Middle East

... Ba'ath party congress ... Abdul Halim Khaddam, the country's vice-president... to resign from his position and from the party. ... the president, is seeking to consolidate his grip on power.

Several other members of the regional command... are expected to announce their resignation ...

... The new make-up of the powerful regional command ... the most important outcome of the congress ...

... The changing of the guard, however, does not necessarily signal any change in the country's domestic and foreign policies.

... the younger generation of leaders ... feel they still have to prove their power. Analysts view the recent wave of arrests of dissidents and human rights activists as a show of force by the young guard ahead of the congress. "The regime has adopted all the policies of the old guard," ... a dissident writer, charged ... '

Many Kurds believe the merger is vital if they are to realise their national aspirations - including regional autonomy and control over the disputed province of Kirkuk.

Kurdish leaders expect the announcement within weeks of a cabinet composed jointly ...

This joint government will then attempt to merge the competing ministries the two parties have run in their respective zones since fighting a small civil war in 1996.

Many Kurds believe that if the state of disunity persists it will disadvantage the Kurds in negotiations with other Iraqis over a permanent constitution.'

... the insurgency has gotten a breather from the interim Iraqi government's slow start.

... leadership of the most active arm of the insurgency is primarily in the hands of foreign insurgents.

The operational goal is to disrupt and demoralize the security services and to incite a sectarian civil war of revenge. This is not working.

... shifting from being a fairly popular resistance against foreign occupation to a more classic brand that attempts to overthrow a struggling government. ... the rebels need a new cause.

... That cause is likely to be electricity, or ... the lack of it. ... summer approaching, the ability to provide power, notably air conditioning, may be the report card on which the people grade their fledgling Shiite-led democracy. Disrupting power will likely be the new objective of the ... insurgency ...

... center of gravity of the insurgency has shifted away from the Baathist holdouts and toward the foreign fighters.

... Baathists ... biding their time to see whether the new government will include them. ... electricity may well be the target of a renewed offensive on their part.

... Where the goal of the Baathist insurgents is discrediting the government in hopes of regaining some measure of power, the goal of the foreign insurgents is chaos and all-out civil war.

... protect the existing electric power grid and expand it. ... concentrate on protecting power-generating stations and patrolling the power lines between cities. This will make Americans a less visible irritant to the population ...

... convince the population that electricity is a people's problem, not just a government responsibility.

... Iraqis need to understand that providing information regarding sabotage ... could go a long way toward reducing the threat.

... publicly discipline the incompetent and the unwilling (Iraqi power officials)

... split the insurgency and play off the differences in goals between the secular Baathist holdouts ... and the foreign insurgents ... The Arab foreign fighter should be portrayed as a disruptive foreign influence.

... '

...the intensity of the Iraqi insurgency ... How, despite their failure to coalesce into a united front and their lack of a coherent political program, have the armed factions shown such staying power?

Once started, rebellions develop their own internal logic and momentum. People who take up arms are normally reluctant to put them down again, even if the chance of ultimate success is minimal.

... In many cases, the rebel cadres simply fought until attrition made them irrelevant.

... that the rebels flourished in an environment of disorder.

... one quick fix to another. At first we tolerated factional militias - until they threatened the Coalition Authority. Then we recruited large numbers of police officers and briefly trained them. They performed as well as poorly trained forces usually do: badly.

... (in 1952) Malayan police had plenty of manpower but lacked competent leaders at every level. ... began a long-term training program that emphasized developing highly professional commanders and noncommissioned officers.

... Dozens of capable men were sent to the United Kingdom for a yearlong police academy course.

... this caused short-term manpower problems, but the strategy paid off. By late 1953, the police department's effectiveness had noticeably improved and again the government was winning the war.

... while the Pentagon was correct in assuming that there were plenty of officers who were not Saddam Hussein loyalists and who would be willing to serve a new government, it overestimated their skills.

... Retraining the officers from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic into Western-style forces was a long, expensive and difficult task.

... Pentagon has relied largely on private contractors to provide training.

... Counterinsurgency is not rocket science - which is unfortunate because America would be good at it if it were. A successful counterinsurgency strategy requires a return to military basics, especially well-trained officers. '

... the first such Syrian missile tests since 2001 ... project using North Korean technology and designed ... to deliver air-burst chemical weapons. ... older Scud B, with a range of about 185 miles, and two Scud D's ... range of about 435 miles.

... the embarrassment to Turkey

The Israeli military ... interpreted the launchings as a gesture of defiance to the United States and the United Nations ...

"This is really putting your fingers in the eyes of the Americans, saying, 'I'm not dancing to your flute,' "

Israeli officials ... were puzzled by the American silence

...All the missiles were launched from northern Syria, near Minakh, north of Aleppo ... The Israelis said they had film of the launching and breakup.

... Israelis noted that ... Damascus could easily have moved its mobile launchers to the center of the country to avoid flight over Turkey altogether.

... a national conference of his Baath Party on Monday, and might have wanted to send a signal of defiance and technological prowess to his domestic audience as well. '

'(Iraqi) Parliament ... elected Talabani as President. Some analysts see this as a step toward establishing security in the region’s oil fields and for the export pipeline. Were some of the revenues from the northern fields to be allocated to the local population — which is reportedly under negotiation — incentives to keep the oil flowing might be sufficiently focused to elicit pipeline protection from the Kurds. The oil pipeline mainly flows through (KDP) territory; The Barzani clan controls the KDP and most of the territory the pipeline crosses. Talabani is leader of (PUK), a different Kurdish faction. That said, the KDP and PUK are reported to be cooperating right now, and they both have incentive to protect that pipeline.'

... If the export pipeline to the Mediterranean were to be repaired and kept operational — and the oil fields around Kirkuk to produce as they have in the past ... monthly revenues of up to $1.2 billion could result.

... Given a stable security situation, very large amounts of capital investment, and the involvement of one or more large oil companies, it would be realistic to suggest potential output ramping up to 5 or 6 million barrels per day over a period of several years. But, given current difficulties, it would seem that this sort of eventuality is far off.

... Increased production is still dependent on resolution of security issues, improvement in oil production facilities, and infrastructure upgrades.

... If the export pipeline to the Mediterranean were to be repaired and kept operational — and the oil fields around Kirkuk to produce as they have in the past ... monthly revenues of up to $1.2 billion could result.>If the export pipeline to the Mediterranean were to be repaired and kept operational — and the oil fields around Kirkuk to produce as they have in the past ... monthly revenues of up to $1.2 billion could result.

...Northern Oil in the World Oil Market: A Concluding Note. World crude oil prices ... at one point they reached nearly $60 per barrel. ... little spare capacity. The addition of an incremental 800,000 barrels per day into this overheated market could have a substantial price impact, even though it would represent only about a 1% increase in total world output. This increment, were it to become available under current circumstances, might result in a noticeable decline in crude prices.'

... Barzani will also serve as commander of the peshmerga, while an undetermined PUK politburo member will serve as deputy commander.

... PUK Deputy Prime Minister Adnan Mufti ... to head the parliament; Nechirvan Barzani ... as the Kurdish prime minister; and the current PUK Prime Minister Umar Fattah will serve as deputy prime minister of the unified administration.

... The agreement is indicative of the Kurdish parties' style of governance, in which democracy is practiced through a top-down approach.

... PUK was hesitant to meet a KDP demand that Barzani assume the presidency for a four-year term.

... the parliament will convene on 4 June, more than four months after the Kurdistan elections.

complaints that their parties were stifling the legislative process by working out an agreement in lieu of sending it to the parliament.

... the unified administration would also include members of minority parties representing Kurdish Islamist groups, and Assyrian and Turkoman parties. While no timeframe has been agreed on, Mufti suggested that ministries from both sides would begin merging as early as two to three months from now. Some ministries need time to unify, like the Interior, like peshmerga, like Finance, but I don't think it will be a big problem because we have a plan on how to continue and how to reach a unification of ministries," he said. '

... the US embassy in Baghdad, without an ambassador for about six months, as "out of the loop" and not involved in significant decisions taken by the new (Iraqi government).

... US officials frustrated with, and ignorant of, Iraq's fractious politics. ... an air of resignation ...

... "The US still has enormous influence in terms of financial resources and obviously our military presence. The government knows it needs the support of the US and also our global reach... They have got to succeed on their own" - Robert Zoellick

... process of writing a new constitution acceptable to all the main ethnic groups ... semblance of US control rests on sticking to the timetable laid out by Paul Bremer ... the US has decided not to involve itself in the detail but aims to uphold principles: a limit to the authority of Sharia law, protection and inclusion of minority groups and defence of women's rights.

... "The Shia may accept the break-up of Iraq as the price of a Shia-dominated Arab state," said Peter Galbraith, estimating Iraq may hold together for five more years.

... Mr Galbraith said a restatement of the TAL would be acceptable to the Kurds as a continuation of "de facto independence", although there needed to be clarification of sharing of natural resources, the status of Kirkuk and the scope of the national army. The US, he said, could not leave Iraq to its own devices now.

... experts ... that the 11 weeks left to draft a constitution are not enough...

... Zebari ... urged the UN to help his government write a new constitution. "As we have learned from the European experience, a permanent constitution is unlikely to succeed if drafted behind closed doors," he said.

... There should be more time for public consultation ... a rushed constitutional process led to problems later ... '

Assad wants to raise the flag of political reform ... but not too high ... like China's Deng Xiaoping, managing a transition to a free-market economy while also maintaining political discipline. But he may instead end up like ... Gorbachev, setting in motion a process of limited reform that will undermine the party and ultimately destroy his regime.

... congress will endorse free-market reforms... Syrians are tired of being poor.

The harder task ... is political reform. ... remove a reference to the Baath Party as "the leader of society." ... Reformers want Assad to resign his own membership ... as a signal that a new age has arrived...

... allow opposition political parties to form, so long as they have a "national platform." ... nonsectarian... ... a crucial dynamic in Syrian politics. Assad ... elite ... Alawites. Religious parties ... reminder of ... uprising in Hama by Sunnis in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

The Alawite-Sunni tensions are slowly easing ... intermarriage. Assad married Sunni ... raising their children as Sunnis. That's the pattern with many secular Alawites; religious Alawites, meanwhile, are embracing Shiite Islam.

Assad knows ... Baath ... corrupt and incompetent. ... hopes the party can rehabilitate itself ... knows that capitalism will mean sudden wealth for the Sunni merchant class ... these rising Sunnis will form a secular, cosmopolitan political party. ... a role for the Baath Party as the protector of rural Syrians left behind in the new prosperity.

... the "emergency law" ... permanent martial law. ... whether to abolish the law entirely or restrict it ... The emergency law is a symbol of ... war with Israel ... regime's thorniest problem and its reason for existence.

... the debacle of the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Assad insists ... he wasn't responsible for the murder of ... Hariri. But he realizes that he blundered by ... to impose an additional term for ... Lahoud .... Assad concluded that keeping his army in Lebanon was a loser and decided to withdraw ... Some Syrians believe Assad quietly purging ... officials who managed the old Lebanon policy; others aren't sure he has the political clout.

Assad would like American support for his "reform" agenda, but he knows that's unlikely. ... whatever Assad does ... backfire ... intelligence links withered ... Lacking American support ... try to convince Europeans...

When Assad took power (many) hoped he would bring real change ... they're still waiting. So ... Syrians. ... if he takes only half-measures ... he will lose what support he has left on the Syrian street. ... being too cautious is the riskiest course of all. '

... There is really very little going on in the world right now more important than stopping this from happening.

... jihadis ... want civil war between Sunni and Shia...

... Until now, the Shia majority ... restrained ... forsworn reprisals against Sunni provocation.

... This now appears to be changing ... the most dangerous moment since the invasion of Iraq.

... good news ... Sunni notables and clerics ... has signalled its wish to join the political and constitutional process ... The bad news is that the jihadi element ... is trying to turn Iraqi streets almost literally into rivers of blood - and that the Shia are finally retaliating. Sunni leaders are beginning to turn up mangled and dead. Exceptional measures such as the current "lockdown" of Baghdad by up to 40,000 Iraqi security forces are justified ... to combat this. Greater openness by the Shia ... towards the Sunni ... essential. But it is time too that Iraq's neighbouring Sunni rulers - watching the downtrodden Shia rise to power with undisguised horror - start helping.'

...It is true that Washington has helped unleash feverish debate over reforms in many Arab countries, but whether it will persist in its push for political change is far from certain.

... Islamist groups, moderate as well as radical, may be the greatest beneficiaries of (American) policy. Perhaps more quickly than it imagined, America has to decide whether it would be ready to accept the outcome of greater democracy in the Arab world.

... By winning a majority of council seats in some of the largest constituencies, Hamas has given the mainstream and secular Fatah movement an additional reason to try to delay the legislative elections next month. I suspect we will not hear calls from Washington to hold the Palestinian poll on time...

... worrying signs that US eagerness for political reforms in Egypt, where the largest opposition is the banned but non-violent Muslim Brotherhood, is waning. ... detention of numerous Muslim Brotherhood members ... have gone largely unnoticed in Washington.

... The Bush administration is understandably torn between a desire to promote democracy and a real fear of political Islam. One way to address this dilemma is to launch a dialogue, starting at least with non-violent Islamists. Ms Cheney argues that armed groups have no role in the political system ... Islamists who reject violence, meanwhile, should be held to certain standards and accept red lines such as respect for women's rights. Liberal, secular groups, she says, are at a huge disadvantage: unlike governments and Islamists (who at least at times have had access to the mosque) the liberals have been denied outlets to express their ideas.

But...Islamists ... born the brunt of government repression. .... contributed to their radicalisation.

... The risk for the US is that failure to show understanding of Islamist demands could wreck its entire democratisation project.

... speak to the more moderate Islamists. A dialogue could help convince Americans that such groups are not necessarily undemocratic.

... The British ... more ambitious ... direct engagement with Hizbollah and Hamas, recognising that both could soon be participating in governments that will be formed after elections. '

... "It's a policy of divide and conquer being applied by our occupiers," ... a Baghdad antiques dealer ... A civil war will not succeed because Iraqis are all brothers and relatives, he added.'

TO STAND aside in principled protest against the limitations of Iran's paternalistic semi-democracy, or to accept, in the name of expediency, a helping hand from the paterfamilias himself? That was the choice facing Mostafa Moin, Iran's main reformist candidate in next month's presidential election.

... The reformists' primary goal, ever since the council barred more than 2,000 of them from competing in last year's general election, has been to stave off extinction. But at what cost?

...Some reform-seeking voters feel that reformist politicians—from Muhammad Khatami, the outgoing president, down— have tainted themselves by compromising with conservatives, and that only by withdrawing from public life can they keep their ideals and integrity intact. If Mr Moin does now run, he may, in fact, become a less attractive candidate.

... Perhaps (Khamanei) ... wants to deny the reformists an excuse to turn their backs on the system. A boisterous election might generate a strong voter turnout, which would help Iran rebut American taunts that it is totalitarian. ... Khamenei may be hoping to clip the wings of ... Rafsanjani.

(Rafsanjani) is the most divisive of the eight confirmed candidates

Mehdi Karrubi, a mildly reformist contender ... that the Iran of Mr Rafsanjani's last presidency was distinguished by international ostracism, undemocratic politics, corruption and political violence.

... Alone among the confirmed candidates, Mr Moin has suggested Iran might indefinitely extend its suspension of uranium-enrichment activities, but decisions on such strategic matters are not taken by the president but by a powerful coterie around the supreme leader. '

...threatened by (E3) ... the Iranians pulled back—temporarily, they say...

Some European diplomats in Tehran hope that if Mr Rafsanjani becomes president, he will urge Mr Khamenei to acquiesce in an indefinite suspension, in return for trade and other incentives from the EU and America.

But Mr Rafsanjani knows ... the dangers of being outflanked by hardliners: in public, at least, he sounds resolutely in favour of Iran pressing on with its nuclear plans.

Mr Rafsanjani's backers say he is a canny old hand, business-friendly and perhaps able to improve relations with the Americans. But Mr Moin could take votes from him. Enough to help one of four hardline conservative candidates ... ? That may be part of the inscrutable Mr Khamenei's calculations. '

... The two parties differ over fundamental issues such as the relative powers of the prime minister and the president, whether the president must be elected by popular mandate or by parliament, and the length of his term.

The KDP wants the post of president to be functional rather than ceremonial, and that he should be elected by popular vote for a four-year term. The PUK does not share this view.

Despite widespread protests over the delay of the first session of the Kurdistan parliament, the two major parties insist they want to resolve differences at behind the scenes negotiations before parliament can debate the issue.

By way of putting pressure on the parties, 17 newly elected Kurdish MPs threatened on May 17 that they will enter the parliament building Wednesday (May 25) and take their seats even if the parties fail to reach agreement. They say the differences should be settled in parliament itself. But only two of the 17 turned up at the parliament building Wednesday.

... Meanwhile the Kurdistan region remains in administrative limbo.

” Kurdistan is facing a crisis of legitimacy , since the two separate administrations of the major parties operate without the existence of a legislature,” local journalist Hawar Ahmad told IPS.

”Besides, don't forget that the role of the Kurdistan parliament has always been a symbolic one, and everything is settled at behind the scenes talks between leaders of the parties,” '

As in virtually every Arab country, a generation-long religious revival is reshaping Syria, long known as one of the Middle East's most secular states. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was the most visible face of Islamic activism, taking the country to the brink of civil war in the early 1980s before retreating under a crackdown whose legacy still shadows the country. The Brotherhood remains a force inside Syria, but in terms of institutions, organization and followers, it is the state-sanctioned version of Islam ... that wields the most influence and that may emerge as one of the most dynamic currents in a time of change.

Its institutions are spreading their influence in Syria, with access to both money and media. While careful in their criticism, its preachers have a greater sway than others in their revivalist mission. The government draws red lines, but sees in their moderate message a counterbalance to a more radical Islam and in their strength an ally in its confrontation with the United States.

... an unpredictable force in a diverse country of 18 million. While often portrayed as a state teetering between dictatorship and democracy, Syria is far more complicated, its destiny far more opaque. At work are struggles between secular and religious forces, government and opposition figures and ... government-backed clergy and a more radical strand buoyed by the war in Iraq.

... some government-allied preachers are already beginning to ponder their reputation in the event of tumult or the government's fall. ... example of Iraq, where the clergy ... emerged ... as one of the few institutions able to exert influence.

"They're simply biding their time at this stage, knowing that things will come their way, that their organizational skills will allow them to fill any gap," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a publisher

Syria and, in particular, its capital remain far more secular than many other Arab locales -- Cairo or Baghdad ... festive bars and chic restaurants ...

... But the struggle over identity in Syria often plays out in spheres where the state has little control. The faithful are drawing borders between themselves and a Baathist government. ... The veil for women is the most common manifestation, and its spread in the past decade remains striking. Other outward shows of piety also are widespread: men wearing beards and forgoing gold rings ... More and more Syrians visit mosques, even in the capital's ritziest districts.

(The Muslim Brotherhood) remains a wild card in Syrian politics. Some opposition figures -- divided and counting their support in the thousands -- have called for reaching out to the Brotherhood as a way to strengthen their voice. From exile, the Brotherhood urged a national dialogue in April. The government itself has flirted with reconciliation, though it remains divided.

... Information Minister "I am personally against a coalition between religion and politics, especially in multi-religious societies like Syria and Lebanon."

... a generation of influential clerics, encouraged by the government, who are free to preach, accept students a nd proselytize as they wish. They espouse a conservative vision of society but a politically subdued message.

... delivers a message of pluralism that evokes the reformist impulse in political Islam seen among some activists in Egypt, Turkey and Jordan.

... With government permission and funding from the Sunni-dominated business class in Damascus, (Mohammad Habash, an influential cleric) has organized forums and convenes daily study groups. Each day, he provides an hour-long message for a private radio station ... He eschews any political agenda but tried -- by his own admission, unsuccessfully -- to broker a reconciliation between the government and the Brotherhood.

Some... have urged him to keep his distance from the government to preserve his reputation. He remains careful in his criticism. But he has called for change, warning the government of trouble if it takes only half-hearted reforms.

"If they miss this chance," he said, "the future will be very difficult here in Syria, in its political life."

Almost since the dawn of Islam in the 7th century, the clergy have struggled with where to draw the line between their independence and authority. Often, it was drawn close to rulers whose writ was absolute, and some in Syria still use an old term to describe today's generation: mushayikh al-sultan , clergy beholden to power (and enriching themselves along the way).

But Syria is in the throes of reviewing what constitutes authority and the legitimacy it brings, as the government struggles to justify its rule, break its isolation and fend off U.S. attempts to undermine it. Even if the clergy pose no threat to authority, they have a say in defining the ideologies that underpin Syrian identity -- whether Arab nationalism, Syrian patriotism, secular liberalism or an Islamic universalism. The clerics' influence, some believe, is almost sure to grow in any transition that Syria undergoes.

... Aleppo ... long vied with Damascus for influence and is considered today one of the most religiously conservative. ... The chief cleric in the city ... espouses a moderate Islam that eschews politics and embraces justice. At the same time, he denounces the Arab nationalism that has underpinned the government, even as he supports ... Assad's attempt to reform...

... Hard-line Sunni leaders have pressed the case. "The killing in Iraq now is according to religious identity," said Sheik Abdel Nasir al-Janabi, a religious Sunni and a hard-line member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni political group that claims to have ties to the insurgency. "Now you're killed because you're a Sunni Arab."

... Sistani ... calls for calm and renewed appeals to Shiites that they place their trust in Iraq's fledgling democracy, not revenge killings.

But the urgency of the Shiite leaders' appeals reflects a deepening fear that the welter of allegations about Shiite death squads going after Sunni Arabs, true or false, may create a new reality, prompting still more sectarian killings and pushing the country ever closer to the brink of civil war.

"We are drifting into a sectarian society," said Ghassan al-Atiyya, a secular Shiite ... "The Americans, instead of strengthening liberal and secular, they are now hostage of Sciri and Kurds."

"They let the genie out of the bottle,"

... Sunni leaders have accused Shiite-led security forces of raiding mosques, arresting more than 300 Sunni clerics and worshipers, and killing several of them...

... Sheik Khalaf al-Aliyan, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of Sunni political leaders, said he had evidence that Shiite political parties had drawn up a list of 4,000 Sunnis they intended to assassinate, a charge that Shiite leaders have dismissed as preposterous.

Most Iraqis, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or Kurd, Muslim or Christian, have held tightly to a legend about the Iraqi past. Iraqis, they say, have never defined themselves primarily by religion or ethnic origin but have submerged themselves in a common identity as Iraqis. Even now, reporters who ask people which community they belong to tend to get a common answer. "I am Iraqi," men and women will say, or, with equal insistence, "I am a Muslim."

Even so, in the last two years a strengthened sense of religious and ethnic identity ...

(Adnan Pachaci) "... in times of trouble people tend to go toward religion, and the religious parties make use of that very skillfully."

... Shiites, for years a downtrodden underclass, took power in elections in January and now control Iraq's government, Parliament and much of its police and security forces. Sunni Arabs, who ran Iraq from the time of the Ottoman Empire, are chafing under that rule but have little leverage after boycotting the elections.

... For Sunnis, perhaps the strongest symbol of Shiite bullying is ... the Badr Brigade. The group was formed in the 1980's in Iran as a fighting force of Iraqi Shiites opposed to Mr. Hussein. Many of its members returned after the American invasion. The group was ordered to disband but still exists informally , with a former member now running the Interior Ministry.

... said it had put down its weapons and become a civil organization. But an American official and Iraqi officials say the group is used to gather intelligence.

... arrests of Sunni businessmen ... concerns among wealthy Sunnis that a campaign is being waged against them. "Anybody who is Sunni and has money is a target," said one member of the Iraqi Bankers Association, ... "This is a witch hunt."

Shiite leaders... have called for restraint despite the killings of Shiites. Even Moktada alSadr...

... "The point is to make Muslims two parts" Mr. Jazaery said of the killers. "God willing, they won't succeed."

...The long-term impact on a driving force behind the multifaceted insurgency may depend on whether Zarqawi dies or recovers enough to become "spiritual leader" of the group.

"It won't make a great deal of difference if he has a more backseat role, but he will be more vulnerable," says Magnus Ranstorp, head of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

"If he dies, it would be a blow... It may atomize the insurgency, and different centers of gravity would emerge. He is a unifying factor for them."

... competing claims ... about the appointment of an interim leader of the group.

... the chosen man is Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Qarni - a Saudi militant who is believed to be Zarqawi's military adviser. He is "renowned for carrying out the most difficult operations" chosen by Zarqawi,

...But shortly afterward, a new statement ... refuting the first...

US and Iraqi forces, which have launched three major offensives in the volatile western Anbar Province this month, report a rapid increase in intelligence they get from Iraqis weary of the violence, as well as from senior detainees.

... The intense violence of May has also hidden thefact that fewer attacks have taken place against US and Iraqi government targets...

"Ending the insurgency is not going to happen with a big bang," says a US diplomat in Baghdad. "It's going to be a slow degradation rather than a one-day surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri."

... Ranstorp says that this insurgency can manage itself, even when Zarqawi is distracted. US and Iraqi forces, he adds, "have a better handle [on the insurgency], and tactical victories - but in order to have closure and a durable effect, you must put them on trial and expose them."

... the most effective interrogators of Al Qaeda groups are masters of the theological debate. "They can point out wrong interpretations [of Islam] that further delegitimize what [militants] are trying to do."

... Insurgents who did not stay to fight in Fallujah raised their flag in the northern city of Mosul and in Baghdad.

US diplomat "... you have to maintain the pressure, all of the time."

... (Iraqi commander) "Iraqi forces are starting to learn how to deal with the streets, and the Americans are slowly, slowly beginning to pull back."

... But success in one place often just shifts the problem to another. "It's like toothpaste: You squeeze somewhere, and it just pushes the insurgents somewhere else in Iraq," says Toby Dodge (IISS). "It would work if you had enough people to cover the ground."

... "The majority of people blowing up things ... assembling car bombs [and] financing the blowing up of Humvees or attacks on police stations - they are Iraqi," says the US diplomat.

... Khamenei... intervened to reinstate two reformist candidates

... This is all encouraging but, in reality, it amounts to no more than a useful pause.

... use what will not be a long breathing space to try to assemble a coherent US-EU policy towards Iran that has a chance of success. The obstacles are formidable.

Nothing whatsoever suggests (Iran and the U.S.) are ready to talk, let alone on matters of substance. There is simply too much bad blood.

The US has never forgotten how it was forced out of Beirut by pro-Iranian truck-bombers in 1983-84, forgiven the humiliation of the Tehran embassy siege, the botched rescue attempt and the Iran-Contra fiasco, or accepted the survival of Hizbollah, the Tehran-backed Shia Islamist movement that drove Israeli forces out of Lebanon.

Iran, for its part, neither forgives nor forgets the 1953 Anglo-American coup against the nationalist Mossadegh government, how the west condoned Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran and then armed Saddam Hussein as he rained rockets on its cities and chemical shells on its troops.

... EU diplomacy and engagement plays an essential but insufficient role. Only the US can offer Iran the security guarantees and normalised relations ... Even then, Tehran would still almost certainly insist on keeping the full nuclear fuel cycle as a deterrent.

Furthermore, Iran has some reason to be confident of its position. It has played the Europeans and Americans off against each other quite well. After the Afghanistan and Iraq wars it is surrounded by American forces. But the US is bogged down in Iraq whereas, politically, Shi'ite Iran has broken out, with a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad that is changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Moreover, while it is clear Washington has a pronounced attitude towards Iran, it is not evident it has a plausible policy.

... if the US goes beyond tacitly supporting the EU initiative and formally associates with it. The goal would be to circumscribe Iran's nuclear activities tightly, while addressing Tehran's legitimate security concerns. That does not offer the clear result Washington would wish for, but does it really have any alternative? '

... Crisis deployment of missile defenses might not offer the assurances one might expect.

... Iran might not regard threats from current nuclear weapons with high yields as credible.

... Lower-yield nuclear weapons could deter more effectively than large weapons.

... it is crucial to be able to communicate intentions and capability to an adversary before as well as during a crisis.'

The decision appeared to mean that the American effort to balance competing ethnic, religious and regional interests in the constitution would be pushed aside.

... Mr. Hammoudi said that missing the deadline would open the way for endless debate, and encourage the insurgents by generating a sense of instability. '

... For now, there has been surprisingly little sectarian violence, while political leaders quarrel over who will control Kirkuk.

... At stake is an estimated 40% of Iraq's oil reserves, within 30 miles of downtown Kirkuk. Control of the city could give the Kurds a significant chunk of Iraq's oil revenue, depending on how the distribution is determined in the new constitution.

... The ancient city is central to the Kurds' often tragic history.

... the 1988 Anfal campaign ... resulted in the "disappearance" of 100,000 Kurds.

... After a failed 1991 uprising by Kurds, Saddam's regime displaced a further estimated 120,000 residents from Kirkuk, a2004 report by Human Rights Watch, said.

... "Kirkuk has been a symbol of suffering for the Kurds, and it's been the center of problems of the Kurds with successive Iraqi governments," says former Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, a Kurd...

... Kurds were looking for quick justice. They demanded that all of the Arab families Saddam brought to Kirkuk return to the south. Fears of reverse-ethnic cleansing

... Today, Kirkuk remains one of Iraq's most diverse cities: 35% Arab, 35% Kurdish, 26% Turkmen and 4% of other groups, according to a U.S. military survey conducted in October 2004.

... The Iraqi Institute for Human Rights in Kirkuk, an independent group, has documented more than 300 cases of vanished Arabs during the past two months.

... peshmerga ... still patrol the streets in pickups. Other members of the militia have joined the local police.

... Whether Kirkuk should join the semi-autonomous northern region should be put to a citywide referendum, says Jalal Jawhar Aziz, head of the PUK offices in Kirkuk'

... Political compromise in the city has remained elusive. Politicians attempting to put together a provincial government in Kirkuk are stalemated. Kurdish leaders swept the Jan. 30 elections, winning 26 of Kirkuk's 41 provincial council seats.

... Arab and Turkmen leaders have boycotted the council meetings, claiming the Kurds are hoarding too much power.'

"Instead of coming to a point in the middle, the parties have actually drifted farther apart," Wickham said.

This is a dangerous fallacy. There is another essential component of any democratic system, and that is an opposition. The task of a democratic opposition is not to oppose the regime, though it may try, through democratic processes, to amend or modify its functioning. The task of a democratic opposition is to oppose the government, to strive to oust and replace it at the next election, and meanwhile to subject its actions, utterances and policies to rigorous but fair scrutiny. The role of a democratic opposition is recognized even in some of the world's pseudo-democracies, which adorn themselves with a tame, compliant pseudo-opposition. That is not enough. The opposition must be real and free, with a genuine, equal chance of winning. Otherwise the democratic process is about as meaningful as a football match with only one team.

... In any functioning democracy a loyal opposition is an essential component, and both the loyalty and the opposition must be authentic.

... in their euphoric embrace of Mr Rafsanjani, the Europeans neglect both Iran's recent history and its political peculiarities.

... Contrary to the popular images of Mr Rafsanjani as the only politician who can transcend Iran's factionalised politics and produce results, his previous tenure as president was far from successful.

He had neither liberalised Iran's economy nor resolved its inherent distortions. Government borrowing from international markets left Iran saddled with a huge debt burden while state subsidies curbed growth rates. High unemployment and inflation plagued the economy. Culturally, Iran remained a largely repressive society laden with religious impositions.

... Neither did the Rafsanjani presidency usher in a foreign policy of moderation and pragmatism.

... Mr Rafsanjani could not develop a consensus behind mending fences with the US or normalising relations with the European community. On issues of terrorism and the Arab-Israeli peace process, Iran remained implacable and dogmatic.

... That is not to suggest Mr Rafsanjani is not a pragmatist; historically, a mixture of realism and self-interest has driven him toward moderation. .... he feels compelled to come to the forefront once more and rescue Iran from its predicament.

In a sense, both Mr Rafsanjani and Mr Khatami are victims of a constitutional order that gives essential power to unelected hardliners. It is the unelected institutions such as the Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians and the judiciary that have the ultimate authority over national affairs.... The tension between revolutionaries unaccountable to the collective will and elected politicians has produced a stalemate that no single politician can easily resolve.

... Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, has consolidated his power over Iran's key institutions, placing like-minded hardliners in important posts.

... the younger generation of conservatives, many of whom covet the presidency themselves, resent not just Mr Rafsanjani's pragmatism but also his opportunism...

... Mr Rafsanjani's candidacy has generated more optimism in western capitals than on Iran's streets. Since the failure of the popular reform movement, Iranians have become disenchanted with the political process, viewing the Islamic polity as incapable of responding to its constituency. International pressure, popular apathy and hardliners' hostility greet Mr Rafsanjani's candidacy. Should he triumph, he may well regret his original decision to run.

... proposal would unite the contiguous southeast Shiite-dominated provinces of Maysan, Basra and Dhiqar into a single state. Basra, the country's second-largest city and the principal port city, would be the new regional government's capital.

The region is rich with resources and trade opportunities. Dhiqar could expand its trading business through Basra's port; Maysan could expand the other two provinces' trade with Iran. Basra would be a more powerful city, with more oil, agriculture, trade and tourism under its control.

The discussion has created tension in Basra between Shiites and the Sunni Arab minority there. Some Sunnis already have left because they think the proposed new region excludes them. That response has some fretting that a state defined partly on religion could fuel the sectarianism that's engulfed the country since the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections.

... a Sunni and a Basra University student said some Shiite students had warned him that a new regional state wouldn't be good for him.

... the chairman of the constitutional committee, Homam Hamoodi said he wanted an Iraq governed by administrative federalism that included at least two states.

... The idea for grouping Iraq's 18 provinces into states first appeared in the U.S.-brokered interim constitution, which allowed up to three provinces, excluding Baghdad and Kirkuk, to become "regions amongst themselves." So far, only the Kurds in the north have created such a region.

As the Kurds gained more power in the newly elected centralized government, the Shiites began discussing a region of their own to counter what they thought was too much political power for the Kurds, analysts said.

"They way they played it out, Kurdistan was a behemoth with a disproportionately high amount of power in Baghdad," said Juan Cole ...

While U.S. officials don't oppose a Shiite region, one Western diplomat ... said southern leaders who thought their proposed state would give them control over the oil there probably were wrong.

... "I think there will be quite a push among Iraqis in the constitutional debates to put oil revenues outside the control of any regional government," he added.

... Earlier this year, the then-governor of Sunni-dominated Anbar province, Sheik Fasal al Goud, proposed creating a Sunni regional government in the west, but many religious leaders rejected the notion. Part of the problem for the Sunnis is that Sunni Arab areas have few natural resources, prompting many Sunnis to call for more centralization.

... Many observers are worried that grouping provinces into states may push the country toward Balkanization.

... David L. Phillips ... argued that a three-state system - Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite - would fuel sectarianism.

... Cole said a system of regional governments might not last long term, particularly if states with enough natural resources to support themselves fought for independence.

"It solves a lot of problems, but I am not sure it leads to long-term stability," Cole said.

One U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said the Americans would welcome any plan under one condition: "We insist Iraq must stay unified."'

Instead of throwing up our hands in an irresponsible fit of despair, we need to learn not just from past disasters but also from historical victories over insurgencies. Indeed, of all the attempts in the past century by irregular indigenous forces to expel regular foreign forces, around a third have failed.

... How ... did the British crush the insurgency of 1920? Three lessons ...

The first ... unlike the American enterprise in Iraq today, they had enough men. In 1920, total British forces in Iraq numbered around 120,000, of whom around 34,000 were trained for actual fighting. During the insurgency, a further 15,000 men arrived as reinforcements.

Coincidentally, that is very close to the number of American military personnel now in Iraq (around 138,000). The trouble is that the population of Iraq was just over three million in 1920, whereas today it is around 24 million. Thus, back then the ratio of Iraqis to foreign forces was, at most, 23 to 1. Today it is around 174 to 1. To arrive at a ratio of 23 to 1 today, about one million American troops would be needed.

(Second) ... The British were able to be ruthless: they used air raids and punitive expeditions to inflict harsh collective punishments on villages that supported the insurgents. The United States has not been above brutal methods on occasion in Iraq, yet humiliation and torture of prisoners have not yielded any significant benefits compared with what it has cost the country's reputation.

The Americans' other problem has to do with timing and expectations....

... the Bush administration has just three and a half years left. Is it credible that American troops will still be in Iraq for even another four years after that? ... Although Iraq was formally granted its independence in 1932, there was still some form of British presence in the country until the late 1950's.'

... So, if we acknowledge that the United States simply does not have the luxury of time that the British enjoyed and cannot be similarly ruthless, can it at least increase the manpower at its disposal in Iraq?

The official answer from Washington is that Iraqi security forces will soon be ready to play an effective role in policing. Few who have seen those forces on the ground find this strategy realistic. Some fear that the training that Iraqi soldiers are receiving may prove useful only when they fight one another in an Iraqi civil war.

... Almost no one (least of all the Pentagon) wants to go back to the draft. So could today's all-volunteer force somehow be expanded to double (at least) the troops available? That too seems unlikely.

... How did the British address the manpower problem in 1920? By bringing in soldiers from India who accounted for more than 87 percent of troops in the counter-insurgency campaign. Perhaps, then, the greatest problem faced by the Anglophone empire of our own time is very simple: the United Kingdom had the Indian Army; the United States does not.

No one should wish for an overhasty American withdrawal from Iraq. It would be the prelude to a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, with inevitable spillovers into and interventions from neighboring countries. ... acknowledge just how thinly stretched American forces in Iraq are and to address the problem: whether by finding new allies (send Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi?); radically expanding the accelerated citizenship program for immigrants who join the army; or lowering the (historically high) educational requirements demanded by military recruiters.

... The numbers that matter right now are 174 to 1. That is not only the ratio of Iraqis to American troops. It is starting to look alarmingly like the odds against American success.

'Some 200 Iranian Kurds marched in single file up an icy mountain path, carrying automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They were training for the day when they hope to cross the nearby Iraqi border into Iran, recruit supporters and reopen a rebellion they reluctantly abandoned long ago. After more than 20 years of calm, fighters based in northern Iraq are itching to resume the Iranian Kurds' campaign for greater autonomy, emboldened by the success of their brethren in post-Saddam Iraq. "We want to break the peace we were forced to accept, ...

Such talk, however, doesn't sit well with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, which is wary of provoking Iran and disturbing its new stature in Iraq's government and has vowed to prevent cross-border attacks.

... the empowerment of Iraq's Kurds since the U.S.-led invasion has inspired their brethren ... The four main Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq said they had no plans to start a fight.

The last full-scale rebellion by Iranian Kurds broke out in 1979, and after intense fighting the Tehran government re-established control over its Kurdish areas in 1983.

Since then Iranian Kurdistan has been largely peaceful. Kurds, who make up about 11 percent of Iran's 70 million people, complain of discrimination but have made no significant moves to break away. When Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was chosen this month as Iraq's new president, some Kurds in Iran celebrated in the streets, and there were unconfirmed reports of arrests.

... Qandil Mountain, in Iraq's northeast corner near Iran and Turkey, is a rugged, isolated region where Kurdish authorities have little control.

...(Sunni Arab) society feeling its way into the future, almost blindly and without consensus.

an argument between an elderly patriarch who wanted to cooperate with the occupation and a son who wanted to kill Americans.

... A country going through fast changes is bound to be opaque, especially from the outside.

... how this population can seem incoherent even to the Sunnis themselves. A mix of forces is at work within it: tribal divisions, sectarian differences, class tensions and an Arab nationalism with conflicting views of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The minority who are doing the fighting are driven by a range of often irreconcilable motives, including national or religious pride, wounded by the occupation, revenge, fantasies of establishing a caliphate and the dream of re-establishing Sunni domination.

The majority of the Sunni Arab population may not be fighting but remains enormously confused and buffeted by outside pressures. They feel both demonized by the West and encouraged by the Sunni Arab world to fight for its honor.

It is this confusion among the Sunni Arabs that has prevented the insurgency - as violent and deadly as it is - from becoming a full-scale rebellion, or even coalescing into a framework with leaders who could make coherent and realistic demands.

... I can understand why some fight against occupation by a foreign army, but it is difficult to understand what they expect to get out of it in the long run. ... the occupation did little to win them over.

Feeling threatened, the Sunnis ... will retreat into religion, tribe and old mindsets, skewing their view of the future. ... a surprising number of Sunni Arabs believe that they, along with the Sunni Kurds, form the majority.

The Sunni Arabs have run Iraq since the Ottoman era under the same illusion that affects every group in controls of a society - that they are the natural rulers because they are more educated and harder working. They often view the predominantly Shia southern Iraq as lazy, corrupt and promiscuous. This is not so much a sectarian division as a cultural one, a north-south relationship with almost racist overtones. It is this attitude, combined with a fear of Iran, that allows many Sunnis to justify Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Shiites.

But the north-south relationship is complicated and not one expressed merely by contempt. For instance, people from Ramadi and Fallujah are fond of people from Basra because of the southern city's disarming friendliness and relaxed mores, which made it at one time a kind of Iraqi New Orleans.

The Salafi fundamentalists ... may view the Shia as Muslim apostates but that is not as common ...The Shia-Sunni divisions tend to be more pronounced where there are fewer of one or the other. In Baghdad, where class consciousness is often more pronounced that sectarian division, the Shia and Sunni intermarry a great deal.

... The Sunni Arabs view the Shia parties now in power with alarm because of what they see as their close ties to Iran, and because they feel they will not share in Iraq's enormous wealth. The insurgency is not likely to calm down until Sunnis sense they are getting a fair share of the pie.

Many in the Baghdad elite, a small group of powerful families, believe that politicians like Ahmed Chalabi, whose Shia family comes from this class, are using the new governing parties to push them out of the way....

Just as the Sunni Arabs are not all Baathists, very few are Salafi fundamentalists... While rural Sunni Arabs are very traditional, many view the strict codes of the Salafis with some distrust. One very religious Iraqi fighter I got to know disliked the Salafis because he thought they did not love the prophet Muhammad enough and that they believed the Koran was merely a set of rules uninformed by love. Like many insurgents I met, he considered himself a Sufi and believed car bombs to be the work of Americans trying to discredit a legitimate resistance.

... unlike the Shia, the Sunnis have no revered leader like the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They can be ambivalent about their clerics, often treating local imams like benign country parsons.

Sunni Arab society outside of Baghdad, where most of the fighting is taking place, is deeply divided along tribal lines and these tribes are in turn divided among smaller clans or subtribes (some of which have Shia and Sunni branches).

The relationship between the tribes is complex and often violent....

The divisions of Sunni society means its cooperation will require accommodating a host of factions, which are difficult to distinguish and by now extremely suspicious of each other and outsiders.... '

The explanation is this: every complex economy is more (or less) than the sum of its parts. What matters is not just how much we save—but how well we invest. The Japanese have squandered much of their higher savings on unproductive investments. Similarly, many work skills are learned on the job. Perhaps 70 percent of the gap in average incomes between the United States and Western Europe reflects the fact that Europeans work less than Americans. The Europeans are entitled to their preferences (longer vacations, earlier retirement), but their higher unemployment and lower labor-force participation rates mean that fewer people acquire real job skills—and that some people with skills don't use them.

... America's economic strengths lie in qualities that are hard to distill into simple statistics or trends. We've maintained beliefs and practices that compensate for our weaknesses, including: ambitiousness; openness to change (even unpleasant change); competition; hard work, and a willingness to take and reward risks. If we lose this magic combination, it won't be China's fault. '

... he wants to "solve the American problem"—that is, find a way to re-establish diplomatic relations with the U.S. and rejoin the world community. Not even departing reform President Mohammed Khatami has been so publicly candid about the need to deal with the Great Satan, but this has been an intermittent 30-year campaign for Rafsanjani.... "Rafsanjani will have secret talks going with the Americans within three months after he takes office," says Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University. '

... The priority given to Iraq's two important Islamic but non-Arab neighbors will not go unnoticed in a region where Arab nationalism has been a dominant and frequently malignant force.

The Shiite and Kurdish politicians who head Iraq's coalition cabinet have survived kingly protests, jihadist suicide bombers and American skepticism to come to power. They must use their brief moment of command to trace a path for a new Iraq that will show the entire Middle East the value and viability of political and cultural pluralism.

... "There is a realization that Arab nationalism should be redefined," Kuwait's foreign minister, Mohammed Sabah, told me. He pointed out that Iraq has Kurds as its president, deputy prime minister and foreign minister; Sudan is shortly to name a non-Arab vice president, and minority groups advance toward greater influence in other Arab countries.

... "The Iraqis are showing that a more multicultural approach does not divorce the country from the Arab world."

... "The great majority of Iraq's population lives nearer to the borders of non-Arab Iran, and non-Arab Turkey, than to Arab countries. These are realities that our politics and culture must reflect." (Ahmed Chalabi)

... the construction of longer-lasting facilities at the sites, including barracks and office structures made of concrete block instead of the metal trailers and tin-sheathed buildings that have become the norm at bigger U.S. bases in Iraq.

... But they said the consolidation plan was not meant to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.

... Eventually, U.S. units would end up concentrated at the four heavily fortified, strategically located hubs, enabling them to provide continued logistical support and emergency combat assistance

... "strategic overwatch" from bases in Kuwait, meaning U.S. forces there would be near enough to respond to events in Iraq if necessary.

... the four bases were chosen to enable U.S. forces to maintain a foothold in various regions of Iraq. Centered around airfields to facilitate resupply operations and troop mobility, the four are Tallil in the south, Al Asad in the west, Balad in the center and either Irbil or Qayyarah in the north.

... Initially referred to in planning documents as "enduring bases," the term was changed in February to "contingency operating bases." '

... The Iraqi insurgency today comprises a shifting host of as many as 70 disparate groups that increasingly have coordinated their attacks.

... The resistance is composed of full-time fighters, part-time supporters, and sympathizers.

...Expansion and erosion of insurgent ranks occurs concurrently, depending on changing personal assessments of how the war is going. '

In Muslim legend, "Khorasan" is from where an army will emerge to support Muslims in the Middle East. Their battle will end with victory in Palestine and the revival of Khilafah (caliphate). For the past few decades, Muslim academics have described Khorasan as the Central Asian states, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

... Al-Qaeda is working to turn the story of Megiddo and the End of Time into reality. And the president of the United States, George W Bush, believes Armageddon is at hand: "The evil one is among us," he said in 2002, in a clear reference to the Antichrist. To quote Michael Ortiz Hill, "[T]he Commander in Chief of the most powerful military force in human history has located American foreign policy within a Biblical narrative that leads inexorably towards the plains of Megiddo ..." '

... The Muslim riots should have been met by outrage and condemnation.

... what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. '

... Israel's nuclear weapons are primarily intended not for a "Samson Option" — not for an apocalyptic "End of the Third Temple Commonwealth" reprisal — but rather for very complex and nuanced functions of deterrence and national defense.

... the success of Israel's efforts will depend not only upon its particular configuration of "countervalue" (countercity) operations, but also upon the extent to which this configuration is made known in advance. Before an enemy state is deterred from striking first, or before it can be deterred from launching retaliatory strikes following an Israeli non-nuclear preemption, it will not be enough that it "knows" Israel has nuclear weapons. It will also need to recognize that these Israeli weapons are sufficiently invulnerable to first-strike attack and/or that these weapons are targeted on their own cities. It could also be vital that these would-be aggressor states fully recognize that their individual national leaders would die in any expected Israeli atomic reprisal.

... Israel must now strengthen its nuclear deterrence so that an enemy state will always reason a first-strike attack would be irrational. To accomplish the important objective, Israel must convince would-be attackers that it maintains both the willingness and the capacity to retaliate with certain nuclear weapons. Where an enemy state considering an attack upon Israel would be unconvinced about either one or both of these elements, it might choose to strike first.

About willingness, even if Israel were prepared to respond to certain attacks with nuclear reprisals, an enemy failure to recognize such preparedness could provoke an attack. Here, misperception or errors in information could immobilize Israeli nuclear deterrence.

... Should Israel's nuclear weapons be seen by an enemy state as high-yield, "city-busting" weapons, they might deter more reliably. Enemy states must understand that Israel not only has secure second-strike nuclear forces, but also that these forces could be used credibly against high-value targets. Israel's nuclear weapons would not be intended for warfighting.

Israel's physical survival ultimately depends upon its nuclear weapons and doctrine. Although an immediate end to "deliberate ambiguity" is probably unnecessary, this would change the moment that Iran were seen as irrevocably nuclear.'

... if (Israel and/or the United States) should fail to seize the strategic moment on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a moment made even more critical by the distinct possibility of an irrational Iranian leadership with nuclear weapons, Israel will have absolutely no choice but to promptly remove its bomb from the basement.

... analysts noted that the Bush administration was not closing the door entirely on the possibility of an improvement in relations with Tehran, provided the regime acted first.

... A European diplomat who follows Iran closely said Mr Burns' testimony would reinforce a widely held perception among European governments that the Bush administration has still been unable to develop a coherent policy towards Iran beyond a unilateral attempt at containment.

... "Iran, like India in important ways, is too big, too capable, too proud, and too important for the US alone to coerce into major behaviour change. A more realistic approach is necessary," (George Perkovich) said.

... Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, asked why the US "outsourced" its diplomacy to France, Germany and the UK in negotiating with Iran. Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman, asked if offering economic incentives would be effective.

Mr Burns reiterated that the US had no intention of joining the nuclear talks, and said there was no evidence that economic persuasion would induce Iran's ruling clerics to give up their suspected nuclear weapons programme.

European diplomats are doubtful that the US would get UN Security Council support for sanctions.

... '

... Though embargoes deprived Pyongyang of modern weaponry - its non-conventional arms, which may soon include nuclear weapons, are another matter - they have also shut North Koreans off from the world, along with the toxic ideas and technologies that could undermine Mr Kim's authority.'

... Foreign-controlled, private banks have been operating in Syria for a year and Syrians have for the first time been permitted to hold foreign exchange. Dissidents are increasingly vocal and several groups have launched independent non-governmental organisations, fertile ground for civic institutions that could offer compelling opposition to the regime. And while activists differ on how best to challenge Mr Assad, their message to Washington is broadly similar: back off.

... The TAL - itself a quasi-constitution - covers a gamut of issues, from the status of women and minorities to the role of Islam in the state. It also provides a template for further steps in Iraq's political reconstruction.

Mr Zoellick noted, however, that parliament as a whole, rather than the government, was responsible for coming up with a draft constitution over the next few months.

... Federalism, for instance, was a key issue for Kurds, who already enjoy regional autonomy in the north. But federalism might also hold some new-found appeal for Sunni Arabs ... Mr Zoellick said. '

... Tehran is not eager to see a successful, broadly based Shiite democracy, which might lead Iran's discontented millions to wonder why they put up with a corrupt, repressive and economically benighted Islamic dictatorship.'

... unless lower- and middle-echelon Baathists are allowed to serve, much of the Sunni professional class will remain excluded from government and sympathetic to the insurgents.

... His officials see the moves, however tentative and drawn out, as the start of a transitional period that will lead to a more liberal, democratic Syria.

Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the last gasp of a government staggering after its hasty and embarrassing troop withdrawal last month from neighboring Lebanon.

... Can Syria truly reform itself and what might follow?

... Dissidents are dismissive of the government's capacity to sincerely reform. They see similarities between government moves here and in Egypt ... where President Hosni Mubarak has sought to introduce measured but controlled change.

... The younger Assad... is seen as lacking his father's political guile, but well-intentioned and eager to curry acceptance rather than generate fear.

... The diplomats and analysts said the Syrian government appeared divided on how to cope with the U.S. threat -- will Syria remain a potential player in regional politics, giving it relevance to American policy, or is its very survival threatened, whatever policies it adopts? Under either scenario, some analysts say, the political reforms unveiled at the congress become less pressing for a party intent on maintaining its grip and a president who still relies on that party for his legitimacy and strength.

... The government, Ammar Abdülhamid said , is still trying to pull "a rabbit out of a hat." "But the hat is bottomless, the rabbit is long dead, and the president is not a magician," Abdulhamid said. '

The key to determining which way Iraq goes may lie largely in how the Iraqi government addresses the minority Sunni population. In particular, analysts say, the government would do well to focus on the part of the Sunni population that is not yet bent on destroying the new Iraq, but that has not yet seen how its interests can be served by it, either.

"The three elements fueling the Iraqi insurgency are the hard-core Sunni Baathists, the foreign extremists, and the Sunni fence-sitters - the last being the largest of the three and probably the ones providing the largest number of recruits right now," says Michael O'Hanlon, an expert in US military affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "In Central America, most of the people were these fence-sitters who could be swayed, and the result was basically political solutions."'

... Of course, it may be that neither of Latin America's examples fit Iraq. A third option could be that Iraq descends into civil war and breaks up, but that is not something either a majority of Iraqis or outside powers want.

... "I'd say Iraq is somewhere between the two" cases of Central America and Colombia, says Amatzia Baram, a noted Iraq expert at the University of Haifa in Israel. While nothing like the "Jihadi" religious factor was present in Latin America, he says Iraq does have the factor of oil revenues, which is playing an incendiary role similar to that of drug money in Colombia. ... "Sunnis have to be assured that they are not going to be excluded from sharing in oil revenues."

Others say that Iraq is similar to Colombia in the key role that criminal gangs play in Iraq and the profits they are amassing from such activities as kidnapping and smuggling - often in conjunction with the insurgency.

... outside forces were instrumental in pressuring Central Americans to compromise and end their conflicts.

"The US hasn't wanted to look like we're running the show, especially when that perception has fired up the insurgency, but we also don't want the government taking actions that deepen the cleavages," says O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "Right now the greater need is to see the government taking steps that can quell the insurgency and not incite it." '"The US hasn't wanted to look like we're running the show, especially when that perception has fired up the insurgency, but we also don't want the government taking actions that deepen the cleavages," says O'Hanlon. "Right now the greater need is to see the government taking steps that can quell the insurgency and not incite it."

... There is a vigorous debate under way in Iran about the concrete goals of the nuclear development. Some aspire to Iran going North Korea's way, abandoning the NPT, conducting nuclear tests and developing an open nuclear arsenal. Others are interested in Iran following Israel's nuclear ambiguity, and some support a nuclear option and an option to enrich uranium, but not necessarily actually going ahead with the enrichment. There are fundamental strategic differences between these three alternatives.

... only a strong proliferation prevention regime can guarantee that Iran does not actualize the possibility of developing a nuclear bomb. The problem is that more than ever before, the proliferation prevention regime is weak, divided and leaderless. '

Despite favoring Ayalon, Sharon has been unable to mediate the dispute because his weak position within his political party, Likud, requires the support of (the foreign minister) Shalom, a prominent hard-liner, government officials said.

"There's always been a history of tension between the foreign minister and the ambassador in Washington, but usually it's behind the scenes," said an Israeli government official. "What's new about this is that all the dirt came out."'

... The fundamental argument against the settlements is not that they are Jewish but that their inhabitants enjoy militarily enforced rights and privileges beyond those of the indigenous Palestinian population, and monopolise resources that should be for the benefit of all - a situation that settlement opponents describe as akin to apartheid. A peace deal that left any or all of the settlers in place would be seen by many as a reward to Israel for its 38-year occupation.

... Mr Abbas should remind Israel and the world that the conflict is not about ethnicity. It is about land and that Palestinians aspire to a state that aims at full territorial sovereignty, not racial purity. If the Palestinians invited Jews to remain in their homes as residents or even equal citizens of a future Palestinian state, where would the injustice be in that? '

The Kurds want their land back. But they also want the Northern Oil Company, part of the Iraqi National Oil Company, which runs the oilfields west of Kirkuk. Talabani complains that until recently ‘there were only 33 Kurds out of 10,000 people working for the oil company.’ ... If the Kurds are to win autonomy from Baghdad, or anything close to independence, then they need a measure of control over the oilfields. The resistance knows this....

The sectarian geography of this no man’s land between Arabs and Kurds is intricate. Kurdish control peters out in the west and south of the province. Around the town of Hawaijah, a notorious Baathist stronghold to the west, the farmers working in the fields are Arabs.

Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul and the leader of the KDP, claimed that security in the city was much improved, though not perfect. The largest government security force in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, are the 14,000-strong, mainly Arab, blue-uniformed police. ‘They are not much good at finding terrorists,’ Goran said, ‘because they are terrorists themselves.’

...While triumphant American reporters and generals trumpeted victory from Fallujah, a city with a population of 350,000, the insurgents were able quietly to capture Mosul, which has a population five times as large. The police abandoned their barracks – some thirty of them are still empty six months later – and their commander fled. The resistance captured $40 million worth of arms and equipment.

US influence is on the retreat in Nineveh province, as it is in the rest of Iraq. There are few troops on the ground: no more than six thousand American soldiers remain in an area with a population of nearly three million. For a year after the invasion, 21,000 men from the heavily equipped 101st Airborne Division had been stationed in Mosul. The division’s commander, General David Petraeus, probably the most intelligent senior American officer in Iraq, reached a tentative understanding with the local Sunni Arab establishment. Thousands of former army officers took a public oath renouncing the Baath Party. The Kurds were furious that the Americans were truckling to Saddam’s former lieutenants. Since then, the American military has changed tack, favouring the Kurds and hostile to the Sunni Arabs. But they have no choice: the Kurds are America’s most important ally. In Mosul the CIA depends on Kurdish intelligence. ‘When the CIA tried to operate by themselves in the city last year they learned nothing,’ a local observer said. ‘These days the Kurds provide the agents and the Americans provide the money and together they are very effective.’ But perhaps they aren’t effective enough. The Sunni Arabs of the north remain wholly alienated and will continue to give shelter to the resistance. Animosity between Kurds and Arabs in Mosul is deep. '

... The insurgents have many weaknesses. They have no political wing. The fanatical Sunni fundamentalists, commonly called the Salafi or the Wahhabi, see Iraqi Shias and Christians as infidels just as worthy of death as any US soldier. When American forces damaged two mosques in Mosul in the fighting last November, the resistance blew up two Iraqi Christian churches. Such sectarianism makes it impossible for the resistance to become a truly nationalist movement, but there are four or five million Sunni Arabs – a strong enough base for an insurgency.

The war will go on in Iraq because no community has got what it wants and none has given up hope of getting it. The Shias ... now believe that the US, the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs are plotting to marginalise them....

The Sunni Arabs are divided and unclear in their aims. They want the US occupation to end. But, having boycotted the election, they are not sure how they will relate to the new government. Despite the Sunn i boycott, the government was elected by popular vote and has a legitimacy its predecessors lacked. The Kurds, almost to their own surprise, are the community which made the biggest gains after Saddam’s fall: they hold Kirkuk; they are allied to the US; Jalal Talabani, one of their leaders, is president of Iraq; they enjoy a degree of autonomy close to independence. But they fear that this may be as good as it gets. The government in Baghdad will get stronger in time, and as it does so it may try to restore its authority over Kurdistan.

Politically and militarily strong for now, the Kurds are geographically isolated. It took me two days to travel from Kirkuk to Baghdad: the two-hour road journey is too dangerous, and I had to go by way of Turkey. The only airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Arbil, was closed: the central government claims it isn’t properly equipped. Traffic between Iraq and Turkey passes over two bridges a few hundred yards apart on a fast-flowing river at Ibrahim Khalil. T his might be the longest traffic jam in the world. Columns of trucks and petrol tankers waiting to cross the border stretch back 70 kilometres into Turkey. Sometimes drivers wait two and a half weeks to get across. Turkey, worried by the impact of events in Iraq on its own Kurdish population, tightens or relaxes the regulations for crossing the bridges to show the Iraqi Kurds that it controls their main link with the outside world.

... Travelling in Iraq has now become so dangerous for journalists that much of the violence is unreported. For Washington and London the absence of journalists is convenient.

... Imagine the outcry if outsiders suggested that the US should be reconfigured to accommodate the large Hispanic population in the southwest or Jewish population on the east coast.

In Ýraq ... breaking down the country into ethnic economic claims and militias, making a once strong country and one of the most advanced in the region, a weak and fragile conglomeration.

If the logic of an ethnic federalism is allowed to take root in Iraq, then why do we not pursue that logic to its conclusion? If ethnicity and language is the basis of political unity, and not state borders and civil infrastructures, then what is the basis for dividing the Arab people of Arabia, the Levant countries, North Africa and Iraq? ...

The Europeans, Latin Americans and East Asians have all pursued economic (and even martial) consolidation to be more powerful entities in a world of large economic blocs, meanwhile the Arab world has been encouraged to do otherwise.'

A Jordanian of deep political experience at the highest reaches of Arab political life ...:"The people in the streets of Beirut knew that no second Hama is possible; they knew that the rulers were under the gaze of American power, and knew that Bush would not permit a massive crackdown by the men in Damascus."

... America had wearied of Mr. Mubarak, and was willing to bet on an open political process, with all its attendant risks and possibilities.

... For decades, (the Arab world) was divided between rulers who monopolized political power and intellectual classes shut out of genuine power, forever prey to the temptations of radicalism.

... There were many liberal, secular Arabs now clamoring for American intervention. The claims of sovereignty were no longer adequate; a malignant political culture had to be "rehabilitated and placed in receivership," a wise Jordanian observer conceded.

... Mr. Bush ... has found eager converts among Muslims and Arabs keen to repair their world, to wean it from a culture of scapegoating and self-pity.

... One of the principal leaders of the Supreme Islamic Council for Revolution in Iraq, Sheikh Hamam Hammoudi... brushed aside the talk of a Shia theocracy.... "My English is better than my Farsi, even though I spent 20 years in Iran." He was proud of his Iraqi identity, proud of being "an Arab." He was sure that the Najaf school of Shia jurisprudence would offer its own alternative to the world view of Qom, across the border. He wanted no theocratic state in Iraq: Islam, he said, would be "a source" of legislation, but the content of politics would be largely secular. The model, he added, with a touch of irony, would be closer to the American mix of religion and politics than to the uncompromising secularism of France....

Women want the vote in Kuwait, the Lebanese clamor for the truth about the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and about the dark Syrian interlude in their history. Egyptians don't seem frightened of the scarecrows with which the Mubarak regime secured their submission. Everywhere, the order is under attack, and men and women are willing to question the prevailing truths. There is to this moment of Arab history the feel of a re-enactment of Europe's Revolution of 1848 -- the springtime of peoples: That revolution broke out in France, then spread to the Italian states, to the German principalities, to the remotest corners of the Austrian empire. '

Abdullah promised to pump up oil production from 10 barrels per day to 12.5 million short term and 15 million long term. But he insisted his immediate priority for the royal purse was the promotion of reforms and better education, health and social welfare systems for his subjects. Therefore investment in expanding oil production would take some time, but it would come about.

Abdullah then laid down his price for “opening a new chapter in US-Saudi strategic relations.”

One, Sharon must be pushed towards keeping step with Abbas and meeting his demands, to continue propping the Palestinian leader up and to do nothing that might hasten his downfall.

Two, Sharon must be urged into serious negotiations with Syria.

Three, The Bush administration must avoid any action that might topple Bashar Assad or bring about the demise of the Assad regime in Damascus.

The Saudi prince put it this way: We did as much as you to force Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon. It is now your turn to meet us halfway. Neither Assad nor Syria must be humiliated any further.

DEBKAfile’s sources have not discovered the US president’s response to these demands. '