by Simon Tisdall
Kosovo is fast becoming “the black hole of Europe” and could descend into renewed violence within weeks unless the EU takes urgent action, senior diplomats and international experts warned in Brussels this week.
But continuing EU indecision over the breakaway province’s demand for independence from Serbia, coupled with the ethnic Albanian majority’s failure to embrace reform and respect Serb minority rights, are paralysing plans to launch “final status” talks this year.

Five years after Nato ejected Serbian forces and imposed an international administration, the UN and the US are still lacking an exit strategy. Serbia, meanwhile, wants its territory back.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 – Seeking to bridge deep differences between the United States and other nations, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain urged the Bush administration on Wednesday to heed the concerns of other countries in return for support in its wars on terrorism and tyranny.

“If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda, too,” Mr. Blair said, appealing for unity in fighting terrorism and poverty. “It can do so, secure in the knowledge that what people want is not for America to concede but to engage.”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

Little America must learn how to play nicely with others.

LONDON, Jan. 26 – The British government announced a plan on Wednesday to overhaul its antiterrorism laws, hoping to grant itself broad new powers to monitor and control foreign terrorism suspects without having to detain them indefinitely without charges, a policy that was declared illegal last month by Britain’s highest court.

The measures, which must be put forward to Parliament as a bill, would give the home secretary, Charles Clarke, the ability to give suspects curfews, tag them with electronic bracelets, limit their access to telephones and the Internet, restrict their communications with “named individuals” and, as a last resort, place them under house arrest.

The new “control orders” would apply to foreigners and British citizens, addressing the court’s judgment that special treatment for foreign detainees was discriminatory and violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The orders, the government said, could be applied if there are “reasonable grounds” for suspecting terrorist activity. Prosecuting a suspect on charges requires a higher threshold.

In announcing the plan to the House of Commons, Mr. Clarke said that the suspects now in detention – the number is thought to be between 9 and 12 – would remain in jail until the “control orders” were in place, adding that they continued “to pose a threat to national security.” Some of the men have been in detention for three years.

“There remains a public emergency threatening the life of the nation,” Mr. Clarke said. “The threat is real, and I believe that the steps I am announcing today will enable us more effectively to meet that threat.”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Guinea-Bissau students holding their ambassador hostage in Moscow said on Thursday the government had promised to start paying their overdue grants, but vowed to hold the envoy until the cash was in their hands.

Nearly 150 students have taken over the impoverished West African country’s tiny embassy rooms in an apartment block in south Moscow.

They have been on hunger strike for three days and refuse to feed ambassador Rogerio Herbert until they get 13 months of outstanding stipends.

“We have no money, so we couldn’t eat even if we wanted to,” 26-year-old economics student Milena Silva told Reuters.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

ISLAM QALA, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The presidents of Afghanistan and Iran opened a new road between their countries on Thursday amid hopes that an increase in trade would improve their uneasy relationship.

Tehran has been unsettled by Afghanistan’s close ties to its arch foe the United States, its massive output of drugs and a recent report has even suggested that U.S. special forces have entered Iran from Afghanistan to search for nuclear sites.

Thousands of U.S.-led troops remain in Afghanistan, three years after they helped oust the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime from power for harboring Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities.

Still, all talk at the official opening of the 122-km (76-mile), $60-million road, paid for by Iran, was of brotherly ties and forging friendship. Most of Afghanistan’s imports come through Iran, and the new, paved road should lead to a surge in trade.

“Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan and Iran desires a stable, modern and free Afghanistan,” said Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

by Toni Solo
When George Bush and Tony Blair start talking loudly about defending “freedom” and “democracy” and “ending poverty”, people everywhere had better watch out even more keenly than usual for their ever more precarious liberties and economic resources. The US regime and its allies are committed to genocidal aggression, unlawful judicial procedures, debilitating “aid” blackmail and “free trade” extortion as their main foreign policy tools. They have demonstrated they will do whatever is necessary to get what they want.

People in Central America in the 80s and in Colombia for over forty years have already lived out the future in Iraq and other targets of international corporate greed. Iraq was already destroyed economically by UN sanctions and US-uk aerial bombardment through the ’90s. But events in Fallujah confirm that the country faces mass population displacement over the next few years, just as millions of people in Colombia have been displaced. That population shift will create an even more desperate pool of semi-skilled and unskilled labour compelled to accept low wages incapable of providing a decent life.

Apart from losing the benefits of its oil, Iraq’s cultivable soils will be ravaged by chemical pesticides and herbicides and planted with “green desert” GM crops to enrich foreign corporate agri-business, as is happening throughout Latin America. Its water resources will be debilitated and privatized just as is happening to water resources from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. Together with these social and environmental catastrophes, the conditions imposed through “free trade” policies, by the World Bank, the IMF, and by “aid” programmes will create and sustain a continuous crisis of political institutions meant to prevent reforms that benefit the poor majority.

Constant interference by the US and its allies in the internal affairs of resource-rich poorer countries purposefully creates instability so as to cripple countries’ abilities to deal effectively with mass poverty. In Latin America, the example of US illegality and contempt for basic legal norms is creating the conditions for renewed tyranny and dictatorship. Ruthless opportunists like Presidents Uribe in Colombia, Gutierrez in Ecuador, Toledo in Peru and Mesa in Bolivia and the US proxies running Central America right now, are all too ready to copy the Bush regime’s freefall into criminality if they get the chance.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assailed as anti-Semites Wednesday critics of Israel who liken its crackdowns on a Palestinian revolt to Nazi-style acts of aggression.

“This phenomenon, of Jews protecting themselves and fighting back, is deemed outrageous by the new anti-Semites,” he told Israel’s parliament a day before world leaders gather in Poland to mark 60 years since the liberation of Auschwitz death camp.

“The legitimate self-defense measures which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror — measures any sovereign state would be obliged to take in order to safeguard its residents — are presented by sundry anti-Semites as Nazi-style acts of aggression,” the right-wing former army general said.

While international peacemakers are careful to avoid drawing historical parallels, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and killing of more than 3,000 Palestinians in violence that erupted in 2000 have drawn comparisons in parts of the Arab and European press to Nazi actions.

“Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the evil that begat the horror still exists, and still poses a threat,” Sharon said. “We know we can trust no one but ourselves.”
Full Article: reuters.myway.com

That final sentence is the battered-child syndrome in a nutshell. The child that grows to recapitulate the abuse on the generations.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s military warned Wednesday that the migration of large numbers of Kurds into the oil rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk could sway the results of the upcoming elections and possibly lead to clashes that could draw Ankara into the dispute.

Kirkuk, a multiethnic city with a Kurdish, ethnic Turkish populations, Arab, Christian — but Kurds have been the strongest group in the city since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Kirkuk is also home to 12 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves, and Turkey said the resources must be shared equally by all Iraqis.

Turkey has repeatedly warned that Kurdish control of the city would make an independent Kurdish state more viable, a development that Ankara has repeatedly said it won’t accept. Turkey fears that a strong Kurdish entity in northern Iraq could inspire Kurds in Turkey, where Kurdish rebels have battled the Turkish army since 1984.
Full Article: nytimes.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A U.S. helicopter crashed in a desert sandstorm in the early morning darkness Wednesday, killing the 30 Marines and one Navy sailor aboard. Six other troops died in insurgent ambushes in the deadliest day for Americans since the Iraq war began nearly two years ago.

Only days before Iraq’s crucial elections Sunday, militants set off at least eight car bombings that killed 13 people and injured 40 others, including 11 Americans. The guerrillas also carried out a string of attacks nationwide against schools that will serve as polling centers.

In Washington, President Bush called on Iraqis to defy terrorism and go to the polls despite relentless insurgent attacks. He said it was a “very discouraging” day when the U.S. death toll for the war rose above 1,400.
Full Article: apnews.myway.com

Bush Upbeat on Vote but Warns Iraqis Need to Take Initiative
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 – President Bush today described the elections in Iraq this weekend as “a grand moment in Iraqi history” and part of a global march toward freedom. But he also acknowledged that Iraqis had not yet taken the initiative in defending their country against insurgents and might even doubt Washington’s will to prevail.

Mr. Bush’s assessment at a hastily called 40-minute news conference came on an especially deadly day of the Iraq war for American forces. A Marine helicopter crash took 31 lives, and 5 other troops died in separate incidents.

“The story today is going to be very discouraging to the American people,” Mr. Bush said. “I understand that. We value life. And we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life. But it is the long-term objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom. Otherwise, the Middle East will continue to be a cauldron of resentment and hate, a recruiting ground for those who have this vision of the world that is the exact opposite of ours.”
Full Article: nytimes.com

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — China has lost faith in the stability of the U.S. dollar and its first priority is to broaden the exchange rate for its currency from the dollar to a more flexible basket of currencies, a top Chinese economist said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum.
Full Article: biz.yahoo.com