Spain does Moscow's bidding

In an unprecedented act of subservience by a democratic Western state to the authoritarian Moscow regime, the Spanish authorities have extradited Murat Gasayev to Russia. The BBC notes that

Spain's El Pais news website reports that Mr Gasayev's extradition took place without any anti-torture guarantees.

Russian prosecutors say the police investigation established that in June 2004 Mr Gasayev took part in an attack on the interior ministry building in Nazran, in the Russian republic of Ingushetia.

Lessons for the intifada

With the probable approach of a third intifada, in which Hamas-led forces once again, in defiance of international law, press Palestinian civilians into  service as human shields, using homes, schools and community centres as rocket launching pads, Michael Weiss, in a guest post at Harry's Place, asks whether the Hamas movement has seen the fundamental error that prevents it from achieving success, It needs, he suggests, to learn a lesson not from the Arab but from the Jewish past:

Palestinians lack a viable political program that places statehood, peaceful coexistence, and socioeconomic wellbeing at the fore, where these interests don’t require academic specialists to decipher them. Call it Fatah without the kleptocracy, or social democracy with teeth. In searching for such a program, or at least the philosophical underpinnings that precede it, Palestinians might take a lesson from an unlikely tutor: 19th-century Zionists. Was there ever any problem Diaspora Jews faced that they thought could not be solved by the temporary salves of charity and favorable international publicity? What the early Zionists came to realize was that without first addressing the integral political crisis of the Jewish nation, the cultural and humanitarian concerns would never be adequately resolved. For today’s Gazans, an ambulance driver who swears upon the Protocols of the Elders of Zion may serve a proximate physical need, but can he really serve a long-term national interest?

The Stalin message

In the Telegraph, Anne Applebaum writes about the message that is sent to the rest of the world by the Putin government's elevation of Stalin to the status of hero. Excerpt:

Every country has a right to celebrate some positive elements of its past, and Russia is no exception. But that Putin and his colleagues have chosen, of all things, to celebrate Stalinist imperialism tells us a good deal about their vision of their country’s future.

Desiring death

Comments by Hamas representative Fathi Hamad:

"For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life."

(Al-Aqsa TV [Hamas], Feb. 29, 2008).

Chechens in officially sanctioned protest against Budanov's early release

Reuters reports that some 200 people have held an officially sanctioned protest in central Grozny against the early release of Col. Yuri Budanov, a Russian officer jailed for the murder of a young Chechen woman. The report says that many of the people taking part in the protest belonged to organizations loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, including the "Ramzan" local public organization.

Sjón - 3 poems

[the translations are my own]

A glass of water

I held
the glass and
looked into it.
The human eye
that lay on the bottom
looked at me
accusingly.

And I
who only asked for water.

(from Madonna [1979])

the hungry man’s astronomy

insatiable moons
follow him home
both by day and by night

they hover above the rooftops
sneaking a quick snack

winter-summer-spring-and-fall

their favourite food
pizza with iceland moss
and ice cream

they are what they eat

(from myrkar fígúrur [1998])

lithograph

marie curie and edvard munch lived in paris at around the same time

munch was interested in new discoveries and went to visit
the curies’ research laboratory on rue lhomond in the 5me arrondissement

marie was alone there and showed the painter how she and pierre
were wrestling with radium, and then gave him afternoon tea

in the lithograph munch sent her as a thank you present
the woman scientist sits among the equipment with her hand under her cheek

the angle of vision is oblique and in the bottom right hand corner you can see
the back of pierre’s neck as he sits at his desk writing in a book

marie curie looks into the light and has the same hairstyle as
edvard munch’s sister in the painting “death in the sickroom”

the picture has been lost – to dream it foretells the dreamer’s death

(from söngur steinsafnarans [2007])

See also in this blog: Sjón - 2 poems

an icelandic economist in soho

Sjón - 2 poems

Two poems by the contemporary Icelandic poet Sjón (Sigurjón Sigurðsson), in my translation:

the stone collector’s song

I remember the thirst and the darkness
I remember one-way streets
I remember closed alleys
and you

you pointed to a cellar door
there used to be a pub there
which we visited
a lot

here it is you said comfortingly
your stone collection
it isn’t
lost

on the shelves behind the bar
waits the iceland spar
all my
stones

sulphur – pyrite – opal
and jasper – dear friends!
none of you have I
forgotten

and up there on the ceiling hang
the obsidian sacks
heavy with
anxiety

*

gallstones
that is the poem I sing
as I squat under house-walls
when the winter denies me shelter

family life

after doing the washing-up the man stumbles
across a reindeer
that is lying under the coffee table
ruminating

it notices him
and rears up in fright

starts running out of the parlour
along the passage
where it jumps
over a pair of sandals
and a woman’s shoe.

he chases it into the bedroom

the beast creeps
under
the double bed

he gets down on all fours
watches it
join the herd

it grunts
elegantly

and the man disappears

(from söngur steinasafnarans [2007])

See also in this blog: an icelandic economist in soho

Amundsen: "secret alliance" between FSB and Islamist armed groups

From a recent (Dec. 4) Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty  interview with Norwegian public figure and human rights activist Ivar Amundsen, on the current situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus:

Natalya Golitsyna: Do you share Akhmed Zakaev’s opinion voiced recently at the ‘Caucasus seminar’ in London that ‘Russia has a vested interest in the instability in the Caucasus’?

Ivar Amundsen: Yes, I do. I think that this constitutes part of its policy in the Caucasus. Zakaev has also mentioned a very important point by saying that today Russia is losing its grip on Chechnya. This might sound paradoxical because Russia claims to have won the guerilla war in Chechnya. During the first Chechen campaign in 1994-1996 which claimed the lives of over one hundred people the Russian population of Chechnya numbered around three hundred and fifty thousand people. At the time ethnic Russians constituted a majority in Grozny. Since the second war which started in 1999 and which is still ongoing judging by the state of emergency still in force in Chechnya, the Russian population of Chechnya has gone down from about three hundred and fifty thousand to seven-eight thousand people. In other words, almost 98% of Chechnya’s civilian population have left the republic and the control over the situation in Chechnya is maintained by the army alone. This is what Zakaev meant when he spoke about Russia’s losing its grip on Chechnya. Today Ramzan Kadyrov is getting bolder and bolder in his aspirations to independence. There is another striking fact. There is an odd and secret alliance (a conspiracy even) between the FSB and the armed groups of Islamic fundamentalists hiding in the Chechen forests. Their leader Doku Umarov has proclaimed the setting of a new Islamic state – an independent Caucasus Emirate. According to experts, this move which could destabilize the situation in the Caucasus is being overseen by the FSB – in order to hamper as much as possible any solution to the Caucasus dilemma. 

Via chechnya-sl

Moscow admits Georgia death toll 162, not 2,100

In another - possibly surprising - volte face the Russian government has admitted that the results of an official investigation show that 162 civilians were killed in the fighting during the August war, and not 2,100, as it has consistently claimed in the past, Bloomberg reports.

See also in this blog: Moscow admits it prepared for August war

Support for Israel

At Harry's Place, Gene takes issue with the Telegraph's defence correspondent Sean Raiment for asserting that Israel is "addicted to violence", when its sole aim is to defend the lives of its citizens against indiscriminate attack:

–If the UK had been subjected to days of constant rocket fire by, say, the Irish army, making ordinary life impossible in large parts of the country; if the British government had repeatedly warned of the consequences if it continued; and if it the British military had finally responded by attacking Irish military installations, would you accuse the UK of being “addicted to violence”?

–Do you really believe that all, or even most, of those killed in the targeted Israeli attacks are civilians? I don’t think even Hamas is claiming that. Of course it doesn’t trouble Hamas to locate its installations in highly-populated areas. And if Israel really wanted to “slaughter” civilians, I can assure you– the death toll would be many times higher.

–Finally there’s that lovely word again: disproportionate. Would you be satisfied if Israel responded by launching a barrage of more-or-less random rocket and mortar fire at neighborhoods in Gaza. That, after all, would be a “proportionate” response.

Americans in the gulags

Reviewing a new book by Tim Tzouliadis in the TLS, Adam Hochschild discusses the dark and little-known fate of those American citizens, mostly of a left-wing persuasion, who in the 1930s tried to escape the Great Depression by emigrating to the Soviet Union. Excerpt:

Even though the conservative Ambassador of tiny Austria was able to save the lives of more than twenty Austrian left-wingers by sheltering them in his basement, US officials, contemptuous of the Americans who had come to Russia out of naive idealism, did virtually nothing. Yet they could have saved many lives if they had tried, for Stalin was shrewd enough to want to please a valued foreign trading partner. Again and again, the diplomats turned aside those begging for help, generally with the excuse that there was no proof that the prisoner involved was a US citizen. This was literally often true, for when Americans arrived to work in the Soviet Union, the Russians usually confiscated their passports – the better to exert control, and also to acquire a stash of US passports they could later doctor and use to send Soviet spies abroad.

Moscow admits it prepared for August war

On December 24, Russia''s President Dmitry Medvedev gave a year's end televised interview in which, among other things, he changed the Kremlin's standard account of the beginning of the recent war with Georgia, the version which has been current ever since the events of August. Whereas before the conflict was portrayed by Moscow as a totally unprovoked and unforeseen attack, Medvedev now for the first time admitted that Russian forces had been preparing for the war in advance. Speaking in the traditional language of Moscow state propaganda, Medvedev said:

“We of course were assuming that not everything was OK with our neighbor’s [referring to Georgia] brains – though we did not expect it was to such degree,” Medvedev said in an interview with Russia’s three main television stations.

“Taking into consideration that they [Georgians] were preparing for that [military actions] – I has once spoken about it – at some point I felt, that our Georgian counterpart [referring to President Saakashvili] simply stopped communicating with the Russian Federation. Before that he was requesting: let’s meet, discuss, have negotiations in Sochi; but then he just walked away from communication. At that point I started to suspect that he had decided to carry out forceful action,” Medvedev said in the interview.

“So, of course, we were preparing for that,” he continued. “And I think that as a result of those preparatory measures, which were carried out [by Russia], losses of the operation were minimal. The Russian army has destroyed the Georgian military infrastructure. At the same time [the Russian army] avoided actions, which could have been of inhuman nature.”   

Not surprisingly, Georgian government representatives were quick to point out that this amounted to a remarkable concession on Moscow's part. The Georgian interior minister called it a "Christmas present", while the foreign minister, Grigol Vashadze, described it as a "plea of guilty":

“Of course Russia was preparing and then carried out aggression against Georgia,” Vano Merabishvili told journalists on December 25. “It is difficult to hide this information. After foreign journalists, including through our assistance, disclosed disinformation disseminated by some so called foreign experts and foreign observers and after the entire world has seen that Russia was getting ready [for aggression against Georgia], Russia simply had to admit it and this is yet another fact that Georgia has become a victim of a pre-planned aggression.”

UN-SANTA

In Forbes, Claudia Rosett has a dream of Christmas Yet To Come:

Summoning all 192 member states to a resort complex in the South Seas, the U.N. convened its now-famous conference on "Santa Modalities." There, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77-plus-China, Cuba's envoy argued that Santa was an imperialist relic of the colonial order.

Pakistan's delegate, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, urged that the U.N. take immediate measures to end Santa's selectively religious and ''xenophobic'' overtones. Emissaries of Zimbabwe, Iran and Cameroon moved for emergency action. The secretary-general himself declared a Santa crisis and wrote a series of impassioned op-eds, explaining that the cause of world peace and progress required a U.N.-modified Multilateral Santa.

Read it all. (via Leopoldo)

Budanov parole request upheld

Rian.ru has the story. So does the BBC, but at present under the misleading headline "Chechen girl strangler 'released'" (should probably be "Strangler of Chechen girl 'released'').

Season's greetings

Season's greetings from Jussi, David and A Step At A Time.

Berlin Philharmonic offers virtual concerts

Starting from today, it's possible to hear the concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic in its Digital Concert Hall, either as a live stream or as video-on-demand. The first live concert is on January 6, with a programme of works by Dvorak and Brahms conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Tickets can be bought for the live events: for the opening concert the price is 5.5 euros, and for subsequent live events it will be 9.90 euros.

A European lesson to be learned

At Maidan, Halya Coynash examines the historical background of antisemitism in Ukraine, and asks some difficult questions:

In western countries the stereotype of French brave opponents of Nazism is widespread, while Poles and Ukrainians are often accused of collaboration and anti-Semitism. There are historical reasons, as well as fairly cynical manipulation. The unequivocal fact gets forgotten that it was the French authorities, and not just isolated individuals, that were implicated in the Holocaust. Nor do people take into account the fact that by helping Jews a Pole or Ukrainian risked not just his own life, but his family’s also. Against the background of vague and extremely unfair accusations levelled at a whole nation, or significant part of it, I fear it is not realistic to expect recognition of any kind of collective responsibility for the Holocaust. Poles found it in them to apologise for a specific crime, yet is it reasonable to expect them to feel collective guilt for the crimes of individuals when Poles themselves suffered so terribly? 

Advocating a strictly pragmatic and open approach to the process of uncovering the truth in this "black hole" of European complicity and responsibility, Coynash notes an additional problem which shows itself

in the unrelenting barrage of propaganda and lies with an unmistakably Soviet odour issuing mainly from Russian-language media outlets, though very often repeated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of the reasons that these tactics are effective highlights another fundamental problem. New information about the War is constantly being dug up by European researchers however this largely adds detail to a basically clear and universally recognized picture. This is not the case in Ukraine where basic information about WWII continues to be highly coloured by the position of those presenting it. There is no point in shouting that we are being maligned if we are not prepared to be remorselessly objective ourselves. Stereotypes have a number of apparent advantages: they’re easy to remember, require little painful mental effort and usually save time. Very often it’s a cut and paste job – the same words year in, year out. Problems arise, at least for those who have nothing against hearing the truth, when reality changes and the words apparently describing it don’t.

The television warrior

Prague Watchdog writes about the international satellite channel soon to be operated by the Chechen Broadcasting Company.

EJM

On Wednesday a new museum will open in the Estonian capital,Tallinn, Postimees reports. Eesti Juudi Muuseum is devoted to the history of Estonia's Jewish minority, which dates back to the early 19th century. The museum has four sections -- a permanent exhibition, an archive, a reading room and a virtual branch on the Internet at the URL http://eja.pri.ee.

A special feature of the museum will be a presentation of the story of the renaissance of Jewish community and religious life - which was repressed during the Soviet era - from 1988 to the present day. There are exhibits connected with the activity of youth and student organizations, antisemitism, the struggle for exit visas to leave for Israel in the years from 1967 to 1988, and the contribution made by Estonian Jews in the fields of education, science, art, sport and business in Estonia.

The throwing of the shoe

The Austin Powers precedent.

Russian troops remain in Perevi

U.S. Senator John Kerry, speaking in Tbilisi today:

“My judgment is that Georgia as a sovereign country needs to be upheld and respected. And the agreement that the Russians have signed up to needs to be upheld.

I think we need to get the focus back from discussions of the August events and how they may unfolded to the realities of what is happening on the ground today and what we need to do to go forward in the interests of protecting the [human] rights and finding an appropriate accommodation that respects the law and the sovereignty.”

Also via Civil.Ge:

The Georgian Interior Ministry said on Saturday that the Russian forces deployed a 500-strong unit in Perevi after retaking the village.

It said that the Russian troops dismantled its checkpoint in Perevi and moved back from the village early on December 12, but returned back eight hours later.

“At 5pm [local time on December 12] one platoon of the Russian occupying forces and one armored vehicle returned back into the village, which started to retake positions there,” the Georgian Interior Ministry said. “Starting from today morning [on December 13] Russian occupying forces were increasing number of its troops and military hardware in the village. At about 9am local time, the Russian occupiers deployed in the village several dozen of paratroopers with six combat helicopters. A mountain rifle battalion was also deployed.”

“The occupiers have threatened to open fire and demanded from the Georgian police to leave the area,” it continued. “In order to defuse tensions, the Georgian law enforcement officers have left Perevi, where over 500 Russian servicemen are currently deployed. OSCE observers, as well as the French, Romanian and Lithuanian ambassadors in Georgia have witnessed this new case of occupation of the village.”

“The Georgian Interior Ministry assesses this fact as a pre-planned provocation, which aims at renewal of the military confrontation,” the statement reads.

On December 12, after the Russian troops pulled back from the village, the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) welcomed the move and head of the mission, Hansjörg Haber, said: “The Russian forces in South Ossetia have for a long time refused to dismantle this checkpoint, in spite of clear evidence that it was situated to the west of the administrative boundary line of South Ossetia. But the insistence of the EU Presidency and of the EUMM on the ground has borne fruit.”

Halonen "not invited" to Oslo

The Finnish daily Ilta-Sanomat reports that Finland's President Tarja Halonen did not receive an invitation from ex-President Martti Ahtisaari to celebrate his award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10.  President Halonen's press secretary is quoted as saying that if the president had received an invitation, she would probably have attended the ceremony.

Through the looking-glass

In Standpoint, Jonathan Foreman, son of the exiled American film-maker Carl Foreman, discusses deep-seated and long-lasting Anglo-American misunderstandings, but concludes that even if the new U.S. President may not show much in the way of Anglophile inclinations, there is none the less hope for a relationship that is mainly based in the paradoxes of a creative kind of wishful thinking:

In general, both Britons and Americans expect the other to be more like them. This can deepen the shock when they encounter some cultural differences they might not even be aware of if they were visiting a European country whose language they didn't speak fluently. This doesn't in any way diminish all the many profound things our two nations have in common. It's like the differences people encounter within their own family. On the other hand nobody appreciates America like a Briton who loves it, and no one loves Britain more than Anglophile Americans. Thank goodness, there are plenty of both.

Saakashvili: Russia's real agenda

At CIF, Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili wonders why Russia refuses to take part in an international probe into the South Ossetia conflict, and argues:

Responding firmly to the Putin-Medvedev government implies neither the isolation nor the abandonment of Russia; it can be achieved in tandem with continuing engagement of, and trade with, Russia. But it does require holding Russia to account. Moscow must honour its sovereign commitments and fully withdraw its troops to pre-August positions. It must allow unrestricted EU monitoring, and accede to the international consensus that these territories are Georgian. Such steps are not bellicose; they are simply the necessary course to contain an imperial regime.

We all hope that Russia soon decides to join the international community as a full, cooperative partner. This would be the greatest contribution to Georgia's stability. In the interim, we should make sure that we do not sacrifice democracies like Georgia that are trying to make this critical part of the world more stable, secure and free.   

The majority of the comments by (mostly) pro-Putin Russian posters speak for themselves.

Role of KKE in Greece events

It's perhaps worth noting that yesterday's demonstration on Omonia Square in central Athens was called by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), and not by the "anarchists" referred to by much of the world's press. At least one expat commentator interviewed on the BBC today alluded to the possibility that a left wing coup is being prepared in Greece.

Chechnya: caught in the crossfire

Prague Watchdog's weekly review (in my tr.), compiled by Andrei Babitsky, looks at the plight of civilians in Chechnya today, caught in the ongoing conflict between Islamist mujahedeen and the Moscow-backed, hostage-taking, ex-guerrilla forces of Ramzan Kadyrov. Yet in spite of everything, life in the republic goes on.

Breaking the chains - Generacion Y

Via Harry's Place: At Generacion Y, Yoani Sanchez describes a visit to the offices of the Cuban interior ministry for questioning about an upcoming meeting of Cuban bloggers. She encapsulates the message she was given by interior ministry officials like this:

We want to warn you that you have transgressed all the limits of tolerance with your rapprochement and contacts with counter-revolutionary elements. This totally disqualifies you for dialog with Cuban authorities.

The activities planned for the coming days cannot be carried out.

We, for our part, will take all measures, make the relevant denunciations and take the necessary actions. This activity, in this moment in the life of the Nation, recuperating from two hurricanes, will not be allowed.

Generacion Y is remarkable for candidly reflecting daily life in Raul Castro's Cuba - a land that in some respects is uncertainly turning to the West, but where the government is still locked in most of the totalitarian reflexes of the past, and where ordinary people are still held hostage in conditions of state-imposed poverty and information control. The blog - published both in English and in Spanish - provides a much-needed antidote to the false revolutionary romanticism of Cuban government supporters like the American actor Sean Penn. For a critical dissection of the attitudes and sentiments of the latter, see this post by Marc Cooper.

St Petersburg Memorial office raided by police

HRW reports that the office of the Memorial Research and Information Center in St. Petersburg was raided by masked men armed with batons on the morning of December 4. The raiders cut the phone lines and barred the three staff members present from leaving the office.

The men, who had a warrant signed by the Prosecutor's Office, included police, special forces and members of the investigative committee of the Prosecutor's Office. They conducted a search of the office that lasted more than seven hours and seized the organization's computer hard drives and other materials, including 20 years of archives on Soviet repression and gulags.

Basic question

MEP Tunne Kelam, on the dangers of doing "business as usual" with Russia:

There remains a basic question to be answered: What is the reason to assume that both strategic partners are sharing the same goals, not to speak of the same values?

In his memoirs, former external relations commissioner Chris Patten speaks of a fundamental difference – while Europe wants stable, well-off neighbours, Russia does not.

Mr Patten writes: "Russia wants weak neighbours and a sphere of influence inhabited by dependent supplicants". Since August 2008, the latter approach is being demonstrated not just by declarations and diplomacy but by military actions.

The effect of the EU's feebleness in handling Russia is as bad for Russia as it is for us.

Hudson scholar faces trial in Russia for illegal "extremist" writings

In an echo of the Soviet era, Andrei Piontkovsky, a Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow, has been summoned back [from Washington, D.C.] to his native Russia, accused of violating a law that that has widely expanded the scope of illegal "extremist activities." So-called extremist acts now include "abasement of national dignity" and "slander of a public official."

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5896&pubType=HI_PressReleases

NATO-Georgia Commission statement

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20065

an icelandic economist in soho

By Sjón

(my tr.)

orange tents
sprout up
around the pub

and he wonders
if the flies that seek  his beer
are real

*

the world’s economy is governed by a giant baby
that extends between the oceans

when it cries the shares fall one after the other

like snow buntings
over snow
in a snowy winter
like snow buntings
over a snowy winter
on snow
like snow
over snow buntings
in a snowy winter
like snow
over a snowy winter
on snow buntings
like a snowy winter
over snow buntings
on snow
like a snowy winter
over snow
on snow buntings

and the change in his pockets grows lighter

*

the gust of wind
that crosses the square
and is meant for him alone

it opens the tent flaps
so that the listening device
comes into view

and he wonders
if the girl at the cash desk
isn’t  a bit mechanical in her movements

Antisemitism in Norway and the Nordic countries

At Harry's Place, guest blogger Ben Cohen examines

the claim, documented by the scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld and others, that antisemitism, frequently blended with anti-Zionist tropes, is alarmingly prominent in Norway and the other Nordic countries.

Soviet origin of modern conflicts

In NRO, former New York Times correspondent and Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Clifford D. May writes about the history of the Taliban, noting that

Afghanistan has been in a state of turmoil for almost 30 years, since the Soviet invasion of 1980. “People here are used to violence, Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, says. “But they also have been traumatized by violence.”

Estonia in the world

At Marko Mihkelson's blog, the English text of his recent Baltic Times interview on the subject of Russia and the EU. Excerpt:

Estonia has often been criti­cized for its inadequate integra­tion of Russian speaking resi­dents into greater society, how do you respond to these claims?

I think that the Estonian inte­gration process has been more or less successful. You have to take into account the different factors which have influenced both the pretext and outcome of this very difficult process. This includes the heritage of Soviet Union but also the recent identity building in Putin's Russia. Both of them are not very much helping to create greater society But we are passionate.

Integration does not only mean how many non-citizens are left in the country By the way, this number has lessened in Estonia by four-fold since 1991. More important than this is the elementary loyalty to the coun­try you live in. This is our main aim today, to promote positive thinking among Russians in Estonia.

Rice to India

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to travel to India on Wednesday, Reuters reports, possibly cutting short her attendance at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels today.