Tag: InternationalNews

{National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden said his “mission’s already accomplished” after leaking NSA secrets that have caused a reassessment of U.S. surveillance policies}

Snowden told The Washington Post in an interview published online Monday night that he was satisfied because journalists have been able to tell the story of the government’s collection of bulk Internet and phone records, an activity that has grown dramatically in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won.”

“As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated,” Snowden told the Post. “Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

President Barack Obama hinted Friday that he would consider some changes to NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records to address the public’s concern about privacy. His comments came in a week in which a federal judge declared the NSA’s collection program probably was unconstitutional. A presidential advisory panel has suggested 46 changes to NSA operations.

Snowden was interviewed in Moscow over two days by Post reporter Barton Gellman, who has received numerous leaks from Snowden. The interview was conducted six months after Snowden’s revelations first appeared in the Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

Gellman described Snowden as relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

In June, the Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint charging Snowden, a former NSA contractor, with espionage and felony theft of government property. Russia granted him temporary asylum five months ago.

The effects of Snowden’s revelations have been evident in the courts, Congress, Silicon Valley and capitals around the world, where even U.S. allies have reacted angrily to reports of U.S. monitoring of their leaders’ cellphone calls. Brazil and members of the European Union are considering ways to better protect their data and U.S. technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are looking at ways to block the collection of data by the government.

Snowden, now 30, said he is not being disloyal to the U.S. or to his former employer.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

Asked about the Snowden interview, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: “Mr. Snowden faces felony charges here in the United States and should be returned to the U.S. as soon as possible, where he will be afforded due process and all the protections of our criminal justice system.”

AP

{{Fernando De la Rua, Argentina’s former president, has been cleared of bribery charges.}}

An Argentine court found on Monday that de la Rua was innocent of bribing senators to pass a controversial work reform bill as the country’s economy neared bankruptcy more than a decade ago.

De la Rua and seven others, including a former labour minister, senators and a congressional worker, were absolved of charges of paying out bribes estimated at $5m to a group of senators for their support in a labour law that would have weakened workers rights, as the country faced an economic collapse 13 years ago.

Aljazeera

China on Wednesday confirmed an incident between a Chinese naval vessel and a U.S. warship in the South China Sea, after Washington said a U.S. guided missile cruiser had avoided a collision with a Chinese warship maneuvering nearby.

Experts have said the near-miss between the USS Cowpens and a Chinese warship operating near China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was the most significant U.S.-China maritime incident in the disputed South China Sea since 2009.

China’s Defense Ministry said the Chinese naval vessel was conducting “normal patrols” when the two vessels “met”.

“During the encounter, the Chinese naval vessel properly handled it in accordance with strict protocol,” the ministry said on its website (www.mod.gov.cn).

“The two Defense departments were kept informed of the relevant situation through normal working channels and carried out effective communication.”

But China’s official news agency Xinhua, in an English language commentary, accused the U.S. ship of deliberately provocative behavior.

“On December 5, U.S. missile cruiser Cowpens, despite warnings from China’s aircraft carrier task group, broke into the Chinese navy’s drilling waters in the South China Sea, and almost collided with a Chinese warship nearby,” it said.

“Even before the navy training, Chinese maritime authorities have posted a navigation notice on their website, and the U.S. warship, which should have had knowledge of what the Chinese were doing there, intentionally carried on with its surveillance of China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier and triggered the confrontation.”

Washington said last week its ship was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision.

The incident came at a time of heightened tension in the region following Beijing’s declaration of an air Defense identification zone further north in the East China Sea, which prompted protests from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday said maritime disputes between countries should be resolved peacefully through arbitration though the United States would speak out when a country, such as China, took unilateral action that raised the potential for conflict.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Kerry and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been equally critical of the air Defense zone, should stop harping on the issue.

“The show the relevant parties have put on is enough. They should give it a rest. If they really care about this region’s peace, they should … stop fomenting trouble,” she told a daily news briefing.

China’s Defense Ministry said, however, there were “good opportunities” for developing Sino-U.S. military ties.

“Both sides are willing to strengthen communication, maintain close coordination and make efforts to maintain regional peace and stability,” the ministry said.

The Liaoning aircraft carrier, which has yet to be fully armed and is being used as a training vessel, was flanked by escort ships, including two destroyers and two frigates, during its first deployment into the South China Sea.

Friction over the South China Sea has surged as China uses its growing naval might to assert a vast claim over the oil-and-gas-rich area, raising fears of a clash between it and other countries in the region, including the Philippines and Vietnam.

The United States had raised the incident at a “high level” with China, according to a State Department official quoted by the U.S. military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper.

Beijing routinely objects to U.S. military surveillance operations within its exclusive economic zone, while Washington insists the United States and other nations have the right to conduct routine operations in international waters.

China deployed the Liaoning to the South China Sea just days after announcing its air Defense zone, which covers air space over a group of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing as well.

Reuters

{Parliament votes in favour of handing Angela Merkel another four-year term for the third time.}

Angela Merkel has been sworn in for a rare third term as German chancellor, capping months of political uncertainty as she bartered with her rivals to help govern Europe’s top economy.

Tuesday’s vote in the Bundestag was a formality as the ruling parties hold an overwhelming majority of the seats. A total of 462 lawmakers backed Merkel for chancellor, with 150 voting against and 9 abstaining.

Eighty-six days after Merkel swept to victory in elections but failed to grab an outright majority, the lower house of parliament voted on handing her another four-year term.

With a whopping 504 of the 631 seats, Merkel’s conservatives and their new centre-left partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), hold a comfortable majority under their hard-fought ‘grand coalition’ deal.

Merkel must be confirmed by President Joachim Gauck at the presidential palace before returning to the Bundestag to be sworn in as Germany’s only third post-war chancellor to win a third mandate.

The ceremony and later swearing-in of ministers followed by the first cabinet meeting will enable Merkel to finally get back down to business in earnest after the longest government-building period since World War II.

Merkel is then due to address parliament on Wednesday and travel to Paris for talks with President Francois Hollande the same day, ahead of an EU summit at the end of the week.

A parliament debate after Wednesday’s address will be the first opportunity for a face-off across the floor since the SPD moved off the opposition benches.Merkel has defended the time spent haggling over policy and posts with an initially reluctant SPD as time well spent, voicing appreciation on signing the coalition pact Monday “that we listened to each other”.

Agencies

{The US National Security Agency is considering offering an amnesty to fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden if he agrees to stop leaking secret documents, an NSA official says.}

The man in charge of assessing the leaks’ damage, Richard Ledgett, said he could be open to an amnesty deal.

Disclosures by the former intelligence worker have revealed the extent of the NSA’s spying activity.

But NSA Director Gen Keith Alexander has dismissed the idea.

Mr Ledgett spoke to US television channel CBS about the possibility of an amnesty deal: “So my personal view is, yes it’s worth having a conversation about.

“I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high, would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

But Gen Alexander, who is retiring early next year, rejected the idea of any amnesty for Mr Snowden.

“This is analogous to a hostage taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10, and then say, ‘if you give me full amnesty, I’ll let the other 40 go’. What do you do?”

BBC

{President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice played host to a series of meetings with Israeli officials last week to try to gain their support for an interim deal with Iran aimed at containing Tehran’s nuclear program.}

The meetings, announced in a White House statement on Sunday, arose from talks between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month as the United States tried to persuade a skeptical Israel to support the Iran deal.

Israel doubts whether Iran will actually give up a nuclear program that the West believes is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon.

The interim deal, achieved in Geneva last month between Iran and major world powers, halts Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for modest sanctions relief. Over the next six months the parties are to attempt to negotiate a comprehensive solution to Iran’s nuclear challenge.

Rice, along with her deputy, Tony Blinken, and senior officials from the departments of State and Treasury, met with Israeli national security adviser Yossi Cohen and other Israeli officials on Thursday and Friday.

“During the meetings, the U.S. team reaffirmed President Obama’s goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” the White House said.

The series of meetings was an initial step toward fulfilling a promise Obama made to Netanyahu in their November 24 phone call that the United States would consult regarding the effort to forge a comprehensive solution with Iran.

Obama has been arguing to Israel and its supporters and to members of the U.S. Senate that it is important to use the next six months to test whether Iran is serious about reaching a comprehensive deal.

Some members of the Senate are eager to slap new economic sanctions on Iran, a prospect the White House argues would upset delicate diplomacy with Tehran.

{{Reuters}}

An American who went missing in Iran six years ago worked for the CIA and was not in the country on a business trip as U.S. officials had claimed, U.S. media reported Thursday.

In a case that had long been shrouded in secrecy and vague official accounts, The Associated Press and The Washington Post published lengthy reports revealing how retired FBI agent Robert Levinson had been paid by the CIA to gather intelligence around the world.

Levinson flew to an Iranian resort, Kish Island, in March 2007 to investigate corruption in the country, with hopes of also gleaning information about Tehran’s suspected nuclear program, the reports said.

But he vanished, and U.S. officials have publicly said that he was a private citizen traveling on private business.

Months later, information surfaced through emails and other documents that Levinson had, in fact, been hired to go to Iran by the CIA — but by a rogue team of analysts with no authority to run overseas operations.

In violation of CIA rules, the analysts had hired Levinson — a seasoned FBI agent with expert knowledge about Russian criminal circles — to gather intelligence, the AP and the Post wrote.

When Congress finally learned what had taken place, the agency sacked three analysts and seven others faced disciplinary action.

To pre-empt a potentially embarrassing lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency also paid Levinson’s family $2.5 million.
Whereabouts unknown

Levinson’s whereabouts are still unknown, and investigators say they don’t know if he is even alive. The last proof of life came about three years ago when his family received a video and pictures of him shackled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit.

“I have been held for three-and-a-half years,” he said in the video. “I am not in good health.”

If Levinson is still alive, at age 65, he has been held in captivity longer than any American citizen, longer than AP reporter Terry Anderson — who was held for more than six years in Beirut.

As a result of Levinson’s case, the spy agency introduced new restrictions on how analysts can work with outsiders.

But the scandal and the agency’s response had remained secret until Thursday’s reports. The Associated Press first learned of Levinson’s CIA ties in 2010 and continued reporting to uncover more details.

The news agency agreed three times to postpone publishing the story because the U.S. government said it was pursuing promising leads to secure his return.

The AP, however, said it had chosen to report the story now because efforts to find and free him have failed.

Senior U.S. officials also say the Iranians almost certainly know about Levinson’s CIA association by this time.

Photos and video in 2010 and 2011 led to a brief diplomatic exchange between Washington and Tehran to secure his release but there have been no promising leads since, according to the reports.

Iran has denied any knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts.

The AP story was reported by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who recently began work at the Post. Goldman’s byline also appears on the Post’s article.

The CIA was not immediately available to comment on the report.

Wire services

{Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych intends to sign an association accord with the European Union after all, EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton has said.}

Despite Yanukovych ditching the deal last month under Russian pressure, Ashton said on Thursday after returning to Brussels from a two-day visit to Kiev, where she saw the huge pro-EU demonstrations, that it would go ahead.

“He made it clear to me that he intends to sign the association agreement,” Ashton said.

The announcement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the economic benefits of joining a customs union, known as the Eurasian Union, with Russia and two other former Soviet republics, Belarus and Kazakhstan, in his bid to woo Ukraine.

Putin said during during a state-of-the-nation address that he was counting on Ukraine finding a political solution to its crisis over Yanukovich’s decision to spurn the EU free-trade agreement in favour of closer economic ties with Moscow.

“I hope that all political sides can successfully reach an agreement in the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Putin said.

“I’m sure achieving Eurasian integration will only increase interest from our other neighbours, including from our Ukrainian partners.”

Aljazeera