IAEA to send high-level team to Iran

VIENNA: The International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) will send its high-level team to Tehran to hold talks with the Iranian government over its controversial nuclear programme, Xinhua reported.

The IAEA mission will be headed by its Deputy Director Herman Nackaerts, said Yukiya Amano, the IAEA’s chief, while talking to reporters after opening an IAEA board meeting in Vienna Thursday.

Although there is still no time frame for initiating the dialogue, but a delay will be “inappropriate”, said Amano, adding that the talks will not only help allay international concerns, but also be in the interests of Iran.

In his opening speech of the board meeting, Amano asked Iran to engage substantively with the IAEA without delay and provide the requested clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to its nuclear program.

In response to questions about the independence and credibility of the recent IAEA report suggesting Iran has engaged in weapon-related nuclear activities, Amano stressed that the report was based on “credible” evidence.

Iran has rejected the allegations in the report, accusing the US of using the IAEA as a tool to pressure Iran over its “peaceful” nuclear programme.

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Obama’s mission: Counter China

BALI, INDONESIA: Tightening ties with Asian nations as China’s might rises, president Barack Obama prepared on Thursday to be the first US president to take part in a summit of East Asian nations. Ahead of his diplomatic efforts here, the White House announced trade deals to show progress on the jobs front back home.

Security issues and the US vision for an increasingly robust American role in Asia are expected to be central themes for Obama’s participation in the East Asia Summit in Bali.

But concerns over China may shadow the president’s meetings on Friday and Saturday with leaders of smaller Asian nations increasingly alarmed over China’s claims to maritime passage and rich oil reserves in the South China Sea.

Obama’s political priority remains creating jobs. Timed to his visit in Indonesia , the White House announced the sale of Boeing 737s and General Electric engines to Indonesia, Boeing 777s to Singapore and Sikorsky helicopters to Brunei. Obama officials estimated the moves would support 127,000 American jobs.

Obama’s nine-day trip has focused on both expanding economic ties with the soaring Asia-Pacific market and boosting the US military posture in the region.

The president will also get a chance to meet leaders such as Indian PM Manmohan Singh, with whom he has an close relationship.

Behind it all, China looms large. Obama will encounter more allies eager for US support as China and its neighbors argue over the South China Sea, critical to US interests as well.

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Economic Pressure From West Can Make Syria’s Assad the Next to Fall: View

The Arab League has shed its milquetoast image in recent months, first approving Western intervention in Libya and, this week, suspending Syria from its ranks. The question is whether this latest step against the Bashar al-Assad regime, which has killed more than 3,500 citizens since the spring, will lead to more concrete changes in Syria.

Cynics say the suspension was a defensive move — Arab leaders, scared of their own restless publics, cut bait with a teetering government in Damascus. The cynics are probably correct. Yet, as in the Libya case, the league’s move gives cover to Europe and the U.S. to step up pressure.

The vote also makes it more difficult for Syria and its allies — Iran, China and Russia — to paint international sanctions as Western meddling, and it may lead the wealthier and more influential Arab and Islamic nations to take unilateral steps. On Nov. 14, King Abdullah II of Jordan became the first Arab leader to call for Assad to step down.

Each day brings more signs of weakness from the Assad regime. Yesterday’s assault by army defectors on a large security complex outside Damascus was the most striking attack by anti-government forces in the eight-month uprising. Such rebel operations, however, are nowhere near the scale of what we saw in Libya before the downfall of Muammar Qaddafi. And for this reason, U.S. and European military intervention isn’t an immediate possibility.

Still, it’s a mistake for Western leaders to publicly take that option off the table, as NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the U.S. ambassador to the organization, Ivo Daalder, have done recently. Even if NATO has “no planning, no discussion and no thought” of using force in Syria, as Daalder put it on Nov. 7, why advertise that to Assad?

So, what can the West do? As of now, there’s no real prospect of seriously aiding the country’s dispersed, weak dissident factions; the Syrian National Council, an exile group that claims to speak for the majority of the anti-government forces, has proved fractured and ineffectual. Any United Nations-based effort to punish the regime would run into a Russian veto. Some have called for international war-crimes charges, but such indictments can give tyrants greater impetus to dig in, as may well have been the case with Qaddafi.

The best approach for now is to take advantage of the fact that Assad, an Alawite Muslim, depends on economic favoritism and outright bribery to maintain control of a nation that is three-quarters Sunni. With foreign reserves dwindling, and having pledged to increase government spending by 58 percent this year, Assad will struggle to make his payroll. Thus we should look to drive an economic wedge between the regime and the military officers, government functionaries and business elites that underlie it.

The U.S. and European Union have built a strong foundation since 2004 by sanctioning scores of individuals and companies associated with the regime, barring most U.S. exports to Syria, freezing assets belonging to the state security apparatus, and, as of Nov. 15, barring European imports of Syrian oil. (Petroleum exports, almost all of them to Europe, make up about 20 percent of the Syrian economy.) As a result, tourism and direct foreign investment have fallen by about half in the last year, and hyperinflation is a real possibility.

More can be done. In the U.S., several proposals before Congress are worth pursuing, such as denying companies that do business with Syria’s energy sector access to U.S. financial institutions and requiring federal contractors to certify that they are not involved in sanctionable activity. Europe, for its part, might expand its ban on Syrian imports beyond oil. Turkey should make good on its threat to cut off power exports, even if it would be more symbolic than effectual, as Syria can produce its own electricity.

One hopes that the Arab League vote is a sign that the Persian Gulf states, which have filled much of the vacuum left by decreased Western business activity in Syria, will change their ways. And though it may be tempting to embarrass Russia and China by holding a UN Security Council vote on an embargo, it would be wiser for now to work behind the scenes to convince them that standing with Syria — and its sponsor, Iran — is not in their long-term interests.

It’s true that much of the economic hardship falls on average Syrians, which risks driving them to solidarity with the government. That scenario seems unlikely, however, in multiethnic, multisectarian Syria, where the Assad family has held power largely because of its perceived ability to keep the peace and maintain the economy. Day after day of civil unrest, price increases and new sanctions from abroad only make clearer the regime’s increasing inability to do either.

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A U.S. Marine Base for Australia Irritates China

President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia after a joint news conference in Canberra on Wednesda

CANBERRA, Australia — President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.

Addressing the Australian Parliament in Canberra on Thursday, President Obama promised a long-term American role in Asia.

The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.

In an address to the Australian Parliament on Thursday morning, Mr. Obama said he had “made a deliberate and strategic decision — as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bloodiest day in Syria!

DAMASCUS: More than 70 people died in one of the bloodiest days of Syria’s eightmonth uprising, activists said on Tuesday, as president Bashar al-Assad’s loyalists reacted angrily to growing isolation.

Around 100 of his supporters stormed the Jordanian embassy in Damascus overnight – the latest regional mission to be targeted since the Arab League voted to impose sanctions – after Jordan’s King Abdullah II became the first Arab leader to publicly call for Assad to quit.

Buoyed by the fast-growing diplomatic pressure, Syria’s opposition stepped up its contacts with the regime’s remaining bulwarks, holding talks in Moscow, which last month joined Beijing in vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have threatened “targeted measures”.

Desertions within Assad’s security forces – which have a professional hard core but also much larger conscripted ranks – triggered much of Monday’s death toll of more than 70.

A total of 34 soldiers and 12 suspected army deserters were killed in clashes, as well as 27 civilians shot dead by security forces.

Late on Tuesday over 1,000 anti-regime protesters were released from jail, state-run television reported.

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New York park reopened to anti-Wall Street protesters

NEW YORK: Anti-Wall Street protesters trickled back late Tuesday into a New York park that had been their home for two months until police cleared the encampment, but they were barred from pitching new tents.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was thrown into crisis during a turbulent 24 hours that began with a surprise early morning raid in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to clear all tents in the privately-owned area.

Protesters then spent the day playing a game of cat-and-mouse with authorities as they sought to re-establish their base near Wall Street, the symbolic epicenter of a movement protesting alleged corporate greed which has spawned copy-cats in other US cities and abroad.

In the evening, police reopened the park and let the demonstrators back in one-by-one — but only after a New York judge backed a ban on pitching tents, rejecting their legal challenge to the dismantling of the camp.

“No one will be denied entry,” a police officer said at the gate, as people began to wander back in again. Once inside, the crowd began to chant: “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street.”

Both sides were claiming a victory of sorts after judge Michael Stallman ruled that the owners of the park and the authorities were not denying protesters their constitutional right to freedom of speech by banning them from camping.

“Zuccotti Park will remain open to all who want to enjoy it, as long as they abide by the park’s rules,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

The judge’s ruling “vindicates our position that First Amendment rights do not include the right to endanger the public or infringe on the rights of others by taking over a public space with tents and tarps,” Bloomberg said.

But protesters were also elated that they were allowed back into the park, owned by Brookfield Properties, which they have been occupying since mid-September.

Dallas Carter, 32, said the protesters “have to go back to court to get the tents and sleeping bags again. But it’s still a victory.” Read the rest of this entry »

Head of Al-Qaida Ayman al-Zawahri recalls ‘human side’ of Osama bin Laden

CAIRO: Longtime bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, now al-Qaida’s new head,remembers Osama bin Laden: A sensitive man who cried when his friends lost family members, remained close to his children despite the hard life of an international jihadist, and fondly remembered by name the 19 men who carried out the deadliest terrorist attack ever on US soil.

Longtime bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, now al-Qaida’s new head, related these and other memories in a new video posted on jihadist websites Tuesday. In the video, al-Zawahri said he wants “to show the human side” of bin Laden’s life.

In doing so, he also is likely trying to boost his own popularity by emphasizing his closeness to the terror group’s former, more charismatic leader.

Bin Laden, who built al-Qaida into the world’s most feared and despised terror organization and was the mastermind behind some of its deadliest attacks, was killed by Navy SEALs in May during a raid in Pakistan. Al-Zawahri assumed control of the organization shortly after, though experts say he lacks bin Laden’s charisma, which drew many to the group.

Throughout the 30-minute, conversational video, apparently the first in a series, al-Zawahri emphasizes what he calls the “nobility” of bin Laden’s character as well as his own proximity to him.

“People don’t know that this man was tender, gentle, kind, with refined feelings, even when life was hard,” al-Zawahri said, wearing a white robe and turban and sitting in front of a green curtain. “We never saw a man like him.”

Al-Zawahri told stories of how bin Laden remembered al-Qaida members who died fighting “jihad,” or “holy war.” He gave special mention to the hijackers who carried out the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in the U.S., which killed nearly 3,000 people.

“The sheik would remember with goodness and gratitude and be moved by the memory of the 19 brothers who attacked the idol of our age, America _ the Pentagon, the headquarters of its military power, and New York, the symbol of its economic power,” he said, pointing his finger for emphasis. “He would remember these brothers with extreme fidelity.”

He recalled one time when he and bin Laden were hiding in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora, saying bin Laden wrote death certificates for each one of the hijackers, fearing he would be killed “without remembering these heroic martyrs.” Read the rest of this entry »

US apologises for frisking Kalam in New York

New Delhi, Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was frisked by the John F. Kennedy airport authorities in New York Sep 29, resulting in a strong Indian protest and a subsequent US apology for the breach of protocol.

Eighty-year-old Kalam, who was in the US to attend a series of events, was returning home by an Air India flight when the airport authorities boarded the aircraft to frisk the former Indian president, who had already occupied his seat.

The Air India crew immediately protested the US Transportation Security Administration’s action. However, Kalam did not object and subjected himself to the security check, officials said.

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna later asked Indian Ambassador Nirupama Rao to raise the issue at the highest level in the US administration, saying it was ‘unacceptable’ to India and that New Delhi may reciprocate the treatment to American dignitaries. Read the rest of this entry »

President Barack Obama lashes out at China

Behave like ‘grown up’ economy: Obama to China,President Barack Obama served notice on Sunday that the United States was fed up with China’s trade and currency practices as he turned up the heat on America’s biggest economic rival.

“Enough’s enough,” Obama said bluntly at a closing news conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit where he scored a significant breakthrough in his push to create a pan-Pacific free trade zone and promote green technologies.

Using some of his toughest language yet against China, Obama, a day after face-to-face talks with President Hu Jintao, demanded that China stop “gaming” the international system and create a level playing field for U.S. and other foreign businesses.

“We’re going to continue to be firm that China operate by the same rules as everyone else,” Obama told reporters after hosting the 21-nation APEC summit in his native Honolulu. “We don’t want them taking advantage of the United States.” Read the rest of this entry »

Norway terror suspect to appear in court in person