Biden to meet Jordan king in Washington

(August 20th 2012, Monday)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden on Monday was to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key US ally in the Middle East that has seen an influx of refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

The two were scheduled to meet at 4:15 pm (2015 GMT) at the vice president's residence in the US capital, the White House said, without providing further details.

Some 150,000 Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Jordan since the start of the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The uprising and the government's brutal crackdown have increasingly come to resemble a civil war, with 23,000 people killed, according to a Syrian human rights group. The United Nations puts the figure at around 17,000.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.

Malaysia's Anwar to retire if he loses next polls

(18th of August 2012, Saturday)

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim plans to end his 30-year political career if he fails to unseat Prime Minister Najib Razak at the next election, he said.

Anwar was once deputy prime minister in the Barisan Nasional (National Front) government that has ruled Malaysia since independence 55 years ago, but has campaigned against it since his shock ouster in 1998.

Najib must call national elections by June next year and many observers expect a tight contest after the ruling coalition suffered its worst showing ever at the last polls in 2008.

"I will try my best. I am confident we will win. But if not, I will step down," Anwar said Friday night when taking part in a Google Hangout that was streamed live on YouTube.

Anwar, who has taught at Oxford and Washington's Georgetown University, said he would return to academic life if he lost.

"If we don't get the mandate, then we should give space for the second-liners in leadership," he said during the one-hour question-and-answer event which has previously featured US President Barack Obama.

Anwar has been in and out of court on various charges he says are political ploys to tarnish his image and stifle his opposition coalition.

He was charged in May with participating in an illegal rally which saw tens of thousands take to the streets to call for reforms to the electoral system, which they say is biased towards the Barisan Nasional.

In January he was acquitted of having sex with a male former aide at the end of a lengthy trial.

Previously, Anwar was imprisoned for corruption and sodomy after he fell out with the then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1998.

He was released from jail in 2004 after the sodomy conviction was overturned.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.

Somalia: A new parliament but no presidential vote

By ABDI GULED, Associated Press
(21st of August 2012, Wednesday)

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somalia's chief justice on Monday swore in 215 new members of parliament, an accomplishment but one that fell far short of U.N. hopes that the Horn of Africa nation would seat a full 275-member parliament that would vote in a new president.

Monday — the last day of eight years of Somalia's U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government — was the day by which the U.N. repeatedly said a new president would be in place. But political bickering, violent threats and seat-buying schemes delayed progress, guaranteeing the day would come and go with no new leader in place.

Nonetheless, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated the people of Somalia "on reaching this watershed moment on their road to peace, stability and political transformation," U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said.

He urged clan elders to complete the seating of all parliament members within a few days and called on the new parliamentarians to prepare for elections of a speaker and president so that the country's political transition can be completed promptly and peacefully "in an environment free from intimidation," del Buey said.

"The Somali people have waited 20 years for peace to take root in their country," the secretary-general's spokesman said. "Now is the time to begin a new chapter in their history."

Somalia has seen much progress over the last year. Al-Shabab militants were forced out of Mogadishu in August 2011, allowing businesses to thrive and the arts and sports to return.

However, Mogadishu politics remains an ugly business, as it did in 1991, when the country's last legitimate president was ousted and the country spiraled into bloody chaos. The International Crisis Group think tank said the current political process has been as undemocratic as the Transitional Federal Government structure it seeks to replace, "with unprecedented levels of political interference, corruption and intimidation."

Somali elders were tasked with naming a parliament, since no election could be held given the state of security around the country. A technical committee disqualified several nominees.
"Some elders allegedly nominated uneducated and objectionable individuals, some sold seats to highest bidders, and others even nominated their own family members," the International Crisis Group said.

Few of the allegations will surprise the international backers — the U.N., U.S. and EU — heavily involved in the political process. A report released in June written for the U.N. said that the last government was rife with corruption. The government allegedly protected a notorious pirate leader and deposited only $3 of every $10 received into state coffers. A report commissioned by the World Bank published in May similarly found that 68 percent of TFG revenues in 2009-10 were unaccounted for.

Monday's swearing-in ceremony was moved to the highly protected airport at the last minute after members of parliament asked for increased security. Somali police and African Union troops patrolled around the airport, which adjoins an African Union military base and is the most secure location in the city.

"This historic moment marks the long-awaited end of the transitional period in Somalia. The new MPs, selected after broad-based, grass roots consultations and representing all of Somalia's clans, have been successfully screened against objective criteria and are now ready to start their important work," said Augustine Mahiga, the U.N. representative to Somalia.

Al-Shabab militants, though evicted from Mogadishu, still penetrate the seaside capital to carry out suicide attacks. One such attack took place earlier this month as Somali elders voted in a new internationally backed constitution that guarantees more rights for women and children. The bombers were stopped at the gates and no one except the two attackers was killed.

After Monday's ceremony, Zainab Mohamed Amir, one of the few female parliamentarians, said she feared women would be underrepresented. Some political negotiations tried to guarantee women 30 percent of parliament seats, but that guarantee has not been made.

"I'm very happy today because we have a new federal parliament that will bring a new government for Somalia," Amir said. "But I'm afraid that women will not get their quota in the parliament."

Backroom political deals center not only on who is named to parliament but also which clan will get what office. The upcoming government will have three powerful positions: president, prime minister and speaker of the parliament. Whatever clan gets a post like speaker, for example, will not be eligible for president.

Despite the fact Somali leaders did not make as much progress as the U.N. hoped, the prime minister of the TFG, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali — a former community college instructor from New York state — called Monday "a historic day."

"Somalia has a new parliament and the presidential election will be next after the parliament gets a new speaker. I wish Somalia will keep the positive news coming so that peace will prevail in the country at last," he said.

No one will say when the presidential election will take place because no one knows. The International Crisis Group predicted that it would be October before a full government is seated. After the president is elected, he must appoint a prime minister who must then assemble a Cabinet that meets the approval of the parliament.

Nick Birnback, a spokesman for the U.N. mission to Somalia, said the vote for the speaker of parliament will be held on Saturday, and that the vote for president could follow later in the month or in early September.

For now the only man — or woman — in a proper position of power in the new government is Mussa Hassan, a former 72-year-old general.

"I am the oldest of the parliament members so I will have to be the caretaker speaker," the grey-haired man told the newly sworn in parliamentarians, as he listed upcoming tasks: "We need an election commission first, to prepare for the election."

Straziuso reported from Nairobi, Kenya.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Egypt president to visit Iran, a first in decades

August 18, 2012

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi will attend a summit in Iran later this month, a presidential official said on Saturday, the first such trip for an Egyptian leader since relations with Tehran deteriorated decades ago.

The visit could mark a thaw between the two countries after years of enmity, especially since Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic revolution. Under Morsi's predecessor Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, predominantly Sunni Muslim, sided with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Arab states in trying to isolate Shiite-led Iran.

Until now, contacts have been channeled through interest sections, a low-level form of diplomatic representation. In May last year, Egypt, which was ruled by an interim military council, expelled a junior Iranian diplomat on suspicion he tried to set up spy rings in Egypt and the Gulf countries.

It's too early to assess the implications of the visit or to what extent the Arab world's most populous country may normalize relations with Tehran, but analysts believe it will bring Egypt back to the regional political stage. The visit is in line with popular sentiment since Mubarak's ouster in an uprising last year for Cairo to craft a foreign policy independent of Western or oil Gulf countries' agendas.

"This really signals the first response to a popular demand and a way to increase the margin of maneuver for Egyptian foreign policy in the region," said political scientist Mustafa Kamel el-Sayyed. "Morsi's visits ... show that Egypt's foreign policy is active again in the region."

"This is a way also to tell Gulf countries that Egypt is not going to simply abide by their wishes and accept an inferior position," he added. The official said that Morsi will visit Tehran on Aug. 30 on his way back from China to attend the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, where Egypt will transfer the movement's rotating leadership to Iran. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not yet authorized to make the announcement.

The trip is no surprise — it came days after Morsi included Iran, a strong ally of Syrian Bashar Assad, in a proposal for a contact group to mediate an end to Syria's escalating civil war. The proposal for the group, which includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, was made at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca.

During the summit, Morsi exchanged handshakes and kisses with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in their first meeting since Morsi assumed his post as Egypt's first elected president. The idea was welcomed by Iran's state-run Press TV, and a leading member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said that Tehran's acceptance of the proposal was a sign Egypt was beginning to regain some of the diplomatic and strategic clout it once held in the region.

After the fall of Egypt's longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak in last year's popular revolt, officials have expressed no desire to maintain Mubarak's staunch anti-Iranian stance. Last July, former Egyptian foreign minister Nabil Elaraby, who also heads the Arab League, delivered a conciliatory message to the Islamic Republic, saying "Iran is not an enemy." He also noted that post-Mubarak Egypt would seek to open a new page with every country in the world, including Iran.

Tensions have not been absent however in contacts with Iran's clerical state since Egypt's uprising. When a delegation of politicians and youth activists made a visit to Iran last year, one Egyptian pro-democracy activist, Mustafa el-Nagger, said his Iranian hosts claimed the revolt sweeping the Arab world was part of an "Islamic awakening." He responded with a different interpretation: the anti-Mubarak uprising was "not a religious revolution, but a human evolution."

Any normalization between the two countries would have to be based on careful calculations. Majority Sunni Egypt has its own suspicions of Iran on both religious and political grounds. The country's ultraconservative Salafis and even the moderate consider Shiites heretics and enemies.

Since splitting from their Sunni brethren in the 7th century over who should replace the Prophet Muhammad as Muslim ruler, Shiites have developed distinct concepts of Islamic law and practices. They account for some 160 million of the Islamic world's population of 1.3 billion people, and make up some 90 percent of Iran's population, over 60 percent of Iraq's, and around 50 percent of the people living in the arc of territory from Lebanon to India.

In 2006, Mubarak angered Shiite leaders by saying Shiites across the Middle East were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. His view was shared by other Arab leaders and officials, including Jordan's King Abdullah II who warned of a Shiite crescent forming in the region.

"The old regime used to turn any of his rivals to a ghost. We don't want to do like Mubarak and exaggerate of the fear of Iran," said Mahmoud Ezzat, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Morsi was the leader of its political arm.

"But at the same time, we should not take the Iranians' ambitions lightly. As much as they don't want us to interfere in their business, we don't want them to interfere in our business," he said, mentioning his group's opposition to Iran's "grand project to spread Shiite faith."

While nearly three decades of Mubarak rule left Egyptians inundated with state-spun scenarios of Iranian plots aiming to destabilize the country, many sympathize with Iran's Islamic revolution and consider Tehran's defiance of the United States a model to follow. Others seek a foreign policy at the very least more independent of Washington.

A new understanding with Iran would be a big shake-up for a region that has been split between Tehran's camp — which includes Syria and Islamic militias Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — and a U.S.-backed group led by Saudi Arabia and rich Gulf nations.

To add another level of complexity, there is also the fact that Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian enclave in the Gaza strip to the frustration of neighboring Israel, is a historical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant force in Egyptian politics since Morsi's election.

Aware of the Gulf states' anxieties over the rise of political Islam in post-Mubarak Egypt, Morsi has focused on courting Saudi Arabia. He visited it twice, once just after he won the presidency, and a second time during the Islamic summit. In an attempt to assuage fears of the Arab uprisings by oil monarchs, he vowed that Egypt does not want to "export its revolution". He has also asserted commitment to the security of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies, a thinly veiled reference to the tension between them and Iran.

Airstrike kills 8 in Syria town near Turkey border

August 18, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian warplane on Saturday bombed a small town partially controlled by anti-regime fighters near the Turkish border, killing eight people and wounding at least 20, the latest escalation in the use of air power by President Bashar Assad's government in the Arab nation's civil war.

The afternoon airstrike, reported by activists in the area as well as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was one of at least two that took place on Saturday. The increased use of airstrikes by the regime is taking its toll on civilians, and, in the eyes of activists, is evidence of its insensitivity to civilian casualties as it battles for survival against the rebels.

The regime's growing use of warplanes also comes at a time when western powers are looking into suggestions for militarily enforcing a no-fly zone in northern Syria. Russia rejects the idea. The airstrike on the town of Manbej in the Jarablous area came hours after a government announcement said Syria welcomed the appointment of former Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as the U.N.'s new point-man in efforts to halt the civil war.

The announcement was made by the office of Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, which also denied Arab media reports that al-Sharaa had defected to the opposition. Al-Sharaa "did not think, at any moment, of leaving the country," the statement said. The regime has suffered a string of prominent defections in recent months, though Assad's inner circle and military have largely kept their cohesive stance behind him.

Brahimi, the new U.N. envoy, takes over from former Secretary-General Kofi Annan who is stepping down on Aug. 31 after his attempts to broker a cease-fire failed. His appointment comes as U.N. observers have begun leaving Syria, with their mission officially over by midnight Sunday.

In Syria, activists and the London Observatory could not say what was the intended target of the lone air force MiG-25 when it rocketed Manbej, which has a population of some 40,000. The wounded were treated in field hospitals in the town and in clinics across the border in Turkey.

A second airstrike earlier in the day targeted the northern border town of Azaz, where more than 40 people were killed and at least 100 wounded in an airstrike earlier this week, according to international watchdog Human Rights Watch. Activists said Saturday's bombs hit an open field. There were no casualties.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a televised interview that his country has rejected foreign intervention in the form of a militarily enforced no-fly zone for government aircraft in northern Syria — an idea he said was mentioned as a possible option by U.S. officials last week.

"That would be a violation of sovereignty if this included areas (in) Syrian territory, as well as a breach of the United Nations charter," Lavrov told Sky News Arabia in the interview Saturday. "There are initiatives by the (U.N.) to provide aid to refugees in camps on the territory of Turkey and Jordan and other countries as per the international humanitarian law," he said in a transcript provided by the Abu Dhabi-based Arabic-language station. "But if they are trying to create safe zones and no-fly zones for military purposes by citing an international crisis — that is unacceptable."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that Washington and Turkey were discussing a range of steps including a no-fly zone over some parts of Syria as the Assad regime increasingly uses its air force to attack rebels.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Associated Press last Monday that he is confident the United States could successfully enforce such a prohibition of flights, but that plans for a no-fly zone were "not on the front burner" despite persistent calls from rebel forces that they need the added protection.

In other violence Saturday, regime forces shelled rebel areas across the country, including the southern province of Daraa, the northern region of Aleppo, Deir el-Zour to the east and the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, activists said. They said at least 15 people were killed in the Deir el-Zour area.

Also Saturday, 40 bodies were found piled in a heap on a street in the Damascus suburb of al-Tal, according to the Observatory and another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees. The suburb saw days of heavy fighting until regime forces largely took over the area earlier this week.

The 40 had all been killed by bullet wounds, but their identity was not known, nor was it known who had killed them, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the Observatory. "It is not clear if they were civilians, army defectors or soldiers," he said. Also unclear was whether they had been killed at the place where the bodies were found or if residents had collected the bodies there.

A series of hostage-takings by Syria's rebels has touched off retaliatory abductions of Syrians in neighboring Lebanon and raised worries Lebanon could be dragged deeper into unrest. Lebanese security officials said Saturday that five more Syrians were abducted in Beirut's southern suburbs overnight. It was not clear who carried out the latest abductions, but earlier kidnappings were carried out by the al-Mikdad clan, a powerful Shiite Muslim family in Lebanon.

The al-Mikdad clan says it has snatched a number of Syrians and a Turk in Lebanon in retaliation for the abduction of their relative, Hassane Salim al-Mikdad, by rebels in Syria.

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, and Brian Rohan in Cairo contributed to this report.

Jordan protests Syrian shelling that wounded girl

By DALE GAVLAK, Associated Press
(20th of August 2012, Monday)

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan has sharply protested to Syria for artillery shelling that wounded a girl in a border village and panicked other civilians, Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah said Monday.

The Syrian ambassador to Jordan rebuffed a summons to the Foreign Ministry to receive a written protest, sending his deputy instead, officials said.

Late Sunday, four shells landed in Jordan's north during clashes between the Syrian military and rebel forces on the Syrian side, wounding a 4-year-old girl. She was reported in fair condition Monday. Four others were treated briefly after suffering panic attacks, Maaytah said.

Maaytah said Jordan denounced the incident and "will ensure this does not happen again." He did not say how.

Last month, Syrian troops killed a 6-year-old Syrian boy fleeing to Jordan with his family.
Maaytah said the government summoned Syrian Ambassador Bahjat Suleiman to hand him the letter of protest late Sunday.

Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said on his Twitter account late Sunday that the ambassador declined to report for the meeting, claiming he was busy. Judeh said a "stern warning" was given to his deputy. The text of the letter was not made public.

The affair underlines growing tensions between the two neighbors against the background of Syria's civil war.

More than 150,000 Syrian refugees are in Jordan. The presence of thousands in a squalid desert tent camp near the border is seen as an embarrassment to Syrian President Bashar Assad, illustrating that people are fleeing his military's onslaught against his own people.

Jordan tries to avoid angering its more powerful neighbor, but tensions are a constant in the relationship.

Syria opposes Jordan's alliance with the United States and its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Jordan is a critic of Iran, Syria's main ally in the region.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Putin murdered dissidents in Communist East Germany

24 September 2011

As reported by the Guardian, Russia's spy agency is waging a massive undercover campaign of harassment against British and American diplomats, as well as other targets, using deniable "psychological" techniques developed by the KGB, a new book reveals.

The federal security service (FSB's) operation involves breaking into the private homes of western diplomats - a method the US state department describes as "home intrusions". Typically the agents move around personal items - opening windows, or setting alarms - in an attempt to demoralize and intimidate their targets.

The FSB operation includes bugging of private apartments, widespread phone tapping, physical surveillance, and email interception. Its victims include local Russian staff working for western embassies, opposition activists, human rights workers and journalists. The clandestine campaign is revealed in Mafia State, a book by the Guardian's former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, serialized in Saturday's Weekend magazine.

The British and American governments are acutely aware of the FSB's campaign of intimidation. But neither has publicly complained about these demonstrative "counter-intelligence" measures, for fear of further straining already difficult relations with Vladmir Putin's resurgent regime. Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, was head of the FSB.

British sources admit they have files "five or six inches thick" detailing FSB break-ins and other incidents of harassment against Moscow embassy staff. "Generally we don't make a fuss about it," one said. So pervasive is the FSB's campaign the British government is unable to staff fully its Moscow embassy. The intrusions are designed to "short-tour" diplomats so they leave their posts early, the source said.

Despite a recent improvement in US-Russian relations, the FSB has also targeted US diplomats and their families. In a 2009 confidential diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the US ambassador in Moscow John Beyrle complains that the FSB's aggressive measures have reached unprecedented levels.

Mafia State recounts how the KGB first became interested in "operational psychology" in the 1960s. But it was the Stasi, East Germany's sinister secret police, that perfected these psychological techniques and used them extensively against dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. These operations were given a name, Zersetzung - literally corrosion or undermining.

According to former Stasi officers the aim was to "switch off" regime opponents by disrupting their private or family lives. Tactics included removing pictures from walls, replacing one variety of tea with another, and even sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were going mad; some suffered breakdowns; a few committed suicide.

It was Erich Honecker, East Germany's communist leader, who patented these methods after concluding that "soft" methods of torture were preferable to open forms of persecution. The advantage of psychological operations was their deniability - important for a regime that wanted to maintain its international respectability. Putin spent the late 1980s as an undercover KGB officer based in the east German town of Dresden.Harding was himself the victim of repeated FSB break-ins, and last November was, in effect, expelled from Russia when the foreign ministry said it was not renewing his journalist's accreditation.

Mafia State also reveals:
· FSB officers privately admit the agency was involved in the assassination of dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko. They regret, however, the bungled way it was carried out.

· The British embassy in Moscow has a "polonium" chair sat on by Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the Litvinenko murder. Uncertain what to do with it, officials have locked it in a room in the embassy.

· Russia's footballing union knew a week before a vote in December that Fifa's executive committee would give Russia, rather than England, the 2018 World Cup

The FSB never explained why they targeted Harding with such zeal. Other western correspondents have also suffered from occasional "home intrusions", but on a much lesser scale, the Guardian writes

It is worth mentioning from the side of the Kavkaz Center that contents of this article was briefly retold by some KGB-sponsored Russian media, including a Gazprom radio Ekho Moskvy and an online KGB new agency Gazeta.Ru.

Most interesting with the Russians is not what they write, but what they never write. In this particular case, the Russians censored in the Guardian story all reference to East Germany and Putin, because it is strictly forbidden to write in Russia that Putin was a butcher of the German people and forced German dissidents to commit suicide.

Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://tor.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2011/09/24/15172.shtml.