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.

* China calls for new reserve currency 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.

* At G20, Kremlin to Pitch New Currency The Kremlin published its priorities Monday for an upcoming meeting of the G20, calling for the creation of a supranational reserve currency.

* ‘Iranian missile threat exaggerated’ A candidate for a top nonproliferation post in the Obama administration played down on Monday the threat from Iran’s long-range missile program.

* New status in Africa empowers an ever-eccentric Qaddafi Forty years after he seized power in a bloodless coup d’état, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader once called the mad dog of the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan, has achieved the international status he always craved, as chairman of the African Union.

* Barak ‘agrees to Likud coalition’ Israel’s Labour leader Ehud Barak has reached a provisional deal with PM-designate Benjamin Netanyahu on forming a coalition.

* Israelis Track the Case of the Exploding Star and the Black Hole Scientists from the Rehovot-based Weizmann Institute have participated in the first-ever study of the world’s largest exploding star.

* Sunni fighters, key to stability, grow restive The American military marked another milestone the other day in the initiative perhaps most responsible for taming the violence in Iraq.

* Serbia marks bombing anniversary Air raid sirens have sounded and church bells have rung across Serbia as the country marks 10 years since the start of Nato’s bombing campaign.

* After years of plenty, Russia returns to earth After years of coasting on high commodity prices, the Russian government is now acknowledging it will need to get by on a much diminished revenue stream for the foreseeable future.

* A religious war within the Israeli Army The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war.

By: – Col. Bob Maginnis

This week, President Obama is expected to unveil his Afghanistan war strategy. After a 60-day top-to-bottom policy review, Obama’s national security team is expected to paint a gloomy picture of the challenges ahead and lower expectations about the realm of the possible in Central Asia.

America and her allies have battled Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan since 2001, but over the past few years events have not gone our way. Foreign troop deaths have increased, as have civilian casualties. Our favorability rating among the locals has steadily declined, as has support for the central government in Kabul.

Our allies are on the ropes. NATO allies with troops in Afghanistan are finding it difficult to sustain their commitment because of the increasing violence and lack of confidence in our strategy.

Pakistan — a putative ally — is the core problem. Islamabad has a weak democracy that is slowly being consumed by Islamic extremists. It provides sanctuary to our enemies who use the border region with Afghanistan to stage ground attacks.

Pakistan’s relationship with “ally” Saudi Arabia also undercuts our efforts in Afghanistan. The Saudis secretly fund the Taliban enemy indirectly and via the Pakistani intelligence services, which complicates our frigid relationship with neighbor Iran.

“For the Saudis, the Pakistani military has always been a vital ally,” states Haroun Mir, co-director of a Kabul-based think tank. Mir explains the Saudis also support the Taliban because it serves “…as a natural foe in the region against Shiite Iran.”

Understandably, Tehran is upset with Saudi support of the Sunni extremists and the prospect Obama might negotiate a Taliban role in Afghanistan’s government. That’s why Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki recently visited the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to revive the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. That group will counter the rise of the Taliban further complicating Obama’s plans.
Obama promises to “…recast our [Afghanistan] policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned…” His strategy must attend to four challenges.

First, Obama admits “…at the heart of a new Afghanistan policy … [will] be a smarter Pakistan policy.” Primarily, he must eliminate the Taliban’s safe haven in Pakistan, a very tall order.

But Pakistan must stabilize itself before it can deny the extremists sanctuary. The U.S. will help by conducting intense engagement to keep Islamabad’s civilian rule intact and inject funds into that economy to pull it back from the brink of collapse. In 2008, the U.S. provided $800 million of non-military aid to Pakistan, and there is pending Congressional legislation for annual non-military aid of $1.5 billion that could last 10 years.

Obama will provide Pakistan’s military more aid like training and helicopters. Even though the U.S. has provided Pakistan $12 billion in military aid since 2001, its forces still lack the means to conduct effective counter-insurgency operations.

Obama’s strategy will also address Taliban attacks inside Pakistan against our critical resupply routes. Insurgents have repeatedly struck transport depots near Peshawar and the Khyber Pass border crossing to Afghanistan, which has resulted in temporary closures.

A major challenge for Obama will be to persuade Islamabad to purge its intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate. The ISI created the Taliban and continues to aid the insurgents according to Sayed Ansari, a spokesman for Kabul’s National Security Directorate.

Second, the Afghan government must be taken off life support. That government is corrupt, lacks grass-roots support and is unable to provide basic services. Even though the standard of living for the average Afghan has improved since 2001, the country remains locked in the Middle Ages in terms of infrastructure, and its economy is dependent on the production of illegal opium, the ingredient for heroin.

The Obama strategy will expand U.S. reconstruction efforts by increasing the civilian capacity to conduct humanitarian and development efforts. This is what some have labeled a “civilian surge.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates endorses a “civilian surge” that harnesses the resources of the entire U.S. government, not just the overstretched military. But a 2008 National Defense University report pessimistically states the U.S. “…lacks adequate civilian capacity to conduct complex operations — those operations that require close civil-military planning and cooperation in the field.”

The Obama strategy will significantly expand Afghanistan’s security forces, hoping it will do more to promote stability. The goal is 400,000 troops and national police, doubling the current size at a cost of $20 billion over seven years.

Third, the Obama strategy will seek to reconcile with the Taliban. The administration’s thinking is that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by General David Petraeus in Iraq.

But at this point, the Taliban appear to believe they can outlast the allies and thus lack any incentive to talk. This must be changed by pressuring their leadership inside Pakistan and by luring foot soldiers away from the insurgency.

Obama will pressure Taliban leaders inside Pakistan with more drone attacks especially in the vicinity of the city of Quetta — the enemy’s new command and control center and the capital of Pakistan’s largest province, Baluchistan — and more joint operations with the Pakistani military.

But the U.S. risks a blowback from strikes in Baluchistan. Drones will kill some Taliban leaders, and those strikes could fuel the jihadist insurgency inside Pakistan, further destabilizing the wobbly government and further jeopardizing the West’s resupply lines.

The strategy will also seek to erode the power of militant leaders by drawing away low-level fighters who sign up for financial reasons. This can be done by strengthening Afghan village elders by offering small-scale economic projects and training local security. The elders would then convince Taliban foot soldiers to lay down their weapons.

Drawing the Taliban to negotiations is a tall order. But Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, believes the majority of Afghans and all but the most extremist Taliban are ready for peace. And Afghan President Karzai, who has been urging talks with the Taliban for some time, insists so-called “moderate” Taliban representatives must accept three pre-conditions for talks: embrace the Afghan constitution, renounce violence and seek peace.

Finally, military operations will refocus, and there will be more allied troops on the ground. Military operations in Afghanistan will focus in two areas: along the border to blunt the flow of insurgents and inside the cities and villages to create a stable environment for development. The U.S. is expected to add 17,000 troops this spring, increasing the American force to about 55,000.

Will Obama’s strategy work? His security team will define a “win” in Central Asia as something short of the conditions in present day Iraq — an elected government that includes all factions, a domestic security establishment that controls the populated areas and a self sustaining economy.

But Obama’s “win” can’t be achieved without overcoming daunting challenges. There’s the real chance a Kabul government that includes the Taliban will revert back to the pre-invasion Islamic extremism. The security situation in the Texas-sized country will require support for decades, but outside help will decline as Western attention drifts elsewhere. Most challenging is reconfiguring the opium-based economy. Creating sufficient alternative long-term jobs will take decades and billions of dollars in aid which may never materialize.

No matter what happens in Afghanistan, Pakistan holds the key to long-term regional stability, and, at this point, that country is dangerously close to imploding. Pulling it back from the precipice to resolve its many crises must be the center piece of Obama’s strategy. Only then does America have any hope of leaving Afghanistan with the expectation that country and the region won’t fall into extremist hands.

Mr. Maginnis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a national security and foreign affairs analyst for radio and television and a senior strategist with the U.S. Army.

* Iran targets the US The prevention of a nuclear Iran constitutes a top US national security priority.

* Ultra-Orthodox party joins Netanyahu’s coalition Incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought a nationalist religious party into what is shaping up to be a narrow, hawkish coalition.

* Turkish president visits Baghdad Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul is on a visit to Iraq, the first by a Turkish head of state for more than 30 years.

* Obama ponders Afghan exit plan President Obama said the US must have an “exit strategy” in Afghanistan, even as Washington sends more troops to fight Taleban militants.

* With counterterror program, Saudis have turned the tide Near the guard tower outside this country’s main counterterrorism training center, some of the concrete barriers are still scarred with shrapnel.

* Egypt won’t boycott peace anniversary The Egyptian ambassador will attend a Foreign Ministry reception marking three decades of peace between the two countries, ending speculation as to whether Egypt would forgo this week’s celebrations.

* Clean up banks to tackle dire world crisis The world is in a dire economic crisis, but no recovery is possible until the financial sector is cleaned up.

* Obama met Gorbachev in run-up to Medvedev talks President Obama has held talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in the latest sign of Washington’s efforts to “press the reset button” on ties with Russia.

* EU expanding its sphere of influence The Eastern Partnership is an EU attempt to expand its “sphere of influence” in the quest for hydrocarbons, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said.

* IDF most moral army in world “I can say that the IDF is the most moral army in the world, with high values,” Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said.

* Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei dismisses Obama overtures Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday dismissed overtures from US President Barack Obama, saying Teheran does not see any change in American policy toward its government.

* Police acts to foil PA festival in J’lem Police prevented several gatherings in east Jerusalem from breaking out on Saturday afternoon, in an effort to stifle the Palestinian Authority’s intention of announcing Jerusalem a cultural capital of the Arabs, Israel Radio reported.

* Assad in Jordan for first time since ’05 The Syrian president and the king of Jordan agreed on Friday that Arabs must achieve a unified stance in the face of regional challenges, according to a statement from the palace in Amman.

* Israel’s Netanyahu gets more time Benjamin Netanyahu, the man expected to be Israel’s next prime minister, has been given another two weeks to form a new government.

* UPDATE 2-Iran leader says world can’t stop nuclear progress Iran has shown world powers they cannot block its nuclear progress, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday, but he made no mention of a new message by U.S. President Barack Obama to his country.

* Pope condemns sorcery, urges Angolans to convert Pope Benedict XVI appealed to the Catholics of Angola on Saturday to reach out to and convert believers in witchcraft who feel threatened by “spirits” and “evil powers” of sorcery.

* First Western tour group since 2003 visits Iraq Ancient ruins aside, two weeks of touring Iraq haven’t been as satisfying as Tina Townsend Greaves had hoped.

* ‘Hamas may decide to nab more troops’ In June 2006, Hamas kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit because Israel refused to open the border crossing to the Gaza Strip, and now that Israel is refusing to release Palestinians in Israeli jails as part of a prisoner swap deal, the organization may have to resort to more kidnappings in order to get what it wants, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal told an Australian paper in a report published on Friday.

* Peres offers New Year wishes to Iranians President Shimon Peres issued an audio greeting to the Iranian people, urging them to shake off the rule of “an oppressive and fanatical regime” and return to relations of peace and harmony with Israel, which, he recalled, the two countries enjoyed when the Shah was in power, until 1979. He called on the “noble Iranian people” to eschew the rhetoric of hate and even offered a greeting for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in Persian.

* Space station unfurls solar wings Ten years after its construction began, the International Space Station now has full power capability.

* UN envoy: Gaza op seems to be war crime of greatest magnitude A UN human rights investigator said Israel’s offensive against Hamas in densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a war crime of the “greatest magnitude.”

* Iranian tipped US on Syrian facility A top-ranked Iranian defector told the US that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear weapons power, leading to an Israeli air strike that destroyed a secret reactor.

* Iran’s first satellite ‘completes mission’ Western powers nervous about potentially military technical know-how

* Obama offers Iran new beginning in diplomacy US President Obama issued an unprecedented videotaped appeal to Iran on Friday offering a “new beginning” of diplomatic engagement.

* PA Plans Sovereignty Strut for Arab Jerusalem Day The Palestinian Authority has created an Arab version of the annual Israeli celebration of Jerusalem Day.

* UN panel says world should ditch dollar A UN panel will recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies.

* I am not Jewish but… Over the years, some of my wildest critics seem to have assumed I am Jewish.

* Russian planes again fly over US Navy ships Russian military aircraft flew just 500 feet over two US Navy ships this week as the ships participated in a joint military exercise with South Korea in the Sea of Japan.

* Netanyahu to ask for continuance on coalition mandate Prime minister-designate expected to ask Peres for more time to form government; Barak to suggest Labor enter formal coalition talks with Likud

* EU defends recovery plan The recovery plan agreed by the EU last year is sufficient to fight the economic crisis despite what its critics say.