Dubai buys $1B stake in DaimlerChrysler

Arab emirate becomes third largest shareholder, may lead to Dubai-based manufacturing facility.

January 30, 2005: 1:28 PM EST

DUBAI (Reuters) - The government of the Gulf emirate of Dubai has bought a $1 billion stake in DaimlerChrysler AG, becoming the auto maker's third largest shareholder, it said on Sunday.

The purchase was made through the government's wholly owned Dubai Holding company, which was set up last year to oversee the emirate's ambitious, multi-billion dollar domestic and foreign investment schemes.

"We welcome Dubai as a long-term investor, which shows it believes in DaimlerChrysler's potential," a DaimlerChrysler spokesman said, confirming the deal.

Industry sources said that neither Deutsche Bank AG nor the Gulf state of Kuwait -- DaimlerChrysler's biggest and second-largest shareholders -- had reduced their stakes. Dubai's stake was about 2 percent, the sources said.

"This is a perfect time to acquire shares in DaimlerChrysler as the company begins to bear the fruits of its merger with Chrysler," said Mohammed Al Gergawi, chief executive of Dubai Holding.

He said in a statement that Dubai Holding had faith in DaimlerChrysler's management team.

Dubai, the trade and tourism hub of the Gulf region, set up Dubai Holdings in late 2004.

The firm is mainly focused on real estate and tourism ventures in Dubai, but it also set up an international private-equity arm, Dubai International Capital, for foreign acquisitions.

INDUSTRIAL AMBITIONS

Dubai is one of the emirates in the oil-rich Gulf state of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The emirate is striving to create a diversified, non-oil economy to make up for falling revenues from dwindling crude reserves.

Walid Shihabi, an analyst at Dubai-based investment bank Shuaa Capital, told Reuters the deal may lead to DaimlerChrysler investing in a Dubai-based manufacturing facility.

In 2004, Dubai announced plans to create an industrial hub aimed at attracting foreign and domestic investment.

"It might be in exchange for DaimlerChrysler establishing an industrial presence. This may be similar to the deal in Abu Dhabi, where VW is going to create a production line," Shihabi added.

In November 2004, Volkswagen AG led a consortium that bought European vehicle-leasing company Leaseplan for 2 billion euros ($2.61 billion). Mubadala Development Co. of the Abu Dhabi government had a 25 percent stake in the deal.

In December 2004, Volkswagen announced plans to build an assembly line for heavy trucks in Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital of the UAE.
DaimlerChrysler's Middle East headquarters is located in Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone, where the company employs around 100 people. In 2004 DaimlerChrysler sold just under 29,000 vehicles in the Middle East, up 14 percent on 2003.

End of Boeing 717 could yield 90 acres of prospects for Long Beach

Empty site will be a developer's dream after firm shuts 717 plant.

By Felix Sanchez
Staff writer

LONG BEACH — In a city that basically is built out, with little undeveloped land available for new commercial projects, news that nearly 90 acres may soon be free has planners salivating.

The prospects come with the announcement that the Boeing Co. is shuttering its Long Beach 717 passenger jet assembly line in mid-2006, marking the end of commercial airplane production in Southern California.

There are an estimated 90 acres at the 717 plant. Much of the land is designated for parking, but is largely unused, and at least 25 acres are where giant manufacturing hangars — one housing the 717 assembly line — now sit.

It will be the latest big parcel of Southern California land available after falling into disuse because of the demise of the once-bustling aerospace industry.

Among the recent examples:

* A former Boeing factory in Downey that once contributed to manned journeys to the moon.
* A Loral Aeroneutronics-Ford Aerospace property in Newport Beach that once housed missile-producing facilities.
* A Lockheed Martin Corp. research and development complex in Burbank.
* A 260 acres of land across from the Boeing Co. property in Long Beach that housed Douglas Aircraft Co.

Those properties are being redeveloped into office buildings, retail shopping centers, industrial parks, hotels, office space, parks, space museums, sound stages for movies and other mixed-use projects.

The 717 property remains a question mark.

"It's still too early. No decisions have been made," Long Beach Boeing spokesman Tom Brabant said. "We will continue to study it."

Irvine-based Boeing Realty turns raw land to fully developed, high-tech office buildings and has projects in various stages of development nationwide.

Some of its biggest include a 240-acre business park adjacent to the Kent Space Center in Washington state; the Pacific Gateway Business Center in Seal Beach, with 48 acres of surplus land; and the Harbor Gateway Business Center in Los Angeles.

In all, Boeing Realty's projects, when built, have an expected market value of $1.5 billion.

In addition to the 600,000-square-foot 717 assembly hangar, Building 80, there are three main structures, including a paint hangar and empty assembly building, as well as office space and parking lots.

Building 80, with its distinctive neon-lighted "Fly DC Jets" logo atop the hangar, was built in 1957 and covered construction for the DC-8, DC-9, MD-80 and MD-90.

Jack Kyser, chief economic forecaster with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., said the 717 plant and land will be a gift to the real estate health of the market.

"For a city that is highly developed, getting this chunk of land, this size of land, it literally is a gift," Kyser said.

But Kyser said the city has to take great care determining how the site should be developed.

"You have to look at what type of jobs were at this site, and (what) you want at this site," Kyser said. "Too often you see cities take old industrial land and put in retail."

That can be a bad trade-off, Kyser said, especially when high-paying aerospace jobs are supplanted with lower-paying retail jobs.

Robert Alperin, a Long Beach real estate broker with Cushman & Wakefield, said the property has the potential for any number of uses: homes, retail, light industrial, office space, parks and schools.

Most likely, it will end up as a mixed-use project, Alperin said.

"The entitlement process is something that I'm sure Boeing is now trying to get their arms around," Alperin said. "What is it they want?

"It creates opportunities for developers and business owners, real estate people and brokers," he said. "I think this is a great opportunity for people in all kinds of business to use creativity to pursue whatever it is that they want to do."

Likely, it will be something along the lines of the recently approved Douglas Park project, a mixed-use development by Boeing Realty of 3.3 million square feet of commercial, retail, office space, research and development, hotel and 1,400 residences on 260 acres of land that once housed Douglas Aircraft plane assembly plants, Alperin said.

Douglas Park is located at the intersection of Lakewood and Carson, just north of Long Beach Airport. At the height of Douglas Aircraft, the plant had more than 50,000 workers, and produced an airplane every 120 minutes.

The 717 factory complex is east of the future Douglas Park, across Lakewood Boulevard and bounded by offices for Boeing Commercial Aviation Services to the north and SkyLinks Golf Course to the south.

Alperin wouldn't put a price tag on the value of the 717 land.

"If it's used for high-density housing, it will be worth a whole lot more than if it's used for office buildings," he said.

January 25, 2005

INSURGENCY

Militant Imams Under Scrutiny Across Europe

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
and LOWELL BERGMAN

ONDON, Jan. 24 - In nightly sermons broadcast on the Internet, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 46-year-old Syrian-born cleric, has urged young Muslim men all over the world to support the Iraq insurgency on the front line of "the global jihad," investigators say.

He struck a similarly defiant tone this month at a rally attended by 500 people at a central London meeting hall, where a giant screen behind him showed images of the World Trade Center falling. "Allah akbar!" - "God is great" - some audience members shouted at the images.

After eavesdropping for months on his nightly praise of the Sept. 11 hijackers and of suicide bombings, Scotland Yard said last week that it was investigating Sheik Omar, the leader of Al Muhajiroun, Britain's largest Muslim group, and officials are exploring whether they can deport him. "We're fed up with him," said a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He needs to be stopped, or he needs to go."

The more aggressive approach toward Sheik Omar is part of an increasing effort to monitor and restrict militant imams in Britain and across Europe. Authorities have stepped up surveillance of militant mosques in several countries, including Germany and France. French officials deported an imam this month after officials said he was inspiring men to join the jihad.

One major concern, officials say, is that more heated religious rhetoric is encouraging young men to leave home to fight in Iraq.

Although the dimensions of the recruitment effort from Europe to Iraq are not clear, there are indications that it is intensifying.

On Sunday, the German police arrested a man suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda and charged him with recruiting men to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq. These arrests were part of an ongoing investigation in cooperation with the United States of recruitment and other terrorist activities in Europe. A senior German official said he was certain there would be additional arrests of militants inside the country who have set up sophisticated recruitment and smuggling networks that lead to Iraq.

Italian investigators say several recruits from Italy carried out bombing attacks in Baghdad. Swiss officials say they are concerned that several militant clerics have openly urged men to become terrorists. And in Jordan, senior officials say they have recently arrested several dozen men who intended to cross the Iraqi border to serve as foreign fighters.

Bohre Eddine Benvahia, the 33-year-old imam recently deported by France to Algeria, had urged young men in a working-class neighborhood of L'Ariane, outside Nice, to join jihad, French intelligence officials said.

Sheik Omar did not return repeated phone calls over the past several days. Last week, he denied in several interviews that he had urged people to become foreign fighters in Iraq, saying his comments had been taken out of context.

"I believe Muslims are obliged to support their Muslim brothers abroad - verbally, financially, politically," he told The Associated Press. "I never said, 'Go abroad.' But if people want to go abroad, it's a very good thing to do. But we never recruit people to go abroad."

News of the central London rally, which was first reported by United Press International, and portions of Sheik Omar's nightly Internet sermons, have alarmed senior British officials. In one sermon last week, Sheik Omar called Al Qaeda "the victorious group" that he said Muslims were "obliged" to join.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has asked officials to investigate whether they can help relocate Sheik Omar to Syria or Lebanon.

Like their counterparts in Britain, counterterrorism officials in Germany say they have seen indications of an increase in attempts by groups there to recruit young fighters to travel to Iraq to fight. Some men in recent weeks have planned to go to Iraq to carry out suicide bombing missions, the officials said.

In the arrest on Sunday, prosecutors said a man they identified as Ibrahim Mohamed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi from Mainz, Germany, had persuaded a 31-year-old man, Yasser Abu S., to go to Iraq on a suicide bombing mission.

Prosecutors said Yasser Abu S. intended to fake his death in a car accident in Egypt and use the life insurance proceeds to pay for Qaeda activities in Germany and travel expenses to Iraq, where he planned to carry out a suicide bombing. The surnames of suspects in criminal cases are not disclosed in Germany.

"Stopping recruitment for Iraq where they may do harm to U.S. troops is our highest priority, and the Germans and other European governments are cooperating," a senior American counterterrorism official based in Europe said in an interview with The New York Times and the PBS program "Frontline." He said a would-be suicide bomber intending to travel to Baghdad was arrested early last fall in Germany. German officials said they were worried that recruitment had intensified there in recent months.

Last October, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated that 1,000 "foreign fighters" had entered Iraq to join the insurgency, although American military officials in Iraq have acknowledged that they are unsure of the numbers of outside fighters.

In raids in several German cities on Jan. 12, the German police arrested 22 people suspected of being militant Muslims while recovering dozens of forged passports and boxes of militant propaganda. A senior German law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said many of the arrested men were members of Ansar al-Islam, recruiting young men to go to Iraq. "One of their projects was to recruit, but they also were smuggling people to Iraq," the official said. He declined to say how many people were estimated to have left Germany for Iraq.

Counterterrorism officials view some militant European mosques as a link in the Iraq recruiting chain, just as they came to see the importance of Al Quds mosque in Hamburg in the formation of the Qaeda cell led by Mohamed Atta, the leading hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Senior officials say that in addition to their concern about European fighters going to Iraq, they also fear that the Iraq war has increased the possibility that terrorists might single out European countries, particularly Britain and Italy, whose leaders have not wavered in supporting the war.

Officials say that in some countries, their efforts to control activities at mosques are hampered by laws that protect religious expression and restrict what they can do to stop hateful speech. British officials say that if they want to deport an imam who they fear is inciting violence, the proceedings can often take months or even years. Under Britain's Terrorism Act of 2000, prosecutors can charge clerics for using "threatening, abusive or insulting behavior" to incite racial hatred.

In Britain, where 1.8 million Muslims live, elected officials are demanding that the police move quickly against several imams who they say have become far more vocal in recent weeks.

Sheik Omar, who was lived here since 1985 after he was deported from Saudi Arabia, warned that Britain must scale back its antiterrorism laws or it would face a "horrendous" response from angry Muslims. "I declare we should ourselves join the global Islamic camp against the global crusade camp," he said.

It is not just imams who have become outspoken in exhorting young men to become jihadists. At the rally sponsored by Sheik Omar, a young speaker named Abu Yahya Abderahman said: "We are at war. It's time for brothers, sisters and children to prepare. Prepare as much as you can, whether they are sticks or stones or bombs. Prepare as much as you can to defeat them, to terrorize them."

In the months after Sept. 11, diplomatic pressure built for Britain to move against outspoken imams. But it was not until last May that British officials arrested the most high-profile militant cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri of the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. He was charged with soliciting or encouraging others to murder people who did not believe in the Islamic faith.

Mr. Masri also faces extradition to the United States, where he is charged with 11 terrorist counts, including trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon. The Finsbury Park mosque was attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, now facing Sept. 11 terrorist charges in the United States, and Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber.

Now leading the mosque is another militant Muslim, Abu Abdullah, who said in an interview, "People see us as extremists because we don't compromise the religion of Allah."

Last month, the United Nations placed sanctions against Saad Fagih, a Saudi dissident living in London who is the leader of the Movement of Islamic Reform in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Fagih adamantly denies that he has any ties to Al Qaeda, but British officials say they are concerned about his activities, too.

Don Van Natta Jr. reported from London for this article, and Lowell Bergman from Europe. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

Baghdad fears rise of 'Iraqi Hitler'

LONDON, England -- Iraq's interim president has criticized U.S. and British forces for dismantling Iraqi security forces and warned that long-term instability could give rise to an "Iraqi Hitler."

Ghazi al-Yawer said Monday the decision to dismantle Saddam Hussein's defense and interior ministries contributed to the violence and disorder seen since the Iraqi dictator was captured a year ago.

"Definitely dissolving the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior was a big mistake at that time," al-Yawer told BBC radio.

"We could have screened people out instead of screening them in and this could have saved us a lot of hassle and problems," he said.

In remarks published Monday in the Arabic press, al-Yawer also warned of a replay of post-World War I Germany, when Adolf Hitler came to power, if Iraqis continue to feel humiliated and despondent.

"This could in the long term create an environment in which an Iraqi Hitler could emerge like the one created by the defeat of Germany and the humiliation of Germans in World War I," al-Yawer told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

Al-Yawer -- a Sunni Muslim who was chosen for the largely symbolic post of president in June -- also urged Iraq's neighbors to break their "negative silence" about attacks in Iraq and play a positive role in helping stabilize the country.

"When a fire breaks out in your neighbor's house you should act quickly to put it out, not only for the sake of your neighbor but also so that you are not forced to put it out in your own home when it spreads there," the president told the newspaper.

Al-Yawer has said parliamentary elections should go ahead on January 30 as scheduled, and told BBC radio he expected more violence in Iraq aimed at derailing the polls.

"Their tactical target is to undermine the electoral process and to stop us having our first elections. This is why we see it is a challenge we have to meet.

"The problem is we are not fearing representation, we are fearing the time of the elections. If people can feel safe enough to go and cast their vote," he said.

On the issue of dismantling Saddam's security forces, al-Yawer said it would be necessary to reinstate some of the officers from the pre-war army and security forces in order to boost the effectiveness of the new security system.

"I firmly believe that the security situation will not be solved unless we have 100 percent efficient Iraqi forces, and that is the message that I took to Washington," he told the BBC.

Al-Yawer was in London, where he briefly stopped after a visit to the United States.

Despite the chaos of the past year, al-Yawer insisted that the overthrow of Saddam by the U.S.-led coalition had been good for his country.

"Changing Saddam's regime, toppling Saddam is the biggest plus that we will never regret happening," he said.

"He established a dynasty of villains. There was no way on earth Iraqis could have pushed him out of government.

"We had to have a surgical intervention to do so, and I think this is the biggest positive thing that makes all the negative things relatively secondary."