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Sunday, February 8, 2009

Holocaust denying bishop to examine 'historical evidence': report

BERLIN (AFP) – A bishop under fire for denying the Holocaust wants to examine the historical evidence before any possible renunciation of his belief that not a single Jew died in Nazi gas chambers, a report said.

"If I find proof I would rectify (earlier statements)... But all that will take time," Bishop Richard Williamson was quoted as saying by the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel.

The British-born bishop denied the existence of the gas chambers in an interview with Swedish television two days the pope lifted his ex-communication last month.

"I believe there were no gas chambers... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," Williamson said.

"There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!"

Meanwhile, the bishop of Innsbruck in western Austria, Manfred Scheuer, said that the Vatican should learn lessons from the episode, which provoked a storm of criticism.

"The Pope's explanations (this week) were more than necessary and I welcome them. But we must now analyze the mistakes that have been made," Austria's Tiroler Zeitung daily on Saturday quoted him as saying.

"On questions as important as the lifting of an excommunication, the episcopal conferences should be consulted," he said, referring to official assemblies of bishops in different regions.

On Wednesday the Vatican said the 67-year-old bishop should "unequivocally" distance himself from his statements.

It also said that Williamson's remarks denying that the Nazis used gas chambers to eliminate millions of European Jews in World War II were not known to Pope Benedict XIV when he decided to lift the excommunication of four renegade bishops, including Williamson, last month.

Ecuador orders U.S. official expelled

By Alexandra Valencia

QUITO (Reuters) – Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa ordered a U.S. Embassy official expelled on Saturday after accusing him of interfering in the country's affairs, a move that will test ties with Washington.

Correa, a leftist, has generally kept good relations with the United States as his socialist allies in Bolivia and Venezuela often clash with Washington over what they say is U.S. "imperialism" in Latin America.

"Foreign minister, give this gentleman 48 hours to pack up his suitcases and get out of the country," Correa said during his weekly media address. "We're not going to let anyone treat us as if we were a colony here."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Quito said the official already left Ecuador last month as part of a regular staff rotation.

"We hope to continue cooperation with Ecuador," spokeswoman Marta Youth said. She did not comment on Correa's charges.

Correa said U.S. official Armando Astorga had abruptly ended a financing agreement with local police after authorities rejected his attempts to handpick officers he wanted to manage the U.S. aid projects.

"Mr. Astorga, keep your dirty money. We don't need it. We have dignity in this country," Correa said. "Ecuador doesn't need charity from anyone."

The United States is Ecuador's main trading partner and the destination for much of its petroleum and banana exports.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist who faces re-election in April, has bolstered his strong popularity in the past by taking a tough stance against what he deems to be interference from neighboring governments or multinational companies.

There has been tension with Washington since Correa vowed not to renew a lease ending this year on a coastal air base used by U.S. forces for counter-narcotics missions.

Correa said on Saturday he would allow U.S. Coast Guard planes to land there if needed, but only if Ecuador was allowed to approve of the pilots.

The former college professor is known for his quick temper, ejecting a journalist from a live interview and ordering the arrests of people he charged had hurled insults or made offensive gestures at his presidential motorcade.

Correa has been tough on foreign companies by repeatedly threatening to expel them over contractual disagreements or legal disputes. Last year, he kicked out Brazilian building firm Odebrecht and sent troops to seize its projects in Ecuador.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a standard-bearer for anti-U.S. sentiment, last year expelled the U.S. ambassador to Caracas and Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked out the U.S. envoy in September after accusing him of fanning civil unrest.

Nazi find sheds light on Egypt's sensitive past

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO – Nazi hunters urged Egypt on Friday to come clean about how much it knew about a fugitive dubbed "Dr. Death," who reportedly lived here for decades until he died in 1992. But Egypt has long kept a strict silence about former Nazis reported to have taken refuge on its soil.

The discovery of Aribert Heim's secret life throws light on how the Arab world took in members of the Nazi regime after World War II, said Efraim Zuroff, head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The region's role as a haven has gone little examined while researchers focused on the larger, better known influx of Nazis to Latin America.

A number of Nazis are believed to have been welcomed in the 1950s by the Egyptian regime of then-President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who was locked in an intense rivalry with Israel that erupted into wars in 1956 and 1967. Nasser enlisted some Nazis to train Egypt's military or produce anti-Israel propaganda — and Israel feared they were involved in building a rocket program.

So far there is no indication that the Austrian-born Heim, a former concentration camp doctor accused of carrying out gruesome, deadly experiments on Jewish prisoners, played any role with the Egyptian government.

Instead, it appears he lived a quiet life in downtown Cairo since the early 1960s. A later convert to Islam, he bought sweets for friends from a famed confectionery and was known for playing pingpong and taking long walks for exercise, said Egyptians who knew him.

The only hint of his past — besides a constant refusal to be photographed — was the personal "research" that he wrote purporting to prove that the Jews of Israel are not true Semites, according to the son of Heim's Egyptian dentist, who saw the paper.

The Egyptian government has been silent since Heim's presence in Egypt was first reported by The New York Times and Germany's ZPF television Thursday. Government officials and several former Nasser-era officials approached by The Associated Press refused to comment on any aspect of the reports.

One current security official would say only that if Heim was in Egypt, he was let in under a previous government. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Egypt would look into the reports.

The silence reflects a reluctance to acknowledge an era that is potentially embarrassing now, three decades after Egypt's peace accords with Israel.

German investigators say they want to search in Egypt for definitive proof of Heim's death and are preparing a request to Egypt for permission.

It remains unknown whether the Egyptian government knew who Heim was when he first entered the country in 1963 and, if not, whether it subsequently found out. He entered using his real last name and middle name, Ferdinand Heim, which appear on a 1964 residency permit found in a satchel of Heim's documents in a Cairo hotel where he lived his last years.

Zuroff said Heim's name was on a 1967 list of 26 former Nazis believed to be hiding in Egypt at that time, drawn up by Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who became the most prominent Nazi hunter.

Zuroff said he didn't know why the lead on Heim was never pursued. It appears to have been forgotten: Most reports on Heim over the past decade speculated he was living in Latin America.

Also on the list was Alois Brunner, long one of the most wanted Nazi fugitives as commander of a camp that processed Jews for deportation from occupied France. Brunner is believed to have later moved to Damascus and worked for the Syrian government. He is widely thought to have died in Syria in the 1990s, though the Damascus regime has never confirmed he was there.

Of the 26 on Wiesenthal's list, Zuroff said, "I don't think any of them are alive — or are in Egypt, for that matter — because they have either left the country or died in Egypt." He said no pressure was ever put "on Egypt in any way to cooperate in investigation and prosecution of Nazi war crimes."

Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, said Cairo should start accounting for Nazis it harbored.

"In the 1950s, Egypt opened its doors wide to fugitive Nazi war criminals," he said in an e-mail interview with the AP. "The time has come for Egypt to give a full accounting of its policy of sheltering Nazi war criminals — and if any of those Nazis are still alive, they should be surrendered for prosecution."

The total number of Third Reich figures who fled to Egypt is not known, and the Egyptian government has never acknowledged any were present.

Egypt would not be the only state to try to draw on the expertise of former Nazis — the United States took in a number of German rocket scientists to work in its space program, particularly Wernher von Braun, who headed NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The prospect of Egypt using Nazis to develop a rocket program "was a major concern for Israel," Zuroff said. In the early 1960s, Israel sent a spy posing as a former Nazi, Wolfgang Lotz, who reported back on German scientists working in Egyptian armaments programs, according to Lotz's 1972 memoir.

But most Nazis taken in by Nasser's regime appear to have been involved in training the Egyptian military and police or in producing propaganda to foment anti-Israeli attitudes.

Among those whom researchers have placed in Egypt were Johann von Leers, a Nazi propagandist, who allegedly worked in Egypt's Information Ministry, converted to Islam and died in Cairo in 1965. Leopold Gleim, a Gestapo colonel in Poland, is believed to have worked with Egypt's secret police.

Nasser touted himself as the leader of the Arab world against Israel, and his regime fought the Jewish state in two wars, suffering a devastating defeat in 1967.

"In the Arab world, there was a great sympathy to Nazis," said Emad Gad, an expert on Egyptian relations with Israel at Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

But the welcome began to chill during the 1960s, when Egypt came to rely more on Soviet aid and training for its military. The atmosphere for former Nazis further soured when Nasser's successor — Anwar Sadat — began the peace process with Israel in the mid-1970s, signing a peace accord in 1979.

Gad said Heim's story may give hints on how the Egyptian government became less willing to protect hidden Nazis.

Heim's documents suggest he likely converted to Islam in the late 1970s, since the first one bearing his Muslim name, Tarek Hussein Farid, is dated 1981.

Gad speculated Heim converted after "he was advised that there will be no political cover anymore and that he has to search for other means."

"So he choose to convert and dissolve in the community," Gad said.

Top Hamas strongman emerges from post-war hiding

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Gaza's top strongman emerged Saturday from six weeks in hiding, leading a Hamas delegation to Egypt for cease-fire talks and reiterating the Islamic militant group is "flexible" over who should lead reconstruction in the devastated territory.

Mahmoud Zahar, who is one of Gaza's top two leaders, and three other Hamas officials crossed from Gaza into Egypt on Saturday, en route to Cairo.

Egypt is mediating indirect talks between Israel and Hamas to reach a durable truce. Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to lift their 20-month border blockade of Gaza, while Israel wants improved guarantees that Hamas will be prevented from smuggling weapons into Gaza.

On the Egyptian side, Zahar told reporters Hamas would be flexible about who will take charge of reconstruction. Thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed or damaged during the war, causing an estimated $2 billion in damages.

Hamas initially insisted it should supervise the spending. However, international donors are reluctant to hand huge sums to the Islamic militants. "We are flexible on who should be in charge of rebuilding," said Zahar who, apparently fearing assassination, had been in hiding during the three-week offensive and even after a tentative cease-fire took hold in mid-January.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh still has not appeared in public.

In the West Bank, Hamas' rival, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, said Saturday he will transfer $50 million in emergency aid to Gazans whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the offensive.

The U.N. is putting together a detailed report on the war damage. The report is to be presented to donor countries in Egypt on March 2. The conference is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for rebuilding Gaza. Fayyad said the emergency payments will be taken from the current Palestinian budget.

Israel unilaterally halted its three-week military offensive on Jan. 18, and Hamas militants also halted fire a day later, but the two sides have not agreed on the terms of a cease-fire. Sporadic violence has continued since.

On Friday, Israeli warplanes struck four smuggling tunnels and a weapons depot in the area of the Gaza-Egypt border, the Israeli military said. The airstrikes came in response to two rockets fired from Gaza on southern Israel.

One of Israel's top goals in the Egypt-mediated contacts with Hamas is to win the return of Gilad Schalit, a tank crewman held by Hamas in Gaza since he was captured in a cross-border raid in June, 2006. Hamas is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in return. In a television interview Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak answered "yes" when asked if Schalit's release had grown closer. "A supreme effort is being made to speed up the process," he told Channel 10 TV.

In other developments, U.N. and Hamas officials met in Gaza late Friday, after Hamas police seized 10 trucks with U.N. aid shipments, including rice and flour. In response, the U.N. suspended aid shipments.

Earlier in the week, Hamas police had seized thousands of blankets and food parcels earmarked for U.N. distribution to needy residents.

Ahmed Kurd, Hamas' minister of social affairs, said Saturday that the two sides resolved their differences. He claimed that the U.N. trucks were not marked and Hamas officials believed the goods were sent by Egyptian charities, meant to be given straight to Hamas.

U.N. officials said Saturday they would not lift their freeze on aid shipments until all 10 trucks were returned.

"When they return what they have taken, we will inform everybody. But what we are hearing is positive as of now," said John Ging, the top U.N. aid official in Gaza.

Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the U.N. agency for food or other support. Their needs have increased after Israel's bruising three-week military operation in the territory that killed hundreds of civilians and left thousands homeless.

In Turkey, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for urgent humanitarian aid for Palestinians, saying Saturday that aid shipments so far met only one-fifth of the actual need.

Abbas, who leads Fatah and runs a rival Palestinian administration in the West Bank, acknowledged the need to iron out differences between Palestinian political factions and go to elections to set up a consensus government that will hopefully be on peaceful terms with Israel.

In 2007, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in fighting that drove out Fatah supporters. Israel's 22-day war on Hamas in Gaza heightened tensions between the Islamic militant group and Fatah, even as Egypt and other Arab countries try to push them into reconciliation.

"We don't want a government that will allow Israel to continue its siege," Abbas said in the Ankara during his European tour to seek support for a unity government.

"We're not asking Hamas to recognize Israel," said Abbas. "We expect this from the new government."

Germany, France dodge Afghanistan troop issue

By DAVID RISING and GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writers

MUNICH – NATO's top official chastised Germany and France for refusing to commit more troops to Afghanistan, but the two European powers skirted the issue Saturday even while agreeing that Washington should not be left to fight international conflicts alone.

Vice President Joe Biden came to the Munich Security Conference amid expectations he would forcefully repeat President Barack Obama's calls for greater European troop deployments in Afghanistan, as Washington prepares to double American troops there to roughly 60,000.

But Biden kept his Afghan comments general in an apparent attempt to avoid a public dispute among allies.

He asked only for European "ideas and input" on a joint Afghan strategy "that brings together our civilian and military resources that prevents terrorists a safe haven and that helps Afghans develop the capacity to secure their own future."

Delegates said they thought the broad-brush approach Biden took was appropriate.

"Vice President Biden came to Munich today in the spirit of partnership," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told AP Television News. "I think he set an ambitious agenda with big goals and high objectives and he called and challenged us to work with him and I think that's the right spirit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel supported the general concept of more European military backing of the U.S. through NATO, but did not address U.S. calls for additional European deployments in Afghanistan.

"International conflicts can no longer be shouldered by one country alone," she declared. "No country can go it alone, so the cooperative approach needs to be guiding us."

Germany has argued that its military is already too stretched to send troops beyond the 4,500 maximum it has committed to the relatively calm north of Afghanistan. About 3,500 are now there. Instead, it says the focus should be on civil reconstruction in conjunction with military security.

The French parliament voted in September to keep 3,300 French troops in the Afghan theater, but has no current plans to increase the French contingent.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy argued for a Europe more ready to defend itself instead of relying on others, but also managed not to touch on the Afghan troops issue.

"Does Europe want peace, or does Europe want to be left in peace?" he asked. "If you want peace, then you ... need to have political and military power."

But NATO's exasperated secretary general, Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, said if Europe wants a greater voice, it needs to do more.

"The Obama administration has already done a lot of what Europeans have asked for including announcing the closure of Guantanamo and a serious focus on climate change," he said. "Europe should also listen; When the United States asks for a serious partner, it does not just want advice, it wants and deserves someone to share the heavy lifting."

De Hoop Scheffer added the same principle applies to Russian requests to be involved in Washington's plans to place a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

He said Russia cannot talk of a new "security architecture" yet build its own new bases in Georgia and support Kyrgyzstan's plans to close the Manas air base, used by the U.S. to resupply troops in Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan's president announced this week his country was kicking Americans out of the base after securing more than $2 billion in loans and aid from Russia. U.S. officials said Kyrgyzstan acted as a result of pressure from Moscow, but Russia and Kyrgyzstan denied that.

Biden urged European nations to take in Guantanamo detainees once the U.S. closes the detention facility for suspected terrorists. Several European nations are considering the U.S. request.

On Iran, Biden said the new U.S. administration was willing to negotiate but will isolate and pressure the Islamic Republic if it does not abandon its nuclear ambitions.

"We will draw upon all the elements of our power — military and diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement, economic and cultural — to stop crises from occurring before they are in front of us," Biden said.

Iran asserts its intentions are purely peaceful.

The U.S. plans interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Washington has said the system is aimed at preventing missile attacks by "rogue states" such as Iran, but Russian officials claim the true intention is to undermine Russia's defenses.

Saying defense shield plans remained on the table, Biden warned the U.S. would continue to have differences with Russia, including opposition to its efforts to carve out independent states in Georgia. But he said the two sides needed to cooperate on common interests.

"It was really a serious call to restart U.S. foreign policy — including, clearly, Russian-American relations," Konstantin Kosachev, head of the international relations committee in Russia's lower parliament house, said on Russian state-run Vesti-24 television.

Obama tells 9/11 families modified military commissions possible

By Margaret Talev and Carol Rosenberg, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — After an emotional, private meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama, survivors and victims' relatives of two al Qaida attacks said Friday that the president quelled some of their fears about closing the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center, promised them an "open-door" policy and a hand in shaping anti-terror policies, and said he is considering a modified military commission system to try detainees.

In a question-and-answer period with Obama that lasted about 35 minutes, some of the roughly 40 attendees affected by the USS Cole and Sept. 11, 2001, attacks emphasized concerns that a year might not be long enough to safely empty the Guantanamo prison as planned, said participant Kirk Lippold, a retired Navy commander in charge of the USS Cole when it was attacked on Oct. 12, 2000.

Participants also made clear their fears about detainees being brought to the United States and into a court system that afforded them full constitutional privileges. Obama did not rule anything out, but said he also had his concerns, and "he did open the door that he might do modified military commissions" instead, Lippold said.

"I think people were more reserved, and they were willing to listen and extend to him the olive branch of 'let's wait and see what you're going to do,'" Lippold said.

The president was greeted with applause when he entered the meeting in Room 350 of the Eisenhower Executive Office building just west of the White House, said New Yorker Valerie Lucznikowska, whose stockbroker nephew died in the World Trade Center on 9-11.

She said the president made his way around the room shaking hands with some and hugging others, and left the attendees feeling impressed, if not universally sold on his plans.

"He made the point that he is closing Guantanamo because it is a symbol to the world of something that got tangled up in Abu Ghraib," she said. "We need our foreign allies to help us catch the terrorists."

Obama told the participants that his general counsel, Gregory Craig, would be their point of contact, and that the door was always open. He also assured them that Abd el Rahim al Nashiri, an alleged organizer of the Cole bombing, would remain in custody and eventually be tried.

Obama had invited the group to address the concerns of vocal critics among them and to explain the administration's overall thinking, as well as the withdrawal of military commission charges late Thursday against Nashiri, who was facing the death penalty.

To some extent, Obama and his aides also seemed to be seeking to reframe the reasoning for closing Guantanamo.

On the campaign trail, Obama, a constitutional lawyer, spoke often about how indefinite detentions went against basic principles of American democracy and human rights, and he said the end did not justify the means.

On Friday, however, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I think the main concern that the president has is the military commissions' failure to bring those in detention to swift justice."

Lippold said that Obama told the attendees that "his goal is to provide swift and certain justice for terrorists; he views Guantanamo Bay as an impediment to justice."

Rebels target new Somali president with mortars

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Rebels fired mortar bombs at the presidential palace in Mogadishu Saturday hours after Somalia's new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed returned to the capital following his election at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti.

Ahmed has promised to build on his record of bringing security when his Islamist forces ruled much of the country, which has been racked by war for 18 years.

African Union peacekeepers said the attack was intended to provoke return fire.

"We just ignored them," Major Barigye Ba-Hoku, spokesman for the AU's small AMISOM mission in the city, told Reuters.

"They are provocative and expect us to respond but we are not ready to. They want an excuse to accuse AMISOM of attacking civilians. We never do that."

A government security officer said several mortars were fired at the hilltop Villa Somalia palace, but no one was hurt.

Abdullahi Qadar, an official working for the new president, said Ahmed had ordered government forces and the AU peacekeepers not to return fire to avoid civilian casualties.

Ahmed, a moderate, headed a sharia courts group that brought some stability to Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in 2006, before Washington's main regional ally Ethiopia invaded to oust them. Ethiopia's military withdrew last month, clearing the way for Ahmed's election in Djibouti a week ago.

Ahmed was then feted at a February 1-4 African Union summit hosted this week by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi -- whose army drove his Islamists from power just two years ago.

He said he and Meles had agreed to work together for a better Horn of Africa and for an end to conflict in the region.

The hardline al Shabaab group, which is on Washington's list of foreign terrorist groups, said before the vote it would start a new campaign of hit-and-run attacks on the government -- whoever came to power.

Somalia: Islamists Want to Keep Fighting Against the New Government

Somalia — An Islamist group known as Hisbal Islam (Islamic Party) said Saturday it will keep fighting against Somalia's new government led by president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed and the AU forces in Mogadishu.

Four insurgent factions agreed Wednesday to merge and continue fighting against the anticipated unity government of Somalia.

"The so-called government led by Sharif Sheik Ahmed is not different from the one of Abdulahi Yusuf," said Dr. Omar Iman, who chairs Hisbal Islam.

"The country was no freed from the enemy and Sharia law was not imposed, how we can stop Jihad (holy war)," Mr Iman added.

Somali's new president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed arrived in Mogadishu on Saturday for the first time since he was elected president in Djibouti by the Somali Parliament last Saturday.

President Sharif briefed reporters and said he came to Mogadishu to form unity government in Mogadishu and to work for the peace.

The new, anti-government Islamic Party is composed of four factions - the Asmara wing of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia led by Hassan Dahir Aweys, Ras Kamboni Brigade, the Islamic Front, and a little-known group known as Anole.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/200902070006.html.