U.S., allies girding for worst-case scenario with Syria's WMD

During a week that witnessed deadly artillery exchanges between Syria and Turkey and a tense showdown over a plane purportedly ferrying munitions from Russia, the arrival of 150 U.S. troops in Jordan was likely to be viewed as token support for an ally coping with a refugee influx from Syria's civil war.

The deployment, though, may be a response to mounting concerns at the Pentagon and among European and Middle East allies that Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons could fall into the hands of hostile forces if the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is eventually toppled.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed little about the special-forces mission to Jordan when he confirmed it at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. But he noted that the United States has been working closely with Jordan to keep track of Syria's weapons of mass destruction as the 19-month-old rebellion grinds on.

Unlike a decade ago, when bad intelligence on Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons spurred a clamor for U.S. military intervention, defense strategists appear to be approaching the suspected stockpiles of mustard and nerve gases in Syria with more collaboration and caution.

The resistance to preemptive action isn't just a consequence of lessons learned in Iraq. Syria is believed to have one of the world's largest chemical weapons arsenals, with commercial satellite surveillance and intelligence reports suggesting as many as 50 production and storage sites as well as missiles that could carry the deadly agents beyond its borders. Jane's Intelligence Review reported in 2009 that Damascus had embarked on a major upgrade of its chemical weapons facilities, transforming its Safir site near Aleppo, now the scene of intense fighting, into a credible deterrent to any threat from nuclear-armed Israel.

The scope of the Syrian chemical weapons program and the international community's failure to craft a cohesive plan to stop the fighting confront Western military strategists with the need to plan for a worst-case scenario rather than act to prevent it, analysts say. That means preparing allies in the region to launch a massive rapid-deployment operation after the Assad regime collapsed but before Al Qaeda-aligned fighters or rogue elements of the Syrian rebels could get their hands on the WMD.

The U.S. special forces sent to Amman are probably training Jordanian troops in containment techniques and checking their equipment and chemical-biological hazard protection and practices, said Steven Bucci, a former Army Green Beret officer and senior Pentagon official who is now a research fellow in defense and domestic  security at the Heritage Foundation.

"They will probably be running them through training procedures for dealing with this stuff to secure it and get it under control or to respond to it if it gets used" in a calamitous last battle, said Bucci. "This is about the best use of our military we could have now, and hopefully we're also helping out the Turks."

Bucci testified to Congress in July that even a limited operation to secure Syria's chemical weapons would require more than 75,000 troops -- and many more if launched amid the civil war now raging.

It is "not a viable option" to commit masses of U.S. ground troops to such an operation, Bucci told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. Any effective force, he said, would have to involve troops from allied Muslim countries also at risk of attack with Syria's chemical weapons.

That's why, he said in an interview Thursday, it is essential for the United States to coordinate with Syria's neighbors now to prepare a post-Assad operation that can prevent terrorist groups or smugglers from making off with the WMD.

Raymond Zilinskas, director of the chemical and biological weapons program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, points out that assessments of Syria's chemical weapons program are largely unverified. But he, too, says the United States and its allies should be girding for the worst.

"From what I understand, these depots are pretty well guarded by the Syrian regime's forces, and they would probably be the last to give up their guarding duties," Zilinskas said. "But if there is a total collapse, there would of course be a threat of jihadists getting these weapons."

Talk of airstrikes to remove the threat is nonsensical, Zilinskas said. Syria has formidable antiaircraft defenses built with Russian assistance, and the international community lacks crucial information on the precise locations, quantities and containment of the gases to be able to bomb them without risking spreading the deadly substances.

"Sarin is pretty volatile. If all these other problems could be resolved, the sarin would probably be destroyed or would be so volatile that it would disappear quickly," Zilinskas said. "But that's not necessarily the case with mustard gas. It's much less deadly but much more persistent. And if the Syrians turn out to have VX, which is a persistent nerve gas, that could cause real problems. That is the worst-case scenario they have to prepare for."

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Photo, top: A military training facility in Russeifeh, Jordan, where U.S. forces and a handful of British allies began training Jordanian commandos this week to respond in case of an attack with chemical weapons from neighboring Syria. Credit: Mohammad Hannon / Associated Press

Insert: A scene from U.S.-Jordanian military exercises in the Qatrana desert in June. Credit: Jamal Nasrallah /AFP/Getty Images

After South Africa police shot miners, miners charged with murder

Two weeks after dozens of striking miners were shot dead by police in a bloody incident that shocked South Africans, state prosecutors have filed charges -- against fellow miners.

Authorities charged 270 miners with murder in the slayings of 34 colleagues under a controversial law often used under apartheid, South African media reported Thursday.

“It's the police who were shooting, but they were under attack by the protesters, who were armed, so today the 270 accused are charged with the murders” of those who were shot, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Frank Lesenyego told the Associated Press.

The decision outraged many South Africans, who argued the law was being abused for political purposes. “Even if it was true that the miners provoked the police, this could never, ever, make them liable for the killing of their comrades,” University of Cape Town constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos wrote, calling the decision bizarre, shocking and shameful.

The charges lodged by prosecutors are so dubious that they are plainly political, he said. “They have acted with fear, favor and prejudice to advance some or another political agenda, further eroding the little trust South Africans might still have left in them,” De Vos concluded.

South African police have argued that they had no choice but to fire on the charging armed miners at the Lonmin platinum mine after lesser measures, such as tear gas and rubber bullets, failed to disperse them. The protesting miners had walked off the job to demand higher wages.

A deadly denouement for foreign troops in Afghanistan

The Netherlands pulled out of Afghanistan two years ago. Canada brought home its contingent last year. France, the fifth-largest contributor of troops to the International Security Assistance Force, will exit the war by the end of this year. New Zealand soldiers will be home by April.

Commitment to the 130,000-strong force fighting to drive Taliban and Al Qaeda militants from their Afghan strongholds has been eroding since the U.S. announcement three years ago that defense and security will be handed over to Afghans by the end of 2014. Analysts say that proclamation of a mission deadline was premature and fired a starting gun for a haphazard exodus driven by domestic political pressures rather than meeting benchmarks for a mission accomplished.

The U.S.-led campaign to defeat insurgents has had its successes, and life for average Afghans has markedly improved since the U.S.-led invasion nearly 11 years ago, security experts say. But the ultimate goal of leaving a stable Afghanistan when the drawdown is finished is now imperiled by a deadly phenomenon many see as inspired by the signaled exits:  Afghans in the green uniforms of police and militia recruits have been turning their guns on their foreign trainers.

Of the 237 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year, according to icasualties.org, at least 40 died at the hands of supposedly allied Afghans. Some of the turncoats are suspected Taliban infiltrators, while others appear to be acting on individual grievances and rising anti-American sentiment. 

"Green-on-blue killings are as devastating a tactic in Afghanistan as were IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in Iraq. This is the most dangerous tactical challenge that U.S. forces have faced in the war," Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security said of the rash of "insider" killings.

The betrayals throw into question a core U.S. conviction that Afghans are loyal partners eager to learn from foreign soldiers how to defend and protect their homeland, Exum said. They also wear down the willingness of ISAF's 40-plus contributing nations to send troops into a volatile and dangerous end game, he said.

"There's been a lot of patience from the United States and other troop-contributing nations to send soldiers to fight and sometimes die in the face of combat with the Taliban, but there's a lot less patience with sending soldiers to be shot in the back by their Afghan colleagues," Exum said.

Ahmad Majidyar, a senior research associate at the American Enterprise Institute who briefs U.S. troops ahead of deployment on the social complexities of his native Afghanistan, likewise sees the insider killings as a consequence of Afghans fearing that the foreigners are heading for the exits.

"With the announcement of a withdrawal timeline, you see a lot of people hedging their bets," he said of tribal leaders worried about Taliban fighters regaining sway over their territory. "It has emboldened the Taliban. Their strategy now is just to wait out the coalition forces."

Majidyar cites the impending departures of French and New Zealand troops as decisions driven by domestic political concerns "rather than a policy based on security realities on the ground." That sends a bad message, he added, to both friendly and enemy forces.

Security force trainees are ordinary young Afghan men, with friends and relatives who sympathize with the Taliban, notes Sarah Chayes, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has spent most of the last decade in Afghanistan on development projects and has worked as an advisor to the U.S. military.

"It’s just demographics," she said of recruits who mingle with Taliban supporters when they visit their home villages or talk over tea. "Everyone is vulnerable to being recruited by extremists because, frankly, the propaganda is fairly convincing: The [Afghan] government is profoundly and abusively corrupt in a structured way that the international community hasn’t paid much attention to."

David Cortright of the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies sees the insider killings as a sign that the U.S. strategy to hand over security to allied regional militias is doomed, as was the Soviet effort in the 1980s to mold Afghanistan into an ideological ally.

"A political option needs to be pursued," he said, embracing a Rand Corp. blueprint for Afghan peace talks drafted last year. It proposes U.N. oversight of a forum including the government of President Hamid Karzai, rival political forces and the Taliban, with the United States and Afghanistan's neighbors conducting parallel talks.

Cortright acknowledges there is little appetite in the international community for any new Afghan initiative, especially one including the Taliban and in the throes of a U.S. presidential election. But he argues that the social gains achieved over the last decade are at risk if Afghanistan collapses into civil war when the foreign troops leave, and that the chances of the military mission delivering a lasting peace are "close to zero."

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Photo: A U.S. soldier rests at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Afghanistan's Kunar province. Credit:  Jose Cabezas/AFP/GettyImages

Israeli threats about Iran -- crying wolf or laying groundwork?

They're passing out gas masks in Jerusalem and testing a new text-messaging system for alerting Israelis to incoming rockets.

The civil defense preparations follow a week of renewed warnings by Israeli officials that airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities may be imminent, despite U.S. misgivings, to thwart Tehran's alleged pursuit of nuclear bomb-making capability.

Western intelligence reports have consistently described Iran's nuclear program as many months, if not years, away from being able to produce a nuclear-armed missile. The Islamic Republic hasn't even made the decision to retool its civilian programs for military production, nonproliferation experts say.

Still, Israeli says that the window of opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb is closing and that the time for a preemptive strike is now, even with the U.S. presidential election less than three months away and the Middle East already engulfed in war and revolution.

The drumbeat for attacking Iran has been heard periodically in Israel for more than a decade. Some international security experts ascribe the latest crescendo to seasonal saber-rattling that is no more likely than previous threats to lead to Israel going it alone on a provocative strike. But few dismiss the strident warnings of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, as cries of "wolf" that can be safely ignored.

"The Israelis don’t distinguish between Iran having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and having the actual weapon," said Aaron David Miller at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, who served as Middle East advisor to six U.S. secretaries of State.

Israeli leaders, though split on the wisdom of attacking Iran without U.S. endorsement, are convinced that they face annihilation by the Islamic Republic should Tehran acquire nuclear weapons, Miller said. He expects Israel to make good on its threats to attack Iran in the near future, but not before the U.S. presidential election, which could be influenced by a new regional conflict that an attack would probably provoke.

"I just don’t believe there is a compelling case for the government of Israel to undertake such a risky action between now and November. Nothing is going to change that will substantially make their job harder or easier by waiting," Miller said.

Satellite surveillance of Iranian nuclear facilities suggests that Tehran has fortified the Fordow uranium-enrichment plant against a possible Israeli missile attack and cleaned up suspected traces of a nuclear test at its Parchin site, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security reported this month. But a March report by the institute described Iran as being in a poor position to produce weapons covertly and unlikely to even attempt a "breakout" for military applications this year.

"I see this as exercising leverage on the Iranians and on the United States, as well as preparing the Israeli public for the consequences of an attack if it occurs," said Allen L. Keiswetter, a retired 36-year veteran of the State Department now teaching Middle East studies at the University of Maryland.

For Iran to pose an imminent nuclear threat to Israel, it would have to enrich its current uranium stockpiles to weapons-grade quality, build the warhead and develop the rocketry to deliver it, Keiswetter said. Tehran is probably three to five years away from completing all those elements, he said.

"But it’s what the Israelis think that matters," he observed. Surrounded by clashes in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Syria's civil war and Arab militia threats from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Israel's actions on the Iranian nuclear matter may be driven as much by psychology as security strategy, Keiswetter said.

Public opinion weighs against Israel going it alone against Iran, as shown in poll results released Thursday by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University. Almost 61% of Israelis surveyed were opposed to striking Iran without the U.S. military behind the action. President Shimon Peres, Israeli Defense Forces chief Benny Gantz and the newly appointed Cabinet minister for civil defense, Avi Dichter, have warned that bombing Iran now would provoke retaliatory missile strikes on Israel, potentially killing hundreds of civilians and giving Tehran fresh incentive to rush a bomb into production.

The naysayers on unilateral Israeli action may have logic on their side, analysts say, but the hawks are building momentum for a strike and preparing the public for possible retaliation.

In his column this week, Foreign Policy magazine Editor-at-Large David Rothkopf observes that Israeli threats against Iran "come with the seasons," making it difficult to take them seriously.

"But it is worth remembering," he noted, "that the punch line of the story about the little boy who cried wolf is that, ultimately, the wolf shows up."

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Photo: Israeli shoppers at a Jerusalem mall pick up gas masks Thursday. Civil defense authorities have been distributing the protective gear as talk of launching airstrikes against Iran stirs public fears of retaliatory bombing. Credit: Jim Hollander / European Pressphoto Agency

Mexico's Monterrey still ranks as top city, despite violence

 

MEXICO CITY -- How can Mexico’s “most modern” and “most prosperous” city also be one of its most dangerous?

That is the contradiction that often plays out in this country of great wealth and crippling poverty, of record tourism and skyrocketing homicide rates.

In a new study by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, or IMCO, the city of Monterrey, at the once-tranquil heart of Mexico’s industrial hub, was ranked No. 1 in most of the things that make an urban center attractive to business and residents. And yet, the report also noted that Monterrey’s murder rate grew by 300% between 2010 and 2011. (Links in Spanish.)

Part of the explanation, the report noted, is that homicides really soared after the cutoff date for the data used to rate competitiveness in the study, late 2010. But security in Monterrey had already begun to deteriorate in early 2009, and other factors apparently sustained the city’s ability to develop and attract investment.

“Before, [Monterrey] was like the United States or Uruguay” in terms of homicide rates, the report noted. “Now, it’s more like Guatemala.”

Yet it continues to have major strengths, the IMCO report said: the nation's highest per capita GDP, 247,000 pesos (nearly $20,000), and second-highest rate of foreign investment; relatively good education; excellent infrastructure and services, like sewage treatment.

Those and other factors were used to measure competitiveness.  Also counted were innovation, labor relations, and government efficiency.  Monterrey was, in fact, the only Mexican city to score the rating of “highly competitive,” the top category.

Monterrey has long been the economic engine of Mexico. It is the center of textile, food-processing, beer and construction industries -- a modern, sophisticated metropolis where per-capita GDP is twice the national average.

It has always been considered Mexico’s wealthiest, and third-largest, city, and for decades its safest. But as long ago as 2006, foot soldiers from the Gulf cartel and its then-ally, the Zetas paramilitary force, were invading poor neighborhoods of the city to recruit followers. Violence exploded in early 2010 when the Zetas split from the Gulf cartel, and by May of that year, authorities were losing control; the air of safety vanished, roadblocks and brazen killings  by narco-traffickers were a common occurrence, some of the elite fled or moved their families. And yet business went on.

"In my opinion, it's not a contradiction because we are saying Monterrey is competitive DESPITE the crisis of violence that it is living," the report's author, IMCO urban development studies director Gabriela Alarcon, said in an email message.

"So far, violence has had an impact on one aspect of competitiveness [security] that, despite being very important … is for now outweighed by Monterrey’s strengths in economic … [and] social aspects … as well as some areas of government that function well.”

Alarcon warned that the key to Monterrey’s future will be to what extent the bad security situation destroys the other areas of the city’s relative success.

For the report, IMCO studied 77 of Mexico’s largest cities, which together account for 80% of domestic economic production and 63% of the national population (link in Spanish).

Ranked at the bottom of the list were Acapulco, where worsening drug-war violence has succeeded in eroding tourism to the once-great coastal mecca, and, in the same state of Guerrero, the state capital, Chilpancingo.

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Photo: Police and forensic investigators stand outside a bar in Monterrey, Mexico's wealthiest but increasingly dangerous city, where gunmen attacked. Nine people were killed. Credit: Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images

 

Syria conflict expected to fester as world's attention strays

Shaken by defections and rebel encroachment on its strongholds, the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is thought by some in the international community to be headed for collapse after a nearly 17-month uprising.

But independent political analysts unencumbered by wishful thinking tend to see the latest developments in the conflict as evidence of its descent into a long, bloody fight to the death as the world's attention drifts from the savagery that diplomacy has failed to stop.

Two weeks of intense fighting around Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the center of its battered economy, have inflicted untold new casualties, sent thousands more into foreign refuge and laid bare the goal of each side to annihilate the other.

The United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and the United States failed to force out Assad and steer the combatants toward agreement on  transitional leadership. That has sent the war spiraling out of the control of outside forces. And it looks likely to rage on with mounting civilian casualties and sectarian atrocities, according to the latest accounts by international security experts.

"Increasingly entrenched and fearing neither threats nor sanctions, the regime has burned all its domestic bridges, and hard-liners with little capacity for compromise are firmly in control," the International Crisis Group says of the Assad government in "Syria's Mutating Conflict," a dire report forecasting unbridled bloodshed.

The fractured opposition fighting to oust Assad has also become radicalized and unmanageable, "threatened from within, despite its efforts, by sectarianism, retaliatory violence and fundamentalism," the just-released ICG report says.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday while traveling in Africa that the defection of Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab demonstrated the urgency of devising a coordinated plan for a post-Assad Syria. On Monday, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the defection, coupled with others by high-level military and government officials, "indicated that the Syria regime is crumbling and losing its grip on power."

On the periphery of Syria's civil war, there is less confidence that an end is nigh.

Andrew Tabler, Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has been traveling in the Lebanese border regions where refugees huddle and fighters regroup. He sees the defections as having had little influence on the determination of Assad to press on with the effort to eradicate opponents he labels "terrorists."

"These defections are not from the inner circle. The government in Syria doesn't run the country, the regime does," Tabler said in a telephone interview from northern Lebanon. "The prime minister was not the person who called the shots."

The resignation last week of the special envoy on Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was seen as Annan's recognition that political divisions within the U.N. Security Council were undermining any chance of getting either Assad or the rebels to comply with the world body's peace plan.

With nothing left to negotiate, a mood of quiet desperation has set in among those monitoring the conflict, now estimated to have taken 20,000 lives and displaced 1.5 million. 

"What we have witnessed in the past 16 months of revolt might just be the harbinger of a far greater human disaster to come," Martin S. Indyk, a former diplomat now directing the foreign policy program  at the Brookings Institution, testified last week at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Indyk sees the Assad regime, made up of fellow members of the minority Shiite Alawite sect, as motivated to destroy the rebels out of fear that they would be slaughtered by the Sunni majority if Assad is driven out.

Alawites and other minority sects that make up more than a quarter of Syria's population see their choice in the conflict as "kill or be killed," said Indyk, noting that the regime, despite a few high-profile defections, has a well-armed fighting force of 300,000, thousands more shabiha paramilitary fighters  and the backing of Iran and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.

With virtually no hope of foreign military intervention in a U.S. election year, the analysts say, it falls to the underdog rebels to offer assurances to Syrian minority communities that their rights would be respected and their interests represented in a post-Assad leadership.

“For those Syrians who have endured 17 months of repression, for whom the instinct of revenge must be hard to suppress, this might seem an inappropriate, unrealistic mission,” said Robert Malley, the crisis group's Middle East program director. "But it is a necessary and inescapable one if the transition is to be worth the enormous price that is being paid."

Tabler, of the Near East Policy institute, doubts that the scattered rebel units could provide such assurances.

"After 17 months of slaughter, I wouldn't rely on the better angels of anyone's nature," he said, predicting the war will be "a grinder."

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Photo: A Syrian boy peers out Tuesday from a schoolhouse in the town of Kafr Hamra, north of Aleppo, where his family has taken refuge from intensifying fighting between rebels and government forces. Credit: Khalil Hamra / Associated Press

 

General warns of dramatic increase in cyber-attacks on U.S. firms

ASPEN, Colo.  -- Computer  intrusions by hackers, criminals and nations against U.S. infrastructure increased seventeenfold from 2009 to 2011, the nation’s chief cyber defender says, and it’s only a matter of time before such an attack causes physical damage.

Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads  the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, revealed the statistics in a rare public interview Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of national security officials. He called for passage of legislation being debated by the Senate that would set up a voluntary system for companies to shore up their computer defenses.

The NSA eavesdrops on communications around the world, and it also monitors cyber-attacks. U.S. Cyber Command is responsible for offensive cyber operations.

Alexander did not say how many attacks happen each year against critical infrastructure, such as electrical, water, chemical and nuclear plants. Such intrusions are typically designed  to probe defenses and lay the groundwork for a destructive attack.  Many plants and factories are run by networked industrial control systems, so an attacker who seizes control of such a system could wreak havoc.

Echoing remarks he has made before, Alexander said the U.S. lacks sufficient defenses against cyber-attacks. On a scale of 1 to 10, he said, American preparedness for a large-scale cyber-attack is “around a 3.”

He said he was particularly worried about attacks that could shut down parts of the electrical grid or compromise public water systems.

“Destructive cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure are coming,” Alexander said.

Alexander said the military had yet to work out rules of engagement for responding to cyber-attacks, and he pointed out that neither of his agencies have the authority to defend against a cyber-attack on a private company, even if that company owns crucial infrastructure.  The pending bill would fix that, he said.

Some business groups oppose the bill as intrusive, and some civil liberties groups say it compromises privacy.

Alexander pointedly refused to comment on Stuxnet, a cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities that has been reported to have been the work of the U.S. and Israeli intelligence.  He also pushed back against the notion that the uptick in attacks on the U.S. is related to Stuxnet, which was first discovered in June 2010.

Alexander repeated his view that computer-based espionage against the industrialized world amounted to “the biggest transfer of wealth in history” because “adversaries have gone into our companies and taken intellectual property.”

He cited one estimate by the security firm McAfee that the losses from such spying add up to a trillion dollars. But, he said, "we don’t know. And which is more alarming:  that it’s really large, or we don’t even know how large it is? … What other countries are doing are stealing the next generation of [our] capabilities.”

Alexander didn’t name the countries, but China and Russia have  been cited by government officials as the biggest culprits, a charge they deny.

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Photo: NBC correspondent Pete Williams, left, interviews Gen. Keith Alexander  on  on cyber-security. Credit: Aspen Daily News 

London Olympics threatened with strike by border officials

LONDON -- Already coping with a shortage of private security staff, the organizers of the 2012 Olympic Games in London are now facing the threat that thousands of government employees responsible for safeguarding the nation's borders will go on strike next Thursday, on the eve of opening day.

But Sebastian Coe, chairman of the Games, defiantly told the BBC on Friday that Britain would offer “a safe and secure” international event.

With athletes and spectators adding to the normal workload of already struggling border staff checking immigration lines, the union representing airport immigration staff and passport and criminal records employees announced a 24-hour strike for next week and a ban on overtime for the duration of the Games, which run through Aug. 12.

Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to British troops in Afghanistan on Thursday, condemned the strike. “I do not believe it is right, I do not believe it will be justified,” he said.

Bulgaria suspects suicide bomber in bus attack that killed 5 Israelis

JERUSALEM -- As Israeli victims of the Bulgarian bus bombing began arriving home Thursday, security officials said they now believe that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber with a fake American passport.

Israel began airlifting wounded tourists from the Black Sea city of Burgas to Tel Aviv following Wednesday's blast, which killed seven people and injured more than 30 others.

Officials believe that five of the dead are Israelis, one was the bus' Bulgarian driver and the seventh was the bomber.

Bulgarian officials released a video showing a Caucasian male with long hair, dressed in short pants, tennis shoes, a baseball cap and sunglasses. He is shown loitering around the airport with a large black backpack. His remains were found on the bus, officials said.

Officials say the man was carrying what appeared to be a U.S. passport and a Michigan driver's license, both of which are believed to be forged, according to Bulgaria's Sofia News Agency. Officials told reporters Thursday that the man had been in the country for more than four days.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that Israel has information linking Lebanon-based Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to the attack, but he did not elaborate or provide evidence of that assertion.

Iranian and Hezbollah officials have denied any role in the bombing.

Israel and Iran have been engaged in a shadow war for nearly two years. Israel blames Iran for orchestrating bomb attacks against Israeli missions in India, Georgia and Thailand. Iran says Israel is behind the assassination of several of its top scientists working on the country's nuclear program.

Israel has threatened to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent the Tehran regime from developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

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Photo: Smoke can be seen over the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, where a tour bus carrying Israeli vacationers exploded, killing at least seven people. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

London Olympics security contractor called 'incompetent' by panel

 

LONDON — A private contractor's planning for security at the Summer Olympics in London was  "incompetent," the chairman of a British Parliament committee said Tuesday.

As athletes streamed into Heathrow Airport for next week's start of the Games, lawmakers quizzed G4S security's Chief Executive Nick Buckles over his company’s last-minute failure to provide over 10,000 extra staff to police venues.

With controversy raging between government and disgruntled army and police officers called up to cover for the lack of trained staff which G4S was unable to provide, lawmakers asked Buckles to explain his company’s shortfall.

At times appearing uncertain and unprepared, Buckles told the committee he was “deeply disappointed” and “embarrassed” about his firm's inability to deliver on the contract. Buckles said he only became aware of the shortage of security personnel on July 3 while he was on vacation in the United States.

Ian Horseman Sewell, G4S account manager for the Olympics, appeared beside Buckles and said he was unaware of any problem until last week.