ENB News : War on Terror- CHALLENGES?!

U.S. Is Likely to Continue Aid to Pakistan
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDEPublished: November 5, 2007WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 —

The Bush administration signaled Sunday that it would probably continue to keep billions of dollars flowing to Pakistan’s military, despite the detention of human rights advocates and leaders of the political opposition by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president.
Skip to next paragraph RelatedPakistan Rounds Up Musharraf’s Political Foes (November 5, 2007) In carefully calibrated public statements and blunter private acknowledgments about the limits of American leverage over General Musharraf, the man President Bush has called one of his most critical allies, the officials argued that it would be counterproductive to let Pakistan’s political turmoil interfere with their best hope of ousting Al Qaeda’s central leadership and the Taliban from the country’s mountainous tribal areas.
Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that while the United States would “have to review the situation with aid,” she said three times that President Bush’s first concern was “to protect America and protect American citizens by continuing to fight against terrorists.”
“That means we have to be very cognizant of the counterterrorism operations that we are involved in,” she said. “We have to be very cognizant of the fact that some of the assistance that has been going to Pakistan is directly related to the counterterrorism mission.”
In Islamabad, aides to General Musharraf — who had dismissed pleas on Friday from Ms. Rice and Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior military commander in the Middle East, to avoid the state-of-emergency declaration — said they had anticipated that there would be few real consequences. They called the American reaction “muted,” saying General Musharraf had not received phone calls of protest from Mr. Bush or other senior American officials. In unusually candid terms, they said American officials support stability over democracy. “They would rather have a stable Pakistan — albeit with some restrictive norms — than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists,” said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. “Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose.”
It was a sign of their confidence that Pakistani officials announced that parliamentary elections set for January might be delayed for as long as a year. Just before she learned of that announcement, Ms. Rice said, “We have a very clear view that the elections need to take place on time, which would mean the beginning of the year.”
In Washington, officials acknowledged that they were trying to balance the American insistence that Pakistan remain on the path to democracy and General Musharraf’s unwillingness to risk chaos that would allow Osama bin Laden and his deputies to operate more freely and embolden the Taliban.
“The equities in Pakistan are huge,” said a senior official deeply involved in trying to persuade General Musharraf to fulfill his promise to shed his uniform and run the country as a civilian leader. “We’ve got U.S. and NATO troops dying in Afghanistan, and a war on terrorism” that cannot be halted while General Musharraf tries to shore up his eroding powers, he said.
But several administration officials said they were struck by the heavy-handed nature of the crackdown announced Saturday. Until a few days ago, they said, General Musharraf had been offering private assurances that any emergency declaration would be short-lived. “They have made this crisis more acute by the way they’ve done this,” the official concluded.
President Bush, who has made spreading democracy a major foreign policy theme, has said nothing in public about General Musharraf’s action. His silence contrasts sharply to his reaction to the crackdown on dissidents in Myanmar last month. In that case, Mr. Bush announced specific steps against Myanmar rulers. But Pakistan, officials argued, is a different case: it is a nuclear-armed nation that Mr. Bush had designated a “major non-NATO ally,” even though its enthusiasm for counterterrorism has been episodic.
In Islamabad, American officials said Mr. Bush’s limited choices could worsen if protests erupt on Pakistan’s streets, and they complained that in the past few months, General Musharraf has focused more on weakening the moderates among his rivals rather than fighting Islamic extremists.
Even Sunday, a close aide to General Musharraf seemed more concerned about the actions of Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the country’s largest opposition party, than about the Islamic militant forces that have tried repeatedly to kill General Musharraf. Ms. Bhutto’s party, he said, “can stir up a lot of trouble.” For more than a year before Saturday’s declaration, American officials have seethed in frustration over Pakistan’s poor performance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. General Musharraf’s effort to strike a deal with tribal leaders — who he said would attack terrorist groups in return for autonomy — quickly failed. When General Musharraf ordered troops back into the region in recent months, many were killed or kidnapped.
In interviews before and after the emergency declaration, Western diplomats and former Pakistani military officials said General Musharraf had done a poor job countering growing militancy in the country, particularly this year. The military-led government has moved too slowly, prepared poorly for operations and often appeased militant groups.
“Initially, this was not complicated,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier who was the senior Pakistani government official in charge of security in the tribal areas until last year. “Now, this is a very complicated situation.”
Through it all the United States has continued pumping money to the country, even when the military pressure on the tribal areas was suspended. While Washington does not assemble in one place all of its various forms of aid to Pakistan, a study published in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the total to be “at least $10 billion in Pakistan since 9/11, excluding covert funds.” Sixty percent of that has gone to “Coalition Support Funds,” essentially direct payments to the Pakistani military, and 15 percent to purchase major weapons systems. Another 15 percent has been for general budget support for the Pakistani government; only 10 percent for development or humanitarian assistance.
General Musharraf’s supporters argued Sunday that his government — now unencumbered by legal constraints and political concerns by the emergency decree — will be in a better position to eradicate extremists and that if the United States wants that security, it has no other choice than to back him.
“If your agenda is to save attacks in the U.S. and eliminate Al Qaeda, only the Pakistani Army can do that,” said the close aide to General Musharraf. “For that, you will have to forget about elections in Pakistan for maybe two to three years.”
There is little question that General Musharraf has failed to develop broad public support in Pakistan for battling terrorists. His political party is divided, has not carried out promised reforms and would most likely lose a national election.
A poll in September by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, showed that Osama bin Laden was more popular in Pakistan than General Musharraf, with 46 percent of respondents giving him a “favorable” rating against 38 percent for the president. Ms. Bhutto received a “favorable” rating from 63 percent. The nationwide poll surveyed 1,044 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and David Rohde from Islamabad, Pakistan.

November 4, 2007
Pakistani Sets Emergency Rule, Defying the U.S.
By DAVID ROHDEThis article was reported by David Rohde, Jane Perlez and Salman Masood, and was written by Mr. Rohde.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sunday, Nov. 4 —

The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency on Saturday night, suspending the country’s Constitution, firing the chief justice of the Supreme Court and filling the streets of this capital city with police officers.
The move appeared to be an effort by General Musharraf to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the country’s Supreme Court, political parties and hard-line Islamists. Pakistan’s Supreme Court had been expected to rule within days on the legality of General Musharraf’s re-election last month as the country’s president.
The emergency act, which analysts and opposition leaders said was more a declaration of martial law, also boldly defied the Bush administration, which had repeatedly urged General Musharraf to avoid such a path and instead move toward democracy. Washington has generously backed the general, sending him more than $10 billion in aid since 2001, mostly for the military. Now the administration finds itself in the bind of having to publicly castigate the man it has described as one of its closest allies in fighting terrorism.
In blunt and brief comments on Saturday, American officials condemned General Musharraf’s move. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded a “quick return to constitutional law.” And in Washington, the White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said, “This action is very disappointing,” and he called on General Musharraf to honor his earlier pledge to resign as army commander and hold nationwide elections before Jan. 15.
In Pakistan, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the main opposition leader, returned early from a visit in Dubai, setting up the possibility that she and her party, as well as other opposition groups like the powerful lawyers’ body here, could organize demonstrations against the president. After landing in Karachi, she mocked General Musharraf and accused him of using the specter of terrorism to prolong his hold on power. “This is not emergency,” she said. “This is martial law.”
After a day of rumors in the Pakistani news media than an emergency declaration would come, the first proof came just after 5 p.m., when independent and international television news stations abruptly went blank in Islamabad and other major cities. Soon after, dozens of police officers surrounded the Supreme Court building, with some justices still inside.
Under the emergency declaration, the justices were ordered to take an oath to abide by a “provisional constitutional order” that replaces the country’s existing Constitution. Those who failed to do so would be dismissed.
Seven of the court’s 11 justices gathered inside the court rejected the order, according to an aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Issuing their own legal order, the justices called General Musharraf’s declaration unlawful and urged military officials to not abide by it.
By 9 p.m., Chief Justice Chaudhry and the other justices had gone to their homes, which were surrounded by police officers. The police blocked journalists from entering the area, disconnected telephone lines and jammed cellphones in the area.
Several hours later, the state-run news media reported that three justices generally seen as supporting General Musharraf had taken an oath to uphold the emergency measure. And it was announced that Mr. Chaudhry had been replaced by a pro-government member of the Supreme Court bench, Abdul Hamid Doger, as chief justice.
Just after midnight, General Musharraf appeared on state-run television. In a 45-minute speech, he said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.”
He gave no firm date for nationwide elections that had been scheduled for January and said his current Parliament, which he dominates, would remain in place. He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.
The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.
He accused the country’s Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”
Wamiq Zuberi, director of Aaj TV, one of the independent stations blacked out on Saturday, said the government had also issued two new orders sharply limiting news coverage.
The orders prohibit coverage that “brings into ridicule or disrepute” General Musharraf and other officials, he said. They also ban the publication of statements from terrorist groups, as well as photographs of suicide bombers or their victims. Violators face up to three years in prison.
Opposition leaders condemned the emergency declaration. Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawyer who led protests against General Musharraf this spring, was detained by the police after saying that opposition groups would announce a schedule of nationwide strikes and protests on Monday.
Before being detained, he accused General Musharraf of “criminal flouting of the Constitution,” adding, “The people and the lawyers cannot be suspended.”
Reuters reported that other opposition leaders were detained. Among them were Imran Khan, an opposition politician and former cricket star who was placed under house arrest, and Javed Hashmi, a leader of the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s party.
Pakistani analysts said the emergency order was, in effect, a declaration of martial law because there were no constitutional provisions allowing such an order.
“This is the imposition of real military rule, because there is no Constitution,” said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, an expert on Pakistani military affairs.
General Musharraf resorted to military power to gain the presidency in October 1999 when he staged a bloodless coup, and Mr. Rizvi said this was a return to those measures. “This is the first time Musharraf has brought in military rule to sustain himself in power,” he said. “He felt threatened by the Supreme Court.”
Mr. Chaudhry, the former chief justice, has been the focal point of the opposition to General Musharraf since the president fired him in March. With support from lawyers, judges and a wide public following, Mr. Chaudhry led a street-style political campaign against his summary firing that helped fuel popular sentiment against General Musharraf.
The Supreme Court reinstated Mr. Chaudhry this summer, and in September it ruled in favor of General Musharraf, saying he could run for re-election while still in uniform.
Late Saturday evening, Islamabad and other major cities were quiet. But analysts said that General Musharraf’s fate would play out on Pakistan’s streets over the next three to four days.
If Ms. Bhutto’s party and other opposition groups are able to mount nationwide street protests, the general could be forced from power. In the past, Pakistan’s army has ousted military leaders when they felt their actions were damaging to the army as an institution.
“If there are street agitations and a lot of people are arrested, he’ll have problems,” Mr. Rizvi said.
At the same time, Ms. Bhutto’s political career is at stake as well, Mr. Rizvi said. If she fails to lead protests, she will lose legitimacy as an opposition leader, he said. And if she tries and produces a paltry turnout, she could find herself in jail or exile.
Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18 for the first time in eight years under a plan that the Bush administration had hoped would bring a democratic sheen to the country even as it continued under the rule of General Musharraf. That plan now lies in tatters.
David Rohde and Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Jane Perlez from Lahore, Pakistan. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Istanbul.
November 4, 2007News AnalysisMusharraf Leaves White House in Lurch By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and HELENE COOPERWASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.
On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.
General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.
Mr. Bush entered a delicate dance with Pakistan immediately after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when General Musharraf pledged his cooperation in the fight against Al Qaeda, whose top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding out in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001. Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists — a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States.
Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, told General Musharraf and his top generals in Islamabad on Friday that he would put that aid at risk if he seized emergency powers.
But after the declaration on Saturday, there was no immediate action by the administration to accompany the tough talk, as officials monitored developments in Pakistan. Inside the White House the hope is that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that General Musharraf will fulfill his promise to abandon his post as Army chief of staff and hold elections by Jan. 15.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the Middle East, called Mr. Musharraf’s move “highly regrettable,” while her spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said the United States was “deeply disturbed.”
Teresita Schaffer, an expert on Pakistan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called General Musharraf’s action “a big embarrassment” for the administration. But she said there was not much the United States could do.
“There’s going to be a lot of visible wringing of hands, and urging Musharraf to declare his intentions,” she said. “But I don’t really see any alternative to continuing to work with him. They can’t just decide they’re going to blow off the whole country of Pakistan, because it sits right next to Afghanistan, where there are some 26,000 U.S. and NATO troops.”
The hand-wringing began even before General Musharraf imposed military rule. Ms. Rice said she has had several conversations with General Musharraf in the past few weeks — the last one two days ago — in which she appealed to him not to declare emergency powers. The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, had also been exhorting General Musharraf and his top deputies against making that step, Ms. Rice said.
“We were clear that we did not support it,” Ms. Rice said, speaking to reporters aboard a flight from Istanbul to Israel, where she is traveling for regional talks. “We were clear that we didn’t support it because it would take Pakistan away from the path of democratic rule.”
But even as she criticized General Musharraf’s power grab, Ms. Rice stopped short of outright condemnation of General Musharraf himself, even going so far as to credit him for doing “a lot” — in the past — toward preparing Pakistan for what she called a “path to democratic rule.”
That seeming contradiction highlights the quandary in which the Bush administration now finds itself.
There has long been a deep fear within the administration, particularly among intelligence officials, that an imperfect General Musharraf is better for American interests than an unknown in a volatile country that is central to the administration’s fight against terrorism. In recent months the White House had been hoping that a power-sharing alliance between General Musharraf and Pakistan’s former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, would help the general cling to power while putting a democratic face on his regime.
Now, experts predict that the United States will be watching Pakistan closely in the coming days to see how hard General Musharraf cracks down on his opponents — and whether opposition political leaders, journalists and scholars are imprisoned. Much of the attention will be on Ms. Bhutto, who strongly condemned the emergency declaration and quickly cut short a visit to Dubai to return to Pakistan during the crisis.
Officials will be watching to see whether Pakistan’s fractured opposition, including Ms. Bhutto and her political party can unite and pose a serious challenge to General Musharraf. They will also be watching the reaction of the military, which has been demoralized by a spate of suicide bombings against military targets.
Whatever happens, experts say that General Musharraf’s decision was not good news for the Bush administration Even if Pakistan does get back on the path to democracy, Saturday’s action will likely tarnish the Pakistani leader, as well as the legitimacy of any election organized by his government.
Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the current situation could easily plunge Pakistan into chaos, leading to an increase in violence by Islamic fundamentalists or provoking demonstrations by opposition political parties.
“You could have chaos in the street, or a situation where it would be suicidal for Bhutto to try to participate in the process,” he said, adding, “Either of those scenarios puts the U.S. in a very difficult position.”
Ginger Thompson contributed reporting.

Imran Khan in hiding as 500 detained in Pakistan
SAEED SHAH IN ISLAMABAD HUNDREDS of lawyers and civil rights activists were arrested by armed police across Pakistan yesterday, while many more went into hiding.

The government also admitted it did not know when elections, which had been scheduled for the next few weeks, would take place, following the imposition of a state of emergency over the weekend.
Among those detained were Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, and Asma Jahangir, chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion.
However Mr Khan, who was placed under house arrest on Saturday night, escaped yesterday. His spokesman, Ahmed Awais, said: "He's okay. He has left his residence and is hiding some place."
In the eastern city of Lahore, police raided a meeting of human rights activists, dragging away about 70 people, among them teachers, lawyers, academics and four journalists covering the meeting.
Last night, there were rumours that those detained - numbering between 400 and 500 according to the government - were being told to sign statements of apology. Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister, described the detentions as "preventative arrests".
Hamid Khan, a leading lawyer, said: "It is absolutely false to say this is a state of emergency: it is martial law; they have suspended the constitution."
In Islamabad, a small, peaceful demonstration of about 40 activists, mostly women and elderly people, was broken up by an overwhelming police response, with a heavily armed anti-terrorist squad coming in as back-up.
The crowd, who chanted "death to martial law" and "go Musharraf go", (referring to General Pervez Musharraf, the president) was baton-charged and several were arrested. Women could be heard screaming as police moved in.
Tahira Abdullah, one of the protesters, said: "This is shocking: the arrest of unarmed citizens standing up for freedom of expression." Under rules announced on Saturday by Pakistan's military ruler, Gen Musharraf, basic rights, such as freedom for public assembly, have been suspended.
At the demonstration, Colonel Sarwar Cheema, a former defence minister, said: "It is very tragic what has happened. But we will not stop here. A movement will generate that will not stop until Musharraf goes."
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said America would be reviewing its aid to Pakistan. The US has provided about $11 billion (£5.3 billion) to Pakistan since 2001, when Gen Musharraf made an alliance with the US following the 11 September attacks.
The strength of resistance to the regime will be tested today, with planned demonstrations by lawyers. Whether that develops into a large enough movement to threaten the regime will depend much on the role played by Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister. She had previously negotiated with Gen Musharraf over a power-sharing pact. If she tacitly backs the new dispensation, by not calling her millions of supporters out on to the streets, analysts said, Gen Musharraf could survive.
Ms Bhutto has strongly condemned the emergency as the "blackest day" in Pakistan's history. Her Pakistan People's Party is one of the few political forces in the country with real street power.
Ali Dayan Hasan, a south-Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "Benazir Bhutto is talking the talk, but will she walk the walk? She must agree to head a protest movement. If she just confines herself to saying things, she is really playing along with Musharraf."
Pakistan's private television channels were still off air last night, with only PTV, the state broadcaster showing programmes - interspersed with political broadcasts for the Musharraf regime.
One playing yesterday showed bombs exploding in cities and civil strife contrasted with happy family scenes, asking in a voiceover: "How do you want to see Pakistan?" Mr Aziz said TV channels would not be allowed back on air until they had agreed a new "code of conduct" put forward by the government. Draconian media regulations were announced over the weekend, including a ban on anything "that defames and brings into ridicule or disrepute the head of state [Musharraf], or members of the armed forces or executive, judicial or legislative organs of the state".

US declares PKK 'a common enemy'

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has said Turkey and the United States share a common enemy in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Ms Rice said the fight against the Kurdish separatist rebels would require persistence and commitment, after talks with the Turkish government in Ankara.
The meeting was aimed at averting major military operations by Turkey against PKK fighters based in northern Iraq.
Turkey has threatened to send in troops if it does not see any concrete action.
Nearly 50 Turkish soldiers have died in clashes with Kurdish fighters in the last month and the government is under huge public pressure to respond with force.
'Very difficult problem'
Speaking at a news conference after talks with the Turkish president, prime minister and foreign minister, Ms Rice said the US was committed to redoubling its efforts to eliminate the threat to Turkey from the PKK.
This is where the words end and action needs to start Ali Babacan Turkish Foreign Minister
"I affirmed to the prime minister as well as to the foreign minister that the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organisation and indeed that we have a common enemy, that we must find ways to take effective action so that Turkey will not suffer from terrorist attacks," she said.
"That is destabilising for Iraq, it's a problem therefore of security for the United States and Turkey and we will work together to achieve our goals," she added.
"This is going to take persistence and it is going to take commitment. This is a very difficult problem... Rooting out terrorism is hard."

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
29 Sept: 13 Turkish people killed in ambush on minibus in south-eastern Sirnak province
7 Oct: 13 Turkish soldiers killed by PKK fighters 17 Oct: Turkish parliament approves use of force against PKK in northern Iraq 21 Oct: 12 Turkish soldiers killed by PKK fighters. Eight soldiers captured 24 Oct: Turkish jets bomb PKK positions, according to Turkish news agency
Turkey's Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, said Ms Rice's visit marked the start of close co-operation between the Nato allies.
"This is where the words end and action needs to start," he said.
Ms Rice gave little detail of any concrete steps the US planned to take, but said current activities, such as the sharing of intelligence, would be enhanced and referred to a "comprehensive approach" that is currently being discussed.
She also underlined that any steps taken by Turkey, whether military or otherwise, had to be effective and reinforce the goal of a stable and secure Iraq on Turkey's border.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Ankara says Ms Rice's visit will set the tone for a meeting between the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and US President George W Bush on Monday in Washington.
Economic sanctions
On Wednesday, the Turkish government announced it had begun to implement new military, political, diplomatic and economic measures to combat the PKK.
THE PKK Formed in late 1970s Launched armed struggle in 1984 Dropped independence demands in 1990s Wants greater autonomy for Turkey's Kurds Leader Abdullah Ocalan arrested in 1999 Ended five-year ceasefire in 2004 Called a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and US
Although no details were given about the economic measures, correspondents say they may result in a boycott of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, which Ankara says is failing to rein in the activities of the PKK.
The move came after Iraq pledged to step up checkpoint security in an effort to deny the movement of the PKK and cut off its supply lines.
The US also said it had stepped up its supply of "actionable intelligence" to the Turkish military to help it locate PKK positions in northern Iraq.
Turkish officials are demanding the closure of PKK camps in Iraq and want the group's leaders arrested.
Ms Rice says the Kurdish President, Masoud Barzani, has pledged to disassociate his administration from the PKK - but Turkey remains sceptical.
"We have doubts about the sincerity of the administration in northern Iraq in the struggle against the terrorist organisation," the Associated Press quoted Turkey's foreign minister as saying.
However, any military operation would target PKK bases, and would not be a general invasion, Mr Babacan added.

November 4, 2007
Turkey Skeptical of Iraqi Vows to Stop Kurdish Raids
By HELENE COOPER and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.ISTANBUL, Nov. 3 —
Turkey said on Saturday that two days of meetings with officials from Iraq and the United States on how to stop Kurdish militants who attack Turkey from northern Iraq had produced no new proposals.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the prime minister of Iraq, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the premier of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a conference here, in a bid to ease tensions between Iraq and Turkey over the rebels, known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.
Iraq pledged it would enact measures to stop the guerrillas. On Saturday afternoon, offices of a political party affiliated with the P.K.K. were shut in at least two northern Iraqi cities. But Turkish officials said the measures had been offered before.
“It has been a meeting with no resolution,” a Foreign Ministry official said after the conference. “There have been no tangible steps offered to us.”
Iraqi officials said that they were setting up checkpoints in northern Iraq and that Kurdish guerrillas would be arrested if stopped. Kurdish security forces also shut down the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party, which has links to the P.K.K, in Sulaimaniya and Erbil. The measures were meant to try to forestall a threatened Turkish retaliatory strike, which Iraqi and American diplomats fear would further inflame Iraq.
“The Iraqi government will actively help Turkey to overcome the P.K.K.,” Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, told reporters after his meeting here with Ms. Rice and Turkey’s foreign minister, Ali Babacan. “We are committed to undertaking a number of demonstrable and visible initiatives to disrupt, pacify and to isolate the P.K.K.”
In Sulaimaniya, 40 gun-toting members of local security forces surrounded and raided the party’s office. One security force commander said that party members were not from the city and were being ordered to leave.
But a senior party official, Dr. Abu Bakr Majid, said later that party members had been told to go home but had not been ordered out of the city, and that officers told them their computers and other equipment would not be removed.
He disputed that party members were not from the city, and said there were no arrests on Saturday in Erbil or Sulaimaniya, though he said a party leader was detained in Dohuk. Party offices in Kirkuk and Mosul were not raided, he said.
The forces in the raid seemed to be on edge, briefly detaining a reporter and photographer from The New York Times and ordering them onto the back of a truck loaded with armed men.
“We’re doing this because we’re getting pressure from Turkey,” said one of the officers, who declined to give his name.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry official, who declined to be identified according to diplomatic protocol, dismissed the raids as theater. “We consider these as secondary steps, nothing sufficient enough to actually resolve the conflict,” he said.
He said the Iraqi delegation “tried to create an air of new measures, but behind closed doors, they could not offer us anything new.”
It was not clear how effective the Iraqi raids on the party offices would be in disrupting P.K.K. activities. The guerrillas have sympathizers within the Kurdish security forces and can move from their mountain bases to the cities by pretending to be unconnected to the P.K.K. They also have provisions stored in their hide-outs.
The party’s Erbil office was closed in 2006, only to be allowed to re-open two months later.
At the Istanbul conference, Mr. Maliki told officials from the United States, Europe and the Middle East that Iraq had overcome the threat of civil war.
“The civil war that Al Qaeda wanted to spread has been prevented,” he said. “Iraq has overcome the period of anger and is stronger and more experienced today.”
The rosy picture painted by Mr. Maliki was at odds with the frustration expressed by Turkey, the host of the conference. Turkish officials hinted strongly that if Iraq and the United States did not act swiftly to rein in the guerrillas, Mr. Erdogan would decide he had no choice but to strike across the border, Arab and American diplomats said.
Mr. Erdogan has set Monday, when he is scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House, as a de facto deadline for American and Iraqi action. The Turkish military has indicated that it is willing to wait for Mr. Erdogan’s return before launching any operation into Iraq.
“Important and immediate measures are as necessary against the terror groups in certain parts of Iraq that hurt neighboring countries as they are against the terror groups inside Iraq that cause trouble for the Iraqi administration,” Mr. Erdogan said in his opening statement. “A tiny flame can become a wildfire.”
The Kurdish issue dominated Saturday’s meeting, held at the ornate Ciragan Palace on the banks of the Bosporus. Indeed, Iraqi officials complained that the focus of the meeting, which they had hoped would be on ways the participants could help prop up the Iraqi government, had shifted to talk among Middle Eastern powers about fears that the violence in Iraq threatened to engulf the region.
Helene Cooper reported from Istanbul, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Sulaimaniya, Iraq. Sabrina Tavernise and Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Michael Kamber from Sulaimaniya.

November 4, 2007
Iraq, With U.S. Support, Voids a Russian Oil Contract
By ANDREW E. KRAMERBAGHDAD, Oct. 29 —

Guided by American legal advisers, the Iraqi government has canceled a controversial development contract with the Russian company Lukoil for a vast oil field in Iraq’s southern desert, freeing it up for potential international investment in the future.
In response, Russian authorities have threatened to revoke a 2004 deal under the Paris Club of creditor nations to forgive $13 billion in Iraqi debt, a senior Iraqi official said.
The field, West Qurna, has estimated reserves of 11 billion barrels, the equivalent of the worldwide proven oil reserves of Exxon Mobil, America’s largest oil company. Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, said in an interview that the field would be opened to new bidders, perhaps as early as next year.
The contract, which had been signed and later canceled by the Saddam Hussein government, had been in legal limbo since the American invasion. But the Kremlin remained hopeful it could be salvaged until this September, when Mr. Shahristani traveled to Moscow to inform officials there that the decision to cancel it was final, he said.
The Russian government, newly emboldened in international affairs by its expanding oil wealth, is still backing Lukoil’s claim and protesting what it considers selective enforcement of contracts in Iraq.
“We will defend our interests,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “It is the government’s obligation to defend the interests of our companies in foreign countries.”
One Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential diplomatic exchange, described Russia’s response as, “If you do the deal, we can muster the political muscle to forgive the debt.”
West Qurna, mapped by Soviet geologists in the 1980s but mostly untapped, is one of a dozen or so supergiant oil fields in the world. They are known in the industry as “elephants,” fields so large they can tip the fortunes of companies or countries.
The field will produce one million barrels of oil a day after four to five years of development, according to both Iraqi oil officials and Lukoil; that is the approximate equivalent of the current output of the North Slope in Alaska.
In Lukoil’s 1997 production-sharing agreement, Saddam Hussein’s government awarded the company development rights to the 11 billion barrels of oil for a paltry signing bonus of $10 million. The deal, concluded when Iraq was seeking Russian support in a failed effort to lift United Nations sanctions, allotted 9.6 percent of the output to Lukoil.
The contract presented a quandary for the United States, which has been accused by some critics of invading Iraq for its oil. There is little evidence to date that the war effort has given American oil companies an inside track to Iraq’s reserves, and the Lukoil deal is the only one involving a major oil company to be reversed since the start of the war.
But as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, the United States has argued vigorously for countries to honor petroleum contracts. In that light, condoning the cancellation of the Lukoil contract could be seen in some quarters as evidence of a double standard.
“From the Russian government perspective, Iraq is seen as occupied and its administration directed by Washington, particularly when it comes to oil,” Vladimir I. Tikhomirov, chief economist at the Russian bank UralSib, said in a telephone interview.
“The Russians see the cancellation of their contract in Iraq as part of the U.S. drive to keep control over the major oil fields there,” he said.
The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has raised the issue with President Bush several times since the 2003 invasion. In an interview with the BBC in June 2003, Mr. Putin said Mr. Bush had gone as far as offering assurances.
“At our last meeting,” Mr. Putin said, “Bush directly and clearly said, ‘We do not have any goals of pressuring Russian companies out of Iraq and we are ready to create the conditions for working together there.’ I have no reason not to believe him.”
The legality of the Lukoil contract remains murky. It is Iraq’s stated policy, as laid out in a draft oil law now before Parliament, to honor contracts signed by the Saddam Hussein government. It is doing just that with contracts with Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Indian oil companies.
But the Iraqis note that it was the Saddam Hussein government that canceled the Lukoil contract. The government’s spokesman, Tariq Aziz, said at the time that the government believed the Russians were negotiating with the Americans to secure the contract in event of an invasion.
Early in the American occupation, the question arose whether the Hussein government’s decision was valid, said Michael Stinson, the former chief adviser to the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The answer was supplied by the principal American legal adviser to the ministry at the time, Robert Maguire, who Mr. Stinson said was then working for the Defense Department. Mr. Maguire drew on pre-Hussein-era law to justify the cancellation, Mr. Stinson said.
James Glanz contributed reporting.

Mon 5 Nov 2007
Putin warns Russians of the danger from 'those who wish to rule over mankind'
MARGARET NEIGHBOUR RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin yesterday claimed that Russia is under threat from others who wish to split the country and take its vast natural resources.
And in a veiled reference to the United States, he claimed there were others who would like to "rule over all mankind".
Speaking in front of Moscow's iconic St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Mr Putin told a group of military cadets and youth group members that while "an overwhelming majority of people in the world" are friendly toward Russia, there are some who "keep saying to this day that our nation should be split".
"Some believe that we are too lucky to possess so much natural wealth, which they say must be divided," Mr Putin said, speaking on National Unity Day.
"These people have lost their mind," he added with a smile.
Mr Putin in the same breath took a shot at the United States, saying there are people who "would like to build a unipolar world and rule over all of mankind". He said any attempt to establish a unipolar world was doomed to fail.
"Nothing of this kind has ever occurred in our planet's history, and I don't think it will ever happen," the president said.
Such talk is typical for Mr Putin, who criticises the United States for the invasion of Iraq.
National Unity Day was created by Mr Putin in 2005 to replace a holiday dedicated to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that had been celebrated on 7 November.