Just Foreign Policy News
June 10, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action – Jewish Voice for Peace: More Palestinian leaders wrongly imprisoned
Bassem and Naji Tamimi, from the village of Nabi Saleh, are being punished for organizing nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Urge the State Department to demand the Tamimis’ release.
http://bit.ly/tamimis
*Action: 17 Senators have signed Merkley-Lee-Udall letter
Senators Merkley-Lee-Udall are circulating a bipartisan letter to the President in support of a substantial July drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan. As of this writing, 17 Senators have signed. The current deadline for signing is close of business Monday, June 13. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) signed today. Urge your Senators to sign. The Congressional switchboard is 202-225-3121. Ask to be transferred to your Senator’s office; ask to talk to the staffer that handles foreign affairs, or leave a voice mail for that person.
The letter, including the 17 current signers:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/933
[you can leave a comment here with any feedback from your Senator’s office.]
Senators Webb and Corker introduce bill barring ground troops from Libya
Building on the actions of the House, including the passage of the Conyers Amendment.
http://www.truth-out.org/war-and-peace-senate-starts-move/1307724890
Video: Senator Webb Introduces Bill barring ground troops from Libya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScizDJKVAMk
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Urge Hillary to Act to Protect the Passengers on the Flotilla
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/audacityofhope/hillarypetition
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Support for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan has risen significantly over the past month, CNN reports. Nearly three-quarters of those questioned say that the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Afghanistan, a ten-point jump since May. Support for the war is now at 36 percent, its lowest point this year.
2) Americans are increasingly ready to see U.S. troops brought home, CBS reports. Sixty-four percent of Americans think the number of troops in Afghanistan should be decreased. That’s an increase of 16 points from last month and a record high for that question in CBS News polls. Half of Americans – 51 percent – think the U.S. should not be involved in the war in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, as NATO forces escalate air strikes in Libya, six in 10 Americans do not think the US should be involved in that conflict. Just 30 percent of Americans think the US is doing the right thing by taking part in the current military conflict in Libya now. A majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike think the U.S. should not be involved in Libya.
3) Some 1,700 detainees at the Bagram U.S. Air Base in Afghanistan are being held without charges or a trial, primarily on the basis of secret evidence that they never get to see or challenge, writes John Hanrahan, for Nieman Watchdog. The ever-growing number of Bagram detainees have far fewer rights than their counterparts at Guantanamo. The author of a recent Human Rights First report notes that the figure of 1,700 detainees is "almost triple the number of detainees who were at Bagram when President Obama came into office two years ago, and is 10 times greater than the number of prisoners currently being held at Guantanamo." It is more than twice the total number of detainees – 779 – who were ever held at Guantanamo.
Despite the powerful findings of the Human Rights First report, Nieman Watchdog has found only a few articles that mentioned it, and only one of those – in the Los Angeles Times (whose story was also used by the Chicago Tribune) – explored the lack of due process issue that was at the heart of the report.
4) Defense Secretary Gates says the US should maintain a long-term military presence in Afghanistan as a "tenant" on bases jointly occupied with Afghan forces, rather than on "permanent" US bases, the Washington Post reports. "Joint bases" would be "more tolerable to the Afghan people," Gates said. The Taliban, with which the U.S. and Afghan governments hope to negotiate an eventual peace accord, has placed the withdrawal of all foreign military forces at the top of its list of demands.
5) The Obama administration has intensified the US "covert" war in Yemen, the New York Times reports. Last Friday, US jets killed a midlevel Qaeda operative and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike.
6) According to two government reports and outside experts, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the US, the Los Angeles Times reports. "We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports. "I think we have wasted our money hugely," agreed Bruce Bagley, who studies U.S. counter-narcotics efforts at the University of Miami. "The effort has had corrosive effects on every country it has touched."
The Defense Department described its own system for tracking contracts as "error prone," according to the Senate report. The report also said the Defense Department doesn’t have reliable data about how successful its efforts have been.
A report last month by the GAO concluded that the State Department "does not have a centralized inventory of counter-narcotics contracts" and said the department does not evaluate the overall success of its counter-narcotics program.
"It’s become increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government’s use of contractors, have largely failed," McCaskill said.
The latest assault on the US counter-narcotics strategy comes a week after a high-profile group of world leaders called the global war on drugs a costly failure. The group recommended that regional governments try legalizing and regulating drugs to help stop the flood of cash going to drug mafias and other organized crime groups.
7) NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake accepted a plea deal from the government Thursday that drops the charges in his indictment, absolves him of mishandling classified information and calls for no prison time, the Washington Post reports. "It’s an unambiguous victory for Drake," said Jesselyn Radack, director of national security at the Government Accountability Project, who supported Drake. "The prosecution’s case imploded."
It also is a setback for the Obama administration’s effort to punish alleged leakers of national security secrets using the widely-criticized Espionage Act, the Post says. "As a tool for prosecuting leakers, the Espionage Act is a broad sword where a scalpel would be far preferable," said Stephen Vladeck, constitutional law professor at American University. "It criminalizes to the same degree the wrongful retention of information that probably should never have been classified in the first place and the willful sale of state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies."
Israel/Palestine
8) Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt reopened Wednesday after a four-day closure caused by a dispute between Egypt and Hamas over travel arrangements, the Beirut Daily Star reports. To great fanfare, Egypt eased border access May 28, extending opening hours and scrapping visa requirements for many Palestinians. Some Hamas officials said Egyptian authorities later appeared to have second thoughts and tried to slow the flow of Palestinians into Egypt.
Iran
9) In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, former European ambassadors to Iran argue for reconsidering the West’s established position on the Iranian nuclear question. The former ambassadors note that "nothing in international law or in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids the enrichment of uranium," that enrichment in Iran is subject to IAEA inspection, that "the IAEA has never uncovered in Iran any attempted diversion of nuclear material to military use," and that "a majority of experts, even in Israel, seems to view Iran as striving to become a ‘threshold country,’ technically able to produce a nuclear weapon but abstaining from doing so for the present," that nothing in international law or in the NPT forbids such an ambition, and that the goal of zero centrifuges operating in Iran is "unrealistic, and it has heavily contributed to the present standoff."
The next step should be for the two sides in this conflict to ask the IAEA what additional tools it needs to monitor the Iranian nuclear program fully and provide credible assurances that all the activities connected with it are purely peaceful in intent, the former ambassadors argue.
Iraq
10) Leon Panetta, the likely incoming Secretary of Defense, says he is confident Iraq will ask the U.S. to maintain troops there after the end of 2011, AP reports.
Cuba
11) Senator Kerry has been holding up funding for Cuba "democracy" programs, saying they are a waste of money that pointlessly antagonize the Cuban government, the Miami Herald reports. There’s "no evidence" the programs help the Cuban people, Kerry said.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) CNN Poll: Support jumps for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan
CNN, June 9
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/09/cnn-poll-support-jumps-for-withdrawing-troops-from-afghanistan/
Washington – In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a plurality of Americans believe for the first time that the U.S. is winning the war in Afghanistan, and support for withdrawing U.S. troops from that country has risen significantly over the past month, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday also indicates that support for the war is now at 36 percent, its lowest point this year.
According to the poll, the number of Americans who think the U.S. is winning has jumped 16 points since last August, to 47 percent. Nearly as many, 46 percent, say the U.S. is not winning, but plummeting 20 points since last August.
Nearly three-quarters of those questioned say that the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Afghanistan, a ten-point jump since May. The number who say that the U.S. needs to have troops in Afghanistan to prevent a terrorist attack in the U.S. stands at 53 percent, a drop of nine points since last September.
[…]
2) Poll: Most want troops in Afghanistan reduced
Stephanie Condon, CBS News, June 8, 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20070187-503544.html
As the Obama administration prepares for a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, Americans are increasingly ready to see U.S. troops brought home, according to a new CBS News poll.
Sixty-four percent of Americans think the number of troops in Afghanistan should be decreased, according to the poll, conducted June 3-7. That’s an increase of 16 points from last month and a record high for that question in CBS News polls. Twenty-two percent said troop levels should stay the same, while 8 percent said they should be increased.
There are currently about 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and President Obama has promised to start bringing home troops in July. It’s unclear, however how significant the drawdown will be.
Half of Americans – 51 percent – think the U.S. should not be involved in the war in Afghanistan, while 43 percent think the U.S. is doing the right thing by continuing the decade-long fight. Public opinion has slowly shifted against fighting the war in Afghanistan since the fall of 2009, when 51 percent thought the U.S. was doing the right thing by fighting that war.
Most Democrats and independents think the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan, while most Republicans think the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, as NATO forces escalate the intensity of their air strikes against pro-government forces in Libya, six in 10 Americans do not think that the United States should be involved in the conflict within that country. Just 30 percent of Americans think the United States is doing the right thing by taking part in the current military conflict in Libya now.
A majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike think the U.S. should not be involved in Libya.
3) Bagram prison, bigger than Guantanamo, its prisoners in limbo, cries out for some news coverage
Some 1,700 detainees are being held with no charges, no trial, no way to prove their innocence despite a Marine Corps general’s 2009 report saying many should be released. In addition, there has been almost no in-depth news coverage of practices that, if widely known, would no doubt add to the call for removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and criticism of the government’s conduct of the war.
John Hanrahan, Nieman Watchdog, May 31, 2011
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00546
Under a U.S. military system straight out of Kafka’s "The Trial" and Heller’s "Catch-22", some 1,700 detainees at the Bagram U.S. Air Base in Afghanistan are being held without charges or a trial, primarily on the basis of secret evidence that they never get to see or challenge.
A still-classified 2009 Marine Corps general’s report concluded that many, probably a majority, were wrongly held then. But it was virtually impossible then and now for innocent detainees to prove they are not allied with insurgents.
The system of dealing with Bagram prisoners through detainee review boards (DRB), although improved upon since President Obama took office, violates universal standards on detention in that it "does not provide detainees the minimum level of due process required by international law," according to a human rights organization’s recent report. Thus far, the report, issued May 10 by New York- and Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization Human Rights First (HRF), has been ignored by almost all the mainstream print and broadcast news media.
As Human Rights First states, the ever-growing number of Bagram detainees – most of whom are Afghans – have far fewer rights than their counterparts at the much more controversial Guantanamo Bay prison. Thanks to a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Guantanamo detainees "have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court and to representation by a lawyer," something Bagram prisoners are denied, the report notes.
The system has resulted in detainees being incarcerated at Bagram for eight years or more, "based largely on evidence they have never seen and with no meaningful opportunity to defend themselves," the report says. Additionally "a significant number" of the approximately 41 non-Afghan detainees "have been recommended for release by a Detainee Review Board but remain in detention at…[Bagram]..without explanation."
In an interview with Nieman Watchdog, the HRF report’s author, Daphne Eviatar, put that figure of 1,700 detainees into context, noting that it is "almost triple the number of detainees who were at Bagram when President Obama came into office two years ago, and is 10 times greater than the number of prisoners currently being held at Guantanamo." In addition, it is more than twice the total number of detainees – 779 – who were ever held at Guantanamo. More than 1,300 individuals were arrested and incarcerated in Bagram in 2010 alone, compared to some 500 in 2009. Eviatar is senior associate in Human Rights First’s law and security program.
Besides violating international law, the current system "flies in the face of the well-founded wisdom of our top military leaders in the region who have warned repeatedly of the dangers of denying Afghan detainees due process," Eviatar said in releasing the report. "Beyond the imprisonment of many likely innocent people, the lack of due process erodes support for U.S. forces in Afghanistan and ultimately undermines U.S. goals there."
There have been past indications that a majority of the Bagram detainees are being wrongfully held. In August 2009, various news outlets reported that U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Major General Douglas M. Stone had been assigned to investigate detention practices in Afghanistan and had issued a still-unreleased 700-page classified report. As National Public Radio reported at the time, Stone told senior military officials that as many as 400 of the 600 detainees then held at Bagram could be released. "Many of these men were swept up in raids – have little connection to the insurgency," NPR reported.
While Guantanamo’s abusive operations, including allegations of torture, provoked much controversy, international condemnation and hundreds of news stories, the Bagram facility has received less scrutiny in the press, despite past allegations of torture, homicide and other abuses there. This makes the Human Rights First report a significant, newsworthy starting point for news organizations to more fully inform the public about the U.S. military’s treatment of detainees. Such reporting would be especially important at a time when public and congressional calls to end the war in Afghanistan are intensifying. Following up on General Stone’s 2009 statement, one question the mainstream press could pursue, in addition to the due process issue, is: How many of the current Bagram detainees have no connection to the insurgency?
[…] Despite the powerful findings of the Human Rights First report, Nieman Watchdog has found only a few articles that mentioned it, and only one of those – in the Los Angeles Times (whose story was also used by the Chicago Tribune) – explored the lack of due process issue that was at the heart of the report. A New York Times article also mentioned the report, but only as part of a larger story that focused more on the intelligence problem for NATO in determining who is and is not a reliable informant or connected to the Taliban. We found no indication of any U.S. television or radio coverage of the report, and Eviatar told us she was unaware of any.
[…]
4) U.S. Wants Joint Bases In Afghanistan
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, June 8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-wants-joint-bases-in-afghanistan-gates-says/2011/06/08/AGGiFaMH_story.html
The United States should maintain a long-term military presence in Afghanistan as a "tenant" on bases jointly occupied with Afghan forces, rather than on permanent U.S. bases, after its combat mission ends, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
"Bases that belong to one country in another country are always a magnet for trouble," he said in an interview with Afghanistan’s Tolo News that was released Wednesday. "Joint bases," from which U.S. troops could provide ongoing training and other assistance, would be "more tolerable to the Afghan people," he said.
As President Obama determines how many U.S. troops will come home in initial withdrawals next month – with all combat forces to be gone from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 – the administration is negotiating a "strategic partnership" agreement with the Kabul government for the longer term.
Obama has said he expects the U.S. presence to gradually transition over the next several years to more of a traditional diplomatic and foreign assistance role, although an unspecified number of U.S. troops are expected to remain.
The Obama administration has repeatedly said that it plans no permanent bases in Afghanistan, but its negotiations with the Afghans about specific numbers, missions and locations have remained secret. Some Afghans, including senior officials, favor permanent bases as an expression of U.S. commitment, while others have said they would prefer no U.S. military presence.
The Taliban, with which the U.S. and Afghan governments hope to negotiate an eventual peace accord, has placed the withdrawal of all foreign military forces at the top of its list of demands.
[…]
5) U.S. Is Intensifying a Secret Campaign of Yemen Airstrikes
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, June 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/middleeast/09intel.html
Washington – The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.
The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.
On Friday, American jets killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel Qaeda operative, and several other militant suspects in a strike in southern Yemen. According to witnesses, four civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Weeks earlier, drone aircraft fired missiles aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who the United States government has tried to kill for more than a year. Mr. Awlaki survived.
The recent operations come after a nearly year-long pause in American airstrikes, which were halted amid concerns that poor intelligence had led to bungled missions and civilian deaths that were undercutting the goals of the secret campaign.
Officials in Washington said that the American and Saudi spy services had been receiving more information – from electronic eavesdropping and informants – about the possible locations of militants. But, they added, the outbreak of the wider conflict in Yemen created a new risk: that one faction might feed information to the Americans that could trigger air strikes against a rival group.
A senior Pentagon official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that using force against militants in Yemen was further complicated by the fact that Qaeda operatives have mingled with other rebels and antigovernment militants, making it harder for the United States to attack without the appearance of picking sides.
[…]
6) U.S. can’t justify its drug war spending, reports say
Government reports say the Obama administration is unable to show that billions of dollars spent in the anti-drug efforts in Latin America have made a significant difference.
Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-narco-contract-20110609,0,1742011.story
Washington – As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts.
The reports specifically criticize the government’s growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years.
"We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports, which was released Wednesday.
"I think we have wasted our money hugely," agreed Bruce Bagley, who studies U.S. counter-narcotics efforts and chairs international studies at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Fla. "The effort has had corrosive effects on every country it has touched."
[…] The majority of U.S. counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT and ARINC, according to the report for the contracting oversight subcommittee, part of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Counter-narcotics contract spending increased 32% over the five-year period, from $482 million in 2005 to $635 million in 2009. DynCorp, based in Falls Church , Va., received the largest total, $1.1 billion.
Among other jobs, the U.S. contractors train local police and investigators, provide logistical support to intelligence collection centers and fly airplanes and helicopters that spray herbicides to eradicate coca crops grown to produce cocaine.
The Department of Defense has spent $6.1 billion since 2005 to help detect planes and boats heading to the U.S. with drug payloads, as well as on surveillance and other intelligence operations.
Senate staff members described some of the expenses as "difficult to characterize." The Army spent $75,000 for paintball supplies for training exercises in 2007, for example, and $5,000 for what the military calls "rubber ducks." The ducks are rubber replicas of M-16 rifles that are used in training exercises, a Pentagon spokesman said.
The Defense Department described its own system for tracking those contracts as "error prone," according to the Senate report. The report also said the Defense Department doesn’t have reliable data about how successful its efforts have been.
A separate report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that the State Department "does not have a centralized inventory of counter-narcotics contracts" and said the department does not evaluate the overall success of its counter-narcotics program.
"It’s become increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government’s use of contractors, have largely failed," McCaskill said.
[…] The latest assault on the United States’ counter-narcotics strategy comes a week after a high-profile group of world leaders called the global war on drugs a costly failure.
The group, which included former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, recommended that regional governments try legalizing and regulating drugs to help stop the flood of cash going to drug mafias and other organized crime groups.
[…] After a decade of U.S. assistance to Colombia and years of using U.S. contractors there, annual cocaine production in Colombia has fallen 60% since 2001, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some of that cocaine production has shifted to Peru, however.
Backed by the U.S., Mexico’s stepped-up offensive against drug cartels similarly has had the unintended effect of pushing them deeper into Central America, especially Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Violence has soared in those countries.
[…]
7) Ex-NSA official Thomas Drake to plead guilty to misdemeanor
Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, June 9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/ex-nsa-manager-has-reportedly-twice-rejected-plea-bargains-in-espionage-act-case/2011/06/09/AG89ZHNH_story.html
Days before his trial was set to begin, former National Security Agency manager and accused leaker Thomas A. Drake accepted a plea deal from the government Thursday that drops the charges in his indictment, absolves him of mishandling classified information and calls for no prison time.
In exchange, Drake, who was facing 35 years in prison if convicted of violating the Espionage Act, will plead guilty to a misdemeanor of exceeding authorized use of a computer. He will pay no fine, and the maximum probation time he can serve will be capped at one year.
"It’s an unambiguous victory for Drake," said Jesselyn Radack, director of national security at the Government Accountability Project, who supported Drake on whistleblower issues. "The prosecution’s case imploded."
The deal brings to a close a five-year ordeal for Drake, 54, who came under investigation in 2006 in leaking to the media and who was indicted in May 2010 on allegations of willful retention of "national defense" or classified information, obstruction of justice and making a false statement.
It also is a setback for the Obama administration’s effort to punish alleged leakers of national security secrets using a widely criticized World War I-era law.
"As a tool for prosecuting leakers, the Espionage Act is a broad sword where a scalpel would be far preferable," said Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at American University. "It criminalizes to the same degree the wrongful retention of information that probably should never have been classified in the first place and the willful sale of state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies."
[…] Drake, who is set to appear in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Friday morning before Judge Richard Bennett to enter the plea, has asserted all along that he never passed classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter who wrote stories exposing NSA mismanagement.
[…] A key ruling last Friday set the stage for Thursday’s deal. The judge denied the government permission to keep secret certain references to classified technology on grounds that it would harm Drake’s right to mount a defense. As a result, the prosecution on Sunday said it would withdraw and redact several sets of documents that were crucial to proving the most serious Espionage Act charges.
Drake has acknowledged communicating with reporter Siobhan Gorman, now with the Wall Street Journal but said it was to help her in her scrutiny of technology programs at the NSA.
Drake and several former NSA colleagues were concerned about what they saw as corruption in the NSA’s handling of a $1.2 billion data-sifting program, Trailblazer. He was also concerned about the launch of a massive NSA program to collect without court approval Americans’ e-mails and phone calls and run them through data-mining programs, an effort that became known informally as warrantless wiretapping.
He has said he tried to raise these concerns through proper channels – his superiors, the NSA inspector general and general counsel, and later the Pentagon inspector general. When he seemed to get no response, he took the "nuclear option," friends said, and turned to Gorman.
Israel/Palestine
8) Gaza crossing with Egypt reopens after dispute
Beirut Daily Star, June 09, 2011
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Jun-09/Gaza-crossing-with-Egypt-reopens-after-dispute.ashx
Gaza Strip: The Gaza Strip’s border crossing with Egypt reopened Wednesday after a four-day closure caused by a dispute between Cairo and Gaza’s Hamas rulers over travel arrangements, officials said.
Witnesses said a bus carrying 60 Palestinians crossed into Egypt from Gaza at the Rafah border, Gaza’s only opening to the outside world. Palestinians waiting to make the same journey cheered when they heard the news.
"It was good news the crossing reopened and I hope things get easier and every passenger will get to his end destination," said Jamal al-Dahshan, 48, who had been waiting to enter Egypt since Saturday.
To great fanfare, Egypt eased border access May 28, extending opening hours and scrapping visa requirements for many Palestinians.
Egyptian protesters who toppled President Hosni Mubarak in an uprising earlier this year have pressed the country’s interim rulers to improve relations with the Palestinians.
Some Hamas officials said Egyptian authorities later appeared to have second thoughts and tried to slow the flow of Palestinians into Egypt.
[…]
Iran
9) Nuclear proliferation: Engaging Iran
A period of uncertainty in the Arab world and the Middle East offers an opportunity to reconsider the West’s position on Iran and restart negotiations over its nuclear program.
Former European Ambassadors to Iran, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ambassadors-iran-20110609,0,2564096.story
[This piece was written by six former ambassadors to Iran from European countries: Richard Dalton (United Kingdom), Steen Hohwü-Christensen (Sweden), Paul von Maltzahn (Germany), Guillaume Metten (Belgium), François Nicoullaud (France) and Roberto Toscano (Italy)]
As ambassadors to Iran during the last decade, we have all followed closely the development of the nuclear crisis between Iran and the international community. It is unacceptable that the talks have been deadlocked for such a long time.
The Arab world and the Middle East are entering a new epoch in which no country is immune from change. This includes the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is facing the disaffection of a significant part of its population. Such a period of uncertainty offers opportunities for reconsidering the West’s established position on the Iranian nuclear question.
In terms of international law, the position of Europe and the United States is perhaps less assured than is generally believed. Basically, it is embodied in a set of resolutions adopted by the U.N. Security Council authorizing coercive measures in case of "threats to the peace."
But what constitutes the threat? Is it the enrichment of uranium in Iranian centrifuges? This is certainly a sensitive activity, by a sensitive country, in a highly sensitive region. The concerns expressed by the international community are legitimate, and Iran has a moral duty, as well as a political need, to answer them.
In principle, however, nothing in international law or in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids the enrichment of uranium. Besides Iran, several other countries, parties or not to the treaty, enrich uranium without being accused of "threatening the peace." And in Iran, this activity is submitted to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. These inspections, it is true, are constrained by a safeguards agreement dating from the 1970s. But it is also true that the IAEA has never uncovered in Iran any attempted diversion of nuclear material to military use.
Is the threat to the peace, then, that Iran is actively attempting to build a nuclear weapon? For at least three years, the United States intelligence community has discounted this hypothesis. The U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, testified in February to Congress: "We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons…. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons…. We continue to judge that Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran."
Today, a majority of experts, even in Israel, seems to view Iran as striving to become a "threshold country," technically able to produce a nuclear weapon but abstaining from doing so for the present. Again, nothing in international law or in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids such an ambition. Like Iran, several other countries are on their way to or have already reached such a threshold but have committed not to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody seems to bother them.
We often hear that Iran’s ill-will, its refusal to negotiate seriously, left our countries no other choice but to drag it to the Security Council in 2006. Here also, things are not quite that clear.
Let us remember that in 2005 Iran was ready to discuss a ceiling limit for the number of its centrifuges and to maintain its rate of enrichment far below the high levels necessary for weapons. Tehran also expressed its readiness to put into force the additional protocol that it had signed with the IAEA allowing intrusive inspections throughout Iran, even in non-declared sites. But at that time, the Europeans and the Americans wanted to compel Iran to forsake its enrichment program entirely.
Today, Iranians assume that this is still the goal of Europe and America, and that it is for this reason that the Security Council insists on suspension of all Iranian enrichment activities. But the goal of "zero centrifuges operating in Iran, permanently or temporarily," is unrealistic, and it has heavily contributed to the present standoff.
Of course, a dilemma lingers in the minds of most of our leaders. Why offer the Iranian regime an opening that could help it restore its internal and international legitimacy? Should we not wait for a more palatable successor before making a new overture?
This is a legitimate question, but we should not overestimate the influence of a nuclear negotiation on internal developments in Iran. Ronald Reagan used to call the Soviet Union the "evil empire," but that did not stop him from negotiating intensely with Mikhail Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament. Should we blame him for having slowed down the course of history?
The five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany should certainly keep the focus on matters of political and human rights, but they should also try harder to solve a frustrating and still urgent proliferation problem. By doing so, we would reduce a serious source of tension in a region that longs more than ever for tranquility.
The failure of the last round of negotiations in Istanbul at the end of January and the last disappointing exchange of letters between the parties show only too well that the current deadlock will be difficult to break. On the process, the more discreet and technical negotiations are, the better chance they will have to progress. And on the substance, we already know that any solution will have to build on the quality of the inspection system of the IAEA.
Either we trust IAEA’s ability to supervise all its member states, including Iran, or we do not. And if the answer is that we do not, then we must ask why, if the organization is effective only with its most virtuous members, we should continue to maintain it.
The next step should be for the two sides in this conflict to ask the IAEA what additional tools it needs to monitor the Iranian nuclear program fully and provide credible assurances that all the activities connected with it are purely peaceful in intent. The agency’s answer would offer a basis for the next round of pragmatic negotiations with Iran.
Iraq
10) Panetta says he is confident Iraq will request that some US troops stay after end of year
Associated Press, June 9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/panetta-says-he-is-confident-iraq-will-request-that-some-us-troops-stay-after-end-of-year/2011/06/09/AG65PRNH_story.html
Washington – The likely next Pentagon chief says he believes Iraq will ask the U.S. to maintain a presence in that country beyond the end of this year, when American troops are currently scheduled to leave.
Leon Panetta is telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that it is up to Iraqi leaders to lay out what support they need, and for how long, in order to make sure security gains there are not lost.
He says he has every confidence that a request will be forthcoming.
[…]
Cuba
11) Funding for Cuba programs stalled in Congress
Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, Wed, Jun. 08, 2011
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/08/v-fullstory/2257727/funding-for-cuba-programs-stalled.html
An Obama administration effort to spend another $20 million on Cuba democracy programs has been blocked for two months amid bitter clashes over policy and personalities.
Words like "backstabber" and "communist dupe" have been thrown about and the issue is littered with leaks and counter-leaks about alleged wrongdoings.
Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is offering to lift the "hold" he put on the money April 1 if the amount is cut to $15 million, according to a note sent by his committee staff to the State Department Friday. El Nuevo Herald obtained a copy.
Committee spokesman Fred Jones declined to comment on the note but said, "We are continuing discussions with the administration in an effort to make sure these programs are effective and meeting real objectives."
Program supporters would not say whether the offer resolves the dispute, which has featured Kerry, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., their staffs and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"It’s been nasty – a Democratic committee chairman against a Democratic administration and another Democratic senator," said a Senate aide who asked to remain anonymous to avoid the crossfire.
At the root of the fight are sharply different visions of the Cuba programs, which have cost $150 million since they were created in the 1990s to assist nongovernment groups on the island.
Havana denounces them as thinly varnished efforts at "regime change" and recently displayed several lots of seized communications equipment, including satellite dishes disguised as surf boards, it said were paid for with U.S. funds.
Kerry, in a note to the State Department shortly after he blocked the money, asked 13 pointed questions, essentially alleging the programs only provoke Havana, which has made it illegal to receive the U.S. funds.
The note alleges that U.S. money was used to "mobilize protests" in Cuba and that dissident groups are so thoroughly penetrated by Havana spies that the U.S. aid is, in effect, helping to finance the island’s intelligence services.
It also condemns the use of encrypted communications, secret codes and aliases in some of the programs, and adds that some of the Cuban recipients were not even aware their aid was coming from Washington.
Kerry also has asked U.S. investigators to look into allegations of fraud in the programs, the note added. Program critics have privately complained of widespread misuse of the funds in the past few years.
[…] Kerry announced his "hold" on the Cuba funds after the State Department notified Congress March 31 that the Obama administration was ready to begin spending the $20 million, already approved by lawmakers in 2008.
There’s "no evidence" the programs help the Cuban people, Kerry said, "nor have they achieved much more than provoking the Cuban government to arrest a U.S. government contractor."
[…] Kerry’s "hold" on the Cuba money – any single senator can block such funds for a period of time – amounts to a replay of last spring, when he held up a previous $20 million allocation for Cuba until it was cut to $15 million and the State Department agreed to tone down the programs.
[…]
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