New version of DNS server Trojan Flush.M spotted in the pipe by Joel Hruska

The SANS Internet Storm Center has reported spotting a new version of the Flush.M Trojan nosing around online. The original malware program was isolated and, erm, canned back in December; March's updated model sports a fresh coat of paint and a few new tricks. Both forms of Flush.M are DNS hijackers capable of redirecting entire networks towards malicious DNS servers. The original version of Flush would redirect to DNS servers located at 85.255.112.36 or 85.255.112.41; the update targets 64.86.133.51 and 63.243.173.162.

Flush.M 2.0 sets the DHCP lease time to just one hour and does not specify a DNS Domain Name, does not contain PAD options after the END option, and does set the BootP Broadcast Bit. BootP is typically used for configuring diskless workstations or for rolling out PC installations across a large network. SANS recommends monitoring network traffic for signs that systems are attempting to connect to any unapproved DNS server other than the one approved by the local DHCP server.

The new Trojan poses a measured risk to network security as its capable of affecting traffic flowing to and from systems that are themselves immune to the exploit Flush.M leverages. Server admins who can't keep an eye on DNS connections can try filtering out the IPs listed above, but this option provides little to no long-term protection against future updates to the Trojan; such updates will inevitably include new DNS addresses.

We haven't talked much about DNS security in 2009—at least not yet—but the issue was a hot topic in the latter half of 2008, beginning with security researcher Dan Kaminsky's revelation that he'd worked with a security industry alliance to plug a fundamental flaw in the DNS system. That problem has been solved, but the scare it caused intensified calls for the Internet to move towards the more secure DNSSEC protocol.

The US Commerce Department requested comments on whether ICANN or another body should be responsible for signing the root servers; the department's observations from the comments it gathered have not been published. Data from 2008 suggests that DNS security flaws remain a major source of concern to most security admins and companies, making it all the more important that relatively low-level Trojans like Flush.M are spun down the drain before they can stink up the joint.

Who Rules Pakistan? by Farhana Ali

The celebration in Pakistan is understandable. The New York Times and international media show men dancing in the streets to honor the return of a dismissed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Backed by the Sharif brothers, the lawyers’ movement and the long march worked. But the use of street power to force the Pakistani government to acquiesce could spell trouble in the coming weeks.

I spoke today by phone to a senior commander in the Pakistani military, who wished to remain anonymous. He expressed his concern about the future of Pakistan, should the Chief Justice reopen cases that have been left dormant for over a year. The officer stated, “If the Chief Justice decides to put Musharraf on trial, then the military will see this as interfering in their affairs. The military would never like to see their former chief of the army ridiculed publicly. Also remember that the Chief Justice will always be skeptical about Zardari [the current President] because he reinstated him under pressure from the Army. I can’t imagine that Zardari will tolerate the Chief Justice for long; then there is the case of the missing persons which the Chief Justice has been actively pursuing…The position of the Chief Justice has become a puzzle and would keep causing instability. You will see this in a couple of months.”

What the media and public sources do not reveal is that the same Chief Justice who has been rallying against President Musharraf supported the General’s coup in 1999, which forced Nawaz Sharif into exile. It is ironic that Chaudhry and Sharif are now forging a partnership, if only for political expedience and short-term gains. “This is a marriage of convenience,” said the military officer. The odd alliance also has revealed that the civilian leaders are unfit to govern, unless a coalition is formed. An email today from Dr. Hassan Askari-Rizvi, who writes regularly on political trends in Pakistan stated, “There are several negative aspects of this development which will have implications for politics in Pakistan. The fact that a street agitation had to be launched with a threat to paralyze the government exposes the weakness of the parliament which was irrelevant to the whole issue.”

Not surprisingly, Pakistan is known for its political paralysis and power struggles. It is increasingly clear that President Zardari, who supported a February 25th decision to ban the Sharif brothers from elected office, conceded to pressure from Army Chief Kiyani. In reality, the military is the true gatekeeper of Pakistan. The question remains: will the reinstatement of Chaudhry be viewed as a triumph for justice or a blow to the civilians’ grip on power? The events of the coming weeks will be telling.

Fragile States: "Toughest Development Challenge of Our Era"

Chinese Spy Who Defected Tells All by Bill Gertz

A veteran Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States says that his country's civilian spy service spends most of its time trying to steal secrets overseas but also works to bolster Beijing's Communist Party rule by repressing religious and political dissent internally.

"In some sense you can say that intelligence work between two countries is just like war but without the fire," Li Fengzhi told The Washington Times in an interview aided by an interpreter.

Mr. Li worked for years as an Ministry of State Security intelligence officer inside China before defecting to the United States, where is he awaiting a response to his request for political asylum. He gave a rare, detailed interview to The Times on Sunday regarding the activities of the MSS, China's Communist-controlled civilian spy agency.

His prior work as a Chinese spy was confirmed to The Times by a Western government source familiar with his defection. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of Mr. Li's case.
Mr. Li told The Times that the MSS focuses on both counterintelligence - working against foreign intelligence agencies - and the collection of secrets and technology.

The MSS, however, is unique from other nations' intelligence services in that it is patterned after the former Soviet Union's KGB political police. Its most important mission is "to control the Chinese people to maintain the rule of the Communist Party," he added.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, did not address Mr. Li's comments directly but repeated past Chinese government statements regarding its intelligence activities.
"Allegations of China conducting spying activities against the United States are groundless and unwarranted," he said Wednesday. "China never engages itself in activities that will harm other countries' national interests."

Mr. Wang said communist rule in China produced historic economic and social progress and that China has contributed to a more secure world. "This is a fact no one can deny," Mr. Wang said.

On those who leave the party, Mr. Wang said "there are also a handful of people who betray their faith and leave the party, whose acts as well as some people's political lies will never shadow the great feats of the party."

Mr. Li said he left China's intelligence services to protest the agency's role in government repression of political dissidents and religious groups that are outside of the ruling communist system. The MSS, mainly a foreign intelligence service, is "deeply" involved in domestic repression of nonofficial Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, Mr. Li said. "The Ministry of State Security is actually not doing things for the security of the country, but rather they spend a lot of effort to control the people, the dissidents, the lower-class Chinese people, and make these people suffer and also make their life miserable," he said.

In the interview, he also said:

• China's spy agency is focused on sending spies to infiltrate the U.S. intelligence community, and also on collecting secrets and technology from the United States. "China spends a tremendous effort to send out spies to important countries like the U.S. to collect information," Mr. Li said.

• China is censoring the Internet to prevent the population from knowing about what occurs outside the country.

• An internal MSS manual that is kept secret from most officers outlines the primary role of the service as the promotion of Communist Party's interests.

• Ongoing cooperation between the CIA and FBI and the MSS in countering international terrorism can be constructive, but U.S. agencies need to be cautious because the MSS is mainly an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, and does not directly serve the interests of the Chinese nation or people, he said.

Mr. Li said he worked in the MSS department in charge of gathering economic, political and technical information in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Some of the work involved targeting and recruiting foreign nationals who visit China.

He was born in 1968 in northern China and was first recruited into a provincial Chinese intelligence service before being promoted to the MSS in Beijing after several years. Two groups in China that are a main focus of the MSS are unofficial Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, he said. The MSS also has targeted pro-democracy activists, like those who were involved in the mass demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, he said.

The MSS is China's main civilian spy service that is viewed by U.S. intelligence officials as one of the world's most active in stealing secrets and running foreign spies. The military counterpart, the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army, or 2PLA, is focused on stealing foreign technology, much of it for weapons and military systems.

Together, the Chinese services are estimated to have several thousand trained operatives working around the world, most posing as diplomats, journalists, business representatives and academics. Thousands of other Chinese nationals also function as semiprofessional information gatherers.

Former FBI Special Agent I.C. Smith, a specialist in Chinese counterintelligence, confirmed that the MSS focuses its activities on penetrating U.S. intelligence and government agencies. "The goal of every intelligence agency is to get someone inside, and in the case of Chinese, they use not just intelligence people but academics and everybody else," Mr. Smith said in an interview.

Mr. Li said his access to information that was banned for the general public helped him to turn against the system, including internal reports on party ideology and information on American values of freedom and democracy.

Mr. Li said that as a doctoral candidate, the MSS sent him to study at an American university, an experience that influenced in his decision to defect. In 2004, after he defected, he was declared an enemy of the state by the MSS in at least two notices sent to security offices in China.

According to U.S. counterintelligence officials, China, unlike the Soviet Union, has had only a small number of defections of intelligence officers like Mr. Li over the past 30 years. Another spy who defected was a Chinese intelligence officer known publicly by the code-name "Planesman," who gave the FBI data that led to 1985 arrest of CIA interpreter Larry Wu-Tai Chin. Another intelligence defector was Sr. Col. Yu Jungping, a military intelligence officer once posted to the Chinese Embassy in Washington who came over in the 1990s.

Mr. Li was in Washington to participate in a conference sponsored by the Falun Gong, a Buddhist-oriented group that advocates the replacement of the Chinese communist government. Mr. Li said he announced his formal withdrawal from the Communist Party at the conference, along with that of his father, who is also in the United States. Mr. Li said he is neither a Christian nor Falun Gong member, but that his interest in religion and fear of being persecuted by the MSS contributed to his decision to defect. Mr. Li said he thinks there are significant numbers of pro-democracy MSS officers inside the service, including those at high levels, who do not support the party and are "even anti-Communsit Party" but fear taking any action.
"But I sincerely hope these people can play a special role in getting rid of the Communist Party," Mr. Li said.

The former intelligence officer, whose family left China with him, said it took him several years to change his views. "After a few years of my personal experience inside the system, I really knew that the Communist Party is very bad," he said. "My true ideal, actually, in this Chinese security department is really to do something for the Chinese people and the nation. But I really hated doing things just for the interest of the Communist Party and a lot of times those things that are in the interest of the Communist Party are doing harm to the Chinese people."

Darfur Awaits Real Action by W.P.E.B.

Darfur, with its blatant genocide, was one of those evocative, highly symbolic issues tailor-made for Candidate Obama's "hope and change" routine. He called it a "stain on our hearts" and promised "immediate steps to end the genocide in Darfur," with "increasing pressure" on the Sudanese government to "halt the killing." But the soaring rhetoric as candidate and lack of action as president have, deservedly, brought Mr. Obama growing criticism from the human rights community.

Responding to his critics, on Wednesday Mr. Obama appointed retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration as special envoy to Sudan, taking over from Bush-era envoy Richard Williamson. Jerry Fowler of the Save Darfur Coalition told The Washington Times that there had been a gap between Mr. Obama's promises and his policies, but that "hopefully this gap is closing." He sees a ripe opportunity for diplomatic action to isolate Khartoum.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with her keen eye for the obvious, has stated that "the real question is what kind of pressure can be brought to bear on President Bashir and the government in Khartoum." Presumably she is supposed to supply the answer to that question, not just keep asking it. One of her ideas is to resurrect the "no-fly zone" craze of the 1990s, to stop the use of helicopters in the genocide campaign. The Darfur region is slightly larger than Iraq, and there is little support infrastructure in the area, so this would entail a major investment of money and personnel when the United States is short on both. We also doubt it would have much impact since the Sudanese could simply ramp up their ground operations much as Saddam did.

The normally pacific U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has suggested that the U.S. go one step further and authorize the use of force, in particular American air strikes and the deployment of a U.N. response force. Given the paucity of critical targets in Sudan and the questionable economics of using million-dollar munitions to destroy thousand-dollar hooches, this may be more a case of bravado than sound military strategy.

But these options aside, we doubt the administration will be interested in intervening in Darfur at all, despite the despicable horrors to many hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Many other nations that could get involved are sitting on their hands or averting their eyes. The surge in Afghanistan, the drawdown in Iraq and the continued war against global terrorism are much higher priorities. There are limits to what we can do with force, and limits to the kind of commitments other nations want to make. And isn't this brand of idealism out of fashion these days? Isn't concern about human rights and the suffering of people living under the heel of dictators the very thing that the neocons and other bogeymen took hits for?

For his part, Sudanese President Omar al-Hassan Bashir was unfazed, even emboldened, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity (but not, significantly, genocide). The U.S. does not recognize the ICC, which has made it difficult to ramp up the rhetoric; State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid had to quickly correct his statement that Bashir was a "fugitive from justice," noting lamely that it was "only in the eyes of the ICC." Bashir has ejected 10 human rights groups, and his henchmen recently attacked a U.N. peacekeeping patrol. His international supporters in China and the Arab world have not made a peep. We fear that the people who voted for Mr. Obama expecting meaningful change in Sudan, as well as a million or more poor souls continuing to suffer in Darfur, are unfortunately in for great disappointment.

Army to Phase Out 'Stop-Loss' Practice by Ann Scott Tyson

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that the Army will phase out the unpopular practice of "stop-loss," which mandates that soldiers stay in the Army beyond their service obligation, over the next two years.

In the meantime, the Pentagon will offer extra pay to soldiers who continue to serve under the policy, Gates said.

About 13,000 soldiers are serving under the stop-loss policy, nearly double the total of two years ago. Gates said the goal is to reduce that number by 50 percent by June 2010 and to bring it down to scores of soldiers by March 2011.

"I felt, particularly in these numbers, that it was breaking faith" to keep soldiers in the service after their end date comes up, Gates said. "To hold them against their will . . . is just not the right thing to do," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

The Army Reserve will no longer mobilize units under stop-loss policy beginning in August, the Army National Guard will follow suit in September, and the active-duty Army, by January. Currently, the Army has 1,452 Reserve soldiers, 4,458 National Guard troops and 7,000 active-duty soldiers on stop-loss.

Effective this month, the Army will also pay soldiers who are under stop-loss an extra $500 per month, and those payments will be retroactive to October, when they were authorized by Congress, Gates said.

Still, Gates said that changes "do carry some risk," and that the Army retains the authority to use stop-loss under "extraordinary" circumstances. But he said that should happen only in an "emergency situation where we absolutely had to have somebody's skills for a specific, limited period of time." Such decisions would be made by the secretary of the Army, he said.

Such a renewed use of stop-loss might stem from a sudden demand to deploy a large Army force, said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.

"Stop-loss has been a vital tool," Rochelle said. But, he added, "we know that this has been a hardship . . . on Army families."

Stop-loss began with an executive order in 1990, which gave the defense secretary the authority to hold on to or bring back from retirement military personnel deemed essential to U.S. national security. The Army used it during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War and again after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

More recently, the Army has used stop-loss to maintain the cohesion of military units, keeping together personnel as they train and deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army now aims to achieve the same goal by offering monetary incentives for soldiers to voluntarily extend their service until 60 days after the end of overseas deployments, said Maj. Gen. Gina Farrisee, the Army's director of military personnel management. The details of such an incentive plan have not been released.

British defense minister blasts NATO over force by Andrea Shalal-Esa

British Defense Secretary John Hutton on Thursday blasted NATO's inability to fully fund a rapid response force of 25,000 troops, and said the alliance needed a "radical transformation" to adapt to new threats.

Failure to provide adequate resources for the NATO Response Force amounted to "a standing indictment" of NATO, but a rapid deployment force proposed by Britain would be much smaller and more attainable, Hutton said in an address to a Washington-based think tank.

Britain has been pressing for 26 NATO defense ministers to agree at a summit next month to create a small NATO rapid deployment force to defend mainland Europe and free troops for duty in Afghanistan. The proposed force would have 1,500 troops ready for deployment and 1,500 in training.

"If we can't put together a force like that, which is minimal .... I would be pessimistic about the future of our ability to deal with some of the other challenges" NATO faces, Hutton said after a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "This is basic stuff."

NATO needed a "radical transformation" to adapt to changing threats and succeed in securing Afghanistan, including closer cooperation with other institutions such as the United Nations, European Union and World Bank, Hutton said.

NATO is already fighting extremism in Afghanistan, training security forces in Iraq and battling pirates off the coasts of Somalia, but further changes are needed to prepare for unconventional warfare and cyber threats, Hutton said.

"Today it needs a new and more radical transformation still. An ability to anticipate and respond to new threats," he said.

Hutton said he and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed on Wednesday to jointly study lessons that could be learned from the war in Afghanistan for NATO's future force structure, future conflicts and U.S.-British defense cooperation.

Success in Afghanistan was essential, Hutton said. "We cannot take the risk that Afghanistan becomes again the safe haven and inspiration for terrorism and extremism. President Obama calls this our good war and he is absolutely right."

NATO also needs to retool its acquisition strategies, Hutton said, calling for greater cooperation on the development and procurement of new weapons. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp was an example for such cooperative efforts, he said.

"We need to do more together when it comes to procurement. We need to plan more together about the sort of capabilities that we'll need in the future," he said. "Europe's been doing this for Europe. The U.S. ... will need to do more of it."

NATO should also scrap excess committees, unnecessary headquarters, and informal defense minister meetings that "achieve nothing but contribute to organizational lethargy."

"We need to build an alliance for change within NATO. Your new administration has the leverage and the vision," he said. "There is an appetite out there for greater efficiency, greater effectiveness and real change."

More About the Mexican Narco-Terror Networks by Michael Bruan

I testified today before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee about the cycle of guns, drugs, and violence in Mexico. A segment of my testimony is below, and you can download the entire testimony here.

"The Mexican cartels’ ‘corporate’ headquarters are set up South of our border, and thanks to corruption, cartel leaders often carry out their work in palatial surroundings. The cartel leaders manage and direct the daily activities of ‘command and control cells’ that are typically located just across the border in our Country. Those command and control cells manage and direct the daily activities of ‘distribution, transportation and money laundering cells’ all across our Nation.

The cartels operate just like terrorist organizations, with extremely complex organizational structures, consisting of highly compartmentalized cells: distribution cells, transportation cells, money laundering cells, and in some cases assassination cells or ‘hit squads.’ Many experts believe Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking organizations are far more sophisticated, operationally and organizationally, then Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. In fact, some experts believe that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations actually copied the drug trafficking cartels’ sophisticated organizational model for their advantage. This sophisticated organizational model continues to thwart law enforcement and security services around the globe. Cell members are so compartmentalized that they possess little, if any knowledge of the greater organizations that encircle and support their nodes; therefore, they can share little of value with law enforcement when apprehended.

The Mexican cartels rely heavily on three of their most important tradecraft tools to maintain power: corruption, intimidation and violence—the ‘hallmarks of organized crime.’ If they can’t corrupt you, they will intimidate you; if that doesn’t work, they will turn to brutal violence. Without the hallmarks of organized crime, the cartels simply cannot effectively operate. The Mexican cartels spend hundreds of millions of dollars to corrupt each year, and they have succeeded in corrupting virtually every level of the Mexican government. If anyone believes for one minute that these powerful syndicates are not looking north into the United States to corrupt—they’re obviously blind. We are already experiencing a spillover of drug related violence, and it’s not just in communities along our SWB. It’s also playing out in places like Atlanta, Chicago, Omaha, Seattle, Maui and Anchorage.

We must also understand that the Mexican cartels operate with Fortune 100 corporate efficiencies. They are masters at creating demand, expanding their markets and developing a diverse product line. They have pushed into West Africa, into places like Guinea-Bissau, the quintessential example of ungoverned space, and established a transshipment base for the movement of multi-ton quantities of cocaine into the rapidly developing markets of Europe and Russia."

Apple and Imagination Technologies Abstract the the CPU and GPU for General Purpose Developers

Imagination Technologies launches advanced, highly-efficient POWERVR™ SGX543MP multi-processor graphics IP family. Truly scalable multi-processing graphics technology offers ‘super-high’ performance points extending POWERVR’s market reach into new segments.

Imagination Technologies, the multimedia chip technologies company, announces further details of the first POWERVR SGX graphics IP core with multi-processor (MP) core support. The technology, henceforth POWERVR SGX543MP, is being delivered to customers in SGXMP2 (two-core) to SGXMP16 (16-core) variants.

With the POWERVR SGX543MP family Imagination continues to extend its leadership of the embedded graphics acceleration market with blistering POWERVR solutions which address the rapidly growing demands for high performance graphics in a wide range of consumer electronics segments.

Imagination’s graphics IP cores now range from SGX520, the world’s smallest OpenGL™ ES 2.0 mobile core, to SGX543MP16 for high-performance console and computing devices.

Some of the innovative technology behind POWERVR SGX543MP is being revealed in a keynote presentation at the 4th annual Multicore Expo (March 16 - 19 2009, Santa Clara, USA.)

Tony King-Smith, VP marketing Imagination Technologies says: “The performance delivered by our latest POWERVR SGX543MP family is the ultimate statement of the highly linear scalability of our unique Series5XT architecture. With the ability to combine up to 16 SGX543 GP-GPU* cores on a single SoC, we are now able to deliver capabilities to our licensing partners previously only thought the domain of the discrete GPU chipset vendors, while maintaining our unrivalled power, area and bandwidth efficiency.”

One of the unique features of the recently announced POWERVR Series5XT architecture is that it enables highly linear scaling of all aspects of GPU performance, specifically vertex shading, pixel shading, primitive setup and overall GP-GPU functionality, whilst maintaining full software compatibility and with virtually no overhead in bandwidth usage.

The POWERVR SGX543MP family enables up to sixteen cores of POWERVR SGX543 programmable GP-GPU logic to be integrated in a high performance, multi-processor graphics solution without performance or silicon area compromises. Taking the already high-performance four-pipe POWERVR SGX543, and then scaling that performance up to between eight and 64 pipelines, POWERVR SGX543MP delivers performance comparable to many desktops, laptops and games consoles.

At 200MHz core frequency an SGX543MP4 (four cores) will deliver 133 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 4Gpixels/sec**. Higher frequencies or a larger number of cores each deliver more performance. At 400MHz core frequency an SGX543MP8 (eight cores) will deliver 532 million polygons per second and fill rates in excess of 16Gpixels/sec.

POWERVR SGX543MP features:

* maintains the highest performance per mW of any embedded graphics core, a key benefit of POWERVR SGX
* highly linear scaling (over 95% efficiency) of performance in both geometry (vertex processing) and rasterisation (pixel/fragment processing)
* dynamic load balancing and on-demand task allocation at the pipeline level
* no fixed allocation of given pixels to specific cores, enabling maximum processing power to be allocated to the areas of highest on-screen action
* scalable GP-GPU compute power, which can be fully utilised through all Khronos APIs including OpenGL ES 2.x, OpenVG™ 1.x and OpenCL™
* use any number of cores from 2-16, even or odd
* no additional work for software developers; using one driver stack for all SGX cores means applications see a common SGX architecture via the standard APIs regardless of number of cores used
* no additional CPU load when using multiple cores or loss of performance

Continues King-Smith: “This multi-core extension to the scalability of the POWERVR SGX architecture, beyond the existing POWERVR SGX520 and SGX53x and 54x families, takes our highly efficient technology into new market segments. Additionally the leading and ever-growing ecosystem of POWERVR Insider, which is of great value to our licensing partners and their OEM customers, will both benefit from, and further develop with, this significant expansion of the family.”

Inside POWERVR SGX543MP

The highly efficient POWEVR SGX543MP family delivers linear progression in vertex and pixel processing performance, unlike competitive solutions which scale only pixel performance. An SGX543MP2 delivers effectively twice the performance of a single SGX543 without compromise. And for a given workload the same bandwidth is required no matter how many cores are deployed – SGX543MP delivers faster performance by dividing the work on –demand, dynamically load balanced in parallel between cores.

Iranian Suspected of Smuggling Weapons for Tehran Jailed in U.S. by Joby Warrick

A Tehran businessman who allegedly helped run a major weapons-smuggling ring for Iran was charged yesterday with multiple export-related crimes, two days after he was arrested in San Francisco after stepping off a flight from Europe.

Hossein Ali Khoshnevisrad, 55, was described by U.S. officials as a key figure in Iran's vast network of businesses and front companies seeking Western technology for weapons ranging from ballistic missiles to improvised explosive devices. Documents and officials from the Justice and Commerce departments linked Khoshnevisrad's firm to a scheme to acquire millions of dollars worth of parts for military helicopters and jet fighters, using Malaysian and European companies as middlemen.

At least some of the parts were intended for an Iranian company that the State Department has linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missiles program, according to documents first obtained by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. The case was the latest in a series of attempts by the U.S. government to crack down on illicit procurement networks that feed Tehran's pursuit of high-tech weapons systems.

The arrest of Khoshnevisrad was an unexpected bonus in those efforts, U.S. officials said. After tracking the businessman and his import company, Ariasa, for months, investigators with U.S. Customs and Border Protection discovered that the entrepreneur was traveling from Iran to the United States for what was believed to be his first visit to this country.

A party of federal officers was waiting for him early Saturday as he arrived at San Francisco International Airport with his wife and son after a stopover flight from Europe. Khoshnevisrad was confronted in the airport's customs area and detained without incident.

"It is rare that a guy of his stature in the procurement business comes to the United States," said a law enforcement official familiar with the case. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe, said the case "demonstrates the scope and reach of these procurement networks, and their global efforts to insulate themselves using trading companies around the world."

Ariasa, the official said, relied chiefly on Malaysian trading partners -- including a phony "book trader" -- to circumvent bans on direct exports of technology to Iran. The link is notable, he said, because Iran appears in recent months to have shifted the routing of many of its purchases through Asia, following a crackdown on several front companies in the United Arab Emirates.

Khoshnevisrad, balding with gray hair and a mustache and wearing a blue dress shirt and slacks, made his first court appearance yesterday at an arraignment before a U.S. magistrate in San Francisco. With his family members in the courtroom, he was formally charged with four counts of export-related charges, tied to a series of alleged deals to ship helicopter engines and military-grade surveillance cameras to Iran. A lawyer for the businessman declined to comment on the charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Candace Kelly requested that Khoshnevisrad be held without bail, saying he posed a "very serious national security risk." The magistrate agreed with that request.

The aircraft parts, valued at more than $4 million, were purchased from U.S. firms and routed through a network of front companies, according to documents obtained by the Berkeley, Calif.-based CIR.

Among the purchases were 17 Rolls-Royce helicopter engines, manufactured at a factory in Indiana and allegedly destined for Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Co., and 11 aerial-surveillance cameras sold by a Pennsylvania distributor and allegedly intended for mounting on Iran's F-4 fighter jets, according to an affidavit by investigators for Commerce's Office of Export Enforcement. The U.S. firms apparently were unaware that the parts were intended for Iran, federal officials said.

The documents, including an affidavit from the Commerce Department filed with the magistrate, indicate that Khoshnevisrad's network also allegedly involved trading companies in Ireland and the Netherlands and American freight carriers, one of which was described in court records as "the Irish trading company's designated freight forwarder from New York."

The investigation of Khoshnevisrad relied in part on intercepted e-mails between him and his business partners. Excerpts from the e-mail exchanges appear to show Khoshnevisrad, while negotiating deals with Irish and Dutch trading partners, often acknowledging that the companies would have to circumvent U.S. export laws.

"We have your 'three engines' ready to ship/deliver in Kuala Lumpur," a representative of the Irish trading company wrote in a Jan. 15, 2007, e-mail, one of several cited in the Commerce affidavit. "We are giving you . . . top-quality service . . . under extreme[ly] difficult conditions (embargo[es] . . . export controls)."

In another e-mail to Khoshnevisrad about three weeks later, the Irish trading company wrote, "Aviation/Equip[ment] . . . embargo . . . very, very 'strong' right now on 'Iran.' Extreme vigilance 'worldwide' in place."

In another case involving alleged front companies, the Justice Department indicted a number of Iranian businessmen and firms for illegally purchasing electronics used to make IEDs of the type used to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq.

Khoshnevisrad's firm, Ariasa, describes itself on its Web site as a trading and engineering firm. Calls to the Tehran telephone numbers listed on the site were not answered.

Forming Coalition, Netanyahu Agrees to Make Nationalist Leader Foreign Minister by Isabel Kershner

Israel’s prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, forged ahead on Monday with negotiations toward a probable narrow, hawkish government after his conservative Likud Party initialed its first coalition agreement with the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman.

If finalized, the agreement, reached late Sunday, could make Mr. Lieberman, an often indelicate and outspoken politician whose threatening language aimed at Arabs arouses suspicion and some trepidation abroad, the next foreign minister.

The attention of many Israelis was focused on Cairo, however, where Israeli negotiators were trying Monday to reach a deal with Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, for the release of a captured Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

The latest attempt appeared to have failed. In a statement issued Monday night, the office of the departing Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that Hamas had hardened its position during the talks and raised extreme demands, despite what were described as generous proposals from Israel.

Hamas demands the release of hundreds of imprisoned Palestinians, including many convicted of deadly terrorist attacks, in exchange for Corporal Shalit, who was captured by Palestinian militants and taken into Gaza in 2006. A senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk, suggested that there had been progress in the talks and that his group was awaiting a positive Israeli response to its demands.

The Israeli negotiators, dealing indirectly with Hamas through Egyptian mediators, were hoping to reach an agreement before Mr. Olmert ended his term. Mr. Olmert called a special cabinet meeting for Tuesday to brief ministers on the talks.

The family of the captured soldier has expressed concern about leaving his fate in the hands of the incoming government, fearing that it might start studying the case from scratch. A rightist government may also take a harder line in any further negotiation.

The Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties have expressed a preference for a broader unity coalition that would include the centrist Kadima Party, which is led by the departing foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Yisrael Beitenu has agreed to make changes in its coalition agreement should Kadima join, and in that case, the job of foreign minister would probably be reassigned.

Dina Libster, a Likud spokeswoman, said Monday that there was “still hope” that Kadima would join.

But the Likud, she said, was close to signing another coalition agreement with the rightist, ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, to be followed by smaller right-wing and religious parties, to give Mr. Netanyahu a majority in the 120-seat Parliament. It seemed increasingly unlikely that Ms. Livni, a strong advocate of negotiations with the Palestinians for a two-state solution, would cooperate at this stage.

Kadima narrowly beat the Likud in the Feb. 10 parliamentary elections but the showing of right-wing parties led President Shimon Peres to pick Mr. Netanyahu to try to form a governing coalition. Mr. Netanyahu has so far resisted Ms. Livni’s demands for a clear commitment to the two-state solution and full power-sharing to the point of a rotating premiership in return for Kadima’s participation in the next government.

In addition to the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement with Yisrael Beitenu also assigns Mr. Lieberman’s party the Tourism, National Infrastructure, Immigrant Absorption and National Security Ministries.

Mr. Lieberman ran a contentious election campaign that many here and abroad saw as racist, focusing on the question of loyalty of the Arab citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the population. Yisrael Beitenu proposed an oath of loyalty to the state that would be taken by all citizens, but that was mainly directed at the Arab minority.

Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said he had been “incensed” by the campaign and how lightly it was taken by so many Israelis. That Yisrael Beitenu won 15 seats, he said, did not make the party “any less extreme.”

Mr. Lieberman’s positions are sometimes contradictory and hard to fathom. A West Bank settler, he advocates the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Yet he withdrew his party from Mr. Olmert’s governing coalition more than a year ago in anger over the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

In the coalition agreement with the Likud, there is no mention of a peace process or peace talks.

Nor is there any mention of a loyalty oath, though the agreement states that the new government will deal with disloyalty and will amend the citizenship law, for example, to strip Israelis of citizenship if they are convicted of spying.

Irena Etinger, a spokeswoman for Yisrael Beitenu, said that this was “the first step” and that others would follow.

In a commentary published in The Jewish Week in New York late last month, Mr. Lieberman said he looked forward to working with President Obama in the next government. “I know that U.S.-Israel relations are as strong as ever,” he said, “and that our shared values and interests make our friendship unshakable.”

Gulf Scream: Fear and loathing in Riyadh of Tehran by Olivier Guitta

A few weeks ago, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader called Bahrain Iran's 14th province. Not only did Bahrain react indignantly, but--more important--so did Saudi Arabia. For, even as a potential conflict between Iran and Israel grabs headlines, tensions have been building between Tehran and Riyadh. The Saudis fear both Iran's nuclear program and its expansionist agenda.

And that's not all. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 launched a far-reaching competition between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia for control of Islam and the ummah, the worldwide community of Muslims. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president, Iran has increased its expenditure of money, energy, and time on proselytizing populations, from Africa to the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia, more than any other Sunni country, feels threatened by this new wave of Shiite proselytizing. Saudi social affairs minister Abdel Mohsen al Hakas has called it unacceptable, and King Abdullah himself has accused Shiites of trying to convert Sunnis, pointing the finger at Tehran. The matter is of vital concern to the kingdom, which prizes its position as the cradle of Islam--all the more since Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah are now among the most popular figures in the Arab world.

Iran's expansionist strategy is not limited to religious affairs. Hundreds of Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah fighters who got their military training in Iran have infiltrated the Gulf since last year in order to "militarize" the Shiite communities of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Their mission is to prepare to destabilize these monarchies, targeting vital national interests and Western interests (both embassies and businesses) in the event of a U.S. or Israeli military strike against Iran.

Citing "British sources," the Kuwaiti daily Al Seyassah reported in September:

European intelligence services have located at least 450 Lebanese Shiite fighters who have already visited the Gulf between January and July 2008, often using false passports, from Lebanon or from Syria, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. Others were able to move directly from Iraq to Kuwait and the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, which is predominantly Shiite. Lebanese immigrants in these countries allegedly confirmed the presence of these agents, and have reported them to the authorities.

The situation is all the more tense in that Saudi Arabia is convinced that Iran is a threat to the Saudi regime. King Abdullah sternly warned Ahmadinejad during the latter's visit to Riyadh in 2007, "We welcome cooperation and investment, but we will not tolerate interference in internal affairs."

In fact, the kingdom's Shiite minority, about 10 percent of the population, is concentrated in the oil-rich eastern region of the country. The regime cannot afford a rebellion or terror attacks there. In 2007, to protect its oil installations, Riyadh created a 35,000-man specialized security force.

While Saudi Shiites remain cautious, they are nonetheless listening to their Iranian big brother and may be ready to contest their second-class citizenship. In December, clashes erupted in the Saudi province of Al-Qatif between the police and Shiite demonstrators responding to Hezbollah's call to support the Palestinians in Gaza. And on February 23, violence broke out in Medina between Shiite and Sunni worshippers.

Iran is threatening Riyadh, moreover, not only by playing the Shiite card, but also by playing the terrorism card. Tehran helps various arms of al Qaeda with funding, supplies, training, and sanctuary, and al Qaeda is a deadly enemy of the Saudi regime.

Thus, some Saudi prisoners who belong to Al Qaeda in Iraq have confessed that they were trained in camps supervised by the Al Quds Brigades, a special branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In Lebanon, some Saudi terrorists from the al Qaeda-linked Palestinian group Fatah al-Islam, which is supported by Syria and fought the Lebanese army in 2007, entered Lebanon via Iran. Among them was a high level target, Abdallah Al Bichi, one of al Qaeda's religious theorists, who had been living in Iran.

Finally, close to 40 percent of the 85 terrorists on Riyadh's "most wanted" list are based in Iran, having entered the Islamic republic just in the past six months. Of the 85, 83 are Saudis and 2 Yemenis. In a country as controlled as Iran, it is inconceivable that the regime is not complicit in hosting these men, most of them affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose goal is the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy.

To counter Iran, Saudi Arabia has built a Sunni axis, cultivating relations with the six Gulf monarchies (though Qatar is wobbly), Jordan, and Egypt. This development was supported by the Bush administration and even implicitly by Israel. (High-level "secret" meetings between Saudis and Israelis have taken place since 2006, and it is not by chance that Riyadh publicly supported Jerusalem in its war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.)

At this point though, the Saudis are concerned about the Obama administration's overtures to Iran and are afraid that a deal will be done to their detriment. Hence the Saudi diplomatic offensive to rally support in the region. Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal recently exhorted his Arab counterparts to stand up to Iran's regional and nuclear ambitions. And Riyadh is courting Iran's main ally in the Middle East, Syria, in the hope of isolating Tehran: The March 11 meeting in Riyadh between King Abdullah and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, along with the heads of state of Egypt and Kuwait, suggested a rapprochement.

Tehran's two-pronged strategy of military/terrorist expansion and Shiite proselytizing is aimed at controlling the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia is seeking to defend itself, both physically and spiritually. Riyadh's jitters are a reminder that the Iranian regime remains a source of concern not just in Western capitals but also in large portions of the Muslim world.

Iraq: Winning the War with Women by Farhana Ali

Over the past year, there is more attention being given to the trend of female suicide bombers in Iraq. Earlier this month, I was invited as a guest speaker by Columbia University to present my research findings on women in Iraq's insurgency. The same week, I offered a similar presentation at Rutgers University School of Law, which devoted an entire day to "The Gender Dimensions of Terror." This week, I received two interview requests from international journalists about female bombers in Iraq, which makes it clear that the world community continues to seek answers to the bomber behind the veil.

While the world is fascinated by women who strap on the bomb, there is far less attention to an even greater issue which is the majority of women who do not kill. My recent article, "Iraqi Mothers Call for Change, which appeared in The Middle East Times on March 17th, highlights the need to mobilize Iraq's non-violent women for long-lasting reform and stability. The article begins here:

The spectacular news of a female suicide bomber in Iraq is a showstopper. Not surprisingly, female suicide bombers receive the greatest attention in the media. But women who care for and nurture the next generation are more important to the future of Iraq.

Women who engage in non-violent activities in a war-torn society represent a powerful human resource for their country. They are members of parliament, community leaders, health officials, lawyers, educators, and importantly, the mothers of Iraq.

If we care about rebuilding Iraqi society, then we must mobilize women. This requires support from Iraqi men. Without them, women will not have a chance at survival, equal employment, equal access to higher education, or equal rights as citizens. By empowering women in Iraq, the United States has an opportunity to promote long-lasting change.

The U.S. government is taking slow but steady steps to include women in the political and economic process. The U.S. government is holding more private sessions with Iraqi women in an effort to understand their needs and improve their daily lives. In a recent e-mail from a U.S. commander, I was asked to join a women's conference this year aimed at recognizing women's issues.

Other organizations in the United States are focused on helping women cope with trauma. An American psychologist is raising funds for a women's trauma center in Diyala, where women have taken part in suicide attacks.

All these initiatives are positive signs of progress, but will take years to result in change for women who have long suffered from years of occupation. Hence, the war is not yet over.

To make sure that we win the war in Iraq, the United States should demand more support from Iraqi men. Too often, men allow women certain freedoms if it benefits them. For example, the often-glamorized U.S.-sponsored Daughters of Iraq program is a wonderful initiative but is likely to fail if the Iraqi government - controlled by men - do not allow women to do more than just search other women.

For now, the Daughters of Iraq program provides women with an income. But these are desperate women who have no other means of survival. An Iraqi woman who once worked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad told me, "The program will never work in the long run because the religious conservatives can't accept a woman in a uniform. In Iraq, security is a man's responsibility."

In recent years, men in Iraq perceive women as a threat to their stability. This is especially true as more women in Iraq detonate. To detect the bomber under the veil, men began to hire women for the sole purpose of looking for female suicide terrorists. As authorities began to arrest would-be female bombers, it became apparent that women could pose a serious threat to civil society. But how do we know that all the women that have been detained since the war are terrorists?

In reality, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of women languishing in jails throughout Iraq on terrorism charges. It is unclear how many of these women have been charged for committing an actual crime. There is no accurate figure of how many women in Iraq's jails are murderers vice mothers.

At a recent lecture at Rutgers University School of Law, where I presented my work on women in Iraq, I met an American lawyer, Vincent Warren, the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He told me he met many women being held at Abu Ghraib because they are believed to be accomplices in terrorism - they allegedly have a husband, brother, or son in the al-Qaida organization. What we don't know is if the female detainees support their violent men or are falsely accused.

Of the accused, jail is the worst rehabilitation center in Iraq for women. When journalist Anita McNaught was first to interview Rania, the 15-year old girl with a bomb hiding under her veil, she called to tell me, "This girl has a horrible future. She will be abused by men behind bars. She would have been better dead than alive."

Outside of jail, women are calling for change. The country's nearly 1 million war widows desire progress. Like men, women seek opportunities to feel normal again. In a patriarchal society, women understand that men are central to their survival. Therefore, we can only hope to improve the lives of women in Iraq by making sure that men are included in any gender-based project. As men are gatekeepers of Iraq, as well as obstacles for reform, we should demand that men develop policies to protect the rights of women - the mothers of the nation.

Osama bin Laden nearly impossible to catch or kill, say experts - but that won't stop Osama hunters by James Gordon Meek

Killing Osama may be a top priority for President Obama, but it's almost Mission Impossible - like it was for his predecessor - if the terror leader is holed up high in Pakistan's snowy peaks, experts say.

"The new people are going to face the same problems," warned a top adviser to President Bush.

The U.S. has been secretly training for years, however, in case the CIA scores that rarest prize: Bin Laden's home address. But they already know his neighborhood.

It's been a challenge, however, gaining intel on the region. Bin Laden hunters have had to turn to Lonely Planet's now out-of-print Hindu Kush trekking guide for information. The U.S. and Indian militaries snatched up boxes of them - so many that they're now almost impossible to find.

"Who else is interested in obscure passes along the Af-Pak-Indian border?" quipped one Pakistan expert.

A close look at the Hindu Kush mountains suggests the higher Bin Laden is, particularly in winter, the harder it'll be to squash him:

Terrain: He could be anywhere in thousands of square miles of mountains among the tallest on Earth and fortified by deep, avalanche-prone snow.

Elevation: If he lives at 10-16,000 feet, U.S. hunters must be acclimatized or suffer altitude sickness, which can be fatal.

Aircraft: The huge CH-47 Chinook is the only chopper that can lift a sizeable force using oxygen to those heights, but it's a big, loud and slow target.

"With very precise information on Bin Laden's whereabouts, it would be possible to mount an operation to get him," said an ex-CIA officer in Pakistan. "The problem is getting the intel."

A "very high risk" high-altitude parachute jump or "ill-advised" chopper assault by U.S. Delta Force or Navy SEALs are both doable but arguably foolhardy, said the officer whose men last battled Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 before he escaped into Pakistan.

"There is no reason to commit special ops forces" if an armed drone can simply "launch multiple Hellfire missile strikes," said former Delta Force commander and "Kill Bin Laden" author Dalton Fury - a pseudonym.

Fury devised a plan - scrapped by top brass - for his elite unit to attack Bin Laden's unguarded rear flank by traversing the Tora Bora mountains above 10,000 feet using oxygen canisters in the thinner air. But bin Laden escapedinto Pakistan.

If bin Laden lives high in the Hindu Kush, he's snowbound for winter and likely free of fear from attack.

Concern about altitude sickness - a common affliction above 9,000 feet - prompted the Army to study dozens of civilian climbers who recently scaled Tanzania's 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro to find out how to adjust soldiers to extreme heights.

"Even if you could get people acclimatized," insisted the Bush adviser, "it's hard to just drop white guys in unnoticed."

Experts point to the disaster of 19 troops killed in a secret mission in 2005 as a learning lesson.

Three SEALs died in a firefight after tribal goatherds spotted them, and 16 more troops perished in a botched Chinook rescue in the Chitral region.

The huge, lumbering twin-rotor chopper can haul troops up to 16,000 feet, but it is "not very stealthy," said a retired aviator.

Afghan Envoy Assails Western Allies as Halfhearted, Defeatist by Karen DeYoung

Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States attacked Western governments fighting in and providing billions in aid to his country, saying that those who claim the international community is not winning the war against extremists there "should know that they never fully tried."

"We never asked to be the 51st state," Ambassador Said T. Jawad said, a reference to a suggestion last month by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) that the United States should concentrate on "realistic goals" and its "original mission" of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

"To suggest that Afghans do not deserve peace, pluralism and human rights is wrong and racist," Jawad said.

He said negotiations with the Taliban should be conducted by the Afghan government and should be withheld until it was in a "position of strength." President Obama, in a New York Times interview last week, echoed numerous administration and U.S. military officials in suggesting that the United States seek negotiations with "reconcilable" Taliban elements.

Obama also said the United States and NATO were not winning the war in Afghanistan and spoke favorably of U.S. military plans to bolster Afghan tribal forces to participate in the war against extremists -- a policy seen as successful in Iraq and being tried in pilot programs in Afghanistan. Jawad said yesterday that such plans "will not work" and would undermine the country's stability.

Jawad's remarks, in an address last night at Harvard University, were a forceful public expression of issues privately raised here last month with the Obama administration by a top-level national security delegation from President Hamid Karzai's government.

Jawad accused those aiding Afghanistan of "total negligence" in building the Afghan police force and judicial system, "under-investment" in the national army, and providing "meager resources" devoted to helping the Afghan government deliver services and protect its citizens.

U.S. military expenditures in Afghanistan have totaled more than $173 billion since 2001, with an additional $35 billion spent in reconstruction aid. U.S. military deaths total more than 660, with 431 NATO troops killed.

Many of Jawad's complaints echo assessments made by the Obama administration, which lays much of the blame for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan on what it sees as its predecessor's obsession with Iraq at Afghanistan's expense. But the ambassador's tone and rejection of any Afghan responsibility for the situation reflected an escalating tension between the Obama and Karzai governments as Obama's national security team forges a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Karzai "doesn't seem to be ready to take any responsibility for the problems," an administration official said.

Obama officials have made little secret of their concern that Karzai -- installed as Afghanistan's interim leader in 2001 and elected president in 2004, both times with U.S. backing -- is incapable of providing the leadership needed to extend government control and services. They believe corruption is rife within his government, although they have not accused Karzai himself.

U.S. hopes of replacing him in elections this year have foundered on the lack of a viable opposition candidate. Meanwhile, the near-term future of Afghanistan's government hangs in the balance as Karzai's term expires in May, while the independent electoral commission has scheduled the ballot for August, a delay that administration officials hope will allow other possibilities to emerge.

Jawad's speech came the day the administration announced its nomination of Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The selection of an active-duty officer -- Eikenberry is deputy chairman of NATO's military committee and the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- appeared to be an exception to the administration's stated goal of increasing the civilian and diplomatic profile of the military-heavy U.S. regional presence.

Afghanistan appreciates Obama's deployment of 17,000 more American troops to the country, Jawad said. But he couched his praise in terms of casualty levels, saying increased U.S. ground operations that "will allow for surgical operations instead of relying on aerial bombings that lead to unacceptable levels of civilian deaths."

"We welcome President Obama's plan to unveil a new comprehensive U.S. strategy by the end of this month," Jawad said, adding that Afghanistan was "grateful for being officially consulted" in the Washington talks last month.

Jawad also praised Pakistan's civilian government as "sincere in fighting extremism and terrorism," but said it "lacks the capacity to wage this fight." The Pakistani military, "on the other hand, has the capacities to do so but not the commitment" and considers Islamist extremists "an ally" in Pakistan's conflict with India, he said.

Although Afghanistan "welcomed President Obama's remarks about talking with the Taliban," Jawad said, the government would handle the negotiations. "In fact," he said, "the process of talking with individual Taliban commanders has been going on for the past six years, and about 600 mid-level Taliban commanders have joined the peace process."

He outlined three major Taliban groups -- the "ideological" forces affiliated with Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and regional terrorism networks; the mid-level commanders who "can be reconciled through dialogue, buying off, bribery and coercion"; and the "paycheck Taliban" made up of "unemployed, uneducated and brainwashed" young foot soldiers who need "employment and education, not too much dialogue."

Citing "defeatist and reductionist media statements and policy recommendations in the U.S. and European capitals," Jawad noted that "NATO and U.S. forces are saying that we are not winning in Afghanistan, implying that the Taliban are not losing.

"If they are not losing," he said, "why should they talk to us?"

Mideast Press Questions Obama by Walter Pincus

The Middle East press has questioned President Obama's authority over Arab-Israeli issues since Charles W. Freeman Jr.'s withdrawal from his appointment to a senior intelligence position.

A commentary in Abu Dhabi's the National, a newspaper owned by an investment fund controlled by the government, said Freeman's decision Tuesday to withdraw as chairman of the National Intelligence Council "threw the Obama administration into the heart of a long-running controversy over the alleged supremacy of pro-Israel hawks in determining U.S. foreign policy after having taken a cautious approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far consistent with previous administrations."

The Daily Star in Beirut went further, saying Freeman's action "is likely to be viewed as a significant victory for hardliners within the so-called 'Israeli lobby,' who led the movement to scuttle his appointment, and a blow to hopes for a new approach to Israel-Palestine issues under the Obama administration."

An analyst in the NSC pointed out that the Israel lobby may have had a Pyrrhic victory. Noting that vocal Freeman opponent Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had publicly said, "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing," the analyst wrote, "A lobby that has thrived through its covert operations can claim another victory in reversing Freeman's appointment, but this time its workings may have been too transparent for its own good."

Other Arab publications echoed that analysis, while at least one Israeli commentator questioned the views of Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, who made the appointment and supported it after questions were raised about Freeman's previous critical statements about Israel.

Meanwhile, Obama has not discussed the matter, and press secretary Robert Gibbs has repeatedly dodged questions about it. On Friday, when asked about Obama's "standing mute" before Freeman's withdrawal, Gibbs said: "He's somebody who served the country greatly but asked that his nomination not proceed, and the Director of National Intelligence accepted that."

A statement by Freeman accusing the Israel lobby of being behind his withdrawal became big news in the United States and the Middle East.

Asked Friday whether the Israel lobby had influenced the White House, Gibbs responded as he had a week earlier, saying: "I've watched with great interest how people perceive different things about our policy and during the campaign, about whether we were too close to one group or too close to the other. So I don't give a lot of thought to those." When a reporter asked "for straight answers," Gibbs said, "I gave you as straight of one as I can get."

The Jeddah Arab News online (in English) ran a commentary saying that observers in Saudi Arabia called the former ambassador's announcement utterly disappointing. An editorial described his withdrawal as "a great victory for Washington 's powerful Israel lobby and a grave defeat for US foreign policy."

But it also carried this statement by senior political analyst Khaled Batarfi: "President Barack Obama . . . would have faced similar problems if his choice of Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell had gone through U.S. Congress."

A Syrian paper, al-Thawrah, said Freeman pulled out when he realized "no one is safe from the evils" of the Israel lobby.

Caroline Glick, a columnist in the Jerusalem Post specializing in national security issues, had a different take. She described what she called "disturbing things about the climate in Washington these days." The foremost was that Blair's choice of Freeman, despite what she said were the latter's known "extreme views on Israel and American Jews," may indicate something about the DNI. She said Blair's testimony last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Iran's nuclear program showed that "America's top intelligence officer is willing to take Iran's word on everything," and, "On the other hand, he isn't willing to take Israel's word on anything."