WAR 03-21-2015-to-03-27-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(154) 02-21-2015-to-02-27-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...27-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(155) 02-28-2015-to-03-06-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...06-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(156) 03-07-2015-to-03-13-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...13-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(157) 03-14-2015-to-03-20-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...20-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

_____

Hummm......Timing.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thenation.com/blog/20212...nally-admitted-israel-has-nuclear-weapons-too

It’s Official: The Pentagon Finally Admitted That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons, Too

William Greider on March 20, 2015 - 10:56 AM ET

While the Washington press corps obsessed over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at the State Department, reporters were missing a far more important story about government secrets. After five decades of pretending otherwise, the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to America’s.

Early last month the Department of Defense released a secret report done in 1987 by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analysis that essentially confirms the existence of Israel’s nukes. DOD was responding to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Grant Smith, an investigative reporter and author who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. Smith said he thinks this is the first time the US government has ever provided official recognition of the long-standing reality.

It’s not exactly news. Policy elites and every president from LBJ to Obama have known that Israel has the bomb. But American authorities have cooperated in the secrecy and prohibited federal employees from sharing the truth with the people. When the White House reporter Helen Thomas asked the question of Barack Obama back in 2009, the president ducked. “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate,” Obama said. That was an awkward fib. Obama certainly knows better, and so do nearly two-thirds of the American people, according to opinion polls.

In my previous blog, “What about Israel’s Nuclear Bomb?” I observed that the news media focused solely on Iran’s nuclear ambitions but generally failed to note that Israel already had nukes. That produced a tip about the Pentagon release in early February.

Yet the confirmation of this poorly kept secret opens a troublesome can of worms for both the US government and our closest ally in the Middle East. Official acknowledgement poses questions and contradictions that cry out for closer inspection. For many years, the United States collaborated with Israel’s development of critical technology needed for advanced armaments. Yet Washington pushed other nations to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires international inspections to discourage the spread of nuclear arms. Israel has never signed the NPT and therefore does not have to submit to inspections.

Washington knew all along what the inspectors would find in Israel. Furthermore, as far back as the 1960s, the US Foreign Assistance Act was amended by concerned senators to prohibit any foreign aid for countries developing their own nukes. Smith asserts that the exception made for Israel was a violation of the US law but it was shrouded by the official secrecy. Since Israel is a major recipient of US aid, American presidents had good reason not to reveal the truth.

The newly released report—“Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations”—describes Israel’s nuclear infrastructure in broad terms, but the dimensions are awesome. Israel’s nuclear research labs, the IDA researchers reported, “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.” Indeed, the investigators observed that Israel’s facilities are “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

The IDA team visited Israeli labs, factories, private companies and government research centers in Israel and relevant NATO nations (details on NATO allies were redacted from the released version). On Israel, the tone of the report was both admiring and collegial. “The SOREQ center,” it said, for instance, “runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration and non-destructive testing for electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety. This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The IDA team added: “It should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.” So far, The IDA estimated, Israel scientists were about where the US had been in the 1950s in understanding fission and fusion processes.

The report does not include a single declarative sentence that directly states the taboo—Israel has nukes—but the meaning is obvious. For many years, scholars and other experts have estimated that Israel has at least 100 to 200 bombs, possibly more.

Some of the IDA’s observations seem to hint at a copy-cat process in which the US government either actively helped or at least looked the other way while Israel borrowed or purloined technologies to establish a parallel nuclear system that looks a lot like America’s. The IDA document does not say anything, one way or the other, on the history of how this happened. But critics of Israel and advocates for banning all nuclear weapons have harbored suspicions for decades.

The Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, Smith said, is pushing another FOIA request aimed at the CIA, hoping to pry open long-secret intelligence investigations about how Israel managed to get the bomb in the first place. The institute is seeking disclosure of a CIA study that supposedly investigated how quantities of uranium were leaked or allegedly smuggled by Israeli agents from a Pennsylvania defense plant to provide seed corn for the Israel bomb.

Smith and others suspect that elements of the US government knew what happened back then or may even have assisted the stealthy transfer. That particular mystery was a hot issue back in the 1970s. It seems likely to get renewed interest now that the pretense of official ignorance has been demolished by release of the 1987 report.

However, the IDA’s most powerful message may not be what it says about Israel’s nukes but what it conveys about the US-Israel relationship. It resembles a technological marriage that over decades transformed the nature of modern warfare in numerous ways. The bulk of the report is really a detailed survey of Israel’s collaborative role in developing critical technologies—the research and industrial base that helped generate advanced armaments of all sorts. Most Americans, myself included, are used to assuming the US military-industrial complex invents and perfects the dazzling innovations, then shares some with favored allies like Israel.

That’s not altogether wrong but the IDA report suggests a more meaningful understanding. The US and Israel are more like a very sophisticated high-tech partnership that collaborates on the frontiers of physics and other sciences in order to yield the gee-whiz weaponry that now define modern warfare. Back in the 1980s, the two nations were sharing and cross-pollinating their defense research at a very advanced level.

Today we have as a result the “electronic battlefield” and many other awesome innovations. Tank commanders with small-screen maps that show where their adversaries are moving. Jet pilots who fire computer-guided bombs. Ships at sea that launch missiles over the horizon and hit targets 1,000 miles away.

I had to read the report several times before I grasped its deeper meaning. The language is densely technological and probably beyond anyone (like myself) who is not a physicist or engineer. The researchers reported on the state of play in electronic optical systems, plasma physics, laser-guided spacecraft, obscure communication innovations and many other scientific explorations that were underway circa 1987.

Finally, it dawned on me. These experts were talking in the 1980s about technological challenges that were forerunners to the dazzling innovations that are now standard. I saw some of these new war-fighting devices in the late 1990s when I wrote a short book on the post-Cold War military struggling to redefine itself when it no longer had the Soviet Union as an enemy (Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequence of Peace).

While reporting on numerous military bases—land, sea and air—I saw some of the early attempts at battlefield communications and guidance systems. A lot of the new stuff didn’t work very well. Soldiers and commanders sometimes had to put it aside or work around it. Drones at that stage were still on the drawing boards, known as UAV’s—“unmanned aerial vehicles.”

The Middle East wars became the live-fire testing ground where new systems were perfected. The consequences of peace were brushed aside by the terror of 9-11. War became America’s continuous preoccupation.

Israel participated importantly in developing groundwork for some of the wonder weapons and, as the IDA survey makes clear, Israeli physicists or engineers were sometimes a few steps ahead of their American counterparts. To be sure, the Israelis were junior partners who brought “technology based on extrapolations of US equipment and ideas.” But the report also observed: “Much Israeli fielded electronic warfare and communications [is] ahead of US fielded equipment.”

On several occasions, the research team spoke of “ingenious” or “Ingeniously clever” solutions that Israeli technologists have found for mind-bending problems of advanced physics. The IDA team also suggested opportunities for American researchers to piggy-back on what Israel had discovered or to team up with one of their R&D centers. Yale’s Office of Naval Research, IDA suggested, should collaborate with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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“Scientists at RAFAEL [another Israeli center] have come up with an ingenious way of using the properties of a glow discharge plasma to detect microwave and millimeter waves,” the report said. “The attractiveness of the project lies in the ability of the discharge to withstand nuclear weapons effects.”

This observation gave a me a chill because the earnest defense scientists have yet to find a way for human beings “to withstand nuclear weapons effects.”

It would be good to keep in mind that these extraordinary breakthroughs in technology have one purpose—fighting wars—and are intended to give still greater advantage to advanced nations like the US and Israel that dwarf more primitive adversaries. Many of the new technologies, it is true, will find commercial applications that improve everyday lives (some already have). Yet it is also true that our advances in high-tech killing power have not subdued all the enemies.

They find irregular ways to fight back. They blow the legs off our soldiers. They plant home-made bombs in crowded restaurants. They recruit children to serve as their guided missiles. They capture and slaughter innocent bystanders, while our side merely bombs the villages from high altitude. The victims do not see our way as pristine or preferable. Their suffering becomes their global recruiting.

The highly successful partnership of American and Israeli military science is one more reason it will be most difficult to disentangle from the past and turn the two countries in new directions, either together or separately. But many people are beginning to grasp that lopsided wars—contests between high-tech and primitive forms of destruction—do not necessarily lead to victory or peace. They have led the United States into more wars.


Read Next: William Greider on how Israel’s nuclear superiority affects Middle East conflicts

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/petraeus-in-iran-warning-echoes-netanyahus-point/89100/

Petraeus, in Iran Warning, Echoes Netanyahu’s Point In Speech to Congress

By LAWRENCE KUDLOW, Special to the Sun | March 21, 2015

Don’t just rely on Benjamin Netanyahu’s passionate advice to Congress on his way to reelection that Iran is our arch enemy. Now we have the counsel of retired general David Petraeus, who gave a remarkable interview this week to the Washington Post. General Petraeus agrees with Mr. Netanyahu: Iran, not the Islamic State, is the real enemy.

The general’s message: “I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq’s long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by — and some guided by — Iran.” The general adds, “Longer-term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge as the preeminent power in the country, one that is outside the control of the government and instead answerable to Tehran.” (Italics mine.)

Mr. Netanyahu is arguing against a bad United States-Iran deal that might end the economic sanctions and permit Iranian nuclear development after ten years. (Of course, nobody believes Iran will wait for, or permit, true verification.) But the thrust of the Petraeus interview is that unless American military strategy completely changes, Iran is going to take over Iraq.

General Petraeus gives ample evidence of this: These Shiite militias are being run by Iran’s top military man, General Qasem Soleimani. He’s the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard. He has been spotted and filmed on the ground in Iraq. And he has been making battlefield tours the way General Petraeus did during the surge.

In the Post interview, General Petraeus relates a remarkable story: In the midst of the surge, the general got a note from Soleimani: “General Petraeus, you should be aware that I, Qasem Soleimani, control Iran’s policy for Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.” (Italics mine.) General Petraeus told the intermediary he could tell Soleimani to “pound sand.”

Overall, General Petraeus makes it clear that the current Iranian regime “is not our ally in the Middle East,” is part of the problem, not the solution, and is “deeply hostile to us and our friends.” Though General Petraeus never mentioned President Obama’s name, it’s clear that the general is splitting from administration policy.

And isn’t all this what Bibi Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress? Didn’t he say Iran’s goal is to control the whole area, and of course attempt at some point to blast Israel off the face of the Earth?

So why are Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Kerry trying to do business with Iran? If we know who the militias really are and know that Iran wants to take over Iraq and control the whole region, why is the United States talking about lifting economic sanctions and negotiating some sort of accommodationist deal with our arch enemy?

And why is the U.S. doing this with oil down 50% and Iran a high-cost producer? The economic table is set for a catastrophic fiscal blow to Iran — our enemy.

According to a Wall Street Journal news report, Iran needs $130.70 a barrel of oil to balance its budget. The price of Brent crude is about $55, or roughly 60% below what Iran needs. It’s hard to get credible economic numbers for Iran, but it’s a safe guess that the budget is most of the state-run economy. Therefore, cheap oil is deadly for Iran.

So I ask again: Why are we helping them? We’ve got Iran on the ropes. Why loosen the sanctions?

Talking to the Post, General Petraeus acknowledges that we moved troops out of Iraq way too soon and in doing so sent a signal of weakness that we were pulling back from the Middle East overall. I would guess that these last-ditch efforts at an Iranian treaty will be perceived as even greater U.S. weakness in the Middle East.

Who knows if this can be stopped? Surely the Senate must vote on any U.S.-Iran deal. But the conundrum is, if we know Iran is our enemy, if we know Iran wants to conquer the Middle East, if we know Iran wants to destroy Israel, if we know Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons, and if we’re hearing all this not just from the Israeli prime minister, who has the burden of defending his nation, but also from a retired general who is out of office and has no skin in the game, why won’t the present administration come to acknowledge the real situation, reverse course, and halt any efforts to placate our arch enemy Iran?

Why do we even have to ask this question?

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/The-doomsday-scenario-394524

Middle East
By YONAH JEREMY BOB \ 03/21/2015 05:05

Iran deal or no deal, the global nuclear Pandora’s box has reached a far more dangerous stage

From Beijing, to Islamabad and Moscow, new technology has made old nuclear standoffs more unpredictable,unstable and pervasive.

Doomsday may be closer than we think. With most of the world’s focus on the Iran nuclear negotiations, little attention has been paid to a complete breakdown in the push to limit nuclear weapons proliferation on a scale not seen in years.

Analysts may be correct that a deal which leaves Iran as a nuclear weapons “threshold state” – or a state which has mastered the skills for making nuclear weapons and need only decide to produce one – may expand a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others. But the proliferation problem will be there and growing, deal or no deal.

The next most obvious problem is North Korea, which is estimated to have somewhere between six to 10 nuclear bombs. It is also continuing to produce new ones and is likely, based on its information exchanges and mutual visits with Iran in recent years, to be illegally sharing its technology with other dangerous new countries that may produce nuclear weapons.

The increasing North Korean threat along with China’s fast-expanding conventional and nuclear forces may cause a new nuclear arms race, with Japan and South Korea finally joining in.

Those countries may decide they can no longer rely on US protection alone, particularly as China develops second-strike nuclear capabilities by virtue of mobile nuclear missile launchers, as well as four Jin-class ballistic missile submarines.

Until now, China had a “small” number of nuclear weapons, estimated at around 250 (as compared to the US’s arsenal – estimated at 4,700 to over 7,000, depending on what is being counted) and all their weapons were in highly vulnerable silos.

Because of that, there was an idea that Beijing would not anger Washington by attacking its neighbors.

The rationale was that the US could potentially retaliate with a nuclear strike on China and simultaneously knock out China’s vulnerable nuclear weapons, to eliminate any retaliation by China against the US.

China’s potential new ability to launch a second or retaliatory nuclear strike against the US from its harder-to-attack mobile weapons sites and submarines mean the US would need to think much harder about intervening to protect its Asian allies from Chinese adventurism.

Pakistan is another obvious problem, though with its already built nuclear weapons arsenal – estimated at 100 to 120 – it strangely receives far less attention than Iran.

Some of that limited attention is probably due to the impression that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is only focused on one country, India, and that the rest of the world can relax without needing to worry too much.

But Islamabad has and continues to develop a wide range of nuclear options, including low-yield short-range weapons which might be easier for it to export to terror groups or for terror groups to steal, with unending questions about how secure the Pakistani government keeps its weapons.

But all of these threats may pale in comparison to the return of the Russian nuclear behemoth.

Estimates on Moscow’s arsenal vary widely depending on what is being counted, but even at the low 4,300 estimate (some are double that), the arsenal includes a new nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile – which is said to be capable of carrying 15 independently targeted medium warheads at a time – and is newly formidable.

Moreover, a new fleet of Borei- and Severodvinsk-class submarines will allow Moscow to keep ballistic missile submarines on permanent patrol for the first time since the end of the Cold War.

Vladmir Putin’s Russia has also become far more fond of threatening nuclear weapons use in a variety of scenarios, and has carried out war games in which it levels nuclear strikes on Poland and Sweden.

Some of this may be to send a message of Russian disapproval of cooperation with US-NATO missile defense and other plans, but it still is a risky and destabilizing business.

As Russia more directly butts heads with the US and Europe, will its nuclear power status allow it to restore its old empire beyond parts of Ukraine? Will the US and Europe need to restore their Cold War military levels of preparedness to fend off a Russian attack? Could these broken-down relations lead Russia to be more aggressive in helping Tehran or even terror groups use smaller tactical nuclear weapons or gain nuclear technology in a new destabilizing fashion? There is another major problem.

True, at the height of the Cold War, Russia was estimated to wield more than 40,000 nuclear weapons, far more than now. Yet back then, Russia and the US were extremely communicative about their nuclear strategy redlines, to avoid any possible misunderstandings or surprises – such as occurred in the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

That communication has broken down, and many of the newer, growing nuclear powers – most worryingly China – have remained more opaque about their nuclear strategies, leaving much more to chance in a high-stakes game.

Doomsday may not be here yet, but increasing nuclear proliferation and aggressiveness without corresponding improving communication between the nuclear powers mean that preventing it may be harder than ever before.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150321/ml--syria-7fda774d5d.html

Attack on Kurds in NE Syria kills at least 20, wounds 70

Mar 21, 12:22 AM (ET)
By BASSEM MROUE

BEIRUT (AP) — A twin bombing attack targeting Kurds celebrating their New Year on Friday killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 70 in a northeast Syrian city, activist groups and state media said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the attacks was carried out by a suicide bomber who belonged to the Islamic State group, and the other was a bomb planted in a nearby area. Twenty people were killed and 80 wounded, the group said.

Syrian state TV quoted the governor of Hassakeh province as saying that the bombings killed 22 and wounded more than 70. The station said hospitals in the city were urging people to donate blood.

Kurdish fighters have been battling the Islamic State group for months, leaving hundreds dead. The main Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, has been advancing recently in Hassakeh province. It is a predominantly Kurdish area but the Islamic State group holds parts of the region, which borders Turkey and Iraq.

YPG fighters, with the help of airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, have evicted IS fighters from the northern Syrian town of Kobani and dozens of nearby villages over the past two months.

Although the Islamic State group did not immediately claim responsibility for the bombings, they were a likely culprit due to their many recent attacks on military and civilian targets in the area.

A spokesman said in a statement that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks. "These heinous attacks took place during a holiday that is customarily a time for Kurdish communities to come together to share their hopes for the new year," the statement reads.

Ekrem Hasso, an official in northeastern Syria's Kurdish region, also blamed IS and said some of the wounded were being rushed to hospitals in the nearby city of Qamishli as well as the towns of Amouda and Dirbasiyeh. He said more than 50 people were killed and dozens wounded.

"Hassakeh hospitals are flooded with casualties," Hasso said by telephone from Amouda. He added that Kurdish forces are on high alert in much of northern Syria for fear of more attacks.

Ghalia Nehme, another official in Syria's Kurdish region, said one of the attacks occurred in a main square in the city of Hassakeh.

Kurdish authorities had announced earlier that no official celebrations will be held for Kurdish New Year, known as Nowruz, due to security concerns, Nehme said. People were celebrating Friday on their own, she said.

"God willing on the eve of this feast all the people will live in peace and there be no such massacres," Nehme told The Associated Press by telephone from northern Syria.

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, making up more than 10 percent of the country's 23 million people. They are centered in Hassakeh and Qamishli provinces. The capital Damascus and Syria's largest city, Aleppo, also have several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods.

In another development, the Observatory said that some 70 troops and pro-government fighters have been killed in attacks by Islamic State militants in the central province of Homs over the past three days. The Islamic State group also sustained casualties in the clashes east of Homs city, it added.

---

Follow Bassem Mroue on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bmroue

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150321/eu--ukraine-truce_violations-0779f49bc5.html

Confidence in Ukraine's cease-fire hurt by arms violations

Mar 21, 5:33 AM (ET)
By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and PETER LEONARD

(AP) An OSCE monitor inspects Grad rocket launchers stored by pro-Russian rebels in the...
Full Image

NOVOAMVROSIIVSKE, Ukraine (AP) — With cameras and clipboards in hands, teams of blue-jacketed international observers drive around the muddy countryside of eastern Ukraine looking for rocket launchers and artillery.

Their task is to verify whether government troops and Russian-backed rebel forces are removing heavy weapons from the front line in accordance with a February cease-fire deal. The success of the Organization for Security and Europe monitoring mission would lessen the chances that heavy fighting will resume in conflict that has already left more than 6,000 dead in a year.

Evidence is emerging, however, that the warring sides are leading monitors on a time-wasting game of hide-and-seek.

Distrust between foes remains intense and anxiety lingers that a new flare-up could be just around the corner.

(AP) An OSCE monitor inspects a cannon stored by pro-Russian rebels in the village of...
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On Friday, an Associated Press journalist saw two tanks and two 120 mm guns being taken toward the front in rebel territory, near the separatist-held city of Donetsk. Two days earlier, Ukrainian troops were seen transporting a tank and a large-caliber gun in the town of Avdiivka, which also lies right on the front line.

None of the weapons should have been there.

Under a peace deal laboriously negotiated between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, anything with a caliber of 100 mm or above should be pulled back 25 to 70 kilometers (15 to 45 miles) from the front.

The weapons withdrawal began the last week of February and both sides claim to have completed the process. But the OSCE says to make sure the pullbacks happened, it must know how many weapons each side has and where they are being stored.

"Some information has been provided from both sides, but we still need substantial information," said Michael Bociurkiw, the OSCE mission spokesman.

(AP) A pro-Russian rebel, partly visible, watches OSCE monitors inspect heavy weapons...
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On Friday, a group of inspectors in rebel territory traveled from Donetsk to Novoamvrosiivske, a village near the Russian border where AP journalists on Feb. 26 followed four trucks carrying Grad launchers to a cement factory.

In that same cement factory, monitors scrutinized dozens of tanks, rocket launchers and howitzers, eyeing serial plates, taking photos and writing down notes. Where serial numbers were scratched away, a photo was taken of that missing information.

In separatist areas, OSCE teams have to ask in advance for permission to visit sites they wish to see and they travel under the supervision of rebel fighters.

"They have complained to us that they can move around freely on Ukrainian territory," one rebel fighter, who gave his name as Major Yegorov, told the AP in Novoamvrosiivske. "That is true, but on that territory there is no fighting. The war is here, in the southeast. So we control them because we want to provide safety for them."

It is unclear to what extent the OSCE teams are able to decide on their own where to inspect.

(AP) A pro-Russian rebel stands on guard in a storage for cannons in the village of...
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On the road back to Donetsk after the Novoamvrosiivske inspection, fresh tracks on the asphalt in the Donetsk suburb of Makiivka appeared to indicate that a convoy of heavy machinery had passed through since the morning. The OSCE team drove past, but an AP journalist followed the tracks to find two tanks in a multi-vehicle convoy that included truck-pulled cannons and troop carriers full of rebel fighters.

On Wednesday, two days earlier, a Ukrainian soldier told an AP reporter, laughing, that a cease-fire agreement-busting cannon that was being taken toward the front had a "90-something mm caliber." The weapon was clearly more powerful than that.

Ukrainian military officials have at times conceded that they are refraining from a complete withdrawal of heavy weapons, citing what they say is rebel reluctance to do the same.

"We will not withdraw all our weapons, as we have no confirmation that the same is being done by the enemy," military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters March 11. "It would be wrong and criminal to leave our troops without any cover."

And Ukrainian authorities say artillery fire continues in sporadic clashes along the front line. Donetsk region police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin said a resident of Avdiivka was killed Friday after a shell struck a home in the town.

(AP) An OSCE monitor inspects Grad rocket launchers stored by pro-Russian rebels in the...
Full Image

In addition, neither side is willing to agree that tanks fall under the weapons to be withdrawn, although the cease-fire clearly envisions their removal.

Monitors complain daily that they are not being allowed to travel freely. Sometimes they are made to wait at checkpoints, forcing delays, while in more extreme cases they are blocked entirely from reaching their destination.

Bociurkiw said even a short wait violates the verification process.

"Any delays are unacceptable in our books," he said.

---

Leonard reported from Kiev, Ukraine.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150320/lt-mexico-violence-3d9fd4048f.html

10 dead in Mexico shootout include 5 police, 2 bystanders

Mar 20, 3:36 PM (ET)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's federal police say gunmen have ambushed a convoy of officers, leading to a shootout in which 10 people died, including five officers and two bystanders.

A police statement says the members of Mexico's new gendarmerie special force were ambushed late Thursday while patrolling in the town of Ocotlan in the western state of Jalisco.

Friday's statement says that as the convoy passed a parked car, a man inside pulled out a large-caliber weapon and opened fire. While officers sought cover and fired back, other gunmen arrived in at least 10 vehicles. Most of the gunmen escaped, leaving five officers, three armed civilians and two bystanders dead. Eight officers were wounded.

The gendarmerie is assigned to prevent crime in strategic business and tourist areas.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/20/us-usa-israel-idUSKBN0MG2L620150320

Netanyahu row casts doubt on Obama pledge to 'have Israel's back'

By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:22pm EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, who once famously said he would “always have Israel’s back,” may be rethinking that promise as aides begin weighing options in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election disavowal of a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

Following Obama’s warning that the United States would “reassess” its relationship with Israel, the administration is not only reconsidering the diplomatic cover it has long given Israel at the United Nations but is also looking at a range of other possibilities to put pressure on its historically close ally, U.S. officials said.

Those could include becoming less active in protecting Israel in international forums and finding new ways to reinforce the message of U.S. opposition to Jewish settlement expansion.

As internal discussions proceeded on Friday, the White House appeared in no rush to lower the temperature in the worst U.S.-Israeli crisis in decades, sparked by Netanyahu’s campaign declaration that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.

The White House made clear for a second straight day that it had little faith in Netanyahu’s effort to backtrack since winning Tuesday's election and insist he was in favor of a two-state solution, long a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy.

There was no sign of any imminent move to turn the administration’s heated rhetoric against Netanyahu into a tangible shift in policy.

As a result, some analysts questioned whether Washington was merely posturing to put the Israeli leader on the defensive at a time when an end-of-March deadline looms in U.S.-led nuclear diplomacy with Iran that Netanyahu vehemently opposes.

“The administration is putting everything on the table except security assistance – and this will allow Netanyahu time to walk back his comments more credibly,” said Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel. “I would also not expect any decisions before the situation with respect to the Iran negotiations becomes clearer.”

U.S. officials privately were mindful of the risk that the diplomatic storm could drive a deeper wedge between the administration and the influential U.S. pro-Israel camp and cause problems for Obama’s fellow Democrats as the 2016 presidential campaign approaches.

One U.S. official voiced skepticism that the administration would shift its stance toward Israel in any substantive way, arguing that despite White House annoyance at Netanyahu, there would likely be too high a domestic political cost to pay for alienating pro-Israel Americans.

“I just don’t believe in the reassessment,” said this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of U.S. relations with Israel.

But Dennis Ross, Obama’s former top Middle East adviser, said the White House pressure had other motives as well.

“There’s an effort to apply leverage to the Israelis to get the prime minister to move on some things when he has a new government formed,” Ross said, citing a U.S. wish to see Israel release frozen Palestinian tax funds and take other goodwill gestures.


RECONSIDERING U.S. SHIELD AT UN

Among the most serious risks for Israel would be a shift in Washington’s posture at the United Nations.

The United States has long stood in the way of Palestinian efforts to get a U.N. resolution recognizing its statehood, including threatening to use its veto, and has protected Israel from efforts to isolate it internationally. But European governments incensed by Netanyahu’s campaign comments against Palestinian statehood, could join in another push for such a resolution.

David Makovsky, a former member of Obama’s team in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that collapsed last year, said the question is: “Will the U.S. consider avoiding a veto over the parameters to a final-status deal with the Palestinians?”

“There’s no doubt that this approach will lead to a firestorm between these two governments if they go forward,” said Makovsky, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Another option under consideration cited by a U.S. official could also be controversial. A report from the administration to Congress in coming weeks about U.S. loan guarantees to Israel, including how much is used for settlements, could contain language critical of expanded construction on occupied land in the West Bank.

While the United States is not likely to reverse its opposition to the Palestinians joining the International Criminal Court next month, Washington could become less vocal in criticizing the move. Some U.S. lawmakers already have threatened to push for a cutoff of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority if it goes ahead with its threat to seek war crimes charges against Israel for last year’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Other possibilities include Obama's cutting back on future one-on-one encounters with Netanyahu.

White House officials have left little doubt that Netanyahu's U.S. ambassador, Ron Dermer, has been largely frozen out by parts of the administration for his role in orchestrating Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this month against Obama’s Iran diplomacy.


(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Howard Goller)

 

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/21/us-iran-nuclear-france-idUSKBN0MH06T20150321

France says deal with Iran must be robust, guarantee no atomic bomb

By John Irish
LAUSANNE, Switzerland Sat Mar 21, 2015 6:06am EDT

(Reuters) - France's foreign minister said on Saturday that his country wanted an agreement over Iran's nuclear program that was sufficiently robust to guarantee that Tehran could not acquire an atomic bomb.

Iran and six world powers - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - suspended negotiations on a nuclear agreement on Friday and are set to meet again next week to break a deadlock over sensitive atomic research and lifting of sanctions.

France has been demanding more stringent restrictions on the Iranians under any deal than the other Western delegations and at one point during the talks French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius phoned his team to ensure it made no more concessions, officials said.

The Europeans and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry plan to meet in London on Saturday to help bridge differences, negotiators said, before a end-March deadline for a political framework agreement and a full nuclear deal by June 30. Officials have expressed concerns that the French might block a deal.

"France wants an agreement, but a robust one that really guarantees that Iran can have access to civilian nuclear power, but not the atomic bomb," Fabius told Europe 1 radio on Saturday.

Iran denies allegations from the Western powers and their allies that it harbors nuclear weapons ambitions. It wants all U.N. sanctions to be lifted immediately, including those targeting its nuclear program.

While the talks have made progress over the past year, differences on sticking points are still wide enough to potentially prevent an agreement in the end.

There was no breakthrough this week. Disagreements arose among the powers, with France insisting on a longer period of restrictions on Iran's nuclear work. It also opposed the idea of suspending some U.N. sanctions relatively quickly if a deal is struck.

"This accord must be robust. Why? Because we have to protect ourselves from the eventuality of an Iranian atomic bomb," Fabius added on Saturday.

"But also if the accord is not sufficiently solid then regional countries would say it's not serious enough, so we are also going to get the nuclear weapon, and that would lead to an extremely dangerous nuclear proliferation."

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini denied on Friday there were divisions between Europe and the United States.

"There is unity, there is unity on the fact that we want a deal, we want a good deal," she said in Brussels after talks with French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the talks would resume on Wednesday.


(Editing by Pravin Char)

 

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Retreating Boko Haram leaves mass of throat-slit corpses near Nigerian town

By Emmanuel Braun
DAMASAK, Nigeria Fri Mar 20, 2015 7:10pm EDT

(Reuters) - Soldiers from Niger and Chad who liberated the Nigerian town of Damasak from Boko Haram militants have discovered the bodies of at least 70 people, many with their throats slit, scattered under a bridge, a Reuters witness said.

In what appeared to be an execution site for the Islamist group, the bodies were strewn beneath the concrete bridge on one of the main roads leading out of the town. At least one was decapitated.

The bodies were partially mummified by the dry desert air, while grass has began to grow around the corpses, suggesting that the killings had taken place some time ago.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in a six-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. Damasak was seized by the Islamist group in November but recaptured by troops from Niger and Chad on Saturday as part of a multinational effort to wipe out the militants.

Chadian soldiers, who said the bodies were discovered on Thursday, spoke of at least 100 corpses in the area around the dry river bed. A Reuters witness was able to count at least 70.

A strong smell of decomposition in many parts of town suggested there could be more bodies concealed there, the Reuters witness said.

A trail of blackened blood was visible along the side of the bridge facing the bodies, suggesting they had been thrown off the side after being killed. Among the dead was the imam of the town.

All but around 50 of the town's residents had fled by the time Damasak was recaptured. Those who remained were mostly too old or too sick to leave.

"People were in town when they (Boko Haram) attacked, they fired at us, we ran away to the bushes but they continued to fire and chased some people to kill them," said Damasak resident Mbodou Moussa.

Chad's military spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa said the Chadians had asked Nigeria's military to occupy the town, which lies close to the border with Niger, and would remain there until Nigerian troops arrived.

The regional offensive was launched this year with Chad, Niger and Cameroon as Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and biggest economy, prepares for presidential elections on March 28.

At the start of this year, Boko Haram controlled around 20 local government areas, a territory the size of Belgium. With the help of its foreign allies, Nigeria's army said on Tuesday it had pushed the rebels out of all but three districts.

On Thursday, however, two security sources told Reuters that Boko Haram had killed at least 10 people in the town of Gamburu, on the border with Cameroon, demonstrating it can still attack civilians despite being forced into retreat.

President Goodluck Jonathan has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle the insurgency. His challenger Muhammadu Buhari has campaigned on a reputation for toughness gained when he was military ruler of Nigeria in the 1980s.


(Additional reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki in Niamey; Writing by Daniel Flynn and Bate Felix; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Grant McCool)

 

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http://freebeacon.com/national-security/northcom-russian-cruise-missile-threat-to-u-s-grows/

Northcom: Russian Cruise Missile Threat to U.S. Grows

U.S. defenses ‘over-matched’ for missile threats

BY: Bill Gertz
March 20, 2015 5:40 pm

Russia is developing a long-range cruise missile that poses a new threat to the United States, the commander of the U.S. Northern Command warned this week.

“Russia is progressing toward its goal of deploying long-range, conventionally-armed cruise missiles with ever increasing stand-off launch distances on its heavy bombers, submarines, and surface combatants, augmenting the Kremlin’s toolkit of flexible deterrent options short of the nuclear threshold,” Adm. William Gortney, Northcom chief who heads the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said Thursday.

“Should these trends continue, over time NORAD will face increased risk in our ability to defend North America against Russian cruise missile threats,” he said in prepared testimony to the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.

A defense official said the missile that concerns the Northcom commander is the Russian KH-101 cruise missile which Russia has developed as a weapon to attack critical infrastructure in the United States, such as the electrical grid.

The comments highlight what defense officials and military analysts say is the growing threat of long-range cruise missiles.

Cruise missiles pose unique threats because they can defeat defenses by flying at low altitudes, avoiding radars, and hiding behind terrain. Some newer cruise missiles have radar-evading stealth features making them even less visible to radar or infrared detectors.

The low-flying missiles also can overwhelm defenses by attacking with multiple missiles coming from different directions and defeating air defenses at their weakest points. They also can fly circuitous routes to reach targets, avoiding radar and air defenses.

Testimony by Gortney and other senior officials at the hearing raised concerns that growing missile capabilities could overwhelm U.S. defenses.

Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, testified that North Korea’s missile development, in particular, is a major concern. Syring said because of funding cuts he may have to advise Gortney that “the [missile defense] system is over-matched.”

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) said he is very concerned about funding shortfalls for missile defense.

“The United States of America is on its way to losing its military edge, not just in terms of the ability to project power, but to even defend the homeland,” Rogers said. “This situation is intolerable.”

Gortney, in his testimony, said: “We remain concerned with the development of conventional cruise missiles that could provide near peer adversaries with options to strike the United States without the perceived risk of retaliation of a nuclear exchange.”

The threat was highlighted in early September, when two Russian Tu-95 strategic bombes conducted practice cruise missile bombing strikes on the United States from launch areas off the coast of eastern Canada, U.S. defense officials said.

Across Capitol Hill, Adm. Cecil D. Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, also voiced concerns about the growing cruise missile threat that he said is affecting U.S. defenses and deterrence.

“The concept of mating advanced weapon systems with commonplace items—such as surface-to-surface cruise missiles disguised as shipping containers—blurs the line between military and civilian environments and complicates our deterrence calculus,” Haney said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

Haney said the Air Force is developing a new air-launched Long-Range Stand-Off nuclear cruise missile to replace the aging air-launched cruise missiles now in use. The new missile is needed to defeat sophisticated air defenses, like those that China is developing.

Neither admiral gave specific technical details on the new Russian cruise missile.

However, former Pentagon nuclear strategist Mark Schneider said the Russian missile is the KH-101.

“The Russians describe the KH-101 as a 5,000-kilometer [3,106-mile] range conventional cruise missile,” he said. “The KH-102 is the nuclear version.”

The KH-101 is configured for launch on Russian strategic bombers. There have been Russian press reports that a sea-based variant is deployed on Russia’s Severodvinsk-class nuclear attack submarines.

A report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) said at least nine nations are developing land-attack cruise missiles and several will make them available to foreign customers. “The cruise missile threat to U.S. forces will increase over the next decade,” the report said.

Russia's Club K cruise missile NASIC
Russia’s Club K cruise missile / National Air and Space Intelligence Center

According to NASIC, Russia’s Club-K cruise missile is sold in a “container launcher” that looks like a standard shipping container. The Club-K can launch cruise missiles from cargo ships, trains, or commercial trucks.

China also has a new long-range cruise missile called the DH-10, and Iran’s land-attack cruise missile is the 1,242-mile-range Meshkat.

The new missiles challenge U.S. dominance in the field of precision conventional cruise missiles.

“The emerging capability of near peers to generate similar long-range strike effects could complicate our decision-making,” the four-star admiral said.

To counter the cruise missile attack threat, the United States has deployed a sensor system called the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS).

The first system was deployed at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and a second will be deployed later this year.

Gortney said JLENS will be a key element of countering the cruise missile threat, and said his command, in charge of U.S. homeland defense, needs better intelligence on the cruise missile threat near U.S. airspace and shores.

“Whether it is a strategic bomber, a submarine, or a surface combatant, defeating the archer is technically more feasible and affordable than defeating the arrow,” he said. “The ability to locate, intercept, and if necessary destroy these platforms before they can launch a strike is crucial.”

The U.S. military is working with the Canadian military to modernize or replace sensors systems designed to detect air intrusions into U.S. and Canadian defense zones.

“Before we can engage an airborne threat, we must be able to see it,” Gortney said, adding that doing so requires developing advanced surveillance to detect, track, and monitor aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones.

“The new surveillance capabilities will, when necessary, cue our defense systems against the full spectrum of air threats of all sizes, at all altitudes, and at all speeds,” he said.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, a former senior intelligence official, said Gortney’s concerns are warranted.

“The threat of accurate, low observable, conventional cruise missiles requires more attention in the form of deterrent capability, systems that yield improved situational awareness, and effective defenses,” said Deptula, now dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies.

“These increasing threats underscore why we need build the kind of deterrent and situational awareness capabilities resident in a new long-range sensor shooter aircraft,” he said. “They also should be a wake up call for us not to neglect our northern tier bases.”

Schneider, the former Pentagon strategic nuclear policy official, said the KH-101 is one of several new cruise missiles being developed by the Russians.

“There is a very large asymmetry in cruise missile capability developing between the U.S. and Russia,” Schneider said. “We have eliminated our only nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile, are ending production of our Tomahawk conventional ship launched cruise missile and the range of our air-launched conventional cruise missile is less than 1,000 kilometers,” he said. “Our follow-on nuclear air-launched cruise missile is not until late 2020s. All of this reflects the fact that the Russians are preparing to fight us while we are preparing to fight terrorists.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://freebeacon.com/national-secu...pons-military-equipment-for-houthis-in-yemen/

Iranian Ship Unloads 185 Tons of Weapons, Military Equipment for Houthis in Yemen

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
March 20, 2015 4:06 pm

An Iranian ship unloaded 185 tons of weapons and military equipment at a Houthi-controlled al-Saleef port in Yemen, al Arabiya reports.

The Houthi militias reportedly closed the port and denied entrance to employees there. Al-Saleef port is considered the second most vital in Yemen.

The news follows last week’s economic partnership agreements between Iran and the Houthis, including a deal that promises a year’s worth of oil supply from Iran.

Iran has also agreed to provide Yemen with a 200 megawatt power plant, according to Yemeni news agency Saba.

Yemen is torn by a power struggle between the Iranian-backed Houthi militias in the north, and the internationally-recognized President Abedrabbu Mansorur Hadi, who has set up a rival seat in the south with the backing of Sunni-led Gulf Arab states.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.military.com/daily-news/...uclear-missiles.html?comp=700001075741&rank=5

North Korean Envoy Says His Country Has Nuclear Missiles

Associated Press | Mar 20, 2015

LONDON — A North Korean envoy says his country has developed nuclear missiles and is prepared to use them at any time.

North Korean Ambassador to Britain Hyun Hak Bong said in a recent interview with British broadcaster Sky News that his government would use the missiles in response to a nuclear attack by the United States.

Asked whether North Korea has the ability now to launch a nuclear missile, Hyun replied, "Any time. Any time. Yes."

"If the United States strike us we should strike back," he said.

Asked if North Korea would only fire nuclear missiles in retaliation, Hyun replied, "We are a peace-loving people you know. We don't want war but we are not afraid of war. This is our policy of the government."

North Korea is thought to have a handful of crude nuclear bombs and has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006. But experts are divided on how far it has come in developing the technology needed to miniaturize warheads so they can be placed on missiles.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security recently estimated that North Korea currently has between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons, some based on plutonium, others on uranium. It concluded that North Korea already has plutonium-based weapons small enough to mount on medium-range and intercontinental-range missiles.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

Hyun's comments come as rival South Korea and the United States conduct annual springtime military drills that North Korea says are aimed at preparing to topple its government. Seoul and Washington say the exercises are purely defensive.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea.

 

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http://www.klfm967.co.uk/news/world-news/1563805/north-korea-nuke-threat-frightening---if-true/

North Korea Nuke Threat Frightening - If True

12:00pm 21st March 2015
(Updated 1:01pm 21st March 2015)

North Korea's ambassador to the UK has told Sky News that his country now has the capability to fire a nuclear missile "anytime".

If true, it's a big deal, a frightening prospect and a potential threat to regional, even global security.

Ambassador Hyun Hak-bong made the claim in an interview with Sky's Defence Correspondent Alistair Bunkall from the country's London embassy.

"We are prepared," the ambassador said. "That is why I say if a sparkle of a fire is made on the Korean peninsula, it will lead to a nuclear war.

"We don't say empty words. We mean what we mean. It is not the United States that has a monopoly on nuclear weapons strikes."

Bunkall sought clarification: "So can I just be clear: you are telling me that the North Korea has the ability now to fire a nuclear missile?

"Anytime, anytime, yes." the ambassador said.

It is widely accepted that North Korea has "the Bomb". But possessing a nuclear bomb is one thing; having the ability to deploy it on a missile is quite another. That is what the ambassador seems to be claiming North Korea can now do.

For years, North Korea has been trying to marry two distinct technologies: it wants to bring together its ballistic missile programme (which it often claims is part of its project to put satellites into orbit) with its nuclear weapon programme.

To deploy a nuclear weapon, North Korea needs to make its nuclear devices "small" enough to fit in the tip of its ballistic missiles - it needs to "miniaturise" them. That's the tricky bit.

The country's nuclear weapons programme itself appears to be successful. It carried out apparently successful underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Analysts believe that the country could have enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least six bombs.

Shortly after the 2013 test, North Korea claimed its scientists had used a miniaturised nuclear device. No proof was provided but, nonetheless, it prompted the alarm bells in Washington DC and Seoul, South Korea.

Recently, American military sources have said North Korea has probably managed some form of miniaturisation. Sources have told Sky News that China, the country with the closest ties to North Korea, holds similar views.

The ambassador's comments to Sky News would, on the face of it, confirm that they have successfully miniaturised their weapons. However, they come at a time when North Korean nuclear or missile tests have been unnervingly absent.

The last flight test of a long range rocket was in December 2012. In July 2013, Sky News was in Pyongyang to see the country's Musudan and KN-08 missiles being paraded through the streets. They have not been seen since.

But a lack of a headline grabbing fourth nuclear test or missile launch could mask quiet activity. Those who study satellite images of North Korea’s known missile launch sites have reported expansion and infrastructure construction.

The exclusive interview is important because it is so unusual to have the opportunity to question a senior official from the North Korean government.

Significantly, the ambassador appeared to rule out a pre-emptive strike on South Korea or the United States.

"If the US strikes us, we should strike back," he said.

"So you would only fire in retaliation?" Bunkall asked.

"Retaliation yes. I said that. We are ready for conventional war with conventional war. Nuclear war with nuclear war."

Bunkall: "So you wouldn't press the button first?"

"Well we are peace loving people. We do not want war, but we are not afraid of war. This is the policy of the government," the ambassador said.

That is surprisingly restrained language by North Korean standards. Usually, the talk is of wanting to wipe out the United States and South Korea.

John Delury, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul's Yonsei University, told Sky News: "I'd say there is a consensus forming that North Korea has miniaturised and weaponised at some basic level.

"There's always room for improvement, of course."

And that's the point: whether or not the ambassador was telling the truth about the ability to fire a nuclear missile, we know that they are trying desperately hard to achieve the capability to do so. The Korean peninsula is already a dangerous place.

Unless North Korea can be brought back to the "Six Party" denuclearisation talks, things could be about to become far less predictable and considerably more dangerous.

 

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http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2015/03/20/63/0200000000AEN20150320005153315F.html

(3rd LD) S. Korea, China, Japan vow efforts to hold summit at early date

2015/03/21 20:11
(ATTN: REWRITES headline, lead; ADDS more info in paras 11,16)

By Kim Soo-yeon

SEOUL, March 21 (Yonhap) -- The top diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan agreed on Saturday to continue efforts to hold a trilateral summit of their leaders at an early date as they seek to revive cooperation amid history and territorial rows.

The pledge came at a meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida. The trilateral meeting was held for the first time in almost three years.

"The three ministers decided to continue their efforts to hold the trilateral summit at the earliest convenient time for the three countries," Yun told a press conference.

A trilateral summit has not been held since May 2012.

In November, South Korean President Park Geun-hye expressed her hope to meet with the Chinese and Japanese leaders following a meeting of their top diplomats.

"By facing history squarely and advancing toward the future, the three foreign ministers also agreed that the three nations should address related issues properly and to work together to improve bilateral relations and to strengthen trilateral cooperation," Yun added.

Relations between South Korea and Japan, and China and Japan have been strained for years due mainly to Tokyo's attempts to whitewash its wartime atrocities and colonial occupation.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910-45 and controlled much of China in the early part of the 20th century.

South Korea and Japan have long been at odds over the issue of Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan's troops during World War II.

Meanwhile, China and Japan have been sparring over a territorial dispute involving islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

"For the three countries, the issue of shared history is not a matter of the past, but a current issue," Wang said in a press conference. "It is important to face up to the history and move forward to the future based on such understanding.

The foreign ministers also reaffirmed their "firm opposition" to North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

"The three ministers decided to continue their joint efforts to resume meaningful six-party talks to make substantial progress in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," a joint statement showed.

The six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia have been dormant since late 2008 when the North walked away from the negotiation table.

Pyongyang later demanded that the six-party talks should resume without any preconditions. But Seoul and Washington have said that North Korea should first demonstrate its willingness to denuclearize.

"We cannot tolerate Pyongyang's nuclear program. It is important to make the world free of nuke weapons as this year marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan," Kishida said.

The ministers also agreed to make efforts towards the acceleration of negotiations for a trilateral free trade agreement.

The trilateral meeting also came at a time when Seoul's diplomacy has been put to the test amid a mounting Washington-Beijing row over the possibility of an advanced U.S. missile defense system on Korean soil and a China-led Asian development bank.

South Korea is struggling to walk a diplomatic tightrope between the U.S., Seoul's key ally, and China, Seoul's largest trading partner, over the sensitive security issue.

Separately, Yun held bilateral meetings with Wang and Kishida, respectively, earlier in the day.

Wang did not bring up the controversial issue of Washington's possible deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system on Korean soil at the meeting with Yun, according to a Seoul official.

Yun and Fumio, meanwhile, agreed to make efforts for progress over ongoing bilateral talks on the former sex slaves.

Last April, Seoul and Tokyo launched talks on Japan's sex slavery, but no breakthrough has been made due largely to Japan's attitude.

sooyeon@yna.co.kr

(END)

 

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(LEAD) U.S. to increase multi-rocket system troops in S. Korea

2015/03/21 02:23
(ATTN: UPDATES with comments from Army spokesman in last 3 paras)
By Oh Seok-min

SEOUL, March 21 (Yonhap) -- The United States plans to send an additional multiple launch rocket system battalion to South Korea in May to better deter North Korea's artillery threats, U.S. Forces Korea said Saturday.

The U.S. secretary of defense "approved the nine-month rotation of a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battalion to South Korea to provide unique counter-fire capabilities supporting its defense," the 8th Army said in a press release.

The first rotational battalion will join the 210th Field Artillery Brigade stationed at Camp Casey in Dongducheon, north of Seoul, near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, in May, it said, adding that the roughly 400 soldiers to be deployed from Texas will be "fully manned, trained and equipped."

Currently, the 210th brigade has two MLRS battalions, and the launchers they have there are to be curtailed in accordance with Washington's army force generation rotational plan.

But the new battalion "will have additional launchers, which ultimately leads to the increase in their total number to be assigned to the 210th Brigade," a USFK official said, refusing to elaborate on the exact number of the current troops and launchers on the peninsula.

"The decision will fill a possible security vacuum that can be caused by the reduced number of launchers," the official added.

The system is seen as a strong deterrent to long-range artillery threats posed by North Korea, which has built up its rocket capabilities.

The move came after Seoul and Washington agreed last year to retain the 210th Brigade in its current location until around 2020, when South Korean forces are expected to complete their counter-fire reinforcement plan. The agreement has sparked controversy over a reversal of their earlier plan to move all U.S. troops south of the South Korean capital.

In Washington, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Donald Peters said the deployment is part of an Army-wide transformation aimed at getting all artillery brigades to have three battalions.

"Korea currently only has two of these battalions. So we are simply adding, rotating a unit to give that brigade the same capability and make it look like all the other artillery brigades in the rest of the entire Army," the spokesman told Yonhap News Agency.

The transformation, which began just a few months ago as part of a broader Army reorganization plan, will "give all of our artillery brigades including the one in Korea additional fire power and combat capability," he said.

graceoh@yna.co.kr

jschang@yna.co.kr

(END)

 

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Germany To Boost Defense 6.2% Over 5 Years

By Deanne Corbett 10:09 a.m. EDT March 20, 2015

BERLIN — The German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel has approved plans to increase defense spending by 6.2 percent over the next five years — an extra €8 billion (US $8.5 billion) by 2019.

In 2016, the defense budget will rise by €1.2 billion to €34.2 billion. The extra funds will allow the defense ministry to push ahead with plans to reform and expand its armed forces as well as commit to a "widened NATO engagement," according to the draft budget. That includes involvement in the NATO response force to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which Merkel has warned could take a long time to resolve.

Germany currently spends about 1.2 percent of GDP on defense — less than the 2 percent recommended by NATO for members of the alliance.

The move comes as the country achieved its first balanced budget in over 40 years in 2014, giving it more leeway to boost spending. The increase also appears in part to be a reaction to the latest terrorist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen. The national police force and the domestic security agency also received budget increases.

"These offices have to adjust to the threat of multiple attacks from small groups, radicalized individuals, as well as from experienced fighters with advanced weaponry," said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere. "They need to be better equipped."

Email: dcorbett@defensenews.com

 

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Shiite rebels call for Yemen offensive; US troops evacuate

Mar 21, 2:55 PM (ET)
By AHMED AL-HAJ

(AP) Members of a militia group loyal to Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, known...
Full Image

ADEN, Yemen (AP) — Yemen's Shiite rebels issued a call to arms Saturday to battle forces loyal to the country's embattled president, as U.S. troops were evacuating a southern air base crucial to America's drone strike program after al-Qaida militants seized a nearby city.

The turmoil comes as Yemen battles al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the target of the drone program, and faces a purported affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings killing at least 137 people Friday.

All these factors could push the Arab world's most impoverished country, united only in the 1990s, back toward civil war.

"I hate to say this, but I'm hearing the loud and clear beating of the drums of war in Yemen," Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote on Twitter.

(AP) Members of a militia group loyal to Yemen's President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, known...
Full Image

The Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, swept into Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September and now control it and nine of the country's 21 provinces. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a one-time prisoner of the Houthis in his own home, escaped last month and installed himself in Aden, declaring it the temporary capital amid the Houthi insurrection.

Earlier Saturday, Hadi gave his first televised address since fleeing the capital, striking a defiant tone. He described the rebels' rule as "a coup against constitutional legitimacy." He also pledged to raise the Yemeni flag over the Maran mountains, a stronghold for the Houthis, members of the Shiite Zaydi sect that represents nearly 30 percent of Yemen's population.

Hadi also said regional Shiite power Iran supported the Houthis, something critics also allege and the rebels deny. Sunni Gulf countries have lined up to support Hadi and have moved their embassies to Aden to back him against the Shiite rebels.

Almost immediately after Hadi's speech, the Houthis issued a statement announcing their offensive against security and military institutions loyal to Hadi, calling it a battle against extremists.

"The council announces this decision to call the proud sons of the Yemeni people in all regions to unite and support and cooperate with the armed and security forces in confronting terrorist forces," they said in the statement carried by the Houthi-controlled state news agency SABA.

Though seizing power in Sanaa and clashing with those protesting their power grab, the Houthis largely haven't resorted to open warfare since beginning their campaign in September. Their statement Saturday immediately recalled the years of war fought in the country, once split between a Marxist south that once was a British colony and a northern republic.

Meanwhile Saturday, U.S. troops including Special Forces commandos were evacuating from the al-Annad air base in southern Yemen, Yemeni security and military officials said. The officials did not say whether the troops had left the country.

The air base, the country's largest, was believed to have some 100 American troops stationed there. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Saturday night, a security official in Aden said a military transport plane from Oman evacuated 16 British military and security forces. He and other security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

On Friday, al-Qaida militants seized control of the southern provincial capital of al-Houta in the group's most dramatic grab of territory in years. That's just nearby the al-Annad air base, which has been the scene of rocket attacks in the past by militants.

Maj. Gen. Mahmoud al-Subeihi, the country's defense minister who is loyal to Hadi, said troops would be deployed near the base to protect it from militants.

The al-Annad base is where American and European military advisers help Yemen battle the country's local al-Qaida branch through drone strikes and logistical support. That group, which holds territory in eastern Yemen, has said it directed the recent attack against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

U.S. forces also have been involved in at least two hostage rescue raids in Yemen in recent months, including one that saw militants kill an American photojournalist and a South African teacher in December.

It's unclear what the pullout will mean for the drone program. The U.S. has carried out more than 100 suspected drone strikes in Yemen since 2009, according to the New America Foundation's International Security Program, which tracks the American campaign. Civilian casualties from the strikes have stoked widespread anti-American sentiment in the country.

All this comes a day after suicide bombers attacked a pair of mosques in Sanaa, unleashing monstrous blasts that killed 137 people, including at least 13 children. A purported affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings, which also wounded 357 people — raising the alarming possibility the extremist group has expanded its presence to Yemen after already setting up a branch in Libya. U.S. officials expressed skeptisim about the claim, though there have been several online statements by individual Yemeni militants declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group.

The presence of the Islamic State group could set up yet another conflict in Yemen, as al-Qaida and the extremists holding a third of Iraq and Syria already are rivals.

---

Associated Press writers Brian Rohan and Jon Gambrell in Cairo contributed to this report.

 

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For liberal Israelis, Netanyahu's win is a reality check

Mar 21, 10:45 AM (ET)
By DANIEL ESTRIN

(AP) In this Tuesday, March 17, 2015 photo, a Zionist Union party supporter stands as...
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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli liberals woke up after national elections with a demoralizing feeling: Most of the country, in a deep and possibly irreversible way, does not think like they do.

There had been a sense of urgency among moderate Israelis, and even an ounce of hope, that widespread frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's six straight years in office would lead voters to pull Israel away from what they perceive as its rightward march toward international isolation, economic inequality and a dead end for peace with the Palestinians.

But as the results trickled in on Wednesday, they showed Likud with a shocking lead that has all but guaranteed Netanyahu a third consecutive term. Netanyahu called it a victory "against all odds." The liberals' optimism has been replaced with despair — and an infuriating belief that the masses may never understand that logic shows the current path is suicidal.

"Drink cyanide, bloody Neanderthals. You won," award-winning Israeli author and actress Alona Kimhi wrote on her Facebook page, before erasing it as her comments became the talk of the town. "Only death will save you from yourselves."

(AP) In this Wednesday, March 17, 2015 photo, Zionist Union party supporters react to...
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Such rage rippled through liberal Israel this week. Social media was full of embittered Israelis accusing Netanyahu's supporters of racism, and some vowed to stop donating charity to the underprivileged whom they perceived as being automatic supporters of the right.

The prime minister's main rival denounced such attacks. "Attempts to divide, vilify and spread hate in Israeli society disgust me, and it doesn't matter whether it comes from the right or the left," wrote Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog on Facebook.

The anger was about far more than the election, reflecting a larger and more dramatic battle for the heart of the country.

Israel's founding fathers were Jews of Ashkenazi, or eastern European, descent and the ideological predecessors of the Labor party, the main faction in the rebranded Zionist Union. The left led the country for its first three decades until Likud — heavily backed by working class Jews of Mizrahi, or Middle Eastern, descent — gained power in 1977.

The Labor Party returned to power in the 1990s, leading the first efforts at peace with the Palestinians. But the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s saw the return of hawkish rule, which in one form or another has lasted until today.

The divisions between right and left largely revolve around the question of what do with territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war — and the millions of Palestinians who live there.

Parties on the left would trade the land for peace and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. They also argue that the lands are a liability, since incorporating the Palestinians as citizens would destroy Israel as a Jewish-majority state.

The right emphasizes the lands' strategic value and biblical symbolism and pushes constantly for settling them with Jews. Its success in this endeavor has, paradoxically, put the country on a path toward being a place where Jews may no longer be a strong majority.

With more than 550,000 Israeli settlers now living in territories claimed by the Palestinians, Israeli liberals — along with the Palestinians — believe time is running out for the "two-state solution." So compelling is this "demographic argument" that Netanyahu himself has adopted its language, claiming at various times since 2009 that he, too, wants to end the occupation; but his party opposes this and Netanyahu continues to support the settlements, leading opponents to believe he is bamboozling them and adding to the sense of urgency.

Activists at the headquarters of V-15, an initiative that called to unseat Netanyahu, silently bundled dozens of banners on Thursday, and one activist asked a journalist to leave. A whole floor of the Zionist Union's campaign headquarters was empty, and party leaders gazed up from crumpled posters next to a vacuum cleaner.

"It's a big disappointment. There was a lot of energy for change here," said Zev Laderman, an investor in start-up companies, sitting in a boulevard cafe. "I woke up this morning to realize that I'm a minority in this country."

The center-left's Zionist Union won 24 seats — somewhat higher than the combined previous total of the two parties that form it — but Likud won 30. Another 37 seats were captured by parties believed to be willing to support Likud for a solid majority in the 120-member parliament. And the left-wing Meretz party will now be the smallest party in the upcoming government.

The looming coalition likely will feature right-wing pro-settler and ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious parties. In fundamental ways, they represent the opposite of the defiantly secular Israeli liberals who are fed up with taxpayer money being pumped to West Bank Jewish settlements and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.

The prime minister's sudden turnaround toward victory took place after an 11th-hour effort to appeal to nationalist Israelis by pledging not to support an independent Palestinian state, and by warning voters of Arab citizens being bused to the polls in "droves" by left-wing organizations — comments that drew rebukes from Israeli Arabs and the White House.

Netanyahu since has tried to contain the damage from his statements — saying he remains committed to Palestinian statehood if conditions throughout the region improve — and insisting he is not a racist. But it seems unlikely that peace negotiations with the Palestinians will be high on his agenda. And the Jewish settlement of the West Bank, which enrages liberal Israelis and cements the country's entanglement there, likely will march on.

Liberal voters perceived this week's defeat less as the result of a poorly fought campaign than as a reflection of demographic trends and genuine public opinion in the country of 8 million.

After years of failed peace efforts, including two Israeli offers for statehood that were rejected or ignored by the Palestinians, few think a deal is likely. Even the Zionist Union seemed to hide from the issue during the campaign, focusing instead on bread-and-butter issues like the country's high cost of living.

"It doesn't matter what kind of campaign (the left) ran," political blogger Tal Schneider said. "There is a reality in the field. You can't change it. It's a nationalist public that is afraid of the Arabs."

Sitting at a bustling cafe in a hipster neighborhood of Tel Aviv, a 26-year-old campaign activist for the Zionist Union broke down in tears about the party's defeat.

"It's devastating," activist Lior Shalish said. She said the election results shouldn't be a surprise, just months after left-wing Israelis were attacked on the streets of Tel Aviv by nationalists during Israel's war against Hamas militants.

"You don't get a left-wing government after that. Like, that doesn't change so quickly," Shalish said. "We were stupid to believe that it does."

Some liberal Israelis said there were rays of light: A joint list unifying various Arab parties emerged as the country's third-largest party, re-energizing a disaffected Israeli Arab minority, and the V-15 initiative claims it increased turnout by centrist and left-wing voters.

In the lead up to the election, the left's momentum reached its peak at a major rally this month, when tens of thousands of Israelis packed a Tel Aviv square demanding a change of government.

The rally was seen as a victory. Many focused on the keynote speech by Meir Dagan, a former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, who issued an emotional appeal for change.

But in retrospect, it seems a tipping point in favor of Netanyahu occurred when artist Yair Garbuz took to the podium and railed against the "amulet kissers" who support Netanyahu.

His comments were perceived as a condescending swipe at the country's conservative working class of religious Jews of Sephardi, or Middle Eastern, lineage who have longstanding gripes with the country's European-descended Ashkenazi elite and lean heavily toward Likud.

The day after elections, columnist Ben Caspit wrote an article in the Maariv daily newspaper titled "Two States." He was not referring to the left's two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to Israel's own cultural divide.

"Israel is split — between left and right, between Bibi and anti-Bibi, between aspirations for normalcy and aspirations for territory," Caspit wrote, using Netanyahu's nickname. "Two states, two styles, two world views, split once again."

---

Follow Daniel Estrin at www.twitter.com/danielestrin.

 

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...sia-isis-launches-a-global-war-of-terror.html

Jamie Dettmer „J
Bloodbath
03.20.15

With Attacks in Yemen and Tunisia ISIS Launches a Global War of Terror

The gruesome bombings in Sanaa and Tunis this week show ISIS expanding its theater of operations.

ISTANBUL ¡X Twin suicide bombings today on two Shia mosques in the heart of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa killed as many as 137 people and wounded 280 others in an attack timed to coincide with worshippers attending noon prayers. Bodies were left lying in pools of blood as the injured were rushed to hospitals.

U.S. officials at first suspected the coordinated attack was mounted by al Qaeda¡¦s local offshoot, but it was claimed quickly by the so-called Islamic State.

The claim for responsibility was made in an online statement posted on the same website the Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, used to claim an affiliate was behind Wednesday¡¦s deadly attack on a landmark museum in Tunis that left 20 foreign tourists dead. In the statement the bombings of the Sanaa mosques was described as a ¡§blessed operation¡¨ against the ¡§dens of the Shiites.¡¨

A U.S. official cautioned that it was too soon to know definitively who is behind the attacks, which bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda-type operations using complex, coordinated attacks by multiple bombers.

The two mosques ¡X Badr and al-Hashoosh ¡X are used by Houthi rebels, members of the Zaidi sect, a branch of Shia Islam, and three Houthi leaders are reported among the dead. Al Qaeda and other jihadists had vowed to confront the Houthis after they overran Sanaa in September demanding a greater share of political power. The Houthis subsequently seized the presidential palace in January, forcing President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, a U.S. ally, to flee.

Bombings of mosques in Yemen have been rare and some analysts warn that Friday¡¦s attacks mark a new low in the country¡¦s violence which could plunge Yemen into a spiral of sectarian conflict between the country¡¦s majority Sunnis and minority Shia Muslims. If so, it will be hard to stop.

A separate explosion triggered by a suicide bomber rocked a compound in the Houthi stronghold of Saada¡X111 miles northeast of Sanaa¡Xkilling two people and seriously injuring a third, say local Houthi security officials. Houthi officials say another suicide bomber was prevented from attack a mosque in Saada.

Among those killed in Sanaa was a prominent Houthi religious leader, Murtatha al Mahathwari, the state-run Saba news agency reported. Yemeni politicians from Hadi administration warned that the attack was pushing Yemen closer to an all-out civil war. ¡§Someone is trying to widen the schisms in the country and are happy to escalate the violence,¡¨ said Mohamed Qubaty, a former political advisor to the Hadi government.

The timing of the attacks in Sanaa virtually guaranteed a bloodbath, and the tactics used did too. According to witnesses a suicide bomber started the attack on the Badr mosque inside the building and that was followed minutes later by an explosion outside, presumably planned to harm those fleeing the first blasts and to strike first-responders and civilian rescuers, say senior Houthi leaders. Those tactics are straight out of al Qaeda¡¦s playbook.

At Hashoush mosque the plan may have been the same but one of the bombers was stopped at a checkpoint outside and detonated his explosions before his companion made it inside to trigger his blast.

Before the Islamic State¡¦s claim of credit for the carnage, Houthis also blamed al Qaeda. Others pointed the finger at the country¡¦s ousted strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite the fact that he has been implicated in the Houthis toppling of Hadi.

A worshipper at the al Hashoosh mosque, in the north of the capital, told Associated Press that he was thrown into the air by the blast. ¡§The heads, legs and arms of the dead people were scattered on the floor of the mosque," said Mohammed al-Ansi. ¡§Blood is running like a river,¡¨ he added. Witnesses also reported that many of those killed and wounded were struck by glass shards from the mosques¡¦ shattered windows.

On Houthi-run al Masirah TV channel volunteers could be seen ferrying the injured using blood-soaked blankets.

Yemen has been the base of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which controls several provinces in the south and has carried out similarly complex suicide attacks on the Houthis before. A car bomb in January that killed 30 outside a police academy in Sanaa was blamed on the group. But the Islamic State, al Qaeda¡¦s rival, announced the formation of a local branch last November, drawing some AQAP defections, among them possibly some bombing tacticians.

The mosque explosions came a day after fierce clashes erupted between Houthi rebels and their supporters and government forces still loyal to Hadi in the port city of Aden, nearly 200 miles southeast of Sanaa. Houthi warplanes attacked the presidential palace in Aden, where Hadi has been based since fleeing last month from Sanaa, where he had been placed under house arrest. Hadi¡¦s downfall and the Houthis¡¦ sweep into the Yemeni capital was a blow to U.S. counter-terror efforts. The Hadi government had cooperated with Washington to target al Qaeda operatives in drone strikes.

If ISIS was responsible for the blasts in Sanaa, it would mark, along with the attack in Tunis, a spectacular, albeit grisly, debut week on the international terror stage. In a matter of days it has killed nearly 160 people and wounded at least 300; retarded Tunisia¡¦s economic comeback and therefore imperiled the country¡¦s political stability; and set Yemen on a possible sectarian death spiral. Until this week, ISIS has focused on defending it¡¦s so-called caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria. But the group¡¦s international ambitions have been clear, encouraging al Qaeda affiliates to defect and swear allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or helping them to form new jihadist offshoots.


AQAP remains for US officials the most worrisome of all the terror network's branches, U.S. intelligence officials say. That's because the group possesses sophisticated knowledge and expertise for building bombs that can be smuggled onto commercial aircraft without being detected by security scanners.

Shane Harris in Washington contributed to this report.

 

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Iraqi Sunnis accuse Shi'ite paramilitaries of burning homes outside Tikrit

BAGHDAD Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:21pm EDT

(Reuters) - Two Iraqi local officials and a police officer accused Shi'ite paramilitary forces on Saturday of burning and looting homes in the town of al-Dour after capturing the area during a military campaign to oust Islamic State fighters.

A spokesman for the armed faction, Kataib Hezbollah, denied the allegations, while a security commander in the area also said there had been no incident in al-Dour.

Salahuddin Provincial Council member Sahar Mawlood, parliament member Dhia al-Douri and a local policeman said that Kataib Hezbollah fighters, who have been battling Islamic State, had looted, blown up or set fire to houses in the town.

"More than 150 houses were burned. Today witnessed the largest targeting of houses, more than the previous days," Mawlood said.

Iraqi security forces backed by Shi'ite paramilitary groups have paused their push to drive Islamic State out of the city of Tikrit, which it seized last June in a lightning advance across central Iraq, although they have captured al-Dour and nearby communities.

The Shi'ite paramilitary forces have been hailed as heroes by fellow Shi'ites, but accused by the Sunni minority of punishing Sunnis with extrajudicial killings and by driving ordinary people from their homes for failing to resist Islamic State.

They strongly deny the allegations. Kataib Hezbollah's military spokesman Jaffar al-Husseini called the al-Dour accusations a smear campaign, saying: "There aren't any attempts to destroy or burn houses in al-Dour."

He said the group that controls al-Dour had been defusing booby trap bombs rigged up in houses by Islamic State, and that security commanders and officials from Salahuddin province had witnessed the operations.

A national police commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he had not seen anything unusual in the town on Saturday.

The operation to retake Tikrit was halted last weekend, as the Iraqi government said it wanted to make sure all civilians had been evacuated, and to protect soldiers and volunteer fighters who were facing stiff resistance.


(Reporting By Ned Parker and Saif Hameed; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

 

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Yemeni president demands Houthis quit Sanaa amid new fighting

By Mohammed Mukhashaf
ADEN Sat Mar 21, 2015 1:31pm EDT

(Reuters) - Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi on Saturday accused the Iranian-allied Houthi militia that controls the capital Sanaa of staging a coup against him, and said he would "raise Yemen's flag" in the Houthis' northern stronghold.

In a call to arms from the southern city of Aden, where he fled last month after escaping house arrest by the Houthis, Hadi called on them to pull their forces out of state ministries, return weapons seized from the army, and quit Sanaa.

"We shall deliver the country to safety and raise Yemen's flag on Mount Marran in Saadeh instead of the Iranian flag," he said in a televised speech, his first since reaching Aden. Iran is an ally of the Houthis, who belong to a Shi'ite Muslim sect.

The Houthis, in a statement from their Supreme Revolutionary Committee, did not directly respond to the speech but called for a "general mobilization" of the armed forces against a "dirty war" they said was being waged by militias loyal to Hadi.

Yemen has been hurtling towards civil war since last year when the Houthis seized Sanaa and advanced into Sunni areas, leading to clashes with local tribes and energizing a southern separatist movement.

Hadi's flight to Aden has raised the prospect of armed confrontation between rival governments based in the north and south, creating chaos that could be exploited by the Yemen-based regional wing of al Qaeda.

Fighting is spreading across the country, and 137 people were killed on Friday in the bombings of two Shi'ite mosques in Sanaa. They were claimed by Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that controls large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and said it was also behind an attack that killed 23 people in Tunisia on Wednesday.


CALL FOR PEACE TALKS

Hadi held open the door to a negotiated settlement with a call for the Houthis and other groups to attend peace talks in Saudi Arabia.

He said Yemen must return to the political situation in place before the Houthis took control of Sanaa, restoring its constitution and implementing the results of a national dialogue process and Gulf-sponsored political transition.

In his speech, he denounced the Houthis as "coup plotters" and said he wanted to confront sectarianism. Addressing Houthi accusations that he planned to back a southern secessionist movement, he said his flight to Aden had been intended to preserve the country's unity.

Unidentified warplanes have bombed Hadi's Aden headquarters in recent days, and on Saturday forces loyal to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is now allied to the Houthis, moved units to Taiz, 150 km (100 miles) northwest of Aden.

In a reflection of the deteriorating security situation, Washington was withdrawing the last 100 of the special forces troops it had deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al Qaeda and allied groups, CNN reported, citing sources in the region.

Washington has been waging a drone war against the militants, who have alarmed Western and Gulf countries with their efforts to bomb international airliners and launch cross-border raids into top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

On Friday, al Qaeda militants killed 20 soldiers during a brief occupation of al-Houta, the capital of Lahj province, which is only 30 km (20 miles) from Aden, before being driven back by the army.

There were also clashes between the Houthis and local tribes in the oil-producing area on the border of the Marib and al-Bayda provinces, which left 12 dead, according to tribal sources. Gunmen fired on anti-Houthi protesters in Taiz on Saturday, but no casualties were reported.

Later on Saturday, Hadi appointed health minister Riyadh Yassin as acting foreign minister, Al Jazeera news reported.


(Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari and Omar Fahmy in Cairo.; Writing by Angus McDowall in Riyadh; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Mark Trevelyan)

 

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Libya's official government bombs capital, commander loyal to Tripoli killed

By Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli
TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya Sat Mar 21, 2015 6:13pm EDT

(Reuters) - Libya's official government conducted air strikes on Saturday against airports and a military camp in the capital Tripoli, controlled by a rival government, and killed a senior commander loyal to that government, officials said.

The internationally recognized government said on Friday that it had launched a military offensive to "liberate" Tripoli, which a group called Libya Dawn seized in August, reinstating a previous parliament.

The recognized prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, and the elected parliament have been confined to eastern Libya since then. Both administrations and the armed factions loyal to them are fighting for control, four years after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled.

A Tripoli official said Salah Burki, a Libya Dawn leader, had been killed west of Tripoli, where a state news agency reported clashes between Libya Dawn and forces from Zintan allied to Thinni.

Details were unclear. Another official and some news websites said Burki had been killed in an air strike on a military camp in Tripoli.

Saqer al-Joroushi, an air force commander loyal to the eastern government, said earlier that his aircraft had bombed Mitiga airport in Tripoli and a camp used by Libya Dawn near another airport in the capital.

He said they had also attacked the airport in Zuwara, a town near the Tunisian border, west of Tripoli. An airport official said the runway had been hit but there were no casualties.

On Friday, U.N. Special Envoy Bernardino Leon said the military offensive threatened international efforts to reach agreement in the next few days on a unity government and lasting ceasefire.

Talks are being held in Morocco, the latest in a series of meetings since September bringing together mostly moderates from both sides.

Western leaders say the U.N.-brokered talks are the only way to end the chaos in Libya, where Islamist militants have also gained ground. Both sides have attacked each other with warplanes in the past few days.


(Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing and Omar Fahmy; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Stephen Powell)

 

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...n-is-letting-America-down-over-Army-cuts.html

Owen Paterson: Britain is letting America down over Army cuts

Former Cabinet minister will accuse the government of “succumbing to temptation” to outsource national defence to the EU and Nato by cutting military budgets

By Tim Ross, Senior Political Correspondent
10:00PM GMT 21 Mar 2015

A Cabinet minister sacked by David Cameron will lead a new battle to stop further cuts to the Armed Forces this week, amid warnings that Britain will be unable to defend itself if funding falls again.

Owen Paterson, who is seen as the standard-bearer for the Tory Right-wing, will use a major speech in America to accuse the government of “succumbing to temptation” to outsource national defence to the European Union and Nato.

At a time when Vladimir Putin is threatening Europe, and Islamist terrorists are engaged in “barbaric slaughter” in the Middle East, the government must “provide the necessary funds” to defend British citizens, he will say.

The former Secretary of State will warn that this approach risks damaging the “special relationship” with United States. “Today Britain is not holding up its part of the defence bargain,” he will say.

The Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, sought to quell the revolt over the defence budget, insisting that the Forces will get the funds they need the Prime Minister had promised not to cut the number of full-time regular military personnel.

The intervention from Mr Paterson, who served as both Northern Ireland and environment secretary, will re-ignite the row over Conservative plans for defence in the run-up to May’s general election.

Scores of Tory MPs, and senior military commanders, are privately dismayed that the party has failed to rule out further cuts to defence after the election. In particular, they fear the Conservatives will fail to meet Nato’s target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence in future years.

The former defence secretary, Liam Fox, is among those to have spoken publicly about the need to commit to the 2 per cent target but critics now fear that last week’s Budget means funding could fall to 1.5 per cent or even lower.

Last night, Admiral Lord West, the Falklands War commander, said he was deeply worried about Britain’s future ability to defend itself against aggression from Russia and others after independent analysts said funding could fall to 1.4 per cent by 2020.

Mr Paterson will set out his concerns in a major speech to the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, a think-tank dedicated to the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States.

He will praise America for spending 4.4 per cent of its national budget on defence. By contrast the UK is letting the trans-Atlantic alliance down, he will say.

The share of the Britain's income that the government spends on defence could fall as low as 1.38 per cent within a decade, as the UK increasingly relies on other countries in Europe for protection, according to Mr Paterson, who served in Mr Cameron’s Cabinet for four years until he was sacked in last summer’s reshuffle.

He will attack the European Union for planning a new EU army, a policy which he says “legitimises” the decision of member states to cut their defence budgets and rely on other countries for protection.

“Even as Vladimir Putin makes his moves, ISIS continues its barbaric slaughter in the Levant and Africa, and Iran continues to fund terrorist activity around the world, we are succumbing to that temptation,” Mr Paterson says.

“It is the first duty of a government to defend its citizens. I believe we should provide the necessary funds required by an appropriate foreign policy.”

Mr Paterson will argue that Britain should leave the EU in order to take back responsibility for its own autonomous defence and foreign policy.

The Prime Minister has tried to calm the row over defence cuts by assuring critics that he does not want to see any further reductions in the numbers of full-time, or “regular” service personnel.

Under spending cuts introduced by the coalition, the British Army is being reduced from 102,000 to 82,000, while an additional 30,000 reservists are being recruited. Some fear that the Army could be cut to as 50,000 after the election.

Speaking to The Telegraph, the Defence Secretary said Conservative critics should be reassured that the party was committed to national defence.

“It is an absolute promise: the Armed Forces will get the resources and equipment they need and the regulars will not be cut further.

“We have proved that by our investment in new kit of all kinds, including two new aircraft carriers, seven hunter-killer submarines, 600 armoured vehicles and new joint-strike fighters.”

“We are spending 2 per cent at the moment. We are going to be spending two per cent again next year,” he said.

He said he would be “fighting” for military resourcing when funding for Whitehall departments is allocated in September. “Every minister will be fighting his or her corner. I will certainly be fighting to protect the defence budget.

“This is no time to drop our guard and we are not doing that,” Mr Fallon said. “On the contrary, we are investing. We face threats from Russian aggression, from the Middle East, from extremism in Africa.”

Mr Fallon rejected the criticism that Russia would be watching for signs of a weakening in Britain’s commitment to resourcing the military.

“Putin will see Britain with the biggest defence budget in Europe, one of only four nations that meet the 2 per cent target, leading the way.”

Lord West, the former First Sea Lord, who commanded HMS Ardent during the Falklands War, said he was deeply worried that “huge” future cuts to the Armed Forces would leave Britain unable to defend itself and its overseas territories from attack.

He singled out Russia as a particularly grave threat in the years ahead. “Putin is playing a game of brinkmanship and brinkmanship is extremely dangerous,” he said.

“Putin’s economy is now on a war footing. He is spending 42 per cent more on nuclear weapons, spending more on defence equipment, yet the economy is a basket case. If I were still Chief of Defence Intelligence I would be telling the MoD that Russia thinks there might be a war within five years.

“It is a highly dangerous world and it’s getting more dangerous all the time. Yet here we are, blithely cutting away. At the end of the day, if you get the defence bit wrong, the National Health Service, welfare, everything else goes down the pan.”

 

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Nigerian soldiers running from liberated towns-New York Times
Mar 22 2015 - 8:57am

Chadian soldiers and their counterparts from Niger are not happy that they have continued to secure towns in Nigeria while the Nigerian soldiers are nowhere near some of these towns days after helping the country to liberate the once Boko Haram-infested towns, the New York Times has reported.

The report by the New York Times paints a picture of fear on the part of Nigeria and worries on the part of the foreign soldiers that the latter has continued to perform the duties of the Nigerian soldiers in their own lands.

In one of such instances, the New York Times describes a picture of what it found in Damasak, one of the liberated towns in the North-eastern state of Borno, Nigeria after Chadian soldiers led a group of journalists to the town.

Boko Haram’s black flag is everywhere in the town of Damasak, deep in Islamist-held territory in northern Nigeria: It is painted on former administrative buildings and schools, and on the side of abandoned gas stations, the foreign newspaper reports.

The other unmistakable sign of the Islamist militants’ recent presence is that very few residents remain in a once-thriving town of 200,000. They have either fled to the state capital, Maiduguri, or been killed by Boko Haram. Every looted and battered storefront yawns open to the dusty roadside.

Mostly, the only sound in the hot, still air is from military vehicles, carrying soldiers from the neighbouring countries of Chad and Niger as they make their way through the wreckage of the deadly five-month Islamist occupation of this Nigerian town. From time to time, the Chadian soldiers ululate to celebrate their victory against the militants in a fierce fire-fight that stretched into last week.

The Chadians ushered a small group of journalists around for a brief look last week, offering a rare glimpse into the group’s northern Nigerian stronghold, and into the dimensions, and difficulties, of a cross-border, four-nation fight against the Islamists.

Rather than revealing important regional cooperation in the battle against Boko Haram, the visit pointed out some of the confusion and resentment creating tension among neighbours. The soldiers from Chad and Niger had succeeded here, but there was not a single Nigerian soldier to be found. The force members were bewildered to find themselves as foreign liberators without any help from the country benefiting from the liberation.

Even as the Nigerian government, with a national election looming, insists that its forces have chased Boko Haram fighters out of much of their northern territory, the deserted streets and all-foreign force here paint a different picture. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians still cannot return home to towns that have been, nominally at least, freed from Boko Haram.

But the foreign soldiers here say they do not want to occupy somebody else’s country, and worry that the Islamist fighters will simply return if they leave and the Nigerians have not arrived to take over.

Hundreds of miles away in Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, officials are expressing anger at the near-total absence of cooperation from the Nigerians in a crucial regional battle, even as Nigerian officials are discounting the extent of Chad’s role.

The disquiet of the Chadian officials was echoed in the words of the front-line Chadian soldiers here who wonder why they, and not the Nigerians, are holding towns like Damasak, several days after the last Boko Haram fighter has fled or been killed.

“We asked them to come, to receive this town from us, but they have not come,” said Second Lt. Mohammed Hassan, resting in the shade of the armoured vehicle he had manned with his company.

“It is because they are afraid,” Lieutenant Hassan added, spitting out the words, his face half hidden against the 107-degree heat in a black turban.

Around him hundreds of soldiers from Chad and Niger were camped out under the broiling sun. The senior Chadian officers tried to shoo away a handful of journalists, but a few of the soldiers, like the lieutenant, still wanted to talk about the battle.

“We fought on the night of the 14th, and the last attack was on the 15th,” Lieutenant Hassan said. As for the Nigerians, “we called them on the 16th” — after the fight for Damasak had ended — “and told them to come; they didn’t believe we were here,” Lieutenant Hassan said.

More politely, his country’s foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, two hours away by military transport plane and helicopter in Ndjamena, offered a similar appraisal in an interview Thursday.

“The Nigerian Army has not succeeded in facing up to Boko Haram,” Mr. Mahamat said.

“The occupation of these towns, this is up to Nigeria,” he added. “My fondest wish is that they assume their responsibilities.”

The soldiers around Lieutenant Hassan, savouring their victory over Boko Haram, displayed a pile of battered rifles captured from the Islamists, some with Arabic exhortations on the stocks. The men said that they had thoroughly searched the looted town and its parched savanna surroundings in the days after the fighting and that there was not a single Boko Haram fighter to be found.

The fight was definitely over, several of the men said with satisfaction, noting with wonder the strange fighting habits and beliefs of their opponents.

“You would say that these are people ready to die, to commit suicide,” Lieutenant Hassan said.

He recounted how, after the battle, a Boko Haram prisoner seemed terrified by the Chadians’ superior matériel — Chad has perhaps the region’s best-equipped army after decades of war, civil and external. The captured fighter insisted that the lieutenant’s armoured personnel carrier was self-driving and ate its opponents.

As a convoy of military vehicles rumbled down the deserted main street, a solitary older couple could be glimpsed at the back of a mud-walled compound. The woman raised clenched fists to the sky, despairingly, as the trucks passed. The soldiers said that the handful of people left in Damasak were simply too feeble to move.

Boko Haram captured the town late in November, according to Nigerian news accounts. The fighters infiltrated Damasak’s extensive market — on the border with Niger, and close to Cameroon and Chad, it was until recently a major regional trading hub — and killed merchants there to sow terror in the population, its customary method. Another group of fighters, waiting at the town’s edge, overran government buildings as the remaining soldiers were occupied at the market.

Since then, Damasak has become a regional headquarters for Boko Haram, officials in Maiduguri said. “Damasak is where they were doing their planning and operational business,” said an official close to the governor of Borno State, of which Maiduguri is the capital.

The number of substantial buildings bearing the Boko Haram insignia was testimony to the town’s strategic role for the group. “They were coordinating and doing all their training there,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Now Damasak, like much of North-eastern Nigeria, is in a vacuum. Boko Haram has been chased away for now, but it is not clear that the Nigerian Army is ready to occupy and hold this and other towns.

Underscoring that point, soldiers from Chad and Niger discovered on Friday what appeared to be a mass grave at the edge of town, and some of the bodies appeared to have been beheaded. Refugees from Boko Haram-controlled towns have said the group frequently decapitates young men.

“It is up to them to hold the town, not us,” said Lieutenant Hassan, referring to the Nigerians. “Our role is offensive. Our mission is to chase the terrorists,” he added.

“We are ready to disengage, right away,” said Mr. Mahamat, the Chadian foreign minister.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/03/21/why_china_fears_thaad_107784.html

March 21, 2015
Why China Fears THAAD
By Harry Kazianis

Well it seems we might want to hold off on all the predictions of Seoul and Beijing joining hands and riding off into the sunset as Asia’s new power couple--at least for now.

China is quite upset at the prospect of South Korea acquiring America’s latest missile defense platform, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD for short. However, Xi Jinping might want to redirect his anger at the real problem and why President Park Geun-hye might be considering THAAD in the first place: North Korea.

But before we get to the heart of the matter, it seems appropriate to understand what THAAD is, what it can do, and why its important.

Back in November, I spoke to Dan Sauter of Business Development for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense at Lockheed Martin to get a better understanding of the system and its capabilities. Sauter explained that THAAD is “a key element of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) and is designed to defend U.S. troops, allied forces, population centers and critical infrastructure against short-thru-medium-range ballistic missiles.” He went on to explain that THAAD “has a unique capability to destroy threats in both the endo- and exo-atmosphere using proven hit-to-kill (kinetic energy) lethality. THAAD is effective against all types of ballistic-missile warheads, especially including Weapons of Mass Destruction (chemical, nuclear or biological) payloads. THAAD was specifically designed to counter mass raids with its high firepower (up to 72 Interceptors per battery), capable organic radar and powerful battle manager/fire control capability.”

THAAD also has one nice feature that is sure to get Beijing’s panties in a bunch--interoperability.

Sauter told The National Interest that THAAD is “interoperable with other BMDS elements, working in concert with Patriot/PAC-3, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, forward based sensors, and C2BMC (Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications System) to maximize integrated air and missile defense capabilities. THAAD is mobile and rapidly deployable, which provides warfighters with greater flexibility to adapt to changing threat situations around the globe.”

Now that we understand a little about what THAAD is and what it can do, why should China care?

It seems Beijing is concerned that THAAD could blunt at least some of their military capabilities--going so far as to utilize Chinese hackers to steal at least some aspects of its design according to various reports.

Here is why Pyongyang matters and could drive a THAAD deployment close to Beijing’s borders. With North Korea constantly rattling the saber and developing various types of long range missiles the United States and its allies are looking for ways to defend themselves--and THAAD could certainly be part of that mix. However, as Beijing knows all too well--and why they are so upset--such weapons could be used as a shield against Chinese missiles as well.

Over the last several decades China has been building a massive arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles. This would be a big part of any anti-access/area-denial strategy it would use against Japan and/or the United States. China’s nuclear weapons arsenal would be launched atop ballistic missiles as well. THAAD, if it were to be deployed to South Korea (which is far from a done deal, by the way), could at least in theory blunt some of the offensive firepower China is trying to deploy on both the conventional and nuclear side--double trouble for sure.

But while China might be upset at the prospects of more U.S. missile defense systems near its borders, this is a problem it hould have seen coming. Back in 2013, during the last big North Korea showdown, the United States moved THAAD to defend Guam from a possible North Korean missile attack.

The threat to China is quite clear. If North Korea were once again to create another crisis where the United States once more had to move additional missile defenses back to the Pacific and increase Aegis patrols as was done in 2013, Washington may just leave such defensive platforms in place. Back in 2013 when the crisis with North Korea was at its peak, I laid out the case for such a U.S. move and the repercussions in further detail:

“North Korea may just provide the strategic rationale the United States needs to drop the veiled nature of the military and geostrategic components of its pivot to Asia...American military planners may decide to keep ever increasing amounts of ballistic missile defense systems forward deployed in East Asia for the next time North Korea threatens the region.

U.S. allies could also follow suit. For example, with Tokyo already actively considering moving away from its more defensive military posture, the North Korea threat may provide the final impetus Tokyo needs to justify sustaining higher defense budgets beyond this year’s increase. Tokyo could also decide Pyongyang’s missile capabilities require it to further bolster its cooperation with the U.S. on missile defense. Just as important, the clear and present danger North Korea poses to South Korea could lead the latter to more actively participate in triangular security arrangements with the U.S. and Japan.

All of this has ramifications for Beijing. Ever increasing amounts of missile defense systems will certainly erode China’s growing anti-access capabilities. While it is hard to make solid predictions, it is clear that missile defenses utilized for the protection of U.S. bases and allies in the region also have the potential of being used and/or enhanced to defend against Chinese missiles in the event – however remote – of some sort of conflict. While no one knows for certain how effective China’s new capabilities would be in a crisis, nor how effectively American and allied missile defenses would prove against such missiles, there is certainly the potential that the potency of China’s asymmetric capabilities would be degraded.”

Considering tensions between Washington and Beijing over multiple issues ranging from the Senkaku Islands, Taiwan, the South China Sea and so on, America might just conclude a little extra insurance policy against two potential problems might just be a really smart idea. Such a move would be purely defensive, strengthen cooperation with critical U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan, and could lead to a more regional outlook among this grouping when it comes to missile defense while nudging Seoul and Japan a little closer together. What is not to like?

For China, the next move should be very clear: it is time to reign in its allies in Pyongyang and make sure North Korea halts any further missile tests that could drive a U.S. deployment of THAAD or any other missile defenses. In the event of another crisis or a missile test that were to show some sort of North Korean ICBM capability, Washington would certainly rethink its commitments to missile defense in the Asia-Pacific. Any move to increase its capabilities and that of its allies would certainly negate Beijing’s missile capabilities and A2/AD capabilities. Does China really want to take such a chance? I don’t think so.

Harry J. Kazianis serves as Editor of RealClearDefense, a member of the RealClearPolitics family of websites. Mr. Kazianis is also a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Center for the National Interest (non-resident) and a Senior Fellow at the China Policy Institute (non-resident). He is the former Executive Editor of The National Interest and former Editor of The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter: @grecianformula.

This piece first appeared in The National Interest on March 19th here.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.france24.com/en/20150322-hundreds-afghans-bury-woman-beaten-death-mob/

22 March 2015 - 13H23
Hundreds of Afghans bury woman beaten to death by mob

KABUL (AFP) - Hundreds of people on Sunday attended the burial of an Afghan woman who was beaten to death and set on fire by a mob for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran.

The body of Farkhunda, 27, who was lynched on Thursday by an angry crowd in central Kabul, was carried to the graveyard by women amid crowds of men, an AFP reporter said, a rare act of protest in a male-dominated society.

The crowd, shouting "Allah o Akbar" (God is greatest), demanded the government bring the killers to justice.

"This is a crime against this family, a crime against a sister and a crime against humanity," said Bari Salam, a human rights activist.

"All those involved and all those who supported her killing should be brought to justice," he said.

The lynching -- in full view of several police officers -- sparked widespread condemnation at home and worldwide.

The United Nations said Farkhunda had "suffered mental illness for many years".

But Farkhunda's father told the media his daughter had a diploma in Islamic studies and could recite the Koran by heart. He insisted she was not involved in burning the Muslim holy book.

Farkhunda's brother Najeebullah Malikzada supported his father's claim.

"Farkhunda was a deeply religious girl. She used to recite the holy Koran and pray five times a day," he told the crowd.

Footage of the attack on social media shows a number of uniformed police watching the crowd as they beat her to death, burn her body and then dump it into a river.

"This brutal act once again shows the incompetence of the police force," Mariam Mustafawi, one of those at the burial, told AFP.

"Today our police force is unable to enforce the rule of law. How can they protect us against the enemy?" she said.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the killing as "heinous" and ordered a commission to investigate the incident.

He said police, who play a crucial part in the war against Taliban insurgents, were not well-trained to contain such incidents.

"Almost 90 per cent of the duties of the police today are focused on fighting, which is not their constitutional role, it is not their legal role," Ghani told reporters on Saturday.

"Focusing on civilian capabilities, on enforcement of the rule of law, is key to us."

Police said they had arrested 21 people, including eight policemen.

"I will question the police... we have started our inquiry. Even If I get killed, I won't let any of her perpetrators get away with it," said General Zahir Zahir, the head of criminal investigation at the interior ministry.

Allegations of Koran burnings have sparked incidents before in the deeply conservative religious nation.

In 2012 the revelation that copies of the Koran had been burnt at the US-run Bagram prison sparked five days of violent anti-US riots and attacks across the country, in which 30 people died.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/22/yemen-security-idINL6N0WO07A20150322

CORRECTED-UPDATE 2-Houthis seize strategic Yemeni city, escalating power struggle

Sun Mar 22, 2015 6:13pm IST

(Corrects name of Saudi minister in 11th para to Nayef)

* Houthis take over parts of Taiz-residents

* Anti-aircraft guns open fire at plane over Aden

* Conflict may pit Gulf Arabs against Iran

* Yemen slides into 'dark tunnel'-Gulf Arabs

By Mohammed Mukhashef

ADEN, March 22 (Reuters) - Houthi fighters opposed to Yemen's president took over the central city of Taiz in an escalation of a power struggle diplomats say risks drawing in neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia and its main regional rival Iran.

Residents of Taiz, on a main road from the capital Sanaa to the country's second city of Aden, said that Houthi militias took over the city's military airport without a struggle from local authorities late on Saturday.

Eyewitnesses in the central province of Ibb reported seeing dozens of tanks and military vehicles headed southward from Houthi-controlled areas toward Taiz, while activists in the city said Houthi gunmen shot into the air to disperse protests by residents demonstrating against their presence.

Conflict has been spreading across Yemen since last year when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and effectively removed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who now seeks a comeback from his base in Aden.

The advance of the Iranian-backed group has angered Sunni Gulf Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.

The Houthi spread into mostly Sunni areas in the centre and west have led to months of clashes with local tribes and al Qaeda, raising fears that the poor and heavily armed country at the base of the Arabian peninsula might descend into civil war.

INTERVENTION

The United Nations Security Council was set to discuss Yemen after Hadi, a U.S. ally, accused the Houthi militia of staging a coup and appealed to the U.N. for "urgent intervention".

Iran on Sunday called for dialogue, but suggested that Hadi should leave to spare the country further bloodshed.

"The expectation is that President ... Hadi will resign rather than repeat mistakes, to play a constructive role in preventing the break-up of Yemen and the transformation of Aden into a terrorist haven," said Iran's deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, according to state news agency IRNA.

But Gulf Arab leaders and security officials on Saturday said Hadi was Yemen's legitimate ruler and they were ready to make "all efforts" to defend the country's security.

"Yemen is sliding into a dark tunnel which would have serious consequences not only on Yemen but on security and stability in the region," the officials, who included Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, said.

"The security of Yemen and of the GCC countries is an indivisible whole," it added.

ESCALATING VIOLENCE

Yemen's struggle for power intensified on Thursday, when loyalists and opponents of Hadi fought gun battles in Aden.

The fighting paused by nightfall, but suicide bombings against a Houthi mosque claimed by Islamic State militants killed nearly 140 worshippers, raising tensions and leading the Houthis to announce a military mobilisation against the militants.

On Sunday, anti-aircraft guns opened fire at an unidentified plane flying over Hadi's compound in Aden and appeared to force it away, witnesses said, in the third incident of its kind since last Thursday.

U.S. officials said Washington had evacuated its remaining personnel from Yemen, including around 100 special operations forces, because of worsening security, marking a setback in U.S. efforts against a powerful al Qaeda branch.

The Houthis are allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, still influential in the military despite having given up power in 2011 after mass protests against his rule. The Yemeni army has varied loyalties, with most units being controlled by the Houthis or Saleh, while some are loyal to Hadi.

(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi, Noah Browning, Mohammed Ghobari, Angus McDowall and Sam Wilkin; Writing by William Maclean, editing by Louise Heavens)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/uk-denmark-russia-idUKKBN0MI0MP20150323

Russia threatens to aim nuclear missiles at Denmark ships if it joins NATO shield

COPENHAGEN Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:41am GMT

(Reuters) - Russia threatened to aim nuclear missiles at Danish warships if Denmark joins NATO's missile defence system, in comments Copenhagen called unacceptable and NATO said would not contribute to peace.

Denmark said in August it would contribute radar capacity on some of its warships to the missile shield, which the Western alliance says is designed to protect members from missile launches from countries like Iran.

Moscow opposes the system, arguing that it could reduce the effectiveness of its own nuclear arsenal, leading to a new Cold War-style arms race.

In an interview in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, said he did not think Danes fully understood the consequences of joining the programme.

"If that happens, Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles," Vanin told the newspaper.

Asked to respond, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Denmark was a staunch member of the alliance and NATO would defend all allies against any threat.

"We have made clear that NATO's ballistic missile defence is not directed at Russia or any country, but is meant to defend against missile threats. This decision was taken a long time ago, so we are surprised at the timing, tone and content of the statements made by Russia's ambassador to Denmark," she said.

"Such statements do not inspire confidence or contribute to predictability, peace or stability," she added.

Tensions between Moscow and the West have grown since the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia over a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine. NATO has recorded increased activity by the Russian navy and air force in the Nordic region.

No missiles are to be placed on Danish soil under the NATO programme, but they could be deployed some day in Greenland, a part of the kingdom, according to Jyllands-Posten.

"Denmark will become a part of the threat against Russia. It will be less peaceful, and relations with Russia will be damaged," Vanin said, adding that Russia has missiles which would be able to penetrate the future missile shield.

Denmark's foreign minister Martin Lidegaard said Vanin's comments were unacceptable.

"Russia knows very well that NATO's missile defence is not aimed at them," Lidegaard told Jyllands-Posten.

NATO's top military commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, told a Brussels conference on Sunday that the comments from the Russian ambassador were the "next step" in a campaign against countries that joined the shield.

"Romania came under great pressure when they became a part of the (missile shield). Poland is coming under great pressure and now anyone else who wants to join in to this defensive capability will come under this diplomatic and political pressure," Breedlove said.

(Reporting by Teis Jensen, additional reporting by Adrian Croft in Brussels; Editing by Peter Graff)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......252 million Muslim majority population sitting astride all of the PRCs oil shipping supply lines from the Middle East, and raw materials from Australia, yeah, this just got a lot more interesting.....

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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/uk-indonesia-china-southchinasea-idUKKBN0MJ05R20150323

Indonesia's president says China has no legal claim to South China Sea - newspaper

TOKYO Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:33am GMT

(Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo says China's claims to the majority of the South China Sea have "no legal foundation in international law," Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported.

The comments, in an interview published on Sunday ahead of visits to Japan and China this week, were the first time Widodo, who took office in October, has taken a position on the South China Sea dispute.

Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, has been a self-appointed broker in the myriad territorial disputes between its neighbours and China over the South China Sea.

"We need peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. It is important to have political and security stability to build up our economic growth," Widodo was quoted as saying in an English version of the interview published on Monday.

"So we support the Code of Conduct (of the South China Sea) and also dialogue between China and Japan, China and ASEAN."

Widodo also confirmed that he and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whom he meets later on Monday, would sign a defence cooperation agreement that would cover "how to work with" Japan's military, and "search and rescue operations, humanitarian assistance, and cyber defence", the Yomiuri reported.

Japan has already bolstered partnerships with the Philippines and Vietnam, the two countries most at odds with China over territorial rows in the South China Sea. Japan itself is embroiled in a bitter dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, further to the north.

Widodo also said he hoped to discuss maritime cooperation with Japan's coast guard "because Japan has good experience to manage its waters", the newspaper reported.

Widodo will visit China immediately after his stop in Japan. Indonesia and China have a more developed military relationship and Jakarta has bought Chinese-made missiles and other military hardware.

(Reporting by Randy Fabi in Jakarta and Linda Sieg in Tokyo; Editing by Michael Perry)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://au.ibtimes.com/us-confirms-n...fter-isis-releases-names-100-military-1431787

U.S. Confirms North Korea’s Nuclear Threat: Issues Alert After ISIS Releases Names of 100 Military Personnel As Targets

By Kalyan Kumar @diplomatist10 on March 23 2015 3:03 PM

The United States has confirmed that it is seized of North Korea's threat of developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile. This was officially acknowledged by Adm. Cecil D. Haney, the top commander, while briefing the U.S Congress on Thursday about emerging threats including China’s multi-warhead missiles.

According to Pentagon, the first flight test of North Korea's KN-11 SLBM was held in February 2014. Haney said North Korea is continuing its advance in nuclear weapon capabilities and have “a miniaturised warhead capable of delivery by ballistic missile.” The February test was followed a land-based ejection test in November, from a static launcher at its Sinpo South Shipyard.

Haney said the complex and dangerous global security environment is seeing nations around the world continue to execute long-term military modernisation programs including capabilities that pose an existential threat to the United States, adding that military forces of nations and groups are “improving across all domains.”

In his prepared testimony, the Admiral endorsed reports that North Korea is working on a new underwater missile capability and has put to rest the skepticism whether the communist state had the technical expertise to build a missile capable of being fired from a submerged submarine.

Open Threat

The statement of U.S Admiral is significant in the context of North Korea’s U. K Ambassador Hyun Hak-bong’s claim that his country is ready to go for a nuclear strike. He told Sky News in London that, “We don't say empty words. We mean what we mean. It is not the United States that has a monopoly on nuclear weapons strikes. We are prepared. A sparkle of a fire is made on the Korean peninsula will lead to a nuclear war.” On being asked whether North Korea has the ability to fire a nuclear missile? "Anytime, anytime, yes." the ambassador claimed.

Meanwhile, North Korea continues to hold out military threats. The latest is its response to balloons that South Korean activists are planning to send along with 10,000 DVDs of the Hollywood film “The Interview”. The film is a comedy about a fictional CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jon Un. The DVDs are to be accompanied by 500,000 propaganda leaflets across the de-militarized zone on March 26. But, Pyongyang's News Agency called the launch a "de facto declaration of war." South Korea’s military warned that it would retaliate if North Korea opens fire on it territory.

China’s Coercion

Admiral Haney also apprised the Senate panel of China’s “low intensity coercion” in the Asia Pacific and its pursuit of space weapons developments as part of its global aspirations. The U.S. officials have confirmed that China had conducted the first flight test of a new missile called the DF-31B, which is a multi-warhead version of its existing DF-31A, which is known for hard to track nature ability to launch with little warning.

The Admiral also said China is also into testing of ballistic missile submarines and "developing multi-dimensional space capabilities supporting their access-denial campaign.” Access denial refers to weapons are designed to drive U.S. forces out of Asia to allow Beijing to become the dominant power there.

ISIS Threat

Meanwhile, the U.S. Marine Corps on Sunday urged “vigilance” after a group claiming to be Islamic State hackers, published names and addresses of 100 U.S military personnel with an appeal to supporters to kill them, reports AFP. The Islamic State Hacking Division posted the detailed online information about personnel of the U.S Air force, Army and Navy with their photos and ranks, monitoring group SITE Intelligence reported.

In its response, the U.S. Marine Corps said it is contacting all affected staff, and urged caution. Vigilance and force protection considerations remain a priority for commanders and their personnel, said U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel John Caldwell. However, Caldwell said the threat remained "unverified."

ISIS, in its message gave the rationale of such an action and said these 100 military staff had targeted the Islamic State group in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The radical group said "with the huge amount of data we have from various different servers and databases, we have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers residing in America can deal with you. Now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for?” the radical group wrote.

(For feedback/comments, contact the writer at kalyanaussie@gmail.com)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.indepthnews.info/index.php/global-issues/2335-france-sees-nuclear-arms-as-deterrent

France Sees Nuclear Arms As Deterrent

By A.D. McKenze | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

PARIS (IDN) - As world leaders prepare to meet in New York next month for the 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), French activists say they are not holding their breath for any real commitment to enforce the 45-year-old accord.

France is the world’s third nuclear-arms power, and while its official policy is that stockpiles should not be increased and that testing must be stopped, the Socialist government of François Hollande is not in favour of total nuclear disarmament.

Hollande’s stance differs little in fact from that of his Conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, who believed that global disarmament must be based on “reciprocity” – a policy that means essentially ‘we’ll get rid of ours if you get rid of yours’.

The country has both maritime and air-based nuclear capability, and the government’s position, outlined in a 2013 white paper, is that “nuclear deterrence” is a means of protecting “vital interests”.

In February 2015, Hollande reiterated that policy in a speech at a French military air base, saying that possessing nuclear arms acts as a deterrent for enemies, in a “dangerous world”.

“The current international context doesn’t allow for any weakness, and there is no question of letting down one’s guard,” he said.

“One cannot rule out the possibility of future state conflicts that may concern us directly or indirectly,” the president declared.

Disarmament activists counter this stance, warning that France is not fulfilling its obligations under the NPT. They say the country has equally lagged on measures agreed in 2010, when the previous Review Conference adopted a 64-point action plan to push forward implementation of the Treaty.

“There is no reduction of nuclear stockpiling taking place, so we need a treaty that completely bans nuclear weapons rather than banning proliferation,” says Patrice Bouveret, director of the Observatoire des armements, an independent French documentation and research centre devoted to peace-building.

“None of the engagements taken five years ago have resulted in anything concrete,” Bouveret told IDN. “States need to now work on launching a different treaty because the current situation is just as ambiguous as it has been.”

Bouveret’s Observatoire des armements is a member of the Sortir du Nucléaire network (network for Phasing out the Nuclear Age), the main French anti-nuclear coalition that comprises 932 organisations and about 60,500 signatories.

The coalition supports “non-violent actions of civil disobedience” and will participate for instance in a 65-day protest to block Germany’s Büchel military air base which has the last nuclear arms on German soil - stored due to an agreement with the United States.

The protest is a show of “opposition to the stationing of arms” at the base and is set to begin on March 26 and continue until the end of the Review Conference in New York, the group says.

Activists are calling for the original five nuclear-weapon states – France, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, and Russia – to do more to forward their own disarmament, even as they try to rein in the “new nuclear states” of North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, India and (perhaps) Iran.

Only P5 o have dismantled testing site and fissile material production installations

France says that up to 2008, it reduced its number of air-launched weapons by a third, cutting its nuclear arsenal to “less than” 300 warheads. In February, for the first time, the government further quantified its nuclear weapons, with Hollande saying that the country has three sets of 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 54 medium-range air-to-surface missiles.

France says that it is the only one of the five original nuclear weapon states to have dismantled its testing site and fissile material production installations, and the government has pledged to continue campaigning for the “definitive end to the production of fissile material” for nuclear arms.

But with France and other countries sticking to the deterrence argument, the stakes remain high, and activists are watching to see what will happen at the April 27-May 22 Review Conference of the 1970 NPT.

“Speaking about disarmament remains complicated in our state,” said 10 French parliamentarians in a message to the International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, held in Vienna last December with more than 1000 delegates attending.

“Too many high-ranking civilians and military officials perceive nuclear disarmament as an act of treason or threat to French security, increasing the complexity of the debate,” said the message, which was notably signed by Hervé Morin, a former defense minister.

“This is a wrong perception, because France is diplomatically engaged ‘to adopt policies that are fully compatible with the Treaty and the objective of achieving a world without nuclear weapons’," the parliamentarians added.

They said that in order to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons, France and its government need to “understand the positive gains” of this process.

“Today too few of our colleagues have understood the risks posed by the worldwide arsenal of 16,300 nuclear weapons,” said Jean-Marie Collin, director of the French branch of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), an international network that provides up-to- date information on nuclear-weapon policies.

It’s clear, however that even if France wants to keep its own weapons, it does not want ownership to spread to “less stable” states. In his February address, Hollande slammed the “race” among some countries to acquire nuclear arms. [IDN-InDepthNews – March 23, 2015]

Photo: he French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and the American nuclear-powered carrier USS Enterprise (left), each of which carry nuclear-capable fighter aircraft | Credit: Wikimedia Commons

2015 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

 

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http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/arti...reconfirm-harsh-realities-restoring-relations

Trilateral Talks
Korea, China, Japan Reconfirm Harsh Realities in Restoring Relations

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
23 March 2015 - 10:15am
Cho Jin-young

For the first time in nearly three years, the foreign ministers of South Korea, China, and Japan met for trilateral talks in order to solve the intricate diplomatic and security problems between the three countries. However, they failed to make concrete progress and come up with an action plan for the improvement of relations. The meeting only confirmed that it will be difficult to restore relations trilaterally.

The foreign ministers of the three countries agreed in the meeting to make efforts to hold a three-way summit between the leaders of their countries as soon as possible and at their convenience. Taking a look at only the outline of the agreement, the summit looks like it will be held soon. However, it won’t. They failed to come to an accord about a concrete schedule or conditions. The Korean government demanded that Japan change its stance on the Japanese military's enforced sex slavery of Korean women during wartime as a precondition for talks, while the Chinese government demanded that Japan change its stance on the territorial dispute over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, and controversy over the perception of history. Therefore, it is unclear whether or not it will be possible to hold a three-way summit within this year. Ultimately, the stance on the Japanese military's sex slavery practices, historical perception, and territorial disputes in the Abe Statement, which will be announced by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in August, will decide whether or not the summit talks will be held.

While Korea and China have reservations about the “conditional” summit talks, Japan is urging for a bilateral or trilateral summit as soon as possible. It shows that the Japanese want to actively deal with nuclear weapons in North Korea by strengthening cooperation in security between Korea, the U.S., and Japan, and to expand their economic territory by pushing ahead with the conclusion of the FTA with Korea and China. Also, when the THAAD deployment in Korea becomes a reality, there is highly likely to be a military confrontation between Korea, the U.S., and Japan versus North Korea, China, and Russia. As it will be even more difficult to improve relations with China in that case, it is necessary to take a preemptive move on security issues through the summit talks.

However, China made clear in this foreign ministers' meeting that whether or not to hold the trilateral talks will be depend on Japan’s stance. In a joint press conference on the same day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “This year marks the 70th anniversary to win the war against fascism. Even though it has been 70 years now, the history issues between the three countries are still ongoing. It has already become common realizations of the three nations to look straight at history and move forward to the future. Through our joint efforts, we should put it into practice and implement it in the development of the relations and cooperation between the three nations.” He expressed his viewpoint that there will be no trilateral summit talks if Japan does not show a change in its attitude on the distortions of history.

In a photo shoot right before the meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida didn’t hold hands, and kept a fixed expression on their faces. These gestures show how strained the two nations' relations are right now.

The three nations formed a consensus to make efforts together to make real progress for the denuclearization of North Korea. However, they failed to agree on holding the time and conditions for six-party talks. Even though Korea and Japan are supposed to induce North Korea in the six-party talks by leveraging China, they showed their limit of not being able to put strong pressure on China.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...cc497e-cdbc-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html

Opinions
The Iran time bomb

By Michael Hayden, Olli Heinonen and Ray Takeyh March 22 at 7:11 PM

Michael Hayden led the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009 and the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As negotiations between Iran and the great powers press forward, Secretary of State John F. Kerry seems to have settled on this defense of any agreement: The terms will leave Iran at least a year away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, thus giving the world plenty of time to react to infractions. The argument is meant to reassure, particularly when a sizable enrichment capacity and a sunset clause appear to have already been conceded. A careful assessment, however, reveals that a one-year breakout time may not be sufficient to detect and reverse Iranian violations.

Once the United States had an indication that Iran was violating an agreement, a bureaucratic process would be necessary to validate the information. It could be months before the director of national intelligence would be confident enough to present a case for action to the president. Several U.S. intelligence agencies, the Energy Department and national nuclear laboratories would need a chance to sniff the data to be convinced that a technical breach had occurred. Only after this methodical review was finished could the director go to the White House with conclusions and recommendations.

Given that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be the on-site inspection organization responsible for the verification of an agreement, the United States’ scoop would have to be forwarded to that body. Of course, both the speed and the extent of U.S. sharing would be affected by the need to protect sensitive human or technical sources of information. Only then would IAEA representatives begin talking with their Iranian counterparts about gaining access to disputed sites or activities. History suggests the Iranians would engage in protracted negotiations and much arcane questioning of the evidence. Iran could eventually offer some access while holding back key data and personnel. It would be only after tortured discussions that the IAEA could proclaim itself dissatisfied with Iran’s reaction. This process also could take months.

Should the indication of infractions originate with the IAEA, the United States would likewise want to validate the findings itself, which would also be time-consuming.

Once the IAEA arrived at a verdict of noncompliance, it would forward its grievances to the U.N. Security Council for adjudication. The United States would have to convince the other member states invested in the agreement — including veto-wielding Russia and China — that the accord was being violated and that forceful action was needed. Time would be spent quarrelling over divergent views, with several outcomes possible, including a Security Council presidential statement or a resolution whose content would need to be agreed upon. And only then could new economic sanctions be imposed on Iran. So, add at least a few more months.

Could sanctions really make a meaningful impact on Iran in whatever time, if any, remained in a one-year scenario? Any sanctions would take time to stress Iran’s economy, particularly in the aftermath of an agreement that paved the way for the return of trade and investment. Of course, the United States would not have to wait for the economic pressure to work and could use force against Iran without U.N. endorsement. However, since the advent of nuclear weapons, the United States has negotiated arms-control agreements with an entire spectrum of adversaries and has never used force in response to violations.

And the reality is that any cheating by Iran would always be incremental and never egregious. Throughout the duration of an agreement, there would be occasional reports of Iran enriching to unacceptably high levels and revelations of unreported nuclear installations and experimentation in weapon designs. Iran’s habit of lulling the world with a cascade of small infractions is an ingenious way to advance its program without provoking a crisis. In the end, a year simply may not be enough time to build an international consensus on measures to redress Iranian violations.

In the midst of all the typical Washington political cacophony about the progress of the negotiations, what is lost is that an accord between the United States and Iran would be the most consequential arms-control agreement of the post-Cold War period. It would determine the level of stability in the Middle East and impact global nuclear nonproliferation norms. With stakes so high, we need a national debate about the nature and parameters of any agreement. The right venue for that debate is the halls of Congress. No agreement can be considered viable or enduring without such legislative approbation.

 

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http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/iran/iran-s-khamenei-faces-biggest-test-over-nuclear-deal-1.1476423

Iran’s Khamenei faces biggest test over nuclear deal

Supreme Leader has demonstrated ability to make pragmatic decisions despite anti-US rhetoric

Published: 03:04 March 23, 2015 Gulf News
By: Ladane Nasseri, Washington Post

Dubai: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an implacable opponent of America and its allies for most of his rule, will have to concede ground if he’s to end a nuclear dispute that has spanned three US presidencies.

Khamenei was selected as guardian of the mainly Shiite Islamic Republic on the death in 1989 of revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini as the country reeled from a newly concluded eight-year war with US ally Iraq. Under his tutelage, Iran sparred with neighboring Sunni states for regional primacy, while sanctions deepened its isolation and crippled the economy. Through it all, Khamenei, 75, stressed self-sufficiency, pious loyalty and animosity toward the United States - the “Great Satan” - and Israel.

Now as negotiators attempt to nail down the give-and-take that would underpin a nuclear pact, Iran’s ultimate authority faces perhaps his biggest test. Iran wants to keep more of its enrichment potential, and have sanctions lifted faster, than its interlocutors at the seven-nation talks envisage.

“This is the single most important decision Khamenei will have to make in his 26-year tenure as supreme leader,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It will be curious to see whether, and how, he spins a nuclear deal as an act of resistance rather than compromise.”

Before envoys regrouped this week in Lausanne, Switzerland, for a last push toward the end March deadline for a framework deal, Secretary of State John Kerry put the ball in the Iranians’ court. “Time is of the essence, the clock is ticking and important decisions need to be made” by Iran, he said.

In a video message to Iran’s people to mark the Persian new year, President Barack Obama said on Thursday that Iran and the US have their “best opportunity in decades to pursue a different future for our countries.”

While it was the election of President Hassan Rouhani with a mandate to end Iran’s economic stagnation that opened the door for a breakthrough in talks with world powers, the nation’s top cleric will have the final say.

The nuclear programme - which Iran says is intended for peaceful purposes and not the pursuit of atomic weapons as the US, Israel and others have charged - has become a totem of the nation’s proclaimed self-reliance.

Khamenei “has staked the well-being of his regime and his own personal authority on Iran preserving its self-declared right to enrich uranium,” said Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation.

Still, “while Khamenei is an ideologue, he has demonstrated the ability to make pragmatic decisions,” Nader said. He’s been under “a lot of pressure from within the political establishment, especially from centrists such as Rouhani who believed that Iran’s nuclear confrontation with the West would endanger the Islamic Republic’s survival,” Nader said.

As Iran’s ultimate arbiter, Khamenei has overseen governments run by both moderate reformist and conservative presidents.

For much of his rule, Iran’s relations with the US and its partners have been poor, with administrations from Ronald Reagan’s onwards imposing trade restrictions citing its alleged support for terrorism. During Bill Clinton’s terms in the Oval Office, Iran’s nuclear ambitions increasingly became a concern.

The United Nations has adopted half a dozen resolutions in an effort to stop Iran’s enrichment programme. US and European Union sanctions slashed oil exports and cut the economy off from the international financial system. Inflation and unemployment spiked during several years of recession.

Rumors of ill health have circulated for more than a decade, including claims that Khamenei, who has a white beard and wears a black turban, is suffering from prostate cancer.

Since taking office in 2013, Rouhani has sought to end Iran’s pariah status, engaging with the US and European powers and dropping the confrontational rhetoric of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He has largely been backed by Khamenei, who called for “heroic flexibility” in the negotiations to achieve a deal in Iran’s national interests.

“He doesn’t want to be seen as the person whose decisions led to the collapse of negotiations,” Reza Haghighatnejad, an Istanbul-based independent political analyst, said by phone.

At the same time, Khamenei, who hasn’t traveled outside Iran since becoming supreme leader, has left himself an escape route and maintained ties with conservative hardliners who oppose the diplomacy.

He “routinely underlines that negotiations are limited to the nuclear field, meaning we are only solving a technical issue with the west not a political one,” according to Haghighatnejad.

While he’s been broadly supportive of the talks, Khamenei has called the US “untrustworthy,” and indicated it was Rouhani’s idea to embark on a diplomatic push. He also says the economy could overcome sanctions if Iranians knuckled down and relied on their own creativity and skills.

“No agreement is possible without the supreme leader’s imprimatur,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, “But his level of association with the deal is probably going to be a function of its quality.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2015/03/22/can-you-say-blowback-in-spanish/

Can You Say ‘Blowback’ in Spanish?

Rebecca Gordon and Tom Engelhardt, March 23, 2015
Originally posted at TomDispatch.

One of the mysteries of our era is why there seems to be no learning curve in Washington. Over the last 13 years, American wars and conflicts have repeatedly helped create disaster zones, encouraging the fragmentation of whole countries and societies in the Greater Middle East and Northern Africa. In the process, such American wars, drone assassination campaigns, raids, and conflicts have acted as recruitment posters for and aided and abetted the growth of terror outfits. And here’s where the genuine strangeness begins to enter the picture: after all of this is absorbed and assessed in Washington, the response is regularly more of what hasn’t worked and a clamoring for yet more of it.

It turns out, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon reports today, that the same kind of process has been going on so much closer to home – right across the border in Mexico, in fact, resulting in the kind of blowback that Chalmers Johnson would have appreciated. Yet while hysteria and panic reign over the barbaric acts of the faraway Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, U.S. involvement in the “war on drugs” in a neighboring country gets just passing attention here. Curiouser and curiouser, hysteria and panic over Mexico only seem to rise when ISIS is reputed to be involved (at least in the fantasy worlds of various right-wingers). Consider it all part of the true mysteries of our strange American age of repetitive war. ~ Tom

It Didn’t Work in Afghanistan, So Let’s Do It in Mexico
By Rebecca Gordon

They behead people by the hundreds. They heap headless, handless bodies along roadsides as warnings to those who would resist their power. They have penetrated the local, state, and national governments and control entire sections of the country. They provide employment and services to an impoverished public, which distrusts their actual government with its bitter record of corruption, repression, and torture. They seduce young people from several countries, including the United States, into their murderous activities.

Is this a description of the heinous practices of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria? It could be, but as a matter of fact it’s not. These particular thugs exist a lot closer to home. They are part of the multi-billion-dollar industry known as the drug cartels of Mexico. Like the Islamic State, the cartels’ power has increased as the result of disastrous policies born in the U.S.A.

There are other parallels between IS and groups like Mexico’s Zetas and its Sinaloa cartel. Just as the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya fertilized the field for IS, another U.S. war, the so-called War on Drugs, opened new horizons for the drug cartels. Just as Washington has worked hand-in-hand with and also behind the backs of corrupt rulers in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, so it has done with the Mexican government. Both kinds of war have resulted in blowback – violent consequences felt in our own cities, whether at the finish line of the Boston Marathon or in communities of color across the country.

In Mexico, the U.S. military is directly involved in the War on Drugs. In this country, that “war” has provided the pretext for the militarization of local police forces and increased routine surveillance of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

And just as both the national security state and the right wing have used the specter of IS to create an atmosphere of panic and hysteria in this country, so both have used the drug cartels’ grotesque theater of violence to justify their demonization of immigrants from Latin America and the massive militarization of America’s borderlands.

The War in Mexico

If there was an official beginning to Mexico’s war on drugs, it would have to be considered the election of Felipe Calderón as the country’s president in 2006. The candidate of the right-wing Partido Acción Nacional, the National Action Party (PAN), Calderón was only the second Mexican president in 70 years who did not come from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). His predecessor, Vicente Fox, had been the first.

It was Calderón who, with encouragement and assistance from the United States, changed Mexico’s war on drugs from a metaphor into the real thing, in which guns and grenades would fuel the deaths of more than 60,000 Mexicans through 2012.

The current president, Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI, admits that another 27,000 Mexicans were murdered in the first year of his presidency. At least another 25,000 have been disappeared since 2007. It was Calderón who brought the Mexican military fully into the fight against drugs, transforming an ineffective policing policy into a full-scale shooting war with the cartels. At least 50,000 military personnel have been deployed.

In addition to ordinary citizens, journalists and politicians have been particular targets in this war. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that murders of Mexican reporters have increased dramatically since 2006. Among those whose killers have been positively identified, 69% died at the hands of the drug cartels, and at least 22% were killed by government or military personnel.

Wikipedia lists over 100 politicians who have lost their lives in Mexico’s war on drugs. That list does not include a woman named Aide Nava González, whose headless body was dumped this month on a road in Guerrero state. Nava was contending for the Partido Revolución Democrática, the Democratic Revolution Party, slot on the ballot in the town of Ahuacuotzingo. Her husband, the former mayor, had been murdered there last year. A note from Los Rojos, a local drug gang, was left with Nava’s body. “This is what will happen,” it read, “to anyone who does not fall in line, ****ing turncoats.”

Guerrero is the home of Ayotzinapa, a town where 43 teachers-in-training once attended a rural teachers college. All 43 “disappeared” last September during a demonstration in the neighboring town of Iguala. Their arrest by police, and apparent subsequent murder at the hands of a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, was one of the few stories of Mexican suffering to break into the U.S. mainstream media last year. The mayor of Iguala has since admitted that he instructed the police to hand the students over to the gang and has been arrested, along with his wife. The town’s police chief is still on the run.

Like the “war on terror” globally, Mexico’s war on drugs has created endless new pretexts for government repression, which has its own lengthy history in that country. That history includes the long-remembered police murders of some 300 students, among the thousands protesting in Mexico City’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas a couple of weeks before the Summer Olympics began in 1968. Juan Méndez, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, wrote in his 2014 mission report on Mexico:

“The National Human Rights Commission recorded an increase in the number of complaints of torture and ill-treatment since 2007 and reported a peak of 2,020 complaints in 2011 and 2,113 in 2012, compared with an annual average of 320 in the six years prior to 2007. Between December 2012 and July 2014, the Commission received 1,148 complaints of violations attributable to the armed forces alone.”

According to Méndez, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of torture cases in the country in any year, because there is no national registry that records such complaints. Nor is everyone who was tortured by representatives of the government likely to report their suffering to that same government.

What is not difficult to pinpoint is the nature of the torture. Méndez notes the “disturbing similarities” in the complaints of those tortured. The police and the military are regularly reported to use a combination of “punches, kicks, and beatings with sticks; electric shocks through the application of electrical devices such as cattle prods to their bodies, usually their genitals; asphyxiation with plastic bags; waterboarding; forced nudity; suspension by their limbs; [and] threats and insults.”

The purpose of such torture is clear as well. As Mendez reports, it’s “to punish and to extract confessions or incriminating information.” A 2008 change to the Mexican constitution makes it easier to do this: under this policy of pre-trial detention (arraigo in Spanish), suspected drug traffickers can be held for up to 80 days without charge. According to the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, “Supposedly, arraigo is used as a means to investigate suspected criminals, but in practice, it is used as a kind of public scrutiny that allows more time for the authorities to determine whether the detained is guilty or innocent.” It’s much easier to extract a confession when you have electric cattle prods and waterboarding at your disposal.

Washington Fights a “War” in Mexico

Who pays for Mexico’s war on drugs? You won’t perhaps be too surprised to learn that the United States foots a major part of the bill. Between 2008 and 2014, Congress has appropriated $2.4 billion dollars to fight the cartels, as part of the Mérida Initiative, a “security cooperation agreement” between the U.S. and Mexican governments. That money supports a failed war in which tens of thousands have been killed and thousands more tortured.

U.S. involvement, however, goes far beyond money. Along with the publicly acknowledged Mérida Initiative, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) signed secret agreements with the Fox and Calderón administrations without the knowledge or consent of the Mexican congress. These openly violated the Mexican constitution, which reserves to that congress the right to approve agreements with foreign governments, as well as the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Crime, which requires that activities carried out by one country inside another be approved by the appropriate agency in the country where those activities take place.

Under these secret agreements, U.S. DEA agents met repeatedly with high-level members of particular drug cartels, especially the Sinaloa group, to obtain information about rival organizations. Informants served as go-betweens in contacts between the DEA and “El Chapo” Guzmán, the head of that cartel. Guzmán was arrested in 2014 by the Mexican government. The newspaper El Universal conducted a year-long investigation in which its reporters documented the extent and effects of this illegal cooperation. The DEA arranged to dismiss drug trafficking charges that were pending in the United States against some of their Sinoloa Cartel informants. In other words, it allowed the cartels with which it worked to continue business – and murder – as usual.

In at least one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued multiple re-entry visas to informants, allowing them to bring significant quantities of drugs into the United States with impunity. In fact, it appears that, in order to maintain the flow of information, U.S. officials took sides in the drug war that devastated the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, killing an estimated 10,500 people. With tacit U.S. permission, the Sinaloa Cartel was able to defeat the rival Juárez Cartel.

Seventy percent of the guns used in Mexico’s drug wars also come from this country. Most are purchased at one or another of the 6,700 licensed firearms sales outlets along the U.S.-Mexico border. The University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute estimates that, between 2010 and 2012, about 253,000 firearms were bought each year for transfer to Mexico. And most of them made it across the border. The Institute reports that “Mexican authorities have seized roughly 12.7% of the total annual trade” in weapons. U.S. interdiction efforts account for a measly 2% of those seized.

And not all of the weapons that ended up in Mexico did so against the wishes of the U.S. government. In the debacle known as “Fast and Furious,” the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) allowed “more than 2,000 weapons, including hundreds of AK-47-type semi-automatic rifles and .50 caliber rifles,” to “walk” across the border and into the hands of the Mexican cartels. Its ostensible purpose was to follow the guns in hopes that they would lead to the arrest of high-level cartel leaders. But relevant agencies of the Mexican government were never informed about the operation, and it seems that there was no actual effort to track the weapons once they crossed the Mexican border. The weapons turned up at crime scenes in both Mexico and the United States. On December 14, 2010, near the Mexican border in Arizona, one of them killed Brian Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF wasn’t the only agency involved in “Fast and Furious.” Personnel from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the DEA, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona also participated, along with the FBI and the IRS.

Nor was the Mexican government entirely informed, although it seems clear that one man, Eduardo Medina Mora, knew about it. A former director of Mexico’s equivalent of the CIA, Medina is considered the “legal architect” of that country’s drug war. He was Mexico’s attorney general when Fast and Furious got underway. By 2010, he’d been removed from that post (possibly because one of his top deputies was arrested for taking bribes from the cartels) and appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom. Later, he served as ambassador to the U.S. until, in early March 2015, President Peña Nieto barely won Senate approval of Medina’s appointment to a 15-year term as head of Mexico’s Supreme Court. Mexicans who still remember Fast and Furious were outraged.

The Pentagon and CIA are also involved in Mexico in significant ways. Since at least 2011, the Pentagon has deployed both piloted aircraft and drones in the Mexican war on drugs. The CIA has also sent operatives to do intelligence gathering. And without specifying which agencies are responsible for such activities, the New York Times reports that “the United States has trained nearly 4,500 new [Mexican] federal police agents and assisted in conducting wiretaps, running informants, and interrogating suspects.” Furthermore, the “Pentagon has provided sophisticated equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.”

In 2011, the State Department recalled career diplomat Earl Anthony Wayne from Kabul. He was then serving as deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and coordinating with the NATO-led occupation forces there. His new assignment based on his counterinsurgency experience? Ambassador to Mexico. In 2013, the U.S. Army opened a special-ops center in Colorado, according to the El Paso Times, “to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida.” Because that worked out so well in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Drug War Comes Home (Along With Plenty of Blowback)

All in all, the U.S. drug war in Mexico has been an abject failure. In spite of high-profile arrests, including in 2014 Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who ran the Sinaloa group, and in 2015 Servando “La Tuta” Gómez, head of the Knights Templar Cartel in Michoacán, the cartels seem as strong as ever. They may occasionally split and reassemble, but they are still able to move plenty of product, and reap at least $20 billion a year in sales in the United States. In fact, this country remains the world’s premier market for illegal drugs.

The cartels are responsible for the majority of the methamphetamine sold in the United States today. Since 2006, when a federal law made it much harder to buy ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in this country, the cartels have replaced small-time U.S.-based meth cookers. The meth they produce is purer than the U.S. product, apparently because it’s made with purer precursor chemicals available from China. The other big product is heroin, whose quickly rising consumption seems to be replacing the demand for cocaine in the United States. On the other hand, marijuana legalization appears to be cutting into the cross-border traffic in that drug.

The Washington Post reports that almost 9% of Americans “age 12 or older – 22.6 million people – are current users of illegal drugs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.” That represents a one-third increase over the 6.2% in 1998. It takes a lot of infrastructure to move that much product.

And that’s where U.S.-based gangs come in. Urban gangs in the United States today are not the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story. Certainly, there are still some small local groups formed by young people looking for family and solidarity on the streets. All too often, however, today’s gangs represent the well-run distribution arm of the international drug trade. In Chicago alone, 100,000 people work in illegal drug distribution, selling mostly into that city’s African-American community. Gang membership is skewing older every year, as gangs transform from local associations to organized, powerfully armed criminal enterprises. Well over half of present gang members are adults now. The communities where they operate live in fear, caught between the gangs that offer them employment while threatening their safety and militarized police forces they do not trust.

Just like U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Mexico war on drugs has only left a larger problem in place, while producing blowback here at home. A particularly nasty example is the cartels’ use of serving U.S. military personnel and veterans as hit men here in the United States. But the effects are far bigger than that. The DEA told the Washington Post that Mexican cartels are operating in more than 1,200 U.S. cities. In all those cities, the failed war on drugs has put in prison 2.3 million people – in vastly disproportionate numbers from communities of color – without cutting demand by one single kilo. And yet, though that war has only visibly increased the drug problem in the same way that the war on terror has generated ever more terror organizations, in both cases there’s no evidence that any other course than war is being considered in Washington.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States. She teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the War Times/Tiempo de Guerras collective. You can contact her through the Mainstreaming Torture website.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt’s just published book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2015 Rebecca Gordon
Read more by Tom Engelhardt

Growing Up in the Shadow of the American War State – March 10th, 2015
How To Create a National Insecurity State – March 8th, 2015
Is Drone Warfare Fraying at the Edges? – March 5th, 2015
The Real American Exceptionalism – February 24th, 2015
Watching the Same Movie About American War for 75 Years – February 19th, 2015

 

[Housecarl]

Please note the author is either not aware or ignoring Iranian support for Shia militia operations in Iraq against Coalition forces among other things.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://southasiaanalysis.org/node/1740

Iran Regains Primacy in United States Middle East Strategic Calculus

Paper No. 5898
Dated 23-Mar-2015

By Dr Subhash Kapila

Iran seems to be regaining its earlier primacy in the United States Middle East strategic calculus in light of US contemporaneous moves, notwithstanding the nuclear issue.

The United States is seemingly co-opting Iran (even if not directly) even if not as a partner but as an essential component in combatting the ISIS menace that has afflicted the Middle East and North Africa. Media reports also suggest that the ISIS is also spreading its tentacles into Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Constantly emphasised in my Papers in the middle of the last decade was the reality that the United States strategic imperatives to stay embedded in the Middle East dictated a normalisation of United States-Iran relations as a given, independent of United States traditional and inviolable commitments to the security and existence of Israel.

Recent media reports also indicate that even in US national security circles, there is a growing advocacy of Iran being co-opted in the overall matrix of neutralising the ISIS threat to Middle East security.

Obviously, Middle East nations including Pakistan, which are supposedly the mainstays of the US regional security architecture are considered by the United States as ‘unequal’ to advance US security interests of containing and liquidating the ISIS threat.

Iran’s strategic significance in terms of her natural predominance as a regional power with all the attributes that go with it, again stood highlighted by me periodically over the years in my Papers on the subject.

Three decades plus of Iran’s demonization by the US-led Western group of nations and their economic sanctions in recent years over Iran’s nuclear program has not diluted Iran’s primacy in the Middle East strategic calculus. It outweighs Saudi Arabia’s strategic utility to United States in terms of US national security interests in the region.

It needs to be recalled that in the decade prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran was the United States most reliable security partner in the region. The United States militarily built it up to perform the role of a ‘regional policeman’ including initiating Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran was then emerging as the main ‘security pillar’ of the United States regional security plans and figured at the very top in the United States strategic calculus and security architecture in the Middle East

In an ironic strategic twist, three decades over, the United States may have to revert to the same strategic formulation, if current trends of militant Islamic militias seem bent on militarily taking over this vital strategic region and threatening United States interests in the region.

However, there are discordant voices in the United States Congress which are determined to thwart any United States-Iran normalisation of relations. While concerns for Israel’s security is a legitimate security imperative for the United States, so is it strategically imperative for the United States to ensure it revises its strategic formulations in the region inconsonance with its global national security interests.

There will be discordant voices within Iran too to such a process especially when a civilsational power like Iran was demonised and strategically isolated by the United States and the West.

Discordant voices within the United States however cannot wish away the centrality of Iran’s primacy in the Middle East strategic calculus as the naturally predominant regional power dominating the entire Eastern flank of the Persian Gulf. Also cannot be wished away is the political importance and spiritual hold that Iran has as the largest and most powerful Shia nation, amongst the sizeable Shia populations in Iraq, Syria and not to speak of the US traditional monarchical allies in The Gulf.

Iran’s opponents within the United States need to note that during the Gulf Wars and the US military intervention in Afghanistan, despite its capabilities to make things difficult militarily for the United States in these two war-torn countries, Iran did not indulge in any such disruption of US military efforts. This was in marked contrast to US’s Major Non-NATO Ally, Pakistan double-timing the United States in Afghanistan, a recorded fact.

Concluding, one would like to stress that Iran does not require United States to prop it as a notable factor in the Middle East strategic calculus. Iran enjoys an intrinsic strategic significance as the naturally predominant regional power in the Middle East and contemporaneous security developments in the region are only propelling it into that role. The United States is also seemingly being impelled to acknowledge this reality.

(Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...sis-syria-islamic-state-idUSKBN0MJ0X920150323

Islamic State moves west to attack Syrian army in Homs: monitor

BEIRUT Mon Mar 23, 2015 6:44am EDT

(Reuters) - Islamic State fighters attacked a military airport in Syria's Homs province on Monday as they pushed on with an offensive against government strongholds towards the west, a monitoring group said.

Skirmishes by Islamic State -- which is strongest in the northeast and east -- into the provinces of Hama, Homs and even Damascus pose a fresh challenge for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria's army has carved a bulwark of territory from Damascus through the cities of Homs and Hama to the western coast by defeating other, less powerful militias including rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the violence through a network of sources in the country, said Islamic State attacked a military airport in Tadmur, a town in Homs province, early on Monday.

Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment, and the fighting was not reported on state media.

The offensive followed a three-day battle erupted on Friday further west in Hama around Sheikh Hilal village, the Observatory said. Islamic State was trying to cut the road from Hama to Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city, it added.

MORALE-BOOSTING OFFENSIVE

Observatory head Rami Abdulrahman, said 74 soldiers in Hama had been killed by Islamic State, which he speculated launched both attacks to raise morale after losses to Kurdish forces in the northeast.

Around 200,000 people have been killed since 2011 in Syria's civil war, which pits Assad against a range of rebels including jihadist groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda's Nusra Front. A U.S-led coalition is bombarding Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq.

Kurdish forces, backed by coalition air strikes, defeated Islamic State in the northern Syria town of Kobani this year and other areas in the northeast.

Abdulrahman said that the push westwards will raise morale as the U.S.-led coalition is unlikely to fly so close to government-controlled areas, allowing Islamic State to advance unhindered.

The vast majority of coalition attacks have been far from army-controlled areas.

Government supporters posted a video on YouTube on Saturday showing trucks covered in the national flag carrying coffins of people said to have been killed fighting Islamic State in Hama province.

The footage was said to be taken in Salamiyah, a religiously-diverse town east of Hama that has been attacked by jihadist brigades.

An Islamic State fighter told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the Hama campaign aimed to eventually take Salamiyah. "The ultimate goal is liberate Salamiya and Hama but it will not happen before Islamic State is 100 percent ready," he said.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-yemen-security-idUSKBN0MJ0OF20150323

Yemeni forces fight off Shi'ite militia heading for Aden: sources

ADEN Mon Mar 23, 2015 4:58am EDT

(Reuters) - Soldiers loyal to Yemeni president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi fought off dozens of Shi'ite Houthi militiamen heading for the Sunni leader's seat of power in the southern city of Aden, militia sources and a local official told Reuters.

Iran-backed Houthis, who took over the southern city of Taiz on Sunday, agreed to share power with Hadi after they seized the capital in September. That split the army, parliament was dissolved in February and violence is intensifying as the northern-based Houthis head south.

"Southern popular committees and units of the army at dawn on Monday foiled an infiltration attempt on Aden by armed convoys carrying Houthi gunmen in the al-Subayha district in Lahj province," a local official told Reuters, referring to a tribal area about 100 km (60 miles) north of Aden.

Sources in Hadi's popular committees militia, tribal fighters in his heartland who fight alongside loyalist soldiers and are backed by Yemen's Sunni Gulf neighbors, said several Houthis were killed and three of their vehicles destroyed.

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Louise Ireland)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-israel-palestinians-un-idUSKBN0MJ0OL20150323

U.S. will not take floor at UN rights debate on Israel, Palestinians

GENEVA Mon Mar 23, 2015 6:47am EDT

(Reuters) - The United States will not take the floor at the main U.N. human rights forum on Monday during the annual debate on violations committed in the Palestinian territories, a U.S. spokesman told Reuters.

The move at the 47-member state forum where Washington unfailingly defends Israel, follows signals that the Obama administration is undertaking a "reassessment" of relations with Israel.

The last time that Washington spoke under that stand-alone agenda item was in March 2013, U.N. records show.

"The U.S. delegation will not be speaking about Palestine today," a U.S. spokesman in Geneva told Reuters in response to a query as the debate began. He declined further comment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's allies acknowledged on Sunday that his election-eve disavowal of a Palestinian state had caused a rift with the White House, but blamed U.S. President Barack Obama's unprecedented criticism on a misunderstanding.

(This story corrects to removes word "unprecedented" in paragraph 2, adds new 3rd paragraph to clarify)

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nationalreview.com/corne...u-whos-killed-two-state-solution-mario-loyola

It’s Obama, Not Netanyahu, Who’s Killed the Two-State Solution

by Mario Loyola March 22, 2015 1:26 PM

The Obama administration’s statements about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have a surreal quality about them. It’s as if nobody in the administration (or the media for that matter) stops to consider how Obama’s own policies have affected the prospects for peace.

The two-state solution has been in a coma since Arafat rejected Clinton’s final offer at Camp David and returned to unleash the al-Aqsa Intifada, which killed 1,000 Israelis and left the Labor party and its supporters deeply skeptical of both the peace process and of the intentions of the Arabs. The disastrous results of the withdrawals from Lebanon (2000) and Gaza (2005) turned that skepticism into mortal fear. Now you have an Israeli army populated by 18-year-olds who grew up knowing only that their Palestinian neighbors want to murder them and their families, and will do so if given the chance.

Even under those difficult circumstances, however, it would have been possible to start shaping the strategic foundations for a peace agreement. It would have been possible, for example, to diminish extremists among the Palestinians, chiefly by cutting Hamas and Hezbollah off from their remaining source of support, Iran. It might have been possible to help ensure the ascendancy of moderate elements in the Syrian resistance. It was certainly possible to maintain America’s priceless military presence in Iraq, and with it the alliance of moderate Sunnis and moderate Shiites at the heart of America’s alliance with that long-suffering country. Achievements on these fronts were necessary preconditions to two-state solution.

But instead Obama has pushed all of those factors in the opposite direction. Compared with 2009, when he came to office, Obama has not only done nothing to make the two-state solution possible, he has done a great deal to make it even more unlikely. It’s not just the capitulation to Iran’s nuclear-weapons program — it’s everything he’s doing in the Middle East: the catastrophic withdrawal from Iraq, the failure to do anything about Syria, the mistreatment of the Israeli government, all of it. Yet Obama gets angry at the government of Israel, which has no power to change any of those strategic factors, and threatens to punish it for merely pointing out the abundantly obvious fact that the two-state solution has become a pie in the sky.

Under Obama, the United States has only undermined the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. That is the elephant in the room when it comes to U.S.-Israeli relations, and the media should start contending with it.