Jim Krane | Dubai | City of Gold

ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ IN THE GULF (AP) _ A secret aircraft that debuted in Vietnam and usually protects U.S. fighter jets has taken on a different and crucial task over Iraq _ trying to stop the scourge of roadside bombs by jamming ground signals from mobile phones and garage door openers.

The EA-6B Prowler is thought to be one of the most effective U.S. weapons against the bombs, the biggest killer of American service members in Iraq. But no one can be sure: Even supporters say its effectiveness is hard to measure.

The aircraft debuted at the tail end of Vietnam and was used in Kosovo and the 1991 Gulf War, escorting U.S. attack jets while jamming military radios, hostile radars and air defense batteries aimed at them.

These days the Prowler focuses its jammers on smaller signals: those of mobile phones and garage door openers that are used to trigger roadside bombs in Iraq, said U.S. Navy Capt. David Woods, 49, of Ogden, Utah.

Often, it's hard to prove that a roadside bomb failed to explode because of Prowler jamming signals, Woods said. Still, he's confident the plane is making a difference against the bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

"When it's flying we have greater success and fewer IEDs going off," Woods said. "It's kind of an insurance policy."

Woods, the commander of Carrier Air Wing Eleven and one of the Navy's most experienced Prowler pilots, says few people understand the EA-6B's mission, which is to control the electromagnetic spectrum so allies can use it _ but not enemies.

The Prowler and its electronic warfare system is so valuable it has never been exported _ even to close allies. Details about the training of crew members are secret.

The Prowler is a homely plane, hung with torpedo-shaped pods and covered in tumor-like bumps packed with a bewildering array of computers, transmitters, antennae and receivers that can analyze and block ground transmissions. A sinister-looking prong protruding from its nose is a refueling nozzle.

The EA-6B's bulbous nose cradles a crew of four: a pilot and three electronic countermeasures officers who operate the jamming gear.

Outside experts say the Prowler remains the world's most effective electronic warfare aircraft, but the aging U.S. fleet of about 120 aircraft is overworked.

Still, the Pentagon considers the Prowler critical enough to ensure no U.S. aircraft carrier heads to battle without four or five. There are two squadrons now at sea in Mideast waters: one aboard the carrier USS John C. Stennis, the other aboard the Nimitz.

Another two land-based Prowler squadrons are in Iraq, Woods said.

In 1999, Serb air defenses shot down an Air Force F-117 stealth fighter probably because it strayed too far from the jamming beam of its Prowler escort, said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Washington-based Lexington Institute.

On the Nimitz, which operated inside the Persian Gulf in recent days, Prowlers could be seen screaming off the deck along with packs of F/A-18 Hornet fighters, heading to Iraqi airspace.

Over Iraq, the fighters fly patterns above U.S. ground operations, waiting to be called to drop 500-pound bombs, if needed.

The Prowlers fly between 20,000 and 30,000 feet, Woods said, steering invisible waves of electromagnetic signals over areas where insurgent bombs may be waiting for U.S. convoys.

According to outside experts, receivers inside the Prowler's tail collect radio signals from the ground, which are analyzed by an on-board computer. As threats are identified, the plane's crew floods the area with electromagnetic energy that blocks the signal.

The plane's computer is loaded with a "threat library" of hostile signals, which are used to match those on the ground. The jammers can block transmissions across wide range of frequencies, everything from TV and radio signals to mobile phones and the Internet.

But its jamming gear has no effect on bombs that are hard-wired to their triggers, Woods said.

The Pentagon is spending $9 billion to replace the Prowler with 90 Boeing F/A-18 fighters outfitted with electronic warfare gear. The first two, known as the EA-18G Growler, are already being tested.

The first Growlers are supposed to begin service by 2009 and replace the carrier-based Prowler squadrons by 2013. The job is expected to eventually be taken over by unmanned planes.

Woods is among a rare breed with more than 1,000 aircraft carrier landings _ nearly all with the Prowler. He says he'll miss the plane he's been flying since 1984.

"It's like an old girlfriend or your first car," he said, pointing to a photo of the plane on the wall of his quarters on the Nimitz. "There are things about it you just can't replace."

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Sat Jun 9 00:02:14 2007

Buried in mud, once-beautiful Muscat embarks on restoration

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) _ This seaside city has long been renowned as one of the Mideast's prettiest, with a gorgeous mountain backdrop, a smattering of hilltop castles overlooking a sparkling sea, and a proud leader who tends to the city like Martha Stewart.

But on Thursday, Muscat came unglued. Cyclone Gonu romped through the tidy Omani capital before heading north across the Gulf of Oman and hitting Iran.

The postcard-perfect mountains that are the city's pride became its pain. Torrential rains poured onto the bone-dry peaks and then flowed into canyons and dry riverbeds that channeled the raging water directly into the city.

Bridges collapsed. Buses were piled in the wadis, the normally dry riverbeds that course through the city.

Muscat's lush palm and eucalyptus groves were blown over along with telephone and power lines. Even the normally sparkling blue sea, just off the crescent-shaped Muttrah Corniche, perhaps the Arab world's prettiest, looked like foamy chocolate milk.

Out on the sea, Gonu was later Thursday downgraded to a tropical depression, rapidly losing energy as it moved toward the Iranian coast. At least 35 people were reported dead, including three in Iran, and 30 more were reported missing.

In Muscat, residents spoke of a night of horror as turgid floodwaters ripped into their homes, carried off refrigerators and cars, and left their streets gouged by sinkholes and caked in shoals of mud.

Nidhal al-Masharafi, 31, hunkered all night on his rooftop with his wife and six children, with just the cell phone he gripped in his hand.

"The water broke through the walls. It came inside the house. It swept everything out," al-Mashrafi said, limping as he wandered the bank of a flooded wadi.

A kilometer (half mile) from his home, al-Mashrafi found his 2006 Subaru Outback, lying atop a taxi in the rapids of a new roaring river that slashed through his neighborhood.

From his rooftop perch, he said he saw floodwaters sweep 16 cars past, including a Ford Explorer which bobbeb by with its headlights on.

"I called the police because I thought someone was still inside," he said. The Explorer could be seen Thursday resting upside down, half submerged.

Residents of the hard-hit neighborhood of al-Ghubra wandered along the banks of the temporary river, searching for their cars.

"I woke up today and my car was gone. I can't find it anywhere," said Humaid al-Harthi, 25, in a cream-colored dishdasha gown.

A few drivers desperate or foolhardy enough to drive across found themselves in rushing water up to their cars' grilles. The crossing was the only entrance to an otherwise cut-off beachfront neighborhood.

Al-Harthi and other residents said it would take at least a year to restore the upper-class district.

Few doubt the city will regain its old polish.

Muscat is Oman's showcase capital _ the Geneva of the Middle East _ where the fastidious Sultan Qaboos has decreed that highways be swept daily and laws require homeowners to cover air conditioners with decorative boxes and wash their cars every two weeks.

In Gonu's wake, those homeowners were hauling soaked bedding and carpets from their concrete villas and piling it in the streets for the bulldozers busy clearing heaps of mud and rocks.

The massive cleanup was well under way as the sun popped out in the late afternoon and began drying Muscat off.

Workers with chain saws could be seen clearing downed trees while fleets of tow trucks went to work wrenching waterlogged cars and trucks from riverbeds.

Some sections of the city still lacked power and phone service a day after Gonu's eye had passed.

"I've never seen anything like this," al-Mashrafi said, a group of friends around him nodding solemnly. "But this is life. Anything can happen."

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Thu Jun 7 10:07:00 2007

Despite tensions, Iranian and U.S. military talk to avoid conflicts

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ IN THE GULF (AP) _ Even as Iran and the United States face off bitterly, U.S. Navy commanders in the Persian Gulf are working quietly to keep communications open with Iran's military, hoping such contacts will help avert an accidental stumble into armed confrontation.

Most of the contacts take place over the crackle of radios, using the standard international bridge-to-bridge communications network, said Rear Adm. Terry Blake, commander of the strike group led by the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, speaking aboard ship this week. Others are between Iranian pilots and air communications networks.

Conversations often begin with an Iranian voice, in accented English, announcing that Iran has detected foreign planes or ships and wants to know their purpose, said the carrier's skipper, Capt. Michael Manazir.

"Hey, vessel at such and such a latitude and longitude, this is the Iranian navy. Who are you? What's your course and speed?" Manazir said, paraphrasing a typical call from Iran.

"We say 'Iranian navy, this is coalition warship 68. Our course is three-zero-zero at 15 knots, operating in international waters."

Most of the conversations are brief and business-like, with little information shared.

But not every encounter is pleasant. The Iranians frequently send frigates and patrol craft or reconnaissance planes, including U.S.-made P-3 Orions, to watch the U.S. ships.

The Navy often responds by scrambling an F/A-18 fighter to intercept and shadow Iranian planes.

"They're curious, if you will," Blake said. "They want to understand who's operating in the area."

The U.S. currently has two carriers _ the Nimitz and the USS John C. Stennis _ operating in the Gulf, often just off Iran's coast.

The carriers and the ships in their strike groups were mostly unaffected by this week's Cyclone Gonu, which hit Oman in the southern Arabian peninsula and brought rain to the far southern coast of Iran, but did not greatly affect Gulf waters.

In Washington, U.S. officials have said the increased naval presence in the Gulf serves as a warning to Iran not to test U.S. resolve at a time when the American military is busy in Iraq.

But Blake and Manazir said the second carrier was mostly part of the Navy's contribution to the buildup of forces in Iraq since January and the continued air bombing in Afghanistan, rather than a warning to Iran.

"Our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are what's drawing our presence here, not Iran," Manazir said.

Manazir said he considers it understandable that Iran is wary of U.S. warships off its coast, just as Americans would be wary if the Iranian navy were off Massachusetts or California.

"That's their coastline. There's a respect for their air and water space," said Manazir, 48, of Mission Viejo, Calif. "But to avoid a misunderstanding, we need dialogue."

When the Nimitz and eight other U.S. warships displayed a massive show of force last month _ sailing through the Strait of Hormuz and conducting exercises off the Iranian coast _ U.S. commanders were in direct radio touch with Iranian navy and air force officers, Blake said.

This week, the Nimitz was operating in a 75-mile by 25-mile patch of sea called Carrier Operating Area 4. The easternmost edge lies about 40 miles from the Iranian city of Bushehr, where Russia is building a nuclear power plant.

Carrier Operating Area 4 consists of deep water with no oil platforms and less merchant ship traffic than other areas. It's also far enough from Iran so that the Nimitz's 70 planes aren't likely to stray into Iranian airspace.

"The reason we do that is to avoid conflict with Iran that we don't want to have," Manazir said.

So far, the U.S.-Iranian dispute over Tehran's nuclear program and the March capture and release of 15 British sailors in disputed northern Gulf waters have not ended the military-to-military dialogue.

"It's a complete disconnect from what you read in the papers. We don't see a manifestation at the tactical level of the verbiage at the political level," said Manazir, surveying the giant ship's bustling flight deck from the bridge.

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Fri Jun 1 12:46:49 2007

Al-Qaida boosts tempo of video releases, raising worries about impact of its propaganda</p>

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Al-Qaida's latest offensive appears to be taking place on computer and television screens, and uses techniques associated more with Madison Avenue than Fallujah.

Although viewership is difficult to measure, analysts say the group's videos seem to be reaching a wider audience than ever, piggybacking on the popularity of blogs and video-sharing programs like YouTube.

Key to the operation are two broadcast anchors, Libyan firebrand Abu Laith al-Libi and an American fugitive, Adam Yehiye Gadahn.

"You're losing on all fronts, and losing big time," Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, told President Bush in an Internet video posted this week on YouTube.

Al-Qaida's as-Sahab media wing already has released 48 videos this year, on a pace to double last year's output of 58 videos, according to Virginia-based IntelCenter, a firm that tracks and analyzes the material. In 2005, the terror group released 16 videos.

Groups in Iraq's predominantly Sunni Arab insurgency, including an al-Qaida affiliate, are also boosting video output and quality. Even the Taliban, which frowned upon cameras when it ruled Afghanistan, has been issuing videos.

"They're all ramping up their propaganda campaigns," said Jeremy Binnie, a terrorism analyst with the Jane's military affairs consultancy in London.

Although no in-depth studies have been done on the impact of such videos, Binnie said, "We've got enough case studies that show the jihadist media does play a role in radicalizing people."

He cited the New Jersey case in which young men were charged with plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix. Officials said the men had watched terror training videos, clips featuring Osama bin Laden and tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel.

Binnie said recent terror plots in Europe also involved participants who watched such videos. Jihadist media "played a significant part in radicalizing these guys as teenagers," he said.

Gadahn, once a California heavy metal aficionado named Adam Perlman, changed his name, his religion and his attitude toward his native land and appears to have taken a job as al-Qaida's news anchor. U.S. authorities charged him with treason for working with al-Qaida.

An Internet link introduced his latest clip as a "Message from the Mujahedeen Brother" and shows Gadahn with flowing beard, glasses and turban.

Al-Qaida's as-Sahab media operation, which is thought to be based in Pakistan, releases its offerings in multiple video formats that can even play on mobile phones.

One recent release offered English-speakers the opportunity to listen to the original Arabic and read subtitles or opt for English dubbing, said Ben Venzke, IntelCenter's chief executive. Text transcripts for media coverage of jihadist speeches are routinely issued in Arabic and English and sometimes French and Urdu, he added.

The videos feature promotional title screens and animated graphics. A couple of recent versions were shot in wide-screen format, Venzke said. "We're expecting their next step to be high-definition TV."

Signs point to the heightened release tempo being a deliberate strategy directed by al-Qaida's senior leadership.

Recent video from al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri and al-Libi have stressed the importance of the group's video wing. Al-Libi recently urged Islamic insurgents in Somalia, who have mostly ignored the medium, to begin using videos to foster awareness of their fight, Venzke said.

"The exposure these things get now is very significant and moves quickly," he said. "Just look at the media coverage alone, not just in the States but all over the world. Younger people share these videos just like you and I share text e-mails. Some of these are getting huge exposure."

Audiences vary from budding terrorists to those bent on stopping them.

Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst, said he repeatedly watched a recent video from a man claiming to be al-Qaida's new leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, to get a flavor for the man's intelligence and grasp of objectives.

"You get a personal connection to these people through video. I was impressed with his speech and the way he presented the policies of al-Qaida," said Alani, a Sunni Arab who was exiled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein's regime and now works for the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

For Western analysts, the biggest worry is the videos in English may help groups recruit the most dangerous kind of terrorist _ someone who has a Western passport and is familiar with the culture of the country he wants to attack, like the British citizens of Pakistani origin who staged the London transit bombings.

"They're interested in influencing that audience," said Binnie, the analyst at Jane's. "It's easier to conduct operations in the U.K. or the U.S. if you've already got a passport and know the culture."

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Analysts say U.S. sanctions affecting Iran's economy

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ U.S. sanctions against Iran have caused damage to the country's economy, Iranian business leaders and analysts say, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to consider additional measures to force Iran to curb its nuclear program.

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog issued a report Wednesday that sets the stage for new Security Council sanctions. A first set of limited U.N. sanctions imposed last March were focused on companies involved in the nuclear program.

But unilateral actions that the United States has taken in recent months have been broader, attempting to block dollar transactions into and out of Iran and targeting energy firms and financial activity.

The U.S. measures are driving up prices in Iran while increasing business costs and making it tougher for Iran to import ordinary goods, businessmen and analysts said this week.

"The sanctions imposed by the U.S., especially in the past year, have been more harmful than we expected," said Saeed Laylaz, a prominent political and economic analyst in Tehran. "The main impact is that all of our imported goods have become more expensive."

U.S. firms had already been banned from doing business with the Islamic Republic. But in recent months, U.S. officials have bluntly warned non-American businesses, too, that they face possible U.S. retribution if caught doing business with Iran.

Given the choice between doing business in Iran or America, at least nine major international banks as well as companies in Europe, Japan and Arab countries have quietly cut ties with Iran, according to interviews with banking and government officials in the United Arab Emirates.

Alireza Sabaghian, an Iranian-born British citizen who owns a Dubai-based shipping firm, said he has angrily given up on $1 million (euro0.74 million) in yearly trade with Iran to protect his larger business in Europe.

"I don't want to put my other business at risk for the sake of making an extra million in Iran," said Sabaghian, whose Alma General Trading has annual shipments worth US$500 million (euro370 million) a year. "I'm a British passport holder. I want to go back there."

In addition, international banks have curbed most of their dealings inside Iran in recent months, under threat that their U.S. operations may be shut down, a Dubai-based representative of an international bank said on condition of anonymity, because of the topic's sensitivity.

Germany's Commerzbank halted dollar transactions with Iran in February after officials at the bank spoke of U.S. pressure.

Others dropping some or all of their Iranian business are Britain's Barclays PLC, HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC; Societe Generale SA and Credit Lyonnais of France; and Credit Suisse Group, UBS AG and Dutch bank ABN Amro Holding.

The banks' moves make it tough for Iranian businesses to get letters of credit and loans that are a staple in a nation increasingly reliant on imports.

"The main problem is financing," said Nasser Hashempour, vice president of the Dubai-based Iranian Business Council. "No one accepts Iranian letters of credit. That's one reason Iranians are moving out of Iran, because they have to establish relations with foreign banks."

Another Dubai-based international banker, also asking his name be withheld, said Iran's hardline government officials and the businesses they control spend cash oil revenues for imports, and are thus less affected than private Iranian merchants by the American measures.

Laylaz said the U.S. measures are leading Iran away from traditional suppliers in western Europe and closer to Russia and China, where U.S. policies have less traction.

Laylaz expects trade with China to reach its highest level ever this year, around US$16 billion (euro12 billion). But in Germany, one of Iran's traditional largest trading partners, exports dropped by 6 percent last year. German companies reported pressure to cut business with Iran and exports have dropped further this year, according to EU figures.

Dubai and nearby ports in Bahrain and Pakistan are serving as a lifeline for Iran, enabling businessmen to bypass the sanctions but also adding to their business costs. Dubai expects to see its trade with Iran jump to US$10 billion (euro7.4 billion) this year from US$7.8 billion in 2006.

As one example of how such trade works, Sabaghian said a friend in Iran tried to import gas cylinders from Germany this year but was refused. The friend then reordered with Dubai as the destination and transshipped the cylinders to Iran.

The ruse got him his cylinders but added to his expenses.

"The sanctions are a financial burden. But they don't make it impossible," Sabaghian said.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, visiting here earlier this month, asked the United Arab Emirates to join the American effort to isolate Iran.

But Cheney was told the Emirates won't consider the restrictions unless they are adopted by Iran's other neighbors, said a government official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the information's sensitivity.

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May 22, 2007

Halliburton shifting focus toward the Mideast, CEO says

Eds: Also moving on general news wires.

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Halliburton will shift some 70 percent of its capital investment over the next five years to the Eastern Hemisphere, which includes oil and gas zones in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, the North Sea and East Asia, the company's chief said Tuesday from his new headquarters in Dubai.

Dave Lesar, arriving for his first week in United Arab Emirates, said Halliburton Co. would quickly expand its Mideast operations as it targets $80 billion in new business over the next five years _ 75 percent of which lies in the eastern hemisphere, mainly the Middle East.

"Halliburton is committed to this part of the world," Lesar told a group of Dubai-based reporters.

The company seeks Arab investors and a share listing on Dubai's new international stock exchange, Lesar said. Halliburton has already hired 4,800 of the 14,000 new workers it plans to bring aboard this year, many of them in the Arab world, he said.

"We're looking for as many young Arab and Asian engineers, technicians and professionals to come and join our organization," Lesar said while swigging a Coke in a swanky hotel meeting room.

"As we build up our headquarters offices here it's not going to be by transferring people from the U.S., it's going to be by hiring locals," he said. "Unlike the States, there are more people in this part of the world who are interested in careers in the oil and gas industry."

Lesar said his goal was to achieve a 50-50 split between Halliburton's business in the Western Hemisphere and the booming new markets in the Eastern Hemisphere, primarily the Mideast. Currently, 65 percent of Halliburton's business and as much as 70 percent of its capital spending is in North and South America.

Lesar said the company was relieved to have shed prickly relationships that brought unwanted scrutiny. In April, Halliburton completed the sell-off of its KBR construction and services unit, which has been under fire for overcharging the U.S. military in Iraq.

"It was purely a commercial decision that has been well-reflected in the marketplace," Lesar said. "Halliburton is an oilfield services company. That's where we started 80 years ago and that's what we're back to."

With KBR gone, Halliburton has no current business in Iraq. But Lesar said Halliburton would look to partner with oil firms doing exploration in Iraq once an investment law is in place.

Security permitting, he said, "sure, we'd be interested in going in there. But I'm not going to put my people at risk."

Also in April, Halliburton stopped work in Iran, where a Dubai-based Halliburton subsidiary operated for years. Lesar said the company wasn't taking any more Iran business.

"Iran and Iraq are clearly two countries with big opportunities but our broader base is in countries outside of those two," he said.

And, in a year and a half, the company's much-discussed ties to the Bush administration will end when Bush leaves office. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's previous chief executive.

"We do have a link to the current administration that will cure itself in the very near future," Lesar said.

Lesar arrived in Dubai on Saturday to begin his stewardship of the company from this Persian Gulf boomtown, home to dozens of international banks and corporations, including U.S. giants like General Electric, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and Citibank. Halliburton is the first major western corporation to move its chief executive here.

The Dubai office allows him to be closer to the world's largest oil companies, like Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., whose leaders he seeks to court.

Halliburton's remaining top executives will probably stay in Houston, although the company plans to hold some of its board meetings in Dubai, Lesar said.

"This isn't a giant transplant from Houston to Dubai," Lesar said. "I don't see the need to have my senior executives sitting 10 feet from me."

Halliburton will continue to pay U.S. taxes on its global earnings, although Lesar and other Americans may have personal tax savings from working in tax-free Dubai and the company could save on capital purchases made here.

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May 14 2007

Iran's hard-line President Ahmadinejad tries to pry Gulf Arabs out of U.S. alliance

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Iran's hard-line president stepped up efforts to pry Gulf countries from their strong U.S. alliance, urging them to push out the American military from bases in the region.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first visit to the United Arab Emirates on Monday came just days after U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney called on Gulf nations to blunt Iran's efforts at regional dominance.

It also came as the United States and Iran agreed to talk in Baghdad about Iraq's deteriorating security. Although seen as a political turnabout, potential for real progress is low as tensions _ and sharp words _ continue to escalate.

In stark contrast to Cheney's low-key visit, Ahmadinejad was greeted at the airport Sunday with a red carpet and the top leaders of the Emirates. But no Emirati leaders joined Ahmadinejad at his public events, and there appeared to be an effort to give the Iranian leader a warm welcome but keep a distance from his statements.

In three separate addresses here, the fiery Iranian leader called for American troops to "pack their bags" and leave U.S. bases in the Gulf. He also was defiant about his country's disputed nuclear program, days after Cheney's tough talk from the deck of U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons _ a claim that Iran denies.

"The superpowers cannot prevent us from owning this" nuclear technology, Ahmadinejad told reporters in the opulent Emirates Palace hotel. "If they want to strike us militarily, I say their use of these practices will be gone forever. The Iranian people can protect themselves and retaliate."

Despite two sets of sanctions, Iran has ignored U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment, which can generate both energy and produce the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

On Sunday, inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran had overcome many of its technological problems in keeping its centrifuges running at the underground enrichment plant in Natanz, The New York Times reported.

Diplomats familiar with Iran's nuclear program have said the country recently set up more centrifuges at Natanz, bringing the number of machines ready to spin uranium gas into enriched form to more than 1,600. IAEA officials have said the country has started enriching small amounts of uranium.

Ahmadinejad, however, also appeared keen to show his country was willing to use its influence in the region, particularly in Iraq, where Iran is close to Shiite political parties.

"We decided we were ready and prepared to do this to support the Iraqi people," he said about the planned talks with the U.S. on Iraq's security situation. He spoke at a news conference before departing for a two-day visit to neighboring Oman, another of Washington's Gulf allies, which allows the United States use of four air bases.

Ahmadinejad urged the U.S. military to leave the Gulf, where it keeps 40,000 troops on bases and another 20,000 in Mideast waters.

"What are these outsiders doing in our region?" he said Monday when asked to comment on Cheney's remarks Friday aboard the USS John C. Stennis.

But it did not appear that Ahmadinejad's visit was any indication that the UAE was shifting its ties with America, which remain closer than Iran's. The Emirates' foreign minister left Monday for a visit to Washington. U.S. Navy ships use three ports in the Emirates and the U.S. Air Force operates from at least three airports, including flying U-2 and Global Hawk spy planes from al-Dhafra Air Base just outside Abu Dhabi.

An Emirates official made it clear the government did not endorse a raucous anti-American rally Sunday at a Dubai soccer stadium, where an audience of several thousand chanted "Down with America!" during Ahmadinejad's speech. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to make government statements, said the rally was "purely an Iranian affair."

"Everyone here and throughout the Gulf knows who Ahmadinejad is and what he represents. He's an extremist," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political scientist at Emirates University. "People don't trust him. This guy isn't going to energize or mobilize people against America or Bush. People here have their own views of Bush."

The Emirates invited Ahmadinejad for the visit _ the first by an Iranian leader since UAE independence in 1971 _ to let him know the Gulf Arab state will remain neutral in his showdown with Washington, Abdulla said. But it must still toe a fine line between Ahmadinejad and the Bush administration.

"Dick Cheney came here with certain demands and people here didn't like it. He's not somebody who is well-liked here, but we have to welcome him because he still represents the United States," Abdulla said.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, also stressed that relations with the Emirates had taken a "quantum leap," and the two countries agreed to create a joint committee headed by their foreign ministers to boost cooperation in tourism, trade, energy and development.

"There's a willingness on both sides to upgrade relations," Ahmadinejad said. "Relations between Iran and the UAE can be a model for all the countries of the region." He also called for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Egypt that were broken in 1979.

The Iranian delegation has similar plans in Oman, a sparsely populated oil-producing state. Iran and Oman share the territory that forms the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which two-fifths of the world's oil shipments pass.

Iran's state news agency, IRNA, reported Monday that Ahmadinejad hopes to establish government trade offices in Oman's capital of Muscat and the port city of Khasab, which sits near the strait, just across from Iran. Khasab is also the site of an airport that has been used as a base by the U.S. military.

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Sun May 13 20:40:56 2007

A day after Cheney visit, Iranian president leads unprecedented anti-U.S. rally in Dubai

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Iran's president led a raucous anti-American rally in this tightly controlled U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, a day after a low-key visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney aimed at countering Tehran's influence in the region.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd Sunday that America was to blame for creating instability and robbing the region of its wealth.

"We are telling you to leave the region. This is for your benefit and the benefit of your nation," Ahmadinejad shouted to the crowd of thousands at a soccer stadium. "The nations of the region can no longer take you forcing yourself on them. The nations of the region know better how to create peace and security."

Ahmadinejad's visit was the first by an Iranian head of state to this Sunni-led Arab country since its independence in 1971 and his rally was remarkable in a country where political parties are banned and power is held solely by tribal families.

Cheney's quiet visit Saturday to the Emirates, which hosts three American military bases, was part of a tour of the region to try to curb Iran's growing influence. On Friday, from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Cheney warned Iran that the U.S. and its allies will keep it from restricting sea traffic as well as from developing nuclear weapons.

The Iranian president has ratcheted up his nation's assertiveness in the Persian Gulf, capitalizing on the Bush administration's unpopularity to challenge Washington's alliances with Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.

Sunni royal families in the Emirates and elsewhere in the region also fear Iran's growing influence, especially the Shiite country's nuclear program, and worry about being sandwiched in a U.S.-Iran war.

Ahmadinejad wants the Emirates, Oman and the other Persian Gulf Arab countries to drop their military alliances with Washington and join Iran in a regional effort to maintain stability in the energy-rich region. Washington maintains 40,000 troops on land bases in Persian Gulf countries outside Iraq and has 20,000 sailors and Marines in the region.

"Every time your name is mentioned, hatred builds up," Ahmadinejad said of the United States. "Go fix yourself. This is Iran's advice to you. Leave the region."

One woman in the crowd shouted "I love you!" and Ahmadinejad paused to respond with a polite "thank you."

"God bless you for loving Iran so dearly," he told the crowd. "I love you."

The crowd, many of them expatriate Iranians, cheered Ahmadinejad and waved Iranian flags. One group carried a black banner bearing a yellow symbol seen on nuclear fallout shelters. Chants of "Down with the USA!" and "Nuclear energy is our right!" frequently interrupted the speech.

Washington and Tehran said Sunday that the two countries would hold talks in Baghdad about Iraq's security situation. But Iran remains locked in a standoff with the U.S. and its allies over White House allegations that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies the claims, saying its program is for generating electricity.

The Iranian president received a red-carpet welcome at Abu Dhabi International Airport, where he was greeted by Emirates President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dubai leader Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also the country's prime minister.

During his two-day visit, Ahmadinejad is to meet with government leaders in Abu Dhabi as well as Dubai, one of the world's fastest-growing cities and home to most of the 500,000-strong Iranian expatriate community.

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Thu May 10 13:36:24 2007

Iranian businessmen in Dubai chafe over U.S. restrictions

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in this wealthy Gulf boomtown on Sunday, he can expect an earful of complaints from Iranian businessmen chafing under U.S. sanctions.

Nasser Hashempour, the vice president of the Dubai-based Iranian Business Council, says U.S. pressure is persuading international banks to stop dealing with Iranian businesses, and ordinary Iranian commerce is being stifled. As a result, prices of consumer items like food, toothpaste and clothes are on the increase in Iran, he said.

"This is psychological warfare. It's completely wrong," Hashempour said on Thursday. "It's making everything more expensive. Innocents are being harmed."

Ahmadinejad is expected just a day after the visit of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Ahmadinejad has increased Iran's assertiveness in the Gulf, seeking to capitalize on the Bush administration's unpopularity to challenge Washington's alliances with Gulf Arab countries.

The Iranian president will pay homage to the powerful 500,000-strong Iranian community in the Emirates that is thriving amid a roaring economic boom. Ahmadinejad is expected to meet privately with Hashempour and other Iranian business leaders on Sunday at Dubai's giant Iranian club, where he is also scheduled to make a public speech.

But Iranian business owners aren't establishing operations in Dubai just because of its plethora of Iranian restaurants, hotels and nightclubs. Hashempour said they're coming because international banks have stopped accepting Iranian letters of credit or currency and refuse to work with Iranian banks.

"That's one reason Iranians are moving out of Iran because they have to establish relations with foreign banks," he said.

The Bush administration has tightened financial restrictions on Iran, shutting down operations of Iranian banks in America and warning foreign banks and investors that continued commerce with Iran could cause them problems in the United States.

International banks have curbed most of their dealings inside Iran in recent months, under threat that their U.S. operations will be shut down, said one banker here who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

A U.S. State Department spokesman in Dubai, Michael Pelletier, declined to comment Thursday on the effect of U.S. sanctions.

But in March, Stuart Levey, the U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, traveled to Dubai to warn Arab bankers to halt dealings with Iran or face U.S. sanctions. Levey alleged that even innocuous-looking trade with Iran could bankroll the country's disputed nuclear program.

The United Nations Security Council has levied two rounds of sanctions aimed at coercing Iran to suspend nuclear activities that the United States has long claimed are part of a covert weapons program. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful. The U.N. sanctions are not targeted at banking, but the U.S. has been successful in stepping up financial pressure independently.

Ahmadinejad will be asked what solutions Iran can offer to lessen the effects of the U.S.-led financial crackdown, said Abbas Bolurfrushan, a Dubai-based Iranian insurance executive and former head of the Iranian Business Council.

Ironically, U.S. sanctions appear to be boosting exports from Dubai to Iran, which are expected to surpass $10 billion this year, up from $7 billion last year, according to Iranian Business Council figures.

Much of that trade is made up of American goods that are shipped to Dubai and re-exported to Iran, Hashempour said. Re-exporting goods drives up their prices, he noted.

U.S. companies are barred from doing business with Iran, and a law passed in 1996 allows Washington to penalize even foreign firms that do more than $20 million (euro14.8 million) in business with the Islamic republic.

The U.S. government has also stepped up its anti-Iran efforts in Dubai, sending a half-dozen U.S. diplomats to form the State Department's Iran Regional Presence Office, the first U.S. diplomatic office aimed at Iran since 1979, when revolutionaries seized control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Washington also maintains a joint team with Emirates that tracks Iran-linked financial transactions, watching for ties to Tehran's nuclear program.

But the U.S. sanctions are stifling transactions that have nothing to do with the nuclear program, Hashempour said. He said he will ask Ahmadinejad to help, saying the sanctions are bleeding Iran by accelerating the country's brain drain.

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Thu May 10 08:02:43 2007

Iran and U.S. both court Gulf Arab allies as Cheney and Ahmadinejad make trips to the region

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Iran and America are courting the Gulf Arab states with the near-simultaneous visits of Vice President Dick Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week.

Both are touring the energy-rich region and landing days apart in the wealthy United Arab Emirates, where the government was said to be carefully choreographing their arrivals and departures.

Cheney was expected to fly from Iraq to the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi on Thursday. Ahmadinejad, who is expected to be greeted with great fanfare as the first ever Iranian head of state to visit, is expected Sunday, after spending two days in neighboring Oman.

The Gulf Arab countries are longtime U.S. allies, but the Bush administration's unpopular war in Iraq has triggered a strong effort by Iran to woo them out of the American camp.

But for its part, Iran has many across the region scared over its insistence on developing a nuclear program which can be used for nuclear arms making.

Washington has countered Iran's growing assertiveness in the region with a flurry of diplomatic visits and sent a second U.S. aircraft carrier steaming off Iran's coast.

Leaders in the Gulf, now in the midst of a lucrative economic boom, fear being sandwiched in a disastrous U.S.-Iran war. Neither Cheney nor Ahmadinejad is expected to win big concessions from the Gulf Arabs.

"We have a deep mistrust of both sides," said Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "Each is trying to defend his corner on major issues in the region. But neither is likely to accomplish very much."

Cheney, who is also traveling to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, is expected to press Emirates president Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for support for U.S. efforts in Iraq, and to shut down Iranian companies here that U.S. officials believe are backing the country's nuclear development. Some 500,000 Iranians live in the Emirates, which lies just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

"We have a common interest with the U.S. in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power and intervening in Iraq and Lebanon," Alani said. "But the problem is that we have a huge mistrust of the U.S. and cannot publicly support its position."

Ahmadinejad wants the Emirates, Oman and the other Gulf Arab countries to drop their military alliances with Washington and join Iran in a regional effort to maintain stability in the energy-rich Gulf. Washington maintains 40,000 troops on land bases in Gulf countries outside Iraq and currently has 20,000 sailors and Marines in the region.

"Iran is maintaining the policy of persuading the Gulf states from being allied with America," said Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University political scientist. "Perhaps Ahmadinejad as a hardline president will also be assuring his hosts that there is no need to be afraid of us."

Ahmadinejad is responding to an invitation to visit the Emirates, the first time an Iranian leader will have made the trip since the six sheikdoms banded together as a nation in 1971.

No Gulf state has backed Iran's offer of an alliance. Instead, Gulf leaders' agenda with Iran looks closer to America's, Alani said. Sheik Khalifa and Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said are likely to press Ahmadinejad to make concessions on its nuclear dispute with the West and give assurances that it is not aimed at producing weapons.

The two Gulf leaders may also warn Iran to stop backing Shiite Muslim radicals in Iraq and Lebanon, officials said. Ahmadinejad heard similar entreaties during his March visit with Saudi King Abdullah.

But the Emirates made a conciliatory move ahead of the Iranian president's arrival, announcing Wednesday that it would release 12 Iranian divers captured this month in disputed Gulf waters.

An Emirates government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on the record, said leaders here will press Ahmadinejad to resolve the status of three disputed Gulf islands. If Iran, which administers the islands, agrees to allow an international arbitrator to decide their status, the two countries could embark on much closer relations, analysts say.

"Together Iran and the Gulf states can take care of the region's security," said Zibakalam, the Tehran professor. "If there are problems, like these islands, they could be solved with good will and cooperation."

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Thu May 3 19:40:46 2007

Most prominent U.S. face at Arab tourism show is Department of Homeland Security

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Promoters from 64 countries vied this week to lure big-spending Arab tourists to their countries at the Middle East's largest tourism convention.

But not a single promoter from the United States turned up.

Instead, the U.S. government sent officials from the Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate its mandatory fingerprinting of Arab and other foreign visitors. The only other U.S. presence inside the Americas hall at the show came from a tiny boutique hotel in New York.

"It's bizarre," said Sarah Wood, promoting Canada's Ontario and Niagara Falls at a nearby booth. "People ask us where the U.S. booth is and we point them to the Homeland Security booth."

A pair of U.S. Homeland Security officials at the show did their best to give details on America's tourist sights, such as the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, while explaining that being fingerprinted by U.S. immigration officials doesn't mean a person should feel like a criminal.

"We tell them, 'We want you to come to the United States,'" said DHS spokeswoman Kimberly Weissman. "They ask us about destinations and we give them our personal anecdotes."

The United States used to send small delegations to the show _ the Arabian Travel Market _ but those dried up after the Sept. 11 attacks, organizers said. Show chairman Tom Nutley has said American operators no longer see Arab tourists as a viable market. Tightened U.S. visa restrictions on Arabs have also kept many tourists away.

Visitors at the show said the lack of U.S. promoters gives the impression that Arabs are no longer welcome in America.

"Maybe they don't want Arabs to visit," said Hussein bin Mutlaq, 52, a retired Emirates army officer. Bin Mutlaq said it was ironic that the Gulf militaries and governments have such close relations with Washington but that individual visits have become so difficult. Two Emiratis were among the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. Fifteen came from neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Another visitor, who declined to give his name, said he wanted to visit America but was put off when he was told that his uncle was strip-searched three times.

The World Tourism Organization said Arab tourists from the Gulf states spent more than $12 billion on foreign vacations in 2005. Figures for 2006 were not immediately available.

The American absence was an opportunity for others.

A Kuwaiti tour operator, Thomas Sam, said he booked 1,000 nights of hotel stays for clients traveling to Australia, Europe and Asia. Morocco's Go Holiday tour operator reported 30 major agreements to handle package tours from Kuwait, Tunisia, Bahrain, Indonesia and Syria. An Emirati operator, Hassan al-Sabbagh said he'd set up new package vacations in Cyprus because of increasing Arab demand.

New York City's absence at the convention was especially perplexing, as Emirates airlines flies three daily direct flights to New York, and Etihad airlines operates another daily direct New York flight from the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.

U.S. carrier Delta Airlines operated a small booth at the convention, offering special fares on its five weekly flights between Dubai and Atlanta, starting May 31. Qatar Airways announced it would begin nonstop flights from Doha to Washington this summer and would begin service to New York via Geneva in June.

But even in the absence of U.S. promoters, Arab affinity toward American culture was evident.

Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe impersonators posed for photographs at the floor show, while American-style cheerleaders performed in front of the Qatar pavilion.

American companies investing in the Arab world, such as American Express and Hertz attended the show.

Two major U.S. theme parks announced they would open franchises in Dubai. Universal Studios, which operates theme parks in Florida, California and Japan, said it would build a $2.2 billion amusement park inside the gargantuan Dubailand amusement zone. Nickelodeon Recreation announced Thursday that it would also open a theme park by 2011 in Dubailand.

But no U.S. theme parks _ not even Universal Studios _ sent envoys to attract Arab visitors to America.

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Tue Apr 17 10:33:03 2007

Al-Jazeera English scores gains with viewers _ except in the U.S.

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Al-Jazeera's English language television has in its six-month existence gained strong viewership across Europe, in parts of Asia, Australia _ and even Israel, according to executives and local companies that carry it.

But no major cable or satellite provider in the U.S. is carrying the channel, a decision the network blames on political pressure. U.S. carriers, however, say there is simply no market.

Nearly 100 million households worldwide receive Al-Jazeera's English service, almost half as many as CNN, station executives say. Since January, it has been broadcasting news to 550,000 Israeli homes on Yes TV, the country's largest cable provider.

"It's extraordinary that while the rest of the world is happy to watch us ... the U.S. stands in splendid isolation," said Al-Jazeera English managing director Nigel Parsons at the station's headquarters in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

Station executives said they expected a dogged battle for American airwaves because Al-Jazeera's Arabic channel has been excoriated by the Bush administration as a mouthpiece for terrorists, including al Qaida's Osama bin Laden.

Still, No. 1 U.S. cable provider Comcast Corp. ,was ready to carry Al-Jazeera English's November debut in the Detroit area, Al-Jazeera executives said.

But Comcast suddenly pulled out just before launch, Parsons said. He and Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, believed the decision was spurred by U.S. political opposition.

"We suspect there was outside pressure, including of a political nature," Parsons said. But he noted he had no evidence of such pressure, and did not know whether pressure came from the U.S. government, elected officials or lobby groups.

A spokeswoman for Philadelphia-based Comcast, D'Arcy Rudnay, said scarce bandwidth and not political pressure was to blame.

"We looked at the local lineup and determined that the channel capacity would be better used to add other channels and services that our customers have been asking for, e.g. more (high definition) and HD On Demand programming," Rudnay said in an e-mail.

Detroit, home to a large Arab community, was considered an ideal market for Arab-focused news. Parsons said Comcast's Detroit affiliate was "pushing for an agreement" to carry Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in high-definition.

Comcast's Detroit spokesman, Jerome Espy, said he wasn't familiar with the details of the Al-Jazeera negotiations. Espy said Comcast Detroit has bandwidth to spare for channels "that fit a certain niche." But he said there was already programming catering to local Arabs.

For now, Al-Jazeera's only U.S. carriers are Fision, a small provider in Houston; Globecast, a French satellite provider; and local providers in Ohio, Vermont and Washington D.C.

The station is currently negotiating with others, Parsons said.

Al-Jazeera faces questions about its marketability in America, however. At one major cable carrier, an executive said Al-Jazeera's English programming was too similar to BBC World and there weren't enough likely American viewers to add another foreign-centric news channel.

The executive spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss corporate strategy.

Interestingly, however, Al-Jazeera English has found an audience in Israel for its mix of extensive African, Asian and Middle Eastern coverage. Viewers in Israel also have access to Al-Jazeera's original Arabic news channel.

"This is thought of as one of the best news channels in the world," said Yes TV spokeswoman Libi Zipser, speaking of Al-Jazeera English. "There are those who think that certain channels are less supportive of Israel, but we just let our customers see what they want to see."

Jeanette Elmekis, 58, whose husband was killed in the 1973 Middle East war, said she thought it was "very important" to understand what people perceived as Israel's enemies think _ even if it appears unfair.

Other analysts say it is not surprising Israel has accepted Al-Jazeera English, given how aggressive and skeptical Israeli media are. That has conditioned Israelis to such coverage.

Al Jazeera "is very critical of Israel, and biased and highly problematic. But you don't ban it," said Eytan Gilboa, a communications professor at Israel's Bar-Ilan University.

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Wed Apr 11 12:52:06 2007

Warm relations between China and the Gulf Arab countries

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ Look closely at some of the major development projects in China, and what you see behind them is Middle East oil.

A $500 million port development in Tianjin is funded by Dubai-based DP World. A $5 billion refinery in Guangdong province will be built by Kuwait. A huge crude oil tank farm on Hainan Island is planned by Saudi Arabia.

These projects and others have come out of the Middle East's growing economic relationship with China, which has become a major buyer of energy from the countries doing the investing. In turn, China _ the world's second-largest oil consumer after the U.S. _ is boosting its investments in the Middle East to lock in a steady stream of oil and gas.

"This is the beginning of a long-term trend of investors from the Gulf region investing in the Far East," said Michael Philipp, chief executive of Credit Suisse Europe, Middle East and Africa, during a CEO conference in Doha in February. "The flows are tremendous. The interest is tremendous. This will continue to grow."

The strengthening Middle East-China bond comes amid a strain in U.S.-Arab relations since the Sept. 11 attacks. When Saudi King Abdullah made his first overseas trip in January 2006 after taking the throne, he skipped America and flew to China. Chinese President Hu Jintao soon returned the honor and later visited neighboring Dubai.

Trade between the six Gulf states and Asia doubled between 2000 and 2005, reaching $240 billion, according to figures released at the CEO conference.

Gulf investments in China totaled around $20 billion last year, bankers handling the deals said. Those investments look set to grow dramatically, especially if high oil prices continue to fill Gulf treasuries.

The six Gulf Arab countries _ Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain _ will invest nearly $250 billion in Asian markets including China over the next five years, according to a January speech by Omar bin Sulaiman, governor of the Dubai International Financial Center.

Cash-flush Gulf investors are drawn to China's red-hot markets, where returns have outpaced those in the United States and Europe. They are also more reluctant to invest in the United States after the U.S. Congress voted to force a Dubai-based company to sell its ownership of American port operations a year ago.

"If you can't go to the United States, you have to go somewhere else," said Beshr Bakheet, a Saudi investment adviser. "People want to do business and (U.S. authorities) are making their lives difficult."

Within a decade, China and India are likely to surpass the United States and Europe as the largest Gulf investment destinations, said N. Janardhan of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, a private think-tank.

Economists say deepening Gulf preferences for Asia could eventually affect the U.S. economy or the value of the dollar, but have not yet. Nor is there much concrete evidence that Gulf investors have yet slowed their purchases of the U.S. assets they traditionally favored.

A survey last year by consultancy McKinsey says Gulf investors will shift their portfolio allocations toward Asian assets by 10 to 30 percent, which "represents an important change in the pattern of global capital flow."

The surge in funds can be seen in several areas:

_ United Nations statistics show the six Gulf countries had no major investments in new company facilities in China in 2002. By 2006 they had 13, seven of which were bankrolled in the United Arab Emirates.

_ When the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China launched its $22 billion public offering in October, Gulf investors snapped up as much as 20 percent of the shares, Philipp of Credit Suisse said. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world's fifth-richest man, bought $2 billion in shares.

_ Kuwait and Saudi companies are building refineries in China. Saudi Arabia is helping build a huge storage facility in China to hold a 30-day emergency oil supply. Dubai firms operate Chinese ports and are developing residential and commercial complexes in Beijing and Shanghai.

_ Chinese firms are building an extension of the Tehran metro in Iran, putting up a shipbuilding complex and negotiating three enormous oil and natural gas production deals, one valued at $16 billion.

_ State-owned Kuwait Investment Authority decided in 2005 to boost the Asian assets in its $100 billion portfolio from 10 to 20 percent.

_ Dubai's enormous Dragon Mart shopping mall and residential complex is the largest trading hub for Chinese wholesalers outside mainland China.

_ China's builders, engineers, labor suppliers and equipment companies have begun winning shares in the $1 trillion in projects planned or under way in the Gulf.

The economic ties have political implications.

For now, Gulf countries show no signs of wanting to get rid of the U.S. security that protects them, but they do want to diversify. Leaders here are angered by the invasion of Iraq, and they worry that the hard-line U.S. policy toward Tehran could provoke an unwanted war. They want China to take a role maintaining stability in the region.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in 2004 that Saudi Arabia would reduce its dependence on U.S.-dominated security arrangements. And in January, a delegation from a Shanghai political think tank was told in Dubai that a bigger Chinese role in the Gulf would be welcomed, especially if Beijing backed Arab positions in the U.N. Security Council.

China appointed a special envoy for Mideast affairs in 2002 and hosted visits from Palestinian foreign minister and Hamas member Mahmoud Zahar last year.

"China's envoy hasn't been too effective so far," said Shen Dingli, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. "But it's a sign that China is getting more involved."

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Sat Apr 7 03:01:29 2007

AP ENTERPRISE: Translators dying by the dozens in most dangerous civilian job in Iraq

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

It's one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in one of the world's most dangerous countries: translating Arabic for the U.S. military in Iraq.

One by one, little noticed in the daily mayhem, dozens of interpreters have been killed - mostly Iraqis but 12 Americans, too. They account for 40 percent of the 300-plus death claims filed by private contractors with the U.S. Labor Department.

Riding in bomb-blasted Humvees, tagging along on foot patrols in Fallujah or dashing into buildings behind Marines, translators are dying on the job, but also facing danger at home: hunted by insurgents who call them pro-American collaborators.

"If the insurgents catch us, they will cut off our heads because the imams say we are spies," said Mustafa Fahmi, 24, an Iraqi interpreter with Titan Corp., the biggest employer of linguists in Iraq. "I've been threatened like fifteen times, but I won't quit. A neighbor saw me driving and said, 'I am going to kill you."'

That fate befell Luqman Mohammed Kurdi Hussein, a Titan linguist and Iraqi Kurd captured by insurgents in October. A video of the 41-year-old's beheading was posted on the Internet.

Another Titan employee, Sudanese interpreter Noureddin Zakaria, was luckier. He appeared as a hostage on an Oct. 30 broadcast by Al-Arabiya television, saying he had been captured in Ramadi. His kidnappers later released him.

In a more recent attack in Baghdad in late March, two carloads of insurgents gunned down five Iraqi women traveling home in a car from their jobs on a U.S. base. All were killed, the Iraqi police reported, and at least one of them was a translator.

The efficiency with which insurgents hunted down Titan contractors worries the U.S. military. As militants killed them in growing numbers, usually in ambushes off base, the Army and others began housing Titan workers on military bases or in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

"There was a period when it seemed translators were being targeted on a daily basis," said First Sgt. Stephen Valley, a U.S. Army reservist who worked with Arab journalists in Baghdad. "There was virtually no way to protect these people."

Most Titan linguists now live on U.S. bases.

More than 4,000 translators work for San Diego, Calif.-based Titan, which supplies the U.S. military with Arabic- and Kurdish-speaking linguists. In April, Titan reported a 23 percent increase in revenues, or $559 million, a company record. Titan said its contract with the U.S. Army is its biggest revenue source, worth up to $657 million by the time it expires.

The human cost has been high. The U.S. Labor Department reports 126 death benefit claims for Titan workers in Iraq out of a total 305 for contractors as of mid-May. The Titan death toll includes 12 Americans, and possibly some non-translators, the company said, with another 149 wounded.

"This is a war zone. Our people are embedded with literally every military unit in Iraq, facing the same life-threatening dangers as our U.S. combat forces," Titan spokesman Wil Williams said. "We have lost more personnel than any other American contractor covered by (U.S. government) insurance because of our unique, critical and dangerous mission, and because of the intensity of the insurgents who seek to discourage Iraqis from serving their country."

Titan's toll - which includes both violent deaths and accidents - is far higher than any of the hundreds of civilian contracting firms in Iraq, including those with many more workers.

For example, Halliburton, the Houston-based contractor with 50,000 employees spread between Iraq and Kuwait, has had more than 60 employees and subcontractors killed in the war zone, more than 250 wounded and one worker unaccounted for, spokeswoman Jennifer Dellinger said.

Many deaths don't show up in the Labor Department statistics under the name Halliburton because often claims are filed under subcontractor names. The 305 death claims with the Labor Department represent only part of the toll for American and other civilian contractors in Iraq. The true figure is difficult to estimate because many firms don't publicize workers' slayings. The U.S. troop death toll is over 1,620.

In Iraq, translators are seen as a critical link between U.S. troops and Iraqis.

"They were important to our mission, and terrorists were trying to hurt us by hurting them," said Army Capt. Joseph Ludvigson, who was based last year in northern Iraq.

On Baghdad's hostile western outskirts, the Army has conducted memorial ceremonies for slain Titan interpreters, said 1st Cavalry Division Maj. Derik Von Recum.

The first, an Iraqi woman, was killed in July, "shot execution-style at her home in front of her family," Von Recum said. The second, an Iraqi man, stopped coming to work in November. It took a few days to figure out insurgents had kidnapped and killed him, Von Recum said.

"The two we lost were like family to us," he said. "I wish we could have provided them with better protection."

But some Iraqis working for Titan said they spent months on the job before being issued helmets, body armor, and ear- and eye-protection given to U.S. troops and foreign contractors.

Titan's Williams said Iraqi workers now get the same Kevlar helmets and vests issued to U.S. troops. "Following some initial equipment shortages, our Iraqi personnel now have the equipment they need where and when they need it," he told The Associated Press.

One Titan interpreter said he completed more than 100 missions without body armor and a helmet. The man spoke on condition his name wasn't used because he didn't want to lose his job.

This reporter, who spent more than a year in Iraq, was accompanied Iraqi interpreters who wore no body armor or helmets on many U.S. military missions.

"You look around and see the soldiers and the international press with you, and they're all wearing the proper protection. What about me? I'm one of the team," said the Titan interpreter, who emerged uninjured from two convoys blasted by roadside bombs.

The interpreter said he asked his U.S. Army commander why the troops and the American civilians - some also in Titan's employ - had body armor and helmets, but not the Iraqis.

"After a while they decided it was wrong. They gave it to us," he said.

A Titan translator with no military background said U.S. troops allow him to carry an AK-47, after having taught him to shoot it. The 31-year-old Iraqi said he opened fire on insurgents when his convoy came under attack near Baghdad in March 2004. He was slightly wounded.

"I saw an American soldier killed right in front of me," said the translator, who didn't want his name used because he feared for his life. "The insurgents were shooting at us from the rooftops. I was trying to shoot them too. The soldiers yelled at me: 'Hey, don't try to be a hero. Get down!"'

He said he has survived three ambushes, but a co-worker with Titan was killed by a mortar round on a U.S. base in Baghdad.

As bad as the on-the-job hazards are the dangers commuting to work.

The Titan translator who had to ask for body armor said he alters his route, schedule and the cars he takes to the U.S. base where he works. He never stays more than a few nights in one house. And he wears a black ski mask to hide his identity while on patrol.

"I stay with neighbors, sometimes with my family, with my wife's family, my uncle, my parents," he said. "If anyone recognizes you, and says, 'Hey, I saw you with the soldiers,' that's when you're done."

Another Titan contractor, who didn't want his name published for fear of retribution, keeps a pistol in his lap when he drives.

"I don't talk about my job," he said. "If you keep your mouth shut, no one is going to know who you are or what your job is."

Money is the chief reward. The interpreters say monthly salaries start at $600 and range as high as more than $1,000 for those who take the most dangerous missions. That pay is big by Iraqi standards, where many survive on less than $100 a month.

Under those salaries, U.S. government death benefits for families of slain Iraqi translators would range from $300 to $700 a month, according to a formula in the Defense Base Act, which sets a maximum payout of less than $4,190 a month.

Valley said he was amazed Iraqis would show up to replace a translator who'd been killed.

"They were putting their lives on the line for what seemed to me a ridiculously small amount of money, but to them it was the highest salary they had ever earned," Valley said.

Valley said his office helped negotiate a new salary scale that made their translators "some of the best paid Iraqi civilian workers in the country."

"If we couldn't protect them from the insurgents, we could get them a higher monthly salary," he said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press writer Jim Krane, who spent more than a year reporting in Iraq, wrote the story from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he's based. AP photographer Jacob Silberberg contributed from Baqouba, Iraq, and AP researcher Monika Mathur from New York.

GRAPHIC: AP Photos: NY427-428; AP Graphic of May 18: TRANSLATOR DEATHS

LOAD-DATE: May 22, 2005

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Wed Mar 28 09:30:16 2007

Gulf Arabs distance themselves from U.S. threats against Iran

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The president of the United Arab Emirates forbade the U.S. military from using bases in his country to attack or spy on Iran as mammoth U.S. Navy maneuvers in the Gulf entered their second day.

Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who leads this key U.S. ally, said Tuesday that the Emirates had assured Iran that it was not siding with Washington in its dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.

Leaders of Arab nations around the Gulf have grown increasingly uneasy with the tough U.S. stance toward Iran, believing any outbreak of war would bring Iranian retaliation on their own soil, which lies in easy reach of Iranian missiles.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Navy continued its largest show of force in the Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with 15 ships, 125 aircraft and 13,000 sailors taking part in an exercise that veered within a few dozen miles of Iran's coast.

The Emirates "refuses to use its territorial lands, air or waters for aggression against any other country, let alone a neighboring Muslim country with which we maintain historic and economic ties," Sheik Khalifa said in a statement carried on Emirates news agency WAM.

"We have assured the brothers in Iran ... that we are not a party in its dispute with the United States, that we will not allow any force to use our territories for military, security and espionage activities against Iran," Sheik Khalifa said.

The statement could prevent the U.S. Air Force from flying intelligence missions over Iran with its squadron of U-2 and Global Hawk spy planes based at al-Dhafra Air Base near the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.

The U.S. Air Force has not altered its air operations in response to Sheik Khalifa's statement, said Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Pierson, based in the neighboring Gulf state of Qatar.

"Our air operations continue as before," Pierson said. He declined to say whether U-2s were flying missions over Iran, but said the U.S. Air Force only operates in international airspace or over countries that have granted permission.

The U.S. Air Force also runs air-to-air refueling missions from the base and is engaged in training Emirates air force pilots on F-16 fighters recently purchased from the United States.

Sheik Khalifa also asked Iran to "be flexible and realistic and to respect international demands" to halt uranium enrichment, while cautioning the United States to use diplomatic means, not military action to solve the dispute.

Earlier this month, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani issued a similar message, saying Qatar wouldn't permit an attack on Iran to be launched from its soil.

Qatar is home to the enormous al-Udeid air base, from where U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary North commands all American air operations over the Mideast.

The United States maintains nearly 40,000 troops on bases in allied Arab countries that face Iran across the Persian Gulf, including about 25,000 in Kuwait, 6,500 in Qatar, 3,000 in Bahrain, 1,300 in the United Arab Emirates and a few hundred in Oman and Saudi Arabia, according to figures from the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

Iran has full diplomatic ties with the Emirates and most Gulf countries, with booming trade and tourism links.

As a result, Gulf countries are doing their best to avoid being linked to any military confrontation between Iran and the U.S., said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst at the Gulf Research Center.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, the loose alliance of six Gulf Arab states, has also called on its members not to offer any support to any U.S. action on Iran, Alani said.

"This kind of statement is timely now, to tell the U.S. they don't want to be a part of it," Alani said. "The Gulf states don't want to be sandwiched in a conflict between the U.S. and Iran. America won't ask their permission to attack. They're going to be the victims in this."

In the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown said the U.S. Gulf maneuvers were defensive in nature, aimed at keeping open the sea lanes that carry a two-fifths of the world's oil shipments.

"We're not looking for any kind of confrontation with Iran," Brown said. "The purpose of the exercise is to ensure that no one miscalculates about our commitment to security and stability in the Gulf."

For its part, Iran insisted the maneuvers were not even taking place.

"American forces have not launched any maneuver in the recent days," Iran's joint armed forces headquarters said in a statement. "This has been part of the enemy's psychological operation."

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Tue Mar 27 05:57:03 2007

U.S. launches huge show of force in Persian Gulf

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The U.S. Navy on Tuesday began its largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a pair of aircraft carriers and backed by warplanes flying simulated attack maneuvers off the coast of Iran.

The maneuvers bring together two strike groups of U.S. warships and more than 100 U.S. warplanes to conduct simulated air warfare in the crowded Gulf shipping lanes.

The U.S. exercises come just four days after Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines who Iran said had strayed into Iranian waters near the Gulf. Britain and the U.S. Navy have insisted the British sailors were operating in Iraqi waters.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl said the U.S. maneuvers were not organized in response to the capture of the British sailors _ nor were they meant to threaten the Islamic Republic, whose navy operates in the same waters.

He declined to specify when the Navy planned the exercises.

Aandahl said the U.S. warships would stay out of Iranian territorial waters, which extend 12 miles off the Iranian coast.

A French naval strike group, led by the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, was operating simultaneously just outside the Gulf. But the French ships were supporting the NATO forces in Afghanistan and not taking part in the U.S. maneuvers, officials said.

Overall, the exercises involve more than 10,000 U.S. personnel on warships and aircraft making simulated attacks on enemy shipping with aircraft and ships, hunting enemy submarines and finding mines.

"What it should be seen as by Iran or anyone else is that it's for regional stability and security," Aandahl said. "These ships are just another demonstration of that. If there's a destabilizing effect, it's Iran's behavior."

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Mon Mar 26 13:20:57 2007

China may lead way as oil companies weigh Iraq's danger against payoff

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ China has sat out the Iraq war, but it could be the first to take advantage when the Iraqi government finishes a law opening up its oil fields to international companies.

The Iraqi oil legislation, expected to be approved by July, will open the door for the government to sign contracts for exploration and production of the country's vast untapped reserves, a top U.S. priority. But since few Western companies are prepared to send equipment or crews into the war zone, it could take five years or more before they begin extracting big shipments of Iraqi crude.

"You will see announcements and deals. But dollars in the ground is a different story," said Saad Rahim, a Mideast analyst with Washington-based PFC Energy.

That leaves China.

China is so desperate for energy that Beijing's government-owned oil companies may be willing to accept higher security risks than others, some analysts say.

By contrast, international oil majors _ companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Total SA _ are likely to try to sign leasing agreements to stake their claims, believing Iraq is so oil-rich that they can afford to wait a few years for the fighting to die down.

"Iraq's potential is so tremendous that they're all ready to pounce as soon as the situation permits," said Sharif Ghalib, a senior analyst with Energy Intelligence Research in New York. "It's a bonanza waiting to happen."

Most estimates put Iraq's proven oil reserves at 115 billion barrels, the world's third-largest. But Iraq has lagged in exploration technologically for so long that actual reservoirs are probably double that, said Frank Verrastro, an oil analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

That potential may outweigh the risk for government oil companies like China's, motivated less by profit than by the need for steady supplies of oil to run its economy. Oil industry executives have said privately that China's strategic needs could lead its national oil companies to be early developers of Iraqi fields, perhaps in joint ventures with Western firms.

Feeding that talk: In October, the China National Petroleum Corp. began renegotiating a $1.2 billion contract signed in 1997 with Saddam Hussein's government to develop the billion-barrel al-Ahdab field, in an area where Shiite militias hold sway.

A Chinese company is also negotiating with a Western oil company to send Chinese workers into Iraq, said a Western oil executive, who declined to give details and spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the information. There is an understanding that some workers might be killed, the executive said.

Officials at the China National Petroleum Corp. and China National Offshore Oil Corp., reached by phone last week, said they had no projects under way in Iraq. They refused to discuss future plans.

Iraqi oil workers and oil ministry officials have been gunned down in the past few years, including eight slain on their way to work at the Beiji refinery last March. If such violence is repeated, even the Chinese could be kept away, robbing that country of oil and Iraq of billions in revenue, Ghalib said.

"The Chinese oil companies have gone into Sudan and Iran, discounting threats of boycotts. But I don't think they'll be willing to risk their people in Iraq. They'd endanger thousands of technicians and face disruptions all the time," he said.

For now, the new oil law's first impact would probably be seen in northern Iraq's Kurdish region. The violence there is low enough for international firms to send crews and equipment, but crude deposits are thought to be smaller than those in the Shiite south or just outside that region, near the northern city of Kirkuk.

The proposed oil law, which has been pushed hard by U.S. officials in Iraq and Washington, won approval from the Cabinet in February after months of haggling. Final action by the Iraqi parliament is expected by its July recess.

Once the law is approved, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani says he will seek bids for projects in the second half of this year. The latest draft offers 51 known oil fields for development and 65 blocks of territory for exploration, most in western Sunni areas where there is no current production.

Even with a new law in place, Iraq's investment climate may not be clear. Physical danger aside, the legal environment is a tangle of overlapping jurisdictions and gray areas. The oil law is supposed to resolve those issues, but it is unclear if it will.

Furthermore, there's no easy way to get the crude to market. Sabotage still hamstrings exports. The British decision to withdraw most of its troops from the south has raised concern about stability at even the largest oil fields. And rickety export infrastructure can't handle much more than the 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi crude now in production.

"God knows what remains to be discovered there. And we need it badly," said Conrad Gerber, president of Swiss oil data company Petro-Logistics. "But there are so many bandits and thieves. It's an absolute nightmare."

For now, the only realm safe enough for most Western firms or oil majors are the three Kurdish-governed provinces in the north, where officials have said they expect international oil giants to help them produce 1 million barrels per day in five years.

Five independent oil companies are already exploring the region, including Norway's DNO and Canada's Addax Petroleum Corp. Some have reported modest discoveries.

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Sun Mar 25 11:34:01 2007

Emirates labor law enshrines abuses, Human Rights Watch says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ A new draft labor law under consideration in the United Arab Emirates treats 1.3 million foreign workers as indentured servants, with no right to form unions or hold strikes, officials from New York-based Human Rights Watch said here Sunday.

The rights group said the draft law punishes low-paid laborers seeking legitimate rights and ignores the companies responsible for widespread abuses, including withholding passports and salaries and forcing workers into years of debt over recruitment costs, said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the rights group's Middle East division.

Emirates Labor Minister Ali al-Kaabi on Sunday said he appreciated the "relevant proposals" from Human Rights Watch, which will be considered for inclusion in the draft law. The law is scheduled for approval by the end of 2007, al-Kaabi said, as reported by Emirates news agency WAM.

A previous government statement described the rights group's allegations as inaccurate and said the Emirates was in the midst of sweeping labor reforms aimed at improving conditions.

But authorities in the Emirates have already begun deporting dozens of workers involved in a spate of recent strikes. After some 8,000 construction workers halted work in Dubai this month, police arrested 185 men for deportation. Those who returned to work were given wage increases of around 54 U.S. cents (40 Euro cents) per day, according to the Dubai-based Gulf News.

Whitson said there was no evidence that a single company executive had ever been tried or jailed for abuses.

"The penalty provisions are a joke," Whitson said at a press conference in a Dubai hotel. "Employers can break the law because they know they can get away with it. If employers are going to treat this law seriously they need to see some real penalties."

For its part, the government noted that it has shut more than 100 substandard labor housing camps, opened a labor court in Dubai and is in the midst of hiring 2,000 labor inspectors, a government statement said. A police crackdown on unpaid wages in Dubai last year forced companies to pay $52 million in back pay.

The energy-rich country is in the midst of a four-year economic boom that has lured 3 million foreign workers, many of whom are building skyscrapers and beach resorts that have turned Dubai into one of the world's hottest tourist destinations. But rights groups have excoriated the Emirates and other wealthy Gulf Arab states for building luxurious lifestyles on the backs of underpaid South Asians earning as little as US$135 (euro102) per month.

She said the law makes no provisions for the country's 600,000 maids and other domestic workers and does not ban companies from holding workers' passports.

She called on the Ministry of Labor to amend the law in line with long-established norms, such as the right to bargain collectively and strike, written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and principles of the International Labor Organization, of which the Emirates is a member.

Al-Kaabi in March 2006 promised that labor unions would be legalized by year's end. But that promise was never kept and appears to have been dropped from the draft labor law.

Whitson said her attempts to meet with Emirates labor officials had failed. But a government official here said Whitson turned down al-Kaabi's offer to meet on Saturday.

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Sun Mar 25 00:03:53 2007

U.S.-funded encyclopedia revels in Iran's greatness

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The Christian concepts of heaven and hell originate in Iran. The Jewish holy Talmud is littered with Iranian words and ideas. And some Iranians cherish the Israeli city of Haifa as a sacred place.

These are among the fascinating nuggets in the Encyclopedia Iranica, a sprawling project under way since 1973 that seeks to distill 5,000 years of Iranian history, geography and life into 45 blue-bound volumes proclaiming Iran's greatness.

"Today more than at any other time we need to keep our Iranian culture alive," Iranica's director Ehsan Yarshater told an audience of 350 Iranians at a fundraiser in Dubai last month. The glitzy dinner, concert and auction raised $100,000 for a project that will take a total of $20 million _ and another decade or so _ to finish.

The Iranian government bitterly opposes the encyclopedia, and the U.S. government backs it. More than half of the encyclopedia's budget comes from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, which has funded it as a project of major cultural significance since 1979 _ the same year Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

"Once completed it will be a magnificent gift to our children and the generations to come," said Yarshater, an Iran scholar at Columbia University in New York.

The encyclopedia is Yarshater's life work. Now a frail 86 years old, he suffers from Parkinson's disease. He started the encyclopedia 32 years ago, just after leaving Iran. The project threatens to outlast him. Another Columbia Iranologist, Ahmad Ashraf, will take over leadership of the project if Yarshater dies before completing it.

Only 13 volumes of the English-language encyclopedia have yet been published, up to the letter G. It's been so slow that managers have abandoned the one-letter-at-a-time approach and are soliciting all remaining articles at once.

Each volume costs $1 million to produce, said Mark Houshmand, who heads the Encyclopedia's Dubai support group. Dubai, with around 300,000 resident Iranians, has a large expatriate community supporting the project, as does Los Angeles, New York, Geneva, London, Toronto and Miami.

Individual volumes can be ordered from Iranica's Web site for $250-$350 each, or the first 12 for $3,450. When complete, it'll take more shelf space even than the 29-volume Encyclopedia Britannica.

Some 2,500 years ago, Persia's empire stretched from Libya to China and included Turkey and northern India. The Persian dominion revived again after the 11th century, spreading from Turkey to Bangladesh and dominating central Asia until the penetration of Western civilization into Asia in the mid-1800s.

Thus, encyclopedia entries cover Persian aspects of places far outside today's borders, including Central Asia, India, North Africa, Greece and Albania.

Most of the work is being done outside Iran too, because the Iranian government opposes the project. Scholars inside the country have faced harassment, the managers say. The project is headquartered at Columbia.

Most of the Iranian opprobrium stems from Yarshater's belonging to the Bahai faith, Houshmand said.

"He's not welcome in Iran. They don't appreciate the work he's doing. They don't want him to get any credit," Houshmand said. "All this is because of his religion. It should be irrelevant. But unfortunately, with today's Iranian government, these things are very relevant."

Bahais have been vigorously persecuted by current and past Iranian regimes. In 1868, several Bahais were exiled to Palestine, now Israel, where they built shrines in Haifa, which they now consider a holy city, the encyclopedia says.

Entries like that, documenting the Islamic Republic's connections to Israel and its pre-Islamic past, are deemed contrary to Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution by its current government.

Concepts such as the survival of a person's soul after death, the Day of Judgment, heaven and hell, and holy angels all derive from Iran's surviving Zoroastrian faith, a 3,000-year-old religion that predates Islam and Christianity, the encyclopedia says. Iran's hard-liners also frown on the Zoroastrian beliefs.

In the fundraiser audience were U.S. and Swiss diplomats and some of Iran's biggest pre-revolutionary pop stars, including singers Mahasti and Aref, both of whom flew from homes in Los Angeles. Iran's most famous pianist, Los Angeles-based Rohani, played his melancholy songs until the wee hours.

"I couldn't care less about what my regime's stance is toward the United States," said Sara Masinaei, 24, a Dubai resident who emigrated from Tehran with her family at the age of eight. "What's important to me is Iran's history, language and traditions. I want my kids and their kids to benefit from what we're supporting today."

Abbas Bolurfrushan said exiles worry about losing touch with Iran and its Farsi language. The books ought to tug them back into the fold until Iran's regime mellows enough to allow them to visit more often, he said.

But Bolurfrushan, who heads the Dubai-based Iranian Business Council, said he was chiefly concerned with practical issues such as U.N. sanctions, which hamper his own trade with Iran.

"I'm fed up with the glorious past," Bolurfrushan said. "What have we got today? The Iranians have to bring themselves out of the past and devote themselves to building up the present."

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Tue Mar 13 17:42:18 2007

Halliburton's Dubai move draws criticism in Congress, but industry experts say it makes sense

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Halliburton Co.'s decision to split its headquarters between Houston and Dubai, where its CEO will move, puts a key company post nearer to important markets _ and further from some political headaches. Industry experts say that makes sense.

The oil services company insists it will gain no special tax or legal advantages from the move, and that Halliburton will keep a big presence in Texas even though its business is now global.

"There's not much oil in Texas any more," said Dalton Garis, an American energy economist at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. "Halliburton is in the oil and gas industry and guess what? Sixty percent of the world's oil and gas is right here. If they didn't move now, they'd have to do it later."

Some Americans were startled to hear chief executive Dave Lesar's announcement Sunday that he would lead the company from a new headquarters in Dubai, the glitzy Mideast financial capital.

Halliburton has been a lightning rod for criticism because of the more than $19 billion in contracts awarded by the Pentagon to its KBR unit to be the sole provider of food and shelter services to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats in Congress have claimed that KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, benefited from ties to Vice President Dick Cheney, who once led Halliburton, and congressional Republicans.

The U.S. military now wants multiple contractors to provide those services and KBR is bidding again despite accusations from lawmakers and the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction Office that the company abused federal rules in record-keeping on the current deal.

Still, defense analysts predict KBR and a company run by former KBR executives, IAP Worldwide Services, will each win one of the 10-year contracts scheduled to start this year and worth up to a total $50 billion.

"Where is the outrage of my Republican colleagues who treated Halliburton as if it was effectively the contractor of preference for all these years?" Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview.

Halliburton is now in the process of cutting all remaining ties with KBR, which held an initial public offering in November. Analysts have said KBR has been a drag on Halliburton earnings and the split will allow Halliburton to focus on selling oil exploration and production equipment and helping producers manage wells and reservoirs.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said the criticism of Halliburton's move to Dubai reminded him of another Congressional uproar over the business-savvy emirate, when a Dubai-owned firm bought operations in six U.S. ports last March. Congress voted to force Dubai to sell the U.S. ports, a move seen here as anti-Arab.

But Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala, said the argument that it's wrong to do business with Dubai or for a company to move its headquarters there risks alienating one of the strongest U.S. allies in the Middle East. "We need to consider that Dubai is a strong ally in a region of the world (where) we need strong allies desperately," he said in an interview.

Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann declined on Tuesday to say how large of a staff Lesar will have at the Dubai office, citing security concerns. But she did say there will be no Houston layoffs and Halliburton will continue to employ roughly 4,000 people there, including the company's chief operating officer, chief financial officer and general counsel.

In addition, company officials said Halliburton, which has operated in Dubai for more than 40 years, will remain a U.S. corporation for tax purposes, incorporated in Delaware, and doesn't expect to reap any tax benefits from the Dubai headquarters operation.

Houston Mayor Bill White, a former deputy energy secretary in the Clinton administration, expressed little concern about the move. He noted that one of Halliburton's competitors, Schlumberger Ltd., maintains principal offices in Houston, Paris and The Hague, and has a large presence in Dubai. Schlumberger, the No. 1 oil services company, moved its U.S. headquarters from New York to Houston last year.

"He understands the global marketplace and the demands on executives," said White spokesman Frank Michel. "He's been there and done that in terms of traveling to places like the Eastern Hemisphere and Russia."

Western businesses have been pouring into Dubai to capture regional energy revenues and take advantage of some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws. Dubai charges no corporate or income tax and in many cases allows companies no restrictions on repatriating profits or importing employees.

In the Mideast, where U.S. government popularity is at an all-time low, it can be a good thing to be viewed as a locally based company, said Ehsan Ul-Haq, chief analyst of PVM Oil Associates in Vienna, Austria.

"They know that the Mideast is where the opportunities are," Ul-Haq said. "So they might want to get rid of their image as an American company."

The Middle East, home to some 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, has been explored and drilled far less intensively than in North America, mainly because producing wells are so large that there was little need to drill more.

But that is changing, Garis said. Rising energy demand from China, India and the United States has kicked off a new round of drilling in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritania, Chad and elsewhere in the Mideast.

Giant state-run energy companies like Saudi Aramco, the world's No. 1 oil producer, are behind most of the exploration, and form Halliburton's customer base. National oil companies now control 77 percent of the world's oil production, according to Washington-based PFC Energy.

Last year, more than 38 percent of Halliburton's $13 billion oil field services revenue stemmed from sources in the eastern hemisphere, where the firm has 16,000 of its 45,000 global employees.

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Tue Mar 13 11:43:42 2007

Halliburton's Dubai move bad for politics, good for business

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Halliburton's critics are blasting the company's decision to shift its Houston-based chief executive to the Arab boomtown of Dubai positively un-American.

But the Texas oil services giant might be going where the buyers for its oil and gas services happen to be: the Middle East.

Halliburton, with its links to the U.S. military and the Republican Party _ U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive _ is considered one of America's most red-blooded companies.

Many Americans were startled to hear chief executive Dave Lesar's announcement Sunday that he would lead the company from a new headquarters in Dubai, the glitzy Mideast financial capital.

Company officials cautioned that Halliburton, which has operated in Dubai for more than 40 years, will remain a U.S. corporation for tax purposes and keep most of its leadership in Houston.

But Halliburton's announcement sparked a tough response from leaders of the U.S. Democratic Party, who said the corporation was biting the taxpayers' hand that fed it more than US$10 billion (euro7.57 billion) in military contracts in Iraq, some handed over without competitive bidding.

"This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges all these years," said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday called it "disgraceful" and called for a U.S. Senate investigation. And Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said it reminded him of another Congressional uproar over the business-savvy emirate, when a Dubai-owned firm bought operations in six U.S. ports last March. Congress voted to force Dubai to sell the U.S. ports, a move seen here as anti-Arab.

Western businesses have been pouring into Dubai to capture incoming energy revenues and take advantage of some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws. Dubai charges no corporate or income tax and in many cases allows companies no restrictions on repatriating profits or importing employees.

But Halliburton's decision bears little likeness to the American corporate phenomenon of moving overseas to save on labor costs or circumvent U.S. taxes, Garis and other analysts said.

The company expects no tax benefits or layoffs, spokeswoman Cathy Mann said Tuesday.

Lesar's departure from Houston has more to do with the vagaries of the oil industry. Halliburton, which has almost completed the spin-off of its KBR military contracting arm, is chiefly interested in selling oil exploration and production equipment and helping producers manage wells and reservoirs.

Ninety percent of the globe's oil exploration to date has taken place in North America, Garis said, and new discoveries there are uncommon. The Middle East, home to some 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, has been explored and drilled far less intensively, mainly because producing wells are so large that there was little need to drill more.

Last year, more than 38 percent of Halliburton's US$13 billion (euro9.84 billion) oil field services revenue stemmed from sources in the eastern hemisphere, where the firm has 16,000 of its 45,000 global employees.

Halliburton's expansion in Dubai is the highest-profile milestone in a trend that has already brought offices from a quarter of the Fortune 500 firms to Dubai, the government says.

Other Texas oil stalwarts have already moved to the Gulf. Houston-based Schlumberger Ltd., the No. 1 oil services company, has a large presence in Dubai.

Former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III visited Dubai last week to announce the expansion of the Texas-based law office he heads, Baker Botts LLC, which handles oil business. And Texas A&M University has opened an engineering school in nearby Qatar.

The Halliburton move is also a vote of confidence in Dubai's stability. A company like Halliburton, with its access to the vice president and U.S. government intelligence, would not move its chief executive to the Middle East without assurances that chaos elsewhere in the region would not reach the United Arab Emirates, Garis said.

And in the Mideast, where U.S. government popularity is at an all-time low, it can be a good thing to be viewed as a locally based company, said Ehsan Ul-Haq, chief analyst of PVM Oil Associates in Vienna, Austria.

"They know that the Mideast is where the opportunities are," Ul-Haq said. "So they might want to get rid of their image as an American company."

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Sun Mar 11 07:39:18 2007

Former U.S. secretary of state calls for broad talks with Syria

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The Middle East has grown less stable during the presidency of U.S. President George W. Bush, but dramatic improvements could be made by opening broad talks with Syria, former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said here Sunday.

Once-pragmatic U.S. relations with Syria have "gone downhill" in recent years, said Baker, who is in Dubai to oversee the expansion of the Baker Botts LLP law offices. Baker is a senior partner at the Houston, Texas-based law firm.

But he said the outlines of a peace deal between Washington's biggest Mideast ally, Israel, and Syria were clear and encouraged both sides to seize the opportunity.

"There's the deal. It's all spelled out," Baker said. "This is all by way of saying we need to engage Syria."

Israel and Syria are officially at war, though there have been no open hostilities between them for decades. Syria has demanded the return of the Golan, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed, as the price for any peace deal.

Israel says it will not discuss a formal treaty with its northern neighbor as long as Damascus continues to back Lebanon's Hezbollah and the radical Islamic Palestinian Hamas group. The U.S. brands both groups as terrorists, and several of Hamas' top leaders live in exile in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has the power to force Hamas to recognize Israel if Assad believed it was in Syria's interest, Baker said. "Hamas' officers are in Damascus. They can do this," he said.

Hamas' recognition of Israel would leave the Jewish state in a stronger position to make peace with the Palestinians, said Baker, who made similar recommendations as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that recommended changes in Bush's Iraq strategy, including direct talks with Syria and Iran.

Baker noted with some satisfaction that U.S. officials were in talks in Iraq over the weekend with both Iran and Syria. He said he hoped those early contacts could be expanded. The Bush administration had long been reluctant to talk to Syria, citing its support for groups like Hamas.

Baker said a good opportunity to forge an Israeli-Palestinian settlement was lost after the 1993 Oslo accords. He said he was dismayed to see those accords, opposed by right-wing Israelis and hard-liners in the current Bush administration, fall to the wayside. Since then, the Mideast has descended deeper into chaos.

"Am I sorry to see Oslo hasn't ripened into a greater peace? Of course I am," Baker said. "It's disappointing to me to see the degree to which the Middle East today is unstable, in a number of arenas. There was a great hope back in the early 1990s. Now, we have a lot of other sources of instability that need to be addressed."

The oil-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf were some of America's closest allies under former President George H.W. Bush, when Baker was secretary of state. Baker and the elder Bush brought Arab leaders together in a coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait in 1991.

But Gulf Arab relations with the United States have become strained since Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Baker, who turns 77 next month, said he was still hopeful for Israeli-Arab settlement in his lifetime.

Baker's comments came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday said he was ready to "treat seriously" a 2002 Saudi plan for an Arab-Israeli peace agreement in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from land it captured in 1967.

Asked whether he backed the presence of two U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle groups in the Mideast _ for the first time since the 2003 Iraq invasion _ Baker said he supported the Bush administration's stance on Iran. That includes being prepared to launch a military attack on Iran's disputed nuclear facilities, he said.

"It's too bad we can't pursue the foreign policy ideals of Mother Theresa, but we just can't," Baker said. "It's a tough world out there."

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Wed Mar 7 20:46:05 2007

Warm relations between China and the Gulf Arab countries come at U.S. expense

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ China and Arab countries in the Gulf region are rushing to each other in an increasingly close embrace, throwing money into each other's economies and starting to discuss security ties.

The growing economic ties are turning political, and that could mean new uncertainty in the United States' ability to count on steady support from longtime Gulf Arab allies like Saudi Arabia. On the economic side, it could also mean less Arab oil money invested in U.S. and European markets.

"This is the beginning of a long-term trend of investors from the Gulf region investing in the Far East," said Michael Philipp, chief executive of Credit Suisse Europe, Middle East and Africa, during a CEO conference in Doha last week. "The flows are tremendous. The interest is tremendous. This will continue to grow."

The new ties burst into bloom last year, when Saudi King Abdullah made his first overseas trip after assuming the throne: He skipped America and flew to China instead. Chinese President Hu Jintao soon returned the honor and also later visited neighboring Dubai.

The rationale for the strengthening bonds is largely economic, but has its political side. As U.S.-Arab relations have been strained since the Sept. 11 attacks, Gulf governments and investors have shifted away from the United States, seeking partners in Asia and Europe.

China is the biggest winner, with as much as US$20 billion (euro15 billion) in Gulf money invested there the past year.

In turn, China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, is boosting investments in the Mideast as it seeks to secure a steady stream of oil and gas.

Cash-flush Gulf investors are drawn to China's red-hot markets, where returns have outpaced those in the United States and Europe. They also sensed anti-Arab bias after the U.S. Congress voted to force a Dubai-based company to sell its ownership of American port operations a year ago.

Overall, trade between the Gulf states and Asia doubled between 2000 and 2005, reaching US$240 billion, according to figures released at the CEO conference.

Economists say deepening Gulf preferences for Asia could eventually affect the U.S. economy or the value of the dollar, but has not yet.

The surging flow of funds can be seen in several areas:

_ When the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China launched its US$22 billion (euro17 billion) public offering in October, the world's largest-ever, Gulf investors snapped up as much as 20 percent of the shares, Philipp said. Arab investors were led by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world's fifth-richest man, who bought US$2 billion (euro1.5 billion) in shares.

_ Qatar, a country of fewer than 1 million people, has a US$64 billion (euro49 billion) "investable surplus" of energy income, said R. Seetharaman, deputy chief executive of Doha Bank. China and India are the logical destination for investing the money, he said.

_ Kuwait and Saudi companies are building refineries in China, while Dubai firms operate Chinese ports and are developing residential and commercial complexes in Beijing and Shanghai.

_ In Iran, Chinese firms are building an extension of the Tehran metro, erecting a shipbuilding complex and negotiating three enormous oil and natural gas production deals, one valued at US$16 billion (euro12 billion).

_ China's builders, engineers, labor suppliers and equipment companies have begun winning shares in the US$1 trillion (euro760 million) in projects planned or under way in the Gulf.

China is cementing similar energy-based ties with African countries and Iran, its top crude supplier and a traditional rival to Gulf Arabs. It also maintains warm relations with Israel, a provider of weapons and technology.

China could take a larger political space in a traditional U.S. domain.

Gulf Arab leaders want China to take a role maintaining stability in the region. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in 2004 that Saudi Arabia would reduce its dependence on U.S.-dominated security arrangements.

For now, Gulf countries show no signs of wanting to end the U.S. security umbrella that protects them, only to diversify it.

Leaders here are angered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and while they are concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions, they worry that Bush's hardline policy toward Tehran could provoke an unwanted war.

In January, a delegation from a Shanghai political think tank was told in Dubai that a bigger Chinese role in the Gulf would be welcomed, especially if Beijing backed Arab positions in the U.N. Security Council.

"We need them to say the Iranian nuclear program is a threat," Dubai security analyst Mustafa Alani, who was among those who met the group, said. "We need a better attitude on the Palestinian issue and on the question of Iraq. They have a role to play in the region, but with power comes responsibility."

China appointed a special envoy for Mideast affairs in 2002 and hosted visits from Palestinian foreign minister and Hamas member Mahmoud Zahar last year.

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Tue Mar 6 14:16:54 2007

France's Louvre museum to build branch in Abu Dhabi, angering some in art world

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ France's storied Louvre museum, home to priceless art works like the Mona Lisa, said Tuesday it will open a new Louvre in this Persian Gulf boomtown, prompting outcries from some who accuse the museum of shilling France's patrimony for $1.3 billion in oil money.

The 30-year agreement, signed by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and the head of Abu Dhabi's tourism authority, Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, opens the way for the Louvre Abu Dhabi to display thousands of works from some of France's best museums, such as the Louvre, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Musee d'Orsay and Versailles.

The works will be housed in a huge flying saucer-shaped museum designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, which will be erected on the Abu Dhabi waterfront, opening sometime after 2012.

Abu Dhabi's rulers are positioning the Louvre as the centerpiece of a cultural district expected to attract millions of well-heeled tourists and diversify its oil-dominated economy.

Donnedieu de Vabres said the venture represents the globalization of French culture, the first step in a long-term cooperation with the wealthy Persian Gulf region. He promised that the Paris Louvre would not sell any of its 35,000-piece collection, nor would the deal weaken France's cultural policy or its museums.

"We're not selling the French legacy and heritage. We want this culture to radiate to parts of the world that value it," the culture minister said. "We're proud that Abu Dhabi wants to bring the Louvre here. We're not here to transform culture into a consumer product."

But prominent figures in the French art world have accused their government of exploiting art for trade and diplomacy and said lending art will overburden French museums. Led by the art historian and critic Didier Rykner, opponents of the Abu Dhabi scheme collected 4,700 signatures to protest it.

"We have lost a battle, but the combat continues," Rykner wrote this week on his Web site "La Tribune de l'Art," paraphrasing Charles de Gaulle's famous remark after Nazi Germany defeated France in 1940.

Rykner promised to fight similar projects, such as plans by the Pompidou Center in Paris to set up a branch in Shanghai, China.

The ruling sheiks of Abu Dhabi have agreed to spend a staggering sum to bring the Louvre to this fast-developing Arab capital. France will receive $525 million for the use of the Louvre brand alone, plus a gift of $33 million to renovate a wing of the Paris Louvre, which will be named for longtime Emirates ruler Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and house Islamic works of art.

A further $750 million will be spent to bring French managers and 300 loaned works of art to fill and staff the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as to renovate a French palace and fund an artwork restoration center in Paris.

The price of building Nouvel's museum design has yet to be calculated and is likely to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost, pushing the overall project close to $2 billion.

Louvre director Henri Loyrette said the museum typically lends up to 1,500 works a year, not including its most precious and fragile pieces, like the Mona Lisa. The Louvre Abu Dhabi can expect a loan of about 300 French works during its first year, which would shrink over time as the museum acquires its own collection, organizers said.

Buying artworks to fill the 260,000-square-foot museum once the 30-year loan period expires could be stratospherically expensive. "We'd rather not announce our collection budget," said Mubarak al-Muhairi, director of Abu Dhabi's tourism authority. "We don't want to create a disturbance in the market."

For its part, France has solid reasons for bringing a Louvre branch to Abu Dhabi, Donnedieu de Vabres said. He said the museum will help reinvigorate France's postcolonial stature in the Arab world, noting the negotiations with Abu Dhabi's royal family had already improved bilateral ties.

Donnedieu de Vabres said French President Jacques Chirac sent a message saying the museum is a symbol of a "world which considers the clash of civilizations the most dangerous trap of our time."

The joint venture is another cultural coup for Abu Dhabi, a once-staid oil boomtown that lives in the shadow of its flashier neighbor, Dubai.

In July, New York's Guggenheim Foundation announced it would build its largest-yet museum in Abu Dhabi, designed by American architect Frank Gehry and expected to cost $400 million to construct.

The Louvre and Guggenheim are two of four museums to be designed by celebrity architects that will anchor a $27 billion cultural district on the currently uninhabited Saadiyat Island just off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The district seeks to draw 3 million tourists by 2015.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will have to breach significant cultural barriers before it opens, since representations of the human figure _ even when clothed _ can be a religious taboo in the Muslim world. One Arab reporter asked during a news conference Tuesday whether the museum would protect its visitors against "pornography."

Museum officials did not address the issue of nudity in works. But art selection will be done by a committee including Abu Dhabi's rulers, who understand the sensitivities in this city, one of the more liberal bastions in the conservative Gulf.

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Mon Mar 5 12:40:14 2007

Iranian military too obsolete to threaten its neighbors, analysts say

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Iran's outdated military presents little current threat to its neighbors, despite the fierce rhetoric from its hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, military analysts said Monday at a security conference here in the Persian Gulf.

Iran has exaggerated its military capabilities, while U.S. and Israeli leaders have engaged in "provocative rhetoric" that overstates the Iranian threat, said Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In reality, Iran is more focused on national defense than using military power to boost its influence in the region, he said.

Cordesman, addressing military leaders from the U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states, said Iran's disputed nuclear program could someday pose a danger, but said any looming threat lies a decade or so away, leaving time for diplomacy.

Iran represents "a force that has to be taken seriously in the defense of its country, but it has very little capacity to project outside the country," Cordesman said. "Iran cannot seriously engage the U.S. for any length of time. In an asymmetric capacity perhaps, but not in conventional warfare."

Many U.S. officials have, however, have worried exactly about such asymmetric capacity, such as Iran's ability to temporarily disrupt oil flows in the Gulf.

Cordesman told the Arab defense officials _ many of whom harbor deep suspicions of Iran's intentions in the region _ that Iran's army musters 1,600 mainly obsolete tanks and armored vehicles, and its air force would be unable to keep its aging fleet of 260 warplanes in battle very long.

Iran's ballistic missiles employ 1960s technology that makes them only accurate enough to "probably" strike a large city, where their small warheads might only damage a few random buildings, Cordesman said.

Iran's most sophisticated weapons system is defensive: the Russian-made TOR-M1 air defense systems just purchased from Russia, he said.

Washington and its allies accuse Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons, but Tehran insists its program is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.

Cordesman said Iran's primitive missiles make more sense delivering nuclear or biological weapons than conventional ones. The worst-case scenario would be a broad Iranian nuclear arsenal tied to missile systems, not just a few bombs kept as a deterrent, Cordesman said.

But that scenario, to become reality, would have to be pushed by multiple Iranian regimes for as long as 15 years, he said.

"One bomb in the basement isn't a threat," he said.

An Iranian expert in international relations, Mahmood Sariolghalam, agreed that Iran's conventional military has exaggerated its capabilities. But he also urged Arab defense leaders and others to engage Iran diplomatically to influence its insular military and defuse tensions.

"Maintaining your distance from Iran will only foster the current inertia in the security apparatus. Iran's policies can be changed through engagement," said Sariolghalam, of the National University of Iran.

Both Sariolghalam and Cordesman warned that the bombastic speeches by Ahmadinejad _ who has called for Israel's destruction _ amounted to posturing and were not backed by credible threats.

Cordesman also contended that tensions in the Gulf were being worsened by U.S. and Israeli leaders overstating the Iranian threat.

Though the U.S. has said it hopes to resolve its issues with Iran diplomatically, it has not ruled out a military assault on Iran.

But Cordesman noted that no possible set of targets had been definitively identified as possible nuclear weapons installations. He also warned that an invasion of Iran would probably trigger a nationalist defense of the country and "turn into a bloody and pointless war of attrition."

"You do not need to consider a military response at this point. You're better off waiting until targets are visible and there's less political controversy," Cordesman said.

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Thu Mar 1 10:24:06 2007

AP INTERVIEW: Pickens says global oil production at peak

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens sees today's stubbornly high oil price as evidence that daily global production capacity is at _ or very near _ its peak.

If demand for crude oil rises beyond the current global output of roughly 85 million barrels per day, Pickens told The Associated Press, prices will rise to compensate and alternative sources of energy will begin to replace petroleum.

"If I'm right, we're already at the peak," Pickens said earlier this week in Doha, on the sidelines of the Forbes magazine CEO conference. "The price will have to go up."

The 78-year-old former wildcatter, who now heads the Dallas-based hedge fund BP Capital, is credited with a history of prescient predictions about the direction of oil markets. His bets have paid off handsomely. BP Capital's returns have exceeded 800 percent since 2001, he said.

Still, most industry and government analysts are far less pessimistic than the straight-talking Texan. Most believe petroleum will be a growing energy source for decades. The U.S. government expects oil demand to rise to 120 million barrels a day by 2030 and says a peak in output _ the point at which half of the world's reserves are depleted _ won't arrive until mid-century.

Forbes publisher Steve Forbes challenged Pickens' assumptions during an exchange in the conference, saying political _ not technological, or geological _ roadblocks stood in the way of increasing the world's oil output. With the right incentives in places such as Mexico more oil could be brought to market and prices could drop, Forbes said.

Pickens responded by saying that Mexico is a declining producer of oil, as are most other countries, naming the United States, Norway, Britain, Canada and soon, Russia.

"The world has been looked at," Pickens told Forbes. "There's still oil to be found, but not in the quantities we've seen in the past. The big fields have been found and the smaller fields, well, there's not enough of them to replenish the base."

Pickens predicted oil prices will rise this year to an annual average of around $70 per barrel. On Wednesday, prices settled at $61.79 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Global consumers, led by the United States, have already burned through 1.1 trillion barrels of oil, or what Pickens described as nearly half of the world's estimated 2.5 trillion barrels of historic oil supply. Other experts put total reserves at 3 trillion barrels and potentially more than 4 trillion barrels.

U.S. government assumptions about the size of global reserves could be based on skewed reporting by Saudi Arabia and other major producers who ban independent verification of their reserves, Pickens said.

"I think there are less reserves around the world than are being reported," Pickens said, reclining in a leather club chair at the Doha Four Seasons hotel with a glass of Coke. "There are no audited reserves in the Mideast. It makes me suspicious."

From now on, Pickens said, rising demand will be met by higher prices rather than ever-larger crude production. Alternative energy sources will begin to take a share of the energy market until the world evolves from a hydrocarbon-based economy to "something that's a mix of hydrocarbons and something else."

Everything from nuclear, coal, wind, solar, hydrogen and biofuels stands a chance to assuage growing demand for energy, Pickens said.

Pickens started his career in the 1950s as a petroleum geologist, built his reputation in the following decades as the founder of Mesa Petroleum Co. and enshrined himself in the history books in the 1980s with attempts to take over major oil companies.

BP Capital's has $4 billion under investment, including $1.5 billion of Pickens' own money, he said.

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Mon Feb 26 15:21:12 2007

Gulf Arab countries could spark nuclear power renaissance

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ The head of Britain's atomic energy agency said Monday the wealthy Gulf Arab countries could lead a renaissance of nuclear power because they can afford to build plants without the opposition that often stymies their construction.

Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, chairman of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, said nuclear energy's relevance was rising in a world beset by global warming and shrinking oil supplies _ even among countries with the largest reserves.

"Why should you talk about nuclear energy in a place where oil and gas flows like milk and honey? The answer is security of supply and the problem of climate change," Judge said during Forbes magazine's CEO Middle East forum in Doha.

She said the Gulf region is a perfect place to develop nuclear energy because it lacks the environmental groups that often oppose it.

"In the Gulf, we have the discretion to build what we want," Judge said.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council is expected to open talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, this month about the feasibility of building nuclear plants. The GCC, which unites Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, wants to use nuclear power in the energy-intensive desalination process.

Other regional countries, including Egypt, also have announced plans to seek atomic energy. Military analysts have suggested Iran's aggressive pursuit of uranium enrichment is pushing Arab countries to develop their own nuclear programs.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusation, saying its program is for energy purposes, but the Persian country has repeatedly defied U.N. Security Council demands that it roll back its program and suspend enrichment.

The Arab nuclear energy move has already won approval from the Bush administration. U.S. officials have said America would help its Gulf allies develop civilian nuclear power as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Russian President Vladimir Putin made a similar offer in Saudi Arabia this month.

"The genie is out of the bottle," Judge said. "If they wanted to build it, this would be the place."

Other major oil exporters are considering nuclear power, including Venezuela and Nigeria. The move makes sense for oil producers who can earn more revenues by exporting oil than using it at home, Judge said.

Several new plants are under construction in China and India, where energy demand is skyrocketing. France, which gets 80 percent of its energy from its 59 nuclear power plants, is a chief source of civilian technology, she said.

Nuclear plants are becoming simpler to build and nearly modular in design, which allows them to be smaller and constructed more quickly. It also makes for easy disassembly once their useful life is over.

Global warming is also pushing governments to consider nuclear power, which emits a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide produced by power plants burning coal, gas or oil.

"Nuclear is feasible now in places where it used to be much more difficult," Judge said.

But one Qatari official said nuclear energy makes no sense for this natural gas-rich monarchy. Hesham al-Emadi, who heads a business zone for energy companies in Doha, said Qatar already owns enough gas to supply its small population for generations. Qatar sits atop the world's largest single field of natural gas.

"I don't think nuclear is on our agenda," al-Emadi said. "Why should we spend our money on other sources of energy? We don't have the R&D to develop these new technologies."

The Gulf is far behind much of the developed world in embracing energy conservation and green technology. Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait rank among the world's largest per capita carbon dioxide polluters. Only a handful of the hundreds of skyscrapers under construction in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and other Gulf cities employ energy-saving technology, officials said.

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Sun Feb 25 21:58:27 2007

Cheney arrives in Persian Gulf for talks with U.S.-allied Oman

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Vice President Dick Cheney landed in the U.S.-allied Arab monarchy of Oman and went directly to talks with its foreign minister, Omani government officials said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman in Oman declined to detail Cheney's plans or the focus of his visit Sunday to the sparsely populated oil-producing state, which allows the United States use of four air bases. But an Omani government official said Cheney was to discuss regional security issues, including the U.S. standoff with Iran over its nuclear program. The official, in the capital Muscat, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak to the press.

Oman sits across the strategically important Strait of Hormuz from Iran, through which two-fifths of the world's oil passes.

The sultanate allows the United States to use the air bases _ including one just 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Iran _ for refueling, logistics and storage of pre-positioned military supplies. Little has been revealed publicly about U.S. military ties with the reclusive country, a deeply sensitive topic inside Oman, an isolated country on the southeastern corner of the Arabian peninsula that has been a quiet U.S. military ally for decades.

The country's cooperation with the U.S. military appears to have dwindled over the past few years, but renewed U.S. access to its bases would give a huge boost to any American action on Iran.

"The Omanis are very careful not to associate themselves with American forces. There are major objections to U.S. activities in Oman and they don't want a large visible presence," said Mustafa Alani, a Gulf Research Center military analyst.

An Omani Foreign Ministry official said Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah was to urge U.S. support for an immediate revival of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Cheney's stopover could be seen as an attempt to ratchet up military pressure on Iran ahead of a meeting by the U.N. Security Council that will discuss tightening of sanctions imposed over its disputed nuclear program.

The visit to Oman was Cheney's second during his time as vice president. In March 2002, Cheney toured U.S. installations at the Masirah Island Air Base, which hosted U.S. B-1B bombers, C-130 transports and U.S. Special Forces AC-130 gunships during the war in Afghanistan, according to press and research reports.

Cheney left Australia on Sunday after a three-day visit to thank the government for contributing troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. He had earlier visited Japan and Guam.

A White House spokeswoman said the vice presidential plane had an electrical problem after leaving Australia earlier Sunday. Reporters on the plane said a power surge during the flight disabled the cabin's electrical outlets. The problem was fixed during a planned stop in Singapore.

A Congressional Research Service report said the Pentagon extended U.S. basing rights in 2000 by providing $120 million to Oman to upgrade its al-Musnanah air base, which sits next to the Strait of Hormuz.

CRS reported 550 U.S. troops were based in Oman as recently as 2004. But that number appears to have slipped to around 270 last year, mainly U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel, some of whom are training the Omani air force, according to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

The CRS report said the Air Force maintains access rights to four Oman air bases, al-Musnanah; al-Seeb, just outside the capital Muscat; Thumrait, near the southern coast; and the Masirah Island Air Base, in the Arabian Sea.

Oman's Masirah air base was the staging base for the failed U.S. attempt to rescue 66 American hostages from the former U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Oman is led by the reclusive Sultan Qaboos, who overthrew his father in 1970. Qaboos has focused on modernizing Oman, but at a slower pace than the frenetic growth transforming neighboring United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

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Tue Feb 20 14:02:12 2007

U.S. Navy's Mideast buildup came after Iranian provocations in crucial Gulf, Navy commander says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) _ Iran has brought its war games maneuvers over the past year into busy shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass, the top U.S. Navy commander in the Mideast said.

The moves have alarmed U.S. officials about possible accidental confrontations that could boil over into war, and led to a recent build-up of Navy forces in the Gulf, Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh said in an interview with The Associated Press and other reporters.

During maneuvers, Iranian sailors have loaded mines onto small minelaying boats and test-fired a Shahab-3 ballistic missile into international waters, he said.

"The Shahab-3 most recently went into waters very close to the traffic separation scheme in the straits themselves. This gives us concern because innocent passage of vessels now is threatened," Walsh said in the interview Monday on the base of the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain.

Iran tested the Shahab during November maneuvers, which it said were in response to U.S. maneuvers in the Gulf it called "adventurist." Iran also showed off an array of new torpedoes in war games in April.

The carrier USS John C. Stennis _ backed by a strike group with more than 6,500 sailors and Marines and with additional minesweeping ships _ arrived in the region Monday. It joined the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after President Bush ordered the build-up as a show of strength to Iran.

The additional U.S. firepower has ratcheted up tensions with Iran. But Walsh said the increase aims to reassure Arab allies in the Gulf and prevent misunderstandings that could escalate into outright conflict.

"That's certainly what we're trying to avoid, a mistake that then boils over into a war," said Walsh, who departs his command of the Fifth Fleet this month to become vice chief of naval operations at the Pentagon, the Navy's No. 2 post.

Walsh said the Navy was responding to "more instability than we've seen in years" in the Fifth Fleet's region _ with conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, tensions in Lebanon and the standoff with Iran.

The Navy has grown increasingly alarmed at what Walsh called Iran's "provocations." Once cordial Navy ship-to-ship relations with Iran in the Gulf have disintegrated over the past 18 months as Iranian vessels made "probing" incursions into Iraqi waters, he said.

"They threaten to use oil as a weapon. They threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz," Walsh said. "And so it is the combination of the rhetoric, the tone, and the aggressive exercises in very constrained waters that gives us concern."

Since the Stennis was ordered to the region, Iranian leaders have increasingly warned that they would respond to any attack by closing off oil shipping lanes or attacking U.S. interests.

The Straits of Hormuz are 34 miles across, but its shipping lanes are only about six miles wide.

Walsh said it was doubtful that Iran could physically block the entire six-mile lanes with mines _ but hitting only a few vessels with missiles and mines would "terrorize" shipping and have the same effect.

"It's more the threat of mines than the threat of closing the straits. That would have dramatic effects on markets around the world," he said.

Walsh said his biggest worry was that Iran would underestimate U.S. resolve to protect its interests in the world's richest oil region. He said the tone of Iranian leaders could make their commanders on the ground more reckless. "It's a mix and a formulation where you can have misunderstanding," he said.

Asked whether the U.S. Navy would launch an attack on Iran if Iranian involvement were confirmed in a deadly incident in Iraq, Walsh said he was unable to discuss the Navy's rules of engagement. But he added, "There are events on land that can spill over onto the sea."

At the same time, Walsh said he understood that U.S.-allied Gulf nations feared that any U.S.-Iranian military conflict could bring attacks on their soil.

Walsh said he was aware that a University of Maryland/Zogby International poll of Arab public opinion this month showed residents of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other allies believe Iran is far less a threat than the U.S. and Israel.

"I'm trying to talk to those in the region, to give them assurances that the reason we're here is to stand by them," he said.

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Sun Feb 18 19:18:43 2007

Human rights watch cites Saudi abuses but also detects shift to more openness

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ A U.S. human rights watchdog that sent a team to Saudi Arabia to investigate abuses said in a new report the kingdom keeps thousands of prisoners in jail without charge, sentences children to death and oppresses women.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had been invited by Saudi authorities to conduct a four-week mission that started in December. Its 13-person team, led by executive director Kenneth Roth, operated under 24-hour surveillance and was blocked at times from observing trials and visiting jails, according to the report released Saturday.

But the group also said it gained unprecedented access to senior officials among the judiciary, police and enforcers of Islamic law. In some areas, including Riyadh and Jiddah, researchers did not have government escorts, HRW said.

"The Saudi government's invitation to Human Rights Watch reflects a newfound openness toward discussing domestic human rights issues," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "By restricting our access to prisons and withholding general permission to observe trials, however, the Saudi government gave the appearance that it still has much to hide."

Saudi secret police hold thousands of political prisoners for years without charge or trial, the report alleged. They include some suspected of ties to the Iraqi insurgency.

It said prisoners at al-Ha'ir prison south of Riyadh reported physical abuse and said they remained locked up long after their sentences expired.

The rights group also said children are jailed for minor offenses, including vague "morals" charges, and face beatings and solitary confinement. Children as young as 13 have been sentenced to death, though the report did not say what they had been sentenced for.

The report also found Saudi courts offer criminal defendants few opportunities to defend themselves and said many are found guilty with little supporting evidence. Trials remain closed despite laws declaring they are open to the public, and judges commonly pronounce guilty verdicts based on little evidence, it said.

Attempts to reach the Saudi Information Ministry for comment on Sunday were unsuccessful and Saudi authorities do not usually respond to allegations of rights abuses.

The State Department in the past has called the U.S. ally's human rights record "poor overall," and alleged security forces abuse prisoners.

Human Rights Watch said it also found women have no right to act on their own behalf and are subject to the control of male guardians, even for everyday activities. Guardians can restrict employment, education and freedom of movement.

The group also alleged abuse of the country's 9 million foreign workers is rampant. Workers go unpaid for months or years, despite working long hours at times with no days off. Physical and sexual abuse was found to be commonplace, as were incidents of forced labor and human trafficking.

A "significant number" of the more than 300 people interviewed expressed fear of government retaliation, the report said.

Despite recent moves to allow some local elections, Saudi Arabia remains under centralized, dynastic rule. Human rights activists say King Abdullah, who took the throne in 2005, has paved the way for a more open discussion of human rights issues but hard-liners have derailed reforms and little has changed.

The HRW report praised the kingdom for gradually increasing the opportunity for the public discussion of human rights issues, though it says freedom of expression remains tightly controlled.

"Several ministers expressed their desire to invite Human Rights Watch back to Saudi Arabia to discuss our findings in detail," the report said.

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Fri Feb 16 10:49:32 2007

Flush with cash and fearful, Gulf Arab states plan weapons buying binge

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Deep fears about the war in Iraq and growing tension between the United States and Iran are driving the wealthy oil states of the Persian Gulf to go on shopping sprees for helicopters, ships and tanks, officials say.

Some 900 weapons makers and security firms from around the world, including the U.S. and Russia, will compete for those military buys at the IDEX military show that opens Sunday in Abu Dhabi. At stake are contracts predicted to soar past the $2 billion signed at the last such show two years ago.

"The shopping lists are directly correlated to the threat perception," said military analyst Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "For the past 15 years, these countries didn't invest a lot in rearming."

But now they're rushing to upgrade.

The biggest fear in the region is that Iraq will collapse into civil war and its violence will spill into nearby Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Alani said.

Those countries want to protect critical sites such as oil installations, ports _ and U.S. military bases that house tens of thousands of American troops. Of those five nations, only Saudi Arabia has no American bases.

Helicopters and electronic warning sensors are expected to be hot sellers. For example, seaborne early warning radar can can detect rogue vessels approaching ports or oil terminals, said Robin Hughes, a Mideast military analyst at the London-based agency Jane's, a sponsor of the show.

If Iran were threatened or attacked by the United States or Israel, its ballistic missiles could hit land targets or ships, and its mines could block the narrow shipping lanes that carry oil from the Gulf.

That scenario is pushing Gulf defense ministers to consider missile defense systems like the Patriot, sold by U.S. manufacturer Raytheon Co. They also are eyeing warships, including mine sweepers, and early-warning radar, Hughes said.

In particular, the Saudi military is looking for air defenses and helicopters and perhaps naval frigates, Hughes said. Eurocopter, a French and German consortium, is working to sell its Tiger helicopter gunships to the Saudi military, he said.

The Emirates' shopping list includes ship-to-ship missiles, Hughes said.

Iran isn't believed to be sending an official delegation to the show. But military officials from Iran, who just took delivery of Russian-made TOR-1 air defense systems, are certain to be roaming the show and studying the weapons.

"They will be looking at interesting air defense systems that other countries are buying," Hughes said. "They want to see what's on the market and what others are buying, and how you defeat those capabilities."

Unmanned aerial vehicles, like Northrop Grumman Corp.'s jet-powered Global Hawk, also will be on display. U.S. manufacturer AAI Corp. will demonstrate robots boats as a defense for offshore oil platforms and ports.

Harbor visitors will also get to gawk at warships for sale by British, French and German shipbuilders.

Other exhibitors include some of the world's largest arms makers: Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., BAE Systems PLC, the Thales Group and Russia's state-run makers of tanks, trucks and howitzers.

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Sun Feb 4 16:02:20 2007

Woods, Federer, Henry announce deal with Gillette

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Keeping a beard at bay has never been a problem for Tiger Woods.

"I can't grow one," Woods said Sunday. "My friends razz me about it."

A few hours after finishing third at the Dubai Desert Classic, the American golfer teamed up with 10-time Grand Slam tennis champion Roger Federer and France soccer player Thierry Henry to announce a deal with Gillette that would put the trio in TV commercials around the world.

Woods, Federer and Henry each posed for photographers with shaving cream, something Woods doesn't have to use all that often.

"I started (shaving) a little late. My stubble didn't quite grow in," said Woods, his face red and windburnt from a sandstorm earlier in the day. "My dad showed me how to do it and I tried to do it just like him. I got foam all over the place."

Gillette executives declined to say how much the athletes will be paid. But Chip Bergh, Gillette's president of global grooming, said each of the trio could afford to buy his own razors.

"But if Tiger called me up and said 'I need some razors,' I'd send him some," Bergh said.

Bergh said Gillette identified 100 athletes that it would consider hiring to market its razors. The company then used market research to narrow its list to Woods, Federer and Henry. If any of the three had rejected Gillette's offer, Bergh said there were some "Plan B" athletes, but he declined to name them.

Bergh said Gillette selected the trio not just because of their success in sports or marketing prowess, but because each embodies "true sporting values" and was a good example off the field.

"I just love going out there and competing against the boys, and I try to beat their brains in," Woods said. "I love the competitive rush. I've loved it ever since I was a kid. I couldn't live with myself without giving it my all."

Despite the new endorsement deal, Woods doesn't plan to start his day with a shave.

"There's no way I'm going to get up early in the morning and shave. I've got to get up and go," Woods said. "I always shave at night."

Federer also has shaving issues. The Swiss champion said he "plays it by ear" and shaves when the mood strikes him. Federer said he once grew a beard because he worried that the act of shaving might cost him a title.

"I was a bit superstitious at my first Wimbledon. I had a bit of a beard," he said.

Woods and Federer have become friends over the past year and developed a tongue-in-cheek rivalry. Both are considered the best in their sport, but it's tough to say which is the better player.

Woods has an advantage: He's won all four major golf tournaments while Federer is still missing the French Open.

"I've got a few months to prepare. You've got to believe it's possible," said Federer, who then suggested that his feat is tougher to achieve than Woods'.

"Of course all four of those are on grass, whereas I have to play some on a hard court," Federer said, laughing.

"There we go," Tiger responded.

Woods and Federer said they hoped to spend more time with Henry, perhaps when the trio begins shooting razor advertisements that are supposed to air later this year.

Woods was in Federer's box last year to watch his U.S. Open victory. A few months later, Federer walked the course with Woods at a golf tournament in China. Federer strolled the course again Sunday in Dubai.

"Getting to know Roger has been pretty cool. We see sport on so many different levels the same way," Woods said.

Federer said he'd started playing a bit of golf on courses in the United States and in Switzerland.

"I don't play that much golf but I do hope to get Tiger to teach me," Federer said.

Henry, for his part, said he admired the two men but had trouble watching golf.

"I would stay up really late to see Tiger play," Henry said. "Sometimes _ I have to be honest _ I did fall asleep."

Asked whether he would like to try golf or tennis, Henry said he couldn't imagine himself playing such a slow-moving game like golf. He said his mind would start to drift.

"I would be thinking about my house and wondering if everyone is OK, or thinking it's too cold," the Arsenal striker said. "I don't know if I could hold the club properly."

Woods has made no secret that he has only a passing interest in soccer, and that doesn't include playing it.

"All that running and never touching the ball that often is just not for me," Woods said.

But both still had praise for Henry.

"I think Thierry is the best striker in the world," Federer said.

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Mon Jan 29 11:24:01 2007

U.S.-Iran tensions could trigger accidental war, military and analysts say

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ Tensions between the United States and Iran have risen to the point where a war could be kicked off by mistake, an outcome that neither Tehran nor Washington wants, U.S. military officials and private analysts say.

A U.S. military official here likened the current U.S.-Iran standoff to the buildup in hostility in Europe before World War I, when a duke's assassination triggered a tragic war that engulfed a continent.

"A mistake could be made and you could end up in something that neither side ever really wanted, and suddenly it's August 1914 all over again," the U.S. officer said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I really believe neither side wants a fight."

Iraq is already a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran, and the U.S. military escalation in the region _ including the recent deployment of a second carrier battle group to the Gulf region and plans to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq _ makes a full-blown war with Iran more likely, said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.

"The U.S. escalation could trigger greater conflict, especially since Iraq provides an unstable context in which it can happen," Nasr said Monday.

In Tehran, political analyst Hermidas Bavand said U.S. force increases were leading many Iranians to believe Washington is looking to pick a fight, perhaps one that would overshadow America's disastrous intervention in Iraq.

"It's an extremely dangerous situation. I don't think Tehran wants war under any circumstances. But there might be an accidental event that could escalate into a large confrontation," Bavand said. "It could be difficult to contain."

The United States and Iran are locked in an escalating series of provocations. Washington accuses Iran of arming and training Shiite Muslim extremists in Iraq. U.S. troops have responded with arresting of Iranian diplomats in Iraq, and the White House has said U.S. President George W. Bush signed an order allowing U.S. troops to kill or capture Iranians inside Iraq.

"If you're in Iraq and trying to kill our troops, then you should consider yourself a target," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said last week.

The two countries also are in dispute over Tehran's controversial nuclear program. The United States accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons _ an allegation Tehran denies. Iran's defiant refusal to suspend uranium enrichment lead the U.N. Security Council to impose limited economic sanctions.

The U.S.-Iran standoff complicates the Qatar-based U.S. Central Command's work overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Centcom commander Gen. John Abizaid, set to retire in March, is required to calibrate Tehran's reactions to the extra U.S. warships and troops making their way to the region. Centcom also must keeps close tabs on Iranian military maneuvers and internal political developments.

Iranian coast guard vessels recently veered into territorial waters on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, an event that could have been viewed as either a mistake or a provocation, the U.S. officer said. Both sides are on tenterhooks.

"You see little things. A boat crosses a line. Like their coast guard. But what does it mean? You've got to be very careful about overreacting," the officer said in an interview on a U.S. base in Qatar. "It's a problem. It certainly makes Gen. Abizaid's job a lot more complicated."

Iran's military has more than 500,000 troops and an antiquated collection of ships, aircraft, ballistic missiles and other weapons. U.S. military analysts describe the Iranian military as large but ineffective.

Surrounding Iran are more than 200,000 U.S. troops in bases scattered across Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. Navy has a carrier battle group in the region and another on the way, and dozens of U.S. bombers and strike aircraft are arrayed on bases surrounding Iran.

Those U.S. bases _ and not Iran's archenemy Israel _ provide the likeliest targets for an Iranian strike, the U.S. officer said. Gates said this month that the Pentagon was dispatching an additional Patriot missile defense battery to the Gulf region, ostensibly to protect U.S. bases.

"We're a little closer than the Israelis. We're a better target for him," the officer said, speaking of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Any war "would be a very short and very violent fight," he said.

Nasr, the Iran expert at the U.S. Naval school, and the U.S. officer cautioned that Washington's ongoing focus on Ahmadinejad's anti-Western rhetoric may strengthen the hard-line's president's position even among his critics back home.

"We've got to stop making him the red herring that he is. He's distracting so much of our attention. Because he's good at it. He plays to the media," the U.S. officer said.

But left alone, analysts believe domestic pressure on Ahmadinejad could eventually lead to his ouster, or at least dilute his power. Reformists and some conservatives who voted him into power in 2005 have recently voiced increasing criticism of Ahmadinejad, saying he spends too much time engaging in anti-Western rhetoric and not enough energy on Iran's domestic problems including its struggling economy.

"I don't think Ahmadinejad is very sophisticated. He's grossly overplaying his hand," the U.S. officer said. "The real power base in Iran is starting to lose interest in him. You can see it. We should probably let this situation develop, as painful as it can be in the short term. I think he will soon find himself on the ledge wondering how he got there."

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Mon Jan 29 19:05:24 2007

In red-hot Dubai market, real estate sales jump to the Internet

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Call it a million-dollar impulse purchase.

Ahmed Goheer, 31, was checking e-mail before bed this month when he read a message saying a Web site was selling luxury apartments in this Arab Gulf boomtown.

So Goheer, a vice president at an investment bank here, clicked.

On the site, Simsari.com, two apartments in a nearly finished high-rise caught his eye. Goheer looked over the floor plans and did some calculations. Still in his pajamas, the Pakistani banker jumped in his Range Rover and drove past the tower under construction, just to make sure it existed. Then he returned to his computer and clicked "buy now." In an instant, Goheer agreed to spend just over $1 million (euro770,000) for two apartments.

On the same site, Goheer arranged for a loan from local mortgage company, Tamweel, which took his personal information and gave him provisional approval. Goheer sealed the deal just after midnight by leaving a $2,700 (euro2,090) deposit with his credit card.

"There was no sense waiting. I bought it that night," Goheer said, giving a tour of the Dubai Marina neighborhood of residential skyscrapers which houses his still-unfinished apartments.

The Internet has long been a stronghold of the real estate business. But most real estate sites only show listings and require would-be buyers to phone an agent. The auction site eBay offers houses to buyers for cash or who can arrange financing.

Dubai government-owned Simsari, which means "my agent" in Arabic, allows buyers to go much further in cyberspace _ but still not all the way. The site appears to be the first that allows buyers to arrange mortgages online and make credit card deposits on their properties. The process moves off-line in the final stages, when buyers have to show up in person to sign and hand over documents.

In December, Simsari's innovations caught the eye of Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, said Omar Hijazi, who oversees the site as chief executive of Tamweel, a Dubai government holding company.

"He told me 'We know about you,'" said Hijazi, who met Schmidt at a Dubai convention. "I don't know whether that's good news or bad news."

It may signal interest in a takeover: Google has launched a beta version of its own real estate sales site, Google Base. Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Selling property online might not make sense in markets where a buyer wants to see the neighborhood and inspect the house. But in Dubai's high-octane market, apartments are often sold from architect's renderings in neighborhoods that won't exist for years. Buyers are often investors living in Europe, Asia or elsewhere in the Mideast.

"There's nothing physical to show them anyway," Hijazi said with a smile.

That kind of market is tailored to the Internet, Hijazi said in an interview in an office overlooking the palm-fringed Persian Gulf.

As of last week, Simsari, which is still in pre-launch mode, had sold four properties and was finalizing 20 more where mortgages had been approved online, Hijazi said. Properties for sale on the site range from a $20 million (euro15.5 million), 80-unit apartment building ready by 2009, to an existing studio apartment in a mid-income complex for $89,600 (euro69,344).

For those who insist on seeing the construction site, Simsari offers satellite imagery that gives views of neighboring homes and their backyard swimming pools.

Incentives to buy online include Simsari's half-percent commission _ lower than Dubai's usual 2 percent sales charge _ and the occasional chance to get in on a pre-launch offer.

Whether it's smart to spend $500,000 (euro386,967) on an apartment in Dubai _ rather than in, say, London or New York _ is another matter. Steve Brice, head of research at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai, said the local market is overheated and nearing the peak of a boom that started in 2002 when foreigners were given permission to buy.

Skyrocketing prices that doubled over three years have slowed. Apartment prices jumped 10 percent in 2005 and home prices jumped 30 percent, Brice said. He believes housing prices will stabilize or start falling by summer, when dozens of 30- and 40-story apartment towers in the Dubai Marina neighborhood will be complete.

"At some point soon we're going to see the scales tip in favor of excess supply," Brice said. "If you're prepared to buy and hold for the long haul, it's not a bad purchase."

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Tue Jan 23 11:43:12 2007

U.S. warns Iran to back off in Persian Gulf

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ A U.S. State Department official ruled out talks with Iran and said Tuesday that a second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Tehran not to challenge America.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Iran must halt enrichment of uranium before the Bush administration will agree to direct negotiations. Several prominent American leaders have urged Bush to seek Iran's help quelling sectarian conflict in neighboring Iraq.

"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region," Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.

"Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us," Burns continued. "We will defend our interests if we are challenged. That might be a message Iran must understand."

U.S. officials said Burns was in the Middle East to outline specifics of new U.S. strategies for Iraq and Iran following a visit to the region last week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But the audience of Dubai-based diplomats and analysts appeared dismayed by Burns' tough talk on Iran. Some complained that U.S. actions were already threatening regional stability and asked the American diplomat to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before turning attention to Iran.

"What we are not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed al-Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. "Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess."

The U.S. and Iran are locked in a standoff over Tehran's defiance of U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Iran says it intends only to generate energy, but Washington some of its allies suspect Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. The U.N. imposed limited sanctions on Iran last month.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week that the country is "ready for anything." Iran conducted missile tests on Monday, the first of five days of military maneuvers southeast of Tehran.

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and several accompanying ships are heading toward the Gulf to join an aircraft carrier group already in the region, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.

The Stennis's arrival in the Middle East will mark the first time since the U.S.-led Iraq invasion in 2003 that the United States has had two carrier battle groups in the region.

The U.S. Navy said Tuesday that the minesweeper USS Gladiator arrived in the Persian Gulf, one of six such ships _ four American, two British _ now plying the Gulf for anti-ship mines.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the U.S. buildup in the Gulf aimed to impress on Iran that America's four-year war in Iraq has not diluted U.S. military power in the Mideast.

U.S. officials have long said Iran would be expected to block busy Gulf shipping lanes if there is a conflict. Two-fifths of the world's oil exports pass through the Gulf.

Burns' speech appeared as a rebuttal to similar comments by Iranian officials in Dubai and Bahrain last month. In December, Iran's top national security adviser, Ali Larijani, appealed to Gulf Arabs to shut down American bases on their soil and instead join Iran in a regional security alliance.

The Emirates and other Gulf states enjoy close trade ties with Iran. U.N. sanctions are expected to boost Emirates' exports to Iran this year to $10 billion, the Dubai-based Iranian Business Council said.

While targeting Iran's nuclear development, Burns said Washington would be a "willing partner" in support of civilian nuclear power programs in its six Gulf Arab allies, saying the Bush administration supports nuclear energy as a means to combat global warming.

But he insisted Iran halt uranium enrichment as a precondition for any direct discussions with Washington.

"It doesn't make any sense to negotiate with Iran while their nuclear program is ongoing," Burns said. "There is an entry fee to the game and everybody has to pay it. You too, Iran, have to pay it."

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Thu Jan 18 11:35:21 2007

Two killed, dozens injured in Dubai skyscraper fire

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ A fire in a Dubai high-rise apartment building on Thursday triggered nightmarish images reminiscent of Sept. 11, with a construction worker falling to his death and dozens of workers trapped above blaze trying to scale the building's exterior.

Two laborers, including the one who fell, building the unfinished structure were killed and 57 others injured when the 37-story apartment tower caught fire, said Dubai Police Maj. Rashid al-Falasi.

Witnesses said the scene reminded them of the burning World Trade Center towers in New York, with panicked workers trapped on the skyscraper's unfinished upper stories. Some said they saw a man fall to his death while trying to descend the building's glass-covered exterior.

"Some of the workers were trying to climb down on cables. One guy in red was trying to climb down and then he just fell. It was horrible," said Louise Olson, 25, from Denmark, who watched the scene from her whirlpool bath in a high-rise that faces the burning tower.

"It was kind of like 9/11," said Steven Wullinger, 35, a German who saw the falling man.

Al-Falasi confirmed that one worker died in a fall. Another was killed in the building by a severe head injury apparently suffered while fleeing the smoke, he said. The man was dead by the time rescuers found him, al-Falasi said.

Three of the 57 injured men were hospitalized in serious condition Thursday night, al-Falasi said.

As hundreds of onlookers on the street below watched stunned, firefighters struggled in a dramatic rescue, smashing skyscraper windows to reach a man perched for more than an hour on a narrow 13th floor ledge. The crowd cheered as rescuers grabbed the man and tugged him to safety.

"He was panicked and not responding. They used psychology to keep him calm," al-Falasi said. "Then they used ropes and a ladder to bring him in."

Black smoke billowed for about two hours from the upper floors of the blue-glass building, located in a cluster of dozens of apartment towers under construction on Dubai's southern outskirts.

Trapped laborers in blue coveralls could be seen waving towels at hovering helicopters or climbing to the roof on scaffolding.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, al-Falasi said.

Terrorism was not suspected in the fire, which was extinguished within a couple of hours.

Witnesses said the fire broke out around 12:30 (07:30 GMT) and burned for at least an hour before fire trucks arrived on the scene. Al-Falasi acknowledged that heavy traffic slowed the response.

Attempts by Dubai's inexperienced emergency services to extinguish the fire and rescue the trapped workers appeared disorganized. A rescue helicopter was unable to land on the building's roof, and firefighters on the ground took hours to start evacuating workers out from a 10th story window, even after most of the smoke had dissipated.

It was not immediately clear why those trapped near the roof were unable to make their way to lower floors.

The injured laborers were from India, Pakistan and China; most suffered from smoke inhalation, Al-Falasi said.

The fire is bound to trigger discussions on upgrading Dubai's emergency services to handle high-rise rescues in a city with hundreds of such towers. A skyscraper intended by its builders to be the world's tallest when finished, reached its 100th story this week.

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Mon Jan 15 16:55:02 2007

Emirates residents outpace Americans in environmental harm

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ When it comes to squandering the earth's natural resources, residents of this desert land of chilled swimming pools, monster 4x4s and air-conditioned malls are on a par with even the ravenous consumption of Americans, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The average person in the Emirates puts more demand on the global ecosystem than any other, giving the country the world's largest per-capita "ecological footprint," WWF data shows. The United States runs second.

But the oil-rich Emirates is considered a developing country, and even as a signatory to the United Nations' Kyoto protocol on global warming, is not required to cut emissions. The United States is not bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.

Even so, the Emirates government has been embarrassed by the WWF report, which it says is flawed. The federal environment agency is devising strategies to cut emissions, including a public campaign that may offer economic incentives to those who turn down their air conditioning, Saad al-Numairy, an adviser to agency, said Monday.

"We have an action plan," al-Numairy said. "But we are a multicultural country with 180 nationalities. It's not going to be easy."

Energy consumption in the Emirates runs high for many of the same reasons found in the United States: a feeling that the good life requires huge air-conditioned houses and cars, and a disdain for public transportation.

Making matters worse are Dubai's audacious developments, including artificial resort islands that have destroyed coral reefs and an indoor ski slope that still creates snow when it is 120 degrees (49 degrees celsius) outside.

"Of all the places to make artificial snow, this has to be the most absurd," said Jonathan Loh, a British biologist who co-authored the WWF report. "It really is shocking."

Nearby Kuwait, another scorching-hot Persian Gulf oil producer, was ranked fifth in the WWF report that emerged in October. Finland was third and Canada fourth.

Environmental officials here say the Emirates ranking is untrue, since the WWF report relies on 2003 data that estimates the country's population at 3 million when it is closer to 5 million.

"It's a fact of life that the UAE will always have a large ecological footprint because of where we are," said Habiba al-Marashi, who chairs the Emirates Environmental Group. "But to be classified as the worst, that hurts. We don't think the report is on solid ground."

Loh defended the ranking, saying the report also used 2003 figures for emissions and resources consumption.

"I think this is a realistic ranking," he said Monday, adding that factoring in more accurate population figures might put UAE in second place just behind the United States, but "it's still going to show that the UAE is right on the top of the scale."

The country's full damage isn't tallied because the WWF study ignores aircraft emissions, Loh said. The UAE emirate of Dubai claims one of the world's busiest airports.

The WWF rankings are measured in "global hectares" _ the area of biologically productive land and sea needed to provide the resources consumed by an average person

The Emirates' ecological footprint measured 11.9 global hectares per person, compared to 9.6 hectares per person for the United States and a global average of 2.2 hectares a person.

The country took the top spot because its energy consumption is high and emissions are spread among a small population, Loh said.

The country's landscape offers little help. Undulating sand dunes and jagged mountains of bare rock offer precious little greenery to soak up carbon emissions.

One focal point for Dubai's emissions is the red-and-white smokestacks jutting from gas-fired power plants and an aluminum smelter that line the beach on the city's outskirts. The plants do double duty distilling fresh water from Gulf seawater, a hugely energy-intensive process that accounts for 98 percent of the fresh water in a country with no rivers and little usable groundwater.

In Dubai and Abu Dhabi desalinated water is lavished, Las Vegas-style, on fountains, artificial lakes, swimming pools, resort greenery and even on golf courses sitting atop once drifting desert sands. Desalination also produces most fresh water in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Gulf countries that also showed high footprints.

Due to the country's small size, carbon emissions and consumption in the Emirates are a tiny fraction of that of the United States, and Loh said most efforts to cut greenhouse gases need to concentrate on America and other large industrial countries.

But unlike in the United States, energy consumption hasn't emerged as an issue. The Emirates, like the rest of the oil-producing Gulf states, was until the 1960s an impoverished desert country whose residents survived through subsistence fishing, farming and small-time trade.

Some of those enjoying the new season of plenty can still remember the hard times, so the government's energy subsidies give Emirates citizens free water and cheap electricity in their homes. Gasoline sells for around $1.70 per gallon.

"Really, we're happy to be rich now," said Majid al-Mansouri, who heads the environment agency serving Abu Dhabi.

The WWF has asked the Emirates government to cut energy use and move toward renewable energy, especially solar power viable in one of the world's sunniest climates.

Al-Mansouri said the country was taking the overall criticisms on board and was looking to make improvements, such as running publicly owned vehicles on compressed natural gas _ which is cleaner burning but still emits globe-warming carbon dioxide. The state oil company has eliminated 80 percent of its wasteful flaring off of natural gas at its oil wellheads, he said.

Other projects once considered environmentally friendly here are now being reevaluated. Longtime Emirates ruler Sheik Zayed oversaw the planting of a forestry belt kept alive by irrigation, which is now considered a waste of water. Parts of the forests are being allowed to slowly die off.

"Those forests became a refuge for wildlife," al-Mansouri said. "We have gazelle, oryx and hares because of these forests."

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Tue Jan 9 13:45:43 2007

Lull in Afghan war allows U.S. carrier to join Somali fray

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Shifting a U.S. aircraft carrier and its 60 warplanes from the Afghanistan war to Somalia has diverted the Navy from bleak winter fighting with the Taliban to an intelligence-led hunt for terror suspects in the Horn of Africa.

The Navy says aircraft from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower are flying regular intelligence missions over Somalia, playing a critical role monitoring the country's 1,880-mile coast and patrolling the sea that surrounds it to prevent suspects from escaping.

Three other U.S. warships had already taken posts off Somalia, part of the return of U.S. military forces to a country it fled in 1994 after losing 18 soldiers in gritty urban combat, portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."

"There's a lot of water to cover and with four ships, that doesn't always do it," said U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. "But the air assets on the Eisenhower can extend the capabilities of those ships."

The re-tasking of the Eisenhower came as U.S. aircraft launched air raids in southern Somalia, trying to kill al-Qaida suspects in the first overt American military action there since the 1990s.

On Monday, AC-130 gunships launched at least two deadly strikes, followed the next day by strikes by attack helicopters. U.S. officials said militants were killed, though witnesses reported dozens of civilians dead.

The winter lull in fighting in Afghanistan meant the Eisenhower and its four squadrons of F/A-18 ground attack jets could fight a different war.

Taliban attacks have dropped by half between August and December _ from 913 to 449 _ and U.S. and coalition warplanes have made drastic cutbacks in bombing, according to coalition military data.

Troops in Afghanistan can still rely on air cover from some 20 ground-based warplanes, including U.S. A-10 ground-attack jets and B-1 bombers, Dutch F-16 and British GR-7 fighters.

"There are alternatives to the carrier in Afghanistan," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There really are no alternatives in Somalia."

The Eisenhower got into position off Somalia "in the past few days" and as of late Tuesday its aircraft had not conducted ground strikes in Somalia, Brown said, nor had they provided support for the AC-130 raids.

The Navy said "rapidly developing events in Somalia" led it to dispatch the Eisenhower from its battle station in the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean off Somalia, where Ethiopian troops and soldiers loyal to Somalia's U.N.-backed government drove out Islamic fighters that controlled the country.

Two guided missile cruisers, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio, and the amphibious landing ship USS Ashland were already patrolling the coast, with crew boarding private vessels in search of fleeing al-Qaida members, Brown said.

No terror suspects have been found aboard any departing ships, he said.

The Eisenhower's aircraft drastically expand U.S. capabilities in the Horn of Africa. They can be used to track escape vessels and other targets, or give air cover to U.S.-trained Ethiopian troops, or repel an assault on the weak Somali government.

"Ethiopia has gone into a very high risk environment with a great deal of American advice and support. If things go wrong they may need American air support," Cordesman said. "Same with the Somali government."

With U.S. warplanes a few miles offshore, the Navy can strike ground targets in minutes, rather than the hours it would take to fly in long-range bombers from U.S. bases in the region, Cordesman said.

The Eisenhower's compliment of F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and E-2C Hawkeye airborne command-and-control craft had been operating over Afghanistan. But bad weather and a string of Taliban defeats has reduced the level of combat operations there, said NATO spokesman Mark Laity in Kabul.

"Since the peak of activity in August and September, we've seen an extremely steep decline in significant actions," he said.

Laity said enough warplanes remain in Afghanistan to provide cover.

"If our troops get into trouble they will get air power," he said.

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Fri Dec 8 15:42:29 2006

Saudi intelligence chief says Israeli nuclear arsenal is provoking arms race

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) _ Israel's nuclear arsenal is the largest strategic threat to the Middle East and appears set to trigger a regional arms race, said Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, said here Friday.

"The existing Israeli nuclear capability is the most dangerous strategic threat to Gulf security in the short and medium term," Prince Muqrin told the International Institute of Strategic Studies' conference.

Muqrin said the threat posed by the Israeli nuclear arsenal was driving "some countries in the region to join an arms race."

The arms race could push moderate Middle Eastern states to enter into alliances with existing nuclear powers or start "covert or overt" nuclear arms developments of their own, "aiming at creating a military balance in the region."

He did not name countries, but appeared to be referring to Iran, which has been accused by Western powers of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran, which had a delegation at the conference, denies the charge, insisting its nuclear program is strictly for the generation of electricity.

"The spread of weapons of mass destruction will complicate security in this region," Muqrin said.

"My position is against any nuclear or weapons of mass destruction in the whole region, including Israel," he added.

Israel neither denies nor confirms that it has the nuclear bomb, but is widely believed to have a stockpile of such weapons, making it the only nuclear state in the Middle East. Some analysts say it has 100-200 nuclear warheads.

The designated U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, told his Congressional nomination hearing this week that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons partly because of the nuclear powers around it, and he pointed to Israel.

"I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent," Gates said of the Iranians. "They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."

Turning to the conflict in Iraq, Muqrin said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the instability by attracting foreign terrorists from around the Middle East. But he was opposed to a prompt withdrawal of American troops.

"Now is not the right time for the Americans to leave," Muqrin said. "But there should be a time frame."

He urged delegates _ who included envoys from the Arab Gulf countries, as well as China, Germany, Iran, Japan and the United States _ to persuade their governments to help Iraq without interfering in its internal affairs.

Saudi Arabia was spending "millions and millions" on defense measures along its 800-kilometer border with Iraq to prevent infiltrators from crossing to join the insurgency, Muqrin said.

"My government is doing its utmost to cooperate with the Iraqi government, with American forces," said the prince, who wore a gold-trimmed black tunic and red-checked headscarf.

The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel, reported to The White House this week that "private individuals within Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states" were financing Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq. Several truck drivers have told The Associated Press that they carried boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq for insurgents.

The Saudi government denies the kingdom is a major source of funds for Iraqi insurgents.

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Sun Dec 17 09:54:49 2006

Child jockeys eliminated from camel racing in UAE, say government, UNICEF

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The Emirates government said Sunday it had succeeded in eliminating the use of young boys as camel jockeys and UNICEF confirmed the eradication of a practice that had drawn international criticism.

In a statement carried by the official news agency WAM, the government also said it would be spending US$9 million to support more than 1,000 former child jockeys who have been repatriated to their countries.

Many of the child jockeys _ who came from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh _ had been trafficked into virtual slavery in the Emirates, and news revelations about their brutal lives embarrassed the country's leaders and damaged its image as a progressive Arab country.

The statement appeared aimed at supporting Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, against a lawsuit in the United States which alleges that his sponsorship of camel racing had encouraged the smuggling of boys as young as four to be trained as jockeys.

Sheik Mohammed's legal representative in Dubai has dismissed the suit "baseless."

UNICEF spokesman Omar Shehadeh said Sunday he believed the government's two-year, US$11.7 million eradication plan had succeeded. UNICEF has been helping the Emirates to implement its 1993 ban on child jockeys and repatriate the boys.

"We've been doing spot checks. There are no more child jockeys on the race tracks," said Shehadeh of the U.N.'s children's welfare agency. "But if anyone has different information, we always welcome tips."

The recent adoption of inexpensive robot jockeys has made it easier for owners and trainers to comply with the ban, Shehadeh said.

The practice of boys racing camels survives elsewhere in the Gulf. The Bedouin-inspired sport is popular in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, where the governments have also banned jockeys under age 18, but have not started repatriation programs.

"The UAE is in the lead on this," Shehadeh said. "We're still in the process of talking to these other countries."

Sending child jockeys home is difficult. It can take months to find their families, who often live in extreme poverty, Shehadeh said.

He said in most cases, the jockey's family knowingly "sold" their children to people in the camel racing business.

UNICEF is trying to ensure that the children will not be worse off by being sent home, and will be resold to the racing business.

Most jockeys came from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mauritania and Sudan, he said.

"In some cases, the parents didn't know what they were giving their kids up for," Shehadeh said. "Poverty is the main issue here."

A handful of the 1,077 boy racers have not been able to find their families, he said.

In 2004, activists estimated that some 40,000 children were involved in the sport in the Gulf.

The Emirates' cabinet, headed by Sheik Mohammed, earmarked $9 million toward paying back wages and severance pay to ex-jockeys who left the country before the repatriations began.

Ex-jockeys will also receive health insurance and schooling under the program, which already pays for temporary housing in their home countries until UNICEF insures they can move home without being resold, Shehadeh said.

In 2005, a U.S. State Department report lambasted the Emirates and other Gulf countries for abusing the boys, saying they were deported once they grew too heavy to be useful as jockeys.

The deported boys were often unable to find their families or even speak their mother tongue, the report said.

In September, American lawyers in Miami filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of unnamed parents of thousands of boys suspected of being abused in the camel race trade in the Emirates over three decades.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from Emirates royal family members, including Sheik Mohammed and his brother Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, both of whom own race horses in the United States.

Sheik Mohammed was served with the lawsuit in September while buying horses in Kentucky.

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Fri Dec 15 04:20:18 2006

Voters in United Arab Emirates set to vote in historic elections Saturday

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The Arab world's slow lurch toward democracy will take another step forward this weekend when the wealthy United Arab Emirates holds the first election in its 35-year history.

Some 450 candidates, including 65 women, are running for 20 open seats on the Federal National Council, a government advisory body seen as an eventual precursor to a national parliament.

"This is a new experiment and a new experience for us," Anwar Gergash, the government minister overseeing the election, said this week.

The United Arab Emirates is the most liberal and modern society on the Arabian Peninsula, with beaches crammed with bikini-clad women and restaurants serving alcohol and pork, banned under Muslim law.

But when it comes to democracy, the Emirates has trailed. Citizens here have watched as every single neighbor held some sort of election, even conservative Saudi Arabia, which, like the Emirates, is run by tribal royal families.

On Saturday, a handful of voters in the capital Abu Dhabi and the eastern emirate of Fujeirah will become the first Emirati citizens to cast ballots since independence in 1971. Voters in Dubai and the other four emirates that make up the federal state will visit polls Monday and Wednesday.

The Emirates' first experiment with democracy has been touted as a major step in empowering the country's 800,000 citizens, among an overall population of 4.5 million, many of whom are immigrant workers. But in power-sharing terms, the election is nearly meaningless.

"It's not really democracy yet," conceded candidate Sheikha al-Mulla, a female psychologist running for one of eight seats in Dubai. "It's preparing the country and the people for the next elections in four years."

The government has hedged against the likelihood of revolutionary change by hand-picking the 6,700 people who will be allowed to vote. It also has balanced the 20 elected members of the Federal National Council with 20 appointed members.

If that weren't enough, the council itself has no formal power. It acts only as an advisory body whose advice can be discarded.

But in the wealthy Emirates, where citizens are a privileged minority with access to free housing and lucrative government jobs, there is little clamor for elections. Many here say the galloping economy is evidence the government has done a good job, and voting is being arranged simply because it is the global fashion.

"It was getting awkward so they had to address it," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor at Emirates University and newspaper columnist who has long advocated elections. "From a historical perspective, it's a step forward. But this is also for outside consumption."

The biggest argument against democracy here is the chaos in Iraq. Gergash, the government minister, said some in the Middle East equate democracy with instability and therefore want to only test it with caution. Some think that elections in Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have either deepened sectarian divisions or brought Islamist hard-liners to power.

"We see elections as divisive and breaking up the social fabric," Gergash said. "We'd rather be safe than sorry. That's why we're moving forward in this measured way."

But the lack of democracy also has become something of an embarrassment in a country that boasts one of the world's highest levels of education, has become a center for international conferences and investment banking and is now a regional hub for the United Nations.

"I'm in my mid-40s. I have a Ph.D., and I've never taken part in an election," Gergash said.

Some 15 percent of the candidates and eligible voters are women, who are permitted to vote and run for office in all Gulf countries except Saudi Arabia, which barred women from participating in municipal elections.

A woman was elected to parliament in nearby Bahrain last month, the first ever in any Gulf Arab state. Kuwait allowed women to vote and run for office for the first time in elections held in June. No female candidates won, but a woman was given a Cabinet post. Qatar and Oman have also held low-level elections.

The Emirates' elected council is expected to be the precursor for a parliament that is years away, but the country currently has no elections law, no guidelines for formation of political parties and no constitutional provision for a parliament.

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Wed Dec 6 11:56:31 2006

Arabs should court U.S. media, potential U.S. presidential hopeful says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Arabs need to increase efforts to communicate their views to the American public, said retired U.S. Gen. Wesley K. Clark Wednesday during an Arab political and business strategy conference.

"We need your political and business leaders to come to the United States and give us your perceptions," said Clark, the former NATO commander who ran for the Democratic nomination to be the party's presidential candidate in 2004.

"There is a lot of talking about the Middle East in Washington but there is not a lot of listening to the region in Washington."

Clark said he was considering another presidential run in 2008.

Arabs need a more vocal presence on television and in Washington, but also in the small-town speaking circuit in organizations like the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, where Clark said people were eager listeners.

"Come to Arkansas, go to Dallas. Get on the speaking circuit," Clark said, elaborating on his remarks on the sidelines of the conference. "This is an important outreach function. France and Britain and the Israelis, they're all over the place. Americans are good listeners but they need someone to listen to."

Syrian ambassador to Washington Imad Moustapha said there was so much anti-Arab "disinformation" in the American media that it would be difficult to achieve a balance. But he conceded that Arabs needed to step up their efforts to change the situation.

"Right now it's the other side that is defining us," Moustapha said. "We have to work hard. It's mainly our fault."

Other speakers at the Arab Strategy Forum said the American debate on the war against terrorism lacked the depth that it merits.

"There is no serious discussion of the role of U.S. policy and the U.S.-Israeli relationship in the cycle of violence and resentment," said Rami Khouri, who heads a political think-tank at the American University of Beirut. "If the United States isn't prepared to discuss this, the problem is only going to get worse."

"It can't be won because it's not a war and it's not against terrorists," said the International Crisis Group's Robert Malley, a Clinton administration adviser on Arab-Israeli Affairs. "You're not going to get Arabs to rally around the war on terror no matter how hard you try."

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Mon Dec 4 12:06:42 2006

Shell CEO berates America for spurning Kyoto environmental pact on global warming

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The chief executive for Shell berated Washington on Monday for spurning the United Nation's Kyoto agreement on global warming, saying U.S. backing for a global regulatory framework would create incentives for oil companies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

"For us as a company, the debate about CO2 is over. We've entered a debate about what we can do about it," Royal Dutch Shell PLC chief Jeroen Van Der Veer told a gathering of hundreds of political and business leaders from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Van Der Veer was asked by an American attending the Arab Strategy Forum whether the energy company's business plans were being hurt by the global backlash against global warming, and the carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil-based fuels considered the prime cause.

Van Der Veer said energy companies would be ready to partner with governments to solve the carbon problem if there was a worldwide framework to bind governments to the same standards. He said Kyoto protocol, which focuses on 35 industrial countries, was a good start.

"You are from the United States. Why don't you join the Kyoto agreement?" Van Der Veer asked the American. "You see an initial framework there and you can build on that for our future."

The Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto accords shortly after taking office in 2001. The preceding Clinton administration signed the agreement in 1997, along with European Union members and Japan. Kyoto requires industrialized countries to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases that act like a greenhouse, trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions appears set to grow. The Shell chief executive said energy use will rise by 50 percent over the next 25 years, mainly from increased demand for oil and natural gas in China and India, but also in the West.

The United States produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, the largest amount of any country. But searing economic growth and rapid industrialization are boosting emissions in China and India, developing countries not bound by the Kyoto accords.

America counts the world's highest level of automobile ownership, at more than 1,000 cars per 1,000 residents, with India at 11 per 1,000 and China at just nine, said Daniel Yergin, director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

"China is not going to stay at nine cars per thousand people, you can be sure about that," Yergin said. "People aren't going to be denied a higher standard of living."

Van Der Veer said there needed to be a "level playing field" of environmental ground rules that all countries followed, otherwise companies like Shell have little incentive to invest in expensive emissions-reducing strategies in one country, when they could move operations to a neighboring country that has no such restrictions.

Shell is looking for ways to cut carbon dioxide emissions by trapping and perhaps injecting the gas into the earth, where it might be useful in increasing pressure in depleted oil fields that could enhance recovery of oil, Van Der Veer said.

"I think a better approach to it is to see it as an opportunity," Van Der Veer said. "Can we catch it? Can we use it for enhanced oil recovery? Where can we sequester it?"

The Middle East, with 60 percent of the world's crude oil reserves and 40 percent of its gas, will remain the world's most important source of energy, Van Der Veer said.

Remaining oil is growing ever more expensive to extract, requiring Shell and other oil companies to make larger investments in a business already saddled with huge costs, he said.

"Countries accuse us of making too much profit," Van Der Veer said. "But those investments have to come from somewhere."

Shell has made an effort to at least appear green, though critics would say the company is more about propaganda than anything else, given that Shell's main product is oil.

Not many people outside the company are praising Shell's green record.That said, they're aware of the issues. Shell was early with "sustainability reporting" (their first annual sustainability report was published in 1998). They currently have a goal to have their (self-reported) greenhouse gas emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, similar to the Kyoto Protocols.

The company is using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, the best known international standard for reporting on GHG emissions. So Shell is also more transparent than some.

Shell claims to have invested $1 billion in renewables since 2000, notably in a major offshore wind project in the North Sea.

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Sat Dec 2 00:02:04 2006

Rather than go abroad to study, Arabs bring foreign colleges to them

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ For decades, top students in this muggy Persian Gulf city traveled a long way to go to college, usually in the United States or Britain. After the Sept. 11 attacks, some felt less welcome.

Now they needn't leave home. Using government coffers heaving with energy revenues, U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are spending billions to keep students at home by luring their favorite U.S. and European universities here.

In Qatar, a gas-rich emirate the size of Connecticut, five U.S. universities have set up full-fledged campuses in a sprawling, starkly modern district called Education City. The government is courting three more.

For conservative Gulf Arabs, the benefits are obvious: landing degrees from fine universities at home, without exposing children to the liberal temptations _ or perceived anti-Arab hostility _ of the West.

Gulf leaders also see top-notch education as a step toward weaning their economies from the boom and bust of energy prices. After watching their economies scrape bottom during the cheap oil years of the 1990s, leaders are rushing to diversify, and education is part of that effort.

Qatar, home to the U.S. military's Mideast command post and the Al-Jazeera TV network, needs an educated class to lead the fast-developing country. The state's first parliamentary election is expected next year.

"You can't create the environment for democracy, reform and progress without investing in your education system," said Hassan al-Ansari, a newspaper editor who heads the Doha-based Gulf Studies Center. "It's not cheap. But this is the best investment we can make."

And it's not just about technical skills. Western universities could capture young minds that otherwise might be influenced by radical Islamists, al-Ansari said.

The schools flocking here are name brands anywhere.

Georgetown University, a Jesuit school in Washington, was persuaded in 2005 to open a branch of its elite School of Foreign Service, alma mater of former President Clinton and his CIA director, George Tenet.

"Here we are, in a fairly conservative Islamic state that said, 'Hey, we want this Catholic Jesuit institution to come and educate our students," Georgetown spokesman Charles Nailen said. The school, founded by the Society of Jesus, has posted its crest on its offices here: an American eagle with talons grasping the Cross of Christ.

The first to arrive was Virginia Commonwealth University, which established a college of fine arts in 1997 offering four-year degrees.

The Ivy League's Cornell followed in 2002 by duplicating its Manhattan-based Weil Cornell Medical College in a sleek building with egg-shaped auditoriums. Texas A&M brought its engineering school in 2003. Carnegie Mellon University opened schools of business and computer science in 2004.

Although financial details are confidential, published reports show Qatar's subsidies are nearly irresistible. All expenses, including faculty housing, are paid. Deals are sweetened by donations as large as $50 million to university coffers.

None of the foreign college campuses in Qatar would comment on finances, but Cornell announced in 2001 it would be paid $750 million over 11 years to operate its Qatar medical school.

Not all of Qatar's overtures have succeeded. The University of North Carolina rejected an offer in 2002 to open a business school. The school sought a $35 million gift, while Qatar offered only $10 million, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

Elsewhere in the Gulf Emirates, Harvard Medical School opened a postgraduate research center in Dubai earlier this year, and Virginia's George Mason University started a branch in Ras al-Khaimah.

University officials say they maintain the academic rigor of U.S. campuses.

"That was one of our stipulations. We would not lower our academic requirements in any way," Nailen said.

American colleges aren't the only ones moving in. Paris' Sorbonne University opened a campus in Abu Dhabi this year. France's INSEAD Business School has announced plans for an executive education center there too _ similar to one that it opened in Israel.

Visa restrictions and other precautions that followed the 9/11 attacks have eased enough for Arab students to return to U.S. universities. But the American schools with branches in the Gulf offer stiff competition.

They also lure companies that would offer jobs to their graduates.

Across the road from Education City, a research and development park is under construction that has commitments from Shell, General Electric and Microsoft. The U.S. military-linked think-tank, Rand Corp., has opened a branch here.

Carnegie Mellon's dean, Chuck Thorpe, expects his graduates will soon start high-tech companies using local venture capital.

"This is a place that has the vision to do education right and the resources to do it," said Thorpe. "That mix is very rare."

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Wed Nov 29 08:56:12 2006

Stung by criticism, Dubai orders demolition of 100 camps for workers

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The government of this emirate on Wednesday ordered the demolition of more than 100 squalid camps for low-wage laborers, weeks after a human rights group rebuked the country for mistreating construction workers.

The camps will be shut down during the next 12 months because their buildings are unfit for human habitation, the Dubai government said in a statement. It added that a task force had found the hostels to be lacking in clean drinking water and sanitation and that they were rife with pests.

The owners of hundreds of other workers' hostels, known here as "camps," have been told to improve their facilities or they, too, will be closed down, the statement said.

The occupants of the camps facing demolition will be relocated to new hostels under construction in other parts of the emirate, the release said, without giving details.

Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a damning report on labor conditions in the United Arab Emirates, saying the country's skyscrapers and resorts had been built on the backs of 600,000 Asian laborers who often work in debt to their employers for years and have minimal rights.

Stung by the bad publicity, the federal government of the Emirates decided to act. It set up special labor courts to deal with unpaid wages and hired 2,000 inspectors to police building sites and housing camps.

In Dubai, whose ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is also the federal prime minister, the local government told companies they had to provide health insurance and allow laborers to change jobs more easily.

"Not only have we shut down almost one-fifth of the labor camps in that area for failure to meet standards, but we have also ordered for improvements to be made to the remaining camps so that they adhere to the outlined regulations," Dubai Public Health Director Salem Mesmar said in a statement.

Most of Dubai's laborers come from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh on three-year contracts that include housing in trailers or crowded bunk rooms. The men earn as little as US$135 (euro100) per month in a country where the average wage is US$2,100 (euro1,600).

Many of the soon-to-be-demolished hostels stand in Dubai's oldest laborer district, known as Sonapur, where tens of thousands of workers live in ramshackle conditions among nearly 500 separate camps.

The dust-blown district on the desert edge of a highway has become an all-male city of jumbled trailers and bunkhouses, where workers hang out their colored coveralls on laundry lines.

Laborers are regularly killed trying to cross the highway as there are no pedestrian walkways or regular public transport.

The Emirates, like other Gulf countries, relies on foreign labor for private sector jobs.

While Dubai's reforms may cut abuses, they will not do anything to raise salaries, which are set in tough South Asian labor markets where wages are a tiny fraction of those in the wealthy Gulf.

Gulf developers employ the tactic of "in-sourcing" laborers on salaries that appear reasonable in their home countries. In many cases, the men go into debt to pay their airfare and visa costs, even though Emirates law says the companies must bear these charges.

Workers end up toiling a year or two just to pay off their loans, Human Rights Watch found.

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Tue Nov 21 14:11:16 2006

Former President Bush takes on Arab critics of his son in testy exchange in Abu Dhabi

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Former President George H.W. Bush took on Arab critics of his son Tuesday during a testy exchange at a leadership conference in the capital of this U.S. ally.

"My son is an honest man," Bush told members of the audience harshly criticized the current U.S. leader's foreign policy.

The oil-rich Persian Gulf used to be safe territory for former President Bush, who brought Arab leaders together in a coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait in 1991. But gratitude for the elder Bush, who served as president from 1989-93, was overshadowed at the conference by hostility toward his son, whose invasion of Iraq and support for Israel are deeply unpopular in the region.

"We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.

Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.

A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.

"I think that's weird and it's nuts," Bush said. "To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."

The hostile comments came during a quesion-and-answer session after Bush finished a folksy address on leadership by telling the audience how deeply hurt he feels when his presidential son is criticized.

"This son is not going to back away," Bush said, his voice quivering. "He's not going to change his view because some poll says this or some poll says that, or some heartfelt comments from the lady who feels deeply in her heart about something. You can't be president of the United States and conduct yourself if you're going to cut and run. This is going to work out in Iraq. I understand the anxiety. It's not easy."

Bush also told the audience its derisive hoots were mild compared to the reaction he got in Germany in the 1980s, after persuading the country to deploy U.S. nuclear missiles.

He told the audience _ including dozens of women in black robes and head scarves _ he was extremely proud of his sons, President George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

He said the happiest day of his life was election day in 1998 when George and Jeb were elected to the governorships of Texas and Florida, but he also described the pain he feels when his sons are attacked.

"I can't begin to tell you the pride I feel in my two sons," Bush said. "When your son's under attack, it hurts. You're determined to be at his side and help him any way you possibly can."

One audience member asked the former president what advice he gives his son on Iraq.

Bush said the presence of reporters in the audience prevented him from revealing his advice. He also declined to comment on his expectations for the findings of the Iraq Study Group, an advisory commission led by Bush family friend and his former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The group is expected to issue its report soon.

"I have strong opinions on a lot of these things. But the reason I can't voice them is, if I did what you ask me to do _ tell you what advice I give my son _ that would then be flashed all over the world," Bush said.

"If it happened to deviate one iota, one little inch, from what the president's doing or thinks he ought to be doing, it would be terrible. It'd bring great anxiety not only to him but to his supporters," he added.

Bush said he'd spoken with Baker recently _ the two are neighbors in Houston _ but preferred to reminisce about old times than discuss what America ought to do in Iraq.

"In the early 1960s, Jim Baker and I were the men's doubles champions in tennis in the city of Houston," Bush said with a grin. "If I were to suggest what they ought to do, it just would not be constructive and certainly would not be helpful to the president. It would cause grief to him."

Bush said he was surprised by the audience's criticism of his son.

"He is working hard for peace. It takes a lot of guts to get up and tell a father about his son in those terms when I just told you the thing that matters in my heart is my family," he said. "How come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United States is so bad?"

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Thu Nov 9 07:13:26 2006

For Qatar, bold moves include outreach to Israel

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ The skyscrapers along this city's graceful seaside corniche are rising quickly, but not as fast as the global clout of this tiny Gulf country.

Once a sleepy backwater, Qatar _ the size of Connecticut and rich from oil and gas _ is now viewed as the architect of some of the Arab world's most daring foreign policy in decades, at times overshadowing powerful Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Last month, it was once again the focus of Western attention and unflattering editorials in Arab newspapers, after it invited Israel's foreign minister to a United Nations democracy conference here.

Qatar has made the outreach to Israel even while serving as the Gulf's closest ally of Hamas, the hardline Palestine militant faction that refuses to recognize Israel and is viewed by the United States as a terrorist group.

Officials here describe the outreach as a "new mentality, a modern mentality," as deputy foreign minister Mohammed al-Rumaihi said in a recent interview.

Qatar's Gulf neighbors "aren't politically ready for this," al-Rumaihi said. "They aren't ready for free dialogue, for open-minded thinking. This is Qatar now. This is who we are."

But Qatar also is motivated by a need for friends to balance against the overweening attention of powerful, neighboring Saudi Arabia and perhaps a more assertive Iran.

"This isn't Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. This is a tough neighborhood," said Hassan al-Ansari, director of Doha-based Gulf Studies Center and editor of the Qatar Tribune. "A small nation can't survive without maintaining relations with everybody."

Qatar has commanded its growing role in international affairs by several deft moves. It has made a habit of welcoming U.N. and international conferences and sports events. It also hosts the U.S. military command running the Iraq war. And it has gained constant attention _ both good and bad _ from its bankrolling of the growing Al-Jazeera news empire.

But what has triggered the biggest reaction is Qatar's willingness to deal with Israel.

For the past decade, Israel has been allowed to maintain a three-person trade representative's office in a Doha villa. Israel opened a similar office in Oman but the government there ordered it shut in 2000.

"We are quite happy with relations between Israel and Qatar," said Roi Rosenblit, who heads the Israel Trade Representation Office here. "They are courageous. They're not afraid to meet us in public."

Al-Rumaihi said Qatar does not view Israel as any different than other countries. "The U.N. has 192 members and Israel is one of them. We engage in dialogue with them," he said.

But open dealings with Israel are beyond the pale for Qatar's Arab neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula, or indeed, across the Persian Gulf in Iran. Public opinion is squarely against Israel.

Meanwhile, Qatar keeps its Hamas ties: Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal spent three years living in Doha before moving to Syria, and he still maintains a house near the Israeli trade mission.

And, money from Qatar _ whether public or private _ has helped to keep Hamas afloat. A government official here, who asked not to be named because of the matter's sensitivity, acknowledged that Qatari "donations" flow to the group.

For that reason, Qatar is believed to have valuable leverage with both Palestinian factions, Hamas and the more moderate Fatah.

Qatar has inserted itself into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, brokering unofficial talks between Israel on prisoner exchanges. Al-Rumaihi said none of the discussions have reached the "official" level, but suggested prisoner talks were ongoing.

"Sometimes we want to improve our chances for success by keeping it secret," he said with a smile.

Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, in the end canceled plans to attend the United Nations democracy conference hosted here in late October. Her office said she balked at supporting a conference that included Hamas.

But Rosenblit said Livni was "very sorry" to have canceled her visit, since there had been hopes for bilateral Israeli-Qatari talks.

"Their help is very welcome," Rosenblit said.

Such bold foreign policy would've been unthinkable in Qatar before 1995, when the current emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, overthrew his father in a peaceful coup.

Sheik Hamad began giving the country a complete overhaul, building a better education system and inviting grateful foreign energy companies to help develop its offshore gas field, the world's largest.

He guaranteed the country's security by leasing the sprawling Al-Udeid Airbase to the U.S. military, which had been told to leave Saudi Arabia in 2002.

And he annoyed neighboring Arab states by throwing full support behind Al-Jazeera.

At the same time Sheik Hamad dismantled Qatar's isolationist foreign policy. The country began spending millions to host huge international conferences, paying to fly top speakers and guests from around the world on state-owned Qatar Airways.

Last week's U.N. democracy conference alone cost Qatar $16 million, al-Rumaihi said.

"We have the financial power, so we can do it," al-Rumaihi said. "Why not? It's our legitimate role in the world."

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Sun Nov 12 05:13:34 2006

Emirates building boom depends on abused workforce, Human Rights Watch says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ An economic boom has crammed this country's seaside with hundreds of shimmering skyscrapers, $1,000-per-night beach hotels and resort islands shaped like palm trees.

But the projects have been built on the backs of 600,000 Asian laborers with few rights and little recourse to combat exploitation, says a report issued Sunday by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The Emirates, the watchdog says, "has abdicated almost entirely from its responsibility to protect workers' rights."

The country ought to embrace modernity not only in its skylines but in its treatment of construction workers who earn as little as $135 a month in a country where the average monthly wage is $2,100, Human Rights Watch says. The workers often toil for two or three years to pay off debts to unscrupulous labor recruiters, the report states.

"There's no reason for a global economic powerhouse like the U.A.E. to tolerate abusive and exploitative labor practices," said Human Rights Watch researcher Hadi Ghaemi. "None of this construction would be possible without these imported workers."

Labor Minister Ali Al Kaabi said the Emirates is in the midst of beefing up its enforcement of already strict laws on labor rights and human trafficking. Al Kaabi acknowledged there are just 80 labor inspectors _ too few to keep companies in line.

"Our laws are tougher than anyone else's in the Mideast," Al Kaabi said. "But the lack of inspectors means sometimes we don't see these problems."

The human rights report comes days after Dubai leader Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum issued a sweeping program of labor reform.

On Saturday the United Arab Emirates' ruler, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, announced tough penalties, up to life imprisonment, against trafficking in humans, which has illegally brought domestic servants, prostitutes and even child camel race jockeys into the country.

The Emirates has already issued laws addressing many of the abuses in the Human Rights Watch report: salaries and passports held back by companies, dangerous working conditions, shady labor agents whose fees keep workers locked in debt and labor enforcers beholden to connected companies, not workers.

But companies flout laws with impunity, because of a lack of enforcement.

Now, Sheik Mohammed has ordered the creation of an inspection directorate and a system of labor courts. He also requires companies to provide health insurance for all foreign workers and allow them to change jobs more easily.

Sometime next year, Al Kaabi said a new force of 2,000 inspectors will police this country's building sites and desert labor camps, home to hundreds of thousands of migrant workmen from South Asia.

"We're in the spotlight because of Dubai's development," Al Kaabi said. "Success means you get a lot of criticism."

The Emirates, like other Gulf countries, relies on foreign labor for private sector jobs. Labor conditions are similar in nearby Kuwait and Qatar; worse in Saudi Arabia and slightly better in Oman and Bahrain, said Ghaemi, of Human Rights Watch.

Gulf developers take advantage of unskilled men in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh willing to take "in-sourced" work for salaries set in the overcrowded South Asian labor market.

While acknowledging the Emirates still has a long way to go, Al Kaabi disputed many of the report's findings, including its allegations that the government was not penalizing companies for violations.

Dozens of companies were fined in July and August alone, the minister said, for not halting work during searing afternoons when temperatures often rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

A company with royal family ties was shut down for six months for not paying workers. Another saw 270 laborers transferred elsewhere for making late payments, Al Kaabi said.

The reforms come after Dubai and Abu Dhabi were hit during the past year by dozens of strikes, occasionally violent, over unpaid wages. The government responded by cracking down on companies, threatening to deport strike leaders and saying workers could eventually form union-like organizations.

"They're building this country with their shoulders and hands. The least we can give them is their basic rights," Al Kaabi said.

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Wed Nov 1 16:06:14 2006

10 years after launch, Al-Jazeera prepares to battle Western media

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DOHA, Qatar (AP) _ Al-Jazeera's taboo-smashing newscasts regularly vex politicians in Washington, but not nearly as much as they anger leaders in the Arab world, where the news channel has been banned from operating in 18 countries at one time or another.

Now, the network is launching its biggest gamble on its 10th anniversary _ an English-language channel with an Arab perspective. Al-Jazeera International plans to hit the airwaves Nov. 15 and hopes to steal viewers from CNN and the BBC.

Feisty and sometimes graphic coverage of global carnage is an Al-Jazeera specialty, as is bracing commentary that has shaken up the Arab world and rattled the West.

"We have an edge over the other networks: We're already based in the Middle East. And we have a different perspective," director Wadah Khanfar told a news conference at the network's Doha headquarters Wednesday.

Al-Jazeera has been through a lot in 10 years, with three staffers killed in Iraq, another locked away without charge at the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a correspondent who interviewed Osama bin Laden convicted on terror charges in Spain.

Those it has covered have also suffered. The network is credited with waking up Arab TV viewers with brash discussions of banned topics. It questioned autocrats across the region and brought a large dollop of diplomatic clout to Qatar, a tiny sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. A frustrated President Bush even talked of bombing the channel's headquarters in 2004, according to a leaked British government memo.

"It made the airwaves uncontrollable," Amjad Nasser wrote Wednesday in the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

The fear Al-Jazeera inspires in the Arab world is best seen in Saudi Arabia, where the network has never been allowed to send a reporter _ even those making personal pilgrimages to Mecca.

Worse, a Saudi boycott of the channel bars Al-Jazeera advertisers from doing business in the kingdom. The boycott has chased away almost all advertisers, leaving Al-Jazeera dependent on the deep pockets of Qatar's royal family.

"We are totally blocked from Saudi Arabia," Khanfar said. The station's employees are also banned from Iraq, Tunisia and Algeria, staffers said.

The network declines to say virtually anything about its finances, but it doesn't appear to be having money trouble. Al-Jazeera International has hired more than 500 staffers, poaching some of the world's best-known journalists from networks including the British Broadcasting Corp., CNN, CNBC and ABC. It will broadcast in ultra-expensive high-definition TV with four chief broadcast centers rather than CNN's two or BBC's one.

Although its one-time anchor, Riz Khan, is among those who departed for Al-Jazeera International, CNN International said it welcomed the new competition.

"We're not worried," spokeswoman Susanna Flood said. "News channels are judged by what they do and not what they say they'll do."

Al-Jazeera says its goal is to reverse the information flow to the world's 1 billion English speakers who now have no choice but to watch Western-oriented broadcasters. Al-Jazeera International also appears to have natural audiences among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, most of whom don't speak Arabic.

Before taking on the big networks, however, it first needs to be seen, which requires coaxing hundreds of global cable TV operators to carry its signal. This has been tough in many countries, the station's commercial director Lindsey Oliver said _ not least the United States, where the Bush administration has accused Al-Jazeera of anti-American bias.

Some U.S. cable carriers are adopting a "show-me" policy, waiting to see what sort of opposition it generates before agreeing to carry it, said Michael Holtzman, a PR spokesman for the network.

"There's no better way to demystify Al-Jazeera than by putting it on the air," Holtzman said. "Most Americans don't speak Arabic, so they haven't had the opportunity to draw their own conclusions."

On Nov. 15, the new 24-hour network will be available to at least 40 million households worldwide via cable in Western Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Malaysia and a few other places, Oliver said.

In the United States, she said, at least one major cable provider and one major satellite provider will carry it, but she declined to identify them.

Comcast, the largest U.S. cable provider, does not plan to be one of them, spokeswoman Jenny Moyer said.

Cox Communications, the third-largest provider, has talked with Al-Jazeera but has not decided whether to carry it, Cox media relations director Stephanie Davis said.

Al-Jazeera has been trying to smooth its entry into the vital U.S. market by casting the channel as the ideal forum for the Bush administration to talk to the Muslim world. Al-Jazeera has had meetings in the White House, with members of Congress and at the State Department and Pentagon, Oliver said.

It has also met with American Jewish media leaders and interest groups to discuss its portrayal of Israel, Holtzman said.

Israel, one of the few countries in the Middle East that has never banned Al-Jazeera, is itself a lucrative target market. Oliver said she was in discussions with Israeli providers.

"There's huge interest for this channel in Israel," she said. "That wouldn't be the case if we were going to be unbalanced."

The network also said it was launching a pan-Arab newspaper, also called Al-Jazeera, to compete with other Arabic dailies.

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Wed Oct 18 20:34:49 2006

Dubai eco-tourism: Champagne and strawberries in the desert

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

MARGHAM, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Skinny-dipping in Arabia? If it feels good, why not?

So I was swimming naked. It was broad daylight, but I figured the private infinity pool behind our private bungalow in this exclusive desert resort was private enough. No one's going to see me but my wife, and she was napping.

But I sensed a pair of eyes watching me as I floated in the pool. I looked around and quickly spotted the peeper. He was hiding in a broom bush: A young Arabian gazelle, a very rare species known for its white belly and alleged timidity. Somebody forgot to tell this one.

I clapped my hands and the gazelle sprung off in a puff of dust, loping down the peach-colored sand dune to another private bungalow below ours.

The Al Maha Desert Resort is eco-tourism, Dubai-style. Its 40 ridiculously luxurious bungalows resemble Bedouin tents, but they're stocked with pillow menus, Bulgari soaps and crystal decanters of free sherry.

They sit on the slope of an enormous dune inside a desert conservation reserve of 90 square miles (230 square kilometers) _ about 5 percent of the landmass of Dubai, an emirate that is also home to the city of Dubai.

Al Maha isn't the only eco-tourism option in the Emirates, just the most expensive. In the northern emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, my wife and I also joined an overnight trek with a company called Mountain Extreme, which takes hardy souls climbing in the sun-shattered rock of the Hajjar Mountains. There are several other wilderness options in this western-oriented Arab country that has become the Middle East's epicenter of luxury tourism.

Al Maha's version of eco-tourism isn't always ecologically friendly. Its air-conditioned bungalows use lots of water and electricity. And the resort's owner, Emirates airlines, has introduced nonnative plants and more than double the animals than the desert can support, so they need to be fed.

But Al Maha is playing a key role in protecting species and desert habitat that are disappearing amid the Gulf's rapacious development.

The resort is oriented with a view over a desert valley and the undulating dunes that stretch unbroken until meeting the rocky Hajjar crags on the dusty horizon.

The valley, with an artificial watering hole at bottom, was the center of our attention. We watched the animals with hotel-supplied binoculars from our private deck, lounging, like the antelopes, in the total quiet of a 108-degree Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) May afternoon. We also watched the traffic from our breakfast table in the luxurious lodge, and during our starlit dinner on the terrace, with the help of well-placed floodlights.

With a few hitches, the wildlife is thriving. The biggest success is the Arabian oryx, a big white antelope whose numbers had been poached to fewer than 50 by the 1960s. At one point, Dubai's herd was given asylum in the arid U.S. state of Arizona to prevent extinction.

Al Maha's herd of 110 Arabian oryx has since swollen to more than 300, many of which can be seen munching the irrigated greenery that lends privacy to Al Maha's bungalows.

There are also three species of gorgeous springing gazelles, two desert foxes as well as the fascinating sand skink, an 8-inch (20-centimeter) lizard with porcelain-like skin. We chased one but it dove into the soft dune, causing sand to cascade like water.

"They can literally swim in the sand," says Don Booysen, the drawling South African naturalist who was our personal guide.

Some animals and trees in Al Maha don't belong in the reserve, most notably a herd of scimitar-horned oryx, once native to Africa's Sahara, now extinct in the wild. Conservationists here are struggling to revive the herd after its numbers dropped alarmingly, from 35 to 18. Another misplaced breed is the Thomson's gazelle, a native of east Africa.

The desert's most destructive nonnative animal _ the camel _ has been banished from most of the resort, allowing natural greenery to return from decades of overgrazing. Camels bred for racing have denuded much of the Emirati desert, turning already barren lands into empty wastes. But well-connected sheiks keep a few herds inside the reserve against the resort's wishes.

"As long as you have camels, you can't do conservation," Booysen says. "There's not enough food for them in the desert."

The biggest issue my wife Chloe and I had with this resort was figuring out what to do with our precious time. Its bungalows rent for 3,500 dirhams (US$1,000;euro800) per night (with discounts for frequent fliers on Emirates airlines), so we didn't want to squander any moments, especially with a trained naturalist at our disposal.

We spent much of the time touring the fascinating desert, waking at 5 a.m. to watch a display of falcon-hunting, and as it turned out, owl-hunting. A spotted eagle-owl followed a trainer's commands brilliantly, circling slowly and swooping just over our upturned faces. Its yellow eyes bulged as it snapped up pieces of bird carcass.

As the sun drifted toward the horizon, we joined a camel trek to the summit of a tall dune where resort staff handed us flutes of champagne and fresh strawberries. We sat in the soft sand with a handful of other couples _ Brits, Germans and Japanese _ and watched a sunset made psychedelic by the dusty horizon.

For those who want eco-tourism without the strawberries and champagne, there are treks among the dramatic and remote mountain villages of the Shihhi tribes of the northern emirate of Ras al-Khaimah and neighboring Oman.

John Falchetto, 33, a Canadian mountaineer and entrepreneur, takes hardy hikers deep into the rugged Wadi Bih canyon and peaks of the Hajjars for overnight hikes that tackle two of the tallest mountains in the Emirates.

We opted to climb Jebel Qiwi, 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) tall, an easy climb over sharp rocks in the blazing sun.

We parked Falchetto's Land Rover at the side of a dirt track and hiked to a village deep in a landscape that crosses Macchu Picchu with the Grand Canyon: terraced stone villages sitting on precarious perches above gaping canyons of colored rock.

Falchetto developed a unique brand of eco-tourism, investing his income renovating abandoned Shihhi villages and using them as base camps for hikers. Most villages can only be reached on foot, and are perched in stunning locations on the edge of cliffs with distant views of the Indian Ocean.

Falchetto is working with the emirate's ruler to establish a nature reserve in the peak district. We spent one night in the village, sleeping on cots in the silent mountain air, watching the rising moon illuminate the canyon below.

At 5:30 a.m., with the sun brightening the sky, we set off on a three-hour ramble to the summit, where we sat on the peak, ate sandwiches and rubbed our sore feet. The barren canyonscape below, with striated layers of limestone and other rock, resembled a vast topographical map spread out before us.

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Fri Oct 13 04:48:43 2006

America's Iran-watchers flock to Dubai, on Iran's doorstep

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ A handful of U.S. diplomats here on Iran's doorstep have quietly opened a diplomatic mission to monitor the Islamic republic and reach out to its people despite a three-decade-old freeze in formal relations.

The Iran Regional Presence Office in the U.S. consulate in Dubai is cultivating low-key ties with expatriate Iranians at a time when Tehran's disputed nuclear program has pushed the two nations' relationship to its lowest depth in years.

With Iran just 100 miles across the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates maintains close ties with both Washington and Tehran, and Iranians and Americans, especially those with business interests, mingle freely in booming Dubai, one of its seven city-states.

The half-dozen U.S. diplomats at the Iran regional office here appear to focus on the softer side of relations, leaving the nuclear confrontation to Washington. Several U.S. officials here declined to be interviewed about the Iran office, saying Washington seeks a low profile.

But one U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he lacked clearance to speak publicly, said the Iran office seeks to arrange scholarly conferences and recruit Iranians to study or teach in the United States.

"We want to separate out issues like support for terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and focus on our relations with the people and the nation and its history and culture," the U.S. diplomat said.

The American official declined to comment on U.S. intelligence activities in Dubai. But the CIA has long been believed to monitor Iran from the Emirates. And Dubai is widely described as a key focus of Iranian intelligence, which keeps a close eye on _ and may even take part in _ Iranian business.

A wealthy community of as many as 500,000 Iranians has taken root in the United Arab Emirates, mainly Dubai, and Iranians have invested billions of dollars here, much of that in businesses with close ties with Tehran.

Abbas Bolurfrushan, president of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai, said he has met with members of the new U.S. Iran team, including director Jillian Burns, a career diplomat and State Department expert on Iran.

"Since they don't have an office in Iran, it's valuable for them to have an office here to gather information on Iran," Bolurfrushan said.

U.S. diplomats don't openly attend Iranian Business Council meetings, but the Iranian business group has friendly relations with the American Business Council in Dubai, Bolurfrushan said.

"We don't intend to reopen our embassy anytime soon," said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, describing plans for the Iran office in March. "But we do plan to put more people, better trained, on the job of watching Iran."

The Iran Regional Presence Office is the first U.S. diplomatic mission aimed at Iran since 1979, when revolutionaries seized control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days.

It was created as part of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's push to boost scrutiny of Iran inside the State Department, which includes rebuilding the once-shuttered Iran desk and training more staff in Farsi.

Congress recently approved an $85 million Iran initiative, which mostly increases the duration of State Department broadcasts into Iran by Radio Farda and Voice of America. Burns said $5 million would also be earmarked for Iranians to study at U.S. universities.

U.S. officials have tried to use the Emirates' relationship with both nations in more aggressive ways, too.

The U.S. recently handed the Emirates' government a list of Iranian firms it branded as government "front companies" allegedly bent on acquiring weapons and dual-use technology blocked by the U.S. trade embargo.

"We hope that our friends here in the U.A.E. or elsewhere are watching those (firms) very closely," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt said in a September interview in Abu Dhabi.

"Iranians will go to great lengths to disguise the nature of the transactions involved," he said.

The Emirates maintains strong commercial ties to Iran alongside close military and intelligence relations with the United States _ including hosting U.S. Air Force spy planes and air refuelers.

The Iranian government has expressed some unhappiness with Dubai's role, Bolurfrushan said _ although most of that concerns economic issues.

Tehran officials have, for example, called for new policies aimed at halting the exodus of skilled Iranian professionals to Dubai.

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Sat Oct 7 22:40:04 2006

Taliban revived after 5 years with Iraq-style violence in Afghanistan

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) _ A sweating man wanders into a crowd and blows himself up, leaving a dozen bodies lifeless on the street. A few blocks away, a car bomb pulverizes an armored Humvee, killing two U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians.

The kind of anonymous insurgent violence that is convulsing Iraq has migrated 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) east to plague Afghanistan five years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime.

The prospect of a second downward spiral _ though so far Afghanistan isn't nearly as violent as Iraq _ has experts worried that Western militaries don't have an effective strategy for these irregular wars.

"One Iraq is bad enough," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. "Given that our two main theaters of operations aren't going well, one has to question how well the U.S. understands counterinsurgency."

The reborn Taliban acknowledges that it has adopted the suicide bombings, beheadings and remote-controlled bombs of the Iraqi insurgent movement. Nearly 200 civilians have been killed in suicide attacks this year that look all too much like the wave of bombings sweeping Iraq.

"We're getting stronger in every province and in every district and every village," said Qari Mohammed Yusuf Ahmadi, who calls himself the Taliban's spokesman for southern Afghanistan. "We don't have helicopters and jet fighters. But we're giving America and its allies a tough time with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and ambushes. Our Muslim brothers in Iraq are using the same tactics."

Resemblances to Iraq don't stop there. Taliban public relations teams videotape attacks and post them online, an uncharacteristic venture into modern technology for a Muslim fundamentalist group that once banned cameras and computers.

The West's military strategy in Afghanistan also resembles that in Iraq.

Just as critics say Washington did not send enough troops to Iraq before the insurgency took root, analysts fault the U.S. for failing to press its advantage in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 when the Taliban were all but vanquished.

Meanwhile, Afghan observers say the same harsh U.S. tactics, decried in Iraq for causing civilian casualties, have helped the Taliban recruit new fighters.

But unlike Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban has ready sanctuary and support just outside their battle zone, in the border areas of Pakistan.

"There will be no end to this insurgency until its sanctuaries and external support are addressed," said Christopher Alexander, the deputy head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military estimates about 6,000 Taliban and other insurgent fighters operate in Afghanistan, many from bases in Pakistan. Yusuf Ahmadi _ who spoke by satellite phone from an undisclosed location and whose exact ties to the militia's leadership are unclear _ put the figure in the tens of thousands.

The Taliban comeback, while focused on the volatile south and east, has begun to hit Kabul. The mountain capital's tree-lined boulevards are now scarred, like the streets of Baghdad, by garlands of razor wire, towering blast walls and impromptu police checkpoints.

There's little indication that Iraqi insurgents are joining the fight in Afghanistan or giving the Taliban direct aid, although a few Arab and Chechen fighters mingle in Taliban ranks.

But even without much personal contact, the Taliban has learned from Iraq's insurgency. Web sites explain the insurgent's art: everything from concealed rocket launchers to roadside bomb-making.

"We're not saying they're getting direct support from Iraq," a U.S. military official in Afghanistan said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity the information. "They've evolved by adapting their tactics. They've seen the value of the suicide bomber in Iraq. For them, it's a very cheap and effective weapons system."

The U.S. and NATO military response in Afghanistan also has nuanced differences from Iraq. U.S. warplanes drop 10 times more bombs in Afghanistan than they do in Iraq, and a few U.S. and NATO troops live off base in village houses, a strategy rarely attempted in Iraq.

But most of the allied war efforts looks similar. In both places, troops cordon off villages and search homes. They employ billions of dollars in technology _ things like signal jammers and mine-clearing vehicles _ to find and disarm roadside bombs. They operate from bases nearly identical in appearance, with troops living in tin trailers barricaded by dirt-filled metal baskets.

The Afghan war is still far smaller, occupying just 40,000 allied troops _ a quarter of those in Iraq _ and suffering a fraction of the casualties. But for individual soldiers serving in mountainous Taliban lands like Zabul province, the dangers feel the same.

"I know Iraq grabs a lot of headlines. But there's still a war going on over here," said Lt. Col. Steve Jarrard, 46, of Johnson City, Tenn., based in the hard-bitten southern town of Qalat. "I really hope we're doing the right thing over here."

Right now, it's too early to tell the result of major U.S. and NATO offensives aimed at crushing the Taliban.

"In three to six months you'll see a noticeable effect," said NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig. "But you're talking two to five years before seeing a defeat of the insurgency" in southern Afghanistan.

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Mon Oct 2 15:56:23 2006

Iranian beachgoers defy conservatives on party island

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

KISH, Iran (AP) _ This coral-rimmed vacation island is a place where the sexes mix and the music pulses, where women let slip their head scarves and frolic with their husbands on the gleaming sands.

Although island authorities draw the line at booze and bikinis, Kish remains a haven of freedom in an Islamic republic under the deepening conservatism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Lately, however, Kish has lost a few freedoms. It used to boast of beaches for foreign tourists where women could bathe in bikinis alongside men. Those beaches proved too racy and were shut down.

"There are new restrictions here now," says Nasim Sehat, a vacationing 20-year-old Tehran woman bowling with her family. "My sister and I couldn't get permission yesterday to go diving, because we are ladies."

But Ahmadinejad, caught up in a furor over nuclear development and his calls for Israel's destruction, "has better things to do for now" than mess with Kish, said Shahab Rezania, 34, a physical therapist from the mainland city of Shiraz.

Here in the Persian Gulf, 10 miles off Iran's mainland and 600 miles south of Tehran, a woman can ride a bike with her arms bared, hair uncovered and jeans rolled up to the calves. Women go bowling with men, they snorkel and race around on speedy personal watercraft and cheer dolphin acrobatics at a Sea World-style amusement park.

And, although it's not really permitted, men and women frolic together on the beach.

"There's no one here to check on you. I haven't seen any police," said Sanam Attaran, 30, a medical technician from Shiraz dining in a packed supper club. "Women here can take their scarves off completely. But it's a little scary to do that."

Even Ramadan, the holy Islamic month of dawn-to-dusk fasting now under way, doesn't slow things down very much.

Attaran, holidaying here before Ramadan began, was dressed like a hippie in an embroidered tunic and sandals. She let her head scarf slide to her shoulders and left it there, defiantly. Gazing at her husband, she said: "When there's nobody around we can swim together."

In mainland Iran, religious laws prohibit women from baring legs, arms or hair. Some activities are segregated, though far less so than in Saudi Arabia, across the Gulf.

Kish governor Madjid Shayesteh, appointed by Ahmadinejad himself, heads the Kish Free Zone, the government agency that runs the 35-square-mile island as a center for free trade and tourism. He's determined to keep it that way.

"I'll continue what was going on the island, unless people tell me that some of those freedoms aren't in line with the laws," Shayesteh said in an interview. "We're eager to keep a happy environment."

And do business. Tehran wants to use Kish's liberal social and economic climate to stanch the hemorrhage of Iranian capital and lure back citizens who have moved across the Gulf to the freewheeling United Arab Emirates, especially booming Dubai, to escape Iran's conservatism.

Iranian parliamentarian Hadi Haqshenas recently complained that Iran's overweening economic rules had triggered the exodus.

"The booming economy in the U.A.E. is a direct consequence of Iran's failed policies" in economics and trade, Haqshenas told the English-language paper Iran News. "Since these wrongheaded policies won't be reversed any time soon, we can expect the U.A.E. to attract many of our specialists, medical doctors, engineers and other experts."

The island is crammed with duty-free malls and luxury hotels, with new ones springing up by the dozen. Work has begun on a $2.2 billion golf resort.

"Kish is improving and developing. They're putting in a lot of effort to make it nice," Sehat remarked amid the clatter of strikes and splits at the Maryam Bowling Alley.

"But there isn't enough freedom here," she said. "I still prefer Dubai."

Kish was developed in the 1970s under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He used Iran's oil wealth to build a casino and hotel on a scrub-covered coral island whose main feature was a primitive fishing village. His airport was built to handle Concordes that were said to fly in from Paris loaded with prostitutes and dinner from Maxim's restaurant.

Kish sat idle for years after the 1979 Islamic revolution ousted the shah, but was declared a free zone in 1989 and development resumed.

Since then, it has wielded a big influence over the rest of Iran. When the country undertook reforms in the 1990s, social freedoms were tested in Kish and, if they proved harmless, moved to Tehran and elsewhere.

Nightclub singing appeared in Kish while it was still banned on the mainland. Women were first allowed to bicycle in public in Kish, a privilege now enjoyed across Iran. Paintball games were introduced here first and have since shown up in Tehran.

Live music is perhaps Kish's most striking attraction.

On a recent September night, Javed, the grizzled crooner at the Shandiz nightclub, sang a Shah-era song whose female singer, Marzieh, is banned from performing in Iran. Waiters served beer mugs of doogh, a yogurt drink, and charred lamb on skewers. Women let their scarves slip and sang along, wiggling to the music in their seats or smoking hookahs.

At the giant Dariush Grand hotel, whose motifs celebrate Iran's pre-Islamic glories, spokeswoman Marzieh Sanai explained: "The idea is to show foreigners, especially westerners, that Iran isn't what you've been seeing on the news for the past 30 years. Iran has a strong culture and long history and we are proud of it."

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Mon Oct 2 12:39:35 2006

U.S. Senate majority leader calls for efforts to bring Taliban into Afghan government

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

QALAT, Afghanistan (AP) _ U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be successful."

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question" but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.

"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.

In violence on Monday, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a NATO convoy in the capital Kabul, wounding three soldiers and three civilians, while a roadside bomb in the eastern Paktia province killed three Afghan soldiers and wounded three others, officials said.

Afghanistan is being rocked by the worst outbreak of violence since the ouster of the Taliban regime in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Militants have increasingly resorted to suicide attacks and roadside bombs.

Frist, who said he would announce whether he would run for the U.S. presidency in about a month, said he had hoped that the United States would be able to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan soon. But the 20,000 U.S. troops are still needed to help the 37-country coalition deal with an intensifying Taliban insurgency.

"We're going to need to stay here a long time," Frist said.

The senator said he had been warned to expect attacks in Afghanistan to increase. There appears to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners, he said, "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban."

He said the only way to win in places like Qalat is to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."

"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."

Frist and Martinez flew to this dust-blown mountain city 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of Kabul during a one-day stop in Afghanistan on a regional tour that includes stops in Pakistan and Iraq.

The pair had intended to visit a new US$6.5 million (euro5.1 million) hospital in Qalat built by the United Arab Emirates, but a group of wounded Taliban fighters were recuperating there, including a midlevel commander, and U.S. commander Lt. Col. Kevin McGlaughlin canceled the visit because of security concerns.

The senators saw firsthand the legendary hostility to outsiders of tribal southern Afghanistan. As Frist's helicopter landed, children just outside the base threw stones. And the senator's first act on Forward Operating Base Lagman was to pin a purple heart on the base's medic, Capt. Jacqueline King of Tinton Falls, New Jersey, who had been badly burned in a June suicide bombing.

"It's rough," King, 42, told reporters and members of Frist's staff. "They're not exactly thrilled to see us here."

Soldiers based in Qalat have been hit by more than 100 roadside bombs since arriving in April, said Air Force Capt. Kevin Tuttle.

The troops here monitor the headquarters for a provincial reconstruction team that has been repairing roads, mentoring doctors at the new hospital and operating a trade school that teaches nursing, welding, auto repair and plumbing.

Frist also chatted with fellow Tennessee surgeon Lt. Col. Steve Jarrard, 46, of Johnson City, in the base hospital.

"I really hope we're doing the right thing over here," Jarrard said, the late afternoon sun burnishing the neighboring mountain peaks. "It's too expensive. I've seen too many guys on the operating table. I try to bring them through and I'm not always successful."

Three NATO-led troops received minor injuries in the suicide bombing in Kabul. Maj. Luke Knittig, a military spokesman, said he could not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers. The attack came two days after another suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded more than 40 outside Afghanistan's Interior Ministry.

In the southern province of Helmand, clashes on Sunday left 10 people dead, including five civilians, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the governor's spokesman.

The civilians were killed when their vehicle hit a freshly planted mine on a road usually used by NATO and Afghan security forces in Helmand's Musa Qala district, Muhiddin said.

Suspected Taliban on a motorbike, meanwhile, killed two policemen in Gereshk district, he said. Separately, NATO-led troops killed three militants in Nawzad district.

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Sat Sep 30 13:44:19 2006

Afghan government considers herbicide to combat runaway opium yield

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) _ With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.

But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops _ even with airborne crop-dusters _ if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.

"This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008 season, we will consider it," said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's poppy belt.

This year Nangahar was a success. Poppy cultivation stayed low amid a boom that saw Afghanistan produce 82 percent of the world's opium, providing for 90 percent of its heroin, according to U.S. and United Nations figures.

Opium eradication is one of the great failures of the five-year period since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In 2000, under the Islamist Taliban government, Afghanistan produced virtually no opium.

Planting has skyrocketed since then, jumping 59 percent this year, enough to produce 6,700 tons of opium that fetched around $750 million for Afghan farmers and eventually sold for $50 billion on the street, mainly in Europe, according to a U.N. report.

Opium poppies have become Afghanistan's chief crop and economic mainstay even as Washington and Britain have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into eradication schemes and complex efforts to create markets for legal crops.

In the meantime, drug money nourishes the insurgency. In the opium-rich southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, Taliban commanders protect growers in return for a 30 to 40 percent tax, which is spent to recruit fighters, experts in the region say.

Retired U.S. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration drug czar, said crop dusters may be the only way to preserve Washington's project in Afghanistan, before drug profits undermine the country's elected government.

"We know exactly where these fields are. They're absolutely vulnerable to eradication. And it is immeasurably more effective to do it with an airplane," McCaffrey said by telephone from Virginia. "I've been telling the Pentagon, if you don't take on drug production you're going to get run out of Afghanistan."

But in Helmand, home to 42 percent of this year's crop, Daoud said it remains too dangerous to spray. A former mujahedeen commander, Daoud said the Taliban can down low-flying planes.

"They have rockets," the bearded general said, fingering a string of prayer beads. "We can't spray there."

U.S. and U.N. experts here say eradicating the drug from this Texas-sized country will take decades.

Inside Afghanistan, with just 150,000 opium users among its 30 million people, poppy eradication is seen as an outside issue. Two speakers at the counternarcotics conference here said it was more urgent to stop people drinking wine.

"We want all drugs banned. Not only poppy," said provincial council chief Fazal Hadi Muslim Yar.

If Karzai approves herbicide, he risks losing the support of 3 million people involved in poppy growing. But without eradication, he could see his government undermined by drug-funded insurgents.

Karzai has said in the past that herbicides pose too big a risk for families and livestock, contaminating water and killing grapes, melons and vegetables grown alongside poppies. But the president approved Afghan eradication teams that used tractors to eliminate thousands of acres of poppies this year.

"Anywhere we eradicate a field, we must immediately provide the farmer with an alternative livelihood," Karzai spokesman Khaleeq Ahmad said on Saturday.

Aerial spraying is especially feared. Rumors have coursed through farm communities blaming sicknesses on secret poppy spraying, said Mohammed Nabi Hussaini, the head of Afghanistan's Poppy Eradication Program.

"There were diseases in children who ate apricots and parents said they saw helicopters nearby," Hussaini said. "But how long can we wait? The longer you wait the more it will get out of control."

McCaffrey said crop-dusting with common herbicides like Roundup was key in drug eradication programs that found success in Thailand and Peru.

Crop spraying is not the preferred option of the United Nations, but would be considered as part of a broad rural development program, U.N. spokesman Dan Norton said on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Afghan farmers are now making crop decisions, weighing options between poppies and Afghanistan's robust vegetables and melons.

For now, the government counternarcotics campaign is friendly. Afghan government officials held a tent rally at the former winter palace in Jalalabad. With 200 turbaned elders and clerics listening, Daoud urged them to snuff out the illicit trade before it turned Afghanistan into a narco-state.

"Addiction will destroy the young generation that is Afghanistan's future," Daoud told the crowd. "Once you're addicted you're a burden to your family."

Across Afghanistan, tougher action is coming. Counternarcotics officials warned local leaders that they will be fired if cultivation rises.

Finally, Kabul officials drove the message home using the twin pillars of God and honor. Assadullah Sajid, an imam in a starched white tunic and long beard, pointed forcefully at the elders and policemen, invoking the Quran and warning them not to disgrace Nangahar.

"Last year our governor was honored because we didn't cultivate," Sajid said sternly. "Let's keep that honor."

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Wed Sep 27 13:54:41 2006

Saudis plan 560-mile fence across border with Iraq to keep out extremists

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence to block terrorists from crossing its 560-mile border with Iraq _ another sign of growing alarm that Sunni-Shiite strife could spill over and drag Iraq's neighbors into its civil conflict.

The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an independent research institute that advises the Saudi government.

The ambitious project reflects not only concern over terrorism but also growing alarm over the situation in Iraq, where U.S. forces are struggling to prevent sectarian violence from escalating to full-scale civil war between that nation's Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

All of Iraq's neighbors, including the Saudis, fear the violence could spill over the borders and threaten their own security.

Saudi leaders worry about Sunni extremists returning home to wage war on the U.S.-allied monarchy or Shiite militants trying to stir up trouble among the Shiite minority.

The fence would do little to stop the flow of militants into Iraq because most are believed to cross from Syria, Jordan and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials have long complained about Saudi extremists joining insurgent groups in Iraq, but say they mostly go through Syria.

Obaid said the $1.8 billion spent since 2004 on shoring up Saudi border surveillance has sharply reduced the movement of militants heading into Iraq. He said the Saudi government is most concerned now with stopping infiltration into its own territory from Iraq.

"More importantly, the main issue is to seal the border on the Iraqi side since there has been almost no (Iraqi security) presence since the U.S. invasion," Obaid said.

In addition to political extremists, the Saudis want to prevent drug smugglers, weapons dealers and illegal migrants from using Iraq as an avenue into Saudi Arabia, he said.

At the southeastern corner of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates is building a barrier along its border with Oman _ mainly to keep out illegal migrants _ just as the U.S. Congress is considering a fence for parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. And Israel is trying to protect itself from suicide bombers by building barriers along its borders with Palestinian areas.

U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to comment on the Saudi plan, saying it was a matter between the two governments.

The spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Iraqi officials had heard of the Saudi plans to improve border security "and we thank them for it."

"If the Saudis want to build border defenses to stop the infiltration of terrorists, they can do that to protect their borders," he said.

Saudi officials, who rarely comment on security matters, declined to discuss the project.

Obaid said contracts for building the fence, expected to cost about $500 million and take five to six years to finish, have not been awarded and work is not expected to begin before next year.

It is unclear whether the Saudis will actually in the end build a fence along the entire Iraqi border _ virtually all barren desert _ or simply at key crossing points.

Although the government in Riyadh has not released complete details of its plans, security experts familiar with the project said it would include electronic sensors and ultraviolet cameras capable of detecting any attempt to breach the fence.

The fence will not be electrified, but it will have sensors to alert security forces if anyone tries to cut through, said the experts, who agreed to discuss details only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project to media.

The Middle East Economic Digest, a regional news magazine, reported this month that the barrier would have a double fence with 135 electronically controlled gates, fence-mounted movement detection sensors, buried radio detection sensors, and concertina razor wire. The magazine said the Saudi government planned to name an international firm to oversee the project.

U.S. officials said in April that Saudis were among the top five nationalities among foreign fighters captured by coalition forces in Iraq. Twenty-three Saudis were arrested in Iraq between September 2005 and April, compared with 51 Syrians and 38 Egyptians, the officials said.

The Saudis are especially sensitive to the possibility of unrest among the country's Shiite minority because it is centered in the oil-producing east of the country.

In another sign of Saudi concern over sectarian tensions, the kingdom plans to host a meeting next month of top Iraqi Sunni and Shiite clerics in the holy city of Mecca in hopes of bridging differences between the sects.

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Tue Sep 19 14:31:18 2006

Golf makes a comeback in Iran after decades-long hiatus

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

KISH, Iran (AP) _ Golf never has been very popular in Iran. Even during the days of the shah, there was a single 18-hole course in Tehran: The Imperial Country Club.

And after the 1979 Islamic revolution, golf was derided as a peculiar western waste of time. The embattled Iranian duffer's options dwindled as the Tehran course sprouted weeds and had five holes expropriated by the Revolutionary Guards.

But now golf is making inroads in the Islamic Republic. Two new courses are under development on this coral island just off Iran's Persian Gulf coast, the first in more than 30 years.

A $2.2 billion golf resort, dubbed The Flower of The East, is under development by an Iranian businessman based in Germany, backed by German and Swiss investors.

The investors believe they'll have little trouble attracting players _ and buyers of luxury homes _ among the 1.1 million tourists who visit Kish each year. They say the rigors of operating in Iran's isolation are outweighed by Kish's attractions: fine white beaches, and no taxes or restrictions on sending home profits.

But construction has been slowed by the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West. If the United Nations imposes sanctions, developers fear the course and surrounding resort could be delayed _ or scuttled.

Ingolf Burstedde, the German engineer overseeing the development, says the German government appears to be withholding normal insurance guarantees to German contractors and architects waiting to build the resort.

"Yes, we're afraid," Burstedde said in his Kish office. "Sanctions would cause a delay, at least. Maybe we'd stop work for a while."

Construction was going ahead last week, with Iranian contractors sculpting a huge patch of land under direction of a Dubai-based golf course designer. Furthest along is a nine-hole course and driving range aimed at first-time golfers.

A tour of the course-to-be last week found backhoes scraping artificial lakes and piling excavated limestone into future bunkers and fairways. The result was a lunar landscape of bleached white hills and dales.

"This is the end of Fairway 4," said project manager Mahmoud Reza Abbasi, giving a tour in his four-wheel drive vehicle. "This is Island B. This is the start of Lake 12."

A French firm will handle the final details, since Iranians have no experience designing golf courses, Abbasi said.

A full 18-hole course planned for a neighboring site is aimed at foreign tourists and homebuyers, mainly wealthy Iranian expatriates who live in Los Angeles, Germany and across the Gulf in Dubai, Burstedde said.

By 2009, Burstedde said two finished courses will be surrounded by luxury villas and townhouses marketed, in some cases, for millions of dollars each.

A second phase, which developers hope to finish by 2012, would contain a luxury hotel, yachting marina and apartments on a manmade peninsula jutting into the harbor.

Burstedde said Iran's laws mean the resort will lack for two things: integrated bathing and liquor. The Islamic Republic still segregates men and women in the island's swimming pools and beaches. And alcohol is banned in Iran.

"Can you imagine going to the bar and you can't get a whiskey?" Burstedde lamented.

In reality, though, men and women do swim together and any taxi driver on the island can find smuggled alcohol. And Burstedde said his resort is preparing for the day those laws are overturned. Spa and swimming pools are designed with easily removable barriers between men's and women's sides.

"When the laws change we simply remove the walls and men and women can mingle," he said.

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Tue Sep 12 12:56:10 2006

Gulf countries beef up counter-terror defenses

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ America's allies in the Persian Gulf are at least as worried about terrorism as the United States, spending billions of dollars on security fences in the desert, eye scanning machines at airports and other measures to keep out militants.

Al-Qaida's warning that the Gulf is among its next targets fuels fear that these affluent Arab countries _ largely spared major violence so far _ could soon be hit.

They have a lot to lose. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates are enjoying tremendous economic growth, boosted by oil money but also because they are seen by investors as islands of stability in a volatile region.

To protect that image, Gulf governments have supplemented their anti-terror defenses by edging closer to Washington. They have allowed the basing of U.S. or British forces, to get under the protection of the U.S. umbrella and benefit from American expertise.

But such ties also make them a target of militants. Saudi Arabia asked American forces to leave in 2003, ending a presence that fueled militant anger against the kingdom and sparked terrorist attacks, including the truck bomb that killed 19 U.S. servicemembers and a Saudi citizen in 1996.

In a video posted on the Internet on Monday, al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, said al-Qaida would soon turn to the other Gulf states.

He addressed Americans, saying "you will be thrown out (of the Gulf) after you are defeated in Iraq, at which point your economic ruin will be achieved." He also threatened Israel.

So far, al-Qaida's main effort in the Gulf has been in Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden's homeland, where the terror group's branch has killed dozens over the past few years.

The kingdom responded with a vigorous anti-terrorism campaign and says it has killed or capturing most of al-Qaida's local leadership. Militants have not carried out a major attack in Saudi Arabia since February, when al-Qaida guerrillas tried to bomb an oil refinery.

The attack killed two guards but the facility was undamaged. Afterward, the kingdom earmarked $2 billion for additional protection at its oil infrastructure, said Nawaf Obaid, a security adviser to the government.

Saudi Arabia has also announced it will spend $12 billion on a complex border defense system of electronic sensors, bases, and physical barriers _ to be built first along its long frontier with Iraq. It is also considering a special oil-sector security force and an intelligence agency focusing on threats to the energy industry, Obaid said.

Saudi Arabia's success might not translate into security for its neighbors, however.

"It's gotten harder and harder for al-Qaida to strike inside Saudi Arabia, so we may see them move into one of the other Gulf countries," Obaid said.

Mustafa Alani, director of the Dubai-based National Security and Terrorism Studies, said al-Qaida has not been able to build a strong presence in the area.

"I don't think that they have a large capacity in the Gulf," Alani said. "I don't think that the organization can do a major operation for several reasons" _ mainly because it is tied down in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Gulf nations are clearly worried.

Kuwait, the main U.S. military staging area for the war in Iraq, saw heavy battles with anti-American militants in 2005. Government forces learned the men planned to attack U.S. military targets and launched raids that killed nine militants and captured dozens. Four policemen were killed.

In Qatar, militants used a car bomb to attack a theater in March 2005, killing a Briton and wounding 12 people.

The United Arab Emirates has not seen any attacks, but there are many factors that could make it a prime target.

The country is home to a U.S. air base, and a government official said a team of U.S. and Emirati agents monitors bank transactions and foreign remittances for signs of terrorist fingerprints.

The freewheeling and cosmopolitan Emirates also welcomes Westerners for beach vacations that can involve boozing and prostitution.

And it has the Mideast's busiest airport in Dubai, accepts more U.S. Navy port visits than any other country in the world, and contributes a special forces team to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.

That hasn't escaped notice by militants. A government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said several plots had been broken up and would-be terrorists arrested _ some of whom were handed over to American authorities.

The official attributed to success to "a little bit of luck" and vigilance. For the airport, the country has installed a system to "triple-cross-check" entries "so certain guys don't get the chance to mobilize," he said, refusing to elaborate.

The UAE also maintains what is believed to be the world's largest identity database of iris scans, which allows ironclad identity checks aimed at preventing those deported from the country from re-entering with false documents.

At the same time, it is building a wall along its border with Oman _ mainly to keep out illegal workers, though militants could try to exploit the porous frontier.

Authorities here commonly mention one anti-terror case that didn't go well.

In early 2001, the Emirates informed U.S. intelligence that it had detained Lebanon's Ziad Jarrah in Dubai, nine months before he took the controls of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Officials say they released Jarrah after the CIA said it had no interest in his continued detention. The CIA has disputed the Emirates' version of events.

Officials here say the economic boom depends on maintaining the image of calm. A catastrophic terrorist attack could change that perception, chasing away those flocking here to buy luxury homes, set up regional headquarters or, soon, attend the Dubai campus of Harvard Medical School.

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Thu Jul 20 10:17:56 2006

Military analysts question Israeli bombing of civilian targets

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Thousands of Israeli bombs have fallen on Lebanese homes, roads, bridges, ports, broadcasting towers and even a lighthouse.

Nearly 300 people, mainly civilians, have been killed, Lebanon's prime minister said.

Analysts say Israel's targeting of civilian and government infrastructure overshadows its strikes on the offices and rocket launchers of Hezbollah guerrillas, whose capture of two Israeli soldiers triggered the attacks.

"This is a classic strategic bombing campaign," said Stephen Biddle, a former head of military studies at the U.S. Army War College now at the Council on Foreign Relations. "What the Israelis are trying to do is pressure others into solving their problem for them, hence the targeting of civilian infrastructure."

But the growing list of civilian casualties _ despite Israel's use of U.S.-designed precision-guided bombs _ could turn Arabs and others against the Jewish state and its key ally, the U.S., and still not fatally wound Hezbollah, said military analysts.

Israeli Cabinet ministers have said the bombing aims to punish Lebanon and make the government understand the entire country will suffer if Hezbollah _ which operates freely in the south _ isn't reined in.

But Israeli military spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal said Wednesday that Israel's bombing targets have direct military significance, since Hezbollah uses roads to transport its rockets and stores them in houses.

"A lot of the rockets are stored in people's homes in urban areas, fired from within villages and brought in from the Damascus-Beirut highway," Dallal said. "We are in day eight and the present condition of Hezbollah is unlike it was on day one. There's no comparison, their infrastructure, their weaponry have all been degraded considerably."

Classic strategic bombardment campaigns aim to flatten key economic resources and are usually designed to bend the targeted government to the will of its attacker or turn the populace against the government.

The United States has been one of the chief proponents of strategic bombardment, launching campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and Serbia. In World War II it targeted factories, railroads, bridges, ports and, in some cases, residential neighborhoods.

James Dobbins, a former Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan who now heads military analysis for the Rand Corp., said choice of targets by Israel was the key and may be misdirected.

"The military rationale seems rather thin, since many of the targets have no conceivable relationship to Hezbollah," he said.

Hezbollah has little visible presence and few links to Lebanon's military. It is skilled at cloaking its actions from Israeli sensors, while its primitive rockets _ which have also killed innocents _ are fired from easy-to-hide mobile launchers. Their lack of a guidance system leaves them without a traceable electronic signature, said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

"The Israelis face their classic problem: They cannot punish Hezbollah, which has no physical structure to destroy," Alani said.

Instead, Israel is bombing Hezbollah's Shiite Muslim power base, leveling villages and office and apartment blocks in Shiite neighborhoods in the eastern Bekaa Valley, southern Lebanon and south Beirut.

Dallal said the Israeli military bombs civilian buildings or homes if intelligence points to a Hezbollah office or munitions on the site.

"If there is a rocket stored in an apartment building and we attack the apartment in the building in which it is stored," he said. "We have the right to attack because of the missile."

The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon said the Israeli campaign most closely resembles the U.S.-led NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999, in which a victory was achieved without a land invasion.

But the 78-day NATO bombardment of Serbia had clear international legitimacy and was more gradual. Air crews targeted Serbian military and communications sites first, and when that didn't persuade the Serb military to pull out of Kosovo, planes hit civilian and government targets.

Targeting was far more discriminatory. Despite tens of thousands of sorties, NATO is thought to have killed 500 civilians in the 2- 1/2 month campaign. By contrast, Israel has killed more than 250 Lebanese in eight days.

And the Serbian actions that triggered NATO's airstrikes were far larger than anything launched from Lebanon, Dobbins said.

"The Serbian government was responsible for the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that drove a million people from their homes," Dobbins said, "while the Lebanese government is not responsible for the rocket attacks upon Israel."

The government, however, has been unable to fulfill a U.N. directive that Hezbollah be disarmed and that government forces take control of southern Lebanon.

Israel has also chosen to hit targets that the United States would probably reject, because of the danger of killing civilians, said Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon strategist now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. war planners realize their campaigns lose international and domestic support when innocents are killed, Flournoy said.

"Our own population is very discriminating in the use of force. People here have bought into the idea of proportionality and the just war," Flournoy said.

For Israel, "it's a balancing act," Flournoy said. "They want to use enough force to get through to the terrorists, while at the same time staying within international norms, so as not to become a pariah."

Israel's history, however, has produced a defense posture that views its enemies as fundamental and existential threats to the country's very survival.

"The airports and bridges don't belong to Hezbollah," Alani said. "People may understand their (Israeli) reactions for the first few days. But world leaders will soon say 'we don't see any links between your attacks and the threat you face.'"

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Sat Jul 8 16:00:56 2006

Guggenheim Foundation to build its largest museum in booming Abu Dhabi

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The Guggenheim announced plans Saturday for a Frank Gehry-designed art museum in Abu Dhabi, a coup for the small Persian Gulf nation and the latest international franchise for the ambitious foundation.

With its flagship museum in New York and branches in Las Vegas; Berlin; Venice, Italy; and Bilbao, Spain, the Guggenheim said its new outpost in Abu Dhabi would be its biggest venture yet.

"This is hugely ambitious, the scale of it is amazing, and they have the resources to do it," foundation director Thomas Krens said after signing the deal with the government and royal family of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven city states of the United Arab Emirates.

"It will have an enormously beneficial impact on how creativity is viewed in this part of the world," Krens said.

The museum would sit on a manmade spit jutting into the Gulf from the currently uninhabited Saadiyat Island, which lies adjacent to Abu Dhabi. With a price tag of just over $200 million, the building would be completed in about five years.

The renowned Gehry designed Guggenheim Bilbao _ with its distinctive titanium-sheathed curves _ considered by many to be his masterwork and one of the world's great modern buildings. His other projects include a Seattle museum dedicated to rock icon Jimi Hendrix and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Speaking to The Associated Press, the Canadian-born architect said the Arabian desert has a "much different feel" than the desert near his California home and would require him to "invent a different kind of architecture that belongs here.

"I want to play off the blue water and the color of the sand and sky and sun," Gehry said Saturday. "It's got to be something that will make sense here. If you import something and plop it down, it's not going to work."

He said his design would be unveiled in November, when the Guggenheim Foundation plans to bring a collection of Russian modernist paintings to a temporary exhibition space in Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace hotel.

Announcing the new museum, Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the nation plans to acquire a prestige collection for the museum by the time it opens in 2012.

The project poses some striking cultural juxtapositions, bringing a museum named for a powerful Jewish-American family and designed by a Jewish architect to the capital of an Arab country that refuses diplomatic ties with Israel. The foundation _ established by millionaire philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1937 _ is a pillar of U.S.-European culture yet will have its largest presence in a Muslim country with no world-class art museums.

But Abu Dhabi, like its flashier neighboring emirate, Dubai, is a liberal, freewheeling city in throes of an energy-fueled economic boom. It is quickly filling with luxury housing, office towers and resorts, and Israelis and Jewish foreigners have business ties and homes here.

Still, one of the first dilemmas facing Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, dubbed GAD, is whether to exhibit nude works that might offend conservative Muslims. Krens said the topic had yet to be discussed.

"This is a minor issue," he said. "Our objective is not to be confrontational, but to engage in a dialogue."

The Guggenheim hopes to repeat its success in Bilbao, where Gehry's museum became the centerpiece of a renaissance in the once-decrepit port city and a huge tourist draw, with 80 percent of its visitors coming from outside Spain.

Abu Dhabi, though wealthy, is in a similar position as Bilbao was, with little to recommend it as a cultural destination, Krens said.

Positioned between Europe and Asia, the Emirates is a luxury travel hub and a top draw for second-home buyers from Europe and South Asia, yet most tourists opt for the five-star hotels and beach resorts of Dubai.

"I have faith in Frank," said Krens, a frequent visitor to the Emirates, where he rode in a December motorcycle rally with actors Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons and Dennis Hopper. Hopper, who lives in a Gehry-designed house, also attended Saturday's announcement.

Krens said the foundation set out to establish a museum in the "underserved" Middle East and that 130 cities expressed interest. Yet others were discouraged by the estimated $400 million cost of building a museum and collection or, like Dubai, couldn't match the scope or sophistication of Abu Dhabi's cultural development plans.

The crown prince envisions the Guggenheim as one of the anchors of a $27 billion "upscale cultural district" on Saadiyat Island that would seek to draw 3 million tourists by 2015.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi would cover 322,920 square feet, making it a fourth larger than Bilbao, currently the foundation's biggest branch. But while the design is up in the air, one thing is certain: Abu Dhabi has plenty of cash to pull it off. It harbors 9 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and 4 percent of its gas reserves.

"We don't see financial investment as a major obstacle," Sheik Mohammed said.

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Sat Jul 8 14:58:17 2006

American architect Frank Gehry wonders whether he can top Bilbao Guggenheim

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ For American architect Frank Gehry, the chance to replicate the wild success of his curvaceous, titanium-roofed Guggenheim Bilbao isn't a calming thought.

"It's scary to start a new project, especially because the first one was so bloody successful," Gehry told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday. "Can you do that again?"

Gehry, one of the globe's most celebrated architects, spoke after the Guggenheim Foundation announced Saturday that this somewhat bland Persian Gulf city would become home to the next Guggenheim museum of contemporary art _ and that Gehry would design it.

Gehry, 77, who wore a rumpled tan suit and walked with a cane, said he initially resisted the idea of designing another Guggenheim. He said he couldn't stomach the thought of trying to repeat the success of the museum in northern Spain at his age, especially in a place as far-flung as Abu Dhabi, a city about which he admitted knowing little.

"It's a new culture to get into, which makes me nervous. My tendency was to not open that door at this time in my life," Gehry said, chatting affably in the gold leafed salon of the opulent Emirates Palace hotel here.

But three hours of "quality time" with Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, who heads the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, was enough to change his mind.

"He came to visit me in California. I told him about what's important to me in making a building," Gehry said. "There was a tremendous rapport."

Other draws of the project were the "magic" of the Arabian desert _ with its undulating peach-colored dunes and the turquoise Persian Gulf _ and the prospect of teaming up again with the Guggenheim Foundation's can-do director Thomas Krens, who oversaw Gehry's Bilbao effort.

"We've had a couple of pretty good hits," Gehry said with a chuckle. "I've got a pretty good track record."

Gehry said he agreed to the project just days ago and had yet to get started, but he said he planned to incorporate shade and other aspects of natural cooling into his next Guggenheim museum.

Abu Dhabi's summer is one of the world's most hostile. Saturday's high temperature reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius), with a brutal 65 percent humidity.

"We'll take that into account," he said. "It's got to be something that will make sense here. If you import something and plop it down, it's not going to work."

Gehry didn't say whether he would incorporate Arab architectural motifs, but agreed that the building must suit its location: a manmade spit of land on a desert island in the Persian Gulf.

"It's important for a building to be a good neighbor when it's built, and not like some foreign object from outer space," he said in a question-and-answer session with reporters, many of them Arabs. "It behooves us to try to understand your culture, your ways of building."

Gehry said the bright titanium that is the signature material in his Bilbao museum would probably be dropped because of the relentless sun of Abu Dhabi.

"Titanium is a material that worked very well with that light. All the other materials went dead in the gray sky," he said. "Here, where the sun is so bright, I would guess titanium wouldn't be appropriate."

But Gehry gave no hint of what materials he might use instead. "There is a palette of enough materials in the world," he said.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi would likely look far different from anything yet seen in the United Arab Emirates. Gehry said he was unimpressed by the concrete and glass skyscrapers sprouting in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as the buildings in the West which inspired them. He singled out Las Vegas for its tacky structures, but said the gambling capital was now "struggling to change its stripes."

"Unfortunately contemporary stuff _ not only here but everywhere _ has been so damned banal," he said with a dismissive wave. "In the U.S. and in the U.K., you have to drive far and long to find anything you'd call architecture."

Gehry said the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, or GAD, would be the most expensive yet, if only because the price of construction has gone beyond the $300 per square foot it cost to build the Bilbao museum.

"It's not going to be cheaper than that," he said. Krens put construction costs at around $600 to $700 per square foot _ which would mean a total cost of near US$200 million (euro 160 million).

The museum's building site now sits under water, just off the shore of Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island, which was to undergo a $27 billion makeover to become the Emirates' cultural epicenter. The building site would be landfilled as Gehry works on schematic drawings, which he said he would unveil in four months, in November _ quicker than the usual six months it takes him to come up with a design.

"There's a fast track going on," he said.

The entire design would take four years, one year less than the five-year construction period. Gehry said he had some control over the shape of the landfill as well as an outdoor pavilion planned as a sculpture garden.

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Mon Jul 3 12:13:16 2006

Booming development driving away Persian Gulf's endangered wildlife

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

KHOR KALBA, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ It's one of the world's rarest birds, but there it sat on a mangrove branch, motionless, eyes peeled for a fiddler crab.

The handsome white-collared kingfisher, its iridescent green back flickering in the dappled 110-degree sunshine, suddenly disappeared. A loud splash came from the swampy thicket. A millisecond later, the bird flashed past, on its way to a hideaway to crunch a live crab in its sharp black beak.

Although the kingfisher is a common bird, only a few dozen of its Arabian subspecies, kalbaensis, are thought to remain on the planet, since their nesting places are restricted to the hollows of knotty old mangroves.

Conservationists here worry that relentless real estate encroachment could push the kalbaensis subspecies into extinction.

Already it has only three known nesting grounds: this ancient mangrove swamp 80 miles from Dubai and two smaller ones just across the border in Oman. All three are threatened by Florida-style luxury resorts and housing along hundreds of miles of once pristine Arabian coastline.

The kingfisher is just one of the species threatened by the building boom. In Oman, a luxury hotel was just finished on a stretch of beach used as a nesting site for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle. Other developments have taken habitat from the rare Socotra cormorant and the dugong, or sea cow, a marine mammal akin to the manatee.

Of the Khor Kalba kingfishers, "There's around 40 pairs there and half a dozen in Oman, and that's it _ in the world," said Peter Hellyer of the Emirates Bird Records Committee. "If that population is put under excessive pressure, you could wipe out an entire subspecies."

Unfortunately for the kingfisher, a U.N. plan to protect the mangroves as a biosphere reserve appears to have been scuttled by the emirate of Sharjah, which allowed the dredging of a channel that bisects the wetland and construction of an adjacent concrete walkway. Hellyer and others say the dredging could eventually kill the mangroves by changing currents or blocking the supply of fresh water.

Calls and e-mails seeking an explanation from Sharjah's environment minister, Abdul Aziz al-Medfa, went unanswered.

Visitors to the Khor Kalba mangroves last month found them open to swimmers and groups of men in four-wheel drives who picnicked in the shade listening to loud music.

Environmental watchdogs in Arabia are few. Those that exist acknowledge they stand little chance against developers, many of whom have royal family connections and huge energy profits to invest.

In Dubai, a designated wildlife zone with coral reefs and sea grasses was buried beneath a manmade island. A mangrove and flamingo sanctuary in Dubai has just been rezoned for a luxury development dubbed The Lagoons. And a giant mangrove flat at nearby Umm al-Quwain is being developed as a marina and resort.

"We try to be positive. But sometimes for your own sanity you block out what's going on," said Habiba al-Marashi, chairwoman of the Emirates Environmental Group. "In the end I can only do so much."

In Oman, developers of the Shangri-La Barr al Jissah resort were asked to move the hotel back from the beach so its lighting wouldn't interfere with hawksbill turtle nesting, but that didn't happen, said Earl Possardt, a turtle specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who consulted with Omani environmental authorities.

Now, Possardt says, conservationists are worried about further bulldozing of Oman's beaches, still some of the world's most important nesting grounds for the green and loggerhead turtles.

"Oman is still a beautifully intact country. But they've got humongous plans for development coming up. I'm afraid they're going to be overrun," Possardt said by telephone from his office in Georgia. "What's at stake is losing one of the world's premier loggerhead nesting populations and some of the region's best green turtle populations."

Besides beaches, the Gulf's delicate mangrove wetlands are in demand for luxury housing. Mangroves, which are thought to require tidal flow and a combination of fresh and salt water, are nurseries for crabs, small fish and insects _ and the birds that eat them. Hundreds of thousands of birds stop in Arabian mangroves while migrating between Africa and Asia.

Developers like mangroves because adjacent homes can sit within eyeshot of the wildlife _ or that portion that isn't chased away.

"These are some of the world's great nesting areas. If you start taking their habitat and food resources, it can affect not just individual birds but the entire population," said David Aubrey, chief executive of the Woods Hole Group, a U.S. environmental survey firm working in Saudi Arabia. "It takes a high level of diligence and planning to retain mangroves, and those aren't features you associate with the rapid development along the UAE coast."

In Khor Kalba, schools of tiny fish splash among the mangrove roots where crabs retreat from their burrows at high tide. But the kingfisher's presence seems less assured.

In 1997, when Dubai filmmaker Yusuf Thakur spent five steamy months filming a documentary on the white-collared kingfisher, he counted 14 breeding pairs in the muddy thickets.

Returning in March, he found the wetland sliced in half by construction and only two pairs of kingfishers nesting in mangroves that previously held eight pairs.

The kingfisher's two other mangrove haunts are also slated for development. A nesting ground at Liwa in Oman lies close to construction of a new port at Sohar. Its other home at Shinas is threatened by a planned resort, said Ian Harrison of the Oman Bird Group.

Harrison said the same developments also menace Oman's only populations of booted warblers, a shy and rare bird that also prefers life in the shade of the mangrove.

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Tue Jun 27 12:34:54 2006

Dubai sprouts a forest of building cranes, but still needs more

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ New York has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. Dubai's symbol, for now, is the construction crane.

This Persian Gulf boomtown is more accurately described as an enormous construction site, rather than a finished city.

Cranes cram the skyline and line the highways, marring the view from almost any window. Their latticed booms wheel over hundreds of half-finished skyscrapers, hauling up gray slabs of prefabricated wall, buckets of wet concrete and bundles of steel reinforcing rod that resembles rust-colored spaghetti.

Building analysts say Dubai has emerged as the world's fastest growing city, as well as its largest repository of building cranes.

"Dubai is the biggest market for tower cranes," said Klaus Binder, who heads tower crane production for the German manufacturer Liebherr. "No other city in the world has such a number. Maybe Shanghai did three or five years ago. There are growing markets in Russia, but they not as big as Dubai's."

The frantic growth is the fruit of oil-rich investors plowing record profits into luxury real estate in this liberal and cosmopolitan city. Dubai now groans under some $200 billion in projects that are either under way or slated to begin shortly, said Colin Foreman, a Gulf construction expert with Middle East Economic Digest.

No one here seems to know how many building cranes have been aiding the city's sprawl across miles of sweltering desert dunes. But inevitably, when one of Dubai's newspapers or pundits seeks to describe the scale of the city's building boom, a crane statistic is mentioned.

Earlier this month, Dubai's Gulf News daily claimed the city harbors 24 percent of the world's construction cranes _ or 30,000 of 125,000 cranes worldwide. Less ambitious estimates range from 6 percent to 10 percent.

Binder believes there are between 1,100 and 1,200 tower cranes in the Emirates, mainly in Dubai, which is roughly 5 to 10 percent of the world's active tower cranes _ one of three varieties used in construction. Dubai harbors many thousands more mobile cranes and crawler cranes _ those on wheels or tracks.

Despite the crane-scarred skyline, Dubai needs more _ far more _ to complete its projects. Problem is, manufacturers can't make cranes fast enough and the second-hand market has been largely cleaned out, those in the industry say.

Rental companies here are booked solid. Gallagher International, which rents 53 mobile cranes to developers here, had leased its entire fleet last week.

"You have to say no to your customers. You cannot find cranes anywhere," said Arty Wartanian, Gallagher's general manager. "People are going to China to buy them because sources in Europe have dried up."

A recent article in Construction Week magazine said crane prices have jumped 30 percent this year, while the two major European manufacturers _ Liebherr and Potain _ were so backlogged that Italian and Chinese cranes were taking a growing share of the Gulf market.

A new Liebherr tower crane costs $100,000 to $1.9 million depending on the size.

It's not just cranes in short supply. The simultaneous building booms in the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, and in nearby Qatar and Bahrain have swept the market of bulldozers, excavators, pile drivers and other machinery. Prices of raw materials like concrete, glass, steel and aluminum are soaring, as is demand for laborers and engineers.

All this is driving up building prices. "It's a classic supply and demand problem," Foreman said.

The 2006 Gulf Construction Yearbook estimates that US$4 billion (euro3.2 billion) is spent each week on projects in the six Gulf Arab countries.

"I guess it's going to be like this for the next five years," Wartanian said.

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Mon Jun 26 03:40:24 2006

Arab countries take major role in humanitarian aid _ and U.N. notices

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ With so much easy money coming in these days, oil-rich Arab countries are trying to prove they are just as good at giving it away.

U.N. officials confirm what Arab spokesmen say _ that they are now among the world's most generous, bankrolling relief efforts for Asian earthquakes, African famines _ even American hurricanes.

As one example, about 60 percent of the relief for the Oct. 8 Pakistan earthquake came from the Muslim world, much of it from the Persian Gulf, said Omar Shehadeh, Dubai-based fundraising chief of UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund.

Saudi Arabia's annual emergency and development aid has ranged from $750 million to $1.1 billion annually over the past few years, said Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi government adviser. The kingdom also gives around $1.5 billion a year in the form of cheap or free oil to poor countries, Obaid said.

The United Arab Emirates gave about $544 million in development aid last year, its Foreign Ministry said.

Overall comparisons are hard to make, in part because the Arabs have tended to give money anonymously to non-U.N. charities or directly to countries in need, rather than funnel donations through the U.N., which has long been distrusted as tool of the West.

That view is changing as U.N. agencies open offices in the Gulf, and figures from one U.N. agency, the World Food Program, while small, show an unexpected picture.

Already this year, Saudi Arabia's $15 million in donations to the U.N. World Food Program has surpassed the $12 million from France and Australia and is not far off Japan's $21 million. The U.S. contribution is $486 million, 32 times bigger than Saudi Arabia's, but its GDP is 38 times bigger. Much of the $486 million consists of bulk food deliveries, which are in effect a way of subsidizing U.S. farmers.

"If this momentum continues, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries could be among our top 10 donors in the next few years," said Tarek Shayya, the WFP's Dubai-based donor officer.

U.N. aid coordinators in the region say humanitarian giving is no longer a Western enterprise.

"There's a lot of generosity in this region and we're convinced it's increasing," said Ivo Freijsen, chief of the Dubai office of the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Charity _ called zakkat _ is an ancient Islamic imperative. The amount of money given is staggering: $250 billion to $1 trillion a year, according to a report last year from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

After 9/11 the giving became controversial, with the United States saying some charities were funneling donations to Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. The Saudi government shut some charities and began monitoring others, in a campaign the U.S. says has largely been effective.

Meanwhile, legitimate donations, private and governmental, keep coming.

In May, billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Al-Walid bin Talal gave $1 million to the WFP for drought relief in Kenya. Two weeks later the Saudi government donated $10 million in cash for East Africa famine relief to WFP, which handles more than half of the world's food aid.

Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also were among first responders to last month's Indonesian earthquake.

And when Hurricane Katrina slammed into America's Gulf coast last summer, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar raided their treasuries for $100 million each.

The United States was the world's largest donor in 2004, handing out around $13 billion in humanitarian and development aid, mostly tied to purchases of U.S. goods, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Measured by percentage of national income, however, America is the smallest contributor among major donor governments, the Congressional Research Service found.

When private donations are factored in, Saudi Arabia is thought to be one of the world's largest per-capita donors, giving more than the U.N.'s standard of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product that most developed countries have not reached, U.N. officials say.

The kingdom's government and citizens have donated $83 billion over the past 30 years, said Abdulaziz Arrukban, WFP's Riyadh-based special ambassador and a key U.N. liaison with the kingdom.

Across the Arab world, the overall giving rate in 2002 was 0.85 percent of GDP, said Saudi Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, a U.N. donor liaison for the Gulf, speaking during a 2003 conference.

The U.S. government spends about 0.15 percent of its GDP on development aid, Japan 0.21 percent and Germany 0.32 percent.

U.N. relief agencies have recently opened several offices in Dubai, which subsidizes them heavily. And in May, the Emirates became the 18th member of the OCHA Donor Support Group, an elite organization of the United States and other wealthy countries.

"We weren't aware of what they were doing and they weren't aware of what we were doing," WFP's Shayya said. "Now we're closer to them."

U.N. relief agencies stress they have few ties with the powerful and unpopular U.N. Security Council.

"We try to clarify that there is a difference between the actions of the Security Council and the U.N. civil servants," Freijsen said. "I belong to the U.A.E. and Sudan as much as I belong to the U.S. or the U.K."

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Thu Jun 8 14:14:24 2006

After years-long search, al-Zarqawi's deputy led troops to his doorstep

By HAMZA HENDAWI and JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ U.S. and Iraqi forces zeroed in on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi over the past two weeks, tracking his movements and missing him at least once with an attempted strike. In the end, the terror leader's spiritual adviser led them to his doorstep and the button was pressed on an airstrike that killed them both, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The success came after several near misses over the three-year hunt for Iraq's most wanted militant. Iraqi forces last year reportedly captured al-Zarqawi, then let him go, not realizing it was him. Just last month, al-Zarqawi leaped from a moving truck to elude U.S. special forces on his tail, an escape filmed by a Predator reconnaissance craft.

The chase ended Wednesday evening at a modest two-story house surrounded by palm groves and orange orchards outside Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad. When word came that al-Zarqawi was there, a pair of U.S. F-16s flying veered away another mission over Iraq and flattened the house with a pair of 500 lb. bombs, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, who commands U.S. and coalition air operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Zarqawi and six others _ including his deputy and spiritual adviser Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, a woman and a child _ were killed.

Al-Iraqi was key to pinpointing al-Zarqawi's location, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

Intelligence officials identified al-Iraqi with the help of an insider in al-Zarqawi's network and began tracking his movements, watching when he would meet with his boss.

"Last night, he made a link-up (with al-Zarqawi) again at 6:15, at which time a decision was made to go ahead and strike that target and eliminate both of them," Caldwell told a news conference in Baghdad.

North said al-Zarqawi's meeting in the house gave commanders time to gather exact coordinates and re-task fighters to Baqouba.

"We knew exactly where he was and we chose the right moment," North told The Associated Press.

On Thursday, al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group issued a Web statement confirming his death. The statement was signed by Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, perhaps in an attempt to spread confusion over whether he was really killed. Caldwell and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, told reporters that al-Iraqi was among the dead in the airstrike. North said a DNA test would confirm the identity in days.

Raids by Iraqi and U.S. units on insurgent strongholds southwest of Baghdad in the past six weeks also uncovered evidence that pointed to al-Zarqawi's whereabouts, Col. Todd Ebel, commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, said. They showed he had been moving through the area to coordinate attacks in Baghdad, he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the hunt began to close in on al-Zarqawi two weeks ago, when Iraqi intelligence received "intelligence on his movements."

He said information from Iraqis near Baqouba area helped the search.

There was one near miss. "An operation was carried out striking a particular target in the belief that he (al-Zarqawi) was present there, but it turned out he had left," al-Maliki said, without giving any details on the strike.

Wednesday's airstrike was the culmination of a massive years-long hunt for al-Zarqawi that involved hundreds of soldiers, spies, tipsters and intelligence analysts and cost more than $500 million, said Ed O'Connell, retired Air Force intelligence officer who led manhunts for Osama bin Laden and other high-value insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

U.S. troops chasing al-Zarqawi included Special Operations Task Force 145, operating out of Balad air base north of Baghdad, O'Connell said.

What may have partly enabled the success now after so long was U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's efforts to patch up relations with Iraq's minority Sunni Arabs, alienated by the U.S. invasion and by the new Shiite-dominated government.

"Khalilzad shaped the environment so they could open lines of infiltration," O'Connell said. "But that was done too late in the game. We should've been reaching out to Sunni insurgents a lot earlier."

At the same time, the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, who was sensitive to U.S.-encouraged derision of him being a foreigner killing Iraqis, began cozying up to Iraq's Sunni insurgents. It was probably the move that led to his undoing, since Khalilizad was doing the same thing, O'Connell said

"Once that happened, all we needed was a guy inside the insurgency to tell us where he was and, bam, we got him," he said.

U.S. Special Forces troops began getting closer and closer. Last month, they were chasing al-Zarqawi, who leaped from a moving truck to get in another vehicle to speed away, O'Connell said.

That was only the latest close call. The closest may have come in late 2004. Deputy Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said Iraqi security forces caught al-Zarqawi near the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah but then released him because they didn't realize who was in their hands.

In May 2005, Web statements by al-Qaida in Iraq said al-Zarqawi was wounded in fighting with Americans and was being treated in a hospital abroad. But days later, a statement said al-Zarqawi was fine and had returned to Iraq.

There was never any independent confirmation of the reports of his wounding.

U.S. forces believe they just missed capturing al-Zarqawi in a Feb. 20, 2005 raid in which troops closed in on his vehicle west of Baghdad near the Euphrates River. His driver and another associate were captured and al-Zarqawi's computer was seized along with pistols and ammunition.

U.S. troops twice launched massive invasions of Fallujah, the stronghold used by al-Qaida in Iraq fighters and other insurgents west of Baghdad. An April 2004 offensive was aborted, leaving the city still in insurgent hands, but the November 2004 assault wrested it from them.

However, al-Zarqawi _ if he was in the city _ escaped.

After Wednesday's airstrike, U.S. officials were eager to prove they got their man, displaying photos of his body at a Baghdad news conference. Jordan _ which imprisoned al-Zarqawi in the 1990s _ provided fingerprint samples that proved the match, as well as DNA from his relatives in Jordan that were being tested against the body.

"The strike last night did not occur over a 24-hour period," Caldwell said. "It was a truly long, painstaking, deliberate exploitation of intelligence, information-gathering, human sources, electronic and signals intelligence."

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Wed Jun 7 13:38:55 2006

U.S. dropping more bombs on Afghanistan

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The U.S. Air Force increased its bombing of Taliban and other insurgent targets in Afghanistan this spring, making about 750 airstrikes in May alone, Air Force officials said.

The intensified bombing in Afghanistan has overshadowed the smaller number of U.S. airstrikes on Iraq, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, who commands U.S. and coalition air operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We have seen more direct support in Afghanistan that is of a kinetic effect than in Iraq of late," North told The Associated Press during a visit Monday to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with defense officials.

Insurgents have mounted a spring offensive against the deployment of U.S.-led troops in the southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, drawing intense bombardments from American warplanes. The surge in fighting has killed more than 400 people, mainly militants, since mid-May.

"As always in the spring, the insurgents are coming out and trying to destabilize" the Afghan government, said North, of Charlottesville, Va.

On May 21, U.S. bombing of Azizi village in Kandahar province killed at least 16 civilians, along with dozens of militants hiding in the compound. Human rights monitors said as many as 34 civilians died in the strike.

The 52-year-old North, who also commands the U.S. 9th Air Force, described the civilian deaths as "regrettable" and said they were being investigated.

"What went wrong, to best of my knowledge, is the Taliban were retreating and firing on coalition forces and took cover in a facility in which civilians were present. Apparently they used the civilians as human shields," North said. "When you've got enemy forces hiding with civilians, it's problematic."

The U.S. bombing has sparked opposition from Afghans angered at the rising death toll of civilians. Afghan lawmakers blame the rising civilian toll for a surge in support for the Taliban.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai took the unusual step last month of summoning the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, and telling him "every effort" should be made to ensure civilians' safety.

Karzai has often called for investigations into civilian deaths and has repeatedly asked the coalition to take care in their bombing targets. Last September, before the recent surge in rebel attacks, he said airstrikes were no longer effective. In 2004, the U.S. military modified its rules of engagement after Karzai expressed outrage over the deaths of 15 children in two airstrikes in late 2003.

U.S. warplanes logged nearly 2,000 strikes in Afghanistan from March through May 2006, about as many as the same period in 2005, said Air Force Maj. Michael Young. But airstrikes spiked at 750 last month, as opposed to 660 in May 2005, Young said.

Much of the bombing has been done by B-1B Lancer bombers that on May 1 replaced an outgoing fleet of the Air Force's aging B-52s. North said the air raids were being called for by ground commanders seeking close air support, which includes bombing, strafing or other raids. The raids are concentrated in remote battlefields in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

In Iraq, North said U.S. warplanes weren't cutting back on sorties but were dropping fewer bombs. Recent U.S. bombing has concentrated on the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, a Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad where U.S. Marines are embroiled in a counterinsurgency battle.

"Ramadi is currently where the insurgents are making a play. So there are more operations in that area," North said.

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Mon May 29 17:15:39 2006

AP Interview: U.S. general says Afghan army plagued by desertions

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Desertions from Afghanistan's U.S.-allied army have dropped sharply, but more than 10 percent of the troops still go AWOL, a U.S. general said Monday.

Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, who heads the effort to train Afghan soldiers and police, said a focus on replacing unfit commanders has cut desertion rates from their peak a few months ago, when almost a quarter of all Afghan troops absconded for varying periods.

"Where you have higher AWOL rates is where you have weaker leaders," Durbin told The Associated Press during a visit to Dubai. "We're trying to trade out those weaker leaders."

More than 2,500 Afghan soldiers are still absent without leave. The army has a total of 35,000 forces, including those in basic training.

In January, a top-level committee headed by Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak began enforcing a plan to cut desertions by replacing commanders whose units suffered high AWOL rates and by improving food and living conditions.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said soldiers desert for several reasons, including a reluctance to fight alongside foreigners against countrymen and a need to earn money for families in remote villages.

The desertion rate dropped from as high as 25 percent in January to about 13 percent now, Durbin said. The goal, he said, is to cut desertions to below 10 percent.

"Perhaps that is alarming by international standards," said Durbin, 52, of Connellsville, Pa.

But, he said, Afghan fighters traditionally have joined militias that permitted long periods of leave. Many return after unexplained disappearances, and those who do not are scrubbed from active-duty rosters.

Durbin compared the concept to American militiamen who returned home at harvest time during the Revolutionary War.

"That behavior wasn't looked down upon," Durbin said. "But that's different from what you have in a professional force."

Afghan army recruiters employing pressure tactics _ including reporting deserters to religious and community leaders _ have persuaded 1,120 deserters to return to their bases, Durbin said.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, said last week during a visit near Kabul that the Afghan army had two tasks.

"One is the fight. The second is to be an enduring symbol for the people of Afghanistan of national unity," he said.

But that army will require U.S. and NATO support for years to come, said Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The numbers still remain very, very low relative to the size of the country and size of the mission," Cordesman said. "They're simply too small to deal with Afghanistan's security problems."

Durbin, who took command of the training mission in December, said Afghan government troops were taking far fewer casualties than their adversaries _ former Taliban militias and opium traffickers _ in heavy fighting in the south.

More than 350 people, mostly anti-government rebels, have died in less than two weeks of heavy fighting, according to Afghan and coalition figures. U.S. airstrikes have killed many of them. A May 21 airstrike killed 16 civilians, U.S. and Afghan figures show.

Durbin said the heavy fighting in the south is related to Afghan security forces' efforts to assert control in a region outside the government's orbit.

"In my mind it's a sign of progress but, unfortunately, it will result in casualties on both sides," Durbin said.

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Thu May 25 14:25:12 2006

United Nations gets shoved aside by Dubai's relentless growth

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The United Nations' honeymoon in Dubai has been brief.

Two years after some U.N. agencies began setting up here, lured by free office and warehouse space, the emirate is asking them to move. Dubai is building its new financial district where the U.N. now sits.

One site identified as a possible new home for the U.N. is a warehouse park under construction on Dubai's desert outskirts, 20 miles from the city's glitzy center. The park, next to a seaport and new airport, makes sense for U.N. agencies dealing in aid airlifts.

But for diplomats like Ivo Freijsen, chief of the U.N.'s regional office for emergency relief, the move would be like shifting U.N. headquarters in Manhattan to an industrial district in New Jersey.

Used to occupying prime real estate in Geneva and New York, some U.N. officials aren't happy about the change.

"They assured us we'd never have a thing to worry about," Freijsen said.

The U.N. has about a hundred workers from five agencies in three office buildings, along with four blue warehouses holding fleets of Toyota Land Cruisers and emergency aid. Freijsen said his agency is shelving expansion plans until city leaders spell out the terms and location of the U.N.'s future home here.

The U.N.'s doomed office park, which also houses dozens of other aid groups, will be moved in two or three years, said Barbara Castek, chief executive of the Dubai Aid and Humanitarian City free zone.

The board that governs the free zone is supposed to reveal its new location June 11, Castek said.

"Whatever arrangement we have with the U.N. now will continue," she said.

The U.N.'s current Dubai offices sit next to a camel racetrack dominated by desert scrub. That happens to be where Dubai's ruling sheiks have broken ground on a multibillion-dollar financial district dubbed Business Bay.

"We're suddenly on very expensive land," said Abdel Rahman Ghandoor, managing editor of the U.N.'s news agency, IRIN. "Dubai used to be attractive. It's getting less and less so."

The U.N.'s growing presence in Dubai stems from overtures four years ago from the emirate's current leader, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland agreed to open a disaster response office and later added a team that seeks to boost the U.N.'s relations with Arab and Muslim world, where the organization is seen as an unwelcome arm of Washington, Freijsen said.

Although they use different language, the U.N.'s Freijsen and Dubai's Castek seem to agree that the city's freewheeling capitalist image can be improved by becoming a global hub for humanitarian aid.

"Dubai doesn't need to make money out of this. It makes enough money," said Freijsen. "But if Dubai wants to look good in the international community, this is how you can do it."

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Mon May 22 14:46:20 2006

U.S. seeks to bolster Gulf military and intelligence ties amid tensions with Iran

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ U.S. officials, seeking Arab allies to provide a united front against Iran, are pushing Gulf states to expand their defenses against ballistic missiles and chemical weapons.

Analysts and former U.S. officials say the goal is to gird for retaliation against oil-rich allies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in case of any U.S.-led attack on Iran.

A slew of high-level State Department officials have visited Gulf states recently to make Washington's case. Thus far, however, their efforts have not brought about a stepped-up security agenda focused on Iran, according to U.S. military officials and analysts in the region.

"The tension with Iran is still diplomatic, not military," said Cmdr. Jeff Breslau of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

Gulf nations have been reluctant to do anything to provoke Iran, a key trading partner just across the Persian Gulf. In an editorial, the Dubai-based Gulf News _ which closely reflects the Emirates government position _ urged Gulf countries to reject aggressive U.S. overtures that could upset delicate relations with Tehran.

"There is no need to exacerbate things further by introducing into the region such controversial measures as heightened security controls and advanced missile systems," the newspaper said. "Once a nation adopts a more aggressive stance to its neighbors, the chance of relations escalating out of hand increases."

State Department officials touring the region in recent weeks include John Hillen, assistant secretary for political-military affairs, and Robert Joseph, undersecretary for arms control and international security. Both focused on rallying Arab support for U.S. efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program, while urging closer military and intelligence ties with Washington.

"We are jointly working on significant enhancements to a number of defensive capabilities in the region," Hillen said in an e-mail answer to questions from The Associated Press.

He acknowledged that discussions included sophisticated new defenses against Iranian ballistic missiles, the monitoring of suspicious transactions and the interdiction of shipments of nuclear technology to Iran. But he would provide few details.

In April, Joseph visited Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, urging them to upgrade defenses against chemical and biological weapons. He also sought help monitoring Iran's financial transactions and closing what he called Iranian "front companies" seeking nuclear technology.

Hillen said the cooperation that Washington seeks would go beyond existing Patriot missile defense batteries in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Navy patrols aimed at tracking rogue nuclear shipments.

"There is a lot new in each area actually _ a lot," he said. "We wouldn't have under and assistant secretaries rolling continuously through the region if there wasn't."

Gulf officials have been reluctant to talk about the effort, with officials in both Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates refusing to comment.

The range of Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile reaches Gulf countries and beyond, including Turkey and Israel, the only country in the Mideast with nuclear weapons.

Washington and Israel accuse Iran of seeking nuclear arms, while Tehran says its research aims to create fuel for power plants.

Gulf countries would probably not back a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but Gulf countries could be targeted by Tehran anyway if an attack occurred, said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

"We have to prepare. You have the obligation to protect your own people," Alani said, urging installation of more U.S. missile defense batteries. "We can't stop the Iranian nuclear development. We can't stop the Americans or the Israelis from attacking Iran. The only thing the Arabs can do is pick up the pieces. We're going to be sandwiched between the two."

The State Department's moves to boost Gulf defenses makes sense, said Wayne White, the State Department's former head of Iraq intelligence.

"If one is planning a defense against what Iran might do with its long-range surface-to-surface missiles and its anti-ship missiles in the Gulf in the wake of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, this is exactly what one would do," White said.

But Alani said the American initiative was more likely meant to contain and isolate Tehran _ replying to Iran's recent military maneuvers, which, he and others have said, exaggerated Iran's abilities to respond to an attack.

Worries about angering Iran could fall by the wayside, Hillen said.

"It's worth noting that since the late '70's, the folks in the region have always rallied, many times dramatically so, to unprecedented levels of cooperation with the U.S. in the face of exigent threats," he said. "We certainly are not seeing a different dynamic now in light of every local player's anxieties about Iran."

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Sat May 13 20:36:20 2006

U.S. air bases in Persian Gulf to eventually replace those in Iraq, senior general says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ The U.S. military is preparing for the day when air power from bases along the Persian Gulf will help ensure that friendly governments in Iraq and Afghanistan survive without American ground troops, a senior U.S. general said.

"We'll be in the region for the foreseeable future," said U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Allen G. Peck, deputy air commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the region. "Our intention would be to stay as long as the host nations will have us."

Agreements have been struck recently with Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates for long-term use of their bases. Already home to U.S. and allied fighter, transport and observation planes, the bases will become more critical if plans proceed to gradually withdraw ground forces from Iraq.

A capable Iraqi air force is years away and Iraqi infantry need the back-up and surveillance provided by U.S. warplanes, Peck said. The bases also could help rush soldiers into Iraq in a crisis. The Pentagon has been keeping thousands of troops in reserve in Kuwait, on Iraq's southern border.

Not everyone is convinced.

The Bush administration declines to say it won't seek to keep bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the U.S. military is spending almost US$1 billion (euro770 million) this year for base construction in Iraq alone. For example, the base at Balad, north of Baghdad, has been expanded to host F-16 fighter and C-130 transport squadrons.

A former Iraq intelligence chief for the State Department, Wayne White, said he believes one of the administration's unstated pre-invasion goals was to secure permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq after overseeing the installation of a pro-American government.

Peck, however, said he knew of no current U.S. plans to maintain permanent air bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because of the Iraqi insurgency, experts say bases in the Persian Gulf nations are a better option given the long relationships Washington has had with them.

But there are risks even in those countries, where many people harbor suspicions of U.S. policy. Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals agitate against the U.S. military presence in the Muslim world. A huge U.S. air base and headquarters in Saudi Arabia was closed before the invasion of Iraq because of fundamentalists' pressure on the Saudi government.

Indeed, American diplomats and some military officers interviewed for this article agreed to discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity, because Arab governments have asked the U.S. military not to publicize their presence.

The Air Force operates refueling, cargo and surveillance flights from large bases in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while maintaining runway access and warehoused supplies in Oman and Saudi Arabia.

The plan Peck described would have the Air Force eventually consolidate most of its Iraq operations in the Persian Gulf bases.

Afghanistan's military also could be backed up from Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic where U.S. officials are negotiating a long-term agreement. The Kyrgyz government has requested a doubling of the base rental, Peck said.

The U.S. base at Incirlik, Turkey, could also enter into the equation. For now, the Turkish government, a NATO ally, allows the U.S. military to operate only cargo, refueling and passenger flights to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the U.S. has based fighter jets there in the past.

Peck and others caution that the shift would take years. The top U.S. officer in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, recently said plans to begin reducing the U.S. presence this year are still on track. But U.S. President George W. Bush also has said the counterinsurgency mission in Iraq will continue at least through the end of his term in January 2009.

"The idea that we can envision a time when air power in places like the UAE becomes our main way of watching over Iraq is still a bit ahead of its time _ to put it gently," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Either way, the Pentagon is planning for the time when U.S. forces pull out of Iraq, or in case Iraq's government asks them to leave. The idea of a long-term U.S. military presence is deeply unpopular in Iraq, polls say.

White and others say the United States could eventually turn over its bases to the Iraqi military and still back up the Iraqi government with small numbers of U.S. special forces troops, along with warplanes based in nearby countries.

"If we do not support the Iraqi army with reconnaissance and airstrike capabilities, which we now rely on so heavily against the insurgents, they're not going to stand a chance," said White, now an Iraq analyst at the Middle East Institute.

O'Hanlon said the Gulf bases are safer than almost anywhere in Iraq. "And everything in the region is close enough together that for most purposes the bases along the gulf should suffice."

The air bases expected to host U.S. air operations after an Iraq pullout are Al-Udeid in Qatar, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait and Al-Dhafra in the UAE. The three bases also lie just across the Persian Gulf from Iran, which the Bush administration and other nations suspect is pursuing nuclear arms.

Visits to U.S. bases in Kuwait and Qatar found signs of heavy construction of permanent housing and operations buildings.

At Al-Udeid, forward headquarters for the U.S. Central Command, construction is under way on a concrete bunker that will house a command center where American and coalition teams will direct and monitor air operations over Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region. The current center is housed in a temporary building on the base.

Construction of the new operations center is being funded by the Qatari government, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The change is inevitable, some experts say.

"We will not be able to retain bases in Iraq. That will simply not be possible," White said.

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Wed Apr 26 02:41:26 2006

Fast-growing Emirates airlines poised to steal business from Europe, Asian carriers

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Emirates was once a money-losing state-run airline. But that phase lasted just one year, 1986, its second year in business.

In each of the 17 years since, Dubai government-owned Emirates has turned a profit, even as it assembled an array of 92 aircraft _ one of the world's youngest fleets _ and a smorgasbord of 83 destinations.

But Emirates' profits, like last fiscal year's whopping 49 percent increase over the previous year, have been overshadowed by its audacious orders for new jets. The airline plans to double in size by 2012, by spending an unheard of $33 billion on 123 new planes, all wide-body jets for long-haul flights, where it will compete with the top European and Asian carriers.

Emirates is an enigma in the airline industry: a government-owned Middle Eastern carrier that receives few, if any, government favors. In the Middle East, not usually considered a bastion of bare-knuckle capitalism, Emirates was born and raised in ultra-competitive Dubai, where 110 airlines compete under an "open skies" policy.

"That's how you hone your competitive survival skills. You don't do it by getting all kinds of protection," said Daniel Kasper, an airline consultant in Cambridge, Mass. with consultancy LECG. "That's a feather in their cap to be able to do this in a market that's as open as Dubai."

On Wednesday, Emirates chairman Sheik Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum planned to announce earnings results for the fiscal year ending March 31. Sheik Ahmed said it'll be Emirates' 18th straight year in the black.

Analysts, like JP Morgan's Peter Negline, expect smaller profits this year, tamped down by the high price of jet fuel.

"We wouldn't be surprised to see some moderation in earnings growth," said Negline, who is based in Hong Kong. "But then we see few airlines in our region making healthy profits with oil prices at these levels."

Looking into 2006, Sheik Ahmed predicted more of the same.

"We should see very positive growth, especially in our market _ the Middle East and Indian subcontinent."

Americans who haven't heard of Emirates soon may get the chance to fly with them. For now, Emirates operates just two daily flights to New York, but Sheik Ahmed said the carrier will add a third flight this year.

As Emirates' order of 60 long-range Boeing 777s starts arriving, West Coast and Midwest terminals might soon see the carrier's trademark Arabic calligraphy tail logo.

"With the introduction of the 777-LR, we can talk about Houston and Chicago," Sheik Ahmed said. "Over the next six years, we'll be receiving one or two aircraft per month."

Over the past six years, Emirates' capacity and traffic have leaped by more than 25 percent a year as its network spread relentlessly wider.

Now, analysts say Emirates is gearing up to capture traffic from European carriers like Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa, as well as Asian operations like Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and Cathay Pacific.

A report last year by investment bank UBS said competition from Emirates could spell the end of long-haul flights by less competitive carriers Swiss International, Alitalia and SAS.

Analysts say the airline's growth hinges on political stability, as well as other wild cards such as bird flu outbreaks or slippage in the global economy that would spur messy competition from a growing phallanx of rival Gulf carriers.

"Other airlines have found they've grown faster than they could successfully manage," Kasper said. "When you add that much capacity, you have a lot of risk during market downturns. You can't stop paying bills for new airplanes just because passengers don't show up."

Emirates has used deft management, well-timed purchases, and was poised to take advantage of the energy boom that has turned Dubai into one of the world's fastest growing cities, Negline said.

"There is an element of being in the right place at the right time," Negline said. "But we shouldn't downplay the fact that they had sensible strategies and executed them very well."

Emirates' operating costs are thought to be 40 percent lower than European rivals like KLM, according to UBS. It also benefits from Dubai's investments in infrastructure and zero tax rate, as well as the sheikdom's cheap labor costs. Salaries are kept low by laws that, for now, prohibit unions. Emirates also operates without a less profitable short-haul fleet or legacy costs like pension burdens.

And Emirates looks set to keep its costs down, ironically, by spending around $12 billion for 45 of Airbus' double-decker A380 super-jumbos, the forthcoming long-haul passenger jet with 555 seats in its smallest version. Each A380 is expected to operate around 13 percent more cheaply than a Boeing 747, the UBS report said.

To cope, Dubai is expanding its airport to handle 70 million passengers a year, which could put it behind Atlanta as the world's busiest airport.

Emirates caters to what was until recently an underserved region, with a Persian Gulf airport midway between Europe and Asia. It also consistently brings home awards on its service.

Dubai is a booming destination in its own right _ for Brits, the second most popular beach destination outside Britain _ with guaranteed sunny weather that draws in tourists and delays few flights.

Emirates focused first on Asia. Its debut destination was Karachi. Now, analysts say Asia is one of the industry's few growth markets. Gulf cities rely hugely on expatriate workers from India, Pakistan, Europe, Australia and increasingly, the Far East and North America.

Emirates and other Gulf airlines are cashing in as more workers flow to jobs here, while stealing passengers from European carriers flying to Asia and Australia, and Asian carriers flying to Europe.

Gulf-based carriers led by Emirates are going to form an ever-larger part of the global airline industry, according to research from JP Morgan.

"European carriers have not seen a competitor like this before," adds the UBS report.

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Wed Apr 19 14:29:33 2006

U.S. military courting Arab media in Dubai

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ For nine months, a small U.S. military team has been courting reporters at Arabic-language news outlets based in Dubai, a charm offensive aimed at reversing negative coverage of the United States.

The operation has caught the eye of the State Department. Spokesman Adam Ereli said this week that an Arabic-speaking diplomat and staff will be sent to Dubai this fall to represent the United States on Arab TV programs.

Ereli and other U.S. officials say Arab news outlets have been ignored for too long, allowing radical Islamists to condemn American policy with little response.

"We have, to our detriment, been defined by our critics," Ereli told The Associated Press by telephone from Washington.

Dubai Media City, the target of the U.S. media outreach teams, is a sleek office park with palm-shaded cafes overlooking artificial lakes that has become the Middle East's largest journalism hub over the past five years. The tax-free zone counts more than 1,000 media-related companies, including bureaus for global and regional TV, radio and newspapers.

"We were essentially allowing al-Qaida and other terrorists to run rampant with lies and propaganda," said Army Capt. Eric Clark, one of two U.S. Central Command officers based in Dubai. "We're late in this fight. We're filling this huge vacuum that's existed in Arab countries for years."

The initiative parallels other U.S. attempts to temper Arabs' opinions of America, including Arabic-language Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra satellite TV, funded and overseen by the State Department. Both run bureaus in Dubai.

President Bush has named Karen Hughes as point person for improving the U.S. image among Muslims. Hughes, as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, will oversee the Dubai media office.

But for now, American media diplomacy here is dominated by the Pentagon.

Influencing Arab opinion is a component of the Pentagon's new "long war" strategy, which says that America's conflict with Islamic extremists requires more diplomacy and less bombing.

"We're working to change the mind-set in the Arab world that America is this monolithic evil," Clark said. "We're hoping to stop the ability of al-Qaida to recruit future members."

Media executives in Dubai say they appreciate Washington's attention, but that positive spin will do little to change their coverage. U.S. foreign policy _ which is perceived as anti-Arab _ is the reason for the negative coverage, they say.

Nakhle Elhage, news director at Al-Arabiya TV, said the U.S. military has won more airtime since the Central Command team arrived.

But Elhage said the team has been unable to improve the network's poor relations with the U.S. military, which he blames for the deaths of three Al-Arabiya reporters in Iraq and the arrests of three others. Elhage said Clark and his senior officer, Navy Capt. Frank Pascual, were unable to help secure the release of a reporter jailed for four months in Iraq.

Elhage spoke of his frustrations at a Centcom conference in January, where he said U.S. delegates displayed little understanding of Arab views.

"They want one-way traffic," he said. "They want to give their message, but they don't want to listen."

Ereli said the Dubai office would discuss America's role in the Iraq and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as well as human rights and AIDS. He said the office will seek to "shift the terms of debate" away from claims of "colonialism and exploitation" toward a more nuanced view of U.S. Mideast objectives.

But for now, Clark cannot discuss much of what incenses the Arab world, especially U.S. support for Israel.

"That's a State Department issue, a White House issue. As a soldier, I can't discuss U.S. policy toward Israel," he said.

The Centcom team was dispatched after exploratory visits in 2005 found that so many Arab-language media had moved to Dubai that a small team could have an outsized strategic effect.

"The pan-Arab media outlets in Dubai Media City were like a dry sponge," Clark said. "They didn't have access to U.S. military personnel for breaking stories."

News operations with bureaus in Dubai include the British Broadcasting Corp., The Associated Press, Reuters and CNN, as well as Arabic networks Middle East Broadcasting Corp., Dubai TV and Abu Dhabi TV, and a plethora of Arabic-language and English regional newspapers.

Dubai also hosts an office of The Lincoln Group, the firm hired by the Pentagon to pay Iraqi newspapers to print articles favorable to the U.S. military.

The Centcom team operates by using cell phones and meeting in coffee shops and hotels. Both officers traded their military uniforms for business suits.

Sometimes Clark and Pascual handle interviews themselves. More often, they escort visiting U.S. officers to interviews.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the former command spokesman in Iraq, for example, recently met with 22 media outlets in Dubai and Qatar over three days, Pascual said.

Clark says he's been able to make headway with news outlets seen as hostile. Stormy relations with the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera are on the mend, Pascual believes.

"Al-Jazeera has gotten better," Pascual said. "They call us now. I think we've made great progress."

When the Pentagon is angered by coverage _ like Al-Jazeera's airing a clip of sobbing American hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq _ the Dubai team adopts another role: telling Arab news executives they've gone too far.

"It's not a bad thing for journalists to feel a bit of push-back now and then," Pascual said.

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Thu Apr 13 14:36:52 2006

AP Interview: U.S. Air Force has not lost spy planes over Iran, general says

By JIM KRANE

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Spy planes that Iran claims to have shot down over its territory were not operated by the U.S. Air Force, a top American general said Thursday. Maj. Gen. Allen G. Peck also played down Pentagon planning for air strikes on Iran, calling it routine.

Iran's Farsi-language daily Jomhouri Islami reported Sunday that Iran had downed an unmanned spy plane flying in its airspace near the border with southern Iraq.

Peck, the deputy commander of U.S. Air Force operations in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters, said no unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, that fly in the region had gone missing.

"All of my UAVs are accounted for," Peck said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I know where they all are and none of them are on the ground in Iran."

It is possible Iran downed a spy drone operated by an intelligence agency, military officials said, or it could have downed a plane flown by a non-coalition military.

Or Iran may have fabricated the incident, the military officials said.

"If people from other countries are flying UAVs or whatever, I can't really speak to that," Peck said. "We haven't lost any over Iran."

Asked whether the Air Force operates spy planes over Iran, Peck answered by saying the U.S. Central Command is trying to avoid "provocations" against Tehran in the current confrontational atmosphere over Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Peck said the Air Force would be very careful before sending spy craft _ especially manned U2 reconnaissance planes based in the United Arab Emirates _ on missions over Iran.

"Never say never," he said. "You've got to realize that penetrating their airspace would be a provocative thing. We're not interested right now in doing something that's perceived as provocative. I don't want to say it could never happen, but we're pretty cognizant of where the borders are and the ramifications of violating others' airspace."

U.S. intelligence agencies do maintain satellites and other collection assets over and inside Iran, which the U.S. Central Command uses to keep track of developments inside Iran's "fairly closed society," Peck said. He would not say what those collection assets w