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Category: Middle East & Africa

  • Syria hits out at ‘terrorist’ US

    Syria hits out at ‘terrorist’ US

    Syria’s foreign minister has accused the US of an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression” over what it says was a helicopter raid on its territory.

    Walid Muallem said Sunday’s attack saw four US aircraft travel eight miles inside Syrian airspace from Iraq and kill eight unarmed civilians on a farm.

    Unnamed US military officials have said the attack targeted and killed a high profile al-Qaeda operative.

    But the White House has not confirmed or denied the alleged raid.

    Walid Muallem: We put the responsibility on the American government

    A US official was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that its forces had mounted a “successful” raid against foreign fighters threatening US forces in Iraq.

    He said the raid was believed to have killed “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region”.

    The BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Washington says the person targeted was Abu Ghadiyah, an Iraqi from Mosul.

    He was the leader of a network which smuggled fighters into Iraq and had been put on a US Treasury Department black list in February for funding and arming insurgents, says our correspondent.

    The military official quoted by AFP said: “Look when you’ve got an opportunity, an important one, you take it”.

    “That’s what the American people would expect, particularly when it comes to foreign fighters going into Iraq, threatening our forces.”

    The US has previously accused Syria of allowing militants into Iraq, but Mr Muallem insisted his country was trying to tighten border controls.

    ‘An opportunity’

    Speaking at a news conference in London, Mr Muallem said the raid on the town of Abu Kamal had killed a father and his three children, a farm guard and his wife, and a fisherman.

    Mr Muallem said the raid was “not a mistake” and that he had urged the Iraqi government to investigate.

    “We consider this criminal and terrorist aggression. We put the responsibility on the American government,” he told reporters following talks with UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

    He added: “All of them [the victims] are civilians, Syrian, unarmed and they are on the Syrian territories.

    “Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression.”

    Asked if Syria would use force if a similar operation was mounted, he said: “As long as you are saying if, I tell you, if they do it again, we will defend our territories.”

    Referring to the US presidential election, he said: “We hope the coming administration will learn the mistakes of this administration.”

    Mr Muallem and Mr Miliband were scheduled to hold a joint press conference, but Mr Miliband withdrew. The UK government has declined to comment on the raid.

    Exclusive BBC footage of the site of the alleged raid

    BBC

  • US helicopter attack on Syria kills eight

    US helicopter attack on Syria kills eight

    Correspondents in Damascus, Syria | October 28, 2008

    US MILITARY helicopters launched a rare attack yesterday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the Syrian Government condemned as “serious aggression”.

    A US military official said the attack by special forces had targeted a network of al-Qa’ida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. The Americans had been unable to shut down the network in the area because Syria was out of the US military’s reach.

    “We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official said.

    The cross-border raid came just days after the commander of US forces in western Iraq said US troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

    A Syrian government statement said the US helicopter gunships attacked Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, 8km inside the Syrian border. Four military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction and fired on the workers inside, killing them. Four children were among the dead, the Syrians reported.

    A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh said some of the helicopters landed and the US troops left the aircraft and fired at a building. He said the helicopters flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and several brick factories. Another witness said four helicopters were used in the US attack.

    Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, there have been some instances in which US troops crossed the 600km Syria-Iraq border in pursuit of militants, or US warplanes violated Syria’s airspace. But yesterday’s attack was the first conducted by aircraft and on such a large scale.

    Syria’s Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the US and Iraqi charges d’affaires to protest over the strike.

    “Syria condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible for this attack and all its repercussions. Syria also calls on the Iraqi Government to shoulder its responsibilities and launch an immediate investigation into this serious violation and prevent the use of Iraqi territory for aggression against Syria,” a government statement said in Damascus.

    Syrian state television broadcast footage showing blood on the floor of the construction site.

    The area attacked is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to support the Sunni insurgency.

    The network of foreign fighters sends militants from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qa’ida and loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, a US military official said.

    While US forces have had considerable success in shutting down the “rat lines” in Iraq, the Syrian area has been out of reach, the official said.

    US major general John Kelly said last week that Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries, but Syria was a “different story”.

    He said the US was helping construct a sand barrier and ditches along the border.

    The White House in August approved similar raids by US special forces from Afghanistan crossing the border into Pakistan to attack al-Qa’ida and Taliban fighters there.

    Most of the foreign fighters in Iraq enter through Syria, according to US intelligence. Foreign fighters carrying cash have been al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s chief source of income, contributing more than 70 per cent of the operating budgets in one sector in Iraq, according to documents captured on the Syrian border last year.

    Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused the US earlier this year of not giving his country the equipment needed to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq. He said Washington feared Syria could use such equipment against Israel.

    Although Syria has long been viewed by the White House as a destabilising country in the Middle East, in recent months Damascus has been trying to change its image and end years of Western seclusion.

    President Bashar Assad has pursued indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by Turkey, and says he wants direct talks next year. Syria has also agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon, a country it used to dominate, and has worked harder at stemming the flow of militants into Iraq.

    AP

    Source: www.theaustralian.news.com.au, October 28, 2008

  • Sulaimani: PUK officials meet with a US diplomat

    Sulaimani: PUK officials meet with a US diplomat

    PUKmedia    2008-10-26    20:41:38

    PUK politburo active member, Omer Said Ali attended by several other PUK politburo members including Jalal Jawhar and Mustafa Saaid Kadir met with a US official from the US Embassy in Baghdad- Head of US diplomatic representation   in Sulaimani province David Wsikler – on Sunday.
    During the meeting, the political and economical conditions in Iraq and the Kurdistan region were discussed.
    Omer Saaid Ali explained that there are political and economical stability in the Kurdistan region which is a good opportunity for foreign investment in the region.
    The US official expressed the readiness of the US Embassy to enhance support between the US Embassy in Iraq and the Kurdistan region especially in aspects of joint American- Kurdish investment, importing high-quality technology and getting benefit from the American investment system.
  • President’s dilemma

    President’s dilemma

    Oct 23rd 2008
    From Economist.com

    Deciding between Nabucco and South Stream

    WHICH will it be? The next American president will have to decide.
    Either Europe gets natural gas from Iran, or Russia stitches up the
    continent’s energy supplies for a generation.

    In one sense, it is hard to compare the two problems. Iranian nuclear
    missiles would be an existential threat to Israel. If Russia sells it
    rocket systems and warhead technology, or advanced air-defence systems
    (or vetoes sanctions) it matters. By contrast, Russia’s threat to
    European security is a slow, boring business. At worst, Europe ends up
    a bit more beholden to Russian pipeline monopolists than is healthy
    politically. But life will go on.

    Europe’s energy hopes lie in a much discussed but so far unrealised
    independent pipeline. Nabucco, as it is optimistically titled (as in
    Verdi, and freeing the slaves) would take gas from Central Asia and
    the Caspian region via Turkey to the Balkans and Central Europe. That
    would replicate the success of two existing oil pipelines across
    Georgia, which have helped dent Russia’s grip on east-west export routes.

    Russia is trying hard to block this. It is reviving the idea of an
    international gas cartel with Qatar and Iran. It also wants to kybosh
    Nabucco through its own rival project, the hugely expensive ($12.8
    billion) South Stream. Backed by Gazprom (the gas division of Kremlin,
    Inc) and Italy’s ENI, it has already got support from Austria,
    Bulgaria and Serbia. The project has now been delayed two years to 2015.

    But politicking around it is lively. This week the Kremlin managed to
    get Romania—until now a determined holdout on the Nabucco side—to
    start talks on joining South Stream. As Vladimir Socor, a veteran
    analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, notes, that creates just the kind
    of contest that the Kremlin likes, in which European countries jostle
    each other to get the best deal from Russia. Previously, that played
    out in a central European battle between Austria and Hungary to be
    Russia’s most-favoured energy partner in the region. Now the Kremlin
    has brought in Slovenia to further increase its leverage.

    All this works only because the European Union (EU) is asleep on the
    job. Bizarrely, Europe’s leaders publicly maintain that the two
    pipelines are not competitors. They have given the task of promoting
    Nabucco to a retired Dutch politician who has not visited the most
    important countries in the project recently (or in some cases even at
    all).

    The main reason for the lack of private-sector interest is lack of
    gas. The big reserves are in Turkmenistan, but Russia wants them too.
    Securing them for Nabucco would mean a huge, concerted diplomatic push
    from the EU and from America. It would also require the building of a
    Transcaspian gas pipeline.

    That is not technically difficult (unlike, incidentally, South Stream,
    which goes through the deep, toxic and rocky depths of the Black Sea).
    But it faces legal obstacles, and could be vetoed by both Russia and
    Iran. As Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute argues in a new paper,
    “the fortunes of the two pipelines are inversely related”.

    That is America’s dilemma. Befriending Iran would create huge problems
    for Russia. An Iranian bypass round the Caspian allows Turkmen gas
    (and Iran’s own plentiful reserves) to flow to Turkey and then on to
    Europe. But the same American officials, politicians and analysts who
    are most hawkish about Russia tend also to be arch-sceptics about
    starting talks with the mullahs (or even turning a blind eye to
    Iranian gas flowing through an American-backed pipeline).

    If Iran can make it clear that does not want to destroy Israel and
    promote terrorism (and stops issuing rhetorical flourishes on the
    subject) it stands to benefit hugely. The “grand bargain” has never
    looked more tempting—or more urgent.

  • Barzani: Recent meeting brings down walls with Turkey

    Barzani: Recent meeting brings down walls with Turkey
    Tuesday, 21 October 2008

    In his first public comments after a meeting with Turkish officials last week, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said the contact removed obstacles standing in the way of dialogue with Ankara and that the sides have turned a new page in ties.”The walls between us have been brought down. The channels are open for dialogue,” Barzani told reporters in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil. “Before, Turkey refused to have any kind of contact with us. Now, Ankara has taken a step to improve relations with us and the Baghdad government.”

    Turkey’s special envoy to Iraq Murat Özçelik and Foreign Ministry bureaucrats met with Barzani in Baghdad last week, the first public contact with the Kurdish leader since the US-led war on Iraq. No detail concerning the content of talks has been revealed but both sides said the meeting was positive. Barzani said neither the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) presence in northern Iraq nor any other issue were specifically on the agenda, adding that problems will be discussed in more detail in future talks.

    “The meeting was a beginning. This is a beginning to find positive solutions to problems between us,” he said. Barzani also said the talks will continue but did not elaborate on the timing or level of the new talks. “These will be announced later. But talks will take place both here and in Turkey,” he said.

    The PKK presence in Kurdish-run northern Iraq has been a major irritant in Turkey’s ties with the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that runs the mountainous region. Ankara has long accused Barzani of supporting the PKK and had refused to have dialogue unless he proved his commitment to help Turkey in its fight with the terrorist group.

    But the no-talk policy is apparently changing. In May, Özçelik and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s foreign policy advisor Ahmet Davutoğlu met with Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish administration. Turkey has been launching cross-border raids on PKK targets in northern Iraq since last December. The United States is sharing intelligence with Turkey on the terrorist group.

    “We don’t want our relations to be confined to the PKK issue only. We want extensive ties in all areas,” said Nechirvan Barzani on Sunday in Arbil. He said more contacts between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds were possible in the near future but did not elaborate. He also revealed that he had a meeting with Özçelik in London in July, discussing his planned meeting with Massoud Barzani.

    Barzani to discuss PJAK in Iran

    Massoud Barzani is expected to visit neighboring Iran this week and the presence of a PKK offshoot in northern Iraq will be on the agenda of his talks, which will focus on border security, Iranian news reports said yesterday. The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which has organic links with the PKK, uses northern Iraqi bases to attack Iran. Turkey and Iran coordinate cross-border attacks on PKK and PJAK targets. Four PJAK members were killed in clashes with the Iranian security forces over the past two weeks. Three Iranian soldiers also died in the clashes.
  • Kurdistan region president to visit Iran on Wednesday

    Kurdistan region president to visit Iran on Wednesday

    PUKmedia    2008-10-21   19:55:49

    Kurdistan region president Massud Barzani heading a senior political delegation will visit Iran on Wednesday, a close source from the delegation told PUKmedia correspondent.
    The several-day visit is upon an Iranian formal invitation. Reinforcing bilateral relations between both sides and discussing conditions in Iraq and the area would be discussed during the visit.

    Barzani would meet with top Iranian officials including the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, and  Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili.

    The accompanying delegation would include representatives of the Kurdistan region political parties namely: Fadhil Mirani, representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Arsalan Baez, representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Salaheddin Mohamed Bahadin, representative and general secretary of the Kurdistan Islamic Union(KIU), Kadir Aziz, representative and secretary general of the Kurdistan Toilers Party (KTP), and Fouad Husain, head of Kurdistan region presidency office.