USA > History > 2010 > Politics > International (III)

Illustration: Otto Dettmer

October 20, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/10/20/opinion/20opedimg.html

Get Tough on Pakistan        NYT        19.10.2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/opinion/20khalilzad.html

Guard Led 3 Americans

Across Iran Border,

Released Hiker Says

October 31, 2010
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

The three American hikers accused of espionage by Iran stepped off an unmarked dirt road — inadvertently crossing from Iraq into the Islamic republic — only because a border guard of unknown nationality gestured for them to approach, the lone hiker to be released said Sunday.

Sarah E. Shourd, a teacher freed in September after nearly 14 months in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, contacted The New York Times to give her fullest public account yet of the capture of the three in July 2009.

Ms. Shourd, 32, said she wanted to correct the gathering false impression, fueled by a classified United States military report made public last week by WikiLeaks, as well as earlier American and British news reports, that the hikers were detained inside Iraq and forced across the border. Her comments came just days before her two fellow hikers, her fiancé, Shane M. Bauer, and their friend Joshua F. Fattal, both 28, are scheduled to go on trial in Iran on Saturday.

On the fateful day, when they approached the armed border guard who had gestured to them, “He pointed to the ground and said ‘Iran’ and pointed to the trail we had been on before he waved to us, then said ‘Iraq,’ ” Ms. Shourd said by telephone from her home in Oakland, Calif. “We did not actually enter Iran until he gestured to us. We were confused and worried and wanted to go back.”

Instead what seemed like a casual encounter mushroomed into a lengthy incarceration and an extended cause of tension in Iranian-American relations.

Besides stating that the three hikers were captured in Iraq, the American military report, by an anonymous official, also said, “The lack of coordination on the part of these hikers, particularly after being forewarned, indicates an intent to agitate and create publicity regarding international policies on Iran.”

Ms. Shourd said that she was mystified by that conclusion. The three had no idea they were near the border and had not been warned about anything, she said. “Those claims are illogical and unsubstantiated. It is ridiculous to claim that mountain climbers would be agitating along a border.”

The United States State Department has never suggested the version published by WikiLeaks, she said, always maintaining that it did not know how their arrest happened.

The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, confirmed that on Sunday. “We don’t know whether they had two feet on one side or the other or one foot on each,” he said. “All we know is Iran has held them far too long.”

Ms. Shourd described what began as a relaxed overnight camping trip, undertaken by three reunited friends from Berkeley happy to escape to the fresh, green Kurdish mountains from the sweltering Syrian plains.

She had been teaching English in Damascus, Syria, where Mr. Bauer was working as a freelance journalist while both studied Arabic. Mr. Fattal came to visit, and they set off to Kurdistan after reading on a Web site that it was safe and listening to a friend rave about the place.

Various Kurds suggested they visit Ahmed Awa, a spectacular mountain waterfall where local people camp overnight. The hikers had no idea it abutted Iran, Ms. Shourd said, and twice encountered Kurdish pesh merga soldiers who greeted them warmly. The music and laughter around scores of campfires at the waterfall gave no sense of imminent danger.

The next day, they trekked up a dirt road past the waterfall. After a lunchtime nap, a soldier with a gun appeared on a ridge above them and gestured for them to keep climbing. He was the first person they saw on the mountain, Ms. Shourd said.

About 500 yards farther up, with no sign to indicate the border, a guard standing by a stone hut gestured for them to approach. A news report that a shot had been fired over their heads was wrong, she said.

At a second, larger structure, according to Ms. Shourd, more guards repeating in Persian, “Mushkil nadereh,” or “no problem,” blocked their attempt to run away and ignored their pleas to return to Iraq. Four days and several moves later they ended up in Evin prison, where Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal remain.

“I think we were extremely unlucky,” said Ms. Shourd, concluding that their one mistake was hiking too far. “I guess I never believed there would be so many hundreds of people close to a border.”

    Guard Led 3 Americans Across Iran Border,
    Released Hiker Says, NYT, 31.10.2010,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/world/
    middleeast/01shourd.html

U.S. Sees Complexity of Bombs

as Link to Qaeda Group

October 30, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — The powerful bombs concealed inside cargo packages and destined for the United States were expertly constructed and unusually sophisticated, American officials said Saturday, further evidence that Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is steadily improving its abilities to strike on American soil.

As investigators on three continents conducted forensic analyses of two bombs shipped from Yemen and intercepted Friday in Britain and Dubai, American officials said evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks.

Yemeni officials on Saturday announced the arrest of a young woman and her mother in connection with the plot, which also may have involved two language schools in Yemen. The two women were not identified, but a defense lawyer who has been in contact with the family, Abdul Rahman Barham, said the daughter was a 22 year-old engineering student at Sana University.

Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, said Saturday night during a news conference that Yemeni security forces had identified her based on a tip from American officials, but he did not indicate her suspected role.

Investigators said that the bomb discovered at the Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates was concealed in a Hewlett-Packard desktop printer, with high explosives packed into a printer cartridge to avoid detection by scanners.

“The wiring of the device indicates that this was done by professionals,” said one official involved in the investigation, who like several officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiry was continuing. “It was set up so that if you scan it, all the printer components would look right.”

The bomb discovered in Britain was also hidden in a printer cartridge.

The terror plot broke publicly in dramatic fashion on Friday morning, when the two packages containing explosives and addressed to synagogues or Jewish community centers in Chicago were found, setting off an international dragnet and fears about packages yet to be discovered. It also led to a tense scene in which American military jets escorted a plane to Kennedy International Airport amid concerns — which turned out to be unfounded — that there might be explosives on board.

On Saturday, in news conferences in London and Yemen, and from interviews with investigators here and abroad, the contours of the investigation began to emerge, along with new details of the frantic hours leading to the discovery of the packages.

American officials said their operating assumption was that the two bombs were the work of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, Al Qaeda in Yemen’s top bomb-maker, whose previous devices have been more rudimentary, and also unsuccessful. Mr. Asiri is believed to have built both the bomb sewn into the underwear of the young Nigerian who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight last Dec. 25, and the suicide bomb that nearly killed Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Mohammed bin Nayef, months earlier. (In the second episode, American officials say, Mr. Asiri hid the explosives in a body cavity of his brother, the suicide bomber.)

Just as in the two previous attacks, the bomb discovered in Dubai contained the explosive PETN, according to the Dubai police and Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security. This new plot, Ms. Napolitano said, had the “hallmarks of Al Qaeda.”

The targets of the bombs remained in question.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said on Saturday that the parcel bomb intercepted in England was designed to explode while the plane was flying. The country’s home secretary, Theresa May, said that British investigators had also concluded the device was “viable and could have exploded.”

“The target may have been an aircraft, and had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down,” she said.

But earlier in the day, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House homeland security intelligence subcommittee, said that federal authorities indicated to him that the packages were probably intended to blow up the Jewish sites in Chicago rather than the cargo planes, since they do not carry passengers.

Based on a conversation with Ms. Napolitano, he said that authorities were also leaving open the possibility that other packages with explosives had not yet been found. On Saturday, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that no specific threats had been made against synagogues or Jewish neighborhoods in the city, but that officers were watching them more closely as a precaution.

It was a call from Mr. bin Nayef, the Saudi intelligence chief, on Thursday evening to John O. Brennan, the White House senior counterterrorism official and former C.I.A. station chief in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that set off the search, according to American officials. They said Mr. bin Nayef also notified C.I.A. officials in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has sometimes been a reluctant ally in America’s global campaign against radical militants. But it sees Yemen, its impoverished next door neighbor, as a different matter. The Saudis consider the Qaeda branch in Yemen its biggest security threat and Saudi intelligence has set up both a web of electronic surveillance and spies to penetrate the organization.

Reviewing the evidence, American intelligence officials say they believe that the plot may have been blessed by the highest levels of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, including Mr. Awlaki.

“We know that Awlaki has taken a very specific interest in plotting against the United States, and we’ve found that he’s usually behind any attempted attack on American targets,” said one official.

Still they cautioned that it was still early to draw any firm conclusions and they did not present proof of Mr. Awlaki’s involvement.

This year, the C.I.A. designated Mr. Awlaki — an American citizen — as a high priority for the agency’s campaign of targeted killing.

According to one official involved in the investigation, the package that was discovered in Dubai had a woman’s name and location in Sana on the return address. The package left Yemen on Thursday, the official said, where it was flown to Doha, Qatar, and on to Dubai.

Also on Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security dispatched a cable warning that the bombs may have been associated with two schools in Yemen — the Yemen American Institute for Languages-Computer Management, and the American Center for Training and Development.

That connection would echo the attempted bombing last Dec. 25; the Nigerian who was implicated had studied at a different Sana language school before training with Al Qaeda. If language schools are again involved, it opens the possibility that a foreign student or students may have participated in the plot.

Security forces in Yemen were in a state of heightened alert on Saturday, as investigators questioned cargo employees and shut down the FedEx and U.P.S. offices in Sana, the Yemeni capital.

Obama administration officials said they were discussing a range of responses to the thwarted attack. The failed attack on Dec. 25 created an opportunity for the White House to press Yemen’s government to take more aggressive action against Qaeda operatives there, and some American officials believe the conditions are similar now.

A thinly veiled campaign of American missile strikes in Yemen this year has achieved mixed results. American officials said that several Qaeda operatives had been killed in the attacks, but there have also been major setbacks, including a strike in May that accidentally killed a deputy governor in a remote province of Yemen. That strike infuriated Yemen’s president, Mr. Saleh, and forced a months-long halt in the American military campaign.

In recent months, the Obama administration has been debating whether to escalate its secret offensive against the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. The C.I.A. has a fraction of the staff in Yemen that it currently has in Pakistan, where the spy agency is running a covert war in the country’s tribal areas, but over the course of the year the C.I.A. has sent more case officers and analysts to Sana as part of a task force with the military’s Joint Special Operations Command.

American officials have been considering sending armed drone aircraft to Yemen to replicate the Pakistan campaign, but such a move would almost certainly require the approval of the mercurial Mr. Saleh.

Yemeni officials have declined to comment on details of the plot, saying only that they are investigating. But new checkpoints appeared in the capital on Saturday, with officers checking the identity cards of drivers and pedestrians.

Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by John F. Burns from London; Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Liz Robbins, Al Baker and Angela Macropoulos from New York.

    U.S. Sees Complexity of Bombs as Link to Qaeda Group, NYT, 30.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/world/31terror.html

Yemen Emerges as Base for Qaeda Attacks on U.S.

October 29, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Not long ago, most Americans had scarcely heard of Yemen, the arid, Texas-size country in the southern corner of the Arabian peninsula.

But on Friday, as news emerged of a plot to send explosives in courier packages from Yemen to synagogues in Chicago, the world’s attention was focused once again on the threats brewing in Yemen’s lawless, strife-torn hinterlands, where American citizens appear to be helping the local branch of Al Qaeda take aim at the United States.

It was the second time in less than a year: on Dec. 25, a Nigerian trained in Yemen tried to detonate a bomb on a commercial flight as it approached Detroit, and Al Qaeda took credit for the attempt. The American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki had been in contact with the would-be bomber, and some analysts believe the latest effort may also be linked to Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who remains in hiding in Yemen and has issued threats by Internet.

In recent months, American intelligence officials have grown increasingly concerned about Yemen, despite a renewed cooperation on counterterrorism with the Yemeni authorities in the past year. Al Qaeda’s regional arm, which went quiet for several months after a series of American airstrikes in Yemen that began last December, has become more active since the spring, and has killed several dozen Yemeni soldiers and police officers.

The group has also stepped up its recruitment drive on the Internet, issuing an English-language magazine that includes articles with titles like “Make a Bomb in Your Mother’s Kitchen.” The most recent issue of the magazine, “Inspire,” was published last month and includes an article by an American citizen named Samir Khan titled “I am Proud to be a Traitor to America.” Mr. Khan, who grew up in North Carolina and New York City, is believed to have joined Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch last year.

One important reason for the rising concern about Yemen is the presence of Americans like Mr. Awlaki and Mr. Khan.

It is not clear how many Americans are working with Al Qaeda in Yemen, a group that is believed to comprise several hundred members, including some from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. The group is mostly based in the lawless provinces to the east of Yemen’s capital, Sana, but has carried out attacks in the capital as well.

“These are people with both access to explosives and knowledge of how the United States works,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University who has written on Yemen. “And in Yemen, you can walk into a local branch of FedEx and mail something to the U.S. You can’t do that in Somalia or in rural Afghanistan.”

Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch, which calls itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, does not consider the United States a key target, intelligence officials and analysts say. The group has tried repeatedly to strike at Saudi Arabia, and says it aims to topple the Yemeni and Saudi governments.

But attacking the United States draws broader publicity, and may be helpful with recruiting. Al Qaeda’s regional arm took credit for a suicide attack on the American Embassy in Sana in September 2008 that left 16 people dead, including the six attackers. There have been other, less deadly attacks on other foreign embassies in Yemen’s capital.

The United States government’s relationship with Yemen has been troubled by mutual suspicion. The country has long been a haven for jihadists, who were welcomed there after returning from fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Yemeni government cracked down on many jihadists, but also maintained relationships with them, paroling some convicted terrorists and cultivating radical clerics. American officials complained; Yemeni officials defended their approach as necessary pragmatism in a country where hard-line Islamist views are common.

Last year American officials showed Yemen’s longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, intelligence reports indicating that Al Qaeda was singling out him and his family members, many of whom hold senior government positions. After that, Mr. Saleh redoubled his commitment to fighting Al Qaeda, and allowed the United States to launch airstrikes on Yemeni terrain.

But Al Qaeda’s presence has also led the United States to vastly increase its military and economic assistance to Yemen, and many Yemeni and American analysts say they fear that Mr. Saleh has a financial interest in maintaining some level of threat in his country.

Another source of concern is the rising chaos of Yemen, which has a fast-growing, desperately poor population of 23 million and is running out of water.

The country’s meager oil reserves, a key source of revenue for the government, are also running dry. The government has limited control outside of major cities, where powerful tribes hold sway and are sometimes willing to shelter Qaeda members. An intermittent rebellion in Yemen’s northwest has created a humanitarian crisis; in the south, a secessionist movement has fostered an increasingly lawless environment where Al Qaeda appears to be flourishing.

Although Al Qaeda has not claimed credit for the packages that were bound for Chicago, this latest episode “is a reminder that we have a serious problem brewing in Yemen, and the current counterterrorism measures have not been able to stop it,” said Gregory Johnsen, an expert on Yemen at Princeton University.

    Yemen Emerges as Base for Qaeda Attacks on U.S., NYT, 29.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/world/middleeast/30yemen.html

Enough Game-Playing

October 29, 2010
The New York Times

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been suspended for four weeks, about as long as they were on. The more protracted the impasse, the harder it will be for the parties to get back to the negotiating table. More delay only plays into the hands of extremists.

Both sides are at fault. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has refused President Obama’s request to extend a moratorium on construction in the Jewish settlements for a modest 60 days. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to negotiate until building in the settlements stops.

We think the burden is on Mr. Netanyahu to get things moving again. The settlements are illegal under international law, and resuming the moratorium, which expired on Sept. 26, will in no way harm Israel’s national interest. But Mr. Abbas also has to recognize that the issue has become a distraction from the main goal of a broader peace deal. The two leaders must not squander this chance.

Back at the table, their first order of business can be setting the borders of the new Palestinian state. Land swaps were always going to be part of a peace deal, and there is little mystery about what the final map would look like. Once the borders are drawn, it will be clear which West Bank settlements would belong to Israel, and Israel can then resume building in those places.

President Obama made a very generous — too generous, we believe — offer to Israel, to get Mr. Netanyahu to extend the moratorium. It included additional security guarantees and more fighter planes, missile defense, satellites. Mr. Netanyahu still refused, insisting that the hard-line members of his coalition would never go along. He then added to the controversy by proposing that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Many Israelis worry that he is putting too many obstacles in the way of a deal and raising unnecessary questions about Israel’s already accepted identity.

The Palestinians say his demand is intended to negate their insistence on a right of return for Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war — a core peace issue along with borders, security and Jerusalem — before any negotiation takes place. Like borders, there is a compromise to be had on the refugee issue, involving compensation and a limited number of Palestinian returnees. Prejudging it right now is too much.

Palestinians are grasping for another route. The current favorite: asking the United Nations to declare their independent state. That would dangerously fuel tensions. Israeli soldiers would still be in the West Bank and so would 120 Jewish settlements with 500,000 settlers. Palestinians would not have free access to Jerusalem. Seeking a United Nations declaration would alienate Washington and other diplomatic players.

We agree with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She told the American Task Force on Palestine, an advocacy group that supports peace: “There is no substitute for face-to-face discussion and, ultimately, for an agreement that leads to a just and lasting peace.”

Enough game-playing. Mr. Netanyahu should accept Mr. Obama’s offer and be ready to form a new governing coalition if some current members bolt. Arab states need to do more to nudge Mr. Abbas back to the table and give him the political support he will need to stay there.

Israelis might dismiss the Palestinian threats to go to the United Nations as theatrics. Today they might be. But the Israelis cannot bet on the infinite patience of the Palestinian people — or the international community.

    Enough Game-Playing, NYT, 29.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/opinion/30sat1.html

Iran Says It Has Begun Loading Fuel at Nuclear Reactor

October 26, 2010
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YONG and ALAN COWELL

TEHRAN — Iran said on Tuesday that it had begun loading the first of 163 fuel rods into the core of its first nuclear reactor, set to go into operation early next year, and vowed to pursue nuclear activities “in other areas.”

Iran’s nuclear program has spread deep concerns in the West because governments, including the United States, believe Tehran has ambitions to build a nuclear weapon and do not accept its denials.

The United States once opposed the Russian-built Bushehr plant in the south of the country but dropped its objections after Russia provided assurances over the fuel supply and the disposal of spent fuel roads that can be used to makes weapons-grade plutonium. Russia has agreed to take back spent fuel.

The plant is supposed to be supervised by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear watchdog based in Vienna. It was not clear if I.A.E.A. inspectors were present when the fuel-loading began.

Ramin Mehmanparast, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Tuesday: “Political pressure and sanctions have not prevented Iran from proceeding with its peaceful nuclear activities according to schedule.”

“The Bushehr power plant is a major project which will help us to take one step toward future alternative energy supplies,” he said, according to the semiofficial IRNA news agency. “We will also pursue our peaceful nuclear activities in other areas.” He did not give details.

The loading of fuel at the reactor was initially supposed to begin soon after fuel was transported there in August, but was delayed by a leak. Iranian officials have denied that the delay was caused by a computer virus on the laptops of several employees at Bushehr.

Speaking to workers at the plant, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the Bushehr facility “is the most exceptional power plant in the world and it is right now at the critical stage of transferring fuel into the core of the reactor which is the last stage of the process.”

Mr. Salehi said that the plant would begin to feed the national power grid within three months.

Under its normal procedures, I.A.E.A. inspectors would oversee the final processes of fuel-loading and then seal the core of the reactor to prevent tampering. The reactor is also supposed to be kept under surveillance by closed circuit television cameras that would detect any movement of fuel.

The procedures to load the fuel and carry out tests at the 1,000-megawatt plant could take several weeks before engineers begin to withdraw so-called control roads, allowing nuclear activity to begin, experts said.

The Bushehr reactor, cast by Tehran as a show-case of its peaceful nuclear intentions, is separate from other more contentious operations elsewhere in the country where Iran is seeking to enrich uranium. Iran says it wants the enrichment facilities to provide fuel for future reactor use and for a medical research reactor. But the West and Israel suspect those programs are designed to produce weapons-grade fuel.

The loading at Bushehr came at a delicate diplomatic juncture, with tighter sanctions ordered against Tehran by the United Nations Security Council, the United States and the European Union, coupled with an invitation to Iran to join international powers for talks in Vienna in mid-November.

Iran has not yet formally accepted the invitation.

In response to the sanctions — the harshest yet — Tehran seemed to dig in its heels, refusing to provide international inspectors with information and access to determine the real purpose of Tehran’s nuclear program.

The Obama administration has argued that the sanctions are having an effect, reducing Iran’s access to foreign capital, halting investment in its energy sector and restricting its shipping at some foreign ports.

But, in September, the I.A.E.A. indicated in a report that the international sanctions have failed so far to force Iran to comply with longstanding requests. The agency complained that Iran had barred two of its most experienced inspectors from the country.

The I.A.E.A. report reiterated that, since August 2008, Iran has refused to answer questions “about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” The report said it was “essential that Iran engage with the agency on these issues” because evidence can degrade with “the passage of time.”

The Bushehr reactor, costing around $1 billion, has a long and tangled history. Construction began in 1975 under a contract signed with Germany, the state-run Press TV reported on Tuesday, but Germany withdrew from the project after the Islamic revolution in 1979. An agreement with Russia in 1995 should have been completed in 1999 but the plan fell prey to long delays.

William Yong reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from London.

    Iran Says It Has Begun Loading Fuel at Nuclear Reactor, NYT, 26.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/world/middleeast/27nuke.html

Some Question Insistence on Israel as Jewish State

October 24, 2010
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The more stridently Israel insists on Palestinian recognition of it as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the more adamantly the Palestinian leadership seems to refuse.

As a result, some senior Israeli officials are beginning to question the wisdom of the policy of their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made recognition of the legitimacy of the Jewish nation-state a prerequisite for any final agreement with the Palestinians.

More recently, Mr. Netanyahu offered it as a quid pro quo for a temporary extension of a moratorium on building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Nascent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled since the moratorium expired last month.

“Of course we are a Jewish state,” Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, told an audience attending a conference on the Future of the Jewish People last week, organized by the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem.

“But we have to make sure we do not get on a slippery slope,” he continued, “where our justifiable demands become prohibitive obstacles” along the way to a deal, particularly so early on.

Another senior Israeli minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to appear in conflict with the prime minister, said that the very act of asking for confirmation of Israel’s legitimacy “may raise questions and have the opposite effect” by putting it up for debate.

Many Jews in Israel and beyond consider it essential that they are recognized not just as members of a religion but also as a people with historic rights to a sovereign state in the Holy Land. The issue, they say, goes to the core of the conflict and will serve as a litmus test for Palestinian intentions.

“Only when our peace partners are willing to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state,” Mr. Netanyahu said Friday at the same conference, “will they truly be prepared to end the conflict and make a lasting peace with Israel.”

But given the opposition to this demand by the Palestinians and many of Israel’s own Arab citizens, some are questioning how vital it is.

At least publicly, the Palestinians seem to have hardened their position.

In its Declaration of Independence in 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization invoked the “historical injustice” inflicted on its people after United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947, “which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish.”

“Yet it is this resolution,” the declaration continued, “that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.”

Yasir Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, was asked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2004 whether he understood that Israel had to remain a Jewish state. “Definitely,” he replied.

Unofficial Palestinian negotiators appeared to accept the idea of Jewish nationhood in the Geneva Accord, a 2003 blueprint for a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement, by recognizing “the right of the Jewish people to statehood and the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the parties’ respective citizens” — and without specifying where.

The accord also stated that the “parties recognize Palestine and Israel as the homelands of their respective peoples,” without specifying who they might be.

Reflecting the current dynamic, fewer Palestinians support the mutual recognition idea now than just a few months ago. An October poll by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah indicated that 64 percent of the Israelis supported and 24 percent opposed mutual recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state for the Palestinian people.

Among Palestinians, 49 percent supported and 48 percent opposed this step. In June, 60 percent of the Israelis supported this mutual recognition of identity, while among the Palestinians support stood at 58 percent.

The Palestinian leadership insists that it is enough to recognize the State of Israel, as the P.L.O. did as part of the Oslo agreement in 1993.

“The issue of recognition is settled, it is done,” said Muhammad Shtayyeh, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, in a telephone interview from Ramallah.

Mr. Shtayyeh said the Palestinian leadership believed that Mr. Netanyahu was only placing obstacles in the way of peace, and that there was certainly no relationship between freezing settlements and recognition.

Dismissing the Geneva Accord as an effort of private individuals, Mr. Shtayyeh and other Palestinians argue that recognition of Israel as the Jewish state will negate their demand for a right of return for Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants, before any negotiation. They also say it undermines the status of the Palestinian-Arab citizens who make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, and who are afforded equal rights in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

The recognition debate, in the meantime, has become entangled with the highly contentious issue of a loyalty oath for new immigrants to Israel. A draft amendment to the country’s citizenship law approved by the cabinet this month would require non-Jews seeking to become naturalized citizens to swear allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

The proposed amendment was a gesture to the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, widely viewed as anti-Arab.

“When Israel is attacking my identity, I defend my identity,” Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli-Arab Parliament member, said in a telephone interview. “This is the way.”

(Mr. Netanyahu’s government said last week it would seek to alter the draft amendment so that all immigrants, not just non-Jews, take the oath.)

There is no consensus even within Israel on the meaning and nature of a “Jewish state.” For many Israelis, it describes the country as it is: with a Jewish majority that speaks Hebrew, living in a dominant Jewish culture. Some would like to see a more religious element; others worry that it denotes an ethnocracy.

In a cartoon in Haaretz, Mr. Netanyahu was depicted eating breakfast at a “Jewish”-labeled table with “Jewish” jam and cheese and a “Jewish” kettle.

“The Jewish state is what? A Lieberman state?” asked Mohammad Darawshe, the Israeli-Arab co-executive director of The Abraham Fund Initiatives, an organization that promotes coexistence and equality among Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.

“I think the Jews deserve a homeland of their own,” Mr. Darawshe said, “but not one that negates the rights and status of other citizens.”

    Some Question Insistence on Israel as Jewish State, NYT, 24.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/world/middleeast/25israel.html

Get Tough on Pakistan

October 19, 2010
The New York Times
By ZALMAY KHALILZAD

Washington

WHEN I visited Kabul a few weeks ago, President Hamid Karzai told me that the United States has yet to offer a credible strategy for how to resolve a critical issue: Pakistan’s role in the war in Afghanistan.

In the region and in the wider war against terrorism, Pakistan has long played a vital positive part — and a troublingly negative one. With Pakistani civilian and military leaders meeting with Obama administration officials this week in Washington — and with the news that Afghan leaders are holding direct talks with Taliban leaders to end the war — cutting through this Gordian knot has become more urgent and more difficult than ever before.

Pakistan has done, and continues to do, a great deal of good: many of the supply lines and much of the logistical support for NATO forces in Afghanistan run through Pakistan. Drones striking terrorists and militants in the tribal areas do so with the Pakistani government’s blessing and rely on Pakistani bases. And Pakistani security services have worked with the Central Intelligence Agency to capture hundreds of Qaeda operatives.

At the same time, Pakistan gives not only sanctuary but also support to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani terrorist network. This has hampered our military efforts; contributed to American, coalition and Afghan deaths; and helped sour relations between Kabul and Washington.

What’s more, Pakistani military leaders believe that our current surge will be the last push before we begin a face-saving troop drawdown next July. They are confident that if they continue to frustrate our military and political strategy — even actively impede reconciliation between Kabul and Taliban groups willing to make peace — pro-Pakistani forces will have the upper hand in Afghanistan after the United States departs.

When dealing with Pakistan, the Obama administration, like the George W. Bush administration, has pursued two lines of action. First, it has tried building up Afghan security forces, providing military assistance and supporting the Afghan economy and state institutions, all in hopes of hardening the country against Pakistan-backed insurgents.

Second, the U.S. has tried to soften Pakistan’s support of extremist militants through enhanced engagement as well as humanitarian, economic and military assistance; indeed, Congress last year approved a five-year, $7.5 billion package of nonmilitary aid, and among the options being discussed by American and Pakistani officials this week is a security pact that would mean billions of dollars more. But such efforts have led to only the most incremental shifts in Pakistan’s policy.

To induce quicker and more significant changes, Washington must offer Islamabad a stark choice between positive incentives and negative consequences.

The United States should demand that Pakistan shut down all sanctuaries and military support programs for insurgents or else we will carry out operations against those insurgent havens, with or without Pakistani consent. Arguments that such pressure would cause Pakistan to disintegrate are overstated. Pakistan’s institutions, particularly the country’s security organs, are sufficiently strong to preclude such an outcome.

Nonetheless, this aggressive approach would require the United States to think through a series of likely Pakistani responses. To deal with an interruption of our supply lines to Afghanistan, for example, we must stockpile supplies and start bringing in more materiél through the northern supply routes and via air.

At the same time, we should present clear, significant incentives. In exchange for demonstrable Pakistani cooperation, the United States should offer to mediate disputes between Pakistan and Afghanistan; help establish a trade corridor from Pakistan into Central Asia; and ensure that Pakistan’s adversaries do not use Afghanistan’s territory to support insurgents in Pakistani Baluchistan.

More fundamentally, the United States needs to demonstrate that, even after our troops depart Afghanistan, we are resolved to stay engaged in the region. To that end, the United States should provide long-term assistance to Pakistan focused on developing not only its security apparatus, but also its civil society, economy and democratic institutions.

Finally, the United States should facilitate a major diplomatic effort focused on stabilizing South Asia. This must involve efforts to improve relations between India and Pakistan. Based on my recent discussions with Pakistani officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, I believe the civilian leadership would welcome such a move.

Without inducing a change in Pakistan’s posture, the United States will have to choose between fighting a longer and bloodier war in Afghanistan than is necessary, at the cost of many young American lives and many billions of dollars, or accepting a major setback in Afghanistan and in the surrounding region. Both are undesirable options.

Instead, the Obama administration should be forcing Pakistan to make some choices — between supporting the United States or supporting extremists.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the president of a consulting firm,

was the ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.

    Get Tough on Pakistan, NYT, 19.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/opinion/20khalilzad.html

Meeting Pakistanis, U.S. Will Try to Fix Relations

October 18, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — As Pakistani civilian and military leaders arrive here this week for high-level meetings, the Obama administration will begin trying to mend a relationship badly damaged by the American military’s tough new stance in the region.

Among the sweeteners on the table will be a multiyear security pact with Pakistan, complete with more reliable military aid — something the Pakistani military has long sought to complement the five-year, $7.5 billion package of nonmilitary aid approved by Congress last year. The administration will also discuss how to channel money to help Pakistan rebuild after its ruinous flood.

But the American gestures come at a time of fraying patience on the part of the Obama administration, and they will carry a familiar warning, a senior American official said: if Pakistan does not intensify its efforts to crack down on militants hiding out in the tribal areas of North Waziristan, or if another terrorist plot against the United States were to emanate from Pakistani soil, the administration would find it hard to persuade Congress or the American public to keep supporting the country.

“Pakistan has taken aggressive action within its own borders. But clearly, this is an ongoing threat and more needs to be done,” the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said Monday. “That will be among the issues talked about.”

The Pakistanis will come with a similarly mixed message. While Pakistan is grateful for the strong American support after the flood, Pakistani officials said, it remains frustrated by what it perceives as the slow pace of economic aid, the lack of access to American markets for Pakistani goods and the administration’s continued lack of sympathy for the country’s confrontation with India.

Other potentially divisive topics are likely to come up, too, including NATO’s role in reconciliation talks between President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and the Taliban. Pakistani officials say they are nervous about being left out of any political settlement involving the Taliban.

Still, in a relationship suffused by tension and flare-ups — most recently over a NATO helicopter gunship that accidentally killed three Pakistani soldiers and Pakistan’s subsequent decision to close a supply route into Afghanistan — this regular meeting, known here as the strategic dialogue, serves as a lubricant to keep both countries talking.

At this meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will formally introduce the new American ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter. Mr. Munter, who recently served in Iraq, replaces Anne W. Patterson, who just wrapped up her tour of duty in Islamabad.

“No country has gotten more attention from Secretary Clinton than Pakistan,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan’s delegation will be led by its foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but much of the attention will be on another official, the military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who is viewed by many as the most powerful man in Pakistan.

White House and Pentagon officials said one immediate goal of this meeting was to ease the tensions that led Pakistan to close the border crossing at Torkham, halting NATO supplies into Afghanistan. Officials on both sides said that acrimony from the border flare-up had already receded, soothed by the multiple apologies that American officials made to Pakistan last week.

Last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Kayani had assured him that Pakistan’s army would tackle the North Waziristan haven, but on Pakistan’s timetable. In an interview, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said, “Our American partners understand that we have 34,000 troops in North Waziristan. Our soldiers have been engaged in flood relief after history’s worst floods. It is not a question of lack of will.”

The new security pact would have three parts: the sale of American military equipment to Pakistan, a program to allow Pakistani military officers to study at American war colleges and counterinsurgency assistance to Pakistani troops.

Currently, the United States spends about $1.5 billion a year to provide this same assistance, but it is doled out year by year. The new agreement, if endorsed by Congress, would approve a multiyear plan assuring stability and continuity in the programs, although Congress would continue to appropriate the financing on a yearly basis. “This is designed to make our military and security assistance to Pakistan predictable and to signal to them that they can count on us,” said a senior official.

At the last dialogue in Islamabad in July, Mrs. Clinton presented more than $500 million in economic aid, including plans to renovate hospitals, upgrade hydroelectric dams, improve water distribution and help farmers export mangoes. But the floods upended those plans, and officials said they now planned to redirect funds to more urgent needs.

This week’s meeting will also be shadowed by a new eruption of political instability in Pakistan: the government of President Asif Ali Zardari is locked in a confrontation with the Supreme Court over the court’s demand that senior ministers be fired on corruption charges. Analysts said they were less worried about the atmospherics than the underlying differences in perspective. The administration’s public contrition for the cross-border attack has largely resolved that issue, said Daniel S. Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But Mr. Markey said he saw potential friction stemming from the American openness to reconciliation with the Taliban. With the United States facilitating rather than guiding the talks, he said, there could be poor coordination between the Afghans, NATO and others — all of which would rattle the Pakistanis.

“Washington is opening the door to a range of negotiations with groups that it has discouraged Pakistan against working with in the past,” he said. “This sends a mixed signal, and cannot help but encourage hedging on Islamabad’s part.”

Another potential bone of contention is one of President Obama’s nuclear objectives: a global accord to end the production of new nuclear fuel. Pakistan has led the opposition to the accord. And without its agreement, the treaty would be basically useless.

Mr. Qureshi blamed the United States for the situation, saying Washington signed a civilian nuclear accord with India that discriminated against Pakistan. “You have disturbed the nuclear balance,” he said in a recent interview in New York, “and we have been forced to develop a new strategy.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

    Meeting Pakistanis, U.S. Will Try to Fix Relations, NYT, 18.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/world/asia/19diplo.html

Obama to Skip Sikh Shrine on Visit to India

October 19, 2010
The New York Times
By LYDIA POLGREEN

NEW DELHI — The Golden Temple, a sprawling and serene complex of gleaming gold and polished marble that is the spiritual center of the Sikh religion, is one of India’s most popular tourist attractions. Revered by Indians of all faiths, it is a cherished emblem of India’s religious diversity. So it was no surprise when the gold-plated marvel was touted as the likely third stop on President Obama’s visit to India, scheduled for early November.

But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city where the temple is located, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

“To come to golden temple he needs to cover his head,” said Dalmegh Singh, secretary of the committee that runs the temple. “That is our tradition. It is their problem to cover the head with a Christian hat or a Muslim cap.”

Mr. Obama, a Christian, has struggled to fend off persistent rumors that he is a Muslim, and Sikhs in the United States have often been mistaken for Muslims. Sikhism, which arose in the Punjab region in the 15th century, includes elements of Hinduism and Islam but forms a wholly distinct faith. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs in the United States have been occasional targets of anti-Muslim discrimination and violence — a Sikh was killed in Arizona a few days after the attack on the World Trade Center by a man who mistook him for a Muslim.

Observant Sikhs do not cut their hair, and Sikh men wear turbans that cover their heads in public. Visitors to Sikh temples, known as gurudwaras, are required to cover their heads and remove their shoes. Hawkers outside the Golden Temple sell orange and white kerchiefs that visitors use to cover their heads. Baseball caps are not considered appropriate.

The Golden Temple is a popular stop for famous visitors. In 1997 the Queen of England padded around the glittering temple in her stocking feet. Another kind of royalty, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that controls India’s Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi has also been to the temple. He slurped tea from a metal bowl there, sitting on the ground like every other visitor, head draped as temple tradition demands. Last year Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, also covered his head when he visited the temple.

For Mr. Obama, who will be seeking to cement the crucial but sometimes testy relationship between two of the world’s biggest democracies, the temple was one of several possible backdrops designed to convey America’s kinship with India. Mr. Obama will visit Mumbai and New Delhi.

H. S. Phoolka, a prominent Sikh lawyer in New Delhi, said he was disappointed that Mr. Obama would not visit the temple.

“We have worked so hard to establish in America that Sikhs have a very different identity than Muslims,” Mr. Phoolka said. “It is very unfortunate that even the White House is conveying the message that there is no difference between Muslims and Sikhs.”

Hari Kumar and Jim Yardley contributed reporting.

    Obama to Skip Sikh Shrine on Visit to India, NYT, 19.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/asia/20india.html

Sudan’s Threatened Peace Deal

October 15, 2010
The New York Times

Time is running out on efforts to avert another civil war in Sudan. A United States-backed deal in 2005 ended two decades of fighting between the Arab Muslim north and the largely Christian south that killed two million people. That deal is now in danger of unraveling if two referendums set for early January do not go forward.

After neglecting the problem for far too long, President Obama and his top aides are pushing both sides to fulfill their commitments to ensure a credible vote and to accept the results. We hope it is not too late.

Voters in the south, which produces most of the country’s oil, are expected to choose to become independent. In the second referendum, voters in the border district of Abyei must decide whether to ally with the north or the south.

Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has dragged his feet on election preparations. Voter registration is months late. Election officials still must be trained and ballots printed and distributed. The two sides must put up their share of the election costs and resolve an impasse over who gets to vote in Abyei. Other critical issues remain unresolved. South Sudan also has to get serious about creating the structures of a new state.

Mr. Obama and his team vowed to end Mr. Bashir’s rampage in Darfur and to do all they could to ensure peace between north and south Sudan. The president quickly appointed a peace envoy and replaced a punishment-heavy strategy with one that leaned more toward incentives. When Mr. Bashir showed little interest, the policy was allowed to drift.

With activists warning of impending disaster, the administration finally beefed up its diplomatic mission in south Sudan and named a veteran diplomat to help mediate talks that ended without a deal this week and are supposed to resume later this month. President Obama headlined a United Nations meeting last month in which all the major players committed to respecting the “outcome of credible” referendums and holding them on Jan. 9.

But a senior official with the Sudanese government said on Thursday that the Abyei referendum would either have to be delayed or the issue decided in negotiations rather than a vote. This reneges on the 2005 peace agreement and is unacceptable.

The Sudanese government should be able to make a deal with south Sudan — including on sharing oil revenues — that both sides can live with. What it can’t afford is another civil war or more international opprobrium if it is found stealing or stymieing this vote.

Mr. Obama has offered more explicit incentives if Sudan lives up to its commitments — including help with food production, increased trade and eventually an end to all economic sanctions. He and his aides have also threatened more punishments if Sudan does not.

Mr. Bashir has thumbed his nose at an International Criminal Court indictment for war crimes in Darfur. We are not sure what will change his behavior. We are sure that China and the African Union, which have enabled Mr. Bashir for years, need to press a lot harder.

    Sudan’s Threatened Peace Deal, NYT, 15.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/opinion/16sat1.html

An End to Israel’s Invisibility

October 13, 2010
The New York Times
By MICHAEL B. OREN

NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel’s creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state. “Israel can name itself whatever it wants,” said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Back in 1948, opposition to the legitimacy of a Jewish state ignited a war. Today it threatens peace.

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Erekat were responding to the call by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, enabling his government to consider extending the moratorium on West Bank construction. “Such a step by the Palestinian Authority would be a confidence-building measure,” Mr. Netanyahu explained, noting that Israel was not demanding recognition as a prerequisite for direct talks. It would “open a new horizon of hope as well as trust among broad parts of the Israeli public.”

Why should it matter whether the Palestinians or any other people recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? Indeed, Israel never sought similar acknowledgment in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu is merely making a tactical demand that will block any chance for the peace they claim he does not really want.

Affirmation of Israel’s Jewishness, however, is the very foundation of peace, its DNA. Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so, too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people’s 3,000-year connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there. This mutual acceptance is essential if both peoples are to live side by side in two states in genuine and lasting peace.

So why won’t the Palestinians reciprocate? After all, the Jewish right to statehood is a tenet of international law. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 called for the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in the land then known as Palestine and, in 1922, the League of Nations cited the “historical connection of the Jewish people” to that country as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home.” In 1947, the United Nations authorized the establishment of “an independent Jewish state,” and recently, while addressing the General Assembly, President Obama proclaimed Israel as “the historic homeland of the Jewish people.” Why, then, can’t the Palestinians simply say “Israel is the Jewish state”?

The reason, perhaps, is that so much of Palestinian identity as a people has coalesced around denying that same status to Jews. “I will not allow it to be written of me that I have ... confirmed the existence of the so-called Temple beneath the Mount,” Yasir Arafat told President Bill Clinton in 2000.

For Palestinians, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also means accepting that the millions of them residing in Arab countries would be resettled within a future Palestinian state and not within Israel, which their numbers would transform into a Palestinian state in all but name. Reconciling with the Jewish state means that the two-state solution is not a two-stage solution leading, as many Palestinians hope, to Israel’s dissolution.

Which is precisely why Israelis seek the basic reassurance that the Palestinian Authority is ready to accept our state — to accept us. Israelis need to know that further concessions would not render us more vulnerable to terrorism and susceptible to unending demands. Though recognition of Israel as the Jewish state would not shield us from further assaults or pressure, it would prove that the Palestinians are serious about peace.

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors, Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he is identifying the only path to co-existence.


Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

    An End to Israel’s Invisibility, NYT, 13.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/opinion/14oren.html

The Latest Crisis

October 12, 2010
The New York Times

Another crisis is roiling American-Pakistani relations after NATO helicopters mistakenly fired on a border post and killed Pakistani soldiers last month. Islamabad then closed a major supply line for NATO troops in Afghanistan; last week, extremists torched fuel trucks waiting at the border crossing. A new White House report said that Pakistan’s Army is refusing to go after Taliban groups targeting American forces.

After a joint Pakistan-NATO inquiry concluded last week that the Pakistani troops were “simply firing warning shots” when the Afghan-based helicopters crossed the border, the United States apologized. Pakistan has since reopened the crossing.

Still, making this alliance work is essential. Pakistan’s government is unraveling in the wake of its incompetent response to devastating floods. The United States needs to do more to help — and Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders finally need to admit that winning the battle against extremists, on both sides of the border, is essential to Pakistan’s security. The agenda is daunting:

RELIEF The government’s incompetence after the floods has stoked public outrage. Even the Army — Pakistan’s best-functioning institution — has been overwhelmed. The United States is the largest donor of emergency aid, more than $450 million so far, and American troops rescued at least 21,000 Pakistanis. Millions of people are still at risk. If Pakistan’s Army needs more help, it should ask — and publicize American cooperation.

RECONSTRUCTION Devastation is vast: twenty million people were displaced and countless bridges, roads, schools and farms were swept away. It will take decades and billions of dollars to rebuild. Donor nations were already tired after Haiti, but there is an antipathy toward Pakistan that should give its government serious pause.

Many donors — starting with China, Pakistan’s longtime ally — must do more. The Obama administration is rightly telling Pakistan that it must invest in its recovery by finally taxing wealthy citizens. Pakistan could also shift funds from its nuclear program. A transparent commission to receive and manage contributions would help rally donors, as would working closely with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

AMERICAN AID In addition to billions of dollars in military aid, Congress last year approved a five-year, $7.5 billion aid package for schools, hospitals and energy plants. Since the floods, Washington has shifted some of that money to recovery efforts. It will have to shift more. Washington needs to move quickly on some high-visibility projects so Pakistanis can see that they are not alone.

GOVERNMENT REFORM Pakistan’s Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, last month reportedly warned President Asif Ali Zardari that the country is on the verge of economic collapse and insisted on a government shakeup. So far, the generals say they don’t want to take over — and a coup would be disastrous. But the argument for reform is undeniable. Washington can, quietly, help the Pakistanis think it through. Any changes must be done transparently and within the Constitution.

DRONE STRIKES In recent weeks, the C.I.A. has stepped up its bombing campaign against Taliban strongholds on Pakistan’s border. The American oversight system for these attacks is deeply inadequate, but Pakistan’s leadership needs to understand that if they won’t go after insurgents targeting American troops, then the United States military will.

When President Obama visits India next month, he must quietly urge its government to revive peace talks with Pakistan. That may be the best hope of getting Pakistan’s military to focus on fighting the insurgency. Next week, senior Pakistani and American officials will hold the latest in a series of “strategic dialogues.” They have a lot to talk about.

    The Latest Crisis, NYT, 12.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12tue1.html

Iran, the Paper Tiger

October 11, 2010
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN

LONDON — I had breakfast last month in New York with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other journalists had lunch or dinner. Ahmadinejad’s passion for the hidden Imam, whose imminent return he expects, is matched only by his passion for Western media.

At the time I chose not to write about the meeting. I was too disgusted — by the media merry-go-round, by more incendiary provocations from Ahmadinejad, and by the sterility of an Iran debate that turns in the tight circle formed by fear-mongering, ignorance and the ghastly stew of Western carrots and sticks.

Ahmadinejad is a one-trick pony. His thing is double standards. Ask about the Iranian nuclear program, he’ll retort with Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. Ask about Iran’s economic difficulties, he’ll see you with September 2008. Ask about rampant capital punishment, he’ll raise you a Texas. Ask about Iranian lying, he’ll counter with human rights and Abu Ghraib.

Not surprisingly, in Fareed Zakaria’s “post-American world,” he has an audience. He’s adept enough, with a touch of Tony Curtis in “The Boston Strangler,” switching personalities with eerie ease.

Throw in some headline-grabbing lunacy — 9/11 as self-inflicted, or the Holocaust as invention, or “Iran is the freest country in the world” — and you have a post-modern media star and villain.

And what do all his words amount to? I’d say not a whole lot beyond unnecessary misery for 71 million isolated Iranians. This guy is all hat and no cattle.

Ahmadinejad is odious but I don’t think he’s dangerous. Some people do of course find him dangerous, especially in the Israel he gratuitously insults and threatens, and yet others — many more I’d say — find it convenient to find him dangerous.

The Iranian president is into his sixth year in office, the Islamic Republic is more divided than ever, Iranian youth have been brutalized, and there’s a nuclear program that, a bit like the Middle East “peace process,” goes on and on and on, defying definition even as it defies termination.

I read with interest in a recent piece by my colleagues John Markoff and David Sanger that “in the past year Israeli estimates of when Iran will have a nuclear weapon had been extended to 2014.” Given that various Israeli leaders have predicted that Iran would have a bomb in 1999 or 2004 or just about every year since 2005, that’s a decade and a half of the non-appearing wolf at the door.

Sure, such predications are necessarily haphazard, the Natanz centrifuges may now be Stuxnetted by computer worms, and Iranian scientists have resembled Iranian pistachios: up for sale. Still there is a dangerous pattern here of Israeli and U.S. alarmism.

Cool heads are needed. Untenable Nazi allusions, rampant in the case of Iran, demean victims of the Holocaust and lead to disastrous wars. A bloody war has been fought in Iran’s western neighbor. So let’s recall that Saddam Hussein told his captors he had cultivated nuclear ambiguity as a deterrent even though his program was precisely zilch.

And what of Iran’s program? Iran remains a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are at Natanz; the number of centrifuges being used to make low-enriched uranium (far from weapons grade) has dropped 23 percent since May 2009 and production has stagnated; U.S. intelligence agencies hold that Iran has not made the decision to build a bomb; any “breakout” decision would be advertised because the I.A.E.A. would be thrown out; the time from “breakout” to deliverable weapon is significant.

I’m with Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who this year told the Washington Post: “Iran will muddle along building its stockpile but never making a nuclear bomb because it knows that crossing that line would provoke an immediate military attack.” The Islamic Republic is a study in muddle but lucid over a single goal: self-preservation.

So there’s time. Yet the foreboding industry is in overdrive, with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic declaring that the Obama administration “knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program” and setting “a better than 50 percent chance” Israel will strike by next July.

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, used Yom Kippur to deliver a speech of ominous prophecy in synagogues, warning of the fateful choices presented Israel by “a radical, genocidal Iran.” (Oren had less to say — and most of that dismissive — about direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks inaugurated two weeks earlier with White House pomp and now already on hold.)

Yes, Ahmadinejad is the bogeyman from Central Casting. One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president.

I don’t expect that, however. And here are two more predictions: Obama won’t attack Iran and nor will Israel, not by next July or ever. Iran is a paper tiger, a postmodern threat: It has many uses but a third Western war against a Muslim country is a bridge too far.

    Iran, the Paper Tiger, NYT, 11.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12iht-edcohen.html

U.S. Alarmed by Harsh Tone of China’s Military

October 11, 2010
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie, in Vietnam on Monday for the first time since the two militaries suspended talks with each other last winter, calling for the two countries to prevent “mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes.”

His message seemed directed mainly at officers like Lt. Cmdr. Tony Cao of the Chinese Navy.

Days before Mr. Gates arrived in Asia, Commander Cao was aboard a frigate in the Yellow Sea, conducting China’s first war games with the Australian Navy, exercises to which, he noted pointedly, the Americans were not invited.

Nor are they likely to be, he told Australian journalists in slightly bent English, until “the United States stops selling the weapons to Taiwan and stopping spying us with the air or the surface.”

The Pentagon is worried that its increasingly tense relationship with the Chinese military owes itself in part to the rising leaders of Commander Cao’s generation, who, much more than the country’s military elders, view the United States as the enemy. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.

The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China’s rise.

“All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of China’s military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. “And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy.”

The stakes have increased as China’s armed forces, once a fairly ragtag group, have become more capable and have taken on bigger tasks. The navy, the centerpiece of China’s military expansion, has added dozens of surface ships and submarines, and is widely reported to be building its first aircraft carrier. Last month’s Yellow Sea maneuvers with the Australian Navy are but the most recent in a series of Chinese military excursions to places as diverse as New Zealand, Britain and Spain.

China is also reported to be building an antiship ballistic missile base in southern China’s Guangdong Province, with missiles capable of reaching the Philippines and Vietnam. The base is regarded as an effort to enforce China’s territorial claims to vast areas of the South China Sea claimed by other nations, and to confront American aircraft carriers that now patrol the area unmolested.

Even improved Chinese forces do not have capacity or, analysts say, the intention, to fight a more able United States military. But their increasing range and ability, and the certainty that they will only become stronger, have prompted China to assert itself regionally and challenge American dominance in the Pacific.

That makes it crucial to help lower-level Chinese officers become more familiar with the Americans, experts say, before a chance encounter blossoms into a crisis.

“The P.L.A. combines an odd combination of deep admiration for the U.S. armed forces as a military, but equally harbors a deep suspicion of U.S. military deployments and intentions towards China,” David Shambaugh, a leading expert on the Chinese military at George Washington University, said in an e-mail exchange, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.

“Unfortunately, the two militaries are locked in a classic security dilemma, whereby each side’s supposedly defensive measures are taken as aggressive action by the other, triggering similar countermeasures in an inexorable cycle,” he wrote. “This is very dangerous, and unnecessary.”

From the Chinese military’s view, this year has offered ample evidence of American ill will.

The Chinese effectively suspended official military relations early this year after President Obama met with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, and approved a $6.7 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China regards as its territory.

Since then, the Chinese military has bristled as the State Department has offered to mediate disputes between China and its neighbors over ownership of Pacific islands and valuable seabed mineral rights. And when the American Navy conducted war games with South Korea last month in the Yellow Sea, less than 400 miles from Beijing, younger Chinese officers detected an encroaching threat.

The United States “is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and constantly challenging China’s core interests,” Rear Adm. Yang Yi, former head of strategic studies at the Chinese Army’s National Defense University, wrote in August in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper. “Washington will inevitably pay a costly price for its muddled decision.”

In truth, little in the American actions is new. Mr. Obama’s predecessors also hosted the Dalai Lama. American arms sales to Taiwan were mandated by Congress in 1979, and have occurred regularly since then. American warships regularly ply the waters off China’s coast and practice with South Korean ships.

But Chinese military leaders seem less inclined to tolerate such old practices now that they have the resources and the confidence to say no.

“Why do you sell arms to Taiwan? We don’t sell arms to Hawaii,” said Col. Liu Mingfu, a China National Defense University professor and author of “The China Dream,” a nationalistic call to succeed the United States as the world’s leading power.

That official military relations are resuming despite the sharp language from Chinese Army officials is most likely a function of international diplomacy. President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Washington soon, and American experts had predicted that China would resume military ties as part of an effort to smooth over rough spots before the state visit.

Some experts see increased contact as critical. A leading Chinese expert on international security, Zhu Feng of Peking University, says that the Chinese military’s hostility toward the United States is not new, just more open. And that, he says, is not only the result of China’s new assertiveness, but its military’s inexperience on the world stage.

“Chinese officers’ international exposure remains very limited,” Mr. Zhu said. “Over time, things will improve very, very significantly. Unfortunately, right now they are less skillful.”

Greater international exposure is precisely what American officials would like to see. Americans hope renewed cooperation will lead to more exchanges of young officers and joint exercises.

“It’s time for both militaries to reconsider their tactics and strategy to boost their friendship,” Mr. Zhu said. “The P.L.A. is increasing its exposure internationally. So what sort of new rule of law can we figure out to fit the P.L.A. to such new exposure? It’s a challenge not just for China, but also for the U.S.”


Jonathan Ansfield and Li Bibo contributed research.

    U.S. Alarmed by Harsh Tone of China’s Military, NYT, 11.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12beijing.html

U.S. Believes Arab States Won’t Scuttle Mideast Talks

October 7, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and ETHAN BRONNER

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration believes it has persuaded Arab states not to scuttle the fledgling Middle East peace negotiations, officials said Thursday, despite the Israeli government’s refusal to freeze Jewish settlements and a vow by the Palestinians to walk away if Israel did not.

With the Arab League’s meeting on Friday expected to deliver a pivotal decision on the future of the talks, the United States has appealed to Jordan and other Arab nations to stop short of pushing the Palestinians to break off the negotiations.

After days of intensive diplomacy by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, the administration now expects the meeting in Libya to produce a stream of vitriol against Israel and an insistence that the two sides cannot talk while settlement building is under way, American and Israeli officials said, but no formal declaration that negotiations should be abandoned.

Such an outcome would allow the peace process to survive another tricky deadline but leave the negotiations basically where they have been since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, first sat down in Washington last month: stuck in the starting gate, with no further meeting scheduled until the issue of settlements is resolved.

Palestinian officials have not commented on the prospective Arab League decision, and on Thursday were holding fast to their position that talks could not continue if settlement building did. But the Arab League’s carefully calibrated response would at least allow the lines to remain open.

The United States continues to haggle with Mr. Netanyahu over a package of security guarantees in return for a one-time 60-day extension of the freeze, Israeli and American officials said. But there are no ministerial meetings planned in coming days to consider extending the freeze, and it cannot be extended without ministerial approval.

The United States signed an agreement on Thursday to sell 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to Israel. Officials said the deal was long in the making and not related to the effort to get the Israelis to extend the freeze, though the United States might throw in an extra plane as a sweetener for Mr. Netanyahu, they said.

In Israel, there was every indication that the Arab League meeting would pass without any announcement on settlements from the prime minister. A leader of the settler movement said Thursday that his group, Yesha Council, no longer saw the need to run advertisements pressing the government not to renew the construction freeze.

“We have pulled back our campaign and don’t feel that the coming days will be dramatic,” the group’s executive director, Naftali Bennett, said in an interview.

In Washington, the Israeli finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said that a deal would be “very difficult to deliver.” Mr. Steinitz, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, said the prime minister faced almost insurmountable political hurdles within his coalition to extend what he had promised would be a one-time construction halt.

“He made it very clear, with U.S. backing, that this is a one-time unilateral gesture for 10 months, and since it is unilateral, it is not negotiated,” Mr. Steinitz said in an interview.

He acknowledged that the United States had offered Israel incentives, which other officials said ranged from military hardware to support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley. And Mr. Steinitz left open the possibility that the deal could be made tempting enough to sway Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu insisted on Thursday that the world’s attention should be focused not on his building policy but on keeping the Palestinians in the talks.

“Today the question has to be put to the Palestinians, ‘Why are you leaving the talks?’ ” he said on a visit to the central city of Lod. “ ‘Why are you turning your backs on peace? Stay in the talks.’ ”

Most of the American diplomacy this week has focused on the Arab world. Mrs. Clinton spoke Thursday with Mr. Abbas and on Tuesday with Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh. Mr. Mitchell’s lieutenants spoke with officials from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman and Kuwait. On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton met with the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who represents the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers: the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

“We want to see a positive signal come out tomorrow,” said Mark A. Toner, the acting State Department spokesman. He declined to say whether that should be an expression of support for the talks or merely an agreement not to call for them to be scrapped.

A senior Palestinian official expressed pessimism on Thursday that there would be further negotiations with the current Netanyahu government.

“There will be no serious political process while Netanyahu’s government pursues settlements,” the official, Yasir Abed Rabbo, a top aide to Mr. Abbas, said on Voice of Palestine radio. “I can go further and say that there will be no serious political process with Netanyahu’s government.”

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas met three times between Sept. 2 and the end of Israel’s 10-month settlement moratorium on Sept. 26. But the Palestinians say there is no point in meeting if the freeze is not renewed. Since there is no next meeting scheduled, there is nothing specific for Mr. Abbas to withdraw from in the coming days.

During his Thursday visit to Lod, Mr. Netanyahu also spoke about the new language he wants to bring to a loyalty oath for non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship. On Sunday he will ask the cabinet to approve a law requiring non-Jews to declare loyalty to “the State of Israel as a Jewish democratic state.” The move is largely aimed at Palestinians who seek Israeli citizenship through marriage to Israeli Arabs.

“There is a great struggle today to annul and blur Israel’s identity as the national state of the Jewish people and say that it does not belong to the Jewish people in a national sense,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is an advocate of a loyalty oath, and there is speculation in Israel that Mr. Netanyahu, who originally favored a softer version of the oath, was seeking to placate Mr. Lieberman to get him to accept a freeze extension.

A top aide to Mr. Netanyahu denied on Army Radio that there was any such connection.


Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

    U.S. Believes Arab States Won’t Scuttle Mideast Talks, NYT, 7.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/world/middleeast/08mideast.html

U.S. Tries to Calm Pakistan Over Airstrike

October 6, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration scrambled to halt a sharp deterioration in its troubled relationship with Pakistan on Wednesday, offering Pakistani officials multiple apologies for a helicopter strike on a border post that killed three Pakistani soldiers last week.

But even as the White House tried to mollify Pakistan, officials acknowledged that the uneasy allies faced looming tensions over a host of issues far larger than the airstrike and the subsequent closing of supply lines into Afghanistan.

American pressure to show progress in Afghanistan is translating into increased pressure on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist groups. It is also running up against Pakistan’s sensitivity about its sovereignty and its determination to play a crucial role in any reconciliation with the Taliban.

American and NATO officials said privately that the Pakistani government’s closing of a crucial border crossing might have made it easier for militants to attack backed-up tanker trucks carrying fuel through Pakistan to Afghanistan to support the American war effort.

Still, the unusual apologies, officials and outside analysts said, were intended to clear away the debris from the explosive events along the border, in hopes of maintaining Pakistani cooperation.

“We have historically had astonishing sources of resilience in our relations with Pakistan,” said Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “One should not too quickly assume we’re in a breakpoint. But having said that, the time we’re in right now, the intensity of anti-American feeling, the antipathy of militants, all of these things make new crises a little more complicated to get through than the old ones were.”

The overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has been pulling out all the stops — aggressively using the American troop buildup, greatly expanding Special Operations raids (as many as a dozen commando raids a night) and pressing the Central Intelligence Agency to ramp up Predator and Reaper drone operations in Pakistan.

He has also, through the not-so-veiled threat of cross-border ground operations, put pressure on the Pakistani Army to pursue militants in the tribal areas even as the army has continued to struggle with relief from the catastrophic floods this summer.

The fragility of Pakistan — and the tentativeness of the alliance — were underscored in a White House report to Congress this week, which sharply criticized the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and other insurgents and noted the ineffectiveness of its civilian government.

American officials lined up to placate Pakistan on intrusions of its sovereignty. General Petraeus offered Pakistan the most explicit American mea culpa yet for the cross-border helicopter strikes, saying that the American-led coalition forces “deeply regret” the “tragic loss of life.”

Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, quickly followed suit, calling “Pakistan’s brave security forces” an important ally in the war. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a private, but official, apology to Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a telephone call on Wednesday afternoon.

Both American and Pakistani officials said that they expected that Wednesday’s apologies would be effective, at least in the short term, and that Pakistan would soon reopen the border crossing at Torkham, a supply route for the NATO coalition in landlocked Afghanistan that runs from the port of Karachi to the Khyber region. The Pakistani government closed that route last week to protest the cross-border strikes.

“It’s obvious that the situation right now ain’t good,” said a senior NATO official, who agreed to speak candidly but only anonymously. “The best thing we could do is to strip away as many of the relatively smaller things as possible so we can focus on the big issues. And crazy as it may seem, the border crossing is a relatively small issue, compared to the others.”

Those other issues were flagged in the latest quarterly report from the White House to Congress on developments in the region. The assessment, first reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, takes aim at both the Pakistani military and the government.

For instance, “the Pakistani military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda forces in North Waziristan,” the report said. It also painted Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, as out of touch with his own populace, a disconnect that the report said was exacerbated by Mr. Zardari’s “decision to travel to Europe despite the floods.” The overall Pakistani response to the catastrophic floods this summer, the report said, was viewed by Pakistanis as “slow and inadequate.”

Frustration with Pakistan is growing in the United States in part because “we’re living in the post-Faisal Shahzad era,” said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Pakistani-American who was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for the attempted Times Square bombing.

Mr. Markey said that tensions among counterterrorism officials had also mounted because of the unspecified threats of terrorist attacks in Europe. “Frustration has really mounted, so the drumbeat is getting louder,” he said.

Making things worse, the administration is expected to brief Congressional officials on an Internet video, which surfaced last week, that showed men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes, underscoring concerns about unlawful killings by Pakistani soldiers supported by the United States.

A prominent House Democrat warned on Wednesday that American aid to Pakistan could be imperiled. “I am appalled by the horrific contents of the recent video, which appears to show extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military,” Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

“The failure of Pakistani officials to punish those responsible could have implications for future security assistance to Pakistan,” he said.

A joint Pakistan-NATO inquiry on the helicopter strike concluded on Wednesday that Pakistani border soldiers who initially fired on NATO helicopters were “simply firing warning shots after hearing the nearby engagement and hearing the helicopters flying nearby,” said Brig. Gen. Timothy M. Zadalis, a NATO spokesman, in a statement.

“This tragic event could have been avoided with better coalition force coordination with the Pakistani military,” he said.


Alissa J. Rubin and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    U.S. Tries to Calm Pakistan Over Airstrike, NYT, 6.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07diplo.html

Risks and Advantages in U.S. Effort in Mideast

October 5, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — When President Obama reopened face-to-face talks between the Israelis and Palestinians last month, he pledged that his administration would hold their hands but warned, “The United States cannot impose an agreement, and we cannot want it more than the parties themselves.”

With the negotiations deadlocked over the issue of Jewish settlements, several veterans of Middle East peacemaking said Mr. Obama’s warning had come true — only weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to sit down.

Not only is the Obama administration holding hands, they said, it is also handing out concessions to each side, in a bid to keep Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas at the table. The generosity of the American offers, and the reluctance of the Israelis or the Palestinians to accept them, have been telling.

On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu’s senior cabinet ministers convened in Jerusalem, officials said, and did not even take up a package of security guarantees being offered by the United States in return for Israel’s extending a freeze on the construction of settlements in the West Bank by 60 days.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, rejected a proposal by the administration that they keep negotiating without an extension, in return for an American endorsement of their position on the borders of a future Palestinian state. Without an extension, the Palestinians insist, the talks are dead.

Few analysts argue that Mr. Obama can broker a peace agreement without horse-trading on issues like this. Ultimately, most believe, he will have to put down his own blueprint for a deal. The question some are asking is whether he is risking too much too soon — and for too little.

“I never imagined that we would have to do anything else,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel and a negotiator in the Clinton administration. “But in the process, we have to be careful not to pay with strategic coin for mere tactical breathing room.”

In the case of Israel, officials said, the United States is offering military hardware, support for a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, help with enforcing a ban on the smuggling of weapons through a Palestinian state, a promise to veto Security Council resolutions critical of Israel during the talks and a pledge to forge a regional security agreement for the Middle East.

For all this, people briefed on the details said, the United States is seeking a single 60-day, nonrenewable extension.

“It’s an extraordinary package for essentially nothing,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who also served as American ambassador to Israel and was a negotiator in the Clinton administration. “Given what’s already happened, who thinks that a two-month extension is enough?”

After initially turning down the American offer, Mr. Netanyahu now appears inclined to accept it, several officials said. They said he needed extra time to round up the necessary votes among his cabinet members, several of whom are steadfastly opposed to an extension of the freeze.

But even if he signs on, some analysts predict that the two sides will end up in the same cul-de-sac in two months. Mr. Abbas, several people said, has told associates that he feels that he has no choice but to keep pushing for a freeze, largely because the Obama administration made settlements the centerpiece of its first 10 months of Middle East diplomacy.

For now, at least, that imperative has trumped even an offer by the United States to formally endorse a Palestinian state based on the borders of Israel before the 1967 Middle East war, something for which the Palestinians have long pushed. Some Palestinians say that an American endorsement is not worth a great deal if the Israelis refuse to recognize it.

“The original sin was putting so much emphasis on settlements, an issue we couldn’t resolve,” said Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. “We’ve spent the last year trying to undo the damage of that step.”

Some analysts argue that the United States still has one crucial advantage. Neither side wants to alienate Washington — the Israelis, because they need American help in defending themselves against Iran; the Palestinians, because they want backing on the issue of territory. In fact, lobbying the administration might be a higher priority than getting back to the bargaining table.

“There is a desire by both parties to woo the party that is not in the room,” said David Makovsky, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Both want to get the support of the U.S.”

The political calendar might also be driving the administration to muddle through this period, analysts said.

“If we can get these 60 days, and get past the midterm elections, we can create a moment of choice for both sides,” said Daniel Levy, a former negotiator who is now at the New America Foundation.

The question of how much the United States is offering, and what it is asking for in return, is being fiercely debated within the White House and the State Department, according to officials. Some of that reflects the strong personalities of the people formulating Middle East policy in the administration.

The package of incentives for Israel was devised largely by Dennis B. Ross, a senior adviser on the Middle East at the National Security Council and a veteran peace negotiator. But the day-to-day negotiations are being handled by George J. Mitchell, the administration’s special envoy to the region who led the push on Israel to halt settlement construction.

The administration hopes that by making it clear that any settlement extension would be a one-time-only offer, it can avoid the prospect of the Palestinians’ threatening to walk out again in two months.

“We recognize that to get the parties over this hump we have to offer something of value to each side,” said the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “In return, we need a commitment from the parties to remain in the negotiations long enough to reach an agreement. We don’t want to go through this again.”

    Risks and Advantages in U.S. Effort in Mideast, NYT, 5.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/world/middleeast/06diplo.html

Pakistan Halts NATO Supplies to Afghanistan After Attack

September 30, 2010
The New York Times
By ISMAIL KHAN and JANE PERLEZ

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan closed a vital transit link for NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for an attack by coalition helicopters on a Pakistani security post hours earlier.

Trucks and oil tankers were stopped at the border post of Torkham just north of Peshawar and it was unclear when the post would reopen, a Pakistani security official said.

A closure of the crossing through which NATO and American troops receive most of their non-lethal equipment is rare, and signaled a downturn in the military relationship between Pakistan and the United States just three months before the Obama administration takes stock of progress in Afghanistan.

A NATO helicopter attacked a border post at Mandati Kandaw, a town close to the capital of Parachinar in the Kurram area of Pakistan’s tribal region, at 5 a.m. on Thursday, the official said. Three paramilitary soldiers of the Frontier Corps were killed, and three others injured, he said. Another border post at Kharlachi in the Kurram region was struck a few hours later, the official added.

The two posts are about 15 miles apart and border Paktia Province in Afghanistan.

The incident occurred as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, was in Islamabad for a previously scheduled visit. He was expected to meet the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, later on Thursday, American officials said.

The helicopter attacks into Pakistani territory Thursday came after American military helicopters launched three airstrikes last weekend killing more than 50 people suspected of being members of the Haqqani network of militants.

American officials in Afghanistan tried to temper Pakistani anger about those attacks, saying that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and had acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan.

American military commanders say they have become increasingly frustrated at the tempo of deadly attacks against American troops in Afghanistan by the Haqqani militants who shelter in Pakistan’s tribal region.

A spokesman at NATO headquarters in Afghanistan said the incident was under investigation.


Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad.

    Pakistan Halts NATO Supplies to Afghanistan After Attack, NYT, 30.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/world/asia/01peshawar.html

U.S. Tries to Breathe Life Back Into Mideast Talks

September 25, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — With the deadline for a potentially deal-breaking decision on Jewish settlements looming on Sunday, American diplomats shuttled furiously between Israeli and Palestinian officials at the United Nations to prevent the peace talks from collapsing.

But there was no sign of a breakthrough after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Friday evening with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

“We will stay at it,” said the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. He would not offer details about the discussions or United States proposals to break the impasse over the settlement moratorium, which is set to expire at midnight Sunday.

Mr. Abbas has threatened to walk out of the talks if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not extend the 10-month ban on construction in the West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu, who is under extreme pressure from his right-leaning coalition, has ruled out an extension, although he has hinted he may be willing to limit the scope of building.

President Obama, in a speech to the United Nations on Thursday, repeated his call to extend the moratorium. He also urged the Palestinians to stick with the negotiations, which began this month and quickly bogged down over settlements.

Mr. Abbas, in his speech to the United Nations on Saturday, did not repeat his threat to walk out on the peace talks, but he did say that halting settlement activity was the only way to give them credibility. “Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements,” he said.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, told the United Nations that freezing settlement activity was the test of Israel’s commitment to successful negotiations. If the talks collapse over that issue, he said, Israel will bear the onus of failure.

Mrs. Clinton and the administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, have been trying to persuade Mr. Netanyahu to agree to a limited extension of two or three months, officials said. Their aim is to give the two sides time to reach enough of an understanding on the borders of a Palestinian state so that it would become clear which settlements fell into Israeli territory and which were in Palestinian territory.

Mr. Mitchell appealed again to Mr. Abbas on Saturday not to break off the talks. But finding a compromise was proving elusive, officials said, with both sides digging in their heels in recent days. Any breakthrough is likely to come hours before the moratorium expires.

“There’s a pretty intensive negotiation going on right now with the Israelis and Palestinians,” Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said on Friday. “We know that time is short, this is an important issue, but I’m just not able to share much right now.”

There had been confusion in recent days over whether the moratorium expired on Sept. 26, 10 months from when it was announced, or on Sept. 30, 10 months from when the administrative order took effect. Israeli and American officials now say Sunday is the expiration date.

The pro-settlement camp in Israel said it was not planning on waiting that long. Activists are planning an event starting at 4 p.m. on Sunday to mark the end of the freeze at the northern West Bank settlement of Revava. Danny Danon, a Parliament member from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said tractors would “break ground for new homes” starting at 6:06 p.m. when, by his count, the moratorium ends.

To keep momentum in the peace process, the administration has continued diplomatic overtures to other Middle East countries. Mrs. Clinton has met Lebanese officials, and on Monday is to meet with Syria’s foreign minister, to try to draw both countries into the peace process.


Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from the United Nations, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

    U.S. Tries to Breathe Life Back Into Mideast Talks, NYT, 25.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/world/middleeast/26mideast.html

Obama Presses for Peace in Likely Sudan Partition

September 24, 2010
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — After months of leaving Sudan policy on a back burner, President Obama put the weight of his administration and his own personal esteem in Africa on the line Friday, demanding that north and south Sudan ensure that their likely split into two nations early next year proceed peacefully.

At a high-level Sudan meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Obama said Washington would normalize relations should the Jan. 9 referendum for the independence of southern Sudan be carried off calmly and the Darfur conflict be settled. Failing in either would bring further isolation, he warned.

If Khartoum fulfills its obligations in settling the conflicts, then the United States will support agricultural development, expand trade and investment, exchange ambassadors and eventually lift sanctions, Mr. Obama said.

“What happens in Sudan in the days ahead may decide whether a people who have endured too much war move forward towards peace or slip backwards into bloodshed,” Mr. Obama said, establishing the warning tone taken by all speakers at the session.

With the southern Sudan independence vote a little more than 100 days away, preparations are greatly lagging. Voter registration that was to have been done by the end of August remains incomplete, and many technical issues are unsettled. Almost nothing has been done to prepare for a secondary referendum to decide the fate of Abyei, a contested area of important oil deposits.

The two sides are dragging their feet on details of the eventual divorce, given that the roughly 4.8 million eligible voters in the south, the only side voting, are likely to choose independence. With independence scheduled six months after the vote, major issues like citizenship, borders and the division of oil revenue have not been negotiated. At least 1.5 million southerners are believed to be living in Khartoum, the capital, and an unknown number of northerners in the south.

United Nations officials had intended the meeting to be a small gathering of foreign ministers to stress in the presence of senior representatives of both sides that the referendum not be delayed.

But it ballooned into something much larger after President Obama decided to attend. About 40 foreign leaders or senior officials signed up to speak. Ultimately the meeting became a highly visible means to serve notice that the onus is on the Sudanese to carry out the last, hardest stages of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement they signed in 2005.

All the governments participating, including major Security Council members like Russia and China, as well as major pan-African organizations, endorsed a final communiqué vowing that the referendum would be held on time and peace respected no matter what the outcome. It also stressed the need to support peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, the embattled western Sudanese region where violence flared anew in recent months.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended decades of war pitting the north, dominated by Arab Muslims, against the Christian and animist south. The civil war left two million people dead and millions more homeless.

Sudan borders on nine other African states, and many speakers worried aloud that any instability “will not stop at its borders,” said Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the leader of Qatar, which is trying to negotiate a peace among the Darfur militias.

The Sudanese had sought a closed meeting, but ultimately it was open, leaving Sudan’s vice president, Ali Osman Taha, and Salva Kiir, the president of the south and a vice president in the north, to sketch their differences in diplomatic terms.

Mr. Taha assured the gathering that the referendum would be held on time, but he criticized the international community for supporting peace on one hand while continuing the “demonization” of the north on the other. The International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war crimes charges, economic sanctions, the lack of debt relief and Sudan’s presence on the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism were all intended to weaken the country, he said.

Mr. Kiir said that the Jan. 9 referendum date was sacred and that any technical delays had to be overcome. “Any delays risk the return to instability and violence,” he said.

Numerous aid organizations, concerned that a lack of attention might encourage opponents of the referendum to delay it, hailed the meeting. But some were outraged that the final communiqué welcomed a commitment by Sudan to pursue war criminals, given that Mr. Bashir has mocked his own indictment.

The final communiqué could not really attack Mr. Bashir while encouraging him to respect the referendum deadline, said two senior officials involved with the negotiations, who said the reference to Sudan’s commitment to pursue war criminals was to ensure that the issue of impunity would not be ignored.

    Obama Presses for Peace in Likely Sudan Partition, NYT, 24.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/africa/25nations.html

The Sunday Deadline

September 23, 2010
The New York Times

President Obama made a compelling case at the United Nations for why a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is not only essential but may even be possible this time. Since the current talks began three weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, are reportedly grappling with some of the toughest issues.

This could all fall apart within days, however. On Sunday, Israel’s 10-month moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank is set to expire. Mr. Abbas has threatened to walk away from the bargaining table if the moratorium isn’t extended. Mr. Netanyahu has said his coalition partners won’t allow him to do that.

It would be shortsighted and dangerous for the two leaders to throw away what could be the best chance in years for peace. President Obama, who called on Israel to extend the moratorium, needs to muster all of his diplomatic skills to ensure they don’t.

The most rational compromise would be for Mr. Netanyahu to extend the moratorium — by 90 days, 120 days, whatever the sides will accept — and for Mr. Abbas to endorse the temporary measure. The two sides could then use the breathing space to negotiate the borders of the new Palestinian state.

That way Palestinians would have more confidence that their long-promised state will become a reality. Israelis would know which settlements will become part of Israel in the land swaps that must be part of any peace agreement. They could then resume building in those designated settlements.

We have heard from the Israelis, and even some American officials, that extending the moratorium is politically impossible for Mr. Netanyahu. Taking political risks is what leadership is all about. (And if this government falls, we suspect that Mr. Netanyahu could form a new coalition with the pro-peace Kadima Party, many of whose members came from his Likud Party.)

This certainly won’t be easy for Mr. Abbas. He feels the Palestinians deserve — and were promised by the Obama administration — a permanent freeze on all settlement-building.

The potential return for both leaders, and the world, is huge. Mr. Abbas has the chance to become the founding father of the Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu, to be the leader who finally brought a lasting peace for Israel.

What makes this all the more tantalizing, and frustrating, is that everybody already knows the outlines of an agreement, covering borders, security, Palestinian refugees and the future of Jerusalem. Decades have been wasted and countless lives have been lost as politicians on both sides failed to exercise the leadership and courage required to get there.

If there is any doubt about what the future holds if these talks unravel, clashes on Wednesday between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in and around the Old City of Jerusalem should be a stark reminder.

It is, of course, up to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas to choose. But as Mr. Obama made clear on Thursday, the Arab states who have spent years trumpeting the Palestinian cause need finally to match their rhetoric with action. They need to prove that they are willing to normalize relations with Israel as part of any deal. And they must encourage Mr. Abbas to compromise — and back him up politically and financially.

President Obama needs to help the Israelis and Palestinians get past Sunday’s deadline and then keep pressing them to negotiate a real and lasting peace. This moment must not be squandered.

    The Sunday Deadline, NYT, 23.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24fri1.html

With Warning, Obama Presses China on Currency

September 23, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama increased pressure on China to immediately revalue its currency on Thursday, devoting most of a two-hour meeting with China’s prime minister to the issue and sending the message, according to one of his top aides, that if “the Chinese don’t take actions, we have other means of protecting U.S. interests.”

But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao barely budged beyond his familiar talking points about gradual “reform” of China’s currency policy, leaving it unclear whether Mr. Obama’s message would change Beijing’s economic or political calculus.

The unusual focus on this single issue at such a high level was clearly an effort by the White House to make the case that Mr. Obama was putting American jobs and competitiveness at the top of the agenda in a relationship that has endured strains in recent weeks on everything from territorial disputes to sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

Democrats in Congress are threatening to pass legislation before the midterm elections that would slap huge tariffs on Chinese goods to undermine the advantages Beijing has enjoyed from a currency, the renminbi, that experts say is artificially weakened by 20 to 25 percent.

Mr. Obama’s aides said he was embracing the threat of tariffs and new trade actions against China at the World Trade Organization to gain some leverage over the Chinese, but was also trying to head off any action that would lead to a destructive trade war.

Jeffrey Bader, the senior director for Asia at the National Security Council, told reporters that the two men engaged in “a lengthy discussion about the impact and the politics of the issue.” One Chinese official speculated Thursday that Mr. Obama’s insistence on spending so much time on the issue was motivated by pre-election politics, suggesting that the pressure might abate after early November.

While the United States has been pressing China for years to lift the strict controls on its currency, which keep Chinese exports competitive and more factory workers employed, American voters and lawmakers have only recently seized on exchange rates as a potent political issue. Mr. Obama pressed much harder on Thursday than during a visit to Beijing last year, perhaps because a Chinese commitment several months ago to allow the value of the currency to rise has resulted in a change of less than 2 percent.

The meeting with Mr. Wen came as the United States appeared to lean toward its longtime ally, Japan, in an increasingly heated standoff between China and Japan over who has claim on territory near the South China Sea.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that China and Japan should sort out the issue themselves, but that “We would fulfill our alliance responsibilities,” a term that clearly referred to the American military alliance with Japan.

But the United States also tried not to inflame the dispute. It barely came up at the meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen, Mr. Bader said, adding that despite the talk of America’s obligation to back its military ally, “we have no expectation in any known universe that this would escalate to that kind of a level.”

Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Wen, in a spare conference room usually used by members of the Security Council, came minutes after the president told the United Nations General Assembly that his efforts to engage friends and adversaries were beginning to bear fruit.

He called on Arab states to support fragile Middle East peace talks and warned Iran that it would face sustained international pressure if it did not negotiate seriously over its nuclear program.

Iranian officials have hinted they are prepared to resume talks, without setting a date.

“The door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it,” said Mr. Obama, who plans to address the Iranian people directly on Friday in an interview with BBC’s Persian service. “But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.”

If Iran fails to meet its obligations under international nonproliferation treaties, he added, it “must be held accountable.”

In June, the United Nations Security Council imposed its fourth round of sanctions against Iran, which were followed by harsher measures by the United States and European and Asian nations. On Wednesday, Russia made clear that it would not be fulfilling a contract to sell Iran an advanced missile system.

Mr. Obama also called on Israel to extend its partial freeze on building new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, construction that is one of the most contentious issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

The moratorium is set to expire this weekend, and hard-won talks could be stymied if the Israelis fail to extend it and the Palestinians decide to walk away from the table.

“Our position on this issue is well known,” Mr. Obama said. “We believe that the moratorium should be extended. We also believe that talks should press on until completed.”

Clashes on Wednesday between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem underscored the fragile state of affairs in the region and the potential for violent outbursts if the negotiations fall apart.

Mr. Obama acknowledged the possibility of “terror, or turbulence, or posturing or petty politics” to disrupt the negotiations, but exhorted world leaders to stand behind the peace process.

“When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel,” he said.

Tonally, Mr. Obama’s speech to the General Assembly was dramatically different from the one he delivered last year, in his maiden appearance as a new president promising change not only at home, but in America’s dealings with the rest of the world. If the 2009 speech was about the promise of a new approach, and often interrupted by applause, this speech was far more about pressing countries to take up what he called their “responsibilities.”

“Last year he sought to signal that U.S. foreign policy was under new management and intended to work better with others, just what his audience wanted to hear,” James M. Lindsay, the director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote shortly after the speech was over. “This year he made clear he wants to get things done, and that will require others to do things they would prefer not to do.” He added, “He shouldn’t be surprised to discover that others are slow to follow.”

Mr. Obama, at turns sweeping and philosophical, told the delegates and world leaders that it was “our destiny” to endure a time of recession, war and conflict, and spoke out broadly in support of open governments and human rights.

    With Warning, Obama Presses China on Currency, NYT, 23.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/world/24prexy.html

U.S. Lauds Russia on Barring Arms to Iran, as Obama Speaks to U.N.

September 22, 2010
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and ANDREW E. KRAMER

UNITED NATIONS — The White House praised Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Wednesday for publicly barring the shipment of an advanced antimissile system to Iran, even as American diplomats here discussed a plan to reopen negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

The Russian announcement and the effort to revive a diplomatic engagement that fell apart a year ago came as President Obama arrived in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly and laid out what he called an ambitious new approach to American development assistance for the world’s poorest countries.

“The days when your development was dictated by foreign capitals must come to an end,” Mr. Obama said from the well of the United Nations, the first of two speeches there over two days, drawing applause from nearly 190 nations attending the Millennium Development Goals summit meeting.

Mr. Medvedev’s announcement confirmed in public what Russian officials had quietly told American and French officials in June: that he would interpret the United Nations sanctions against Iran as mandating that Russia should permanently halt delivery of S-300 missiles, which Tehran wanted to build as a deterrent to airstrikes against its nuclear facilities. The declaration by Mr. Medvedev ended equivocation by Russian officials about whether the sophisticated advanced air defense system would fall under the sanctions ban.

Iran declared several months ago that it would build an equivalent system of its own, but obtaining the components, the guidance systems and the expertise would be a challenge, especially with the ban on high-technology imports to the country.

The White House, eager to demonstrate cooperation with Russia at a moment when the Senate is debating ratification of the new strategic arms reduction treaty, said in a statement that Mr. Medvedev “has demonstrated leadership on holding Iran accountable to its international obligations from start to finish.” It added, “This continues to demonstrate how Russia and the United States are cooperating closely on behalf of our mutual interests, and global security.”

Mr. Medvedev’s decree ended an internal debate in Russia, pitting supporters of sanctions against those trying to bolster economic relations with Iran, and about whether the Security Council sanctions included the air defense missiles. Russian news media had reported that the contract was worth $800 million.

“The importance is, it is now public and official,” James F. Collins, former ambassador to Russia and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a telephone interview from Washington.

The Russian and American announcements came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continued a seemingly endless series of public appearances in New York: television interviews, meetings with reporters and academics and speeches denouncing American imperialism, proclaiming the failures of capitalism, and warning the United States that it had never been involved in a “real war.”

But he also said that the resumption of talks between Iran and the West was inevitable, and while the United States fears being mired in fruitless negotiations while Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material increases, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s prediction seems about right.

At a meeting today with France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China, diplomats planned what one senior American official described to reporters as a “phased approach” that would include reviving an earlier proposal to supply Iran with enriched fuel for a research reactor in Tehran in return for Iran’s shipping the bulk of its stockpile of uranium to Russia and France.

“We’re prepared to engage and see if we can’t produce what would be a confidence-building step,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a private meeting.

The original deal fell apart soon after it was negotiated last October in Geneva, rejected in Tehran. That set off a chain of events that led to the Security Council sanctions, the toughest of four passed in as many years.

Part of the motivation for the sanctions was to force Iran back to negotiations, and ultimately to comply with the Security Council demand that it halt all enrichment of nuclear fuel and answer the questions posed by international inspectors. But resurrecting the research reactor deal will be tricky.

The original deal called for Iran to turn over 1,200 kilograms of nuclear fuel, in return for specialized fuel rods that would enable the research reactor to produce medical isotopes. At the time, that would have left Iran with less than one bomb’s worth of low-enriched uranium. But since then, Iran’s stockpile has increased, and it has begun enriching some uranium to 20 percent, a level of purity that takes it closer to bomb-grade fuel.

A new deal would call for Iran to turn over more of its stockpile, and to cease the 20 percent enrichment.

Communicating with Iran has been characteristically difficult. Iran has yet to respond to specific overtures by the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton. She is seeking a specific date for a meeting.

Iran’s reluctance to do that may reflect internal disagreements in Tehran about how to respond to the latest Western efforts to discuss its nuclear program, another senior official said.

The administration hopes to learn more about Iran’s intentions later this week when the British foreign secretary, William Hague, meets the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in New York. Iranian officials are also likely to meet diplomats from Russia and China.

But in a sign of the chill between the United States and Iran, officials said they did not expect any meetings, even impromptu encounters, between American and Iranian officials in New York. Just the process of arranging a meeting with Iran will take several weeks, an official said.

Mr. Obama used the United Nations development conference to announce a plan to reinvigorate American development efforts and the principal agency for delivering them, the United States Agency for International Development, which languished for years with financing cutbacks and a loss of talented employees.

Instead of dictating development projects and goals to poorer countries, he said, the United States would seek partnerships with local governments and organizations to give them a voice in setting their priorities. He also said the administration would focus on choosing development projects where it believed that American involvement could produce sustainable economic growth. It will also seek to team up with other governments and well-financed new players, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

While the administration does not plan to change its overall commitment to aid, officials said it would reallocate funds from countries that are deemed less promising to those with a greater chance of success.

The White House wants to raise the profile of the development agency, but it has not fundamentally changed its place in the administration. The agency’s administrator, Rajiv Shah, will continue to report to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a largely symbolic step, he will have a seat on the National Security Council for issues that are relevant to development.


David E Sanger reported from the United Nations, and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow. Mark Landler contributed reporting from the United Nations.

    U.S. Lauds Russia on Barring Arms to Iran, as Obama Speaks to U.N., NYT, 22.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/world/europe/23prexy.html

Clashes in Jerusalem as Talks Snag

September 22, 2010
The New York Times
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — With Israel’s construction freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank scheduled to end this weekend, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were seeking an elusive formula on Wednesday to keep their peace talks going while both sides warned that if the talks ended, violence could erupt.

As if to illustrate that warning, Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in and around the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday after an Israeli security guard fatally shot a Palestinian resident of Silwan, a volatile and hotly contested East Jerusalem neighborhood where a few hundred Jewish settlers live among tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The guard told the police that he had opened fire in self-defense after being ambushed by stone-throwers before dawn. But Palestinians said there were signs that the dead man, Samer Sirhan, 32, had been chased by the guard, and Palestinian spokesmen accused the Israeli settlers of carrying out provocations in order to heat up the atmosphere and divert attention away from the issue of Israeli settlement construction.

Mr. Sirhan, a father of five, was a member of Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian party engaged in the peace talks with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership has said that the 10-month moratorium must be extended for the talks to progress, and that if settlement construction started again next week it would prove that the Israeli government was not serious about making peace.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded that such talk is evidence of Palestinian insincerity, saying that the moratorium was a gesture aimed at making it easier for the Palestinians to enter direct talks. Since they waited nine months before taking advantage of it, walking out on the talks now would prove that they were not serious about peace.

Efforts by the Obama administration to get Mr. Netanyahu to extend the freeze have so far been rejected.

“The end of the freeze is a test case for the concept of compromise,” Dan Meridor, Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, said this week. “Neither side will get all it wants.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has often said that once building begins again, he will end the peace talks. But on Tuesday, he spoke to American Jewish leaders in New York and did not insist that the end of the freeze meant the end of the talks.

“I cannot say I will leave the negotiations, but it’s very difficult for me to resume talks if Prime Minister Netanyahu declares that he will continue his activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” he told the leaders.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was at the meeting with Mr. Abbas, said by telephone that he was impressed by two things: that the Palestinian president referred to Mr. Netanyahu as “my partner” and that he appeared to be seeking a way to stay at the negotiations even if some building began. On other issues, like Jerusalem and naming Israel a Jewish state, Mr. Foxman said Mr. Abbas did not please him.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s military chief of staff, told a parliamentary committee that if the peace talks, begun in Washington three weeks ago, ran aground, he expected a wave of anti-Israel attacks in the West Bank, although not on the scale of a decade ago after the breakdown of similar talks, and not necessarily right away.

The Israeli military has increased its presence in the West Bank since Hamas gunmen shot dead four settlers driving on the main north-south road near Hebron just as the new talks were about to start. Palestinian security forces arrested suspects in the settler killings, a move praised by the Israelis.

Relations between the two forces have been improving and the streets have been calm. Wednesday’s events in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan in which Mr. Sirhan was killed exposed underlying tensions, however.

Women and children screamed and wailed as dozens of enraged young men bore Mr. Sirhan’s body in a simple, open green coffin up a narrow alleyway and stairs leading to his father’s house. The body was then carried to Mr. Sirhan’s house before being taken for burial.

The disturbances then spread. In the Old City, the police briefly entered the sacred compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary to push back protesters. Eight Israeli passers-by were lightly injured by stones in other East Jerusalem neighborhoods, and one was stabbed in the back, the police said.

After the killing, Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said that the presence of “heavily armed settlers in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods” paved the way for “such crimes.”

    Clashes in Jerusalem as Talks Snag, NYT, 22.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/world/middleeast/23mideast.html

China’s Disputes in Asia Buttress Influence of U.S.

September 22, 2010
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — For the last several years, one big theme has dominated talk of the future of Asia: As China rises, its neighbors are being inevitably drawn into its orbit, currying favor with the region’s new hegemonic power.

The presumed loser, of course, is the United States, whose wealth and influence are being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose economic troubles have eroded its standing in a more dynamic Asia.

But rising frictions between China and its neighbors in recent weeks over security issues have handed the United States an opportunity to reassert itself — one the Obama administration has been keen to take advantage of.

Washington is leaping into the middle of heated territorial disputes between China and Southeast Asian nations despite stern Chinese warnings that it mind its own business. The United States is carrying out naval exercises with South Korea in order to help Seoul rebuff threats from North Korea even though China is denouncing those exercises, saying that they intrude on areas where the Chinese military operates.

Meanwhile, China’s increasingly tense standoff with Japan over a Chinese fishing trawler captured by Japanese ships in disputed waters is pushing Japan back under the American security umbrella.

The arena for these struggles is shifting this week to a summit meeting of world leaders at the United Nations. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, has refused to meet with his Japanese counterpart, Naoto Kan, and on Tuesday he threatened Japan with “further action” if it did not unconditionally release the fishing captain.

On Friday, President Obama is expected to meet with Southeast Asian leaders and promise that the United States is willing to help them peacefully settle South China Sea territorial disputes with China.

“The U.S. has been smart,” said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy who studies security issues in Asia. “It has done well by coming to the assistance of countries in the region.”

“All across the board, China is seeing the atmospherics change tremendously,” he added. “The idea of the China threat, thanks to its own efforts, is being revived.”

Asserting Chinese sovereignty over borderlands in contention — everywhere from Tibet to Taiwan to the South China Sea — has long been the top priority for Chinese nationalists, an obsession that overrides all other concerns. But this complicates China’s attempts to present the country’s rise as a boon for the whole region and creates wedges between China and its neighbors.

Nothing underscores that better than the escalating diplomatic conflict between China and Japan over the detention of the Chinese fishing captain, Zhan Qixiong, by the Japanese authorities, who say the captain rammed two Japanese vessels around the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The islands are administered by Japan but claimed by both Japan and China.

The current dispute may strengthen the military alliance between the United States and Japan, as did an incident last April when a Chinese helicopter buzzed a Japanese destroyer. Such confrontations tend to remind Japanese officials, who have suggested that they need to refocus their foreign policy on China instead of America, that they rely on the United States to balance an unpredictable China, analysts say.

“Japan will have no choice but to further go into America’s arms, to further beef up the U.S.-Japan alliance and its military power,” said Huang Jing, a scholar of the Chinese military at the National University of Singapore.

In July, Southeast Asian nations, particularly Vietnam, applauded when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States was willing to help mediate a solution to disputes that those nations had with China over the South China Sea, which is rich in oil, natural gas and fish. China insists on dealing with Southeast Asian nations one on one, but Mrs. Clinton said the United States supported multilateral talks. Freedom of navigation in the sea is an American national interest, she said.

President Obama meets on Friday with leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean. The Associated Press reported that the participants would issue a joint statement opposing the “use or threat of force by any claimant attempting to enforce disputed claims in the South China Sea.” The statement is clearly aimed at China, which has seized Vietnamese fishing vessels in recent years and detained their crews.

On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, criticized any attempt at mediation by the United States. “We firmly oppose any country having nothing to do with the South China Sea issue getting involved in the dispute,” she said at a news conference in Beijing.

China has also been objecting to American plans to hold military exercises with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, which China claims as its exclusive military operations zone. The United States and South Korea want to send a stern message to North Korea over what Seoul says was the torpedoing last March of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine. China’s belligerence serves only to reinforce South Korea’s dependence on the American military.

American officials are increasingly concerned about the modernization of China’s navy and its long-range abilities, as well as China’s growing assertiveness in the surrounding waters. In March, a Chinese official told White House officials that the South China Sea was part of China’s “core interest” of sovereignty, similar to Tibet and Taiwan, an American official said in an interview at the time. American officials also object to China’s telling foreign oil companies not to work with Vietnam on developing oil fields in the South China Sea.

Some Chinese military leaders and analysts see an American effort to contain China. Feng Zhaokui, a Japan scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an article on Tuesday in The Global Times, a populist newspaper, that the United States was trying to “nurture a coalition against China.”

In August, Rear Adm. Yang Yi wrote an editorial for The PLA Daily, published by the Chinese Army, in which he said that on one hand, Washington “wants China to play a role in regional security issues.”

“On the other hand,” he continued, “it is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and is constantly challenging China’s core interests.”

Asian countries suspicious of Chinese intentions see Washington as a natural ally. In April, the incident involving the Chinese helicopter and Japanese destroyer spooked many in Japan, making them feel vulnerable at a time when Yukio Hatoyama, then the prime minister, had angered Washington with his pledges to relocate a Marine Corps air base away from Okinawa.

His successor, Mr. Kan, has sought to smooth out ties with Washington and has emphasized that the alliance is the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy.

“Insecurity about China’s presence has served as a wake-up call on the importance of the alliance,” said Fumiaki Kubo, a professor of public policy at the University of Tokyo.


Michael Wines contributed reporting from Beijing, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo. Zhang Jing contributed research.

    China’s Disputes in Asia Buttress Influence of U.S., NYT, 22.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/world/asia/23china.html

Obama Is Said to Be Preparing to Seek Approval on Saudi Arms Sale

September 17, 2010
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing to seek Congressional approval for a huge arms sale to Saudi Arabia, chiefly intended as a building block for Middle East regional defenses to box in Iran, according to administration and Pentagon officials.

The advanced jet fighters and helicopters for Saudi Arabia, long a leading customer for these weapons, could become the largest arms deal in American history, and one significant enough to shift the region’s balance of power over the course of a decade.

The key element of the sale would be scores of new F-15 combat aircraft, along with more than 175 attack and troop-transport helicopters and, if subsequent negotiations are successful, ships and antimissile defenses. The deal has been put together in quiet consultations with Israel, which has sought assurances that it will retain its technological edge over Saudi forces, even as Saudi Arabia improves its ability to face down a shared rival, the Iranians.

“We want Iran to understand that its nuclear program is not getting them leverage over their neighbors, that they are not getting an advantage,” a senior administration official said Friday, describing the Saudi sale as part of a broader regional strategy in which the United States has bolstered antimissle defenses in Arab states along the Persian Gulf. “We want the Iranians to know that every time they think they will gain, they will actually lose.”

Though the timing appears coincidental, Congress will likely be formally notified of the proposed sale in the coming days, during a visit to the United States by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad has used his annual visit to address the United Nations General Assembly as a moment to denounce the United States and proclaim that Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful, though this month international weapons inspectors said they had been stonewalled on important questions about Iranian work on warhead designs.

When the arms sale plan is formally sent to Congress, that will start a 30-day clock for it to consider the issue. There is little question it will go forward — the administration is already talking about how many jobs it will create in Congressional districts around the country — but several members of Congress have already expressed reservations about whether it would erode Israel’s military edge.

Administration officials would not discuss the proposed sale on the record because the pre-notification negotiations with Congressional committees were still under way. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal on Tuesday, projected that the value could top $60 billion. But officials involved in the planning said a firm estimate remained impossible because the sale would unfold in phases and would be likely to change along the way as weapons packages, battlefield-management systems and service contracts were decided.

Saudi Arabia has over the decades been the largest purchaser of American arms, with a package for advanced-radar aircraft and associated command systems in the early 1980s worth about $7.5 billion. That was followed in the early 1990s by a deal for jet fighters and support systems that cost nearly $10 billion, according to government records. Another gulf partner that serves as a front line against Iran, the United Arab Emirates, has also purchased significant amounts of American weapons, in particular air-defense systems.

In the past, Israel has often regarded those sales with suspicion. But in recent years, the standoff with Iran has changed the regional dynamics. Officials from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates describe their perceptions of the threat from Iran in very similar terms.

Since coming to office, Mr. Obama and his top officials have hinted at extending the American defense umbrella over much of the Persian Gulf, in hopes of preventing other states in the region, including the Saudi Arabia, from seeking nuclear arms of their own. The sale of conventional weapons, the theory goes, helps persuade Saudia Arabia and other Arab states that they could deter Iranian ambitions, even without their own nuclear capability.

There is an added benefit for the American military, in addition to helping regional partners bolster their defenses with weapons that cannot be matched by Iran. The purchase of these American combat systems and related military support, including American trainers, would allow the United States armed forces to operate seamlessly in that part of the world, according to Pentagon officials.

“We are helping these allied and partner nations create their own containment shield against Iran,” said an American military officer. “It is a way of deterring Iran, but helpful to us in so many other ways.”

A senior Defense Department official said the proposed sale would include 84 new F-15s and an agreement to modernize 70 of Saudi Arabia’s older F-15s to that same upgraded configuration. The official said Saudi Arabia was expected to retire its older aircraft as the new and upgraded warplanes arrived, so that over the next 5 or 10 years the Saudi Air Force would be far more capable, but not larger in number.

In addition, the weapons package would include 70 Apache attack helicopters, 72 Black Hawk troop-transport helicopters and 36 Little Bird helicopters. The Little Bird is a small, agile helicopter used by American Special Operations forces for surveillance, as well as for inserting or extracting small numbers of combat troops quickly and surreptitiously.

    Obama Is Said to Be Preparing to Seek Approval on Saudi Arms Sale, NYT, 17.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/world/18arms.html

Mr. Geithner and China

September 17, 2010
The New York Times

It is clear that China is going to keep manipulating its currency — and crowding out every other exporter — until the world pushes back. So it was good to hear Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner speaking out this week on Capitol Hill, warning that an undervalued Chinese currency “makes it more difficult for goods and services produced by American workers to compete.”

The problem is that if the United States is the only one pushing back then Beijing will find it all too easy to ignore — claiming that it is resisting the American bully.

The policy is not in China’s long-term interest — as Mr. Geithner made clear in his testimony. It yields little employment growth and represses household spending. But Beijing has been reluctant to give up a strategy that has underpinned years of stellar economic growth.

It is once again swamping the world with exports. And it is unlikely to change until more countries — in Europe and Asia but especially India, Brazil and other developing countries, which China sees as its political constituency — start complaining. They are also the countries most hurt by Beijing’s currency manipulation. Mr. Geithner told Congress that he would look at the Obama administration’s entire “mix of tools.” The decision this week by the United States trade representative to bring cases at the World Trade Organization against China’s punitive tariffs on American steel and its discrimination against American debit card companies is a start.

The administration will also have to be careful not to unleash something it can’t control. Protectionist impulses run frighteningly deep in Congress.

At the hearing, Senator Charles Schumer declared that “China’s currency manipulation is like a boot to the throat of our recovery. This administration refuses to try and take that boot off our neck.” Nearly 100 members of the House from both parties recently sent a letter to the leadership asking for a vote on legislation that would impose new tariffs on Chinese imports to make up for its artificially cheap currency.

That can be a dangerous game. Unilateral trade sanctions could quickly lead to retaliation and escalate into a bilateral trade war that would benefit nobody and damage everybody.

The administration’s softly-softly approach has made very little headway. China announced in June that it would release its currency peg to the dollar. Its currency, the renminbi, has appreciated less than 2 percent against the dollar since, and it has declined against the euro, the yen and other currencies.

It is good to hear Mr. Geithner speaking out. It was also good to hear Japan this week criticizing China’s currency manipulation. The Obama administration now needs to persuade more countries to speak up. That may be the only way to get China to abandon its victim act and its policy that is doing huge economic damage around the world.

    Mr. Geithner and China, NYT, 17.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/opinion/18sat1.html

North Korea Wants to Make a Deal

September 15, 2010
The New York Times
By JIMMY CARTER

Atlanta

DURING my recent travels to North Korea and China, I received clear, strong signals that Pyongyang wants to restart negotiations on a comprehensive peace treaty with the United States and South Korea and on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The components of such an agreement have been fairly constant over the past 16 years, first confirmed in 1994 by the United States and Kim Il-sung, then the North Korean leader, and repeated by a multilateral agreement negotiated in September 2005.

The basic provisions hold that North Korea’s old graphite-moderated nuclear energy reactor, which can easily produce weapons-grade plutonium, and all related facilities and products should be disabled under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency; that while the reactor is shut down, the United States should provide fuel oil or electric power to North Korea until new power plants are built; that the United States should provide assurances against the threat of nuclear attack or other military actions against North Korea; that the United States and North Korea should move toward the normalization of political and economic relations and a peace treaty covering the peninsula; that better relations should be pursued by North Korea, South Korea and Japan; and that all parties should strengthen their economic cooperation on energy, trade and investment.

The comprehensive agreement reached by the Clinton administration was disavowed in 2002 by President George W. Bush. Nevertheless, although North Korea reprocessed fuel rods into plutonium and tested nuclear explosives in 2006, good progress was made in its talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

But conditions have since deteriorated: the talks stopped in 2009, and that same year the United Nations imposed sanctions on Pyongyang after it conducted a second nuclear test and launched a long-range missile. North Korea also prohibited reunions between North and South Korean families.

Tensions grew still higher this year when North Korea detained an American, Aijalon Gomes, whom it accused of crossing into its territory, in January and a South Korean fishing crew in August.

However, there are now clear signals of eagerness from Pyongyang to resume negotiations and accept the basic provisions of the denuclearization and peace efforts.

In July, North Korean officials invited me to come to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, and other officials to secure the release of Mr. Gomes. Those who invited me said that no one else’s request for the prisoner’s release would be honored. They wanted me to come in the hope that I might help resurrect the agreements on denuclearization and peace that were the last official acts of Kim Il-sung before his death in 1994.

I notified the White House of this invitation, and approval for my visit was given in mid-August, after North Korea announced that Mr. Gomes would soon be transferred from his hospital back to prison and that Kim Jong-il was no longer available to meet with me. (I later learned that he would be in China.)

In Pyongyang I requested Mr. Gomes’s freedom, then had to wait 36 hours for his retrial, pardon and release. During this time I met with Kim Yong-nam, president of the presidium of the North’s Parliament, and Kim Kye-gwan, the vice foreign minister and chief negotiator for North Korea in the six-party nuclear talks. Both of them had participated in my previous negotiations with Kim Il-sung.

They understood that I had no official status and could not speak for the American government, so I listened to their proposals, asked questions and, when I returned to the United States, delivered their message to Washington.

They told me they wanted to expand on the good relationships that had developed earlier in the decade with South Korea’s president at the time, Kim Dae-jung, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan.

They expressed concern about several recent American actions, including unwarranted sanctions, ostentatious inclusion of North Korea among nations subject to nuclear attack and provocative military maneuvers with South Korea.

Still, they said, they were ready to demonstrate their desire for peace and denuclearization. They referred to the six-party talks as being “sentenced to death but not yet executed.”

The following week I traveled to Beijing, where Chinese leaders informed me that Mr. Kim had delivered the same points to them while I was in Pyongyang, and that he later released the South Korean fishing crew and suggested the resumption of family reunions. Seeing this as a clear sign of North Korean interest, the Chinese are actively promoting the resumption of the six-party talks.

A settlement on the Korean Peninsula is crucial to peace and stability in Asia, and it is long overdue. These positive messages from North Korea should be pursued aggressively and without delay, with each step in the process carefully and thoroughly confirmed.


Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

    North Korea Wants to Make a Deal, NYT, 15.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/opinion/16carter.html

Aid to Counter Al Qaeda in Yemen Divides U.S. Officials

September 15, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — Senior State Department and American military officials are deeply divided over the pace and scale of military aid to Yemen, which is emerging as a crucial testing ground for the Obama administration’s approach to countering the threat from Al Qaeda.

As the terrorism network’s Yemen branch threatens new attacks on the United States, the United States Central Command has proposed supplying Yemen with $1.2 billion in military equipment and training over the next six years, a significant escalation on a front in the campaign against terrorism, which has largely been hidden from public view.

The aid would include automatic weapons, coastal patrol boats, transport planes and helicopters, as well as tools and spare parts. Training could expand to allow American logistical advisers to accompany Yemeni troops in some noncombat roles.

Opponents, though, fear American weapons could be used against political enemies of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and provoke a backlash that could further destabilize the volatile, impoverished country.

The debate is unfolding as the administration reassesses how and when to use American missiles against suspected terrorists in Yemen following a botched strike in May. That attack, the fourth since December by the American military, killed a provincial deputy governor and set off tribal unrest.

The Yemen quandary reflects the uncertainty the administration faces as it tries to prevent a repeat of the Dec. 25 attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by a Nigerian man trained in Yemen. American officials say a central role in preparing the attack was played by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric now hiding with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the network’s branch in Yemen.

“Yemen is the most dangerous place,” said Representative Jane Harman, a senior California Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee who visited Yemen in March. “We’re much more likely to be attacked in the U.S. by someone inspired by, or trained by, people in Yemen than anything that comes out of Afghanistan.”

Administration officials acknowledge that they are still trying to find the right balance between American strikes, military aid and development assistance — not only in Yemen, but in Pakistan, Somalia and other countries where Islamic extremist groups are operating.

Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, said in a policy talk last week that American-backed assaults by Yemeni forces on Al Qaeda may “deny it the time and space it needs to organize, plan and train for operations.” But in the long term, he added, countering extremism in Yemen “must involve the development of credible institutions that can deliver real economic and social progress.”

American military aid to Yemen has soared already, to $155 million in fiscal 2010 from less than $5 million in fiscal 2006, but American commanders say the assistance has been piecemeal.

The proposal by the Central Command, which runs military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, would represent a shift to a more comprehensive approach to strengthening Yemeni troops, proponents say.

“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right, not dribble aid in and wonder why, if things worsen,” said one senior defense official involved in the debate, who agreed to speak candidly if he was not identified. “It’s like a forest fire. You fight to put it out, not watch it.”

As many as 75 American Special Forces troops now train Yemeni forces, and some proponents of the plan envision these advisers also accompanying Yemeni troops on helicopter missions as logistical advisers.

Military officials say that the aid would be phased in to avoid overwhelming Yemen’s tiny military, and that safeguards would ensure that equipment and troops trained by American counterterrorism experts were not diverted to domestic conflicts. In addition to Al Qaeda, Yemeni forces face so-called Houthi rebels in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

But senior State Department officials in Washington, as well as Stephen A. Seche, who just completed a three-year tour as the American ambassador to Yemen, oppose the plan, saying the threat — about 500 to 600 hard-core members of the Qaeda branch — does not justify building a 21st-century military force in the poorest country in the Arab world, which has no hostile neighbors, according to two senior administration officials.

The critics say that security aid should be parceled out year by year to retain American leverage, and that it must be part of a far broader plan to promote development and stability. State Department officials offer a scaled-back alternative that focuses on providing Yemeni special forces with transport helicopters to allow them to operate from remote bases and deploy quickly against Qaeda cells, guided by American surveillance photographs and communications intercepts.

Under this plan, American advisers would train Yemeni troops at upgraded operating bases in four or five remote locations. The goal would be to have Yemeni forces develop better informant networks to make ground strikes more precise, avoiding civilian casualties and the provocative American label on missile strikes.

A senior military official said that Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supported the aid package, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. Its most enthusiastic proponent was Gen. David H. Petraeus, before he left his position as head of the Central Command in July to oversee allied forces in Afghanistan, two senior military officials said. His successor, Gen. James N. Mattis, initially viewed the proposal with skepticism, but now embraces the plan “lock, stock and barrel,” a senior defense official said.

The Pentagon and State Department are reconciling differences as part of the budget process for next year, officials said.

State Department officials said the May 25 strike that killed the deputy governor of Marib Province underscored the need for less reliance on American airstrikes and greater emphasis on improving the ability of Yemeni forces. For their part, American commanders say they have tightened the procedures for airstrikes against Qaeda suspects.

If the Saleh government was once seen in Washington as too cozy with Islamic militants, that has changed, in part because Al Qaeda has stepped up its attacks. In recent weeks, Yemeni security forces have rousted Qaeda fighters from the southern city of Lawdar. In retaliation, Al Qaeda on Friday published the names of 55 regional security, police and intelligence officers, calling them “legitimate targets.”

“That response shows Al Qaeda sees a real threat from security forces,” said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen scholar at Princeton. But Mr. Johnsen said the priorities of President Saleh, an autocrat whose family has ruled for three decades, do not coincide with those of the United States.

“If we’re just pouring money and equipment into the Yemeni military in the hopes that it will be used against Al Qaeda,” Mr. Johnsen said, “that hope doesn’t match either with history or current reality.”

    Aid to Counter Al Qaeda in Yemen Divides U.S. Officials, NYT, 15.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/world/middleeast/16yemen.html

Ratify the New Start Treaty

September 14, 2010
The New York Times

After 21 Senate hearings and briefings, the Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on Thursday on the New Start treaty. The first nuclear arms control agreement with the Russians in nearly a decade, it calls for both sides to reduce their deployed warheads modestly to 1,550 from 2,200. The treaty also will ensure that each country has continued insight into the other’s arsenal, with inspections and exchanges of information.

If those reasons are not persuasive enough, consider this: Failure to ratify will undermine Washington’s credibility as it presses other wannabes — Iran and North Korea to start — to drop their nuclear ambitions.

Despite all of that, some Republican senators are plying bogus cold war arguments to delay or defeat the pact. Far too many others are still sitting on the fence.

The treaty has been endorsed by a bipartisan list of foreign policy figures, including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Sam Nunn, William Perry and James Schlesinger. All three leaders of the nation’s nuclear laboratories and seven former commanders of nuclear forces also are calling for ratification. These are not people known for weakening the country’s defenses.

That hasn’t deterred Senators Jim DeMint and James Inhofe, Republicans who are among the treaty’s fiercest opponents. Jon Kyl, who isn’t on the committee, is leading the fight in the full Senate. More moderate senators, like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Judd Gregg and Scott Brown, have yet to declare their intentions.

Critics claim that the treaty will limit America’s efforts to build missile defenses, pointing to a line in the nonbinding preamble about the “interrelationship” between offensive and defensive strategic arms and a provision in the treaty that bans the use of missile silos or submarine launch tubes to house missile interceptors.

American commanders have no interest in using either that way. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says flatly that the New Start treaty will impose “no limits on us.”

The critics — most loudly Mr. Kyl — also claim that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to “modernize” the nuclear weapons it retains. That is just flat out untrue. President Obama has pledged $80 billion over the next 10 years to sustain and modernize the nuclear complex — more than we think is necessary, especially at a time of huge deficits and two wars.

Richard Lugar, the committee’s senior Republican and the Senate’s most respected expert on arms control, has proposed a resolution of treaty approval to address the critics’ concerns. According to one draft, any future agreed-upon limitations on missile defenses would require Senate approval. The draft also stipulates that the United States is committed to providing the money needed to maintain the labs and the nuclear arsenal.

For senators who are more interested in the national interest than scoring political points, that should be more than enough. Amendments that could force the United States to reopen negotiations with Russia are unnecessary and could scuttle the pact for good.

Failure to ratify this treaty would be hugely costly for American credibility and security. It would mean that the United States will have far less information about Russia’s nuclear plans. (The two sides stopped sharing data and halted all ground inspections in December when the Start I treaty expired.) And it would mean no further reduction for the foreseeable future in the 20,000 nuclear weapons still in the two countries’ arsenals.

The Senate needs to ratify New Start now.

    Ratify the New Start Treaty, NYT, 14.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/opinion/15wed1.html

Ayatollah Speaks of Plot to Abuse Koran

September 13, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH

DAMASCUS, Syria — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered a fiery address on Monday accusing the United States government of orchestrating desecrations of the Koran by right-wing American Christian groups last weekend, Iranian state news agencies reported.

The speech appeared to be part of an effort by Iran’s hard-line leaders to amplify Muslim outrage over scattered gestures to burn or tear pages of the Koran, in the wake of the threat — later withdrawn — by Terry Jones, a Florida pastor, to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In Tehran, about 1,000 protesters chanting “Death to America” and “U.S. pastor must be killed” clashed with the police and threw stones at the Swiss Embassy, Reuters reported. The Swiss have handled American interests in Iran ever since the United States severed diplomatic relations with Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

After Iran’s state-owned Press TV ran reports about Koran desecrations in the United States, India blocked local cable operators from broadcasting the station in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where angry anti-American protests have taken place in recent days.

In his speech, Ayatollah Khamenei said “the leaders of the global arrogance” — a code for the United States among Iranian conservatives — had engineered the plot to desecrate the Koran, Press TV and other agencies reported. He added that “Zionist think tanks which hold the most influence in the United States government and its security and military organizations” were also involved.

Ayatollah Khamenei warned people not to believe that isolated right-wing American Christians were to blame, calling them “puppets” of the government. “This incident and previous incidents clearly show that what the global arrogance is attacking today is the foundation of Islam and the Holy Koran,” he said.

Also on Monday, an Iranian official said that the judiciary had opened proceedings against “the leaders of sedition,” a phrase often used to describe the opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, according to Fars News, which has links to Iran’s military.

The official, Naser Seraj, did not provide details, Fars reported. Iranian hard-liners have repeatedly called for the arrest of Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Karroubi and former President Mohammad Khatami, who played leading roles in the protest movement that rocked Iran after last year’s disputed presidential election.

Although the street protests faded earlier this year, Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi, who were candidates in the 2009 election, have continued to maintain that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory was achieved through fraud, and they regularly criticize the government and encourage opposition. Both men have faced increased restrictions recently, and groups of rock-throwing young hard-liners attacked Mr. Karroubi’s house earlier this month as the police stood by.

    Ayatollah Speaks of Plot to Abuse Koran, NYT, 13.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html

Obama Urges Israel to Extend Settlement Moratorium

September 10, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — President Obama called Friday for Israel to extend its moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank as a good-will gesture to move peace talks with the Palestinians forward.

During a wide-ranging news conference at the White House, Mr. Obama said that while the politics of extending the moratorium would be difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, given his conservative government coalition, he had nonetheless asked Mr. Netanyahu to extend it when they met recently in Washington.

“What I’ve said to Prime Minister Netanyahu is that given, so far, the talks are moving forward in a constructive way, it makes sense to extend that moratorium,” Mr. Obama said, in remarks that took some administration officials by surprise.

Mr. Obama said he had also told Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, that he, too, had to make gestures to Israel to keep the peace talks going. The negotiations began last week in Washington.

“You’ve got to show the Israeli public that you are serious and constructive in these talks so that the politics for Prime Minister Netanyahu, if he were to extend the settlements moratorium, would be a little bit easier,” Mr. Obama said he had told Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Obama’s remarks on Friday were significant because the settlement construction moratorium, which is scheduled to expire Sept. 26, is looming as the first hurdle in the nascent peace talks. His comments surprised some administration officials because of a customary concern that the United States not appear to be pushing Israel.

But a member of the administration said American officials had already been privately prodding their Israeli counterparts to look for ways to extend the moratorium. In many ways, Mr. Obama was simply acknowledging an open secret.

Israeli officials have given no indication that they would extend the moratorium, and Mr. Abbas has said he would walk away from the negotiations if settlement construction resumed.

Mr. Obama acknowledged the pressures Mr. Abbas faced from those who opposed the talks.

“I think President Abbas came here despite great misgivings and pressure from the other side, because he understood the window for creating a Palestinian state is closing,” Mr. Obama said. “And there are a whole bunch of parties in the region who purport to be friends of the Palestinians, and yet do everything they can to avoid the path that would actually lead to a Palestinian state, would actually lead to their goal.”

During the news conference, Mr. Obama also acknowledged that the presence on the Central Intelligence Agency’s payroll of Afghan officials whom Western nations have accused of corruption sent a bad message, especially while the United States was pressing the Afghan government to curb corruption.

“Are there going to be occasions where we look and see that some of our folks on the ground have made compromises with people who are known to have engaged in corruption?” Mr. Obama said. “We’re reviewing all that constantly, and there may be occasions where that happens.”

The New York Times reported last month that an aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan who is at the center of a politically delicate corruption investigation is being paid by the C.I.A.

Mr. Obama said the United States had “got to make sure that we’re not sending a mixed message here.”

“So one of the things that I’ve said to my national security team,” he said, “is, ‘Let’s be consistent, in terms of how we operate, across agencies. Let’s make sure that our efforts there are not seen as somehow giving a wink and a nod to corruption. If we are saying publicly that that’s important, then our actions have to match up across the board.’ But it is a challenging environment in which to do that.”

    Obama Urges Israel to Extend Settlement Moratorium, NYT, 10.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/middleeast/11diplo.html

Iran Halts Release of American Held for a Year

September 10, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran on Friday postponed the release of an American woman who has been detained along with two friends for more than a year, in an abrupt shift that suggested divisions within the Iranian government.

Iranian officials had said that the woman, Sarah E. Shourd, 32, who was arrested with two fellow hikers and accused of spying after straying across the Iranian border in July 2009, would be released Saturday morning. But late on Friday the Iranian state news agency, IRNA, quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s deputy for communications, Mohammad Hassan Salehimaram, as saying that the release had been postponed, and promising more details later.

Hours earlier, a high-level prosecutor had announced that the release could not take place because it circumvented judicial rules.

The about-face appeared to be something of an embarrassment for Mr. Ahmadinejad. Earlier on Friday, one of Iran’s semiofficial news agencies had said Mr. Ahmadinejad had personally intervened to secure Ms. Shourd’s release.

The postponement dealt a blow to Ms. Shourd’s family, who had voiced excitement on Thursday about her imminent release. Ms. Shourd is suffering from medical problems and has been kept in solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin Prison, according to her mother, Nora Shourd.

The detention of the three hikers has further strained relations between Iran and the United States at a time of rising tension over Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran has accused the three Americans of spying, but American officials have said they are innocent and called for their release.

Iranian officials first announced Thursday that Ms. Shourd would be released, and even invited reporters to attend the event on Saturday. But late on Friday, Jaffar Abbas Dowlatabadi, the prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, said the release had been canceled because “the judiciary process has not been completed” in her case.

Mr. Ahmadinejad had intervened in Ms. Shourd’s case in part because of “the special viewpoint of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the dignity of women,” according to Ramin Mehmanarast, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, who was quoted on Iran’s Mehr news agency on Friday.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s gesture came after months of global criticism of Iran’s treatment of a female prisoner, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery. That sentence has been suspended, and Iranian officials have struggled to reframe the case, saying Ms. Ashtiani was also guilty of murder.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad’s powers are limited in Iran’s political system, and he has clashed repeatedly with conservative rivals in recent months. In an apparent attempt to save face for the president, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported that Saturday was being declared a public holiday, and that Ms. Shourd’s release was being postponed until a more appropriate time.

There has been no word on the fate of the other two hikers arrested with Ms. Shourd, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal, both 28. Iranian officials have suggested that the three Americans could be traded for Iranians being held by the United States.

    Iran Halts Release of American Held for a Year, NYT, 10.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/middleeast/11iran.html

Read the Report

September 9, 2010
The New York Times

Iran has spent the last four years ignoring the United Nations’ order to stop enriching uranium. And far too many of the world’s major players have spent the last four years ignoring Iran’s defiance.

The good news is that many countries are finally waking up to the danger. In the three months since the United Nations Security Council adopted its latest round of sanctions, a growing number is turning up the heat on Tehran, implementing the United Nations penalties and, in some cases, going beyond them.

The United States, the European Union, Canada and Australia have approved national sanctions that aim to choke off Iran’s access to foreign capital, halt investment in its energy sector and impede its shipping industry.

In recent days, Japan barred all transactions with 15 Iranian banks, the United Arab Emirates froze four Iranian bank accounts and South Korea announced plans to restrict foreign exchange transactions for 126 Iranian companies and individuals — including the only Asian branch of Bank Mellat, one of Iran’s largest banks. The sanctioned accounts, institutions and individuals are all associated with Iran’s nuclear or missile programs.

The Obama administration, which has been pressing allies and others to take a much tougher line, went even further on Tuesday, sanctioning an Iranian-owned bank in Germany, the European-Iranian Trade Bank, or E.I.H. Bank, which is accused of facilitating billions of dollars of transactions for blacklisted Iranian companies. The move effectively shuts E.I.H. out of the American financial system.

Iran’s government — so far at least — remains defiant. According to the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian scientists are continuing their slow but steady production of low-enriched uranium and now have 6,108 pounds, up 15 percent from June. With further enrichment, that would be enough fuel for about two nuclear weapons.

Tehran has a long and cynical history of hiding nuclear facilities — including its main enrichment site at Natanz and more recently discovered enrichment facility at Qum. If that isn’t enough, an Iranian dissident group on Thursday said it has found evidence of yet another secret nuclear site. And Iran is still refusing to fully cooperate with inspections by the atomic energy agency. For the past two years, Iran has barred two of the agency’s most experienced monitors. The report also says Iran is continuing to refuse to answer questions about whether it is hiding other facilities and whether its program has military uses, including a suspected project to fit a nuclear warhead on a missile.

American officials say said the new sanctions are beginning to bite — choking Iran’s access to foreign capital, trade and investments. If there is any chance of changing Tehran’s behavior, it is clearly going to take more pressure and more time.

Countries that have adopted sanctions already need to implement them robustly. We are sure that the United Arab Emirates, a major hub for Iranian business activity, can find more than four accounts to freeze. Countries that for political or economic reasons are still enabling Iran — China comes immediately to mind — need to read that I.A.E.A. report again.

Tehran, predictably, insists it is not building a weapon. Its refusal to halt enrichment and cooperate with the I.A.E.A. makes that ever more impossible to believe.

    Read the Report, NYT, 9.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10fri1.html

Gaza Smugglers Dead, Missing in Israeli Strike

September 5, 2010
Filed at 2:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Gaza security officials say an Israeli airstrike targeting a smuggling tunnel has killed one Palestinian, wounded a second and left three more missing.

The Hamas officials identified the five as smugglers working in the tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border.

They spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because authorities had not officially released the information.

The Israeli military said aircraft attacked tunnels in retaliation for Hamas shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank over the last week.

The Hamas attacks killed four settlers and wounded two others. They took place as Israelis and Palestinians relaunched direct peace negotiations in Washington.

    Gaza Smugglers Dead, Missing in Israeli Strike, NYT, 5.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/05/world/AP-ML-Israel-Palestinians.html

Another Start for Peace Talks

September 3, 2010
The New York Times

The resumption of direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians this week was auspicious, despite a long history of failed attempts that fosters justifiable pessimism about the ultimate chance of success.

Two days of meetings in Washington struck the right tone. Unlike in 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat had to be forced to shake hands at the White House, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had no trouble.

The results were good: a decision to meet again in Egypt in two weeks and every two weeks thereafter to negotiate an agreement on all the core issues. That means the borders of a new Palestinian state, security for Israel, the status of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees. The leaders set an ambitious one-year deadline. If they are truly committed, that seems plausible. But that’s a big if.

We have long been skeptical that Mr. Netanyahu really wants a deal. But he insisted he had come to “find a historic compromise” that would end the conflict and that he recognizes that “another people shares this land with us.” He even told Mr. Abbas, “you are my partner in peace.” We will soon see if it was all political theater.

Mr. Abbas came to the table reluctantly. He is the weaker party and most at risk of being blamed for any breakdown. Still, he promised to “work to make these negotiations succeed” and said security — a major issue for Israel — “is vital for both of us.”

Predictably, peace opponents tried to torpedo the talks. But Mr. Netanyahu didn’t walk out when Hamas rejectionists killed four Israelis near Hebron. And Mr. Abbas not only condemned the attack but his security forces went after those responsible. He didn’t walk out when some Israeli settlers began new settlement construction even before a Sept. 26 moratorium is to expire.

President Obama and his team seem to have found a firmer footing than last year. Now he needs to follow through on his promise to make the United States an active participant in the talks.

A durable peace deal will take even more. Saudi Arabia and other Arab states who have long called for a Palestinian homeland must join Egypt and Jordan in actively backing the Palestinians and the talks. The Israeli and Palestinian people must begin to see tangible evidence that this time is different.

Sept. 26 is the next flashpoint. The Washington conference would have had far more impact if the two sides announced an agreement to deal with that. Mr. Netanyahu should extend the moratorium.

    Another Start for Peace Talks, NYT, 3.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/opinion/04sat2.html

Settlements in West Bank

Are Clouding Peace Talks

September 2, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators cleared the first hurdle on Thursday in their elusive quest for Middle East peace: they agreed to keep talking, two weeks from now in Egypt.

But on a richly choreographed day of diplomacy, filled with solemn promises to tackle the tough issues dividing them, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders did not confront the one issue that could sink these talks in three weeks: whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will extend a moratorium on the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has threatened to walk out of the negotiations if Israel does not extend the moratorium beyond September. But officials said the two leaders barely broached the topic during three hours of talks, which covered the gamut of issues that have divided Israel and the Palestinians for decades.

Instead, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas focused on mechanics, agreeing to aim for a “framework agreement” that resolves the core issues in carving out a Palestinian state from the Israeli-occupied territory on the West Bank. The fine points of a treaty would be worked out after that.

In a sign that the Obama administration will continue to play a visible role in the process, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the administration’s special envoy for Arab-Israeli affairs, George J. Mitchell, will take part in the next meeting, likely to be in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik.

Mrs. Clinton, in formally reopening the negotiations at the State Department on Thursday morning, acknowledged, “We’ve been here before, and we know how difficult the road ahead will be.” But she expressed confidence that the core disputes separating the two sides could be resolved within a year.

Analysts said they were encouraged by the goal of a “framework agreement,” which could be a practical vehicle for both sides to resolve vexing “final status” issues: borders, security, the political status of Jerusalem, settlements and the rights of Palestinian refugees.

“They’ve set for themselves an achievable objective in a one-year time frame,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel and Middle East peace negotiator. “A comprehensive agreement would have been unrealistic with that kind of timetable.”

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas met alone for 90 minutes in Mrs. Clinton’s office and emerged smiling, officials said. After two years without a face-to-face meeting, the two spent some time breaking the ice.

Mr. Abbas brought Mr. Netanyahu up to date on how far he had gotten in his talks with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Palestinian negotiators are hoping to use the concessions Mr. Olmert made — which have never been publicly acknowledged by Israel — as a basis from which to start these negotiations. But Mr. Netanyahu has so far balked at that.

“The climate, and atmosphere, was positive and serious and down to business,” said Nabil Shaath, foreign relations commissioner of Mr. Abbas’s Fatah Party, who is negotiating for the Palestinians.

“But the cloud is still there,” he added. “The Israelis gave absolutely no hopeful signs that they will continue the moratorium. And in our point of view, that is the litmus test for the Israelis.”

On Wednesday, officials said, President Obama spoke bluntly to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas at the White House, urging them not to allow the impasse to scotch the talks. But Mr. Netanyahu has not offered any hint of a compromise, and analysts say he is hemmed in by his right-leaning coalition, which could splinter if he simply extended the moratorium.

The more likely outcome, officials said, is a compromise in which Israel would agree to limit settlements, but exempt West Bank areas that are certain to remain part of Israel under a peace deal. It could also offer a limited extension, based on agreeing on the borders of a Palestinian state.

Israeli officials declined to discuss the issue of settlements but said the overall tenor of the talks was “good and constructive.” Citing the killings of four Israeli settlers in the West Bank this week, Mr. Netanyahu said security would have to be a critical theme of the talks. He said that the rise of Iran, and its support of militant groups, had radically altered the landscape for peace talks.

“There is a commitment on our part to address all issues,” said Jonathan Peled, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. “A lot will depend on addressing Israel’s security concerns, and whether the Palestinian leadership is willing to make historic compromises.”

It was a day of self-conscious history-making at the State Department. Just before 10 a.m., the Palestinian delegation entered the ornate Benjamin Franklin Room. Twenty minutes later, the Israelis entered, taking their seats and gazing at the Palestinians across a rose-colored carpet.

“I fervently believe that the two men sitting on either side of me, that you are the leaders who can make this long-cherished dream a reality,” Mrs. Clinton said, gesturing to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas.

Mrs. Clinton paid tribute to the diplomats in the room, several of whom she noted were veterans of the process. Watching from behind was Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on the Middle East who helped run the Camp David negotiation for Mrs. Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, in 2000. Also at the table were seasoned negotiators like Mr. Netanyahu’s key adviser on the process, Yitzhak Molcho, and Mr. Abbas’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat.

“The people sitting here have worked very hard for many years,” she said. “Now it’s time to get to work.”

But Mrs. Clinton also repeated the oblique criticism of Arab states voiced by Mr. Obama on Wednesday. “We hear often from those voices in the region who insist this is a top priority and yet do very little to support the work that would actually bring about a Palestinian state,” she said.

Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states have been slow to deliver promised financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, officials close to Mr. Abbas said, and the authority faces an increasingly dire shortfall.

Mrs. Clinton also addressed the people of the Middle East directly. “Your leaders may be sitting at the negotiating table,” she said, “but you are ultimately the ones who will ultimately decide the future.” Mrs. Clinton asked Israelis and Palestinians for their “support and patience” in the process.

On Friday morning, she is to give an unusual joint interview to Israeli and Palestinian television channels, part of what will be an aggressive strategy to sell the peace process at home and abroad.

    Settlements in West Bank Are Clouding Peace Talks, NYT, 2.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/world/middleeast/03diplo.html

Clinton Calls for Bold Steps

as Mideast Talks Begin

September 2, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton formally reopened direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on Thursday, acknowledging that “we’ve been here before, and we know how difficult the road ahead will be,” but expressing confidence that the core disputes separating the two sides can be resolved within a year.

“I fervently believe that the two men sitting on either side of me, that you are the leaders who can make this long-cherished dream a reality,” Mrs. Clinton said to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

Mrs. Clinton said the United States would be an “active and sustained partner” during the negotiations and echoed President Obama’s declaration that an agreement was in the American national security interest.

The Israeli and Palestinian delegations sat across from each other beneath the twinkling chandeliers of the Benjamin Franklin room in the State Department. After remarks by the leaders, they went behind closed doors to begin hashing out the familiar, but until now intractable, issues of how to carve a Palestinian state out of Israeli-occupied territory in the West Bank.

The meeting was expected to run about three hours, after which the administration’s special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell, will brief reporters about the outcome. A crucial early indicator of success is if the two sides agree to a second meeting. American officials said they were optimistic that they would meet again, possibly on Sept. 15 in Egypt.

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas both pledged themselves to be peacemakers, though each cited the issues that could keep them apart: security concerns on the part of the Israelis, particularly in the wake of the killing of four Israeli settlers, and Israel’s continued settlement construction, which the Palestinians insist must be halted in order for the talks to go anywhere.

Noting that they disagree on other core issues — which in addition to security and settlements include borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the rights of Palestinian refugees — Mr. Netanyahu said, “True peace, lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides.”

Mr. Abbas called on Israel to stop building settlements and to lift its embargo on Gaza. He noted that “we’re not starting from scratch because we had many rounds of negotiation between the P.L.O. and the Israeli government,” referring to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The Palestinians want the negotiations to start off from where they left off at the end of 2008, when Mr. Abbas was negotiating with the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Mr. Netanyahu, who leads a right-leaning coalition government, has rejected any pre-conditions for the talks.

It was a day of self-conscious history-making at the State Department. Just before 10 a.m., the Palestinian delegation entered the room, chatting and browsing on their BlackBerrys as they waited for the Israelis to show up. Twenty minutes later, the Israelis entered, taking their places and gazing at their Palestinian counterparts across a dusty-rose-colored carpet.

Mrs. Clinton paid tribute to the diplomats in the room, several of whom she noted are grizzled veterans of the process. Watching from behind was Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on the Middle East who helped run the Camp David negotiations for President Clinton in 2000. Also at the table were seasoned negotiators like Mr. Netanyahu’s adviser on the process, Yitzhak Molcho, and Mr. Abbas’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat.

“The people sitting here have worked very hard for many years,” she said. “Now it’s time to get to work.”

Clinton Calls for Bold Steps as Mideast Talks Begin, NYT, 3.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/world/middleeast/03diplo.html