Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks

Times

The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.

The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.

“What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.”

Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. “The terrorists are at the gates,” he warned.

In a counterterrorism journal, published by America’s West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclearcapable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead.

A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August.

Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad.

Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility.

The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a “nuclear 9/11”.

“I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,” said Mowatt-Larssen. “These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.”

Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban.

“You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles — whether as part of an assembly team or security,” said Gregory. “It’s a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.”

Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands.

“All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,” said MowattLarssen. “This is not just theoretical. It did happen — Pakistan has had inside problems before.”

Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden.

Pakistan’s military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.

US officials refused to speak on the record about American safety plans, well aware of how this would be seen in Islamabad. However, one official admitted that the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s storage sites are located. “Don’t assume the US knows everything,” he said.

Although Washington has provided $100m worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its nuclear protection programme, US personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.

In the past fortnight the US has made unprecedented formal protests to Pakistan’s national security apparatus, warning it about fanning virulent anti-American sentiment in the media.

Concerns about hostility towards America within elements of the Pakistani armed forces first surfaced in 2007. At a meeting of military commanders staged at Kurram, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Pakistani major drew his pistol and shot an American. The incident was hushed up as a gunfight

Kyrgyzstan Has Undergone a Grassroots Revolution' Kester Kenn Klomegah interviews APAS KUBANYCHBEK, Kyrgyz opposition leader

IPC
MOSCOW, Apr 12, 2010 (IPS) - Apas Kubanychbek, who hails from the high mountainous area of Ysyk-Ata in the Chuyskaya province of Kyrgyzstan, was involved in the political movements and democratic struggles of the former Soviet republic in the early 1990s. 

A fierce critic of media suppression, nepotism, corruption and human rights violations in Kyrgyzstan, Kubanychbek spoke with IPS correspondent Kester Kenn Klomegah, at an undisclosed location, shortly after the mass protests that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his government in Bishkek last week.

Q: How would you explain or interpret the latest political developments leading to the unexpected change of government in Kyrgyzstan? 

A: The mass anti-government protest was really an indication of more than a decade of disillusionment and dissatisfaction that accumulated in the political, economic and social spheres from the period of the first post-Soviet president Askar Akayev to his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev who came to power in 2005 during the Tulip revolution. People supported the revolution simply because they wanted a change, but that popular revolutionary interest was short-lived.

It's worth recalling that during the Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan was one of 15 socialist republics and it was governed by Moscow. However, after the collapse of the Soviet era, what we have witnessed cannot be described as democracy but mismanagement of state power. Authorities have consistently used state power to suppress opposition voices, limit media freedom and basic rights. There was also hidden and deep-seated corruption.

El-Jurt (People), the political party I founded about eight years ago, alongside other opposition groups has been fighting against injustice and for the welfare of the impoverished in the 5.3 million population in Kyrgyzstan. We really need a better and more democratic society. Governments were not competent to carry out necessary democratic reforms for the building of a flourishing economy. Both the Akayev and Bakiyev governments consisted mainly of close friends, relatives and former communists who strongly and conservatively opposed radical changes and democracy. Thus, what happened a few days ago in my country should be expected and can be described as a grassroots revolution against official authority.

Q: Could you say more about accusations of corruption and infringement of human rights in the country? 

A: Akayev and his wife Mayram were not held back from the temptation of corruption. He created a corrupt political system where state ministers were appointed on bribes. Fish rots from the head and, seeing Akayev’s style, government officials also took bribes from subordinates.

My party, El-Jyurt, was suppressed because I began to publicly to criticise the embezzlement of Kyrgyz gold (four tonnes) together with the international adventurer, B. Bershtain, the head of the western firm ‘Seabeko Corporation’, and began to put journalists into prisons. I was also arrested for public criticism of government corruption and thrown into prison. In 1994, they prevented my candidacy for the parliamentary election, considering me the most dangerous political opponent.

Today, in Kyrgyzstan executive power is totally struck by corruption, beginning from the president and ending with the heads of regions, law courts, and law enforcement agencies. Corruption over the years has contributed to Kyrgyzstan’s political and economic crisis and rising unemployment. Many specialists, even the unskilled, have emigrated. The level of poverty according to international experts exceeded 80 percent during the years of Bakiyev's administration. Unemployment led to the emigration of more than two million Kirghiz citizens into the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and further abroad.

One interesting fact is that the Kremlin has paid heavily to Bakiyev to remove U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan and this issue has links to what is currently taking place, although Russian authorities have described the recent anti-government protests as purely internal.

Q: How do the opposition groups, such as yours, feel about the ousted government’s tight control over the media? Do you think the human rights situation got worse during the Bakiyev administration? 

A: It was really beyond description, worse than any of the ex-Soviet republics. I was supported by people very strongly for the 2005 presidential elections in contrast to Bakiyev. I appeared on the Kyrgyz national television as the future presidential candidate and people supported me as a hero of the emerging revolution. Unfortunately, Bakiyev did everything through the Central Election Commission (CEC) of the country, illegally excluding my name from the list as presidential candidate and using the entire administrative resources to win the elections. This was just one classical example how democracy was stifled with members of opposition languishing in deplorable conditions in prison while others fled abroad.

Q: What measures do you suggest should be put in place in pursuit of democracy in your country? And what lessons are there to draw from the Kyrgyzstan case? 

A: The new provisional government has to rebuild or restructure the state and civil institutions by flushing out the remaining conservatives, bringing in more active, young and progressive-minded specialists. As chairman of one of the largest opposition parties, I can testify that Bakiyev suffocated media freedom in Kyrgyzstan using authoritarian methods, just as his predecessor did. For example, the West, for some reasons, banked on the former officials from the executive branch who erroneously assumed that they have experience in state administration. Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia are examples of leaders who have disappointed their people and their countries.

The new authorities have to learn from the negative tendencies of the two previous regimes. They should do away with authoritarianism, follow democratic principles and change the atmosphere of intimidation for Kyrgyz people. I will strongly appeal to democracy loving countries in Europe and the West to help opposition groups including El-Jyurt.

In summary, authorities in Kyrgyzstan must establish international standards and norms of democracy, observe fundamental human rights, establish checks and balances, ensure the independence of the judicial authority, the freedom of the press, fight corruption and work towards democratic elections within the shortest possible period

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”.