by Frank James, with correction

There was a lot of surprise in Washington and beyond when the news broke that U.S. State Department official William Burns will be meeting in Geneva, Switzerland with Iranian officials over the weekend as part of an international group attempting to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear-weapons development efforts.

What raised so many eyebrows was what appeared to be seeming reversal in the Bush Administration's position that it wouldn't engage in direct talks unless the Iranians ceased and desisted in their nuclear enrichment efforts.

It's no reversal, said the White House which insisted that just because a senior State Department official will be in a room with Iranian officials where a lot of talking will be taking place, that's not the same as negotiations.

Here's a lengthy exchange White House Press Secretary Dana Perino had with reporters this afternoon:

Q But you're saying this isn't negotiated? Is this negotiating with the Iranians?

Q Well, how can you say nothing has changed if you're sending over Bill Burns to even sit there? I mean, that certainly gives the Iranians --

by Andrew Zajac

The U.S. government's long and troubled history of trying to broadcast TV and radio programming into Cuba added another unhappy chapter with release of a Government Accountability Office report critical of efforts to use commercial broadcasters to beam Radio and TV Marti signals into the island.

No-bid contracts awarded in December 2006 to transmit programming via Radio Mambi and TV Azteca "did not reflect sound business practices", GAO investigators found.

The GAO also criticized a lack of transparency in the way Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting recruits and pays for production and on-air talent.

OCB defended the contracts to Mambi and Azteca, arguing that the U.S. urgently needed a way to reach the Cuban people because of the deteriorating health of president Fidel Castro (pictured above).

by Mark Silva

If Barack Obama were president, he is asked in an interview airing Sunday on CNN, and U.S. forces in Afghanistan captured Osama bin Laden, what would he do with him?

"Well I think that if he was captured alive then we would make a decision to bring the full weight of not only U.S. justice, but world justice, down on him,'' Obama says in the interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for the program, GPS.

"I think that, and I've said this before, that I am not a cheerleader for the death penalty, I think it has to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes,'' Obama says. "But I certainly think that plotting and engineering the death of 3,000 Americans justifies such an approach.

"Now I think this is a big hypothetical though,'' he adds. "Let's catch him first."

Obama's Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, has pledged to find bin Laden, sponsor of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- "track him down'' -- "I'll follow him to the gates of Hell,'' he said during a Republican debate at the Reagan library.

Obama also is criticial of the goverment of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his GPS interview, in excerpts provided by CNN: "I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped to organize Afghanistan, and the government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence. So there are a lot of problems there."

The Republican National Committee asserted that Obama had "no interest in Afghanistan" prior to his campaign for president.

"Obama has never visited Afghanistan to meet our allies on the ground, yet he is audacious enough to assert that President Karzai has 'not gotten out of the bunker,'" RNC spokesman Alex Conant said. "Obama's words are naively out-of-touch with reality and offensive to America's allies. Considering Obama's negligent leadership of the Senate subcommittee charged with overseeing the NATO mission in Afghanistan, Obama has no credibility discussing Afghanistan."

Among other matters covered in the program airing at 1 pm Sunday, Obama is asked about McCain suggesting that Russia be thrown out of the Group of Eight major industrial nations.

"It would be a mistake,'' Obama says. "Look, if we're going to do something about nuclear proliferation, just to take one issue that I think is as important as any on the list, we've got to have Russia involved. The amount of loose nuclear material that is floating around in the former Soviet Union, the amount of technical know-how that is in countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain, without Russia's cooperation, our efforts in that on that front will be greatly weakened."

by Bay Fang

Iran's reported test-firing of missiles two days in a row, just as it is showing more interest in dialogue about its nuclear enrichment program, highlighted the mixed messages that pose a dilemma for the U.S. as it weighs how to approach a country moving ever closer to becoming a nuclear power.

In a show of strength and readiness, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards reportedly launched nine mid- to long-range ballistic missiles in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, and two more Thursday, including one that could reach Israel and U.S. forces stationed in the region.

But it comes as Tehran has seemed to react favorably to a new package of incentives presented by the U.S. and its European allies to halt its nuclear program, and as its top nuclear negotiator is planning to meet with European Union representative Javier Solana in the coming weeks.

Regional analysts surmise that the two approaches could indicate a real division in Tehran over how to deal with the West, but could also be an effective negotiating tactic.

From Newsday...

by Janie Lorber

WASHINGTON - A flotilla of peace protesters in canoes and rafts attempted to blockade the houseboat of Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) early Wednesday morning in reaction to legislation he submitted that would impose sanctions on Iran.

The Queens Democrat emerged from his home on the Potomac River smiling and clapping after the demonstrators, known as Code Pink, had been chanting for nearly 30 minutes. They want Ackerman to withdraw the legislation because they believe it symbolizes the first step on a path to war. Instead of force, Code Pink is calling for direct talks with the Iranian government.

(Members of the anti-war Code Pink protested Rep. Gary Ackerman's house boat with a canoe blockade Wednesday morning. Photo by Michael Temchine.)

"This is not an embargo," Ackerman told the protesters. "We're not calling for a blockade. It is basically what the UN is doing. The UN has imposed sanctions on Iran."

Ackerman said he would be willing to meet with any Iranian government official without preconditions, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but would not retreat from his legislation.

Ackerman said he expected the bill, which already has 220 co-sponsors, to pass the House easily, though no date has been set for a vote.

By Clarence Page

Even Robert Mugabe can't escape the age of YouTube.
The British Guardian has posted video of state-sponsored vote rigging by Zimbabwe's aspiring president-for-life that would put an old-school Chicago precinct captain to shame.

The video, shot by a Zimbabwean prison officer for the British Guardian, can be viewed here .
There have been numerous reports of killings, torture and stolen votes in Mugabe's recent anointment, but this is the first known evidence to be captured in video.
Opposition Morgan Tsvangirai, who has experienced beatings and detention from Mugabe's 28-year-old regime himself, pulled out of the election to stop the waves of violence and intimidation against his own supporters.

Though Mugabe was the only candidate, he directed voters to turn out for him anyway because he didn't just want to win. He wanted a landslide.

What he got was a "ZANUslide," according to at least one Zimbabwean journalist on-the-run . ZANU-PF is the acronym for Mugabe's political party, Zimbabwean African National Union-Popular Front.

by Bay Fang

While her boss, President Bush, spoke out in Japan on the eve of the G8 summit about North Korean abductions and human rights in China, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fielding the press back home on a different subject - her golf game.

In interviews with both CBS News and XM radio during the AT&T National Golf Tournament, at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD Saturday, Rice confessed that her summer goal was to "get just a little bit better at chipping so that I can have a little shorter putt."

Bush got in trouble in May when he told reporters he had sacrificed his golf game for the sake of the troops. "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said in an interview with Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

(Enterprising reporters later revealed that although Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq, his last round of golf was actually played in October 2003.)

Rice's last game was on the morning of the Fourth with her cousin and her cousin's husband, and a couple of friends in town for the holiday.

(Photo by Adrian Bradshaw / EPA)

by Frank James and David Nitkin

In the time-honored Washington tradition of waiting until the last minute before a weekend or holiday to drop controversial news, the White House waited until the eve of the Independence Day holiday to announce that President Bush will attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.

Here's the press release where they buried the lead, not mentioning until the last sentence that the president will be in Beijing for the pageant-filled start of the games. (Though, true to form, White House announcements of impending trips typically spell them out in chronological order.)

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

In South Korea, President Bush and President Lee will discuss regional and global security issues as well as their commitment to getting their respective legislatures to ratify the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, which will bring important benefits to workers, farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs in both the United States and Korea. The President will then travel to Thailand to celebrate 175 years of the U.S.-Thailand relationship and to discuss issues bilateral and regional issues with Prime Minister Samak. In China, the President looks forward to seeing President Hu and other senior Chinese leaders for discussions on a wide range of issues including the way ahead on North Korean denuclearization. The President and Mrs. Bush will attend the Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games on August 8.

by Frank James

Sen. John McCain certainly had great timing to be in Latin America at the same time that the Colombian military launched its daring rescue mission which liberated former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors who had been held for years in the jungles by the FARC rebel group.

The rescue's timing may have merely been coincidental with McCain's visit to Colombia.

But if Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe were going to help one of the presidential candidates, it would likely be McCain more than Sen, Barack Obama since the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee supports the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement while Sen. Barack Obama doesn't.

Indeed, Uribe aided McCain by letting the senator look presidential, briefing him before and after the military action in which members of the Colombian military impersonated FARC guerillas in order to fool the hostages' guards into letting them get on an unmarked white helicopter.

In a statement, the McCain campaign avoided making any overtly political points. It didn't even mention McCain's own history as a prisoner of war.

It merely expressed the senator's happiness and the fact of the presidential level briefings. The presidential politics of the situation was left for others to highlight.

The McCain statement is below:

by Matthew Hay Brown

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, in Pakistan Monday to meet with president Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, says the divided government in Islamabad seems to have come together on the need to crack down on militants in the border region with Afghanistan.

"In the last two or three days I think there has been a change," the Maryland Democrat said today on the phone from Astana, Kazakhstan. "We hope that's in response to the security needs in regards to the border. But there's also an increased amount of violence in Pakistan - more and more suicide bombings and security issues within the country, not just in the territories. That may also have been a wake-up call to the new government."

Cardin's visit - he's leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to meetings Tuesday in Astana as co-chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission - coincided with the offensive begun over the weekend by Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps against militants in the Khyber tribal area.

The paramilitary troops faced no resistance today as they pushed deeper into the region where militants threaten the city of Peshawar and a key U.S. supply line, the Associated Press reported. They were able to take key hilltops and reestablish checkpoints that had been abandoned by tribal police.

by Matthew Hay Brown

With world leaders and global celebrities preparing to celebrate the 90th birthday of freedom champion Nelson Mandela, Congress has moved to remove the Nobel peace laureate from a U.S. database of terrorists.

The Senate voted late Thursday to lift longstanding travel restrictions on Mandela and his comrades in the African National Congress, which was banned in 1960 by South Africa's apartheid government and labeled a terrorist organization by the United States because it used armed force in the struggle against white minority rule.

The voice vote, reported by Reuters, follows a similar move by the House. Lawmakers hoped to strike Mandela's name from the list before his birthday on July 18.

Mandela was jailed for 27 years in the struggle against apartheid. Freed in 1990, he was the first South African president elected in a fully democratic election, and became a force for racial reconciliation in the divided nation.

The State Department and the Department of Justice have supported taking Mandela off the list; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called the designation "embarassing."

"This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it's frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela," Rice told a Senate committee in April.

by Bay Fang

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's three-country, five-day Asia tour, which starts this week, appears to be a last-ditch attempts to salvage the legacy of the Bush administration.

She will be going first to Japan for the G8 foreign ministers' meeting Thursday before heading to South Korea and visiting quake-ravaged China, but the biggest focus of the trip will be on scoring a breakthrough on the North Korea nuclear disarmament talks, which involve China, Russia and Japan, as well as South and North Korea.

But even while raising expectations of a coming declaration by Pyongyang on its full nuclear capability, which has been the sticking point in the process, Rice revealed that new intelligence could stymie the effort. Apparently, this intelligence comes from traces of uranium found on the pages of documents that were handed over by North Korea last month, which were supposed to help US officials verify the declaration that is still awaited.

by Mark Silva

President Bush, during a weeklong tour of Europe - his farewell, second-term survey of a continent where relations with the United States were strained by the president's first-term policies - spoke of the many ways that the U.S. and Europe are "working together.''

Perhaps most significant now is that cooperation on the question of Iran.

Bush, who repeatedly has insisted that "all options are on the table'' when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, also has maintained through his second term that diplomacy is and will be the best option. While the U.S. has refrained from direct talks with Iran, European partners have jumped into those talks.

"Iran is not Iraq,'' Bush has said many times, in response to the question of whether his ultimatum for Iran - abandon its nuclear ambitions, or face isolation from the rest of the world - is a formula for another U.S.-led invasion.

That invasion of Iraq is what drove a wedge through the U.S. and Europe in Bush's first term. That diplomacy with Iran has helped repair that rift during Bush's second term.

Bush, delivering his weekly radio address from Europe - he is in France today, and will travel to the United Kingdom on Sunday - says: "We're... working together to ensure that Iran is not allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.

"This week, America and our European allies sent a clear and unmistakable message to the regime in Tehran: It must verifiably suspend its enrichment activities -- or face further isolation and additional sanctions,'' Bush said in his address. "Together, America and Europe are pursuing strong diplomacy with Iran, so that future generations can look back and say that we came together to stop this threat to our people.''

See the rest here:

by Mark Silva

In case you're still wondering about that Father's Day gift - and if that picture-frame seems a bit worn out - consider the gifts that President Bush and the Holy Father exchanged in the privacy of the papal study at the Vatican today:

This was Bush's third meeting with Pope Benedict XVI - their second at the Vatican.

Crowds lined the streets leading into St. Peter's Square, with many snapping photographs - more fodder for frames.

Two Swiss Guards in full, technicolor regalia manned the gate for the president's arrival. The pope greeted the president at St. John's Tower, part of a medieval wall around the city state, located in the luscious green Vatican Gardens, with palm, Italian pine, cedar and other assorted trees. A beautiful maze garden affords a view of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

The president and pope, meeting privately for nearly a half hour in the papal study, talked about human rights, HIV and AIDS in Africa and lifting people out of poverty, according to Dana Perino, the White House press secretary.

And they exchanged gifts at the end of the meeting. The president gave the pope a framed photo of the two taken in April near the colonnades at the White House. The 11" x 14" photo was framed in sterling silver with a presidential seal and engraved signatures of the president and First Lady Laura Bush. The pope presented the president with a framed photo and four volumes on St. Peter's Basilica.

Following the meeting, the two walked into view in the gardens under a largely sunny sky. They walked through the Lourdes Grotto, a replica of the "Grotto of Massabielle" of Lourdes given by the French people to Pope Leo XIII in 1952. The original is in Lourdes, sent to Pope John XXIII in 1958 on the centenary of the apparitions of the Madonna in Lourdes. The pope wore white robes and cap, with a large gold cross hanging from his neck, the president a dark blue suit and blue tie.

A choir sang "Exulte Deo," by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and "Alma Redemptoris Mater," by Giuseppe Liberto. The president's motorcade departed soon after noon, with Bush bound for Paris.

With thanks to the observant pool reporting of USA Today's Jeff Stinson

by Mark Silva

Heading into Paris, where U.S.-Franco relations have been frayed by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and other issues, First Lady Laura Bush asserted somewhat confidently: "I think it's on the mend.''

President Bush delivers an address there today about his vision of liberty, and the first lady concludes work at an international donors' conference that has committed more than $20 billion to the rebuilding of war-torn Afghanistan - an interest which Laura Bush, who visited Afghanistan again before this tour, says she expects to maintain for the rest of her life.

The first lady, who had gone to Paris for the donors' conference and has returned with the president, reports that the relatively new French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been overheard to be saying some very "pro-American'' things there.

And she professes success in the donor-talks.

"We're not sure exactly of the number, but it looks like it's $20 billion to $21 billion, which is really terrific,'' Laura Bush, who walked back to the press cabin on Air Force One en route to Paris today, said of the donor-conference commitments to Afghanistan. "That means that the United States only represents about a half of it.

"A lot of times we're more than that. But I also think it shows that the international community is supporting Afghanistan; that they're not going to abandon Afghanistan now at this very crucial time in their history.

by Mark Silva

"We Americans engage in foreign policy because we have to, not because we want to, and this is a healthy disposition -- it is that of a republic, not an empire.''

The words of Condoleezza Rice, nearing the end of eight years in foreign policy with the Bush administration - as a national security adviser, and ultimately as secretary of state.

The former Stanford provost who took George W. Bush to school on foreign policy when the former governor of Texas came calling for tutoring on the world - the one whose hometown in Alabama gave rise to the appellation of "the Vulcans,'' the neo-cons in the administration who shaped White House war policies - plans to return to academia when the president retires.

"There have been times in the past eight years when we have had to do new and difficult things--things that, at times, have tested the resolve and the patience of the American people,'' Rice writes in an article for the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. "Our actions have not always been popular, or even well understood....

"Yet I find that whatever differences we and our allies have had over the last eight years, they still want a confident and engaged United States, because there are few problems in the world that can be resolved without us," Rice writes.