Israeli warplanes hit Gaza tunnels

By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – President Barack Obama's new Mideast envoy sought Wednesday to boost a 10-day-old Gaza cease-fire that was thrown into turmoil, as Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza smuggling tunnels in retaliation for a Palestinian bombing that killed a soldier.

The Israeli Cabinet met to consider how far to go in its response to Tuesday's bombing. U.S. envoy George Mitchell said it was "critical" that the cease-fire be extended, as he met Egypt's president before heading to Jerusalem.

The violence is the worst since Israel and Hamas separately declared cease-fires on Jan. 18 to end a three-week Israeli offensive against the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip. Since withdrawing its troops, Israel has threatened to retaliate hard for any violations of the informal truce.

The soldier was killed Tuesday on Israel's frontier with the Gaza Strip by a roadside bomb planted on the Gaza side and set off by remote control, the military said. Three other soldiers patrolling the border were injured.

Israel responded swiftly, sending tanks and bulldozers into northern Gaza to plow up the attack site and launching an airstrike that wounded a Hamas militant "who was prominent in the organization accountable for the attack," the military said. Hamas said the Israeli strike injured one of its men as he rode a motorcycle in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

Airstrikes early Wednesday targeted the network of tunnels used to smuggle arms, money and people into Gaza from Egypt. Israel bombed the tunnels heavily during the war, but smugglers resumed work after the cease-fire.

There was no claim of responsibility for Tuesday's bombing, but Ramattan, a Palestinian news agency, released a video of the roadside bombing allegedly filmed by militants it did not identify.

The images showed a large explosion next to a jeep moving on the Israeli side of the border fence. A huge plume of smoke emerges as the jeep stops. Two Israeli soldiers are then seen running toward the jeep, and gunfire is directed at them before a secondary blast hits them, too.

"Hamas unfortunately controls the Gaza strip and is directly responsible for all hostile fire from Gaza into Israel," government spokesman Mark Regev told The Associated Press.

"Israel wants the quiet in the south to continue but yesterday's attack is a deliberate provocation designed to undermine and torpedo the calm. If Hamas acts to undermine the cease-fire, it will have no one but itself to blame for the consequences," he said.

The violence cast a shadow over the start of Mitchell's tour. Obama said his envoy would listen to all sides to then craft an approach for moving forward with stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Before his tour, Israeli officials said Mitchell would also discuss ways to solidify the cease-fire into a longer term truce — a complicated prospect that will require international arrangements to ensure that border crossings into Gaza are opened while preventing Hamas from rearming by smuggling in weapons.

In Cairo, Mitchell met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The American envoy was to head later in the day to Jerusalem to meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, top security officials and pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Mitchell has no plans to meet with Hamas, which the U.S., Israel and European Union consider a terrorist group. Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in June 2007. Hamas' control of Gaza, and its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, are considered major obstacles to peace efforts.

Jewish settlers in the West Bank were planning a Jerusalem demonstration to coincide with the visit by Mitchell, who in a 2001 report urged Israel to freeze settlements in the West Bank.

Yishay Hollender, a spokesman for settlers' umbrella group, the Yesha Council, said settlers will drive to Jerusalem a float depicting the dangers to Israel of a Palestinian state as a "reception" for Mitchell.

The Israeli pro-peace group Peace Now released a report Wednesday saying West Bank settlements expanded more in 2008 than they had the previous year. The report said 1,257 new structures were built in settlements during 2008, compared to 800 in 2007, an increase of 57 percent.

The group said building more than doubled in settler outposts, which unlike settlements are not recognized by the Israeli government — with 261 structures erected in 2008, compared to 98 the year before.

The Israeli government has promised to dismantle outposts. The Palestinians demand a complete halt to settlement building in the West Bank during peace negotiations, saying their expansion is taking land they demand for an independent state.

At his West Bank headquarters, Abbas said Tuesday he was looking forward to working with the new administration.

The Israeli offensive killed nearly 1,300 people, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $2 billion in damage. The international community is trying to broker a long-term cease-fire and figure out how to rebuild the coastal territory.

Obama tells Arabic network US is 'not your enemy'

By PAUL SCHEMM, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt – President Barack Obama chose an Arabic satellite TV network for his first formal television interview as president, part of a concerted effort to repair relations with the Muslim world that were damaged under the previous administration.

Obama cited his Muslim background and relatives, practically a taboo issue during the U.S. presidential campaign, and said in the interview, which aired Tuesday, that one of his main tasks was to communicate to Muslims "that the Americans are not your enemy."

The interview on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel aired as Obama's new envoy to the region, former Sen. George J. Mitchell, arrived in Egypt on Tuesday for a visit that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Obama said the U.S. had made mistakes in the past but "that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."

Obama also emphasized the importance of engaging with Iran, a country the Bush administration often singled out as the most dangerous in the region.

Obama condemned Iran's threats against Israel, pursuit of nuclear weapons and support of terrorist organizations, but said "it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress."

Obama's predecessor, former President George W. Bush, launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which prompted a massive backlash against the U.S. in the Muslim world.

In contrast to the enthusiastic reception Obama's victory has garnered around the world, the Arab world has been much more cautious about the new U.S. president — with most people skeptical that American policy in the region will change substantially.

"I can't be optimistic until I see something tangible," said Hatem al-Kurdi, 35, a Gaza City engineer who saw parts of the interview. "Anyone can say nice words, but you have to follow with actions."

"He seems very interested in the Middle East issue but he didn't say exactly what he's going to do about it," Kurdi added.

After earlier dismissing Obama as following the same policies as his predecessor, officials from the militant Palestinian Hamas group softened their stance against the new president Tuesday.

"In the last couple of days there have been a lot of statements (from Obama), some of them very positive, and choosing this George Mitchell as an envoy," said Ahmed Youssef, a senior Hamas official interviewed on the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news network. "I think there are some positive things we have to count."

Obama's choice of Al-Arabiya network, which is owned by a Saudi businessman, follows the lead of the Bush administration, which gave several presidential interviews to that news channel.

"The U.S. sees Al-Arabiya as a friendly Arab channel, whereas they see Al-Jazeera as confrontational," said Lawrence Pintak, director of the journalism training center at the American University in Cairo.

Hady Amr, director of the Brookings Doha Center, an arm of the U.S. think-tank in the Qatari capital, described decision to make the first presidential interview with an Arabic news network as "stunning."

"President Obama has made it absolutely clear ... that a central priority will be repairing America's relations with the Muslim world," he said. "If that's his objective, I'd say he's been hitting home run after home run."

In the interview, Obama called for a new partnership with the Muslim world "based on mutual respect and mutual interest." He talked about growing up in Indonesia, the Muslim world's most populous nation, and noted that he has Muslim relatives.

Obama's Kenyan father was born Muslim, though a self-described atheist, and many of his relatives in Kenya are practicing Muslims. As a child, Obama lived for a number of years in Indonesia while his mother as doing research there.

This appeal does seem to have struck a chord among many Muslims.

"He's different from the previous presidents, perhaps because of his color or his Islamic background. My views of America are different now than they were during the Bush administration," said Youssef Ali, 45, who works for the Iraqi Electricity Ministry in Baghdad.

Most of Obama's interview focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is widely perceived in the Middle East as the most pressing issue in a region filled with animosities.

Obama said he felt it was important to "get engaged right away" in the Middle East and had directed Mitchell to talk to "all the major parties involved." His administration would craft an approach after that, he said.

"What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating," Obama told the interviewer.

The president reiterated the U.S. commitment to Israel as an ally and to its right to defend itself. But he suggested that both Israel and the Palestinians have hard choices to make.

"I do believe that the moment is ripe for both sides to realize that the path that they are on is one that is not going to result in prosperity and security for their people," he said, calling for a Palestinian state that is contiguous with internal freedom of movement and can trade with neighboring countries.

On Tuesday, Gaza's fragile truce was threatened when a bomb detonated by Palestinian militants exploded next to an Israeli army patrol along the border with Gaza, killing one soldier and wounding three.

Obama also said that recent statements and messages issued by the al-Qaida terror network suggest they do not know how to deal with his new approach.

"They seem nervous," he told the interviewer. "What that tells me is that their ideas are bankrupt."

In his latest message on Jan. 14, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden said Obama had been left with a "heavy inheritance" of Bush's wars. Shortly after the election, the network's number two, Ayman al-Zawahri described Obama with a demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of whites.

The message suggested the terror network was worried Obama could undermine its rallying cry that the U.S. is an enemy oppressor.

"There's no actions that they've taken that say a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them," said Obama about al-Qaida.

Gates says more troops for Afghanistan by summer

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday "we are lost" unless the United States can find a way not to kill so many civilians in the pursuit of militants in Afghanistan, and that flooding the chaotic country with U.S. troops would be a disaster.

Gates, the only Republican Cabinet member whom President Barack Obama asked to stay on, told a Senate panel that the Pentagon could send two more brigades to Afghanistan by late spring and a third brigade by late summer to try to salvage a war that has ground to a grim standoff with entrenched and resourceful militants.

The U.S. is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, still less than half the number currently in Iraq and a modest commitment when compared with the "surge" of U.S. forces and resources credited with turning around a flagging fight in Iraq.

But Gates said he is deeply skeptical about adding any more U.S. forces beyond that, in part because military dominion in Afghanistan has failed for every great power that tried it.

"The civilian casualties are doing us an enormous harm in Afghanistan, and we have got to do better," to avoid innocent deaths, even though the Taliban militants use civilians as cover, Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem, rather than as part of their solution. And then we are lost."

Bracing and blunt, Gates outlined an agenda for Afghanistan that is closely focused on U.S. strategic needs in a battle against terrorism and extremism, and that trims the democratic ambitions of the Bush administration.

"We need to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves in Afghanistan," Gates said.

The United States should keep its sights on one thing: preventing Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists who would harm the U.S. or its allies, Gates said.

"Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," Gates said, referring to a haven of purity in Norse mythology. "Nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience or money, to be honest."

Gates joined U.S. fortunes in Afghanistan to the related struggle against extremism in Pakistan, but signaled no reduction in U.S. missile strikes or other raids that infuriate both peoples and besmirch the U.S.-backed governments in Kabul and Islamabad.

"Both President Bush and President Obama have made clear that we will go after al-Qaida wherever al-Qaida is and we will continue to pursue them," Gates said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also indicated missile strikes will continue. He said rules for using missiles in Afghanistan were carefully set, and while the Pentagon has studied possible changes to the rules the U.S. commander there has not asked for one.

"I don't think we can succeed in Afghanistan if civilians keep dying there," Mullen said. "And we've got to figure out a way to absolutely minimize that, the goal being zero."

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the nation's top military priority, Mullen said, and he echoed Gates' sober assessment of Afghanistan.

"The risk of where we are in Afghanistan right now in terms of outcomes, I think ... is pretty high right now because it's not going well and it hasn't been going well for a significant period of time," Mullen told reporters at the Foreign Press Center.

To the constellation of problems in Afghanistan — corruption, the flourishing drug trade and the limited competence of the central government — Mullen added the fact, plain but rarely said, that the United States couldn't do as much as it might have liked to counter the resurgence of the Taliban because its troops were tied up in Iraq.

The Taliban and other militants now control wide swaths of territory. Last year, 151 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan, the most in any year since the U.S. invaded the Taliban-ruled country in late 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden.

Gates testified before Senate and House committees as Obama considers options for drawing down operations in Iraq and doubling the force size in Afghanistan. Obama planned to meet Wednesday with the service chiefs.

The issue of civilian deaths is increasingly sensitive in Afghanistan, with President Hamid Karzai accusing the U.S. of killing civilians in three separate cases over the last month. Karzai has repeatedly warned the U.S. and NATO to guard against killing civilians, saying such deaths undermine his government and the international mission.

Karzai met Tuesday in the capital with relatives of some of those killed. He told the villagers he has given the U.S. and NATO one month to respond to a draft agreement that calls for increased Afghan participation in military operations.

Indonesia seeks access to Guantanamo terror suspect

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia is prepared to try alleged Al-Qaeda bomb plotter Hambali if he is returned to his homeland after the planned closure of the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, police said Tuesday.

Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003 on suspicion of being one of Al-Qaeda's senior operatives in Southeast Asia and a top member of terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a spate of deadly attacks across the region.

Indonesian police said Jakarta had asked the US authorities for permission to meet and interview Hambali at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in anticipation of a possible handover once the prison camp is closed.

"We hope that we'll have access to Hambali soon," police spokesman Abubakar Nataprawira said.

US President Barack Obama last week signed an executive order to close the prison camp within a year, prompting speculation on whether Hambali -- described by former president George W. Bush as one of the most dangerous men in the world -- would be returned to Indonesia to stand trial.

"We'll work together with the foreign ministry to see what opportunities are given to us, whether they (the US authorities) will only let us interview Hambali there or whether we can bring him here," Nataprawira said.

"If we find enough evidence we can bring him to court."

Jakarta has lodged several requests with Washington for access to Hambali, otherwise known as Riduan Isamuddin.

The Afghan war veteran who allegedly liaised between Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah is accused of being at a meeting in Bangkok when top militants agreed to hit "soft targets" in Southeast Asia.

That meeting allegedly led to the 2002 nightclub bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

One of Hambali's brothers, Rusman Gunawan, was jailed for four years in 2004 for channeling 50,000 dollars from Pakistan to Indonesia at Hambali's request.

The money was used to fund the 2003 Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta that killed 12 people.

In a visit to the United States in 2006, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla said Hambali should be brought before a court to stand trial.

Insurgents seize seat of Somalia's parliament

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A hardline Islamic group seized the seat of the Somali parliament and said Tuesday that it will establish Shariah law in the city.

Al-Shabab, which is on Washington's list of terror groups, took over Baidoa late Monday, a day after Ethiopian troops who had been propping up the government ended their unpopular, two-year presence. Al-Shabab, which means "The Youth," has been gaining ground as Somalia's Western-backed government crumbles.

"We will establish an Islamic administration for the town, and appeal to residents to remain calm," al-Shabab spokesman Sheik Muktar Robow said.

Somalia is a Muslim country, but al-Shabab's strict interpretation of Islam has drawn fear and trepidation. In one case, the group stoned to death a 13-year-old girl for adultery even though her parents said she was a rape victim.

The takeover came as Somalia's parliament meets this week in neighboring Djibouti to elect a new president. It appears unlikely the lawmakers will be able to return to Baidoa, 155 miles (250 kilometers) southwest of the capital.

There was a brief firefight between the Islamists and government-allied militias, who soon fled, witnesses said.

A nurse at the city's main hospital, Ahmed Yarow, said two people were wounded during the clashes.

The arid, impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government since 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew a socialist dictator. Pirates operate off its lawless coastline and analysts fear the failed state is a harbor for international terrorists.

The African Union has fewer than 3,000 troops in Somalia, even though 8,000 were authorized.

African Union commission chairman Jean Ping said Tuesday the capture of Baidoa was not unexpected. AU troops do not patrol Baidoa, but mostly stay in the capital.

"It's not with three battalions that we can cover all of Somalia," he said at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Chechen separatist envoy killed in N.Caucasus - FSB

MOSCOW, January 27 (RIA Novosti) - An emissary of Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, who was in Russia's North Caucasus to revive the militant movement, has been killed by Russian forces, the FSB said on Tuesday.

Khadiyev, a militant and Muslim religious leader, had been active in Chechnya and Daghestan since May 2008 reviving separatist groups controlled by Zakayev, the London-based head of the "Chechen government in exile," the Federal Security Service said in a statement.

Russia has repeatedly asked Britain to extradite Zakayev, accused of terrorist activities, but the request has invariably been refused.

"Considering the danger posed by the militant leader, the FSB along with the Interior Ministry conducted an operation to seize him, during which Khadiyev offered resistance, was wounded and died of his wounds," the domestic security service said.

It added that the operation had been carried out on January 17.

"The liquidation of Khadiyev is a serious blow to the bandit underground," the FSB said.

The service also said another two militants had been killed in Ingushetia, on Saturday.

Brothers Ruslan and Murad Uzhakhov, believed to have been involved in a series of attacks on law enforcement officials, were killed in a special operation in the city of Nazran.