DHS ‘Daunted’ by Early Results From Cargo Scanning Mandate
By Eleanor Stables, CQ Staff
Early results of a pilot to test 100 percent scanning of U.S.-bound containerized cargo shows both promise and challenges, a top Department of Homeland Security official told lawmakers Tuesday.

Stewart Baker, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy, said while he is “daunted by the prospect of 100 percent scanning in every port” and “there are many challenges,” the department will pursue that goal “aggressively.”

The Sept. 11 commission recommendation law (PL 110-53) mandates the scanning of all U.S.-bound cargo containers at foreign ports by July 2012. The law gives the Homeland Security secretary leeway if he finds the available integrated scanning technology, which includes a combination of imaging — such as X-ray — and radiation detection, is not adequate. The secretary would be permitted to seek extensions of the mandate every two years.

A 2006 port security law (PL 109-347) requires three foreign ports to pilot test scanning 100 percent of U.S.-bound containers using integrated scanning. The law requires the pilots reach “full-scale implementation” by Oct. 13, 2007, a deadline DHS announced Oct. 12 it has met at ports in Southampton, U.K., Port Qasim, Pakistan, and Puerto Cortez, Honduras, under its Secure Freight Initiative.

The 2006 law requires a report on the pilot in April 2008, but lawmakers at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday had preliminary questions. Asked by Norm Coleman, R-Minn., if the pilot program has slowed trade, Baker replied “in general we haven’t had too many slow ups” but “weather-related surprises” such as extreme heat and thunderstorms has created some challenges for equipment. “Very early reads suggest a wide variety of reactions” from shippers regarding interest in using ports participating in the pilot program, Baker said. Some shippers prefer to use the pilot ports to reduce the likelihood of cargo inspections in the United States, while others want to avoid the ports because of increased fees, Baker said.

Among challenges in the pilot, installing equipment has required reconfiguring ports’ layouts, which vary greatly, and even the concrete used at each port can create difficulties if it emits natural radiation that throws off sensors, Baker said. Other complications include figuring out how to scan trans-shipments, in which a container is transferred by crane directly from one ship to another. Each country requires diplomatic agreements and their information technology infrastructure can make transferring the scanning data to U.S. officials in real time “very high” cost, he said in written testimony.

The ports in the United Kingdom and Pakistan participating in the pilot are both managed by the United Arab Emirates-owned port terminal operator DP World, whose plan to take over operations at six U.S. ports was strongly criticized in February 2006 by members of Congress, who saw the deal as a threat to national security. In response, DP World sold its operations at those U.S. ports.

DHS also intends to go beyond the 2006 port security law requirements and conduct scanning pilots at four additional foreign ports that “post different challenges,” Baker said in testimony. “The lessons we are learning from this initial seven-port deployment indicate a lot of promise for these technologies, but at the same time have allowed us to develop a more realistic vision of the challenges inherent in scanning the 11.6 million shipping containers that come to the United States from over 700 ports each year,” he said.

The Sept. 11 commission recommendation law would allow the Homeland Security secretary to seek extensions every two years on the July 2012 mandate for 100 percent screening if he found that two of the following conditions existed:

• The scanning would “significantly impact trade.”

• The necessary scanning equipment was not available.

• The equipment had too high a false alarm rate.

• The equipment could not be integrated as necessary with existing systems.

• The equipment did not have an adequate automatic notification of when cargo required further inspection.

• The equipment could not be installed in foreign ports because the “port does not have the physical characteristics to install such a system.”

Eleanor Stables can be reached at estables@cq.com.

US loses cotton subsidies fight
The US could face billions of dollars in trade sanctions for failing to scrap illegal subsidies paid to American cotton growers.
The World Trade Organisation ruling is a victory for Brazil's cotton industry and for West African states which say the payments harmed their producers.

Brazil hailed the ruling, saying US subsidies had hit world prices, hurting farmers in Brazil and elsewhere.

But US officials believe the payments comply with international trade rules.

Washington is expected to make an appeal against the ruling.

Roberto Azevedo, the Brazilian foreign ministry's trade chief, said that the three-member WTO compliance panel had upheld the findings of its interim report released in July.

"It wasn't changed," he told the Associated Press (AP) news agency just after the ruling was released confidentially to US and Brazilian officials in Geneva.

The office of the US Trade Representative in Washington confirmed the news, saying the US was "very disappointed".

Brazil has reserved the right to impose annual sanctions of up to $4bn on the United States but would probably seek less in retaliatory measures because the US has removed some of the offending subsidies, AP notes.

Oxfam official Gawain Kripke told the BBC that the ruling would also have a beneficial impact on African cotton farmers, if Brazil is successful in reducing American cotton subsidies.

But if they are not then small countries, like Mali or Burkina Faso, wouldn't really hurt American producers very much.

"The truth is that it takes a bigger country to really make the US comply, because the market has to be big enough that the US is worried about it," he said.

October 25, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Time for the Bundesmacht

By ROGER COHEN
KABUL, Afghanistan

Remember the Wehrmacht? It was a formidable fighting force. The modern German army, the Bundeswehr, is also very effective. Thing is, it is reluctant to fight or even place itself in danger.

Given history, that may seem just fine. The United States helped frame the institutions of today’s Germany precisely to guarantee peace over war. But in Afghanistan, where 3,200 Germans serve in a hard-pressed NATO force, a touch of “Bundesmacht” would be welcome.

Afghanistan is a divided country. The south and east are dangerous because Taliban forces are resurgent there; NATO casualties have been significant. The north and west are quieter; peacekeeping prevails. Tensions have grown between front-line alliance states fighting a war and those that are not.

The former group, battling the Taliban in Helmand Province and elsewhere, includes the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. The latter is dominated by Germany, Spain and Italy. The split gives a rough guide to parts of the world that still see military force as inextricable from international security and others that are now functionally pacifist.

“In Afghanistan, NATO solidarity collapses at the point of danger,” said Julian Lindley-French, a military expert at the Netherlands Defense Academy. “There’s no point planning robust operations worldwide if the burden is not shared. A lot of the German troops are little more than heavily armed traffic cops.”

Canada, with about 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, has seen 71 killed. That is about three times the German losses and seven times the Italian. Britain has more than 80 dead, and the United States almost 450. These are eloquent numbers.

The Afghan mission has evolved. The United Nations mandate for the 40,000 NATO troops there speaks of the “maintenance of security” in the interests of “reconstruction and humanitarian efforts.” Nowhere does it mention counterinsurgency or counterterrorism.

But with the Taliban regrouping, and support for it still arriving from Pakistani border areas, security has become inseparable from eliminating insurgents. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the American commander of the NATO force, said “thousands” of Taliban had been killed this year; other officers put the figure around 5,000.

Some of this counterinsurgency toll is the work of U.S. and other special forces in the separate American-run Operation Enduring Freedom — the more secret of the Afghan campaigns. Still, NATO is at war here.

That, however, is a fact Europeans are reluctant to accept, just as the link between slaughter in Madrid, London or Amsterdam and the Afghan-Pakistani terror nexus seems unconvincing to many Europeans floating on an Iraq-comforted wave of moral smugness.

This month, the German Bundestag approved the extension of the mission for another year. But Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has not visited Afghanistan, prefers talk of trendy eco-problems. Tenuous German support for deployment here is tied to maintaining the caveats with which the mission began: the army is here to help with security, reconstruction and good governance from a northern base. Building schools should be more central than killing Taliban. Soft power trumps hard.

General McNeill would not argue with some of that. “There is no solely military solution,” he said. Afghanistan, six years after the toppling of the Taliban, stands at a tipping point: only improved governance, a less corrupt police force and material progress will marginalize the back-to-the-past brigade.

But this underresourced mission, on which NATO’s future hinges, needs switch-hitters. Rigid interpretation of mandates ill serves a changing situation.

William Wood, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, said, “The commitment to Afghanistan should be a full commitment,” and “some of the caveats should be removed.” He continued, “It would certainly be better if we could all cooperate together on precisely the same missions.”

NATO defense ministers, meeting in the Netherlands, are being pressed this week by the U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, to provide more troops and helicopters. Those are needed. But at a deeper level, NATO members must decide whether they are in this together with an equal readiness to face danger.

If, for example, Germany, Italy and Spain were more flexible, some of their troops could be detached to provide a strategic reserve for the stormy south.

One German retort I’ve heard is that it’s no good having the United States demand that its allies fight and die in southern Afghanistan when Washington refuses debate over the role of its pampered friend, Pakistan, in the violence.

That’s a fair point. Still, it’s time to bring on the Bundesmacht and past time for continental Europe to overcome its pacifist mirage and accept that these are dangerous times demanding serious defense budgets and sacrifice.

•

Blog: www.iht.com/passages.

Nicholas D. Kristof is on book leave.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/5044

Annapolis Blues
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
October 24, 2007

The Bush administration's plans to convene a new round of Israeli-Arab diplomacy on Nov. 26 will, I predict, do substantial damage to American and Israeli interests.

As a rule, successful negotiations require a common aim; in management-labor talks, for example, both sides want to get back to work. When a shared premise is lacking, not only do negotiations usually fail, but they usually do more harm than good. Such is the case in the forthcoming Annapolis, Maryland, talks. One side (Israel) seeks peaceful coexistence while the other (the Arabs) seeks to eliminate its negotiating partner, as evidenced by its violent actions, its voting patterns, replies to polls, political rhetoric, media messages, school textbooks, mosque sermons, wall graffiti, and much else.

Damage will be done should the Israeli government make "painful concessions" and get a cold peace or empty promises in return, as has consistently been the case since 1979. This lop-sided outcome would, once again, boost Arab exhilaration and determination to eliminate the Jewish state.

Mahmoud Abbas, Condoleezza Rice, and Ehud Olmert: Will they be celebrating at Annapolis?
Contrarily, should the Israelis resist a joint U.S.-Palestinian position, I see a possible crisis in U.S.-Israel relations of unprecedented proportions – worse than 1975 or even 1957. That's because, in part, the stakes are so high. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that "the United States sees the establishment of a Palestinian state, a two-state solution, as absolutely essential to the future of not just Palestinians and Israelis but also to the Middle East and, indeed, to American interests." If a Palestinian state is "absolutely essential … to American interests," whoever stands in its way will presumably pay a heavy price. As I have been arguing since November 2004, U.S.-Israel relations are hanging by a thread. Annapolis renders them yet more vulnerable to disruption.
Putting aside these deep and inescapable problems, the talks face two practical challenges: On the Palestinian side, "Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas" (as Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick calls him) is an extremely weak reed. "There is no responsible Palestinian leadership that could deliver a newspaper on time in the morning," the Jerusalem Report's Hirsh Goodman notes, "much less a peace agreement that would stand the test of time."

On the Israeli side, Ehud Olmert's prime ministry could crash if his skittish partners abandon the ruling coalition. Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have warned against dividing Jerusalem and other steps. Ehud Barak, head of the Labor Party, reportedly will reject any plan denying freedom of movement to the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni could bolt if a Palestinian "right of return" is not renounced. That a recent poll finds 77 percent of Israelis think their government is "too weak to sign a peace agreement with the Palestinians in Israel's name" increases the chance of defections.

These grim prospects raise the question: Why, after nearly seven years of staying aloof from Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has the Bush administration now succumbed to the bug? Some possible factors.

Iranian threat: Rice sees an opportunity for U.S. diplomacy in a Middle East re-alignment resulting from Iranian aggression, both actual (Hizbullah, Hamas) and future (nuclear weapons).
Inaction worse: If nothing is done, Kadima's already dismal standing in the polls will continue to fall and Fatah's tenuous hold over the West Bank will erode. The prospect of Likud and Hamas succeeding Olmert and Abbas pleases the Bush administration no more than it does those two men.
Legacy: Zbigniew Brzezinski has articulated the foreign policy establishment's hopes for Annapolis and its dim view of Rice: "She realizes that her legacy right now is really very poor. If she can pull this off, she will be seen as a real historical figure."
Civil rights: Rice believes in a bizarre analogy between West Bank Palestinians and southern Blacks.
Messianism: Both George W. Bush and Rice seem to view themselves as destined to resolve Arab-Israeli hostilities. One interlocutor recounts that "she believes this is the time for the Israeli and Palestinian conflict to end."
Rice's comment echoes both George H.W. Bush's 1991 statement that "the time has come to put an end to Arab-Israeli conflict" and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's 2005 announcement of his intent "to resolve this problem once and for all." But, as Irving Kristol has memorably observed, "Whom the gods would destroy they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict."

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/5044

Turkish Planes Bomb Rebel Positions

Oct 24 09:43 AM US/Eastern
By SELCAN HACAOGLU
Associated Press Writer

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships reportedly attacked positions of Kurdish rebels along its rugged border with Iraq on Wednesday, as Turkey's military stepped up its anti-rebel operations.
Several F-16 warplanes loaded with bombs took off from an air base in southeastern city of Diyarbakir, private Dogan news agency and local reporters said. The warplanes and helicopter gunships bombed mountain paths in Turkey used by rebels to infiltrate from neighboring Iraq, Anatolia reported.

On Sunday, Turkish helicopter gunships have penetrated into Iraqi territory and troops have shelled suspected Kurdish rebel positions across the border in Iraq, a government official said Wednesday.

U.S.-made Cobra and Super Cobra attack helicopters chased Kurdish rebels three miles into Iraqi territory on Sunday but returned to their bases in Turkey after a rebel ambush killed 12 soldiers near the border, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He also said Turkish artillery units shelled rebel positions as recently as Tuesday night but did not say which areas were targeted.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)—Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships reportedly attacked positions of Kurdish rebels along its rugged border with Iraq on Wednesday, as Turkey's military stepped up its anti-rebel operations.

Several F-16 warplanes loaded with bombs took off from an air base in southeastern city of Diyarbakir, private Dogan news agency and local reporters said. The warplanes and helicopter gunships bombed mountain paths in Turkey used by rebels to infiltrate from neighboring Iraq, Anatolia reported.