http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/05/201251620515544315.html
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-will-cut-its-oil-imports-from-iran-by-11-percent/2012/05/15/gIQAyp8GRU_story.html
| Deadly clashes in Libyan border town | |
At least seven people killed in fighting between armed men and residents in southern oasis of Ghadames.
Last Modified: 16 May 2012 21:49
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Libya's government spokesman Nasser al-Manaa did not identify the assailants [AFP]
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At least seven people have been killed in clashes between armed men and residents of a Libyan town on the border with Algeria, officials said, underlining the insecurity that still plagues the country one month before elections.
"There were clashes in the city of Ghadames," Nasser al-Manaa, Libya's government spokesman said on Wednesday.
"The number of people killed is seven," Manaa said, adding that more than 20 were wounded in clashes that erupted early in the day in the southern oasis town 600km from the capital Tripoli.
Six of the raiders were killed along with a resident of Ghadames, the AFP news agency reported. That toll was confirmed by a local medical official. Manaa, who did not identify the assailants, said military forces had entered the city and brought the situation under control. The health ministry, for its part, was providing emergency assistance. Tension had been building for days between locals and Tuareg tribesmen - nomads who roam the desert spanning the borders of Libya and its neighbours, an official at Ghadames local council said. Ghadames officials said the attackers belonged to the Tuareg community. However, a senior military official excluded the possibility of foreigners entering the country and stirring up the unrest. "We are not aware of the entry of any external party," army spokesman Ali al-Sheikhi told AFP, pointing to regular air patrols over the area. Tribal tensions The fighting erupted over control of a checkpoint on the edge of Ghadames on a desert route often used for smuggling, officials told the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity. Ghadames, which is also known as the "Pearl of the Desert," is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to Roman ruins close to Libya's borders with Algeria and Tunisia. The Tuareg have historically roamed over vast tracts of the southern Sahara and control smuggling routes criss-crossing the Sahel region. Libya's interim rulers have struggled to impose their will on the vast country's often fractious tribal groups since last year's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. Many Tuaregs backed Gaddafi during the fighting because he supported their rebellion against the governments of Mali and Niger in the 1970s and later allowed them to settle in southern Libya. The tribe is important to regional security because it has huge influence in the empty desert expanses which are used
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http://news.antiwar.com/2012/05/16/us-helps-arms-pour-into-syria-as-rebels-spurn-peace-deal/
US Helps Arms Pour into Syria as Rebels Spurn Peace Deal'Non-Lethal' Aid Means Massive Influx of Weapons
by Jason Ditz, May 16, 2012
The Obama Administration’s promise to provide “non-lethal” aid coincides almost perfectly with the point at which the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Syrian National Council (SNC), initially at least ambivalent about the UN peace deal, began condemning the pact and launch huge attacks on Syrian military targets.
 That’s no coincidence, though, as the “non-lethal aid” turns out to have come in the form of huge quantities of high tech weaponry, which the US didn’t directly pay for but which the US is helping smuggle into the country.
The report comes as US officials say that they consider the ceasefire a “failure” and a civil war “inevitable.” Indeed it seems to be, now that the rebels are awash in arms from the GCC nations and have tacit US backing to spurn the ceasefire.
On Monday, the rebels attacked Syrian troops around Rastan, killing at least 23 soldiers. Yesterday, they engaged in an even bigger fight along the coast, capturingfour UN ceasefire monitors in the process.
US and other western officials have repeatedly blamed the Assad regime for all of the ceasefire violations, and while combatants on both sides have violated it in small measure, the big attacks and the official condemnations of the peace talks have come from the rebels, and the US has been fueling this belligerence.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/many-will-profit-if-pakistan-reopens-nato-supply-routes/2012/05/15/gIQAPIN9RU_print.html
Many will profit if Pakistan reopens NATO supply routesBy Richard Leiby,
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — U.S. commanders in Afghanistan want to get war supplies rolling across Pakistan’s borders again. So do Pakistanis in places high and low — from officials trying to balance the nation’s budget to black marketeers who stand ready to plunder the NATO-contracted trucks and oil tankers expected to shortly resume passage into Afghanistan after nearly six months of closed border crossings.
The deal isn’t quite sealed, but Pakistan is set to announce in a matter of days its decision to again allow onto its territory the convoys that supply U.S.-led international forces trying to wind down the decade-long war against the Taliban.
Pakistan’s decision, after months of political posturing and delicate negotiations, is likely to ease strains between Washington and Islamabad. For its renewed cooperation, Pakistan would reap higher tariffs and a payout of at least $1.3 billion in withheld “coalition support funds” for its contribution to the fight against Islamist militants.
Officials on both sides say the agreement will not provide Pakistan the full apology it wants for an incident in which U.S. fighter jets and helicopters mistakenly bombed two outposts on the border with Afghanistan in November, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. The deaths prompted Pakistan to seal the borders.
Multiple beneficiaries
But for traders such as Baz Muhammad Afridi, happy days will return when the blockade ends. Afridi, 46, who vends looted goods in a bazaar on the outskirts of Peshawar known informally as “the U.S. market,” nearly abandoned his business because of dwindling stock.
Afridi said he sold food, daggers, computers and engineering equipment pillaged from supply convoys. “We were getting quality goods, technological gadgets and American flags at very reasonable prices,” he said Tuesday.
“But the supply suspension nearly stopped our business, and it becomes hard to meet even daily expenses,” he said. “Lower-middle-class people like me will be happy with the reopening of NATO supply lines.”
On the macroeconomic level, Islamabad needs help, too. The $1.3 billion has been penciled into the proposed budget, according to Finance Ministry officials.
And there are other beneficiaries. The Pakistani military — sometimes called Army Inc. because of its sizable stake in commerce, corporations and land holdings — indirectly controls 30 percent of the NATO oil tanker contracts, according to local transporter associations. The military, which played the key role in the NATO-provisioning negotiations with U.S. and Afghan army commanders last weekend, declined to comment on its share of the supply business.
Tribal-area militants will profit, too: They demand protection money from the companies that haul the freight. And they launch attacks to get their slice of what’s inside the steel sea-shipping containers that begin their journey at the port of Karachi and travel hundreds of miles through perilous territory.
“Even the Taliban is the beneficiary. . . . They get weapons and ammunition when they attack the containers,” said a black-market trader in NATO goods, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of Taliban reprisals. “This is one of the financial sources of the militants.”
Not to be left out, police and other local authorities extract bribes to allow convoys to pass, transporters say. It’s part of doing business for companies that are hoping to put 8,000 to 10,000 tankers and trucks back on the roads to reach land-locked Afghanistan.
Cost concerns for NATO
Pakistan shut its border crossings soon after the November attacks, forcing NATO to use other, more costly routes across Central Asia. In the past, NATO has shipped two-thirds or more of its supplies for the Afghanistan war through Pakistan.
Even before the border closure, U.S. military officials had stockpiled several months of material to weather possible problems with the Pakistan route. Those stockpiles have been supplemented by increased shipments through what’s known as the Northern Distribution Network, through Central Asia and Russia.
While new NDN agreements have been signed to expand the types and quantities of goods those countries allow to pass through their territories, the passage is far more expensive and lengthy. The cost and difficulty would increase exponentially as the United States and its coalition partners begin to remove equipment as the coalition withdraws combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
In April, Pakistan’s Parliament unanimously passed guidelines for future dealings with the United States, calling for an end to CIA drone strikes on targets in Pakistan and an apology for “the condemnable and unprovoked” border attacks in November. The Pentagon has called the deaths accidental and regrettable but has concluded that both sides shared blame.
Observers in Islamabad and Washington never expected the drone strikes would end, but an apology was a possibility until April 15 attacks on Western targets in Kabul that U.S. officials attributed to the Pakistan-based Haqqani network.
Pakistan’s willingness to reopen the border, widely signaled Monday, seemed to have an immediate result: On Tuesday afternoon, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen invited President Asif Ali Zardari to this weekend’s Chicago summit, where the alliance will discuss the endgame in Afghanistan.
Despite Washington’s extreme mistrust of Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus — which it blames for harboring militants who attack troops in Afghanistan — Pakistani participation is seen as vital to a settlement with the Taliban and allied insurgents.
Pakistani officials said that Zardari would attend the summit and that the invitation was not linked to the opening of the NATO supply lines.
Some analysts speculated that Zardari might wait to announce in Chicago any new deal with NATO. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s unwieldy cabinet — 53 ministers in all — took up the matter but ended the day with no decision, except to reinforce the Parliament’s previous recommendation that shipments contain no weaponry or lethal supplies.
Afterward, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told journalists: “No decision on NATO supplies will be made under any pressure.”
For people in Pakistan’s insurgency-wracked northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the practical implications of the NATO issue matter far more than the political ones.
Javed Ali Khan, a farmer in his early 30s who lives near Peshawar, said he has to protect himself from militants. He would like the looters to get back in business.
“The prices of weapons, arms and ammunition will come down once the NATO supply is restored,” he said. “American- and European-made pistol prices went up almost double since November 26, 2011.”
That was the day U.S. aircraft bombed Pakistan’s border posts. Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington and special correspondents Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report. |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-will-cut-its-oil-imports-from-iran-by-11-percent/2012/05/15/gIQAyp8GRU_story.html
India will cut oil imports from Iran by 11%
NEW DELHI — A week after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged New Delhi to reduce its engagement with Tehran, India said it would cut Iranian oil imports by 11 percent in the coming year.
The promised cut could constitute a significant step for India toward securing a waiver from U.S. sanctions before a June deadline, although officials here denied that they were motivated by U.S. pressure, and some analysts questioned whether the move would be enough to satisfy Washington.
The United States already has granted sanctions waivers to Japan and 10 European countries after they announced cuts, but it has not yet done so for India or China, two of the biggest importers of Iranian oil.
Deputy Oil Minister R.P.N. Singh told Parliament on Tuesday that imports from Iran would be reduced to 113.6 million barrels in the financial year ending next March, down from 127.8 million barrels the previous year.
The Obama administration welcomed India’s pledge, but State Department officials hinted that they hoped to see even larger cuts, and they stopped short of saying whether the 11 percent cut was sufficient to earn a waiver.
“As the secretary said when she was there, we are making progress,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington. “There’s more progress to be made.”
In the past few months, New Delhi has come under enormous pressure from Washington to join international sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program. But India’s historical ties with Iran, and especially its reliance on Iranian oil, have posed a severe foreign policy dilemma.
Fiercely independent in its foreign policy-making and wary of angering its huge Muslim population, India says it will respect only sanctions agreed to by the United Nations. Officials would never publicly admit that any reduction in oil imports from Iran has come as a result of U.S. pressure.
“In order to reduce its dependence on any particular region of the world, India has been consciously trying to diversify its sources of crude oil imports to strengthen the country’s energy security,” Singh told lawmakers in a written statement Tuesday.
India imports 80 percent of its oil, from more than 30 countries. Iran accounts for almost 12 percent of its total imports.
Indian officials privately say it is difficult to restrain India’s growing appetite for energy, which is desperately needed to fuel industrial expansion and economic growth. But U.S.-led sanctions already have made it much harder for India to ship and pay for Iranian oil.
A U.S. special envoy, Carlos Pascual, met officials in New Delhi on Tuesday to follow up on Clinton’s discussions with Indian officials. The Foreign Ministry official said the discussion with the envoy was about India’s long-term energy needs and “included the Iran issue, but it was not the primary focus today.”
“We have already scaled back imports because we have been facing difficulties in paying for the oil and having trouble finding enough tankers to lift the oil,” said K.C. Singh, a retired diplomat who served as India’s ambassador to Tehran. “Today’s announcement may be okay for the time being, but I suspect that Americans would want us to do more. India has to do a tough balancing act between Iran and America. We have to ensure that our strategic engagement with the U.S. continues.”
Under pressure from the U.S. Treasury, India withdrew in December 2010 from the Asian Clearing Union, a mechanism set up to make payments from the South Asian region to Iran. But Iran continued to supply oil on credit, with debts ballooning to $3 billion earlier this year.
In March, Iran agreed to receive part of the payment in Indian rupees, through Indian banks. The option of paying with either dollars or euros has been choked off because of international pressure.
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