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Action Demanded
On US Qur’an Desecration
A major Sunni party, headed by Iraq’s vice president, on Monday demanded tough government action against a US soldier who fired bullets into the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book, AFP reported.
The desecration was also strongly condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents more than 3,000 mosques, and which held both the US military and Iraqi government responsible.
Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi’s party said in a statement “the Iraqi Islamic Party demands that the US administration deal firmly with this desecration and also calls on our government to have a position in keeping with the enormity of this humiliation.“
There was no immediate reaction from the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki but the American army staff sergeant, who pumped bullets into the Qur’an and wrote graffiti inside it, has already been removed from Iraq.
American Apology
US military authorities in Iraq have apologized to the local community west of Baghdad where the soldier fired at the Qur’an on May 11 during shooting practice.
Major General Jeffrey Hammond, the top commander of US forces in Baghdad, met community leaders from Radhwaniya in the capital’s western outskirts and issued Saturday to extend an apology.
US military spokesman Colonel Bill Buckner said the military viewed the incident “as both serious and deeply troubling,“ but stressed it was an “isolated incident and a result of one soldier’s actions.“
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq said in a statement “this heinous crime shows the hatred that the leaders and the members of the occupying force have against the Qur’an and the (Muslim) people.“
US Violation
The US military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained at the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations, according to AP.
A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Civil liberties groups such as the International Justice Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of US treaty obligations.
The majority are believed to be 16 or 17 years old. In the United States a 17-year-old can enlist in the US army, with parental consent.
The report said that of the total of 2,500 juveniles jailed since 2002, all but 100 had been picked up in Iraq.
A total of eight juveniles have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but all were released from 2004 to 2006.
“It remains uncertain the exact age of these individuals, as most of them did not know their date of birth or even the year they were born,“ the report said.
But US military doctors who evaluated them believed that three were under age 16.
According to the ACLU, the lack of protections and consideration for the juvenile status of detainees violates the obligations of the US under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict that the US ratified in 2002, as well as universally accepted international norms.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is scheduled to question the U.S. government delegation on its compliance with its obligations on May 22 in Geneva.
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Hezbollah Arms Non-Negotiable
Lebanese MP Mohammed Raad who represents Hezbollah at the Doha discussions has said the issue of Hezbollah arms is non-negotiable.
In an interview with the Al-Manar TV, Raad said, “We are flexible, but not at the expense of our constants.“
He noted “we will not raise the ceiling of our conditions, but no one can force us to lower the ceiling of our conditions, upon which the opposition agrees.“
Raad said the issues of the resistance and Hezbollah arms are non-negotiable.
“We are negotiating the world ... the resistance and its weapons are not included in the Doha talks,“ Raad told Al-Manar TV.
Raad denied the existence of a final agreement as yet, but added that there was consensus on certain issues.
The MP ruled out any agreement short of an “integrated basket,“ including the formation of a national unity government and the adoption of an electoral law.
“We understand the circumstances of some (parties) and have shown some flexibility, but no result can be reached if measures to satisfy some (parties) are adopted,“ Raad noted.
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Saudi Arms Deal Under Probe
US officials investigating alleged bribes in a Saudi arms deal subpoenaed the chief executive of BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest military contractor, on his arrival in the United States last week, BAE officials said on Sunday.
According to Reuters, a subpoena was served on Mike Turner, the CEO, at George Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas, on May 12, said Greg Caires, a BAE spokesman in Washington.
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A BAE shareholder has charged BAE board members with offering bribes and other payments to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan and others.
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Also subpoenaed was a BAE non-executive director, Sir Nigel Rudd, who was traveling with Turner, Caires said.
A subpoena is a court order to give testimony. The summonses were part of a US Justice Department investigation of bribery charges tied to Britain’s biggest arms deal, a series of warplane sales to Saudi Arabia clinched in the mid-1980s and valued at up to $80 billion.
More Subpoenas
The British government’s Serious Fraud Office dropped an inquiry into the deal in December 2006 after then-prime minister Tony Blair said the probe threatened national security.
In June 2007, the company said it had been notified the US Justice Department had begun investigating BAE’s compliance with anti-bribery laws, including dealings with Saudi Arabia.
An unspecified number of subpoenas also were served on BAE Systems’ employees in the United States last week, BAE said.
“The company has been and continues to be in discussion with the DoJ (US Department of Justice) concerning the subpoenas served in the course of its investigation,“ Caires said.
Al-Yamamah
BAE has denied making wrongful payments to help secure the arms deal known as Al-Yamamah, or “the Dove.“
The US Justice Department had no comment, said Laura Sweeney, a department spokeswoman.
Caires said he could not confirm or deny British media reports that personal electronic devices belonging to Turner and Rudd, including laptops, had been seized and examined before they were allowed to continue their trip.
The pair were not prevented from entering the United States and Turner has since returned to Britain, John Neilson, a BAE spokesman told Reuters in London.
A BAE shareholder has charged past and present BAE board members with breaching their duties by allegedly allowing more than $2 billion in kickbacks, bribes and other payments to Prince Bandar bin Sultan and others.
Saudi Combat Jets
Bandar, the former ambassador to the United States who is now the head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council, has strongly denied the charges, as has BAE.
The lawsuit was brought by the Michigan city of Harper Woods’ employee pension fund.
It is before a US federal judge in Washington, Rosemary Collyer, who earlier this year temporarily barred Bandar from removing real estate proceeds from the United States.
BAE won a 4.43 billion pounds deal for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets from Saudi Arabia last September; nine months after Britain’s Serious Fraud Office ended its inquiry.
Bribery could violate both the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act if found to have deprived the government of tax revenue, said Selva Ozelli, an international tax attorney and certified public accountant in New York.
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Bin Laden Wants
Gaza Blockade Lifted
Osama bin Laden has called on Muslims to help lift the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, in an audio message purportedly recorded by the Al-Qaeda chief and posted on the Internet on Sunday. The message, which could not immediately be authenticated, was addressed to the “Islamic nation“ and posted on a website used by Islamists, AFP said.
It called on Muslims, especially those in Egypt, to work to break the “unjust blockade“ on Gaza, which has resulted in “dozens of deaths.“
It also cited the participation of some western leaders in recent celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel as “proof that (their) values of justice, freedom and humanism are mere slogans brandished about to trick the weak.“
The new recording upbraided Arab states for having sold out the Palestinian people, insisting that Israel owed its continued existence “not to its own power, but to the fact that (Arab) governments have renounced their struggle“ against Israel.
The Internet site had announced earlier Sunday that it was about to carry a “very strong“ address from “the lion of Islam, Sheikh Osama bin Laden.“
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Taliban Responsible for Pak Attack
A Taliban militant group claimed responsibility Monday for a suicide bombing that killed at least 11 people at the gate of an army base in Pakistan’s volatile northwest.
The attack Sunday in the city of Mardan was the deadliest in more than two months and could complicate efforts by the new government to reach peace deals with militants. Four soldiers were among the dead, AP said.
Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar said the attack was carried out by a branch of the militant group Tehrik-e-Taliban in response to a Pakistani military operation in the nearby district of Darra Adam Khel.
Umar also described the bombing as a response to a suspected US missile strike last week in the Bajur tribal region that killed at least 14 people.
Sunday’s bomb went off in a market between a bakery and the gate of the Punjab Regimental Center in Mardan.
Police chief Akhtar Ali Shah said 11 people were killed and 22 wounded.
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Sudan Rebel Assault
Last week’s rebel assault near Sudan’s capital was not a permanent
setback for Darfur peace talks nor relations between Sudan and neighboring Chad, the head of the African Union said.
Unscheduled Mission
A US Navy warship has reportedly been stationed near the coast of Lebanon for an unscheduled mission. It would be dispatched to the area to support
additional communication requirements for US ships already underway.
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Olmert Court Hearing Held
Israel’s Supreme Court heard on Monday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is suspected of personally accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from a US businessman in the
latest scandal to embroil the premier.
State Prosecutor Moshe Lador said the alleged cash payments took place when Olmert was trade and industry minister between 2003 and 2006, AFP reported.
Lador was speaking at a Supreme Court hearing to decide whether to allow prosecutors to take preliminary sworn testimony from millionaire financier Morris Talansky.
Olmert “allegedly received cash money from Talansky both in Israel, through his bureau chief in the trade and industry ministry, and in the United States,“ Lador said during the hearing.
He said the funds were allegedly transferred “both during Talansky’s visits to Israel and when Talansky briefly met from time to time with Olmert when he handed the money in cash dollars in envelopes to Olmert.“
Olmert is suspected of having received the money illegally from Talansky before he became premier in 2006.
The premier has denied any wrongdoing but has admitted he received money from Talansky to help finance his electoral campaigns in 1999 and 2003.
Olmert, who faces three other police investigations, has said he will step down if he is charged in the case.
Kuwait Cabinet Resigns
Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Monday accepted the resignation of the Cabinet following general elections in the oil-rich Persian Gulf state, the official KUNA news agency reported.
The emir asked outgoing Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad al-Sabah to remain in office until a new cabinet is formed, KUNA said, quoting an emiri decree.
The resignation, which is required by law after an election, came after a brief cabinet meeting chaired by the premier, a member of the ruling family as is the norm in Kuwait.
The emir is now expected to begin consultations with former parliament speakers on forming a new cabinet, which must be done within two weeks.
The Kuwaiti ruler can either ask the outgoing premier to form a new government or appoint a new prime minister.
Radical Islamists made a strong showing in Saturday’s elections to the 50-seat parliament.
Iraqi Senior Police Officer killed
A bomb blast has killed a senior police officer just outside the city of Nasiriyah south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police say.
The bomb was planted on the wall of Major Farhan Ali’s office, in Souk al-Shouyoukh, 350 kilometers south of Baghdad, Colonel Yasser Hassan told AFP on Monday.
Hassan said an investigation into the attack was underway.
An officer and two policemen were also wounded last week when a bomb went off at a police building in Nasiriyah.
Egypt Police Shoot Sudanese
Egyptian police shot and critically wounded a Sudanese man on Monday as he tried to cross the border illegally into Israel, a security official said, AFP reported.
Maurice Dana, 24, was shot in the head as he tried to enter Israel from an area south of the Egyptian town of Rafah, the official said.
“He was taken to El-Arish hospital (in north Sinai) but his condition is critical.“
In recent months Egypt has arrested dozens of illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, trying to sneak into Israel from the Sinai in search of work. Several have been killed while trying to cross the frontier.
In February, rights group Amnesty International slammed Egypt’s use of force at the border.
Prince Sultan’s Health Failing
Saudi Crown Prince bin Abdulaziz, who has cancer, is reported to be in failing health at his home in Geneva, Switzerland, UPI reported.
Prince Sultan, 81, who serves as the Saudi defense minister and is a strong US ally, has contended with cancer for several years. He moved to his palace in Morocco in March when his condition worsened. On April 26, he was moved to Switzerland to be close to his regular doctors.
His brother, Interior Minister Prince Nayef, believed to be about 75, is expected to succeed him and would be in line to succeed Saudi King Abdullah, 85.
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History Lessons (Part II)
By Hassan Nafaa
Israel has always had its aims and objectives clearly in sight, whereas the Arabs never clearly identified their aims and objectives to begin with. It is surely time they did.
Accepting the above we should be able to derive several important lessons. The first is that no Arab state or people stand outside the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is to say that the conflict has always been, and remains, an Arab-Israeli and not just a Palestinian-Israeli one. The Palestinians’ conflict with Israel differs from that of other Arabs in degree not in kind. Naturally, the further away an Arab country is from Israel the less grave is its conflict with Israel, though the more Israel succeeds in imposing its conditions on the Palestinians and the countries bordering it the more Arab countries further afield are at risk of being drawn closer to the ever-expanding geographical presence and political influence of Israel. Of course, Israel will never be able to occupy these countries militarily. But we cannot rule out an attempt on its part to impose on them certain patterns of foreign policy behavior and to intervene in their domestic affairs on the pretext of security or “normalization“. Since the struggle against Israel is a collective Arab one and since the go-it-alone approach that individual governments have long preferred has failed miserably to accomplish even individual governments’ aspirations the Arabs obviously need to develop a unified strategy for managing the struggle with Israel in accordance with which priorities and the allocation of roles and responsibilities are clearly and equitably defined.
This strategy must be capable of mobilizing all the Arabs’ available energies and resources and it must avail itself of a combination of military and non-military means, both conventional and non- conventional. There must also be an institutional command for collective Arab action that can transform the strategy into implementable programs and policies. For the foreseeable future at least that command must operate on the assumption of perpetual conflict for Israel has yet to demonstrate that it is ready or even mature enough for a comprehensive and just solution, nor will it be ready or mature enough for such a solution until it is made to see that this is its only choice. The purpose of any conflict management approach is to compel the adversary towards a settlement based on actual, as opposed to imaginary, balances of power.
The third lesson pertains to the framework of principles. If a unified Arab strategy for managing the conflict with Israel is to be effective it must be prepared to shift to negotiations over a just and comprehensive solution, but it must be very clear from the outset upon the principles that Israel must accept as a condition for Arab agreement to negotiate. I believe that the Arab world could offer Israel the choice between two alternatives.
The first is essentially a modified version of the Arab peace initiative, which would call for: Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territory inclusive of East Jerusalem, the return to the pre-June 1967 borders on all fronts and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and with the same sovereign rights and duties enjoyed by Israel; Israeli acknowledgement of its responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees and its agreement to permit them to return to their homes and to compensate them for suffering and lost property; a commitment by Israel to fully guarantee and respect the human, civil and political rights of the Arab community in Israel; a declaration by Israel that it is a state for all its citizens, without discrimination, rather than a state for all the Jews in the world and the revision of the right to return so as to extend it to anyone who had previously resided in historic Palestine, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation.
The second alternative is to advocate a single democratic state founded upon the principle of equality among all citizens. To me this solution offers numerous advantages, the foremost being: it offers a more rational and less costly way out of the current impasse in the so-called peace process; it conforms to the spirit and principles of liberalism and democracy espoused in the West and, indeed, in Israel itself, would therefore echo powerfully abroad and potentially attract wide and influential support; it would facilitate the creation of original solutions to problems that have so far remained intractable, such as the status of Beit-ul-Moqaddas and the cause of Palestinian refugees while simultaneously putting a stop to Zionist racism the success of which would pave the way for the darker forces waiting in the wings from taking centre stage; it will help promote solid democratic transformations in the rest of the region which has long been thirsting for a truly sustainable development process.
Some might charge that to draw such lessons from the past and advocate such solutions is to take refuge in a world of utter fancy. Yet we desperately need to apply some imagination if we are to save ourselves from the brutal fate that awaits us if we continue with current policies. (Concluded)
Al Ahram
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 21
BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The Palestinian government will host a major investors conference (to May 23), part of efforts to boost the economy as Palestinians take part in US-backed peace talks with Israel.
ISLAMABAD - Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee to visit Pakistan for a review of a four-year-old peace process between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
GEORGIA - Parliamentary elections.
THE HAGUE - International Criminal Court holds confirmation of charges hearing for ex-Congo warlord Mathieu Ngudjolo. Mathieu faces war crimes charges of murder, sexual slavery and using child soldiers.
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