Just Foreign Policy News
March 5, 2010
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Help Kucinich Force House Debate on Afghanistan
Yesterday Rep. Kucinich introduced a privileged resolution – H. Con Res. 248 – invoking the War Powers Act to force the President to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year. Because it is a privileged resolution, Congress will be forced to debate the issue of the open-ended U.S. war in and occupation of Afghanistan. Debate is expected early next week. Ask your Representative to become a co-sponsor of Representative Kucinich’s resolution.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/kucinich
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Criticism is growing about how aid money is being spent in Haiti, AP reports. A half-million homeless received tarps and tents; far more are still waiting under soggy bed sheets in camps that reek of human waste. Refugees International published a report saying the "the humanitarian response has fallen short of meeting the Haitian people’s immediate needs." Haitian leaders complain that foreign NGOs won’t tell the government what they are doing, and the the top U.N. official in Haiti said the country’s leaders are right: For half a century, the international community has kept Haiti’s government weak and unable to deal with disaster by ignoring officials and working with outside organizations. "We complain because the government is not able to (lead), but we are partly responsible for that," said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations Edmond Mulet. Haiti wanted aid organizations to register with the government long before the quake, a goal identified as a priority by Bill Clinton when he was named U.N. special envoy in 2009. But it was never completed.
2) Secretary of State Clinton said the Obama administration would resume aid to Honduras suspended after a coup last year and urged Latin American nations to recognize the new Honduran government, AP reports. Clinton said the Honduran government that took office in January was reconciling the population split by last June’s coup. But Human Rights Watch said opponents of the coup had been killed, detained and attacked over the past month.
3) Several U.S.-based human rights groups and nine members of Congress urged Secretary of State Clinton to demand a thorough investigation of what they asserted were ongoing human rights abuses under the Lobo government, Bloomberg reports. The Congressional letter urged Clinton to send "a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalization of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance."
4) The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said it’s "high time" a political solution is found with the Taliban to resolve the conflict, AP reports. "It’s time to talk," Kai Eide said. Eide said he hoped a spring peace jirga – or conference – that Afghan President Karzai is organizing would result in a national consensus for peace.
5) Claims that expanding Haiti’s garment assembly industry will "rebuild Haiti" and add "several hundred thousand" jobs are a hoax, writes David Wilson in MRZine. Regionally, the sector has been losing jobs, and at the wages now being paid, Haitian workers won’t be able to contribute to building anything. A UN plan isn’t really about creating jobs; it’s about relocating them. The key, according to the author of the UN plan, lies in Haiti’s "propitious fundamentals" – its "poverty and relatively unregulated labor market" and "labor costs that are fully competitive with China." The plan is to take jobs away from Dominican, Mexican, and Central American workers – and pay Haitians even less for doing the same work.
6) A new directive from General McChrystal orders coalition forces to avoid night raids when possible, but to bring Afghan troops with them if they must enter homes after dark, AP reports. McChrystal’s order falls short of the complete ban on night raids sought by President Karzai. if night raids are conducted, Afghan security forces "should be the first force seen and the first voices heard by the occupants of any compound entered." The order requires that Afghan troops be included in the planning and execution of all night raids, and that Afghan government representatives must be notified in advance. It also said that all searches during the raid must be led and accomplished primarily by Afghan forces, including the search of women by women.
7) About 28 lawmakers unveiled legislation to withdraw from NAFTA, Reuters reports. The repeal proposal comes as Obama says he wants to resolve problems blocking congressional approval of trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Obama criticized NAFTA during the 2008 campaign but has not followed through on threats to withdraw from the agreement if Canada and Mexico did not agree to revamp the pact’s labor and environmental provisions. The House is expected to vote later this year on whether the US should remain a member of the WTO.
Iraq
8) Maintaining a reduced US military presense in Iraq will not help Iraq solve its internatl conflicts, since a much larger US presence over the last seven years has not led to resolution, writes an Army lieutenant colonel who has served two yearlong tours in Iraq in a letter to the New York Times. Senior military leaders have acknowledged that our influence over events is waning at best, if not virtually nonexistent.
9) We must honor the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and the Iraqi governments, which states that the U.S. will remove its combat troops by the end of this August, followed by the removal of all U.S. forces from the country by Dec. 31, 2011, writes Rep. Conyers in USA Today. All parties in Iraq are relying on the U.S. to follow through on this negotiated troop removal timeline.
Iran
10) The Obama administration is pushing to carve out an exemption for China and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council from legislation pending in the Senate and the House that would tighten sanctions on companies doing business in Iran, the Washington Post reports. The administration’s lobbying for a Chinese exemption has raised eyebrows in Congress and angered several allies, most notably South Korea and Japan, which would not be exempted under the administration’s plan. Over the course of the past decade, Japanese firms, under U.S. pressure, have divested significantly in Iran’s oil and gas industry. As they have pulled out, China has moved in.
Afghanistan
11) General Petraeus said he had expanded the authority of Gen. McChrystal to give him operational control over virtually all US forces in Afghanistan, Reuters reports. McChrystal commands U.S. and NATO troops, except for U.S. Special Operations forces and prison guards. Special Ops have come under scrutiny since a NATO airstrike late last month killed 27 Afghan civilians. U.S. officials say Special Ops called in the strike. Petraeus said he had ordered that "all U.S. forces, less a handful, be placed there under General McChrystal’s operational, not just tactical, control." Petraeus did not say which handful of forces would not be covered by the order.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Billions for Haiti, a criticism for every dollar
Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press, Friday, March 5, 2010; 5:55 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030502842.html
Port-au-Prince, Haiti – The world’s bill for the Haitian earthquake is large and growing – now $2.2 billion – and so is the criticism about how the money is being spent.
A half-million homeless received tarps and tents; far more are still waiting under soggy bed sheets in camps that reek of human waste. More than 4.3 million people got emergency food rations; few will be able to feed themselves anytime soon. Medical aid went to thousands, but long-term care isn’t even on the horizon.
International aid groups and officials readily acknowledge they are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Haitian leaders – frustrated that billions are bypassing them in favor of U.N. agencies and American and other non-governmental organizations – are whipping up sentiment against foreign aid groups they say have gone out of control.
In the past few days, someone scrawled graffiti declaring "Down with NGO thieves" along the cracked walls that line the road between Port-au-Prince’s international airport, the temporary government headquarters, and a U.N. base.
Ahead of a crucial March 31 post-quake donors conference in New York, many are taking a hard look at the money that’s flowed in so far.
[…] But leaders including Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive are not happy with the way the aid money is being delivered. "The NGOs don’t tell us … where the money’s coming from or how they’re spending it," he told The Associated Press. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don’t explain what they’re doing with it."
Haiti wanted aid organizations to register with the government long before the quake, a goal identified as a priority by former U.S. President Bill Clinton when he was named U.N. special envoy in 2009. But it was never completed.
U.N. and U.S. officials said there is close monitoring of NGOs who receive funds. The U.S. Agency for International Development requires recipient groups to file reports every two weeks on how their activities are lining up with their planned programs, said Julie Leonard, leader of the agency’s Disaster Assistance Response Team. Governments tend to give funds to agencies from their own countries.
USAID paid at least $160 million of its total Haiti-related expenditures to the Defense Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, two local U.S. search and rescue teams and, in at least two instances, itself.
Tens of millions more went to U.S.-based aid groups. While much of that bought food and other necessities for Haitians, it often did so from U.S. companies – including highly subsidized rice growers whose products are undercutting local producers, driving them out of business.
One cent of every dollar has gone to the Haitian government.
[…] But the top U.N. official in Haiti said the country’s leaders are right: For half a century, the international community has kept Haiti’s government weak and unable to deal with disaster by ignoring officials and working with outside organizations. "We complain because the government is not able to (lead), but we are partly responsible for that," said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations Edmond Mulet.
Worse, the patchwork of roughly 900 foreign and thousands more Haiti-based NGOs do not coordinate, take on too many roles and swarm well-known neighborhoods while leaving others untouched – doing what Mulet called "little things with little impact."
He said the individual organizations should identify specific roles, such as road construction, and stick to them to make it easier for the Haitian government to coordinate the overall response.
A French Foreign Ministry official said the solution is to take the Haitian government seriously. "It’s a bit the image of a child: If you believe he will never become an adult, he will never become an adult," said Pierre Duquesne, who oversees foreign aid.
Clinton has put out two statements in the past week noting that much has been left undone in the massive international relief effort. Refugees International published a report saying the "the humanitarian response has fallen short of meeting the Haitian people’s immediate needs."
[…] Mulet said a strong plan at the New York donors’ conference could help organize the response, strengthen the government and provide help for the Haitian people. But doing so will mean changing the way things have been done in Haiti for decades. "If this shake-up was not enough to really change us nor them, then I don’t know what will," he said.
2) U.S. to Resume Aid to Honduras
Associated Press, March 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/world/americas/05briefs-clinton.html
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the Obama administration would resume aid to Honduras that was suspended after a coup last year and urged Latin American nations to recognize the new Honduran government. Mrs. Clinton said the Honduran government that took office in January was democratically elected, was reconciling the population split by last June’s coup and deserved normal relations with countries that cut ties after the ouster of the former president. But Human Rights Watch said opponents of the coup had been killed, detained and attacked over the past month.
3) UN envoy says it’s ‘time to talk’ to the Taliban
Deb Riechmann, Associated Press, Thursday, March 4, 2010; 2:44 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030400830.html
Kabul – The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said Thursday that it’s "high time" a political solution is found with the Taliban to resolve the more than 8-year-old conflict. "It’s time to talk," Kai Eide said.
In his last news conference as the U.N. representative, Eide said he hoped a spring peace jirga – or conference – that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is organizing would result in a national consensus for peace that the entire nation could rally around.
In a wide-ranging news conference at the heavily secured U.N. compound, Eide said he has always been behind a policy of engagement, but has no illusions about the complexities of negotiating peace with Taliban leaders.
[…]
4) Rebuilding Haiti – the Sweatshop Hoax
David L. Wilson, MRZine, 04.03.10
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson040310.html
[Wilson is co-editor of Weekly News Update on the Americas. He was in Port-au-Prince to interview Haitian activists about the UN development plan when the earthquake struck on January 12.]
Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country’s garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market. This, according to several opinion pieces in the Times, is the way to rebuild Haiti.
The outlines of the plan were drawn up a year earlier, in January 2009, by Oxford economist Paul Collier, but the leading proponents of development through sweatshops have been liberal Democrats in the United States. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus pushed hard for HOPE and HOPE II, the 2006 Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act and its 2008 extension; these acts make the plan possible by giving preferential treatment to U.S. imports of apparel assembled in Haiti.
[…] The plan’s liberal supporters sometimes admit that assembly plant jobs may not be the very best type of employment. But Haitians need work, they say, and the new sweatshops will create jobs – as many as "several hundred thousand," according to Prof. Collier’s description of the plan. What the liberals don’t explain is where they think the jobs will come from.
The garment export industry in the Caribbean Basin has been in a sharp decline for the past five years. The current round of jobs losses in the region’s apparel maquiladoras – the Spanish name for the assembly plants – started with the growth of competition from industrial powers like China and has intensified with the economic crisis in the United States, the main market for the industry’s products.
The Dominican Republic, Haiti’s closest neighbor, lost 73,000 garment jobs from 2005 through 2007, according to an informative article by Marion Weber and Jennifer Blair in the July/August 2009 NACLA Report on the Americas. The six countries that signed on to the 2005 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) – in addition to the Dominican Republic, the U.S.-sponsored trade zone includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua – saw their combined exports fall from a 13.3% share of the U.S. import market in 2004 to 9.8% in 2008.
The job situation continues to deteriorate. Garment jobs in the Dominican "free trade zones" (FTZs) – the special areas where the maquilas are clustered – fell another 15.05% in 2008, from 58,546 to 49,735.8 In Honduras, site of Latin America’s most recent coup d’état, textile and apparel production for the first six months of 2009 was down by 17.9% compared to the same period the year before. The Honduran maquiladora sector lost 15,000 jobs in 2008 and about 8,000 in the first eight months of 2009, leaving it with some 114,000 employees.
[…] Of course, the U.S. market for imported apparel is expected to grow back if the economic crisis recedes, but it’s hard to see how that by itself would produce several hundred thousand new jobs for Haiti.
People in the United States tend to think irrationally about things like job creation. Many of us believe that immigration reduces the number of jobs available for U.S. citizens, while the same people often swallow the idea that building new industrial parks in Port-au-Prince will magically create jobs for Haitians.
The reality is exactly the opposite. If Haitian immigrants were stitching garments in New York or Los Angeles at jobs with standard wage rates, they and their dependents would be able to pay for decent housing and staples like food and clothing. This would stimulate job creation, and the new jobs would make up for the jobs the immigrants had taken – as in fact happened in the past when the United States produced its own apparel in union shops. But if the same Haitians work in assembly plants in Port-au-Prince or in the FTZ near the Dominican border in Ouanaminthe, they have to accept wages at about one-twentieth the rate they would get in the United States. These workers are barely able to scrape by; their spending can do little to stimulate job creation either in Haiti or in the region as a whole.
But the UN plan isn’t really about creating jobs; it’s about relocating them. The key, according to Prof. Collier, lies in Haiti’s "propitious fundamentals" – its "poverty and relatively unregulated labor market" and "labor costs that are fully competitive with China." Add Haiti’s location near the United States: it’s "on the doorstep of its market." Haiti is the "only low-wage economy in the region," Collier writes, meaning that the maquilas in nearby countries just can’t compete with Haitian factories paying a minimum wage of around $3.05 a day, approximately half the minimum in the Dominican FTZs.
So when the professors and politicians say they will help Haitian workers by giving them jobs, what they really mean is that they plan to take the jobs away from Dominican, Mexican, and Central American workers – and pay the Haitians even less for doing the same work. It’s no wonder that the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), a U.S. manufactures’ organization, hopes to "play a responsible and proactive role in Haiti’s overall recovery."
[…] The jobs the Haitians will get are only temporary, in any case. Haitian workers have been through all this before.
Haiti pioneered export-based development plans in the 1970s under Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc"). Once assembly plants started operating in Haiti, other parts of the region followed suit under the Reagan administration’s 1984 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). The brief boom in the Caribbean apparel industry ended when jobs started going to Mexico because of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexican workers became still more "competitive" after 1994, thanks to an economic crisis and a currency devaluation (a de facto wage cut). The Mexicans in turn lost jobs to lower-paid Chinese workers as the new millennium started. Dominican and Central American manufacturers responded with DR-CAFTA and, predictably, more wage cuts. And yet the job losses have continued.12
Anti-sweatshop activists Barbara Briggs and Charlie Kernaghan used to warn back in the 1990s that this type of "economic development" would create a "race to the bottom" in which workers in different countries would have to compete by accepting lower and lower wages. And that’s exactly what happened.
[…]
5) Clinton Tries to Mend Honduras Dispute on Central American Tour
Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Bloomberg, March 05, 2010, 1:01 AM EST http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-05/clinton-tries-to-mend-honduras-dispute-on-central-american-tour.html
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her first trip to Central America since last June’s coup in Honduras, announced the U.S. is restoring aid to the country and urged its neighbors to normalize ties following the election of a new president.
"Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and the normalization of relations," Clinton said yesterday in Costa Rica, citing moves by President Porfirio Lobo to form a unity government and establish a truth commission to investigate abuses after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted and sent into exile by Honduras’s military.
[…] Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States, and excluded from a new 32-nation regional group that met recently in Mexico. "Other countries in the region say they want to wait a while" to recognize the new government, Clinton told reporters. "I don’t know what they’re waiting for," she said, adding that "President Lobo and his administration have taken the steps necessary to restore democracy."
Since Lobo took office, Honduras has restored diplomatic ties with 29 countries that broke relations following the coup, Lobo’s spokesman Bladimir Bacca said today in a telephone interview. Ten countries, including major economies Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, insist the election of Lobo is illegitimate because voting was overseen by a government installed by the coup leaders.
Clinton sent a letter on March 3 to Congress "notifying them that we will be restoring aid to Honduras," she said at a meeting of foreign and trade ministers in San Jose, Costa Rica. Clinton spoke at a meeting of Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas, a gathering of 17 Western Hemisphere nations dedicated to increasing economic opportunities.
[…] Meanwhile, several U.S.-based human rights groups and nine members of Congress urged Clinton yesterday to demand a thorough investigation of what they asserted were ongoing human rights abuses under the Lobo government.
The Congressional letter, signed by John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary committee, among others, urged Clinton to send "a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalization of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance."
Human Rights Watch said abuses against coup opponents continued after Lobo’s January swearing-in. Honduran authorities should investigate murders and attacks in the past month which may be "politically motivated," the New York-based group said in a March 3 letter to Honduran attorney general Luis Alberto Rubi.
6) NATO details its Afghan night raids policy
Tini Tran, Associated Press, Friday, March 5, 2010; 9:28 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030501125.html
Kabul – A new directive from NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan orders coalition forces to avoid night raids when possible, but to bring Afghan troops with them if they must enter homes after dark. The coalition released details of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s new policy Friday – changes that are meant to cut down on the storm of complaints from Afghan people.
Though McChrystal’s order falls short of the complete ban on night raids sought by President Hamid Karzai, it does reflect new sensitivities by NATO at a time when the coalition is pursuing a strategy of gaining Afghan public trust in a bid to rout Taliban extremists.
McChrystal had issued the order in late January – as reported by The Associated Press last week – and portions of the classified directive were made public Friday by his headquarters.
[…] The directive tells troops "to explore all other feasible options before effecting a night raid."
However, if night raids are conducted, Afghan security forces "should be the first force seen and the first voices heard by the occupants of any compound entered."
The order requires that Afghan troops must be included in the planning and execution of all night raids, and that Afghan government representatives must be notified in advance. When possible, community elders also need to be consulted.
It also said that all searches during the raid must be led and accomplished primarily by Afghan forces, including the search of women by women. Compensation for property seized or damaged must also be made – reiterating a practice already in place.
[…]
7) U.S. Lawmakers Launch Push to Repeal NAFTA
Reuters, March 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/03/04/us/politics/politics-us-usa-congress-nafta.html
Washington – A small group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation on Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.
The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade pact. "At a time when 10 to 12 percent of the American people are unemployed, I think Congress has an obligation to put people back to work," Taylor said.
He argued NAFTA has cost the United States millions of manufacturing jobs and hurt national security by encouraging companies to move production to Mexico. The high unemployment rate makes it the "perfect" time to push for repeal even though past efforts have failed, he said.
"You’ll see the American people rally behind this, in my humble opinion," said Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican who is one of about 28 co-sponsors of the bill.
[…] The repeal proposal comes as Obama says he wants to resolve problems blocking congressional approval of long-delayed trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. The strongest opposition to those agreements comes from Obama’s fellow Democrats.
[…] Obama criticized NAFTA during the 2008 presidential election campaign but has not followed through on threats to withdraw from the agreement if Canada and Mexico did not agree to revamp the pact’s labor and environmental provisions.
But many Democrats are pushing for that and other changes to existing trade deals before considering any new deals such as the deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote later this year on whether the United States should remain a member of the World Trade Organization. U.S. law allows House and Senate members to request a vote on that issue every five years. In 2005, 86 of the House’s 435 members voted to withdraw from the world trade body.
Iraq
8) Reasons Not To Keep U.S. Troops In Iraq – (Letter)
Mark Solomon, New York Times, March 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/lweb05iraq.html
[The writer is an Army lieutenant colonel who has served two yearlong tours in Iraq.]
To the Editor: Thomas E. Ricks expresses his belief that it may be necessary to extend our presence in Iraq by "several years." He bases his argument on the belief that a force of 30,000 to 50,000 troops with a very narrow mission to advise and assist Iraqi security forces could avert a civil war.
Mr. Ricks is correct that the fundamental divisions in Iraq between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds remain unsolved as well as the issues of oil revenue-sharing and the nature of the government. But our continued presence will not serve to advance resolution of these issues and is not likely to prevent a war, since a much larger presence over the last seven years has not led to a resolution amenable to all parties. Senior military leaders have already stated in the press and in other public forums that our influence over events is waning at best, if not virtually nonexistent.
The only viable alternative is to withdraw now and quickly. Should we leave now, we can honestly say that we have invested greatly in the future of Iraq (more than 4,000 lives, billions of dollars, national prestige) and done all we could to set the conditions for a successful, peaceful future for the Iraqi people.
The rest is up to them; they will either succeed or fail. We must ensure that should they fail, they do not take us down with them.
9) Stick to troop timetable
Only when the U.S. gets out can Iraq achieve peace and stability.
Rep. John Conyers, USA Today, March 05, 2010
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/03/opposing-view-stick-to-troop-timetable.html#more
Any discussion about the future of the United States’ presence in Iraq must begin with a sobering analysis of what our occupation has cost us – in both American lives and missed opportunities to invest in our country’s future. The reckless decision of the previous administration to enter into this unnecessary war of choice has resulted in the loss of 4,384 American lives, at least 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives and $747.3 billion.
Putting this last number in perspective, the funds expended abroad could have paid for one-year college scholarships for 115 million students, allowed our cash-strapped state governments to hire 12 million elementary school teachers, or put an additional 16 million cops on the streets to protect our communities.
While the wisest course of action would have been to avoid this costly conflict entirely, we must, at the very least, honor the Status of Forces Agreement entered into by the U.S. and the Iraqi governments in November 2008. It states that the U.S. will remove its combat troops by the end of this August, followed by the removal of all U.S. forces from the country by Dec. 31, 2011.
All parties, political and otherwise, currently operating in Iraq are relying on the U.S. to follow through on this mutually negotiated troop removal timeline. The fledgling government in Baghdad has derived much of its legitimacy from the Iraqi people by appearing to stand up to the American occupation and by providing internal security independent of U.S. forces.
Moreover, various political, regional and ethnic factions have been operating under the assumption that the American presence was nearing its end. With this understanding, they have been negotiating the political arrangements that will lay the foundation for long-term stability in Iraq.
The success of these efforts could be threatened by our failure to live up to the withdrawal timetable outlined in the agreement. A peaceful, stable government in Iraq can only be achieved when its citizens are focused on the future of their country instead of on an unending military occupation.
Iran
10) U.S. criticized on Iran sanctions
John Pomfret and Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Friday, March 5, 2010; A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030404735.html
The Obama administration is pushing to carve out an exemption for China and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council from legislation pending in the Senate and the House that would tighten sanctions on companies doing business in Iran, administration and congressional sources said.
China has balked at supporting a fourth round of U.N. sanctions on Iran. That has emboldened countries on the council, such as Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon, to also express opposition.
The administration’s plan in effect would label China as a country cooperating in the U.S.-led drive to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and appears to be part of a broader strategy to prod Beijing to vote for a new sanctions resolution. The three previous resolutions enjoyed broad support in the 15-member council, so any result that includes several abstentions or no votes would be viewed as a major diplomatic setback.
But the administration’s lobbying for a Chinese exemption has raised eyebrows in Congress and angered several allies, most notably South Korea and Japan, which would not be exempted under the administration’s plan.
"We’re absolutely flabbergasted," said one senior official from a foreign country friendly to the United States. "Tell me what exactly have the Chinese done to deserve this?" Japan and South Korea, which are U.S. allies, have raised the issue with the Obama administration.
Among other things, the legislation tightens existing U.S. sanctions on Iran by targeting sales of refined petroleum products to the country and the administration would want it to include an exemption for the six countries seeking to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program. The six are the five permanent members of the Security Council – the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain – and Germany. The most controversial, by far, would be China.
"Given the Chinese-Iranian relationship, it’s hard to imagine a meaningful cooperating country exemption that China would fall into," said a Hill staff member involved in the issue.
One foreign official complained that the administration’s efforts would encourage China to water down U.N. sanctions on Iran as much as possible and then push Chinese firms – should the U.S. law pass – to invest more in Iran’s oil and gas sector.
Similar behavior has been seen in Chinese companies before. Over the course of the past decade, Japanese firms, under U.S. pressure, have divested significantly in Iran’s oil and gas industry. As they have pulled out, China has moved in.
Today China has commitments of more than $80 billion in Iran’s energy sector. Japan, which once had a 70 percent interest in the Azadegan oil field, has reduced it to 10 percent. Last August, a Chinese consortium led by the Chinese National Petroleum Company signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $3 billion in the field.
Several diplomats said that until now, China has refused to even engage in discussions about possible sanctions. On Thursday, China indicated a slight shift after Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg held talks with officials in Beijing.
During a Security Council meeting, Chinese diplomat Liu Zhenmin underscored Beijing’s desire to see the nuclear standoff resolve through diplomatic negotiations.
But he reaffirmed that China remains committed to supporting the "dual track strategy" – negotiations and sanctions – and urged Tehran to step up cooperation to the International Atomic Energy to "remove doubts" about the suspected military nature of Iran’s nuclear program, Liu said.
At the session, China and Russia pressed Tehran to agree to an offer to swap its enriched uranium for a foreign supply of nuclear fuel for its medical research reactor. The apparently coordinated appeal presented Iran with a final chance to skirt U.N. sanctions.
[…]
Afghanistan
11) U.S. Commander In Afghanistan Gets More Authority
Pav Jordan, Reuters, Thursday, March 4, 2010; 5:10 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030404055.html
Ottawa – U.S. General David Petraeus said on Thursday he had expanded the authority of his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to give him operational control over virtually all American forces in the country. Officials in Washington said the move was part of an effort to further streamline the military hierarchy in Afghanistan.
McChrystal commands U.S. and NATO troops there – except for U.S. Special Operations forces and prison guards who run detention facilities and answer to Petraeus, they said.
Special Ops have come under scrutiny since a NATO airstrike late last month killed 27 Afghan civilians. U.S. officials say Special Ops called in the strike.
McChrystal has sought to curtail the use of air power, arguing that civilian deaths hurt a campaign to win over the local population and defeat Taliban insurgents.
Speaking to a defense conference in Ottawa, Petraeus said he had ordered that "all U.S. forces, less a handful, be placed there under General McChrystal’s operational, not just tactical, control."
[…] Petraeus did not say which handful of forces would not be covered by the order.
[…]
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.