Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Officials attend an Arab League Foreign Ministers' meeting
Officials attend an Arab League Foreign Ministers' meeting in Cairo July 30, 2007. Arab League foreign ministers' met in Cairo to discuss a Middle East peace plan that is part of a renewed diplomatic push to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Bedouin community should really need other alternatives to make a living
RAFAH, Egypt - Hidden inside a bedroom closet just feet from a crib and a bed, an Egyptian army officer lifted floor tiles to reveal a hole: the entrance to a tunnel for smuggling weapons extending hundreds of yards across the border into the Gaza Strip.
Tunnel entrances turn up in homes all over this border town. Another house nearby had two, one hidden in the kitchen and another in a backyard duck pen — small holes in the earth, just wide enough for a person to crawl through, dug with homemade tools. Egyptian authorities have discovered six tunnels in the border town of Rafah since Hamas took over Gaza in mid-June, after days of fierce battles with Fatah fighters loyal to Abbas, Mamdouh told reporters in Rafah. The military could not say whether the rate of digging tunnels — or discovering them — has increased since the Hamas takeover. The Egyptians have found 138 tunnels since September 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, handing it over to Palestinian control.Border crossings in Rafah have been closed since the Hamas takeover and likely won't reopen as long as the militant group remains in control. European monitors at the crossings fled during the fighting, and the official Palestinian security forces — dominated by Abbas' Fatah faction — have been eliminated from Gaza. That has left Hamas guarding the border from its side. During Sunday's tour, a tent of Hamas fighters in black uniforms was visible on the Gaza side. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group has 200 fighters at the border. He insisted Hamas was "making great efforts to protect the area" but would not comment on tunnels or smuggling.
Mamdouh, who heads a military office for liaison with international organizations, said the Egyptian side has "no contact at all with Hamas" about running the border, but said the militant group was trying to show it can control the area, which during times of closure has been plagued by violence as Palestinians try to break into or out of Gaza. "It's very calm. They are trying to give the world a good image by keeping everything quiet on the border area," he said. Most of the tunnels — which are also used for drug smuggling — are dug from the Gaza side, usually about 2 1/2 feet in diameter and extending 100 to 800 yards into Rafah, Mamdouh said. They are dug using homemade tools and sometimes even have electric lights. Rafah's Bedouin residents are paid to allow the tunnel entryways to be hidden in their homes.
Source Reuters
The Bedouins and the Bedouin community should really need other alternatives to make a living. Maybe it would be better conditions there if there was some kind of program that could help the Bedouins earn their living on working and other ways. If there could be improvements for the Bedouins they maybe should prefer doing other things than risking 10 years in jail for this tunnels and everyone should have benefits of it.
Tunnel entrances turn up in homes all over this border town. Another house nearby had two, one hidden in the kitchen and another in a backyard duck pen — small holes in the earth, just wide enough for a person to crawl through, dug with homemade tools. Egyptian authorities have discovered six tunnels in the border town of Rafah since Hamas took over Gaza in mid-June, after days of fierce battles with Fatah fighters loyal to Abbas, Mamdouh told reporters in Rafah. The military could not say whether the rate of digging tunnels — or discovering them — has increased since the Hamas takeover. The Egyptians have found 138 tunnels since September 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, handing it over to Palestinian control.Border crossings in Rafah have been closed since the Hamas takeover and likely won't reopen as long as the militant group remains in control. European monitors at the crossings fled during the fighting, and the official Palestinian security forces — dominated by Abbas' Fatah faction — have been eliminated from Gaza. That has left Hamas guarding the border from its side. During Sunday's tour, a tent of Hamas fighters in black uniforms was visible on the Gaza side. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group has 200 fighters at the border. He insisted Hamas was "making great efforts to protect the area" but would not comment on tunnels or smuggling.
Mamdouh, who heads a military office for liaison with international organizations, said the Egyptian side has "no contact at all with Hamas" about running the border, but said the militant group was trying to show it can control the area, which during times of closure has been plagued by violence as Palestinians try to break into or out of Gaza. "It's very calm. They are trying to give the world a good image by keeping everything quiet on the border area," he said. Most of the tunnels — which are also used for drug smuggling — are dug from the Gaza side, usually about 2 1/2 feet in diameter and extending 100 to 800 yards into Rafah, Mamdouh said. They are dug using homemade tools and sometimes even have electric lights. Rafah's Bedouin residents are paid to allow the tunnel entryways to be hidden in their homes.
Source Reuters
The Bedouins and the Bedouin community should really need other alternatives to make a living. Maybe it would be better conditions there if there was some kind of program that could help the Bedouins earn their living on working and other ways. If there could be improvements for the Bedouins they maybe should prefer doing other things than risking 10 years in jail for this tunnels and everyone should have benefits of it.
Monday, July 30, 2007
An Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying Palestinian militants
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying Palestinian militants on Monday, wounding two members of Islamic Jihad and the Gaza commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Islamic Jihad said.
Middle East: The big smorgosboard...
Israel is looking into reports that Russia plans to sell 250 advanced long-range Sukhoi-30 fighter jets to Iran in an unprecedented billion-dollar deal. According to reports, in addition to the fighter jets, Teheran also plans to purchase a number of aerial fuel tankers that are compatible with the Sukhoi and capable of extending its range by thousands of kilometers. Defense officials said the Sukhoi sale would grant Iran long-range offensive capabilities. Government officials voiced concern over the reports. They said Russia could be trying to compete with the United States, which announced over the weekend a billion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
"I went to the Palestinian embassy in Cairo to register my name, but they refused because I belong to Hamas"
Egypt and Israel on Saturday agreed that 627 of the 6,000 stranded Palestinians, who have been living in increasingly dire conditions, would be allowed back to the Gaza Strip, with 100 crossing on Sunday and 527 on Monday. Palestinians had been asked to register in Cairo for a seat on the convoy and the first 627 names on the register were selected to leave, a security source said. But many said they were not allowed to register because they were supporters of the Islamist Hamas. "I went to the Palestinian embassy in Cairo to register my name, but they refused because I belong to Hamas," one man told AFP, declining to give his name. Others said that the process was made easier for supporters of president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, while Hamas members were not even being allowed to register.
"There is no jihad. Just instruments of death."
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004. Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.
At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists. The kingdom still has a way to go in cracking the jihadist mind-set. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees held in Iraq, according to Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser. They number hundreds, he said this month following a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dozens more are fighting alongside al-Qaida-inspired militants at a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.
Several hundred prisoners, as well as returnees from Guantanamo, are thought to have passed through the rehabilitation program. Al-Shayea says his change of heart began when he was visited by a cleric at al-Ha'ir Prison in Riyadh following his repatriation from Iraq. He says he put two questions to the cleric: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions? No and no, came the reply. "I realized that all along I was wrong," al-Shayea told The Associated Press in a two-hour interview at a Riyadh hotel before returning to an Interior Ministry compound that serves as a sort of halfway house for ex-jihadists rejoining Saudi society.
"There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death," he said.
Saudi Arabia's campaign against terrorism began in earnest after al-Qaida-linked militants struck three residential expatriate compounds in Riyadh in May 2003, killing 26 people. The government says it cracked down on charities suspected of using donations to finance terrorism, banned mosques from holding unlicensed religious sessions and warned preachers against inciting youths to jihad. Officials as well as the government-guided media began to clearly and unequivocally refer to suicide bombings as terrorism.
The Interior Ministry sponsored programs on government-run TV stations showing repentant jihadists warning youths against joining al-Qaida and clergymen trying to correct misconceptions about jihad and dealing with non-Muslims. Al-Shayea has appeared on Al-Majd, a Saudi religious TV channel. Three years ago it set up the prison program.
"The aim is to reform the youths, to listen to them and talk to them," said Ahmed Jailan, one of the clerics. "We also try to instill a sense of hope in them by telling them they still have the chance to make up for what they lost if they follow true Islam." The prisoners later appear before a panel of judges who decide whether they can move from prison to the Interior Ministry compound, where activities include reading, civic and religious courses, sports and family visits. They get help finding jobs and wives, and after release they get free medical care, monthly stipends and sometimes cars.
At the time he was first approached to join the insurgency, al-Shayea was already becoming a devout Muslim in his ultraconservative town of Buraida. He grew a beard, prayed five times a day and stopped listening to Arabic love songs he used to enjoy. He was 19 and jobless. Then he was contacted by a school friend whom he doesn't identify. "My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad," said al-Shayea. "He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad." "We didn't think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight against occupiers," said al-Shayea.
Finally the friend told him he was going to Iraq, and invited al-Shayea to join him. He was told to shave his beard and pack Western clothes to avoid looking like a would-be jihadist. He got a passport and an airline ticket to Syria. And he managed to save $1,600 — travel fees, he was told, that would go to smugglers, weapons training and al-Qaida's coffers. On a cool November night toward the end of the holy month of Ramadan, he donned a black T-shirt and jeans and told his parents he was going camping in the desert with his friends. He and his friend flew to Syria, a favored transit point for Iraq-bound fighters because Syria doesn't ask visiting Arabs for visas, and its 360-mile border with Iraq is thinly policed. A network of al-Qaida operatives sheltered him in Damascus, Aleppo and the border town of Abu-Kamal, and about two weeks later he and 23 other men were smuggled into Iraq. Four Iraqi teenagers guided them to the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They saw Syrian border guards in the distance who fired in the air. "They didn't try to stop us. We were already in Iraq," al-Shayea said. At al-Qaim, the men were split into two groups. Al-Shayea said his group of 12 met an al-Qaida leader who had direct links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida chief in Iraq who was later killed by a U.S. airstrike. He took the men's money and gave each $100. "Then he asked us a question: 'Those who want to carry out martyrdom (suicide) attacks, raise your hands,'" said al-Shayea. "No one did." Al-Shayea's group then spent a week at the Sunni fundamentalist stronghold of Rawa before al-Shayea and another Saudi man were taken to Ramadi and finally Baghdad. Al-Shayea met his new "emir," or leader, an Iraqi who told him his first assignment was to take a fuel tanker to a Baghdad neighborhood to be collected by others. "I felt scared. I didn't know Baghdad at all, and I also didn't know how to drive heavy vehicles," he said.
Also, he says, he was never told that the truck would contain 26 tons of butane gas, rigged to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy. "That evening, we performed the last prayer of the day and had dinner — a dish of chicken and aubergines," said al-Shayea. "The emir gave me a crude map of my route." Two al-Qaida militants drove with al-Shayea, but then jumped out 1,000 yards from where he was supposed to park the truck and fled in a waiting car. "I felt something bad was about to happen," he said. The farther he drove, the more nervous he got until, 60 feet from the embassy, an explosion — believed triggered from afar — turned the back of the tanker into a fireball. "I saw the fire and I started to scream and pray," he said. "I looked around me and I saw everything had melted. My hands had turned black. I jumped from the window and started running without thinking of what I was doing." The blast killed nine people. Thinking he was an innocent victim and a Shiite by his fake ID card, passers-by took al-Shayea to a Shiite-run hospital. There he kept silent for several days until he finally told his doctors the truth. The world's first encounter with al-Shayea was on footage of his interrogation which was sent to Arab TV stations. Back in Buraida, his parents saw their son, face charred, head heavily bandaged, but alive. They were stunned. They had been notified he was dead and had held a wake for him. Al-Shayea said he told his interrogators where to find a senior al-Zarqawi aide in Baghdad, revealed all he knew about al-Qaida, and denounced al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden as killers of innocents. He says he hasn't seen nor heard from the friend who accompanied him since they parted soon after entering Iraq.
Today his hair has grown back, he sports a thick black beard and he can move without difficulty. He credits the medical care he received, including 30 operations, at the hospital of U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison. He says that when he was handed over to the Americans a couple of days after his interrogation at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, he was scared because he had heard about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "But the care with which the American officers carried me down to the car when they came to take me made me relax," said al-Shayea. "One spoke Arabic and tried to put me at ease." After almost six months of medical care and interrogations during which al-Shayea said he was treated well, he was visited by three Saudi officers. "They told me they were there for my sake," said al-Shayea. "They allowed me to write a letter to my parents." They also asked him if he would tell his story publicly. He says he replied that he would have volunteered to do so even if they hadn't asked.
A couple of weeks later, in mid-2005, al-Shayea was flown home. His parents were at the airport. "I took my dad in my arms, crying, and kept asking for forgiveness," he said. He spent a couple of months in the hospital and then was moved to al-Ha'ir Jail where he says he was given a TV set, newspapers and plenty of food. He also read a lot of books. One of them — which he says he would never have imagined he would read — is the Arabic classic "One Thousand and One Nights."
By DONNA ABU-NASR, AP
At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists. The kingdom still has a way to go in cracking the jihadist mind-set. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees held in Iraq, according to Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser. They number hundreds, he said this month following a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dozens more are fighting alongside al-Qaida-inspired militants at a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.
Several hundred prisoners, as well as returnees from Guantanamo, are thought to have passed through the rehabilitation program. Al-Shayea says his change of heart began when he was visited by a cleric at al-Ha'ir Prison in Riyadh following his repatriation from Iraq. He says he put two questions to the cleric: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions? No and no, came the reply. "I realized that all along I was wrong," al-Shayea told The Associated Press in a two-hour interview at a Riyadh hotel before returning to an Interior Ministry compound that serves as a sort of halfway house for ex-jihadists rejoining Saudi society.
"There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death," he said.
Saudi Arabia's campaign against terrorism began in earnest after al-Qaida-linked militants struck three residential expatriate compounds in Riyadh in May 2003, killing 26 people. The government says it cracked down on charities suspected of using donations to finance terrorism, banned mosques from holding unlicensed religious sessions and warned preachers against inciting youths to jihad. Officials as well as the government-guided media began to clearly and unequivocally refer to suicide bombings as terrorism.
The Interior Ministry sponsored programs on government-run TV stations showing repentant jihadists warning youths against joining al-Qaida and clergymen trying to correct misconceptions about jihad and dealing with non-Muslims. Al-Shayea has appeared on Al-Majd, a Saudi religious TV channel. Three years ago it set up the prison program.
"The aim is to reform the youths, to listen to them and talk to them," said Ahmed Jailan, one of the clerics. "We also try to instill a sense of hope in them by telling them they still have the chance to make up for what they lost if they follow true Islam." The prisoners later appear before a panel of judges who decide whether they can move from prison to the Interior Ministry compound, where activities include reading, civic and religious courses, sports and family visits. They get help finding jobs and wives, and after release they get free medical care, monthly stipends and sometimes cars.
At the time he was first approached to join the insurgency, al-Shayea was already becoming a devout Muslim in his ultraconservative town of Buraida. He grew a beard, prayed five times a day and stopped listening to Arabic love songs he used to enjoy. He was 19 and jobless. Then he was contacted by a school friend whom he doesn't identify. "My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad," said al-Shayea. "He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad." "We didn't think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight against occupiers," said al-Shayea.
Finally the friend told him he was going to Iraq, and invited al-Shayea to join him. He was told to shave his beard and pack Western clothes to avoid looking like a would-be jihadist. He got a passport and an airline ticket to Syria. And he managed to save $1,600 — travel fees, he was told, that would go to smugglers, weapons training and al-Qaida's coffers. On a cool November night toward the end of the holy month of Ramadan, he donned a black T-shirt and jeans and told his parents he was going camping in the desert with his friends. He and his friend flew to Syria, a favored transit point for Iraq-bound fighters because Syria doesn't ask visiting Arabs for visas, and its 360-mile border with Iraq is thinly policed. A network of al-Qaida operatives sheltered him in Damascus, Aleppo and the border town of Abu-Kamal, and about two weeks later he and 23 other men were smuggled into Iraq. Four Iraqi teenagers guided them to the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. They saw Syrian border guards in the distance who fired in the air. "They didn't try to stop us. We were already in Iraq," al-Shayea said. At al-Qaim, the men were split into two groups. Al-Shayea said his group of 12 met an al-Qaida leader who had direct links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida chief in Iraq who was later killed by a U.S. airstrike. He took the men's money and gave each $100. "Then he asked us a question: 'Those who want to carry out martyrdom (suicide) attacks, raise your hands,'" said al-Shayea. "No one did." Al-Shayea's group then spent a week at the Sunni fundamentalist stronghold of Rawa before al-Shayea and another Saudi man were taken to Ramadi and finally Baghdad. Al-Shayea met his new "emir," or leader, an Iraqi who told him his first assignment was to take a fuel tanker to a Baghdad neighborhood to be collected by others. "I felt scared. I didn't know Baghdad at all, and I also didn't know how to drive heavy vehicles," he said.
Also, he says, he was never told that the truck would contain 26 tons of butane gas, rigged to explode outside the Jordanian Embassy. "That evening, we performed the last prayer of the day and had dinner — a dish of chicken and aubergines," said al-Shayea. "The emir gave me a crude map of my route." Two al-Qaida militants drove with al-Shayea, but then jumped out 1,000 yards from where he was supposed to park the truck and fled in a waiting car. "I felt something bad was about to happen," he said. The farther he drove, the more nervous he got until, 60 feet from the embassy, an explosion — believed triggered from afar — turned the back of the tanker into a fireball. "I saw the fire and I started to scream and pray," he said. "I looked around me and I saw everything had melted. My hands had turned black. I jumped from the window and started running without thinking of what I was doing." The blast killed nine people. Thinking he was an innocent victim and a Shiite by his fake ID card, passers-by took al-Shayea to a Shiite-run hospital. There he kept silent for several days until he finally told his doctors the truth. The world's first encounter with al-Shayea was on footage of his interrogation which was sent to Arab TV stations. Back in Buraida, his parents saw their son, face charred, head heavily bandaged, but alive. They were stunned. They had been notified he was dead and had held a wake for him. Al-Shayea said he told his interrogators where to find a senior al-Zarqawi aide in Baghdad, revealed all he knew about al-Qaida, and denounced al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden as killers of innocents. He says he hasn't seen nor heard from the friend who accompanied him since they parted soon after entering Iraq.
Today his hair has grown back, he sports a thick black beard and he can move without difficulty. He credits the medical care he received, including 30 operations, at the hospital of U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison. He says that when he was handed over to the Americans a couple of days after his interrogation at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, he was scared because he had heard about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "But the care with which the American officers carried me down to the car when they came to take me made me relax," said al-Shayea. "One spoke Arabic and tried to put me at ease." After almost six months of medical care and interrogations during which al-Shayea said he was treated well, he was visited by three Saudi officers. "They told me they were there for my sake," said al-Shayea. "They allowed me to write a letter to my parents." They also asked him if he would tell his story publicly. He says he replied that he would have volunteered to do so even if they hadn't asked.
A couple of weeks later, in mid-2005, al-Shayea was flown home. His parents were at the airport. "I took my dad in my arms, crying, and kept asking for forgiveness," he said. He spent a couple of months in the hospital and then was moved to al-Ha'ir Jail where he says he was given a TV set, newspapers and plenty of food. He also read a lot of books. One of them — which he says he would never have imagined he would read — is the Arabic classic "One Thousand and One Nights."
By DONNA ABU-NASR, AP
Saturday, July 28, 2007
We will not tolerate if Turkey thinks they can shuffle all their problems on the U.S. and the Iraqi´s
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will visit Turkey next month to discuss security issues, his spokesman said Saturday, as the Turkish government weighs a possible offensive into northern Iraq to thwart Kurdish separatists.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued the invitation to al-Maliki earlier this month and warned the incursion could occur if talks with the United States and Iraqi leaders failed to produce effective measures against the Kurdish guerrillas operating from bases in northern Iraq.
We will not tolerate if Turkey thinks they can shuffle all their problems on the U.S. and the Iraqi´s and keep moving back and forward on that border as you have done for decades, while others serves in others interests to be suicidal and other use that border to transport weaponry to Hezbollah and other places!
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued the invitation to al-Maliki earlier this month and warned the incursion could occur if talks with the United States and Iraqi leaders failed to produce effective measures against the Kurdish guerrillas operating from bases in northern Iraq.
We will not tolerate if Turkey thinks they can shuffle all their problems on the U.S. and the Iraqi´s and keep moving back and forward on that border as you have done for decades, while others serves in others interests to be suicidal and other use that border to transport weaponry to Hezbollah and other places!
Free speech
While Russia has said it believes in keeping open the door to dialogue with Hamas, analysts here saw little chance of Moscow brokering a Middle East breakthrough.
Everyone have their right to speak. Russia though shouldn´t take your-what-you-now-relation-is-with Britain into the Quartet and finding solutions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Everyone have their right to speak. Russia though shouldn´t take your-what-you-now-relation-is-with Britain into the Quartet and finding solutions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Stages
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Thousands of Palestinians stranded in Egypt for weeks will be allowed back into the Hamas-held Gaza Strip next week under a deal between Israel and Egypt, Palestinian officials said on Saturday.
The Egyptian Red Crescent estimated that roughly 5,000 Palestinians have been stranded in dusty Egyptian towns in north Sinai since Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip on June 14 and the main border crossings were closed. Palestinian officials estimate the number of stranded Gazans at between 6,000 and 7,000. Palestinian Minister of Prisoners Affairs Ashraf Ajrami said that Palestinians stuck on the Egyptian side of the border will be allowed to pass through Israel and back into Gaza as early as Tuesday. "They will enter Gaza through border points along the Egyptian-Israeli border. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for putting them in buses and transporting them back into Gaza," Ajrami said. Other Palestinian sources familiar with the deal said the Palestinians would cross the border in stages, rather than all at one time. The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been closed since Hamas's takeover. Hamas has rejected proposals to allow the stranded Gazans to return through other crossings controlled by Israel.
Palestinian militants fired a Qassam rocket into the western Negev Friday evening, several hours after an earlier Qassam landed in Ashkelon. The first rocket landed in an open field in the Ashkelon's southern industrial zone. The second rocket landed in a western Negev community, damaging several homes. As in the previous attack, no one was injured.Two more rockets were launched later Friday evening, one in Sderot and the second in a town nearby. Neither rocket caused damage or injuries. At least 7 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since Thursday. One of them struck a home in the western Negev city of Sderot.
The Egyptian Red Crescent estimated that roughly 5,000 Palestinians have been stranded in dusty Egyptian towns in north Sinai since Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip on June 14 and the main border crossings were closed. Palestinian officials estimate the number of stranded Gazans at between 6,000 and 7,000. Palestinian Minister of Prisoners Affairs Ashraf Ajrami said that Palestinians stuck on the Egyptian side of the border will be allowed to pass through Israel and back into Gaza as early as Tuesday. "They will enter Gaza through border points along the Egyptian-Israeli border. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for putting them in buses and transporting them back into Gaza," Ajrami said. Other Palestinian sources familiar with the deal said the Palestinians would cross the border in stages, rather than all at one time. The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been closed since Hamas's takeover. Hamas has rejected proposals to allow the stranded Gazans to return through other crossings controlled by Israel.
Palestinian militants fired a Qassam rocket into the western Negev Friday evening, several hours after an earlier Qassam landed in Ashkelon. The first rocket landed in an open field in the Ashkelon's southern industrial zone. The second rocket landed in a western Negev community, damaging several homes. As in the previous attack, no one was injured.Two more rockets were launched later Friday evening, one in Sderot and the second in a town nearby. Neither rocket caused damage or injuries. At least 7 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since Thursday. One of them struck a home in the western Negev city of Sderot.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Sorry Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
According to a report in the New York Times the Saudis view Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, seen here 14 July 2007, as an agent of Iran and appear to have stepped up efforts to weaken his government, providing funding for Sunni groups.
Which planet?
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and current President George W. Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire.
Yes..Of course and Russia is not a part of anything going on on this planet. You sits on another planet! Which planet?
Yes..Of course and Russia is not a part of anything going on on this planet. You sits on another planet! Which planet?
The new PA program presented by PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad
The new PA program presented by PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad on Friday includes the attainment of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement consisting of pre-1967 borders, Jerusalem as the capital of both states and the honoring of past agreements between the two. The platform also calls for a just and agreed-upon resolution to the refugee problem on the basis of UN resolutions.
The proposal, which was presented to PA ministers, requires the approval of the PA parliament. According to the new proposed principles, Fayad's government would end the anarchy in the PA and prevent citizens from moving around openly with weapons in Palestinians cities. Only PA security forces would have the right to bear arms.
The new PA platform also includes clauses on improving the status of women in Palestinian society, enhancing Palestinian education, preserving the environment, strengthening democratic institutions, upholding human rights, ensuring religious tolerance and guaranteeing cultural and political pluralism.
It also vows to battle corruption and fight against the use of religion to justify murder and destructive practices. Also Friday, Fayad confirmed that security corporation with Israel had been restored, but stressed that "more effort is required." The PA prime minister told Israel Radio that corporation was essential to avoiding conflicts regarding IDF operations in the area of the PA security forces.
Also Friday, Vice Premier Haim Ramon said that Israel should withdraw from most of the West Bank in a deal with the Palestinians. Ramon told Israel Radio that he supported a withdrawal from "most" of the West Bank, "except for large settlement blocs."
On Thursday, Olmert's aides confirmed that the prime minister wanted to formulate a declaration detailing what a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank would look like. However, Jerusalem officials stressed that they had not actually received the guidelines in writing and would therefore not give an official response.
The proposal, which was presented to PA ministers, requires the approval of the PA parliament. According to the new proposed principles, Fayad's government would end the anarchy in the PA and prevent citizens from moving around openly with weapons in Palestinians cities. Only PA security forces would have the right to bear arms.
The new PA platform also includes clauses on improving the status of women in Palestinian society, enhancing Palestinian education, preserving the environment, strengthening democratic institutions, upholding human rights, ensuring religious tolerance and guaranteeing cultural and political pluralism.
It also vows to battle corruption and fight against the use of religion to justify murder and destructive practices. Also Friday, Fayad confirmed that security corporation with Israel had been restored, but stressed that "more effort is required." The PA prime minister told Israel Radio that corporation was essential to avoiding conflicts regarding IDF operations in the area of the PA security forces.
Also Friday, Vice Premier Haim Ramon said that Israel should withdraw from most of the West Bank in a deal with the Palestinians. Ramon told Israel Radio that he supported a withdrawal from "most" of the West Bank, "except for large settlement blocs."
On Thursday, Olmert's aides confirmed that the prime minister wanted to formulate a declaration detailing what a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank would look like. However, Jerusalem officials stressed that they had not actually received the guidelines in writing and would therefore not give an official response.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers met Israeli leaders
The Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers met Israeli leaders Wednesday to discuss an Arab League peace plan, originally presented in 2002 and recently revived. Here are the main points and Israel's responses:
• Arab League: Israel must withdraw from all the territories it captured in the 1967 war — the West Bank, Golan Heights and east Jerusalem. (Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005).
Israel: Insists on border adjustments to reflect its security needs and Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Opposes division of Jerusalem. Peace talks with Syria broke down in 2000 though Israel offered withdrawal from the Golan to the international boundary.
• Arab League: In return for total withdrawal, Israel would receive "full normalization" of relations with all Arab states.
Israel: Welcomes peaceful relations with Arab states but insists on formal peace treaties with its neighbors.
• Arab League: An "agreed solution" to the Palestinian refugee issue would be negotiated, based on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 191.
Israel: Fears the reference to the U.N. resolution is a code for the "right of return," the Palestinian demand that the 700,000 refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation, and their 3 million descendants, have the right to reclaim their original homes in Israel. Israel believes refugees should receive compensation and be resettled where they are now or in the new Palestinian state.
• Arab League: An independent Palestinian state should be created with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel: Accepts creation of a Palestinian state but opposes handing over any part of Jerusalem. A past government offered to cede Arab sections of the city to the new state, but talks broke down.
Associated Press
• Arab League: Israel must withdraw from all the territories it captured in the 1967 war — the West Bank, Golan Heights and east Jerusalem. (Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005).
Israel: Insists on border adjustments to reflect its security needs and Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Opposes division of Jerusalem. Peace talks with Syria broke down in 2000 though Israel offered withdrawal from the Golan to the international boundary.
• Arab League: In return for total withdrawal, Israel would receive "full normalization" of relations with all Arab states.
Israel: Welcomes peaceful relations with Arab states but insists on formal peace treaties with its neighbors.
• Arab League: An "agreed solution" to the Palestinian refugee issue would be negotiated, based on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 191.
Israel: Fears the reference to the U.N. resolution is a code for the "right of return," the Palestinian demand that the 700,000 refugees from the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation, and their 3 million descendants, have the right to reclaim their original homes in Israel. Israel believes refugees should receive compensation and be resettled where they are now or in the new Palestinian state.
• Arab League: An independent Palestinian state should be created with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel: Accepts creation of a Palestinian state but opposes handing over any part of Jerusalem. A past government offered to cede Arab sections of the city to the new state, but talks broke down.
Associated Press
Killing Iraqi´s and soccer fans against the "enemies" to the region
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The death toll from two car bombs in Baghdad that targeted Iraqis celebrating the national team's win in the Asian Cup semifinal on Wednesday has reached 50, police said.
PM offers Abbas 'Agreement of Principles' on Palestinian statehood
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is offering to hold negotiations toward an "Agreement of Principles" for the establishment of a Palestinian state on most of the territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Olmert's proposal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is based on his view that it is important to first discuss issues that are relatively easy for the two sides to agree upon. No less important is Olmert's assessment that such an accord will enjoy the overwhelming support of the Israeli public and the Knesset.If Olmert's proposal is accepted by the Palestinians, the two sides will begin negotiations on the characteristics of the Palestinian state, its official institutions, its economy, and the customs arrangement it will have with Israel.
After an "Agreement of Principles," the two sides will tackle the more sensitive diplomatic issues, like final borders and the transit arrangements.
After an "Agreement of Principles," the two sides will tackle the more sensitive diplomatic issues, like final borders and the transit arrangements.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has called for opening Gaza
Gaza's worried business leaders are still trying to arrange a meeting with government officials in the West Bank to discuss the fallout from the closure, said Nasser el-Helou, who imports doors, windows and medicine.
Blair's new employer, the international diplomatic Quartet comprised of the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia, has not yet staked out a position. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has called for opening Gaza. After a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas, Blair is to return to the region in September, but by then it might already be too late for Gaza's economy. Since June, 3,190 factories and workshops in Gaza have closed and the remaining 20 percent have reduced production, Palestinian business leaders said. The U.N. has halted $93 million worth of projects because it couldn't bring in raw materials. Of 68,000 private sector workers who have been fired in recent weeks, 10,000 have already applied for assistance, a U.N. official said.
The closure of the crossings hurts every aspect of Gaza's economy.
In the case of the Hamada cannery, the losses begin with farmer Abed Abu Mustafa. The 42-year-old, four of his 10 children and five seasonal workers pick tomatoes on their farm in southern Gaza. Hamada pays the farmer $100 for every ton of tomatoes, and bought Abu Mustafa's crop before the closure. "This season, I can sell my tomatoes, but what about next season?" Abu Mustafa said during a demonstration outside Gaza's parliament, where farmers blocked the road with trucks to protest their uncertain future. Hamada said he's still canning tomatoes he's already paid for, and would store them in a warehouse, but that he wouldn't buy any more crops. He used to export most of his goods to the West Bank and sell the rest in Gaza's smaller market. Hamada hasn't fired his 60 workers yet, but he has shortened their shifts. Hamada still struggles along where others have shut down. The AG Garment factory halted production June 14, putting 240 people out of work. It's unable to deliver $38,000 worth of clothes to its Israeli contracting company, according to the Palestinian Private Sector Coordinating Council.
Source reuters
Blair's new employer, the international diplomatic Quartet comprised of the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia, has not yet staked out a position. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has called for opening Gaza. After a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas, Blair is to return to the region in September, but by then it might already be too late for Gaza's economy. Since June, 3,190 factories and workshops in Gaza have closed and the remaining 20 percent have reduced production, Palestinian business leaders said. The U.N. has halted $93 million worth of projects because it couldn't bring in raw materials. Of 68,000 private sector workers who have been fired in recent weeks, 10,000 have already applied for assistance, a U.N. official said.
The closure of the crossings hurts every aspect of Gaza's economy.
In the case of the Hamada cannery, the losses begin with farmer Abed Abu Mustafa. The 42-year-old, four of his 10 children and five seasonal workers pick tomatoes on their farm in southern Gaza. Hamada pays the farmer $100 for every ton of tomatoes, and bought Abu Mustafa's crop before the closure. "This season, I can sell my tomatoes, but what about next season?" Abu Mustafa said during a demonstration outside Gaza's parliament, where farmers blocked the road with trucks to protest their uncertain future. Hamada said he's still canning tomatoes he's already paid for, and would store them in a warehouse, but that he wouldn't buy any more crops. He used to export most of his goods to the West Bank and sell the rest in Gaza's smaller market. Hamada hasn't fired his 60 workers yet, but he has shortened their shifts. Hamada still struggles along where others have shut down. The AG Garment factory halted production June 14, putting 240 people out of work. It's unable to deliver $38,000 worth of clothes to its Israeli contracting company, according to the Palestinian Private Sector Coordinating Council.
Source reuters
Wonders of the world..
And you have one certificate as a new wonder of the world! How about we come over and make a Disney world there? And dump some rubbish on the first best spot! Oh..I forgot..Mickey Mouse has died! Well..I´m sure you could need some more roads or something! Yes..How about a camping place! That would be nice..With fires, caravans, dogs, music, some playing accordion ..and we sure can find some place to hang up our washed clothes on! Yes! Haaavaana gillaa haavaaanaa giiila..
Get those tractors out of there!
Get those tractors out of there!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Forced together..Living on the same planet..
BAGHDAD - The United States, Iran and Iraq have agreed to set up a security subcommittee to carry forward talks on restoring stability in Iraq, the U.S. envoy said Tuesday at the end of a second round of groundbreaking talks with his Iranian counterpart.
"We discussed ways forward, and one of the issues we discussed was the formation of a security subcommittee that would address at an expert or technical level some issues relating to security, be that support for violent militias, al-Qaida or border security," Ambassador Ryan Crocker said after the meeting that included lunch and spanned nearly seven hours. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said experts would meet as early as Wednesday to work out the structure and mechanism of the committee. "We hope that the next round of talks will be on a higher level if progress is made," he said at a separate news conference after the talks. But underscoring the rising tensions between the two foes, Crocker reiterated accusations that Iran is fueling the violence in Iraq by arming and training Shiite militias. He warned that no progress could be made unless Iranian actions change on the ground. "The fact is, as we made very clear in today's talks, that over the roughly two months since our last meeting we've actually seen militia-related activity that could be attributed to Iranian support go up and not down," Crocker said, citing testimony from detainees and weapons and ammunition confiscated in Iraq as evidence.
I guess we are all forced together on this planet..So it´s time to realize we have to sort things out together..Just like the cats on the yards..
"We discussed ways forward, and one of the issues we discussed was the formation of a security subcommittee that would address at an expert or technical level some issues relating to security, be that support for violent militias, al-Qaida or border security," Ambassador Ryan Crocker said after the meeting that included lunch and spanned nearly seven hours. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said experts would meet as early as Wednesday to work out the structure and mechanism of the committee. "We hope that the next round of talks will be on a higher level if progress is made," he said at a separate news conference after the talks. But underscoring the rising tensions between the two foes, Crocker reiterated accusations that Iran is fueling the violence in Iraq by arming and training Shiite militias. He warned that no progress could be made unless Iranian actions change on the ground. "The fact is, as we made very clear in today's talks, that over the roughly two months since our last meeting we've actually seen militia-related activity that could be attributed to Iranian support go up and not down," Crocker said, citing testimony from detainees and weapons and ammunition confiscated in Iraq as evidence.
I guess we are all forced together on this planet..So it´s time to realize we have to sort things out together..Just like the cats on the yards..
"Colonial thinking"
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denounced Britain's demands for the extradition of a suspect in the killing of Alexander Litvinenko as insulting and a relic of its colonial thinking.
"What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking," Putin was shown saying on Russian state television. "They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never been a British colony," Putin said.
"What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking," Putin was shown saying on Russian state television. "They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never been a British colony," Putin said.
Bring stability to Iraq
BAGHDAD - The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq sat down together Tuesday, seeking ways to use their influence to bring stability to Iraq. They gathered for the second set of talks in nearly two months despite rising tensions over Washington's allegations that Tehran is fueling the violence.
Blair
Palestinians don't view envoy as honest broker, see him as biased in favor of Israel, US.Officially, Blair was instructed to leave aside "final-status" issues on resolving the conflict, such as borders, Palestinian refugees and the governance of Jerusalem, raising questions about how effective he can be. His task also has been complicated by Palestinian infighting.
"This is an opportunity for direct engagement on issues solely related to Iraq"
BAGHDAD - The United States said ambassador-level talks with Iran in Baghdad on Tuesday will focus solely on the situation in Iraq despite rising tensions over American-Iranians detained by Tehran and Iranians held in U.S. custody in Iraq.
"This is an opportunity for direct engagement on issues solely related to Iraq," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Monday. "We are going to raise the need for Iran to match its actions with its words in seeking strategic stability in Iraq." McCormack said Iran has not taken any steps to help bring about a stable Iraq, a goal he said Iran professes to share with the United States. "We'll see, if, as a result of these engagements, they will change their behavior."
"This is an opportunity for direct engagement on issues solely related to Iraq," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Monday. "We are going to raise the need for Iran to match its actions with its words in seeking strategic stability in Iraq." McCormack said Iran has not taken any steps to help bring about a stable Iraq, a goal he said Iran professes to share with the United States. "We'll see, if, as a result of these engagements, they will change their behavior."
Monday, July 23, 2007
The difference?
Senior Israeli security official: Reports of Iran-Syria arms deal untrue (Haaretz)
So what? What makes the difference?
So what? What makes the difference?
Hezbollah guerrillas have moved most of their rockets in south Lebanon among civilians in villages
JERUSALEM - Hezbollah guerrillas have moved most of their rockets in south Lebanon among civilians in villages, an apparent attempt to avoid detection by Israel and U.N. troops, Israeli military officials said Sunday.
Lebanon criticized Israel for targeting civilian areas, while Israel said Hezbollah was to blame for operating among civilians and putting them at risk.
Last summer, many of Hezbollah's rocket batteries were located in unpopulated rural areas, where the guerrillas dug networks of tunnels and fortifications, the officials said. But the army's new intelligence indicates that those positions have now largely been abandoned in favor of populated villages, which provide better cover for the group's activities. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject. The U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended the war expanded UNIFIL, the international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, to 13,000 troops, entrusting it with ensuring that Hezbollah is not rearming near the Lebanon-Israel border.
Lebanon criticized Israel for targeting civilian areas, while Israel said Hezbollah was to blame for operating among civilians and putting them at risk.
Last summer, many of Hezbollah's rocket batteries were located in unpopulated rural areas, where the guerrillas dug networks of tunnels and fortifications, the officials said. But the army's new intelligence indicates that those positions have now largely been abandoned in favor of populated villages, which provide better cover for the group's activities. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject. The U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended the war expanded UNIFIL, the international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, to 13,000 troops, entrusting it with ensuring that Hezbollah is not rearming near the Lebanon-Israel border.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Well..Stop attacking them then!
LEWZHE, Iraq - The commander of Iraq-based Kurdish rebels said he believed Turkey will quickly follow its parliamentary elections Sunday with a long-anticipated offensive against his remote mountain bases. Murat Karayilan, the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, warned that his fighters were prepared for battle, but denied Ankara's charges that his group was using Iraqi soil to launch attacks against Turkish forces across the border.
Karayilan said that the autonomous Kurdish government in Iraq was not supporting his group. He described his group's bases in northern Iraq as primarily political indoctrination centers. An AP reporter, however, saw PKK guerrillas training on the use of light arms and doing endurance drills in full combat gear as he made his way to Lewzhe. "The arms market and merchants are our main sources of weapons," said Karayilan who said that his guerrillas recently ambushed and commandeered an Iranian truckload of weapons that was on its way to Lebanon. He said he commands about 10,000 people. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has protested to Ankara over cross-border shelling of Iraqi territory by the Turkish army and repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Al-Maliki has received an invitation from Erdogan to visit Turkey, but no date has been set. Karayilan charged that any Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq would be intended to thwart efforts by Iraq's Kurds to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
It´s the same old record we see in a lot of places! Don't give us some: "Turkey's concerns about the Kurdish entity in Iraq"! Get together with your fellow Kurds in Iraq and stop this meanings less suicide bombings in Turkey! Stop being suicidal like in some neurotic Bergman movie! And go back to the negotiation table! Put some political press on Turkey to negotiate! Take others to backing you up..I´m sure there are politicians and countries that want to see this conflict to end!And I´m sure Turkey have other things to do than driving that border back and forward, back and forward, back and forward..Turkey are in a major process in different aspects and political, inside and internationally! Get of those tracks you have been driving in for decades! Let it go! There is nothing there than land being marked of decades of driving back and forward! Take the step into the future! It´s good to make sure there are security, but start negotiate! Yes..Now is the time..Pronto!
And we know you ambushed and commandeered an Iranian truckload of weapons that was on its way to Lebanon. There are weapon transportations with Iranian made weaponry through Syria! Nasrallah and other militants don´t get their weapons falling down from the sky! How much Iran and Syria ever so deny it!
So get of those tracks! There are no justifications left to use that area for weapon transports and not to negotiate with the Kurds!
Karayilan said that the autonomous Kurdish government in Iraq was not supporting his group. He described his group's bases in northern Iraq as primarily political indoctrination centers. An AP reporter, however, saw PKK guerrillas training on the use of light arms and doing endurance drills in full combat gear as he made his way to Lewzhe. "The arms market and merchants are our main sources of weapons," said Karayilan who said that his guerrillas recently ambushed and commandeered an Iranian truckload of weapons that was on its way to Lebanon. He said he commands about 10,000 people. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has protested to Ankara over cross-border shelling of Iraqi territory by the Turkish army and repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Al-Maliki has received an invitation from Erdogan to visit Turkey, but no date has been set. Karayilan charged that any Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq would be intended to thwart efforts by Iraq's Kurds to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
It´s the same old record we see in a lot of places! Don't give us some: "Turkey's concerns about the Kurdish entity in Iraq"! Get together with your fellow Kurds in Iraq and stop this meanings less suicide bombings in Turkey! Stop being suicidal like in some neurotic Bergman movie! And go back to the negotiation table! Put some political press on Turkey to negotiate! Take others to backing you up..I´m sure there are politicians and countries that want to see this conflict to end!And I´m sure Turkey have other things to do than driving that border back and forward, back and forward, back and forward..Turkey are in a major process in different aspects and political, inside and internationally! Get of those tracks you have been driving in for decades! Let it go! There is nothing there than land being marked of decades of driving back and forward! Take the step into the future! It´s good to make sure there are security, but start negotiate! Yes..Now is the time..Pronto!
And we know you ambushed and commandeered an Iranian truckload of weapons that was on its way to Lebanon. There are weapon transportations with Iranian made weaponry through Syria! Nasrallah and other militants don´t get their weapons falling down from the sky! How much Iran and Syria ever so deny it!
So get of those tracks! There are no justifications left to use that area for weapon transports and not to negotiate with the Kurds!
Stop attacking them then! All of you!
Time to wake up Prime Minister Mr Nouri al-Maliki!
You have a mission! And if you going to be a big part in making history you can not let yourself being intimidated away from an accommodation with the Sunnis by sectarian thinking!
There is urgent need to to improve conditions in Sadiyah. The whole Iraq is important and the Iraqi´s does not want conflicts in Sadiyah! Not now and not later. I promise you that! So make it a secure place! We will keep a very close eye on Sadiyah! Do not ever think the world don´t see Sadiyah! None of you!
There is urgent need to to improve conditions in Sadiyah. The whole Iraq is important and the Iraqi´s does not want conflicts in Sadiyah! Not now and not later. I promise you that! So make it a secure place! We will keep a very close eye on Sadiyah! Do not ever think the world don´t see Sadiyah! None of you!
Three sisters were found stabbed to death in the Gaza Strip
Three sisters were found stabbed to death in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, raising suspicion they were killed by relatives because of suspected immoral behavior, a human rights organization said.
The three sisters, 16-year-old Nahed Hija and her sisters, 19-year-old Suha and 22-year-old Lina, were found dead from multiple stab wounds, buried in a shallow grave in the central Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, said Hamdi Shakkour of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Shakkour said they suspected the women were victims of "honor crimes," in which women are murdered by male relatives because of suspected intimate relations - not necessarily sex - outside of marriage. The Hamas force that polices the Gaza Strip said in a statement it was investigating the deaths.
The three sisters, 16-year-old Nahed Hija and her sisters, 19-year-old Suha and 22-year-old Lina, were found dead from multiple stab wounds, buried in a shallow grave in the central Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, said Hamdi Shakkour of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Shakkour said they suspected the women were victims of "honor crimes," in which women are murdered by male relatives because of suspected intimate relations - not necessarily sex - outside of marriage. The Hamas force that polices the Gaza Strip said in a statement it was investigating the deaths.
U.N.!
Now! Instead of being used every now and then as it suits for the moment in some propaganda balloon the U.N. should really take responsibility to demand that those little jihad fabrics iof children in Gaza stops! Or take them to trial for breaking the Geneva convention of children's rights!
Right way of living?
Palestinian militants from Islamic Jihad march during a funeral in the Gaza Strip, 06 July 2007. At least two activists of the Islamic Jihad were killed in an Israeli air raid in the north of the Gaza Strip, medical sources said. The deaths followed the killing of two Hamas militants by Israeli gunfire earlier in the day, also in Gaza.
I do never see happy faces on those jihadists. Just sad. Sooo sad eyes..In fact...they looks brainwashed..It have never crossed your minds that you actually might having a wrong way of living?..
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman on Sunday dismissed as a "media game" recent reports of a secret arms deal with Syria.
The Iranian news agency reported Sunday that Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, denied reports concerning a $1 billion Iranian weapons purchase for Syria in exchange for it avoiding peace talks with Israel. "These publications are aimed at damaging the good relations between Iran and Syria," he said. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman on Sunday dismissed as a "media game" recent reports of a secret arms deal with Syria.
Mohammad Ali Hosseini refused to provide confirmation of the deal and questioned how the media would know about it if it was confidential. "This is a media game," said Hosseini during his weekly news briefing. "It is not confirmed."
Mohammad Ali Hosseini refused to provide confirmation of the deal and questioned how the media would know about it if it was confidential. "This is a media game," said Hosseini during his weekly news briefing. "It is not confirmed."
Saturday, July 21, 2007
There are no such thing as safe haven for anyone on earth..
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Saturday he was troubled by a U.S. intelligence report that al Qaeda has become entrenched in a safe haven in Pakistan's tribal region near Afghanistan.
I would not use that words..because there are no such thing as safe haven for anyone on earth..
I would not use that words..because there are no such thing as safe haven for anyone on earth..
Cooperating in security issues?
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Syria was setting an "impossible threshold" for peace talks by demanding Israel commit to withdraw fully from the occupied Golan Heights before negotiations resume. Olmert said Israel was ready to withdraw from the Golan. "Certainly we will also have to make concessions," he said at a collective farm in northern Israel. But Assad's demand for a guarantee to remove Jewish settlers and troops from the entire territory before talks resumed "creates conditions that set an impossible threshold for the start of negotiations," Olmert said.
Yes...One wonder..What kind of relation that is..With one ambassador and another in one room and Israel in-some-hotel-some-place..And if Israel make some package-everything-is-already-ready-guaranties..What is there left to talk about really?
And of course as usual..Assad thinks he comes before the Palestinians..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070721/wl_nm/israel_syria_dc
Yes...One wonder..What kind of relation that is..With one ambassador and another in one room and Israel in-some-hotel-some-place..And if Israel make some package-everything-is-already-ready-guaranties..What is there left to talk about really?
And of course as usual..Assad thinks he comes before the Palestinians..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070721/wl_nm/israel_syria_dc
If you can spend billions of money, lives and time under year after year with "cracking down", you can take the time with diplomacy
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office, meanwhile, confirmed that he had received an invitation for his Turkish counterpart to visit the country to discuss Turkey's demand that Baghdad crack down on guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq but no date has been set. "I think that the date will be set soon," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
You have been "cracking down" for ages! Moving back and forward on those borders for decades! Yes..If you can spend billions of money, lives and time under year after year with "cracking down", you can take the time with diplomacy and solve the conflict with the Kurds!
You have been "cracking down" for ages! Moving back and forward on those borders for decades! Yes..If you can spend billions of money, lives and time under year after year with "cracking down", you can take the time with diplomacy and solve the conflict with the Kurds!
Friday, July 20, 2007
"Russia has not slammed the door on its colleagues"
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has not "slammed the door" on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, even though it has pulled out of the pact, Russian media quoted the country's foreign minister as saying on Friday.
"Russia has not slammed the door on its colleagues in the matter of discussing a Conventional Forces in Europe treaty," Itar-Tass quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying in Berlin where he met his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "We stand for preserving and strengthening the system of arms control. There are chances that we will be able to reach mutually acceptable agreements," Lavrov said. Earlier on Friday, a Russian foreign ministry department head told Interfax Russia wanted to start negotiating a revised CFE treaty in the autumn, adding a timeframe to a previous offer.
"Russia has not slammed the door on its colleagues in the matter of discussing a Conventional Forces in Europe treaty," Itar-Tass quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying in Berlin where he met his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "We stand for preserving and strengthening the system of arms control. There are chances that we will be able to reach mutually acceptable agreements," Lavrov said. Earlier on Friday, a Russian foreign ministry department head told Interfax Russia wanted to start negotiating a revised CFE treaty in the autumn, adding a timeframe to a previous offer.
Call on Syria to open direct peace talks
JERUSALEM - President Shimon Peres on Thursday called on Syria to open direct peace talks with Israel, urging Damascus to drop its demand that negotiations take place through mediators.
It seems that Assad speaks one thing and act another and seems only to be interested when it´s getting closer with talks with the Palestinians...And after some pulling the strings and making unrest, "resistance" with jihadists firing rockets among the Palestinians and have taken enough of time, stalling talks between Palestinians and Israel, making sure there is conflicts instead of understandings, he is to occupied with his duck farm for talks, making sure to look like he is interested one day and playing in his kindergarten the other, steeling more time!
It seems that Assad speaks one thing and act another and seems only to be interested when it´s getting closer with talks with the Palestinians...And after some pulling the strings and making unrest, "resistance" with jihadists firing rockets among the Palestinians and have taken enough of time, stalling talks between Palestinians and Israel, making sure there is conflicts instead of understandings, he is to occupied with his duck farm for talks, making sure to look like he is interested one day and playing in his kindergarten the other, steeling more time!
Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Israel (Reuters) - Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners on Friday as part of a U.S.-backed deal to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas Islamists took over the Gaza Strip last month. Some of the 250 or so prisoners, mostly members of Abbas's secular Fatah faction, kissed the ground as they were released from handcuffs at a military checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah and transferred from Israeli to Palestinian buses for a ceremony with Abbas at his presidential compound. Many of the prisoners waved Palestinian flags after their journey from the Kitsiyot prison in southern Israel. They were to be reunited shortly with families, some of whom turned out to cheer the handover from outside the checkpoint security fence. "We welcome home our men and women," said senior Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Shame on you Hamas!
You have put yourselves and your own interests before the Palestinian people ones again!
While Assad taps his chest playing smart..And the Shiite allie sits in Syria playing smart talking about hot, while people comes through Syria killing Shiite´s! Others being trapped in tunnels and Palestinians suffers at the borders.
When will you ever learn?
While Assad taps his chest playing smart..And the Shiite allie sits in Syria playing smart talking about hot, while people comes through Syria killing Shiite´s! Others being trapped in tunnels and Palestinians suffers at the borders.
When will you ever learn?
Cooperation..
Teams of medics have been dispatched to Rafah and to al-Arish hospital, 50 kilometers (about 35 miles) to the west, to treat the sick, in particular those with diabetes, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali said. A security source told AFP that police reinforcements had been sent to Rafah, that the road to Al-Arish had been closed in order to stop Palestinians from approaching the area.
Israel has said that an alternative crossing via the Jewish state should be used, allowing it to control who gets in and out of Gaza. However, the Islamist movement Hamas has said it will treat the Israeli crossing as a military target if it is used.
I really hope there are some cooperation between Israel, Egypt and European Union monitors..on the Rafah border. Hamas have not cooperate and are really a part of this turmoil at the border.
We notice Hamas is a part of the responsibility that Palestinians suffer at the border, by threatening with violence at an alternative crossing ! So..now it´s put to the record ..And strongly objects to that any Palestinians from different militant factions getting in right now. So we do hope you take your time to try to sort this people out and do some priorities to start with.
We do hope you can manage with help from European Union monitors so there will be no injuries in some uncontrolled rush..When it can be opened.
Israel has said that an alternative crossing via the Jewish state should be used, allowing it to control who gets in and out of Gaza. However, the Islamist movement Hamas has said it will treat the Israeli crossing as a military target if it is used.
I really hope there are some cooperation between Israel, Egypt and European Union monitors..on the Rafah border. Hamas have not cooperate and are really a part of this turmoil at the border.
We notice Hamas is a part of the responsibility that Palestinians suffer at the border, by threatening with violence at an alternative crossing ! So..now it´s put to the record ..And strongly objects to that any Palestinians from different militant factions getting in right now. So we do hope you take your time to try to sort this people out and do some priorities to start with.
We do hope you can manage with help from European Union monitors so there will be no injuries in some uncontrolled rush..When it can be opened.
Lebanon
The army command, in a communique, said the troops are tightening the noose on Fatah al-Islam terrorists and renewed its offer to them to surrender, stressing that their ability to maneuver has become "so tight."
As if there wasn´t a alliance before..
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday and pledged to strengthen the alliance between their countries, which are both under U.S.-led pressure.
Mixed messages from Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) - A statement aired by two private Afghan television channels and circulated in Kabul said his Hezb-i-Islami had halted its armed struggle and sought peace. But a Hekmatyar spokesman denied the statement.
"Hezb-e-Islami leader Hekmatyar has not issued any statement, it is an attempt to vilify him and spoil his image," Hekmatyar spokesman Haroon Zarghon told Reuters. "We will continue our jihad and we will never give up our armed struggle against the foreign troops and the Afghan government."
You mean jihad-killing-Muslims-killing-children-killing-each-other-killing-people-in-prayers- killing-donkeys and everything that moves..It´s tragic...really..
"Hezb-e-Islami leader Hekmatyar has not issued any statement, it is an attempt to vilify him and spoil his image," Hekmatyar spokesman Haroon Zarghon told Reuters. "We will continue our jihad and we will never give up our armed struggle against the foreign troops and the Afghan government."
You mean jihad-killing-Muslims-killing-children-killing-each-other-killing-people-in-prayers- killing-donkeys and everything that moves..It´s tragic...really..
The Lebanese army shelled militants cornered in parts of a Palestinian refugee camp
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - The Lebanese army shelled al Qaeda-inspired militants cornered in parts of a Palestinian refugee camp on Thursday and security sources said two more soldiers were killed in the fighting.
Lebanese troops, advancing behind a curtain of shell fire, stormed Fatah al-Islam's Headquarters in the northern camp of Nahr al-Bared Thursday pushing diehard terrorists to underground shelters.The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Lebanese troops, moved to establish control over the terrorists' last pocket of resistance in the camp's Saasaa sector after controlling their headquarters. It did not disclose further details. However, a resident of Nahr al-Bared who had evacuated the shanty town during lulls in the fighting, said the Saasaa sector is a narrow slum in the center of the camp, noting that Fatah al-Islam terrorists are entrenched in a network of tunnels that had been established in the 1970s to serve as air raid shelters. "It is going to be a tough last battle. These terrorists are under the ground and can emerge from burrows like rats. It wouldn't be easy," The source told Naharnet.
Lebanese troops, advancing behind a curtain of shell fire, stormed Fatah al-Islam's Headquarters in the northern camp of Nahr al-Bared Thursday pushing diehard terrorists to underground shelters.The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Lebanese troops, moved to establish control over the terrorists' last pocket of resistance in the camp's Saasaa sector after controlling their headquarters. It did not disclose further details. However, a resident of Nahr al-Bared who had evacuated the shanty town during lulls in the fighting, said the Saasaa sector is a narrow slum in the center of the camp, noting that Fatah al-Islam terrorists are entrenched in a network of tunnels that had been established in the 1970s to serve as air raid shelters. "It is going to be a tough last battle. These terrorists are under the ground and can emerge from burrows like rats. It wouldn't be easy," The source told Naharnet.
"Members of Hezb-i-Islami have stopped and refrained from brother killing and from the destruction of the country and assumed political activity"
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan rebel leader and Taliban and al Qaeda ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has declared a ceasefire in his battle against Afghanistan's government, he said in a statement.
Hekmatyar is wanted by the Afghan government and U.S. authorities, but the veteran fighter who once led the biggest mujahideen faction against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation has a history of changing sides and shifting alliances. Aired by two private television channels and circulated in Kabul, the statement said: "Members of Hezb-i-Islami have stopped and refrained from brother killing and from the destruction of the country and assumed political activity because it believes the Americans, like the British and Russians, will pull out (of Afghanistan)," said the statement obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
"Hence, now we have to unite for creating an Islamic system and start our political efforts so that we can provide a tranquil life and everlasting peace for our Muslim countrymen," it said. It was not immediately clear when and where the statement was issued and Hekmatyar's sympathizers could not be contacted for verification. An Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman said he was not aware of the statement and other government officials were not immediately available for comment. A Kabul-based Western diplomat said any peace move would be welcome, but reconciliation would be hard for Hekmatyar.
Hekmatyar is wanted by the Afghan government and U.S. authorities, but the veteran fighter who once led the biggest mujahideen faction against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation has a history of changing sides and shifting alliances. Aired by two private television channels and circulated in Kabul, the statement said: "Members of Hezb-i-Islami have stopped and refrained from brother killing and from the destruction of the country and assumed political activity because it believes the Americans, like the British and Russians, will pull out (of Afghanistan)," said the statement obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
"Hence, now we have to unite for creating an Islamic system and start our political efforts so that we can provide a tranquil life and everlasting peace for our Muslim countrymen," it said. It was not immediately clear when and where the statement was issued and Hekmatyar's sympathizers could not be contacted for verification. An Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman said he was not aware of the statement and other government officials were not immediately available for comment. A Kabul-based Western diplomat said any peace move would be welcome, but reconciliation would be hard for Hekmatyar.
So what´s the lesson?
"If the earthquake study shows the facility, built over what has turned out to be an active fault-line, needs to be reinforced, it might take much longer than a year before operations can resume", the Nikkei said.
We shall not have nuclear plants on active fault-lines..Shall we?
We shall not have nuclear plants on active fault-lines..Shall we?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Wind crafts is good..
It´s good to have in mind to try to take some considerations of moving birds, migratory birds, when to decide where..in which location to put up them. Because they can disturb the birds landmarks..And as a consequences of that it can effect the bird population and bird crashes into aeroplanes..of confused birds..
A fault line may run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 12 miles from the epicenter
I am worried," Mayor Hiroshi Aida said in ordering the closure. "The safety of the plant must be assured before it is reopened." Officials at Tokyo Electric, operator of the plant, said damage caused by the quake posed no danger to people or the environment. But damage was widely visible on the site, from cracked roads and buckled sidewalks to the charred outside wall of an electrical transformer building that caught fire. "To be honest, it's a mess," said company President Tsunehisa Katsumata, but he insisted fears of radioactive contamination were unfounded.
On Tuesday, the utility shocked the nation by releasing a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake, after earlier reporting only the transformer fire and a small leak of radioactive water. The new list of problems included the transformer fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste. It also said the leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was 50 percent bigger than announced Monday night. "We made a mistake in calculating the amount that leaked into the ocean," the company said in a statement. Spokesman Jun Oshima said the amount was still "one-billionth of Japan's legal limit." Even that list had to be revised. Tokyo Electric said later Wednesday that about 400 barrels containing low-level nuclear waste had tipped over at a storage facility at the plant during the quake, revising an earlier figure of 100. The impact from falling knocked the lids off about 40 barrels, spilling their contents onto the floor, spokesman Tsutomu Uehara told reporters in Tokyo. Uehara said no radiation had been detected outside the facility.
Concerns about nuclear safety echoed across Japan, which depends on 55 reactors for about 30 percent of its electricity needs. "Japan has a dense population so the human damage would be major here. There would be many deaths," Hideyuki Ban, a director of the civil group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told reporters. "I think that a quake-prone country should phase out its use of nuclear power." The International Atomic Energy Agency pressed Japan's government to undertake a thorough investigation of the damage to see if lessons could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere. Speaking in Malaysia, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei offered help from his U.N. watchdog agency. "I would hope, and I trust, that Japan would be fully transparent in its investigation of that accident," he said. "The agency would be ready to join Japan through an international team in reviewing that accident and drawing the necessary lessons."
Katsumata, Tokyo Electric's president, said the company would thoroughly study the impact of the earthquake. "We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly." Yet, while Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, executives at the plant admitted they had not foreseen such a powerful temblor hitting the facility. The plant's deputy superintendent, Masakazu Minamidate, said the strongest known quake in the region previously was a magnitude 6.5. "This was stronger than we expected," he said.
New data from aftershocks following Monday's offshore quake suggested a fault line may run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 12 miles from the epicenter. Minamidate said an onshore survey of fault lines had been completed, but not one offshore. While it was unclear how close the fault line involved in the quake is to the plant, Meteorological Agency official Osamu Kamigaichi said it might stretch under the site. Japan's Coast Guard said it would launch a study of the ocean floor off Kashiwazaki starting Friday to better map fault lines in the area.
By ERIC TALMADGE, AP
On Tuesday, the utility shocked the nation by releasing a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake, after earlier reporting only the transformer fire and a small leak of radioactive water. The new list of problems included the transformer fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste. It also said the leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was 50 percent bigger than announced Monday night. "We made a mistake in calculating the amount that leaked into the ocean," the company said in a statement. Spokesman Jun Oshima said the amount was still "one-billionth of Japan's legal limit." Even that list had to be revised. Tokyo Electric said later Wednesday that about 400 barrels containing low-level nuclear waste had tipped over at a storage facility at the plant during the quake, revising an earlier figure of 100. The impact from falling knocked the lids off about 40 barrels, spilling their contents onto the floor, spokesman Tsutomu Uehara told reporters in Tokyo. Uehara said no radiation had been detected outside the facility.
Concerns about nuclear safety echoed across Japan, which depends on 55 reactors for about 30 percent of its electricity needs. "Japan has a dense population so the human damage would be major here. There would be many deaths," Hideyuki Ban, a director of the civil group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told reporters. "I think that a quake-prone country should phase out its use of nuclear power." The International Atomic Energy Agency pressed Japan's government to undertake a thorough investigation of the damage to see if lessons could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere. Speaking in Malaysia, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei offered help from his U.N. watchdog agency. "I would hope, and I trust, that Japan would be fully transparent in its investigation of that accident," he said. "The agency would be ready to join Japan through an international team in reviewing that accident and drawing the necessary lessons."
Katsumata, Tokyo Electric's president, said the company would thoroughly study the impact of the earthquake. "We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly." Yet, while Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, executives at the plant admitted they had not foreseen such a powerful temblor hitting the facility. The plant's deputy superintendent, Masakazu Minamidate, said the strongest known quake in the region previously was a magnitude 6.5. "This was stronger than we expected," he said.
New data from aftershocks following Monday's offshore quake suggested a fault line may run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 12 miles from the epicenter. Minamidate said an onshore survey of fault lines had been completed, but not one offshore. While it was unclear how close the fault line involved in the quake is to the plant, Meteorological Agency official Osamu Kamigaichi said it might stretch under the site. Japan's Coast Guard said it would launch a study of the ocean floor off Kashiwazaki starting Friday to better map fault lines in the area.
By ERIC TALMADGE, AP
What are you doing?
Former Palestinian police officer, lies on a bed outside his home east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, in this photo taken Monday, July, 9, 2007. He claimed Hamas gunmen banged nails into his legs, trying to force him to confess to killing Hamas loyalists. A member of the Fatah movement, lies inside his house in the southern Gaza strip. Flies crawled over two blood-encrusted holes in Palestinian policeman legs, wounds that he said were made by nails hammered in by Hamas gunmen who tortured him.
The demonstrators complained that some of the detainees had been brutally tortured by Abbas's security forces in Nablus. They also accused the PA policemen of stealing the personal belongings of their sons.
In the Gaza Strip, a top Fatah leader, Zakariya al-Agha, accused Hamas of torturing dozens of Fatah activists over the past few weeks. "I've seen many forms of torture that were carried out by Israel, but what Hamas is doing is more brutal and ruthless," he said, noting that some detainees had died in Hamas-controlled prisons.
A Palestinian man identified only as Mohammed shows the bruises and welts on his back, in a hospital in Gaza City, 12 July 2007. The bruises on Mohammed's body and his swollen blue feet are the price he says he paid for being an officer loyal to the Fatah party in a Gaza Strip now ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.
Ambassador-level talks on Iraq
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's foreign minister said Wednesday that his government had accepted a U.S. request for ambassador-level talks on Iraq, to be held "in the near future.
Talk to them!
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Islamist militant group battling Lebanese troops at a Palestinian refugee camp said on Wednesday it was willing to resume talks to end the fighting, a move that came after it lost ground in a two-month-old battle.
"We don't want anything but for them to surrender. All of this is a media propaganda because the noose is tightening around them," a military source said.
Maybe so..maybe so..But it´s not so important why. The importance is that Lebanon show you are fair and mature enough, to give them some alternatives. Give them a reason to stay alive..
"We don't want anything but for them to surrender. All of this is a media propaganda because the noose is tightening around them," a military source said.
Maybe so..maybe so..But it´s not so important why. The importance is that Lebanon show you are fair and mature enough, to give them some alternatives. Give them a reason to stay alive..
And Mr President Bashar Assad
If you don´t have any positive, concrete, or any good to contribute with or to say other than showing up yourself and putting yourself before any one else on this planet, as a rotten spoiled child totally occupied by yourself, totally ignoring others with your stupid remarks: Shut up! Get yourself a adviser, a speaker or someone that have some respect for other people and some clue of what to not say! We have had enough of your stupid comments! Grow up!
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has reported 50 problems at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
KARIWA, Japan (Reuters) - A Japanese city ordered the world's biggest nuclear power plant to stay closed until safety was assured after an earthquake caused radiation leaks, as the U.N. nuclear watchdog said the utility had misjudged seismic risks.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has reported 50 problems at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northwestern Japan after a 6.8 magnitude tremor on Monday, and said on Wednesday it had revised up the level of radiation in water that leaked. "It's clear that this earthquake, as TEPCO, the operating company, indicated, was stronger than what the reactor was designed for," International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
Quake nuclear spill bigger than first thought. Japan's largest nuclear facility suffered a leak of radioactive material after Monday's 6.8 magnitude earthquake that was larger than first reported.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has reported 50 problems at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northwestern Japan after a 6.8 magnitude tremor on Monday, and said on Wednesday it had revised up the level of radiation in water that leaked. "It's clear that this earthquake, as TEPCO, the operating company, indicated, was stronger than what the reactor was designed for," International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
Quake nuclear spill bigger than first thought. Japan's largest nuclear facility suffered a leak of radioactive material after Monday's 6.8 magnitude earthquake that was larger than first reported.
"Imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people"
BAGHDAD - The U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, adding that information from him indicates the group's foreign-based leadership wields considerable influence over the Iraqi chapter. Bergner said al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between al-Masri and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri. "In fact, communication between the senior al-Qaida leadership and al-Masri frequently went through al-Mashhadani," Bergner said. "Along with al-Masri, al-Mashhadani co-founded a virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006," Bergner said. "The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest efforts by al-Qaida to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people."
"Palestinians and Arabs choose peace"
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told Bush in a phone call that both "Palestinians and Arabs choose peace," according to a statement carried by the state Saudi Press Agency.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
"This reminds us yet again of the serious threats posed by nuclear power"
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (OneWorld) - The huge fire and radioactive leak at a nuclear site in Japan caused by Monday's earthquake have prompted new calls for restraints on the use of nuclear technology. "This reminds us yet again of the serious threats posed by nuclear power," said Jan Beranek of Greenpeace International, one of the world's leading environmental groups.
BERLIN - A fire at a German nuclear power plant and the temporary shutdown of another has boosted supporters of plans to close the country's atomic energy program, despite concerns that coal- or gas-fired replacements will produce more greenhouse gases. The controversy led the utility Vattenfall AG to dismiss its German head over last month's fire at the Kruemmel plant in northern Germany and has sharpened tension over energy policy in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. The debate could be further stoked by an earthquake Monday in northwestern Japan that caused a fire and a radioactive water leak at a nuclear power facility.
UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will ask President Bush on Tuesday to have a top U.S. official attend a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change in September because "American participation is crucially important." The secretary-general told a news conference Monday before he headed to Washington to meet Bush that he wants the September meeting to provide "strong political (momentum) and guidelines" for a major meeting in Bali, Indonesia in December on a new global climate pact.
BERLIN - A fire at a German nuclear power plant and the temporary shutdown of another has boosted supporters of plans to close the country's atomic energy program, despite concerns that coal- or gas-fired replacements will produce more greenhouse gases. The controversy led the utility Vattenfall AG to dismiss its German head over last month's fire at the Kruemmel plant in northern Germany and has sharpened tension over energy policy in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. The debate could be further stoked by an earthquake Monday in northwestern Japan that caused a fire and a radioactive water leak at a nuclear power facility.
UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will ask President Bush on Tuesday to have a top U.S. official attend a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change in September because "American participation is crucially important." The secretary-general told a news conference Monday before he headed to Washington to meet Bush that he wants the September meeting to provide "strong political (momentum) and guidelines" for a major meeting in Bali, Indonesia in December on a new global climate pact.
Minor radiation leaks after an earthquake in Japan
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (Reuters) - Officials at the world's biggest nuclear power plant said on Tuesday there had been more minor radiation leaks after an earthquake in Japan that killed nine people and forced thousands from their homes. The latest admissions by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have reignited fears about nuclear safety in a country that relies on atomic power for one-third of its electricity but has faced repeated cover-ups of past accidents by atomic power utilities. "I believe that nuclear power plants can only be operated with the trust of the people," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo, about 250 km (155 miles) south-east of Niigata prefecture, where the quake struck on Monday morning.
At least 10 Palestinians have died in Egypt since the border closed due to complications from pre-existing medical conditions
RAFAH, Egypt (Reuters) - Khowla Salah al-Ghalban, nine months pregnant and barely able to move, lies on a concrete floor in the Egyptian border town of Rafah as flies buzz around her. She hopes to make it home to Gaza before her baby comes.
The Rafah crossing point into Gaza -- the impoverished strip's main outlet to the outside world -- has been largely shut since June 9, shortly before Hamas Islamists routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and took control of the territory. While the stranded Palestinians include some holidaymakers, Egyptian officials said most are Gazans like Ghalban who sought medical treatment abroad. Many show off fresh surgical scars and present visitors with medical reports detailing their treatment. The Egyptian side of Rafah, where many of the Palestinians have sought shelter, is a sparsely populated patch of sand littered with garbage and dotted with low-rise concrete housing and frequent security checkpoints. Proposals to allow stranded Palestinians to cross into Gaza through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing have run into obstacles. Some Palestinian officials object to using that crossing because it is subject to Israeli controls.
Aid agencies said a recent U.N. assessment mission to Sinai found most Palestinians were managing to get by on their own, and were in better shape than during some previous closures. "The big concern is if this thing drags out. Because even if you can support yourself for a while, if it keeps going indefinitely it begins to strain all those resources," said Erma Manoncourt, a UNICEF representative in Cairo. Last week, Egypt deployed hundreds of additional police to reinforce its border over fears that Palestinian militants could try to storm it after around 500 Palestinian demonstrators in el-Arish demanded its reopening, security sources said.
By Abigail Hauslohner
The Rafah crossing point into Gaza -- the impoverished strip's main outlet to the outside world -- has been largely shut since June 9, shortly before Hamas Islamists routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and took control of the territory. While the stranded Palestinians include some holidaymakers, Egyptian officials said most are Gazans like Ghalban who sought medical treatment abroad. Many show off fresh surgical scars and present visitors with medical reports detailing their treatment. The Egyptian side of Rafah, where many of the Palestinians have sought shelter, is a sparsely populated patch of sand littered with garbage and dotted with low-rise concrete housing and frequent security checkpoints. Proposals to allow stranded Palestinians to cross into Gaza through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing have run into obstacles. Some Palestinian officials object to using that crossing because it is subject to Israeli controls.
Aid agencies said a recent U.N. assessment mission to Sinai found most Palestinians were managing to get by on their own, and were in better shape than during some previous closures. "The big concern is if this thing drags out. Because even if you can support yourself for a while, if it keeps going indefinitely it begins to strain all those resources," said Erma Manoncourt, a UNICEF representative in Cairo. Last week, Egypt deployed hundreds of additional police to reinforce its border over fears that Palestinian militants could try to storm it after around 500 Palestinian demonstrators in el-Arish demanded its reopening, security sources said.
By Abigail Hauslohner
Iran-U.S. talks soon
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said on Tuesday his country saw a "high possibility" that a second round of talks between the United States and Iran on the issue of Iraqi security would take place in the "near future."
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iran and the United States will hold a second round of talks about Iraq's security shortly, to follow up a landmark meeting held in May, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday. I can confirm that there will be a second round of talks in Baghdad soon. It will be at the ambassadorial level. Iraq will be there and the talks will be about Iraq's stability and security," Zebari told Reuters by telephone. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters he saw a "high possibility" a second round would take place in the "near future." Underlining the sense of chaos, at least four people were killed and five others wounded by a car bomb inside a parking lot opposite the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, police said. The Iranian and the U.S. ambassadors to Iraq last met in Baghdad on May 28 -- the most high-profile meeting of the two foes in almost three decades.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iran and the United States will hold a second round of talks about Iraq's security shortly, to follow up a landmark meeting held in May, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday. I can confirm that there will be a second round of talks in Baghdad soon. It will be at the ambassadorial level. Iraq will be there and the talks will be about Iraq's stability and security," Zebari told Reuters by telephone. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters he saw a "high possibility" a second round would take place in the "near future." Underlining the sense of chaos, at least four people were killed and five others wounded by a car bomb inside a parking lot opposite the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, police said. The Iranian and the U.S. ambassadors to Iraq last met in Baghdad on May 28 -- the most high-profile meeting of the two foes in almost three decades.
BAGHDAD
U.S. troops stormed Tuesday into an insurgent-controlled area of a turbulent province where police reported that gunmen — some wearing military clothing — had massacred 29 Shiite villagers the night before.
They have no lawyers!
TEHRAN, Iran - Two Iranian-Americans detained here on national security charges appeared Monday for the first time on state television, with one saying in a brief video clip that his foundation may have targeted "the world of Islam."
I must say Iran gives not a trustworthy impression at all with your totally lack of justice system for the people! How can you even claim some one responsible without giving them legal representatives ? And we shall believe what your authority's claims without lawyers? We shall just swallow and not questioning anything without a juridical system? And you shall be trustworthy overall? And you broadcast a statement that "they may have targeted the world of Islam"! Without a legal system, representatives or anything! Just like that! Make them say they are guilty for targeting Islam without lawyers. Are you competing with al-Qaida in the video-clip world? Which is winning the most stupid untrustworthy clip?
I must say Iran gives not a trustworthy impression at all with your totally lack of justice system for the people! How can you even claim some one responsible without giving them legal representatives ? And we shall believe what your authority's claims without lawyers? We shall just swallow and not questioning anything without a juridical system? And you shall be trustworthy overall? And you broadcast a statement that "they may have targeted the world of Islam"! Without a legal system, representatives or anything! Just like that! Make them say they are guilty for targeting Islam without lawyers. Are you competing with al-Qaida in the video-clip world? Which is winning the most stupid untrustworthy clip?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Check your back-up generators!
Black smoke rises from a burning electrical transformer near one of Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Plant's four reactors after a fire broke out, following a strong earthquake in Kashiwazaki, northwestern Japan, Monday, July 16, 2007. The nuclear plant automatically shut down during the 6.8-magnitude quake. The fire was put out shortly after noon and there was no damage to the reactors.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia
KIRKUK, Iraq - Twin suicide car bombings exploded within 20 minutes of each other in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, killing at least 71 people and wounding around 150 in attacks targeting a Kurdish political office and ripping through an outdoor market, police said.
BEIRUT, Lebanon AP) — A bomb hit a U.N. peacekeeping force patrol on a coastal road in southern Lebanon on Monday, a Lebanese security official said, the second such attack targeting the force in less than a month. The bomb struck the convoy as it was driving through the village of Qassimiyeh near the southern port city of Tyre, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
And others are occupied making war..To busy with themselves and their idiocy, to think about anyone else, disasters or natural disasters. And with all those foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan..I mean it´s not just the U.S. there, and U.N. forces being targeted..Plotting attacks in London, Saudi Arabia, threatening Iran (if we should take that serious..I mean some having their routes through there.. ) and other countries in the Middle East, etc..etc..Yes one can say some having war against the whole world. And with Iranian made weapons and 80 percent coming through Syria's border they can´t secure..And all the weaponry to militants in Palestinian camps and Hezbollah..One could say Iran and Syria are a part of it, with that psychopath in Qatar and his roads to Damascus, Algeria, West Afghanistan, his little jihadists in Lebanon and jihad fabrics in Gaza tec..etc..! Such a nice "religion" you have promoted..Iran! Killing children..against the "enemies"..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=AmPArEhVzPANxahl83GNhLcLewgF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_unifil;_ylt=AjJg9GbmMsg2N.wsIJgjnkkLewgF
BEIRUT, Lebanon AP) — A bomb hit a U.N. peacekeeping force patrol on a coastal road in southern Lebanon on Monday, a Lebanese security official said, the second such attack targeting the force in less than a month. The bomb struck the convoy as it was driving through the village of Qassimiyeh near the southern port city of Tyre, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
And others are occupied making war..To busy with themselves and their idiocy, to think about anyone else, disasters or natural disasters. And with all those foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan..I mean it´s not just the U.S. there, and U.N. forces being targeted..Plotting attacks in London, Saudi Arabia, threatening Iran (if we should take that serious..I mean some having their routes through there.. ) and other countries in the Middle East, etc..etc..Yes one can say some having war against the whole world. And with Iranian made weapons and 80 percent coming through Syria's border they can´t secure..And all the weaponry to militants in Palestinian camps and Hezbollah..One could say Iran and Syria are a part of it, with that psychopath in Qatar and his roads to Damascus, Algeria, West Afghanistan, his little jihadists in Lebanon and jihad fabrics in Gaza tec..etc..! Such a nice "religion" you have promoted..Iran! Killing children..against the "enemies"..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=AmPArEhVzPANxahl83GNhLcLewgF
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070716/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_unifil;_ylt=AjJg9GbmMsg2N.wsIJgjnkkLewgF
A strong earthquake in Japan
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (Reuters) - A strong earthquake killed at least three people in Japan on Monday, injured more than 500, flattened houses and started a small fire at the world's largest nuclear power plant.
The world's most recognized Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, delivered a stinging tirade against Palestinian infighting
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The world's most recognized Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, delivered a stinging tirade against Palestinian infighting on Sunday in his first public appearance in decades in the Israeli city of Haifa.
The reading by Darwish, known as the "Palestinian national poet," came a month after deadly battles between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip claimed dozens of casualties. Darwish, 66, described the infighting as a "a public attempt at suicide in the streets." He spoke to a packed auditorium in the port city and his remarks were broadcast live over Arab satellite television. "We became independent," Darwish said mockingly. "Gaza became independent of the West Bank, and for one people, two countries, two prisons."
Darwish said bitterly the two governments made the possibility of creating a Palestinian state "one of the seven wonders of the world." Darwish, who was born in a village near Haifa, also directed barbs at Israel. He blamed the Jewish state for not taking advantage of a historic chance at peace. It was Darwish's first poetry reading in Haifa since he left the port city in 1970 to study in the former Soviet Union.
While Haifa is city known for its coexistence among Jews and Arabs, it was a flourishing mostly Palestinian town before Israel won the 1948 war that followed its creation. Most of its original residents fled or were forced out in 1948, and the town, nicknamed "the Bride of the Sea," looms large in Palestinian literature. Since 1970, Darwish only briefly returned for personal engagements. He joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization, living in different Arab countries. He resigned from the PLO in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, signed with Israel. Darwish moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996. His poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages, and he has won many international prizes for his work.
The reading by Darwish, known as the "Palestinian national poet," came a month after deadly battles between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip claimed dozens of casualties. Darwish, 66, described the infighting as a "a public attempt at suicide in the streets." He spoke to a packed auditorium in the port city and his remarks were broadcast live over Arab satellite television. "We became independent," Darwish said mockingly. "Gaza became independent of the West Bank, and for one people, two countries, two prisons."
Darwish said bitterly the two governments made the possibility of creating a Palestinian state "one of the seven wonders of the world." Darwish, who was born in a village near Haifa, also directed barbs at Israel. He blamed the Jewish state for not taking advantage of a historic chance at peace. It was Darwish's first poetry reading in Haifa since he left the port city in 1970 to study in the former Soviet Union.
While Haifa is city known for its coexistence among Jews and Arabs, it was a flourishing mostly Palestinian town before Israel won the 1948 war that followed its creation. Most of its original residents fled or were forced out in 1948, and the town, nicknamed "the Bride of the Sea," looms large in Palestinian literature. Since 1970, Darwish only briefly returned for personal engagements. He joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization, living in different Arab countries. He resigned from the PLO in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, signed with Israel. Darwish moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996. His poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages, and he has won many international prizes for his work.
By DIAA HADID, AP
Algeria
ALGIERS (Reuters) - The Algerian army halted an attack by Al Qaeda militants and killed four in the troubled northeastern Kabylie region, newspapers reported on Sunday.
About 50 members of the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb attacked two police stations in Yaourene village in Tizi Ouzou province, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Algiers, early on Saturday, El Watan and Liberte dailies said. Well-armed, the militants surrounded the police stations and clashed with security forces for two hours before fleeing after the intervention of helicopters, the newspapers said, citing residents and security sources.
About 50 members of the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb attacked two police stations in Yaourene village in Tizi Ouzou province, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Algiers, early on Saturday, El Watan and Liberte dailies said. Well-armed, the militants surrounded the police stations and clashed with security forces for two hours before fleeing after the intervention of helicopters, the newspapers said, citing residents and security sources.
Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of suicide and roadside bombs
KABUL (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed six Afghans working for a Western security company in the east of the country on Sunday, the provincial governor said. Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of suicide and roadside bombs in the last two years as Taliban insurgents switch to Iraq-style tactics after suffering heavy casualties in conventional attacks.
And more weapons against peace
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist rebels fired mortar bombs at the opening ceremony of a Somali peace meeting on Sunday but missed their heavily-guarded target.
And more weapons..
NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese troops advanced for the first time on Sunday into a Palestinian refugee camp as they battled al Qaeda-inspired militants, and two soldiers were killed raising the military death toll to 100.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
A frequent torrent of weapons
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Forty people were killed in northwest Pakistan on Sunday in a surge of militant violence which officials said could be aimed at avenging the commando assault on a radical mosque in the capital last week.
About 90 people, most of them paramilitary soldiers and police, have been killed in attacks in the northwest since July 3, when security forces in Islamabad surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex following clashes with gunmen. Commandos stormed the fortified mosque-school compound a week later killing 75 supporters of hardline clerics, most of them militant gunmen. Early on Sunday, 14 people, 11 of them paramilitary soldiers, were killed in a suicide-bomb ambush on a patrol in the scenic Swat valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Hours later, a suicide bomber targeted a police recruiting centre in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, in the same province, killing 26, many of them young men taking a police entrance exam, police said. Dozens were wounded.
A a police recruiting centre...it´s very "Iraqi´ch targets"..Yes..al-Qaida like..No..There are no lack of weapons every here and there..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070715/wl_nm/pakistan_violence_dc;_ylt=Ahe2ZfCFnJMrAV0Yoh.FK7Jm.3QA
About 90 people, most of them paramilitary soldiers and police, have been killed in attacks in the northwest since July 3, when security forces in Islamabad surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex following clashes with gunmen. Commandos stormed the fortified mosque-school compound a week later killing 75 supporters of hardline clerics, most of them militant gunmen. Early on Sunday, 14 people, 11 of them paramilitary soldiers, were killed in a suicide-bomb ambush on a patrol in the scenic Swat valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Hours later, a suicide bomber targeted a police recruiting centre in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, in the same province, killing 26, many of them young men taking a police entrance exam, police said. Dozens were wounded.
A a police recruiting centre...it´s very "Iraqi´ch targets"..Yes..al-Qaida like..No..There are no lack of weapons every here and there..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070715/wl_nm/pakistan_violence_dc;_ylt=Ahe2ZfCFnJMrAV0Yoh.FK7Jm.3QA
Mr Shimon Peres is back
Israel's eldest statesman Shimon Peres swears in as the Jewish state's ninth President during a ceremony at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem July 15, 2007.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres was sworn in as Israel's president on Sunday and pledged to seize the opportunity to encourage long-delayed efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution to conflict in the Middle East.
"When the opportunity for peace is created, it must not be missed," Peres said in his inaugural speech to parliament, after taking the oath of office. It is a president's duty to "encourage peace processes at home, with our neighbors and the entire region," Peres added in his remarks to a house packed with Israeli well-wishers and dignitaries. Peres won a Nobel prize along with the late Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for a 1993 interim peace deal, Israel's first with the Palestinians, that led to the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. As head of state, Peres will have the critical job of granting pardons or commuting sentences for prisoners in Israeli jails, including dozens of Palestinian inmates Israel has pledged to release in a boost to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Peres served as prime minister from 1984 to 1986 then again in 1995 after Rabin's assassination, though he never won an Israeli election for the position decisively. He left Labour in 2005 to help found the centrist Kadima party alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister who has been in a coma since suffering a stroke the following year. Peres, Israel's ninth head of state, had to step down as Olmert's deputy in order to become president, and resign as parliament's longest-serving member of 48 years. While the presidency does not entail any direct involvement in policymaking, Israeli presidents traditionally speak out on key issues, often influencing political decisions. The president also meets world leaders.
Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres was sworn in as Israel's president on Sunday and pledged to seize the opportunity to encourage long-delayed efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution to conflict in the Middle East.
"When the opportunity for peace is created, it must not be missed," Peres said in his inaugural speech to parliament, after taking the oath of office. It is a president's duty to "encourage peace processes at home, with our neighbors and the entire region," Peres added in his remarks to a house packed with Israeli well-wishers and dignitaries. Peres won a Nobel prize along with the late Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for a 1993 interim peace deal, Israel's first with the Palestinians, that led to the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. As head of state, Peres will have the critical job of granting pardons or commuting sentences for prisoners in Israeli jails, including dozens of Palestinian inmates Israel has pledged to release in a boost to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Peres served as prime minister from 1984 to 1986 then again in 1995 after Rabin's assassination, though he never won an Israeli election for the position decisively. He left Labour in 2005 to help found the centrist Kadima party alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister who has been in a coma since suffering a stroke the following year. Peres, Israel's ninth head of state, had to step down as Olmert's deputy in order to become president, and resign as parliament's longest-serving member of 48 years. While the presidency does not entail any direct involvement in policymaking, Israeli presidents traditionally speak out on key issues, often influencing political decisions. The president also meets world leaders.
Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem
Thank you!
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has agreed to stop hunting up to 180 wanted Fatah militants who pledge to end attacks against the Jewish state.
That´s good! Because we all know none of you can go on like this in the long run! There are other more important things to do than fighting! There are Palestinians at the border to Gaza and to Syria that badly needs help and some changes!
That´s good! Because we all know none of you can go on like this in the long run! There are other more important things to do than fighting! There are Palestinians at the border to Gaza and to Syria that badly needs help and some changes!
You stop this use of mahogany!
Or you will sit on your precious mahogany and make all have difficulty in breathing in the end! Yes.. use your satellites and take a good look how much rain forests there is left! The rain forests control the climate from the south pol to the north pol! The forests control the damp state all over the earth and the cleaning of gases that now makes the greenhouse effect, because the forests have been exploited and can´t take care of those gases properly! You sitting on the lungs of the earth, on your precious furniture, floors and in boats!
Idiots!
Idiots!
Yeah..right..
"The happy (man) is the one that God has chosen him to be a martyr."
So why don´t we all just lay down a die? You go first!
And then we can leave the earth to the donkeys, the dogs and other animals! As that would be the purpose of God´s creation!
Idiot!
So why don´t we all just lay down a die? You go first!
And then we can leave the earth to the donkeys, the dogs and other animals! As that would be the purpose of God´s creation!
Idiot!
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied on Friday to denounce the government for ordering an army crackdown on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad.
We worries about the water resources on earth..
And the quality of the water! And the fact that they exploit the rain forests- the lungs of the earth. Of course there will be warmer and lack of oxygen when there is no lungs to take care of a lot of stuff.
And al-Qaida and Jihadists are occupied dictating people over the whole Middle East, spreading death and destruction, in the name of God, while their "leaders" thinks they sitting safer than the rest of us, having dinner! And Iran and Syria want to make us believe that there are some "circles that wants to disturb their relations with Turkey", that transports weapons while Hezbollah is rearming..After they "wanted just a little war"..While Palestinians are suffering at the border to Syria, Gaza and in Lebanon and Hamas stops fruit transports..
Give it back!
JERUSALEM - Jerusalem's mayor has asked the Turkish government to return a 2,700-year-old tablet uncovered in an ancient subterranean passage in the city, sugggesting that it could be a "gesture of goodwill" between allies. Known as the Siloam inscription, the tablet was found in a tunnel hewed to channel water from a spring outside Jerusalem's walls into the city around 700 B.C. — a project mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Chronicles. It was discovered in 1880 and taken by the Holy Land's Ottoman rulers to Istanbul, where it is now in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski made the request in a Thursday meeting with Turkey's ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, Lupolianski spokesman Gidi Schmerling said Friday. Lupolianski suggested the tablet's return could be a "gesture of goodwill" from Turkey, Schmerling said Friday. Turkey and Israel are close regional allies. An official at Turkey's embassy in Israel said the request would be passed on to the Turkish government. A transfer of ownership was unlikely, the official said, but Turkey would look into lending the tablet to Israel or creating a replica. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as required by embassy regulations. In the Bible's account, the Siloam water tunnel was constructed by King Hezekiah to solve one of ancient Jerusalem's most pressing problems — its most important water source, the Siloam spring, was outside the city walls and vulnerable to the kingdom's Assyrian enemies.
The tunnel, around 500 yards long, was hollowed out of the bedrock by two teams of diggers starting from each end, according to the tablet, which was installed to celebrate the moment the two teams met underground, "pickax to pickax." "When there were only three cubits more to cut through, the men were heard calling from one side to the other," the Hebrew inscription recounts. The tunnel and spring are located in what is today the east Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Silwan, controlled by Israel since 1967.
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, AP
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski made the request in a Thursday meeting with Turkey's ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, Lupolianski spokesman Gidi Schmerling said Friday. Lupolianski suggested the tablet's return could be a "gesture of goodwill" from Turkey, Schmerling said Friday. Turkey and Israel are close regional allies. An official at Turkey's embassy in Israel said the request would be passed on to the Turkish government. A transfer of ownership was unlikely, the official said, but Turkey would look into lending the tablet to Israel or creating a replica. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as required by embassy regulations. In the Bible's account, the Siloam water tunnel was constructed by King Hezekiah to solve one of ancient Jerusalem's most pressing problems — its most important water source, the Siloam spring, was outside the city walls and vulnerable to the kingdom's Assyrian enemies.
The tunnel, around 500 yards long, was hollowed out of the bedrock by two teams of diggers starting from each end, according to the tablet, which was installed to celebrate the moment the two teams met underground, "pickax to pickax." "When there were only three cubits more to cut through, the men were heard calling from one side to the other," the Hebrew inscription recounts. The tunnel and spring are located in what is today the east Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Silwan, controlled by Israel since 1967.
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, AP
Destruction, weapons and rockets..and more weapons..
Smoke billows from damaged buildings hit by a Lebanese army artillery shell, during a fighting with Islamic militants, at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Friday July 13, 2007. Islamic militants fired back volleys of rockets at the Lebanese army on Friday as troops pounded the remaining suspected hideouts of the Fatah Islam fighters holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon.
No there are no lack of weapons and rockets all over. It seems to be a frequent torrent of weapons in both Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. And Iran and Syria are totally out of responsibility when it comes to take some measures against this torrent of weapons and fighters coming into Iraq through Syria, weapons from Iran or to others like Hezbollah?
No there are no lack of weapons and rockets all over. It seems to be a frequent torrent of weapons in both Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. And Iran and Syria are totally out of responsibility when it comes to take some measures against this torrent of weapons and fighters coming into Iraq through Syria, weapons from Iran or to others like Hezbollah?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Gunmen killed five Iraqi government guards
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen killed five Iraqi government guards outside the ministry of the interior in central Baghdad on Friday, police said.
Syria must be very vulnerable if you should be attacked..With no security on your borders..
"60 to 80 foreign fighters enter Iraq "in any given month" — 70 percent of them through Syria." Syria insists it is trying to stop the flow but that it is impossible to seal off the long desert border.
Well...Syria must be very vulnerable if you should be attacked..With no security on your borders..And it seems very strange to be able to guarantee that there is no weapons transport to Hezbollah from your other border.
Well...Syria must be very vulnerable if you should be attacked..With no security on your borders..And it seems very strange to be able to guarantee that there is no weapons transport to Hezbollah from your other border.
Monday, July 09, 2007
6 months...
AMMAN, Jordan - A Jordanian court sentenced a man to six months in prison Monday for killing his pregnant sister — an "honor killing" the man said was necessary to uphold his family's reputation. The court justified the lenient sentence, saying it was warranted due to the "state of fury" that led to the woman's slaying.
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