IAEA: Syria site hit by Israel resembled atom plant

 

 

“Confidential UN watchdog report says ’significant’ amounts of uranium particles found by inspectors at Syrian complex bombed by Israel in September 2007, adding further investigation needed to prove reactor allegations “

A Syrian complex bombed by Israel bore features resembling those of an undeclared nuclear reactor and UN inspectors found "significant" traces of uranium at the site, a watchdog report said on Wednesday. But the International Atomic Energy Agency report said the findings gleaned from inspectors’ visit to the site in June were not enough to conclude a reactor was once there. It said further investigation and greater Syrian transparency were needed. The confidential nuclear safeguards report said Syria would be asked to show to inspectors debris and equipment whisked away from the site after the September 2007 Israeli air raid. The United States gave intelligence to the IAEA last April that Washington said indicated the site was a reactor that was close to being built with North Korean assistance and designed to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.

Syria, an ally of Iran whose disputed uranium enrichment program has been under IAEA investigation for years, says the site destroyed was a disused military building and the uranium traces almost certainly came with the munitions used to bomb it. Damascus has dismissed as fabricated the satellite imagery and other intelligence underpinning the investigation. "While it cannot be excluded that the building in question was intended for non-nuclear use, the features of the building, along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water, are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site," said the IAEA report, sent to its 35-nation board of governors ahead of a November 27-28 meeting. “

click for article – http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3625629,00.html

“Veterans Helped by Healing Paws”

 

As an enthusiastic Dog owner and also someone who has the greatest respect for the people of the Armed Services, I found the following article very informative and moving..

Some who have suffered traumatic injuries gain a sense of independence with service dogs, who help provide a bridge back to society.

click for article   Veterans Helped by Healing Paws
By KAREN JONES
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:15:28 GMT

Pilot who went blind at 15,000ft lands safely thanks to the RAF

 

A pilot who suddenly went blind at 15,000ft is guided in to land by RAF crews from Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire.

Pilot who went blind at 15,000ft lands safely thanks to the RAF
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:14:25 GMT

The creep of authoritarianism in Russia – The Guardian

 

“President Dmitry Medvedev moved yesterday to entrench the current Russian leadership’s grip on power by proposing a presidential term that would extend the stint in office from four to six years. Medvedev said the extension was necessary to guarantee stability and help Russia deal with huge global challenges. But critics said the proposal was further evidence of Russia’s alarming and rapid drift towards authoritarianism. This morning’s Vedomosti newspaper, citing Kremlin sources, said that Medvedev could resign from his post as early as 2009 – paving the way for Vladimir Putin, currently the prime minister, to come back to the Kremlin. Putin stepped down as president in May, when he handed over to Medvedev, his handpicked successor. Under this scenario Putin could get his presidential job back next year and then serve two six-year terms, Vedomosti suggested. In his first state of the nation address yesterday, Medvedev also said he was deploying nuclear missiles in western Russia to "neutralise" the Pentagon’s missile defence system – and lambasted the US for its "arrogant course" and "unilateralism". Speaking hours after Barack Obama was voted in as the next American president, Medvedev said Russia would site short-range Iskander nuclear-capable missiles next door to Poland, in Russia’s Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad.

The Iskander missiles would be targeted at the US’s missile defence and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, Medvedev said. Russia would also install radio-jamming equipment to sabotage the US weapons, he added. The US insists its system is aimed not at Russia but at Iran. Medvedev’s threat – with its echoes of cold war-style confrontation along the frontiers of eastern Europe – is likely to be an early foreign policy headache for Obama, as his fledgling administration seeks to improve ties with the EU. The Democrats are ambivalent about the Bush administration’s expensive defence plans in Europe. But if Obama dumps the project he risks accusations of weakness and caving in to Russian bullying. “

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/06/putin-kremlin-russia

“Russia suffers catastrophe”

 

“This summer’s armed incursion into Georgia and Moscow’s saber-rattling elsewhere have prompted many observers, including myself, to warn of a newly muscular Russia willing to threaten or commit military force. But there’s another important set of facts to understand about Russia that modifies that threat calculation significantly. Russians are in danger of dying off. The hard numbers show Russia’s population has been declining precipitously since the Soviet Union imploded, down from almost 149 million in 1992 to 142 million at the end of last year – an average loss of approximately 700,000 people a year. The United Nations and other organizations have warned that if it stays on the current demographic path, Russia’s populace will shrink by a third, to less than 100 million by 2050. By comparison, the U.S. has more than 300 million, and China has 1.3 billion people. Part of an alarming worldwide trend, Russia’s birthrate is well below that required – 2.1 children per woman – just to maintain the population with neutral growth. Currently, Russian women average 1.3 births in their lifetime, which is not enough to keep up. For a variety of reasons, none understood very well, many Russian women are deciding to have one or no children. The death rate is really the dark side of the equation. For every 100 babies born in Russia, 150 people die. Since the 1960s, the life expectancy and overall health of Russian males has been sliding downward. Today, a typical Russian male lives to the ripe old age of 59, which puts the country far down, No. 166 in the rankings, alongside poorer African nations. Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt says, "Russia is virtually the only industrialized society where such a thing has ever taken place in peacetime, and death rates for men and women of working ages are vastly higher, and for certain age groups, over twice as high as they were 40 years ago." A big part of the problem is the long-held tradition of heavy alcohol use and regular binge drinking, particularly among men. The ravages of vodka, however, are compounded by a runaway AIDS epidemic, alarmingly high rates of heart disease, tuberculosis and other illnesses. Health researchers are still trying to understand why Russian men in their productive years succumb to health complications at far higher rates than in other developed countries. They’re calling this "hypermortality." According to a recent U.N. study, "Compared to the majority of countries that have similar levels of economic development, mortality in Russia is 3 to 5 times higher for men, and twice as high for women." The report warns that Russia’s working-age population will decline by 1 million each year by 2020 to 2025. These are staggering numbers, and even though Moscow is trying to reverse them with financial incentives for childbirth, Russia’s future still looks dark, indeed. So, while Russian troops occupy sovereign parts of Georgia, Russian bombers take to the skies on patrol, and Putin looks warily at Ukraine, Russia’s population is shrinking, and the "flower of Russian manhood" is slowly dying off.”

http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081016/OPINION/810160317/1014/OPINION

“Russia is in breach of its obligations under treaties signed by president Dmitry Medvedev” – The Guardian

 

“It is a scenic drive up into the mountains, past apple orchards and mulberry trees, and along a series of attractive villages. The provincial town of Akhalgori is at the top of a steep valley in Georgia’s Upper Caucasus, a mere 40km from Tbilisi. But some two months after Russia’s war with Georgia ended, the seeds of a new conflict are being sown here in Akhalgori. Russian and South Ossetian troops seized the sleepy town on August 15, sweeping in unopposed early that evening. When I arrived the next morning they had set up an HQ in Akhalgori’s police station. Soldiers were sitting under pine trees; they had taken down the Georgian flag and replaced it with a South Ossetian one. The Russians, from Chechnya, were friendly – offering me a ride on their tank. We gave them some pancakes. Most of the locals had fled; some had hidden in the forest. A few were sitting out on the dusty main square or by the bus stop, waiting for a lift down the valley. "This is a very beautiful place," 26-year-old Dato Natadze told me wistfully, gesturing at the tree-covered mountains. "No wonder the Russians want it."

Exactly two months later the Russians are still there. They haven’t budged. Last week Moscow withdrew its forces from the so-called buffer zone next to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, handing the area over to EU peacekeepers. It is refusing, however, to give up Akhalgori. Instead, Russia appears determined to hang on to the town and to other strategic chunks of Georgia it seized during August’s brief war. The Kremlin is, in effect, unilaterally redrawing Georgia’s map. The international community appears not to have noticed. According to Russia, Akhalgori now belongs to the new South Ossetian state – a flimsy claim based on the fact it was part of the South Ossetian autonomous republic during Soviet times. Back then it was called Leningori. In reality Akhalgori is a predominantly Georgian town. It played no role in the separatist conflicts of the 1990s. It has been under continuous Georgian administration. Its mixed population of Georgians, Ossetians, Armenians and the odd Russian had – until August 15 – lived happily together. In Tbilisi, even politicians critical of president Mikheil Saakashvili say Russia’s behaviour in Akhalgori is outrageous. Furious hardliners within Georgia’s administration recently floated secret plans for a military assault to seize it back. For the moment, Georgia is resisting the lure of another adventure. Last week I found only a couple of Georgian police cars parked on the road leading to the town. But if the Russians won’t leave, there is a real prospect that a new conflict will, sooner or later, ignite in the Caucasus. This, perhaps, is Russia’s intention. The European Union, the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe were due to hold talks in Geneva on Georgia’s future today – but the Russians failed to turn up. The most pressing question the EU faces is this: is South Ossetia what Russia now says it is? Or does South Ossetia comprise the much smaller territory administered by the separatists before August’s conflict?

The EU needs to be clear and unequivocal: Russia is in breach of its obligations under treaties signed by president Dmitry Medvedev. On August 12 he agreed to withdraw Russia’s forces to the positions they occupied before August 7, when Saakashvili launched his disastrous invasion of South Ossetia. Russia now argues realities have changed. In late August Moscow recognised both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. Over the weekend Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the ceasefire agreements did not apply to Akhalgori – which was, he said, "within South Ossetian boundaries."

In reality, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are puppet entities whose sovereignty only exists because of the presence of large numbers of Russian troops there. Moscow now plans permanent military garrisons in both fictitious states. It is also building a road between Akhalgori and Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s gloomy capital; at the moment there isn’t one.

The EU has to resist calls from France and Germany to resume dialogue with Moscow over a new partnership and cooperation agreement. There can be no business as usual while Russia continues to occupy Georgia, and while the residents of Akhalgori are unable to go home.
"These were the mountains that defended Georgia for centuries from foreign invaders. I’m very sad. I don’t have any desire to be part of Ossetia or Russia," Tamar Ogadze, from Akhalgori, told me after packing up her belongings and leaving the town to stay with her parents. She added: "The worse thing is that nobody asked us."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/15/russia-georgia

“Taliban leader killed by SAS was Pakistan officer” – Times

 

“October 12, 2008
Christina Lamb in Kabul
British officials covered up evidence that a Taliban commander killed by special forces in Helmand last year was in fact a Pakistani military officer, according to highly placed Afghan officials.
The commander, targeted in a compound in the Sangin valley, was one of six killed in the past year by SAS and SBS forces. When the British soldiers entered the compound they discovered a Pakistani military ID on the body.
It was the first physical evidence of covert Pakistani military operations against British forces in Afghanistan even though Islamabad insists it is a close ally in the war against terror. Britain’s refusal to make the incident public led to a row with the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who has long accused London of viewing Afghanistan through the eyes of Pakistani military intelligence, which is widely believed to have been helping the Taliban. “He feels he has been telling everyone about Pakistan for the past six years and here was the evidence, yet London refused to release it, because they care more about their relations with Islamabad than Kabul,” said a source close to the president. “He knows Britain is worried about inflaming its large Pakistani population, but that is no excuse.”
So furious was Karzai that he threatened to expel British diplomats. When some months later he was informed by the governor of Helmand that British officials were secretly negotiating with the Taliban, he expelled two men and accused Britain of wanting to set up a training camp for former Taliban fighters.  Karzai will visit London next month for talks with Gordon Brown in an attempt to repair the strained relations between the two countries. “He is very sad about the breakdown of relations with Britain,” said the source. “He loves British culture and poetry, had a British education [at a school in India], likes tea in the afternoon and thinks Gordon Brown is a very decent man, not a cheat.” British officials in Kabul refused to comment on the allegation that they had covered up the discovery of a Pakistani soldier. They insisted Karzai’s government had been informed of the negotiations with the Taliban, adding that “the camp was just a place for them to be reintegrated, learn about hygiene and things”.
During the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, officers from Pakistani military intelligence regularly accompanied Afghan mujaheddin inside Afghanistan and directed operations. The Afghan claims of Pakistani involvement in Helmand were backed by a senior United Nations official who said he had been told by his superiors to keep quiet after Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN apparently threatened to stop contributing forces to peacekeeping missions. Pakistan is the UN’s biggest supplier of peacekeeping troops. The coalition’s refusal to confront Pakistan changed after the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last July, when 41 people were killed. According to both British and US intelligence, phone intercepts led directly back to an Afghan cell of Pakistan’s military intelligence. The past month has seen US forces carry out bombings and a ground raid on Pakistani territory. Claims of Pakistan’s involvement were rejected by Asif Durrani, the country’s chargé d’affaires in Kabul. “Afghanistan wants to blame someone else for its problems and Pakistan is just the whipping boy,” he said. However, repeated accusations from Karzai about Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban have been backed by a senior US marine officer. Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Nash, who commanded an embedded training team in eastern Afghanistan from June 2007 to March this year, told the Army Times that Pakistani forces flew repeated helicopter missions into Afghanistan to resupply a Taliban base camp during a fierce battle in June last year. Nash said: “We were on the receiving end of Pakistani military D-30 [a howitzer]. On numerous occasions Afghan border police checkpoints and observation posts were attacked by Pakistani military forces.”
Comments by Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith in The Sunday Times last week that a decisive military victory against the Taliban was not possible and negotiations should be opened have received widespread backing.
General Jean-Louis Georgelin, France’s military chief, said: “There is no military solution to the Afghan crisis and I totally share this feeling.”
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, who initially dismissed the brigadier’s comments as “defeatist”, said on Friday that the US was now prepared to back talks with the Taliban. “

click link for full article – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4926401.ece

Nato to target Somalia’s pirates

 

The Nato military alliance agrees to send warships to help combat piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Nato to target Somalia’s pirates
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:47:42 GMT

“Satellite images show South Ossetia destruction”- Reuters

 

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Satellite images taken just after a battle between Georgia and Russia over the region of South Ossetia show fresh damage to villages continued for days after the initial clash, researchers and human rights activists reported on Thursday.The images analyzed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science and Human Rights Program do not show who was responsible for the damage — Georgia, Russia or other groups. But they may be evidence of war crimes, said Amnesty International, which commissioned the study. "These images do not lie — the additional destruction shown from August 10 to August 19 must be used to establish who had responsibility for protecting civilians from attacks by militia," said Amnesty’s Ariela Blatter."The destruction of civilian infrastructure highlights the need for the international community to undertake an independent investigation of abuses during the conflict, with the complete support of all parties involved."The crisis erupted in August when Georgia tried to forcibly retake the pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, which threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s. Russia counter-attacked into Georgia on August 7 and 8, overwhelming Georgian forces and drawing condemnation from the West. Russian forces pulled back into South Ossetia on Wednesday as part of a cease-fire brokered by the European Union.Georgia says Russia fully controlled Tskhinvali by August 10, but Russia has said Georgian troops inflicted most of the damage to civilian areas of South Ossetia.Lars Bromley, who heads the AAAS project to use satellites to monitor human rights abuses and conflict, said it was difficult to get images to verify the claims. "We were able to use only a few commercial satellites. Anyone with a credit card can order imagery from them and the competition was heavy," Bromley said in a telephone interview."What it does is it probably sheds some light on how much damage was done to Tskhinvali and other surrounding villages … while the Russians were in control and while the Georgians were in control," Bromley added. His group has documented conflicts in places such as Myanmar, Sudan and Ethiopia. The images, taken on August 10 and 19, show 424 civilian structures near Tskhinvali intact on August 10 but damaged by the 19th. In Tamarasheni 152 structures that were intact on August 10 seemed to have been damaged by the 19th. Amnesty said the images support on-the-ground reports that more than 100 civilian houses in Tskhinvali were shelled during the initial Georgian bombardment. "Amnesty International is particularly concerned by the reported formation in and around South Ossetia of irregular, locally organized armed groups able to act with impunity, increasing the potential dangers for civilians," the group said in a statement. It reported looting, burning and beatings. "To be sure, there was indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force on both sides of the conflict," Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch told a briefing earlier this week in Washington.”

click for full article  http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnTRE4984JU.html

“Russian president Dmitry Medvedev calls for Europe to freeze out US” – Telegraph

President Medvedev blamed Washington’s ‘economic egotism’ for the world’s financial woes Photo: AP

Confident that a spat with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Mr Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. Gone was the kind of war time rhetoric that saw Mr Medvedev lash out at the West and characterise his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili as a "lunatic". Instead Mr Medvedev spoke of a Russia that was "absolutely not interested in confrontation". Yet there was little doubt that Mr Medvedev was playing the divide-and-rule tactics of his predecessor Vladimir Putin by seeking to pit the United States against its European allies. In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the United States was at the root of all the world’s problems. He blamed Washington’s "economic egotism" for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy. He also maintained that the United States was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

"After toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States started a series of unilateral actions," Mr Medvedev said. "As a result, a trend appeared in international relations towards creating dividing lines. This was in fact the revival of a policy popular in the past and known as containment." While he called for a cooling of the noxious rhetoric that has blighted East-West relations in the past two years, Mr Medvedev clearly laid the blame for the deterioration on the United States, which he said was again viewing Russian through the prism of the Cold War. "Sovietology, like paranoia, is a very dangerous disease, and it is a pity that part of the US administration still suffers from it," he said. To remedy Washington’s ambitions to play the global policeman, Mr Medvedev proposed an overhaul of the world’s security and financial structures.

In order to end the "unipolar" model in which the world depended on the United States, he proposed creating new financial systems to challenge the dominance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, both of which had fallen under Washington’s spell. Slamming the enlargement of Nato, which he said had advance provocatively towards the borders of Russia, he also proposed drafting a new European Security Treaty. While Russia has insisted it is not intending to supplant Nato, Mr Medvedev made it clear that the US-dominated alliance was partly responsible for the war in the Caucasus by its failure to rein in Georgian "aggression". If the tone was softer, the theme of the speech was familiar, and drew comparisons with an address by Mr Putin in February last year in which the former president, now prime minister, railed against US "hyperpower". Many observers say that address heralded the beginning of a new era in East-West confrontation. "Medvedev’s speech was more balanced than previous ones, but it was still permeated with criticism of the United States," said Nikolai Petrov, a Russian foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Centre think-tank in Moscow. "He curtsies to Europe but what he proposes is ultimately anachronistic rather than constructive."

click for full article – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3159998/Russian-president-Dmitry-Medvedev-calls-for-Europe-to-freeze-out-US.html

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