Israel fitting nuclear arms on German-supplied subs: report

Israel is arming submarines supplied and largely financed byGermany with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, influential German news weekly Der Spiegel reports in its issue to be published on Monday.

The magazine said in a cover story that Berlin had until now denied any knowledge that German submarines were being used as part of an Israeli atomic arsenal.

But former high-ranking officials of the German defence ministry told Der Spiegel that the government always assumed Israel was putting nuclear warheads on the Dolphin-class vessels.

The article, based on a months-long probe, cited files from the foreign ministry in Berlin indicating the West German state was aware of the practice as early as 1961.

In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said only: "I can confirm that we have German submarines. It's no secret.

"As for the rest, I am not in a position to talk about their capacity," he told AFP.

Israel is the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear-armed power.

Germany has already supplied Israel with three of the submarines in question, footing most of the bill, and another three are to be delivered by 2017 under a recently signed contract.

Meanwhile Israel is weighing whether to order three more, according to the report.

"The Germans can be proud to have ensured the existence of the state of Israel for several years to come," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying.

The opposition Social Democrat Party called Sunday on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government for an explanation.

"The federal government must provide information so that we know if the submarines delivered by Germany can be potentially equipped with nuclear warheads," party spokesman Rolf Muetzenich told Der Spiegel.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said all submarines had been delivered unarmed.

"The federal government will not speculate on subsequent arming," he said.

The report said Germany hoped to see Israeli concessions on settlements on Palestinian land and approval for the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the assistance.

Israel sees its existence under threat if its arch-foe Iran goes nuclear. Like the United States, it has refused to rule out bombing Iranian nuclear sites.

Germany, bearing the historical guilt of the Holocaust, is Israel's closest ally in Europe.

But it has sharply criticised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settlement policies in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem as undermining peace efforts with the Palestinians.

Tensions between Germany and Israel flared in April when Nobel prize-winning German author Gunter Grass published an inflammatory poem warning that a nuclear-armed Israel "could wipe out the Iranian people (with a) first strike."

Prophecy unfolding before our eyes!

Putin to meet Iran's Ahmadinejad in China: Kremlin


Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a summit in Beijing next week as tensions rise over Tehran's nuclear drive, a Kremlin official said.


"Meeting Ahmadinejad will let Putin personally feel the tension around the Iranian issue and how it is perceived in Tehran," Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters last week in comments that were embargoed for release until Sunday.


Putin and Ahmadinejad agreed to meet over the phone and the initiative came "from both sides," Ushakov said.


The meeting will come as Russia prepares to host the latest round of talks on June 18 and 19 between world powers and Iranian negotiators in a bid to find a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.


The Moscow talks will follow a meeting last month in Baghdad where the six world powers -- the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany -- confronted Tehran over its intention to enrich uranium despite fears it was building a nuclear bomb.


The talks achieved little in two days of intense discussions besides setting up the next meeting in Moscow.


Like Western capitals, Russia "was not too happy" with the outcome of the Baghdad talks, but "understood the main thing, which is readiness of both sides to continue talks," Ushakov said.


"Only in dialogue is it possible to get a sense of any sort of compromise, which is crucial to unblock this situation... and leave out the most scary scenarios."


Russia has repeatedly warned against using military action against Iran -- an option never ruled out by Israel or the United States -- and said that this could cause a catastrophe in the Middle East.


Putin will meet Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. He is also scheduled to speak with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in a bilateral meeting.


The meeting with Ahmadinejad will be Putin's first since his return to the Kremlin for a third term after a four-year stint as prime minister.


During his second term as president, Putin met Ahmadinejad in Tehran in 2007 in a rare visit to the country by the Kremlin chief.


The Russian delegation to the China summit is a show of force with "all the major names of Russian business in attendance," said Ushakov.


Putin is also due to meet China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.


With China preparing for a stage-managed leadership change, Putin will also meet Vice Premier Li Kequiang, who is set to be the next premier, and Xi Jinping, who is tipped as the next president.

Powerful "Flame" cyber weapon found in Iran

A computer engineer checks equipment at an internet service provider in Tehran February 15, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Caren Firouz

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON | Mon May 28, 2012 2:09pm EDT

(Reuters) - Security experts discovered a highly complex computer virus in Iran and the Middle East that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored espionage.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that claimed responsibility for discovering the virus.

Kaspersky researchers said they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.

Iran has accused the United States and Isreal of deploying Stuxnet.

Cyber security experts said the discovery provides new evidence to the public to show what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.

"This is one of many, many campaigns that happen all the time and never make it into the public domain," said Alexander Klimburg, a cyber security expert at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

A cyber security agency in Iran said on its website on Monday that Flame bore a "close relation" to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country's nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Kaspersky Lab said it discovered Flame after a U.N. telecommunications agency asked it to analyze data on malicious software across the Middle East in search of the data-wiping virus reported by Iran.

STUXNET CONNECTION

Experts at Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security who have spent weeks studying Flame said they have yet to find any evidence that it can attack infrastructure, delete data or inflict other physical damage.

Yet they said they are in the early stages of their investigations and that they may discover other purposes beyond data theft. It took researchers months to determine the key mysteries behind Stuxnet, including the purpose of modules used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran.

"Their initial research suggest that this was probably written by the authors of Stuxnet for covert intelligence collection," said John Bumgarner, a cyber warfare expert with the non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit think tank.

Flame appears poised to go down in history as the third major cyber weapon uncovered after Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin Duqu, named after the Star Wars villain.

The Moscow-based company is controlled by Russian malware researcher Eugene Kaspersky. It gained notoriety in cyber weapons research after solving several mysteries surrounding Stuxnet and Duqu.

Their research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by the Israel/Palestine region, then Sudan and Syria.

The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility it attacked. It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg.

GATHERING DATA

Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.

Kaspersky Lab said Flame and Stuxnet appear to infect machines by exploiting the same flaw in the Windows operating system and that both viruses employ a similar way of spreading.

That means the teams that built Stuxnet and Duqu might have had access to the same technology as the team that built Flame, Schouwenberg said.

He said that a nation state would have the capability to build such a sophisticated tool, but declined to comment on which countries might do so.

The question of who built flame is sure to become a hot topic in the security community as well as the diplomatic world.

There is some controversy over who was behind Stuxnet and Duqu.

Some experts suspect the United States and Israel, a view that was laid out in a January 2011 New York Times report that said it came from a joint program begun around 2004 to undermine what they say are Iran's efforts to build a bomb. That article said the program was originally authorized by U.S. President George W. Bush, and then accelerated by his successor, Barack Obama.

A U.S. Defense Department spokesman, David Oten, declined to comment on Flame on Monday, saying it may take "some time" because of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

The CIA, the State Department, the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Cyber Command declined to comment.

Hungarian researcher Boldizsar Bencsath, whose Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security first discovered Duqu, said his analysis shows that Flame may have been active for at least five years and perhaps eight years or more.

"The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now," Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.

(Additional reporting by Jim Wolf in Washington, Daniel Fineran in Dubai and William Maclean in London; editing by Edward Tobin, Ron Popeski and Mohammad Zargham)

Reuters

Russian arms shipment en route to Syria: report

By Louis Charbonneau


UNITED NATIONS | Fri May 25, 2012 6:14pm EDT


(Reuters) - A Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons is en route to Syria and due to arrive at a Syrian port this weekend, Al Arabiya television said in a report that Western diplomats in New York described on Friday as credible.


Syria is one of Russia's top weapons customers. The United States and European Union have suggested the U.N. Security Council should impose an arms embargo and other U.N. sanctions on Syria for its 14-month assault on a pro-democracy opposition determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.


But Russia, with the support of fellow veto power China, has prevented the council from imposing any U.N. sanctions on Syria and has refused to halt arms sales to Damascus.


"Al Arabiya have learned that a Russian cargo ship carrying a large amount of weapons plans to unload its cargo in the Syrian port of Tartus," the broadcaster said on its website on Thursday.


The report said the ship left a Russian port on May 6 and cited a "Western source" as saying that it will dock at Tartus on Saturday.


"The ship is trying to conceal its final destination in a suspicious way," Al Arabiya said.


Western diplomats and officials said the report was credible.


In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had seen reports of countries supplying arms to the government and rebels. He urged states not to arm either side in the Syrian conflict.


"Those who may contemplate supporting any side with weapons, military training or other military assistance, must reconsider such options to enable a sustained cessation of violence," he said.


Russia has defended its weapons deliveries to Syria in the face of Western criticism, saying government forces need to defend themselves against rebels receiving arms from abroad. [ID:nL5E8GEE2G] Damascus says Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya are among the countries helping the rebels.


ARMS FOR ASSAD


One diplomat told Reuters that the vessel, which is called Professor Katsman, is owned by a Maltese firm, which is owned by a Cypriot company that is owned by Russian firm.


Diplomats said the Russian firm might have been acting on behalf of state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, though that was not clear. What is clear, they said, is that the weapons were intended to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch ally whom Moscow continues to support.


"I don't have any information on this ship, but our policy is not to comment on individual shipments, regarding contents or timing," a spokesman for Rosoboronexport, Vyacheslav Davidenko, said in Moscow.


The Russian Foreign Ministry said it did not have information that a ship was headed to Tartus with weapons and declined further comment.


U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked about the Al Arabiya report at her daily briefing in Washington.


"I had not seen that report," she told reporters. "You know how strongly we feel that no country should be delivering weapons to the Assad regime now."


U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has also urged countries not to supply weapons to either side in the conflict. Annan plans to visit Damascus soon, his spokesman said on Friday.


(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Arshad Mohammed and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Thomas Grove and Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Editing by Vicki Allen andStacey Joyce)


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