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News archives for the week ending 2nd April 2010

Pakistan needs $1bn funding

The volatile tribal zone of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, needs $1bn (£600m) in funding to avoid it relapsing into a base for al-Qaida, the Pakistani head of the Frontier Corps said yesterday.

Major General Tariq Khan said combat operations to clear Taliban and al-Qaida extremists from the belt, including North Waziristan, would be completed by May.

He said that once the region had been pacified it must not be neglected by the international community as it was after the late 1980s Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

North Waziristan is a crucial operation for US-led forces in Afghanistan. The west has been pressing for action in the area, which is abase for al-Qaida and the Haqqani network, one of the most feared insurgent groups in Afghanistan.

The tribal area is one of the poorest in Pakistan. After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaida and the Taliban crossed the border turning the area into an extremist fiefdom.

The Guardian 2/4/10

Brown backs new Iran sanctions

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed renewed efforts to secure fresh sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme during wide-ranging talks.

The pair met at Mr Brown's official country retreat Chequers, where they both expressed "strong support" for sanctions, Downing Street said.

It came as a senior US diplomat signalled China was ready to hold "serious" talks at the United Nations with Western powers which reject Tehran's claims not to be seeking nuclear weapons. China wields a veto as a permanent member of the UN Security Council but US President Barack Obama has said he hopes to have new sanctions in place within weeks.

Press Association, 2/4/10

Zardari closer to losing powers

A Pakistani parliamentary committee on Wednesday approved a set of constitutional amendments that will, among other things, shift the balance of power from unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari to the prime minister.

Although the reforms, which are expected to pass, will curb Mr. Zardari’s powers, they may also elicit a rare flash of support for the embattled leader.

“It’s a massive political boost to [Zardari],” says Cyril Almeida, a political columnist for Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language daily. “It’s not the standard practice in Pakistan to give away powers. It’s more the reverse, where people consolidate or accumulate powers.”

The powers include the authority to dissolve parliament, which was used four times during the 1990s to dismiss elected governments, and the power to appoint the commander of the armed forces.

The amendment bill will also achieve longstanding demands for greater provincial autonomy, and rename the North West Frontier Province as “Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa,” in recognition of the ethnic Pashtuns (or Pakhtoons) who make up the majority of the population there. The British had given the name “NWFP” in 1901, and news of the change sparked massive celebrations in the provincial capital of Peshawar.

Christian Science Monitor, 1/4/10

BP kicks off Iraq oil bonanza

BP PLC Tuesday awarded $500 million in contracts to drill wells in Iraq's giant Rumaila oil field, the first step in a mammoth initiative by foreign oil companies to revive the country's energy industry.

If successful, the effort at Rumaila and several other fields near Basra could be one of the largest expansions of crude-oil production ever achieved anywhere.

Increased Iraq production could be the difference between a well-supplied global market with oil steadily trading below today's $82 a barrel and a tight oil market with triple-digit prices, struggling to meet rising Asian demand.

Wall Street Journal, 31/3/10

Canada confirms Afghan withdrawal

The Ministers` Meeting at the Chateau Cartier in Gatineau, Quebec, between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made it clear that Canada is determined to withdraw its 2.800 troops from Afghanistan between July and December 2011.

Despite a United States position that attempted persuasion, the Canadian Forces will discontinue their military support in Afghanistan in 2011.

The Examiner, Canada, 30/3/10

West shares blame for Afghan corruption

Corruption is entrenched in Afghanistan, leaving the poor at the mercy of the powerful while security-obsessed international forces often turn a blind eye to abuses, a United Nations report charged on Tuesday.

Despite $35 billion injected into the economy since 2002, one in three Afghans, or 9 million people, live in absolute poverty while another third survive just above the poverty line, it said.

"A key driver of poverty in Afghanistan is the abuse of power. Many Afghan power-holders use their influence to drive the public agenda for their own personal or vested interests," said the report issued by the U.N. human rights office.

As a result, the government of President Hamid Karzai is often unable to deliver basic services, such as security, food or shelter, or protect communities from lawlessness, it said.

Karzai says corruption is a problem in Afghanistan, but the West shares much of the blame for poorly managing billions of dollars in aid programmes, which dwarf Afghanistan's own budget.

New York Times, 30/3/10

Committee calls for curbs on arms sales to Israel

A committee of British members of parliament has called for a review of future arms sales after it emerged that components supplied by Britain to Israel were highly likely to have been used during the war on Gaza last year.

In a report released on Tuesday, the MPs said: "It is regrettable that arms exports to Israel were almost certainly used in Operation Cast Lead. This is in direct contravention to the UK government's policy that UK arms exports to Israel should not be used in the Occupied Territories."

After the Israeli assault on Gaza, the British government reviewed more than 180 pending arms licences destined for the country. Five licences for equipment to be supplied to the Israeli navy were revoked as a result of the review.

But campaign groups in the UK are calling for a complete embargo on British arms sales to Israel. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade says that "the only effective action would be the immediate imposition of embargo on arms and components going to Israel, whether directly or through incorporation into weaponry produced in third countries".

During 2008, the year running up to the war on Gaza, the UK approved arms licences to Israel worth $41.3m, as well as providing the components for US-made weapons destined for Israel.

Al Jazeera, 31/3/10

Defence is 19% of US government budget

The Obama budget set 2011 defense spending at $739 billion. This amounts to 19 percent of total federal outlays.

Carl Conetta, director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Mass., suspects defense spending could be cut as low as $650 billion without seriously damaging American security needs. To trim the deficit, Mr. Obama called for a freeze in discretionary spending but exempted defense.

The US defense budget adds up, at the very least, to 47 percent of total worldwide defense spending. That reflects the US role as the sole superpower, the various US interests abroad, and the relatively high costs of the US military.

Christian Science Monitor, 29/3/10

£4 billion for new missile system

MBDA and the U.K. Ministry of Defence Monday announced a deal worth up to £4 billion over 10 years for the European missile company to develop and supply a new complex weapons capability for the British armed forces.

The first phase of the deal is a £330 million contract focused on the deployment of new capabilities to British forces in Afghanistan.

Dow Jones, 29/3/10

Threat of disqualification for election winners

Iraq’s election results could be called into question today, as a committee that seeks out members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime is set to call for the disqualification of some candidates who won parliamentary seats on March 7.

The Justice and Accountability Commission, which recommended that hundreds of candidates be barred before the polls, did not specify yesterday how many elected candidates it would now try to dismiss.

Ayad Allawi, leader of the winning bloc, warned over the weekend that it might seek to disqualify more candidates from his Iraqia grouping. Mr Allawi’s secular bloc narrowly beat the grouping led by the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in the elections, with 91 seats to 89, but the numbers meant that Mr Allawi would still need coalition partners to form a government.

Mr al-Maliki has refused to accept the results, although they were endorsed by the UN and the US, and gave a TV interview last night in which he attacked Ad Melkert, the UN envoy, accusing him of failing to address fraud.

The Times, 29/3/10

US troop deaths double in Afghanistan

The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of soldiers to reverse the Taliban’s momentum.

US officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on Kandahar, where a major offensive is expected in the coming months.

Indian Express, 28/3/10

US and Pakistan reach understanding...

The three days of “strategic dialogue” between the civilian and military hierarchies of the United States and Pakistan in Washington were remarkable, not for what was announced on Friday at their conclusion, but for the dramatic warming of relations that led to them.

Independent analysts agree that the two governments have arrived at an understanding that, crudely put, amounts to:

“If you [Pakistan] use your influence with the Taliban to bail us out in Afghanistan, we [the US and our partners] will give you a big say in the endgame, keep India off your back and save you from the financial, energy and water crises that have brought your economy to its knees.”

The Nation, United Arab Emirates, 27/3/10

...and India isn't happy

As part of the appeasement policy towards Pakistan, the Obama administration, which hopes for action against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, has pledged millions in aid, held out the promise of a civilian nuclear deal, promised to facilitate the transfer of military hardware and assured Pakistan that it is on par with India.

There is no doubt that appeasing Pakistan for results in Afghanistan is the top foreign policy priority of US President Barack Obama, who finds little domestic acceptability for a continued US presence in Afghanistan

But many experts see this as a miscalculation on Washington’s part. “The American will is waning and obviously they are looking for a way to secure an exit (from Afghanistan) and the only way they think they can do that — which is a complete miscalculation — is by somehow trying to win Pakistan over by concession — aid and weapons. It will only be like the past,” said counter-terrorism expert Ajai Sahni.

Pakistan, till now, has shown little commitment towards taking action against the terror infrastructure on its soil. Even the fact that terror groups are now inflicting casualties on its own soil has not stopped Islamabad from persisting in its use of terror as a state policy.

New Delhi has constantly pointed out to Washington that action against one small part of the terror infrastructure will yield little results as the groups are all interlinked while even the limited action is viewed with extreme skepticism.

The Economic Times, India, 28/3/10

The end of the 'special relationship'

The UK government needs to be "less deferential" towards the US and more willing to say no to Washington, a group of MPs have said.

The Commons Foreign Affairs committee also said it was wrong to speak of "the special relationship" with the US, as it was fostering other alliances.

The committee said although Britain and the US still had close ties, the UK's influence had "diminished" as its economic and military power had waned.

The committee said that the relationship was more associated now with the perceived support Britain gave to President George W Bush over the Iraq war.

"The perception that the British government was a subservient 'poodle' to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas," it said.

"This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK."

BBC News, 28/3/10

Narrow Allawi victory leads to uncertainty

The secular party of Ayad Allawi, a former interim prime minister once derided as an American puppet, won a wafer-thin victory in Iraq’s election, setting the stage for a protracted period of political uncertainty and possible violence that could threaten plans to withdraw American troops.

The outcome, announced Friday, was immediately challenged by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his supporters in the State of Law coalition, who hurled accusations of fraud and made vague references to the prime minister’s power as commander in chief.

Several parties have cried fraud as their fortunes waxed or waned in the slow vote count, an ominous reminder of an Iraqi political culture where winning is everything and compromise elusive. Western observers and an independent election commission said they saw no signs of widespread fraud.

Mr. Allawi galvanized the votes of millions of Sunnis — who boycotted the last parliamentary elections in 2005 — to build his edge of 91 to 89 seats over his nearest rival, Mr. Maliki. That falls far short of the majority of 163 of the 325 seats in Parliament that he needs to form a government.

Iraqi political experts interviewed Friday doubted that Mr. Allawi would succeed in assembling a governing coalition. But even if he did, they said it would take at least until July, possibly even longer, a potentially destabilizing stretch in which a disgruntled Mr. Maliki would serve as caretaker prime minister of the nation.

New York Times, 26/3/10