BRUSSELS: The US is renewing pressure on its European NATO allies to establish a long-term train-and-advise mission in Iraq, diplomats said, reviving a divisive issue for an alliance wary after a decade in Afghanistan.
US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis sent a letter to NATO headquarters in January calling for a formal NATO mission to Iraq with a semi-permanent or permanent command to train Iraqi forces, according to five senior NATO diplomats.
After a three-year war with Daesh, Washington wants to ensure the militants do not re-emerge. While NATO does have trainers in Iraq already, they number less than 20. NATO defense ministers are expected to discuss the US request in Brussels next week, with a possible decision at a summit in July.
In his letter, Mattis left many details open but suggested developing military academies and a military doctrine for the Iraqi Defense Ministry, diplomats said. Other ideas cited by diplomats include bomb disposal training, maintenance of Soviet-era vehicles and medical training.
“The US is pushing hard for a NATO role in Iraq, not in a combat role, but for a long-term assignment,” said one senior NATO diplomat on condition of anonymity.
“This looks suspiciously like another Afghanistan,” the diplomat said, referring to the long-running conflict where NATO is funding and training Afghan forces. “Few allies want that.”
Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael declined to discuss whether Mattis had sent a letter to NATO but said: “The administration continues to look for ways allies can do more to counter terrorist organizations.”
A NATO official said that the alliance is “looking into how we can step-up our training efforts.”
NATO defense chiefs will provide ministers with a range of options for an Iraq mission, while NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has discussed the issue with Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, who supports a mission, diplomats said.
The US push is also part of President Donald Trump’s demand that the Western alliance go beyond its core task of defending its territory and help stem militancy.
Trump scolded allies last May at a summit in Brussels, warning of more attacks in Europe if NATO did not do more to stop militants. Even his predecessor Barack Obama sought a greater NATO role in the Middle East.
Then, US officials had raised the possibility of NATO taking over the running of the US-led coalition against Daesh, as it did of the US-led mission in Afghanistan in 2003.
The US sees NATO’s long experience in Afghanistan as putting it in an ideal position to help build up Iraqi forces after recapturing territory taken by Daesh. The US has more than 5,000 troops in Iraq.
But European allies fear being pulled into another open-ended foreign assignment that is costly, unpopular at home and potentially dangerous.
In a gesture to Trump, the 29-nation alliance agreed last year to join the coalition. However, France and Germany insisted that the decision was mainly symbolic.
The size of any potential NATO mission has not been debated, but the diplomats said they would need to be substantially more than the current team to mollify Trump. They could involve regional training centers outside Baghdad.
“This is an area where we could demonstrate relevance,” a second diplomat said, noting that allies were well aware of Trump’s campaign criticism in 2016 that NATO was “obsolete” because it did not do more to combat militants.
Creating a formal NATO mission would mean greater funding, so-called force generation to drum-up troops and a structure to keep them in the field for longer.
Difficult issues include whether military trainers would require protection and who would provide it.
Iraq would need to formally request the NATO mission, diplomats said. That would likely rely on Abadi winning re-election in May, as rival candidates backed by Iran are hostile to US troops remaining in the country.
But the pressure is also greater because NATO has not yet been able to follow up on a similar train-and-advise request from Libya’s UN-backed government in Tripoli, diplomats said, because the country is still controlled by rival factions.
Facing Trump’s demands, NATO to consider larger Iraq training mission
Facing Trump’s demands, NATO to consider larger Iraq training mission
Pakistan’s missile program is ‘emerging threat’, top US official says
WASHINGTON: A senior White House official on Thursday said nuclear-armed Pakistan is developing long-range ballistic missile capabilities that eventually could allow it to strike targets well beyond South Asia, making it an “emerging threat” to the United States.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer’s surprise revelation underscored how far the once-close ties between Washington and Islamabad have deteriorated since the 2021 US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It also raised questions about whether Pakistan has shifted the objectives of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs long intended to counter those of India, the victor in three major wars they have fought since 1947.
Speaking to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Finer said Pakistan has pursued “increasingly sophisticated missile technology, from long-range ballistic missile systems to equipment, that would enable the testing of significantly larger rocket motors.”
If those trends continue, Finer said, “Pakistan will have the capability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.”
The number of nuclear-armed states with missiles that can reach the US homeland “is very small and they tend to be adversarial,” he continued, naming Russia, North Korea and China.
“So, candidly, it’s hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States,” Finer said.
His speech came a day after Washington announced a new round of sanctions related to Pakistan’s ballistic missile development program, including for the first time against the state-run defense agency that oversees the program.
The Pakistani embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Islamabad casts its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs as deterrents against Indian aggression and intended to maintain regional stability.
Two senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the US concerns with Pakistan’s missile program have been long-standing and stemmed from the sizes of the rocket engines being developed.
The threat posed to the United States is up to a decade away, said one official.
Finer’s comments, the officials said, were intended to press Pakistani officials to address why they are developing more powerful rocket engines, something they have refused to do.
“They don’t acknowledge our concerns. They tell us we are biased,” said the second US official, adding that Pakistani officials have wrongly implied that US sanctions on their missile program are intended “to handicap their ability to defend against India.”
Finer included himself among senior US officials who he said repeatedly have raised concerns about the missile program with top Pakistani officials to no avail.
Washington and Islamabad, he noted, had been “long-time partners” on development, counter-terrorism and security.
“That makes us question even more why Pakistan will be motivated to develop a capability that could be used against us.”
Pakistan has been critical of warm ties US President Joe Biden has forged with its long-time foe India, and maintains close ties with China. Some Chinese entities have been slapped with US sanctions for supplying Islamabad’s ballistic missile program.
It conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1998 — more than 20 years after India’s first test blast — and has built an extensive arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of lofting nuclear warheads.
The Bulletin of the American Scientists research organization estimates that Pakistan has a stockpile of about 170 warheads.
US-Pakistani relations have undergone major ups and downs, including close Cold War ties that saw them support Afghan rebels against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Pakistan also was a key partner in the US fight against Al-Qaeda following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and has been a major non-NATO ally since 2004.
But ties also have been hurt by coups staged by the Pakistani military, its support for the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule and its nuclear weapons program.
Several experts said Finer’s speech came as a major surprise.
“For a senior US official to publicly link concerns about proliferation in Pakistan to a future direct threat to the US homeland — this is a mighty dramatic development,” said Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center think tank.
Man accused in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing faces federal charge that’s eligible for death penalty
NEW YORK: The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was whisked back to New York by plane and helicopter Thursday to face new federal charges of stalking and murder, which could bring the death penalty if he’s convicted.
Luigi Mangione was held without bail following a Manhattan federal court appearance, capping a whirlwind day that began in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week in the Dec. 4 attack on Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate had been expected to be arraigned Thursday on a state murder indictment in a killing that at once rattled the business community and galvanized some health insurance critics, but the federal charges preempted that appearance. The cases will now proceed on parallel tracks, prosecutors said, with the state charges expected to go to trial first.
Mangione, shackled at the ankles and wearing dress clothes, said little during the 15-minute proceeding as he sat between his lawyers in a packed federal courtroom.
He nodded as a magistrate judge informed him of his rights and the charges against him, occasionally leaning forward to a microphone to tell her he understood.
After the hearing, a federal marshal handed Mangione’s lawyers a bag containing his belongings, including the orange prison jumpsuit he had worn to court in Pennsylvania.
Mangione had been held in Pennsylvania since his Dec. 9 arrest while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, about 233 miles (37 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
At a hearing there Thursday morning, Mangione agreed to be returned to New York and was immediately turned over to at least a dozen New York Police Department officers who took him to an airport and a plane bound for Long Island.
He then was flown to a Manhattan heliport, where he was walked slowly up a pier by a throng of officers with assault rifles — a contingent that included New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The federal complaint filed Thursday charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and one count each of murder through use of a firearm and a firearms offense. Murder by firearm carries the possibility of the death penalty, though federal prosecutors will determine whether to pursue that path in coming months.
In a state court indictment announced earlier this week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office charged Mangione with murder as an act of terrorism, which carries a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. New York does not have the death penalty.
Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said it’s a “highly unusual situation” for a defendant face simultaneous state and federal cases.
“Frankly I’ve never seen anything like what is happening here,” said Friedman Agnifilo, a former top deputy in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
She reserved the right to seek bail at a later point and declined to comment as she left the courthouse.
Mangione, of Towson, Maryland, is accused of ambushing the 50-year-old Thompson as the executive arrived to a Manhattan hotel for an investor conference.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were scrawled on the ammunition investigators found at the scene, echoing a phrase commonly used to describe insurer tactics to avoid paying claims.
The gunman then pedaled a bicycle through Central Park, took a taxicab to a bus station and then rode the subway to a train station before fleeing to Pennsylvania, authorities said.
There, a McDonald’s customer noticed that Mangione looked like the person in surveillance photos police were circulating of the gunman, prosecutors said.
When he was arrested, they say, Mangione had the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport, fake IDs and about $10,000.
According to the federal complaint, Mangione also had a spiral notebook that included several handwritten pages expressing hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives. UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the US, though the insurer said Mangione was never a client.
An August entry said that “the target is insurance” because “it checks every box,” according to the filing. An entry in October “describes an intent to ‘wack’ the CEO of one of the insurance companies at its investor conference,” the document said.
Mangione initially fought attempts to return him to New York. In addition to waiving extradition Thursday, he waived a preliminary hearing on forgery and firearms charges in Pennsylvania.
The killing unleashed an outpouring of stories about resentment toward US health insurance companies while also shaking corporate America after some social media users called the shooting payback.
Mangione, a computer science graduate from a prominent Maryland family, repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.
In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”
He apparently cut himself off from family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing in San Francisco in November.
Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.
US lawmakers reject Republican bill to avert government shutdown
WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-led funding bill aimed at averting a government shutdown, with federal agencies due to run out of cash on Friday night and cease operations starting this weekend.
The contentious legislation would have kept the government open through mid-March and suspended the country’s borrowing limit for President-elect Donald Trump’s first two years in office.
But dozens of debt hawks in the Republican ranks — unhappy about allowing the national debt to rise unchecked for half of Trump’s term — rebelled against their own leadership to sink the package.
It marked a defeat for the Republican leader, who with tech billionaire Elon Musk — his incoming “efficiency czar” — had thrown his weight behind the plan.
And with party leaders announcing no further votes in the House on Thursday, the race to keep the lights on and prevent 875,000 non-essential workers being sent home over Christmas without pay is set to go down to the wire.
“We will regroup and we will come up with another solution, so stay tuned,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson — who led the negotiations — told reporters.
The bill was supposed to fix a mammoth bipartisan package that Trump and Musk sabotaged on Wednesday amid conservatives’ complaints about unrelated items in the text ballooning its overall cost.
The retooled version was considered under a fast-track method that required two-thirds support but Democrats refused to help Republicans overcome their rank-and-file rebels and it failed to win even a straightforward majority.
“The... proposal is not serious, it’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said ahead of the vote. The White House described it as a “giveaway for billionaires.”
Republicans will likely try again Friday with a more pared-down bill, although the party leadership offered no clear path forward, telling reporters they would have to meet to discuss a Plan C.
Funding the government is always fraught and lawmakers are under pressure this time around because they failed to agree on full-year budgets for 2025 despite months of negotiations.
Party leaders had landed on a stopgap bill — known as a “continuing resolution” (CR) — to keep operations functioning through mid-March.
Major Trump donor and ally Musk spent much of Wednesday bombarding his 208 million followers on X with posts trashing the deal, and amplifying complaints from debt hawks in the House who balked at numerous expensive add-ons shoehorned into the package.
Twelve hours later, Trump, who appeared to be playing catch-up, began threatening the reelection prospects of Republicans thinking of supporting it and demanding out of the blue that the bill increase or even scrap the country’s debt limit.
Government functions are due to begin winding up at midnight going into Saturday, with non-essential workers at risk of being furloughed without pay while essential staff toil through the holidays without a paycheck.
Johnson has been facing criticism from all sides for his handling of the negotiations and his speaker’s gavel looks likely to be under threat when he stands for reelection in January.
The Louisiana congressman appeared to have misjudged his own members’ tolerance for the original CR’s spiraling costs, and for allowing himself to have been blindsided by Musk and Trump.
Democrats, who control the Senate, have little political incentive to help Republicans and Jeffries has insisted they will only vote for the bipartisan package, meaning Trump’s party will have to go it alone on any further efforts.
This is something the fractious, divided party — which can afford to lose only a handful of members in any House vote — has not managed in any major bill in this Congress.
While voicing frustration over spending levels, Trump’s main objection to the original CR was that Congress was leaving him to handle a debt-limit increase — invariably a contentious, time-consuming fight — rather than including it in the text.
President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the veteran Democrat “supports the bipartisan agreement to keep the government open... not this giveaway for billionaires that Republicans are proposing at the 11th hour.”
US disagrees with HRW ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel
- US official: ‘When it comes to a determination of something like genocide, the legal standard is just incredibly high, and so the finding in this scenario we just disagree with’
WASHINGTON: The United States said Thursday it disagreed with New York-based Human Rights Watch’s accusation that Israel was carrying out “acts of genocide” in the Gaza Strip by damaging water infrastructure.
“When it comes to a determination of something like genocide, the legal standard is just incredibly high, and so the finding in this scenario we just disagree with,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
“That does not take away from the fact that there is a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
The report released Thursday by the Human Rights Watch follows a similar accusation by London-based Amnesty International.
In a separate report on Thursday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in its 14-month war in Gaza launched after a massive Hamas attack.
The medical group said it documented 41 attacks on MSF staff including air strikes on health facilities and direct fire on humanitarian convoys.
Patel distanced the United States from the finding but, in contrast to Israel, stressed the value of non-governmental organizations.
“Even within their report, they make pretty clear that they don’t have the legal authority to determine intentionality” in the strikes on MSF, Patel said.
“But we continue to appreciate the important role that’s played by civil society organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, and we’re deeply concerned about the scale of civilian harm in this conflict,” he said.
Putin ready to meet Trump to talk Ukraine deal
- Asked if he would do anything differently if he could go back to February 2022, when he launched the Ukraine offensive, Putin said he only regretted not having done it sooner
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he was ready for talks with US President-elect Donald Trump at “any time” while regretting that he did not launch Moscow’s full-scale offensive earlier.
Trump, who will return to the White House in January, has called for negotiations to begin, stoking fears in Kyiv that he could force Ukraine to accept peace on terms favorable to Moscow.
At his annual end-of-year news conference, the 72-year-old said his troops held the upper hand across the battlefield.
He spoke as Kyiv said Russian attacks on northeastern Ukraine had killed three people and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with EU leaders in Brussels.
Putin spoke in a confident tone but was forced to admit he did not know when Russia would take back the parts of Russia’s Kursk region held by Kyiv since August.
The traditional annual question-and-answer sessions are largely a televised show while also being a rare setting in which Putin is put on the spot with some uncomfortable questions.
Putin spoke for just under four and a half hours.
Asked about Trump’s overtures regarding a possible peace deal, Putin said he would welcome a meeting with the incoming Republican.
“I don’t know when I’m going to see him. He isn’t saying anything about it. I haven’t talked to him in more than four years. I am ready for it, of course. Any time,” Putin said.
“If we ever have a meeting with President-elect Trump, I am sure we’ll have a lot to talk about,” he said, adding that Russia was ready for “negotiations and compromises.”
Russia’s troops have been advancing in eastern Ukraine for months, with Putin repeatedly touting their prowess on the battlefield.
But asked by a woman from the Kursk region when residents would be able to return to their homes there, after thousands were evacuated from frontline areas during the Ukrainian assault, Putin said he could not name a date.
“We will absolutely kick them out. Absolutely. It can’t be any other way. But the question of a specific date, I’m sorry, I cannot say right now,” he said.
Putin was also pressed on the economic headwinds Russia faced — the fallout from a huge ramp-up in military spending and deep labor shortages caused by the conflict.
He insisted that the situation was “stable, despite external threats,” citing low unemployment and industrial growth.
Asked about soaring inflation, Putin said that “inflation is a worrying signal.” Price rises for foods such as butter and meat were “unpleasant,” he conceded.
He acknowledged, too, that Western sanctions were a factor — while not of “key significance.” He hoped the central bank, expected to raise interest rates again Friday to cool inflation, would take a “balanced” decision, he added.
Putin appeared to repeat his threat to strike Kyiv with Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile, dubbed Oreshnik.
Asked by a military journalist if the weapon had any flaws, Putin suggested a “hi-tech duel” between the West and Russia to test his claims that it is impervious to air defenses.
“Let them set some target to be hit, let’s say in Kyiv,” he said.
“They will concentrate there all their air defenses. And we will launch an Oreshnik strike there and see what happens.”
Zelensky hit back by saying: “People are dying and he thinks it’s ‘interesting’.. Dumbass.”
Putin condemned as “terrorism” the killing in Moscow of a senior Russian army general, claimed by Kyiv.
The former KGB agent also made a rare criticism of the security services.
“Our special services are missing these hits,” he said, listing other recent killings.
“We must not allow such very serious blunders to happen.”
Asked if he would do anything differently if he could go back to February 2022, when he launched the Ukraine offensive, Putin said he only regretted not having done it sooner.
“Knowing what is happening now, I would think that such a decision... should have been taken earlier,” he said.
And Russia “should have started preparing for these events, including the special military operation,” he said, using Moscow’s official term for the conflict.
In his first public comments since the fall of ex-Syrian President Bashar Assad, Putin rejected claims his toppling was a “defeat” for Russia.
“You want to present what is happening in Syria as a defeat for Russia. I assure you it is not,” Putin said.
“We came to Syria 10 years ago so that a terrorist enclave would not be created there like in Afghanistan. On the whole, we have achieved our goal,” Putin said.
Putin said he had not yet met Assad, who fled to Moscow as rebels closed in on Damascus, but planned to soon.
