U.S. Diplomat Allowed Rare Visit With Burmese Dissident - NYTimes.com

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By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — A senior American diplomat who completed a rare visit to Myanmar on Wednesday said that Washington would improve relations with the nation if its military government embraced reconciliation with Myanmar’s democratic opposition.

“We stated clearly that the United States is prepared to take steps to improve the relationship, but that the process must be based on reciprocal and concrete efforts by the Burmese government,” the diplomat, Kurt M. Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in a statement before boarding a plane for Thailand.

Mr. Campbell is the highest-ranking American official to hold substantive talks in Myanmar, formerly Burma, in more than a decade, and he described his trip as an “exploratory mission.”

After a two-hour meeting on Wednesday with the leader of the country’s beleaguered democracy movement, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Campbell urged the government to allow her “more frequent interactions” with members of her own party, the National League for Democracy, which won elections in 1990 that were ignored by the ruling generals.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years and is allowed only infrequent meetings with anyone outside her home. Mr. Campbell is the most senior American representative she has met since 1995.

Mr. Campbell’s trip is part of a broader policy review announced by the Obama administration to engage Myanmar after years of diplomatic isolation and sanctions. American officials say they have no immediate plans to lift the sanctions, which bar most trade and investment in the country by American companies.

The European Union also imposes wide-ranging sanctions on the military government, but Myanmar’s neighbors, including Thailand, China and India, trade and deal freely with the country, weakening the effectiveness of the Western sanctions.

During his two-day visit, Mr. Campbell held talks with Myanmar’s prime minister, Gen. Thein Sein, but in what seemed to be a snub that has become commonplace for visiting dignitaries, Mr. Campbell did not meet Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the junta.

Mr. Campbell also held talks with the minister of science and technology and said he expected Myanmar to live up to its United Nations obligations on “proliferation,” probably a reference to the country’s nuclear ambitions, which most analysts say they believe are in a nascent stage.

Mr. Campbell said the United States was committed to seeing “national reconciliation and a fully inclusive political process,” a variation on the oft-repeated pleas of United Nations officials and Western diplomats.

Skeptics of the American attempts at reconciliation, including many members of the Burmese exile community in Thailand and the United States, point to the numerous failed attempts at engagement since the generals ignored the 1990 elections.

The military has announced elections for next year and is introducing a new constitution that devolves power away from the military but retains a prominent role for the military leadership. Many analysts are skeptical that the military will actually give up significant control.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions - NYTimes.com

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By RACHEL DONADIO

MILAN — In a landmark ruling on Wednesday, an Italian judge convicted a C.I.A. station chief and 22 other Americans accused of being C.I.A. agents of kidnapping in the 2003 abduction of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan.

An enormous symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, the case was the first ever to contest the United States practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, presumably one more open to coercive interrogation techniques. The case was widely seen as an implicit indictment of the measures the Bush administration relied on to fight terrorism.

Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. station chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to 22 other Americans. Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome.

The judge did not convict three high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, citing state secrecy, and a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolò Pollari, also received diplomatic immunity. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.

Through their court-appointed lawyers, they pleade not guilty.

Italian prosecutors had charged the Americans and seven members of the Italian military intelligence agency in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors said he was snatched in broad daylight, flown from an American air base in Italy to a base in Germany and then on to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

That Italy would convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases.

But the convictions may have little practical effect. They do not seem to change the close relations between the United States and Italy. Nothing new was learned about whether the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had approved the kidnapping. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone, Italian or American, would spend any time in jail.

Armando Spataro, the counter-terrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans.

Mr. Spataro said he was pleased with what he called a “very courageous” verdict. He said it was a victory that “we brought the trial to an end, and the facts were shown to be what they were.” In his closing remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Spataro denounced torture and said that the abduction undermined the work of Italian counterterrorism investigators. He also criticized American authorities for not cooperating with the Italian justice system.

Since it began in 2007, the trial has faced many complex legal hurdles. That it has reached this late stage is a testament to the persistence of Mr. Spataro, a veteran of counterterrorism and Mafia investigations, and the earlier rulings of Judge Oscar Magi.

In May, Mr. Magi ruled that there was enough evidence to proceed with the case even after Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled in March that all evidence of coordination between the Italian secret services and the C.I.A. violated state secrecy rules and was therefore inadmissible in the trial.

Judge Magi also asked for $1.45 million in damages for Mr. Nasr and $750,000 for his wife, Ghali Nabila. In separate lawsuits, Mr. Nasr, who is now living in Alexandria, Egypt, is seeking $14 million in damages from the defendants, and h is wife is seeking $7.4 million against the Italian authorities “for their refusal to cooperate” with justice. In August the couple also filed a suit with the European Court of Human Rights.

At the time of his abduction, Mr. Nasr was under surveillance by the Italian authorities, who suspected him of delivering sermons preaching violence from his Milan mosque and recruiting militants to send to Iraq in anticipation of the American invasion. He disappeared for a year after his abduction, finally resurfacing in Egypt, where he called his wife in Italy to say he had been tortured.

The phone call was enough to activate Italian prosecutors, who are required to investigate if there is the possibility a of a crime.

Prosecutors were able to reconstruct his disappearance using cellphone records traced to the American agents. The operatives used false names but left a significant paper trail of unencrypted cellphone records and credit card bills at luxury hotels in Milan, suggesting they believed they were operating with latitude.

Court-appointed lawyers for several of the American defendants claim that prosecutors never adequately established their clients’ identities.

“The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar,” said Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A spokesman.

Italian government has denied involvement.

In June, Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by a brother of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and widely seen as close to the Italian government, published an interview that it said it had conducted via Skype with Mr. Lady, who has since retired and whose whereabouts are unknown. In the interview, he said of Abu Omar’s abduction, “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job. We’re at war against terrorism.”

Among the 22 Americans convicted was Sabrina De Sousa, who worked in the United States Embassy in Rome and was accused of having worked closely with Mr. Lady Ms. De Sousa, who denied the prosecutors’ assertion that she was a C.I.A. operative, sued the State Department for diplomatic immunity.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Clashes in Iran on Anniversary of Embassy Takeover - NYTimes.com

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran’s beleaguered opposition movement struggled to reassert itself on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of protesters braved police beatings and clouds of tear gas on the sidelines of a major, government-sponsored anti-American rally.

The protests — in Tehran and several other cities — were the opposition’s largest street showing in almost two months, and came on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the United States Embassy in 1979, a day of great symbolic importance for both Iran and the United States. Although a huge deployment of police beat back and scattered many of them, the protesters took heart at their ability to openly challenge the government despite a stream of stark warnings from all levels of Iran’s conservative establishment.

Protesters openly flouted the day’s official anti-American message, with about a thousand people, many wearing clothing and accessories in the opposition’s signature bright green color, gathering outside the Russian Embassy in Tehran and chanting, “The real den of spies is the Russian embassy.”

The American embassy has been called the “den of spies” in Iran for decades. But many opposition supporters were angered by Russia’s early acceptance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory in Iran’s June presidential elections.

It was a day of scattered protests and violence across central Tehran, and even some government authorities seemed to grudgingly concede that the opposition had — for the first time — disrupted the annual anti-American rally. The official IRNA news agency reported in midafternoon that “rioters,” many wearing the opposition’s green symbols, had gathered in front of its offices on Valiasr Street chanting “Death to the Dictator” and other anti-government slogans.

At the same time, a new theme emerged on Wednesday, with many protesters declaring their impatience with President Obama’s policy of dialogue with the Iranian government. Many could be heard chanting: “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us,” witnesses said.

President Obama released his own statement on Wednesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the embassy takeover, repeating his appeals to move beyond the two countries’ mutual distrust. The statement expressed sympathy for Iran’s opposition movement, and suggested that time was running out on a United Nations-backed plan that is aimed at averting a showdown over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice and their courageous pursuit of universal rights,” the statement said of the Iranian people. “It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

On Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave an angry speech accusing the United States of dictating the terms of the nuclear deal, and suggested that Mr. Obama was no different from his predecessor.

There were reports of several dozen arrests in Wednesday’s protests, including some outside Tehran, and many injuries. The reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, who has become the government’s most outspoken critic, narrowly avoided injury when pro-government forces fired a tear gas cylinder at him as he marched with protesters in Tehran, according to Radio Farda. Two of his guards leapt to defend him and were hospitalized for their wounds, the station reported.

Mir-Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader who was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main challenger in the elections, was prevented from attending the protests by security men on motorbikes who arrived at the Cultural Center in central Tehran, where he has his offices, Radio Farda reported.

Overall, the police appear to have fought back protesters more aggressively than they did in September, when opposition supporters came out in much larger numbers and virtually hijacked another state-sponsored rally known as Jerusalem Day.

On Wednesday, the streets of central Tehran were lined with police and Basij militia men starting early in the morning, witnesses said, and in the subways, officers singled out people wearing green armbands, bracelets or head scarves and ripped them off. The protest turnout may also have been limited by the fact that it took place on a workday, unlike the Jerusalem Day protest.

One young man who had been leading anti-government chants in Valiasr Square summed up the day’s events like this: “One day we come out and it’s our day, another day they suppress us. Today, we did not get to have our say, but it was good enough that we brought them out onto the streets.”

Still, the day was a tonic to the opposition, which has struggled to maintain its momentum since the June election set off the country’s worst domestic unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The authorities have brutally suppressed the movement in recent months through a combination of arrests, show trials and intimidation. Many leading reformist figures remain in jail, and while some detainees have been released, the government continues to arrest more every week.

The protests in Tehran began in Haft-e-Tir square, where crowds began forming in mid-morning and chanting “Death to the Dictator!” and other anti-government slogans. Many of them wore surgical masks in anticipation of tear gas. As their numbers grew, riot police and Basij militia members fired tear gas and lunged periodically into the crowd to beat or arrest protesters.

A disorderly march began, moving westward toward Valiasr Square, the scene of many earlier protests. The government’s official rally was taking place on a parallel route to the south, and a deployment of police and militia men prevented protesters from reaching it. By mid-afternoon, both demonstrations appeared to be ending.

Many protesters seemed acutely conscious of the government’s vulnerability, after a week during which Mr. Ahmadinejad often seemed to be alone in his support for concluding a nuclear deal with the West.

“They should get rid of all this ‘death to, death to’ — death to what?” said one middle-aged woman who was marching with her two daughters. “On the one hand they shout ‘Death to America’ and on the other hand they go and make deals with them.”

The anniversary of the embassy takeover underscored a broader unease about relations with the West. The day has long been a touchstone for Iran’s revolutionaries, but Mr. Obama’s outreach has complicated the state’s reflexive anti-Americanism. One of Iran’s leading reformist voices, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, surprised many of his compatriots by declaring on Tuesday that the seizure of the embassy in 1979 was “not the right thing to do.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad himself has argued that Iran has tamed the West’s arrogance and should now agree to the proposed nuclear deal, under which Iran’s uranium would be shipped abroad for processing and eventually returned in the form of fuel rods for a reactor producing medical isotopes.

But his political enemies, both conservative and reformist, have seized on an opportunity to humiliate him, and have assailed the nuclear plan as a surrender to the West — much as he did to them in years past. The status of the plan remains unclear, with Western leaders showing signs of impatience over Iran’s delays.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Helene Cooper from Washington.

Czech leader signs Lisbon Treaty, clearing way for stronger E.U. - washingtonpost.com

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By Karel Janicek
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

PRAGUE -- A charter meant to transform Europe into a more unified and powerful global player passed its last major hurdle Tuesday and appears set to become law within weeks.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who has been highly skeptical of increasing the European Union's powers, signed the Lisbon Treaty at the Prague Castle hours after his nation's Constitutional Court struck down a complaint that it violated the Czech constitution.

Klaus had been tirelessly attacking and stalling the document, saying it would hand too much power to E.U. institutions in Brussels. He awaited the court's ruling before deciding whether to endorse it. "I expected the decision of the Constitutional Court and respect it," Klaus told reporters Tuesday afternoon, but he added that he vehemently disagrees with the verdict.

"The Czech Republic will cease to be a sovereign state" under the treaty, he said.

Klaus represented the last obstacle to full ratification of the treaty, which was bogged down in negotiations for almost a decade and has been ratified by the 26 other E.U. countries. The charter is to take effect Dec. 1.

European leaders welcomed news of the signing. "President Klaus's decision marks an important and historic step for all of Europe," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel noted during a speech to the U.S. Congress in Washington that, with the new treaty, the E.U. "will become stronger and more capable of acting, and so a strong and reliable partner for the United States." She added: "On this basis, we can build stable partnerships with others, above all with Russia, China and India."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said of Klaus's decision: "This is great news for all Europeans." Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who has worked to seal the Lisbon Treaty under Sweden's E.U. presidency, said he would call for an E.U. summit as soon as possible.

Klaus's "signature ends a far too long period of institutional focus within the EU," Reinfeldt said in a text message sent from Washington. "It opens up for a more democratic, transparent and efficient Union."

Earlier in the day, the Constitutional Court's chief judge, Pavel Rychetsky, said that the Lisbon Treaty "does not violate the [Czech] constitution" and that all formal obstacles for ratification "are removed." In Brussels, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso of Portugal said he was "extremely pleased" with the Czech court's verdict.

"I hope that we can now move forward as quickly as possible on the nomination of the president of the European Council and vice president of the Commission High Representative," he said, referring to the newly created post of president, who will chair E.U. summits, and the bloc's new foreign policy chief, who will represent the bloc abroad.

Once the Lisbon Treaty becomes law, more policy decisions will be permitted by majority rather than unanimous votes at European summits. Those policies would then increasingly be shaped by the elected parliaments of each member nation and the European Parliament, which currently has little say.

E.U. leaders say such new voting rules are needed to promote stronger policies in combating cross-border crime, terrorism and ecological threats.

Projecting this more decisive E.U. abroad would be a new fixed-term president -- in place of a decades-old system that rotates the presidency among governments every six months.

Camp of Afghan challenger Abdullah sought top posts, officials say - washingtonpost.com

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Talks continued until hours before candidate withdrew, officials say

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

KABUL -- When Abdullah Abdullah chose to withdraw from the presidential election this week -- effectively handing incumbent Hamid Karzai a new term -- he described his position as a selfless protest against a flawed electoral system that was not fair for all Afghans.

But in the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Abdullah and Karzai camps, less high-minded motives also were at play. Afghan and Western officials said Abdullah's representatives were seeking a power-sharing deal with Karzai, demanding several senior government positions in talks that continued until hours before he announced his withdrawal Sunday.

One Afghan official close to Karzai said that around 2:30 p.m. Saturday, an Abdullah representative handed over a document demanding 11 senior government posts, including cabinet positions, for the candidate's supporters. A Western official said Abdullah's team had earlier demanded five positions.

Among the demands was that Attah Mohammed Noor, a strong Abdullah supporter and the governor of Balkh province in the north, would remain in his post and that a son of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani would get a cabinet seat. Abdullah's camp was also pushing for the removal of the interior and defense ministers, close allies of Karzai.

This "double game" is "all about the number of cabinet posts," the Afghan official said. "That's Afghan politics."

It remains unclear whether the negotiations were initiated at Abdullah's direction or whether his supporters were acting independently. Neither side would say whether Karzai and Abdullah reached a deal on government posts or whether the talks influenced Abdullah's decision to withdraw from the race.

Abdullah's intentions

The central question now facing Abdullah is how he will use the political capital he accrued in the election. Although foreign diplomats hailed him as a statesman for his honorable campaign conduct -- appealing to his supporters to remain calm during the uncertain weeks after the first round of voting in August -- many Afghans ultimately saw him as a spoiler, surrounded by men who viewed politics as a contest of raw power.

The circumstances of Abdullah's departure from the race shed little light on his intentions. His aides insist that Karzai refused to budge on any of the demands Abdullah made to reform an electoral process that produced large-scale fraud in the first round, making withdrawal his only option. Some of his supporters say he should focus on building a political party outside the government to pressure Karzai into reforms. One top Abdullah campaign official, however, said there was a 60 percent chance that Abdullah allies would end up in the cabinet.

In his first speech since being declared the election's winner, Karzai said Tuesday that he would be open to cooperating with his rivals, although he did not say whether there would be a place for Abdullah.

"My government will be for all Afghans, and all those who want to work with me are most welcome, regardless of whether they opposed me in the election or whether they supported me in the election," he said.

Karzai also vowed to "launch a campaign to clean the government of corruption," which is a top priority for the Obama administration. He suggested that curbing corruption would not be accomplished by removing high-ranking officials but by reforming Afghan laws and strengthening an anti-corruption panel that was formed last year.

During the negotiations over potential power-sharing arrangements, Rabbani, an influential power broker in Afghan politics who had backed Abdullah, was an advocate for securing government positions for Abdullah supporters, several officials said.

"Rabbani wanted the deal; he wanted the cabinet posts," said the Afghan official close to Karzai. But reaching such an agreement was difficult because Karzai felt he "already has a coalition."

"Abdullah does not offer a good number of technocrats and liberals that would be acceptable to the international community," the official said.

A spokesman for Abdullah said he could not confirm whether demands had been made for cabinet posts.

Reform vs. top jobs

People close to Abdullah say he is more interested in pushing a reform agenda than in securing seats in the government for his backers. During the campaign, he advocated for a parliamentary system with elected governors as a check on presidential powers.

"Our slogan for the campaign was hope and change," said Homayoun Shah Assefy, one of Abdullah's running mates. "If we enter this government without an agreement on reforms, it would be political suicide for us."

Some observers said Karzai would be more willing to put members of Abdullah's team in cabinet posts than to enact sweeping reforms.

"From his point of view, it's not a big sacrifice to choose ministers who were opposed to him in the election, provided they are now on his side," the Western official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The biggest sacrifice would be to get into constitutional changes."

Correspondent Pamela Constable and special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Iran's supreme leader warns against negotiating with U.S. - washingtonpost.com

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Ayatollah says talks would be 'perverted'

By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

TEHRAN -- Iran's supreme leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from President Obama, warned Tuesday that negotiating with the United States would be "naive and perverted" and that Iranian politicians should not be "deceived" into starting such talks.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 70, said Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages. It was the second time that Khamenei, who wields ultimate political and religious authority in Iran, has referred to the president's outreach.

The White House has not confirmed sending letters to the Iranian supreme leader but has acknowledged a willingness to talk to Tehran and said it has sought to communicate with Iranian leaders in a variety of ways.

In his harshest comments yet on the Obama administration, Khamenei said in a speech Tuesday that the United States has ill intentions toward Iran and is not to be trusted.

"The new U.S. president has said nice things," he said. "He has given us many spoken and written messages and said: 'Let's turn the page and create a new situation. Let's cooperate with each other in resolving world problems.' "

Khamenei said he had responded in March to Obama's overtures, referring to a speech in which he said he would wait for changes in U.S. policy toward Iran before reassessing ties.

Since then, Khamenei said, "what we have witnessed is completely the opposite of what they have been saying and claiming. On the face of things, they say, 'Let's negotiate.' But alongside this, they threaten us and say that if these negotiations do not achieve a desirable result, they will do this and that."

Khamenei urged Iranian representatives to be extremely careful when dealing with the United States.

"Whenever they smile at the officials of the Islamic revolution, when we carefully look at the situation, we notice that they are hiding a dagger behind their back," he said. "They have not changed their intentions."

The remarks came amid wrangling between Iranian officials and representatives of the United States, Russia and France over a U.N.-backed proposal aimed at resolving a protracted dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Under the deal, Iran would ship much of its low-enriched uranium abroad for processing into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes.

On Monday, Iran said it wanted further negotiations and more guarantees that any uranium it ships would be returned. During talks on the offer in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iranian officials tentatively agreed to the arrangement.

In Morocco on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Iran to accept the uranium swap proposal.

In a news conference after talks with Arab leaders in the city of Marrakesh, Clinton said, "We continue to press the Iranians to accept fully the proposal that has been made, which they accepted in principle." Full agreement to the proposal "would be a good indication that Iran does not wish to be isolated and does wish to cooperate with the international community," she said.

Iran should take the deal as it stands, she added, "because we are not altering it."

Khamenei made his remarks during a commemoration of the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which led to the rupture of U.S.-Iranian ties and which will be celebrated throughout Iran on Wednesday.

Iranian authorities, meanwhile, warned the opposition against using Wednesday's commemorative events to stage protests against the government. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have urged supporters to demonstrate during the anniversary rallies, news agencies reported.

"Only anti-American rallies in front of the former American Embassy in Tehran are legal," the head of Tehran's security forces said in a statement. "Other gatherings or rallies on Wednesday are illegal and will be strongly confronted by the police."

India's space ambitions taking off - washingtonpost.com

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By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

PANNITHITTU, India -- In this seaside village, the children of farmers and fishermen aspire to become something that their impoverished parents never thought possible: astronauts.

Through community-based programs, India's space agency has been partnering with schools in remote areas such as this one, helping to teach students about space exploration and cutting-edge technology. The agency is also training thousands of young scientists and, in 2012, will open the nation's first astronaut-training center in the southern city of Bangalore.

"I want to be prepared in space sciences so I can go to the moon when India picks its astronauts," said Lakshmi Kannan, 15, pushing her long braids out of her face and clutching her science textbook.

Lakshmi's hopes are not unlike India's ambitions, writ small. For years, the country has focused its efforts in space on practical applications -- using satellites to collect information on natural disasters, for instance. But India is now moving beyond that traditional focus and has planned its first manned space mission in 2015.

The ambitions of the 46-year-old national space program could vastly expand India's international profile in space and catapult it into a space race with China. China, the only country besides the United States and Russia to have launched a manned spacecraft, did so six years ago.

"It's such an exciting time in the history of India's space program," said G. Madhavan Nair, a rocket scientist and the outgoing chairman of the national space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). "More and more bright young Indian scientists are calling us for jobs. We will look back on this as a turning point."

The ascendancy of India's space program highlights the country's rising ambitions on the world stage, as it grows economically and asserts itself in matters of diplomacy.

Politicians once dismissed the space program as a waste. Activists for India's legions of poor criticized additional funding for the program, saying it was needless decades after the American crew of Apollo 11 had landed on the moon. Now, however, the program is a source of prestige.

Last year, India reached a milestone, launching 10 satellites into space on a single rocket. Officials are positioning the country to become a leader in the business of launching satellites for others, having found paying clients in countries such as Israel and Italy. They even talk of a mission to Mars.

India's program is smaller in scope than China's and is thought to receive far less funding. It is also designed mostly for civilian purposes, whereas experts have suggested that China is more interested in military applications. (The Communist Party has said its goal is peaceful space exploration.)

"A human space flight with an eventual moon mission is a direct challenge to China's regional leadership," said John M. Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. "China is still the leader. India has yet to diminish China's space stature. But India is indeed seeking a higher global profile."

India now has among the world's largest constellations of remote-sensing satellites. They are sophisticated enough to distinguish healthy coconuts from diseased ones in this region's thick palms. They can also zero in on deadly mosquitoes lurking in a patch of jungle.

In September, a NASA device aboard India's first lunar probe detected strong evidence of water on the moon -- a "holy grail for lunar scientists," as Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, put it.

The partnership with Americans was particularly gratifying to Indians, given recent bilateral history. After New Delhi conducted nuclear tests in 1998, the United States imposed sanctions denying India access to certain technology in a bid to curb its ability to launch nuclear rockets, said Theresa Hitchens, a space expert who is director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva.

"Space launchers and ballistic missiles are quite similar from a technical perspective," she said.

Many of the sanctions have been lifted, and India and the United States last year signed a historic civilian nuclear agreement, lifting a 30-year ban on bilateral nuclear trade.

"The scientists at ISRO and NASA have always had deep respect for each other. But it was politics and bureaucracy that stood in the way of great science," said Pallava Bagla, co-author of "Destination Moon: India's Quest for the Moon, Mars and Beyond."

As India's space program barrels ahead, experts fear that NASA is losing ground. The space agency's human spaceflight program is facing budget cuts, as well as basic questions about where to go and how to get there.

After NASA's aging space shuttle retires in 2010, it will be five years before the United States will have another spacecraft that can reach the international space station.

The United States may have to buy a seat to the moon on an Indian spaceship, said Rakesh Sharma, India's first astronaut, who in 1984 was aboard the Soviet Union's Soyuz T-11 space shuttle. "Now that would be something," Sharma said. "Maybe budget cuts could usher in an era of more cooperation rather than competition and distrust."

EAP Half-Yearly Update

November 2009
	Available in: العربية
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY East Asia’s rebound from the economic downturn has been surprisingly swift and very welcome. A vigorous and timely fiscal and monetary stimulus in most countries in East Asia and the Pacific along with decisive measures in developed economies to prevent a financial meltdown, have stopped the decline in activity and set in motion the regional rebound. Our projection for real GDP growth in developing East Asia is set to slow to 6.7 percent in 2009 from 8 percent in 2008, or much more moderately than after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Developments in East Asia and the Pacific remain strongly influenced by China. Take China out of the equation, and the rest of the region is recovering with less vigor. Developing East Asia excluding China is projected to grow more slowly in 2009 than South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and only modestly faster than Sub-Saharan Africa. The aggregate numbers tell an incomplete story about the social and poverty impact of the crisis. The report estimates that 14 million people who would have emerged from $2-a-day poverty if the region’s economies had kept growing at pre-crisis levels, will remain in poverty in 2010. The rebound has yet to become a recovery. That is why the authorities in the region are mindful of the risks of a premature withdrawal of stimulus, given the large output gaps and concerns that developed countries are converging to a slower-growth equilibrium. The crisis has prompted countries in the region to rethink their development strategies. For most, the choice between growth driven by exports, and growth driven by domestic demand is a false one. Countries need to resist protectionism and become more integrated into the global economy. At the same time, governments are realizing that more growth can be extracted from domestic demand if they ease or eliminate incentives that favor the quick buildup of export-led, investment-heavy manufacturing. Downside and upside risks in consolidating the rebound into recovery: Downside risks include a double dip in economic activity in the advanced countries as stimulus measures and inventory restocking wear off. On the upside, a more robust recovery in the advanced countries could remove some of the imperative for rebalancing in developing East Asia and encourage sustaining the pre-crisis export-oriented growth model. Can East Asia and the Pacific sustain rapid growth, even if the rest of the world grows slowly? This will depend on whether East Asia and Pacific can integrate further regionally – through better facilitation of trade in goods and by extending its liberal trade policies to services. Download the Executive Summary (143kb pdf) Download the Full Report (1.4mb pdf) DOWNLOAD CHAPTERS Chapter 1: The Rebound (482kb pdf) Chapter 2: Economic Policies Supporting Recovery in East Asia (195kb pdf) Chapter 3: Transforming the Rebound Into Recovery (233kb pdf) DOWNLOAD COUNTRY SECTIONS, KEY INDICATORS Country Sections (591kb pdf) Cambodia China Fiji Indonesia Lao People’s Democratic Republic Malaysia Mongolia Papua New Guinea Philippines Thailand Vietnam Key Country Indicators (314kb pdf | 196kb xls) Appendices (406kb pdf)

Twitter Tweaks Social Media with New Lists Feature - Nation

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by Ari Melber

Twitter, the over-hyped, under-appreciated social network for sharing chit-chat and links, just launched a tool enabling users to create their own lists on the site. The Journal explains the basics:

The new feature allows Twitter users to organize the people they follow and streamline their feeds. Others can then follow their lists, sparing them the time of hunting for individual Twitterers with shared interests

So what, right?

The feature could be consequential, however, because it devolves a bit more media and social influence to users.

Previously, Twitter essentially held the market on recommending users, through its official list of suggested users. Making that list would net a user hundreds of thousands of followers -- turning the micro-site into a broadcasting portal with the reach of cable news. Landing on the list is so valuable, in fact, one state's election commission is examining whether such social media activity should be regulated. (California has several pols on the big list, with follower counts topping 900,000.)

The new lists enable people to curate and aggregate their own recommendations. Then other users can follow the entire group, or surf a list through a dedicated section of Twitter, which is accessible to people who never even signed up with the service. (This may please Nation commenter Mask, our resident luddite.)

For example, The Nation's Twitter account now hosts a list of Nation contributors. I just created a politics and media list of people worth checking out on Twitter. And users are already innovating ways to tap the list feature for activism and political shaming -- human rights advocate Bob Fertik launched a list tracking journalists who he accuses of enabling torture and war crimes.

Apart from influence and recommendations, this feature also breaks digital ground for live, communal conversations. Now, a national organization could invite its members on Twitter for real-time reaction to a big event, like a presidential speech. That already happens on Twitter, but primarily through new, social networks of people -- not across the social or organizational graphs of offline groups.

Will a Racial Divide Swallow Obama? - Nation

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by Melissa Harris-Lacewell

On Sunday I went to the Prudential Center in Newark to hear President Obama make the case for Governor Jon Corzine's reelection here in New Jersey. Already a strong supporter of Governor Corzine I wasn't going to be convinced. And I wasn't particularly excited about standing in a long line, on a chilly afternoon to listen to two men I've heard speak dozens of times. But I was determined to go. One year ago I'd been in Newark to hear candidate Obama make his closing arguments, and I wanted to check out what an Obama rally looks like one year later.

Some elements of the atmosphere were familiar: insanely long lines, intense police presence, surprisingly jovial mood despite the chill. One thing was noticeably and distressingly different: the crowd waiting to see President Obama in Newark on Sunday was much less diverse than the crowd that greeted him in the waning days of the 2008 election. By my estimation the supporters in Newark yesterday were not exclusively, but certainly predominately, African American.

The event mirrors recent trends in the polls. Presidential job approval polls by Gallup have tracked two consistent trends in President Obama's ratings: overall decline and a widening racial gap between black and white Americans.

As a public opinion researcher, I am not surprised by this racial gap. Political science has convincingly and repeatedly found a wide and persistent gulf between the political attitudes of white and black Americans.

For example, one of the most consistent finding of public opinion research is how African American partisanship differs from that of whites. African American allegiance to the Republican Party of Lincoln was solid for the decades between Emancipation and The New Deal, but by the 1940s black Americans had become overwhelmingly Democratic in affiliation. At the same time, white voters increasingly moved to the Republican column, particularly in the South.

African Americans are unique both in the direction of their affiliation and in the homogeneity of the attachment. But despite the strength of this attachment, black Democratic partisanship is quite different from that of white Democrats. There is marked racial division of opinion within the party ranks and leadership. The Congressional Black Caucus often finds itself at odds with party leadership, and among voters, black and white Democrats differ on issues of economic redistribution, domestic public policy, and even foreign policy.

This means that President Obama is not the first contemporary president to experience a noticeable racial approval gap. African American animosity toward Presidents Reagan and Bush, who were well liked by most whites, was a salient feature of the 1980s. African American attitudes toward Clinton were quite different. In 2000, black respondents reported average warmth toward Clinton of 79 points, a presidential score, that for the first time, outstripped black American ratings for Reverend Jesse Jackson. The approval ratings among African Americans for George W. Bush made history when they plummeted to single digits in some polls during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

This history suggests that black voter support of Obama is not driven solely by his identity as the first African American president, but instead is rooted in more persistent racial differences in American politics.

Therefore, while my academic-self is unsurprised by this racial gap, my citizen-self is distressed. One of the distinctive and exciting features of the Obama candidacy was the appeal of its multi-racial coalition. I appreciated the Obama yard signs in Hebrew and Arabic, the bumper sticker that read Older White Woman for Obama, the sustaining role of hip-hop music in the campaign, and watching Americans of all backgrounds chant Si Se Puede.

I have always been more impressed by the Obama coalition than by Obama himself. Perhaps this is because as a Hyde Park, Chicagoan I began following Obama's career when he was a smart, but awkward, state senator who endured a tough congressional loss. Perhaps it's because I've always secretly like Michelle better. Whatever his shortcomings, I was thrilled by Obama's 2008 campaign because his candidacy became a space where a real, winning, multi-racial, electoral coalition emerged around progressive issues on the national stage. My greatest hope for this campaign-built-on-hope was for America's racial possibilities if this diverse coalition could be sustained.

I was not alone in my enthusiasm. In the weeks immediately following the election of President Obama, Americans reported significant optimism about the future of race relations and racial equality. But late last week Gallup reported that post-election racial optimism has waned among all Americans, and particularly among black people.

On October 29, Gallup reported responses to the question: "Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States or that a solution will eventually be worked out?" Responses reflected patterns similar to 1963, with 40% of Americans expecting race always to be a problem. And though black Americans had become more optimistic a year ago, they are now significantly more pessimistic about race in America.

These Gallup findings mirror decades of public opinion research showing that African Americans and whites differ dramatically on their perception of the existence of discrimination, and in their assessment of the potential for realizing a racially fair society. These differing perceptions of racial discrimination translate into enormous gaps in support for public policies. These gaps have effectively stymied effective coalitions for progressive policies for decades.

Despite the presence of white and Latino voters at the Newark rally on Sunday, this racial divide felt troubling and present.

Black Americans have become significantly more supportive of President Obama and more pessimistic about the country as the President has endured attacks that seem personal and racially motivated. This trend is potentially troublesome for several reasons. If black voters feel the need to rally around the President to protect him from racial attacks, then they are less able to function as full members of the coalition. Black voters need to be able to both praise and criticize the President in order to ensure their individual and collective interests are voiced.

Further, if President Obama's poll numbers are primarily bolstered by an enthusiastic, but racially isolated core, then his administration becomes more vulnerable to unfairly racialized attacks from opponents. Those opponents could seek to cast President Obama as a protector of identity-group interests, rather than as a broad representative of American interests.

President Obama and his administration may seek to distance themselves from the negative implications of racialized support by enacting social conservatives policies. This was a strategy used by President Clinton during the second half of his first term. It has the perverse effect of punishing African Americans for their political support and loyalty.

Even as Democrats seek to pass health care reform they need also to aggressively rebuild the foundation of mullti-racial enthusiasm that drove the 2008 election. President Obama's efficacy is seriously undermined to the extent that his base shrinks and divides along racial lines.

Even more important, Americans' faith in our capacity to find common ground and achieve collective aims is eroding--quickly.

Berlin, Israel, Mexico: Walls Across the World - Nation

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It's being called "the most ambitious commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany": "The Wall Project" in Los Angeles -- and its political message will surprise many. Artists commissioned by the organizers have promised works that draw analogies between the Berlin Wall and the wall the Israelis have erected along the border with the West Bank, and the wall the US has erected along the Mexican border.

That's not exactly the sort of thing Ronald Reagan had in mind when he stood in Berlin in 1989 and said "Tear down this wall!"

LA's Berlin Wall anniversary commemoration has been organized by the Wende Museum, a private institution in Culver City, with the support of the City of L.A. It includes "The Wall Across Wilshire," a one-hour event on November 8 at which a replica of the Berlin Wall 60 feet long will be erected blocking Wilshire Blvd. in front of the County Museum of Art at midnight.

Artists have been commissioned to paint the wall with "their creative response to the walls in our lives": the top two are Shepard Fairey, who did the iconic Obama "Hope" poster, and Thierry Noir, a French-born, Berlin-based muralist famous for his paintings on the Berlin wall in 1989.

In an interview with the LA Times, Fairey said his painting on the wall in L.A. would be an "antiwar, anti-containment piece" that "makes a parallel to the Wall of Palestine."

Thierry Noir told the Times that his painting would draw an analogy between the Berlin Wall and the border wall between the US and Mexico – the point being, he said, that "every wall is not built forever."

Maybe Fairey and Noir mean that the Israeli wall and the US border wall should come down, the way the Berlin Wall did, and allow free movement--of Palestinians into Israel, and of Mexicans into the US.

And maybe they mean more than that. The Berlin Wall prevented victims of Stalinism from reaching freedom in the West; Fairey's point seems to be that the Israeli wall prevents victims of Zionism from exercising their right of return to their historic homes in Palestine.

Thierry Noir's point seems to be that the US border wall, like the Berlin Wall, divides one country into two: what was once all-Mexican territory in California and the Southwest. And, like divided Germany, the two sides of the Mexican border -- "Aztlan" -- should be, and perhaps will be, re-united some day.

An undivided Palestine; an undivided Aztlan: these meanings found in the Berlin Wall commemoration are likely to drive conservatives into a wild rage. First Amendment defenders of course will invoke the freedom of the artist. A fight over the meaning of freedom: what better way to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Keeping Focus on Fighting Genital Mutilation - Nation

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For a couple of decades, a small, underfunded nonprofit organization in New York called Equality Now has bolstered community groups in Africa that are making steady progress against the painful and destructive practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). But there is concern that an Equality Now-led campaign that has cost an unknown number of advocates their lives is meeting new resistance not only in traditional societies but also among Western anthropologists and other cultural apologists who put a higher value on a harmful practice than on the well-being of girls. Taina Bien-Aimé, Equality Now's executive director, calls it a "rites or rights" dilemma.

The United Nations has taken a surprising lead in publicly advocating for an end to the practice, in which a girl or woman's clitoris and sometimes surrounding vaginal areas are cut away to make her "more marriageable." The World Health Organization estimates that about 100 million to 140 million women worldwide have been subjected to FGM. The practice is most prevalent in Africa but also occurs among immigrants in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Genital cutting is also reported in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. According to Unicef, about 3 million girls are at risk of being mutilated each year, some in infancy, in countries where the prevalence of the practice can be as high as 90 percent. In August the Population Fund, UNFPA, published a technical report on the scope of the practice.

There is often more action internationally than in the United States to curb the practice, although 17 American states have passed laws against the procedure since it began to appear in immigrant communities. In the United States, an analysis of census data by the African Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston shows that (based on families' countries of origin) more than nearly 228,000 females have been or are at risk of being subjected to FGM, with more than 38,000 of them in California and nearly 26,000 in New York State. Only one person in the United States, an Ethiopian-born resident of Georgia, has gone to jail, charged with cruelty after he cut off his 2-year-old daughter's clitoris with scissors.

On November 3 Equality Now will kick off a campaign in the United States to refocus attention on FGM, with Meryl Streep appearing as a spokeswoman for the cause at the first screening of the documentary Africa Rising. That screening, at NYU, sold out weeks in advance, but it will be followed by programs on the West Coast and in Boston.

By early next year a distribution agreement with Women Make Movies, a multicultural feminist nonprofit, should make the documentary, featuring activists from Africa and international rights organizations, widely available to any group interested in presenting a program on the issue.

Bien-Aimé said that from the beginning in the early 1990s, Equality Now, which also campaigns against sex tourism and trafficking in the United States, followed the lead of grassroots activists against FGM in Africa at a time when the subject was taboo in the United States. "We met with and were actually fascinated by the work of individuals who were literally risking their lives to talk about female genital mutilation, to break the silence and raise awareness," Bien-Aimé observes.

Equality Now stepped in to help forge a network and give it an international platform, but the programs and pace were always left to the people on the scene, men as well as women. In 2000 a fund was created to funnel support to the local groups. A newsletter, Awaken, is published in English, French and Arabic.

Many of the women who have been helped in their advocacy were survivors of the practice. "They were indigenous to their communities," Bien-Aimeé said. "They know best how to address the issue."

"Just the fact that FGM is now a household word is an enormous success," she said. "Fifteen of twenty-eight African countries have laws; an African protocol on the rights of women is the first legal instrument mandating governments to legislate against FGM."

But the practice goes on, and resistance to the prohibition of FGM has led to increasingly younger girls being cut on the apparent theory that this will pass unnoticed. During the political upheaval in Kenya in 2008, while police forces were overstretched or in disarray, mass cuttings were reported. Equality Now heard of the forcible cutting of about 600 girls in the Kenyan city of Eldoret during the school Christmas break.

Bien-Aimé said that last year in Burkina Faso, where there is a hot line to report cases, about 200 infants were rushed to hospitals after being subjected to the practice. FGM, apart from causing girls to bleed to death and eliminating sexual pleasure from the lives of survivors, can lead to high levels of infection and disease, later difficult births and maternal deaths.

The resistance to ending FGM or creating less harmful rites of passage for girls is not confined to developing countries. "For reasons that I don't understand, there's this resurgence of debate around 'rites or rights' in this country," Bien-Aimé said. "It's extremely disturbing." Campaigns against the practice are being challenged on cultural sensitivity by anthropologist and other academics. Some leading American anthropologists, including Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago and Bettina Shell-Duncan, a specialist in biocultural and medical anthropology at the University of Washington, argue that activists who advocate against genital cutting tend to overemphasize the most harmful versions of the practice and fail to appreciate the importance of this rite in many families and communities, where damage to a girl or young woman may be slight.

FGM has fallen off the radar of many health officials. "What is the CDC doing, what is Health and Human Services doing?" Bien-Aimé asked. By comparison, Britain, Sweden and France have special programs in immigrant communities.

"It is critically important for voices from the ground to be heard now," she said.

About Barbara Crossette

Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.

She is the author of So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996, and a collection of travel essays about colonial resort towns that are still attracting visitors more than a century after their creation, The Great Hill Stations of Asia, published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999. In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York. She is also the author of India Facing the 21st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993.