ANKARA (AFP) – Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul praised neighboring Iran’s “serious” efforts to curb Kurdish separatists, while warning Iraqi Kurds that the rebels will one day threaten their stability if they continue to find refuge in northern Iraq.

Thousands of militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting Ankara since 1984, are based in mountain hideouts in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, and also often use Iran to infiltrate Turkey.

Baghdad said at the weekend that Iranian forces entered several kilometers (miles) into Iraq and shelled PKK positions; Iran, which has its own restive Kurdish community, neither confirmed nor denied the claim.

The PKK, which has markedly stepped up violence this year, is considered a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States.

“The terrorist organization is a threat not only to Turkey, but also to Iran,” Gul said in an interview with NTV television. “The Iranians have understood this and that is why they give great importance to this issue and are engaged in a very serious effort.”

Pejak, a Kurdish group linked to the PKK, is active in Iran and has been blamed for many of the armed attacks last year that killed at least 120 Iranian police and wounded scores of others.

In Turkey, at least 20 members of the security forces have been killed this year in clashes and landmine attacks blamed on the PKK, which has lost at least 53 fighters, according to an AFP count.

Kurdish militants also claimed eight bomb attacks in urban centers, killing four and leaving 95 injured.

Turkey has amassed thousands of troops along the Iraqi border for what it describes as a large-scale effort to prevent increasing infiltration by PKK militants.
news.yahoo.com

It’s hundreds of thousands of Turkish troops. Curioser and curioser…

BAGHDAD (AFP) – US forces are “zooming in” on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who may be in Baghdad or nearby, and the demise of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader is only a matter of time, a US general said.

Major General Rick Lynch also took aim at Zarqawi personally, reaffirming claims he made last week that the shadowy Jordanian fugitive is a desperate man.

“Zarqawi is zooming in on Baghdad and we are zooming in on him,” the US military spokesman told reporters in the Iraqi capital. “His focus is Yusufiyah and Baghdad and we believe he is somewhere in person in the vicinity.”

“His centre of activity is Baghdad, but it’s only a matter of time that we take him down,” Lynch said adding that Yusifiyah was the new “staging area for suicide bombers in Baghdad.”
news.yahoo.com

The month after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra was the bloodiest in Baghdad’s modern history, with 1,294 bodies arriving at the city’s morgue.

Ninety per cent had been shot, said the facility’s deputy director, Dr Qaiss Hassan, as official figures were released of the carnage that came after the destruction of the revered Shia holy site on Feb 22.

There was a wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killings as Shia mobs rampaged through the Iraqi capital, attacking mosques and targeting Sunnis, some of whom then carried out reprisal killings.

Last month, although the numbers dropped from the record set in March, the morgue still had to deal with the arrival of 1,115 bodies.

The figures indicate that in just two months as many people were killed in Baghdad alone as the total number of US troops to have died in the conflict so far.

Under Iraqi medical law the morgue does not deal with any person who has died from natural causes as they can have their death certificate issued by a doctor.
telegraph.co.uk

WASHINGTON Ð With mounting sectarian violence in Iraq yet waning American influence there, a prominent Democratic policymaker is touting a plan to divide Iraq into sectarian-based autonomous regions – as a way to head off even deeper conflict.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware is calling for the division of Iraq into Shiite, Kurdish, and Sunni regions. Those regions would share oil wealth and provide for their own internal security, while leaving foreign policy, border security, and oil policy to a central government in Baghdad.

The Biden proposal is the most recent evidence that US leaders are looking for new ideas for addressing Iraq and the US commitment there. In March Congress named an independent panel, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and longtime Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, charged with providing the White House and Congress with a fresh assessment of options for Iraq.

Biden’s wading into the Iraq conundrum is commended by some observers for at least attempting to answer the big problems they say others – particularly the Bush administration – have left unaddressed. Those include the thorny issue of Iraq’s militias, which some US military officials now call a bigger problem than the insurgency.

Most Iraq experts, however, are categoric in their rejection of the proposal, saying it would only worsen an already bad situation – and that it is not likely to garner broad support among Iraqis.
csmonitor.com

GENEVA, May 5 Ñ A delegation of American officials came before a United Nations panel on torture today to account for the conduct of the United States in the fight against terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

The American officials, who were part of an unusually large group sent to deliver a report on the country’s compliance with the Convention Against Torture, offered a careful and familiar set of responses to questions that the panel posed.

Despite abuses in places like the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the American officials denied that the government systematically mistreated prisoners and they reiterated a commitment to a global ban on torture.

John B. Bellinger III, the legal adviser to the State Department, who led the delegation, said that criticism of United States policy has become “so hyperbolic as to be absurd.” He added: “I would ask you not to believe every allegation that you have heard.”

Speaking before the United Nation’s Committee Against Torture, he also reiterated the “absolute commitment” of the United States to eradicating torture globally and said the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents that have been, or will be, investigated and punished.

But the United Nations legal experts charged with ensuring that nations keep their commitments under the Convention Against Torture appeared skeptical.

Fernando Mari–o MenŽndez of Spain cited data from human rights groups that of 600 United States personnel alleged to have been involved in the torture or murder of prisoners, only 10 received prison terms of a year or more.

The 10-member committee raised a number of other concerns, which the delegation is to respond to in detail on Monday. They include Washington’s reported policy of sending prisoners for questioning to countries with poor human rights records, and the role of controversial interrogation techniques like “waterboarding,” in which prisoners are led to believe they are going to drown.

By sending its delegation here, the Bush administration was trying to restore credibility to its program for treating prisoners by affirming support for the Convention Against Torture, a treaty outlawing prisoner abuse that was signed by Washington more than a decade ago.
nytimes.com

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A speech by Vice President Dick Cheney strongly critical of the Kremlin marks the start of a new Cold War that could drive Moscow away from its new-found Western allies, the Russian press said on Friday.

In shocked reaction to the harshest U.S. criticism of Moscow for years, commentators said Washington had created an anti-Russian cordon of Western-aligned states stretching from the Baltic almost to the Caspian Sea.

The Kremlin, in a reaction within hours of Cheney’s delivery in Vilnius, said the speech, which was full of accusations that Moscow was limiting human rights and using its energy riches to blackmail the world, was “completely incomprehensible.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to comment directly on Friday when asked about Cheney, but said the meeting of former communist satellites that the vice president had addressed appeared to be “united against someone.”

The Russian press agreed, comparing Cheney’s words to a 1946 speech by British statesman Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, when he said Europe was divided by an “Iron Curtain.”
reuters.myway.com

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, May 5 Ñ A day after chastising Moscow for its use of oil and natural gas as “tools for intimidation and blackmail,” Vice President Dick Cheney visited Kazakhstan today to promote export routes that bypass Russia and directly supply the West.

With his comments, Mr. Cheney waded into a messy geopolitical struggle for energy and influence in the countries of the former Soviet Union, rapidly developing into one of the world’s largest producing regions.

The United States backs efforts to weaken Russia’s grip by building new export routes for the enormous energy reserves of Central Asia, much of which now must pass through Russian territory to reach ports in the Black Sea or pipelines to Europe.

Mr. Cheney’s visit to Kazakhstan, on Russia’s southern rim, highlighted the balancing of United States interests, trying to counter Russian dominance in energy matters in the region by cozying up to states like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that have spotty human rights records and limited democracy Ñ and plenty of oil.
nytimes.com

Cheney et al have been at these machinations for years: whatever he’s ‘wading into’ is his same old s—.

…Another high profile casualty was Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, who has played a leading role, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the foreign ministers of France and Germany, in the West’s confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. He was moved to the less prestigious post of leader of the House of Commons, responsible for maintaining Labor party discipline.

Mr. Straw was replaced by Margaret Beckett, the environment minister, and Britain’s first female foreign secretary.
nytimes.com

Too soft on Iran.

BRITISH forces were placed on notice by the Taleban yesterday that their mission to impose security over southern Afghanistan would end in failure. On the day that Britain took command of the Nato forces that are being deployed in their thousands across the most volatile provinces of the country, the Taleban leadership sent them a chilling message. ÒOur activity will increase day by day. We now have the confidence to fight face-to-face and we have all the ammunition we need,Ó said Mohammad Hanif Sherzad, the spokesman for Mullah Omar, the reclusive, one-eyed Taleban leader, who has a $10 million (£5.4 million) bounty on his head.

ÒWe will turn Afghanistan into a river of blood for the British,Ó he told The Times on a satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. ÒWe have beaten them before and we will beat them again.Ó
timesonline.co.uk

NEW HAVEN, Conn., May 4 (UPI) — Yale University is feeling increased pressure over the presence on campus of a student with a Taliban past.

The student, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, 27, identified by The New York Times as a roving ambassador for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, has been taking non-degree courses at Yale since the summer. He has applied for admission to a degree-granting program.

Yale has been the subject of intense debate in publications and on TV and Web sites, including criticism by some families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some students and professors, however, support his presence as mutually beneficial.

Now, Yale must decide on the question of admitting him to a degree-granting program and the debate rages anew.
upi.com