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Car bombs 'target Israel envoys' in India and Georgia

2012-02-13T10:11:00.002-08:00

Bombers have targeted staff at Israeli embassies in India and Georgia, officials say, with Israel accusing Iran of masterminding the attacks.

Witnesses said a motorcyclist placed a device on an embassy car in Delhi, causing a blast that hurt four people - one seriously. A bomb underneath a diplomat's car in Tbilisi was defused.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was behind both incidents.

But Iranian officials denied the claims as "sheer lies".

'Terror exporter'

One of the victims of the Delhi bombing, the wife of a defence ministry official, was in a "critical but stable" condition, according to AFP news agency. It quoted a doctor as saying she had undergone spinal surgery.

Mr Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud party MPs that there had been "two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians".

"Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world," he said.

He also blamed Iran for recent plots to attack Israeli targets in Thailand and Azerbaijan that were prevented.

And he suggested that the militant Islamist Hezbollah movement was also involved.

Israel's foreign ministry said the country had the ability to track down those who carried out the attacks.

But Iran's state news agency Irna quoted the country's ambassador in India as denying involvement.

"Any terrorist attack is condemned and we strongly reject the untrue comments by an Israeli official," said Mehdi Nabizadeh in comments translated by Reuters news agency.

International condemnation

"These accusations are untrue and sheer lies, like previous times."

In a statement, India's Foreign Minister SM Krishna pledged a full investigation, adding: "The culprits will be brought to justice at the earliest.

AFP quoted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as condemning the attacks, adding the US "stands ready to assist with any investigations of these cowardly actions". UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was "shocked and appalled" by the bombings.

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, in Jerusalem, says security at Israeli embassies has been tightened in recent months following warnings of potential attacks, after Iran accused Israel of a series of attacks on its nuclear scientists.

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said one of them, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, died last month when motorcyclists placed a "sticky bomb" on his car - a technique similar to that used in previous attacks attributed to the work of Israel's Mossad.

Similarities seen in the Delhi blast could be an indication of the aggressors sending a message that attacks in Tehran will be repaid in kind, he added.

After the explosion in Delhi, Indian TV showed pictures of a burning car near the embassy.

Bomb squad

The area around the vehicle was later cordoned off and forensic experts and the bomb squad were examining the burnt out remains.

The embassy is guarded by several layers of security and is in a well-defended area of central Delhi, close to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official residence.

David Goldfarb, the spokesman for Israel's Delhi embassy, said the diplomat's car was close to the building on Aurangzeb Road when the explosion went off.

He said they had no details as to who was behind the attack.

Officials in Georgia said an explosive device was attached to the bottom of a diplomat's car in the capital, Tbilisi, but was found and defused before it detonated.

Mossad chief travelled to Washington to gauge US reaction to Iran strike

2012-02-13T10:05:00.003-08:00

The head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo, made a secret trip to Washington earlier this month to gauge the likely US reaction to an independent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

The highly sensitive content of Mr Pardo's discussion with his American counterparts has been revealed in a Newsweek article entitled 'Obama's Dangerous Game With Iran'.

Unnamed US officials claim the Israeli security chief's line of questioning to CIA chief David Petraeus ran: "What is our posture on Iran? Are we ready to bomb? Would we [do so later]? What does it mean if [Israel] does it anyway?"

Mr Petraeus told a Senate Select Committee in a public hearing broadcast live on US television last month that he had met with Mr Pardo to discuss Israel's growing concern over Iran's nuclear aspirations.

When asked in the same briefing if Israel intends to strike, James Clapper, director of US national intelligence, told the committee chair that he would prefer to answer her question behind closed doors.

US sources quoted in the Newsweek report added that Israel has refused to share with the US a "significant" amount of intelligence regarding its military preparations.

sraeli officials refused to respond to the article on Monday, which goes on to question how much influence the US president has over Israel and how far the Obama administration will be willing to go to prevent Iran's nuclear armament.

According to Yehuda Ben Meir, a former Israeli deputy minister of foreign affairs and expert on Israel-US relations, full US backing is by no means a prerequisite for an Israeli strike.

"It's a matter of degrees of grey – will the US apply strong pressure on Israel to hold off on attack or will it say, 'we don't think this is the right time to act but it's your decision'. The outcome depends on a very nuanced exchange at the highest possible level," Mr Ben Meir said.

"The situation is developing day by day. More and more, the US position is going out on a limb and making it clear that it sees a nuclear Iran as an unacceptable danger to the world and if they decide to, they can prevent it."

Washington has so far held a clear line on the issue of Iran, asking for time and space for sanctions to work. But while the Iranian economy has suffered a major dint as a result of combined US and EU economic isolation, news that India has emerged as the largest customer of Iranian oil, flouting an international trade embargo, will undoubtedly lessen the crippling effect of sanctions that the US is hoping for.

On Monday, Vice Admiral Mark, who leads the US naval fleet in the Gulf, added muscle to Washington's repeated assertions that it has not ruled out a military solution to the Iranian nuclear threat should sanctions fail

The Washington Post: Threats of war cloud hopes for Middle East

2012-02-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Fears of an as-yet-undefined Middle Eastern war are darkening the horizons of a Middle East that only a year ago was celebrating the fall of dictators, the ascent of people power and the promise of a new era of democracy.
Iranian threats to mine the Strait of Hormuz raise the specter of conflict between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Warnings from Israel that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities open up the possibility of a region-wide conflict.
Most worryingly of all, as shells rain down on the Syrian city of Homs and TV screens across the region replay gory scenes of casualties captured on videos posted on YouTube, there is now little doubt that Syria is in the early stages of a civil war, one whose potentially profound ramifications provoke jitters far beyond its borders.
Although a wider war is by no means inevitable, 2012 is already proving a dark sequel to the hope and possibility of 2011, as the demands of ordinary people for greater freedoms collide with the competing agendas of big powers in the region’s most volatile heart.
“There are two different trajectories in the Middle East,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. While “North Africa is moving toward more democracy,” he said, the Levant region — including Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — is “moving toward confrontation and sectarian conflict. It is a much darker, gloomier trajectory.”
Despite chaos in Cairo and confusion in Tripoli, the three North African nations ofTunisia, Egypt and Libya are getting on with the task, however messily, of building new democracies after a year in which authoritarian leaders in each country were deposed.
But in the Arab heartlands stretched between Israel and Iran, the awakening of democratic aspirations has stirred also ancient rivalries and more recent grudges across a network of crisscrossing fault lines, any one of which could crack and trigger all the rest.
“It feels like anywhere could explode, without knowing why, at any time,” said Umm Haya, a Syrian living in Baghdad, reflecting the widespread sense of unease among many living beyond Syria’s borders. “The whole region is inflammable.”
At the center of it all is Syria, whose nearly year-long revolt began as an overwhelmingly peaceful popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad but now is being reshaped into a far wider struggle for influence.
‘Syria will explode’
Unlike Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, whose relatively limited regional reach ensured their revolts were contained within their borders, Syria lies at the nexus of a web of strategic alliances, geopolitical interests and religious jealousies that would be upended were the regime there to fall.
“Libya imploded. Syria will explode,” said a diplomat from a non-Western country interviewed in Damascus. “And it will explode across the whole region.”
It is not only that Syria’s religious and ethnic makeup complicates an essentially grass-roots uprising against decades of tyranny. Assad’s minority Alawite clan, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, controls most key positions in the security forces spearheading the effort to suppress the unrest, lending a sectarian dimension to a revolt dominated by the country’s Sunni majority

Independent: Aleppo bears the brunt in another day of carnage and defiance

2012-02-11T03:29:00.000-08:00

At least 28 people were killed when two explosions ripped through state security buildings in Aleppo yesterday, widening Syria's conflict to a regime stronghold which has so far escaped major unrest.

One of the blasts tore through a street outside the city's Military Intelligence Directorate. Footage broadcast by state television showed rubble strewn over the road and five corpses lying under blankets to one side of the street.

According to a state TV presenter, who was filmed crying as the footage was beamed back, a number of children playing in a nearby park were killed in the attack. It was not possible to confirm the account.

The second blast hit a police headquarters in another part of the city. State media said at least 175 people were injured in the explosion.

The government blamed the blasts, the first since three similar attacks hit Damascus in December and January, killing dozens, on "terrorists". Opposition figures, however, accused the Baathist regime of staging the incidents to try to undermine the opposition.

The activists from the Local Coordinating Committees, who have been working to spread word of the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, claimed that security forces opened fire and killed seven people after the blasts.

The claim was repeated by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Yesterday's carnage in Aleppo came as the Syrian army continued to pound the besieged city of Homs with rocket and tank fire. Activists described the scenes of bloodshed and mayhem as President Assad's generals maintained their operation against rebel-held neighbourhoods in the city.

One man, who called himself Yusef, told The Independent he had been sick after visiting one of the makeshift field hospitals which doctors and volunteers are using to treat the wounded. "There was a woman there with no head," he said. "It had been blown off her shoulders. I couldn't look at her."

Another, who said his name was Basel Fouad, claimed there were still families trapped under the collapsed masonry of battered apartment blocks. "When they attack a house, they don't just hit it with one rocket. They hit the same house three or four times until it is destroyed," he said.

Activists and rights groups say many hundreds of people have been killed in Homs since the Syrian army launched its latest offensive last week.

According to Syria expert Joshua Landis, the ferocity of the Homs siege is a result of the anger being voiced among some regime supporters – many of whom are drawn from the same Alawite sect as President Assad – who feel the ruling elite's response to the anti-government uprising has been ineffective. "His supporters are saying he needs to smash the opposition," he said.

Telegraph: Protests planned for anniversary of Mubarak's downfall

2012-02-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

Strikes and demonstrations are planned to protest against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, a committee of generals which took over the reins of power when Mr Mubarak was forced to resign on

11 Feb last year.

Chaired by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi - an old ally of the former president - the council has been accused of being as repressive as the regime it replaced.

Hundreds demonstrated outside the defence ministry in Cairo after Friday prayers yesterday, chanting: "Down with military rule".

Last January, Asmaa Mahfouz, a young opposition activist, recorded a Youtube video that helped inspire Egyptians to rise up against Mr Mubarak.

"Maybe we can have freedom, justice, honour and human dignity," she said. "I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square and I will stand alone and I'll hold up a banner."

She urged other Egyptians to join her and "demand our human rights, our fundamental human rights", adding: "This entire government is corrupt - a corrupt president and corrupt security forces."

Less than a month after Ms Mahfouz posted this video on 18 Jan, mass protests had swept away Mr Mubarak.

Yesterday, however, Ms Mahfouz, now 27, was marching again, this time against the ruling generals.

The April 6 youth movement, which first emerged in opposition to Mr Mubarak, issued a statement calling for strikes against the military regime. The group urged Egyptians "to support these strikes in order to end the unjust rule and build a nation in which justice, freedom and dignity prevail".

The generals oversaw parliamentary elections last year, which were won by hardline Islamist parties. They have promised to hand over power when a new president is chosen.

However, there is no clear timetable laying down when this will happen. Before presidential elections can be held, a new constitution must first be drafted and approved by a referendum. In the meantime, demonstrations against the generals have frequently been suppressed by security forces.

Guardian: Egypt's politicians are still under the spell of the military

2012-02-11T03:14:00.001-08:00

The protests over Egypt's recent football tragedy are symptomatic of daily life in the ongoing Egyptian revolution. Even now, hardly a month, week or day goes by without someone else losing their life for freedom

, or being wounded in the struggle. In essence the revolution is a struggle for legitimacy between the Egyptian parliament, the army and the establishment, and the people in Tahrir Square.

FINANCIAL TIMES : Raucous start for Egypt first free parliament

2012-01-24T04:03:00.001-08:00

Egypt’s first freely elected parliament got off to a raucous start at its inaugural session in Cairo on Monday, held just two days ahead of the anniversary of the January 25 revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak, the former leader.

The previous parliament did little more than rubber stamp legislation presented by Mr Mubarak’s ministers. The new assembly is unlikely to be as pliant.

Dozens of new parliamentarians attended the first session wearing bright yellow sashes printed with the message “No to Military Trials for Civilians.”, referring to the thousands of Egyptians who have been tried in military courts by the country’s interim military rulers.

The inauguration began with a prayer to the hundreds of Egyptians who died during the revolution.

“I invite the distinguished assembly to stand and read the fatiha (Muslim prayer) in memory of the martyrs of the January 25 revolution ... because the blood of the martyrs is what brought this day,” said Mahmoud al-Saqa, 81, a member of the liberal Wafd party, who as oldest member of the house acted as speaker.

One by one members of the new assembly, answering a roll call, took the microphone to vow to protect the republican system, the interests of the people and “to respect the constitution and the law.”

However, controversy erupted when Mamdouh Ismail, an Islamist deputy from a small Salafi party, added the qualifying phrase “in whatever does not contradict God’s law”, prompting a rebuke from the speaker who asked him to stick to the original text.

Numerous Salafi deputies tried to add similar phrases to their vows, but with almost perfect timing the speaker’s assistant cut them off before they could add the phrase.

Those still determined to slip the phrase in began their vow with it.

The assembly is dominated by Islamists who, after decades of repression by the country’s former rulers, captured almost two-thirds of the seats in elections late last year.

Deputies from Freedom and Justice, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, form the largest bloc in the new parliament with 46 per cent of the seats. Nour, a party formed last year by ultraconservative Salafi Islamists, has a quarter of the seats.

The Salafi’s electoral gains were the biggest surprise of the Egyptian election. Their strong showing has discomfited the Muslim Brotherhood, which fears they will try to out flank them on Islamic grounds, dragging them into hardline positions that could rattle Egypt’s foreign partners or the army.

Unlike the Brotherhood, the Salafis want Egypt’s new constitution – to be drafted by a committee selected by parliament – to stipulate the full implementation of Islamic law.

Once the parliamentarians were sworn in, the session degenerated into a shouting match over procedures to choose the speaker of the house.

The FJP had agreed with other main political forces ahead of the inaugural session to appoint Saad al-Katatni, one of its senior officials, to the post.

However, other candidates noisily insisted on the right to address the parliament and present themselves to the assembly.

Mr Katatni was duly elected speaker and in his acceptance speech thanked the military council for keeping its promise to hold elections. He vowed “the revolution continues” – a reference to the slogan of protesters determined to unleash another wave of demonstrations against the ruling military council.

“We will not be content until all the aims of the revolution have been realised,” he said. “We will avenge the martyrs [killed during the uprising against Mr Mubarak] through fair, effective and fast trials and we will rebuild Egypt as a national, democratic, constitutional and modern state.”

The country’s military rulers had brought forward by more than a month the date of the opening session in a bid to sideline activists organising anniversary protests on January 25 aimed at pressing the generals to hand over power to civilians immediately.

About 200 protesters demonstrated in front of parliament chanting “we want bread, freedom and social justice” and “down with military rule, down with Mubarak; we are back to the days of Mubarak”.

Robert Fisk: In the line of fire: Tom Hurndall

2012-01-21T19:43:00.001-08:00

I don't know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of 'human shields' who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because – looking back over the history of that terrible war – Hurndall's journals show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. "I may not be a human shield," he wrote on 17 March from his Amman hotel. "And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers' lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes."

Hurndall got it about right, didn't he? It wasn't so simple as war/no war, black and white, he wrote. "Things I've heard and seen over the past few weeks prove what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but... the air war that's proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn't discriminate between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe hundreds of thousands, just to save thousands of American soldiers having to fight honestly, hand to hand. It is wrong." Oh, how many of my professional colleagues wrote like this on the eve of war? Not many.

We pooh-poohed the Hurndalls and their friends as groupies, even when they did briefly enter the South Baghdad electricity station and met one engineer, Attiah Bakir, who had been horrifyingly wounded 11 years earlier when an American bomb blew a fragment of metal into his brain. "You can see now where it struck," Hurndall wrote, "caving in the central third of his forehead and removing the bone totally. Above the bridge of his broken nose, there is only a cavity with scarred skin covering the prominent gap..."

Hurndall's picture of Attiah Bakir shows him as a distinguished, brave man who refused to leave his place of work as the next war approached. He was silenced only when one of Hurndall's friends made the mistake of asking what he thought of Saddam's government. I cringed for the poor man. 'Minders' were everywhere in those early days. Talking to any civilian was almost criminally foolish. Iraqis were forbidden from talking to foreigners. Hence all those bloody minders (many of whom, of course, ended up working for Baghdad journalists after Saddam's overthrow).

Hurndall had a dispassionate eye. "Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many stars as now in the western deserts of Iraq," he wrote on 22 February. "How can somewhere so beautiful be so wrought with terror and war as it is soon to be?" In answer to the questions asked of them by the BBC, ITV, WBO, CNN, Al Jazeera and others, Hurndall had no single reply. "I don't think there could be one, two or 100 responses," he wrote. "To each of us our own, but not one of us wants to die." Prophetic words for Tom to have written.

You can see him smiling selflessly in several of his snapshots. He went to cover the refugee complex at Al-Rweished and moved inexorably towards Gaza where he was confronted by the massive tragedy of the Palestinians. "I woke up at about eight in my bed in Jerusalem and lay in until 9.30," he wrote. "We left at 10... Since then, I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris..."

Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. "While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle... It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, 'We are international volunteers. Don't shoot!'. That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can't be sure where from..."

Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 when – in his mother's words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act.

"Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper." He was a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most of us have dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.

Independent: EU s toughest sanctions yet put Iran on final warning over nuclear programme

2012-01-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

The toughest sanctions yet imposed on Iran will be unveiled by the European Union on Monday amid warnings it could be the last chance to resolve the nuclear stand-off before military strikes are considered.

The punitive measures will include embargoes on oil, the country's central bank and financial institutions, with the aim of driving the Tehran regime to the negotiating table as it faces its revenue lifeblood being choked off.

Failure to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear weapons programme through the EU's sanctions, alongside similar moves by the US, would inevitably lead to pressure by Israel for air strikes. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Tel Aviv yesterday to discuss the unfolding scenario and, according to diplomatic sources, dissuade Benjamin Netanyahu's government from taking pre-emptive action.

Details of the economic offensive show the extent to which Europe and the US intend to put Iran in a trade stranglehold while, at the same time, revealing the problems in enforcing the measures. The EU countries which buy 25 per cent of Iran's oil output are also the ones affected the worst by the eurozone crisis – Greece, Portugal and Spain. They will have to pay more for alternative supplies and also to modify refineries, but there are, at present, no plans by other member states to bail them out.

There is also apprehension that the embargo may end up by creating an oil shortage which will drastically push up prices, actually helping the beleaguered Iranian regime. China, a large-scale purchaser of Iranian fuel will, it is believed, continue with existing contracts, while other major buyers such as India, Japan and South Korea have indicated they will have to find alternative sources of supply before jettisoning Iranian oil.

The uncertainties have forced the EU to put a review system in place to monitor the effect of the sanctions. Iranian clients such as Greece will be given an extended time period, of between three and eight months, to find replacement for Iranian supplies.

The policy will be reassessed if it appears to be backfiring, with the price of oil rising steeply and the weakened economies going into tailspins.

Intense negotiations have been held with other members of OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to try to persuade them to raise production. Western diplomats insist there are strong signs that Saudi Arabia and producers in the Gulf, fierce Sunni rivals of Shia Iran, will help. The issue was discussed during a visit to Bahrain by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the highly influential former head of Saudi intelligence, earlier this week.

The UK's trade links with Iran are small, with only 0.7 % of oil, worth £147m out of a total import bill of £19.4bn, coming from the country. Exports of goods and services from Britain in 2010 amounted to £414m – a fall of around 41 per cent from the previous year. Import of goods from January to September last year were around £178m.

Information obtained by The Independent shows there are six Iranian companies operating in the UK – Bank Saderat, Bimeh Iran Insurance, Bank Sepah, Melli Bank, NPC and the National Iranian Oil Company. Some of these may be on the sanctions list being drawn up over the weekend. Five British companies – Shell, BP, Rio Tinto, BAT and Clontarf – continue to operate in Iran and will be affected by both the EU oil sanctions and the US regulations on counties trading with Tehran.

The Central Bank of Iran will be on the sanctions list and there will be a freeze on the movement of the country's gold reserves held abroad, putting further strain on trading activities and triggering what President Ahmadinejad complained was "the heaviest economic onslaught on a nation in history".

The value of the national currency, the rial, has fallen to an all-time low of 18,000 to a dollar, a drop of 6,000 in a month. With fresh tightening of the screw to come, the foreign minister, Ali Akber Salehi, warned Gulf states against putting themselves in a "dangerous position" if they sided with the West and raised production. The minister claimed, at the same time, that the US, in particular, was "playing a two-faced game". "They are flexing their muscles in public but also secretly saying 'come and talk with us'," he said.

HAARETZ : Egypt to announce final results of parliamentary elections

2012-01-21T19:02:00.001-08:00

Elections officials are expected to announce on Saturday the final results of Egypt's parliamentary polls, which were conducted over three stages lasting from November through January.

Results come two days before the new parliament, with 498 elected members and 10 appointed members, is scheduled to hold its first session.

Preliminary results indicate that Islamist parties - which were allowed to be licensed following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak last year - secured around 70 per cent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, or People's Assembly.

The prime task of the new parliament will be to pick a committee tasked with drafting a new constitution for Egypt.

Elections for the less powerful Shura Council, or upper house of parliament, are to be held in two stages, with voting taking place between January 29 and February 22.

HAARETZ : Final results: Muslim Brotherhood wins sweeping victory in Egyptian elections

2012-01-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

The Muslim Brotherhood's electoral coalition has won 38 percent of seats allocated to party lists for Egypt's parliament, with Islamists of various stripes taking more than two thirds of the assembly, in line with their own forecasts.

According to final results issued by the High Elections Committee on Saturday, the hardline Islamist Nour Party won 29 percent of list seats. The secular New Wafd and the Egyptian Bloc coalition came third and fourth respectively.

Under a complex electoral system, two thirds of seats in Egypt's 498-seats lower house are decided by proportional representation on closed party lists. The other third are contested by individual candidates.

Earlier this month, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns met Mohamed Morsi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), in Washington's highest level outreach to the Islamist group as part of a series of meetings with Egyptian political figures in Cairo.

Nuland said Burns did not meet hardline Salafists, which have also logged strong showings in early rounds of voting and espouse an even more conservative view of Islam that some have compared to Afghanistan's Taliban.

independent : Assad s tanks withdraw from opposition-held town

2012-01-20T05:41:00.000-08:00

Syrian government tanks and armoured vehicles have pulled back from an embattled mountain town near Damascus, witnesses said, as a month-long Arab League fact-finding mission expired.

The withdrawal from Zabadani left the town under the control of the opposition, activists said. It had witnessed heavy exchanges of fire between army troops and anti-government military defectors over the past six days.

The 10-month uprising against the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, has become increasingly militarised and chaotic as frustrated regime opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight against government forces.

According to a protocol signed by the Syrian government, an Arab League observer mission ended yesterday, but can be renewed for another month. The mission has been mired in controversy, with the opposition claiming it served as a cover for the regime to continue its brutal crackdown.

The League will discuss on Sunday whether or not to extend the mission.

Independent : 2011: A year when freedom lost ground

2012-01-20T05:24:00.000-08:00

The world was a less free place last year despite the toppling of dictators in the Middle East, which represented the "most significant challenge to authoritarian rule since the fall of Soviet Communism", according to a report.

The Freedom in the World report – produced annually by the NGO Freedom House – showed that while the Arab Spring brought major gains for political rights and civil liberties, there have also been "harsh and sometimes murderous reaction[s]" to the uprisings in the Middle East, China and other regions.

Overall, the levels of freedom enjoyed by people in 26 countries declined in 2011, while only 12 showed a net improvement, according to the report. It is the sixth consecutive year in which the number of countries becoming "less free" has outnumbered those becoming more so.

"The Middle East is a part of the world that has been immobile and apathetic for decades. But now, things are actually happening that are probably the most important gains for freedom in a decade," said Arch Puddington, Freedom House's vice-president for research.

"On balance, there has been a slight decline across the world but in the key areas, there has been a move towards freedom. In areas untouched by the democratic revolution, you are seeing movement, so it is encouraging.

"In Tunisia and Egypt, gains this year can turn into retreats in the future," added Mr Puddington. "One of the world's biggest threats is Egypt, it is a huge challenge. There are elections, the constitution will be written and the formation of a government is ahead, all potentially major challenges to freedom. It is the most important country in the Arab world. And it also represents the biggest opportunity for the future."

He identified Syria as a major security issue and added: "we are concerned about democracies which are slipping: Ukraine, Turkey and South Africa, for example."

The report examines the ability of individuals to exercise political and civil rights in a total of 195 countries and 14 territories around the world, based on the events of last year. It assigns each a score out of seven and a status of free – the lower score the freer – partly free, or not free.

The countries are then ranked according to the change in the level of freedom enjoyed compared to 2010.

Independent: EU should block finance for Israeli settlements

2012-01-18T00:58:00.001-08:00

The European Commission should consider passing legislation to prevent finance generated within its member states being used to support illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territory, the bloc's top diplomats in Jerusalem and Ramallah have advised.

The proposal is made in a report warning that a new surge in Jewish settlement expansion in Arab East Jerusalem, among other policies, is "systematically undermining the Palestinian presence" in the city and making the prospect of it becoming the shared capital of two states "increasingly unlikely and unworkable".

The report argues that "attempts to emphasise the Jewish identity of the city at the expense of Muslim and Christian residents" – including outsourcing archaeology in sensitive sites close to the Old City to a powerful settler group, Elad – "threaten its religious diversity and provide fuel to those want further to radicalise the conflict with regional and global repercussions".

It makes an urgent call for the EU to adopt a more "active and visible" implementation of its policy. And it paints a bleak picture of how Israel is "perpetuating" its unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 war – a move never accepted as legal by European governments – in ways that are "increasingly undermining the two-state solution".

The report points out that 10 per cent of the city's resources are spent on services for Palestinians, who represent 37 per cent of the population. There are 200 planning permissions granted to Palestinians per year compared with the 1,500 they need, it adds, with a consequent wave of house demolitions. Up to 90,000 people live under threat of having their homes demolished.

The potentially radical proposal for "appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity" is the first indication that some member states are seeking European divestment from businesses actively involved in the settlement enterprise.

The finance recommendation has been worded with deliberate vagueness to maintain a consensus among sharply differing views within the EU. But the clear implication is that some of the European Consuls General – ambassador-rank representatives to the Palestinians – want the Commission to consider for the first time whether it has an obligation to legislate on the grounds that the settlements contravene international law.

Under one interpretation of the proposal, the Commission would use legislation to force companies in Europe to break their links with businesses involved in settlement construction and commercial activities. This follows some high-profile voluntary examples like that of Deutsche Bahn, which last year pulled out of electrification of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem rail link because it cut through the West Bank.

The report also says the Jerusalem municipality is failing in its obligation to provide schooling for all Palestinian children, with less than half now attending municipal schools.

Asaf Sharon, a member of the Israeli group Solidarity, which has been active in opposing evictions and demolitions in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, said he was struck by the urgency with which the European diplomats regarded the situation in Jerusalem, compared with a lack of a similar sense in Israel itself. "I hope EU would act on the report's conclusions," he said. "Now they have to be proactive for all our sakes."

New York Times: Hoarding Is Seen as Cause of Fuel Shortage in Egypt

2012-01-16T13:08:00.001-08:00

A sudden shortage of gasoline gripped Egypt over the weekend, raising new concerns about its teetering economy and its political stability.

The state news media said the empty pumps and long lines were caused by hoarding, prompted by what were called false rumors of an impending increase in gasoline prices, which the government sets at artificially low levels through enormous subsidies.

The shortage comes at a time when the government is running out of money that it might use to increase fuel supplies, if only to dispel such panic. Egypt’s reserves of foreign currency, needed both to prop up the Egyptian pound and to keep fuel prices down, have dwindled to critically low levels.

The crisis began with the collapse of tourism and foreign investment, two vital sources of foreign currency for the country, after the revolts that ousted President Hosni Mubarak broke out a year ago.

With 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line, any potential increase in fuel prices, or in the price of other basic necessities caused by a fall in the exchange rate, could spur renewed unrest. Street protests are already a regular occurrence here, usually demanding the departure of the military rulers who took power from Mr. Mubarak.

Over the past three months, at least 80 demonstrators have been killed and hundreds seriously injured as security forces have tried to put down the protests.

Though gas stations across the country were turning away customers for lack of fuel, and long lines were forming at the ones that still had gasoline to sell, the Ministry of Petroleum issued a statement over the weekend asserting that the country’s fuel supply was still more than adequate to meet all public needs.

“In spite of that, it was recently noticed that there’s crowdedness around gas stations as a result of the rumors circulated about an increase in the prices,” the state-run newspaper Al Ahram reported. The government urged Egyptians “not to crowd around gas stations and not to listen to rumors,” which it said “only aim at stirring insecurity in the hearts of citizens.”

A rush on the pumps may have been sparked by the news this month that in order to conserve badly needed cash, the ruling military council planned to reduce the amount of natural gas and other commodities used by heavy industry.

But many economists have argued for years that Egypt’s heavy subsidies of energy for consumers were increasingly untenable, even before the current economic crisis began. Egypt spends as much as 10 percent of its gross domestic product subsidizing energy costs, even though the benefits flow disproportionately to affluent consumers who drive big cars and live in large villas.