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Date Posted: 09:56:42 11/14/07 Wed
Author: part 2
Subject: Re: November 13, 2007
In reply to: part 1 's message, "November 13, 2007" on 09:53:49 11/14/07 Wed

PA District Attorney Investigating Internet Killer Network

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--Pennsylvania District Attorney Bruce Castor is
investigating whether last week's school shooter in Finland,
Pekka-Eric Auvinen, was using the Internet to plan out other
shootings with Dillon Cossey, a 14-year-old in Pennsylvania. Last
week, 18-year-old Auvinen, killed eight students at his high
school, plus the nurse and principal, in Jokela, Finland, before
commiting suicide. Montgomery County DA Castor announced that he
ordered detectives to search the computer of Cossey, who was
arrested last month after an arsenal of weapons, with notebooks
and videos of the 1999 Columbine high school attack were found in
his home. Cossey admitted in court that he planned an attack on
his high school.
Auvinen had posted a video on YouTube, before the killings,
invoking the names of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold, as well as Friederich Nietzsche. Finnish police,
according to AP, said today that Auvinen, "may have had Internet
contacts" with Cossey. Other teens have come forward in Finland
saying they were part of a YouTube network of users with Auvinen.
It's highly likely that the network included MySpace and
Facebook, as well. [ddp]

ECONOMICS

U.S. Remains an Economic Super-Power, Says Ambrose Evans
Pritchard

Nov. 12 (EIRNS)--In the midst of many dozens of commentaries
suggesting the end of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve
currency, British agent Ambrose Evans Pritchard, reported in a
London Daily Telegraph article posted late Sunday night that the
``U.S. Will Retake Economic Superpower Crown.'' ``Every 20 years
or so, the punditocracy consigns America to the economic dustbin
... [but] At the end of the day, the U.S. remains the only major
power still producing babies at a rate high enough to survive
through the 21st century as a dynamic society.''
Evans Pritchard is dismissive of the ``Europe'' of the euro
bloc, and says, ``The dollar is at least the currency of a
nation, backed by a unified democracy. There is no parallel with
sterling of the lat 1940s. America is a rich republic of 300
million, not a crumbling empire held by force. That said, the
dollar may fall further yet...'' But ultimately he believes that
``America will now conquer market share at the expense of others
in a beggar-thy-neighbor 1930s world.'' He notes that with all
the troubles for the U.S., ``the shares of Barclays, RBS...UBS,
et al. are still in freefall, in many cases down 40%.''
Lyndon LaRouche commented that what Evans Pritchard is
really saying is that the British are in much worse shape than
the U.S.--if the U.S. acts with the power that it truly has,
Constituionally, institutionally, and economically. (mjs)

Inflationary pressures in China

Nov. 12 (LPAC) -The Peoples Bank of China has raised the reserve
ratio requirements for banks for the ninth time this year alone,
to 13.5%, in an effort to curb the excessive liquidity in the
economy. The Chinese currency, the yuan, has been rising at an
accelerating rate against the collapsing US dollar in recent
weeks. There is heavy pressure on the Chinese government to
up-value the yuan, and "hot money," speculating on a yuan
re-valuation, continues to flow into China. This external
pressure, including China's continuous trade surpluses, are
exacerbating internal inflation.
The liquidity excess is worse than the PBOC had expected in
October, and therefore the central bank raised the reserve
requirement ratio for commercial banks to a 10-year high, Peng
Xingyun, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences Institute of Finance and Banking, told Xinhua yesterday.
Analysts at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the
biggest bank, are warning that the liquidity will flow into the
existing real estate and stock market bubbles, and predict that
the reserve rate will be up to 15% by next year. Peng said that
the "PBOC raised the reserve requirement ratio before it released
October's money supply and other financial statistics next week,
as it is concerned about the excessive liquidity and credit
increase." By end September, PBOC figures showed an 18.5%
increase in M2 -- cash in circulation and all deposits, year on
year, up to 39.3 trillion yuan ($5.2 trillion).
Last week, at the International Finance Forum in Beijing,
the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National
People's Congress (NPC) Cheng Siwei, warned of the inflationary
pressure. "Capital coming from bank deposits, forex reserves and
hot money from overseas have raised consumer prices and pushed up
both the property market and the stock market at the same time,
which traditionally move in opposite directions," Cheng said.
Financial measures, including raising reserve requirements, have
not curbed the problem, he said.
Money laundering is also being targetted. PBOC governor Zhou
Xiaochuan told a national meeting on money laundering in Beijing
Nov. 9 that China is going to increase measures to control money
laundering, and will monitor the securities and insurance
companies to safeguard financial security. Zhou Xiaochuan said
that China's anti-money laundering efforts have to be improved,
and the government would work to amend the Criminal Law to make
money-laundering investigations more efficient. Unregistered
marketable securities will have to be registered on both arrival
and departure, as one key measure, Zhou said. (mmc)

Washington Post's Mallaby Endorses World Monetary Dictatorship

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--British imperial columnist Sebastian
Mallaby, in his regular Washington Post column, promotes the very
"private" global currency scheme that Lyndon LaRouche denounced
last May as an "imperial oligarchical" scheme for a one-world
monetary dictatorship.
Mallaby's column, entitled "The Dollar in Danger," starts
with Nixon's (and George Shultz's) decoupling of the dollar from
gold in 1971. Now the dollar is again vulnerable, and its days as
a reserve currency are numbered, Mallaby writes. The last thing
the world wants is dollar weakness, he says, pointing out that
east Asians and oil states aren't about to start dumping dollars.
"Most economists assume that the dollar will continue to act
as the global currency because there is no alternative," Mallaby
concludes. "But one of my colleagues at the Council on Foreign
Relations, Benn Steil, has proposed another option -- a privately
created currency that would confer an inflation-proof claim on
gold or a basket of commodities. Steil calls his idea `digital
gold,' which has a nice back-to-the-future ring. The more the
dollar slides, the less Steil's suggestion sounds like a fantasy
from a movie studio." (Maybe Mallaby has been watching, or
reading, too much H.G. Wells.)
When Steil's proposal was first published in {Foreign
Affairs} last May, LaRouche denounced it as dangerous folly. As
we reported at the time, "LaRouche described the Steil proposal
for a 'trilateral' division of a one-world monetary dictatorship
as an attempt to revive the `Persian Model' of a global empire,
divided between regional powers. In the original Persian case,
the proposal was for a division between an eastern and western
empire. Now, LaRouche warned, the CFR is promoting a `trilateral'
division of the world, along precisely the Persian Model of
imperial oligarchical rule. LaRouche drew the parallel to the
Persian campaign to destroy Athens at the close of the
Peloponnesian Wars and the present schemes, and also pointed to
the parallels with the Venetian model of a private financier
oligarchy ruling the world through control over debt and
commerce." [ews]

Will Pragmatism and Cowardice Kill the Nuclear Industry, Again?

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 12--That the U.S. nuclear industry could
kill the "nuclear renaissance" before it gets off the ground was
in evidence at the annual meeting of the American Nuclear
Society, which runs from Nov. 11-15. For the past few years, the
industry has opportunistically jumped on the "global warming"
bandwagon, selling nuclear energy as a way of reducing carbon
emissions. At yesterday's plenary sesssion, nuclear engineers sat
through a rant by Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center
on Global Climate Change, who claimed that carbon dioxide
emissions had to be reduced by 80% by 2050, and that putting a
"price on carbon" is the "only way to make nuclear competetive."
Instead of federal subsidies, the "best subsidy is a climate
policy," she raved.
But it not such environmental extremists who could kill
nuclear--it is the "nuclear supporters," and the industry itself.
The second panel included former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu,
who led a fight for years to get the Seabrook nuclear power plant
in that state online, two decades ago. After appropriately
excoriating the industry for being "too afraid to be
pro-nuclear," he stated that although he is "a skeptic on global
warming, you might as well exploit it, and use the stupidity of
one group to accomplish what we want."
During the Q&A, referring to a statement by a representative
of the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, that to build for
support for nuclear, "every voter needs to know the truth," EIR
suggested to Governor Sununu that jumping on the bandwagon of
curbing CO2, when, even were there global warming, you'd have to
get rid of water vapor, not CO2, is not telling the truth, and is
not the reason why the U.S. needs nuclear power plants. This will
backfire, EIR stated. Although Sununu agreed that "too much of
the private sector has caved in to the fad of global warming," he
repeated that the nuclear industry has to be part of the
discussion of what policy should be enacted to combat it!
Many of those in the audience, from the nuclear industry,
universities, and national laboratories, agreed that global
warming is a hoax, and not the way to promote nuclear energy, and
took copies of an open letter to the American Nuclear Society,
prepared by {21st Century Science & Technology}, and written by
scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski, and copies of EIR articles on
nuclear energy. [mgf]

Exxon CEO Denounces `Resource Nationalism'

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--As more and more nations are taking measures to
regain their national patrimony from world corporations which
have looted nations' wealth, the CEO of ExxonMobil Corp. has
denounced "resource nationalism" as "counterproductive."
``Isolation and resource nationalism is counterproductive
and undermines the goal of supply security,'' Rex Tillerson said
today in an energy conference speech in Rome. The drive by some
oil-exporting countries to become ``energy superpowers'' will
have ``detrimental impacts,'' Tillerson said, Bloomberg reports.
Countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela have forced resource
looters to renegotiate contracts, often imposed with the aid of
Economic Hitmen. People in those countries which try to take
greater control of their resources will pay, Tillerson
threatened, with lost revenue and cuts in international
investment. Is a tiger fearing the springing of a trap? (fhb)

Oil Majors Don't Invest, Just Loot

Nov. 12 (LPAC) -- Again, a prominent German newspaper, the Nov.
11, Sunday edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, sheds light
on the non-investment policy of the leading oil companies. This
involves two aspects: 1) state-owned companies are often used to
co-fund the state budget for other expenses, rather than
re-investing revenues in the oil sector. In the case of Iran,
production is down to 4 million barrels a day, as compared to 6
million which it formerly pumped out of the soil. 2) The
production costs are "too high" for companies that want to make
money, mainly. Exxon complains that the operation of an
oil-drilling platform costs three times what it did several years
ago. BP complains that producing a barrel of crude oil costs $60
now, as compared to $40 earlier.
There are enough oil reserves in the ground, there is no
scarcity, the article states, the problem is rather
non-investment. And because of that, the world is heading for a
critical undersupply during the decade beginning in 2010. There
are already panicked "market" forecasts (or rather, wishful
prophecies.?) of a price of$250 per barrel, to come after 2010,
the article hints. (rap)

UNITED STATES

Top U.S. Commander Says Military Does Not Want To Attack Iran

Nov. 12, 2007 (EIRNS)--In what is being characterized as a "shot
across the bow" against Bush Administration's hardliners, the
lead story in today's Financial Times is a large photo and
interview with U.S. Adm. Willam Fallon, head of the Central
Command, saying the U.S. military command does not want to attack
Iran. The FT interview is the most public and vocal statement
that Fallon has made to date about Iran, but it is consistent
with what EIR has been reporting for months--there's an intensive
fight within the Bush Administration against Vice President
Cheney's commitment to bomb Iran before the administration leaves
office.
Fallon immediately condemns "the continuing stories that
just keep going around and around that any day there will be
another war, which is just not where we want to go," he said.
"Getting Iranian behavior to change and finding way to get them
to come to their senses and do that is the real objective.
Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being
not the first choice in my book."
The Financial Times comments that although Fallon did not
rule out military action at some point, "his comments served as a
shot across the bows of hawks who are arguing for imminent
action. They also echoed the views of senior brass that military
action is currently unnecessary, and should only be consider as
an absolute last resort."
The FT then quotes Fallon again saying that "generally the
bellicose comments are not particularly helpful. That said we
have to make sure that there is no mistake on the part of the
Iranians about our resolve in tending to business in the region.
There has to be some combination of strength and willingness to
engage. How to come up with the right combination of that is the
real trick." [dea]

Congressman Calls for Public U.S.-Iran War Game as Heuristic
Device

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--A senior member of the House Ways and Means
Committee, in a brief statement on the House floor Nov. 9, called
for members of Congress to participate as soon as possible in an
U.S.-Iran war game, and allow the American public to witness it
on television. "Think what we would have learned if we had done
it before the invasion of Iraq," he said.
Nine-term Democrat Jim McDermott (Wash.) said in his call,
"My concern that the President might launch a military strike
against Iran is well known, but my mission here today is not
rhetorical.... We know the Pentagon has conducted war games to
examine the casualities and consequences of a U.S. military
strike against Iran. We should, too. Here are some of the
questions we could consider: How many dead? Wounded? How much
destruction? Would we pulverize Iranian targets with bunker
buster bombs?
"A group of recently retired, high-level CIA intelligence
agents brought the idea to me. These are patriots whom we trusted
with keeping and protecting America's secrets. They and others,
including a retired Air Force Colonel who conducted war games in
the Pentagon, would accurately produce a U.S.-Iran war game, just
as it's done in the Pentagon. I know because they gave me a plan.
"A military strike against Iran would involve life and death
issues. We need to understand what that would look like. I urge
my colleagues and the media to join me in demanding that we
publicly conduct a U.S.-Iran war game as soon as possible...."
[fhb]

California Rep. Filner Warns: Allowing Mercenary Operations in a
Democracy is a "Step Toward Dictatorship!"

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--California Democratic Congressman Bob Filner is
warning that if the Blackwater USA mercenary outfit is permitted
to build an 824-acre military-style training facility in the town
of Potrero, east of San Diego and eight miles from the Mexican
border, this will have dangerous implications for the health of
democracy in the United States.
Echoing warnings also made by LaRouchePAC, in the context of
Felix Rohatyn's "Revolution in Military Affairs," Filner told a
protest gathering last April, on the sidelines of the California
Democratic Party Convention, that Blackwater's plans were "a
dangerous development... for a democracy to have mercenaries...if
the country wants to do a job, we should do it as citizens." The
government "can't get enough people to go to Iraq for this
horrible war, so they hire them. That's the first stage of moving
toward a dictatorship."
"This is not just paranoid thinking," Filner warned. "We've
seen this in history. We've seen democracies fall when
mercenaries are involved. We can go back to the Praetorian
Guard, or the Hessians...This is a very dangerous development."
The California Congressmen told {Salon.com} in October that
the complex that will be known as "Blackwater West" is an ominous
sign of plans to, minimally, privatize border security. He noted
that the Minutemen vigilante group is already present on the
border, and if Blackwater moves in with its operations--which
could extend far beyond border security--it will make things even
worse. "You don't want armies around who will sell out to the
highest bidder. ...The border is a very sensitive area, and if
Blackwater operates the way they do in Iraq--shoot first and ask
questions later--my constituents are at risk."
Filner told constituents back in April that "we have to say
...we're not only not going to allow this to happen in our
backyard...it's not going to happen anywhere." Blackwater, isn't
subject to military or civilian law, he said. They've been
investigated for lack of accountability. "This is disgraceful. No
mercenaries for America!" [crr]

`Pelosi, Feinstein Betraying Dems'

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--That's the title of a piece in the {Niagara Falls
Reporter} by Bill Gallagher, a former Niagara Falls city
councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.
"The `San Francisco Democrats' are the handmaidens for
President George W. Bush: feckless, short-sighted and cynical.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
both wealthy San Franciscans, are leading voices in the
Congressional chorus that chooses convenience over principle and
perceived political advantage over certain political truth.
"Pelosi wants no talk of impeachment for Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and other war criminals. She has done
nothing to block funding for the war in Iraq, the only way to end
the occupation, save Iraqi and American lives and let the Iraqi
people determine their own destiny.
"Feinstein made sure we now have as our nation's chief law
enforcement officer a man who refuses to condemn drowning torture
and believes the President has unlimited authority and need not
respect the laws of the land....
"Pelosi demonstrably is out of stride with the American
people, and especially Democrats, in protecting the Busheviks
from the heat of the impeachments they richly deserve." [fhb]

Labor `Crats Pimp for Health Insurance Companies

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--More than 350 unions support single-payer
Medicare For All, H.R. 676. Some 85 members of the House have
signed on to Rep. John Conyers' bill. But on NOv. 9 AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney and leaders of the SEIU, UFCW,
Bricklayers, Laborers, and Teamsters along with DLA Piper partner
and former Congressman Dick Gephardt held a media event at the
National Press Club to announce their backing of a plan that
would allow the health insurance ``industry'' to survive at the
expense of the American population. The Corporate Crime Reporter
reports that they endorsed the plan of Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich (D), which is similar to the proposal announced by
Arnie, the Rohatyn-Shultz creation in California. [fhb]

IBERO-AMERICA

President Correa Demands: Stop Central Bank "Pimping" for
Financier Interests--Repatriate Ibero-America's Reserves!

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--Speaking Nov. 10 in Santiago, Chile, Ecuador's
President Rafael Correa denounced as a form of "pimping," the
practice that most central banks have of depositing a nation's
foreign reserves abroad. Currently, $450 billion of
Ibero-America's reserves are deposited outside the region,
"supposedly for security reasons," he said. In fact, "we are
financing the United States!"
In the case of Ecuador, he said, "this is a case of Ripley's
`Believe it or Not!'" The "autonomous" Central Bank has deposited
our reserves, which are largely public-sector deposits, in Miami!
"Those national savings should instead be invested in our
refineries and dams, but instead, those brilliant Central Bank
technocrats have invested them abroad, and we can't touch them,
because [the bank] is autonomous, by law." Correa warned that
once the Constituent Assembly goes into session, "all this will
change."
The Ecuadorian leader laughingly noted that by saying this,
he would almost certainly be accused of being a "Chavista" -- a
follower of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez--because the latter
has also proposed doing away with Central Bank autonomy. But, he
added, "the person who convinced President Chavez to put an end
to that pimping was none other than your humble servant.... The
only thing that kind of pimping is good for is implementing a
monetarist system, with no democratic oversight." President
Correa explained that with the proper coordination,
Ibero-America's reserves could be repatriated to the region "by
tomorrow," but noted that since important financial interests
would be affected, "some try to torpedo this initiative." [crr]

The Cause of Mexico's Devastating Flood: Since Lopez Portillo,
the Governments Just Haven't Given a Dam

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--The four dams on Mexico's Grijalva River--the
largest in the country, which runs from Guatemala through Chiapas
and Tabasco--were able to handle almost the entirety of the
enormous amount of rainfall that sent flood waters down the
Grijalva River at the end of October; but the Usumacinta River
(the second largest in the country, in the same area) and its
tributaries have no dams at all, and thus couldn't contain the
massive inundation which hit the flood plain in the state of
Tabasco, along the Gulf Coast of Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
This is the summary finding that emerges from a detailed
report filed by the Society of Civil Engineers of Mexico (CICM)
on Nov. 6. According to the CICM study:
1) About one meter (100 cm) fell on the states of Tabasco
and Chiapas in just three days at the end of October. This
enormous amount of precipitation was far greater than the
previous big flood of 1999, when 50 cm fell in the entire month
of October.
2) Where the Grijalva and the Usumacinta unite in the
coastal flood plain, just downstream from the city of
Villahermosa, a "hydraulic plug" developed which caused a back-up
of enormous amounts of water.
3) Storms in the Gulf of Mexico contributed as well, by
raising the sea level by a full meter above normal, between the
effects of tides and winds.
4) The Grijalva basin represents 27% of the surface area
subjected to the heavy rainfall. Of the four major dams on the
Grijalva and its tributaries, the three farthest upstream (La
Angostura, Chicoasen and Malpaso), were able to control 100% of
the water volume reaching them without having to release any of
it farther downstream. The fourth dam, Penitas, was able to
contain about one-third of the 3,000 cubic meters per second of
water reaching it, but was forced to release some 2,000 cubic
meters per second downstream. But the CICM calculated that this
volume of water contributed only 3% of the total floodwaters that
hit Tabasco.
5) The Usumacinta and its tributaries and other rivers in
the region, constitute 73% of the surface area hit by the rains.
And they have {no} dams on them whatsoever. Thus, the devastating
flood.
The CICM concludes their report with the understated
recommendation that Mexico must "promote a greater investment in
infrastructure projects in the entire national territory, and
especially in the South-Southeast region, to prevent disasters
and contribute to sustained and balanced long-term economic
development." [DNS]

EUROPE

British Foreign Intelligence Recruits You, Via MySpace!

Nov. 12 (LPAC) -- In the context of the ongoing foreign
intelligence war between Russia and Britain, the {Pravda} daily
already on Oct. 18 had the following, rather interesting report:
"Sometimes spies use strange methods, such as psychological
techniquess, informational war, etc. A British intelligence
agency will work with cyberspace. GCHQ said Thursday [Oct. 18] it
hopes to attract computer-savvy young recruits by embedding job
ads within video games such as `Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell:
Double Agent' (www.ixbt.com).
GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) said it was
looking to reach "an Internet-savvy generation of graduate
groups." In a statement, GCHQ said it hoped the campaign would
"capture the imagination of people with a particular interest in
IT." The month-long ad campaign, which started at the end of
October, is being run by GCHQ, the recruitment firm TMP
Worldwide, and Microsoft-owned ad agency Massive Inc. Ads
entitled "Careers in British Intelligence" will appear as
billboards in scenes in "Splinter Cell" and other games,
including "Need for Speed Carbon" and "Enemy Territory: Quake
Wars" when they are played on computers and Microsoft Xbox
consoles in Britain.
Kate Clemens, Head of GCHQ's digital strategy at TMP
Worldwide, said the campaign would target frequent gamers who
"are particularly receptive to innovative forms of advertising.
The world of online gaming offers GCHQ a further route to target
a captive audience."
GCHQ employs about 5,000 people at its high-tech
headquarters in Cheltenham, western England. Britain's shadowy
intelligence services have slowly been raising their profile --
and deflating some cherished secret-agent myths -- as they
attempt to attract a larger and more diverse pool of recruits.
The foreign intelligence service MI6 launched a website in 2005,
which cautions that its work is far from the "level of glamor and
excitement" of James Bond films. Its domestic counterpart, MI5,
has an online section tackling "myths and misconceptions" that
stresses "we do not kill people or arrange their assassination."
Microsoft bought New York-based Massive last year. The
company sells virtual billboard space to advertisers, then --
rather than placing the ads within the games themselves --
delivers them over the Internet to PCs and Xbox 360 game
consoles." (rap)

AFRICA

`Sudan Is the Buffer Between Two Zones of Africa; If Sudan Drifts
Into Conflict, the Whole of Africa Will Bleed'

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--These were opening words of Salva Kiir, Vice
President of Sudan, and President of Southern Sudan, speaking at
the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington on Nov. 7. The two zones
he referred to, are Libya south through Chad, Central Africa
Republic, and down to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and
the escalating conflict involving Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia.
With the recent report by the International Crisis Group warning
of the imminence of war between Eritrea and Ethiopia before the
end of November, Salva Kiir is not exaggerating the danger for
war erupting throughout this entire region of Africa.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended a
generation of war between North and South Sudan, was signed in
January 2005. Kiir said it should be the model for ending such
conflicts, ``but if it collapses the whole continent will
suffer.'' While Salva Kiir blamed the North and the National
Congress Party for the violating numerous provisions of the CPA,
which led to the removal of ministers of his Sudan People's
Liberation Movement (SPLM/A) from the Unity Government in
October, he reiterated that the CPA must not fail, and Sudan must
not revert to war. He compared the CPA to a drunk that is
staggering, ready to fall, but is still standing. While Salva
Kiir was in the United States, Sudanese President Gen. Omar al
Bashir was in South Africa meeting with President Thabo Mbeki,
promising to work toward a solution to the current impasse with
the CPA. That this should happen is all the more important,
giving the failure of the Darfur peace conference last month in
Libya, and the likelihood of more irregular warfare between the
almost two dozen rebel groups and the government operating in
Darfur. [LKF]

SOUTHWEST ASIA

Iran, Russia Denounce PKK Violence, as PKK Kidnaps Seven People
in Southeast Turkey

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--PKK terrorists have kidnapped seven people,
including two village guards in the eastern Turkey province of
Van. The PKK blocked a bridge leading to the village of Ogulveren
near the border with Iran and kidnapped the two guards and five
other young men late on Nov. 11.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Hosseini
said yesterday that Iranian security and military forces were
pursuing terrorist grouplets in border regions, it was reported
by IRNA. This coheres with earlier reports that the PKK has
dispersed its members into Iran in an effort to escape from the
coordinated military crackdown that was promised by President
Bush to the Turkish Prime Minister, in northern Iraq. Abdullah
Ocalan, a former PKK leader, and brother of the imprisoned PKK
chief, told AFP that over the past month ``thousands of PKK
members have crossed into Iran.'' He also said PKKers were
receiving support from Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
At the same time, a Kurdish delegation is in Turkey for
talks on the PKK crisis. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Alexander Saltanov stated at a seminar on the dialogue of
civilizations and the Middle East held in St. Petersburg, Russia
that Russia condemned PKK violence. This was reported to Cihan
news agency, and picked up by Zaman. [wie/ews]

Arafat Memorial Rally Erupts in Violence, Seven Killed

Nov. 12 (LPAC)--Further fulfilling Eliott Abrams' plan for
Palestinian civil war, violence broke out today in Gaza at a
Fatah rally commemorating the third anniversary of the death of
Yasser Arafat. In an hour and one-half of gunfire, at least six
Palestinians were killed, and over 100 were wounded. Doctors at
Gaza hospitals said all of the dead and most of the wounded were
Fatah supporters who were participating in the mass rally,
although Hamas security personnel were also among the wounded.
Officials of Fatah, which organized the rally, estimated
attendance at 250,000.
Fatah officials blamed Hamas for starting the violence,
while Hamas officials accused Fatah. [ews]

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