Geopolitics Weekly

Al-Jazeera reported that Ahmadinejad also met Khaled Mash'al, the Damascus-based leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, and Ramadan Shallah of Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Tehran

Two years ago the military leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Damascus in an attack that was also blamed on Israel's secret service, the Mossad

Syria and Iran announced they were cancelling visa restrictions between their countries

Clinton said the US wanted Syria "generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran, which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States".

The dispute has also overshadowed Iceland's application to join the EU, which was submitted in July.

Mr Rigi said the initial US contact was made after US President Barack Obama was elected in November 2008 and took place through a person in Quetta, Pakistan. "The Americans said... that we don't have a problem with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but the problem is Iran and we don't have a military programme against Iran." The rebel leader claimed that he was promised US support to launch attacks on Iran in return for the release of Jundullah prisoners. "They [Americans] promised to help us and they said that they would co-operate with us, free our prisoners and would give us [Jundullah] military equipment, bombs, machine guns, and they would give us a base,"

Iran has linked Jundullah to the Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda network and accuses Pakistan, Britain and the US of backing the group to destabilise the country

Jundullah was founded in 2002 to defend the Baluchi minority in the poor, remote and lawless region of south-east Iran.

Earlier this month, Libya stopped issuing visas to citizens from many European nations, prompting condemnation from the European Commission.

Libya's move came after Switzerland allegedly blacklisted 188 high-ranking Libyans, denying them entry permits. The Swiss ban is said to include Mr Gaddafi and his family. The row began after the arrest of Mr Gaddafi's son Hannibal and his wife, Aline Skaf, in Geneva in July 2008. They were accused of assaulting two servants while staying at a luxury hotel in the Swiss city, though the charges were later dropped. Libya retaliated by cancelling oil supplies, withdrawing billions of dollars from Swiss banks, refusing visas to Swiss citizens and recalling some of its diplomats. In the same month that the Gaddafis were arrested, Libyan authorities detained two Swiss businessmen, in what analysts believe was a retaliatory move.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership said last year it would seek U.N. Security Council backing for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war. It said the initiative would not be a unilateral declaration of statehood but would aim to secure international support for the eventual creation of a state based on the 1967 borders.

Israel has sharply criticised the idea of any unilateral initiative and says only negotiations can produce results. But there has been growing speculation in Israel that the Palestinians are looking for ways around direct talks which have been suspended for over a year.

A think-tank close to the Israeli government says the Palestinians "have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood" with serious implications for Israel. "Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia," said a recent paper by Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. The EU and the United States recognised the independence of Kosovo without the support of a Security Council resolution. Palestinian leaders now believe "geopolitical conditions are ripe" to follow that path, Diker said.

In total prosecutors have charged more than 400 people, including soldiers, academics, journalists and politicians. No one has yet been convicted.

The detentions followed revelations of wiretap evidence and the discovery of secret weapons caches, which dealt a blow to the military's credibility.

Turkey's secular military has ousted four governments since 1960, which is why many Turks believe it has been the real power since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created the republic out of the Ottoman Empire.Under European Union pressure, Erdogan has dramatically curtailed the military's power and reinforced civilian rule, while bolstering democratic institutions.

But the deal does not feature in the new decree.

In a speech to parliament on the first day of its spring session on Saturday, President Karzai listed his priorities, which included reforming the ECC's structure. He reportedly said that in preparation for this year's parliamentary elections, he would limit "interference from others" by "Afghanising" the poll process.

Jewish settlers and nationalists, who oppose giving up control of any of the West Bank, said they were pleased with Mr Netanyahu's announcement and that they would press for additional biblical sites to be added to the list.

The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School

Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.

Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.

Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.

Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.

A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.

newspaper said trails led to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, which was created with military backing and trains some of its computer scientists.