Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

Russia and U.S. cheer cooperation on missile sting

Russia and the United States yesterday hailed cooperation between old Cold War rivals — the FBI and former KGB — for establishing a new era of cooperation in the war on terror through the joint arrest of an international arms dealer.

Sergei Ignatchenko, the chief spokesman of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSS), the successor agency to the old Soviet KGB, called Tuesday's arrest of a British arms dealer a "new stage in the development of our cooperation with the special services."

"[This] has been carried our for the first time since the end of the Cold War when our special services fought against each other," Mr. Ignatchenko said in Washington.

Hemant Lakhani, a Briton of Indian descent, was arrested in Newark,on Tuesday while attempting the sale of a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile to an undercover FBI agent whom he had met in Russia. Such missiles could be used for shooting down low-flying commercial airlines.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday in an interview with the Spanish-language Univision TV network: "The arrests that took place yesterday were very significant because the United States and the Russian Federation worked together to stop this kind of traffic in arms.

"Small arms, surface-to-air missiles — all of these in the hands of terrorists put us all at risk. ... And that is why the world must work together. All of us have a part to play in this campaign against terrorism, and I am pleased this time it worked and we caught them. I think we are making progress, and we'll be making more progress in the months and years ahead."

Federal authorities in the United States described the undercover sting operation as "unprecedented," saying it included agents from the FBI, the Russian FSS and British intelligence officers.

The operation lasted for more than 18 months, beginning when Mr. Lakhani was spotted in St. Petersburg and Moscow attempting to buy black market weapons.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security set up a team of undercover agents to pose as Muslim extremists, including an FBI agent who arranged to buy and take delivery of the SA 18 Igla missile.

An FBI agent, who had received permission from Russian President Vladimir Putin to conduct undercover operations in Russia, made contact with Mr. Lakhani to negotiate the sale.

The agent told the British arms dealer he wanted something that could be used to shoot down a commercial jetliner in the United States, authorities said.

Despite the operation's success, there is still plenty of distrust between the secret services of the two former enemies.

The Russians are not very happy with the cooperation they have now, said Nikolai Sokov, from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

"The U.S. accepts the information the Russians give, but they do not give anything back. It is a one-way street," he said.

Analysts say it will be difficult to halt trade in shoulder-fired missiles.

"There is so much hardware in Russia that the occasions for temptation are irresistible," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org.

With a global inventory of these missiles — such as Strela, Igla, Stinger and others — of up to a half-million, it is difficult to track them, Mr. Pike said.

In July, eight shoulder-fired missiles were reported missing from a depot in St. Petersburg, and Muslim rebels from the Russian province of Chechnya were suspected.

Iraq Seen as Terror Target


Sep 19... Anti-Western extremists have been infiltrating and may be looking to attack symbols of America and its allies, officials say

The powerful car bomb that ripped through the Jordanian Embassy here last week marked a turning point for Iraq, suggesting that the country has become a terrorist target and raising the specter of spiraling violence as anti-Western extremists seize the opportunity to attack symbols of America and its supporters.

Although responsibility for the blast has yet to be determined, the sophisticated attack on a key U.S. ally without regard for civilian casualties brought into focus that the United States may be facing more than angry remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, which U.S. officials have blamed for a series of shooting and grenade attacks on American soldiers.

U.S. and Iraqi government officials as well as terrorism experts say anti-Western Islamic fighters have been infiltrating Iraq in significant numbers since the end of the war, taking advantage of chaos on the borders and the minimal police presence to establish themselves. Like Hussein loyalists, their goal is to drive the U.S. out of Iraq.

Although experts caution that the attack may have been carried out by Hussein's supporters, the reported influx of foreign fighters raises serious concerns about the stability of Iraq.

"What we're seeing now is jihadis coming in from all over, from Albania to Algeria," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief.

"They're answering the call from [Osama] bin Laden ... not to defend Saddam, but to defend Islam," he said, noting that U.S. and allied intelligence officials believe that 500 to 600 of these foreign fighters have entered Iraq.

"In the future months and years, if the situation as far as Iraq's stability remains the same, we will probably see a situation like in Chechnya and Bosnia," in which Iraq becomes a new front for Islamic holy warriors, said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French private investigator and terrorism expert who has worked with the French intelligence services.

At one level, their appearance in Iraq is hardly a surprise. With 150,000 American troops on the ground as well as several thousand U.S. contractors and an array of Western humanitarian and media organizations, Iraq now offers a plethora of potential targets.

"The Iraqi government is an American proxy, and all of the public buildings in Iraq are now American," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group. "Anyone who wants to strike an American target can blow up something in Baghdad. They don't have to come all the way across the ocean."

Why the attackers in Thursday's deadly bombing chose the Jordanian Embassy rather than a more obviously U.S. target is unclear. Anti-American forces may have chosen Jordan because the country's leader, King Abdullah II, offered quiet support for the war on Iraq and has been active in helping in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

Regardless, the choice of a civilian target is sure to increase the already high level of anxiety in the country. That is certainly the goal of the perpetrators, said Toby Dodge, a professor at the University of Warwick in Britain and one of that country's top Iraq experts.

The bombers probably chose the embassy because it was an easier target than the heavily guarded headquarters of the U.S. authorities, he said. It shows that their clandestine network can lash out in ways that are hard to predict or defend against, he said.

"The oddity of the target is part of the message," Dodge said.

While the focus since the blast has been on foreign fighters, several experts as well as L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator of the country, were careful to say that the car bomb -- which killed at least 17 people -- could have been planted by Hussein loyalists eager to cause greater damage than they have been able to wreak on the U.S. military.

"It's a fatal mistake to blame this on externalities," Dodge said. "The people pulling the trigger are Iraqis."

Late Saturday, five masked men who said they represented three unknown Iraqi Islamic groups called for attacks against occupying forces and warned other countries not to send troops.

But, in a videotape broadcast by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, they also denounced the embassy bombing as "sabotage carried out by some spies and traitors who want to harm the resistance."

In briefings after the bombing for the Iraqi Governing Council, a top Iraqi law enforcement officer who works closely with the Americans warned panel members of further violence.

"We expect there will be more attacks, suicide attacks, car bombs," said Adel Abdul Mehdi, a senior advisor to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the leading parties on the fledgling Iraqi Governing Council.

The current council president, Ibrahim Jafari, predicted that the attacks could spread to symbols of other foreign governments working closely with Iraq.

The consequences could be debilitating for almost every aspect of U.S. strategy in the country, forcing a cycle of increasingly strict security measures, which in turn would raise resentment of the American presence, some analysts said.

That would hamper U.S. plans to create a country with basic democratic freedoms and a stable environment attractive to foreign investors.

"It may be the beginning of a no-win scenario for U.S. forces," said Charles V. Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. He said it could set off "a cycle of anti-terrorist actions and crackdowns and reprisals which generate even more hatred and terrorist action."

A similar cycle occurred in Afghanistan under the Soviet Union's occupation when mujahedin and other foreign fighters -- including some funded by the United States -- crossed the permeable Afghan borders to attack the Soviet forces, ultimately compelling them to abandon the country.

Much is not yet known about last week's attack, and it could turn out to be an isolated event. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground operations in Iraq, said that the blast "didn't mean anything" and added that car bombs were nothing new in the country.

But he has stated repeatedly in recent days that many forces are attacking U.S. soldiers and that anti-American foreign fighters have entered the country.

"We have criminal activity, foreign fighters, Saddam Fedayeen and former regime leaders," Sanchez said in a briefing after the bombing. "There are terrorist organizations out there with a common purpose."

Among the groups believed to be active now in Iraq, Cannistraro said, are several inspired by Bin Laden, including the notoriously violent Algerian terrorist organization Al Taifa al Mansoura, which means "The Blessed and Victorious." Also operating is Ansar al Islam, an extremist group, previously based in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, intelligence officials from the U.S. and other countries said.

These are not the same foreign fighters who came to Iraq at the beginning of the war to help fight the Americans. Most of those were either killed or went home, Cannistraro said.

"We know the Jordanians had recently intercepted Syrian and Saudi jihadis who were wanting to go to fight in Iraq," said Brisard, the intelligence expert.

For the moment, the U.S. response to the lethal onslaught seems to be to fight back with sweeping arrests and intrusive weapons searches. Over the long term, such tactics are likely to garner so much anger from the civilian population that they are probably not sustainable.

The only recourse may be to take the very steps that are hardest to make successful in the face of terrorist threats, observers say.

"There is a lot that can be done -- reducing the visible American presence, putting an Iraqi face on the government and getting the economy started," said GlobalSecurity.org's Pike. "Until they come up with an exit strategy, [and] as long as Iraq looks like a U.S. surrogate, it's going to be a problem."

Bush faces many obstacles on Iran, North Korea

The Bush administration's use of discredited intelligence on Iraqi weapons may complicate America's ability to deal with more tangible nuclear dangers across the Middle East and in Asia.

The recent nuclear activity by North Korea and Iran and the broader issue of keeping mass-killing weapons away from terrorists loom as the biggest foreign policy challenges after the Iraq war.

Yet administration critics suggest President Bush's hand is weakened by credibility issues over assertions before the war about Iraq's nuclear and other weapons capabilities.

"What happens now when we need to rally the world about the weapons programs in North Korea and Iraq? How likely are they to believe the detail of what we present to them?" asks Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The administration is pinning its hopes on diplomacy as the way to contain Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions. The United States also is looking toward the same international weapons inspection apparatus that it spurned in Iraq.

The issue is not only whether the two remaining nations in Bush's "axis of evil" are building atomic bombs, but also how their neighbors would react.

For instance, North Korea's testing of a nuclear device might persuade Japan to quickly go nuclear itself, arms-control experts suggest. A nuclear Japan, in turn, might force China to increase its arsenal. That could put pressure on Taiwan to seek such weapons.

A nuclear Iran, meanwhile, could make it harder to establish pro-American governments in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tehran's possession of the bomb could trigger an arms race between Iran and Israel. Israel might feel compelled to try to take out an Iranian nuclear plant - as it did an Iraqi facility in 1981.

Israel has never confirmed being a nuclear power, but it is widely believed to have as many as 100 to 200 such weapons.

Then there are nuclear club members India and Pakistan.

"India has dozens of nuclear weapons and is actively pursuing a long-range missile program to enable them to target not simply Pakistan but also China," said John Pike, a military analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a consulting group based in Arlington, Va.

"Pakistan's nuclear program and missile program has basically been developed in close concert with Iran and North Korea. You might even think of it as one program doing business at three locations," he added.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Pakistan and India "are on a hair trigger that is even finer and shorter than the one that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War."

"Yet there has been very little attention focused by U.S. policy-makers or the international community on a systematic, comprehensive approach to reducing risks in that region," Kimball said.

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is an important ally in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism. That makes it harder for the administration to press its accusations that Pakistan helped North Korea's nuclear-arms program in return for missile parts.

Bush, vacationing this month in Texas, is hoping that diplomacy and pressure from neighboring powers will help defuse the nuclear threats in both Iran and North Korea.

The best course on Iran is "to convince others to join us in a clear declaration that the development of a nuclear weapon is not in their interests," Bush said.

As to North Korea, Bush hopes its agreement to meet for six-nation talks on its nuclear programs will lead to the country's renunciation of nuclear weaponry.

"We are making progress," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said late last week. "It's a tough regime to deal with. ... But we're fairly sanguine that if you're going to get this done, it's going to have to be in coordination with other states."

But uncertainties abound.

North Korea last week balked at the makeup of the U.S. delegation to the six-nation talks. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami pledged not to give up a nuclear program he insisted was designed to produce electrical energy, not atomic bombs.

Whereas the first nuclear powers were major players on the world stage - the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China - the emerging nuclear powers are poorer, generally less stable governments.

That fact, and the chance that nuclear materials could wind up in the hands of terrorist groups, worries arms-control experts and administration officials.

Washington's hope is "that somehow diplomatically we can work our way through this issue," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The notion or the thought" that nuclear material "could be proliferated to other countries could change our security environment in a not-so-nice a way," Myers said.

Shadowy U.S. Task Force 20 stalks Saddam in Iraq

A shadowy unit of elite troops is leading the hunt in Iraq for Saddam Hussein, who remains a step ahead of his pursuers four months after being driven from power.

The U.S. military is tight-lipped about the activities of Task Force 20, whose commandos were involved in the July 22 raid in Mosul in which Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed and now are stalking the missing former president.

But a senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Task Force 20 as "a multi-service special forces unit."

The official said it tracks "high-value targets," meaning Saddam and his inner circle, and during the war was responsible for securing Iraq's expansive western desert and also involved in the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction.

Analysts said Task Force 20 comprises perhaps 750-1,500 troops, drawn from several established units under the U.S. Special Operations Command.

Its commandos have taken part in raids in and around Saddam's hometown Tikrit, the capital Baghdad and elsewhere, but so far have failed to locate him.

Like other nations, the United States maintains elite units for hostage rescues, counter-terrorism operations and missions requiring few troops using stealth and speed.

DELTA FORCE
The Army's Delta Force appears to be at the heart of Task Force 20, with contributions from Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) teams and other units, said Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the Globalsecurity.org defense think tank.

Garrett said Task Force 20 may be headquartered at Baghdad international airport, probably with forward operating positions around Tikrit. In Tikrit, members of the task force show up periodically at a local barracks, with stubbly faces and scruffy civilian clothes, saying nothing.

A Reuters reporter on the scene when the Army's Third Infantry Division arrived at the airport in April before the fall of Baghdad saw members of Task Force 20 already in place. They wore traditional Arab headdresses, trousers and black T-shirts, drove in modified Humvees and carried M16 rifles.

Delta Force, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and comprised of volunteers mainly from the 82nd Airborne Division, Green Berets and Rangers, was created in 1977 and has performed difficult and sometimes disastrous missions.

For example, eight Americans were killed in April 1980 when a transport plane collided with a helicopter at a spot in Iran dubbed Desert One in a botched Delta Force mission to rescue hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Michael Vickers, a former Army Special Forces and CIA officer and an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said CIA paramilitary operatives may be working alongside Task Force 20, but it was unlikely they comprised a formal part of the unit.

"The agency doesn't like to have their people under military command," Vickers said.