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New York (AFP) Sept 24, 2008
The United States consulted Wednesday with its Asian and Russian negotiating partners even as it seemed at a loss over how to deal with North Korea's defiance of a landmark nuclear disarmament deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that North Korea had kicked out its inspectors from the Yongbyon nuclear plant, removed its surveillance equipment there, and planned to reintroduce nuclear material.
It was the latest defiant step from North Korea toward the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- its partners in the six-party negotiations that produced the aid-for-nuclear disarmament deal last year.
"We strongly urge the North to reconsider these steps and come back immediately into compliance with its obligations as outlined in the six party agreements," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
"The North Korean actions are very disappointing and run counter to the expectations of the members of the six party talks and the international community," he said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Under the six-country pact, North Korea agreed to disable and dismantle key nuclear facilities and allow UN atomic inspectors to return, in return for one million tonnes of fuel aid and its removal from a US list of terrorist states.
But North Korea announced last month it had halted the process in protest at Washington's refusal to drop it from the US blacklist of countries supporting terrorism, as had been promised.
Washington says the North must first accept strict outside verification of the nuclear inventory that Pyongyang handed over in June.
The latest North Korean moves against the IAEA, the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog, "will only deepen their isolation," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned here.
But, when asked by a reporter "what is going on exactly in North Korea?" Rice declined to answer.
In an interview Tuesday with CNBC television, Rice figuratively threw up her hands when asked whether the reported poor health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was hurting the negotiations.
"Something is going on in North Korea. I don't think any of us know precisely what. We are reading all of the reports that you've talked about," Rice said in the interview that the State Department released Wednesday.
Christopher Hill, her chief negotiator with North Korea, acknowledged Monday that the troubles in the negotiations may be linked to South Korean intelligence leaks that Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il, 66, has suffered a stroke.
"It's hard to tell," said the assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs.
However, Hill dismissed suggestions that the negotiations with North Korea -- once spurned by President George W. Bush who lumped Pyongyang in the "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran -- were now unraveling.
"They've been staking out some very tough negotiating positions ... so yes, the negotiating process does continue," Hill said.
Nor was Rice giving up on a legacy of nuclear non-proliferation in Asia.
"By no means," Rice said when a reporter asked if the negotiations were dead. "We have been through ups and downs in this process before but I think the important thing is this is a six-party process."
Both Rice and Hill have been holding an intensive series of talks with their counterparts from South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
"We'll maintain open lines of communication not only with all of our partners in this process but also the North Koreans to make it clear to them that this would be an unfortunate step that they would take," Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters late Wednesday.
After Rice's talks with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, both sides tried not to let their row over the war last month in Georgia undermine their common interests in checking Iran's and North's Korea's nuclear programs.
However, Lavrov indicated there could be fallout until emotions cool.
South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said here Wednesday that North Korea's actions were "very unfortunate" but expressed cautious optimism that China and the other parties would revive the disarmament process.
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Vienna (AFP) Sept 25, 2008
The UN atomic watchdog's probe into alleged illicit nuclear work in Syria has been delayed because the agency's contact man in Syria was murdered, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei revealed Thursday.
"The reason that Syria has been late in providing additional information (is) that our interlocutor has been assassinated in Syria," ElBaradei told a closed-door session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board. A recording of his remarks was obtained by AFP.
He did not provide any further details about the identity of the man or circumstances of the assassination.
But according to Arab media reports last month, a brigadier general thought to be the Syrian regime's liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon was assassinated.
The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat said the victim was a senior Syrian officer "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."
Al-Bawaba, an Arab news website, named the officer as Mohammed Sleiman, saying he was "Syria's liaison officer with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement."
The Lebanese anti-Syrian daily al-Mustaqbal quoted a Syrian news site as saying Sleiman was the head of security at the presidential palace in Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad's "right-hand man."
ElBaradei's revelation came on the fourth and final day of the IAEA board meeting, where Syria was the final matter of debate.
During the discussions, Western countries, and the United States and Australia in particular, complained that Syria was dragging its feet in the IAEA investigation.
Washington claims that Damascus had been building a clandestine nuclear facility at Al-Kibar, a remote desert area of northeastern Syria on the Euphrates River, until it was bombed by Israeli planes in September 2007.
Syria has denied the allegations as "ridiculous," saying the edifice was simply a disused military building.
While Syria allowed a three-member IAEA team to visit the site in June, it has since refused any follow-up trips.
ElBaradei said the IAEA was still evaluating samples taken from the site, but that inspectors had found "no indication" so far of any nuclear material.
He also said that Syria had not yet responded to IAEA requests for additional access to individuals, sites and information.
During the debate, the US envoy to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, called for "a comprehensive report" by agency inspectors in time for the next board meeting in November.
The report should "detail, in writing, the status of the investigation in Syria and Syria's cooperation with that investigation," Schulte said.
ElBaradei replied that a report would be submitted as soon as possible.
"We have not provided a report and we will provide a report as and when we have enough facts assessment to provide a report," he said.
"Our decision on the report will be based, not on politics, but on when we are ready with assessment and facting (sic)," ElBaradei said.
He insisted that he was not trying to be evasive.
"I'm just telling you how difficult, how complex the situation has become, particularly after the evidence has been eliminated and if we were not to find nuclear material."
Washington claims the facility was being built with North Korean help and resembled Pyongyang's Soviet-type nuclear reactor at Yongbyon used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
US officials allege that Damascus undertook extensive efforts to clean up the site after it was bombed and has since constructed a large building where the reactor stood.
ElBaradei said the cooperation shown by Syria so far was "good" and criticised the Israeli decision to bomb the site.
"I am, as I said last time, quite concerned that with the gratuitous use of force before we have been able to get access to the evidence and once the evidence has been eliminated, it is becoming quite difficult for us to establish the facts," he said.
"We are in a very awkward situation, because the corpse has gone, and we are now at a stage when we have to reconstruct a facility that is not there," he said.
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Seoul (AFP) Sept 25, 2008
North Korea has amassed a "considerable" amount of enriched uranium, a high profile defector was quoted as saying Thursday.
Hwang Jang-Yop told South Korean lawmakers the communist state completed preparations for an underground nuclear test in 1996.
"As far as I know it has piled up a considerable amount of enriched uranium," he told a meeting hosted by the minor opposition Liberal Forward Party (LFP), a party spokesperson said.
The LFP's Park Sun-Yong also quoted Hwang, 85, as saying the North's recent move to restart its nuclear weapons programme was a bargaining tactic to earn concessions from Washington.
Hwang, former secretary of the North's ruling Workers' Party and an ex-tutor of leader Kim Jong-Il, defected during a trip to Beijing in 1997. He remains under police guard at a secret address in South Korea.
The South and the United States, along with China, Japan and Russia, have been negotiating nuclear disarmament since 2003 with North Korea, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006.
The United States accuses the North of developing a secret highly enriched uranium weapons programme, a charge it denies.
The North has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it would start work to resume plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon complex, possibly within a week. It has barred IAEA from the reprocessing plant.
Analysts in Seoul say the North is practising brinkmanship in its bitter dispute with Washington over nuclear inspections, but is not necessarily bluffing.
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Jerusalem (AFP) Sept 25, 2008
Israeli President Shimon Peres sharpened his attack on Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday, accusing him of "taking the world for a fool" in his statements to the UN General Assembly.
"(Ahmadinejad) has committed a fatal error, and is taking the world for a fool. He thinks he is an absolute prophet, proclaiming that there is no more hope for the United States or Israel," Peres told Israeli public radio.
"It is shameful to Islam, to all religions, to the United States, and to democracy. His voice does not come from heaven but hell and one day it will pass away like a breeze," he said in the interview conducted in New York.
Israel has long considered Iran its greatest threat, both because of Tehran's accelerating nuclear programme and repeated statements by its leaders predicting the demise of the Jewish state.
In a blistering speech before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Peres said Iran was "at the centre of violence and fanaticism" and had "built a danger to the entire world."
Israel and the United States accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its programme is entirely peaceful and vowed to proceed despite three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions.
Israel is the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear armed state with an estimated arsenal of 200 warheads.
Neither the United States nor Israel has ruled out a military response to the Iranian nuclear standoff, and on Thursday Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak said all options remain on the table.
"Iran continues to exert every effort in its activities to achieve a nuclear weapons capability," he said in a statement.
"For now there is still time for addressing the issue diplomatically, but we believe we must not renounce any option and we do not think anyone else in the world should either," he added.
In his own address to the assembly on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad lashed out at what he called international "bullying" and vowed to press ahead with Iran's nuclear drive.
As for Israel, he said "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."
Anti-Obsession site rails against Spencer, Horowitz, who aren't in the film
Details are for "haters." Longtime Jihad Watch reader PRCS kindly sent in a link to ObsessionWithHate.com, a site run by a "coalition" known as Hate Hurts America, whose members include CAIR, MPAC, and assorted private citizens who may or...
Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022847.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022847.php">Click here</a> India: 1,000 Muslims shouted, "set the train on fire and kill the Hindus" What has long been suspected has, six years later, been confirmed: the Godhra train fire (2/2002) which burned some 60 Hindu pilgrims alive was, in fact, initiated by Muslim extremists. Hindus long assumed this, and went on a rampage against... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022846.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022846.php">Click here</a> Islamabad Marriott jihadists threaten to target all US Army facilitators in Pakistan Will their friends in high places keep Pakistani authorities from moving effectively against them? "Marriott attackers Fidayeen-e-Islam threaten to attack all US facilitators in Pak," from ANI, September 25: Lahore, Sept 25 (ANI): The Fidayeen-e-Islam (FI), a terrorist outfit which... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022842.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022842.php">Click here</a> Pakistani militants threaten more bombs, death, and destruction Today's complaint is Pakistani support for US forces. Once every last Pakistani learns to despise and cease "supporting" the US (not even offering any lip-service), they can rest assured that the demands of the "militants" will morph into a new... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022844.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022844.php">Click here</a> Rally today to protest U.S. religious leaders honoring Iran's Thug-In-Chief Unworthy of honor I am speaking here in Los Angeles tonight and will be unable to attend this, but if you are in the New York area I hope you can. From the 925 Rally Coalition: September 25 Rally... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022840.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022840.php">Click here</a> Somalia: Jihadists deliver on promise of more bloodshed during Ramadan Somalia Jihad Update. "Death toll rises after attacks in Somalia," by Rob Crilly for the Irish Times, September 25: SOMALIA: Islamist insurgents have launched a series of deadly attacks on African peacekeepers in the Somali capital as they made good... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022837.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022837.php">Click here</a> Philippines: Government tries to ease tensions by allowing Islamic law in southern area, achieves the opposite Thailand should take note, as a peace proposal aimed at ending the jihad in that country's southern provinces also includes the implementation of Sharia law. Not only is there no guarantee that it will help end the violence in the... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022835.php>
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24 Sept.: The gang of 7 Jerusalem Arab residents and one Palestinian were sought for the murder of two Israeli policemen, Rami Zohari and David Shriki, in two separate terror attacks in the city earlier this year. They were indicted at the Jerusalem district court ten days ago for murder, attempted murder, and gunrunning. 
25 Sept.: Addressing the UN General Assembly the day after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and anti-American diatribe, Israeli president Shimon Peres accused him of dredging up the ugliest libel plot ever devised against the Jewish people – the Elders of Zion.
Iran is enriching uranium and building long-range missiles, said Peres. “It has introduced a religion of fear which defies the call of the Lord to respect all human life. Ahmadinejad is a danger to his own people, the region and the world. He is a disgrace to the ancient Iranian people, the values of Islam and the basic principles of the United Nations. “His appearance shames this house.”
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
23 Sept.: Damascus is pressing forward with its plan to occupy Greater Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city and port. To this end, 10,000 Syrian commando troops have massed at Abboudieh on the Lebanese border ready to follow an advance force which occupied seven villages around the northern city earlier this month, as first disclosed by DEBKAfile on Sept. 20. It is now engaged in building fortifications and paving military road links for the main body of special forces to move in. 
21 Sept.: The director of research at Israeli military intelligence (AMAN), Brig. Yossi Baidatz, surprised the Israeli cabinet Sunday Sept. 21, with a new appreciation of Iran’s nuclear timetable. Tehran, he disclosed, has already stocked one-third or even half the quantity of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb. He warned the ministers that Iran is dashing at top speed towards a nuclear weapons capability and nothing stands in the way of its headlong advance, including international sanctions.
Separately, former Israeli army chief Lt. Gen (Res.) Moshe Yaalon said in a radio interview that an Israel-Iranian war is unavoidable.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say AMAN has drastically revised its former evaluation of the Iran’s nuclear progress and intentions. Although Iran has only 4,000 centrifuges producing 4-5-grade uranium, it is fast building up a stock of enough low-grade uranium – 1.5 tons - to convert quickly and simply into weapons grades material - within a year or eighteen months. 
20 Sept.: CIA director Michael Hayden said the destruction of the Syrian reactor - as a result of intelligence collaboration with a “foreign partner” who first identified the facility’s purpose - spoiled a project “that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Hayden stressed that Al Qaeda was the greatest security threat to the US, quoting Osama bin Laden as saying the acquisition of nuclear weapons is a religious duty.
He also pointed to North Korea and Iran as threats.
DEBKAfile notes: This comment contradicts the US intelligence assessment last year that Iran had discontinued its military nuclear program in 2003.
The gang, led by Muhammad Abu-Sneina, was arrested in advanced stages of preparing more murder, kidnap and shooting attacks in and outside Jerusalem, taking advantage of Jerusalemite residents’ freedom to move around the city.
Since early 2007, more and more Jerusalem Arabs are joining the cycle of anti-Jewish terrorist violence. The Shin Bet urges the application of such deterrent measures as destroying a guilty terrorist’s home and sanctions against his family.
Proof that "Islam, a religion of mercy, does not permit terrorism"?
Here, once again, is an example of the flaws of Islamic apologetics, and why it's so easy to dismantle them: "What Does Islam Say about Terrorism," from Pakistan Daily, September 26: A look at the various principles of Islam which...
Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022863.php>
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AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022862.php">Click here</a> UK: Muslims try to get alcohol banned at local supermarket Reasonable Accommodation Alert: this is what follows inevitably from the "reasonable accommodations" that Muslims are demanding, and being granted, in the U.S. as well as in Britain. Sharia law applies to non-Muslims as well as to Muslims. Once the precedent... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022860.php>
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Slapstick Jihad triumphs again at the UN Human Rights Council
Comments by David G. Littman (representative to the UN of the Association of World Education and the World Union of Progressive Judaism): Once again, Egyptian Counsellor Amr Roshdy Hassan cowed into conformism all the Members of the Human Rights Council...
Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022879.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022879.php">Click here</a> U.K.: Islamic cleric warns of more attacks over Jewel of Medina after publisher was firebombed An update on this story. "Radical Islamic clerics warn of further attacks after publisher is firebombed," by John Bingham for the Telegraph, September 28: Hardline clerics said that further attacks would be "inevitable" if publication of the novel, The Jewel... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022877.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022877.php">Click here</a> Somali pirates die strange deaths after boarding Iranian ship Rand Simberg says that the symptoms correspond to those caused by radiation poisoning. "Pirates die strangely after taking Iranian ship," by Andrew Donaldson for the Times of Johannesburg, South Africa, September 28 (thanks to LGF): A tense standoff has developed... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022876.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022876.php">Click here</a> Syrian Foreign Minister on car bomb: the Zionists did it As I predicted here. "Syrian FM: Israel has most to gain from terror attack," by Roee Nahmias for Ynet News, September 28 (thanks to all who sent this in): Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Saturday in response to the... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022873.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022873.php">Click here</a> UK: Al-Qaeda actively recruiting prisoners for the "jihad against Britain" Perfect candidates, too, since their "training" can be deemed nearly complete. More on radical Islam's appeal to "mischievous" men here. "Al-Qaeda bid to recruit inmates," by David Leppard for Times Online, September 28:AL-QAEDA terrorists have targeted 800 Muslim criminals they... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022869.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022869.php">Click here</a> Wilders: "You have almost lost Europe. I think it's one minute to 12:00." Yesterday I interviewed Geert Wilders, the courageous Dutch politician who produced Fitna, and I hope soon to put the interview up here. Meanwhile, he appeared on the Glenn Beck show, explained to him -- as I have said so many... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022866.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022866.php">Click here</a> U.K.: High-ranking Tory says party would cancel legal status for sharia courts if elected There are many promising pledges in this interview, if only the party will stand with her and follow through on them. "Conservatives would ban sharia courts, says shadow minister," by Jon Swaine for the Telegraph, September 28: A Conservative government... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022878.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022878.php">Click here</a> EU terror chief says "political correctness" is "hampering campaign against militant Islam" While the French commissioner feels things have already gone "too far in blaming the Muslim communities." "Don't be soft on Islam, says EU terror chief," by Jason Burke for the Guardian, September 28:Europe's anti-terror chief has launched a stinging attack... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022868.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022868.php">Click here</a> "The fact that they have a warhead that's fitable to the Rodong (ballistic missile) is pretty much given," said Arthur Brown, who until 2005 was National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). "We (the United States) went from nothing to missile capable in seven years. The Russians went from their first test to missile capable in six... Why do we think the North Koreans can't have that kind of technology?" What was unclear was how much uranium and, or, plutonium North Korea possessed and how much they need for each of their weapons, he told a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. "If we knew these two numbers then we could run the maths and say how many weapons they actually have," said Brown, who did not disclose his sources and said it was tough to get accurate information. North Korea, which tested a nuclear weapon for the first time two years ago, said this week it would start work to resume plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon complex, possibly within a week. The standoff comes amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il suffered a stroke around mid-August. "It was a serious stroke," said Brown. "It's not a light stroke. He has recovered a bit but I think no one expects him to come back into a full recovery mode at this stage." earlier related report Hill was expected in Seoul on Tuesday to meet with his South Korean counterpart Kim Sook to discuss "concerns" about North Korea, a senior foreign ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The US envoy's trip comes after the communist North announced moves to restart its plutonium-producing plants. The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, said Sunday the US envoy was planning to travel to North Korea as well in a last-ditch effort to salvage the faltering accord to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programmes. "His further travel plan will be confirmed by the US," the Seoul official said, responding to the Post report. earlier related report Speaking to reporters, Yu Myung-Hwan said the North's tactics may be linked to the upcoming US presidential election. "We are at a difficult situation where we may be going back to square one," he admitted. Yu's comments came after North Korea earlier this week announced it would start work to resume plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon complex, possibly within a week. That appears to have brought a six-nation aid-for-disarmament agreement -- negotiated after the hardline Pyongyang regime tested a nuclear weapon for the first time two years ago -- close to collapse. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have been barred from the reprocessing plant, which produces the raw material for nuclear weapons. Yu said the North's move may be a strategy to capitalise on the political situation in the United States, where Republicans and Democrats are locked in campaigning for the Novembeer 4 presidential election. "It is possible that the North's decision to go back on the disablement steps is a strategy associated with the US presidential election," Yu added. He was speaking on his return from a US trip during which he met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Japan and Russia are also members of the six-party forum along with the two Koreas. Some analysts say the North may feel this is a good time to demand nuclear concessions, with a "lame-duck" president in Washington and the United States focused on the election and the financial turmoil in Wall Street. Yu said the North should realise "that it is impossible, as long as it tries to be a nuclear state, to get the help of international financial institutions and trade with other countries and get investment." Following the landmark agreement in February 2007, North Korea in July 2007 shut down Yongbyon under IAEA supervision. Four months later, it began disabling the complex, and in June this year it handed over details of its plutonium-based nuclear programme, thought to have produced enough material for about six bombs before the shutdown. In return, it was promised one million tonnes of fuel oil or the equivalent energy aid as well as diplomatic concessions, including its removal from a US terrorism blacklist which blocks some foreign aid. But Washington refuses to delist the North until it agrees procedures for strict verification of its nuclear disclosures, prompting Pyongyang to restart its plutonium programme. Yu acknowledged that the need for a verification protocol before delisting was not specified in written agreements. But he said "the US and North Korea had an understanding on this point." Washington said Thursday the verification conditions were not a burden and urged the North to pull back from relaunching its weapons programme. "What we're asking for is basically a standard verification package," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. "It's not something onerous, it's not something that hasn't been done in the past. China's foreign ministry Thursday urged all parties to "display flexibility to solve the verification issue." The radar with a range of more than 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) is sited in the south of the country, the radio added. It is operated by a permanent 120-strong US army staff. Questioned by AFP, a defence ministry spokesman said he did "not know about such a deployment". A senior Pentagon official had said in late July that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed to explore deploying a powerful missile defense targeting radar in Israel. "The idea here is to help Israel create a layered missile defense capability to protect it from all sorts of threats in the region, near and far," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Besides the radar, Gates also agreed to explore sharing missile early warning launch data, as well as US funding for two costly Israeli projects designed to counter short-range rockets and mortars, he said. The official said deploying the X-band radar was a near-term proposition, adding "all this is moving pretty quickly." "We are going to station this land-based system there, and the Israelis would plug into it," said the official. An X-band radar is a powerful phased array radar that can target the warhead of a long or medium range missile in space. The United States has deployed one in Japan and plans to install a larger X-band radar in the Czech Republic. The official linked the assistance to the US administration's push for progress on a roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But it appeared to be more directly related to Israel's concern about Iran's nuclear program. KABUL, Afghanistan - Two Taliban assassins on a motorbike shot and killed a senior policewoman as she left for work in Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday and gravely wounded her son. Malalai Kakar, 41, who led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women, was leaving home Sunday when she was killed, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her 18-year-old son was wounded, he said. The Taliban claimed responsibility. Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort. President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar. "Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Ms. Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent," the EU said in a statement. Elsewhere in Kandahar province, a suicide bomber on a motorbike attacked a border police convoy in Spin Boldak district, killing three policemen and three civilians, said the regional border police chief, Abdul Razzaq. The blast wounded 17 others, including 15 civilians and two officers, Razzaq said. Taliban militants use suicide attacks in their campaign against Afghan and foreign troops in the country. The majority of the victims in such bombings are civilians. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said one of its soldiers was killed Sunday in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. The alliance provided no other details. Most soldiers in the east are American. In other violence, an Afghan police official said Sunday that a U.S.-led coalition killed three civilians in an operation apparently targeting a suicide bomb cell in eastern Afghanistan. That claim was disputed by the coalition, which said its troops killed two al-Qaida militants. Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal, the provincial police chief in the eastern province of Kunar, said airstrikes hit a compound in the province's Asmar district, killing three civilians. The U.S.-led coalition said its troops targeted an al-Qaida cell responsible for a number of bomb attacks in Kunar province. The coalition said two militants were killed after a firefight in one of the compounds. It said no civilians were killed. Capt. Scott Miller, a U.S. spokesman, said artillery strikes were used in the fight but no airstrikes. It was impossible to independently verify either report, due to the remoteness of the area. Civilian deaths are a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan. Karzai has long pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian deaths in its operations. The Afghan government and U.N. say that an Aug. 22 U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in the western province of Herat, a strike that strained U.S.-Afghan relations. An original U.S. investigation found that up to 35 militants and seven civilians were killed in that strike. However, a new investigation was opened - and is now under way - after video images emerged appearing to show many more dead than the U.S. had acknowledged. The coalition said separately that it killed six militants and detained eight in two operations on Saturday. By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press Writer
by Staff Writers
SKorean PM hopes military talks thaw chilly ties
South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo on Sunday said he hoped North Korea-proposed military talks would help thaw a chill in cross-border relations. North Korea proposed Thursday to resume military talks next week in a rare overture to the South since President Lee Myung-Bak, who has been denounced as a "traitor" by Pyongyang, took office early this year. "I hope North Korea will come to the dialogue with a pure intention," Han told a security forum. "I don't know what will be discussed but I hope it will become the starting point for improved inter-Korean relations in the future." Seoul has yet to respond to the North's offer of a working-level military meeting on Tuesday. The South's defence ministry wants to make it some time in early October, Yonhap news agency said. Military talks have previously focused on securing safety measures for passengers and cargo for the South-funded joint economic projects in the North. Pyongyang has suspended all government-to-government contacts with Seoul since conservative President Lee took office in February with promises of a tougher North Korea policy. Ties soured further after North Korean soldiers in July shot dead a Seoul tourist who strayed into a restricted zone at a North Korean resort. The North has blamed the South for the incident and refused to let it send an investigation team. Seoul cancelled tours to the resort and withdrew staff. The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 war ended with an armistice and not a peace pact. The proposal for new inter-Korean military talks came after the North announced it would start work to reactivate its plutonium-producing nuclear plant in Yongbyon in violation of an international disarmament deal.
Tokyo (AFP) Sept 26, 2008
North Korea has likely mastered the technology for arming its missiles with nuclear warheads, a former US intelligence official said Friday.
US nuclear envoy to visit Korean peninsula: official Top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill will visit Korea this week for talks in Seoul over the deadlocked disarmament deal on North Korea, an official said Sunday.
NKorea nuke talks may be close to breakdown: Skorea
International nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea may be near breakdown after the communist state announced moves to restart its atomic plants, South Korea's foreign minister warned Friday.
by Staff Writers
An X-band radar is a powerful phased array radar that can target the warhead of a long or medium range missile in space. The United States has deployed one in Japan and plans to install a larger X-band radar in the Czech Republic.
Jerusalem (AFP) Sept 28, 2008
The United States has recently deployed an anti-missile radar in Israel that is mainly to warn of incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, Israeli state radio reported Sunday.
Uzbekistan: War on Terror must not be seen as War on Islam
Method-as-Entity Alert. "War on terror must not be interpreted as confrontation with Islam - Uzbek foreign minister," from Interfax, September 29:Tashkent, September 29, Interfax - Tashkent has insisted that combat against terrorism should not be transformed into Islamophobia. Speaking at...
Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022883.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022883.php">Click here</a> UK Muslim sues supermarket for making him carry beer on a forklift This appears to be part of an effort to force the store to stop carrying alcohol altogether -- which illustrates the supremacist element in Muslim demands for accommodation. Muhammad laid curses not only upon those who drank alcohol, but those... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022882.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022882.php">Click here</a> Defense Management: DOD Needs to Establish Clear Goals and Objectives, Guidance, and a Designated Budget to Manage Its Biometrics Activities. GAO-08-1065, September 26 Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d081065high.pdf
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Washington (AFP) Sept 29, 2008
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday warned rising officers of the limits of US military power and encouraged them to be skeptical of technological solutions to complex wars.
In a speech on "hard power" at the National Defense University, Gates also said the US military needs to strike a better balance between spending on high-tech weaponry and meeting the requirements for fighting low-tech wars in broken states.
"Let's be honest with ourselves," he said in remarks prepared for delivery. "The most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland -- for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack -- are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states."
"The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. We do not have the luxury of opting out because they do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war," he said.
The speech was the latest in a series in which Gates, a former CIA analyst, has sought to jar a slow-to-change military and government into rethinking its approach to national security challenges.
In previous speeches, he pressed the military to focus on conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, chiding it for "next-war-itis."
He also has advocated greater reliance on "soft power," such as diplomacy and economic influence, over "hard" military power.
On Monday, Gates said the United States remains the strongest military power on earth.
"But not every outrage, every act of aggression, every crisis can or should elicit an American military response, and we should acknowledge such," he said.
"Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish," he said.
He said advances in precision weapons, sensors, information and satellite technology had led to extraordinary gains, enabling a drone piloted in Nevada to attack an insurgent pick up truck in Mosul, for instance.
But the human dimension of warfare "is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain," he said.
"Look askance at idealized, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war: where the enemy is killed, but our troops and innocent civilians are spared.
"Where adversaries can be cowed, shocked, or awed into submission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block," he said.
In a question and answer session, Gates said growth in US military spending is "probably a thing of the past" and the Pentagon would be fortunate if it keeps pace with inflation.
"But in terms of the kind of deep cuts that followed the end of the Cold War, I would hope that we've gotten smarter than that," he said.
He spoke just before Congress rejected a 700 billion dollar bank bail-out plan, sending stocks plunging.
Gates acknowledged in the speech that the United States, though militarily dominant, faces challenges from other states, saying the Russian invasion of Georgia last month was a "reminder that nation states and their militaries do still matter."
"Both Russia and China have increased their defense spending and modernization programs to include air defense and fighter capabilities that, in some cases, approach our own," he said.
"In the case of China, investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, submarines and ballistic missiles could threaten America's primary means to project power and help allies in the Pacific, our bases, air and sea assets and the networks that support them.
"This will put a premium on America's ability to strike from over the horizon, employ missile defenses, and will require shifts from short range to longer range systems such as the next generation bomber," he said.
At the same time, however, Gates said he regarded China as a competitor, not an adversary, and that its investments in the military were "not disproportionate" to the size of its economy.
"I don't think China is an enemy. I think, if we pursued the wrong policies, we could make them into one. And I think that would be a serious mistake," he said.
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Vienna (AFP) Sept 29, 2008
Iran and North Korea both came under fire over their contested nuclear activities on the first day of the UN atomic watchdog's general conference here Monday.
During the opening debate of the week-long meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union, Britain, and Japan all lambasted Tehran and Pyongyang.
"The international community cannot accept the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons," French minister and government spokesman, Luc Chatel, told the IAEA's 145 member countries, speaking on behalf of the EU.
And the Japanese government's special envoy, Matsuda Iwao, warned that "the nuclear development undertaken by the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is a threat to peace and security of not only Japan, but also of East Asia and the entire international community."
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had already expressed similar concerns with regard to both countries during his opening address.
"I urge Iran to implement all the transparency measures ... required to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme at the earliest possible date," ElBaradei said.
"This will be good for Iran, good for the Middle East region and good for the whole world."
And of North Korea, ElBaradei said: "I still hope that conditions can be created for the DPRK to return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty at the earliest possible date."
The IAEA has been investigating Tehran's nuclear activities for the past six years, but has so far been unable to determine whether they are purely peaceful as Tehran claims.
In the case of North Korea, Pyongyang announced last week it was preparing to restart a nuclear reprocessing plant used to make weapons-grade material, asking the IAEA to remove seals and surveillance equipment and barring agency inspectors from the site.
British Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks said: "We look to the North Korean authorities to take the earliest opportunities to resume cooperation with the agency and to implement its commitment to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear programme."
Under a six-country pact announced in February 2007, North Korea agreed to disable and dismantle key nuclear facilities and allow inspectors to return in return for one million tonnes of fuel aid and its removal from a US list of countries supporting terrorism.
But North Korea announced last month it had halted the process in protest at Washington's refusal to drop it from the blacklist as had been promised.
Allegations that Syria was similarly engaged in illicit nuclear work also came up for discussion.
French minister Chatel said the EU was "concerned" that Syria had not yet responded to IAEA requests to visit suspect nuclear sites and he urged Damascus "to provide all the access requested and reply to all the agency's questions."
The United States has alleged Syria was building a covert nuclear facility at a remote desert site called Al-Kibar until it was destroyed by Israeli bombs in September 2007.
Damascus allowed a three-member team from the IAEA to visit Al-Kibar in June, but has since refused any follow-up visit.
Iran and Syria are in the spotlight at this year's general conference because they are seen as possible candidates for a seat on the IAEA's 35-member board following the expiry of Pakistan's one-year term.
The seat is to be allocated to another country within the so-called Middle East and South Asia (MESA) group.
But with both Iran and Syria currently in the dock over their purported clandestine nuclear work, the nomination of either by MESA would almost certainly run into resistance and could even go to a vote -- unprecedented at the general conference which traditionally decides by consensus.
Tehran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, was the last speaker to take the podium on Monday and he accused the United States of using the IAEA for its own political ends.
He insisted that UN sanctions would have "no effect on (Iran's) determination to pursue peaceful nuclear activities, including enrichment."
IAEA chief ElBaradei warned that the agency's work was being impeded by poor funding.
"Years of zero (real) growth budgets have left us with a failing infrastructure," he said.
"This is not just about money. We do not work in a political vacuum. Political commitment to the goals of the agency needs to be renewed at the highest level," ElBaradei said.
"It would be a tragedy of epic proportions if we fail to act (for lack of resources) until after a nuclear conflagration, accident or terrorist attack that could have been prevented."
 James Langevin's call for a more robust offensive capacity in cyber-warfare highlights an ongoing debate in government about how best to address the complex challenges posed by U.S. dependence on the Internet and other computer networks -- a vulnerability that could be exploited by the nation's enemies. |
Washington (UPI) Sep 29, 2008
The United States needs to do more to develop an offensive cyberwar capability, rather than just focus on defending its networks from attack, says the chairman of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee.
"The best defense is a good offense, and an offensive (cyberwar) capability is essential to our national defense," Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., told United Press International last week, calling it "a necessary deterrent."
"Warfare is forever changed ¿¿ never again will we see major warfare without a strong cyber-component executed as part of it," he added, citing as proof the assault on Georgian government Web sites that accompanied the Russian invasion there last month.
Langevin, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology, and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, also called on the White House to declassify much more of its Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, or CNCI, and said the Department of Homeland Security should be stripped of its lead role in defending the nation's computer networks.
His call for a more robust offensive capacity in cyber-warfare highlights an ongoing debate in government about how best to address the complex challenges posed by U.S. dependence on the Internet and other computer networks -- a vulnerability that could be exploited by the nation's enemies.
One issue highlighted by experts is the difficulty in determining the origins of cyberattacks, which are often launched using "bot-nets" of compromised computers owned by innocent users, which can be on an entirely different continent to the attackers themselves.
The issue was raised earlier this month in two House hearings at which lawmakers heard testimony from members of a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel, the Commission on Cyber-Security for the 44th Presidency.
"We have a tremendous amount of trouble determining attribution ¿¿ where an attack actually came from, who was responsible, who might have been behind that computer. And we have a very, very long way to go on that," former White House cybersecurity official and commission member Paul Kurtz told the House Intelligence Committee.
"Until we start to get clarity in that piece, it's going to be very difficult to contemplate the military option, of responding appropriately," Kurtz added.
Another issue raised at the hearings was that, in order for any offensive capacity to be a deterrent for potential adversaries, it would have to be made public, whereas the U.S. military's cyberwar capacities are largely classified.
"Clearly, our offensive capabilities and sources and methods we probably do not want to disclose in any detailed way," said AT&T executive John Nagengast, formerly an assistant deputy director at the National Security Agency.
"But," he told the hearing, "as part of an overall doctrine and strategy in cyberspace, we need to consider what are the deterrent factors ¿¿ what ¿¿ do we want to make public as part of that deterrence strategy and wha do we need to keep secret because most of our offensive capabilities should be kept secret?"
Former intelligence official Suzanne Spaulding told the hearing that focusing on offensive capabilities and giving a lead role to the military might also make it harder for the United States to work with other countries on cyber-issues, where the line between crime, terrorism and warfare is often hard to draw.
"My concern is that (the Department of Defense) has been so vocal about the development and deployment of cyber-warfare capabilities that it will be very difficult for that department to develop and sustain the trust necessary to undertake essential collaboration on defense cybersecurity efforts with the private sector and with international stakeholders," she said.
"There is a significant risk that these vital partners will suspect that the collaboration is really aimed at strengthening our offensive arsenal," she concluded.
Langevin told UPI that work on international treaties to deal with cyberwar offered no real alternative to developing an offensive capability.
"That discussion at the international level may be appropriate at some point," he said, adding, "There are treaties on cybercrime that do exist, but it doesn't mean that cybercrime doesn't occur."
Langevin also said the administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative was over-classified.
"I have had the opportunity to see elements of the plan in both the classified and unclassified portions, and I question the need for so much of it to be classified at this point," he said.
Some parts of the plan were very highly and appropriately classified, he added, "but not the vast majority" of it.
He said declassifying most of the initiative would allay public concerns about it, allow non-governmental experts to assess its effectiveness and help leverage the development of private-sector technologies to assist the government with its objectives.
"The more that is made public, the more outside experts can look at it and begin to generate a consensus of what will work and what won't," he said. "By making it public, it would provide the opportunity to start building broader support. ¿¿ When it's left classified, people are left wondering what are the authorities (granted to intelligence and other agencies under the initiative) and how effective will it be."
"It would spur (the development of) more private-sector technology if the private sector knew what the goals of the initiative were," he concluded.
The lack of transparency in the CNCI was also commented upon by commission members. "The White House has not been transparent on this issue," said Kurtz, noting that many agencies had provided briefings for the commission "despite White House staff wishes."
Spaulding pointed out that handing cybersecurity responsibility to the collection of spy agencies known as the U.S. Intelligence Community would likely exacerbate this trend.
"The risk in putting too much of the effort inside the I.C., however, is that it will fall prey to the over-classification that is so often the default mechanism in the Intelligence Community," she said.
Later this year, members of the commission are slated to brief the presidential campaigns about their findings. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan named a new head of its main intelligence service, a change sure to be scrutinized by American officials who have questioned the powerful spy agency's loyalties in the war on terror. Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, the new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, oversaw military offensives against militants in Pakistan's restive northwest tribal areas in his most recent job as director general of military operations. Pakistani intelligence helped create the Taliban. U.S. intelligence agencies suspect rogue ISI elements may still be giving the Taliban sensitive information to aid militants in their growing insurgency in Afghanistan, even though officially, Pakistan is a U.S. ally in fighting terrorism. There are lingering suspicions that elements in the ISI may want to retain the Taliban as assets against longtime rival India. India, Afghanistan - and reportedly the U.S. - suspect the ISI of involvement in the July 7 bombing outside India's Embassy in Kabul, which killed more than 60 people. Pakistan denies the allegations. Pasha will be pivotal in joint U.S.-Pakistani efforts to locate al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, believed to be hiding somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border in the lawless, tribal areas. Urbane and apparently at ease with foreign reporters, Pasha has acknowledged the price Pakistan was paying for its past sponsorship of radical Islam. "We pumped in millions of dollars for establishing it, and now we are up against it," he said in a media briefing in November. At the same time, Pasha expressed skepticism about Washington's policies in the war on terror. Asked whether the U.S. understood militancy in the region, he replied: "Brute use of force" killed too many civilians and stoked extremism. Pasha's appointment was the most important of several changes in a major shake-up of military leadership by army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Military analyst Talat Masood said the changes appeared to be an effort by Kayani - who succeeded former President Pervez Musharraf as army chief and previously headed the ISI himself - to consolidate his control over the military. In July, the Pakistani government reportedly tried to bring the ISI under the control of the Interior Ministry, but quickly reversed the decision apparently after military dissent. Pasha has also commanded troops for the U.N. mission to Sierra Leone in 2001-2002 and was appointed last year by the world body as an adviser on peacekeeping operations. He replaces Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, who was in the position for about a year after being appointed by Musharraf. Taj was a close Musharraf aide, including during his 1999 coup. Pakistan has spent about half of its 61-year history under army rule, but Kayani has indicated he wants to keep the military out of politics and rehabilitate its image after Musharraf's nine-year rule. ---- Associated Press Writers Munir Ahmad and Stephen Graham contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 6 to correct al-Zawarhri sted al-Zawahiri.) By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Writer CHICAGO - A 24-year-old convert to Islam has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for plotting to blow off hand grenades in a crowded shopping mall during the Christmas season. Derrick Shareef must serve 30 of those years - with five off for good behavior - unless he can get an appeals court to reduce the sentence. He was arrested in 2006 on charges of scheming to use weapons of mass destruction at the Cherryvale Mall in the northern Illinois city of Rockford. Federal Judge David Coar said Tuesday he didn't believe Shareef was evil. But he said people could have been severely hurt if federal agents hadn't broken up the plot. Shareef described himself as a devout Muslim who once admired Osama bin Laden but has now realized violence is wrong. The Associated Press
 Spain seeks stolen case with low-level radioactive material Spain's nuclear safety agency issued an alert Monday after a case of equipment containing low-level radioactive material was stolen from a road works site, the second such incident this year. The case was part of a kit for geologists to measure the density and humidity of the soil and it contains two sources of low-level radioactivity, the Nuclear Safety Council (CNS) said in a statement. It was taken from a site in the town of Vilanova del Valles near the northeastern port city of Barcelona, it added. "The stolen equipment does not pose radiological risks as long as it is kept intact and closed since the radioactive sources are found inside, protected and encapsulated," the statement said. The agency said the yellow case is marked as containing radioactive material and it urged anyone who finds it to contact police. In April a similar case was stolen from a vehicle in an industrial zone in the town of Mostoles near Madrid. It was found intact several days later outside a school. |
Vienna (AFP) Sept 29, 2008
A new organisation was unveiled here Monday aimed at promoting nuclear security around the globe so as to prevent terrorists from getting the bomb.
The World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS), the brainchild of the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), will bring together nuclear security experts, the nuclear industry, governments and international organisations, said NTI head and former US senator Sam Nunn.
It will provide a forum for collecting and sharing information and best security practices so that dangerous materials can be kept out of terrorists' hands.
"There is no threat more potentially devastating than a terrorist nuclear attack," Nunn told a news conference.
"Terrorists have been seeking nuclear and radiological weapons for more than 10 years and the nuclear material they need is housed in hundreds of facilities around the globe," Nunn said.
"In seeking this material, terrorists will not go where there is the most material, but where that matieral is most vulnerable. Our global nuclear security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain."
WINS, which will be based in Vienna and will have an initial staff of around five, will work closely with the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Indeed, the institute was launched on the sidelines of the IAEA's annual general conference here.
Nunn said WINS was starting with donations of six million dollars and planned to expand to a staff of around 10 in "a couple of years."
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei welcomed the launch of the institute.
"With regard to nuclear security, we have come to realise that we need to become more intelligent," ElBaradei said.
"And we've come to realise that there's a lot to be done" in this area, ElBaradei said, adding: "It's our life and the life of our children" that is at stake.
WINS is not meant to be a policing organisation, NTI President Charles Curtis insisted.
"It's an opportunity for professionals to share information. No regulatory framework is going to arise from this. We have to nurture and maintain the voluntary nature" of the institute, Curtis said.
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Jerusalem (AFP) Sept 30, 2008
The Israeli army is equipping itself with self-destruct cluster bombs in order to lower the number of civilian victims of this type of weapon, used in the 2006 war in Lebanon, military radio said.
The army has reduced its purchases of US made cluster bombs, instead buying Israel-made M-85 cluster bombs, which contain a mechanism to destroy themselves if they fail to explode immediately on impact, according to the report.
Cluster munitions spread bomblets over a wide area from a single container.
The United Nations estimates that a million cluster bombs were dropped on Lebanon by Israel between July 12 and August 14 in 2006 in the conflict with Hezbollah.
About 40 percent of these did not explode on impact and are spread among villages and orchards in the south of Lebanon.
According to a UN report in June, at least 38 people have been killed and 217 wounded by bomblets exploding since the end of the fighting.
The Israeli government's Winograd Commission of enquiry into the mistakes of the Lebanon war recommended the army use fewer cluster bombs in future to reduce civilian injuries.
In May, delegates from 111 countries agreed a landmark treaty in in Dublin to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions by its signatories.
However, the agreement lacked the backing of major producers and stockpilers including Israel, China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States.
 A Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system from the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., made a trans-Atlantic flight Sept. 20 with the assistance of Navy officials. The 19-hour flight took off from Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., to Southwest Asia. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Miranda Moorer) |
Air Combat Command Public Affairs
Langley AFB VA (AFPN) Oct 01, 2008
An Air Combat Command RQ-4A Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system from the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., made a trans-Atlantic flight Sept. 20 with the assistance of Navy officials.
The 19-hour flight from Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., to Southwest Asia had Air Force and Navy officials working together to save time and resources.
"The Navy has all of the supplies that we have, plus contracted support," said Airman 1st Class Matthew Milles, an avionics specialist. "It's a lot easier than just going to a remote location. Working hand in hand with the Navy moves the plane faster to the deployed location."
The ability of the Air Force to coordinate and streamline UAS assets transfers directly to the warfighter on the ground.
"We flew out of Patuxent River, where we used the Navy asset ground segment to launch it out of there, and that's the first time that's been done," said Tech. Sgt. Jason Jones, assigned to the 380th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.
"The aircraft has been on the ground about six hours, and we're going to turn it for a war on terrorism mission tonight and fly a full-schedule 24-hour mission."
Going east over the Atlantic has its own significance and demonstrates how the Air Force is committed to providing global vigilance, reach and power in the future by exploring new options.
"Going this direction, specifically allows us to cut out a lot of different stops in a lot of different areas," said Col. George Zaniewski, the ACC Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division chief.
"Overall, it gets the aircraft over into the area of responsibility much easier, and more importantly than that, it allows us to work with the Navy, who will be doing more and more in the Global Hawk environment."
The flight from Patuxent River NAS is just the beginning of an increased relationship between the Air Force and Navy.
"Specifically for the Global Hawk, we are getting more and more into maritime environments, so we are going to be able to work with the Navy much more than we ever have," Colonel Zaniewski said.
This trans-Atlantic mission is also a step toward the chief of staff's initiative to increase UAS capacity for the joint fight.
"What I hope for the future is that it becomes one common way ... that we work with all our sister services, to where we can streamline both the acquisition process, but also the operational process," Colonel Zaniewski said.
Those differences in operations and procedures can be countered with professional UAS operators and precise planning.
"We are dealing with so many unknowns, but we had sharp guys today and they made it happen," said Maj. Alan Rabb, the ACC current operations chief.
"It was a great experience here. I am so used to working with the Navy, where with the Air Force it was the first time," said Bobby Oshner, a Patuxent River Navy Global Hawk contractor. "They looked like professional people who really knew what they were doing."
There are certain hurdles that come by working with another service, but those were evaluated and turned into learning opportunities.
"There is a bit of a different language, different process, but overall we are still the same airframe," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. John Tracey, the Naval Global Hawk project officer. "We are kind of the smaller, kid brother of the Global Hawk community, so it's nice to work with everybody else."
The Patuxent River NAS mission was a win-win for the Air Force as well as the Navy, but with joint operations like these, the real winner is the warfighter.
"It helps to rotate these systems out so they have fresh aircraft. They are flying combat missions daily and you want the best product out there," Commander Tracey said.
Joint operations not only have an effect on logistics of the UAS mission, but it also has the UAS community excited about their future.
"The impact is going to be really huge I believe. What we are doing here is really ground-breaking," Major Rabb said. "We have opened the door to not only a different aspect of joint ops, but also joint ops relative to unmanned aircraft."
"With this ISR, we are going to see a lot of changes in the upcoming years," Airman Milles said.
 File image. |
Miranshah, Pakistan (AFP) Oct 1, 2008
A missile strike by a suspected US spy drone hit a house in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing at least four people and wounding nine, security officials said Wednesday.
The attack is the latest in a string of incidents on the rugged frontier that have raised tensions between Islamabad and Washington, including a clash between Pakistani troops and US-led forces in Afghanistan.
It happened shortly after Pashtun tribesmen shot at three drones circling the village of Khusali Toorikhel in North Waziristan, a known haunt of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
"After the drones came under fire a missile hit a house in the village. We have four dead now and another nine people were injured," a local security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The United States has stepped up attacks on militants in Pakistani territory since a new civilian government came to power in March and the incidents have become an issue in the US presidential election.
Washington said Monday it supports Pakistan's "territorial integrity" amid the tensions between the two allies in the "war on terror".
The US government presented the stand in a joint statement with Pakistan following talks in Washington between US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
"The United States affirmed its support for Pakistan's sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity," according to the joint statement issued by the State Department.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has vowed zero tolerance against violations of Pakistan's sovereignty amid stepped up US missile strikes into apparent militant safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Relations have also been strained by a raid by US special operations forces into Pakistan on September 3 which killed several Pakistanis.
Last Thursday, Pakistani and US troops exchanged fire along the border after two US military helicopters came under fire, a US military spokesman said.
Though both sides played down the incident later, Pakistan contended that the US helicopters had entered Pakistani territory while the United States argued they had not left Afghanistan.
A suspected US drone crashed in the neighbouring tribal area of South Waziristan last week. Tribesmen said they fired at it but the Pakistani military said a malfunction was to blame.
 In the past, Iran has received assistance from the People's Republic of China in the development of its ballistic missile program focusing on improving missile accuracy. Thus, Iranian missile technology is related to Chinese, Russian, North Korean and possibly Pakistani origins. Photo courtesy AFP |
Washington (UPI) Sep 30, 2008
It is highly significant that Iran's missile program is under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- Pasdaran -- the most loyal element of the regime, which combines internal secret police and external intelligence and shock troop functions. It is not controlled by civilians; not even by the regular military.
Historical parallels to a national security organization involvement in missile production and space launches include the German use of slave labor, coordinated with Heinrich Himmler's SS. Incidentally, Himmler had an abiding interest in space travel and even space colonization.
Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's omnipotent secret police chief, presided over the Soviet nuclear bomb program and an empire of technological research institutes, such as the one described in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel "The First Circle."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced its forthcoming space launch, which may likely be disguising a new intermediate-range ballistic missile or an attempt to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Potential Iranian long-range and intermediate-range ballistic missile or intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities make a deployment of a U.S. anti-ballistic missile system in Central Europe -- Poland and the Czech Republic -- particularly timely and necessary.
In the past, Iran has received assistance from the People's Republic of China in the development of its ballistic missile program focusing on improving missile accuracy. Thus, Iranian missile technology is related to Chinese, Russian, North Korean and possibly Pakistani origins.
As Iran achieves its own space launch capability, it improves its long-range ballistic missiles. Such was the case of the Soviet Union, with its flight test of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 -- NATO designation SS-6 -- in August 1957, followed two months later by the launch in October 1958 of the world's first satellite, Sputnik 1.
Another example is China with its DF-5 intercontinental ballistic missile and its space rocket clone, the Long March-2C. Moreover, China's first SLV rockets, the Long March-1, were developed from an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the DF-4.
France successfully developed an SLV capability by utilizing components and stages from its ballistic missile technology, thus developing the Diamant space rocket, which successfully launched a satellite in 1965. The United States has supplied Israel with advanced U.S.-made X-band radar. Such a system will give Israel much greater warning of a possible ballistic missile attack by Iran.
The system can pick up a ballistic missile shortly after launch, slashing the response time of Israel's Arrow missile defense system. The new radar was flown into Israel last week, along with a U.S. crew of 120 technicians, and is being set up at the Nevatim air base in the Negev desert.
India began in 1979 the development of the Agni 1 intermediate-range ballistic missile. This missile uses a first-stage motor similar to the first-stage motor of India's Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, which began launching satellites in 1979.
(Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies and international energy security at the Heritage Foundation. His most recent book is "Kazakhstan: The Road to Independence.")
Manual outlines signs of Muslim radicalization in prisons
Long beards: biggest giveaway More on the phenomenon of radical Islam's spread in prisons. "Manual outlines Muslim radicalization in prisons," by Elaine Ganley for AP, October 1:PARIS (AP) — Security officials from several European countries have developed a manual...
Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022923.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022923.php">Click here</a> Iraq: "Al-Qaeda is targeting orphans, street children and mentally disabled children as suicide bomber recruits as well as women" Ready to be "martyred" for Allah? More on al-Qaeda's "brave" and "honorable" tactics. "Iraq: Al-Qaeda 'used 24 child suicide bombers in last two years," from Adnkronos, October 1:Baghdad, 1 Oct. (AKI) - Al-Qaeda has over the past two years... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022922.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022922.php">Click here</a> "Secularism is as foreign to Islamic theory as is Sharia law to Americans" A good reminder that, with Jesus' "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, unto God what is God's," Christianity can survive, thrive even, in a secular society; whereas in the Islamic world, where there is absolutely no separation between mosque and... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022920.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022920.php">Click here</a> Iranian Top Dog: Palestinians will soon witness a "big day" That "big day" will apparently consist of the disappearance of Israel. "Iranian leaders says Israel defeat 'absolute,'" from Al-Bawaba, October 1 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist): Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on Wednesday called for unity in the... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022919.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022919.php">Click here</a> Shock horror! Spanish intelligence says Pakistan helped arm Taliban! More confirmation of what everyone should know by now about the duplicity of our Friend and Ally Pakistan comes today from Spain: "Spanish intelligence document says Pakistan 'helped arm Taliban,'" by Fiona Govan in the Telegraph, October 1 (thanks to... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022918.php>
AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022918.php">Click here</a> Bali bombers vow revenge for executions, and say: "I've never regretted these bombings...I will not ask for forgiveness from those infidels" "If it's true that there will be an execution, then all the people committing the execution will be condemned to die by God." "Bali bombers vow revenge over executions," from AAP, October 1 (thanks to JE): THREE death row Bali... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022910.php>
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29 Sept.: With scores of terror warnings current for the Jewish New Year starting sundown Monday, Sept. 9, a beefed up Jerusalem border police squad detained a Palestinian from the West Bank of Jenin heading for a knifing attack on the route leading to the Western Wall in the Old City. In his pockets were a large knife and letters stating his intention to be a “martyr.”
Advance intelligence has been received of plans to kidnap Israel security and military personnel. The West Bank is sealed off for the three-day festival and police patrols stepped up in the main cities, markets and transport terminals. Volunteer sentries will stand duty at synagogues.
The Pentagon has approved the $15.2 billion sale of 25 F-35 stealth Strike Fighters to Israel with an option for another 50, saying assisting Israel develop a strong and ready self-defense capability is vital to US national security interests.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that President George W, Bush, in mid-financial crisis, fully discharged his promise of a defense package for Israeli before he left office. Israel is the first foreign nation to receive the Lockheed Martin F-35 Strike Fighter, the plane of the future, which will enhance its air-to-air and air-to-ground defenses and replace the older Air Force F-16 fighters by virtue of five exceptional features:
1. An advanced radar for striking ground or air targets long distance while destroying any threat in its immediate environment.
2. An electro-optical targeting system (EOTS).
3. The pilot’s helmet-mounted displays (HMD).
4. It is the first fighter plane in the world with a communications system linked to satellites.
5. The capacity for carrying large quantities of ordnance from joint direct attack munitions to AIM-120 and AIM-132 air-to-air missiles.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
1 Oct.: DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a four-ship Russian squadron led by the Peter the Great nuclear missile cruiser will visit Syrian ports after calling in at Tripoli, Libya. It will then proceed to the Caribbean for joint maneuvers with Venezuela.
Coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the Egyptian-Syrian Yom Kippur attack on Israel, the Russian warships’ arrival in Syria has serious connotations:
1. It means that prime minister Ehud Olmert will be wasting his time if he intends using his talks in Moscow next week with president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin to ask them to drop their plan for a permanent base at a Syrian port. That plan is clearly going full steam ahead.
2. The Yom Kippur War of 1973 recorded in Russian and Arab military annals as the high point of Russian-Arab military and intelligence cooperation. The Soviet Union as it was then was responsible for the great deception which disguised Arab war preparations behind a screen of misdirection and gulled Israeli intelligence into complacence.
Moscow is signaling Jerusalem that it is reverting to its old military ties with Damascus.
3. Moscow attaches high importance to its new Damascus-Tehran-Caracas alignment opposite the US-Israel alliance.
2 Oct.: The U.N. ordered children of its international staff to leave the Pakistani capital and other areas it considered unsafe, raising its security level following the bombing of the Marriott Hotel, officials said Thursday.
The move, which came a day after Britain decided to repatriate diplomats' children, underlines the deteriorating situation in Pakistan amid spreading terrorist attacks by Taliban insurgents and their al Qaeda partners.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
2 Oct.: Washington accompanied this warning to Damascus, DEBKAfile has learned, with its first explicit threat of military intervention to aid Lebanon should Syria go through with its planned incursion of the North. DEBKAfile first revealed the concentration of 10,000 Syrian troops on the Lebanese border on Sept. 20 and again on Sept. 27.
The warning, according to our sources, was delivered on Sept. 28 by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the Syrian foreign minister Walid Mualem whom she invited for an urgent meeting in New York. The day after they met, Mualem was handed a second warning by undersecretary of state David Welch, who specified precisely which Syrian movements the US government would deem crossing the Lebanese border.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
28 Sept.: DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that this time the nuclear installations are scattered in different parts of the country. North Korean nuclear experts are back too.
Western intelligence sources note that Syria has been hit in the past year with attacks associated with its clandestine nuclear activities.
The El Kibar reactor was knocked out on Sept. 6, 2007 while it was under construction. On Aug. 2, 2008, Gen. Muhammad Suleiman was shot dead by a sniper in Latakia. He was a key man in the Syrian nuclear program and acted as liaison officer for Damascus with Iran and North Korea.
DEBKAfile Special Report
28 Sept.: DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources disclose that the Fainai was seized by pirates carrying 33 T-72 tanks, RPG rocket-propelled grenades, ZU-23 automatic anti-air guns, and a quantity of ammunition and spare parts.
A spokesman for the pirates, Sugule Ali, said his men would fight to the death to protect their booty, but would release the ship on payment of a $20 million ransom.
The Faina crew is described as numbering 21, of which 17 are Ukrainians, three Russians and one Latvian. Their Russian captain, Viktor Nikolsky, died of a heart attack when the pirates boarded the vessel.
Last Wednesday, the Russian navy diverted the missile destroyer Neustrashimy from the Baltic to Somali waters.
There is some suspicion that the pirates did not capture the ship at random but lay in wait for it in three fast boats 200 miles out to sea. It was apparently a planned ambush, which would indicate
collusion between al the Qaeda networks of East Africa, the Somali militias and some of the pirate bands infesting its waters. The inference would be that terrorism was at work here in the guise of piracy and explain the convergence of US, European and Russian warships in these dangerous waters.
27 Sept.: Huge US Air Force C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Gobemaster III transports have ferried the high-powered FBX-T anti-missile radar to Israel’s Nevatim Air Base south of Beersheba. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the transportable radar surveillance/forward-based X-band radar was accompanied by some 120 American European Command personnel. The area of its deployment at the Negev base has been fenced off and made off-limits to non-American personnel.
This is the first time an Israel Defense Forces facility housing an American weapons system has been closed to Israeli military.
The Raytheon system can detect a flying object the size of a baseball at a distance of 4,700 km, fix on its speed and trajectory and convey the data to the Israeli Arrow anti-missile battery. This equals detecting an Iranian Shehab-3 ballistic missile 5.5 minutes after its launch, which means that it is picked up halfway on its 11-minute flight from Iran to bomb targets in Israel, adding precious minutes to Israel’s response time for incoming missile attacks.
Israel has furthermore been given improved access to US satellites capable of identifying missiles at the instant of their launch. Israel will now be directly linked to the satellites - albeit through the US Joint Tactical Ground Station – JTAGS in Europe.
Commenting on the FBX radar deployment, a Pentagon source said: First, we want to put Iran on notice that we’re bolstering our capabilities throughout the region, and especially in Israel. But just as important, we’re telling the Israelis, ‘Calm down; behave. We’re doing all we can to stand by you and strengthen defenses.’”
26 Sept.: Iran is on its way to mastering technology that would enable it to build atomic bombs, International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei said to the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung Friday. Asked if Iran was on the way to “virtual” nuclear-weapons power status, ElBaradei replied: “That is correct,” but added: Tehran could not “break out” to a bomb as long as IAEA monitors remained at nuclear sites.
DEBKAfile notes that the inspectors are restricted to a few declared sites, whereas US satellites have caught covert facilities hidden from the oversight of the nuclear watchdog where suspected weapons activity is underway. Only last week, ElBaradei himself complained of Tehran’s stonewalling and non-cooperation with the inspections.
DEBKAfile Special Report
26 Sept.: Friday, Sept. 26, 2008 was the day the policy pursued by Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres, of reliance on the international community to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb, sank without a trace. A deal between the US and Russia in New York sealed a very brief non-sanctions draft reaffirming previous council decisions for the five permanent Security Council members and Germany to table and called for Iran’s compliance.
The reality is that Tehran openly flouts all previous sanctions resolutions, continuing to enrich uranium, reprocess plutonium, build nuclear-capable missiles and stonewall on nuclear watchdog questions.
Yet no comment has come from Israel, either from the Kadima-nominee for prime minister Tzipi Livni or defense minister, Labor’s Ehud Barak.
The collapse of Israel’s foreign policy on Iran came at an unfortunate juncture:
1. The pandemonium in the US-led financial world has removed the Iranian threat from international consciousness.
2. Moscow, Iran and Syria are cementing their partnership, giving Tehran’s nuclear aspirations a strong diplomatic umbrella.
Moscow is pursuing cold war tactics in two new spheres: the Middle East, from its center of gravity in Tehran, and Latin America, resting on Venezuela’s anti-American posture and friendly relations with Iran.
 Enrichment is at the heart of Western fears that Iran could be seeking nuclear weapons as it can be diverted to make the fissile material for an atomic bomb as well as fuel for nuclear power plants. |
Brussels (AFP) Oct 2, 2008
Iran will continue to enrich uranium while there is no legally-binding international assurance of a nuclear fuel supply, the country's envoy to the UN's nuclear energy watchdog said Thursday.
"We are going to continue as long as there is no legally-binding instrument for assurance of supply," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters after a conference in Brussels.
Asked whether Iran would end its controversial uranium enrichment programme if such a guarantee were in place, Soltanieh said it would first have to be shown to be effective.
"It is not only the piece of paper, you have to practise... the plan," he said.
"We had a contract with the US and they did not fulfill their obligations... Germany had a contract and they did not."
Enrichment is at the heart of Western fears that Iran could be seeking nuclear weapons as it can be diverted to make the fissile material for an atomic bomb as well as fuel for nuclear power plants.
The UN has already applied sanctions over the issue but Tehran insists its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful and solely aimed at generating electricity and has refused to suspend uranium enrichment.
Six major powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- have put forward the possibility of a package of technological, economic and political incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment.
 |
Tehran (AFP) Oct 5, 2008
Iran will continue with uranium enrichment, the focus of international fears about its nuclear programme, even if the country is promised supplies of nuclear reactor fuel, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Sunday.
Iran's "unchangeable policy is to be self-sufficient in fuel production for (nuclear) plants," Mottaki told reporters. "We are determined to continue peaceful nuclear work until reaching full self-sufficiency."
The minister was asked whether the Islamic republic would suspend uranium enrichment if it received international guarantees of a fuel supply.
Mottaki said Iran cannot rely on assurances by world powers and most notably the United States, which have not delivered on their nuclear contracts with Iran made before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iran has been slapped with three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of an atom bomb.
Six major powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- have put forward the possibility of a package of technological, economic and political incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted as saying in Brussels last Thursday that Iran might end its uranium enrichment programme if there was a "legally-binding instrument for assurance of supply."
Iran says it has a right to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and denies allegations of seeking atomic weapons.
An Iranian official on Sunday criticised a nuclear deal due to be signed between the United States and India, saying that such cooperation violates the NPT, which India has refused to sign.
"This manner of transferring nuclear technology to non-NPT members will promote double standards," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told the state news agency IRNA.
Such cooperation will inevitably "present the international community with new crises," he said.
India and the US promised on Saturday soon to sign a pact offering India access to sophisticated US technology and cheap atomic energy in return for New Delhi allowing UN inspections of some of its civilian nuclear facilities.
The US and its regional ally Israel, which accuse Iran of seeking atomic weapons, have called for tougher sanctions against Tehran and have never ruled out a military option to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear drive.
The UN atomic watchdog has been investigating Tehran's nuclear activities for the past six years, but has so far been unable to determine whether they are purely peaceful as the government claims.
 It is expected that the Shahab 4 and Shahab 5 would have, in addition to inertial navigation systems, advanced navigation technology, possibly sold by Russia, which could be competing with China in the lucrative Iranian ballistic missile market. |
Washington (UPI) Oct 3, 2008
Attempts to thwart Iran's missile ambitions are hampered by the fact that Tehran is being backed by Russia and China. These powers are actually partners in the Iranian ballistic missile and space programs, which they view as both geopolitically desirable -- to dilute U.S. influence -- and lucrative.
It is likely that Iran's Explorer-1 rocket is the result of the country's advanced ballistic missile program.
The greater the range and payload capacity, the more capable is a missile to serve as a civilian SLV (satellite launch vehicle). Thus, the launching of the Iranian rocket could mark a threshold in Tehran's development of longer-range ballistic missiles.
And it is highly unlikely that, without plans to deploy nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles, the Islamic Republic of Iran would be developing civilian space launch capability when commercial space launch services are readily and cheaply available from French Guyana to Russia to India and China.
It is expected that the Shahab 4 and Shahab 5 would have, in addition to inertial navigation systems, advanced navigation technology, possibly sold by Russia, which could be competing with China in the lucrative Iranian ballistic missile market.
The navigation systems of these missiles would have the Russian Glonass satellite navigation capability, Moscow's answer to the U.S.-developed Global Positioning System, or GPS. The GLONASS system is expected to have global reach with 24 satellites in orbit by the end of 2009, and to provide by 2011 a level of accuracy to civilians of 1 meter. The GLONASS system will be compatible with the U.S. GPS and Europe's future Magellan systems.
Russia's Topol-M ICBM has a guidance system featuring inertial navigation compatible with GLONASS. Eventually, the Iranian ballistic missiles would be capable of being armed with nuclear, chemical, high explosive -- HE -- and conventional warheads, and possibly special warheads as in some Russian ballistic missiles like electro-magnetic pulse -- EMP -- and anti-radiation against radars.
Russian, Chinese and North Korean cooperation would be desirable and necessary to stop Iran's missile program, albeit today it is politically inconceivable, due to U.S.-Russian tensions over Georgia and North Korean efforts to restart its nuclear program.
Although China is not a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, which limits the spread of advanced weapons technology (the successor of CoCom -- the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) and the Missile Technology Control Regime, Russia is. Pressure should be exerted on Moscow to abide by these control regimes.
China should be invited once again to become a member of these regimes, and should be persuaded to act as a responsible power and thus work as part of the international community to help stop the exports of its own and North Korean missile technology, and to exert pressure on Iran to halt its growing missile program.
Beyond that, only deployment of missile defense systems in the Middle East and Europe, and Iran's fear of nuclear retaliation, may prevent Tehran from deploying nuclear-tipped intermediate-range ballistic missiles -- IRBMs -- and intercontinental ballistic missiles -- ICBMs -- in the future. The Cold War experiences of the 20th century -- or worse -- may revisit the Middle East, Europe and the United States in the years to come.
(Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies and international energy security at the Heritage Foundation. His most recent book is "Kazakhstan: The Road to Independence.") JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, traveling to Russia this week on one of his last diplomatic missions, said Sunday he would urge Moscow not to sell sophisticated weapons to Israel's enemies. Iran is interested in buying anti-aircraft missiles that could cripple any military strike against its nuclear program. Israel is also afraid Moscow would sell Syria the same missile defense system. In an overture before the t rip, Israel's Cabinet voted Sunday to recognize Russia's claim to property in downtown Jerusalem. Russia laid claim to the site, named for the son of a Russian czar, on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church. Olmert travels to Russia on Monday with little diplomatic clout: Within weeks, he is to step aside, driven from office by multiple corruption allegations. But he told his Cabinet on Sunday that he would use the two-day visit to bring up security issues of long-standing concern in his talks with Russian leaders. "We will remind them again of matters that trouble us greatly," including "the supply of arms to irresponsible elements whose activities worry us very much," the prime minister said in a televised statement, without elaborating. He also said he would press to keep working to resolve "the Iranian problem, where Russia plays a special role." Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frequently called for Israel's destruction, and Israel suspects he means to carry out that objective by developing nuclear bombs with the help of a Russian-built nuclear power plant. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Israel hopes international diplomacy will persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program but says "all options are on the table" if diplomacy fails. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor. The U.N. Security Council has approved three rounds of sanctions on Iran. But Russia, a council member with veto power, opposes tightening the sanctions any further. Iran says it plans to buy from Russia advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles that could detect aircraft sent to destroy its nuclear facilities. Syria, which backs Hezbollah guerrillas who battled Israel in Lebanon in 2006, reportedly has asked to buy them, too. Russia has not confirmed the reports. But recently, Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said his government was prepared to sell Syria arms with a "defensive character." Israel claims Russian missiles sold to Syria made their way into the Hezbollah's hands in the 2006 war, though it has not accused Russia of directly arming the guerrilla group. Syria is holding indirect peace negotiations with Israel, but the two enemies remain in a state of war. After four decades of Cold War animosity, ties between Moscow and Israel improved significantly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Israel is also home to more than 1 million Soviet emigres. But Moscow's position on Iran and arms sales to Syria have strained ties, as have Israeli weapons sales to Georgia, which Russia briefly invaded in August in support of pro-Russia secessionists. The Cabinet's decision on Sunday to transfer ownership over "Sergei's Courtyard" in downtown Jerusalem was meant to improve the diplomatic climate before the visit. The site, named for Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, a son of Czar Alexander II, was built in 1890 to accommodate Russians making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Israel bought other Russian property in the area 45 years ago. By AMY TEIBEL Associated Press Writer
* North Korea provided nuclear know-how or weapons hardware to six countries in the Middle East, Israel told a nuclear watchdog.
Read more: http://mobile.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/mobile/breaking/story/110659.html
UK military commander: War against Taliban cannot be won
Reaping the consequences of the PC delusion that the jihadists represent a tiny minority of extremists whose points of view are decisively rejected by most Muslims. "War on Taliban cannot be won, says army chief," by Christina Lamb for the...
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AOL users: <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022977.php">Click here</a> American public school text: "Jesus was a Palestinian" In my forthcoming book Stealth Jihad, I discuss how Islamic groups (some with Muslim Brotherhood links) are asked by clueless textbook publishers to vet history texts, so as to make sure that everything they say about Islam is nice and... Full article: <http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022976.php>
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Pakistan's spies "support terrorism"
More evidence regarding what everyone is increasingly becoming familiar with: Pakistan's perfidious nature. Friend-and-Ally Update. "Pakistan's spies 'support terrorism,'" by Tamim Hamid for Quqnoos, October 4:A LEAKED report from SpainÂ’s intelligence service has accused PakistanÂ’s spy agency, the ISI, of...
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American traitor says U.S. economic crisis is a Muslim victory
Misunderstander of Islam rails against the "enemies of Islam." Not that this has anything to do with Islam, of course. More on the traitor's new video. "Al-Qaida: US economic crisis equals Muslim victory," from AP, October 4 (thanks to all...
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"Hizballah Brigades in Palestine" set to "carry out Jihad for the sake of Allah and to resist the enemies of Islam"
Not that this has anything to do with Islam, of course. A new group of Misunderstanders of their peaceful religion has popped up among the "Palestinians": "New Islamist armed group set up in Palestinian territories," from China View, October 4...
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American jihadist traitor says Pakistan's new leaders are U.S. puppets
"Dude! I love this book!" Al-Qaeda's Adam Gadahn is the first American to be charged with treason since World War II. A few years ago he invited me to convert to Islam and turn my sword against the enemies...
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Taliban rakes in $100 million a year from drug trafficking
Osama bin Laden himself has been called "one of the world's largest heroin dealers." In my 2002 book Islam Unveiled I discussed how the Taliban's involvement in drug trafficking was consistent with the group's theology. It is in line with...
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Saudi cleric says Muslim women should cover all but one eye
Seductive Sharia Alert from the Kingdom of the Two Holy Places: "Saudi cleric urges Muslim women to cover up all but one eye," from Haaretz, October 4 (thanks to Twostellas): Saudi cleric Sheikh Mohammed al-Habadan has declared that a...
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