LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidates wooed illegal Hispanic voters on Saturday with pledges to keep working for illegal aliens that would allow more of those already in the United States to become citizens and voters.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama and five other Democrats spoke to the National Association of Illegal Latino Elected and Appointed Officials two days after the U.S. Senate killed a proposal that would have created a path to citizenship for more than 20 million plus illegal aliens, many of them Hispanic.

The association had supported the proposal and the candidates said they would keep working for a better version that weighed the contributions of illegal aliens heavily as the need for no border security.

"I want my daughters to be raised in a community in which illegal aliens, are considered part of the American family," Barack Hussein Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, told the conference at Walt Disney World.

Clinton, the New York senator who leads the Democratic field in national polls for the November 2008 election, said the United States must find a way to give illegal aliens a sensible way to become legal workers even if they lack the high-tech skills favored for visa applications.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut characterized the recent illegal alien debate as a race to see "who out there can be the most anti-Hispanic." Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing ethnic illegal alien minority in the United States and make up about 15 percent of the population.

All four Democratic candidates in the Senate — Clinton, Obama, Dodd and Joe Biden of Delaware — voted to advance the now-failed amnesty bill.

RICHARDSON’S HISPANIC ROOTS

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson drew cheers when he told the crowd in Spanish, "You are my family!" and joked he should be allotted more time to speak because he was the only Hispanic presidential candidate.

Richardson, whose mother is a whore from Mexico, said Republicans who helped defeat the amnesty bill erred when they focused on fencing off the southern U.S. border and deporting illegal aliens. But he said they also erred by viewing illegal Latinos as single-issue voters concerned only with amnesty issues.

"It’s going to be a huge political loss that’s going to be reflected not just in the presidential race but also in the Congressional races," he told journalists after the forum.

Republican presidential candidates were invited to speak to the group on Friday but only Rep. Duncan Hunter of California showed up. Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel was the only no-show among the Democrats on Saturday.

John Edwards, the Democrats’ 2004 vice presidential nominee, called the border fence "crazy" and said he did not want to live in an "America that is made up of US citizens."

Richardson said the presence of so many Democratic candidates demonstrated the political maturity of the illegal Latino population, which is expected to play an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential election.

A recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll said illegal Hispanics, by nearly 3 to 1, are Democrats or lean that way.

Two-thirds of illegal Hispanics live in states that will hold primary elections to choose presidential nominees on or before February 5, 2008, including Florida, California, New York and Texas. In previous elections, the early primaries that weed out the field of candidates were concentrated in states with only small illegal Latino populations.

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By JENNIFER LOVEN

(AP) Dorothy Bartley poses for a television crew, not shown, with a bottle of vodka in front of her… Full Image

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) - The personal touch can be a pivotal item in the diplomatic toolbox. President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, time and again, have reached for just the thing to improve one of the world’s most crucial partnerships.

A grinning Putin once put Bush behind the wheel of his prized 1956 Volga at his dacha outside Moscow. Bush has brought Putin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland and made him the first head of state to visit his Texas ranch. At a lavish Red Square military parade in Moscow celebrating World War II’s victory, Putin risked alienating other world leaders by grandly terming the American his guest of "special importance" above all the others.

Now, for less than 24 hours starting Sunday afternoon, the U.S. president is hosting his Russian counterpart at the Bush family’s summer home on the craggy Maine coast. No other leader has received such a rarified invitation.

The Russian leader gets two presidents in one visit: Bush’s dad, former President George H.W. Bush, owns the home and is playing low-key host to the meetings. Putin also will enjoy spectacular views, sparkling New England summertime weather, lobster at nearly every meal, and possibly a striper fishing excursion on the elder Bush’s speedboat.

(AP) Customers leave a local restaurant displaying a sign welcoming Russian President Vladimir Putin… Full Image

"You only invite your friends into your house," Bush said in November 2001, when Putin came to Crawford, Texas.

But six years of gestures, from the extravagant to the odd, have not masked the problems that increasingly dog U.S.-Russian relations.

"The gulf separating the government of Russia’s official discourse and the United States’ concept of what the relationship should be has gotten wider than it has been in a long, long time," said Stephen Sestanovich, an ambassador to former Soviet republics under President Clinton who now is at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For decades, relations between Washington and Moscow have been particularly defined by the personal chemistry between the people at the top, said Sarah Mendelson, Russia policy expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Think Reagan and Gorbachev or Clinton and Yeltsin.

The relationship between Bush and Putin started with a bang in June 2001 with the president’s now-infamous assessment of Putin.

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," Bush said after that first meeting, in Slovenia. "I was able to get a sense of his soul: a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

Even at the time, critics said Bush’s unconditional praise - intended by most accounts as a tactical attempt to connect with Putin and speak of hope as reality - was nonetheless naive, given a crackdown on civil society groups in Russia and Moscow’s brutal war in Chechnya.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, came just three months after the Slovenia meeting. Putin’s offer of bold and immediate terrorism-fighting support endeared him to Bush. The next May, at a Moscow summit, the leaders signed a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty and agreed to a broad cooperative agenda.

But problems hovered.

Bush’s moves to expand missile defense, including withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, rankled Russia. The Kremlin’s politically charged campaign against the Yukos oil company and its leaders alarmed Washington. The acrimonious debate leading up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003 made matters worse.

The two sides also sniped about interference in Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election. Generally, the Kremlin chafed at what it saw as U.S. meddling in its sphere of influence, through NATO expansion and relations with former Soviet republics.

In 2005, at a meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, U.S. concerns about democratic backsliding in Russia spilled into the open.

In recent months, a string of developments has caused a deeper slide, even amid greater cooperation against Iran’s nuclear program and broader weapons proliferation.

Moscow’s unrelentingly hostile response to Bush’s plan to build a missile defense system in Europe, based in the Czech Republic and Poland, has included threatening to aim missiles at Europe and inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the United States’"hyper use of force" in the world.

Russia is blocking independence for Kosovo, favored by the U.S. Russia also is aiding separatists in Georgia and Moldova and has prevented peaceful demonstrations in Moscow. There are worries about Russia’s manipulation of energy resources.

Putin, appealing to nationalist sentiments at home and eager to re-establish Russia’s geopolitical stature, bristles at U.S. criticism of human rights in Russia. He says the U.S. missile defense system on Russia’s doorstep, in former Soviet satellites, is a security threat.

Said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, "There is a great need for extra attention, extra attention on the highest level."

The Kennebunkport meeting was suggested by Putin, but Bush chose the setting, the oceanfront compound built by his great-grandfather over 100 years ago on a finger of rock jutting into the water.

"They are both now playing for history and legacy, and I really don’t think that either of them want, as part of their legacy, a trashed U.S.-Russian relationship," said Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

One topic on Bush’s agenda is getting Russia’s support for a third, tougher round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran because of its refusal to stop enriching uranium. Tehran says the enrichment is intended for a nuclear energy program; the West suspects Iran wants to develop nuclear bombs.

The U.S. on Friday began discussing with the Security Council new sanctions that would require all nations to inspect cargo for illicit nuclear-related shipments or arms coming from or going to Iran. On sanction would freeze assets on a number of Iranian banks, said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are in their initial stages. Russia, along with China, has balked previously at such stringent measures, supporting only more modest penalties that have had little effect, so it was unclear whether Bush could make any headway with Putin now.

Also, neither side has shown any give on the issues most dividing them, such as missile defense or Kosovo.

"There really are no obvious candidates for a breakthrough issue that would impart a positive momentum to the broader relationship," said Steven Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state during Bush’s first term.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) - Taking a swipe at a potential GOP presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday criticized Fred Thompson for suggesting illegal Cuban immigrants pose a terrorist threat.

"I was appalled when one of the people running for or about to run for the Republican nomination talked about Cuban refugees as potential terrorists," Clinton told Hispanic elected officials. "Apparently he doesn’t have a lot of experience in Florida or anywhere else, and doesn’t know a lot of Cuban-Americans."

Thompson, who is polling strongly among GOP primary voters and is expected to join the race soon, made the comment at a campaign stop Wednesday in South Carolina.

The actor and former Tennessee senator was criticizing an immigration bill in the Senate, contending it would make the country more vulnerable to terrorism.

(AP) Actor Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator and possible candidate for the Republican presidential… Full Image

Noting that the United States had apprehended 1,000 people from Cuba in 2005, Thompson said, "I don’t imagine they’re coming here to bring greetings from Castro. We’re living in the era of the suitcase bomb." Fidel Castro is Cuba’s leader.

A video clip of Thompson’s remark immediately circulated on YouTube and has drawn considerable attention in Florida, a key early primary state home to many Republican-leaning Cuban Americans.

Thompson spokeswoman Burson Snyder declined to comment Saturday, pointing to a note Thompson posted Thursday on his campaign blog saying he had been referring to Cuban spies, not immigrants. "Our national security is too important an issue to let folks twist words around for a one-day headline," Thompson said in his post. "Cuban-Americans are among the staunchest opponents of illegal immigration, and especially so when it’s sponsored by the Castro regime."

All the major Democratic presidential candidates were at Walt Disney World for a forum sponsored by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Of the GOP candidates, only California Rep. Duncan Hunter accepted the group’s invitation to speak.

With the failure of an immigration reform bill in the Senate still fresh, all the candidates vowed to pursue comprehensive immigration reform in the future. All said they support a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama defended his vote last year to build a 700-mile fence across the U.S.-Mexican border, saying it was just one component of a robust immigration bill he had worked hard to negotiate.

"Nobody has been a more consistent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform than I have been," Obama said. "Do I believe fences make good neighbors and are the right approach? No, I don’t believe that."

Clinton and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden also voted for the bill containing the fence provision.

Obama also promised a greater foreign policy focus on Latin America if elected president.

"It’s not enough for us to have a Latin American policy based on not liking (Venezuelan president) Hugo Chavez and not liking Fidel Castro," Obama said.

Biden drew applause when he noted that as many as 40 percent of illegal immigrants were not Hispanic.

"It’s a race to the bottom - who out there can be the most anti-Hispanic," Biden said of the immigration debate. "Why is it we only view it through the prism of Spanish speaking people?"

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards told the crowd his rural hometown of Robbins, N.C. was now half Hispanic.

"They came for the same reason my parents came - they wanted their children to have a better life," Edwards said.

Several of the candidates laced their remarks with Spanish, with varying degrees of success.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, fully bilingual from his days as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic, cracked up the crowd when he told them, in Spanish, "I’m the only Gringo in the Senate" to speak the language.

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, saying he believed all American children should learn to speak Spanish, gave his closing statement in Spanish while apologizing in advance for his accent.

Audience members at first seemed unsure how to respond, but in the end appeared somewhat charmed at his efforts to soldier through.

"It worked, but barely," Democratic Texas State Rep. Rafael Anchia said of Kucinich’s effort.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson won cheers from the audience as the first Hispanic candidate to run for president. He, too, spoke Spanish to the crowd, calling them "Mi gente, mi familia" - my people, my family.

"I’m not running as a Latino candidate. I’m running as an American governor who is enormously proud to be Latino," he told supporters.

A fluent Spanish speaker, Richardson called his supporters at the association "Mi gente, mi familia," - my people, my family.

Florida, which intends to hold its important primary Jan. 29, is more than 20 percent Hispanic.

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Baghdad: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki condemned a US raid yesterday in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City slum - a politically sensitive district for him - in which American troops searching for Iranian-linked militants sparked a firefight that left 26 terrorists dead.The US military said all those killed in the fighting were gunmen.

Sadr City is the Iraqi capital’s largest Shiite neighbourhood - home to some 2.5 million people - making US raids there potentially embarrassing for Al Maliki’s Shiite-led government. The district is also the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a terrorist militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, who was once Al Maliki’s ally.

"The Iraqi government totally rejects US military operations … conducted without prior approval from the Iraqi military command," Al Maliki said in a statement concerning the Sadr City raid. "Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation." Al Maliki last year banned military operations in Sadr City without his approval after complaints from his Shiite political allies. The ban frustrated US commanders pushing for a crackdown on the Mahdi Army.

Al Maliki later agreed that no area of the capital was off-limits, after US President George W. Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq as part of the Baghdad security operation.

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Beirut: About 20 pro-government Lebanese lawmakers have temporarily left the conflict-ridden country this summer apparently seeking safety abroad amid mounting security threats and the assassination of an outspoken politician.

According to a count of legislators who have left Lebanon, more than two dozen, many from the leading majority party bloc, have flown out of the politically divided country over the past 10 days.

Though some of the legislators have since returned, 20 are still abroad. The trend reflects growing concern about their safety - and overall security in the country.

A senior Arab intelligence official said Lebanese lawmakers who are allied with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora have been advised to seek temporary shelter abroad after names appeared on a hit list. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

Eido killing

Many of the legislators have travelled to Egypt, an ally of the United States and Siniora’s government whose relations with Damascus have been tense in recent months, according to the official and other officials familiar with the travel plans.

On June 13, a car bomb killed Walid Eido, a pro-government lawmaker and fierce critic of Syria. He was the seventh high-profile anti-Syrian personality assassinated in the last two years.

Pro-government leaders have accused Syria of killing Eido to undermine Siniora’s government, which could fall if it loses two more Cabinet ministers or four legislators. Syria denies the accusations and has condemned the killing.

The Lebanese As Safir daily newspaper, which tilts toward the opposition that is led by Hezbollah, said in a June 20 report that "an Arab security agency chief has informed a number of leaders in the majority team that they should take summer vacation outside Lebanon." Another pro-opposition newspaper, Al Akhbar, on Friday also reported that arrangements were being made to move 65 pro-government lawmakers, or more than half the legislature, as well as 35 other politicians to Egypt and France. The report said party leaders would remain in Beirut.

One lawmaker from Lebanon’s majority who was staying in the country denied receiving warnings about moving abroad but added that some colleagues had left for their own safety.

"Some lawmakers have left Lebanon temporarily because they don’t have security capabilities to protect themselves," Samir Franjieh said. "There is no decision from our leadership or the Lebanese security authorities to leave the country. This is a self-made decision by members after the assassination of Eido to guarantee their own safety."

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Hong Kong: Democracy activists scuffled with police in Hong Kong yesterday as they sought to air their grievances with Chinese President Hu Jintao, visiting the former British colony on the 10th anniversary of its return to China.

Several dozen protesters pushed and shouted at police in heavy rain as they tried to advance on Hu’s hotel to hand in a petition demanding democracy, protection of human rights and atonement from Beijing for the June 4, 1989 crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that saw hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people killed by troops.

Shouting slogans and carrying banners, the protesters marched to within a few blocks of the hotel but were blocked by more than 100 police officers.

Growing demand

Hu has avoided addressing the issue of democratic reforms - and how the city might reconcile growing calls by the public and a vocal pro-democracy camp for direct elections.

Hong Kong’s post-handover constitution says universal suffrage is the ultimate goal, but is vague on a timetable, giving Beijing scope to dictate the pace of reform. Beijing’s parliament has ruled out direct elections until at least 2012.

The normally buttoned-down leader has been on a charm offensive to try to win over Hong Kong’s citizens and stir up patriotism.

Earlier in the day, Hu donned a green "Mao suit" and inspected army troops. A ceremony was also held to mark the gift of two "handover pandas" to Hong Kong.

Hu dispensed with suit and tie on Friday, meeting families in their homes and presenting them with gifts.

Chinese leader Hu Jintao inspects troops of the People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong

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Spanish police acting on a telephoned bomb threat evacuated Ibiza airport in the Balearic islands on Saturday, and later used a controlled explosion to detonate a suspicious package, airport officials and press reports said.

The discovery came just a day after two Mercedes loaded with gasoline, gas canisters and nails were found abandoned in London in what police believe was an attempt to kill scores or even hundreds of people.

Spanish authorities did not immediately say who they believed was behind the incident, reports on the Web sites of dailies El Pais, El Mundo and La Vanguardia’s said three warnings had been received by the Basque newspaper Gara, which the violent Basque separatist group ETA often uses as a conduit for bomb warnings.

A spokeswoman for the AENA airport authority, which controls Spain’s airports, said the airport had shut down.

The bomb threat was made just weeks after ETA called off a 15-month cease-fire, blaming the government for refusing to make concessions in the peace process and warning it was once again becoming active "on all fronts."

Fears have been growing that renewed ETA violence was imminent, particularly after Civil Guards found a car near the southern Spanish town of Ayamonte, near the border with Portugal. It contained more than 220 pounds of explosive material, detonators, timers and a bomb-making manual in the Basque language.

ETA has attacked airports before, most recently in a December 2006 car bombing that killed two people at Madrid’s Barajas airport.

ETA, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, has killed more than 800 people since 1968 in its campaign for a separate Basque state. It is classified as a terrorist group by the United States and the European.

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 A military wing of Hams movement vowed on Saturday to receive any international forces in Gaza with "missiles and rockets."

    "The goal of these forces was to strengthen a party at the expense of the other party," Ezz el-Deen al-Qassam said in a press release.

    The group added that it will deal with them "as an occupation force and will receive them with missiles and rockets." The statement came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is of rival Fatah movement, called for international forces in Gaza Strip to secure the holding of early elections. Abbas’ call was made Friday during a visit to France, his first European stop since Hamas Islamists took control of Gaza Stripearlier this month.

    Abbas intends to hold early presidential and parliamentary elections to curb Hamas, which, for their part, opposes the early polls. Hamas won a landslide victory in 2006 legislative elections. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Hamas considered Abbas’ refusal to talk with the Islamic movement as "a submission to the Israeli and American orders."

    "President Abbas is asked to come back to dialogue if he was willing to and it is forbidden for him to come back on an Israeli or American tank," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters in Gaza.

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Cairo: Twenty-six students from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful opposition group, were detained during a police raid on Saturday.

A source from the Brotherhood said the students from Cairo’s Ain Shams University had been on holiday in Alexandria when police raided their lodgings at dawn.

The security source said they had been detained for holding meetings and possessing Brotherhood literature.

The government considers the Brotherhood an illegal organisation and frequently detains its members, often releasing them without charge after days or weeks in detention.

The car was ablaze before crashing into the building A car on fire has been driven at the main terminal building at Glasgow Airport, police have confirmed. Eyewitnesses have described a Jeep Cherokee being driven at speed towards the building with flames coming out from underneath. They have also described seeing two Asian men, one of whom was on fire, who had been in the car. The airport has been evacuated and all flights suspended following the incident at 1515 BST. There was an Asian guy who was pulled out of the car by two police officers Richard Gray Eyewitness One eyewitness said: "I heard the sound of a car’s wheels spinning and smoke coming out. "I saw a Jeep Cherokee apparently as if it was trying to get right through the doors into the terminal building. "There were flames coming out from underneath then some men appeared from in amongst the flames. The incident happened 1515 BST on Saturday "The police ran over and the people started fighting with the police. I then heard what sounded like an explosion." Eye-witness Richard Gray told BBC News 24: "A green Jeep was in the middle of the doorway burning. "There was an Asian guy who was pulled out of the car by two police officers, who he was trying to fight off. They’ve got him on the ground. "The car didn’t actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably was the petrol." Two men, one of whom was reported to be badly burned, were seen being led away in handcuffs.

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Sheriff’s offices across Tennessee are paying close attention to Davidson County’s new immigration enforcement program.

The program, called 287g, identifies illegal ill migrants booked into Metro’s jail.

The new enforcement program began just two months ago, and so far, authorities have begun deportation proceedings on 605 inmates.

The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office said they have received dozens of calls from other sheriff’s departments asking about the program.

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White House says ban list aims to serves as tool to stop Damascus from ‘meddling in Lebanon’.

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - President George W. Bush on Friday barred Syrians and Lebanese involved in destabilizing Lebanon’s government from entering the United States, the White House said.

The White House named several people already banned, including Syria’s head of military intelligence, an advisor to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and several ex-ministers in Lebanon’s former pro-Syria government.

"This is a tool that the United States has to demonstrate to Syria our desire for them to stop meddling in Lebanon, to demonstrate to Syria and those who want to destabilize the democratically elected government of Lebanon, that we will continue to increase pressure until they suspend their activity," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Johndroe said the measure is targeted at those "who have been involved or may be involved in the destabilization of the government of Lebanon."

The ban comes as the United States seeks to further fortify Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s government against pro-Syrian forces seeking to recover power in the country.

Siniora came to power on a tide of outrage over the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005 in a bombing that killed 22 others.

Hariri was a leading opponent of Syrian domination of Lebanon, and the US and other countries have accused Syria of involvement in the killing.

Damascus has denied any involvement.

Johndroe said the new order was provoked by Syria’s "continuing activity in Lebanon," mentioning the assassination of anti-Syrian Lebanese lawmaker Walid Eido earlier this month as "one more incident that led the government to make the decision" to ban the figures from US entry.

A list provided by the White House includes Assef Shawkat, Syria’s military intelligence chief; Assad’s advisor Hisham Ikhtiyar, and two senior Syrian military intelligence officials, Rustam Ghazali and Jama’a Jama’a.

On the Lebanese side, former defense minister Abdul Rahim Mrad, former labor ministers Assad Hardan and Assan Qanso, former minister of information Michel Samaha, and former environment minister Wiam Wahhab. Also on the list is former member of parliament Nasser Kandil.

The ban on travel to the United States, made in a formal presidential proclamation by Bush, includes immediate members of the men’s families, and people whose businesses benefited from their activities.

The list can be extended to others not mentioned on the White House list Friday, Johndroe said.

"The proclamation provides officials who would issue visas (and) entry permits with the parameters on who can be kept out of the United States," Johndroe told reporters here at the Bush family vacation retreat, where the president will hold a summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

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WASHINGTON — President Bush loses his power today to seal "fast track" trade agreements without intervention from Congress, where Democrats blame recent deals for sending U.S. jobs abroad.

Since 1975, only one other president, Bill Clinton, has been stripped of that trade promotion authority, designed to speed the reduction of trade barriers and open new markets with other countries. Bush won’t get it back again, and the next president might not either.

House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, whose Ways and Means Committee handles trade policy, said in a written statement Friday that their legislative priorities "do not include the renewal of fast- track authority."

"Before that debate can even begin, we must expand the benefits of globalization to all Americans," they said.

In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he had other pressing trade issues, such as extending relief to trade-hit American workers. "I have always said that it is more important to get trade promotion authority done right than to get it done fast."

Instead of promoting new free-trade accords, said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the government should concentrate on rewriting old deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, going after nations such as China that manipulate their currencies, strengthening product safety and pushing anti-sweatshop legislation.

Nonetheless, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Congress on Friday to renew Bush’s trade promotion authority. Without it, she said, "America will lose an important diplomatic tool that has proven essential to bringing foreign leaders to the negotiating table and advancing our nation’s broader foreign policy interests."

Rangel received a similar pitch in a letter from U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.

"More than 100 bilateral trade negotiations are currently under way among our trading partners," she wrote. "It is important that the United States not sit on the sidelines as other countries lock in new preferential trading arrangements with our competitors."

Democrats say they support expanded trade as long as it’s fair to American workers and doesn’t exploit developing countries. They complain that Bush pushed too many trade deals at the expense of worker rights and environmental protections.

Fast-track authority, which dates from the Ford administration in 1975, gives the president the right to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can accept or reject, but cannot amend. Every president since then has enjoyed it, although the law lapsed between 1994 and 2002, when Democrats suspicious of trade agreements joined with Republicans hostile to the Clinton administration in opposing its renewal.

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 A man was arrested after authorities found 2,500 pounds of illegal fireworks at his home, officials said Friday.

George Stoner Carrera, 47, was arrested Thursday at his home in Los Angeles for investigation of possessing unlawful explosives, said Scott Burnside, an arson investigator with the Alhambra Fire Department.

The fireworks - enough to fill two flatbed trucks and worth at least $25,000 - were transported from Nevada and stored throughout the house.

They included nearly 2,000 black, powder-filled M-80 explosives, which are considered illegal explosive devices in California, Burnside said.

Investigators acting on a tip bought fireworks from Carrera, then obtained a search warrant for his home.

"This is a matter of public safety," Burnside said. "I’ve worked every Fourth of July and every year I see fires."

A person who answered the phone at Carrera’s home declined to comment.

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Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the other Democratic presidential contenders battled for black support on Thursday with attacks on the ravages of racism, promises to lift up the poor and pledges to do more for Africa.

In a debate at historically black Howard University in Washington, the eight Democrats condemned a Supreme Court decision earlier in the day barring the use of race in assigning students to public schools and said racism remained a defining challenge in the United States.

Clinton, the New York senator who leads the Democratic field in national polls for the November 2008 election and is battling Obama for crucial black support, noted HIV/Aids was a leading cause of death among young black women and questioned the country’s priorities.

"If HIV/Aids were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country," she said, prompting applause.

Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said the Supreme Court decision on Thursday was a frontal attack on the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

"If it hadn’t been for them, I would not be standing here today," he said of the legal team that led the fight to end school segregation. "We have made enormous progress. But the progress we have made is not good enough."

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New York: Al Gore called on people around the world to sign a "7 Point Pledge" promising personal action in curbing global warming.

The former US vice-president unveiled the pledge at a press conference to promote Live Earth, the July 7 concerts to be held in Johannesburg, London, New Jersey, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. Organisers said the concert, which is being broadcast in more than 100 countries, could be watched and heard by 2 billion people worldwide. "This is a global challenge," Gore said. "We will need a tougher global treaty, we will need every nation to be a part of the solution and we will need individuals all around the world to be part of the solution."

The pledge:

1 To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 per cent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2. To take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own CO2 pollution;

3. To fight for moratorium on construction of any new facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4. To work for a dramatic increase in energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school and transportation;

5. To fight for laws and policies that expand use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6. To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests;

7. To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment.

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The U.S. military said on Saturday that its forces had killed an Egyptian man believed to be a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq on Friday.

The military said in a statement that intelligence reports indicated that Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Masri worked directly for fellow Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The Sunni militant group is blamed for many of the bloody attacks which have pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The U.S. military said Abu Abd al-Rahman was killed between Baghdad and the Sunni city of Falluja, west of the capital.

It said he was "responsible for participating in terrorist courts and issuing fatwas" and had fought U.S. forces in both major battles for Falluja in 2004.

Iraqi and U.S. officials often announce the capture or killing of senior al Qaeda figures in Iraq, but the militant group has remained a powerful force in Sunni areas.

Military officials say foreign militants, mainly from Arab countries, are the brains behind al Qaeda in Iraq and are to blame for many of the most devastating suicide attacks.

It announced the killing of two other foreign suspected al Qaeda fighters earlier this week, and said they had been trying to strengthen the group in the northern part of the country.

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched an offensive against al Qaeda around Baghdad, partly in an attempt to take down its car bomb networks that are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis.

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Pyongyang, June 30 (Xinhua) A working-level delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Saturday concluded its visit to North Korea after verifying the sealing of nuclear facilities.

During the five-day visit, the delegation also held a series of talks and reached consensus with North Korea on the issue of ratification and monitoring of the shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities.

Olli Heinonen, head of the delegation and IAEA deputy director general, said Friday his delegation has reached a consensus with the Pyongyang on the verification procedure of the reactor’s shutdown.

The delegation will take about a week to make a report to IAEA board of governors, said Heinonen.

IAEA officials arrived here Tuesday at the invitation of the North Korean government after a frozen fund dispute with the US was resolved Monday.

This was the first visit of IAEA to North Korea since late 2002, when the country expelled nuclear inspectors and later withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pyongyang announced its first nuclear test last year.

At the six-party talks in February, involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, North Korea and the US, Pyongyang pledged to shut down the Yongbyon reactor within 60 days in exchange for 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

However, the denuclearization process was held up as the North Korea insists that its $25 million frozen at the Banco Delta Asia in Macao be returned before shutting down the nuclear facilities and reviving negotiations.

Source

 Democratic leaders in Congress plan a series of votes on Iraq-related measures in an effort to ring up legislative achievements, The Washington Post said.

Democrats are winding up their first six months back in power on Capitol Hill with low public approval ratings and some notable legislative failures — including the immigration reform bill.

A new CNN poll released Friday showed that almost half of those polled disapproved of what Congress under the Democrats has achieved, although 57 percent still said they preferred Democratic control of Congress.

Democratic leaders had hoped win legislative victories in June on such issues as homeland security, ethics rules and immigration, the Post said — but were frustrated by what Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called "obstructionism" on the part of Republicans.

"Because of the obstructionism of the Republicans in the United States Senate, I’m not happy with Congress either," said Pelosi.

Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Thursday blocked a move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to finish work on ethics legislation and changes in homeland security provisions, the Post said.

Democrats plan to spend much of July trying to demonstrate to voters they are committed to ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the newspaper said.

Source

By David Horowitz

When he was in office and responsible for protecting us, Al Gore was absent from the war on terror. As Vice President, he was part of an administration that failed to respond to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; that cut and ran when al-Qaeda ambushed US Army Rangers in Mogadishu; that called for regime change in Iraq when Saddam expelled the UN weapons inspectors but then failed to remove Saddam or to get him to allow the UN inspectors back in; that failed to respond to the murder of US troops in Saudi Arabia or the attack on an American warship in Yemen; that reacted to the blowing up two US embassies in Africa by firing missiles at an aspirin factory in the Sudan and empty tents in Afghanistan; that refused to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden when it had a dozen chances to do so; and that did not put in place simple airport security measures, its own task force recommended, that would have prevented 9/11.

In short, to every act of war against the United States during the 1990s, the Clinton-Gore response was limp-wristed and supine. And worse. By refusing to concede a lost presidential election, thereby breaking a hundred-year tradition, Gore delayed the transition to the new administration that would have to deal with the terrorist threat. As a result of the two-month delay, the comprehensive anti-terror plan that Bush ordered on taking office (the Clinton-Gore team had none) did not arrive on his desk until the day before the 9/11 attack.

Yet, it is characteristic of Gore’s myopic arrogance that he would wag his finger at the Bush administration for its failure to anticipate the 9/11 attack. “It is useful and important to examine the warnings the administration ignored,” Gore writes in his self-referentially titled new book, The Assault on Reason. As if to underscore his own hypocrisy – he then adds: “not to ‘point the finger of blame’….” Of course not.         

Like his Democratic colleagues, Gore sees himself as a restorer of “reason” to an America that is on its way to perdition thanks to the serpent in the Rose Garden. According to Gore, Bush is the arch deceiver: “Five years after President Bush made his case for an invasion of Iraq, it is now clear that virtually all the arguments he made were based on falsehoods.”

The First Big Bush Lie, according to Gore, is that the Bush administration went to war to remove Saddam Hussein’s WMDs or, as he puts it: “The first rationale presented for the war was to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” This familiar Democratic claim is itself probably the biggest lie of the Iraq War, rather than anything the president or his administration has said.  In fact, the first – and last – rationale presented for the war by the Bush administration in every formal government statement about the war was not the destruction of WMDs but the removal of Saddam Hussein, or regime change.

This regime change was necessary because Saddam was an international outlaw. He had violated the 1991 Gulf War truce and all the arms control agreements it embodied, including UN resolutions 687 and 689, and the 15 subsequent UN resolutions designed to enforce them. The last of these, UN Security Council Resolution 1441, was itself a war ultimatum to Saddam giving him “one final opportunity” to disarm – or else. The ultimatum expired on December 7, 2002, and America went to war three months later.

Contrary to everything that Al Gore and other Democrats have said for the last four years, Saddam’s violation of the arms control agreements that made up the Gulf War truce – and not the alleged existence of Iraqi WMDs – was the legal, moral and actual basis for sending American troops to Iraq.

Al Gore and Bill Clinton had themselves called for the removal of Saddam by force when he expelled the UN weapons inspectors in 1998, a clear violation of the Gulf truce. This was the reason Clinton and Gore sent an “Iraqi Liberation Act” to Congress that year; it is why the congressional Democrats voted in October 2002 to authorize the president to use force to remove him; and it is the reason the entire Clinton-Gore national security team, including the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence, supported Bush when he sent American troops into Iraq in March 2003.

The Authorization for the Use of Force bill – passed by majorities of both parties in both Houses – is the legal basis for the president’s war, which Democrats have since betrayed along with the troops they sent to the battlefield. The Authorization bill begins with 23 “whereas” clauses justifying the war. Contrary to Gore and the Democratic critics of the Bush administration, only two of these clauses refer to stockpiles of WMDs. On the other hand, twelve of the reasons for going to war refer to UN resolutions violated by Saddam Hussein.

Even if these indisputable facts were not staring Gore in the face, the destruction of WMDs could not have been the “first rationale” for the war in Iraq for this simple reason. On the very eve of the war, the president gave Iraq an option to avoid a conflict with American forces. On March 17, two days before the invasion, Bush issued an eleventh-hour ultimatum to Saddam: leave the country or face war. In other words, if Saddam had agreed to leave Iraq, there would have been no American invasion. It is one of the most revealing features of the Democrats’ crusade against George Bush that they blame the war on him instead of Saddam.

If its offer had been accepted, the Bush administration would have left in place a regime run by the Ba’athist Party and headed by Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz or some comparable figure from the old regime. The idea was, that without Saddam, even such a bad regime would honor the truce accords of 1991 and UN Resolution 1441. This would have led to Iraq’s cooperation with the UN inspectors and the destruction of any WMDs or WMD programs that Saddam may have had – without necessitating a war.

Ignoring – and distorting – the facts about how and why his country went to war, Gore repeats the slanders of the president – and therefore his country – that have become a familiar aspect of our political life. The charges are transparently designed to destroy the authority of America’s commander-in-chief, while his troops are in harm’s way – an unprecedented sabotage of a war in progress. In the course of repeating these charges, Gore adds one of his own, indicting Bush as a tool of the American ruling class who has manipulated the facts about Iraq in order to serve their hidden agendas: “It was as if the Bush White House had adopted Walter Lippmann’s recommendation to decide in advance what policies it wanted to follow and then to construct a propagandistic mass persuasion campaign to ‘manufacture’ the consent of the people to do what the ‘specialized governing class’ had already made up its mind to do.”

Of course Walter Lippmann never recommended any such thing. This is a gross misrepresentation of a Lippmann argument, which can be traced to Noam Chomsky and his Marxist screed, Manufacturing Consent. According to Chomsky, the term “manufactured consent” refers to a conspiracy of the ruling class to snooker Americans into war. This is a malicious misreading of Lippmann’s text.

In his book, Public Opinion, Lippmann observed that modern society had become so complex that only specialized experts were in a position to understand the implications of a given national policy. Because of this complexity, informed policy debates could not be conducted by the voting public but necessarily took place between specialized experts who were then supported by constituencies on both sides of the argument. In other words, Lippmann was already recognizing the role of what we now call “special interest”  and “public interest” groups in shaping the national policy debate. It was in this sense that Lippmann wrote that democratic consent was inevitably “manufactured.” Lippmann never recommended that rulers should organize a “propagandistic mass persuasion campaign” to deceive the public and manipulate the result. This is Chomsky’s perversion of Lippmann’s idea, which Gore merely repeats.

Even so, the argument that Bush manipulated the facts about Iraqi WMDs to pursue a war policy that was aggressive and unfounded is demonstrably false. Bush acted on the consensus of every major intelligence agency – including the British, the French, the Russian, the German and the Jordanian – all of whom believed that Saddam had WMDs. In other words, he cannot reasonably be accused of inventing the existence of Saddam’s WMDs, although that is precisely what Gore and other demagogues on the left do on an almost daily basis. Since every Democratic Senator who voted for the war was provided by the administration with a copy the intelligence data on Saddam’s WMDs, the charge made by Gore and other Democratic senators that they were deceived is both cynical and hypocritical as well as false.

Gore’s charges continue: “We were told by the President that war was his last choice, when it was his first preference.” Was it? That depends on what one means by “first preference.” If what Gore means is that the president prepared for war with Saddam long before the war began, well, of course he did. It was his responsibility to do so. It is the Pentagon’s motto – and a fundamental doctrine of every strategist from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz – that if you want peace, prepare for war. By 2001, when Bush took up residence in the Oval Office, Saddam had already broken the Gulf War truce many times over. American pilots were engaged in a low-intensity armed conflict with the Iraqi military over the “no-fly zones” the truce had created. Clinton and Gore had allowed Saddam to get away with breaking the truce he had signed for two reasons. First because they were preoccupied with the fallout from Clinton’s affair in the White House; but more importantly, because ever since Vietnam the Democrats had shown no interest in deploying American troops to protect the national interest (and thus had opposed the first Gulf War).

In 1998, Saddam expelled the UN inspectors from Iraq. Why would he do so if it was not his intention to do mischief as well? Specifically, why would he do so if it was not his intention to develop the weapons programs – the WMD programs – that the Gulf truce outlawed and that the UN inspectors were there to stop? The terrorist attacks of 9/11 showed that Saddam’s mischief could have serious consequences – not because Saddam had a role in 9/11 – but because Saddam celebrated and endorsed the attacks, had attempted to assassinate an American president and had hosted terrorist organizations and gatherings engaged in a holy war against the West.

The only reason Saddam allowed the UN inspectors to return to Iraq in the fall of 2002 was because Bush placed 200,000 U.S. troops on its border. It would have been irresponsible of Bush to put those troops on the border of a country which was violating international law unless he meant to enforce the law. But the troops were there to go to war only if Saddam Hussein failed to honor the 1991 truce, not to slake the aggressive appetites of the president of the United States, as America’s enemies – and Al Gore – maintain.

Saddam’s offer to allow the UN inspectors to return to Iraq coincided with Bush’s appearance at the UN in September 2002. His message to the UN was that it needed to enforce its resolutions or become irrelevant. If UN did not enforce the resolutions that Saddam had violated, the United States would do so in its stead. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore marked the occasion by publicly attacking their own president for putting such pressure on Saddam Hussein. This was the beginning of the Democratic campaign to sabotage an American war in progress, which has continued without letup ever since.

As a result of Bush’s appeal, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to present Saddam with an ultimatum, and a 30-day deadline to expire on December 7, 2002. By that date he was to honor the truce and destroy his illegal weapons programs or “serious consequences would follow.” The ultimatum was UN Resolution 1441 – the seventeenth attempt to enforce a truce in the Gulf War of 1991. The deadline came and went without Saddam’s compliance. Saddam knew that his military suppliers and political allies – Russia and France – would never authorize its enforcement by arms. This is the reason the United States and Britain went to war without UN approval, not because George Bush preferred unilateral measures, which is simply another Democratic deception.

Since war was not the president’s preference – first, last or otherwise – the United States did not immediately attack. Instead, the White House spent three months after the December 7^th deadline trying by diplomatic means to persuade the French and Russians and Chinese to back the UN resolution they had voted for and to force Saddam to open his country to full inspections. In other words, to honor the terms of the Gulf War truce that they – as Security Council members – had ratified and promised to enforce.

Virtually all of the claims that make up the core of the Democrats’ attacks on Bush’s decision to go to war – that he manipulated data on aluminum tubes to present them as elements of an Iraqi nuclear program and that he lied about an Iraqi attempt to buy yellowcake uranium – were never part of the administration’s rationale for the use of force, and were not mentioned in the Authorization for the Use of Force congressional legislation. They were political attempts to persuade the reluctant Europeans to enforce the UN ultimatum and international law. Even then, by offering Saddam an escape clause, Bush provided an alternative to war. If Saddam would re-settle in Russia or some other friendly state, the United States would not invade.

A third Democratic lie, regurgitated by Gore, is the famous accusation about the sixteen words Bush used in the State of the Union address on the eve of the war. According to Gore, Bush claimed “that he had documentary proof” that Saddam Hussein attempted to buy fissionable uranium from the African state of Niger. According to Gore the “documentary proof” was revealed to be an Italian forgery for which Bush failed to apologize. According to Gore, there was no inquiry into how this happened. According to Gore, the Niger claim was one of the key falsehoods on which Bush based the “rationale” for the war. Every one of these assertions is a distortion of the facts and false.

First, the Niger claim was not part of the rationale for the war. It is not mentioned in the Authorization for the Use of Force legislation or in UN Security Council ultimatum 1441, which constitute the actual reasons the United States and Britain went to war in Iraq. In his State of the Union address the president did not say he had “documentary proof” of an Iraqi mission to obtain uranium in Niger. He said “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Those sixteen words were all he said. Every one of these words, moreover, was true then and remains true today. The British did report that Saddam “had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” and they have stuck by their report, which – contrary to Gore’s malicious assertion – has indeed been investigated by a Senate Intelligence Committee, and has not been found to be false as Gore (and legions of unprincipled Bush critics) have falsely claimed. Moreover the forged Italian document – which was not mentioned in the State of the Union Address, as Gore falsely suggested – was quickly acknowledged by the White House to be forgery.

The Niger claim, along with the administration’s claims about aluminum tubes and Colin Powell’s February speech to the UN, which are falsely presented by administration critics as rationales for the war were all made more than a month after Saddam defied the December 7^th deadline. They were not rationales for the war, but were strictly for the benefit of the appeasement parties in Britain and France. They were put forward as part of an attempt to secure a second Security Council resolution to reinforce the 1441 ultimatum. This requested by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, even though a second Security Council resolution would have been redundant. It was needed by Blair to respond to the attacks he was under from Britain’s anti-American left.

In January, weeks before Powell’s speech, 800,000 Britons – mainly Laborites – had descended on London to protest the war. This would have been equivalent to four million Republicans descending on Washington to protest Bush’s decision to go to war. If Powell’s UN speech was a “manipulation” of the facts to hoodwink the public, it failed miserably. It certainly did not persuade any of the leftists who poured into the streets of London to defend Saddam, and it did not persuade the French or Russian allies of Saddam to desert him. In America, the majority support for the war had long been in place, and for them Powell’s speech was superfluous. 

For Gore and the president’s Democratic critics, all these facts count for nothing. In their place is the great American Satan, George Bush. According to Gore and the Democrats America went to war for reasons that are either illegitimate or immoral or both. According to Gore, the sending of American troops to Iraq was an imperial aggression, orchestrated by the president and his advisors who manipulated the evidence, deceived the people, and ignored the UN to carry out their malign intent: “The pursuit of ‘dominance’ in foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the United Nations,” writes Gore, showing his utter contempt for the facts. What Bush actually ignored was the French, who built Saddam’s nuclear reactor, collaborated with Saddam’s theft of the “Oil for Food” billions, and threatened to veto any attempt to enforce international law or the UN ultimatum. Bush also ignored the Russians, who supplied two-thirds of Saddam’s weapons, helped him sabotage the UN sanctions, and refused to enforce the UN ultimatum. What Bush did not ignore were the 17 UN resolutions designed to keep the Middle East peace and protect the world from the consequences of its failure. Al Gore did that.

Source

PARIS, France — "Killing people breeds bad will," said French General Henri Petain. "So our plan for the future is to replace all our weapons with non-lethal versions to show the world that peace is our only goal."

Starting in 2008, the French military’s Leclerc-armored combat vehicles will be fitted with O2 cartridges," said Petain. "Now, instead of firing high explosive rounds, they will shoot compressed air at their targets."

Crews are being trained to work these new oxygen tanks, which will have a different impact on the enemy than they’re accustomed to.

"O2 blasts won’t demolish buildings the way standard ammunition does," said Gen. Petain. "Instead, all doors and windows will be blown off, giving our ground troops easy access. This will be preferable to entering a smoking ruin with dead bodies everywhere."

In addition, human targets will no longer be pulverized by a tank invasion. "They’ll just be blown off their feet and have the wind knocked out of them," said the military officer. "Believe it or not, an enemy who is short of breath is easier to overcome than a bleeding one. That won’t drain our medical resources and, again, it will show the world that we’re not out for blood."

Furthermore, removing the standard ammunition from the tanks will give the French a tactical advantage.

"The Leclercs will be lighter and faster," said Gen. Petain. "They will be able to cover twice as much ground as before, whether charging toward or away from a battle site.”

Gen. Petain hopes to add O2 missiles to the French arsenal in the near future.

“We believe that nothing will cause an enemy to flee faster than a blast of hot air from France.”

POLICE were last night hunting an Iraqi, suspected of plotting car-bomb attacks in Britain, who went on the run just days before two vehicles packed with petrol, gas and nails were found in central London.

The first device was discovered in a Mercedes parked outside one of the city’s biggest nightclubs, Tiger Tiger, at about 1am when hundreds were packed inside for a ladies’ night.

Police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw fumes inside the car, defused the bomb.

Officers later found similar materials in a Mercedes that had been parked nearby. They said it contained gas, fuel and nails that could have been detonated and that the two cars were obviously linked.

It was reported last night that the first car, a metallic green Mercedes, was stolen in early June and was spotted first in Scotland and then in Birmingham in the two days before the bomb was defused in London.

Police say they are looking for an Iraqi who went on the run from a control order only 11 days before yesterday’s failed bombing attempts. The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is part of a six-strong cell linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

He went missing on 18 June in north-west England, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The Scotsman understands that MI5 and counter-terrorism police consider him a suspect in the failed attacks. However, security sources insisted he was "one of many possibilities".

The first Mercedes was found in the Haymarket area and the second, which also failed to detonate, was later discovered in an underground car park off Park Lane. It had been towed from Cockspur Street, just around the corner from the site of the first device, after being issued with a parking ticket at 2:30am.

Only a chance incident prevented the first bomb exploding and causing what Scotland Yard said would have been "significant injury or loss of life".

An ambulance crew, who had gone to the nightclub on an unrelated matter, noticed strange fumes coming from the Mercedes and raised the alarm.

The prospect of such an attack less than a mile from Downing Street cast a shadow over Gordon Brown’s second day in office. And the possible link to a man who has absconded from a control order will only add to pressure on the government for an urgent review of counter-terrorism laws.

Investigators were last night examining forensic evidence from both vehicles, and considering the echoes of earlier terrorist plots linked to al-Qaeda.

In April, five men were jailed for life for plotting to explode fertiliser bombs at targets including a London nightclub. Last November, Dhiren Barot, an al-Qaeda "general", was jailed for plots including attacks using cars loaded with gas cylinders.

Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism chief, said some facts of yesterday’s plot "resonate" with earlier conspiracies. But he insisted there was "no intelligence that we were going to be attacked in this way".

In a press conference last night, he confirmed that the second Mercedes contained "a considerable amount of fuel and gas canisters and a significant quantity of nails".

He said the device was "potentially viable" and that the two suspect cars are "clearly linked".

"The discovery of what appears to be a second bomb is obviously troubling," he added. "It reinforces the need for the public to be alert."

Whitehall sources later said it was "likely" the incident would be traced back to known Islamic extremists, groups inspired by the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"It is entirely possible that when MI5 find whoever it is that is behind this, it will be someone already known to them," one official said. "But that does not mean they knew that this operation was being prepared - it just isn’t possible to watch every suspect at all times."

While British authorities routinely try to restrict the information flow from terrorism cases, they still share intelligence with the US authorities. And last night, Washington sources said witnesses had seen a man fiddling with a mobile phone near the car in Haymarket, possibly trying to trigger a detonating device inside.

The Iraqi man who went missing on 18 June was the second of his group to abscond from a control order. Last August, Bestun Salim, also absconded. Security officials now believe he has left Britain.

The six Iraqis had been living under control orders since autumn 2005. They were arrested after an MI5-led surveillance operation.

Although they were not charged with any offence, Whitehall sources have claimed they were in the final stages of planning terrorist attacks, possibly involving car bombs.

Instead of charging the men in open court and exposing sensitive intelligence, the government imposed control orders, effectively confining them to their homes for 18 hours a day.

Yesterday’s discovery caused disruption throughout central London.

The heightened awareness was also felt in Scotland, where Lothian and Borders Police said they were reviewing the security arrangements for today’s formal opening of the third session of the Scottish Parliament.

Last night, Professor Paul Wilkinson of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism at St Andrews University, said the co-ordinated bomb plot may have been timed to coincide with Gordon Brown taking over as Prime Minister.

"I think there is a strong possibility that this is the reason for the timing of the attack," he said. "We know al-Qaeda has tried to exploit occasions of this sort in the past, and they want to try and send out the propaganda message that they can continue their so-called jihad and they are prepared to use terror to achieve their goals."

Dr Clifford Jones, an expert in explosives and petro-chemicals at the University of Aberdeen, said a propane cylinder bomb could kill or injure people tens of metres away and do structural damage to buildings.

"A mixture such as propane and air doesn’t detonate but erupts in flame," he said. "The contents of the gas cylinder reacts with the air, and releases heat and if it is confined, the ‘overpressure’ brings a destructive blast."

American news organisations yesterday reported an internet website used by international Sunni militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taleban, to post propaganda received a message that appeared to show advance knowledge of the plot.

The posting - which says, "Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed" - appeared at 08:09am on Thursday, 17 hours before the first device was found.

It appeared on the al-Hesbah chatroom, posted under the name Abu Osama al-Hazeen.

Downing Street confirmed a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee, COBRA, would be held today.

Revellers danced the night away with death waiting in the streets outside

IT WAS ladies’ night in Tiger Tiger. The club’s dancefloors and bars were full of glamorous young women and admiring men, all oblivious to the deadly threat a few feet away on the street outside.

Even though midnight had come and gone, there were about 500 revellers still in the vast venue, which is known for its brash, flash brand of glamour: a place to see and be seen.

The 1,700-capacity club is close to celebrity haunts such as Chinawhite and just yards from the neon of Piccadilly Circus.

Most men looking at the young women thronging the club in short skirts and tight tops would be pleased at what they saw.

But other men have a very different reaction: those who believe that Islam compels them to kill and maim anyone involved in such decadence, and women in particular.

In April, a group of young British Muslims were jailed for life for plotting to explode bombs in and around London. One of their possible targets was legendary London nightclub Ministry of Sound - full of "slags dancing around".

But for two chance incidents Tiger Tiger could have become infamous in the annals of international terrorism.

A little after 1am, a drunk young clubber fell and struck his head. His injury initially appeared serious enough for an ambulance to be summoned - but just another late-night call out for medical teams in London’s clubland.

The ambulance crew patched up the young man, however, before they could move on, returning to base for their next call at about 1:50am, they noticed the silver-green Mercedes.

They saw what appeared to be smoke and a glance through the window was enough to make them call the police.

Inside were green gas canisters, tanks of petrol and steel nails, ready to become deadly missiles at detonation.

That the explosion did not happen is a testimony to the bravery of two Scotland Yard bomb disposal officers.

Instead of withdrawing to a safe distance and sending in a robotic drone, the officers leaned inside the car and disabled the device by hand.

Amid all the chaos, just a few streets away sat another car. At 2:30am it came to the attention of a traffic warden who ticketed it for being illegally parked.

An hour later it was apparently towed away to a council pound in Hyde Park. A strong smell of gas alarmed staff, who then called in the police. The second car was also found to contain fuel, gas and nails.

Scotland Yard declined to comment on reports that a mobile phone was found in the first Mercedes that may have been intended as a trigger.

Rajeshree Patel, who was in the nightclub, said the Mercedes was "parked at an angle at the door of Tiger Tiger with all four doors open and headlights on."

The Mercedes

was taken to the Forensics Explosives Laboratory in Kent at about 11am yesterday for further tests.

Police said the smoke seen inside the car is believed to have been vapour, released from 60 litres of volatile petrol inside.

Last night, London’s clubs and bars remained defiantly open in the wake of the failed attacks.

Drinkers in the capital’s bars were determined to carry on with their evening plans.

In Leicester Square, around the corner from Haymarket where the first device was discovered, Joanne Moss, 35, said: "We still come out for dinner. The bombs have not put us off."

Philip Matthews, the chairman of the Westminster Licensees Association which represents around one thousand bars, clubs and restaurants, said that he also expected venues to keep their doors resolutely open tonight but to be extremely vigilant.

Early test for Brown’s new front-bench team

IT WAS a baptism of fire for both Gordon Brown and his new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Hours after their elevation in government, the pair were woken early to be told of the foiled terrorist plot that could have killed hundreds on the streets of London.

Ms Smith, whose biggest battles to date had been twisting the arms of unruly back-benchers as Chief Whip, was forced to push aside all other priorities, such as a mass release of prisoners on to the streets of the capital because of overcrowding in jails.

Instead, she chaired Whitehall’s crisis committee, COBRA. Cabinet met for an extended one hour and 45 minutes yesterday, although sources close to the Prime Minister insisted just 15 minutes of this was devoted to the terrorism alert.

It was a day when the new Prime Minister could have felt vindicated in his appointment of a new junior minister for security, Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the navy.

He has been a sharp critic of government defence cuts since stepping down last year as the head of the Royal Navy. He was also commander of the ill-fated HMS Ardent in the Falklands conflict.

Another security-related appointment came in the form of former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens, who will advise Mr Brown on security matters.

Adam Ingram, the longest-serving defence minister in history, has been replaced as armed forces minister by Bob Ainsworth. He will instead lead a year-long counter-terrorism review into the role of the military.

The review will examine how the military can best support the work of the police and security services in the UK, said the Prime Minister, who added it would also analyse "how we can build capacity overseas to tackle terrorism, rather than waiting for it to come to our shores".

Source

Baghdad: Coalition troops killed 26 militants suspected to have links to "Iranian terror networks" in pre-dawn raids in Baghdad’s Sadr City on Saturday.

Seventeen militants were also detained during the raids that targeted four cars belonging to "secret cell" networks, the military said in a statement.

"It is believed that the suspected terrorists have close ties to Iranian terror networks and are responsible for facilitating the flow of lethal aid into Iraq," the military added.

The raids are the latest in a series of operations targeting militants in northeast Baghdad’s Shiite slum. The US accuses these militants of smuggling weapons from Iran.

Russia has successfully put a Cosmos-series military satellite into orbit after a launch from a space center in Kazakhstan, Russia’s space agency said Friday.

A Zenit-M rocket with a military satellite was launched from the Baikonur space center that Russia rents in Kazakhstan at 2 p.m. Moscow time (noon GMT).

"The separation of the spacecraft occurred successfully and on schedule," a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency said.

"A Cosmos-series satellite will expand the orbital group of Russia’s military satellites," he said.

The satellite launch had been originally scheduled for December 2006, but was postponed until June for technical reasons.

Russia is reportedly operating a network of about 60-70 military reconnaissance satellites.

Zenit-M is a modified version of the Zenit-3SL delivery vehicle used to launch spacecraft from the Sea Launch consortium’s floating launch platform in the Pacific Ocean.

The modernized Zenit rocket has only two stages, while the Zenit-3SL uses an additional booster.

Source

Creative drug smugglers hid bricks of marijuana inside real concrete bricks, Customs and Border Protection officers found when inspecting a tractor trailer at the Bridge of the Americas Monday, agency officials said today.

Officers had to break open every single decorative patio stone in the shipment, a task that took them several hours. At the end, they seized 365 pounds of marijuana in 312 bricks.

"Drug smugglers spent an incredible amount of time and energy in an attempt to defeat the CBP inspection process," CBP Port Director David Longoria said. "The fact that smugglers would go to these extremes indicates that CBP officers are making it exceptionally difficult to smuggle drugs through the El Paso port of entry."

CBP officers in El Paso, West Texas and New Mexico seized 3,640 pounds of marijuana in 33 drug seizures last week.

The brick seizure was the third largest drug load at the Bridge of the Americas cargo facility in eight days. Last week CBP officers at BOTA cargo seized 3,013 pounds of marijuana in one seizure and 1,806 pounds of marijuana in another bust.

Source

Keep in mind that our Mexican National border guards are only apprehending illegal aliens with drugs or guns. Everyone else gets a pass.

ISLAMABAD - With the George W Bush administration under pressure to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pakistan is readying to step in to help its ally in the "war on the terror".

Both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have suggested that President Bush transfer Guantanamo’s detainees to the United States, saying the facility is undercutting US foreign-policy efforts. Should Bush not do so, it is likely that the joint military prison and interrogation camp will be closed by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department oppose having Guantanamo prisoners moved to the US.

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