Archive for the week ending 30th May 2008
US cluster bombs to be banned from UK
The US will no longer be able to stockpile cluster bombs at its military bases in Britain under government proposals for an international ban on the controversial weapons.
As diplomats from more than 100 states unanimously passed a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs around the world, it emerged that British ministers are prepared to go further. The government has agreed to scrap the two types of cluster weapon in the armoury of British forces, but it will also ask the US to get rid of its cluster bombs based here, and it will no longer ask for a 'phasing out' period for its newest cluster munition - the M73, which is attached to Apache attack helicopters.
Final negotiations centred on the issue of 'interoperability' - how far troops from countries signed up to the treaty should 'cooperate' with troops from countries that have not, notably the US.
The US claimed last week that the treaty could jeopardise its participation in joint peacekeeping and disaster relief operations, as most American military units have cluster bombs in their armoury. The US is not party to the Dublin talks.
Troops from Britain and other countries signing up to the cluster bomb ban would not be subjected to prosecution under international law if they were engaged in operations with those still free to use the weapons, the draft Dublin treaty is expected to say.
Guardian 29/5/08
Britain drops opposition to cluster bomb ban
A sudden change of British policy by Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lent momentum to negotiations on an international treaty to ban cluster munitions and created fresh pressures on the Bush administration, which had counted Britain as one of its staunchest allies in opposing the ban.
But as negotiators from 109 nations prepared to work through Wednesday night on a treaty text, it seemed clear that even a new pact agreeing on a ban would leave most of the world's stockpile of cluster weapons untouched.
The United States has been joined in its outright opposition to the ban - and its boycott of the Dublin conference - by military powers that include China, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan and Brazil, which is one of the world's largest exporters of cluster munitions.
Supporters of the cluster weapons ban hailed the British shift as the most important breakthrough in 16 months of negotiation. "It has had an earth-shattering impact," said Marc Garlasco, a military analyst for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.
But Garlasco and others warned that the treaty could still be derailed or diluted by an unresolved dispute over responsibilities and potential legal liabilities of signatory states that co-operate in war with nations that have not joined the ban.
The United States has lobbied energetically for continuing cooperation in war with states that support the ban, for example among NATO allies.
Another issue that could snarl negotiations is provisions affecting the stockpiles of cluster munitions at American bases in countries that plan to join the ban, including Britain and Germany. American diplomats have lobbied for those stockpiles to remain untouched by the ban.
International Herald Tribune 28/5/08
NATO puts pressure on Pakistan
NATO's secretary-general urged Pakistan on Tuesday to prevent a spillover of violence from its border region into Afghanistan and called for stronger political dialogue between Pakistan and the U.S.-led alliance.
Faced with a wave of suicide attacks, Pakistan has begun negotiations with Taliban militants who control much of the mountainous region on its side of the border with Afghanistan and thinned out the number of troops in the area.
But NATO's force in Afghanistan has said the peace talks have led to an increase in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials have often accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven from which to direct and launch attacks and also rest and regroup.
Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled to Pakistan's border lands, that have never come under the full control of any government, after U.S-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.
Reuters 27/5/08
Oil shake-up
The Iraqi government has replaced some of the top officials in state-owned oil companies in southern Iraq, tightening its grip on an industry that fuels the economy but has been outside of its direct control.
The shake-up, which has largely escaped public notice, affects industries in the southern oil hub of Basra, where 30,000 government troops were deployed in March to clamp down on Shi'ite militias and criminal gangs that dominated the city.
The Baghdad government has removed the heads of the South Oil Company, which is in charge of exports, the South Gas Company and the Iraqi Oil Tankers Company.
Analysts warned the move could trigger fresh violence in the unstable but strategic area, home to Iraq's main oil reserves.
The officials told Reuters the move was an attempt by the central government in Baghdad to take advantage of the improved security situation in Iraq's second city to wrest control of the industry from the locally powerful Shi'ite Fadhila party.
Iraq, which wants to boost oil exports this year to a post-war high, exports the bulk of its crude through Basra, its gateway to the Gulf, at an average of around 1.5 million bpd a day. The oil industry provides more than 90 percent of government revenues and is seen as crucial to rebuilding an economy shattered by decades of war and sanctions.
Rueters 26/5/08
Oil: a global crisis
The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.
The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.
He spoke after oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. They have now multiplied sixfold since 2002, compared with the fourfold increase of the 1973 and 1974 "oil shock" that ended the world's long postwar boom.
Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels.
Dr Salameh told the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions.
"This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil."
The Independent 25/5/08
Japan may end Iraq military mission
Japan may end its supply support mission for U.S.-led forces in Iraq next year, partly because of objections from the powerful opposition.
Japan has about 210 air force personnel in Kuwait, from where they airlift supplies to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. It withdrew its ground troops - sent to southern Iraq as a gesture of support to Tokyo's biggest ally, the United States - in 2006.
The special law allowing the Iraq mission despite Japan's pacifist constitution is set to expire in July 2009. Opposition parties have dominated parliament's upper house since an election last July, and have taken advantage of their position to block many government policies.
The divided parliament clashed earlier this year over military activities, when the ruling bloc pushed through a law which enabled a naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan by passing it twice in the lower house with a two-thirds majority.
The country's dispatch of 600 ground troops to southern Iraq in 2004-2006 in a non-combat mission was opposed by many voters, who saw it as stretching the limits of Japan's constitution.
Reuters 25/5/08
Iraq PM's political rehabilitation
After two years in office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has managed only in the past two months to stamp a semblance of authority in this unwieldy nation with bold crackdowns on Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents in Baghdad, Basra and the north.
The progress has brought the Shiite prime minister's political rehabilitation, quieting critics at home who have long seen him as ineffective, indifferent to corruption or biased toward Shiite interests.
It also has won him praise from American officials and the military, only months after some in the United States were calling for him to be replaced for failing to achieve political benchmarks.
His current political buoyancy also comes in no small part from an overall drop of violence - the U.S. military said that last week it recorded the lowest number of attacks since April 2004.
But al-Maliki is not out of the woods yet. Security gains made in the crackdowns he has personally overseen remain fragile and could quickly unravel.
The goodwill he has created has also yet to translate into concrete gains in reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. A deal still has not been sealed on returning Sunni Arab rivals to his government or on passing a crucial law on sharing oil wealth, blocked in part by his Kurdish allies.
Reconciliation will be key as al-Maliki faces the potentially divisive political events that loom ahead - like provincial elections and negotiations over a long-term presence of U.S. forces.
Al-Maliki also has to face the daunting tasks of reducing popular discontent over services, employment and crime. Better-than-expected oil income - $60-plus billion this year - should enable him to cushion some of the hardship Iraqis face.
AP 25/5/08
Truce in jeopardy
Supporters of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr warned the Iraqi government on Saturday that it was jeopardising a fragile truce, accusing security forces of attacking worshippers loyal to him in Baghdad and Basra.
Iraqi security forces fired shots to disperse worshippers in the southern oil port city of Basra during Muslim prayers on Friday and seized hundreds of Sadr supporters in southwestern Baghdad at about the same time.
Officials in Sadr's political movement, one of the biggest blocs in parliament, said on Saturday that police had targeted a mosque in Baghdad's Amil district, arresting 400 worshippers inside and outside the building during Friday prayers. The mosque is also Sadr's office in the area.
Sadrists in Basra said one person was killed and five wounded when Iraqi troops opened fire to prevent worshippers from gathering in a square. Police said the soldiers had fired shots into the air to break up an illegal gathering and that six had been wounded.
A U.S. military spokesman confirmed U.S. forces had been involved in the operation.
The truces negotiated in Basra and Baghdad have largely held and are partly credited by U.S. forces for near record-low levels of violence countrywide in the past two weeks. They allowed some 10,000 Iraqi troops backed by tanks to enter Sadr City, Sadr's main stronghold in Baghdad, unopposed this week, to stamp the government's authority over an area largely outside its control since coming to power in 2006.
Reuters 24/5/08
More US fraud in Iraq
An audit of some $8bn (£4bn) paid to US and Iraqi contractors has found that almost every payment failed to comply with US laws aimed at preventing fraud.
In one instance, $11m was paid to a US company without any record of what goods or services were provided, the US defence department audit said. US spending of another $1.8bn in seized Iraqi assets was also poorly handled.
The review by the defence department's inspector general estimates that the US Army made more than 180,000 commercial payments from bases in Iraq, Egypt and Kuwait from 2001 to 2006.
The $8bn spending of US taxpayers' money involved purchases of goods and services ranging from bottled water, mattresses and food to trucks and phones. In some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for in cash with little or no documentation to show what was delivered.
In one example, investigators found a copy of a $5.6m cheque paid by the US Treasury to an Iraqi contractor, but no records to show what had been purchased.
The review was seen as significant because, unlike previous critical audits of US spending in Iraq, it was the first time the Pentagon itself had revealed mismanagement on such a scale.
In April, a separate audit of US-funded reconstruction projects for Iraq found that millions of dollars had been wasted because hundreds of schemes were never completed.
Last year, congressional investigators said as much as $10bn (£5bn) charged by US contractors for Iraq reconstruction had been questionable.
BBC News 23/5/08
Afghan outrage at US decision on marines
Afghan officials expressed outrage Saturday at a decision by the U.S. military not to charge U.S. Marines involved in a shooting spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead in 2007.
Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, made the decision Friday not to bring charges after reviewing the findings of a special tribunal.
Afghan witnesses and a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded that a unit of Marine special operations troops opened fire along a 10-mile stretch of road, killing up to 19 civilians and wounding 50 other people.
Helland, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, decided not to bring charges against Maj. Fred C. Galvin, commander of the 120-person special operations company, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, a platoon leader.
Helland determined the Marines in the convoy "acted appropriately and in accordance with the rules of engagement and tactics, techniques and procedures in place at the time in response to a complex attack," the Marines said.
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan condemned the decision.
AP 24/5/08
Attacks surge in Afghanistan
The number of attacks on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan has increased significantly in April and May, causing many here to worry that local peace deals with militants in neighboring Pakistan are allowing them to regroup and focus on fighting across the border in Afghanistan.
Officials with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that attacks in eastern Afghanistan in the past three or four weeks have jumped to about 100 a week from 60 a week in March. which include everything from minor indirect fire to suicide attacks.
ISAF has about 51,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the U.S. military provides almost all the 16,000 troops in the eastern region, which borders Pakistan's tribal areas, the remote and mostly lawless border region where Taliban and Al Qaeda militants have found shelter for years. Any increase in attacks in eastern Afghanistan therefore would be primarily against U.S. forces.
Chicago Tribune 23/5/08
US airstrike kills 2 children
A U.S. helicopter strike north of Baghdad killed eight people in a vehicle, including at least two children, Iraqi officials said Thursday, insisting all the dead were civilians. The U.S. military said six were al-Qaida militants but acknowledged children were killed.
It was the latest incident threatening to alienate Sunni Arabs, who have played a key role in the steep decline in violence over the past year by joining forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq. Beiji, an oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad, lies in a largely Sunni Arab area.
The strike came as the U.S. was trying to ease Iraqi anger over the shooting of a copy of the Quran by an American sniper, who used Islam's holy book for target practice.
Associated Press, 23/5/08