Admiral Mullen’s Thousand Ship Navy

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations and named last week as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (pending the president’s nomination and confirmation by the Senate) has long been considered one of the Navy’s great strategic thinkers. The essay below might give some insights.

By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS
Armed Forces Journal
May 31, 2007

It’s an innocuous shipping container, no different than thousands of others moving every day across the globe. Traveling on a Taiwanese container ship across the Pacific, the box — designed as part of a global, commercial intermodal system and transported on ships, railroad cars and 18-wheel trucks — carries documentation saying it’s filled with medical supplies from Indonesia. It might be loaded and unloaded onto several ships before it winds up on a dock in Baltimore, where an inspector looks over the documentation and sees nothing suspicious. The container becomes the load for a truck bound for Cincinnati, where it’s delivered to a supply company that’s a front for a terrorist organization.

In Ohio, a laboratory-grown sample of the smallpox virus is removed from the legitimate medical samples in the shipping container. The terrorists infect themselves and fan out across the U.S., traveling on airliners and walking around shopping malls, movie theaters and grocery stores, infecting thousands of people with a potentially fatal virus that won’t be detectable for nearly two weeks.

Stopping this threat and other forms of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from making their way across the world’s oceans is a challenge for the U.S. Navy and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen. Mullen acknowledges that inspecting each container entering the U.S. is not practical and is seeking the cooperation of friendly navies, international organizations and even shipping companies to garner the kind of intelligence that would allow a WMD-laden container to be identified and intercepted long before it hits the country’s shores. One of the mechanisms for making that happen is the “Thousand-Ship Navy” (TSN), a metaphorical term for combining efforts on an international scale to halt or divert the movement of threats on the high seas.

The dangers were laid out this summer in a briefing by Vice Adm. John Morgan, deputy chief of naval operations for information, plans and strategy. Along with WMD menaces such as nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism, Morgan identified such significant threats as the proliferation of ballistic missiles, the creation of regional instability, threats to the global economy and “the rise of evil genius.” New threats, Morgan said in his brief, will be “market-driven and decentralized,” meaning they will likely be aimed at targets of significance with the threat materializing from a diffuse origin.

“Only global coalition-sharing intelligence and information can forestall nuclear terrorism,” Morgan said in his brief, and the Navy is applying that solution to other threats, as well.

A THOUSAND SHIPS DEFINED

Mullen summed up the Thousand-Ship Navy concept in an opinion piece published Oct. 29 in The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper: “[The fleet is] a global maritime partnership that unites maritime forces, port operators, commercial shippers, and international, governmental and nongovernmental agencies to address mutual concerns.

“Membership in this ‘navy’ is purely voluntary and would have no legal or encumbering ties. It would be a free-form, self-organizing network of maritime partners — good neighbors interested in using the power of the sea to unite, rather than to divide. The barriers for entry are low. Respect for sovereignty is high.”

The name itself captures the scope of the effort. It’s not actually about having 1,000 international ships at sea. It’s more about capabilities. Everyone brings what they can, when they can, for as long they can.

The Thousand-Ship Navy is one of three overlapping strategy initiatives now in development. In 2006, Mullen called for the Navy to develop a new Global Maritime Strategy to guide its concepts of naval operations and proposed a concept called Global Fleet Stations to build relationships and support forward presence in countries around the globe. Taken together, the efforts are aimed at positioning the Navy to operate against a range of concentrated or diffuse threats ranging from major international competitors to individual terrorists.

In putting out these ideas, Mullen has stressed that they are operating concepts — not acquisition programs. The idea is to change on an international scale how people do business and operate with one another, not to add to the Navy’s already stretched budget.

Mullen has been tireless over the past year in preaching the virtues of global maritime cooperation and urging the formulation of the TSN. Examples of the concept in action that he frequently cites include:

• Humanitarian assistance operations after the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster along the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and the October 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan.

• International rescue efforts to save the crew of a trapped Russian minisub off Petropavlovsk in August 2005.

• Maritime evacuation operations in Lebanon in July after the Israeli invasion of that country.

In those operations, navies “self-organized — in free-form style — with no treaty or alliance, and seamlessly accomplished a vital mission,” Mullen said in recent addresses.

In day-to-day operations to counter “ideologues, pirates, proliferators, criminals and terrorists,” Mullen points to recent initiatives such as:

• Implementation of automatic identification systems (AIS) on ships at sea, allowing ships to automatically communicate information about their position, course and identity to other vessels or authorities on shore.

• Creation of the Virtual Regional Maritime Traffic Center, an Italian-led effort to create a communications network allowing navies in the Mediterranean and Black Sea region to track merchant ship traffic.

• Coordinated operations by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore to counter piracy and terrorist movements around the Strait of Malacca — “clearly a model maritime network,” Mullen said.

Navy officials have pointed to the Strait of Malacca situation as an example where the intended goal was accomplished without the direct participation of the U.S. “We don’t have to do it ourselves,” one Navy official said.

Mullen has pointed out that “technology and information technology, in particular,” may very well be the single largest contributor to our maritime security.”

“Not long ago,” he told an international naval audience Oct. 31 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, “security at sea depended upon one’s ability to remain unseen. In the future, that security will depend on the network, on being seen and identified.”

To flesh out these Maritime Domain Awareness strategies and concepts, Mullen started a series of discussions around the country to examine the issues and raise and address concerns. Few argue with the scenarios described by Mullen or with the need for a Thousand-Ship Navy. But participants from U.S. and foreign military services and governments, think tanks and industry openly brought up specific problems with implementing the plans.

• Mistrust among nations. “Everyone wants to see the common operating picture, but they aren’t necessarily willing to contribute to it,” said one former senior naval officer who attended two TSN conferences. “The guy next door might be watching, and we don’t want him to see what we’re doing. Those local issues of suspicion are probably going to translate into problems.”

• Mistrust from leadership. Several nations in South America now are led by people who at one time were imprisoned or hurt by the military, pointed out one group at a discussion. “Having military things just doesn’t strike them as a cool thing,” the former senior naval officer said. And in many countries where the U.S. seeks cooperation, he noted, significant differences exist between the officer corps and enlisted troops, who also see many officers benefiting from illegal profiteering. “Those local issues of suspicion are probably going to translate into problems,” he said.

• Communications. “We might want to send some digital burst stream up in the air and these guys are sitting there with only a VHF set that does only voice communications,” the former officer said. “There are also language difficulties,” he noted, and cultural differences among naval, military and civilian groups that make proper translation even more difficult.

• Incentivizing participating nations. Navies with meager financial resources often look at the U.S. as a source for funds or equipment, some discussion participants pointed out. Addressing the “what’s-in-it-for-me” factor is key to making the concept work, participants said.

Underwriting the entire discussion of the Thousand-Ship Navy concept, said one former military officer, is the need to disassociate it from being a purely U.S. idea and appeal to international needs. “If TSN is perceived as an American thing, it is dead in the water,” he said. “For it to work, explicit and implicit references to U.S. security concerns have to go.”

Among the positive ideas emerging at the conferences has been the suggestion that international shipping companies be enlisted in the information-gathering and awareness effort.

Maersk Line, a Danish concern, which with more than 500 ships and 1,400,000 containers is one of the world’s largest shipping companies, has held talks with the U.S. Navy on how it could participate. The company notes that its ships travel across the globe and can gather significant amounts of information.

“They know all the stuff that’s going down. Who the drug guys are. Who’s slipping people into containers,” the former naval officer said. “Not to mention the ships and what they see.”

In response, the former officer said, Maersk might expect breaks on AIS costs or getting a pass on having its ships stopped multiple times at sea for inspection. “If their ship has to stop three times for inspections, it’s interference,” the former naval officer said. “But if you can vector your limited security resources to other guys, he makes more money.”

A key to making the TSN concept a success, the former military officer pointed out, is the Navy’s ability to succinctly explain the idea to potential participants. “TSN,” he said after an August conference, “could be stillborn unless the concepts are better understood, packaged and presented.”

Mullen, by constantly promoting the idea, is working to do just that. But the CNO also is anxious to begin seeing more action rather than discussion. Mullen briefed President Bush on the Thousand-Ship Navy idea during a presidential visit to the Pentagon on Aug. 24. According to a Navy source, “The admiral hit a home run” with the president.

“It was very well-received,” the source said. That the briefing occured so soon after the idea was initially conceived indicates it has widespread support from the administration, another observer said.

The bottom line, Mullen points out, is that a nation’s security rests on international cooperation. “We must act quickly. None of us can do this on our own,” he told the Pearl Harbor audience. “We need each other.”

Jihadists moving into Lebanon from Syria

By Christopher Allbritton
The Washington Times
May 29, 2007

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon — Heavily armed foreign jihadists have been entering Lebanon from Syria from around the time Western authorities noticed a drop in the infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq, Lebanese officials say.
    
Syrian authorities, hoping to disrupt Lebanon so they can reassert control of the country, “have stopped sending [the jihadists] to Iraq and are now sending them here,” charged Mohammed Salam, a specialist in Palestinian affairs in Lebanon. “They sent those people to die in Lebanon.”
    
Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, said about half of the militants who have been battling Lebanese forces in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli for nine days had fought previously in Iraq.
    
“They are very dangerous,” he said in an interview. “We have no choice, we have to combat them.”
    
Officials traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before Miss Rice’s meeting with her Syrian counterpart in Egypt early this month that Syria appeared to be taking “positive” steps to guard its border with Iraq, resulting in a reduced number of jihadists crossing the border.
    
But U.N. officials running the Nahr el-Bared camp told The Washington Times that a large band of foreigners carrying mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons entered the camp in a group several months ago.
    
That is near the time that infiltration of militants from Syria into Iraq fell off, according to Lebanese authorities, who suspect the jihadists were simply redirected by Damascus.
    
Several thousand residents have been trapped in the Palestinian refugee camp since fighting broke out May 20 between the army and several hundred militants of a group called Fatah Islam, which includes a large number of foreign fighters.
    
Palestinian leaders tried yesterday to negotiate an end to the standoff, in which Lebanese army forces are ringed around the camp, but Prime Minister Fuad Siniora insisted that the militants surrender and face justice.
    
Gen. Rifi said the foreigners began arriving in Lebanon during the war between Hezbollah and Israel last summer, when between 60 and 70 jihadists were integrated into Fatah al-Intifada, a group set up by Syrian intelligence in the 1980s.
    
In November last year, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship named Shaker Youssef al-Absi broke with Fatah al-Intifada and set up a new group, Fatah Islam, based in the Nahr el-Bared camp. Gen. Rifi said Fatah Islam has about 250 fighters, of which about 50 have been killed so far.
    
“They are parasites,” the general said. “Even in Nahr el-Bared, there are not a lot of Palestinians with Fatah Islam.”

The original group had about 30 to 40 Lebanese members and 20 Palestinians in the leadership positions, Gen. Rifi said. The rest were made up of fighters from Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria and even from as far as Bangladesh.
    
Residents of the camp appear to have been terrorized by the jihadists, according to interviews with Palestinians who fled for their lives over the past week.
    
The militants “were shooting at anyone who moved,” said one refugee who declined to give his name. He said he could tell they were foreign by listening to their accents, but his wife shushed him and he said no more.
    
Gen. Rifi said there are several more cells of foreign jihadists scattered around Lebanon. Some are in the Palestinian camps, some are in Tripoli and some are in Beirut. Another government official said some were based in the Bekaa Valley.
    
“Some [Gulf] Arabs, originally from al Qaeda, joined the group,” Gen. Rifi said. “But they are false al Qaeda. Our al Qaeda is made in Syria.”
    
Money for the fighters comes from local criminal activities, such as bank robberies — one of which sparked the current standoff — and support from Gulf countries and “local politicians,” said a senior regional military source. “They’re part of the global jihad,” he said.
    
Many government supporters think the timing of this flare-up, given an upcoming U.N. Security Council vote on the formation of an international tribunal to investigate the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, indicates Syria’s involvement.
    
“It’s actually a Syrian-sponsored and -coordinated move to send these jihadis into Lebanon to topple the regime,” said Mr. Salam.
    
Syria has been using the militant Shi’ite group Hezbollah to advance its interests in Lebanon, but Mr. Salam suggested Damascus was worried about inflaming religious tensions with the Sunni-led government that could spill over into Syria.
    
The Syrians “wouldn’t mind demolishing Lebanon, but they didn’t want to do it with a Sunni-Shi’ite war because that could cross the border into Syria. So they got Sunnis to fight Sunnis,” the analyst said. 
    

U.N. agency knew of armed foreigners in Lebanon camp

By Betsy Pisik
The Washington Times
May 24, 2007

NEW YORK — The U.N. agency that oversees the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, the scene of three days of battles between Lebanese troops and Muslim militants, said yesterday it had been aware for months that heavily armed foreigners were moving into the Palestinian enclave but were helpless to stop them.
    
The extremists of Fatah Islam, who local reports say hail from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bangladesh, apparently entered the camp, just north of Tripoli, several months ago. They are thought to have arrived in a group, not individually.
    
Officials of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) could not say how a large band of foreigners carrying what has been described as mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons were able get past the Lebanese army soldiers stationed outside the camp.
    
They also could not explain why militias of young Palestinian men who provide security and gather intelligence throughout Nahr el-Bared and other Palestinian areas allowed foreign fighters to settle there.
    
“Somebody hasn’t been doing their job,” said Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner-general of UNRWA. “The problem with refugee camps in Lebanon is that they are self-policed. … This group showed up a few months ago. As far as we know, it is mainly a foreign group.
    
“The Palestinian refugees themselves have been very unhappy about it and have been trying to persuade them to leave,” Mrs. AbuZayd told reporters.
    
Yesterday, Lebanon’s defense minister issued an ultimatum to Islamic militants barricaded in the camp to surrender or face a military onslaught.
    
Also yesterday, refugees continued to leave Nahr el-Bared as a tense cease-fire held. Some piled onto the backs of pickup trucks or stuffed themselves into battered sedans.
    
Many joined relatives in the nearby Badawi refugee camp, while others made their way to nearby Tripoli.
    
UNRWA has 200 Palestinian employees inside the camp, mostly teachers, medical staff and aid workers who help distribute supplies.
    
Mrs. AbuZayd said she was surprised that many of the camp’s 30,000 inhabitants didn’t leave before fighting erupted Sunday.
    
On Tuesday, thousands of refugees took advantage of a pause in fighting to escape. 

 ”UNRWA couldn’t do anything because the United Nations is not responsible for policing or administering the camps, only their own installations inside them,” Mrs. AbuZayd said.
    
Security inside Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps has always been a sensitive issue.
    
Lebanese police and soldiers are not permitted to enter the camps but maintain a perimeter, as much to protect the Lebanese as to protect the Palestinians from outside threat.
    
UNRWA says it does not administer the camps, nor does it maintain a roster of legal occupants.
    
The U.N. agency is responsible only for registering refugees who want to use UNRWA facilities such as schools and clinics as well as assistance programs.
    
About 400,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon, most of them in severely crowded camps with little fresh water, sanitation or jobs. They camps originally held those displaced by the 1948 creation of Israel, although the refugee numbers have multiplied in later generations.
    
The chief U.N. coordinator for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, yesterday condemned as “unacceptable and outrageous” a Tuesday mortar attack on a U.N. relief convoy that had just arrived inside the Nahr el-Bared camp. Baby formula, milk powder, bread and water supplies eventually were unloaded.
    
“I simply don’t know who is responsible for starting that exchange of fire,” said Mr. Holmes, adding that the number of casualties in that and other attacks still cannot be gauged.
    
He said the camp has been without running water or electricity since Sunday.
    
UNRWA is working with other agencies and private humanitarian groups to obtain shelter and services to those who have left. 
    

Lebanese army, militants resume fight

By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press

TRIPOLI, Lebanon – Artillery and machine gun fire echoed around a crowded Palestinian refugee camp for a third straight day Tuesday, as the Lebanese government ordered the army to finish off the Fatah Islam militants holed up inside the camp in the country’s north.
Black smoke billowed from the area after artillery and machine gun exchanges at the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the port city of Tripoli.

Relief supplies could not enter the camp as the U.N. Relief and Works Agency scrambled to evacuate one of its employees, a Palestinian aid worker wounded Monday, Taleb al-Salhani of UNRWA said.

Lebanese army stopped six UNRWA trucks, including a water tanker, saying it was too dangerous to enter the camp, leaving them parked by the roadside. Al-Salhani said he hoped for a cease-fire later in the day to allow the U.N. convoy through.

Inside the city itself, security forces moved in against a suspected Fatah Islam hideout in an apartment building, witnesses said.

Shots rang out on Mitein Street at midmorning as security forces, after receiving a tip about armed men in an apartment, raided the building using tear gas and leaving it gutted. Apparently no one was caught.

The developments reflected the government’s determination to pursue the Islamic militants who have staged attacks on Lebanese troops since Sunday, killing 29 soldiers. Some 20 militants have also been killed, as well as an undetermined number of civilians.

Lebanon’s Cabinet late Monday authorized the army to step up its campaign and “end the terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people,” Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Major Palestinian faction leaders met with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora for the second time in as many days.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived Tuesday in Beirut to discuss the latest crisis gripping Lebanon.

A spokesman for Fatah Islam, Abu Salim Taha, said the group managed to repulse several attempts by Lebanese troops to advance on their positions inside the camp.

“The shelling is heavy, not only on our positions, but also on children and women. Destruction is all over,” he said. Speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from the camp, he denied his group was behind bomb blasts in Beirut on Sunday and Monday night.

The latest fighting has raised fears that Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war could spread in a country with an uneasy balancing act among various sects and factions.

Palestinian refugees have been hiding in their homes inside the camp and Palestinian officials there said nine civilians were killed Monday. Reports from the camp of food and medical supplies running out could not be confirmed because officials and reporters could not enter.

Mufti Salim Lababidi, a Sunni spiritual leader of Palestinians in Lebanon, denounced the shelling which he claimed has killed or wounded some 100 civilians. “There are thousand ways to uproot Fatah Islam … there are ways other than this,” he said on al-Jazeera television.

The camp is home to more than 31,000 people living in two- or three-story white buildings on densely packed narrow streets. It is one of more than 12 impoverished camps housing more than 215,000 refugees, out of a total of 400,000 Palestinians here. Lebanese authorities do not enter the camps, according to a nearly 40-year-old agreement with the Palestinians.

Major Palestinian factions have distanced themselves from Fatah Islam, which arose here last year and touts itself as a Palestinian liberation movement. But many view it as a nascent branch of al-Qaida-style terrorism with ambitions of carrying out attacks around the region.

The military assault adds yet another layer of instability to Lebanon’s potentially explosive politics. Saniora’s government already faces a domestic political crisis, with the opposition led by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demanding its removal.

Raising fears of spreading violence, an explosion went off in a shopping area in a Sunni Muslim sector of Beirut late Monday, wrecking parked cars and injuring seven people — a day after a bomb blast in a Christian part of the capital killed a woman. The confluence of two bombings while the fighting was going on in Tripoli was highly unusual.

Saniora also risks a backlash among Palestinians in Lebanon’s other refugee camps, where armed groups and Islamic extremists have been growing in influence. The White House said it supports Saniora’s efforts to deal with the fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists” operating in the camp.

The leader of Fatah Islam, Palestinian Shaker al-Absi, has been linked to the former head of al-Qaida in

Iraq and is accused in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. He moved into Nahr el-Bared last fall after being expelled from

Syria, where he was in custody.

Since then, he is believed to have recruited about 100 fighters, including militants from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries, and he has said he follows the ideology of al-Qaida leader

Osama bin Laden. Among the militants killed in the fighting Sunday was a man suspected in a plot to bomb trains in Germany last year, according to Lebanese security officials.

Beirut security officials accuse Syria of backing Fatah Islam to disrupt Lebanon, charges that are denied by Damascus, which controlled Lebanon until 2005 when its troops were forced to withdraw from the country following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

GOP debate focuses on Iraq war, abortion

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – Alone among 10 Republican presidential contenders, Rudy Giuliani said in campaign debate Thursday night “it would be OK” if the Supreme Court upholds a 1973 landmark abortion rights ruling. “It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent,” said the former New York city mayor, who has a record.

In a party that draws strength from anti-abortion voters, Giuliani’s nine GOP rivals agreed that it would be a great day if the court overturns the landmark ruling.

“Glorious day of human liberty and freedom,” enthused Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney acknowledged he had changed his mind on the subject when he began to delve into the issue of cloning. He said his position had once effectively been “pro-choice.”

But Giuliani, who said he personally hates abortion, hedged when asked about his current position.

“I think the Court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it,” he said. “… The states could then make their own decisions.”

Alone among the top three contenders, Arizona Sen. John McCain  has a career-long record of opposition to abortion.

The 10 rivals showed their conservative credentials across 90 minutes of debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, each claiming to be a worthy heir to the political legacy of the late 40th president.They stressed the importance of persisting in Iraq, called for lower taxes and a muscular defense and supported spending restraint.”The first pork barrel, earmark bill that crosses my desk I’m going to veto it and I’m going to make the author famous,” said McCain.

Romney jumped in at that, saying that as governor he had cast a veto “hundreds of times.” Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson put his total at some 1,900 vetoes.

The field split on another issue, with Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo raising their hands when moderator Chris Matthews asked who did not believe in evolution.

Giuliani, McCain and Romney were the first among 10 equals on the debate stage — the men with the most money and the best approval ratings in the polls more than eight months before the first 2008 national convention delegates are selected.

Other participants included former Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia; and Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Ron Paul of Texas.

They debated in the shadow of Reagan’s Air Force One, the aircraft hanging suspended in the library’s pavilion. The 40th president’s widow, Nancy Reagan, sat in the front row next to California Gov.  Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The issue of abortion looms large in the 2008 presidential campaign in a party where a wide swath of political activists support the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.Both Romney and Giuliani must persuade conservative voters they are ready to embrace that view — or else persuade them to overlook the issue in picking a candidate for the White House.

In a debate that ranged broadly, most of the contenders said they opposed legislation making federal funds available for a wider range of embryonic stem cell research.

The technique necessarily involves the destruction of a human embryo, and is opposed by many anti-abortion conservatives as a result.

There are exceptions, though, including Reagan’s widow, Nancy. Also, public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the research, which doctors say holds promise for treatment or even cures of numerous diseases.

Most of the contenders said they opposed expanded federal research.

McCain was the exception, saying unambiguously he supports expanded federal research into embryonic stem cells.

Thompson said there was “so much research” in the area that he couldn’t give a yes or no answer.

Giuliani’s response was open to interpretation. He said he supports it “as long as we’re not creating life in order to destroy it,” then added he would back funding for research along the lines of legislation pending in Congress.

The bill he cited does not expand research on embryonic stem cells, however, but deals with adult stem cells.

There was no dissent about the importance of the U.S. military mission in Iraq.

“We should never retreat in the face of terrorism,” said Giuliani, adding, “terrible mistake.”

Romney also said the United States must support the government of Nouri al-Maliki in its efforts to combat terrorism.

“I want to get our troops home as soon as we possibly can, but at the same time we don’t want to get them out in such a precipitous way that we have to go back,” he said, warning that too hasty a departure could lead to chaos in the region.

McCain said the war effort is now on the right track, although he said that until recently, the war had been “terribly mismanaged” by the Bush administration. “Terribly mismanaged,” he repeated for emphasis.

The Iraq comments contrasted sharply with last week’s debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls.

Then, eight presidential hopefuls called for an end to the military involvement that so far has claimed the lives of more than 3,300 U.S. troops.

Speaking of Iran, Giuliani said “they looked in Ronald Reagan’s eyes and in two minutes they released the hostages.” That was a reference to the U.S. hostages released from captivity on the day of Reagan’s inauguration in 1981.

He didn’t mention other hostages taken on Reagan’s watch — those seized in Lebanon and kept for years.

Romney invoked Reagan in discussing abortion rights. “I changed my mind. I took the same course that Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush” did, he said.

Romney and McCain squared off over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden without directly addressing each other. Last week, the ex-governor said, “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person” and advocated a broader strategy to defeat Islamic jihadists. McCain had called the comment “naive.”

Under questioning, Romney defended his comment, saying: “It’s more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay and he will die.”

McCain shot back, saying bin Laden’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. “We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will catch him. We will bring him to justice and I’ll follow him to the gates of hell,” he said.

MSNBC and The Politico co-sponsored the debate.

___

On the Net:

http://www.reaganlibrary.com

Condoleezza Rice Meets Syria’s Foreign Minister

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt – In a highly anticipated meeting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Syria‘s foreign minister of U.S. concerns about his country’s porous border with Iraq Thursday — the two nations’ first Cabinet-level talks in years.

“I didn’t lecture him and he didn’t lecture me,” Rice said afterward.

Prospects dimmed for a more dramatic face-to-face discussion between Rice and

Iran‘s foreign minister.

“We haven’t planned and have not asked for a bilateral meeting, nor have they asked us,” she said.

The 30-minute session with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem marks a diplomatic turning point for the Bush administration, which had resisted talks with Syria and Iran despite the recommendations of allies abroad and the Iraq Study Group and lawmakers from both parties at home.

“It’s a start,” Moallem said afterward.

The carefully orchestrated meeting overshadowed the modest initial accomplishments here from a 50-nation gathering devoted to improving Iraq’s security and financial bottom line. Iraq’s embattled prime minister was among those leaning on the Bush administration to engage Syria and Iran, arguing that those neighboring nations could help lessen violence in Iraq.

Until now, Rice and President Bush had said Syria well knew what it could do to help Iraq — namely tighten its border — and didn’t need the U.S. to point it out. The United States claims that Syria looks the other way while fighters from many countries cross its border to join the ranks of al-Qaida and other insurgent or terror groups in Iraq.

Ahead of the meeting, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Syria had somewhat stemmed the flow of foreign fighters. “There has been some movement by the Syrians,” said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell. “There has been a reduction in the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq” for more than a month.

The Bush administration also has said it worries that Syria will use any contact with the United States as leverage in a dispute over alleged Syrian meddling in fragile Lebanon. Rice said that subject did not come up Thursday.

Rice’s meeting with Moallem marked the first such high-level talks since the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The United States yanked its ambassador from Damascus in protest, and has given a cold shoulder to the Syrian government since. Syria denies it had anything to do with the killing.

Moallem asked Rice to return an ambassador, but she made no promises.

Rice said the talks were limited to Iraqi security. “I made clear we don’t want to have a difficult relationship with Syria, but we need to have some basis for a better relationship.”

Only last month the White House blistered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a diplomatic trip to Damascus, and administration officials suggested afterward that Syrian President Bashar Assad had played the California Democrat for a fool.

“There’s a difference in going to Damascus and having broad-scale discussions about a whole range of issues with Syria and that was the issue at the time,” Rice said Thursday. “Having the secretary of state take an opportunity to speak to the foreign minister of Syria about a concrete problem involving Iraq, at an Iraqi neighbors conference, makes more sense.”

Rice called Pelosi ahead of this week’s trip to Egypt, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Rice and Moallem have no specific plans to meet again, although lower-level diplomats from both countries will continue to discuss ways to improve security in Iraq, diplomats said.

“We are serious and we expect the United States to show the same seriousness,” Moallem said. “We agreed to continue dialogue.”

The Iraqi government is pressing for talks between Rice and Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, saying Washington’s conflict with the government in Tehran is fueling instability in Iraq.

Rice and the Iranian “said hello, that’s about it,” at a luncheon Thursday, McCormack said.

They missed one another entirely at dinner.

Although Rice had seemed to invite a broader engagement with Iran ahead of the Iraq meeting, the tone changed in recent days. U.S. officials played down the chances for any substantive exchange, and some said they would wait for clearer signals from the Iranians that they were ready to talk.

The United States cut diplomatic relations with Iran shortly after the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The Bush administration labeled Iran part of an “axis of evil,” and Iranian leaders still refer to the United States as the Great Satan.

The United States pressed hard in the weeks before the conference to get Arab countries’ participation and urge them to forgive Iraq’s billions of dollars of debt — and it was with that request that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the conference.

The conference aims in part to overcome differences between al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government and Sunni Arab nations, which are demanding that the Iraqi government ensure greater participation by Sunni Arabs in Iraq’s political process.

Al-Maliki pledged to institute reforms to boost Sunni participation but said forgiving Iraq its debts was the only way the country could rebuild.

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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Edith M. Lederer in Sharm el-Sheik and Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.