Terror War Re-Evaluated as Musharraf Steps Down.
By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun | August 19, 2008

America and Pakistan’s neighbors are being forced to re-evaluate their strategy in the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban after the resignation yesterday of President Musharraf, whose nine-year reign included a decision after September 11, 2001, to cooperate closely with America in the fight against international terrorism.

President Musharraf of Pakistan responds to people gathered after the farewell ceremony in Islamabad yesterday. Officials in Washington yesterday were careful to balance statements of praise for Mr. Musharraf with expressions of confidence that his successors would do just as well. But in New Delhi, where Mr. Musharraf’s recent misfortunes are seen as a probable cause for the renewal of Pakistani-Indian hostilities in the disputed region of Kashmir and elsewhere, officials were almost openly ruing his departure.

A Pakistani-born diplomat yesterday said it is ironical that Mr. Musharraf, after long being maligned as a ruthless dictator, could end up ushering in a new, more democratically oriented government in Islamabad. “He left like Nixon did, under pressure of probable impeachment,” the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “Then again, he is also the first Pakistani leader to leave on his own, without being hanged, assassinated, or deposed by the military. For Pakistan, that is a certain step forward.”

But it was unclear yesterday whether Mr. Musharraf would stay in Pakistan, where some are calling for him to be put on trial, or be forced to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or the West. Asylum in America “is not on the table,” Secretary of State Rice said yesterday. According to reports from the region, a Saudi plane departed Pakistan yesterday without picking up Mr. Musharraf, after sitting on the tarmac for hours. A leader of the ruling coalition in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, spent years in Saudi exile after he was deposed as prime minister in a 1999 military coup by Mr. Musharraf, who was then chief of the army.

“President Musharraf has been a friend to the United States and one of the world’s most committed partners in the war against terrorism and extremism,” Ms. Rice said in a statement.

“President Bush appreciates President Musharraf’s efforts in the democratic transition of Pakistan as well as his commitment to fighting Al Qaeda and extremist groups,” a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said. He added: “We’re confident that we will maintain a good relationship with the government of Pakistan.”

American officials said they were confident that the uneasy ruling coalition of the moderately Islamic party led by Mr. Sharif and the Western-oriented party that was led by Benazir Bhutto until her assassination and is now led by her widower, Asif Ali Zardari; son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, and Prime Minister Gilani, would cooperate with America on the war on terror as closely as Mr. Musharraf did. “The war against extremism is bigger than one man,” a State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, said.

Mr. Musharraf’s “departure is a loss for the U.S. because the civilian government will not do as good a job against terrorism,” a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told The New York Sun.

In the aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, “What we needed in Pakistan is someone to stand with us, and Musharraf did just that,” a Bush administration official said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. America reciprocated to the tune of $10 billion in military support for the Pakistani government after Mr. Musharraf promised to dedicate his army and intelligence services to the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Now, according to some in Washington, the best remaining Pakistani partner in the war on terror is the current army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has yet to express a preference for any party. Meanwhile, the partnership between the Pakistan Muslim League-N and the secular Pakistan Peoples Party is fragile and unlikely to maintain Mr. Musharraf’s tight grip over the army and the country’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence.

India is specifically concerned that a resurgent ISI could shift Pakistan’s attention to Kashmir and hostilities with New Delhi from the war on terror and the Afghan border. As speculation about Mr. Musharraf’s departure increased in recent weeks, India’s national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, told a Singaporean newspaper, the Straits Times, that the president’s absence would leave “a big vacuum.” India is “deeply concerned about this vacuum because it leaves the radical extremist outfits with freedom to do what they like, not merely on Pak-Afghan border but clearly our side of the border too,” Mr. Narayanan told the paper.

In recent years, the long-standing tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad have eased under Mr. Musharraf. The two countries established commercial ties, while the situation in Kashmir grew calmer. During the last few weeks, however, cross-border attacks have increased, Pakistani-backed pro-independence Kashmiri fighters have intensified their activities, and diplomatic talks have slowed. Additionally, both India and Afghanistan blamed the ISI for the bombing in July of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

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So, all acknowledge that the real power in Pakistan - military dictatorship or not - is in the hands of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and who rules over them? Quite clearly, there never was a Pakistani Ataturk - and what do these generals want? Whatever it is - it is not democracy.

What does Military Nationalism mean in a Pakistani context? Where is their loyalty when it comes to the Taliban, and even Al-Qaeda? What was their historic relationship to the Saudi Arabian money pipeline, or to the US involvement in the Cold War heating-up proxy-stage in Afghanistan with the introduction of religious extremism well funded via the Saudis? Will someone start using this Sunni potential as an antidote to the Iranian Shia element in the larger Islamic World? Historically, it was just only Pakistan, who besides the Saudi monarchy, recognized the annexation of Jerusalem by Jordan. Without a military hand ruling in Islamabad - this being replaced by a politically broad, but weak, alliance - will the ISI, and everybody else, find it more convenient to spend the ISI time now in playing the fields outside Pakistan, rather then trying to muddle the waters at home? Will anyone look under the rug of the old nuclear materials, and know-how sales, and will there be a second round of this sort of sales - specially as they have more to offer then Iran or North Korea?

Musharraf or not, the incomming US President will have to worry about what goes on inside the nominal borders of Pakistan much more then the stated preocupation with Afghanistan.

Effigies of the G8 leaders on holiday by
Oxfam International (CC).

COMMENTARY: The Global Leadership Vacuum

By Jeffrey Sachs

The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly aren’t up to the task. A dose of basic management logic could help them establish goals, mobilize financing, and identify the scientific expertise and organizations best suited to implement solutions.

The Global Leadership Vacuum
By Jeffrey Sachs

August 1, 2008

The G8 Summit in Japan last month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world’s leaders.

The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders that went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually, and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.

There are four deep problems. The first is the incoherence of American leadership. While we are well past the time when the United States alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the Clinton administration, but it has disappeared entirely during the Bush administration.

The second problem is the lack of global financing. The hunger crisis can be overcome in poor countries if they get help to grow more food. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies. Diseases such as malaria can be overcome through globally coordinated investments in disease control. The oceans, rainforests, and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection.

Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production, and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly $350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world. This is obviously affordable, and is modest compared to military spending, but is far above the pittance that the G8 actually brings to the table to solve these urgent challenges. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made a valiant effort to get the rest of Europe to honor the modest aid pledges made at the G8 Summit in 2005, but it has been a tough fight, and one that hasn’t been won.

The third problem is the disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians. Scientists and engineers have developed many powerful ways to address today’s challenges, whether growing food, controlling diseases, or protecting the environment. And these methods have become even more powerful in recent years with advances in information and communications technology, which make global solutions easier to identify and implement than ever before.

The fourth problem is that the G8 ignores the very international institutions—notably the United Nations and the World Bank—that offer the best hope to implement global solutions. These institutions are often deprived of political backing, underfinanced, and then blamed by the G8 when global problems aren’t solved. Instead, they should be given clear authority and responsibilities, and then held accountable for their performance.

President Bush may be too unaware to recognize that his historically high 70 percent disapproval rating among U.S. voters is related to the fact that his government turned its back on the international community—and thereby got trapped in war and economic crisis. The other G8 leaders presumably can see that their own unpopularity at home is strongly related to high food and energy prices, and an increasingly unstable global climate and global economy, none of which they can address on their own.

Starting in January 2009 with the new U.S. president, politicians should take the best chance for their own political survival, and of course for their countries’ well-being, by reinvigorating global cooperation. They should agree to address shared global goals, including the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease (the Millennium Development Goals), as well as climate change and environmental destruction.

To achieve these goals, the G8 should set clear timetables for action, and transparent agreements on how to fund it. The smartest move would be to agree that each country tax its CO2 emissions in order to reduce climate change, and then devote a fixed amount of the proceeds to global problem solving. With the funding assured, the G8 would suddenly move from empty promises to real policies.

Backed by adequate funding, the world’s political leaders should turn to the expert scientific community and international organizations to help implement a truly global effort. Rather than regarding the UN and its agencies as competitors or threats to national sovereignty, they should recognize that working with the UN agencies is in fact the only way to solve global problems, and therefore is the key to their own political survival.

These steps—agreeing on global goals, mobilizing the financing needed to meet them, and identifying the scientific expertise and organizations needed to implement solutions—are basic management logic. Some may scoff that this approach is impossible at the global level, because all politics are local. Yet today, all politicians depend on global solutions for their own political survival. That by itself could make solutions that now seem out of reach commonplace in the future.

Time is short, since global problems are mounting rapidly. The world is passing through the greatest economic crisis in decades. It’s time to say to the G8 leaders, “Get your act together, or don’t even bother to meet next year.” It’s too embarrassing to watch grown men and women gather for empty photo opportunities.

Georgia and the Ukraine made moves to get closer to the West - they applied to become members of NATO. Georgia also worked with Western Europe in order to help the EU with access to Azerbaijan and Central Asia petroleum and gas. Russia clearly did not regard this bypassing of its traditional authority over what it considers as its brood. At the UN they still are bunched as former CIS and other Eastern bloc friends. Georgia had to be punished and Ukraine had to be thought that its future may be of the same sort.

Now, did the Georgians think that the US will be more then a paper tiger? Lots of promise, social help - but militarily? Then - it really is not direct US interests, but rather EU interests. So, why would Russia not say to itself that showing the EU that the US is a paper tiger - nu - that is something that can also help loosen further the EU-US ties.

Will the US react by telling the Russians that their economy does not justify their being members of the G8? That would be a reasonable game-play, but who will pick this up in the US Presidential contests?

Aha! so here we go. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and saw honesty. Perhaps he was right of sorts and Putin has now provided a pay-back. Russia’s moves strengthen McCain in his competition with Obama.

Was this move intended to help the Republican’s in the Presidential competition, and a sign of an oil-hungry party in charge, that barks but does not bite, rather then a new force that would make the world less dependent on oil - and oil these days is indeed the only thing going for the present version of a degraded Russia. The future is bleak for Russia in a world that will be dominated by China and India with the billion-plus people, and their booming internal economies that by now whistle at Russia as there is very little except brute nuclear power that this country has to offer them. Oil - yes - but the oil to China and India will arrive by ship rather then by pipe - and if it is a pipe - that pipe will come from Central Asia and not Russia.

Do we think that National borders are holly? No! But then South Ossetia belongs together with North Ossetia to one Free Ossetia State - and that is clearly not what Russia wants. They did not let go of Chechnia either. So the question here is whose ox is being gored - and the ox will suffer just the same under this or another regime. The South Ossetians of Georgia had at least a chance at a new and better life. By playing the Russian cards they blew it and that is why the civilized world is on Georgia’s side. If this sort of game digs deep into the Ukraine, our best advise to the Ukraine government is to take the Czech example of friendly divorce, and let go of those eastern territories that want some more Russian punishment. Ukraine will then soon find out that they are better thereof - and the Russian Ukrainians will just be set back and have to start their lives anew.

Let the diplomatic Beijing Games begin… but which leaders are taking part?
The Independent - Thursday, 7 August 2008.

(Photo) Torchbearer Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets basketball team holds the torch as he runs through the Tiananmen Gate during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay.

WHO’S COMING!

*George Bush

A quiet confirmation from the White House on Independence Day helped turn the tide for China. Mr Bush is believed to have accepted a personal invitation from his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, and Japan and Russia quickly followed suit. He said a snub would insult the people of China. Covering his bases, Mr Bush got his criticism of Beijing out of the way yesterday.

*Sonia Gandhi

When it came to its rival developing superpower, China did not send an invitation to either the Indian head of state Pratibha Patil or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, inviting instead Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born head of India’s Congress Party and widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. She wasted little time in accepting.

*Nicolas Sarkozy

Unsurprisingly he has been the one to generate the most controversy. First flirted publicly with a boycott before thinking harder about the true cost of such a snub. Later realised that selling the Airbus and nuclear technology were greater priorities – whatever his human rights critics said. And he’s curried favour by shying away from meeting the Dalai Lama during the Games.

*Kevin Rudd

The Australian Prime Minister has told the Chinese some awkward truths in their own language. The former diplomat and Mandarin speaker called on Beijing to engage with the Dalai Lama in March and followed it up with a candid visit in April. He stopped short of boycotting the opener in a move which might have threatened trade links.

———————

Who’s not going:

*Gordon Brown

He is a realist over relations with China, having agreed fresh trade deals with Beijing this year, but he was unable to resist the temptation to hint at dissent and opted to stay away from the opening ceremony after the crackdown in Tibet. Mr Brown insists the two are not connected. For a politician in his parlous situation, he might regret opting for the closing ceremony instead.

*Angela Merkel

The most straightforward of Europe’s leaders on issues that China finds uncomfortable, she risked the ire of Beijing by welcoming the Dalai Lama to Berlin last year – something her predecessor Gerhard Schröder hadn’t dared to do. She has been equally blunt in pointing out that the Olympic opener clashes with her holiday, so she will not be attending.

*Stephen Harper

Canada’s prime minister appeared to be swimming with the mainstream when he confirmed in April that he would not attend the Bird’s Nest show. Looking around the G8 he had the Italians, Germans, Brits and, he thought, the US with him. A few months later the snub looks more costly and Canada’s trade minister has been forced to assure the public that it won’t hit exports.

*Hans Gert-Pöttering

The president of the European Parliament is the only leading political figure to formally boycott the ceremony. Without a trade portfolio to defend – or at least with others to do that job, he felt free to take a stand over China’s treatment of the Dalai Lama. It remains a moot point whether the invitation list ever included the German politician.

———————–

And who wasn’t welcome !!!!

*Robert Mugabe

The embattled Zimbabwean leader got his refusal in first, saying that talks to resolve the political crisis prevented him from going. However, Beijing had already made it clear in private that he was not wanted. While Mr Mugabe does not usually do as he is told, he was not willing to embarrass his Chinese backers, at a time when he needs them more than ever.

*Omar Al-Bashir

While he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he has not been invited by Beijing. The Sudanese leader can count on Chinese support so long as he keeps the oil exports coming, but his is not a friendship Beijing wants to project. Darfur has been rivalled only by Tibet as a negative factor in China’s international image.

*Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The unpredictable Iranian leader was among the few leaders the rest regard as a pariah who was offered a seat at Beijing. He politely refused the invitation in May but said he might show up for the Paralympics. Despite Tehran’s insistence to the contrary, some sources insist that China had made an offer it wanted the man in Tehran to refuse.

*Kim Jong-Il

It’s hard to know whether the North Korean leader’s decision to stay at home has been greeted with greater relief in Beijing or Washington. A public encounter with Kim was not a prospect to thrill the White House – or his South Korean counterpart. Instead, his right-hand man Kim Yong Nam will be a “guest of honour”.

From:    munekata at iges.or.jp
Subject: IGES Call for Abstracts: Climate-Friendly Transportation Strategies in Asia: Overcoming Obstacles to Co-benefits
Date: August 6, 2008

Call for Abstracts: Climate-Friendly Transportation Strategies in Asia: Overcoming Obstacles to Co-benefits.

The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) Climate Policy Project invites abstracts (two A4 pages) on co-benefits of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in Asia’s transportation sector.

Selected authors will be invited to contribute full-length papers for a multi-chapter book project. Selected authors will also be sponsored to attend the Better Air Quality (BAQ) 2008 Workshop in Bangkok, Thailand and present their findings at a pre-event panel scheduled for 11 November 2008.

Due Date: 1 September 2008

Project Rationale:

Rising rates of motorization in developing Asia have become a source of concern outside and inside the region. Outside the region this concern stems from projections that carbon emissions from Asia’s transport sector could triple by 2025. Inside the region it stems from projections that urban air pollution levels, fuel costs, and commuting times could increase just as sharply over the same period. The key to altering these projections may lie in integrated transportation policies. Integrated transportation policies are so named because, rather than focusing on either developmental or climate goals, they pursue both objectives simultaneously. Integrated policies therefore have the potential to be more cost-effective than isolated climate or developmental policies.

A number of studies have demonstrated this potential by estimating the developmental benefits of integrated policies. These benefits are commonly referred to as co-benefits.  The values of co-benefits are often found to be significant in developing Asia, which would presumably draw interest from regional policymakers. But while the influence of this research seems likely to expand, thus far its impacts on policies have been limited. This book project seeks to determine why these potentially sizable impacts have yet to materialize in developing Asia’s transport sector. More concretely, the project’s main goal is to understand the opportunities for and obstacles to maximizing the co-benefits of transportation policies in developing Asia.  A second goal is to propose countermeasures based on that assessment.

Abstracts should focus on one of the following three themes.

Analytical Framework: Papers should identify categories of transportation policies with significant co-benefits and barriers to realizing those benefits. Papers may focus on technical, financial, political, and social barriers. Analytical frameworks offering explanations for why some categories of policies are more likely to succeed than others are encouraged.

Case Studies: Papers should examine specific projects/programmes/ policies where the co-benefits have or have not materialized in developing Asia.  Submissions should highlight the actors, interests and institutions that contributed to the case’s performance. Comparative case studies are encouraged.

Co-benefits in the Post-2012 Climate Regime: Papers should explore opportunities for recognizing and rewarding transportation co-benefits in the post-2012 climate regime. Insights into how the post-2012 climate regime could strengthen the design and implementation of integrated transportation policies are encouraged.
Abstracts should be submitted as a PDF file attachment by email to  cobenefits at iges.or.jp by 1 September 2008. Include “IGES CO-BENEFIT ABSTRACT” on the subject line of the email.  The abstract should include the following: the title of the paper, name and institutional affiliation of author(s) and their disciplines on the title page. Only English-language submissions will be considered.

The IGES Climate Policy Project will acknowledge receipt of all submissions by email. Notification of selected abstracts will be made by 15 September 2008. The authors of selected abstracts will be asked to submit the draft version of full paper by 5 November 2008. This call for abstracts is open to policy practitioners, scholars, and students from both developed and developing countries. The focus of study should be Asia; cases outside the region can be used for comparative purposes.

About the Climate Policy Project at IGES

The mission of the project is to recommend effective climate policies for sustainable development in Asia in this era of evolving global climate regime. In Phase 4 of its research (April 2007-March 2010), the project is conducting research on four sub-themes: market mechanisms, adaptation, climate regime beyond 2012, and co-benefits. This call for papers is specifically designed to assist the work of the sub-themes of climate regime beyond 2012 and co-benefits. For additional details of the project, please refer to http://www.iges.or.jp/en/cp.

For additional details regarding this call for abstracts, please contact:
Dr. Ancha Srinivasan, Principal Researcher and Manager at:        cobenefits at iges.or.jp

India’s Temples Go Green.
Monday, Jul. 07, 2008, Time Magazine.
By MADHUR SINGH

An array of solar panels installed atop the Tirumala Temple’s “Nitya Annadanam canteen” in Tirupathi, India, to facilitate operation of steam cookers. This is the world’s largest solar steam cooking system.
HINDU PHOTO ARCHIVES

The Tirumala temple, in the south Indian city of Tirupathi, Kerala, is one of Hinduism’s holiest shrines. Over 5,000 pilgrims a day visit this city of seven hills, filling Tirumala’s coffers with donations and making it India’s richest temple. But since 2002, Tirumala has also been generating revenue from a less likely source: carbon credits.

For decades, the temple’s community kitchen has fed nearly 15,000 people, cooking 30,000 meals a day. Five years ago, Tirumala adopted solar cooking technology, allowing it to dramatically cut down on the amount of diesel fuel it uses. The temple now sells the emission reduction credits it earns to a Swiss green-technology investor, Good Energies Inc.

Like Tirumala, dozens of holy places across India are moving quietly towards green energy. Muni Seva Ashram, in Gujarat, which combines spiritual practice with social activism, is working to make its premises entirely green by using solar, wind and biogas energy. A residential school for 400 students is already running exclusively on green energy. Starting this year, the ashram will also sell three million carbon credits. A similar movement is afoot at the revered Sai Baba Temple in Shirdi, Maharashtra. “Our aim is to avoid pollution in every way,” says Raghunath Aher, the temple’s chief engineer. “A holy place should be pure and completely in harmony with nature.”

It’s not surprising that religious groups are in the vanguard of India’s green movement: India is the birthplace of four of the world’s largest religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, all of which revere nature and preach conservation. But the country’s environmental practice hasn’t always matched that preaching, leaving its air and water woefully polluted. According to the World Bank, emissions increased 57% in the decade following the India’s economic liberalization.

Now, however, religious groups, keen to marry spirituality with sustainability, are leading the push to reverse that trend. Deepak Gadhia, founder of Gadhia Solar Energy Systems, which provided solar cooking technology to Tirumala temple, says more and more religious organizations have approached him in recent years. “With most businesses, the first question is of economics,” he says, “But spiritual organizations look at larger issues. They want energy that is spiritually positive.”

Art of Living, for instance, a 25-year-old spiritual organization that claims nearly 30 million followers in India, focuses on returning to “the way of life espoused in the ancient Hindu scriptures,” according to spokesperson Mamta Kailkhura. The group is working with the government of Uttaranchal state to clean up the Ganges River and devise a waste disposal system for the holy city of Rishikesh. In the villages near Art of Living’s ashram in Bangalore, a program to teach farmers organic methods and ancient water harvesting techniques is afoot. The ashram itself uses biogas for part of its lighting requirements, and recycles all of its water. Of course, it all makes sound economic sense: with the government subsidizing up to 50% of the costs of installing green technology, temples like Tirumala can make steady returns selling the resulting carbon credits.

And India’s faith-based organizations are also helping spread the gospel of green. The UK-based Alliance of Religions and Conservation, which works with the UN to involve religious groups in environmental outreach, is working on a conservation campaign in the holy city of Vrindavan, as well as pushing India’s 28,000 Sikh temples to convert their kitchens to green technology. The combined potential of such efforts is limitless. India’s religious groups have sizable incomes, own vast amounts of land, and have enormous influence on public opinion through their educational institutions. Indeed, with 99% of Indians professing to one faith or another, the country’s green movement might not have a prayer without them.

From:    jeh1 at columbia.edu
Subject: Complete Trip Report.                                                                                                                                    Date: August 4, 2008

- July 3, 2008: Dear Prime Minister Fukuda: A letter to the leader of Japan before the G8 meeting
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

- July 2008: *Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy*
Slides for presentation given July 4 at United Nations University in Tokyo, available in PDF and Powerpoint.
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…

Above is a summary of the State of the Science and a hint to the State of the Politics.

The links are here and we will post this also in our data base.

Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say.

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 1, 2008, The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.  The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan visited Washington this week What Was He Told There?

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

American officials said that the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that the C.I.A. emissary, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, had been ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, even before the attack. The intercepts were not detailed enough to warn of any specific attack.

The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.

“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one State Department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops.

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power. In recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been concerned about India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan, including New Delhi’s close ties to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI.

Pakistan’s defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told a Pakistani television network on Wednesday that Mr. Bush asked senior Pakistani officials this week, “ ‘Who is in control of ISI?’ ” and asked about leaked information that tipped militants to surveillance efforts by Western intelligence services.

Pakistan’s new civilian government is wrestling with these very issues, and there is concern in Washington that the civilian leaders will be unable to end a longstanding relationship between members of the ISI and militants associated with Al Qaeda.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, did not return a call seeking comment.

Further underscoring the tension between Pakistan and its Western allies, Britain’s senior military officer said in Washington on Thursday that an American and British program to help train Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in the tribal areas had been delayed while Pakistan’s military and civilian officials sorted out details about the program’s goals.

Britain and the United States had each offered to send about two dozen military trainers to Pakistan later this summer to train Pakistani Army officers who in turn would instruct the Frontier Corps paramilitary forces.

But the British officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, said the program had been temporarily delayed. “We don’t yet have a firm start date,” he told a small group of reporters. “We’re ready to go.”

The bombing of the Indian Embassy helped to set off a new deterioration in relations between India and Pakistan.

This week, Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at each other across the Kashmir frontier for more than 12 hours overnight Monday, in what the Indian Army called the most serious violation of a five-year-old cease-fire agreement. The nightlong battle came after one Indian soldier and four Pakistanis were killed along the border between sections of Kashmir that are controlled by India and by Pakistan.

Indian officials say they are equally worried about what is happening on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border because they say the insurgents who are facing off with India in Kashmir and those who target Afghanistan are related and can keep both borders burning at the same time.

India and Afghanistan share close political, cultural and economic ties, and India maintains an active intelligence network in Afghanistan, all of which has drawn suspicion from Pakistani officials.

When asked Thursday about whether the ISI and Pakistani military remained loyal to the country’s civilian government, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question. “That’s probably something the government of Pakistan ought to speak to,” Admiral Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the militia commander, battled Soviet troops during the 1980s and has had a long and complicated relationship with the C.I.A. He was among a group of fighters who received arms and millions of dollars from the C.I.A. during that period, but his allegiance with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the following decade led the United States to sever the relationship.

Mr. Haqqani and his sons now run a network that Western intelligence services say they believe is responsible for a campaign of violence throughout Afghanistan, including the Indian Embassy bombing and an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul earlier this year.

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Today on TV, as part of a discussion at the Washington Institute for The Middle East, Shaul Mofaz, The Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, a former Defense Minister and Chief of the Military Staff, was asked why Israel is worried about pre-nuclear Iran, but does not show worry about the nuclear Pakistan?

His answer was that Pakistan is managed by a regime friendly to the US, even though there is the unruliness at the Afghan border, on the other hand Iran is ruled by an enemy elite even though the Iranian people are friendly people. He seemed to trust the government of Pakistan and we really wonder why? We do not think that a man of his past does not see the real facts on the ground - so all what we can conclude is that he sees the facts in Washington and he will not dare to step out from a line-up with the White House. So Quo Vadis Pakistan? And US - just because you helped create the Golem - will you now also continue to talk Afghanistan when it is clear that any solution to the AfghanPakiMess starts with actions in Pakistan.