Monday, April 27, 2015

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Senate begins full debate on Iran nuke deal amid warnings about amendments that would nix robust support


With the Senate set to begin full debate this week on a bipartisan bill to give Congress the authority to review and potentially reject any Iran nuclear deal, some members are being warned about pushing amendments that change the bipartisan legislation and nix its support.
"Anybody who monkeys with this bill is going to run into a buzz saw," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned ahead of the floor debate.
And Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is urging fellow senators to stick with the plan that recently emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The high-profile debate comes as negotiators from the United States and five other countries try to reach a final deal with Iran by June 30 to curb the country's nuclear-enrichment program, in exchange for relief from sanctions choking its economy.
The parties will meet again this week on the sidelines of a U.N. conference in New York.
The Senate bill was approved 19-0 by the Foreign Relations committee and has 62 co-sponsors from both parties. It is expected pass the GOP-led Senate and House.
Some lawmakers, however, want changes that risk them losing the support of President Obama, who grudgingly backed the measure, and his fellow Democrats.
If there is a final deal with Iran, Obama can use his executive authority to ease some sanctions on his own and work with the European Union and the United Nations to lift others. Obama also can waive sanctions that Congress has imposed on Iran, but he cannot formally lift them.
The bill would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions for at least 30 days while lawmakers weigh in.
If 60 senators vote to disapprove of the deal, Obama would lose his waiver power altogether. The president is betting he will not.
If Congress disapproves, the president will almost respond with a veto. As long as he can get more than one-third of the Senate to side with him, he can prevent his veto from being overridden.
Backers of the bill are trying to keep lawmakers focused on how it would give Congress a say on a critical national security issue. They say the measure is not meant to be about how Iran increasingly is wielding influence in the Middle East, its support of terrorist groups or human rights violations. They worry that adding too many divisive amendments would cause Democrats to drop their support.
Even so, some senators are proposing amendments to pressure Iran to end its support of such groups, stop threatening to destroy Israel and recognize its right to exist, and release U.S. citizens held in Iran.
Other amendments would prevent sanctions relief if Iran cooperates with nuclear-armed North Korea or until international nuclear inspectors are guaranteed access to Iranian military sites.
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a presidential candidate, has an amendment with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that would require Congress to sign off on any final nuclear deal, not just disapprove of it. An amendment from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., would make any deal a treaty, thus needing to be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate.
"The president should have to get 67 votes for a major nuclear arms agreement with an outlaw regime," said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
Cotton wants to lower the number of votes needed to reject a deal from 60 to 51. That means opponents of any deal would only need Republican votes to sink it.
He also wants to see amendments requiring that Congress be notified of any violations of an agreement, not just ones that are legally defined as material breaches.
A third set of amendments would prevent sanctions relief until they meet goals the U.S. established at the beginning of the negotiations. Critics of the talks claim the administration has backtracked and agreed to too many concessions for Iran.
Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee chairman and a co-author of the bill, said he too would like to see Iran change its behavior and he wants any final deal to be a good one that will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But he said that's not what the bill is about.
"This bill is about the process," Corker said. "It's not a bill about the content of any deal, and hopefully, that's how the bill will remain."

US troops in Europe request bigger guns amid tensions with Russia over Ukraine


One of the last American combat units stationed in Europe is asking the government for bigger guns amid rising tensions over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
The 2nd Cavalry Regiment is requesting that 81 of its 8-wheel-drive Stryker infantry carrier vehicles be equipped with 30-mm. automatic cannons -- double the caliber of the 12.7-mm. guns they already carry, the military news website Breaking Defense reports.
The House Armed Services committee is already setting aside money for the upgrade, which the Army approved Wednesday, according to a memo obtained by the website.
The upgraded cannons would give the Strykers added firepower against other light-armored vehicles.
The 2nd Cavalry Regiment, based in Vilseck, Germany, had been deployed to the Baltic States to deter aggression following Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, Breaking Defense reports.
NATO's chief on Thursday reported a sizeable Russian military buildup on the border with Ukraine that he said would enable pro-Moscow separatists to launch a new offensive with little warning.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has substantially stepped up supplies to the rebels, as well as providing them with advanced training and equipment like drones, despite a cease-fire.
Making an accusation of their own, Russian officials said U.S. military instructors were training Ukrainian national guardsmen in urban fighting techniques in the same eastern regions where Ukrainian forces and separatists have been fighting for the past year.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department rejected the Russian claim of U.S. trainers in eastern Ukraine, saying all the activity was in western Ukraine near the border with Poland.
"We've been doing this for about 20 years now," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters, calling the Russian statement "ridiculous."
Stoltenberg said the reported Russian moves undermine the cease-fire declared in eastern Ukraine and violate the Minsk agreements entered into by Moscow. He said more than 1,000 pieces of Russian military equipment have been moved over the past month, including tanks, artillery and air defense units.
Stoltenberg said this "gives reason for great concern" and would enable the separatists to go on the offensive again with little warning.
He said the U.S.-led defense alliance is not certain about the intentions of Moscow and the pro-Russian rebels, "but we are certain about the capabilities."
The claim from Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen.-Maj. Igor Konashenkov that U.S. trainers are active in disputed areas of eastern Ukraine came one day after the U.S. State Department accused Russia of deploying air-defense systems in eastern Ukraine and combined Russia-separatist forces of maintaining artillery and rocket launchers in violation of the shaky cease-fire deal.
Konashenkov denied those claims, and said U.S. military instructors are working in the vicinity of the cities of Mariupol, Artemivsk and Volnovakha.
U.S. paratroopers last week arrived in western Ukraine to train national guard units.

Clinton Foundation addresses disclosure of $31M Canadian donation, re-filing IRS revenue forms


The Clinton Foundation acknowledged Sunday that the nonprofit group “made mistakes” in IRS filings and defended its disclosure of controversial contributions from a Canadian financier, following days of intense public scrutiny about foundation finances.
“We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them,” foundation executive Maura Pally wrote on the foundation website. “And [we] have taken steps to ensure they don't happen in the future.”
The donations were called into question last week by Peter Schweizer, author of the soon-to-be-released book “Clinton Cash.”
Schweizer found Canadian financier Frank Giustra gave $31.1 million to the foundation after a 2005 uranium-mine deal he made in Kazakhstan, with former President Clinton at his side. The deal eventually led to one that gave Russia access to U.S. uranium deposits.
The concerns about the foundation’s contributions and finances are being raised as Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, makes a 2016 White House bid.
She also was secretary of state during other deals about which Schweizer has raised concerns.
Pally writes that the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership of Canada is listed on the foundation website as a donor . However, Canadian law prohibits charities from disclosing individual donors without their permission.
“This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency,” she writes.
Pally also wrote Sunday that the foundation has already said it will likely re-file tax forms for some years, following the completion of a voluntary external review.
However, she says the effort was not an admission that the foundation failed to report all of its revenue.
“That is not the case,” Pally writes. “Our total revenue was accurately reported on each year's form.”
She said the errors were the result of government grants being “mistakenly combined with other donations.”
Pally also argued that the foundation’s policies for donor disclosures and foreign-government contributors are “stronger than ever” and that the group has already announced that it will accept funding from only a “handful of governments,” including many whose multi-year grants for philanthropic work have yet to be completed.
“We are committed to operating the foundation responsibly and effectively to continue the life-changing work that this philanthropy is doing every day,” Pally wrote.

Rescuers struggle to reach victims of Nepal earthquake as death toll tops 3,700


Rescue workers raced to reach remote rural villages in Nepal Monday as the official death toll from a devastating earthquake rose past 3,700 and threatened to climb.
Nepal police said in a statement Monday that the country's death toll had risen to 3,617 people. That number does not include the 18 people confirmed dead in an avalanche that swept through the Mount Everest base camp in the wake of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India. China reported that 20 people had died in Tibet.
Reports received so far by the government and aid groups suggest that many communities perched on mountainsides are devastated or struggling to cope. Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district, near the epicenter of Saturday's quake, said he was in desperate need of help.
"There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I've had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," he said.
He said 223 people had been confirmed dead in the district but he presumed "the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured."
"Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides, and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls," said Matt Darvas, a member of the aid group World Vision. "It will likely be helicopter access only."
Timalsina said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.
"We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue," he said. "We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives."
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of newly homeless families slept on the streets of the capital, Kathmandu, for a second consecutive night Sunday. Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said tents and water were being handed out Monday at 10 locations in Kathmandu, but that aftershocks were leaving everyone jittery.
"There have been nearly 100 earthquakes and aftershocks, which is making rescue work difficult. Even the rescuers are scared and running because of them," he said.
Tens of thousands spent the night sleeping in parks or on a golf course. Others camped in open squares lined by cracked buildings and piles of rubble.
It's overwhelming. It's too much to think about," said 55-year-old Bijay Nakarmi, mourning his parents, whose bodies recovered from the rubble of what once was a three-story building.
He could tell how they died from their injuries. His mother was electrocuted by a live wire on the roof top. His father was cut down by falling beams on the staircase.
He had last seen them a few days earlier -- on Nepal's Mothers' Day -- for a cheerful family meal.
"I have their bodies by the river. They are resting until relatives can come to the funeral," Nakarmi said as workers continued searching for another five people buried underneath the wreckage.
The capital city is largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings. But outside of the oldest neighborhoods, many in Kathmandu were surprised by how few modern structures collapsed in the quake.
The earthquake was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years. It destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods of Kathmandu and was strong enough to be felt all across parts of India, Bangladesh, China's region of Tibet and Pakistan.
Nepal's worst recorded earthquake in 1934 measured 8.0 and all but destroyed the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.
Rescuers aided by international teams spent Sunday digging through rubble of buildings - concrete slabs, bricks, iron beams, wood - to look for survivors. Because the air was filled with chalky concrete dust, many people wore breathing masks or held shawls over their faces.
Hundreds of people in Kathmandu's western Kalanki neighborhood nervously watched the slow progress of a single backhoe digging into the rubble of the collapsed Lumbini Guest House, once a three-story budget hotel.
Most areas were without power and water. The United Nations said hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were overcrowded and running out of emergency supplies and space to store corpses.
Most shops in Kathmandu were closed after the government declared a weeklong period of recovery. Only fruit vendors and pharmacies seemed to be doing business.
"More people are coming now," fruit seller Shyam Jaiswal said. "They cannot cook so they need to buy something they can eat raw."
Jaiswal said stocks were running out, and more shipments were not expected for at least a week, but added, "We are not raising prices. That would be illegal, immoral profit."
The quake will probably put a huge strain on the resources of this impoverished country best known for Everest, the highest mountain in the world. The economy of Nepal, a nation of 27.8 million people, relies heavily on tourism, principally trekking and Himalayan mountain climbing.
The first nations to respond were Nepal's neighbors - India, China and Pakistan, all of which have been jockeying for influence over the landlocked nation. Nepal remains closest to India, with which it shares deep political, cultural and religious ties.
Other countries sending support Sunday included the United States, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Israel and Singapore.
An American military plane left Delaware's Dover Air Force Base for Nepal, carrying 70 people, including a disaster-assistance response team and an urban search-and-rescue team, and 45 tons of cargo, the Pentagon said.

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