President Barack Obama’s mideast peace envoy George Mitchell is an unlikely optimist.

Ten months into an assignment that has confounded generations of U.S. diplomats, Mitchell said on Wednesday he remained upbeat about bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks — thanks in part to his experience resolving another once-intractable crisis, the dispute between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Mitchell, credited with shaping the 1998 Good Friday Accord that ended that long and bloody conflict, said the key was not to lose heart.

“Over a period of five years, I chaired three separate sets of discussions.  The main negotiation lasted for nearly two years.  For most of that time, there was little or no progress, and our effort was branded a failure,” Mitchell told a news briefing.

“But then, after two years of saying no, both sides said yes. In a real sense, we had 700 days of failure and one day of success.”

Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, has thus far had little success in shuttle diplomacy aimed at resuming stalled Mideast peace talks, which have seen the two sides still bitterly divided over the issue of Israeli settlement construction on Palestinian lands.

Mitchell said there was no alternative but to push forward.

“If you’re serious about peace, you can’t take as final the first no, the second no or even the hundredth no.  You can’t get discouraged by setbacks and you can’t be deterred by criticism.  You have to be patient, persevering and determined,” he said.

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Photo Credit:Reuters/Fadi Arouri (Mitchell during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah in September)

Oh the hiding places people find for cash.

As the Justice Department argued that former U.S. government scientist Stewart Nozette should remain in jail while he awaits trial on espionage charges, juicy new details emerged about the sting operation leading to his arrest for passing top secret information to an individual he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer but really was the FBI.

Nozette was arrested at the famous Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Oct. 19 but before FBI agents put the cuffs on him, the Justice Department said that he went to the bathroom in the suite and stashed $10,000 in the toilet’s upper tank. (The money was later recovered so don’t bother booking the room.)

The money was meant as a down payment on some $2 million Nozette demanded for handing over details about a classified program that the United States had spent $1 billion to develop and deploy, according to the Justice Department.

Nozette allegedly also sought from the undercover FBI employee an Israeli passport with an alias and he opened a safe deposit box in California in which he stashed three computer drives, eight videotapes, 55 gold South African Krugerrand coins worth roughly $50,000, and $30,000 in savings bonds, the government said. (The Justice Department has said that Israel had no involvement in the attempted espionage.)

Earlier this year a jury convicted a former congressman, William Jefferson of Louisiana, in a corruption case that included $90,000 hidden in a freezer.

To bolster the government’s case to keep Nozette under lock and key until his trial, the Justice Department said its investigation “has revealed that Nozette is a person of means,” noting that he owns several residential properties across the country including a $2 million house in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and a $550,000 vacation home in Merritt Island, Florida.

“No treaty allows the United States to compel the extradition of an individual charged with espionage,” the government’s filing said.

Nozette has held a number of senior government positions and even helped with the development of a radar experiment that helped in the discovery of water ice on the south pole of the moon, the government said. He also worked at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and held special security clearance.

In January 2009, Nozette pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges, paying $265,000 in restitution.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jamal Saidi

President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a big, fixed-installation missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is drawing some angry reaction abroad.

Conservatives in Poland, where the Bush administration planned to base interceptor rockets, and the Czech Republic, where a radar installation was planned, accused Washington of buckling to Russian pressure.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates meets Friday afternoon with his Czech counterpart, Martin Bartak, as the administration works to explain its new thinking. It may be a hard sell.

“Betrayal! The USA has sold us to the Russians and stabbed us in the back,” said the Polish tabloid Fakt.

The Czech daily Lidowe Noviny took a similar line. “Obama gave in to the Kremlin,” it said.

Some military experts viewed the decision as a sign of weakness by Obama that Moscow hardliners would try to exploit further.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described it as “correct and brave,” and followed up Friday with a speech calling for Obama to agree to concessions on trade and technology transfer.

The Bush administration had proposed the shield to counter concerns Iran was developing a long-range missile capability that could strike at the United States.

The Obama administration said Iranian short- and medium-range missiles were a more immediate concern. It said it would scrap the antiballistic missile shield in favor of a more mobile, versatile system targeting shorter-range missiles.

U.S. newspapers were more receptive to that rationale. The New York Times called it “a sound strategic decision” and USA today said it marked the first big break in foreign policy with the former administration.

Republicans charged that it amounted to a big security concession to Russia, even as the administration said the decision was all about Iran and not Moscow.

The announcement came ahead of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York next week and the start of direct talks in October between Iran and major powers concerned about its nuclear enrichment program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did little Friday to allay those worries.

Speaking to worshipers at Tehran University, Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a “lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.”

He said it was a pretext to create a Jewish state and that Iranians had a “national and religious duty” to confront it.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech looking at her aims for the U.N. General Assembly, said the missile decision was a reaction to Iran, not Russia.

“We would never, never walk away from our allies,” she said.

Obama meets today with Susan Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, ahead of the General Assembly session.

And the religious right begins its annual Washington gathering — the Value Voters Summit — looking for ways to rally conservative Christians against Obama’s agenda, including healthcare reform.

http://www.reuters.com/news/politics

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama discusses missile defense Thursday); Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Gates discussing missile defense Thursday)

Back from South Bend, Indiana, President Obama meets today at 10:30 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The new/old Israeli leader wants to talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions — his government has not ruled out military action, while Obama wants to emphasize diplomacy.

Netanyahu hopes the emphasis on Iran will mean that Obama will have less of an opportunity to press him on other issues, like Palestinian statehood and expanded Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

If the meeting turns confrontational, it could mean a rocky start for the two leaders, and a more complicated chapter in U.S.-Israeli relations.

On Capitol Hill, the House Energy and Commerce Committee takes up sweeping climate-change legislation that would give polluting industries most of the emission permits they need.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner speaks at the National Press Club at 11:30, and U.S. Trade Representatvive Ron Kirk talks trade at the Chamber of Commerce at noon.

photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed (Obama takes part in the blessing of students during the commencement ceremonies at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, May 17)

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Nobel peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president but, after looking at President Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, he said: “I nearly felt it’s good to be an American.”

Speaking after lunch at the National Press Club in Washington, the 71-year-old winner of the 2008 prize was asked on Tuesday to assess the U.S. leader’s call for peace and dialogue with Islam.

“I must say that I’m proud as a transatlanticist and democrat to see that sort of speech is made,” he told reporters.

Ahtisaari, the president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for helping to bring peace to places as far-flung as Kosovo, Namibia and Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Interviewed by Arshad Mohammed of Reuters on Monday, he said Hamas must be allowed into talks on ending the conflict with Israel and it was both dangerous and pointless to exclude the Palestinian militant group.

He said Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which holds sway in the West Bank, “have to get their act together and form a united front” to end their power struggle.

Ahtisaari said it would be foolish to rule out peace talks under new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recalling it was Richard Nixon who as U.S. president in 1972 broke with a U.S. policy of isolating China by visiting Beijing.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Bjorn Sigurdson/Pool (Ahtisaari poses with certificate and medal after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December)

Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee didn’t attend the latest U.N. Security Council meeting on Iraq. But the moment the 3-hour session was over the Iranian delegation was circulating a strongly worded letter from Khazaee that had a very clear message for the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama: Stop talking like Bush.

He was responding to less than two dozen words on Iran in U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice’s speech to the council during a routine review of U.N. activities in Iraq. Rice said that U.S. policy "will seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism.”

Those words clearly infuriated the Iranians, who have been toning down their anti-U.S. rhetoric since Obama took over from George W. Bush five weeks ago.

"It is unfortunate that, yet again, we are hearing the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous administration," Khazaee said in a letter to the council's current president, Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu.

"Instead of raising allegations against others, the United States had better take concrete and meaningful steps in correcting its past wrong policies and practices vis-a-vis other nations, including the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Khazaee's remarks were among the most critical of the new U.S. administration by a senior Iranian official to date.

Is the Obama administration simply repeating the “same tired” language of the Bush administration? The accusations aren’t new, U.N. diplomats say, but the promises of a new approach could herald a radical shift in U.S. policy on Iran.

Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said repeatedly that Washington would use all tools, including direct talks, to deal with Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.

Iran has reacted cautiously, saying it’s open to fair talks while demanding fundamental changes in U.S. policy. Western envoys in New York say that not everyone in the Islamic Republic is happy about the outstretched hand of Obama and his promises of change.

Tehran had often criticized the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, which labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq. It’s harder to criticize Obama at the moment, diplomats say. That could be one of the reasons Khazaee seized the opportunity to attack Rice’s speech to the council.

“The hardliners in Tehran find it easier to have a U.S. administration that turns its back on them,” said a European diplomat. “It’s easier to deal with a ‘Great Satan’. It gives them someone to blame their troubles on.”

It’s nearly three decades since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took a group of U.S. diplomats and officials hostage.

Present-day Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, has repeatedly ruled out a suspension of the country’s uranium enrichment program, prompting the Security Council to impose three rounds of sanctions.

U.N. diplomats say that Obama administration officials have signaled that they do not believe the Iranian nuclear program can be stopped with U.S. or Israeli air strikes. Instead, Obama wants to use a combination of pressure – possibly by imposing further U.N. sanctions – and inducements to persuade the Iranians to halt their enrichment program. The details of the new approach are being worked out in a thorough review of the U.S. policy on Iran, U.S. officials say.

“Will a kindler, gentler U.S. approach work?” asked the European diplomat. “We’ll have to wait and see. Iran’s one of the countries that invented chess and it’s a very good player.”

Is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Jakarta a hint that President Barack Obama will pick Indonesia as the first Muslim country he visits in his drive to improve U.S. relations with the Islamic world? There were lots of other suggestions when he first mentioned this back in December, including Egypt (the New York Times pick) and Morocco (judging by what might have been a write-in campaign on our comments page).

My tip at the time was either Indonesia or Turkey. In recent weeks, Turkey's star has probably faded as its relations with Israel soured recently. Those strains came after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan angrily accused Israeli President Shimon Peres of "knowing very well how to kill" in Gaza during a debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos and then stormed off the stage.

(Photo: Hillary Clinton with Jakarta schoolgirls, 18 Feb 2009/Supri)

Clinton said all the right things today, like telling the country where Obama spent four years as a boy that it was proof that modernity and Islam can coexist. "As I travel around the world over the next years, I will be saying to people: if you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can co-exist, go to Indonesia," she said at a dinner with civil society activists. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda reciprocated by telling her Indonesia shared the United States' joy at Obama's election and she should tell the U.S. president "we cannot wait too long" for a visit.

Obama spent four years in Indonesia after his American mother, Ann Dunham, married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro following the end of her marriage to Obama's Kenyan father. He told President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during a phone call after his election that he'd like to visit Indonesia again. It would help forge  greater cooperation between the two nations and give him a chance to try local food again including meatball soup, nasi goreng and rambutan, a local newspaper reported him as saying.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) will meet in Singapore in November. It's just a short flight from there to Jakarta.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

DEERFIELD BEACH, Florida - Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden stood up for running mate Barack Obama on Tuesday, insisting that he is a friend of Israel.

Speaking at a largely Jewish senior citizen community center, Biden, known as a strong supporter of the Jewish state during his 35 years in the Senate, said Obama shares his longtime support of Israel as an important ally in the often volatile Middle East.

Biden said he would not have agreed to give up his job as chairman of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become Obama’s vice presidential nominee “if I didn’t in my gut and in my heart and in my head know that Barack Obama is exactly where I am on Israel.”

Biden said he offered his defense of Obama because there is “some scurrilous stuff going on on Internet, particularly in Florida,” which is considered a swing state in the Nov. 4 election.

Some blogs and emails have disseminated talk that Obama is secretly a Muslim — he is in fact Christian — as well as anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.

“I promise you the stuff you are getting on the Internet is simply not true,” said Biden, a Delaware Democrat.

Biden added Israel has become less secure during the eight years of outgoing Republican President George W. Bush’s reign.

“I promise you, we will make it more secure,” Biden said, drawing applause from a crowd of several hundred people.

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SDEROT, Israel - Barack Obama pledged his support for Israel Wednesday while standing in front of a pile of rocket and mortar casings in a town repeatedly attacked by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
 
“I am here to say as an American and as a friend of Israel that we stand with the people of Sderot and all of the people of Israel,” the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate told reporters at the town’s police station.
 
Sderot has been a popular stop on the U.S. campaign trail this year. Republican presidential contender John McCain visited the town in March — but with a smaller press contingent — and also spoke to reporters in front of the piles of rockets.
 
“If people were rocketing my state, I think that the citizens from my state would advocate a very vigorous response,” McCain said at the time.

Obama had a similar view. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he said. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

Since McCain’s visit, rocket fire on Sderot has largely stopped due to a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Obama’s visit is aimed at allaying wariness among some Jewish voters in the United States who are concerned about his support for Israel and his policies for the Middle East.
 
Obama, a Christian, has had difficulty dispelling rumors suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent. The New Yorker magazine lampooned the image with a cover cartoon portraying Obama in traditional Muslim garb and his wife sporting an AK-47 — a picture that sparked outrage in many circles.
 
Obama was ridiculed and criticized in April when a top Hamas adviser told a radio interviewer that the Palestinian militant group — considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government — liked Obama and hoped he would win the U.S. presidential election.
 
The remarks were labeled a Hamas endorsement and McCain used them as part of a fundraising appeal to supporters.
 
Hamas changed its mind about Obama last month after he declared strong support for Israel in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group said the two U.S. candidates had the same policy on the Mideast and so it had no preference.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama walks by shelves of rocket casings in Sderot on Wednesday); Reuters/POOL New (McCain stands in front of rocket casings in Sderot March 19)

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may have taken care of his Hamas problem on Wednesday with a speech to the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby.
 
The Illinois senator was ridiculed, criticized and generally harassed back in April when a top Hamas adviser, Ahmed Yousef, told a radio interviewer that the Palestinian militant group — considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government — liked Obama and hoped he would win the U.S. presidential election.

Yousef’s remarks were labeled a Hamas endorsement and Republican John McCain used them as part of a fundraising appeal to supporters. Obama’s denunciations of Hamas and criticism of McCain over the incident did little to undo the damage.
 
That may have changed Wednesday, when Obama went before American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington a day after clinching the Democratic nomination and declared his strong support for Israel.
 
Israel’s security is sacrosanct and it must retain a qualitative military advantage, Obama said. Any peace deal must include Palestinian recognition that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided capital, he said.
 
Hamas promply unendorsed Obama, a Christian who has had difficulty dispelling a rumor campaign suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent.
 
“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza.
 
“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.
 
“Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.

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 Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama speaks at AIPAC conference)