However, she avoided a direct clash on the issue and hinted that a compromise could yet be found.
The European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, said: “We are moving towards lifting the arms embargo. Ms Rice made clear her continuing objections to normalising arms sales with Beijing yesterday during a visit to Brussels. THE EUROPEAN Union said yesterday it was moving ahead with plans to lift an arms embargo on China despite hearing a raft of reservations from the new American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. “There is no such thing as a Kazakh language,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio “Nor is there any history of a written language.

In general there’s simply nothing there.” Mr Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, supports the restoration of the Russian Empire by force, including the seizure of Finland and Alaska. Yesterday his office stood by his comments about Kazakhstan.His views on Kazakhstan may be linked to the fact that he was born there in 1946 when it was part of the Soviet Union and witnessed the intensive Russification” of the republic in the next two decades, a process that saw Russian farm workers eventually outnumber the natives.Kazakhstan became independent in 1991.. THE FAR-RIGHT Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky was embroiled in a fresh row yesterday after the authorities in Kazakhstan accused him of insulting an entire nation and of fomenting ethnic hatred. Kazakhstan’s general prosecutor, Rashid Tusupbekov, wrote to his Russian counterpart demanding that the nationalist firebrand be prosecuted for whipping up ethnic hatred between Russians and Kazakhs and for insulting the dignity of the Kazakh people.
The row began when Mr Zhirinovsky, in a radio interview last month, asserted that Kazakhstan, which was colonised by Russia in the 19th century, had never existed as an independent nation.His inference was that the former Soviet republic should be part of Russia and not independent.He went on to criticise a recent border agreement between the two countries saying Russia was giving away its historic lands – then he claimed there was no such thing as a Kazakh identity. Serving officers fear that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, formerly based in Iran and controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, will want jobs in the Interior and Defence Ministries Nobody expects the wave of assassinations to stop soon.. The Americans also fear that one day the weapons they hand over now will be turned against them by Iraqis or will be sold to the resistance.With the Shia victory in the election, the security ministries could again experience the post-war turmoil largely dealt with by the former Baathist interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi. When they arrived, the Iraqi crews were angry to find that they were being given outdated, Soviet-made T-55s.”The one thing the Americans seem determined about is to retain control of the Iraqi army,” said a foreign diplomat in Baghdad.

The presence of American soldiers makes the Iraqi soldiers feel that they will be viewed as traitors to their own country by other Iraqis.The lack of equipment and vehicles is still common, almost two years after the invasion. In the Qadassiya district of Baghdad yesterday police commandos were driving at great speed to an emergency. Their vehicles were elderly white pick-ups.US officers told some Iraqi units that they would receive tanks. Many of their former colleagues now serve in the security ministries of the interim government. Information leaks.The American recipe for making the army and security forces more effective is to embed US training officers in Iraqi units It is not a welcome move among Iraqi officers.

“They keep saying that they don’t need more training but better weapons,” says Sabah Khadim, a senior adviser in the Interior Ministry. Instead of driving off, he remembered something he had left in his house and his guards went to get it It was a fatal delay. A car filled with gunmen drove up and opened up on him and his son.Yesterday evening, police in Baghdad said a director in the ministry of culture and housing had been assassinated by gunmen who attacked his car.The suicide bombs, the attacks on US troops and the set-piece battles in Najaf and Kerbala are widely publicised abroad The insurgents appear crude though bloodthirsty. President George Bush claimed it was created to “cut through the hateful propaganda that fills the airwaves in the Muslim world.”Mr Khazaal had just left his house and was standing by his car He had two bodyguards. The most effective members of the resistance belonged to the old Iraqi army and security services.

He counts himself lucky to be alive – he counted 150 bullet holes in the remains of his vehicle. Largely recovered from his wounds, he still walks awkwardly and seems to wince with pain when he moves his arms.It is not difficult to work out where the insurgents’ intelligence comes from. Gunmen attacked his car two months ago and he was shot twice in the back, the bullets just missing his heart. “He was careful about his own security and was always changing his address,” said a colleague.It did not do him much good Somebody in the resistance decided he posed a real threat. But another war of assassinations and kidnappings is proving that the resistance has a well-informed intelligence service. It can identify the most effective personnel on the interim government side and eliminate them.General Mudher, a burly middle-aged man, is the creator of the police commandos. Wearing camouflage uniform and black ski-masks, the commandos are a lot more warlike than the ordinary police with their elderly weapons and fragile blue and white police cars.A veteran soldier famous in Iraq for bringing his tank safely from Kuwait back to Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf war, General Mudher recruited and trained this new force.