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Intelligence Guidance: Week of April 12, 2009; STRATFOR

Intelligence Guidance: Week of April 12, 2009

STRATFOR TODAY » April 10, 2009 | 2005 GMT

Editor’s Note: The following is an internal STRATFOR document produced to provide high-level guidance to our analysts. This document is not a forecast, but rather a series of guidelines for understanding and evaluating events, as well as suggestions on areas for focus.

1. The effects of the recent series of summits: The last two weeks have been busy in Eurasia, with everyone who is anyone meeting in a series of summits. One outcome of those summits is a renewed animosity between the Americans and Russians. The two points where they are rubbing up against each other most actively are in Moldova and Georgia, former Soviet states that are currently the target of revolution movements. How the Americans and Russians interact in those two countries will give us a great deal of insight into how far the bigger powers are willing to go. In particular we need to see if the Americans are going to try and insert a foreign monitoring presence into Moldova, and if the Russians will take a (quiet) role in getting the Georgian opposition to back a single candidate to take over the government. Such developments would greatly up the ante.

2. Meetings in East Asia: It is now East Asia’s turn to have a battery of summits. At the time of this writing, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is meeting, and in the next week there will be a smattering of bilateral talks (Japan-Jordan, Singapore-Vietnam, New Zealand-China, Pakistan-Japan, Kazakhstan-China) as well as a Pakistani donors’ conference in Tokyo. The issues at these meetings are not as world-wrenching as the European summits, but here the offer of money looms much larger. The East Asians are putting together a $120 billion fund to assist each other in tough times (and could include Pakistan looking for help from Japan and other donors). If successful, it will be first fund of its kind since the International Monetary Fund. The devil will be in the details, so we need to dig through them all.

3. Obama in Latin America: This week will be Latin America’s chance to bend U.S. President Barack Obama’s ear. He will be in Mexico for a bilateral summit April 16-17, and then Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas. The Mexican summit is by far the more important of the two, as Obama has yet to even hint what his policy is toward one of the United States’ most important relationships (trade, border security, immigration, drugs, etc). There is not much guidance on this one, other than pick apart everything we find.

EURASIA

April 14-15: Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat is scheduled to visit Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and discuss reunification with the Greek-controlled portion of Cyprus.

April 15-19: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit China and meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leading government officials.

April 16-17: Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg is scheduled to visit Minsk to discuss Belarus’ role in the Eastern Partnership, the European Union’s cooperation program with neighbors on its eastern periphery.

MIDDLE EAST/SOUTH ASIA

April 10: Strikes that began April 9 continued in most parts of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, leaving banks, offices, educational institutions and shopping centers shut down. Baloch nationalists called the strikes to protest the recent killings of three Baloch political leaders. Protests and strikes reportedly continued in Quetta, Naushki, Aawaran, Khuzdar, Qalat, Mstung, Rurbat, Dalbadin, Bhag, Kharan, Punjgur, Mand, Gawadar, Jiwani, Ormara and Hub.

April 9-11: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will visit Russia to meet with Russian officials and companies and discuss investment in Iraq’s oil industry and its electric power sector. Al-Maliki will be accompanied by the Iraqi ministers of oil, foreign affairs, defense and electricity. An Iraqi government spokesman said al-Maliki also would discuss the possibility of reactivating contracts with Russian companies drafted under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

April 11: Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian National Authority will meet to discuss formulating a unified stance on the new Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The leaders also plan to discuss the Arab peace initiative.

April 12: U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell will begin a tour of the Middle East, including visits to Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Persian Gulf and North Africa as well as Egypt the week of April 12. Mitchell will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The goal of his trip is to make progress on a two-state solution for peace in the region. Mitchell is also scheduled to arrive in Egypt on April 16 where he will meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for talks on the Middle East peace process and the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders are to discuss the upcoming U.S.-Egyptian talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, which are scheduled for the end of April.

April 12-15: Jordanian King Abdullah II will travel to Japan for a three-day visit during which he will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso for talks on boosting bilateral economic ties. The monarch also plans to meet with Emperor Akihito, senior government officials and businessmen.

April 15: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will begin a trip to Japan. During his visit, Zardari will meet with Emperor Akihito and Prime Minister Taro Aso. On April 17, Zardari reportedly will chair the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Group Ministerial Meeting and will attend the Pakistan Donors Conference, co-hosted by Japan and the World Bank.

April 17: Syria will celebrate Independence Day.

EAST ASIA

April 9-16: Japanese State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Shintaro Ito will visit the United States to discuss North Korea’s recent missile launch.

April 10-12: Thailand will hold its postponed 14th Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit and related meetings in the coastal town of Pattaya. Talks are expected to focus heavily on how the region can best cope with the fallout of the global financial crisis.

April 13: Mongolian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Batbold Sukhbaatar will have hold talks with Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Hirofumi Nakasone.

April 13-17: Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew will visit Vietnam for talks on regional and international matters, especially the financial and economic crisis and measures to address this crisis. Both sides will also discuss measures to further enhance bilateral cooperation in economics, trade, investment, culture and education.

April 11-25: Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong will pay official visits to the United States and Singapore and have extensive discussions on bilateral relations and issues of common interest.

April 14: Fiji’s ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, who was ousted on Dec. 5, 2006, by the military in a bloodless coup, will tender his resignation to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo as promised.

April 14-18: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key will pay an official visit to China.

April 15: North Korea will mark the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s birthday.

April 17-19: The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) will be held in the southern Chinese province of Hainan. Eleven foreign leaders are confirmed to attend, including former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

LATIN AMERICA

April 14-15: The Presidential Summit for the Bolivarian Alternative, an event organized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, will be held in Caracas in advance of the Summit of the Americas. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and a representative of the government of Cuba, who has yet to be named, are slated to attend.

April 14-16: The Brazilian government will co-host the World Economic Forum on South America in Rio de Janeiro. The forum will bring together 500 leaders representing business, government, academia, civil society and media from more than 35 countries. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva will open the meeting, which will center on how the region is responding to the global economic crisis.

April 15: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Director of the White House Homeland Security Council John Brennan will make a series of visits to southwestern border communities beginning April 15. They plan to meet with local officials and residents to discuss border security.

April 16: Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo will visit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas, in his second visit to Venezuela since being elected in April 2008.

April 16: Peruvian President Alan Garcia will travel to Beijing to sign a free trade agreement with China.

April 16-17: U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Mexico for a visit with Mexican President Felipe Calderon. The two will discuss immigration issues, the global financial crisis and border security.

April 17: Anti-Castro Cuban exile and former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, who was indicted by a federal grand jury April 8 of lying to U.S. authorities about his role in bomb attacks against tourist sites in Cuba in 1997, is scheduled to be arraigned. Posada is wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela, where he is accused of masterminding the 1976 suitcase bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

April 17-19: U.S. President Barack Obama will head to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to attend the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a gathering of democratically-elected heads of state from the Western Hemisphere.

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