Bishop 'blames Jews' for criticism of Catholic church record on abuse

A furious transatlantic row has erupted over quotes that were attributed to a retired Italian bishop, which suggested that Jews were behind the current criticism of the Catholic church's record on tackling clerical sex abuse.

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: "They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

The interview was spotted on Friday by the American Jewish Committee, which said Babini was using "slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to world war two".

On its website, the American Jewish Group Committee quoted bishop Vincenzo Paglia, an official at the Italian Bishops' Conference, as saying Babini's remarks were "entirely contrary to the official line and mainstream thought of the Catholic church".

As the interview appeared on Italy's main newspaper sites today, complete with the American reaction, the Bishops' Conference rushed out a statement quoting Babini denying he had ever given the interview in the first place. "Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me," he said.

Babini has previously been quoted on the Pontifex website accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust, as well as criticising homosexuality.

As cases of alleged priestly abuse emerge in the US and Europe, Benedict's handling of proven molesters before he became pope in 2005 has now been questioned in cases in Munich, Wisconsin and, most recently, in California, where his signature appears on an 1985 letter resisting calls to defrock a paedophile priest.

Kyrgyzi president flees amidst revolt

Anti-government unrest rocked the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday as thousands of protesters stormed the main government building, set fire to the prosecutor's office and took over state television.

The UK's Daily Mail reports that authoritarian President Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled the country after ordering his forces to fire on protesters.

The eruption of violence shattered the relative stability of this mountainous former Soviet nation, which houses a US military base that is a key supply center in the fight against the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan.

At least 17 people were killed and at least 180 wounded in clashes between demonstrators and security forces, the government said. The main opposition leader said 100 demonstrators had been slain but the claim could not immediately be confirmed.

The leader of main opposition party Ata-Meken announced on national television that he was negotiating with the president and demanding he step down. Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the claim.

Ata-Meken head Omurbek Tekebayev said he wanted every family to adopt the philosophy "freedom or death."

The chaos erupted after elite police at government headquarters in the capital, Bishkek, opened fire to drive back crowds furious over government corruption and a recent hike in power prices. Protesters seized and looted the state TV building and marched toward the Interior Ministry, according to Associated Press reporters on the scene, before changing direction and attacking a national security building nearby. They were repelled by security forces.

Opposition activist Shamil Murat told the AP that Interior Minister Moldomusa Kongatiyev had been beaten to death by a mob in the western town of Talas where the unrest began a day ago. The respected Fergana.ru Web site reported later that Kongatiyev was badly beaten but had not died, saying its own reporter had witnessed the beating.

Dozens of wounded demonstrators lined the corridors of one of Bishkek's main hospitals, a block away from the main square, where doctors were unable to cope with the flood of patients. Weeping nurses slumped over dead bodies, doctors shouted at each other and the floors were covered in blood.

Health Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Bayalinova said 180 people were hurt in the clashes Wednesday, without elaborating. Opposition activist Toktoim Umetalieva said at least 100 people had died after police opened fire with live ammunition. The number of 17 dead was confirmed by another government health official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The unrest began Tuesday in the western city of Talas, where demonstrators stormed a government office and held a governor hostage, prompting a government warning of "severe" repercussions for continuing unrest.

The opposition called nationwide protests for Wednesday, vowing to defy increasingly authoritarian President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Since coming to power in 2005 on a wave of street protests known as the Tulip Revolution, Bakiyev has ensured a measure of stability, but many observers say he has done so at the expense of democratic standards while enriching himself and his family.

Over the past two years, Kyrgyz authorities have clamped down on free media, and opposition activists say they have routinely been subjected to physical intimidation and targeted by politically motivated criminal investigations. Many of the opposition leaders once were allies of Bakiyev.

Anti-government forces have been in disarray until recently, but widespread anger over a 200 percent hike in electricity and heating gas bills has galvanized the fractious opposition.

Police in Bishkek at first used rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons and concussion grenades Wednesday to try to control crowds of young men clad in black who were chasing police officers, beating them up and seizing their arms, trucks and armored personnel carriers.

Some protesters then tried to use a personnel carrier to ram the gates of the government headquarters, known as the White House. Many of the protesters threw rocks, but about a half dozen young protesters shot Kalashnikovs into the air from the square in front of the building.

"We don't want this rotten power!" protester Makhsat Talbadyev said, as he and others in Bishkek waved opposition party flags and chanted: "Bakiyev out!"

Some 200 elite police began firing, pushing the crowd back from the government headquarters. The president was not seen in public Wednesday and his whereabouts were unclear.

Protesters set fire to the prosecutor general's office in the city center, and a giant plume of black smoke billowed into the sky.

Groups of protesters then set out across Bishkek, attacking more government buildings.

At least 10 opposition leaders were arrested overnight and were being held at the security headquarters in Bishkek, opposition lawmaker Irina Karamushkina said.

One of them, Temir Sariyev, was freed Wednesday by protesters.

The US State Department called for peace and restraint on both sides.

The prime minister, meanwhile, accused the opposition of provoking the violence in the country of 5 million people.

"What kind of opposition is this? They are just bandits," Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov said.

Unrest also broke out for a second day in the western town of Talas and spread to the southern city of Naryn.

Some 5,000 protesters seized Naryn's regional administration building and installed a new governor, opposition activist Adilet Eshenov said. At least four people were wounded in clashes, including the regional police chief, he said.

Another 10,000 protesters stormed police headquarters Wednesday in Talas, where on Tuesday protesters had held the regional governor hostage in his office.

The protesters beat up the interior minister, Kongatiyev, and forced him to call his subordinates in Bishkek and call off the crackdown on protesters, a correspondent for the local affiliate of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said.

Witnesses said the crowd in Talas looted police headquarters Wednesday, removing computers and furniture. Dozens of police officers left the building and mingled with protesters.

In the eastern region of Issyk-Kul, protesters seized the regional administration building and declared they installed their governor, the Ata-Meken opposition party said on its Web site.

Hundreds of protesters overran the government building Tuesday on Talas' main square. They were initially dispersed by baton-wielding police, but then fought through tear gas and flash grenades to regroup, burning police cars and hurling stones and Molotov cocktails.

Usenov said Tuesday's violence in Talas had left 85 officers injured and 15 unaccounted for.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who met with Bakiyev in Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, arrived in Moscow on Wednesday at the end of a trip to several Central Asian nations.

"The secretary-general is shocked by the reported deaths and injuries that have occurred today in Kyrgyzstan," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said. "He once again calls on all concerned to show restraint. He urgently appeals for dialogue and calm to avoid further bloodshed."

Source: AP

Pope's immunity could be challenged in Britain

Protests are growing against Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Britain, where some lawyers question whether the Vatican's implicit statehood status should shield the pope from prosecution over sex crimes by pedophile priests.

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition on Downing Street's web site against the pope's 4-day visit to England and Scotland in September, which will cost U.K. taxpayers an estimated 15 million pounds ($22.5 million).

The campaign has gained momentum as more Catholic sex abuse scandals have swept across Europe.

Although Benedict has not been accused of any crime, senior British lawyers are now examining whether the pope should have immunity as a head of state and whether he could be prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction for an alleged systematic cover-up of sexual abuses by priests.

Universal jurisdiction — a concept in international law — allows judges to issue warrants for nearly any visitor accused of grievous crimes, no matter where they live.

Lawyers are divided over the immunity issue. Some argue that the Vatican isn't a true state, while others note the Vatican has national relations with about 170 countries, including Britain. The Vatican is also the only non-member to have permanent observer status at the U.N.

Then again, no other top religious leaders enjoy the same U.N. privileges or immunity, so why should the pope?

David Crane, former chief prosecutor at the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal, said it would be difficult to implicate the pope in anything criminal.

"It's a fascinating kind of academic, theoretical discussion," said Crane, who prosecuted Sierra Leone's Charles Taylor when he was still a sitting head of state. "At this point, there's no liability at all."

But Geoffrey Robertson, who as a U.N. appeals judge delivered key decisions on the illegality of conscripting child soldiers and the invalidity of amnesties for war crimes, believes it could be time to challenge the immunity of the pope — and Britain could be the place. He wrote a legal opinion on the topic that was published Friday in the U.S. news site The Daily Beast and Saturday in the British newspaper the Guardian.

"Unlike in the United States, where the judges commonly uphold what the executive says, the British courts don't accept these things at face value," Robertson told The Associated Press on Saturday. "The Vatican is not a state — it was a construct of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."

But Jeffrey Lena, the California attorney who argued — and won — head of state immunity for Benedict in U.S. sex abuse cases, said the pope could not successfully be prosecuted for crimes under international law.

"Those who would claim that 'universal jurisdiction' could be asserted over the pope appear to completely misunderstand the sorts of violations, such as genocide, which are required to assert such jurisdiction," he said in a statement to the AP.

Still, Israeli officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have recently been targeted by groups in Britain under universal jurisdiction. The law principle is rooted in the belief that certain crimes — such as genocide, war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity — are so serious that they are an offense against humanity and must be addressed.

It's a tactic that the British government would likely abhor, but British judges have often gone against government wishes in lawsuits.

Recent examples include British judges who issued an arrest warrant against Israel's former foreign minister for alleged war crimes, and a British court ruling this year that forced the government to release its intelligence exchanges with U.S. officials about the torture claims of a former Guantanamo detainee.

Prosecution in the deepening cleric sex abuse scandal, however, ultimately rests on the question of immunity. If British judges do challenge the pope's immunity, there are a handful of possible legal scenarios — all of them speculative.

The pope could be served for a writ for civil damages, a complaint could be lodged with the International Criminal Court, or abuse victims could try to have Benedict arrested for crimes against humanity — perhaps the least likely scenario.

Lawyers question whether an alleged systematic cover-up could be considered a crime against humanity — a charge usually reserved for the International Criminal Court — and whether it could be pursued under universal jurisdiction.

Attorney Jennifer Robinson in London, who has been researching the possibilities, says rape and sexual slavery can be considered crimes against humanity.

Others, like Hurst Hannum with the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University near Boston, are skeptical.

"No one would question that the Church's response to widespread abuses has been atrocious, but it's very difficult for me to see how that would fit 'crimes against humanity,'" said Hannum.

Robertson is more in favor of challenging the immunity question.

"Head of state immunity provides no protection in the International Criminal Court," said Robertson, who represented The Associated Press and other media organizations who sought to make U.S.-U.K. intelligence exchanges public in the case of former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

"If acts of sexual abuse by priests are not isolated or sporadic events but part of a wide practice both known to and unpunished by their de facto-authority — i.e. the Catholic Church ... then the commander can be held criminally liable," Robertson said.

Even though the Vatican — like the United States — did not sign the accord that established the international court, a crime would only have to occur in a country which did sign, like Britain. Still, lawyers would have to prove that the crimes or an alleged cover-up occurred or continued after the court was set up in July 2002.

In a 2005 test case in Texas that involved alleged victims of sex abuse by priests, the Vatican obtained the intervention of President George W. Bush, who agreed the pope should have immunity against such prosecutions because he was an acting head of a foreign state.

It was around 1929 when Mussolini decided that the Vatican — a tiny enclave about 0.17 of a square mile with some 900 people — was a sovereign state.

"The notion that statehood can be created by another country's unilateral declaration is risible," Robertson said.

Others say the last 80 years of history have turned the Vatican into a state, and it would be almost impossible to strip the pope of his immunity now.

"My guess is the weight of opinion would allow the pope to enjoy immunity," said Hannum. "It's not automatically clear that the Holy See is a state, although it's treated as one for almost every purpose."

Last year, a Palestinian bid to have Barak — the Israeli defense chief who also served as prime minister until 2001 — arrested for alleged war crimes during a visit to Britain failed when the courts determined that he should be given immunity from arrest.

But months later, pro-Palestinian activists persuaded a London judge to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli politician Tzipi Livni, who was foreign minister during the 2008-2009 war in Gaza. The warrant was eventually withdrawn after Livni canceled her trip.

Spain and Britain jointly pioneered the universal jurisdiction concept when, in 1998, Britain executed a Spanish arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on torture claims. Pinochet was kept under house arrest in London until he was ruled physically and mentally unfit to stand trial and released in 2000.

When he was arrested, however, Pinochet was no longer head of state.

In 2001, activists brought Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to trial in Belgium in connection with a 1982 massacre at a Beirut refugee camp. Sharon canceled a planned trip to Belgium and was tried in absentia in a Belgian court. He was not convicted but the case provoked diplomatic protests and prompted Belgium in 2003 to tighten the law that had permitted the trial.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed to block private groups from taking legal action against visiting foreign dignitaries but any new law is unlikely before Britain's expected May 6 election.

The pope plans to visit Malta, Portugal and Cyprus before traveling to Britain on Sept. 16. A trip to Spain is planned for later in the fall.

Source: AP

Womb to let

An Israeli social anthropologist describes the process of surrogacy, which enables couples to be parents by relying on a hired stranger.Since Israel’s pathfinding surrogacy law – the first in which government supervises women being paid to gestate the embryos and deliver the babies of couples unable to have their own – was passed in 1996, about 350 children have been born. A few heartwarming stories about childless couples becoming parents and some sensational ones about surrogates who regretted their role have hit the media, but there has been no objective assessment of how the law has been implemented and how it affected those involved.

At least until now. A comprehensive, 361-page, English-language masterpiece on surrogacy by an Israeli social anthropologist, Dr. Elly Teman, has just been published by the University of California Press (www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11401.php). Academic and well-researched, moving and sensitive, Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self concludes that the law was well designed and is being fairly implemented.

Around the world, some feminists have denounced surrogacy for allegedly taking advantage of the women who bear the babies, while others have claimed it is “abnormal” for a surrogate to forgo a baby she carried, even if it was not her biological child.

Although Teman writes in the world’s first “ethnographic study” on the subject that “surrogacy does have the potential to exploit women..., the voices of surrogates counter automatic presumptions of exploitation by showing that a majority achieve a degree of appreciation through surrogacy that they do not get otherwise from partners or from society at large.”

At the same time, despite fears of opponents, Teman found that surrogacy arrangements in Israel did nothing to erode the nuclear family; instead, it reflected Israel’s conservative approach to reproduction and reflected the pro-birth ideology of a mostly Jewish society facing dangerous enemies.

Teman, who was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Portland, Oregon, was brought to Israel as a teenager. After completing her military service and traveling in the Far East, she began her studies at the Hebrew University, where she completed a doctorate in social anthropology.

SHE FIRST became interested in the topic about two years after the law was passed, and soon after the delivery at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center of the first surrogate children – girl and boy twins – in February 1998. As a graduate student in anthropology, she worked as an interpreter for visiting US law Prof. Kelly Weisberg, who came to Hebrew University to do research about her own book, The Birth of Surrogacy in Israel. One day, Teman accompanied Weisberg to an interview with “Yael,” who as a woman who could not carry her own embryos to delivery lobbied for the law; she and her husband later contracted a single woman to carry their baby. Teman writes in her book ($55 hardcover/$22 softcover) that although she had never given such a situation much thought, she was “profoundly touched” by Yael’s personal story and became good friends with her, ultimately deciding to devote eight years to interviewing many of the surrogates and “intended mothers.”

Her book is the result of 43 in-depth, formal conversations with 26 surrogates and 45 interviews with 35 intended mothers; most of these encounters took place in the interviewees’ homes, and often included looking at home videos and photo albums. In some cases, she spoke to both the surrogate and the woman who was to take home the baby. She was also in touch with some of the intended mothers and surrogates during the pregnancy and after the births, and in contact in person or by e-mail with “two-thirds” of those involved in Israeli surrogacy arrangements between 1998 and the end of 2005. The academic nature of the work is demonstrated by her 60 pages of notes and bibliography.

Teman and her husband Avi currently live in Philadelphia with their two children, Uriel and Rachela, while she is working as a research fellow at the Penn Center for Integration of Genetic Healthcare Technologies at the University of Pennsylvania. They intend to return home to Israel after concluding her postdoctoral work.

CONTRARY TO the image of surrogates as being desperate women who undergo the implantation of embryos of a couple just for the roughly $25,000 payment, Teman found that about 30 percent were Israeli middle-to lower-middle-class who worked at a steady job, owned cars and lived in pleasant homes. They usually lived with boyfriends and decided to be a surrogate to provide “extras” for their family. About half were lower-class single parents, divorced, widowed or never married, who thought the money would give them a “financial push forward.” The rest, said the author, lived in delapidated apartments in poor areas and thought surrogacy would be a better way to pay their bills than, say, selling a kidney. Teman said the economic and class differences between Israeli surrogates and intended mothers were quite a bit smaller than their counterparts in the US, where surrogacy is arranged privately and for much higher sums. The would-be surrogate must be currently unmarried, have at least one child of her own, must not have miscarried or delivered prematurely, and be free of psychological or physical problems.

UNLIKE COMMERCIAL arrangements in other countries where surrogacy is not illegal, the intended mothers are not rich career women who want children but don’t want to be bothered (or become “misshapen”) by pregnancy. All of them have undergone many failed in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles, miscarried many times and were born without or lost their uterus due to disease. Some had no healthy ova of their own and had to obtain donor eggs to be fertilized by their husbands’ sperm. Under the law, all intended parents have to be heterosexual and married, with the written agreement approved by a Health Ministry committee and recognized by a court. No Muslim or Christian Arabs have been surrogates or intended parents, as Islamic law prohibits surrogacy, and strong stigmas surround the practice in the Christian Arab community, Teman writes. However, a homosexual couple recently petitioned the High Court to give the Knesset the authority to allow them to apply as well.

The contract worked out by the two parties includes many details, possibly including whether the surrogate can work or smoke, and what she may not eat or do during the pregnancy, what happens if she miscarries or the baby is born defective, how she is paid, and other important details. While the pre-surrogacy supervision is stringent, the state avoids intervention during most of the pregnancy. But at delivery (either vaginal or in many cases by cesarean section), the baby is whisked off and given to the intended mother (who sometimes is hospitalized in the maternity ward) and her husband, while the surrogate is rolled into the gynecology department until her discharge. The baby immediately and officially becomes the natural child of the couple (who like the surrogate receive a maternity allowance) and is entered into their identity cards.

Teman stresses that while the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel might have been expected to fight legal surrogacy, opposition was overcome by Judaism’s highly positive views of having children and using almost any means to achieve this. Added to this imperative is Israel’s national culture of increasing the population.

Surrogacy and taking home one’s biological baby are described by many participants interviewed as powerful experiences that change lives. “And that’s why I say, I didn’t just give birth to a baby; I gave birth to a mother,” declares Tamar, a surrogate, even before the volume’s text begins. “I always say my mother gave birth to me the first time; she gave me life. But my surrogate gave me life the second time,” says Shlomit, an intended mother.

The IVF procedure and embryo transfer are quite complicated, requiring a series of rather painful hormone shots in the buttocks of the biological mother to ripen her ova, which are fertilized in a glass dish by her husband’s sperm. The surrogate too undergoes shots to coordinate her reproductive system with that of the biological mother so her uterus will be maximally prepared to receive the embryo(s).

IN A VERY interesting chapter, the author explains that the surrogates she interviewed have a different vocabulary and use special metaphors for parts of their bodies to separate themselves from the commissioning couples’ fetuses. One called herself an “oven that bakes the bread for hungry people. I just help them... Like if my friend needed a loan, I would save from my own food, and I would give her a loan. Would they then say I am being used?” Another surrogate said she was “someone with a womb, a good womb ... I just held [the fetuses] in my belly, like an incubator... I was their incubator for nine months... And the second that they were born, I finished the job and that was it.

Many of the surrogates described their commissioned pregnancy as very different physically from when they bore their own child – little or no nausea or food urges, for example. It was as if their womb belonged to someone else, and their emotions toward the fetus were nonexistent. In no case did any surrogate chronicled by Teman express a desire to keep the baby they had delivered.

The relationships between surrogates and intended parents were often very close, especially between the women. Some said they would do anything for the biological mother and felt the need to update her daily on what she felt so that the mother – who could never become pregnant – would be able to “experience” it. Some of the commissioning mothers developed symptoms of pregnancy – even high levels of pregnancy hormones – as a way of entering their future role. They invariably fondle the belly of their surrogate to feel fetal movements and hear the heartbeats and drive the surrogates to tests and spoil them. Sometimes even the father is allowed by the surrogate to be present for vaginal ultrasound scans, not to mention the birth. But in some cases, the relationship becomes very sticky, and Teman describes cases in which the couples develop severe psychological dependence and make too many demands, forgetting the boundaries of the surrogate’s self. Yet some surrogates also worry about the sudden disconnection from the couple, fearing they will lose them as friends. Surrogate e-mail forums and Web sites often carry such stories and give advice to avoid the minefields.

Teman notes that the law has its drawbacks, including the directive that surrogates must be single women, that gay couples and single persons cannot hire surrogates, and that intended mothers must first have made repeated IVF attempts to prove their candidacy. “However, the legislation also protects surrogates, couples and the resultant child. The government ensures that parties are diligently screened and that all contracts are valid.” It is the quality of the surrogate’s relationship with the couple that largely determines her satisfaction with the experience. The Israeli surrogacy law, minus some of the restrictions required by Jewish law, could serve as a model for other countries, the author concludes.

Think Tank: Israel could use tactical nukes on Iran

Deeply concerned as it is by the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran, Israel has never even hinted at using atomic weapons to forestall the perceived threat. But now a respected Washington think tank has said that low-radioactive yield "tactical" nuclear warheads would be one way for the Israelis to destroy Iranian uranium enrichment plants in remote, dug-in fortifications.

Despite the 65-year-old taboo against carrying out -- or, for that matter, mooting -- nuclear strikes, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says in a new report that "some believe that nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can destroy targets deep underground or in tunnels."

But other independent experts are on record warning that such a scenario is based on the "myth" of a clean atomic attack and would be too politically hazardous to justify.

In their study titled "Options in Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Program," CSIS analysts Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman envisage the possibility of Israel "using these warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons" given the difficulty its jets would face in reaching Iran for anything more than a one-off sortie.

Ballistic missiles or submarine-launched cruise missiles could serve for Israeli tactical nuclear strikes without interference from Iranian air defenses, the 208-page report says. "Earth-penetrator" warheads would produce most damage.

Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East's sole atomic arsenal. Israeli leaders do not comment on this capability other than to underscore its deterrent role; President Shimon Peres has said repeatedly that "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the region."

A veteran Israeli defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said preemptive nuclear strikes were foreign to the national doctrine: "Such weapons exist so as not to be used."

A fixture of NATO and Soviet arsenals, tactical nuclear weapons are designed to deliver focused devastation with less contamination than city-killing bombs like those the United States dropped on Japan to end World War Two.

That damage containment would, in theory, off-set diplomatic fallout for whichever country were to use such arms on a foe.

FALLOUT

There has been speculation that the United States -- which, like Israel, has not ruled out military force to deny Iran atomic arms -- could itself resort to tactical nuclear strikes.

The Pentagon's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, which was leaked to the media, spoke of the need to develop new "mini-nukes" for defeating bunker systems. The review cited Iran among potential enemies that might eventually warrant a U.S. nuclear deployment.

Yet Toukan and Cordesman think it "very unlikely that any U.S. president would authorize the use of such nuclear weapons, or even allow ... a strong ally such as Israel to use them, unless another country had used nuclear weapons against the U.S. and its allies."

They say the United States would be central to any diplomatic solution to the Iranian standoff and is the only country that could launch a successful military strike on Iran.

International experts who contributed essays to the 2003 book "Tactical Nuclear Weapons" mostly shied from hawkishness.

"Who could predict what might happen next if (the) taboo on the use of nuclear weapons were to be broken?" wrote former CIA director Stansfield Turner. "Getting tactical nuclear weapons under control, rather than attesting to their use by building new ones, should be our goal."

Princeton University physicist Robert Nelson assailed the idea that tactical nuclear weapons, detonated below ground, would pose tolerable risks for civilians and the environment.

"This is a dangerous myth. In fact, shallow buried nuclear explosions produce far more local fallout than air or surface explosions of the same yield," he argued.

Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. air force colonel who runs wargames for various Washington agencies, said an Israeli decision on using non-conventional weapons against Iran would come down to how far its nuclear program was to be retarded.

Israel supports efforts by world powers to rein in Iran -- which denies seeking the bomb -- through sanctions, and some experts say any pre-emptive Israeli strike would aim to jolt international diplomats into finally knuckling down on Tehran.

"If a 3-to-5 year delay were the Israeli objective, I expect it would drive their target people to say the only way it could be done is with tactical nuclear weapons," Gardiner said."I expect the Israeli objective to be more like a year. That is doable without tactical nuclear weapons."