The Arab League on Saturday expressed its willingness to boost relations with the African Union and the African people.

A top Israeli defense official was in Cairo on Sunday for the latest talks with Egyptian mediators who are trying to hammer out a truce with Hamas in Gaza.

More than any other part of the military, the US Army has borne the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving it stretched to the breaking point.
In almost any conflict, those directly impacted by the fighting pay the greatest price. The war in Iraq has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 US service personnel. The number of Iraqi civilians killed remains shamefully unknown, although it is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. But in this column I want to address the direct impact of the fighting on an institution: the US Army.
More than any other part of the US military, the army has borne the brunt of the war, leaving it stretched to what some consider breaking point. In recent statements, senior US military officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have acknowledged that if another major regional war were to break out, US forces would have to lean heavily on naval and air power.
“The United States has ample and untapped combat power in our naval and air forces, with the capacity to defeat any, repeat any, adversary who committed an act of aggression, whether in the Persian Gulf, on the Korean Peninsula, or in the Straits of Taiwan,“ the statements read.
“There is a risk,“ in the commitment of land forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, “but it is a prudent and manageable one.“
About half of the Army’s 43 combat brigades - the 3,500-strong units which actually do the fighting in any war - are in Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment, on deployments that currently last 15 months. But the rest have either just returned from a deployment, or are gearing up to go back.
“For every year in a combat zone, [deployed soldiers] are supposed to get two years at home“ to repair and replace equipment, rest up and re-train, said Korb.
“At the moment its one year“ for a 15-month deployment.
The huge costs of replacing or repairing war-damaged equipment and caring for injured veterans will be a drain on resources for years to come. Korb, whose says his charge when he was appointed to the Pentagon by president Ronald Reagan was to save the all-volunteer force, added that the stress could also be seen in the problems Army leaders were having recruiting and retaining high quality individuals.
“They have had to lower their standards,“ he said, both for the level of education applicants must have, for scores on admission tests and in the number of waivers that have to be issued to allow individuals with criminal records to enlist.
“Since the country has turned against the war,“ he said, “opinion formers, teachers, parents, leaders, what have you, they are not motivating young people to join up.“
At the same time, he said, graduates of the Army’s elite officer training academy at West Point, NY, were leaving in unprecedented numbers. By January 2008, he said, more than half of the class of 2000 and 46 percent of the class of 2001 had left the service.
“We’re talking about captains,“ he said, calling them the backbone of the force. He acknowledged that the Marines, the other ground fighting force of the US military, was not having problems meeting its recruiting goals. “They have a special kudos,“ he said, adding that they also served seven-month deployments, with seven months between them. Korb said the army hoped to be able to return to one-year deployments if and when the number of combat brigades in Iraq was cut to 15, a move currently slated to happen later this year. But the bottom line, he said, was that there needed to be a big increase in so-called end-strength, the number of troops the US military could deploy into conflict. “That’s expensive,“ he said.
He noted that Congress continued to provide all the funding the military asked for, and to allow the money to be appropriated in emergency supplemental bills, which are not subject to usual federal budgetary rules.
Korb said the Democrats, since they took control of Congress in 2007, had at least insisted that the supplemental bills be presented at the same time as the regular budget, so that they could be subject to the same scrutiny, rather than being rushed through at the last minute. “In the sixth year of a war, you should know how much it’s costing you,“ he said.
Will the spending actually gets a closer look-over? The Senate is this week taking up just such a supplemental bill, so we shall see. Despite the apparent indulgence of Congress, Flournoy said the US military faced a budgetary “perfect storm“ - domestic political and economic pressures on spending as the country slipped into recession; “enormous O&M [operations and maintenance] costs“ of repairing and replacing equipment lost or damaged in the war; “skyrocketing personnel costs,“ both for recruitment and retention, and for health-care; and “procurement spending going through the roof.“
“There are some very tough choices ahead,“ she said. Gates said recently that big ticket procurement programs would have to show their relevance to the kind of wars - long-term, low-intensity - the US military found itself having to fight right now.
“I believe that any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to the kind of irregular campaigns that, as I mentioned, are most likely to engage America’s military in coming decades,“ Gates said.
ISN Security Watch

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani rejected on Sunday a suggestion his government was set on confronting President Pervez Musharraf, but newspapers said a destabilizing showdown was looming.
Gilani is a senior member of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s party which won the most seats in a February general election, which marked a return to civilian rule, in which the unpopular Musharraf’s allies were trounced, Reuters reported.
The head of Bhutto’s party, her widower Asif Ali Zardari, on Saturday unveiled proposed constitutional changes that would strip Musharraf, a former army chief and staunch US ally in its campaign against terrorism, of his powers.
A tussle for power pitting the ruling party and its allies against Musharraf would spell more instability in a nuclear-armed country that has been ruled by the military for more than half of its history since its independence in 1947.

Gilani, asked by a reporter in the eastern city of Lahore about confrontation with Musharraf, said the constitutional changes represented the stand of Bhutto and her party, and there was no intention of confrontation.
“As far as the presidency is concerned, we respect the president. We’re talking about our manifesto, Benazir Bhutto’s manifesto. We’re talking about our program, we’re not talking about any confrontation,“ Gilani said.
Zardari said on Saturday the amendments would remove the president’s power to dismiss a government and pass responsibility for appointing heads of the armed services and provincial governors to the prime minister. Zardari’s party has been saying the constitutional amendments would be part of a package of reforms that would include the restoration of judges who Musharraf sacked last year.
Zardari’s People’s Party has to consult its three coalition allies over the 62 proposed amendments that could be put before parliament by the end of June.
Musharraf’s critics say his reelection by the outgoing parliament last October while still army chief was illegal and Zardari said the People’s Party never accepted Musharraf as a constitutional president.

Israeli authorities have blocked an American professor Norman Finkelstein known for his harsh criticism of Israel from entering the country, officials said Saturday.
Israeli security officials said Finkelstein was denied entry on Friday because of suspicions that he had contact with elements ’hostile’ to Israel, AP reported.
The Haaretz daily said Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv and placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin.
Finkelstein has angered Jewish groups by accusing Jews in Israel and the US of exploiting the legacy of the Holocaust for political and financial gain.
He also has argued that Israel uses the outcry over perceived anti-Semitism to stifle criticism.
Finkelstein resigned from DePaul University in Chicago last year after he was denied tenure.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday said that Israel approached recently-resumed negotiations with Syria “seriously’’ with a “very detailed and strict preparation’’.
“There is and there will be a very detailed and strict preparation that will adjust our expectations from the negotiations to the current reality now... and to the security and political sensitivities that comes with the reality as we know it now,’’ Olmert said during Sunday’s cabinet meeting, AP reported.
On Wednesday, Israel and Syria announced a resumption of peace talks after an eight-year break.
A day later, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Damascus would have to stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and cut ties with Iran if any agreement were to be reached.
Syria rejected the Israeli demands, a Syrian state newspaper said on Saturday.

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli minister on Sunday proposed leasing the occupied Golan Heights for 25 years under a future peace agreement with Syria.
“Looking forward, I am ready to recognize Syria’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a peace agreement,“ Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told reporters before the weekly cabinet meeting, AFP reported.
“I propose leasing the Golan from the Syrians for 25 years. If they are serious about peace they have nothing to lose,“ said Sheetrit, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s centrist Kadima party.