( I have to say there’s something to Rand Paul’s position. I agree that over time Israel could and should become completely independent of foreign assistance {aka control}. A look at this week’s posts here show us why. – JW )
Tea Party leader returning from visit says Israel would benefit from economic independence from the US
Sen. Rand Paul in Jerusalem, January 12, 2013 (photo credit: Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said he does not favor immediate cuts to defense assistance to Israel, but believes Israel ultimately would benefit from economic independence from the United States.
Paul (R-Ky.), in a conference call Wednesday marking his return from a weeklong visit to Israel, said his first priority in targeting foreign assistance would be those nations where people “burn the American flag and say death to America.”
Israel, he said, has been a “great friend” to the United States.
“Something I would be in favor of would not be immediate, dramatic or draconian, it would be evolving,” he said of his favoring cuts in assistance to Israel. “I’m for an independent, strong Israel that is not a client state and not a reliant state.”
Asked particularly about missile defense cooperation, he said there was a “great argument” for such programs and he believes that American cities should have missile defense infrastructure.
Of Iron Dome, the Israeli anti-missile system that Israel says repelled 80 percent of rocket attacks during the recent Gaza War, Rand said, “There’s a great argument for the Iron Dome,” although he would want to examine “exactly how it is funded.”
Iron Dome is funded currently by hundreds of millions of dollars in grants on top of the $3 billion Israel receives annually in defense assistance from the United States.
Paul said he understands how his calls for reducing aid to Israel make him an outlier among fellow senators, but that he believes his position is more pro-Israel than theirs.
The Kentucky lawmaker also said it was “presumptuous” of American politicians to dictate to Israel where it should build, and that he leans toward recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, although he understands arguments that such recognition could be “provocative.”
Paul, who met on his trip with Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he was concerned about defense assistance to Egypt in part because its president, Mohamed Morsi, has made anti-Semitic remarks, but also because such sales fuel an arms race with Israel.
Paul has gently distanced himself from the positions of his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a perennial presidential candidate who also has favored cutting assistance to Israel but often has cast those arguments as criticism of Israeli policies. The younger Paul is seen as likely to bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi gives an interview to Lebanese Al-Quds TV, in October 2010 (image capture MEMRI video)
Additional statements made by Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi before entering office, in which he accuses US President Barack Obama of lying in his 2009 Cairo speech and urges Muslims “to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews,” were published Thursday by media watchdog group MEMRI.
“One American president after another — and most recently, that Obama — talks about American guarantees for the safety of the Zionists in Palestine. [Obama] was very clear when he uttered his empty words on the land of Egypt. He uttered many lies, of which he couldn’t have fulfilled a single word, even if he were sincere — which he is not,” Morsi says in the latest clips, referring to Obama’s 2009 speech, delivered at Cairo University.
Morsi made the remarks in a speech in 2010 when he was a leading Muslim Brotherhood figure. These and other remarks were revived when an Egyptian TV show aired them last week to highlight and mock Morsi’s current policies.
In the same address, Morsi said: “Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them. They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue.”
The new quotes — found, translated, reposted and transcribed by MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) — emerged hours after the Obama administration issued a statement saying the Egyptian presidency’s clarification over a previous set of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel comments was welcome, but not enough to ease the White house’s concerns.
A statement by Morsi’s office rejected discrimination and incitement to violence based on religion. The State Department called it “an important first step,” but said the US continues to look for Morsi and other Egyptian leaders to demonstrate a commitment to religious tolerance and Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.
The US has said Morsi’s previous 2010 remarks — in which he urged hatred of Jews and called Zionists “pigs” and “bloodsuckers” — are “deeply offensive” and need to be repudiated.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland would not say if Washington is demanding that Morsi personally repudiate the remarks, but she made clear the US needs to see more than the statement from his office to be convinced he no longer holds to the earlier views.
“From our perspective, that statement was an important first step to make clear that the type of offensive rhetoric that we saw in 2010 is not acceptable, not productive and shouldn’t be part of a democratic Egypt,” she told reporters. “That said, we look to President Morsi and Egyptian leaders to demonstrate in both word and in deed their commitment to religious tolerance and to upholding all of Egypt’s international obligations.”
On Wednesday, Morsi sought to defuse Washington’s anger over his past remarks, telling a group of visiting US senators that his comments were taken out of context and were a denunciation of Israeli policies and not Israel itself or the Jewish people, according to a spokesman. The spokesman said Morsi told the lawmakers that a distinction must be made between the two.
Later Wednesday, after the State Department declined to comment on the spokesman’s explanation, Morsi’s office went further by releasing an English-language statement that said “the president strongly believes that we must respect and indeed celebrate our common humanity and does not accept or condone derogatory statements regarding any religious or ethnic group.”
Nuland said Thursday that her comments applied to that statement and not the spokesman’s remarks.
The flap is a new twist in Morsi’s attempts to reconcile his background as a veteran of the Muslim Brotherhood — a vehemently anti-Israel and anti-US group — and the requirements of his role as head of state, which include keeping the strategic relationship with Washington, which wants Egypt to continue to honor its 1979 peace deal with Israel.
Morsi has promised to abide by Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and has continued security cooperation with Israel over the volatile Sinai Peninsula and their border. In November, Morsi brokered a truce between the Jewish state and Gaza’s Hamas rulers in November, a feat that won him warm praise from the Americans.
A satellite image taken in October shows the Amenas Gas Field in Algeria (photo credit: AP/DigitalGlobe)
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — About 60 foreign hostages are still unaccounted for three days into a bloody siege with Islamist militants at a gas plant deep in the Sahara, Algeria’s state news service said Friday.
The militants, meanwhile, offered to trade two American hostages for terror figures jailed in the United States, according to a statement received by a Mauritanian news site that often reports news from North African extremists.
It was the latest surprising development in a hostage drama that began Wednesday when militants seized hundreds of workers from 10 nations at Algeria’s remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. Algerian forces retaliated Thursday by storming the plant in an attempted rescue operation that killed at least four hostages and left leaders around the world expressing strong concerns about the hostages’ safety.
Algerian special forces resumed negotiating Friday with the militants holed up in the refinery, according to the Algerian news service, which cited a security source.
The report said “more than half of the 132 hostages” had been freed in the first two days, but it could not account for the remainder, saying some could be hidden throughout the sprawling desert site.
Militants on Friday offered to trade two American hostages for two prominent terror figures jailed in the United States: the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
The offer, according to a Mauritanian news site that frequently broadcasts dispatches from groups linked to al-Qaeda, came from Moktar Belmoktar, an extremist commander based in Mali who apparently masterminded the operation.
Algeria’s government has kept a tight grip on information, but it was clear that the militant assault that began Wednesday with an attempted bus hijacking has killed at least six people from the plant — and perhaps many more.
Workers kidnapped by the militants came from around the world — Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians. Leaders on Friday expressed strong concerns about how Algeria was handing the situation and its apparent reluctance to communicate.
British Prime Minister David Cameron went before the House of Commons on Friday to provide an update, seeming frustrated that Britain was not told about the military operation despite having “urged we be consulted.”
Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the Ain Amenas plant, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of Algiers, the capital. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.
“This is a large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages,” Cameron said. He told lawmakers the situation remained fluid and dangerous, saying “part of the threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, a threat still remains in another part.”
Algeria’s army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.
The US government sent an unarmed surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya, but it could do little more than watch Thursday’s military intervention. British intelligence and security officials were on the ground in Algeria’s capital but were not at the installation, said a British official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
A US official said while some Americans escaped, other Americans were either still held or unaccounted for.
El Mokhtar Ould Sidi, editor of the Mauritanian news site ANI, said several calls on Thursday came from the kidnappers themselves giving their demands and describing the situation.
“They were clearly in a situation of war, the spokesman who contacted us was giving orders to his colleagues and you could hear the sounds of war in the background…. He threatened to kill all the hostages if the Algerian forces tried to liberate them,” he said.
With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.
Militants claimed 35 hostages died when the military helicopters opened fire as they were transporting hostages from the living quarters to the main factory area where other workers were being held.
The group — led by a Mali-based al-Qaeda offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday’s military assault — but garnered a global audience.
The militants made it clear that their attack was in revenge for the French intervention against Islamists who have taken over large parts of neighboring Mali. France has encountered fierce resistance from the extremist groups in Mali and failed to persuade many Western allies to join in the actual combat.
Even violence-scarred Algerians were stunned by the brazen hostage-taking Wednesday, the biggest in northern Africa in years and the first to include Americans as targets. Mass fighting in the 1990s had largely spared the lucrative oil and gas industry that gives Algeria its economic independence and regional weight.
The official Algerian news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday’s operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in the initial militant ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, it said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.
APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.
One Irish hostage managed to escape: electrician Stephen McFaul, who’d worked in North Africa’s oil and natural gas fields off and on for 15 years. His family said the militants let hostages call their families to press the kidnappers’ demands.
“He phoned me at 9 o’clock to say al-Qaeda were holding him, kidnapped, and to contact the Irish government, for they wanted publicity. Nightmare, so it was. Never want to do it again. He’ll not be back! He’ll take a job here in Belfast like the rest of us,” said his mother, Marie.
Dylan, McFaul’s 13-year-old son, started crying as he talked to Ulster Television. “I feel over the moon, just really excited. I just can’t wait for him to get home,” he said.
A U.S. Air Force aero evacuation plane is in the process of rescuing Americans and others who were taken hostage by an Al Qaeda-linked group at a gas plant in Algeria. The rescued hostages will be flown to a U.S. facility in Europe.
An American from Texas remains missing after an Algerian military raid on the terror group reportedly ended the hostage standoff at the remote gas plant in the Saharan Desert.
Britain’s Foreign Office said Friday the hostage crisis “remains ongoing,” but gave no further details.
Militants reportedly want to swap two Americans for jailed terror figures, a Mauritania news site reported. One of the two, Omar Abdel Rahman, masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Algerian state news says about 60 foreign hostages are unaccounted for and negotiations have resumed. The news agency said more than half of the 132 foreign hostages had been freed.
Two Americans escaped unharmed Thursday, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News, and five other Americans who had been at the vast Ain Amenas complex were able to avoid being taken captive when the terrorists first attacked early Wednesday.
The Associated Press reports at least six people, and perhaps many more, were killed — Britons, Filipinos and Algerians — in the Algerians special forces’ rescue mission. Dozens more remained unaccounted for, including Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians, at least one American and the fighters themselves.
The Algerian News Agency reports 650 hostages were freed, including 573 Algerians, according to Reuters.
Three flights reportedly left Algeria Thursday, carrying staff from several hundred companies at the site.
At least 20 gunmen attacked and took over the complex, reportedly in retaliation for France’s military intervention against Al Qaeda-linked rebels in neighboring Mali, though Fox News sources say the attack may have been planned much earlier.
With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.
The militants — led by a Mali-based Al Qaeda offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday’s military assault, but succeeded in garnering a global audience.
“An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded,” Algerian Communications Minister Mohand Said Oubelaid told national media, adding that the “terrorists are multinational,” coming from several different countries with the goal of “destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure.”
Islamists from the Masked Brigade, a Mali-based Al Qaeda offshoot, who have been speaking through a Mauritanian news outlet, said Algerian helicopters opened fire as the militants tried to leave the vast energy complex with their hostages. They claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the attack and only seven hostages survived.
The reports of high casualties have deeply disturbed foreign governments, prompting a number to criticize Algeria’s operation. Britain’s Foreign Office attempted to prepare the British public by saying, “We should be under no illusion that there will be some bad and distressing news to follow from this terrorist attack.”
Algeria’s official news service, meanwhile, earlier claimed that 600 local workers were freed in the raid and half of the foreigners being held were rescued. Many of those locals were reportedly released on Wednesday, however, by the militants themselves.
One Irish hostage was confirmed safe: supervising electrician Stephen McFaul, whose mother said he would not be returning to Algeria.
“He phoned me at 9 o’clock to say Al Qaeda were holding him, kidnapped, and to contact the Irish government, for they wanted publicity. Nightmare, so it was. Never want to do it again. He’ll not be back! He’ll take a job here in Belfast like the rest of us,” said his mother, Marie.
Dylan, McFaul’s 13-year-old son, started crying as he talked to Ulster Television. “I feel over the moon, just really excited. I just can’t wait for him to get home,” he said.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration was “concerned about reports of loss of life and are seeking clarity from the government of Algeria.”
Jean-Christophe Gray, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron, said Britain was not informed in advance of the raid but described the situation as “very grave and serious.” French President Francois Hollande called it a “dramatic” situation involving dozens of hostages.
Algerian forces who had ringed the Ain Amenas complex in a tense standoff had vowed not to negotiate with the kidnappers, who reportedly were seeking safe passage. Security experts said the end of the two-day standoff was in keeping with the North African country’s tough approach to terrorism.
“I would not be surprised if the death toll was has high as the militants put it, it’s a well-known fact that the Algerians never had problems causing a blood bath to respond to terrorist attacks,” said Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa analyst for the Eurasia group, who expressed doubt over Algeria’s claims that mediation was abandoned in the face of the kidnappers’ intransigence. “I wonder whether really in 24 hours you can establish some kind of negotiations with terrorists, I don’t think they really tried.”
The kidnapping is one of the largest ever attempted by a militant group in North Africa. The militants phoned a Mauritanian news outlet to demand that France end its intervention in neighboring Mali to ensure the safety of the hostages in the isolated plant, located 800 miles south of the capital of Algiers.
Phone contacts with the militants were severed as government forces closed in, according to the Mauritanian agency, which often carries reports from Al Qaeda-linked extremist groups in North Africa.
A 58-year-old Norwegian engineer who made it to the safety of a nearby Algerian military camp told his wife how militants attacked a bus Wednesday before being fended off by a military escort.
“Bullets were flying over their heads as they hid on the floor of the bus,” Vigdis Sletten told The Associated Press in a phone interview from her home in Bokn, on Norway’s west coast.
Her husband and the other bus passengers climbed out of a window and were transported to a nearby military camp, she said.
“He is among the lucky ones, and he has confirmed he is not injured,” she said, declining to give his name for security reasons.
It was then that the militants went after the living quarters of the plant instead of disappearing back into the desert.
A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that the seven surviving hostages included three Belgians, two Americans, a Briton and a Japanese citizen.
The Norwegian energy company Statoil had said three Algerian employees who had been held hostage were safe but the fate of nine Norwegian workers was unclear. Japanese media reported at least 3 Japanese citizens among the hostages and Malaysia confirmed two.
Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila said the roughly 20 well-armed gunmen operating under orders from Moktar Belmoktar, Al Qaeda’s strongman in the Sahara, who is now based in Mali.
Progress on halting Iran’s nuclear program critically depends on U.S. determination and strategy. But it’s still an open question whether Obama even wants 2013 to be the year of decision, with all the serious consequences that that implies.
After the last round of negotiations with Iran failed to make headway last summer, the U.S. moved into accelerated election mode, and Iran was off the agenda until November. But if there were expectations that Obama would pick this issue up very quickly after the elections in order to keep up the momentum created in 2012, these were quelled when in mid-November he noted that he hoped to get back to negotiations “in the coming months”. Certainly no sense of urgency was conveyed by this remark.
There were additional inputs to the debate over the next step on Iran in the closing months of 2012. Around the time of the elections, the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Iran might initiate bilateral negotiations, albeit lacking any details on whether this would replace the P5+1-Iran format or complement it; whether it would focus on nuclear issues or U.S.-Iran relations broadly defined. In addition, prominent American voices emphasized the need to make one more determined and sincere effort to negotiate with Iran before moving to military force, which seemed to continue the more determined U.S. approach on Iran that characterized 2012. Others emphasized that the Obama administration was serious about not allowing Iran to become a nuclear state, and that if negotiations proved futile, this president would indeed take military action.
In the current public debate on Iran, two basic approaches stand out for dealing with it through negotiations: The step-by-step approach, and what can be called the ‘grand gesture’ approach – namely, offering Iran the best deal, in a ‘take it or leave it’ mode.
The logic of the former approach is that both sides need to build up the confidence of the other, as they slowly and incrementally move toward an agreed-upon settlement.
The second approach takes its cue from the fact that we are at a very late stage in the game, after repeated and unsuccessful attempts to deal with Iran through diplomacy; time has, or is about to, run out. Either Iran finally accepts a deal now, or it leaves the other side no choice but to pronounce negotiations to have failed.
The step-by-step approach unfortunately sidesteps the major constraint to negotiating successfully with Iran: namely, that Iran has no interest (as of yet) in a negotiated deal which would mean giving up on its goal of nuclear weapons, which it can achieve on its own. Further pressure is the only thing that might make Iranian leaders finally alter their calculation, and come to the table genuinely looking for a deal. As such, gradual reduction of the pressure of sanctions – before a final deal is reached – would actually be the best way to ensure failure, not success.
So far, none of these inputs into the debate, or ideas for conducting negotiations, have congealed into a clear U.S. or international strategy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program in 2013. It’s not even clear yet whether a new round of P5+1-Iran talks will take place this month due to Iranian stalling (not for the first time) on setting a date and venue.
What is Obama’s next step? Will he continue with the other P5+1 partners or go it alone? The direction of international efforts for 2013 – and the answer to whether it will indeed be a fateful year – critically depends on U.S. determination and strategy, and whether Obama even wants 2013 to be the year of decision, with all that that implies.
Either we will see a continuation of past failed attempts to negotiate, with increasing Iranian demands to adopt an ever more lenient approach, international actors inching away from the demands they put to Iran in April 2012, and Iran continuing to advance its program. Or we will see a determined U.S. leadership that continues on the path begun in 2012, significantly increasing the pressure on Iran until it comes to the table serious about making a deal. Continued economic pressure and open threats of military consequences are crucial for bringing Iran to this point.
At some point, the administration must also determine the criteria for pronouncing the failure of negotiations and to consider seriously a move to military force. This will not be easy as the Iranians will most likely continue a strategy of not bringing things to a head, in a manner that would compel the West to consider a showdown. A further complication will become apparent when Netanyahu (if re-elected) returns to the scene in the spring or summer, as suggested by his September UN General Assembly speech, with the message that time is running out.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Seyed Hossein Mousavian (a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators) and Mohammad Ali Shabani make the case for understanding two key Iranian concepts – “maslahat” (self-interest or expediency) and “aberu” (“face” as in saving face) – in order to deal more effectively with Iran on the nuclear front. Indeed they note that honor and face-saving will normally trump Iranian self-interest in policymaking, if the two come in conflict.
There is no doubt that such elements of a cultural gap between the two sides will need to be recognized when negotiations begin in earnest. But for now, Iran is not at the point of “maslahat”, or expediency, as far as its nuclear program is concerned. This is not because of wounded pride, but because it wants a military nuclear capability. If further pressure makes Iran interested in a deal, then the international community today well understands Iran’s concerns for honor and dignity, and will no doubt address them in the context of a deal that the international community proposes.
But equally important when that time arrives is for Iran to grasp the importance of concepts that the West holds in high esteem: Like upholding international commitments and negotiating in good faith.
Dr. Emily Landau is director of the Arms Control program at INSS. Shimon Stein (Ambassador ret.) is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Friday militants who attacked the United States and its citizens will hunted down, in the first comments by a senior US officials on the events in Algeria.
He said the US government was working around the clock to ensure the safe return of its citizens caught up in the crisis though officials had no clear information on the fate of Americans. “Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere,” he said. (Reuters)
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks about the hostage situation in Algeria at the start of his remarks during a visit to King’s College in London Jan. 18, 2013. /AP Photo
Updated at 7:44 a.m. ET
LONDON Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday the U.S. is working with the British and Algerian governments to assess what’s happening on the ground at a natural gas complex in the Sahara where Islamic militants are holding hostages from at least 10 countries.
Speaking Friday at Kings College in London, Panetta said the U.S. is “working around the clock to ensure the safe return of our citizens.”
Panetta said the terrorists should be on notice that they’ll find no sanctuary in Algeria or North Africa.
He said anyone who looks to attack the U.S. will have “no place to hide.”
Algerian helicopters and special forces stormed the complex in the remote desert Thursday, leaving the fate of the fighters and many of the captives uncertain.
By nightfall, Algeria’s government said the raid was over. But the government news service later reported that the raid was moving closer to the heart of the natural gas complex Friday.
“This is a large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers Friday. He characterized the situation as fluid and dangerous, saying “part of the threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, a threat still remains in another part.”
Cameron seemed frustrated that Britain was not told about the military operation despite having “urged we be consulted.”
Dueling claims from the military and the militants have muddied the world’s understanding of an event that angered Western leaders as Algeria’s government kept tight control of information.
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Deaths and survivors in Algerian hostage rescue
A total of 18 militants were killed and the plant’s living quarters were secured, according to Algeria’s state news agency, which cited security officials.
At least six people, and perhaps many more, were killed — Britons, Filipinos and Algerians. Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the Ain Amenas plant, families urging them never to return.
But definitive information on casualties remained unclear Friday.
At least one American, Mark Cobb, who had hidden in a meeting room, is known to have gotten out of the gas plant, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports.
One high-ranking source in the U.S. government told CBS News that four Americans had been freed, one of them injured, after the raid.
Dozens more remained unaccounted for: Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians and the fighters themselves.
On Friday, up to around 20 people, most believed to be Americans, were being evacuated from the country, the U.S. African Command said.
Cameron spoke twice to his Algerian counterpart on Thursday, Britain’s Foreign Office said.
“We are not in a position to give further information at this time. But the Prime Minister has advised we should be prepared for bad news,” the office said.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the U.S. government sent a Predator surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya and 800 miles from the Algerian capital, but it could do little more than watch Thursday’s intervention.
Algeria’s army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.
With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.
The militants — led by a Mali-based al Qaeda offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday’s military assault but succeeded in garnering a global audience.
Even violence-scarred Algerians were stunned by the brazen hostage-taking Wednesday, the biggest in northern Africa in years and the first to include Americans as targets. Mass fighting in the 1990s had largely spared the lucrative oil and gas industry that gives Algeria its economic independence and regional weight.
Casualty figures in the Algerian standoff varied widely. The remote location is extremely hard to reach and was surrounded by Algerian security forces — who, like the militants, are inclined to advertise their successes and minimize their failures.
“An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded,” Algeria’s communications minister, Mohand Said Oubelaid, told national media, adding that the “terrorists are multinational,” coming from several different countries with the goal of “destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure.”
The official news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday’s operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in an ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, the APS news agency said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.
APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.
The militants, via a Mauritanian news website, claimed according to the Associated Press that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the helicopter strafing. A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that only seven hostages survived.
President Obama and Cameron spoke on the phone to share their confusion. White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration was “seeking clarity from the government of Algeria.”
Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken. The U.S. government was in contact with American businesses across North Africa and the Middle East to help them guard against the possibility of copycat attacks.
BP, the Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, operate the gas field and a Japanese company, JGC Corp, provides services for the facility.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested the military raid as an act that “threatened the lives of the hostages,” according to a spokesman.
Jean-Christophe Gray, a spokesman for Cameron, said Britain was not informed in advance of the raid.
One Irish hostage managed to escape: electrician Stephen McFaul, who’d worked in North Africa’s oil and natural gas fields off and on for 15 years. His family said the militants let hostages call their families to press the kidnappers’ demands.
“He phoned me at 9 o’clock to say al Qaeda were holding him, kidnapped, and to contact the Irish government, for they wanted publicity. Nightmare, so it was. Never want to do it again. He’ll not be back! He’ll take a job here in Belfast like the rest of us,” said his mother, Marie.
Dylan, McFaul’s 13-year-old son, started crying as he talked to Ulster Television. “I feel over the moon, just really excited. I just can’t wait for him to get home,” he said.
At least one Filipino managed to escape and was slightly injured, the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department said. Spokesman Raul Hernandez said he had no information about any fatalities.
Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila said the 20-odd militants entered the country from nearby Libya in three vehicles, in an operation commanded by extremist mastermind Moktar Belmoktar, who is normally based in Mali.
The militants made it clear that their attack was fallout from the intervention in Mali. One commander, Oumar Ould Hamaha, said they were now “globalizing the conflict” in revenge for the military assault on Malian soil.
France has encountered fierce resistance from the extremist groups in Mali and failed to persuade many allies to join in the actual combat. The Algeria raid could push other partners to act more decisively in Mali — but could also scare away those who are wary of inviting terrorist attacks back home.
Herman Nackaerts, Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaks with media after his arrival from Iran in Vienna, Austria, on Friday (photo credit: AP/Ronald Zak)
VIENNA — UN experts returned from Tehran on Friday without sealing a long-sought deal that would restart a probe of suspicions that Iran worked on atomic arms, adding to doubts that upcoming separate talks between six world powers and the Islamic Republic will succeed in reducing fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Herman Nackaerts, who headed the team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts, said Friday that “Iran did not agree to allow [IAEA] inspectors into the Parchin military facility,” which is one focal point of the nuclear watchdog’s demands.
He said the two sides would meet again in the Iranian capital Feb. 12. But even if those talks make progress, they will come too late for an Iran-six nation meeting tentatively scheduled for the end of this month.
Those nations — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — had looked to the Tehran meeting as providing a signal for Iranian readiness to compromise when they sit down with Tehran. They hope those talks will result in an agreement by the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium to a higher level that could be turned relatively quickly into the fissile core of nuclear arms.
Iran says it is enriching only to make nuclear reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes.
This week Iran’s Foreign Ministry again cited a 2005 fatwa by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that banned nuclear weapons — a declaration the West has dismissed as a stalling tactic.
By compromising on the IAEA probe, Iran could have argued that the onus was now on the six powers to show some flexibility, temper their demands, and roll back US and European sanctions that have hit Iran’s critical oil exports and blacklisted the country from international banking networks.
Although Tehran may hope that agreement to meet again next month with the IAEA shows it is interested in a deal, that may be too little for the six powers, who are growingly frustrated that their own talks with Tehran have barely progressed.
Iran denies any interest in nuclear weapons, asserting that all its nuclear activities are peaceful. It stopped answering questions about allegations that it secretly did research and development work on such arms more than four years ago, saying it had provided enough information to disprove the claims. New attempts to restart the investigation have dragged on for more than a year, with Tehran insisting on a detailed outline of what UN experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency may or may not do in their investigations.
Nackaerts, in brief arrival comments Friday said that “differences remain,” and no deal was reached.
Agency officials say they are willing to continue negotiations but some privately have described the delays as a tactic to further stall the investigations. They are particularly concerned that such delays can hurt their efforts to investigate Parchin.
The IAEA suspects that Iran has conducted live tests of conventional explosives at the site southeast of Tehran that could be used to detonate a nuclear charge and have cited satellite photos indicating a cleanup there.
But critics of the investigations contend that apparent demolition at Parchin is due to a major construction project by the Iranians and does not mean Iran is sanitizing the area.
The agency already visited Parchin twice, the last time in 2005. But back then, it did not have access to satellite imagery that it now uses to pinpoint its search. On Friday, Nackaerts said that his team was again unable to go to the suspect site.
Two diplomats familiar with his team’s negotiations said the main sticking points were Iran’s insistence that it be allowed to look at intelligence from the United States, Israel and other IAEA member nations that the agency is using in its probe and its demands that any investigation not be open-ended.
But the agency cannot share intelligence without permission from the nation that provides it and says it cannot accept limits on its probe because one piece of evidence may lead to a whole new line of questions involving new sites, documents or officials.
The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss confidential information.
All the regional systems in the Middle East are collapsing or on the verge of its destruction.
The rebel movements and revolutions, political fires and armed confrontations in the region, raise many questions about whether the region is preparing itself to redraw the political borders and change powers, or if the process has already started. As I have previously mentioned in my last article, the future of the region depends on the result of the outcome of the Egyptian situation.
If the Islamists were able to tighten their grip not just on power, but also on the joints and mind of the country, and its society, this would mark the collapse of the entire region. On the other hand, if the voice of civilization and rationality is able to find a place guaranteeing some stability in the society, even if it doesn’t take the reins for the moment, this will give a glimmer of hope that the region might be able to find a formula to avoid the collapse and catch up with modernity.
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