Washington’s World: April 25th-May 1st

The opposing dynamics underlying US policy toward Libya – humanitarian interventionism and realist caution – remain on display in the decision to commit predator drones to the NATO operations. While the military leadership continues to resist deeper involvement, an emerging coalition of liberal and conservative 'hawks' is pushing President Obama to remain engaged. Our White House contacts report that he is unenthusiastic. Nonetheless, the difficulties being experienced by the non-US members of NATO make it difficult for him to turn his back completely. We expect, therefore, a continuation of the present approach of background support rather than operational leadership. US officials are more concerned by the developing crises in Syria and Yemen. Additionally, negations about longer-term US military presence in Iraq are not making progress. Finally, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu due to visit Washington next month for an address a joint session of Congressand with the prospect of a vote on Palestinian statehood looming at the forthcoming September session of the UN General Assembly, Obama's advisers are debating whether he should step in with a new offer of more hands-on US commitment to the peace process. Privately senior officials tell us that, while a presidential speech is in draft, the White House political staff does not believe that Obama should risk political capital at this stage by too high a profile on this issue. We believe that those waiting for a substantive new proposal from the US will be disappointed. Increasingly Obama is devoting priority to his reelection bid, conducting six fund-raising events during a recent 2-day visit to the West Coast. While these are early days, Obama remains the man to beat – albeit that his own poll numbers are only modest. He can take encouragement from a gradually improving domestic economy and continuing tensions between pragmatic Republican leaders and their more ideologically rigid foot soldiers.  As we have noted before, these will play out in the upcoming debate about the federal debt ceiling. Top Democratic and Republican officials are trying to work our a deal, but grass roots opposition mean that it is by no means sure that they will succeed.

Sources on Middle East

The New Cold War

There has long been bad blood between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but popular protests across the Middle East now threaten to turn the rivalry into a tense and dangerous regional divide.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704116404576262744106483816.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_News_BlogsModule#printMode

Iranian Winter Could Chill the Arab Spring

From nukes to terrorist proxies, Tehran's power grows—and Washington dithers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704641604576254843851472796.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Arming Libya's Rebels: A Debate in Doha

By Charles McDermid / Doha Thursday, Apr. 14, 2011

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2065124,00.html

U.S. airstrikes in Libya continue despite announced shift to NATO

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/sc-dc-0414-libya-airstrikes-20110413,0,6095912.story

Kerry: Obama wasted 1 1/2 years on Mideast peace, may try again soon

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that President Barack Obama frittered away the first half of his term on an ill-advised approach to seeking peace in the Middle East, but may "step out" within weeks with a new initiative to break the gridlock.

Speaking to a gathering in Washington of leaders from the Muslim world, Kerry said the administration's effort to set the table for broader talks by resolving the impasse over Jewish settlements in the West Bank was futile. However, he suggested that Obama may move soon to get the peace process going in order to head off a possible showdown at the United Nations in September.

"I was opposed to the prolonged effort on the settlements in a public way because I never thought it would work and, in fact, we have wasted a year and a half on something that for a number of reasons was not achievable," Kerry told the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, organized by the Brookings Institution's Saban Center. "I think it sort of put the cart ahead of the horse in a way here. The key is to get to the security and borders definition and if you can get the borders definition you’ve solved the problem of the settlements. But we can’t get that discussion right now."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit Washington next month. Kerry said Netanyahu is likely to address the U.S. Congress and will have an opportunity to present a peace plan that could help defuse a confrontation at the United Nations in September over a proposed vote on the international organization formally recognizing Gaza and the West Bank as a Palestinian state.

"I suspect that it’s very possible that President Obama will even step out ahead of that and will possibly-- I say possibly--make his own contribution to where he thinks the process ought to go in the meantime. Conceivably, that can come together in a responsible effort that produces a transition here," Kerry said. "I think we can get to borders and the fundamental issues fairly quickly and its conceivable that between now and September we will do that."

CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who was moderating the panel discussion, responded with skepticism bordering on disbelief. "You’re predicting a burst of diplomatic activity and achievement in six months that has not happened in two years?” he asked.

“I’m going way out on a limb and predicting the possibility of it,” said Kerry, while hinting that his speculation was informed by some concrete knowledge about a renewed U.S. effort.. “But I think I’m giving you some relatively good vision of what might unfold here."

A White House spokesman declined to comment on Kerry's criticism or his tentative prediction of a new U.S. initiative. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is schedule to address the same conference Tuesday evening.

Kerry called the Palestinian effort to seek formal recognition at the United Nations a "mistake" on the part of Palestinian President Abbas that could backfire and have "dangerous" consequences in various countries in the region.

"I hope that a diplomatic initiative can in fact preclude unintended consequences but, believe me, everyone is well aware of those dangers of September and I think there will be a genuine effort to try to avoid things that you’re not initiating and controlling yourself," the senator said

Another panelist, Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, said simply prodding Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate won't work because Israel feels too secure and the Palestinian leadership too weak.

"The problem will remain unresolved unless the United States steps forward," Brzezinski said. "I think it behooves the United states to step forward with a generalized framework of what the peace has to be."

If so inclined, you can view video of Kerry and Brezinski's comments after the jump. Pick it up around 1:04:45.

For Syrian Christians, protests are cause for fear

The Washington Post

April 23, 

DAMASCUS, Syria — In the days leading up to Easter Sunday, Syria’s Christian community should have been busy preparing. This year, however, signs of festivities were hardly visible.
Following anti-government protests that have been violently suppressed, leaving about 300 people dead, street parades and other forms of public celebration have been declared illegal by authorities.
Meanwhile, fear is mounting among the nation’s Christians that the uprising that has rocked this tightly controlled country over the past month will bring them only misery.
For decades, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has protected Christian interests by enforcing its strictly secular program and by curbing the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. In recent years, Assad has visited the town of Maaloula and other Christian communities to pray and pass on messages of goodwill. At Christmas, he addresses Syria’s Christians, carrying similar tidings. Assad is himself from the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam, and many Christians feel they can relate to him.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population, have largely stayed out of the anti-government protests, fearing what change could bring. Many are wealthy and could have much to lose if the uprising succeeds. Christians also occupy a disproportionately high percentage of senior positions within the government and tend to work in the educated professions as doctors, dentists and engineers.
As protests have spread by demonstrators demanding Assad’s ouster and a chance for Syrians to choose their leader after decades of autocratic rule by Assad and his father, the government has claimed that it is being challenged by Islamic radicals. The demonstrators deny that, but many Christians appear to believe it.
Dozens of planned weddings in Christian villages across Damascus have been canceled for fear of attack by extremists. Christians are withdrawing funds from banks, keeping their children home from school and not venturing out to socialize.
According to a person from the Christian neighborhood of Qassaa, letters were sent to three local churches last week with the message “you’re next.” The person, who like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, reported that on Friday, pro- and anti-regime demonstrators clashed in the neighborhood and shots were fired near a church.
In the town of Qatana, 20 miles southwest of Damascus, helicopters circle overhead and army trucks drive the streets. Several men from the town said terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Iraq were caught trying to detonate a bomb at a local church two weeks ago, but that claim could not be verified.
Many Christians interviewed said their biggest fear was the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Syria. About half as many worshipers as usual attended Good Friday church services this year because people are afraid to leave their homes.
There are numerous Christian denominations in Syria, including Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Catholic and Greek Catholic. They share a history in these lands that dates back nearly 2,000 years.
In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and home to a large Christian population, churchgoers are exercising caution this Easter.
Like Damascus, Aleppo has largely been bypassed by the anti-regime protests that have swept across Syria in recent weeks. But here, too, people are anxious. And online, in social networking forums such as Facebook and Twitter, they are becoming increasingly nationalistic.
“That sometimes reaches the level of attacking and insulting anyone who posts something that contains criticism of the state of affairs in Syria,” said one Armenian Christian man from the Villat area of Aleppo, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Despite the escalating violence — more people were killed Friday than any previous day during Syria’s uprising — few Christians are talking of leaving Syria should the security situation deteriorate.
“I came back from America after 14 years to build this house and to be with my parents again,” said a Christian woman from Aleppo. “I will not leave my house, no matter what happens.”

U.S. and Allies Seek a Refuge for Qaddafi

NYtimes

April 16, 2011

By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has begun seeking a country, most likely in Africa, that might be willing to provide shelter to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi if he were forced out of Libya, even as a new wave of intelligence reports suggest that no rebel leader has emerged as a credible successor to the Libyan dictator.

The intense search for a country to accept Colonel Qaddafi has been conducted quietly by the United States and its allies, even though the Libyan leader has shown defiance in recent days, declaring that he has no intention of yielding to demands that he leave his country, and intensifying his bombardment of the rebel city of Misurata.

The effort is complicated by the likelihood that he would be indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the bombing ofPan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, and atrocities inside Libya.

One possibility, according to three administration officials, is to find a country that is not a signatory to the treaty that requires countries to turn over anyone under indictment for trial by the court, perhaps giving Colonel Qaddafi an incentive to abandon his stronghold in Tripoli.

The move by the United States to find a haven for Colonel Qaddafi may help explain how the White House is trying to enforce President Obama’s declaration that the Libyan leader must leave the country but without violating Mr. Obama’s refusal to put troops on the ground.

The United Nations Security Council has authorized military strikes to protect the Libyan population, but not to oust the leadership. But Mr. Obama and the leaders of Britain and France, among others, have declared that to be their goals, apart from the military campaign.

“We learned some lessons from Iraq, and one of the biggest is that Libyans have to be responsible for regime change, not us,” one senior administration official said on Saturday. “What we’re simply trying to do is find some peaceful way to organize an exit, if the opportunity arises.”

About half of the countries in Africa have not signed or ratified the Rome Statute, which requires nations to abide by commands from the international court. (The United States has also not ratified the statute, because of concerns about the potential indictment of its soldiers or intelligence agents.) Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, suggested late last month that several African countries could offer Colonel Qaddafi a haven, but he did not identify them.

Even though Colonel Qaddafi has had close business dealings with the leaders of countries like Chad, Mali and Zimbabwe, and there have been pro-Qaddafi rallies elsewhere recently across the continent, it was unclear which, if any, nations were emerging as likely candidates to take in Colonel Qaddafi. The African Union has been quietly sounding out potential hosts, but those negotiations have been closely guarded.

As the drama over Colonel Qaddafi’s future has intensified, new details are emerging of the monthlong NATO bombing campaign, which, in the minds of many world leaders, has expanded into a campaign to press the Libyan military and Colonel Qaddafi’s aides to turn against him.

That effort has gone more slowly than some expected; after the defection of the former intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, no other senior officials have broken with the man who has ruled Libya for 42 years.

Six countries — Britain, Norway, Denmark, France, Canada and Belgium — have provided more than 60 aircraft that are conducting airstrikes against Libyan targets that attack civilians. But NATO commanders say they are still struggling to come up with at least eight more warplanes to ensure the alliance can sustain a longer-term operation and relieve strain on pilots now flying repeated combat missions.

The United States, which carried out the largest share of strike missions before handing off control of the operation to NATO on April 4, has promised additional fighter-bombers and ground-attack planes if NATO requests them. While some European officials have privately complained that the United States should resume a leading role in the missions, American officials say they have not received any formal requests for more aircraft.

Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, asserted that in a month’s time the coalition has accomplished three major objectives: saving the de facto rebel capital of Benghazi from becoming the site of a civilian atrocity, setting up an international command to protect civilians and clear the skies of Libyan aircraft, and providing modest amounts of humanitarian assistance.

Still, the NATO countries flying ground-attack missions operate under different degrees of caution when striking targets that could hurt civilians or damage mosques, schools or hospitals, complicating the campaign, a senior American military official said. Some pilots have refused to drop their bombs for this reason, the official said, but allied air-war planners cannot predict which pilots will be matched against particular targets.

“Without a doubt, it is frustrating working through all this to get maximum effect for our efforts and dealing with all these variants,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upsetting coalition partners.

American officials concede that the rebel leaders have not settled on who might succeed Colonel Qaddafi if he is ousted, and some fear that tribal warfare could break out if there is no consensus figure who could bind the country together.

White House officials say that while they would have liked to see Colonel Qaddafi depart already, they believe that pressure is building.

“There are aspects  of the passage of time that work against Qaddafi, if we can cut him off from weapons, material and cash,” Mr. Rhodes said. He added that “it affects the calculations of the people around him. But it will take time for the opposition group to gel.”

This month, an American envoy, Chris Stevens, was sent to Benghazi to learn more about the Transitional National Council. The group has pledged to work toward new presidential and parliamentary elections after Colonel Qaddafi’s ouster, uphold human rights, draft a constitution and encourage the formation of political parties. Mr. Stevens is expected to stay as long as a month, security permitting, State Department officials said.

The United Nations special envoy to Libya, Abdelilah al-Khatib, a former Jordanian foreign minister, is also meeting with opposition figures, as well as with members of Colonel Qaddafi’s government to explore possible diplomatic settlement.

Perhaps the most prominent member of the government in waiting is Mahmoud Jibril, a planning expert who defected from the Qaddafi government. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has met twice with Mr. Jibril, who American diplomats say is the group’s most polished and savvy public figure. He also spoke to several NATO, Arab and African ministers who gathered in Doha, Qatar, last Wednesday to discuss the Libya crisis.

Another leading council member is Ali Tarhouni, who was appointed finance minister of the rebels’ shadow government. Mr. Tarhouni, who teaches economics at the University of Washington, returned to Libya in February after more than 35 years in exile to advise the opposition on economic matters.

“With respect to the opposition, we are learning more all the time,” Mrs. Clinton said in Berlin on Friday. “We are pooling our information. There are a number of countries that have significant ties to members of the oppositions, who have a presence in Benghazi that enables them to collect information. Our envoy is still in Benghazi and meeting with a broad cross-section of people.”

Mrs. Clinton told NATO ministers that the coalition had acknowledged the transitional council was “a legitimate and important interlocutor for the Libyan people.” She added: “We all need to deepen our engagement with and increase our support for the opposition.”

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Berlin.

Israeli PM to Propose Peace Deal in Congress

WSJ

April 15, 2011

By JOSHUA MITNICK

TEL AVIV—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to unveil a new Middle East peace initiative in an address to the U.S. Congress next month, in a bid to counter a unilateral Palestinian drive for international recognition of statehood.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and Mr. Netanyahu made separate announcements Thursday of the planned appearance—which doesn't yet have a specific date—confirming weeks of speculation that the Israeli prime minister would deliver a major policy address in the U.S.

Speaking to members of his Likud party Thursday, the Israeli prime minister said he would use the address to discuss a way to "bring a secure peace between us and our neighbors. Not a peace on paper, not a peace of ceremonies and lawns, but a peace that will last and ensure our future and security."

No more details on the Palestinian portion of the speech were available. But Mr. Netanyahu said he would also address Iran's nuclear program and recent domestic unrest across the Middle East.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently signaled the Obama administration's intention for a renewed push on Arab-Israeli peacemaking after a months-long hiatus. The U.S. last year failed to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations after Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank prompted the Palestinians to boycott the talks.

Mr. Boehner said in a statement that "we look forward to hearing the Prime Minister's views on how we can continue working together for peace freedom and security."

Mr. Netanyahu has come under growing pressure in Israel and the U.S. to develop a diplomatic initiative to undercut a Palestinian campaign to obtain a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly that would recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is opposed to the campaign, viewing it as an attempt to sidestep bilateral negotiations and dictate the terms of a peace settlement.

The Israeli press is comparing Netanyahu's upcoming Congressional address in importance to his June 2009 speech at Israel's Bar Ilan University in which he first threw support behind the idea of a Palestinian state.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a close ally of the prime minister, has warned of a "diplomatic tsunami" facing Israel if the Palestinian drive for recognition succeeds.

This week, the Palestinian Authority got endorsements from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, declaring it ready to function as a sovereign state. Plans to convene this week the so-called Quartet of peace process sponsors scheduled for Friday were postponed, Israeli news reports said, because of disputes over a European proposal to adopt a series of principles for a peace deal opposed by Israel.

Dan Meridor, a cabinet member from Netanyahu's party, told reporters and diplomats last week that he believed regional unrest has shortened the time frame for a peace deal because it could strengthen militants from Hamas at the expense of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Yet, Netanyahu and others in his government maintain that regional instability requires Israel to be even more cautious in making concessions for peace.

In recent weeks, the Netanyahu government has proposed an interim peace proposal to establish Palestinian state in temporary borders, but the Palestinians swiftly rejected that.

The Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday that the prime minister also is mulling an initiative that would trigger peace progress by withdrawing forces unilaterally from parts of the West Bank, but not from Jewish settlements.

An Israeli government official said Mr. Netanyahu is studying possible unilateral steps to encourage progress with the Palestinians if peace talks cannot be restarted, but wouldn't comment on exactly what.

Libya’s Pathway to Peace

NYtimes

April 14, 2011

By BARACK OBAMA, DAVID CAMERON, and NICOLAS SARKOZY

Together with our NATO allies and coalition partners, the United States, France and Britain have been united from the start in responding to the crisis in Libya, and we are united on what needs to happen in order to end it.

Even as we continue our military operations today to protect civilians in Libya, we are determined to look to the future. We are convinced that better times lie ahead for the people of Libya, and a pathway can be forged to achieve just that.

We must never forget the reasons why the international community was obliged to act in the first place. As Libya descended into chaos with Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi attacking his own people, the Arab League called for action. The Libyan opposition called for help. And the people of Libya looked to the world in their hour of need. In an historic resolution, the United Nations Security Council authorized all necessary measures to protect the people of Libya from the attacks upon them. By responding immediately, our countries, together with an international coalition, halted the advance of Qaddafi’s forces and prevented the bloodbath that he had promised to inflict upon the citizens of the besieged city of Benghazi.

Tens of thousands of lives have been protected. But the people of Libya are still suffering terrible horrors at Qaddafi’s hands each and every day. His rockets and shells rained down on defenseless civilians in Ajdabiya. The city of Misurata is enduring a medieval siege, as Qaddafi tries to strangle its population into submission. The evidence of disappearances and abuses grows daily.

Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power. The International Criminal Court is rightly investigating the crimes committed against civilians and the grievous violations of international law. It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government. The brave citizens of those towns that have held out against forces that have been mercilessly targeting them would face a fearful vengeance if the world accepted such an arrangement. It would be an unconscionable betrayal.

Furthermore, it would condemn Libya to being not only a pariah state, but a failed state too. Qaddafi has promised to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian ships and airliners. And because he has lost the consent of his people any deal that leaves him in power would lead to further chaos and lawlessness. We know from bitter experience what that would mean. Neither Europe, the region, or the world can afford a new safe haven for extremists.

There is a pathway to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya — a future without Qaddafi that preserves Libya’s integrity and sovereignty, and restores her economy and the prosperity and security of her people. This needs to begin with a genuine end to violence, marked by deeds not words. The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging, including Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zintan, and return to their barracks. However, so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good. At that point, the United Nations and its members should help the Libyan people as they rebuild where Qaddafi has destroyed — to repair homes and hospitals, to restore basic utilities, and to assist Libyans as they develop the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.

This vision for the future of Libya has the support of a broad coalition of countries, including many from the Arab world. These countries came together in London on March 29 and founded a Contact Group which met this week in Doha to support a solution to the crisis that respects the will of the Libyan people.

Today, NATO and our partners are acting in the name of the United Nations with an unprecedented international legal mandate. But it will be the people of Libya, not the U.N., who choose their new constitution, elect their new leaders, and write the next chapter in their history.

Britain, France and the United States will not rest until the United Nations Security Council resolutions have been implemented and the Libyan people can choose their own future.

Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States. David Cameron is prime minister of Britain and Nicolas Sarkozy is president of France.

U.S. "Democracy" Advisors Suddenly in Demand

MIDEAST
Barbara Slavin 

WASHINGTON, Apr 14 (IPS) - For years, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organisations devoted to democracy promotion toiled in the Middle East with little expectation of success.
Now, with the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia toppled and rebellions raging from Libya to Yemen, these officials and organisations face unprecedented opportunities but also new questions about the U.S. role.

Critics cite the Barack Obama administration's inconsistency in failing to intervene more forcefully against government repression of dissidents particularly in Bahrain, where the United States has run into Saudi determination to preserve a minority Sunni regime at all cost.

In Egypt and Tunisia, however, the U.S. has pivoted quickly from "democracy promotion to democracy consolidation", said J. Scott Carpenter, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration in charge of democracy programmes in the Middle East and North Africa.

Carpenter, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said U.S. aid organisations and NGOs have been "overwhelmed by the demand" for technical assistance on how to organise parties and run campaigns, particularly in Egypt, where legislative elections are due in September and presidential elections before the end of the year.

"There is an incredible opportunity to leverage the relationships" Americans have built with Arab civil society groups during the years when it seemed that autocratic regimes would never change, he said.

Others worry that organisations such as the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (IRI), which are funded by the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy, and the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development lack the personnel to evaluate all the requests from civil society groups for about 65 million dollars in reprogrammed U.S. aid for Egypt.

"It's a pretty chaotic atmosphere and that's not usually a recipe for doing things well," said Michelle Dunne, an expert on Middle East democracy programmes at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, the military-led transitional Egyptian government would prefer more economic aid to compensate for the losses caused by political unrest and uncertainty. Dunne said two Egyptian officials are in Washington this week lobbying for debt relief.

According to Dunne, Egypt pays 330 million dollars a year in debt service – more than its annual 250 million dollars in U.S. economic aid – to service a U.S. debt of 3.1 billion dollars. In the current austere U.S. economic climate, however, such requests are not meeting an enthusiastic response.

Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, also said Egypt needs more economic support than the Obama administration is prepared to give. At the same time, he faults U.S. officials for failing to hold Egypt's interim government to its promises to be inclusive and transparent in organising the transition to a post-Hosni Mubarak democracy.

The military council rushed through amendments to the constitution and a Mar. 19 referendum in which 77 percent of those voting approved the changes, which establish term limits for the president but allow him to retain extraordinary powers. Turnout in the referendum was under 50 percent and many secular groups complained that they had been given no opportunity to comment on the amendments.

Meanwhile, the emergency law in effect in Egypt since 1981 has yet to be repealed. Police have arrested, beaten and even shot democracy advocates and sought to break up rallies in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

The situation is far worse in Bahrain, where scores have been killed, half a dozen political prisoners have died in custody and the government moved this week to outlaw long-standing political parties representing the island's Shiite majority.

While the Obama administration has been consistent rhetorically in opposing the use of force and supporting universal rights to free expression, "where they've been inconsistent is in the level of effort they've provided," said the Carnegie Endowment's Dunne.

She attributed some of the U.S. failings to a losing struggle with Saudi Arabia, which sent troops to Bahrain to back the local Sunni monarchy and objected bitterly when Washington nudged Mubarak aside.

"We always thought we had a set of common interests with the Saudis but always knew that we had different values and that can't be swept under the rug anymore," Dunne said.

Even where the U.S. appears to have nimbly adjusted policy to support democratic gains, it faces scepticism and suspicion about its motives. In Egypt, critics allege that the U.S. is trying to boost secular parties against the Muslim Brotherhood, an 83-year-old organisation that is finally able to compete openly for political support.

"An organic explosion is going on and no Western hand can help," Hisham Hellyer, an Egypt expert at the University of Warwick and organiser of a new interactive website,Tahrir Squared, told the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank, earlier this week. He said U.S. efforts would actually bolster the Brotherhood, which is expected to win 15-25 percent of seats in a new parliament.

Any Egyptian political groups that take outside money "will have their credibility shot", Hellyer said.

However, Thomas Garrett, vice president for programmes at IRI, said the intention of groups like his is "not to level the playing field between particular groups but to level the playing field in general."

Garrett said that U.S. aid provides training for multiple groups at one time and does not come in the form of cash payments to individual political parties.

While current grant restrictions prevent U.S. contractors from assisting the Muslim Brotherhood, Garrett said his organisation had trained Islamic groups in other countries, such as Indonesia and Iraq. He did not rule out similar assistance to a party or parties formed by the Muslim Brothers in Egypt.

"It's exhilarating," he said of IRI's activities in Egypt. "We've been working since 2005 with Egyptian political activists and now the democratic universe has vastly expanded."

(END/2011)

NATO runs short on some munitions in Libya

By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, Friday, April 15, 8:46 PM

Less than a month into the Libyan conflict, NATO is running short of precision bombs, highlighting the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action over an extended period of time, according to senior NATO and U.S. officials.
The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months.
U.S. strike aircraft that participated in the early stage of the operation, before the United States relinquished command to NATO and assumed what President Obama called a “supporting” role, have remained in the theater “on 12-hour standby” with crews “constantly briefed on the current situation,” a NATO official said.
So far, the NATO commander has not requested their deployment. Several U.S. military officials said they anticipated being called back into the fight, although a senior administration official said he expected other countries to announce “in the next few days” that they would contribute aircraft equipped with the laser-guided munitions.
Opposition spokesmen in the western Libyan city of Misurata, under steady bombardment by government shelling, said Friday that Gaddafi’s forces had used cluster bombs, and Human Rights Watch said its representatives on the ground had witnessed the explosion of cluster munitions in civilian areas there. The Libyan government denied the weapons had been used.
A spokesman for the Misurata City Council appealed for NATO to send ground troops to secure the port that is the besieged city’s only remaining humanitarian lifeline.
The opposition has also repeatedly called for an increase in NATO airstrikes. The six countries conducting the air attacks, led by Britain and France, were unsuccessful at a meeting this week in Berlin in persuading more alliance members to join them.
NATO officials said that their operational tempo has not decreased since the United States relinquished command of the Libya operation and withdrew its strike aircraft at the beginning of April. More planes, they said, would not necessarily result immediately in more strike missions.
But, they said, the current bombing rate by the participating nations is not sustainable. “The reason we need more capability isn’t because we aren’t hitting what we see — it’s so that we can sustain the ability to do so. One problem is flight time, the other is munitions,” said another official, one of several who were not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.
European arsenals of laser-guided bombs, the NATO weapon of choice in the Libyan campaign, have been quickly depleted, officials said. Although the United States has significant stockpiles, its munitions do not fit on the British- and French-made planes that have flown the bulk of the missions.
Britain and France have each contributed about 20 strike aircraft to the campaign. Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada have each contributed six — all of them U.S.-manufactured and compatible with U.S. weaponry.
Since the end of March, more than 800 strike missions have been flown, with U.S. aircraft conducting only three, targeting static Libyan air defense installations. The United States still conducts about 25 percent of the overall sorties over Libya, largely intelligence, jamming and refueling missions.
Other NATO countries, along with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan, have contributed planes to enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Gaddafi’s use of airpower, but so far have declined to participate in the strike missions.
After the Berlin meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rassmussen said that 10 more aircraft were needed and that he was confident they would be supplied. A U.S. official said that Italy — which earlier in the week said it was not interested — may contribute planes to the ground attack mission, and that the Arab participants might also do so.
But with Gaddafi’s forces and the rebel army locked in a stalemate, Obama has resisted calls from opposition leaders, and some hardline lawmakers in this country, to move U.S. warplanes back into a leading role.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other have called on Obama to redeploy U.S. AC-130 gunships, which are considered more effective over populated areas.
Although the gunships flew several missions early in the operation, Gen. Carter Ham, who commanded the mission before it was turned over to NATO, said last week that they were frequently grounded because of weather and other concerns.
The slow-moving aircraft, which flew as low as 4,000 feet over Libya, are also considerably more vulnerable than jet fighters to surface-to-air missiles. While much of Libya’s stationary air defenses have been destroyed, Ham said Gaddafi was believed to have about 20,000 shoulder-held SAMS at the beginning of the conflict, and “most” of them are still unaccounted for.
Concerns that supplies of jet-launched precision bombs are growing short in Europe have reignited long-standing controversies over both burden-sharing and compatibility within NATO. While allied jets have largely followed the U.S. lead and converted to precision munitions over the last decade, they have struggled to keep pace, according to senior U.S. military officials.
Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank. “Maybe they were just planning on using their air force for air shows.”
Despite U.S. badgering, European allies have been slow in some cases to modify their planes and other weapons systems so they can accommodate U.S. bombs. Retooling these fighter jets so that they are compatible with U.S. systems requires money, and all European militaries have faced significant cuts in recent years.
Typically, the British and French militaries buy munitions in batches and stockpile them. When arsenals start to run low, factories must be retooled and production lines restarted to replace the diminished stock, all of which can take time and additional money, said Elizabeth Quintana, an aerospace analyst at the Royal United Service Institute in London.

deyoungk@washpost.com

Pace of Attacks in Libya Conflict Is Dividing NATO

NYtimes

April 12, 2011

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — With the United States limiting itself to a supporting role in the conflict in Libya, fissures opened among NATO allies on Tuesday over the scope and intensity of attacks against the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, officials here and in Europe said.

On the eve of two important meetings this week, France and Britain openly called on the alliance and its partners to intensify airstrikes on Libyan government troops to protect civilians, prompting an unusual public retort from NATO’s command that it was carrying out the military operation under the terms of the United Nations Security Council resolution that authorized force.

“As long as regime forces continue attacking their own people, we will intervene to protect them,” Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, the NATO operational commander, said in Naples, Italy. “NATO’s resolve is in its mandate to protect the civilian population.”

Arriving for talks in Luxembourg with other European leaders, the British foreign minister, William Hague, said that the allies had to “maintain and intensify” the military effort, noting that Britain had already deployed extra ground attack planes.

“Of course, it would be welcome if other countries also did the same,” Mr. Hague said.

His remarks, echoed by Foreign Minister Alain Juppé of France, reflected what officials have described as a complex and at times convoluted coalition, with many participating countries refusing to carry out airstrikes against forces on the ground, even as their planes patrol the skies over Libya.

Britain and France, for example, are now flying the bulk of the attack missions, with Norway, Denmark and Canada also striking Libyan targets on the ground. But other countries, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are taking less aggressive roles, enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya or conducting reconnaissance missions, in a nod to political considerations back home.

The varying tactics reflect the different ways in which each country in the coalition views the mission, and how tough it has been to corral all the participants into focused attacks.

In Washington, Obama administration officials sought to tamp down a growing sense of concern among some military analysts that the combination of the Americans’ back-seat role, NATO’s inexperience in waging a complicated air campaign against moving targets and botched communications with the ragtag rebel army had thrown the mission into disarray. In the past week, NATO pilots were involved in two friendly-fire instances that killed well over a dozen rebel fighters.

Meantime, as some allies privately hope for the return of the American-led ground-attack missions, other coalition partners have expressed concern that their supplies of precision-guided bombs are running low after more than 800 strike missions.

“We have every confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the tasks of enforcing the arms embargo as well as the no-fly zone and the protection of civilians in Libya,” Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said Tuesday. “As the president said, the U.S. and other key partners had capabilities that they brought to this operation upfront, and then our role would diminish as NATO stepped up and took command and control of the operation. And that’s what’s happened.”

The United States has worked hard to limit its role in the Libyan campaign, arguing that it has its plate full with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has also argued that Libya’s history and proximity to Europe make it a European problem, and that it was the French, in particular, who had argued for aggressive intervention.

Still, officials in Washington and Europe expressed frustration and worry about the coordination of the campaign, though a senior official of the Obama administration said it was willing to accept the complications inherent in the command of the operation because “there’s a huge benefit in having a wider coalition.”

The countries involved in the conflict are to hold separate meetings this week to try to maintain a consensus on forcing Colonel Qaddafi to end attacks on cities held by rebel forces.

In Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday, representatives of one group of allied countries will discuss the diplomatic initiatives now under way, led by the United Nations special envoy for Libya, Abdel Ilah al-Khatib, and African leaders. Libya’s former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who fled to Britain, is also expected to attend. NATO members begin a meeting the next day in Berlin.

The American delegation to the meetings in Doha will be led by Under Secretary of State William J. Burns. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who met with the Jordanian foreign minister and the emir of Qatar in Washington on Tuesday, will attend the NATO meeting in Berlin.

The separate meetings are themselves a sign of the bifurcated political and military leadership of the coalition, whose members remain divided over the means of the operation, if not the end: a political transition in Libya that sees the removal of Colonel Qaddafi.

“Forming coalitions is complicated enough,” the senior administration official said. “Sustaining them is sometimes equally complicated. It requires a lot of hard work and tending.”

A European diplomat expressed concern that the efforts to negotiate a cease-fire — rebuffed so far by the rebels and government loyalists — could have a potential “demobilization effect” among some of the militaries now involved, because it might entice some countries to slow down the assault. Referring to Colonel Qaddafi, the diplomat insisted that “we have to maintain the military pressure on him” in order to end the conflict.

Several European and NATO diplomats acknowledged on Tuesday that NATO’s initial handling of the air campaign has been plagued with problems and miscommunications. But these officials insisted that with improving weather and lessons learned from a week’s worth of hard knocks, the tempo of operations was steadily improving.

A senior NATO diplomat said, for instance, that the alliance decided only at the end of March how many aircraft it would need to maintain the operation that the United States led for about 10 days. After some reluctance, countries were providing the forces to fill the requirements.

NATO is now flying just under 200 aircraft, with the United States supplying about 40 refueling, reconnaissance and other specialized planes that few if any other countries have. The United States also has about 40 aircraft in reserve, including tank-killing A-10s and AC-130 gunships.

The diplomats said that after a rough start, NATO was getting better at attacking mobile targets by identifying them accurately and quickly and relaying that information to the warplanes. “There is a learning curve, but we are progressing,” a French diplomat said. “The Americans are not indispensable.”

In Brussels, Brig. Gen. Mark van Uhm, NATO chief of operations, said Tuesday that allied warplanes flew an average of 62 bombing runs a day last weekend, about on par with what the American-led operation did.

“We are having an effect,” General van Uhm said. “Qaddafi forces can’t fight how they want to, where they want to or with what weapons they want to.”

Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.