News Headlines
Tuesday 2/2/2010
*Regional and International Affairs:
Political Headlines:
- Israel says white phosphorus use in Gaza "exceeded authority". (The Christian Science Monitor)
- Iran, With Opposition Protests Continuing, Executes More Prisoners. (The New York Times)
- After Afghanistan conference, an optimistic Karzai. (The Christian Science Monitor)
- Defense chiefs feared equipment shortage as Iraq invasion began. (The Guardian Unlimited)
- Kazakh official warns against quitting Afghanistan. (The Washington Times)
- China says to sanction U.S. firms selling Taiwan arms. (The Washington Post)
- China Rejects Demands for Greater Tibetan Autonomy. (The New York Times)
- Criticism of Haiti's government increasing. (The Huston Chronicle)
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US:
- Pentagon revises its long-held two-war doctrine. (The Christian Science Monitor)
- Obama budget: Record spending, record deficit. (The Huston Chronicle)
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*Regional and International Affairs
Political Headlines:
- Israel says white phosphorus use in Gaza "exceeded authority". (The Christian Science Monitor)
On Friday, Israel said it had used the incendiary white phosphorus in the Gaza war and that two officers were reprimanded for "exceeding their authority."
Israel said this weekend that two senior military officers were reprimanded for their role in the war in Gaza last year, in particular for their involvement in the highly controversial use of white phosphorus.
The revelation emerged as part of Israel’s response to the Goldstone report issued in September, which accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. The UN secretary general had asked both sides in the conflict to respond to the report’s allegations by this week.
Drawn up by the Foreign Ministry after several months’ work, Israel’s 46-page response indicated that the two officers were reprimanded for “exceeding their authority in a manner that jeopardized the lives of others.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0201/Israel-says-white-phosphorus-use-in-Gaza-exceeded-authority
- Iran, With Opposition Protests Continuing, Executes More Prisoners. (The New York Times)
Every Thursday since last April, Davoud Rahmanipour traveled to the notorious Evin prison in northern Tehran for a weekly visit with his son, Arash, 19, who was being held there while his lawyer appealed his death sentence.
The elder Mr. Rahmanipour was unsettled last Thursday to hear from prison authorities that his son had been transferred to a different prison. His misgivings gave way to shock and grief that afternoon when he heard, on state-run television, that his son had been hanged that day at dawn.
“We are in a devastating psychological and physical situation,” Mr. Rahmanipour said Monday in a tearful voice during a telephone interview.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/world/middleeast/02iran.html?ref=middleeast
- After Afghanistan conference, an optimistic Karzai. (The Christian Science Monitor)
After last week's Afghanistan conference in London, Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned home optimistic, with money pledged for reconciliation with the Taliban and promises that his government will soon be given control over half of Western aid.
Afghan journalists interviewing Hamid Karzai before he went back to Kabul from a 70-nation conference say they haven’t seen the Afghan president this optimistic in some time.
The larger dynamics from London on the Afghan war to end a refuge for Al Qaeda will play out over months. But international support and funds for the Afghan president are an immediate help to Mr. Karzai at home, analysts say.
Only a few months ago Karzai was down, if not out – facing US and UN exasperation over a fraudulent election, since patched over, and for foot-dragging in a nine-year war.
But he arrived in Kabul Sunday with NATO support for Taliban engagement, funding of $140 million for the first year of the policy – and agreement that his government will soon administer 50 percent of Western aid, rather than the 20 percent it now controls.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0201/After-Afghanistan-conference-an-optimistic-Karzai
- Defense chiefs feared equipment shortage as Iraq invasion began. (The Guardian Unlimited)
Armed forces head Jock Stirrup tells Chilcot inquiry that military planners did not have enough time to prepare
The head of the armed forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry. Photograph: PA
Defence chiefs warned ministers of a "serious risk" the military would not have all the equipment it needed to invade Iraq because of delays imposed by the Blair government, the head of the armed forces told the Chilcot inquiry today .
Pressure on the defence budget was so great that a year after the invasion, the chiefs threatened to resign unless the Treasury, under Gordon Brown, relented on plans for cuts in military expenditure, the inquiry was told.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said top military planners "simply didn't have enough time, as it turned out, to do everything we needed to do before the operation started".
He told the Iraq inquiry: "We made it absolutely clear to ministers that if we were not allowed to engage with industry – and that was the critical element – we could take these no further and that there was a serious risk that they would not all be delivered by the assumed start of operations."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/01/jock-stirrup-chilcott-inquiry-evidence
- Kazakh official warns against quitting Afghanistan. (The Washington Times)
When Kazakhstan's foreign minister, Kanat Saudabayev, begins a five-day U.S. visit in Washington on Monday, one of the main topics of discussion is likely to be a proposal to hold a summit meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
As the first Asian country and the first former member of the Soviet Union to chair the prestigious organization, the government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev is taking its role very seriously and one of its ambitions is to organize a summit meeting of the 56 heads of state and government of the OSCE.
"The OSCE summit should become a sort of a crown jewel in our chairmanship and should set the stage for the further strengthening and developing of the OSCE," Mr. Saudabayev told The Washington Times in an interview last week.
Given the monumental logistics involved, especially concerns over providing security to a large number of world leaders, no such summit has been held in the past 11 years.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/01/kazakh-official-warns-against-quitting-afghanistan/
- China says to sanction U.S. firms selling Taiwan arms. (The Washington Post)
China said it would go ahead with threatened sanctions against U.S. companies selling arms to Taiwan unless they halted sales.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, told a news conference on Tuesday that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan severely hurt China's core interests.
On Friday, the Obama administration said it would sell a package of $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and other military hardware to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing deems an illegitimate breakaway.
China then said U.S. companies involved in selling the arms to Taiwan would face "corresponding sanctions."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020200154.html
- China Rejects Demands for Greater Tibetan Autonomy. (The New York Times)
Chinese officials have rejected demands by the Dalai Lama that Tibetan areas of China receive greater autonomy and be governed as a single region, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported Monday.
The report came after days of meetings in China between Chinese officials and two envoys of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, who lives in exile in India. During the talks, a senior Chinese official, Du Qinglin, told the envoys that the concept of a “Greater Tibet” and “high-level autonomy” violated the Chinese Constitution, Xinhua reported. Mr. Du insisted that talks would progress “only if the Dalai Lama completely abandoned such claims,” according to the report.
The Tibetan envoys could not be reached for comment. They returned to India early Monday, according to Chhime R. Chhoekyapa, the Dalai Lama’s secretary, The Associated Press reported.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/world/asia/02tibet.html?ref=asia
- Criticism of Haiti's government increasing. (The Huston Chronicle)
The mourning is far from over, but the politicking has resumed.
Hundreds gathered Monday at a gravel pit where countless earthquake victims have been dumped, turning a remembrance ceremony for the dead into one of the first organized political rallies since the disaster, with followers denouncing President Rene Preval.
Many called for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return a familiar political refrain when things swing between bad and worse in Haiti.
"Preval has done nothing for this country, nothing for the victims," said Jean Delcius, 54, who was bused to the memorial service by Aristide's development foundation. "We need someone new to take charge here. If it's not Aristide, then someone competent."
Critics were already blaming Preval for rising unemployment, corruption and greed. Then the Jan. 12 earthquake struck, killing at least 150,000 people, flattening most government buildings and turning the capital into an apocalyptic vision of broken concrete and twisted steel.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/latinamerica/6846576.html
US:
- Pentagon revises its long-held two-war doctrine. (The Christian Science Monitor)
A key Pentagon strategic document released Monday, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, increases the emphasis on a new range of threats, including cybersecurity. It departs from the military's traditional goal of being able to fight two conventional wars at once.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates's efforts to focus the Defense Department on the wars at hand not the ones being waged in the minds of futurists fixated on China or Russia is the guiding principle behind a new strategic document that sets the Pentagon’s priorities for the next several years.
Unlike last year, when Mr. Gates made cuts to programs that were at odds with Congress, this year’s changes are less dramatic and more thematic.
That includes the Quadrennial Defense Review, the strategic document released Monday. In the past, the QDR has demanded that the US be prepared to confront two major, conventional wars at one time. But noting that the US is already engaged in two wars, Gates said Monday that it’s time to rethink the “construct” of national security.
“We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we planned,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/0201/QDR-Pentagon-revises-its-long-held-two-war-doctrine
- Obama budget: Record spending, record deficit. (The Huston Chronicle)
Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.
If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion under the administration's accounting.
The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year's stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.
The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion.
At the same time, Obama is acutely aware that persistent joblessness is the issue most likely to spell political trouble for Democrats in this year's midterm elections — and perhaps for his own re-election chances in 2012.
The president's budget plan sees the deficit coming down by nearly $300 billion next year, and he's offering more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction proposals over the coming decade.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6846516.html