Najib Mikati

BEIRUT, Lebanon, April 19--Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati announced Tuesday that he’s formed a Cabinet, ending more than six weeks of delay in trying to set up a government for Lebanon, AP reported.
“This is a no-grudge government and the beginning of making the future,“ Mikati said shortly after meeting President Emile Lahoud and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at the presidential palace. “This Cabinet represents all Lebanese sects.“
Mikati, a pro-Syrian lawmaker, was appointed to form a government on Friday. The first legislator to be asked to form a Cabinet, Omar Karami, gave up last week.
Karami’s government resigned Feb. 28 in the face of mass demonstrations over the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two weeks before. In March he was asked to form a new Cabinet.
The opposition, which refused to join a Karami-led Cabinet, has been pushing for elections to be held before the outgoing parliament’s mandate expires on May 31. It expects to win a majority in the elections.
Mikati told reporters Monday that the main goal of the government he was trying to form would be “passing the election law and holding general elections within the constitutional time-frame.“ It was the first time Mikati had specifically mentioned the May 31 deadline.
He spent Monday consulting with legislators of all political shades on the formation of a new Cabinet.

GENEVA, April 19--The main global humanist organization and a group of former Muslims on Monday accused European countries of ignoring violations of human rights in their Islamic communities to preserve “multi-culturalism“, Reuters reported.
In a presentation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and at a separate news conference and a seminar, they also argued that Muslim countries were trying to use the body to quash any discussion of their own rights record. “Western society tends to turn a blind eye to the plight of European Muslim women and girls because ’Muslim culture is different’,“ Roy Brown, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), told the 53-member commission.
“Yet in Europe many women find themselves subject to domestic violence, undergo forced marriages or are even killed by family members because of some belief that they have tarnished the family honor,“ Brown declared.
That view was echoed later by three ex-Muslims and self-described atheists--Somali-born Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Iranian exile rights activist Azam Kamguian and historian of Islam Ibn Warraq--and French sociologist Caroline Fourest.
Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, told the news conference she condemned “the moral relativism in Europe whereby women from Third World countries do not enjoy the same freedoms as native European women enjoy.“
Many Muslim women and girls “are forced to marry, have their genitals mutilated, are taken by their parents to their countries of origin against their wishes, sometimes even killed,“ she declared.
Liberal democratic governments did not interfere out of a concern to maintain a policy of “multi-culturalism“--encouraging immigrants from other parts of the world to maintain their traditions while integrating into their host society.

Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi takes an oath in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican before the start of the conclave, April 18. (AFP Photo)

VATICAN CITY,
April 19--Cardinals sequestered in a secret conclave in the majestic Sistine Chapel began a second day of voting for a new pope on Tuesday after an initial ballot failed to find a successor to John Paul, Reuters said.
The 115 red-hatted princes of the Roman Catholic Church who are locked in the conclave, meeting under Michelangelo’s famed frescoes and sworn to secrecy, cast a first vote on Monday.
Tens of thousands of excited faithful in St. Peter’s Square watched as black smoke spewed from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney, signaling an inconclusive vote.
The first wisps of smoke appeared white-- the age-old signal that a new pope has been chosen--prompting loud cheers. But the crowd soon went quiet as the smoke turned black.
Pilgrims eager to see history in the making began gathering in the square early on Tuesday. Many had been there on Monday.
The cardinals began their second day of voting on Tuesday at 9 a.m. and will now vote up to four times a day--twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon.
Smoke is expected at around noon and 7 p.m.. But if the cardinals elect a new pontiff in the first vote of the morning or afternoon sessions, smoke could come earlier.
In the 20th century, there were eight conclaves. They lasted from two days to five days, with the average just over three days. The conclave to elect John Paul II lasted three days and eight ballots.

Syed Ali Geelani

SRINAGAR, India, April 19--A hardline Indian Kashmir separatist leader has rejected Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s call for secessionist forces to unite and speak with one voice, AFP quoted a report as saying.
“Pakistan desires separatist unity,“ said Syed Ali Geelani, head of the revolt-hit region’s hardline faction of the main separatist alliance Hurriyat.
“But I can’t break my principles to forge unity for the sake of unity,“ he told the local Current News Service on Tuesday.
Geelani said Musharraf told him during a three-day visit to New Delhi that ended Monday to join forces with moderate separatists to present a united secessionist front.
Hardliners broke away from Hurriyat in 2003 after moderates, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, said they were open to talks with New Delhi.
Both factions claim to be the real Hurriyat.
Musharraf said in a broadcast by Pakistan TV late Monday that Indian Kashmir separatist leaders should use “their brains“ and join talks with India as it would be a step toward trilateral talks, the Press Trust of India reported.
The interview with Current News Service contained no separatist reaction to the Press Trust of Indian report.
India and Pakistan started a peace process 14 months ago that has led to a ceasefire along their disputed Kashmir boundary and a bus service linking the two zones of the divided region.
Kashmir has been the trigger of two wars between the nuclear-armed rivals since independence from Britain in 1947 and tens of thousands have died since an Islamic separatist insurgency was launched in the Indian zone in 1989.
India opposes including the separatists in talks with Pakistan on Kashmir but has held two rounds of talks with moderate separatists. Farooq and other doves are due to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh soon.
The hardliners have boycotted the talks.
Farooq has said the two countries will have to take all factions into account before reaching a solution. He says if tripartite talks were not immediately acceptable a “triangular approach“ could be adopted.

Mordechai Vanunu

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, April 19--Israel’s interior minister said on Tuesday he would ban nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country for a further 12 months due to concerns he could harm national security, Reuters reported.
Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz told Army Radio he would prevent Vanunu from obtaining an Israeli passport necessary to leave the country for another year, saying Vanunu had more nuclear secrets to spill.
“He collected enormous amounts of information, a large part of which is still relevant, I am sorry to say...(and) he says ’the moment that I can, I will publish it’, Pines-Paz said.
“When a man says that he will harm national security, where does that leave us? ... (This is) a preventive step and we have no choice but to use it.“
Vanunu was released from prison last April after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing to Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper nuclear secrets collected from years of work as a technician at Israel’s Dimona atomic reactor.
The 50-year-old former nuclear technician has said that he has no additional information about Israel’s nuclear program and wants to leave the country and start a new life abroad.
Vanunu is also on trial for violating the terms of his release in which he was forbidden from speaking to foreign reporters. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to two years.
The information and photographs of the Dimona reactor that Vanunu passed on to the Sunday Times has led foreign experts to conclude that Israel has as many as 200 nuclear warheads.
Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity in which it refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.

Ecuadorean demonstrators protest on the streets in Quito, Ecuador, April 17. (Reuters Photo)

QUITO, Ecuador, April 19--Ecuador’s opposition parties in Congress will try to oust President Lucio Gutierrez for meddling in the country’s courts, Reuters quoted congressional leaders as saying on Monday as thousands protested against the government.
“He’s on his own and we need an impeachment to get rid of him,“ said Carlos Gonzalez, a congressmen with Democratic Left, one of the main opposition parties.
The opposition needs a simple majority to start impeachment proceedings against Gutierrez and a two-thirds majority to oust him. The process could take months and a similar impeachment attempt failed narrowly last year.
The unstable Andean country, where two presidents have been overthrown amid popular unrest since 1997, looked set for weeks of uncertainty with the impeachment threat hanging over the government.
But opposition leaders said they wanted to finish the slow process of reforming the Supreme Court and other tribunals before any vote to start impeachment proceedings.
Opposition parties accuse Gutierrez, a former army colonel once jailed for a coup attempt, of behaving like a dictator by stacking the Supreme Court with his allies last December.
Confusingly, they also accuse him of behaving like a dictator for firing that same court by decree on Friday.
Public anger against Gutierrez seemed little reduced by the dismissal of the court. Thousands chanted “Lucio, out! Enough of dictatorships“ on the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s most populous city. There were also spontaneous anti-government demonstrations on the streets of the mountain capital Quito.
It was to stop such protests that the president declared a state of emergency on Friday night. But he rescinded it the next day to make it easier to negotiate with the opposition.

KUWAIT CITY, April 19--Kuwait’s parliament approved a law on Tuesday to allow women to vote and run for the first time in municipal elections in the Persian Gulf Arab state, fuelling hopes for wider female suffrage, Reuters said.
“The National Assembly approves women’s participation in the Municipal Council elections,“ state news agency KUNA reported.
Kuwaiti women are not allowed to vote or run in parliamentary polls but the government has introduced a bill to grant full female suffrage that has yet to be approved by the 50-man house.
Similar government moves have failed in the past in the pro-Western country.
KUNA said 26 MPs out of 49 in attendance backed the bill allowing women to take part in municipal polls. Twenty lawmakers were against and three abstained.
Last month, MPs passed a municipal elections law without a government-proposed article to let women take part, setting back hopes the house would approve broader female suffrage. But the government amended the law and sent it back to parliament.
The United States has been pressing its allies in the Middle East to make political reforms, saying lack of freedom and democracy have fostered violent Islamic militancy.

MOSCOW, April 19--Russia will seek a stable partnership with NATO during this week’s meeting of foreign ministers in Vilnius despite Moscow’s objection to the bloc’s expansion into eastern Europe, AFP quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying Tuesday.
“We think that a NATO-Russian partnership has become a key factor for European stability, and we want (this partnership) to avoid political instability,“ foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
Yakovenko said the two sides will sign an agreement on the “legal status“ of NATO armed forces which would qualify the status of the Western bloc’s troops in foreign countries.
“Our joining this agreement will facilitate joint peacekeeping missions,“ Yakovenko said.
“We will seek joint cooperation in the fields of industry, science and technology,“ Yakovenko said.
The Russia-NATO council was initially set up in 1997 to ease Russian concerns of the bloc’s expansion into eastern Europe and to give Moscow a voice--but not a veto--in NATO’s military affairs.
Through it, Russia unsuccessfully lobbied against NATO’s expansion into the three former Soviet Baltic states.
Russia is uneasy about the potential NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine.