Concerns Rise Around Obama Trip - WSJ.com

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By JONATHAN WEISMAN

SHANGHAI -- President Barack Obama arrived here late Sunday to press China on issues from climate change to economic restructuring, amid rising concerns that his first swing through Asia as president will yield more disappointment than progress on trade, human rights, national security and environmental concerns.

President Obama speaks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, right, during meetings in Singapore, site of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

A flurry of actions in Singapore this weekend raised more questions than they resolved on a broad sweep of issues confronting both sides of the Pacific. On Sunday, leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum dropped efforts to reach a binding international climate-change agreement in Copenhagen next month, settling instead for what they called a political framework for future negotiations.

Mr. Obama became the first president to meet with the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including the military junta of Myanmar, and White House officials say he personally demanded the country's leaders release political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But Mr. Obama failed to secure any mention of political prisoners in an ASEAN communiqué.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev meet in Singapore on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit, but the focus of their talks was on Iran. Video courtesy of Reuters.

The U.S. and Russia now appear unlikely to complete a nuclear arms reduction accord by Dec. 5, when the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires. Mr. Obama met for closed-door consultations with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, but National Security Council Russia specialist Michael McFaul said major issues remain, and the two countries are working out a "bridging agreement" to extend previous arms-ratification rules.

On trade, the U.S. president committed this weekend to re-engage the Trans Pacific Partnership, a fledgling free trade alliance in the region. But a presidential shift in tone toward more trade engagement will face its real test Thursday when Mr. Obama visits South Korea to discuss a free trade agreement with that country that remains stuck.

And on Iran, Messers. Obama and Medvedev were left to warn leaders of the Islamic Republic once again that "time is running out." Iran has yet to agree to a Russian offer to provide nuclear material for research in exchange for the closure of a nuclear reactor that western powers say could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Half way through his Asian tour, Mr. Obama is confronting the limits of engagement and personal charm.

International efforts to combat climate change took a significant blow when the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum conceded a binding international treaty won't be reached when the United Nations convenes in Copenhagen in three weeks. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen flew to Singapore Saturday night to deliver a new, down-sized proposal to lock world leaders into further talks.

"Even if we may not hammer out the last dot's of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come," Mr. Rasmussen told APEC leaders at a hastily convened meeting organized by Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Sunday morning.

The election of Mr. Obama, a believer in strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, had raised hopes among environmentalists that Copenhagen would produce a tough, binding treaty to follow the Kyoto Accords of 1997. The landslide victory of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan brought to power a new government pledging deeper emissions cuts than its predecessor. And Chinese President Hu Jintao proposed in September to adopt what he called "carbon intensity targets," the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere per unit of economic output. Emissions from surging economics like China's would continue to rise but at a slower rate.

But political opposition in the U.S. Congress over Mr. Obama's climate-change proposals and continuing resistance among developing countries to binding emission reduction targets slowed consensus ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

Mr. Rasmussen laid out in some detail his goals for the Copenhagen summit. He said leaders should produce a five- to eight-page text with "precise language" committing developed countries to reductions of emissions thought to be warming the planet, with provisions on adapting to warmer temperatures, financing adaptation and combating climate change in poor countries, and technological development and diffusion. It would include pledges of immediate financing for early action.

"We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook," Mr. Rasmussen told the leaders. "We are trying to create a framework that will allow everybody to commit."

But the leaders didn't say when a final summit would be convened to ratify a real treaty.

"There are two choices that we face, given where things are. One was to have a political declaration to say 'We tried. We didn't achieve an agreement and we'll keep on trying.' and the other was to see if we could reach accord as the Danish prime minister laid out," said Michael Froman, White House deputy national security adviser for international economics..

Mr. Obama, in a speech Sunday, took his appeal for a new world economic order to the leaders of Asia that must help make it happen. He said the United States would strive to consume less, save more and restructure its economy around trade and exports. But he appealed to Asian nations to make their own economies more dependent on domestic consumption than U.S. profligacy.

White House officials say a similar message will be delivered in Shanghai and Beijing, but it is unclear how hard the U.S. president can press Beijing to allow the Chinese yuan to appreciate. At the APEC summit, leaders "until the last moment" tried to secure a commitment to stabilize foreign-exchange markers, according to a top adviser to an APEC head of state. But disagreements between the U.S. and Chinese delegations kept any commitment on currency out of the APEC final statement.

A more valuable yuan would empower Chinese consumers to buy, while making Chinese exports less attractive to U.S. consumers. But Washington cannot afford to anger China, which it needs to float a U.S. budget deficit that reached $176.4 billion in October alone, a monthly record.

Indeed, the Asia trip is exposing the limits of Mr. Obama's policy of engagement. The U.S. president met with ASEAN, declaring that efforts to marginalize the government of Myanmar had failed. Human rights groups had hoped a communiqué out of the meeting would call for the release of Ms. Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Instead, it made a cryptic reference to a previous ASEAN foreign ministers communiqué that called for her release. Sunday's statement did say that 2010 elections in Myanmar must be "free, fair, inclusive and transparent."

The failure to single out Ms. Suu Kyi was "another blow" to dissidents who want more pressure on the Myanmar junta, said Soe Aung, a spokesman for the Forum for Democracy in Burma, a Thailand-based organization. "We keep saying again and again that the U.S. should not send a mixed signal to the regime."

A White House official said the president never expected the leaders of Myanmar to accept any mention of the Nobel Laureate opposition leader but did press for a mention of political prisoners.

U.S. officials had taken pains to reduce expectations for the meeting, which was part of a new initiative by the Obama administration to improve its ties with Southeast Asia and increase interaction with the Myanmar government. The U.S. imposes stiff sanctions on the country, also known as Burma. But many analysts view those sanctions as a failure as Myanmar has expanded trade with China and other Asian nations, and U.S. officials now believe they might have more influence over the country's leaders if they talk with them more regularly.

Myanmar's military has controlled the country since 1962, and is accused of widespread human rights violations while overseeing an economy that remains one of the least-developed in Asia. The country's profile has risen over the last year, however, amid reports of growing ties with North Korea. The regime plans to hold elections next year, the first since 1990, in a bid to boost its international reputation. But the U.S. and others contend the results cannot be fair unless Ms. Suu Kyi and her supporters – who won the last vote – are allowed to participate.

—Costas Paris contributed to this article.

Write to Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com

MSNBC Not Shy About Criticizing Obama - NYTimes.com

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By BRIAN STELTER

If President Obama happened to glance at “The Rachel Maddow Show” last Monday, he might have winced.

Ms. Maddow pretended to celebrate the passage of a health care overhaul bill in the House, calling it “potentially a huge generational win for the Democratic Party” — but then halted the triumphant music and called it an “electoral defeat.”

The Stupak amendment, she said, was “the biggest restriction on abortion rights in a generation.” Then she wondered aloud about the consequences for Democrats “if they don’t get women or anybody who’s pro-choice to ever vote for them again.” She returned to the subject the next four evenings in a row.

This is how it looks to have a television network pressuring President Obama from the left.

While much attention has been paid to the feud between the Fox News Channel and the White House, the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from Ms. Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other progressive hosts on MSNBC, who are using their nightly news-and-views-casts to measure what she calls “the distance between Obama’s rhetoric and his actions.”

While they may agree with much of what Mr. Obama says, they have pressed him to keep his campaign promises about health care, civil liberties and other issues.

“I don’t think our audience is looking for unequivocal ‘rah-rah,’ ” said Ms. Maddow, who calls herself a liberal but not a Democrat.

The spectacle of Democrats sniping at one another is not new, but having a TV home for it is. MSNBC — sometimes critically called the “home team” for supporters of Mr. Obama — has even hit upon the theme with a promotional tagline, “pushing back on the president,” in commercials for “Hardball,” Chris Matthews’s political hour.

“Our job is not to echo the president’s talking points,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. “Our job is to hold whoever’s in power’s feet to the fire.”

But is it good business? MSNBC is projected to take in $365 million in revenue this year, roughly the same amount as last year, when the presidential election bolstered its bottom line. Three years ago, before making a left turn, it had revenue of about $270 million a year. MSNBC’s parent company, NBC Universal, is on the verge of being spun out of General Electric in a deal that would make Comcast its controlling entity.

Gary Carr, the executive director of national broadcast for the media buying agency TargetCast, said the opinions matter less than the ratings they earn. With cable’s prime-time opinion shows, “you’re reaching a lot of people,” he said.

It is certainly reaching the White House. Anita Dunn, the departing White House communications director, calls Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow “progressive but not partisan,” and in doing so, distinguishes them from Fox News, which she considers a political opponent. The MSNBC hosts, she said in an e-mail message last month, “often take issues with the administration’s positions or tactics and are never shy about letting their viewers know when they disagree.”

Ms. Maddow said that apart from an off-the-record meeting between Mr. Obama and commentators that she attended last month, she has heard little from the White House.

Mr. Griffin said, “We heard a whole lot more from the Bush White House.”

MSNBC’s liberal points of view have made the channel an occasional thorn in the side of G.E., but the channel has also fostered a diversity of opinions that people like Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, say were lacking in the past.

“There’s been a huge market void for a long time,” Mr. Green said. Speaking of the MSNBC hosts, he said, “They are creating an environment where progressive thinkers and activists can thrive.”

Ms. Maddow, not surprisingly, agrees. “What looks like the middle of the country ought to look like the middle on TV,” she said in an interview this month.

She paused and added, “Maybe that would have helped us make better policy decisions in the country in the past.”

Sitting down to a midnight dinner in the East Village after her program on a recent Thursday, Ms. Maddow had shed her suit for a T-shirt. Four minutes in, a fan asked for an autograph. “You’re doing great work,” he said while she signed her name.

MSNBC’s political tilt — and Ms. Maddow’s ascension to one of the most influential positions in progressive America — are still starkly new phenomena. A Rhodes scholar with liberal radio roots, Ms. Maddow started to host MSNBC’s 9 p.m. hour on the eve of last year’s presidential election, at a time when MSNBC was wrestling with its political identity. New viewers materialized overnight, peaking at nearly two million a night in October 2008. Without an election to drive viewership, her program averaged 880,000 viewers last month.

As her objections to the Stupak amendment (so named for Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan) indicate, much of her work these days involves the Democratic health care overhaul. Ms. Maddow, Mr. Olbermann and Ed Schultz, the channel’s 6 p.m. host, formerly of Air America, have all exhorted Democrats to keep the public option.

Mr. Schultz started a broadcast last month by asking, “Where is the president? I think it’s time to be clear — crystal clear. What does Barack Obama want when it comes to health care in this country? What does he want in the bill?”

Topics often tackled on Ms. Maddow’s program include the relationship between the United States military and politics (something she is writing a book about) and the repeal of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays in the military.

Representatives for two gay members of the military, Dan Choi and Victor Fehrenbach, approached Ms. Maddow’s producers about coming out on her show, in March and May respectively. Introducing Mr. Fehrenbach, Ms. Maddow intoned that he was about to be fired “in the shadow of these political promises left unfulfilled.”

Asked why she thought the two men had contacted her producers, Ms. Maddow said, “Maybe it’s because I’m gay; maybe it’s because we’ve covered this issue before on our air.”

Other MSNBC hosts have also objected to some of the president’s policy decisions. In April, Mr. Olbermann, the channel’s best-known voice, urged Mr. Obama to hold members of the Bush administration accountable for what he called the “torture of prisoners.”

“Prosecute, Mr. President,” he said. “Even if you get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good for generations unborn.”

Ms. Maddow, however, contrasts her channel’s advocacy with the activism conducted, she says, by others on cable news. “We’re articulating liberal viewpoints,” she said at dinner, “but we’re not saying ‘Call your congressman, show up at this rally!’ ”

On her show, she has criticized Fox News for seeming to promote tea party rallies denouncing the administration this year, and the Fox host Glenn Beck, who has promoted a “9/12 Project,” intended, he says, to restore the values that Americans sensed immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I don’t have a constituency,” she said. “I’m not trying to form a — what would it be? — a ‘9/10’ movement.”

Illinois Democrats Back Plan to House Guantánamo Prisoners - NYTimes.com

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By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Top Illinois Democrats on Sunday wholeheartedly embraced the idea of sending terrorism suspects from Guantánamo Bay to a maximum-security prison about 150 miles west of Chicago, raising the possibility of a major breakthrough in the Obama administration’s efforts to close the military detention facility in Cuba.

But while Gov. Patrick J. Quinn and Senator Richard J. Durbin endorsed housing the detainees at the Thomson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in a rural area, other local leaders were drumming up opposition to the idea, which could still face considerable opposition in Congress.

For the White House, which confirmed the administration’s interest, it could be the best chance so far to cut through the legal and political knots that have stopped it from closing down the prison camp in Cuba. For supporters in Illinois, it is an attractive economic opportunity. And just as opponents have done elsewhere, some in Illinois cast this plan as an unacceptable risk.

Mr. Quinn and Mr. Durbin, in news conferences to promote the plan, said that turning over the state prison, which is unoccupied, to the federal penal system, and using it for maximum-security inmates including as many as 100 captives from the campaign against terrorism, would create several thousand jobs.

But leading Republicans in the state — including Representatives Donald Manzullo, whose district includes Thomson, and Mark Steven Kirk, who is running for the United States Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama — signed a letter to the president on Sunday strongly opposing any such move.

“As home to America’s tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its No. 1 target,” the letter said, referring to the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower. “The United States spent more than $50 million to build the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to keep terrorists away from U.S. soil. Al Qaeda terrorists should stay where they cannot endanger American citizens.”

The sharp local debate echoed vehement arguments heard all weekend, after the administration announced that it would try the man accused as the operational leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and several co-conspirators, in a federal court in New York, while putting others accused of terrorism before military commissions for an attack on the U.S.S. Cole. That, too, was presented as a step along the path to closing Guantánamo.

News of the possible deal in Illinois was first reported over the weekend by The Chicago Tribune. On Sunday, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decision had been made, said that Thomson had emerged as “a leading option” for becoming the new facility the administration needs, and confirmed that government officials would tour the prison site on Monday.

Days after his inauguration, Mr. Obama declared that within a year he would close the Guantánamo prison, a signature component of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy. In a speech at the National Archives in May, Mr. Obama proposed bringing those detainees deemed too dangerous to release to a facility inside the United States — including some who could not be tried for lack of evidence but were called committed Al Qaeda terrorists and might be held as “combatants.”

Lawmakers of both parties have expressed deep unease all along. Congress enacted a law this year forbidding the administration from bringing Guantánamo detainees into the United States except for the purpose of prosecution. But leading Democratic lawmakers said at the time that they were open to rescinding the restriction once the administration came up with a plan for how to handle the detainees.

As a home-state ally of Mr. Obama, Mr. Quinn provided the kind of enthusiasm no other governor has offered. He called the proposal “good for our state, good for economy and good for our public safety.” By some estimates, it would provide 3,200 jobs and cut the local unemployment rate in half.

But the governor acknowledged the hurdles ahead, saying, “This is not a done deal.” The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the detainees should not be moved to prisons on United States soil from the base in Cuba, which is also known as Gitmo.

“What problem is the president going to solve by moving these trials to New York or by moving Gitmo prisoners to Michigan, to Illinois, to Colorado?” Mr. Hoekstra said. “Why move them into the United States while we are still under the threat from radical jihadists?”

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in three appearances on television talk shows that by treating these prisoners in the civilian system, the administration was mishandling the fight against terrorism.

“It would seem to me what the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality, the war on terror, from their point of view, is over,” Mr. Giuliani said on Fox News Sunday. “We’re no longer going to treat these people as if this was an act of war.”

For months, an interagency administration task force has been examining ways to handle the Guantánamo population, including looking at state and federal prisons around the country that might be used. Thomson, a maximum-security state prison that was built in 2001 at a cost to Illinois taxpayers of about $120 million, only to sit almost unused, is one of them.

Its chances got a lift last month when the president of the Village of Thomson, Jerry Hebeler, contacted Mr. Quinn’s office to suggest a federal takeover of the prison, according to a letter Mr. Quinn sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last week. Mr. Quinn agreed and personally raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Obama two weeks ago.

The Thomson prison is contained by a 146-acre reservation near the Mississippi River and has eight 200-cell compartments designed for strict control of inmates. It is surrounded by an electrified fence capable of carrying 7,000 volts, has 312 surveillance cameras with motion detection capability, and armed inner and outer perimeter towers.

If a decision is made to proceed, the official said, the Federal Bureau of Prisons would buy the prison from Illinois and convert it into a maximum-security federal penitentiary. The bureau would house ordinary federal inmates in part of the facility and lease another part to the Defense Department to hold former Guantánamo detainees. The two populations would not have contact, the official said.

The federal government would also retrofit the facility to take it beyond the security specifications of the federal “Supermax” facility in Florence, Colo., from which no prisoner has ever escaped, including by adding extra external perimeter fencing, the official said. It would be operated with the most restrictive security conditions, “including individual confinement and isolation capabilities,” the official said.

Susan Saulny contributed reporting.

China Is Sending More Students to U.S. - NYTimes.com

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By TAMAR LEWIN

American universities are enrolling a new wave of Chinese undergraduates, according to the annual Open Doors report.

While India was, for the eighth consecutive year, the leading country of origin for international students — sending 103,260 students, a 9 percent increase over the previous year — China is rapidly catching up, sending 98,510 last year, a 21 percent increase.

“I think we’re going to be seeing 100,000 students from each for years to come, with an increasing share of them being undergraduates,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, which publishes the report with support from the State Department.

Over all, the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by 8 percent to an all-time high of 671,616 in the 2008-9 academic year — the largest percentage increase in more than 25 years, according to the report.

With the current recession, the influx of international students has been especially important to the American economy, according to Allan E. Goodman, president of the institute.

“International education is domestic economic development,” Mr. Goodman said. “International students shop at the local Wal-Mart, rent rooms and buy food. Foreign students bring $17.8 billion to this country. A lot of campuses this year are increasing their international recruitment, trying to keep their programs whole by recruiting international students to fill their spaces.”

The number of international students exceeded the past peak enrollment year, 2002-3, by 14.5 percent. In 2008-9, undergraduate enrollment rose 11 percent, compared with only a 2 percent increase in graduate enrollment.

In China, that shift has been quite sharp. Last year, China sent 26,275 undergraduates and 57,451 graduate students to the United States — compared with 8,034 undergraduates and 50,976 graduate students five years earlier.

Ms. Blumenthal said the growing share of undergraduates would change the face of the Chinese students’ presence in the United States.

“It used to be that they were all in the graduate science departments, but now, with the one-child policy, more and more Chinese parents are taking their considerable wealth and investing it in that one child getting an American college education,” she said. “There’s a book getting huge play in China right now explaining liberal arts education.”

The book, “A True Liberal Arts Education,” by three Chinese undergraduates from Bowdoin College, Franklin & Marshall College and Bucknell University, describes the education available at small liberal arts colleges, and the concept of liberal arts, both relatively unknown in China.

Meanwhile, many large public universities are devoting new resources to building up their share of international undergraduates. The State University of New York, for example, recently made Mitch Leventhal the vice chancellor for global affairs. Mr. Leventhal, who at the University of Cincinnati helped build a network of ties abroad, expects to increase undergraduate recruiting, especially in India and China.

“There’s growing disposable income in China, and not enough good universities to meet the demand,” he said. “And in China, especially, studying in the United States is a great differentiator, because when students get home, they speak English.”

Although the report tracks only the 2008-9 numbers, a smaller survey by the institute last month found that over all, the increase in international students seems to be continuing, with China remaining strong. Of the institutions surveyed this fall, 60 percent reported an increase in Chinese students, and only 11 percent a decline. In contrast, the number of institutions reporting increases in their enrollment of Indian students equaled the number reporting declines.

The survey also found continuing growth this year in the number of students from the Middle East, and continuing declines in the numbers from Japan.

Afghanistan to Form Anti - Graft Unit as Pressure Grows - NYTimes.com

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By REUTERS

Filed at 11:33 a.m. ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan will form a new anti-corruption unit to investigate high-level graft after widespread criticism and demands from Washington for it to do more amid a wider regional strategy review.

The announcement, which included a major crime unit, comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bluntly warned that President Hamid Karzai and his government must do better, saying Washington wanted to see tangible evidence of Kabul's fight against rampant corruption.

On Monday, three days before Karzai was due to be sworn in for another five-year term, the government said it would set up a new body to tackle corruption and other crime.

Afghanistan has made similar announcements in the past, although previous efforts have borne little fruit.

"President Hamid Karzai ... has dedicated his five years to fighting corruption," Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, flanked by U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and British ambassador Mark Sedwill, told reporters at a news briefing in Kabul on Monday.

The new anti-corruption unit, part of the Attorney General's department, would be formed to prosecute public corruption cases involving high-level officials and other major crimes, the Interior Ministry said later in a statement.

However Afghan officials gave few other details about the new unit and answered only a handful of questions.

Ambassador Eikenberry said the issue needed to be taken seriously.

"(Corruption) requires action. Words are cheap. Deeds are required," he said.

Analysts feared the new anti-corruption might just be a knee-jerk reaction to Western criticism, or be used to settle political scores.

"On the one hand they are responding to the international demands to do more against corruption, but we will have to wait until they become active and come up with results," Thomas Ruttig, co-director of independent research organisation Afghan Analysts Network, told Reuters.

Attention has focussed on the legitimacy of Karzai's new government after a fraud-marred election in August, with U.S. President Barack Obama still to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan that might include sending up to 40,000 more troops.

RAMPANT CORRUPTION

Karzai fell out of favour with many in the West before the August 20 election, his government seen as riddled with corruption.

Karzai and Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal have railed at the increasingly trenchant criticism from the West since Karzai's re-election was confirmed earlier this month despite findings of widespread vote fraud.

Zakhilwal has said the Western must share the blame for corruption in Afghanistan, while Karzai has accused Western donors of mismanaging the billions of dollars of foreign aid that prop up Afghanistan's war-battered economy.

The next tests for Karzai will be whether he names new faces to his cabinet as he has promised and which international dignitaries attend his swearing-in on Thursday.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Monday he and President Asif Ali Zardari would attend and expected a "round table" with Afghan and other foreign officials.

Obama has said stabilising Afghanistan was an important part of Washington's strategy against terrorist networks which he said remained the greatest threat to U.S. security.

Fighting graft is also seen as critical in winning back Afghan support in the war against a resurgent Taliban.

Last week, it emerged Eikenberry had expressed deep concerns in memos to Obama about sending in more troops until Karzai's government improved its performance.

A central question as Obama debates whether to send more troops is whether Karzai can be a credible partner.

Obama, facing dissent among his advisers, has been criticised at home for "dithering" on the Afghan war strategy, with political pressure rising to make a decision soon.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has requested 40,000 more troops for the war and says the mission is at risk of failure without them.

Prosecutors in the new anti-graft unit would be trained by officials from the EU police mission in Afghanistan, as well as others from Britain and the United States. Training and vetting would include polygraph tests, the statement said.

A major crimes unit would also be established, as Clinton had said on Sunday must be done, which would refer major corruption and other criminal cases to the new anti-graft body.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Caren Bohan in SHANGHAI and Chris Buckley in BEIJING; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by David Fox)

(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)

Anbar Province Holds Its Breath as U.S. Forces Draw Down - NYTimes.com

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By MARC SANTORA

RAMADI, Iraq — Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Youssef caught a fleeting glimpse of the man who wanted him dead.

As his armored sport utility vehicle pulled past the battered yellow taxi, the commander of the police in Anbar Province recalled thinking how the driver looked like so many men in this impoverished territory — another poor peasant trying to eke out a living.

Then the taxi driver crashed his car into the general’s, detonating his explosives and sending both vehicles hurtling into the air.

“I was not sure if I was alive or dead,” General Youssef said. “Parts of the suicide bomber were scattered all around me, still steaming like fried meat.”

The attack in June, from which General Youssef walked away unscathed, marked the beginning of what Iraqi and American officials said has been a concerted effort by Sunni insurgents to reassert themselves in a part of the country that had once been their stronghold.

Late Sunday night, men dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms killed at least 13 people, including a local cleric. The victims were rousted from their homes in a village west of Baghdad, and their bullet riddled bodies were later recovered from a nearby cemetery, according to witnesses. A doctor at Abu Ghraib hospital, where the bodies were brought, said they all had gunshot wounds in the head.

In recent weeks the targets of suicide bombers in Anbar have included a restaurant popular among the police in Falluja, where 16 people were killed; a police officer’s funeral in Haditha, where 6 were killed; a water tanker in Ramadi that exploded, killing 7 police officers escorting the vehicle; and a national reconciliation meeting in Ramadi, where 26 were killed.

There have also been dozens of attacks on checkpoints and, in the last two months, nearly daily attacks on police across the province as well as assassinations of influential tribal leaders and destruction of vital infrastructure.

“In the last few months you have had an attempt by A.Q.I. to regain a foothold here,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, using the military’s term for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely homegrown Sunni militant group thought to have foreign support.

The level of violence is still greatly reduced from 2005, when the local police force collapsed, and 2007, when the surge of troops began and tribal leaders banded together to fight the militants. But it is a delicate moment in a region where militants once controlled the streets and were able to direct attacks into Baghdad, about 70 miles away.

Local leaders are contending with rampant unemployment, a failure to attract investment, tensions between the Iraqi police and army, and fears that competing political forces could turn to violence before the upcoming national elections in January.

Anbar has played a critical role in the history of post-invasion Iraq. It was the place where the insurgency got its rise, where Al Qaeda established a base to stage spectacular attacks that ignited the sectarian bloodletting and also where the tide of the war began to shift in America’s favor as tribal leaders and former insurgents turned on Al Qaeda.

It borders Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, which the government accuses of aiding militants, and it runs right up to the outskirts of Baghdad, which militants have long understood to be the center of gravity in the fight for Iraq.

With American forces in a period of transition, Iraqi politicians positioning themselves for the national election, basic services still in shambles and rampant unemployment, Iraqi security officials say that al Qaeda and other militants would like to exploit the moment in one last bid to derail the fragile security gains.

The fact that Monday’s attackers dressed in Army uniforms raised a number of troubling questions, including the prospect of infiltration of the security forces or extrajudicial killings carried out by soldiers. Even if the attackers were merely posing as Iraqi soldiers, since uniforms can be easily bought in stores, the episode could further undermine the trust of the population.

“We no longer trust the army after this incident,” said Abdul Rahman, who witnessed the arrests and knew some of the men later found dead. “If the army came to capture someone now, he would not go with them, fearing he would face the same destiny.”

At the same time as Iraqi security forces work to thwart the militant networks, the American role here continues to evolve and diminish.

Anbar is the first province in Iraq where American combat brigades have moved out completely and where one of the newly trained Advise and Assist Brigades has arrived.

The new brigade took complete responsibility from the Marines in late September and they are tasked with preparing the ground for a complete American withdrawal.

At the peak of the surge in troops to Iraq in 2007, there were some 20,000 Marines in Anbar, staging out of 10 large bases. There are now 3,500 troops spread across five bases. Eventually, nearly all of the American soldiers in Iraq will be part of these Advise and Assist Brigades as the military moves toward getting all the troops out by the end of 2011.

The new brigades were created to better carry out many of the lessons learned over the course of seven years of fighting a counterinsurgency. While American troops have been focusing on training Iraqi forces for years, the new brigades aim to create a unity of command, where all the various efforts to stabilize and rebuild the province — from infrastructure development to job creation — are directed through the brigade commander.

“The most important aspect of what we are doing is changing the mindset,” said Col. Mark Stammer, noting that more than half of the soldiers in his brigade have served previous deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, often focused on combat operations. Everything Americans troops now do in the province is at the direct request of Iraqi forces, he said. In fact, the Iraqis rarely ask for assistance on day-to-day security operations.

When militants blew up a major bridge last month in Ramadi, less than a mile from the American base on the outskirts of the city, no American forces responded. Iraqis asked for assistance only days later and only regarding complicated forensic and engineering work, according to American officials.

As a result of the concerted effort to ensure Iraqis take the lead, American forces have less knowledge of what is happening outside their bases. General Lanza acknowledged that situational awareness was a concern, but he said that there was progress in getting American advisors situated in crucial areas of the Iraqi security forces’ hierarchy.

Despite the attacks, General Youssef said that the diminished American role was a good thing since militants could no longer point to the American presence as a justification for their attacks. Since August, there have only been two direct attacks on American forces, according the United States officials.

But attacks on police have increased in recent months, according to Iraqi officials. And as the elections approach, General Youssef says that he expects the violence to get worse.

American officials noted the vast difference in the level of violence from two years ago and the increasing capabilities of Iraqi security forces.

“These attacks are designed to threaten the police,” General Lanza said. “But you do not see the institutions of the state falling apart.”

Both Iraqi and American officials say that the militant networks have been greatly diminished. General Youssef cited the fact that when militants blew up the bridge in Ramadi in October they set off the bomb at 4:30 a.m. Two years ago they blew up the same bridge in broad daylight.

Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, one of Anbar’s prominent leaders who helped mobilize a tribal rebellion against Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007, said that the chief aim of militants now seemed less directed at stirring sectarian tensions and more about trying to keep investors out of the area.

“They want to attack for two main reasons,” he said. “They target the police because the police have achieved a victory over them. And the second major reason is because they want to keep investors out.”

The most dangerous areas in Anbar are those just outside Baghdad, including the area where Monday’s attack took place, according to General Youssef.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, head of Baghdad’s Operations Command, said in a statement that there would be an investigation and that the attack could have been the result of a “tribal dispute.”

One eyewitness, who identified himself as Abu Ali, said he watched as some of the victims were taken from their homes.

“I saw men dressed in Army uniforms going into houses and arresting people,” he said. “I went fast into my home. In the morning my brother’s son came to me and told me they took his father.”

There were conflicting reports as to whether some of those killed were former insurgents who had joined the effort fight Al Qaeda or were still active members of a militant group known as the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades.

Mr. Rahman, one of the witnesses, said that only the police and army could move freely in the village at night and that he also saw men wearing army uniforms dragging people from their homes.

On Monday, the village was locked down, with dozens of Iraqi Army vehicles cordoning off the area. Witnesses saw American military vehicles in the area as well.

There were also attacks on Iraqi security forces in other parts of the country on Monday, including two bombings in Baghdad that killed five Iraqi Army soldiers and wounded a dozen more soldiers and civilians.

In Kirkuk, where ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds remain high, an explosion in the middle crowded market killed 6 people and wounded 12 more.

And in Mosul, which remains the most violent city in the country, one civilian was killed when a bomb targeting a police patrol was detonated. Two more Iraqi soldiers were killed when they were ambushed by gunmen.

The American military also announced the death of a soldier on Monday, saying in a statement that the soldier died from injuries sustained during a noncombat-related vehicle accident.

Australian Leader Apologizes for Child Migrants - NYTimes.com

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By MARK McDONALD

The children were gathered up by the tens of thousands, some of them as young as 3, taken from single mothers and impoverished families in Britain, then sent abroad for what was supposed to be a better start in life. What they found was isolation, physical and sexual abuse, and what the prime minister of Australia said Monday was “the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost.”

In an emotional address in Canberra, with many in the audience weeping, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a national apology for Australia’s role in child migrant programs that forcibly brought an estimated 150,000 British youngsters — known in Australia as the Lost Innocents — to Australia, Canada and other parts of the Commonwealth. The programs ended about 40 years ago.

“We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation’s history, and we come together today to offer our nation’s apology,” Mr. Rudd said. “The truth is this is an ugly story and its ugliness must be told without fear or favor if we are to confront fully the demons of our past.”

He said Australia was “sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation, and the cold absence of love of tenderness of care.”

A 1998 report by the British Parliament said that the child migrant program helped relieve financial burdens on Britain’s social service agencies. Also, the report noted, “a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock’ was seen as a desirable policy objective” that would “maintain the racial unity of the Empire.”

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, is expected to add Britain’s apology soon.

Mr. Rudd also expressed regret Monday about the so-called Forgotten Australians, those children who were placed in state institutions — and suffered there — during the 20th century. A 2004 Senate report said more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes and orphanages during the last century. Many of those children, the report said, were abused.

“The truth is,” said Mr. Rudd, “a great evil has been done.”

“Today is your day,” said the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who also spoke at the Canberra ceremony. “Today we acknowledge that with broken hearts and breaking spirits you were left in the custody — you can hardly call it care — of too many people whose abuse and neglect of you made a mockery of the claim you were taken from your own family for your own good.”

Rod Braydon, 65, in an interview with The Associated Press, said he was 6 years old when he was raped by a Salvation Army officer. It was his first night in a Melbourne boys’ home.

“When we reported this as kids, we were flogged to within an inch of our lives, locked up in dungeons and isolation cells,” Mr. Braydon said.

He reportedly has received a cash settlement from the Salvation Army and has sued the Victoria state government.

John Hennessey, 72, from Campbelltown, near Sydney, was a former child migrant who cooperated with the 1998 British parliamentary inquiry. On Monday, he told The A.P. he was 6 when he was sent from a British orphanage to a boys’ school in Western Australia.

Mr. Hennessey still speaks with a stutter that was caused, he said, by a savage beating he received from an Australian headmaster when he was 12. He said his transgression was stealing grapes from a vineyard because he was hungry.

Pakistan's Zardari criticized over U.S. alliance, insurgency and shortages - washingtonpost.com

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After little more than a year in office, Zardari faces criticism over U.S. alliance, battle with insurgents and widespread shortages

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 16, 2009

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- President Asif Ali Zardari, who entered office 14 months ago on a wave of post-dictatorship goodwill and sympathy for his slain wife, Benazir Bhutto, now faces growing public anger and disillusionment over his remote presidency. Some critics are urging him to step down, and others predict he will be forced from office within months.

In interviews, opinion articles and talk shows, a diverse range of people are denouncing Zardari as a corrupt and indifferent ruler. They accuse him of living in posh isolation while his country battles Islamist extremists, energy and food shortages, and a host of other problems.

Army officials, although considered unlikely to stage a coup, have made no secret of their unhappiness over Zardari's compliant relationship with Washington. The United States is allied with Pakistan in the war against extremists, but army leaders here remain wary of U.S. ties with India, and they were infuriated by the controls on military spending included in a recent American aid package for Pakistan.

Poor and working-class Pakistanis, meanwhile, blame the government for protracted shortages of gas, electricity and staple foods. They also feel increasingly unprotected, as suicide bombings have killed more than 350 people in two months.

"There is a sense that the government is adrift and rudderless at a time the nation needs strong leadership," said S. Rifaat Hussain, a professor at Quaid-i-Azam University, adding that Zardari is widely seen as using his power for personal benefit. "He has alienated the best people and filled his cabinet with those who sit around waiting for orders. There is huge disillusionment."

Zardari's deepening unpopularity has put Washington in a bind because of its avowed commitment to bolstering democratic politics in Pakistan after a decade of military rule. If he is forced from power, either on old corruption charges or through a collapse of the ruling coalition, analysts said, Washington might have to deal with new leaders who are less friendly and no better able to solve Pakistan's problems.

Zardari rarely gives long interviews or unscripted speeches, but aides insist he is not the man his critics portray. They describe him as hardworking, tough-minded and bursting with ideas for improving the economy. They say he is not corrupt, and attribute such accusations to a mix of political rivalry and the country's sensationalistic TV talk-show culture.

"The president lives in a glass house, and he knows his responsibilities to the country. I can assure you there is no wheeling and dealing going on," said Fauzia Wahab, a legislator and spokeswoman for the ruling Pakistan People's Party. "People keep bringing up old cases, but it is just to humiliate and ridicule him. To be negative is fashionable."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview Saturday that Zardari is the victim of certain political groups, including right-wing religious parties, "conspiring against democracy." Malik added: "The president is progressive and determined to pursue the war on terror. Some groups don't like that."

Legally, the issue most likely to bring Zardari down is corruption. A businessman known as "Mr. Ten Percent" when his late wife was prime minister in the 1990s, he was accused of orchestrating kickback schemes and spent nearly eight years in prison on various charges, although he was never convicted of a crime.

Last week, charges resurfaced from a 1994 case in which Pakistani naval officials allegedly took huge commissions in the sale of three French submarines. A French newspaper reported that Zardari was also paid more than $3 million and may have been complicit in the killings of 11 French maritime engineers in Karachi in 2002. Pakistani officials denied the charges, noting that he was in prison at the time.

For the moment at least, Zardari cannot be prosecuted on any past charges -- an immunity he gained under a provisional constitutional change decreed by his predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, before leaving office. But parliament unexpectedly did not give the decree final approval last month, and it is due to expire Nov. 28.

After that date, the Supreme Court, led by the iconoclastic chief justice whose reinstatement Zardari fought to prevent, could declare his election illegal and reopen cases against him and some of his aides. Even though he will probably not be sent back to prison, the specter of prosecution could deal Zardari a fatal political blow, leaving leaders scrambling to form a new government in the middle of a war against terrorism.

"It is clear the cases will be reopened eventually, but corruption is not the real issue," said Athar Minallah, a lawyer and former aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. "The president should never be removed illegally, but if we are to build a stable Pakistan, we need to reestablish the rule of law and the constitution."

The other major strike against Zardari is the public perception that he is too close to the United States.

Despite generous U.S. aid offers and the bilateral thaw that followed the return of civilian government, many Pakistanis are convinced the United States wants to take over their country and use the anti-terrorism effort as an excuse to seize its nuclear arsenal.

"There is a lot of suspicion and antagonism," said Hussain, the professor. "Zardari needs to get out and tell people that the government wants democracy, but not one that is subservient to American interests."

Wahab said she was stunned at the ferocious domestic criticism of the U.S. aid package, which would give Pakistan $7.5 billion over five years. She said that Zardari had worked hard to win international aid for Pakistan, and that his dream is to build an economy that could compete with India's and China's. "A lot of good things have happened in these 18 months," she said, "but no one ever talks about them."

Yet Pakistanis interviewed last week, from students to shopkeepers to retirees, complained that the Zardari government has not delivered relief from any of the country's major problems. All said they had lost the hope they had felt when military rule was replaced by a civilian government.

"Prices keep going up and bombs keep going off, but our leaders don't seem to care," said Jamal Hassan, 26, who sells socks in a bazaar. "Everyone thought Zardari would become a changed person and a mature politician, but he didn't change and he didn't deliver. We don't want dictatorship back, but since then everything has gotten worse."

Immigration looms as sticking point in health-care legislation - washingtonpost.com

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Immigration and health House measure omits Senate panel's legal test

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

The 31-year-old woman creeping gingerly into Adventist HealthCare's free-standing emergency department in Germantown was obviously in pain, and physician Orlee Panitch quickly diagnosed the problem: gallstones.

The case wasn't an emergency -- yet -- but the woman, who is an illegal immigrant, didn't know where else to go for care.

"Her inability to access care is a problem," Panitch said. "At some point, untreated, she'll need emergency surgery to deal with this."

That question of access to care for some immigrants, and who should pay for it, could well become one of the most contentious sticking points in the coming weeks as members of Congress sit down to reconcile the health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday with the yet-to-emerge Senate version.

The controversy centers largely on whether illegal immigrants should benefit at all under a revised health-care system. Democratic leaders had vowed that only legal residents would receive subsidies to buy insurance. And after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) famously shouted "You lie" at President Obama when he made that vow to Congress, both the White House and the Senate Finance Committee went a step further. They pledged that undocumented workers would be barred not only from receiving subsidies but also from buying insurance through federally sponsored exchanges -- even if they used their own money.

Last week, when some House Democratic leaders pressed to match the Senate Finance Committee version, Hispanic lawmakers threatened to revolt and ultimately prevailed: Under the bill approved by the House, illegal immigrants would not be barred from the exchanges.

That stark debate, however, has largely obscured the distinct challenge raised by immigrant families as reformers try to provide coverage to as many Americans as possible. Because so many of the nation's 38 million immigrants -- legal and illegal -- live in households that include both categories, families must often rely on a patchwork of care and funding. And while the legislation could have a significant impact on how millions of immigrants obtain care, it is clear that large gaps in coverage will remain, not only across immigrant communities but also even within individual families.

Maria Salmeron, for example, is a legal resident from El Salvador who has insurance through her job in the kitchen of a nursing home. But her husband, a construction worker who is trying to legalize his status, has no insurance. Their youngest child, Isabella, a 2-year-old citizen in pigtails, requires a ventilator to breathe. Her medical needs are covered by state and federal programs.

On a recent fall day, Salmeron took Isabella to a pediatric clinic in Falls Church, where a bilingual pediatrician, Albert Brito, checked her for a cold and helped her mother make an appointment with a kidney specialist for the child.

Meanwhile, the nurse who comes to the family's home to help take care of Isabella has no insurance. J. Katan, a legal resident from Nigeria, said she cannot afford the premiums for the plan offered by her nursing agency.

"If I need to see a doctor," she said, "I go myself, and I pay."

Locally and nationwide, roughly two-thirds of working-age immigrants who are legal residents are insured, and more than one-third of illegal immigrants also have insurance, according to a new study by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The group estimates that as many as 2.8 million uninsured legal residents of working age could benefit from reform, by qualifying for expanded Medicaid or proposed subsidies to purchase insurance. Nearly 1 million uninsured legal immigrants also work at firms that could be required to provide insurance. And 1.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants work for firms that may be required to provide insurance, according to the institute.

Even as lawmakers remain divided over how far to extend the new safety net, some health providers already have fashioned multi-layered systems to match care with the mixed needs of immigrant families.

The Falls Church pediatric clinic that treated Isabella was created by the Inova Health System, part of a cluster strategy that includes a maternity clinic for uninsured women, a nutritionist, a low-cost pharmacy, a lab, classrooms and social workers to help families navigate the system.

"We're basically a community safety net as well as a medical safety net," said Geoffrey DeLizzio, director of the clinics.

Ramiro Herbas, who came from Bolivia eight years ago, recently brought his son, Demothi, 2, for a checkup and a flu shot to the Falls Church pediatric clinic. American-born Demothi qualifies for Medicaid. Herbas said he has a work permit, but his construction jobs don't offer insurance. If he gets sick he visits a doctor's office in Seven Corners, where discount practices cater to immigrants, $40 a visit.

For some, the emergency department will remain the only option -- especially for patients like Susy, the illegal immigrant with gallstones, who would be excluded from subsidies.

"The pain is strong," said Susy, a babysitter who came from Peru six years ago. Because of her immigration status, she spoke on the condition that her last name not be published.

As Susy lay on a bed, Marcos Pesquera, executive director of Adventist's center on health disparities, picked up the phone and made an appointment for her with a surgeon, who, two weeks later, removed her gallbladder at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital.

Susy said she was initially asked to make a deposit of $3,500 to the hospital. Ultimately she made a deposit of just $100, she said, but she added that she may be asked to pay more.

The surgeon declined to comment, but his colleague, Jason Brodsky of Inpatient Surgical Consultants, said in an e-mailed statement: "We are pleased to provide this care regardless of a patient's insurance status."

Most of the cost of Susy's care will end up being absorbed by Adventist.

Like Inova, Adventist HealthCare, a $1.2 billion nonprofit provider, has stitched together services on its Germantown campus with a cluster of clinics and emergency care, paid for by an array of public and private players.

Next door to the emergency department where Susy was treated, Monica Peñaherrera, 53, sat in an examination room at a clinic operated by the nonprofit Mobile Medical Care. Peñaherrera is an American citizen but has had no health insurance since her husband's construction business declined. When she felt a pain in her breast recently, she came to the clinic she had heard about at her church.

"I'm comfortable here," Peñaherrera said after she was examined by nurse practitioner Marylynn Gonsalves. "I think of her as my family doctor."

For Peñaherrera's visit, she pays $30. Montgomery County pays $62. "That is way less than half what our costs would be," says Bob Spector, executive director of Mobile Med. The rest comes from cash and diagnostic support from Adventist, plus Mobile Med's own fundraising and reliance in some cases on donated medical expertise.

The patchwork of services is also paid for by taxpayers and people with insurance.

"We have to try to cover for those who can't pay or won't pay with the revenues that come from people who can and do pay," says Bill Robertson, president of Adventist HealthCare, which provided about $51 million in uncompensated care -- to poor, uninsured patients like Susy -- in their two local hospitals last year. The hospital covers the gap with money from other patients' insurance plans that pay more than cost.

Downstairs from Mobile Med is a maternity clinic for uninsured women, where Socorro Almejo, 38, an immigrant from Mexico, brought her 17-year-old daughter, Reina, who is pregnant, for a routine prenatal exam. Reina is receiving a full range of pregnancy checkups for $450 through a county-subsidized program. Almejo herself has no insurance and goes to another clinic when she is sick. "I'm glad at least my children have [coverage], even if I don't," she said.

Dianne Fisher, the county health department's nurse administrator for women's health services, said the goal was to ensure healthy pregnancies and births. "Otherwise," she said, "they would show up in the emergency room, with more problems."

Cleric says he was confidant to Hasan - washingtonpost.com

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In Yemen, al-Aulaqi tells of e-mail exchanges, says he did not instigate rampage

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 16, 2009

SANAA, YEMEN -- In his first interview with a journalist since the Fort Hood rampage, Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi said that he neither ordered nor pressured Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to harm Americans, but that he considered himself a confidant of the Army psychiatrist who was given a glimpse via e-mail into Hasan's growing discomfort with the U.S. military.

The cleric said he thought he played a role in transforming Hasan into a devout Muslim eight years ago, when Hasan listened to his lectures at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Northern Virginia. Aulaqi said that Hasan "trusted" him and that the two developed an e-mail correspondence over the past year.

The portrait of the alleged Fort Hood shooter offered by Aulaqi provides some hints as to Hasan's mind-set and motivations in the months leading up to the Nov. 5 rampage, in which 13 were killed. Aulaqi's comments also add to questions over whether U.S. authorities, who were aware of at least some of Hasan's e-mails to Aulaqi, should have sensed a potential threat. U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted e-mails from Hasan, but the FBI concluded that they posed no serious danger and that an investigation was unnecessary, said federal law enforcement officials.

Aulaqi declined to be interviewed by an American journalist with The Washington Post. But he provided an account of his relationship with Hasan -- which consisted of a correspondence of a dozen or so e-mails -- to Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a Yemeni journalist and terrorism expert with close ties to Aulaqi whom The Post contacted to conduct the interview. The Post reimbursed Shaea's travel expenses but did not pay him.

On Sunday, Shaea offered details of his interview with Aulaqi, an influential preacher whose sermons and writings supporting jihad have attracted a wide following among radical Islamists. Shaea allowed a Post reporter to view a video recording of a man who closely resembles pictures of Aulaqi sitting in front of his laptop computer reading the e-mails, and to hear an audiotape in which a man, who like Aulaqi speaks English with an American accent, discusses his e-mail correspondence with Hasan.

The quotes in this article are based on Shaea's handwritten notes. Shaea said he was allowed to review the e-mails between Hasan and Aulaqi, but they were not provided to The Post.

The thick-bearded, white-robed Aulaqi, who was born in New Mexico, served as an imam at two mosques attended by three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers -- Virginia's Dar al-Hijra and another in California. Aulaqi, who is in his late 30s, is also fluent in Arabic. U.S. officials have accused him of working with al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia. In mid-2006, he was detained in Yemen, his ancestral homeland, at the request of U.S. authorities. He was released in December 2007.

Explaining why he wrote on his Web site that Hasan was a "hero," According to Shaea, Aulaqi said: "I blessed the act because it was against a military target. And the soldiers who were killed were not normal soldiers, but those who were trained and prepared to go to Afghanistan and Iraq."

Aulaqi's views are controversial, earning him not only designation by U.S. counterterrorism officials as a leading English-language promoter and supporter of al-Qaeda, but also criticism from other fundamentalist Islamic clerics. Sheik Salman al-Awdah, a Saudi religious leader, gave an interview last week calling the massacre at Fort Hood "unjustified," "irrational" and "inadvisable" because it will cause a backlash against Muslims in America and Europe.

But Aulaqi's statements reflect the increasingly radical path he has taken since settling in Yemen in 2004. Print, video and audio files of his words have been found on the private hard drives of terrorism suspects in Canada in 2006 and in the United States in 2007 and 2008. He also wrote congratulations to al Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group leading an insurgency in Somalia, after it apparently used the first U.S.-citizen suicide bomber last fall.

"Fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today," Aulaqi allegedly wrote on his Web site after Hasan's ties to him were reported after the shootings. "The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."

On Dec. 23, 2008, days after he said Hasan first e-mailed him, Aulaqi also posted online words encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers, writing: "The bullets of the fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq are a reflection of the feelings of the Muslims towards America," according to the NEFA Foundation, a private South Carolina group that monitors extremist Web sites.

Aulaqi is an "example of al-Qaeda reach into" the United States, U.S. officials said publicly in October 2008, years after his ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers were probed by the 9/11 Commission. The panel also revealed earlier FBI investigations into his connections to al-Qaeda associates.

Aulaqi described Hasan as a man who took his Muslim faith seriously, and who was eager to understand how to interpret Islamic sharia law. In the e-mails, Hasan appeared to question U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often used "evidence from sharia that what America was doing should be confronted," the cleric told Shaea.

"So Nidal was providing evidence to Anwar, not vice versa," said Shaea. "Anwar felt, after seeing Nidal's e-mails, that [Hasan] had wide knowledge of sharia law." Shaea said he interviewed Aulaqi in his house on Saturday in Shabwa, a province in southern Yemen that has become an extremist stronghold and where al-Qaeda is seeking to create a haven.

Aulaqi told Shaea that Hasan first reached out to him in an e-mail dated Dec. 17, 2008. He described Hasan introducing himself and writing: "Do you remember me? I used to pray with you at the Virginia mosque."

Initially, Aulaqi said he did not recall Hasan and did not reply to the e-mail. But after Hasan sent two or three more e-mails, the cleric said he "started to remember who he was," according to Shaea.

Aulaqi said Hasan viewed him as a confidant. "It was clear from his e-mails that Nidal trusted me. Nidal told me: 'I speak with you about issues that I never speak with anyone else,' " he told Shaea.

The cleric said Hasan informed him that he had become a devout Muslim around the time Aulaqi was preaching at Dar al-Hijrah, in 2001 and 2002. "Anwar said, 'Maybe Nidal was affected by one of my lectures,'" said Shaea.

Of the dozen or so e-mails, said Shaea, Aulaqi replied to Hasan two or three times. Aulaqi declined to comment on what he told Hasan. Asked whether Hasan mentioned Fort Hood as a target in his e-mails, Shaea declined to comment.

Aulaqi said Hasan's alleged shooting spree was allowed under Islam because it was a form of jihad. "There are some people in the United States who said this shooting has nothing to do with Islam, that it was not permissible under Islam," he said, according to Shaea. "But I would say it is permissible. . . . America was the one who first brought the battle to Muslim countries."

The cleric also denounced what he described as contradictory behavior by Muslims who condemned Hasan's actions and "let him down." According to Shaea, he said: "They say American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan should be killed, so how can they say the American soldier should not be killed at the moment they are going to Iraq and Afghanistan?"

Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu in Washington contributed to this report.