MUNICH - At Saturday's morning session of the 2012 Munich Security Conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta clarified that NATO forces will not stop fighting in Afghanistan in 2013, but he confirmed that the U.S. hopes to hand over the combat lead to Afghan forces that year. Many European and NATO officials in the room were still a little miffed they had to learn about the strategy shift in the newspapers two days ago.

On the way to Brussels to attend the NATO defense ministers meeting Feb. 2, Panetta made news by saying that U.S. forces will transition out of a lead combat role next year. "Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013," Panetta said. "Hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013 we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role."

On Saturday morning here in Munich, sitting beside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Panetta made the same announcement again, but this time with a bit more nuance.

"Our bottom line [in Afghanistan] is ‘in together, out together.' As an alliance, we are fully committed to the Lisbon framework and transitioning to Afghan control by 2014. Our discussions included considerations about how ISAF will move from the lead combat role to a support, advise, and assist role as Afghan security forces move into the lead," he said. "We hope Afghan forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan sometime in 2013. But of course ISAF will continue to be fully combat capable and we will engage in combat as necessary thereafter."

Prior to Panetta's statements this week, the only public milestone between now and the full transition of responsibility to Afghan forces at the end of 2014, as was announced at the Lisbon conference last year, was the Sept. 2012 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. surge forces, as announced by President Barack Obama last June.

Panetta's remarks this week place a new milestone in the middle of those two dates, by setting a public goal of handing over lead combat responsibility for the last geographical area in Afghanistan, known as Tranche 5, over a year before the full handover of responsibility is set to take place.

European officials here in Munich said they understood the reason for the new milestone, which is to give the Afghans some time to adjust to having the combat lead while NATO forces are still present in large enough numbers to help them out, especially if there are bumps along the road.

But several NATO and European officials were shocked and some were even a little miffed that Panetta had made a major change in the messaging over the Afghanistan war without giving them a heads up.

There are two different theories as to why Panetta decided to announce the 2013 milestone on the plane to Europe, before telling his NATO counterparts about it, despite that he was about to see them only hours later.

Some here in Munich think that Panetta simply spoke too fast and didn't mean to surprise his European colleagues. Others believe that Panetta wanted to announce the news on his own terms, rather than tell the Europeans and then have it leak out to the press, perhaps in an even less articulate way.

One high ranking European official told The Cable that his government was expecting such an announcement at the NATO summit in Chicago in May, not here in Europe in February.

"The feeling was, well we can't say the same thing in Chicago as we said in Lisbon," the official said, referring to the expected May announcement. "It was all carefully planned and now that plan is completely ruined."

European governments had told the Obama administration that announcing a new milestone for drawdowns in Afghanistan was politically difficult for them, but that they were willing to go along with it, albeit reluctantly.

"We said, ‘Okay, if Obama needs this politically, that's fine. But please consider the bad side effects for us. This is hard to explain to our constituencies," the European official said. "Before today we could still say the drawdown was conditions based. Now we can't make the argument that it's anything but politically motivated."

Panetta's main mission Saturday was to reassure European countries that the United States was not abandoning Europe despite the defense budget cuts in the U.S. and the American strategic pivot to Asia. He announced that a battalion sized U.S. military force would rotate to Europe as America's first concrete presence in the NATO Response Force.

"Our military footprint in Europe will remain larger than in any other region in the world," he said.

In the question and answer session following his remarks, Panetta said that the Pentagon was not planning to implement the defense "trigger" set to go into effect in Jan. 2013, which would mandate $600 billion in additional defense cuts over the next ten years.

"Sequestration is a crazy formula," he said. "We're not paying attention to sequester. Sequester is crazy... If sequester happened, the strategy I just developed would have to be thrown out the window."

MUNICH - As part of the opening events Friday evening at the 2012 Munich Security Conference, the German government honored Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman (I-CT) with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit as a tribute to his last year serving as a U.S. senator.

"You know, if I had known I would be so honored upon my retirement from the senate, I probably would have retired before the last term," Lieberman said in his acceptance speech. He thanked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for inviting him to co-chair the U.S. Congressional delegation to the conference over 20 years ago. Every year since, McCain and Lieberman have brought a large contingent of American lawmakers and experts to the conference.

The award is officially awarded by German President Christian Wulff and was presented Friday by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. Lieberman was quite impressed that Westerwelle knew his middle name.

"I'm usually known as ‘Joseph I. Lieberman' and very few people know what the ‘I' stands for," he said. "In one of my early campaigns for state office, I had a friend who was supporting me who happened to be Irish and Catholic. He was convinced the ‘I' stood for Ignatius."

Lieberman promised to keep on working on behalf of the U.S.-German relationship even after he leaves the Senate.

"I assure you that although I am retiring from the Senate, I'm not retiring," he said. "The U.S. German alliance is an alliance built not on the temporary coincidence of shifting interests, but on the firm values that our two societies share and these are the values of human rights, democracy, free enterprise, the rule of law, and individual freedom."

Westerwelle noted that the Germans have not always agreed with Lieberman, such as when they opposed the war in Iraq, but he praised Lieberman's commitment to the relationship.

"Over the years we've agreed on many issues. Of course I cannot deny we've also had some disagreements on others. And I believe that is the way it should be among friends and allies," he said. "But you always kept talking and we never gave up finding solutions to the problems that lie ahead of us."

Westerwelle then quoted Vice President Joe Biden's speech from the 2009 Munich conference, when Biden said, "When sharing ideas and searching for purpose in a more complex world, Americans and Europeans still look to one another before they look to anyone else."

Saturday, the conference kicks into full gear, with highly anticipated speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, and many others.

Also on Saturday, Lieberman will become the third ever recipient of the Ewald von Kleist Award, named after the man who founded the conference in 1962. The first two recipients were former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was in attendance at Friday's ceremony, and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana de Madariaga.

The United States and Russia will conclude a missile defense cooperation agreement eventually as a result of the "strategic stability" talks between the two powers, according to the State Department's top arms control official.

"We will get a missile defense agreement for cooperation with Russia," Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher told a meeting of the Defense Writers Group on Thursday. "I believe that missile defense is the metaphor for the opportunity of getting things right [in the U.S.-Russia relationship]. It's been an irritant in our relationship for 30 years. It's also the place where great European powers, including Russia, can work together cooperatively."

Tauscher talked at length about her ongoing discussions, which she dubbed "strategic stability" talks, with Russian officials over missile defense. These have centered around cooperation on the Obama administration's European missile defense program, known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach, she said.

"Almost everything else that you work with on European security has been settled, decided, and worked on together for decades. The only thing that's new where you can bring the Russians in is missile defense," Tauscher said. "This is the place where we can begin to put aside the Cold War and ‘mutually assured destruction' and move toward ‘mutually assured stability.'"

Your humble Cable guy asked Tauscher why the Obama administration's optimism about a missile defense agreement with Moscow seems so far removed from the pessimism of leading Russian officials. In a November speech, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested talks had broken down and he threatened several retaliatory measures, including Russia's potential withdrawal from the New START nuclear reductions agreement.

Tauscher responded that these statements were part of the Russian campaign season and that progress would speed up once the March Presidential elections in Russia had subsided. She also acknowledged that the Russians are demanding a legally binding document from the Obama administration promising U.S. missile defenses in Europe will not impact Russia's strategic deterrent, which Tauscher said they will never get.

"We will never do a legally binding agreement because I can't do one. I can't get anything ratified. Even if I wanted to I'm not sure I would.... ‘Legally binding' doesn't mean what it did before," Tauscher said. "What they are looking for really is a sense that future administrations are going to live by [Obama's commitments]. And you can't really do that."

GOP senators fought hard against during the New START debate against giving Russia any assurances that could be seen as limits on the U.S. missile defense system. Tauscher said the only way for Russia to be assured about the U.S. system was to cooperate fully in its implementation.

"The only way they are going to be assured ... the system does not undercut their strategic deterrent is to sit with us in the tent in NATO and see what we are doing. They will only be their own eyes and ears," she said. "Is it a political leap of faith? Yes. Are they ready to do it? No. But we are hoping that these strategic stability talks over the next 8 months will start to loosen these old ties that have been binding everybody in the old way of thinking."

Tauscher also said implementation of New START with Russia was going extremely well, one year after ratification. There have been 1,700 notifications [of missile movements, etc] and each side has done near the maximum allowed number of inspections, she said.

"We have a very good treaty. Nobody claimed it was the best or the biggest treaty in the world. But it's a modest treaty that has served us in so many different ways," she said. "New START is just doing great."

Tauscher said the Obama administration hopes the "strategic stability" talks will establish reliability and durability in the U.S.-Russia relationship, which will lead to further nuclear reduction talks following Russia's presidential election, including discussions about reducing Russia's tactical nuclear stockpile.

"We want to get back to the table with the Russians both on strategic and non-strategic, deployed and non-deployed. That means everything," she said "We need the elections can pass so that both sides can get back to the table."

Overall, Tauscher disputed the contention that U.S.-Russia relations have peaked, and she dismissed those who have pointed to official comments from either side that seem to indicate the U.S.-Russia "reset" policy is coming to an end.

"While you might pick little data points out and say well there's a little bit of snotty talk here or there... the truth is everything is moving along, nose up, things are good."

The Senate will debate and vote on two controversial State Department nominations next week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced.

On Dec. 13, the Senate will debate and vote on whether to consider the nominations of Mari Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador and Norm Eisen to be ambassador to the Czech Republic. Both are sitting ambassadors who were sent to their posts under recess appointments that expire at the end of the year.

"There will be at least two roll call votes at 5:30 p.m. in relation to the Eisen and Aponte nominations," Reid said on the Senate floor on Thursday night. The votes will be to move on to debating the nominations, not on the nominations themselves. If both votes surpass the 60 senator threshold necessary to achieve cloture, both ambassadors could be formally confirmed by the end of next week.

Reid indicated, but didn't say outright, that there could be more nominations moving next week as well. If the Senate doesn't act this month, the recess appointment of Matthew Bryza to be ambassador to Azerbaijan will expire and he will have to come home.

The nomination of NSC Senior Director Mike McFaul to become ambassador to Russia is also stalled due to a hold by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who wants assurances from the administration it will not give sensitive missile defense data to the Russian Federation.

Reid is personally committed to the Aponte nomination, a Senate Democratic aide told The Cable today.

"Reid's a big fan of hers and he doesn't think her nomination should be a Democratic or Republican issue," the aide said. "He thinks her accomplishments in the past should be proof enough that she's qualified for the position. She's done a lot of work to strengthen U.S. ties with Latin America."

Aponte's nomination to be ambassador to El Salvador was initially held up last year in an effort led by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was demanding more information about Aponte's long-ago romance with Roberto Tamayo, a Cuban-born insurance salesman who allegedly had ties to both the FBI and Castro's intelligence apparatus, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation at the time.

DeMint shows no signs of backing down, and Aponte was barely approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a 10-9 vote that fell along party lines.

Eisen was sent to Prague through a recess appointment because of objections by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IO). Grassley is still upset over the June 2009 removal of Gerald Walpin as Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a position where he oversaw government programs such as AmeriCorps.

Eisen, the former White House ethics czar, was a key figure in the controversy and defended the White House's actions. He also made the case to Congress that Walpin was unfit for his position, writing in a letter to senators shortly after the sacking that Walpin "was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve." Walpin called those allegations "absolutely amazing."

Grassley, along with Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), has never dropped the issue of Walpin's firing. Grassley's staffers contributed heavily to a joint House-Senate report released last November, which they say alleged not only that Walpin's firing was handled improperly but also that Eisen misled Congress about the matter.

UPDATE: Reid issued the following statement on the Aponte nomination late Friday afternoon:

Mari Carmen Aponte's accomplished record as our nation's current ambassador to El Salvador should be reason enough for the Senate to confirm her on Monday. In 15 months serving our country, Ms. Aponte has already brokered an important transnational, anti-crime agreement and has strengthened our ties with El Salvador. Experts on the region from across the political spectrum support her confirmation. The Puerto Rican community and all Americans are right to be proud of Ms. Aponte's accomplishments as a diplomat representing our nation, as I am.

Unfortunately, a handful of extreme Republicans are threatening to block her nomination just to score political points. I hope Senate Republicans will put politics aside, and do the right thing for our foreign policy by voting to confirm Ms. Aponte.

Vice President Joe Biden is in Baghdad right now on a surprise visit before he travels this weekend to Turkey and Greece.

Biden landed on Tuesday afternoon in Baghdad and is expected to hold meetings with top Iraqi officials about the future of the U.S.-Iraqi partnership. He will stay for two days, multiple news outlets reported.

"Vice President Biden has arrived in Baghdad, Iraq," his office said in a release. "While there, the Vice President will co-chair a meeting of the U.S.-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee. He will also meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani, Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, and other political leaders. The Vice President will also participate in, and give remarks at, an event to commemorate the sacrifices and accomplishments of U.S. and Iraqi troops."

On Friday, Dec. 2, Biden will arrive in Ankara, where he'll have meetings with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and lay a wreath at the Ataturk Mausoleum before continuing on to Istanbul. In Istanbul, Biden will attend a global entrepreneurship summit hosted by Erdogan.

National Security Advisor to the Vice President Tony Blinken told reporters on Monday that he expects Biden to discuss U.S. assistance in fighting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been attacking Turkish forces recently.

"The PKK is a common enemy of Turkey, the United States, and Iraq, and we expect to focus on that," Blinken said.

Blinken also said Biden hopes to discuss the situation in Syria, the upcoming meeting of Cypriot leaders in January, the war in Afghanistan, "and the prospects for progress in normalizing relations between Turkey and Armenia." He'll also meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the Orthodox Christian Church.

Regarding Turkey's deteriorating relationship with Israel, Blinken said, "I suspect that that will come up."

"It pains us to see the two of them at odds because they're both such close partners of the United States," Blinken said. "And the bottom line is that improved relations between Turkey and Israel would be good for Turkey, good for Israel, and good for the United States and indeed good for the region and the world so that's something we will continue to encourage."

Biden will then travel to Athens on Monday, Dec. 5, where he will hold the administration's first meeting with new Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. He'll also meet with President Karolos Papoulias, as well as former Prime Minister George Papandreou, who heads the largest party in Parliament, and Antonio Samaras, who heads the second largest party.

But the Greeks shouldn't expect any direct financial assistance as they struggle with their fiscal crisis.

"I think the U.S. very much recognizes the sacrifices being made by the Greek people as they pursue this reform process and view the fiscal and structural reforms that have been agreed on with the European partners and with the IMF as critical," said Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman. "On the economic situation, the Vice President will be supportive of the overall reform effort and the package of measures that have been put in place by the European partners and by the IMF."

The top U.S. official at NATO said Monday that there is zero planning -- or even thinking -- going on about a military intervention in Syria.

"There has been no planning, no thought, and no discussion about any intervention into Syria. It just isn't part of the envelope of thinking, among individual countries and certainly among the 28 [full NATO members]," said Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. "If things change, things change. But as of today, that's where the reality stands."

Daalder, speaking to an audience at the Atlantic Council, is in town along with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will meet later today with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  They will be discussing the NATO summit to be held in Chicago next May and taking a victory lap following the fall of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Daalder said that there were three overarching conditions that need to be met before the Obama administration would even consider any future military intervention such as occurred in Libya.

"The formula was that there needs to be a demonstrable need, regional support, and sound legal basis for action," said Daalder. "It's those three things we need to look for before we even think about the possibility of action. None of them apply in Syria."

Daalder also noted that there is not enough evidence that air strikes would be effective in Syria, that the opposition and the Arab League have not asked for intervention, and that the U.N. Security Council has refused to act.

Daalder said several times that the United States had not been "leading from behind" in Libya, and he offered his take on the Obama administration's foreign-policy philosophy, as implemented during the Libya intervention.

"The administration came to power with a particular view about how the world worked. And that was a view that in an age of globalization, security was no longer principally determined by geography, but developments anywhere in the world could have a major security impact at home, so as a result you had to find a way to work with others," he said. "The lynchpin of Obama foreign policy was rebuilding partnerships and alliances."

"As part of that analysis, there was also a belief that the era when the United States could decide, determine, and do everything by itself had also come to an end," he said.

The United States is conducting an exercise to examine the lessons learned during the Libya intervention. However, Daalder said that although the European countries ran short of key items such as precision missiles during the war, the United States was perfectly well-prepared and did everything basically right throughout the mission.

"I'm not sure there is a lesson we need to learn for the United States," Daalder said. "In terms of capabilities, we know where the shortfalls are, but they are European shortfalls.... We could have done this campaign by ourselves. But the wise decision was not to do something we could, because others could help too."

Daalder also acknowledged that NATO-Russia talks over missile defense cooperation are at an impasse over a dispute regarding Russian demands for written assurances that U.S. systems are incapable of being used against Russia. The United States has no intention of giving such assurances, according to Daalder.

"We have put on the table numerous proposals for cooperation, which in many ways take their proposals as the basis," he said.

"They want a written guarantee that is legally binding that says the system will be incapable and will never be directed against them," he said. "And we have said that a legal guarantee like that is not something we want nor something we could ratify."

When President Barack Obama stops in Poland on May 27 during his visit to Europe next week, the Poles and their friends in Congress will be watching closely to see if the president will fulfill his pledge to make progress on their most valued issue -- Poland's drive to join the State Department's Visa Waiver Program.

Poland, which is the only member of the 25-country "Schengen area" whose citizens are not able to travel to the United States without obtaining a visa in advance, has been petitioning the administration to let it in the program for a long time. After neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, and Latvia entered the program, the Poles finally got a pledge from the Obama administration that it would work with Congress to make it happen.

"I am going to make this a priority," Obama said on Dec. 8, sitting alongside Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski. "And I want to solve this issue before very long. My expectation is, is that this problem will be solved during my presidency."

But now, more than five months later, Poland's advocates on Capitol Hill say they've seen no movement from the administration on the issue and are calling on Obama to announce his plan to get it done when he arrives in Poland.

"It's a campaign promise, it's the number one issue right now in U.S.-Polish relations. The president should come through on his campaign commitment to Polish-Americans that he was going to do this," Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said in a Friday interview with The Cable.

"This would also help repair damaged relations with Poland, especially after the disastrous missile defense decision announced on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland [in 2009]," Kirk said. That was when the administration decided to alter plans to station interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of a different approach.

Kirk took over Senate leadership on this issue following the retirement of Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who actually offered to trade his vote on the New START treaty with Russia for the Polish visa waiver program entry last year. Kirk hails from Illinois, which has the largest Polish population outside of Poland, he brags.

On April 26, Kirk sent a letter to Obama to announce his support for the congressional legislation that would pave the way for Poland to enter the program. Other lawmakers who signed the letter were the bill's spokesperson Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Mike Quigley (D - IL), Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), Jan Schakowsky (D -IL), and Brian Higgins (D -NY).

On a conference call Friday morning, The Cable asked Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes what progress the president would announce on this issue when he gets to Poland.

"We believe we've made some progress and we'll have more to say, I think, about this when we're in Poland. The president will be able to specifically outline the steps that we've taken and the roadmap that we see. We're following through on our commitment to be responsive to Polish concerns," said Rhodes.

We pressed Rhodes on Obama's promise to get it done "during my presidency," which could mean 2012 or 2016, depending on which side of the aisle you talk to. But Rhodes didn't have any specifics.

"[The president's] working to follow through on that precise commitment that you referenced, and we'll be discussing this in Warsaw and have more to say there," he said.

"It's a tremendous opportunity for the president on the 27th. And if he flubs it, then he flubs it," said Kirk. "We'll see."

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher remains the top administration official in charge of missile defense negotiations with Russia despite reports to the contrary, a senior administration official told The Cable.

The Washington Times reported this week that Tauscher "was given a demotion" and no longer was serving as the lead administration official in charge of the negotiations, which are part of the bilateral working group meetings that the United States and Russia have been conducting for over a year. The same article reported that Tauscher had annoyed colleagues due to her abrasive style, and that she often referred to herself in the third person as "The Tausch." Jim Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, was now in charge, according to the report.

But that's simply not true, one senior administration official and one State Department official told The Cable. They pointed out that Tauscher is in Brussels now, meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's lead negotiator on missile defense cooperation.

"Ellen leads our team to the talks and her counterpart is Ryabkov and any contention that she has been demoted is just plain wrong," the senior administration official said.

Tauscher is in charge of diplomatic engagement with Russia on this issue and Miller is the technical expert who works with her, the official explained.

"Jim's an extremely able player on missile defense issues, and has been involved in discussions with the Russian Ministry of Defense that complement the overall talks on missile defense," the official said.

As for the accusation that Tauscher refers to herself as "The Tausch," that is apparently a nickname that was given to her by colleague and friend Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) when both served in Congress, according to the State Department official. It's a term of affection that some on Tauscher's staff have adopted, but not a nickname she is known to use herself, the official said.

The senior administration official also took issue with the Washington Times' assertion that the U.S.-Russia missile defense talks have "largely [been] kept secret from Congress and the public."

 "The fact of these talks is a matter of public record -- that's not to suggest the details of the talks aren't private," the senior administration official said. "As the president has made clear, we see the possibility of missile defense with Russia as something that can serve both of our interests, it doesn't constrain us in any way."

Tauscher explained the rationale of pursuing missile defense cooperation with Russia in a speech at the Global Zero conference in Washington on April 8.

"Thirty years ago at the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan saw virtue in cooperating with Moscow on missile defense. We in the Obama administration do, too, because Missile Defense cooperation could make us safer and facilitate talks on further reductions on strategic, non-strategic, and non-deployed nuclear weapons," she said. "We want Russia inside the missile defense tent where it will see that missile defenses that the United States has planned to put in Europe are not about undermining Russia's strategic deterrent."

Meanwhile, the administration has been moving forward on implementing the Phased Adaptive Approach that was announced in 2009, which altered the Bush administration's plan to plant missile interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. The latest announcement was a deal with Romania announced on May 3 to station interceptors there.

The article was written by Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz, who has written articles critical of Tauscher's bureau for months and has long drawn the ire of the State Department. As one State Department official said in January, "This particular reporter, as you know, has his own foreign policy."

The nation of Georgia is in a position to block Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a top goal of the U.S.-Russia reset policy. The Georgians say that they are willing to strike a deal with Russia but only if Moscow abides by WTO rules on trade and customs policy, a position that would require Russian concessions in its conflict over the occupied territories, according to the president of Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, sat down for an exclusive interview with The Cable during his recent visit to Washington. He said that after lot of stalling and hand wringing, negotiations between Tbilisi and Moscow over the latter's desire to join the WTO had begun. As a WTO member, Georgia has veto power over any new additions to the organizations. Saakashvili said it was too early to tell if the Russians were negotiating in good faith or willing to make real concessions.

The Russian government refused to talk directly with Georgia for a long time and expected the United States to deliver Georgia's support for Russia's WTO accession, Saakashvili said.

"They were telling the Americans that we will make a deal with you and Georgia comes as part of the package. I heard some Russians say that it just takes one call from Vice President [Joseph] Biden to Saakashvili to convince him and make him shut up,'" the president said.

"But it's not like this and the Americans know it's not like this -- and they've done their best to clarify this to the Russians. Exactly because of that American position, finally the Russians came to the negotiating table. That's already great progress."

Obama administration officials have made it clear that Washington won't become involved in WTO negotiations between Russia and Georgia. The first round of those talks took place in the city of Bern with Swiss mediation earlier this month. The next round is scheduled to begin in May. Saakashvili said that Georgia was willing to be flexible but that the initial Russian proposals, which only dealt with Georgian exports to Russia, were not constructive.

"Some Russians were saying ‘we'll let back in your wine and you will change your position.'" Saakashvili said. "We don't have any wine left to sell to the Russians. That's not the bargaining chip. We need transparency of border transactions and customs issues. That's where we need to find mutually acceptable solutions with the Russians."

Of course, one huge problem is how to define the Georgian-Russian border. For Tbilisi, that includes the borders between Russia and the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it considers breakaway republics. Russia has recognized the territories as independent states and has troops stationed in both regions.

"It's up to the Russians to show that they can go to flexible and compromise solutions," Saakashvili said. "Russians have said we can get [WTO membership] without Georgia. Good luck. Let them try. But Georgia is not going to compromise our principles."

Saakashvili also said that he is willing to limit the negotiations to the economic arena, leaving aside contentious political issues, such as Russia's failure to adhere to the terms of the ceasefire that ended the 2008 conflict. But he doubted the Russian government could keep the two issues separate.

"It would be counter-productive to go to political issues, but unfortunately [throughout the recent history of Russian-Georgia relations] Russians have turned every single economic issue into a political one. That's where we find ourselves," he said.

Saakashvili also talked about Georgia's desire to start buying defensive weapons from the United States. There has been an unofficial, unstated ban on selling heavy weapons to Georgia, a ban Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ) have often complained about.

"It's not in our interest to leave a stalwart partner, a NATO-aspirant country, without the needs to properly defend itself," McCain said at Tuesday's SASC hearing.

Saakashvili said he takes the administration at its word that there is no ban on weapons sales to Georgia and that some sales of small arms are "in the pipeline." But he added that Georgia really needs heavier weapons that could be used to defend the country in the case of another conflict with Russia.

"We don't' really need small arms, we have plenty of them and actually there are many alternative sources to shop for them," he said. "What Georgia really needs is something that it cannot get from anywhere else and that's anti-air and anti-tank [weapons] and that's completely obvious ... that's where should be the next stage of the cooperation."

Georgia has been striving to prove its value as a U.S. ally in a tumultuous region. Georgia has over 1,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan in some of the most dangerous areas in the South of Afghanistan and Saakashvili offered to send more troops in his March meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, he said.

The U.S. is also investing in Georgia. Saakashvili highlighted that the U.S. military is increasing its involvement on the ground in Georgia, for example by opening a $100 million U.S. Army Medical Research lab in Tbilisi as part of the Nunn-Lugar initiative.

Saakashvili said that the United States still must lead in supporting emerging democracies and use its moral authority and soft power to push for human rights and democratic change in countries with oppressive governments.

"This administration has been holding the line, at the U.N. Security Council, at the OSCE, at the arms control talks. American was the first major power to call a spade a spade, to call Russia's action in Georgia a military occupation. This moral support is paramount for any nation and these kind of things count," he said.

"This ultimately will make the whole process of advancing freedom irreversible."

Following two days of intensive discussions in Brussels, NATO has agreed to support -- but not command -- operations in Libya. Meanwhile, France has proposed a high-level international "political steering committee" to actually run the war. But does the Obama administration support that idea?

"NATO has now decided to launch an operation to enforce the arms embargo against Libya," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement from Brussels on Tuesday evening. He said U.S. Admiral James Stavridis was activating NATO ships and aircraft to "monitor, report and, if needed, interdict vessels suspected of carrying illegal arms or mercenaries."

NATO has also "completed plans to help enforce the no-fly zone" that will be brought into force "if needed, in a clearly defined manner," to support the effort to protect the Libyan people," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen didn't say whether NATO would perform the command-and-control function of the no-fly zone, something that Turkey has objected to because the "all necessary measures" language of Security Council Resolution 1973 includes the bombing of Libya. France objected to NATO being in command of the war operations on a day-to-day basis and has now proposed a new "political steering committee," made up of foreign ministers from the United States, European, and Arab states, to oversee the war.

A French diplomat told The Cable that the details of the proposal would be worked out over the next few days. "It was always understood that there would be two stages of operations. The one that started on Saturday and a second phase in which NATO would play a role," the French diplomat said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé announced on Tuesday that the British are in agreement with the proposal but the French government has not said anything about the position of the Obama administration.

So is the Obama administration on board? White House spokesman Tommy Vietor did not respond to a request for comment on the French proposal. Obama spoke with Sarkozy Tuesday and "the two Presidents agreed on the means of using NATO's command structures to support the coalition," the French government said in a read out.

It's not clear how the French steering committee would be in operational control of the war, but the proposal includes that the committee would be in charge of the "strategic decisions" involving military action, the diplomat said.

If enacted, the proposal would allow President Barack Obama to fulfill his pledge to transfer leadership of the war out of American hands within "a matter of days," as he said Monday.

The French position is that the steering committee idea would allow NATO to bring its military capabilities to bear without putting an exclusively Western label on the military intervention. Qaddafi has called the campaign a "colonial crusade" by western nations.

"The only constraint is that we need to keep the Arabs involved," the French diplomat said. "In order to do that we need to use NATO capabilities and we need to [provide so that] Arab countries stay involved."

The NATO meetings on Monday were contentious. The French and German representatives reportedly stormed out of the meeting, albeit for very different reasons. France was upset at Rasmussen for openly criticizing France in the meeting and questioning their reliability as an ally. Germany is opposed to the military intervention altogether.

"We do not want to be sucked into a position of eventually seeing German soldiers fighting in Libya," Germany's foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said.

"There was confusion yesterday but we are safely now going in the right direction," the French diplomat reported.

Our sources also report that Washington has made it clear that they want to see the transfer of leadership for the Libya mission leave U.S. hands by the end of the week. Whether the Obama administration and the Defense Department are comfortable with a French led international steering committee making decisions about the actions of U.S. military forces remains to be seen.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meetings in Paris with the G8 foreign ministers on Monday left her European interlocutors with more questions than answers about the Obama administration's stance on intervention in Libya.

Inside the foreign ministers' meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's campaign against the Libyan rebels and the violence being perpetrated against civilians. Britain and France argued for immediate action while Germany and Russia opposed such a move, according to two European diplomats who were briefed on the meeting.

Clinton stayed out of the fray, repeating the administration's position that all options are on the table but not specifically endorsing any particular step. She also did not voice support for stronger action in the near term, such as a no-fly zone or military aid to the rebels, both diplomats said.

"The way the U.S. acted was to let the Germans and the Russians block everything, which announced for us an alignment with the Germans as far as we are concerned," one of the diplomats told The Cable.

Clinton's unwillingness to commit the United States to a specific position led many in the room to wonder exactly where the administration stood on the situation in Libya.

"Frankly we are just completely puzzled," the diplomat said. "We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States."

On the same day, Clinton had a short meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy pressed Clinton to come out more forcefully in favor of action in Libya. She declined Sarkozy's request, according to a government source familiar with the meeting.

Sarkozy told Clinton that "we need action now" and she responded to him, "there are difficulties," the source said, explaining that Clinton was referring to China and Russia's opposition to intervention at the United Nations. Sarkozy replied that the United States should at least try to overcome the difficulties by leading a strong push at the U.N., but Clinton simply repeated, "There are difficulties."

One diplomat, who supports stronger action in Libya, contended that the United States' lack of clarity on this issue is only strengthening those who oppose action.

"The risk we run is to look weak because we've asked him to leave and we aren't taking any action to support our rhetoric and that has consequences on the ground and in the region," said the European diplomat.

British and French frustration with the lack of international will to intervene in Libya is growing. British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday that Arab sentiment was, "if you don't show your support for the Libyan people and for democracy at this time, you are saying you will intervene only when it's about your security, but you won't help when it's about our democracy."

France sent letters on Wednesday to all the members of the U.N. Security Council, which is discussing a Lebanon-sponsored resolution to implement a no-fly zone, calling on them to support the resolution, as has been requested by the Arab League.

"Together, we can save the martyred people of Libya. It is now a matter of days, if not hours. The worst would be that the appeal of the League of the Arab States and the Security Council decisions be overruled by the force of arms," the letter stated.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe wrote on his blog, "It is not enough to proclaim, as did almost all of the major democracies that ‘Qaddafi must go.' We must give ourselves the means to effectively assist those who took up arms against his dictatorship."

In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday in Cairo, Clinton pointed to the U.N. Security Council as the proper venue for any decision to be made and she pushed back at the contention by the British and the French that the U.S. was dragging its feet.

"I don't think that is fair.  I think, based on my conversations in Paris with the G-8 ministers, which, of course, included those two countries, I think we all agree that given the Arab League statement, it was time to move to the Security Council to see what was possible," Clinton said.  I don't want to prejudge it because countries are still very concerned about it.  And I know how anxious the British and the French and the Lebanese are, and they have taken a big step in presenting something.  But we want to get something that will do what needs to be done and can be passed."

"It won't do us any good to consult, negotiate, and then have something vetoed or not have enough votes to pass it," Clinton added.

Clinton met with Libyan opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril in Paris as well, but declined to make any promises on specific actions to support the Libyan opposition.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) also doubled down on his call for a no-fly zone over Libya in a speech on Wednesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The international community cannot simply watch from the sidelines as this quest for democracy is met with violence," he said. "The Arab League's call for a U.N. no-fly zone over Libya is an unprecedented signal that the old rules of impunity for autocratic leaders no longer stand... The world needs to respond immediately to avert a humanitarian disaster."

And Clinton's former top aide Anne-Marie Slaughter accused the Obama administration of prioritizing oil over the human rights of the people of Libya.

"U.S. is defining ‘vital strategic interest' in terms of oil and geography, not universal values. Wrong call that will come back to haunt us," she wrote on Wednesday on her Twitter page.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) warned an audience of foreign policy hands on Tuesday evening about the threat of "lawfare" on U.S. sovereignty, lashing out at the State Department, American law schools, the European Union, and the "so-called international community."

"First of all, it is important to recognize that the campaign against national sovereignty... is not going to go away anytime soon," Kyl said, as he accepted the distinguished service award at the annual gala event of the Center for the National Interest, which as of Tuesday is the new name of the Nixon Center.

The lavish event at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel featured short and almost universally upbeat speeches by notable foreign policy figures, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, retired Gen. Chuck Boyd, center President Dimitri Simes, and fellow award recipient Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

But Kyl's acceptance speech turned into a 25-minute diatribe about the risk of the United States slipping unwittingly into an undemocratic system of international laws that would result in the loss of U.S. legal sovereignty. A large portion of the speech was directed at the State Department's top lawyer Harold Koh and the administration's announcement on Monday that it would honor two additional protocols to the Geneva Convention.

"Some Americans, including many leading academics and some high-level government officials, view sovereignty as an outmoded notion," Kyl said. "They want the United States to accept the authority of so-called transnational legal norms."

"In certain American intellectual circles, sovereignty is viewed not as a principle to be upheld, but a problem to be remedied. That view, with roots that reach back decades, is particularly strong among some faculty members at our prestigious law schools."

Kyl said that Koh, a former dean of Yale Law School, was a strong advocate of adopting certain elements of international law. Kyl said that Koh's philosophy was "not consistent with how laws are supposed to be made in our constitutional democracy."

The State Department announced on Monday that it would work to ratify Additional Protocol II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which mandates stricter enforcement measures to guarantee the humane treatment of prisoners, and that the United States would voluntarily adhere to the norms established under Article 75 of Protocol I in international armed conflicts, which also prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners.

"The Additional Protocol would permit terrorist groups to receive POW privileges even if they hide among civilian populations and do not reveal themselves until just before an attack. This would give terrorists advantages over conventional forces," Kyl said. "If the United States adopted it, Protocol 1 would hamper American combat operations, increasing risks for U.S. soldiers, as well as for civilians in combat zones."

Kyl then went on to criticize the joining of sovereign legal systems in the European Union and said that the changes in Europe ran counter to democratic principles.

"Many of our friends in Europe believe that national sovereignty itself, including the sovereignty of democratic states, is problematic. They view international agreements as a means to advance progressive ‘norms' that have little support among democratic publics. And, some view it as a way to constrain U.S. power," Kyl said.

"In Europe there never was a sustained, serious, popular debate about the loss of sovereignty and democratic accountability. It just happened."

Several European ambassadors were present at the event. One of them, a critic of the EU, said to The Cable of Kyl's speech, "That was a lot of Europe bashing, even for me."

McCain's speech, by contrast, was light and self-deprecating.

"I must again ask for your sympathy for the families in the state of Arizona, because Barry Goldwater from Arizona ran for president of the United States, Mo Udall of Arizona ran for president of the United States, Bruce Babbitt of Arizona ran for president of the United States, I from Arizona ran for president of the United States," McCain said.

"Arizona might be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children they can grow up to be president."

Other notables in attendance included freshman Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), former Congresswoman Jane Harman, former AIT Chairman Hank Greenberg, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad, the center's executive director Paul Saunders, emcee Steve Clemons, and of course, your humble Cable guy.

Three years after the war between Russian and Georgia, the two countries have started a process to discuss Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, top White House officials said. However, the U.S. government is not involved in those discussions.

Russia's bid to join the WTO this year will be at the top of the agenda when Vice President Joseph Biden travels to Moscow next week. The Obama administration strongly supports Russia's entry and sees U.S. assistance in that regard as part of the reset of U.S.-Russia relations. But Georgia, a WTO member, can single-handedly thwart Russia's accession. And while the White House sees some progress between the two foes, they don't want to be any part of that conversation.

"We have worked very closely with our Russian counterparts... to help them in the multilateral process so they can meet their goal of joining the WTO this year," NSC Senior Director for Russia Michael McFaul told reporters on a conference call Friday.

Responding to a question from The Cable, McFaul acknowledged that Russia cannot join the WTO unless Georgia agreed but said he saw movement on that front.

"There are definitely issues remaining between Russia and Georgia regarding trade relations that have to be addressed," he said. "There is a process underway. I don't want to prejudge it because we're not involved in it."

But McFaul was firm that the United States would not insert itself into the effort to help Russia and Georgia come to an agreement on the issue.

"We're not going to do that," he said. "At the end of the day this is a bilateral issue, not a trilateral issue."

Some insiders believe that this message from the Obama administration is meant to push both the Russian and Georgian governments to make a deal on WTO without depending on U.S. incentives or pressures to get it done. Regardless, McFaul said that he believed Georgia was willing to limit the discussions to "deal specifically with the economic and trade issues involved and not make it into a larger debate."

So what does Georgia want from Russia? Georgian Prime Minister Nika Gilauri spelled it out in an exclusive interview with The Cable.

"Georgia's support to Russia's WTO membership is conditional. The precondition is fulfillment of obligation taken by Russia in our bilateral accession protocol in 2004 and solving issues of customs administration on the Georgian-Russian border," he said. "Unregulated illegal trade as it takes place now is counter WTO rules. Russia should become member of this rules-based organization but only if it respects trade rules."

Of course, one huge problem is how to define the "Georgian-Russian border." If you are Georgia, that includes the borders between Russia and the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it considers breakaway republics.

When Biden meets with Russian leaders next week, he can tell them that the administration is intent on repealing trade restrictions under the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was imposed in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration.

"We plan to terminate the application of Jackson-Vanik in the near future," McFaul said.

However, lifting the law requires the support of Congress, so the White House can't count on it being done right away. "It's not something the White House can't simply press a button and have it done," added Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken.

Biden will arrive in Russia on March 9. He will stop by the U.S. embassy for lunch with U.S. business leaders, and then take those businessmen on a tour of Skolkovo, Russia's new "Silicon Valley." That evening he'll meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. On March 10, Biden will meet with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, then with civil society leaders, and then give a speech at Moscow University.

After Russia's WTO bid, the top agenda item for Biden in Russia will be cooperation on missile defense. The United States has been talking to Russia about missile defense cooperation for a long time, but most in Washington are skeptical that it will ever be possible to satisfy's Russia's objections to U.S. missile defense in Europe.

"We are on the verge of trying to take an issue that used to be extremely contentious... and to try to make it an area of cooperation," said McFaul. "Without some sort of cooperation on missile defense, it will be difficult" to make progress on further reductions of nuclear stockpiles in Europe, he said.

Several reporters on the call asked McFaul and Blinken what Biden's message would be to the Russian government on the international response to the bloodshed in Libya.

"We don't want to address Libya specific questions on this call," Blinken said.

The crisis in Egypt is occupying the time and attention of top administration officials to such an extent that Obama foreign policy critic Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is now representing the United States on a non-proliferation panel at the Munich Security Conference in Munich this weekend.

Kyl replaces National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, who was originally scheduled to speak on Saturday afternoon to represent the U.S. perspective, on a panel entitled, "Nonproliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament: What's next?" Donilon will remain in Washington as the White House continues to work around the clock on the Egypt crisis. The conference organizers chose Kyl, who is in Munich already, to replace Donilon.

The choice is perplexing because Kyl, who led the vociferous GOP opposition to the New START nuclear reductions pact with Russia, has been the most active and effective critic of the Obama administration's non-proliferation agenda. He has also worked to raise concerns about the administration's missile defense plans, its civilian nuclear agreements, and he is promising to stand in the way of the administration's next arms control agenda item, the Congressional Test Ban Treaty.

The conference organizers bypassed top Obama administration arms control officials who will also be in Munich, including Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemeoller, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They, along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), will all be sitting in the audience as Kyl tells the assembled world leaders in Munich how he sees the future of arms control in the United States.

Many in the State Department are not happy with this turn of events, and wonder why the German organizers bypassed the administration officials. "We're floored," one State Department official said. "It's odd on many levels."

Requests for comment from the conference organizers and the National Security Council were not immediately returned.

So what will Kyl's message be in Munich? Here's an excerpt from his remarks on the topic last May at the Nixon Center:

Bottom line: there is no evidence our moral leadership in arms control and disarmament will convince countries to set aside their calculations of the impact of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism on their national security, and help us address these threats.  

The Administration's security agenda is based on the notion of the U.S. making substantive changes to our national security posture in the hopes of persuading others to act, frequently contrary to their economic or security interests.  

But this good faith assumption that others will reciprocate is not supported by any evidence -- it is certainly not informed by any past experience....

As you can tell by now, I am not much impressed with the notion that we can achieve important U.S. security goals by leadership which stresses concession by the U.S.  Rather than change and hope, I adhere to the philosophy of President Reagan epitomized in the words -peace through strength.

A strong America is the best guarantor of a peaceful world that has ever been known.  And there is nothing immoral about strength that keeps the peace. 

 UPDATE: Tauscher was added to the billet and spoke on the panel alongside Kyl. Our sources report that the panel went were and there were no real fireworks between Tauscher and Kyl.