Israel hits Gaza as Olmert
pledges protection from rockets
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem
Israeli troops killed four Palestinians, three of them militants, in its latest assault on the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, unveiled plans to protect nearby homes from rockets.
Troops supported by helicopters moved into the southern Gaza Strip overnight, killing a civilian and three militants from the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement that has ruled the Strip since June, medics said.
‘The army is operating in the south of the Gaza Strip against the infrastructures of terrorist organisations,’ an Israeli military spokesman said. ‘We attacked armed men.’
The latest deaths came as Olmert unveiled plans to reinforce Israeli homes near the border with Gaza which have come under near-daily rocket and mortar attack in recent months.‘I will convene a ministerial committee on the issue of reinforcing homes in the area of Sderot and the area surrounding Gaza,’ Olmert said at the weekly cabinet meeting, referring to the southern Israeli town most hit by rockets.
‘It is part of several steps Israel is taking to counter Qassam (rocket) fire,’ including continuing military operations and economic sanctions.
‘Fifteen schools are already completely secure, and today we will decide on proposals which will be brought for government approval next week and are aimed at completing reinforcement measures,’ Olmert said.
The proposal would protect some 8,000 houses at a cost of around 97 million dollars (66 million euros), a senior official said.
‘This new project will cover the reinforcement of 8,000 of the 10,500 homes within a range of 7 kilometres from the Gaza border, including all the houses within 4.5 kilometres,’ the official said.
Until now the government has agreed to pay only for the part reinforcement of homes in areas vulnerable to fire from Palestinian militants in Gaza.
The houses require additional reinforcement because they will not be covered by the Iron Dome project, an anti-rocket system Israel hopes to complete in 2010 that may not be able to shoot down projectiles fired at such close range.
Anwar criticises Malaysian govt
over rally crackdown
Agence France-Presse . Kuala Lumpur
Former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim Sunday criticised the authorities for using water cannon and teargas against ethnic Indians protesting against alleged discrimination.
Saturday’s rally was the latest in a series of street demonstrations that have rocked this multicultural nation as political parties manoeuvre to win the hearts and minds of voters ahead of general elections on March 8.
More than 300 people defied a police ban, gathering in downtown Kuala Lumpur to present roses to the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and protest against alleged discrimination before police fired tear gas and water cannon to break up the rally.
‘This is clearly a police state,’ Anwar said.
‘I mean a group marching peacefully to present flowers to the prime minister, what kind of treatment did the government give to these people?’ he asked.
‘It was very high-handed,’ said the de facto opposition leader.
The police detained 160 people in scuffles during the rally and later outside a Hindu temple nearby, the capital’s police chief Muhammad Sabtu Osman told the official Bernama news agency. Most have since been released but lawyers claimed a female protestor – one of nine who are being held till Monday – was abused in custody.
‘While being detained, she said she was beaten up by the police,’ lawyer Gobind Singh, who is representing the nine, said.
‘Although she was in pain, she did not receive any medical treatment,’ he added.
‘These are not hardened criminals, they are normal people and should not have to face such violence at the hands of the police while in detention,’ said Singh, who is contesting as an opposition candidate in the upcoming polls.
Abdullah has condemned the protests, saying it was an attempt to disrupt the elections, Bernama reported.
More British Muslims
seeking shariah
Agence France-Presse . London
Many Britons reacted with alarm at a suggestion by the Church of England’s top cleric this month that the country could adopt aspects of the Islamic code.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has faced calls to resign, while political leaders distanced themselves from his controversial views, insisting that domestic law must take precedent.
But by saying that incorporating parts of shariah law seemed ‘unavoidable’ in certain circumstances, he shed light on the fact that Muslims here have long been turning to the Islamic code.
There are about a dozen shariah courts in Britain – although they have no formal legal status – and are mainly used to resolve non-criminal, and particularly family, disputes.
The biggest is the Islamic Shariah Council in Leyton, east London. Since it was set up in 1982, it has dealt with 7,000 divorce cases in accordance with Quranic values.
‘We act as a religious court, which means deciding about their dispute and giving them written determination, based on shariah, Islamic principals and jurisprudence,’ one of its founders, Mufti Barkatullah.
The council is not a substitute for the civil courts but provides an ‘additional’ service, granting or refusing an Islamic divorce – or talaq.
‘People who live in the United Kingdom undertake and abide by the law of the land, but they regard those laws as administrative law, not a divine law,’ Barkatullah said.
‘The matters of marriage and divorce don’t fall into the state domain. It is a religious matter.
Even if they have registered a civil marriage or divorce, ‘their perception is that their religious duties and their religious relationships are not finalised’, he added.
Mufti Barkatullah dispenses Islamic justice with Maulana Abu Sayeed and Suhaib Hasan, two scholars who like him, are originally from the Indian sub-continent, and Haitham Al-Haddad, a Saudi.
When AFP visited their small anonymous offices in Leyton, they granted a talaq to a woman who was battered by her husband. He was suffering from mental problems and she had obtained a civil divorce in May last year.
According to shariah law, the right to divorce is incumbent first on the man. A civil divorce as such is only automatically validated in Islamic law if the man has sought it or given his consent.
If not, the woman can begin divorce proceedings or Khul’a with the council.
The scholars will then look to either get the husband’s consent, reconcile the couple or grant the woman the talaq at their discretion if the husband does not turn up in person or is clearly in the wrong.
‘We examine the case in the light of the fundamental objectives of the marriage. Once we are sure that the marriage is not functioning, then we say you shall separate,’ Barkatullah explained.
‘First of all, we try to bring them to a common ground. If it is repairable, we’ll do the repairing. If it is not repairable, we say leaving it hanging is more harmful than separation.’
According to a February 2006 survey, 40 per cent of the 1.6 million British Muslims said they would back the introduction of sharia law in majority Muslim areas.
The Islamic Shariah Council said more and more people are now seeking them out.
‘If the government doesn’t take the political way, then the consumer will have the choice,’ said Barkatullah.
‘If more and more people come to us rather than to a British court, we’ll know their choice. That’s what is happening, that’s what the archbishop is saying: you have to accommodate, it’s inevitable.’
Indian troops kill 20 Maoists
after police carnage
Agence France-Presse . Bhubaneswar
Indian troops killed at least 20 Maoist guerrillas on Sunday in clashes following the killing of 13 policemen by the insurgents in the eastern state of Orissa, officials said.
Three police commandos also died in skirmishes after security forces backed by army helicopters launched a retaliatory attack in the state’s dense forests where hundreds of Maoist guerrillas are believed to be holed up, they said.
‘All we can say as of now is that at least 20 Maoist rebels were killed during Sunday’s encounter,’ the Orissa home secretary, Tarun Kanti Mishra, told a news conference in the state capital Bhubaneswar.
‘The encounter will continue,’ Mishra warned as heavily-armed troopers poured into the jungles about 250 kilometres from Bhubaneswar, which are considered to be Maoist strongholds.
Ex-Philippine officials urge
Arroyo cabinet to resign
Reuters/bdnews24.com . Manila
More than 50 former top Philippine government officials, including a one-time head of the central bank, urged president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s cabinet to resign on Sunday over a multi-million dollar corruption scandal.
‘We call on all those who can no longer endure this wrongful governance with its structures of evil and unmoderated greed: it is time to cut clean, it is time to go,’ read the statement, signed by the ex-officials, including five former finance chiefs and former central bank governor, Jose Cuisia.
A Senate probe into allegations of $130 million worth of kickbacks in a state telecoms deal with China’s ZTE Corp. has revived calls for the resignation of Arroyo and opposition groups are planning anti-government rallies next week and on February 25, the anniversary of the overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
But a spokeswoman for the presidential palace said morale in the administration was high.
‘The cabinet members have no reason to resign,’ Lorelei Fajardo said.
On Sunday, former president and democracy icon Corazon Aquino joined around 2,500 people at a church service in Manila to honour Rodolfo Lozada, a former government official whose testimony in the Senate inquiry revived the protests.
‘I want all of us Filipinos to be united again. If we can get together we will also see a bright future for our country,’ Aquino told the cheering congregation, who finished the mass with a protest song and clenched fists.
Aquino was elected president in 1986 after Marcos was overthrown in a people power revolt.
A presidential election is not due until 2010 when Arroyo’s final term ends.
Obama, Hillary feud over
role of superdelegates
Agence France-Presse . Washington
The US presidential race heated up Sunday after White House hopeful senator Hillary Clinton clashed with rival Barack Obama over how the Democratic Party should choose its presidential nominee.
Trailing Obama in the nomination race after losing eight straight contests to the Illinois senator, Hillary and her advisers suggested hundreds of ‘superdelegates’ – party activists and elected lawmakers attending the Democratic convention in August – were not bound by the results of voting in their states, US media reported.
‘Superdelegates are a part of the process,’ Hillary was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.
‘They are supposed to exercise independent judgment,’ Hillary said on Saturday while campaigning in Wisconsin, which holds primaries on Tuesday.
Hillary and her advisers made clear their view that the 795 unelected superdelegates could clinch the nomination for her even if Obama prevails among voters in primaries and caucuses.
Obama, who has won the popular vote so far, has argued that superdelegates should back the candidate who wins the most delegates based on primaries and caucuses in states across the country.
He now has a slight lead in pledged delegates after a string of victories and hopes to extend his winning streak in Wisconsin and in caucuses in Hawaii on Tuesday.
But senior Hillary aide Harold Ickes told reporters the superdelegates should exercise ‘their best judgment in the interests of the party and the country.’
Ickes predicted that after all primaries are concluded on June 7, ‘she will be neck and neck with Obama ... Then she will wrap up the nomination.’
Ickes also argued the results of delegates from Michigan and Florida should count even though the candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. The national Democratic Party stripped the two states of delegates after they flouted party rules and moved up the date of their primaries.
Obama’s campaign promptly shot back, accusing Hillary of planning to undermine the popular will of Democratic voters.
‘The Hillary campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say or do anything to win tactics that could undermine Democrats’ ability to win the general election,’ said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe in an email.
The feud over how to select the Democrats’ presidential candidate for the 2008 election came as Hillary struggled to regain the initiative amid gathering momentum for Obama, who also now has the edge in campaign funds.
Both candidates campaigned in Wisconsin to woo the Midwestern state’s mainly white, working class electorate, which has shaped the outcome of previous Democratic nomination fights.
Obama and the former first lady traded attacks over their voting records and platforms on Saturday, with Hillary painting the silver-tongued Obama as lacking substance while he portrayed the New York senator as hamstrung by Washington’s partisan ways.
Iran plays down rare US encounter
Agence France-Presse . Tehran
Iran on Sunday played down a rare encounter with the United States at an anti-money laundering watchdog in Paris, insisting that no direct talks had taken place with its arch-foe.
Tehran also said that the latest round of its talks with the United States on Iraq had been postponed for ‘technical reasons,’ but did not give any date for when the next discussions could take place.
The United States said that senior US Treasury official Daniel Glaser attended a meeting alongside Iranian officials at the Financial Action Task Force in Paris last month.
‘No direct talks were held,’ foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. ‘All that was said was within the framework of this meeting,’ he added.
‘The meeting was aimed at looking into issues related to money laundering. This is an international forum and the United States is also a member of that international forum.’
The January 29 meeting brought together representatives of 14 countries, including the United States and Iran, US State Department officials said.
The Iranian economy minister, Davoud Danesh Jafari, said the Americans sought information at the meeting about new anti-money laundering laws Iran has passed.
‘An expert from the central bank and the ministry of economy took part in the meeting and had exchanges, but this was not a high-level meeting,’ he was quoted in the press on Sunday as saying.
The United States has in the past accused Iranian state banks of acting as a conduit for terror financing, and has imposed sanctions against several institutions. Iran vehemently denies the charges.
Kenya rejects US pressure
over power-sharing deal
Agence France-Presse . Nairobi
The Kenyan government Sunday issued a veiled warning to the United States not to put ‘a gun to anybody’s head’, on the eve of US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s visit to push for a power-sharing deal.
Rice is due in Nairobi on Monday for meetings with the president, Mwai Kibaki, and opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose dispute over who won the December 27 presidential election plunged once stable Kenya into violence in which more than 1,000 people have died.
‘We encourage our friends to support us, to encourage us, but not to make any mistake by putting a gun to anybody’s head and say ‘either or’ because that cannot work,’ the foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, told reporters.
The US president, George W Bush, called for a power-sharing deal at the start of his Africa tour on Saturday and said he was sending Rice to Kenya to support Kofi Annan’s mediation, which appears deadlocked over a proposed coalition government.
While Wetangula did not specifically mention the United States, he said: ‘Those who support us should avoid judgmental language that tends to appear like we are being told ‘you must do this or you must do that’. We will find a solution, and as Kenyans and we are committed to that.’
Kibaki’s camp has balked at a power-sharing deal, saying in talks led by Annan that it was willing to include opposition members in government, but under the strong executive leadership of the president, according to a government official.
After initially welcoming Kibaki’s re-election, the United States backtracked in the face of mounting evidence of flaws in the presidential poll and is now pressing Kibaki to agree to a coalition with Odinga.
During a visit to neighbouring Tanzania, however, Bush on Sunday took pains to specify that the United States did not want to ‘dictate’ a solution to Kenya’s crisis but wanted to ‘help move the process along.’
Power shift brings political
uncertainty to Russia
Associated Press . Moscow
As Russia prepares for March 2 presidential elections, it enters an era of political uncertainty it hasn’t seen since the president, Vladimir Putin, succeeded Boris Yeltsin eight years ago.
Putin’s longtime protege, Dmitry Medvedev, is expected to emerge as the victor, thanks to the support of the Kremlin’s political and media muscle. But what policies a president Medvedev might pursue – or even whether he will be more than a figurehead – are a mystery.
Medvedev has said he will ask his friend and mentor, Putin, to become his prime minister, and emphasises that he will pursue Putin’s policies. If Putin accepts the premiership, Medvedev is expected to serve as Putin’s understudy through at least his first months in office – an unprecedented situation.
He will face huge challenges at home and abroad. Within eight months he will be facing a new US president-elect, while inheriting relations with the West that are at their lowest ebb since the Soviet era. Russia’s next leader needs to come to an understanding with Europe and the UN about future NATO expansion and plans for an anti-missile system near Russia’s borders. And he must reassure the world that Russia is a constructive, unthreatening partner while maintaining ties with Iran, North Korea and other regimes considered pariahs in the West.
If Medvedev has any new ideas for dealing with these issues, he hasn’t revealed them in his carefully scripted public appearances. He hasn’t even formally campaigned or agreed to debate his rivals.
He has, however, given voters a glimpse behind his serious public face, as he did Monday when the rock group ‘Deep Purple’ performed a concert for him at the Kremlin. He spoke nostalgically about being a fan as a teenager, when the band’s music was forbidden in the Soviet Union.
CIA sets up 12 bogus
companies after 9/11
Agence France-Presse . Washington
Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency set up 12 bogus companies in Europe and other parts of the world in the hope of penetrating Islamic organisations, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website late Saturday.
But citing current and former CIA officials, the newspaper said the agency had now shut down all but two of them after concluding they were ill-conceived.
The firms were part of an ambitious plan to increase the number of CIA case officers sent overseas under what is known as ‘nonofficial cover’ in order to increase the agency’s potential for penetrating Islamic networks, the report said.
According to the paper, the agents posed as employees of investment banks, consulting firms or other fictitious enterprises with no apparent ties to the US government.
But the plan became the source of significant dispute within the agency, The Times noted.
Democrats create biggest
buzz in US primaries
Agence France-Presse . Washington
Record numbers of voters are taking part in US primary elections, but the enthusiasm is more pronounced in the Democratic than the Republican camp, with the biggest buzz for Democrat Barack Obama.
Polling stations announced record voter turnout last Tuesday when nominating contests were held in Viginia, Maryland and Washington, DC. In Maryland, some precincts even ran out of the ‘I have voted’ stickers they normally give out.
‘Every single election that we’ve had so far in this contest you’ve seen the number of people participating in the Democratic primary double,’ said Obama in a campaign debate with Hillary last month. ‘This is good news for Democrats.’
One spectacular record was set in the north-western state of Idaho where 21,000 voters turned out for a primary election on February 5 – more than four times the number that voted in the primary of 2004.
But not all candidates are benefiting equally from this turnout. Last Tuesday, Obama drew twice as many voters as his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, and even more than all the Republican voters combined.
‘There’s no doubt that she has not generated the kind of grassroots enthusiasm that we have,’ Obama said of Hillary.
US satellite shoot-down part
of space arms race: Russia
Agence France-Presse . Moscow
Moscow fears a US plan to shoot down a damaged spy satellite in the coming weeks is a veiled weapons test and represents an ‘attempt to move the arms race into space,’ Russia’s defence ministry said.
The operation, which Washington says is motivated only by the desire to avoid a damaging crash on Earth, ‘does not look as innocent as they are trying to present it,’ the ministry said in a statement released late Saturday.
‘The impression arises that the United States is trying to use the accident with its satellite to test its national anti-missile defence system as a means of destroying satellites,’ the Russian ministry said.
The ability to shoot down satellites is seen by many analysts as crucial in future conflicts due to the dependence of modern military equipment on satellite-based communications.
Washington says a US warship will fire a surface-to-air missile at the US satellite, which is roughly the size of a bus, to ensure any Earth-bound debris will splash into the ocean. Without intervention, the satellite would hit earth in early March, a US official said.
The United States denies the shoot-down aims at protecting the satellite’s technological secrets or at demonstrating anti-satellite capability.
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