Nabil Shaath

RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine, Jan. 16--New orders by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the army to crush militants in the Gaza Strip will only serve to further undermine the peace process, AFP quoted Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath as saying Sunday.
"This policy will not serve the peace process and I ask the Israeli people to reject this Sharon policy," Shaath told reporters after a meeting with his Japanese counterpart Nobutaka Machimura in Ramallah.
Sharon told the weekly cabinet meeting he had given the army carte blanche to act against the militant groups, accusing the new Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas of not lifting a finger against the the likes of Hamas despite his condemnation of the armed intifada.
Shaath said Abbas would head to Gaza on Wednesday for talks with the leaders of the armed factions in a bid to persuade them to sign up to a ceasefire. He had previously announced that Abbas would head there on Monday.
"We are ready and our president Abu Mazen is ready for peace. He will go to Gaza to meet with Hamas and Jihad and all the leaders to discuss with them about a ceasefire and to try and reach an agreement with them about this."
Shaath contrasted Abbas' stated desire to end the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence with Sharon's order to step up military activity.
"Abu Mazen is ready to continue the peace process and increase his efforts to succeed in the peace process and go back to negotiations but it is clear for us that Sharon is ready to increase the killing and demolitions," he said.
Sharon ordered a severing of all ties with the Palestinian Authority in the wake of a suicide attack on a border crossing between Gaza and Israel which left six Israelis dead.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by three militant groups, including an armed offshoot of Abbas' own Fatah organisation.

DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 16--Some 40 moderate Islamists in Saudi Arabia have condemned those who incite the violence which has plagued their country over the past 20 months, while urging leaders of the oil-rich kingdom to introduce "serious" reforms, AFP reported.
"We reaffirm that such acts (of violence) are prohibited (by Islamic law), and we condemn those who praise these acts and incite (extremists) to target the nation's oil interests and vital installations," a group of academics and public figures from across Saudi Arabia said in a statement received by AFP on Sunday.
The statement came a month after the Saudi-born Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden called on his followers to strike oil facilities in the Persian Gulf and Iraq and warned Saudi leaders they risked a popular uprising, in an audiotape posted on an Islamist website.
"Incitement and praise of acts of bombings and destruction in the name of religion--and the resulting events--have tarnished the image of Islam," Sunday's statement said.
Thinkers and Muslim scholars must "step up efforts to explain that such acts are prohibited ... We also call on those who have espoused destructive ideas to reconsider their attitude and fear God," it said.
While urging "all citizens to close ranks," the signatories called on "officials to (engage in) serious reform through clear mechanisms and specific programs, chiefly as pertains to youth and their problems, in order to safeguard the country's security and stability and prevent the emergence of a climate that can be exploited by proponents of (violence)."
The 41 signatories included Tewfik
Al-Qussayer and Khaled Al-Ujaimi, two university professors briefly detained by the authorities in March last year for signing pro-reform petitions, and prominent Islamist moderates such as Mohsen Al-Awaji and Safar Al-Hawali.
Presumed Al-Qaeda militants have carried out a spate of bombing and shooting attacks in Saudi Arabia that have left over 100 people killed and hundreds more injured since May 2003.

An Indian survivor searches for her belongings in the debris of her damaged house hit by last month's tsunami on Hut Bay beach, January 14. (Reuters Photo)

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 16--The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Indian Ocean nations rose to 168,373 Sunday with another 5,000 deaths being reported by Indonesia's social affairs ministry, AFP reported.
Indonesia was hardest-hit by the December 26 quake and tsunamis, with 115,229 confirmed deaths and 12,132 people missing as of Sunday, the social affairs ministry said.
Thailand's tsunami death toll crept higher Sunday to 5,321 confirmed dead, while the number of reported missing slipped to 3,170 names, the interior ministry said in a daily update.
Among the dead, 1,732 were believed to be Thais, 2,173 were believed foreign, and 1,416 were of unknown national origin, the ministry's disaster management agency said.
Sri Lanka's tsunami death toll stands at 30,920 and the number of those reported missing is 6,034, according to government figures.
In neighboring India, the official death toll remains at 10,672 with 5,711 still missing and feared dead.
Myanmar's Prime Minister Soe Win has said 59 people were killed in the tsunamis, against an estimated 90 deaths according to the UN.
At least 82 people were killed and another 26 were missing in the Maldives, a government spokesman said.
Sixty-eight people were dead in Malaysia, most of them in Penang, according to police, while Bangladesh reported two deaths.
Fatalities also occurred on the east coast of Africa where 298 people were declared dead in Somalia, 10 in Tanzania and one in Kenya.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra measured 9.0 on the Richter scale--making it the largest quake worldwide in four decades.

Deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, a presidential candidate of the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union casts her ballot in a runoff vote in Zagreb, January 16. (AFP Photo)

ZAGREB, Croatia, Jan. 16--Croatians voted on Sunday in presidential elections likely to give incumbent Stjepan Mesic, credited with putting the former Yugoslav republic on the road towards the European Union, a second term, Reuters reported.
Mesic clearly won the first round of voting two weeks ago but failed to gain an outright majority, forcing a runoff against the candidate of the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor.
The winner of the election looks set to oversee the country's EU entry, planned for 2009.
Both contenders back EU membership, but whereas the ruling conservatives have only recently adopted pro-Western policies after a prolonged flirt with hardline nationalism, Mesic is seen at home and abroad as a guarantor of Croatia's EU drive.
"Mesic is my choice. He is laid back, not aloof, but is also a statesman and will help us move towards the European Union," said Bojan Srdic, a 40-year-old teacher.
Kosor, a close ally of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, has called on Croats to elect her as the first woman president. But she has also tried to woo the nationalist camp by vowing to be a tough defender of national interests.
Western diplomats say the outcome will not affect Croatia's EU bid, as presidential powers are limited to having a say in foreign policy, defense and intelligence.
But they see 70-year-old Mesic as a useful counterweight to the HDZ, which controls cabinet and parliament, and praise him for his courage in denouncing war crimes committed by Croats during wars that tore apart socialist Yugoslavia.
"In many respects, Mesic has been the moral correction in this country," a senior EU diplomat in Zagreb told Reuters.
"For the West, it is so much more convenient to keep working with Mesic. He is continuity, someone they know and have been pleased with because he has been good in foreign policy," said political analyst Zeljko Trkanjec.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Jan 16--The UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia is set to hand down a verdict Monday in the case of two Bosnian Serb officers accused of playing an important role in the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, AFP reported.
Vidoje Blagojevic, the commander of the Bratunac brigade of the Bosnian Serb army and a direct subordinate of general Radislav Kristic, faces charges of complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Last April Krstic became the only man found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide by the court here so far. On appeal he was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his leading role in the massacre of Muslims that followed the fall of the UN-protected Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia in July 1995.
In its verdict the appeals court confirmed that the killings in Srebrenica legally constituted genocide. The massacre is considered the worst single atrocity on European soil since World War II.
The attack on the enclave was led by Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, who also faces genocide charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) here but has been on the run from international justice since 1995.
"Blagojevic was on the third echelon of the hierarchy after Mladic and Krstic," prosecutor Peter McCloskey said in his closing statement last September.
"It would be unfair for Blagojevic to face more than his commander (Krstic) that is why we asked for 32 years in prison," he said.
Blagojevic pleaded not guilty to all charges after his arrest and transfer to The Hague in August 2001.
His lawyer Michael Karnavas asked the court to acquit Blagojevic portraying his client as an incompetent commander who had little authority over his troops and no knowledge of any plan to commit genocide by his superiors.
Blagojevic's co-accused Dragan Jokic, who was the chief of engineers in the Zvornik brigade of the Bosnian Serb army which participated in the massacre, faces charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
According to the prosecution Jokic played a major role in trying to conceal the crimes by digging up the mass graves and reburying victims at smaller hidden gravesites. Jokic also pleaded not guilty before the trial started.
"Dragan Jokic was not in a position of command. He did not give the order for the burial of the corpses. He was not aware of what was going on," Jokic's lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic said calling for his acquittal.
The prosecutor instead said Jokic played a "fundamental role" in event and called for a sentence between 15 and 20 years.

LONDON, Jan. 16--The political drama of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's supposedly bitter falling-out with his finance minister Gordon Brown took a fresh twist Sunday with claims Blair offered to step down if Brown backed British euro entry, AFP reported.
According to a new book being serialized by the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Blair sent three other ministers to see Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown to offer him the deal.
Blair offered to quit in favor of Brown if the powerful finance minister agreed to smooth the way for British membership of the European single currency, the book by journalist Robert Peston, "Brown's Britain", claims.
The prime minister even pressed Brown directly during a dinner at Downing Street in December 2001, the book says, with Brown rebuffing the overture.
Brown, who is known to covet the prime ministership, is notably less keen on British entry to the euro than Blair, and as chancellor, has final say on such a crucial economic issue.
In June 2003, Brown announced a delay on moves towards British euro entry for the foreseeable future, saying that only two of five self-imposed government tests for the economic benefits of membership had been met.
The volatile relationship between the country's two most powerful politicians hit the headlines a week ago when an earlier extract of the book chronicled a supposedly bitter falling out between the pair.
Peston's book reported that Blair, in a fit of self-doubt after
the Iraq war, repeatedly told Brown last year that he would step aside for him, but then changed his mind under pressure from loyalists.
According to Peston's sources, Brown then told Blair: "There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe."
The bad publicity this has caused to the ruling Labour Party, just four months before an expected general election, saw Blair and Brown dressed down by their own MPs last week.