Bashar al-Assad

ISTANBUL, Turkey, Oct. 19--Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that a failure to preserve Iraq’s unity will trigger new bloodshed in the Middle East, a Turkish newspaper reported Friday.
Iraq’s disintegration will “be a bomb that will blow up the Middle East,“ the Radikal daily quoted Assad as telling a group of journalists in Istanbul during a visit to Turkey, AFP said.
“We fully agree with Turkey that Iraq’s territorial integrity must be preserved,“ he said.
Syria and Turkey both oppose any Iraqi Kurdish attempt to break away from the central government in Baghdad, fearing that this could fuel separatist ambitions among their own Kurds.
The Turkish parliament Wednesday authorised military strikes in Kurdish-held northern Iraq within a year against bases of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which uses the region as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border.
Following talks with Turkish leaders in Ankara Wednesday, Assad said Syria sees a possible Turkish incursion into Iraq as “Turkey’s legitimate right“ in the fight against terrorism.
The PKK, which has waged a 23-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey, is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.
But the Syrian leader later finetuned his position, calling on Ankara to give Baghdad a chance to tackle the rebels.
“The problem cannot be resolved by being considered only as a military and security problem. Results cannot be obtained without the backing of political efforts,“ Radikal quoted Assas as saying.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government “should be given a chance,“ he added.

YANGON, Myanmar, Oct. 19--Military-run Myanmar claimed Friday it was taking another step on its “road map“ to democracy by drafting a new charter, and accused the United States of training monks who led protests last month.
The junta named 54 people to a committee tasked with writing a new constitution, following more than a decade of talks on the guidelines for the charter, the official New Light of Myanmar paper said.
The announcement came as the regime was under global pressure over its bloody crackdown on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks in late September, when at least 13 people were killed and 3,000 detained, reported AFP.
Anti-junta rallies began in August following a massive hike in fuel prices and snowballed into the biggest challenge to the iron-fisted regime in nearly two decades.
In the wake of the violence, the United States and the European Union tightened sanctions on the junta while the United Nations is pressuring the regime to open talks with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest.
UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari is traveling around Asia to build regional pressure on the junta.
He called Thursday for a carrot-and-stick approach, saying that in addition to tough action the regime should be offered incentives to reform.
But the state newspaper Friday lashed out at the United States, accusing Washington of training monks and forcing them to stage the protests against the government.
“The embassy of a big power secretly gave training courses to young monks and novices,“ the paper said.

So far about 500 of the vehicles have been airlifted to Iraq.

WASHINGTON,
Oct. 19--The Pentagon announced contracts late Thursday worth $1.2 billion for 2,400 mine resistant armored vehicles from three manufacturers as part of a crash program to field them in Iraq.
The contracts were awarded to Force Protection Industries, BAE and International Military and Government LLC, AFP quoted a senior Pentagon official as saying.
“The orders obligate roughly $1.2 billion for 2,400 MRAPs, roughly two months of production,“ the official said.
The vehicles will raise to 8,400 the number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles on order by the Pentagon.
He said the Pentagon plans to place orders for an additional 6,500 of the armored vehicles in December, but Congress must first approve the additional funding required.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made acquisition and delivery of the vehicles to Iraq and Afghanistan the Defense Department’s highest procurement priority.
So far about 500 of the vehicles have been airlifted to Iraq, and the Pentagon hopes to have 1,500 in country by the end of the year.
The MRAPs V-shaped hull is designed to deflect the blast of an explosion, offering better protection against mines than the armored Humvees now in use in both combat zones.
The official said the Pentagon had decided to narrow its selection of MRAP vendors to three to reduce the number of variants of the vehicle moving through production lines and post production equipping.
“We are building at least eight vehicle variants from five vendors. With unique army and marine corps equipment installations this means we are fielding as many as 16 different vehicle designs,“ he said.
“Going forward we need to reduce the burden for training, maintenance and spare parts for our deployed forces,“ he said.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Oct. 19--Kyrgyzstan votes in a constitutional referendum on Sunday (Oct. 21) that could substantially weaken the president’s powers in a bid to resolve years of political upheaval in this Central Asian state.
The proposed reform, which would strengthen the parliament in the former Soviet republic, is widely expected to be adopted although analysts have warned that turnout may be low for the snap referendum, AFP said.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev had promised to reform the constitution after coming to power in 2005 on the back of a popular revolt that toppled his predecessor Askar Akayev.
“The president has taken his responsibilities at last and is bringing constitutional reform to its logical end,“ said Melis Eshimkanov, a member of parliament and a frequent critic of Bakiyev’s rule.
Kyrgyzstan is located at a strategic crossroads and hosts US and Russian military bases. It is seen as a relatively democratic country surrounded by authoritarian regimes in Central Asia.
The association of Kyrgyz political scientists said that the reform would probably be adopted but added that it could lead to “political conflict“ if the authorities boost turnout figures.
“That would lead to the results not being recognized by political forces and would make the plebiscite illegitimate,“ the association said in a statement.
Fifty percent of the electorate has to vote for the referendum to be valid.
Some opposition leaders have also said that Bakiyev called the referendum in order to dissolve parliament and hold fresh elections that would boost his newly-created Ak Zhol party.
Bakiyev has been involved in numerous standoffs with the parliament and is mindful of the fact that rigged parliamentary elections led to the revolution in 2005 that ousted his predecessor, analysts said.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Oct. 19--Israel’s former military commander in the occupied West Bank has been reprimanded for using Palestinian civilians as human shields, the army said on Friday.
According to AFP, Brigadier General Yair Golan was barred from promotion for nine months under the terms of the reprimand, it said.
Golan admitted using Palestinians as human shields, which Israel’s supreme court banned two years ago following petitions from human rights groups, the army said.
The reprimand follows an investigation by military police.
In March, Israeli television broadcast footage of Israeli forces advancing behind a young male Palestinian civilian during a door-to-door search and arrest operation in Nablus.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem charged that during the operation soldiers used a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, an 11-year-old girl and a 24-year-old man as human shields.

LIMA, Peru, Dec. 19--As Peru heads into the most sensational trial in its history, the country is being taken back 16 years to the night when hooded men stormed a barbecue in a Lima tenement courtyard and machine-gunned the crowd, killing 15 people including an 8-year-old boy.
It was November 1991--just a year into the 10-year presidency of Alberto Fujimori--and a dirty war was raging between government forces and Maoist rebels calling themselves the Shining Path, AP reported.
The police investigation of the Lima massacre went nowhere, but many Peruvians assumed the targets at the barbecue were Shining Path supporters, and some felt a firm response to the murderous rebel movement was just what the country needed.
The questions didn’t go away, however, and Fujimori, who had initially won sweeping popularity for his economic measures and war on the Shining Path, gradually lost support until he was forced into exile in Japan, his ancestral homeland.
Now he’s back, facing a trial next month at which the barbecue massacre will loom large. Prosecutors will claim the attackers were a military death squad, that they hit the wrong party--and that the action was authorized by Fujimori.
Fujimori could have stayed safe in Japan, but instead went to Chile, expecting to be extradited to Peru but calculating the terms of his extradition would limit the prosecution to lesser charges that he could beat, allowing his return to politics.
But it looks like a gamble gone seriously wrong. He has been charged with an array of crimes--bribery, wiretapping, misusing public funds, kidnapping and murder for the massacre in the capital’s Barrios Altos district.
Fujimori, who is 69, could face 30 years in prison if convicted.
Some in Peru wonder whether its justice system can fairly prosecute a former president who remains both loathed and loved.

Newly-trained Afghan National Army soldiers fire during a exercise in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 18.

WASHINGTON,
Oct. 19--The Afghan army needs three times the number of international military training teams as are currently working with it to accelerate its development, a senior US military official said Thursday.
Major General Robert Cone, head of the combined security transition command in Afghanistan, said the additional trainers were needed as the Afghan National Army grows from 50,000 to 70,000 troops, reported AFP.
“The greatest shortfall that we face right now, both in terms of increasing the size of the training base and in taking units into combat and employing them, are trainers,“ he said.
He said 22 training teams are currently working with the army, and another 20 have been promised by NATO countries. But he said 60 more teams were needed.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told reporters the army also needed “air mobility, more firepower, and more combat enablers and force multipliers“ to begin taking over from the NATO force.
Wardak met earlier with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is expected to lobby for more contributions from NATO countries next week at a meeting of alliance defense ministers in the Netherlands.
The training teams generally consist of about 16 members, who mentor Afghan officers. Cone said the emphasis of the training will be shifting to battalion and brigade size formations.
“The army is extremely motivated and performs very well at the individual and small-unit level,“ Cone said.