Italy's Berlusconi says he won't seek rerun as prime minister

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

ROME -- Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced Wednesday that he would not stand for reelection to his old job and pledged to help launch younger faces in the party he created.

Berlusconi, the controversial 76-year-old billionaire who was forced to step down in November as Italy faced financial disaster, called for primary elections within the People of Liberty Party, or PDL, to choose the candidate for premier in April elections.

Two figures immediately threw their hats into the ring: party secretary Angelino Alfano and Daniela Santanche, an outspoken member of Parliament who has vigorously defended Berlusconi, long plagued by sex scandals and judicial proceedings.

Berlusconi's announcement came after months of contradictory declarations about the intentions of the former leader who dominated Italian public life for two decades. It was the latest in a series of events that signal a long-awaited generational change in Italian politics.

In a long message to Italian news agencies, Berlusconi said that “for love of Italy one can do crazy things and wise things.... Now I want to take a step back with the same love that moved me to act then,” referring to his 1994 surprise election and first of three turns as prime minister.

“I will support the young people who now must play and make goals,” said Berlusconi, who is owner of the AC Milan major league soccer squad.

Under economic pressure, Vietnam apologizes

Mired in economic malaise, attacked by bloggers and riven by infighting within the ruling Communist Party, Vietnam took an unusual step last week -- it apologized.

In a widely broadcast speech, Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong acknowledged that the government had failed to curb corruption in its top ranks. The statement was widely read as an indictment of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who has come under fire from his party and the public in recent weeks.

The government statement spared Dung from any stiffer action. But experts say the apology is not the end of the saga but rather just the latest result of a host of greater problems that have put pressure on the Vietnamese government as competing factions fight for control.

“It’s half time and the score is still zero to zero,” said David Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “The ones seeking to bring [Dung] down are still in power.”

The Communist Party in Vietnam has been divided between hard-liners and those who back the opening of its market, said Michael Buehler, a Northern Illinois University professor and Southeast Asia expert with the Asia Society. Dung falls into the second camp.

The prime minister has faced corruption scandals in state-owned enterprises as the country liberalizes its markets. In August, one of his allies was arrested for conducting “illegal business.” At the same time, economic woes in once-booming Vietnam have worked against Dung.

Mexico's most powerful woman faults working mothers

 

MEXICO CITY -- She may be Mexico's most powerful woman, but she doesn't seem too keen on power for women.

Elba Esther Gordillo, the much-feared head of Mexico's gigantic teachers union, is blaming the abysmal state of education here on none other than working mothers.

In an "open letter to the public" covering two full pages of Mexico's leading Reforma newspaper, Gordillo seemed to rue the days decades ago when traditional family roles were clearly established (link in Spanish, registration required).

"A fact that was changed when women had to share responsibility for the family income, which didn't only contribute to the deterioration of the individual but also of society," Gordillo wrote.

"The abandonment of the mother in the rearing of children turned schools into daycare centers, gave teachers sole responsibility for education and emptied education of any substance," she added.

Gordillo went on to say that the void created by absent mothers working outside the home was filled with "the excessive consumption of junk TV" and similar distractions, which generally contributed to the demise of society's values.

Quite a lot to hang on working women, especially since most experts would blame Mexico's poor educational system on precisely the union that Gordillo lords over like a private fiefdom.

Gordillo, who favors expensive jewelry, designer clothes and tons of prime real estate, is the "president for life" of the union, which also formed a political party prone to backroom king-making deals and which generally refuses to open its bank accounts to public scrutiny. Thanks to the union's clout, teachers are allowed to bequeath their posts to descendants, and most teachers have flunked basic competency exams.

Outrage over Gordillo's comments was swift, intense and came from both the political left and right as well as women's groups.

"I read that and didn't know whether to laugh or cry," feminist columnist Rosaura Barahona wrote, noting that Gordillo apparently ignored the fact that many of the very teachers she represents are working moms (link in Spanish).

"It is very easy to blame women for everything bad that happens in the world today and for the poor education of the children," she continued. "But what about the fathers? The school? The media? The church? The government?"

If Gordillo needed a scapegoat, Barahona concluded, she should look elsewhere.

And that is exactly what many analysts said Gordillo appeared to be doing. She is under pressure on several fronts. There is a move afoot in the recently seated Congress that would force unions to be more democratic and "transparent," qualities that might erode her power. And the citizens group Mexicanos Primero has launched a concerted campaign to promote education and criticize Gordillo's handling of the teachers. One slogan is: More money for education, less for the union.

Gordillo on Thursday was opening a three-day convention of her union, the largest teachers group in Latin America. It was expected that members would endorse a slate of regional and local leaders primarily loyal to Gordillo.  The city of the convention had to be changed at the last minute because of reports that a group of dissident teachers who oppose Gordillo planned to picket the meeting.

Gordillo used the venue to argue that some of her recent comments had been "twisted" and that she really wasn't a misogynist.

But her critics remained adamant and revived a June television interview given by Gordillo's daughter, Monica Arriola, who was just elected to the Senate (link in Spanish). In it, Arriola said she was essentially raised by her grandmother because her mother, whom she sometimes went weeks without seeing, was too busy.

"It was difficult to see her," Arriola said, "because of her work."

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Photo: Teachers union boss Elba Esther Gordillo of Mexico, shown in 2006 in Mexico City. Credit: Dario Lopez-Mills / Associated Press

 

 

Cuban missile crisis myth constrains today's diplomatic standoffs

This post has been corrected.

Fifty years after the superpowers were poised to annihilate each other over nuclear missiles sent to Cuba, the myth prevails that President Kennedy forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to back down by threatening to unleash nuclear war.

It took three decades after October 1962, when the world hovered on the brink of a cataclysm, before  documents were declassified that disclosed the back-channel diplomacy and compromise that led to peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. But even today, hard-liners cling to the narrative that taking a tough, inflexible stance with adversaries is the path to diplomatic triumph.

That misguided interpretation hampers diplomacy today, say veterans of the perilous Cold War standoff and the historians who study it. The notion that threatening military action can force an opponent's surrender has created dangerously unrealistic expectations, they say, in high-stakes conflicts like the U.S.-led challenge of Iran's purported quest to build nuclear weapons.

Kennedy didn't stare down Khrushchev with vows to bomb Cuban missile sites, although that was the tactic pushed by his military advisors, recently revealed history of the crisis shows. The president sent his brother, then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, to secretly negotiate with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. In the strictest of confidence, RFK offered withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and a promise not to invade vulnerable Cuba in exchange for the Kremlin pulling out the nuclear arms it had deployed to Fidel Castro's island.

"The secrecy that accompanied the resolution of the most dangerous crisis in foreign policy history has distorted the whole process of conflict resolution and diplomacy," said Peter Kornbluh, Cuba analyst for the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "The takeaway from the crisis was that might makes right and that you can force your opponents to back down with a strong, forceful stance."

Documents released sporadically over the last 20 years show that the crisis was resolved through compromise, not coercion, said Kornbluh, who has spent decades pushing for declassification of U.S.-Cuba history documents related to the crisis. Some 2,700 pages from RFK's private papers were released by the National Archives and Kennedy Library just last week.

R. Nicholas Burns, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service now teaching diplomacy at Harvard's Kennedy School, sees applications for the Iran dispute from the real story of the missile crisis resolution.

The fundamental breakthrough in the confrontation occurred "because Kennedy finally decided, against the wishes of most of his advisors, that rather than risk nuclear war he was going to make a compromise with Khrushchev," Burns said. He pointed to the confidential offer to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Europe, a turning point still "not well understood -- people think Khrushchev backed down."

In the real world, Burns said, "it is exceedingly rare that we get everything we want in an international discussion. To get something of value, you have to give up something."

Burns sees the outlines of a negotiated agreement with Iran that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, a plan he believes would be acceptable to Democrats and Republicans once the presidential election is over and the campaign rhetoric that rejects compromise dies down. In exchange for Iran's submitting its nuclear facilities to regular international inspections, Burns said, U.S. and other Western leaders could recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium to the levels needed in civilian arenas, such as energy production and medicine.

Lessons learned in the U.S.-led wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan also argue for exhausting every diplomatic option before engaging in armed conflict, Burns said.

"Sometimes it's necessary to use military force -- I'm not a pacifist," said the retired diplomat, who was an undersecretary of State for political affairs under President George W. Bush. "But more often than not, you have to put your faith in diplomacy. We have the time and space to negotiate with Iran."

Differentiating between national interests and those of allies is an even more important lesson gleaned from the missile crisis, said Robert Pastor, an American University professor of international relations and former National Security Council official in the Carter administration.

"Fidel Castro actually urged Khrushchev to attack the United States because he felt American imperialism would try to destroy both Cuba and the socialist world," said Pastor, who credits Khrushchev with wisely rejecting Castro's adventurism in favor of peace. Pastor sees a similar danger of Israel provoking war with Iran, confronting Washington with the need to decide between trying to restrain Israel or fighting a new Middle East war.

Sergei N. Khrushchev, the late premier's son who is now a U.S. citizen and international affairs analyst at Brown University, has been campaigning for a correction of the Cuban missile history at anniversary events this week.

"Khrushchev didn’t like Kennedy any more than President Obama likes [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," he said in an interview. "But he realized you have to speak to them anyway if you want to resolve problems. We say we will never negotiate with our enemies, only with our friends. But that's not negotiating, that's having a party."

For the record, 8:35 a.m. Oct. 17: This post originally said the RFK papers made public this week were posted on the nongovernmental National Security Archive website. They were released by the National Archives and Kennedy Library.

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Photo: Caroline Kennedy, daughter of late President John F. Kennedy, shows her mother's original copy of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Sergei Khrushchev, son of late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, next to a photograph of their fathers at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston at a commemoration Sunday of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Credit: Michael Dwyer / Associated Press

 

Long-elusive Philippines peace accord reflects exhaustion

With 150,000 dead from decades of religious and ethnic fighting and no family in the southern Philippines free of fear they could be the next slain, Filipinos and their fractious leaders have run out of energy for rebellion.

A road map to peace unveiled this week by the Philippine government and the main rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has been hailed by Muslims and Catholics alike as a glimmer of hope that an end is in sight to bloody clashes that have racked the islands since the 1960s. The deal also eases Western concern that foreign Islamic militants could be drawn to remote Philippine jungle camps, already the scene of kidnappings and beheadings.

Under the accord to be signed Sunday in Manila, the rebels would eventually enjoy self-rule over a yet-to-be-defined territorial entity to be called  Bangsamoro, or Moro Nation. They would also have more control over the region's rich tropical forests and oil and gas reserves.

The agreement lays out a four-year transition to autonomy for the southern islands of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. But huge hurdles remain to be cleared: How does the government integrate Islamic rebels into the mainly Catholic ranks of the national armed forces? Which areas of the ethnically diverse south will be included in the new state? Will sharia law be invoked in Bangsamoro, and can it realistically be applied only to the Muslim population, as proposed during the internationally mediated negotiations?

The most perplexing question may be how police and soldiers can disarm the legions of gun-toting rebels and resisters who constitute the only law in much of the south's remote mountains and jungles.

Having weathered dictatorship, corruption and conflict for much of the 66 years they have been independent, Filipinos are eager to answer those daunting questions, relief officials and analysts say.

The agreement reached this week is less the product of strategic give-and-take during years of negotiations than a white flag of surrender to exhaustion sent up by both the government and the rebels. That is the view of Albert Santoli, president of the Asia America Initiative that for more than a decade has provided relief to the tens of thousands of Filipinos who have fled the fighting.

"People are tired of killing each other. They're tired of never knowing if they're going to have to flee their homes," Santoli said. He pointed to the relative harmony in refugee camps that shelter internally displaced Muslims and Christians together as grounds for confidence that Filipinos are eager to work for peace.

Although he views a 2016 target for creating Bangsamoro as unrealistic, Santoli said the deadline may motivate young Filipinos to take advantage of the apparent sincerity of President Benigno Aquino III to broker an end to the fighting.

"The hope is that if everyone is committed to the process that things will get better, that they'll be able to create an attitude of cooperation among youth," Santoli said. "But in practical terms, it will take a generation."

Michael Buehler, Philippines expert for the Asia Society and a political science professor at Northern Illinois University, sees the potential for success in this latest peace effort of the post-World War II era.

"Mindanao is one of the most resource-rich parts of the country," which is its blessing and its curse, Buehler said. The decades of fighting have prevented the south from tapping its valuable tropical woods, minerals and fuels. They have also provided cover for backdoor deals between business interests in the north and southern provincial kingpins who often have sway over the rebels in their fiefdoms.

"Very often Manila has had a divide-and-rule approach to problems in the south," Buehler said. If autonomy looks to be getting in the way of deals cut on the sidelines of the conflict, "that could provide incentive for them to undermine the peace plan," Buehler said of the de facto rural power brokers unlikely to be eager to step aside for Islamic rebel leaders. 

Still, the new plan is seen as a serious effort to integrate Muslims who have long felt like outsiders in the Catholic-dominated state, said Gerard Finin, a senior fellow at Honolulu's East West Center who has traveled and worked in the Philippines since the 1970s.

He sees two major challenges ahead, though. The mediators -- which include the United States, Europe, Malaysia and other Muslim nations -- must strive to keep the rebels unified behind the Moro Islamic Liberation Front leaders during the difficult negotiations ahead. And all must remain vigilant, Finin said, in protecting any new Bangsamoro government from being undermined by the multitude of political, economic and tribal conflicts of interest fueling the violence.

"There are still many big questions to be answered," Finin said. "But things are looking better today than they have for some time."

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Photo: Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels patrol inside their base at Camp Darapan on the island of Mindanao in 2011. The rebels and other unauthorized gunmen would be disarmed under a peace plan to be signed Sunday in Manila. Credit: Ted Aljibe / AFP/Getty Images

 

Latin American governments congratulate Chavez win in Venezuela

MEXICO CITY -- Governments in Latin America quickly congratulated Hugo Chavez on his reelection Sunday as president of Venezuela, a sign of his convincing win over strong opposition challenger Henrique Capriles.

With Chavez's victory, Venezuela's socialist government is set to remain in power at least through 2019 and maintain its position as a regional leader for leftist governments that are Bolivarian ideological allies or depend on Venezuela's oil and subsidies.

The congratulations were effusive and personally directed at the president who has been in office for more than 13 years, making Chavez, 58, the longest-serving leader in Latin America.

"Your decisive victory assures the continuation of the struggle for the genuine integration of Our America," said Cuban President Raul Castro, in a statement released by the communist country's embassy in Mexico City.

As 'Chavismo' sputters, a charismatic challenger woos Venezuelans

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has loomed larger than life over his oil-rich country for nearly 14 years, doling out healthcare and houses and university admissions to supporters of his “Bolivarian Revolution” aimed at creating history’s first affluent socialist state.

A barrel-chested former paratrooper who has tapped Venezuela's oil revenues to court a loyal following among the country’s poor, Chavez has handily outpolled disorganized opponents in past elections and harnessed people power to defeat a 2001 coup d’etat and win a recall vote three years later.

But much of the revolutionary fire that stirred the masses into a political phenomenon known as Chavismo has gone out of the cancer-stricken president. For the first time since his 1998 election victory, he faces a viable competitor with a message of unity and a track record of efficient management as governor of the state that surrounds Caracas.

Few neutral observers are yet convinced that Chavez will fall to Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles in Sunday’s presidential election. They are as dubious of polls showing the 40-year-old challenger with a slight edge as they are of the Chavez-commissioned surveys depicting the incumbent at least 10 percentage points ahead. 

Still, there is a solidifying impression among political analysts that Chavez's "missions" to eradicate illiteracy, improve healthcare, provide government jobs and build housing for the homeless have benefited too few for the vast sums squandered on the programs. A Reuters news agency report this week on its investigation into the opaque ledgers of a massive slush fund under Chavez's control identified more than $100 billion in off-budget spending over the last seven years.

While the social programs are popular and have made dents in poverty and illiteracy, Venezuelans are tiring of unfulfilled promises after 14 years, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. He believes that Chavez "has run his course."

Violent crime has skyrocketed -- including at least two fatal shootings of Capriles supporters at campaign events this week. Infrastructure is crumbling, as seen in deadly refinery explosions this summer. Power shortages afflict much of the country, and "there is a sense that Chavez's rhetoric has lost its magic," Shifter said.

A cult of personality enveloped Chavez through most of his presidency, with his visage ubiquitous on posters and billboards. Broadcast media have been obliged to carry every one of his 2,300 speeches. If aired end to end 24/7, they would run for 72 days, according to the calculations of two prominent Latin American statesmen in a report for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The report, by career Chilean diplomat Genaro Arriagada and former Mexican Federal Electoral Institute chief Jose Woldenberg, also noted that Venezuela’s high-tech balloting machines that identify voters by fingerprint are suspected by a third of the population -– and a majority of Chavez supporters -- of creating a record of how they voted, despite official demonstrations to the contrary.

Voters in line for new housing or other government perqs fear they'll be bumped from the waiting lists if they are found to have voted for the opposition, said Charles Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and now president of the Institute of the Americas in La Jolla.

"What is true is not as important as what people think is true," Shapiro said of voters' enduring  suspicions that their votes won't be secret.

Opinion polls in Venezuela are a poor gauge of voter intentions, said Shapiro, who wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether an end to the Chavez era might be on the horizon.

"What I do know is that Capriles has run a terrific campaign. Chavez has been president for 14 years, and in any country a certain weariness sets in," Shapiro said. "While Chavez is a very good campaigner, he clearly is not as vigorous as in past campaigns."

Chavez, 58, has had three cancer operations in Cuba in 15 months and often has been absent, uncharacteristically, from the public spotlight.

The 40-year-old Capriles, by contrast, has projected a dynamic image, plunging headlong into Chavista territory to assure the poor that as president he would maintain popular social programs but run them better.

"Capriles has been extremely smart in his campaign, in a way that would suggest there's not going to be a period of vengeance against Chavez supporters in the government," Shifter said. "The mistake the opposition has made in the past is saying that everything Chavez has done is bad."

It remains to be seen whether the young governor's message is strong enough to overcome the considerable powers of incumbency, with Chavez in control of the airwaves and the oil treasure chest, Shifter said. There are also concerns about whether a Capriles victory would be respected by Chavez loyalists on the electoral council, in the courts and among the armed forces.

"Capriles is the new generation," whether he wins this time or not, Shifter said. "People are obviously responding to his message and giving him a serious look."

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Photo: Venezuelan presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, at a campaign rally on Monday, has united the country's scattered opposition forces to confront President Hugo Chavez with the first serious challenge of his 14-year tenure in Miraflores Palace. Credit: Leo Ramirez / AFP/GettyImages

Insert: President Hugo Chavez, at a campaign rally in Yaracui state on Tuesday, still draws enthusiastic crowds but has been less in the public spotlight this election year because of long absences for cancer treatment in Cuba. Credit: Juan Barreto / AFP/GettyImages

Georgia President Saakashvili concedes election defeat

TBILISI, Georgia -- Mikheil Saakashvili, the pro-Western president of Georgia faced with increasing protests among his people, conceded defeat Tuesday after preliminary election returns showed the opposition had won control of parliament and the right to name a powerful new prime minister.

In a televised address, the 44-year-old leader acknowledged that the Georgian Dream coalition led by tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili had won, and said his own United National Movement would become the opposition.

"You know well that the views of this coalition were and still remain fundamentally unacceptable for me," he said, "but democracy works in a way that allows the Georgian people to make a decision by a majority."

With nearly half the ballots counted by Tuesday afternoon, the Central Election Commission reported that Georgian Dream had 54.1% of the vote to 41% for Saakashvili's movement.

Ivanishvili said Tuesday in televised remarks that after all the votes are counted, his coalition would most likely control at least 100 of the 150 seats in parliament. The tycoon said he would seek the post of prime minister and that the entire Cabinet would be replaced.

Latest threat to the Eurozone: Catalonia independence quest

Just when it seemed stability was on the horizon for the tumultuous Eurozone, with Spain getting a grip on its debt financing and a plan to bail out insolvent banks, a fresh threat to the common currency has emerged with Catalonia's reignited drive to secede from the Spanish kingdom.

More than a million residents of the country's most prosperous region rallied for independence in a protest of historic proportions on Sept. 11, Catalonia's National Day. Some  estimates put the crowd as high as 2 million, or more than a quarter of the 7.5 million who live in the northeast region including Barcelona. This week, after Madrid rebuffed Catalonia leader Artur Mas’ demand for more control over his region’s tax revenues, the regional parliament set a Nov. 25 date for polling Catalans on "self-determination."

Spain’s constitution doesn’t empower the regions to call votes on sovereignty and questions of national integrity. But Mas has said his region will go ahead with a referendum without the central authorities’ approval to address what Catalans consider a grave injustice: They pay as much as $20 billion more into national coffers each year than they get back in public services.

The prospect of a national breakup, no matter how remote and fraught with procedural complications, spurred Spanish King Juan Carlos into rare action on a political matter.

“In these circumstances, the worst thing we can do is divide our forces, encourage dissent, chase chimeras and deepen wounds," the king warned in a letter posted on a new palace website, the daily El Pais reported. It was an apparent allusion to the nationalist stirrings that spurred the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and a dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Franco that endured until his death in 1975. It was the first time the Spanish monarch weighed in on a political issue in more than 30 years.

Other influential Spaniards have also stepped forward to propose compromise, such as a looser federal structure that would give rebellious regions like Catalonia more autonomy without fracturing a country that has also dealt with a Basque separatist movement for decades. Juan Luis Cebrián, media mogul and author, warned last week that all the secession talk threatened to unleash the “wild beast” of right-wing nationalism that shackled Spain’s development for much of the 20^th century.

Catalonia secession is neither a sure thing nor an imminent one, analysts note. Catalans for centuries have been bandying about the idea of independence for their thriving bastion of manufacturing, shipping, tourism and culture. The conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has made clear that it opposes Catalonia’s bailing on the rest of the kingdom, and it holds what  essentially could be a veto if the region envisions moving into statehood and taking its Eurozone membership with it. By charter, the Eurozone’s 17 members would have to unanimously approve induction of any new euro currency user.

Mas may be stirring the secession quest to force Madrid to cede more power to Catalonia over its own finances. But in an environment of deep public spending cuts, the second bout of recession in four years and unemployment afflicting 1 in every 4 Spaniards, the notion of sheering off the northeastern corner flanked by Andorra, France and the Mediterranean Sea is clearly appealing to many. Catalonia accounts for 20% of the Spanish gross domestic product and a quarter of its exports.

Catalonia secession has long been part of the political landscape in Spain and has just entered a more active phase because of the tough living conditions resulting from European Union austerity measures demanded to keep euro users' national deficits in check, said Fabian Zuleeg, chief economist at the Brussels-based European Policy Center.

"This is potentially more serious, as it reflects a real conflict between the national and regional levels," Zuleeg said. "The way Catalonia sees it, they've been paying in excessively into the national coffers and, because they have their own deficit, they have to go cap in hand to the Spanish government," only to be denied latitude to keep the regional economy on track.

The 2013 budget unveiled Thursday requires all regions to cut back further on already pared public spending and to generate more tax revenue to service staggering national debts. The piled-on austerity measures are fomenting unrest throughout the country, as seen this week in angry protests demanding job creation and investment in growth, which had to be dispersed with tear gas and mass arrests.

The Catalans' reignited campaign for independence "is an escalation but by no means the last act," said Uri Dadush, director of the international economics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But it's another source of tension in Spain, a complicating factor and another way that things could unravel."

Hit by bailouts, failing banks, unsustainable interest rates and mounting public resentment of the severe belt-tightening across the European periphery from Ireland to Greece, the common currency is at risk, Dadush said, of "death by a thousand cuts."

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Photo: More than a million supporters of independence for Catalonia rallied in Barcelona and other cities on Catalonia National Day, Sept. 11, pressing secession as a means of controlling their own finances and preserving their language and culture. Credit: Stefano Buonamici / Bloomberg

Iran dissident group removed from U.S. terrorist list

WASHINGTON -- The State Department formally removed the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin Khalq from its list of terrorist groups, even while pointing out its lingering concerns about the organization.

In a statement issued Friday under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's name, the department said it knew of no confirmed acts of terrorism committed by the group in more than a decade and cited its cooperation in removing some of its members from a paramilitary camp in Iraq formerly under U.S. protection.

Even so, the department said it remained concerned about allegations that the group, also known by the initials MEK,  had abused some of its own members.

"The Department does not overlook or forget the MEK's past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992," the statement said.

MEK members follow an ideology that combines elements of Marxism and Islamism. Some critics and former members have described it as a cult.

It has been a staunch opponent of the Iranian regime and is viewed by Tehran as a mortal enemy. Its leadership, based in Paris, has campaigned for years in Washington to have it removed from the stigmatizing terrorist list.

It has paid a list of prominent former U.S. officials and journalists to lobby for it or speak publicly on its behalf. Although group members dream of a day when the group could run a new Iran, many analysts are skeptical that it has much popular support or influence. 

Maryam Rajavi, the group's Paris-based leader, hailed Clinton for her decision, saying it "was difficult and required political courage."

The Iranian government condemned the decision and blamed the group for an incident in which  a senior Iranian diplomat in New York for the U.N. General Assembly was assaulted on the street.

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Photo: Supporters of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin Khalq celebrate the group's removal from the U.S. terrorism  list in Washington. Credit: Antonov Mladen / Agence France-Presse