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6Dec/10Off

Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

GENEVA -Iran and six world powers are heading into negotiations about the country's nuclear program Monday with low expectations, at odds on what to talk about and with tensions high over the assassination of one of Tehran's most prominent scientists.
The talks in Geneva — the first in over a year — are meant to ease concerns over Iran's nuclear agenda. Tehran says it does not want atomic arms, but as it builds on its capacity to make such weapons, neither Israel nor the U.S. have ruled out military action if Tehran fails to heed U.N. Security Council demands to freeze key nuclear programs.
Iran's bold stance was highlighted Sunday, when it announced it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it is now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
A senior diplomat in Vienna who is familiar with the issue said the move was expected and mainly symbolic. Still, the timing of the announcement was significant in signaling just a day ahead of the Geneva talks that Tehran was unlikely to meet international demands that it curb its nuclear activities.
Over two planned days, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, with Ashton's office saying she will act "on behalf" of the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. In fact, senior officials for those six powers will attend and do much of the talking with Tehran.
Chances of meaningful progress were low even before the assassination late last month of a prominent nuclear scientist and the wounding of another further clouded hopes of success at the talks.
Jalili called the killing a "disgrace" for the Security Council on Saturday, claiming the attacks were linked to efforts to implement international sanctions. He did not elaborate.
Still, the expected presence of Ali Bagheri reflects the importance Iran attaches to the meeting. Officials familiar with the composition of the Iranian delegation say Bagheri has a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Western officials urged Tehran to meet international concerns about its nuclear activities.
Invoking possible military confrontation over Iran's nuclear defiance, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Saturday that the Geneva talks need to make a serious start toward resolving the issue.
"We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome," he said. "We will not look away or back down."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to Iran to restore trust about its nuclear intentions, urging it to come to Geneva prepared to "firmly, conclusively reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons."
But for Iran the main issues are peace, prosperity — and nuclear topics only in the context of global disarmament.
"Iran has not and will not allow anybody in the talks to withdraw one iota of the rights of the Iranian nation," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said before the scheduled talks, warning the other nations at the table to "put aside the devil's temper" and negotiate in good faith.
Expectations are suitably low, even allowing for the fact that both sides are likely talking tough going into the talks with the purpose of maximizing their starting negotiating positions.
Glyn Davies, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the talks were meant to shape conditions for "a new start," even while insisting that Iran's nuclear program "has to be first and foremost on the agenda."
Other officials from the four Western nations coming to the table acknowledge that the six powers are coming without a firm agenda. One of them used freestyle wrestling as an analogy of what to expect.
"Think of this as a sort of catch-as-catch can," said the official, a senior diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was briefing The Associated Press on privileged information. "I don't think we are going to get into any kind of substantive discussions — the best we can hope for is a second round of meetings."
Such caution is understandable.
The last Geneva meeting of the seven nations in October 2009 appeared to put Iran nuclear talks back on track after a four-year hiatus, but Tehran and the six powers began to quibble about what was agreed on only days after they ended.
Iran initially seemed to accept a plan to export 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to be made into special fuel for a Tehran reactor making medical materials — a move that would have stripped it of much of the material it then had stockpiled that could have been turned into a bomb.
But it then started putting conditions on the deal, which unraveled, deepening mistrust between the two sides.
A fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of Tehran's continued expansion of uranium enrichment has further burdened relations.
Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors and not to make fissile warhead material. But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment program clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons program — something Iran denies.

Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

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27Jul/10Off

US braces for blowback over Afghan war disclosures

WASHINGTON -Operatives inside Afghanistan and Pakistan who have worked for the U.S. against the Taliban or al-Qaida may be at risk following the disclosure of thousands of once-secret U.S. military documents, former and current officials said.
As the Obama administration scrambles to repair any political damage to the war effort in Congress and among the American public by the WikiLeaks revelations, there are also growing concerns that some U.S. allies abroad may ask whether they can trust America to keep secrets, officials said.
Speaking in the Rose Garden Tuesday, President Barack Obama said he was concerned about the massive leak of sensitive documents about the Afghanistan war, but that the papers did not reveal any concerns that were not already part of the debate.
In his first public comments on the matter, Obama said the disclosure of classified information from the battlefield "could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations."
The president spoke in the Rose Garden following a meeting with House and Senate leaders of both parties.
In Baghdad, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he was "appalled" by the leak. He said "there is a real potential threat there to put American lives at risk."
The Army is leading the Pentagon's inquiry into the source of the leak. A federal law enforcement official said the Justice Department is assisting in the probe. The law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity about the ongoing probe says the Justice Department does not have its own separate investigation into the leak, but rather is acting in a support role to the Pentagon.
Col. Dave Lapan said the Army criminal probe launched Tuesday is aimed at finding the source of secret documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks, an online site. The Army's criminal investigative division led the investigation into Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence specialist charged with leaking other material to WikiLeaks. Lapan said it's not clear whether the latest material came from Manning or someone else.
The WikiLeaks material, which ranges from files documenting Afghan civilian deaths to evidence of U.S.-Pakistani distrust, could reinforce war opponents in Congress who aim to rein in the war effort. But the leaks are not expected to dim the passage of a looming $60 billion war funding bill.
Congress has backed the war so far, and an early test of that continued support came when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., opened a hearing on the Afghan war.
At the hearing, few members mentioned the leak of documents but several expressed frustration at the lack of progress in improving Afghan governance and in drawing more ordinary Afghans away from the Taliban. In a tone of exasperation, Kerry questioned why the Taliban, with fewer resources, is able to field fighters who are more committed than Afghan soldiers.
"What's going on here?" Kerry asked.
In his only reference to the leak, Kerry called the new material "overhyped," said that it was released in violation of the law and that it largely involves raw intelligence reports from the field. He said he thought the document release could jeopardize the U.S. mission there.
Despite strong opposition among liberals who see Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, House Democrats must either approve the funding bill before leaving at the end of this week for a six-week vacation, or commit political suicide by leaving troops in the lurch in war zones overseas.
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday he worries that the leaks won't stop "until we see someone in an orange jump suit."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the military doesn't know who was behind the leaks, although it has launched "a very robust investigation."
Morrell complained that too much was being made of the documents. Referring to files that detailed American suspicions that some Pakistani intelligence officials were aiding insurgents, Morrell insisted those concerns have abated in recent years and the relationship has improved.
The disclosures, he said, are "clearly out of step with where this relationship is now, and has been heading for some time."
Morrell was interviewed on CBS's "The Early Show" and Bond appeared on NBC's "Today" show.
Even as the administration dismissed the WikiLeaks material as outdated, U.S. military and intelligence analysts were caught up in a speed-reading battle to limit the damage contained in the once-secret files now scattered across the Internet.
The officials are concerned about the impact on the military's human intelligence network built up over the past eight years inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such figures range from Afghan village elders who have worked behind the scenes with U.S. troops to militants working as double agents.
Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military may need weeks to review all the records to determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."
WikiLeaks said it has behaved responsibly, even withholding some 15,000 records that are believed to include names of specific Afghans or Pakistanis who helped U.S. troops on the ground.
But former CIA director Michael Hayden denounced the leak Monday as a gift to America's enemies.
"If I had gotten this trove on the Taliban or al-Qaida, I would have called it priceless," he said. "I would love to know what al-Qaida or the Taliban was thinking about a specific subject in 2007, for instance, because I could say they got that right and they got that wrong."
Hayden predicted the Taliban would take anything that described a U.S. strike and the intelligence behind it "and figure out who was in the room when that particular operation, say in 2008, was planned, and in whose home." Then the militants would probably punish the traitor who'd worked with the Americans, he said.
Another casualty of the disclosures may be American efforts to forge cooperation with Pakistan's secretive intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Multiple U.S. military cables posted by WikiLeaks complain about ISI complicity with the Taliban. And they also tell the Pakistanis "how much we know about them," said Robert Riegle, a former senior intelligence officer who now runs Mission Concepts Inc., a private intelligence firm.
"You're not going to see any cooperation," he said. "People are going to freeze."
The raw data released Sunday may also prove useful in a wider way to America's "frenemies" — the intelligence services of countries like China and Russia, who have the resources to process and make sense of such vast vaults of data, said Ellen McCarthy, former intelligence officer and president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
Former CIA chief Hayden added: "If I'm head of the Russian intelligence, I'm getting my best English speakers and saying: 'Read every document, and I want you to tell me, how good are these guys? What are their approaches, their strengths, their weaknesses and their blind spots?'"
—
Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

US braces for blowback over Afghan war disclosures

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24Jul/10Off

NKorea vows nuclear response to US-SKorea drills

SEOUL, South Korea -North Korea warned Saturday that joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises poised to begin this weekend amount to a military provocation that will draw a "powerful" nuclear response from Pyongyang.
North Korea routinely threatens war when South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an attack on the North. The latest threat comes amid increased tensions on the peninsula over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship that Seoul and Washington blame on Pyongyang.
The allies' defense chiefs announced earlier in the week they would stage the drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the March sinking of the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.
North Korea vehemently denies any involvement, and says any punishment would trigger war.
In Hanoi, a North Korean spokesman for the delegation attending a regional security conference warned Friday the drills would draw a "physical response" from Pyongyang.
On Saturday, North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission — headed by leader Kim Jong Il — backed that threat up by promising a "retaliatory sacred war" against South Korea and the U.S. for what it called a second "unpardonable" provocation after wrongly accusing the North in the Cheonan incident.
"The army and people of the (North) will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises," the commission said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said no unusual North Korean military movements were detected.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington supercarrier is already docked in the southern port of Busan for the military games set to begin Sunday. In addition, the U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in the South to deter against aggression, a presence that Pyongyang cites as a key reason behind its drive to build nuclear weapons.
"The more desperately the U.S. imperialists brandish their nukes and the more zealously their lackeys follow them, the more rapidly the (North's) nuclear deterrence will be bolstered up along the orbit of self-defense and the more remote the prospect for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula will be become," the commission statement said.
The U.S.-South Korean military drills are to set to run through Wednesday, with about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops on some 20 ships and submarines carrying out exercises in the East Sea.
The drills also involve some 200 aircraft, headlined by four U.S. Air Force's F-22 "Raptor" stealth fighters.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.
On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on the North.
In Hanoi, Clinton and a North Korean official traded barbs Friday over the sinking, the military drills and the imposition of the new U.S. sanctions. North Korean spokesman Ri Tong Il said the tensions showed the need to negotiate a peace treaty to replace the armistice signed at the end of the Korean War.
Clinton said the U.S. is willing to meet and negotiate with the North, but this type of threat only heightens tensions. She added progress in the short term seems unlikely.
"It is distressing when North Korea continues its threats and causes so much anxiety among its neighbors and the larger region," she told reporters. "But we will demonstrate once again with our military exercises ... that the United States stands in firm support of the defense of South Korea and we will continue to do so."
The 27-member bloc meeting in Hanoi — 10 members of ASEAN and countries with major interests in the area like the U.S., China, Japan, North and South Korea and Russia — expressed "deep concern" over the Cheonan's sinking in a joint statement, a weakened version of an earlier ASEAN statement.
—
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jim Gomez in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Jean H. Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

NKorea vows nuclear response to US-SKorea drills

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9Jul/10Off

10 Russian spies deported after NY guilty pleas

NEW YORK -In the biggest spy swap since the Cold War, 10 Russian agents who infiltrated suburban America were deported Thursday in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West.
The spies left New York for Moscow hours after pleading guilty to conspiracy in a Manhattan courtroom and being sentenced to time served and ordered out of the country, said a law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record.
The spy swap carries significant consequences for efforts between Washington and Moscow to repair ties chilled by a deepening atmosphere of suspicion.
The U.S. defendants were captured last week in homes across the Northeast. They were accused of embedding themselves in ordinary American life while leading double lives complete with false passports, secret code words, fake names, invisible ink and encrypted radio.
One spy worked for an accounting firm, another was a real-estate agent, another a columnist for a Spanish-language newspaper.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the "extraordinary" case took years of work, "and the agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the United States and its interests." White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on PBS' "NewsHour" that President Barack Obama was aware of the investigation, the decision to go forward with the arrests and the spy swap with Russia.
Whether the agents provided Russia with valuable secret information is questionable.
"None of the people involved from my understanding provided any information that couldn't be obtained on the Internet," defendant Anna Chapman's attorney, Robert Baum, told The Associated Press.
In Russia, the Kremlin said President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree pardoning four convicted foreign spies so that they can be exchanged for the 10 U.S. defendants.
The Kremlin statement carried by the Russian news agencies says that Medvedev has pardoned Russian citizens Alexander Zaporozhsky, Gennady Vasilenko, Sergei Skripal and Igor Sutyagin.
Sutyagin, an arms analyst, was reportedly plucked from a Moscow prison and put on a plane to Vienna. Skripal is a former colonel in the Russian military intelligence, and Zaporozhsky is a former colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also issued a statement saying that the exchange being conducted by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and the CIA was conducted in the context of "overall improvement of the U.S.-Russian ties and giving them new dynamics."
An Obama administration official said the quick and pragmatic arrangement of the spy swap with Russia speaks to the progress that has been made in U.S.-Russian relations.
The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deal, said that by shutting down the spy operation, the U.S. sent a warning to other governments that might be interested in undertaking similar spy operations.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in a letter Thursday that some of the four prisoners are in poor health and had served lengthy prison terms. Three of the four were accused by Russia of contacting Western intelligence agencies while they were working for the Russian or Soviet government, the letter stated.
The 10 suburban spies pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country and were ordered deported. An 11th defendant has been a fugitive since fleeing authorities in Cyprus following his release on bail.
One defendant's attorney said a private plane had been expected to take the 10 to Russia. The attorney, John Rodriguez, said his client, Vicky Pelaez, had been given only 24 hours to say yes or no to the "all or nothing" deal for deportation.
The defendants — led into court in handcuffs, some in prison smocks and some wearing T-shirts and jeans, provided almost no information about what kind of spying they actually did for Russia. Asked to describe their crimes, each acknowledged having worked for Russia secretly, sometimes under an assumed identity, without registering as a foreign agent.
One, Andrey Bezrukov, smiled and waved to a supporter in the audience and had an animated conversation with another, Elena Vavilova. Vladimir and Lydia Guryev, who lived in the United States as a couple under the aliases Richard and Cynthia Murphy, sat side-by-side but didn't speak.
Pelaez's two sons were among the children of the accused spies in court. A lawyer for her husband said the children would have the option of going to Russia with their parents or staying in the U.S.
Chapman — whose sultry photos gleaned from social-networking sites made her a tabloid sensation — pulled back her mane of red hair as she glanced around the courtroom. A burly deputy U.S. marshal hovered behind her.
All the defendants stood and raised their right hands in unison to be sworn in before answering a series of questions from the judge, beginning with a request to state their true identities. Their answers were short and scripted, their 10 guilty pleas given one by one in assembly-line precision.
Chapman looked baffled when the judge asked if her secret laptop exchanges with a Russian official "were in furtherance of the conspiracy." She finally looked at her lawyer, shrugged and replied, "Yes." Asked by the judge if she realized at the time that her actions were criminal, she said, "Yes I did, your honor."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said Russian officials had visited with the defendants numerous times in prison, and he sought assurances that none of the pleas resulted from inducements that might have been offered by Russian authorities.
Rodriguez, the attorney, said in court that the Russian government had promised Pelaez $2,000 a month for life, housing and documents to allow her children to visit Russia and have all their expenses paid. She decided to go home to her native Peru instead.
Peru's foreign minister, Jose Antonio Garcia, told the AP that Pelaez had committed no crime in her homeland and would be "received like any other Peruvian citizen."
Vladimir Guryev acknowledged that from the mid-1990s to the present day, he lived in the U.S. under an assumed name and took directions from the Russian Federation.
Asked whether he knew his actions were a crime, he said:
"I knew they were illegal, yes, your honor."
Sutyagin, a Russian arms control analyst serving a 14-year sentence for spying for the U.S., was reportedly taken from a Moscow prison and flown to Vienna earlier Thursday.
Sutyagin had told his relatives he was going to be among spies in Russia who would be freed in exchange for 11 people charged in the United States with being Russian agents. They said he was going to be sent to Vienna, then London.
In Moscow, his lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, said a journalist called Sutyagin's family to inform them that he was seen walking off a plane in Vienna on Thursday. However, she told the AP she could not confirm that claim with Russian authorities.
In New York, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that the investigation was aimed at uncovering and deterring espionage and was "not undertaken for the purpose of having a bargaining chip."
He predicted the Russian government "is unlikely to engage in this methodology in the future and that's a good thing. ... The case sends a message to every other agency that if you come to America and spy on Americans in America you will be exposed."
Despite the benefits given to at least one of the Russian agents freed by the United States, they are unlikely to be greeted as heroes in Russia, as the Kremlin will likely try to quickly turn the page over the embarrassing incident and avoid further damage in relations with Washington.
Independent newspapers and liberal commentators in Russia have chafed at the obvious lack of results of the spy ring work and ridiculed the low level of their training.
—
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Pete Yost, Calvin Woodward and Matt Lee in Washington; David B. Caruso in New York; Denise Lavoie in Boston; David Nowak, Misha Japaridze, Vladimir Isachenkov, Jim Heintz and Khristina Narizhnaya in Moscow; Matt Barakat in Alexandria, Va.; Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y.; Carla Salazar in Lima, Peru, and David Stringer in London.

10 Russian spies deported after NY guilty pleas

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8Jul/10Off

Russian, US spy suspects brace for possible swap

MOSCOW -Special riot police beefed up security around Moscow's Lefortovo prison Thursday and a gaggle of TV cameras and photographers jostled for the best position as the world braced for what could be largest spy swap since the Cold War.
A convoy of armored vehicles arrived in the morning at the prison, thought to be the central gathering point for people convicted of spying for the West, including nuclear researcher Igor Sutyagin, serving a 14-year sentence for spying for the United States.
Sutyagin's brother and lawyer say he was transferred to Lefortovo earlier this week to take part in the swap and could be flown out to freedom as early as Thursday. They said Sutyagin saw a list of 11 prisoners in Russia who are being traded for 10 people arrested in the United States for being unregistered Russian agents.
In New York, a federal court was to decide the fate of those 10 suspects later Thursday.
Officials in neither country would confirm an exchange was planned. But the machinations — including a meeting in Washington between U.S. officials and the Russian ambassador on Wednesday — had all the hallmarks as the two former Cold War antagonists moved to tamp down tensions stirred up by the U.S. arrests.
"A swap seems very much on the cards. There is political will on both sides, and actually by even moving it as far as they have, Moscow has de facto acknowledged that these guys were spies," intelligence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said.
Five suspects charged with spying in the U.S. were hurriedly ordered to New York on Wednesday, joining five others already behind bars there, after Sutyagin, a Russian arms-control researcher, spilled the news of the swap after being transferred to Moscow from his forlorn penal colony near the Arctic Circle.
Dmitry Sutyagin said his brother was told he was among a dozen convicted spies to be exchanged for Russians arrested by the FBI. He said his brother could be sent to Vienna, then London, as early as Thursday.
Defense lawyers in Moscow and New York have expressed confidence that their clients' fates would be settled very soon.
In a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, the ten suspects in New York and an 11th person, who was released on bail by a court in Cyprus and is now a fugitive, were formally charged.
The indictment charged all with conspiring to act as secret agents and charged nine of them with conspiracy to commit money laundering. It demanded that those accused of money laundering return any assets used in the offense.
Attorney Robert Baum, who represents defendant Anna Chapman, said the case might be settled when she and the other nine people arrested in the United States appear Thursday for arraignment on the indictment, raising the possibility of guilty pleas to the lowest charges and deportation from the U.S..
"Of certain events tomorrow that might occur, the fact the indictment is minimal makes perfect sense. This is a crazy situation," said Robert J. Krakow, an attorney for defendant Juan Lazaro.
Prosecutors released a copy of the indictment as federal judges in Boston and Alexandria, Virginia, signed orders directing that five defendants arrested in Massachusetts and Virginia be transferred to New York. All were charged in Manhattan.
The defendants were accused of living seemingly ordinary lives in America while they acted as unregistered agents for the Russian government, sending secret messages and carrying out orders they received from their Russian contacts.
All have remained in custody except for a man identified as Christopher R. Metsos, the 11th suspect who is charged with being the spy ring's paymaster. Metsos, traveling on a forged Canadian passport, jumped bail last week after being arrested in Cyprus.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in New York signed an order Wednesday requiring that defendant Vicky Pelaez, Lazaro's wife, remain detained until the judge can hear an appeal Friday by the U.S. government of a $250,000 bail package approved last week. Pelaez is a U.S. citizen.
Sutyagin, who worked as an arms control and military analyst at the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute, a think tank, was arrested in 1999 and convicted in 2004 on charges of passing information on nuclear submarines and other weapons to a British company that investigators claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin has all along denied that he was spying, saying the information he provided was available from open sources.
His case was one of several incidents of Russian academics and scientists being targeted by Russia's Federal Security Service and accused of misusing classified information, revealing state secrets or, in some cases, espionage.
—
AP writers Misha Japaridze, Vladimir Isachenkov, Jim Heintz and Khristina Narizhnaya in Moscow, Calvin Woodward, Pete Yost and Matt Lee in Washington, Matt Barakat in Alexandria, Va., Denise Lavoie in Boston and Larry Neumeister and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.

Russian, US spy suspects brace for possible swap

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14Jun/10Off

100,000 Uzbek refugees seek safety at border

OSH, Kyrgyzstan -Some 100,000 minority Uzbeks fleeing a purge by mobs of Kyrgyz massed at the border Monday, an Uzbek leader said, as the deadliest ethnic violence to hit this Central Asian nation in decades left a major city smoldering.
With fires raging in the southern city of Osh for a fourth day Monday, the official death toll of 124 killed and nearly 1,500 injured from the clashes that began Thursday appeared way too low.
An Uzbek community leader claimed at least 200 Uzbeks alone had already been buried, and the Red Cross said its delegates saw about 100 bodies being buried in just one cemetery.
The United States, Russia and the United Nations worked on humanitarian aid airlifts while neighboring Uzbekistan hastily set up camps to handle the flood of hungry, frightened refugees. Most were women, children and the elderly, many of whom Uzbekistan said had gunshot wounds.
The interim government, which took over after former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted by a mass revolt in April, has been unable to stop the violence and accused Bakiyev's family of instigating it to halt a June 27 vote. Uzbeks have backed the interim government, while many Kyrgyz in the south have supported the toppled president.
The government said Monday it had arrested a "well-known person" suspected of stoking the violence, but gave no further details. Suspects from Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan were also detained and claimed to have been hired by supporters of Bakiyev, government spokesman Farid Niyazov said.
The interim government had planned a referendum to approve a new constitution on June 27, but it now appears unlikely the vote will take place. New parliamentary elections are scheduled for October, but the violence appears aimed at undermining the interim government before then.
From his self-imposed exile in Belarus, Bakiyev has denied any role in the violence.
Jallahitdin Jalilatdinov, who heads the Uzbek National Center, told The Associated Press on Monday that at least 100,000 Uzbeks were awaiting entry into Uzbekistan, while another 80,000 had already crossed over the border.
An AP reporter saw hundreds of Uzbek refugees stuck in no-man's-land at a border crossing near Jalal-Abad, while an AP photographer saw hundreds of refugees in a camp on the Uzbek side.
Desperate refugee women grabbed loaves of flat bread handed out by aid workers amid the chaos.
New fires raged Monday across Osh — the country's second-largest city — which is 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the border with Uzbekistan. Food and water were scarce as armed looters smashed stores, stealing everything from televisions to food. Cars stolen from ethnic Uzbeks raced around the city, most crowded with young Kyrgyz wielding sharpened sticks, axes and metal rods.
In the mainly Uzbek district of Aravanskoe, an area formerly brimming with shops and restaurants, entire streets were burned to the ground. In one still-smoldering building, an AP photographer saw the charred bodies of three people.
No police or troops were seen on the streets of the city of 250,000.
Hundreds of residents gathered at Osh's central square Monday seeking to get on buses heading to the airport. Gunman have made the road from the city to the airport too dangerous to tackle alone.
Osh police chief Kursan Asanov told the AP that 950 foreigners — mostly Russians, Pakistanis, Indians and Africans — have been evacuated since disturbances began, as well as residents who were Uzbek and Kyrgyz.
"The entire city is in the state of panic — you see for yourselves — because all people have children," said Osh resident Galina Nikolayevna.
Mukaddas Jamolova, a 54-year old housewife from Kara-Su, near Osh, said she saw looters burn down many Uzbek homes. She said her house was not burned down but the family can't flee to Uzbekistan as they fear armed attackers.
"We can't go anywhere, we have a curfew, nobody's letting us out," Jamolova told The Associated Press on the phone.
In another city beset by violence, Jalal-Abad, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Osh, armed Kyrgyz amassed at the central square to hunt down an Uzbek community leader who they blame for starting the trouble.
At a mosque in the village of Sura-Tash, ethnic Uzbeks converted a mosque into a makeshift hospital. Using the most rudimentary supplies, health workers treated anyone who came by for with wounds from beatings at the hands of Kyrgyz, or ordinary medical issues like heat exhaustion and diabetes.
Some took shade in the mosque, but hundreds were forced to wait outside in the sun.
Vodka was used to sterilize medical equipment and powdered plaster was melted down to turn into casts for broken limbs.
One doctor said those who attacked Uzbeks seemed to have the support of the Kyrgyz military.
"Many people have died, snipers fired from more than one kilometer away, and organized gangs followed the military as they drove in with armored personnel carriers," said Lutsalla Khakimov, a doctor working at the mosque. "This was organized, they wanted to start a war."
Some victims said they had been raped.
As the clashes continued, desperately needed aid began trickling into the south. Several planes arrived at Osh airport with tons of medical supplies from the World Health Organization. Trucks carried the supplies into the city with an armed escort.
The U.S. had a shipment of tents, cots and medical supplies ready to fly to Osh from its Manas air base in Bishkek, the U.S. Embassy said.
The U.S. and Russia both have military bases in northern Kyrgyzstan, away from the rioting. Russia sent in an extra battalion to protect its air base. The U.S. Manas air base is a crucial supply hub for the coalition fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Uzbeks make up 15 percent of Kyrgyzstan's 5 million people, but in the south their numbers rival ethnic Kyrgyz. The fertile Ferghana Valley, where Osh and Jalal-Abad are located, once belonged to a single feudal lord, but was split by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin among Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, rekindling old rivalries.
In 1990, hundreds were killed in a land dispute between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh, and only the quick deployment of Soviet troops quelled the fighting. Russia over the weekend refused a request by the interim government to send troops into Kyrgyzstan, so the government began a partial mobilization of military reservists.
"No one is rushing to help us, so we need to establish order ourselves," said Talaaibek Adibayev, a 39-year-old army veteran who showed up at Bishkek's military conscription office.
—
Karmanau reported from Bishkek, where Associated Press writer Leila Saralayeva contributed. D. Dalton Bennett in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, and Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow also contributed.

100,000 Uzbek refugees seek safety at border

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