State Department urges President Carter not to meet with Hamas

Once again, the Department of State has demonstrated its incredible resistance to the practice of diplomacy. Jimmy Carter, whose record of defusing international crises won him the Nobel Peace Prize, has been "counseled" by State not to meet with Hamas political leadership because such a meeting would undermine our policy of isolating terrorist groups — a policy that, in my view, has proven to be totally misguided. Nothing is more valuable, after all, to effective diplomacy than eyeball-to-eyeball contact with one's "enemy."

Here is a link to an excelllent Aljazeera video report on YouTube about President Carter's proposed peacemaking trip and the Department's advice to Carter against meeting with Hamas. The text of an Al Jazeera news report appears below.

US tells Carter not to meet Hamas

Hamas said Carter requested a meeting with Meshaal [EPA]
FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2008
5:07 MECCA TIME, 2:07 GMT

The US state department has urged Jimmy Carter, the former president, not to violate foreign policy by meeting Hamas's political leader during a tour of the Middle East next week.

The "advice" follows plans by Carter to meet Khaled Meshaal in Syria on a nine-day trip that is to include Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
On Thursday Hamas officials said Carter had requested a meeting with Meshaal, the Palestinian group's political leader in exile in Syria.

"There is an agreement to hold the meeting and arrangements are under way," Ayman Taha told Reuters, adding that the meeting had been fixed for April 18.
The US-based Carter Centre did not confirm the meeting or "any specifics" in Carter's undisclosed itinerary.

But Sean McCormack, the state department spokesman, said the former US leader was "counselled" against meeting any Hamas representatives because it went against US foreign policy of isolating the group.

"US government policy is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation and we don't believe it is in the interests of our policy or in the interests of peace to have such a meeting," he said on Thursday.

The former president had earlier discussed with David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, plans to meet Meshaal.

The centre said Carter, a Nobel Peace laureate, was leading a study mission as part of his efforts to "support peace, democracy and human rights" in the Middle East.

"This is a study mission and our purpose is not to negotiate but to support and provide momentum for current efforts to secure peace in the Middle East," it said in a statement.

"Our delegation has considerable experience in the region, and we go there with an open mind and heart to listen and learn from all parties."

Israel, which also calls Hamas a terrorist organisation, expressed concern over the meeting, which would be the first public contact between a US leader and Hamas officials in two years.

"The unintended consequences of such a meeting would be to embolden terrorists and undermine the cause of peace," Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the US, told Reuters.

Peru: "President orders 'bombings' of illicit coca"

Peru | 2 April, 2007 [ 18:08 ]

http://filer.livinginperu.com/news/img/garcia_bombing_coca.jpg600400

Peru's Alan Garcia has taken a hard stance against the country's drug trade.

© Andina

(LIP-jl) -- "The Peruvian government will not give up nor budge an inch against threats versus the expansion of illicit coca plant cultivations," declared Peruvian President Alan Garcia at the inauguration of the II Inter-American Forum on Security and Human Coexistence.

Garcia's anti-drug rhetoric was highlighted by his call to "bomb" and "gun down" all narcotics maceration wells and clandestine airports used to produce and transport illegal drugs out of the Peruvian jungle.

"If we don't kill off the danger of expanding narcotics operations immediately, then Peru may very well face insurgency problems as large as what is happening in Colombia," Garcia affirmed.

"Use A37 attack planes, bomb and gun down airports and maceration wells. And at the same time, take out the benefactor, the drug baron," emphasized the Peruvian leader.

He indicated that the Peruvian government cannot budge an inch on their anti-drug measure, otherwise, "the international community will put us on the 'black list' of global drug suppliers."

Garcia added, "I am positive that we can identify which coca farms are cultivated for traditional purposes and which are produced for criminal purposes."

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Reuters: "Ecuador's poor majority back referendum"

Ecuador's poor majority backs Correa's referendum

By Alonso Soto

REUTERS

8:02 a.m. April 12, 2007

QUITO – In Ecuador's shantytowns, where stray dogs rifle through garbage and mud-caked children in torn clothes play soccer on dirt tracks, supporting the president's constitutional reform plans is a way to hit back at the old elite. Polls predict Ecuadoreans will Sunday overwhelmingly back a proposal by leftist President Rafael Correa to set up an assembly to rewrite the constitution, a move that could curb the powers of a Congress widely seen as self-serving.

“He is going to change things in this country, because he can outsmart all those corrupt politicians,” said truck-driver Manuel Ordonez, 45, in Quito's crime-ridden slum of Pisuli.

“The assembly will bring the change we need,” he said, perched on the roof of his dingy one-room home where his mother was boiling a corn-cob for dinner.

Correa, who took office in January, says the proposed assembly could cut the influence of congressmen in the Andean nation's judiciary and state companies, and force them to live in the poor constituencies they represent.

In Pisuli, which clings to a bleak hillside overlooking a glitzy residential district, many are unsure what the new assembly would do but back it as the brainchild of the dashing, charismatic Correa. “I see hope in him, hope we never had,” said Gloria Sanchez, 57, a tiny mother of five who collects scrap metal for a living. “I really don't know what a new assembly can do, but we need change. I trust Correa,” she added, impervious to a chill, misty drizzle soaking the world's second-highest capital.

Although a Cedatos-Gallup poll found 63 percent of voters in the world's top banana exporter would back the new assembly, 98 percent did not fully understand what powers it would have.

If Ecuadoreans vote “yes” Sunday, there will be an election for assembly members later this year, most likely in September or October.

CHAVEZ ALLY

Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has ruffled Wall Street with his vows to renegotiate oil deals and the national debt.

But while the opposition warns in television campaigns that Correa is turning into a dictator and centering power around himself like Chavez, poncho-clad Indians have marched through poor mountain hamlets with placards saying “Vote Yes”.

“Correa is the new outsider who battles the establishment and that has made him very attractive for Ecuadoreans,” said Carlos Cordova, a pollster with Cedatos-Gallup.

“People identify with him and he is still enjoying his honeymoon after only three months on the job. His popularity is fueling support for the assembly in Sunday's referendum.” But analysts warn that Correa could run into trouble if old foes such as former President Lucio Gutierrez, who was ousted in 2005 amid street protests and turmoil in Congress, get a strong foothold in the assembly, or if powerful Indian groups feel sidelined.

Ecuadorean politics are extremely volatile and Correa is the eighth president in a decade. Even the decision to hold the referendum sparked a bitter dispute in which lawmakers were fired and fought with the police.

Three presidents have been ousted by congressional and popular unrest in the last 10 years.

Michael Shifter, a Latin America analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank, said playing the populist card might not end Ecuador's hair-trigger volatility as Correa wants.

“I'm not sure the constituent assembly is the solution to Ecuador's fragmentation, particularity for the way Correa antagonizes the political forces,” he said.

“Correa's confrontational style may play well politically but not solve the country's instability.”

Opinion: The "Hot-Air" Debate on Iraq

Here's another great "polemic" on Iraq from my good friend Curt Jones. (Click here to read his previous posting on this blog.) Curt is a retired foreign service officer who spent practically all of his thirty year career in the Middle East. Now a leading expert on the region, he's a relentless critic of the Bush administration's Iraq and Palestine policies, but he faults the Democrats just as severely for their failure to pose a serious challenge to those policies.*

THE HOT-AIR DEBATE
Surge versus Redeploy Equals Zero

       Congress is perpetrating another fraud. This time the issue is Iraq. The debate is intense, but off-target: The result is nonbinding, and both sides are missing the point.

       From the surgers, we hear irrelevant allusions to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the resolve and sacrifice that made America great. Worse, they are recycling the myth about “Islamic fascism” while avoiding the elementary fact that the illegal and misguided invasion was the original sin.

       From the redeployers, we hear desperate efforts to clothe disengagement in artful phrases that don’t sound like surrender, backed by overoptimistic expressions of hope that the challenge will galvanize the Maliki government into taking charge of a situation that may have gotten out of any faction’s control.

       Neither side tells us the truth, because we voters have never been good at swallowing bad news. Politicians avoid it like the plague. No one is going to admit that an American soldier died in vain. But after four years, three thousand deaths on 9/ll, tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and three million Iraqi refugees, the time is long past to bite the bullet: American policy in the Middle East is imperialist, and imperialism always loses.

       It started with oil: Back in 1945, FDR made a seemingly innocuous promise to protect Saudi Arabia in return for an inside track to Saudi oil. Today, that promise has snowballed into security guarantees to seven precarious regimes, backed by an overwhelming complex of ground, air, and naval installations across the Middle East.

       In 1948, America orchestrated the insertion of a Jewish state into a non-Jewish environment. As the inevitable Arab-Iranian-Israeli conflict escalated over the years, American support for Israel escalated in synchrony, until their foreign policies were inextricable. Whenever Israel went to war, America joined in – though generally behind the scenes.

       On December 26, 1991, the Russian flag replaced the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin, and America awoke to the realization that it was the last superpower left standing. Statesmen would have seized that opportunity to enlist the new American colossus in the cause of international comity, but America’s leaders of the time were politicians; they seized the opportunity for aggrandizement of parochial American interests. In September 2002 President George W. Bush issued “The National Security Strategy of the United States” – a blueprint for world domination. It professes dedication to freedom, but it is couched in the chauvinist rhetoric of triumphalism.

       In this spirit, America has staked a partisan claim to Middle East oil, underwritten preeminence of Jewish rights over Arab rights in Palestine, and waged a campaign to promote docile regimes across the Middle East.

       In March 2003, this campaign culminated in the disastrous effort to change the regime in Iraq. There’s nothing we can do about that now. Iraq is out of American control. Our problem is to get the troops out. The operative questions are how soon and how far.

       If you’re a politician, timing is everything. When disaster looms, you do your best to stave it off until you’re out of office. As for redeployment, reasonable observers have expressed the hope that we might be able to confine the conflagration to Iraq by maintaining military readiness around the periphery. This strategy is not promising. Someday the United States will choose to take all its ground troops out of the Middle East.

       For now, let’s quash those rumors of American and/or Israeli preemption – possibly even nuclear – against Iran. If Washington starts to display signs of dementia, the public has an existential interest in taking corrective action.

* Curtis Jones is the author of Divide and Perish, the Geopolitics of the Middle East (AuthorHouse 2006).

A blog for everyone else!

I've found I need a place I can publish stuff that isn't narrowly relevant to any of my country blogs (see links in right margin). This is where that "stuff" will be posted.