Washington, Dec 31 (DPA) Former US vice president Dick Cheney has accused President Barack Obama of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists in the wake of the Christmas Day attack on a US airliner.
In a statement to Politico published Wednesday, Cheney said Obama’s policies have sought to cast aside the realities of the war on terrorism by taking a “low key” response to an attack, suspected of being carried out by a Nigerian citizen with Al Qaeda ties.
“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war,” Cheney said. “He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people we won’t be at war.”
Cheney has been a leading Republican critic of Obama since he and former president George W. Bush left office in January, and his remarks are intended to show that Obama and the Democrats are weak when to comes to fighting terrorism.
Cheney cited the administration’s decision to try the five alleged plotters of the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in a civilian rather than a military court, and to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
The suspect on the Delta/Northwest Airlines flight, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, remains in US custody after he allegedly tried to detonate explosive as the plane was preparing to land in Detroit.
Abdulmutallab has reportedly told US authorities he received the explosives and training from Al Qaeda elements in Yemen, which announced it is investigating ties between the Nigerian and the terrorist group.
Meanwhile, CNN, citing two Obama administration officials, reported the military has begun to assess possible targets in Yemen for retaliatory strikes against Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, released a statement earlier this week taking responsibility for the failed attack and warned more are on the way. AQAP said the airline plot was meant to avenge US assistance to the Yemeni government, which has been launching assaults against Al Qaeda militants in the country.
The US has reportedly provided intelligence to assist with air raids, and is believed to also be conducting covert operations in Yemen against Al Qaeda.
London, Dec 30 (IANS) Relatives of a Briton executed by China Wednesday blamed the British media, government and human rights campaigners for not pleading his case early or strongly enough.
“This is an example of Britain’s powerlessness in the world,” said Amina and Ridwan Shaikh, whose cousin Akmal Shaikh was executed by China Tuesday after being found guilty of drug smuggling.
They said they were “shocked” that apart from Sky News, there was only “sporadic media attention” paid to Shaikh, widely considered to have been a mentally unstable man who was duped into carrying four kg of heroin into Urumqi.
“Only when news was released of his imminent execution did it get the coverage it deserved,” they said in a letter to The Guardian.
The relatives also slammed the British government and the anti-capital punishment charity Reprieve for not pursuing a hard enough strategy against China.
“We understand the [Reprieve] strategy was based on expert advice that, as the Chinese regime is a brutal one, the best approach is to not criticise it as this may make things worse,” they said.
“Did the British government pull out its diplomats in protest? Did it have a hard-hitting strategy to persuade the Chinese authorities to change their decision?”
The Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis has said that as well as official representations, ministers made 27 separate appeals on Shaikh’s behalf in the two years since his arrest.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown personally pleaded Shaikh’s case with Chinese Premier Hu Jintao at Copenhagen earlier in December.
Lewis said: “Engagement with China is non-negotiable and any alternative strategy is simply not credible. But by being so clear in our public criticism of China’s handling of this case we are demonstrating that it is not business as usual.”
Amina and Ridwan Sheikh also implied that their cousin suffered his fate in part because he was a Muslim.
“We are not mourning simply for our cousin as a lot of other people, including Muslims in China, have experienced and will continue to experience the same fate, without any real justification; our hearts pour out to them too,” they said.
London, Dec. 30 (ANI): The Chinese warning that Britain’s protest against the execution of drug trafficking-accused British citizen, Akmal Shaikh, could harm diplomatic ties between the two countries, has its roots in the historical China-Britain Opium Wars on the 19th century.
An official statement from the Chinese embassy said the ‘strong resentment’ felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers was in part based on ‘the bitter memory of history’.
The Telegraph quoted Jonathan Fenby, the author of The Penguin History of Modern China, as saying that the statement was a reference to the two Opium Wars fought between China and Great Britain and its allies in the middle of the 19th century and the wider opium trade.
The trade in opium, often grown in India, boomed in China despite efforts to ban it with large amounts of the drugs being shipped into the country by British merchants.
Attempts by the Chinese government to disrupt the trade were met with force and Britain twice went to war to protect its stranglehold on the market.
British merchants forced the Chinese to grant them access to Chinese ports and won the right for their citizens to be exempt from Chinese law.
‘The unequal treaties, as they became known, caused a great deal of resentment in late 19th century and 20th century China among Chinese nationalists,” Fenby said.
‘If you spoke to the average 20 or 30-something Chinese person they would say the British forced us to take opium. It is established as part of the historical story,’ he added.
Shaikh’s execution triggered strong criticism from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said in a statement that he was “appalled”.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry expressed China’s anger at the British Government’s response to the death sentence.
“Nobody has the right to speak ill of China’s judicial sovereignty. We express strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition over the groundless British accusations. We hope that the British side can view this matter rationally and not create new obstacles in bilateral relations,” said Jiang Yu. (ANI)
Washington, Dec.30 (ANI): The Obama administration is readying sanctions against discrete elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters, marking a shift to a more aggressive U.S. posture toward the Islamic republic, U.S. officials said.
Ten months after President Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers on its nuclear program, Tehran has failed to respond other than an abortive gesture in the fall.
Sanctions would probably be imposed in three ways — at the U.N. Security Council, with like-minded countries and unilaterally — and U.S. officials would pursue them more or less simultaneously, with initial emphasis on pressing forward at the United Nations in February.
The Washington Post quotes the officials as saying that the Obama administration wants to carefully target sanctions to avoid alienating the Iranian public — while keeping the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran’s nuclear program.
The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people, they add.
‘We have never been attracted to the idea of trying to get the whole world to cordon off their economy. We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation — whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame,’ said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
As a result, top officials are showing little interest in legislation racing through Congress that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran.
Another senior official said. ‘Our intention is to keep the door open.’
Throughout the year, Obama had reached out directly to the Iranian leadership, through video messages and two personal letters to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an effort to break through the antagonism and distrust that had built up since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy.
When the protests over a disputed presidential election began in June, Obama’s initial response was muted to keep the prospects for engagement open.
France, an advocate of firmer pressure on Iran, will hold the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council that month.
The precise contours of the administration’s sanctions policy are still being decided, but high on the list of targets is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the arm of the military that has been centrally involved in the attacks on demonstrators and that is playing an increasingly bigger role in Iran’s economy.
The increasingly central role of the Revolutionary Guard in both the economy and the protests, officials said, makes it a target of possible resentment among the Iranian public — and for tough U.S. sanctions.
But officials insist that sanctions would not be linked to the protests. (ANI)
Washington, Dec. 30 (ANI): President Barack Obama’s ratings have dropped dramatically in the face of rising unemployment, a slipping legislative agenda and painful decisions on health care, the economy and the war in Afghanistan, suggesting that he has been hard hit during his first year in office.
According to the Washington Times, his support has faltered on all those key issues – and from both ends of the spectrum. Opponents blame him for expanding the size of government while some in his Democratic base accuse him of not pushing hard enough for his agenda.
As Mr. Obama leads his party into next year’s congressional elections, pollsters say, his overall approval rating – down to an average of 48 percent from 67 percent in January, according to Pollster.com’s aggregate of several national polls – likely will be tied to the unemployment rate, which hovers at 10 percent.
‘The economy may be growing and the recession may be over, but on Main Street, people who are unemployed are not happy and people who are worried about being unemployed are not happy,’ said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Only 44 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, compared with 59 percent in February, when he signed the 787 billion dollar stimulus package, according to National Journal’s Pollster.com.
Support for Obama’s handling of his marquee health care initiative, now nearing final approval in Congress, stands at 41 percent – down from 57 percent in February.
Democratic leaders and the White House have suggested that the lack of public backing for the health care bill will change once it has been passed and blame Republicans for spreading misinformation about what’s in the legislation.
Democratic pollster Tom Jensen said he doubts Obama will see any short-term gain from signing health care reform into law, arguing that independents and Republicans who overwhelmingly oppose the bill are not likely to be swayed.
Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, said: ‘What’s ultimately going to decide Obama’s fate with those folks is if the economy turns around or not.’
He further said the 2010 midterm elections are likely to be ‘brutal for Democrats’ but that it won’t be solely a result of Obama’s approval ratings.
On Afghanistan, Obama has the approval of sixty-two percent of the voters approved of his February decision to send an additional 17,000 troops to the war-torn country and 58 percent said in early December that they support his move to send 30,000 more, according to Quinnipiac.
But in a later Quinnipiac poll, only 47 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the war overall.
Results from Gallup are even more stark:
Obama’s approval on Afghanistan plummeted from 56 percent in mid-July to 35 percent in late November. However, 51 percent said they approved of the 30,000-troop surge in a poll taken after Obama’s Dec. 1 announcement. (ANI)
Washington, Dec.30 (ANI) : Raising concerns over the expanding proportion of banned terror outfits across the world, US President Barack Obama has branded Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as the four ‘terror hot beds’ from where the extremists are planning to attack America.
In a statement issued here, Obama vowed to continue the struggle against the terror outfits and added that he would leave no stone unturned to dismantle the militant network flourishing in these terror safe havens.
“We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland,” The Dawn quoted Obama, as saying.
Referring to the attempted Christmas Day aeroplane bombing plot, Obama said he had ordered a thorough review of the airport screening process to determine how the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was able to fly into the United States.
“We need to determine just how the suspect was able to bring dangerous explosives aboard an aircraft and what additional steps we can take to thwart future attacks,” Obama said.
“We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt, but those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will do more than simply strengthen our defences,” he added. (ANI)
Cape Canaveral (Florida), Dec 30 (DPA) As the world marked the 40th anniversary of the first human on the moon this year, the future of the space programme that pioneering astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins helped found looks more uncertain than ever.
The Apollo astronauts are old men now. In July, it seemed like they recreated that golden age of space flight when they shook hands with US President Barack Obama, who praised them for their contributions.
But even as NASA announced unprecedented findings from scientific missions to the moon and Mars, the Obama administration conducted a review of its activities that could alter or scrub the space agency’s future plans.
NASA is winding down its nearly three-decade-old space shuttle programme and is set to retire the ageing space “trucks” in late 2010. Just five more flights remain, aimed at preparing the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) for life without the shuttle, the only craft large enough to transport major parts to the station.
“With the number of missions to go, it’s starting to hit home,” shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach said after the November launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.
After the shuttle is retired, US astronauts will be forced to rely on Russian transport to the ISS, which is nearly complete and where scientists hope to turn the focus from construction to experimentation.
The ISS became even more international in 2009, as its permanent crew expanded for the first time to six with astronauts from all partner agencies, including US, European, Japanese, Russian and Canadian astronauts. Japan also began transporting goods to the
station on an unmanned spacecraft and completed the installation of its Kibo module.
The US plans to replace its space shuttle fleet with Orion spacecraft that are a bit of a throwback to the Apollo capsules used during the space race of the 1960s. The Orion is designed to eventually carry astronauts back to the moon and possibly even to
Mars.
But big plans require big spending – something politicians are reluctant to devote to scientific endeavours amidst economic difficulties back on Earth.
Obama ordered an independent review of the manned space programme this summer and the administration is still analysing the findings. The panel of aerospace experts and former astronauts concluded that the current financing of space exploration simply won’t allow NASA to reach its goals.
A review of all options found that no future manned exploration – whether to the moon, Mars or elsewhere – could be accomplished under the current spending plan of about $9 billion per year on manned space missions. At least $3 billion more per year is needed to take astronauts out of low-Earth orbit, where they have been confined since the 1970s.
“The US human spaceflight programme appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory,” the panel said in a summary of its findings. “It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.”
Indeed, Obama’s current budget requests would further decrease funding for the new programme, even as his advisors say he remains committed to space flight.
The commission also said NASA would not be ready to send astronauts aloft with the new Orion spacecraft until at least 2017, two years behind schedule.
That widens the gap between the retirement of the shuttle next year and implementation of the new vehicle, leaving astronauts totally dependent on Russian spacecraft to reach the ISS.
But until officials in Washington decide how to proceed, NASA has continued with Orion’s development. In October, it conducted the first test flight of its rocket, Ares I.
It also sent unmanned spacecraft to the moon to develop complete maps for future exploration and slammed a rocket into the surface in a search for water.
Findings by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) experiment proved that water is even more abundant in the moon’s craters than expected, unlocking a new chapter in the history of lunar science, NASA officials said.
There was also further evidence of a wet past on Mars, where unmanned space rovers Spirit and Opportunity continued their work even as scientists struggled to free Spirit, which has been lodged for months in a patch of powdery Martian soil.
NASA also turned its Hubble Space Telescope back towards the stars after a shuttle mission set it back to work in a final servicing mission in May. It has since beamed back pictures of the early universe and far distant galaxies that may provide astronomers with important data about the origins of the universe.
Islamabad, Dec.30 (ANI): The United States has rebuffed reports that said that Washington is brokering talks between India and Pakistan to resolve the long pending Kashmir issue.
Responding to an article published in a local daily, which quoted President Barack Obama’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke as saying that the White House was mediating talks between India and Pakistan, the US embassy described the report as ‘baseless’ and ‘false’.
“This assertion is false and baseless. Ambassador Holbrooke made no such statement. Moreover, he reiterated the long-standing US position on the Kashmir issue as recently as his December 15 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations,” a statement issued by the US embassy said here. (ANI)
Washington, Dec 30 (DPA) President Barack Obama has sharply altered the tone of US diplomacy as his first year in office comes to close, a move that has been broadly welcomed but produced few tangible results.
Obama’s talk of support for a multilateral approach has won him praise abroad after eight years of George W. Bush’s perceived unilateralism. This approach got him the Nobel Peace Prize, but little achievement on foreign policy objectives.
“I don’t think they have very much to show for it,” said John Pike, an analyst at Globalsecurity.org.
The Israelis and Palestinians have yet to sit down to begin negotiations on a settlement, Iran has rebuffed overtures to resolve the stalemate over its nuclear ambitions, and until only recently Obama had not secured even modest contributions from the Europeans to offer more military help in Afghanistan.
Obama has taken some major steps to rebuild America’s image in the world. He announced the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, and in a major concession to the Russians, he scrapped Bush’s controversial plans to base a long-range missile
defence system in Eastern Europe.
“The Russians just pocketed that and said ‘thank you very much let’s go to the next item’,” Pike said.
The Russians, along with the Chinese, have not budged on their reluctance to get behind tougher UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.
Two days after Obama took office, he acted on a campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison holding suspects in the war on terrorism. The facility was at the centre of the poor US image and the decision to shutter it was warmly received in capitals around the world.
Only a handful of countries have stepped forward to take some of the 215 detainees remaining at the US naval installation in Cuba, increasing the likelihood that Obama will miss his own Jan 22 deadline for closing the detention centre. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Dec 3 that there are 116 inmates eligible for transfer to another country.
But Obama’s reshaping of the US image in the world and willingness to engage traditional foes like Cuba, Iran and North Korea to introduce a new era in relations was enough for the Nobel Foundation to award him its most coveted prize. Other observers believe Obama’s new tone counts as an accomplishment.
“No, the results do not yet merit his Nobel Peace Prize,” Jacob Weisenberg recently wrote in Newsweek. “But not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodelled America’s global role.”
On Dec 1, Obama announced his plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending an additional 30,000 troops and was able to convince NATO allies to chip in with more assistance. Bush constantly struggled to convince his NATO partners to do more, but Obama was able to persuade them so far to add 7,000 troops to supplement the US build-up.
However, key allies France and Germany said they will wait until a conference on Afghanistan in January to announce whether they will make additional contributions beyond the combined 8,000 soldiers they already have there. Many of the NATO allies restrict their troops from going into combat zones. It is yet to be determined whether the fresh non-American deployment will include those restrictions.
“To the extent that these are a bunch of peacekeepers who are not issued bullets, this is not going to make a difference,” Pike said.
Washington, Dec 30 (IANS) President Obama has said that a “mix of human and systemic failure” allowed a terror suspect to board a US airliner on Christmas Day even when the intelligence community had information that should have triggered “red flags”.
Information on the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, should have been sufficient to alert authorities to prevent him from getting on the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, he said in a brief statement Tuesday during his vacation in Hawaii.
“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said. “What already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security.”
“We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system, because our security is at stake, and lives are at stake, he said.
Obama’s second statement in two days came after he was told during a private briefing Tuesday morning that the government had a variety of information in its possession before the thwarted bombing that would have been a clear warning sign had it been shared among agencies, the New York Times said.
Two unnamed officials cited by the influential US daily said the government had intelligence from Yemen before Friday that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda there were talking about “a Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack.
While the information did not include a name, officials said it would have been evident had it been compared to information about Abdulmutallab. The government also had more information about where Abdulmutallab had been and what some of his plans were.
The daily quoted an official as saying the administration was “increasingly confident” that Al Qaeda had a role in the attack, as the group’s Yemeni branch has publicly claimed.
Obama himself said US intelligence officials had received information signalling that AbdulMutallab might be a terrorism threat but failed to take steps to prevent the man from boarding the flight. “It’s been widely reported that the father of the suspect in the Christmas incident warned US officials in Africa about his son’s extremist views,” Obama said.
“It now appears that weeks ago, this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list.”
Obama cited “other deficiencies,” saying “there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together.”
The screening system implemented after the Sep 11 terrorist attacks on the United States was “not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and knowledge we have,” he said.
“Had this critical information been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence, and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged,” Obama said. “The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America.”
It was his “job to ensure that our intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security systems and the people in them are working effectively and held accountable,” Obama said. “I intend to fulfil that responsibility and insist on accountability at every level.”
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
