DIPLOMATIC SETTLEMENT

The Lebanese government and Hezbollah would agree to implement Security Council resolution 1559.

This resolution, passed in September 2004, called for the disbanding of all militias in Lebanon and the extension of Lebanese government authority to all parts of the country. Hezbollah would move out of south Lebanon and the Lebanese army would move down to the border with Israel. The idea is that this would remove the source of conflict.

Both Israel and Hezbollah would accept a ceasefire and the agreement formalised in a new Security Council resolution.

An international force would be deployed in the border area at least until the Lebanese army arrived.

Getting agreement on the mandate, size and deployment of such a force is not going to be easy. It would replace an existing UN force, Unifil, which has been monitoring events but not influencing them since 1978.

The Israelis might maintain a self-declared "buffer zone" for a time, but any settlement would have to see an Israeli withdrawal.

Some kind of deal would be done to resolve the original trigger for this war, the capture of two Israeli solders by Hezbollah. Israel wants their unconditional release. Hezbollah says they were taken to be exchanged.

Lebanon also wants Israel to leave a strip of land known as the Shebaa Farms at the foot of Mount Hermon, but the UN has ruled that this land belongs to Syria and that its future should be decided by Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

STALEMATE
Under this scenario, the Israeli military effort to remove Hezbollah fighters from south Lebanon gets bogged down and Hezbollah refuses to pull back or reach any agreement with the Lebanese government. Fighting continues.

This would leave Israel far short of its aims. There would be domestic political fall-out in that great ambitions were laid out for this conflict.

A stalemate in which Israel was making little headway might also be interpreted as "Israel loses", in that it did not achieve its goals.

Already the Israelis have found the going tougher than they might have expected. The terrain - mountainous, rocky, and full of caves, gullies and ravines - is ideal guerrilla country and the Israelis cannot use their armoured forces there easily.

It is therefore conceivable that the Israelis will not achieve the decisive victory they seek. If that happened, the fighting could go on indefinitely to a greater or lesser degree. Israeli bombing could continue in an attempt to cut off Hezbollah reinforcements moving south.

Hezbollah could continue firing rockets from north of any Israeli-controlled zone.

The civilian suffering would go on and people might not be able to return to normal lives on both sides of the border.

Israel could establish control over a self-declared "buffer zone" along the border and just stay there. There would be stalemate, with continuing confrontations and fire fights with the potential of the conflict erupting again at any time.

ISRAEL DECLARES SUCCESS
Israel would go on more or less as now until it reckoned it had achieved success. It might or might not announce a ceasefire but it would in practice hand over southern Lebanon to an international force and withdraw. In due course, the Lebanese army would deploy to the border. Israel would declare victory against Hezbollah, though it would probably not get its two captured soldiers back.

THE WAR WINDS DOWN
It is possible that at some stage the Israelis will announce they have achieved their main aims through bombing and the removal of Hezbollah from the border. There might be no ceasefire but the bombing would stop or be reduced. Hezbollah might respond by stopping its rocket attacks. There might be occasional incidents.

This would leave issues unresolved however, including that of the missing Israeli soldiers. Israel will not exchange them for the prisoner Hezbollah wants most, Samir Qantar, who attacked a block of flats in Nahariha in 1979, killing a father and his daughter (the latter by smashing her head in). The only prisoner release Israel says it will engage in is one through the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

WIDER ISRAELI INVASION
Israel might decide to step up its ground attacks, for example, after a Hezbollah attack on cities further south.

In 1978, the Israelis invaded up to the Litani River some 20km (12 miles) north of the border and in 1982 they went all the way to Beirut. They did not leave south Lebanon until 2000.

Their aim in those operations was to remove Palestinian fighters, from whom Hezbollah has taken over.

It is possible that the Israelis will decide to expand their currently quite limited ground attacks into the kind of big operation carried out in 1978. An attack on Tyre on the coast would be considered as Hezbollah has been firing rockets from around Tyre.

However, all this would leave Israel in occupation and under constant harassment and attack. It would not be the long-term solution they seek. If they simply left again, Hezbollah would move back in.

THE CONFLICT ESCALATES OR SPREADS

The intensity of the fighting might increase. Hezbollah might extend its attacks to other cities. Israel might step up its bombing and ground operations. If this happened, tensions would rise all round.

The Lebanese government, product of an uneasy alliance between Lebanon's various populations, and in which Hezbollah sits with reforming elements from the Cedar Revolution, has held together.

But it could fall apart if the pressure is not eased and some solution does not become apparent, especially to the suffering of civilians. Hezbollah could emerge the stronger.

The fighting could develop into a new Jihadist front, drawing in fighters from elsewhere.

Hezbollah's supporters, Syria and Iran, could get drawn in.

Syria which has lost power in Lebanon over the last couple of years could be tempted to regain influence there.

The sidelined issue of Iran's nuclear programme could come to the fore again and become a diplomatic and economic confrontation with the West if tensions increased. The solution to the issue depends on understanding and confidence and this has been badly damaged by this crisis.

The morning after his fever spiked, she took him to a clinic, but it did not have the medicines that might have saved him. He died four days later, crying, "Mommy, Mommy," before losing consciousness.

It is no secret that mosquitoes carry the parasite that causes malaria. More mystifying is why 800,000 young African children a year still die of malaria - more than from any other disease - when there are medicines that cure for 55 cents a dose, mosquito nets that shield a child for $1 a year, and indoor insecticide spraying that costs about $10 annually for a household.

An emerging consensus on solutions, combined with fresh scrutiny and a windfall of new financing, are prompting major donors to revamp years of failed efforts to stem malaria's mortal toll. The growing support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, enriched this week by a $31 billion gift from Warren E. Buffett, will provide still more impetus for change.

Paltry budgets, faulty strategies and government mismanagement have hamstrung past efforts. In Uganda, population 28 million, not one of the 1.8 million nets approved more than two years ago by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has yet arrived.

The World Bank, after pledging to halve malaria deaths in Africa six years ago, had let its staff working on the disease dwindle to zero.

And the main United States aid agency admitted to outraged senators last year that it spent more on high-priced consultants than life-saving commodities, like mosquito nets that cost $5.75 a piece.

Social conservatives and liberals have been building alliances across ideological lines on malaria, a killer of little children. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said he had found common ground with the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has long maintained that practical solutions carried out by Africans can prevent millions of deaths from malaria. "You have the left and right coming together," the senator said.

At Congressional hearings last year, Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican and a doctor from Oklahoma, argued that Washington-based consultants and contractors have consumed too much of the malaria budget.

He called on Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and fiery advocate on malaria, who testified that the American agency, the United States Agency for International Development, was too cozy with "the foreign aid industrial complex."

Only 1 percent of the agency's 2004 malaria budget went for medicines, 1 percent for insecticides and 6 percent for mosquito nets. The rest was spent on research, education, evaluation, administration and other costs.

The Bush administration is changing that approach.

First, the United States aid agency is shifting its focus from mainly backing the sale of subsidized mosquito nets in Africa to giving more of them away to poor people.

It is also committed to buying combination drugs like Coartem because the disease is proving increasingly resistant to older, cheaper medicines. A dose of Coartem, produced by the Swiss company Novartis, now costs 55 cents for a child up to age 3.

Finally, the United States is also getting behind the use of DDT and other insecticides and will pay for large-scale programs to spray small amounts of them inside homes.

"We pretty well do know what the silver set of bullets are," Senator Brownback said at his 2004 hearing.

The decisive push for change in malaria programs has come from the White House. Michael Gerson, one of the president's closest advisers, described malaria in an interview as "maybe the main source of unnecessary suffering in the world."

Under the Bush administration's new policy, this year more than 40 percent of America's growing aid for malaria control is to be spent on nets, insecticides, medicines and other commodities.

The Bush administration hopes to convince Congress to at least triple spending on malaria control to $300 million by 2008.

Global aid for malaria control has been rising, though the resources do not match the scale of the dying, critics say. Contributions from rich nations and international organizations have more than doubled since 2003 to $841 million last year, according to the World Health Organization.

With its new gift, the Gates Foundation says its malaria financing will rise, though it is too soon to say by how much. It has already given $177 million for malaria controls.

As the United States moves forward, other crucial donors are also taking steps to fix flawed programs.

The World Bank has approved $130 million for projects in Africa in the past year and says that by 2010 new lending will grow to up to $1 billion.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a widely praised organization set up in 2002 to pool the resources of donors, generally relies on African governments to do their own procurement.

Still, the government has not yet bought the nets the fund approved more than two years ago. "Oh, my dear, there are a lot of complications in procurement here," said John Rwakimari, who runs the country's malaria program.

The fund is now considering a change that would enable it to provide countries like Uganda with the nets and other commodities directly, rather than the money to buy them after Uganda's management of past grants was marred by incompetence and corruption.

Millions of doses of Global Fund-financed Coartem, the antimalaria drug, arrived this year in Uganda - but that was because the country agreed, at the Global Fund's urging, to buy them through the World Health Organization.

The scope of malaria's toll was evident on a recent visit to the pediatric ward of the regional public hospital in Gulu, Uganda. Babies and toddlers burning with malarial fevers arrived regularly. Mothers lay next to them, their soothing maternal voices a low murmuring in the cavernous room.

As many as 100,000 people, mostly children, die of malaria each year in Uganda alone. "It's like a jumbo jet crashing every day," said Dr. Andrew Collins, deputy director of the Malaria Consortium, an international nonprofit group.

The United States is testing indoor insecticide spraying there. It is also treating more than 700,000 nets that Ugandans already own with insecticides and buying another 400,000 nets laced with insecticides that last up to five years.

Volunteers handed out the nets to families with children under age 5 in over 100 camps like the one where Phillip Odong lived his short life for people who have fled the Lord's Resistance Army, a ruthless rebel group that has terrorized the countryside. The volunteers, many of them peasants, were trained by United States-financed groups led by the JSI Research and Training Institute.

The nets were so sought after in some camps that families whose children were too old to qualify for them besieged health officials. "They packed the health center like firewood," said Suzanne Nyedo, a nurse at the Bobi camp.

Even as policies begin to change, many uncertainties remain.

For example, the United States aid agency has asked for bids on a five-year $150 million contract for indoor spraying of insecticides.

Michael Miller, a senior official at the agency, said contractors would hire Africans to do the spraying. He said the goal was to ensure that Africans also gained the know-how to run insecticide spraying programs.

Mr. Attaran, a harsh critic of the agency, has his doubts.

"Will there be a Halliburton of mosquito control?" he asked. "If there is, the effort will fail. To be cost-effective, it will need to use local labor and managers."

Others warn that the changes are not a panacea.

Andrew Natsios, who helped devise the new policy before resigning as administrator of the United States aid agency earlier this year, cautioned that malaria projects will need to provide much more than just nets and sprays.

"It's not only simplistic, it won't work over the longer term because the countries can't sustain it on their own" for lack of expertise and resources, he said. The aid agency has a crucial role, he argued, in providing technical advice and training.

And there are other questions. Will donors follow through on financing? Will families use the mosquito nets? Will there be enough health workers to deliver medicines?

"There's potential for incredible impact," said Dr. Regina Rabinovich of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, "or incredible failure."

For the first time since its publication began in 2001, the annual report tried to suggest that China is a growing nuclear threat to the US. In the context of the Bush administration's doctrine of "pre-emptive war", the shift indicates that the Bush administration and Pentagon are themselves preparing for nuclear war.

According to the Pentagon, the "threat" is an alleged discussion underway in Chinese military circles over an abandonment of China's longstanding policy of "no-first strike"?that is, no use of nuclear weapons except in response to nuclear attack.

Peter Rodman, US assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, told the American Forces Press Service on May 23: "One thing we point to [in the report] this year is their strategic forces. We sense that they are at the beginning of some serious modernization of their overall strategic forces... We take them at their word that they adhere to the no first use doctrine, but we see these occasional comments as an indication of a possible debate going on among Chinese strategists."

The Pentagon report highlighted a statement by Chinese general Zhu Chenghu in July 2005 as one of the "key developments" in China's strategic policy. Zhu declared that if the US threatened to attack China in a conflict over Taiwan, China would have to "respond with nuclear weapons".

The Pentagon conceded that Beijing has dismissed Zhu's comments as his "personal opinion" and reaffirmed its "no first use" policy during US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visit to China last October. It nevertheless concluded: "Zhu's remark, however, show that the circle of military and civilian national security professionals discussing the value of China's current 'no first use' nuclear policy is broader than previously assessed."
The report cited several Chinese academics. Chu Shulong, a scholar from Qinghua University, reportedly told the state media in July 2005 that "if foreign countries launch a full-scale war against China and deploy all types of advanced weapons except nuclear weapons, China may renounce this commitment [of no first use] at a time when the country's fate hangs in the balance".

Another academic, Shen Dingli, wrote in a publication China Security last year: "If China's conventional forces are devastated, and if Taiwan takes the opportunity to declare de jure independence, it is inconceivable that China would allow its nuclear weapons to be destroyed by a precision attack with conventional munitions, rather than use them as a true means of deterrence."

None of these comments constitutes evidence that Beijing is about to abandon the "no first use" policy announced when China first constructed nuclear weapons in the 1960s. Moreover, far from being an indication of military strength, the remarks about the possible use of nuclear weapons to counter a US conventional attack underscore China's weakness in comparison with the US.

Despite efforts to modernize weaponry and strategic doctrine, much of its hardware is old. Most of China's sophisticated military technology is still heavily reliant on foreign sources, especially Russian. The Chinese army is numerically large but only semi-mechanized; its commanders are inexperienced and the largely peasant Chinese soldiers are poorly trained.

The fact that the Pentagon report has chosen to highlight a few isolated comments reveals a great deal more about the Bush administration's own nuclear policy, than that of China. It should be noted that even in the midst of the Cold War, the US never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, it stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and South Korea, alleging precisely what is contained in the Chinese comments: the inability of US and allied forces to withstand a concerted conventional offensive by the Soviet or Chinese military.

Pointing to a possible Chinese threat is a convenient pretext for justifying the Pentagon's extensive efforts to upgrade and modernize its own arsenal to establish an unchallenged nuclear hegemony. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs entitled "The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy" provided a sobering assessment of the direction of US nuclear policy.

During the Cold War, the prevailing nuclear doctrine was characterized as MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). With thousands of nuclear weapons based on a variety of platforms, including submarines, warplanes and long-range missiles, neither side was in a position to annihilate the weaponry of the other in a first strike. The survival of even a portion of a nuclear arsenal following an attack meant a devastating retaliation on the aggressor.

The authors of the Foreign Affairs article pointed out that sections of the US establishment had never accepted the MAD doctrine and that the Pentagon now appeared to be striving for "nuclear primacy"?that is, the ability to obliterate the capacity of any nuclear-armed enemy to respond to a US first strike. The bulk of the article is devoted to a careful analysis, using publicly available sources, of Russia's ability to withstand and retaliate against a US nuclear first strike. It concluded that, with the decay of the Russia defences, its nuclear-armed submarine fleet and long-range missiles following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US had probably achieved "nuclear primacy".

The Foreign Affairs article also makes clear that China's nuclear weapons are even more vulnerable to a US attack. "A US first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People's Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs [ballistic-missile-launching submarines] or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational.

"China's medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified US government assessments, China's entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China's ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fueling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a US submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles."
Foreign Affairs has close links to the US political establishment. The article indicates that there is widespread discussion and planning in the top echelons of the Bush administration and Pentagon about a possible first strike on US enemies?whether Russia, China or other nuclear armed countries.

Exaggerated accounts of the Chinese "threat" are useful to justify the further development of the US nuclear arsenal.

The greatest danger of nuclear war does not come from China, but from the US. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington has been seeking to use its military superiority increasingly aggressively to offset its long-term economic decline, in particular to establish its dominance over the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The Bush administration's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and threats against Iran have antagonized US rivals in Europe and Asia.

The US preoccupation with China reflects deep concerns about Beijing's economic expansion and growing political influence in Asia and globally. The Pentagon's focus on China says more about US preparations for eventual war, including a possible nuclear attack, against the Beijing regime, than it does about China's relatively limited military capacity.

The radical Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, loosely affiliated to president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party and the armed wing of the governing Hamas were among those groups that delivered the announcement at the West Bank press conference.

"We have decided to tell the occupier 'no more truce from today' in response to the bloodletting of our women, our children and our elderly," said Ramzi Obeid of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

"We will not suffer your repeated crimes in silence. We are going to destroy you and no one can stop us, if you do not stop these massacres against our people," he added.

Meanwhile in Brussels, the European Commission announced yesterday plans to release 105 million euros in aid to the Palestinians, bypassing their Hamas-led government, and the first funds will be paid out by early July.

"The temporary international mechanism will bring relief," said External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

"The EU is making good on its promises to continue as a reliable partner for the Palestinian people."

But she added: "We would be able to do more for the Palestinians if their government committed itself to seeking peace by peaceful means."

Also on Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was due in Gaza for talks with the Hamas-led government in a bid to galvanise talks on how to end an acute domestic crisis and crippling foreign isolation.

Abbas, who was to arrive in Gaza City by evening, was expected to head into talks with Prime Minister Esmail Haniya and representatives from the various factions.

Crisis talks between Fatah party and Hamas had been expected to end on Wednesday but officials pushed the contacts into overtime with a view to averting a referendum.

Meetings have focused on a proposed policy programme that implicitly recognises Israel's right to exist.

Under a 2002 presidential order, the National Security Agency has been monitoring international communications of hundreds in the US, the paper says.

Before, the NSA had typically limited US surveillance to foreign embassies.

Questioned about the report, Condoleezza Rice said Mr Bush had never ordered anyone to do anything illegal.

But some NSA officials familiar with the operation have questioned whether the surveillance of calls and e-mails has crossed constitutional limits on legal searches, according to the Times.

American law usually requires a secret court, known as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to give permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil.

When asked about the programme on US TV, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said: "The president acted lawfully in every step that he has taken".

"He takes absolutely seriously his constitutional responsibility both to defend Americans and to do it within the law," she said.

She declined to discuss details of the New York Times report.

'Sea change'

The newspaper said nearly a dozen current and former administration officials discussed the programme with reporters.

They were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the scheme.

Under the programme, the NSA has eavesdropped on as many as 500 people inside the US at any given time in its search for evidence of terrorist activity, the paper said.

Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

"This is really a sea change," a former senior official who specialises in national security law told the paper.

"It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."

The New York Times said it delayed publishing the information on the move for a year, in response to White House concerns it could jeopardise investigations.

Some officials said the programme had helped to uncover several terror plots, including one by an Ohio lorry driver who was jailed in 2003 for supporting al-Qaeda and targeting a New York bridge for sabotage.

'Above the law'

Officials cited by the paper said the Bush administration saw the scheme as necessary to disclose terror threats.

However, the paper reported that questions about the legality of the scheme led the Bush administration to suspend it temporarily last year and impose new restrictions.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said eavesdropping in the US without a court order and without complying with the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was "both illegal and unconstitutional".

"The administration is claiming extraordinary presidential powers at the expense of civil liberties and is putting the president above the law," director Caroline Fredrickson said.

The group called on Congress to investigate the report.

The Bush administration has faced opposition over some anti-terrorism initiatives in the past, such as the Patriot Act, which is up for renewal by Congress.

The law grants government agencies extraordinary powers to spy on and prosecute those suspected of terrorism.

Opponents say many of its provisions infringe civil liberties.

Scores of mosques and private addresses have been checked for radiation, the US News and World Report says.

A Justice Department spokesman said the programme was necessary in the fight against al-Qaeda.

Last week, President George W Bush admitted allowing the wiretapping of Americans with suspected terror links.

Mr Bush has defended the covert programme and vowed to continue the practice, saying it was vital to protect the country.

No warrants

According to US News and World Report, the nuclear surveillance programme was set up after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

It began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team.

The Associated Press news agency said federal law enforcement officials have confirmed the programme's existence.

The air monitoring targeted private US property in the Washington DC area, including Maryland and Virginia suburbs, and the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York and Seattle, the magazine said.

At its peak, three vehicles in Washington monitored 120 sites a day.

Nearly all of the targets were key Muslim sites.

"In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the programme," the publication said.

"The targets were almost all US citizens," an unnamed source involved in the programme told the magazine.

"A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs," the source said.

Muslim anger

Federal officials cited by US News and World Report said that monitoring on public property, such as driveways and parking lots, was legal and that warrants were not needed for the kind of radiation sampling it conducted.

They also rejected the claim that the programme specifically targeted Muslims.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the programme was necessary as al-Qaeda remained committed to obtaining nuclear weapons.

An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the news "comes as a complete shock to us and everyone in the Muslim community".

He added: "This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims. I don't think this is the message the government wants to send at this time."

Seven men have been charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Towers in Chicago, and attack FBI offices.

The men, five from the US and two from Haiti, hoped to wage a "full ground war" against the US, according to the charges brought against them.

Officials said the men were foiled at an early stage and posed no danger.

Mr Gonzales said the group of "home-grown terrorists" were inspired by "a violent jihadist message".

"They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy," he told reporters.

'Dangerous'

According to charges brought against the men, the group of men aged 22 to 32 had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, but had no contacts with it.

They have been charged with conspiring to blow up both the Sears Tower and the FBI building in North Miami Beach. A federal indictment says they were conspiring to "levy war against the United States". They were arrested at a warehouse in Miami, during an undercover operation after their group was infiltrated by an agent posing as an al-Qaeda member

Mr Gonzales said the lack of direct link to al-Qaeda did not make the group any less dangerous.

"Today terrorist threats come from a smaller, more loosely defined cells not affiliated to al-Qaeda," he said.

"Left unchecked these home-grown terrorists may prove as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda."

'Wannabes'

Five of those charged appeared at a Miami federal court on Friday.

They wore ankle chains and were chained together at the wrists, the Associated Press reported.

Alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste apparently asked an undercover agent he thought was from al-Qaeda for help to build an "army to wage jihad", the indictment said.

He is said to have told the agent he and his "soldiers" wanted al-Qaeda training and planning for a "full ground war" against the US in order to "kill all the devils we can". His mission would "be just as good or greater than 9/11", Mr Batiste said, according to the indictment.

No weapons were found in the Miami warehouse, and the seven had not posed any immediate danger, the FBI said.

Deputy FBI leader John Pistole said the plot had been "aspirational" rather than "operational".

Neighbours in Miami's poor Liberty City area said the men apparently slept in the warehouse where they were arrested.

"They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard," said Tashawn Rose.

However a man claiming links to the arrested men told the news channel CNN that they were a peaceful religious group, who studied Allah.

The cautionary document was a product of the Business Roundtable, whose 160 corporate members include companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems to General Motors, Home Depot and Coca-Cola. All told, the group's high-rolling membership counts $4.5 trillion in annual revenues, more than 10 million employees and nearly a third the total value of the U.S. stock market.

Experts remain divided on the likelihood that a "cyber Katrina" will occur, as the round table itself acknowledges. But many sectors of the economy continue to urge the government to be better prepared should such an event occur

transportation to financial services--could face devastation if a natural disaster, terrorist or hacker succeeded in disrupting Net access, they said.

"There is no national policy on why, when and how the government would intervene to reconstitute portions of the Internet or to respond to a threat or attack," the report said. Private-sector companies may have individual readiness plans, but they aren't prepared to work together on a wide scale to restore normal activity, the businesses said.

The report called for the government to take a number of actions:

? Set up a global advance-warning mechanism, akin to those broadcasted for natural disasters, for Internet disruptions

? Issue a policy that clearly defines the roles of business and government representatives in the event of disruptions

? Establish formal training programs for response to cyberdisasters

? Allot more federal funding for cybersecurity protection

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, which bears primary responsibility for coordinating responses to cyberattacks, receives on average $70 million per year, or about 0.2 percent of the entire U.S. Department of Homeland Security budget, the report noted.

The suggestions drew praise from the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. That organization, composed of computer security companies, has long been lobbying for additional actions by Congress and the Bush administration in the cybersecurity realm.

"A massive cyberdisruption could have a cascading, long-term impact, without adequate coordination between government and the private sector," said Paul Kurtz, the alliance's executive director. "The stakes are too high for continued government inaction."

Homeland Security has borne the brunt of the criticism for alleged inaction, though the agency did lead a mock cyberattack and response earlier this year. An analysis of that exercise is expected this summer.

A new video on the website of the Palestinian terrorist and governing group Hamas promises the eventual defeat and subjugation of Western nations under Islam.

Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in the face of terrorist attacks is present as the prototype for future Israeli and Western behavior in the face of Islamic force, reports Palestinian Media Watch.

The video is a collection of statements by Hamas terrorist leader Yasser Ghalban, who was killed last week by Palestinians among ongoing internal fighting.

Ghalban declares, "We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the U.S.A. will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered ? ."

Identifying itself as coming from the "Al-Qassam Brigades Media Office," Hamas' "military wing," the leader states on the video:

"The Jihad for Allah ... is the way of Truth and the way for salvation and the way which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah's will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun."

Palestinian Media Watch comments that the ideology expressed in the video is similar to the al-Qaida ideology, "anticipating battles with other religions throughout the world," as seen in this example

Hamas, officially considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, now governs the Palestinian Authority.

As WorldNetDaily reported last month, the Hamas' children's website included comic strips encouraging hatred of Israelis, who are defined as "evil Zionists."

One strip featured two boys who come upon supposed toys in the street.

"Don't take any of them!" warns one boy. "These are not toys, but booby-trapped bombs that will explode in the hands of those who touch them. They are placed here by the evil Zionists to kill innocent Palestinian children."

The Hamas' children's website was launched in 2002, encouraging kids to follow the example of terrorist suicide bombers.

The Pope received the bishops today, at the close of their five-yearly visit to the Vatican, and spoke on a topic of "great present importance ... the family."

"Alongside exemplary family nuclei," the [Pontiff] said, "there are frequently others that are characterized by, unfortunately, the frailty of conjugal bonds, the plague of abortion and the demographic crisis."

Other sources of concern for the Bishop of Rome include the "lack of care in the transmission of authentic values to children; ? the precariousness of work; ? social mobility that weakens the bonds between generations; ? [and] young people's growing sense of inner emptiness."

"A modernity that is not rooted in authentic human values is destined to be dominated by the tyranny of instability and the loss of points of reference," Benedict XVI said. "For this reason, every ecclesial community, with its own faith and supported by the grace of God, is called to be a point of reference and to dialogue with the society in which it is integrated.

"The Church, teacher of life, draws from the natural law and from the word of God those principles that present the irreplaceable basis to build the family, according to the design of the creator."

The Pontiff encouraged the bishops to always be "courageous defenders of the family and life," and to continue with the efforts undertaken "in favor of the human and religious formation of engaged couples and young families."

Benedict XVI added: "It is an extremely meritorious work, which I hope will also be appreciated and supported by the institutions of the civil society."

Passed on Thursday, the bill, which also includes a 2.2 percent pay raise for troops, will have to be reconciled with the House of Representatives' 427.6 billion dollar military budget passed Tuesday that also includes 50 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government's fiscal year 2007 starts October 1.

The Senate measure was preceded by an often passionate debate on two Democratic resolutions that attempted to set a deadline for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.

The Republican-controlled Senate rejected one resolution, proposed by former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, calling for combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by July 1 next year, by a 86-13 vote.

The second bill, calling for troops to begin moving out of Iraq this year but without setting a hard timetable for final withdrawal, was dismissed by a 60-39 vote.

Neither bill had been given much chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate, but lawmakers said they nevertheless reflect the deep public disaffection with the US military engagement in Iraq.

Republicans, for their part, welcomed the chance to make the case, just a few months ahead of critical midterm elections, that they are the party with strong, coherent view on defense and security issues.

With the Iraq war increasingly unpopular with the US public, Democrats hope to take control of the Senate or House of Representatives in the November elections.

The Senate passed by voice vote an amendment by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden that would ban establishing permanent US military bases in Iraq and prevent the United States from controlling Iraq's crude oil resources.

"The Iraqi people remain suspicious of our intentions and are growing increasingly impatient, putting our men and women in uniform in greater danger," Biden said in support of his resolution.

"I do believe that we have a duty to proclaim -- and proclaim regularly and clearly -- that we have no intention of either maintaining permanent American military bases in Iraq or controlling its oil," he added.

"Osama bin Laden and like-minded jihadists use the US occupation and their assertion that we aim to steal the region's oil as rallying cries in their regular calls to arms," said the Senator from Delaware.

The Senate Thursday also unanimously adopted an amendment to the budget bill proposed by Republican Jeff Sessions calling for a 45 million dollar increase for the US missile defense system.

A test of a sea-based missile shield was carried out successfully Thursday when a US warship shot down a target missile warhead over the Pacific, the US military said.

The test came amid tension over North Korea's preparations to launch a long-range missile. A senior defense official told lawmakers Thursday that if the missile launch went ahead "we would seek to impose some cost on North Korea."

Not long after the group began their activity, members of the Pink Angels, which the statement describes as "a militant mob of homosexuals," confronted the protesters and attempted to drown out their message with whistles, while hiding the signs with large sheets of pink Styrofoam.

"Even though the Christians obeyed all laws, city ordinances and lawful requests by the Philadelphia police officers on hand," said Life and Liberty Ministries, "they were promptly and without warning arrested and hauled off to jail, where they spent 21 hours before being released on Monday morning."

Eight charges were filed against the protesters, including three felonies and five misdemeanors. The charges were: criminal conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, reckless endangerment of another person, ethnic intimidation, riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, and obstructing highways.

The ethnic intimidation charge, explains Robert Knight, writing for Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute, was made possible by Pennsylvania's Ethnic Intimidation and Institutional Vandalism Act that state's hate crimes" law to which the newest "victim" category of "sexual orientation" was recently added.

Although some of the charges reportedly have been dropped since the 11 defendants were released, the Culture and Family Institute report quotes Philadelphia Police spokeswoman Officer Maria Ibrahim as saying the remaining charges are "criminal conspiracy," "failure to disperse," "disorderly conduct" and "obstructing a highway."

Responding to the riot charge, the group's statement said: "Despite the fact that our behavior was above reproach and we were attacked by a mob of whistle-blowing, obscenity-screaming God haters, the Christians, and only the Christians, were charged."

Said Dennis Green, director of Life and Liberty Ministries: "The Scriptures are filled with accounts of faithful followers of the Messiah who proclaimed the Gospel despite severe persecution. We are called upon and commanded to do no less. To shrink back would not be biblical Christianity."

The organization Repent America sponsored the protest.

"This is one of the most remarkable and unlawful actions by police that I have ever witnessed," said Michael Marcavage, director of Repent America. "Their blatant disregard of the law by allowing hecklers to impede our way, block our message and then arrest us, is inexcusable, especially by police officers who are specially trained to protect civil rights.

"Christians are now being labeled as 'haters' and any speech that homosexuals perceive to be intimidating, such as our Christian witness at OutFest, makes them a prime target for 'hate crimes legislation.'"

Continued Marcavage: "We are clearly 'not guilty' of these crimes, and with the help of our video footage, we shall be vindicated of these trumped-up charges."

The CFI account quotes Brian Fahling of the American Family Association's Center for Law and Policy, a public interest law firm which is representing the Christian defendants.

"We're going to do whatever it takes to ensure that the Philadelphia Police Department and the city are held accountable for this," Fahling told CFI. "As far as we can tell, this was utterly uncalled for and has no legal justification."

The group is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 18 at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center.

Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year.

Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.

"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.

"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."

Jefferts Schori's election seemed certain to exacerbate splits within a Episcopal Church that is already deeply divided over homosexuality with several dioceses and parishes threatening to break away.

It could also widen divisions with other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, which do not allow women bishops. In the worldwide Anglican church women are bishops only in Canada, the United States and New Zealand.

Three years ago when the Church last met in convention, a majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.

The Robinson issue has been particularly criticized in Africa where the church has a growing membership and where homosexuality is often taboo.

Jefferts Schori, who was raised a Roman Catholic and graduated in marine biology with a doctorate specialization in squids and oysters, supported the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.

The 52-year-old bishop is married to Richard Schori, a retired theoretical mathematician. They have one daughter, Katharine Johanna, 24, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and a pilot like her mother.

Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.

"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said.

"The Bible tells us about how to treat other human beings, and that's certainly the great message of Jesus -- to include the unincluded."

Hank Dittmar is an American transport expert and head of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, which was set up by Prince Charles to promote traditional building design.

.In 2050, I would hope to see cities that restored a more intimate relationship with the countryside around them both in the use of local materials in building construction and local traditions of architecture.

We should be moving towards cities that are based around walking than around the motor car, and around living in a way that relies on the sort of energy budget and food budget that's available to us close by.

One way to move in that direction is to start to think about some timeless patterns of how cities ought to be. And that means thinking about cities as being typological [examples of different types of buildings, streets, squares and spaces] rather than a series of one-off sculptural objects that generate the "wow" factor.

We need to think of ways of having our workplace close to where we live. If we do that, we reduce transport intensity and make it easier for people to be close to their families. You will then see polycentric cities emerging rather than mono-centric cities, where everyone leaves their home to go to work.

The thing that I worry about most for the future is if energy becomes unaffordable and more scarce. We could move into a situation where those who can afford energy sort of withdraw and continue to use it and those who don't move into more deprivation.

This could lead to further destabilisation. A lot of the cities where people are urbanising are being fed by petroleum-based agriculture and petroleum-based economies - and that's mighty scary.

Michael Dear is Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California. He is also author of The Postmodern Urban Condition.
One of the effects of global capitalism is the creation of an increasingly polarised world. On the one hand, you have what my colleague Mike Davis calls a planet of slums, and on the other hand, you have what we call cities of gold.

While these terms can apply on a global scale, they can also apply to cities, such as Los Angeles and Mexico city, where there is a lot of slum and a lot of gold.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity.

What this polarisation within cities creates is what I call post-modern urbanisation and I think we're going to see a lot more of it by 2050. Basically, in conventional cities - modernist cities - the norm has been for the centre to organise the hinterland.

However, in post-modern urbanism, this has been reversed - the hinterland organises what's left of the core. Look at Southern California, the Pearl River Delta, or Barcelona, there is a huge decentralised spread of urban development and no real single core to speak of.

LA, for example, has 20 or 30s downtowns - there isn't the conventional pattern of people travelling into the city and out of the city in the morning. People cross the city in a wide variety of ways and this means a lot more choices - a lot more dispersed patterns of behaviour. It also means a lack of central authority in organising a city region or its government.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity. We simply have a collage or pastiche of almost random urban spread which ultimately collides and creates cities and then we start adding the trappings of conventional cities.

So, you have an extraordinary fragmented urban region which extends in the case of LA over 14,000 square miles.

This offers up opportunities for intense local autonomies - on the one hand you have the rich succeeding but on the other, you have poorer people claiming their spaces.

Local autonomies develop in a metropolis. In our region that tends to be Hispanics, and that's one of the most important demographic trends that you can imagine.

Nigel Thrift is vice-chancellor of the university of Warwick and one of the leading human geographers and social scientists.
In the developed world my guess is by 2050 energy sustainability will have become a big deal and the result of that will be that the kind of sprawl that we have seen in the United States in particular will actually be halted, on the grounds of energy costs.

In Europe, things ought to be better because on the whole, European cities are much more compact and should be able to last out some of problems that the larger sprawling cities in the developed world will have. Even if you look at London - it doesn't spread over a vast area.

What I would really like to see is some kind of a Marshall Fund, but for cities around the world.

I think the issue then becomes whether the more severe forecasts on global climate change do start to bite and if they did then some cities especially coastal cities like London would start to have problems in terms of flooding and so on - indeed that has already been forecast.

I don't think that this means doom or anything of the kind. But it will involve some quite substantial government action at some point to start thinking about the way that cities ought to be and at the moment it seems to me that that thinking is only being half done.

There are some important urbanists, like Richard Rogers, who are quite right when they say we need to do more thinking in this area about the form of cities in the future and how they link up. Some types of transport will turn out to be really problematic. We may have seen the heydays of certain kinds of air travel over the next 10 to 15 years.

With regards to other parts of the world, the future looks patchy. In parts of Asia and Africa, you can see examples of countries and cities that will be able to weather the worst - as well as some of the worst weather. On the other hand, there are some cities that are highly vulnerable - what is needed is worldwide action to prevent some of the problems there.

What I would really like to see is some kind of a Marshall Fund, but for cities around the world.

Stephen Graham is a professor of human geography at the University of Durham. He is editor of The Cybercities Reader.

There was a lot of hype in the last 30 or 40 years somehow implying that the more important your technology and more important your information technology, the less and less you need to move around, the less and less that you need to meet face-to-face with people and the less and less you need to rely on the city.

There was an assumption with the shift towards broadband, virtual reality would somehow allow people to withdraw. The evidence seems to go completely against that expectation.

I think there is a radical democratisation going on based on much lower cost access and based on things like wireless technologies which are much cheaper to lay out across cities.

This may seem paradoxical but the evidence indicates that the more economies, social interactions and cultures rely on advanced technologies, the more cities seem to grow. I think there is a demand to be face-to-face with people no matter how capable the technology - and, of course, by 2050, we will have had fairly radical technical shifts. Those processes of change seem to go together rather than in opposition.

In India, China and Africa, the picture has been very polarised. Only a small number of elite people have been connected to the new technologies. However, I think there is a radical democratisation going on based on much lower cost access and based on things like wireless technologies which are much cheaper to lay out across cities.

It is also based on all kinds of interesting entrepreneurship where people in informal settlements or squatter settlements set up little internet spaces. These bring whole communities that have an awful amount of energy and into the digital age.

I think there are signs for optimism based on this extraordinary rapid democratisation.

Walden Bello, Executive Director of the Bangkok-based research and policy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.

An urban nightmare in less than 50 years' time is certainly what will engulf us if current trends continue.

In the South, urban populations are growing at twice the rate of national populations. People continue to be expelled from the countryside in large numbers, and a key reason for this is that agriculture has simply been made unattractive

by the lack of agrarian reform the dumping of cheap subsidised agricultural products from the North courtesy of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture decades of city-biased and industry-first economic development policies that consistently pushed down the price of grain and other farm products. At the same time, the capacity of industry and manufacturing to absorb the influx from the countryside is being eroded by de-industrialisation.

Local manufacturers are being driven out of business by radically lowered tariffs on foreign products under economic programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund and WTO, and foreign investors are closing up shop and moving to China to take advantage of dirt-cheap wages.

One of the results of this migration-without-absorption is the mushrooming of vast shantytowns populated by what some have called a "subproletariat."

Assaulted by climate change, massive air pollution, and biologically dead rivers, the cities of the South are becoming environmental disaster areas. The urban poor living in such settlements under terrible conditions of squalor, crime, and insecurity now make up 30-40% of the population of cities such as Manila, Jakarta, Mexico City, and Lagos.

With their budgets gutted by austerity programs pushed by the IMF and World Bank and unable or unwilling to tax the rich, city governments cannot provide basic services needed by this swelling urban mass such as water, electricity, and infrastructure.

Northern cities have their equivalent of these third world shantytowns: inner city ghettoes, overcrowded housing projects, and suburban slums where racial minorities and immigrants and their children cluster, unable to find jobs or able to find only low-paying unskilled jobs unwanted by the dominant society.

The capital of the empire is becoming a paradigm for the rest of the urban America: Washington, DC, is a predominantly black city dominated by white minority that works in the city by day but lives in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland by night.

Assaulted by climate change, massive air pollution, and biologically dead rivers, the cities of the South are becoming environmental disaster areas.

Manila, Shenyang, Mexico City are the rule. In the North, the gains registered in restoring the environments in some cities in the last few years are now threatened by the combination of climate change, tight city budgets imposed by fiscal conservatives, and influential pro-development lobbies.

The urban landscape depicted by Paul Theroux in his classic 1986 novel O-Zone, where the rich live in artificial "green" enclaves protected by private corporate armies from the environmentally devastated areas surrounding them that are populated by the rest, will soon move from fiction to fact.

These trends can be reversed, but only by moves that would truly be revolutionary, among them a rigorous regime of very deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions; an end to the poverty and inequality creating programs of the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization; a new economic relationship based on justice and equity between the North and the South that would involve strict controls on the operations of transnational corporations.

If the 20th century is any indication, sceptics say, such deep-seated changes can only come after terrible wars and social turmoil.

But perhaps the increasingly common realisation among the rich and well-off that their privileges can no longer be purchased at the expense of the misery of the many and the destruction of the planet might just be the spectre that can bring about a relatively peaceful transition this time around.

Saskia Sassen is a leading theorist of globalisation and its impact on cities. She is the author of the newly published: Territory, Authority and Rights - from Medieval to Global Assemblages. The urban landscape, no matter where we are, will look different from what it does today. This will certainly be the case in the big cities that are also powerful economic centres.

I think we are moving in that direction and that means there will be a lot of innovation - it will be a bit more of a free-for-all and we will invent new political forms of membership.

The way we experience the city today in Europe will be very rare in the future. European cities will feel more like cities of the global south. Europe will see a lot more immigration and more big cities - and they will have a sense of the frontier town. The city will be a frontier space.

We will have dreadful situations in some of these cities because there will be an awful lot of dispossessed people and a lot of struggle. The centre will not hold, necessarily.

We are just at the beginning of the future - but we can't quite see it. We are entering a phase in which the political will be profoundly changed - in the same way that when citizenship and secular statehood was implemented and there were no more divine monarchs.

What we are going to see is the reinvention of the notion of political. The notion of rights will become rights to the city and that will mean rights to things like housing and rights to water.

Here, in London, for example, you have a sense that things are really governed - in New York less so, in Mexico City even less so and in Sao Paulo, even less so.

I think we are moving in that direction and that means there will be a lot of innovation - it will be a bit more of a free-for-all and we will invent new political forms of membership, which will enable people who are truly marginal to claim their rights to the city.

Political turmoil in the Middle East has caused sharp fluctuations in petroleum prices since the 1970s.

Crisis after crisis, from confrontations between Israel and Arab nations to the unsettling situations in Iran and Iraq, have unsettled the Middle East and the world.

These conflicting interests have become even more complicated in recent times.

The United States, although a key player in preventing armed conflict in the Middle East, has found some of its strategies have cast a shadow over the petroleum market.

Iran is a case in point.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, Israel along with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations will strongly object. Tensions in the Middle East will intensify rapidly.

Hoping to avoid such an outcome, the United States has argued for economic sanctions as a way to resolve suspicions over Iran's nuclear weapons development.

However, a visit to the Strait of Hormuz clearly shows the limits of that strategy.

The gateway to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz is an important passage for oil tankers. About 80 percent of Japan's petroleum imports pass through this narrow, sharply curved sea lane between Iran to the north and the United Arab Emirates and Oman to the south.

On Oman's northern tip is the small port of Khasab. At around 8 a.m. each day, about 200 small boats from Iran race across the strait to dock in Khasab.

The boats usually carry a contraband cargo of sheep and goats. The smuggled livestock can be sold in Oman for three times the price it fetches in Iran. Using Japanese-made outboard motors, the boats cut across the paths of huge oil tankers to unload their cargo in Khasab.

For the return trip, the boats load up on Chinese-made clothing and shoes brought in via the United Arab Emirates. They sail in fleets back to Iran.

With many Iranians now settled in Oman and the UAE, this illicit trade has gone on for years. Omani authorities do little to clamp down on the smuggling.

A harbor official, a man originally from Iran, explains:

"The Strait of Hormuz has always been a lifeline for Iran to get around economic sanctions," the harbor official said. "Regardless of how strongly the United States calls for such sanctions, it is meaningless here."

The small boats are not only used for smuggling. They also sometimes present a military threat.

In the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, boats were equipped with small missiles that were used to attack American ships.

A rubber raft was used in the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in waters off Yemen.

Even though the United States has a huge military advantage, there are no assurances it can win a guerrilla war. That, in a nutshell, is the problem the United States faces in the Middle East.

Key to the stable supply of Middle Eastern oil has long been friendly relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the world's largest petroleum exporter.

However, key events have loosened the tight bonds of what was once dubbed the "Washington-Riyadh axis."

Topping the list is 9/11. Of the 19 terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, 15 were from Saudi Arabia.

Public outrage in the United States led to charges that the Saudi Arabian government was being "too soft on terrorists."

Yet, Saudi Arabia has also taken new steps in its own "petroleum diplomacy" with overtures to China, an increasingly influential consumer of oil.

In January, after King Abdullah ascended to the throne in Saudi Arabia, his first official overseas destination was not the United States, but China.

That decision was symbolic of a new age in petroleum geopolitics.

In April, Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a return visit to Riyadh. Reports said he and his Saudi counterparts talked about natural gas development in Saudi Arabia and the construction of oil refineries in China.

The slogan of the energy security seminar held in January in Dubai was "Look East." The Middle East is clearly interested in looking toward the Asian market, and especially China.

As a researcher from Saudi Arabia put it: "Our anti-American feelings fit perfectly with the appeal of the fast growing Chinese market. Differences in political systems are irrelevant."

While Saudi Arabia will not likely immediately sever ties concerning mutual interests with the United States, questions will certainly arise over what might happen to petroleum supplies should cracks appear in the relationship between the two nations.

Iraq is the second major headache for the United States. Prior to the Iraq war, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush predicted the conflict would be quickly concluded with a stable new government soon in place.

That would bring Iraq's petroleum production within three years to its levels before the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, reaching 3.5 million barrels a day, according to U.S. senior officials. However, security in Iraq is still precarious. Today, three years on, petroleum production remains at about 2 million bpd, in part because of terrorist acts that sever pipelines.

U.S. calls to turn the Middle East into a democracy, part of its strategy in the war on terrorism, have had the reverse effect to what was expected.

Washington assumed that as democratization progressed, fewer people would be sympathetic to terrorism because of the disruption it causes society. With order and balance restored, a pro-American government would have naturally emerged.

That strategy has collapsed.

Instead, we are seeing an even more virulent form of anti-American sentiment in nations across the Middle East that are still controlled by strong-armed rulers.

In democratic elections held in Palestine, Hamas won the most seats. The radical Muslim organization is decidedly anti-American.

While a U.S. presence remains necessary for stability in the Middle East and a stable oil supply, the future of the region is growing increasingly unclear as Washington's control over the region declines.