US-Regierung will Antiterrorkampf neu ausrichten

--- Im Weißen Haus wird an einer neuen inhaltlichen Ausrichtung der Antiterrorpolitik gefeilt, meldet die Washington Post heute: The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader "strategy against violent extremism." The shift is meant to recognize the transformation of al Qaeda over the past three years into a far more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization than the group that struck the United States in 2001. But critics say the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities while the administration left key counterterrorism jobs unfilled and argued internally over how best to confront the rapid spread of the pro-al Qaeda global Islamic jihad. President Bush's top adviser on terrorism, Frances Fragos Townsend, said in an interview that the review is needed to take into account the "ripple effect" from years of operations targeting al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, arrested for planning the Sept. 11 attacks, and his recently detained deputy. "Naturally, the enemy has adapted," she said. "As you capture a Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an Abu Faraj al-Libbi raises up. Nature abhors a vacuum." The review marks the first ambitious effort since the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks to take stock of what the administration has called the "global war on terrorism" -- or GWOT -- but is now considering changing to recognize the evolution of its fight. "What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism," said a senior administration official who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not finished. "GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at." ... Another key aspect is likely to be the addition of public diplomacy efforts aimed at winning over Arab public sentiment, and State Department official Paul Simons said at a congressional hearing earlier this month that the "internal deliberative process" was broadly conceived to encompass everything from further crackdowns on terrorist financing networks to policies aimed at curbing the teaching of holy war against the West and other "tools with respect to the global war on terrorism." Der Krieg gegen den Terror wird demnach also bald Krieg gegen den gewalttätigen Extremismus lauten, auch wenn Bushs Spindoktoren da wohl noch ein wenig feilen können.

Und sonst: "Wir haben viele Terroristen getötet". Der pakistanische Präsident Pervez Musharraf, 61, über Erfolge bei der Jagd auf Osama Bin Laden, die Aussichten für eine Friedensregelung in Nahost und die Rolle seines Landes beim Verkauf von Nukleartechnologie an Nordkorea und Iran, Der Spiegel (Reaktionen dazu aus Iran auch gleich mitserviert).

Neues von der Enthauptungsfront im Irak: Insurgents Say They Have Killed Japanese. Video May Show Body of Hostage, Washington Post.

Schröders Pläne zur Verfassungsänderung stoßen auf Widerstand. Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder und die SPD erwägen, die juristisch heikle Vertrauensfrage mit einer Verfassungsänderung zu umgehen. Doch weder FDP noch Grüne halten allzuviell von diesen Planspielen, ftd.de

Reizklima bei Rot-Grün. In der Koalition wird die Stimmung immer gereizter. Grünen-Politiker wehren sich gegen die Attacken der Sozialdemokraten. Spitzenvertreter der Öko-Partei wollen heute an einem geheimen Ort in Berlin zusammenkommen, um über das weitere Vorgehen zu beraten, Spiegel Online.

Öl ins nukleare Feuer. In New York ging die 7. Konferenz zur Überprüfung des Atomwaffensperrvertrages ohne Ergebnis zu Ende, Telepolis.