Mr Rowhani won over 50% of votes cast in Iran’s presidential election on June 14th, securing his victory on the first ballot and avoiding a run‑off vote, which had been widely expected. He far outpolled the other conservative candidates, including the popular mayor of Tehran, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf (who came second with just 17% of the vote), and the current chief nuclear negotiator, Said Jalili. Overall turnout in the election was high, at over 72%, compared with around 60% in 2005 and 85% in 2009.

Mr Rowhani is by no means a radical reformist and his election reflects voters’ concern over the economic effects of sanctions rather than a revival of the political reform project of the presidency of Mohammed Khatami (1997‑2005). But he is committed to seeking reconciliation internationally and to cautious reform at home. The vote also marks a dramatic swing away from the hardline, or principlist, conservatism under the eight‑year presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

High turnout favoured Rowhani

The strong turnout—higher, as the Iranian media has noted, than the 57.5% turnout in last year’s US presidential election—shows that, whatever exiles say, most Iranians believe they are offered some meaningful choices within the Islamic system. The election has also highlighted continued rivalries within the principlist camp, with three credible candidates refusing to unite around a single figure. It has also shown the political durability both of the reformists and of the pragmatic conservatives associated with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, despite their many setbacks since the suppression of unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election.

The endorsement of Mr Rowhani by Mr Rafsanjani and Mr Khatami will certainly have boosted his campaign, but the extent of his win shows an appeal to voters beyond the political camps of reformists or the technocratically inclined pragmatic conservatives.

Why he won

A key point during the election was the third televised debate, in which Mr Rowhani and Ali‑Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister, lambasted Mr Jalili, who has conducted Iran’s talks over the nuclear programme since 2007. The two‑pronged attack—especially from Mr Velayati, a long‑term adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei—smashed the earlier consensus among the candidates that the nuclear programme was in no way to become an election issue.

Iranian voters, who understand that tightening US-led sanctions over the past year have seriously squeezed the economy, were suddenly presented with the option of a president who, rather than just repeating a mantra of “resistance”, would work to reduce international tension while defending Iran’s interests diplomatically.

Economic priorities

Mr Rowhani won the votes of millions who were attracted in 2005 by Mr Ahmadinejad’s campaign against corruption and promise to “put the oil money on the sofreh (the square carpet on which poorer Iranians eat meals)”. Mr Ahmadinejad’s replacement of the state subsidies on everyday items, like bread and petrol, with cash payments has probably reduced inequality in the country. But prices have risen by 40% year on year in the first quarter of 2013 and unemployment has reached 15%, with around 30% of young people jobless. Many medicines have been in short supply, and the Iranian rial has fallen sharply since the advent of more stringent US and EU sanctions in 2012.

Whatever steps the Iranian authorities have taken to boost domestic production have been undermined by populist economic management, such as forcing the banking system into unsustainable lending, and by the effect of sanctions that have halved oil exports to around 1m barrels/day.

Mr Rowhani’s presidency will probably herald a less populist approach, but he did little in the election to advance coherent economic plans. His father was a bazaar merchant in Semnan, northern Iran, and Mr Rowhani’s inclination may be towards the more liberal economic policies followed under the Rafsanjani and Khatami presidencies before Mr Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005. But given the more immediate economic priorities, with the private sector battered by sanctions, inflation continuing to run high and exports constrained, any sudden blossoming of free-market economics is unlikely in the near term.

Sanctions and the nuclear programme

Mr Rowhani’s diplomatic credentials—widely discussed in the election—are clear. In leading negotiations in 2003‑05 with the EU over Iran’s nuclear programme as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) he took Iran closer to a substantial diplomatic agreement with the West than at any time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Voters apparently share the judgement of one of the president‑elect’s fellow negotiators, Hossein Mousavian, who in his 2012 memoirs called the 2003 Saadabad agreement with the Europeans “a comprehensive step forward” that “opened a middle road between submission and confrontation”.

But the simple fact that Mr Rowhani failed—in the sense that the Saadabad agreement had broken down by 2005—illustrates the challenges he will now face as president in reaching out for ways to reduce international tensions both around the nuclear programme and around Shia‑Sunni regional conflicts enflamed by the escalating violence in Syria.

Although the president will need to manage the hopes of reformists expecting greater political freedoms, he will also face renewed criticism from principlist conservatives who back in 2003‑05 argued that he was selling out Iran’s interests by suspending uranium enrichment as a goodwill gesture during the talks with the EU. Mr Rowhani’s strong electoral mandate will strengthen his hand, but he will also need to maintain his close relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei, who appointed him to the SNSC and who personally entrusted him in 2003 with negotiating with Europe.

Ayatollah Khamenei has shown on several occasions—including through his 2006 decision to back direct talks with the US over Iraq—a willingness to face down principlists who oppose any dialogue with the “Great Satan”, and Mr Rowhani will need the leader’s backing to fend off principlist attacks. A key concern for Ayatollah Khamenei is that Iran is able to avoid the public disunity within its leadership that has been so prevalent since 2011, when Mr Ahmadinejad publicly rebuffed the supreme leader’s directives over cabinet allocations. Establishing a manageable relationship with Mr Rowhani will help the supreme leader to co‑ordinate support among conservative elements in the regime, including the powerful Revolutionary Guards, for any changes to the nuclear programme.

Just as importantly, Mr Rowhani will also need negotiating partners, including an Obama administration that can recognise that Iran has national interests in pursuing a nuclear agenda and can accept that an agreement is possible to limit Iran’s nuclear programme while accepting it will continue uranium enrichment. Attention will now turn to the next round of nuclear talks, set to take place by August. Mr Rowhani’s victory and more workable negotiating style may mean that the pattern of escalating tensions may be avoided in future negotiations.

On May 28th Honduras released a rare piece of good news, with the announcement that two of the country’s major criminal gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Mara 18 (M-18), had agreed to a truce. The agreement was negotiated by Romulo Emiliani, the Catholic bishop of San Pedro Sula, the country’s most violent city, and Adam Blackwell, the Secretary for Multidimensional Security at the Organization of American States (OAS).

A tale of two neighbours

The agreement is open-ended and aims to reduce violence between the two gangs, which have an estimated combined membership of 12,000. The maras (urban gangs) are heavily involved in violent crime, extortion and drug distribution. MS-13 and MS-18 come into frequent conflict over control of territory, leading to a high gang-on-gang murder rate and killings of civilians caught in the crossfire. This has contributed to Honduras’ surging murder rate, which the UN estimates at 87 murders per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world.

Honduras is experiencing a similar gang problem to neighbouring El Salvador. Both MS-13 and M-18 are the dominant gangs in both countries, as they are throughout much of the Central American isthmus. Both gangs originated in the US in the 1980s among young Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants fleeing from the civil conflicts in the region. From the 1990s onwards, gang members began to be deported back from the US to their countries of origin, spreading the mara gangs into Central America.

The truce is similar to one introduced in El Salvador in March 2012, which was also part-mediated by the OAS. The Salvadoran truce has proven surprisingly durable, leading the country’s murder rate to halve in the past year, particularly in the capital, San Salvador. The Honduran authorities are hoping that the May 28th agreement could emulate the success of the one reached by its neighbour, leading to a similar decline in violence.

The Salvadoran example

Although the Salvadoran truce has proven effective in reducing murder rates, there are some concerns about the extent of this success. Some local NGOs have reported an increase in disappearances, suggesting that the gangs are still carrying out murders but are being more careful to conceal them in order to maintain the impression that they are complying with the truce. In addition, as the truce referred specifically to gang murders, this has left the maras relatively free to continue with their other illicit activities, especially extortion and drug trafficking. Indeed, this may mark the beginning of the gangs’ emergence as predominantly business-focused entities, rather than concentrating on gang-on-gang rivalry.

As such, a concern in El Salvador is that the truce has had only a limited impact on the civilian population, as the decline in the murder rate mainly reflects a reduction in gang-on-gang killings, rather than those targeting civilians. Furthermore, the gangs’ new focus on extortion may be detrimental for civilians, as local businesses come under increasing pressure to finance the gangs.

This is not to say that the truce has been counter-productive; any reduction in the high murder rate offers an opportunity for the state to focus on rehabilitation and preventative programmes that seek to reduce gang membership. However, the aforementioned concerns do demonstrate the challenges facing any attempt to capitalise on the Honduran truce, where the same tentative evolution towards criminal rather than street gangs may also begin.

Challenges in Honduras

The agreement to a truce will be a test for the leaderships of MS-13 and M-18 in Honduras, as these two gangs have generally looser connections and are less answerable to a centralised leadership. Even if the truce does hold, the decline in the murder rate may not be as marked as in El Salvador. This is because gang membership is lower in Honduras, at 12,000 compared to 20,000 in El Salvador, meaning that a lower proportion of Honduras’ violent crime is likely to be due to the maras. In addition, Honduras has a number of other criminal groups operating in the country, such as the major transnational drug-trafficking organisations moving drugs through Central America towards Mexico and the US. Add to that the increasingly criminalised environment as a result of the country’s high level of political instability, and the potential for violent crime remains high.

The implementation of the truce will not be helped by the upcoming presidential and legislative elections in November 2013, as the term in office of Porfirio Lobo, the president, comes to an end. Xiomara Castro, the wife of former president Manuel Zelaya (who was ousted in a military-led coup in June 2009) and presidential candidate, is currently heading the polls, ahead of Juan Orlando Hernández, of the ruling Partido Nacional (National Party), and Salvador Nasralla, a former sports commentator. Given the ongoing tensions stemming from the coup in 2009, political issues are set to dominate in the run-up to the vote, most likely accompanied by rising instability and potential street violence. This may prevent either the government or the opposition from providing major support to the agreement between the maras, particularly in terms of government-backed rehabilitation and job-creation programmes.

Moreover, there may be fears that the timing of the truce could have political implications. If the truce holds, this would be an ideal way for the Partido Nacional to claim that it is making progress on tackling crime, despite the high murder rates characterising Mr Lobo’s tenure. The mara gangs would therefore be well-placed to put pressure on the government by threatening to break the truce ahead of the elections. Although the gangs have as yet shown few signs of attempting to influence the political arena (although they have done at a very local level), if they aim to increase their criminal activities they may seek to gain leverage over local law enforcement and state entities; national elections would therefore provide a good opportunity to do so.

Concern about the Syrian al Qaeda-affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as the al-Nusra Front, is at an all-time high, according to the analyst, with as many as 10,000 fighters and supporters inside Syria. The United States has designated al-Nusra Front as a terrorist group with links to al Qaeda in Iraq.

That assessment is shared by some Middle Eastern intelligence agencies that have long believed the United States is underestimating the Sunni-backed al Qaeda movement in the country, according to a Middle East source. It is also believed that Iran is running training camps inside Syria for Hezbollah and that other Iranian militia fighters are coming into the country to fight for the regime.

The analyst has been part of recent discussions with the U.S. intelligence community, which is urgently working to understand what is going on inside the war-ravaged country and is consulting outside experts. The analyst, who declined to be named because of the sensitive nature of the information, stressed that all assessments about Syria are approximate at best because of the lack of U.S. personnel on the ground.

With the growing strength and support for al-Nusra, U.S. concerns are growing about its influence to further destabilize Syria and potentially pose a greater regional threat, administration officials have told CNN.

Next moves for the U.S. on Syria

“They are making desperate attempts to get chemical weapons,” the analyst told CNN, noting that in the past few weeks, security services in Iraq and Turkey arrested operatives who were “trying to get their hands on sarin.”

A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN recently that gathering intelligence on Syria, including its potential future use of chemical weapons, is now one of the top priorities of the U.S. intelligence community.

The Obama administration announced last week that it will start arming rebels because Syria crossed a “red line”by using chemical weapons — including sarin gas — against the opposition.

The development is likely to be at the center of the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland on Monday, setting a riveting backdrop to the meeting after Syria’s longtime ally Russia said the move supports “those who kill their enemies and eat their organs.”

Opinion: Peace in Syria? Talk to Iran

In one corner, the United States, the United Kingdom and France say rebels need more help in ousting a 42-year dynasty and ending a regime that crushes dissent with lethal force.

In the other corner, Russia says its supply of arms to the Syrian regime isn’t nearly as bad as sending weapons to the rebels.

“I believe you will not deny that one should hardly back those who kill their enemies and eat their organs. … Do you want to support these people? Do you want to supply arms to these people?” Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Sunday.

He was referring to a widely circulated video that allegedly showed a rebel fighter eating the heart of a dead soldier. The video, posted by a group loyal to the Syrian government, raised questions about the rebels’ credibility, even though the Syrian opposition widely condemned the act.

On Monday, Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama will meet one-on-one to discuss the war that has now killed more than 92,000 people, including thousands of children.

On the ground in Damascus: Locals defiant toward more U.S. help of rebels

Chaos on the ground

While world leaders struggle to form a unified front, the seesaw battles rage on inside Syria — and at a staggering price. About 5,000 Syrians are killed every month, the United Nations said.

The opposition once controlled the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk, which served as a Palestinian refugee camp. But Palestinian fighters supporting the regime say they’re taking the area back.

“We will keep fighting until we get rid of Jabhat al-Nusra and al Qaeda and all other insurgents in Syria,” fighter Abu Ihad told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen in Yarmouk.

The pro-government fighters said they’re angry about the U.S. decision to arm the opposition, especially since members of al-Nusra Front have joined the rebels.

In recent weeks, the rebels have suffered a series of devastating setbacks. Their loss of the stronghold Qusayr coincided with the arrival of Hezbollah fighters supporting Syrian troops.

Syrian rebels have pleaded for anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, saying they are outgunned by President Bashar al-Assad’s military.

Explosions rock Damascus military airport

The U.S. has a new game plan

Obama has not detailed the increased military support, but Washington officials told CNN that the plan includes providing small arms, ammunition and possibly anti-tank weapons to the rebels.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CNN’s Candy Crowley there is a strong consensus on arming Syrian rebels.

“As the Foreign Relations Committee voted nearly a month ago on a strong bipartisan vote of 15-3 … we believe the rebels need to be armed, the moderate elements of those rebels,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey.

“Public intelligence sources have said that we’ve come to know who, in fact, we could ultimately arm. And the reality is we need to tip the scales, not simply to nudge them. And the president’s moving in the right direction.”

Britain has not decided whether to provide weapons to rebels but has provided technical assistance and training alongside the United States, France and its other allies.

“I’m in no doubt that responsibility lies with President Assad. It is the onslaught that he has inflicted on his own people which is the primary cause of the suffering, the humanitarian catastrophe and the deaths we have seen,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday.

Russia’s president said he believed both sides were responsible for the bloodshed. Putin said he hoped the G8 summit this week would help broker a peace deal to end the carnage.

But it’s unclear how many more lives may be lost in the meantime.

Bulent Arinc made the remarks in Ankara, where 1,000 striking trade union workers faced off briefly against police backed by several water cannon, before police retreated and the crowd left.

In Istanbul, the cradle of protests that have presented Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan with the greatest public challenge to his 10-year leadership, several hundred union members also marched in sympathy with anti-government demonstrations.

They were prevented from entering Taksim Square, the focal point of the unrest, but after workers had moved off, between 200 and 300 mainly young protesters, some of them throwing stones from slingshots, fought with police.

The violence was minor compared with the weekend, which saw some of the fiercest clashes so far when police fired teargas and water cannon to clear thousands of people from the square.

“Our police, our security forces are doing their jobs. If it’s not enough, then the gendarmes will do their jobs. If that’s not enough … we could even use elements of the Turkish Armed Forces,” Arinc told Turkey’s state-run TRT television.

Any use of the army would be a dramatic step in Turkey, where Erdogan has pushed through democratic reforms including taming a military that toppled four governments in four decades.

There were also clashes on Monday in the city of Eskisehir, around 200 km (120 miles) southeast of Istanbul, where police used teargas and water cannon to disperse crowds and cleared away hundreds of tents, the Dogan news agency reported.

Monday’s union marches were peaceful and small, and, while it was unclear how many of the 850,000 public workers answered union calls to strike, there were no signs of major disruption.

What began late in May as a protest by environmentalists upset at government plans to build on a public park adjoining Taksim has grown into a movement against Erdogan, who opponents say is overbearing and meddles in their personal lives.

OPPOSITION SUPPORT RISES

The unrest has yet to seriously threaten Erdogan’s position.

A new poll showed that 35.3 percent of people would vote for his AK Party were an election to be held straight away, compared with 36.3 percent in April.

In the first survey published since protests started, opposition groups also gained in popularity, most notably the CHP whose support jumped to 22.7 percent in June from 15.3 percent two months ago.

European Union enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele expressed concern about developments in Turkey, whose negotiations to join the bloc have stalled, partly over worries about its record on human rights and freedom of speech.

Germany has long harbored doubts about admitting Turkey to the EU. Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “appalled, like many others” at Turkey’s tough response to the protests.

“I would like to see those who … have a different opinion and a different idea of society having some space in a Turkey that moves into the 21st century,” she told the German broadcaster RTL.

“What’s happening in Turkey at the moment is not in line with our idea of the freedom to demonstrate or freedom of speech.”

Erdogan sought to seize back the initiative over the weekend by holding huge rallies in Istanbul and Ankara. Hundreds of thousands turned up to see a leader who has won three successive elections, and whom they considered unfairly under siege.

The blunt-talking 59-year-old said the rallies were to kick off campaigning for local elections next year and not related to the unrest, but they were widely seen as a show of strength.

A defiant Erdogan told a sea of flag-waving supporters in Istanbul on Sunday that the disturbances had been manipulated by “terrorists” and dismissed suggestions that he was behaving like a dictator, a constant refrain from protesters on the streets.

Just a few kilometers away, police fought running battles with protesters in clashes that lasted well into the evening.

The stark contrast between events in different parts of Istanbul highlighted how the protests have polarized Turkey, its conservative religious heartland largely backing Erdogan while Western-facing liberals swell the ranks of the protesters.

But Angela Merkel also told broadcaster RTL on Monday that she was “surprised” to learn of the scope of recently leaked U.S. spying programs.

Merkel said the U.S. must clarify what information on people’s communications is monitored and how, reiterating that she will raise the issue in talks with President Barack Obama in Berlin on Wednesday.

However, Merkel said security services could have not foiled a 2007 terror plot without “tips from American sources.”

Four Islamic extremists were then arrested while preparing an explosive device with power equivalent to 900 pounds of TNT that authorities said was meant to attack American soldiers and citizens in Germany.

In 90 minutes of live online chatting, the person identified as Snowden by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and website insisted that U.S. authorities have access to phone calls, e-mails and other communications far beyond constitutional bounds.

While he said legal restrictions can be easily skirted by analysts at the National Security Agency, FBI and CIA, Snowden stopped short of accusing authorities of violating specific laws.

Instead, he said toothless regulations and policies were to blame for what he called “suspicionless surveillance,” and he warned that policies can be changed to allow further abuses.

Asked Monday if the NSA was following the online chat, the agency’s press office provided a non-response, saying: “We have your question and we will get back to you with any updates.”

Obama, top legislators and national security officials defend the surveillance programs as necessary to combat terrorism, arguing that some privacy must be sacrificed in a balanced approach.

They say the law allows collection of metadata, such as the time and numbers of phone calls, and that a special federal court must approve accessing the content — listening to the call itself.

In the blog posts on Monday, the writer identified as Snowden contended the government’s overbroad collection of information violated rights of innocent Americans who have no links to suspicious activity.

Referring to a program that permits broader access to foreign communications than is allowed for domestic monitoring, the writer said authorities sidestep regulations. For example, a phone call from overseas can mean automatic inclusion of a U.S. number in the record-keeping, according to the writer.

“The reality is that … Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant,” one blog post said. “They excuse this as ‘incidental’ collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications.”

Another post warned that restrictions against unauthorized access to the content of communications — such as listening to phone calls or reading e-mails — were based on policy rather than technology and therefore “can change at any time.”

The writer said he leaked details of the surveillance programs because Obama campaigned for the presidency on a platform of ending abuses.

However, Obama “closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge,” a blog post said.

The Snowden post also said that he had to get out of the United States before the leaks were published by the Guardian and Washington Post to avoid being targeted by the government.

Now, it said, the U.S. government “predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home” by “openly declaring me guilty of treason.”

Snowden, who is believed to be in Hong Kong, also purportedly wrote that the truth about surveillance programs he disclosed will come out, and “the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me.”

Details on NSA-thwarted plots coming, lawmaker says

The blog post rejected accusations that he had or might provide classified information to China, saying he only leaked to journalists and calling such a charge a smear tactic intended to turn public opinion against his effort to provide Americans with full information about how their government monitors them.

A CNN/ORC International poll released Monday showed 54% of respondents didn’t approve of Snowden’s admitted actions, while 44% backed the leaks.

Snowden’s father told Fox News that he hoped and prayed his son “will not release any secrets that could constitute treason.”

The father, Lon Snowden, also said he wanted his son to return to the United States “and face this,” adding “I love my son.”

Snowden, 29, worked for the NSA through a private contractor firm until May, when he decamped to Hong Kong. He went public earlier this month as the source of articles by the newspapers, saying the agency’s efforts pose “an existential threat to democracy.”

The revelations about the NSA’s collection of millions of records from U.S. telecommunications and technology firms have led to a furious debate within the United States about the scale and scope of surveillance programs that date from the days after the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

Defenders say the programs — approved by Congress after a warrantless surveillance effort under the Bush administration was revealed in 2005 — have protected American lives by helping agents break up terrorism plots.

Bigger threat: Snowden or NSA?

Critics call the programs an unconstitutional overreach of authority under the Patriot Act, the law that authorized increased government surveillance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

In a new development, the Guardian reported Sunday that Britain’s electronic intelligence agency monitored delegates’ phones and tried to capture their passwords during an economic summit held there in 2009.

Targets included British allies such as Turkey and South Africa, the newspaper reported. The Guardian cited documents provided by Snowden.

According to the newspaper, the documents show that the British “signals intelligence” agency GCHQ used “ground-breaking intelligence capabilities” to intercept calls made by members of the G-20 conference delegations at meetings in London.

Facebook, Microsoft disclose information on user data requests

Analysts received round-the-clock summaries of calls that were being made, and GCHQ set up Internet cafes for delegates in hopes of intercepting e-mails and capturing keystrokes, the Guardian reported.

One briefing slide explained the intercepts would give intelligence agencies the ability to read delegates’ e-mails “before/as they do,” providing “sustained intelligence options against them even after (the) conference has finished.”

GCHQ is Britain’s equivalent of the secretive NSA in the United States.

The Guardian reported that the NSA had attempted to eavesdrop on then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during the conference as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow and briefed its British counterparts on the effects.

The latest report was published on the eve of a smaller economic summit hosted by the British government — the Group of Eight gathering in Northern Ireland.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said Sunday he was aware of the Guardian’s latest report but declined to comment on it.

“What we should be focused on is how irresponsible and egregious these recent leaks are,” he told CNN. “It’s impossible to know exactly how much damage is being done by these disclosures, but they will have an effect on our counterterrorism efforts.”

Cheney defends NSA, calls Obama’s credibility ‘nonexistent’

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, a former NSA director, said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” that what the agency collects are “essentially billing records” that detail the time, duration and phone numbers involved in a call.

The records are added to a database that agents can query in cases involving a terror investigation overseas, and agents can’t eavesdrop on Americans’ calls without an order from a secret court that handles intelligence matters, he said.

If a phone number related to an investigation has links to a domestic phone number, “We’ve got to go back to the court,” he said.

GOP tries to keep focus on IRS targeting scandal

However, critics such as Sen. Mark Udall, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had raised questions about the scale of the program even before Snowden’s leak.

Udall said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he doesn’t believe the program is making Americans any safer, “and I think it’s ultimately, perhaps, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

“I think we owe it to the American people to have a fulsome debate in the open about the extent of these programs,” said Udall, a Colorado Democrat. “You have a law that’s been interpreted secretly by a secret court that then issues secret orders to generate a secret program. I just don’t think this is an American approach to a world in which we have great threats.”

Obama does not feel that he has violated the privacy of any American, his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

McDonough said the president will be discussing the need to “find the right balance, especially in this new situation where we find ourselves with all of us reliant on Internet, on e-mail, on texting.”

he decision, which may allow new flows of weapons to Syrian rebel forces, “is a reflection of ‘double standards’ and could inflict direct damage to the prospects for convening the international conference,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov of Russia said, according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.

“You cannot declare the wish to stop the bloodshed, on one hand, and continue to pump armaments into Syria, on the other hand,” Mr. Ryabkov told journalists later, according to the Interfax news service.

He rejected the notion that Russian support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria constitutes interference on behalf of one side in the conflict, saying that Russia is selling arms to “legitimate authorities.” He defended a plan to provide the Syrian government with Russian-made S-300 missile batteries, saying the new weapons would be a “stabilizing factor” that could avert a Western-led intervention.

“We consider that such steps will restrain some hotheads from the possibility of giving this conflict, or from considering a scenario that would give this conflict, an international character with the participation of external forces,” he said.

The British Foreign office said in an e-mailed statement: “We have stated that we have made no decision to supply arms to Syria. At the same time, Russia has acknowledged publicly that it is providing weapons to the Assad regime. Of course we disapprove strongly of continued arms sales to the regime. The focus now needs to move to energizing the political track, including through preparing for the ‘Geneva II Conference.’ We will be working closely with our partners and Russia to give it the best chance of making progress.”

Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Russian counterpart on Monday to continue to try to organize peace talks in Geneva next month. There was no immediate American reaction to the Mr. Ryabkov’s statement.

In a declaration, the European Union said member states that might wish to send weapons to Syrian rebels “shall assess the export license applications on a case-by-case basis” in line with the organization’s rules on exports of military technology and equipment.

The ministers did agree to renew all the economic sanctions already in place against the Syrian government.

Reacting to the statement from Moscow, Michael Mann, the spokesman for the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, stressed that the decision taken by foreign ministers did not mean that arms would flow immediately to the Syrian opposition.

Mr. Mann said that it was “important to note” that the declaration includes a statement that European Union nations “will not proceed at this stage with the delivery of the equipment.”

The ministers will review their position before Aug. 1 after consulting the United Nations on the progress of the American-Russian initiative and on the engagement of the Syrian parties, he said.

But efforts to ease the arms embargo, led by Britain, exposed deep rifts on Monday over the issue of arming the rebels.

Austria, the Czech Republic and Sweden came to the meeting strongly opposing arms shipments. They distrust large parts of the Syrian opposition and said they feared that the weapons would end up in the hands of jihadist groups.

They also said funneling arms to the opposition now would undermine the chances of a deal with the Assad government before the planned peace conference in Geneva.

There were also fears that Russia, which already sends arms to the Syrian government, would feel freer to send more.

France supported Britain in seeking to ease the embargo, but had called for a wider consensus.

The European ministers said it was now up to each member state to decide for itself whether to export weapons to the opposition, because the arms-export issue had been separated from the other sanctions.

In a sign of the tensions, the Austrian foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, held an impromptu news conference late Monday warning that the end of the embargo risked creating a situation where “everybody is entitled to deliver weapons to the Assad regime or to the opposition.”

The failure to agree means that the European Union’s existing package of sanctions will lapse after Friday. But ministers emphasized that economic sanctions like asset freezes and travel bans on Syrian officials would continue.

A lapse of all the sanctions would have been a serious embarrassment for the bloc.

“I’m glad at the end of the day we were able to have a sanctions regime for all the other sanctions that were in place,” Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, said after the meeting.

Mr. Timmermans said none of the bloc’s member nations, including his own, intended to ship arms to the Syrian rebels immediately. But he warned that lifting the arms embargo could lead Russia to step up its arms shipments to the Assad government.

“The only effect you could have — let’s be realistic about this — is that it will stimulate the Russians to provide even more arms,” he said. “But they’ve been providing so many arms that I’m sure even more will not make much of a difference.”

In a statement made before Russia’s reaction, Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and leader of the grouping of centrist parties in the European Parliament, said Tuesday that Britain and France “should be congratulated on taking the lead.”

“The longer we leave the Syrian opposition to fend for themselves or depend on support from Qatar and other Arab countries the less influence we can exert over the outcome and the greater the risk they will turn toward extremism,” he said.

But Oxfam’s Head of Arms Control, Anna MacDonald, said she was disappointed with the bloc’s decision and the lack of European unity. “Ministers sent out mixed signals. What was needed was an unequivocal stance that the E.U. will do everything it can to stop the bloodshed and prevent a deadly arms race in Syria, which would have devastating humanitarian consequences,” she said.

Mr. Kerry and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, met in Paris on Monday evening to try to lay the groundwork for talks that would bring together representatives of Mr. Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition. The Assad government has indicated that it is prepared to attend, but the Syrian opposition is still picking new leaders.

Mr. Kerry said additional meetings between American and Russian officials would be held to work out “how this conference can best be prepared for the possibilities of success, not failure.”

“Both of us, Russia and the United States, are deeply committed, remain committed to trying to implement the Geneva 1 principles, which require a transitional government by mutual consent that has full executive authority in order to allow the people of Syria to decide the future of Syria,” Mr. Kerry said.

The expectation is that the meeting will be held by mid-June.

USAToday: Chinese hackers have gained access to the designs of many of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems, according to report prepared for the Defense Department and government and defense industry officials,The Washington Postreported Tuesday.

The compromised weapons designs include, among others, advanced Patriot missile system, the Navy’s Aegis ballistic missile defense systems, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The confidential report was prepared by the Defense Science Board, a senor advisory group of government and civilian experts.

It does not accuse the Chinese of stealing the designs, but says that the designs of more than two dozen systems were compromised, the Post reported.

Report: Plans for Australia’s top spy HQ hacked by China

Read: Unclassified report on hacking threat issued in January

The report comes a month before a President Obama meets with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping next month in California.

It also coincides with reports in the Australian media that Chinese hackers had allegedly stolen blueprints for Australian’s new spy headquarters.

An alleged breach of U.S. systems was noted in a public report issued by the advisory panel in January, but the section of the report listing the compromised weapons system remained classified until Tuesday. The public version had warned that the Pentagon is unprepared to counter a full-scale cyber-conflict.

The Chinese government has insisted that it does not conduct ­cyber-espionage on U.S. agencies or companies, and government spokesmen often complain that Beijing is a target of U.S. cyberattacks, the Post notes.

The decision, announced on Friday by Interpol, to delete all information about Mr. Browder from its databases amounted to a rare — and sharp — rebuke of Russia for trying to use international law enforcement agencies in a political dispute.

Mr. Browder, once the largest private foreign investor in Russia, has crusaded against Russia’s government since the death of his lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, in a Russian prison in 2009, apparently after he was denied proper medical care.

Mr. Magnitsky was arrested while trying to expose a government corruption scheme, in which a company once owned by Mr. Browder was used to file a fraudulent $230 million tax return.

In December, President Obama signed a law named for Mr. Magnitsky that aims to punish human rights abuses in Russia by prohibiting Russians accused of such violations from traveling to the United States or holding financial assets there. Russia retaliated with its own law on human rights abuses by Americans, and barred American citizens from adopting Russian children.

Mr. Browder was a major force behind the American legislation and has been pushing for similar laws to be adopted in Europe.

Mr. Putin and other officials have brushed off questions about why no one has been convicted in Mr. Magnitsky’s death, and they have increasingly sought to portray Mr. Magnitsky and Mr. Browder as criminals.

The Russian government is prosecuting Mr. Magnitsky posthumously on tax evasion charges, and prosecutors have charged Mr. Browder with illegally acquiring shares in Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas company, from 2001 to 2004, at a time when foreign ownership was restricted. In April, a court in Moscow issued a warrant for his arrest.

It was in connection with this case that Russia requested that Interpol issue a “blue notice” asking law enforcement agencies worldwide to report on Mr. Browder’s whereabouts and provide other information about him.

Interpol said that its independent Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files had “studied a complaint brought before it by Mr. Browder and concluded that the case was of a predominantly political nature.”

A spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry told Russian news agencies on Saturday that the government had only asked Interpol for information and had not yet requested that Mr. Browder be declared a fugitive.

But the chairman of the Russian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Aleksei Pushkov, characterized Interpol’s decision as politically motivated.

“I think some international quarters have put pressure on Interpol,” Mr. Pushkov said, according to the news agency Interfax. He said Mr. Browder “has apparently managed to mobilize significant political resources” to block an inquiry.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Browder, who is scheduled to be in Berlin on Monday, said he was pleased by the Interpol announcement, which he called “a clear sign of how far Russia has stepped over the line in the Magnitsky case.” In a separate statement, Mr. Browder’s office said the decision showed “that a deeply corrupt regime will not be allowed to freely persecute whistle-blowers.”

There is something obsessive about the way our leaders keep saying that Australia does not have to choose between America and China. Julia Gillard says it almost every time she talks about foreign policy. Bob Carr and Stephen Smith cling to it. It’s woven into the government’s Asian Century white paper and National Security Statement.

And it’s there again in the Defence white paper: ”The government does not believe that Australia must choose between its longstanding alliance with the United States and its expanding relationship with China.”

Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop say the same thing, and John Howard said recently it was ”infantile” even to discuss the idea that we might have to choose.

But is it true? It depends what precisely we think our leaders are saying. If they are talking about the past and even the present, then the mantra is true. For many years now we have not had to choose between the US and China, and this has been absolutely vital to us. America has kept us safe and China has kept us solvent.

The whole question, however, is whether this will still be so in future. Our leaders shamelessly evade this question, because although grammatically ”we don’t have to choose” is about the present, they present it as a prediction about the future. They therefore assume that what’s been true must stay true.

One can see why they are so edgy about it. If they turn out to be wrong, and we do have to choose, all our ideas about Australia’s future will be overturned. How can we be secure without America? How can we be prosperous without China? These are questions they want to evade, because they have no answers to them.

But this is precisely why they are so wrong to avoid the whole issue. This is why our highest foreign policy priority must be to keep both relationships strong, and why it is so important to understand what might threaten our ability to do that.

Whether in future we will face a choice between America and China depends absolutely on how their relationship with one another develops. The decision will not be ours, but theirs. If either of them decide that we have to make a choice, then we do. The better they get along, the less we will be forced to choose. The more they see themselves as rivals, the starker our choices will be.

We have faced such choices before, of course. Between 1949, when the Communists took power, and 1972, when Nixon went to Beijing, America and China were bitter rivals, and we wholeheartedly backed America against China in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. It was the deal between Nixon and Mao, and the US-China relationship that flowed from it, that changed all that, and has saved us from making choices for the past 40 years.

Now there is a real risk that their rivalry will revive, because China no longer accepts the deal Mao did in 1972. It claims a bigger role in Asia to match its growing power, and that can only come at America’s expense. The great question of our age, and the most important question for Australian foreign policy in decades, is whether Washington and Beijing can negotiate a new power-sharing arrangement that satisfies both of them and provides a basis for future co-operation.

If they can reach this kind of new mutual understanding about their roles in Asia, Australia will not have to choose between them. If they can’t, rivalry between them will escalate, and we will be forced to choose. The government assumes that a deal will be done, because that would be in both sides’ best interests.

But this ignores the very real signs that rivalry between America and China is growing fast. This can be seen in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, where disputed islands are merely tokens in a contest in which it wants to show that it can challenge America at sea, and America wants to prove that it cannot. Underlying this is China’s strategic build-up in Asia, and America’s own build-up in response.

As this rivalry grows, ”we do not have to choose” turns out to mean trying to play both sides at the same time. We welcome the US military build-up in Asia, and we welcome China’s military build-up too. We urge America and China to reach new understanding about their roles in Asia, but we also urge America to keep playing exactly the same role as hitherto.

This can’t last. Eventually both Washington and Beijing will grow sick of it, but before then things could easily be brought to a head by a US-China clash somewhere like the East China Sea. If that happens, America will ask for direct Australian military support against China. How will ”we do not have to choose” sound then?

So Australia does face a choice today. It is not a choice between the US and China. It is a choice about whether we do anything to avoid being forced to make that choice in future. It is not clear exactly what we could do. But by just repeating ”we don’t have to choose”, our leaders are choosing not to even explore the issue. They are choosing to do nothing about the most important foreign policy challenge we face.

Hugh White is professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU.

France’s Le Monde newspaper also published on Monday a first- hand account from a journalist claiming he and his photographer had been gassed and had evidence of the banned weapons’ use in Syria.

“Last night we started getting reports the regime used light doses of Sarin gas in the countryside of Damascus. We have at least two villages where light doses of Sarin gas were used. We know of at least five confirmed deaths due to suffocation, due to the use of Sarin gas. We have over 200 cases of wounded people who are in dire need of help,” said the Syrian National Coalition’s Khaled Saleh.

The problem, say investigators, is that obtaining samples as proof is tricky because other chemical agents such as tear gas are being used, and once mixed the results are hard to obtain. Some speculate that other agents are being used deliberately to mask the Sarin deployment.

Israeli officials have asked Russia to stop what they say is an imminent delivery of Russian S-300 air defense systems to Syria.

However, neither leader mentioned the missiles in their brief opening remarks and concluding statements after the talks. They took no questions from reporters. Their refusal to mention the missile issue in public and their friendly tone may reflect an understanding reached in talks that lasted several hours.

Putin wrapped up the meeting by saying that Russia and Israel share concern about the situation in Syria. He said that he and Netanyahu believe that the conflict in Syria is fraught with negative consequences for the entire region, adding that they agreed to follow the situation through personal contacts and links between Russian and Israeli special services.

“Only a quick cessation of hostilities and a political settlement can prevent a negative scenario,” Putin said. “At this sensitive moment, it’s particularly important to avoid any action that could destabilize the situation.”

Putin hailed what he described as close ties between the two countries, and Netanyahu responded in kind and invited Putin to make another trip to Israel.

Netanyahu added that the volatile situation in the Middle East requires action to improve security. “The region around us is very unstable and explosive, and therefore I am glad for the opportunity to examine together new ways to stabilize the area and bring security and stability to the area,” he said at the start of the talks.

The warm statements and assurances of mutual friendship contrasted with sharp criticism by Israeli Tourism Minister Uzi Landau, who on Monday accused Russia destabilizing the Middle East by selling weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. “Anyone who provides weaponry to terror organizations is siding with terror,” Landau said.

Russia has continued to ship weapons to Syria despite the civil war there, but so far has refrained from providing Damascus with the S-300s, a powerful weapon that has a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) and the capability to track down and strike multiple targets simultaneously with lethal efficiency.

The weapon would mean a quantum leap in Syria’s air defense capability, including against neighboring countries that oppose Assad’s regime.

Israel attacked suspected shipments of advanced Iranian missiles in Syria with back-to-back airstrikes this month. Israeli officials signaled there would be more attacks unless Syria refrains from trying to deliver such “game-changing” missiles to ally Hezbollah, an anti-Israel militia in Lebanon and key Syrian ally. Hezbollah said weapons shipments won’t cease.

Netanyahu in his concluding statement emphasized the need for Israel to protect its people, adding that “deep and thorough discussions” with Russia would help find ways to improve regional stability.