KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a Canadian armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing himself but causing no casualties to Canadian troops, the Afghan army said.

The blast occurred in Daman district, about 15 km (10 miles) south of the city of Kandahar and about 10 km (six miles) from the airport, where Canadian troops are based.
ca.reuters,com

A bomb ripped through a vegetable market in a Shia section of Baghdad and a senior Sunni leader escaped assassination as at least 36 people were killed yesterday in a surge of violence that pushed Iraq closer still to sectarian civil war.

An aide to Ibrahim al- Jaafari, the Prime Minister, meanwhile, lashed out at Sunni, Kurdish and secular political leaders who have mounted a campaign to deny him another term, saying the Shia United Iraqi alliance will not change its candidate.
independent.co.uk

Shiites in Iraqi city of Basra threaten boycott of oil and goods
Basra/Baghdad – The influential Shiite-Islamic Fadhila Party in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra on Friday threatened to halt the traffic of oil and other goods from southern Iraq into the centre of the country.

The threat would be carried out if the party’s demands were not taken into consideration in the formation of the future Iraqi government, said Fadhila party leader Sheikh Sabah al-Saedi in his Friday sermon in Basra.

Among the party’s demands were that there would be no ‘remnants of the old regime’ of Saddam Hussein in the new government and that the ministries of the interior and defence would remain in the hands of the Shiite alliance.

Previously cabinet talks had centred on promoting Sunni leadership of at least one of the ‘armed’ ministries (interior or defence) for the sake of national unity.

Al-Saedi also called for the ‘execution’ of Saddam Hussein, who persecuted Shiites and is currently standing trial before a special tribunal in Baghdad.

According to observers, the threat to hinder the flow of goods and oil would be an extreme form of pressure, as two thirds of Iraq’s oil is found in the south of the country, and production and transport of oil from the north has practically been brought to a standstill by insurgent acts of sabotage.

In addition, Basra is the only sea sea port the country has.

Last December, in okaying the execution of Stan Tookie Williams, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went out of his way to smear a whole history of Black struggle against racism. Schwarzenegger’s statement denying clemency claimed that Stan’s record of turning his life around must be a lie–because Stan identified with Black revolutionaries of the past and present, dedicating his autobiography to a number.

The most abuse of all was heaped on George Jackson–whose inclusion in Stan’s dedication “is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed,” read Schwarzenegger’s statement.

Jackson, author of the widely read prison memoir Soledad Brother, had been thrown in jail for a petty robbery, and became a revolutionary behind bars. He was murdered in August 1971 by guards at San Quentin prison in an alleged “escape attempt.”
counterpunch.org

Rampant child malnutrition in poor countries is usually not caused principally by lack of food, nor are large, politically popular programs to feed schoolchildren the right way to tackle a problem stunting the intellectual and physical development of more than 100 million children worldwide, a new World Bank report says.

The irreversible damage malnutrition causes to children occurs by age 2, long before they begin primary school, and the bank contends that efforts to combat this scourge must concentrate on the brief window of opportunity between gestation and age 2, with a focus on teaching mothers to properly feed and care for babies and toddlers.

While many experts would agree with the bank’s assessment of the evidence on malnutrition, its policy recommendations are sure to be controversial at a time when the world is pushing to halve poverty in the coming decade and school feeding programs are often seen as part of the solution.

The bank, the largest financier of antipoverty programs in developing countries, maintains in the report released today, “Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development,” that countries like India with staggering rates of malnutrition need to change their approach to speed up progress.

Nutritionists at the bank say programs should emphasize changing the behaviors of mothers — for example, to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of life or seek quick treatment for their children’s diarrhea and other common childhood illnesses, rather than directly providing food.
nytimes.com

How insane is this?

WASHINGTON — Archaeological finds from Mexico and Peru show that, long before Europeans arrived, women served as warriors, governors and priestesses.

An exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery includes little pottery jugs and massive stone images portraying women in a variety of roles in addition to traditional homemakers and care givers.

“Women were not only daughters, wives, mothers and grandmothers, but also healers, midwives, scribes, artists, poets, priestesses, warriors, governors and even goddesses in pre-Columbian society,” said Judy L. Larson, director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in announcing the exhibit.
latimes.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – A proposed pipeline that would provide Venezuelan natural gas to South America may never materialize because of financing and other problems, an Energy Department official said Thursday.

The comments by assistant energy secretary Karen A. Harbert came as officials from Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina met in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, to lay plans for the project.

Testifying at a House subcommittee hearing, Harbert said the pipeline would take years to complete “if it ever comes to fruition.”

“There are tremendous technical challenges,” she said. “There are tremendous environmental challenges. But most importantly, there are tremendous financial feasibility challenges.”

The same issues were being discussed at the Caracas meeting. Much of the project is expected to be financed from Venezuelan oil revenues.

…She expressed doubt that Venezuela will be able to carry out its agenda for constructing refineries and tankers and producing natural gas because of lack of financing.

The problem, Harbert said, stems from “the lack of expertise and increasing restrictions on foreign investment in the oil sector.”
guardian.co.uk

In other words, they’ll make sure it doesn’t get built.

ROME, March 2 — Citing new photographic analysis, an Italian parliamentary commission has concluded that top Soviet leaders were behind the failed plot to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

“This commission holds, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope Karol Wojtyla,” the commission wrote, using John Paul’s given name, in a preliminary report released to news organizations this week. The report needs approval by Parliament.

The report has no legal bearing, but reopens a central unanswered question from the cold war era: Whether Bulgarian secret agents, working on behalf of the Soviets, played a role in the shooting in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, which gravely wounded John Paul.

The report claims that the Soviet leadership saw John Paul as a threat because of his support for the Solidarity trade union, which worked to undermine Soviet control in his native Poland.
nytimes.com

oh. okay.

Hamas Heads to Moscow in Search for Legitimacy
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Hamas embarks on a quest for international legitimacy on Friday with an official visit to Russia, marking the Islamic militant group’s first talks with a major power involved in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Although it deals a blow to U.S.-led efforts to isolate Hamas since it swept Palestinian elections in January, Russia’s mediation is seen by some in the West as a chance to talk the faction into renouncing violence and recognizing Israel.

JERUSALEM, March 2 — Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned Palestinians today that Israel would use “far-reaching measures” and “an iron fist against any attempt to resume terrorist activity,” whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Olmert spoke as a new opinion poll showed his Kadima party continuing to slip a month before March 28 elections, but it was still comfortably on course to form a new Israeli government. The Haaretz-Channel 10 poll shows Kadima winning 37 of the parliament’s 120 seats, down two seats from last month and down seven seats from a similar poll taken at the end of January.

Mr. Olmert said at a news conference that he has personally ordered airstrikes against Palestinians involved in firing Qassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip. “There are no longer any restrictions on the security establishment regarding counterterrorism actions anywhere,” he said. “Not a few times terrorists who were about to fire rockets were liquidated before they could fire them and it was based on my orders, sometimes my personal orders.”
nytimes.com

Israeli ‘ruler-in-waiting’ plans to starve Hamas
She is already being spoken of as an Israeli leader in waiting. Today the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni brings to London the campaign to destabilise the incoming Hamas Palestinian government by starving it of cash.

Israel’s policy – described by a spokesman as putting “the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger” – has left London feeling squeamish. Tony Blair and Jack Straw will today undoubtedly show solidarity with Israel, saying Britain is not in the business of funding terrorists. But in private there is anguish that the policy will bring malnutrition to innocent Palestinians and punish them for taking part in a democratic election. The Palestinians are completely dependent on foreign aid for their survival and Israel’s campaign to put 3.6 million people on starvation rations is foreboding.

…A former Mossad officer, Ms Livni is the daughter of Zionists – classified as terrorists by the British authorities. Her father, Eitan, was the Irgun’s head of operations when it blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 28 Britons, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. The subsequent wave of terror attacks he led outraged British public opinion, leading the government to abandon the Palestinian Mandate and turn the problem over to the UN, with disastrous consequences for the Palestinians.

Mofaz: Karnei Shomron to be included in Israel’s final borders
Setting a vision for Israel’s permanent borders, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said that the government plans to retain the settlements of Karnei Shomron, Reihan and Shaked in any future deal with the Palestinians.

Israel, Mofaz said, planned to retain the Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion settlement blocs in addition to the settlements of Shaked, Reihan, Karnei Shomron and Kedumim, whether under a peace plan with the Palestinians or in a unilateral withdrawal.

“When we talk about Israel’s permanent or future borders, it includes the Jordan Valley, Ma’aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ariel, Kedumim-Karnei Shomron and Reihan-Shaked,” Mofaz said during a meeting with the residents of the settlement of Oranit late Sunday night. The defense minister made no mention of the future of the Ofra-Beit El bloc, Hebron, Itamar or Elon Moreh.

The settlements Mofaz listed went a little farther than a similar list Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert detailed three weeks ago. Olmert began to broadly draw the parameters of where he thought Israel’s final border should run earlier in the month in a Channel 2 interview, saying that the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion, Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel settlement blocs would remain a part of the country.

“We will separate from the majority of the Palestinian population that lives in Judea and Samaria, and it will obligate us to leave territories where Israel is today,” Olmert said. “We will move into central settlement blocs.”

03/02/06 “The Hindu” — — DUBAI: As the countdown for a crucial meeting on Iran on March 6 gets under way, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has revealed that it has not found any evidence that Teheran had diverted material towards making atomic weapons.

In its report which has been circulated to its 35 board members, the IAEA said that its three years of investigations had not shown “any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”, the Associated Press reported.
informationclearinghouse.info

Iran claims Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads
MOSCOW. March 2 (Interfax) – Teheran has information suggesting that Israel’s nuclear arsenal exceeds 200 warheads.

“Israel’s nuclear potential exceeds 200 warheads. The U.S., meanwhile, is pursuing a policy aimed at distracting attention from this problem,” Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani told the press in Moscow on Thursday.

India, Pakistan got atomic arms “legitimately”: US
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Wednesday the way India and Pakistan had obtained nuclear arms was legitimate, in contrast to Iran which he accused of pursuing atomic weapons in violation of its international undertakings.

While Iran is seeking to conceal development of nuclear weapons under the guise of a legitimate program to generate nuclear power, Bolton said, India and Pakistan “did it legitimately.”

His comments, made in response to an audience question following a speech to a meeting of the World Jewish Congress, appeared to go farther than the administration of President George W. Bush has previously gone in embracing the two nations’ nuclear programs.

BAGHDAD – A political conflict threatened to further exacerbate Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions Thursday as Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders issued a letter demanding that the leading Shiite Muslim coalition withdraw its nomination of interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to head the next government.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to avert attacks today, during the Muslim day of prayer, the government announced a one-day ban on private vehicles in Baghdad and its outskirts. The police and army were instructed to seal off the capital and seize any private vehicles on the roads between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.

“We had many conflicts with the past government, and for it to continue for the next four years is just unacceptable to us,” said Faraj Haidary of the Kurdish Alliance, which has persuaded other political blocs to sign off on the formal letter delivered Thursday.

Politicians with the leading Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which holds a plurality of seats in the new parliament, warned that efforts to form a “national unity” government, a major U.S. goal, might collapse if the Kurds and Sunnis don’t back down.

“Jaafari is the nominee, and the UIA will not be provoked in this way,” said Fadhil Shara, a representative of Shiite radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The political maneuvering followed a spasm of sectarian clashes that left hundreds dead in the past week. The bloodshed continued Thursday, with police reporting that more than 30 people were killed in attacks across the country.
startribune.com

Militia says will defend Baghdad’s Sadr city
BAGHDAD, March 2 (Reuters) – Militias loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will take a key defence role in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a Sadr official said, after a blast in a minibus killed five people there on Thursday.

“Today, the terrorists have targeted Sadr City because it has a Shi’ite majority which tells that the extremists want to fight Shi’ites wherever they are,” Hazim Araji told Reuters.

“We are going to coordinate with Iraqi army and police but the Mehdi Army is going to have a key role providing protection.”

Police said eight people were also wounded in the blast in Sadr City. Such attacks have been rare inside the slum area, a stronghold of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has promoted solidarity with Sunni Arab insurgents.

Sadr, a youthful nationalist with a following among poor Shi’ites, led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004 and has maintained ties with Sunni rebels. But many Sunnis blame his Mehdi Army militia for attacks on Sunni mosques this past week.

Robert Fisk: Somebody is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq.
The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.