Saturday, April 10, 2010

Obama doubts sanctions can change Iran course

Press Tv
In a new twist in Washington's drive for international pressure against Iran, US President Barack Obama says there is no guarantee that sanctions will change the course of Tehran's nuclear program.

"Do we have a guarantee as to the sanctions we are able to institute at this stage are automatically going to change Iranian behavior? Of course we don't," Obama said in a Friday interview with George Stephanopolous on ABC's Good Morning America.

The US president, however, expressed hope that "consistent and steady" international pressure would eventually persuade Iran to "start making a different set of cost-benefit analyses" about what he described as Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Washington is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the country's drive for its nuclear energy program.

Iran, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.

It has repeatedly called for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons and global nuclear disarmament.

On Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that sanctions will never "scare Tehran into giving up its right to attain peaceful nuclear technology".

"We do not welcome threats and sanctions and we will never plead with those who are threatening us with sanctions to not impose sanctions, but we will turn sanctions into opportunities," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

The Islamic Republic has been under US sanctions after the nation toppled a US-backed dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

SBB/ZAP//DT

US suspends Kyrgyzstan troop flights at Manas

Press Tv

The Transit Center at Manas serves as a crucial supply route for US-led forces in Afghanistan.
The US has stopped all troop flights to Afghanistan from its controversial air base in Kyrgyzstan, a day after the country's new leadership said it would close the key military base in the country.

No reason was given for the decision taken by the US commanders at the Transit Center at Manas (formerly Manas Air Base), a crucial hub for the US-led operations in Afghanistan.

The US military in Kyrgyzstan decided late Friday "to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights," Major John Redfield, a spokesman for US Central Command said.

Decisions on continuing other military flights "will be made on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Rickardo Bodden, another spokesman for the US military base, told Reuters that "while normal flight operations at Manas had resumed on Friday, a decision was taken Friday evening to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights."

Pentagon officials say Manas is central to the war in Afghanistan as about 50,000 US-led troops passed through the base last month alone.

The developments come amid political upheaval in the strategic Central Asian state. The opposition, led by ex-foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva, has taken power and dissolved the parliament. Otunbayeva has promised a new constitution and a presidential election at some point in the next six months. She says a care-taker government will serve as both presidency and parliament for now.

On Saturday, members of Kyrgyzstan's self-proclaimed new leadership have announced their plans to shorten the Pentagon's lease on the base at Manas International Airport near the capital Bishkek.

This comes as mourners in Bishkek are to say their last farewells to some 75 people killed in the uprising in recent days.

The unrest has also left more than 1,500 wounded.

MVZ/ZAP/DT

US to retain 90 nukes on Iran border

Press Tv

A US B-2 bomber dropping a B61 thermonuclear bomb
As Washington and Moscow sign a new arms reduction treaty, skepticism arises in Turkey as to whether those cuts will include US atomic warheads stored in the country.

US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague on Thursday, which requires both sides to reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,550, or about one-third below current levels.

This is while the Obama administration has revised US policy on atomic weapons, as part of a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that, among other things, is said to be aimed at reducing the US stockpile.

But silence over anticipated US plans to withdraw nuclear bombs deployed in the Incirlik Air Base in southern Anatolia, has left many speculating on whether Washington has any intentions to remove the weapons at all.

When asked about a possible US move to withdraw its nuclear weapons from five European countries, including Turkey, Turkey's Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said that Ankara had no information about such plans.

“No information has been officially announced,” Gonul told reporters on Wednesday.

The US has positioned a total of 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs in Turkey, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany since the Cold War. Turkey is believed to be hosting 90 bombs at Incirlik Air Base.

On April 2, The Times reported that the United States may remove tactical nuclear weapons deployed in five NATO member European countries, including Turkey.

However, the possibility of the White House seriously considering a decision to withdraw the B61 gravity bombs seems unlikely, as it has not consulted Ankara on the issue so far.

In the latest NPR, while the Obama Administration has reduced the threat of using nuclear weapons against signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has excluded NPT signatory Iran from threat reduction.

During the release of the current NPT today, the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, "the NPR has a very strong message for both Iran and North Korea, because whether it's in declaratory policy or in other elements of the NPR, we essentially carve out states like Iran and North Korea that are not in compliance with NPT."

"Basically, all options are on the table when it comes to countries in that category," he elaborated.

Washington, which accuses Iran of having the "intention" of developing nuclear weapons, is leading a push for a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran at the United Nations Security Council in a bid to hinder the nation's drive for a nuclear energy program.

Iran, as a signatory of NPT, insists that it neither believes in atomic weapons, nor, as a matter of religious principles, does it intend to acquire nuclear or other weapons of mass-destruction.

MJ/ZAP/DT

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

Times online

Tim Reid, Washinton

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.


Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93, he said — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken.

He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”. This was “not acceptable to the Administration and would have been severely detrimental to the leadership at DoD [Mr Rumsfeld at the Defence Department]”.

Referring to Mr Cheney, Colonel Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the US Army, asserted: “He had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent ... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.”

He alleged that for Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld “innocent people languishing in Guantánamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror and the small number of terrorists who were responsible for the September 11 attacks”.

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, Colonel Wilkerson said, deemed the incarceration of innocent men acceptable if some genuine militants were captured, leading to a better intelligence picture of Iraq at a time when the Bush Administration was desperate to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, “thus justifying the Administration’s plans for war with that country”.

He signed the declaration in support of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantánamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007. Mr Hamad claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damages action against a list of American officials.

Defenders of Guantánamo said that detainees began to be released as early as September 2002, nine months after the first prisoners were sent to the jail at the US naval base in Cuba. By the time Mr Bush left office more than 530 detainees had been freed.

A spokesman for Mr Bush said of Colonel Wilkerson’s allegations: “We are not going to have any comment on that.” A former associate to Mr Rumsfeld said that Mr Wilkerson's assertions were completely untrue.

The associate said the former Defence Secretary had worked harder than anyone to get detainees released and worked assiduously to keep the prison population as small as possible. Mr Cheney’s office did not respond.

There are currently about 180 detainees left in the facility.

Britain’s top Catholic ‘protected’ paedophile

Times online  


The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales presided over a child protection system that allowed a paedophile priest to continue abusing schoolboys despite repeated complaints from victims, an investigation by The Times has discovered.


The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, chaired the church’s child safety watchdog in 2001-08 while Father David Pearce was repeatedly investigated by church officials and police. Despite a High Court ruling in 2006 awarding damages to one of his victims, Pearce remained a priest at Ealing Abbey, West London, where he groomed and assaulted one final victim before his arrest in 2008.


Pearce, 68, a Benedictine monk and former headteacher at the prestigious St Benedict’s School, was jailed for eight years in October after admitting a catalogue of sex offences against teenage pupils during 35 years at the abbey.



Archbishop Nichols last night denied any knowledge of the Pearce case while he was chairman of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (Copca).



Church officials said that Archbishop Nichols was not told the full details of Pearce’s child abuse offences until he replaced Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at Westminster last year.




However, his predecessor knew of the allegations, a spokesman for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor confirmed. The Cardinal has recently been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to sit on the Vatican body that appoints bishops.




The Pope was further embroiled in the worldwide clerical abuse scandal yesterday by the discovery of a letter which purports to show that he resisted the defrocking of an American priest because of the effect it might have “on the good of the universal church”.