History > 2006 > USA > International (I)

President Bush

visited an agricultural school in India Friday before going to Pakistan.

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press        NYT        March 3, 2006

Pakistan Is Tense as Bush Arrives on 24-Hour Visit        NYT        4.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/asia/04pakistan.html

Bush Ally Coasts to 2nd Term in Colombia

May 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JUAN FORERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, May 28 — President Álvaro Uribe, considered by the Bush administration to be an unswerving caretaker for Washington's drug war in Latin America, was re-elected Sunday in a landslide to a second four-year term.

Colombians gave Mr. Uribe 62 percent of the vote, with nearly all of the votes counted. Voters were apparently satisfied that he had made headway during his first term in wresting control of this country from Marxist rebels and drug traffickers. He overwhelmed the second-place finisher, Carlos Gaviria, a left-of-center former Constitutional Court justice who received 22 percent of the vote, and Horacio Serpa, the Liberal Party's standard-bearer, who garnered less than 12 percent.

"The victory by President Uribe will permit the young people of Colombia to learn about the conflict from the history books — not like us who have had to live with it," said Martha Lucía Ramírez, a former defense minister under Mr. Uribe.

Buttressed by more than $3 billion from the United States, most of it military aid, Mr. Uribe has fought Latin America's most persistent leftist insurgency while cooperating with an ambitious American program intended to eradicate drug crops through aerial spraying.

He has also supported American trade initiatives, signing a free trade treaty with the Bush administration which, if approved by lawmakers here and in Washington, would become the second-largest trade pact signed by the United States with a Latin American country.

In a region where Mr. Bush is unpopular, Mr. Uribe also represents a trusted counterweight to rising leftist populism, particularly in neighboring Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez is relentlessly challenging American policy.

Mr. Uribe's most important accomplishments have been in security. The army, with 100,000 more troops than it had four years ago — close to a one-third increase — has taken back towns and roads once under the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest rebel group. When Mr. Uribe took office, nearly one-fifth of Colombia's towns had no police or army presence and kidnappings were out of control.

The rebels often had control of communities like the farming village of Choachí, an hour's drive over rugged mountains from Bogotá's presidential palace.

In Choachí on Sunday, farmers in wool ponchos and faded fedoras and their wives in their best clothes came down from the hills and stood in long lines to cast their paper ballots. Several of these stoic, hard-working people, used to producing potatoes and onions, said they were fed up with kidnappings, road blockades and the ever-present threat of violence.

"Now there's at least some tranquillity and you can get around," said Ángel Díaz, 61. "Before you could not move. The violence was just terrible, kidnappings, shootings."

Moments after voting for Mr. Uribe in a school here, Arturo Hoyos, another farmer, explained, "There has been peace with this president."

Mr. Uribe, though, faces difficult challenges, which some political analysts say will be particularly thorny because of his own government's bungling.

Right-wing paramilitary groups, antiguerrilla forces that were given generous concessions to demobilize fighters, are evolving into drug-trafficking cartels that control politicians and extortion rackets across the northern coast. The government has also been plagued by accusations that important agencies, like the intelligence service, have closely collaborated with the paramilitaries.

Though his popularity ratings have been among the highest of any Latin American leader — often above 70 percent — Mr. Uribe leads a loose coalition of movements that could splinter. That means he will have to move quickly to gain congressional approval of some of his most ambitious programs, including the trade agreement with the United States and revisions in the tax code.

"The challenges will not be few," said Colombia's leading newspaper, El Tiempo, in an editorial on Sunday. "The political checkbook can run out sooner than expected. Everything depends on the cohesion of the Uribe supporters and the coherence of the opposition."

Still, Mr. Uribe, the first president to win re-election since President Rafael Nuñez in 1892, is the most popular leader in Colombia's modern history. Mr. Uribe received even more votes this time than when he was first elected in 2002, when he garnered 53 percent of the vote.

Colombian presidents had been barred from seeking a second term under the 1991 Constitution, and the Congress approved an amendment permitting him to seek a second term. Many members who voted for the amendment were rewarded with jobs, a development that did not seem to tarnish Mr. Uribe's image. Nor have disclosures about paramilitary ties to the security services or the news that an army patrol wiped out an elite anti-drug police unit on Monday, killing 10 officers in a clash and causing speculation that the soldiers had ties to traffickers.

Mr. Uribe's main opponents — Mr. Gaviria, from the Democratic Pole party, and Mr. Serpa, who has run unsuccessfully for president three times — tried to take advantage of Mr. Uribe's setbacks, his sometimes caustic personality and the country's grinding poverty.

Mr. Gaviria and his party did for the first time replace a traditional party to become the largest opposition force, demonstrating that the left has future here.

There was little else to celebrate for Mr. Uribe's opponents. Mr. Serpa's third-place finish was an especially hard blow for the Liberal Party, whose influence had steadily eroded in recent months.

In March, Uribe allies took overwhelming control of the country's 268-member Congress. Four more years will give Mr. Uribe the chance to place his allies in major government institutions like the Constitutional Court, the comptroller's office, the Bank of the Republic and the electoral board.

"President Uribe has all the powers in his hands," wrote Daniel Coronell, a columnist with a newsweekly, Semana. "He will own the executive branch like never before, and be proprietor of big chunks of the legislative and judicial branches."

    Bush Ally Coasts to 2nd Term in Colombia, NYT, 29.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/world/americas/29colombia.html?hp&ex=1148961600&en=cad55cf97081bb76&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iran Chief Eclipses Clerics as He Consolidates Power

May 28, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN, May 27 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to consolidate power in the office of the presidency in a way never before seen in the 27-year history of the Islamic Republic, apparently with the tacit approval of Iran's supreme leader, according to government officials and political analysts here.

That rare unity of elected and religious leadership at the highest levels offers the United States an opportunity to talk to a government, however combative, that has often spoken with multiple voices. But if Washington, which severed relations with Iran after the 1979 revolution, opened such a dialogue, it could lift the prestige of the Iranian president, who has pushed toward confrontation with the West.

Political analysts and people close to the government here say Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies are trying to buttress a system of conservative clerical rule that has lost credibility with the public. Their strategy hinges on trying to win concessions from the West on Iran's nuclear program and opening direct, high-level talks with the United States, while easing social restrictions, cracking down on political dissent and building a new political class from outside the clergy.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is pressing far beyond the boundaries set by other presidents. For the first time since the revolution, a president has overshadowed the nation's chief cleric, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on both domestic and international affairs.

He has evicted the former president, Mohammad Khatami, from his offices, taken control of a crucial research organization away from another former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, challenged high-ranking clerics on the treatment of women and forced prominent academics out of the university system.

"Parliament and government should fight against wealthy officials," Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a speech before Parliament on Saturday that again appeared aimed at upending pillars of the status quo. "Wealthy people should not have influence over senior officials because of their wealth. They should not impose their demands on the needs of the poor people."

In this theocratic system, where appointed religious leaders hold ultimate power, the presidency is a relatively weak position. In the multiple layers of power that obscure the governance of Iran, no one knows for certain where the ultimate decisions are being made. But many of those watching in near disbelief at the speed and aggression with which the president is seeking to accumulate power assume that he is operating with the full support of Ayatollah Khamenei.

"Usually the supreme leader would be the front-runner in all internal and external issues," said Hamidreza Taraghi, the political director of the strongly conservative Islamic Coalition Party. "Here we have the president out front on all these issues, and the supreme leader is supporting him."

Mr. Ahmadinejad is pursuing a risky strategy that could offer him a shot at long-term influence over the direction of the country — or ruin. He appears motivated at least in part by a recognition that relying on clerics to serve as the public face of the government has undermined the credibility of both, analysts here said.

The changing nature of Iran's domestic political landscape has potentially far-reaching implications for the United States. While Iran has adopted a confrontational approach toward the West, it has also signaled — however clumsily — a desire to mend relations. Though the content of Mr. Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush was widely mocked here and in Washington for its religious focus and preachy tone, it played well to Iran's most conservative religious leaders. Analysts here said it represented both Mr. Ahmadinejad's independence and his position as a messenger for the system, and that the very act of reaching out was significant.

"If the U.S. had relations with Iran under the reform government, it would not have been a complete relationship," said Alireza Akhari, a retired general with the Revolutionary Guard and former deputy defense minister, referring to Mr. Khatami's administration. "But if there can be a détente now, that means the whole country is behind relations with the West."

Mr. Ahmadinejad is trying to outpace the challenges buffeting Iran, ones that could undermine his presidency and conservative control. The economy is in shambles, unemployment is soaring, and the new president has failed to deliver on his promise of economic relief for the poor. Ethnic tensions are rising around the country, with protests and terrorist strikes in the north and the south, and students have been staging protests at universities around the country.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's critics — and there are many — say that the public will turn on him if he does not improve their lives, and soon. It may ultimately prove impossible to surmount these problems while building a new political elite, many people here said.

"The real issue here is we now have a government with no experience running a country and dealing with foreign policy," said Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Tehran University and childhood friend of the president.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was elected last June, has adopted an ideologically flexible strategy. He has called for restoring the conservative values of the Islamic Revolution, yet at the same time has relaxed enforcement of strict Islamic social codes on the street. During the spring, when the warm weather sets in, young women are often harassed by the volunteer vigilantes known as the Basiji for their dress, but not this year. More music seems to be available in stores than in the past — small but telling changes, people here say.

If there is one consistent theme to his actions, it is the concept of seeking justice, reflecting a central characteristic of Shiite Islam. In more temporal terms, his strategy appears to be two-pronged: to reinforce his support among hard-liners with sharp attacks on Israel and the West, for example, while moving to appease a society weary of the social and economic challenges of life in the Islamic republic.

"He is reshaping the identity of the elite," said a political science professor in Tehran who asked not to be identified so as not to affect his relations with government officials. "Being against Jews and Zionists is an essential part of this new identity."

Mr. Ahmadinejad has been far freer to maneuver than his predecessor, Mr. Khatami, whose movement for change frightened religious leaders. Instead of having to prove his fealty to the system, Mr. Ahmadinejad has been given — or has taken — the opportunity to try to calm the streets. Perhaps most surprising, the man who was rumored to want to segregate men and women on elevators and even sidewalks has emerged as a proponent of women's rights, challenging some of the nation's most powerful religious leaders.

"I believe Ahmadinejad's government will be the most secular we have had since the start of the revolution," said Mahmoud Shamsolvaezin, a journalist and political analyst. "The government is not a secular one with secular thought. Ahmadinejad is a very religious man. But the government recognizes it has no choice, this is what the public demands."

Mr. Ahmadinejad called for allowing women into stadiums, in an attempt to reverse a post-revolution ban when religious leaders decreed that sports arenas were not the proper environment for women. Four grand ayatollahs objected to his decision, but he backed down only when the supreme leader stepped in. Even then, Mr. Ahmadinejad said he was suspending the decision, not canceling it.

Most significant, during the discussion of the stadium issue, the president defended women in a way that put him outside the mainstream of conservative Islamic discourse, even beyond Iran's borders.

"Unfortunately, whenever there is talk of social corruption, fingers are pointed at women," Mr. Ahmadinejad said, in comments that for a leader in this society were groundbreaking. "Shouldn't men be blamed for the problems, too?"

The president's strategy is also aimed at limiting political challenges to the system. While political arrests are down, and the government has not moved to close privately held newspapers, it has staged a few crucial arrests — sending a chill through intellectual and academic circles — and it has pressured newspapers to be silent on certain topics, like opposition to the nuclear program.

He also has struck back at those who would undermine or mock him. The local press reported that the president became so incensed with jokes about his personal hygiene that were being exchanged via text messages on cellphones, that he had the messages stopped and people at the top of the cellphone system punished.

Mr. Ahmadinejad offered voters change and promises to improve the lives of the poor, who make up the majority of this country. But he has been unable to push through economic changes by personal fiat, as he has done in the political realm. He ordered the banks, for example, to lower interest rates, and was rebuffed by the head of the central bank. He offered to give inexpensive housing loans to the poor — but with only 300,000 available, more than 2 million people applied. The program will cost the government more than $3 billion.

He has traveled around the country, promising to dole out development projects the government can hardly afford. In the last year, the cost of construction materials has jumped 30 to 50 percent, and prices of dairy products have increased by more than 15 percent. Many people are asking how this can happen when the price of oil is so high.

Without a strong grasp of economics, and an economy that is almost entirely in the hands of the government, Mr. Ahmadinejad has grappled with ways to inject oil revenue into the system without causing inflation to soar. At the same time, the volatile political situation has caused capital flight and limited foreign investment as the needs of the public continue to grow alongside the president's promises.

In politics, the president by turns ignores and confronts those who have opposed him from the start, whether conservative or liberal, all the while playing to the masses.

"Ahmadinejad knows there is a big gap between the intellectual elite and the masses, and he knows how it serves his interest," said Emadedin Baghi, director of a prisoners' rights group. "He is playing to the masses and trying to widen this gap."

He has managed to sideline opponents like Mr. Rafsanjani, either through his own initiative or with the back-channel support of Mr. Khamenei, the supreme leader. Mr. Rafsanjani, a midlevel cleric whom Mr. Ahmadinejad defeated in a runoff for the presidency, "has been undermined, he's not a powerful person anymore," said Muhammad Atrianfar, a close ally of Mr. Rafsanjani and publisher of the daily newspaper Shargh. He said Mr. Rafsanjani had tried to get the supreme leader to rein the president in, but was unable to convince him.

Mr. Rafsanjani is representative of the class of people — wealthy and influential from the first generation of the revolution — that the president is trying to displace, said the retired general, Mr. Akhari.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting for this article.

    Iran Chief Eclipses Clerics as He Consolidates Power, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html?hp&ex=1148875200&en=3926c18faed214ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Is Debating Talks With Iran on Nuclear Issue

May 27, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 26 — The Bush administration is beginning to debate whether to set aside a longstanding policy taboo and open direct talks with Iran, to help avert a crisis over Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program, European officials and Americans close to the administration said Friday.

European officials who have been in contact with the administration in recent weeks said the discussion was heating up, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice worked with European foreign ministers to persuade Iran to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium.

European leaders make no secret of their desire for the United States to join in the talks with Iran, if only to show that the Americans have gone the extra mile to avoid a confrontation that could spiral into a fight over sanctions or even military action.

But since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the crisis over the seizure of American hostages in November that year, the United States has avoided direct talks with Iran. There were sporadic contacts during the war in Afghanistan, in the early stages of the Iraq war and in the days after the earthquake in Bam, Iran, at the end of 2003.

European officials say Ms. Rice has begun discussing the issue with top aides at the State Department. Her belief, they say, is that ultimately the matter will have to be addressed by the administration's national security officials, whether talks with Iran remain at an impasse or even if there is some progress.

But others who know her well say she is resisting on the ground that signaling a willingness to talk would show weakness and disrupt the delicate negotiations with Europe. Ms. Rice is also said to fear that the administration might end up making too many concessions to Iran.

Administration officials said President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have opposed direct talks, even through informal back channels. As a result, many European officials say they doubt that a decision to talk is likely soon.

The prospect of direct talks between the United States and Iran is so politically delicate within the Bush administration that the officials who described the emerging debate would discuss it only after being granted anonymity.

Those officials included representatives of several European countries, as well as Americans who said they had discussed the issue recently with people inside the Bush administration. Some of the officials made clear that they favored direct talks between the United States and Iran.

State Department officials refused to talk about the issue, even anonymously. But over the last week, administration spokesmen have been careful not to rule out talks.

Discussion about possible American contacts with Iran has been fueled not simply by the Europeans, but by a growing chorus of outsiders with ties to the administration who have spoken out in favor of talks.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a recent column in The Washington Post, raised the possibility that the recent rambling letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush — dismissed by Ms. Rice as an offensive tirade— could be seen as an opportunity to open contacts.

Both Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former top aide to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state under Mr. Powell, have also advocated talks with Iran.

"Diplomacy is much more than just talking to your friends," Mr. Armitage said in a telephone interview. "You've got to talk to people who aren't our friends, and even people you dislike. Some people in the administration think that diplomacy is a sign of weakness. In fact, it can show that you're strong."

Mr. Armitage held the last high-level discussions with Iran, after the Bam earthquake. In November 2004, Mr. Powell sat next to the Iranian foreign minister at a dinner during a conference in Egypt on Iraq, but he said they engaged only in small talk.

The United States has stayed out of the talks with Iran, which began in late 2004 and got new life last summer when, with American endorsement, the Europeans offered to help Iran integrate politically and economically with the West if it ended its nuclear ambitions.

Also on the table were unspecified security guarantees suggesting that Iran would not have to worry about outside efforts to topple the government.

The Europeans are now working with the United States, Russia and China on a revised package of economic, political and nuclear energy incentives if Iran ended its nuclear enrichment activities. Also being sought, at least by the Europeans and the United States, is an agreement to take Iran to the United Nations Security Council if it continues to defy the demands for compliance on nuclear issues.

European officials say the discussions about possible American-Iranian contacts are not part of these talks, but would be a way to improve the atmosphere with Iran.

Among the European diplomats who have urged Ms. Rice to consider direct contacts with Iran are Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, raised the issue with President Bush when she visited Washington earlier this year.

"What's interesting about Rice is that she listens when you make your case," a European official said.

Another European diplomat said, "It's a European aspiration for talks to happen," but added, "Nothing is likely at the moment." Still another European diplomat said of the Americans that "everyone and their brother has been telling them to do it."

One reason senior administration officials do not like the idea of talking with Iran, many of them say, is that they are not certain Iranian leaders would respond positively. A rebuff from Iran, even to a back-channel query, is to be avoided at all costs, various officials agree.

The administration, for example, has been embarrassed by the on-again, off-again possibility of talks with Iran on Iraq, which were authorized by Ms. Rice late last year.

The concern, some say, is that talking to Iran only about Iraq will anger Sunni dissidents in Iraq, reinforcing the Sunni-led insurgency while enhancing the status of Iraqi Shiites, whose strong ties to Iran make Washington uneasy.

On the other hand, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was said to be eager to enlist Iran in helping to deal with Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which are accused of carrying out killings and kidnappings of Sunnis in Iraq.

Some Europeans favor American participation in the European-Iranian talks, at least down the road. Others raise the possibility of informal contacts through nongovernmental organizations or policy institutes.

Incentives and possible sanctions against Iran are to be the focus of negotiations between the United States and the European nations in coming days and weeks.

The United States is resisting the Europeans' desire to increase economic incentives for Iran, because that would involve a lifting of American sanctions on European businesses that helped Iran. At the same time, Russia and China are resisting the idea of seeking a new resolution at the United Nations Security Council that could be seen as clearing the way for sanctions or possible military action against Iran.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

    U.S. Is Debating Talks With Iran on Nuclear Issue, NYT, 27.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?hp&ex=1148788800&en=602d1881e4ca95b7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Pressed by U.S., European Banks Limit Iran Deals

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 21 — Prodded by the United States with threats of fines and lost business, four of the biggest European banks have started curbing their activities in Iran, even in the absence of a Security Council resolution imposing economic sanctions on Iran for its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Top Treasury and State Department officials have intensified their efforts to limit Iran-related activities of major banks in Europe, the United States and the Middle East in the past six months, invoking antiterrorism and banking laws. They have also traveled to Europe and the Middle East to drive home the risky nature of dealing with a country that has repeatedly rebuffed Western demands over suspending uranium enrichment, and to urge European countries to take similar steps.

Stuart A. Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said: "We are seeing banks and other institutions reassessing their ties to Iran. They are asking themselves if they really want to be handling business for entities owned by a government engaged in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism."

The four European banks — the UBS and Credit Suisse banks of Switzerland, ABN Amro of the Netherlands, and HSBC, based in London — have made varying levels of disclosure about the limits on their activities in Iran in the past six months. Almost all large European banks have branches or bureaus in the United States, units that are subject to American laws.

American officials said the United States had informed its European allies about the new pressure exerted on the banks, and indeed had asked these countries to join the effort. At the same time, the Americans have not publicized the new pressure, partly out of concern it could complicate efforts by European negotiators, who were still talking with Iran about a package of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment.

It is not clear how curbed business with four of Europe's biggest banks could adversely affect Iran. But some outside political and economic experts say it is unlikely to do much damage considering Iran is one of OPEC's leading producers and is earning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of windfall profits daily from $70-a-barrel petroleum.

The American prodding has not yet resulted in any fines or other punishment. But UBS and ABN Amro are no strangers to the sting of American financial penalties for dealing with countries that the United States has wanted to isolate. UBS was fined $100 million by the Federal Reserve two years ago for the unauthorized movement of dollars to Iran and other countries like Libya and Yugoslavia, which were subject to American trade sanctions at the time. Last December, ABN Amro was fined $80 million for failure to comply with regulations against money laundering and with economic sanctions against Libya and Iran from 1997 to 2004.

UBS now says it will no longer do direct business with any individuals, businesses or banks in Iran. UBS also says it will not finance exports or imports for any corporate clients in Iran. But the bank has said that it would not stop doing business with clients who use other means to transact business there. ABN Amro also says it has minimized its activities in Iran.

"We have no representation in Iran," said Sierk Nawijn, a spokesman for ABN Amro in Amsterdam. He added that although the bank does no dollar-based business with Iran, it was participating in "a fairly limited number of transactions" with it."

Georg Söntgerath, a spokesman for Credit Suisse in Zurich, said, "As of January, we have said that we will not enter into any new business relations with corporate clients in Iran." He said the decision, which applied to Syria and some other countries, resulted from an assessment of an "increased economic risk for our bank and our clients."

He said, however, that the bank would fulfill existing contracts with businesses in Iran.

A United Nations Security Council resolution might restrict some of those kinds of dealings.

The Americans have taken other steps to pressure Iran. With American encouragement, Iran's rating as a business risk was raised last month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 leading countries with market economies.

At the same time, the defiance of the West by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has unsettled markets, and American officials have said the climate of anxiety over the prospect of globally enforced sanctions — or even military action — was having its own effect.

"I think there is a real and growing sense that there's a risk associated with doing business with Iran, with lending Iran more money or providing it with a line of credit," said Robert G. Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security. "But I would argue that their motive is market forces, more than any American pressure."

Some European diplomats from countries with missions in Tehran say that there are signs of an impact, despite the rise in oil prices.

Whatever the cause, Iran's economic growth has slowed to less than 5 percent, its stock market has dropped more than 20 percent in the past year, new investments and construction have declined, and Iranians have been sending their money abroad, or buying gold.

Iran has recently tried to counter diplomatic pressures over its nuclear program with reminders to Europe that it was a good market, with a good work force. In a regular weekly news conference on Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza Assefi, urged Europe not to take any steps that would jeopardize economic links with Iran.

"We have good ties with Europe, and a bad decision by Europeans over Iran's nuclear program can undermine relations and will eventually harm the Europeans," he said.

Many experts said it would be difficult to bar banks from conducting the lucrative business of financing trade deals with Iran. Iran's largest trading partners are Japan, China, Italy, Germany and France. All of those nations have companies that use banks to finance letters of credit to export machinery, commodities and other goods to Iran.

The laws being applied against banks are varied, and many of them also apply to North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Sudan. A 1984 law requires a ban on activities with any country declared a sponsor of terrorism. Officials are also invoking the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 and a directive signed by President Bush last year banning transactions with those suspected of helping the spread of unconventional weapons.

Under that directive, the United States has identified six Iranian entities, including its Aerospace Industries Organization, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and several private industrial groups, as off limits to banks that operate under American protections and laws.

Mr. Joseph said the use of American banking regulations and antiterrorism laws against European banks had been effective against Iran and would have a greater effect "if we can get other countries to take similar actions."

Some experts say they doubt that anything short of a sweeping oil embargo, or a blockade of gasoline imports — Iran imports about 40 percent of its gasoline — could get Iran to change its behavior, and the West is not contemplating such steps.

"I don't see that the pullout of a few European banks doing a tremendous amount of damage," said Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, an advocacy organization. "They're making $300 million a day from oil revenues, and they can weather the storm."

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article.

    Pressed by U.S., European Banks Limit Iran Deals, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/world/middleeast/22iran.html?hp&ex=1148356800&en=81020796a95d8ee7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Is Proposing European Shield for Iran Missiles

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, May 21 — The Bush administration is moving to establish a new antimissile site in Europe that would be designed to stop attacks by Iran against the United States and its European allies.

The administration's proposal, which comes amid rising concerns about Iran's suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, calls for installing 10 antimissile interceptors at a European site by 2011. Poland and the Czech Republic are among the nations under consideration.

A recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials say. The Pentagon has asked Congress for $56 million to begin initial work on the long-envisioned antimissile site, a request that has run into some opposition in Congress. The final cost, including the interceptors themselves, is estimated at $1.6 billion.

The establishment of an antimissile base in Eastern Europe would have enormous political implications. The deployment of interceptors in Poland, for example, would create the first permanent American military presence on that nation's soil and further solidify the close ties between the defense establishments of the two nations.

While the plan has been described in Congressional testimony and in published reports, it has received relatively little attention in the United States. But it is a subject of lively discussion in Poland and has also prompted Russian charges that Washington's hidden agenda is to expand the American presence in the former Warsaw Pact nation.

Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military's general staff, has sought to stir up Polish opposition to the plan.

"What can we do?" General Baluyevsky told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in December. "Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterward. I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans. However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk."

The proposed antimissile site is the latest chapter in the long-running saga of the United States missile defense program, which began with President Reagan's expansive vision of a space-based antimissile shield.

More than 20 years and billions of dollars later, the Bush administration is proceeding with a limited antimissile system, one that is no longer intended to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," as Mr. Reagan famously put it. Instead, it is designed to counter prospective dangers from nations like North Korea and Iran.

President Bush made the program a top priority soon after taking office and cleared the way for antimissile deployments by withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

Nine interceptors have already been installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as part of a broader, multilayered system planned by the Pentagon. An interceptor consists of a rocket that carries a 155-pound "kill vehicle," which is designed to seek out and collide with an enemy missile warhead. While the program is still being tested, the Pentagon says that the interceptors could be pressed into service in a crisis.

The program's numerous critics say it is behind schedule and not up to even this challenge. "It has been doing very poorly," said Philip Coyle, the former head of the Office of Operational Test and Evaluation in the Pentagon. "They have not had a successful flight intercept test for four years."

Lieut. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, chief of the Missile Defense Agency at the Pentagon, said none of the technical problems have been show-stoppers. Several tests in which a target is to be intercepted are scheduled for this year and early next year.

The Pentagon is seeking $9.3 billion for its missile defense work for the 2007 fiscal year. About $2.4 billion is to go for fielding new systems and maintaining existing ones. The remainder is for additional development and testing.

Given the many technical challenges, the House Armed Services Committee has refused to approve the $56 million for the initial engineering work for the new antimissile field. The Senate Armed Services Committee, however, has supported the initiative, and the Pentagon is pressing Congress to approve the funds to install in Europe the same type of interceptors that are at Fort Greely.

As the debate continues over the technical capabilities of the system, the Pentagon has pushed to expand it. The Fort Greely and Vandenberg sites are primarily oriented against potential missile threats from North Korea.

"We have a limited capacity today, and it is certainly focused against the North Koreans initially," General Obering said in an interview. "We are worried about what is happening in the Middle East. We want to make sure that we have coverage from those approaches."

To improve the coverage against a potential Iranian threat, the Pentagon is upgrading a radar complex at Fylingdales, a British air base, and plans to begin similar work at the American Thule Air Base in Greenland. By building an antimissile base in Europe, the Pentagon is seeking to position the interceptors close to the projected flight path of Iranian missiles that would be aimed toward Europe or continue on a polar route to the United States.

General Obering said the system would complement any NATO efforts to develop an antimissile defense.

Iran does not have intercontinental-range missiles and has yet to conduct a flight test of a multistage rocket. There has been concern that Iran might develop the technology it needs to build such a weapon in the guise of a civilian space program. But some experts say it is a long way from developing such a system.

"As far as we can tell, Iran is many years away from having the capability to deliver a military strike against the U.S.," said Gary Samore, vice president of the MacArthur Foundation and a former aide at the National Security Council. "If they made a political decision to seriously pursue a space launch vehicle it would take them a decade or more to develop the capability to launch against the U.S."

Still, Iran has long seen ballistic missiles as an important weapon. Iran fired Scud missiles at Baghdad and Kirkuk during its war with Iraq and later embarked on an effort to secure additional missiles and missile technology from foreign suppliers, including North Korea. The Iranian Shahab-3, a liquid-fueled missile that is based on North Korea's No-dong missile, has the range to strike Israel, Turkey and other countries in the region.

Defense Department officials argue that Iran could collaborate with North Korea to speed up the development of long-range systems. Given the time it would take the United States to install an antimissile site in Europe, some officials said it was not too soon to begin work.

"Iran understands the use of ballistic missiles to change strategic geography," said a senior American Defense official who asked not to be identified because he did not want to be drawn into the public debate. "This is a long lead-time item. We would much rather be a couple of years early than a couple of years late."

In the meantime, the Bush administration has resumed its efforts to sound out support abroad. In early April, Pentagon and State Department officials visited Warsaw to renew discussions about the project, which has been talked about for years. American officials said the Polish government has been receptive.

"They asked us officially if we were still interested in discussing the issue," Poland's deputy foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, said last month. "Of course we said yes and we are awaiting details." Poland's defense minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said recently that he has submitted questions for the Pentagon to answer before formal talks could be convened. Mr. Sikorski, who declined to be interviewed for this article, met in Washington with Mr. Rumsfeld last week to discuss an array of security issues.

In an effort to build support for the potential project, American diplomats in Warsaw have been meeting with opposition parties to keep them informed on the process of picking a site. According to a Polish press report, the Boeing Company, the prime contractor for the program, has made it clear that it would use Polish subcontractors. A Boeing spokesman declined to comment on the report.

The Czech Republic has sought to avoid public discussion of the project, fearing that it could become an issue in June parliamentary elections. As a result, American officials have refrained from talking openly about a potential site on Czech territory. But it remains an option that both sides intend to discuss privately, said an American official, who was granted anonymity because of the confidentiality of the discussions.

The United States already has a very close military relationship with Eastern European nations. The United States Army rehearsed helicopter attacks in Poland before the invasion of Iraq, and Poland later sent troops to Iraq. Exiled Iraqi fighters opposed to Saddam Hussein were trained in Hungary. Poland and the Czech Republic, along with eight other East European nations, are NATO members.

With the political fortunes of Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain in decline and controversy at home over his decision to join the American invasion of Iraq, there is no serious discussion about installing antimissile interceptors in Britain, the American official said.

The installation of 10 interceptors in Eastern Europe would have no significant ability to defend against Russia's sizable nuclear arsenal. American officials say that the Bush administration sought to assure the Russians that the system is not aimed at Moscow by keeping it informed about the recent visit by American officials to Warsaw. But the Russians are unhappy with the idea and have portrayed it as a step that would jeopardize cooperation between NATO and Russia, including on antimissile systems.

The development of an antimissile site in Poland would have a "negative impact on the whole Euro-Atlantic security system," Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defense minister, told a Belarus newspaper. "The choice of location for the deployment of those systems is dubious, to put it mildly."

    U.S. Is Proposing European Shield for Iran Missiles, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/world/middleeast/22missiles.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Exercise With Turkey Is Aimed at Iran

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 21 — The United States will hold a joint military exercise using naval, army and air forces with Turkey next week aimed at demonstrating a determination to stop missile and nuclear technology from reaching Iran and other countries, Bush administration officials said Sunday.

The officials said the exercise was part of a three-year effort known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, under which the United States and cooperating countries carry out military and naval exercises to interdict nuclear materials and contraband.

The initiative also involves efforts to restrict financing and suspect commercial transactions for Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and other countries.

About 20 such exercises have taken place in the last three years, beginning with naval exercises off Japan that have angered the government of North Korea, which has accused the United States of using intimidation tactics.

The United States is trying to persuade friendly countries near the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean to join in the exercises, but has met with limited success, administration officials say.

A month ago, Robert G. Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, traveled the gulf region to get countries to participate. But administration officials say those countries are wary of doing so, anxious not to be seen as provoking Iran militarily.

More recently, John Hillen, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, visited the region to lobby countries to participate.

Administration officials say they have found interest in several nations, including Saudi Arabia and India, but no commitments. India, which is trying to win support in Congress for a nuclear technology pact with the Bush administration, is under particular pressure to join because of the size of its navy. Indian officials say they are interested but that they do not want to disrupt ties with Iran, a major trading partner.

More than 70 countries have cooperated to some degree in the military exercises, or at least sent forces as observers, a senior administration official said Sunday. He said that Saudi Arabia might at least participate in the exercise with Turkey next week, though most likely as an observer.

    U.S. Exercise With Turkey Is Aimed at Iran, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/world/middleeast/22tehran.html

U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea

May 18, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, May 17 — President Bush's top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country's nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.

Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.

North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.

The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran's nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration's discussions about what to do next said, "There is a sense that they can't leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure."

But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.

With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea's government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush's remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush's negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.

In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country's suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea's prison camps and the suffering of its people.

Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. "Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue," former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, "Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed."

A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush's administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb's worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.

With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.

Those papers touched off what one senior official called "a blizzard of debate" over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush's first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.

Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, "I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult."

The official added, "So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war" that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. "It may be another way to get there."

An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks — the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia — commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "at an early date" but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.

It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum." But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.

As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush's aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice — China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world's 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.

Japan, Korea's colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.

A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, "The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program."

"They signed a joint statement," he added, "but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."

In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North's banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as "defensive measures" intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.

Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were "the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention," several participants in the meeting said.

Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.

    U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea, NYT, 18.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/world/asia/18korea.html?hp&ex=1148011200&en=e93b4d0acc403f02&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Will Restore Diplomatic Links With the Libyans

May 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, May 15 — The Bush administration announced Monday that it would re-establish full diplomatic ties with Libya because Libya had abandoned its nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs and helped in the campaign against terrorism.

The decision ends more than 25 years of hostility while sending a strong signal to Iran and North Korea to follow suit.

Along with the normalization of relations and the announced intention to open a new embassy in Tripoli, the administration removed Libya from the list of nations that are state sponsors of terrorism. The United States had reaffirmed Libya's place on that list as recently as March.

The announcements were a result of Libya's surprise decision in 2003 to renounce terrorism. At the time, senior American officials said they believed that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, had taken that step because he was chastened by the American invasion of Iraq. Since then, Libya has also destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles and dismantled a secret nuclear weapons program.

"Libya is an important model as nations around the world press for changes in behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. Hers was just one of several similar statements on Monday from senior officials who worked hard to turn Libya's change in behavior into a lesson for Iran as a resolution on Iran's nuclear development program remains stalled in the United Nations Security Council.

So far, however, Iran has ridiculed Libya for its reconciliation with the West. But on Monday, Libya accepted the news enthusiastically and even promised to cooperate with the United States in at least one area in which it is ill equipped to offer help.

"We encourage America on the path of cooperation and we hope we will cooperate together through cultural debate to spread democracy around the world together," said Mustapha Zaidi, who leads Libya's Revolutionary Committees — an apparatus of Colonel Qaddafi's iron-fisted control of the country.

The United States withdrew its ambassador from Libya in 1972 after Colonel Qaddafi renounced agreements with the West and repeatedly inveighed against the United States in speeches and public statements.

After a mob sacked and burned the American Embassy in 1979, the United States cut off relations. But the relationship did not reach its nadir until 1986, when the Reagan administration accused Libya of ordering the bombing of a German discothèque that killed three people. In response, the United States bombed targets in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The most notorious of Libya's actions was the bombing in 1988 of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Since then, Libya has accepted responsibility, turned over two suspects and paid families of victims more than $2 billion. Another payment of roughly $700 million is due now.

Reactions from family members and others affected by the bombing were mixed. The State Department notified them of the decision in an e-mail on Monday morning.

Susan Cohen of Cape May Courthouse, N.J., lost her only child in the plane crash. "Qaddafi has triumphed," she said. "This is all done for oil; that's all they care about."

In 2004, however, relatives of 230 victims signed a letter to President Bush, urging that sanctions be lifted. The lifting unblocked funds for the settlement. Libya is a major oil-producing state and a member of OPEC, but David Welch, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, insisted: "This decision is not undertaken because Libya has oil. This decision is undertaken because they've addressed our national security concerns."

While lifting sanctions on Libya, the United States on Monday listed Venezuela as a country that is not cooperating on terrorism. The State Department said the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, had given oratorical support to Iran and to the Iraqi insurgency and had provided aid to insurgents involved in drug trafficking in Colombia.

"Nobody is saying that Venezuela is actively sponsoring terrorism," said a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity under department rules. "But Venezuela has clearly shown a lack of interest in working with us in combating it."

The listing of Venezuela means that the United States cannot sell it military equipment, but the officials said such sales are negligible now.

For decades, Libya had been among the half-dozen countries that the United States routinely listed as state sponsors of terrorism, along with Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Sudan. In the latest terrorism report, published last month, the State Department noted that Libya had made progress.

Henry Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, said in an interview that one development that helped lead to the decision was Libya's "assistance in identifying some of the terrorist networks going into Iraq.

"They have been volunteering information; we've had a pretty dynamic discussion" over the last year, he said.

The United States opened an "interests section" in Libya two years ago, giving Washington a small diplomatic presence. Additional steps in 2004 opened Libya to American businesses, including energy companies.

Matthew L. Wald and Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting for this article.

    U.S. Will Restore Diplomatic Links With the Libyans, NYT, 16.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/world/africa/16diplo.html?hp&ex=1147838400&en=5a1b8342e79816e3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

White House dismisses calls for direct Iran talks

Sun May 14, 2006 6:37 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Sunday dismissed calls for direct talks with Iran to resolve the stand-off over its nuclear program, saying the United Nations was the best forum for those discussions.

"We think the framework we have is even better, we have a number of countries that are engaged with Iran on this issue, we are supportive of those discussions," White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley told CNN.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the United States on Friday to enter into direct talks with Tehran, as have others.

But Hadley said the United Nations was the preferred forum for the talks.

"The forum has now shifted to a discussion in the U.N. Security Council where the international community as a whole, of which the United States is a part, can make clear to Iran what it needs to do," he told CNN's "Late Edition. "We think that's the right forum at this time for this issue."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sent an 18-page letter to President George W. Bush last week, said over the weekend that he was ready to talk with any country except Israel and not under threat of force.

Bush dismissed the letter, saying it did not addressing the issue of when Iran would abandon its nuclear program, which the West suspects is a cover for building weapons.

Iran says the program is merely for peaceful power generation.

Britain, France and Germany, backed by the United States, Russia and China, are to unveil a package of inducements and penalties for Iran depending on whether it cooperates or resists Western calls that it halt uranium enrichment.

"We are looking at the kinds of sanctions that might be applied if it does not make the right choice. We're also looking at the kinds of benefits that might be applied if Iran does make the right choice," Hadley said.

"There have been a lot of opportunities for Iran to make the right choice, which is respond to the will of the international community and give assurances, by getting out of the enrichment business, that it's not pursuing a nuclear bomb," he said.

    White House dismisses calls for direct Iran talks, R, 15.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-14T223744Z_01_N14206203_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-BUSH.xml

Books on Anti-Americanism

They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us
 

May 14, 2006
The New York Times
Review by ROBERT WRIGHT

You wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Andrew Kohut, a pollster and commentator who seems to divide his time between quantifying America's Bush-era plunge in the world's esteem and quantifying Bush's plunge in America's esteem. Then again, you also wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Julia E. Sweig, a liberal senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But Sweig's "Friendly Fire" joins Kohut's "America Against the World" (written with the columnist Bruce Stokes) in showing that Bush isn't the only one to blame for the world's dim view of the United States. And these days that counts as good news for Bush.

Whether it's good news for the United States is another question. Once you see the deep and diffuse roots of current anti-Americanism, you realize there won't be an easy fix. Still, these two books — especially "Friendly Fire," the more prescriptive of the two — offer insight into how we might avoid what Sweig calls "the Anti-American Century."

The strain of "American exceptionalism" that President Bush has made internationally infamous is hardly new, Sweig notes. A Latin America specialist, she can list a century's worth of examples of the dubious idea that "America could throw its weight around — willy-nilly of international law or the sovereignty of other states — because its goals were noble, its values universal in their appeal."

And she doesn't stop with Latin America. More obviously germane to current headlines than the 1954 coup America sponsored in Guatemala is the one it sponsored in Iran in 1953, ushering in the secular authoritarianism that would in turn usher in the fundamentalist revolution of 1979. This, like so much American support for oppression during the cold war, made less of an impact on Americans than on the oppressed. "The dramas that contained the seeds of today's rebellion played out in obscurity, as yet imperceptible to the naked American eye," Sweig writes in the course of her sweeping and pungent review of abrasive American foreign policies.

Anti-Americanism emanating from globalization also long predates the Bush presidency. As Kohut and Stokes point out in their data-rich book, international resentment of American culture (movies, McDonald's) and business practices (long work hours) was appearing in Gallup polls by the early 1980's.

If America has been alienating people for decades, why has anti-Americanism so rarely gotten the attention it's getting now? For one thing, several forces have converged to create a new truth: national security depends crucially on foreign feelings toward America.

Of course, it was always important that some people — notably political leaders in nations deemed allies — like us. (Alienating freshly installed dictators has long been considered poor strategy.) But popular sentiment mattered less in the years before democratization made leaders beholden to the masses in so many countries, and before microelectronic information technology made the masses in even authoritarian nations more unruly.

And, of course, terrorism wasn't the threat it is now. The Venezuelans who stoned Vice President Richard Nixon's car in 1958 might have made their grievances felt more powerfully and farther to the north if they'd had modern munitions, transportation and information technology. Neither book much emphasizes this peril of anti-Americanism — the growing lethality of grass-roots hatred. But the war on terror is the backdrop for their illumination of how anti-Americanism impedes effective alliances.

America's post-cold-war pre-eminence — and the sudden visibility of that pre-eminence — complicates our attempts to win friends. People already ambivalent about encroaching American culture and commerce can increasingly see affluent America itself via video. Masses that have long felt bitterly toward the rich in their own nations can transfer some antipathy to their new next-door neighbors, us: the globalization of resentment.

In sum, by the late 90's America was becoming a more natural target for ill will, even as its national security rested increasingly on good will. More than ever, we needed a leader of diplomatic sensibility, keenly attuned to the hopes and fears of diverse peoples, willing to help other nations address their priorities.

And in walked . . . George W. Bush. His alleged failures in this regard have been so thoroughly discussed that we can save time by evoking them with keywords: "crusade," "evil," Kyoto, Iraq, Bolton, Geneva Convention and so on. There's no proving Sweig's contention that Bush's "policies and nonpolicies . . . stripped bare the latent structural anti-American animus that had accumulated over time," but Kohut's Pew Research Center polls show that global opinion of the United States has plummeted under Bush — not just since its unnatural post-9/11 high, but since he took office.

And this time it's personal. Only a few years ago, anti-Americanism focused on government policies; the world "held Americans in higher esteem than America," Kohut and Stokes note. But foreigners are "increasingly equating the U.S. people with the U.S. government."

Kohut and Stokes argue, in effect, that these foreigners are confused, that Americans aren't in the grips of the offensive exceptionalism lately exhibited by their government. According to the polls, "the American people, as opposed to some of their leaders, seek no converts to their ideology." And they are not "cultural imperialists." Maybe not. But this reserve seems grounded less in humility (60 percent of Americans consider their culture "superior to others") than in apathy. Americans, Kohut and Stokes write, tend "to downplay the importance of America's relationship to other nations . . . to be indifferent to global issues . . . to lack enthusiasm for multinational efforts and institutions" and in general to have "an inattentive self-centeredness unmindful of their country's deepening linkages with other countries."

In other words: We're not obnoxiously evangelistic, just obnoxiously self-involved. So even if Bush doesn't reflect the real America, and is replaced by someone who does, we'll still be in trouble. At least, we'll be in trouble if much of the problem is indeed, as Sweig argues, the longstanding "near inability of the United States to see its power from the perspective of the powerless." Changing that will require not a leader worthy of the people, but a leader willing to lead the people.

Sweig complains that "Americans think of themselves as kings and queens of the world's prom." But, actually, we can't escape that role, at least for now. In wealth and power we are No. 1. The question is whether we'll be the typical prom king or queen — resented by most at the bottom of the social hierarchy and many in the middle — or instead the rare prom king or queen who manages to be really, truly, you know, popular.

Americans may be bad at doing what Sweig recommends — "seeing ourselves as others see us" — but we're not alone in this. People in general have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of people whose circumstances differ from theirs. That's why the world is such a mess — and why succeeding at this task would qualify as real moral progress.

So history has put America in a position where its national security depends on its further moral growth. This is scary but also kind of inspiring. Maybe the term "American greatness" needn't have the militaristic connotations lately attached to it. Here, perhaps, is an exceptionalism worth aspiring to. But if we succeed, let's try not to brag about it.

Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author, most recently, of "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny."

    They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/books/review/14wright.html

Iranian Letter: Using Religion to Lecture Bush

May 10, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO, May 9 — With the tone of a teacher and the certainty of a believer, the president of Iran wrote to President Bush that Western democracy had failed and that the invasion of Iraq, American treatment of prisoners and support for Israel could not be reconciled with Christian values.

Locked in a conflict with the West over Iran's nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the observations in a letter on Monday that the Iranian government said "raised new ways of solving problems."

The 18-page letter, whose text was made available by United Nations diplomats on Tuesday, did not offer any concrete proposals for dealing with the crisis, but suggested that the United States give up its liberal, democratic, secular system and turn more toward religion.

"Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems," Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote.

State Department officials said there was nothing in the letter relevant to current talks with Iran about its nuclear programs.

Though the letter was dismissed by American officials, some said it provided an interesting window into the mind-set in Tehran, especially with its emphasis on grievances.

"There was not a single substantive proposal in the letter, but it was a revealing insight into their mentality," a senior State Department official said.

While the letter laid out a litany of policy disputes with the United States, it was also personal, urging President Bush, who is candid about his religious conviction, to examine his actions in the light of Christian values. As he has done in the past, the Iranian struck a prophetic tone, which is certain to be well received by his core supporters and mocked by his opponents.

"We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point that is the Almighty God," he wrote. "Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teaching of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question to you is: 'Do you want to join them?' "

The letter was framed entirely in religious terms but also laid out a populist manifesto of anti-Americanism, offering illustrations of what has won the Iranian a following among many people throughout the Middle East. He presented himself as the defender not only of Muslims but of all oppressed people, including those in Africa and Latin America.

But his primary focus was on religious principles central to Shiite Islam, specifically the concept of a just ruler and the fight against oppression. With a respectful, if superior, tone, he used a question and answer style to present a case for American hypocrisy.

He seemed to try to shame President Bush when he asked: "Are you pleased with the current condition of the world? Do you think present policies can continue?"

The letter marked a significant gesture, the first direct contact between an Iranian head of state and an American president since the revolution of 1979. It also presented some degree of political risk for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who left himself open to criticism that this would aggravate a nuclear showdown, and from those who see his contact with Mr. Bush as a betrayal.

The letter focused repeatedly on the notion that America is a sinner.

"My basic question is this: Is there no better way to interact with the rest of the world? Today there are hundreds of millions of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims, and millions of people who follow the teachings of Moses. All divine religions share and respect one word, and that is monotheism, or belief in a single God and no other in the world."

While sticking to a script of grievances against the United States, the tone also marked a shift from Mr. Ahmadinejad's past discussions. He did not use the terms "Great Satan" or "World Oppressor." And the letter did seek to identify a common ground for starting discussions.

"It would be a big mistake if the United States dismissed it or if they only consider it as a philosophical, religious, historical letter," Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Tehran University, said by telephone. "It would be a good idea if President Bush responds to it. It can open up some space."

The letter also included many standard views of conservatives in Iran, including the comment that those responsible for planning the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were never charged or tried, hinting darkly of conspiracy.

"Sept. 11 was not a simple operation," he wrote. "Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligences and security services, or with extensive infiltration? Of course, this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret?"

Since he was elected last June, the Iranian has promised to return to the principles of the revolution, and his letter echoed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who wrote to Mikhail S. Gorbachev in September 1989 that Communism was dead, and then invited him to study Islam.

Citing the war in Iraq and reports of secret prisons around Europe, Mr. Ahmadinejad argued that the United States had failed to live up to its own stated values, an argument that resonates in the streets of the Middle East.

While the notion that a head of state might write such a document might be perceived as naïve, it is another effort by Mr. Ahmadinejad to demonstrate his Everyman style.

"His letter was addressed more to young people in the Islamic world than to the American president," said Wahid Abdel Maguid, deputy director of the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt. "He wants to play the hero, mobilizing and inciting the enthusiasm of the young people. This is not a kind of letter that a head of state sends to another."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.

    Iranian Letter: Using Religion to Lecture Bush, NYT, 10.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?hp&ex=1147320000&en=27b9db9cf5590290&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iranian Writes to Bush; No R.S.V.P. Is Likely

May 9, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 — In a diplomatic overture that was immediately dismissed by the United States, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent a lengthy letter to President Bush over the weekend offering what an Iranian spokesman called "new ways" to resolve the crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

The letter, described in Tehran as the first direct communication from an Iranian leader to an American president since 1979, was said by the spokesman to analyze "the roots of the problems" with the West. But American officials said it was a meandering screed that proposed no solutions to the nuclear issue.

"This letter isn't it," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York. "This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort. It isn't addressing the issues that we're dealing with in a concrete way."

American officials said the letter, which was not released, was 16 pages in Persian and 18 pages in an English translation that Iran provided. The officials said the letter offered a philosophical, historical and religious analysis of Iran's relationship to the West, and asked questions about the cost to the world of the establishment of Israel, while another section asserted that Western-style democracy had failed humanity.

Some American officials said the letter appeared to be aimed at disrupting talks on Iran among top envoys of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The United States ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, suggested that Iran was throwing "sand in the eyes" of diplomats.

The officials were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the letter.

Ms. Rice met Monday with her counterparts from five countries at a dinner to discuss Iran, but the indications were that the United States and the Europeans remained at odds with Russia and China.

She is to address the Security Council on Tuesday on American recommendations to carry out the accord to end the war in Sudan.

Another urgent matter on her agenda was the Middle East, where there appeared to be a growing difference of view between the Bush administration and some European allies. European officials say they are increasingly worried about the freeze on payments to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which is causing shortages of medicines and blocking salaries for civil servants.

Last month President Jacques Chirac of France urged President Bush to join a trust fund administered by the World Bank to pay the salaries, circumventing the leaders of Hamas, which won parliamentary elections earlier this year.

The United States is arguing that European, Arab and American donations must not support a government led by a party that refuses to recognize Israel and that condones or even carries out attacks on Israelis.

Ms. Rice is to meet Tuesday with Russian, United Nations and European envoys on Hamas, and the meeting may prove contentious. Iran was the focus of a separate disagreement between the United States and France on the issue of a proposed resolution on Lebanon. France wants the resolution to focus on getting Syria to recognize Lebanon and stop interfering in its affairs. The Bush administration wants the resolution to rebuke Iran as well for interfering in Lebanon.

By all accounts, the most pressing matter before the United States at the United Nations is Iran. As always, the West is trying to get Iran to stop certain nuclear activities it believes to be a front for making weapons. Iran argues that it has a right to carry out these activities, which it says are for civilian nuclear energy.

Britain and France have proposed a resolution demanding that Iran comply with requests from the Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency to suspend its enrichment of uranium, end construction of a heavy-water reactor and negotiate the future of its nuclear program.

Their draft resolution would invoke Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, implying that a failure by Iran could lead to further Council action, including economic penalties. Russia and China oppose invoking the chapter, fearing that the West would be paving the way for economic or even military actions.

Russia has led the opposition to a tough resolution on Iran, but on Monday the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, said that because Chapter 7 "is about enforcement measures," it is inappropriate at the present.

American and European officials say the choice is whether to push a resolution through under Chapter 7, and hope Russia and China do not veto it, or to water down the resolution to get Russian and Chinese support.

Mr. Bolton said Russia and China could come up with alternative language that would also imply that the demand by the Council was "mandatory" for Iran. But he said no such language had been submitted.

Some European diplomats argue that it is more important to get a unanimously supported resolution than a strong one backed by only some Council members. In effect, they say, a mixed signal is worse than a weak but unanimous signal.

Complicating matters is the tense state of relations with Russia right now. Vice President Dick Cheney may have damaged the chances of getting Russian help on Iran because he has recently assailed Russian policies as antidemocratic and said Russia was trying to use energy as a political weapon.

    Iranian Writes to Bush; No R.S.V.P. Is Likely, NYT, 9.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/middleeast/09iran.html

Behavior guide aims at demise of "the ugly American"

Tue May 9, 2006 3:37 PM ET
Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alarmed by the relentless rise of anti-Americanism around the world, a business-backed group is trying to change the behavior that spawned an enduring stereotype of Americans abroad -- loud, arrogant, ill-dressed, ill-mannered and lacking respect for other cultures.

For many years, much of the rest of the world distinguished between the United States and the American people. Americans tended to get better ratings than their country and its policies. But recent surveys show that favorable perceptions of Americans have been shrinking while views on the world's only superpower grow increasingly hostile.

Enter Business for Diplomatic Action Inc. (BDA), a non-profit organization founded by advertising executive Keith Reinhard after a worldwide survey of attitudes toward Americans convinced him that "our collective personality is one of the root causes of anti-Americanism."

"We are seen as loud, arrogant and completely self-absorbed," said Reinhard, chairman emeritus of the advertising agency DDB Worldwide. "People see in us the ultimate arrogance -- assuming that everybody wants to be like us."

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

This month, San Francisco-based BDA -- whose board includes executives from Exxon and McDonald's -- began distributing a "World Citizen's Guide" to corporate travelers. Its 16 points are a mirror image of the behavioral patterns that earned Americans a boorish reputation in the first place. Here's a sampler from the guide.

*** Think as big as you like but talk and act smaller. In many countries, any form of boasting is considered rude. Talking about wealth, power or status -- corporate or personal -- can create resentment.

*** Speak lower and slower. In conversation, match your voice level and tonality to the environment and other people. A loud voice is often perceived as bragging. A fast talker can be seen as aggressive and threatening

*** Dress up. You can always dress down. In some countries, casual dress is a sign of disrespect. Check out what is expected and when in doubt, err on the side of the more formal and less casual attire. You can remove a jacket and tie if you are overdressed. But you can't make up for being too casual.

***Listen at least as much as you talk. By all means, talk about America and your life in the country. But also ask people you're visiting about themselves and their way of life. Listen, and show your interest in how they compare their experiences to yours.

NOT GOOD AT LISTENING

"We Americans just don't listen," said BDA's executive director Cari Eggspuehler. "Listening is not an American trait." Eggspuehler traveled the world when she worked for the U.S. Department of State before joining BDA.

More than 400 companies have expressed interest in the World Citizens Guide. Ten thousand copies have already been distributed and 30,000 more are now being printed under sponsorship from the National Business Travelers Association which works with BDA to push the initiative.

A proposal to the State Department to issue the guide along with every new or renewed U.S. passport is still under review, according to Eggspuehler.

The new guide for corporate executives follows similar but more detailed tips for U.S. students traveling abroad. Compiled by BDA and students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, that guide was sponsored by Pepsico and handed out to more than 200,000 students.

An estimated 60 million Americans travel abroad each year and BDA's Reinhard sees all of them as potential ambassadors who might win the hearts and minds of their host countries, no matter how much people there might hate U.S. policies.

When word of the new guide first filtered onto Internet discussion groups, some participants were quick to point out that American travelers have no monopoly on boorish behavior.

BDA's campaign follows several unsuccessful attempts by the government to "sell America," including a branding effort led by a high-powered advertising executive, Charlotte Beers. Under her leadership, the State Department's Office for Public Diplomacy produced a series of videos about Moslems thriving in the United States.

They were meant to show that the Moslem world had a mistaken image of the United States, but several Arab governments refused to air the videos, branding them propaganda.

Before Beers resigned in frustration, two years after taking the job, she told a congressional committee: "The gap between who we are and how we wish to be seen, and how we are in fact seen, is frighteningly wide."

This is not a new phenomenon, historians say. The term "Ugly American" became part of the popular language with a best-selling 1968 novel of that title. It criticized the blundering behavior of Americans in Southeast Asia and prompted then-president Dwight Eisenhower to reform U.S. aid programs in the region.

Beers resigned unexpectedly two weeks before the United States went to war on Iraq -- an act which further tarnished America's image in large parts of the world -- and was replaced by Karen Hughes, a close confidante of President George W. Bush.

Hughes' guiding principles for the job are what she calls "The Four Es" -- engage, exchange, execute and empower. She has visited several Moslem countries and won largely negative reviews at home and abroad.

The Office of Management and Budget, part of the White House, recently rated the public diplomacy program as "not performing." "There is no broad overarching US government public diplomacy strategy," the OMB said. "Because of this lack of a plan, programs such as this one may not be the most effective both in the long and the short term.

(USA-UGLY, editing by Cynthia Osterman; e-mail:bernd.debusmann@reuters.com)

    Behavior guide aims at demise of "the ugly American", R, 9.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-09T193657Z_01_N09311567_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-UGLY.xml

Cheney, Visiting Kazakhstan, Wades Into Energy Battle

May 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ILAN GREENBERG and ANDREW E. KRAMER

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, May 5 — A day after chastising Moscow for its use of oil and natural gas as "tools for intimidation and blackmail," Vice President Dick Cheney visited Kazakhstan on Friday to promote export routes that bypass Russia and directly supply the West.

With his comments, Mr. Cheney waded into a messy geopolitical struggle for energy and influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union, rapidly becoming one of the world's largest-producing regions.

The United States backs efforts to weaken Russia's grip by building new export routes for the enormous energy reserves of Central Asia, much of which now must cross Russian territory to reach ports in the Black Sea or pipelines to Europe.

Mr. Cheney's visit to Kazakhstan, on Russia's southern rim, highlighted the balancing of United States interests, trying to counter Russian dominance in energy matters by cozying up to states like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that have spotty human rights records and limited democracy — and plenty of oil.

"The United States is trying to strike a difficult balance," said Tanya Kostello, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a New York risk consultancy. "It is trying to encourage the regime in Kazakhstan to move toward democracy while maintaining the economic ties."

The Kazakh president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, won a third six-year term in December 2005, with 91 percent of the vote in an election that international observers said was flawed. Two opposition politicians have been murdered in six months, raising the specter of instability.

Kazakhstan produced 1.2 million barrels of oil a day last year but is expected to pump 3 million a day by 2015.

On Friday, Mr. Cheney met privately with officials from the Kazakh government, ending the day with a dinner with Mr. Nazarbayev in Astana, the Kazakh capital, according to American officials.

Asked afterward his opinion of democracy in Kazakhstan, the vice president endorsed the Nazarbayev government without qualification. "I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here in Kazakhstan over the past 15 years," he said, "both in terms of economic development as well as political development."

In Russia, reaction to Mr. Cheney's speech on Thursday was sharp. Kommersant, a major daily, called it "the beginning of a second cold war," this time in a struggle over energy and competing spheres of influence rather than ideology.

In an echo of the 19th-century Great Game scramble for colonial possessions in Central Asia, the United States is seeking to weaken Russia's control over oil and natural gas while also keeping China from stepping in to the breach. It is also encouraging export options that avoid Iran, another longstanding rival for regional influence.

Meanwhile Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, is growing increasingly reliant on Central Asian natural gas as its fields in the Arctic decline. Turkmenistan, wedged between Iran and Kazakhstan, has some of the world's largest reserves of natural gas.

Because Kazakhstan borders China and Russia, and shares the Caspian Sea with Iran to the south, Mr. Nazarbayev has many options. Under several proposed pipeline routes, Kazakh oil and gas would be sent through Russia, Turkey, Iran, China, Pakistan and even Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Kazakhstan's energy minister cheered the United States and Europe by saying he was interested in building a gas pipeline westward to Azerbaijan and then to Turkey, bypassing Russia and loosening Gazprom's lock on this trade. But that same day, Kazakhstan's national pipeline operator issued a guarantee to Russia to ship Russian oil to China through its new Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline.

In this seesaw struggle for influence, the United States is set to score a victory this fall with the opening of pipelines carrying oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, again bypassing Russia.

With those pipes in place, American officials like Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher, who is traveling this week with Mr. Cheney, have called for Kazakhstan to commit to transporting more of its oil along this westward route.

Some modern players of the Great Game argue that energy sales to China paradoxically serve American interests, because oil that China pumps from Kazakhstan is oil that it will not buy on the spot market in the Persian Gulf, purchases that could push up world prices.

The United States is also concerned about maintaining its military presence in Central Asia. The need became acute after Uzbekistan reacted to American criticism of its violent suppression of a demonstration last summer by expelling the Americans from an air base supporting operations in Afghanistan.

The United States' other Central Asian base, in Kyrgyzstan, also seems to be on wobbly foundations, with the government there demanding higher rent payments and discussing whether to expel the Americans — cheered on by Russia and the Chinese, analysts say.

Kazakhstan is the largest and, many say, most stable country in the Caspian Sea region. The entire basin contains roughly 10 billion barrels of oil, much of it in Kazakhstan territory. Kazakhstan is second only to Russia in oil reserves among the countries once part of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Cheney's visit was the latest high-level United States delegation in Kazakhstan, where support for Mr. Nazarbayev's energy policies are balanced with careful criticism of his autocratic rule.

Opposition leaders say they are emboldened by Mr. Cheney's pointed comments on Thursday in the speech in Lithuania, when he praised democratic advances in former Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine, in spite of resistance from Russia.

Mr. Cheney said President Bush, who is to meet with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, in July, "will make the case, clearly and confidently, that Russia has nothing to fear and everything to gain from having strong, stable democracies on its borders."

Opposition leaders here were to meet with Mr. Cheney for an hour after lunch on Saturday, just before Mr. Cheney's departure to Croatia, the final leg of his three-country tour.

"We're going to try to explain the deplorable situation in this country," Oraz Jandosov, co-chairman of the Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, said in an interview. "After Cheney's speech yesterday, it will be difficult for him to be unsympathetic to us."

Still, Mr. Jandosov said several colleagues would miss the talks because the authorities had prevented them from traveling to the capital.

Ilan Greenberg reported from Almaty for this article, and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow.

    Cheney, Visiting Kazakhstan, Wades Into Energy Battle, 6.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/world/europe/06cheney.html?hp&ex=1146974400&en=e422be07447e20a7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Thousands Rally in Support of American Aid to Darfur

May 1, 2006
The New York Times
By HOLLI CHMELA

WASHINGTON, April 30 — In front of thousands of people rallying on Sunday on the Mall, religious leaders, politicians and celebrities urged the American people and the Bush administration to do more to help end the ethnic and political conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The rally here was one of nearly 20 events across the country sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition, an alliance of more than 160 organizations.

The Washington event attracted dozens of speakers, including Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois; Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; the Rev. Al Sharpton; the actor George Clooney; Joey Cheek, the Olympic speed skater; and Big & Rich, the country music group.

Since violence erupted in 2003, it is estimated that more than 200,000 people have died in Darfur, more than two million have been displaced and countless others are suffering from hunger and disease.

In 2004, the House of Representatives approved a declaration of genocide for Darfur, and since then the House and Senate have urged stronger peacekeeping missions and approved billions of dollars in aid to Sudan and the Darfur region of the East African nation.

That is not enough, demonstrators and speakers said.

Dominic Oduho, 32, came to the United States as a refugee from southern Sudan six years ago. He now lives in Dallas in a community with about 200 Sudanese, but he hopes to rejoin his parents in Sudan.

With tears in his eyes, Mr. Oduho said: "I'm personally moved by the way the American people are supporting us; the faces here, there are almost more white people than black people. This message is not a message that will remain here."

Many in the crowd said the Save Darfur rally was the first of any kind they had attended. For others, it was their first in decades.

Esther Muencz, 64, and her husband, Tamas, 65, both Holocaust survivors, left Cleveland at 4:15 a.m. to travel here by bus with members of their synagogue.

"I was one of the hidden children, taken in by a gentile family in Poland," Mrs. Muencz said. "If somebody would have done this when they murdered six million of us, maybe some would have been saved."

Elizabeth King, 43, drove from Maplewood, N.J., with her husband and daughter Sophie, who is 7.

"My husband and I got home late last night and thought about how hard the long drive down here today would be," Mrs. King said. "But you feel different when you're a parent. You feel more of an obligation to teach your children and follow through."

Last year, Sophie and her friends set up a lemonade stand and raised $30 for victims of Hurricane Katrina. She said she wanted to do the same for the people of Darfur. "It made me sad that all the people are getting hurt in Africa," she said.

Another demonstrator, Suzanne Thompson of New Hampshire, made signs using her grandchildren's markers and Sudanese children's artwork that she printed from the Internet.

"I haven't spoken out for a while — I'm embarrassed to say the last time was Vietnam — but this seemed very important," Ms. Thompson said. "It's important as a mother, a grandmother and a former schoolteacher, to speak out for other human beings. If we speak out, our country will hear us and the world will hear us."

Stephen Kiir, 30, another demonstrator from the Sudanese community in Dallas, said: "When I came here today, I thought it would be Sudanese alone. I thought we were the only people suffering in the world, but there are other people suffering even more than us."

Mr. Kiir continued, "It's good that young people are here to see this, because they are the ones who can tell other people what is going on. We will see the result of it."

    Thousands Rally in Support of American Aid to Darfur, NYT, 1.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/us/01rally.html

Rice says US could pressure Iran outside UN

Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:34 PM ET
Reuters
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned on Sunday the United States might take steps outside the U.N. Security Council to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear program.

Rice, who appeared on several Sunday television talk shows, said Washington still had a number of diplomatic steps it could take through the U.N. Security Council against Iran. However, if the Council did not act quickly enough, Washington and its allies would not wait.

"I absolutely believe that we have a lot of diplomatic arrows in our quiver at the Security Council and also like-minded states that would be able and willing to look at additional measures if the Security Council does not move quickly enough," Rice said on the CBS show Face the Nation.

Rice accused Iran of "playing games" with the international community, saying Tehran had had plenty of time to comply with earlier demands to halt its program.

The United States contends that Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its program is purely to meet civil energy needs.

The United States, Britain and France want to introduce a new Security Council resolution which would require Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported last week that Tehran had defied an earlier Security Council deadline to halt its enrichment program.

The new resolution would invoke Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, making compliance mandatory and punishable by sanctions if violated. However, the United States still has to overcome veto threats by Russia and China to get such a resolution through the Council.

Iran renewed its defiant stance on Sunday, vowing to ignore any such resolution and to strike back if attacked.

Earlier, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, had suggested there could be still be room to consider a proposal to move Iran's enrichment work to Russia.

Despite its defiance, Rice said Iran was trying to avoid international isolation. She disputed an assessment by her predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell, who said in an interview in London that Iran appeared willing to accept sanctions to continue its atomic program.

"When the Iranians say things like, 'We don't care if there are sanctions,' then I ask myself, then why are they working so hard to stay out of the Security Council?" Rice said on CBS.

Deputy Oil Minister Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian on Sunday said there was little risk of sanctions on Iran's energy sector while oil prices flirt with record highs.

But Rice said no one was considering oil or gas sanctions, adding that there were a other options.

She sidestepped a question on whether she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a psychopath. But she said the Iranian president's behavior reinforced the world's concerns about his country acquiring nuclear weapons.

"I have no idea. I have never seen the man or talked to him," Rice said on CNN's Late Edition. "I just know that nobody speaks in polite company in that way and that he represents the Iranian regime very badly."

    Rice says US could pressure Iran outside UN, R, 30.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-30T183432Z_01_N3084290_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-RICE.xml

News Analysis

Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo

April 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and ELAINE SCIOLINO

WASHINGTON, April 29 — Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy.

In many ways, what has unfolded in the past three days resembles cold-war deception and brinkmanship, with some decidedly new twists for a very different nuclear age. As in the early days of the cold war, both sides have tried to write the rules on the fly, using every tool available — from American threats of sanctions to Iranian threats to cut off oil.

Iran, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been successful in gradually blinding the agency's inspectors, increasingly denying them access to crucial sites and steadfastly refusing to answer questions about suspected links between Iran's civilian nuclear program and its military.

While Iran denies any clandestine effort to build a nuclear weapon, it is clearly drawing on the diplomatic playbook of a country that has done just that — North Korea. Iran has gone so far as to boast about, and perhaps exaggerate, its nuclear prowess to try to convince the West that its program is now unstoppable.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the chairman of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, and other Iranian officials on Friday described their nuclear program as "irreversible." They argue that the United States should simply accept this — much as it now accepts that Pakistan and India will never give up nuclear technology.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's fiery president, said Saturday that giving up enrichment "is our red line, and we will never cross it," according to state television.

In Washington, senior Bush administration officials have taken a position at the opposite extreme. In the words of Robert Joseph, the State Department's top proliferation official, the administration is determined to ensure that "not one centrifuge spins" in Iran.

In interviews in the past two days, the officials have described a plan to turn the United Nations Security Council's "requests" that Iran cease enriching uranium into an enforceable requirement. What has chilled the Chinese, the Russians and some others in Europe, however, is that the administration is insisting on citing Iran under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of penalties, and if that is inadequate, of military force.

This is still not a contest between nuclear powers — Iran is not believed to have a bomb yet, and intelligence estimates say that day is still 5 to 10 years away, assuming there is no clandestine effort that no one has detected.

Instead, it is an effort by the United States and some other nations to refashion the nuclear rules. They want to declare that even if Iran is legally entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, Mr. Ahmadinejad cannot be trusted to do so. By deceiving the nuclear agency about its activities, President Bush and British, French and German officials say, Iran has given up whatever treaty rights it once enjoyed.

Mr. Bush has also acknowledged that America's credibility has been deeply harmed by the intelligence failures over Iraq.

On Friday, he tried to allay concerns that he was proceeding down the same path he used to give a legal basis for the invasion he ordered 37 months ago. "There's a difference between the two countries," he told reporters, even as his European allies worry about similarities in the American strategy.

For the first time, the administration has publicly declared, as it did in the case of Iraq, that if the Security Council fails to act, Mr. Bush will organize "like-minded nations" to begin to impose punishment.

"We have not conceded the point and we will not concede the point that Iran will become a nuclear weapons power," said R. Nicholas Burns, who directs the diplomatic talks for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He insisted that Iran was mistaken if it thought that the Bush administration would ever allow its nuclear activity to go ahead— which is essentially what has happened in North Korea for the past three years, while negotiations have dragged on to the brink of collapse.

"The difference in the two situations is that in Iran you have a state situated in the most volatile area of the world, where they are the leading central banker of terrorist actions," Mr. Burns said. "What they can't count on is a compliant and divided international community."

The strategies have only hardened the other side's position.

Washington's episodic saber-rattling — from the president's vague comments that "all options" are on the table if diplomacy fails, and the increasingly public discussion of whether he or the Israelis will ultimately opt for a military strike — has so far failed.

The Iranians have responded with threats of their own, knowing that even the specter of confrontation rattles the oil markets and sends prices to new levels, enriching Iran and heightening the pain for Mr. Bush and American consumers.

The Iranians may have also overplayed their hand.

While they insist that their current activities are within their treaty obligations, they ignore the I.A.E.A.'s finding that Tehran hid some of its activities for two decades. And Friday's report accuses Iran of continuing to hide vital information.

But this dispute is about more than transparency. It is also about national pride and Iran's insistence on self-sufficiency and independence. That may help explain why Iran has celebrated enrichment with dancers in traditional dress, who paraded on national television while holding a small box said to contain the fruits of their atomic labors.

The inspectors' report confirmed that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium at a low level, but it would take significantly more processing, equipment, and problem-solving to produce fuel for a bomb. Fabricating a warhead would take even more time, and risk detection.

"The real fight here is not over whether they have a weapons program, it is over whether they can create a nuclear weapons option," said Gary Samore, who led nonproliferation efforts in the Clinton administration and continues to study the Iranian program, speaking earlier this year. "And that is the smoke-and-mirrors game, convincing everyone that they have that capability."

That is what most concerns senior officials inside the Bush administration. Officials who deal with nuclear strategy note that it is now widely assumed that North Korea has several to 10 nuclear weapons — even though the North Koreans have never conducted a nuclear test.

"We think the Iranians looked at the Koreans and learned a lesson," said a senior official, who would not speak for attribution on a matter of nuclear strategy.

It would be a very different approach than the one taken by the Russians in the late 1940's, or the Chinese in the early 1960's, or the Indians and Pakistanis in the late 1990's, all of whom set off nuclear explosions to prove their powers. Given the limited access allowed I.A.E.A. inspectors, officials here and in Vienna say, there would be no way to verify, or disprove, Iran's claims.

Mr. Bush has therefore taken the position that Iran must give up everything. He said Friday, "The Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon."

The Russians and Chinese view that as unrealistic; a senior Russian official said it was time for a "détente" with Iran, drawing another term from the cold war.

In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the atomic agency, has made it clear in conversations with diplomats that he believes pragmatism will eventually dictate that Iran be allowed some limited form of enrichment, monitored constantly by his agency.

But there is the fear — here, and in Vienna — that the I.A.E.A. is seeing only part of the program, and that the evasive answers to its questions hide a clandestine effort, somewhere under the desert. As Tehran restricts international inspections, it will be harder to know whether its program more closely resembles the very real one in Pakistan, whose scientists sold technology to Iran, or the nuclear mirage in Iraq.

U.S. Rejects Offer on Inspections

TEHRAN, April 29 (AP) — Iran said Saturday that it would allow United Nations inspectors to resume inspections of its nuclear facilities, but only if the dispute was returned to the United Nations' nuclear monitor.

The White House rejected the offer.

Iran gave no ground on the United Nations Security Council's demand that it stop enriching uranium but offered to allow the inspections if the Council dropped the matter; Council members have been at odds over imposing sanctions on Iran.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington for this article, and Elaine Sciolino from Vienna.

    Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo, NYT, 30.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/world/middleeast/30iran.html?hp&ex=1146456000&en=ce0c4b8cb66a637e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iran Threatens Retaliation if U.S. Attacks

April 27, 2006
The New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, April 26 — Iran's supreme religious leader vowed Wednesday that Iran would retaliate "twofold" if it were attacked by the United States over its refusal to comply with demands regarding its nuclear activities. He made his comments as other senior Iranians traveled to Vienna just days ahead of the deadline for international monitors to report on Iran's nuclear program.

"Iranian people and the Islamic regime will not invade any country, but the Americans should know that if they invade Iran, their interests around the world would be harmed," the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told workers gathered ahead of May Day, the international workers' holiday, the ISNA news agency reported.

"Iran will respond twofold to any attack," Ayatollah Khamenei said.

In escalating rhetoric, a number of Iranian officials have made similar threats in recent days, but the Bush administration has insisted it is pursuing a diplomatic path, even while vaguely holding open the distant option of imposing sanctions or taking military action if diplomacy fails.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is for energy-producing purposes and that it is entitled to pursue those interests, including enriching nuclear fuel. The United States and some of its European allies, however, believe the country has ambitions for a nuclear bomb.

On Wednesday in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the United Nations' monitoring group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with the Iranian representatives, two days before Mr. ElBaradei is to report to the United Nations Security Council.

"The talks were encouraging," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said, according to Reuters. But he gave no details.

Tension between the monitoring agency and Iran became evident after Iran refused to answer the agency's questions during a trip by Mr. ElBaradei last week. A trip by Mr. ElBaradei's deputy was canceled in protest.

Iran has been relying on the vote of two its economic allies, China and Russia, at the Security Council meeting, hoping they would use their veto power to stop any punitive measures against it.

Moscow has helped Iran build its first nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr and Iran has extensive oil deals with China.

China's defense minister, Cao Gangchuan, said Wednesday that he hoped Iran's nuclear issue would be settled through diplomatic means, the New Chinese News Agency reported.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of defense ministers from members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Mr. Cao said: "Under the current situation, there is still room to seek an appropriate settlement to the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation. More efforts are needed to maintain such an important international consensus."

Mr. Cao said Iran, as a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, enjoys the right to peaceful use of nuclear power, and should also perform relevant obligations and commitment.

    Iran Threatens Retaliation if U.S. Attacks, NYT, 27.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?hp&ex=1146196800&en=d4f59932eef64a1c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Azerbaijan Leader, Under Fire, Hopes U.S. Visit Improves Image

April 23, 2006
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

MOSCOW, April 19 — Next week, after years of waiting for an unequivocal nod of Western approval, President Ilham H. Aliyev of Azerbaijan will fly to Washington to be received at the White House, a visit his administration hopes will lift his stature.

Being a guest of President Bush has been billed in Mr. Aliyev's circle as a chance for the 44-year-old president — dogged by allegations of corruption, election rigging and repression of opposition figures — to gain more international legitimacy.

"We have long waited for this visit," said Ali Gasanov, a senior presidential adviser. "Now it has been scheduled, and we hope that we will be able to discuss global issues."

For President Bush, who has made democracy promotion a prominent theme of his foreign policy, Mr. Aliyev's visit could prove tricky.

Mr. Aliyev's invitation arrived during a period of increasing diplomatic difficulties between the United States and both Russia and Iran, countries that border Azerbaijan.

But while Azerbaijan's strategic location could hardly be better and its relations with the United States have mostly been warm, no leader in the region more fully embodies the conflicting American objectives in the former Soviet Union than its president.

Mr. Aliyev is a secular Muslim politician who is steering oil and gas to Western markets and who has given political and military support to the Iraq war. But his administration has never held a clean election and has used riot police to crush antigovernment demonstrations.

The invitation, made last week, has raised eyebrows in the former Soviet world, where Mr. Bush's calls for democratization have increased tensions between opposition movements and the entrenched autocrats.

Opposition leaders have long said the United States' desires to diversify Western energy sources and to encourage democratic growth have collided in Azerbaijan. By inviting Mr. Aliyev to the White House, they say, Mr. Bush has made a choice: oil and location now trump other concerns.

Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, noted that when Mr. Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an invitation, awaiting improvement by Azerbaijan in promoting civil society and recognizing human rights.

"It is difficult for Azerbaijan's democratic forces to understand what changed," said Mr. Kerimli, who was beaten by the police as were several thousand demonstrators during a crackdown on a protest over fraudulent parliamentary elections last fall. The demonstration had been peaceful until the police rushed in with clubs.

"I think the White House must explain what has happened when three years ago Aliyev was not wanted for a reception in the White House, and now he falsifies another election and is received," Mr. Kerimli said.

American officials insist nothing has changed, and say Mr. Aliyev has been invited for what they call a "working visit," during which he will be urged to liberalize his government and its economy, which is tightly controlled by state officials and clans.

"If we are going to elevate our relationship with Azerbaijan to something that is qualitatively different, then there has to be progress on democratic and market reforms," a senior State Department official said. "I am sure we will talk in these clear and blunt terms."

The United States' relationship with Azerbaijan rests on three principal issues: access to energy resources, international security cooperation, and democratic and economic change.

On the first two issues, the United States has made clear it is satisfied. Mr. Aliyev has supported new pipelines to pump Caspian hydrocarbons away from Russia and Iran to Western customers, and provided troops to United States-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Azerbaijan also grants overflight rights to the American military and is cooperating with a Pentagon-sponsored modernization of a former Soviet airfield that could be used by American military planes.

Mr. Aliyev often welcomes foreign delegations to Baku, the capital, describing in smooth English his efforts to push his nation toward Western models of democracy and free markets.

But Azerbaijan has remained undemocratic. No election under Mr. Aliyev or his late father, Heydar Aliyev, has been judged free or fair by the main international observers. Instead, fraud and abuse of state resources for chosen candidates have been widespread.

Ilham Aliyev's government maintains a distinctly Soviet-era state television network and has elevated Heydar Aliyev to the status of a minor personality cult figure.

Moreover, Azerbaijan's government is often described as one of the world's most corrupt. A criminal case now in federal court in New York against three international speculators describes enormous shakedowns and bribes in the late 1990's at Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company. Mr. Aliyev was a Socar vice president at the time.

Last year the Azerbaijani government showed signs of paranoia, arresting several people shortly before the parliamentary election and accusing them of plotting an armed coup.

Public evidence for the charges has been scarce, and a lawyer for two of the men held in solitary confinement for months since — Farhad Aliyev, the former minister of economics, and his brother Rafiq — has urged Congress to raise issues of their treatment when Mr. Aliyev comes to Washington. (The president is not related to the accused men.)

American officials say that Azerbaijan has been liberalizing slowly, and evolving into a more responsible state. But given Mr. Aliyev's uneven record and the allegations against him, his visit has raised fresh questions about the degree to which American standards are malleable.

"Russian public opinion, when it looks at the United States policy in Azerbaijan, cannot ignore the fact that the United States has a desire not in favor of democracy but in favor of profits and geopolitical domination," said Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies here and a Kremlin adviser.

Mr. Markov and others have noted that the West has penalized Belarus for police crackdowns after tainted elections last month.

"This is one of the reasons that Russian public opinion is very suspicious of United States policies in the former Soviet political sphere, and its propaganda about democracy," Mr. Markov said.

"Ilham Aliyev will be in the White House not because he promotes democracy," Mr. Markov said. "He will be in the White House because he controls oil."

In Armenia, Mr. Aliyev's invitation has also generated interest.

Armenia fought Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a wedge of territory within Azerbaijan's boundaries that each country claims. The conflict has been frozen for several years, but Mr. Aliyev's recent statements have often been bellicose.

"The visit at this time should not be viewed as appreciation of their democratic or other policies," Vartan Oskanian, Armenia's foreign minister, said via e-mail.

    Azerbaijan Leader, Under Fire, Hopes U.S. Visit Improves Image, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/world/europe/23azerbaijan.html

Peter Brookes        Times        April 22, 2006

L: Chinese President Hu Jintao
R: US President George W. Bush

China heckler at White House charged in court

Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:20 PM ET
The New York Times
By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A heckler from the Falun Gong spiritual movement who disrupted a White House appearance by Chinese President Hu Jintao was charged on Friday with harassing, intimidating and threatening a foreign official.

The federal misdemeanor charges against Wang Wenyi -- a 47-year-old who said she had carried out an individual act of conscience -- are punishable by up to six months in jail.

Wang entered the White House grounds as a reporter before interrupting the highly scripted welcome ceremony for Hu hosted by President George W. Bush on Thursday.

"President Hu, your days are numbered. President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," she yelled, referring to the spiritual meditation movement that is banned in China.

Bush personally apologized to Hu for the incident, said by officials to have been deeply resented by the Chinese authorities.

Outside the courthouse after being charged, Wang said she was a physician who had decided to speak out as "an individual act of conscience."

"It is not a crime, but an act of civil disobedience," she said, reading from a prepared statement.

The law at issue bars willfully harassing, intimidating, coercing or threatening a foreign official in the performance of their official duties.

U.S. officials said Wang entered the White House grounds as a reporter with The Epoch Times, an English-language publication strongly supportive of the meditation movement that is banned in China.

Wang, in an interview on the CNN program "The Situation Room," said she had lived in the United States for nearly 20 years and was awaiting a naturalization ceremony to become a U.S. citizen.

She said she realized the charges might hurt her naturalization prospects but said it was worthwhile to call attention to what she called "unspeakable" human-rights abuses in China.

She said the news organization she had represented did not know that she would disrupt the event.

Wang did not speak during the court hearing, which lasted

about 30 minutes. But her court-appointed lawyer, David Bos, challenged the criminal charge on free-speech grounds.

"It's making the First Amendment rights of all Americans just evaporate," he said, calling Wang's remarks "relatively innocuous."

Angela George, from the U.S. attorney's office, said Wang had gone beyond political speech and that the verbal attack was personally directed at Hu.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson did not rule on the free-speech issue. She refused to dismiss the criminal complaint against Wang, saying it was too soon to make a decision about throwing out the case.

Robinson released Wang without bail, but ordered her to stay away from the White House.

    China heckler at White House charged in court, R, 21.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-22T012013Z_01_N21214768_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-USA-PROTESTER.xml

Analysis

An Old Presidential Predicament: China Proves Tough to Influence

April 21, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 20 — Just about every American president since Richard M. Nixon has confronted the fact that his influence over China is far more limited than he once hoped. President Bush is now facing that reality midway through his second term, at a moment when the Chinese clearly sense his weakness.

Mr. Bush's predicament was on display during his encounters on Thursday with President Hu Jintao, in which Mr. Bush made it clear that the status quo was unacceptable — that America's $200 billion annual trade deficit is "unsustainable," that Iran needs to face sanctions to force it to halt its nuclear program, and that China must "use its considerable influence" to make sure North Korea is disarmed.

Mr. Hu acknowledged that each of those issues needed attention, but deflected every effort to commit China to concrete action. It was the fifth time that the two men have met in the past year. The mood was friendly, yet the tension was unmistakable.

"Each side leaves with frustrations, and you could particularly hear that in President Bush's tone," said Kurt Campbell, an Asian expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The United States was unhappy with progress on issues critical to the American agenda; the Chinese were unhappy that Mr. Hu has rarely been out of the earshot of protesters.

Arriving in Seattle earlier in the week, Mr. Hu was greeted as the leader of a huge and growing customer. In Washington, Mr. Bush referred instead to China as a "stakeholder," a word intended as a message that it must use its power for more than commercial gain. Mr. Bush made clear that in his view Beijing must stop regarding places like Iran and Sudan as suppliers of the oil China needs to fuel its growth, and start regarding them as international problems that China needs to help solve.

During his 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush described Beijing as a "strategic competitor" whose ambitions for global influence must be contained. Now he prefers to say America's relationship with the Chinese is "complicated," reflecting a conversion that he took a step further on Thursday to declare that "China and the United States share extensive common strategic interests."

Perhaps that should have been no surprise. Like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before him, Mr. Bush came to office convinced that if he set tougher rules about engaging China, the Chinese would change their behavior. They quickly came to abandon that view.

"A number of presidents since Nixon have come to office with negative views of the Chinese," said Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President Bush's father. "They always end up supporting the thrust of the policy established by President Nixon," one of engagement.

But for this President Bush, whose first dealings with the Chinese involved recovering American airmen whose spy plane was forced down off the Chinese coast, it has been a slow transition, and an unhappy one.

And now, some members of his administration concede when promised anonymity, Mr. Bush needs a breakthrough in the relationship — on North Korea, where China has the most influence, or Iran, where it is a major oil customer, or on the trade deficit that has grown so large, with no end in sight.

He appears increasingly unlikely to get that breakthrough.

Mr. Bush clearly thought his biggest opportunity was on the Korean crisis, where he decided to engage all of North Korea's neighbors, with the Chinese as host, in an effort to convince Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, that he has no choice but to give up a small arsenal of nuclear weapons. Those talks have stretched on for more than two years.

Mr. Bush frequently notes that the Chinese share his goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, and Mr. Hu affirmed that on Thursday. But the reality, officials acknowledge in background conversations, is that the Chinese are not unhappy with the status quo, because the last thing they want is chaos on their border with North Korea, or a collapse of that government.

Iran has proved only slightly less frustrating for Mr. Bush. Again the Chinese say they share the long-term goal of making sure Tehran does not get a nuclear weapon, but they have opposed any use of sanctions, or even discussion of a military option if diplomacy fails. So when Mr. Bush raised the possibility of pressing Iran by using a section of the United Nations Charter that allows for enforcement, Mr. Hu stayed silent.

Mr. Hu has given slightly more on the issue of freeing China's currency so that its value rises, a way of curbing the trade deficit because the price of Chinese goods would gradually rise. But it has been a painfully slow process, leaving Congress frustrated and threatening to take action.

Mr. Bush had hoped for better. When Mr. Hu took office, one of Mr. Bush's top foreign policy advisers said that since the two men were of the same generation, they should be able to communicate easily.

Mr. Hu was viewed as a technocrat, not an ideologue; a reformer willing to acknowledge, as he did Thursday, that his country's modernization had to be accompanied by some level of democratization.

But he has made clear to Mr. Bush that his focus is on keeping the peace at home, where economic change to a more market-based economy has been wrenching. And so for the Chinese, the status quo works: China is growing, its influence in Asia is expanding, its military ascendancy along the coast facing Taiwan is striking, and its economy is on a path toward overtaking Japan's.

Mr. Hu apparently no longer feels, as past Chinese leaders did, that he must come to the United States bearing gifts. And the Chinese, ever sensitive to questions of status, made clear they felt slighted by Mr. Bush's decision not to offer up a full state dinner for the leader of 1.3 billion people; instead, Mr. Hu got lunch.

And in return, Mr. Bush got vague promises that China would continue doing what it is already doing — at its own pace.

    An Old Presidential Predicament: China Proves Tough to Influence, NYT, 21.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/asia/21assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


 

The grand scene at the White House was helped by a beautiful Spring day.

Jason Reed/Reuters

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation        NYT        21.4.2006
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/asia/21prexy.html?hp&ex=
1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage 

 

With pomp and pageantry, President Bush welcomed President Hu Jintao of China to the White House on Thursday.

Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation        NYT        21.4.2006
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1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage 

The day got off to a rocky start, when an emotional heckler interrupted Mr. Hu,
shouting at him from a platform where news photographers were covering the event.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation        NYT        21.4.2006
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1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage 

Eventually, security officials led her away
as some photographers turned their cameras from the two leaders and pointed them at the protester.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation        NYT        21.4.2006
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/asia/21prexy.html?hp&ex=
1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Two leading couples posed for cameras on the Truman Balcony.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation        NYT        21.4.2006
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/asia/21prexy.html?hp&ex=
1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage 

 

Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation

April 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN

WASHINGTON, April 20 — President Bush and China's president, Hu Jintao, pledged to cooperate more closely on fighting nuclear proliferation and reducing trade imbalances on Thursday, but broke no new ground on the most delicate issues that divide the two nations.

The meeting, the first at the White House between the men since Mr. Hu became China's top leader in 2002, was plagued by gaffes that upended months of painstaking diplomacy over protocol and staging.

Though administration officials said significant progress was made, especially on the economic front, the session also underscored the intractable nature of a long list of grievances between the world's richest country and its fastest rising rival.

No new agreements were announced after Oval Office negotiations and a working lunch.

The occasion was disrupted when a member of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, accredited as a reporter for a sect-run publication to cover the ceremony at the White House, interrupted Mr. Hu's address and upset the elaborate choreography the Chinese delegation had regarded as the most important trophy of Mr. Hu's visit. Screaming, "President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," the ethnic Chinese woman, Wenyi Wang, partly drowned out Mr. Hu. She continued shouting for more than a minute before security officers removed her.

Mr. Bush later apologized to Mr. Hu for the incident, White House officials said. But Chinese Foreign Ministry officials traveling with Mr. Hu canceled an afternoon briefing. One delegation member, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly, described his superiors as outraged by the breach.

Compounding the gaffe, a White House announcer introducing the national anthems at the same ceremony mistakenly referred to China as the Republic of China, which is the formal name of its archrival, Taiwan. Mainland China is the People's Republic of China. China treats American support for Taiwan, a separately governed island that China claims as its sovereign territory, as the biggest irritant in bilateral relations. Even minuscule changes in the wording of diplomatic statements on the subject are often viewed as transformative on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

While it is unclear whether the Chinese will interpret the two incidents as simple mistakes or as overt efforts to embarrass Mr. Hu, there was no indication that they derailed the private discussions between the presidents that followed.

The two men emerged from the Oval Office and agreed to accept several questions from the news media, a rarity for Mr. Hu, an aloof leader who almost never interacts with the press.

Mr. Bush said the countries would "deepen our cooperation in addressing threats to global security, including the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, the violence unleashed by terrorists and extremists and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

He acknowledged that the two men "do not agree on everything" but said, "We're able to discuss our disagreements in a spirit of friendship and cooperation."

Mr. Hu also acknowledged that "different opinions or even frictions" had complicated the relationship. But he emphasized that China believed that the areas of agreement outweighed the differences.

"China and the United States share extensive common interests, and there is a broad prospect for the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries," he said.

Mr. Bush said he discussed with Mr. Hu the possibility of passing a United Nations Security Council motion against Iran that would permit imposing sanctions ranging from economic penalties to military strikes. China has repeatedly rejected the idea as an unnecessary escalation of the nuclear standoff.

Mr. Hu emphasized that China would only support steps that enhanced dialogue and did not suggest any inclination to embrace Mr. Bush's idea.

Mr. Hu said multinational talks to end North Korea's nuclear program had run into difficulties, but he did not outline new steps that China would take to bring North Korea back to the bargaining table. Mr. Bush urged him to do more to use China's "considerable influence" to get results after years of inconclusive diplomacy.

Bush administration officials were more upbeat about the discussion on economic issues, including China's incipient steps to allow its currency, the yuan, to appreciate and efforts by Mr. Hu to reduce China's reliance on exports and stimulate domestic demand as a source of growth.

As it has many times before, China has promised to buy more American goods and to crack down on industrial-scale piracy of American copyrights and trademarks. But after announcing a broad commitment to those goals earlier this month, China presented no new measures.

Mr. Hu did emphasize China's intention to undertake a structural shift in its economy, which has tended to favor investment- and export-driven growth during its heady rise over the past quarter century.

Citing steps China has taken as part of its five-year economic plan, Mr. Hu said Beijing would seek to stimulate more consumer-led growth, in part by improving the social safety net so that consumers felt comfortable spending money rather than saving it at record high levels for health, education and retirement.

"China is pursuing a policy of boosting domestic demand, which means that we'll mainly rely on domestic demand to further promote economic growth," Mr. Hu said.

On human rights, Mr. Hu refused to make concessions on any cases on a list that Mr. Bush presented to him last September, when they met during a session at the United Nations. Dennis Wilder, the acting senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council, said Mr. Bush presented the same list to Mr. Hu again this time.

Mr. Hu did get a big part of what Chinese analysts said he came for: images of him with the American president on the White House lawn, as Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, his predecessors, had posed for.

The pomp included an elaborate honor guard, a military band, a fife and drum corps and the full 21-gun salute given visiting heads of state.

But the protocol for the meeting was already a sore point for the Chinese, who argued for months that Mr. Hu's first trip here as president must be a full state visit. The White House declined to offer him a state dinner, however, and has called the session a "working visit."

The heckling by the protester is likely to exacerbate the spat over protocol. Chinese television viewers will now almost certainly get a censored view of the event. Mr. Wilder said he did not expect the incident to have significant repercussions. But, he said, "I'm not going to stand here and say they are not upset."

    Bush and Hu Vow New Cooperation, NYT, 21.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/asia/21prexy.html?hp&ex=1145678400&en=87b1f05b33ada92a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

China's Leader Makes 1st Visit to White House

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

President Bush said today the United States would strengthen its cooperation with China on resolving nuclear disputes, saying at the start of a visit by President Hu Jintao that he wanted the country to use its influence to ensure the Korean peninsula is free of nuclear weapons and to send a message of concern to Iran about its nuclear ambitions.

"We intend to deepen our cooperation in addressing threats to global security," Mr. Bush said during a ceremony welcoming Mr. Hu to the White House.

"I appreciate China's role as host of the six-party talks, which will be successful only if North Korea makes the right strategic decision: to abandon all its nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs as pledged to the other five parties," Mr. Bush added.

Last September, North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China signed a communiqué in which North Korea made a commitment to ending its nuclear weapons program in exchange for diplomatic, security and economic benefits. The issues of timing, inspections and the delivery of aid is subject to future negotiations.

Mr. Bush said the visit of Mr. Hu to the White House was intended to develop cooperation on other strategic issues, including Iran's nuclear ambitions and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

"We are ready to continue to work with the U.S. side and other parties concerned to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, and the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation to uphold the international non-proliferation regime and safeguard global peace and stability," Mr. Hu said.

Mr. Hu, who is on his first visit to Washington as his country's top leader, was earlier interrupted during his remarks by a heckler who had positioned herself among journalists covering the event.

Mr. Bush also stressed that there should be a peaceful resolution of the long-standing question of Taiwan's independence. Mr. Hu said that China would make "every effort" to do so but added that Taiwan was an "inalienable part of the Chinese territory". He said China would "never allow anyone to make China secede from China by any means."

The two countries shared interests such as increasing trade and economic ties.

Trade has grown to $285 billion a year, and United States exports to China grew nearly 21 percent in last year alone, Mr. Bush said.

"Our trade relationship can become even stronger, as China adopts policies that allow U.S. companies to compete in China with the same freedom that Chinese companies are able to compete here in the United States," he said.

The day got off to a rocky start, when an emotional heckler interrupted Mr. Hu, shouting at him from a platform where news photographers were covering the event.

The Asian woman shouted in Chinese, but also broke into English, yelling "Stop the torture and killings!" and shouting the name of the Falun Gong, a religious and exercise sect that is outlawed in China. "Falun Dafa is good," she yelled.

Mr. Hu looked at first confused and then hesitated before continuing to speak.

"You're okay," Mr. Bush said to him in a low voice, prodding him on.

For at least a minute, the protests punctuated both Mr. Hu's remarks and the gaps in which he fell silent as his words were being translated into English.

Eventually, security officials made their way to the top of the camera stand and led her away as some photographers turned their cameras from the two leaders and pointed them at the protester.

President Bush said the two countries can be candid about their disagreements, saying that in the area of human rights, the Chinese people should be allowed freedom to assemble, speak freely and to worship.

The incident with the protester raised questions about the adequacy of security measures for journalists covering visits of foreign leaders to the White House. It was not clear how the woman gained access to the pool. She positioned herself in the one place where the Secret Service would have the hardest time reaching her: On the top level of a grandstand set up for television cameras, blocked by equipment and ladders on all sides.

At one point she attempted to unfurl a yellow Falun Gong banner. A cameraman next to her put his hand on her back, and appeared to be encouraging her to quiet down, but she continued to yell.

It took some time for a burly, uniformed Secret Service agent and a plainclothes agent, a woman, to reach the protestor, and they grabbed her by both arms and took her behind the cameras, down the stairs of the temporary platform, and out the southwest gate, away from the ceremony. Chinese officials on the edges of the crowd were staring in some disbelief, shaking their heads.

Chinese authorities consider the Falun Gong a major threat to national security and have outlawed the group. Members of the sect are regularly interned in camps without being tried.

Supporters of the movement also protested Mr. Hu's visit in Washington state on Tuesday, using sound trucks to blast messages into his hotel that accused China's internal security forces of torture, organ harvesting and other atrocities. They also appeared near the headquarters of Microsoft, which hosted Mr. Hu during his visit. He also visited Boeing.

Outside of the White House gates, protesters gathered, some of them waving banners that reflected human rights issues, Tibet and Taiwan.

David E. Sanger, John Holusha, Leslie Wayne,and Joseph Kahn contributed reporting for this article.

    China's Leader Makes 1st Visit to White House, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/world/asia/20cnd-hu.html?hp&ex=1145592000&en=2285acd0977fe787&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Transcript

Remarks by President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China

April 20, 2006
The New York Times

The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush and President Hu Jinatao of China, as provided by CQ Transcriptions, Inc.


BUSH: Good morning. Laura and I are pleased to welcome President Hu Jintao and his wife, Madame Liu, to the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

The United States and China are two nations divided by a vast ocean, yet connected through a global economy that has created opportunity for both our peoples.

The United States welcomes the emergence of a China that is peaceful and prosperous and that supports international institutions.

As stakeholders in the international system, our two nations share many strategic interests. President Hu and I will discuss how to advance those interests and how China and the United States can cooperate responsibly with other nations to address common challenges.

Our two nations share an interest in expanding free and fair trade, which has increased the prosperity of both the American people and the Chinese people. Trade in goods between our two nations has grown to $285 billion a year, and U.S. exports to China grew nearly 21 percent in last year alone.

Our trade relationship can become even stronger as China adopts policies that allow U.S. companies to compete in China with the same freedom that Chinese companies are able to compete here in the United States.

So we welcome China's commitments to increase domestic demand, to reform its pension system, to expand market access for U.S. goods and services, to improve enforcement of intellectual property rights and to move toward a flexible market-based exchange rate for its currency. These policies will benefit the Chinese people and are consistent with being a responsible member of the international economic system and a leader in the World Trade Organization.

Prosperity depends on security. So the United States and China share a strategic interest in enhancing security for both our peoples.

We intend to deepen our cooperation in addressing threats to global security, including the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, the violence unleashed by terrorists and extremists, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

I appreciate China's role as the host of the six-party talks, which will be successful only if North Korea makes the right strategic decision: to abandon all its nuclear weapons and its existing nuclear programs as pledged to the other five parties.

I'll continue to seek President Hu's advice and cooperation, and urge his nation to use its considerable influence with North Korea to make meaningful progress toward a Korean Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons.

The natural world also generates threats to international security. And the United States and China share a strategic interest in meeting these challenges, as well.

We will continue to cooperate to fight avian flu and other pandemic diseases. We'll continue to cooperate to respond to natural disasters. We'll continue to cooperate to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. New technologies can drive economic growth on both sides of the Pacific and help us become better stewards of our natural resources.

As the relationship between our two nations grows and matures, we can be candid about our disagreements. I'll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people.

China's become successful because the Chinese people are experience (sic) the freedom to buy and to sell and to produce. And China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship.

The United States will also be candid about our policy toward Taiwan. The United States maintains our one-China policy based on the three communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act.

We oppose unilateral changes in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by either side. We urge all parties to avoid confrontational or provocative acts. And we believe the future of Taiwan should be resolved peacefully.

The United States and China will continue to build on our common interests. We will address our differences in the spirit of mutual respect. We made progress in building a relationship that is candid and cooperative, and President Hu's visit will further that progress.

And so, Mr. President, welcome to the White House. We're really glad you're here. I'm looking forward to your meetings. And I'm so thrilled to welcome Madam Liu, as well. Thank you for coming.

HU (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): President George W. Bush, Mrs. Bush, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, I am glad to visit the United States in a lovely season of spring at your invitation, Mr. President.

I wish to convey to the great American people the warm greetings and best wishes of the 1.3 billion Chinese people.

I have come to enhance dialogue, expand common ground, deepen mutual trust and cooperation, and to promote the all-around growth of constructive and cooperative China-U.S. relations in the 21st century.

The Chinese people have always cherished goodwill toward the American people. In 1784, U.S. merchant ship Empress of China sailed to China, opening the friendly exchanges between our two peoples.

In mid-19th century, several dozen thousand Chinese workers, working side by side with American workers and braving harsh conditions, built the great railway linking the east and the west of the American continent.

In our common struggle against fascist aggression over 60 years ago, several thousand American soldiers lost their lives in battlefields in China. Their heroic sacrifice still remains fresh in the minds of the Chinese people.

Thanks to the concerted efforts made by our two governments and our two peoples over the years, our friendship has grown from strength to strength and yielded rich fruit.

The Chinese and the Americans are great peoples. The Americans are optimistic, full of enterprise and drive, down to earth and innovative.

HU (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In just over 200 years, they have turned the United States into the most developed country in the world and made phenomenal achievements in economic development and science and technology.

The Chinese are industrious, courageous, honest and intelligent. They created the splendid ancient Chinese civilization. And today they are firmly committed to the path of peaceful development and are making continuous progress in a modernization drive by carrying out the reform and opening-up program.

Both China and the United States are countries of significant influence in the world. We share important common, strategic interests in a wide range of areas, including economic cooperation and trade, security, public health, energy and environmental protection, and on major international and regional issues.

HU (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): In particular, mutually beneficial and win-win China-U.S. economic cooperation and trade benefit our two peoples and promote the economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large.

Indeed, they have become an important foundation for China-U.S. relations.

Enhanced interactions and cooperation between China and the United States serve the interests of our two peoples and are conducive to world peace and development.

We should stay firmly rooted in the present while looking ahead to the future and view and approach China-U.S. relations from a strategic and long-term perspective.

We should, on the basis of the principles set forth in the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, respect each other as equals and promote closer exchanges and cooperation.

This will enable us to make steady progress in advancing constructive and cooperative China-U.S. relations and bring more benefits to our two peoples and the people of the world.

HU (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): We are ready to continue to work with the U.S. side and other parties concerned to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation, to uphold the international nonproliferation regime and to safeguard global peace and stability.

We are ready to work with the U.S. side in a spirit of seeking mutual benefit and win-win outcomes to properly address each other's concerns and facilitate the sound and steady growth of bilateral economic cooperation and trade.

We will continue to pursue the strategy of boosting domestic demand and ensure fast and balanced economic and social development in China. This will create more opportunities for China-U.S. economic cooperation and trade.

We will continue to advance the reform of the RNB exchange rate regime, take positive steps in such areas as expanding market access, increasing import, and strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, and further expand China-U.S. economic cooperation and trade.

We are ready to expand friendly people-to-people exchanges and enhance exchanges and cooperation in science, technology, culture, education and other areas.

We are ready to enhance dialogue and exchanges with the U.S. side on the basis of mutual respect and equality to promote the world's cause of human rights.

President Bush, you and the U.S. government have stated on various occasions that you are committed to the one-China policy, abide by the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques, and oppose Taiwan independence. We appreciate your commitments.

Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory. We will continue to make every effort and endeavor with every sincerity to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification of the two sides across the Taiwan Straits.

We will work with our Taiwan compatriots to promote the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations. However, we will never allow anyone to make Taiwan secede from China by any means.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the 21st century has entrusted people around world with a lofty historic mission. That is to maintain world peace, promote common development and create a brighter future for mankind.

Let us work together with the international community to build a world of enduring peace, common prosperity and harmony.

Thank you once again, Mr. President, for your warm welcome. (APPLAUSE)

END

    Remarks by President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/washington/20bush-text.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

China's Leader, in Seattle, Tells U.S. Not to Dwell on Divisive Issues

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN

SEATTLE, April 19 — Gamely donning a Boeing baseball cap and mingling enthusiastically with local business executives, President Hu Jintao of China said Wednesday that his nation and the United States "enjoy extensive common interests" and could avoid major problems in their relationship if they "avoid politicizing" the issues that divide them.

Mr. Hu, on the second day of his first visit to the United States as China's top leader, continued a charm offensive directed mainly at commercial interests and offered an overview of economic relations that broke little new ground but displayed a prodigious memory for statistical data.

In a lunchtime address to 600 local officials and business leaders at a Boeing plant in Everett, Wash., Mr. Hu, only occasionally consulting his notes, recited the number of fixed-line telephone users in China (740 million), the installed capacity of nuclear power plants there (30,000 megawatts), China's export volume in 2005 ($1.4221 trillion) and the number of foreign-invested enterprises that have set up shop there since 1979 (530,000, including 49,000 linked to the United States), as examples of the boundless opportunities the two countries share.

He will meet President Bush at the White House on Thursday. While their talks are likely to cover a variety of topics, including the Iranian nuclear program, religious freedom and energy policy, Mr. Hu on Wednesday mainly took aim at a recent surge of protectionist pressure in Congress and defended the mutual benefits of open trade.

He cited research conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, that he said underscored how trade with China was overwhelmingly beneficial to the United States.

"According to Morgan Stanley, in 2004 alone, high-quality yet inexpensive Chinese goods saved U.S. consumers $100 billion, and trading with China created over four million jobs in the United States," he said. "The fast-growing bilateral business ties have delivered great benefits to our peoples."

Mr. Hu acknowledged that some problems existed in ties between the countries, calling them "hardly avoidable." But unlike the Bush administration, which has laid out concerns about China's military spending, currency policy and quest for oil in considerable detail, Mr. Hu offered mostly oratorical platitudes.

He did not signal that he planned to reach major new accords with Mr. Bush. He stood firm on China's management of its currency, repeating the now standard line that Beijing intends to keep the exchange rate "basically stable," even as he promised to move toward greater flexibility down the road. The Bush administration and Congressional leaders have said the yuan is greatly undervalued and gives China an artificial trade advantage.

"China and the United States are fully capable of settling the problems that have occurred in the course of business growth and keeping their business relations on a sound track," Mr. Hu said.

Earlier in the day, he met a group of Chinese and American former officials and scholars who were convened in Seattle to discuss Chinese-American relations and China's rising power.

Although the participants included former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; William J. Perry, a former secretary of defense; and many other notables from both countries, Mr. Hu delivered a few remarks about China's "peaceful development" strategy and did not engage in any dialogue, participants said.

At the Boeing lunch, he selected two written questions from a pile submitted by people in the audience, both of which turned out to be gently worded requests for him to expand on his vision for bilateral ties.

Before his lunch speech, Mr. Hu toured the Boeing site in a golf cart, met privately with company executives and visited a mock-up of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a next-generation airplane. China has said it will buy 60 of the new twin-engine, widebody jets, becoming what Boeing calls a "launch customer" for the line of aircraft.

As he did at Microsoft on Tuesday, Mr. Hu turned on the charm when talking about China's enthusiasm for Boeing products. He sounded at times like a Boeing salesman, rattling off statistics about past deliveries and current orders for Boeing planes, the number of Boeing aircraft Chinese airlines now fly, 542, and the amount of money China has spent buying Boeing planes since Richard Nixon's historic visit in 1972, $37 billion.

"Boeing is a household name in China," Mr. Hu said. "When Chinese people fly, it is mostly in a Boeing plane. I'm pleased to say that I came to the United States on a Boeing plane."

Mr. Hu actually arrived in Seattle on Tuesday and flew to Washington on Wednesday from Paine Field, Boeing's private airport. His Air China 747-400 stood on the tarmac outside the Future of Flight museum where he spoke at lunch.

Alan R. Mulally, president of Boeing's commercial aircraft division, introduced Mr. Hu to a group of 5,000 Boeing workers in an event that had the aura of a pep rally. After Mr. Hu made a glowing tribute to Boeing's tradition of innovation, Mr. Mulally said simply, "China rocks."

Leslie Wayne contributed reporting for this article.

    China's Leader, in Seattle, Tells U.S. Not to Dwell on Divisive Issues, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/world/asia/20hu.html

Bush won't rule out nuclear strike on Iran

Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:16 AM ET
Reuters
By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Bush refused on Tuesday to rule out nuclear strikes against Iran if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions.

Iran, which says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, told world powers it would pursue atomic technology, whatever they decide at a meeting in Moscow later in the day.

Bush said in Washington he would discuss Iran's nuclear activities with China's President Hu Jintao this week and avoided ruling out nuclear retaliation if diplomatic efforts fail.

Asked if options included planning for a nuclear strike, Bush replied: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."

Speculation about a U.S. attack has mounted since a report in New Yorker magazine said this month that Washington was mulling the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to knock out Iran's subterranean nuclear sites.

The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking atom bombs, was expected to push for targeted sanctions against Tehran when it meets the U.N. Security Council's other permanent members -- Britain, France, China and Russia -- plus Germany in Moscow.

Russia and China oppose sanctions and the use of force.

Deputy foreign ministers from the six nations are meeting ahead of an end-April deadline for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report on whether Iran is complying with U.N. demands that it halt uranium enrichment.

"I recommend that they do not make hasty decisions, be prudent and study their path in the past. Any time they have pressured Iran they have got adverse results," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

"Whatever the result of this meeting might be, Iran will not abandon its rights (to nuclear technology)," he added later.

Iran defied U.N. demands by declaring last week it had enriched uranium to a level used in power stations and was aiming for industrial-scale production, ratcheting up tensions and sending oil prices to record highs above $72 a barrel.

The United States, which already enforces its own sweeping sanctions on Iran, wants the Security Council to be ready to take strong diplomatic action, including so-called targeted measures such as a freeze on assets and visa curbs.

Washington says it does not want to embargo Iran's oil and gas industries to avoid creating hardship for the Iranian people. Iran is the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter.

CHINA, RUSSIA OPPOSE SANCTIONS

China, which sent an envoy to Iran on Friday to try to defuse the standoff, repeated a call for a negotiated solution.

"We hope all sides will maintain restraint and flexibility," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing.

Russia restated its opposition to punitive action. "We are convinced that neither the sanctions route nor the use of force route will lead to a solution of this problem," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Israel's Jerusalem Post the United States probably could not destroy Iran's nuclear program but could attempt to set it back by strikes as a last resort.

"I think the only justifiable use of military power would be an attempt to deter the development of their nuclear program if we felt there was no other way to do it," he said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at an annual military parade, said the army was ready to defend the nation.

"It will cut off the hands of any aggressors and will make any aggressor regret it," Ahmadinejad declared.

In Kuwait, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said he doubted the Americans would use force. "It is unlikely that they would enter into such a perilous situation from which they cannot come out."

Iran says it will not drop its right to enrich uranium for peaceful use but that it will work with the IAEA.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog says it has been unable to verify that Iran's nuclear program is purely civilian, but has found no hard proof of efforts to build atomic weapons.

IAEA inspectors are due in Iran on Friday to visit nuclear sites, including one at Natanz where Iran says it has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, the level used in nuclear power plants.

IRNA news agency said Olli Heinonen, ElBaradei's deputy for safeguards issues, would lead the team. One diplomat said his presence suggested Iran might provide some missing information.

Experts say it would take Iran years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb from its current 164 centrifuges. But Iran says it will to install 3,000 centrifuges, which could make enough material for a warhead in one year.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran, Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

    Bush won't rule out nuclear strike on Iran, R, 18.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-18T151553Z_01_L17370115_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml&src=cms

US to urge other world powers to act against Iran

Tue Apr 18, 2006 12:28 AM ET
Reuters
By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States will press other major world powers on Tuesday to consider what it called targeted sanctions against Iran as an April 30 U.N. deadline loomed for Tehran over its nuclear program.

World crude oil prices topped $70 a barrel on Monday, the highest level for nearly eight months, as Iran's pursuit of its nuclear program heightened market fears Washington might take military action against the oil-producing Islamic Republic.

But U.S. talk of laying the groundwork for possible force is widely expected to be dismissed when the U.N. Security Council's five veto-wielding permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- meet together with Germany.

Russia and China strongly oppose sanctions or the use of force. Apart from the United States, the others -- including close U.S. ally Britain -- oppose military action.

Iran said last week it had enriched uranium for use in its power stations, increasing tensions in a standoff with the West which suspects Tehran is trying to build an atomic bomb. Tehran says its nuclear program is only for electricity generation.

The United States, which already has a broad range of sanctions on Iran, said it wanted the Security Council to be ready to take strong diplomatic action, including so-called targeted measures such as a freeze on assets and visa curbs.

"We're kind of sanctioned out at this point. We're down to pistachios and rugs," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

The United States says it is not looking at restrictions on Iran's oil and gas sectors on grounds that it is does not want to create hardship for the Iranian people. Iran is the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter.

APRIL 30 DEADLINE

The Security Council has told Iran to halt all sensitive atomic activities and on March 29 asked its nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, to report on Iranian compliance in 30 days.

McCormack told reporters he did not expect any major decisions to be taken at the Moscow meeting.

"We would expect when the Security Council next meets to take up the issue of Iran in the wake of the IAEA's upcoming report on Iran that they be ready to take strong diplomatic action," said McCormack.

Iran said on Monday it would not be bullied or threatened by the United States into stopping its uranium enrichment work but would cooperate with the IAEA.

So far despite three years of probing the IAEA says it cannot verify Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful but has found no hard proof of efforts to build atomic weapons.

A senior Iranian official criticized U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for saying last week the United Nations must consider strong action against Iran, such as a resolution that could lead to sanctions or lay the groundwork for force.

"I think the era of threats and bullying is over. ... At any rate, such remarks will not bear fruit," Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

"We have always signified our willingness to allow IAEA inspectors to come to Iran and visit our nuclear sites."

U.N. INSPECTIONS

IAEA officials said after the agency's head, Mohamed ElBaradei, held talks in Tehran last week that senior U.N. inspectors would visit Iran this week.

The United States said a statement by Ahmadinejad last week that Iran was conducting research on a P-2 centrifuge, which can enrich uranium quickly, was cause for serious concern.

"Undisclosed work on P-2 centrifuges would be a further violation of Iran's safeguard obligations, in addition to those that have already been identified by the (IAEA) board," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"Such violations and failures by the regime to comply with its international obligations run contrary to the regime's claims that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes," said McClellan.

Iran had previously said it was carrying out research and development into P-2 centrifuges, which are faster than the P-1 versions it uses to enrich uranium.

"The unclear status of P-2 work in Iran has been a running sore in IAEA investigations," said a Vienna-based diplomat familiar with IAEA inquiries. He declined to be named.

(Additional reporting by Mohamed Ghobari in Yemen, Haitham Haddadin and H. Hashim Ahmed in Kuwait, Sue Pleming in Washington, Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

    US to urge other world powers to act against Iran, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-18T042756Z_01_L17370115_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml

In Candor From China, Efforts to Ease Anxiety

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, April 16 — China and the United States have engaged in public disputes about trade, human rights, military spending and energy security, but for just a moment late last year, their leaders put briefing books aside and agreed to talk privately.

With an aura of candor described as unusual for Chinese leaders, President Hu Jintao told President Bush that fighting political corruption, rural unrest, a widening wealth gap and severe pollution consumes nearly all his time. He said domestic problems left China with neither the will nor the means to challenge America's dominance in world affairs, according to two Bush administration officials who were told about the session.

The overture — described as having improved Mr. Hu's ties with Mr. Bush despite the Chinese leader's generally aloof style — is part of a Chinese effort to reduce, or at least to deflect, American anxiety about the country's growing economic, political and military power.

When Mr. Hu travels to Washington this week for his first White House visit as China's top leader, the question will be whether the improved chemistry between the heads of the world's richest nation and its fastest rising rival can enhance a relationship that seems to be stuck somewhere between tentative stability and stormy tension.

"At the top level, the two have become frank and pragmatic in discussing the major issues between them," said Michael Green, the former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council who is now at Georgetown University. "But China is also trying to expand its influence in the world at the expense of the U.S., which is not something we are going to give them a pass on."

Mr. Bush, in his second inaugural address, promised to confront "every ruler and every nation" that resisted the tide of freedom. But frustratingly for an administration that has painted the world with such broad brush strokes, the relationship with authoritarian China has tended to resist breakthroughs.

Unlike the "Ping-Pong diplomacy" that led to Richard Nixon's historic handshake with Mao in 1972, the incremental talks on the main issues that divide the two nations have seemed to leave officials fatigued. Those issues include the control of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, China's support for several resource-rich dictatorships that are hostile to the United States, its gaping trade surplus and poor human rights record, and the always delicate question of American backing for Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its sovereign territory.

The two countries have, arguably, become each other's biggest long-term threat. But both sides also strive to avoid confrontation. Their political, diplomatic and economic ties are too intertwined for either side to pursue unilateral solutions.

"The responsible elite in China has no intention of picking a fight with the U.S.," said Jin Canrong, an expert on the United States at People's University in Beijing. "But no one has much hope that the two countries can develop deep feelings of trust, either."

Few expect that Mr. Hu will dispel that unease during his four-day visit. But this Chinese leader is seen as having come around to the idea that China's overall foreign policy objectives depend on a benign relationship with Washington. Chinese officials say he is eager to have his maiden trip to the United States perceived as a success.

Mr. Hu, 64, emerged from the inner depths of the Communist Party to assume the top leadership positions in 2002. He remains a colorless conservative even by China's buttoned-down standards. He governs sternly and secretly, almost never grants interviews, and has overseen an unrelenting crackdown on journalists, lawyers,and religious leaders who defy one-party rule.

Unlike his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who was regarded as pro-American in the Chinese political context, Mr. Hu initially worked harder to cultivate close ties to France, Germany, Russia and Southeast Asian countries. Last year he also ordered a "smokeless war" against "liberal elements" in Chinese society that he believes are openly or covertly supported by the United States, according to several officials and journalists told about his internal remarks.

American officials said that in the yearlong negotiations over Mr. Hu's trip, the Chinese side focused mainly on pomp and protocol, down to the television camera angles on the South Lawn of the White House. The two sides argued for months over whether Mr. Hu's trip constituted a formal state visit, until they agreed to disagree.

The Bush administration, wary of empty summitry, decided to call it a "working visit." Mr. Bush and Mr. Hu will have lunch at the White House, but no state dinner. Beijing still insists it is a state visit, an honor all of Mr. Hu's predecessors received on their first trip to the White House.

"Hu has two priorities — to make sure relations with the U.S. are not a big problem, and to make sure he doesn't lose face," said a senior Chinese academic who asked not to quoted by name when talking about the Chinese leader. "Of the two, I think the second one is more important to him."

But Mr. Hu's earlier assurance to Mr. Bush that China's domestic problems were what preoccupied him most were clearly part of a new effort to address, if not necessarily resolve, those core tensions.

In a burst of checkbook diplomacy earlier this month, Mr. Hu dispatched China's largest-ever buying delegation to the United States, which committed to purchase $16.2 billion in American aircraft, agricultural products, auto parts, telecommunications gear and computer software. A negotiating team led by Wu Yi, China's vice prime minister, also agreed to undertake a broader crackdown on piracy of American copyrights and trademarks, reopen the Chinese market to American beef, and allow more foreign firms to compete for government contracts.

Mr. Hu plans to visit Microsoft and dine with its chairman, Bill Gates, in Seattle on Tuesday. Human rights and media watchdog groups have pressed Mr. Gates to raise concerns about China's online censorship and arrest of cyber-dissidents when they meet. Mr. Hu will also tour Boeing's aircraft factory there before continuing on to Washington on Thursday and delivering a speech at Yale on Friday.

On the sidelines in Seattle, Mr. Hu has also invited a small group of American statesmen and scholars to discuss bilateral relations with him privately, an event that the two countries agreed to keep off the official agenda to encourage candor, participants said.

The session was organized by Zheng Bijian, a former head of the Communist Party's main training academy for party cadres, who coined the term "peaceful rise." The concept of peaceful rise, though only informally endorsed by Mr. Hu, is intended to show that China believes that it can emerge as a great power without following the violent path blazed by the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Russia before it.

"There is a real effort at salesmanship going on," said one former Bush administration official invited to participate in the private session. "He wants to come across as charming and attentive to American concerns."

Optimists on both sides say the attempts to build confidence amount to more than a propaganda campaign. China, they say, has become a "status quo" power, committed to maintaining the international order forged primarily by the United States in the postwar period.

Global commerce and a peaceful diplomatic environment in East Asia have contributed enormously to China's rapid economic growth in the past quarter century, which depends on foreign investment, open markets, secure borders and generally nonideological ties with its neighbors.

Many Chinese scholars say Beijing may not tolerate American hegemony in foreign affairs indefinitely. But most also say that Beijing has too much at stake in the current world order to try upsetting it in the foreseeable future.

"We have no incentive to wreck the global system established by the U.S.," said Wang Xiaodong, a prolific writer and pundit who has argued that the country should not bow to American pressure. "The reason is, simply, that it is a game we can win."

On the American side, the trend is also toward more integration. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, who last fall called China a "stakeholder" in the international system, has promoted high-level strategic dialogue between the countries, which China has eagerly embraced.

But there are many pessimists as well. They see the risks of conflict mounting unless the Communist Party gives up its monopoly on power. Mr. Hu's accommodation of the United States is viewed as temporizing, giving China time to gather strength and spread its influence unhindered.

People who worry about China's intention point in particular to its rapid military buildup as a sign of its increased financial wherewithal and nascent strategic ambitions that will inevitably challenge America's dominance in the Pacific.

Beijing's efforts to secure supplies of oil, natural gas and other commodities in countries that have rocky relations with Washington, including Sudan, Iran and Venezuela, have also raised suspicions that it is using its buying power to create a circle of friends hostile to American interests.

Economically, China is widely accused of keeping the value of its currency, the yuan, artificially cheap to encourage export-fueled growth and attract foreign manufacturers. Last year, it enjoyed a record $203 billion bilateral trade surplus with the United States.

While Chinese officials say they intend to shift to an economic model that favors domestic consumer-led growth and will gradually let the yuan appreciate closer to its market value, both the Bush administration and some members of Congress say that is not happening fast enough to head off a possible rupture in economic ties.

Randall G. Shriver, a former Bush administration deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific who is now with Armitage International, a consulting firm in Washington, said Chinese actions on the economic, military and diplomatic front signaled a willingness to undermine American foreign policy goals.

"I'm not convinced that they want to challenge us across the board," Mr. Shriver said. "But there is a general notion that they want to accumulate influence, which will necessarily diminish U.S. power."

He added, "The game is on."

    In Candor From China, Efforts to Ease Anxiety, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/world/asia/17hu.html?hp&ex=1145332800&en=c382b8d4b659c49d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iran warns against US attack

Sun Apr 16, 2006 6:04 PM ET
Reuters
By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has expanded its uranium conversion facilities in Isfahan and reinforced its Natanz underground uranium enrichment plant, a US think tank said, amid growing concern over possible US military action.

Talk of a US attack has topped the international news agenda since a report in New Yorker magazine said this month that Washington was mulling the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to knock out Iran's subterranean nuclear sites.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Sunday any US attack on Iran would plunge the region into instability.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also warned that US military intervention in Iran was not the best solution to resolve the nuclear standoff and a leading US senator called for direct US talks with Iran.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in an email sent to news media that Iran has built a new tunnel entrance at a uranium processing plant in Isfahan.

"This new entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or further expansion of the existing one," said ISIS, led by ex-UN arms inspector and nuclear expert David Albright.

ISIS also released four satellite images taken between 2002 and January 2006 it said showed Natanz's two subterranean cascade halls being buried by successive layers of earth, apparent concrete slabs and more earth and other materials.

The roofs of the halls now appear to be 8 meters (26 feet) underground, ISIS said.

The revelations came one week after Iran announced it had enriched uranium for use in power stations for the first time, stoking a diplomatic row over Western suspicions of a covert Iranian atomic bomb project. Iran says it seeks nuclear power.

Wielding the threat of sanctions, the United Nations Security Council has urged Iran to stop enrichment work and asked nuclear watchdog head Mohamed ElBaradei to report on Tehran's reply on April 28.

Iran stood its ground when ElBaradei visited the country last week.

President Bush has dismissed reports of plans for a military strike against Iran as "wild speculation" and said he remained focused on diplomacy to defuse the standoff.

TAKING NO CHANCES

But analysts said Iran was not taking any chances.

"Iran is taking extraordinary precautions to try to protect its nuclear assets. But the growing talk of eliminating Iran's nuclear program from the air is pretty glib," Albright told Reuters by telephone from Washington.

Despite Bush's denial, Iran's Rafsanjani said Tehran could not discount the possibility of a US military strike.

"Harm will not only engulf the Islamic Republic of Iran, but the region and everybody," the influential Iranian leader told a news conference during a visit to Syria.

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran was still seeking a diplomatic solution for the crisis, "(but) America should be aware it is not in a position to create another crisis in the region," an apparent reference to Iraq.

In Washington, Richard Lugar, a leading Republican senator, said the United States should hold direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program and go slow on sanctions. "We need to make more headway diplomatically" before moving toward sanctions, Lugar said on the ABC television program "This Week".

Annan told Spain's ABC daily that the situation was "too heated" and could not withstand any further aggravation.

"I still think the best solution is a negotiated one, and I don't see what would be solved by a military operation," he said. "I hope the will to negotiate prevails and that the military option proves to be only speculation."

Pope Benedict, in a speech televised to millions of viewers at the end of Easter Sunday mass, also joined the chorus of leaders calling for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

"Concerning the international crises linked to nuclear power, may an honorable solution be found for all parties, through serious and honest negotiations," he said in a clear reference to Iran.

Former White House counterterrorism head Richard Clarke wrote in Sunday's New York Times that a US war with Iran could be even more damaging to America's interests than the Iraq war.

In an article co-authored with Steven Simon, a former State Department official who also worked for the National Security Council, he warned that Iran's likely response would be to use "its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States".

A hardline Iranian group said on Sunday 200 people had signed up in the past few days to carry out "martyrdom missions" against US and British interests if Iran was attacked.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Oweis in Damascus, Philip Pullella in Vatican City and Chris Michaud in New York, Jim Wolf in Washington and Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)

    Iran warns against US attack, R, 16.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-16T220324Z_01_L16707281_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml

Former officials warn against US attack on Iran

Sat Apr 15, 2006 9:40 PM ET
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to America's interests than the war with Iraq, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote in Sunday's New York Times.

In an op-ed article co-authored with Steven Simon, a former State Department official who also worked for the National Security Council, Clarke wrote reports that the Bush administration is contemplating bombing nuclear sites in Iran raised concerns that "would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process."

Iran's likely response would be to "use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States," Clarke and Simon warned.

"Iran has forces as its command far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field," they said, citing Iran's links with the militant group Hezbollah.

Iran could also make things much worse in Iraq, they wrote, adding "there is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready."

President George W. Bush might then sanction more bombing, Clarke and Simon said, hoping Iranians would overthrow the Tehran government. But "more likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control."

The authors concluded by warning that "the parallels to the run-up to the war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was 'No war plan on my desk' despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion."

Congress "must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well," they said.

    Former officials warn against US attack on Iran, R, 15.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2006-04-16T014006Z_01_N15206081_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-USA-ARTICLE.xml

No plan B - so could the US ever learn to live with Iran in the nuclear club?

Saturday April 15, 2006
Guardian
Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem


The Bush administration has yet to decide on a clear plan B for Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

But military planning is progressing to fill that policy vacuum and may create a momentum of its own, former administration officials and political observers said yesterday.

After the fall of Baghdad three years ago, US marines completed an analysis for an amphibious assault on a radical, fictitious Middle Eastern theocracy called Karona, a thinly disguised version of Iran, according to William Arkin, a former army intelligence officer who writes on military affairs for Washington Post online.

In parallel with the marines' plan, the Pentagon has ordered US central command to conduct an analysis of a fullscale war with Iran in the "near term".

In July 2004, US and British army planners met at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to play a war game codenamed Hotspur 2004, fictitiously set in 2015 in the Caspian Sea, in which a British medium-weight brigade operated as part of a US-led force.

Most of the plans being worked on focus on suspected underground facilities scattered around Iran where Tehran is believed to be building a covert nuclear weapons programme. Because those bunkers are thought to be built of thick concrete and buried deep below the surface, those plans also include nuclear options.

Mr Arkin wrote: "To think today that the gamers put nukes away is naive, and to think that nuclear weapons don't play a role in the Bush administration's strategy is wildly wrong."

The plans are being honed by US strategic command in Omaha, Nebraska, as part of Global Strike, a pre-emptive strategy for dealing with suspected weapons of mass destruction held by "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

Interest in the military's planning took on added urgency this week as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran had joined the nuclear club by mastering a key part of the technology. This came within days of the New Yorker magazine disclosing that George Bush was refusing to take off the table a nuclear strike on Iran's research establishments.

The White House, for the last 15 months, has been engaged in plan A, the diplomatic route backed up, if necessary, by sanctions. But Iran once more rebuffed diplomatic overtures this week, and is unlikely to be troubled by sanctions if China and Russia do not participate.

That leaves the question of what the Bush administration would do next. Colonel Sam Gardiner, a retired air force colonel and expert on targeting at the National Defence University (NDU), said: "I have a terrible feeling they are taking this one day at a time. They have a plan A but not a plan B."

The US state department and the Foreign Office, in spite of public statements that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, privately discuss what the Middle East landscape would look like if Iran acquires a nuclear bomb: there is a tacit acceptance of what may turn out to be the reality.

But the White House does not accept this. Col Gardiner said: "At one time there was a paper floating around, produced by the NDU, on how to live with a nuclear armed Iran. But they [the administration] are so negative about that. There is no serious discussion about it other than among academics."

Flynt Leverett, formerly a Middle East specialist in Mr Bush's national security council, said: "The policy line is that Iran should not have a fuel cycle and that the number of centrifuges [used to enrich uranium] should be zero. But they have ruled out direct diplomacy with Iran, or any kind of grand bargain that would encompass the nuclear issue."

Col Gardiner, who oversaw an independent war game study for Atlantic Monthly magazine two years ago, found that the use of a military option rarely left the US in a better position, after likely retaliations and international reaction were taken into account. But he said, it was the Pentagon's job to think up war plans and pass them up the chain of command, gathering momentum along the way. At that level, the administration would have to factor in the scale and nature of Iranian retaliation, which Robert Baer, a former CIA covert agent in the Middle East, believes would be ferocious.

"The Iranians are smarter than anyone in this whole equation. Their intelligence service is very good. They know they could do an enormous amount of damage in Iraq, in Lebanon, in the whole region," Mr Baer said.

"The administration is realising that there are serious drawbacks with the military option," Mr Leverett said. "If you strike at the nuclear infrastructure, the chance you're not going to hit everything you need to hit is high. Second of all, you're going to make Iranian decision-makers all the more determined to make a bomb. The blowback would be devastating. And if the US, as it's coming out more and more, may have to use nuclear penetrating warheads to get after the facilities then the international political blowback is enormous."

Even more than over Iraq, the US would need allies. Many would question what Tony Blair would do if he received a call from Mr Bush asking for support. While Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, says repeatedly that a military strike on Iraq is "inconceivable", Mr Blair has preferred to leave the military option on the table. Number 10 has privately expressed irritation with Mr Straw for categorically ruling out the military option.

According to the Foreign Office, when Mr Straw says a military strike is inconceivable, what he means is that is it inconceivable that Britain would support such a strike and that his conversations with Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, suggest that the US is not likely to launch such a strike.

There is also Israel to consider. That is a wild card as far as the Foreign Office is concerned.

But Israel, in spite of warnings from its military that Iran could have an atomic bomb within two or three years, says it is inclined to leave the initiative in confronting Tehran to Washington.

Shimon Peres, who is widely regarded as the father of Israel's nuclear bomb, said Israel would leave the initiative to Washington.

"The United States has placed this issue at the top of its agenda. I do not recommend that we should be involved," he told Israel Radio.

Former White House officials doubt that the White House would ever acquiesce in Iran reaching the point where a weapon was within its reach.

"I think there has been an agreement formed in the administration ... and the body politic of America - a nuclear armed Iranian leadership is unacceptable," said Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff under the former secretary of state Colin Powell.

What next?

Peaceful outcome

Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, which the US sees as a step towards achieving a weapons capability, and receives trade incentives and technology transfers

Tehran wins

UN security council is deadlocked, with Russia and China refusing to join the US, Britain and France in imposing punitive measures. The US, Europe and Israel accept that Iran becomes the second state in the Middle East with a nuclear weapon

Sanctions

Russia and China join the US, Britain and France in supporting sanctions. These would probably be limited to travel bans and freezing overseas accounts rather than sanctions that would hit the whole population

Military strikes

Either the US or Israel, or both, launch air strikes on nuclear plants. Iran could retaliate by closing the channel for oil supplies from the Gulf

    No plan B - so could the US ever learn to live with Iran in the nuclear club?, G, 15.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1754378,00.html

US warns Iran on nuclear announcement

Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:00 PM ET
Reuters
By Carol Giacomo and Tabassum Zakaria
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States warned on Tuesday that Iran's latest declared nuclear advance could accelerate international pressures on Tehran but experts said much depends on whether the claims prove true and whether Russia and China see the same threat Washington does.

Iran's announcement that it had succeeded in enriching uranium to a level used in nuclear power plants added fresh tensions to its confrontation with the West, which accuses Tehran of developing nuclear weapons.

"If the regime continues to move in the direction that it is currently, then we will be talking about the way forward with the other members of the Security Council and Germany about how to address this going forward," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on board Air Force One en route to Missouri.

The State Department said it was unable to confirm Iran's claim and some experts said even if Iran's assertions are accurate, it would still be years before the Islamic state is able to produce a nuclear weapon.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stressed that Iran's statements referred to an ability to produce uranium "at a fairly low enrichment level," not the highly enriched grade that is a "critical pathway" to developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian officials said they were producing enriched uranium at the 3.5 percent level from a cascade of 164 centrifuges, rapidly rotating cylinders used in uranium enrichment.

McCormack said Iran's announcement defied the U.N. Security Council which last month urged Tehran to halt enrichment by the end of April and return to talks on its nuclear ambitions.

The Security Council could impose tougher resolutions and sanctions but "at this point I think that we are going to see what the days ahead bring us in terms of Iranian reaction," said McCormack. He urged Iran to "choose the pathway of diplomacy as opposed to the pathway of defiance."

ELECTRICITY, OR BOMBS?

The spokesmen did not specify what the security council's next steps might be. Key veto-wielding members Russia and China have resisted stronger measures.

McCormack said Iran's announcement "gives more weight to the international community to act in a concerted fashion," but several experts said it remains unclear whether Russia and China would be more willing to back sanctions.

The United States has repeatedly said Iran's nuclear program is a cover for developing nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists it is for civilian purposes to generate electricity.

Although Iranian officials touted their achievement as significant, some experts were skeptical.

Robert Einhorn, a former top U.S. non-proliferation official, told Reuters: "It's hard to know what we make of it because if in fact they really believe they've reached a milestone, which is confidence that they can operate this 164-machine cascade, then that is much sooner than we anticipated."

Iran's announcement is "probably a premature declaration of success, perhaps done for political reasons," he said, speculating Tehran might use the announcement to justify again suspending enrichment and resuming negotiations.

"On the other hand, it might be designed to convey the message that at this point it will do the world no good to conduct military strikes because Iran already has this technology ... and can replicate it," said Einhorn, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Recent news reports that the Pentagon was planning possible military strikes against Iran have increased tensions but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday insisted the United States "is on a diplomatic track."

A European diplomat involved in non-proliferation issues told Reuters he doubted Tuesday's announcement would cause the security council to speed up its timetable.

    US warns Iran on nuclear announcement, R, 11.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-04-11T220022Z_01_N11238036_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-USA.xml

US envoy says ball in Pyongyang's court

Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:16 AM ET
Reuters
By George Nishiyama and Jack Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) - Envoys to stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear arms program sought ways on Tuesday to entice the secretive state back to the table, but Washington's lead negotiator insisted the ball was in Pyongyang's court.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said it was time for North Korea to make up its mind to return to the negotiations, last held in November in Beijing. Hill also said he had no plans to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan.

"We have done our homework. They need to do their homework, and then we need to get on with it," Hill told reporters.

All the chief delegates to the six-party talks are in Tokyo, most of them to attend a private forum on security issues.

Kim said on Monday that Washington must lift what he called financial sanctions against North Korea before it would return to the talks, aimed at averting a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

But Hill said Pyongyang must not set preconditions.

Asked when the six-way talks might resume, Hill said: "You have to ask the DPRK (North Korea). What I want to do is show you that I'm ready. I've got some pretty good ideas for how we can proceed ... I told the Chinese that I think the DPRK needs to make a fundamental decision."

Analysts say that China, the host of the six-way talks and a close ally of North Korea, is keen to get agreement to resume the negotiations before President Hu Jintao meets President Bush in Washington next week.

Speculation persists that U.S. and North Korean negotiators might meet while in Tokyo to try to find a way back to the multilateral negotiations. Hill is set to leave on Wednesday.

Washington has cracked down on financial institutions that it suspects of assisting Pyongyang in illicit financial activities, including money laundering and counterfeiting U.S. currency.

The U.S. Treasury Department has branded Macau's Banco Delta Asia as a "willing pawn" in North Korea's illicit activities.

North Korea denies any involvement in such activities, while Washington says its crackdown is purely a law enforcement matter and should not be linked to the six-party process.

Hill said the amount involved in the Macao banking activities was less than a week's worth of the energy supplies promised to North Korea in the six-party deal.

"You have to ask yourself the question, why would they hold up an entire negotiation over revenue that would be essentially one week?" he said.

"That's a little worrisome because either they aren't doing their mathematics correctly or they really don't want to get on with the task of doing away with these nuclear weapons."

The six countries in the talks are the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China. They agreed in September that North Korea would end all nuclear programs in return for aid and a promise of security and better diplomatic ties.

But the last session in November, aimed at compiling a plan to implement that deal, yielded no progress.

(Additional reporting by Masayuki Kitano and Teruaki Ueno)

    US envoy says ball in Pyongyang's court, R, 11.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-11T141613Z_01_T269286_RTRUKOC_0_US-KOREA-NORTH-TALKS.xml&archived=False

US plans strike to topple Iran regime - report

· US 'intent on Iran attack'
· Bush accused of 'messianic' mission

Monday April 10, 2006
Guardian
Julian Borger in Washington and Bob Tait in Tehran

The US is planning military action against Iran because George Bush is intent on regime change in Tehran - and not just as a contingency if diplomatic efforts fail to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme, it was reported yesterday.

In the New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh, America's best known investigative journalist, concluded that the Bush administration is even considering the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against deep Iranian bunkers, but that top generals in the Pentagon are attempting to take that option off the table.

Hersh, who helped break the story of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, quoted an unnamed Pentagon adviser as saying the resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians was "a juggernaut that has to be stopped" and that some senior officers and officials were considering resignation over the issue.

There is also rising concern in the US military and abroad that Mr Bush's goal in Iran is not counter-proliferation but regime change, the article reports. The president and his aides now refer to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a potential Adolf Hitler, according to a former senior intelligence official.

Another government consultant is quoted as saying Mr Bush believes he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do" and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy".

"The word I'm hearing is messianic," Mr Hersh said yesterday on CNN. "[Bush] is politically free. He really thinks he has a chance and this is his mission."

There was no formal response from the White House yesterday but Fox News television quoted unnamed officials as saying Mr Hersh's article was "hyped, without knowledge of the president's thinking". In Britain, Jack Straw told the BBC that the idea of a US nuclear strike against Iran was "completely nuts".

Military action against Iran was "not on the agenda", the foreign secretary said. "They [the Americans] are very committed indeed to resolving this issue ... by negotiation and by diplomatic pressure."

An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, dismissed the reports as "psychological war, launched by Americans because they feel angry and desperate regarding Iran's nuclear dossier".

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism operations chief said Mr Bush had not yet made up his mind about the use of direct military action against Iran.

"There is a battle for Bush's soul over that," he said, adding that Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser is adamantly opposed to a war.

However, Mr Cannistraro said covert military action, in the form of special forces troops identifying targets and aiding dissident groups, is already under way.

"It's been authorised, and it's going on to the extent that there is some lethality to it. Some people have been killed."

He said US-backed Baluchi Sunni guerrillas had been involved in an attack in Sistan-Baluchistan last month in which over 20 Iranian government officials were killed and the governor of the provincial capital was wounded. The Iranian government had blamed British intelligence for the incident.

Last week, the Iranian regime made a public show of its combat readiness by test-firing some of its missile technology during seven days of war games in the Gulf, images of which were broadcast repeatedly on state television.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Pentagon and CIA planners had been exploring possible targets, including a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a uranium conversion site in Isfahan, as part of a broader strategy of "coercive diplomacy" aimed at forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But that report made no mention of the possible use of a tactical nuclear bunker-buster, such as the B61-11, against deep underground targets, reported by Mr Hersh.

The UN security council has given Iran until the end of this month to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, which most western governments believe is intended to produce a nuclear warhead, not generate electric power as Tehran insists. There is no consensus in the security council over what steps to take if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports back that Iran has failed to comply. The IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei is due in Tehran this week for talks.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton said last week the US would explore other diplomatic and economic options if the security council fails to agree. He has also told British parliamentarians that he believes that military action could halt or at least set back the Iranian nuclear programme by striking it at its weakest point.

The Washington Post reported that while no military action is likely in the short term, the possible targets went beyond suspected nuclear installations and included the option of a "more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets".

It is a widespread belief in Washington's neo-conservative circles that a comprehensive air assault would disorient the Tehran government and galvanise the Iranian people into bringing it down. The departure of senior neo-conservatives from the administration after Mr Bush's 2004 re-election was thought to have weakened their clout, but Mr Hersh's report suggested that the president's personal convictions may yet prove decisive.

    US plans strike to topple Iran regime - report, G, 10.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1750678,00.html

Democracy in the Arab World, a U.S. Goal, Falters

April 10, 2006
The New York Times
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 9 — Steps toward democracy in the Arab world, a crucial American goal that just months ago was cause for optimism — with elections held in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian areas — are slowing, blocked by legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.

Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

In Egypt, the government of President Hosni Mubarak, which allowed a contested presidential election last year, has delayed municipal elections by two years after the Muslim Brotherhood made big gains in parliamentary elections late last year, despite the government's violent efforts to stop the group's supporters.

In Jordan, where King Abdullah II has made political change and democratization mandates, proponents see their hand weakened, with a document advocating change put on the back burner. Parliamentary elections in Qatar were postponed again, to 2007, while advocacy groups say that laws regulating the emergence of nongovernmental organizations have stymied their development.

In Yemen, the government has cracked down on the news media ahead of presidential elections this year, intimidating journalists who had been considered overcritical of the government.

In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has refused calls that the country's consultative council be elected, while the arrest last month of Muhsin al-Awaji, a government critic, raised questions about how far the country's newfound openness would go. And in Syria, promises for reforms have been followed by a harsh crackdown on the opposition.

Administration officials do not deny that there have been setbacks in the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, but say that recent negative trends do not discredit their approach.

"Democratic development isn't always linear," said a senior State Department official, insisting on anonymity in commenting for this article. "It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about."

Arab nations in the Middle East are largely led by monarchies and authoritarian governments, many of which have been unable to keep up with explosive population growth and development needs.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Bush administration made democratization of the Middle East a strategic goal, to answer the extremism that had taken root in many parts of the region. Arab governments, prodded also by emboldened opposition movements, made some moves toward democracy. But Arab rulers now emphasize that change is a slow process, or simply focus on economic changes instead. With many economies booming, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, governments are in no hurry to bring about change. At last month's meeting of Arab League leaders, there was no mention of an Arab reform program launched in Tunis in 2004.

The slowdown comes at a critical time for the Bush administration, which has been increasingly seen as weakened both at home and abroad by its occupation of Iraq. Many Arab leaders appear to be betting that the American public is losing its appetite for major interventions, giving them a freer hand.

"Iraq has allowed people to say, 'Forget the American style of reform,' " said Taher al-Adwan, editor in chief of the Amman-based newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yawm. "The Americans are not able to present anything to the reformers to encourage them."

In Egypt — one of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East, receiving about $2 billion a year in military and financial aid — President Mubarak promised during his re-election campaign last summer to further amend the Constitution and allow room for other political parties to grow. But so far there has been virtually no movement on either front.

The government continues to restrict the creation of opposition parties, and judges who questioned the integrity of the recent parliamentary elections have become the focus of criminal investigations.

In December, when an Egyptian court sentenced the political opposition leader Ayman Nour to five years in prison on charges that had been widely viewed as politically motivated, Washington responded harshly, calling for his release. But Washington expressed only mild disapproval over the February announcement of the delay of municipal elections.

The delay is widely seen as an effort to preserve the monopoly on power held by Egypt's National Democratic Party following the success of the Muslim Brotherhood at the polls. It is also considered an effort to halt the Brotherhood's promotion of an independent candidate for president in 2011.

"America had a problem with violent Islamic groups because of a lack of democracy in the region, but when people choose nonviolent Islamic groups, they don't want to deal with it," said Essam el-Erian, a senior member and spokesman for the Brotherhood. "Even if Islamic groups win elections and have poor relations with the U.S., they should at least appreciate that they will not be violent."

In Bahrain, where sectarian tensions between the majority Shiite population and the Sunni-dominated government prevail, a flurry of official maneuvers apparently intended to reduce the Shiite vote has preceded the municipal and parliamentary elections expected this year.

Bahrain, a tiny nation of 700,000, is often held up as a model of reform and democratization. Opposition figures say that elections, if they happen this year, will be a symbol of backtracking, not of a growing democracy. But government officials accuse the opposition of fanning sectarian tensions for political gain and point to the expected participation of opposition groups as a sign that conditions are improving.

"The question many people are asking is this: did reform slow down, or did it just never happen?" said Toby Craig Jones, who recently worked as a Persian Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group, in independent research and advocacy organization. "This was never an example of real reform, it's an example of controlled reform."

Nabeel Rajab, vice president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, which was shut down by the government in 2004, said: "The Americans seem to think this is enough. They will only get involved when things get very bad. We enjoyed the honeymoon, but now it's over."

When King Abdullah of Jordan entrusted a group of 26 prominent Jordanians to map out a reform agenda for his kingdom in February 2005, the stated objective was a plan for comprehensive reform and democratization efforts. But when the group presented the 2,500-page document to the king more than nine tumultuous months later, not long after the multiple suicide bombings at Amman hotels, it made little impact.

"For some reason, it was not publicized, it was not advertised, and it's got into the hands of very few people," said Taher al-Masri, a member of the drafting committee and, for a brief time, prime minister of Jordan. "We went, we took a picture, and that was it," he said of the ceremony.

The effort toward what was called the National Agenda set off a contentious battle between Jordan's elite Western-educated reformers, who were accused of debating issues behind closed doors, and entrenched forces in the Parliament and Senate, who sought to have greater say in the program.

Advocates like Marwan Muasher and others were quickly tainted, perceived as serving an American agenda rather than seeking reform.

Jordan's elected Parliament sought to stymie any laws presented out of the effort, dismissing them as an effort aimed at appeasing the West, while the Senate, appointed by the king and comprising predominantly old-guard powers, also worked to preserve its hold.

Meanwhile, the changes in government only served to interrupt the reform dialogue. The king, who appoints the prime minister, went through three governments last year. The latest government of Prime Minister Maarouf al-Bakheet appointed shortly after the agenda was presented, has billed itself as a reform government.

Appointed shortly after the Nov. 9 multiple suicide bombings in Amman, the government was specifically charged with pursuing the National Agenda, its officials said. Some in the government accuse the National Agenda authors of sour grapes, continuing a practice of former government officials insulting current ones.

"There's no contradiction between the government plan and the National Agenda," said Sabri Rbeihat, minister of political development and parliamentary affairs. "But it's a long-term plan, while the government platform is annual."

The government has drafted numerous laws that will change various sectors of government. But for many who took part in drafting the National Agenda, the sense that it has been placed in the background suggested that the new government was pursuing its own agenda.

"For some reason, the system seems to cave in to the first signs of resistance, then it follows with policies of appeasement, and the reformers are abandoned," said Mustafa Hamarneh, a committee member and director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Jordan. "The national agenda was going to be a road map to reform in the country, but it suddenly disappeared off the radar screen. It is no longer part of the official discourse."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Abeer Allam and Michael Slackman from Cairo, Suha Maayeh from Amman, Jordan, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.

    Democracy in the Arab World, a U.S. Goal, Falters, NYT, 10.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/middleeast/10democracy.html?hp&ex=1144728000&en=e462991f80d3cb48&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iran accuses US of "psychological war"

Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:52 AM ET
Reuters
By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Sunday brushed aside what it called a U.S. "psychological war" against its nuclear programme after a published report described Pentagon planning for possible military strikes against Iranian atomic facilities.

A report by influential investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, citing unnamed current and former officials, said Washington has stepped up plans for possible attacks on Iranian facilities to curb its atomic work.

The article said the United States was considering using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's underground uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran.

"This is a psychological war launched by Americans because they feel angry and desperate regarding Iran's nuclear dossier," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.

"We will stand by our right to nuclear technology. It is our red line. We are ready to deal with any possible scenario. Iran is not afraid of threatening language," he added.

The United Nations has called on Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which the West believes Iran is pursuing to acquire technology to make a nuclear bomb. Iran has rejected the demand and insists it only wants to make fuel for civilian uses.

Iran's decision in January to resume enrichment prompted Britain, France and Germany to break off 2-1/2 years of EU talks with Tehran and back a U.S. demand to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which can impose sanctions.

Asefi said Iran was ready to continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and said IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei would visit Iran by Friday to discuss Iran's cooperation with the IAEA.

"We have always had good cooperation with the IAEA and we will continue to do so," he said.

ElBaradei is expected to provide a report to the Council on Iran's nuclear programme entitled "the process of Iranian compliance" at the end of this month.

ElBaradei has said he has found no proof of a weapons programme in Iran but at the same time has said he cannot give the Islamic Republic a clean bill of health.

An IAEA official has said earlier that ElBaradei would travel to Iran on Tuesday or Wednesday for a day of meetings in Tehran to try to win more cooperation from Tehran.

    Iran accuses US of "psychological war", R, 10.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-10T075152Z_01_N07360273_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-USA.xml

Rice Finds British Muslims Want to Give Her an Earful

April 2, 2006
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY

BLACKBURN, England, April 1 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced more protests and public embarrassment here on Saturday that have turned a trip meant to be a friendly follow-up to an American trip by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw into a two-day run through a raucous, mishap-ridden gantlet.

She was heckled by protesters and faced criticism from Muslim leaders hand-selected to meet with her by the Foreign Office during a visit here, the hometown of Mr. Straw. He visited Ms. Rice's hometown, Birmingham, Ala., in October.

About 250 protesters ringing Blackburn's City Hall shouted "Shame on you" as the two arrived. Through the din, Ms. Rice looked off into the distance and spotted a handful of people, many holding shopping bags, who had stopped to gawk.

She pointed them out to Mr. Straw, and the two of them waved enthusiastically. Later, Mr. Straw said this gathering of "people who agree with the visit" was "at least as large as the protesters."

In a news conference, Ms. Rice said she was "enjoying this visit very much." She described the meeting with the Muslim leaders as "immensely stimulating and interesting."

Although the names of the 21 Muslim leaders had been made public, several of them requested that their names not be published or broadcast, for fear of repercussions. Five who agreed to be interviewed clearly feared they might be viewed as traitors.

"We are here to represent the views of the thousands of protesters out there," said Kamrudden Kotha, the leader of a business federation. "We talked to them about the perceived double standard of American foreign policy. But I am not naïve enough to think we will change American foreign policy."

Whenever asked, Mr. Straw said the protesters were a small minority, and he even belittled them, saying at one point that he "could have done better" during his youthful days as a peace advocate. He added, "I can't say I am embarrassed in the least" by the reception his hometown gave to Ms. Rice. "If you did an opinion poll, you'd find that the vast majority of people in Blackburn agree with this trip."

On Friday, Ms. Rice had to content herself with a visit to the Liverpool school where Paul McCartney studied instead of meeting him — and had to face a short line of students wearing T-shirts that said: "No torture. No compromise." During a visit to a school in Blackburn, she was greeted with chants of "Condi Rice go home!"

Mr. Straw had advised Ms. Rice that she would probably be greeted by protesters on the trip, officials said, and she told him that such confrontations would not bother her. She gave several interviews to the British press, and almost every one was dominated by questions about her rough reception.

"People can say whatever they wish," she told The Lancashire Evening Telegraph. "I know where I stand. We made the right decision" in Iraq. "I was fully supportive of the decision."

During the news conference in Blackburn on Saturday, the boos and jeers rose to greet the secretaries as they spoke. Referring to the protesters at one point, Ms. Rice said, "They make my point. A democracy is the only system of government that allows people to be heard peacefully."

In front of City Hall a little earlier, Mayor Yusef Janvirmani, a native of Uganda, stood on the steps, resplendent in his ceremonial red robes, the heavy gold mayor's medallion suspended from his neck. He seemed unsure what to do as he prepared to welcome Blackburn's most prominent foreign visitor in decades. He decided to shake hands with the protesters behind the barricades as if he were working a rope line. "I'm delighted they are here," he told reporters. "I am against the war and will tell her that."

"But," he added, "having the secretary of state here is good for the economy."

    Rice Finds British Muslims Want to Give Her an Earful, NYT, 2.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/world/europe/02rice.html

Rice Floats the Idea of U.N. Sanctions on Iran, but China and Russia Reject It

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY

BERLIN, March 30 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting here on Thursday with representatives of the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, raised the idea of imposing unspecified sanctions on Iran, but she received a decidedly cool reaction from China and Russia.

Her proposal came a day after the Security Council approved a statement criticizing the Iranian nuclear program that was a result of heavy compromise. Previously, she had said that sanctions were a possibility but that it was premature to discuss them.

Her proposal was described to reporters in a briefing aboard her plane by a senior State Department official, and she did not comment directly on her proposal during a news conference after the three-and-a-half-hour meeting here on Thursday.

But Dai Bingguo, China's vice minister of foreign affairs, rejected the idea of sanctions and offered a thinly veiled criticism of the war in Iraq when he said: "The Chinese side feels there has already been enough turmoil in the Middle East. We don't need any more turmoil."

The Security Council approved the statement on Wednesday after three weeks of debate. Ms. Rice and her aides praised it on Thursday, even though it was far weaker than the one the United States had originally proposed. It calls on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear monitoring arm of the United Nations, to report within 30 days on Iran's progress toward curtailing its nuclear development work. The report then goes to the Security Council, giving it an opportunity to respond.

After months of diplomacy, the United States persuaded a majority of the agency's board to report Iran to the Security Council last month.

Ms. Rice noted on Thursday that Russia had wanted to remove the language from the Security Council statement calling for a referral to the Security Council, which would have effectively returned the case to the atomic energy agency. Russia backed down from its demand, under American pressure.

As it is, Russia and China bluntly declared on Thursday that they had no interest in imposing sanctions of any sort or in taking any further action against Iran, though both countries did express concern about the nuclear program. Russian and Chinese officials said they wanted to refer the issue back to the atomic energy agency.

"Russia believes that the sole solution for this problem will be based on the work of the I.A.E.A.," said the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.

American officials say Iran is unlikely to budge from its confrontational position unless it is offered "in addition to carrots some sticks," the senior official traveling with Ms. Rice said Thursday evening. "Iran needs to know there will be consequences if it continues to hold out."

But the same opposition that forced the United States to accept a weaker Security Council statement than it had wanted seems likely to make it difficult to impose sanctions or other actions against Iran to persuade it to back down.

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, speaking at a disarmament conference in Geneva on Thursday, described the Security Council action as "political maneuvering by some Western countries" and "an abuse of international mechanisms."

On her way here Wednesday night, Ms. Rice said the meeting was being held to begin discussions of "the next steps" to be taken against Iran, now that the Security Council statement had been approved. Later, after Russia's and China's public rebukes of the idea of taking further action, the senior administration official, briefing reporters, offered a different goal for the meeting, saying it had been an effort to keep together the coalition of nations opposed to Iran's nuclear program.

The official, who briefed reporters traveling with Ms. Rice under the ground rule that he not be identified by name, said several nations, presumably European countries, had supported the notion of unspecified sanctions after Ms. Rice proposed the idea. He would not name the nations.

Ms. Rice alluded to the sort of sanctions the United States would be likely to propose when, speaking to reporters on her way here, she said the United States and its allies would look at "how a strong message can be sent to the Iranian regime that it's the regime that is isolated, not the Iranian people."

The senior official said Ms. Rice was referring to the idea of imposing travel bans on senior Iranian officials and freezing their foreign bank accounts, as the United States and Europe say they intend to do with regard to Belarus.

    Rice Floats the Idea of U.N. Sanctions on Iran, but China and Russia Reject It, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/world/31diplo.html

U.S. and Russia Divided on Wording of U.N. Statement on Iran

March 26, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, March 25 — The Bush administration and Russia, struggling to forge a joint strategy on Iran, remain at odds over whether the United Nations Security Council should take a step toward imposing penalties on Iran by labeling its nuclear activities a threat to world peace, American and European officials say.

The officials say that the Russian-American impasse, in which leading European countries are siding with the Bush administration, has held up what the West had hoped would be a unanimous move by the Security Council on Iran this month. The impasse also has echoes of the Iraq war, they say, in that Russia is concerned about a possible replay of the United States' using resolutions by the Council to confront Iran in the same way it acted against Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, spoke Friday to try to close a crucial difference over the language of a possible Security Council statement on Iran, specifically the statement's reference to Iran's nuclear activities as "a threat to international peace and security," various officials said. That wording, by implication, would open the door for further Security Council action against Iran.

Ms. Rice said Friday that Russian and American officials would work through the weekend to resolve their differences.

The sensitive talks with Russia are only the latest in a series of difficulties that have strained relations in the last couple years. Among the irritants have been Russia's crackdown on dissent, its cutoff of natural gas shipments to Ukraine and its efforts to extend influence in the region.

A new source of irritation could come with the disclosure from Iraqi documents that a possible Russian spy operation early in the Iraq war in 2003 provided Saddam Hussein with information about American war plans and troop movements.

A senior State Department official said Saturday that the department was studying details related to the disclosure, and no decision had been made on whether to raise the matter diplomatically with the Russians. But American officials say that Russia is extremely sensitive over the Iraq war, and it has vowed not to let the United States use pressure from the Security Council on Iran as a means to authorize economic penalties or even military action.

Russia's foreign intelligence service has denied passing information the war plans. On Saturday, a state news agency, RIA, cited unidentified Russian security officials as saying that the American Defense Department study that included the documents seemed intended to punish Russia for opposing the 2003 invasion. "This kind of unsubstantiated allegation against Russia's intelligence service has been voiced repeatedly," said Boris Labusov, a spokesman for the service.

A Western diplomat, referring to the Security Council discussions on Iran, and speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are confidential, said: "The Russians are worried that if you label Iran a threat to international peace, it's the beginning of a process. If there is going to be a solution, it will have to be negotiated by Lavrov and Rice."

The Bush administration had some hope over the weekend that the Russian-American talks could produce agreement soon. That contrasted with the mood early this week after a contentious session involving American, European, Russian and Chinese envoys at the United Nations.

Bush administration officials have declined to discuss the possibility of penalties on Iran. They and European diplomats emphasize that any future penalties against Tehran would be structured to avoid strangling the Iranian economy as a whole and stirring anti-Western resentment among ordinary Iranians.

The administration concern is that suffering by Iranians would delay the day of a more pro-Western government taking power in Tehran, undercutting a planned $85 million American program to subsidize Iranian dissidents, promote exchange programs and sponsor broadcasts to encourage pro-Western attitudes.

Despite the desire to win over Iranians, the administration and its European partners have prepared a series of escalating economic and political penalties that could be ready for imposition on Iran by the summer, officials said.

Those penalties, they said, would start with imposing travel bans or freezing foreign-held assets of Iranian officials, followed by a ban on commercial dealings with any businesses connected to Iran's military or to its nuclear programs.

More sweeping bans on commercial, business and energy relations would be saved for later, various officials have said, adding that if the Security Council does not authorize penalties, European countries may act unilaterally after consultation with the United States.

But a ban on military and nuclear energy dealings with Iran would have immediate economic effects on Russia, which has contracted with Iran to develop military defense systems and establish a civilian nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf coast city of Bushehr. For its part, Russia argues that penalties would backfire and cut off what little cooperation Iran is still giving.

European diplomats also say that the Russians have raised objections to the American spending plan to encourage political change inside Iran. The plan is widely seen as analogous to efforts to bring about "regime change" in Iraq a few years ago.

Iranian news media outlets, meanwhile, are praising Russia and China for trying to block a Security Council action that would impose penalties on Iran, according to Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.

"The Iranian papers are bursting with stories about how China and Russia are not caving to the American pressure to punish Iran," Mr. Milani said. "It's clear that they are trying to portray this as a victory for Iranian diplomacy, which has gotten Russia and China not to cave in to U.S. pressure."

Andrew Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow for this article.

    U.S. and Russia Divided on Wording of U.N. Statement on Iran, NYT, 26.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/international/26diplo.html

Western, Muslim worlds clash again over religion

Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:48 PM ET
Reuters
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

ROME (Reuters) - Western political leaders and the media have reacted with mounting indignation to the news that a Kabul court threatened to impose the death sentence on an Afghan man who abandoned Islam and coverted to Christianity.

Two months ago, political and religious leaders in the Muslim world were rounding on Western European media and governments for printing and defending caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that they considered blasphemous.

The cases are clearly different. Western leaders from President George W. Bush down have spoken up to save the life of a man whose religious freedom is a universal human right which his judges say is secondary to Islamic law.

In the cartoons case, demonstrators sacked Western embassies in Damascus and Beirut, lives were lost in unrest and Muslim leaders demanded apologies and curbs on Western press freedom.

Amin Farhang, the Afghan economy minister who lived in exile in Germany for 22 years before returning in 2001, illustrated the gulf between Western and traditional Islamic views when he tried to make a link between the two controversies.

"Following the row about the cartoons, which has cost so many lives, we should look calmly at things and work for a fair solution," he told the German daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

He said Kabul was trying to build democracy after a United States-led coalition drove the fundamentalist Taliban from power in 2001, but Afghanistan was a traditional Islamic society.

"Afghanistan cannot switch suddenly from one extreme to the other," he said, presenting the right to convert as too much for a country that upholds the Islamic punishment for apostasy.

A NORM, NOT AN EXTREME

The uproar sparked off by the case of Abdur Rahman, now on trial in Kabul for renouncing Islam, showed that Westerners saw religious freedom as a universal norm and not an extreme.

"It is deeply troubling that a country we helped liberate would hold a person to account because they chose a particular religion over another," Bush said on Wednesday.

Some critics suggested NATO states withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. A few even suggested that Western troops kidnap Abdur Rahman and bring him along when they leave.

"The case is more than deeply troubling, it's barbaric," wrote the New York Times. "If Afghanistan wants to return to the Taliban days, it can do so without the help of the United States."

Among the strongest critics are evangelical Christians in the United States, a core constituency that has backed Bush so far on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"How can we congratulate ourselves for liberating Afghanistan from the rule of jihadists only to be ruled by Islamists who kill Christians?" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council asked.

Another leading figure, Charles Colson, said: "If we can't guarantee fundamental religious freedoms in the countries where we establish democratic reforms, then the whole credibility of our foreign policy is thrown into serious question."

Canada's top Anglican prelate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchinson, said of the Islamic punishment for apostasy that Rahman faces: "I'm absolutely horrified to think that this kind of fanatical literalism would be applied in this day and age."

BITTER COMMENTARIES

European newspapers ran bitter commentaries. Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung said Kabul was "tolerant like the Taliban." Die Welt in Berlin wrote that Afghanistan faced "the dark ages of barbarity" if it executed Rahman.

"We have a duty not to cooperate in bringing back the burning of heretics at the stake," the Dutch daily Trouw wrote. Milan's Corriere della Sera said Western states helping Afghanistan should launch a movement to reform Islam there.

In Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, the daily that first ran the Prophet Mohammad cartoons, quoted Syrian-born member of parliament Naser Khader as saying: "If necessary, Danish troops should liberate Abdur Rahman and Denmark should offer him asylum.

"This matter underlines that sharia (Islamic law) must be fought wherever it exists," he said.

France's Marianne magazine made clear Western critics might not be satisfied if the Kabul court arranges to avoid the death sentence by declaring Rahman insane and unfit for trial.

"If he is not tried, he will probably end up in a psychiatric hospital, which for a man of sound mind is sometimes worse than death," it commented.

    Western, Muslim worlds clash again over religion, R, 23.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-23T234842Z_01_L22620258_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

Bush: talks with Iran to show US concerns on Iraq

Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:49 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday said the United States wants talks with Iran to make clear that attempts to spread sectarian violence in Iraq were unacceptable.

Bush has said he views Iran as a threat, and the United States suspects Iran of using its nuclear program to develop a bomb, which Tehran denies.

But the United States has said it is open to talks with Iran narrowly about Iraq. "This is a way for us to make it clear to them that, about what's right or wrong in their activities inside of Iraq," Bush said at a news conference.

He reiterated that negotiations on Iran's nuclear program would be conducted in an international forum. "Our job is to make sure that this international will remains strong and united so that we can solve this issue diplomatically," Bush said.

    Bush: talks with Iran to show US concerns on Iraq, R, 21.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-21T154807Z_01_N21318719_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true&src=cms

China hits back at White House security report

Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:07 PM ET
Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - China hit back at the United States on Tuesday for a White House national security report that criticized its military buildup and trade policies, saying the remarks were "groundless" and harmed relations.

The sniping comes ahead of a trip to Washington expected in late April by Chinese leader Hu Jintao, his first formal visit as president.

"We ask the U.S. side to stop releasing remarks that are harmful to the healthy development of the Sino-U.S. relations, to mutual understanding and to regional peace, stability and development," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in remarks carried by the official Xinhua news agency.

China has made a "strong representation" against the United States over the report and expressed its "strong dissatisfaction", Qin said, calling the document groundless and irresponsible.

The White House report said China was expanding its military without transparency, but Qin characterized Beijing's military policy as "defensive in nature".

The U.S. report also expressed concern about China's trade tactics, saying Beijing was seeking to direct markets rather than opening them up, acting as if it could "lock up" energy supplies around the world and supporting resource-rich countries without regard for their domestic rule or international behavior.

China has energy deals with states like Sudan and Iran, on which Washington has imposed sanctions.

Qin said China conducts economic and energy cooperation with other countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.

"We hope the U.S. side will take feasible measures to eliminate the harmful influence of the related remarks and opinions in the report," he said.

    China hits back at White House security report, R, 20.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-21T040721Z_01_PEK98298_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-USA.xml

Imagine

Suppose We Just Let Iran Have the Bomb

March 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON

PRESIDENT BUSH'S message to Iran these days sounds unambiguous: The United States will do what it takes to keep the mullahs from getting the bomb. Diplomacy is vastly preferred, President Bush and his aides insist. Yet it was no accident that the just-revised National Security Strategy declares: "This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided."

To nervous allies, those words echo the run-up to the Iraq invasion, which began three years ago today. But Iran is not Iraq. And some experts in the United States — mostly outside the administration — have been thinking the unthinkable, or at least the undiscussable: If all other options are worse, could the world learn to live with a nuclear Iran?

"The reality is that most of us think the Iranians are probably going to get a weapon, or the technology to make one, sooner or later," an administration official acknowledged a few weeks ago, refusing to talk on the record because such an admission amounts to a concession that dragging Iran in front of the United Nations Security Council may prove an exercise in futility. "The optimists around here just hope we can delay the day by 10 or 20 years, and that by that time we'll have a different relationship with a different Iranian government."

A roll of the dice, for sure. Yet is the risk greater than it was when other countries — from the Soviet Union and China to India and Pakistan — defied the United States to join the nuclear club?

And could deterrence, containment and cool calculation of national interest work to restrain Iran as it worked to restrain America and its competitors during the cold war? Or is that false comfort?

"We've lived with Iran as a terror threat for a generation," says Stephen Biddle, the senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, making the case that containment could work again. "Iran has a return address, and states with a return address can be retaliated against."

As for concerns that an Iranian nuclear capability would touch off a Middle East arms race, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia trying to join the club, the West would most likely head them off, said Barry R. Posen, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a Feb. 27 article on The New York Times Op-Ed page. Israel, he said, might finally acknowledge publicly that it has nuclear weapons. But everyone already knows about this capability.

What of the fear that Iran might pass a weapon to Hezbollah or to Al Qaeda in Iraq? Those arguing for a containment strategy say Iran knows that the origins of any detonated bomb would be traced sooner or later, so the mullahs would not be foolish enough to trust proxies with such a weapon.

The Bush administration rejects all such arguments as near madness, especially since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran's president.

"Accommodating a nuclear armed Iran is not in our interests," says R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs who will be at the Security Council today to argue for a clear warning to Iran and then a steady escalation of pressure to force it to give up any ability to enrich uranium. "Given the radical nature of Iran under Ahmadinejad and its stated wish to wipe Israel off the map of the world," Mr. Burns continued, "it is entirely unconvincing that we could or should live with a nuclear Iran."

The two views of the Iran threat boil down to this: if Iran is simply a new example of a 60-year-old problem, then classic containment should work in 2016 the way it worked in 1956. But traditional deterrence strategy will not work if Iran is one of the first nightmares of a second nuclear age — in which weapons are pieced together by agents working in the shadows and supplied by networks of private entrenpreneurs like Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer who gave the Iranian nuclear program its start.

In this new era, the argument goes, the best way to head off an attack is to prevent loosely controlled (or devious) countries from acquiring the makings of nuclear bombs in the first place. If an attack is staged not from a missile silo but from a basement or a cargo container, it will take time to pinpoint who deserves the blame. By then, the human cost is already too high and retaliation is no longer certain.

The debate is likely to play out for much of the year, based on a series of guesses about Iran's true intentions, and its capabilities. The list of unknowables is long. They range from the technical to the political, from how long it will take Iran's scientists to get their centrifuges running to who will ultimately prevail in Iran's seemingly endless internal battle over its relationship to the Westernized world.

But getting this right requires projecting what happens to America, Israel and Europe, especially if Iran's power to send the price of oil skyrocketing is enhanced by the confidence that a nuclear arsenal can bring.

The Iranians know exactly what the bomb would make them: the dominant regional power in the Middle East. Iran would become, in a stroke, more powerful than the Saudis, an even greater influence than it is today over a Shiite-controlled Iraq and, arguably, as powerful as Israel. And the better Iran's missile technology becomes, the greater its influence and ability to blackmail.

Bush administration officials who have reviewed the classified assessments of Iran's next moves worry that it would not even have to build a complete bomb to gain leverage. It would just have to make a credible case that it could assemble a weapon on short notice. "For their political needs, that would be enough," said Gary Samore, who was a nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration.

That explains why the Americans have been so adamant about not allowing Iran to conduct even experimental uranium-enrichment technology on its soil, even if it has a right to do so as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It may also explain why the Iranians are so insistent that they will never give up that right.

The Iranians also know that history suggests they have a good chance of reaching their goal. This is not the first time the Americans have declared that another nation cannot be allowed to unlock the secrets of the atom — and then learned to live with the risk when it did.

In the mid-1960's, President Lyndon Johnson contemplated pre-emptive strikes against sites where China had nuclear installations. "Many today forget that Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao Zedong's China were seen as more threatening in both capabilities and intentions than are today's mullahs in Tehran," Richard K. Betts, a professor of political science at Columbia University, wrote in the most recent issue of The National Interest.

In both cases, though, what seemed at the time like a life-threatening menace morphed into a manageable threat — partly because containment worked, and partly because Soviet and Chinese leaders made shrewd assessments of their real strategic interests.

Both, however, are somewhat flawed comparisons: Iran is no superpower. The cases of Pakistan, India and North Korea may be more instructive.

When Pakistan and India set off tests and countertests in 1998, Washington tried to punish both. That effort didn't extend past 9/11. Mr. Bush needed both countries too much. Today Pakistan is a "major non-NATO ally" with a nuclear force that many in Washington still fear could fall into the wrong hands in the event of a coup. Last month, President Bush gave India the ultimate blessing, agreeing to seek an exemption from Congress that would allow the United States to sell India fuel for its civilian nuclear plants.

Even more to the point is the case of North Korea. As in the case of Iran, Mr. Bush has said the United States cannot "tolerate" North Korea as a nuclear power. But Washington is already tolerating exactly that. John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, told Congress recently that intelligence officials assume that North Korea is telling the truth when it boasts it has produced enough nuclear fuel for several weapons. But no one — least of all its closest neighbors, China and South Korea — dare push it to the brink. They have learned to live with the status quo.

The Iranians are betting that this confrontation — what Graham Allison, a nuclear expert at Harvard, calls a "slow motion Cuban missile crisis" — has a good chance of coming out the same way. If so, the problem may go beyond Iran.

"Remember, Iran is just one instance of the problem, and in Iran's case, containment might work," says Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security adviser to Mr. Bush's father. "But if that happens, I think we are on the way to a world of proliferation like we have not seen before."

    Suppose We Just Let Iran Have the Bomb, NYT, 20.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/weekinreview/19sanger.ART0.html

U.S. and Iranians Agree to Discuss Violence in Iraq

March 17, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and DAVID E. SANGER

TEHRAN, March 16 — Iran and the United States agreed Thursday to hold direct talks on how to halt sectarian violence and restore calm in Iraq, offering the first face-to-face conversation between the sides after months of confrontation over Iran's nuclear program.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, announced in Iran's Parliament on Thursday that he would send a team of negotiators to Iraq to meet with American representatives there. But he also suggested in an interview that there would be stiff preconditions.

"I think Iraq is a good testing ground for America to take a harder look at the way it acts," Mr. Larijani said in his office shortly after making the announcement. "If there's a determination in America to take that hard look, then we're prepared to help."

In Washington, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that American officials would have a "very narrow mandate" in talking to the Iranians, and that direct talks on the nuclear issue would occur only with the major European powers and Russia and China.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Sydney, Australia, that talks with Iranian envoys in Baghdad could be "useful" but would be limited to discussions on Iraqi security. "This isn't a negotiation of some kind," she said. President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said he regarded Iran's initiative as a sign that Tehran's leaders "are finally beginning to listen" to the nations that have referred Iran's nuclear activity to the United Nations Security Council.

But he suggested that there had been plenty of dialogue — most of it conducted in public — and that the problem was not one of discussion but of action by Iran to give up all production of nuclear fuel.

As both sides maneuver for leverage on the nuclear issue, Iran has continued to indicate that it could be a help — or hindrance — in Iraq, where a majority of the population are Shiite Muslims, as in Iran.

It is not clear exactly what steps Iran could take to help stabilize Iraq. But it has long supported Iraqi Shiite political parties and maintained personal ties with their leaders.

The United States has been putting pressure on Shiite leaders to make concessions to Sunni parties and to rein in militias implicated in death squads and sectarian reprisals.

Mr. Larijani, general secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, announced that he would send negotiators to Iraq to meet with the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. He said he was acting at the request of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite religious party with links to Iran. Mr. Larijani also said Mr. Khalilzad had reached out to Iran on several occasions asking for help.

"Hakim urged the Iranian government to do this because he said it was necessary for security in Iraq," said Mr. Larijani's spokesman, Hossein Entezami, who was present during the interview.

A senior administration official, who would not speak on the record because he is not authorized to talk about Iran, said Mr. Khalilzad had asked the Iranians months ago to talk about Iraq, chiefly to warn Tehran to stop sending in weapons.

Earlier this week, Mr. Bush accused Tehran of producing sophisticated roadside bombs that are being used against both Iraqi and American troops.

Mr. Hadley appeared to try to dampen expectations that the talks would produce any breakthroughs, saying: "We're talking to Iran all the time: We make statements; they make statements."

So far, most of those statements have amounted to a public exchange of accusations and vague threats, from Iran's periodic claim that it would consider an oil cutoff if the Security Council censured Iraq to the Bush administration's warning, in a revised national security strategy released on Thursday, that diplomacy "must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided." Nonetheless, the decision by Tehran to open talks amounts to the first tangible sign that Iran has taken a step back, however slight, from its full-bore confrontational approach with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program. Since early last summer, Iran has moved aggressively in defiance of the West, opening its nuclear facilities and moving ahead with small-scale uranium enrichment.

The Iranian leadership's combative approach had won wide support in Iran when it was seen to be working. But with Iran unable to win the unequivocal support of Russia and with the board of International Atomic Energy Agency referring the case to the Security Council, there has been growing concern in Iran and a desire among some to move away from all-out confrontation.

While Iran reopened its nuclear facilities and canceled its voluntary cooperation with Europe over inspections, it did not resume industrial-level enrichment when it was referred to the Security Council, as it had threatened. Mr. Entezami said Iran "did not want to provoke."

Mr. Larijani, who ran for president in the last election, sat for more than an hour in his office defending Iran's right to develop nuclear energy, while berating the United States as arrogant, evil and disrespectful of other countries.

In between the invective, he held out the prospect that Iran might be able to help America in calming Iraq. He did not mention that Iran would also stand to gain from stability next door and from the presence of a strong Shiite- dominated government receptive to Iranian influence.

"We have repeatedly said that we are willing to help bring stability in Iraq and bring to power a democratic government," Mr. Larijani said. "We are prepared to give our hand. But the condition is that the United States should respect the vote of the people. Their army must not provoke from behind the scenes."

"We do not have much trust," Mr. Larijani said. "We have certain doubts about the way Americans act. We do not hear one voice. We hear distorted voices from the U.S."

The feeling is mutual in Washington, where R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told reporters on Thursday that "we see an Iranian government, particularly since Ahmadinejad came to office, that seems bound and determined to create a nuclear weapons capability." He said Washington had calculated that facing that kind of leader, "it is better to try to isolate the Iranian government."

Mr. Hadley also took care to say the repetition of the American doctrine of pre-emptive military action to face down nuclear threats had not been made "with Iran in mind."

In Tehran, European diplomats said there did not appear to be room for common ground on the nuclear issue for now. One European diplomat said the West would never accept Iran's bottom line, that it must enrich uranium on Iranian soil to bolster its scientific and economic development.

One diplomat said Iranian feelers about direct talks with the United States were a local political calculation. Despite public invective against America, many Iranians are eager to see an improvement in relations.

"Is there a deal out there that gives them enrichment? No," said the diplomat who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussion.

Another European diplomat said the West had little trust left in Iran.

"The leadership here has managed to sell us the same carpet four times, and each time, it's a bit more expensive," said the diplomat, who also spoke anonymously to preserve his ability to work in Tehran.

But several European diplomats said that only direct talks between the United States and Iran could produce a diplomatic agreement to head off a crisis.

"They want a security guarantee that only the United States can give," a European diplomat said. "They want a guarantee to at least be left alone."

There is something else Iran wants from America, and the nuclear issue is only the latest flashpoint in a grievance that has existed since the Islamic revolution nearly three decades ago. As Mr. Larijani spelled out grievances and slights, it was clear that he was saying, among other things, that Iran wants respect.

"If America wants to be a superpower, it should learn its manners," Mr. Larijani said. "One should not humiliate others."

Michael Slackman reported from Tehran for this article, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran, and Steven R. Weisman from Sydney, Australia.

    U.S. and Iranians Agree to Discuss Violence in Iraq, NYT, 17.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/international/middleeast/17iran.html?hp&ex=1142571600&en=4947ae6ef9486509&ei=5094&partner=homepage

US open to talks with Iran on Iraq

Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:06 AM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that the United States is open to holding talks with Iran about stabilizing Iraq after the Islamic republic responded to prior offers from Washington for a dialogue.

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan noted that any such talks would be confined to the Iraq issue and would be on a separate track from efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran.

In November, President George W. Bush authorized his ambassador in Iraq to have talks with Iran in what would be unusual contact between two long-standing foes who are locked in a standoff over Tehran's nuclear programs.

Iran initially rejected the U.S. offer for talks.

But Iran changed its position on Thursday after Bush made his most explicit accusation this week that Iranian involvement in Iraq was destabilizing a country wracked by sectarian violence.

McClellan said U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad was authorized to speak with Iran about issues specifically relating to Iraq.

"The other issues are separate from this issue. The nuclear issue is being discussed at the United Nations among diplomats of the Security Council. That's a separate issue from this," he added.

"We previously have had discussions with Iran about issue relating to Afghanistan. But this is a very narrow mandate, dealing with issues specifically relating to Iraq," he said.

A State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to discuss the dialogue, said, "Obviously we're open to meeting with Iranian officials to discuss Iraq-related issues. The arrangements for such a meeting will have to be worked out with our diplomatic mission in Iraq."

    US open to talks with Iran on Iraq, R, 16.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-16T160614Z_01_N16339705_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-USA-IRAQ.xml&src=cms

Iran says ready to talk with Washington on Iraq

Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:41 AM ET
Reuters
By Parinoosh Arami

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is willing to open a dialogue with the United States on Iraq, a senior official said on Thursday.

Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged Shi'ite Iran to help resolve disputed issues in Iraq, apparently referring to U.S. accusations of meddling in the country, which is gripped by sectarian violence. Iran denies the charges.

"We will accept the proposal to help resolve the problems in Iraq and establish an independent government there as it was made by Mr. Hakim, a top Islamic leader in Iraq," said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran Supreme National Security Council.

Three months after elections, negotiations on forming a power-sharing government in Iraq are deadlocked as the country slides toward civil war.

Larijani refused to comment on the time and level of talks.

Iranian officials had previously said Tehran was not interested in discussions before U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq.

There was no immediate response from the United States, which is leading diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

"The negotiations will be only on resolving the problems in Iraq," Larijani told reporters.

Iran has repeatedly been accused by the United States of allowing weapons and insurgents to cross its borders into Iraq. Tehran denies the allegations.

Hakim, a leader in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) who developed close ties with Iran when he opposed Saddam Hussein during years in exile there, called on Iran to open talks with the United States.

"We want the wise Iranian leadership to open a clear dialogue with America regarding Iraq and reach an understanding on disputed issues in Iraq, a dialogue for the benefit of the Iraqi people," he told a gathering of his supporters in comments televised on a Shi'ite television channel.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said journalists in Tehran had been shown a letter by a senior Iranian intelligence agent that was purportedly from U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and which invited Iran to send representatives to talks in Iraq.

The newspaper said the letter was written in Farsi, which the Afghan-born ambassador speaks. Khalilzad told CNN there had been no meetings between Iranian and U.S. officials.

Khalilzad denied seeking Iran's help to calm violence in Iraq and said there were concerns about the Islamic Republic's alleged links with militias in Iraq.

Earlier, the U.S. embassy denied such a letter existed.

Arab Sunnis resent those relations and accuse Tehran of shaping the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government's policies.

    Iran says ready to talk with Washington on Iraq, R, 16.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-16T124127Z_01_L16733603_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&related=true

Comment

Latin America and Asia are at last breaking free of Washington's grip

The US-dominated world order is being challenged by a new spirit of independence in the global south

Wednesday March 15, 2006
Guardian
Noam Chomsky

The prospect that Europe and Asia might move towards greater independence has troubled US planners since the second world war. The concerns have only risen as the "tripolar order" - Europe, North America and Asia - has continued to evolve.

Every day Latin America, too, is becoming more independent. Now Asia and the Americas are strengthening their ties while the reigning superpower, the odd man out, consumes itself in misadventures in the Middle East.

Regional integration in Asia and Latin America is a crucial and increasingly important issue that, from Washington's perspective, betokens a defiant world gone out of control. Energy, of course, remains a defining factor - the object of contention - everywhere.

China, unlike Europe, refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the fear of China by US planners, which presents a dilemma: steps toward confrontation are inhibited by US corporate reliance on China as an export platform and growing market, as well as by China's financial reserves - reported to be approaching Japan's in scale.

In January, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah visited Beijing, which is expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for "increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas and investment", the Wall Street Journal reports.

Already much of Iran's oil goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons that both states presumably regard as deterrent to US designs. India also has options. India may choose to be a US client, or it may prefer to join the more independent Asian bloc that is taking shape, with ever more ties to Middle East oil producers. Siddharth Varadarjan, the deputy editor of the Hindu, observes that "if the 21st century is to be an 'Asian century,' Asia's passivity in the energy sector has to end".

The key is India-China cooperation. In January, an agreement signed in Beijing "cleared the way for India and China to collaborate not only in technology but also in hydrocarbon exploration and production, a partnership that could eventually alter fundamental equations in the world's oil and natural gas sector", Varadarjan points out.

An additional step, already being contemplated, is an Asian oil market trading in euros. The impact on the international financial system and the balance of global power could be significant. It should be no surprise that President Bush paid a recent visit to try to keep India in the fold, offering nuclear cooperation and other inducements as a lure.

Meanwhile, in Latin America left-centre governments prevail from Venezuela to Argentina. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether.

Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic gridlock.

Venezuela, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on the openly hostile US government.

Venezuela has joined Mercosur, the South American customs union - a move described by Nestor Kirchner, the Argentinian president, as "a milestone" in the development of this trading bloc, and welcomed as a "new chapter in our integration" by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president.

Venezuela, apart from supplying Argentina with fuel oil, bought almost a third of Argentinian debt issued in 2005, one element of a region-wide effort to free the countries from the controls of the IMF after two decades of disastrous conformity to the rules imposed by the US-dominated international financial institutions.

Steps toward Southern Cone [the southern states of South America] integration advanced further in December with the election in Bolivia of Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president. Morales moved quickly to reach a series of energy accords with Venezuela. The Financial Times reported that these "are expected to underpin forthcoming radical reforms to Bolivia's economy and energy sector" with its huge gas reserves, second only to Venezuela's in South America.

Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming ever closer, each relying on its comparative advantage. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil, while in return Cuba organises literacy and health programmes, sending thousands of highly skilled professionals, teachers and doctors, who work in the poorest and most neglected areas, as they do elsewhere in the third world.

Cuban medical assistance is also being welcomed elsewhere. One of the most horrendous tragedies of recent years was the earthquake in Pakistan last October. Besides the huge death toll, unknown numbers of survivors have to face brutal winter weather with little shelter, food or medical assistance.

"Cuba has provided the largest contingent of doctors and paramedics to Pakistan," paying all the costs (perhaps with Venezuelan funding), writes John Cherian in India's Frontline magazine, citing Dawn, a leading Pakistan daily.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan expressed his "deep gratitude" to Fidel Castro for the "spirit and compassion" of the Cuban medical teams - reported to comprise more than 1,000 trained personnel, 44% of them women, who remained to work in remote mountain villages, "living in tents in freezing weather and in an alien culture", after western aid teams had been withdrawn.

Growing popular movements, primarily in the south but with increasing participation in the rich industrial countries, are serving as the bases for many of these developments towards more independence and concern for the needs of the great majority of the population.

© Noam Chomsky

· Noam Chomsky, the author, most recently, of Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World, is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

www.chomsky.info 

    Latin America and Asia are at last breaking free of Washington's grip, G, 15.3.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1731009,00.html

As U.S. Dissents, U.N. Approves a New Council on Rights Abuse

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 — With the United States in virtually lone opposition, the United Nations overwhelmingly approved a new Human Rights Council on Wednesday to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission.

The vote in the General Assembly was 170 to 4 with 3 abstentions. Joining the United States were Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.

Secretary General Kofi Annan, who first proposed the council a year ago, hailed the decision, saying, "This gives the United Nations the chance — a much needed chance — to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world."

But John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said the proposed council was "not sufficiently improved" over the commission, which has been faulted for permitting notorious rights abusers to join.

"We must not let the victims of human rights abuses throughout the world think that U.N. member states were willing to settle for 'good enough,' " Mr. Bolton said in a statement after the vote. "We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a 'compromise' and merely 'the best we could do' rather than one that ensured doing 'all we could do' to promote human rights."

He said the United States would "work cooperatively" to strengthen the council, but he did not say whether the United States would be a candidate to serve on it.

That decision, a critical consideration for the panel's future, is still "under discussion," said a senior administration official in Washington who requested anonymity because he was discussing unsettled policy.

The resolution calls for the election of new council members on May 9 and a first meeting of the council on June 19. The commission, which is beginning its annual session in Geneva next week, will be abolished on June 16.

The council will have 47 members, as opposed to the commission's 53; the means to make timely interventions in crises; and a year-round presence, with three meetings a year at its Geneva base lasting a total of at least 10 weeks. The commission has traditionally met for six weeks, once a year.

Under terms meant to restrict rights abusers from membership, candidates for the council will be voted on individually rather than as a regional group, their rights records will be subject to mandatory periodic review and countries found guilty of abuses can be suspended.

But the final text had a weakened version of the crucial membership restriction in Mr. Annan's original plan, which required new members to be elected by two-thirds of those voting. Instead, council members will be elected by an absolute majority of member states, meaning 96 votes.

Major rights organizations and a number of American allies in the United Nations — which had all lobbied Washington to reconsider its opposition — argued that the terms were far better than existing ones and would keep major abusers off the council.

    As U.S. Dissents, U.N. Approves a New Council on Rights Abuse, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/international/16nations.html

Diplomacy must win to avoid Iran confrontation -US

Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:39 AM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An international diplomatic effort to force Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions must succeed "if confrontation is to be avoided," the White House said on Thursday in a new national security strategy.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," said the document, which also described national security challenges in Iraq and across the Middle East as well as in Russia and China.

The United States and its European allies are locked in a test of wills with Iran over suspicions that Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program despite its insistence that it merely wants atomic power for civilian use.

"This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," said the document without elaborating.

President George W. Bush has insisted on a diplomatic outcome to the negotiations but has never taken the military option off the table, although experts believe U.S. involvement in the Iraq war is a limiting factor.

The document cited other concerns about Iran: that it sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq and denies freedom to Iranians. It said these can only be resolved if Iran makes the strategic decision to change its policies, open up its political system and allow freedom.

"This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy," the document said. "In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct."

The document sought to draw a line between Iran's leaders and the Iranian people, saying "our strategy is to block the threats posed by the regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is oppressing."

North Korea also poses a serious nuclear proliferation challenge, the document said.

It said Washington will continue to press for a return to talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program between the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan despite North Korea's "long and bleak record of duplicity and bad-faith negotiations."

"PREPARED TO ACT ALONE"

The new strategy is an update of a 2002 document that itself reversed a Cold War policy aimed at containing the Soviet Union. The 2002 document advocated pre-emptive strikes against hostile states or terrorist groups -- a policy critics said was used to launch the Iraq war.

In the new document, the United States insists that "we must be prepared to act alone if necessary."

But in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq three years ago, which strained international ties, the document emphasized the need for diplomacy, saying "there is little of lasting consequence that we can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of our allies and partners."

The document reflected U.S. concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been backsliding on democracy. It said strengthening ties with Moscow depends on the foreign and domestic policies that Russia adopts, particularly toward the Middle East, South and Central Asia and East Asia.

"Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions," the document said. "We will work to try to persuade the Russian government to move forward, not backward, along freedom's path."

The document also described worries about China, saying it was "holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world."

These include quietly expanding China's military while extending trade but acting as if Beijing can somehow "lock up" energy supplies around the world "or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."

China is "supporting resource-rich countries without regard to the misrule at home or misbehavior abroad of those regimes," the document said.

"Ultimately, China's leaders must see that they cannot let their population increasingly experience the freedoms to buy, sell and produce, while denying them the rights to assemble, speak and worship."

The document also said Hamas, the militant group that won Palestinian elections, has the opportunity for peace with Israel and statehood "if Hamas will abandon its terrorist roots and change its relationship with Israel."

    Diplomacy must win to avoid Iran confrontation -US, R, 16.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-03-16T063928Z_01_N15269262_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-BUSH.xml

Walt Handelsman        Long Island, NY, Newsday        Cagle        17.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/handelsman.asp

R: 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush

Report Backs Iraq Strike and Cites Iran Peril

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, March 15 — An updated version of the Bush administration's national security strategy, the first in more than three years, gives no ground on the decision to order a pre-emptive attack on Iraq in 2003, and identifies Iran as the country likely to present the single greatest future challenge to the United States.

The strategy document declares that American-led diplomacy to halt Iran's program to enrich nuclear fuel "must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," a near final draft of the document says. But it carefully avoids spelling out what steps the United States might take if diplomacy fails, and it makes no such direct threat of confrontation with North Korea, which boasts that it has already developed nuclear weapons.

When asked about the omission in an interview today, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser and the principal author of the new report, said "the sentence applies to both Iran and North Korea."

The 48-page draft of the new "National Security Strategy of the United States," which was released by the White House before a formal presentation by Mr. Hadley on Thursday, is an effort to both expand on and assess the security strategy published by the administration in September 2002, a year after the terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon upended American foreign policy.

But in a reflection of new challenges, the document also covers territory that the first strategy sidestepped, warning China, for example, against "old ways of thinking and acting" in its competition for energy resources.

China's leaders, it says, are "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up — as if they can follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era."

No such discussion appears in the earlier version of the strategy, and Mr. Hadley said the warning was an effort to get China's leaders to think about "the broader constellation" of their interests.

In a reflection of growing tensions between Washington and Moscow, the administration also expresses deep worry that Russia is falling off the path to democracy that Mr. Bush spent much of his first term celebrating.

"Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions," the document reads. In a much tougher tone than the 2002 document, it emphasizes that the future of the relationship with Russia "will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic, that Russia adopts."

Mr. Hadley, who was the deputy to Condoleezza Rice, who was the national security adviser when the 2002 document was produced, said the effort was not intended to formulate new strategy, but to "take stock of what has been accomplished and describe the new challenges we face."

He noted, for example, that dealing with economic globalization — a subject the administration rarely talked about directly until recently — constituted a new chapter, and that in other areas "we've learned something over the past four years."

But chief among the sections that remain unchanged is the most controversial section of the 2002 strategy: the elevation of pre-emptive strikes to a central part of United States strategy.

"The world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue W.M.D. at their own peril," the strategy says. It acknowledges misjudgments about Iraq's weapons program that preceded the invasion three years ago, but it is clearly unwilling to give ground on that decision. The report notes that "there will always be some uncertainty about the status of hidden programs since proliferators are often brutal regimes that go to great lengths to conceal their activities."

While the new document hews to many of the administration's familiar themes, it contains changes that seem born of bitter experience. Throughout the document there is talk of the need for "effective democracies," a code phrase, some of its drafters said, for countries that do not just hold free elections but also build democratic institutions and spread their benefits to their populations. "I don't think there was as much of an appreciation of the need for that in 2002," one senior official said.

The new document is also less ideological in tone, and far more country-specific. Syria, for example, received no mention in the older document, but it is cited as a sponsor of terrorism in this one.

Mr. Hadley and other officials said that in using the word "confrontation" the administration did not intend to signal a greater willingness to use military force against Iran's nuclear production sites. But it did indicate a willingness to step up pressure against Iranian leaders, including the threat of penalties that the United States is pressing in the United Nations Security Council.

Even as the White House edited the final drafts of the strategy, the House International Relations Committee voted 37 to 3 for legislation to end American economic aid to any country that invests in Iran's energy sector. The administration has opposed the bill out of concern that it would interfere with efforts to form a common front against Iran in the Security Council.

Still, the wording of the warning about confrontation with Iran comes just two pages after the strategy reiterates the 2002 warning that the United States reserves the right to take "anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack." The juxtaposition is unlikely to be lost on Iran's leaders.

Sections of the new document discuss at greater length the need to strengthen alliances, with specific references to supporting NATO and reforming the United Nations.

Following Mr. Bush's new push to ward off what he has called a dangerous shift toward isolationism, there is a section that refers to the need to "engage the opportunities and confront the challenges of globalization," a word that did not appear in the 2002 document.

The passage hails the "new flows of trade, investment, information and technology," which it says are transforming national security in every area from the spread of H.I.V./AIDS to avian flu to "environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic megadisasters such as flood, hurricanes, earthquakes or tsunamis." It stays away from the subject of global warming.

    Report Backs Iraq Strike and Cites Iran Peril, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/politics/16strategy.html?hp&ex=1142571600&en=8d390f0cbda4448e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

West seeks UN pressure on Iran

Tue Mar 14, 2006 10:35 PM ET
Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran came under more pressure to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programs on Tuesday when the United States and its allies took the issue to the full U.N. Security Council and Russia pursued its own initiative in talks in Moscow.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that any retreat on the nuclear issue would break the Islamic Republic's independence and force it to retreat in other areas.

"Therefore, the path is irreversible and the foreign policy apparatus must defend that right bravely," he was quoted as saying by state television in Tehran. Iran says it is merely pursuing nuclear energy and does not want an atomic bomb.

France and Britain, in an informal meeting at the French mission of all 15 council members, presented "elements" for a statement that would call on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment efforts, which the West believes are a cover for bomb making.

The session was the first time all 15 council ambassadors had discussed the text.

Russia and China, uneasy about involving the Security Council, are still wary over the statement the United States, France and Britain want the 15-member body to adopt.

"We have some difficulty with the elements," China's U.N. ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters.

The text from the three Western nations also asks for a quick progress report on Iran's nuclear compliance from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But Russia and China, the two other council members with veto powers, want the report to go back to the IAEA, rather than to the council, diplomats said.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog declared last week it could not verify Iran's assertion that its nuclear program was entirely for peaceful purposes.

Another informal meeting of the 15 council ambassadors is scheduled for Thursday and again on Friday.

Greece's U.N. Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis said he saw no problem with the proposals as they were similar to those adopted by the governing board of the IAEA.

"Most of the elements are from the text of the resolution adopted by the governing board, which we already voted for," he told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was confident a strong international consensus would emerge.

"I am quite certain that when everyone has a chance to think about the importance of sending Iran a very strong message ... (they would agree) it is time for Iran to heed the call," she said during a visit to Jakarta.

NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS

At the United Nations, U.S. ambassador John Bolton said the five permanent members would meet again on Wednesday

"We are united in our determination to ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapons capability," he said.

In Moscow, Iranian and Russian officials had a further round of talks after Russia accused Tehran on Monday of obstructing efforts to find a diplomatic solution.

The Russian Security Council reported no progress in Tuesday's session, but said the talks would continue.

It did not say if the two sides were discussing Moscow's proposal to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf as a way to ensure Tehran can get fuel for nuclear reactors without being able to master technology that could be used to build bombs.

Previous talks have stumbled on Iran's insistence on doing some enrichment at home. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was "disappointed" by Iran's approach.

If the split in the Security Council continues, the Western powers may drop the idea of a statement, which requires approval by all 15 members. Instead, they could draft a resolution and force Russia and China to abstain or veto.

Russia and China oppose sanctions, which the U.N. Security Council has the power to impose. The Western nations believe the council could eventually start with measures such as travel bans and an assets freeze on Iranian leaders.

In Beijing, China urged Tehran to cooperate with U.N. inspectors and pursue talks with Russia. "China believes that under current conditions, the Russian proposal remains a meaningful attempt to break through the stalemate," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair, Christian Oliver and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran, Chris Buckley in Beijing, Sue Pleming in Jakarta and Irving Arieff at the United Nations)

    West seeks UN pressure on Iran, R, 14.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-03-15T033545Z_01_L14629676_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml

Rice seeks to boost ties with Indonesia on trip

Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:32 PM ET
Reuters
By Sue Pleming

JAKARTA (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed Indonesia as a vibrant democracy on Tuesday, seeking to cement anti-terrorism cooperation and political ties with the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Rice will meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and foreign and economics ministers. Yudhoyono, a former general with U.S. training, became Indonesia's first directly elected president in 2004 on a strong security platform.

"This is a state that has really made giant strides over the last several years and the United States has been able to significantly change the nature of the relationship," Rice told reporters traveling with her to Jakarta.

The end of autocratic President Suharto's 32-year rule in 1998 and social unrest allowed democracy to flourish in Indonesia.

Last November, the United States restored military ties with Indonesia as a reward for cooperation against al Qaeda-linked militants and cited reforms in the military and efforts by the government to improve its human rights record.

"Rice has often said that democratization in Indonesia has transformed the degree of the bilateral relationship... as well as U.S. appreciation toward Indonesia's role in Southeast Asia and East Asia," Indonesia Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying ahead of the visit.

In the past few weeks there have been large anti-American demonstrations in Indonesia, but Rice said she was not concerned about any demonstrations during her visit, adding that such protests showed democracy was working.

Militant Islamic groups have already announced plans for at least one protest, at midday on Tuesday at the U.S. embassy.

LEVERAGE

Rice, due to give a speech on democracy on Wednesday before going on to Australia, dismissed criticism from human rights groups Washington had moved too quickly to restore military relations with Indonesia.

She said it was a better strategy for the United States to have contact with the Indonesian military than to isolate it.

Some human rights groups say progress in reforming Indonesia's military and police has been too slow and that the United States has not paid enough attention to abuses committed by the military, losing important leverage to push for change.

Before U.S. President George W. Bush's administration provided any assistance to the Indonesian military, it should demand to see evidence of real reform, said Lisa Misol of the New York-based Human Rights Watch group.

"(Rice) also should use her trip to announce that the U.S. will refuse to provide them with lethal weapons and will insist on robust monitoring of whatever aid it sends," said Misol.

But the United States sees Indonesia as a voice of moderation in the Islamic world and Rice hopes it might have some influence in the Middle East, particularly over the militant group Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in January.

"I would ask them to continue to influence those in the Palestinian territories that the choice has to be for peace," said Rice.

On that topic Indonesia's Wirajuda said: "Indonesia is home to the world's biggest Muslim population, and is expected to help the peace process there. Our stance is that we support the process there, one which is democratic and transparent."

One area where Rice may face prickly questions will be Jakarta's demand for direct access to Indonesian militant Hambali, who has been held by the Americans since 2003.

Hambali is suspected to be the mastermind behind the bombings on Indonesia's holiday island of Bali in 2002 in which more than 200 people were killed.

Wirajuda said Hambali would not be a "central issue" of official meetings but could be mentioned.

Another topic that could have been contentious, a long-running dispute over whether U.S. company Exxon Mobil Corp or Indonesia's state-owned energy firm would operate a promising new oil field, was settled on the eve of Rice's visit with a compromise giving the U.S. firm the dominant role.

(With additional reporting in Jakarta by Jerry Norton)

    Rice seeks to boost ties with Indonesia on trip, R, 13.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-14T023144Z_01_JAK77182_RTRUKOC_0_US-INDONESIA-USA.xml

US envoy hints at strike to stop Iran

· Bolton says nuclear plant can be 'taken out'
· UN agency meets to send report to security council

Monday March 6, 2006
Guardian
Julian Borger Washington

The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. The warning came ahead of a meeting today of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which will forward a report on Iran's nuclear activities to the UN security council.

The council will have to decide whether to impose sanctions, an issue that could split the international community as policy towards Iraq did before the invasion.

Yesterday the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said: "Nobody has said that we have to rush immediately to sanctions of some kind."

However the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, visiting Washington last week, encountered sharply different views within the Bush administration. The most hawkish came from Mr Bolton. According to Eric Illsley, a Labour committee member, the envoy told the MPs: "They must know everything is on the table and they must understand what that means. We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."

It is unusual for an administration official to go into detail about possible military action against Iran. To produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, Iran would have to set up a self-sustaining cycle of processes. Mr Bolton appeared to be suggesting that cycle could be hit at its most vulnerable point.

The CIA appears to be the most sceptical about a military solution and shares the state department's position, say British MPs, in suggesting gradually stepping up pressure on the Iranians.

The Pentagon position was described, by the committee chairman, Mike Gapes, as throwing a demand for a militarily enforced embargo into the security council "like a hand grenade - and see what happens".

Yesterday Mr Bolton reiterated his hardline stance. In a speech to the annual convention of the American-Israel public affairs committee, the leading pro-Israel US lobbyists, he said: "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve ... we must be prepared to rely on comprehensive solutions and use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

The IAEA referred Iran to the security council on February 4, but a month's grace was left for diplomatic initiatives. By yesterday, those appeared exhausted. A meeting of European and Iranian negotiators broke down on Friday over Tehran's insistence that even if Russia was allowed to enrich Iran's uranium, Iran would enrich small amounts for research. Iran says that it needs enrichment for electricity.

According to Time magazine, the US plans to present the security council with evidence that Iran is designing a crude nuclear bomb, like the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The evidence will be in the form of blueprints that the US said were found on a laptop belonging to an Iranian nuclear engineer, and obtained by the CIA in 2004. However, any such presentation will bring back memories of a similar briefing in February 2003 in which Colin Powell, then US secretary of state, laid out evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which proved not to exist.

While the US and Britain keep a united front over Iraq in the UN security council, there are clear differences over Iran. Britain has ruled out a military option if diplomatic pressure fails. The US has not. There is no serious consideration of large-scale use of ground forces, but there are disagreements in the administration over whether air strikes and small-scale special forces operations could be effective in halting or slowing down Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.

Some believe Iran has secret facilities that are buried so deep underground as to be impenetrable. They argue that the US could never be certain whether or not it had destroyed Iran's "capability".

    US envoy hints at strike to stop Iran, G, 6.3.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1724473,00.html

US warns Iran of consequences of nuclear ambitions

Sun Mar 5, 2006 3:39 PM ET
Reuters
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Sunday warned that Iran faced "painful consequences" if it continued sensitive nuclear activities and said the problem would become increasingly difficult to resolve if the international community did not confront it.

Ahead of what could be a crucial international meeting on Iran on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton reaffirmed that the United States will use "all tools at our disposal" to thwart Iran's nuclear program and is already "beefing up defensive measures" to do so.

"The Iran regime must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences," he told 4,500 delegates to the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel U.S. lobbying group.

Monday's meeting of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency governing board is expected to take stock of Iran's continued defiance of U.S. and European demands to end sensitive weapons-related uranium enrichment activity and then hand the case over to the UN Security Council.

The United States is discussing a 30- to 60-day deadline for Tehran to halt its nuclear program and cooperate with international inspectors or face intensified pressure in the security council, a U.S. official told Reuters.

Iran on Sunday again threatened to begin large-scale nuclear enrichment if the case is taken up by the security council.

Bolton said Iran poses a "comprehensive threat" as a state-sponsor of terrorism and a nuclear aspirant, and so "we must be prepared to ... use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat."

'LONGER WE WAIT ... HARDER IT WILL BECOME TO SOLVE'

"The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve," he warned.

Bolton reaffirmed that Washington does not see the security council moving quickly to impose sanctions on Iran. Veto-wielding members Russia and China have made clear their reluctance.

But he said many other governments have begun to speak publicly of sanctions, implying they may take action outside the security council.

The United States has had sweeping sanctions on Iran since after the 1979 Iranian revolution, but it is looking at ways to further use its Proliferation Security Initiative to deny Iran materials it needs for its nuclear program, Bolton said.

The United States and key allies, led by the European Union trio of Britain, France and Germany, are convinced Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon, but Tehran insists it is only interested in civilian nuclear energy.

Former chief UN weapons inspector David Kay, who also spoke at the AIPAC conference, discussed the limits of weapons inspections and said a conclusive judgment about Iran's program may only come too late, after it conducts a weapons test.

The IAEA is expected to weigh a report on Monday by the IAEA chief saying Iran has ignored a February 4 resolution urging it to shelve uranium-enrichment work to ease the crisis.

Instead, Iran is vacuum-testing 20 centrifuges, which convert uranium into fuel for power plants or, if highly purified, bombs, the report said. Iran also plans to install 3,000 centrifuges later this year in a push to "industrial scale" enrichment, according to the IAEA report.

The IAEA board voted on February 4 to report Iran to the security council, but on the condition the world body would not flex its muscle at least until after Monday's session.

If the security council did not act in a timely manner, Bolton said, the council's credibility would be damaged.

    US warns Iran of consequences of nuclear ambitions, R, 5.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-03-05T203855Z_01_N05192128_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-USA.xml

The World

We Are (Aren't) Safer With India in the Nuclear Club

March 5, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON

HAS President Bush just made the world a safer or a more dangerous place?

That question lingered after he reached a deal with India last week recognizing that India is never giving up its nuclear weapons, and declaring that a country America once treated as a nuclear pariah could now be trusted.

In doing so, Mr. Bush took a step in his efforts to rewrite the world's longstanding rules that for more than 30 years have forbidden providing nuclear technology to countries that do not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"I'm trying to think differently," Mr. Bush said in New Delhi, referring to the administration's argument that a new system is needed. But in treating India as a special case — a "strategic relationship" — he has so far declined to define general rules for everyone.

In essence, Mr. Bush is making a huge gamble — critics say a dangerous one — that the United States can control proliferation by single-handedly rewarding nuclear states it considers "responsible," and punishing those it declares irresponsible. For those keeping a scorecard, India is in the first camp, Iran is in the second, and no one in the administration wants to talk, at least on the record, about Israel or Pakistan — two allies that have embraced the bomb, but not the treaty.

So will other countries with nuclear ambitions react by becoming more responsible, as the administration hopes, or more envious and more determined than ever to expand their own arsenals? And will India use its new access to American-branded nuclear fuel to free up its domestic supplies of uranium to make bomb fuel for new weapons? And how will the deal affect the tense relationship between India and Pakistan, or for that matter China?

Perhaps the strongest and most discussed critique of the deal goes like this: Mr. Bush's timing could not be worse. In the eyes of his critics, he is creating a double standard by legitimizing an Indian weapons program that only eight years ago led Washington to impose huge sanctions, while demanding, in the same week, that Iran and North Korea give up any capacity to make their own nuclear fuel.

Mr. Bush, notes Ashton B. Carter, a nuclear expert at Harvard, declared nearly two years ago that there should be no new nuclear states, a concept that "was violated irrevocably" when Mr. Bush and the Indians reached agreement on the broad outline of this deal last summer. Now, he says, the deal at least puts the United States in the position of dealing directly with India's plans to maintain or expand its arsenal.

But the new deal may have solved one problem at the expense of creating new ones. Mr. Bush's team says it designed the India deal as a way to build a "strategic partnership" with the world's largest democracy, after decades of estrangement. India has proved itself a responsible power, Mr. Bush said. It also does not hurt that the country is one of the fastest-growing emerging markets, a favorite destination for technology companies, and a potential friend if trouble breaks out in tense relationships with China and Pakistan.

The part of the deal the administration likes to talk about allows India to buy American fuel for its civilian reactors for the first time, in exchange for opening them to international inspection. But India only designated 14 of its sites as "civilian" plants that it permanently guarantees can be inspected (up from four a few months ago), meaning that the additional eight can be used to make bomb fuel.

That part of the deal drives its critics up the cooling tower.

The administration never expected India's nuclear establishment to give up its ability to make bomb-grade fuel. So the administration's negotiator "caved on that one early on," in the words of Robert J. Einhorn, a nonproliferation expert who served under President Clinton and in the early days of Mr. Bush's tenure.

Critics have noted that since the United States would now sell India fuel for its newly declared civilian reactors — assuming Congress goes along — the Indians can devote their domestic uranium supply to weapons. "It substantially expands the supply of uranium the Indians have for military purposes," said Mr. Einhorn.

Mr. Bush argues that the Indians were going to build more weapons anyway.

And he said on Thursday in New Delhi that a way had be found to help India build safe civilian nuclear plants. Otherwise, it and China, the other country with a billion-plus population and a rising appetite for energy supplies, would end up struggling with each other and the West over resources to keep their economies growing.

Mr. Bush puts that as a pocketbook issue: "Increasing demand for oil from America, from India and China, relative to a supply that's not keeping up with demand, causes our fuel prices to go up," he said. "And so, to the extent that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer."

"It's a start," said Xenia Dormandy, a Southeast Asia expert who was in on the early days of the deal as an official at the National Security Council, before leaving for Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It acknowledges that over the years, India has played according to the rules, never proliferated, and it makes more sense to bring a rising power into the system rather than treat them like we've treated them for 30 years."

Ms. Dormandy applauds the deal for another reason: the politics of Pakistan, the nuclear power next door, is driven by jealousy over anything that India gets. The government there, she argued, may be driven to clean up its nuclear act in hopes of one day getting a similar deal.

Maybe so, but it could be a long wait: Robert Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India and an early architect of the agreement, said that because of the huge nuclear black market that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer, operated from Islamabad for two decades, "there's not the slightest possibility that this deal is going to be made available to Pakistan." But if there is a plan to keep Pakistan from boosting its own relatively small arsenal to keep up with India — or China from doing the same — no one in the adminstration has yet explained it.

That is why some experts believe the deal could make the world more dangerous: Even if India is a responsble player, the deal could touch off a regional race to produce more bomb fuel. In that case, more of that fuel would be floating around — perhaps to tempt terrorists. If, on the other hand, India shows restraint and Mr. Bush's gamble pays off, other nations that defiantly built their own weapons may gradually be drawn back into a new club whose membership rules are still being written.

    We Are (Aren't) Safer With India in the Nuclear Club, NYT, 5.3.2006,  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/weekinreview/05sanger.html

News Analysis

U.S. Gives India Applause, Pakistan a Pat on the Back

March 5, 2006
The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, March 4 — President Bush leaves this region having declared India and Pakistan strategic partners. But his declarations spoke just as loudly of the shifting balance of power in the region, and the world.

It was India that appeared to come out the biggest winner this week. Pakistan walked away with little more than a mild pat on the back after Mr. Bush's visit on Saturday. While buttressing America's alliances in the region, Mr. Bush also took home a formidable political challenge to sell his nuclear deal with India to a skeptical Congress.

India could hardly be more pleased. "IND-US CIVILIZATION," screamed a front-page headline in The Times of India on Saturday, in joyous praise for what President Bush had bestowed on the nation.

Those gifts included a nuclear deal celebrated by Indian officials, elevation as a global leader, and nary a recriminatory word on the troubles in the disputed province of Kashmir. Indian backers of a United States-India partnership were elated.

"I think we have managed to get a rather good deal," a senior Indian official said, unwilling to disclose his name because the full details of the nuclear agreement had yet to be shared with the Indian Parliament. "This is from our point of view, a hard bargain."

In Pakistan, the difference was discerned. "One thing is very clear: The U.S. is keeping India and Pakistan at two different levels," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, an independent political analyst in Lahore. "The kind of multifaceted interaction that exists between India and the United States is not to be seen with reference to Pakistan. For Pakistan, it's a limited and cautious support."

Some members of the United States Congress and analysts have already taken the Bush administration to task for making too many concessions to India, the bête noire of outsourcing in some American circles and a stubborn opponent of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Mr. Bush's test is to persuade Americans that India is worth the bargain.

The balance of costs and benefits has everything to do with India's new place in the world and its rise in the American imagination.

It is the world's largest democracy, seen in some quarters as a potential check on China. It has the world's second-largest population of Muslims. Its engineers and call center workers are embedded in the largest American corporations. Its immigrants in the United States have grown swiftly in number, wealth and influence.

Perhaps most important, India's economy has galloped forward for the last several years: It is poised to post more than 8 percent growth this year and double-digit growth in the years ahead. Its potential market is vast. Mr. Bush exhorted India to open that market further, and in his joint statement with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh he listed "economic prosperity and trade" as the first among several agreements made between the countries. "Economics has featured prominently on this trip," the deputy United States trade representative, Karan Bhatia, said Friday.

But it is the nuclear deal, which commits the United States to supporting India's civilian nuclear program, that will stand as the measure of what was achieved this week.

Pakistan said it expected Mr. Bush at least to press India harder for a solution to their territorial dispute over Kashmir in exchange for the nuclear favor granted to India.

But despite Pakistani demands for equal nuclear status with India, the White House maintained that the scandal surrounding the Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and his illegal nuclear peddling made no such deal possible anytime soon.

There was only a passing public reference to Kashmir — and that too only to urge the leaders of both India and Pakistan to work it out between themselves.

What Pakistan got instead was affirmation of its standing as a vital ally in the war on terrorism and what many here will interpret as modest blessing of President Pervez Musharraf's brand of democracy, despite Mr. Bush's nudge to conduct transparent elections next year.

Likewise, Indian officials point out that strategic ties with Washington can help India achieve its aspirations on the world stage — chief among them, ending the country's nuclear isolation in the world and yielding the legitimacy it has long sought as a nuclear weapons state.

Mushahid Hussain, a member of the Pakistani Parliament and close to General Musharraf, said at least the new strategic partnership between Pakistan and the United States should yield a "a peace dividend" for South Asia.

To please two lovers is by nature an impossible task, and in this instance, Mr. Bush did not leave South Asia without leaving a trail of ambivalence — and even outright anger — in both countries.

And while both India and Pakistan may be grateful in receiving what support Washington has to offer, it was not clear that either nation could embrace all that Mr. Bush expected of his new friends. In India, for starters, Mr. Bush's message of crusading for democracy worldwide raised eyebrows. "As a global power, India has an historic duty to support democracy around the world," is what he told the invitation-only audience here at Purana Qila, a fort, on Friday. He used the word "democracy" 16 times in his speech.

Ashok K. Mehta, a retired general who writes about India's foreign policy, pointed out that India was not in the habit of spreading democracy, not even in its own neighborhood. "We would like countries to uphold democratic values but we will not thrust that down their throats," is how Mr. Mehta put it, on his way out of the Bush address.

Indeed, Mr. Bush's list of rogue states — he mentioned Myanmar, Cuba and Syria in his final speech in New Delhi — are all among India's friends. Then there was the explicit reference to Iran, as a country ruled by a clerical minority. India has a longstanding and vital relationship with Iran. "In a world where the Bush administration is perceived in a not very positive light, India is going to have a challenge in structuring its other relationships," said Sundeep Waslekar of the Strategic Foresight Group. "This challenge will be most demonstrated in how we manage our relationship with Iran."

But India is already marching ahead with deepening its engagement with the military junta that rules natural gas-rich Myanmar, formerly Burma. It has bid, with China, on an oilfield in Syria. Fidel Castro — and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela — are regarded here as friends, even if they are not held in the same esteem in the United States. Sachin Pilot, a member of Parliament, put it neatly, "We agree to disagree."

    U.S. Gives India Applause, Pakistan a Pat on the Back, NYT, 5.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/international/asia/05trip.html?hp&ex=1141621200&en=eb125418c323be45&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Says Pakistan Cannot Expect Nuclear Deal Like One With India

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, March 4 -- President Bush made clear today that Pakistan should not expect anytime soon a civilian nuclear agreement like the one the United States reached only days ago with India, and he bluntly said that the two archrivals on the subcontinent cannot be compared to each other.

Mr. Bush said that he and Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, had discussed a civilian nuclear program for Pakistan during talks this morning.

“I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories," Mr. Bush said at a joint outdoor news conference with Mr. Musharraf on the grounds of the presidential palace, Aiwan-e-Sadr. “So as we proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences."

Mr. Bush had never been expected to endorse a nuclear agreement with Pakistan, the country of A.Q Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program who has confessed to running the largest illegal nuclear proliferation network in history. But it was striking that the president spoke so directly as his host, Mr. Musharraf, stood at his side.

Critics of Mr. Bush’s nuclear agreement with India say that it will only encourage other nations to demand similar arrangements. Under the terms of the Indian pact, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections.

Before Mr. Bush’s remarks, administration officials had said that Mr. Musharraf had no chance of making such a deal because proliferation and terrorism remain concerns in Pakistan.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, struggled to answer local journalists who asked if Pakistan had not been left empty-handed after the visit. Speaking at a news briefing this afternoon to release the joint statement issued by both presidents, he said Mr. Musharraf had pressed the case for civil nuclear cooperation, since Pakistan had urgent energy needs. "These things take a long time," he said. President Bush had hinted at something, he said, but he declined to explain further.

Mr. Bush nonetheless strongly supported Mr. Musharraf’s efforts in combating militants, even though Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, are believed to still be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

”Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is," Mr. Bush said. “He understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility and he understands the need to make sure our strategy is able to defeat the enemy."

Mr. Bush and Mr. Musharraf made their remarks on the serene lawn of Aiwan-e-Sadr, with ducks splashing in a flower-filled pool in the background, as the capital around them remained in an effective 24-hour lockdown. Security was intense for the first visit of an American president in six years, and the first by Mr. Bush, who was in essence traveling to Mr. bin Laden’s backyard two days after a suicide bombing attack in the southern city of Karachi left four dead, including an American Embassy employee.

Mr. Musharraf said he had expressed Pakistan’s deepest regrets in his talks with Mr. Bush about the bombing, which he said was very viciously timed to spoil Mr. Bush’s visit. Mr. Bush said that he sent his condolences to the family of David Foy, the embassy employee killed in the attack, as well as to the families of the Pakistanis who died.

”We’re not going to back down in the face of these killers," Mr. Bush said. “We’ll fight this war and we will win this war together."

Mr. Kasuri said that Mr. Musharraf had made a "comprehensive and telling response" to American concerns of Pakistan's commitment to fighting terrorism. "They had a level of discussion I had not seen before," he said, adding that Mr. Musharraf shared intelligence and documentary evidence with Mr. Bush. Pakistan had had to deal with 30,000 foreign fighters passing through from Afghanistan over the years, had more troops in the border areas than foreign and Afghan forces together on the other side, and had lost 600 soldiers in fighting in Waziristan, he said.

Mr. Bush, who said only last week in Washington that Pakistan still has some distance to travel on the road to democracy, made a gentle reference today to the need for democratic advances in the country, saying that elections scheduled for next year need to be open and honest. Mr. Musharraf, who seized power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, had promised to give up his military uniform in 2004, but changed the constitution so that he could hold both his army post and the presidency until 2007.

Throughout the day, the streets of Islamabad were peaceful, with the main rally planned for the adjoining city of Rawalpindi curtailed after the political leader Imran Khan was placed under house arrest.

But people in Islamabad showed a lack of excitement over the visit and did not glance at the live coverage of the news conference held by the two presidents on television in the shopping mall.

“I do not think the visit will make much difference," said Naser Abbasy, 37, who runs a clothes store in Islamabad.

His brother, Rashid Mehmud Abbasy, 35, was wearing a black armband in protest of Mr. Bush’s visit. “It is a protest, because of all the atrocities against Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere," he said.

It is not about the president, but his policies, he said. The Muslim leaders had called on supporters to wear black armbands, he said.

But Mr. Abbasy said the visit would be beneficial if it gave Mr. Bush a better understanding of the views of Pakistanis. “He gave a lot to India, despite knowing that we do not get on well," he said. “So he should support us equally."

Middle class shoppers were more ready to see the good in the visit, even if the security lockdown had caused irritation. “That kind of recognition is good," said Ambreen Mirza, 28, a psychologist shopping for DVD’s. But she voiced the reservations that some people feel. “Most people dislike his policies," she said. “Pakistanis were gripped by a fear that the U.S. is friend now but one that we will lose, which has happened before."

Resentment against the cartoons in some Western publications depicting the Prophet Muhammad was still uppermost in people’s minds.

“In all my life I never heard of insults being made to the Prophet," said Muhammad Pervez, 55, sitting drinking tea with a shopkeeper. “We respect the Holy Books of other religions, so it is unimaginable to insult our prophet and out book. He is so powerful, President Bush could say something to stop the cartoons or punish those responsible. So our dislike for him has grown because of this cartoon incident."

    Bush Says Pakistan Cannot Expect Nuclear Deal Like One With India, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/asia/04cnd-pakistan.html?hp&ex=1141534800&en=fd6e253a355720de&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Us-Pakistan Joint Statement

March 4, 2006
For Immediate Release
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

JOINT STATEMENT

United States-Pakistan Strategic Partnership

President Bush and President Musharraf have affirmed the long-term, strategic partnership between their two countries. In 2004, the United States acknowledged its aspirations for closer bilateral ties with Pakistan by designating Pakistan as a Major Non-NATO Ally. The U.S.-Pakistan strategic partnership is based on the shared interests of the United States and Pakistan in building stable and sustainable democracy and in promoting peace and security, stability, prosperity, and democracy in South Asia and across the globe.

The two leaders are determined to strengthen the foundation for a strong, stable, and enduring relationship. This will require a significant expansion of U.S.-Pakistan bilateral economic ties, including mutual trade and investment. As a key step in this direction the United States and Pakistan are making meaningful progress toward concluding a Bilateral Investment Treaty.

Both leaders commit to working together with Afghanistan to make Pakistan and Afghanistan a land bridge linking the economic potentials of South Asia and Central Asia.

The American people feel profound sympathy for the victims of the tragic earthquake that struck on October 8, 2005. President Bush reaffirmed the United States' determination to stand by the Pakistani people as they recover and rebuild.

President Bush and President Musharraf reaffirm their condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Following the September 11 attacks, the United States and Pakistan joined international efforts to fight the scourge of terrorism. President Bush is grateful for President Musharraf's strong and vital support in the war on terror. The two leaders underscored the need for a comprehensive strategy for addressing the threat of terrorism and extremism. President Bush and President Musharraf will continue to work together to address political injustice, poverty, corruption, ignorance, and hopelessness. They resolve to maintain their close counterterrorism cooperation and to increase their efforts to reduce the threat of terrorism regionally and internationally.

The two leaders recognize the need to promote tolerance, respect and mutual understanding, and inter-faith harmony to strengthen appreciation of the values and norms common to the world's religions and cultures. The two leaders acknowledge with appreciation the various international initiatives in this regard including President Musharraf's concept of Enlightened Moderation. The two leaders agreed that acts that disturb inter-faith harmony should be avoided.

President Bush and President Musharraf support the peace process and composite dialogue between Pakistan and India for improvement of relations and resolution of disputes and building a better future in South Asia.

Both leaders share concern about the threat to global stability posed by the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat of terrorist groups acquiring such weapons. President Bush and President Musharraf commit to play leading roles in international efforts to prevent the proliferation of WMD, their delivery systems, and related technology and expertise.

STRATEGIC DIALOGUE

President Bush and President Musharraf are launching a Strategic Dialogue under the Strategic Partnership. The Dialogue will be co-chaired by the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Pakistan's Foreign Secretary. They will meet regularly to review issues of mutual interest.

In implementation of the strategic partnership, President Bush and President Musharraf commit both countries to undertake the following steps in the areas of economic growth and prosperity, energy, peace and security, social sector development, science and technology, democracy, and non-proliferation:

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY

* Establish and implement strong financial sector controls that can defend against illicit finance.

* Facilitate Pakistan's economic growth through increased trade and investment links with the United States and within the region and the global economy, including through an enhanced economic dialogue encompassing bilateral cooperation for Pakistan's economic development, regional economic cooperation, and the global economy.

* The United States will provide financial support for the establishment of a Center for Entrepreneurship in Pakistan under the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) Initiative. The Center will promote entrepreneurial training and skills development to young women and men to launch business initiatives that would generate employment opportunities.

ENERGY COOPERATION

* Hold a High-Level Energy Meeting to inaugurate an energy working group, which will explore ways to meet Pakistan's growing energy needs and strengthen its energy security.

* Work together to develop public and private collaboration on a broad range of energy sources.

PEACE AND SECURITY

* Build a robust defense relationship that advances shared security goals, promotes regional stability, and contributes to international security.

* Continue robust U.S. security assistance to meet Pakistan's legitimate defense needs and bolster its capabilities in the war on terror.

* Deepen bilateral collaboration in the fields of defense training, joint exercises, defense procurement, technology transfers, and international peacekeeping.

* Decide to increase the frequency of defense policy discussions to strengthen collaboration in the identified sectors.

* Work together to ensure the maintenance of peace, security, and stability in the South Asia region and beyond.

* Cooperate closely in international institutions, including bodies of the United Nations, on matters of mutual concern.

SOCIAL SECTOR DEVELOPMENT

* Continue U.S. support in the health sector through collaborative projects and programs.

* Reinforce Pakistan's efforts to reform and expand access to its public education through continuing U.S. cooperation.

* Encourage educational programs and greater interaction and linkages between the research and academic institutions of the two countries.

* Promote exchange of students and scholars, fellowship programs, and strengthened research collaboration, including through institutional support for higher education and training.

* Establish a wide-ranging High Level Dialogue on Education to enhance and strengthen cooperation in the education sector.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

* Build capacity in Pakistan and work toward increased cooperation in science, technology, and engineering.

* Improve the quality, relevance, or capacity of education and research at Pakistan's institutions of higher education in the field of science and technology.

* Establish Pakistan-U.S. Joint Committee on Science and Technology to develop collaborative activities and relationships between the scientific and technological communities and institutions of both countries.

* Enhance institutional capacity of Pakistan in the area of environment through exchange of experts and developing linkages and collaborative projects with relevant U.S. institutions.

EMOCRACY

* Support Pakistan as it develops strong and transparent democratic institutions and conducts free and fair elections to ensure sustainable democracy.

NON-PROLIFERATION

* Support Pakistan's non-proliferation efforts and strengthen its capabilities, by:

o Supporting Pakistan's measures for implementation of its new export control law, including adoption of enforcement regulations and establishment of a new export licensing body; and

o Providing U.S. assistance through the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense Program (Megaports) and the Department of Homeland Security's Container Security Initiative.

PRESIDENTIAL VISIT

* President Bush thanked President Musharraf and the people of Pakistan for the generous reception and warm hospitality accorded to him, Mrs. Laura Bush, and members of the Presidential delegation during their stay in Pakistan.

    Us-Pakistan Joint Statement, White House, 4.3.2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060304-1.html

U.S. Isolated in Opposing Plan for a New U.N. Rights Council

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, March 3 — The United States has found itself isolated in its opposition to a proposal to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, and its pledge to vote against adoption of the plan has thrown the United Nations into turmoil.

Many delegations say they share the American misgivings about the proposal but fear that postponing or renegotiating it — the two options put forward by John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador — would doom the effort to produce a more credible rights body.

"If we reopen it to negotiations, there will be chaos, and if we postpone it, it will be a negative signal for the priority that human rights should have at the U.N.," Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador, said Friday.

Mr. Muñoz, a promoter of democracy who was held as a political prisoner under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, said, "This is clearly a compromise and not what some countries would like, but we perceive that aside from the U.S., there are very few countries who oppose the text."

Human rights groups are lobbying actively for adoption, galvanized by the prospect of American rejection and by suspicion of Mr. Bolton's motives in objecting to the proposal.

"It's an open question whether Bolton's throwing all the cards up in the air is meant to improve the council or to prove that the U.N. can't reform itself and therefore should be abandoned," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Yvonne Terlingen, the United Nations representative for Amnesty International, warned, "If the U.S. insists on revising the text, it will be aiding and abetting those whose purpose is to wreck the council, not to make it stronger."

In an interview on Friday, Jan Eliasson of Sweden, the General Assembly president, who wrote the final text, said: "I definitely don't want to have an isolation process vis-à-vis the U.S. This is the country of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Bill of Rights. The U.S. belongs on this council, and I want the U.S. on board."

The current rights commission has been faulted for allowing notorious rights abusers like Sudan and Zimbabwe to become members, and producing an effective substitute for it has been seen as a test of whether the United Nations can meet widespread demands for fundamental change.

Mr. Eliasson said he had set a goal of resolving the matter by next week because the existing commission is scheduled to begin its annual meeting in Geneva on March 13.

This week, Mr. Bolton dismissed the importance of that deadline, saying, "It might be worthwhile having the commission meet again to remind everybody it is so bad that we can get on the track of real reform."

Asked for comment on the impasse, Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for Mr. Bolton, said there was nothing to add to what the ambassador had already said.

Mr. Eliasson put the proposal forward on Feb. 23 for a new Human Rights Council, after months of negotiations and revisions. Mr. Bolton said the same day that it had too many "deficiencies" and should be renegotiated, and on Monday he announced that the United States would oppose it if it were put to a vote.

Though the United States has no veto power in the 191-member General Assembly, a negative vote could critically undermine the new panel.

"A Human Rights Council without the United States would lack credibility," Emyr Jones Parry, the British ambassador, said Thursday. Noting that the European Union had formally endorsed the text, Mr. Jones Parry said, "The job now is to get clarity on what the U.S. wants."

Those working for acceptance argue that provisions in the plan for direct election of members, formal review of member nations' rights records and suspension of gross violators would make it less likely that abusers could join.

They also claim that a requirement that new members be approved by a majority — a minimum of 96 votes — would eliminate violators from membership. The formula weakens the requirement in the original proposal, made by Secretary General Kofi Annan, for a two-thirds vote for new members of a Human Rights Council.

"There's no way that a Sudan or Zimbabwe is going to be able to get on this council," said Mr. Roth, of Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Roth also contended that Mr. Bolton's absence last fall and winter from some 30 meetings of the group drawing up the proposal led other countries to conclude that the United States was not fully committed to it.

In a crucial meeting with Mr. Eliasson last month, in which countries laid down their demands, Mr. Bolton did not mention the importance to the Bush administration of the two-thirds vote. He has since cited its omission as one of the reasons for the United States objection.

"The State Department was trying to communicate to the U.N. that the two-thirds vote was an important part of the U.S. position," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, "and there was quite a bit of surprise in the department that Bolton didn't bother to mention this to Eliasson."

    U.S. Isolated in Opposing Plan for a New U.N. Rights Council, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/04nations.html

Pakistan Is Tense as Bush Arrives on 24-Hour Visit

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and ELISABETH BUMILLER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 3 — President Bush arrived here on Friday for a 24-hour visit to a capital locked down under extraordinary security, as a broad coalition of political parties closed shops and halted transportation across the country and planned more demonstrations for the weekend.

The visit by Mr. Bush, the first by an American president in six years, threatened to further roil a nation still seething over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper.

Thousands of people have turned out for weeks in rolling protests that were increasingly directed at Mr. Bush and the pro-American policies of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Mr. Bush nevertheless flew directly to Islamabad aboard Air Force One, a symbolic gesture that he considered the country safe enough for a presidential welcome on an open tarmac, and an overnight stay.

The capital was virtually sealed for his arrival. Concrete barriers and police squads blocked off the main avenues running to Parliament, the presidential palace and the diplomatic enclave where the president stayed, leaving the streets from the airport dark and deserted.

Before his arrival, President Bush heralded General Musharraf as a courageous man who has stood firm through several assassination attempts as a frontline ally in the fight against terrorism.

Mr. Bush also commended the general's vision for Pakistan as a moderate Islamic state.

But General Musharraf faces more political pressure than at any time since he seized power in a coup in 1999, as the turmoil over the cartoons has given Islamic parties an opportunity to develop an alliance with the larger, secular opposition.

"Islamabad is not ready to accept a visit from Bush," Syed Munawar Hasan, secretary general of the largest Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, warned during the past week of rallies, arrests and growing political antagonism. "The people hate Bush — the demonstrations will show that — there is no doubt about that."

The problem of terrorism inside Pakistan and the kinds of pressures General Musharraf faces were evident on Thursday when a suicide bomber killed an American diplomat and two others outside the American Consulate in Karachi.

Six years ago, President Clinton arrived in Islamabad by unmarked military jet accompanied by a decoy plane with the familiar blue and white of Air Force One and "United States of America" on its side.

Despite Mr. Bush's more public landing, Air Force One approached Islamabad with its running lights off and interior shades drawn, a precaution that would make it harder for anyone trying to aim a missile at the plane.

After his airport arrival was covered by local television crews, Mr. Bush slipped away from public view, and reporters traveling with him could not tell whether he even rode with the presidential motorcade, or in an unmarked Black Hawk helicopter, to the heavily fortified residence of the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker.

At their meetings on Saturday, Mr. Bush is expected to support General Musharraf's efforts to advance a solution with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, and to sign trade and economic agreements.

But there will be no consideration of nuclear cooperation of the kind Mr. Bush announced with India, because Pakistan's role in nuclear proliferation, led by the scientist A. Q. Khan, remains a black mark.

Security will remain tight through Mr. Bush's stay. General Musharraf has reacted sternly to the political commotion since the Danish cartoons, banning rallies in Islamabad and in Lahore, where the worst violence occurred on Feb. 14, when five people were killed.

The government has since detained some political leaders. Demonstrations are being restricted by large deployments of armed police officers and rangers.

These steps, however, have not quelled the momentum of the opposition, which has declared Saturday a day of protest and urged supporters to wear black armbands and hang black flags in a statement against Mr. Bush's visit.

After six years of virtually unchallenged power, General Musharraf appears to be entering a rockier period as the opposition gathers itself.

The demonstrations and the sporadic violence have revealed the political tensions that are building in Pakistan a year ahead of planned elections, and may point to a rough ride ahead for General Musharraf and his cooperation with the United States.

"We will try to make him resign," said Qazi Hussein Ahmad, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, in an interview at his home, where he was placed after the demonstrations in Lahore. "This is the moment of the workers and the people."

He denied that his followers were responsible for the recent violence.

The opposition has been implacable in its criticism of General Musharraf's seizure of power in 1999 and of his holding of the two posts of army chief and president, which he shows no sign of giving up, despite clear urging from the Commonwealth, among others.

Opposition politicians also accuse the United States of treating him as an important ally while ignoring the antidemocratic nature of his military coup.

"The people of Pakistan are rather disappointed," said Mian Raza Rabbani, a senator and member of the largest political organization, the liberal-leaning Pakistan People's Party. "They have seen the United States pay a great deal of lip service supporting democracy in Muslim countries, but when we look at what is happening in Pakistan, President Bush says he shares the president's views and his democratic vision for Pakistan. For a great many, that is flawed."

Today General Musharraf faces many pressures, some of his own making. The Pakistani military and police forces are battling armed insurrections in two of the four provinces, the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, where tension have built over the sharing of natural gas.

In the North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, the army is fighting a long campaign against Islamic extremists, including Taliban remnants. Many say Osama bin Laden may be hiding there.

The religious parties accuse the general of fighting a war against his own people in the tribal areas at the behest of America. The army has lost 400 soldiers there in the last two years, General Musharraf said in a recent television interview.

"Pakistan has never been so unstable, and the federation has never been under greater political strain," Senator Rabbani said.

It is, above all, General Musharraf's failure to build a political base that is weakening him, analysts say. The Pakistan Muslim League, which he cobbled together to form a government, lacks unity and broad appeal.

For nearly six years, it was hardly necessary. When he seized power, President Musharraf was widely welcomed by Pakistanis, such was the disgust and weariness with the corrupt and ineffective civilian governments. He is still the most popular politician in the country, according to one recent privately conducted poll.

He is seen as not corrupt — a huge plus in a country where so many politicians are tainted with graft — and he has brought a measure of economic prosperity. "He's doing well. I think he's fine," said Muddasir Is Haq, 27, who owns a plumbing shop in Lahore.

On the other hand, the continual strikes and demonstrations called by the religious parties were hurting business, he said.

The general has managed to rule without serious political opposition in large measure by successfully dividing and manipulating the opposition political parties.

The leaders of the largest parties, two former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, remain in exile, accused of corruption, and their parties have withered in their absence. Even the legislators in parliament complain they are sidelined from much of the decision making.

"It's all dictated democracy, the real reins of power are with Musharraf," said Talat Masood, a retired general and political analyst in Islamabad. The demonstrations have been a sign of pent up frustrations, he said. "The government has muzzled the political parties and they did this to vent their anger on the government."

Suggestions from members of the government that elections could be postponed until 2008, which would allow General Musharraf to be confirmed for a second term by the currently pliable Parliament, have also stirred up the opposition, Mr. Talat said.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, who acts as a spokesman for the Pakistani military and for President Musharraf, said the president was committed to the democratic process, and wanted parliamentary elections to take place next year, despite the suggestions by some in the government that elections be postponed.

The newly elected national and provincial assemblies would then elect a president. President Musharraf would serve another term if asked, and only then would he speak on whether he would give up his post as chief of the army, General Sultan said.

Hari Kumar and Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi for this article, and Salman Masood from Pakistan.

    Pakistan Is Tense as Bush Arrives on 24-Hour Visit, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/asia/04pakistan.html?hp&ex=1141534800&en=efee51f8c210fbf3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush, in High-Tech Center, Urges Americans to Welcome Competition From India

March 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 3 — Before arriving in Pakistan, President Bush finished his two-day visit to India with a speech praising the new warmth in Indian-American relations, and urged Americans to welcome rather than fear India as an economic competitor.

"The United States and India, separated by half the globe, are closer than ever before, and the partnership between our free nations has the power to transform the world," Mr. Bush declared in the cool March air on the grounds of a 16th-century fort in New Delhi.

Earlier, Mr. Bush began his final day in India with a four-hour trip to Hyderabad, in the south, where he met with entrepreneurs, toured an agricultural university and patted a water buffalo.

Hyderabad is a center of India's booming high-tech industry, and was also on President Clinton's itinerary when he visited India in 2000.

There, Mr. Bush strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods.

"People do lose jobs as a result of globalization, and it's painful for those who lose jobs," Mr. Bush said at a meeting with young entrepreneurs at the Indian School of Business, one of the premier schools of its kind in India. Nonetheless, the president said, "globalization provides great opportunities."

Mr. Bush said there was a "300-million-person market of middle-class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want," then "all of a sudden, people will be able to have a market here."

Later in the day, in New Delhi, Mr. Bush called on India to continue to raise its ceilings on foreign investment and to continue to open its markets to American goods, and reiterated that a major nuclear pact that he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced Thursday would help India meet its enormous energy needs.

Speaking in the dramatically lighted setting of the fort called the Purana Qila, built by the Afghan conqueror Sher Shah Suri, Mr. Bush evoked the memory of Gandhi, the founder of modern India.

"Yesterday, I visited a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, and read the peaceful words of a fearless man," Mr. Bush said. "His words are familiar in my country because they helped move a generation of Americans to overcome the injustice of racial segregation.

"When Martin Luther King arrived in Delhi in 1959, he said to other countries, 'I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.' I come to India as a friend."

The president also prepared his Indian hosts for his impending visit to rival Pakistan, saying, "the day is passed" since Indians worried about America's friendship with Pakistan.

"India is better off because America has a close relationship with Pakistan, and Pakistan is better off because America has a close relation with India," Mr. Bush said.

He added that "a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world."

A short time later on Air Force One, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters that Mr. Bush had meant to say "the Muslim world," because Pakistan is not an Arab country.

Reactions to Mr. Bush's remarks from the Indian business, military and political leaders invited to the speech were positive. "My sense is, he has struck an emotional chord," said Rana Kapoor, chief executive of Yes Bank Ltd. "The speech came across as a conscientious recognition of India as a strong democratic ally."

Sachin Pilot, a member of Parliament, described the speech as "upbeat and bullish."

"It gives you the feeling that things are much more equitable," he said. "Not only was the speech filled with compliments about India," he said, there was also an expectation for India "to play its global role."

But anti-Bush protests in Lucknow, in the north, exploded into violence on Friday. Three people were killed and more than a dozen injured, the police said.

The violence began when Muslim demonstrators called for shops to be shuttered Friday afternoon to protest Mr. Bush's visit. The closings spiraled into scuffles, stone-throwing and gunfights on the street, said O.P. Tripathi, inspector general of police for Lucknow. Riot police were called in.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, as street protesters denounced the Bush visit, a coalition of separatist groups asked Mr. Bush to help resolve the half-century-long conflict over the territory and urge both India and Pakistan to demilitarize their portions of the province.

Somini Sengupta and Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi for this article.

    Bush, in High-Tech Center, Urges Americans to Welcome Competition From India, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/international/asia/04india.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In India, Bush Urges Americans to Welcome Global Competition

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW DELHI, March 3 — President Bush met with Indian entrepreneurs and toured an agricultural university during a four-hour trip to the southern city of Hyderabad today, when he said that the United States should welcome rather than fear competition from India.

"People do lose jobs as a result of globalization and it's painful for those who lose jobs," Mr. Bush said at meeting with young entrepreneurs at Hyderabad's Indian School of Business, one of the premier schools of its kind in India. Nonetheless, the president said, "globalization provides great opportunities."

Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip, strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods. Hyderabad is a center of India's booming high-tech industry, and was also on President Bill Clinton's itinerary when he visited India in 2000.

"The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable," Mr. Bush said at the business school.

At an earlier stop at Hyderabad's Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Mr. Bush watched Indian women in saris hand-till the soil around tomatoes, peanuts and soybeans. One of the women gave Mr. Bush a thumbs'-up sign as he walked past. The president also viewed a water buffalo and some Indian handcrafts.

Shops in the city's predominately Muslim Charminar quarter were closed in protest of the president's visit, the Associated Press reported. Several hundred communist and Muslim demonstrators chanted "Bush go home" and carried posters of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Bush returned to New Delhi later in the day to deliver an outdoor evening speech at the city's Purana Qila, a 16th century fort built by the Afghan conqueror Sher Sha Suri. In the speech, billed as the major address of Mr. Bush's trip to India, Mr. Bush spoke of the "natural partnership" between the United States and India, including the major nuclear pact that he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced in New Delhi on Thursday.

The pact, which fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July, would help India satisfy its huge civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.

In the speech, Mr. Bush said the two countries were also united in the struggle against terrorism, noting that "both our nations know the pain of terrorism on our own soil."

The "two great purposes" of the partnership were "to expand the circle of prosperity and development across the world, and to defeat our common enemy by advancing the noble cause of human freedom," he said.

After the speech, Mr. Bush was scheduled to fly to Islamabad for an overnight stay and meetings with the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday. Mr. Bush said on Thursday that he was still making the trip despite a bombing near the U.S. consulate in Karachi on Thursday morning that left four dead, including an American diplomat.

Mr. Bush's overnight stay and day of events in Islamabad is in sharp contrast to Mr. Clinton's trip to the Pakistani capital in March 2000, when he arrived by an unmarked military plane and spent barely six hours there.

White House officials acknowledge the security problems in a country where Osama bin Laden is believed to be in hiding, but said they were manageable.

"Pakistan is both an ally in the war on terror and, in some sense, a site where the war is being carried about," Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told reporters in New Delhi on Thursday.

Mr. Hadley added that "at this point, people are comfortable that the necessary precautions are in place, but this is not a risk-free undertaking."

John O'Neil contributed reporting for this article from New York.

    In India, Bush Urges Americans to Welcome Global Competition, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1141448400&en=14258ae1db1ff295&ei=5094&partner=homepage

News Analysis

Dissenting on Atomic Deal

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, March 2 — In concluding its nuclear deal with India, the Bush administration faces significant opposition in Congress and tough questions from its allies on whether the arrangement could set a precedent encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and other potential foes of the United States.

But Bush administration officials expressed confidence on Thursday that they could overcome the skepticism of the critics, in part because support is nearly universal in the West and among Republicans and Democrats in Washington for building India's strength as a bastion of democracy and a counterweight to China in Asia.

The Defense Department issued an unusually explicit statement hailing the deal for opening a path for more American-Indian military cooperation.

"Where only a few years ago, no one would have talked about the prospects for a major U.S.-India defense deal, today the prospects are promising, whether in the realm of combat aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft or naval vessels," the Defense Department statement said.

Diplomats familiar with the negotiations with India said Britain, France, Germany and probably Russia would eventually line up to support the agreement, in part because it would clear the way for them to sell nuclear fuel, reactors and equipment to India. They would not agree to be identified, because several countries have yet to signal what stance they would take.

More skepticism is expected from China, several diplomats said, because India has made little secret of its desire for a nuclear weapons arsenal to counter Beijing and its longtime ally, Pakistan.

Critics of the deal in Congress and abroad are certain to focus on what they maintain is a double standard embraced by the Bush administration: in effect, allowing India to have nuclear weapons and still get international assistance but insisting that Iran, North Korea and other "rogue states" be given no such waiver.

But administration officials insisted there was no double standard.

"The comparison between India and Iran is just ludicrous," R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said Thursday in a telephone interview. "India is a highly democratic, peaceful, stable state that has not proliferated nuclear weapons. Iran is an autocratic state mistrusted by nearly all countries and that has violated its international commitments."

What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

This bipartisan skepticism is unusual, producing for example cooperation between a liberal Democrat, Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, and a conservative Republican, Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has raised more than 80 questions about the deal that he says need to be answered before it can be approved.

"People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we're wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran," said a Republican aide on Capitol Hill, who requested anonymity because he was describing matters still being weighed in private discussions. "But it's also true that India is facing an energy crisis, and we can't ignore that problem either."

The negotiated accord announced Thursday by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi is aimed at removing the ban effectively imposed by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on the sale of fuel and civilian nuclear technology to India, in return for India's agreement to put its civilian reactors under international inspections.

India, the negotiators agreed, will be able not only to retain its nuclear arms program but to keep a third of its reactors under military control, outside international inspection, including two so-called fast-breeder reactors that could produce fuel for weapons.

The accord would also allow India to build future breeder reactors and keep them outside international inspections. A fast-breeder reactor takes spent nuclear fuel and processes it for reuse as fuel or weapons. American officials negotiating with India over the last several months failed to get India to put its current and future breeder reactors under civilian control. But the accord would allow India to buy equipment and materials for only those new reactors that are to be used for civilian purposes.

India's refusal to put all its breeder reactors under civilian control was seen in New Delhi as a matter of pride and sovereignty. Mr. Singh, who reiterated the need for India's autonomy in nuclear matters, faces pressure from his governing coalition, which includes the Communist Party and other anti-American elements.

India's nuclear program has previously mixed civilian and military purposes. But the accord announced in New Delhi would place 14 of India's 22 nuclear reactors under civilian inspection regimes by 2014. The phase-in and the possibility that breeder reactors may never come under such a regime have drawn fire from critics.

"This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible."

    Dissenting on Atomic Deal, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/politics/03nuke.html?hp&ex=1141362000&en=3171609c02b6e215&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, March 2 — President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced here on Thursday what Mr. Bush called a "historic" nuclear pact that would help India satisfy its enormous civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.

Under the agreement, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections. The pact fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July.

In Washington, Democratic and Republican critics said that India's willingness to subject some of its nuclear program to inspections was meaningless so long as the country had a secret military nuclear program alongside it, and that the pact would only encourage rogue nations like North Korea and Iran to continue to pursue nuclear weapons. They predicted a bruising fight in Congress over the pact, which needs its approval. [Page A10.]

At the same time, Mr. Bush said he was going forward with a trip on Friday night to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to meet with the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, despite a bombing Thursday morning outside a Marriott Hotel and the United States Consulate in Karachi. The bombing, a suspected suicide attack, left four dead, including an American Embassy employee.

"Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference with Mr. Singh. "My trip to Pakistan is an important trip. It's important to talk with President Musharraf about continuing our fight against terrorists. After all, he has had a direct stake in this fight; four times the terrorists have tried to kill him."

In New Delhi, American and Indian negotiators working all night reached agreement on the nuclear deal at 10:30 a.m. Thursday local time — only two hours before Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced it — after the United States accepted an Indian plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.

In the plan, India agreed permanently to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities, meaning those reactors will be subject for the first time to international inspections or safeguards.

The other reactors, as well as a prototype fast-breeder reactor in the early stages of development, will remain as military facilities, and not be subject to inspections. India also retained the right to develop future fast-breeder reactors for its military program, a provision that critics of the deal called astonishing. In addition, India said it was guaranteed a permanent supply of nuclear fuel.

The separation plan, according to a senior Indian official, also envisions India-specific rules from the International Atomic Energy Agency, effectively recognizing India as a nuclear weapons state in "a category of its own."

Both sides appeared eager to announce the agreement as the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's first visit to India, and did so with few details at a triumphal news conference on the lush grounds of Hyderabad House, a former princely residence in the heart of this capital. But Mr. Bush acknowledged that the deal now faced a difficult battle for approval in Congress that would entail a change in American law.

"We concluded an historic agreement today on nuclear power," Mr. Bush said, with Mr. Singh at his side. "It's not an easy job for the prime minister to achieve this agreement, I understand. It's not easy for the American president to achieve this agreement. But it's a necessary agreement. It's one that will help both our peoples."

Speaking of Congress, he added: "Some people just don't want to change and change with the times. But this agreement is in our interest."

Indians hailed the agreement as historic and highly advantageous for their country.

"It offers access to civilian nuclear energy, it protects your strategic program, and it mainstreams India," said Amitabh Mattoo, vice chancellor of Jammu University. "India couldn't have hoped for a better deal."

Critics also said keeping the fast-breeder reactors under military control, without inspections, would allow India to develop far more nuclear arms, and more quickly, than it has in the past. Fast-breeder reactors are highly efficient producers of the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

"It's not meaningful to talk about 14 of the 22 reactors being placed under safeguards," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who served as a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and the early days of the Bush administration. "What's meaningful is what the Indians can do at the unsafeguarded reactors, which is vastly increase their production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. One has to assume that the administration was so interested in concluding a deal that it was prepared to cave in to the demands of the Indian nuclear establishment."

Critics of the deal also said it would now be more difficult for the United States to persuade Iran and other nations to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.

"It will set a precedent that Iran will use to argue that the United States has a double standard," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a leading opponent of the deal. "You can't break the rules and expect Iran to play by them, and that's what President Bush is doing today."

Administration officials in New Delhi countered that India was a responsible nuclear power and had earned the right to the nuclear energy technology that it urgently needs for a booming economy and its population of one billion.

"India is unique," R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi.

Mr. Burns, the administration's point man in the nuclear talks, added: "It has developed its entire nuclear program over 30 years alone because it had been isolated. So the question we faced was the following: Is it better to maintain India in isolation, or is it better to try to bring it into the international mainstream? And President Bush felt the latter."

The deal was praised by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This agreement is an important step towards satisfying India's growing need for energy, including nuclear technology and fuel, as an engine for development.," he said in a statement. "It would also bring India closer as an important partner in the nonproliferation regime."

President Jacques Chirac of France also offered his blessings late Thursday, calling India "a responsible power" and saying access to civilian nuclear energy would help India "respond to its immense energy needs while limiting its emissions of greenhouse gases," Agence France-Presse reported.

At the news conference, Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced additional cooperative agreements on counterterrorism, fighting AIDS in India and trade, including the importing to the United States of Indian mangoes, considered by connoisseurs to be among the best in the world.

"And oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes," Mr. Bush said at the news conference.

    Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03prexy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Muslim-Led Protesters Rage Against Bush on His India Visit

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS and HARI KUMAR

MUMBAI, India, March 2 — For the second day in a row, raucous protests against President Bush's visit erupted across India on Thursday, with the most militant here in the nation's commercial capital.

As Mr. Bush had lunch with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the capital, New Delhi, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out in Azad Maidan, a field here made famous by Gandhi's civil disobedience protests against British rule.

The current protest, called by Muslim organizations and leftist political parties, was largely peaceful, but bristling with an anti-American rage that is not often displayed in India.

The demonstrators shouted slogans against Mr. Bush. In one section of the field, a crowd gathered to burn an American flag. The crowd began beating the flaming flag. Then a young man lifted a boy named Shoaib over the fire and instructed him to urinate on it. He did, bemused by all the attention. He said he was in third grade.

Nearby, a few dozen men stood under a banner declaring, "We are ready to become suicide bomber." It is a sentiment rarely expressed openly in India, which has had domestic terrorism over the years but whose citizens have not seemed to be attracted to the current global terrorist networks.

"Suppose Bush is here," said Sajid Khan, 25, a student. "I will suicide bomb to Bush. If we could get a visa, we would go there and fight."

Crowd estimates varied from 250,000 to 700,000, according to the city police and a protest organizer — or from 10 percent to 25 percent of the Muslim population of Mumbai (also known as Bombay).

On the streets of New Delhi, protests on Thursday were much milder than a day earlier, when at least 50,000 people demonstrated. Fewer than 10,000 people showed up Thursday for a protest march and rally called by leftist political parties. "I am Bush. I ambush," read one placard. "Bush go back," the crowd chanted.

"We oppose Bush and our government," said Bijender Singh, 28, a farm worker. "Why did they invite Bush?"

Prakash Karat, secretary of the Communist Party of India, told the crowd at the rally, half a mile from the Parliament building, "George Bush is the guest of the government of India but not of the people of India."

Mr. Karat's party supports Manmohan Singh's Congress Party-led coalition government, but has been the loudest voice of opposition on the nuclear deal between the United States and India. The Communists also staged a protest on the steps of Parliament.

Jainarain Singh, a security guard active with the Communist Party, said he considered the alliance with the Bush White House to be detrimental to India's growth — the opposite of the message the prime minister tried to convey. "We should be independent," Jainarain Singh said. "We should not decide our policies under U.S. pressure."

All roads and lanes leading from the march route to Hyderabad House, where Mr. Bush and the prime minister held a news conference, were heavily fortified by the police.

From the eastern city of Calcutta, television news stations reported protests that featured burning effigies of Mr. Bush and drew an estimated 50,000 demonstrators.

Elsewhere in the capital, Mr. Bush's appearance on Thursday seemed to draw far less interest than the test cricket match between India and England. At a Subway fast-food restaurant on Connaught Place, New Delhi's commercial center, the television was tuned in to the cricket match.

Rajesh Kumar, 42, a marketing and sales executive for an Indian airline, said he was cynical about how India would benefit from the nuclear agreement.

"It's just a balloon of air, designed to pump up India's ego," he said. "People are still fighting for their bread and butter here. This won't solve anything." He added, "America wants to dominate the world."

The nuclear deal did not impress Sidharth Jain, 19, a computer engineering student, either. "The deal doesn't matter to us much," he said. "I don't think anyone really understands what it means." But he was hopeful that improved ties with the United States might make it easier for him to go to a university there.

Anand Giridharadas reported from Mumbai for this article, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi. Amelia Gentleman contributed reporting from New Delhi.

    Muslim-Led Protesters Rage Against Bush on His India Visit, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/international/asia/03protests.htm

The Alliance

U.S. Sees Emirates as Both Ally and, Since 9/11, a Foe

February 23, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — When the United Arab Emirates paid $6.5 billion for 80 advanced F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin in 2000, the deal was applauded by members of Congress and local American officials as a milestone that would solidify relations and help preserve thousands of American aerospace jobs.

But in the days since the Bush administration approved the purchase by a state-run company from Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, of rights to manage seaports in six American cities, lawmakers have denounced the port deal as a security threat and threatened to block it.

The episodes highlight how Persian Gulf sheikdoms and other Islamic countries in the region have come to be treated paradoxically in Washington as both strategic allies and, since the attacks of September 2001, as untrustworthy foes in combating terror groups like Al Qaeda.

Few countries encapsulate this paradox more than the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. Around 1,500 American military personnel work and live at an airbase an hour outside the capital of one of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, from which surveillance aircraft and refueling tankers fly missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in Washington, and especially on Capitol Hill, the emirates' reputation has been colored more by the blistering treatment the country was dealt by the 9/11 Commission, the congressionally mandated panel that conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The commission's inquiry found that "the vast majority of the money funding the Sept. 11 attacks flowed through the U.A.E." Its government, the panel said, ignored American pressure to clamp down on terror financing until after the attacks.

Even now, when by all accounts the emirates have taken action in response to some American demands to enact tougher controls in its banking sector and cooperate against Al Qaeda, many lawmakers say allowing Dubai Ports World, the state-run U.A.E. company, to take over the ports remains too much of a risk.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and a member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said it was reckless to allow a country to manage the ports that does not have a "solid" record against terrorism.

The United Arab Emirates is composed of a disparate group of sheikdoms that banded together in 1971. Dubai, which runs Dubai Ports World, has built itself into a financial and transportation hub in the region. The country is the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil, but the vast bulk of its oil reserves lie in the more conservative Abu Dhabi, the emirate that holds the country's presidency and dominates its foreign and defense policy-making.

The emirates grew closer to Washington when commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf was threatened during the "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq in the 1980's. The ties expanded in the 1990's, culminating in the F-16 sale in 2000. Revelations about the Dubai banks' role in the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, however, have introduced tensions on both sides.

Current and former American officials who have dealt with the United Arab Emirates say the portrayal of the emirates by opponents of the port deal is at best misleading and at worst could jeopardize the assistance the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and other agencies say they need in preventing terrorism.

If the port deal is overturned, few experts expect that U.A.E. would significantly reduce military cooperation with the Pentagon, which Abu Dhabi sees as vital to protect it from far larger neighbors, like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi is unlikely to cut off oil and gas sales, which form a small part of American imports, experts said.

"It certainly will not mean that U.A.E. will start ending cooperation with the U.S.," said Theodore Kattouf, who was ambassador to the emirates from 1998 to 2001. "But I think it would be seen as a real rebuff to a country that is sort of leading the way in the Middle East in terms of globalization and free trade."

Pentagon officials say that part of the emirates' public relations problem stems from their unwillingness to disclose all but the most basic description of their cooperation with the American military. Worried about appearing too close to Washington, the emirates permit American troops and equipment in their country only under the condition that the United States cannot describe the scale or nature of the American mission, military officials said.

But the Pentagon in recent days has disclosed more details about American bases, apparently to counter the claims about the U.A.E.'s sympathy for terrorists. In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "In everything that we have asked and worked with them on, they have proven to be very, very solid partners."

    U.S. Sees Emirates as Both Ally and, Since 9/11, a Foe, NYT, 23.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/national/23emirates.html

Iran is world's top sponsor of terrorism: Rumsfeld

Sat Feb 4, 2006 8:40 AM ET
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau

MUNICH (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran on Saturday of being the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, a charge that his Iranian counterpart rejected as "ridiculous" and "outrageous".

"The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism," Rumsfeld told an annual security conference in Munich where talk of Iran's nuclear program was at the top of the agenda.

"The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran," he said.

Rumsfeld spoke just before the UN's nuclear watchdog decided to report Iran, which Washington and the European Union fear is covertly developing atomic weapons, to the UN Security Council. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

"We must continue to work together to seek a diplomatic solution to stopping the development of (Iran's) uranium enrichment program," Rumsfeld said.

Enrichment can make fuel for atomic power plants or weapons.

"While we oppose the actions of Iran's regime, we stand with the Iranian people who want a peaceful democratic future. They have no desire to see the country they love isolated from the rest of the civilized world," he said.

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar was quoted by Iranian state television as saying Rumsfeld's comments were "outrageous remarks and a ridiculous projection by the White House leaders."

"Rumsfeld had better try to act responsibly for the disgrace of attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, because the people of the world will never forget the torturing of the prisoners of Abu-Ghraib," he said.

IRAQ IS THE "CENTRAL FRONT"

Although he labeled the Islamic republic of Iran as the main sponsor of terrorism, Rumsfeld said Islamic terrorists had made Iraq the "central front in their war against the civilized world."

Rumsfeld said they were using Iraq as a training and recruiting ground, in the same way as they operated in Afghanistan when the Taliban were in charge.

But he vehemently rejected any suggestion that Iraq had been a catalyst for a global wave of terrorist acts.

"Any argument that Iraq might have been a trigger is inconsistent with the facts," he said, listing a number of terrorist acts that took place even before September 11, 2001.

In addition to the September 11 attacks, which are believed to have been carried out by al Qaeda, Rumsfeld named other attacks which he said Islamic terrorists had masterminded. He mentioned the massacre of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia and bombings in Britain, Spain, Egypt, Israel and elsewhere.

Rumsfeld said that the world needed to prepare itself for a long fight against Islamic terrorists who he said wanted to set up a global Islamic empire.

"They have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire," he said. "As during the Cold War, the struggle ahead promises to be a long war."

Washington and its allies were doing everything possible to ensure that terrorists did not get hold of weapons of mass destruction, which he described as a nightmare scenario.

"The world would change overnight if a handful of terrorists managed to obtain and launch a chemical, biological, or radiological weapon," he said.

(Additional reporting by Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran)

    Iran is world's top sponsor of terrorism: Rumsfeld, R, 4.2.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-02-04T133957Z_01_L0461714_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-RUMSFELD.xml

U.S. Says It Also Finds Cartoons of Muhammad Offensive

February 4, 2006
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY and IAN FISHER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Muslim world erupted in anger on Friday over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Europe while the Bush administration offered the protesters support, saying of the cartoons, "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive."

Streets in the Palestinian regions and in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia were filled with demonstrators calling for boycotts of European goods and burning the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared.

While a huge rally in the Gaza Strip was peaceful — and many leaders warned against violence — some of the oratory was not.

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," one preacher at Al Omari mosque in Gaza told worshipers during Friday Prayer, according to Reuters. Other demonstrators called for amputating the hands of the cartoonists who drew the pictures.

Many Muslims consider it blasphemy to print any image of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, let alone a cartoon that ridicules him.

The set of a dozen cartoons has outraged Muslims as being provocative and anti-Muslim, while many Europeans have defended their publication under the right to free speech.

One cartoon depicts Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb. Another shows him at the gates of heaven, arms raised, saying to men who seem to be suicide bombers, "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins." A third has devil's horns emerging from his turban. A fourth shows two women who are entirely veiled, with only their eyes showing, and the prophet standing between them with a strip of black cloth covering his eyes, preventing him from seeing.

Since being published in Denmark in September, they have been reprinted in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary, as well as in Jordan. They are also on the Internet. Editors at the papers in France and Jordan were fired.

The United States has been trying to improve its image in the Arab world, badly damaged by the Iraq war and American support for Israel.

The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, reading the government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

Still, the United States defended the right of the Danish and French newspapers to publish the cartoons. "We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view," Mr. McCormack added.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan also criticized the publication of the cartoons, but urged Muslims to forgive the offense and "move on."

"I am distressed and concerned by this whole affair," he said. "I share the distress of the Muslim friends, who feel that the cartoon offends their religion. I also respect the right of freedom of speech. But of course freedom of speech is never absolute. It entails responsibility and judgment."

For the Bush administration, talking about the uproar represented a delicate balancing act. A central tenet of the administration's foreign policy is the promotion of democracy and human rights, including free speech, in countries where they are lacking. But a core mission of its public diplomacy is to emphasize respect for Islam in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Major American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, did not publish the caricatures. Representatives said the story could be told effectively without publishing images that many would find offensive.

"Readers were well served by a short story without publishing the cartoon," said Robert Christie, a spokesman for Dow Jones & Company, which owns The Wall Street Journal. "We didn't want to publish anything that can be perceived as inflammatory to our readers' culture when it didn't add anything to the story."

In a midafternoon meeting on Friday, editors at The Chicago Tribune discussed the issue but decided against publishing the cartoons. "We can communicate to our readers what this is about without running it," said James O'Shea, the paper's managing editor.

Most television news executives made similar decisions. On Friday CNN ran a disguised version of a cartoon, and on an NBC News program on Thursday, the camera shot depicted only a fragment of the full cartoon. CBS banned the broadcast of the cartoons across the network, said Kelli Edwards, a spokeswoman for CBS News.

Only ABC showed a cartoon in its entirety, lingering over the image for several seconds during Thursday's evening news broadcast and on "Nightline." "We felt you couldn't really explain to the audience what the controversy was without showing what the controversy was," said Jeffrey Schneider, a spokesman.

In France, where rioting broke out last year among its sizable Muslim population, President Jacques Chirac released a statement on Friday defending free speech but also appealing "to all to show the greatest spirit of responsibility, of respect and of good measure to avoid anything that could hurt other people's beliefs."

In Gaza, a pamphlet released by gunmen at the European Union office threatened harm to "churches."

Hamas leaders, showing how their role has changed since their election success last week, quickly and publicly reacted to calm fears of Gaza's small Christian population, only 3,000 people. On Thursday a top Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, visited the only Catholic church in Gaza to condemn any threats against Christians.

"He said he is protecting us not because he is Hamas," said the Rev. Manuel Musallam of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, who said he has long and friendly relations with Hamas. "But he is protecting Christians and our institutions as the state of Palestine and as a government."

    U.S. Says It Also Finds Cartoons of Muhammad Offensive, NYT, 4.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/politics/04mideast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength

January 30, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

LONDON, Jan. 29 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that the United States had failed to understand the depth of hostility among Palestinians toward their longtime leaders. The hostility led to an election victory by the militant group Hamas that has reduced to tatters crucial assumptions underlying American policies and hopes in the Middle East.

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."

Immediately after the election, Bush administration officials said the results reflected a Palestinian desire for change and not necessarily an embrace of Hamas, which the United States, Israel and the European Union consider a terrorist organization sworn to Israel's destruction. But Ms. Rice's comments seemed to reflect a certain second-guessing over how the administration had failed to foresee, or factor into its thinking, the possibility of a Hamas victory.

Indeed, Hamas's victory has set off a debate whether the administration was so wedded to its belief in democracy that it could not see the dangers of holding elections in regions where Islamist groups were strong and democratic institutions weak.

"There is a lot of blame to go around," said Martin Indyk, a top Middle East negotiator in the Clinton administration, referring to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his Fatah party. "But on the American side, the conceptual failure that contributed to disaster was the president's belief that democracy and elections solve everything."

Ms. Rice pointed out that the election results surprised just about everyone. "I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas's strong showing," she said on her way to London for meetings on the Middle East, Iran and other matters. "Some say that Hamas itself was caught off guard by its strong showing."

With increasing vehemence in the last few days, administration officials have defended their decision to back Mr. Abbas with American aid and to rebuff Israel when it warned that the election should not be held as long as Hamas participated while refusing to lay down its arms. Those officials continue to lay most of the blame on Mr. Abbas for not offering a positive alternative to Hamas.

American officials say they were never comfortable with Mr. Abbas's decision that the elections be held without the disarmament of Hamas, but they went along with it because there was no alternative. One official recounted how President Bush had personally but unsuccessfully appealed to Mr. Abbas at the White House last October to disarm Hamas before the elections.

"The fact is, Abu Mazen wouldn't do it," said the official, referring to Mr. Abbas. "He said he wouldn't do it, because he said he couldn't do it."

What Mr. Abbas instead offered at the White House was a plan to avoid a civil war among Palestinians by winning the election and only then disarming Hamas and folding it into the mainstream. The administration resolved, in turn, to support Mr. Abbas's political party with whatever diplomacy or resources it could.

Even while acknowledging the failure to foresee a Hamas victory, Ms. Rice said the American decisions were basically correct. Contrary to some reports that even Mr. Abbas wanted the elections delayed, she said a postponement was neither possible nor desirable.

"Our constant discussions with Abu Mazen suggested that he wanted to go ahead with the elections and go ahead with them on time," Ms. Rice said. "We had to support that. I just don't understand the argument that somehow it would have gotten better the longer it went on."

At another point, she said: "You ask yourself, Are you going to support a policy of denying the Palestinians elections that had been promised to them at a certain point in time because people were fearful of the outcome?"

Others noted that the Palestinian elections had been postponed once already, from last summer to January, to give Mr. Abbas and Fatah time to capitalize on the pullout of Israeli settlers from Gaza in August.

To help Mr. Abbas, the United States and its European partners mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for the Palestinians to meet their payrolls, field their security forces, make welfare payments and build infrastructure.

The total outside assistance to the Palestinians runs to more than $1 billion a year. Now Ms. Rice will meet in London on Monday with top officials of Europe, the United Nations and Russia to call on Hamas to abandon its vow to destroy Israel and to disarm and negotiate a two-state solution in the Middle East, or risk having this aid cut off.

"You've got to hedge against the risk that elections are going to lead to precisely this result," said Mr. Indyk, the former Middle East negotiator. "The hedge is to build civil society and democratic institutions first. But this administration doesn't listen to that."

Many experts blame the Palestinians for most of their problems, particularly the corruption and mismanagement in Mr. Abbas's Fatah organization. Hamas, by contrast, capitalized on its image of integrity and its record of delivering services.

Mr. Abbas is widely described as bitter that he failed to strengthen his hand by getting American help in persuading Israel to curb settlement growth, release prisoners and lift the checkpoints and roadblocks choking off livelihoods in the West Bank. By all accounts, Mr. Abbas's frustration with the administration on this score was met with frustration on the American side that he was not doing enough to crack down on violence and root out corruption.

The administration was also under pressure from Europeans to try to coax Hamas into the mainstream, and it did not want to rebuff their advice at a time when it was trying to work closely with the Europeans on isolating Iran.

Administration officials said that even in the analysis of Israelis, Hamas's behavior in accepting a period of "calm" in the last year — ceasing its attacks on Israeli civilians — meant that it was willing to break with other groups like Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israeli and American officials felt that such a trend was to be encouraged.

As for Mr. Abbas's position on disarming Hamas after the elections, an administration official said: "Our sense was that there was a certain logic to his presentation, and we did not see that we could force an alternative on him. But we were also skeptical."

The administration then immediately began working with European and other allies to set up "normative standards" for any group participating in the political process. Those standards are to be the focus of the talks in London, with the financing cutoff an implicit threat to Hamas. But a cutoff could force Hamas to turn to other sources, like Iran, for help.

Ms. Rice told reporters that she was convinced of the wisdom of instilling democracy in the Middle East. Elections have brought into office anti-American Islamic radicals in Egypt, Lebanon and Iran, but Ms. Rice said the alternative was trying to bottle up seething anger in the region that could lead to more terrorist attacks in the West.

"There is a huge transition going on in the Middle East, as a whole and in its parts," she said. "The outcomes that we're seeing in any number of places, I will be the first to say, have a sense of unpredictability about them. That's the nature of big historic change. It's simply the way it is."

    Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength, NYT, 30.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/international/middleeast/30diplo.html?hp&ex=1138683600&en=625ad2aaabc7e54d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Antiwar Campaigner Speaks on Chávez Broadcast

January 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times


CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 29 (Reuters) — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela joined Cindy Sheehan, the American antiwar activist, on Sunday to attack President Bush and promised to support her protest against the Iraq war.

Mr. Chávez has become a voice for many opponents of the Bush administration's policies who are drawn to his self-styled socialist revolution and his close alliance with the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

"Enough of imperialist aggression; we must tell the world: down with the U.S. empire," Mr. Chávez said as he hugged Ms. Sheehan, whose son died in the Iraq war, and the widow of the Puerto Rican independence advocate Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who was killed in a gunfight with the police last year.

"We have to bury imperialism this century," Mr. Chávez told her on his Sunday television broadcast. "Cindy, we are with you in your fight."

American relations with Venezuela have become increasingly antagonistic as Mr. Chávez campaigns against Bush administration policies in South America and as Washington portrays him as an antidemocratic threat to regional stability.

Ms. Sheehan was the latest American activist to appear on Mr. Chávez's Sunday program, where he discusses topics ranging from baseball and his life in the army to Venezuelan history and oil prices. Ms. Sheehan said she agreed with Harry Belafonte, the singer and activist, who recently called Mr. Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Mr. Chávez's show.

"The war in Iraq will end, our troops will come home, Bush will be impeached and he will be brought to justice," said Ms. Sheehan, who held a vigil outside Mr. Bush's Texas ranch after her son was killed.

Ms. Sheehan was in Caracas for the sixth World Social Forum, where nearly 60,000 people met to protest American foreign policy and debate ideas from land reform for the poor to fair trade and indigenous rights. The forum began in 2001 in Brazil as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

    Antiwar Campaigner Speaks on Chávez Broadcast, NYT, 30.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/international/americas/30venezuela.html

Democracy Undone

Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos

January 29, 2006
The New York Times
By WALT BOGDANICH and JENNY NORDBERG

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As his plane lifted off the runway here in August 2003, Brian Dean Curran rewound his last, bleak days as the American ambassador in this tormented land.

Haiti, Mr. Curran feared, was headed toward a cataclysm, another violent uncoupling of its once jubilant embrace of democracy more than a decade before. He had come here hoping to help that tenuous democracy grow. Now he was leaving in anger and foreboding.

Seven months later, an accused death squad leader helped armed rebels topple the president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti, never a model of stability, soon dissolved into a state so lawless it stunned even those who had pushed for the removal of Mr. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who rose to power as the champion and hero of Haiti's poor.

Today, the capital, Port-au-Prince, is virtually paralyzed by kidnappings, spreading panic among rich and poor alike. Corrupt police officers in uniform have assassinated people on the streets in the light of day. The chaos is so extreme and the interim government so dysfunctional that voting to elect a new one has already been delayed four times. The latest date is Feb. 7.

Yet even as Haiti prepares to pick its first elected president since the rebellion two years ago, questions linger about the circumstances of Mr. Aristide's ouster — and especially why the Bush administration, which has made building democracy a centerpiece of its foreign policy in Iraq and around the world, did not do more to preserve it so close to its shores.

The Bush administration has said that while Mr. Aristide was deeply flawed, its policy was always to work with him as Haiti's democratically elected leader.

But the administration's actions in Haiti did not always match its words. Interviews and a review of government documents show that a democracy-building group close to the White House, and financed by American taxpayers, undercut the official United States policy and the ambassador assigned to carry it out.

As a result, the United States spoke with two sometimes contradictory voices in a country where its words carry enormous weight. That mixed message, the former American ambassador said, made efforts to foster political peace "immeasurably more difficult." Without a political agreement, a weak government was destabilized further, leaving it vulnerable to the rebels.

Mr. Curran accused the democracy-building group, the International Republican Institute, of trying to undermine the reconciliation process after disputed 2000 Senate elections threw Haiti into a violent political crisis. The group's leader in Haiti, Stanley Lucas, an avowed Aristide opponent from the Haitian elite, counseled the opposition to stand firm, and not work with Mr. Aristide, as a way to cripple his government and drive him from power, said Mr. Curran, whose account is supported in crucial parts by other diplomats and opposition figures. Many of these people spoke publicly about the events for the first time.

Mr. Curran, a 30-year Foreign Service veteran and a Clinton appointee retained by President Bush, also accused Mr. Lucas of telling the opposition that he, not the ambassador, represented the Bush administration's true intentions.

Records show that Mr. Curran warned his bosses in Washington that Mr. Lucas's behavior was contrary to American policy and "risked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government." Yet when he asked for tighter controls over the I.R.I. in the summer of 2002, he hit a roadblock after high officials in the State Department and National Security Council expressed support for the pro-democracy group, an American aid official wrote at the time.

The International Republican Institute is one of several prominent nonprofit groups that receive federal funds to help countries develop the mechanisms of democracy, like campaigning and election monitoring. Of all the groups, though, the I.R.I. is closest to the administration. President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration's democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Last spring, at an I.R.I. fund-raiser, Mr. Bush called democracy-building "a growth industry."

These groups walk a fine line. Under federal guidelines, they are supposed to nurture democracy in a nonpartisan way, lest they be accused of meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations. But in Haiti, according to diplomats, Mr. Lucas actively worked against President Aristide.

Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state at the time, said that the American policy in Haiti was what Mr. Curran believed it to be, and that the United States stood by Mr. Aristide until the last few days of his presidency.

But in a recent interview, Otto J. Reich, who served under Mr. Powell as the State Department's top official on Latin America, said that a subtle shift in policy away from Mr. Aristide had taken place after Mr. Bush became president — as Mr. Curran and others had suspected.

"There was a change in policy that was perhaps not well perceived by some people in the embassy," Mr. Reich said, referring to Mr. Curran. "We wanted to change, to give the Haitians an opportunity to choose a democratic leader," said Mr. Reich, one of a group of newly ascendant policy makers who feared the rise of leftist governments in Latin America.

Told of that statement, Mr. Curran said, "That Reich would admit that a different policy was in effect totally vindicates my suspicions, as well as confirms what an amateur crowd was in charge in Washington."

Bridging the divide between Mr. Aristide and his opponents would have been difficult in even the best of circumstances. But what emerges from the events in Haiti is a portrait of how the effort to nurture democracy became entangled in the ideological wars and partisan rivalries of Washington.

"What you had was the constant undermining of the credibility of the negotiators," said Luigi R. Einaudi, a respected veteran diplomat who led the international effort to find a political settlement on behalf of the Organization of American States.

The I.R.I. did not permit The New York Times to interview Mr. Lucas, but in a response to written questions, he denied trying to undermine American policy. "I never told the opposition not to negotiate," Mr. Lucas said in an e-mail message.

Georges A. Fauriol, the I.R.I.'s senior vice president, said that his group faithfully tried to represent "the ideals of the American democratic system," and that he personally pressed the opposition to compromise. Mr. Fauriol blamed "innuendos and political interests" for the complaints of Mr. Curran and others. He also said Mr. Curran never gave him the specifics that he needed to act against Mr. Lucas, whom he called "one of our best political party trainers."

In Haiti, Mr. Lucas's partisan activities were well known. Evans Paul, a leader of the anti-Aristide movement and now a presidential candidate, said Mr. Lucas's stand against negotiating was "a bit too harsh" even for some in the opposition.

Jean-Max Bellerive, an official in three Haitian administrations, including Mr. Aristide's, added, "He said there was a big plan for Haiti that came from Washington, that Aristide would not finish his mandate." As for the ambassador, Mr. Bellerive said, "he told me that Curran was of no importance, that he did not fit in the big picture."

Micha Gaillard, a former spokesman for the main anti-Aristide coalition, the Democratic Convergence, said Mr. Lucas went so far as to act as its representative in Washington.

With Washington's approval, Mr. Lucas used taxpayer money to fly hundreds of opposition members — but no one from Mr. Aristide's Lavalas party — to a hotel in the Dominican Republic for political training that began in late 2002. Two leaders of the armed rebellion told The Times that they were in the same hotel during some of those meetings, but did not attend.

The I.R.I. said the sessions were held outside Haiti because Lavalas had physically threatened its staff, including Mr. Lucas. But another American democracy-building group, the National Democratic Institute, said it was able to work successfully with Mr. Aristide's party in Haiti.

Mr. Curran left Haiti in August 2003 for a new assignment, and by fall, Mr. Aristide's political opponents had decided there was little point in negotiating. Still, there was one last hope. Mr. Einaudi persuaded some opposition leaders to meet with Mr. Aristide at the home of the new American ambassador, James B. Foley. But while the president was prepared to give up much of his power, Mr. Einaudi said, American officials "pulled the rug out," abruptly canceling the meeting without consulting him.

Several months later, the rebels marched on Port-au-Prince and Mr. Aristide left Haiti on a plane provided by the American government. Since then, Haiti has become even more chaotic, said Marc L. Bazin, an elder statesman of Haitian politics.

"I was suspicious that it would not be good," Mr. Bazin said. "But that bad — no."

Added Mr. Einaudi, "Building democracy in Haiti now is going to take a very long time."

A Voice for the Poor

After two centuries of foreign occupiers, dictators, generals, a self-appointed president for life and the overthrow of more than 30 governments, Haitians finally had the chance in 1990 to elect the leader they wanted. The people chose Mr. Aristide, a priest who had been expelled from his Roman Catholic order for his fiery orations of liberation theology.

"He was espousing change in Haiti, fundamental populist change," said Robert Maguire, a Haiti scholar who has criticized American policy as insufficiently concerned with Haiti's poor. "Right away, he was viewed as a threat by very powerful forces in Haiti."

President Aristide promised not only to give voice to the poor in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, but also to raise the minimum wage and force businesses to pay taxes. He rallied supporters with heated attacks on the United States, a tacit supporter of past dictatorships and a major influence in Haitian affairs since the Marines occupied the country from 1915 to 1934.

"He wasn't going to be beholden to the United States, and so he was going to be trouble," said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, a Democratic critic of Bush administration policy on Latin America. "We had interests and ties with some of the very strong financial interests in the country, and Aristide was threatening them." Those interests, mostly in the textile and electronic assembly businesses, sold many of their products cheap to the United States.

When the Haitian military, with the support of the business elite, overthrew Mr. Aristide after just shy of eight months in office, the administration of George H. W. Bush criticized the loss of Haiti's first democracy, but did not intervene militarily.

Raymond A. Joseph, the current interim government's ambassador to the United States, recalls a speech that Mr. Aristide gave in September 1991. "That's the speech," Mr. Joseph said, "that triggered the coup d'état against him, where he said, 'Whenever you feel the heat under your feet, turn your eyes to the mountains where the wealthy are, they're responsible for you. Go give them what they deserve.' "

After the coup came repression. In the first two years, the United States Coast Guard intercepted 41,000 Haitians at sea. Pressured by the Congressional Black Caucus, President Bill Clinton sent troops to help restore Mr. Aristide to power in 1994.

Mr. Aristide quickly disbanded the country's most powerful institution — the military. It did not help that Mr. Aristide — and for that matter, Haiti — had little experience with the give and take of democracy.

"He was not trained to be a politician, he was trained to be a priest," Mr. Einaudi said. "So that when he got involved heavily in politics, he didn't know very much about the games politicians play."

Mr. Aristide returned with only one year left in his term, and because the Haitian Constitution barred him from consecutive terms, his ally René Préval was voted into office.

But the international community believed that Mr. Aristide remained a real power, and it had grown frustrated with the government's shortcomings. That frustration built to the parliamentary elections of 2000. Mr. Aristide's party declared victory in 18 of 19 Senate races, even though international observers said runoffs were required in 8 of them because no one had won a clear majority. Angry Lavalas opponents, in turn, boycotted presidential elections in November; Mr. Aristide won overwhelmingly.

Tensions rose further as international lenders withheld aid from the Aristide government. "We could not deliver any goods, services to the people," said Leslie Voltaire, a former minister under Mr. Aristide.

Even Mr. Bazin, a former World Bank official who ran against Mr. Aristide in 1990, criticized the cutoff. "The poorer you are, the less democratic you are," he said.

Indeed, the combination of a strengthening opposition, a weaker government and an attempted coup drove Mr. Aristide deeper into the arms of his most fervent supporters in the slums. "The urban gangs received money, logistical support and weapons from the national police because the government saw them as a bulwark against a coup," the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution organization that studies Haiti and other trouble spots, said in a 2005 report.

When some Aristide supporters engaged in criminal acts, including killings and drug trafficking, the president was often unwilling or unable to stop them. That eroded his popular support.

A simple dispute over a handful of Senate seats had now morphed into a showdown over the very legitimacy of Mr. Aristide's presidency.

It was in these months that two ingredients were added to the roiling Haitian stew: a new American ambassador, Brian Dean Curran, arrived in Port-au-Prince and a Republican administration was inaugurated in Washington.

An Ambassador's Mission

Mr. Curran began his assignment at the start of 2001. To understand the country better, he made a point of learning Creole, the language of the poor, even though diplomats and the ruling elite conversed in French.

"He was amazing to watch," one former government official said. "He would walk in a classroom with Haitian children and take over from the teacher."

Mr. Curran said he wanted to believe in Mr. Aristide but slowly became disillusioned. "I had many conversations with him about the police, about human rights abuses," Mr. Curran said. "And in the end, he disappointed me."

Even so, Mr. Curran said, his mission was clear. "The promotion of democracy was at the very heart of what I was doing in Haiti," he said. Clear, too, was how to go about that: supporting Mr. Aristide's right to office while working to foster a compromise. "That was the officially stated policy," Mr. Curran said. "Those were my instructions."

Mr. Curran was supposed to have help from the I.R.I., which had been active in Haiti since 1990. Along with the National Democratic Institute, the I.R.I. was formed in the early 1980's after President Ronald Reagan called on Americans to fight totalitarianism.

Its board includes Republican foreign-policy heavyweights and lobbyists, and its chairman is Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who did not answer requests for an interview. The group's financing comes from the Agency for International Development, as well as the State Department, foundations and corporations like Halliburton and Chevron.

More than its sister group, the International Republican Institute tends to work in countries "it views as being strategically important to U.S. national foreign policy interests," according to a 1999 report by the international development agency.

The I.R.I.'s Republican affiliations did not go unnoticed on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Graffiti condemning the I.R.I. had been showing up for some time, the work of Aristide supporters. "I think they distrusted I.R.I. as an organization because they were affiliated with the Republican Party, and Lavalas just felt the Republican Party was out to get them," said David Adams, a former A.I.D. mission director in Haiti.

And there was one more reason, he said: Stanley Lucas, the I.R.I.'s leader in Haiti.

Mr. Lucas, who said he grew up in the United States and Haiti and worked as a part-time Haitian civil servant, came from a land-owning family. That background, along with his politics, "sends a very provocative message, I think, to those supporting Aristide," said Mr. Maguire, who runs the international affairs program at Trinity University in Washington. Mr. Lucas joined the I.R.I. in 1993 and took over its Haiti program five years later.

With his good looks, sociability and fluency in Creole, French and English, he moved easily between Port-au-Prince and Capitol Hill. "He's the Denzel Washington of Haiti," one A.I.D. official said. That he was a karate champion only added to his aura.

The anti-Aristide message had currency around Washington. Mr. Einaudi, the veteran diplomat, recalled attending the I.R.I.'s 2001 fund-raising dinner and being surrounded by a half-dozen Haitian businessmen sounding a common cry: "We were foolish to think that we could do anything with Aristide. That it was impossible to negotiate with him. That it was necessary to get rid of him."

A year later, the I.R.I. created a stir when it issued a press release praising the attempted overthrow of Hugo Chávez, the elected president of Venezuela and a confrontational populist, who, like Mr. Aristide, was seen as a threat by some in Washington. The institute has since told The Times that praising the attempted coup was wrong.

Mr. Lucas had been to Venezuela seven times for the I.R.I., but he was not there at the time of the coup. Instead, he was focusing on Haiti, where his work was creating another stir for the institute.

No Negotiations, No Compromise

In early 2002, Mr. Curran said, he began receiving troubling reports about Mr. Lucas. As he urged the opposition in Haiti "to show flexibility," the ambassador said, Mr. Lucas was sending the opposite instructions: "Hang tough. Don't compromise. In the end, we'll get rid of Aristide."

As his concern mounted, Mr. Curran asked that Mr. Lucas be removed from the I.R.I.'s Haiti program. The institute resisted.

Mr. Fauriol, the institute's senior vice president, said Mr. Curran had not been forthcoming with information about Mr. Lucas. "Specifics we've never been given," he said, adding that Mr. Lucas's critics probably did not know him very well.

"We don't have any questions about the quality of his work," Mr. Fauriol said. "There is something of a cottage industry that's sort of built around what he has or hasn't done, perceptions, rumors, whisperings. And it has sort of created a profile of an individual that is, shall we say, greatly exaggerated — simply not true."

Mr. Curran countered that he had ample witnesses to Mr. Lucas's behavior. And opposition leaders said in interviews that Mr. Lucas had actively opposed a political settlement.

"Mr. Lucas was of the opinion negotiations would be a bad idea; I was of the opinion we should have negotiated to show our good faith," said Mr. Paul, a former mayor of Port-au-Prince, who nonetheless praised Mr. Lucas's support for the opposition against Mr. Aristide.

Mr. Gaillard, the former spokesman for the Democratic Convergence, the main anti-Aristide coalition, said he also did not like that Mr. Lucas was acting as the Haitian opposition's representative in Washington. "That really disturbed us, because we didn't know exactly what he was saying," he said.

Mr. Bazin added that Mr. Lucas "was prepared to act aggressively to get Aristide out of power."

Mr. Einaudi said he found Mr. Lucas's role disturbing.

"Stanley Lucas is a very bright man, very able man," he said. But, he said, "I thought it was a mistake the way Dean Curran did, I think, that he should become the person in charge of I.R.I.'s policies and activities."

At the A.I.D. office in Port-au-Prince, the agency's director, Mr. Adams, said he found Mr. Lucas difficult to deal with.

"When Stanley tells you something, it's kind of hard to know exactly what the kernel of truth is," Mr. Adams said.

With the I.R.I. standing behind Mr. Lucas, Mr. Curran complained to his superiors in Washington — through cables, e-mail messages and, he said, in meetings.

In a July 2002 cable, he wrote: "I continue to have grave misgivings about the participation of an individual whose questionable behavior could be to the detriment of U.S. interests. The USAID director shares my concerns."

Mr. Curran also cautioned that Mr. Lucas's continued participation "will, at best, lead to confusion as to U.S. policy objectives, which continue to eschew unconstitutional acts and favor negotiations and, at worst, contribute to political destabilization in Haiti."

The Old Policy Makers Return

Mr. Curran sent his cables to the Bush administration's Latin American policy team, records show. In addition to Mr. Reich, then assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, that group included Elliott L. Abrams, a special assistant to the president and senior director for democracy and human rights, and Daniel W. Fisk, a deputy to Mr. Reich.

These men were veteran fighters against the spread of leftist political ideology in Latin America, beginning with Fidel Castro and Cuba. Mr. Fisk's former boss, Jesse Helms, then a Republican senator from North Carolina, had once called Mr. Aristide a "psychopath," based on a C.I.A. report about his mental condition that turned out to be false.

In the 1980's, Mr. Reich and Mr. Abrams had become ensnared in investigations of Reagan administration activities opposing the socialist government of Nicaragua. The comptroller general determined in 1987 that a public diplomacy office run by the Cuban-born Mr. Reich had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities." In 1991, Mr. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in connection with the Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned by the first President Bush.

Now, with the advent of the second Bush administration, Mr. Reich, Mr. Abrams and their colleagues were back in power. The Clinton era, they felt, had been a bad one for United States interests in Latin America.

"The United States had squandered a good deal of its credibility by its support for Aristide during the Clinton years," said Roger F. Noriega, a former senior Helms aide who replaced Mr. Reich at the State Department in 2003. "We essentially held his coat while stuffing millions of dollars in it while he terrorized the opposition."

At the time of Mr. Curran's complaints, the I.R.I.'s current president, Mr. Craner, was running the State Department's democracy and human rights program. He questioned the charges leveled by Mr. Curran, who goes by his middle name, Dean.

"I'm curious about why Dean has a very different opinion of Stanley from his bosses," Mr. Craner said. He added that neither Mr. Noriega nor Mr. Reich had come to him or the institute and complained, and he urged The Times to call them.

Mr. Noriega said Mr. Curran had not worked for him, but offered that he had seen no evidence of misconduct by the I.R.I. Mr. Reich was more specific about Mr. Curran.

"He never expressed any problems with Stanley Lucas to me, and I was his boss," Mr. Reich said. Asked why his name showed up on cables as having received Mr. Curran's complaints, and why Mr. Curran's cables detailed discussions with him, Mr. Reich replied: "I have absolutely no recollection of that. I'm not questioning it, I just have no recollection of that."

Mr. Reich said he could not understand why Mr. Curran would focus on "some low-level bureaucrat" at the I.R.I. rather than the misconduct of Mr. Aristide. That, he asserted, was why the United States had gradually backed away from Mr. Aristide. "The crime is the Clinton administration supported him as long as it did," Mr. Reich said.

Mr. Curran said it was "a patent lie" that he had never complained to Mr. Reich.

Records show that in the summer of 2002, Mr. Curran sought tighter control over the I.R.I. before signing off on a politically delicate program that Mr. Lucas had organized in the Dominican Republic to teach the opposition the art of campaigning.

Washington officials opposed Mr. Curran's request. Not only was there pressure from Congress, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Adams of A.I.D., but "there were senior State/N.S.C. officials who were sympathetic to I.R.I.'s position as well."

Mr. Curran did secure several concessions suggested by Mr. Reich, including that Mr. Lucas would be barred from participating in the program for 120 days and would be dismissed from the I.R.I.'s Haiti program if he misbehaved, records show. Even so, Mr. Curran thought the grant was a bad idea if Mr. Lucas remained involved.

The Training Next Door

Haiti has had a long, tense relationship with the Dominican Republic, its more affluent neighbor on the island of Hispaniola. Haitians who work there are often mistreated, human rights groups say, and the country has been a haven for those accused of trying to overthrow Haitian governments.

In December 2002, the I.R.I. began training Haitian political parties there, at the Hotel Santo Domingo, owned by the Fanjul family, which fled Cuba under Mr. Castro and now runs a giant sugar-cane business.

The training was unusual for more than its location: only Mr. Aristide's opponents, not members of his party, were invited.

Institute officials said this was because the opposition parties were less powerful and needed more help. The goal, Mr. Fauriol said, "was to broaden, if you will, the ability of various actors to participate in the political process."

They also said they were not required to work with Lavalas because its members condoned violence and the institute's workers were threatened, which was why the meetings were held outside Haiti. And they pointed out that no American officials had objected to excluding Lavalas.

There were perhaps a dozen sessions, spread over a year, the institute said. Hundreds of opposition members came.

"The training programs were really run-of-the-mill political party programs," Mr. Fauriol said. To the Dominican ambassador who issued the travelers' visas in Haiti, though, the meetings "clearly conveyed a confrontation, not a dialogue."

"For the opposition, it was interesting to know that the American government, or people from the American government, supported and validated its politics," the former ambassador, Alberto Despradel, said last fall at the Hotel Santo Domingo.

Among the trainers brought in was Brian Berry, who worked on George W. Bush's 1994 primary campaign for Texas governor.

Mr. Berry had an interest in the Caribbean. He said he had a small bag of sand from the Bay of Pigs; he said he looked forward to returning it to "a free Cuba beach" when Mr. Castro was gone. Mr. Berry said he volunteered for I.R.I., to further the cause of democracy.

Mr. Bazin, a moderate Aristide opponent, sent representatives to the Hotel Santo Domingo. They came away believing that more was going on than routine political training.

"The report I got from my people was that there were two meetings — open meetings where democracy would be discussed and closed meetings where other things would be discussed, and we are not invited to the other meetings," said Mr. Bazin, who is now running for president as the candidate of a faction of Lavalas.

Mr. Bazin said people who had attended the closed meetings told him that "there are things you don't know" — that Mr. Aristide would ultimately be removed and that he should stop calling for compromise.

Afterward, he said, he spoke with Mr. Curran. "I asked him, "How many policies do they have in the U.S.?' " Mr. Bazin said.

Mr. Lucas said Mr. Bazin's comments should be viewed in light of his alliance with some former Aristide supporters. And Mr. Fauriol denied that secret meetings had occurred. Also, A.I.D.'s inspector general said in a 2004 report that the training sessions did not violate government regulations.

But by attending the first training session, Mr. Lucas violated his 120-day prohibition.

Mr. Curran sent a blistering message to Washington. "I.R.I. has set us on a collision course today," he wrote, adding, "I am afraid this episode brings into question the good faith of I.R.I. in promising to control Stanley's renegade activities of the past."

He asked that the institute's program be canceled or Mr. Lucas dismissed. Neither happened.

Mr. Fauriol apologized, attributing the violation to a simple misunderstanding of when the exclusion period began. Besides, one American official said, Mr. Lucas had only a minor role in the meetings.

To Mr. Curran, however, any involvement was a problem. "How can we control what is said in private conversations?" he wrote to Washington, "Or what is conveyed by winks and nods?"

It turns out there was another matter, one that federal officials apparently did not know about: two leaders of the armed rebels told The Times they were spending time at the Hotel Santo Domingo while the training was under way.

Guy Philippe, a former police commander who had fled Haiti after two failed coup attempts, said in an interview that he had seen Mr. Lucas at the hotel.

"I was living in the hotel, sleeping in the hotel," Mr. Philippe said. "So I've seen him and his friends and those guys in the opposition, but we didn't talk politics." He said he had not attended any I.R.I. meetings.

Paul Arcelin, an architect of the rebellion, said he, too, had seen Mr. Lucas at the hotel during the training sessions. In an interview there last fall, Mr. Arcelin said, "I used to meet Stanley Lucas here in this hotel, alone, sitting down talking about the future of Haiti." But he said they had not discussed overthrowing Mr. Aristide.

Mr. Lucas said Mr. Arcelin showed up at an I.R.I. meeting and was told to leave. He also disputed Mr. Philippe's account.

Several opposition activists said they wanted nothing to do with the armed rebels. "Participation in our seminars was from a very restricted list of people," Mr. Fauriol said.

The seminars were still under way in September 2003 when the Bush administration sent a new ambassador to Haiti. Mr. Curran wanted to stay longer, Mr. Reich said. But he said Mr. Curran was replaced because "we did not think the ambassador was carrying out the new policy in the way we wanted it carried out."

Mr. Powell disputed that, saying he recalled that Mr. Curran was not removed because of a change in policy, but as part of a normal rotation.

Before leaving, Mr. Curran met with Haitian business leaders. "He made a remarkable speech," Mr. Bazin said, recalling that Mr. Curran admonished them not only for doing things "that are not acceptable, including dealing with drug dealers," but also for listening to people who only pretended to represent United States policy.

Mr. Curran called them "chimères of Washington" — invoking a word commonly used to describe gang members loyal to Mr. Aristide.

"The Haitians, in their marvelous language, which is so full of allusions and metaphor, have created this term for these people — the chimères, the ghosts," Mr. Curran explained. "Because they're there and they do things and they terrify you. And then they fade away."

Time Runs Out

The fall of 2003 was a perilous time for Haiti. In the north, the police fought gun battles with a gang called the Cannibal Army. In the capital, gangs professing loyalty to the Aristide government attacked journalists and protesting university students. Across the Dominican border, the rebels waited for the right moment to attack.

Over four years, Mr. Einaudi, a former acting secretary general of the Organization of American States, had made some 30 trips to Haiti trying to prevent such a moment. Yet he had failed. Mr. Aristide was finally willing to share power, Mr. Einaudi said, but the opposition, emboldened, felt no need to deal with him.

With time running out, Mr. Einaudi hit upon a new approach — one he hoped would take advantage of the arrival of the new American ambassador, Mr. Foley. Mr. Einaudi invited Mr. Aristide and his opponents to meet at the ambassador's home — a clear signal that the United States wanted negotiations, not regime change.

When members of both sides agreed to come, there was a glimmer of hope, Mr. Einaudi said.


Terence A. Todman, a retired American diplomat who also worked in Haiti for the O.A.S, said: "We knew there would be shouting. But at least they were together."

Then, suddenly, it was over. In a move that stunned Mr. Einaudi, the United States canceled the meeting, killing "what was in fact my last move," he said.

His colleague was more blunt. "That blew it," said Mr. Todman, who like Mr. Einaudi was speaking publicly about the scuttled meeting for the first time. "That was the end of any effort to get them together."

Mr. Noriega, who had replaced Mr. Reich at the State Department, said in an interview that the administration called off the meeting after talking to Aristide opponents. It was "going to be a failure for us and wreck our credibility," he said.

Representative Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who monitored Haitian elections in 2000, had a different reaction when told of the canceled meeting.

"If there was a last opportunity and it wasn't acted upon and we did not pursue it, then that would be a stain upon the United States," he said.

The Rebels' Final Push

Several months later, the rebels crossed into Haiti and began their final push. There were perhaps 200 in all, many of them former soldiers in the army Mr. Aristide had disbanded years before. Leading the final assault were Mr. Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain.

Rights groups have identified Mr. Chamblain as the leader of death squads when the military ran Haiti after Mr. Aristide's first ouster in 1991. He had twice been convicted in absentia — for his role in a massacre in Gonaïves in 1994 and in connection with the 1993 killing of an Aristide supporter.

As for Mr. Philippe, Mr. Curran said he was suspected of having had ties to drug traffickers before leaving Haiti after a failed coup attempt.

Mr. Philippe, who is now running for president of Haiti, denies any connection to the drug trade, pointing out that he has never been charged with such a crime.

On Feb. 19, 2004, the rebels attacked the jail in Fort-Liberté, near the border. Without the military to defend the country, the government had to rely on the poorly equipped police, its ranks weakened by corruption. Jacques Édouard, the jail supervisor, said he was forced to release 73 prisoners, including convicted murderers.

Some prisoners joined the rebels, while others took over the city, robbing residents and burning homes until the United Nations arrived a month later, said Andrea Loi Valenzuela, a United Nations worker there.

When rebels reached the city of Cap Haitien on Feb. 22, the police chief, Hugues Gabriel, told his 28 officers to flee. "They had machine guns," he said. "We have little handguns with little ammunition."

In Washington, the Bush administration voiced its official policy. "We cannot buy into a proposition that says the elected president must be forced out of office by thugs and those who do not respect law and are bringing terrible violence to the Haitian people," Secretary of State Powell said.

But when Mr. Aristide asked for international troops, he did not get them.

Mr. Powell said he continued to press for a political settlement to keep Mr. Aristide in office. "We were doing everything we could to support his incumbency," he said in a recent interview. Only in the last days, when Port-au-Prince appeared "on the verge of a serious blood bath," he said, did the United States explore other options. "There comes a point when you have to make a judgment as to whether you should continue to support President Aristide or whether it is better to try another route," he said.

On Feb. 29 — Mr. Philippe's birthday — the United States flew President Aristide to exile in South Africa.

Unanswered Questions

Almost immediately, Congressional Democrats and Caricom, the association of Caribbean nations, called for an independent inquiry into Mr. Aristide's ouster and why Haiti's neighbors had not come to its aid.

"It doesn't add up for the greatest country in the world to be fearful of 200 thugs, my goodness," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

The State Department said there was nothing to investigate. "I think the U.S. role was clear," a spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said at the time, adding, "The focus needs to be on moving forward."

Two years later, there has been no inquiry. Caricom refuses to recognize Haiti's interim government. And questions about Mr. Aristide's fall remain unanswered.

Among them is what the Bush administration knew about the rebels, who plotted in the Dominican Republic, a country friendly to the United States.

Their activities there had not gone unnoticed by Haitian authorities. Edwin M. Paraison, a former Haitian diplomat in the Dominican Republic, said his government contacted authorities there three times to express concern "about subversive actions that were being planned on the Dominican territory." But, he said, little was done.

American officials said they did not take the rebels terribly seriously. "Our sense was that they were not a large force, not a well-trained force, and not in any way a threat to the stability then in Haiti," said Mr. Foley, the American ambassador at the time. "Now that proved to be otherwise."

Mr. Despradel, the former Dominican ambassador, said American authorities had to have known what the rebels were doing.

"Given the intelligence the United States has in place throughout the Caribbean and their advanced technology that lets them hear a mosquito in outer space — I think Guy Philippe is bigger than that," he said.

At a Senate hearing in 2004, Mr. Noriega was asked if he knew of any ties between Mr. Philippe and the I.R.I. — specifically Mr. Lucas — during the training meetings in the Dominican Republic. He said he did not.

"If it were the case, we would certainly stop it," Mr. Noriega said. "We knew who Guy Philippe was and that he had a criminal background."

The inspector general of A.I.D. also said that, based on interviews with American officials and a review of federal records, it found no evidence of contacts between the men during the year or so the sessions were taking place, a view echoed by Mr. Fauriol. "If they occurred, they would have been against any sense of responsibility of the I.R.I. and any guidance from us," he said. "I don't think those meetings occurred."

And in his e-mail response, Mr. Lucas himself said, "To be clear, I do not know Guy Philippe." He added that he might have met him once in the 1990's when Mr. Philippe was a police commander in Port-au-Prince.

Mr. Philippe tells a different story. In interviews with The Times, he called Mr. Lucas "a good friend" whom he has known much of his life. "He used to be my teacher in Ping-Pong," Mr. Philippe said.

Not only did he say he saw Mr. Lucas during the training at the Hotel Santo Domingo; he said he met with him once or twice in 2000 or 2001, while in exile in Ecuador. "He was working for I.R.I.," Mr. Philippe said. "It was not a planned meeting." They did not discuss politics, he said, adding, "It's like someone I knew when I was young."

Mr. Voltaire, the former minister in the Aristide administration, recalled meeting Mr. Lucas at a diplomatic reception in Lima, Peru, in September 2001. He said Mr. Lucas told him he was headed to Ecuador to meet with a small group of former Haitian policemen who had trained there. Mr. Philippe was known to belong to that group.

Mr. Craner, the I.R.I. president, said Mr. Lucas might have been in a bar in Ecuador when Mr. Philippe was present, though Mr. Lucas could not be sure. Mr. Lucas said, "We dug down deep into scenarios where Guy Philippe was potentially present in the room, even if I could not confirm that." He did acknowledge being in Peru during the time frame cited by Mr. Voltaire.

Dashing Hopes for Calm

One day last August, Haiti's interim prime minister, Gérard Latortue, invited a Times reporter into a private cabinet meeting. With his ministers seated around a long wooden table, Mr. Latortue said he wanted to deliver a personal message: Haiti was safe to visit now.

"I really would like people to know now that there is an improvement," said the prime minister, a former Florida businessman and United Nations official. "Go where you want to go and after, report what you have seen — whatever it is." And he added, "We are living in very exceptional times."

Several days later, in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood, uniformed riot police officers swept through a crowd at a soccer match, singling out people to kill — with guns and machetes — outside the stadium. Unable to leave, people screamed and huddled on the ground. An estimated 10 people were killed at the event, which had been financed by the United States to promote peace in the area.

Things have only deteriorated from there. Kidnapping gangs hungry for ransom money have waged an expanding war on the capital. Several months ago, the Haitian police chief, Mario Andrésol, said a quarter of his force was corrupt or tied to the kidnappers. Assassinations, mob violence, torture and arbitrary arrests have created a "catastrophic" human rights problem, a top United Nations official said in October.

After Mr. Aristide left, expressions of hope for a more stable, peaceful Haiti came from Haitian business leaders and officials in other countries, including the United States. "The Bush administration believes that if we all do our part and do it right, Haiti will have the democracy it deserves," Mr. Noriega told the American Enterprise Institute in April 2004.

Those hopes have fallen short at nearly every turn, and for reasons that go beyond Haiti's desperate poverty. The interim government is widely viewed as politicized and inept. The local and international security forces are undermanned and overmatched by the proliferation of guns and drugs. The United States, which sent in troops to help stabilize the country immediately after Mr. Aristide's ouster, pulled them out several months later, even though they command unparalleled respect in Haiti.

Mr. Latortue's government, set up as an unelected caretaker, dashed any hope of reconciliation when the prime minister praised the rebels as "freedom fighters." Then, Mr. Chamblain, the rebel convicted twice in absentia for his role in political killings, was acquitted of one murder in a retrial that rights groups called a sham. His other conviction was dismissed as well.

At the same time, Mr. Aristide's former prime minister, Yvon Neptune, was jailed for a year without charges, prompting an international outcry. Only after a hunger strike left him near death did the government bring murder-related charges. Another prominent Aristide supporter, the Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, has been repeatedly arrested; Amnesty International calls Father Jean-Juste, who has leukemia, "a prisoner of conscience."

Still, the Latortue government cannot be blamed for all Haiti's immediate problems.

Juan Gabriel Valdés, a Chilean who leads the United Nations mission in Haiti, said the country needed 25,000 to 30,000 police officers, more than three times the current number. International aid — $1.08 billion has been pledged — has been slow to arrive in the slums, where violence incubates.

"If Haiti underscored anything it is that security and development must go hand in hand," said Caroline Anstey, director of the World Bank's Caribbean unit. "Better security would have meant faster development results on the ground. Faster development would have contributed to better security."

The United States has played a diminished role since its troops left in mid-2004. It pledged $230 million to Haiti from July 2004 to September 2006, A.I.D. said.

But Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, said the United States pulled its forces out too soon, turning the job over to United Nations peacekeepers while the country was still in the grip of armed conflict.

On Jan. 24, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said United Nations forces "are doing a good job," adding, "I take issue with this idea that somehow the United States has not been deeply involved."

Yet the violence in Haiti, especially the kidnappings, is eating away at society.

A reporter for The Times was with United Nations troops in Bel Air, a Port-au-Prince slum, when they found and freed André Boujour, 41, who said he had been kidnapped two weeks earlier and held in a 10-by-10-foot hut, accessible only by a narrow path through a warren of tightly packed shacks.

Mr. Boujour said he was abducted after delivering several thousand dollars he had raised from friends and family to free his kidnapped sister.

'A Tragedy of Partisanship'

When Mr. Curran and Mr. Einaudi went to Haiti, they said, they believed that working with the elected government, whatever its flaws, would help a young but already sputtering democracy take hold. They said they believed that the people making policy in Washington shared that hope. Then, they said, they ran into something larger.

"Haiti is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy of partisanship and hate and hostility," Mr. Einaudi said. "These were divides among Haitians and they are also divides among Americans, because Haiti came to symbolize within the United States a point of friction between Democrats and Republicans that did not facilitate bipartisanship or stable policy or communication."

Mr. Fauriol said that the I.R.I., too, was frustrated with the interim government. "We've got to deal with reality and the reality is rather imperfect," he said. Even so, he wrote last spring that "Haiti's democratic hopes have been given another chance." The institute's activities in Haiti no longer include Mr. Lucas. He now works for the group's Afghanistan program.

Both Mr. Reich and Mr. Noriega have left the government. Before Mr. Noriega departed, he said America "will continue to be a firm supporter of democracy in Haiti."

Mr. Maguire, the Haiti expert, is skeptical. "I don't see that the U.S. is exporting democracy," he said. "I think it's more exporting a kind of fear, that if we don't do the things the way the U.S. and powerful interests in our country want us to do them, then perhaps we'll be as expendable as Mr. Aristide was."

Mr. Curran has left the Foreign Service and is working for NATO. In the final analysis, Mr. Einaudi said, the former American ambassador was simply no match for the anti-Aristide lobby in Washington.

"The difficulty," Mr. Einaudi said, "is that he took on a battle that he couldn't win."

    Mixed U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos, NYT, 29.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/international/americas/29haiti.html