The United States may push for a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria in hopes of reinforcing existing council demands for that country to respect Lebanese sovereignty, a senior official said Thursday.

As before, the United States has been in close touch with France on the issue. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is tentatively planning to raise the subject next week in New York with French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy.
pravda.ru

EIRUT: Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdel-Aziz al-Saud said although Arabs were becoming increasingly convinced of the importance of democratic reform, their slogans remain mere words as convictions have yet to be put into practice. The prince added that, on the other hand, democratic reform has become one of the priorities of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Arab world.

Prince Talal delivered a speech at the American University of Cairo Wednesday under the theme of “Political Reform between Arabs and the U.S.: The United States of America and Reform in the Arab World, Between Dialogue and Practice.”

He said he believed that the U.S. stand regarding Arab democratic reform was not only reflected in U.S. political rhetoric, but was also coupled with selective action encouraging reform and sometimes criticizing delays to undertake it.

He added that Arab civil society constitutes the basic structure for development toward democracy and human rights.

Prince Talal indicated that some saw a new U.S. policy being adopted in the Arab world but others believed that this will die when the motives behind it are achieved.

He denied any new policy, arguing that the U.S. principles behind this policy
are based on “Jeffersonism” which has always set the goals of American policy.

Prince Talal said perhaps fears of U.S. intervention in the Arab world stem from the fact that many opponents to the U.S. have shifted their positions and that this new U.S. policy was coupled with a war on Iraq and cruel and unfair political and media campaigns against Islam, labeling Muslims as terrorists and extremists.

The prince said there was a contradiction a U.S. policy which fought terrorism through war but preached freedom, adding that this contradiction shows how difficult making changes in U.S. policy is.

He said America lacked sufficient knowledge about the affairs of the region and illustrated that the U.S. could get involved in a major project without understanding its dimensions, he backed up his argument with the example of the war waged by the U.S. on Iraq without accurate information and in the absence of a vision for the post-war Iraq.

Addressing the U.S., Prince Talal said the Arab region could not engage in adventures resulting from reckless choices, stressing that chaotic instability could lead to catastrophes.

The prince indicated that the region could explode if members of the U.S. administration insist on striking militarily at Iran to thwart its nuclear project.

He added that although he opposed any attack on Iran, it is necessary to clear the region of weapons of mass destruction.

Prince Talal said his calls were an attempt to direct a change in U.S. policy toward being a support for Arab people and not a new burden.

“The U.S. needs assistance to be able to help the Arab region,” he said, adding that America is still confused about many issues, including Islamic movements.

Prince Talal called for cooperation to make a gradually successful change to democracy, freedom and human rights, through timetables agreed upon in national dialogue without pressure or threats.
dailystar.com

A rep of arguably the most dangerous and repressive Islamic fundamentalist state lecturing on ‘Jeffersonian democracy’…sadly, it fits.

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.