The Club de Monaco must be one of the most exclusive in the world because its members - all heavyweights of international politics -- meet for just one weekend a year in the exquisite setting of the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo.
The aim of the Club is to bring together government ministers, secretaries-general of international organisations, European Commissioners, ambassadors, foreign affairs pundits and similar men and women of distinction to exchange views frankly and informally on the great questions of the moment, especially as they refer to the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin. The rules of the Club do not allow me to name names or attribute views to the various high-powered members who attend. So I propose instead to take you behind the scenes of the recent meeting because, as is often the case at such gatherings, what is said privately in the lobbies is often as interesting as what is said in the conference room. Inevitably, this year's meeting was dominated by three main issues of great topicality: should the United States stay in Iraq or withdraw; should it talk to Iran or attack it; and what should be done to revive the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process. Almost immediately, I came up against a paradox. Most people would argue that there can be no peace in Iraq until the United States admits defeat and gets out. An American withdrawal would satisfy the main demand of the insurgents, thereby removing one major strand from the complex tissue of conflicts afflicting that country.
On this view, the Pentagon should announce a timetable for a phased withdrawal, tied to progress in rebuilding Iraq's army and police forces. The fact that six American helicopters, vital for the movement of troops, have been shot down in recent weeks suggests that the insurgents are upgrading their weapons. A delay in pulling out can only mean more casualties and still greater expenditure. An American withdrawal would also force Iraq's warring factions and its six antagonistic neighbours to hammer out a compromise acceptable to all. That, at least, is the theory. But when one probes deeper, one finds that not many people actually want the Americans to leave - at least not yet. For many, the time is not yet ripe. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are worried that a precipitate U.S. withdrawal would lead to a massacre of Shi'is by Sunnis, forcing them to intervene, which they are understandably reluctant to do. No one is keen to stick their finger into the Iraqi hornet's nest. Syria may want the Americans out of Iraq, but not if that will expose it to attack.
One would have thought that Iran would be extremely glad to see the Americans depart. That is what Iranian leaders have repeatedly said. This has led many to fear that Tehran wishes to drive out the Americans in order to replace America's regional hegemony with its own. But this is neither likely nor even possible.
It is often forgotten that the antipathy between Arabs and Persians is centuries old and cannot easily be overcome. Even though Iraq's present leaders are mainly Shi'a, and even though several of them took refuge for many years in Iran to escape Saddam Hussein's repression, they are not ready to submit to Iranian dictation. On both sides of the border memories of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war are still too painful.
The last thing Iran wants is an Iraqi revival under a strong leader at the head of a strong army. It would far rather the United States stayed a while longer in Baghdad to keep the Iraqis down - or rather, if one is cynical, to destroy the country further, and delay the day when a united Iraq might again pose a threat.
When Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980, he tore up the 1975 Algiers whereby he conceded the Shah's claim that the Thalweg, or median line in the Shatt al-Arab, become the common border between them. Saddam later complained that he had been forced to accept the agreement in order to put an end to Iran's support for Mustafa Barzani's Kurdish insurgents, then waging a bitter war against Baghdad.
So much is history. But what is new and striking is that today's Maliki government in Baghdad also refuses to recognise the 1975 Algiers agreement! That is a small but significant indication that Iraq is not about to surrender to Iran.
In truth, there is no great enthusiasm among Iraq's neighbours for a rapid U.S. withdrawal because each fears that it may be to the other's advantage. As for the myriad militias fighting each other inside Iraq, they do not seem ready to put away their guns. As the 15-year long Lebanese civil war demonstrated, conflicts of this sort have an inner dynamic which needs to run its course before a settlement can be reached.
However tragic the Iraqi situation may be, and however great the human misery, the conflict may not yet be 'mature' enough for a settlement. Factions and states inside and outside the country are still jockeying for power. The prize is too great for these actors to give up the struggle.
It needs to be said, however, that in everyone's mind is the fear that a sectarian conflict between Shi'is and Sunnis could spill over from Iraq into the whole region, from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Gulf States, and to Lebanon. It is this terrible anxiety which may bring Iraq's neighbours and many other interested parties to accept Iraq's invitation to a conference in Baghdad later this month. It will at least have the advantage of bringing the U.S. face to face across the conference table with Iran and Syria.
I observed another paradox at Monte Carlo. Everyone believes it would be utter folly for the United States to attack Iran. It would set the whole region on fire, disrupt the oil flow, plunge the industrial world into recession, give an enormous boost to terrorism. So grave would be the consequences that such a war is virtually impossible to imagine.
And yet, judging from conversations in the lobbies, the possibility of war has by no means been ruled out. Some conferees, who had recently been in Moscow, reported that President Vladimir Putin believes an American attack on Iran is coming. His speech last month, harshly critical of American policy, is believed to have been intended as a warning to the U.S. to draw back from the brink.In his present desperate mood, President George W Bush may believe that to win in Iraq, he must first deal Iran a knock out blow. He may be ready to take such a gamble. Israel and its influential friends in Washington are pressing him to attack Iran - much as they pressed him to attack Iraq.
Washington's pro-Israeli neo-conservatives are playing their last card. In thrall to a geopolitical fantasy conceived in the 1990s, they imagined that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would trigger a political revolution across the Arab world, which would destroy Islamic radicalism, Arab nationalism and Palestinian militancy, making the whole region pro-American and pro-Israeli. Their dream has faded, but they remain dangerous. Their influence on Bush should not be underestimated.
As for a possible re-launch of the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process, I must report that the mood in the lobbies was distinctly gloomy. Serious doubts were expressed about whether U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had the personal authority or the backing in Washington to bring Israel to the negotiating table. Her eight visits to the region have yielded next to nothing.
The recent summit between Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas resulted in nothing but an angry exchange. The Israelis scorn the long-term hudna or truce which Hamas has offered. They still clamour for Hamas to recognise Israel's right to exist - although they themselves stubbornly refuse to recognise the Palestinians' right to an independent state. I was amazed to hear an Israeli utter the old, shop-soiled complaint: 'How can you negotiate with someone who wants to kill you!' when it is the Israelis themselves who are doing most of the killing.
On present form, there will be no shortage of problems for next year's Club de Monaco to debate. *Original English
Pentagon for attack on camps in N. Waziristan: NYT
The Pentagon has advocated direct US strikes against alleged Al Qaeda training camps inside North Waziristan where the terrorist group appears to have made new inroads, the New York Times reported on Monday.
The concern about a resurgent Al Qaeda has been the subject of intensive discussion at high levels of the Bush administration, the report said, and has reignited debate about how to address Pakistan's role as a haven for militants without undermining the government of President Pervez Musharraf.
The Pentagon, the report said, wanted direct US strikes against the camps, but others warned that any raids could result in civilian casualties.
“State Department officials say that increased American pressure could undermine President Musharraf's military-led government,” the report added.
Last week, President Bush's senior counterterrorism adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, went to Afghanistan to consult security officials about rising US concerns on Al Qaeda's resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Quoting unnamed intelligence sources, the newspaper reported that Al Qaeda, the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden, had established a new operating organization after being ousted more than five years ago from its safe haven in formerly Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, in particular appeared to be coordinating operations from North Waziristan, where the Pakistani government had little control, the report claimed.
The report identified several new Al Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that it said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.American analysts told the newspaper that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Zawahri. Osama bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.
The report said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Al Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men were being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Al Qaeda infrastructure in the region was gradually becoming more mature.
As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization's hierarchy as intact and strengthening.
American officials and analysts said a variety of factors in Pakistan had come together to allow "core Al Qaeda leadership” to regain some of its strength. The emergence of a relative haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding area has helped senior operatives communicate more effectively with the outside world via courier and the Internet.
The newspaper said that investigation into last summer's failed plot to bomb airliners in London has led counterterrorism officials to what they say are "clear linkages" between the plotters and core Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. American analysts point out that the trials of terrorism suspects in Britain revealed that some of the defendants had been trained in Pakistan.
In a videotaped statement last year, Zawahri claimed responsibility for the July 2005 London suicide bombings. Included in the same tape was a statement by one of the London suicide bombers, pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda. Two of the four bombers travelled to Pakistan prior to the attack.
The NYT report said that some counter-terrorism experts question the seriousness of Pakistan's commitment to the fight against terror. They argued that elements of Pakistan's military still supported the Taliban and saw them as a valuable proxy to counter the rising influence of India.
Since 2001, members of various militant groups in Pakistan had increased their cooperation with one another in the tribal areas, the report said.
It quoted analysts as saying that North Waziristan became a hub of militant activity last year, after President Musharraf negotiated a treaty with tribal leaders in the area.
Officials told the newspaper that the United States still had little idea where Osama bin Laden and Zawahri had been hiding since 2001, but that the two men were not believed to be present in the camps currently operating in North Waziristan.
Pakistan should respond with full force if US makes intrusion.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one area where liberals and neo-conservatives in America find common ground. From Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton all the way to George Bush and Condoleezza Rice one and all are united in supporting Israel's assault on the Palestinian people and their land.
The criticism of Jimmy Carter's book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is a case in point. The hysteria on the Right is not worthy of repetition, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi outdid herself by issuing a statement that: "It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression." Wrong to suggest? Here is something right to suggest: Madam Speaker, it is time for you to visit Gaza.
In The Tribes Triumphant, arguably one of the best books ever written about the Middle East, journalist Charles Glass describes children in Gaza on their way to school: "... little girls with white fringe collars, boys leading their younger brothers ... with canvas bags of books on their backs, hair brushed back and faces scrubbed ... Thousands and thousands of children's feet padding the dusty paths between their mother's front doors and their schools ... Beautiful youngsters so innocent that they could laugh even in Gaza."
Glass reveals that 56.6 percent of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza (if you can call it living) are under the age of 18. That means 792,400 children; Gaza has no cinemas, no theatres, no concert halls, and no space for entertainment or amusement. Where then do these children play? Israel controls all access to, from and within Gaza, never allowing these children to see the world outside this tiny crowded strip of sand they call home. If this, Madam Speaker, is not ethnically based oppression, what is?
"Gaza First" was the slogan that got the Oslo accords off the ground in the early 1990s. Today, as innocent, unarmed men, women and children in Gaza are imprisoned, starved and killed by Israel in broad daylight, its obvious that it, meaning the Oslo agreement, was another nail in the coffin of a just and lasting peace. Then came Sharon's Gaza disengagement, which was a disingenuous claim by Israel to make "concessions for peace". Pretending to pull out of Gaza for the sake of peace, Israel tightened the noose around Gaza and its people while freeing itself from any obligation for the welfare of the people of Gaza.
People call Gaza a hotbed of terror, neglecting, or perhaps refusing to see that people in Gaza are attempting, albeit in all futility, to resist the terror under which they are forced to live. Close to one million of Gaza's 1.4 million residents are refugees or descendents of refugees forced out of their homes from other parts of Palestine only to be imprisoned and impoverished in Gaza. In The Roadmap to Nowhere Tanya Reinhart writes: "Since 1967, 280,000 people in Gaza have passed through Israeli prisons, detention cells and interrogation rooms." The connection cannot be overlooked: Residents of Gaza have made a name for themselves in resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine even before 1967 and they have paid dearly for this resistance.
On 11 December 2006 Jan McGirk described in The Independent the effects of Israeli terror on the children of Gaza: "No sane child can remain unaffected by the mayhem of Gaza Strip. Playmates frequently are killed or maimed: at last count, Israeli guns had slain 88 Gazan children and wounded another 343 between mid-June and December, 2006" She further writes that "In Gaza's grim conditions, mothers find it hard to tell if their offspring are crying out of fright, pain or misery. But when normally bickering brats fall silent, it's the first sign of mental scars from being constantly scared." She adds, "Muhammad, who would hit smaller children or shatter cups when he did not get his way, eventually revealed in an after school meeting that two IDF soldiers had executed a young man right in front of him."
In America people still speak of a "peace process", and the situation in Gaza and in the West Bank is characterized as a conflict between two people who can't find a fair compromise. Few dare to mention that the only process that is taking place is oppression for the sake of expansion. Palestinian children are imprisoned, traumatized, starved and murdered so that Israeli can maintain its hegemony over the: "Land of Israel".
Gaza is collateral damage, the children of Gaza are of no consequence and the leaders of the enlightened, democratic Western world could not care less. But in spite of its enormous military might Israel's authority over life in Gaza can be must be defied. People conscience must act so that the ethnically based oppression, of which House Speaker Pelosi says it is wrong to accuse Israel, must be brought to an end.
Miko Peled is an Israeli living in San Diego. He is the son of Israeli General Matityahu Peled.
Radical action is needed to save a "hollowed-out and fatally weakened" Iraqi state and ease violence that a new Pentagon report says is at an all-time high, a prominent think-tank warned on Tuesday. The report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said an international effort was needed to prevent Iraq collapsing into a "failed and fragmented state" whose Shi'ite- Sunni Arab conflict could draw in its neighbours in a proxy war.
A group of prominent Jewish leaders, lawmakers, diplomats, and public intellectuals met yesterday to call on the United Nations's International Court of Justice to charge President Ahmadinejad of Iran with inciting genocide.
Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world gathered at a government-sponsored conference here today to discuss their theories about whether six million Jews were indeed killed by the Nazis during World War II and whether gas chambers existed.
When one hears the words “Middle East”, most people form an immediate image in their minds: Sand, Oil, AK-47’s and explosions. The region has been a hotbed of warfare and terror for generations.
With his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Jimmy Carter seems to have abandoned his position as the Democratic Party's comforting elder statesman. Carter's 21st book, a study of the Middle East that is sharply critical of Israel, is a far cry from such fare as "The Virtues of Aging" and "Christmas in Plains."
If you look at the population growth of Palestinians. It has alarmed Israelis , Jordanians, and Lebanese. Palestine will come out as a strong State. All these states are in delima.
Shi'ites storm Sunni area of Baghdad; 2 are killed
Gangs of roving Shi'ite Muslim gunmen stormed a west Baghdad neighborhood yesterday, burning houses and killing at least two people in broad daylight, authorities said
It is wrong to punish the whole Sunni community for the Crimes of Sadams. He was dictator. He killed his Sunni Kurds too. Now there is no difference between Sadam and these Shiite fanatics.
Since day one of Israel’s existence, its number one foreign policy objective has been to provoke a war between the United States and the Arab world. Only in this way, the Israelis concluded, can Israel be guaranteed in the form desired, that of course being an aggressive expansionist state.
When in 1954 the US and Egypt were having some friendly talks, Israel responded by bombing US facilities in Egypt, with a goal that Egyptians be blamed. This failed as the Israelis were caught and this became known in Israel as the Lavon Affair.
Later, Israel managed to make the US a partner in crime and US troops were sent into Lebanon to relieve Israeli troops and to guarantee an Israeli-installed regime in Beirut. The invasion itself had been green-lighted by the neocon-infested Reagan Administration, neocons whose devotion to Israel is legendary. Eventually, this US involvement in a war on behalf of Israel led to the Marine barracks bombing, causing US outrage at Arabs and cries for revenge.
In 1991, the US destroyed Iraq as Israel wanted in order to maintain a regional WMD monopoly. Saddam had to be destroyed as he said on April 1 1990, “If they attack us, fire will eat half of Israel”, and as GW Bush and the rest of the Christian right say, “He who curses them (the Israelis) shall be cursed”.
Finally, on September 11 2001, Benjamin Netanyahu famously said “It’s very good” when asked to describe the shocking and grim events. Indeed it was to him, it was the culmination of 50 years of Israeli policy, a very satisfying result.
