UN Rwandan genocide court nets second fugitive in two months

A former senior Rwandan military officer indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1994 genocide in the tiny Central African country was handed over to the court today after being on the run for nearly nine years - the second fugitive to be delivered up in two months.

United States Will Remain in Afghanistan, Says Pentagon

Tuesday, October 06, 2009
16:05 Mecca time, 13:05 GMT

Gates: US will stay in Afghanistan

Al Jazeera News

View a news reports on the failed US policy in Afghanistan at the URLs below:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/10/20091064451860748.html#
http://media.smh.com.au/world/world-news/afghanistan-at-a-crossroads-770004.html

The US defence secretary has said American troops will not leave Afghanistan despite a lack of numbers that allows for Taliban’s revival.

Speaking at George Washington University on Tuesday, Robert Gates said troops had to stay but that the situation required some “momentous decisions” from Barack Obama, the US president.

“Because of our inability, and the inability, frankly, of our allies, [to send] enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now, it seems,” he said.

Gates said Washington could not afford to give al-Qaeda or the Taliban the propaganda victory of a US retreat.

“That country, and particularly the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is … where the mujahideen defeated the other superpower,” he said.

“They now have the opportunity to defeat a second superpower, which more than anything would empower their message and the opportunity to recruit and fund raise and plan operations.”

Pullout pressure

The comments by Gates, a former CIA chief, come as leftists and US foreign-policy critics increasingly call for a US pullout.

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the White House on Monday, and a few were arrested when they chained themselves to the gates.

Seeking to shore up support, Obama has invited senior Democratic and Republican politicians to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the war.

He will meet his national security team to continue the policy review on Wednesday and Friday.

Obama almost doubled the US troop total in Afghanistan to 62,000 to combat the worst violence since US-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001.

But signing off on the 30,000- to 40,000-troop increase that the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is said to have requested would be politically risky for Obama.

Unease within his own Democratic Party has been voiced increasingly, as is fatigue among the American public after eight years of war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s warning

Last week, McChrystal gave warning that Taliban fighters are gathering strength.

“The situation is serious and I choose that word very, very carefully,” he told military and defence experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London on Thursday.

“My best military judgment is that the situation is, in some ways, deteriorating.”

He went on to say that unrest across the country was up, and it was up “not only because there are more coalition forces, it is up because the insurgency is growing”.

Any plan that falls short of stabilising Afghanistan “is probably a shortsighted strategy”, McChrystal said, and he called openly for additional resources.

That prompted retired General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, to say on Sunday that military advice is best provided “up through the chain of command”.

Gates blames past lack of troops for Taliban edge

Tue Oct 6, 2009 10:10am EDT
By Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates blamed the Taliban’s revival on a past failure to deploy enough troops to Afghanistan and said U.S. forces would not withdraw whatever the result of President Barack Obama’s strategy review.

“We are not leaving Afghanistan. This discussion is about next steps forward and the president has some momentous decisions to make,” Gates said in a TV program taped at George Washington University on Monday and being aired by CNN on Tuesday.

Obama faces pivotal decisions after the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, presented a grim assessment of the eight-year war.

Eight American soldiers were killed last Saturday when tribal militia stormed two combat outposts in eastern Afghanistan, the worst U.S. loss in more than a year.

The administration is debating whether to send up to 40,000 more troops, or scale back the mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden.

Gates suggested U.S. and allied failure to put more troops into Afghanistan in the past, when then-president George W. Bush shifted resources to invade Iraq, gave the Taliban an edge.

“Because of our inability, and the inability, frankly, of our allies, (for putting) enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now, it seems,” Gates said.

Complicating the White House discussions are allegations of vote fraud in Afghanistan’s August presidential election, mostly aimed at incumbent and provisional winner Hamid Karzai.

Some say if Karzai is declared victor despite the charges it will undermine his government’s legitimacy. U.S. officials have cited the fraud allegations as a reason for the policy review.

VOTE COUNT RULES MAY HELP KARZAI

Afghan election authorities began a recount on Monday, but new rules appeared to make it unlikely Karzai’s preliminary win would be overturned and a second round vote take place.

The former deputy head of the U.N. mission in Kabul, U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith — sacked last week for outspoken views on voting fraud — said the method chosen to evaluate suspicious ballots was “not acceptable.”

The new rules from the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission treat suspicious ballot boxes the same regardless of which candidate received the suspect votes.

Galbraith told Reuters: “It cannot be correct to treat all presidential candidates equally for disqualification of ballots.”

“Let’s not mince words: there was one candidate who had control of the state apparatus.”

A final result from the poll will likely come next week.

Galbraith is close to Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s Afghanistan and Pakistan point man. Holbrooke is not considered a Karzai fan and is presumably a key player in the White House talks.

But more than Afghanistan politics are at issue in the talks.

In his CNN remarks, Gates said the United States could not afford to give al Qaeda and the Taliban the propaganda victory of a U.S. retreat in Afghanistan, where mujahideen forced the Soviet Union to withdraw after a decade of bloody warfare.

“That country, and particularly the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is the modern epicenter of jihad,” he said.

“And their view is … they now have the opportunity to defeat a second superpower, which more than anything would empower their message and the opportunity to recruit and fund raise and plan operations.

“What’s more important than that in my view is the message that it sends that empowers al Qaeda,” Gates said. “The notion that they have come back from this defeat, come back from 2002, to challenge not only the United States but NATO, 42 nations, is a hugely empowering message should they be successful.”

With casualties rising, U.S. public opinion has turned increasingly against what Obama’s aides once called the “good war,” in contrast to the Iraq war launched by Bush in 2003.

Seeking to shore up support, Obama invited senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the war. He will meet his national security team to continue the policy review on Wednesday and Friday.

Obama almost doubled the U.S. troop total in Afghanistan to 62,000 to combat the worst violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001. The U.S. invasion was in response to the September 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda, which had been given a haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Phil Stewart and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Alan Elsner and Jerry Norton)

NATO says kills 100 fighters in huge Afghan battle

Tue Oct 6, 2009 11:21am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO forces said Tuesday they had killed more that 100 fighters in a huge weekend battle in eastern Afghanistan in which eight Americans died, the deadliest firefight for U.S. troops in more than a year.

The revised enemy death toll gives an idea of the scale of the battle, one of the biggest of the eight-year-old war, in which hundreds of fighters armed with machine guns, rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attempted to storm remote outposts.

“A more detailed battlefield assessment following the October 3 attack in Nuristan has determined that enemy forces suffered more than 100 dead during the well-coordinated defense, significantly higher losses than originally thought,” NATO said in a statement.

The fighters launched their assault on two remote outposts in Nuristan province Saturday, triggering the 13-hour battle in a part of the country U.S. forces had already planned to abandon under a new strategy calling for a focus on population centres.

At least two Afghan soldiers died in the battle and authorities said they had lost contact with police in the area and did not know if they were captured or deserted.

The NATO statement said Western forces had concluded the attackers were local militants operating with the help of the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami group led by former anti-Soviet Mujahideen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Since the weekend assault, Afghan authorities say U.S. and Afghan forces have mounted a number of operations to retake areas held by the Taliban. U.S. officials say operations have taken place in the area but have not give further details.

(Reporting by Peter Graff; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Western Afghanistan, a new worry?

By Golnar Motevalli
Reuters

Herat province in west Afghanistan is seen as one of the country’s safest areas. It is one of the largest, most prosperous Afghan provinces — its capital’s wide, smooth and tree-lined boulevards are a far cry from Kabul’s crumbling skyline.

But the past few months have seen a sharp increase in violence.

Last month a cabinet minister and former militia leader, Ismail Khan, was the target of a bomb attack in Herat city. A day earlier, Herati traders took to the streets to protest against rising insecurity in the province.

Khan, who is seen by many Heratis as an icon of the anti-Taliban and anti-Soviet mujahedin, was unharmed, but three civilians were killed.

The district of Guzara in Herat has seen a spate of Taliban attacks, including the shooting dead of three men and the hanging of another and an ambush on a policeman’s home in which his teenage son was killed.

Since July at least 29 civilians have been killed in insurgent-linked attacks in Herat. Foreign troops, mainly Italians and Americans, are hit by roadside bombs or ambushed on a weekly basis.

While these attacks do not put Herat on a par with southern provinces such as Kandahar or Helmand — where the Taliban have grass-roots support in many areas — they still point to a considerable rise in instability in Herat, when compared to the same period last year.

Although the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, focusses mainly on the insurgency in the Pashtun tribal belt of the south and east, in
an interview with CBS news recently, he said the spread of violence to the mostly Tajik north and west was worse than he had expected.

Some analysts, including Ahmed Rashid, a prominent authority on the Taliban, have warned that the Taliban has been pushing further westwards and northwards for the past year in an effort to consolidate gains already made in northern provinces such as Badghis and Kunduz — where there are mainly European troops.

Iran might also have reason to be alarmed. Last month, three Afghan policemen at a checkpoint very close to the border with Iran were killed in a Taliban ambush about two months after they attacked an Iranian engineering company, killing one employee.

U.S. military and Afghan officials have said that the rise in Taliban attacks in the west is partly a result of July’s U.S. operation “Strike of the Sword” in southern Helmand province, which has pushed Taliban fighters to the west and north.

Farah province, which is sandwiched between Herat and Helmand, has also seen a sharp spike in violence since the U.S. operation and the Taliban now command checkpoints in districts
such as Bala Boluk. In April I accompanied U.S. and Afghan army patrols in Bala Boluk, but on my second visit to Farah in August, I was told the entire district was now pretty much a no-go zone.

Could Herat’s Guzara district, where much of the Taliban-related violence has taken place in the past months, be on the same slide into Taliban control?

And are the Italian troops, who make up the bulk of main foreign force in Herat, and whom the Taliban perceive as weaker than their U.S. counterparts, capable of containing the growth of the insurgency in the west?

New Taliban chief meets reporters

The new head of Pakistan’s Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, has met reporters in the country’s north-west, quashing persistent rumours he was dead.

It is the first public appearance by the Taliban chief since he took control after his predecessor was killed in a US missile attack in August.

Hakimullah Mehsud said he would avenge the killing of Baitullah Mehsud.

News of the meeting came as a suicide bomber targeted the UN’s offices in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that Hakimullah Mehsud’s decision to appear before the press indicates the Taliban are desperate to shore up the morale of their comrades in other regions.

The meeting comes at a time when the Pakistani army and US drones have been aggressively targeting the militant leadership in the region.

Hakimullah Mehsud met only journalists from his clan at a location which has not been disclosed. Five Mehsud reporters based near his stronghold in the tribal region of South Waziristan attended the clandestine meeting on Sunday.

It was held on condition that it could be reported only on Monday.

Very few other journalists were invited - those who were did not go for security reasons.

The Taliban commander’s appearance in public will end weeks of speculation on the part of Pakistani and US intelligence officials that he was in fact dead, our correspondent says.

Rumours of his demise persisted despite the fact that he had spoken to the BBC and other media outlets by telephone on a number of occasions in recent months.

Vengeance promised

Hakimullah Mehsud was flanked by senior Taliban commanders Qari Waliur Rehman and Qari Hussain - the man reputed to be responsible for training suicide bombers.

One of the journalists who was at the meeting told the BBC that all the militant leaders appeared to be in good health.

Hakimullah Mehsud said his group would avenge the killing of former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud by striking back at Pakistan and the US.

He said he would retaliate against recent efforts on the part of the US and Pakistani security forces to target senior Taliban figures.

A number of senior militant commanders have been killed in recent missile strikes along the troubled border with Afghanistan.

Hakimullah Mehsud’s brother was killed in a clash with security forces only last week.

The recent spate of strikes on Taliban commanders follows the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile attack in the tribal region of South Waziristan on 6 August.

After some weeks the Taliban acknowledged his death and put Hakimullah Mehsud, the young and feared commander from South Waziristan, at its helm.

Correspondents say a series of blasts across the country’s north-west in the past month show that the Taliban appear to be reasserting themselves after a series of setbacks.

This public appearance by Hakimullah Mehsud appears to be part of an effort to prevent the Pakistani Taliban from disintegrating, our correspondent says.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8290243.stm
Published: 2009/10/05 11:14:22 GMT

Suicide bomb hits UN in Pakistan

A suicide bomber dressed in military uniform has attacked the UN World Food Programme offices in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, killing five people.

Pakistan’s interior minister said an investigation had begun into security lapses after guards had allowed the man into the compound to go to the toilet.

Four of the dead are Pakistanis, the fifth is an Iraqi. The bomber died too.

It is unclear who is responsible but suspicion will fall on the Pakistani Taliban, correspondents say.

They promised revenge for the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in August and have been behind a series of recent attacks.

Last week, at least 16 people died in two suicide car bomb attacks in north-western Pakistan.

‘No to terrorists’

Local television footage showed smoke rising from the heavily fortified UN building, shortly after the early afternoon blast in its reception area.

A number of injured people are being treated in hospital.

The BBC’s Orla Guerin in Islamabad says heavily armed anti-terror police quickly ringed the compound and sniffer dogs were brought in.

For Pakistan this was an unwelcome reminder that their capital remains vulnerable, our correspondent says. It is further proof that the militants can still strike in spite of increased security precautions and ongoing army operations.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said an investigation had been launched into the security officials who had allowed the bomber, who was wearing a uniform of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, to enter.

Mr Malik said the attack would not “slacken the resolve” of Pakistan’s efforts to counter the Taliban.

He said: “The operations that we carried out against them in Swat, North Waziristan and South Waziristan have broken their back. They are like a wounded snake.”

Mr Malik added: “I want to make it clear to the terrorists that the entire nation is united, and the entire nation says no to Taliban, no to oppressors, no to terrorists, no to extremists.”

‘Heinous crime’

Earlier, a WFP employee, Sajjad Anwar, said about 100 people were working in the compound at the time.

“Walls of the building have cracked because of the intensity of the blast,” he said.

“I don’t know how this could have happened. We have private security as well as government-provided police.”

The WFP said five of its staff members had been confirmed dead.

They included two Pakistani finance assistants and an Iraqi information and communication technology officer.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack.

“This is a heinous crime committed against those who have been working tirelessly to assist the poor and vulnerable,” he said in Geneva.

The attack came as Britain’s defence and home ministers visited Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials on the role Pakistan plays in combating terror in the UK.

A British embassy spokesman said: “I’m not prepared to say where they are staying, but it is safe to say they were not affected.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8290059.stm
Published: 2009/10/05 16:18:01 GMT

Who Controls American Foreign Policy?

Who controls American foreign policy?

By Reason Wafawarova in PERTH, Australia
Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald

ON January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush coined the phrase “axis of evil” as he singled out Iran, Iraq and North Korea as “posing a serious threat to the civilised world”, and he collectively accused all the three countries and other unnamed countries of developing “weapons of mass destruction”.

On March 5, 2009 Bush’s successor Barack Obama announced an extension of the United States’ illegal economic sanctions regime on Zimbabwe by a year, telling the world that Zimbabwe “poses a continuing and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”.

For North Korea the mainstream debate that presents the conflict between Pyongyang and Washington is that the North Koreans are an unscrupulous lot up to developing a mass killing weapon so they can bring an end to this planet.

Indeed the Western mainstream society is dead scared although the majority of the world’s population finds the assertion thoroughly laughable.

A similar debate rages on for Iran and we are told the Iranians want to “wipe Israel off the map” and that the country is such a bunch of “extremist Muslims” that if allowed to have a nuclear bomb, they will enjoy blowing off the planet with one nuclear strike.

In simple black and white colours, the US confrontation with Iran is presented as the good Judeo-Christian world against the evil Islamic extremism world.

For Iraq the initial mainstream debate was similar to that of North Korea and Iran and former British premier Tony Blair spiced up this debate on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by claiming that Iraq was about to destroy the world “in 48 hours”.

Saddam Hussein was presumably armed to the hilt with weapons of mass destruction and had to be disarmed by the good boys of this planet — the Westerners, led by the most righteous Americans.

When the weapons of mass destruction could not be found anywhere, the Americans and their world-saving Western crack team simply shifted public debate to a new dimension where we were told if weapons of mass destruction did not exist in Iraq, as indeed was the case, then the occupying Western forces could as well “free the Iraqis” from themselves and “create a democracy” in the primitive Islamic state.

Those members of the public who publicly loath this doctrine and refuse to follow the logic of this nonsense are reminded that after all Iraq, like Iran “supports and exports terrorism”, so they can at least be scared and sympathise with Washington’s sabre-rattling foreign policy.

For Zimbabwe, the mainstream debate is that President Mugabe does not respect “property rights” and violates the human rights of indigenous Zimbabweans by denying them the chance to be ruled by Morgan Tsvangirai and his Washington-sponsored and London founded MDC-T party.

The debate continues to outline how President Mugabe destroyed “the Jewel of Africa” and how he destroyed “the bread basket of Africa” by “grabbing land” from “skilled white commercial farmers”.

At the centre of US foreign policy on North Korea is the Korean peninsula and the threat to Seoul. For Iran and Iraq, the central issue is Israel and the Zionist dream of controlling the Middle East.

For Zimbabwe, the centre of US foreign policy is the Anglo-Rhodesians who lost the land they held to President Mugabe’s land reform policy, and on the lunatic fringe of this nucleus is the MDC-T with its ill-thought vision of turning Zimbabwe into a United States client state whose welfare and economic backing will be reminiscent to that of Israel — almost totally backed by aid from the Mighty Empire.

The United States is the dog in the Middle East and Israel is the tail. They are the dog for North Korea and South Korea is the tail.

For Zimbabwe, the US is still the dog and the MDC-T-Anglo-Rhodesian alliance is the tail.

The question is what is happening with US foreign policy for all these places?

We have heard of recent confessions by MDC insiders that the so called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001; the US sanctions law on Zimbabwe, was actually drafted at a hotel inside Zimbabwe by a team of legal people from Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s MDC.

There are numerous similar reports of Israel drafting US policy on Middle East countries as well as South Korea’s role in supplying intelligence on the US foreign policy on North Korea.

Can we say it is the “dog wagging the tail” or the “tail wagging the dog”? Yet others like Jonathan Cook, the author of “Israel and The Clash of Civilisations” argue that it is the “dog and the tail wagging each other”, something he calls “organised chaos”.

The “dog wagging the tail” model is championed by Noam Chomsky who argues that the contradiction between US interests and its policies on the ground is only apparent and not real.

He argues that in truth, the US is just pursuing its long-standing strategy of bullying non-compliant states in the Middle East and elsewhere to secure control of such resources as oil and minerals.

Clearly, the Bush regime was intending to cream off much of Iraq’s wealth, giving Anglo-American corporations the right to plunder from many of the country’s vast oilfields for the foreseeable future, just like the Bush-Blair alliance sought to restore Anglo-Rhodesian control of Zimbabwe’s farmlands.

When asked about the reasons for a possible attack on Teheran by an interviewer in 2007, Chomsky had this to say:

“There are several issues in the case of Iran. One is simply that it is independent and independence is not tolerated.

“Sometimes it is called successful defiance in the internal record. Take Cuba. A very large majority of the US population is in favour of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations.

“And even part of the business world is in favour of it too. But the US government won’t allow it. It’s attributed to the Florida vote but I don’t think that’s much of the explanation.

“I think it has to do with a feature of world affairs that is insufficiently appreciated. International affairs are very much run like the mafia.

“The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money.

“You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.”

Chomsky argued that it is not only that Iran has substantial resources and that it is part of the world’s major system but it also defied the United States.

He raised the point that the United States overthrew the Iranian parliamentary government in 1953 and installed a brutal tyrant, helped him to develop nuclear power; in fact the very same programmes that are now considered by the United States and other Western countries to be a threat.

Chomsky argued that the US government sponsored this programme, by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kissinger, and others in the 1970s, as long as the Shah was in power.

This argument is the dog wagging its tail. It portrays the US using Israel to destabilise the Middle East, using South Korea to control the Korean peninsula, the MDC-T-Anglo-Rhodesian alliance to topple Zanu-PF and President Mugabe, its leader and so on and so forth.

Chomsky’s argument is plausible but fails to answer why the White House ignored documented Pentagon advice that Bush was better off negotiating with Iran, or why the earlier decision to occupy Iraq in 1991 was taken against expert advice from Washington hawks; who argued that the containment policy on Saddam Hussein was more successful than the chaos that followed the invasion.

It is interesting that while Cuba was contained through sanctions and Iran was attacked by the US, via the efforts of Iraq, both methods failed to bring the desired regime change just like the embargo on Mugabe’s Zimbabwe also has so far failed to bring the desired regime change.

The US had an opportunity to engage Iranians and persuade them against the enrichment of uranium in 2003 when Teheran wrote to the White House seeking negotiations.

That method could have ended the stalemate that exists today, but the United States ignored the hand extended by Iran.

This move goes against Chomsky’s argument of the US seeking obedience and compliance.

It suggests another possibility, a third force interest; the tail wagging the dog. This is where the monstrous and murderous ambitions of Israel come into play.

Israel wants Iran annihilated and destroyed so that it can remain unrivalled as a Middle East super power, and negotiations with Iran are an insult to the ambitions of Israel.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two American professors, provided the alternative to Chomsky’s hypothesis.

They argued for the tail wagging the dog scenario where they wrote in an article published in the London Review of Books, after American publications refused it, that the pro-Israel lobby, uniquely among Washington lobby groups, had managed to push US foreign policy in a totally self-destructive direction.

Although Israel was not a vital strategic asset, argued the professors, its policy goals were being pursued above Washington’s.

They wrote: “The Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria, and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.”

The end result is that the US policy ends up looking identical to that of its clients, be it the Israeli position on Palestine, Iran or Hezbollah.

The same goes for the MDC-T’s position on who should run Zimbabwe’s central bank or the Attorney General’s office. The MDC-T talks like the Americans and the Americans talk like the MDC-T.

Johnnie Carson talks like he is the identical twin of Tendai Biti and so on and so forth.

But is Washington so supine to allow foreign powers to hijack foreign policy?

Would the US Congress endorse a Bill drafted by a team of third world citizens at a hotel in a remote bush in a third world African country as law?

How would other powerful elites like the executives of corporations afford to allow Israel to compromise the US national interests without expelling such “foreign bodies”?

These are the challenges to the Mearsheimer-Walt hypothesis and indeed this has always been the defence publicly offered by Zimbabwe’s MDC-T — that they are too small to influence what the Americans want to do on Zimbabwe.

They argue that they will not bother adding their voice to the growing call for the lifting of illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe because they reckon such a call would not make a difference anyway.

But do they believe in that call themselves? Does Prime Minister Tsvangirai really want to have ZDERA repealed and does he want to see the illegal sanctions he fought so hard to mobilise lifted? Is that in his political interest?

It would be naive to say Jewish and American neo-cons put more loyalty to Israel than they do to the US. That fails to explain the motivations of such hardcore neo-conservatives like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Bolton and Collin Powell.

It may be that we may have to go by the third model from Jonathan Cook.

He argues that these tails, be it Israel, Taiwan, MDC-T, South Korea or the disgraced Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan — all of them somehow push their agenda through by persuading the US neo-cons that their respective goals are all related and compatible with US broader interests.

Cook argues that Israel’s ambitions to be a small empire in the Middle East can easily be married to the US’ interests in controlling the oil resource in that region.

It can be argued that the MDC-T ambitions to form a government in Zimbabwe can easily be married to the US plan to establish client states in Africa, and this is this writer’s argument and it is not from Cook.

In this vein the US Congress could have endorsed ZDERA on the basis of how the law would coincide with their broader interest of restoring white hegemony in Zimbabwe’s agrarian sector as well as establishing a client black government in the country.

Otherwise it is hard to see how the US could ever allow a situation where a US law was actually drafted by foreigners, let alone those from an African country, as indeed is said to have happened with the drafting of ZDERA.

It is interesting to watch the dog and the tail wagging each other but this may as well be the scenario. The MDC-T may be that tail that can wag the dog for or in the name of the dog’s own interests.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova.com or visit www.rwafawarova. com

DPRK May Return to Nuclear Weapons Talks

North Korea ‘may return to talks’

North Korea says it may be willing to return to six-party international talks on its nuclear weapons programme, state media have reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is said to have made the announcement to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao before he left Pyongyang after a three-day visit.

But Mr Kim said the return would be dependent on the progress of its planned bilateral talks with the US.

The US says it remains ready to engage with North Korea.

Highlighting the urgency of restarting talks, a South Korean source said the North appeared to be in the final stages of restoring the nuclear programme at Yongbyon that it had shut down before abandoning the six-party process.

“We have obtained indications that point to restoration work being in the final stages,” Reuters news agency quoted the source as saying.

“The work to restore nuclear facilities at Yongbyon has been ongoing since early this year.”

‘Vital consensus’

The six-party talks, which began in 2003, constitute delegates from the two Koreas, China, the US, Russia and Japan.

The forum reached deals in 2005 and 2007, under which the North shut down its plants at Yongbyon and began disabling them in return for aid and security guarantees.

But the last talks were in December 2008, and in April this year North Korea said the negotiations were over for good, following widespread condemnation of its long-range missile launch.

A month later, tensions rose still further when the North conducted an underground nuclear test.

In recent weeks, though, the North has shown signs of a more conciliatory approach, and on Monday Mr Kim told Mr Wen that Pyongyang was “willing to attend multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, depending on the progress in its talks with the United States,” China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

“The hostile relations between the DPRK [North Korea] and the United States should be converted into peaceful ties through the bilateral talks without fail,” North Korea’s state news agency KCNA quoted Mr Kim as saying.

US state department spokesman Ian Kelly said the aim for Washington was to convince Pyongyang to take the path to complete denuclearisation.

He said this remained the core objective, and that the multi-party process was the best mechanism for achieving that.

“We and our six-party partners want North Korea to engage in a dialogue that leads to complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula through irreversible steps,” Mr Kelly said.

Gymnastics display

Mr Wen has just completed a three-day trip to North Korea, to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the countries.

China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner and is the country which holds the greatest sway over the secretive Pyongyang regime.

The importance of Mr Wen’s visit was underlined when he was met on arrival on Sunday by Mr Kim.

Mr Kim accompanied Mr Wen to a Korean opera, where the two held “friendly talks”, Xinhua said.

He also escorted the Chinese party to a special performance of the Arirang mass gymnastics display marking the anniversary.

According to KCNA, performers and the audience “broke into cheers of ‘Hurrah!’, shaking the stadium, and fireworks were displayed to beautifully decorate the nocturnal sky”.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8291882.stm
Published: 2009/10/06 08:21:00 GMT

Madagascar News Update: African Union Commissioner Jean Ping SaysAugust Deal Must Stand

AU Chief: August Deal Only Way to Solve Madagascar Crisis

By VOA News
06 October 2009

The African Union is calling on Madagascar’s political rivals to stick to an August power-sharing deal, saying “there is no other alternative” to ending the country’s political crisis.

AU commissioner Jean Ping made the remarks Tuesday in Antananarivo, where he met with fellow mediators on the International Contact Group for Madagascar.

Mr. Ping assembled the foreign envoys to discuss ways of restoring political order to the island nation.

Police fired tear gas to disperse a small number of protesters who had gathered outside the meeting.

Madagascar’s current leader, Andry Rajoelina, ousted President Marc Ravalomanana with the military’s help in March.

Mr. Rajoelina formed his own administration in September after the four main political factions could not agree who would hold top positions.

The African Union says the move violates the August 9 accord, which requires all sides to agree on appointments to an interim government.

Both the AU and the Southern African Development Community have refused to recognize Mr. Rajoelina as president.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

Madagascar police use tear gas on protesters

(AP) ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Police have dispersed protesters with tear gas outside a meeting of mediators who hope to smooth over Madagascar’s post-coup political turmoil.

African Union commissioner Jean Ping says the third meeting of African Union and southern African mediators on Tuesday hopes to reach a peaceful political solution after a coup in March.

Military-backed politician Andry Rajoelina overthrew President Marc Ravalomanana, who is now in exile. Rajoelina drew criticism from other African governments for unilaterally forming a new government in September, violating an accord that demands that all parties agree on appointments.

Mediators resume talks on Madagascar crisis

(AFP) ANTANANARIVO — The International Contact Group for Madagascar resumed talks on Tuesday to push for the implementation of agreements to end the island nation’s political crisis.

Madagascar’s four main political groups signed a deal in August in the Mozambican capital Maputo to form an interim authority, but have since disagreed over the distribution of key positions.

The island’s leader Andry Rajoelina, who in March toppled president Marc Ravalomanana, unilaterally named a transitional government in disregard of the Maputo accord. This has been an obstacle to progress.

But at the weekend, Rajoelina said he would honour the August agreement and accept a new prime minister agreed on by his rivals on condition the international community lifts sanctions and backs the transitional process.

“There is no other alternative to Maputo,” said Jean Ping, the African Union commission chief who also heads the contact group, referring to the August agreement.

Ping said Rajoelina’s weekend comments would be discussed in Tuesday’s meeting, the third by the international contact group since April.

“We are going to study how to implement a return to constitutional order,” Ping said.

The four political groups include those of Rajoelina, Ravalomanana and former presidents Didier Ratsiraka and Albert Zafy who were represented by delegations at the talks in Antananarivo.

In addition to Ping, the International Contact Group is made up of former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano and representatives from the United Nations, the International Organisation of La Francophonie, the Indian Ocean Commission, the European Union, France and the United States.

The Indian Ocean island has been mired in a political crisis since early this year following months of anti-government protests that culminated when Rajoelina toppled his rival on March 17 with the army’s backing.

New PM likely to be appointed at mediation talks

2009-10-06 10:47 TU

Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina is expected to name a new Prime Minister at a meeting with the International Contact Group on Madagascar which began on Tuesday morning in the country’s capital, Antananarivo.

“We are going to study how to implement a return to constitutional order,” said African Union chief Jean Ping, who heads the conciliation efforts.

Ping insisted that there is no alternative to the agreement reached in the Mozabican capital, Maputo, in August. There the four main political groups agreed to form an interim authority but they have since fallen out over who will hold key positions.

Rajoelina, who unilaterally named a transitional government with Monja Roindefo as Prime Minister after the Maputo talks, said on Sunday that he will now implement the deal. But he named two conditions - international sanctions must be lifted and foreign powers must give written commitments to support an election as part of the transitional process.

A small group of demonstrators declared support for Roindefo outside Tuesday’s meeting.

Rajeolina took power, with army backing, in March.

The mediators will meet representatives of Rajeolina and deposed President Marc Ravalomanana, as well as two former Presidents, Albert Zafy and Didier Ratsikara, who are expected to play a key role in negotiations.

In addition to Ping, the International Contact Group is made up of former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano and representatives from the UN, the International Organisation of La Francophonie, the Indian Ocean Commission, the European Union, France and the US.

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How Will the Next $1.5 Million Be Spent on ‘Monitoring’ the DetroitPolice?

Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Ron Scott
313.399.7345

How Will the Next $1.5 Million Be Spent?

Coalition Calls for Inclusion in New Police Monitor Choice

10/6/09—The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality released this statement today about the appointment of new Police Monitor Robert Warshaw by Judge Julian Cook:

Newly appointed Police Monitor Robert Warshaw and Deputy Monitor Thomas Lusby are both police officials. This fact raises questions for us, given the character and culture of policing that exists throughout the United States. Our question: can cops police cops?

We feel it is imperative that we–as the citizens who brought the long train of civil rights violations and shootings violations which have not yet abated-—to the public’s attention some 13 years ago be central to the monitoring process.

The City of Detroit has already paid more than $300 million in the last 13 years in lawsuits regarding police misconduct. It is only with the direction of the citizens who are most abused that this or any Monitor can evaluate or make any recommendations to stem the tide of lives lost and lawsuit money paid.

We continue our call for Judge Cook to include aggrieved families as “parties of interest” in these Consent Judgments. We will be watching closely to see if Mr. Warshaw is willing to balance his police-heavy team with many of those who have recommended the changes in the police department that he will only reiterate.

The Coalition remains vigilant in its challenge to Judge Cook to “monitor the Monitor,” and to work hard to ensure that a true culture change is achieved within the Detroit Police Department. In short, we look for transparency, inclusion, and accountability in this process.

Killing of Nigerian news editor draws condemnation from top UN official

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom today condemned the recent killing of a Nigerian news editor, and called on authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.