(source: Guardian)

The media may revel in a Mossad hit, yet Britain's response to a plot that could threaten its own citizens has been craven

Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if ­Iranian ­intelligence was almost ­unversally believed to have ­assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the ­operation ­using forged or stolen passports of ­citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.

You can be sure it would have ­triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and ­perhaps a debate at the UN ­security council, with demands for harsher ­sanctions against an increasingly ­dangerous Islamic republic.

(source: BBC news)

Passports belonging to the alleged killers of a top Hamas official in Dubai are fraudulent, the British and Irish governments have said.Ireland said the names and passport numbers of three suspects did not match anything issued by its officials.Britain said it believed the six British passports were also fraudulent.

Arrest warrants were issued for the suspects named by police in Dubai, where Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in a hotel room on 20 January.Two more men, one using a French passport and one using a German passport, are also suspected of playing parts in the assassination.The French foreign ministry said it was "not able to confirm the nationality of this person", according to AFP news agency.German officials said the passport number was either incomplete or wrong, Associated Press reported.

Police in Dubai have issued arrest warrants for 11 suspects they want to question about the killing of a senior Hamas official in Dubai. The suspects include six men travelling on false British passports.

By Ali Abunimah

(source: The Electronic Intifada)

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel's influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an "existential threat" to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to "attack" and possibly engage in criminal "sabotage" of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international "hubs" in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

The Reut Institute's analyses hold that Israel's traditional strategic doctrine -- which views threats to the state's existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response -- is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a "Resistance Network" and a "Delegitimization Network."

 By M K Bhadrakumar

(source: Asia Times Online)

The Nobel Peace Prize has a tradition. In the entire period from 1901 to 2009, it has never been awarded twice to any of its 97 individual recipients.

United States President Barack Obama is thus unlikely to win a second Nobel. Yet, in an historical perspective, Afghanistan promises to become the first country in which Islamists will have been ushered into power on the wave of America's newfound smart power.

That too may only be the beginning. "Of course Afghanistan is not an island. There is no solution just within its borders," North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders

Fogh Rasmussen said at a security conference in Munich last weekend.

Implementation of the UN resolutions is the only solution of the Kashmir dispute and execution of such process is the immediate need of the hour.

This was stated by the speakers at a seminar, which was organised in Srinagar by the High Court Bar Association of the occupied territory and attended by the representatives of almost all Kashmiri Hurriyet groups.

The speakers said, Kashmir is an internationally accepted disputed territory with which the future of millions of people is associated. Referring to the talks on Kashmir, they observed that such a process was suitable when troops were totally withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir, oppression put to an end and efforts made for the implementation of the right to self-determination of the people.