WASHINGTON,
July 29--The Bush administration spelled out plans on Friday to sell $4.6 billion of arms to moderate Arab states, including battle tanks worth as much as $2.9 billion to protect critical Saudi infrastructure, Reuters said.
The announcement came two weeks after the administration said it would sell Israel its latest supply of JP-8 aviation fuel valued at up to $210 million to help Israeli warplanes “keep peace and security in the region.“
The United States also rushed a delivery of precision-guided bombs requested by Israel after launching its airstrikes against Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon 17 days ago, The New York Times reported last week.
In the newly proposed sales to Arab states, UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter gunships worth up to $808 million would go to the United Arab Emirates, while AH-64 Apache helicopters worth as much as $400 million would go to Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain would also get Black Hawk helicopters, valued at up to $252 million. Jordan would get a potential $156 million in upgrades to 1,000 of its M113A1 armored personnel carriers.
Javelin anti-tank missiles valued at up to $48 million would go to Oman under the deals put forward by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which administers US government-to-government arms sales.
The $2.9 billion Saudi deal involves the sale of 58 older-generation US M1A1 Abrams tanks that would be modernized. Also, 315 Saudi-owned, newer-model, Abrams tanks would be improved with such things as air-conditioning and infrared sights for the commanders as well as the gunners.
The project’s prime contractor would be General Dynamics Corp.’s Land Systems business unit of Sterling Heights, Michigan, the Pentagon said in a notice to Congress required by law.
Vehicle “teardown“ and final reassembly would be carried out in Saudi Arabia, the notice said. The upgraded configuration is known as the M1A2S, in which the S stands for Saudi.

Bahraini Shiites set the Israeli flag on fire during a demonstration condemning the Israeli offensive against Lebanon in Isa, east of Manama, July 28. (AFP Photo)

MANAMA, Bahrain, July 29--Hundreds of Bahrainis demonstrated Friday against Israel’s onslaught against Hezbollah as police sealed off the neighborhood that houses the US embassy, an AFP correspondent reported.
Protesters waving flags of Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah along with their national flag took to the streets in Issa, south of the capital Manama.
Hundreds of others staged a sit-in in Al-Khawaja mosque in the centre of Manama, while dozens of trade unionists demonstrated outside UN office.
Meanwhile, security forces blocked all roads leading to the US embassy in the Manama’s southern suburb of New Zinj.
Police used tear gas last Friday to disperse demonstrators intent on protesting outside the US embassy against Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon.
Some demonstrators set tyres alight and threw stones at police who responded with tear gas.
King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa last Thursday ratified a controversial new law on public assembly, restricting the right to meet and laying down prison terms for unauthorized demonstrations.
Among other things, the new law prohibits protests near diplomatic missions.
The small state of Bahrain is a close ally of the United States, and the US Navy’s fifth fleet is based there.

SYDNEY, Australia, July 29--Scuffles broke out between protesters and police guarding Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Saturday when demonstrators surrounded his car in the western city of Perth.
According to AFP, about 200 protesters, many carrying Lebanese and Palestinian flags, rallied outside a conference being held by Howard’s Liberal party, calling for peace in the Middle East.
Television footage showed a number of demonstrators attempting to stop Howard’s car leaving the function venue by trying to drape themselves across the bonnet before police pulled them off.
The Australian Associated Press (AAP) news agency reported protesters also hurled projectiles at Howard’s car, which sped away from the scene as police wrestled people to the ground.
Sky News reported two people had been arrested although no official figures were immediately available from police.
Howard this week said he understood why Israel had taken military action in the face of Hezbollah rocket attacks from Lebanese territory and urged the Arab world to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Protest leader Muhammad El Khatib said the Australian government was not doing enough to broker peace in the region and that he was concerned for relatives in Lebanon.
“There are people hiding from bombs, we just want peace,“ he told AAP.
“Hezbollah is protecting Lebanon. They are freedom fighters, not terrorists.“
Australia has evacuated about 6,000 of its citizens from Lebanon.

MOSCOW, July 29--Russian President Vladimir Putin approved late Friday a new law against “extremism“ that critics say could allow the country’s authorities to crack down more on dissent, AFP wrote.
“The president signed a federal law with amendments to the federal law ’On Countering Extremist Activity’ that was approved earlier,“ the Kremlin said in a statement published on its website. The law “is aimed at improving the definition of extremist activity by classifying socially dangerous actions as extremist“, the statement said.
Russian members of parliament said earlier that the law will help authorities combat powerful racist groups operating in the country.
But opponents say it moves towards making criticism of the authorities by the media, opposition parties and rights groups a crime.
Human rights groups had urged Putin to veto the legislation.
Among activities defined as “extremist“ crimes the new law includes “humiliating national merit,“ “public slander of state officials“ and “hampering the lawful activity of state organs“.
Under the new law, public airing of views that could incite racial hatred, as well as the display of Nazi symbols or public defense of terrorism will also be considered crimes.

Omar Al-Beshir

KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 29--President Omar Al-Beshir warned Friday that Darfur would become a “graveyard“ for United Nations forces if they were deployed in the west Sudan region, the official SUNA news agency said.
“We shall never hand Darfur over to international forces which will never enjoy being in the region that will become their graveyard,“ Beshir was quoted as telling a rally at Zeribah in North Kordofan, central Sudan.
“If they really want to protect the people of Darfur, what are they doing about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Palestine and the killing of women, children and innocents there?“
Beshir warned advocates within the country of the proposed deployment of UN forces in Darfur that they would not be spared by those forces, AFP said.
“When they enter Darfur, those forces will not differentiate between the president and those leaders who call for this (the deployment),“ he said without elaborating.
Beshir cited Iraq, where despite the presence of foreign forces there is “destruction, damage and sedition between the Sunnis and Shiites instigated by Western intelligence, in addition to the torture and killing of inmates in Abu Ghraib and other prisons.“
Decades of ethnic tensions in Darfur erupted in 2003 when ethnic minorities took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum to fight for autonomy and a greater share of the region’s resources.
The government responded by unleashing its feared and mainly Arab proxy Janjaweed militia in a scorched-earth policy against minority villages suspected of supporting the rebels.
Some 300,000 people--overwhelmingly civilians--have been killed and 2.4 million more have fled their homes.
A Darfur rebel group that refused to sign a peace deal for western Sudan in May accused the government Friday of unleashing the Janjaweed in a bid to eradicate rebel holdouts.

SOFIA, Bulgaria,
July 29--Two Bulgarian Muslim girls have been forbidden to wear headscarves in school, after a parliamentary anti-discrimination commission ruled Friday the school had the right to impose the ban, AFP quoted national television as saying.
The little-known Organization for Islamic Development and Culture, in Smolian in southern Bulgaria, set a precedent in June when it lodged a complaint on behalf of the two girls, after the director of their school put a ban on all religious signs.
The two 17-year-old girls, Fatme and Mikhaela, recently told bTV television that they also attended an Islamic religious school, which had told them to cover their heads.
Such schools, which have been spreading lately in regions with large Muslim minorities, are often sponsored by Saudi foundations.
Bulgaria’s Muslim minority of ethnic Turks makes up 10 percent of the country’s population of 7.6 million. It is represented in parliament by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party, which holds 34 seats and has three ministers in the three-party coalition government.
The anti-discrimination commission, which on Friday ruled in accordance with the constitution that “the ban on headscarves in school does not amount to discrimination,“ is headed in part by the MRF.
Mufti Alish Haji, the religious leader of Bulgarian Muslims, protested, however, and threatened to take the case to international human rights organizations.
On Thursday, the Bulgarian parliament formally denounced “provocation“ against religious tolerance after vandals tried to burn down a mosque in the centre of the country.
In a parliamentary declaration that also referred to headscarves, deputies said they were “determined not to allow Bulgaria to be led astray from the road of accession to the European Union, which is a community of peoples with different religions and cultures.“

Junichiro Koizumi

CAMP ASAKA, Japan, July 29--Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Saturday drew the curtain on the deployment of Japanese troops in Iraq, a historic mission he had initiated to put Japan on the map of global turmoil.
“I feel proud because every one of you has come home safe and sound,“ Koizumi said at a ceremony marking the end of the two-and-a-half-year mission in the southern city of Samawa.
“It is wonderful that you have fulfilled your duty without firing a shot or causing a death,“ he told about 600 soldiers who made up the last contingent of the mission, and a similar number of relatives, AFP reported.
“What you have done will be remembered by the Japanese people and the Iraqi people for a long time to come,“ Koizumi said, speaking at this military base northwest of Tokyo.
It was one of his final public speeches before he steps down in September at the end of a five-year tenure marked by bold, unprecedented initiatives.
The Iraq mission was among Koizumi’s diplomatic highlights while his economic reforms at home produced few major results aside from the privatization of postal services.
Some analysts and observers including Tokyo’s former ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaya have said that sending troops to Iraq could have lost Japan, which relies on Middle Eastern oil, some of its friends in the Arab world.
A batch of 280 ground troops flew into Tokyo last Tuesday, completing the mission which marked the first time since World War II that Japanese troops have been dispatched to a country where fighting is under way.
Despite strong objections at home, Koizumi, who prides himself as a close ally of US President George W. Bush, had his ruling coalition push through a law in late 2003 to justify the “non-combat“ deployment to help rebuild the relatively calm Iraqi province of Muthanna.

Jacob Zuma

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, July 29--South Africa’s sacked deputy president Jacob Zuma on Monday faces trial in an explosive graft scandal that could bury his presidential ambitions, AFP reported.
The opening of the eagerly awaited trial, at the high court in the sleepy eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, is the object of dispute between Zuma’s lawyers and state prosecutors, who are seeking to postpone the hearing until next year.
The 64-year-old veteran politician, who was sacked by President Thabo Mbeki last year after his financial adviser Schabir Shaik was sentenced to 15 years in jail, faces two graft charges related to a 1999 multi-billion-dollar government arms deal.
He is accused of complicity to accepting a bribe through Shaik to protect a local subsidiary of French arms company Thales from a subsequent state investigation into alleged irregularities.
The Shaik trial brought to light Zuma’s penchant for the high life and expensive designer suits and showed that he lived well beyond his means, including building a traditional Zulu homestead for his spouses.
Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley said the defense would fight the government lawyer’s bid, undertaken last week, to postpone the trial.
Zuma, a charismatic and popular leader from the country’s dominant Zulu ethnic group, claims the charges are politically motivated and part of a conspiracy to stop him from succeeding Mbeki in three years’ time.
He, too, has pushed for a speedy trial, arguing that “justice delayed is justice denied.“
“I wanted this case to be over last year already,“ he said. “I have been ready all the time to defend myself.“
The reports have also said that the state is having difficulty mustering concrete, legally admissible evidence to prove that Zuma had requested a bribe from the French firm and had held a meeting with a company official.