China's military buildup raises questions --from www.inq7.net

China's military buildup raises questions--US official

From Philippine Daily Inquirer

First posted 02:35pm (Mla time) Sept 23, 2005
By Robert Burns
Associated Press


WASHINGTON -- The pace and scope of China's military buildup raise questions about the government's intentions toward its neighbors, says Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's new top policy adviser.

In his first interview since replacing Douglas J. Feith as undersecretary of defense for policy, Eric S. Edelman described China as a rising power that is at a "strategic crossroads" after years of impressive economic growth.

"It's a little bit hard to see" what security threat could trouble China enough to prompt such a big military buildup, Edelman said during an Associated Press interview in his Pentagon office.

"It far surpasses anything that any of China's neighbors in Asia are doing or would be capable of doing," he said. "So it raises inevitably a question in people's minds: To what end is this activity aimed? I don't think we know the answer, completely."

The Bush administration, which had rocky relations with China during the early years of President George W. Bush's first term, is engaging in a series of high-level visits to China, including a planned Rumsfeld trip in October.

Edelman said the administration's goal is to reach a better understanding with allies, particularly in Europe, on how to approach China in ways that encourage Beijing's leaders to pursue a peaceful path in the future.

"We would do well to work together with our friends and allies in Europe to see if we can come to a more common view of that and how we can do it," Edelman said. "The odds of it happening go up dramatically if everybody else works together."

Edelman, who runs a policy organization of about 1,200 people, took the job Aug. 9 as a recess appointment, meaning Bush used a constitutional power to bypass Senate confirmation and install Edelman while Congress was in recess.

An argument over the release of Pentagon documents related to Iraq has blocked Edelman's confirmation for several months. He said his nomination was resubmitted to the Senate this week, although it is not clear that it will be acted upon. If not confirmed, his recess appointment would expire in January 2007.

A career diplomat who specialized in Soviet and East European affairs, Edelman said he was in Turkey, where he was US ambassador, when Rumsfeld called him last spring to ask if he would take the Pentagon job. He said he had been contemplating retirement until that moment but decided to accept after talking with Rumsfeld. Before going to Turkey he was a national security assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney from February 2001 to June 2003.

One of the issues he faces in his new assignment is the future of US cooperation with North Korea on recovering the remains of US servicemen who died there during the 1950-53 Korean War. To the regret of some veterans groups, the administration halted that last May, contending the North Koreans had created an unsafe environment.

Edelman said it was not clear whether the administration would try to restore that program.

"As a general proposition it is right and important that we do everything we can to ascertain the situation of the MIA and POW folks whose names are on the books as not-accounted-for," he said. "We owe that as a nation and as a department to the families and to those who may still be out there alive, but also to the memory of those who are not but whose situations we have not been able to completely ascertain yet."

Edelman is among several new faces this year in the E-ring, the Pentagon's executive corridor. Another is Gordon England, replacing Paul Wolfowitz as deputy secretary of defense, although England is in an "acting" capacity because his nomination has been stalled in the Senate for several months. Wolfowitz became World Bank president on June 1.

Edelman was a special assistant to former Secretary of State George P. Shultz during President Ronald Reagan's first term and served at the US Embassy in Moscow for two years during Reagan's second term.

In the administration of Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, he worked in the office of the secretary of defense as a staff aide to Wolfowitz, who held the post Edelman now holds.





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Ex-opposition leader wants Australia to ditch US alliance --www.inq7.net

Ex-opposition leader wants Australia to ditch US alliance

First posted 07:46pm (Mla time) Sept 17, 2005
Agence France-Presse







SYDNEY -- Australia's ex-opposition leader Mark Latham wants his country to scrap its alliance with the United States as the link represents "the last manifestation of the White Australia mentality," according to excerpts from his diaries published Saturday.

Latham, who insisted he supported the US alliance in the lead-up to his crushing defeat in last October's election, offered a scathing assessment of the pact in diary entries published in the Weekend Australian newspaper.

"It's just another form of neo-colonialism," the former leader of the center-left Labor Party said, claiming the alliance had unnecessarily dragged Australia into wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Latham said the US alliance was hindering Australia's integration into Asia and represented a security blanket for "a timid insular nation at the bottom of the world, too frightened to embrace an independent foreign policy."

He said the mentality that embraced the US alliance was the same that created the White Australia policy, the discriminatory migration policy that until the 1960s made it difficult for non-Caucasians to settle in Australia.

Latham resigned shortly after losing to Prime Minister John Howard last October and until this week had shied away from public life.

However, his 440-page book "The Latham Diaries" has dominated Australian newspapers and airwaves in recent days as the ex-leader has launched a vitriolic attack on his former colleagues that has been described as "the biggest dummy spit in the history of Australian politics."

Current Labor leader Kim Beazley has threatened to sue over Latham's allegations that his successor spread sexual innuendoes about him, while key Labor figures have bristled at his assessment that the party is "irreparably broken."

Labor frontbencher Robert McClelland said his party did not share Latham's views on the US alliance and had a 65-year history of supporting links with Washington.

He said Latham had lied about his views on the alliance, which has long been a central platform of Australian foreign policy on both sides of politics.

"He was misleading not only his colleagues but also the Australian public," McClelland told reporters.

Acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile said Latham's comments raised questions about Labor's commitment to the US alliance.

"We cannot let the frontbench of the Labor Party off the hook on this, they supported the Latham leadership, they supported his policies."





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US envoy warned of coup --from www.inq7.net

US envoy warned of coup
Mussomeli report may be one of FBI stolen files

First posted 00:16am (Mla time) Sept 18, 2005
By Norman Bordadora
Inquirer News Service




THE United States Embassy said in a report last April that President Macapagal-Arroyo's public support had faded and that it had been told elements in the Armed Forces were planning to move and force her into resigning, according to a document obtained by the Inquirer yesterday.

The embassy said that "imprecise" information it had received also suggested that Ms Arroyo might try to use her hardcore supporters outside the military, who could be armed, to thwart any coup attempts against her.

These were some of the points mentioned in the April 15, 2005, intelligence assessment prepared by then US Embassy Charge d'Affaires Joseph Mussomeli and sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, only weeks before the "Hello Garci" tape scandal and a Senate inquiry into alleged "jueteng" payoffs plunged the Arroyo administration into its worst political crisis.

The paper said that deposed President Joseph Estrada seemed to have benefited "substantially" from Ms Arroyo's waning popularity.

US Embassy press attaché Matthew Lussenhop said no comment when the Inquirer contacted the embassy.

Mussomeli is now the US ambassador to Cambodia. He left Manila last month. Days before he left the country, he told reporters that while there was always disgruntlement in the military, "I don't believe there's any risk now of any military coup. Put it at close to zero."

The Mussomeli paper referred to what it said were rampant rumors at the time that a coup attempt could occur "as early as May 2005." Titled "Philippines: Public Unease Growing,"Mussomeli's intelligence assessment could be one of the estimated 100 classified FBI files allegedly downloaded by the FBI's Filipino-American intelligence analyst Leandro Aragoncillo and sent to several personalities in the country.

The FBI has arrested Aragoncillo and former Philippine National Police Senior Supt. Michael Ray Aquino, to whom Aragoncillo had supposedly passed on the files, on espionage charges. Aquino's lawyer said his client had not breached any US law.

"The broad support that Macapagal-Arroyo enjoyed following her inauguration last year has faded and public frustration with the economy, corruption and the stalled efforts at reform have taken their toll on her standing," the paper said.

The paper was also prepared in the wake of a nationwide transport strike that even had the US diplomat mentioning in the report that its effects "might persuade the military to move...."

"With the impending unification of the opposition groups, Embassy Manila suggests that Estrada seems to have benefited substantially from her declining ratings," read the report prepared by the top American diplomat in the country at the time.

The report also quoted US Embassy sources as saying that a trusted emissary of Ms Arroyo had been sent to visit Estrada in detention at his Tanay, Rizal, estate to ask the deposed leader "to lower his politicking."


Estrada has 'highest rating'

"Despite being incarcerated for almost four years, Estrada still maintains the highest popularity ratings in the country," the report said. "He equates legitimacy with popular support and his intention to revive the pro-Estrada fervor has already produced destabilization rumors."

"Reports from the US Defense Attache's Office suggest [the coup plotters] are planning an undefined `military operation' involving elements from all four services that is intended to intimidate Macapagal-Arroyo into resigning," the report said.

The paper, however, admitted that US agents in the Philippines had "little information" on the composition and plans of the "mid-level military coup plotters."

"Rumors are rampant but vague, though the latest have officers moving against Macapagal-Arroyo soon, possibly as early as May 2005," the report said.

It mentioned Ms Arroyo as having supporters-who could likewise be armed-whom she could count on aside from an "unreliable military."

"Information on Macapagal-Arroyo's hardcore supporters, including how well armed or organized [they] are, also is imprecise. Some reporting suggests, however, that Macapagal-Arroyo may depend on these groups rather than his (sic) unreliable military to defend her government," the report said.


Two takeover scenarios

It also mentioned two scenarios involving a military takeover as having "imminent potential."

The first one involves the opposition goading Ms Arroyo into declaring a state of emergency, "prompting the military-unwilling to repress citizens of any political stripe-either to refuse or to turn against the President."

The second involves a "general strike" by those against her.

"Alternatively, if Macapagal-Arroyo responds to the strike by calling her own supporters into the streets to confront the opposition violently, the military could act against her in the name of restoring order," the report said.

The Mussomeli report also widely quoted from the findings of the Social Weather Stations survey at the time.

"Political infighting, social disorder and, above all, economic uncertainty have left the Filipinos increasingly anxious about the direction their country is taking, according to the latest SWS survey," the report's first sentence read.

The report also mentioned the SWS findings at the time that Ms Arroyo was not the only one to suffer a dip in popularity but also the legislature, judiciary, military and the police.

The paper also included a comment on Filipinos wanting sweeping electoral reforms at a time when the "Hello Garci" tapes – the alleged recorded conversations between Ms Arroyo and then Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano on poll results manipulation-had yet to be exposed.


Controversial envoy

"In the aftermath of recent elections, polling by SWS indicates that only 44 percent of the Filipino population is satisfied with democracy, leading many commentators to believe that the public is ready to endorse sweeping-and badly needed-electoral reforms," read Mussomeli's report.

Mussomeli easily became controversial during his stint as the US Embassy charge d'affaires when he once told the media that Mindanao was facing a scenario similar to Afghanistan when it was controlled by terrorists.





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