FPI Overnight Brief: August 25, 2009

AFP reports that “Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Mongolia on Tuesday for a two-day visit focused on sealing a series of investment deals including one on a joint venture in uranium mining. Medvedev's trip comes just three months after his Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the resource-rich former Soviet satellite, which has vast copper, coal and gold deposits, as Russia seeks to revive its influence here.”

The BBC reports that “The trial has begun in Iran of a number of senior opposition figures following June's disputed presidential election. The defendants, who include former ministers in the 1997-2005 Khatami government, are accused of conspiring with foreign powers to organise unrest. Two leading economists are also on trial, Saeed Leylaz and Kian Tajbaksh. It is the fourth such trial since the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative, sparked pro-reform street protests.”

AFP reports that “The government in northwest China's Xinjiang region on Tuesday denied a report in the state media that more than 200 people would be put on trial this week over recent deadly ethnic unrest in the area. On Monday, the state-run China Daily reported on its front page that the People's Intermediate Court in the regional capital Urumqi was preparing for the trials amid tight security. ‘At present, there is no scheduled date for the trial,’ Li Hua, an official at the Xinjiang government media office, told AFP. ‘I don't know how China Daily got that information, but it's not true. We will announce it to the media when there is a trial.’ At least 197 people died in Urumqi in early July as members of the largely Muslim Uighur minority clashed with Han Chinese in the worst ethnic unrest to hit the country in decades.”

Ilan Berman and Clifford D. May write in the Wall Street Journal that “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently in Thailand that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the U.S. will offer allies in the Middle East a ‘defense umbrella’ to prevent Iranian intimidation. That's a fine sentiment, but it raises the question: Are we capable of doing so? The answer is more complicated than most people think. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery systems since the collapse of the Soviet Union means that any ‘defense umbrella’ will require the deployment of missile defense technologies capable of neutralizing a potential salvo of nuclear-tipped missiles—whether from Iran or another rogue such as North Korea. Yet America's missile-defense efforts are being scaled back. Congress is contemplating a $1.4 billion reduction to the Pentagon's budget for antimissile capabilities.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “Iraq's Shiite parties on Monday said they have formed a new alliance to compete in January's parliamentary vote that doesn't include Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party -- fracturing the country's ruling Shiite coalition. The new alliance -- led by the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which has strong historic ties to Iran -- shakes up the political landscape and highlights the increasing divisions among Iraq's once-unified Shiite parties. Aides say Mr. Maliki is confident he can succeed independent of the Shiite alliance by cobbling together a nationalist coalition of parties and politicians that cuts across Iraq's sectarian divides and draws support from Shiites, who make up the majority of voters, Sunnis and Kurds.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “The U.S. released one of the youngest detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison and sent him home to Afghanistan, the Justice Department said Monday. Mohammed Jawad, who according to his lawyers may have been as young as 12 when he was detained and moved to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay more than six years ago, was released in the past day… Authorities said Mr. Jawad allegedly threw a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers in 2002. Mr. Jawad has maintained that he is innocent and was tortured into confessing, his lawyer said. Federal authorities said recently that they were no longer relying on any statements Mr. Jawad made after he was subjected to harsh interrogations.”

The AP reports that “Scotland's justice minister on Monday defended his much-criticized decision to free the Lockerbie bomber, as the U.S. State Department said that although it disagreed ‘passionately,’ the move would not affect relations between the United States and Britain. The Scottish administration has faced unrelenting criticism from the both the U.S. government and the families of American victims of the 1988 airline bombing since it announced last week it was freeing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. The terminally ill al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, returned to his native Libya on Thursday, where he was greeted by crowds waving Libyan and Scottish flags. The United States will stand by Britain, even though it believes the decision was a mistake, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.”

The AFP reports that “Pakistan must exploit rifts among Taliban commanders jostling to inherit the brutal legacy of rebel chief Baitullah Mehsud, analysts say, or risk the power vacuum being filled by Al-Qaeda. An heir apparent, Hakimullah Mehsud, has emerged in the battle to succeed Mehsud after his reported death near the Afghan border, but analysts and officials told AFP that infighting continued despite the claims and swirling rumours. On August 5, a missile from a US drone slammed into a house deep in the mountains of South Waziristan where Mehsud was said to be receiving medical treatment, with Pakistani officials certain the feared warlord died. Desperate to salvage unity among Taliban footsoldiers, the Islamist militia insists he is simply ill, but that has not stopped a fierce battle breaking out for the reins of power and command over his fighters.”

Nicholas Eberstadt and Carol Adelman write in the Weekly Standard that “What's needed today is more flexibility in aid programming. Aid can be tailored to each country's evolving conditions and development opportunities. It should also be premised on leverage--that is, linking U.S. public resources to the myriad emerging streams of private endeavor that characterize global development and encouraging the emergence of more innovative and efficient ways of delivering assistance and better evaluating the aid's ultimate impact…Countries are much more likely to grow when they embrace policies that create open economies, and encourage trade, private investment, business creation, savings, and innovation. Good governance and the development of a sturdy institutional domestic framework, including rule of law, individual rights, and property rights, are critical to prosperity…The pervasive lack of convincing evidence of significant benefit from past foreign aid efforts, the changing nature and capabilities of the developing world, and the emergence of new sources and approaches to resource transfers for development all point to the need for a fundamental rethinking of the objectives, strategies, and instruments of U.S. foreign aid.”