AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO BE CHASTENED BY IRAQ?:

US 'aiming at Syria regime change' (Anton La Guardia, 05/10/2005, Daily Telegraph)

Israel predicted yesterday that America would impose fresh sanctions on Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Shaul Mofaz, the defence minister, said he believed sanctions would follow publication of a United Nations report expected to implicate senior Syrian officials in the murder of Rafik al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

"I won't be surprised if Syria gets a red card," Mr Mofaz told Israel radio. "[The United States] will take actions against Syria, beginning with economic sanctions and moving on to others, that will make it clear to the Syrians that their policies do not comply with UN decisions, the US's new world order or the prohibition of sovereign states to support terrorism."

On Saturday, President George W Bush and his national security council are to discuss America's options on Syria, ranging from tightening existing limited sanctions to military action.

Dictatorships don't get sovereignty rights.

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Gulf factor key to PM’s Iran vote decision (K.P. NAYAR, 9/25/05, Telegraph of India)

New Delhi acquitted itself reasonably well in the first significant challenge to its global standing and diplomacy since the world acknowledged India as an emerging global power worthy of being in the big league in the 21st century.

The handling of the challenge — its vote on whether Iran’s nuclear programme should be referred to the UN Security Council — was all the more commendable because its outcome defied domestic political expediency.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally cleared the decision to vote with the US and the so-called EU-3, namely Germany, France and the UK, in favour of referring Iran at an unspecified date to the Security Council on suspicions of pursuing a programme to acquire nuclear weapons in the full knowledge that the vote would spark a furore among Left parties and to a lesser extent in the BJP.

In deciding to vote with the West and not abstaining along with Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa, what weighed with the Prime Minister was the absolute imperative for India to secure its interests in the Gulf and not the desire to protect the July 18, 2005, Indo-US nuclear agreement, according to diplomats engaged in the negotiations that led to the IAEA resolution yesterday.

Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush’s term ends. In 2002, a year before the US invaded Iraq, high-ranking Americans had similarly shared their definitive vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, making it clear that they would change the regime in Baghdad.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 4, 2005 10:41 PM