"2006 will really be the test of whether the positive atmospherics of 2005 can actually be translated into concrete policies," Robin Niblett, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, told AFP.

He said the key issue that will determine whether the new entente is genuine is the current dispute with Iran over its nuclear program and Washington's willingness to work through the crisis with its European allies.

"I think Iran has been the success story for the US being pragmatic and treating Europe as a partner in transatlantic relations rather than playing the leadership role which it expects Europe to follow," Niblett said.

"However in 2006, we'll see whether that partnership can be sustained as we get into the actual implementation of policies to influence Iran."

Another dossier being touted as a success story is cooperation between the United States and France -- one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war -- on Syria's involvement in Lebanon.

Last week's visit to Washington by Germany's new chancellor Angela Merkel is also hailed as a positive step in reviving transatlantic ties.

"The long and short of it is that when Bush was reelected he realized he had alienated our friends in Europe and that many of the costs of engaging abroad were just too large for the US to carry alone," said Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

But despite all the public posturing about the renewed friendship, experts say the Bush administration's new style and tone is not likely to roll back the clocks.

"The trust Europeans, and the rest of the world in general, had placed in America's foreign policy is gone," Daalder said. "And it is the lack of trust that now marks relations between the US and Europe."

Daniel Hamilton, head of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, said even eastern European countries that traditionally backed the US were becoming more skeptical of Washington's justifications for its war on terror.

"There is still a question across Europe of 'do you sacrifice your values for tactical advantages ... or do you understand there are some basic principles you have to uphold even though you may be less effective?'" he said.

The divide on such issues as torture and the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay was highlighted during Rice's recent visit to Europe, when she had to field a storm of public outrage over reports that the CIA was operating secret prisons on the continent for terror suspects.

"When a secretary of state has to spend a week in Europe convincing the publics and the governments that the United States does not torture, you know that the relationship is kind of different than when a president was able to go to Berlin and say 'Ich bin ein Berliner'," Daalder said.

He was referring to the late president John F. Kennedy's visit to west Berlin in 1963 during which he proclaimed in German "I am a Berliner."

Martino told a parliamentary committee Italy will "gradually end" its military presence and phase into a new type of presence he said would be "substantially civilian in nature".

Italy, which has the fourth largest foreign contingent in Iraq, faces a general election next April where the unpopular Iraq war is likely to become an issue. Most Italians and all opposition parties were opposed to the troop deployment.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has already said that all the troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2006 in co-ordination with the Iraqi government.

The United States, which currently has about 140 000 soldiers in Iraq, has reduced its presence there by about 20 000 troops since the Iraqi parliamentary elections on December 15.

The US military has announced plans to cut its contingent by several thousand more troops in the coming weeks. Other countries are also scaling back their presence.

The Agriculture Ministry said on Friday the ban would remain until it receives more information from the United States. A U.S. embassy official in Tokyo said the U.S. regretted the incident and would investigate it.

Japan had initially stopped all purchases of beef from the United States after a case of the brain-wasting mad cow disease in December 2003, halting annual trade worth about $1.4 billion. The ban lasted two years and became an irritant in otherwise close and friendly U.S.-Japan relations.

The latest incident, which also comes as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick is due to visit Japan on Sunday and Monday, could alarm Japanese consumers as well as raise questions about Tokyo's decision to lift the ban.

"It is regrettable that the United States has failed abide by the agreement," a farm ministry official told a briefing, referring to a deal in October 2004 between Japan and the U.S. on the resumption of beef imports.

"Any decision (to resume imports) would be after we receive information from the U.S. government," the official said.

A total of 390 kg (860 lb) of beef imported from a meatpacker in New York was found to contain parts of a spinal cord when it was inspected on arrival at Narita International Airport near Tokyo, a Farm Ministry official said earlier.

Experts believe humans can contract a fatal variant of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), by eating contaminated meat.

Japan only imports U.S. beef from cattle aged 20 months or younger. It requires all animal material linked to mad cow, including the spinal cord, to be totally removed.

Washington acted quickly to try to ease concern in what was the United States' top overseas beef market prior to the ban.

The United States is expected to conduct a full investigation into the shipment, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said in a statement.

"We deeply regret the incident occurred. We expect that there will be a full investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and we look forward to the results of that investigation," said the statement, read by an embassy spokesman.

The United States will also work closely with Japanese authorities to ensure that there is no repeat of this mistake, the statement said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said earlier on Friday that Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa wanted the United States to act firmly.

"He also recommended, because preserving food safety and security for the people is extremely important, calling on the United States to make a strong response," Koizumi told reporters.

Small quantities of beef from the United States have started to enter Japan, but consumers remain worried that safeguards there are not up to Japanese standards.

With India not being a member of Nuclear Suppliers Group, Burns hinted that India would have to prepare a comprehensive plan on the separation of its reactors. He hoped that a detailed plan would be ready before U.S. President Grorge Bush's visit to India in March.

India's position is unique, Burns said, adding that a substantiative and detailed agreement would have to be reached in this regard.

Burns said, "We have learnt a lot from India on India's perspective and will continue talks towards an agreement."

He said the "U.S. had a great friend in India" and hoped that the two nations would be able to achieve the civil nuclear energy cooperation. "India is a global partner of the U.S.," Burns said.

Meanwhile, the two leaders also said they had also held thorough discussions on referring Iran to Security Council.

Shyam Saran said India was committed to finding an amicable solution to the Iran issue.

"We have close, civilized relations with Iran. We would not like to see any confrontation. International consensus needs to beevolved on the issue," Saran said.

The Shiite and the Kurdish blocs, who expected to garner the absolute majority in order to form the government, have garnered 181 seats which entails three seats to obtain the two third of the 275 seats necessary to form a government.

Sunni Arabs were under-represented in the interim parliament after a majority of them boycotted the January elections in 2005.

Kurds saw their seat total reduced. An alliance of the two major Kurdish parties won 53 seats, down from the 75 they took in the 2005 vote.

A rival Kurdish ticket, the Kurdish Islamic Group, won five seats, a gain of three from the outgoing parliament.

A ticket headed by secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister, won 25 seats, down from 40 in the outgoing assembly. Allawi, who was supported by the United States, earned a reputation for toughness in dealing with insurgents, but his term was marred by allegations of corruption.

Politicians have four days to contest the results, which were largely in line with preliminary returns following the balloting. Officials then will have 10 days to study any complaints before they certify the results and parliament convenes to appoint a new government.

U.S. officials hope that a greater Sunni voice in the new parliament and government will help defuse the insurgency so American and other international troops can begin withdrawing.

The results were announced a day after an international review group said the Dec. 15 election was flawed but generally fair considering the country's security crisis. Sunni politicians had demanded the review after raising allegations of fraud. Al-Mutlaq had called for a new election.

The decision to have the election reviewed by outside experts was an attempt to mollify Sunni complaints and encourage them to join the political process.

Sunni Arabs dominated political life in Iraq for generations but are believed to comprise about 20 per cent of the country's estimated 27 million people. Shiites form about 60 per cent and Kurds 15 to 20 per cent.

The strike apparently missed al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri. And an audiotape aired Thursday, the first public communication from Osama bin Laden in over a year, suggests the network's figureheads are alive.

But the possible demise of four top lieutenants reported by Pakistani officials would rob al-Qaida of people holding the reins to daily operations.

"It's a very significant blow to al-Qaida," said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "These are very experienced leaders and to replace them in the short term will be very difficult."

The Jan. 13 attack on an Islamic holiday gathering in Damadola killed 13 villagers in the Pakistani hamlet near the Afghan border, and possibly four or five foreign militants whose bodies were reportedly spirited away by sympathizers.

None of the militants' bodies has been traced, but Pakistani officials say they likely included Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, an al-Qaida explosives expert with a $5 million US bounty on his head.

He allegedly tested chemical weapons on dogs and trained hundreds of fighters at a terror camp in Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. Terrorism experts believe that among his students were the suicide bombers who killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole in 2000.

Another likely victim is Abdul Rehman al-Maghribi, a Moroccan believed to be al-Zawahri's son-in-law, who acted as a PR man for the group, distributing CDs and videos to publicize its exploits and attract new followers.

But the biggest quarry could be Khalid Habib, al-Qaida's operations chief along the Afghan-Pakistan border - from where militants can launch attacks on U.S. forces and Afghan government targets. Pakistani officials also accuse him of planning two assassination attempts on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

"You can say he's the No. 3 leader," Gunaratna said. "As the chief operations officer, he decides who gets hit and when."

Violence in Afghanistan's south and east spiked last year, killing about 1,600 people, including a surge of at least 20 suicide attacks in less than four months - a change of tactics by the militants, who may be mimicking comrades in Iraq.

Afghanistan's Defence Ministry spokesman, Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi, said it was too early to tell what effect the missile strike would have on the insurgency in Afghanistan.

But Assadullah Wafa, governor of Afghanistan's Kunar region bordering the area around Damadola, said the attack would seriously damage morale.

"I can't imagine there will be any retaliatory strikes," he said. "They will regroup and then keep a low profile to make sure they're not hit again."

Based in Wafa's home province is another suspected casualty of the attack, Abu Obaidah al-Masri. He is believed to be in charge of planning attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces in the area, which Pakistan says are forbidden from crossing the border in pursuit of militants.

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general, said the loss of four top operatives would keep al-Qaida on the defensive in Afghanistan and away from the planning board.

"They have fewer and fewer hiding places," Masood said. "People should be more hesitant to give them sanctuary."

But the attack has strained Washington's ties with Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terror. Pakistan has caught over 700 al-Qaida suspects in the past four years, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Thousands of Pakistanis have taken to the streets to protest the attack, including more than 1,000 in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday. They denounced the United States and called for the resignation of Musharraf, accusing him of being an American puppet. More rallies were planned Friday.

"Pakistan should not fight against al-Qaida because this is America's war," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of an anti-U.S. religious alliance.

But that anger may cool with confirmation that al-Qaida leaders actually were at the blast site and not just villagers.

"It shows that U.S. intelligence might not have been so bad after all," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum think-tank. "But I don't think we can fool ourselves into thinking this is a death blow. Al-Qaida's a snake with many heads."

The war on terror has forced al-Qaida to decentralize, experts say. Isolated on the remote Afghan-Pakistan border, bin Laden and al-Zawahri remain powerful symbols for followers but are probably unable to direct operations around the world.

Masood predicted the U.S.-led coalition would step up military actions in the region to keep the pressure on al-Qaida, regardless of public opposition in Pakistan.

"They will not be deterred by negative fallout," he said. "They think it's just collateral damage."

The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.

Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.

It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice.

"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail", Mr Siddiq writes, "and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations."

The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.

The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."

The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.

The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. "Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?", it asks, and gives the response: "Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries". It asks: "How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?" The reply given is: "Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities".

Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs' questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.

On December 7 - the date of the leaked document - Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to."

On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: "It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don't know anything about it." He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.

In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the memo. "The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns," she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty's behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice's statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. "I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government's position," he said. "Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition."

Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: "All the experts who have looked at Rice's assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes". He said his committee would pursue the issue.

The document, drawn up by a member of Jack Straw's private office and leaked to the New Statesman magazine, was described by No 10 yesterday as a memo to help the foreign secretary prepare a statement to MPs. It describes rendition as illegal in most circumstances, and says the government does not know how many times the US has asked to use British airports for rendition flights.

The shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, wrote to Mr Straw asking whether the US had ever approached Britain after September 11 2001 to discuss the use of UK territory for rendition flights. "Is it possible that British territory or airspace could have been used for the purposes of extraordinary rendition without the knowledge or informed consent of the UK government?" Sir Menzies Campbell, acting Lib Dem leader, wrote to Tony Blair demanding an explanation why he told MPs last month that he did "entirely accept" American assurances that rendition complied with international law.

John Reid, the defence secretary, was asked by his Conservative shadow, Liam Fox, to explain the rules covering the handover to Afghan authorities of suspects seized by British troops. The Foreign Office document says there is no way of knowing whether suspects captured by British forces have been sent to secret interrogation centres by the US.

Andrew Tyrie, Conservative chairman of the all-party group on rendition, said it was a scandal that the government was not in a position to ensure the UK had complied with its legal obligation to investigate allegations of torture.

A report drawn up this week for the Scottish National party lists 10 firms which allegedly operate work for the CIA and their aircraft which have landed at Prestwick, Glasgow, and Edinburgh airports. The SNP's foreign affairs spokesman, Angus Robertson, was among MPs yesterday who raised the issue with Geoff Hoon, leader of the Commons.

Mr Hoon replied: "It has been the practice of governments over time, and I am not going to change that practice, not to comment on these issues."

A report, Changing States, published yesterday by the Institute of Public Policy Research, which has close links to Downing Street, says the US policy of rendition is "simply indefensible".

"We were told lies and misinformation about the circumstances surrounding his death," she said.

"We have always been told the IPCC investigation would be the process to tell us what happened [but] we discover we don't even get to see a copy."

The spokeswoman said she was convinced that those responsible for the shooting should be prosecuted. "Real justice can only be found in a court of law," she told a press conference in central London.

The IPCC report was delivered to the CPS offices on Ludgate Hill, central London, in two boxes by John Cummins, the senior investigator in the case.

Its delivery marked the culmination of the six-month inquiry into the shooting.

Copies of the report will be sent to Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the south London coroner. The coroner can send it to the home secretary at his discretion.

Mr de Menezes' family will be briefed on the report's contents by the IPCC.

The IPCC has consistently refused to detail the nature of the alleged offences the CPS will potentially have to consider, although it is believed they could be as serious as murder or manslaughter.

It has also refused to confirm how many officers were interviewed by its investigators, although reports have said it was around 10.

Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head the day after the alleged attempted July 21 suicide bomb attacks on London's transport system.

It is believed he was mistaken for a suspect who had been put under surveillance by anti-terror officers.

The CPS is likely to take several months to reach a decision on whether to charge any of the officers involved in the operation that led to the death.

Mr de Menezes was killed at Stockwell tube station, south London, on July 22 2005 by police using a then secret shoot-to-kill policy called Operation Kratos, the day after failed terrorist attacks on London's transport network.

Mr de Menezes was mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot eight times from close range while being held down by police.

Ten police officers were questioned under criminal caution but it is still unclear whether soldiers involved in the surveillance part of the operation were questioned by the IPCC, whose legal powers cover only the police.

The police officers included in the referral to the CPS included Commander Cressida Dick, the senior officer in charge of deciding whether the threat was so great the shoot-to-kill tactics were needed. Also questioned under caution were the two officers who fired the fatal shots.

Mr de Menezes was followed from a flat which police believed was being used by a suspect, then tailed as he got on a bus and walked in the street, before being shot inside a tube carriage.

A number of policing errors are believed to have been identified, including flawed assessment of intelligence and poor communications.

Because of the "grave and exceptional circumstances" of the case, the report has also been sent to the home secretary.

A copy was also sent to the Metropolitan police which has set up a special group to consider the fallout from the shooting, aware of the potential for continuing damage to the force's reputation.

The IPCC faces criticism whichever way its report goes. Police and their supporters will claim it is unfair to second guess officers who had to make split-second decisions in a high pressure situation, when their lives were also potentially at risk.

The victim's family believe he was murdered by a reckless police force and want officers tried and convicted.

Under the Police Reform Act 2002, the IPCC sends its findings to the CPS when "the report indicates that a criminal offence may have been committed by the person whose conduct was the subject-matter of the investigation".

It is a low threshold and the CPS will prosecute if it believes there is a greater than 50% chance of conviction and that the public interest would not be harmed by trying officers who were involved in a national security operation. Contrary to some reports the IPCC does not ascribe any blame to the Met's commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

But his role after the shooting is being examined in a second IPCC investigation into statements he made after the shooting.

One senior source with close knowledge of the Met told the Guardian that "Stockwell 2", as the inquiry into Sir Ian is known, could be more dangerous to the image of the force than the de Menezes inquiry.

The source said the force was standing by its officers: "As an organisation the Met is short on loyalty, but there is no move to scapegoat anyone. The shooting was a complete and utter fuck-up, but it has to be put into context as to what was being faced on that day."

The family of Mr de Menezes condemned the decision to give the police and other bodies a copy of the report, but to deny them even a look.

Mr de Menezes's cousin, Patricia da Silva Armani, said: "We remain in the dark ... This investigation was a test for the IPCC about its own credibility with victims, we can only say it has failed in that respect.

"Everything we have learnt over the last months has strengthened our conviction that those responsible for the killing of Jean should be prosecuted. Real justice can only be found in a court of law."

Charles Clarke, the home secretary, said he hoped to make the report public after proceedings were complete, which could be years away.

Scotland Yard would not comment.

The four missiles, each carrying enough explosives to take out an armored vehicle, slammed into three local jewelers' houses at 950 miles per hour, nearly twice the speed of a passenger jet at cruising altitude. "The houses have been razed," reported a neighbor, a member of the Pakistani parliament. "There is nothing left. Pieces of the missiles are scattered all around. Everything has been blackened in a 100-yard radius." The target of this latest assassination attempt via missile strike, Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, wasn't there. At least 22 innocent civilians, including five women and five children, were killed. "They acted on wrong information," a Pakistani intelligence official said of the Americans.

The political fallout is devastating. The Pashtun tribesmen of FATA, still enraged at the militarization of an autonomous region that regular Pakistani army troops first invaded in 2004, are threatening a general uprising. As tens of thousands of people chanted "death to America" at protest marches across Pakistan, the regime of U.S. puppet dictator General Pervez Musharraf--weakened by the West's failure to provide earthquake aid in Kashmir--was pushed to the brink of collapse. After Musharraf: the first civil war in a nuclear power.

This was only the latest botched U.S. attack. Eight days earlier, another attempt to kill al-Zawahiri failed when a missile blew up a house in the Saidgi area, also in the FATA, based on another incorrect report. Eight innocent civilians died.

If insanity is repeating an action in expectation of different results, the assassination-by-joystick squad at Langley is clearly nuts. How many must die before they notice that precision airstrikes are anything but?

In the wake of 9/11 the Pentagon went gaga over unmanned aerial vehicles. "These systems...park over the bad guys, watch them continually, never give them a break," said Dyke Weatherington, UAV chief in Donald Rumsfeld's office, in 2002. "The other aspect is that we're doing that without putting service members at risk." But history belies Rumsfeld's assurance that the Predator-Hellfire program has a "darned good record."

On February 4, 2002 a Predator fired a Hellfire missile at three men, including one nicknamed "Tall Man" who was mistaken by CIA operators for the 6'5" Osama bin Laden, near Zhawar Kili in Afghanistan's Paktia province. "The people who have the responsibility for making those judgments made the judgments that, in fact, they were Al Qaeda," said Rumsfeld. They were not. The victims were desperately poor civilians gathering scrap metal from exploded missiles to sell for food. The U.S. has not apologized.

On May 6, 2002 a Predator fired a missile at a convoy of cars in Kunar province in an attempt to assassinate Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hektmatyar because he opposes puppet ruler Hamid Karzai. Hekmatyar wasn't there. At least ten civilians were blown to bits. Hektmatyar, understandably perturbed, has since declared himself and his militia our mortal enemies. No apology there either.

And now the massacre in Pakistan.

Mishaps are unavoidable due to the Predator's design limitations. Image resolution is too fuzzy to make out much of anything at 10,000 feet up. Fly the drone lower than that and it becomes vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. Assassinations by unmanned aircraft seem doomed to failure--out of thousands of sorties, the Defense Department can only point to a single success, the alleged Hellfire killing of Al Qaeda's supposed "number five guy" in Pakistan last year. But it's not just drone planes. Attempted assassination bombings attempted by flesh-and-blood pilots haven't fared better.

Ronald Reagan ordered an airstrike on Libyan leader Moammar Khadafi's home in Tripoli. Khadafi survived, but his baby daughter and 37 others were killed. In 1998 Bill Clinton ordered Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at Osama bin Laden's training camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Bin Laden wasn't there, but dozens of others died; the Sudanese facility turned out to be an innocuous aspirin factory. At the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq George W. Bush ordered 40 cruise missiles fired at a Baghdad restaurant where Saddam Hussein was reported to be eating dinner. He wasn't. No Baathist officials died. Fourteen members of two Christian families, mostly women and children, did.

Incompetence and poor intelligence are not exclusive to us. Though brutal, the 9/11 attacks fell far short of their planners' immediate goals. Tens of thousands would have died at the World Trade Center had the hijackers known that New Yorkers start work at nine. And even if one of the two Washington-bound planes had struck the White House, Bush was in Florida at the time.

Targeted killing by aerial bombardment, whether it's carried out by pilots, hijackers or computer-guided drones, is an inherently flawed concept--too easy to contemplate, too hard to carry out, and too ham-fisted to execute without also killing civilians. Intelligence is faulty, guidance systems fail, imagery is fuzzy. When the target of an assassination is present, small bombs can't ensure success and big bombs invariably result in "collateral damage." Technology hasn't changed everything. You can't know what's going on on the ground from the air.

Civilized nations should band together to renounce and outlaw these sloppy and obscene aerial assassination attempts, which send the terrifying message that killing civilians is acceptable in the pursuit of justice. But if the international community can't go that far, they can at least ban the use of unmanned vehicles like the Predator. Murder by mistake is bad enough when a human being can be held accountable.

Late last year, the US state department announced its next generation passports would contain a thin metal sheet, a little like a layer of tinfoil. To privacy advocates and lobbyists in the US, the seemingly innocuous move was an official acknowledgement of their worst fears.

A few months previously the state department had announced that its new passports would be among the most advanced in the world: not only would they be biometric (holding a digitised record of their holders' fingerprints) but able to transmit that information using radio frequency identification, also known by the initials RFID.

The technology works in a relatively straightforward manner. A sleeping chip, an inch square and as thin as a piece of paper, is fitted to the passport. When it is passed over a reader, the chip's onboard antenna powers up and sends back its identifying information. The same process works the Oyster smart card for public transport users in London and, when the prices come down, the chips are likely to replace bar codes in supermarkets and their supply chains. With the exception of some religiously-driven campaigners who compare it to the biblical mark of the beast, the technology is generally considered to have a good future.

The advantages for border control and governments of RFID-enabled passports is that a record of the passport holder can be read in seconds and they are much harder to forge than the existing passports. The disadvantage - pointed out by the privacy advocates and lobbyists - is that the technology means that sensitive information on an unprotected RFID chip could be stolen by anyone with a reader. Hence the introduction of the protective radio shield.

Like "the environment" two decades ago, "privacy" is one of those wonkish, slightly abstract, concepts that hovers around the edges of public consciousness in the developed world. British high street and supermarket sales of paper shredders overtook toasters for the first time in May 2005 as concerns grew over identity theft and credit card fraud. Tesco claimed to be selling 10,000 a month; newspapers called them "the new toasters". But most people give less thought to the idea that even if they destroy their bank statements, their personal data continues to be stored electronically.

As for the RFID passports, activists at the 2005 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Seattle - a gathering of the technology-literate and privacy-minded - set up an experiment to show the chips posed both real and conceivable dangers. A souped-up RFID reader was put together that could read a chip at a metre, rather more than the state department's claimed couple of centimetres. Since technological advances never go backwards, this could be extended by a factor of 10 or, to use the journalist's favourite unit of measurement, the length of a double decker bus.

It then does not require a great leap of the imagination for anyone who, say, wanted to blow up Americans to combine an extended reader with explosives to set up a booby trap for US passport holders. The addition of the metal radio shield means the data can be read (and the bomb activated) only if the passport is opened. If it is closed there can be no remote reading or detection of Americans. As travellers tend only to open their passports at passport control in highly supervised areas of airports where any suspect package would be likely to be spotted and removed, this means it is one-nil to the privacy campaigners and, they would argue, US passport holders too.

'Sleepwalking into a surveillance society'

Privacy is hard to put a value on. Allowing others to know a little about you can be a liberating thing - you can buy goods using credit cards, hire a DVD or travel to a foreign country, where the immigration officials at your destination can trust that you are who you say because you have a passport. In fact, we allow others to know a little bit about us several times in day: each time we make a phone call, pay with plastic, send an email or interact with a database (which you can do by calling your bank) a piece of data is collected.

It is big business. Personal information oils much of the financial services sector and the fast-growing information businesses use industrial-era sounding words such as "data mining" and "data warehousing" to describe their activities. The scope of the information held by public and private bodies (plus the monitoring technology necessary for future initiatives such as road pricing) is leading some to suggest that a surveillance society - albeit a largely consensual one - is taking root.

The information commissioner - the government appointee who sits at the top of the UK data industry regulatory framework - is not a man who radiates excitement. He is usually photographed dressed in grey, and his neatly sideparted hair gives him the aura of a man who places great emphasis on precision. So when in 2004 he told the Times of his anxiety that Briton would "sleepwalk into a surveillance society" it was unlikely that Richard Thomas had been caught out by a wily interviewer or was not speaking his mind.

Mr Thomas, a solicitor by training, said the United Kingdom risked becoming a country where "more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shared across many more boundaries than British society would feel comfortable with".

The view is widely shared among those who are concerned with the human implications of data retention and processing. Dr Susanne Lace, senior policy officer for the the National Consumer Council, argues we are becoming "glass consumers" (the title of a book she has edited on the subject) as what is known about each person renders them almost transparent.

'No one is in control'

She doubts how much the public knows about the collection and processing of its data. "You often hear assumptions that people are quick to give away information, but they don't necessarily know what they are giving away or who it is going to be used by," she says.

The growth in electronic databases that is prompting such concerns is driven by two factors. The first is the advance in technology and computer storage, which gets bigger and cheaper each year. The second is the interest among governments and private enterprises in making use of it.

The soon to be tinfoil-enabled US passports are an obvious instance of the two coming together, but such clear-cut examples are rare. One of the greatest challenges to those in the field is working out how many databases there are and how they relate to each other.

Stewart Room is an information lawyer, law lecturer and the chair of National Association of Data Protection Officers (Nadpo), a professional body spanning the public and private sectors. He admitted at his organisation's annual conference in November that this was something not even he knew.

"It is shrouded in ambiguity," he said. "I'm regarded as an expert in this field and I can't tell you how many databases exist, what firewalls are in place and what checks and balances. I've looked everywhere to find the rules and I can't find them. They are not there. We are doing all of this but no one is in control. Information leeches out."

The big database growth in the next few years will be in the public sector as tax-funded bodies deliver on what Tony Blair identified in a 2002 Downing Street report as a "great potential to make better use of personal information to deliver benefits to individuals and to society".

The rush to legislate for the collection and processing of personal information was, however, already on. Acts including the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 allowed for the interception and disclosure of communications data. The 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, passed in the months after 9/11, permitted its retention.

The government then became interested in collecting its own data. A year after the Downing Street report, the government responded to the neglect, abuse and murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié with a proposal for a national children's database - the first project of its kind on this scale.

The idea was to link together evidence of abuse collected by the various agencies that deal with a child, so Victoria's all too avoidable fate would not be repeated. Victoria had 128 injuries on her body when she died, some from cigarette burns, some from a bicycle chain, but the four London boroughs, two police forces, two hospitals and one specialist children's unit who had seen her in the previous 12 months never knew of each other's suspicions that she was at risk.

Caring and sharing

Whether a database was the correct response to child abuse or not, it demonstrated how policy makers were increasingly seeing data collection and processing as the answer to a variety of questions. Following the July 7 2005 suicide attacks on the London transport network, the home secretary, Charles Clarke, pressed for - and got - EU-wide retention of telecommunications data. Work starts soon on a police network that will make Britain the first country in the world to monitor and store for at least two years the movements of all vehicles on the roads. Since April last year, police have had the power to take DNA from anyone arrested on suspicion of a recordable offence, one of the reasons why police now hold the genetic profile of 37% of black men in the UK.

The biggest project of all - and by far the highest profile - are the proposals for a national identity database to operate in tandem with a national identity card, provided the government can find a way around the House of Lords' threat this week to block the bill until the scheme's estimated costs are vetted by the National Audit Office.

A single entry will include a name, all associated addresses, biometric identifiers (a full set of fingerprints, iris scans and a photograph) and an audit log of each time it is accessed and by whom. The security services, the Inland Revenue, GPs' surgeries, benefit offices and police stations are among those who will have access. The plans would see the routine exchange and sharing of personal information become the backbone of the administration of the public services. The scheme is put forward as the answer to a variety of questions, including what to do about benefit fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism.

It is an answer that has attracted its fair share of criticism. NO2ID, a non-partisan group that campaigns against the introduction of ID cards, includes civil libertarians who believe an identity card marks a fundamental - and unwanted - change in the relationship between the citizen and the state and those who believe such a large single database will be fundamentally insecure since the incentives to hack into it are enormous.

Mr Room concedes that the ever-growing mountain of information that is known (or knowable) about each one of us does not necessarily mean we are moving towards the oppressive state control that some activists forecast, but he does worry about the world such a loss of privacy could create. "It doesn't always lead on to totalitarianism, but what if Adolf Hitler had sprung up with the technology we have now?" he asks.

His concern is that the present legislation is built on 35-year-old thinking, from the days when data collection and processing were carried out only by governments (for example through censuses), not private companies. He fears the existing law does not give the information commissioner enough weight to punish those who flout it. There are no equivalent powers to those of the US federal trade commission, which last year ordered an audit costing millions on a discount shopping outfit, the BJ Wholesale Club, that had kept its customers' credit card details for longer than it needed and failed to encrypt them, among other errors.

Over the course of an interview at the Nadpo conference, Mr Room lists some of the day-to-day areas of concern he encounters in his professional life. The high street retailers who ask for postcodes from credit card customers purely for the purposes of building up marketing databases; the debt recovery firms who buy the rights to defaulting customers from loan companies and then obtain their new addresses from the local offices of government agencies through deception; the lack of decent regulatory standards for the formal transfer of data between public and private sector databases.

He is a lawyer rather than a campaigner but believes data collection - or capture - is as much a certainty of modern life as death and taxes were to Benjamin Franklin. His belief is that the law badly needs to catch up with technology.

"We're not talking about sleepwalking into a surveillance society anymore," he says. "The surveillance society has arrived. And the laws in place are not sufficient to protect us against the state and against the private sector, and against all those who will want to use our personal information."

Peers voted then to hold up the scheme until ministers provide precise details of how much ID cards will cost.

The terrorism bill's provisions led to a major rebellion by Labour backbenchers - and the government's first defeat by MPs - when the bill went through the Commons.

Moving the amendment tonight Lord Lloyd said the proposed offence had attracted ridicule and it was apparent that it would be "unworkable in practice". But Home Office minister Baroness Scotland of Asthal said the government's position had not changed.

"We do not believe it is acceptable that people should be allowed to make statements which glorify terrorism and thereby make it more likely that others will commit such acts," she said.

After the division, an amendment creating an alternative definition to "glorification", moved by Tory frontbencher Lord Kingsland, was carried without a vote.

This states that an offence of "indirect encouragement of terrorism" should comprise the making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener should infer that he should emulate it.

Earlier, moving the first amendment, Lord Lloyd said many bodies such as liberty and justice had criticised the "glorification" offence.

"I have never known a case where the commentators have been so united in their views about any clause in any bill before this House," he said.

"This section of the bill will have to go. It is unnecessary. We do not need it to meet our international obligations. "Cases of provocation, encouragement and incitement all mean exactly the same and are amply covered by our existing law.

"It will also have to go because it is damaging to community relations. Far from adding to our safety, which I do not think it will, in the end it could prove counter-productive.

"I cannot envisage our courts holding that a glorification offence is a proportionate response to the threat from which we suffer."

Subsequently, the US tried to mitigate the severity of the crime, by claiming that they were targeting al-Qaeda members. Even if the alleged al-Qaeda members were present, that does not automatically give the US right to bomb houses inside a foreign territory, with total disregard for the innocent civilians. Unless, the US is above the law or inflicting collateral damages with impunity is an automatic entitlement for the leader of the free world! The air strike was a clear violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan, according to international law it was an act of war. So where is the UN now? Where is the Morgan Freeman look-alike UN-Muppet, Kofi Annan?

The US decision to bomb the village must have been based on credible ‘intelligence’. In that case, why not surround the area with armed forces, and then give the innocent civilians in the village a safe passage to vacate, and demand the surrender of the alleged al-Qaeda members? For sure the US has more than adequate resources and firepower to take on a small band of men lightly armed. If this route was pursued, the al-Qaeda members would have been taken prisoners or they would have died resisting the US firepower. Taken alive they might have provided valuable information; if they died, that could be argued to have prevented future attacks on the US. Either result would have yielded benefit for the US.

>However, instead of attempting to seize the alleged al-Qaeda members, the US decided to kill them by bombing the place. Why did the US opt for the least beneficial route in terms of the “war on terror”? The decision can be explained by the following reasons:



Pervez Musharraf responded by making a nation-wide television address. He defended his collaboration with US foreign policy on the grounds that it was preventing open US aggression against Pakistan. This is the same argument he used at the very beginning, when Afghanistan was attacked but it still has not stopped the Pakistanis and other innocent Muslims being killed by the US firepower.

Even with open assistance from Musharraf, the US continues to arm India favourably, and has allowed the pro-Israeli elements to inspect all the nuclear assets of Pakistan. Such information inexorably will end up with the Israeli intelligence (Mossad), and eventually with the Indian intelligence. Musharraf has excelled in showing subservience to the US, he promised the US that the nuclear weapons are guarded. Such is the absurdity of the situation, instead of using the nuclear weapons to protect the country; the country is protecting the nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence has become a nuclear burden for Pakistan!

Therefore, Pakistan’s security has worsened in relative terms, which is serious, as it makes her more vulnerable to an attack. This erosion of security is natural and expected, when a country allows a foreign power to use it as a base. What guarantees have the US provided that it will not attack Pakistan in the future directly or through a proxy like India? The same guarantee their British cousins provided to the rebellious Arabs, who fought against the Ottomans. Instead of independence, the Arabs were made more dependent, by dividing them into weak despotic states, mini-states, some of the oil-fields turned into pathetic micro-states.

The colonial powers consumed the cheap oil, the Arab sheiks and their tribes got fatter than the camels and the West in turn ‘rewarded’ the Arabs collectively with the grand prize of Israel for their obedience (treachery)! Similar division of Iraq is taking place according to the policy of divide and conquer, just look at those people who are rushing to aid the US in this matter. So prepare for the future US-led liberation of Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, and Kashmir. Then divide these territories further along the sectarian lines of Sunni and Shi’ites.

Mass anti-US demonstrations followed the US bombings, but why exclusively blame the US, when it was Musharraf, who opened up the country for the US forces to use it as a military base. When a paid assassin kills, it is not the assassin or the weapon that should be blamed but the one who paid the assassin - the primary cause. The Americans are like the assassin with a deadly weapon, but it was Musharraf who allowed these assassins to use the country for target practice; and we all knew who the US was going to use for their target practice. Hence, the ultimate blame lies on Parvez Musharraf, the primary cause.

The families should demand compensation for the murder of their loved ones, according to the laws of Pakistan, where the crime was committed. In addition, the masses should call for the removal of US bases from the region to prevent future strikes and to protect the sovereignty of Pakistan. Finally, demand impeachment of Musharraf for treason, and for complicity in the murder of the Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan by the US forces. The masses ought to raise questions about the weakening of the security of Pakistan, which is dependent on strength and independence of the nation and its leadership. Certainly, Musharraf as a leader has shown neither strength nor independence. The age-old colonial system inherited and run by the feudal lords continues to bleed the country. It is time to reflect on the fundamental questions: why Pakistan was created, where it is today and where is Pakistan heading towards.