Iran’s leader warns U.S. against attack

Iran’s leader warns U.S. against attack

Iran’s leader warns U.S. against attack

Khamenei says Iran prepared to strike American interests around the world
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:40 a.m. ET Feb 8, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran - If the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.

Speaking to a gathering of Iranian air force commanders, Khamenei said: “The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world.”

Iranian leaders often speak of a crushing response to any attack. While the remarks are seen as an attempt to drum up national support, Iran’s position on Iraq and its nuclear program have provoked more than usual international pressure in recent months.

President Bush has ordered American troops to act against Iranians suspected of being involved in the Iraqi insurgency and has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf area as a warning to Iran. The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions because of Iran’s refusal to cease uranium enrichment.

“Some people say that the U.S. president is not prone to calculating the consequences of his actions,” Khamenei said in remarks broadcast on state television, “but it is possible to bring this kind of person to wisdom.

“U.S. policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response,” Khamenei added.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17042605/

Blair, Bush in 'war crimes trial'

BBC
A tribunal to try UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush for war crimes will be convened on Wednesday.


It is no surprise that neither man will be attending the proceedings - they may not even be aware that it is taking place.

But start it will, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur called as part of the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's campaign to criminalise war.

Dr Mahathir is not expected to sit on the tribunal. He couldn't quite be characterised as impartial.

Dr Mahathir said: "What is Blair if not the co-murderer of 500,000 Iraqi children and the liar who told the British that Saddam had WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) which could be launched against Britain within 45 minutes?

"History should remember Blair and Bush as the 'killers of children'."

Although the aim of the conference - entitled Expose War Crimes, Criminalise War - is to outlaw war itself, for many Malaysians who've turned up that means one thing.

"They're giving an open mind to people who know what kind of war crime that the US do to our communities in the world," was one man's assessment. It seemed to be that of most people.

"It is the converted preaching to the converted," said Gwynne Dyer, a journalist and Oscar-nominated documentary maker who addressed the conference.

"But I think this [conference] has potential," he said. "It actually has a goal beyond cheering people up and allowing them to vent."

And there's a lot of venting going on here. Specifically it seems to be to vilify Tony Blair and George Bush.

'Vast conspiracy'

The meeting has attracted a curious range of speakers.

The former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq Hans Von Sponeck shares a platform with author Alfred Lambremont Webre.

Mr Webre claims to have uncovered a vast conspiracy to profit from wars. He's also keenly interested in intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

The message is made quite clear by an exhibition staged in parallel with the conference. Its style is Madame Tussauds on a shoestring, and it features tableaux illustrating the carnage of the world wars, the Palestinian problem, Vietnam and of course Iraq.

There's a section comprising a cage and a couple of dummies wired up to electrodes with the song Rivers of Babylon pumping away in the background.

A helpful notice tells us that the "cheerful" music of Boney M was used as an instrument of torture in the Iraq prison at Abu Ghraib.

Dr Mahathir is busy signing autographs. A woman passes him a copy of her programme to sign.

"Oh Dr Mahathir", she coos, "you're more handsome in person than you are in photographs."

The 81-year-old statesman takes it in his stride.

His admirer persists. "I'm honoured, I'm standing in front of you, I'm shaking I feel like I'm in love for the first time," she says.

"Shameless flattery," I suggested to Dr Mahathir.

"Yes, it's flattery," he said with a grave smile.

Resignation calls

But there's no flattery when I ask him if he has anything to add about Mr Blair.

"What do I have to say about him? I think it's about time he resigns. Don't wait too long, people are impatient. It's time he resigns. He's been telling lies."

Not everyone is convinced that Dr Mahathir is a suitable figurehead for a new human rights movement.

After all, his record during 22 years in power was far from unblemished.

He detained political opponents without trial and had scant regard for the freedom of the press. His administration was accused of turning a blind eye to torture.

I put this to Dr Dyer.

"If you know someone who has a claim to the moral high ground I'd like to meet him," he said.

"Nelson Mandela," I ventured.

"Alright, there's one, name a second," he challenged me.

"Desmond Tutu," I suggested knowing, I still had the Dalai Lama up my sleeve.

"Oh damn," said Dr Dyer. "But you know nobody comes to this with clean hands and if you wait until you have perfect people to do it you're not going to get it done are you?"

Meanwhile a Downing Street spokesman responded simply: "We believe the invasion of Iraq was lawful, and we believe that the UN confirmed with resolution 1723 that the presence of the multi-national force remains legal."

And never the twain shall meet.

U.S. military: Iraqi lawmaker is U.S. Embassy bomber

CNN
A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence."

Repeated efforts by CNN to reach Jamal Jafaar Mohammed for comment through the parliament, through the ruling Shiite Muslim coalition and the Badr Organization -- the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization he once led -- have been unsuccessful. (Watch how a convicted terrorist became an Iraqi lawmaker )

A Kuwaiti court sentenced Jamal Jafaar Mohammed to death in 1984 in the car bombings of the U.S. and French embassies the previous December. Five people died in the attacks and 86 were wounded.

He had fled the country before the trial.

Western intelligence agencies also accuse Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984 and the attempted assassination of a Kuwaiti prince.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed won a seat in Iraq's Council of Representatives in the U.S.-backed elections of December 2005. He represents Babil province, south of Baghdad, in parliament.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said officials are actively pursuing Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's case with Iraqi officials. Al-Maliki has urged American intelligence officials to share their information with Iraqi lawmakers, who could strip Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of his parliamentary immunity.

"We don't want parliament to be a shelter for outlaws and wanted people," al-Maliki told CNN. "This is the government's view, but the parliament is responsible. I don't think parliament will accept having people like [him] or others currently in the parliament."

Al-Maliki's political party, Dawa, claimed responsibility for the Kuwait bombings at the time but now disavows them. The Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim party was forced into exile under former dictator Saddam Hussein, who was executed in December.

The prime minister says the situation is embarrassing -- not only to his government but to a U.S. administration that holds up Iraq's government as a democratic model for the region.

Top U.S. officials, including President Bush, have accused Iran of meddling in Iraq by fomenting sectarian violence and providing arms to illegal militias. Bush has authorized U.S. troops to use deadly force against Iranian agents in Iraq to defend American or allied forces, and the administration's increasingly tough warnings to Tehran have raised concerns that the four-year-old Iraq war could spread.

Al-Maliki told CNN last week that the United States and Iran should stop using his country as a proxy battleground, accusing Iran of targeting U.S. troops in Iraq but saying he doesn't want U.S. forces to use Iraq as a base to attack Iraq's neighbors.

"War on terrorism tax" sought as Congress debates Bush budget

reuters
An outspoken supporter of the Iraq war on Tuesday called for a new tax to pay for its astronomical cost as Congress opened a debate on President George W. Bush's $2.9 trillion budget plan for next year.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut proposed a "war on terrorism tax" at a Senate hearing during which he said the Pentagon's $622 billion defense budget proposal for fiscal 2008 threatened to crowd out funds for domestic programs.

The lawmaker, a former Democrat turned independent, favors a U.S. troop buildup in Iraq.

Bush traveled to Manassas, Virginia, to deliver the opposite message about the budget he submitted to the Democrat-controlled Congress on Monday.

"This budget can work if Congress resists the temptation to raise your taxes," the Republican president told employees of Micron Technology Inc., a semiconductor manufacturer.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on and their costs could hit $662 billion by the end of next year, Congress is becoming increasingly worried about cutting domestic programs to keep wartime budget deficits down.

Even moderate Republicans have rebelled against tight budgets for social programs, saying last year they had been "cut to the bone and into the marrow."

House of Representatives and Senate budget panels want to produce their own spending plans within the next few months.

"I think we have to start thinking about a war on terrorism tax," Lieberman said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Bush's defense budget. "I mean, people keep saying we're not asking a sacrifice of anybody but our military in this war and some civilians who are working on it."

Lieberman did not provide details of his tax idea.

'UNCONVINCING'

Bush's budget proposal also faced skepticism among Democrats on the House Budget Committee.

"We find the results that you claim unconvincing," Chairman John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat, told Bush budget director Rob Portman.

Spratt said Bush's plan projects a $61 billion budget surplus in 2012 while assuming only $50 billion in war costs in 2009 and none after that. This year, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total around $170 billion.

Bush's budget also does not factor in permanently fixing a quirk in the U.S. tax code so that middle-class taxpayers do not get hit with tax bills designed for the wealthy. The fix could cost around $1 trillion.

"We have good news for the American people," Portman told the committee. "The president's 2008 budget reduces the deficit every year and balances the budget by 2012, while meeting our nation's priorities."

Rep. Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat, responded, "My first thought is, if we're doing so good, how come we're so broke?"

U.S. debt has risen $3 trillion since Bush took office in 2001. That debt skyrocketed following an economic slowdown that began in late 2000 and Bush tax cuts amid huge increases in spending for government-run health programs, the military and domestic security after September 11.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said Bush needs to reach out to Democrats if he wants to accomplish a budget that deals with politically explosive issues like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"I don't think that I can tell the president what to put on the table and what not to put on the table but I can tell him don't pick a damn fight," Rangel told reporters.

Washington politicians were not the only ones attacking Bush's budget, which would allow domestic discretionary spending to grow by only 1 percent, below the rate of inflation.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said his state would be hurt by plans to transfer some health care costs to the poor from the federal government to state governments. He also said it was unacceptable to eliminate federal reimbursements for costs of jailing illegal immigrants.

Jerusalem construction dig sparks major row

monstersandcritics
Jerusalem - A new Israeli construction project in Jerusalem has sparked a storm of controversy, with Muslim leaders warning of harm to Islamic holy places and calling for a revival of the uprising against Israel.

The row centres around Israel's building of a new walkway leading up to the Old City's disputed Temple Mount/ Harem al-Sharif compound, holy to both Jews and Muslims and a perennial Jerusalem flashpoint.

The compound is perhaps the most volatile site in an already volatile region. It houses the al-Aqsa mosque, the third most holy site in Islam, and Muslims believe it marks the spot from where the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.

For Jews, it is the holiest site in Judaism, as it contains the archaeological remnants of their biblical temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and abuts the Western (Wailing) Wall, the only surviving structure pertaining to the temple.

Although Israel claims sovereignty over the site, administration of the holy places in the compound is in the hands of the Muslim Waqf religious trust, which zealously guards against any encroachment.

Claims that Israel is attempting to undermine the foundations of the compound's al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques are not new and have been sounded, in various forms, virtually since Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem area in the 1967 Middle East War.

Islamic leaders are unappeased by Israel's assertion that the Muslim holy sites would not be harmed by the current work being undertaken to prepare for the construction of a new walkway from the Western Wall plaza to the compound.

The walkway is to replace an old wooden structure built after the previous ramp collapsed in 2004 due to rain, snow and a minor earthquake.

Israel says it is not building the new walkway in the compound but outside it, and argues it is necessary to provide safe access to it. It had declared the previous structure a 'safety hazard.'

'There is no connection to the Temple Mount,' Dr Gideon Avni, an archaeologist working on the project, said of the excavations.

'The danger in Jerusalem has increased. It is high time for the Intifada (uprising) of the Islamic people,' said Raed Salah, head of Israel's Islamic Movement northern faction, who on Wednesday was arrested as he tried to force his way through a security gate leading to the Western Wall Plaza.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, and President Mahmoud Abbas, currently in Saudi Arabia for talks on forming a unity government, also lent their voices to the protests.

Abbas called for the Islamic world to intervene to stop the work, and Haniya, whose Hamas movement has been engaged in bloody clashes with Abbas' Fatah organization for months, told Palestinians to remember that their battle was with the 'Israeli occupation.'

The Jerusalem Post daily, in an editorial Wednesday, accused Palestinian leaders of 'exploiting the issue for political purposes to redirect hostility against Israel in the midst of a bloody conflict.'

'Each time the Palestinians engage in internal wars, our leaders have a special talent for uniting them against us,' Roni Shaked of the Yediot Achronot daily countered.

Jordan's King Abdullah II lodged an official complaint with the Israeli government and demanded the work be stopped.

Even the US State Department joined in the fray, with spokesman Sean McCormack telling reporters that 'we urge all parties to exercise great care when deciding whether and how to engage in any activity near sensitive religious sites.'

Israeli criticism of the excavations focuses less on any alleged harm to Muslim holy sites, but more on whether the work was coordinated with the Waqf.

'All this commotion could have been avoided,' Yediot's Shaked wrote in an article entitled 'Playng with fire.'

'The bulldozers started without Israel having taken the position of the Waqf into consideration,' he said.

An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, insisted towards Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Four held over Iranian diplomat kidnapping

zeenews
Baghdad, Feb 07: Four Iraqi military officers have been detained over the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Wednesday.

"Those detained are (Iraqi) military officers. But there is some questioning about their affiliations and who is ordering them to do these things," Zebari told reporters.

"There are doubts that the four are affiliated with government entities," he added, without elaborating.

Jalal Sharafi, 40, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, was abducted in Karrada, a predominantly Shiite Southeastern district of the capital, on Sunday by gunmen dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms.

Iraq and Iran are working closely to resolve the kidnapping, an official at Tehran's embassy said today.

"There is a very close cooperation with the Iraqi Government in this regard," a top official told a news agency, noting that Iranian Ambassador Hasan Kazemi Qmi had met both Zebari and Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed to discuss the situation.

Bureau Report

Democrats Seek Unpaid Taxes, Setting Up Clash

ny times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Congressional Democrats, hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes, are on a collision course with the Bush administration about pursuing the potentially vast amount of money that people hide from the Internal Revenue Service.

House and Senate Democrats say the government could collect as much as $100 billion more a year by whittling the tax gap — the unpaid taxes, mostly on unreported earnings, that the I.R.S. estimated was about $300 billion a year.

But the Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., says it cannot realistically recover one-tenth as much as Democrats suggest.

On Monday, as part of President Bush’s budget proposal, the Treasury Department will unveil more than a dozen proposals to pursue tax cheats. But officials said those ideas would bring in less than $10 billion a year in extra revenue.

Mark W. Everson, the I.R.S. commissioner, has expressed far greater optimism. At a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee a year ago, he told lawmakers that the government could recover “between $50 billion and $100 billion without changing the dynamic between the I.R.S. and the people.”

Recouping unpaid taxes is a perennial concern in Washington. But the issue may have new urgency with the Democrats now in power and driving the considerable momentum behind it. Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has cited the tax gap as a top priority for increasing revenue, ahead of any discussion about rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts.

Democrats badly want the money because they have adopted strict “pay as you go” budgeting rules that require Congress to pay for any new programs or tax cuts with revenue from other areas.

“The tax gap is the logical place to go,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “It’s also the fair thing to do. When you have a number as high as $300 billion in unreported and uncollected income taxes, that puts a burden on everybody.”

Administration officials contend that Democrats have exaggerated the amount of money they can recover.

“At this point we have to do more research to understand where this money is,” said Michele Davis, a Treasury Department spokeswoman. “We are very mindful of the compliance burden on taxpayers who do follow the law.”

The Democrats have offered only a few specific proposals, and lawmakers have conspicuously refused to comment about proposals that could raise money but also provoke a political reaction from legions of self-employed people and family businesses.

Based on an analysis of audited tax returns from 2001, the I.R.S. recently estimated that the government lost $290 billion that year as a result of underreporting and underpayment of taxes.

More than 80 percent of that loss stemmed from underreporting by individuals, not corporations.

And the biggest problems were with people in business for themselves, who earned income that was not reported to the I.R.S. on W-2 forms or on the Form 1099 that businesses file when they pay independent contractors.

The I.R.S. estimated that it lost $109 billion on unreported business income, almost all of that from sole proprietors, like painters, plumbers, dry cleaners, florists, limousine drivers and restaurant owners.

Small-business lobbying groups have begun to mobilize against proposals intended to reduce the tax gap.

Two of the biggest trade associations in Washington, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, organized the Coalition for Fairness in Tax Compliance in December to address lawmakers about proposals that might burden law-abiding business owners.

“I’m focused on avoiding the wrong solutions,” said Macey Davis, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents more than 600,000 small companies, half of which have fewer than five employees. “We’re not out to protect noncompliance. We’re out to protect those who are compliant and whose businesses could be hurt.”

Small-business groups have provided powerful support to President Bush and to Republican lawmakers. But they are poised to fight at least one proposal by the Treasury Department, which would authorize the I.R.S. to obtain information about a business’s revenues from credit card companies.

The proposal would allow the I.R.S. to compare the credit card payments made to a business with the revenues the business owner reports on his or her tax return. If the credit card payments were suspiciously high compared with what the business owner reported to the government, the I.R.S. could begin an audit.

Opponents of the proposal contend that it would catch very little wrong-doing because it would not examine payments made in cash or by check. They warn that it could have disruptive side effects on business operations. (A similar idea proposed by the Bush administration last year received virtually no attention from the Republican-led Congress.)

The Democrats’ biggest obstacle is that the tax gap is in some ways as amorphous as “waste, fraud and abuse” — everyone is against it, but no one is sure how to go about dealing with it. Many tax experts agree that increasing compliance would require an array of tactics, from increased auditing to tougher reporting requirements, to address scores of different practices.

Many such efforts would probably prompt political resistance, whether from small-business lobbying groups or from the credit card companies that might be ordered to provide the I.R.S. with transaction data at no charge. And some efforts may not yield much extra revenue. Another proposal that could lead to organized political opposition is a plan to crack down on investors who understate their profits when selling stocks.

The I.R.S. estimated that it lost about $11 billion in 2001 from people who understated their capital gains after selling stock. According to the agency’s review of tax returns that year, a year when the stock market was plunging and losses were more common than gains, about 38 percent of all people underreported their capital gains.

The problem, I.R.S. officials said, is that brokerage firms report only how much money a person receives from the sale of stock, not how much the person paid for it. Without an audit, the government has no way of verifying the profits that people report.

Nina Olson, the I.R.S.’s independent taxpayer advocate, has proposed that Congress require brokerage firms to report a person’s purchase cost as well as sales proceeds to the government. Mr. Emanuel has introduced a bill based on the idea.

The Bush administration is also planning to ask Congress to provide more money for enforcement efforts, including money for more auditors. But the I.R.S. currently audits fewer than one out of 435 tax returns. Doubling the number of auditors would mean that the I.R.S. would still audit less than 1 percent of all returns.

Democratic lawmakers contend that the Bush administration has been dragging its feet on efforts to track down underreporting.

“I know they can’t recover every dollar of the tax gap, but the I.R.S. needs to make an aggressive effort, and an honest one,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee. “Treasury shouldn’t lowball their estimate.”

But in an interview last week, Mr. Baucus declined to propose any of his own ideas for reducing cheating. “I’m leaving it up to them,” he said, referring to the Treasury Department.

Some Treasury officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because President Bush had not announced his proposals, said that Democrats had exaggerated the amount of money they could recover. But in his testimony before the Senate budget committee last February, Mr. Everson said the government could recover much more than it has been collecting.

“What we’ve said is, between now and 2009, we want to get the compliance rate from 83.5 percent to 85 percent,” Mr. Everson said. “That gets you about $30 billion in improved compliance.”

Ms. Olson, the I.R.S. taxpayer advocate, said it was not implausible to recover something in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year.

“There’s no silver bullet,” Ms. Olson cautioned, noting that the government had to use an array of tactics to address scores of different compliance problems. But she added, “I think there’s a significant amount of money that’s left on the table and that’s not hard to recover.”

Bush seeks big hike in Iraq, Afghan wars budget

daily india
Washington, Feb 6 (ANI): US President George Bush has reportedly sought a record 784 billion dollars for national defence as part of the annual and supplemental budget requests he sent to the US Congress.

In his 2.9 trillion-dollar budget requests for fiscal year 2008, Bush is seeking 481.4 billion dollars for the Department of Defence, which shows a 62 per cent boost in defence spending since he took office in 2001 and a 10 per cent increase over this year's spending.

The Bush administration is seeking 235 billion dollars more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal year 2008 which begins on Oct. 1. Most of these funds will be spent on Iraq but President Bush warned that even more funds may be needed for this increasingly unpopular war, reported the Dawn.

"As commander in chief, my highest priority is the security of our nation. The budget will support a new strategy in Iraq that demands more from Iraq's elected government, and gives American forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete the mission," the paper quoted Bush as saying in a budget message to the US Congress.

The 784 billion-dollar proposed defence budget is the total of four separate requests covering three fiscal years - a base budget for 2008, supplemental budgets for 2007 and 2008, and a partial supplemental budget for 2009, said the House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, a Democrat from South Carolina.

He added: "That is a huge sum of money for one budget cycle. The President calls for us to rein in spending and then calls for a 784 billion dollar increase in spending."

President Bush is also learnt to have sent to the Congress a request for additional funding to continue his global war on terror, including funds needed to address extraordinary emergency requirements. (ANI)

US officer who refused to deploy to Iraq on trial

eitb 24
The judge barred several experts in international and constitutional law from testifying about the legality of the war on Monday. The officer called the US occupation morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law.

The judge in the case against the first US officer charged with refusing to deploy to Iraq barred several experts in international and constitutional law from testifying about the legality of the war on Monday.

In the Fort Lewis court martial, the military judge, Lt. Col. John Head refused almost all the defence witnesses in the case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada (wuh-TOD'-uh), 28, of Honolulu, who is charged with missing movement for refusing to ship out with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

Watada also faces charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for accusing the Army of war crimes and denouncing the administration for conducting an "illegal war" founded on "lies."

The judge agreed with the military that the international and constitutional law experts would be irrelevant. Head has already ruled that Lieutenant Ehren Watada cannot base his defence on the legality of the war.

Demonstrators supporting Watada paraded near Fort Lewis, some calling for the President George W. Bush to be impeached. If convicted on the charges, Watada could receive four years in prison and a dishonourable discharge. He has requested that his case be heard by a military panel of officers, the equivalent of a jury. It had not yet been selected on Monday.

"Illegal and immoral war"

Last June, Watada refused to go to Iraq with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis. He then publicly discussed his reasons for not deploying, including his belief that the war was both illegal and immoral.

Watada, who joined the Army in March 2003, has called the US occupation of Iraq morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law.

Charges later filed against the soldier did little to quell his actions. In August, he spoke at a Veterans for Peace rally in Seattle, in which he again criticised the war.

Following Monday's court session, Watada's attorney Eric Seitz spoke with reporters. Seitz noted that the judge was not allowing the defence to call witnesses who questioned the legality of the war or other efforts to contradict war time policies.Seitz said the courtroom atmosphere was tense as the judge had been denying defence motions."I would suggest that this is a typical kind of military case where the military doesn't want to hear what you want to say and we're battling to say even the simplest things," added Seitz.

Watada is expected to take the stand on Wednesday. One of Watada's superior officers will also be called to the stand to testify on his behalf.

GOP filibuster frustrates Senate debate on Iraq war

SF Gate
(02-06) 04:00 PST Washington -- Senate Republicans on Monday blocked debate on the Iraq war, stymieing efforts by Democrats to send even a weak bipartisan message opposing President Bush's order of 21,500 more troops into an intensifying civil war in Baghdad and Anbar province.

Senate Republican leaders pressured their most vocal anti-war critics into a test of party loyalty, using a procedural vote to save the administration a major embarrassment and stall Democratic plans to ratchet up pressure on the White House to begin pulling back from Iraq. The move also saved wavering Republicans from casting a difficult vote revealing their stand on the war.

Unless the Senate impasse can be broken, the war debate will turn next to the House, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has promised to begin debate next week. House Democrats had hoped that the Senate would move first, demonstrating a strong, bipartisan resistance to Bush's war plans, but that does not appear likely.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said no decision had been made yet on what kind of resolution would be brought up -- whether it would be one similar to the bipartisan nonbinding Senate version offered by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., or a straight up-or-down vote on Bush's plan.

"We will have a vote,'' Daly said. "Clearly the American people and a bipartisan majority of the House and Senate want to have a discussion and a vote on Iraq."

The Senate debate was to be the first on the war since Democrats took control of Congress after the November elections. Instead, the impasse demonstrates that Senate Republicans, despite their widespread misgivings about Iraq and their new minority status, still lend critical support to Bush's handling of the war.

At least eight Republicans were prepared to vote for the Warner resolution stating the Senate "disagrees" with the troop increase. But the motion to end a filibuster and begin the Senate debate failed 49-47, with all Republicans and Sen. Joe Lieberman, independent-Conn., voting no.

Democrats, with the backing of Lieberman and Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., hold a 51-49 majority, in the Senate where the minority wields enormous power through the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break.

The question is how long the Republican support, already fracturing, can hold. Republicans routinely describe the troop increase as Bush's last chance in Iraq. Twenty Senate Republicans face re-election in 2008, and with public support for Bush and the war reaching new lows, the party is not expected to hold together much longer unless the troop increase quickly improves the situation.

Bush continues to meet with wavering Republicans to shore up support. "Believe me, I felt the love," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, of a Friday meeting with the president.

Despite voicing criticism of the troop increase, Murkowski said she remains undecided on a resolution opposing it.

"I am still working over the message that is sent and the recognition that you've got different audiences that are viewing this," Murkowski said. "This is not just a message to President Bush, though there are some who would have it be that simple. It is also a message to (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-) Maliki, it's a message to our troops, it's a message to the Iraqi people, it's a message to our allies, it's a message to our enemies."

Republicans said Monday they were willing to debate the war, but insisted on more amendments than Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was willing to consider, particularly one by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., saying the Senate should not cut off funding for troops in the field.

"The Republican side is ready for this debate," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "We're anxious to have it."

McConnell said Republicans were not resorting to any special tactics, calling it "ordinary" to require 60 votes before an item can move forward on the floor of the Senate and pointing to the Democratic use of the filibuster against Bush's judicial appointments when they were in the Senate minority.

McConnell made clear that he would insist that any war measures meet a 60-vote threshold.

A frustrated Reid angrily promised a relentless pushback on requests by the White House for money and other measures supporting the war.

"You can run but you can't hide," Reid said. "I'm telling everyone within the sound of my voice ... we are going to debate Iraq."

Citing the deaths of more than 3,100 U.S. troops, Reid said, "They are dead! We are not going to allow the situation in Iraq to continue."

Reid said he was under time pressure to pass by Feb. 15 a spending plan left over from last year to avoid a government shutdown. He accused the Republicans of draining the time needed for the debate over the Iraq resolutions, possibly forcing a postponement that could last weeks.

McConnell accused Democrats of trying to avoid a debate on the Gregg amendment, which might have secured more votes than the Warner resolution and muddied the anti-war message Bush's opponents had hoped to send.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., dismissed the Gregg amendment as a "shibboleth," because the vast majority of Democrats oppose cutting funding for the troops. "It's going to come up again and again and again," Feinstein said. "It's just dreadful that you can't debate a resolution on the No. 1 topic facing the nation."

Opponents of the president's war policy -- including Warner, a longtime Republican supporter of the military and a former Navy secretary -- leaped on a devastating report by the government's intelligence agencies released Friday that portrayed a far grimmer situation in Iraq than the president has acknowledged.

The National Intelligence Estimate said the term civil war "does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq," which includes a "sea change" in violence among groups jockeying for power, a hardening of sectarian divisions and rising extremism.

Warner said 323,000 Iraqi troops have been trained by the United States at great expense and they should be the ones inserted into Baghdad because they understand the language and culture.

"How does an American GI being thrust in the darkened alleys of this city, with all of the cross fire between the Sunni and the Shia, Shia upon Shia, Sunni upon Sunni, decide whom to shoot," he said.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., made clear that he would have supported the Warner resolution and that the war needed to be debated.

Iraq "is engulfing the work of this body, and the House and all of Washington," Specter said. "There is no oxygen left in this town" for anything else.

Lieberman, who voted with Republicans, has been a consistent supporter of the war and the president's policy. He argued Monday that Bush's plan and the "decisive battle for Baghdad" should be allowed to work, and if senators don't believe it can, they should "have the courage of your convictions" and vote to cut off funds or give the White House a binding timeline to withdraw.

Iran said to have set up centrifuges

reuters
VIENNA — Iran has set up two cascades of 164 centrifuges each in its Natanz nuclear plant, laying a basis for full-scale uranium enrichment, European diplomats said Monday.

The cascades were to be vacuum-tested shortly, without uranium feedstock inside, and fuel material would then be added if the trial runs were successful, they said.

The 328 centrifuges would be the vanguard of 3,000 planned for installation in coming months.

Tehran recently finished installing piping, electrical cables and other equipment needed to begin so-called industrial-scale enrichment in the vast subterranean complex, which is fortified and ringed by antiaircraft guns, in the central Iranian desert.

Starting the cascades would dramatically sharpen Iran's confrontation with Western powers that pushed through limited United Nations sanctions on Tehran six weeks ago to try to curb what they suspect is a disguised effort to produce atomic bombs.

The Islamic Republic, the world's No. 4 oil producer, says it wants to produce electricity.

Diplomats said the launch of the cascades may be the gist of Iran's planned announcement on nuclear progress Sunday.

"Two cascades have been installed in the underground plant, but they are not running yet," said a European Union diplomat in Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Iran plans to rig up a total of 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz over the longer term.

There was no comment from Iran. On Friday, it denied reports abroad that it had begun installing the 3,000 centrifuges.

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

By JULIA PRESTON

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

The law has strong support from crime victims’ organizations and some women’s groups, who say it will help law enforcement identify sexual predators and also detect dangerous criminals among illegal immigrants.

“Obviously, the bigger the DNA database, the better,” said Lynn Parrish, the spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, based in Washington. “If this had been implemented years ago, it could have prevented many crimes. Rapists are generalists. They don’t just rape, they also murder.”

Peter Neufeld, a lawyer who is a co-director of the Innocence Project, which has exonerated dozens of prison inmates using DNA evidence, said the government was overreaching by seeking to apply DNA sampling as universally as fingerprinting.

“Whereas fingerprints merely identify the person who left them,” Mr. Neufeld said, “DNA profiles have the potential to reveal our physical diseases and mental disorders. It becomes intrusive when the government begins to mine our most intimate matters.”

Immigration lawyers said they did not learn of the measure when it passed last year and were dismayed by its sweeping scope.

“This has taken us by storm,” said Deborah Notkin, a lawyer who was president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association last year. “It’s so broad, it’s scary. It is a terrible thing to do because people are sometimes detained erroneously in the immigration system.”

Immigration lawyers noted that most immigration violations, including those committed when people enter the country illegally, are civil, not criminal, offenses. They warned that the new law would make it difficult for immigrants to remove their DNA profiles from the federal database, even if they were never found to have committed any serious violation or crime.

Under the new law, DNA samples would be taken from any illegal immigrants who are detained and would normally be fingerprinted, justice officials said. Last year federal customs, Border Patrol and immigration agents detained more than 1.2 million immigrants, the majority of them at the border with Mexico. About 238,000 of those immigrants were detained in immigration enforcement investigations. A great majority of all immigration detainees were fingerprinted, immigration officials said. About 102,000 people were arrested on federal charges not related to immigration in 2005.

While the proposed rules have not been finished, justice officials said they were certain to bring a huge new workload for the F.B.I. laboratory that logs, analyzes and stores federal DNA samples. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they anticipated an increase ranging from 250,000 to as many as 1 million samples a year.

The laboratory currently receives about 96,000 samples a year, said Robert Fram, chief of the agency’s Scientific Analysis Section.

DNA would not be taken from legal immigrants who are stopped briefly by the authorities, justice officials said, or from legal residents who are detained on noncriminal immigration violations.

“What this does is move the DNA collection to the arrest stage,” said Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman. “The general approach,” he said, “is to bring the collection of DNA samples into alignment with current federal fingerprint collection practices.” He said the department was “moving forward aggressively” to issue proposed regulations.

The 2006 amendment was sponsored by two border state Republicans, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and Senator John Cornyn of Texas. In an interview, Mr. Kyl said the measure was broadly drawn to encompass illegal immigrants as well as Americans arrested for federal crimes. He said that 13 percent of illegal immigrants detained in Arizona last year had criminal records.

“Some of these are very bad people,” Mr. Kyl said. “The number of sexual assaults committed by illegal immigrants is astonishing. Right now there is a fingerprint system in use, but it is not as thorough as it could be.”

Ms. Parrish, of the rape victims’ organization, pointed to the case of Angel Resendiz, a Mexican immigrant who was known as the Railroad Killer. Starting in 1997, Mr. Resendiz committed at least 15 murders and numerous rapes in the United States. Over the years of his rampage, Mr. Resendiz was deported 17 times. He was executed in Texas in June.

“That was 17 missed opportunities to collect his DNA,” Ms. Parrish said. “If he had been identified as the perpetrator of the first rapes, it would have prevented later ones.”

Immigration lawyers said the DNA sampling could tar illegal immigrants with a criminal stigma, even though most of them have never committed any criminal offense.

“To equate somebody with a possible immigration violation in the same category as a suspected sex offender is an outrage,” said David Leopold, an immigration lawyer who practices in Cleveland.

Forensic DNA is culled either from a tiny blood sample taken from a fingertip (the F.B.I.’s preferred method) or from a swab of the inside of the mouth. Federal samples are logged into the F.B.I.’s laboratory, analyzed and transformed into profiles that can be read by computer. The profiles are loaded into a database called the National DNA Index System.

The F.B.I. also loads DNA profiles from local and state police into the federal database and runs searches. Only seven states now collect DNA from suspects when they are arrested; of those, only two states are authorized by their laws to send those samples to the federal database.

Mr. Neufeld, of the Innocence Project, said his group supported broad DNA collection from convicted criminals. But, he said, “There is no demonstrable nexus between being detained for an immigration matter and the likelihood you are going to commit some serious violent crime.”

The DNA amendment has divided women’s groups that are usually unified supporters of the Violence Against Women Act, which was adopted in 1994.

“We were stunned by the extraordinary, broad sweep of this amendment,” said Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations at Legal Momentum, a law group founded by the National Organization for Women. Ms. Jacobs recalled that the amendment had been adopted by a voice vote with little debate. She said many lawmakers eager to renew the act, which enjoys solid bipartisan support, appeared unaware of the scope of the DNA amendment.

“The pervasive problems of profiling in the United States will only be exacerbated by such a system,” Ms. Jacobs said, because Latino and other immigrants will be greatly over-represented in the database. She noted that the law required a court order to remove a profile from the system.

Many groups warned that the measure would compound already severe backlogs in the F.B.I.’s DNA processing. Mr. Fram of the F.B.I. said there had been an enormous increase in the samples coming to the databank since it started to operate in 1998, but no new resources for the bureau’s laboratory. Currently about 150,000 DNA samples from convicted criminals are waiting to be processed and loaded into the national database, Mr. Fram said.

He said the laboratory had added robot technology to speed the processing. But in the “worst case scenario,” where the laboratory receives one million new samples a year, Mr. Fram said, “there is going to be a bottleneck.”

Police chief Beheading plot being used as distraction from Blair woes

UK Daily
The senior policeman leading the investigation into an alleged plot to behead a Muslim British soldier believes the inquiry has been "hijacked" by the Government.

Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw was "seething" when he discovered Whitehall officials leaked sensitive details of Operation Gamble to the media in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the problems engulfing Tony Blair.
And he is said to be increasingly frustrated that the anonymous briefings may be impeding his officers' efforts to gather evidence.

A source close to Mr Shaw said: "He is angry that while he had played a straight bat there are others in Government departments who, without asking him, briefed the media about his inquiry."

Last Wednesday morning, only a few hours after the dawn arrests of nine men in Birmingham, Mr Shaw watched despairingly as details of the operation he hoped would remain secret flashed up on TV.

The source said: "He said through gritted teeth, "I haven't said any of those things - it has all come from London."

At one point, to the bewilderment of senior officers, details of the operation were being broadcast while one of the suspects had still to be found.

Mr Shaw never intended for the public to know, at least not yet, the existence of the alleged beheading plot, fearing the huge publicity would only further inflame Birmingham's Muslim communities at a time when he needs their assistance.

Following the leaks, senior officers were sent to try to pacify community leaders and explain that the police were not to blame.

Mr Shaw, a married father of two, is a highly espected figure among the city's ethnic minorities and is understood to be dismayed at the rancour in the Muslim community that the interference from Whitehall has produced.

The source said: "He feels the inquiry has been hijacked by those who don't have to live - as he does - with the direct consequences of what they say publicly.

"To my knowledge, he hasn't speculated as to what motivated these people to brief the media but it's really rather obvious that there are various agendas at work here."

Mr Shaw had released only scant information about the arrests, not operational details.

But the unofficial release of lurid detail about an alleged beheading plot - and an accompanying account of how two soldiers were used as "live bait" to try to flush out the suspects - dramatically raised the interest in the story.

Conveniently for the Government, it replaced the prisons crisis as the story of the week - and took the sting out of the cash-for-honours row that saw Tony Blair questioned by police for a second time.

Mr Shaw felt it necessary to spell out his discomfort in a news conference on Friday.

Referring to Birmingham, he said: "I am acutely aware that members of the community are confused and bewildered by what is being said by the media."

The Home Office said: "We have only released factual statements on the matter and the Secretary of State and the Attorney General have reminded media not to do anything that would prejudice the operation."

Top secret army cell recruiting Iraqi insurgent double agents

telegraph uk
Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone", the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG), and it has proved to be one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror.
Its members - servicemen and women of all ranks recruited from all three of the Armed Forces - are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents.

Working alongside the Special Air Service and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black, they have supplied intelligence that has saved hundreds of lives and resulted in some of the most notable successes against the myriad terror groups fighting in Iraq. Only last week, intelligence from the JSG is understood to have led to a series of successful operations against Sunni militia groups in southern Baghdad.

Information obtained by the unit is also understood to have inspired one of the most successful operations carried out by Task Force Black, in November 2005, when SAS snipers shot dead three suicide bombers.

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq up until his death in June last year, followed intelligence obtained by the JSG, as did the rescue of the kidnapped peace campaigner, Norman Kember.
"The JSG is the coalition's secret weapon," revealed one defence source. "Their job is to recruit and run covert human intelligence sources or agents - we never use the term informer. The Americans are in awe of the unit because they have nothing like them within their military."

During the Troubles, the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then "turning" members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA.

The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland.

The JSG recruits men and women of any rank from all three services up to the age of 42. Volunteers attend a two week pre-selection course where those not in possession of the unique set of skills required to handle agents successfully are weeded out.

Candidates who get through pre-selection then spend the next four months at the Intelligence Corps headquarters at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, being taught driving and close-quarter battle skills - operators must be capable of using a wide variety of weapons but must be expert shots with a pistol.

But most important of all, -volunteers must be able to befriend people they may actually despise, win their trust and persuade them to become agents, which in some cases will mean getting them to inform on friends and relatives. Those who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan.

Sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that in Baghdad intelligence is obtained in a variety of ways. Some of it comes through phone calls to a confidential hot-line where callers can either talk to a member of the JSG or arrange a meeting inside the "Green Zone". It is too dangerous for operators to meet agents at a secret rendezvous in other parts of the city.

With so many Iraqis entering the zone every day, those who want to pass on information can do so with a certain amount of anonymity. But a risk still remains. All potential agents are warned that anyone suspected of being a coalition spy will be tortured before being murdered. If he is married, his wife will be gang-raped in front of their children, who will in all probability also be murdered, they are told. Despite the risks, JSG operators deal with dozens of Iraqis every week who are -prepared, for a variety of reasons, to become informers.

"Some Iraqis come to us because they are simply fed up with the violence," said one source. "They may have had -members of their families -murdered, tortured or kidnapped. Unlike much of the middle class which has already fled the country, they may be too poor to leave and so they come to us to see if they can make a difference.

"They may have a little bit of information or detailed knowledge of a planned attack. We also have to deal with terrorists and that presents us with a difficulty. We are happy for them to pass us information but it is made absolutely clear to them that as a member of a terrorist group they are criminals and they should cease all activity immediately - we have had cases where Shia or Sunni men have provided us with information and as part of the debriefing process we have discovered that they are terrorists themselves. We warn them that they are running the risk of being killed or captured and that they should get themselves into a position within the organisation where they will not be directly involved in murder."

To senior American officers in Baghdad, the JSG is playing a vital role in the most important theatre of the war on terror.

"In many respects, Afghanistan is a side issue and that is something the Americans understand better than British politicians," said a source. "Ask any senior officer in Baghdad, given a choice, which war would they be prepared to lose and they will say the war in Afghanistan.

"In many respects the war in Iraq has redefined insurgent warfare. Think of the very worst of Northern Ireland combined with the very worst of the Balkans and you are coming close to life on a daily basis in Baghdad. The situation is chaotic and bordering on being hopeless. The Iraqis have absolutely no faith in their army or police force because they are all or nearly all linked to militias.

"Only the coalition forces can bring real security - if the war is lost chaos will reign and the whole of the region will be dragged into a bloody and catastrophic ethnic war."

Iraq report pessimistic over US role

guardian

The US has little control of events in Iraq and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, an intelligence assessment was expected to say today.

The long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq expressed uncertainty about the capacity of Iraqi leaders to transcend sectarian interests and fight extremists, establish effective national institutions and end corruption.

A two-page version is to be made public today, after the 90-page classified NIE was presented to the US president, George Bush, yesterday.

According to the Washington Post, the document emphasises that although al-Qaida actions remains a problem, they have been surpassed by sectarian violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to US goals. Iran, which the administration has accused of supplying and directing insurgents, is mentioned but is not a focus.

The NIE has been a source of controversy in the past. In October 2002, the NIE concluded - wrongly as it turned out - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was "reconstituting" his nuclear weapons programme. The document provided the case of going to war in Iraq.

The intelligence assessment, which provides projections for the next 18 months, comes amid growing opposition to Mr Bush's Iraq policies from Congress, now under Democratic control after the November midterm elections.

The Senate is expected to debate a resolution next week, which was put forward by senior Democrats and Republicans who oppose Mr Bush's plan to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq. Although the resolution would not be binding, its passage would be an embarrassment for the White House.

Even among the US military, there is disagreement on the Mr Bush's troop "surge". The outgoing top US general in Iraq, George Casey, yesterday said Mr Bush has ordered more troops than needed to quell violence in Baghdad.

Gen Casey, who is in line to become the chief of staff of the army, said he had asked for two brigades - 7,000 troops - of additional forces rather than the five brigades that his successor, General David Petraeus, is now seeking.

"I did not want to bring one more American soldier into Iraq than was necessary to accomplish the mission," Gen Casey said.

He has said in the past that increasing the number of US troops would raise tension between Iraqis and American soldiers.

He added, however, that he understood how Gen Petraeus might want the full complement of 21,500 additional troops. They could "either reinforce success, maintain momentum or put more forces in a place where the plans are not working," he told a senate confirmation hearing yesterday.

The Iraqi government is also unenthusiastic about the US troop increase. At his November meeting with Mr Bush in Amman, Jordan, the prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, presented the Americans with an Iraqi security plan that involved increased deployment of Iraqi troops in Baghdad. But according to White House officials, the US found the Iraqi plan "deficient" and concluded that American troops were needed.

Gen Casey yesterday acknowledged that Mr Maliki was not enthusiastic about the American troop increase. "He leans toward not wanting to have to bring in more coalition forces."

Britain 'moving towards a police state'

telegraph
One of Birmingham’s most senior Muslims has said that Britain is “moving towards a police state”, but he appealed for his co-religionists to stay calm in the wake of the arrest of nine men in an alleged kidnap plot.

Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said it was vital that Muslims in the city did not panic or become angry despite growing scepticism about the intelligence which led to the arrests on Wednesday.

Senior Birmingham Muslim says that Britain is moving towards a police state
Dr Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, said it was vital that Muslims in the city did not become angry

Dr Naseem’s call came after Islamic religious leaders nationwide urged Muslims to co-operate with police investigating the alleged plot to kidnap, torture and behead a British Muslim soldier.

Dr Naseem said that although it was “not a time to panic or get angry”, he disagreed with the manner of the arrests and the use of laws on the detention and questioning of suspects.

“This unfortunate country is moving towards a police state - the laws being passed are wrong and against the traditions of this country,” Dr Naseem said.

About 4,000 worshippers are expected to attend Friday prayers this afternoon at the Central Mosque, one of Europe’s largest.

The Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Muslim umbrella group, said “very serious allegations” had been made, and the police must be helped to complete their investigations.

A senior member of the council warned that the public glare of the media would damage the wider Muslim community even if the police raids later proved to be baseless.

“There is so much adverse publicity ,” he said. “There have been a number of cases where the police have moved in and nothing has been found. But by then the damage has been done.”

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said there was huge concern that the public formed impressions of Muslims from such “snap shots” as the Birmingham arrests.

West Midlands police held a public relations exercise in the area, distributing thousands of leaflets reassuring Muslims that they were not targeting communities or faiths, but suspected criminals.

Muslim groups point out that more than half of the 1,100 people arrested as terrorism suspects over the past five years have been released without charge.

Putin Frowns on U.S. Missiles in Europe

washington post

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday scoffed at Washington's claims that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in central Europe was intended to counter threats posed by Iran and said that Russia would take countermeasures.

U.S. officials have said that proposed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic will be designed to intercept missiles planned by Iran that would be capable of reaching eastern Europe and will not affect Russia's security. But Putin said the Kremlin didn't trust that claim.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

"Our military experts don't believe that the missile defense systems to be deployed in eastern Europe are intended to counter the threat from Iran or some terrorists," Putin said at his annual news conference, adding that Iran only has missiles which aren't capable of reaching Europe.

"We consider such claims unfounded, and, naturally, that directly concerns us and will cause a relevant reaction. That reaction will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly efficient," Putin said.

Putin said that Russia's latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that more effective weapons systems are being developed.

"We will have next-generation systems immune to any prospective missile defense," Putin said. He said that while missile defense systems under development will only be capable of tackling ballistic missiles, the new weapons will be capable of changing the altitude and direction of their flight on their way to target.

"Missile defense systems are helpless against that," Putin said.

He rejected allegations that the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in Europe could be a response to Russia's growing defense spending, saying the U.S. move had been planned long before growing oil revenues gave Russia a chance to increase its defense spending. He said Moscow's military budget is still 25 times smaller than Washington's defense spending.

Thousands in Mexico City Protest Rising Food Prices

new york times

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 31 — Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.

Left-wing parties joined the unions and peasant organizations that had called the protest. The protesters, some of whom handed out ears of corn, marched up Mexico City’s main avenue to the Zócalo, the site of protests through much of the summer and fall against Mr. Calderón’s election.

The high cost of tortillas and other food staples has consumed politics here over the past few weeks, posing a stubborn challenge to Mr. Calderón as he seeks to project an image as a take-charge leader. It has spilled into the ever-simmering debate here over the country’s commitment to free-market economics.

As marchers gathered at dusk in the city’s main square, a former television personality, Verónica Velasco, read a statement condemning the government’s policies. “While other countries are looking for alternatives to neoliberal policies, in Mexico, the government has lagged behind and insisted in applying a model that, after a quarter century, has shown its inefficiency and inequality,” the statement said.

As night fell, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate who narrowly lost to Mr. Calderón in July, spoke to the crowd.

City officials would not give an estimate of the size of the protest.

To opponents of Mr. Calderón’s government, the spike in the price of tortillas is further proof that the free-market policies he has pledged to continue benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The high prices are new ammunition for those who have previously pressed to renegotiate the agricultural chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide more protection for Mexican farmers, and for Mexico to end its dependence on imports of American corn and recover what nationalists call food sovereignty.

Mr. Calderón barely won a bitterly contested election in July against a leftist opponent who promised to roll back some of those policies. Aware that he would have to win over part of the population that has yet to see the benefits of free trade, Mr. Calderón quickly announced a series of social programs once he took office.

He also cracked down on the drug trade, establishing an image as a decisive executive. He ordered the army into several cities to fight drug violence and summarily extradited 11 drug trafficking suspects to the United States.

But the tortilla price spiral appeared to come as a surprise. Although Mr. Calderón moved quickly, announcing a pact on Jan. 18 to freeze prices, the problem has not been resolved.

Even with the pact, the news reports focused on the fact that the price ceiling for the tortillas of about 35 cents a pound was about 40 percent higher than the price three months earlier and contrasted that with the 4 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is still less than $5 a day.

But because fewer than 10 percent of tortilla producers signed on to the agreement, the government had little power over those who did not. In some areas, prices have risen to 45 cents a pound. There is little more that Mr. Calderón can do to contain prices without huge expenditures for subsidies. Most analysts agree that the main cause of the increase has been a spike in corn prices in the United States, as the demand for corn to produce ethanol has jumped.

But the uneven structure of Mexico’s corn and tortilla industry here has also generated accusations — none of them proved — of hoarding and profiteering. Mexico’s corn flour industry is controlled by just two companies, Grupo Maseca, also known as Gruma, and Minsa. Under the pact, Gruma agreed to keep prices for corn flour at 21 cents a pound. The government has promised to crack down on profiteers.

Ken Shwedel, an agricultural economist in Mexico City for the Dutch agribusiness bank Rabobank, said prices were likely to remain high in the United States, which supplies about 25 percent of Mexico’s corn.

“This is the first time you’ve got a real agricultural shock to the economy,” he said. “The market economy isn’t as benevolent as a state-run economy. The market is characterized by fluctuations. You have to live with it and know how to deal with it.”

The marchers clearly directed their blame at the government. “When they get involved in something as elemental as tortillas, well that’s just irresponsible,” said Francisco Ruiz, 48, a telephone worker.

Carola Ortega, 64, a member of a peasant group, said: “We’re here because the government always takes advantage of the poor. First it was tortillas, but we’re not stupid; if tortillas go up, everything else does too.”

Some analysts argue that the opposition has merely seized on a convenient issue and that the controversy will blow over.

“For the unions, it is about much more than tortillas,” said Vidal Romero, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, a Mexico City university. “They want to make it clear to the president that they still have strength and not let the government do what it wants.”

For the left, the tortilla issue is a new rallying cry after months of postelectoral protests. Mr. Romero said the left hoped to use the march to position itself as the main opposition force to Mr. Calderón’s presidency. “They want to draw oxygen from it,” he said.

Putin hopes Russia-Iran contact will reassure West

reuters

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said today he hoped a visit by Russia’s Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov to Tehran this month would help Iran reassure the West that it does not seek nuclear weapons.

“We hope that (Ivanov’s) visit to Iran will help us align our positions and will help convince our Iranian partners to take decisions that would improve the situation in a healthy way...and remove all suspicions in the international community about Iran’s alleged plans to create nuclear weapons,” Putin said during an annual news conference.

Western powers fear Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme will be used for atomic bombs and the UN Security Council passed a resolution in December imposing limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend the programme.

Iran says it has a right to develop its civilian nuclear sector and last month said it was pressing ahead with a plan to install 3 000 atomic centrifuges. Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Last month, Russia angered the US by delivering new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and said it would consider more requests from Tehran for defensive weapons.

Murdered spy had no reason to run, Putin says

guardian

The murdered former spy Alexander Litvinenko did not possess any secrets and had no reason to flee Russia, the country's president, Vladimir Putin, said today.

Facing more than 1,200 journalists at an annual televised press conference in the Kremlin's Round Hall, Mr Putin fielded questions on the deaths of the former KGB officer and the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

During the three and a half hour conference, he expressed mistrust over US proposals to site anti-missile systems in eastern Europe, rejecting the idea that these would only target possible missiles from Iran.

He also insisted Russia was not using its huge energy resources as a political weapon and rejected suggestions that he might try to orchestrate a succession as his second - and constitutionally final - term in office draws to a close.

Mr Litvinenko, in a statement made shortly before his death, accused Mr Putin of being involved in a plot to poison him. However, the Russian president said there had been no reason for Mr Litvinenko to flee to Britain, where he settled in 2000.

The former spy had complained of official harassment in Russia after making allegations about misconduct by the Russian security services.

"There was no need to flee anywhere. He did not carry any secrets at all," Mr Putin was quoted as saying by Reuters. "Whatever negative comments he had about his old job, he had already said everything. There could be nothing new in his words."

Mr Putin rejected suggestions Mr Litvinenko had been killed as part of a plot to discredit the Kremlin.

"Openly speaking, I don't believe in the conspiracy thesis," he said, also refusing to speculate on how Mr Litvinenko had ingested the radioactive poison that killed him.

The Russian president threatened unspecified but retaliatory measures against any US positioning of anti-missile defences in eastern Europe.

Washington has proposed putting a radar station in the Czech Republic and a battery of rockets in Poland. The Pentagon says the equipment is intended to detect and shoot down hostile missiles, which it says could come from Iran.

However, Mr Putin said: "Our specialists don't think that anti-missile systems in eastern Europe are aimed against terrorists or Iran. Can you really fight terrorists with ballistic missiles?"

When questioned about energy, he said Russia was simply trying to ensure it received a fair price for its oil and gas.

Last month, shipments of Russian oil to western Europe were interrupted for several days in a dispute over prices with Belarus, through which a Russian pipeline passes.

Gas supplies were also reduced in early 2006 when Moscow was locked in a similar disagreement with Ukraine.

However, Mr Putin denied any political motives. "We are always told that Russia is using its ... economic resources to achieve its foreign policy aims," he said. "This is not the case."

He said Moscow wanted to charge market prices after years of providing energy to ex-Soviet neighbours at subsidised tariffs.

"Russia has always met, and will continue to meet, its obligations to supply its customers, but we are not obliged to subsidise other countries' economies on an enormous scale," he added.

Mr Putin stressed that he would not nominate a designated successor ahead of the presidential elections scheduled to take place in March 2008.

"There will be no successor. There will be candidates for the post of president," he said. "The authorities' goal is to ensure the elections are held democratically."