http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE73K11820110421?sp=true

Russia says Libya advisers outside U.N. mandate

Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:41pm GMT

 

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* Says world being pulled into Libya land conflict




* Yemen should solve problems with internal dialogue


LJUBLJANA, April 21 (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday that Western countries sending military advisers to Libya were going beyond a U.N. Security Council mandate and dragging the world into a ground war.

"We are not happy about the latest events in Libya, which are pulling the international community into a conflict on the ground. This may have unpredictable consequences," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Slovenia.

"We can remember how instructors were first sent to some other countries, and later soldiers were sent there and hundreds of people died on both sides," Lavrov told a news conference.

Britain said on Tuesday it would send military officers to advise Libyan rebels. [ID:nLDE73I1A7] France, the other main leader of the Western coalition conducting air strikes, has decided to send up to 10 military advisers. [ID:nLDE73J1M3]

Veto-wielding permanent U.N. Security Council member Russia abstained from the vote on the Western-initiated resolution authorising military intervention in Libya, but has repeatedly criticised the extend of the coalition operation that ensued.

Moscow has also warned against outside interference in Arab nations caught up in a wave of unrest.

In Ljubljana, Lavrov said anti-government protesters in Yemen shoud start a dialogue with the government in order to reach an agreement on the future and not rely on help from abroad.

(Reporting by Marja Novak; Editing by Steve Gutterman)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/opinion/20dowd.html?_r=1&src=recg

Op-Ed Columnist

Stripped of Dignity

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: April 19, 2011

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

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¶ A young computer programmer on his way to a pheasant-hunting trip last November offered a cri de coeur about government groping.


¶ “If you touch my junk,” he told the T.S.A. agent at the San Diego airport just before he abandoned his trip, “I’ll have you arrested.”

¶ It’s hard to feel safe in the skies when you have to worry not only about terrorists but our own air-traffic controllers conking out, watching movies and making boneheaded mistakes. A controller’s error on Monday evening put Michelle Obama’s plane frighteningly close to a 200-ton military cargo jet.

¶ Ever since the Thanksgiving rebellion over intrusive new pat-downs that some have dubbed “gate-rape,” Americans have been debating security requirements versus privacy rights.

¶ Consternation crackled again last week when a Kentucky couple posted video of their 6-year-old daughter being given the deep probe by a female T.S.A. agent in New Orleans.

¶ “We felt that it was inappropriate,” the girl’s mother, Selena Drexel, told ABC News. “You know, we struggle to teach our child to protect themselves, to say ‘No, it’s not O.K. for folks to touch me in this way, in these areas.’ Yet, here we are saying, ‘Well, it’s O.K. for these people.’ ”

¶ State Representative Sharon Cissna of Alaska has become a heroine for many women with breast cancer since she spoke out about the “twisted policy” of having the “invasive, probing hands of a stranger” on her, after scanners twice showed the scars from her mastectomy and she was ordered to undergo “humiliating” body searches.

¶ The second time the Anchorage Democrat was told to do the pat-down in mid-February, returning to Juneau after getting medical treatment in Seattle, she refused. She rented a car, drove three hours into British Columbia, took a plane from Vancouver to the small town of Prince Rupert and then got on a ferry for a two-day trip to Juneau.

¶ Her fellow lawmakers in the Last Frontier, where people have to travel by air quite a bit, passed a bill she co-sponsored pushing the T.S.A. to rethink its methods because “no one should have to sacrifice their dignity in order to travel.”

¶ Cissna, 69, who said the aggressive pat-down also stirred unpleasant memories of a teenage molestation, said she has gotten more than a thousand letters. The Alaska Legislature has asked the U.S. Senate to hold hearings.

¶ “I don’t have a huge war against T.S.A.,” she said on Monday. “I have a huge war against government that isn’t looking carefully enough at the people that it serves.”

¶ She asserted that the system does not seem smartly tailored to focus on dangerous people rather than “good, law-abiding people.” So kids, seniors and those with disabilities, joint replacements and other medical conditions — things they already feel embarrassed about — end up getting harassed.

¶ “Not only breast cancer veterans like myself,” she said, “but people who’ve had colostomies, any kind of alteration to their bodies that makes them look not absolutely 100 percent normal. And it is assaultive.”

¶ One of my relatives, a distinguished federal official, recently sent a letter of complaint to the T.S.A. about her experience submitting to a body search at Washington’s Reagan airport after the scanner reflected the shadow of the ostomy bag she wears on her abdomen.

¶ Fearing that would happen, she had printed out the notification card on the T.S.A. Web site, as she wrote, “so as to discreetly inform the T.S.A. agent of my medical condition. The agent would not even look at the card. ... The screening agent then did a hand search of my groin, breasts, under the waistband of my slacks and around my ostomy bag. ... Does having an ileostomy now make you a terrorist suspect?”

¶ She has been rethinking how long she wants to work for the government in a job that requires a lot of air travel and says she would consider joining a class-action lawsuit against the T.S.A.

¶ John Pistole, the T.S.A. chief and 26-year veteran of the F.B.I., said he called Tom Sawyer, a 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor who had his urostomy bag dislodged, and urine spilled on him, after a rough T.S.A. search in Detroit last November.

¶ “I asked him to come in and provide some personal perspective that could be used in training to give greater sensitivity,” said Pistole, who flew Sawyer from Lansing, Mich., to Washington.

¶ He said they are trying to move past a “one-size-fits-all” program and implement a “risk-based, intelligence-driven process” by the end of the year that would have more refined targeting. If passengers are willing to share the same information they give to airline frequent-flier programs, he said, maybe some day they will be able to “keep their jacket on and their laptop in their briefcase and hang on to that unfinished bottle of water.

¶ “I’d like to get to the point,” he said wistfully, “where most people could leave their shoes on.”

Russia Warns NATO Over the Size of Libya Attacks - By Judy Dempsey - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16nato.html#h[]

Russia Warns NATO Over the Size of Libya Attacks

By JUDY DEMPSEY

Published: April 15, 2011

BERLIN — As NATO leaders sought additional aircraft Friday to oppose the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, Russia warned the alliance not to use too much military force there.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said it was crucial not to use “excessive military force which will lead to further additional casualties among civilians.”


“We believe it is important to urgently transfer things into the political course and proceed with a political and diplomatic settlement,” he said at a news conference at the end of a two-day meeting here of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s foreign ministers.

Russia has strongly opposed the NATO mission in Libya from the start, getting support from Brazil, China and India.

On Friday, Mr. Lavrov suggested that NATO’s actions had exceeded the U.N. Security Council’s resolution, which calls for a no-flight zone and protection of the civilian population. He said that at one point some counties had wanted to send ground forces into Libya, in breach of the mandate, though he then conceded that that did not happen.

NATO officials dismissed Mr. Lavrov’s criticism. “We are strictly adhering to the U.N mandate,” said NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Mr. Rasmussen was still trying Friday to obtain more aircraft from alliance members. He said he had indications that allies would provide extra strike aircraft for the operation.

“I’m hopeful that we will get the necessary assets in the very near future,” Mr. Rasmussen said at the news conference after the meeting. He declined to name any countries.

Britain and France had asked its NATO allies to provide more strike aircraft so that the coalition could hit targets in Libya with more precision. But it was clear Friday that several big alliance members, including Italy, Spain and Poland, were not willing to provide strike aircraft.

Despite the differences between Russia and NATO over Libya, both sides had lengthy discussions Friday at the NATO-Russia council, which is supposed to foster closer cooperation and trust between both sides.

At the meeting, NATO discussed the controversial issue of U.S. plans to deploys parts of a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for cooperation between NATO and Russia on the issue, saying such that would protect Europe and Russia against threats.

“From the NATO side, our position is very clear: We are thinking about two separate systems, a NATO system and a Russian system, but with a common objective,” Mrs. Clinton told the foreign ministers Friday. “So these two systems should coordinate and cooperate closely, exchange data and thereby make the overall architecture effective.”

She said the two missile defense centers — one for data sharing and one for advance planning and coordinating operations — could serve as linchpins for a cooperative approach to European missile defense. “They could offer a higher level of protection for NATO and Russia than if we acted separately.”

“We want to work together to set up mechanisms that will ensure long-term cooperation on missile defense between NATO and Russia,” she said. “We are optimistic that the NATO-Russia council can agree on a way forward based on the principle of equal partnership.”

Mrs. Clinton also raised the prospect of new negotiations to strengthen conventional arms control in Europe. But Mrs. Clinton insisted that “to get there, Russia must be willing to talk to its neighbors about its equipment and forces in disputed territories.”

Mrs. Clinton was referring to the presence of Russian troops in Transnistria, which is attempting to break away from Moldova, as well as the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that are supported by Russia.

On a more harmonious note, Russia and NATO agreed that Moscow would supply helicopters to Afghanistan and help assist the transit of military equipment and logistical supplies into the country.

At the end of the summit meeting, Mrs. Clinton gave an optimistic assessment, saying the alliance was united in its goal.

And in a move aimed at starting a major debate on nuclear weapons, Mrs. Clinton said NATO would begin what she called a NATO posture review process “to determine what mix of conventional, nuclear and missile defense forces NATO will need going forward.”

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.