Missile Fantasies
The administration's rush to deploy missile defenses in Europe brings a sinister response from Russia.
Sunday, February 25, 2007; B06

THE EMERGING debate over the deployment of U.S missile defenses in Central Europe is based on a series of false pretenses. The Bush administration pretends that it is sensible to invest $225 million next year in preparing to install ground-based interceptors and radar systems in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against an attack from Iran, even though the glitch-plagued defense system hasn't yet proved workable and Iran doesn't have a missile that could reach the United States or Europe. The Polish and Czech governments, eager to deepen strategic cooperation with the United States, pretend that they will benefit from hosting the systems, even though they have little reason to worry about threats from the Middle East and the Bush administration has been slow to reward their past collaboration in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The prize for cynical posturing, nevertheless, goes to Russia, which in the past few days has suddenly advanced a claim that it knows to be false: that the deployment of the antimissile system would weaken the Russian nuclear deterrent. As Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals know, even if U.S. interceptors in Poland could function according to the Bush administration's scheme -- which they can't, and won't anytime soon -- they would not be capable of stopping a single Russian intercontinental ballistic missile, much less the massive force that remains at Moscow's disposal. U.S. officials have met with Russian counterparts on at least 10 occasions to explain this.

Mr. Putin and his generals nevertheless are threatening that Russia might respond to the U.S. missile defenses by redeploying intermediate-range missiles that were banned from Europe by a 1987 treaty. An even more sinister comment came Monday from the commander of Russian missile forces, who said that if Poland and the Czech Republic hosted the U.S. rockets and radars, they would be targeted by Russia's strategic missiles. This crude attempt at intimidating Moscow's former Soviet satellites predictably produced a defiant response from the two governments and probably eliminated any domestic opposition to an otherwise questionable venture. As Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg put it, "The Czechs will now think the shield is even more necessary."

The Bush administration's pushing of this initiative, which would not result in the deployment of any interceptors in Europe before 2010, is probably motivated by the same political impulses that have driven missile defense since 2001. Administration officials are determined to create a program so literally set in concrete that it can't be stopped or reversed by future presidents -- as was the missile defense program of President George H.W. Bush. Whether the technology actually works or a threat exists that justifies the rush never seems to matter much.

Such sandbagging justifies close scrutiny by Congress of the Pentagon's $10 billion funding request for missile defense in next year's budget, including the funds for Poland and the Czech Republic. But the Russian gamesmanship is more worrisome. On the opposite page today, Mr. Putin's foreign minister denies any interest in confrontation. But at the same time Mr. Putin may use the U.S. defense program as an excuse to revive a major piece of the Soviet nuclear arsenal with which to threaten NATO members in Europe. It's hard to think of a quicker way to revive the Cold War.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

March 17, 2007

By EDWARD WONG
NAJAF, Iraq — While the Bush administration works to stop Iran from meddling in Iraq, Iranian air-conditioners fill Iraqi appliance stores, Iranian tomatoes ripen on the windowsills of kitchens here and legions of white Iranian-made Peugeots sit in Iraqi driveways.

Some Iraqi cities, including Basra, the southern oil center, buy or plan to buy electricity from Iran. The Iraqi government relies on Iranian companies to bring gasoline from Turkmenistan to alleviate a severe shortage. Iraqi officials are reviewing an application by Iran to open a branch of an Iranian bank in Baghdad, and Iran has offered to lend Iraq $1 billion.

The economies of Iraq and Iran, the largest Shiite-majority countries in the world, are becoming closely integrated, with Iranian goods flooding Iraqi markets and Iraqi cities looking to Iran for basic services.

After the two countries fought a devastating war from 1980 to 1988, Saddam Hussein maintained tight control over cross-border trade, but commerce has exploded since the American-led invasion of 2003.

Much of the money is heading in one direction, though: Iraq is becoming dependent on imports because industries here have been ravaged by the economic sanctions of the 1990s and the current sectarian violence. Reconstruction and security have lagged so far behind the expectations of ordinary Iraqis that cheap goods from Iran and neighboring countries often provide the only comforts in their lives.

“What is happening in Iraq at the moment is a lot of trade, but it’s almost all one-way trade,” Barham Salih, the Iraqi deputy prime minister for finance, said of the country’s economic ties with Iran and other neighbors. “If you take oil away, there’s a lot of imbalance in this.”

Iraqi leaders from the Shiite bloc currently in power say political and economic ties with Iran, which is governed by Shiite Persians, will inevitably strengthen. As driving factors, they cite the hostility of Sunni Arab nations to a Shiite-run Iraq and the ambivalence of the White House toward the devout Shiite parties here.

“If the Shiites do not feel protected, if they feel what they’ve achieved can’t be maintained, much of the leadership will have to work with Iran,” said Sami al-Askari, a Shiite legislator who advises Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, himself a religious Shiite with close ties to Iran. “The Arabs and the Americans are saying Iran is bad, but it’s the only recourse.”

According to one commonly cited statistic, trade between Iraq and Iran has grown by 30 percent a year since the 2003 invasion. But American officials here say no accurate numbers are available because Iran refuses to release complete figures.

Statistics from the American Embassy’s economic section show that Syria accounted for 22 percent of Iraq’s imports in 2005, and Turkey 21 percent. Iran, which has the longest border with Iraq, would be likely to fall in that range, officials said. The C.I.A. World Factbook estimates Iraq’s total imports in 2006 at $20.8 billion.

Iran has divulged a few trade numbers. Tehran told the government of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region that trade with the region amounted to more than $1 billion in 2006, said Hassan Baqi, president of the chamber of commerce in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, who is a Kurd, said that provincial governments had been making their own commercial deals with Iranian interests, but that lately he had started ordering them to go through the Foreign Ministry.

“We have a number of agreements with Iran on energy, on trade, on oil, on visitors — that is, pilgrims — which is very important to them,” he said.

Here in the Shiite religious heartland in the south, Iraqis have profited handsomely from the new economic ties with Iran. This is particularly noticeable in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, where shrines draw Iranian pilgrims by the thousands each month.

The headquarters here of revered Shiite clerics like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani collect enormous dues from satellite offices in Iran. That money, too, ends up in the local economy.

The Iranian government gives Najaf $20 million a year to build and improve tourist facilities for pilgrims, said Asaad Abu Galal, the governor of Najaf. Mr. Abu Galal, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an influential Iraqi political party founded in Iran, said Karbala got roughly $3 million a year. In addition, each Iranian pilgrim spends up to $1,000 on hotels, food and souvenirs.

Provincial tourism officials estimate that more than 22,000 Iranian pilgrims visit Najaf each month and that at least 10,000 travel to Karbala. Most come on package tours.

Officials would like to see more, but they say many are being held back by visa restrictions and security concerns. “We must increase the number of pilgrims,” Mr. Abu Galal said.

The close ties with Iran in the south have drawn scrutiny from the United States, Iraqi officials say. At one point, Najaf Province came close to hiring an Iranian company to build an airport, but the deal was scuttled at the last minute by the Transportation Ministry in Baghdad, officials with the Supreme Council said. They suspect the United States of putting pressure on the ministry.

“The Americans don’t want to bring Iranians to Najaf,” Mr. Abu Galal said. “The Americans want to control the sky.”

A senior American official in Baghdad declined to comment specifically on the Najaf airport project, but said the Americans did look carefully at major business exchanges with Iran. “We pay a lot of attention,” he said. “We don’t want people working for the intelligence services to get contracts for projects here in Iraq.”

Tensions between the United States and Iran have increased tremendously in recent months. The White House, saying Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons, has urged the United Nations to impose harsh sanctions. It has also accused Iran of exporting deadly explosives to Shiite militias in Iraq.

But the senior American official said the growth in trade between Iraq and Iran was generally positive. “I wouldn’t link the rise in trade with Iran with Iranian political influence,” said the official, who requested anonymity, following diplomatic protocol. “As long as this is normal economic activity that doesn’t have security implications, it’s a good step.”

Speaking of Iraq’s Shiite leaders, he added: “I think there’s a little bit of a tendency for them to want to deal with Iran. For many of these individuals Iran is more or less a frame of reference. I think that’s something we have to accept.”

Border cities have turned to Iran to help alleviate chronic electricity shortages. If construction on transmission wires is finished by the summer, Basra, the country’s second-largest city, will soon have the capacity to draw 250 megawatts of power from Iran at 5.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, said Karim Wahid, the Iraqi electricity minister.

Diyala Province, which borders Iran east and north of Baghdad, already imports 120 megawatts at 5.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, he said.

Halabja, a Kurdish city, has spent $1.8 million to develop the infrastructure to import electricity from Iran but has not begun receiving power, Kurdish officials say.

Iranian goods have proliferated throughout Iraq. White Peugeot sedans that began rolling out of Iranian factories in 2005 are sold everywhere in Iraq. In the far south, Basra imports $45 million worth of goods from Iran each year, including items as varied as carpets, construction materials, fish and spices, said Muhammad al-Waeli, the governor of Basra Province. Each day, 100 to 150 commercial trucks drive from Iran to Iraq at the nearby Shalamcha border crossing.

In downtown Baghdad, piles of Iranian air-conditioners with brand names like Sona, Jayan and Aysan Khazar sit next to Chinese television sets on sidewalks outside appliance stores.

The blue-and-white air-conditioners use a water-cooling technology and can run on generator power, making them popular with electricity-starved Iraqis. They cost $60 to $140 and came on the market only after the fall of Mr. Hussein.

Mahmoud Abu Amir, the owner of a shop called Diamond of the Gulf, sat at his desk sipping chai, a spiced tea, one afternoon as men unloaded Iranian air-conditioners from a truck. Mr. Abu Amir said he had more than 2,000 in stock. “The transportation fees from Iran are much cheaper than from, say, China,” he said.

Books published in Iran now fill the shelves of bookshops across Iraq. The books are cheap because the Iranian government subsidizes printing costs by up to 60 percent, said Safaa Dawood Salman, the owner of a cramped bookshop on Baghdad’s famous Mutanabi Street, which was devastated by a suicide car bombing on March 5.

“The books are cheaper than before,” said Shayma Said, 29, as she handed over a 10,000-dinar note — about $8 — to Mr. Salman to pay for a hardcover Iranian-printed book on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. “I want to buy the three other books in this collection when I save up enough money.”

Facing a severe shortage of doctors, because so many have fled the country, Iraqis increasingly look to Iran for medical care. Iraqis run hotels in Tehran for incoming patients, and Iraqis able to speak Persian offer their services as translators for $5 a day.

A resident of Baghdad named Afrah said her mother had been going blind, so the family packed and flew to Tehran, where her mother had surgery to mend her badly damaged retina. Afrah received medical treatment for her own eye problems.

Afterward, they made a pilgrimage to Qum, a Shiite holy city. The monthlong trip to Iran cost the family $6,000.

“We have friends who went there and had successful operations, and that encouraged us to go there,” said Afrah, 47, allowing only her first name to be printed because of security concerns. “We were very comfortable. There were so many Iraqis there.”

Damien Cave, Alissa J. Rubin and Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Yerevan Adham from Halabja, Iraq.

By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 16, 2007 – Tribal leaders are cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi security forces to reduce terrorist-staged violence in Diyala province, senior U.S. and Iraqi military officials said today.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have urged prominent sheikhs in Diyala province "to work with their people to become part of the security process and part of the political process (to) drive a wedge (between) the terrorists and any auxiliary support or direct support that they may receive from the people," Army Col. David W. Sutherland, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, said from his headquarters in Baqubah during a teleconference with reporters.
Baqubah is the capital city of Diyala and is located about 125 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The sheikhs were attentive during recent discussions, said Maj. Gen. Shakir Halail Husain, commander of the 5th Iraqi Army Division, and Sutherland's partner.
"We explained to them that the coalition forces and the Iraqi security forces are working to serve them, and the government of Diyala is working to provide food and fuel for them," the Iraqi general commented through an interpreter at the news conference.
Those talks are paying off. Citizens in Muqdadiyah, Baqubah and Balad Ruz have provided tips that have resulted in the arrest of several terrorists, the Iraqi general said.
"Yesterday, we arrested 17 of them," he said, "and we killed six terrorists in the same area."
Sectarian violence in Diyala province, as measured by the number of murders and kidnappings, has decreased 70 percent in the period between July 2006 and February, Sutherland noted. However, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces in the province have gone up, the colonel said.
This situation indicates "the terrorists are trying to disrupt the operations by coalition forces working with the Iraqi security forces," Sutherland said.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda in Iraq has changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq in order to posture as an Iraqi resistance group, the colonel said. However, "this is the same foreign-led group dedicated to death and destruction," he pointed out.
Sutherland said his five-battalion force was recently reinforced by the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, which is equipped with Stryker vehicles. American soldiers in Diyala province work alongside Iraqi 5th Division-troops and 10,000 Iraqi police, he said.
And, recent U.S.-Iraqi anti-terrorist operations conducted in Balad Ruz, Katoon and Muqdadyidah have been successful, the Iraqi general noted.
"We have scored big success in these areas," he said. "We have improved security in Diyala province."

Does Prime Minister Erdo?an Accept Turkish Secularism?

Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007

On March 14, 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, leader of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP), became Turkey's prime minister.[1] While the AKP makes no secret of its Islamic roots, it describes itself as a conservative party that fully accepts Turkey's secular system of government.[2] "A political party cannot have a religion, only individuals can," Erdo?an explained.[3]

Some U.S. officials accept such assurances. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried, for example, has said that he sees the AKP as the Islamic equivalent of a European Christian Democratic party.[4] But is the AKP merely the Muslim version of a Christian Democratic party? Is Erdo?an committed to democracy and Western values?

He has sought to reverse the ban on head scarves in state institutions, called for a "change of mindset" in the judiciary,[5] embraced Hamas, and endorsed an Al-Qaeda financier.[6] He has sought to equate religious school education with that of secular schools,[7] and his political party has worked to enforce Islamic alcohol bans in some municipalities.[8] On April 12, 2006, President Ahmed Necdet Sezer warned, "Religious fundamentalism has reached alarming proportions. Turkey's only guarantee against this threat is its secular order."[9]

Early in his career while mayor of Istanbul (1994-98), Erdo?an was explicit in support of an Islamist agenda. As he considers a presidential run, a juxtaposition of statements made early in his career with his actions as premier suggest that while his style may have changed, his agenda has not. Far from being just the Muslim equivalent of a Christian Democrat, Erdo?an remains an unabashed Islamist, raising the question: Will 2007 be the year Turkey elects an Islamist president?—The Editors

Separation of Mosque and State

The Turkish Republic is founded on the notion of the separation of mosque and state.

"We will turn all our schools into ?mam Hatips [religious schools]"—Cumhuriyet, Sept. 9, 1994
"Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shari‘a."— Milliyet, Nov. 21, 1994
"I am the imam of Istanbul."—Hürriyet, Jan. 8, 1995
"The police operations against the turban are comical."—Sabah, May 5, 1995
"I support the proposal to inaugurate the parliament by reciting the Qu'ran."—Milliyet, Jan. 8, 1996
Belittling of Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the father of modern Turkey and the symbol of Turkish secularism.

"One ought not to stand [in respect, stiff] like a straw on Atatürk's commemoration events."—Hürriyet, May 12, 1994
"There was much ado about nothing on November 10 [the commemoration of Atatürk's death]—Hürriyet, Nov. 14, 1994
Disapproval of Western Culture

Turkish governments traditionally pride themselves on their embrace of and participation in European culture.

"I am against the [Western] New Year's celebrations."—Sabah, Dec. 19, 1994
"Alcohol should be banned."—Hürriyet, May 1, 1996
"Swimsuit commercials are lustful exploitations."— Hürriyet, Mar. 6, 1996
[1] Turkish Daily News (Ankara), Feb. 8, 2003.
[2] Turkish Daily News, Oct. 23, 2003; Ak?am (Ankara), Sept. 18, 2006.
[3] The New York Times, May 11, 2003.
[4] Remarks by Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, at American Enterprise Institute conference, Gdansk, Poland, Aug. 30, 2005; Daniel Fried, Foreign Press Center briefing, Washington, D.C., Nov. 9, 2005.
[5] Turkish Daily News, Feb. 15, 2006.
[6] Sabah (Istanbul), Sept. 22, 2006.
[7] Turkish Daily News, Feb. 10, 2006.
[8] Associated Press, Dec. 15, 2005.
[9] Turkish Daily News, Apr. 14, 2006.

March 16, 2007
A New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks on U.S.

By SOUAD MEKHENNET and MICHAEL MOSS
TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs.

In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. “Allah-u akbar,” the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall.

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda.

He has solid terrorist credentials. A former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia who was killed last summer, Mr. Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia along with Mr. Zarqawi in the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, Laurence Foley. Just four months after arriving here from Syria, Mr. Abssi has a militia that intelligence officials estimate at 150 men and an arsenal of explosives, rockets and even an antiaircraft gun.

During a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Abssi displayed his makeshift training facility and his strident message that America needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. “The only way to achieve our rights is by force,” he said. “This is the way America deals with us. So when the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave.”

Mr. Abssi’s organization is the image of what intelligence officials have warned is the re-emergence of Al Qaeda. Shattered after 2001, the organization founded by Osama bin Laden is now reforming as an alliance of small groups around the world that share a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam but have developed their own independent terror capabilities, these officials have said. If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has acknowledged directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a string of other terror plots, represents the previous generation of Qaeda leaders, Mr. Abssi and others like him represent the new.

American and Middle Eastern intelligence officials say he is viewed as a dangerous militant who can assemble small teams of operatives with acute military skill.

“Guys like Abssi have the capability on the ground that Al Qaeda has lost and is looking to tap into,” said an American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Abssi has shown himself to be a canny operator. Despite being on terrorism watch lists around the world, he has set himself up in a Palestinian refugee camp where, because of Lebanese politics, he is largely shielded from the government. The camp also gives him ready access to a pool of recruits, young Palestinians whose militant vision has evolved from the struggle against Israel to a larger Islamic cause.

Intelligence officials here say that he has also exploited another source of manpower: they estimate he has 50 militants from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries fresh from fighting with the insurgency in Iraq.

The officials say they fear that he is seeking to establish himself as a terror leader on the order of Mr. Zarqawi. “He is trying to fill a void and do so in a high-profile manner that will attract the attention of supporters,” the American intelligence official said.

Mr. Abssi has recently taken on a communications adviser, Abu al-Hassan, 24, a journalism student who dropped out of college to join Fatah al Islam. His current project: a newsmagazine aimed at attracting recruits.

The arc of Mr. Abssi’s life shows the allure of Al Qaeda for Arab militants. Born in Palestine, from which he and family were evicted by the Israelis, Mr. Abssi, 51, said he stopped studying medicine to fly planes for Yasir Arafat. He then staged attacks on Israel from his own base in Syria. After he was imprisoned in Syria for three years on terrorism charges, he said he broadened his targets to include Americans in Jordan.

The Times arranged to speak with Mr. Abssi through a series of intermediaries, who helped set up meetings in his headquarters at the Nahr al Bared refugee camp. Mr. Abssi, a soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, was interviewed in a bare room inside a small cinderblock building on the edge of a field where training was under way. About 80 men were in the compound, performing various tasks, including one who manned an antiaircraft gun. As Mr. Abssi spoke, two aides took notes, while a third fiddled with a submachine gun. A bazooka leaned against the wall behind him.

In a 90-minute interview, his first with Western reporters, Mr. Abssi said he shared Al Qaeda’s fundamentalist interpretation and endorsed the creation of a global Islamic nation. He said killing American soldiers in Iraq was no longer enough to convince the American public that its government should abandon what many Muslims view as a war against Islam.

“We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn’t it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?” Mr. Abssi said. “It is our right to hit them in their homes the same as they hit us in our homes.

“We are not afraid of being named terrorists,” he added. “But I want to ask, is someone who detonates one kilogram a terrorist while someone who detonates tons in Arab and Islamic cities not a terrorist?”

When asked, Mr. Abssi refused to say what his targets might be.

[This week, Lebanese law enforcement officials said they arrested four men from Fatah al Islam in Beirut and other Lebanese cities and were charging them with the February bombing of two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians. Mr. Abssi denies any involvement and says he has no plans to strike within Lebanon.]

Fertile Soil for Militants

Inside the Palestinian camp, Mr. Abssi seems to be building his operation with little interference.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, says the government does not have authority to enter a Palestinian camp — even though Mr. Abssi is now wanted in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria on terrorism charges.

To enter the camps, he said, “We would need an agreement from other Arab countries.” He said that instead the government was tightening its cordon around the camp to make it harder for Mr. Abssi or his men to slip in and out.

Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have long been fertile ground for militancy, particularly focused on the fight against Israel. But militants in those camps now have a broader vision. In Ain el Hilwe camp, an hour’s drive south of Beirut, another radical Sunni group, Asbat al Ansar, has been sending fighters to Iraq since the start of the war, its leaders acknowledged in interviews.

“The U.S. is oppressing a lot of people,” the group’s deputy commander, who goes by the name of Abu Sharif, said in a room strewn with Kalashnikovs. “They are killing a lot of innocents, but one day they are getting paid back.” A leading sheik in the camp, Jamal Hatad, has a television studio that broadcasts 12 hours a day with shows ranging from viewer call-ins to video of Mr. bin Laden’s statements and parents proudly displaying photographs of their martyred children.

“I was happy,” Hamad Mustaf Ayasin, 70, recalled in hearing last fall that his 35-year-old son, Ahmed, had died in Iraq fighting American troops near the Syrian border. “The U.S. is against Muslims all over the world.”

On the streets of the camp, one young man after another said dying in Iraq was no longer their only dream.

“If I had the chance to do any kind of operation against anyone who is against Islam, inside or outside of the United States, I would do the operation,” said Mohamed, an 18-year-old student, who declined to give his last name.

Hussein Hamdan, 19, who keeps a poster of Osama bin Laden in the bedroom he shares with two sisters, is a street tough attuned to religious fundamentalism. He dropped out of school at age 10, spent 18 months in jail on assault charges, and in March — “just to make a statement,” he said — took a razor and repeatedly slashed both his forearms. “I want to become a mujahedeen and go to jihad in any country where there are Jews or Americans to fight against them,” he said.

Lebanon has increasingly become a source of terror suspects. One of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from Lebanon, as did six men charged with planting bombs on German trains last summer. Two other Lebanese men and a Palestinian were among those accused last spring of plotting to blow up the PATH train tunnels beneath the Hudson River.

The Killing of Innocents

Mr. Abssi said he derived much of his spiritual guidance from Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Islamic scholar. A recent study by the Defense Department’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y., listed Mr. Bukhari among the 20 Islamic scholars who had greater influence today among militant Arabs than Mr. bin Laden.

“Originally, the killing of innocents and children was forbidden,” Mr. Abssi said. “However, there are situations in which the killing of such is permissible. One of these exceptions is those that kill our women and children.”

“Osama bin Laden does make the fatwas,” Mr. Abssi said, using the Arabic word for Islamic legal pronouncements. “Should his fatwas follow the Sunnah,” or Islamic law, he said, “we will carry them out.”

His closest known association with Mr. Zarqawi involved the killing of Mr. Foley. In previously undisclosed court records obtained by The Times, Jordanian officials say that Mr. Abssi helped organize the assassination, working closely with Mr. Zarqawi.

A senior administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, Mr. Foley was leaving his home in Amman on Oct. 28, 2002, when he was shot at close range by a man who had hidden in his garage. Seven bullets from a 7-millimeter pistol struck his neck, face, chest and stomach, the Jordanian government said in court papers.

Eleven men were charged in the case, and two men have been hanged, including the gunman, Salem Sa’ad Salem bin Saweed. According to the court records, Mr. Saweed met Mr. Abssi five years earlier in Syria, where they became friends and “arranged military operations against American and Jewish interests in Jordan.” Mr. Zarqawi provided the $10,000, along with $32,000 more for additional attacks, the court papers say. But in meeting Mr. Saweed, Mr. Zarqawi told him to work through Mr. Abssi, who helped the gunman with money, logistics and training in weapons and explosives.

Mr. Saweed and an accomplice in Jordan chose Mr. Foley as a target by watching his neighborhood for cars bearing diplomatic plates.

A Valid Target

In the interview with The Times, Mr. Abssi acknowledged working with Mr. Zarqawi. He said he played no part in Mr. Foley’s death, but considered him a valid target. “I don’t know what Foley’s role was but I can say that any person that comes to our region with a military, security or political aim, then he is a legitimate target,” he said.

[Mr. Foley’s widow, Virginia Foley, said Wednesday that she thought her husband’s killers had either been killed or jailed. “I’m appalled and surprised that there is still somebody out there,” she said, when told of Mr. Abssi’s current activities.]

The American intelligence official said the prosecution of Mr. Foley’s killers was under the control of the Jordanians.

At the time of Mr. Foley’s death, Mr. Abssi had been in jail for two months, having been arrested on charges of plotting attacks inside Syria. He ultimately served three years in prison, says Mounir Ali, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information.

Mr. Ali denied recent reports in Lebanon that Syria sent Mr. Abssi to that country to stir trouble there. “This accusation is baseless,” Mr. Ali said. “After he was set free he restarted his terrorist activities by training elements in favor of Al Qaeda.”

He said Syria sought his arrest in late January, but discovered Mr. Abssi had “disappeared, and no one knew where he went.”

Late last November, Mr. Abssi moved into the Palestinian camp here, seized three compounds held by a secular group, Fatah al Intifada, raised his group’s black flag, and issued a declaration saying he was bringing religion to the Palestinian cause. Mr. Abssi reappeared on Jordan’s radar in January when police had a three-hour battle with two suspected terrorists in the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, killing one of the men. Authorities say they learned that Mr. Abssi had sent the men. A short while later, Lebanese authorities picked up two Saudi Arabian men leaving Mr. Abssi’s camp, and learned both men had fought in Iraq. Two more men were found leaving the camp in February, General Rifi said.

General Rifi said officials were trying to learn as much as possible about Mr. Abssi’s operation from sources and surveillance, but it was clear that their information was limited. In questioning people, security officials are showing a photograph of Mr. Abssi that is 30 years old, though it displays his most distinctive feature — two moles, one on each side of his nose.

The apparent inability to apprehend Mr. Abssi provokes fury in the men who are hunting him. A security official in one of the countries where he is wanted scowled when asked why Mr. Abssi was operating freely: “I can go lots of places to grab people, but I can’t grab him.”

In the interview with The Times, Mr. Abssi said he had been largely warmly received in the Palestinian camp, and that he was optimistic about his cause. “One of the reasons for choosing this camp is our belief that the people here are close to God as they feel the same suffering as our brothers in Palestine,” he said.

“Today’s youth, when they see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq, it enthuses them to join the way of the right and jihad,” he said. “These people have now started to adopt the right path.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, and Margot Williams from New York.