WHEN US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Australia from March 16 she could well be asked about the Absent American.

The Absent American is the man or woman you would expect to be living in the US ambassador's residence in Canberra, but hasn't for more than a year.

That charming house, occupied by US envoys since Christmas 1943, has been strangely empty since Tom Schieffer took his suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe in February last year.

Schieffer, a close friend and former business partner of US President George W. Bush, is now ambassador to Japan, but has had no successor here.

The Absent American and the vacant house looking over the back of Parliament House and out over the lake, have vexed the minds of some interested in the US-Australia relationship.

Former trade minister and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer has been one of them.

Fischer has cheekily suggested that rather than go to waste, the residence could be used to give still-homeless victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans some R&R here.

More seriously he has said, "We're now a year without an ambassador, and it's going on a bit long."

Tim Fischer works promoting tourism to Australia, and the absence of an ambassador is bothering him and other business types.

The office of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer isn't worried: It's a matter for the Americans to deal with, not us.

However, Downer a few months ago did raise the matter of the Absent American during a visit to Washington, and there is no evidence he was given any solid assurances.

Apparently it bothered him enough back then to make inquiries, and it's hard to imagine he is totally satisfied with present arrangements.

Even in strict terms of functional diplomatic connections, the observation of protocol, it is an embarrassing vacuum.

William P. McCormick is no doubt doing a sterling job as US envoy to New Zealand, and Robert W. Fitts likewise is serving his nation's interests in Papua New Guinea. We have the Absent American.

There have been a couple of attempts to get an ambassador in the big house in Canberra but each time something has come up and the candidates have not been able to make the trip across the Pacific.

The quest is for someone who is personally, as well as politically, close to George Bush.

Bush has under three years left in his second and final term as President, so a new ambassador would not have a long tour of duty in Australia.

It's not that links between Canberra and Washington have suffered greatly. Deputy head of mission William Stanton is a capable and experienced professional diplomat standing in for an ambassador.

However, there is a broader question about the condition of Australia-US ties.

There has been rumbled discontent over the fact Secretary of State Rice ditched two previously scheduled visits here and, apparently, had to be talked into the impending visit from March 16-18.

Rice was here with President Bush in October 2003, before she was made Secretary of State. Since her elevation, her focus has been on the Middle East and not our Asia-Pacific region. The coming visit appears to be a hasty repair job on that lack of attention, with Australia lumped into a tour of Indonesia, Peru and Chile.

Downer has used Parliament to depict the Rice visit and relations generally with the US as functioning like a well-oiled machine. Contrary to suggestions that the US at the top level has been truant from security concerns in our region, Downer says they are heavily engaged.

During her visit, Rice will attend the first meeting of an Australia-US-Japan ministerial summit on security matters.

Elsewhere she has been lined up to meet Prime Minister John Howard, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Treasurer Peter Costello and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock.

"This visit underscores the importance of the American alliance," Downer told Parliament last week.

"We had the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, here in November of last year.

"We are entirely unapologetic about our close relationship with the US. It is a country which we engage with very heavily over Asia-Pacific matters."

If the United States is so deeply involved in our region, it might be able to find one person to live in the ambassador's residence in Canberra.

On December 31, 2003, I boarded a bus in Ulm, Germany, for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. When the bus crossed the border, Macedonian officials confiscated my passport and detained me for several hours. Eventually, I was transferred to a hotel, where I was held for 23days.

I was guarded at all times, the curtains were always drawn, I was never permitted to leave the room, I was threatened with guns, and I was not allowed to contact anyone. At the hotel, I was repeatedly questioned about my activities in Ulm, my associates, my mosque, meetings with people that had never occurred, or associations with people I had never met. I answered all of their questions truthfully, emphatically denying their accusations. After 13 days I went on a hunger strike to protest my confinement.

On January 23, 2004, I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and placed in a car. The car eventually stopped and I heard aeroplanes. I was taken from the car and led to a building where I was severely beaten. Someone sliced the clothes off my body, and when I would not remove my underwear, I was beaten again until someone forcibly removed it from me. I was thrown on the floor, my hands were pulled behind me, and someone's boot was placed on my back. Then I felt something firm being forced inside my anus.

I was dragged across the floor and my blindfold was removed. I saw seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks. One of the men placed me in a diaper and a tracksuit. I was put in a belt with chains that attached to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs were placed over my ears, eye pads over my eyes, and then I was blindfolded and hooded. In the plane, I was thrown to the floor face down, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the sides of the plane. I felt two injections, and I was rendered nearly unconscious. At some point, I felt the plane land and take off again. When it landed again, I was unchained and taken off the plane. It felt very warm outside, and so I knew I had not been returned to Germany. I later learned that I was in Afghanistan.

Once off the plane, I was shoved into the back of a vehicle. After a short drive, I was dragged out of the car, pushed roughly into a building, and left in a small, dirty, cold concrete cell. That first night I was interrogated by six or eight men dressed in the same black clothing and ski masks, as well as a masked American doctor and a translator. They stripped me, photographed me and took blood and urine samples. I was returned to my cell, where I would remain in solitary confinement, with no reading or writing materials, and without once being permitted outside to breathe fresh air, for more than four months.

During this time, I was interrogated three or four times, always by the same man, with others who were dressed in black clothing and ski masks, and always at night. The man who interrogated me asked about whether I had taken a trip to Jalalabad using a false passport, whether I had attended Palestinian training camps and whether I knew the September 11 conspirators or other alleged extremists. As in Macedonia, I truthfully denied his accusations. Two men who participated in my interrogations identified themselves as Americans. My requests to meet with a representative of the German government or a lawyer, or to be brought before a court, were ignored.

In March, along with several other inmates, I commenced a hunger strike to protest our confinement without charges. After 27 days without food, I was allowed to meet with two unmasked Americans, the prison director and an even higher official whom other inmates referred to as "the boss". I pleaded with them either to release me or to bring me to court. The American prison director replied that he could not release me without permission from Washington, but said that I should not be detained in the prison. On day 37 of my hunger strike, I was dragged into an interrogation room, tied to a chair, and a feeding tube was forced through my nose to my stomach. After the force-feeding, I became extremely ill and suffered the worst pain of my life.

Near the beginning of May, I was brought into an interrogation room to meet an American who identified himself as a psychologist. He told me he had travelled from Washington to check on me, and promised I would soon be released. Soon thereafter I was interrogated again by a native German speaker named "Sam", the American prison director and an American translator. I was warned at one point that, as a condition of my release, I was never to mention what had happened to me, because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret.

On May 28, I was led out of my cell, blindfolded and handcuffed.

I was put on a plane and chained to the seat. I was accompanied by Sam and also heard the voices of two or three Americans. Sam informed me that the plane would land in a European country other than Germany, because the Americans did not want to leave clear traces of their involvement in my ordeal, but that I would eventually continue on to Germany. I believed I would be executed rather than returned home.

When the plane landed, I was placed in a car, still blindfolded, and driven up and down mountains for hours. Eventually, I was removed from the car and my blindfold removed. My captors gave me my passport and belongings, sliced off my handcuffs and told me to walk down a dark, deserted road and not to look back. I believed I would be shot in the back and left to die, but when I turned the bend, there were armed men who asked me why I was in Albania and took my passport. They took me to the airport, and only when the plane took off did I believe I was actually returning to Germany. When I returned I had long hair and a beard, and had lost 18 kilos. My wife and children had left our house in Ulm, believing I had left them and was not coming back. Now we are together again in Germany.

I'm filing this lawsuit because I believe in the American system of justice. What happened to me was outside the bounds of any legal framework and should never be allowed to happen to anyone else. Ultimately, what I would like from this lawsuit is an acknowledgment that the CIA is responsible for what happened to me, an explanation as to why this happened, and an apology.

From a statement made to the American Civil Liberties Union in December by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted and detained in Macedonia and Afghanistan from December 31, 2003, to May 28, 2004. The ACLU is charging that former CIA director George Tenet acted illegally by authorising agents to abduct El-Masri, beat him, drug him and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

I am slowing down, not so conscious of time, which recently has been not so much as pressing as beckoning ... now I feel time can wait. What happens, happens. Nothing can now stop what will or will not eventuate. Everything lies in the decisions we make. I live quietly and now that that part of my life is over, for now anyway, I feel as if I have dropped some baggage from my mind. Yes, I leave out many things that matter, and I dissemble on the subject of my inner life because it is in such a fluid state. When I write about it I do so as though it has set fast, even for a moment, in some way. But what is my real purpose? I cannot avoid the show of emotion or personal feeling and if I try to explain the circumstance that led to my decision, what would they think! Perhaps these thoughts are beneficial for my inner life. There seems to be a metaphorical confusion in this: if the inner life is in need or air, how come it takes place in the least excessible part of my being? Perhaps there are clues here to the nature of humaness? There may be clues, but the mystery to myself is insoluable as ever!

Twenty-six years after the Islamic Revolution the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have lurched back towards radicalism.

Many revolutions have passed through an initial quiet period after an early phase of radicalism, only to experience a resurgence years later. The initial quiet is often marked by corruption and a retreat from revolutionary goals. Believing stronger pursuit of revolutionary ideals is the only way to strengthen their country, idealists seek to inspire a return of the radicals, triggering conflict with pragmatic co-revolutionaries.

The Mexican revolution of 1910 began with peasant uprisings and worker revolts, The revolution's radical phase seemed to end in 1920 when Alvaro Obregon seized power; he limited land reforms and sought reconciliation with the United States. For the next 14 years General Obregon and his ally, Plutarco Calles ruled Mexico.

Then, in 1934, resentment against corruption led General Calles to choose an honest idealist to become president. That honest reolutionary Lazaro Cardenas, toured the country building popular support and then turned on Calles, expelling him from Mexico.

In 1938, 28 years after the reovolution began, Cardenas provoked a confrontation with the US and Britain by nationalising Mexico's petroleum. Only in the 1940s, after Cardenas left power, did Mexico turn to a more conservative path.

Similarly, China's communist revolution began with a decade of attacks on the middle classes, culminating in the Great Leap Forward of 1958-59. That disastrous campaign weakened Mao's influence while pragmatists like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping grew stronger.

Mao worried that his revolution was going off track, and in the mid-1960s he launched an effort to regain control by educating a new generation of radical youth. The Cultural Revolution tore China apart, returned Mao to supreme power and allowed him to purge the pragmatists.

But in the early 1970s, moderates gained by engineering a reapproachment with the US, capped by President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Deng was rehabilitated the following year, and in the late 1970s after Mao's death, pragmatists seized control of the regime.

What do these historical examples suggest for Iran? It is likely that the relative calm dating from Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989 is over. The election of Ahmadinejad marks new struggles within the ruling Islamic Republic party. These pit the honest radicals - led by Ahmadinejad and supported by younger revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament - against the more currupt and pragmatic mullahs who head the party, led by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Supreme leader Sayyid Ali Khamenie is in the middle, increasingly isolated.

How should the US and European leaders respond? Historically, phases of resurgent radicalism have lasted 5-10 years, marked by aggressiveness against internal and external enemies.

This bodes ill for improved relations with Iran in the short run, and makes it imperative that Western powers unite to make it unambiguously clear any use of nuclear weapons or materials by Iran or terrosit groups aligned with Iran will result in an immediate and devastating response. (China developed nuclear weapons just befores its Cultural Revolution, mainly to deter the Sovient Union, but never used them).

It also seems advisable to offer positive incentives - including US recognition and an end to sanctions - that could empower pragmatists in their intra-party struggle much as Nixon's overtures to China helped blunt China's radicalism and strengthened the hand of pragmatists inthe Communist Party.

Nixon did not demand that China abandon communism or that Mexicao become a democracy, only that they act responsibly and learn to do business with the US. China is still not a democracy, and Mexico is only just becoming one. Neither country always sees eye to eye with the West. But both became counties with which it is possible to do a great deal of business, and both are increasingly integrated in to the global economy. That may be the only realistic goal to taming Iran.

OxCoooooo4 - ox77Po79 page 5