Archive for the week ending 6th June 2008
Obama: support to Israel 'sacrosanct'
Barack Obama has pledged unwavering support for Israel in his first foreign policy speech since declaring himself the Democratic nominee for president.
He told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent Jewish lobby, Israel's security was "sacrosanct" and "non-negotiable". He also said he would do "everything" to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
BBC News, 4/6/08
Agreement would allow US to launch attacks from Iraq
A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its nationa l security.
Senior Iraqi military sources have told Gulf News that the long-term controversial agreement is likely to include three major items.
Under the agreement, Iraqi security institutions such as Defence, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, will be under American supervision for ten years.
The agreement is also likely to give American forces permanent military bases in the country, as well as the right to move against any country considered to be a threat against world stability or acting against Iraqi or American interests.
The sources also said that a British brigade was expected to remain at the international airport in Basra for ten years as long as the American troops stayed in the permanent bases in Iraq.
Gulf News, 5/6/08
US admitting trickle of Iraq refugees
The United States is admitting more Iraqi refugees than before, but Iraq should step up its efforts to encourage its citizens living abroad to come home, the senior U.S. coordinator for Iraqi refugee issues said on Tuesday.
Ambassador James Foley said the United States, which has been criticized for its slow pace in admitting Iraqi refugees, was confident it would meet a goal of admitting 12,000 by the end of September.
More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, going to Syria, Jordan and other countries. Foley said there were up to 2.5 million internally displaced people in Iraq as well.
So far 4,742 Iraqi refugees have been admitted to the United States in the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Reuters, 3/6/08
Iraq and US at odds over troop agreement
The Iraqi government Tuesday said it had a "different vision" from the US over the deployment of American troops in the country beyond 2008 and vowed not to compromise national sovereignty.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the cabinet discussed the proposed Status of Forces Agreement which is scheduled to be concluded by next month and insisted that Iraq's national interests must be protected.
"A joint vision on this issue is yet to be achieved between the two sides, and ... the Iraqi side has a different vision, and it will not undercut or be negligent towards Iraqis' rights and sovereignty," Dabbagh said.
AFP, 3/6/08
The new iron curtain
Why are our forces - and this is a question I was asked in Baghdad - in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria (yes, US special forces have a base near Tamanraset), Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Tajikistan? (Yes again, French bomber pilots are based at Dushanbe to fly "close air support" for our lads in Afghanistan.)
And as long as we have stretched this iron curtain across the Middle East, we will be at war and al-Qa'ida will be at war with us.
This new iron curtain, by the way, starts up in Greenland and stretches down through Britain and Germany, through Bosnia and Greece to Turkey. What is it for? What's on the other side? Russia. China. India.
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 2/6/08
US prison ships
The US is operating 'floating prisons' to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as 'floating prisons' since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.
15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as military base by the UK and the Americans.
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said "By its own admission the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001."
Guardian 2/6/08
Europe attacks 42 day plan
Europe's human rights commissioner is to write to Gordon Brown this week warning him that the proposal to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge is an 'excessive' measure that will put Britain 'way out of line' with the rest of Europe and will prove counter-productive.
The Government's claim that criminal suspects in Italy can be held for months without charge has also been dismissed by Italian parliamentary authorities.
They have confirmed to Commons librarians that the maximum period of pre-charge detention under Italian law is four days.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said "when the Council of Europe human rights commissioner has cause to intervene in Britain, we should all be truly ashamed. The commissioner has endorsed Liberty's view that 28 days is already way out of line with the rest of Europe".
Guardian 2/6/08
Guantanamo military judge sacked for siding with defence
A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday.
Army Col. Peter Brownback III was presiding over the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, in his role as chief judge at Guantanamo, ordered the dismissal without explanation and announced Brownback's replacement in an e-mail this week to lawyers in Khadr's case.
Human rights monitors saw Brownback's dismissal as indicative of political influence on the tribunal.
"The fact that Judge Brownback has now been taken off the case, without explanation, creates the appearance of political meddling and highlights why these commissions cannot be considered full, fair and independent," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch.
Los Angeles Times, 31/5/08
Brown reneges on cluster bomb treaty
Gordon Brown has negotiated a loophole for Britain to continue using cluster bombs, despite his declaration of a full ban.
The prime minister appeared to reinforce his humanitarian credentials when he dramatically overruled the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in talks at a 109-nation conference in Dublin on Wednesday.
While Brown announced support for "a ban on all cluster bombs, including those currently in service by the UK", the government quietly excluded new anti-tank cluster shells that are not yet in service.
Britain will now press ahead with an £83m contract to buy a new generation of the munitions, signed last November with GIWS, a German manufacturer.
Although the MoD has previously described the shells as "cluster munitions", it now maintains they do not fall into the convention's final definition of what constitutes a cluster weapon.
Sunday Times, 1/6/08
Australia withdrawing Iraq troops
US forces are replacing the 500 Australian troops pulling out of their base in southern Iraq as promised by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
This withdrawal was an election promise made by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to bring Australian soldiers home from Iraq this year when they reached the end of their fourth six-month-long rotation.
Australia was one of the first countries to support the invasion of Iraq led by US President George Bush, pledging 1,500 troops to the war.
After two years in Iraq, Australian troops have suffered no combat deaths and are now returning home.
Press TV 1/6/08
France has new stance on Iraq
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met Iraq's president on Saturday during a visit officials said showed Paris's renewed commitment to a country whose 2003 invasion by U.S.-led troops it strongly opposed.
"The visit represents the re-engagement of France, and through it the European Union and the international community, in Iraq," a French diplomatic official in Paris said.
The official said Kouchner would inaugurate a new French embassy office in Arbil in northern Iraq.
France, which takes over the EU's rotating presidency in July, has said it will lead a drive for greater EU involvement in rebuilding Iraq and has offered to host reconciliation talks.
Reuters 31/5/08
Downturn in violence may be simply a breathing space
U.S. military deaths plunged in May to the lowest monthly level in more than four years and civilian casualties were down sharply, too, as Iraqi forces assumed the lead in offensives in three cities and a truce with Shiite extremists took hold.
But many Iraqis as well as U.S. officials and private security analysts are uncertain whether the current lull signals a long-term trend or is simply a breathing spell like so many others before.
Iraqis have experienced lulls in the past - notably after the January 2005 elections - only to see violence flare again.
ABC News, 31/3/08
Iraqis call for referendum on deal with US
Loyalists of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on the Iraqi government Saturday to hold a public referendum on a long-term security deal with the United States.
Widespread opposition to the deal has raised doubts that negotiators can meet a July target to finalize a pact to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.
Associated Press, 31/5/08
Guantanamo Briton may face death penalty
Gordon Brown is facing increasing pressure to directly intervene in the case of a British resident being held at Guantanamo Bay who has been charged with terrorism-related offences and may face the death penalty.
MPs, human rights lawyers and former Guantanamo inmates have called on the Prime Minister to help secure the release of a 29-year-old Londoner, Binyam Mohamed, who has been held by the Americans for more than six years without trial.
Mr Mohamed claims to have suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his American captors, including razor blade cuts to his genitals. He has been formally charged with terrorism-related offences and is now due to be brought before a US Military Commission.
Independent, 31/5/08
CIA claims al-Qaida is on the defensive
Al-Qaida has been essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and is on the defensive throughout most of the rest of the world, the CIA claimed yesterday.
The upbeat assessment comes less than a year after US intelligence reported that al-Qaida had rebuilt its strength around the world and was well-placed to launch fresh attacks.
In an interview with the Washington Post published yesterday, Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said: "On balance, we are doing pretty well. Near strategic defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaida globally and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically', as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam."
Hayden cited US success in using Predator drone planes to strike against suspected al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan, including the killings this year of Abu Laith al-Libi and Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi. He said: "The ability to kill and capture key members of al-Qaida continues, and keeps them off balance." He added that capturing Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, still at large seven years after 9/11, remained a top priority.
Various US intelligence analysts, while accepting that al-Qaida has suffered various setbacks, questioned whether this one would be permanent and noted al-Qaida activity in Afghanistan and continuing plots against European targets.
Guardian 31/5/08
Army suicides rise
The number of U.S. Army suicides increased again last year amid the most violent year yet in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
An army official said that 115 troops committed suicide in 2007, an increase of almost 13 percent over the previous year's 102.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because a full report on the deaths was not being released until later.
About a quarter of the deaths occurred in Iraq.
International Herald Tribune 30/5/08
Iraqis rally over US security deal
Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to protest against a long-term security deal with the US.
The rallies after Friday prayers follow a call by Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal that could lead to more US troops and a long-term US presence.
Washington wants the Iraqi government to provide a legal framework for US troops to remain in Iraq beyond the expiration of a UN mandate in December.
Officials from the administration of George Bush, the US president, told Al Jazeera they expect to finalise the deal by the end of July.
Protesters burned an effigy of Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, as well as a US flag before dispersing peacefully after about an hour.
In Kut, 175km south of Baghdad, hundreds of Sadrists staged similar demonstrations.
Al Jazeera 30/5/08