WASHINGTON, April 19 (UPI) -- Insider notes from United Press International for April 19 ...
With all bettors focusing their gambling skills on the papal conclave, those with a taste for the more exotic might be willing to bet on where the next "velvet revolution" will occur. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is upping the speculation; during a meeting with the Georgian prosecutor general's office staff Saakashvili discussed the recent regime changes in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and added, "We have defeated our enemies in these two countries, but there is one more country on our list." Saakashvili then promised to reveal the country at the GUUAM summit in Chisinau on April 22, attended by the leaders of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Saakashvili's comments undoubtedly blindsided U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, currently in Moscow seeking Russian assistance on derailing Iran's nuclear programs. If Saakashvili delivers on his promise and "names names," then President George W. Bush's trip to Moscow for the May 9 victory celebrations could well be less warm then expected, especially as he is due to visit Georgia afterward.
Relations between Washington and Ottawa over air-space issues have been rocky since Feb. 24, when Canada formally declined to participate in the Bush administration's plan to build a continental ballistic missile-defense system. Despite such misgivings the countries remain intimately connected on air-space issues, which was illustrated Monday, when U.S. authorities postponed indefinitely the scheduled launch from Cape Canaveral of a U.S. Titan IVB rocket after Canada expressed concern that a failure would result in debris crashing into the ocean near Newfoundland's offshore Hibernia and Terra Nova oil platforms, 196 miles off St. Johns. U.S. Air Force Space Command spokesman Capt. Joe Macri diplomatically ascribed the delay to a problem with one of the rocket's boosters. Oil companies, which had been planning to evacuate 325 crewmen from the oil platforms, subsequently cancelled their plans. The platform owners estimated that the evacuation would have cost $100 million, including lost production revenue. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams said last week that he was satisfied that the Titan IVB's discarded 10-ton booster would not pose a risk to oil crews, saying that the U.S. Air Force estimated that the chances of debris from the rocket launch striking a rig in the area were as remote as 1 trillion-to-1. The rocket's payload was hardly insignificant -- a National Reconnaissance Office intelligence satellite. Not that the issue will go away. Macri said, "We're looking at other launch windows right now."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pronouncements on the proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza are far more optimistic than the projections of the Israel Defense Forces, which fear a rise in terrorism after the evacuation. IDF forces are so certain that the aftermath will become more turbulent that they have begun planning Operation "Rainy Day" to cope with the expected surge in violence. Israeli journalists specializing in military affairs concur with the bleak IDF assessment; HaTzofeh military correspondent Haggai Huberman wrote that terrorism will rise to the extent that "the IDF will be forced to re-take the cities of Judea and Samaria" that were recently returned to Palestinian security control. Ha'aretz defense affairs expert Amir Oren is even more negative, saying, "The prediction (among the military) is that by next January to March, after Palestinian terror has increased and become more sophisticated, the IDF will return to Gaza. The mind-boggling thing is that the state of Israel is advancing, knowingly and with its eyes open, toward this death trap. The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was a surprise, but the war of October 2005 is totally known in advance."
Say "romance" and "India" and people immediately think of the Taj Mahal, commissioned in the 17th century by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz-ul-Zamani. Since India became independent in 1947 the monument has been under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India, but not perhaps for much longer. The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Wakf Board, a religious board that oversees Muslim property, has claimed it. Following a recent directive of the Allahabad High Court, the Wakf board issued two notices to the ASI querying why the monument should be not registered as a Wakf property. In hearings in December and January the ASI did not bother to make a representation before the Wakf Board on its claims. Chairman of the Wakf Board Hafiz Usman said it had taken up the issue only in compliance with the recent high-court directive asking it to decide if the Taj Mahal was Wakf property. Usman claimed that the presence of graves in the monument was sufficient to register it as Wakf property. If custody of the Taj Mahal is transferred to the Wakf, the board will claim a 7-percent share in the total income from the monument.
