"US Vice President Dick Cheney issued blunt new criticisms of resurgent Russia, and called for Western unity in meeting its challenges in a major speech to a European security conference," The Wall Street Journal reported. "The vice president, a longtime vocal critic of Russia, offered some of the Bush administration's toughest rhetoric yet in his speech to a European security conference. He accused Russia of seeking to reinvent the old Soviet Union's sphere of influence, and beat back the advance of democracy in Eastern Europe. He also charged that Russia has been selling weapons to Syria and Iran that have wound up in the hands of terrorists. " 'In the Middle East, Russian arms-dealing has endangered the prospects for peace and freedom in the region,' the vice president said. 'Russia has sold advanced weapons to the regimes in Syria and Iran. [And] some of the Russian weapons sold to Damascus have been channeled to terrorist fighters in Lebanon and Iraq.' " The Israeli news agency Ynetnews also said: "The vice president later met in private with Israeli President Shimon Peres on the sidelines of the conference. Cheney added that Moscow was selling the arms to Iran and Syria knowing full-well it is intended for Hizbollah and the terror organisations in Iraq, Peres' aides said." The New York Times said: "Mr Cheney has long been the Bush administration's most vocal hawk, but his remarks on Saturday, originally intended to reflect broadly on Euro-Atlantic security, amounted to a sweeping indictment of Russia's actions in recent years and a challenge to its leaders to reverse course. The speech, his aides said, was carefully vetted in Washington and reflected the administration's deep anger over Russia's incursion into Georgia a month ago. "He called for a continued expansion of the alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine, despite Russian threats, and a diversification of energy supplies, which, he said, Russia has wielded like a weapon to intimidate European nations." Reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, Tom Lasseter spoke to several Kremlin-watchers in Moscow who are worried that Russia and America are closer to direct confrontation than at any point since the end of the Cold War. "Sergei Markov, a Duma member who's ... close to the Kremlin, accused the Bush administration of playing 'a very dirty and bloody game' in which it was intentionally provoking Russia to create the appearance of a new cold war to help McCain's hawkish presidential campaign and further US attempts to hem in Russian power. "Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst in Moscow who works with the US-based Jamestown Foundation, agreed that relations between the countries were dangerously tense, but blamed the Kremlin. " 'Russia is probing the West, as it often did during the Cold War, (to see) how far is the West willing to go: What will happen if Russia continues to push?' Felgenhauer said. 'There is a party of war within the ruling party.... It seems that for now the hard-liners are winning.' "Aleksandr Dugin, a hard-line Russian theorist whose ideas about weakening American geopolitical standing are popular with many Kremlin leaders, said Russia was challenging US domination and that confrontation may be unavoidable."
Israel's president opposes attack on Iran
"Israel's president, Shimon Peres, has warned the prime minister that a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could provoke a broader conflict. "Peres is the first senior politician to advise Ehud Olmert against such an attack at a time of growing tension when other leading figures are threatening airstrikes unless Tehran halts its nuclear programme. "The Israeli air force has rehearsed an operation to destroy sites connected with the project. " 'The military way will not solve the problem,' said Peres, the 85-year-old founder of the Jewish state's nuclear programme, in an interview with The Sunday Times." In The Boston Globe, the security analysts, Ray Takeyh and Nikolas Gvosdev, discussed Russia's Iran policy and the impact of the invasion of Georgia. "Russia is happy with the standoff between Iran and the United States. Not only does it destabilize international oil markets - keeping prices higher than they ought to be - but Iran's large natural gas reserves are effectively off-limits for European use, reinforcing the continent's dependency on Moscow. At the same time, as Iran strengthens its economic links with key Asian powers, it makes it more dependent on Russia and China for its critical trade and investments. Russia can only benefit from Iran's gradual reorientation toward the East. "All this is not to suggest that Iran has not benefited from the Russian-Georgian conflagration, but that those advantages have been subtle. Tehran is using the Georgian crisis as a cautionary lesson to the Persian Gulf states. From its podiums and platforms, the message emanating from the Islamic Republic is that the Georgians mistakenly accepted American pledges of support only to pay a heavy price for their naivetÈ. The Gulf sheikdoms who similarly put much stock in US security assurances would be wise to come to terms with their populous and powerful Persian neighbor. In a region where America is viewed as unpredictable and unreliable, this message has a powerful resonance."
Nato supply lines in jeopardy as Zardari becomes Pakistan's new president
"Newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari was plunged headlong into his first major crisis last night after angry Pakistani officials cut off vital supply lines serving the US-led Nato force fighting in Afghanistan," The Australian reported. "In a major test for Mr Zardari following his spectacular weekend election win, Nato's lifeline from the port city of Karachi that brings in essential daily shipments of oil and other supplies was cut off at the Khyber Pass. "The move was in apparent retaliation for last week's first-ever ground assault inside Pakistani territory by US special forces against Islamic militants." Pakistan's Dawn newspaper added: "The ministries of interior and defence have taken diametrically opposite positions on the issue of halting Nato supplies to Afghanistan via the Torkham border post. "While the former says it is a temporary disruption because of 'security concerns', the latter insists that the government decided to stop the supplies indefinitely because Pakistan has issues with the allied forces' recent incursions inside the Pakistani territory." In a commentary for The Australian, Bruce Loudon wrote: "Asif Ali Zardari's elevation to the presidency brings together a happy coincidence of interests for him - constitutional immunity from prosecution, virtually unfettered powers as he rules from the heavily guarded white marble presidential palace that dominates the Islamabad skyline, and an opportunity to strut the world stage as a leader in his own right. "In the end, Mr Zardari's huge win in the weekend election - after weeks of mounting controversy that had even raised questions about his mental health - astounded friend and foe alike: a convincing 481 out of a possible 702 votes in the electoral college made up of members of the national and provincial parliaments. Only Punjab, Pakistan's biggest province and the stronghold of his political adversary, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, held out against him, voting instead for Sharif's preferred candidate, retired judge Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui. "But even that could not disguise the extent of the Zardari juggernaut: 100 per cent of the votes cast in Sindh, 98 per cent in Baluchistan, 86 per cent in the North West Frontier Province." In a commentary for The Guardian, Tariq Ali wrote: "There will be no expressions of joy on the streets to mark the transference of power from a moth-eaten general to a worm-eaten politician. The affection felt in some quarters for the Bhutto family is non-transferable. If Benazir were still alive, Zardari would not have been given any official post. She had been considering two other senior politicians for the presidency. Had she been more democratically inclined she would never have treated her political party so scornfully, reducing it to the status of a family heirloom, bequeathed to her son, with her husband as the regent till the boy came of age. "This, and this alone, has aided Zardari's rise to the top. He was disliked by many of his wife's closest supporters in the People's Party (or the Bhutto Family Party, as it is referred to by disaffected members) even when she was alive. They blamed his greed and godfatherish behaviour to explain her fall from power on two previous occasions, which I always thought was slightly unfair. She knew. It was a joint enterprise. She was never one to regard politics alone as the consuming passion of her life and always envied the lifestyle and social behaviour of the very rich. And he was shameless in his endeavours to achieve that status."
pwoodward@thenational.ae