Palestinian Elections Postponed

The Palestinian electoral commission said the elections called for January should be postponed because the vote can not take place in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
“I regret to say it is unfortunate that the elections will be postponed,” commission head Hanna Nasser told reporters on Thursday. “It has become clear to us that conducting elections in the Gaza Strip is not likely to happen,” AFP reported.
The election delay risks throwing the bitterly divided Palestinians into a legal and constitutional limbo, since the mandates of both president and parliament will have run out in January.
Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmud Abbas will consult with Palestinian Authority officials in the next few days and is likely to accept the commission’s recommendation, officials said.
“I believe we will delay the date of the elections,” said Azzam Al-Ahmad, a member of the central committee of Abbas’s Fatah party.
Abbas had called for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on January 24, when the four-year mandate of the current Hamas-dominated parliament runs out.
But Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since June 2007, blasted the presidential decree as unconstitutional because his own mandate ran out last January.
Abbas was elected on January 9, 2005 for a four-year term. The Palestinian Authority extended his presidency by one year so presidential and parliamentary elections could be held on the same date, as required by Palestinian Basic Law.
“After January 25, there will be a legal vacuum because the president and parliament will no longer be legal,” said Ahmad of Fatah’s central committee.
A committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will meet in December to “examine how to fill this legal vacuum,” he said.
Hamas hailed the electoral commission’s decision, adding that “conditions are not suitable for a successful election ... in the absence of a national consensus,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP in Gaza.
The bitter rift between Fatah and Hamas goes back to the start of limited Palestinian self-rule in the 1990s, when strongmen of the secular Fatah cracked down on the Islamist militant group.

Assad Meets Sarkozy Over Mideast Peace

French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried to breathe life into the Middle East peace process on Friday, hosting his Syrian counterpart just two days after talks with the Israeli prime minister.
President Bashar Al-Assad arrived at the Elysee Palace in Paris boasting of a new “climate of trust” in relations with France, but without having directly responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer of new talks, AFP reported.
Relations between France and Syria have been warming since Assad paid a landmark visit to Paris last year for Bastille Day celebrations and Sarkozy visited Damascus two months later in September 2008.
Sarkozy hopes to use France’s ties with Damascus as a lever to persuade Assad to renew dialogue with his arch foe Israel and to solicit his help in persuading the Palestinian leadership to return to talks.
Following Netanyahu’s visit to Paris on Wednesday, a senior Israeli official said: “Mr Sarkozy raised the issue of the Syrian track.
“The prime minister said he is willing to meet with the Syrian president at any time and anywhere to move on the peace negotiations on the basis of no pre-conditions,” he promised.
Hostility between Israel and Syria is one of the problems underlying all efforts to seek a broader Middle East peace settlement.
Syria has repeatedly demanded the return of the strategic Golan Heights, which Israeli captured in the 1967 war and unilaterally annexed in 1981, as a non-negotiable condition for peace.
Israel accuses Syria of backing anti-Israeli groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas. Both have offices in Damascus.
Assad told a meeting of Arab politicians this week Syria would not “put forward conditions on making peace” but warned it had “rights that we will not renounce,” according to the SANA news agency.
Turkish mediation between the foes broke off last year during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, closing a promising diplomatic channel, but Ankara says it is willing to resume its role.
Keeping the pressure on Israel and the Palestinians, Sarkozy is dispatching Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to the region for talks next week.
Sarkozy outlined “important suggestions” aimed at restarting the comatose peace process between these two parties during telephone talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday, according to a Palestinian aide.

Lebanon, Syria Coordination
The Lebanese and Syrian presidents vowed during talks in Damascus on Thursday to keep up coordination between the two Arab neighbors amid signs of improved ties, Middle East Online reported.
Bashar al-Assad and Michel Suleiman of Lebanon met just three days after the formation of a unity government in Beirut following almost five months of tough negotiations.
The two leaders reviewed “the positive developments which have recently taken place in Lebanon,” especially the new Cabinet.
Assad called for the rival parties in Lebanon “to take advantage of this positive atmosphere and to continue dialogue so as to strengthen Lebanese understanding and unity as a basis for stability.”
Suleiman, on a second visit to Damascus since his May 2008 election, hailed “the privileged relations with Syria, which are in the interests of Lebanon.”
The presidents agreed to “continue consultations, coordination and cooperation.”
In Beirut, the presidency said the two leaders “stressed that they share the same point of view as concerns regional and international issues” and would “work together at all levels and in all domains.”
On Monday, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri formed a national unity government with the powerful resistance group Hezbollah.
The winning alliance headed by Hariri won 71 seats in the 128-member parliament in the election against 57 for the opposition led by Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah opposition had actually secured the majority (52%) of the votes in Lebanon, but could not secure a majority of Parliamentary seats (it won 45%) because of the nature of the sectarian government system in the country.
Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.
On Thursday, Hariri received a congratulations telegram from his Syrian counterpart Mohammed Naji Otri, in what was the first official contact by Damascus with its longtime foe, a Hariri aide in Beirut said.

Saudi Villages Evacuated Due to Yemen Violence

Some 240 villages in Saudi Arabia have been evacuated and scores of schools closed due to fighting which has now spilled over from Yemen, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, citing local contacts.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, launched an offensive last week after Yemeni Houthis seized Saudi territory along the mountainous border from which they said the Saudis had been allowing Yemeni troops to use to attack their positions, Reuters reported.
“Fighting has now spilled into Saudi Arabia, reportedly causing 240 villages to be evacuated and more than 50 schools to be closed,” Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
The information came from UNICEF’s contacts on the ground, a spokeswoman said in Geneva, giving no further details.
A Saudi government adviser said on Thursday that Saudi Arabia is using air power and artillery to enforce a 10 km (six mile) deep buffer zone inside Yemen to keep the Shiite fighters away from its southwestern border.
Fighting between Yemeni troops and Houthi fighters, who say Yemen’s Zaidi Shiite minority suffers discrimination and neglect, has flared on and off since 2004 in the northern province of Saada.
UNICEF voiced deep concern at the escalation of the conflict in north Yemen, where the United Nations now says 175,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.
More than 15,000 are staying in Al-Mazraq camp in Hajjah province, the population of which has doubled in the past month, according to the agency.
“Deaths have been recorded among children in the camp as malnutrition, already a chronic problem in Yemen, is reaching alarming levels,” Kaag said. More than 600 children in the camp are being treated for severe acute malnutrition, she said.

Blair Faces Iraq War Inquiry

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be publicly questioned about the Iraq war during Britain’s long-awaited inquiry into mistakes made before and during the conflict, the inquiry chairman said on Friday.
Chairman John Chilcott said Blair and other senior politicians will be questioned early next year on their role and decisions over the war, AP reported.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in June that he would hold an inquiry into the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. He initially had said the hearings would be private, but changed his stance after bereaved families and anti-war campaigners said a private inquiry would command little confidence.
Chilcott, a former civil servant, said the first round of hearings will start Nov. 24 and last until February 2010. He said senior officials and military officers would give evidence first, and politicians including Blair would be questioned from January. The full list of witnesses called to give evidence will be announced later this month.
Chilcott said there would be some private sessions next year to deal with sensitive information. Another later public round of hearings will take place after Britain’s general election, which has to take place by June 2010.
Britain’s six-year operation in Iraq, which ended in April, cost the lives of 179 service personnel. At the height of combat operations in March and April 2003, Britain had 46,000 troops in Iraq.
The Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Britain, prompting some of the country’s largest ever protest marches--including a rally which drew an estimated 2 million demonstrators to central London. Blair, who was prime minister at the time, was badly tarnished by the conflict, but won a 2005 national election with a reduced majority.

Italy Police Smash Algerian Terror Gang

The Italian authorities said 17 Algerians have been arrested in Italy and elsewhere on suspicion of stealing money to finance terrorism.
Six of the arrests were in Italy, while the other suspects were picked up in Algeria, Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, BBC reported.
The gang allegedly stole the identities of Algerian footballers playing in France in order to travel freely.
An estimated 1m euros (£902,000) of stolen money was sent to Algeria.
Italian police say the cash - exported in tranches of about 10,000 euros - is believed to have been for financing terrorism because some of the suspects were on international watch lists.
The suspects have been charged with criminal association, receiving stolen goods and falsifying documents.

EU to Endorse Somalia Plan

The European Union is to endorse next week a plan to train up to 2,000 security personnel from Somalia, as the EU broadens engagement in the crisis hit Horn of Africa country, officials said Friday.
The plan would see up to 200 EU soldiers train Somali military and police in neighboring Uganda, probably for a year, following a request from the interim government in Mogadishu to help build a 6,000-strong security force, AFP reported.
The decision, expected Tuesday in Brussels at a meeting of EU foreign, defense and development ministers, would launch official planning for the mission, said the spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
“Once this is approved, which we expect is going to happen during the (EU) council then we will be launching the real planning,” the spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, told reporters.
“We will be exploring how we can support, in addition to what we do with piracy on the high seas, the transitional government,” she said.
“We think that this is a very good contribution to the global approach that the European Union has in order to tackle the Somali problems and all of its impact,” she said.
The training, which may need to be carried out in two or three phases over a year, will involve Somalis numbering “in the low thousands. Initially we might be talking about 1,000 and 2,000,” Gallach said.
“Less than 200 trainers” from Europe will be needed, she said. The EU is still struggling to build a police mission of around 400 staff in Afghanistan, but given this work will take place in Uganda away from security problems officials said the trainers could be found by year’s end.
Off the coast of Somalia, the EU is currently running an anti-piracy mission in the waters of the Gulf of Aden, but senior officials have long conceded that the only real way to combat the problem is on the ground.
Somalia has been gripped by civil wars and insurgencies and bereft of stable government since the overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
The capital Mogadishu has been ravaged by violence that worsened in May when the insurgents stepped up an offensive against the internationally-backed government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Israel Kills Palestinian

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded at least one other in a confrontation near a Gaza Strip border crossing on Friday, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical workers said.