[Peace-discuss] Just Foreign Policy News, October 27, 2006

[Robert Naiman]

Just Foreign Policy News
October 27, 2006

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Summary:
U.S./Top News
Calls for dialogue with Iran, Syria, and North Korea have increased,
Helene Cooper reports for the New York Times. Officially, the
administration is sticking to form. But within the administration,
things are a little more nuanced, officials said.

A new poll shows support for the war in Iraq is slipping among white
evangelical Protestants, previously a key pillar of support for
President Bush's conduct of the conflict, Reuters reports.

Spinning out implausible scenarios like the claim it might take only
12 to 18 more months for the Iraqis to be able to defend themselves
won't get Iraq any closer to containing the mayhem, nor the US any
closer to extricating itself, writes the New York Times in an
editorial. What is needed is an explicit, credible and public set of
deadlines.

Democratic leaders and candidates are virtually unanimous in opposing
the president's conduct of the war, and most advocate American
disengagement - either quickly or slowly, the New York Times reports.
But the variety of formulations is dizzying, John Broder writes.
Broder overstates his case. He acknowledges that the majority of
Senate Democrats have agreed on a plan to begin withdrawing troops. He
claims that "even if the Democrats win one or both houses of Congress,
they will not have the authority to change the course of the war
significantly," which is a silly assertion, since, if they had the
majority, they could cut off funding, which would certainly change the
course of the war significantly. Whether they would do so is another
question, but that doesn't make Broder's assertion any less silly.

An Al-Qaeda terror suspect whose evidence of links between Iraq and
the terror network was used to justify the US invasion confessed after
being tortured, a journalist told the BBC. "What he claimed most
significantly was a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi
regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report … was used by Colin
Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq," Stephen
Grey said.

The CIA tried to pressure Germany to quiet EU protests about human
rights abuses in its clandestine torture flights program by making the
action a condition of access to an imprisoned German citizen, the
Guardian reports. After the CIA offered the deal to Germany, EU
countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism
of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have
been held, the Guardian notes. [Consular access to imprisoned citizens
is guaranteed by international treaty - JFP.]

UN member states voted Thursday to create an international treaty to
curb the illicit trade in guns and other light weapons, despite strong
opposition from the United States, Inter Press Service reports.

Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S.
foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ,
according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely
contested political races, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

Fifty years after the Eisenhower Administration cemented U.S.
influence in the Middle East by its decisive action to repel the
British and French invasion of Egypt in the Suez crisis, the era of
U.S. domination is coming to an end, Jim Lobe writes for Inter Press
Service.

Iran
Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium by successfully
executing the process with a second network of centrifuges, an Iranian
news agency reported. A spokesman for France's Foreign Ministry said
the Iranian announcement was not a great surprise because the IAEA had
said in August that Iran was developing new nuclear capacities.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Iran's action was not a
cause for worry.

Iran's official news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as
describing reported US naval exercises at the end of October with
Bahrain, Kuwait, France and Britain as dangerous and suspicious, the
BBC reported Tuesday.

Palestine
The Palestinian interior minister took home $2 million in cash from
Muslim countries when he returned to the Gaza Strip this week, part of
a continuing effort to meet government expenses in the face of a
cutoff in aid from Western countries, the New York Times reports. The
Times report again conflates US and EU aid funds with Palestinian tax
revenues illegally withheld by Israel. In correspondence with Just
Foreign Policy, a Times editor defended the paper's coverage, citing
the fact that one time the paper reported the issue correctly.

North Korea
At isolated border crossing with China, no one seems to have noticed
the recent UN sanctions against North Korea, the New York Times
reports.

A team of government and outside experts convened by the CIA concluded
in 1997 that North Korea's economy was deteriorating so rapidly that
the government of Kim Jong-il was likely to collapse within five
years, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the
National Security Archive.

Thailand
Investigators have failed to uncover solid evidence to support
corruption charges against Thailand's ousted Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, the nation's coup leader said in an interview Thursday.
General Sondhi had justified the coup on September 19 by saying that
widespread corruption during Thaksin's five years in office had
undermined democracy. Sondhi acknowledged the military could lose
public support if nothing emerges to back up the corruption claims.

Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Dissent Grows Over Silent Treatment for 'Axis of Evil' Nations
Helene Cooper, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/27diplo.html
Ever since President Bush first proclaimed there to be an "axis of
evil" in 2002, pundits, diplomats and politicians have urged him to
talk to its members. But with Iraq experiencing a further surge in
violence, North Korea testing a nuclear device and Iran continuing to
defy a UN Security Council demand to stop enriching uranium, the cries
for dialogue have grown louder.

James Baker said this month that he believed "in talking to your
enemies." After North Korea's nuclear test, former President Carter
said that "the stupidest thing that a government can do that has a
real problem with someone is to refuse to talk to them." Senator
Barack Obama said last weekend that even at the peak of the cold war,
"when there were nuclear missiles pointing at every major U.S. city,
there was a direct line between the White House and the Kremlin."

Officially, the administration is sticking to form. President Bush
said as much Wednesday, when he was asked whether he would be willing
to work with Iran and Syria if it was determined that they could help
bring stability to Iraq, their neighbor. His reply did not veer from
the script, which withholds American dialogue with "axis of evil"
members until they change their ways.

He said if the Iranians stopped enriching uranium, American diplomats
would talk to them. He also had a to-do list for President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria to get into America's good graces. But within the
administration, things are a little more nuanced, officials said. One
administration official distilled the internal deliberations this way,
"On Syria, there's a very healthy debate about whether we should talk
to them; on Iran, there is no debate internally."

Among those inside the administration who are urging more engagement
with Damascus, most come from the State Department's Near Eastern
Affairs bureau, including Assistant Secretary David Welch, officials
said. But, surprisingly, in recent months, the usually hawkish deputy
national security adviser, J. D. Crouch, has been pushing for the
administration to talk directly to Syria, officials say. "His style
with the Syrians is that we need to be very strict with them," one
administration official said. "It's not a friendly 'Let's go for
coffee.' More like, 'Let's directly deliver a very strong message to
them.' "

The original "axis of evil," as defined by Bush, comprises Iraq, North
Korea and Iran. But after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam
Hussein, Iraq was replaced by Syria. American officials and some at
the UN have said Syria had a hand in the Hariri assassination. The
Bush administration and Israel have also accused Syria of supporting
Hezbollah in its raid into Israel this summer, an attack that set off
a monthlong war.

There is less debate within the administration when it comes to Iran.
Secretary of State Rice is believed to have pushed the White House as
far toward dialogue with Iran as it would go when she prodded Bush in
May to offer to join European talks with Iran over Tehran's nuclear
ambitions. Rice herself has offered to sit at the table with the
Iranians, but she includes the usual caveat: Iran must first
verifiably suspend its uranium enrichment program.

As for North Korea, American officials continue to espouse the view
that the US, by insisting on talking to North Korea only within the
confines of a regional group, can better share the burden of power.

But the administration will continue to take hits over not talking to
its enemies until it can demonstrably show that this strategy has had
results, diplomats said. Said one European diplomat in Washington:
"They've isolated Cuba for 40 years, and you see how well that's
worked."

2) U.S. evangelical support for Iraq war slipping
Ed Stoddard, Reuters, Friday, October 27, 2006; 7:34 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700358.html
A new poll shows support for the war in Iraq is slipping among white
evangelical Protestants, previously a key pillar of support for
President Bush's conduct of the conflict. The poll is the latest bad
domestic news for Bush and the Republicans about Iraq with just 12
days to go to congressional elections in which the Democrats are
widely expected to capture control of the House of Representatives.

Conducted by the PEW Research Center, it found that 58 percent of
white evangelical Protestants surveyed felt the US made the right
decision in using force in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, below the 71
percent in a previous poll in September. This compared to little
change overall among committed Republicans, with 78 percent saying it
was the correct course versus 76 percent in September.

Political activists in the evangelical community have been unwavering
supporters of the war they see in part as a broader "clash of
civilizations." Distaste among their flock for the conflict therefore
highlights the depth of its unpopularity.

Scott Keeter of the PEW Research Center said it was hard to say why
evangelical support seemed to have fallen so sharply but geography
could be one reason. "Many evangelicals are in the South and the
military presence there is quite large and so the impact of the war on
local communities is probably greater there," he said.

The PEW poll also found that only 48 percent of white evangelical
Protestants now thought the war effort was going very or fairly well,
versus 61 percent in September.

3) Real Timetables for Iraq
Editorial, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/opinion/27fri1.html
Funny how a few weeks before the election Bush administration
officials start hinting at timetables for getting American troops out
of Iraq. But spinning out implausible scenarios - like the claim that
it might take only 12 to 18 more months for the Iraqis to be able to
defend themselves - won't get Iraq any closer to containing the
mayhem, nor this country any closer to extricating itself.

What is needed is an explicit, credible and public set of deadlines -
for Iraq's leaders but also for President Bush - to confront the most
difficult problems, including disarming sectarian militias,
stabilizing Baghdad, protecting minority rights, and apportioning the
country's oil wealth. That's the only way Iraqis and Americans can
judge whether progress is being made and whether the effort is worth
the cost.

Ambassador Khalilzad seemed to be moving down that road this week when
he announced that Iraq's leaders had agreed to a timeline for "making
the hard decisions" necessary to reduce sectarian bloodletting. The
Times's review of the unpublished "notional political timetable"
suggests that it is a lot less demanding than advertised.

For example, it gives the Iraqi Parliament until December to outline
the terms for demobilizing militias. But it sets no deadline by which
Prime Minister al-Maliki - whose government is backed by two religious
parties with powerful militias - must disarm the militias. The day
after Khalilzad announced the existence of a timetable, Maliki held
his own news conference denying he had agreed to anything.

The Iraqis weren't the only ones backpedaling. A day after the top
American general in Iraq, George Casey, acknowledged that more troops
may be needed to help stabilize Baghdad, his office issued a
"clarification" saying that wasn't really what he meant.

And while General Casey suggested that the Iraqis should be able to
provide their own security in 12 to 18 months, President Bush let slip
that he had a far different timeline in mind. When asked at a news
conference whether he would renounce any claim to permanent bases in
Iraq, Bush said that was something for the Iraqi government to decide.
He added, "And, frankly, it's not in much of a position to be thinking
about what the world is going to look like five or 10 years from now."

The Iraqis need to begin national reconciliation talks and disarm the
militias. The Americans need to make a credible push to secure Baghdad
and elicit the help of Iraq's neighbors. There's no time left for
notional timetables. Bush said the other day that "we're making it
clear to the Iraqis that America's patience is not unlimited." We hope
it's clear to Bush that Americans have already lost patience with his
bumbling conduct of this war, and the remaining grace period can be
measured in months, not years. That's a real deadline, for concrete
progress, not for more rosy notions of victory.

4) Democrats Are Divided on a Solution for Iraq
John M. Broder, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/washington/27policy.html
If the Nov. 7 election in the US is a referendum on the Iraq war, what
are the choices? President Bush admitted Wednesday things were not
going as well as he had hoped in Iraq. He said his overarching goal -
victory - remained unchanged, but he gave no sense of what it would
take to achieve it.

Democratic leaders and candidates are virtually unanimous in opposing
the president's conduct of the war, and most advocate American
disengagement - either quickly or slowly. But most are not calling for
an immediate withdrawal of American forces or offering a vision of
what postwar Iraq should look like. They say they stand for change,
but the variety of formulations is dizzying.

Nineteen House members sponsored a bill to cut off funds for the war.
The Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania opposes a deadline for
ending American involvement in Iraq. The Democratic candidate for
Senate in Ohio wants all the troops out within two years.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who is likely to be the
next speaker of the House if Democrats win the chamber, is calling for
immediate steps to begin to remove American forces, with all of them
out of Iraq by the end of 2007.

The range of proposals in part reflects the military, political and
sectarian maze that Iraq has become. With virtually no one contending
that an exit would be easy, no one wants to be responsible for a
decision that would leave Iraq a smoldering ruin of civil war.

But the range of proposals also illustrates the state of the
Democratic Party, which has not held executive power for six years or
controlled the Congress for twice that long. There is no dominant
figure in the party to formulate a policy position, so a hundred
schools of thought contend. And even if the Democrats win one or both
houses of Congress, they will not have the authority to change the
course of the war significantly.

A number of Democratic policy analysts and elected officials who are
not facing re-election this year have drafted quite detailed proposals
for untangling the Iraq knot. Senator Joseph Biden has proposed a plan
to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions with the US
providing a security umbrella for a time.

Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island are
urging a plan, endorsed by a majority of Senate Democrats, to begin
withdrawing troops within the next few months to impress upon Iraqi
leaders that the American presence is not open-ended.
Richard C. Holbrooke, who was the ambassador to the UN under President
Bill Clinton, this week offered an amalgam of the two plans. His
proposal would give each of the three major population groups more
autonomy and would provide for the beginning of a phased withdrawal
with no firm timetable for completion.

But most Democrats standing for election are not as detailed or
categorical. If the election has become a referendum on Iraq, it is
one without a definitive choice. With less than two weeks to Election
Day, both Republicans and Democrats appear to be fudging their
positions to avoid alienating voters. Polls indicate that the public,
hungry for a change, prefers the Democratic approach, unspecific as it
is, to a continuation of the Bush policies.

Democratic leaders in Congress say that voters are not demanding that
candidates present a coherent plan to end the war. It is beyond the
power of Congress to conduct military operations or order troop
withdrawals in any case. But, they say, voters are flocking to the
party because it offers an alternative to what Democrats call the
failed Bush administration policy.

"The public understands also we're not the commander in chief," said
Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who heads the
party's senatorial campaign committee. "If we were to get the
majority, we could do a lot more to get George Bush to change
direction."

Representative Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who is trying to unseat
Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, said he wants the military to
come up with a plan to provide for an "orderly and safe" withdrawal of
American troops within the next two years. "It's a practical plan, and
I think the public agrees with it overwhelmingly," Brown said in an
interview Thursday.

5) Confession That Formed Base of Iraq War was Acquired Under Torture:
Journalist
Agence France Presse, Friday, October 27, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1027-04.htm
An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the US, who gave evidence of
links between Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being
tortured, a journalist told the BBC. Iban al Shakh al Libby told
intelligence agents that he was close to Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin
Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and "understood an awful lot about the
inner workings of Al-Qaeda," former FBI agent Jack Clonan told the
broadcaster.

Libby was tortured in an Egyptian prison, according to Stephen Grey,
the author of the newly-released book "Ghost Plane" who investigated
the secret US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that housed
terror suspects around the world. Libby was apparently taken to Cairo,
Clonan told the broadcaster, after being captured in Afghanistan in
the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. "He (Libby)
claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian
prisons," Grey said.

"What he claimed most significantly was a connection between ...
Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence
report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US
secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ...
for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.

Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003,
weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under
Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he
could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative", whom Grey
alleges is Libby. "At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence
was extracted under torture were not provided," Grey said.

Grey said that, after being held in Egypt, Libby was transferred to a
secret CIA facility in Afghanistan. The journalist said he had also
met other people held in that facility who describe the torture that
Libby faced at the CIA facility. Since then, "he disappeared", Grey
said. "Like hundreds of other people arrested after September 11, he's
vanished into a sort of netherworld of prisons where astonishingly,
President Bush now says the prisons have emptied. "

6) CIA Tried to Silence EU on Torture Flights
Germany offered access to prisoner in Morocco if it quelled opposition
Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, Thursday, October 26, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1026-05.htm
The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the
human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine
torture flights program, the Guardian can reveal. According to a
secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access
to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan
cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should
cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the
north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable
partner in the fight against terrorism".

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last
February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained
suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser
of the September 11 strikes. He was flown from Morocco to Syria on
another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the
condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents
in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped
the charges, but denied any link.

After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an
almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights
records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They
have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly
because of growing evidence of their complicity.

The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew
terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and
Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They
are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who
first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year
ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records
show.

He describes how one CIA pilot told him that Prestwick airport, near
Glasgow, was a popular destination for refuelling stops and layovers.
"It's an 'ask-no-questions' type of place and you don't need to give
them any advance warning you're coming," the pilot said.

7) UN Passes Arms Trade Treaty Over US Opposition
Haider Rizvi, Inter Press Service, Friday, October 27, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1027-01.htm
UN member states voted Thursday to create an international treaty to
curb the illicit trade in guns and other light weapons, despite strong
opposition from the US and other big powers. A vast majority of
delegates to the U.N. General Assembly's first committee endorsed the
resolution calling for the establishment of a treaty to stop weapons
transfers that fuel conflict, poverty and serious human rights
violations.

As many as 139 countries voted in favor of the resolution while 24
abstained. The US, the world's largest supplier of small arms, was the
only country that opposed the resolution. Other major
arms-manufacturing nations that oppose the treaty but did not
participate in the voting include Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

The vote came after three years of complex diplomatic negotiations and
a worldwide campaign by civil society groups that involved more than
one million people in 170 countries. Civil society groups said they
were extremely happy with the outcome of the vote. "It's a great
victory," Helen Hughes of Amnesty International told IPS. Jeremy
Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, described the treaty as an
international commitment to "end the scandal of the unregulated arms
trade".

Both Amnesty International and Oxfam had been at the forefront of
lobbying efforts in support of the treaty. This week they were joined
by 15 Nobel Peace Prize-winners in urging nations to vote for the
resolution. "No weapons should ever be transferred if they will be
used for serious violations of human rights," they said in a letter to
the delegates who are currently attending the General Assembly
session.

Independent experts who have worked closely with the UN on the issue
of small arms proliferation estimate that in the past three years more
than one million people have been killed as a result of the unchecked
flow of guns and other small weapons. Several emerging arms exporters,
such as Brazil, Bulgaria and Ukraine, as well as many countries that
have been devastated by armed violence, including Colombia, East
Timor, Haiti, Liberia and Rwanda, voted in favor of the resolution.

Nobel laureates signing the letter included South Africa's Archbishop
Desmond Titu, the Dalai Lama, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias,
Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, top U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed El
Baradei, and former Polish president Lech Walesa.

Activists said they were disappointed with the U.S. role in
negotiations and its decision to reject the resolution. "This is not a
good foreign policy," said Amnesty International's Hughes, who
acknowledged U.S. laws on weapons manufacturing and supply were
relatively stronger. "Their 'no' vote shows that they are opposed to
the need for effective international controls," Hughes said. According
to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US
accounted for 48% of worldwide military spending in 2005.

The resolution calls for the establishment of a group of experts to
look at the feasibility, scope and parameters of the treaty, which
must report back to the first committee by the fall of 2008.

8) Preacher says GOP delaying 2nd coming
Becky Gaylord, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Monday, October 09, 2006
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/116038288540580.xml&coll=2
Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S.
foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ,
according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely
contested political races. K.A. Paul railed against the war in Iraq on
Sunday before a crowd of 1,000 at the New Spirit Revival Center in
Cleveland Heights, his first stop on what he hopes is a 30-city
campaign.

The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush
administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign
policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran
and Syria. "Somebody needs to say enough is enough," he said to
worshippers who stood, waved and called out in support.

Paul, who claimed to support conservative political leaders in the
past, is launching "a crusade to save America from the wrath of God
and Republicans abusing their power," according to his press
materials. "God is mad at this country," Paul told the congregation.
He described the war in Iraq as "unnecessary genocide."

9) 50 Years After Suez, U.S. Hegemony Ebbing Fast
Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, Friday, October 27, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1027-02.htm
As the Middle East prepares to mark the 50th anniversary on Oct. 29 of
the Suez Crisis that effectively ended European colonialism, a half
century of U.S. hegemony in the region also appears to be coming to an
end, according to a growing number of analysts.

The observation is based primarily on the serious damage done to
Washington's position in the Middle East by its invasion and
occupation of Iraq, where more than 140,000 of its troops remain
bogged down in what seems likely an increasingly futile effort both to
crush a Sunni insurgency it failed to anticipate and prevent a larger
sectarian civil war.

In addition, the passivity - or obstinacy - of the administration of
President Bush in failing to revive any kind of Arab-Israeli peace
process, particularly in the wake of last summer's war between Israel
and Hezbollah or the ongoing deterioration of the Palestinian
Authority, appears to have brought both Washington's image and
influence in the region to an all-time low.

"American foreign policy in the Middle East is approaching a very
serious crisis," Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser
noted this week."We are facing the possibility of literally being
pushed out of the Middle East," he warned, suggesting that only a
major change in U.S. policy, particularly regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, can reverse the current trend.

While other analysts insist that Washington's status as the world's
military hyperpower and its continued heavy reliance on Middle Eastern
oil - let alone its continued presence in Iraq - ensure its continued
relevance to the region, the consensus among regional specialists here
is that its ability to affect events there has indeed been
substantially diminished.

"The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended and a new era
in the modern history of the region has begun," wrote Richard Haass,
president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the
latest edition of Foreign Affairs.

That this "New Middle East", as Haass titled his article, should be
dawning 50 years after the Suez Crisis is particularly poignant,
according to long-time observers of the region who note that, more
than any other event, it was Washington's role in the crisis that
boosted its image as a force for liberation and positioned it as an
honest broker between Arabs and Israel.

On Oct. 29, 1956, Israel invaded Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula and
within a few days occupied the Suez Canal zone that had been recently
nationalised by the government of Egyptian President Gamal Nasser.
Pursuant to a plan worked out in advance with the two European
governments, Israel then invited Britain and France to send their
forces to the area as a buffer. When Nasser rejected their offer to do
so, they invaded anyway.

U.S. President Eisenhower, who had not been informed of the three
countries' plans in advance, responded by threatening to "pull the
plug" on the British pound and even to remove the U.S. nuclear
umbrella from all three countries if they did not cease fire and
commit themselves to a speedy withdrawal, one that was completed by
early 1957.

To most historians, the crisis - and the humiliation inflicted on the
invading powers - spelled the effective end of western European
colonialism in the region and the advent of U.S. pre-eminence, a
pre-eminence that was successively enhanced by the aftermath of the
1973 Arab-Israeli war, the 1978 Camp David accords, and the end of the
Cold War a decade later.

"Certainly, in terms of the prestige and image of the U.S. in the
region, it goes without saying that Suez was the high point,"
according to Chris Toensing, editor of the Washington-based Middle
East Report. "The U.S. was seen not only as country that had itself
not only thrown off the yoke of colonialism, but was willing to stick
its neck out to help other countries do so as well."

If that helped establish Washington's "soft power" in the region, it
also demonstrated to Arabs that the U.S. not only had influence over
Israel, but was prepared to use it, even over the objections of both
Tel Aviv and the increasingly influential "Israel Lobby" in
Washington.

"It is the fact that we made Israel withdraw from Sinai that
established us an honest broker [between Israel and the Arabs],"
according to Richard Parker, a retired foreign service officer. "Since
Sinai, that has always been our trump card in the region."

Fifty years later, however, both U.S. soft power and its status as an
honest broker - the two greatest achievements of the Suez crisis - are
at their lowest ebb. As of 2002, when the U.S. acquiesced in Israel's
military campaign against the Palestinian intifada, disapproval of the
US skyrocketed across the Arab world, according to public opinion
polls which showed an even greater deterioration after the 2003 Iraq
invasion and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal the following year.

In addition, the Bush administration's failure to exercise any
demonstrable pressure on Israel to seriously engage the Palestinians
in a peace process, its transparent support for Israel's military
offensive and bombing campaign in Lebanon last summer's war with
Hezbollah, and its rejection to date of renewed Arab efforts to
promote the 2002 Saudi peace plan in the wake of the Lebanon conflict
have effectively destroyed the image of Washington as an honest
broker.

"Our strongpoint was always that we were the only power that could do
anything with the Israelis," according to Parker. "We still have that
influence, but the key is whether we're prepared to use it. If not,
it's going to waste away."

Iran
10) Iran Doubles Nuke Enrichment Capacity
Nasser Karimi, Associated Press, Friday, October 27, 2006; 11:53 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700265.html
Iran has doubled its capacity to enrich uranium by successfully
executing the process with a second network of centrifuges, a
semiofficial news agency reported Friday, sending a defiant new
message to the U.N. Security Council. Council members are working on a
draft resolution that would impose limited sanctions on Iran because
of its refusal to cease enrichment.

The Iranian Students News Agency quoted an anonymous official as
saying Iran has successfully begun injecting gas into a second network
of centrifuges. "We are injecting gas into the second cascade, which
we installed two weeks ago," the official said, according to ISNA. The
news agency said the second cascade had doubled Iran's capacity to
enrich uranium.

Iranian authorities are believed to leak ISNA information that they
want published but consider too sensitive for release to official
media. France's Foreign Ministry called Iran's expansion of its
nuclear program a "negative signal" that should be taken to account at
U.N. talks over possible sanctions. A spokesman for the ministry said
the Iranian announcement was not a great surprise because the
International Atomic Energy Agency had said in August that Iran was
developing new nuclear capacities.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, expressed support for
sanctions against Iran but insisted that they be temporary and
reversible.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Iran's action was not a
cause for worry. "I don't share concerns on this account," Ivanov told
reporters, adding that a second network of centrifuges launched by
Iran was under IAEA supervision. "It's premature to talk of uranium
enrichment or of military uranium."

Diplomats told AP Monday that even the decision to "dry test" the 164
centrifuges in the second Iranian pilot enrichment facility showed
Iran's defiance of the Security Council. The council had set an Aug.
31 deadline for Tehran to cease all experiments linked to enrichment.

Iran produced a small batch of low-enriched uranium - suitable as
nuclear fuel but not weapons grade - in February, using its initial
cascade of 164 centrifuges at its pilot plant at Natanz. The Iran
official quoted by ISNA said the nuclear watchdog was fully aware that
Tehran was injecting the gas in its new centrifuges, and that nuclear
inspectors had already arrived in Iran.

Iran says it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by the end
of this year. Some 54,000 centrifuges would be required to produce
enough nuclear fuel for a reactor.

The U.S. and its European allies are circulating a draft U.N. Security
Council resolution that would ban the sale of missile and nuclear
technology to Iran and deny the country certain assistance from the
U.N. nuclear watchdog. China and Russia, which can veto Security
Council resolutions, are reportedly pushing for continued dialogue
with Iran instead of punishment.

11) Iran condemns US Gulf exercises
Iran has criticised planned US military exercises in the Gulf as provocative.
BBC News, Tuesday, 24 October 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6080204.stm
Iran's official news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry
official as describing the military manoeuvres as dangerous and
suspicious. Reports say the US is to hold naval exercises at the end
of October with Bahrain, Kuwait, France and Britain. Reports say the
US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting
and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

The Iranian foreign ministry official said the US-led exercises were
not in line with the security and stability of the region. Instead,
they are aimed at fomenting crises, he said. He complained that it was
the warmongering of neo-conservatives in America who want to win the
mid-term US congressional elections in November. The manoeuvres come
as America is pushing for tough UN sanctions on Iran, prohibiting
nuclear cooperation or sales of ballistic missiles. Our correspondent
says it is not yet clear whether the UN would authorise the searching
of ships heading to Iran.

Palestine
12) Hamas Gets $2 Million to Help Offset Cutoff
Greg Myre, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html
The Palestinian interior minister took home $2 million in cash from
Muslim countries when he returned to the Gaza Strip this week, part of
a continuing effort to meet government expenses in the face of a
cutoff in aid from Western countries, an aide to the minister said
Thursday. The minister, Said Siam, entered Gaza on Tuesday at the
Rafah border crossing with Egypt, after a trip that also took him to
Syria and Iran. The aide, Maher Ramli, said the money had come from
"Arab and Muslim countries," but declined to identify them.

The Interior Ministry, which is responsible for various security
agencies, plans to spend half the money by making $50 payments to
20,000 members of the security forces, Ramli said. Like other
government employees, security force members have received only
partial and sporadic salary payments since Hamas, the militant Islamic
group, came to power in the spring after winning Palestinian
legislative elections in January.

Ramli said the remaining $1 million would go toward restoring the
Interior Ministry building, which was damaged in a recent fire set by
members of Fatah, the faction that has been battling Hamas in Gaza.

Israel, the EU and the US all cut money to the Palestinian Authority
after Hamas took over. They have demanded that the Palestinian
Authority meet several conditions, including the recognition of
Israel, which Hamas leaders in the government have refused to do.
[Once again, the New York Times conflates US and EU aid money with
Palestinian tax dollars being illegally withheld by the Israeli
government. - JFP.]

As a result, the Palestinian Authority is desperately short of cash
and has not been able to raise anywhere near the more than $150
million a month it needs to pay salaries and cover basic operating
expenses.

Several Arab and Muslim countries have pledged to help. However, the
US has threatened sanctions against banks that conduct transactions
with Hamas. The banks, unwilling to risk their access to international
financial markets, have refused to handle such transactions. Siam is
the latest of several Hamas officials who have carried large sums of
cash into Gaza in recent months. The foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahar,
returned with $20 million stuffed in suitcases back in June.

Palestinians may carry in unlimited sums of money as long as they
declare it, which Siam did, said EU monitors who assist Palestinians
at the Rafah crossing point. Officially, the Palestinian Authority has
controlled its Rafah border crossing with Egypt for the past 11
months, with the European monitors also present. But in practice, the
crossing has been mostly closed since the end of June, when Israeli
troops re-entered southern Gaza after the capture of an Israeli
soldier, who was taken to Gaza.

Israel is allowing the crossing to open periodically, and Palestinians
were let in and out on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Rafah was closed
again on Thursday.

North Korea
13) Sanctions Don't Dent North Korea-China Trade
Jim Yardley, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/asia/27border.html
SANHE, China, Oct. 25 - At the isolated border crossing in this
Chinese town, no one seems to have noticed the recent UN sanctions
against North Korea. Truckers carrying goods into North Korea across
the Tumen River say inspections are unchanged on the Chinese side.
Customs agents rarely open boxes here or at two other border crossings
in this mountainous region, truckers and private transport companies
say.

Nor are any fences visible, like the barrier under construction near
China's busiest border crossing at the city of Dandong. There were
early reports that inspectors in Dandong were at least opening trucks
for a look, but so far statistics and anecdotal reports in the Chinese
news media indicate that, essentially, everything remains the same.

What is visible here, though, is the growing and, in some ways,
surprisingly complicated trade relationship between China and North
Korea. China remains North Korea's most important aid donor and oil
supplier, but, conversely, China is now importing growing amounts of
coal and electricity from North Korea. Chinese entrepreneurs,
meanwhile, are starting to buy shares in North Korean mining
operations and, in one case, trying to gain access to the Sea of Japan
by leasing a North Korean port as a potential shipping hub.

The upswing in Chinese economic activity - which is already raising
questions about whether the intent is more strategic than commercial -
is one of the reasons that China has sent mixed signals about how
aggressive it will be in inspecting border trade to meet the UN
sanctions. For now, at least, some truckers in this region say the
only change in border inspections has come on the North Korean side,
where customs agents are checking loads more carefully for items
deemed contraband by Kim Jong-il's government.

The US has praised China for approving the sanctions against North
Korea, and Secretary of State Rice used her visit to Beijing last week
to emphasize the common desire to restart diplomatic talks on North
Korea's nuclear program. China's leaders are said to be deeply angered
over the nuclear test and have signaled they may take a harder line
against their longtime ally. Last week, some banks in Dandong froze
certain accounts and financial transactions with North Korea.

But the question of inspections along the 866-mile border between
China and North Korea is a different matter. The sanctions authorized
countries to inspect cargo entering and leaving North Korea and barred
the sale or transfer of material that can be used to make nuclear
weapons. Yet the sanctions are still less than two weeks old, and some
details have still not been worked out. For example, the sanctions ban
luxury goods without defining them.

The US wants tightened border inspections by China as a tool for
squeezing the North Korean economy and ensuring that North Korea
cannot buy or sell nuclear materials. China is worried that
destabilizing North Korea could begin an exodus of refugees and has
resisted changing inspections. This week, with rumors swirling about a
possible border crackdown, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu
Jianchao, said China intended to comply fully with the sanctions, but
also said inspections along the border would remain "normal."

The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region, the name of the sprawling
district that includes the Sanhe border checkpoint, is not the primary
trade route between China and North Korea; Dandong, with its more
direct route to Pyongyang, the North's capital, is by far the busiest.

Trade between China and North Korea has grown rapidly in recent years
- as has North Korea's trade deficit with China, in part, because
China no longer appears to be selling oil at a subsidized rate. China
now accounts for almost 40 percent of North Korea's total foreign
trade; bilateral trade has more than doubled to $1.1 billion in 2005
from $490 million in 1995. In Yanbian alone, trade with North Korea
jumped 82 percent in 2004 and another 20 percent in 2005, according to
a local newspaper account.

14) In '97, U.S. Panel Predicted a North Korea Collapse in 5 Years
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, October 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/world/asia/27intel.html
A team of government and outside experts convened by the CIA concluded
in 1997 that North Korea's economy was deteriorating so rapidly that
the government of Kim Jong-il was likely to collapse within five
years, according to declassified documents made public Thursday.

The panel described the isolated and impoverished country as being on
the brink of economic ruin and said that "political implosion stemming
from irreversible economic degradation seems the most plausible
endgame for North Korea." The majority among the group argued that the
North's government "cannot remain viable for the long term" and could
fall within five years.

Nearly a decade later, the assessment has not been borne out, and its
disclosure is evidence of past American misjudgments about the
internal dynamics of North Korea's closed society. American
intelligence agencies still regard North Korea as among the toughest
of intelligence targets and have made little progress inserting human
spies into the country to steal secrets about the government.

The assessment was produced by a group that included senior
intelligence analysts, Pentagon war gamers and independent academic
experts. It was made public on Thursday by the National Security
Archive. "Conventional wisdom was completely wrong," said Ambassador
Wendy Sherman, who during the late 1990s was the Clinton
administration's coordinator for North Korea policy. "People
constantly underestimated the staying power of the North Korean
regime."

The North Korean economy has stabilized in recent years, in part
because of a sustained humanitarian aid campaign carried out by the
country's neighbors, especially China and South Korea. Today, there is
less belief in Washington that Kim could lose his grip on power
because of an economic collapse within the country.

The belief that the North Korean economy was collapsing helped shaped
White House thinking in 1994 when it promised to deliver light-water
nuclear reactors to North Korea by 2003 in exchange for Pyongyang's
halting its covert nuclear weapons program. Senior Clinton
administration officials said privately at the time that they did not
expect Kim's government to be in power by the time the US had to make
good on its pledge.

The documents disclosed a misjudgment by the C.I.A. that is the mirror
image of an earlier one: while it was predicting an imminent North
Korean collapse, the agency was still being criticized for failing in
the 1980s to anticipate the speed with which the Soviet Union would
eventually fall.

Publicly, Bush administration officials say that the sanctions can be
useful for bringing North Korea back to the negotiating table.
Privately however, some officials hold out the hope that the economic
squeeze could work to undermine Kim.

Some members of the C.I.A.-led team of experts interviewed Thursday
said they never suspected in 1997 that North Korea's neighbors would
undertake such a concerted aid effort. "Maybe I just don't have a
great imagination, but the idea that South Korea and Japan and other
countries would come to North Korea's rescue wasn't one of the
hypotheses that I was entertaining," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a North
Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Thailand
15) Little proof of Thaksin corruption: Coup leader
Press Trust of India, Bangkok, October 26, 2006	
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1829277,00050004.htm
Investigators have failed to uncover solid evidence to support
corruption charges against Thailand's ousted Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, the nation's coup leader said in an interview Thursday.
"It will be difficult to implicate him" in major corruption cases,
General Sondhi Boonyaratklin told The Nation newspaper. "We cannot
impound the money he made with accountable legal evidence, but can
only look for some possible hidden (evidence) with questionable
background," he said.

In the past, Sondhi has justified the bloodless coup on September 19
by saying that widespread corruption during Thaksin's five years in
office had undermined democracy. He quickly revived the nation's
dormant corruption watchdogs and set up his own high-powered team of
investigators to look into allegations of graft by Thaksin and members
of his government. Sondhi acknowledged that the military could lose
the public support it has generally enjoyed so far if nothing emerges
to back up the corruption claims.

--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming
U.S. foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the
majority of Americans.