The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreed in 2001 to create a shared currency to help them integrate economies and pursue a monetary policy more independently of the US.

All of the council’s members except Kuwait peg their currencies to the dollar.

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar on December 15 announced the creation of a Monetary Council, a step toward establishing a shared currency. The board of the council, which will set a timetable for establishing a joint central bank and choose a currency regime, will meet for the first time on March 30.

Oman opted out in 2007. The UAE, the second-biggest Arab economy, withdrew from the currency project in May 2009 after the Saudi capital, Riyadh was selected as the location for the Monetary Council, the future central bank.

The UAE has no plans to rejoin the union project, said January 6, 2010 central bank Governor Sultan bin Nasser al-Suwaidi.Today, in Abu Dhabi, he said that the UAE remains committed to the concept of a single currency, though free trade in the region must come first. That is the reason for a Bloomberg new report on the topic.

Reuters from Berlin, where President Mubarak, 81 years of age, had a gallbladder operation, reports that his health is improving. The problem is that 30 years in office and having made sure there is no number 2 to him, the fact that he went for an operation plunged the Egyptian economic benchmark by 2.4%. We posted the information about Japanese and Kuwait funds made available to the stagnant economy of Egypt, for purpose of green, and perhaps nuclear energy. With this new information we wonder about the meaning of that that previous posting. Is investment in Egypt these days indeed a safe idea or do the foreign banks believe that Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA, will  be the winner in the upcoming elections in Egypt?

———————-

Egypt To Secure $430 Mln Loan For Wind Farm: Agency
Date: 15-Mar-10

by Alexander Dziadosz, Reuters from Egypt.

Egypt is set to secure a $430 million loan from Japan to fund a 220-megawatt wind farm as it tries to boost its renewable energy output, the state news agency MENA said on Friday.

Egypt, an oil and gas producer, has been developing wind power along its eastern Red Sea coast. It aims to generate 12 percent of its power from wind and 20 percent from renewables overall by 2020.

The loan, inked this week, will be used to build a wind farm in Gebel el Zeit on the Gulf of Suez, the report said.

Officials say Egypt’s combined oil and gas reserves will last it roughly three decades, pushing it to develop alternative energy sources, including nuclear and solar.

Last week Egypt said it would receive a $100 million loan from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development to fund a 1,300 megawatt power plant in the Red Sea coastal town of Ain Sokhna, east of Cairo.

Exclusive report by Robert Fisk for The Independent of London.
The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

China Threatens Dollar
Find out why China is deliberatelydestroying the Dollar. Free Report
MoneyMorning.com/dollar_china

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

It’s hard to create a democracy: From The Economist print edition – Kuwait’s mould-breaking election.

Via Roberto Savio’s IPS “Other News,” May 21st 2009 – Cairo- A recent general election in Kuwait may not make the government more effective.

THE economy of Kuwait is exceedingly well oiled. With just 3.4m residents, only a third of them indigenous citizens, the emirate sits on a claimed 8% of the world’s petroleum reserves. Yet for all this wealth, Kuwait’s political system remains creaky and crash-prone. Rather than inspiring the Persian Gulf’s more authoritarian monarchies to reform, its 46-year-old experiment with limited democracy has often seemed a model to be avoided. Just since 2006, batterings from the 50-member parliament, which has tended lately to be dominated by Islamists and conservative tribal leaders, have sent five successive governments tumbling like ninepins.

Growing frustration with this game prompted a lower turnout in a general election on May 16th, but the results have raised hopes of change for the better. Overall, 21 incumbents lost their seats, among them several prominent Sunni Islamists.

Parties are officially outlawed in Kuwait, meaning that candidates run as independents. But the affiliations of many are widely known, making some trends clear.

Representation of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, has shrunk from three seats to one in the incoming parliament; an arch-traditionalist Salafist Islamist group has dipped from five to two. At the same time, the number of Shia MPs has risen from five to nine, closer to the minority sect’s 20%-plus share of the population.

Most eye-catchingly, enough of Kuwait’s 385,000 eligible voters shook off traditional habits to elect women for the first time since they gained full political rights in 2005.

Four women, all with doctorates from American universities, and only two of whom cover their hair as a sign of piety, won seats, and by convincing margins.

Masouma Mubarak, a dean at Kuwait University, who had faced stiff Islamist opposition when holding ministerial rank in three cabinets, easily outpolled all rival candidates in her district. This is a first for the Gulf monarchies-bar a woman in the nearby kingdom of Bahrain who stood unopposed in a tiny constituency; a female has also been elected to the United Arab Emirates’ federal council, but the voters are themselves handpicked by the authorities.

Yet while liberals have cheered the result as a mark of social progress, it does not necessarily augur plain sailing for the al-Sabah family that has ruled Kuwait since the 18th century. Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad, who became emir in 2006, has exercised his privilege of giving family members top cabinet posts, repeatedly choosing his nephew, Sheikh Nasser Muhammad, as prime minister. Yet parliament’s latest dissolution, in March, was prompted by the prime minister’s objection to being questioned in parliament over his alleged mishandling of the economy, and possibly having to face a confidence motion.

With the emir having again reappointed Sheikh Nasser, and with the returning parliament sure to include some of his loudest critics, the stage looks set for a resumption of clashes. Ordinary Kuwaitis are wary not only of further dithering over such things as a planned bail-out package for financial institutions hit by the global recession and an oft-delayed mega-project to develop new oilfields. Rumours also hint at tensions in the Sabah family, with princely rivals to Sheikh Nasser said to be quietly egging on his parliamentary foes.

Given their huge stockpile of national savings from the oil boom years, plus plenty of continued income despite the drop in oil prices, Kuwaitis can probably afford to go on bickering anyway. Some incoming MPs, including Ms Mubarak, promise to push for procedural reforms to make the parliament’s relations with the cabinet less confrontational. And still, for all its hiccups, Kuwait’s hybrid system of government looks downright racy next to the crusty paternalism of the states nearby.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers, for instance, have just scorned another of the numerous petitions from their people demanding democratising reforms, showing disdain by abruptly postponing the only elections the country runs, to half the seats on town councils that do not do much anyway. In the kingdom, Ms Mubarak would not only be denied the right to vote or run for public office. She could not drive to such an office in her own car, or even sit in it if that might mean mingling with the opposite sex.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2009

MIDEAST: A Tale of Two Summits.

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani for IPS.

CAIRO, Jan 27, 2009 – Despite declarations of Arab unity at a recent economic summit, Egyptian commentators say that fundamental differences between rival Arab camps – especially over the issue of Palestine – are far from over. “The deep divisions currently plaguing the Arab world cannot be solved over the course of an official state luncheon,” Mohamed Abu Al-Hadid, political analyst and chairman of the board of the state-owned Dar Al-Tahrir publishing house wrote in official daily Al-Gomhouriya Thursday (Jan. 22).

On Jan. 16, leaders and representatives of 12 Arab League (AL) member states attended a meeting in Doha, Qatar to discuss the carnage then taking place in the Gaza Strip through Israel’s military campaign. The meeting followed repeated calls by Qatar for an emergency AL summit in hope of forging a common Arab stance against ongoing Israeli aggression.

Regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia, however, declined to attend. Instead, they announced their intention to discuss the crisis at a scheduled Arab economic summit in Kuwait three days later. The move highlighted the longstanding divide among AL members, which pits Washington’s “moderate” Arab allies – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – against those opposed to U.S. policy in the region.

The differences between the two blocs are defined largely by their respective positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict. While the former grouping backs U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, the latter supports resistance against Israel led by Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Abbas recognises Israel and insists on holding U.S.-sponsored negotiations with Israeli counterparts, despite the abject failure of talks to realise even modest Palestinian demands. By contrast, Hamas – democratically elected in 2006 – rejects Israel’s legitimacy, cleaving instead to a strategy of armed resistance.

Israel’s 2006 war on southern Lebanon fostered similar divisions, with Washington’s Arab allies supporting the U.S.-backed Beirut government against Lebanese resistance faction Hizbullah. Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip – which lasted from Dec. 27 to Jan. 17 and resulted in more than 1,300 Palestinian deaths – aggravated the longstanding rift.

According to Nabil Abdel Fattah, assistant director at the semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, the decision by Egypt and Saudi Arabia to avoid Doha reflected “conflicts over how to deal with the crisis” then playing out in Gaza.

“Qatar wanted to take a very tough stand against Israel,” Abdel Fattah told IPS. “The moderate states, meanwhile, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, wanted to adopt a more nuanced approach in hope of persuading Israel to halt hostilities.”

In the absence of leading “moderate” representatives, the Doha meeting took a relatively strong stand against the Israeli aggression in Gaza, with both Qatar and Mauritania announcing the suspension of official relations with Israel.

In a joint declaration, participants urged Arab countries to cut all ties and break off all peace talks with Israel, which they charged with committing war crimes. The statement also demanded that Israel “cease its assault on Gaza and leave unconditionally,” and called for the immediate reopening of the embattled enclave’s borders.

Speaking at the meeting, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad described the 2002 Arab peace initiative – which offers full Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for key Palestinian demands – as “dead”. He went on to say that Syria had called off indirect talks with Israel, launched last year through Turkish mediators.

Notably, for the first time ever at a high-level Arab political meeting, the Palestinian people were represented by Hamas, not – as has always been the case at AL meetings – by the PA. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal used the opportunity to reiterate Hamas’s rejection of any ceasefire proposal that did not include the permanent reopening of the Gaza Strip’s borders.

According to Abdel Fattah, the decision by Egypt and Saudi Arabia to spurn the event was also partially aimed at Qatar. Despite its tiny size, Qatar has recently reinvented itself as a regional power broker, straddling the fence between rival camps.

“Qatar has tried to take a leading role in the region, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia see this as an infringement on their own diplomatic roles,” he said. “Egypt also fears that Qatar might be acting as a mask for Iranian and Syrian influence.”

In an editorial, Abu Al-Hadid reminded readers that Qatar – despite its pretensions – represented no less of a U.S. ally than states of the “moderate” axis. “Let’s not forget that Qatar, while trumpeting a tough stand against Israel, plays host to the biggest U.S. airbase in the region,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, discord appeared to give way to unity when Arab leaders gathered in Kuwait for the economic summit on Jan. 19 and 20. Although initially intended to focus on Arab economic, social and development issues, the meeting was dominated by ongoing violence in Gaza.

On the summit’s first day, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdelaziz hosted a formal luncheon for the leaders of Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Qatar. At the conclusion of the closed-door event, attendees announced they had turned a “new page” of Arab reconciliation, declaring an end of traditional rivalries, particularly those between Egypt and Qatar and between Syria and Saudi Arabia.

“We turned a new page for the good of the Arab world,” Qatari PM Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem told satellite news channel Al-Jazeera shortly afterwards.

The following day, Arab leaders announced the establishment of a sizable financial trust for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, along with a number of other joint economic projects. In a final statement, longstanding political differences between participants were downplayed or avoided.

Most local commentators, meanwhile, doubted the sincerity of the abrupt expressions of unity heard at the conference.

“These declarations don’t amount to real reconciliation,” said Abdel Fattah. “The same old divisions remain – over Israel, the role of the Palestinian resistance and the role of non-Arab neighbours in the region.”

According to Abdelhalim Kandil, editor-in-chief of independent weekly Sout Al-Umma, the issue of Arab division is largely illusory, “since both camps appear to be on the U.S.-Israeli doorstep, albeit to differing degrees.”

“All these regimes are fully aware that there is no difference between Israel and the U.S.,” Kandil wrote Jan. 19. “Yet despite the massacres taking place in Gaza, none of them ever considered cutting relations with Washington or expelling the U.S. military presence from their respective countries.”

He added: “This, of course, is because the U.S. is in the region expressly to protect these regimes.”

 A UN Diplomatic solution? You put the fighting cocks into the same room but you do not!

Interesting -King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia can say that he did not brake any rules the Kingdom established years ago when they decided not to be in the presence of an Israeli. See, the gentleman in the room was PEREZ and this is not the Israeli President whose name is PERES.

And What Was The Real Reason For This Hooplah? Was this so that Retiring President Bush comes one more time to the UN?

 —————-

SPEECH BY HE MR GORDON BROWN, UK PRIME MINISTER FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, TO THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY PLENARY MEETING ON “A CULTURE OF PEACE”, 13 NOVEMBER 2008

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen – I am delighted that so many leaders who have served the world with such distinction and whom I admire for their statesmanship have assembled from every faith and every continent for this very special Conference on the Culture of Peace and the Power of Dialogue.   And I am grateful that this Conference is being held under the auspices of the United Nations and in this great Hall where so many declarations and decisions that have changed history have been pronounced.

And let me pay tribute especially to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia – a man of great faith whose leadership has inspired this dialogue.   And it is in recognition of his work and that of the Secretary-General, who I also applaud, that President Bush, the King of Jordan, the Emir of Kuwait, Presidents Perez, Zadari, Karzai and Halonen and Prime Minister Erdogan and many many more have addressed this forum yesterday and today.

Now, never has such a global dialogue been so critical.   Never has this global leadership working for its success been so strong and so inspirational.   And never have the global opportunities that might flow from this and then to conflict, division, misunderstanding and poverty been so profound and so necessary.

But if we believe that our future peace and security lies together rather than apart, lies in understanding not isolation, lies in the differences that we acknowledge and enrich us, not the differences that divide us, then we must speak to people’s values and speak to their beliefs.

More than two-thirds of our fellow citizens are followers of the major faiths, so we can be in no doubt about the power of faith to shape our world.   And while it is not for politicians to lead that bringing together of faiths, that can ultimately only be done by the leaders of faith communities themselves, we cannot successfully lead nations without it.

History tells us that the greatest of social movements have been built on the strongest of ethical foundations.   Two hundred years ago was it not men and women of faith and religious conviction who successfully campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade?   They said that we could not be one world until slavery was ended.

Fifty years ago was it not men and women of conscience and religious faith who inspired the civil rights movement here in this country by saying that we could not be one world until every single citizen, whatever their colour, their race or background, enjoyed equal rights?

And is it not men and women of conscience and religious conviction who say today, as we said here at this General Assembly only a few weeks ago, that we cannot be one world when 30,000 children die unnecessarily every day from diseases we know how to cure and that we must together respond to this poverty emergency by redoubling our efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals?

This is the power of faith to forge the greatest possible coalition for the common good, not one which seeks to impose uniformity of doctrine or culture, but one that is enriched by diversity, united by shared values, empowered by a common commitment to make our world a better place.

Now too often throughout history, people have seen the foreigner as at best a stranger and sometimes at worse an enemy and too often cultures and faiths appear to change at national borders as dramatically as fashion and language.   But today we know we are not and never can be moral strangers to each other because we find that through each of our heritages, our traditions and faiths, runs a single powerful moral sense – a sense that we all share the pain of others, a sense that we believe in something bigger than ourselves.

When Christians say, “do to others what you would have them do to you”.

When Judaism says, “love your neighbour as yourself”.

When Muslims say, “no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself”.

When Buddhists say, “hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful”.

When Sikhs say, “treat others as you would be treated yourself”.

When Hindus say, “the sum of duty is do not unto others which would cause pain if done to you”.

Now call this the best angels of our nature, call it the light in man, call it the moral sense, call it as Adam Smith the philosopher did, the moral sentiment.   Call it conscience of fostering compassion, call it the global ethic, the irrevocable unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families, communities, for races, nations and religions that most of us accept that what you do not wish done to yourself you do not do to others.   It’s the same sacred ideal at the ethical heart of all true religions, our duty to others, our concern for the outsider, the sense that each of us is our brother and sister’s keeper.

And so to those who say that religion, and especially that the misunderstanding and intolerance that has often existed between religions, is responsible for many of the problems we face today, I say we will address these problems if we act upon that moral sense that is shared at the heart of all the great faiths of the world.

Now we have a unique opportunity in this new global age in what is an inter-dependent world, to act upon that inter-dependence and make a partnership by working together for the common good.   And what is new in this global age is our enhanced ability to communicate with each other, to speak to each other across continents.

It wasn’t so long ago that we used to say, “if only people could communicate across borders.   If only people could hear what their opponents have to say.   If only they could speak with each other and find that they have so much in common, then the world would be different.

But today most of these barriers, these old barriers to communication are being removed.   We can now communicate with each other across frontiers.   Almost instantaneously, through the internet, through texting and through e-mailing, there are hundreds of thousands of social networks crossing the world, there are millions of people who may not inhabit the same street, but now inhabit the same internet and site.   And it is in the encounter of listening, at being listened to, that we discover that the beliefs we have in common are so much greater than what has in the past driven us apart.

We discover what Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs calls the dignity of difference.   People, he said, all made in the divine image who find that they are possessed of a dignity and sanctity that transcends our differences.   And we must act upon our interdependence.

Recently in Abuja in Nigeria, I visited a run-down and dilapidated school where children either were sitting on the floor without a desk or were sitting three to the desk that had been built for one.   And their parents told me that a few miles away, a far better school, a far better equipped school offered free education.   But the great facilities and teachers came at a high price because they were funded by an extremist group poisoning the children’s minds and attracting them to a life of terrorism.

I believe it falls upon us to ensure the right to a decent education, free of extremism, for every child in the world.   And think of it if the achievement of this generation could be that every child was able to go to school to gain an education to recognise what they had in common with other children, and I believe we could do this, coming together by spending ten billion dollars a year, a hundred dollars for each child.

But let us agree that the first thing we should do is that we do everything to fight extremism wherever it exists so that people understand the central tenants of their faiths and the rich association that these faiths enjoy with each other.   And we in Britain will continue to step up our campaign, working with other countries, to separate decent-minded young people from the pressures of divisive and extremist advocates of terrorism.

Secondly, the values of different faiths are already expressed in joint projects and common service.   We in Britain have Muslim aid, collaborating with the United Methodist Committee in America, to respond to the needs of disaster victims in Asia.   British Muslims working with American Christians to support Asian neighbours of all faith traditions gives us a glimpse of the potential of faith across our world.

And as we celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so we should also see shared values through a shared commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms.

And I have one other proposal about how shared values can bring us together.   40 years ago the United States created the Peace School for young people from America to help the world.   And around the world many countries, including Britain, have their own Voluntary Service Overseas Organisations.

But in this new global age, should we not celebrate the shared moral sense that is common to all cultures, all religions and all faiths, by bringing young people together in a global corps, perhaps a global environmental corps and a global community service corps and a global peace corps, a global medical aid corps, bringing young people of all nationalities and faiths together with each other in a global effort that will show the strength that comes when the world’s young people acting together?

And let me say thirdly, that we should repeat the importance that everyone who has spoken here attaches to peace in the Middle East, the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with an Israeli state that has its security guaranteed.   And we in Britain with other countries will continue to work for that objective that I believe can be achieved by goodwill in the Middle East.

Now at this unique point in our history, when the world is facing the first financial crisis and the first resources’ crisis of the new global age, so that ability to come together and build shared solutions is never, has never been more important.

And let me send out the strongest message that the road to economic ruin in the past has been following the path of protectionism.   The way forward is not countries working in isolation from or against each other, but countries cooperating together.   And I believe that as world leaders gathered in Washington this weekend, we must and we will see enhanced cooperation by Governments to deal with economic problems that are now hitting every continent in the world.   But I also believe that what matters is a clear statement that is coming from this Conference in New York, that far more than the cooperation of Governments, the cooperation of peoples, whatever their faith, in each continent of the world, will determine whether we can build a truly global society.

I believe that through our continuing dialogue, we can come to recognise our common ground, the common ground on which we stand, whatever our faith traditions, a common commitment to peace, to freedom, to prosperity, to tolerance and respect.   And if we can mobilise a global movement around these shared goals, then the achievements can be momentous.   We can become the first generation to abolish illiteracy and give every child the chance of education together.   We can become the first generation to solve the climate change together.   We can become the first generation, and we need to be that, to eradicate tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, malaria and HIV/AIDS from the face of the earth.

We can become the first generation to consign extreme poverty to the history books for all time.

We can become the first generation to do so by demonstrating by our actions what this Conference has been all about today, that the greatest of social changes are built from the strongest of ethical foundations.

Thank you very much.

Hazel Foster (Miss)
Third Secretary Press
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations
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His Excellency Manouchehr Mottaki, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2005, has come now for the third time to The Asia Society during the September – October period of the UN General Assembly In New York City.

Last year I had the opportunity to ask him about about Climate Change and why Iran, with its great scientists, and people involved at the UN level, does not embark in a leadership position in the area of renewable energy rather then striving for nuclear energy incurring only indignities. Others asked him about Iran’s stand on Israel.

This year – none of the above. One question from the floor asked about Israel – but was answered in the general line of the presentation – without the question been tackled at all. The Moderator was illustrious US Career Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, who served as impeccable host, presenting lots of compliments to his guest and making sure he is very comfortable. Further, The Asia Society simply managed to put the press away in a back room, and without the Q & A period reaching out to them – that is except the literally last question which asked about the possibility for regional negotiations in the crucial Middle East problem.   And the answer to that question was then submerged under the previous line of presentation that exposed beautifully the way Iran wants to be seen. No mention was made of the name Israel also in this   answer by the Minister.

The reality is   that many in Iran like actually some of the cocoons   created via the 1980 revolution that came as a reaction to some real injustices its people incurred from the hand of the US CIA when it undid the Mohammad Mosaddeq   April 28, 1951 – August 19, 1953 regime for its nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and reinstated the   Shah who returned   on 22 August 1953, from the brief self-imposed exile in Rome. Also, some in the US Administration feared that Mossadeq was, or would become, dependent on the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party, at a time of returning Soviet influence, and too close for comfort to have the cold War Tectonic Plates reach towards the Saudi and Iraqi oilfields.

The extent of the US role in Mossadeq’s overthrow was not formally acknowledged for many years, although the Eisenhower administration was quite vocal in its opposition to the policies of the ousted Iranian Prime Minister. In his memoirs, Eisenhower writes angrily about Mossadeq, and describes him as impractical and naive, though he stops short of admitting any overt involvement in the coup.

Eventually the CIA’s role became well-known, and caused controversy within the organization itself, and within the CIA congressional hearings of the 1970s. CIA supporters maintain that the plot against Mosaddeq was strategically necessary, and praise the efficiency of agents in carrying out the plan. Critics say the scheme was paranoid and colonial, as well as immoral.

In March 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated her regret that Mosaddeq was ousted: “The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development, and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America.” In the same year, the New York Times published a detailed report about the coup based on alleged CIA documents. For his sudden rise in popularity inside and outside of Iran, and for his defiance of the British, Mosaddeq was named as Time Magazine’s 1951 Man of the Year. Other notables considered for the title that year included Dean Acheson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and General Douglas MacArthur.

In early 2004, the Egyptian government changed a street name in Cairo from Pahlavi to Mosaddeq, to facilitate closer relations with Iran.

 Now, these last few paragraphs, obviously, do not come from the monologue of Minister Mottaki, but I thought to bring this up because otherwise the show at the Asia Society cannot be understood, and the Ministers personality grasped.

***

The literally last question mentioned above, that came from the back-room filled with people from media was added when the announced “last question” that came from a lady sitting at the front-right table, clearly laudatory asked, “for those of us interested in the understanding of the history of the Middle East, when did Iran invade last one of its neighbors?”   The clear short answer was – “not in our lifetime.”

***

Had be given to me the opportunity to ask a question – what I had in mind was something like this:

“In light of what your excellency has said in regard to regional solutions for regional problems, and in light of justifiable aspirations by Iran to become an Asian powerhouse, what is your reaction to the Bahrain proposal at this year’s High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly, when Bahrain suggested the creation of a new UN organization comprising ALL STATES OF THE REGION – that wasinterpreted as meaning a Middle East organization that includes Israel?” This is exactly the most wanting direct question that was not put before our guest.

***

From The Speakers Profile and The Internet:

 Manouchehr Mottaki was born   May 12, 1953 in Bandar Gaz, in the northern Iranian Province of Golestan, and went to school there. Bandar-Gaz, during the Reza Shah Pahlavi rule, was an important city in the north with a national railroad and “several infrastructures.” It was considered   a transit bridge to the Soviet Union. After graduation, he joined the army and as per national plan joined the public education program by which was conducted by the government. He went to Khorasan province and established a school in a poor village around Mashhad, and taught there. After his service in the army, since he was interested in social and political issues, he decided to travel abroad both for experience and study. At that time India was a popular academic destination for young Iranians. So he traveled and studied for a few years in India, before the revolution in Iran.       He holds a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Bangalore University in India (1976). Mottaki also holds a master’s degree (MA) in international relations from the University of Tehran (1996).

 After the 1980 revolution, he was elected by the people of his home town and the neighboring cities as the first parliament representative and assigned by the other representatives as the head of the national security and foreign policy committee due to his politic and diplomatic talents. During his years in Majlis (Congress) and effective collaboration with the foreign ministry, he was employed then by the ministry after parliament.   Or, he made thus his career within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during 24 years of continuous presence in different positions through   the Majlis (Parliament)..

He served thus as member of parliament in the first Majlis, head of seventh political bureau of Foreign Ministry (1984),

Iran’s ambassador to Turkey (1985),

Foreign Ministry’s secretary general for Western European affairs (1989),

Deputy Foreign Minister – first for international affairs (1989) and then   for legal, consular and parliamentary affairs (1992).

 Iran’s ambassador to Japan (1994),

Advisor to foreign minister (1999),

Deputy head of Culture and Islamic Communications Organization (2001)

Chief of the Foreign Relations Committee of the 7th Majlis National Security and Foreign Relations Commission (2004).

During the 2005 presidential election, he was the campaign manager of Ali Larijani, the right-conservative candidate.

President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad, in 2005,   appointed him to the position of Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005.

 

Mottaki quotations:

“Referring the case to the Security Council would be a lose-lose game, and we would prefer that this game does not happen. We see a win-win situation, that is where the EU and international community have confidence and the Islamic Republic of Iran reaches its legitimate right.”

“The Islamic Republic pays great cost to control and prevent transfer of narcotics to West.

“We do not accept global nuclear ‘apartheid’ and scientific ‘apartheid’.

“All voluntary measures taken over the past two-and-a-half or three years have been halted and we have no further commitment to the additional protocol and other voluntary commitments.”

“We should try to cool down the situation. We do not support any violence.”

“Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned.”

“The time for using language of threats is over, it’s time for negotiation. We express our readiness for negotiations based on justice and a comprehensive compromise. We want to peacefully solve the problem.

“Nuclear weapons are not in Iran’s defense doctrine.”

“The issue is quite simple. We would like to enjoy our membership as well as the other members of the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty. The country has followed the rules and regulations of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and wants to keep its rights.”

***

The Foreign Minister’s Introductory Presentation Before The Asia Society, Thursday, October 2, 2008:

Mottaki started by saying that since our last meeting here (2007), we had three events:

(1) The enjoyable visit of members of this Society in Tehran – he hopes this is a start for more such exchanges. This as a better way for mutual understanding – Scholars, Tourists, Students in such exchanges create the possibility to have more realistic picture of each other.

 

(2) LEBANON: A solution of more then 30 months of crisis was achieved after being initiated by different parties. Foreign Minister Mottaki wants to talk about how it was achieved – because the process is as important as the results.

It was a regional-based solution for the Lebanon crisis. The decision was that it has to be a solution based on votes by a 50+ plurality of all groups in the country – all groups in the country come to the table and a consensus is built – that was the tone of the Lebanon Policy agreement.

On the second day of the negotiations in Doha, at 2:30 AM, the feeling was that it all collapsed the negotiations were locked. Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League said go ahead, but others opposed. Mottaki was in contact with Doha and Beirut and   at 9 AM they took up the issue again, and it was settled after a day of negotiations by 9 PM.

One learned that use of force should expect a reaction from the other side. Then also that territorial integrity is an integral part of any solution. These lessons apply whenever you have conflict – this clearly also in the Georgia – Russia case.

 

(3) GEORGIA: The areas are already affected by crisis – energy, transportation, security.

The crisis started by use of force based on wrong information and miscalculation. The latter by not expecting reaction.

The second point is territorial integrity.

Its the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia now, before it was Kosovo, Does it result from the same policies? If so, are there other areas where action led to reaction? If Yes – What are these?

On the second day of the Georgia case there was an agreement signed with Poland. If this signing of the agreement with Poland has become another step, should we look for reaction in Syria? in Venezuela?

What is NATO going to do?

Iran is a neighbor of Azerbaijan and Armenia – so there is a regional concern and Iran has to take part in the initiatives – parallel with Europe. So he went to the region and to Berlin. Is NATO moving to accept Georgia as a member?                             The interesting question is then the borders.

***

 

Now it was the turn for Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to take his position as moderator and conversation partner.

He has retired from the US Foreign Service in 1997 with the highest rank – that of a Career Ambassador, but continued to be involved in special positions like the Special US envoy for the Kosovo Final Status (December 2005 – March 2008).   Now he is in the private sector.   In his career postings he was Ambassador to India, the Philippines, Egypt, Zambia… among other appointments, he was also Under Secretary of Defence for Policy.

He started by saying that Iran is a great nation that commands and deserves respect – yet for many of us it is difficult to see how Iran chooses to challenge the international community. How do you square your requirement for respect with a confrontation attitude he then asked the Minister.

Mottaki, who made his introductory presentation in English, but now used a translator for the conversation part of the event, started to smile.

His answer was: A very nice gathering and behavior – my response – What we see is   selective dealing and approach – and double standards.

Back in the 80s we extensively talked up issues. I suggest how the first Iraq war was dealt with and the second war – the war of Saddam against Kuwait. In all   these the underlying issue is the occupation of foreign lands. {I assume he means the Iraq war against Iran as the first war and the war of Iraq on Kuwait as the second war}   Back then the heated discussion was having a cease-fire not a settlement. So the first step is a cease-fire, another first step is withdrawal. We wanted to have the an “a” inserted so that it is clear that a withdrawal comes after the cease-fire. See, using “oil-for-food” money – even now a percentage goes to Kuwait, this while for 4 years we were engaged in lengthy negotiations that were ordered by the UN. Two Assistant Secretary-Generals that dealt with this are present here – they remember those negotiations. Sometimes just to keep things going we had to put proposals on the table. We felt these were in Iraq’s favor and Iraq asked – what do you pay us to accept?

On the nuclear issue – at the end of the day – it is officials of one country … But Islamic and Sharia teachings say that atomic bombs have no place in our defense.we also contend that nuclear weapons are nomore effective. Also military powr has lost effectiveness.

I outlined new agreements for the IAEA last year. 1,5 years ago, in Madrid, we said to the Agency we will give the right answers to the IAEA questions. Then the US turned over questions to the IAEA and they posed them to us. The agency said they have other questions and we started answering them one by one. For each set of questions they sent us a written letter that they accepted the answer as adequate. What expectations should Iran have? We expect the 5+1 to thank us for these efforts to answer all questions. We expected that at the September meeting to be told by the Agency that they put aside all questions, but they provided a second US set of contentions.

They were supposed to bring up questions in one set of timetable. These questions went beyond the timetable. but we accepted.

These questions, like the previous are baseless, we will not agre to the US directed routes. I believe if we continue the negotiations we will reach a point of agreement that will lead to action.

 

{All the above sounded to me like a reprise of the 1001 Nights stories – this time from Tehran. I wonder how many people in the room accepted these, though, as I remarked at the beginning of this article, I am probably one of the most inclined to allow some slack to the Iranians because of past US behavior – but this story contained really too much rope. It did not inspire safety at all.}

 

Now Ambassador Wisner had one more short question he said. The elections in the US. “Do you see from Iran’s point of view an opportunity for dialogue? What will be the modalities for negotiation?

A. A US President will have to reach out including the Middle East. If there are changes in the White House we will intently consider them. We take note of comments made by previous Presidents, who are not in power anymore, also candidates not yet elected. Comments made, promises given by them cannot yet be seriously considered. We have to wait and see.

As for an interest section, there is only stories in news media.

 

***

Q&A from the floor:

Answer On Israel of sorts:   Iran US relations are dependent on a number of issues. Unilateral Vs. Policies in the Middle East have complicated the situation. NO MENTION OF ISRAEL IN THE ANSWER.

 

Answer on Nuclear In The Middle East:   Atomic weapons cannot provide security. We all heard that the US had enough to destroy Russia. It helped in the balance of fear.

Six years have passed from the day your troops have entered Iraq – they have not succeeded. Why could not atomic weapons help in Afghanistan and Iraq? This year the 13th anniversary since the Islamic revolution in Iran.

if I were to list our grievances against the US it will be a long long list. Had we a nuclear bomb, could that have changed your actions in Iraq?

In tandem with development on hardware side, the software side. The US is not lacking in modern weapons, also in its economic might (except for the present problems). No serious changes will occur in the US. The problem is – insufficient reasoning to convince the international public opinion.

 

Answer to the last question on the Middle East: We go about our business about our nuclear problems. We provided the answers.

if a person is asleep- how hard you knock, it will not help. The US cannot accept Iran’s peaceful proposals because once they accept they will not be able to stay in this position.

US intelligence agencies announced that Iran does not work on nuclear bomb, but the uS did not accept. I know of five different reports. I think it is high time for them to accept this.

The 15 years they were against my country. What is wrong about changing policies – and see what was wrong for their country?

 

 

From:  liasieghart at hotmail.com
Subject: Yemen, cogeneration and the CDM an outline of opportunity
Date: September 4, 2008

The Clean Development Mechanism has been instrumental in the development of a number of cogeneration projects around the world, but none yet in Yemen, where the scope for projects is certainly present. Lia Carol Sieghart looks at the role that cogeneration could play as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the country. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, at the 3rd Conference of the Parties (COP 3) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Kyoto, Japan. This treaty significantly bolstered the Convention by committing parties from developed countries, known as Annex 1 Parties, to legally binding limits on GHG emissions. They may also acquire emission reduction credits by taking advantage of the three ‘flexibility mechanisms’ defined under the Protocol.These mechanisms are:

• International Emissions Trading (IET)
• Joint Implementation (JI)
• Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The latter is the only mechanism that involves developing countries. The CDM allows Annex 1 Parties (or entities from those Parties) to invest in project activities that reduce GHG emissions and contribute to sustainable development in non-Annex 1 countries.The CDM has seen an exponential growth since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect in 2005. The end of 2007 provided a milestone with the 100-millionth certified emission reduction credit being issued. In April 2008 the 1000th project, an energy efficiency project, was registered with the Executive Board. At present there are more 3000 projects in the UNFCCC pipeline.Nevertheless, the number of host countries playing a vital role is still very limited. The geographic dispersion of registered projects remains imbalanced. So far the main share of projects is with Asia and Latin America. Most projects are registered with India as a host country, followed by China, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia and Chile. India and China in particular have been early movers and have grasped the investment opportunities provided by the CDM. The vast majority of projects registered are in the energy sector. Taking into consideration the projects under validation and those requesting registration, it seems that this distribution pattern will not change significantly during the first commitment period.

  There are many reasons why the CDM has so far fallen short of its full potential, many of which are country-specific while others are repeatedly reported from various countries. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region 18 countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but to date only 20 projects have been registered (Table 1). This amounts to ~2 % of the total of registered project activities.

  Click here to enlarge image

  The MENA Region population comprises about 6% of the total world population, almost equivalent to the population of the European Union. Most MENA countries are experiencing a rapid population growth. The region is economically diverse – the spectrum ranges from oil-rich economies to countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population.

  By 2050, the MENA countries will reach an electricity demand of the same magnitude as Europe (3500 TWh/y). In some of the countries, electricity demand is expected to triple from almost 1500 TWh/y at present to 4100 TWh/y in 2050. Correspondingly, the effects of climate change will become more severe. The fossil fuel-based power sector offers enormous potential for CO₂ emission reductions, both through energy efficiency improvements in existing applications as well as utilization of state-of-the-art technology for new capacity additions.

  Given the surging growth in energy demand, the region needs to develop sustainable energy patterns, increase energy accessibility – particularly for marginalized populations in rural areas – and encourage efficient use of energy. Countries need to embark on a less carbon-intensive development path. Utilizing the CDM can provide a vital trigger in this process.

  CHP has a clear opportunity to expand quickly. CHP installations, by combining electricity production with a heat recovery system, provide reliable and cost-effective opportunities for GHG emissions reduction and an important contribution to meeting heat and electricity demand. Cogeneration projects also have the potential to bring energy efficiency measures to large industries in the region, while the MENA oil industry and refinery capacity offers further significant cost-effective potential for heat recovery and cogeneration.

  THE REPUBLIC OF YEMEN

  The Republic of Yemen lies to the south of Saudi Arabia, bounded by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The 2004 census recorded a population of 19.72 million, with an average annual population growth rate of 3.2 % and one of the highest birth rates in the MENA Region. Yemen remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and currently ranks 49 on the UN’s list of the 50 Least Developed Countries. Yemen’s GNI per capita is US$760, compared to, for example, US$12,510 in Saudi Arabia, US$23,990 in the United Arab Emirates and US$9070 in Oman². According to the Country Social Analysis (2006) by the World Bank the GDP growth rate has been falling steadily in recent years. Inflation has been averaging at almost 12% since 2002, rapidly increasing the cost of living.

  The country, a non-OPEC member, is the smallest oil producer in the Middle East³. Nevertheless, the economy is highly dependent on the oil sector, with the country’s oil exports accounting for approximately 85% of export revenues and 33% of gross domestic product (GDP). Yemen’s energy use relies heavily on fossil fuels. Thus, there is potential to reduce GHG emissions in the energy sector, the oil and refinery industry and in the industrial sector.

  GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IN YEMEN

  The 2001 First National Communication to the UNFCCC used 1995 as a reference year for Yemen’s GHG emissions inventory due to the high uncertainty of 1994’s information as a result of the April–July 1994 civil war. The total GHG emissions (CO₂, CH⁴, N²O) of the country, in 1995, amounted to 18.7 million tonnes CO₂eq, (CO₂=11.4 million tonnes, CH⁴=128,000 and NO₂=15,000). Taking CO₂ removal into account, the total net emission of CO₂ is 845,000 tonnes. These figures are exclusive of the emission from the international bunker (114,350 tonnes CO₂) and from combustion of biomass (353,290 tonnes CO₂).

  Yemen’s emission profile by gas type for 1995 shows that CO₂ accounts for 61% of the total national GHG emissions (113,580 tonnes CO₂), N²O 25% (465,700 tonnes CO₂eq) and CH⁴ 14% (269,400 tonnes CO₂eq). Table 2 shows gas emissions by various sectors.

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  If we look at the industrial processes, there are many that create GHG emissions as a by-product of the process itself. Cement production generated the most emissions (99.3%). Other production processes with minor emissions are lime production, limestone use and soda use (food & beverages). The total GHG generated by these processes was estimated at 547,000 tonnes CO₂eq, which accounted for 2.92% of the country’s total GHG emissions. The production of cement in Yemen in 1995 was 1,089,000 tonnes that resulted in CO₂ emission of 543,000 tonnes CO₂eq representing 4.8% of the country’s total CO₂ emissions (energy sector, industrial processes etc), while it represents around 2.9% of the total GHGs.

  The CO₂ emission from cement production was calculated by multiplying 1995 cement production (1,089,000 tonnes) by the emission factor (0.4985 tonnes of CO₂ per tonne of cement produced). The SO₂ emitted from cement production was obtained by using an emission factor of 0.3 kg SO₂/tonne cement, thus leading to 330 tonnes SO₂ in 1995.

  THE YEMENI ENERGY SECTOR

  Yemen’s 100% state-owned Public Electricity Corporation (PEC) formed in 1991, under the Ministry of Electricity, is the sole public utility with the mandate for generation, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity in the country. The entity operates approximately 80% of the country’s generating capacity as part of the national grid. The remainder is generated by small off-grid suppliers and privately owned generators, predominantly in rural areas⁴. In urban areas diesel generators are also used as back-up systems. The efficiency of diesel generators can be up to 40%. Electricity demand amounted to 3294 GWh in 2005, an increase of 9.6% annually since 2000.

  The Yemeni population has the lowest access to electricity in the region, with only 53%⁵ of the total population having access. Of the 72% of the Yemeni population living in rural areas, only 23% have any access to electricity, which compares unfavourably with 85% of the urban population that have access to electricity. Out of this 23%, about 10%–14% is connected to the national grid system while the remainder is estimated to have some access from other sources, typically a diesel generator that operates only a few hours in the evening. Even for those connected to the grid, electricity supply is intermittent, with regular rolling blackouts in most cities.

  Click here to enlarge image

  Yemen has been experiencing a chronic power supply shortage. An estimate for the electric power deficit in 2006 was 220 MW, a figure that is expected to increase to 250 MW in 2008. With the 2005 increase in diesel prices, the cost of diesel generation has become economically unsustainable thereby significantly increasing the demand for a lower-carbon, more-efficient, lower-cost and reliable energy future.

  The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP, 2003–2005) states the following: ‘Indicators show the failure of electric power in Yemen in keeping pace with demand [is] due to the ageing of the power stations and the distribution networks, which is reflected in the high losses that are currently estimated at about 38%, well above the internationally prevailing levels. This situation prevents the full utilization of machinery and equipment in the different productive and service units, or burdens the private sector facilities with the cost of setting up their own generating plants, not to mention the inability to systematically fulfil domestic lighting requirements. This situation is expected to continue over the medium term due to the increase of demand at high rates, and thus increases the adverse aspects on investment opportunities and the growth of output, income and employment, clearly showing the importance of strategic investment by the private sector in this field.’

  In the industrial sector, power is purchased either from the national grid or off-grid from privately owned diesel generators with poor electrical efficiency ranging from 25% up to 35% especially in light industry. Heavy industry, e.g. the cement sector – the most energy intensive of any industry⁶, covers its heat needs using boilers fired either by heavy fuel oil or diesel, again with an overall poor fuel efficiency. The main electricity consuming sections in a cement plant are the mills (finish grinding and raw grinding) and the exhaust fans (kiln/raw mill and cement mill) which together account for more than 80% of the total electrical energy usage.⁷ The separate production of heat and power is an obvious waste of energy. Change is needed by using a range of existing and emerging technologies, particularly in relation to the production and consumption both of heat and electricity.

  The cement industry is considered as one of the main players in the industrial sector. Commercial production started back in 1973 with the launching of the first production line of the Bajil Cement Factory. Cement production is highly competitive, both locally and internationally, so any improvements in production efficiency can result in important increases in competitiveness.⁸

  Despite 16.9 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, a cleaner source of non-renewable energy, heavy fuel oil or diesel-fuelled power generation remains the energy source. Use of natural gas is hampered by the absence of a domestic natural gas infrastructure. On the downstream side there is a crude refining capacity of 130,000 barrels/day from two ageing refineries. The Aden refinery has a capacity of 90,000 to 120,000 barrels/day, while the capacity at the Marib refinery, is 10,000 barrels/day.

  So the challenge for the government is to meet the energy needs of the country in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner. To address this challenge, one approach is to integrate the use of CHP as part of a larger portfolio of low-carbon energy technology solutions. Also the First National Communication under the UNFCCC suggests CHP as a viable measure to reduce GHG emissions and to cope with climate change.

  COGENERATION – AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YEMEN

  The Yemeni electricity sector driven by fossil-fuelled power generation is characterized by a loss of waste heat and a deficient transmission and distribution system resulting in poor net generation. Energy use and efficiency are important factors for economic development and environmental integrity.

  Click here to enlarge image

  CHP applications could be viable and cost-effective in the Yemeni setting because they:

  • reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emissions
  • provide a decentralized energy source which results in reduced investment in energy system infrastructure
  • reduce transmission and distribution losses.

  Energy-intensive industrial sites such as oil refining, heavy processing (food and textiles) and the cement industry with its simultaneous demand for heat and power, could all benefit. Also the commercial and institutional/residential sectors could match their thermal and electrical needs. CHP application in the commercial/institutional sector could address light manufacturing, hotels, hospitals and large office complexes.

  Despite good potential for CHP, to date no systems are operating in Yemen. The main barriers are: technical, financial, lack of maintenance capacity and awareness, the heavy subsidy of petroleum products and the absence of a domestic natural gas infrastructure – the fuel of choice for most new industrial CHP systems. However, access to reasonably priced and reliable electricity supply systems are an obvious prerequisite for economic stability and development. The development of a strategy for CHP would assist in kick-starting the momentum in Yemen and should include the following elements:

  • identification of projects that could be initially implemented by the public sector and identify pipeline of projects that can be promoted for private sector development
  • formulation of CHP-enabling market
  • elaboration of incentives that attract private investors and lower the costs of electricity generation from CHP applications.

  Coupling GHG emissions abatement with CHP installation would help guide the country’s economic growth to a less carbon-intensive development path. The emission reduction potential makes CHP applications, in principal, eligible for the CDM. In order to qualify for Certified Emission Reductions under the CDM, one needs to address ‘additionality’, ‘permanence’, and ‘leakage’ requirements as well as satisfy sustainable development criteria defined by the country. By gaining CDM support for projects, Yemen could gain access to significant additional flows of technology and finance to assist in achieving a more sustainable, less greenhouse-intensive pathway of development. Also the National Adaptation Programme of Action⁹ is suggesting CHP systems as an efficient method of power generation and a suitable measure to reduce GHG emissions. Considering a cogeneration project as a CDM project activity would assist in generating emission credits and thereby make the project more feasible.

  RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

  The CDM is a key model fostering broad engagement in climate change mitigation, and can be used as a means of promoting sustainable development by providing access to improved energy services. The energy sector is a major source of GHG emissions and a critical area for socio-economic development of the country. Yemen has a good potential for cogeneration projects in the industrial, commercial and institutional/residential sectors.

  In keeping with the dual aim of climate protection and sustainable development, the CDM can trigger the installation of CHP systems by removing barriers to implementation of state-of-the art technology in this area. Despite the strong potential of cogeneration for GHG reduction to date there is no installed capacity – project developers often lack the technical and financial capacity to identify projects within their operational activities. Mainstreaming carbon finance into business operations would have a catalytic impact on facilitating CDM project development and consequently assist in the feasibility of cogeneration in Yemen.

  Lia Carol Sieghart is with the Ministry of Water and Environment, DNA Secretariat, Republic of Yemen.
  e-mail: sieghart@yemen.net.ye

  References

  1. Status: 29.03.2008

  2. World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 1 July 2007

  3. Report No.: 34008-YE – Republic of Yemen – Country Social Analysis – January 11, 2006 – Water, Environment, Social and Rural Development Department, Middle East and North Africa Region

  4. Energy Information Administration  www.eia.doe.gov): Yemen – Country Analysis Brief (October 2007)

  5. World Bank and UNDP (2005): Household Energy Supply and Use in Yemen: Volume I, Main Report

  6. WADE (2007): Concrete Energy Savings – Onsite Power in the Cement Industry

  7. IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control). 2001. Reference document on best available techniques in the cement and lime manufacturing industries, European Union.

  8. WADE (2007): Concrete Energy Savings – Onsite Power in the Cement Industry

  9. 2001 First National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

  Cogeneration and On-Site Power Production July, 2008

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  Copyright © 2008: PennWell Corporation, Tulsa, OK; All Rights Reserved.

The title of the following article by Roula Khalaf, written for the Financial Times, is:

“WHY ARAB STATES MUST EMBRACE IRAQ.”

King Abdullah of jordan, the most West-oriented ruler of an Arab State, has broken the ice by going to Baghdad. OK – he did this because of the revealed great financial reserves of the new Iraqi State – and Jordan, as a non-Petroleum Arab State, needs money. But as Roula Khalaf says – there was more to it then simple monetary calculations. With the US disengagement from Iraq in the cards – do the Arab want to see the country move completely to Iran’s sphere of influence? It is clear now that the US will not continue to do the deterrent work for them.

Roula Khalaf is an excellent Arab journalist that we met once at a WWF event in Amman, Jordan. She is now the Middle East Editor for the Financial Times, and, as we picked up on the internet, she announced the launch of the the UK newspaper’s ME edition. Khalaf states that twice a week the paper will publish dedicated regional news. http://www.zawya.com/radio/default.cfm/sidDE080428061709359685

WTO Talks Collapse: Was There Ever a Future for Bananas?
World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed today, July 29, after nine days of intense negotiations. Trade ministers from approximately 35 countries struggled to salvage the stalled seven-year-old Doha round. Optimistic signs and compromises surfaced as a result of last weekend’s supposed breakthrough, but these were soon followed by stubborn accusations from a number of combative nations, including the United States, China, and India. Constructing a 153-country consensus now seems even more cumbersome and talks will not resume for at least two years. During this past week in Geneva, country officials worked particularly long hours in an attempt to come up with the necessary concessions, as well as extending their stay in Switzerland in hopes of returning home “successfully.” Such a dream was, unfortunately, not to be realized.

This latest round of trade talks was launched in the Qatar capital in November 2001, but has long been stalemated over issues of farm subsidies called for by the U.S., Japan and the EU, as well as tariffs on industrial goods imposed by the developing economies of Latin America and Asia. Proposed changes included EU and U.S. farm subsidy reductions of up to 80 percent. The compromise was that developing countries would open their markets to imports of manufactured goods, removing so-called “import shields.”

In the deal last weekend, Latin American banana producers and EU officials appeared to begin the process of putting to rest a quarter-century banana “war.” Many Latin American banana exporters had contended for years that the EU routinely gave preferential treatment to their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), and had kept import tariffs artificially high on the fruit that originates on mainland Latin America.

The complaint was originally filed by the U.S. because three of the largest banana producers in Latin America are U.S. multinational corporations. COHA repeatedly has argued in the past that U.S. banana companies, and not Latin American economies, are likely to benefit from the removal of the tariffs (see “Banana Wars Continue – Chiquita Once Again Tries to Work Its Omnipotent Will, Now Under New Management: Likely Big Losers Will Be CARICOM’s Windward Islands”). In addition to this contention, many view the present Doha round as an inappropriate forum for banana talk to occur in the first place, as any new arrangement could anger some of the ACP nations and thus would endanger the future of the round. Nonetheless, it is important for the banana conflict to be resolved so that Latin America, as well as U.S. corporations and English-speaking Caribbean exporters (who in most cases depend upon such exports for their economic survival), can see the benefits from the sale of their largest cash crop. Throughout the negotiations, it can be said that the U.S. was less than sensitive to the importance of a favorable outcome to such islands as Dominica, Grenada, and St. Lucia- a matter of sheer survival.

One of the main issues of contention amongst developing countries was the possible existence of Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM). This provision would enable countries like China and India to raise agricultural tariffs to protect their farmers in case of a surge in imports. Latin American countries rejected the SSM proposal, saying that it would be damaging to their export interests. Venezuelan Industry and Trade Minister William Antonio Contreras said that “we are not here to block an agreement, but to defend our interests and to fulfill the command of the round that is the one of developing.” The dispute over the existence of these mechanisms, designed to help only certain nations, largely contributed to the collapse of the talks.

It now should be clearer than ever as to why WTO talks have been at a stand still for so many years. It is not an enigma why it has been so difficult to achieve consensus with a myriad of players in the field with a lot to gain, but even more to lose. Lucrative deals for some nations can be devastating to others: WTO negotiations certainly have not proven to be a win-win game.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associates Revaz Ardesher and Jessica Wayne
July 29th, 2008 COHA is the Washington Based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

———————-

WTO Talks Collapse Amidst Developing Countries’ Reluctance to Sacrifice Food Security.
Tuesday 29 July 2008

Opinion from – The Center for Economic and Policy Research.             {The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives. CEPR’s Advisory Board of Economists includes Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Richard Freeman, professor of economics at Harvard University; and Eileen Appelbaum, professor and director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. }

Indian women farm laborers plant rice. India and other developing nations are reluctant to sacrifice food security measures during World Trade Organization negotiations.

  Last-minute attempt to push through a WTO expansion “deal” fails.
Washington, DC – Despite trade ministers’ hopes for a last-minute deal, World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed yet again today, and observers at the talks in Geneva say that the failure is not surprising, given the reluctance of India and other developing nations to sacrifice food security measures in the wake of the recent global spike in food prices.
Given President Bush’s lame duck status, negotiators had been called to Geneva to try to push through a last-minute deal before Bush left office. Because negotiators need about six months after a deal on the major issues to complete the details of the agreement, this possibility has now evaporated.

“Given what’s been on the table, no deal is better than a bad deal. A Doha conclusion would have had major negative impacts for workers and farmers in developing countries. The tariff cuts demanded of developing countries would have caused massive job loss, and countries would have lost the ability to protect farmers from dumping, further impoverishing millions on the verge of survival,” said Deborah James, Director of International Programs for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has been observing the talks in Geneva.

  It is unclear why negotiations were proceeding, given the fact that the U.S. delegation does not have a mandate to conclude negotiations, as made clear by a letter from Senators Feingold and Byrd sent to President Bush last week. In addition, cuts in subsidies agreed to by the U.S. are also incompatible with the new U.S. Farm Bill passed by Congress, and over-riding a veto by President Bush.
Many developing nations not invited to participate in the exclusive “Green Room” meetings in Geneva this past week are likely to continue strong opposition to a deal in the midst of a global economic downturn and increasing concerns over food security.

  At a time when many countries are seeking to reduce dependence on troubled economies in the U.S. and Europe, and as fears of a global recession loom, many nations are questioning the development gains to be achieved from trade liberalization. The projected gains from the Doha Round offer developing countries very little in potential gains. According to World Bank modeling, developing country benefits would be just 16 percent of total world gains, or 0.16 per cent of GDP. This works out to less than a penny per day per capita in the developing world. Poverty reduction – which in itself would be very limited – would reach only 2.5 million people.[1] These projections do not include many of the costs of implementing the Doha Round, which UNCTAD estimates to be as much as four times the projected gains.
The Doha Round could also increase world prices for food.[2] Since most developing countries are net food importers, the recent increase in food prices has led some developing country governments to reconsider food security mechanisms such as tariffs and domestic subsidies, which the WTO seeks to reduce. A number of countries have also imposed restrictions on exports, in response to the food crisis.
“There just hasn’t been much to gain for developing countries in this round – or for that matter, the majority of people even in the rich countries,” said CEPR Co-Director and economist, Mark Weisbrot. “The attempts by the rich countries to reduce policy space for developing countries in manufacturing are widely seen as ‘kicking away the ladder’ that rich countries like the United States used when they were developing countries.
  “The whole process of subordinating national policy to special commercial interests – whether in agriculture, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals (one of the most powerful interests and gainers in the WTO), or the financial sector – has gone way too far. Growth and development in most countries has been hurt, and they are pushing back. In the United States, too, rising inequality and now an economic downturn have provoked a backlash.”

Throughout the negotiations, some developing nations promoted trade policies and objectives at odds with the Doha Round’s objectives of opening developing country markets, including commitments to food sovereignty and defending policy space for alternative forms of economic development.

In a written statement, Bolivian president Evo Morales said that, “The WTO negotiations have turned into a fight by developed countries to open markets in developing countries to favor their big companies.”
[1] Kevin P. Gallagher and Timothy A. Wise, “Back to the Drawing Board: No Basis for Concluding the Doha Round of Negotiations.” Research and Information System for Developing Countries Issue Brief. No. 36, April 2008.
[2] Sandra Polaski, “Winners and Losers: Impact of the Doha Round on Developing Countries.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2006.
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www.SustainabiliTank.info does not accept that this was just about bananas – we just posted the case of the airline industry that would have come under the services end of the World Trade Agreement.

A WTO was supposed to balance global trade so that everyone has to get something out of this, but when those that have neither the money, nor the fuel, have to do something to benefit interests that are placed in position to hurt them even more – so better put up barriers to harming trade. For some this means close in your agriculture, but we just pointed at some that would be better off if they closed in their airtransport -this just as an example. So let us be blunt here – the US would be completely in its right now to put an extra “oil-cost-tax” on the National airlines of the oil-states. With an end to the running-around-Doha exercize there is no reason why the US should not do this to help its airlines.

Today’s News are full with the woes of private airlines. “Fuel Prices hurt Ryanair and Shares Tumble 25%;” “Airport Lounges are the latest casualty of the current crisis in the airline industry;” “Delta will charge for the second suitcase;” but Emirates is introducing showers to its first class passengers.

The point is that Emirates and other government owned oil-state airlines benefit from clear subsidy of their fuel costs thus undermining air-transport competition. DOHA happens to be in such a State and DOHA is the keyword for ongoing trade negotiations that include also services – and air transport is these days a main service. We know that when you are dependent on the power that has the cash, and also happens to have the fuel that your country is addicted to – you may not have the stomach for true negotiations.

The DOHA round, supposedly is stuck on agriculture – but what about transport – be it air transport loke in the case of “Emirates” or maritime transport like in the case of Norway – will the negotiators on world trade step up now to an honest witness stand? That is the Question in our present posting.

As Most Airlines Struggle, Middle East Carriers Are Expanding.
By CAROLINE BROTHERS, Published: July 29, 2008, The New York Times.

HAMBURG — As carriers from American Airlines to Thai Airway International respond to high oil prices by shedding jobs, culling routes and grounding aircraft, Middle Eastern carriers are expanding as fast as they can in hopes of redefining their region as the aviation crossroads of the globe.

“There is no sign of a crisis there,” said Thomas O. Enders, the chief executive of Airbus, in an interview on Monday shortly before handing over a new A380 jet to the chairman of Emirates, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum. “These airlines are on a very impressive growth path and expansion course.”

Emirates, which in 2000 became the first customer to sign a firm commitment to buy A380s, has since increased its order more than eightfold to 58 planes. At Monday’s ceremonial delivery, Sheik Ahmed signed a letter of intent for an additional 60 Airbus jets with a total price tag of $13.3 billion: 30 wide-bodied A330 planes and 30 of the A350s that are still under development.

The technological capacity of new-generation aircraft like the Airbus A380 allows gulf states to leverage their geographical position as a crossroads, putting 80 percent of the world’s most attractive markets, like India and China, within reach of nonstop flights.

Tim Clark, president of Emirates, said that from the start, the airline had focused on Dubai’s central location. The aim was to link places that were not already linked, like Africa and China, or Russia and South Africa, Mr. Clark said.

The Middle East is pouring $54 billion into airport expansion over the next decade, according to the International Air Transport Association, and airlines in the region have ordered 700 planes at a cost of $140 billion over the last three years.

“The size of our order mirrors the rising prominence of the Middle East and its increasing emergence as a new focal point of global aviation,” said James Hogan, the chief executive of Etihad, an airline based in the region that ordered 100 aircraft in July, including 10 Airbus A380s.

The big Emirates order for the superjumbos — which would be able to compete with low-cost carriers if configured for 750 passengers in economy class — might sound like a recipe for overcapacity. But so far, airlines in the gulf have done well in matching demand, which grew 11 percent in the first five months of this year, with capacity that rose 11.1 percent, according to the transport association.

Furthermore, the gulf airlines are mining fast-growing routes. Passenger traffic between the Middle East and Africa rose 19.8 percent in the five months to June this year, and 14 percent between the Middle East and Far East, though from a low base, the association said. That compares with average growth of 4.5 percent for all international routes.

The Middle Eastern carriers are also running a tight ship. During the five months to May, the load factor, or percentage of available seats sold, on the region’s airlines was 74.6, according to association figures, in line with a “high” global average of 75.2.

The level means that Middle Eastern airlines are flying as full as their rivals and suggests that they are not emptying their competitors’ planes.

But over the longer run, aviation experts said, airlines like Emirates, which compete on price for the mass market and on service for business travelers, should make some inroads against competitors.

The A380 that Sheik Ahmed received Monday represents a crucial element of a business strategy that makes the Middle Eastern airlines “a competitive threat to any European-based carrier,” according to Daniel Solon, an independent aviation consultant based in Barcelona.

The technological advances of the A380 mean that it can fly more passengers farther and for less money than their competitors.

In eight capitals on the Indian subcontinent, Emirates already offers travelers to the United States a chance to change planes in Dubai as an alternative to congested European airports.

Industry executives say that the gulf region would also be a well-positioned hub for traffic from China to Africa, while Emirates’ services between Europe and Australia mean that passengers can bypass Asia altogether.

“The capability of airlines has changed the reach of the gulf region,” said Chris Tarry, an analyst at Ctaira, a British aviation consulting firm. “If you’ve got planes that can fly farther, you change the structure of the market.”

Fareed Zakaria, on his GPS, the new bright star of CNN TV, had two guests from Europe on his program on Sunday, July 27, 2008 – the writers Bernard Henry Levy, known in France simply as BHL, and Josef Joffe, the editor of Die Zeit.

GHL said flatly, were Obama to run for President of the EU he would get at least 85% of the vote. The Europeans see in him the joint embodiment of the two best figures in recent American history – MLK and JFK – and propelled by a very reasonable mix of realism and idealism. Bringing his impressions to a closer set of images – he sees in Obama someone who has the potential of leading from a mix of the Neocons with Kissinger.

Joe Joffe thought that this week showed Obama as a canvas on which the Europeans projected what they want for America – that is how they want to see it. He also said that McCain, known to the Europeans, has vanished nevertheless from the media in Europe, as he thinks happened also in the US. “He has lost the battle of storytelling’ – he said.

GHL added that in France “we would not elect a President from a minority – so we dream of America.”

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 http://www.nypost.com/seven/07272008/new…

OBAMA’S SECRET RESCUE MISSION
SEEKS TO FREE US MOM’S KIDS FROM PALESTINIAN ‘CAPTIVITY’

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS, New York Post, July 27, 2008

Barack Obama carried out a secret assignment during his global tour last week.
While talking about the Middle East peace process in the West Bank Wednesday, the presumptive Democratic nominee slipped a note to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
The private message: Help an anguished Chicago mother get her daughters back.

Obama detailed the plight of Colleen Bargouthi, 36. She says that for the last year, her four daughters have been held in the Palestinian territories, made to wear headdresses and schooled in Islam by their Muslim father, Yasser Shibli.
Obama asked Fayyad’s help in Colleen’s fight to get her girls home after their Palestinian dad blocked them from returning from what was to be a six-week family trip to his hometown of Ramallah on the West Bank.
“According to Colleen, [her husband] hit her, kept her as a virtual prisoner in her in-laws’ home and menaced her with guns,” the note reads.
The husband promised he “would return the girls if she went home and found a job and a place for the family.
“Yasser Shibli Bargouthi has since told Colleen that her daughters will never be allowed to leave to return to their mother. I would ask that the minister of justice look into this case.”
Obama also asked the US consul general in Jerusalem, Jacob Welles, to investigate and work with Fayyad.
Colleen had taken her case to the Chicago media and met with Obama’s camp. But she was unaware of his efforts until contacted by The Post.
An Obama staffer called Colleen Thursday saying that Fayyad had vowed to look into the situation.
“I can’t believe it. I am so amazed and pleased,” she said.
Colleen could never have imagined the turn of events her life has taken. She was Colleen Davis when she met Yasser, a grocery-store manager, in 1993 through a friend while she worked as a waitress at Midway Airport.
He was a Muslim and she a Baptist, but he told her it was not an issue. She made her religious beliefs clear to his clan and got their blessing before the two married in a Christian ceremony 15 years ago.
Six months later, they traveled to Ramallah and she was welcomed into the family. “I always told him that I was a Christian and would remain one, and that any children we had would be raised Christian,” she says.
The couple settled in a Chicago suburb with her son, Ricky, from a previous marriage and had four daughters, Emily, 11, Hannah, 8, Amanda, 6 and Sarah, 5.
Colleen was a stay-at-home mom and her husband became manager of a cellphone store.
The couple bought a house in 1999 but sold it when they couldn’t make the payments.

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OPINION in The New York Times, Sunday July 27, 2008.

How Obama Became Acting President.

by: Frank Rich, The New York Times

Frank Rich writes about how Barack Obama has become “acting president,” and raises questions about John McCain’s “fitness to be president.”

It almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality – sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” – much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip – will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? – few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East – conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors – the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

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OPINION In The New York Times, Friday July 25, 2008.

Bush’s Puppets. { or Quo Vadis Stephen Johnson? Did You Forget Your Federal Oath To Have a Non-Partisan EPA? }
by: Bill Becker, Climate Progress*

According to Bill Becker of the Presidential Climate Action Project, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has neglected his federal oath to “well and faithfully discharge the duties” of his office by repeatedly allowing the Bush White House to manipulate environmental decisions and undermine action necessary to address climate change. (Photo: Getty Images)

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson neglects his federal oath.
Some of us had high hopes for Stephen Johnson when President Bush appointed him in March 2005 as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Johnson was not a former oil-industry lobbyist or Halliburton executive. He was a career civil servant who had been with the federal government for 24 years. He was a scientist, not a political hack, and he had served under both Democrat and Republican presidents.
I could relate, although my federal career was the reverse of Johnson’s.
I started as a political appointee under President George H.W. Bush, then served the next 15 years as a careerist at the Department of Energy. During that time, I learned that there are a lot of good feds out there – people who work hard and take risks for what they believe is in the public’s best interest. It requires backbone at times to resist improper political pressures and to carry out the oath of office that federal employees take, promising to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
It now appears that Johnson is not fulfilling that oath. There’s new evidence that he has allowed the White House to usurp his duty to enforce one of the nation’s most important environmental laws, the Clean Air Act. Under the Act, it is the Administrator of EPA, not the president, who is the decider on enforcement issues. The president does not have the legal authority to dictate what those decisions will be.
But that’s not the way the game is played in this Administration. From time to time, we get a glimpse back stage to see that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their deputies are pulling the strings in a show of raw petro-politics, the law and the contrary advice of experts notwithstanding.
One such glimpse came this week from former EPA official Jason Burnett — an admitted and unrepentant Democrat. Burnett told Congress that Johnson allowed the White House to overrule him on California’s request for a waiver under the Clean Air Act. The waiver would have allowed the state to implement its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, in excess of those set by the federal government.
The Clean Air Act specifically allows California to be more aggressive than the federal government on matters like this, so long as the Administrator grants a waiver. Once California is given the go-ahead, other states are allowed to adopt its standards. Seventeen states indicated they would adopt the California standard for vehicle emissions once Johnson signed the waiver.
Instead, Johnson denied the request in February 2008 after sitting on it for nearly three years, an unusual outcome given that EPA had approved all 50 of California’s previous waiver applications over the last 40 years.
The denial was Johnson’s right under the law, assuming it was his decision and was based soundly on the criteria established by the Act. But Burnett says that Johnson originally intended to grant the waiver, believing it was justified until he was overruled by the White House.
As Robert Sussman of the Center for American Progress has pointed out, this is not the first time that Johnson has pushed key environmental decisions into EPA’s black hole or has overruled the recommendations of his former colleagues among the agency’s scientists and professional staff. Sussman documents other decisions by Johnson that raise “disturbing questions about his ability to carry out the spirit and letter of the nation’s environmental laws and his acquiescence in a White House political agenda seemingly bent on blocking the agency from taking action compelled by court decisions and long-standing Clean Air Act precedents.”
The most significant of these has been EPA and White House stalling tactics on climate action since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that the agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. To trigger the regulatory process, all Johnson has to do is to declare that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare – an obvious conclusion based both on the Court’s decision and on an overwhelming body of scientific evidence.
Nevertheless, 16 months after the Supreme Court ruling, EPA announced earlier this month that it would not proceed with regulation while Bush is still in office.
But back to the California waiver: Last January, Johnson told a congressional committee under oath that “I made the decision” to deny California’s request. Burnett’s latest testimony indicates otherwise. When a House subcommittee asked Johnson for the real story last May, he refused to talk about his conversations with the White House, claiming executive privilege.
In case there has been any doubt, Burnett’s testimony supports the case that public officials such as Johnson (along with the parade of other Administration officials who have recently declared executive privilege or acute amnesia) are merely puppets of the West Wing, even when Congress has delegated them direct responsibility to administer the law.
And in case there has been any doubt, the plot of the puppet-show was made transparent by other Administration decisions in recent days. One lifted the ban imposed by Bush’s father on offshore oil production. In another, just announced, the Department of Interior released draft rules to pave the way for oil shale production on public lands in the West. Congress has placed a moratorium on final oil-shale rules, but the moratorium is scheduled to expire on Oct. 1. Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne is quoted as saying he’ll move swiftly to make the rules final when the moratorium expires.
Oil shale production would be a disaster of several dimensions. It is extremely energy and water intensive, and its use would be another major setback to the goal of reducing the nation’s carbon emissions. Oil shale production would divert precious water from Western cities and farms, creating another fuel-or-food problem, and sink more money and time into another questionable carbon-intensive resource that will make meaningful climate action more difficult and expensive, if not impossible.
There’s no mystery here. The White House is blocking action on climate change while setting the stage for the oil industry to feed America’s addiction to that carbon-intensive fuel for many years to come.
With only six months left on stage, the puppet masters are hard at work. It’s a disappointment that someone like Johnson, who has made public service his career, is allowing his integrity to be destroyed by a president who shows little regard for him, the nation’s long-term welfare, or the law.
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 * Bill Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, an initiative to help the next President of the United States take decisive action on global warming and energy security in his or her first 100 days in office.

Obama Arrives in Baghdad to Discuss Iraq Strategy.

By Sudarsan Raghavan and Debbi Wilgoren, Washington Post Foreign Service.
Monday, July 21, 2008; 11:20 AM

BAGHDAD, July 21 — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived in Iraq Monday morning to discuss U.S.-Iraq strategy and American troop levels, issues that have become a cornerstone of debate in the U.S. presidential campaign.

But after meeting for nearly an hour with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top U.S. and Iraqi officials, Obama declined to say what they had talked about.

“We had a very constructive discussion,” the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic nominee said before ducking back into a heavily guarded Chevrolet Suburban to head to his next meeting, with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. “I’ll be providing details later during my visit.”

Obama is traveling as part of a congressional delegation that includes Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), both critics of the war. But in many ways — from the red carpet rolled out for the group at Maliki’s residence to his seat of honor next to Maliki during a brief photo opportunity — he is being treated like a visiting head of state.

The delegation began its trip with two days in Afghanistan, then flew to Kuwait, where the three senators met with Kuwait’s emir, Sabah Ahmed al-Sabah, and other senior officials, according to the official Kuwait News Agency. In Iraq, they will meet with top U.S. and Iraqi officials and military commanders, including Army Gen. David H. Petraeus.

It was an amazing C-Span session, this Saturday, June 28, 2008 – but it was recorded actually seemingly already on March 17, 2008.

The Middle East Institute, Washington DC, is was founded in 1946 by George Camp Keiser and former Secretary of State Christian Herter and since then “has been an important conduit of information between Middle Eastern nations and American policymakers, organizations and the public.” Their website goes on to note that they “publish quarterly one of the most prestigious journals on the Middle East, The Middle East Journal. The PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE is made up of Chevron Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Raytheon, Saudi Aramco, and Shell.

Ambassador Wendy J. Chamberlin is currently MEI’s President and she chaired the meeting with Mr. Screuer. She is a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan – in effect she is the lady that was charged by President Bush to ask General Musharaf if he is with the US or against it – then she was blamed for the outcome. She also seems not to be thankful to the Administration for how she was treated.

Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA employee.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sch…

In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka “Alec Station”), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counter-terrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004.
Scheuer resigned in 2004. He is currently a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for The Jamestown Foundation’s online publication Global Terrorism Analysis. He also makes radio and television appearances and teaches a graduate-level course on Al-Qaeda at Georgetown University. He also participates in conferences on terrorism and national security issues, such as the New America Foundation’s December 2004 conference, “Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11.”

Scheuer is now known to be the anonymous author of both Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and the earlier anonymous work, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.

Osama bin Laden stated in his September 7, 2007 message: “If you want to understand what’s going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.”

Scheuer’s latest book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq was released on February 12, 2008.
Not much is known about his personal history, though Scheuer was an analyst at the CIA and not a covert field operations officer. During a recent C-SPAN interview, he mentioned that he is a graduate of Canisius College. He also received a Ph.D. in British Empire-U.S.-Canada-U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba. Scheuer a 1974 graduate from Canisius university master’s degrees from Niagara University (1976) and Carleton University (1981).

In the 9/11 Commission Report, Scheuer is featured in Chapter 4, where his name is given only as “Mike”. He is portrayed as being occasionally frustrated with his superiors’ failure to aggressively target bin Laden. He seems to be on the right and unhappy for the fact how the US and his geographical area of experteze was dealt with.

The Jamestown Foundation is a Conservative think tank claiming to report about events and nations strategically important to the United States. www.jamestown.org

We went to the length to understand this source because we were quite astonished with what we heard on C-Span as follows:

In the Sunni world the Al-Qaeda liberation is in fashion, and in their eyes we are on the right side of history. Bin Laden is extremely talented and he has identified issues in US politics. In the US – no politician will come out and say that we are supporting dictators in the Arab World because we needed the oil. So he knows our weakness and knows we serve his cause that is the cause of Arab liberation.

As an example, Scheuer brings up how the extraordinary problem that we pushed Obama to go on TV and say – I will never be a Muslim. Scheuer says flatly – “I would better be inclined to kill Bin Laden then talk to him.”

Scheuer advocates a US disengagement from the Middle East, and says “if it was not for the oil, why should we care what they do when we leave?”… “Iran is in effect more of a participatory democracy then any of our allies in the Middle East.”

Scheuer’s main point is that if we did not care for their oil we really have no reason to care about them, and the US Republic has no business in spreading democracy. The US is in business to do what is good for its people – fighting for oil, and being dependent on oil, is not good for the American people. We pay with blood for this dependence.

The Administration could have saved as a lot of problems in the last years with one bullet to Saddam’s head.

“EXTRICATE OURSELVES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST AND PUT OUR RESOURCES IN ALTERNATIVE ENERGY” he said.

Scheuer wants the Restoration of our ability to decide when to fight and when not to fight. In that case we would not invest ourselves in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

So, let us say bravo Michael Scheuer – we always thought that real conservatives will want to see US independence of oil. And here is very important to note that Scheuer does not send us to drill in the Arctic or in the off-shore waters. The realist he is he knows that all that talk is hog-wash. He kept repeating INVEST IN ALTERNATIVES TO OIL. he never said just Middle East oil because he knows oil is fungible and as long as we remain dependent on oil we will remain dependent on Middle East oil.

Further, mind please that he said this at an institute that is frequented by the oil industry – that in Washington is part of the overpowering oil lobby. Ambassador Chamberlin was obviously compelled to note that any idea expressed at the meeting is personal and not institutional. But then let us note that the Jamestown Foundation has also political power when it comes to US Presidential preferences. We know where Obama stands on the issue, but what will McCains final stand be on the issue? If he does not express clear – No Oil – Thank You – ideas, these Conservatives might find former Congressman Barr much more to the point. So, was this the thank you note from Ralph Nader to the 2008 elections? This Nader spells Barr.

From:  rcervigni at worldbank.org
Subject: Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – New World Bank web site.
Date: June 27, 2008

We are pleased to announce the launch of the World Bank web site on climate change in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA).

The site contains information on ongoing and planned World Bank activities aimed at helping MENA countries enhance their resilience to Climate Change, and move to a low carbon development path.

The URL for the site is: http://www.worldbank.org/mena/climatecha…

Raffaello Cervigni
Senior Natural Resource Economist
Regional Coordinator, Climate Change
Sustainable Development Sector Department (MNSSD)
Middle East and North Africa Region
The World Bank
Room H 8-225
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20433 USA
Office: 202 458 8473
Fax: 202 614 1688
Cell Phone: 202 378 4432
E-mail:  rcervigni at worldbank.org

The Following is an astonishing disregard of the UN by an Arab country.

There is nothing wrong for Kuwait to establish a “fund for good living in Muslim countries.” It would be adorable had they established such a fund to help the Palestinians so the whole world would have
to spend less on UNRWA in the Gaza area. It is also beautiful for Kuwait to help support food prices in Muslim countries – prices that have increased in major part because of the increase of the cost of oil that
increased the cost of producing and transporting food. The poor lost in direct proportion to the gains in oil exporting States. Also that is fine with us – specially those of us that believe in a world of alternatives.

But – the real Chutzpah here is in the Sheikh asking non-Muslim countries to contribute to a fund that is intended specifically and exclusively to a Muslim charity – by Muslims and for Muslims only. Now that is plain discrimination
against   all the other world poor that suffer from the increase of the price of food, and their leaders do not stash away in their Sovereign Funds money made from the sale of oil.

UN DAILY NEWS from the UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE – April 21, 2008.
=========================================================================

We are not going to interpret/review/discuss these selected postings from the above – beyond saying here that they show clearly the preoccupation the UN has with the Islamic world – the schizophrenia induced by people like Jean Ziegler and others to placate the Arab legion by giving in when they think that   whipping   Israel and the Jews will   be returned with browny favors. Durban was a racism promoting conference – and it will be repeated by the UN this year.

But Ziegler is not alone – there are other facilitators of this hatred at the UN. Saudi Arabia has the money to fund these actions and such centers like the UN DPI provide daily reminders – just watch the phalanx that opens the questions at the daily UN briefings to the press. I can put my finger on who represents there Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah. This is the true inclusivity of the UN. That the otherwise good Swiss are part of these games may have to do something with its banking industry. Who knows? God works in strange ways and money talks when it comes to hatred.
SOME STATES STILL DO NOT RECOGNIZE RACISM’S EXISTENCE, UN RIGHTS CHIEF CAUTIONS

As preparatory meetings kicked off today in Geneva in preparation for next year’s review of the landmark 2001 global conference against racism, the top United Nations human rights official warned that some States still do not recognize the existence of racism as a phenomenon.

“National laws and measures to ensure its elimination in most countries are either inadequate or ineffective,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. “As a result, vulnerable groups continue to suffer aggression while abusers enjoy impunity.”

She added that few nations have implemented the necessary action plans to remedy this situation.

The process to prepare for the 2009 Durban Review Conference began in 2006, but its first substantive meeting was held by the Preparatory Committee today.

The Conference will assess progress and implementation at the regional, national and international levels of the Declaration and Plan of Action adopted by the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

“The Durban Review Conference is not, and should not be seen as, a repetition of the 2001 World Conference,” Ms. Arbour pointed out at the opening meeting of the Preparatory Committee.

Instead, “it is a platform to evaluate progress, an opportunity to reinvigorate commitments, and a vehicle to fine-tune responses in a purposeful and contextual manner.”

According to a press release from Ms. Arbour’s Office, known as OHCHR, progress since the 2001 meeting – a huge event which attracted some 18,000 people – has been patchy.

The High Commissioner acknowledged that the controversy surrounding the original Durban Conference has not completely subsided.

“There is no hiding the fact that the Durban Review Conference, even before moving its first, preparatory steps, has already elicited criticism and continues to raise concerns which, if not squarely confronted and resolved, may ultimately jeopardize a successful outcome of this process,” she said.

 

UN AND SAUDI ARABIA STRESS IMPORTANCE OF ARAB PEACE INITIATIVE

The senior United Nations envoy on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister have underscored the continued importance of the Arab Peace Initiative during a meeting in Riyadh on the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process Robert Serry and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal also stressed their shared commitment to a comprehensive regional peace based on Security Council resolutions and international law during yesterday’s meeting, UN spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters in New York today.

They conferred on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian talks as well as on the situation on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territory, including moves to address the grave humanitarian conditions faced by the Gaza Strip.

“In addition, they discussed efforts to ensure implementation of Phase I Road Map obligations,” Ms. Montas said.

The Arab Peace Initiative, a plan adopted in Beirut by the region’s leaders in March 2002, is based on the principle of land for peace. It calls for Israel to withdraw from all Arab lands occupied since 1967, recognize an independent Palestinian State and provide a just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. In return Arab countries would recognize Israel, end their conflict and normalize relations.

In a related development, no diesel or petrol has entered Gaza since the 9 April attack by Palestinian militants on the Nahal Oz fuel depot, according to Mr. Serry’s office, known as UNSCO.

The UN and its humanitarian partners, which have already been squeezed by shortages, will shut down their operations – including the provision of health, education, food, water, sanitation and other key services to the area’s 1.5 million residents – in a few days if fuel supplies are not restored immediately.

All international aid agencies operating in Gaza are scheduled to meet tomorrow to assess the increasingly dire situation.

RURAL WOMEN COULD SUFFER DUE TO INCREASED BIOFUEL PRODUCTION, WARNS UN AGENCY

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today that the increasing demand for liquid biofuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel, the conversion of agricultural land for their production and the increased use of natural resources could be detrimental to women in rural areas.

In a new study, the agency urges countries to adopt measures to ensure that women have the same opportunities as men to benefit from the increased production of biofuels.

“Unless policies are adopted in developing countries to strengthen the participation of small farmers, especially women in biofuel production by increasing their access to land, capital and technology – gender inequalities are likely to become more marked and women’s vulnerability to hunger and poverty further exacerbated,” said Yianna Lambrou, co-author of the paper entitled Gender and Equity Issues in Liquid Biofuels Production – Minimizing the Risks to Maximize the Opportunities.

“Biofuel production certainly offers opportunities for farmers – but they will only trickle down to the farm level, especially to women, if pro-poor policies are put in place that also empower women,” Ms. Lambrou added.

Converting agricultural lands for biofuel production could force women out of the lands used for farming, and harm their ability to provide food, the report states. In addition, the increased use of natural resources such as water and firewood for biofuel production means less of those resources will be available for use by women, who already have to travel long distances for collecting such materials.

Therefore, FAO calls for further examining the socio-economic effects of liquid biofuel production on men and women. It also urges biofuel development strategy that is both environmentally sustainable and pro-poor, and which will protect the agricultural activities of small farmers, especially women.

Last year the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food called for a five-year moratorium on biofuels, after warning that converting crops such as maize, wheat and sugar into fuels was driving up the prices of food, land and water.

Jean Ziegler noted that while the argument for biofuels is legitimate in terms of energy efficiency and combating climate change, the effect of transforming food crops such as wheat and maize into agricultural fuel is “absolutely catastrophic” for hungry people and will negatively impact the realization of the right to food.

More recently, the increased production of biofuels has been cited as one of the reasons for the global surge in food prices, which has led to protests and riots in different parts of the world.

UN POLITICAL CHIEF VISITS IRAQ AHEAD OF KUWAIT SUMMIT

The top United Nations political official has just wrapped up a three-day visit to Baghdad, expressing confidence that the world body is doing its part to help build a peaceful and prosperous Iraq, and praising UN staff on the ground for their dedication under difficult conditions.

While in Iraq, B. Lynn Pascoe, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, visited with the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and held meetings with senior officials of the Iraqi Government and the Multinational Forces (MNF).

He was briefed on the situation in the strife-torn country and UN assistance to the Government and people of Iraq in areas covered by Security Council resolution 1770. These include elections, reconciliation, the resolution of disputed boundaries, human rights and humanitarian concerns, as well as UN support for reconstruction and development.

Mr. Pascoe also toured UNAMI facilities and the international zone in which the mission is located. He said he was impressed by UNAMI’s stepped up efforts to assist Iraq since the passage of resolution 1770 last August and the appointment of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura. At a town hall meeting with UNAMI staff, he expressed strong support and appreciation for their dedication and hard work under difficult circumstances.

“Despite the many challenges facing Iraq, I believe the United Nations is playing a constructive and positive role and will continue working to build a peaceful and prosperous Iraq,” Mr. Pascoe said at the conclusion of the visit.

Mr. Pascoe had meetings with Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdel Mahdi and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih. He said both expressed appreciation for the work of the UN in Iraq and proposed areas where the mission could do more.

In particular, he said, both leaders welcomed the role that the UN is playing with respect to the resolution of disputed internal territories, preparations for governorate elections before the end of the year, assistance to refugees and internally displaced persons, and facilitating political dialogue and national reconciliation.

“They also thanked the United Nations for its efforts in supporting humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, and in particular, helping to build a positive momentum for the development and implementation of the International Compact with Iraq,” he added.

Before departing, the Under-Secretary-General also held discussions today on the political and security situation in Iraq with United States Ambassador Ryan Crocker and with the MNF Force Commander, General David Petraeus. Both expressed strong support for UNAMI’s current activities and vowed to help in any way they can, he said.

Mr. Pascoe arrived Monday evening in Kuwait, where he will attend, on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a meeting of Iraq and neighbouring countries beginning on Tuesday.

He is expected to brief the Security Council on the situation in Iraq next week.

UNESCO CALLS FOR BETTER PROTECTION OF JOURNALISTS AFTER GAZA KILLING

The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has called for improved protection of journalists, after a Palestinian cameraman working for the Reuters news agency in Gaza was killed when a missile hit his vehicle.

“I condemn the killing of Palestinian journalist Fadel Shanaa,” declared UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

Mr. Shanaa, 25, died on 16 April after a missile hit the vehicle in which he and sound engineer Wafa Barbakh were travelling in while filming the actions of Israeli tanks near the Al-Barij refugee camp. Mr. Barbakh was injured in the incident.

The vehicle is reported to have been clearly marked with the word “Press” to indicate it was being used by journalists.

“I trust the Israeli authorities will spare no effort in investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack on Mr Shanaa’s vehicle,” said Mr. Matsuura. “It is important that due regard be paid to the safety of journalists, at all times and under all circumstances.”
 

Japan wants IMF to monitor sovereign wealth funds.

By SHINYA AJIMA, Monday April 14, 2008 on Japan Times online.

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) – Japan expressed hope Saturday that the International Monetary Fund will play a more active role in monitoring the movements of sovereign wealth funds because such an involvement of the international body would help minimize “protectionism” in countries receiving their investment.

“We recognize the higher presence” of SWFs, or state-backed investment entities, in the global financial market, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said in a statement released at a meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the policy-guiding panel of the IMF.

“I support the IMF’s action to make full use of its experience in monitoring movements in international capital flows, and formulate best practices in the areas of governance, institutional arrangements and transparency,” Nukaga said.

Such efforts would benefit both SWFs and countries which receive their money “by minimizing protectionism in recipient countries,” he said.

His remarks came at the time of increasing influence wielded by SWFs in helping major financial institutions reinforce their capital bases as the global credit turmoil stemming from U.S. subprime mortgage problems has deepened.

The market has increasingly recognized the greater presence of SWFs owned by emerging economies such as China and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

Experts, however, says that such SWFs becoming large shareholders in financial institutions in major economic powers could raise concern about the control of the financial industry by those funds and lead to protectionist moves, such as restricting their investment, in those countries.

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda launched a project team in February to study whether Tokyo should have its own investment arm using the world’s second-biggest foreign exchange reserves.

BOJ’s new chief meet with Fed, ECB chiefs: New Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa held separate talks with U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in Washington on Saturday, Japanese officials said.

The officials did not reveal the details of the talks held on the sidelines of a series of international financial meetings.

Shirakawa, who assumed the post of BOJ governor Wednesday, is believed to have exchanged views with his counterparts of the U.S. and European central banks on how to tackle the global financial turmoil stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. He is also believed to have briefed Bernanke and Trichet about Japan’s monetary policy management.

Iraq implodes as Shia fights Shia – Another tragedy as the Shia majority turn on each other.

By Patrick Cockburn – Thursday, 27 March 2008.

A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.

Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq’s two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons.

The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq’s majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.

Mr Sadr’s followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are expected to win.

Mortars and rockets launched from Mehdi Army-controlled districts of Baghdad struck the Green Zone, the seat of American power in Iraq, for the third day yesterday, seriously wounding three Americans. Two rockets hit the parking lot of the Iraqi cabinet. The mixed area of al-Mansur in west Baghdad, where shops had begun to reopen in recent months, was deserted yesterday as Mehdi Army fighters were rumoured among local people to be moving in from the nearby Shia stronghold of Washash. “We expect an attack by the Shia in spite of the Americans being spread over Sunni districts to defend them,” said a Sunni resident.

Forty people have been killed and at least 200 injured in Basra in the last two days of violence. In the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, 11 people were killed and 18 injured yesterday by a US air strike called in support of Iraqi forces following street battles with Shia militia members in the city’s Thawra neighbourhood. In Baghdad, 14 have been killed and 140 wounded.

The supporters of Mr Sadr, who form the largest political movement in Iraq, blame the Americans for giving the go-ahead for Mr Maliki’s offensive against them and supporting it with helicopters and bomber aircraft. US troops have sealed off Sadr City, the close-packed slum in the capital with a population that is the main bastion of the Sadrists, while the Mehdi Army has taken over its streets, establishing checkpoints, each manned by about 20 heavily armed men. It is unlikely that the militiamen in Basra will surrender as demanded by the government. Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to Mr Maliki, said those who kept their weapons would be arrested. “Any gunman who does not do that within three days will be an outlaw.”

Streets were empty in Basra and Baghdad as people stayed at home to avoid the fighting. The Mehdi Army is enforcing a strike in Baghdad with mosques calling for the closure of shops, businesses and schools.

In the Shia city of Kut, on the Tigris south of Baghdad, local residents say that black-clad Mehdi Army militiamen have taken over five districts and expelled the police.

At the same time, Mr Sadr is clearly eager to continue the truce which he declared on 29 August last year after bloody clashes in Kerbala with Iraqi police controlled by the rival Shia political movement, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and their well-organised militia, the Badr organisation.

He renewed this ceasefire in February, saying he wanted to purge its ranks of criminals. “The freeze that Sadr has ordered is still ongoing,” said one of his chief lieutenants, Luwaa Smaism.

Mr Sadr has sought to avoid an all-out military confrontation with American troops or Badr backed by American forces since he fought two ferocious battles for Najaf against US marines in 2004.

Mr Sadr has sent emissaries to Mr Maliki asking him to remove his troops, numbering some 15,000 men from Basra, and to resolve problems peacefully. But his aides say there will be no talks until the Iraqi army reinforcements are withdrawn. The offer of talks is in keeping with Mr Sadr’s past behaviour, which is to appear conciliatory but in practice to make few real concessions. The US is claiming that the Sadrists are not being singled out, only Iran-supported militia factions, but this will find few believers in Iraq.

“This is not a battle against the [Mehdi Army] nor is it a proxy war between the United States and Iran,” said a US military spokesman, Major General Kevin Bergner. “It is [the] government of Iraq taking the necessary action to deal with criminals on the streets.”

The Sunni population is pleased to see the government and the Americans attacking the Mehdi Army, which they see as a Shia death squad. “Before, the Shia were arresting and killing us and forcing us to leave Iraq for Jordan and Syria where we lived in misery,” said Osama Sabr, a Sunni in west Baghdad.

The fighting is threatening to disrupt Iraq’s oil production, most of which comes from the Basra area, because workers in the oilfields dare not leave their homes.
The militia:

The Mehdi Army – Armed wing of the Sadr movement. Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia is divided, with one wing supporting the radical cleric’s ceasefire while another has rejected it and continued attacks on Iraqi government forces and the British base at Basra aiport.

The Badr Brigade – Armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The Badr Brigade has been involved in numerous clashes with the Mehdi Army and appears not to be the target of the current offensive by the Iraqi government forces. The group has organised “spontaneous” demonstrations against General Mohan and General Jalil.

The Fadhila – A political party and armed group with a localised powerbase. The governor of Basra is a member of the party, and it controls a significant proportion of the region’s oil supply.

Secret Cells – Said to be armed and trained by Iran and allegedly carrying out attacks ordered by Tehran.

Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground.

There are 2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes and are internally displaced. Another 2 million have left the country, most to Syria and Jordan, which now has the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on Earth. An Oxfam report estimates that one in three Iraqis are in need of emergency aid, but the chaos and violence is so widespread that assistance is impossible. Iraq is in a state of anarchy. The American occupation forces are one more source of terror tossed into the caldron of suicide bombings, mercenary armies, militias, massive explosions, ambushes, kidnappings and mass executions. But wait until we leave.

It was not supposed to turn out like this. Remember all those visions of a democratic Iraq, visions peddled by the White House and fatuous pundits like Thomas Friedman and the gravel-voiced morons who pollute our airwaves on CNN and Fox News? They assured us that the war would be a cakewalk. We would be greeted as liberators. Democracy would seep out over the borders of Iraq to usher in a new Middle East. Now, struggling to salvage their own credibility, they blame the debacle on poor planning and mismanagement.

There are probably about 10,000 Arabists in the United States — people who have lived for prolonged periods in the Middle East and speak Arabic. At the inception of the war you could not have rounded up more than about a dozen who thought this was a good idea. And I include all the Arabists in the State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Anyone who had spent significant time in Iraq knew this would not work. The war was not doomed because Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz did not do sufficient planning for the occupation. The war was doomed, period. It never had a chance. And even a cursory knowledge of Iraqi history and politics made this apparent.

This is not to deny the stupidity of the occupation. The disbanding of the Iraqi army; the ham-fisted attempt to install the crook and, it now turns out, Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi in power; the firing of all Baathist public officials, including university professors, primary school teachers, nurses and doctors; the failure to secure Baghdad and the vast weapons depots from looters; allowing heavily armed American units to blast their way through densely populated neighborhoods, giving the insurgency its most potent recruiting tool — all ensured a swift descent into chaos.

But Iraq would not have held together even if we had been spared the gross incompetence of the Bush administration. Saddam Hussein, like the more benign dictator Josip Broz Tito in the former Yugoslavia, understood that the glue that held the country together was the secret police.

Iraq, however, is different from Yugoslavia. Iraq has oil — lots of it. It also has water in a part of the world that is running out of water. And the dismemberment of Iraq will unleash a mad scramble for dwindling resources that will include the involvement of neighboring states. The Kurds, like the Shiites and the Sunnis, know that if they do not get their hands on water resources and oil they cannot survive. But Turkey, Syria and Iran have no intention of allowing the Kurds to create a viable enclave. A functioning Kurdistan in northern Iraq means rebellion by the repressed Kurdish minorities in these countries.

The Kurds, orphans of the 20th century who have been repeatedly sold out by every ally they ever had, including the United States, will be crushed. The possibility that Iraq will become a Shiite state, run by clerics allied with Iran, terrifies the Arab world. Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, would most likely keep the conflict going by arming Sunni militias. This anarchy could end with foreign forces, including Iran and Turkey, carving up the battered carcass of Iraq. No matter what happens, many, many Iraqis are going to die. And it is our fault.

The neoconservatives — and the liberal interventionists, who still serve as the neocons’ useful idiots when it comes to Iran — have learned nothing. They talk about hitting Iran and maybe even Pakistan with airstrikes. Strikes on Iran would ensure a regional conflict. Such an action has the potential of drawing Israel into war — especially if Iran retaliates for any airstrikes by hitting Israel, as I would expect Tehran to do. There are still many in the U.S. who cling to the doctrine of pre-emptive war, a doctrine that the post-World War II Nuremberg laws define as a criminal “war of aggression.”

The occupation of Iraq, along with the Afghanistan occupation, has only furthered the spread of failed states and increased authoritarianism, savage violence, instability and anarchy. It has swelled the ranks of our real enemies — the Islamic terrorists — and opened up voids of lawlessness where they can operate and plot against us. It has scuttled the art of diplomacy. It has left us an outlaw state intent on creating more outlaw states. It has empowered Iran, as well as Russia and China, which sit on the sidelines gleefully watching our self-immolation. This is what George W. Bush and all those “reluctant hawks” who supported him have bequeathed us.

The above is the evaluation of Chris Hedges of www.Truthdig.com and it was reposted as http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/58944

It continues by stating – “What is terrifying is not that the architects and numerous apologists of the Iraq war have learned nothing, but that they may not yet be finished.” And had as an opening paragraph: “The war in Iraq is about to get worse — much worse. The Democrats’ decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests.”

SustainabiliTank.info thought that deposing Saddam was not a mistake, but staying in Iraq for the sake of its oil is what created the problems. Had the US left imediately after having deposed the old regime, and allowed the Iraqis to sort out their problems by themselves, while signaling to its neighbors not to get involved either – there may have been an amicable divorce or a war that would have led to a similar result anyway – this without reducing to shambles the American might.

We cannot accept that forcing the Iraqis to live in the context of a British post World War I mistake, that created an Iraq out of Turkish three separate entities, was preordained. Had the US looked at the eventual need to disengage from the adiction to oil – that is oil period – and used the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this misadventure, and created an energy – alternative, we would have been so much ahead. The good analysis of the Truthdig article, would have raised above the political intent to a full analysis, had it touched also upon this area. That is the fact that while ridding the neighborhood of a thug who had invaded earlier Kuwait, and had all intention of doing so to further states of the region, was not wrong – but that insisting not to change America’s dependence on oil – was and still is – the real culprit. It is not the problem with the “neo-cons” but the problem with the oil-industry folks sitting in the White House and parked all over Washington, enbedded with BOTH political parties.

————————

Iraqi Government Unraveling as More Ministers Announce Boycott.
By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers, from Baghdad, Monday, August 6, 2007.

Baghdad – Iraq’s government, already unable to reconcile rival Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions, seemed headed for complete paralysis Monday as five more Cabinet ministers announced that they’d boycott government meetings.

If the ministers from the secular Iraqiya political list hold to their decision, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki will be unable to convene a quorum of the council of ministers to approve legislation or take other action weeks before U.S. officials are to make a crucial mid-September assessment of the success or failure of American policy here.

U.S. officials said they’d have no immediate comment. “Things change here by the hour,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Phil Reeker said in an e-mail.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack issued a lukewarm statement of support for Maliki, in contrast to earlier ringing endorsements from President Bush.

“There’s a very healthy political debate that’s going on in Iraq, and that’s good,” McCormack said. “It’s going to be for them (the Iraqis) to make the judgments about whether or not that government is performing.”

Without action by Maliki’s government, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and military commander Army Gen. David Petraeus are unlikely to be able to tell Congress that Iraq is making progress on key political fronts. A mid-July assessment painted a bleak picture of the chances for Iraqi political reconciliation.

“The situation is very fragile,” said Hajim al Hassani, an Iraqiya member of parliament.

The Iraqiya ministers’ decision to skip government meetings brings to 17 the number of ministers who’ve left the government or suspended their participation in it.

Last week, six members of the Sunni Accordance Front quit, saying that Maliki, a Shiite, had ignored 12 demands, including that he stop the infiltration of the country’s security services by members of Shiite militias. That followed a decision in April by six ministers loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to leave, saying Maliki had failed to insist on a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal.

The Iraqiya faction in parliament is led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite whom American officials had appointed as Iraq’s prime minister when the U.S. dissolved the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had governed Iraq for the first 14 months after Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

Hassani called the boycott the “first step toward withdrawal.”

“They are not happy with the performance of the government,” Hassani said. “The main point is trying to pressure and try to force the government to do some reforms and present some services to the people. Of course, the parliament is not meeting and the prime minister can’t do anything unless the parliament comes back.”

President Bush ordered another 28,000 troops to Iraq in January, arguing that a military crackdown might cut violence and allow reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite politicians over key issues.

But in spite of the U.S. troop surge, there have been no steps toward reconciliation. Shiite militias have continued to force Sunni residents from their neighborhoods in Baghdad, and parliament has taken no action on a range of legislation intended to ease tensions, including setting rules for hiring former members of Saddam’s Baath party in government positions.

With Iraq’s parliament on vacation until September, American officials had resigned themselves to no progress on the congressionally established benchmarks. Now, action is unlikely even when parliament returns, since Iraq’s constitution requires that the council of ministers approve all legislation first.

Meanwhile, Crocker met Monday for the third time with his Iranian counterpart, Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi, to discuss security concerns.

The meeting, which lasted about two hours, came as a joint U.S.-Iranian-Iraqi committee held its first meeting on security issues. Embassy spokesman Reeker said that meeting lasted four hours and was “frank and serious.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the meeting focused on dealing with al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group that’s thought to be behind some of the most spectacular attacks in Iraq. The embassy’s counselor for political and military affairs, Marcie B. Ries, the former U.S. ambassador to Albania, led the U.S. delegation.

IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, said the Iranian delegation had accused the U.S. of “intentional support for notorious elements and giving terrorists a free hand in certain parts of Iraq.”

The news agency didn’t offer specifics, but the Maliki government has complained about recent U.S. support for Sunni insurgents who’ve agreed to turn against al Qaida in Iraq but remain opposed to the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

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A further interesting comment comes from Mr. B. Lynn Pascoe, a seasoned US Diplomat, who was made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, head od the Department of Political Affairs and UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs. He was on his way to the UN Security Council meeeting dealing with the force that will be going to Darfur, and on the way, in a journalists’ “stake-out” he spoke about Iraq.

We understand that hr feels he has the mandate to be helpful in Iraq. Albeit, at present most of the UN staff is in Amman, but he described the needs as immense. With 2 million refugees outside Iraq – in Jordan, Syria, Iran … and Jordan having the highest global / per capita presence of refugees, he will be given more staff and they will be in Iraq proper.

Could the UN handle Iraq? To answer this I have watched the noon UN Press Conference, August 7, 2007 that had as guest Jane Holl Lute, acting head of the Department of Field Support, to discuss preparations for the African Union-UN hybrid operation in Darfur. That is an operation that will eventually have 30,000 people, including many local people. It will take six months to make this force operational, and it was already being talked about for a couple of years. it comes as a substitute to the All-African force that is now in Darfur, and it is eventually going to be operational December 31, 2007. It will include among its 30,000 people a substantive part from among the present AMIS.

Now, with above example, being talked about as the largest, and most difficult UN military operation ever, is there hope that the UN could be effective in the Iraq of today? Anybody around with this sort of illusions – Mr. Pascoe?

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Matthew Russell Lee of Inner CityPress at the UN followed up by reporting about:

UN Staff Union Questions Ban’s Rush Into Iraq.

UNITED NATIONS, August 7, 2007 — “We are willing to increase our assistance to the UN,” said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Tuesday, to provide the means for “the ends for which we want to deploy it.”

    Amb. Khalilzad added that “we are well on our way to adopting Thursday” a Security Council resolution which would expand the UN’s mandate in Iraq. Following the Security Council consultations, only Amb. Khalilzad  and the UN’s political chief B. Lynn Pascoe, also an American, spoke at the Council stakeout microphone.

                      Less than two hours later and only one room away, in the Trusteeship Council chamber, the UN staff union met. The first item on the agenda was a draft resolution, using the Security Council’s own format of “recalling” and “noting,” calling on Ban Ki-moon to “not deploy any additional staff members to Iraq… until such time as the security situation and environment improves.” The resolution, adopted unanimously, calls on Mr. Ban “to be accountable for certifying that the necessary safety and security arrangements… are met before staff are deployed.”

                      At the UN’s noon briefing on Tuesday, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon’s associate spokesman  about the staff union resolution, and how Mr. Ban would go about reviewing and “certifying” security.

                      The Associate Spokesman replied that security is constantly reviewed.   So the resolution wouldn’t bring about any change? Not that I’m aware of, the Associate Spokesman said.