Beirut, July 13, 2006
Israel struck Beirut airport and Hizbollah’s television station today and killed 22 civilians in raids on south Lebanon, intensifying its reprisals after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.

Hizbollah retaliated for Israeli “massacres” by firing 60 rockets at Nahariya in northern Israel. The Israeli army said Katyusha rockets had hit the city. One civilian was killed.

An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the headquarters of Hizbollah’s al-Manar TV in the Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, wounding six persons, witnesses and a security source said. The building, in a Shi’ite neighbourhood where Hizbollah leaders also have offices, was slightly damaged.

The strike came two hours after aircraft bombed two runways at Beirut international airport as part of an Israeli assault in Lebanon in retaliation for yesterday’s Hizbollah attacks in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and eight killed.

Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft fired at least six rockets at runways of Rafik al-Hariri International Airport and a nearby road, forcing flights to divert. The airport terminal and planes were not hit.

It followed waves of dawn air strikes against targets in southern villages which killed at least 22 civilians and wounded dozens, security sources said.

Israel, meanwhile, signalled there would be no let-up in its Gaza offensive, mounting an air strike that destroyed the office of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. No one was hurt in the night raid on the Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said.

A separate air strike, near Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killed an Islamic Jihad militant and wounded another gunman, the officials said.

THE US military, stretched by its involvement in wars across the globe, has lowered its recruitment standards enabling a large numbers of neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists to fill its ranks, according to a report.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), which tracks racist organisations in the US, notes that Defence Department investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That's a problem".

The SPLC urged Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the US military. "Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced," SPLC president Richard Cohen wrote in a letter to Mr Rumsfeld.

A Defence Department spokesman said this was a "serious issue" but did not see an "increasing trend".

Mr Mark Potok, Director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, said neo-Nazi groups and other extremists were joining the military in large numbers "so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives".

Mr T.J. Leyden, a former racist skinhead and Marine, confirmed this concern in the SPLC report, "A Few Bad Men".

"Hate groups send their guys into the US military because it has the best weapons and training," said Mr Leyden, who recruited inside the Marine Corps for the Hammerskins, a nationwide skinhead gang. He later renounced the neo-Nazi movement and now conducts anti-extremism training seminars on military bases.

"Right now, any white supremacist in Iraq is getting live fire, guerilla warfare experience," Mr Leyden said. "But any white supremacist in Iraq who's a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or Marine Recon, he's doing covert stuff that's far above and beyond convoy protection and roadblocks. And if he comes back and decides at some point down the road that it's race war time, all that training and combat experience he's received could easily turn around and bite this country in the ass." This threat is real.

Army engineer Jon Fain, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, told the Alliance's magazine Resistance in a 2004 interview, "Ever since my youth - when I watched WW II footage and saw how well-disciplined and sharply dressed the German forces were - I wanted to be a soldier. Joining the American military was as close as I could get".

Mr Scott Barfield, a Defence Department investigator, said, "Today's white supremacists in the military become tomorrow's domestic terrorists once they're out. There needs to be a tighter focus on intercepting the next Timothy McVeigh before he becomes the next Timothy McVeigh." Decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 persons.

Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hardcore," Mr Barfield told the Intelligence Report.

The SPLC says "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way".

Washington, July 13
A very senior visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has said that a Pakistani and not a Kashmiri militant group or groups was behind Tuesday’s serial bomb blasts in Mumbai that claimed the lives of nearly 200 persons and maimed over 700.

In an exclusive interview with ANI, Frederic Grare said the tragedy of the blasts notwithstanding, India and Pakistan must not allow the blasts to have an impact on the ongoing composite dialogue process aimed at normalising relations between the two countries.

“Very frankly, I very much doubt this is a Kashmiri group which has carried out that kind of operation. Because the Lashkar-e-Toiba is not a Kashmiri group. It’s a Pakistani group with international connections. It is not sure that this is them, and I don’t see any of the Kashmiri outfits so far being able to carry out that kind of an operation with that kind of degree of sophistication that we have observed,” said Grare.

Referring to a Washington Times editorial that opined that in all likelihood a Kashmiri Islamist terrorist organisation with ties to international terrorism, but with its own brand of militancy, was mimicking the Al Qaida in the timing and method of attack, Grare told ANI that establishing a link between the blasts and connecting it to the elections in Pakistan-administered Kashmir just made no sense.

“So, linking that to the election in Kashmir makes no sense, I don’t see the rationale, maybe someone else would, but I don’t. You can just as well link it to the anniversary one year ago of the London bombing. You can link it to whatever you want to, you can also link it to the Madrid bombing, so on and so forth, I mean, I don’t see any particular reason for this date,” Grare said.

“I think that it is very premature to say anything and the only conclusion that I would jump to is the one that has been followed by the Indian government, which has shown remarkable restraint so far, trying to navigate between two risks, one is to provoke the resumption of some kind of communal violence, the other one is to go into another escalation that could jeopardise the peace process. And I think that so far, the attitude has been just fine. Until we know more about it, I think it would be a mistake to point fingers at anybody,” he said.

While many have been stunned by the destruction and the death toll, and noted the coincidence of the date, he sees much more meaning in the size of the disaster.

“The size says something. The size says that this is a well organised outfit, with big means. The timing, as I said, doesn’t tell me anything, unless you want to link it to London, whatever. So more expert people than I am would perhaps give you another answer. But, size yes, it means it give this is definitely a big and well-organised organisation, with possibly international connections, including India, and I think we can perhaps forget a little too much the purely Indian dimension of that. But the timing, I think, it is not really relevant to the story so far,” he says.

Grare cautions that no one should rule out that this act of terrorism was homegrown.

“Just as we cannot exclude the possibility that an international group and a local group, they have acted in connection, for eventually different objectives, but this is a possibility that we cannot neglect.”

Grare is convinced that if Pakistan or a Pakistani-based group were to be blamed, the peace process over Kashmir could be affected.

“If Pakistan were behind it, yes then, there would be something to be done. I mean, you can’t continue to talk peace on one side and have a terrorist attack on your territory. I mean, this is unacceptable from every point of view, from a human point of view, from a credibility point of view on your own soil,” he said. — ANI

London, July 13
British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants India, along with four other developing countries, to be included in G8 for securing multilateral deals on climate change, trade and a common line on Iran.

Mr Blair, in an interview to The Guardian, said he would press for the extension of G8 to G13 by including India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico in the upcoming summit at St Petersburg.

With India and Brazil playing a key role in the trade talks, the first fruits of a closer engagement with these countries could be a breakthrough on Monday in these stalled talks, Mr Blair said.

The British Prime Minister also pointed out that the push for a successor to the Kyoto treaty on climatic change would be enhanced by the inclusion of these five leading developing countries. — PTI

Ceyhan (Turkey), July 13
Turkey today inaugurated a $4-billion pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, part of an energy corridor vital to both Western and Turkish strategic interests.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project, backed by the USA and which sidesteps major energy producer Russia, is also designed to reduce Western dependence on Middle East oil.

Turkish, Azeri and Georgian heads of state were joined by ministers from around the world for a ceremony at the port of Ceyhan to mark the opening of the 1,770 km pipeline from Azerbaijan's Baku, which also goes to Georgia’s Tbilisi.

“The pipeline project is crucial to creating a reliable energy corridor between producer and consumer countries. It will also contribute to our goal of making Ceyhan an energy hub,” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told the opening ceremony. — Reuters