NEWS, 24.05.2012

EU urges Greece to stay in euro

 

European Union leaders, advised by senior officials to prepare contingency plans in case Greece decides to quit the single currency, urged the country to stay the course on austerity and complete the reforms demanded under its bailout programme.After nearly six hours of talks held during an informal dinner, leaders said they were committed to Greece remaining in the euro zone, but it had to stick to its side of the bargain too, a commitment that will mean a heavy cost for Greeks."We want Greece to stay in the euro, but we insist that Greece sticks to commitments that it has agreed to," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after a Wednesday evening summit in Brussels dragged long into the night.Three officials told Reuters the instruction to have plans in place for a Greek exit was agreed on Monday during a teleconference of the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG) - experts who work for euro zone finance ministers.The Greek finance ministry denied there was any such agreement but Belgian Finance Minister Steven Vanackere, said: "All the contingency plans (for Greece) come back to the same thing: to be responsible as a government is to foresee even what you hope to avoid."Two other senior EU officials confirmed the call and its contents, saying contingency planning was only sensible.In its monthly report, Germany's Bundesbank said the situation in Greece was "extremely worrying" and it was jeopardising any further financial aid by threatening not to implement reforms agreed as part of its two bailouts.It said a euro exit would pose "considerable but manageable" challenges for its European partners, raising pressure on Athens to stick with its painful economic reforms.Greek officials have said that without outside funds, the country will run out of money within two months and there remains the threat that if it crashes out of the euro zone, other member states could be brought down too.A document seen by Reuters detailed the potential costs to individual member states of a Greek exit and said that if it came about, an "amiable divorce" should be sought with the EU and IMF possibly giving up to 50 billion euros to ease its path.Although EU leaders' minds will have been focused by that prospect, disagreements have flared over a plan for mutual euro zone bond issuance and other measures to alleviate two years of debt turmoil, such as giving countries like Spain an extra year to make the spending cuts demanded of them."The idea is to put energy into the growth motor. All the member countries don't necessarily share my ideas. But a certain number expressed themselves in the same direction," new French President Francois Hollande told reporters.For the first time in more than two years of crisis summits, the leaders of France and Germany did not huddle beforehand to agree positions, marking a significant shift in the axis which has traditionally driven European policymaking.Instead, Hollande met Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Paris to discuss policy, before the pair travelled to Brussels by train.Despite fears Greeks could open the departure door if they vote for anti-bailout parties at a June 17 election, Spain, where the economy is in recession and the banking system in need of restructuring, is at the front line of the crisis.After meeting Hollande, Rajoy said he had no intention of seeking outside aid for Spain's banks, which are laden with bad debts from a property boom that bust and still has some way to go before it touches bottom.But his government said its rescue of problem lender Bankia would cost at least 9 billion euros and it is also seeking ways to help its highly indebted regions meet huge refinancing bills.Shifting sands Socialist Hollande's election victory has significantly changed the terms of the debate in Europe, with his call for greater emphasis on growth rather than debt-cutting now a rallying cry for other leaders.That has set up a showdown with conservative Merkel, whose primary objective is budget austerity and structural reform.At his first EU summit, Hollande chose to make a stand on euro bonds - issuing common euro zone debt - despite consistent German opposition to the idea. "I was not alone in defending euro bonds," he said.Merkel showed no sign of dropping her objections to the proposal, which she has said can only be discussed once there is much closer fiscal union in Europe. "There were differences in the exchange about euro bonds," she said bluntly.The Netherlands, Finland and some smaller euro zone member states support her.No major decisions were made at Wednesday's summit, which was intended to promote ideas on jobs and growth ahead of another meeting at the end of June.But debate was intense, not just over euro bonds but over how to rescue banks and whether to give more time to struggling euro zone countries to meet their budget deficit goals."We haven't come together to confront each other ... but we have to say what we think - what are the right instruments, the right methods, the right steps, the right initiatives to raise growth," Hollande said.The leaders discussed broad measures to stem the fallout from a winding up or restructuring of bad banks, EU officials said, with the European Central Bank pressing for the bloc to stand behind its struggling lenders but with Merkel's approval seen as far from guaranteed.At the heart of the discussion are proposals from the European Commission for a legal framework to wind up or reorganise insolvent banks so as to avoid a repeat of the multi-trillion-euro taxpayer bailouts during the financial crisis.Another suggestion is for the euro zone's rescue funds to be allowed to recapitalise banks directly, rather than having to lend to countries for on-lending to the banks. But that is another idea with which Germany is uncomfortable.Having rallied on Tuesday, European stocks dropped 2.2 percent as investors priced in a lack of dramatic policy action. The euro tumbled against the dollar to its lowest since August 2010 and Spanish and Italian borrowing costs climbed.A German two-year debt auction gave a stark illustration of how money is dashing for safe havens. Investors snapped up the 4.5 billion euros of paper on offer even though it came with a zero coupon - offering no return at all.Search for growth With the euro zone registering no growth in the first quarter and threatening to slip back into recession, policymakers touted three ideas to provide stimulus:- 'Project bonds' backed by the EU budget to finance infrastructure projects alongside private sector investment.- Doubling the paid-in capital of the European Investment Bank, the EU's co-financing arm, to a little over 20 billion euros.- Redirecting structural funds which tend to flow to poorer countries, to other areas where they might reap more immediate growth rewards.Even if all three proposals were to be activated quickly, economists say they will not provide a sufficient shot in the arm to the euro zone and the wider EU economy.

NEWS,26.03.2012.

Israel sees new advantage in Iron Dome anti-missile system

Israel's newest weapon sits squarely along the border of this southern Israeli town. The Iron Dome, a rocket interception system built by Israel, guards many of the cities that lie within the range of rockets fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. The system, considered among the most advanced in the world, fires a missile to intercept incoming rockets after it gauges whether a rocket will fall in an area where it can cause damage. It is, according to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a "game changer."When violence flared along the Israel-Gaza border earlier this month, the effectiveness of the Iron Dome was tested, and Israeli officials couldn't have been more pleased.Of the approximately 250 rockets and mortars fired at Israel from Gaza, 166 entered Israel's airspace, officials said. Of those, 74 would have struck civilian areas or buildings. The Iron Dome system intercepted 56 before they could land, a success rate of 75 percent. Israeli officials argue, however, that the Iron Dome also identified rockets that were headed for open areas, such as fields, and let them land harmlessly. Factoring those in, Israeli military officials argue that only 18 of the 166 landed anywhere on target, giving the system a success rate of nearly 90 percent.Israeli military officers and politicians said the success of the system gave Israel "diplomatic maneuverability" that it didn't have previously. Israel Defense Forces chief Benny Gantz described the Iron Dome's impact as a "serious and historical military change."Gantz said the ability to protect Israeli population centers from rocket attacks removed one of the key factors that the military had always seen as a limitation on its operations: what the likelihood was of reprisals.Now, Gantz added, the Israeli military can operate relatively undeterred without concern about rocket attacks. The barrage of rockets earlier this month was triggered by the targeted killing in a drone strike of Zuhair al Qaissi, a senior member of the Popular Resistance Committee, an umbrella group that includes militants from various Palestinian factions.Iron Dome is just the beginning, Gantz said. While it focuses on smaller rockets with a relatively short range, such as those from the Gaza Strip, Israel is installing other systems that are intended to stop larger missiles, fired from farther away.David's Sling, a system built in conjunction with the U.S. military, is designed to intercept medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles, such as those possessed by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Another system, the Arrow, also developed with the United States, would intercept ballistic missiles fired from hundreds of miles away.Israeli military officials said they hoped the systems would deter militants from firing rockets."If they know we have the ability to stop their rockets from hitting their targets, they might abandon this method," said one Israel Defense Forces officer, who spoke to reporters recently on the condition of anonymity. "In the long run we can hope for this."Already though, the impact on Israeli residents of the south has been felt. Writing in The Jerusalem Post, military analyst Yaakov Katz said that, "Israel's political leadership is under less pressure from the public that is under the rocket fire. As a result, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak feel a need to escalate the operation."Meira Cohanim, a 56-year-old resident of Ashkelon, said she felt comforted that the military was trying to intercept missiles from Gaza, even if the system wasn't 100 percent effective."Before, you had this feeling that the rockets were just pounding away," she said. "And they would land wherever they did and your home was hit or it wasn't. Now there is a feeling that something might be changing; we might be protected."Iron Dome, she said, might give the Israel Defense Forces more leeway to operate in Gaza, but she hoped that it wouldn't mean another war."The people in Gaza don't have Iron Dome or even bomb shelters. I know some people here think it's good for us to attack them, but there are innocents and children there, too," she said. "I hope Iron Dome brings peace, not one-sided war."

NEWS,11.02.2012.

Israel's Mossad Teams up with Terror Group to Kill Iran's Nuclear Scientists (Part 2)

The MEK and its sister organizations have since the beginning been run by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, a husband-wife team who have maintained tight control despite assassination threats and internal dissent. Massoud Rajavi, 63, founded the MEK, but since the U.S. invasion of Iraq has taken a backseat to his wife.The State Department report describes the Rajavis as “fundamentally undemocratic” and “not a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.”NBC News correspondent Tom Aspell visits an MEK base in Iraq in this Nightly News piece that aired on May 26, 1991.One reason for that is the MEK’s close relationship with Saddam Hussein, as demonstrated by this 1986 video showing the late Iraqi dictator meeting with Massoud Rajavi. Saddam recruited the MEK in much the same way the Israelis allegedly have, using them to fight Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War, a role they took on proudly. So proudly, they invited NBC News to one of their military camps outside Baghdad in 1991.“The National Liberation Army (MLA), the military wing of the Mujahedin, conducted raids into Iran during the latter years of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War,” according to the State Department report. The NLA's last major offensive reportedly was conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991, when it joined Saddam Hussein's brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion. In addition to occasional acts of sabotage, the Mujahedin are responsible for violent attacks in Iran that victimize civilians.”“Internally, the Mujahedin run their organization autocratically, suppressing dissent and eschewing tolerance of differing viewpoints,” it said. “Rajavi, who heads the Mojahedin’s political and military wings, has fostered a cult of personality around himself.”The U.S. suspicion of the MEK doesn’t end there. Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that in 1994, the MEK made a pact with terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Yousef built an 11-pound bomb that MEK agents placed inside one of Shia Islam’s greatest shrines in Mashad, Iran, on June 20, 1994. At least 26 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 200 wounded in the attack.That connection between Yousef, nephew of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and the MEK was first reported in a book, “The New Jackals,” by Simon Reeve. NBC News confirmed that Yousef told U.S. law enforcement that he had worked with the MEK on the bombing.In recent years, the MEK has said it has renounced violence, but Iranian officials say that is not true, that killings of Iranians continue. Still, through some deft lobbying, the group has been able to get the United Kingdom and the European Union to remove it from their lists of terrorist groups.The alleged involvement of the MEK in the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists provides the U.S. with a cloak of deniability regarding the clandestine killings. Because the U.S. has designated the MEK as a terrorist organization, neither military nor intelligence units of the U.S. government, can work with them. “We cannot deal with them, “said one senior U.S. official. “We would not deal with them because of the designation.” Iranian officials initially accused the Israelis and MEK of being behind the attacks, but they have since added the CIA to the list. Three days after the Jan. 11, 2012, bombing in Tehran that killed Roshan, the state news agency IRNA reported that Iran’s Foreign Ministry had sent a diplomatic letter to the U.S. claiming to have “evidence and reliable information” that the CIA provided “guidance, support and planning” to assassins directly involved in the attack.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately denied any connection to the killings. “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Clinton told reporters on the day of the attack.But at least two GOP presidential candidates have no problem with the targeting of nuclear scientists. In a November debate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed “taking out their scientists,” and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum called it, ”a wonderful thing.”The MEK’s opposition to the Iranian government also has recently earned it both plaudits and support from an odd mix of political bedfellows. A group of former Cabinet-level officials have joined together to support the MEK’s removal from the official U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list, even taking out a full-page ad last year in the New York Times calling for the removal of the MEK from the U.S. terrorist list. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy were among those whose signatures were on the ad.“There’s an extraordinary group of bipartisan or even apolitical leaders, military leaders, diplomats, the United States … the United Kingdom, the European Union, even a U.S. District Court in Washington, said that this group that was put on the foreign terrorist organization watch list in 1997 doesn’t deserve to be there,” Ridge said in November on “The Andrea Mitchell Show” on MSNBC TV.U.S. politicians also have been pushing the U.S. government to protect the 3,400 MEK members and their families at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, about 35 miles north of Baghdad. With the departure of U.S. troops, the MEK feared that Iraqi forces, with encouragement from Iran, would attack the camp, leading to a bloodbath. At the last minute, however, agreement was brokered with the United Nations that would permit the MEK members’ departure for resettlement in unspecified democratic countries. As of this week, there’s been little movement on the planned resettlement. Iranian fighters with the National Liberation Army, the military wing of the MEK, clean armoured personnel carriers in 1997 after a field exercise near Camp Ashraf in Iraq.The Iranians see what’s happening as terrorism and hypocrisy by the United States. They have forwarded documents and other evidence to the United Nations – and directly to the United States, they say.” I think this is very cynical plan. This is unacceptable,” said Larijani. “This is a bad trend in the world. Unprecedented. We should kill scientists … to block a scientific program? I mean this is disaster!”Daniel Byman, a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and also a senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said that if the accounts of the Israeli-MEK assassinations are accurate, the operation borders on terrorism.“In theory, states cannot be terrorist, but if they hire locals to do assassinations, that would be state sponsorship,” said Byman, author of the recent book, “A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism.” “You could argue that they took action not to terrorize the public, the purpose of terrorism, but only the nuclear community. An argument could also be made that degrading the program means that you don’t have to take military action and thus, this is a lower level of violence and that really these are military targets, where normally terrorist targets are civilians.”But ultimately, Byman said, there is a “spectrum of responsibility” and that Israel is ultimately responsible.Ronen Bergman, while not speaking on behalf of the Israeli government, suggests that there is a justification, citing an oft-repeated but disputed quote in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s said that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth.“Meir Degan, the chief of Mossad, when he was in office, hung a photograph behind him, behind the chair of the chief of Mossad,” notes the Israeli commentator. “And in that photograph you see -- an ultra-orthodox Jew -- long beard, standing on his knees with his-- hands up in the air, and two Gestapo soldiers standing -- beside him with guns pointed at him. One of -- one of them is smiling.“And Degan used to say to his people and the people coming to visit him from CIA, NSA, et cetera, ‘Look at this guy in the picture. This is my grandfather just seconds before he was killed by the SS,’” Bergman said. “’… We are here to prevent this from happening again.’"