By: Zvi Bar’el – Haaretz.com

Did the truck convoy making its way from Port Sudan to Egypt carry weapons from Iran, China or Russia – Sudan’s three major arms suppliers? The prime suspect is Iran, which has been strengthening its ties with Sudan ever since President Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in a military coup in 1989.

Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najar visited Sudan this month and signed a series of military cooperation agreements. Among other things, Iran’s army will now train Sudanese military cadets and Iran will provide Sudan with advanced weapons. In 2006, Bashir visited Iran, declared the friendship between the two states strong and said Sudan’s army was “willing to put itself at the disposal of Iranian instructors.”

Arab sources report that Sudan allows Hezbollah to operate in its territory, including by purchasing arms both for the organization’s own use and for Hamas. Since some areas of Sudan are not under the central government’s control, international terror organizations see it as a convenient playground.

Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an average per capita income of about $200. Its legal system is based on Islamic religious law. However, it maintains relatively good ties with the American intelligence community. Sudan hosted Osama Bin Laden for years, until he left it in 1996 for Afghanistan. But after the September 11 attacks, Khartoum offered to cooperate with the United States and allowed CIA agents to operate in its territory.

In exchange, then-president George Bush lifted many of the sanctions that had been imposed on Sudan and praised the intelligence cooperation with Khartoum. Some of the sanctions were reimposed in 2004, following the outbreak of the war in Darfur. But the U.S. is maintaining its diplomatic ties with Sudan to preserve the reconciliation agreement between north and south, for which Sudan won U.S. assistance worth $360 million.

In 1995, after an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak while he was visiting Addis Ababa, Mubarak accused Sudan of responsibility for the attack and urged the Sudanese people to topple the regime. Egypt also gave asylum to former Sudanese president Jaffer Numeiri until Bashir permitted his return.

Egypt is nevertheless careful to maintain correct relations with Sudan, to ensure that it does not damage the Nile, Egypt’s life source, and that the peace agreement between northern and southern Sudan does not damage Egypt’s interests. Yet Cairo is also watching the increasingly close relationship between Iran and Sudan with alarm, seeing it as a threat.

The International Criminal Court recently issued a warrant for Bashir’s arrest on charges of planning and committing genocide. Bashir has thus far scoffed at the warrant, and this week, he visited Mubarak to seek Arab backing against it. Egyptian sources said he also consulted Mubarak about the strike on the arms convoy and sought his help to improve Sudan’s relations with Washington.

* Sudan: No proof IAF attacked convoy The Sudani Foreign Ministry said Friday there was no proof that Israel attacked a Hamas-bound arms convoy in the country two months ago.

* Russian ‘Arctic military’ plan Russia has announced plans to set up a military force to protect its interests in the Arctic.

* Japan to ‘destroy’ N Korea rocket Japan says it is deploying missile interceptors to destroy any parts of a North Korean rocket that might fall on its territory.

* Obama: Safety of world at stake in Afghanistan President Obama, saying “the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks are in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” announced a new strategy Friday to confront the growing threat in the two countries.

* ‘Iron Dome’ Passes the Test The Defense Ministry reported Thursday that the Iron Dome rocket protection system recently passed a series of tests.

* Erdogan says Turkey ready to resume Israel-Syria mediation Turkey is ready to resume mediation between Israel and Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying.

* Iranian leader assures Assad of Muslim victory Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, on Friday that Israel and the US were “weakening with God’s help”.

* Olmert: Not much time left for peace To seal an agreement with the Palestinians, future Israeli leaders would have to offer them “more than what Ehud Barak offered at Camp David.”

* ANALYSIS / Sudan has become playground for terror groups Did the truck convoy making its way from Port Sudan to Egypt carry weapons from Iran, China or Russia – Sudan’s three major arms suppliers?

* Is it Time for the IMF to Change? As the only Arab country that is a member of the G-20 and thus invited to next week’s summit on the global economy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a heavy responsibility to speak for those other Arab peoples who are not represented there.

* While Israel celebrates, Egypt stays quiet The Foreign Ministry, as well as local academic and cultural institutions, have planned a number of events this week to commemorate three decades of peace between Egypt and Israel.

* 30 years at peace There was something melancholy about our story this week that Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Yasser Reda would be marking the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our countries.

* China fury at US military report Beijing has reacted angrily to a Pentagon report on China’s military power, which claimed it was altering the military balance in Asia.

* Barkat: Jerusalem must stay united Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told American Jewish leaders in New York on Wednesday that he believes Jerusalem must remain united for pragmatic reasons as much as for emotional ones.

* Czech government defeat raises major Lisbon concerns The presidents of both the European Commission and the European Parliament on Wednesday (25 March) urged the Czech Republic to proceed with the ratification of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

* ‘IAF planes bombed Gaza-bound weapons convoy’ As Israeli troops battled Palestinian gunmen during Operation Cast Lead in an attempt to end the rocket threat to southern Israel, IAF warplanes conducted a mission with similar objectives far from the front in the Gaza Strip.

* Geithner ‘open’ to China proposal Geithner, at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. is “open” to a headline-grabbing proposal by the governor of the China’s central bank.

* N Korea ‘places missile on pad’ North Korea has placed what is thought to be a long-range missile on a launch pad.

* Islam helps shape coming Indonesian elections Islamic parties in Indonesia will not get enough votes in the coming election to nominate a presidential candidate, according to polls.

* Egyptians ponder 30-year peace with Israel In Cairo, the 30th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt is seen by many as a moment for regret, not celebration.

By: Wolfgang G Schwanitz – The Jerusalem Post

Etgar Lefkovits asks if the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is whitewashing the grand mufti’s biography on-line (“US museum draws flak for pro-Nazi mufti bio,” March 18). Not at all. It’s not bad intention, but the wrong approach that has led to the thesis of “ideological and strategic incompatibility between Nazism and Arab nationalism.”

The main events of Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s life were kept in the dark before the millennium. Then the mufti’s memoirs and other studies appeared in Arabic. Obviously the museum’s authors – surely not Middle East historians – do not know those books or that language.

Big chunks of knowledge have been left out in the museum’s narrative. Almost nothing relates to the 29 years he lived after World War II, though there is the fairy tale of his “escape” from Paris to Cairo in 1946. But escape? Before this happened, the French said he was free to go.

Missing is his help in getting thousands of Nazis jobs in the Middle East in the military, security or propaganda (most converted to Islam). You wonder from where the deadly ideology came that pushed Israel into a spiral of struggle for survival. Here you learn nothing about the mufti’s bases in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Indonesia or Pakistan. Nor is anything said about his involvement in the murder of those willing to come to terms with the young Jewish state, people like Jordan’s King Abdullah I.

Missing is the mufti’s worldwide incitement of terror against Israel and Jews, the support for his protégé Yasser Arafat and his role in finding retreats for Muslim Brothers in cities like Geneva or Munich. You don’t read anything about the global Islamic organizations he built until his death in 1974.

Even the mufti’s year of birth is in quotation marks, although he stated clearly it was 1897. It goes on with misguiding sections, mistakes and omissions. Hitler certainly recognized the Arabs’ wish for independence, and the mufti as their foremost speaker. He stressed his basic position in a 1939 meeting with Ibn Saud’s envoy, and publicly at the end of 1940, giving further secret assurances to the mufti in person a year later. The text of the museum misrepresents facts and evidence.

Berlin and Rome had already done a joint broadcast declaring support for Arab aspirations. Hitler repeated it orally and in writing. The dictator was most compatible with the mufti. Until the very end, Hitler ordered full support for him – as explained by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1944. They even prepared a new financial agreement with the mufti as late as April 5, 1945.

Hitler needed the mufti as an accomplice in the Holocaust planned for the Middle East and as an adviser in Muslim affairs. For his part, the mufti found much common ground with Hitler. Just read his appeal of 1937 to all Muslims (not mentioned in the text). In a time when even Berlin still had various projects on the table about “how to solve the Jewish question,” the mufti called on Muslims for jihad to rid their lands of Jews. In a mixture of religious and racist hatred, he likened them to “microbes and scum of all countries.”

No chance that close relations arose at the end of 1937 when Adolf Eichmann traveled to Cairo, because he failed to meet the mufti in Palestine. So Husseini approached the Nazis in turn with a deal: For German help and weapons to prevent the rise of a national Jewish home, he would spread Nazi ideology and “keep up the terror in all Mandatory areas.”

Though the relations went through various phases, he soon had liaison officers in the four most powerful German offices. He enjoyed a steady relationship with the SS since 1937 (not 1943, as the museum claims). So close did the mufti feel to Hitler that he offered him a risky venture in September 1944: a mediation between Hitler and Stalin. The mufti’s protests against the release of Jews to Palestine had the desired impact. He discusses this and more in his memoirs, without mercy or regret.

It is also wrong to say Husseini conditioned his call for a general uprising on some declaration. On the contrary, he was the Nazis’ most willing executioner among the Arabs. In the Middle East he also kept a wide institutional basis for authority over Muslims in other parts of the world. He got plenty of money and aides.

Displaying a biography today and not mentioning what happened in Germany in the middle of 1943 is astounding. In his memoirs, the mufti admitted that Heinrich Himmler, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, told him secrets of the German empire. Besides “research for a nuclear bomb,” he told him on the persecution of Jews: “Up to now we have exterminated [abadna] around three million of them.” This admission discovered in his memoirs in 1999 ended decades of heated debate on what the mufti knew about the Holocaust.

All in all, the museum displays a deeply flawed text. Carol Greenwald of Holocaust Museum Watch has alerted us rightly (for the second time) and the museum has homework to do in reaching a respectable academic standard.

By: Zvi Mazel – The Jerusalem Post

On March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty on the White House lawn. It was an intensely emotional moment. For the Israelis, the hope was born that this first step – making peace with the greatest of Arab countries – would help build a bridge to the rest of the Middle East. They found it difficult to understand the lack of enthusiasm, if not downright opposition, demonstrated by many countries.

The Arab world as a whole denounced the Egyptian initiative, which breached its united front against Israel and was seen as weakening the Palestinian struggle in which Egypt was the strongest player due to its military might. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League and the headquarters of that organization was moved to Tunis. Even the European Community (today the European Union) refrained from supporting the treaty. It did praise Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for their efforts to achieve peace, but stressed that the treaty was incomplete because it did not provide for a Palestinian state.

The United Nations evinced the same lack of support. The signatories to the treaty and the United States, which had sponsored it, had expected that the world organization would set up a peacekeeping force to monitor the demilitarization of the Sinai area. It did not happen. The Soviet Union threatened to veto any such proposal at the Security Council, and it was taken off the UN agenda.

It has to be remembered that the creation of a peace force which would supervise the demilitarization of the Sinai after Israel returned it to Egypt was at the core of the treaty. Egypt was undertaking to put an end to the state of war and establish peaceful relations in all fields of life; however Israel wanted to get solid guarantees that Sinai would no longer serve as a base of attack against its heavily populated areas. Consequently a detailed military agreement had been reached as part of the peace treaty: Egypt could keep limited military forces in the peninsula, but only police forces along the border, and an international force would supervise this essential proviso.

The UN having declined to set it up, the US stepped in and led to the creation of a special unit, the Multinational Force and Observers, whose mandate was to monitor the implementation of the military agreement. Eleven countries agreed to take part in it, though it was the United States which supplied 90 percent of the personnel. The observers of the Multinational Force also monitor a narrow strip on the Israeli side where no tanks or heavy weapons are allowed.

Because of the situation in Gaza, the two countries have mutually accepted minor temporary derogations to the military treaty, such as allowing 700 Egyptian army personnel along the Philadelphi corridor, but have refrained from making changes in the treaty itself. It seems that the dispositions of the military treaty have been faithfully observed by Egypt, and this is one of the few rays of light in the overall relationship.

ITHIN EGYPT the peace agreement met with a variety of reactions, and eventually turned into what is generally seen as a “cold peace.” And yet in the beginning it was greeted enthusiastically by the masses, who cheered Sadat upon his return from his historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977. An estimated two million people waited on the route taken by his motorcade and cheered while yelling “Long live peace! Long live Sadat!”

An Egyptian sociologist, then known for his anti-Israel position, once told me that he had been suspicious of such popular fervor, and believed it had been staged by the Mukhabarat, the Egyptian security service. He decided to conduct an opinion poll – one of the first ever in Egypt – to check the situation on the ground. To his great surprise the survey showed that over 60% supported Sadat. Not convinced, he did another survey which brought the same results. This led him to change his opinion and support the peace – a position he holds to this day.

There is no doubt but that Egypt had had enough war. Thousands of Egyptian soldiers perished during the five armed confrontations with Israel with no tangible results and no end of the conflict in sight. Its economy had suffered and the Soviet Union, which was its main supplier of weapons, tended to treat it as a subservient nation. This led Sadat to change tack. He got rid of the Russians and turned to the US, knowing fully well that the path to Washington was through a peace treaty with Israel.

The Yom Kippur War had taken Israel completely by surprise and had provided the Egyptian army with a number of military successes which were seen as restoring pride to Egypt and making it possible for that country to enter negotiations. The people of Egypt rejoiced in the return of lost lands, and even more at the prospect of a rapid improvement in their standard of living. The US was granting Egypt a hefty $2 billion a year for military and civilian purposes, and the threat of war had receded.

The assassination of Sadat to a great extent ended those expectations. Opposition to the peace became more vocal. It included intellectual circles and media brought up on the pan-Arabism of Gamal Abdel Nasser but also leftist parties and the Muslim establishment, as well as the Muslim Brothers. Elected president, Hosni Mubarak was not ready to tackle those forces, though he had the means to do so. He chose to settle for a limited peace, the cold peace, while launching an all-out effort to restore Egypt to its former position at the center of the Arab world. In this he was successful: Egypt was readmitted to the Arab League in 1989, and the headquarters of that organization left Tunis to return to Cairo.

MUBARAK MADE NO EFFORT, however, to curb the growing swell of attacks against Israel and the Jews which become a staple of the Egyptian media.

In spite of the peace and the lack of any direct threat, Mubarak continued to strengthen the army. In fact, thanks to American military assistance, the Egyptian army is now the largest Arab army in the region.

ver the years, Egypt’s economy failed to progress, and a disillusioned people lost faith in the peace. And yet Israel did all that was in its power to promote normalization between the two countries, still hoping to achieve better understanding and not just a cold peace limited to contacts between governments and minimal commercial links. In 1981, Sadat asked then-agriculture minister Ariel Sharon for help in developing his country’s agriculture, which was unable to produce enough food for the growing population. Israel sent experts in a variety of fields, from drip irrigation to the supply of seeds adapted to the light desert soil. This was expected to lead to increased yields and crops in areas outside the heavily populated delta lands.

Indeed, within a few years remarkable results were achieved. Thanks to Israeli help and know-how, Egypt now meets most of its own needs in fruits and vegetables, and even exports some produce to Europe. Unfortunately, the average Egyptian is not aware of this fact, and the opposition in Egypt repeatedly accuses Israel of having “poisoned” Egyptian soil.

EFFORTS TO PROMOTE cooperation in the fields of tourism, industry and commerce remain limited because the government of Egypt does not want them to go beyond the strict minimumAll contactsin the cultural and scientific spheres are banned and the professional associations of the Egyptian elite, such as engineers, doctors and writers, boycott Israel and forbid their members to have any contact with it. The sale of oil and gas to Israel is encountering growing opposition. Visits to Israel are actively discouraged and a special permit is needed.

A case in point is that of the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) agreement according to which goods produced in special zones can be exported to the US with no customs tax within the framework of the trade agreement between Israel and the US, provided a small percentage of the process is conducted in Israel. It was Egypt which asked for this agreement, since its textile industry was on the brink of ruin. It needed an injection of technology and open markets to survive. Exports from the QIZ have added a hefty $800 million to Egypt. This was instrumental in the liberation of Azzam Azzam, but did not lead to any improvement in the overall situation.

PEACE HAS ENDURED, though. Even if mostly limited to contacts
between governments, it has nevertheless facilitated significant changes in the region. It opened the door to the Madrid Conference in 1991, where the subject of a comprehensive peace with all Arab states, including the PLO, was put squarely on the table. It also led to tentative economic cooperation with a number of Arab states. The Oslo Accords and peace with Jordan probably would not have been possible without it.

What is more, over the years both countries have concluded that they do have common vital interests, making some form of cooperation a must. First and foremost is the Palestinian question. It is doubtful if both countries have the same solution in mind, since Egypt fully supports the Palestinian position. However it feels the need to stabilize the situation and contain terror and understands that there will have to be a compromise. This is why Egypt is keen to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, and why it is spending so much energy brokering the Gilad Schalit issue. But Egypt has its red lines. It is not ready to kill Palestinians to prevent smuggling and protect Israeli interests in Gaza.

NO LESS IMPORTANT for Egypt is the growing threat of international terror from jihadist groups such as al-Qaida, and the Iranian attempts at subversion through Hizbullah and Hamas. To defend itself against these threats, Egypt tends to coordinate its steps with pragmatic Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, but needs the help and assistance of the US and the quiet understanding, with a measure of coordination, of Israel. Both Israel and the US have a vital interest in the continued stability of the Egyptian regime and cooperation with it.

Thus Egypt has steadfastly refused to be drawn back into the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. Mubarak turned down the opposition’s calls to send the Egyptian army to fight Israel during the intifada, the war in Lebanon and the recent war in Gaza. The old leader, who is deeply committed to the stability of his country, has repeatedly said his country knows only too well the price of war and has no wish to experience it again. Let whoever wants to fight Israel do so, he says; Egypt won’t. In this he echoes Sadat’s exhortation: “No more war, no more bloodshed.”

From time to time the media in Israel turn their attention to the state of the peace with Egypt. The refusal of the Egyptian ambassador to attend the opening of the exhibition on Egypt in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem last Sunday is a reminder that the policy of cold peace is still very much alive.

With the Mubarak era drawing to its close, there is a lot of apprehension concerning the future. This is only to be expected. The cold peace and escalating incitement against Israel and the Jews are not conducive to optimism. And yet peace has endured for 30 years, surviving acute crises. Does this mean it will go on? Is the will for peace going to be stronger than the vociferous opposition in Egypt? We cannot and should not be blind to the unpredictability which is one of the characteristics of the region, yet there are grounds for cautious optimism.

By: Marc S. Ellenbogen – Middle East Times

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 24 (UPI) — In little more than a week, European leaders will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in Strasbourg, France. Europeans will show a common voice on immigration and security. Much of the credit can be given to Nicolas Sarkozy’s six-month EU presidency, which ran from July to December 2008.

Many European leaders described Sarkozy’s EU presidency as a mixture of hubris and self-aggrandizement — a man with cowboy manner. These comments came mostly from European leaders who were jealous Sarkozy had taken center stage as a man who actually managed to give Europe a voice. Not only did Sarkozy give Europe a voice; he actually set an agenda that is good for the future.

Sarkozy took on the presidency during the Georgian crisis. It was the first war on European soil since the 1990s Balkan failure. It was during the Olympics, while the world was focused on China. It was during Bush’s lame-duck period.

Europe’s chattering classes pride themselves on consensus. Most often while seeking consensus, a vacuum in leadership is created. Nevermind that the practice of consensus is often used as an excuse to avoid making a decision at all. Mostly, this endless blathering means lost opportunities for Europe to take the lead internationally.

Sarkozy understood this.

He negotiated a climate energy package for reducing CO2 while not putting the European economy’s competitive edge in danger. Germany was central to the passage of the bill, and Sarkozy was able to convince Chancellor Angela Merkel to back him. The Copenhagen agreement deals with a 20-percent reduction in CO2, energy efficiency and renewable energy. “The agreement finds a compromise between the environment and industrial competition,” said Charles Fries, France’s ambassador to Prague and the former European policy adviser to President Jacques Chirac.

Sarkozy — partly for domestic reasons — focused heavily on immigration and political asylum. The Pact on Immigration and Asylum bundled several European Commission regulatory texts. The document acknowledges the interconnectivity of Europe’s future. It especially attempts to create co-development and management on all migration issues for Europe — a significant political step.

Under the French presidency, the European Security and Defense Policy showed a growing capacity. With the operations in Kosovo, Georgia and Atalanta — a naval operation against piracy near Somalia — Sarkozy was able to show that Europe could indeed muster military and security capacity. Sarkozy — an Atlanticist — focused on making ESDP and NATO more complimentary. It was decided to unify the EU’s military and civilian strategic-planning capacities. Most importantly, Sarkozy announced that France would return to NATO’s integrated military structure, which it left 40 years ago.

Europeans are often hesitant about “persona politics.” But in a system that lives on consensus, the European Union had to swallow her consensus pride — taking a back seat to Sarkozy’s leadership style. Sarkozy put his personal energy into the EU presidency in an attempt to demonstrate Europe’s ability to manage global challenges. On the whole, Sarkozy was efficient and effective.

He showed creativity on the Union for the Mediterranean, which had actually been launched during his French presidential campaign in 2007. Some European countries took exception to this proposal because it did not include them as they are not on the Mediterranean. There was also concern that the Mediterranean Union would push aside Northern European countries that have been involved in the Barcelona process since 1995. Some felt it was competing with the EU herself. Nonetheless, Sarkozy showed he could and would think outside the box for Europe.

Agriculture was added to the French presidency’s agenda before Sarkozy actually took over. The Europeans had already secured financing for their Common Agricultural Policy through 2013. The French pushed for the suppression of milk quotas and for a CAP health check.

Energy policy will continue to haunt the European Union. The rising prices of oil and gas, and their fall, along with Europe’s energy reliance on Russia — especially among the new members from Central and Eastern Europe — create a growing interdependence. The United States is wary of this inheritance.

Sarkozy took the European presidency as three crises loomed — Ireland’s “no” on the Lisbon Treaty, Georgia and the world financial crisis.

Sarkozy considered himself the father of the new Lisbon Treaty. He traveled to Dublin and suggested the Irish should vote again, which did not endear him to Ireland’s leadership. A way out was found at the end of the French presidency by giving Ireland some guarantees on neutrality, abortion legislation and her tax system. Besides Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland have also yet to approve the treaty, which creates a European president.

Sarkozy responded quickly to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. True, the Georgians were dumb enough to be provoked by Russia, and as was later shown, actually made the first move. Nonetheless, Sarkozy quickly secured the cessation of hostilities, recognition of Georgian sovereignty by Russia, withdrawal of Russian troops from zones adjacent to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the agreement for further talks in Geneva on Georgian refugees, which are still ongoing.

Sarkozy showed he was up to the task during France’s EU presidency.

His leadership has paved the way for a stronger European voice.

Let us see what happens in Strasbourg.

* Netanyahu ‘will be peace partner’ Israel’s next prime minister, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, has said his incoming government will be a “partner for peace” with the Palestinians.

* Hamas says no date set for signing unity deal The Islamic Hamas movement on Wednesday denied reports that rival Palestinian factions will sign a reconciliation and unity deal next month.

* Egypt-Israel: An unfinished peace On March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty on the White House lawn. It was an intensely emotional moment.

* Czech government falls, putting EU presidency at risk The Czech parliament on Tuesday (24 March) by a razor-thin majority voted down the government led by Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who currently holds the EU presidency.

* Joint Darfur aid warning issued More than a million people in Darfur will go without food rations by May unless new aid agencies are deployed.

* The End of the Global War on Terror The end of the Global War on Terror — or at least the use of that phrase — has been codified at the Pentagon.

* Atlantic Eye: Sarkozy’s European voice In little more than a week, European leaders will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in Strasbourg, France.

* EU Presidency: Obama Plans ‘a Way to Hell’ A top European Union politician on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as “a way to hell.”

* Brown calls on EU to lead the way out of financial ‘hurricane’ In an unusually pro-European speech on Tuesday (24 March) UK prime minister Gordon Brown insisted that Britain was one of the EU’s key players.

* The sheikh and the Shoah Etgar Lefkovits asks if the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is whitewashing the grand mufti’s biography on-line.

By: Associated Press

MOSCOW — If you’re inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn’t mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.

Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry’s school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia’s state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.

“There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010,” Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy — a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin.

Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy.

Panarin didn’t give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources.

He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world’s wealthiest country for more than a decade now.

But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other “social and cultural phenomena” led him to nail down a specific timeframe for “The End” — when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control.

Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.

Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington’s bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed.

“I was there recently and things are far from good,” he said. “What’s happened is the collapse of the American dream.”

Panarin insisted he didn’t wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar.

Asked for comment on how the Foreign Ministry views Panarin’s theories, a spokesman said all questions had to be submitted in writing and no answers were likely before Wednesday.

It wasn’t clear how persuasive the 20-minute lecture was. One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country’s demise.

Panarin dismissed that idea: “The collapse of Russia will not occur.”

But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration.

“I can’t imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart,” Malashenko told the AP.

By: Walid Phares – Middle East Times

France’s war with the jihadis is more intense than most Americans or even most Europeans would imagine.

With French troops engaging the Taliban in Afghanistan often coming under attack, jihadist cells have started targeting France as well as French presence in the Sahel, the north African Sahara.

In a recent interview with Parisian daily Le Figaro, French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, provided significant revelations.

During a recent lecture tour of Europe I had the opportunity to meet with French defense and counterterrorism officials as well as with legislators, particularly members of the French National Assembly serving on the Afghanistan’s committee.

According to Alliot Marie members of a terrorist group in Central Asia have recently been arrested in Mulhouse, in the east of France, where they were apparently undergoing military training.

This shows that active jihadist cells are indeed deploying inside France as they are inside many other Western European countries. The minister said: “I can tell you that 89 Islamic activists were arrested in France in 2007.”

Asked about the recruitment factories Alliot Marie said, “French prisons are a place of privileged recruitment for Islamist radicals. It’s one of my concerns. I come moreover to propose to my European counterparts to develop a handbook on Islamism in prison to inform security professionals on how to detect and prevent this type of recruitment.”

France’s prison system is not that different – in terms of incubator – from the United Kingdom or the United States.

The minister also indicated that “Certain problem areas in our suburbs also remain choice target for Salafist activities. The youth are then sent to theological education in the Muslim world and attend Koranic schools, like the madrassas of Pakistan, Egypt and Yemen.”

Again, we can see clearly the nature of the international system established by the jihadist Salafists which applies in France, other European countries and in America as well. This undermines the theories that the bulk of jihadist indoctrination system is not unified nor is it universal.

For France, having the largest demography of jihadist Salafists is revealing that the recruitment-indoctrination process is somewhat comparable. Obviously, the language, local realities are always different.

On another level, Alliot Marie listed names for five countries described “at risk.”

“Like Pakistan or Yemen, we do communicate, in agreement with the airlines, the names and dates of departure and arrivals of passengers reported as dangerous. We want to extend this watch to other countries and to flights with a stopover, which would prevent for example going through Switzerland when coming from Pakistan in order to cover up tracks. Finally, we would like to know if passengers travel alone or accompanied. It’s important to prevent hijacking of planes.”

Such a statement is surprising as many critics in the United States blast Washington for establishing lists of passengers from countries at risk while claiming that Europeans do not. Now we hear the French minister of interior clarifying that these lists exist and that they are part of the French national security apparatus. This demonstrates that the prevention policy in a country very sensitive to civil liberties such as France, can work as a component of counter terrorism measures.

Two other areas of confrontation with al-Qaida are the Sahel in Africa and on the Internet.

The French minister said: “AQMIM threatens today French interests throughout the Maghreb and its influence extends to the Sahel.”

She continued: “[A] more important danger is that the terrorists have changed tactics. Several leaders of the Gulf countries have confided in me that attacks organized well in advance are yielding to opportunistic attacks, unplanned and committed by individuals indoctrinated through the internet. These wannabe jihadists are sometimes often don’t even belong to. This new threat is therefore much more difficult to identify and follow up on.”

Here again, another ingredient calling for attention internationally: what I have coined “Mutant Jihad” in my 2005 book “Future Jihad”, which has been described as “homegrown terrorism,” once again presents the feature of indoctrination as a root cause.

This finding by the French government should give the counter terrorism community across the Atlantic more indicators that the jihadist ideology remains in the center of the movement globally, even if regional interests are signaled here and there.

But I must admit that the most indicative statement made by Alliot Marie is her call to create a “handbook on Islamism” to be used inside the prison system to allow authorities to detect the growth of jihadist or Salafist ideology.

If anything, this bold move shows the precariousness of the recently developed assertions – both in Brussels and in Washington – that words that detect the ideology shouldn’t be used. Here we have the minister of interior of the French Republic – a country that has more experience with Salafism than any other Western nation – urging just the opposite: that is the production of a manual that would precisely find and use all words possible that would help in finding the radicals.

This comes as greater evidence that the architects of the so-called Lexicon disseminated across the U.S. bureaucracy is not only counterproductive, but is actually dangerous for the efforts in counter terrorism to detect the enemy ideology.

While one of Europe’s largest democracies is heading toward winning that battle of words by actually using them and understanding them, the most powerful democracy in the war on terror has abandoned one of the most efficient tools to “see” the enemy, and to educate its own public about it.

Note that the French minister uses these terms in a very precise way. She used “Islamists” when needed and Salafists when she wanted to be more specific about the doctrine.

In France, as I noted through my discussions this summer and as we can read widely in the media and academia, the terms jihadists, Islamists and Salafists are used with confidence and on solid academic grounds.

Furthermore, French-Muslim intellectuals and officials use these terms very naturally as these words are well understood in the Muslim community of France, the largest in Europe, unlike what some apologists claim in the United States: that these words, allegedly, touches the sensitivities of the community. However, the French use of these words is very focused and avoids the hyphenations and generalizations, which can indeed have a negative impact on the cultural dialogue.

In conclusion, the French battle with Salafist jihadism is widening, though not well publicized overseas. In the next months and years, it is expected that escalation would covers the areas mentioned by the French minister: Afghanistan, Sahel and North Africa as well as France itself.

By: Jamil Anderlini – The Financial Times Limited

China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies”.

Analysts said the proposal was an indication of Beijing’s fears that actions being taken to save the domestic US economy would have a negative impact on China.

“This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.

Although Mr Zhou did not mention the US dollar, the essay gave a pointed critique of the current dollar-dominated monetary system.

“The outbreak of the [current] crisis and its spillover to the entire world reflected the inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system,” Mr Zhou wrote.

China has little choice but to hold the bulk of its $2,000bn of foreign exchange reserves in US dollars, and this is unlikely to change in the near future.

To replace the current system, Mr Zhou suggested expanding the role of special drawing rights, which were introduced by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime but became less relevant once that collapsed in the 1970s.

Today, the value of SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the US dollar, yen, euro and sterling – and they are used largely as a unit of account by the IMF and some other international organisations.

China’s proposal would expand the basket of currencies forming the basis of SDR valuation to all major economies and set up a settlement system between SDRs and other currencies so they could be used in international trade and financial transactions.

Countries would entrust a portion of their SDR reserves to the IMF to manage collectively on their behalf and SDRs would gradually replace existing reserve currencies.

Mr Zhou said the proposal would require “extraordinary political vision and courage” and acknowledged a debt to John Maynard Keynes, who made a similar suggestion in the 1940s.