An explosion that blew up an Iraqi oil pipeline south of Baghdad was caused accidentally, the US military said on Saturday, adding the
firefighters had contained a blaze sparked by the blast.

A delegation of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) will visit Egypt on Monday for talks with senior Egypt officials on a possible ceasefire with Israel, PFLP said on Saturday.

Syria’s ambassador to the US has dismissed the White House’s claim that North Korea had helped it build a nuclear reactor as a “ridiculous story“.
Imad Moustapha told Al Jazeera that his government maintained there was no evidence of any alleged secret nuclear activity.
If there had been a nuclear reactor, there would have been security such as anti-aircraft weapons and guards there, Moustapha said.
The Bush administration has claimed North Korea helped Syria to build an alleged nuclear reactor destroyed in a controversial Israeli air raid last year. The White House said in a statement on Thursday that Syria “must come clean“ over its alleged secret cooperation with North Korea on the reactor.
The controversy began last September, when an Israeli air raid destroyed a target in Syrian territory which some reports later said was a nuclear facility being built with North Korean help.
Syria, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has maintained in the past that the site was an unused military facility.
It later razed the site and built a larger building in its place. The target of Israel’s raid has been veiled in secrecy, with US intelligence and government officials refusing to confirm for months that such a raid even took place.

Iraqis hold a poster of Shiite cleric, Muqtada Al-Sadr, during a demonstration in support of him and against US-led forces in the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called for an international tribunal to try western leaders with war crimes over the war in Iraq.
In a speech at Imperial College in London, Mahathir called for a tribunal to try US President George W. Bush plus former prime ministers, Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia, for their part in the conflict, said a spokesman for the Muslim group the Ramadhan Foundation, AFP reported.
Spokesman Mohammed Shafiq said that Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, wants to see the trio tried “in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq.
“It was an opportunity for students to put a range of questions about war crimes and the international situation.“
He quoted Mahathir as saying that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing.
On the war in Iraq, Mahathir spoke about “the thousands dying, the economic war, the power of oil and how we could utilize some of these tools to have a leverage against the people who commit countries to war,“ Shafiq said.
The Ramadhan Foundation is a leading British Muslim youth organization working for peaceful co-existence and dialogue between communities.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized the US and British conduct of the war in Afghanistan, telling The New York Times in an interview published on Saturday that his government must be accorded the lead in policy decisions.
Karzai told the newspaper he wanted US forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members and their sympathizers, saying that fear of arrest along with past mistreatment were discouraging them from coming forward and laying down their arms.
“It has to happen,“ he said of the end to such arrests. Karzai also said in the interview conducted on Friday that he did not have specific details about alleged mistreatment of people in custody.
Ousted from power in 2001 by US-led and Afghan forces, the Qaeda-backed Taliban has vowed to topple the Afghan government and drive out the foreign troops who back it. Nearly 12,000 people, including more than 330 foreign troops, have been killed in violence in the past two years.
Karzai, who faces reelection next year, criticized the US-led coalition for what he characterized as carrying out the war on terrorism in Afghanistan’s villages, and said the real threat was centered in Taliban and Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. “The sanctuaries must go, period,“ the Times quoted him as saying.
He also said that civilian casualties needed to stop despite their numbers dropping significantly over last year.
“I am not happy with civilian casualties coming down; I want an end to civilian casualties,“ he said. “As much as one may argue it’s difficult, I don’t accept that argument.“
Karzai added, “I must also be fair to say that our partners in America have recognized my concerns and have acted on them in good faith.“
In calling for greater Afghan autonomy, Karzai said, “for the success of the world in Afghanistan, it would be better to recognize this inherent character in Afghanistan and work with it and support it.“
“Eventually, if the world is to succeed in Afghanistan, it will be by building the Afghan state, not by keeping it weak,“ he told the Times at his presidential office.
Karzai said relations with Pakistan’s new government began on a good note. “I am fairly confident of their good intentions,“ he said.
“If the current government has the full backing of the military and intelligence circles in Pakistan and with the good intentions that they have, things will improve.“

Through its silence, the international community is effectively sanctioning one of the most shameful examples of inhumanity to have occurred in the 21st century.
Some 1.5 million people, nearly half of them children under the age of 14, are being denied basic necessities like food and medical services for one simple reason: They live in the Gaza Strip for nearly a year now, Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory in what it says is an effort to crush Islamist militants there. But without access to the outside world, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has rapidly deteriorated.
Food prices have risen dramatically, garbage is overflowing into residential streets, children are becoming increasingly malnourished and basic health services are being denied for lack of fuel and other supplies.
This week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other international aid organizations were forced to halt many of their vital operations in the besieged territory, including food-distribution services, due to a lack of fuel.
Predictably, both Hamas and Israel have traded blame for the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Hamas has argued that Israel is at fault for having imposed its crippling blockade without regard for the welfare of innocent civilians. Israel, on the other hand, accuses Hamas of withholding vital supplies and dramatizing the crisis in order to score a propaganda victory.
But it no longer matters which of the two parties is to blame for the events that have unfolded. What matters is that 1.5 million people are in living in a state of internationally sanctioned peril. Those who argue that the blockade is justifiable for reasons of Israel’s self-defense ought to re-evaluate their flawed understanding of security. How could the collective punishment of more than 500,000 children possibly achieve peace, or benefit either Israel or the Palestinians in the long term?
Does anyone honestly expect that a generation of Palestinians who are forced to endure extreme hardship and depredation will one day want to live in harmony with their Israeli neighbors?
Quite the contrary, these actions appear almost flawlessly designed to ensure that acrimony and violence will continue to flourish in the years and decades to come.
Opponents--including many Israelis--of Israel’s traditional penchant for military solutions to political problems frequently note a sad irony, that of women and children being grotesquely mistreated at the hands of a state established in the historical shadow of the Holocaust. Fair enough, but it is not just the Israeli government that has failed to learn the right lessons from the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis: Western leaders are doing the same thing because just as their predecessors largely turned a blind eye to what was happening to European Jewry more than six decades ago, they are ignoring the plight of the people of Gaza today. Worse yet, the atrocities in Gaza are being carried out in the open--and nothing is being done to punish the guilty or protect the victims.
Daily Star