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3. februar 2005
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The Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev has no regrets for the slaughter of children in Beslan, which he blames on the Russians, and is planning more such operations:
THE Chechen rebel leader who masterminded the Beslan school siege last autumn plans more such operations, despite his apparent remorse over the deaths of more than 330 people — half of them children — in the North Ossetia attack.
In his first interview since that bloodbath, Shamil Basayev says that he is in a state of shock over what happened, but blames the Russians for precipitating the bloody end of the siege. Mr Basayev, Russia’s most wanted man with a $10 million bounty on his head for numerous attacks, said he is willing to stand trial for his actions, but does not renounce his war with the Kremlin or attacks on Russian civilians.
The interview, to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, was obtained after months of negotiations through intermediaries. It was filmed by Mr Basayev’s entourage at an undisclosed location last month and the video given to a journalist in the Middle East.
Mr Basayev said that he originally planned to seize one or possibly two schools simultaneously in either Moscow or St Petersburg, but lack of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, a “Russia garrison in the North Caucasus”, and thus the root of all things bad in war-torn Chechnya, with the ‘silent consent of (the North Ossetian) population.’
He says his intention was to offer the Russian leadership no chance of achieving a “bloodless resolution” to the siege, forcing it to stop the “genocide of the Chechen people”. He says he never thought the Russian leadership would be willing to oversee the death of children, but says that he was “cruelly mistaken” and that he was “not delighted by what happened there”.
Obviously there is much to blame the Russians for, but the fact is that when you take hostages you, and only you, have the responsibility for their security. Anyone who takes a school with children hostage is a monster.
Link via a comprehensive security news update on Winds of Change.
11:05:34 PM 
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Paul Volcker has presented the initial findings in his oil-for-food report, and the fingers are sharply pointed to Kofi Annan's close associate Benon Sevan, who lead the programme:
Sevan, a 67-year-old Cypriot, led the program from months after launch in December 1996 to its demise in November 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam.
Volker said that Sevan repeatedly solicited payments from Iraq and that Iraqis paid the money in hopes of buying influence.
"Mr. Sevan placed himself in a grave and continuing conflict of influence situation that violated explicit U.N. rules, violated the standards of integrity essential to a high-level, international civil servant," Volker said.
Totally damning.
I don't believe for a minute that Volcker (CNN thinks it's Volker) has come to the bottom of this yet. Sevan is toast, and for the first time the UN leadership has been publicly exposed as utterly corrupt.
Is the WSJ article where Volcker outlined the findings online for non-subscribers? I can't see it...
Update: You can download the report from Fox in PDF format. The report is way more damning than accusing Sevan of "conflict of interest." We're talking about corruption.
10:39:00 PM
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The few people left who does not have a GMail account can now get one. Just check ISnoop.
My GMail today said I have 50 (!) invites left, a bit more than the usual 4. Ihere is little point in inviting people as anyone can now get invites automagically when they want to. Obviously the Google people want to stress test the system with heaps of new users.
Does that mean an official launch is not too far away?
10:18:16 PM
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The IRA is angered that it has been accused of being behind a £26.5M Belfast bank raid, and has issued a statement that it withdraws its offer to complete the decommissioning process.
Downing Street, the Irish government and virtually everybody is convinced the IRA were behind the bank robbery. The IRA denies this. If any solid evidence has been made available to the public, I have missed it, but it's difficult to see that the Irish government would be so categorical if there was not a strong case against the terrorist-turned-crime organisation.
The decomissioning process was already in deep trouble over verification problems, and it's easy to interpret this latest statement as merely an excuse. BBC's correspondent Mark Simpson went further, saying it is "more of an IRA tantrum than anything more significant."
At any rate, it is difficult to imagine the weakened IRA returning to terrorism, but a heavily armed paramilitary crime organisation is hardly good news for Northern Ireland, either.
10:29:47 AM
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Vaclac Havel is one of the few politicians in the world I will say I greatly admire. Now, as an ageing statesman it falls to him to blast the European Union for its cowardice and appeasement, in this case towards Castro's Cuba.
It is almost hard to believe, but the EU has now decided it will recommend its member nations to not invite Cuban dissidents to its embassies, to not offend Fidel Castro. Behind this is of course Spain's Prime Minister José Zapatero, the man rushed into office on a wave of appeasement.
Havel does not mince words:
I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses -- indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations' profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.
Cuba's dissidents will, of course, happily do without Western cocktail parties and polite conversation at receptions. This persecution will admittedly aggravate their difficult struggle, but they will naturally survive it. The question is whether the EU will survive it.
Today, the EU is dancing to Fidel Castro's tune. That means that tomorrow it could bid for contracts to build missile bases on the coast of the People's Republic of China. The following day it could allow its decisions on Chechnya to be dictated by Russian President Vladimir Putin's advisors. Then, for some unknown reason, it could make its assistance to Africa conditional on fraternal ties with the worst African dictators.
Where will it end? The release of Milosevic? Denying a visa to Russian human-rights activist Sergey Kovalyov? An apology to Saddam Hussein? The opening of peace talks with al Qaeda?
Havel's letter deserves a full reading. Also in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Madrid.
9:30:53 AM
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I've finally bitten the bullet and changed the settings of my blog so xml/rss syndication also includes the headline. This also means the headline is a permalink.
9:16:40 AM
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Zurab Zhvania, former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze's ally who turned against him and had a prominent role in the "Rose Revolution," has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. He was found in a friend's apartment in Tbilisi, apparently poisoned by gas.
Interior Minister Nano Merabishvili said Zhvania had arrived at the flat at about midnight local time on Wednesday (2100 GMT).
Security guards became suspicious after the prime minister failed to answer his phone for several hours.
They broke in around 0400 to find Zhvania dead in an armchair.
The body of his friend and the owner of the flat, named as Kremo-Kartli region deputy governor Raul Usupov, was found in the kitchen.
No foul play was suspected, Mr Merabishvili said, but the body had been taken to the coroner's office for further examination.
This may well be a tragic accident, but I still hope Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine takes his precautions. I bet he does.
8:04:25 AM
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In his inaugural speech, President Bush praised democracy, leaving himself open to the charge that some of the United States' closest allies are ruthless dictatures. In his State of the Union speech tonight, the president pointed to two of these dictatures and encouraged them to reform:
To promote peace and stability in the broader Middle East, the United States will work with our friends in the region to fight the common threat of terror, while we encourage a higher standard of freedom. Hopeful reform is already taking hold in an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain. The government of Saudi Arabia can demonstrate its leadership in the region by expanding the role of its people in determining their future. And the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.
Cautious, sure, but I noticed he praised Egypt as a "great and proud" nation, while heaping no honorifics on the Saudi government.
Realpolitik can be like crack. You do get dependent on it. Much the same is true about oil, of course. And therein lies the rub.
6:46:13 AM
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The Register has an interview with a comment spammer, the natural enemy of bloggers everywhere.
He's not as worried about Google/Yahoo/MSN's nofollow link updates as I think he should be.
Spam comment links are not made primarily for people to click them, though that is a bonus. They are made to create hyperlinks to the target site, increasing its page ranking. Google (and, now, most search engines) rank pages by importance based on how many (and who) links to it. This is why blogs are rather prominent in search results. And since we are, spammers are trying to get links to casinos, porn and viagra sites into our comments.
Radio Userland, like most other blog tool makers, has implemented "rel=nofollow" in links added to comments, and it works on this site. This means that when the Google (et al) spiders index the comments on this site (if they do at all), the link is not counted towards the target site's page rank.
The solution is of course for spammers to set up their own blogs, and keep exploiting old blogs without this upgrade.
1:08:27 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2005; 01:29:40.
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