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Sadr fighters lay down their weapons
Published: May 15, 2008 at 10:44 PM
BAGHDAD, May 15 (UPI) -- Forces loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr laid down their weapons Thursday as reports emerged from Iraq of relative calm in the Baghdad district of Sadr City. -
U.S. claims Iranian weapons are in Iraq
Published: May 15, 2008 at 10:42 PM
BAGHDAD, May 15 (UPI) -- A spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad said emerging evidence suggests Iran is backing the so-called special groups targeting coalition and Iraqi forces. -
Sadrists' political future uncertain
Published: May 15, 2008 at 10:40 PM
BAGHDAD, May 15 (UPI) -- The Sadrist Movement emerged as an influential force in the post-Saddam era in Iraq, but its potency may be in decline, analysts say.
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Analysis: Indian agencies start blame game
Published: May 15, 2008 at 8:36 PM
By KUSHAL JEENA
UPI Correspondent
NEW DELHI, May 15 (UPI) -- India's intelligence and security agencies are indulging in a blame game over a recent foiled infiltration bid by militants on the Pakistani border, with one agency accusing the paramilitary forces guarding the border of lacking alertness. -
Iraq press roundup
Published: May 15, 2008 at 7:20 PM
By HIBA DAWOOD
UPI Correspondent
The daily Al Mashriq newspaper had an editorial Thursday titled "Last lines for the chaotic months" that said although Iraq has been in a war for five years, the government in the last few weeks has been chaotically carrying out quick military operations and offensives in many cities and areas around the country. -
Features: More graves found
Published: May 15, 2008 at 2:31 PM
By RICHARD TOMKINS
ZAHAMM, Iraq, May 13 (UPI) -- The number of human remains unearthed in an al-Qaida killing field northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province is nearing 70 with the discovery of more graves by villagers who had volunteered to search an abandoned pomegranate orchard. -
Analysis: USAF's cyber offense capability
Published: May 15, 2008 at 2:23 PM
By SHAUN WATERMAN
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- Procurement documents from the U.S. Air Force give a rare glimpse into the Pentagon's plans for developing an offensive cyberwar capacity that can infiltrate, steal data from and if necessary take down enemy information technology networks. -
Iraq Press Roundup
Published: May 14, 2008 at 3:49 PM
By HIBA DAWOOD
UPI Correspondent
The Association of Muslim Scholars' Al Basaer newspaper said in its editorial Wednesday that President Bush has divided the people of Iraq into five groups according to the five political groups in Iraq. -
Feature: Iraq's killing fields
Published: May 14, 2008 at 2:13 PM
By RICHARD TOMKINS
ZAHAMM, Iraq, May 13 (UPI) -- Farmers digging in part of an abandoned pomegranate orchard in the Diyala provincial village of Zahamm have uncovered the graves of more than 50 people murdered by al-Qaida-Iraq during their two-year reign of terror in the area.
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Atlantic Eye: Pakistan's drop to the abyss
Published: Dec. 31, 2007 at 11:55 AM
By MARC S. ELLENBOGEN
UPI International Columnist
MALMO, Sweden, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- "Musharraf will bring us to the brink," Pakistan's Ambassador Asif Ezdi said to me privately in Berlin in December 2002. I looked doubtfully at Ezdi. It was a year after Sept. 11; Musharraf was an ally of the United States. I did not recognize how prescient Ezdi's words would be.
Five years ago I hosted a good-bye dinner in Berlin's venerable Brandenburger Hof for the dean of the Diplomatic Corps, New Zealand's Winston Cochrane. Cochrane had previously been ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. From Berlin he covered Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland. I jokingly called him "the viceroy" -- something that didn't humor him, but which he grimacingly put-up with.
Joining Cochrane and his wife as my guests were Ezdi and his wife, the Czech ambassador; Germany's former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger; Christoph Kannengiesser, the director of the German Confederation of Industry; Horst Schaettle, the director general of Sender Freies Berlin; the medical equipment mogul Wolfgang Bauer; and Immo Stabreit, the executive vice president of the German Council on Foreign Relations and former ambassador to the United States, France and South Africa.
Our discussions focused on Afghanistan, the Taliban, U.S. foreign policy, New Zealand's possible role as a mediator, North Korea and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Ezdi spoke briefly of Pakistan, in respectful but cautious terms.
Ezdi is not a man of many words. He plays his cards close to his vest. He is quiet and unassuming. I liked him. It would be the first of many meetings in Berlin.
In an Op-Ed on Dec. 28 in Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's finest, and cited in the well-known weekly der Spiegel, Ezdi publicly and uncharacteristically blasts Musharraf's grab for power. He lambastes the alliance of the feudal class and officers' corps who rule Pakistan. He criticizes the U.S. blind support for this coalition and its unflinching support for Musharraf, "who presents himself as the only alternative to Islamic fundamentalists."
"The United States will invest in this coalition as long as it supports U.S. global political goals -- even at the expense of Pakistani democracy." He continues that the only two groups who can fight this feudal coalition are the religious fanatics -- who he rejects, but who are supported by the poor -- and the city-based middle classes, who have Western values and reject the feudal-military alliance.
Ezdi writes that democratic forces are fighting for democracy supported by Pakistan's civil society, its judges, attorneys, civil servants, journalists and students. "We are calling for the constitution to be followed, a rule of law which puts the civilian authority above the military. … All of us," Ezdi writes, "want the West to help us. But the West must stop helping Musharraf cling to power at all costs."
This week, I called my condolences to Mustafa Kamal Kazi, a ranking Pakistani diplomat and former under secretary and now Pakistan's ambassador to Russia. Kazi is a personal friend of Benazir Bhutto and the Bhutto family. They hail from the same ancestral area. Kazi and I met some years ago after the sudden death of Frans Lurvink, a Global Panel benefactor. After the funeral, Kazi offered me a lift to the wake. We became steadfast friends and have become political sounding-boards for each other ever since.
Our last intense debate had been some months earlier, when we jointly visited Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, the Russian government's Asia expert and chief envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea. A slotted time of 10 minutes became an hour. Losyukov signed Pakistan's condolence book in Moscow on behalf of the Russian government.
In August I needed a break from the U.S. presidential campaign and other work. On my way back from Azerbaijan, I stopped in Moscow. There, Kazi and I tangled hairs about Pakistan and Asia. Mustafa was even more concerned than normal about U.S. policy toward Pakistan.
In Pakistan the military elite is primarily Punjabi and the feudal elites -- like Bhutto -- mostly Sindhi; they have been feuding for their share of power. A source close to the administration told me the United States urged Bhutto back to Pakistan in the hope that her presence would help Musharraf, who is part of the military elite though he is a mujahir, a migrant from India. The same source said Saudi Arabia sent back former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the same intentions -- to bolster Musharraf. But neither the military elites nor the jihadists were comfortable with the plans imposed upon them. It seems clear that one of these chains of command killed Bhutto.
Most recently, Kazi was consternated by current U.S. unilateral foreign policy approaches. "Does the United States government understand spatial and temporal thinking?" he asked me. Kazi had just been to dinner with Bhutto in London; I had met her some years ago in Oxford. At the dinner, Bhutto expressed similar concerns about the United States.
The Bush administration's policy of only supporting Musharraf is bad for Pakistan, bad for the region and extremely bad for the United States.
It is unwise and bad policy for the U.S. government to force foreign leaders to do what they perceive to be "good" for the United States to the detriment of their own countries -- to choose between U.S. interests and the interest of their own people.
This must not happen in a new administration -- it will not if I have a role to play.
--
(UPI Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Global Panel Foundation and president of the Prague Society. A venture capitalist with seats in Berlin and Prague, he was a visiting fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a member of the National Advisory Board of the U.S. Democratic Party.)
--
(e-mail: ellenbogen@globalpanel.org)
UPI International Columnist
MALMO, Sweden, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- "Musharraf will bring us to the brink," Pakistan's Ambassador Asif Ezdi said to me privately in Berlin in December 2002. I looked doubtfully at Ezdi. It was a year after Sept. 11; Musharraf was an ally of the United States. I did not recognize how prescient Ezdi's words would be.
Five years ago I hosted a good-bye dinner in Berlin's venerable Brandenburger Hof for the dean of the Diplomatic Corps, New Zealand's Winston Cochrane. Cochrane had previously been ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. From Berlin he covered Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland. I jokingly called him "the viceroy" -- something that didn't humor him, but which he grimacingly put-up with.
Joining Cochrane and his wife as my guests were Ezdi and his wife, the Czech ambassador; Germany's former Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger; Christoph Kannengiesser, the director of the German Confederation of Industry; Horst Schaettle, the director general of Sender Freies Berlin; the medical equipment mogul Wolfgang Bauer; and Immo Stabreit, the executive vice president of the German Council on Foreign Relations and former ambassador to the United States, France and South Africa.
Our discussions focused on Afghanistan, the Taliban, U.S. foreign policy, New Zealand's possible role as a mediator, North Korea and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Ezdi spoke briefly of Pakistan, in respectful but cautious terms.
Ezdi is not a man of many words. He plays his cards close to his vest. He is quiet and unassuming. I liked him. It would be the first of many meetings in Berlin.
In an Op-Ed on Dec. 28 in Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's finest, and cited in the well-known weekly der Spiegel, Ezdi publicly and uncharacteristically blasts Musharraf's grab for power. He lambastes the alliance of the feudal class and officers' corps who rule Pakistan. He criticizes the U.S. blind support for this coalition and its unflinching support for Musharraf, "who presents himself as the only alternative to Islamic fundamentalists."
"The United States will invest in this coalition as long as it supports U.S. global political goals -- even at the expense of Pakistani democracy." He continues that the only two groups who can fight this feudal coalition are the religious fanatics -- who he rejects, but who are supported by the poor -- and the city-based middle classes, who have Western values and reject the feudal-military alliance.
Ezdi writes that democratic forces are fighting for democracy supported by Pakistan's civil society, its judges, attorneys, civil servants, journalists and students. "We are calling for the constitution to be followed, a rule of law which puts the civilian authority above the military. … All of us," Ezdi writes, "want the West to help us. But the West must stop helping Musharraf cling to power at all costs."
This week, I called my condolences to Mustafa Kamal Kazi, a ranking Pakistani diplomat and former under secretary and now Pakistan's ambassador to Russia. Kazi is a personal friend of Benazir Bhutto and the Bhutto family. They hail from the same ancestral area. Kazi and I met some years ago after the sudden death of Frans Lurvink, a Global Panel benefactor. After the funeral, Kazi offered me a lift to the wake. We became steadfast friends and have become political sounding-boards for each other ever since.
Our last intense debate had been some months earlier, when we jointly visited Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, the Russian government's Asia expert and chief envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea. A slotted time of 10 minutes became an hour. Losyukov signed Pakistan's condolence book in Moscow on behalf of the Russian government.
In August I needed a break from the U.S. presidential campaign and other work. On my way back from Azerbaijan, I stopped in Moscow. There, Kazi and I tangled hairs about Pakistan and Asia. Mustafa was even more concerned than normal about U.S. policy toward Pakistan.
In Pakistan the military elite is primarily Punjabi and the feudal elites -- like Bhutto -- mostly Sindhi; they have been feuding for their share of power. A source close to the administration told me the United States urged Bhutto back to Pakistan in the hope that her presence would help Musharraf, who is part of the military elite though he is a mujahir, a migrant from India. The same source said Saudi Arabia sent back former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the same intentions -- to bolster Musharraf. But neither the military elites nor the jihadists were comfortable with the plans imposed upon them. It seems clear that one of these chains of command killed Bhutto.
Most recently, Kazi was consternated by current U.S. unilateral foreign policy approaches. "Does the United States government understand spatial and temporal thinking?" he asked me. Kazi had just been to dinner with Bhutto in London; I had met her some years ago in Oxford. At the dinner, Bhutto expressed similar concerns about the United States.
The Bush administration's policy of only supporting Musharraf is bad for Pakistan, bad for the region and extremely bad for the United States.
It is unwise and bad policy for the U.S. government to force foreign leaders to do what they perceive to be "good" for the United States to the detriment of their own countries -- to choose between U.S. interests and the interest of their own people.
This must not happen in a new administration -- it will not if I have a role to play.
--
(UPI Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Global Panel Foundation and president of the Prague Society. A venture capitalist with seats in Berlin and Prague, he was a visiting fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a member of the National Advisory Board of the U.S. Democratic Party.)
--
(e-mail: ellenbogen@globalpanel.org)
© 2007 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
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Analysis: Military slew Bhutto -- sources