The Marty Heiser Show

The Bush administration had until now refused to talk directly to the Iranians about their nuclear program, although there have been sporadic contacts among relatively low-level officials on other subjects.

While the United States tries to restart talks with North Korea over its nuclear program, the few official ties between the nations are disappearing.

The Bush administration has forged a close intelligence partnership with the Islamic regime that once welcomed Osama bin Laden here, even though Sudan continues to come under harsh U.S. and international criticism for human rights violations.The Sudanese government, an unlikely ally in the U.S. fight against terror, remains on the most recent U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, however, it has been providing access to terrorism suspects and sharing intelligence data with the United States. Last week, the CIA sent an executive jet here to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration, U.S. government officials confirmed.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday added to an Iraq spending bill a controversial provision to help pave the way for undocumented agriculture workers to win legal status, a move that may reopen the divisive immigration debate on the Senate floor.

The so-called Ag-Jobs amendment, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would create a process that allows undocumented workers to continue to work on farms. Without the amendment, Feinstein warned that the U.S. would lose $5-9 billion to foreign competition, tens of thousands of farms would shut down and 80,000 workers would be transferred to Mexico. The bill would sunset in five years.

"Agriculture needs a consistent workforce," Feinstein said. "Without it, they can't plant, they can't prune, they can't pick and they can't pack.

"This is an emergency situation," she added.

GOP looking past Bush
from The Hill
A growing number of Senate Republicans are preparing to break from President Bush on an emergency war-spending bill.

It is the latest in a series of fights that demonstrate GOP willingness to look ahead to the next administration while ignoring the one still in office.

Recognizing that the emergency measure will probably be the only spending bill approved before the November elections, many Republican senators say they are willing to add billions of dollars in domestic spending because the sagging economy is dominating the minds of voters.

Bush has firmly stated he would veto such a measure.

Nine ministers from the Pakistani Muslim League (PML-N) of Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, have quit the cabinet over the delayed reinstatement of judges sacked last year.

The ministers submitted their resignations to Yousuf Raza Gilani, the incumbent prime minister, on Tuesday.

However, Gilani has reportedly refused to accept the resignations.

Sharif said on Monday that the PML-N was "bound by this date," referring to a deadline he set with his main coalition partner, the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, for judges sacked by Pervez Musharraf, the president, to be reinstated.

However, he said his party would not take any decision that would strengthen the "dictatorship", referring to Musharraf.

Sharif party to quit cabinet

Nawaz Sharif, a former Pakistani prime minister, has announced that ministers from his political party will resign over the delayed reinstatement of judges sacked last year.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Sharif said: "Our ministers will submit their resignations to the prime minister tomorrow."

However he said his party would not take any decision that would strengthen the "dictatorship", referring to Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.

Sharif's party, the PML-N, pledged to continue supporting the six-week old coalition from outside the government, the prime minister's office said.

It said: "Senior Federal Minister for Food, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan called on Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani this morning and assured him that PML-N members would continue to support the coalition government, regardless of the decision taken by the party leadership today."

Government coalition partners Gilani and Sharif have been deadlocked over the restoration of judges dismissed by Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, in November under emergency rule.

What the Russian papers say
20:00 | 04/ 05/ 2008

MOSCOW, May 4 (RIA Novosti) Washington might bomb Iran to stop gas cartel / Saakashvili targets Medvedev after failing to persuade Putin / Freedom House criticizes the United States / Basic Element quits tender for purchasing RTB Bor

RBC Daily

Washington might bomb Iran to stop gas cartel

On April 30, a high-ranking Pentagon official was reported as saying that the United States was planning to attack Iran if the latter does not curtail its nuclear program and stop arming Iraqi Shias.

Experts say the true goal behind the alleged plans is to stop Gazprom establishing itself in the region and the efforts of Tehran and Moscow to set up a gas cartel.
The same day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in New Delhi that India was prepared to sign an agreement on the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan. The Pakistani prime minister expressed support for the project. The Russian gas monopoly has supported the project and proposed investing in it for a share in the consortium.

Igor Tomberg, a senior research fellow at the Center for Energy Studies of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Russia might propose building a kind of a Nord Stream pipeline along the Arabian Sea bed, bypassing unstable Pakistan.
The United States, which has its own plans for Iran's gas, is categorically against the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.
Another headache is the proposed gas cartel, whose charter may be approved this summer at the Moscow meeting of the energy ministers of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

Iran is also trying to involve Gazprom in its projects. In late April, the concern agreed with the National Iranian Oil Company to set up a joint venture for the development of three license areas of the South Pars gas deposit.
Taken together, this is of major importance for global power generation, which will increasingly depend on gas in the 21st century, said Konstantin Simonov, head of Russia's National Energy Security Fund.

This is forcing Washington to take unusual steps. On April 30, the second conference of the World Congress of Azerbaijanis (WCA) was held in Baku with the assistance of Azerbaijan's State Committee for the Diaspora. The WCA was set up in the Untied States in 1997 to fight for the independence of southern Azerbaijan, i.e., the northern provinces of Iran populated by Azeris. Congress participants actually presented territorial claims to Iran.

In 2006, military analyst Ralph Peters published an article, "Blood borders. How a better Middle East would look," in which he writes that in a better Middle East "Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan."

That the White House supports the idea became clear when it actually divided Iraq into Sunnite, Shiite and Kurdish pseudo-states in 2007. The United States views Azerbaijan as a key ally in the South Caucasus and a potential NATO member, as well as one of the four bridgeheads for a possible attack on Iran.