Libyan war updates/Stop NATO news: June 30, 2011

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Libyan War: 13,184 NATO Sorties, 4,963 Combat Missions

African Union Condemns France For Arming Libyan Rebels

French Arms Deliveries Violation Of UN Resolution: Russia

Killing Of Libyan Civilians Weakens NATO’s War Stance

Canadian Warship Deploys To Mediterranean For NATO’s Libyan War

Mediterranean: U.S., Spain End Amphibious Assault Drills “To Go To War”

“Vancouver to Vladivostok”: NATO Chief Eyes North Africa, Middle East

“Expanding Fading Clout”: Russia Slams West’s Double Standards In Middle East

Pentagon: Ex-CIA Director Out, Ex-CIA Director In

Quarter Million Displaced: NATO Air Strikes, Raids Fuel Afghan Refugee Crisis

U.S. Building Alliance To Effect Regime Change In Syria

Serbia Submits Kosovo Organ Trafficking Draft To OSCE

China Warns Japan Over Disputed Islands

U.S. AFRICOM To Supply Burundi, Uganda With Drones For Somali War

Majority Of Russians Want Warsaw Pact-Type Counterweight To NATO

U.S. Forces Ordered Out Of Pakistani Air Base

NATO Still Pushing For Kazakh Troops In Afghanistan

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Libyan War: 13,184 NATO Sorties, 4,963 Combat Missions

http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/3/documents/Libya%20update%20June%2011/20110630oup-update[1].pdf

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 30, 2011

NATO and Libya
Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ

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Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations

Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 13,184 sorties, including 4,963 strike sorties, have been conducted.

Sorties conducted 29 JUNE: 149

Strike sorties conducted 29 JUNE: 55

…

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African Union Condemns France For Arming Libyan Rebels

http://en.rian.ru/world/20110630/164925545.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 30, 2011

AU condemns French arms drop to Libyan rebels – media

MOSCOW: African Union Commission Chief Jean Ping condemned on Thursday French arms supply to Libyan rebels, world media said on Thursday.

France has confirmed media reports that it dropped weapons to Berber tribal fighters in mountains southwest of the Libyan capital Tripoli without informing the other coalition countries taking part in a military operation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

“What worries us is not who is giving what, but simply that weapons are being distributed by all parties and to all parties,” Ping said ahead of an African Union summit in Equatorial Guinea. “We already have proof that these weapons are in the hands of al-Qaeda, of traffickers. These weapons will contribute to the destabilization of African states.”

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Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s NATO envoy, criticized certain NATO countries for interfering in Libya.

“Individual NATO countries have basically started giving direct military aid to one of the warring sides,” Rogozin said, adding that this could be qualified as direct interference in an internal conflict.

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French Arms Deliveries Violation Of UN Resolution: Russia

http://en.rian.ru/world/20110630/164934759.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 30, 2011

French arms sales to Libya in breach of UN resolution – Lavrov

Moscow: France’s distribution of weapons to Libyan tribes, if confirmed, is a blatant violation of the UN Security Council resolution, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

“We asked our French colleagues today if reports are true that weapons to Libyan rebels came from France. We are waiting for their answer,” Lavrov said. “This, if confirmed, is a serious breach of the UN Security Council Resolution 1970.”

French media reported that weapons were dropped to Berber tribal fighters in the mountains southwest of the Libyan capital Tripoli without informing the other coalition countries taking part in a military operation against Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi. Reports said the load included anti-tank rockets and even light armored vehicles.

Thierry Burkhard, spokesman for the French general staff, confirmed on Wednesday that arms distribution took place but said only light arms and ammunition were airdropped.

….

The international military operation began on March 19 following a UN resolution and was extended until late September.

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http://rt.com/news/france-supplying-rebels-country/

RT
June 30, 2011

Russia criticizes France over arming Libyan rebels

France has become the first country openly to admit it has supplied the Libyan rebels with weapons – a measure banned by the UN Security Council. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has labeled the move as a major violation of the UN resolution.

“We have asked our French colleagues if the statement about weapon supply from France to the Libyan rebels is true,” Lavrov said. “We are waiting for the answer. If that is proved to be true, that would be a major violation of the UN resolution 1970.”

The move was also condemned by the African Union, while China indirectly objected to it.

A French military spokesman, Colonel Thierry Burkhard, said the arms, including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, as well as munitions, were parachuted in to besieged rebels.

According to the official, the deliveries took place in early June in the western Nafusa Mountains…AP reported on Wednesday.

Chairman of the African Union Jean Ping has condemned the move in an interview with BBC, saying it threatens to put the entire region at risk.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei indirectly opposed France’s actions on Thursday, saying that countries should avoid actions that go beyond UN Security Council directives.

Spokesman for the rebels Mahmoud Jibrilm who is now in Austria, said more weapons are needed to fight against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. He also said the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council needs large amounts of money from foreign sponsors to fund its programs for civilians.

Meanwhile the UK on Thursday said that it is supplying body armor to the rebels. Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK was offering 5,000 sets of body armor, 6,650 police uniforms, 5,000 high-visibility vests and communication tools to Benghazi. The equipment is meant for the rebel police.

­“Armed rebels are not civilians, which the UN wants to protect”

France has been among the main powers behind the NATO-led air campaign, officially aimed at protecting civilians from assaults by Gaddafi’s forces. However, many view a change of regime in Libya as the main reason of the alliance’s involvement in the country.

The Libyan National Transitional Council last week also received its first tranche of financial help from the international community to the amount $100 million, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague announced on Wednesday. The rebels are receiving funds from several nations including the US, the UK, Italy and France.

The UN Security Council resolution 1970, which was adopted on February 26, imposed an arms embargo on the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, preventing weapons from being supplied to anyone in Libya. The UN Security Council resolution 1973, which established a no-fly zone over Libya, allowed NATO countries “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”

As the unrest has been continuing in Libya since mid-February, the fighting between the forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the rebels, backed by the NATO forces, seems to have reached a stalemate.

France’s admission to arming rebels undermines the whole reasoning behind the bombing campaign, says John Laughland, the director for the Institute of Democracy and Co-operation in Paris.

“The argument, as we know, war predicated on the accusation that Libyan government was attacking civilians. The admission that France war arming the rebels is very obviously an admission that what’s going on in Libya is a fight between the government and armed rebels, and armed rebels are not civilians. So any attack on the armed rebels in Libya is therefore not necessarily a war crime. In other words this news is not only incompatible with the case that’s being made for the war in Libya, it completely contradicts it,” he told RT.

­George Kenney, a former US diplomat, said that France had also apparently shipped a couple of light tanks to the rebels, and that this would only lead to more problems later.

“That was very foolish on the part of France. We do not know who these rebels are. We do not know what they are going to do with these weapons. And I would suspect that some significant percentage of the weapons will find their way into the hands of terrorists and will just become another problem for us to have to deal with later on.”

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Killing Of Libyan Civilians Weakens NATO’s War Stance

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15195397,00.html

Deutsche Welle
June 28, 2011

NATO sees support waver after airstrike kills civilians in Libya

NATO aircraft have been bombing Gadhafi targets for over three months, but the Libyan leader has clung to power. Now NATO is taking criticism for civilian deaths in recent air strikes, and some allies are nervous.

This week marked the three-month anniversary since the start of NATO’s military operations in Libya, but there was little sign of a breakthrough.

Earlier this month, NATO acknowledged…killing several civilians during a bombing raid in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. NATO admitted in a statement that the civilians were killed when allied warplanes failed to hit a Libyan missile site.

The casualties have prompted accusations that NATO has overstepped its United Nations mandate. Even within the Alliance, some have voiced concern about where the campaign is heading.

Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini told reporters last week that NATO’s reputation was on the line.

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Uneasy feelings

On Monday, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity.

Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund in Washington said that the court’s decision could prolong NATO’s involvement.

“I do think the decision by the court in The Hague raises the stakes. It would make it much more difficult for the Gadhafi regime to accept a graceful exit,” said Lesser.

A pricy problem

Adding to NATO’s woes, key allies Britain and France are warning about the cost of the airstrikes, running at around 1 million euros ($143 million) per day. Others, like Canada, are considering pulling out in the autumn.

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NATO’s current mandate runs out at the end of September. And if there’s no breakthrough by then, it could be forced to reconsider its mission in Libya.

Author: Vanessa Mock, Brussels / smh
Editor: Michael Lawton

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Canadian Warship Deploys To Mediterranean For NATO’s Libyan War

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/124748004.html

Canadian Press
June 29, 2011

HMCS Vancouver headed for Mediterranean to take part in Libyan mission

ESQUIMALT, B.C. – The frigate HMCS Vancouver is preparing to leave for the Mediterranean Sea to take part in the NATO-led mission in Libya.

Vancouver, a Halifax-class frigate, carries about 250 officers and crew and includes a CH-124 Sea King helicopter and air detachment.

The ship will replace HMCS Charlottetown, which has been on patrol with NATO forces in the region since the early spring.

In March, Canada sent fighter jets, patrol planes, aerial tankers and the warship…

The mission includes bombing by NATO countries who are trying to drive Gadhafi from power.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird visited Libya this week after Canada recognized rebels fighting Gadhafi as the legitimate government of that country.

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http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/canadian-forces-frigate-deploy-mediterranean-sea-support-nato-operations-libya-1533229.htm

Marketwire
June 29, 2011

Canadian Forces Frigate to Deploy to the Mediterranean Sea in Support of NATO Operations for Libya

ESQUIMALT, BRITISH COLUMBIA: Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Vancouver will depart in the coming days to the Mediterranean Sea to join NATO forces…HMCS Vancouver will replace HMCS Charlottetown, which has been on patrol with NATO forces in the region since the early spring with Operation Unified Protector, on a regular rotation of ship and crew.

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“Our ships and sailors are always ready to do the job asked of them by Canada. I am proud that Vancouver will soon continue the important work off the coast of Libya..,” said Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden, Chief of the Maritime Staff. “Operating in the congested air-sea environment off Libya is particularly challenging, but the crew of Vancouver is well trained to meet this challenge and make a real difference.”

HMCS Vancouver, a Halifax-class frigate, is commanded by Commander Brad Peats, and carries a ship’s company of about 250 officers and crew, which includes a CH-124 Sea King helicopter and air detachment.

The Canadian contribution to Operation Unified Protector is known as Operation Mobile.

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Mediterranean: U.S., Spain End Amphibious Assault Drills “To Go To War”

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=61327

Navy NewsStand
June 29, 2011

U.S., Spain Complete Bilateral Amphibious, Aviation Exercise
From USS Bataan Public Affairs

-”What we do is train to go to war,” said Marine Corps Capt. John Bradley, PHIBRON-6 combat cargo officer. “So this is important when it comes time to go to war and do your job in the military. It equips us to train as a team; to train to fight, so if we actually get the call in a real-world situation to debark Marines, go ashore and fight in harms way … then the amphibious portion that takes place is not going to be an issue.”

USS BATAAN, At Sea: Sailors and Marines of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (BATARG) and 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) completed the bilateral Spanish Amphibious Landing Exercise (PHIBLEX) 2011 off the coast of Spain June 29.

The exercise, which began June 22, partnered 800 Spanish service members with 4,000 Sailors and Marines from the BATARG/22nd MEU for combined joint air and amphibious operations from the sea and on the shores of Spain.

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PHIBLEX was specifically developed to improve interoperability, increase readiness and develop professional relationships between the two forces.

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PHIBLEX took weeks of planning and coordination between Spanish and U.S. forces.

“PHIBLEX was the culmination of over six months of very deliberate planning and coordination between 22nd MEU, [U.S.] 6th Fleet, U.S. Embassy [Spain], and Spanish planners that paid off over the last 10 days with some tremendously valuable military-to-military training,” said Col. Eric Steidl, 22nd MEU commanding officer…

PHIBLEX events included amphibious operations from the well decks of Bataan, dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) and amphibious transport dock USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), flight operations ashore and from the flight deck of Bataan, as well as parachute, fast rope, medical evacuation and non-combatant evacuation training from a military training facility in the area of Sierra Del Retin, Spain.

“It’s always a benefit when our two countries can work together,” said Spanish Marine Corps Major Carlier Grana, Commander Naval Group 2 operations officer. “In our current international environment, emerging risks exist that make it extremely important for us to be familiar with one another.”

The exercise culminated during a full-scale amphibious landing demonstration that combined surface, amphibious and flight operations.

“What we do is train to go to war,” said Marine Corps Capt. John Bradley, PHIBRON-6 combat cargo officer. “So this is important when it comes time to go to war and do your job in the military. It equips us to train as a team; to train to fight, so if we actually get the call in a real-world situation to debark Marines, go ashore and fight in harms way … then the amphibious portion that takes place is not going to be an issue.”

PHIBLEX required the movement of approximately 1,400 Marines, 134 vehicles and tons of equipment. Bradley coordinated with combat cargo teams from the Spanish military and aboard all three ships to conduct the massive offload ashore and keep the movement as smooth as possible.

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The BATARG and 22nd MEU deployed three months ahead of their original schedule to relieve the Kearsarge ARG and 26th MEU. The blue-green team conducted integrated training throughout April to arrive on station and provide the combatant commander with a versatile sea-based force that can be tailored to a variety of missions.

Bataan is the command ship of the BATARG, supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility.

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“Vancouver to Vladivostok”: NATO Chief Eyes North Africa, Middle East

http://finchannel.com/Main_News/World/89862_According_to_NATO,_Joint_responses_needed_to_promote_stability_in_Europe_and_neighbouring_regions/

The Financial (Georgia)
June 30, 2011

According to NATO, Joint responses needed to promote stability in Europe and neighbouring regions

VIENNA: NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen underscored the need for a comprehensive approach to security threats in Europe as well as in North Africa and the Middle East at the opening session of the OSCE’s Annual Security Review Conference in Vienna today.

He called for deepening co-operation between NATO and the OSCE to address challenges including Afghanistan, arms control, transnational threats and promoting democratic reforms.

“The OSCE is a crucial part of Europe’s security architecture. And NATO is another,” said Rasmussen. “We both share the aim expressed in last year’s Astana Declaration of building a ‘free, democratic, common and indivisible security community from Vancouver to Vladivostok’. A security community that must be rooted in agreed principles, shared commitments and common goals.”

State Secretary Kęstutis Jankauskas, representing Lithuania’s OSCE Chairmanship, said: “One of the important priorities of the Lithuanian Chairmanship is to enhance co-operation with other international and regional organizations, and to profile the OSCE as a suitable platform for dialogue and interaction between relevant international actors. Our meeting takes place within the larger context of a re-examination of the security landscape in the OSCE area. Therefore, ‘comparing notes’ with other security organizations on their perception of existing challenges to our common security, as well as on future trends, is of exceptional importance.”

In this regard, Rasmussen emphasized the need to co-ordinate and complement operations, including in Afghanistan, and to improve responses to transnational threats such as terrorism.

“Terrorism is another major issue that both NATO and the OSCE must deal with,” said Rasmussen. “We could consider joint training and education for our own staffs before we deploy them. We could reinforce our combined efforts on security sector reform. And we could broaden our co-operation to include training of security forces.”

On promoting democracy and human rights, Rasmussen addressed the importance of advancing democratic reforms in the OSCE area, as well as supporting partner countries and neighbouring regions, including North Africa and the Middle East.

“Since January this year, men and women across North Africa and the Middle East have shown real courage. They have cried out for freedom. And they have triggered a wave of change across their region, and beyond,” he said. “At NATO, we are actively considering just how we might respond to requests for help. The OSCE is also giving this careful thought.”

Rasmussen added: “The range of possibilities for practical support is wide. But the intention must be the same…”

“NATO and the OSCE have a shared past in making Europe more stable and secure. Our job now is to make tomorrow even more secure.”

The OSCE Annual Security Review Conference provides a framework for enhancing security dialogue and for reviewing security work undertaken by the OSCE and its 56 participating States.

As a regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter, the OSCE serves as a forum for co-operation with regional and sub-regional organizations and initiatives in the OSCE area.

Recognizing that the “risks and challenges we face today cannot be met by a single State or Organization”, the participating States in Istanbul in 1999 adopted the Platform for Co-operative Security to define the Organization’s work with international partners and acknowledge “the key integrating role that the OSCE can play”.

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“Expanding Fading Clout”: Russia Slams West’s Double Standards In Middle East

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/30/52610641.html

Voice of Russia
June 30, 2011

Russia slams West’s ‘double standards’ in Mideast

Russia describes as inadmissible the West’s attempts to replace some regimes in the Arab world, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a State Duma session in Moscow on Thursday.

“Russia is up in arms against the West’s efforts to expand its fading Middle East clout by politicizing processes currently under way in some Middle East countries”, Lavrov said.

He berated the United States and EU countries for pursuing policy of double standards in relation to Syria and Yemen, which Lavrov said are yet to resolve their domestic deadlocks.

“With civil war showing no signs of abating in Yemen, no one turns to the UN Security Council for help”, Lavrov lamented.

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Pentagon: Ex-CIA Director Out, Ex-CIA Director In

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/New-US-Defense-Secretary-Panetta-Faces-Many-Challenges-124650499.html

Voice of America News
June 28, 2011

New US Defense Secretary Panetta Faces Many Challenges
Meredith Buel

Washington: Leon Panetta, 73, will become the 23rd U.S. secretary of defense, replacing the retiring Robert Gates on July 1.

Decade of war

The United States has been a nation at war for nearly a decade and the all-volunteer force has been stretched by years of combat. More than 1,500 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan and the war has become increasingly unpopular with the American public.

While a third of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are to be withdrawn by the middle of next year, the new secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, says there is still significant work to be done.

“My first task at DOD [Department of Defense] will be to ensure that we prevail in the conflicts that we are engaged in,” Panetta said. “In Afghanistan, we must continue to degrade the Taliban.”

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Panetta comes to the Pentagon after serving as chief of the CIA, where he supervised the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Panetta has also been a strong supporter of increased drone attacks…along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

“We are engaged in the most aggressive operations in the history of the CIA in that part of the world..,” Panetta said.

Those drone attacks are very unpopular in Pakistan and managing the relationship with Islamabad is another major test for the new defense secretary.

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Quarter Million Displaced: NATO Air Strikes, Raids Fuel Afghan Refugee Crisis

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/nato-airstrikes-night-raids-blamed-for-afghan-idp-crisis-report

AlertNet
June 29, 2011

NATO airstrikes, night raids blamed for Afghan IDP crisis –report
Katie Nguyen

LONDON: More than 250,000 Afghans have fled their villages in the last two years, Refugees International said in a report blaming U.S. counterinsurgency strategy for causing greater instability in Afghanistan and forcing more people from their homes.

“President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan has not prioritized the needs of hundreds of thousands of Afghans whose lives have been made worse since the war began,” Refugees International President Michel Gabaudan said in a statement.

Not only have NATO-led troops and Afghan forces failed to protect Afghans, but international airstrikes and night raids by U.S. Special Forces were destroying homes, crops and infrastructure, traumatising civilians and displacing tens of thousands of people, the advocacy group said.

The number of people displaced since the beginning of the year has more than doubled to 91,000 compared to the same period last year. In the north alone, nearly 30,000 people have been uprooted, a sevenfold increase compared to last year, it said.

Internal displacement is not new in a country that has suffered a decade of conflict. But the pattern of displacement in Afghanistan had changed, U.S.-based Refugees International said.

“Before the military escalated its campaign, Afghans were fleeing for brief periods and returning home shortly thereafter,” it said. “Now, people are increasingly unwilling to go back to their homes because they are afraid their villages are unsafe.”

Exacerbating the crisis were militias, many funded and trained by the United States as part of the Afghan Local Police programme favoured by U.S. General David Petraeus.

Security analysts have repeatedly raised fears the units could lead to a repeat of the tribal militias that received covert U.S. backing to fight the 1979 Soviet invasion, before later turning on their own government.

The defence units are meant to provide security for villagers wanting to resist the Taliban. But many of them are increasing insecurity, particularly in the south, with members accused of looting, harassing and forcibly taxing villages, Refugees International said.

It called on the U.S. Congress to withhold funding for the initiative until proper recruitment, vetting and command/control systems were in place.

LIMITED HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE

Refugees International’s report comes a week after President Barack Obama announced he was ordering 10,000 U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of the year and 23,000 more by next summer, leaving some 70,000 U.S. troops on the ground.

The report, based on field research carried out last month, also criticised foreign and Afghan troops for failing to share information with aid organisations about the humanitarian needs and displacement patterns in areas where they operate.

In a symptom of the “fractured” relations aid groups had with the military brass, monthly NGO meetings with the deputy commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul had stopped altogether, Refugees International said.

“At best, military coordination with humanitarian agencies is ad-hoc and personality-driven, worsened by the high turnover rates of the military,” it said.

To tackle increasingly difficult humanitarian challenges in Afghanistan, the United Nations should immediately fill the post of Humanitarian Coordinator, which has been vacant for seven months, Refugees International said.

It also suggested that the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR double the number of humanitarian affairs and protection officers. For example, UNHCR has only one protection officer to cover nine northern provinces.

Not only have Afghans had to contend with the conflict but a drought in the north and increasing food prices have made life harder, leaving few options for safety or survival.

In one case a group of internally displaced people from northwestern Badgis province told researchers they had been uprooted more than five times in one year, and were forced to live in a cave during one period of intense fighting.

(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)

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U.S. Building Alliance To Effect Regime Change In Syria

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2011/me_syria0797_06_29.asp

World Tribune
June 29, 2011

U.S. now quietly seeking regime change in Syria

-In late June, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a proposal to enhance military monitoring of Syria. Officials said the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet was stationed near the Syrian coast of the eastern Mediterranean…

WASHINGTON: [T]he United States is seeking to build an alliance against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama was urging several U.S. allies in the region to undermine the Assad regime amid the revolt in Syria. They said Obama has sent messages to several of Syria’s neighbors, particularly Israel, Jordan and Turkey.

“The United States cannot be seen as being involved in regime change in Syria, but it is clear that Assad must go for the sake of regional stability,” an official said.

Officials said Obama has urged Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to improve relations with Israel as part of a strategy against Assad. They said the president envisioned that Ankara and Jerusalem coordinate intelligence and military deployment…

In June, Israel and Turkey conducted high-level talks meant to improve relations and cooperation. Officials said Erdogan agreed to an Israeli request to stop a Turkish-flagged flotilla from sailing to the Gaza Strip, under siege since the Hamas takeover in 2007.

Officials said Obama, who has not publicly addressed Syria since May 19, was changing U.S. policy toward Assad. They said the change came in wake of recent talks between Obama and Erdogan in which the Turkish prime minister warned that Assad’s crackdown could destroy Syria and lead to a separate Kurdish entity along the borders of Iraq and Turkey.

“Once Erdogan stopped his support for Assad, the president quickly changed as well, although he kept this private,” the official said.

In late June, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a proposal to enhance military monitoring of Syria. Officials said the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet was stationed near the Syrian coast of the eastern Mediterranean…

Officials said Obama has been alarmed by the prospect of a military clash between Syria and Turkey. They said most of the Syrian Army’s Fourth Division, led by Assad’s younger brother, Maher, has been deployed along the Turkish border.

“Turkey sees this as a threat and could lash out before long,” the official said. “There is an attempt, coordinated with other neighbors of Syria, to force Assad to withdraw his forces from the Turkish border.”

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Serbia Submits Kosovo Organ Trafficking Draft To OSCE

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2011&mm=06&dd=29&nav_id=75181

Tanjug News Agency
June 29, 2011

Serbia submits Kosovo organ trafficking draft to OSCE

COPENHAGEN: Serbia has proposed to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe a draft resolution on Kosovo organ trafficking.

It requires an urgent international investigation of allegations that atrocities were committed in Kosovo and Albania in 1999 and 2000.

Members of ethnic Albanian KLA have been named in Council of Europe Rapporteur Dick Marty’s report as perpetrators of the crimes, while their victims were Serb and other civilians kidnapped in the province.

The draft will be discussed at the annual meeting of OSCE PA in Belgrade from July 6 to 10, it was announced on Wednesday in Copenhagen.

The trafficking of human beings is one of the worst crimes against humanity, but the trade in human organs is an extreme form of this crime, head of the Serbian delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly Suzana Grubješić, who filed the resolution, said.

The resolution, which is supported by 41 OSCE PA members from 17 countries, calls for closer international cooperation in the fight against criminal organizations involved in trafficking in human organs, OSCE PA said.

The Serbian delegation has scheduled a special meeting on the fight against illegal human organ trafficking for July 9 in Belgrade to further highlight the issue.

The event will be addressed by Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, and Grubješić.

The OSCE PA will hold its 20th annual meeting from July 6 to 10 in Belgrade, which will be attended by over 250 delegates from over 50 countries.

Parliamentarians will consider the inclusion of the resolution in the Belgrade Declaration, which will help shape future policies of OSCE member states.

All members present will vote on both documents.

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China Warns Japan Over Disputed Islands

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-06/29/c_13957297.htm

Xinhua News Agency
June 29, 2011

China reaffirms position on Diaoyu Islands

BEIJING: China reaffirmed its position on the Diaoyu Islands Wednesday, saying that any move by Japan against China’s sovereignty over the islands was “illegal and invalid.”

“China’s indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands has been inherent since ancient times,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement.

Media reports said a fishing boat from Taiwan was disturbed Wednesday morning by the Japanese Coast Guard while sailing around the Diaoyu Islands.

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U.S. AFRICOM To Supply Burundi, Uganda With Drones For Somali War

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13946702

BBC News
June 29, 2011

Uganda and Burundi to get US drones to fight Islamists

The US is supplying drone aircrafts to Uganda and Burundi to help them fight Islamist militants in Somalia, its defence officials have told the BBC.

The four drones will be part of a $45m (£28m) military aid package aid to the two countries.

Uganda and Burundi contribute the 9,000 troops to an African peace force in Somalia battling Islamists that control much of the country.

The US military command for Africa (Africom) confirmed to the BBC that the Pentagon plan was to strengthen Uganda’s and Burundi’s counter-terrorism capabilities.

The military aid is to include body armour, night-vision gear, communications and surveillance systems.

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The US has a military base in neighbouring Djibouti where some 3,000 US troops, as well as armour, aircraft and drones are based.

…

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Majority Of Russians Want Warsaw Pact-Type Counterweight To NATO

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=255901

Interfax
June 30, 2011

Russians want military block of Warsaw Pact dimension to be recreated – poll

MOSCOW: Two thirds (66%) of Russian citizens, mostly young people (84%), do not remember or do not know that a Warsaw Treaty Organization existed and was disbanded 20 years ago, but many are convinced that Russia needs an organization of this kind today, sociologists have reported.

Only one third (34%) of respondents polled by VTsIOM pollster in June could remember what this organization was about, VTsIOM experts told Interfax on Wednesday.

The overall image of the organization is generally positive and many said that it helped maintain peace after World War II (12%), aimed to unite all socialist countries (9%), resist NATO (9%) and guarantee the social camp’s security (8%).

Asked whether Russia needs a new organization similar to the Warsaw Pact or NATO, half of the respondents answered in the affirmative (51%) and one quarter (23%) said “No.”

The Warsaw Pact, the military union of the European socialist countries, was formed after the relevant treaty was signed on May 14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. It emerged after Germany joined NATO. It was a defensive treaty, which aimed to maintain the member-states’ security and to safeguard peace in Europe.

A protocol, disbanding the Warsaw Pact, was signed in Prague on July 1, 1991, in connection with reforms launched in the Soviet Union and other Central and East European countries.

====

U.S. Forces Ordered Out Of Pakistani Air Base

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/30/52597301.html

Voice of Russia
June 30, 2011

U.S. forces told to vacate Pakistani air base

Islamabad has asked U.S. forces to withdraw from the Shamsi air base in northeast Pakistan. Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar told reporters on Wednesday that the base would be vacated soon and that it had already been leased to the United Arab Emirates.

The United States used the Shamsi air base for supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan and for drone attacks on Taliban camps along the Pakistani-Afghan border, which inflicted civilian casualties amid angry protests in Pakistan.

====

NATO Still Pushing For Kazakh Troops In Afghanistan

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/30/52594120.html

Voice of Russia
June 30, 2011

Kazakhstan mulls Afghan mission

Kazakhstan may send peacekeepers to Afghanistan. Ural Mukhamedzhanov, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, the Majilis, reminded reporters on Thursday that the lower house had already given its consent.

Earlier, the upper house rejected the proposal but will take it up in autumn.

====

Plutarch: On war and its opponents

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Plutarch
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Translated by John Dryden

From Tiberius Gracchus

…Tiberius, maintaining an honourable and just cause, and possessed of eloquence sufficient to have made a less creditable action appear plausible, was no safe or easy antagonist, when, with the people crowding around the hustings, he took his place, and spoke in behalf of the poor. “The savage beasts,” said he, “in Italy, have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and light and, having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children.” He told them that the commanders were guilty of a ridiculous error, when, at the head of their armies, they exhorted the common soldiers to fight for their sepulchres and altars; when not any amongst so many Romans is possessed of either altar or monument, neither have they any houses of their own, or hearths of their ancestors to defend. They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men. They were styled the masters of the world, but in the meantime had not one foot of ground which they could call their own.

From Numa Pompilius

Numa was about forty years of age when the ambassadors came to make him offers of the kingdom; the speakers were Proculus and Velesus, one or other of whom it had been thought the people would elect as their new king; the original Romans being for Proculus, and the Sabines for Velesus. Their speech was very short, supposing that, when they came to tender a kingdom, there needed little to persuade to an acceptance; but, contrary to their expectations, they found that they had to use many reasons and entreaties to induce one, that lived in peace and quietness, to accept the government of a city whose foundation and increase had been made, in a manner, in war. In presence of his father and his kinsman Marcius he returned answer that “Every alteration of a man’s life is dangerous to him; but madness only could induce one who needs nothing, and is satisfied with everything, to quit a life he is accustomed to; which, whatever else it is deficient in, at any rate has the advantage of certainty over one wholly doubtful and unknown. Though, indeed, the difficulties of this government cannot even be called unknown; Romulus, who first held it, did not escape the suspicion of having plotted against the life of his colleague Tatius; nor the senate the like accusation, of having treasonably murdered Romulus. Yet Romulus had the advantage to be thought divinely born and miraculously preserved and nurtured. My birth was mortal; I was reared and instructed by men that are known to you. The very points of my character that are most commended mark me as unfit to reign, love of retirement and of studies inconsistent with business, a passion that has become inveterate in me for peace, for unwarlike occupations, and for the society of men whose meetings are but those of worship and of kindly intercourse, whose lives in general are spent upon their farms and their pastures. I should but be, methinks, a laughingstock, while I should go about to inculcate the worship of the gods and give lessons in the love of justice and the abhorrence of violence and war, to a city whose needs are rather for a captain than for a king.”

*****

When Numa had…won the favour and affection of the people, he set himself without delay to the task of bringing the hard and iron Roman temper to somewhat more of gentleness and equity. Plato’s expression of a city in high fever was never more applicable than to Rome at that time; in its origin formed by daring and warlike spirits, whom bold and desperate adventure brought thither from every quarter, it had found in perpetual wars and incursions on its neighbours its after sustenance and means of growth, and in conflict with danger the source of new strength; like piles, which the blows of the hammer serve to fix into the ground. Wherefore Numa, judging it no slight undertaking to mollify and bend to peace the presumptuous and stubborn spirits of this people, began to operate upon them with the sanctions of religion. He sacrificed often and used processions and religious dances, in which most commonly he officiated in person; by such combinations of solemnity with refined and humanizing pleasures, seeking to win over and mitigate their fiery and warlike tempers…

Libyan war updates/Stop NATO news: June 29, 2011

====

Libya: NATO Air Missions Exceed 13,000, Combat Sorties Near 5,000

Democracy By Order Of Washington: Next Targets North Africa, Middle East

Senate Gives Obama Blessing For Military Intervention In Libya

Wisconsin Air National Guard Deployed For NATO’s Libyan War

Five Lessons Of The Balkan Conflict

Montenegro: NATO Chief Completing Total Absorption Of Balkans

U.S. Special Forces Chief Nominee Pushes Afghan Night Raids

Afghanistan: NATO Loses Three Drones In As Many Days

Two NATO Soldiers Killed In Southern Afghanistan

Next U.S./NATO Afghan War Commander: 100,000 Foreign Troops To Stay

NATO Chief, North Atlantic Council To Visit Georgia

NATO To Hold “Emerging Security Challenges” Conference In Georgia

NATO, U.S. Experts, Training Group To Visit Azerbaijan

Romania: U.S. Trains Azerbaijani Troops In “Marine Landing Operations”

American Ambassador: U.S., Azerbaijan Share Strategic Interests In Caspian

Baltic Assembly: Azerbaijan Is GUAM’s Leading Force

Pentagon To Concentrate On Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

Germany: Fighter Jets Scream Overhead As NATO Rehearses Next War

Saudi Troops To Stay In Bahrain

Pilots Trained In United States: Morocco Becomes 25th “F-16 Ally”

Iran Denies Plans To Bomb NATO Bases In Turkey If Syria Attacked

Pakistan: NATO Accused Of Infiltrating Militants Into Border Areas

====

Libya: NATO Air Missions Exceed 13,000, Combat Sorties Near 5,000

http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/3/documents/Libya%20update%20June%2011/20110629_110629-oup-update.pdf

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 29, 2011

NATO and Libya
Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ

…

Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations

Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 13,035 sorties, including 4,908 strike sorties, have been conducted.

Sorties conducted 28 JUNE: 148

Strike sorties conducted 28 JUNE: 58

…

====

Democracy By Order Of Washington: Next Targets North Africa, Middle East

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/29/52565554.html

Voice of Russia
June 29, 2011

Dermocracy by order of Washington
Pyotr Iskanderov

-The hidden agenda of the Community is the erection of a cordon around Russia by the U.S and having malleable client countries fits the plan snugly.
East European nations and the Baltic countries are of strategic importance to the U.S in terms of political support throughout the world.
-The next plan of the U.S is the redrawing of the maps of North Africa, the Middle and Near East.

Members of The Community of Democracies are due to meet on June 30-July 1 in Vilnius at a foreign ministerial level. The U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be at the meeting.

The Community of Democracies is an international organization of democracies and democratizing countries with a stated commitment to strengthening and deepening of democratic norms and practices worldwide. It was founded in 2000 on the initiative of the then U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the Polish Foreign Minister Bronislav Geremek. Countries in Eastern Europe and former republics in the old Soviet Union, regarded by the West as the precursors of democracy joined the Community.

According to a press release by the US State Department, the Vilnius meeting will be attended by officials, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, budding leaders and private sectors representatives, and they are to discuss the strengthening of civil societies and the fledgling democracies.

It should be pointed out that at the time when Madeleine Albright and Bronislav Geremek floated their idea, countries in Eastern Europe, which America called “New Europe,” had just burst onto the scene, but the old Europe, especially Germany and France, were not overjoyed that countries in Eastern Europe were upsetting the existing balance of forces. But the U.S administration was over the moon, because Poland, Lithuania, Estonia Latvia and other nations in the so-called new Europe would help strengthen U.S military and allied influences in Europe.

Not surprisingly, the initiative of the Community of Democracies raised more questions than answers, the major one being about the need for the Community, in view of the fact that the most active members are already members of the EU, an organization which is in a position to help European nations within the framework of the Union. The hidden agenda of the Community is the erection of a cordon around Russia by the U.S and having malleable client countries fits the plan snugly.

East European nations and the Baltic countries are of strategic importance to the U.S in terms of political support throughout the world.

American leaders who are skilled practitioners of double standards will benefit hugely from adopting different approaches to ties with Eastern European countries. Speaking in an interview for VOR, Victor Litovkin, senior editor of the “Independent Military Review,” said that the U.S position on Kosovo on the one hand, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the other hand, was a classic example of American double standards policy.

“The independence of Kosovo was their project. The US and East European nations fought for the tearing away of Kosovo from Serbia and were among the first to recognize it, although the grounds on which the argument for such independence were based are much weaker than the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia”, said Litovkin.

The next plan of the U.S is the redrawing of the maps of North Africa, the Middle and Near East. America is counting on the suppoort of its most loyal allies.

====

Senate Gives Obama Blessing For Military Intervention In Libya

http://rt.com/news/senate-obama-military-libya/

RT
June 29, 2011

Senate gives blessing to Obama for military intervention in Libya

In Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has finally authorized American involvement in the military mission – something President Obama was strongly pushing for.

­The vote was 14 to 5 in the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. The resolution gives approval for US warplanes and unmanned drones to continue limited strikes for up to one year, but forbids the deployment of ground troops.

At the Tuesday hearing, a top US State Department lawyer Harold Koh told a Senate panel, which was divided over Obama’s authority to commit US military resources to the conflict, that the US president was acting within the law in ordering military attacks against Libya. He insisted that the commander-in-chief did not require congressional authorization for his actions.

“This administration is acting lawfully, consistent with both the letter and the spirit of the constitution and the War Powers Resolution,” Koh told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as quoted by AP.

At the same time, Koh faced both Republicans and Democrats who challenged his stance that air strikes and drone attacks on Gaddafi’s forces did not qualify as military intervention.

“We are contributing 70 per cent of the coalition’s intelligence capabilities and the majority of its refuelling assets. The fact that we are leaving most of the shooting to other countries does not mean the United States is not involved in acts of war,” AP quoted a top Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana as saying.

Just days ago, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted down a measure to carry on military action in Libya. This had no immediate effect on the campaign, but represented a symbolic falling-out between congress and the president.

====

Wisconsin Air National Guard Deployed For NATO’s Libyan War

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/124677684.html

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
June 28, 2011

State Air National Guard unit to support NATO effort
By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel

Members of the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s air refueling unit deployed this month in support of the NATO-led operation in Libya.

Col. Ted Metzgar, commander of the Wisconsin Air National Guard 128th Air Refueling Wing, and a team from the unit left Milwaukee for a 90-day deployment to refuel planes participating in Operation Unified Protector in the skies over Libya.

Metzgar assumed command of the 313th Air Expeditionary Wing in western Europe from a Pennsylvania Air National Guard refueling unit. The 313th Air Expeditionary Wing provides air refueling to NATO aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya.

====

Five Lessons Of The Balkan Conflict

http://en.rian.ru/valdai_op/20110629/164905004.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 29, 2011

Five lessons of the Balkan conflict
By Alexei Fenenko*

On June 25, twenty years ago, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. This was followed by the Serbo-Croatian (1991 – 1995), Bosnian (1992 – 1995), Kosovo (1998 – 1999) and Macedonian (2001) wars, which became the official facts in textbooks on the history of international relations. Thus, the question arises: Do the Balkan wars of the 1990s offer something more than academic interest?

I think they do. The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia took on global significance almost immediately. They became the platform for the formation of the contemporary world order, while at the same time revealing its new contradictions. In this sense, the Balkan wars of the 1990s taught us five lessons that are still relevant today.

Lesson One: The “Atlantic Community” (the EU and NATO) can exist as a united actor only if it has an external enemy. Otherwise, it is prone to break into groups of interest, like any system. The internationalization of the Balkan conflict began in December 1991, when Germany, despite the protests of Britain and France, unilaterally recognized the sovereignty of Slovenia and Croatia and threatened to withdraw from the European Community over it. This move alarmed Britain and France, so they began to view NATO as a mechanism to keep Germany’s growing independence in check. Moreover, this situation posed a threat to European integration. Thus, it was not Warsaw and Vilnius but London and Paris that were primarily responsible for strengthening the alliance in the early 1990s. The Americans took advantage of these sentiments and again joined NATO in its operations in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999).

This conclusion gives rise to some ideas about the prospects of the alliance’s military policy. Since 2001, NATO’s main opponent has been international terrorism, so the main mission was the operation in Afghanistan. But at the Lisbon Summit on November 20, 2010, NATO leaders pledged to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by 2014. On June 23, U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed that Americans are ready to implement the “Lisbon strategy.” Who will be the alliance’s new enemy after the Afghan war?

Lesson two: NATO remains the priority for the United States. It is how America makes its presence felt in Europe. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia frightened Americans, too. But the reason was not a serious human rights violation (if necessary, Washington can tolerate such things.) The key worry for the White House was the possibility of disagreement among the NATO allies. The growing rift between Britain and France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other hand, threatened to undermine transatlantic unity. Thus, the alliance needed some joint military operation that could unite the allies in shared sacrifice.

Alongside this, the Clinton Administration managed to solve another problem. In 1992, in the early days of the European Union, the Petersburg Declaration was adopted, which announced the new challenges of the Western European Union: humanitarian missions and crisis management. Washington considered this as an attempt to create duplicate NATO defense structures. Thus, the Balkan wars allowed them to assign both of these missions to the alliance. In 1996 (just after the Bosnian conflict) the “Berlin formula” was applied: the EU created its own armed forces based on NATO infrastructure. So far, Brussels has not been able to go beyond its scope.

Lesson three: The military operations in Yugoslavia clearly demonstrated that the U.S. would not allow the resurgence of communist regimes in the former Soviet bloc (except Russia). The Croats, Albanians, and Bosnian Muslims were no less cruel than the Serbs. However, NATO carried out a peace keeping operation only against the latter. Why? A possible explanation may be that the leader of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, emphasized his continuity with Tito’s communist regime. Yugoslavia was used as an example to show the socialists of Eastern Europe that they could gain power only if they accepted the conditions of the “Washington Consensus” (1989).

Lesson four: During the Balkan wars there appeared a new type of “war punishment.” Until the late 20th century, war had been traditionally aimed at forcing the enemy to compromise or to bend to the winner’s will. The latter required ground operations: the arrival of the victorious army to establish the desired order. Along with nuclear weapons, the technical impossibility of such a war largely guaranteed the peaceful nature of the Soviet-American relations.

Now the situation has changed. Air operations against the Bosnian Serbs and Yugoslavia, by contrast, were staged only to create conditions for regime change and the subsequent dismemberment of the country. From an ideological perspective, war is not waged on a state but on its “pernicious regime.” The regime is depicted as a pariah well in advance, thus threatening international stability. Similarly, an opposition must be created in advance to carry out the necessary changes.

Lesson five: The Balkan wars of the 1990s developed and consolidated a system of separated legitimacy. Adopted by the Clinton Administration in 1993, the concept of “expansion of democracy” included: (1) strengthening transatlantic unity, (2) the inclusion of the former socialist countries (except Russia) in the common institutions and (3) carrying out “humanitarian actions”. The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo consolidated this. A system was created within which certain regimes now can be given limited rights to conduct domestic policies on their own. Moreover, their leaders cannot be guaranteed personal safety under any circumstance (the “Arab Spring” of 2011 proved that such security is not guaranteed for the allies either, if the U.S. and the EU do not consider them fully legitimate).

These lessons show why the Balkan events caused such a nervous reaction in Russia. It was not because of the “Slavic unity” of 1914. Regarding the fate of Bosnia and Kosovo, Russian elite felt that both the U.S. and the EU countries considered Russia to be alien to them. Thus, it causes fears that under certain conditions the “Balkan scenario” may well be applied to Russia, too. Hence, the discussions over disarmament issues, human rights, criticism of domestic policy, etc. After the events in Yugoslavia, these issues have become not only a matter of morality (as it was during the Gorbachev period), but also an instrument for protecting or, conversely, weakening national security.

In the 1960s, the establishment of nuclear parity with the United States gave the Brezhnev elite a sense of external security that was unprecedented in Russian history. Without it, it would have been hardly possible to demolish or restructure the old system. However, in the 1990s, under the influence of the Balkan developments, this confidence began to recede. Another more vital, question arose: How would the world change if Russia’s military potential was diminished? This issue is still quite relevant today in the context of the Libyan war and the heated debate over missile defense.

*Alexei Fenenko is Leading Research Fellow, Institute of International Security Studies of RAS, Russian Academy of Sciences.

====

Montenegro: NATO Chief Completing Total Absorption Of Balkans

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_75568.htm

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 29, 2011

NATO Secretary General visits Montenegro and calls for Euro-Atlantic integration of the Western Balkans

-“My message to all the political leaders, of all the countries in this region, is clear. You are responsible for breaking with the past, and focusing on the future. For taking your countries forward. And into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community of nations.”

The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen visited Budva, Montenegro on Wednesday, 29th June 2011. During his visit, the Secretary General met with President Filip Vujanovic and with Prime Minister Igor Luksic.

They discussed progress made in the first year of Montenegro’s Membership Action Plan (MAP), the situation in the Western Balkans as well as NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and Libya. In a joint press conference with the Prime Minister, Mr. Rasmussen thanked Montenegro for substantial contributions to the Alliance’s operation in Afghanistan.

…

The Secretary General also commended the participation of Montenegro in the Adriatic Charter initiative aimed at providing trainers to Afghanistan.

…

Mr. Rasmussen stressed that the joint Adriatic Charter initiative “is an excellent example of how we can produce security in the future”.

…

Mr. Rasmussen also commended Montenegro for the constructive role it has played in promoting security and stability in the region.

“It is my vision to see all countries in the Western Balkans improve their relationship with NATO and the EU in the future”, he emphasised.

The Secretary General praised the Government of Montenegro for “its efforts to reform the Montenegrin society.”

“Your first year in the MAP process has been a great success. Montenegro has achieved a lot of progress in its reform process”.

The Secretary General underlined that nevertheless “there is still some work to do when it comes to fight against organised crime and corruption” and concluded: “I welcome the strong commitment of the Government to continue the reform work”.

In his address to the Adriatic Charter Conference, the Secretary General urged the leaders of the region to focus on the common ground and the common good.

“My message to all the political leaders, of all the countries in this region, is clear. You are responsible for breaking with the past, and focusing on the future. For taking your countries forward. And into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community of nations”, he said.

====

U.S. Special Forces Chief Nominee Pushes Afghan Night Raids

http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/afghanistan/top-special-ops-nominee-defends-night-raids-in-afghan-war-1.147757

Stars and Stripes
June 29, 2011

Top special ops nominee defends night raids in Afghan war

In spite of the criticism against U.S. and NATO forces’ use of night raids in Afghanistan, the man tapped to be the next head of Special Operations Command defended the practice during testimony before Congress, the National Journal reports.

Vice Adm. William McRaven, the man who commanded the operation that kill Osama bin Laden in May, told lawmakers that the missions, typically carried out by special forces, ***often are misconstrued as violent***, the journal reports. President Obama has nominated McRaven for the top special operations spot.

The use of night raids has been controversial and has drawn the ire of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who repeatedly has called for U.S. and NATO forces to stop conducting such missions.

In 2010, then-Gen. Stanley McChrystal put NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan under new orders to refrain from night raids whenever it’s not absolutely merited. Gen. David Petraeus reinstated more use of night raids when he took over as commander.

McRaven said ending night raids in the Afghan war, written about in the National Journal, would be detrimental to missions.

====

Afghanistan: NATO Loses Three Drones In As Many Days

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/28/52526944.html

Voice of Russia
June 29, 2011

ISAF drone crashes in A’stan

A NATO drone crashed in Afghanistan on Tuesday – already the third unmanned
aircraft to go down in the past three days, RIA Novosti reports.

Tuesday’s crash was in Kunar province and the previous two in Kapisa and Gerat
provinces.

The ISAF confirmed the incidents in a press release, noting that none of the
drones had come under ground fire.

A Taliban spokesman, meanwhile, said all the three had been shot down by rebels.

====

Two NATO Soldiers Killed In Southern Afghanistan

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=150467

Azeri Press Agency
June 28, 2011

Two US-led troops killed in Afghan war

Baku: Two US-led foreign soldiers have been killed in separate incidents in troubled southern Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, NATO says, APA reports quoting Press TV.

The US-led military alliance says one of the soldiers was killed in a militant attack and the other one in a bomb blast.

The coalition has neither disclosed the nationality of the soldiers nor the exact location of the incidents.

At least 276 US-led foreign forces have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.

Over 2,557 foreign troops have been killed since the US-led war began in Afghanistan a decade ago.

As the US-led forces casualties continue to rise in Afghanistan, public opinion in the United States and other Western countries is increasingly turning against the Afghan war.

The security situation has steadily deteriorated across Afghanistan over the past few years despite the presence of around 150,000 US-led foreign troops in the country.

====

Next U.S./NATO Afghan War Commander: 100,000 Foreign Troops To Stay

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=64491

U.S. Department of Defense
June 28, 2011

Allen Vows to Emulate Petraeus’ Leadership
By Lisa Daniel

-Allen recently became a special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after serving as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. He was the deputy commanding general of Multinational Force Iraq – West and commanded the II Marine Expeditionary Force in Anbar province, Iraq, from 2006 to 2008.

WASHINGTON: If he becomes the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen said he’ll seek to equal the strong leadership of his predecessor, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus.

“If confirmed, I will seek to emulate General Petraeus’ resolute leadership,” Allen said today during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Petraeus appeared before the committee last week for his confirmation hearing to become President Barack Obama’s CIA director, replacing Leon Panetta, who becomes defense secretary on July 1.

…

Allen noted that 68,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of NATO forces will remain in Afghanistan after the surge forces redeploy. He added under questioning that it will be enough to continue counterinsurgency operations there, and that if confirmed, he will monitor the drawdown closely.

“It is my intention, as commander, to monitor that progress,” he said. “Should I become concerned that our ability to accomplish our objectives is threatened, I will give forthright recommendations up the chain of command.”

Allen recently became a special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after serving as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. He was the deputy commanding general of Multinational Force Iraq – West and commanded the II Marine Expeditionary Force in Anbar province, Iraq, from 2006 to 2008.

If confirmed as commander in Afghanistan, Allen said he looks forward to serving again with Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the new ambassador in Afghanistan, and will “fully synchronize” military and civilian efforts there.

…

====

NATO Chief, North Atlantic Council To Visit Georgia

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1897876.html

Trend News Agency
June 28, 2011

NATO official to arrive in Georgia in November
N. Kirtskhalia

Tbilisi: Issues of conducting the NATO Council in Tbilisi have been considered today by Chairman of the Georgian Parliament David Bakradze and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen during a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The parties discussed the issues of NATO ambassadors’ and the NATO Secretary General’s visits to Tbilisi, the First Channel of the Georgian Public Broadcasting reported.

According to the preliminary data, the NATO Council will be held in Tbilisi in November. The Secretary General will chair the meeting.

This will be Rasmussen’s second visit to Tbilisi as NATO Secretary General. He was in Tbilisi in September last year.

====

NATO To Hold “Emerging Security Challenges” Conference In Georgia

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_75833.htm

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 29, 2011

NATO-Georgia conference on ”Emerging Security Challenges”
7- 8 July

NATO and Georgia will co-host a conference on “Emerging Security Challenges” on 7 and 8 July in Tbilisi.

The purpose of this conference, which is supported by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, is to bring together experts, academia, industry and policy makers from NATO and partner nations to discuss the cross-cutting nature of emerging security challenges (cyber defence, energy security and terrorism), identify measures to enhance the prevention and resilience to emerging security risks, and propose relevant research projects as part of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme.

…

====

NATO, U.S. Experts, Training Group To Visit Azerbaijan

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=150498

Azeri Press Agency
June 29, 2011

NATO expert groups to visit Azerbaijan next month
Rashad Suleymanov

Baku: Experts and training groups from NATO’s various organizations will visit Azerbaijan in July, the press service of the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan told APA.

NATO and US experts will visit Azerbaijan on July 5-6. During the visit they will discuss the continuation of expert assistance to the Military Academy of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the education sphere.

The mobile training group of NATO’s Naples Joint Forces Command will visit Baku on July 10-12.

The expert staff meeting will be held in Baku on July 20-23 with the participation of Izmir-based NATO Air Forces Command.

====

Romania: U.S. Trains Azerbaijani Troops In “Marine Landing Operations”

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1898147.html

Trend News Agency
June 29, 2011

Azerbaijani soldiers to attend int’l events
K. Zarbaliyeva

Baku: Azerbaijani servicemen are to take part in events held in several foreign countries in July.

According to the Azerbaijani-Turkish bilateral military cooperation plan, officers will take part in exercises on the open sea in Turkey from July 17 to Aug.9, the Defense Ministry told Trend.

Azerbaijani servicemen will participate in a command and staff course with ground troops in Pakistan from July 18 to June 17, 2012 in accordance with the Azerbaijani-Pakistani bilateral cooperation plan.

According to the Azerbaijani-German bilateral cooperation program, officers will take part in the fourth international training workshop on the efficient training of medical personnel for peacekeeping operations in Munich on July 18-22.

According to the Azerbaijani-America worker plan, Azerbaijani officers are to take part in the “Marine landing operations” in Romania from July 27 to 31 July.

====

American Ambassador: U.S., Azerbaijan Share Strategic Interests In Caspian

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1898065.html

Trend News Agency
June 29, 2011

Ambassador Matthew Bryza: US and Azerbaijan are sharing three sets of strategic interests
V. Zhavoronkova

Baku: US-Azerbaijani relations are strong and are growing stronger, the US ambassador to Azerbaijan Matthew Bryza said in an interview with Trend on the eve of the U.S. Independence Day, celebrated on July 4.

“We did go through a difficult period for several months but I strongly feel that we not only have come out of the negative trend but we’ve built on an already existing strong foundation and we are moving forward,” he said.

He said the US and Azerbaijan share three sets of strategic interests: interests in security, in energy and in internal reforms.

“Not in any particular order, just three broad sets of interest we believe need to keep moving forward together at the same time so that we can achieve our broad strategic goals and so we can have a stable and deepening partnership,” he said.

Security dialogue

Last Friday’s bilateral security dialog was very positive and achieved several concrete results, said Bryza.

“One is that we are going to accelerate our cooperation to help Azerbaijan protect its critical energy infrastructure. Two, move ahead with some military exercises and cooperative programs including one that will take place in Romania in August, one other one will be in Germany involving a hundred or more Azerbaijani solders with NATO partners,” said the ambassador.

He said the sides also had a chance in depth to exchange US and Azerbaijani views on how to work together to achieve common strategic goals and even how to find those common strategic goals.

…

Cooperation in Caspian

The US has been working for years with Azerbaijan and international companies on investing in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the South Caucasus gas pipeline to help ensure that the physical security of those projects will be maintained, the Ambassador said.

“Now we realize that offshore on the Caspian sea there are a limited number, small number of very important pieces of infrastructure like oil and gas platforms and underwater pipelines that are responsible for huge amount of wealth generated in this country,” said Bryza.

And they are also very responsible to our European allies as they diversify their supplies of natural gas as well as oil, he said.

…

Compared to where the overall question of exporting Caspian gas to Europe was in 2005 and 2006, he said.

“There has been a dramatic set of activities, set of changes the strategic map and a commercial map in this part of the world and in Europe in a profound way and that is great. That is great for everyone,” said Bryza.

Countries in Europe and companies from Europe are working with Azerbaijani partners to increase competition for European gas markets, he said.

…

“Similarly on [the] Trans-Caspian, we in the United States and our European Union allies who will consume the gas believe it makes sense for some volume of gas from the Eastern side of the Caspian Sea to come to Europe via the Southern Corridor, said the Ambassador.

“Of course, it doesn’t make sense for all of that gas to come Eastward, but some of it. Some of it is just situated in deposits in the Caspian Sea or near the Caspian Sea for which the most economical mode of export is across the Caspian Sea.

“And the United States will not consume any of the natural gas probably ever because it will all go to Europe,” said Bryza.

“But we have an interest in our friends who produce the natural gas being able to decide their own future, their own destiny as independent states that we respect. If they decide to send gas in one direction or another, we believe they should have a right to do so, and we hope some will make its way to Europe. And we can only hope that they will find a way to do this as the states themselves have said regardless of what they ultimately decide where to draw their boundary,” said Bryza.

====

Baltic Assembly: Azerbaijan Is GUAM’s Leading Force

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=150539

Azeri Press Agency
June 29, 2011

Vice-Speaker of Baltic Assembly: “Azerbaijan is GUAM’s leading force”
Rashad Suleymanov

-A resolution on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity was adopted in the organization in 2009.
Reirs noted that one of the important issues for Latvia was energy security…

Baku: The First Deputy Speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament Ziyafet Asgarov received a delegation led by the president of the Baltic Assembly, Chairman of the Latvian delegation to this organization Janis Reirs, the press service of the Azerbaijani Parliament told APA.

Noting the greater strengthening of relations between the countries, Reirs said that Latvia intended to increase investment capital in Azerbaijan. The chances of the Azerbaijani side to invest capital in Latvia are broad.

Speaking about the GUAM [Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova] forum which will be held in October, Reirs underlined that Azerbaijan was a leading force of this organization and noted the importance of broadening the relations between the Baltic Assembly and GUAM.

They noted the importance of public statements on the history of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and its peaceful solution. It was said that the processes in the South Caucasus are kept in the focus of attention in the Baltic Assembly. A resolution on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity was adopted in the organization in 2009.

Reirs noted that one of the important issues for Latvia was energy security and wished the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan to open its representation in their country.

Vice-speaker Asgarov said that Azerbaijan was interested in cooperation with the Baltic Assembly.

====

Pentagon To Concentrate On Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

http://en.trend.az/news/karabakh/1898475.html

Trend News Agency
June 29, 2011

Pentagon to concentrate on separate areas of Nagorno-Karabakh settlement

The Pentagon cannot ignore the fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement is a major problem for Azerbaijan and Armenia. It causes significant problems in U.S. relations with these countries, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasian Affairs Celeste Wallander said in an interview with the Armenian Service of “Liberty” radio.

She said that Pentagon intends to concentrate on those areas of the Nagorno-Karabakh where it can provide constructive assistance to Armenia and Azerbaijan, News.am. reported.

…

====

Germany: Fighter Jets Scream Overhead As NATO Rehearses Next War

http://www.usafe.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123261897

U.S. Air Forces in Europe
June 28, 2011

Extensive planning effort pays off at Allied Strike 2011
by Capt. Tristan Hinderliter
USAFE Public Affairs

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany: Fighter jets scream overhead here as the execution phase of Allied Strike 2011 is in full swing this week, capping months of extensive planning that has brought together nearly 350 people from the U.S. and 14 NATO partner nations for the largest Close Air Support exercise in Europe.

“The planning effort was massive,” said Capt. Ruven Yarbrough, exercise deputy director from the 4th Air Support Operations Group in Heidelberg, Germany. “It was a giant undertaking, but one that we could do…”

This is the fifth iteration of the annual exercise, which has grown exponentially each year. Planning for this year’s exercise really started right after last year’s exercise, although most of the planning has happened in the past nine months…

As part of the planning process, exercise organizers looked closely at the after-action reports from the previous year, building on the good and improving on or cutting the bad. In addition to the Joint Terminal Attack Controllers the exercise is designed to train, many other career fields integral to the exercise were involved in the planning process, including Weather, Security Forces, Combat Communications, Intelligence, Logistics, Transportation and others.

…

====

Saudi Troops To Stay In Bahrain

http://en.rian.ru/world/20110629/164898915.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 29, 2011

No plans to pull out all Saudi troops from Bahrain – source

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has no plans to withdraw its entire security contingent from Bahrain “because the threats still remain,” a Bahrain government source told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

A 1,500-strong force from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, dubbed the Peninsula Shield, was sent to Bahrain in mid-March to help quell Shiite opposition protests that swept the country since February.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia was preparing to pull out its contingent from Bahrain starting next week because the situation in the country had stabilized.

“Part of the Peninsula Shield contingent will return to Saudi Arabia, but that does not mean all the troops will be pulled out because there are still some threats remaining,” the source said on the condition of anonymity.

The current political unrest in Bahrain started in February with opposition protesters demanding far-reaching democratic reforms in the mainly Shiite country which has been ruled by a Sunni Muslim dynasty for more than 200 years.

Bahrain, which is home to the United States’ 5th Fleet, and its Arab neighbors from the Gulf Cooperation Council have accused Shiite protesters of having links to foreign militant groups such as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Since the arrival of the Saudi-led contingent in the country and the introduction of a three-month curfew, the opposition has faced waves of arrests and deadly crackdowns. The curfew was lifted on June 1.

====

Pilots Trained In United States: Morocco Becomes 25th “F-16 Ally”

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123261739

U.S. Air Forces in Europe
June 28, 2011

First Moroccan F-16 pilots to complete training in Arizona
by Maj. Gabe Johnson
162nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs

-”We are modernizing our fleet and we’ve chosen the F-16, not only because it is a high-quality airplane, but also because of the close relationship we have with the United States,” said Deputy Inspector of the Royal Moroccan Air Force, Brig. Gen. Abdelali Houari.
-As students, the pilots averaged three sorties per week and accumulated more than 150 F-16 hours each. Once home, they will be responsible not only for training others, but will also be instrumental in implementing F-16 operations at Ben Guerir Air Base.
Ben Guerir is a former U.S. air base located about 36 miles north of Marrakech and once served as a transatlantic abort landing site for the space shuttle. It’s currently undergoing upgrades that, according to Moroccan officials, are modeled after U.S. Air Force bases.

TUCSON, Ariz. – In July, the Kingdom of Morocco, a strategic partner for U.S. forces in North Africa, will become the 25th country to own and operate F-16s.

The pilots tapped to fly them are scheduled to finish training here in time to bring them home, July 30.

Four Royal Moroccan Air Force officers, former F-5 pilots, will conclude 15 months of instruction at the 162nd Fighter Wing, the international F-16 training unit at Tucson International Airport.

They are the first from their country to accomplish consecutive courses in basic qualification, flight lead upgrade and instructor pilot certification in the multi-role fighter.

A handful of Air National Guard pilots will accompany them as they deliver the first four of Morocco’s 24-aircraft purchase. The new planes, block-52 versions of the fighter, will be fresh off the assembly line and are a considerable step up in technology from the third generation fighters Morocco currently flies.

“We are modernizing our fleet and we’ve chosen the F-16, not only because it is a high-quality airplane, but also because of the close relationship we have with the United States,” said Deputy Inspector of the Royal Moroccan Air Force, Brig. Gen. Abdelali Houari.

“We are really happy to send our pilots here to be trained,” he said. “After a year and a half in the United States, our pilots are happy. Of course they want to return home, but they have gained a lot of experience here with the Arizona Air National Guard.”

Lt. Col. Steve Haase, the Morocco program manager for the 162nd FW, has worked with the Royal Moroccon Air Force for three years. He’s trained fighter pilots from all over the world and fully understands the scope of the students’ historic accomplishment.

“It’s all them,” he said. “It’s a big commitment to be the first F-16 pilots for Morocco. It’s a testament to their positive attitude and work ethic. They are excited about the F-16 and its capabilities; yet they understand how much work there will be to build up an F-16 base.”

As students, the pilots averaged three sorties per week and accumulated more than 150 F-16 hours each. Once home, they will be responsible not only for training others, but will also be instrumental in implementing F-16 operations at Ben Guerir Air Base.

Ben Guerir is a former U.S. air base located about 36 miles north of Marrakech and once served as a transatlantic abort landing site for the space shuttle. It’s currently undergoing upgrades that, according to Moroccan officials, are modeled after U.S. Air Force bases.

…

Six additional Moroccan pilots are in the basic F-16 course in Tucson with graduation planned for September. They too will return home to help manage Morocco’s growing F-16 fleet.

It’s unclear if more student pilots from Morocco will train in Tucson; however, according to Colonel Haase, the 162nd FW stands ready.

…

Since 1989, the 162nd FW has trained with virtually every nation that flies the F-16. In addition to Morocco, the wing trains with pilots from Singapore, Norway, Belgium, Chile, the South Korea, and the Netherlands.

====

Iran Denies Plans To Bomb NATO Bases In Turkey If Syria Attacked

http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/73501/

PanArmenian.net
June 29, 2011

Iran denies it plans to bomb NATO

Iran has denied claims that it threatened to hit NATO bases in Turkey in case the alliance launches an attack against Syria.

“Such reports fall within the media commotion, which is being fueled by certain Western media outlets,” Tehran Times quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.

“Our relations with Turkey are very good, and the reports that are being released about NATO’s actions have no basis in fact,” he stated.

“NATO is not able to enter a new game as it has faced many problems in Afghanistan. Turkish officials are wise enough not to engage themselves in games designed by the West.”

====

Pakistan: NATO Accused Of Infiltrating Militants Into Border Areas

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=55041&Cat=7&dt=6/29/2011

News International
June 28, 2011

Nato accused of infiltrating militants into border areas

PESHAWAR: Amn Tehrik Chairman Syed Kamal Shah on Tuesday accused the Afghanistan-based Nato forces of sending trained militants into the border areas of Pakistan to create unrest.

“The US wants to pit the Pakhtuns living on both sides of the Durand Line against each other before pulling out troops of Afghanistan,” he said in a statement. Expressing concern over the recent infiltration of militants into Pakistan border areas, he said the US was executing a well-hatched conspiracy to weaken the Pakhtuns.

Kamal Shah alleged the Afghanistan-based Nato forces had trained the militants who infiltrated into Pakistan’s territory recently. He said a jirga of impartial elders belonging to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, tribal areas and Afghanistan would be convened after Ramazan to seek a solution to the problems being faced by the Pakhtun nation.

“It’s an unprecedented situation. We need to take bold steps to save the Pakhtuns from being killed,” he said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Pakhtun leadership to come forward and save the future of the Pakhtuns. Kamal Shah said the youth also needed to contribute to the efforts being made to remove the sense of deprivation among the Pakhtuns.

====

Interview: Inversion of Humanitarian War

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/52733

CKUW News
June 9, 2011

Inversion of Humanitarian War
Rick Rozoff and Scott Price

Summary: The current wars under the banner of the war on terror have all been justified under the notion of a humanitarian war.

Rick Rozoff goes through in inversion of a humanitarian war and the historical revisioning that goes with it.

Interview at:

Robert Graves: Recalling the last war, preparing for the next

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Robert Graves

*****

The Next War (1917)

You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father’s hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you’re bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented hay of father’s loft,
And stop young Slavs from cutting bows
And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.
Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you’ll have to play, all in;
It’s the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don’t change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage
Once more with pomp and greed and rage;
Courtly ministers will stop
At home and fight to the last drop;
By the million men will die
In some new horrible agony;
And children here will thrust and poke,
Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke,
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.

*****

Recalling War
From Collected Poems (1938)

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean,
The track aches only when the rain reminds.
The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood,
The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm.
The blinded man sees with his ears and hands
As much or more than once with both his eyes.
Their war was fought these 20 years ago
And now assumes the nature-look of time,
As when the morning traveller turns and views
His wild night-stumbling carved into a hill.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags
But an infection of the common sky
That sagged ominously upon the earth
Even when the season was the airiest May.
Down pressed the sky, and we, oppressed, thrust out
Boastful tongue, clenched fist and valiant yard.
Natural infirmities were out of mode,
For Death was young again; patron alone
Of healthy dying, premature fate-spasm.

Fear made fine bed-fellows. Sick with delight
At life’s discovered transitoriness,
Our youth became all-flesh and waived the mind.
Never was such antiqueness of romance,
Such tasty honey oozing from the heart.
And old importances came swimming back -
Wine, meat, log-fires, a roof over the head,
A weapon at the thigh, surgeons at call.
Even there was a use again for God -
A word of rage in lack of meat, wine, fire,
In ache of wounds beyond all surgeoning.

War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world has still kept head in air,
Protesting logic or protesting love,
Until the unendurable moment struck -
The inward scream, the duty to run mad.

And we recall the merry ways of guns -
Nibbling the walls of factory and church
Like a child, piecrust; felling groves of trees
Like a child, dandelions with a switch.
Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill,
Down in a row the brave tin-soldiers fall:
A sight to be recalled in elder days
When learnedly the future we devote
To yet more boastful visions of despair.

Libyan war updates/Stop NATO news: June 28, 2011

====

Reports Of U.S. Military Plans Against Libya, Syria Cause Concern

U.S. Aircraft Supercarrier Enters Mediterranean For “NATO Missions”

NATO’s Libyan War: Almost 13,000 Air Operations, Nearly 5,000 Combat Flights

Libya: International Criminal Court Cover For NATO Operations

All Freedom-Loving People Must Condemn NATO Action In Libya

Germany To Supply NATO With Arms For Assault On Libya

Standing NATO Maritime Group Surge Operations In Eastern Mediterranean

UN: U.S. Gets 4,200 Ethiopian Troops To Patrol North-South Sudan Border

U.S. Tests Cruise Missiles With Mock Nuclear Warheads

California: New Naval Strike Missiles Tested For Deployment To Norway, Poland

Turkmenistan: NATO To Patrol Eurasian Pipelines?

NATO Caucasus, Central Asia Representative In Armenia

NATO Assistant Secretary General To Visit Azerbaijan

NATO-Georgia Commission Meeting Held At NATO Headquarters

Serbia: U.S. Leads Joint Paratroop Training Exercises

Report: U.S. Missile Strike Kills 20 Pakistani Civilians, Wounds Several More

Pakistan: Three NATO Tankers Torched

U.S. Africa Partnership Station: 37 Stops In 14 Countries

U.S. AFRICOM Conducts Deployment Training In Burundi

Philippines: U.S. Launches Joint Naval Exercises

====

Reports Of U.S. Military Plans Against Libya, Syria Cause Concern

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15186523,00.html

Deutsche Welle
June 27, 2011

Rumors of US plans for Libya, Syria cause concern
The idea of US Army boots on Libyan soil is causing alarm

-If an invasion was being planned, the amount of naval firepower now available in the region would give more than adequate support for any land forces being deployed on Libyan soil.

Among the rumors circulating of US plans for expanded military operations in Libya and a possible intervention in Syria lie certain truths which are cause for concern – despite the dismissals of analysts.

When the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 on March 17 of this year, it authorized the use of force by UN member states, granting them the right to “take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in Libya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”

In the three months that have followed, the rules of Resolution 1973 appear to have been bent to allow the NATO-led mission to not only protect civilians in Libya but actively pursue the forces of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, target his strongholds and effectively force him out of power.

This ‘mission creep’ has caused fractures and divisions within the international coalition that originally agreed to take on the UN’s Libyan operations.

The Arab League, whose involvement helped sell the mission to the Arab world, is becoming increasingly nervous about what it sees as NATO’s new goal of regime change. Meanwhile, those members of the Security Council that abstained from the Resolution 1973 vote are concerned by developments they fear may lead toward a land invasion of Libya and the contravening of the UN resolution.

Russia in particular has been angered by the deployment of military advisors and Special Forces operatives from the US, France and Britain to support the efforts of the Libyan opposition.

Russian warning

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters earlier this month after France and Britain had deployed attack helicopters to Libya for the first time that the prospect of land operations in Libya was against Moscow’s wishes. “We consider that what is going on is either consciously or unconsciously sliding toward a land operation,” he said. “That would be very deplorable.”

Lavrov’s comments came just days before NATO agreed to extend its mission in Libya for a further 90 days and less than a week after French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama agreed on the fringes of the G8 summit at the end of May that Gadhafi could not be negotiated with and that “the shadow of tyranny” must be lifted.

Soon after, a number of unsubstantiated reports based on anonymous military sources began flooding the Internet claiming that US forces were already being readied for a full-scale ground invasion of Libya.

The alleged military sources at the US Army’s Fort Hood base in Texas, where these preparations were said to be taking place, revealed to the Infowars.com website that the invasion was being planned for October. This report spawned a wave of similar extrapolations on the theme of a potential escalation in Libya

…

US Navy deployments

Whether it is part of a future invasion plan or not, the existence of a recently re-deployed US Navy strike group in the Mediterranean cannot be disputed and its arrival could certainly have helped generate the buzz about a possible escalation.

The group, led by the Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, along with the guided missile destroyers Truxtun and Mitscher, the missile cruisers Gettysburg and Anzio and eight squadrons of aircraft, has been sent to strengthen the US Sixth Fleet which is based in Naples, Italy. Most of the NATO missions in Libya to date have originated from bases in that country.

If an invasion was being planned, the amount of naval firepower now available in the region would give more than adequate support for any land forces being deployed on Libyan soil.

This is not the only US Navy strike group on the move. The USS Bataan, which alone can land more than 2,000 marines, equipped with helicopters and vertical takeoff planes, artillery and tanks, along with two other amphibious assault ships, anchored in Italy in mid-May. Reports suggest that the Bataan and its flotilla then left for an undisclosed location off the Syrian coast, prompting further rumors of a potential US intervention in Syria.

Battle group

The independent news site DEBKAfile, again quoting anonymous US military sources, reported that the Bataan was moving into position as part of a potential mission involving US and Turkish forces to stop the anti-opposition crackdown currently taking place in Syria and to counter any response from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon to any such operations.

…

Author: Nick Amies
Editor: Rob Mudge

====

U.S. Aircraft Supercarrier Enters Mediterranean For “NATO Missions”

http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2176122&Language=en

Kuwait News Agency
June 24, 2011

US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier transits through Suez Canal

CAIRO: US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier “USS Enterprise” weighing 93,000 tons passed through the Suez Canal on Friday on its way to the Mediterranean Sea to take part in NATO missions.

The US aircraft carrier was accompanied by Pitcher-missile cruiser Light Golf, and a supply ship. It passed the canal under tightened security measures enforced by the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority including halting the traffic of ferryboats across the canal, securing roads parallel to the canal as well as the Peace Bridge across the Suez Canal at Al-Qanatra, west of Ismailia city, said a source from the Suaz Canal Authority.

“USS Enterprise,” is the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

—————————————————————————

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/471103

Al-Masry Al-Youm 
June 24, 2011

US aircraft carrier crosses Suez Canal

Egyptian shipping sources said US aircraft carrier USS Enterprise crossed the Suez Canal on Friday coming from the Red Sea en route to the Mediterranean.

They added that the ship, which is the US Navy’s oldest and longest aircraft carrier, was accompanied by a guided missile destroyer and a supply ship.

Shipping sources said Egyptian authorities tightened security measures on both sides of the canal to secure the ship.

The USS Enterprise carries 60 aircraft, weighing about 93,000 tons, according to the same sources.

It was not made clear whether the aircraft carrier was on its way to the Libyan coast to participate in NATO air strikes against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.

====

NATO’s Libyan War: Almost 13,000 Air Operations, Nearly 5,000 Combat Flights

http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/3/images/2011/June/20110628oup-update[1].pdf

North Atlantic Treaty Otganization
Allied Command Operations
June 28, 2011

NATO and Libya
Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ

…

Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations

Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 12,887 sorties, including 4,850 strike sorties, have been conducted.

Sorties conducted 27 JUNE: 142
Strike sorties conducted 27 JUNE: 46

…

====

Libya: International Criminal Court Cover For NATO Operations

http://en.rian.ru/world/20110628/164879369.html

Russian Information Agency Novosti
June 28, 2011

Libya says it intends to persecute NATO in international courts

CAIRO: Libya intends to persecute NATO in international courts for the Western military alliance’s attempts to physically eliminate country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi and members of his family, the Libyan Justice Ministry said in a statement.

The statement comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued on Monday an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, accusing him of torturing and killing opponents of his regime.

“The so-called International Criminal Court is only a cover for operations of NATO, which repeatedly tried to physically eliminate the leader of the Revolution [Gaddafi] and his family members,” the statement said.

The ministry added that such actions of NATO are “war crimes,” which must be persecuted in international criminal courts.

…

====

All Freedom-Loving People Must Condemn NATO Action In Libya

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2011-06/28/content_12789365.htm

China Daily
June 28, 2011

Condemn NATO action in Libya
Shi Qingli

Beijing: It has been more than three months since NATO began bombarding Libya. Bombs and missiles have blasted the soil of a sovereign country, killing thousands of civilians, and demolishing homes and workplaces. Libyans, to say the least, are living in horror.

I am pained by the brutal NATO attack and the misery of the Libyan people. I appeal to people across the world to unite against NATO’s action and join the efforts to restore peace in Libya.

Led by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, NATO’s military action against Libya is nothing but a terrorist attack. It is no different from the attack masterminded by Osama bin Laden against the US and its allies.

The bombardment of Libya on the pretext of restoring peace and justice has claimed thousands of innocent lives. The NATO attacks have killed not only Libyan government forces and rebel army members, but also civilians.

On May 23, for example, NATO carried out 21 air strikes on Tripoli, capital of Libya, killing and injuring many civilians. The NATO air raids have caused more than 20,000 casualties. NATO member states have committed a war crime and should be punished for their action.

The NATO air strikes have devastated Libya, traumatized Libyans and horrified people across the globe. NATO needs to realize that this open aggression will stir Libyans against the West and prompt righteous people around the world, including those in NATO member states, to hate it.

Every bomb and missile that has landed on Libyan soil is like a seed of hatred, which will sprout sooner than later. The hands of NATO leaders are covered with blood.

To promote world peace, countries trying to solve international problems should adhere to the principles of equality, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-aggression and non-interference in other nation’s internal affairs, and peaceful coexistence.

Libya’s internal affairs are for the Libyan people to decide and no country has the right to interfere. If NATO member states assume the right to interfere in Libya’s matters, then Libya is also entitled to do the same in their affairs. But that would make war inevitable and result in the death of more innocent people, making global peace a mirage.

I appeal to all freedom-loving people across the world to oppose NATO’s military action against Libya and restore peace and save innocent lives.

====

Germany To Supply NATO With Arms For Assault On Libya

http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE75Q1PR20110627

Reuters
June 27, 2011

Germany to supply NATO arms for Libya strikes-media

BERLIN: Germany will supply bomb components and other military ordnance to aid NATO in Libya in a concession to allies after Berlin’s controversial opposition to flying air strikes, Spiegel Online reported on Monday.

Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere has approved the measure, according to government sources cited by the online media, which would still mean Germany would not participate directly in any military action.

Spiegel Online said it was not clear what supplies Berlin would provide, but it said it could include complete rockets and high-tech guidance systems.

A spokesman from the defense ministry told Reuters that a request for supplies came from the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA), but declined to give details about the nature.

“The general willingness to provide support was signalled,” he said.

…

Berlin hopes that providing arms will be seen as a gesture that it wants to end its isolation following its decision, which earned heavy criticism in Germany as well, according to Spiegel Online.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber and Christiaan Hetzner;
Editing by Michael Roddy)

====

Standing NATO Maritime Group Surge Operations In Eastern Mediterranean

http://www.aco.nato.int/page424205240.aspx

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
June 28, 2011

SNMG2 Surge Operations in Eastern Med

Naples, Italy: The Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2) has begun surge operations in the Eastern Mediterranean as part of Operation Active Endeavour.

SNMG2 flagship Turkish frigate TCG Orucreis and Greek frigate HS Kanaris recently finished their first work up for operations and are now working intensely in deterrent surge operations for a two-week period.

Unpredictable deterrent surge operations were foreseen by the revised OAE Operational Plan of January 2010 which directed that the overall approach to OAE would become less platform-based and increasingly network-based.

“This is a very interesting moment in what has been almost a decade of OAE,” according to Vice Admiral Rinaldo Veri, Commander of Maritime Command Naples the headquarters running the operation. “There is massive focus on the maritime operations taking place in support of the Security Council Resolutions regarding Libya. However Operation Active Endeavour has not stopped. Indeed due to Libya-related operations there is a large area of the Mediterranean saturate with assets and surveillance which, although not strictly part of the anti-terrorist mission, can act in associated support of OAE and clearly acts to diminish any ability terrorists have to maneuver in the maritime environment.”

The SNMG2 deterrent surge follows another surge recently carried out by the Standing NATO Mine Counter-measures Group 1 in the Western Mediterranean.

Background

Operation Active Endeavour (OAE) is part of NATO’s multi-faceted response to the terrorist threat [sic]. Its mission is to conduct maritime operations in the assigned area of operations to demonstrate NATO’s resolve to help deter, defend, disrupt and protect against terrorism. As the Alliance has refined its counter-terrorism role in the intervening years, the operation’s mandate has been regularly reviewed and its remit extended. OAE’s achievements through targeted maritime operations are highly impressive and constitute a significant deterrent to terrorist activity in the Mediterranean Sea. The Operation not only demonstrates NATO’s resolve but is also a vivid example of the added, essential value that NATO can bring to the complex, global fight against terrorism. The contribution/collaboration/co-operation with partners and Mediterranean Dialogue countries substantially improves the overall effectiveness of OAE.

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UN: U.S. Gets 4,200 Ethiopian Troops To Patrol North-South Sudan Border

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/27/52473945.html

Voice of Russia
June 27, 2011

Ethiopia to patrol Abyei peace

The United Nations Security Council has passed an American resolution to authorize Ethiopia to station 42 hundred peacekeepers in the disputed Abyei region on the border between North and South Sudan.

Meeting in Addis Ababa a week ago at the headquarters of the African Union, the sides in the conflict agreed to withdraw troops from Abyei.

This area is rich in oil. The dispute over it erupted after last January when a South Sudan referendum returned an overwhelming ‘yes’ to complete independence.

————————————————————————–

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=150371

Azeri Press Agency
June 27, 2011

Security Council votes to deploy Ethiopian peacekeepers in Sudan’s Abyei

Baku: Thw UN Security Council Monday unanimously adopted a resolution on sending 4,200 Ethiopian peacekeepers to Sudan’s Abyei area for six months, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The force, with the name of the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), will take into account the Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement on Temporary Arrangements for the Administration and Security of the Abyei Area, said the resolution.

The Security Council also decided that UNISFA shall comprise a maximum of 4200 military personnel, 50 police personnel, and appropriate civilian support.

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U.S. Tests Cruise Missiles With Mock Nuclear Warheads

http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110627_5389.php

Global Security Newswire
June 27, 2011

U.S. Tests Cruise Missiles With Mock Warheads

The United States earlier this month carried out two separate flight tests involving a data-collecting Joint Test Assembly for the W-80 nuclear warhead, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration said on Friday (see GSN, April 5).

A B-52 bomber from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota fired an Air Launched Cruise Missile carrying one of the non-nuclear assemblies in both tests, which each took place at the Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.

Various data collection components in the Joint Test Assembly verified that the mock warheads behaved as intended in what was described as a comprehensive analysis of the readiness of the cruise missile system.

“NNSA and DOD [the Defense Department] are committed to ensuring that all weapon systems perform as designed, and these successful tests continue to illustrate that commitment,” Brig. Gen. Sandra Finan, an NNSA principal assistant deputy administrator, said in a statement…

The National Nuclear Security Administration produced the mock weapon for the Joint Surveillance Flight Test Program, an effort that the agency oversees along with the Pentagon. Test-assembly trials seek to replicate real warhead configurations and employ the maximum amount possible of actual armaments. The mock bomb was built at the Pantex Plant in Texas (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, June 24).

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California: New Naval Strike Missiles Tested For Deployment To Norway, Poland

http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/841/?SID=934f7d4123a9dcc7a3fe5eb7fe3d97c4

Defence Professionals
June 27, 2011

Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile Completes Final Milestone
By Nicolas von Kospoth

-Kongsberg and Lockheed Martin are developing a multi-role version of the NSM, dubbed Joint Strike Missile (JSM), which is to be integrated with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Being air-launched, the missile will have a greater range, estimated to reach 240 kilometres.
-After this month’s successful test in California, the first deliveries of series-production missiles to the Royal Norwegian Navy and the Polish Navy later this year will be important milestones to underline the system’s operational fitness.

Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) anti-ship and land-attack missile has come one large step closer to entering service with the Royal Norwegian Navy after a series-production unit of the fifth-generation missile system performed successfully during a live-fire test earlier in June. The test firing was again conducted at the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s Point Mugu range in California, chosen because of the location’s versatile testing conditions over land and sea.

According to Norwegian defence manufacturer Kongsberg, the test “demonstrated the unrivalled capabilities of the missile,” resulting in a successful strike against a sea target. The missile was launched from a land-based canister and performed a pre-programmed flight, including a range of demanding manoeuvres such as sea-skimming flight patterns. After having located the sea target, the missile successfully engaged and destroyed it.

The US Navy’s Point Mugu test site had already been the location of several NSM test firings, including in early 2007 when the Norwegian Navy decided upon the final approval for the missile system’s development phase, as well as in February 2009, which resulted in a successful strike by a surface-launched NSM against a sea target.

According to Kongsberg, the NSM is the only fifth generation long range precision strike missile currently available. Further, the company explains: “The missile is completely passive, has proven its excellent sea skimming capabilities, and with its advance terminal manoeuvres it will survive enemy air defences. The Autonomous Target Recognition (ATR) of the seeker ensures that the correct target is detected, recognised and hit, at sea or on land.”

The NSM is currently in series production for Royal Norwegian Navy vessels of the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates and Skjold-class littoral corvettes. Furthermore, the Polish Navy in December 2008 and December 2010 awarded contracts worth a total of NOK 1.46 billion (approx. $265 million / €187 million) to supply NSM systems to the country’s land-based coastal artillery forces. Poland is the first export customer for the NSM and is considered an important reference for additional foreign orders.

The missiles are now in series production and deliveries to the Polish Navy, as well as the Royal Norwegian Navy, are scheduled for late 2011 through 2014. The land-based systems for the Polish coastal artillery are to be integrated onto trucks built by Polish-based Jelcz SA.

Further, Kongsberg and Lockheed Martin are developing a multi-role version of the NSM, dubbed Joint Strike Missile (JSM), which is to be integrated with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Being air-launched, the missile will have a greater range, estimated to reach 240 kilometres. The missile will receive significant modifications to fit into the aircraft’s internal weapons bay and will allow for engaging ground targets, in addition to naval targets.

In mid-April 2011, the Norwegian Government decided to present the continued development phase II of the JSM to Parliament in order to achieve approval of the system’s further development. JSM development began in 2008 and received official support from the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation (NDLO) in 2009 when a NOK 166 million contract was inked for continued development. According to Kongsberg, there is consensus between the company and the NDLO for a JSM phase II development contract worth NOK 535 million.

After this month’s successful test in California, the first deliveries of series-production missiles to the Royal Norwegian Navy and the Polish Navy later this year will be important milestones to underline the system’s operational fitness. Despite being an independently developed system for a more challenging purpose, the JSM air-launched variant might receive a vital push from the upcoming key events in the NSM programme…

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Turkmenistan: NATO To Patrol Eurasian Pipelines?

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/63753

EurasiaNet
June 27, 2011

Turkmenistan: NATO Official Visits Ashgabat
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

-[T]he Russian news agency regnum.ru are among Russian outlets that believe NATO is seeking actually to guard Eurasian pipelines and secure energy resources for its members, based on its experience running its own pipelines established during in the Cold War to secure fuel supplies for its operations.

A NATO representative visited Ashgabat last week, but the NATO website did not have any press statement and the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH) stuck to the usual careful script.

No mention was made of any enhancement of the role of “neutral Turkmenistan” in providing transit access to Afghanistan, beyond the current re-fueling permission for NATO jets at Ashgabat international airport.

James Appathurai, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia was received on June 24 by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Turkmenistan has participated in NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program since 1994. President Berdymukhamedov visited NATO headquarters in 2007, followed by the Turkmen Defense Minister in February 2010.

Appathurai discussed response to natural disasters, and combating illegal drugs trafficking, international terrorism and organized crime – all under the purview of NATO’s new Emerging Security Challenges Division opened last August.

He spoke of strengthening science and education contacts, which have been emphasized by the Turkmen government lately.

The NATO representative also expressed appreciation for Turkmenistan’s economic assistance to neighboring Afghanistan – and here the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline was mentioned, with the expectation that TAPI will “contribute profoundly to sustainable development of the Asian region,” said TDH.

Yes, NATO is in the pipeline business, too – up to a point. Although NATO has not exactly articulated this claim, the Russian news agency regnum.ru are among Russian outlets that believe NATO is seeking actually to guard Eurasian pipelines and secure energy resources for its members, based on its experience running its own pipelines established during in the Cold War to secure fuel supplies for its operations.

NATO discussed its own pipeline security role in more abstract terms at the Bucharest energy summit in 2008 and at the Security and Defense Agenda meeting in Brussels in 2009, then NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said, “NATO is not in the business of protecting pipelines. But when there’s a crisis, or if a certain nation asks for assistance, NATO could, I think, be instrumental in protecting pipelines on land.”

In 2008, regnum.ru and other Russian-language media quoted Robert Simmons, who at that time held the position of NATO’s Special Representative to the Caucasus and Central Asia, as saying that NATO has been involved in the problem of energy security for 40 years through its own pipeline agencies within its structure – and was therefore ostensibly lobbying for diversification of pipelines to circumvent Russia.

No mention was made of NATO’s assistance to Turkmenistan in cleaning up old radioactive materials from the Soviet era, a subject that was among the urgent concerns of a Turkish ambassador in an alleged cable published by WikiLeaks.

Turkmenistan has more than 21,000 tons of radioactive waste stored primarily at two sites, Khazar and Balkanabat, situated 600 kilometers and 400 kilometers from Ashgabat, respectively.

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NATO Caucasus, Central Asia Representative In Armenia

http://www.armradio.am/eng/news/?part=off&id=20323

Public Radio of Armenia
June 28, 2011

Minister Nalbandian meets NATO Special Representative

On June 28 Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian received James Appathurai, the Special Representative of the NATO Secretary General for the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

Minister Nalbandian congratulated James Appathurai on assuming the position of the Special Representative of the NATO Secretary General, expressing hope that he would contribute to the development of Armenia-NATO cooperation.

During the meeting the interlocutors dwelt on a number of issues on the agenda of Armenia-NATO partnership, particularly the cooperation within the framework of the Partnership for Peace Program, the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council and the Individual Partnership Action Plan.

Edward Nalbandian and James Appathurai discussed the preparation works of the sitting of the North Atlantic Council in 28+1 format, which will discuss and sum up the annual results of IPAP implementation.

Minister Nalbandian presented to the guest the latest developments in the process of settlement of the Karabakh conflict, particularly referring to the results of the Kazan meeting.

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NATO Assistant Secretary General To Visit Azerbaijan

http://en.trend.az/news/society/1897753.html

Trend News Agency
June 28, 2011

NATO’s Assistant Secretary General to visit Azerbaijan

Baku: NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Ambassador Gabor Iklody will visit Azerbaijan next week, Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) told Trend.

NATO’s Assistant Secretary General will take part in the event to complete the “Saloglu Project” on cleaning the unexploded ordnance. It is one of the largest conversion projects supported by NATO.

Saloglu was the largest ammunition depot of the Soviet army in the South Caucasus. About 138 depots were destroyed as a result of explosion on the base in August 1991. The “Saloglu project” was launched in December 2005. More than 640,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance were found and destroyed up to now.

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NATO-Georgia Commission Meeting Held At NATO Headquarters

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1897480.html

Trend News Agency
June 28, 2011

Georgian parliamentary speaker to attend NATO-Georgia Commission meeting
N. Kirtzkhalia 

Tbilisi: Georgian Parliamentary Speaker David Bakradze is leaving for Brussels to attend a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission at NATO headquarters.

During his visit, Bakradze will meet with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Parliament told Trend.

The meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission will be attended by Bakradze, Rasmussen and ambassadors from member states.

Bakradze will present Lithuanian Ambassador to NATO Linas Linkevičius with a Presidential Order of Splendour.

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Serbia: U.S. Leads Joint Paratroop Training Exercises

http://www.eucom.mil/english/fullstory.asp?article=US-Serbian-Paratroopers-Joint-Mountaineering

United States European Command
Embassy of the United States of America, Belgrade
July 27, 2011

US and Serbian Paratroopers in Joint Mountaineering and Survival Training

U.S. and Serbian paratroopers engaged in joint training that consisted of two parts: survival training June 6-12 on the Mali Jastrebac and Radan mountains, and mountaineering training June 15-23 at the Jelasnicka gorge and on the Stol Mountain. The American paratroopers from the United States Army Europe 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, joined the Serbian Armed Force (SAF) 63rd battalion’s regular training and were given an opportunity to try their hand at some routine SAF training activities.

…

This event is part the two countries’ military-to-military cooperation and is the first training activity undertaken jointly by the American and Serbian paratroopers. Further cooperation between the two forces is planned in the months to come, both operationally (joint paratroop training in Nis and Germany) and on the command level (joint activities related to decision-making processes).

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Report: U.S. Missile Strike Kills 20 Pakistani Civilians, Wounds Several More

http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2011/06/28/dozens-killed-waziristan-drone-attacks

Pajhwok Afghan News
June 28, 2011

Dozens killed in Waziristan drone attacks
By Wasim Yousufzai

ISLAMABAD: Up to 28 people have been killed in US drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan, according to officials and witnesses in the area.

The first strike on Monday evening targeted a vehicle in Nashtar Valley of the Shawal area in South Waziristan, a local official said on condition of anonymity.

Three foreigners were among eight fighters killed in the attack, he said.

Another drone fired two missiles on a house about two hours after the first incident, inflicting casualties on more than 10 people in the Manto area of the town, he added.

Another security official said the missile attack targeted a local Taliban commander named Adam Khan, and that several foreigners were among the insurgents killed.

However, a resident of the area, Hajji Malak Dildar, said that 20 civilians were killed and several others injured in the second attack.

…

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Pakistan: Three NATO Tankers Torched

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=54885&Cat=2&dt=6/28/2011

News International
June 28, 2011

Three Nato oil tankers torched in Mastung, Dasht 

MASTUNG: Unknown armed men set ablaze two more Nato oil tankers in Mastung and one in the Dasht area in separate incidents on Monday.

According to the police, an Afghanistan-bound oil tanker carrying fuel for Nato forces was on its way from Karachi when armed men intercepted and opened fire on it at the Ghanja Dhori outskirts of Mastung.

Meanwhile, another Nato oil tanker was also on its way when armed men riding a bike intercepted and sprayed bullets on it in the Dasht area some 25-km from Quetta. As a result, both oil tankers caught fire while one of drivers sustained bullet injuries. The injured was rushed to the hospital for medical aid.

In the Dasht area of Balochistan, unknown gunmen set ablaze another Nato oil tanker on Monday. According to police, a tanker carrying oil for the ISAF force stationed in Afghanistan was on it way from Karachi when unknown armed men intercepted and opened fire on it. Resultantly, the driver of the vehicle sustained bullet injuries.

Armed assailants later sprinkled petrol and set the oil tanker on fire.

Shortly after the incident, police reached the site and shifted the injured to the nearby hospital. The unknown armed men managed to escape. The Levies Force reached the site and started an investigation.

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U.S. Africa Partnership Station: 37 Stops In 14 Countries

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=61262

Navy NewsStand
June 27, 2011

Swift Crews Turnover in Preparation For APS
By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ian Carver, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/Commander, U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs

ROTA, Spain: The Gold Crew of High Speed Vessel SWIFT (HSV 2) exchanged command June 21 with Swift’s Blue Crew at Naval Station Rota in preparation for its upcoming Africa Partnership Station (APS) 2011 deployment.

With a rotational manning concept, crew turnovers are a common occurrence aboard Swift, substituting crews every four months, allowing Swift to remain forward deployed nearly the entire year, thus enhancing its operational impact to the fleet.

Swifts’ Gold Crew recently completed a 122-day deployment, covering more than 15,000 nautical miles, 37 stops in 14 countries during its participation in Southern Partnership Station (SPS) 2011 and the multinational training exercise African Lion 2011.

…

Swift’s current mission is taking part in APS visiting eight West African countries to [host] maritime training courses for military and civilian members.

…

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U.S. AFRICOM Conducts Deployment Training In Burundi

http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=6838&lang=0

U.S. Army Africa
June 27, 2911

USARAF Conducts Deployment Capability Training in Burundi
U.S. Army Africa Public Affairs

-ADAPT is a four phase program, that occurs every 12 months and USARAF has already conducted training in Rwanda, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Botswana, and Ghana.

Vicenza, Italy – …U.S. Army Africa’s Africa Deployment Assistance Partnership Team (ADAPT) conducted a deployment capability training event with uniformed members of the Burundian Defense Forces June 6-10, 2011 at the Bujumbura Military Airfield in Bujumbura, Burundi.

…

ADAPT is a U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) program managed and executed by USARAF. The team was in Bujumbura to share best practices on deploying personnel and equipment via aircraft, and to enhance force projection capabilities of African militaries…

“This is our first ADAPT with the Burundian military,” Menzies said. “This event was based off of a pre-deployment site survey we conducted last year so the lesson plan was specifically tailored to meet existing Burundi training requirements.”

Menzies said another focus of the training is to foster positive relationships between the U.S. and African military forces.

“This successful military-to-military ADAPT event demonstrates the important partnerships between U.S. Army Africa and African partner nations in increasing deployment capabilities and capacity,” Menzies said.

Increasing deployment interoperability with U.S. forces in joint/combined operations, training and exercises is a focal point of this military-to-military training opportunity.

“Training and having the capability to deploy personnel and cargo are crucial enabling components to a deploying force. As a matter of fact, Burundian forces soldiers are already applying the ADAPT training to their real world operations,” Febles said.

…

ADAPT is a four phase program, that occurs every 12 months and USARAF has already conducted training in Rwanda, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Botswana, and Ghana.

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Philippines: U.S. Launches Joint Naval Exercises

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-06/28/c_13954433.htm

Xinhua News Agency
June 28, 2011

U.S., Philippine navies kick off 11-day joint exercise

MANILA: Navies from the United States and the Philippines kicked off an 11-day joint exercise Tuesday afternoon in waters off the southwestern Philippine island province of Palawan, showcasing the ties and interoperability between the two allies.

Dubbed the 17th “Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training” (CARAT), the exercise was held in the Sulu Sea east of Palawan and is expected to wind up on July 8, both navies said.

Guided missile destroyers USS Chung-Hoon, USS Howard and the diving and salvage ship USNS Safeguard are the U.S. Navy’s centerpieces for the exercise, the U.S. Navy said earlier in a statement, adding that in addition to the three ships, other participants include P-3C Orion aircraft, SH-60 Seahawk aircraft, U.S. Navy Seabees, a U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team, U.S. Navy Mobile Security Squadron, U.S. Navy Riverine Forces and Medical Support personnel.

On the Philippine side, patrol ships BRP Pangasinan and BRP Rizal are dedicated for the exercise, according to Lt. Noel Cadigal, spokesman of the Philippines’ Naval Forces West.

The at-sea phase of the exercise focuses on developing maritime security capabilities in areas such as maritime interdiction, information sharing, combined operations at sea, patrol operations, gunnery exercises, as well as anti-piracy and anti-smuggling exercises.

…

“The main purpose of the activity is to strengthen the ties and cooperation between the two navies by the exchange of knowledge and skills in the field of navigation and naval operations, particularly maritime defense, port security, resource protection and disaster response,” said Philippine Navy spokesman Lt. Col. Omar Tonsay, noting the exercise is among the bilateral trainings conducted under the auspices of the Mutual Defense Treaty, which was signed between the Philippines and the United States in 1951.

However, the exercise and the Mutual Defense Treaty were bombarded by a left-wing group in the Philippines.

In a statement issued prior to the exercise, the New Patriotic Alliance, known as Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Filipino, said the fact that the joint naval exercise will be between modern U.S. warships and ageing Philippine patrol ships shows the entire concept of U.S. military assistance is a failure.

“After 60 years of the Mutual Defense Treaty, several decades of U.S. military bases and 12 years of the Visiting Forces Agreement, our AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) has not modernized. We were promised the same in exchange for approving all these one-sided agreements and yet here is our navy, still employing World War II-era ships,” said Renato Reyes, Jr., secretary general of the New Patriotic Alliance.

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Harold Pinter: Art, Truth and Politics

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Harold Pinter
The Nobel Prize in Literature lecture (2005)
Art, Truth and Politics

In 1958 I wrote the following:

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is ‘What have you done with the scissors?’ The first line of Old Times is ‘Dark.’

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

‘Dark’ I took to be a description of someone’s hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), ‘Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don’t you buy a dog? You’re a dog cook. Honest. You think you’re cooking for a lot of dogs.’ So since B calls A ‘Dad’ it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn’t know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

‘Dark.’ A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. ‘Fat or thin?’ the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It’s a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author’s position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can’t dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man’s buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’

Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,’ he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: ‘The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.’

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.

But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what’s called the ‘international community’. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man’s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they’re interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. ‘A grateful child,’ said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. ‘When do I get my arms back?’ he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn’t holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you’re making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’:

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda’s poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. That is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don’t quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.

‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’

A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called ‘Death’.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

Libyan war updates/Stop NATO news: June 27, 2011

====

South African President Again Blasts NATO’s War In Libya

NATO’s Air War In Libya: 12,745 Sorties, 4,804 Strike Missions

Libyan War Exceeds 100 Days: NATO Bombs Gaddafi Residence

Video And Text: Global Regime Change: Cash And Cyberware On U.S. Offensive

Tbilisi: NATO Representative Promotes Georgia’s Integration

Pakistan: U.S. Drone Strikes Kill At Least 26 People

Four U.S. Missiles Kill At Least Eight In Pakistan

Pakistan Tells Britain To Withdraw Military Trainers

U.S. Spy Plane Crashes, Falls Into Taliban Hands

====

South African President Again Blasts NATO’s War In Libya

http://en.trend.az/regions/met/arabicr/1897178.html

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
June 27, 2011

Zuma: NATO mission is to protect civilians, not assassinate Gaddafi

South African President Jacob Zuma on Sunday severely criticized the NATO mission in Libya and warned against assassinating leader Moamer Gaddafi, dpa reported.

Expressing concern over the “continuing bombing by NATO and its allies,” he said the United Nations resolution that mandated the airstrikes to implement a no-fly zone was aimed at protecting civilians.

“The intention was not to authorize a campaign for regime change or political assassination,” Zuma told a meeting of the African Union (AU) in Pretoria called to discuss the conflict in Libya.

Zuma has led two AU delegations to Libya. Both diplomatic efforts failed to produce a ceasefire agreement between the regime and Libyan rebels, who want Gaddafi to step down after 42 years in power.

Zuma’s last mediating mission in May ended with the government and rebels entrenched in their positions.

Zuma said that in spite of efforts to broker peace, the crisis in Libya was escalating.

“On the ground, there is a military stalemate which we cannot and must not be allowed to drag on and on, both because of its horrendous cost in civilian lives and the potential it has to destabilize the entire sub-region,” he said.

Ever defiant, Gaddafi has vowed to defeat NATO as the military alliance continues bombing sites in the capital Tripoli and other regime strongholds.

====

NATO’s Air War In Libya: 12,745 Sorties, 4,804 Strike Missions

http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/3/documents/Libya%20update%20June%2011/20110627oup-update[1].pdf

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 27, 2011

NATO and Libya
Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ

…

Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations

Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 12,745 sorties, including 4,804 strike sorties, have been conducted.

Sorties conducted 26 JUNE: 138

Strike sorties conducted 26 JUNE: 56

…

====

Libyan War Exceeds 100 Days: NATO Bombs Gaddafi Residence

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/27/52457843.html

Voice of Russia
June 27, 2011

NATO bombs Gaddafi’s residence

Two powerful explosions sounded in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Monday near the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s residence. The Associated Press says that they may have come from a NATO air raid. Several minutes after the explosions, jet plane engines could be heard in the city.

The news agency reports that Gaddafi is not in his residence at present. Nothing is reported about casualties.

Monday marks 100 days since the start of the NATO military operation in Libya.

====

Video And Text: Global Regime Change: Cash And Cyberware On U.S. Offensive

http://rt.com/news/us-cash-regime-change/

RT
June 27, 2011

Cash and cyberware on the US offensive

Video

After the State Department announced its new programs aimed at spreading democracy around the world, some activists say the US is fostering regime change in countries not aligned with American foreign policy goals.

The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has requested proposals on how to foster change in a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Cuba. The US claims the best of intentions, saying it wants to strengthen independent civil society groups in those countries.

Lawyer and journalist Eva Golinger believes differently: “It’s just really another form of provoking regime change. They’re just trying to do it under a different guise or different facade, saying that somehow with the best intentions they are promoting democracy, but in reality it’s just promoting the US agenda.”

Among other things, the State Department is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

Other programs include a so-called “internet in a suitcase,” a powerful portable wireless transmitter that activists can use to set up their own networks, in order to circumvent state control. But at the same time, American companies provide authorities in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait with the technology to effectively block websites.

“Those double standards do in fact exist and everybody should be fully aware of those things and understand that it’s an integral part of the US foreign policy. The United States government is fostering regime change, that’s what essentially the color revolutions are. And they have a geopolitical motive, and the geopolitical motive is different in every country they work in,” says Eric Pottenger, author and blogger.

Technology is not all the US provides to instigate change in certain countries. Some opposition movements get a direct cash supply. For example, WikiLeaks cables show that the State Department has for years secretly funded Syrian anti-government groups.

“It’s done in general to create a world that is more aligned – more specifically, more controllably aligned – with the views of the United States. Without having to land troops, without having to invade, bomb,” explains Luis Rumbaut from the educational fund Alianza Cubano-Americana.

There is a page on the State Department’s website promoting grants for those willing to bring about change in communist Cuba. One of the requirements says: “It is preferable for these personnel to speak Spanish fluently, possess solid understanding of the cultural context, and have prior experience on the island, in order to maximize their effectiveness in this unique operating environment.”

It sounds very much like recruiting agents. But instead of doing that the traditional stealth way, the US does that right out in the open, on their website.

America’s help most often comes with strings attached. Many say opposition leaders in Libya, who now get financial and political support from Washington, are sure to get instructions on how to return the favor.

“Essentially their behaviors end up being consistent with agents of the US government, even if they don’t necessarily think that’s what’s they are doing,” Eric Pottenger believes.

====

Tbilisi: NATO Representative Promotes Georgia’s Integration

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1897218.html

Trend News Agency
June 27, 2011

NATO rep to visit Tbilisi workshop
N. Kirtskhalia

Tbilisi: The representative of the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Despina Afendouli, will visit Tbilisi today.

Afentoul will attend a workshop organized by the NATO Information Center in Tbilisi at the Vere Palace, the Georgian Foreign Ministry told Trend.

The workshop is devoted to Georgia’s integration into NATO.

A NATO representative will leave Georgia on June 28.

====

Pakistan: U.S. Drone Strikes Kill At Least 26 People

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-06/28/c_13952835.htm

Xinhua News Agency
June 28, 2011

26 people killed in two U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: At least 26 people were killed in two U.S. drone strikes launched Monday in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area of South Waziristan, reported local Urdu TV channel Geo.

According to the local media reports, the U.S. drones launched two strikes in the same afore-said area on Monday.

During the first strike launched on Monday afternoon, four missiles were fired by U.S. drones at a vehicle suspected of carrying militants in the Wana area of South Waziristan, reportedly killing 12 people.

The second strike, which was launched late Monday night in the Mantoi area of South Waziristan with a target at two houses, killing 14 people.

….

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Four U.S. Missiles Kill At Least Eight In Pakistan

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-06/27/c_13952626.htm

Xinhua News Agency
June 27, 2011

U.S. drone attack kills 8 in NW Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: At least eight people were killed Monday when a U.S. drone targeted the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, local sources said.

The pilotless aircraft fired four missiles at a vehicle in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan which borders Afghanistan, they said.

The identities of the killed are not immediately known…

So far this year, the U.S. drones have carried out almost 40 attacks in Pakistan’s northwest region, reportedly killing over 300 people.

…

====

Pakistan Tells Britain To Withdraw Military Trainers

http://en.trend.az/regions/world/ocountries/1897317.html

Trend News Agency
June 27, 2011

Pakistan tells Britain to withdraw military trainers

Pakistan requested that Britain pull out a team of military advisors sent to train the country’s paramilitary troops, British media reports have said, DPA reported.

The Guardian newspaper on Sunday cited the British Ministry of Defence confirming that 18 advisors deployed to the southern province of Baluchistan to train the Frontier Corps had been withdrawn.

…

The move came after a raid by US special forces that killed Osama bin Laden in the north-western city of Abbottabad on May 2. The incident strained relations between Pakistan and its western allies in the fight against terrorism.

The United States have already pulled out more than 100 military trainers from Pakistan in the wake of the raid.

====

U.S. Spy Plane Crashes, Falls Into Taliban Hands

http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2011/06/27/nato-spy-plane-crashes-kapisa

Pajhwok Afghan News
June 27, 2011

NATO spy plane crashes in Kapisa

MEHMOOD RAQI: A pilotless surveillance drone used by NATO-led troops has crashed in the Tagab district of central Kapisa province, the alliance said on Monday, but the Taliban claimed to have shot down the aircraft.

…

The Tagab district chief, Abdul Hakim Akhunzada, confirmed the crash, saying the aircraft went down in the Zangali area late on Sunday. He said the Taliban seized the remains of the plane.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the drone was a spy plane and that the Taliban had taken its debris.

====

Libyan war updates/Stop NATO news: June 26, 2011

====

100 Days Of War: 12,607 NATO Air Missions, 4,478 Strike Sorties In Libya

Libya Seeks Nigeria’s Aid To End NATO Bombardments

Iraq: Deadliest Month For U.S. Soldiers In Over Two Years

U.S. Troops Deploy With Polish Counterparts For Afghan War

Afghanistan: Two Spanish Soldiers Killed, Three Wounded

NATO To Keep Slovak Troops In Afghanistan

Four NATO Sldiers Killed In Afghan Attacks

NATO Tanker Set On Fire In Pakistan

U.S., German Troops In “Unparalleled” Czech Border Exercise

Azerbaijan: President Vows Military Build-Up For New Caucasus War

Azerbaijani Army One Of The Strongest “In Europe”: MP

====

100 Days Of War: 12,607 NATO Air Missions, 4,478 Strike Sorties In Libya

http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/3/documents/Libya%20update%20June%2011/20110626_110626-oup-update.pdf

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
June 26, 2011

NATO and Libya
Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ

…

Over the past 24 hours, NATO has conducted the following activities associated with Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR:

Air Operations

Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 12607 sorties, including 4748 strike sorties, have been conducted.

Sorties conducted 25 JUNE: 123

Strike sorties conducted 25 JUNE: 45

…

====

Libya Seeks Nigeria’s Aid To End NATO Bombardments

http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5235344

Press Trust of India
June 26, 2011

Libya seeks Nigeria’s help to end NATO bombardments
From Paul Ohia

Abuja: Libya has sought Nigeria”s help to halt the air attacks by NATO forces which seeks to force the embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to quit.

Libyan Foreign minister Abdullahi Oubaidi met President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday and said he extracted a promise from the Nigerian leader to take up the issue at the forthcoming meeting of the African Union in Equatorial Guinea.

“The action of NATO is a strict violation of the sovereignty of Libya. The matter ought to have been allowed for internal resolution but has been blown out of control by NATO which has been bombing and killing innocent civilians”, Oubaidi said adding that infrastructure in the country was totally being destroyed.

…

Initial missile bombardments led by France was followed by a combination of attacks by other world powers with war planes trailed by combat helicopters.

The African Union has sent several emissaries including South African President Jacob Zuma to the country to seek a peaceful solution to the civil war.

During the India-Africa Forum Summit held recently in Addis Ababa, President Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea and the Chairman of the African Union lamented the backseat given to Africa in tackling such problems.

====

Iraq: Deadliest Month For U.S. Soldiers In Over Two Years

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/27/52422049.html

Voice of Russia
June 27, 2011

2 US soldiers killed in Iraq

Two US soldiers were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday while conducting operations, France Presse reports citing Pentagon officials in Washington.

The deaths bring to 4,465 the overall number of American troops killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led invasion in 2003. Eleven American troops have died this month in combat related situations.

The casualty figure is the highest number of combat-related deaths since May 2009.

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U.S. Troops Deploy With Polish Counterparts For Afghan War

http://www.sj-r.com/top-stories/x898079368/18-Illinois-National-Guard-members-to-join-Polish-forces-in-Afghanistan

State Journal-Register
June 21, 2011

18 Illinois Guard members to join Polish forces in Afghanistan

Sgt. David Sworobowicz soon will be putting his Polish language skills to good use in Afghanistan.

Sworobowicz, a Springfield resident who grew up near Chicago, is one of 18 Illinois National Guard soldiers who are deploying to Afghanistan with a Polish army unit…

As part of his duties, Sworobowicz will translate between the Polish soldiers and Illinois Guard personnel.

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While in Afghanistan, the Guard members will be working with the Poles on a variety of missions, including security operations.

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The Illinois National Guard has had a partnership with Poland since 1993. Since then, the Illinois Army National Guard has participated in more than 30 exercises with Polish land forces.

Purple’s team represents the 14th rotation of Illinois Guard personnel supporting operations in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

The team will leave Thursday for two weeks of training at Camp Atterbury, near Edinburgh, Ind. They will then head to Poland where they will train with Polish forces for about two months and should arrive in Afghanistan in the fall for a six-month deployment.

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Afghanistan: Two Spanish Soliders Killed, Three Wounded

http://en.trend.az/regions/world/afghanistan/1897195.html

Trend News Agency
June 27, 2011

Two Spanish soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Two Spanish soldiers have been killed and three others injured in Afghanistan as their armored vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device, Press TV reported.

Spain’s Defense Minister Carme Chacon announced at a press conference that the incident took place on Sunday, some 20 kilometers north of the Qala i Naw city in the northwestern region of Badghia, when the soldiers were conducting a reconnaissance patrol.

The injured soldiers, who suffered from broken bones and bruises, had been taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Bala Murghab. Two of them had to amputate their legs, AFP reported.

Spain currently has some 1,500 troops in the NATO-led military operation in Afghanistan.

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NATO To Keep Slovak Troops In Afghanistan

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/25/52371475.html

Voice of Russia
June 25, 2011

Slovakia not withdrawing troops from Afghanistan

Slovakia does not plan to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by 2014 said the Press-Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Slovakia, Ivan Rudolph.

“The armed forces of Slovakia will be in Afghanistan until the end of the process of transferring responsibility for security to local authorities in 2014. Gradually we will move to aiding in the training of Afghan security forces, “- he said.

Currently Slovakia has 323 troops in Afghanistan.

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Four NATO Sldiers Killed In Afghan Attacks

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1647664.php/Four-NATO-soldiers-killed-in-separate-attacks-in-Afghanistan

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
June 26, 2011

Four NATO soldiers killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan

Kabul: Four NATO soldiers have been killed in separate attacks by Afghan insurgents over the weekend, the military alliance said Sunday.

Two International Security Assistance Forces soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack in the west of the country, while another member died as result of a similar attack in the south, coalition forces said in a statement.

Both incidents took place on Sunday. The military did not reveal the nationalities of the deceased nor the exact location of the attacks.

On Saturday, another ISAF soldier was killed in an insurgent attack in the south.

More than 50 United States and NATO soldiers have been killed so far this month in Afghanistan, according to iCausalities.org, an independent website that tracks military fatalities in Afghanistan.

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NATO Tanker Set On Fire In Pakistan

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C06%5C26%5Cstory_26-6-2011_pg7_9

Associated Press of Pakistan
June 26, 2011

NATO container set ablaze

MASTUNG: Unidentified gunmen set ablaze a NATO container in Mastung on Saturday.

A police official said that a container carrying supplies for the NATO forces was on its way to Afghanistan from Karachi when unidentified armed men intercepted it and opened indiscriminate fire at it.

Resultantly, the container caught fire and was gutted, however, the driver and cleaner remained unhurt. Police have cordoned off the area and started search operation.

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U.S., German Troops In “Unparalleled” Czech Border Exercise

http://praguemonitor.com/2011/06/21/czech-us-german-soldiers-join-unique-border-exercise

Czech News Agency
June 21, 2011

Czech, US, German soldiers to join unique border exercise

Plzen, West Bohemia: Some 60 professional soldiers and military reserves from the Czech Republic, Germany and the United States will take part in the 12th border exercise in Plzen and Gare, Germany, this week, Plzen Regional Military Command chief Roman Kucera told reporters Monday.

The Patrouille-Hlidka-Euregio-Egrensis exercise, which is unparalleled in the Czech Republic, will focus on military tasks and rescue operations, Kucera said.

Soldiers will be divided into mixed international teams to fulfil several tasks…

The exercise is to extend cooperation of border regions and improve soldiers’ military and non-military skills, Kucera pointed out.

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After the Czech part of the exercise ends and is assessed, the event will move to Germany where soldiers are to fulfill other tasks, Slavomir Tomcak, from the Regional Military Command, said.

The team competitions in the complex of the miliary shooting range in Plzen-Lobzy will be open to the public.

…

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Azerbaijan: President Vows Military Build-Up For New Caucasus War

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=254614

Interfax
June 26, 2011

Azerbaijan will restore its territorial integrity by any means – President Aliyev

BAKU: Azerbaijan must be strong in order to restore its territorial integrity, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said.

“I am absolutely sure that our territorial integrity will be restored in any way. To this end we must be even stronger,” he said in Baku before the beginning of a military parade of the Day of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan.

He said that the occupation of 20% of Azerbaijani territory by Armenia is a temporary phenomenon and cannot last forever.

He stressed that Azerbaijan will continue building up its military might. “While in 2003 our military spending amounted to $160million, in 2010 – to $2.15 billion, this year the figure has reached $3.3 billion,” he said adding that today Azerbaijan’s military spending exceeds Armenia’s entire national budget by 50%.

Aliyev said that military speeding will continue to remain the top priority in the national budget until Armenia withdraws from Azerbaijani lands and signs a peace agreement.

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Azerbaijani Army One Of The Strongest “In Europe”: MP

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/1897138.html

Trend News Agency
June 26, 2011

MP: Azerbaijani army proved to be one of strongest armies in Europe
M. Aliyev

Baku: In a Sunday military parade Azerbaijani Army demonstrated itself as one of the strongest armies of Europe, the deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani parliamentary committee on defense and security, Aydin Mirzazade, told Trend.

According to Mirzazade, the discipline of different divisions of the Armed Forces was demonstrated on a high level and the feeling was that arrangements for the parade were very substantial.

A military parade commemorating the Azerbaijani Armed Forces Day and the 20th anniversary of restoration of the country’s independence ended in Baku on Sunday.

“Today we witnessed updated technique – missiles, rifles, military equipment, as well as renewal of their technical characteristics – as compared to the parade held three years ago,” Mirzazade said.

The number of military airliners and helicopters has increased considerably, he added.

“It is well seen that the Azerbaijani Army’s maneuver capabilities are quite high in any battle conditions with such technique and training,” Mirzazade underscored.

Mirzazade noted that the ambassadors of foreign countries and military attaches were observing with great interests the parade, which made a deep impression on them.

The Azerbaijani Army is fully prepared to implement tasks set for it.

The military parade was attended by 6,000 servicemen of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces. About 400 military equipment and weapon systems, including 50 modernized military combat equipment, 60 weapons produced and upgraded in Azerbaijan, 14 armored transporters, 35 combat helicopters, 22 fighter jets, 8 training aircrafts, 28 ships, boats and other equipment were demonstrated at the parade.

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Herodotus: No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Herodotus
From The Histories
Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt

“Tell me Croesus, who was it who persuaded you to March against my country and be my enemy rather than my friend?”

“My lord,” Croesus replied, “the luck was yours when I did it, and the loss was mine. The god of the Greeks encouraged me to fight you: the blame is his. No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace – in peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons…”

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“You know, my lord, that amongst living creatures it is the great ones that God smites with his thunder, out of envy of their pride. It is always the great buildings and the tall trees which are struck by lightning…”

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“There is danger in insatiable desire, and I could not but remember the fate of Cyrus’ campaign against the Massagetae and Cambyses’ invasion of Ethiopia. Yes, and did I not march with Darius, too, against the Scythians? My memory of those disasters forced me to believe that the world would call you happy only if you lived in peace…”