Sadly, this harrowing account, as told to American journalist Nicholas Kristof, is not unique.

In Darfur, where close to 400,000 people have been killed as part of a government-sponsored program of ethnic cleansing, the brutal rape of women and children has become a weapon of war.

Sexual violence is now an integral and devastating part of the conflict aimed at breaking the will of the local people, humiliating them so that they will abandon their lands and weakening tribal ethnic lines.

Every day women in Darfur face the prospect of being raped and beaten when they leave their homes to find food or search for firewood. They face this prospect even though the international community claims that it is protecting them.

Even if they survive this trauma, as I learnt when I visited the region last year, their prospects are bleak. Many of them have had their homes destroyed and their male relatives killed.

Their villages are burned to the ground, they are forced to walk for days, carrying their children through baking heat and dust storms, to insecure refugee camps. Here, instead of finding safety and comfort, they must build their own shelters, and they are still vulnerable to attack.

These are the physical aspects of the disaster. The psychological ones run much deeper. No one can estimate how often the women in Darfur are attacked and raped because their society shames the victims into silence.

Until a few weeks ago women who sought medical help after being raped were actually arrested by the Sudanese security forces. This silence leaves its marks on the society and on the women themselves.

Not only will many of the women be unable to marry, but they also face the stigma of violation.

When the international community finally found the will to complain to the regime in Khartoum, the arrests stopped, proving we can make a difference when we can be bothered to confront Sudan's dictators.

We haven't heard much about what is happening in Darfur recently. The killing and raping continues, but the Sudanese regime has changed tactics.

It no longer needs to use its air force to bomb its own people because it has achieved its racist aim: 90% of the black African villages have been destroyed.

Now the Sudanese are using their proxies, the Janjaweed militia, to rape women whenever they venture out for firewood.

Khartoum has rightly guessed that the international community is not going to take them to task over the daily suffering of hundreds of thousands of women who cannot bear to talk about their ordeal.

Is this our response? Is this what innocent women and children deserve?

The United Nations has repeatedly refused to send peacekeepers to Darfur. However, there are other steps we can take to protect the women there.

We could send groups of policewomen from African nations to accompany the firewood-gathering trips.

Civilian police would not represent the same challenge to the national sovereignty of Sudan that soldiers would.

By training, supporting and enabling female police officers from African countries we could build the capacity of their forces, thus achieving two worthwhile aims at once.

We could help provide fuel-efficient stoves so less firewood is needed.

We could vastly increase the currently tiny number of African Union monitors in Darfur, giving them enough personnel to deter the militia from attacking women.

We could provide rape counselling and a chance to break the taboo of silence.

We could increase medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, as recommended by Médecins Sans Frontièrs.

Unless steps are taken now, the long-term consequences could include a generation of women unable to have children due to infection or physical damage and thousands of raped women who are pregnant and will live with the stigma all their lives, unable to get married.

These common sense steps require political will. So far, this has been lacking when it comes to Darfur.

But we must keep the pressure on the United Nations, the European Commission and our own governments until they are shamed enough to act.

Kofi Annan has described Darfur as "little short of hell on Earth". It is time to end that hell, for Saida, and for the thousands like her.

· Glenys Kinnock is MEP for Wales and a member of the European parliament's development and cooperation committee.

Another issue to figure during talks is that of growing international pressure to report Iranian nuclear defiance to the UN Security Council.

Burns, who arrived in West Indian city Mumbai Wednesday, will hold talks with Saran in New Delhi on a wide range of bilateral issues, including the India-U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation deal ahead of President George W. Bush's visit here.

The two sides will hold the fourth meeting of the joint working group on civil nuclear cooperation and discuss further implementation of the initiatives agreed upon in their July 18 joint statement.

They will focus specifically on New Delhi's separation plan of its civilian and military nuclear facilities presented by Saran during his visit to Washington last month.

The two sides are likely to finalize dates for Bush's visit to India, which is expected in the first week of March.

Burns is likely to step up pressure on India to back a proposal by the European Union to report Iran to the UN Security Council.

At one point, Col Roberts, 51, allegedly shouted "f*** this country, f*** the King, f*** the Buddha". Gareth Rees QC, for the prosecution, said "This, I believe was directed to the King and country of Thailand."

Later, while being restrained, the officer is said to have screamed, " Do you know who I am? I am the head of the British government in Thailand and you are treating me like this!"

Isleworth Crown Court in London heard that Col Roberts, of Passfield, Hampshire, had drunk two or three bottles of wine - of the smaller size served in aircraft - three Black Label whiskies and "some port".

That was in addition to wine consumed earlier on a connecting flight from Bangkok to Abu Dhabi on 17 February last year.

Col Roberts is alleged to have threatened to kill a member of the crew, kicked a policeman and grabbed a "terrified" two-year-old boy and his mother. At one point he loudly declared that North Korea was "untrustworthy".

Kevin McGuire, who sat next to Col Roberts, said he elbowed Col Roberts in the face and put him in a headlock after he began to "rant and rave". He said: "I asked for more help and was given that. We got plastic restraints on his wrists and ankles."

Col Roberts denies being drunk on an aircraft.

The case continues.

Who Do the Americans Think They Are? Do they think, just because they are the sole superpower, that they have become the world's overlords and can violate anyone's sovereignty at will? Within days, they have outrageously trespassed on our territory twice with their fighter aircraft and with their inexcusably appalling strafing, have unpardonably killed our innocent children, women and men. Do they think we are their colony or some kind of a banana republic?

Let the American warlords in Afghanistan and their bosses back home in Washington know that we are no one's colony, but an independent nation that holds its sovereignty, freedom and honor dearly. And they must also know that it is not American lives alone that are precious in this world. The people of this country are not children of a lesser god. Their lives are just as priceless. And we hold our compatriots in the tribal areas, who are our flesh and blood, dearest to our hearts. Their brutal slaughter in the criminal strafing by trespassing American aircraft has shocked and outraged every one of us.

The Americans just have no business intruding on our territory. If they had information on some al-Qaeda fugitive hiding in the region, they should have passed it on to our security people - who would have acted on it. After all, some 70,000 of our brave soldiers are deployed there to cope with the aftermath of the cowardice attack by the American invaders of Afghanistan, and they are verifiably acquitting themselves well on this score.

One needs no military tutor to know that for an invasion to succeed, the invaders need to nab their adversary's senior command as quickly as possible. But the American invaders failed to do so. For fear of accumulating their own body bags, American military commanders don't put their soldiers on the ground to do the job, relying instead on aerial bombing to vanquish their enemies.

In the process, they not only let al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escape, but also their leadership, who then scattered in every direction. And this cowardice of the American invaders is costing us dearly. In flushing out the fugitives who had sneaked into this country's tribal areas, both our military and civilian population are paying a heavy price in precious lives. And while the American warlords and their forces in Afghanistan primarily complain and kill mostly civilians, real progress has been shown only by our military and people. Not only have our security people caught hundreds of fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, they have captured dozens of their leaders, including high-ranking ones, and handed them over to the Americans.

So if the American warlords in Afghanistan obtained information that some wanted figure was hiding in our territory, no matter how high that figure was, that intelligence should have been transmitted to our security apparatus for action. One can understand the desire of American commanders to present a big war trophy to their bosses back home, both to spruce up their own battered image after years of failure and to help their political leadership to reverse their own sagging domestic popularity. But in no event should they trifle with this country's sovereignty and territorial sanctity. Their intrusions are, by every definition, criminal, wicked, contemptible and absolutely unacceptable.

The [Pakistan] government should take a very serious notice of these intrusions. No one, whoever he may be, should be allowed to take us for granted. Our sovereignty is too precious a thing to be trifled with. And the lives of our people are too invaluable to become the instrument of any foreigner's agenda, or part of a plan to refurbish someone's tarnished image. Indeed, it is painful to the bone that instead of reacting sharply, our top officials have been rather hedgy on the occasions of both recent American intrusions on our territory.

A few days ago, American aircraft trespassed into North Waziristan and destroyed several dwellings in Sidgai Village, killing at least eight people, including women and children, our officials said that the attack would be investigated, although villagers clearly identified the attackers. The very fact that the government formally lodged a protest later with the American authorities confirms that our people were correct. And now again, while the villagers of Damdola in Bajaur Agency are crying that that attackers were American aircraft that mowed down at least 18 innocent people, including women and children, our leaders are hedgy again. They say they will investigate.

This is not acceptable.

When it comes to our sovereignty and our people's lives, the government must show itself to be acutely sensitive and assertive. Its response must be strong and prompt. The Pentagon in Washington and American military commanders are in denial of the Damdola attack, just as they were of the Sidgai assault. They were as untruthful then as they are now. The government must demand an apology and compensation from Washington for the aggrieved families. And it must tell the Americans in the clearest possible terms that in no event will their breach of our territorial sanctity and slaughter of our people be tolerated in future.

The USAid analysis talks of an "internecine conflict" involving religious, ethnic, criminal and tribal groups. "It is increasingly common for tribesmen to 'turn in' to the authorities enemies as insurgents -- this as a form of tribal revenge," the paper says, casting doubt on the efficacy of counter-insurgent sweeps by coalition and Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, foreign jihadist groups are growing in strength, the report said.

"External fighters and organisations such as al-Qaeda and the Iraqi offshoot led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are gaining in number and notoriety as significant actors," USAid's assessment said. "Recruitment into the ranks of these organisations takes place throughout the Sunni Muslim world, with most suicide bombers coming from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region."

The assessment conflicted sharply with recent Pentagon claims that Zarqawi's group was in "disarray".

The USAid document was attached to project documents for the Focused Stabilisation in Strategic Cities Initiative, a $1,3-billion project to curb violence in cities such as Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Najaf, through job creation and investment in local communities.

The paper, whose existence was first reported by The Washington Post, argues that insurgent attacks "significantly damage the country's infrastructure and cause a tide of adverse economic and social effects that ripple across Iraq".

"In the social breakdown that has accompanied the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime criminal elements within Iraqi society have had almost free rein," the document says. "In the absence of an effective police force capable of ensuring public safety, criminal elements flourish ... Baghdad is reportedly divided into zones controlled by organised criminal groups-clans."

The lawlessness has had an impact on basic freedoms, USAid argues, particularly in the south, where "social liberties have been curtailed dramatically by roving bands of self-appointed religious-moral police". USAid officials did not respond to calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA expert on Iraq now teaching at the National Defence University in Washington, said while the administration's pronouncements on security were rosy, the USAid version was pessimistic. "It's a very difficult environment, but if I read this right, they are saying there is violence everywhere and I don't think it's true," Yaphe said. She said USAid could have published the document to pressure the White House to increase its funding. The administration does not intend to request more reconstruction funds after the end of this year. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

The ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported Tuesday that prosecutors planned to charge the soldier with murdering Calipari and attempting to murder the agent driving the car as well as the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, who were both wounded during the incident. State TV news Tg1, and private SKY TG 24 television news also carried the report.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Franco Ionta, could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt.-Col. Barry Venable, said the Pentagon had not seen any charges actually filed and declined to comment.

An Italian government report in May blamed U.S. military authorities for failing to signal there was a military checkpoint ahead on the road. It also contended that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting.

The Americans insisted that the car was going fast enough to alarm the soldiers. The Italians have said the vehicle was travelling slowly.

Police and ballistic experts assigned by Rome prosecutors to examine the car have concluded it was travelling slower than the U.S. military claimed. They agreed with U.S. findings that only one soldier fired at the car.

The shooting angered Italians, already largely opposed to the war in Iraq, and led many to step up calls for withdrawing the Italian contingent. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who sent some 3,000 troops to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster, insisted the incident would not affect troop levels or Italy's friendship with Washington.

U.S. officials have said "very solid" intelligence indicated that senior al Qaeda members were expected to attend a dinner celebrating the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid and that Osama Bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could very well be among them.

Although these officials believe a number of "significant" al Qaeda figures were killed in the attack, there is no evidence so far that al-Zawahiri was among them. Pakistani officials have said he apparently was not there.

The knowledgeable source -- who declined to be identified more specifically -- on Tuesday was not clear how many foreigners were killed by the airstrike, but said, "certainly some of them were of Egyptian origin," and had direct ties with al-Zawahiri.

A Pakistani provincial official said Tuesday that "four or five" foreign fighters were killed in the strike.

Fahim Wazir, political agent for the semi-autonomous Bajour tribal agency, said that determination was based on information gathered by investigators, but he would not elaborate.

In addition to the militants, 18 local residents also were killed, setting off anti-American protests across Pakistan.

Wazir said two Muslim clerics had invited 10 to 12 foreign militants to the dinner.

U.S. sources have told CNN that the remains of about 12 bodies, including as many as eight foreigners, were quickly retrieved by a group of men after the airstrike, and taken elsewhere for burial.

Pakistani officials said among the 18 civilians killed in the attack were five children, five women and eight men.

But there have been conflicting accounts from Pakistani officials and witnesses over who, if anyone, reclaimed bodies from the scene of the missile strike.

Damadola residents claim all the victims were locals and they buried them all. One Pakistani official told The Associated Press on Saturday that the bodies had been taken away for DNA tests, although it was not clear by whom.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, called Pakistan a valued ally in the war on terror Tuesday and pledged to continue pursuing al Qaeda leaders amid concerns the airstrike has strained ties between the two countries and could provoke more anti-American sentiment, The Associated Press reports.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to discuss the attack on Tuesday but said "al Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."

"There are leaders that we continue to pursue and we will bring them to justice. The American people expect us to do so and that's what this president is committed to doing," he told reporters in Washington.

The attack has become an embarrassment for Islamabad, a staunch U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. Many in this nation of 150 million people oppose the government's backing of the United States in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Frustration has been growing over a recent series of suspected U.S. attacks along the porous and ill-defined frontier aimed at militants. Washington has 20,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, but Pakistan says it does not allow them to hunt down or attack militants across the border.

Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets over the weekend, chanting "Death to America" and calling for the resignation of military leader President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

The green Hamas flags were fluttering from the rooftops against a cold grey sky when they brought the body of the militant Thabet Ayyadeh home yesterday. As the mourners began making their way towards the cemetery they could hear repeated bursts of Israeli gunfire - directed into the air as a warning - to deter the teenagers throwing stones at the waiting police jeeps.

Mohammed Abu Tir, number two on Hamas's national list of parliamentary candidates, had arrived in good time to pay his condolences to the dead 24-year-old's tearful brother Ziad. As the January rain began to fall, they kissed three times before Ziad Ayyadeh, 36, declared: "It is a positive thing because people now will vote for Hamas."

The Israeli army said Thabet Ayyadeh, a leader of Hamas's military wing, was shot dead in the early hours of yesterday when he opened fire, slightly wounding a soldier, as he ran out of a house which the army had been surrounding in Tulkarem with the intention of arresting him.

His older brother reminded the Hamas leader that the dead man had not been the family's first "martyr". For in November 2001, another brother, Moayed, who at the age of 16 had met Mohammed Abu Tir in jail during the latter's 20 year imprisonment, had blown himself up injuring two Israeli commandos. "You were his teacher," he told the candidate respectfully. "You were responsible for forming his character."

Mr Abu Tir replied that he saw the two dead brothers as "sons" and added: "They did their duty. The blood of martyrs is precious to us." He was quick to add: "We have not come here to use the incident for the election. I participate in events like this without elections."

Nevertheless Mr Abu Tir's presence at this West Bank funeral was a reminder that for all Hamas's appeal to voters who were fed up with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and its reputation for inefficiency and corruption, its leading candidates, fighting under the banner of "Change and Reform", were making no effort to distance themselves from the faction's past record of armed militancy.

Two rival candidates also attending the funeral in Thabet Ayyadeh's impoverished home village of Hizma, encircled by the separation barrier and the settlements to the north-east of Jerusalem, made clear their fears that the killing would help Hamas when voters elected a new Palestinian Legislative Council for the first time in nearly a decade next Wednesday.

Hatem Abbas, a prominent local Fatah activist who is standing as an independent, said it would have an "indirect" impact on the election. "People will show solidarity with the martyrs and the organisation they belong to."

And Hassan Ispeh, a candidate for Mustafa Barghouti's Independent Palestine party, which is against the use of arms, said: "This will be negative for me. This man is from Hizma and the vote will be higher now for Hamas in Hizma and Tulkarem."

But with 50 per cent unemployment it may be other issues that finally decide how the people of Hizma vote. Hamdan Nimr, 52, who used to run a construction company which did work as far way as Tel Aviv but now has no work, said he would not vote at all. As long as Israel is here it's useless to vote. What can the PA do? Even the President needs a permit from Israel. We are in a prison here."

As he spoke at the side of the lane descending from the Ayyadeh family house, the young men brought down the body, draped with a green Hamas banner, chanting in unison: "We sacrifice our blood and soul for the martyr. There is no God but only one God and the martyr is the one blessed by God."

Watching the procession Mr Nimr added reflectively: "Most people here will vote for Hamas because the peace process has failed. If you don't have hope, you vote for Hamas."

Apart from the cultural insensitivity (according to a recent Zogby poll, Arabs overwhelmingly voted Sharon the most unpopular world leader) Friedman’s musings hardly seem like the remedy that most Israelis would appreciate.

After all, it’s doubtful that the Israeli public would welcome the idea of a fiery Arab nationalist rising up and occupying Tel Aviv for 20 years; leaving devastation and 40,000 dead in his wake, as Sharon did in Beirut. Nor is it likely that Sharon’s cross-border killing sprees and targeted assassinations would be enthusiastically received if they were directed at Israeli citizens rather than Palestinians. And, we can be reasonably certain that no Israeli would be willing to endure endless checkpoints, house-demolitions, imprisonment and torture for the sake of accommodating an Arab Sharon.

So, what the heck does Friedman mean?

Friedman is a master at twisting language and events to make the most outrageous statements seem like the acme of reasoned analysis.

Imagine, however, the squeals of outrage if some political pundit in Iran were to suggest that the path to peace in the Middle East requires the emergence of an Israeli Arafat?

Do you think that might raise a few eyebrows in Israel or the US?

The fact is, Sharon blocked peace at every juncture just like every other Israeli leader dating back to Prime Minister Rabin. Sharon had no intention of following the Road Map and was quite blunt in that regard. As his minister Dov Weinglass candidly admitted, the peace process has been dunked in “formaldehyde” and would only be extracted when some political advantage could be gained by its revival.

At least Sharon has been honest in his intransigence. How tiresome it has been to see the steady rotation of conservative and liberal Israeli politicians boast of their commitment to the peace process while continuing the annexation of Palestinian land and increasing the number of settlers on the West Bank.

The names have changed, but the policy never has.

Sharon has been completely straightforward in his plan to see an expanded “Greater Israel” stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

We can now discard the foolish notion that Arafat was the “obstacle to peace”; a moniker he bore until the day he died.

Just weeks after Arafat was buried and Mahmud Abbas took over, a poll showed that nearly 80% of the Israeli public wanted a negotiated settlement with the new PA leadership. Any negotiation, of course, would have derailed Sharon’s plan for expanding colonies and annexing more Palestinian land, so the will of the people was breezily ignored.

What greater proof do we need of Sharon’s determination to torpedo any effort for peace?

Friedman celebrates Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza as, “his finest and wisest hour”; a judgment that has been unanimously accepted by the western media. Others, however, remain deeply skeptical.

Gaza was a logistical and security nightmare for Israel. Even before the settlers were evacuated and the settlements had been destroyed, twice the amount of land that was returned in Gaza had been annexed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Needless to say, the details were obscured in the “unbiased” media coverage.

Although Friedman’s premature eulogy describes a Sharon that no one will recognize and who allegedly “reversed course” on “overbuilding settlements (that) imperiled Israel’s Jewish and democratic character”; the opposite is actually closer to the truth.

Sharon’s life was a straight line that never veered one millimeter off its original path. He may have been a friend to the power-hungry, hard-right advocates of “rule by force”, but he was the mortal enemy peace through negotiation. For Friedman to imply that an “Arab Sharon” would resolve this bitter multi-generational conflict shows his disregard for the facts as well as history.

What Friedman calls “the positive side of (Sharon’s) legacy” is a tidy bit of revisionism that borders on the absurd. If Friedman chooses to demonstrate his adulation of power and brutality, that’s his business, but Sharon never distanced himself from his murderous career. Friedman has no right to do it for him.

Part of Cheney's growing desperation stems from the fact that the recent plea agreement between U.S. Justice Department prosecutors and super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, threatens to bring down the entire political dirty-money empire of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), which has been Cheney's principal power base since coming in as Vice President and de facto head-of-state in January 2001. Cheney and DeLay were shown by a recent EIR exclusive story to be politically "joined at the hip" (see EIR, Dec. 30, 2005). The Vice President is so deeply implicated in the DeLay/Abramoff dirty-money machine that the legal defense funds of DeLay and Cheney's ex-chief of staff Lewis Libby are headed by the same two Republican lobbyists, Wayne Berman and former Congressman Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.).

But Israeli sources report, and Washington insiders confirm, that Netanyahu himself is so closely tied to Jack Abramoff that the fallout from Abramoff's plea may bring him down as well, as the international web of money-laundering fronts, tax-exempt charities, and no-bid contractors put together by Abramoff unravels under U.S. prosecutors' scrutiny.
West Bank Story

The first published clue about the Netanyahu/Abramoff links actually surfaced last year, when Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff revealed on May 2, 2005 that one of Abramoff's tax-exempt charities, Capital Athletic Foundation, had funnelled $140,000 to a West Bank settlement, to finance the purchasing of security equipment, including "camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager, and other material."

Funds for the Capital Athletic Foundation, ostensibly an Abramoff family charity dedicated to helping inner-city youth, came largely from Indian tribe clients of Abramoff.

The security gear was provided to the West Bank town of Beitar Illit, which Isikoff described as "a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled with their Palestinian neighbors."

Beitar Illit is the home of Schmuel Ben-Zvi, a rightwing American who moved to the West Bank, and who was a close high school pal of Abramoff in Hollywood. The $140,000 was paid to an Israeli group called Kollel Ohel Tiferet, which is not publicly registered in Israel.

While Ben-Zvi denied any links to the $140,000 West Bank payoff, an exchange of emails between him and Abramoff told a different story. On receiving the money, Ben-Zvi wrote to Abramoff: "I feel like the tank commanders in the Yom Kippur war, who when hearing over the radio that reinforcements were coming, felt so great that they raised their seats higher out of the tank hatch and went forward." To which Abramoff wrote back: "If only there were another dozen of you the dirty rats would be finished," referring to the Palestinian neighbors of Beitar Illit.

When questions arose over what Israeli entity to pass the money to, Ben-Zvi proposed to write a letter to the Capital Athletic Foundation, on the letterhead of his Snipers Workshop, which he described as "an educational entity of sorts."

Informed of the West Bank funding, Indian tribal lawyer Henry Buffalo told Newsweek, "This is almost like outer-limits bizarre. The tribe would never have given money for this."

FBI sources told Newsweek's Isikoff that the bulk of the $4 million listed as the Abramoff fund's tax-exempt gifts went to a now-defunct Maryland yeshiva where Abramoff's two sons went to school.
Wiring Congress

Another contributor to the Capital Athletic Foundation was an Israeli telecom startup company, Foxcom, which kicked in $50,000 to the Abramoff fund. Foxcom received a $3-million contract to install wireless antenna systems at the U.S. Congress, in a deal pushed through by Abramoff crony Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee. The Washington Post revealed on Oct. 18, 2005 that Foxcom had paid Abramoff $280,000 in lobbying fees around the time they got the Congressional contract. An American company, LGC Wireless, which had lost the bid to Foxcom, went to the FBI and charged that the bidding process had been rigged by Ney.

Newsweek reported on Aug. 22, 2005 that U.S. officials had rushed to indict and arrest Abramoff on Aug. 11, because they feared he would flee to Israel, as two of his business partners had already done.

And still to be unravelled are the Abramoff connections to the Russian oil company Naftasib, which laundered $1 million to another Abramoff "charity," the U.S. Family Network, through a London law firm, James and Sarch, in 1998. Two top Naftasib executives, Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky, spent "quality time" with Tom DeLay in Moscow, shortly before the laundered payoff to Abramoff. The Russian "oil company" lists the Russian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior as Naftasib's two main clients. Some of the military equipment delivered to the West Bank settlement of Ben-Zvi came from Russia, hinting at Russian Mafiya ties in the background of the Abramoff saga.

Senior Washington sources have cautioned that it would be a mistake to presume that the Abramoff money flow to Israel and Russia primarily went out of the United States. Abramoff's takeover of the gambling cruise ship line SunCruz gave him a perfect instrument for laundering millions of dollars a day through the offshore gambling tables.
Syria War Diversion

The Cheney push to install Netanyahu as Israel's next Prime Minister, replacing the now-incapacitated Ariel Sharon, is, according to Israeli sources, part of Cheney's desperate move to "change the subject" from his growing political problems in Washington.

Netanyahu is pledged, according to the Israeli sources, to a war with Syria, to divert attention, and to move ahead with the decade-old "Clean Break" scheme, drafted for Netanyahu in July 1996 by a group of American neo-con allies of Cheney. The "Clean Break" strategy paper was co-authored by Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, and others, and called for the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, followed by similar "regime changes" in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. David Wurmser, the single most vociferous advocate of "regime change" in Damascus, is now a senior Middle East policy aide to Cheney. He previously served under Doug Feith at the Pentagon, when Feith was Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the first Bush-Cheney Administration.

Cheney's war scheme against Syria also implicates Abramoff, according to a Jan. 11, 2006 story by Justin Raimondi, posted on antiwar.com. "One investigator, eager to obtain information about the neo-con-sponsored Reform Party of Syria, led by one Farid Ghadry, the Syrian version of Ahmed Chalabi" Raimondi wrote, "stumbled on the Abramoff connection: 'When repeated calls to [Ghadry's] organization went unanswered, I visited the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the RPS. Reform Party of Syria is in the office of super-Zionist lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Middle Gate Ventures, Abramoff's political advisory company, partners with RPS."

The US has come under pressure over allegations that the CIA ran secret jails for terror suspects abroad and flew some through European airports.

The committee's inquiry will run alongside the investigation by human rights watchdog the Council of Europe.

The 46 members of the new committee are set to be announced on Thursday.

Their mandate will include analysing:

* Whether the CIA has carried out abductions, "extraordinary rendition", detentions at secret sites, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners on EU territory or flown prisoners through, to or from member states

* Whether such actions violated human rights treaties

* Whether there have been detentions of citizens from EU states or candidate countries

* Whether EU member states or institutions have been involved in the illegal deprivation of the liberty of individuals.

If any evidence of involvement is found, the parliament could open sanctions proceedings that could lead to the loss of EU voting rights.

Human Rights Watch has said it has circumstantial evidence suggesting that the CIA transported suspects captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania - both of which have denied the claims.

Germany denied any role in the abduction of its national Khaled al-Masri, who says he was seized by US intelligence agents in 2003 and taken to Afghanistan, where he was held for five months and mistreated.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Washington would never condone torture, without categorically denying that some terror suspects were transported through or held in Europe.

The committee's first interim report is due in four months' time.

The publication comes as inquiries continue into “rendition flights” by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and an all party group of the House of Commons.

SNP Foreign Affairs and Defence spokesman, Angus Robertson MP, has sent the report to First Minister Jack McConnell urging the Scottish Executive to “use every avenue open to it through the criminal justice system to establish whether there has been the illegal transportation of people through Scottish airports and discourage it ever happening in the future”.

The report lists 10 firms which allegedly operate as CIA shell companies and details the plane types, registration numbers and dates which they landed at Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports. Among the planes was a Gulfstream jet (Registration number N379P/N8068V) nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express” and was reportedly used to transport suspects to the US prison on Cuba. That plane is listed in the report as having landed five times at Glasgow and Prestwick airports between 2002 and the end of 2004.

The report also lists details about a DC 9 airliner (Registration number N822US) which has been the subject of diplomatic inquiries by the Norwegian government and debate in the Canadian Parliament. The plane is listed in the report as having landed at both Glasgow and Prestwick airports in 2002 and 2003.

Speaking after the publication of the report Angus Robertson MP said:

“There is disquiet across Europe about this whole issue. This report gives worrying details about alleged rendition flights through Scotland. The planes in question have been subject to diplomatic and parliamentary inquiries in different countries. This report establishes that they did pass through Scottish airports.

“The Scottish Executive now has a responsibility to pursue this issue like other governments. Continuing with a “hear no evil, see no evil” policy is just not good enough. In Scotland we are rightly proud of our criminal justice system. Now it should act with our devolved administration standing up to be counted.”

The report has been forwarded to the committees of inquiry established by the Council of Europe, European Parliament and by Westminster MPs. SNP European spokesman Alyn Smith is one of the MEPs nominated to take part in the European Parliament inquiry when it begins later today (Wednesday):

Alyn Smith said:

“The European Parliament can find information on this issue that national Parliaments cannot, so the SNP enthusiastically backs the setting up of the Parliament's committee of Inquiry. I hope to be confirmed as a member of that Committee as it is important that Scotland is represented upon it.

“The SNP is working on these flights in the Scottish, London and European parliaments as it is crucial that we get to the bottom of this. If Scotland is being used as a staging post on illegal flights for dubious purposes then that makes us the bad guys.

“Equally, the Americans are our friends and our colleagues and if they have been playing it straight have nothing to fear from the maximum degree of transparency possible.”