Author: Dana Lewis

In a training base in Jenin, the West Bank, the Palestinian National Security Force, has agreed to give us an exclusive look at what amounts to a light army now springing up in the West Bank.

‘Light’ because all the Israeli’s have allowed them to pack are AK-47 rifles, at least so far.

There are already 2500 Palestinian soldiers deployed in 10 Palestinian City’s and dozens of smaller towns. By next year there will be double that number. And America is largely responsible for their training and equipping.

3 star Lt. General Keith Dayton has quietly been working here, since the take over of the Gaza strip by Hamas extremists in 2007 to build a Palestinian army.   American Special Forces soldiers are helping to whip them into shape in training centers in Jordan and the West Bank, to stop Hamas from taking more territory and to protect the Palestinian authority of Mahmoud Abbas. And many Palestinian soldiers couldn’t praise enough what they called the high degree of professional training provided by the American SF team.

General Dayton’s spokesman refused our requests for interviews, and said the Palestinians would also not talk.  Odd considering American tax payers have funded most of the force to the tune of more than 500 million dollars.

But in fact the Palestinians agreed to show us their soldiers and talk to us, because they are proud of the army believing it’s critical to forming a Palestinian State and to demonstrate to  Israel there will be security for both people’s.

Palestinian Colonel Raed Asedeh says “all members of Hamas are screened out” from the army. “Hamas is banned” he adds.

And while Israel has reluctantly agreed to allow the build up of the NSF, Israeli leaders understand the risks not only in having a Palestinian force and also in not having one.

“If the whole thing collapses, who knows what these weapon will be used for” said Israeli Deputy P.M. Dan Meridor in my interview with him in Jerusalem.   But he went on to say he was in favor of the NSF, stating “I am not playing down the risks, but if we don’t agree to anything, and leave the situation unresolved terror may erupt”.   In the context of security he said a peace agreement has to be reached; “We can’t be the South Africa of the past”, said Meridor who is also the director of Israeli Intelligence.

The Palestinian soldiers say the drop in terror attacks in Israel is not only due to Israels wall built across the West Bank, but also because of the successes of the NSF.  They meet with Israeli military commanders and both sides say they have shared information with each other, and had some small degree of co-operation.

Still the Palestinians note the Israeli’s tie up their requests for critical equipment at the borders for months on end including simple gear like two way radios.    The Israeli’s won’t allow them enough bullets to conduct target practice for soldiers on training bases or tear gas to deal with crowd control.

And remarkably the Israeli army orders the NSF in Jenin not to patrol the streets from midnight to 6am.

Colonel Asedeh questions “how are we to have the trust of our people if we are only providing order half the time”?  But he predicts it’s only a matter of time before his troops patrol all of the West Bank, marching towards a Palestinian State.

In an interview with Fox News today Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, also Minister of Intelligence, hinted if a full peace agreement can’t be reached in current American mediated talks with the Palestinian’s, a series of partial agreements could be negotiated.

The suggestion of partial agreements was floated by Meridor when I asked him “you said if the current talk’s don’t go anywhere it will be ‘hard for Israel’. What is on the hard menu, what do you worry about at the end of the four months”?

(The current so called Proximity talks, where Palestinians and Israeli’s don’t sit together but negotiate through American envoy George Mitchell we’re designed to unfold over a period of four months.)

Meridor replied “first of all it’s not four months, I don’t know the time limit. I think we need to get an agreement. If we can’t get a final agreement immediately we should at least proceed towards the agreement and have partial steps, one after the other building more and more of that Palestinian State, even if we can’t resolve final issues like the delineation of the border, the situation of Jerusalem, or refugees”.

Partial agreements are something unlikely to be accepted by the Palestinians who want an encompassing peace agreement that will lead them to a Palestinian State within two years from now.

But Meridor stated in my interview with him in Jerusalem, “Why I think it is important we move ahead? I’ll tell you. We have a relatively quiet situation regarding terror, I don’t want it to collapse, as we have seen other times”.   And he added the Palestinian economy is doing much better and people in the West Bank see more jobs and see hope.  He warned “I don’t want this to go down the drain with some outburst of violence.”

Many observers say the clock is talking on peace talks, and that if they fail there could be another intifada or Palestinian uprising.   Over the weekend a member of the PLO Executive was quoted in a Jordanian Newspaper as saying Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,  does not rule out the possibility of resuming an “armed struggle” against Israel if U.S. sponsored talks fail.

Meridor also discussed the growing threat to Israel from the Hezbollah, the Iranian sponsored organisation in Lebanon, now said to have some 14000 rockets in its war chest.

Recently Israel’s President Shimon Peres alleged the Syrians had passed scud missiles to the Hezbollah.  When I pressed Meridor today on the question if Israel has hard evidence of scud transfers he said “I don’t want to speak in specific about it, but when people speak of it, they know what they base their talk on” adding “I think that people understand the danger in this development, I can not say any more  details about this”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry says all adoptions of Russian children by American families have been suspended until a high level State Department delegation, due in Russia this weekend, works out an agreement with their Russian counterparts to better protect the rights of children.

Today State Department sources were caught unawares by the announcement of a freeze. A U.S. diplomatic source told me “we don’t know anything about it, the Russians have told us nothing officially”.

There are 232 U.S. families currently adopting 281 Russian children. Their cases and the fates of those kids are suddenly in limbo because their are reports of Russian Courts now delaying adoption procedures unsure what the Russian Government has decided.  Originally a freeze on adoptions was only to apply to future adoptions, not adoptions pending where parents have already spent several years trying to adopt Russian children.

The adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens, which is now suspended, will be possible in the future only if such an agreement is reached,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said on state television today.

The freeze follows the highly publicized case of a 7 year old Russian boy, adopted by a mother in Tennessee last year, then last thursday sent alone on a plane back to Russia because she claimed he was psychotic and dangerous and that she had been misled by the Russian orphanage. The ‘return to sender’ infuriated Russian officials including President Medvedev who called it a “monstrous act” to abandon the boy.

There was much theatre and applause in Prague but as we say in the news business, lots of torque too.

Yes – U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev have signed a historic accord to rid the World of a few more thousand nuclear weapons but the torque is this.

When the Russians and Americans originally started talks to replace the aging START agreement with a new arms control accord, they anticipated dealing with stored nuclear warheads not only the ones mounted on missiles.

It’s vitally important to note in the final deal stored warheads are not included. Because there are at least 8000 of them on either side and that means the new nuclear arms deal doesn’t deal with the bulk of nuclear stock piles.

They also didn’t deal with tactical warheads which number in the thousands. They are the smaller nuclear weapons both sides developed during the cold war that would possibly be used in an East West conflict in Europe to stop advancing tanks and troops. These are the weapons that are the easiest for terrorists to steal, and these are the nuclear weapons America still houses in NATO bunkers in European Countires including Spain and Turkey.

So the torque is they left much out of the nuclear agreement. Even the lead American negotiator Rose Gottemoelerr told me “Dana we just couldn’t get to the tacticals or stored weapons in this accord but they are on the table for the next round”.

What next round? Rose is right there has to be another round but just getting this accord approved is going to be tough going in the U.S. Senate.

International organizations are calling on American and Russia to sit again and bring warhead numbers including STORED WARHEADS down to a number closer to a thousand so then Countires like China and Pakistan and Israel and India will sit at future arms control talks and openly discuss lowering their nuclear stockpiles.

Israel also has to be called to that table or what will be the incentive for Countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia and Syria not to develop their own nuclear weapons?

Presidents Obama and Medvedev took a positive step but the applause should be muted until Rose Gottemoeller and her Russian counterparts are sitting again together and discussing  the more critical issues in overall Strategic Arms Reduction.

     A high level Russian Government source tells Fox News the arms treaty is basically done.
The replacement to START, The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is “basically finished except for a few minor details, all the major issues are solved” said the source.

The source tells Fox News U.S. President Obama and his Russian counterpart President Medvedev will sign the new treaty in a month,  and discussions are now underway to determine where the signing will take place. Not in Russia or America, but likely in a third Country says the source.

The major stumbling block has been Americas missile defense system and Russia’s unwillingness to separate defensive systems from offensive systems. (Defensive being the shield, offensive being numbers of nukes and delivery systems). The Russian source tells Fox News the new agreement ties the two together, but no details on how it does that. The source would not be specific. But another highyl placed source in the Government here, said it will be in text of the agreement that the two issues are linked, offensive and defensive, otherwise “there would be no chance of having this ratified by the Russia parliament” he said.

The new treaty will reduce nuclear  warheads down to roughly 1600 each and about 500 delivery vehicles. (Missiles, aircraft and subs). An over all reduction of over 30% of nuclear stockpiles in American and Russia respectively.

Alreadty independant arms reduction groups are calling on Russia and America to negotiate further cuts in nuclear arms beyond this new treaty to replace the START agreement which expired in December.

If there was an award for despicable legacies Joseph Stalin would rank right up there with Hitler and Mao for the men with the most blood on their hands. By conservative estimates the man who led the Soviet Union for 30 years until his death in 1953, was responsible for killing some 20 million people, most of them his own citizens.

His penalty? In May of this year when Russia celebrates it’s victory over Germany in World War 2 (victory with the help of all it’s allies including America) it will put Stalins face on billboards all over Moscow.

Vladimir Makarov, with the Moscow City Government advertising committee confirms to Fox News Stalin’s face will be on at least 10 huge billboards. The exact design is not finalized but he says “we do not say Staliin was not a criminal, we’re only saying this man was the Commander in Chief when the Soviet Union and it’s Allies defeated the Germans and we can’t erase him from history.”

Of course not erasing him from history and putting his face on billboards is quite another matter to Russians we talked to in the street.   One woman said “so many people suffered fromk this man, generations of people who are still alive, families, good smart people simply vanished because of Stalin”.

Imagine if Germany suddenly put up  billboards of Adolf Hitler? Unfair comparison? Last year the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe declared Stalin was equally to blame as Hitler for mass genocide in Europe. In fact Stalin secretly made a deal with Hitler to carve up Countries like Poland.

Stalin, vicious and paranoid, arranged for hundreds of thousands of Russians to be spirited away to Gulags or workcamps. He used ‘purges’ to execute thousands of members of the Communist Party he found to be threatening.  He starved millions of people. But none of those facts and that history will make it to the Moscow City Hall billboards.

Only his role as Commander in the Patriotic War will be posted, but of course the fact many say Russia won the war despite Stalins bad leadership won’t be on the billboards either.  None of the facts surrounding his dismissal of his best Generals leading up to the War, his refusal to believe his Intelligence agencies and top Generals warning Germany was about to attack, and in the hours following Germany’s attack Stalins refusal to allow his forces to fight back or counter attack won’t make the billboards either.

So is it just bad judgement or a mistake Stalin’s Soviet image will be polished up and posted on billboards here?  Critics say it goes deeper than that.  The Kremlin is trying to spruce up Russia’s image as former Soviet Countries have documented how harsh their citizens were treated under Stalin and others.  And of course the Kremlin needs people to respect authority in a Country which imitates democracy, but according to opposition leaders, has no free and fair elections or free press. So they are starting with Stalin.  As historian Vladimir Ryzhkov put’s it “they are trying to control minds, to control understandings of people”.

But Stalin will be a tough sell in a Country where people hear stories from their fathers and mothers about what terrible things happened to their relatives under Stalin and his henchmen who came in the midle of the night and took people away. The billboards will bring back those memories and more.

A high level Russian government source tells me an nuclear arms agreement to replace the expired START Treaty, (Strategic Reduction Arms Treaty) which was “weeks away” from being finalized in November, and “days away” from a final draft in Dcember, and “close to being finished” in January, is “still not done and not being done for a reason”, “stalled”, “threatened”, and “going sideways” in March.

The source says Russia is disappointed and frusturated with the Obama adminstration because it is “being run now by the hawks”. Translation – those who want to reduce the nuclear stock piles of the two Nations, Russia and America have lost ground to those who mistrust Russia and don’t want to lower the numbers of warheads and launch vehicles in America.

The Russians are angry America is now talking about locating a missle defense shield in Romania and Bulgaria.  And the source says Russia, now firmly see’s nuclear talks and discussion of a missile defense shield firmly linked.

A source on the America negotiation team confirms the Russia’s have increasingly raised missile defense at nuclear arms talks in Geneva, even though originally the Russian’s agreed to discuss nuclear warheads separately from the shield issue.

What’s changed?  The Russian source tells me Russia had to hear about the missile defense shield proposal for Bulgaria and Romania from sources other than the Obama adminstration. “That is not resetting relations” said the source, referring to America promises to reset relations with Russia and rebuild trust.

Bottom line – The Russians won’t sign a new deal to replace START now (which expired in december) unless their concerns about missile defense are addressed. The two issues formerly delinked, are now married up and that means all the talking between American and Russian negotiators to lower nuclear warheads in both Countries won’t produce a final agreement unless the Russian and American Presidents get involved and sort out the problem.

Both President Obama and his Russian counter-part, Dmitri Medvedev, have issued another joint declaration urging the negotiating teams from America and Russia to hurry up and reach agreement on an new nuclear arms treaty to replace the strategic arms reduction treaty (START) that expired in December.

A Kremlin source say’s “thats about the fifth time we have done that because this is going on forever and we need an agreement.”

A high level U.S. source familiar with the talks tells Fox News  there are half a dozen working groups sitting in Geneva, working on this “day in day out, it’s a hectic meeting schedule.”

So why no deal to control the two largest nuclear arsenals on the planet?

The source says the problem in talks continue to center on the inspection regime, and every time there is a change in the the slightest detail, “it cascades down and raises a wave of new questions.”  The inspection regime is key because that’s how the two sides verify what the other has.

Essentially both the Russians and Americans have already agreed to a reduction of warheads and delivery vehicles from the old agreement.  While it has not been officially announced, sources tell Fox News respective nuclear stockpiles will fall 30-35 percent down to about 1,650 warheads each along with a significant reduction in launch vehicles, to about 500 each.  (The U.S. relies on a triad of launch vehicles ranging from Submarines to Bombers to Missiles.)

But what changes in this new deal is critical.  Under START,  if one side had a missile capable of delivering 10 warheads, it was counted as ten.  Now the new inspection regime will be incredibly intrusive, with Russians looking in to American nuclear silos and actually counting each warhead.   The Americans will do the same in Russia.

And there’s been politics played at the negotiating table. Despite the fact the Russians agreed not to make this new agreement turn on concerns about America’s planned missile defense shield, a source says the Russians continue to raise the issue almost daily at the table in Geneva slowing down talks and making a final deal all the more difficult. The Russians say if the missile defense deal isn’t resolved final approval for a follow on agreement to START will be difficult in the Duma, the Russian Parliament.

And the Americans also use the same argument with their Russian counterparts saying the Senate and the House won’t easily pass a new deal either. There is still optimism a new nuclear arms control agreement is “just a matter of weeks away” says the source.

And those doing the heavy lifting in Geneva probably appreciated this recent kick in the pants from their Presidents to get it done soon.

There’s not much free press in Russia. The English language service, Russia Today, is broadcast in Europe and America, and serves as a mouth piece of the Kremlin. It has a hired commentator who must be embarrassed by his own anti-Western rhetoric.

All the Russian Television stations are under the tight grip of the Presidential Press Service of Russian leader, Dmitri Medvedev, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

So it’s not insignificant that there is a wave of Russian police taking to the Web to speak out. Recently, Russia has seen a string of officers appearing on the internet — claiming they’ve seen the dirt on the inside of the police force. According to them, it’s about as filthy as it gets.

One was a police Major who appealed directly to Putin to clean up the police, admitting he got his rank by promising to convict an innocent person.

Another policeman came clean about wrongfully convicting people on arson charges.

The police say they take bribes on the street because their commanders demand a percentage and if their not collecting rubles curbside — for things like minor traffic infractions — they will be fired. I have been stopped in Moscow, and it’s routine for police to ask for cash.

Pavel Felgenhaur, a long time security affairs reporter, tells me the corruption is complete, from top to bottom. All police are involved or turn a blind eye to it, Felgenhaur said.  It’s how they supplement their meager incomes.

The police confessions which are all over Youtube have received a remarkable number of hits from Russians who, according to recent polls, have little or no faith in their police and justice system. A recent poll indicates more than two-thirds of Russians don’t trust their police.  When we talk to people here about corruption everyone has a story to tell about how they were shaken down by some traffic cop — or worse.

People hesitate to call the police even for crimes because they fear they will be victimized a second time, by the people who were hired to uphold the law.

So when Medvedev announced sweeping changes to the Interior Ministry this past week including firing top Generals and Deputy Ministers, why didn’t anyone here take him seriously?

The head of the Moscow Police Union in Moscow says Medvedev would have to fire all the police and start over to clean up the force.

What this is really about says the Union, is the Kremlin’s fear of growing civil unrest over the economy and limited political freedoms. The real changes Medvedev has in mind are not getting rid of the bad cops, says the Union. He will soon pass laws to ensure that police who speak out or refuse orders will get an automatic ticket to jail.  So it will become even more difficult to uncover the dirt.

So why did the Kremlin bother?   The new laws will allow them to better control protests, and jail political opposition.

As Felgenhaur notes, the entire system, including the Kremlin, is corrupt.   So no one will feel disappointed that the corruption ‘clean up effort’ that fails on take off.

But those angry and frustrated cops on the internet did get the word out, and that may have long term consequences for the thirst for real reform in Russia by  people here who are increasingly unwilling to accept the dirty status quo.

Egyptian Maher El-Gowhary and his 15 year old daughter Dina never pray twice at the same church, never stay longer than a month in any one apartment.  They are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country.

Maher and Dina nervously agreed to meet us at a Church in Cairo. The priest at the Church said he feared problems from the Egyptian authorities and while he agreed to have us watch his Sunday mass, the Priest  declined to speak to us about what is happening in Egypt and to the El-Gowhary’s.

They tell their story out of fear and desperation.  Born Muslims they chose to convert to the Christian Church after both claim they had religious visions.

Now Maher says “Muslims try to kill us,  and will kill us if they find us.”

Several religious fatwas have been issued for “spilling his blood” after Maher asked an Egyptian Court to legally recognize his conversion, so he can one day be buried as a Christian and so his daughter won’t be forced into a marriage by her Muslim mother.

The court ruled a legal conversion to Christianity would threaten public order.  His lawyer told us it’s a dangerous double standard because in Egypt a Christian can convert to the Muslim faith in a week, but a Muslim cannot convert to the Christian faith.

Ten percent of Egypt is Christian, largely the Coptic Christians who increasingly say they face daunting discrimination and even death.

We had to hide our camera as we followed the El-Gowhary’s because we were told if the authorities discovered we were preparing our story we would be arrested.

Religious tensions are running high in Egypt.

On January 6th, the Coptic Christmas eve, three Muslim men sprayed gunfire at a Church in Upper Egypt killing six Christians and wounding up to a dozen more.  Christians rioted the next day and the area is still closed to outsiders including the press.

Human rights activist Hussein Bahjet say’s Egypt has the potential to become like Lebanon because of growing sectarian violence.

“Civil strife that could engulf the country” Bahjet says.

The U.S. State Department reports respect of religious freedom in Egypt is declining, Christians are denied Government jobs, Priests are threatened and harassed, Christians are increasingly attacks in what State describes as “a climate of impunity that encourages violence.”

In some cases authorities turn a blind eye to attacks on Christians, in other cases there is evidence police sparked the attacks.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been largely silent about the problem, but this week he spoke out saying Egyptians must up-root “fanaticism and sectarianism, which threatens the unit of our nation.”

Dina has written a letter to President Obama which has been published on Christian websites.  She has been pulled out of school. She has only a blue jean jacket to stay warm and little food to eat.  Her letter was a desperate plea.  “I wrote that we are a minority Christian Community treated very badly and I want to tell President Obama to tell the Egyptian Government to treat us well.”

Her father Mayer says he can’t stay in Egypt anymore.   He and his daughter are in such grave danger we can’t report where they are in Egypt now, or where they are planning on moving tomorrow.

In recent days the two  met with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in Cairo.   They asked for refugee status to get out of Egypt.

A source at the Commission say’s its a complicated matter because Dina has a Muslim mother and there are legal issues, but their request is being considered.

The Commission source also says because of religious discrimination in Egypt, last year the State Department down graded Egypt to being on a watch list.  This year it could potentially be downgraded further to a Country of particular concern.   That means the U.S. might even consider sanctions against a Country which receives some 2 billion dollars in U.S. aid every year.

As I write this Dina and her father are packing, moving to another area of Egypt. Out of money. And running of out hope.