Author: Ben Debski

“This is the beauty of the premises. It’s set up for an IT intensive operation,” said Maher al-Khaiyat, a marketing manager at Microsoft Jordan, as he points to the wired tiles below the US firm’s newly-leased office in the park’s builtup area of 112,650 square metres.

“We don’t need to build any infrastructure. It’s all there.”

Located between the Levant and Iraq, resource-poor Jordan is marketing itself as a Middle East services hub, promoting its political stability, well-educated workforce and economic reforms that have opened up most sectors to private investment.

The country is setting up new free zones and business parks like the KHBP, which is a converted military base, but businessmen say it has yet to create conditions that can lure businesses away from Dubai, the nearby Gulf Arab business hub.

“Gulf investors have a lot of cash and are looking for viable ventures. I think Jordan has a lot of attractive projects but we are not moving fast enough in offering them to investors,” prominent industrialist Ghassan Nuqul said.

Nuqul, vice chairman of Amman-based Nuqul Group, a major regional exporter of hygienic paper products, said constant changes in laws deterred investors.

“We need consistency in laws to assure investors,” Nuqul said reflecting frustrations of many entrepreneurs.

New tenants
Underlining Nuqul’s concerns, official figures show that foreign investments more than halved to 214 million dinars ($302m) in the first nine months of this year from 523 million dinars in the same period of 2009, as the country suffers its second consecutive year of economic recession.

Rather than catching up, Jordan appears to be losing ground to other Middle East countries such as Egypt, which boasts 5.1 percent growth for 2009/10, or Lebanon, which expects to grow five percent in 2011 despite the persistent political uncertainty.

Lacking the oil resources that abound in the Gulf, Jordan also cannot emulate the massive investments those countries have made to propel themselves within living memory from fishing villages and trading outposts into bustling cities.

In response, Jordan has cut corporate tax and introduced other incentives to encourage entrepreneurs and boost inflows.

Prospective tenants at the military-style KHBP include Google and the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, government sources said. The government is also courting Abu Dhabi investment vehicle Aabar to buy an equity stake in the $1.5bn project, the sources said.

Nasser Sunnaa, chief executive of Jordan Investment Board, the country’s investment promotion agency, sees more foreign investors already based in the Middle East moving their offices to Jordan, where salaries, rents and the general cost of doing business is lower than Dubai and other Gulf locations.

“This positioning of Jordan as a gateway to the region with good governance and skilled human capital is finding a good echo with foreign investors,” Sunnaa said.

Without oil, however, Jordan cannot offer the ultimate incentive available in the United Arab Emirate – no tax at all.

For a country which for many years exported its skilled manpower to the Gulf region, the need to generate jobs at home through foreign investment is increasingly urgent as the government fights rising unemployment.

“We need the type of foreign investments to help us create the jobs that employ more Jordanians,” said Finance Minister Mohammad Abu Hammour, whose office in downtown Amman overlooks a sprawling capital, where almost a third of the population reside and income gaps between rich and poor are widening.

Proof of sluggish economic activity is evident on the streets of Amman, with many of the commercial properties built during the boom years now plastered with “for rent” signs.

Many Jordanians say that in a global economy where the competition for investment is ever more intense, Jordan cannot rely simply on its reputation as an island of stability in a regional sea of political volatility and violence.

“Security and stability is a main factor but not the only one that brings investments,” Nael Raja Al-Kabariti, chairman of the Jordan Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby, said. “There are many countries in the region that are giving much more to attract investors so competition is tough.”

Talks hit an impasse over agricultural issues, market access and customs cooperation, said Francisco Alvarez, Pamana’s deputy trade minister.

“Instead of forcing the close (of negotiations) or generating some kind of crisis … we believed what was responsible in this moment was to suspend the process,” Alvarez told reporters.

Alvarez said negotiators had reached agreements on at least 21 of the treaty’s 25 chapters, but that no date for fresh talks had been set.

The two neighbors announced plans in February to negotiate a trade pact that they said would double bilateral trade.

Trade between the two countries, including seafood, agricultural products and construction materials, was worth $300m in 2009.

A former province of Colombia, Panama gained its independence in 1903 and retains close ties with its neighbor. But the two countries have squabbled in the past over more than $1bn in goods Colombia buys from Panama’s Caribbean tax-free zone due to shipping restrictions imposed by Colombia.

Around 150 marines backed by helicopters and soldiers fought running battles with members of the powerful Gulf cartel for hours in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, terrifying residents and briefly shutting border bridges.

Dodging grenades and coming under heavy fire from gunmen hidden in houses and shooting from trucks, the marines moved in on Cardenas, one of Mexico’s most-wanted traffickers, and killed him on Friday afternoon, the navy said.

“He died in a shootout with us,” a navy spokesman said.

Three marines and four gunmen were killed, the navy said. A reporter was killed after being caught in crossfire, local media reported.

Cardenas, 48, was the brother of former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas, who was extradited to Texas in 2007. He had a $5m bounty on his head in the United States and ran the powerful gang with his partner, Jorge Eduardo Costilla, known as El Coss, who is still at large.

Praised in drug ballads, Cardenas won his nickname of “Tony Tormenta” (Tony Storm) for beheading and torturing rivals.

Risk of more violence
The Gulf cartel, which dominates trafficking from northeastern Mexico into Central America and has cells across the United States, is pitted against its former armed wing, the Zetas, in an unrelenting turf war.

That violence has spread into Mexico’s richest city of Monterrey near the Texas border, in a escalation of the drug war that worries foreign investors with factories in the area.

More than 31,000 people have been killed across Mexico since December 2006, when Calderon took office and launched his army-led crackdown. The government is under increasing pressure to contain the burgeoning death toll across the country.

Drug gangs blocked roads and set fire to gas stations in the colonial city of Morelia in western Mexico after soldiers captured a local drug gang leader, state news agency Notimex said.

Calderon’s national security chief Alejandro Poire lauded Cardenas’ killing as a major success in weakening the cartels that generate up to $40bn a year in narcotics sales in the United States.

“Today, we are taking a significant step in dismantling the criminal gangs that do so much damage to our country’s population,” Poire told reporters.

But drug trade specialists warned the violence will continue as long as Mexico fails to reform the corrupt judicial, police and prison services that help feed the cycle of killings.

“This is unfortunately going to fuel the spiraling violence because rivals will try to take advantage of the Gulf cartel’s weakened state,” said Pedro de la Cruz, a security analyst at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

Calderon has pledged reform but has failed to get initiatives through a divided Congress, focusing mainly on army-led operations that have led to the capture or killing of several top drug lords since late last year.

But the Zetas, blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the drug war including the murders of 72 migrants in August, appear to be relatively unscathed by the crackdown and their top operators are still at large.

Peru says Yale has some 40,000 of artifacts including pottery, jewelry and bones from the Incan site in the Peruvian Andes.

The artifacts were sent out of Peru after a Yale alumnus, U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham, rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. The Andean country argues the objects were lent to the New Haven, Connecticut, school for 18 months but never sent back.

Yale has shown a willingness to return the pieces as long as Peru can ensure they are cared for properly.

Garcia sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama last week asking for help getting the pieces returned without conditions.

“The items must be returned to Machu Picchu before a century passes,” Garcia, who walked with members of his Cabinet and Congress, told protesters.

“The law is on our side and so are the Peruvian people who suffered the looting of their cultural heritage,” he said.

Many marchers carried signs reading:” Yale, return the Machu Picchu relics.”

Yale officials could not be reached for comment, although Garcia said Peru was working with the university to reach an agreement.

At the time of Bingham’s find, the ancient city — now a tourist hot spot that drives economic activity in the region of Cuzco – was essentially forgotten, covered by thick forest in the mountains 8,000 feet (2,400 metres) above sea level.

Peru is dotted with hundreds of archeological sites and has struggled for years to combat trafficking of fossils and artifacts.

The sudden departure of former President Nestor Kirchner has turned politics on its head in South America’s second largest economy. He had been expected to run again for president next October, taking over from his wife just as she succeeded him in 2007, so Fernandez may now seek re-election herself.

Markets rallied following Kirchner’s death, sensing an end in sight to the couple’s combative style and unorthodox economic policies such as sudden nationalizations, the under-reporting of inflation data and grains export curbs.

But with the economy booming, and her solid approval ratings likely to get a sympathy boost, Fernandez may see little reason to change course, especially if she can shore up the backing of ruling Peronist party bigwigs who control the vote-winning machinery.

So far, the notoriously fickle mayors of the suburbs that circle Buenos Aires, Peronism’s heartland and a region vital to national electoral success, are pledging loyalty to Fernandez.

Peronism has long been about the power to win votes and mobilize the masses, so recent scenes of tens of thousands of people queuing to catch a glimpse of Kirchner’s coffin and rallying to support Fernandez may make rebels think twice.

“After that display, no one can question the president’s legitimacy and that she is not only our president, but our political leader,” said Fernando Espinoza, mayor of La Matanza, which has a population of more than 1.3 million and is a treasured prize for politicians on the campaign trail.

La Matanza, a working-class district in the Buenos Aires outskirts is a stronghold of Peronism, which is named after former President Gen. Juan Peron and draws inspiration from his wife Evita.

Fernandez may look for a replacement to take on her husband’s power broker role in the couple’s trusted inner circle, such as cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez, who also served under former President Eduardo Duhalde, an opposition figure.

Threat from within
Her choice will be crucial. Any failure to keep Peronist leaders on her side could hamper her government in the last year of her term and kill off her chances of re-election.

“There are lots of ambitious people who feared Nestor and we’ll have to see if she can keep all that as controlled as he did,” said Argentine political consultant Freddy Thomsen.

“We will want to see who she relies on for advice because Nestor did so much of that,” he added.

One of the biggest challenges may be reining in trade union leader Hugo Moyano, whose growing power, wealth and influence within the government has been sounding alarm bells elsewhere in Peronist party ranks.

In the months before he died, Kirchner was said to be under intense pressure from Moyano, who controls the truck drivers union and heads the Peronist party in Buenos Aires province.

Truckers have the potential to bring the country to a standstill and stop the key grains exports reaching port. Some analysts say that for that reason, Kirchner opted to keep Moyano close, but Fernandez may try a less cozy approach.

“The only person I’m married to is Nestor Kirchner,” Fernandez said days before her husband’s death, a comment some local media interpreted as an allusion to Moyano.

While Kirchner’s death deprives Fernandez of her closest ally, it has also disoriented a breakaway Peronist faction looking to take back control of the party and gearing up to challenge Kirchner in next year’s election.

Even if the likely sympathy vote for Fernandez fades long before polling, the so-called Federal Peronists could find it harder to gain traction with Kirchner out of the equation.

Kirchner was widely seen as the more confrontational of the couple and critics portrayed him as a murky figure calling the shots from behind the scenes. Although credited with pulling Argentina out of a deep recession and financial crisis when he was president from 2003-2007, his approval ratings have in the last year trailed those of his wife.

“The Federals have nothing to add now,” said Julio Barbaro, a prominent Peronist and former official, who also dismissed the possible candidacy of Buenos Aires Gov. Daniel Scioli – a moderate acceptable to business leaders and the dissidents.

“I can’t see the government giving (Scioli) anything he doesn’t deserve,” Barbaro said, though he did urge Fernandez to seek greater consensus in the party.

A week after Kirchner’s death stunned the country, Argentines and curious tourists are still taking photographs of the roses and handwritten condolence letters tied by supporters to the railings in front of the pink presidential palace.

For older Peronists, last week’s scenes have stirred memories of the death of General Peron in 1974, and that could help Fernandez be accepted as Peronism’s new figurehead.

“We must support her and vote for her again,” said housewife Haydee Rios, 63, reading the fading messages. “(But) she needs to differentiate herself and wipe the slate clean.”

 Carrefour, the world’s number two retailer, had set a November 5 deadline for second-round bids in an auction which is expected to fetch $1bn, sources said.

 The auction has generated strong interest, mostly from trader buyers, the sources said.

 The supermarket operator is selling its shops in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to focus on markets where it holds leading positions.

 Dairy Farm, which is backed by Jardine Mathseon Holdings Ltd, is interested only in Malaysian and Singapore assets, while Tesco was pursuing most of the assets up for grabs, the sources said.

 Sources previously told reporters that Aeon, Japan’s No 2 retailer, and Malaysian private equity fund Navis Capital would also bid only for Malaysian and Singapore assets.

 The auction is run in two separate processes, one for Thai assets and the other for Malaysian and Singapore assets.

 One source said that French retailer Casino Group, Thai retailer Berli Jucker and Thai Central Group are in the fray for Carrefour’s Thailand assets. But this could not be independently verified from other sources.

 Companies mentioned in this report could either not be reached for a comment or declined to comment.

 Carrefour’s sale comes at a time when Indonesian retailer Matahari is planning to exit its hypermarket business for about $1bn. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Carlyle Group and South Korea’s Lotte Shopping are in the race to buy the asset, sources previously told reporters.

The fighting in the eastern town of Myawaddy on the Thai border between ethnic minority Karen rebels and government forces broke out.

Five Thai villagers were wounded when four rocket-propelled grenades landed on Thai soil, a Thai official said, as several thousand people fled the fighting in one of the main trade gateways along the 1,800 km (1,100 mile) border with Thailand.

Animosity between majority Burmans and ethnic minorities in the hilly borderlands that form a horseshoe around the central Irrawaddy river plain goes back centuries.

“Nothing’s been resolved,” said David Mathieson, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. “The election hasn’t resolved any of the underlying causes of the civil war.”

Karen fighters have passed their war against the government down the generations since the then-Burma won independence in 1948 from British colonial rulers who had taken advantage of ethnic divisions to help maintain control.

Karen nationalists at first demanded an independent state but more recently have sought autonomy within a federal Myanmar, as have other minorities such as the Kachin, Shan and Wa.

But such calls spell nothing but trouble in the eyes of the army which is dominated by Burmans, who make up about 65 percent of the population, and sees one of its most crucial roles as preventing the break-up of the country.

Hostilies
Over the years, battered by an increasingly powerful army, most minority factions have struck ceasefires with the government under which they’ve been allowed to keep their weapons and run their enclaves.

But tension has flared as the army tried to absorb those groups into a military-run Border Guard Force by the election.

Main factions balked but with the election now out of the way, the army is expected to try to force them into line.

“It’s quite possible hostilities will break out,” said veteran Myanmar-analyst and author Bertil Lintner. “There’s going to be trouble but exactly in what shape or form is hard to tell.”

The Karen battling soldiers in Myawaddy are from a splinter faction of a ceasefire group that objects to being forced into the Border Guard Force. Other factions including the Kachin and the Wa along the border with China are also resisting.

“Being absorbed into the military power structure not just robs them of their identity but it makes them subordinate and robs them of whatever political aspirations they’ve had,” said Mathieson at Human Rights Watch.

China, building gas and oil pipelines from Myanmar to fuel its economy, is loathe to see trouble that could trigger a flood of refugees and will be pressing all sides to avoid conflict.

The Myanmar government will be hoping regional assemblies being set up with this election can satisfy minorities’ aspirations for self-rule.

But it’s yet to be seen how much influence the assemblies, over which the army will hold virtual veto power, will have.

“They sound good on paper but in practice, what will they be allowed to do?,” said Mathieson.

“I think it’s an example of further divide and rule. It’s about further splitting and marginalising the ethno-nationalist organisations.”

Headley’s story, contained in confidential Indian government documents, casts fresh light on the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, where US President Barack Obama paid tribute to the victims during a visit to the city.

It suggests that LeT cadres are increasingly being drawn into the orbit of al Qaeda and its affiliates and slipping out of the control of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, as the once cohesive group becomes more fractured and more receptive to al Qaeda’s global Islamist agenda.

The LeT has in the past been seen as one of Pakistan’s most reliable proxies, security analysts say, eschewing attacks on Pakistan itself and focusing on India and Kashmir.

“Tensions have existed within Lashkar for some time between those with a narrower focus on India and those with an international bent,” said Stephen Tankel, a US-based analyst who is writing a book on the group.

“As the Kashmir jihad waned and al Qaeda’s global jihad accelerated, managing these tensions became more difficult. The decision to launch a terrorist spectacular in Mumbai was driven by these internal dynamics,” he added.

Headley, arrested in Chicago last year, provided his account to Indian investigators in 34 hours of interviews in June.

According to documents obtained by reporters, he said plans for Mumbai began as a limited operation to attack an annual conference of software engineers in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

Within a matter of months it ballooned into a sea-borne assault by 10 gunman on many targets – the kind that security officials have said could also be planned for European cities – and ended up killing 166 people in a three-day siege.

The LeT had been straining at the seams for years, under pressure from the ISI to limit its activities in Kashmir which has been disputed by Pakistan and India since they won independence in 1947.

The group has been and losing members who went off to fight with, and become influenced by, other groups waging the more active jihad in Afghanistan.

“I understand this compelled the LeT to consider a spectacular terrorist strike in India,” the documents quote Headley, who has turned witness for the prosecution, as saying.

Committed to Kashmir
Headley, who scouted out targets in Mumbai on a number of trips, began working increasingly with Ilyas Kashmiri, the commander of a militant group based in Pakistan’s tribal areas who is closely linked to al Qaeda.

He visited Kashmiri twice in 2009, and discussed plans for an attack on Denmark, where the newspaper Jyllands-Posten had published cartoons deemed offensive to Islam. The men present “even discussed a general attack on Copenhagen”, Headley said.

Headley found himself scouting targets in Copenhagen for al Qaeda, and travelling to Sweden and the British town of Derby to seek help for the attack. It was thwarted when he was arrested in Chicago last year, according to some reports on a tip-off from British intelligence.

Much of Headley’s story has been leaking out steadily since his arrest. But what comes across in the testimony given to Indian prosecutors is a much more detailed picture of how the LeT has been transformed over the last decade.

While security officials worry that LeT’s supporters in the Pakistani diaspora could be used in an attack in the West, the group’s leaders still view Kashmir as the most important front.

In many discussions cited by Headley, they asserted its primacy with a zeal which frequently appears to go further than the ISI would like.

But it has been heavily influenced by the Afghan war, as LeT cadres have worked with groups fighting the Pakistan army on the border and returned committed to global jihad and less willing to toe the line of the group’s one-time ISI masters.

Pakistan has officially banned the group and curtailed its activities after it began a peace process with India in 2004.

Headley said that with Pakistan facing an identity crisis over the war in Afghanistan and in the tribal areas, “a debate had begun among the terrorist outfits as to whether to fight in Kashmir or in Afghanistan. The clash of ideology led to splits in many of our outfits”.

While LeT leaders approved the Mumbai plans, according to Headley, they were influenced by more radical members as targets grew to include places frequented by foreigners and Jews.

The targets chosen led even many Indian security analysts to rule out the involvement of the ISI leadership, which they said would never have taken the risk of triggering a US backlash by allowing the LeT to attack Americans and Jews.

The plot then acquired an almost random momentum.

With the assault planned for September in Ramadan, a hope was expressed that too many Muslims would not be killed since they would be at home breaking their fast. That was forgotten when this attempt failed after the gunmen’s boat capsized.

Plans to use the main railway station as an escape route were ditched when commanders decided the gunmen must fight to the death – turning the assault into a three-day siege, and the terminus into a target where a third of the victims died.

According to Headley, official ISI handlers were aware of the Mumbai plans. But in an organisation which runs into the thousands, and where agents were given a great deal of autonomy, it is unclear how far this information was passed up the line.

The Indian documents quote Headley as saying that ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited an LeT commander in jail after the assault “to understand the Mumbai attack conspiracy”.

Asked about the report, a Pakistani official said no ISI officers were involved in the Mumbai attacks, and noted that Pakistan had long been asking India to share evidence it had gathered.

India has long argued that Pakistan must not only curb the activities of the LeT but also dismantle “the infrastructure of terrorism” in order to prevent further attacks like Mumbai.

“We are willing to take concrete measures to help Portugal cope with the global financial crisis,” he said after meeting Prime Minister Jose Socrates, without elaborating.

The meeting was the last stop of Hu’s tour to France and Portugal before returning to Beijing.

In October, Premier Wen Jiabao promised to buy Greek government bonds when Athens returns to markets, in a show of support for the country whose debt burden pushed the euro zone into crisis and required an international bailout.

Portugal, which unlike Greece still sells bonds on financial markets although at high cost, had hoped for a similar promise as it is trying to soothe investors’ concerns about its ability to cut a high budget deficit and rein in ballooning debt.

Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying, who is part of the Chinese delegation visiting Europe, told reporters that Beijing remained committed to investing in European bonds and was willing to lend Portugal a helping hand.

The Chinese government faces criticism at home over losses which state entities incurred during the global crisis. But Beijing may calculate that using part of its huge foreign currency reserves to support troubled European countries would help to deflect international criticism of its trade policies and its refusal to let its yuan currency appreciate sharply.

Portugal and China also signed several cooperation treaties in areas such as financial services, logistics, renewable energy and tourism, and agreed to work to double their bilateral trade by 2015.

Hu said he would encourage Chinese companies to invest in Portugal, while China also wanted Portuguese firms to sell more goods in the world’s most populous country.

High debt premiums
A stern-looking Socrates thanked Hu for a “personal effort” to achieve not only the doubling of trade and more mutual investment, but also “a more balanced relationship so that both our peoples can benefit from this ambition”.

Portuguese imports from China in the January-August period jumped 47 percent to €1.03bn from last year, while exports to the world’s second largest economy in the first eight months of the year totalled just €149m.

Investors’ concerns that Portugal may fail to rein in its budget deficit and debt have caused its debt premiums to soar this year, raising the risk of a Greek-style bailout.

But the minority Socialist government maintains it will meet the budget deficit target of 7.3 percent of GDP this year and 4.6 percent in 2011 year. It is betting on higher exports to avoid a new recession next year, when tough austerity measures such as higher taxes and wage cuts will start.

In an example of possible investment, Portugal’s largest company and utility EDP said China Power Holding International (CPI), with which it signed an agreement for a potential partnership, expressed interest in buying a stake in the Portuguese company.

“Given the strategic significance the cooperation partnership may have, CPI has manifested its interest in a potential entry into EDP’s capital,” EDP said in a statement.

Other agreements included a joint effort to identify business opportunities by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China , the world’s biggest lender by market value, and Portugal’s largest listed bank Millennium bcp.

China’s Huawei Technologies, the world’s second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, and Portugal Telecom signed a deal to work together to develop new generation services.