APS Diplomat Recorder articles from January 2007

APS Diplomat Recorder archives from January 2007

ARAB AFFAIRS - Jan 1 - Iran Lays Down A Challenge To Arab Leaders.
January 6, 2007... On a recent trip to Bahrain, a self-assured Iran's FM Manouchehr Mottaki, professes to have the answer to the Gulf's troubles. Speaking to a largely Arab and western audience, he suggested Gulf stability was best achieved by removing American...

ARAB AFFAIRS - Jan 1 - Israeli Raid Overshadows Peace Talks Between Olmert And Mubarak.
January 6, 2007... PM Ehud Olmert of Israel and Pres Hosni Mubarak of Egypt meet to discuss how to restore momentum to negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But the meeting, in the Red Sea town of Sharm el Sheik, was overshadowed by an Israeli...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 4 - US Helps Contain Somalia's Islamist Forces.
January 6, 2007... A US-led naval task force off the Somali coast has been boarding ships in recent days as part of efforts to prevent Islamist militants fleeing the country. The task force is taking part in a broader US military effort to stop Islamist fighters...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 5 - US Gives Abbas $86m To 'Destroy Terror Network'.(Mahmoud Abbas)
January 6, 2007... The Bush administration will provide $86m to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, expanding US involvement in his struggle with Hamas. Fighting between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas, the ruling Islamist...

ETHIOPIA - Jan 2 - Troops May Leave Somalia 'In Weeks'.
January 6, 2007... Ethiopia's PM Meles Zenawi says Ethiopian troops can be pulled out of Somalia "within a few weeks", adding that the victors of Somalia's two-week war are now "mopping up remnants" of the country's former Islamist leaders. Addis Ababa, which...

IRAN - Jan 3 - Iranian Official Urges New Nuclear Talks.
January 6, 2007... Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator close to the influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, calls for renewed diplomacy with the west to break the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. He also implied that Iran...

IRAQ - Dec 31 - Saddam Traded Insults With His Executioners.(Saddam Hussein)
January 6, 2007... Saddam Hussein is buried just before dawn in his home town of Awja, drawing hundreds of mourners, as video circulates across the country showing the former Iraqi president exchanging taunts with his executioners just before his hanging. The...

IRAQ - Dec 31 - Saddam Buried; Videos Grip Iraq.(Saddam Hussein )
January 6, 2007... The body of Saddam Hussein is buried in the town of his birth in the hours before dawn, after a final journey into the night aboard an American military helicopter that carried him from Baghdad. The burial was the final act in a grim and...

ISRAEL - Jan 2 - Top Israeli General Admits To Serious Errors During Lebanon War.(Dan Halutz)
January 6, 2007... Lt Gen Dan Halutz, concedes that the military made serious errors during last summer's war against Hizbullah in Lebanon but said that he will not resign his post. Halutz said that Israel had badly damaged Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and...

PALESTINE - Jan 3 - Resurgent Violence Kills 5 Palestinians.
January 6, 2007... A resurgence in factional violence kills five Palestinians, threatening a fragile truce between Hamas and Fatah. After nightfall, warring sides in the southern Gaza Strip agreed to stop the violence, but it was unclear whether this would end...

SOMALIA - Jan 4 - Lack Of Security Threatens Somalia's Hard-Won Gains.
January 6, 2007... A hand grenade is tossed into a government army compound in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, in a sign of a growing insurgency. Just days after Ethiopian-led troops helped rout Somalia's once-powerful Islamist forces and install a new government...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 9 - US Confirms Air Strikes In Somalia Conflict.
January 13, 2007... US officials confirm it launched weekend air strikes against alleged al-Qaeda leaders in Somalia, marking Washington's first direct engagement in the Horn of Africa conflict. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the target of a strike by an...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 10 - Bush Pledges 21,500 More Troops For Iraq.
January 13, 2007... Bush unveils what many see as his last chance to salvage the deteriorating situation in Iraq with the pledge of 21,500 new US troops and an admission the current strategy was failing. In a live broad cast Bush told Americans: Where mistakes...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 12 - Gates Denies US Forces Will Enter Iran.
January 13, 2007... The US defence secretary Robert Gates, dismisses concerns that the Pentagon will send US troops across the Iraqi border into Iran to disrupt networks allegedly supplying weapons to Shi'ite militias in Iraq. Pres Bush this week raised alarm that...

ETHIOPIA - Jan 10 - Ethiopia 'Holding Suspects' After US Air Strike.
January 13, 2007... PM Meles Zenawi, says that a US air strike in southern Somalia had killed eight suspected militants and wounded five others, who had been captured by Ethiopian forces. Ethiopia, a key US ally, led an offensive against a Somali Islamist movement...

IRAQ - Jan 6 - Maliki Vows To Restore Order In Baghdad.
January 13, 2007... US Pres Bush expects to announce a surge in American manpower in Iraq this week in a bid to improve security, the Iraqi government has announces its own make-or-break offensive to contain insurgents and militias in the capital. PM Nouri...

PALESTINE - Jan 7 - Fatah Holds A Big Rally As Feud With Hamas Deepens.
January 13, 2007... The Palestinian faction Fatah - led by President Mahmoud Abbas - hold a large rally in a Gaza City sport stadium, marking Fatah's 42nd anniversary with a show of strength and defiance after days of bloody clashes with the rival Hamas movement....

SOMALIA - Jan 10 - Violence Engulfs Somali Capital.
January 13, 2007... Mogadishu explodes in violence after insurgents attack a government barracks during the night and soldiers respond by sealing off large swaths of the city and searching house to house for weapons. The raids immediately sparked resistance, and...

ARAB AFFAIRS - Jan 14 - Talabani Tackles Syria Over Security.
January 19, 2007... Iraq's Pres Jalal Talabani, meet his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus at the start of a four-day visit that will focus on security. The visit, the first time since 1979 that an Iraqi head of state has visited the Syrian capital,...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 18 - Sunni Allies Give 'Qualified Support' For Bush's Iraq Strategy.
January 19, 2007... When US State Sec Rice, flies out of the Middle East after a tour of the region to mobilise support for the White House's controversial new Iraq strategy, Arab diplomats are left hoping, rather than expecting, that it might actually achieve...

AFGHANISTAN - Jan 17 - Allies Consider Extra Troops For Afghanistan.
January 19, 2007... The US and the UK are considering deploying more troops in Afghanistan, in the light of other Nato countries' failure to send reinforcements. Last September, General James Jones, then Nato's top commander, called for the alliance's 26 member...

IRAN - Jan 18 - Ahmadinejad Under Pressure At Home Over UN Sanctions.
January 19, 2007... Pres Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming under pressure on several fronts at home, just a month after the UN Security Council imposed its first sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program. Members of the Iranian Parliament criticised the president...

IRAQ - Jan 15 - Sunni Anger Over Bungling Of Execution.
January 19, 2007... Iraq executes Saddam Hussein's co-defendants, eliciting fresh controversy after it was revealed that one of the executions was bungled. Saddam's half brother Barzan al-Tikriti, and a revolutionary court judge Awadh al-Bandar, were hanged before...

IRAQ - Jan 15 - Maliki Attacked For Ties To Shi'ite Militants.
January 19, 2007... Iraq's most senior Sunni politician launches a bitter personal attack on the country's PM, warning Nouri al-Maliki that the Iraqi government has only limited time to break with sectarian groups and start delivering to ordinary citizens. In...

IRAQ - Jan 16 - Baghdad University Bombs Kill At Least 65.
January 19, 2007... Bomb attacks outside a Baghdad university kill at least 65 students and staff as the UN produced a report saying that more than 34,000 civilians had died violently in Iraq last year. The attacks outside Baghdad's Mustansiriyah University...

ISRAEL - Jan 16 - Israeli Military Chief Quits Over Lebanon.
January 19, 2007... The chief of Israel's armed forces Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz resigns after internal probes pointed to his responsibility for the setbacks of last year's Lebanon war. The July-August assault on Lebanese Hizbullah guerrillas drove them from...

JORDAN - Jan 19 - Jordan Weighs Nuclear Programme.
January 19, 2007... Jordan becomes the latest Middle East state to announce it is investigating the creation of a civil nuclear programme. King Abdullah told Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper that the changing political climate in the region had prompted him to consider...

PALESTINE - Jan 14 - Abbas Rules Out Plan For Interim State.(Mahmoud Abbas )
January 19, 2007... The PA president pre-empts emerging pressure to accept an interim Palestinian state with temporary borders. Mahmoud Abbas told Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, a comprehensive peace treaty was the only realistic solution to the conflict...

PALESTINE - Jan 16 - Hamas Denies Gaza Tunnels Dug to Kill Fatah Leaders.
January 19, 2007... Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, says the tunnels dug by Palestinians under the Gaza Strip are aimed at foiling possible Israeli ground offensives and not at killing prominent leaders of the rival Fatah faction. Fatah, locked in...

SOMALIA - Jan 17 - Islamist Fighters In Somalia Arrested While Trying To Escape Into Kenya.
January 19, 2007... Several Somali Islamist fighters and possibly some top leaders are arrested trying to escape into Kenya, the Kenyan authorities report, raising the possibility of a sticky asylum issue. "We have detained a number of people but we are still...

ARAB-US RELATIONS - Jan 26 - Bush Denies Preparing Attack Against Iran.
January 27, 2007... Bush denies widespread rumours his administration is preparing some kind of military action against Iran. Bush confirmed a report in Washington Post that he had authorised US troops to shoot and kill Iranian operatives in Iraq, but denied this...

AFGHANISTAN - Jan 22 - The Taliban Announce That They Will Open Schools In Afghanistan.
January 27, 2007... The Taliban said they will open their own schools in areas of southern Afghanistan under the group's control, an apparent effort to win support among local residents and undermine the Western- backed government's efforts to expand education....

IRAN - Jan 21 - Ahmadi-nejad Dismisses Effects Of Un Sanctions On Iran.
January 27, 2007... President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad brushes off UN sanctions on Iran's nuclear program as insignificant and vows that Iran will not halt the program. "The resolution was born dead", he said in Parliament of the Security Council action that...

IRAQ - Jan 21 - Shi'ite Group Ends Boycott Ahead Of Moves To Curb Militias.
January 27, 2007... Representatives of Iraq's radical Shi'ite Sadrist movement says they are ending a two-month boycott of the government - a conciliatory gesture by a group that faces a crackdown on its associated militias by US and Iraqi forces. "We are ending...

IRAQ - Jan 22 - Iraq Attacks Kill At Least 88.
January 27, 2007... Raising the prospect of yet more intensified sectarian fighting here, two powerful car bombs rip through a crowded market in central Baghdad, killing at least 88, wounding 160 and leaving the area littered with pieces of human bodies amid the...

ISRAEL - Jan 23 - Attorney General Plans Indictment Of Israeli President.
January 27, 2007... The Israeli attorney general plans to indict President Moshe Katsav on charges of rape and other sexual offenses, the Justice Ministry announces, in what will be the most serious criminal case involving a senior Israeli official. Katsav, whose...

PALESTINE - Jan 22 - Palestinian Factions Set To Resume Unity Talks.
January 27, 2007... After the inconclusive talks in Damascus between Pres Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, leader of the ruling Hamas movement, Palestinians prepare to press on with efforts to form a national unity government. A statement from the umbrella group...

LEBANON - Jan 25 - Beirut Riots Cast Shadow Over Aid Pledges.
January 27, 2007... An international donor conference in Paris at which $7.6 bn is committed to support Lebanon is overshadowed by renewed political violence in the increasingly divided country. The clashes in Beirut were sparked by a fight between pro-government...