Thursday, April 13, 2017

50 days of protest and still no answers for families of disappeared in Kilinochchi

10 Apr 2017

The relatives of the disappeared in Kilinochchi are continuing to protest, fifty days into the start of their campaign.

Apr 13, 2017

President Maithripla Sirisena has instructed several senior ministers to expedite the Constitution drafting process. Although the topic of formulating a new Constitution has been discussed, there is concern among many over the delay in the process. Formulating a new Constitution was one of the main election promises of the good governance regime.

While many opinions have been expressed regarding the new Constitution, the President had instructed the relevant committees to expedite the reports pertaining to the formulation of the new Constitutional process. The President had wanted the public kept informed on the progress. Areas such as the reduction of the Executive residential powers and revising of the electoral system bear special significance in the proposed new Constitution.

Another significant factor is that the President had notified his legal advisors to prepare the draft for proposed Constitution that can be passed with a 2/3rd majority without a referendum. The President had said this during a discussion he had with Chief Ministers recently. Although there is speculation that the government is preparing to divide the country according to a federal system, the President reiterated that be it federal or otherwise, he will not allow the country to be divided.

Lanka News Web we make some comments regarding this. Expressing his views Social Welfare and Empowerment Minister S.B. Dissanayake said the possibility of having the Constitutional amendments passed with a 2/3rd majority without a referendum was mentioned in the good governance election manifesto as well and that is the President’s stand. Hence, according to SB, he is not in favor of a Constitutional amendment that requires a referendum.

While there are various opinions and views regarding the new Constitution, The Lanka News Web , spoke to some of the opposition members to find out what their views are.

Minister of Labour and Trade Unions Relations said the from the start the SLFP had been of the stand that a Constitutional amendment was sufficient.
He said Susil Premajayantha had said if the government opts for a Constitutional amendment, it can be done without having to go for a referendum. The UNP too had agreed to this suggestion. However, the SLFP is of the view that if the Executive Presidency is abolished, it would have a negative effect on the sovereignty of this country.
Meanwhile factions of both parties within the government claim that the disparity between these two party ideas is the main reason for the delay in the constitutional process. Proving the fact that there are many opposing ideas within the government, Senior UNP Minister Ranjith Maddumabandara said the process of formulating of the new Constitution is dragging on because of the SLFP. He said the current government was formed by the President and the UNP and said the SLFP should understand that and understand their position. He indicated

that the UNP is working towards bringing in a new Constitution.

In response to Maddumabandara’s comment, Minister John Amaratunge said it is true that there are issues between the SLFP and UNP factions within the government and added that in order to overcome these obstacles and work together amicably, representatives of both parties should sit together and discuss issues in a cordial manner.
Meanwhile, Higher Education

Minister Lakshman Kiriella said the United National Front received the mandate of the people at the past election based on the promise of formulating a new Constitution.
Kiriella pointed out that during the election campaign, President Sirisena had promised to bring in a new Constitution and put it to a referendum. “What is the harm in getting the approval of the people after formulating a new Constitution?” he asked.

However, UNP, MP Mugibur Rahuman said the Constitutional amendment is something that the government promised the people and it should be done without delay. He said just as the government made a commitment to foster reconciliation among the Tamils in the North and Sinhalese in the South, the constitution issue should also be resolved without delay.
He pointed out that devolution of power was nothing new to this country and said that even in the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka peace accord, devolution of power was among the issues discussed. Similarly, he said no matter what issue arises regarding a referendum, if the government wants to amend the Constitution, seeking public views through a referendum is a vital factor.

Expressing his views on the new Constitution, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna G.L. Peiris said the government has no desire or mechanism with regard to formulating a new Constitution. He pointed out that despite speculations, there are around ten clauses in the Constitution that cannot be amended without a referendum and the Executive Presidency cannot be abolished without that. “Just like the Diaspora, there is huge pressure being excerpted on the government of Sri Lanka. As the government is indebted to the Diaspora they will say whatever it takes to please them, but the government has no proper plan to address any of these concerns.”

The JVP who constantly harped on the Constitution as well as the devolution of power, is of the view that as the SLFP claims, if the UNP agrees to it, they would be defying the mandate they received. “The President did not receive the people’s mandate as the Chairman of the SLFP. Hence he has no right to stand up for those representing the SLFP Interim Committee. This is hoodwinking the people who voted for him. What we want is for the Executive Presidency to be abolished and a new Constitution brought in through a referendum. If the Northern people’s grievances have not been resolved so far with the current devolution of power, then the government will need to look at an alternative power devolution package in order to address the issued faced by the Northern people,” said Nalinda Jayatissa of the JVP.
While those were the JVP’s views, Left Front leader Vasudeva Nanayakkara said, “Even we are unaware if the government is planning on amending the existing Constitution or bringing in a new Constitution. A Constitutional amendment cannot be done without a referendum. However, despite all these issues, our future goal is to defeat this government,” he added.

AshWaru Colombo

Power in the wrong hands: The ACJU and MMDA

Featured image courtesy Maatram

FARWEEZ IMAMUDEEN on 04/13/2017

ACJU’s latest media statement on the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) does not mention anything about altering their previous position. In other words they are still right. How can they not be? They are the Jammiyathul Ulama – The union of scholars. The statement has changed nothing except to defend their infallible president. Apparently according to the ACJU Rizvi Mufthi’s following statement, “Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) is perfect in its present state”, has been misinterpreted to mean that the MMDA is perfect in its present state.

Power in the wrong hands The ACJU and MMDA.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Pakistani arrested at BIA with heroin in his shoes

April 13, 2017

A Pakistani national has been arrested with 1 kg and 156 g of heroin at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake.

The suspect had arrived in the country onboard Emirates Airlines flight EK 648 from Dubai at around 5.15pm today (13).

The stock of heroin, worth around Rs 11.6 million, was found concealed in the suspect’s shoes.

He is being further investigated by airport customs.

No military activity in Sri Lankan ports: PM

2017-04-13

Sri Lanka will make sure no military activity is conducted at its ports, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said in Tokyo on Wednesday as China invests heavily in roads and harbours in the country, the Reuters reported.

“Sri Lanka hopes to become the regional hub of the Indian Ocean again,” Mr. Wickremesinghe told a joint news conference following a meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe.

“We want to ensure that we develop all our ports, and all these ports are used for commercial activity, transparent activity, and will not be available to anyone for any military activity.”

Mr. Wickremesinghe had not mentioned any specific countries. China’s investments in transportation infrastructure in Sri Lanka are considered part of its ambitions to build maritime routes to the oil-rich Middle East and on to Europe.

This development, Reuters said, makes some countries, including India and the United States, nervous.

Sri Lanka sits near shipping lanes through which much of the world’s trade passes on its way to China and Japan.

“The era of the Indo-Pacific is now being ushered in. Yet, however, true regional prosperity cannot come into being without the realisation of a free and open Indo-Pacific. To make this happen, it is indispensable for Sri Lanka to achieve sustainable growth as a hub, and develop ports that are open to all,” Abe said.

20kg of Kerala Cannabis recovered in Delft

April 13, 2017

On receipt of intelligence information to the Northern Naval Command, a group of naval personnel recovered 20 kg of Kerala Cannabis abandoned in the beach area of Valliyar on the Delft Island.

The consignment of cannabis that had been bagged in 10 packages was handed over to the Delft Police for onward investigation, Sri Lanka Navy said.

Palestinian teen “sacrificed his life to defend the camp”

Photo shows hands reaching towards Murad Abu Ghazi as his body is carried during his funeral procession

Summoning deep patience is nothing new for Zeina Abu Ghazi.

Budour Youssef Hassan-12 April 2017

She lives with her family in Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. A refugee from Beit Jibrin, a Palestinian town ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in 1948, located in what is today called Israel, Zeina is a mother of nine: six boys and three girls.

All six of her sons have been jailed by Israel over the last 15 years, mainly for stone-throwing and participating in clashes with Israeli occupation forces.

Visiting prisons can be an excruciating journey. For Zeina it has meant leaving home as early as 5 am, waiting for hours at checkpoints, and enduring invasive searches before entering the various prisons located throughout historic Palestine where Israel has locked up her sons. But that ordeal would instantly be forgotten once Zeina saw her boys.

“You have to be patient and resilient,” Zeina said. “God gives me the strength to continue and the patience to cope, and we mothers have no choice but to be patient.”

Zeina faces her greatest test yet after the death of her son Murad just a few days before his 17th birthday last month.

That day was supposed to be a happy one in Arroub camp. Residents were celebrating the release of Ismail Farrajin after 13 years of Israeli imprisonment.

Close-up of face of smiling youth — Murad Abu Ghazi (via Defense for Children International - Palestine)

Fridays are also known for regular confrontations between camp youth and Israeli soldiers. Arroub is one of the most frequently raided camps in the West Bank, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees.

Murad, still not fully recovered from a car accident that left him with a broken leg, joined the youth to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at an Israeli military post near the camp. The Israeli army ambushed the youth, firing live bullets at them from close range.

A coroner found that Murad was hit with a bullet in his left shoulder, which pierced his heart before exiting his chest. He likely died within minutes of being struck.

Another teen was hit in the chest with a live bullet and was left in moderate-to-critical condition.

“At first we were told that Murad was injured and that another guy was killed,” Akram Abu Ghazi, Murad’s 33-year-old brother, told The Electronic Intifada.

“I drove to al-Ahli hospital in Hebron where Murad was transferred. I cannot describe to you the shock we all felt when the doctors said that Murad was dead. I did not know how to pass the news to my parents.”

Pride

It was only after Murad’s death that his parents found out that he frequently attended protests and took part in confrontations with the Israeli army week in, week out.

“Yes, I am proud of him, especially when I hear from his friends about his courage and determination,” Zeina said. “But I wish I could have stopped him from going, because every mother wants to protect her children first and foremost.”

Yet Murad was too stubborn, never shying away from the front lines, never heeding his older brothers’ advice to be more cautious.

His friend Ahmad recalled that Murad insisted on taking the cast off his broken leg himself without consulting the doctor.

“He was so active and energetic and couldn’t stay put,” said Ahmad. “The thing that really annoyed him when he broke his leg was that he couldn’t be with us during the clashes with the army.”

The year 2016 was particularly rough for Murad.

In February, his close friend and classmate Omar Madi Jawabreh, 15, was killed by Israeli occupation forces when a bullet hit him in the chest.

Clashes had broken out after the army invaded Arroub and camp youth responded with a barrage of rocks. Murad was among those confronting the soldiers that day when Omar was shot before his eyes.

“Omar’s martyrdom affected Murad deeply, it changed him,” Zeina said. “He visited Omar’s grave every day and wore his necklace. He kept Omar’s picture in his pocket and always visited his mother and was like a son to her.”

Friends of Palestinian martyrs, including young teenagers, spontaneously form networks of support around bereaved families. This is particularly true in Arroub, home to approximately 1,000 refugees, where community ties are strong. Murad and his friends sought to make up for the loss of Omar by remaining close to his family and treating his mother like their own.

Imprisoned by Israel

The following September, Murad was arrested when he had just been released from hospital where he was receiving treatment for severe abdominal illness. Murad was arrested along with his cousin Muhammad. He was charged with stone-throwing and spent three months in jail.

“Even after his release, he was not happy and we felt that something inside him had changed,” Rana, Murad’s sister, told The Electronic Intifada. “It hurt him that he was released while Muhammad remained in prison. He kept saying that he wanted to go back to jail in order not to leave Muhammad alone.”

Murad dropped out of school and instead opted to work with his uncle in construction and was planning to start a career as a plumber.

Like most boys in the camp, Murad loved playing football and his brother said he was a big fan of FC Barcelona.

“Wherever he goes, he fills the place with happiness,” Akram said. “For many in the camp, Murad is a resistance hero. But for us, he will always be remembered as the kid who made everyone around him laugh from the depth of their heart.”

Murad’s father, Yousif, is profoundly devastated by the loss of his son. Almost completely deaf, Yousif has had nervous breakdowns since Murad’s killing.

“He wakes me up in the middle of the night and screams Murad’s name,” Zeina said. “I tell him that Murad is in heaven now and he says, crying, that he just wants him back home.”

Arroub camp paid Murad an emotional farewell, one that will live on in the memory of his family and friends.

“The whole camp participated in the funeral,” said Murad’s friend Ahmad. “Men, women and children. Everyone here loved Murad. My head will always be held high because he was my friend.”

Zeina had one big dream for Murad.

“I always prayed to live long enough in order to see Murad married and to hold his children in my arms,” she said. “But he had something more important to do: he sacrificed his life to defend the camp.”

Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer based in Jerusalem. She blogs

at budourhassan.wordpress.com.

Kim Jong Un’s rockets are getting an important boost — from China

Participants practice Wednesday for a parade on the main Kim Il Sung square in central Pyongyang. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

By Joby Warrick April 13 at 7:00 AM

When North Korea launched its Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite into space last February, officials heralded the event as a birthday gift for dead leader Kim Jong Il. But the day also brought an unexpected prize for the country’s adversaries: priceless intelligence in the form of rocket parts that fell into the Yellow Sea.

Entire sections of booster rocket were snagged by South Korea’s navy and then scrutinized by international weapons experts for clues about the state of North Korea’s missile program. Along with motor parts and wiring, investigators discerned a pattern. Many key components were foreign-made, acquired from businesses based in China.

The trove “demonstrates the continuing critical importance of high-end, foreign-sourced components” in building the missiles North Korea uses to threaten its neighbors, a U.N. expert team concluded in a report released last month. When U.N. officials contacted the implicated Chinese firms to ask about the parts, the report said, they received only silence.

China’s complex relationship with North Korea was a key topic during last week’s U.S. visit by President Xi Jinping, as Trump administration officials urged Chinese counterparts to apply more pressure on Pyongyang to halt its work on nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems. Yet, despite China’s public efforts to rein in North Korea’s provocative behavior, Chinese companies continue to act as enablers, supplying the isolated communist regime with technology and hardware that allow its missiles to take flight, according to current and former U.S. and U.N. officials and independent weapons experts.

Kim Jong Un has tested nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles at an unprecedented rate since he came into power. Yet, the country is under some of the toughest sanctions ever. This is how the regime is able to funnel billions of dollars into its nuclear program. (Video: Jason Aldag/Photo: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

The private assistance has included sensitive software and other items specifically banned for export to North Korea under U.N. Security Council sanctions, the officials and experts said.

China has officially denied that such illegal exports exist, but investigations show restricted products were shipped privately to North Korea as recently as 18 months ago. Still unclear, analysts said, is whether the Chinese government tacitly approved of the exports, or is simply unable or unwilling to police the thousands of Chinese companies that account for more than 80 percent of all foreign goods imported by North Korea each year.

“There’s all kinds of slack in the system,” said Joshua Pollack, a former consultant to U.S. government agencies on arms control and a senior research associate with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “It could be that the Chinese don’t care enough to do much about it. A second possibility it that they don’t have the systems — such as strong export controls — in place. Or that it’s just corruption.”

[Will North Korea fire a missile that can hit the U. S.? Probably]

Whatever the reason, experts say, the flow of products through China has allowed North Korea’s missiles engineers to achieve progress that would otherwise be difficult for an impoverished regime that is cut off from the West and lacks a sophisticated microelectronics industry.

When confronted privately about such exports, Chinese officials have typically demanded high levels of proof — specific names and dates that can be difficult to derive from water-damaged rocket parts pulled from the ocean, said an Obama administration nonproliferation official involved in sensitive negotiations with China over its relations with North Korea.

“They’d say, ‘give us details,’ but in most cases we could never say it was ‘this precise person on this precise day,’” said the official, who insisted on anonymity in describing diplomatic negotiations. “With them, it was never a team sport. It was always just the bare minimum of what they had to do in order to avoid having to take serious action.”

North Korea's state-run television airs a video of the country's rocket launch on Feb. 7, 2016. The Unha-3 rocket brought the Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite into orbit. (Reuters)

The Unha-3, the rocket that launched North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite into orbit on Feb. 7, 2016, was among the most powerful ever built by Kim Jong Un’s government. It is also the most worrisome. U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials have long believed that the three-stage, 100-foot-tall rocket was designed as a forerunner for a future nuclear-tipped space vehicle that could allow North Korea to threaten cities as far away as Washington.

Mindful that spy agencies would seek to recover spent parts after the launch, North Korean engineers laced the rocket with explosives so that each stage would self-destruct while hurtling back to Earth. Still, South Korean navy ships were waiting to scoop up any parts that survived, eventually harvesting enough components to allow a crude reconstruction of the entire rocket.

Investigators determined that the Unha-3’s frame was indigenously made. But inside the rocket’s shell was an array of electronics, including specialized pressure sensors, transmitters and circuitry. An extensive probe by U.S. and South Korean officials revealed that many of the components had been manufactured in Western countries and shipped to North Korea by Chinese distributors — a finding that was echoed in the United Nations Panel of Experts report made public on March 9.

[Satellite photos suggest another n-test is imminent.]

The report, which received scant attention outside the world body, described elaborate systems for disguising technology exports intended for North Korea. Some schemes involved Chinese front-companies created by North Korean intelligence agencies; others were run through banks created as joint ventures by Pyongyang and foreign partners, including Chinese financial institutions. As sanctions grew tougher, the sanction-busters simply learned new tricks for getting around the rules, the panel’s investigators found.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is flouting sanctions through trade in prohibited goods, with evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope and sophistication,” the eight-member panel concluded. International resolve for approving new sanctions had “not yet been matched,” the report said, “by the requisite political will, prioritization and resource allocation to ensure effective implementation.”

Some of the banned components exported to North Korea can’t be found inside a missile frame. A separate report by U.S. weapons experts reveals how Pyongyang used Chinese middlemen to obtain access to European-made software essential for making parts that go inside advanced rockets.

The report recounts a 2015 business deal in which a European manufacturer agreed to sell sensitive software and industrial-control systems to a Chinese company based in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, about 150 miles from the North Korean border. The deal that came with an important condition: None of the items were to be resold to North Korea.

The agreement was quickly broken, according to the report by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington nonprofit that focuses on nuclear-weapons proliferation. The purchaser, a manufacturing giant in northeastern China known as the Shenyang Machine Tool Co. Ltd., integrated the European technology in its own line of industrial milling machines used to make metal parts. Two of those machines were then sold to North Korea, the report said. While North Korea’s eventual use of the machines is not known, the controllers and software are used elsewhere to manufacture parts for missiles as well as centrifuges used to make enriched uranium.

“These goods were supplied to Shenyang Machine Tools under the condition that they would not be retransferred to North Korea or other sanctioned states,” said the report, set to be released this week. European officials “decided to investigate the responsible individuals in the Shenyang company but this effort failed,” the document said. Shenyang officials would later claim that the transfer of sensitive technology had been inadvertent, the report said.

David Albright, author of the report and a former U.N. weapons inspector, declined to identify the European manufacturer or the government that conducted the investigation, citing confidentiality agreements. The Shenyang firm did not respond to emailed requests from The Washington Post seeking comment.

Albright, the author of dozens of technical studies on North Korea’s weapons programs, noted that China has made a show of prosecuting other businesses that violate sanctions on trading with North Korea. But he said the Shenyang case illustrates that illicit trade continues, often under complex schemes that are difficult even for Chinese authorities to spot.

[Navy sends strike group toward Korean Peninsula]

But he argued that the Chinese could do much more.

“It’s a question of priorities,” said Albright, who has discussed such cases with Chinese officials. “China is an export economy and money is never a dirty word, ever. There are good people in the system who would like to do more, but as you work your way down through the bureaucracy, the interest goes way down.”

There are signs that Beijing is beginning to tighten the screws. In September, Chinese authorities arrested at least 11 business executives in the border city of Dandong for allegedly selling banned goods to North Korea. Among those arrested was Ma Xiaohong, the 44-year-old founder and chairwoman of Hongxiang Group, a company accused by U.S. officials of supplying Pyongyang with rare metals and chemicals used in nuclear-weapons production. China also recently curtailed coal imports from North Korea and imposed unilateral sanctions intended to pressure Kim Jong Un into halting further nuclear tests.

In public comments after the Ma arrest, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said his country would be “relentless” in enforcing sanctions aimed at ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.

“These efforts are there for all to see,” Lu said.

During last week’s presidential visit, Trump administration officials urged President Xi to do still more. At a news conference on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China to join in a “new strategy to end North Korea’s reckless behavior.”

The same message has been delivered privately as part of a pressure campaign that dates at least to the early years of the Obama administration. In meetings, U.S. officials have warned that a failure to halt the illicit trade could speed up Kim Jong Un’s nuclear timetable and increase the risk of a regional war — one that could devastate regional economies and send waves of refugees streaming across China’s border — an outcome Chinese leaders are particularly anxious to avoid, according to a recently retired U.S. diplomat and veteran of numerous rounds of such talks.

“China may be willing to close its eyes to some things,” the diplomat said, “but they’re not prepared to welcome North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state.”

Montenegro Has the U.S. Greenlight to Join NATO. Now What?

BY EMILY TAMKIN-APRIL 12, 2017

Just one day before President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met in Washington, the North Atlantic alliance came one big step to gaining its first new member in eight years: Montenegro.

“The United States will work to further strengthen our already strong relationship with Montenegro, and looks forward to formally welcoming the country as the twenty-ninth member of the NATO Alliance,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday, shortly after Trump signed off on the near-unanimous Senate consent for the tiny Balkan state to join the world’s biggest alliance.

Trump apparently had a change of heart as to the utility of NATO. On Wednesday, at a joint press conference, the U.S. president said of the alliance, “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.” He reiterated, however, that NATO partners need to increase their spending and “not rely on the U.S. to make up the difference.”

“The U.S. approval for Montenegro’s accession to NATO is also recognition for all of the hard work and reforms Montenegro implemented during the rigorous process of integration to the Alliance, which proves that the membership is open to countries that share the common values and are willing to meet the criteria,” Montenegro’s ambassador, Nebojsa Kaluderovic, said in an email to Foreign Policy.

The United States was one of the last of the 28 NATO members to approve the addition of Montenegro to the group; the Balkan country now just waits on Spain’s approval. (Though Spain’s parliament approved Montenegro’s bid, leftist parties fear provoking Russia’s wrath through an expansion of the Western alliance.)

Assuming Madrid consents, Montenegro will join the other NATO members at a summit in May — and will brace itself for the response from Russia. Moscow has long been opposed to Montenegro’s accession, as it has long opposed to NATO expansion, which it views as a provocation.

Montenegro, for its part, believes Russia was already taking action, blaming it for a failed coup attempt last October. (Russia denies that.) “Russia has a long track record of expressing its opposing views about NATO expansion including Montenegrin membership, and in this case acted in an unprecedented way,” Kaluderovic said.

But what’s less clear is whether, and how, Russia might respond. As seen in Moscow’s efforts to influence politics and public opinion across Europe, tanks and howitzers aren’t needed to push back against countries that step out of line.

In late March, during the same week that Montenegro got the U.S. Senate’s overwhelming approval for NATO membership, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on their first arms deal since 2013. Montenegro gained independence from Serbia in 2006.

Just being under the NATO umbrella may offer protection from a full-on assault, but doesn’t provide any shield from other Russian efforts at destabilization. In 2007, Russia launched a major cyberattack on Estonia’s banks and government. Since then it has unleashed a campaign of hacking, disinformation, and “astroturf” political agitation meant to sow dissent among its former Baltic dependencies, NATO members all.

Montenegro may now be in the club, but will be vying with Albania for NATO’s least-impressive military. It has about 2,000 soldiers, but no air force, no coast guard, and no military academy. But joining NATO, said foreign minister Srdjan Darmanovic last month, is the decision the country made when it decided to become independent.

And it’s a decision that the U.S. government apparently think benefits the United States, too. As Trump’s letter noted, Montenegro’s accession will not increase American spending obligations. Some lawmakers went further still. Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) said that, far from inviting a collision with Russia, Montenegro’s accession is critical for resisting it.

“The behavior on the part of the Russians throughout the region and the world is not acceptable in these times,” McCain said.

Kaluderovic agrees. “Our impending accession shows that our future is in our hands.”

Update, Apr. 12, 4:22 pm ET: This piece was updated to include President Trump’s comments on NATO from the press conference.

Photo credit: Francois Nel/Getty Images for BEGOC

Assad’s implausible claims about chemical weapons

By PATRICK WORRALL-13 APR 2017

President Bashar al-Assad gave a rare interview in English today, as world leaders continued to criticise a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held area of Syria.

Theresa May said the British government believes it is “highly likely” that an air strike on the village of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib Province on April 3 was the work of the Assad regime.

Donald Trump has already made it clear he holds the Syrian government responsible for the attack, which was widely reported to have killed more than 70 people including young children.

The US president ordered a Tomahawk missile strike on the regime’s Shayrat airbase in response.

President Assad made a number of questionable claims during the exclusive AFP interview, during which he repeatedly denied Syria’s responsibility for the deaths in Khan Sheikhun.

The Telegraph actually carried a photograph of the same man cradling the bodies of the baby girls shortly before he buried them in a mass grave.

“The only information the world has had until this moment is published by al-Qaeda.”

“You have a lot of fake videos now… We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all?”

President Assad appears to be casting doubt on whether an attack on Khan Sheikhun happened at all.

He said in the interview: “Definitely, 100 percent for us, it’s fabrication.

“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.”

Oddly, this contradicts previous statements on Khan Sheikhun made by Assad’s allies in Moscow and by members of his own government.

Representatives of Russia and Syria have previously stated that an airstrike on the village did take place last week.

And although many of the details were disputed, they did not dispute the presence of chemical weapons at the scene.

A day after the attack, Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, gave a statement saying Syrian planes had hit a rebel chemical weapons stockpile.

The following day, Assad’s foreign minister Walid Muallem also referred to an “airstrike by the Syrian army on an ammunition depot of al-Nusra terrorists with chemical weapons inside it”.

There is a disagreement about the timing. Russian and Syrian government sources put the attack at after 11am local time, whereas local eyewitnesses said it happened hours earlier.

But initially, neither Syria nor Russia denied that people were at risk of exposure to chemical weapons.

The story was that this was an airstrike with conventional weapons, and chemicals at the scene belonged to rebel groups.

Strangely, President Assad appears to be casting doubt now on whether there was a deadly attack of any kind.

Were the children “dead at all”?

A number of videos were posted apparently showing victims from the area suffering the after-effects of chemical poisoning.

Some of the videos are gathered, along with translations, on this page on the citizen journalist sit Bellingcat. A warning: some of the footage is distressing.

Doctors at the scene highlight similar symptoms among the patients: they are unresponsive, their pupils are constricted, and they do not react when torches are shone in their eyes.

People sympathetic to the regime tend to doubt evidence gathered from rescuers and medics in rebel-held areas.

But a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical team said that they saw similar symptoms in patients brought to a hospital near the Turkish border from Khan Sheikhoun.

We haven’t seen any compelling evidence that any of the video footage from Khan Sheikhun has been faked, but as it happens, we don’t need to rely exclusively on video evidence anyway.

Reporters at Channel 4 News spoke to individuals in the area who suffered the after-effects of poisoning and saw the same symptoms in other people. People told us that they had lost family members, identifying themselves and their relatives.

The Guardian newspaper sent a reporter called Kareem Shaheen to Khan Sheikhun two days after the attack.

He filed an article that included interviews with witnesses, including a man identified as Abdulhamid al-Yousef (pictured below) who lost his wife and twin baby daughters in the attack.

Shaheen also filed photographs of freshly-dug graves in the village, said to contain the bodies of 20 victims.

Local doctors gave detailed accounts to journalists of treating victims, describing symptoms which experts said were consistent with nerve agent poisoning.

Save the Children told FactCheck that trusted local partners had given them specific details of three children under six who were taken from Khan Sheikhun to a local hospital suffering from symptoms consistent with neurotoxin poisoning.

It is not clear whether these children survived, but there were first-hand reports from medical staff working on the ground that other infants with similar symptoms had certainly died, the charity said.

Other international organisations with partners on the ground in Syria, including the World Health Organization, have similarly put their concern on record.

The WHO said the likelihood that this was a chemical attack was born out by lack of external injuries, respiratory distress and “additional signs consistent with exposure to organophosphorus chemicals, a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents”.

Several academic experts have gone on record as saying that the likely culprit in this case is sarin – the nerve gas invented by the Nazis – and that the Syrian regime is more likely than any rebel group to have the capacity to launch a sarin attack.

Chemical weapons experts also say it is implausible that conventional bombs falling on a stash of sarin would have spread the deadly gas without destroying it.

“The only information the world has had until this moment is published by al-Qaeda.”

It’s true that the attack site is in territory controlled by Islamist militants, some linked to the al-Qaeda terror group. But it’s not true that the only evidence of a chemical attack comes from local rebels.

As we have seen, independent journalists have been able to analyse images of the attack, using geo-location and other tools to verify that it did in fact happen.

And international humanitarian organisations have relayed information from trusted local partners who work in the area where the attacks took place.

The British delegation to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said UK scientists have tested samples from Khan Sheikhun and the samples “tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, or a sarin-like substance”.

Turkish officials said they conducted post-mortems on victims and also found evidence of sarin.

“We gave up our arsenal a few years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them.”

Syria was certainly supposed to have given up its chemical weapons stockpile in 2013, but there is widespread suspicion that the regime held on to some poisons.

An investigation by the OPCW and the UN found that Syrian forces dropped chemical weapons on rebel forces in 2014 and 2015, after the regime agreed to destroy its stocks. In both attacks, the chemical used was thought to be chlorine.

The same report also accused the so-called Islamic State of launching an attack with mustard gas.

Human Rights Watch accused regime forces of dropping chlorine on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times in November and December last year.

Inside Bannon’s struggle: From ‘shadow president’ to Trump’s marked man

When Stephen K. Bannon reported for work Wednesday, he did not act like a man who had just been publicly humiliated by his boss.

Trump’s chief strategist served in the Navy, has a daughter in the Army and once referred to himself as a Leninist.

By Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Robert Costa April 12 at 8:16 PM

The White House chief strategist cycled in and out of the Oval Office for meetings with President Trump and took a seat in the front row of the East Room for the afternoon visit of NATO’s secretary general, flanked by some of the very advisers with whom he has been feuding.

But for Bannon, the day’s routine obscured the reality that he is a marked man — diminished by weeks of battles with the bloc of centrists led by Trump’s daughter and son-in-law and cut down by the president himself, who belittled Bannon in an interview with the New York Post.

The president’s comments were described by White House officials as a dressing-down and warning shot, though one Bannon friend, reflecting on them Wednesday, likened Bannon to a terminally ill family member who had been moved into hospice care.

The man not long ago dubbed the “shadow president” — with singular influence over Trump’s agenda and the workings of the federal government — is struggling to keep his job with his portfolio reduced and his profile damaged, according to interviews Wednesday with 21 of Trump’s aides, confidants and allies. Some colleagues described Bannon as a stubborn recluse who had failed to build a reservoir of goodwill within the West Wing.

White House advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon are in the midst of a feud — one that's being waged in the media. The Fix's Callum Borchers explains how it's typical of the inner turmoil that's plagued the Trump administration from the start. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

“Bannon is a brilliant pirate who has had a huge impact,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter. “But White Houses, in the end, are like the U.S. Navy — corporate structures and very hard on pirates.”

For now, at least, Bannon may survive the turmoil, and he and other White House staffers are striving to be on their best behavior after their infighting earned them a scolding by the president over the weekend, according to the aides and allies, many of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about internal dynamics. Bannon declined to be interviewed.

[Bannon wants a war on Washington. Now he’s part of one inside the White House.]

But the mercurial president has a long history of turning quickly on subordinates, and the political hit late Tuesday in the New York Post was trademark Trump, using the friendly Manhattan tabloid to publicly debase his chief strategist. The president said Bannon was hardly the Svengali of his caricature, but rather “a good guy” who “was not involved in my campaign until very late.”

Bannon’s associates were caught off guard by Trump’s comments. Some interpreted them as a paternal “love tap” by Trump to assert his own dominance, while others worried they amounted to an indirect firing. Bannon himself was humbled, people close to him said, and his allies scrambled to defend him, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who praised him in an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio program.

In a second interview, with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Trump referred to Bannon as “a guy who works for me” — and pointedly noted, as he did with the New York Post, that he was his own “strategist,” even though chief strategist is Bannon’s job title.

Trump also is increasingly embracing more mainstream policy positions championed by daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and their allies, including ascendant National
Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, instead of Bannon’s brand of combative nationalism.

On Wednesday alone, Trump flipped from Bannon-favored positions on issues such as the Export-Import Bank and Chinese currency manipulation, alarming some Bannon aides who feared their wing had lost influence with the president.

On Ingraham’s show, Sessions dismissed the suggestion that Bannon’s worldview, which he shares, was being sidelined. “I’m an admirer of Steve Bannon and the Trump family and they’ve been supportive of what we’re doing,” said the attorney general, who in recent days has unveiled tough policies aimed at illegal immigration and drug crimes. “I’ve not felt any pushback against me or on anything I’ve done or advocated.”

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a close Trump friend who chaired his inaugural committee, spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington meeting with the president and his senior team. He characterized the ideological disagreement between Bannon and others as natural and even healthy.

“The way this president makes decisions is he encourages different points of view from different people, and he curates those and comes up with his own positions,” Barrack said. “The lack of unanimity is just the way this president manages. He is in command and control.”

Trump and his team are rushing to notch accomplishments that they can hail at the 100-day mark later this month and to impose new discipline on a White House that has been riven by disorder and suspicion since Trump took office.

[Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations]

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court and sworn in this week, upending Senate procedure and marking a significant victory for Trump's conservative base. But the absence of any other major legislative achievement and the public failure of a health-care overhaul has gnawed at the president, and other White House advisers have been swift in assigning partial blame to Bannon, according to Trump staffers and outside allies.

Bannon’s effective demotion began last week when he was removed from the National Security Council’s principals committee. But his real problems began much earlier. Trump bristled at the media depiction of Bannon as a puppeteer, punctuated by the Feb. 13 Time magazine cover labeling Bannon “The Great Manipulator.”

Trump fashions himself as the leading man — the protagonist of every story in which he stars — and was content to have Bannon as his sidekick, but he did not welcome the competition for top billing.

Bannon further imperiled his standing with the president by getting crosswise with Kushner, officials said. The two men were close during last year’s campaign; Kushner came to see Bannon as a wartime consigliere. But in the White House, Bannon went to war with the business leaders Kushner helped recruit to the administration — Cohn and others, including Dina Powell, the senior economic counselor and deputy national security adviser.

Bannon privately derided them as “globalists” and “Democrats,” officials said, even though Powell worked in George W. Bush’s administration and has been called a principled conservative by leading Republican senators.

Bannon’s supporters believe he is an essential conduit between Trump and his nationalist, populist base. The wealthy Mercer family, which has nurtured Bannon’s political rise and infused Trump’s campaign and allied groups with millions of dollars, is closely monitoring Bannon’s falling fortunes. Rebekah Mercer, who directs the family’s political activities, is unnerved and worried about losing her best link to a president her family takes credit for helping get elected but believes Bannon will be able to maintain his influence, people close to the family said.

Ingraham wrote in an email of Bannon: “Of course he didn’t invent the conservative populist ideals that Trump ran on, but he is … a reminder in the West Wing of what the president’s core supporters expect of the administration and the promises that must be fulfilled. I think the president has really keen political instincts — and I have to believe he knows his chances of a successful first term are better with Steve on the inside than on the outside.”

[Horrible pictures of suffering moved Trump to action on Syria]

Other Trump loyalists flatly dismiss the idea that Bannon is the id of the Trump movement, pointing out that Trump has been advocating some of the same populist positions — especially on immigration and trade — for decades and for more than a year on the campaign trail before Bannon’s hiring last summer.

These people argue that a better representative of Trump’s voters inside the White House is Stephen Miller, the senior policy adviser and former Sessions aide who joined the campaign early and helped Trump hone and communicate his ideas. They said Miller has worked closely with Bannon but also has strategically aligned himself with Kushner, who came to see him last year as indispensable at Trump’s side.

As tensions have heightened in recent weeks, the Bannon and Kushner camps have devolved into opposing firing squads. Team Bannon believes the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a show the president watches regularly, are speaking regularly with Kushner and projecting his anti-Bannon sentiments. Kushner allies, meanwhile, finger Bannon as responsible for unflattering stories involving the president’s son-in-law, including those focusing on Kushner’s talks with Russians.

Inside a White House led by a president increasingly hungry to make deals, even with Democrats, Bannon’s dogmatism appears to have weakened him.

“The West Wing is finally appreciating it’s a democracy, not a dictatorship, but the rules are hard to navigate when there is such a high degree of polarization,” said Richard Hohlt, a longtime Republican consultant who has observed seven different presidents since his arrival in Washington. “It becomes difficult in a democracy if you’re going to be all ideological purity, all the time.”

Trump’s three oldest children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — and Kushner have been frustrated by the impression of chaos inside the White House and feel that their father has not always been served well by his senior staff, according to people with knowledge of their sentiments. The Trump heirs are interested in any changes that might help resuscitate the presidency and preserve the family’s name at a time when they are trying to expand the Trump Organization’s portfolio of hotels.

“The fundamental assessment is that if they want to win the White House in 2020, they’re not going to do it the way they did in 2016, because the family brand would not sustain the collateral damage,” said one well-connected Republican operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s family. “It would be so protectionist, nationalist and backward-looking that they’d only be able to build in Oklahoma City or the Ozarks.”

Bannon has borne at least part of the blame for the administration’s problems governing. He was intimately involved in the entry ban, which was twice blocked in federal court, and the failed health-care push especially hurt him. Trump thought Bannon would be able to bring along the House Freedom Caucus — a group of hard-line anti-establishment conservatives — but they helped tank the bill to scale back the Affordable Care Act.

Reince Priebus, the often-embattled chief of staff, is among the aides who feel growing pressure from the president to show that the administration can govern. Priebus has been telling confidants, “I’m not going to have a Memorial Day where the number one headline is ‘Republicans can’t produce a budget’ when everyone else in America can,” according to multiple people with knowledge of his plea.

For Trump, one bright spot was the decision to launch 59 missiles in Syria last week. The president was pleased with the process, overseen by national security adviser H.R. McMaster, that brought together his war cabinet and corralled its expertise in a way that resembled a more traditional White House.

“He’s in the best place that I’ve seen him since the inauguration,” Barrack said. “He’s confident. He thinks he’s found the groove, and with his team too. . . . He looks great. His energy level is off the map. And I think he now feels the commander in chief role.”

Damian Paletta contributed to this report.