Geopolitics Weekly

We feel that Obama must now follow his words with actions.

SPIEGEL: The new US president, who has called your aggressive anti-Israeli remarks "disgusting," has nevertheless spoken of a new beginning in relations with Iran and extended his hand to you. Ahmadinejad: I haven't understood Obama's comments quite that way. I pay attention to what he says today. But that is precisely where I see a lack of something decisive. What leads you to talk about a new beginning? Have there been any changes in American policy? We welcome changes, but they have yet to occur.

We support talks on the basis of fairness and respect. That has always been our position. We are waiting for Obama to announce his plans, so that we can analyze them.

You are aware that we are not the ones who severed relations with America. America cut off relations with us. What do you expect from Iran now?

that could lead to a resumption of diplomatic relations, perhaps even to the reopening of the embassy, which was occupied in 1979, the year of the revolution? Ahmadinejad: We have not received an official request in this regard yet. If this happens, we will take a position on the matter. This is not a question of form. Fundamental changes must take place, to the benefit of all parties. The American government must finally learn lessons from the past.

We do not commit terror, but we are victims of terror. After the revolution, our president and prime minister were killed in a bombing attack in the building adjacent to my office. Our faith forbids us from engaging in terrorism

we have contributed to stabilization in both Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years. While we were making these contributions, the Bush administration accused us of doing the opposite.

For the past 30 years, Germany and other European countries have been under pressure from the Americans not to improve their relations with Tehran. That's what all European statesmen tell us.

"I don't think that it should be a surprise that after we lost 20% of Georgian territory and have no democracy in the country, we are asking for the resignation of the president," said Nino Burjanadze.

Ms Burjanadze was formerly an ally of Mr Saakashvili but now leads the opposition Democratic Movement-United Georgia party.

While most international attention is focussed on Iran's uranium enrichment activities, the inauguration of the new plant in Isfahan shifts attention to a parallel programme that also has outside observers worried, BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus reports. Once it is fully operational it could produce sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year, should Iran choose to separate the plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel, he says.

The newly-opened plant will produce pellets of uranium oxide that could be used to fuel a heavy-water reactor in Arak expected to be completed some time between 2011 and 2013.

It signals Iran has reached the final stage in the nuclear fuel cycle, analysts say.

"The Iranian nation has from the beginning been after logic and negotiations, but negotiations based on justice and complete respect for rights and regulations," Mr Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on Thursday. "One-sided negotiations, conditional negotiations, negotiations in an atmosphere of threat are not something that any free person would accept," he said.

Iran needs to "convince us all of the exclusively peaceful character of its nuclear programme", Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. On Wednesday, the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany said they would ask EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to approach Iran with the talks offer.

Signalling a policy shift, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would be a "full participant" in talks. "Obviously we believe that pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes senses," she said. "There is nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon."

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," said a senior intelligence official. "So have the Russians."

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

"Over the past several years, we have seen cyberattacks against critical infrastructures abroad, and many of our own infrastructures are as vulnerable as their foreign counterparts," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently told lawmakers. "A number of nations, including Russia and China, can disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure."

protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week

It is nearly impossible to know whether or not an attack is government-sponsored because of the difficulty in tracking true identities in cyberspace. U.S. officials said investigators have followed electronic trails of stolen data to China and Russia.

Russian and Chinese officials have denied any wrongdoing. "These are pure speculations," said Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy. "Russia has nothing to do with the cyberattacks on the U.S. infrastructure, or on any infrastructure in any other country in the world."

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Wang Baodong, said the Chinese government "resolutely oppose[s] any crime, including hacking, that destroys the Internet or computer network" and has laws barring the practice. China was ready to cooperate with other countries to counter such attacks, he said, and added that "some people overseas with Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China."

Specialists at the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute, said attack programs search for openings in a network, much as a thief tests locks on doors. Once inside, these programs and their human controllers can acquire the same access and powers as a systems administrator.

The WSJ reported that the intruders had not sought to damage the power grid or any other key infrastructure so far, but suggested they could change their approach in the event of a crisis or war.

Security watchers said that, if true, the involvement of the Chinese and Russians in such a scenario would show they were strategically thinking about how either to constrain the US or to inflict more damage if they felt a need to do so.

"I think that China recognises if in a very strategic sense you want to ensure you have the ability to exploit another country's potential weakness or vulnerability, but do it in a way that isn't confrontational or cause an international crisis, then this is a very good way of doing that," Eric Rosenbach, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center, told Reuters news agency.

The motives behind these alleged attacks are undoubtedly military or political in nature, said Tim Mather, chief security strategist for the RSA Conference, the world's biggest security event.

In the coming weeks, a government review of cyber security is due to land on the desk of US President Barack Obama.

Iran has so far reacted cautiously to U.S. overtures since Obama took office in January, saying it wants to see a real shift in Washington's policies rather than a change in words. Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday Iran sought "interaction and negotiation based on honor, justice and respect."

Analysts say Iran may be setting tough conditions for dialogue in a bid to buy time. Adding to uncertainty, it holds a presidential vote in June in which Ahmadinejad faces a challenge from a moderate politician seeking detente with the West.

One Iranian analyst said he expected Ahmadinejad to say in Isfahan, where Iran has a uranium conversion facility, that it has perfected the last of several phases of fuel output, with the production of uranium pellets and fuel rods for reactors.

Intellipedia's boosters concede that their wiki is still largely an adjunct to the work of America's intelligence analysts. No finished intelligence product for decision makers is generated from Intellipedia — National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are still written the old-fashioned way, authored and circulated for peer review and consensus. When Tom Fingar tried in 2006 to produce an NIE on Nigeria using Intellipedia, he failed because it generated a stream of information rather than a formal thesis and was taken over by the traditional system.

Kavi Chongkittavorn, a columnist and editor at The Nation, an English-language newspaper, said that despite the numbers in the streets, Mr. Thaksin’s challenge was fading in strength.

Wearing the red shirts of Thaksin loyalists, the demonstrators streamed into Bangkok throughout the day from his political strongholds in the rural north and northeast and by early evening the police estimated the crowds at 100,000.

The protests were reminiscent of the political paralysis that gripped Thailand last year. Those demonstrations, which were sometimes violent, forced the previous government to abandon Government House, paralyzed the workings of the administration and eventually shut down Bangkok’s two major airports. The protests were led by the “yellow shirts” of the People’s Alliance for Democracy.

The protests ended in December when — with the airports blockaded, tourism crippled and the economy at a virtual standstill — the Constitutional Court found the governing party guilty of election fraud. The court ruling led eventually to Mr. Abhisit’s selection as prime minister by Parliament in December.

The dismal state of the Thai economy has been another cause of anger among protesters. Just this week the World Bank revised its growth prospects downward: The bank now expects a 2.7 percent decline in Thailand’s gross domestic product in 2009, the country’s first contraction in more than a decade.

According to official results, the party took about 49.9% of the votes, but opposition leaders dismissed the result as fraudulent and have demanded a rerun.

Despite some economic progress under the communists, who have been in power since 2001, Moldova remains the poorest country in Europe. About 600,000 Moldovans have left to find work in EU countries.

Moldova's provinces largely support the pro-Russian communists, but the capital favours the more western-leaning opposition.

Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: "Moldova's violent 'Twitter revolution' is totally different from the peaceful protest of Ukraine's Orange revolution."This time, the crowd are not angry at a stolen election, but at the growing corruption of the ruling Communist party, its recent turn towards Russia and an imminent economic crisis."

Russian analysts, however, suggested that the protests were unjustified because western observers had confirmed that the communists were legitimate winners of the election and had certified the poll as fair."This is an active attempt by a small minority to take power," Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute for the Study of Post-Soviet Countries, said.

The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal.

He ordered that Romania's ambassador be expelled, recalled the Moldovan envoy from Bucharest, and said Romanians would in future need visas to cross into Moldova.

Earlier the president described the violence as "a coup d'etat".

Some of the protesters on Tuesday had carried Romanian flags and called for the unification of Moldova with Romania, its bigger neighbour.

Russia's foreign ministry said there was a plot aimed at undermining "the sovereignty of Moldova". But Romania's foreign ministry said: "This accusation is a provocation aimed at the Romanian state."

Russia’s foreign ministry, in a statement on Wednesday, said the riots were a plot aimed at undermining Moldova’s sovereignty and it pointed a finger at forces which favour a reunion with Romania. “The Russian foreign ministry hopes that common sense will prevail, public and constitutional order will be restored in the next few days and the choice of the Moldovan citizens will be confirmed by all politically responsible forces,” it said.

Official election results from Sunday’s vote put the Communists in front with close to 50 percent. The vote is important because Moldova has a single-chamber parliament which is responsible for choosing the country’s president.

He characterizes Greece's banking sector as being "basically sound" and "in considerably better condition" than those in other EU countries and in the United States. He notes that Greece was the first EU country to provide a government guarantee for personal savings up to a total of €100,000.

now the European Commission has instigated disciplinary proceedings, because Athens has exceeded the euro zone budget deficit limit of 3 percent for the third time in a row. The results of audits carried out by Brussels look very different from the information in Livadas's glossy brochures. In EU statistics, Greek government debt is listed as amounting to 94 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Italy is the only other euro zone country which has a higher level of government debt. Greece also has the lowest credit rating of all the euro zone countries. It has to finance its government debt under terms which are worse than for any other euro zone country, with the exception of Malta.

Educated young people from the middle class have little prospect of finding employment, despite being well qualified, and are forced to take casual jobs to make ends meet. As a result, many young Greeks are forced to live with their parents until they are well past the age of 30. The anger of the "€700 generation" -- as the young people are known -- over their situation exploded last December in weeks of rioting throughout the country.

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the Bank of Greece, the nation's central bank, warned his countrymen against "self-satisfaction" and spoke of a looming danger of national bankruptcy. And Greece has still to feel the full effects of the global recession.

"The negative factors you see here are all leftovers from the past," says one EU diplomat, adding that most of them are homegrown. Economic experts are anxiously waiting to see what's going to happen this summer. They fear there could be a decline in the tourism sector, one of the most important pillars of growth in the Greek economy, accounting for 17 percent of gross domestic product. The volume of tourist bookings from the United States is reported to have dropped by up to 50 percent. The number of British vacationers, some 3 million annually in the past, alongside 2.3 million Germans, is expected to shrink by up to 30 percent.

The situation of banks that invested in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans is uncertain. Greek financial institutions invested billions of euros in bank takeovers or in setting up their own branches in Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Given that the value of the national currencies in some of those countries has fallen dramatically, what were originally seen as attractive investments in developing economies could well turn out to be huge losses.

That's what the crisis looks like in Greece. "Nobody wants to see it, but everybody is afraid of it," says Kalliope Amyg, a young political scientist. "The country is dancing on a volcano."

Some analysts fear that the US may push India to limit its presence in Afghanistan to "please" Pakistan. India is spending millions of dollars in infrastructure projects in Afghanistan.

Mr Holbrooke has denied that Washington wanted to become a mediator between the two neighbours. "That is not our job," he told reporters in Islamabad. He said the US was "not going to be involved" in mediating in the dispute over Kashmir.

Mr Obama has pledged substantial economic assistance for Pakistan - more than $1bn (£684m) annually over the next five years - but the money will depend on the army's performance against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

A seven-strong team of congressional Democrats is currently in Cuba, looking into ways to improve US-Cuban relations, but only three of them attended the meeting with Mr Castro.

President Obama is expected to announce soon that he is easing restrictions imposed in 2004 by George W Bush on travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans. Last week, a bill was introduced to Congress which would allow unrestricted travel to Cuba for all Americans.

in an article published on Sunday, Fidel Castro said his country was not afraid to talk to the US.

But no-one is yet expecting the lifting of America's 50-year-old trade embargo on Cuba, our correspondent adds.

"Turkey is bound to Europe by more than bridges over the Bosporus," he said. "Centuries of shared history, culture and commerce bring you together … and Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe's foundation once more."

It is a demand that US presidents have been making for years -- and it is one that never fails to generate grumblings of disapproval from those in Europe who are opposed to Turkish EU accession -- namely Germany, France and Cyprus. This week is no different, with a slough of German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, rushing to disagree with Obama. Sarkozy, too, voiced his disapproval.

The Turks know full well that, without the economic advantages bestowed by EU membership, they will have a more difficult time solidifying their position as a moderate Muslim democracy. But their pride can take only so much. Critique from Europe has strengthened the feeling held by many in Turkey that they aren't desired as an EU member. Such a rejection hurts countries looking to wield influence."

"Many in Turkey will have thus been gratified by Ankara's having almost blocked the consensus necessary to name a new NATO secretary general. That feeling, though, is misleading, because Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gambled away political capital…. It was not the way for the Turkish leader to win new friends."

"The preview delivered by Turkey in the argument over NATO and Rasmussen is likely enough for the Europeans. It shows what it would be like were Turkey, as an EU member, to turn itself into the ambassador of the Muslim world -- whether on issues of freedom of expression (Muhammad caricatures) or when it comes to any other domestic political issue. Those who have a say in Brussels also have a say in Berlin. Can it possibly be that Paris is the only EU capital to have grasped this truth?"