WASHINGTON — Libya has withdrawn from its commitment to destroy the nation's weapons of mass destruction program.
Officials said Libya has dropped plans to destroy its mustard gas stocks. They said the project, stipulated in a 2003 agreement, would not be conducted after Libyan complaints that the effort was too expensive.
Libya was believed to possess at least 23 metric tons of mustard gas. Tripoli was also said to have 1,300 tons of precursor chemicals.
So far, Libya has authorized the removal of more than 1,000 tons of nuclear and missile equipment and destroyed 3,500 chemical-weapons capable munitions. Officials said the remaining chemical agents were scheduled to be destroyed in 2007, Middle East Newsline reported.
Officials said the Libyan decision has been relayed to the United States, which pressed Tripoli to destroy its WMD stocks and medium-range missiles. They said the regime of Col. Moammar Khaddafy has been demonstrating greater hostility since Washington restored full diplomatic relations in 2006.
"There is a danger that Libya was consistently withdrawing from its commitments," an official said.
In December 2006, Libya and the United States signed a contract to cooperate in the destruction of Libya's CW stockpile. Under the accord, the United States ...   more »

UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen has warned that the Middle East could see full-scale war.
He said a fresh effort was needed to contain the current violence, or energetic diplomacy to try to bring peace.
"The picture which emerges is very dark, and apparently getting darker," he said.
"So there are reasons for real concerns in the international community."
Roed-Larsen, the current UN envoy for Lebanon-Syria issues who for many years was the top UN Mideast envoy, said "the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East has changed fundamentally over a few years".
"A few years ago, as it had been over many, many decades, the centre of gravity for all the conflicts were the Israeli-Arab conflicts," he said.
"Now, there seems to be four epicentres of conflict in the region with their own dynamics, the Iraqi issues, the Iranian issues, the Syrian-Lebanese issues, and of course the heart of hearts, the traditional conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli issue."
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By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
We were in a small house in Zarqa, Jordan, trying to interview two heavily bearded Islamic militants about their distribution of recruitment videos when one of us asked one too many questions.
“He’s American?” one of the militants growled. “Let’s kidnap and kill him.”
The room fell silent. But before anyone could act on this impulse, the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in. You can’t just slaughter a visitor, militants are taught by sympathetic Islamic scholars. You need permission from whoever arranges the meeting. And in this case, the arranger who helped us to meet this pair declined to sign off.
“He’s my guest,” Marwan Shehadeh, a Jordanian researcher, told the bearded men.
With Islamist violence brewing in various parts of the world, the set of rules that seek to guide and justify the killing that militants do is growing more complex.
This jihad etiquette is not written down, and for good reason. It varies as much in interpretation and practice as extremist groups vary in their goals. But the rules have some general themes that underlie actions ranging from the recent rash of suicide bombings in Algeria and Somalia, to the surge in ...   more »

Hundreds of Christian books are disappearing off the shelves of U.S. prisons under a federal directive intended to prevent violent inmates from receiving radical Islamic texts, prompting a lawsuit.
Instead of focusing on Muslim books, the directive restricts literature from all religions, the Associated Press reported. The post-9/11 order, which only now is being implemented, allows the prison libraries to stock only 100 to 150 books for each religion.
Three inmates at the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., have filed suit, claiming violation of their constitutional rights.
Inmate John Okon told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain the set of books removed from the prison were used to minister to new converts.
"I have really seen religion turn around the life of some of these men, especially in the Christian community," he said, according to the AP.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman explained to the judge the rule limiting books was the result of a review by the Department of Justice in April 2004 of how prisons choose Muslims providers of religious services.
The reason for the delay is unclear, the AP reported, but prison officials said they needed time to look over a long list of books.
As ...   more »

This week in Miami, representatives from nearly 30 countries have gathered to talk shop on how to combat nuclear terrorism in a first-of-its-kind international conference led by the FBI and its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
The "Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism Law Enforcement Conference"—attended by some 450 public and private sector officials from law enforcement, intelligence, border control, nuclear security, and related professions-is an outgrowth of an agreement signed by Russia and the U.S. last summer to build multinational cooperation on the issue.
Countries attending include the U.S., Russia, Canada, China, the U.K., Egypt, Morocco, Germany, France, Israel, Japan, and others.
The conference's primary objective: to build the capabilities of partner nations to investigate, prevent, and respond to sudden strikes by terrorists using nuclear devices or other radioactive materials. To make that happen, the conference will include:  
The Deputy Director of Russia's Federal Security Bureau, Colonel General Vladimir Ivanovich Bulavin, talked about his country's efforts to combat nuclear terrorism and to support the growing global initiative.  
… Detailed briefings that put the latest information and best practices in the hands of the participants;
… A complex table top exercise involving fictitious characters from different countries plotting ...   more »

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned Monday that the nation's largest city needs to be prepared for a hurricane powerful enough to cause serious flooding in lower Manhattan and elsewhere.
"It's always a little odd being in New York and talking about hurricanes," Chertoff said after touring a new command center at the Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn.
Still, he added, a hurricane "would be an extraordinarily devastating blow to the city."
Weather experts have said New York is about due for a major hurricane with 130 mph winds and a 30-foot storm surge that could cause the Hudson and East Rivers to overflow.
  Such a storm could inflict more than $100 billion in economic losses while forcing the evacuation of 3 million people - more than six times the population of pre-Katrina New Orleans.
Historically, the city has endured a hurricane roughly once every 90 years. The last major New York-area hurricane in 1938 caused 700 deaths along the Eastern seaboard.
Last year, the city unveiled a new hurricane plan to evacuate 3 million people while sheltering more than 600,000 others. Emergency management officials estimated the preparedness costs at up to $30 million.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans ...   more »