A senior government official said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet is expected to vote in favour of a proposal at a meeting Saturday night under which Israel would silence its guns even without a reciprocal agreement from the Palestinian group which has controlled Gaza since mid 2007.

Under the terms of the proposal, Israeli troops would remain inside the territory for an unspecified period, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity

The Jewish state expected Hamas to halt its attacks as well, the official said, but warned that “if it decides to open fire, we will not hesitate to respond and resume our offensive.”

“The security cabinet is expected to vote in favour of a unilateral ceasefire at tomorrow’s meeting following the signing of the memorandum in Washington and significant progress made in Cairo,” the official said.

The breakthrough came after Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement in Washington with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under which the United States would assist in preventing smuggling into Gaza, and a top envoy returned from talks with officials in Cairo.

“Olmert was satisfied with the results of the talks in Cairo, which answered Israel’s basic requirements for a thorough answer to Israel’s demands to halt rocket fire and an agreement on coordination between Israel and Egypt on the opening of the crossings” in Gaza, added the official.

However, although Olmert is in favour of the ceasefire, its approval is not certain as the security cabinet has shown previous divisions over the conduct of the war which was designed to put an end to rockets fired from Gaza.

Even as the stage was being set for a possible end to the Israeli offensive, in which at least 1,188 Palestinians have been killed, including 410 children, the military was staging a fresh wave of deadly strikes on the territory.

At least 55 Palestinians were killed on Friday, including at least 10 people who died when a tank shell slammed into their house in Gaza City during a funeral wake, according to Palestinian medics.

In the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the territory, three daughters and a niece of a Palestinian doctor working in Israel were killed in an Israeli air strike.

“They were girls, only girls. I want to know why they have they killed them. Who gave the order to fire?” the children’s sobbing father Ezzedine Abu Eish said on Israeli television.

Palestinian militants meanwhile fired over 20 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel on Friday, wounding five people, the Israeli military said. Over 700 such projectiles have been fired since the start of the war.

Earlier Khaled Meshaal, the exiled head of Hamas’s politburo, told Arab leaders the Islamist movement would not accept any ceasefire that did not provide for a full Israeli pullout and the opening of Gaza’s borders, including into Egypt.

“I assure you: despite all the destruction in Gaza, we will not accept Israel’s conditions for a ceasefire,” he told a meeting of Arab and other leaders in Doha.

His deputy Mussa Abu Marzuk later told Al-Jazeera television that Hamas would not make any decisions regarding a unilateral Israel ceasefire until its delegation held a fresh round of talks with Cairo on Saturday.

A senior Egyptian official quoted by the official MENA news agency said said Cairo had already conveyed the Israeli response to Hamas’s proposal for a ceasefire under certain specified conditions.

Clamping down on the porous Gaza-Egypt border, where hundreds of underground tunnels form Hamas’s main rear supply route, has been a key Israeli demand for ending the offensive that has has also wounded around 5,285 people.

After signing the deal in Washington, Livni told Israeli television that smuggling weapons into Gaza was tantamount to firing at Israel.

“They continue doing this, Israel has the right to respond,” she said.

Rice said she hoped the agreement, under which the United States and Israel will step up efforts to stamp out arms smuggling to Gaza, would advance efforts to secure a ceasefire.

She said she hoped for a “ceasefire very, very soon” but could not promise one would be sealed in time for January 20, when President George W. Bush hands the White House over to his successor, Barack Obama.

“We’re working … on as quick a timeline as we possibly can in support of the Egyptian mediation,” she said.

The war in Gaza has drawn worldwide protests and raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade for 18 months.

AFP: Israel poised to call unilateral halt to Gaza offensive

If Israel agrees to stop shooting, Israel radio said a truce summit would be held in Cairo Sunday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Israeli leaders expected to attend.

Hamas’ political chief rejected Israel’s conditions, but negotiators for the Islamic militant group were in behind-the-scenes contact with mediators in Cairo and signaled it was time for a truce.

“If they are ready, we are ready,” Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas figure, told Sky News.

Israel launched its military offensive Dec. 27 to try to halt Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, and top envoys were in Cairo and Washington on Friday to discuss cease-fire terms.

Palestinian medics say the fighting has killed at least 1,140 Palestinians and Israel’s bombing campaign caused massive destruction in the Gaza Strip. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, four by rocket fire, according to Israel.

The Israeli vote was scheduled hours after the U.S. paved the way by agreeing to provide assurances that Hamas will not be able to rearm if Israel approves a cease-fire. It comes ahead of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday, and Israeli elections next month.

A senior Israeli official said a vote approving the truce would amount to a “unilateral” cease-fire, though Israeli forces would only leave Gaza after an official declaration that the fighting was over. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

A truce would begin a phased process in which Israel halts its military offensive and then gauges the reaction from Hamas militants, the official said. If the militants continue to fire rockets, the assault would resume.

Under the deal, Egypt would shut down weapons smuggling routes with international help, and discussions on opening Gaza’s blockaded border crossings would take place at a later date.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban, who had weekend visits planned to Lebanon and Syria, was considering whether to attend a summit in Cairo Sunday, adding: “There’s been no decision yet.”

Israeli leaders were also considering whether to attend the summit, the senior Israeli official said.

The diplomatic developments coincided with an easing of violence in Gaza, where Israeli assaults killed 14 Palestinians on Friday, a lower death toll than in recent days. Palestinian medics took advantage of the relative calm, digging out 25 bodies buried under rubble in areas where Israeli forces and militants had clashed.

Palestinians heard dozens of Israeli tanks and other military vehicles roll away from the eastern and southern edges of Gaza City. An Israeli security official said the tanks would redeploy and were not withdrawing. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Israeli envoy Amos Gilad returned from Cairo and reported “substantial progress” in truce talks with Egyptian mediators, said a statement from the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

“I hope we are entering the endgame and that our goal of sustained and durable quiet in the south is about to be attained,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement intended to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons into Gaza if a cease-fire is implemented.

Livni described the deal as “vital … for a cessation of hostility” and said it was meant “to complement Egyptian actions and to end of the flow of weapons to Gaza.”

Earlier, Rice said she hoped European countries would work out similar bilateral agreements with Israel.

“There are a number of conditions that need to be obtained if a cease-fire is to be durable,” Rice said. “Among them is to do something about the weapons smuggling and the potential for resupply of Hamas from other places, including from Iran.”

The agreement outlines a framework under which the United States commits detection and surveillance equipment, as well as logistical help and training to Israel, Egypt and other nations to be used in monitoring Gaza’s land and sea borders.

Rice and State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Obama and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton had been consulted on the details of the document, which was concluded after frenetic negotiations to address Israeli concerns that Hamas would use a cease-fire to stock up on weapons.

A diplomat on the U.N. Security Council in New York said he was reasonably optimistic that “we are in the last leg of the negotiations,” though some issues remain unresolved.

There were long discussions on border security because the Egyptians don’t want any kind of international presence on their side of the border, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are being held behind closed doors.

“Everything has to be on the other side of the border, which means there’s a problem of who will be there, not only on behalf of the international community, but also which Palestinians. So it’s linked to a potential agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority — so it’s linked to other discussions,” the diplomat said.

In addition, he said, discussions were under way with the U.S. on technology to help locate and destroy the tunnels Hamas has used to smuggle in weapons.

In Gaza, residents said they would welcome an end to the fighting, but expressed skepticism a cease-fire can hold.

“Everybody wants the world to return to what it was. But I think it’s empty words,” said Ghadir Mohammed, who was forced to flee her Gaza City home because of the fighting. “Let’s assume if Hamas fires a rocket, will they be quiet about it? Israel isn’t the kind to be quiet.”

Hiba Dahshan from the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place, said: “We are exhausted. We need a solution. Hopefully they’ll halt fire.”

A resident of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, which has been targeted by Hamas rockets, said the army needed to free Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit — abducted by Hamas in 2006 — and be sure there would be quiet in southern Israel before stopping the fight.

“For eight years, they have been shooting at us,” said Yigal Hakmon, manager of a convenience store. “We can’t stop in the middle. We have to finish. We have to kill all the Hamas people.”

Hamas, which has controlled the tiny Mediterranean strip since 2007, has demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the opening of blockaded border crossings.

Mohamed Nazzal, a Hamas official based in Damascus, said the Egyptians invited Hamas on Friday for more discussions.

“It is expected that we go to see what is the opinion of the Israelis on the Hamas propositions,” Nazzal said.

The Syrian-based Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal took a hard line at a summit of Arab countries in the Qatari capital of Doha, asking them to cut off any ties with Israel.

“We will not accept Israel’s conditions for a cease-fire,” Mashaal told the summit. He said Hamas demands that “the aggression stop,” Israeli troops withdraw and crossings into Gaza open immediately.

Qatar and Mauritania heeded Mashaal’s call, suspending political and economic contacts with Israel to protest the fighting. Qatar does not have diplomatic relations with Israel but maintains lower-level ties; Mauritania has full relations, but Israel’s embassy in Mauritania was to remain and its ambassador was not being expelled.

Israel says it’s near ‘endgame’ for Gaza offensive – Yahoo! News

The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

Lebanese security sources told Reuters that they believed it was unlikely that the rockets were fired under instructions from the militant group Hezbollah. But there was no confirmation or denial from Hezbollah itself.

In 2006, after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier just outside Gaza, a large Israeli operation there was overshadowed by Israeli’s massive response to an attack in the north by Hezbollah, which turned into what is known as the Second Lebanon War.

On Wednesday, Israel had said that it would send senior officials to talk with Egypt about halting the conflict in Gaza, but there were no immediate signs of a diplomatic breakthrough, and fighting between Israel and Hamas militants continued after a three-hour lull for humanitarian aid to be distributed.

International pressure for a negotiated cease-fire intensified after Israeli shells killed some 40 people at a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday. Israel said Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from the school compound prior to Israel’s shelling.

Israel suspended its military operations in Gaza for three hours on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid and fuel for power generation to reach Gazans, who used the afternoon break to shop.

But fighting resumed soon afterward. In the evening, the Israeli Army dropped leaflets warning the citizens of Rafah, next to the border with Egypt, to leave their homes. Israel has been bombing the tunnel networks through which arms and consumer goods are smuggled from Egypt into Gaza.

The rockets from Lebanon fell in residential areas. Shimon Koren, head of the northern district police, instructed residents of Nahariya and Kabri to enter bomb shelters and he instructed residents in nearby localities to open their shelters. School was cancelled in Nahariya and nearby Shlomi. The Israeli government said it welcomed the efforts of France and Egypt to work out a durable cease-fire. It said it would end its assault if Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel and ended the smuggling of weapons from Egypt. It said that if a durable cease-fire took hold, it would reopen border crossings into Gaza for goods and people. But Israeli and Hamas officials both denied an assertion by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that a cease-fire had been agreed upon.

“There is an agreement on general principles, that Hamas should stop rocket fire and mustn’t rearm,” a senior Israeli official said Wednesday evening. “But that’s like agreeing that motherhood is a good thing. We have to transform those agreed principles into working procedures on the ground, and that’s barely begun.”

The government spokesman, Mark Regev, said that “the challenge now is to get the details to match the principles.”

There were early signs that a formal diplomatic negotiation could begin after 12 days of fighting. Egypt’s chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, is expected to serve as a go-between for Israel and Hamas. Two Israeli officials — a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shalom Turgeman, and a senior defense official, Amos Gilad — are expected to go to Egypt on Thursday to begin discussions, Israeli officials said.

The United States has been involved behind the scenes, senior Israeli and French officials said, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “constantly on the phone” with Mr. Olmert, according to one Israeli official.

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, said of talks about a cease-fire: “As I understand, the Israelis are open to the concept, but they want to learn more about the details; so do we.”

At the United Nations, several Arab delegates said Wednesday night that they thought they now had enough votes to approve a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. That would likely put the United States and other Western powers, which oppose a binding resolution, in the awkward position of having to veto a cease-fire.

A senior French official in Paris said that Mr. Sarkozy’s earlier comment about an agreement on a cease-fire was misunderstood: “The plan is not a cease-fire; the plan is a road map toward a cease-fire.” One crucial aspect of any deal is how to prevent new smuggling tunnels from being built under Egypt’s border with Gaza.

The senior Israeli official raised the possibility of reaching “tacit agreements” with Hamas to end rocket fire, while also persuading Egypt to allow American and perhaps European army engineers to help seal its border with Gaza above and below ground.

Hamas is insisting that any new arrangement include the reopening of border crossings for trade with Israel and the reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt for people.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has said that a 2005 agreement on the Rafah crossing, reached with Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, must be respected. That agreement called for a Palestinian Authority presence at the crossing, supervision by European Union monitors and Israeli video surveillance of who entered and left.

Hamas wants to control the crossing itself and is not eager to cooperate with Fatah, its -rival.

In Washington, President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that upon taking office he would “engage immediately” in the Middle East crisis and that he was “deeply concerned” about the loss of life on both sides.

“I am doing everything that we have to do to make sure that the day I take office we are prepared to engage immediately in trying to deal with the situation there,” he said at a news conference. “Not only the short-term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region.”

In Gaza, John Ging, the director of Gazan operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, visited the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp where Israeli shells fell Tuesday. He denied that Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from within the school compound and called for an international investigation into the attack, which he said had killed 40 people.

Israeli officials said they were continuing to investigate, but reiterated that Hamas had been using the school as a base. Mr. Gilad, the defense official, told Israeli Army radio: “This school served as a base for Hamas men whose identity we know. They fired from inside the school compound, and the army fired back at the source. The time was after school hours, and this school is an example of the cynical and cruel use Hamas does with civilian facilities.”

Casualty figures are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians.

But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms.

Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire.

At least 40 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces struck a school run by the United Nations in Gaza, a UN official said. Israel, which struck at least 40 more Hamas targets overnight, said it responded after its soldiers were fired at from the building.

The school deaths yesterday added urgency to diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching a cease-fire as the conflict entered its 12th day. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak proposed a new initiative last night and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been lobbying throughout the region for a truce, said the casualties at the school demonstrate the urgent need to stop the fighting. “Time works against us,” he said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed the proposal and Mubarak’s call for peace talks in Cairo, which may begin as early as today.

“The Security Cabinet will meet this morning to discuss the future of the military effort in Gaza, as well as the diplomatic efforts,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, commenting during an interview with Sky News, said it may take “some days” to study the details of the cease-fire proposal.

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Jerusalem, said in a phone interview he could confirm 40 dead and 45 injured, after three Israeli artillery shells hit the school in northern Gaza.

Rocket-Firing Cell

The Israeli army said in a faxed statement last night its investigations showed that “among the dead in the school were members of the military wing of the Hamas terror organization and a cell firing rockets and mortars at Israeli forces.”

The incident at the school may force the Israeli government to scale back its military offensive aimed at stopping rocket attacks by Palestinian militants on cities and towns in the country’s south.

“If it becomes the dominant story for the next 48 hours, especially in the U.S., then it will give Hamas a significant advantage,” Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said in a telephone interview.

As during the war in Lebanon in 2006, the current fighting “is as much about images and public relations as it is about military developments,” Steinberg said.

Street Fighting

Israel’s military expanded its hold over the 40-kilometer (25-mile) long coastal territory, fighting in the streets of Gaza City in the north and Khan Yunis in the south. Israel continued its military operations through the night in Gaza, striking at least 40 targets including rocket launching sites, groups of Hamas gunmen, and tunnels used for weapons storage, the army said in an e-mailed statement.

Palestinian militants made their longest strike so far yesterday when a rocket hit the Israeli city of Gedera, 45 kilometers to the north, injuring a 3-month-old infant, police said. A Hamas spokesman said the group’s military wing has dozens of suicide bombers ready to confront Israeli troops in the streets of Gaza.

At least 35 rockets struck Israeli territory yesterday compared with 40 the day before, according to the army. That’s down from a peak of 76 on Dec. 27, the first day of the operation. As many as 3,200 rockets and mortar shells have been fired at Israel since the start of 2008. Rocket attacks have killed four Israelis since fighting began. At least five rockets from Gaza struck Israel this morning, police said.

‘Friendly Fire’

Six Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground fighting began, the army said. One died on Jan. 4, three died and 24 were wounded by a tank shell in a “friendly fire incident” in northern Gaza on Jan. 5, and two more were killed in separate incidents yesterday, the military said in an e-mailed statement.

At least 630 Palestinians have died in the conflict and 2,600 have been wounded, said Mu’awia Hassanein, chief of emergency medical services in Gaza.

UN officials said as many as a quarter of the Palestinians killed were civilians, a figure Israel disputes as too high.

In reacting to the deaths at the school, the Israeli military accused Hamas of making “cynical use” of civilians by firing from schools.

UNRWA opened several schools as shelters for civilians whose houses in refugee camps were destroyed by Israeli forces. No classes were in session.

“Even though the blue UN flag was flying and visible, Israel targeted our school,” Adnan Abu Hasna, a UNRWA spokesman in Gaza, said in a telephone interview. UNRWA said it was “99.9” percent certain there were no militants in the school.

Mosques, Schools

Several mosques and schools have been struck since Israel began its assault on Gaza 12 days ago. Israel alleges Hamas was using the buildings to hide arms and wanted militants.

Gaza’s water and sewage systems are on the verge of collapse because of power shortages, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said yesterday. More than 530,000 people among Gaza’s population of 1.4 million are completely cut off from running water and the rest receive water only every few days, the agency said in an e-mailed statement.

Israel will open a “humanitarian corridor” into the Gaza Strip, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an e-mailed statement shortly after midnight. It said that certain “geographic areas” would be made accessible to the local population for limited periods of time during which they could “stock up.”

Humanitarian Corridor

The plan for a humanitarian corridor “in no way compromises our call for an immediate cease-fire,” said UNRWA’s Gunness.

Mubarak called for a cease-fire for a “limited period” that would allow food, fuel and medicine to enter Gaza and give time for talks on a “comprehensive and lasting” agreement to end the fighting, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

Israel’s attack on Gaza is “genocide,” Abbas told the UN Security Council late yesterday.

Abbas left New York late yesterday for the Egyptian capital, in response to Mubarak’s invitation, according to Palestinian Authority envoy Saeb Erekat. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev said her government is “considering” the initiative.

“We invite Israelis and Palestinians to meet and discuss how not to renew the fighting, and this includes securing the borders and lifting the blockade,” Mubarak said at a news conference last night in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, after meeting with Sarkozy.

Sarkozy also met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday after holding talks the day before with Olmert and Abbas.

Syrian Influence

“I am sure that Syria has an influence; Syria should help us convince Hamas to listen to the voice of reason,” Sarkozy said yesterday at a news conference. Al-Assad said he favored a cease-fire, while describing Israel’s offensive in Gaza as a “war crime.”

Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador from Caracas yesterday and said the Israeli government should be tried for war crimes over the invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Israel is considering in response whether to expel Venezuela’s charge d’affaires in Tel Aviv, said the Foreign Ministry.

Last week, Israel rejected a French-proposed 48-hour truce with Hamas, saying it was seeking a permanent end to the Gaza rocket attacks.

Israeli stocks climbed yesterday for a seventh day, the longest winning streak since October 2007, following gains in European stocks and U.S. futures. The benchmark TA-25 Index of stocks has gained 12 percent since Dec. 27, when the Gaza offensive began, tracking a global rally.

Economic Blockade

The shekel fell as much as 1.46 percent to 3.8870 per dollar, and traded at 3.8844 as of 5:19 p.m. yesterday.

Israel began the campaign to halt rocket attacks after a six-month cease-fire with Hamas expired Dec. 19. Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, refused to renew the truce because it said Israel hadn’t eased its economic blockade of Gaza. Militants fired 70 rockets at Israel the day before the cease-fire ended.

Bloomberg.com: Europe

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet the delegation Monday in Ramallah, West Bank, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said. Abbas then plans to head to New York for meetings at the United Nations, Erakat said.

Monday’s first meeting will involve members of the European Union leadership and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country just finished a six-month EU presidency. The Czech Republic, which took over the role from France, will lead the delegation, the Czech presidency said.

The officials would try to establish a dialogue between the EU and Middle East to look for possible ways of reestablishing an armistice in Gaza, the Czech presidency said. They would also be looking for ways to provide humanitarian aid to people in Gaza.

The delegation heads to Egypt on Sunday for a meeting with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. They would hold a full day of meetings in Israel and the West Bank on Monday, and on Tuesday they head to Jordan to meet with Prime Minister Nader al-Dahabi.

Europe’s stepped-up initiative comes as the United States stays out of the spotlight.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington is talking with European, Israeli and Arab partners to find a “sustainable” solution in Gaza, but at this point, Rice has no plans to head to the region.

The White House has declined comment on whether an Israeli ground incursion would be justified.

Both the White House and the State Department have also refused to comment on reports that some diplomats are suggesting international monitors be brought into Gaza as part of any peace deal.

EU delegation pushing for Gaza cease-fire – CNN.com

Asked about a Russian warship transiting the Panama Canal earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who saw the ship while crossing the canal last week — told The Associated Press: “I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine.”

The Pentagon, while puzzled by the Russians’ actions, also is taking a ho-hum attitude. The U.S. military commander for the region, Adm. James Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said that from his vantage point, there is no reason to be concerned about the Russian naval activity.

“They pose no military threat to the U.S.,” Stavridis said in an e-mail to the AP on Tuesday.

It was the first such passage by a Russian or Soviet warship since World War II.

There is no suggestion of a military confrontation, but the Russian moves are notable in part because they appear to reflect an effort by Moscow to flex some muscle in America’s backyard in response to Washington’s support for the former Soviet republic of Georgia and elsewhere on the Russian periphery. That includes U.S. missile defense bases to be erected in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Russians were unhappy with a U.S. decision to send a state-of-the-art warship into the Black Sea as part of an American humanitarian aid mission for Georgia in the aftermath of last August’s war with Russia. The Russians also are angry about the Bush administration’s push to add Georgia and the former Soviet republic of Ukraine as members of the NATO military alliance.

Under the gaze of the U.S. Southern Command, Russian ships this fall held joint exercises with the navy of Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is a fierce U.S. critic.

Navy Rear Adm. Tom Meek, the deputy director for security and intelligence at Southern Command, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he sees little chance of Russia teaming up with Venezuela in a militarily meaningful way.

“I don’t think that Russia and Venezuela are really serious about putting together a military coalition that would give them any kind of aggregate military capability to oppose anybody,” Meek said. “Frankly, the maneuvers they conducted down here were so basic and rudimentary that they did not amount to anything, in my opinion.”

And it’s not just the Russian navy that is showing up in the West.

In September, two Tu-160 long-range bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, landed in Venezuela — the first landing in the Western Hemisphere by Russian military aircraft since the Cold War ended.

Rice shrugs it off.

“A few aging Blackjacks flying unarmed along the coast of Venezuela is — I don’t know why one would do it, but I’m not particularly going to lose sleep over that,” she said in the AP interview Monday.

She said Russia is welcome to have relations with countries in the West.

“I don’t think anybody’s confused about the preponderance of power in the Western Hemisphere,” Rice said.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made no effort to hide his irritation at what he considers American arrogance.

“God forbid from engaging in any kind of controversy in the American continent,” he said, referring to his Blackjack bombers flying to Venezuela for a training exercise. “This is considered the ‘holiest of the holy,’” he said during a meeting with Western political scholars at his Black Sea residence in Sochi. “And they drive ships with weapons to a place just 10 kilometers from where we’re at? Is this normal? Is this an equitable move?”

On Monday, the Russian navy announced that a destroyer and two support vessels will visit Cuba for the first time since the Soviet era. The ships are from a squadron that has been on a lengthy visit to Latin America; they are scheduled to put in at Havana on Friday for a five-day stay, navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said.

Moscow’s support for Cuba fell sharply after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the Russians have bolstered ties recently.

The joint naval exercises with Venezuela were Russia’s way of “demonstrating to the U.S. that it has a foothold in a region traditionally dominated by the U.S.,” said analyst Anna Gilmour at Jane’s Intelligence Review.

Still, she and many Russian analysts say Moscow’s deployments of warships are largely for show.

Russia’s navy is a shadow of its Soviet-era force, having suffered from a serious lack of investment since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Many ships and submarines have rusted away at their berths, and deadly accidents occur regularly.

Yahoo! News

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush’s last major foreign policy initiatives.

Rice said the resolution will have a significant impact, especially since “pirates are adapting to the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden by traveling further” into sea lanes not guarded by warships sent by the U.S. and other countries.

The council authorized nations to use “all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia” to stop anyone using Somali territory to plan or carry out piracy in the nearby waters traversed each year by thousands of cargo ships sailing between Asia and the Suez Canal.

That includes the use of Somali airspace, even though the U.S. appeased Indonesia, a council member, by removing direct mention of it, U.S. officials said.

Somalia Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Jama, whose government asked for the help, said he was “heartened” by the council action. “These acts of piracy are categorically unacceptable and should be put to an end,” he said.

The resolution sets up the possibility of increased American military action in Somalia, a chaotic country where a U.S. peacekeeping mission in 1992-93 ended with a humiliating withdrawal of troops after a deadly clash in Mogadishu, as portrayed in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

The commander of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet expressed doubt last week about the wisdom of staging ground attacks on Somali pirates. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters it is difficult to identify pirates and said the potential for killing innocent civilians “cannot be overestimated.”

Rice played down the differences between the State Department and Pentagon, telling reporters that the U.S. was fully committed to preventing pirates from establishing a sanctuary.

“What we do or do not do in cases of hot pursuit we’ll have to see, and you’ll have to take it case by case,” she said. “I would not be here seeking authorization to go ashore if the United States government, perhaps most importantly, the president of the United States, were not behind this resolution.”

Spurred by widespread poverty in their homeland, which hasn’t had a functioning government for nearly two decades, Somali pirates are evading an international naval flotilla to intercept huge tankers, freighters and other ships to hold for ransom. A tugboat operated by the French oil company Total and a Turkish cargo ship became the latest victims Tuesday.

Pirates have hijacked more than 40 vessels off Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline this year. Before the latest seizures, maritime officials said 14 vessels remained in pirate hands — including a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons. Also held are more than 250 crew members.

Rice said the resolution will allow the tougher action needed to quell the piracy, which she blamed on Somalia’s turmoil.

“Once peace and normalcy have returned to Somalia, we believe that economic development can return to Somalia,” she said. “This current response is a good start.”

Under the resolution, nations must first get a request for an attack from Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government, which itself would be required to notify U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before any attack.

“Piracy is a symptom of the state of anarchy which has persisted in that country for over 17 years,” Ban told the council. “This lawlessness constitutes a serious threat to regional stability and to international peace and security.”

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss any possible military operations, but acknowledged there are “practical challenges” to combating pirates. He said the U.S. would continue to work with allies in the region and encourage shipping companies to take prudent measures to protect their vessels.

The United Nations also has been urging shipping and insurance companies not to pay ransom for captured ships, saying that encourages more piracy.

He Yafei, China’s vice minister for foreign affairs, told the Security Council that China is considering sending warships to the Gulf of Aden, where they would join ships from the U.S., Russia, Denmark, Italy and other countries.

Kenya’s military chief, Gen. Jeremiah Kianga, said Tuesday his country will increase patrols along its own coast because the Somali piracy has made business at Kenya’s main port more expensive. The Kenyan air force and navy will not enter Somali air space or waters, he said.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said Tuesday that it is important for nations to jointly confront pirates.

“Regional cooperation is essential,” Costa said. “A few years ago, piracy was a threat to the Straits of Malacca (in Southeast Asia). By working together, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand managed to cut the number of attacks by more than half since 2004.”

Yahoo! News

The White House said it would “rethink” its approach to North Korea, which Mr. Bush included as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002 before taking a more diplomatic approach to the country in 2007.

“They should have rethought it about five years ago because these talks were doomed from the outset, and some of us said so,” said John Bolton, a former top-ranking official in the Bush administration who has become one of its loudest critics on this issue.

Pyongyang’s refusal to agree – in writing – to key provisions prompted the abrupt return of U.S. envoy Christopher Hill before the end of the negotiating session.

“We had some very ambitious plans for this round [of negotiations]. Unfortunately, we were not able to complete some of what we wanted to do,” Mr. Hill, an assistant secretary of state, said before leaving Beijing, according to wire service reports.

China was hosting the negotiations as part of the six-party talks, a multilateral process including South Korea, Japan and Russia.

Combined with the failure of Middle East peace talks to produce a hoped-for agreement by the end of this year, Thursday’s events meant that the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave office empty-handed after attempting to score high-profile wins on two long-running foreign policy problems.

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, an Asian-Pacific affairs analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he hoped that Pyongyang’s isolation would at some point force it to make concessions.

“The North Koreans are digging in again, but I don’t know at what point they may begin to feel that this [intransigence] isn’t going to work that well for them,” Mr. Sonnenfeldt said.

“I would guess the incoming administration will have to go through these talks again,” Mr. Sonnenfeldt said, though he added that the North Koreans likely will “keep fooling around without letting people know what they are going to do.”

Washington Times

Meanwhile, authorities in India reported the first arrests since the end of the siege in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people. Two men in the eastern city of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, were detained by police and accused of providing the mobile phone cards used by the attackers.

The hoax call and subsequent air force alert reported by the English-language Dawn newspaper underscored the volatile atmosphere between the nuclear-armed neighbors during the 60-hour rampage by gunmen in India’s commercial capital that began the night of Nov. 26.

The report also seemed certain to raise new questions about the competence of Pakistan’s civilian government, elected less than a year ago. The civilian leadership has already been criticized for initially promising to send the chief of its main spy agency to help in the Indian probe, then hastily reneging after objections from the political opposition and the security establishment.

The newspaper’s account said it took intercession by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other diplomats to establish that the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, had not made the call to President Asif Ali Zardari on the night of Nov. 28.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Lou Fintor, said he was unaware of any such incident having occurred, and a Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq, referred calls to the Information Ministry, which said it would be making a statement later on what it described as the “so-called” hoax.

However, a Western diplomat and a Pakistani security official confirmed the broad outlines of the Dawn account.

India has blamed Pakistan-based militants in the attacks but not the Pakistani state. Pakistan has denied any official involvement, and there is widespread public anger over the fact that India accused Pakistani elements even while the attacks were still unfolding.

During the air force alert, Pakistani warplanes carried out patrols while carrying live weapons, Dawn said. Senior intelligence officials also suggested to reporters during that interval that Pakistan might shift tens of thousands of troops from the border with Afghanistan to the Indian frontier.

The incident reportedly began when a caller who identified himself as Mukherjee urgently requested to speak with Zardari. The two had earlier been in phone contact, and because the situation was so fluid at that point, presidential aides bypassed normal identification checks and put the call through, the newspaper’s account said.

Most analysts believe a Pakistani group could not have carried out the Mumbai attacks without the help of local Indian accomplices, and the two arrests reported today by authorities could help support that thesis.

However, a police official in West Bengal, the state where Kolkata is situated, cautioned that the two men did not necessarily have direct links with the attackers or prior knowledge of the plot.

Authorities said the arrested pair had bought large batches of cellphone SIM cards that included one later used by the gunmen during the attacks. How the SIM cards came into the attackers’ possession remained unclear.

Police say the gunmen were in touch by mobile phone with handlers in Pakistan while the siege was taking place, allegedly seeking guidance on how to proceed and on whom to kill and whom to spare among their hostages at luxury hotels and other sites.

Police have already released details of another Indian national who they say was recruited by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba to scout out possible target sites in Mumbai, including some of those that were hit during the recent attacks. Police say the man was found carrying hand-drawn maps of the sites.

Although it has not been established whether the man was directly connected to the attacks that eventually unfolded, public outrage in India has grown over the perceived failure of authorities to act on intelligence pointing to an imminent strike on Mumbai. On Friday, India’s new home minister admitted that there had been “lapses” in security.

Los Angeles Times

EXPLOSIVES were yesterday found in Mumbai’s main train station, which police said were left over from last week’s attacks.

The bomb squad defused the two 8lb bombs, said Bapu Domre, the assistant commissioner of police, but it was not clear last night why they had not been found earlier.

The discovery came as Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, visited New Delhi and called for full co-operation from Pakistan to ease tensions in the region after the attacks, which left at least 171 dead. Indian and US officials have blamed the three-day assault on Pakistani militants, but stopped short of naming the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian foreign minister, said the attacks were led from inside Pakistan, and said India would act decisively to protect its territorial integrity.

He said: “I informed Dr Rice there is no doubt that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai were perpetrated by individuals who came from Pakistan and whose controllers are in Pakistan.”

Pakistan has condemned the assault, denied any involvement by state agencies and vowed to work with India in the inquiry. Nevertheless, the accusations have sparked fears the nuclear-armed neighbours might slide towards a fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947 unless cool heads prevail. It is feared a confrontation would undermine efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda.

Dr Rice met the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and other leaders in the Indian capital and is due to visit Islamabad today. She said the US was “already actively engaged in information sharing” with Indian authorities, and she made clear that Islamabad would also have to cooperate with the investigation.

“President (Asif Ali] Zardari has told me that he will follow the leads wherever they go,” she said. “I have said that Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency, and co-operate fully.”

She said it was too early to say who was responsible for the attack, but added: “Whether there is a direct al-Qaeda hand or not, this is clearly the kind of terror in which al-Qaeda participates.”

India has called on Pakistan to turn over 20 people who are “fugitives of Indian law” and wanted for questioning, but Mr Zardari said the suspects would be tried in Pakistan if they were found to be hiding there and if there was evidence of wrongdoing.

“At the moment, these are just names of individuals – no proof and no investigation,” he said.

A week after the attacks, more details of intelligence failures began to emerge, drawing further criticism to authorities already blamed for acting slowly during the 60-hour siege created by ten gunmen.

Sureesh Mehta, the head of the navy, earlier called India’s failure to act on multiple warnings “a systemic failure”. India had received a warning from the United States that militants were plotting a waterborne assault on Mumbai and that hotels might be targeted.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff also urged Pakistan yesterday to investigate all possible links between the Mumbai attacks and Pakistani groups and to broaden its campaign against militants.

Admiral Mike Mullen flew in for talks with Pakistan’s eight-month-old civilian government and military commanders.

A US embassy statement said Admiral Mullen “encouraged Pakistani leaders to take more, and more concerted, action against militant extremists elsewhere in the country”.

AK Antony, the Indian defence minister, told his military chiefs they needed to improve intelligence co-ordination so security forces could act on all credible threats, according to a ministry statement. The statement said he discussed beefing up maritime security and “reviewed in detail the preparedness against any possible terror threats from air.”

Meanwhile, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday as he arrived in Brussels for Nato talks, that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai had underscored the need for the West to help Pakistan tackle terrorism.

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