WARSAW, Poland -- He died en route to the most sensitive mission possible -- a visit to the place that has driven a wedge between Poles and Russians for three generations.
The death of Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president and dozens of his high-level countrymen in a plane crash, and the purpose behind the journey, laid bare the deep divisions that remain between two nations still struggling to be more than uneasy neighbors who watch each other with skepticism and suspicion.
Saturday's planned visit to the Katyn forest was somber in purpose but underscored his suspicious eye of the massive neighbor and former taskmaster to the east. The memorial service was to mark the 70th anniversary of the killing of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret security during World War II.
Katyn. The site of the massacre of Polish military officers, priests, shopkeepers. Men shot in the back of the head by Josef Stalin's NKVD, the precursor of the KGB.
''It is an accursed place,'' former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24 after the crash.
''It brought to the forefront again an event that Moscow would like to forget or, if not to forget, to sideline,'' he said, noting that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took a significant step by attending the Katyn commemorations last Wednesday with Polish counterpart Donald Tusk.
The ancient city of Smolensk has long played a significant and somewhat symbolic role in Russian-Polish relations.
Russian and Polish rulers fiercely fought over it for centuries, as well as over other contested territories in today's Ukraine and Belarus, and the Russian takeover of the city in the mid-17th century preceded Moscow's takeover of eastern Polish lands.
Earlier this week, Poles took deep satisfaction in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's presence at the memorial for the 22,000 killed there.
Putin was the first Russian leader to commemorate the Katyn massacres with a Polish leader and noted that both nations' ''fates had been inexorably joined'' by the atrocities that saw 22,000 Polish officers, prisoners and intellectuals massacred by Stalin's secret police in 1940 in and around Katyn, a village near Russia's border with Belarus.
''In our country there has been a clear political, legal and moral judgment made of the evil acts of this totalitarian regime, and this judgment cannot be revised,'' he said, but he did not apologize or call it a war crime.
Listening to the remarks was the Polish prime minister, Tusk, not Kaczynski who, as president, was not invited to the event.
''It was a step forward. He could have not shown up, he could have not invited Tusk,'' Bugajski said.
Instead Kaczynski, along with others, made their own trip Saturday for Polish-only commemorations.
''I think in a way this is a God-given opportunity to really talk honestly about Katyn and what led to Katyn,'' Bugajski said. ''We know who killed these people.''
For half a century, Soviet officials claimed that the mass executions had been carried out by Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. But the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's rule admitted in 1990 that the crimes had been committed by Stalin's NKVD secret police.
''Without a doubt, there is evident symbolism in this tragedy that we cannot even grasp now,'' Slawomir Debski, the head of Poland's Institute of International Affairs, said. ''At a time when it seemed we were reaching a conclusion of the Katyn issue between Poland and Russia, after the ceremonies and good gestures, we have another tragedy.''
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, said Kaczynski's death could fuel anti-Russian sentiments among some Poles.
''There will be certain people who'll say 'It was Russians who organized the whole thing,''' Lukyanov was quoted by the gazeta.ru news portal as saying.
He said only an open investigation by the Russian authorities could put to rest any suspicion but there was optimism, too.
''But we may also look for a grain of hope in that it can mend our relations because it is such a tragedy that we may see a kind of catharsis,'' Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist with Warsaw University.
Russia and Poland have always kept a wary eye on each other. Poland, after communism's collapse, eagerly embraced the west, joining the European Union and NATO, partly to anchor itself in Europe and give itself a security blanket against Russia.
Now Katyn, which has long divided the two countries, could further erode already testy national relations or, analysts said Saturday, could provide the chance for them to move forward and extend hands.
''We cannot understand why people representing the Polish state died at the same place where thousands of Poland's officers had been murdered,'' Debski said. ''Apparently this soil must like Polish blood.''
WASHINGTON – As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington's Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows.
Whether Kissinger played a role in blocking the delivery of the warning against assassination to the governments of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay has long been a topic of controversy.
Discovered in recent weeks by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization, the Sept. 16, 1976 cable is among tens of thousands of declassified State Department documents recently made available to the public.
In 1976, the South American nations of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay were engaged in a program of repression code-named Operation Condor that targeted those governments' political opponents throughout Latin America, Europe and even the United States.
Based on information from the CIA, the U.S. State Department became concerned that Condor included plans for political assassination around the world. The State Department drafted a plan to deliver a stern message to the three governments not to engage in such murders.
In the Sept. 16, 1976 cable, the topic of one paragraph is listed as "Operation Condor," preceded by the words "(KISSINGER, HENRY A.) SUBJECT: ACTIONS TAKEN." The cable states that "secretary declined to approve message to Montevideo" Uruguay "and has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter."
"The Sept. 16 cable is the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots," Peter Kornbluh, the National Security Archive's senior analyst on Chile, said Saturday. Kornbluh is the author of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."
Jessica LePorin, a spokeswoman for Kissinger, says that the former secretary of state dealt many years ago with questions concerning the cancellation of the warnings to the South American governments and had no further comment on the matter.
Kissinger has dealt with the issue indirectly. Writing in defense of Kissinger in 2004 when the issue arose, William D. Rogers, Kissinger's former assistant secretary of state, said Kissinger "had nothing to do with" a Sept. 20, 1976 cable instructing that the warnings to Chile, Argentina and Uruguay be canceled. Rogers died in 2007.
"You can instruct" the U.S. ambassadors "to take no further action" on the subject of Operation Condor, said the Sept. 20 cable by Harry Shlaudeman, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, to Shlaudeman's deputy.
The next day, on Sept. 21, 1976, agents of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet planted a car bomb and exploded it on a Washington, D.C., street, killing both former AmbassadorOrlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Letelier was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet government.
Nearly a month before the blast, the State Department seemed intent on delivering a strong message to the governments engaged in Operation Condor.
An Aug. 23, 1976 State Department cable instructs the U.S. embassies in the capitals of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay to "seek appointment as soon as possible with highest appropriate official, preferably the chief of state."
The message that was to be conveyed: the U.S. government knows that Operation Condor may "include plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain ... countries and abroad."
"What we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved," Shlaudeman wrote in a memo to Kissinger dated Aug. 30, 1976. That memo is referenced in the newly disclosed Sept. 16, 1976 cable containing Kissinger's name.
Concerns among the ambassadors may have led to cancellation of the planned warning.
In the Aug. 30, 1976 memo, Shlaudeman discussed a possibility that the U.S. ambassador in Uruguay might be endangered by delivering a warning against assassination. The U.S. ambassador to Chile said that Pinochet might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with assassination plots.
WASHINGTON – Emboldened by success the first time around, President Barack Obama is likely to pick the Supreme Court nominee he wants and let the confirmation fight proceed from there, putting huge emphasis on a justice who would bring a fight-for-the-little-guy sensibility to the job.
Politics will certainly play into Obama's calculus: He no longer has the votes in the Senate to overcome the delaying tactic known as the filibuster, and a minority Republican Party in fierce opposition to Obama's agenda has little incentive to hand him a win just months before House and Senate elections.
But Obama's strategy worked when he chose Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter last year — announce the criteria he deems the most vital for a nominee, vet the nominees with no embarrassing gaffes or leaks, and pick the one with whom he feels the most comfort.
Confirmability was a factor then, not a driver. Expect much the same now.
Obama's task is to replace the liberal lion of the court, Justice John Paul Stevens, who on Friday announced his coming retirement.
In quick succession, Obama has a rare chance to choose two justices who could shape the court's rulings for decades. He has given every sign that he approaches this decision the way aggressive coaches prefer to call strategy — playing to win, as opposed to playing not to lose.
In choosing a nominee over the next few weeks, Obama is inclined to stick with his formula of going all in, like he did in getting a health care reform law, the biggest and most consuming fight of his presidency. The view from the White House is that the president is almost certain to face a political and ideological fight in this election year no matter whom he nominates to the court; the only issue is to what degree.
So why scale back?
What's more, Obama has shown an aggressive streak when it comes to the nation's highest court, one sure to shape his thinking in picking a nominee.
Obama openly criticized the court for a January ruling that allowed corporations to spend freely to influence elections. And he did that during his State of the Union address with six justices sitting in front of him, drawing a rare, dismissive reaction from Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's conservative members.
Stevens had strongly dissented in that corporate-friendly campaign finance case, saying it did nothing less than threaten "to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation." And Obama all but referenced the court ruling when he said from the Rose Garden on Friday that he is poised to choose a nominee who "like Justice Stevens, knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens."
It is this criterion — Obama has called it empathy, or seeing life and the law through others' eyes — that defined his choice of Sotomayor.
It seems sure to do so again this time, inviting a political fight.
Sotomayor's confirmation itself was, for the most part, a hardened partisan battle. The vote was 68-31, with Democrats unanimously behind her and most Republicans opposing her choice and Obama's judicial standards. Yet not lost in all that was that nine Republicans voted to confirm Sotomayor.
Among them was conservative Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He offered sharp questioning during confirmation hearings and found some of Sotomayor's views troubling, but ultimately considered her well qualified and, importantly, showed deference to Obama's prerogative by saying "elections matter."
Obama hopes to get at least one such Republican supporter this time — and in purely practical terms, one is all he needs. Democrats and their allied independents hold 59 seats in the Senate, one short of the 60 needed to overcome a vote-killing delay maneuver.
Confirmation itself would require a simple majority. And while senators take their "advise and consent" role seriously and members of the president's own party don't like their votes taken for granted, Obama clearly enters the process in a strong position, unless surprising questions emerge about his nominee's record or behavior.
Barring that kind of trouble, Obama's biggest risk is choosing someone that so riles Republicans that all 41 unite against him or her.
Obama's White House does not appear to be giving that consideration any extra weight in relation to all the other factors he will consider. Among them: intellectual rigor, integrity, experience, gender, race, philosophy, plus any controversial rulings or statements that could turn confirmation from tough to untenable.
The Sotomayor experience gives Obama a head start in other important ways.
Many candidates have been vetted, and a few were even interviewed last time. So the White House already has its list of names under consideration. The confirmed number is about 10, and it is likely only to shrink, not grow.
The three names that come up the most are Solicitor GeneralElena Kagan and federal appellate judges Merrick Garland of Washington and Diane Wood of Chicago. The White House has done nothing to squelch speculation about those three but also revels in knowing Obama could blow away conventional wisdom.
Even the timeline will likely be replicated, putting hearings in midsummer and an up-or-down vote for the nominee before the Senate breaks in August.
Obama promises to pick a nominee quickly. There seems no obvious reason he could not do so within the same timeframe — 25 days — that elapsed between Souter's retirement announcement and Obama's selection of Sotomayor.
The partisan atmosphere is only worse this time. But Obama's game plan seems the same: choosing a nominee on his terms.
NEW ORLEANS-- Former Sen. Rick Santorum is telling fellow Republicans that the party failed the conservative movement when the GOP controlled Congress and the White House.
Santorum is one of several potential presidential candidates who addressed the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, a three-day gathering of GOP activists.
The former Pennsylvania senator says some Republicans were guilty of growing the size of government earlier this decade.
''Conservatives didn't fail America,'' he said. ''Conservatives failed conservatism.''
Besides the presidential couple, all other people on board the plane reportedly died, including the country's army chief, its deputy foreign minister, the Central Bank governor and scores of other officials, legislators and crew members.
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The Dow Jones industrial average briefly traded above 11000 points on Friday, the latest mile marker in a yearlong rally that has catapulted the stock market from the depths of the financial crisis.
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Early on, it seemed that Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was willing at least in part to take the heat for the financial crisis.
London, England (CNN) -- As the anti-establishment provocateur behind the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren once reveled in fueling outrage on the front pages of the British press.
Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible.
SAN FRANCISCO - Faced with withering criticism for its spotty iPhone service, AT&T blames in part a shortage of cellphone towers near homes and businesses.
BANGKOK – Thai soldiers and police fought pitched battles Saturday night with anti-government demonstrators in streets enveloped in tear gas, but troops later retreated and asked protesters to do the same. Eleven people were killed, including a Japanese journalist, and more than 500 wounded, according to hospital officials.
Beleaguered Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva went on national television shortly before midnight to pay condolences to the families of victims and indirectly assert that he would not bow to protesters' demands to dissolve Parliament.
"The government and I are still responsible for easing the situation and trying to bring peace and order to the country," Abhisit said, vowing a transparent investigation into Thailand's worst political violence in nearly 20 years.
The army had vowed to clear the "Red Shirt" protesters out of one of their two bases in Bangkok by nightfall, but the push instead set off street fighting. There was a continuous sound of gunfire and explosions, mostly from Molotov cocktails. After more than two hours of fierce clashes, the soldiers pulled back.
Army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd went on television to ask the protesters to retreat as well. He also accused them of firing live rounds and throwing grenades during the fighting. An APTN cameraman saw two Red Shirt security guards carrying assault rifles.
"The security forces have now retreated to a certain extent from the Red Shirts," Sansern said. He said a senior government official had been asked to coordinate with the protesters to restore peace.
The Red Shirt protesters are demanding that Abhisit dissolve Parliament and call new elections. Their demonstrations are part of a long-running battle between the mostly poor and rural supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the ruling elite they say orchestrated the 2006 military coup that removed him from power.
The Red Shirts see the Oxford-educated Abhisit as a symbol of an elite impervious to the plight of Thailand's poor and claim he took office illegitimately in December 2008 after the military pressured Parliament to vote for him.
The government's Erawan emergency center said tallies from four Bangkok hospitals showed the death toll Saturday evening had risen to at least 11 — two soldiers and nine civilians.
Among them was Japanese cameraman Hiro Muramoto who worked for Thomson Reuters news agency. In a statement, Reuters said he was shot in the chest while covering the fighting.
The protesters marched the body of a man they said was killed in the fighting to one of their encampments. They carried the man — who had part of his head blown off — on a stretcher.
The injury toll for the day rose to 521, according to the Erawan emergency center. The army said any live rounds were fired only into the air, but confirmed that two of its soldiers had been shot. Government spokesman Panithan Wattanayakorn said more than 60 troops had been injured.
Most of Saturday's fighting took place around Democracy Monument, which is near one of the encampments of the Red Shirt protesters. But it spread to the Khao San Road area, a favorite of foreign backpackers.
Soldiers made repeated charges to clear the Red Shirts, while some tourists stood by watching. Two protesters and a Buddhist monk with them were badly beaten by soldiers and taken away by ambulance.
A Japanese tourist who was wearing a red shirt was also clubbed by soldiers until bystanders rescued him.
Red Shirt leaders at the second rally site in the capital's main shopping district said they were leading followers to reinforce their comrades at the site of the fighting.
Government forces have confronted the protesters before but pulled back rather than risk bloodshed.
On Friday, the army failed to prevent demonstrators from breaking into the compound of a satellite transmission station and briefly restarting a pro-Red Shirt television station that had been shut down by the government under a state of emergency. The humiliating rout of troops and riot police raised questions about how much control Abhisit has over the police and army.
To effectively confront the protesters, Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee of Chulalongkorn University said the government needs the cooperation of the military, but the army may be reluctant to use force against the protesters.
Thailand's military has traditionally played a major role in politics, staging almost a score of coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
On Saturday afternoon, army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd said the military planned to clear out the protesters from their original rally site in the old section of Bangkok by dusk. More troops were also sent to the second rally site in the heart of Bangkok's upscale shopping district. The city's elevated mass transit system known as the Skytrain, which runs past that site, stopped running and closed all its stations.
The deployment came after protesters were pushed back by water cannons and rubber bullets from the headquarters of the 1st Army Region. Although they have two main rally sites, the Red Shirts use trucks and motorcycles to send followers all over the city on short notice.
Arrest warrants have been issued for 27 Red Shirt leaders, but none is known to have been taken into custody.
Merchants say the demonstrations have cost them hundreds of millions of baht (tens of millions of dollars), and luxury hotels near the site have been under virtual siege.
Both sides are resorting to much stronger and less diplomatic language
Cuba's leaders do not want to normalise ties with the US because then they would lose their excuse for the state of the country, says Hillary Clinton.
Cuba's response to recent US efforts to improve relations had revealed "an intransigent, entrenched regime" in Havana, said the US secretary of state.
The Cuban authorities have long blamed a 48-year US trade embargo for holding back the country's development.
The US says the embargo will remain until Cuba improves human rights.
Relations between Washington and the communist government in Havana have soured in recent months after early expectations of an improvement under the Obama administration.
The BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says initial hopes of improved relations are receding with both sides resorting to much stronger and less diplomatic language.
'Very sad'
Mrs Clinton said the response of Cuban President Raul Castro and his brother, ex-leader Fidel Castro, to US efforts to improve ties proved they had no interest in political reform or ending the sanctions.
There should be an opportunity for a transition to a full democracy in Cuba... but it may not happen any time soon
Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State
"It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalisation with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years," she said in a speech at Kentucky's University of Louisville.
"I find that very sad, because there should be an opportunity for a transition to a full democracy in Cuba and it's going to happen at some point, but it may not happen any time soon."
Earlier this month, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez held a meeting with Cheryl Mills, Mrs Clinton's chief-of-staff, in one of the highest level contacts between the two countries for years.
US officials said the two "did not agree on very much" at the talks, which were held in New York on the sidelines of a UN forum on aid for quake-hit Haiti.
'New crusade'
The recent death of the jailed dissident hunger striker, Orlando Zapata, brought widespread international condemnation and has focused attention on Cuba's human rights record.
The authorities here have responded by going on the offensive.
In a televised speech last weekend, President Raul Castro accused the US, Europe and the Western media of waging an unprecedented publicity war against the island.
"The empire and its allies have launched a new crusade to try to demonise Cuba and to destabilise the country," a front page editorial in the communist party newspaper Granma added.
The authorities have now called for a massive May Day mobilisation to denounce the West and in support of the revolution.
Apr 8th 2010 | LOS ANGELES | From The Economist print edition
FOR a while, things seemed to be going so well. Crime has been falling for two decades. Race relations have improved. The weather is as fine as ever and the traffic no worse—in fact, there were even plans for expanding public transport that counted as bold in this culture of sprawl and cars. Eli Broad, the city’s leading philanthropist, considers it “one of the four cultural capitals of the world” (along with New York, London and Paris) and talks boldly of attracting as many “cultural visitors” as the other three to its museums and theatres. Antonio Villaraigosa, the city’s mayor (and the first Hispanic one since the 19th century), tells visitors that this is the only big city in America where “people don’t care who your father is” (Mr Villaraigosa says he has seen his own father, at most, 25 times in his life). LA is, to him, a pure meritocracy and “the capital of the Pacific Rim”.
All of this is true, but hardly helpful now that the city faces a more banal problem: not enough money. Revenues have been falling, and the city is confronting a budget deficit of at least $212m in the current fiscal year, which ends in June, and of $484m in the next fiscal year, according to estimates by Wendy Greuel, the city’s chief accountant. This week, after the city’s power and water utility refused to transfer some money to the city’s general fund, Ms Greuel projected that the fund, the city’s main account, will be overdrawn by May 5th. She would have to tap a reserve to keep paying employees and suppliers.
In part, Los Angeles shares the pain of many large American cities during this recession, which has depressed sales taxes and other local revenues. But Los Angeles has the added problem of being in California, which has been suffering the biggest budget crisis and one of the worst housing busts among the 50 states, and which occasionally raids local funds. And California’s voters have, in ballot measures over the decades, made all money matters more complicated than necessary. The notorious Proposition 13 of 1978 cut and capped property taxes, still the biggest source of city revenue. A lagging indicator of housing prices, they have been roughly flat this year but are expected to fall next year, according to Ms Greuel’s estimates. Proposition 218 of 1996 requires explicit voter approval to raise most other city fees and revenues.
Cutting spending is hardly easier in Los Angeles, which has—like many western cities but unlike the biggest eastern ones—a weak mayor who shares power with a cantankerous city council. Mr Villaraigosa must present a budget proposal to the council this month. He wants to eliminate 4,000 of the city’s 48,500 jobs, cutting pay and getting rid of entire departments, such as personnel. On April 6th he proposed shutting most city agencies for two days a week. He is in for a fight.
Any budget solution, moreover, could jeopardise some of LA’s hard-won successes. The biggest part of the budget, for example, goes to the police, with about 10,000 officers deployed at the moment. “The last place we cut is public safety,” says Mr Villaraigosa. But Charlie Beck, the police chief, is already not paying for overtime and is struggling just to replace the officers who retire each year. He expects the city council to stop him hiring next year. A recent spate of killings, meanwhile, is a reminder that crime could increase again in this city of gangs. “All the remedies have remained untouched till now,” says Mr Beck, referring to his cops on the streets. Los Angeles touches them at its peril.
The Vatican says the Pope had been exercising due caution
The Vatican has defended the Pope against allegations that he was responsible for delaying Church action against a US paedophile priest.
A spokesman said the claims, which stem from a letter signed by Benedict XVI when he was a senior Vatican official, had been taken out of context.
AP published a letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1985, resisting Stephen Kiesle's defrocking.
The Vatican says he was exercising due caution before sacking the priest.
A leading British Catholic commentator said the issue had exposed an ongoing power struggle between senior Vatican cardinals that started during the papacy of Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II.
Series of scandals
In the letter, Cardinal Ratzinger - who was at the time the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has responsibility for tackling abuse by clerics - said the "good of the universal Church" needed to be considered in any defrocking, AP reported.
ANALYSIS
By David Willey, BBC News, Rome
The Vatican claims the letter must be considered in its true context of a lengthy exchange of correspondence between California and Rome about defrocking an American priest who was a known child molester.
The Pope's critics claim that he stalled and left unanswered for years letters concerning alleged cases of sexual abuse by priests.
American bishops are coming under increasing pressure from their flocks to explain why the Church in Rome did not take more robust action or took no action at all.
So they are releasing confidential documents which put the future Pope's lack of action in a bad light.
The Vatican insists that the Pope was only exercising due caution before sacking a priest for sexual misconduct.
A Vatican spokesman said the letter was part of a long correspondence and should not be taken out of context.
"The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," said the spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi.
He acknowledged that the Church had lost public trust and said Church law could no longer be placed above civil laws if that trust were to be recovered.
This is an abrupt change of tone by the Vatican, says BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.
Officials had previously accused critics of trying to smear the Pope personally and only last weekend said he should ignore petty gossip directed at him, our correspondent adds.
The Catholic Church has been hit by a series of child abuse scandals in recent years, including in Ireland, the US, Germany and Norway, and has faced criticism for failing to deal adequately with the problem.
On Friday, the Vatican urged Catholic dioceses around the world to co-operate with police investigating sex abuse allegations against priests.
The Vatican says the Pope is willing to meet more victims of clerical abuse, while the Church is set to publish an internet guide as to how bishops deal with accusations of sexual abuse.
'Grave significance'
AP said Fr Kiesle was sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco.
ALLEGATIONS FACING POPE
In 1980 as archbishop of Munich and Freising, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger unwittingly approved housing for a priest accused of child abuse; a former deputy later said he made the decision
Cardinal Ratzinger failed to act over complaints during the 1990s about US priest Lawrence Murphy, who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin
Cardinal Ratzinger allowed a case against Arizona priest Michael Teta to languish at the Vatican for more than a decade despite repeated pleas for his removal
Cardinal Ratzinger resisted the defrocking of California priest Stephen Kiesle, a convicted offender, saying "good of the universal Church" needed to be considered
The Pope's supporters say he has been unfairly blamed for cases handled by junior staff, and that he has been proactive in addressing child abuse.
It said the Oakland diocese had recommended Fr Kiesle's removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.
A Vatican attorney said Kiesle was not accused of any misdemeanour during the period.
Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981.
AP says the 1985 correspondence, written in Latin, shows the cardinal saying that Kiesle's removal would need careful review.
Cardinal Ratzinger urged "as much paternal care as possible" for Kiesle.
Kiesle was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after admitting molesting a young girl in 1995.
Kiesle is now 63 and is on the registered sex offenders list in California.
Power struggle
While the scandal has prompted calls for the Pope's resignation, a columnist for Britain's leading Catholic newspaper said Cardinal Ratzinger had actually wanted to crack down hard on paedophile priests in the 1980s.
This court... deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner
Clifford Longley, a columnist for The Tablet, said the cardinal was thwarted by other senior Vatican figures who wanted to cover up the sex-abuse crisis, until he was given overall control of the issue in 2001.
"Ratzinger was thwarted on several occasions... by people surrounding the Pope, and indeed possibly by John Paul II himself, who did not appear to be taking the situation anything like as seriously as Ratzinger," said Mr Longley.
Since Benedict XVI was elected as Pope in 2006, things had changed radically, added Mr Longley, but the power-struggle was ongoing.
The Vatican has ruled out any possibility of a papal resignation over the scandal.
In another sign of the times, Nikkeibecomes the latest newspaper to restrict access to its Web site. Japan's largest source for business news went one step further, however, and now demands anyone wanting to link to an article or the home page must submit a written application explaining their reasoning. Two of the country's other big papers -- Yomiuri (circulation 10 million) and Asahi (circulation 8 million) -- already limit access to their sites by running shorter versions of the stories online. They don't make people jump through hoops to link...
Reader's Digestreplaces president Eva Dillon with Lisa Sharples... Source Interlink installsMike Sullivan as CEO and director. He comes from national magazine distributor Comag... Carol Smithsteps in as vice president and publisher of Bon Appétit and the Gourmet brand. She previously served as senior vice president and chief brand officer of Hachette Filipacchi Media's Elle group... Meredith chops 20 from the workforce in Des Moines... Stacy MorrisonleavesRedbook after five years as editor-in-chief. The search is on for her replacement...
The New York Timesshifts around its economics team. Former politics reporter Michael Powell joins the beat, as does media journo Motoko Rich. Another former Timesman, Stephen Labaton, joinsGoldman Sachs as a full-time consultant and presumably scores a nice pay boost... Nia-Malika HendersonleavesPolitico to cover the First Family for The Washington Post... USA Todayoutsources its travel site content to Demand Media. The move could either raise the latter company's profile above the respectability line or bring the newspaper down to DM's level...
Time Out New Yorkpublicity managerLindsay Kaplansays goodbye to the weekly pub for Hachette Filipacchi Media, where she'll serve as social media manager... Mary Pomponiosigns on as publicity manager at Plume Books... Oliver Wymanbrings on former Dealbook editor Peter Edmonston and Harvard Business Review's Eileen Roche as director of digital marketing and senior editor, content development, respectively... And there are changes at Foreign Policy, Citysearch.com, and more...
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April 9, 2010: Tracey Weber has been named executive vice president, textbooks and digital education, at Barnes & Noble. She had been president, North America, at Travelocity. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Candace Finn has been named subsidiary rights manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She had been subsidiary rights associate there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Carla Gray has been named director of marketing, adult books, at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She had been associate director of marketing there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Mark Tavani has been named executive editor at Ballantine Books. He had been senior editor there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Jason Sack has been named assistant editor at Harper. He had been editorial assistant there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Maya Ziv has been named assistant editor at Harper. She had been editorial assistant there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Jiyeon Dew has been named production manager at Bloomsbury. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Carrie Majer has been named senior publicist at Bloomsbury. She had been publicist there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 9, 2010: Federico Quadrani has been named executive producer, weekends, at MSNBC. He had been supervising producer, the Today show, at NBC. (TVNewser)
April 9, 2010: Lisa Bloom has been named newsreader, Anderson Cooper 360, at CNN. She had been commentator there. (TVNewser)
April 9, 2010: Sam Mandragona has been named digital media producer at CNN. He had been creative director at NBC Universal. (mb)
April 7, 2010: Patrick Heig has been named New York City editor at Citysearch.com. He had been San Francisco editor there. (mb)
April 7, 2010: Rachel Mannheimer has been named assistant editor at Bloomsbury. She had been editorial assistant there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 7, 2010: Margaret Maloney has been named associate editor at Bloomsbury and Walker. She had been editorial assistant there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 7, 2010: Pete Beatty has been named editor at Bloomsbury Press. He had been associate editor there. (Publishers Lunch)
April 7, 2010: Jeanne Emanuel has been named vice president of special and gift sales at Perseus Books Group. She had been executive director of sales at Adams Media. (Publishers Lunch)
April 7, 2010: Carol Smith has been named vice president and publishing director at Bon Appetit and the Gourmet brand. She had been senior vice president and chief brand officer at Elle Group. (FBNY)
April 7, 2010: Daryl McNutt has been named vice president of marketing at BrightRoll. He had been vice president of marketing solutions at ComScore. (mb)
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There should be an opportunity for a transition to a full democracy in Cuba... but it may not happen any time soon 
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