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Friday, February 23, 2007 - 3

NEWS BRIEFS
BERLIN
Rice: U.S., Europe
and Russia ready to
bargain with Iran
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said yesterday the United
States, European and Russian
diplomats have a common goal to
encourage Iranback to thebargain-
ing table over its disputed nuclear
program.
"We reconfirmed we will use
available channels and the Security
Council to try to achieve that goal,"
the top U.S. diplomat said. Rice
spoke following a breakfast meet-
ing with her counterparts from
Germany, Russia and the European
Union.
The group reviewed Iran's com-
pliance with a U.N. Security Coun-
cil demand that it stop enriching
uranium, a key step toward pro-
ducing either nuclear power or a
nuclear weapon.
BAGHDAD
More rape charges
leveled at Iraqi
troops
Four Iraqi soldiers have been
accused of raping a 50-year-old
Sunni woman and the attempted
rape of her two daughters in the
second allegation of sexual assault
leveled against Iraqi forces this
week, an official said yesterday.
Brig. Gen. Nijm Abdullah said
the attack allegedly occurred about
10 days ago in the northern city of
Tal Afar during a search for weap-
ons and insurgents.
A lieutenant and three enlisted
men denied the charge but later
confessed after they were con-
fronted by the woman, a Turkom-
an. Abdullah said a fifth soldier
suspected something was wrong,
burst into the house and forced
the others at gunpoint to stop the
assault.
WASHINGTON
Obama asked
to apologize for
comments of mogul
The rival presidential campaigns
of Hillary Rodham Clinton and
Barack Obama traded accusations
of nasty politics yesterday over
Hollywood donor David Geffen,
who once backed Bill Clinton but
now supports his wife's top rival.
The Clinton campaign demand-
ed thatObamadenounce comments
made by the DreamWorks movie
studio founder, who told New York
Times columnist Maureen Dowd in
yesterday's editions that while "ev-
erybody in politics lies," the former
president and his wife "do it with
such ease, it's troubling."
The Clinton camp also called on
Obama to give back Geffen's $2,300
contribution.
Campaigning in Iowa, Obama
refused.
"It's not clear to me why I'd be
apologizing for someone else's re-
mark," the Illinois senator said.
SAN JOSE, Calif.
Cisco, Apple, settle
iPhone name
dispute

Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple
Inc. have agreed to share the
"iPhone" name, but both compa-
nies are staying tightlipped about
what future products might come
from the resulting deal to collabo-
rate on "interoperability" between
the companies' products.
Analysts said the settlement
announced late yesterday in Cis-
co's trademark-infringement law-
suit could help both companies
strengthen their positions in the
increasingly fierce battle to deliv-
er video and other applications
directly to consumers' homes.
Zeus Kerravala, a network
infrastructure analyst with Yan-
kee Group, said there are ample
opportunities for the companies
to dream up collaborative projects
to win over consumers.
One possibility, he said, could be
a device from Cisco's Linksys divi-
sion that users call into to record
podcasts that are then automati-
cally uploaded to iTunes.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports

U.S. and Ethiopia
teamed in Somalia

GETTING WARMER

U.S. struck al-Qaeda
targets from eastern
Ethiopia
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times
WASHINGTON - The U.S.
military quietly waged a campaign
from Ethiopia last month to cap-
ture or kill top leaders of al-Qaida
in the Horn of Africa, includ-
ing the use of an airstrip in east-
ern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes
against Islamic militants in neigh-
boring Somalia, according to U.S.
officials.
The close and largely clandes-
tine relationship with Ethiopia
also included significant sharing
of intelligence on the Islamic mili-
tants' positions and information
from U.S. spy satellites with the
Ethiopian military. Members of
a secret U.S. Special Operations
unit, Task Force 88, were deployed
in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ven-
tured into Somalia, the officials
said.
The counterterrorism effort
was described by U.S. officials as
a qualified success that disrupted
terrorist networks in the East
African nation, led to the death
and capture of several Islamic mil-
itants and involved a collaborative
relationship with Ethiopia that
had been developing for years.
But the tally of the dead and
captured does not as yet include
some Qaida leaders - including
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and
Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam -
whom the United States has hunt-
ed for their suspected roles in the
attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998. With Soma-
lia still in a chaotic state, and U.S.
and African officials struggling
to cobble together a peacekeeping
force for the war-ravaged country,
the long-term effects of recent U.S.
operations remain unclear.
It has been known for several
weeks that U.S. Special Opera-
tions troops have operated inside
Somalia and that the United States
carried out two strikes on Qaida
suspects using AC-130 gunships.
But the extent of U.S. cooperation
with the recent Ethiopian invasion
into Somalia and the fact that the

Pentagon secretly used an airstrip
in Ethiopia to carry out attacks
have not been previously report-
ed.
The secret campaign in the
Horn of Africa is an example of
a more aggressive approach the
Pentagon has taken in recent years
to dispatch Special Operations
troops globally to hunt high-level
terrorism suspects. President
Bush gave the Pentagon powers
after the Sept. 11 attacks to carry
out these missions, which histori-
cally had been reserved for intel-
ligence operatives.
When Ethiopian troops first
began a large-scale military offen-
sive in Somalia late last year, offi-
cials in Washington denied that
the Bush administration had given
its tacit approval to the Ethiopian
government. In interviews ,over
the past several weeks, however,
officials from several U.S. agencies
with a hand in Somalia policy have
described a close alliance between
Washington and the Ethiopian
government that was developed
with a common purpose: root-
ing out Islamic radicalism inside
Somalia.
The Pentagon for several years
has beentrainingEthiopian troops
for counterterrorism operations in
camps near the Somalia border,
including Ethiopian special forc-
es called the Agazi Commandos,
which were part of the Ethiopian
offensive in Somalia.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon
spokesman, declined to discuss
details of the U.S. operation, but
some officials agreed to provide
specifics because they saw it as a
relative success story. They said
that the close relationship has
included the sharing of battlefield
intelligence on the Islamists' posi-
tions - the result of an Ethiopian
request to Gen. John P. Abizaid,
then the head of the U.S. Central
Command. John D. Negroponte,
the director of national intelli-
gence at the time, then authorized
spy satellites to be diverted to pro-
vide information for Ethiopian
troops, the officials said.
The deepening U.S. alliance
with Ethiopia is the latest twist
in the United States' on-and-off
intervention in Somalia in the past
two decades, beginning with an
effort to distribute food to starving
Somalis and evolving into deadly
confrontation in 1993 between

U.S. troops and fighters loyal to a
Somali warlord, Mohamed Farrah
Aidid. The latestchapterbegan last
June when the Council of Islamic
Courts, an armed fundamentalist
movement, defeated a coalition of
warlords backed by the CIA and
took power in Mogadishu, the cap-
ital. The Islamists were believed
to be sheltering Qaida militants
involved in the embassy bombings,
as well as in a 2002 hotel bombing
in Kenya.
After a failed CIA effort to arm
and finance Somali warlords, the
Bush administration decided on
a policy to bolster Somalia's weak
transitional government. This
decision brought U.S. policy in line
with Ethiopia's.
As the Islamists' grip on power
grew stronger, their militias
began to encircle Baidoa, where
the transitional government was
operating in virtual exile. Ethio-
pian officials pledged that if the
Islamists attacked Baidoa, they
would respond with a full-scale
assault.
While Washington resisted offi-
ciallyendorsingan Ethiopian inva-
sion, U.S. officials from several
government agencies said that the
Bush administration decided last
year that an incursion was the best
option to dislodge the Islamists
from power.
When the Ethiopian offensivep
began on Dec. 24, it soon turned
into a rout, somewhat to the
Americans' surprise. Armed with
U.S. intelligence, the Ethiopians'
tank columns, artillery batter-
ies and military jets made quick
work of the poorly trained and ill-
equipped Islamist militia.
"The Ethiopians just wiped out
entire grid squares; it was a Blitz-
kreig," said one official in Wash-
ington who helped develop the
strategy toward Somalia.
As the Islamists retreated, the
Qaida operatives and their close
aides fled south toward a swampy
region. Using information provid-
ed by Ethiopian forces in Somalia
as well as U.S. intelligence, a task
force from the Pentagon's Joint
Special Operations Command
began planning direct strikes.
On Dec. 31, the largely impotent
transitional government of Soma-
lia submitted a formal request to
the U.S. ambassador in Kenya ask-
ing for the United States to take
action against the militants.

An ice sculpture ofa pair of scissors melts in the 40-degree temperatures outside of
Anneke's Downtown Hair and Company on Main Street yesterday. The salon paid the
University of Michigan Ice Carving Team to make the sculpture two weeks ago.

Is

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