Report: Iran 'bought' Solomon Island vote against Israel

Iran is bribing friendly countries to Israel to abandon it and vote against the Jewish state in the UN, a report obtained by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem reported.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the report said the Iranian foreign minister met with the foreign minister of the Oceania nation Solomon Islands last year and promised him a check in the amount of $200,000, along with technological aid.

These incentives were meant to come in exchange for an end to the nation's support of Israel.

Shortly after the offer was made the Solomon Islands' foreign minister visited Tehran.

Michael Ronen, Israel's ambassador to the Solomon Islands, said in response to the Yedioth report that "Israelis very active in nurturing its relations with countries in the region".

"We don't believe in conditions and we don't offer money in exchange for support" Ronen added. "We offer mainly humanitarian support, in order to stress that we are a positive power in the region."

He added that small states will always be tempted by cash donations. "Iran won the support of the Solomon Islands for $200,000. I won't offer $250,000 to overturn the decision. Israel does not buy support for money," Ronen said.

"The Solomon Islands have never been supportive of Israel. It has never been against us but has always refrained or been absent from votes. Israel also has a lot of friends here in the press and the social sector, but we won't threaten them to remove our support," he added.

The public in the Solomon Islands and the media, which reject ties with Iran, will do this and the local government will pay with public opinion."

The Solomon Islands is a very poor nation made up of 990 islands inhabited by 600,000 residents.

More at YNet

$30m bribe claim sours West’s hope that Karzai can show he is fit to lead

New claims of corruption will hang over Hamid Karzai today as he tries to use his inauguration to persuade Western allies that he is capable of changing his ways and arresting Afghanistan’s downward spiral.

Every word from the Afghan leader, when he speaks to about 300 foreign dignitaries at his inauguration ceremony in Kabul, will be scrutinised in London and Washington for evidence that he is serious about tackling abuses of power and that he can turn the tide in the war against the Taleban.

Hopes of an end to corruption were put into doubt last night when the Minister of Mines was forced to deny that he had accepted a $30 million bribe from a Chinese company two years ago in exchange for awarding a $2.9 billion contract for a copper mine in Logar province. Mohammed Ibrahim Adel denied the allegations, about Afghanistan’s biggest foreign investment project, in The Washington Post, which quoted US sources. It is not clear whether he will be in Mr Karzai’s next Government.

Thousands of soldiers and police sealed off the city and today has been declared a public holiday. Main roads in Kabul have been closed and the airport will be shut to civilian traffic. The preparations have added to the sense that this will be more than a routine swearing-in ceremony.

Mr Karzai was declared the winner from elections in August only after weeks of dispute. He failed to reach the 50 per cent needed to win after a third of his votes were rejected as fraudulent and won only after Dr Abdullah Abdullah stood down.

Journalists are barred from the ceremony amid suspicions that the President does not want the public to know which figures have been invited.

One person that none of the foreign dignitaries will want to be seen with is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the President’s brother, who has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the administration. He is one of the most powerful people in the country despite being only a member of the Kandahar provincial council. He has been linked to Afghanistan’s drugs industry.

More at Times Online

Army tells its soldiers to 'bribe' the Taleban

British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday.

Army commanders should also talk to insurgent leaders with “blood on their hands” in order to hasten the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British and Nato forces have failed to defeat the Taleban. The manual is also a recognition that the Army’s previous doctrine for success against insurgents, which was based on the experience in Northern Ireland, is now out of date.

The new instructions came on the day that Gordon Brown went farther than before in setting out Britain’s exit strategy from Afghanistan. The Prime Minister stated explicitly last night that he wanted troops to begin handing over districts to Afghan authorities during next year — a general election year in Britain.

Addressing the issue of paying off the locals, the new manual states that army commanders should give away enough money to dissuade them from joining the enemy. The Taleban is known to pay about $10 (£5.95) a day to recruit local fighters.

Major-General Paul Newton said: “The best weapons to counter insurgents don’t shoot. In other words, use bags of gold in the short term to change the security dynamics. But you don’t just chuck gold at them, this has to be done wisely.”

British commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have complained that their access to money on the battlefield — cash rather than literal gold — compares poorly with their US counterparts.

Read more at Times Online

Taliban leader rejects U.S. attempts to lure away fighters with money

Kabul, Afghanistan :A top Taliban political leader delivered a message Friday to President Obama, calling his attempt to lure away Taliban fighters with money "an old weapon that has failed already."

"The Mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan are not mercenaries and employed gunmen like the armed men of the invaders and their surrogates," Mullah Brader Akhund said in the statement. "This war will come to an end when all invaders leave our country and an Islamic government based on the aspirations of our people is formed in the country."

Akhund is the deputy emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is the political arm of the Taliban.

He was referring to the Taliban reintegration provision, part of the $680 billion defense appropriation bill that Obama signed Wednesday to pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year.

The provision would separate local Taliban from their leaders, paying the fighters to quit the organization, replicating a program used to neutralize the insurgency against Americans in Iraq, according to the Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Akhund said 19th century British invaders and Soviet fighters in the 1980s tried the same tactic, unsuccessfully.

He said the Taliban consider the U.S. measure "a sign of weakness and complete despondency of the enemy."

Read more here,,,,

Source: CNN

Payments to Taliban widespread

NATO officially denies that any of its members pay insurgents in Afghanistan for peace, but military sources said yesterday the practice is widespread among foreign forces fighting the Taliban.

The Times newspaper said 10 French troops killed in Sarobi, near Kabul, last year had not properly assessed the risks, because their Italian predecessors failed to inform them they had paid the Taliban not to attack them.

The Italian government described the British newspaper's report as "totally baseless" and said it had "never authorised any kind of money payment to members of the Taliban insurrection in Afghanistan".

But a senior Afghan official suggested otherwise. "I certainly can confirm that we were aware that the Italian forces were paying the opposition in Sarobi not to attack them," he said.

"We have reports of similar deals in (western) Herat province by Italian troops based there under NATO's umbrella.

"It's a deal: you don't attack me, I don't attack you," he said, adding the practice was passed on between foreign forces and it was likely that senior commanders were either involved or turned a blind eye to it. It is simply a matter of buying time and surviving."

A French army spokesman in Kabul, Lieutenant Colonel Jackie Fouquereau, said: "The French do not give money to insurgents."

NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, General Eric Tremblay, said he was "not aware" of such practices and had no information about the Italian case.

"It's not a counter-insurgency tactic. But the Afghan government can sometimes make local arrangements. If it's done, it's more by the Afghan government than the international forces," he said.

But according to a number of Western and Afghan officers, the politically sensitive practice is fairly widespread among NATO forces in Afghanistan.

One Western military source told of payments made by Canadian soldiers stationed in the violent southern province of Kandahar, while another officer spoke of similar practices by the German army in northern Kunduz.

"I can tell you that lots of countries under the NATO umbrella operating out in rural parts of Afghanistan do pay the militants for not attacking them," the senior Afghan official said.

He added that it "seems to be the practice with military forces from some NATO countries, excluding the US forces under NATO, the British forces and the whole coalition forces" under the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

"I think more than 50 per cent of NATO forces deployed in rural Afghanistan have such deals or at least have struck such deals" to ensure peace, the official said.

He said he did not want to say precisely how many but one Western officer said: "As it's not very positive and not officially recognised, it's never spoken about openly. It's a bit shameful.

"Consequently, it's sometimes not communicated properly between the old unit and the new unit that comes in to relieve them," which may have happened between the Italians and the French.

According to The Times, the Italian secret service gave tens of thousands of dollars to Taliban commanders and local warlords to keep the peace in the Sarobi region.

The French soldiers had been deployed there for less than a month when 10 of them were killed and 21 others injured on August 18 last year in one of the deadliest ambushes by insurgents against foreign forces.

The French Defence Minister was called on yesterday to give an urgent account to parliament of the Taliban ambush. As the Socialist Party reacted with anger to The Times report, the ministry said that it had long been aware of rumours that linked Italian bribery to the ambush in Sarobi. The reports had no basis, it said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would not be authorising extra troops for Afghanistan and wanted the Afghan army to take over security.

He told the newspaper Le Figaro: "If we leave, Pakistan, a nuclear power, will be threatened. But France will not send one more soldier."

Source: The Australian

Italy denies 'Taliban payoff deal'

A British newspaper report alleging 10 French soldiers died in Afghanistan because Italy failed to inform them of a Taliban payoff deal has been strongly denied by both Italy and France.

The Times newspaper reported on Thursday that Italy's secret services paid the Taliban "tens of thousands of dollars" to keep the Sarobi area in Afghanistan safe for its troops, but did not tell Nato allies about the deal.

It accused Italy of misleading the French, who took over control of the district in mid-2008, into believing the area was safe, leaving them unprepared for the attack in which the soldiers died.

But the office of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, called the report "completely groundless", while the country's defence minister added he wanted to sue the newspaper.

"The Berlusconi government has never authorised nor has it allowed any form of payment toward members of the Taliban insurgence," a statement from the prime minister's office said.

Admiral Christophe Prazuck, a spokesman for the French military, also dismissed the report as "baseless".

"These are rumours, and it is not the first time we have heard them," he said.

But Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the opposition Socialists, called for a review of the Afghan mission, in which 2,900 French troops are serving.

The Times report said that because the French were not informed of the alleged deal they made a "catastrophically incorrect threat assessment" of the area.

It said US intelligence officials had discovered through intercepted phone conversations that the Italians had been buying off fighters in Herat province, western Afghanistan.

The paper continued that a number of high-ranking Nato officers had told it that payments were discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.

Following the ambush in August 2008, in which the French troops were killed, reports emerged that the soldiers had been poorly equipped, and only had one radio, which went dead, leaving them unable to call for help.

However, the French military have denied these reports.

Prazuck said French, Italian and Turkish troops, all of whom oversee the Kabul region, had a relationship of "trust, full transparency".

"We share information constantly with the Italians, the Turks and the French in Kabul, daily, regularly," he said.

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

French troops killed after Italy stopped paying bribes to Taliban

TEN French soldiers killed in Afghanistan failed to realise the risks in the area because Italian officials had secretly paid the Taliban to desist from violence.

The Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taliban commanders and local warlords to keep the Sarobi area near Kabul quiet in the months before French forces moved in.

The French had been in charge of the area for just a month when the 10 soldiers were killed in an insurgent ambush in August 2008, in one of the biggest single losses of life for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Western military officials had revealed the existence of the payments, but they had been hidden from the incoming French forces at the time.

The Italian forces they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year.

The report said that because the French knew nothing of the bribes they made a "catastrophically incorrect threat assessment'' of the area.

It explains why the French troops were relatively lightly armed and insufficiently backed up by air cover when they were ambushed by 170 heavily armed insurgents, it added.

The Taliban and the insurgent Hezb-i-Islami faction claimed responsibility for the attack.

A senior NATO officer in Kabul told the newspaper: "It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies.''

In October 2007, two Italian agents were kidnapped in western Afghanistan. One was killed during a rescue by British special forces.

The Italian press later alleged they had been seized while making payments to the Taliban.

Source: The Australian

Dubai Prosecutors Indict Several for Bribery, Fraud

Mirna Sleiman | March 10

DUBAI'S public prosecutor has indicted several businessmen and former bank executives on charges of bribery and fraud, alleging they defrauded Dubai Islamic Bank of more than 1.84 billion UAE dirhams ($791 million), an official bill of indictment shows.

Amid several government probes in the city-state, a handful of executives at some of Dubai's leading real-estate and financial firms have been detained for questioning.

In the past several years, analysts say, regulation in Dubai has failed to keep up with the pace of growth. In the good times, investors didn't fret much about such shortcomings. Now, as the economy slows, regulators are trying to rein in the offshore boomtown.

The bill of indictment is the latest event in a months-long investigation at DIB. The largest traded Islamic lender in the United Arab Emirates, DIB is a major force in Islamic banking in the Middle East.

The prosecution's bill of indictment - which formally notifies suspects that charges have been brought against them - names seven suspects in the case, two of whom have fled the country, according to the bill of indictment seen by Zawya Dow Jones.

According to the bill of indictment, British businessmen Charles Ridley and Ryan Cornelius, along with Turkish businessman Erin Nil, embezzled $US501 million from DIB through forged invoices and fake deals. The alleged deals were done between 2004 and 2007, according to the bill of indictment.

Former DIB employees Omair Mooraj and Rifat Usmani, both holders of Pakistani passports, are accused of receiving a total of $US1.7 million in alleged bribes to facilitate the financing of the deals, according to the bill of indictment. Zia Usmani, identified as a US businessman, is also accused in the bill of defrauding the bank of $US2 million.

Zia Usmani and Mr Nil have left Dubai, according to the bill of indictment. Zawya Dow Jones was unable to make contact with either man or their representatives. The other men have been detained by Dubai police, according to the bill of indictment.

Dubai police also are holding Arthur Fitzwilliam, the British owner of Dubai-based real-estate developer Plantation Holdings, in connection with the case, according to the bill of indictment.

Habib Al Mulla, a Dubai-based lawyer representing Mr Mooraj, told Zawya Dow Jones on Monday that he will "defend his client in court rigorously by all legal means."

"We believe he has not violated any applicable laws in the country," Mr. Al Mulla said. Mr. Al Mulla confirmed that the case has now been referred to court.

Dubai Public Prosecution officials couldn't be reached for comment. Dubai Islamic Bank officials weren't available for further comment on the case.

DIB shares fell 0.9 per cent on Monday to 2.29 dirhams on the Dubai Financial Market. The stock is down about 75 per cent since the beginning of June.

Source: The Australian