29 January, 2007 Today's security news and views from the global press and the blogosphere
Will the US punish Israel for using cluster-bombs? American officials are concerned that Israel violated the conditions of its arms pact with Washington. Congress will have to consider penalising the country this week after investigations confirmed that Israel used American-made cluster-bombs in its attack on Hizbullah last summer. This situation is not without precedent; in 1982, the Reagan administration banned cluster-bomb sales to Israel for six years. A suicide bombing in Israel A suicide bomber of the Islamic Jihad militant group blew himself up in the southern Israeli town of Eilat, killing three people. The attack – the first suicide bombing since April – was condemned by Fatah but condoned by Hamas as factional violence continues unabated in the occupied territories. A Saudi-led initiative hopes to steer Palestine's internal combatants towards peace. Bombs and bluster in Pakistan A suicide bomber in the northwestern Pakistani town of Peshwar killed fourteen people – mostly policemen – on Saturday, just a few hours before a major Shia procession through the town. In recent years, Pakistan has had its fair share of the Shia-Sunni tensions and violence escalating in parts of the middle east. Meanwhile, Pakistani officials have further rebuffed accusations by US, Afghan and other politicians of its complicity in the mounting Taliban threat in Afghanistan. Pakistan's foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri claimed that Pakistan "cannot do more than what it is doing now" to prevent cross-border infiltration. Kasuri's claim in late 2006 that NATO would have to negotiate with the Taliban rather than defeat them militarily caused outrage in Afghanistan and the west. Read Ahmed Rashid's take on the foreign minister's claims then on Madrid11.net. India joins star wars race In the wake of China's successful anti-satellite missile test, both Indian and Russian officials have called for a "weapons-free space". Nevertheless, India intends to build an aerospace defence command system, similar to the American NORAD, in order to safeguard it from threats from space. This comes in a week that has seen the US, China and Iran announce new plans for expanding strategically and militarily into space. Iraq caught in Iranian and American tug-of-war The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram calls for Arab countries to resurrect old regional security pacts. With the US and Israel increasingly seeking to position Arab countries against Iran (and, in doing so, inflaming Shia-Sunni tensions), the writer argues that Arab countries must unite and build security ties on the basis of collective interests, not foreign interference. It may be difficult to shed the long legacy of superpower-interference in such initiatives. The battle-lines are already being drawn, however, as Egypt accused Iran for being involved in the killing the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq in Baghdad in 2005. Ihab al-Sharif – the slain envoy – was the first resident ambassador in Iraq from a Sunni Arab state after the US invasion. Egypt has supported the Bush administration's "surge" of troops into the country, and is thought to fear that Iraq is being pulled towards Shia Iran and away from the Sunni Arab world. Tehran certainly hopes to strengthen relations between itself and Baghdad. Iran's own ambassador to Iraq outlined plans for greater military and economic cooperation between the two countries. As the Bush administration moves aggressively to curb Iranian influence in the country, such plans may bring Tehran into further political conflict with Washington. In large skirmishes in Iraq, US and Iraqi forces claimed to have killed over 300 militants near the holy city of Najaf. Kurdistan's embattled minority Iraqi Turkomans in the north of the country – particularly in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk – are facing increasing discrimination and persecution at the hands of Kurdish and Arab forces. The mistreatment of the Turkic minority has fuelled Turkey's calls for further delay of the planned referendum to decide the fate of Kirkuk. War and peace in southeast Asia Muslim figures from Indonesia and the United Kingdom met today to set up the Indonesia-UK Islamic Advisory Group that will seek to counsel governments on how best to improve relations between the Muslim world and the west. The group has been formed as a follow-up to a pact agreed upon by British and Indonesian leaders last year. Violence in Thailand's restive south claimed four lives over the weekend. Suspected Muslim fighters targeted Buddhists in drive-by shootings, killing four and injuring two.
by Kanishk Tharoor
