Geopolitics Weekly

Fending off domestic criticism, Obama did not meet with the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington last year in an apparent bid to set relations off on a good foot with China.     But Obama has since the start of the year gone ahead with decisions opposed by Beijing -- including approving a 6.4-billion-dollar arms package to Taiwan, which China regards as its territory awaiting reunification.

Many observers believe the Chinese are simply stringing the Tibetan exiles along until the Dalai Lama dies, on the assumption that the Tibetan movement will wither without him.

Ford. Now deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, he previously served as ambassador to Algeria from 2006 to 2008 and deputy chief of mission in Bahrain between 2001 and 2004.

Relations between Washington and Damascus have improved since Obama took office 13 months ago. Analysts say Washington is hoping to pull Syria away from Iran and get its help in stabilizing neighboring Iraq.   Nevertheless Obama renewed sanctions against Syria last May, accusing it of supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and destabilizing Iraq, with which it shares a long, porous border that has been a conduit for al Qaeda fighters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a radio interview: "We are very alarmed and we cannot accept this, that Iran is refusing to co-operate with the IAEA."

But Ayatollah Khamenei countered: "The West's accusations are baseless because our religious beliefs bar us from using such weapons. "We do not believe in atomic weapons and are not seeking that," he was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

The report says its information was "consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the timeframe in which the activities were conducted and the people and organisations involved". It says: "Altogether this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile." The report also urges Iran co-operates with IAEA investigators "without further delay" as its resistance added to concerns "about possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme".

"The behaviour of the US side seriously interferes in China's internal politics and seriously hurts the national feelings of the Chinese people," a ministry statement said.

The White House meeting was held amid recent tensions, mainly over a US arms sale to Taiwan and allegations of Chinese cyber-spying.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement that the meeting between President Obama and the exiled Tibetan leader "violated the US government's repeated acceptance that Tibet is a part of China and it does not support Tibetan independence".

The closed talks were held at the White House's Map Room instead of the more official Oval Office, in an attempt to signal to China that it was a private, not a political meeting.

In 1990, a Canadian-born former officer called Victor Ostrovsky blew the whistle on its internal organisation, training and methods, revealing codenames including "Kidon" (bayonet), the unit in charge of assassinations. An official smear campaign failed to stop Ostrovsky's book, so the agency kept quiet when another ostensibly inside account came out in 2007. It described the use of shortwave radios for sending encoded transmissions, operations in Iran for collecting soil samples, and joint operations with the CIA against Hezbollah.

the worst own goal came in 1997, during Binyamin Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. Mossad agents tried but failed to assassinate Khaled Mash'al – the same Hamas leader who is now warning of retaliation for Mabhouh's murder – by injecting poison into his ear in Amman, Jordan. Using forged Canadian passports, they fled to the Israeli embassy, triggering outrage and a huge diplomatic crisis with Jordan. Danny Yatom, the then Mossad chief, was forced to quit. Ephraim Halevy, a quietly spoken former Londoner, was brought back from retirement to clear up the mess.

It would be surprising if a key part of this extraordinary story did not turn out to be the role played by Palestinians. It is still Mossad practice to recruit double agents, just as it was with the PLO back in the 1970s. News of the arrest in Damascus of another senior Hamas operative – though denied by Mash'al – seems to point in this direction. Two other Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai are members of the Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, suggesting treachery may indeed have been involved. Previous assassinations have involved a Palestinian agent identifying the target.

Yossi Melman, the expert on intelligence for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, worries that, as before the 1973 war, the Israeli government may be getting it wrong by focusing on the wrong enemy – the Palestinians – instead of prioritising Iran and Hizbullah.

a further two Irish passports were used in the assassination, bringing the total number of Irish travel documents involved to five as speculation grew that the size of the hit squad was bigger than the 11 originally reported.

In Dubai, however, the emirate's police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, called on local television for Interpol to issue "a red notice against the head of Mossad … as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now."

British officials said last night it was too early to speculate on what measures Britain might take against Israel if the government remained uncooperative.One possible consequence could be Britain's response to an Israeli request to change its 'universal jurisdiction' law on war crimes, under which a London magistrates court issued an arrest warrant in December for Israel's former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for her role in the Gaza offensive a year earlier.

Sir Richard Dalton, Britain's ambassador to Iran from 2003 to 2006 said: "All this just says how pathetic and ludicrous the claim is that Israel is Britain's strategic partner."

The Dubai authorities said they had asked Britain for assistance at the end of January, but the foreign office insists it was only informed of the British connection hours before it was made public.

Mr Balkenende's centre-right Christian Democrats wanted to agree to Nato's request to extend the Dutch presence in Afghanistan. But this was bitterly opposed by the Dutch Labour Party.

As recently as Friday she had appealed for the poll to be declared void, saying: "I cannot accept double standards and I cannot give up". The prime minister said more than a million votes, which she said were decisive to the outcome, were invalid.

Ahmed Maher, who leads the youth political activist April 6th Movement and was temporarily detained on his way to the airport, says he has faith in Mr ElBaradei. "If he nominates himself, we will back him and promote him. He should be the alternative to the existing regime. He is held in high international esteem and has great administrative experience. He is a very appropriate person."

Current constitutional rules effectively bar him from standing in a presidential race. Contenders must have been a leading member of a political party represented in parliament for at least a year. To stand as an independent candidate he would need at least 250 signatures from officials in elected bodies that are dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party.

State media have already criticised Mr ElBaradei for his comments on Egyptian politics. He has been accused of knowing little about his country after decades working abroad for the UN. Some well-known reform campaigners have also raised questions about his suitability to run for office.

"He doesn't have a past in activism or politics in Egypt," notes well-known blogger, Wael Abbas. "He's not Lenin coming back to Russia after the Revolution or Mandela coming out of prison. So I don't think the support for him is well grounded." "What I believe in that some people are clinging to straws. They are sinking and they are clinging to something that they think might help their lives."

Rival Palestinian factions, meanwhile, continued to trade accusations about involvement in the Dubai killing. Hamas named two Palestinians under arrest in the emirate as Anwar Sheibar and Ahmad Hassanein, former Gazan members of Fatah's security forces with links to the senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan. Al-Hayat, the London-based Arabic daily, quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying that the two had provided logistical aid to the alleged Mossad team.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.