By funding the warlords in Somalia, the US has given credibility to their extremist opponents.

Washington has been playing with fire in Somalia, where its support for a warlord alliance has ended up boosting Islamic militias, which now hold the capital Mogadishu, analysts say.

Somalia has been torn by four months of fighting between the Islamists and an alliance of warlords who largely controlled the lawless state for the past 15 years.

The Joint Islamic Courts militias appeared on Thursday to have defeated the warlords after capturing their last two strongholds, and have vowed to rapidly open Sharia courts in the areas under its control.

Only a few months ago, this would have been impossible for lack of public support, experts said.

But the United States support for the warlord Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism—hated by the population—sparked a wave of anti-American sentiment that massively boosted support for the Islamists, they said.

Washington has never publicly confirmed or denied its support for the alliance but US officials have told Agence France-Presse they provided the warlords with money and intelligence to help rein in “creeping Talibanisation” in Somalia.

“In reality, the Islamic courts are not strong. They are divided along traditional clan lines,” argued Roland Marchal, a Horn of Africa expert from France’s CNRS institute, who recently returned from a trip to Somalia.

“They benefited from this anti-Americanism,” said Marchal. “People who are absolute moderates in religious terms are fighting alongside the Islamic courts to get rid of the warlords.”

For US specialist Ken Menkhaus, a political science professor at the University of Davidson: “It’s not only that the US backed the wrong guys, it’s also that some of the US assistance was misused for a different agenda than the US had in mind.”

“The Americans had a fairly limited agenda in Mogadishu: it was to work through non-state partners to monitor and if possible apprehend a small number [three or four] of foreign al-Qaeda operatives in the city.”

“It was not the US government’s intent to see this alliance engage in a full-scale war against the union of Islamic courts,” he said.

“It’s plausible that the US assistance to these militias was misused: the militia leaders saw an opportunity to … strengthen their own political base vis-á-vis their principal rivals in the city: the Islamic courts.

“They hoped to harness US counter-terrorism assistance to their own political agenda, but they got whacked.”

Marchal also suggested Washington had committed a tactical error by supporting the warlord alliance—but for a different reason.

“The Americans’ mistake was to arm people who were already a spent force—and who had their own agenda,” he said.

“People I talked to [in Somalia] told me the alliance’s militiamen didn’t really put up a fight, because the war made no sense for them.

“They just took the American money and went home. It was a military collapse. That doesn’t mean the Islamic courts are strong—it just means their opponents have disintegrated.”

Two powerful warlords—Mohamed Afrah Qanyare and Issa Botan Alin—fled the town of Jowhar without fighting ahead of the Islamic assault on Tuesday.

Others who had holed up in Mogadishu defected to the Islamic courts’ side this week.

Karin von Hippel, a former United Nations expert on Somalia and member of the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says that by backing the warlords, Washington encouraged the Islamic courts to take up arms.

“If in recent weeks Somalis have been protesting alleged US interference in the fighting in Mogadishu, it is not only because of perceptions that the US government is anti-Islam but also because they don’t want the warlords to be any stronger than they already are,” she wrote in a recent newspaper column.

Meanwhile, Marchal said it was essential for the international community to open up channels of communication with the moderate elements in the Islamic courts as soon as possible.

“To cry that this is an al-Qaeda plot will only radicalise the population. We are busy creating an enemy that didn’t exist two months ago.”—AFP

Tehran (AFP) Jun 16, 2006

Defense ministers from close allies Iran and Syria on Thursday signed an agreement for military cooperation against what they called the "common threats" presented by Israel and the United States. In a joint press conference, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and visiting Syrian counterpart Hassan Turkmani said their talks had been aimed at consolidating their defense efforts and strengthening support for one another.

"Our cooperation is based on a strategic pact and unity against common threats. We can have a common front against Israel's threats," Turkmani told reporters after two intensive rounds of talks with Najjar.

Syrian Defence Minister Hassan Turkmani and his Iranian counterpart Mostafa Mohammad Najjar signed the cooperation agreement in Tehran, on the 15 June 2006. The two defence ministers agreed today to expand defence cooperation, the Iranian ministry said. Turkmani started a four-day official visit to Tehran earlier this week.

"Our cooperation with the Iranians against Israeli threats is nothing secret and we regularly consult about this with our friends," he said.

Before the press conference, Iran's defense ministry said the two sides "stressed strengthening mutual ties and the necessity to preserve peace and stability in the region."

The defense ministry statement also said they discussed "ridding the region of weapons of mass destruction," in an apparent reference to the widely held belief that Israel possesses nuclear warheads.

The United States has led opposition to Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is aimed at civilian energy purposes but which Washington suspects is a cover for atomic weapons-making.

US President George W. Bush has advocated diplomacy to resolve the international row over Iran's aims but has also said "all options are on the table" if Iran refuses to halt sensitive uranium enrichment work.

Washington has included Syria in its so-called axis of evil that also comprises Iran and North Korea, citing these nations as "supporters of terrorism."

Asked about US threats against Damascus and Tehran, both top brass brushed off the importance of such threats.

"This is nothing new, we will resist these threats," the Syrian defense minister said.

However, Turkmani dismissed the possibility of hosting an Iranian military base on Syrian soil.

"The language of a (foreign) military base in our country is alien to us. I want to say that it is not on the agenda," he added.

The Iranian defense minister said: "US threats are a kind of psychological operation. It is not new. With unity among the region's nations, these threats will not prevail."

Although the two refused to give specifics about the agreement for military cooperation, Najjar said Iran "considers Syria's security its own security, and we consider our defense capabilities to be those of Syria."

Najjar also shrugged off reports that Iran could pose a threat to the region.

"Iran is ready to sign a non aggression pact with regional countries," he said.

"Our military warfare equipment is based on deterrent policies and strategy. Enemies should know about our capabilities and should not even think about an assault against us," he said in response to a question about the optimization process going on for the medium range Shahab-3 missile.

Iran's Shahab-3 missiles have a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,280 miles), capable of hitting arch-enemy Israel and US bases across the Middle East.

Najjar added that the Syrian side has purchased some Iranian military equipment, but did not elaborate on the purchased items and did not say whether the purchases were made as part of Thursday's agreement.

Turkmani started an official visit to Tehran on Sunday.

During his trip, Turkmani has also met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic republic's military chiefs and visited Iranian military factories in Isfahan and Tehran.

Source: Agence France-Presse

SEOUL, June 16 (AFP) Jun 16, 2006

Republished from SPACE WAR

North Korea's air force on Friday accused a US reconnaissance plane of intruding into its territorial waters to spy on strategic targets.

The North's Air Force Command said that a US RC-135 plane being refueled in the air had spied on strategic targets for hours after flying over its waters off the northeast coast.

"The ceaseless illegal intrusions of their strategic reconnaissance planes on spy missions have created an imminent danger of military clash in the sky above those waters," it warned in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency.

It was the North's second warning in a week against alleged US spy plane intrusions.

On Sunday, the air force threatened to "punish" US spy flights, recalling the fate of a US Navy plane it shot down in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in 1969.

Another US-North Korean incident occurred when North Korea fired missiles at an SR-71 spy plane in August 1981. The jet was undamaged.

The warning comes amid jitters over the Stalinist country's preparations for a long-range missile test.

Officials here and in Washington confirmed earlier this week that North Korea appeared to be preparing to launch an inter-continental ballistic missile capable of reaching the mainland United States.

North Korea is believed to be developing the missile for a range of up to 10,000 kilometers.

It shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a long-range Taepodong-1 missile with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) over Japan into the Pacific Ocean, claiming it was a satellite launch.

HUMANS must learn to live on other planets to survive, Professor Stephen Hawking has claimed.

The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University said humans must find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there is an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.

Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, he told a news conference in Hong Kong.

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Prof Hawking, who arrived in Hong Kong "to a rock star's welcome".
Prof Hawking said that if humans could avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that could continue without support from Earth.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," he said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

Prof Hawking's comments were reminiscent of the work of American astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was a believer in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

But his work focused on the search for habitable worlds and intelligent life beyond the solar system, as well as theories about life's origins, ideas popularised in his best-selling 1985 novel, Contact,

By MIN LEE Associated Press Writer
2006-06-15

HONG KONG (AP) - Famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God.

The British author _ who wrote the best-seller "A Brief History of Time" _ said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican.

Hawking, who didn't say when the meeting was held, quoted the pope as saying, "It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not enquire into the beginning itelf because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."

The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, "I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."

The church condemned Galileo in the 17th century for supporting Nicholas Copernicus' discovery that Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

But in 1992, Pope John Paul II issued a declaration saying that the church's denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

Hawking is one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation. He has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe. He proposes that space and time have no beginning and no end.

His hourlong lecture to a sold-out audience at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology was highly theoretical and technical. During the question-and-answer session, Hawking was asked where constants like gravity come from and whether gravity can distort light.

But there were several light, humorous moments.

Hawking _ who must communicate with an electronic speech synthesizer _ said he once considered using a machine that gave him a French accent but he couldn't use it because his wife would divorce him.

The astrophysicist is wheelchair-bound and uses an electronic voice because he has the neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Hawking was asked why his computerized voice has an American accent.

"The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986," he said. "I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it."

But Hawking said he's shopping for a new system because the hardware he uses is large and fragile. He also said it uses components that are no longer made.

"I have been trying to get a software version, but it seems very difficult," he said.

He urged people with physical disabilities not to give up on their ambitions.

"You can't afford to be disabled in spirit as well as physically," he said. "People won't have time for you."

The moderator at the lecture told the audience that at a recent dinner, she asked Hawking what his ambitions were. He said he wanted to know how the universe began, what happens inside black holes and how can humans survive the next 100 years, she said.

But she added he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."

Hawking ended his lecture saying, "We are getting closer to answering the age-old questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from?"

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen accused the World Bank on Thursday of hiring corrupt foreign consultants, mirroring recent corruption allegations made against his government.

Hun Sen also urged the bank to publish full details of its investigations into alleged government fraud in several aid contracts which led to the suspension earlier this month of $7.6 million in funding for three development projects.

The bank has demanded repayment of the money.

"It is now four weeks old and still no full report has been provided to us, so where is the transparency?" Hun Sen said at a hospital construction ceremony attended by foreign diplomats in the northwest province of Banteay Meanchey.

"Foreign consultants who signed to approve the projects must be brought to account. If Cambodian officials are corrupt then foreign consultants are even more corrupt because they are the decision makers," he said in remarks monitored in Phnom Penh.

World Bank officials in Phnom Penh were not immediately available for comment.

These sorts of allegations are sadly nothing new and alarmingly has been shown to be in fact the modus operandi of many such NGOS. An excellent book released in 2005 "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins shed light on this shadowy area. Perkins, in telling the real-life story about his extraordinary dealings as an EHM, claims to have exposed the "world of international intrigue and corruption that is turning the American republic into a global empire despised by increasing numbers of people around the planet."

As an Economic Hit Man or EHM his job was to "convince Third World countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development—loans that were much larger than needed—and to guarantee that the development projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel". Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that "oil and other resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire".

In his EHM capacity, John Perkins traveled all over the world—to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East—and was "either a direct participant in or witness to some of the most dramatic events in modern history, including the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the assassination of Panama’s President Omar Torrijos, the subsequent invasion of Panama, and events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq".

John Perkins also served as one of these highly paid consultants to some of the largest multinational corporations on the planet, whose pockets he had previously helped to line—taking on this role "partly in response to a series of not-so-veiled threats and lucrative payoffs". Perkins revelations were described by Harvard professor and Pulitzer prize-winning author—John E. Mack as, “A bombshell. One of those rare instances in which someone deeply entrenched in our governmental/ corporate imperialist structure has come forward to reveal in unequivocal terms its inner workings.

The case of Cambodia, as one of the world's poorest countries, relies heavily on foreign aid. Donors have often criticized the Hun Sen government for failing to tackle chronic corruption.

"We must take responsibility for our mistakes _ if we were truly wrong," Hun Sen said during a recent trip to the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey. "But we also appeal to the World Bank to punish its own officials ... who signed (approval) for those projects."

The three suspended projects cover land management and administration; provincial and rural infrastructure; and provincial and suburban water supply and sanitation. They are worth about US$71.8 million (euro57 million) in World Bank financing, according to a June 6 statement by the bank.

The World Bank said it has "sufficient evidence to substantiate allegations of fraud and corruption" and that the projects that cannot be resumed unless the government "deals head-on with corruption."

It has also demanded that the government pay it back any amount of money already disbursed under contracts "misprocured because of corruption."

Prime Minister Hun Sen claimed that the bank's allegations could be part of a wider political conspiracy to tarnish his government's credibility ahead of local and national elections in 2007 and 2008.