britain pretty dispensable too

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan will not let British investigators question suspects detained in Pakistan over the Mumbai terrorist attacks, prime minister Gilani said Monday. Gordon Brown asked for access to the suspects during a visit to Islamabad on Sunday, but Gilani’s office said he turned him down. Gilani said in parliament that he also told Brown that “if there were any proofs, these persons will be prosecuted under the law of Pakistan.” Brown also has asked India to let British police question the only gunman captured alive during the Mumbai attacks. India has made no public response.

USA, the dispensable nation

Bush Excluded by Latin Summit Favoring
China, Russia, Iran Ties (extracts)
Joshua Goodman, Bloomberg, Dec 15 2008

Latin American and Caribbean leaders gathering in Brazil tomorrow will mark a historic occasion: a region-wide summit that excludes the US. From Venezuela to Brazil, governments are expanding military, economic and diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran. Since November, Russian warships have engaged in joint naval exercises with Venezuela, Hu Jintao has signed a free-trade agreement with Peru, and Brazil has invited Ahmadinejad for a state visit. Bolivia’s Evo Morales last month expelled the US Drug Enforcement Administration, alleging that DEA agents were conspiring to overthrow him; Bush dismissed the charges as absurd and suspended Bolivia’s trade privileges. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa has refused to renew the lease on the US’s only military outpost in South America.

The summit reinforces such regional initiatives as the Union of South American Nations, which was formed in May by 12 countries to mediate conflicts such as political violence in Bolivia, bypassing the US-dominated OAS. The US “didn’t ask to be invited,” says Thomas Shannon, top US diplomat for Latin America, although it had discussed with Brazil and Mexico ways the meeting’s agenda could be used during the US-backed Summit of the Americas in April. “We don’t subscribe to the hydraulic theory of diplomacy, that when one country is up, the other is down, that if China and Russia are in the area our influence has somehow waned,” Shannon said in a telephone interview. The fact that “there’s no warfare, weapons proliferation, suicide bombers or jihadists” in Latin America may make its issues “less urgent” though no less important, Shannon said.

China’s trade with the region shot up 12-fold since 1995, to $110b last year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. China’s share of the region’s imports also jumped to 24% from 9.8% in 1990, while the US share shrunk to 34% from 43%. Two years after reaching a bilateral free-trade agreement, China’s demand for copper made it Chile’s biggest export market in 2007, replacing the US. Since 2004, Hu Jintao has spent more time in the region than Bush. In October, China joined the Inter-American Development Bank, with a $350m loan. This month it pledged $10b in loans, to Petroleo Brasileiro SA. Colombia, which is spending $115k a month lobbying the US Congress to approve a stalled free-trade pact, signed an investment treaty last month with China. Obama said he opposed the accord, over concerns that Colombia isn’t doing enough to stamp out violence against labor organizers.

Chavez turned to Russia for at least $4.4b in weapons after the US blocked sales of aircraft parts. Brazil’s Defense Minister Jobim said in Washington this month that his government will only buy weapons from countries that agree to transfer technology for local production. Plans to purchase 36 new fighter jets, in which Boeing’s F-18 is competing for a contract against Saab AB and Dassault Systemes SA, “can only be justified politically if they contribute to national development,” Jobim said. Brazil may sign a deal with France for four nuclear submarines intended to help secure its oil basins in the Atlantic when Sarkozy visits Lula this month. The US plan to reassert its naval presence by reactivating the Fourth Fleet to patrol the Caribbean has triggered negative reactions, ranging from Chavez’s threat to sink the convoys to Lula’s demand for explanations.

united nations? phooey

Israel expels UN rights envoy who compared Israelis to Nazis
Yoav Stern, Haaretz, Dec 15 2008

Professor Richard Falk, a United Nations envoy who once sparked controversy by comparing Israelis to Nazis, has been barred entry to Israel and was put on a plane bound out of the country early today (Dec 15). In March, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council appointed Falk, a Jewish American and professor emeritus at Princeton University, to a six-year term monitoring the human rights situation as UN Special Rapporteur in the Palestinian territories. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in September that it would not allow Falk to enter the country, after the BBC quoted Falk as defending statements he made last year equating Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with Nazi treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Falk told BBC that Israel had been unfairly shielded from international criticism. Israel has also complained that Falk’s mandate as an investigator was confined to human rights violations by Israel toward Palestinians, and did not encompass violations by Palestinians toward Israelis. Falk had been scheduled to hold meetings in Ramallah in the coming days with representatives of many human rights organizations. The Adalah rights organization Monday sent an urgent letter to Interior Minister Meir Shitreet and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, demanding that they lift the ban on Falk, which it called

a severe blow to the rights of the Palestinian civilian population living under Israeli occupation, a population which must be afforded protection by the occupier under international humanitarian law … It is Israel’s obligation as a member of the UN and a signatory to various international human rights conventions to respect the work of UN representatives, to enable their human rights missions, and to assist them in fulfilling their responsibilities without fear of repercussions.

Prior to Falk’s formal assumption of his duties, Israel had in the past allowed Falk to enter the country. This was the first time he had arrived in Israel in his role as Special Rapporteur. The Foreign Ministry said that it has been made clear to Falk in advance that he would be denied entry into Israel, and that Israel would not cooperate with him. Simona Helprin, head of the Foreign Ministry’s human rights department, said

Falk was not invited by Israel, nor did he coordinate the visit, as UN regulations obligated him to do. It is indeed rare that Israel bars entry in this manner, but we cannot accept a situation in which an envoy arrives about whom it is known in advance that he will not carry out his role properly. From Israel’s standpoint, he is not objective.

The council’s previous investigator, John Dugard from South Africa, compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to apartheid, the discriminatory policy of the previous white regime in South Africa toward blacks.

how did i miss this? (hat tip greg)

Ex-managers at plant may have fled, officials say
Tony Leys, des Moines register, Nov 22 2008

Federal agents bearing a fresh indictment arrested one Agriprocessors Inc. supervisor Nov 21, but officials said they suspect that two others have fled to Israel. Former poultry-line managers Hosam Amara and Zeev Levi were named in the new indictment, but their whereabouts were unknown, officials said. A spokesman for the US attorney in Cedar Rapids said investigators suspect both men are now in Israel. Dean Beebe, 51, who was identified as the Postville meatpacking plant’s operations manager, was arrested Nov 21 at the plant, prosecutors said. He faces 10 charges handed up by a grand jury in Cedar Rapids. Beebe was accused of harboring illegal immigrants and helping them gain false documents. Amara, 44, and Levi, whose age was unavailable, each face four similar charges. During a related court hearing on Nov 19, prosecutor Peter Deegan told a judge that he strongly suspected Amara was in Israel. Deegan said Amara contacted associates in the US as recently as this week. Prosecution spokesman Robert Teig said Friday that his office would not discuss what the government is doing to find the two men.

bye bye, ken

Ken Livingstone, who was mayor of London at the time of the de Menezes shooting in July 2005, praised the senior officer in charge of the police surveillance operation that led to de Menezes being shot dead on a train after being mistaken for a fugitive suicide bomber. Livingstone said Cressida Dick was one of the “most talented” officers he had worked with. “She has an incredible record and I hope that her career continues to progress in the police because I have always considered she has commissioner potential,” he said. Livingstone cast doubt on the testimony of witnesses to the shooting who contradicted evidence given by police marksmen that they had shouted “armed police” to de Menezes before shooting him dead with seven bullets. Livingstone said he was “tempted to trust” the marksmen’s testimony even though the jurors had dismissed their claims that a warning had been shouted and that de Menezes had walked towards them in a threatening manner before he was killed. – David Leppard, Times