Trial of Iraq journalist who threw shoes postponed

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – The trial of an Iraqi journalist who gained cult status for throwing his shoes at former President George W. Bush was adjourned Thursday until next month as supporters said he should be praised for standing up to the U.S. "occupier," not punished.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi walked into the courtroom in western Baghdad and was handed a scarf printed with a red, black and green Iraqi flag, which he kissed. Relatives and supporters applauded and chanted "Imam Ali is with you hero," in reference to a revered Shiite Muslim saint.

The 30-year-old television journalist's expression of anger at a joint press conference with Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Dec. 14 energized many in the Middle East who opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

But al-Maliki was deeply embarrassed by the act against a U.S. president who had stood by him during the worst of the violence in Iraq when some Arab leaders were quietly urging Washington to oust him.

Al-Zeidi's attorneys say he has been charged with assaulting a foreign leader, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. The defense has tried to get the charge reduced, saying the act doesn't merit such harsh punishment.

Defense attorney Dhia al-Saadi Thursday asked the court to call social experts to testify because of what he called the political and psychological nature of the act.

Judge Abdul-Amir al-Rubaie then held a closed session before announcing the trial was postponed until March 12 because the court needs time to ask the Iraqi Cabinet whether Bush's visit was "formal or informal."

Dozens of relatives and supporters gathered outside the courtroom before the trial began, waving banners and calling for al-Zeidi's release.

"We are proud of what Muntadhar has done," said al-Zeidi's sister Doniya, as she stood outside the court Thursday with about 60 other supporters. "Bush was not a guest in Iraq or came by invitation of the Iraqi people. He came as an occupier."

Karim al-Shujeiri, one of al-Zeidi's lawyers, said he met with his client Wednesday and found "his spirits and morale were high, and he was confident in the independence of the Iraqi legal system."

The journalist's aunt, Nawal Lazim, who handed him the scarf as he entered the court, said Iraqis should be proud of al-Zeidi's act.

"What Muntadhar has done is revenge for Iraqi widows and for the bloodshed caused by the occupation and policy of Bush," Lazim said.

North Korea warns of war as Clinton heads for Seoul

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Thursday it was ready for war with the South, just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was set to arrive in Seoul for talks on defusing the North's military threat.

North Korea has repeatedly threatened in recent weeks to reduce the South to ashes. Pyongyang is thought to be readying its longest-range missile for launch in what analysts say is a bid to grab the new U.S. administration's attention and pressure Seoul to ease up on its hard line.

"(The South Korean president's) group of traitors should never forget that the (North) Korean People's Army is fully ready for an all-out confrontation," the North's KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed military official as saying.

Clinton said in Tokyo on Tuesday at the start of her first foreign trip since taking office that a North Korean missile launch would be "very unhelpful."

The South's foreign minister warned a launch would be met by sanctions and further isolation for the reclusive state.

Reports in the South said North Korea has been assembling its Taepodong-2 missile, which is designed to carry a warhead as far as Alaska. The same missile fizzled and blew apart seconds after it was launched for the first and only time in 2006.

South Korea's defense minister was quoted by local media as saying the North could test-launch the missile in about two or three weeks. A leading local daily quoted intelligence sources as saying it could be as early as next week.

South Korean officials have said they are also worried about North Korea holding a short-range missile test toward a contested Yellow Sea border off the west coast of the peninsula which has been the scene of deadly naval fights between the rival Koreas.

CLINTON VISIT

Analysts said the North may provoke a minor skirmish but they did not expect a major conflict because Pyongyang's huge but ill-equipped army is little match for South Korea and its major ally the United States, which positions about 28,000 troops on the peninsula.

The North said it may be forced to counter strike if it felt threatened by joint U.S. and South Korean military drills announced on Wednesday. The annual drills will be held in March.

"If bellicose U.S. forces and South Korean puppets dare wage aggression against us wrapped up in foolish delusion, we will explode our might ... and ruthlessly destroy the invasionary forces," KCNA said.

Just before Clinton touched down in Tokyo this week, North Korea issued a fresh missile threat by saying it had the right to launch its longest-range rocket, which Pyongyang contends is at the center of its peaceful space program.

Clinton, who has meetings in Indonesia on Thursday, her second day there, will go to China after her stop in South Korea.

She arrives in Seoul late on Thursday and will hold discussions on Friday with top South Korean officials including President Lee Myung-bak when efforts to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions are likely to top the agenda.

North Korea has lambasted Lee in its official media. Lee, who took office a year ago, has angered the destitute North by cutting off what once had been a free flow of unconditional aid and saying handouts would come once Pyongyang behaved better.

"It has gone so far that it is kind of worrying because they (North Koreans) are putting themselves in the position of having to carry through on some of this rhetoric," said Brian Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at the South's Dongseo University.

Reporter shot after peace rally in NW Pakistan

By SHERIN ZADA, Associated Press Writer

MINGORA, Pakistan – Gunmen killed a Pakistani television reporter Wednesday hours after he covered a peace march led by a hard-line cleric aimed at convincing militants in the Swat Valley to lay down their weapons under a pact with the government, the victim's employer said.

It was unclear who shot Geo television's Musa Khan Khel, but the incident shows that Swat remains a dangerous region despite Monday's truce agreement, which NATO has warned risks giving the Taliban a "safe haven" in the former tourist region.

Reporters have often been killed or kidnapped in northwest Pakistan in circumstances that are rarely investigated. Journalists there say they face threats from both militants and members of the security forces and have to be very careful on what and how they report.

Khel's body was found close to the town of Matta several hours after he had left the rest of his crew without telling them where he was going, said Azhar Abbas, the managing director of Geo, Pakistan's most popular news channel.

He had been shot several times in his upper body, and his throat was partly slit, Abbas said, refusing to speculate on a motive for the crime.

Khel had arrived in the town after filing reports on Geo about a peace march to the town by Sufi Muhammad — an aging pro-Taliban cleric who is father-in-law to Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah — and hundreds of his supporters.

On Monday, the regional government in Pakistan's northwest struck a deal with Muhammad in which he agreed to persuade Fazlullah to give up arms in return for the pledge to introduce a system of Islamic law in the valley, where militants have routed the police, beheaded political opponents and burned scores of schools for girls.

Muhammad has said he hopes to meet with Fazlullah soon. The march was aimed at rallying support for his efforts.

Fighting between security forces and militants has killed hundreds of people in Swat over the past year, while up to a third of the valley's 1.5 million people have fled. The region lies next to Pakistan's tribal regions close to the Afghan border, where Taliban and al-Qaida militants have long held sway.

Pakistani officials insist the deal is not a concession, but rather that it addresses the long-standing demands of residents in Swat and surrounding areas for a more efficient justice system. They say the laws will not be implemented until the militants have disarmed.

The main changes would involve already existing regulations that were never enforced, for instance, allowing religious scholars to advise judges, officials said. There are no publicized plans to ban girls from schooling or introduce other hardline measures, as some Taliban fighters would want.

"We will not introduce the Taliban system here," Bashir Bilour, a senior provincial government leader, said Wednesday. "This is a system about justice. It is for producing swift justice."

While Britain and NATO have said they are concerned by the deal, the United States has been muted in its criticism.

When pressed by reporters at the State Department on Tuesday spokesman Gordon Duguid said the U.S. was seeking a "fuller explanation" from Pakistan.

"As I understand it, Islamic law is within the constitutional framework of Pakistan," he added. "So I don't know that that is particularly an issue for anyone outside of Pakistan to discuss."

The U.S. response was a sign the new administration is wary about weakening an already fragile Pakistani government that Washington needs to help fight Islamic militants using Pakistan to stage attacks on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

A similar deal in Swat last year collapsed in a few months and was blamed for giving insurgents time to regroup.

Some 2,000 militants are believed to operate in the valley. In defiance of some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops, they have already set up their own courts, meting out punishments in line with an exceptionally harsh brand of Islamic law.

Israel says no cease-fire until soldier comes home

By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Israel declared Wednesday that it will not open the Gaza Strip's blockaded borders until Hamas militants free a captured Israeli soldier, dealing a blow to Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term cease-fire.

The decision was condemned by Hamas, which is desperate for border crossings to be opened in order to start repairing destruction from Israel's military offensive in the coastal territory last month.

In parallel, the prime minister of the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank announced plans to stream reconstruction money directly to the people of Gaza. That would effectively sideline the Hamas administration in Gaza.

Gaza's borders have been sealed by Israel and Egypt since the Islamic militants of Hamas violently seized control of the territory nearly two years ago, driving out supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel allows only vital humanitarian supplies to enter, and the Security Cabinet decided that closure will stay in place until Sgt. Gilad Schalit is released. The 11-member body unanimously endorsed the condition, which was set out by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week.

The soldier was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid by Hamas-linked militants who attacked an army base, killing two other soldiers.

In return for sending Schalit back, Hamas is demanding the freedom of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including dozens of convicted killers. It also has insisted the prisoner exchange should be handled separately from the cease-fire negotiations.

Olmert insisted on a link. "I don't think we need to open the crossings until the issue of Gilad Schalit is resolved," he told the Security Cabinet, according to his office.

Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel will fly to Cairo on Friday for further indirect talks with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, officials in Olmert's office said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Dekel would remain in Cairo until an accord is reached.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would continue to allow a limited flow of food and humanitarian items into Gaza.

Regev said the ministers also agreed that a number of Palestinian prisoners could be released in exchange for the soldier. He would not say how many.

"We will have to release terrorists, people who are guilty of very difficult crimes," Regev said. "The ministers supported and understood this."

Hamas officials, both in Gaza and in the group's exiled leadership in Syria, condemned Israel's decision and accused it of undermining the Egyptian truce effort.

Ali Baraka, a Hamas leader based in Damascus, Syria, said Israel's decision "comes in the face of Egyptian efforts because this position is one of obstinacy."

The Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that Israel's new demand meant it did not want a truce.

Speaking shortly before Israel announced its condition, the United Nation's top Mideast envoy, Robert Serry, warned there is a danger of new fighting in Gaza if a cease-fire deal isn't reached quickly.

He told the U.N. Security Council that a durable cease-fire can be achieved only if there is broad progress on exchanging prisoners, preventing weapons smuggling into Gaza, opening Gaza's borders and uniting Palestinian factions.

These steps "would also pave the way for the longer term recovery and reconstruction of Gaza," Serry said.

As long as the borders are closed, efforts to repair the heavy damage in Gaza will remain frozen because of shortages of cement, glass, nails and other basic supplies. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and the basic infrastructure was hit hard during the Israeli offensive.

Support for Hamas' rule could be eroded by a failure to begin repairs.

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the Abbas administration, told The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah that he will present a plan to donors to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in aid directly to owners of damaged homes in Gaza, working with Gaza's banks. That would bypass Hamas, although Fayyad would not say that this was his goal.

Hamas insists on a role in allocating aid, but donors are balking at working with the Islamic militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. It was unclear if Hamas would try to block the funding, risking harsh criticism from its people.

Also complicating the situation is Israel's political turmoil.

Olmert, who is the focus of investigations into alleged corruption, will step down after a new government is formed following last week's parliamentary election. The results of the vote were inconclusive.

Israel's president, Shimon Peres, received the official election results Wednesday evening and started consultations with the 12 parties. In a statement, he said he would complete the talks Thursday.

Based on those discussions, Peres will pick either centrist Tzipi Livni of Kadima or Benjamin Netanyahu of the hard-line Likud to try to form a governing coalition. The prime minister-designate would have up to six weeks to form a government.

Americans have taken their decision as per their own discretion

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

New York Times quoted American president, Barrack Obama on Tuesday to have said that the current American Administration would focus more on war in Afghanistan rather than reconstruction. Though the ultra motives behind American invasion of Afghanistan were clear to all Afghans with insight, but the past eight years, have clearly portrayed the poor pace of reconstruction works in Afghanistan performed by the invading Americans.

Furthermore, the current absurd state of the so-called prosperity, the Americans were boasting to bring about in Afghanistan, is unquestionably obvious to all our countrymen. Similarly, the invading forces have failed to put an end to the sufferings of the Afghan people. By announcing their war-mongering policy, the Americans have unveiled once again their anti-Afghan feature and, on their own accord, adopted a bellicose direction as their policy based on blood shedding, sufferings and torturing of the Afghans.

It is aimed at keeping the Afghans entangled in the vortex of the flames of war. This is now up to the peace-loving people of the world and America to find for themselves the true hidden motives of the US Administration behind her intransigence, stubbornness and irrational stand on Afghanistan.

As far as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is concerned, its forces have the upper hand over the invading forces. The count of their victories is growing and their influence spreading. Realistic observers all over the world acknowledge that the policy of the invading Americans and their allies have faced a fiasco in Afghanistan. This is why that Eishidon, an Arab diplomat, who was a candidate for the post of secretary General of the United Nations told London Times in an interview:"

The Americans and the Western powers should know that they will never gain success through military approaches. Had this approach been a successful one, the Americans would not have been compelled to pull out of Iraq, calling it a futile war. In Eishodon words, Afghanistan now has become an oven for the Americans. There is no vista of hope that the Americans will overcome over the Taliban in future." He says. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan enjoys a high spirit and with the help of Allah (SwT), the Afghans too support their stand vis-à-vis the invaders.

In view of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the new leadership of America is smarting from the issues left to them as a wicked legacy of the brutal, stubborn and disastrous reign of Bush governance.

So the new leadership has to deeply ponder over the Bush legacy and conduct a comprehensive judgment about the backlash of the actions of former Administration. They should work out an acceptable and rational policy vis-à-vis the people of the world. American new leadership strategy of intransigence favoring continuation of war in Afghanistan is, in itself, harmful to America.

It will have lethal consequences because the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have armed the Afghan nation with a full spirit of Jihad and freedom- lovingness. The Americans will sustain sporadic losses in Afghanistan this coming spring. Their forces in military barracks and military bases will hardly dare to come out from their hide-outs to patrol the roads. They will not be able to extend their patrol to rural areas either.

Therefore, it is now up to the powers- that-be at the White House to decide whether the American interest and dignity lies in the bloodshed and the war-mongering policies of Bush or in a pragmatic approach based on ground realities, human dignity and rationality.

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Queen Rania cites UNRWA's 'dire' need for funds

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

AMMAN: Jordan's Queen Rania appealed on Monday for urgent aid for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warning that lack of funds might stop its operations. "We are in very dire need of much more assistance and without which I think UNRWA won't be able to operate," the queen, wife of King Abdullah II, told a meeting of UNRWA in Amman. "The international community owes greats debts to UNRWA. It was quite alarming to know that the financial situation was in jeopardy." Rania, herself of Palestinian origin, called for urgent assistance to UNRWA, which cares for some 4.3 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. According to UNRWA's website, the agency has unveiled a $345 million "quick recovery plan" for the Gaza Strip, where Israel's 22 days of attacks in December and January caused massive destruction and killed over 1,300 people. "We have collected $120 million, and we need a little more than 200 million out of the 345 to balance," UNRWA commissioner general Karen Abu Zayed told a news conference after the meeting. UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in January the United Nations would launch a $613 million appeal to meet the "massive" needs of those hit by Israel's war in Gaza.

Has Liquid Water Been Detected On Mars?

Liquid water may have been discovered by the late Phoenix Mars Lander. This astonishing (and controversial) claim comes from some very intriguing images of the lander's leg shortly after Phoenix landed on the Red Planet last year. The series of black and white images appear to show droplets of water hanging off the robot's bodywork in the shade; it seems possible that the water droplets were splashed from the surface during Phoenix's rocket-assisted landing. Far from being static blobs, they appear to grow, much like water droplets here on Earth as water vapor is absorbed from the atmosphere.

But wait a minute, isn't the Martian atmosphere too thin and too cold to accommodate liquid water? That's where the perchlorate comes in…

If liquid water has been found to exist on the surface of Mars, there will be huge implications for our understanding of the planet. Most tantalizingly, liquid water, on or near the planet's surface, could aid the survival of microbial life, reinvigorating the search for extraterrestrial life on out interplanetary neighbor. But on a planet where the atmospheric pressure is 100 times less than on Earth, and temperatures reached a maximum of -20° Celcius during the Phoenix mission, why isn't this "liquid water" candidate frozen?

The perchlorate discovery in the Martian soil was announced by the Phoenix team in August 2008, after an explosion of intense Internet conjecture caused by the "potential for life" announcement by an Aviation Week article days earlier. It turned out that the Phoenix instrumentation had found quantities of a toxic chemical called perchlorate known to be a hindrance to life as we know it. Although follow-up reports were slightly more positive about the presence of the chemical (a possible energy source for microbial life), the mood was fairly sombre. On a planet as unforgiving as Mars, any bad news is a severe knock for the hope of finding life.

However, regardless of perchlorate's toxic effects on life, it may be helping out another one of life's resources to stay in liquid form. If perchlorate is dissolved in significant quantities, water could remain as a liquid down to temperatures as low as -70°C. So could it be that the dissolved perchlorate salt is acting as a very impressive anti-freeze?

Nilton Renno from the University of Michigan and Phoenix team member, thinks it could be. "According to my calculations, you can have liquid saline solutions just below the surface almost anywhere on Mars," he said.

Renno's team carried out a series of laboratory experiments and found that the lander's thrusters would have melted the top millimetre of ice in the regolith. The resulting water droplets may have been splashed onto the landers leg. If the concentration of perchlorate was high enough, the water could have remained in a liquid state during the Mars daytime. As time progressed, atmospheric water vapour may have been absorbed, hence the growing and shifting blobs of liquid on the leg. There is also the possibility that the droplets were splashed from pools of perchlorate-rich water already in a liquid state on the surface.

However, not everyone is convinced. Fellow Phoenix team member Michael Hecht from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, thinks that the photographs actually show water ice, not liquid water. The "frost" changed shape as vapour from the air coalesced and froze to the leg. Renno points out that this is unlikely as any ice on the leg would be more likely to sublime, rather than grow, but Hecht believes this could happen if the leg was colder than its surroundings.

Renno's team will be continuing tests on samples of perchlorate-rich water under Mars-like conditions for the next few months to understand the dynamics of water under these extreme conditions. What makes this even more interesting is that some microbial life on Earth has the ability to survive in very salty fluids, perhaps microbial alien life on Mars evolved in a similar environment where there were pools of liquid water maintained at extremely low temperatures by high concentrations of perchlorate salt…

NASA to launch satellite for studying CO2

The launch of NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to the study of carbon dioxide is slated for Feb. 24, the space agency said Tuesday.

The launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory is set for 1:51:30 a.m. PST (0951 GMT) during a 4-and-a-half-minute launch window. The observatory will launch into a 438-mile (705-km) orbit and then map the earth once every 16 days for at least two years.

The observatory's space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide will provide the first complete picture of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions, NASA said.

The measurements also will show just where carbon dioxide is pulled out of the atmosphere and stored.

NASA said data from the observatory will reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and will improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions.

Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate.

Sahel leaders set for security summit

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

BAMAKO: Leaders of the states in Africa's northern Sahel desert zone are set to meet in Bamako Thursday for a special security summit, a source in the Malian Foreign Ministry told AFP. Nearly all of the leaders of the six nations that make up the Sahal zone - Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Chad - are expected in the Malian capital for a summit expected to last for "several hours," the source said. The Sahel region, with vast stretches of inhospitable desert, is notoriously difficult to control with several armed groups and rebels roaming freely between the countries.

Court bars release of 17 Uighurs detainees into US

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that 17 Turkic Muslims cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay must stay at the prison camp, raising the stakes for an Obama administration that has pledged to quickly close the facility and free those who have not been charged.

In a showdown over presidential power, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said a judge went too far last October in ordering the U.S. entry of the 17 men, known as Uighurs (WEE'-gurz), over the objections of the Bush administration.

The three-judge panel suggested the detainees might be able to seek entry by applying to the Homeland Security Department, which administers U.S. immigration laws. But the court bluntly concluded the detainees otherwise had no constitutional right to immediate freedom after being held in custody at the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charges for nearly seven years.

"Such sentiments, however high-minded, do not represent a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of the political branches," wrote Judge A. Raymond Randolph, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush.

Attorneys for the detainees said they were considering whether to appeal the decision to the full appeals court or the Supreme Court. But they made clear it was now time for President Barack Obama to take action after eight years of Bush administration detention policies.

"The ball is in President Obama's court," said Emi MacLean, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. "If he is genuinely committed to closing Guantanamo, one clear and immediate step he should take is release the Uighurs into the U.S."

The White House declined to comment on the ruling, citing its ongoing review on closing the Guantanamo prison. Within days of taking office, Obama ordered Guantanamo closed in a year. But he has since been largely quiet on where the hundreds of prisoners — most of whom are being held without charges — should be released if no country is willing to take them.

The State Department has said it is continuing diplomatic efforts to resettle the Uighurs and other detainees in other countries.

At issue in the case was whether a federal judge has the authority to order the release of prisoners at Guantanamo who were unlawfully detained by the United States and cannot be sent back to their homeland. The Muslims were cleared for release from Guantanamo as early as 2003 but fear they will be tortured if they are returned to China.

Earlier this month, Beijing warned other countries not to accept the men.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in October ordered the government to release the 17 men into the United States, noting that they were no longer considered enemy combatants. He sternly rebuked the Bush administration for a detention policy toward the Uighurs that "crossed the constitutional threshold into infinitum."

But in Wednesday's decision, the three-judge panel made up of one Democratic and two Republican appointees disagreed.

"The government has represented that it is continuing diplomatic attempts to find an appropriate country willing to admit petitioners, and we have no reason to doubt that it is doing so," Randolph wrote. "Nor do we have the power to require anything more."

Judge Judith Rogers, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, wrote in a separate opinion that Urbina might have constitutional authority to release the men based on recent Supreme Court rulings. But Rogers said Urbina's decision was premature because he had not yet heard from U.S. immigration officials.

The Supreme Court has held that Guantanamo Bay detainees can go to court to challenge their imprisonment. Wednesday's appeals court ruling effectively means that a judge can hear the case but in some instances have no authority to actually free the detainees.

"Today's decision represents a disappointing step back towards the Bush administration's unlawful Guantanamo policies," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project. "These men were cleared for release but have been held without charge in a system that utterly disregards the fundamental tenets of due process."

Roughly 20 percent of about 250 detainees who remain at Guantanamo fear torture or persecution if they return to their home countries, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Bush administration had maintained that, unless another country agrees to take them, the detainees should stay at Guantanamo.

Uighurs are from Xinjiang — an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations — and say they have been repressed by the Chinese government. China has long said that insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang. The Uighur detainees were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001.

Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but has since balked on taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.

A Swedish immigration court initially granted asylum to one of those men on Wednesday, although the Swedish migration board is now appealing the decision to a higher court. Adil Hakimjan applied for asylum in Sweden because his sister lives there.

Elderly woman dies of heart attack as Israel strikes S Gaza

An elderly Palestinian woman died on Wednesday morning due to a heart attack after Israel started hitting smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt in southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said.

Dr. Mohammed Subuh, a director at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah town, said the 70-year-old Huda Abu Tuhla died of heart attack as a result of the Israeli bombing near her house in Rafah.

Israel launched first round of attacks on the underground tunnels during its offensive in Gaza Strip in December and January. Though the largest military operation stopped and Egypt resumed efforts to broker a ceasefire, Israel kept striking at the tunnels from time to time.

The Israeli army said the fresh airstrikes on the border area in Rafah have destroyed seven tunnels, which are used to bring in fuel, cloths, food and raw materials to the residents of the besieged coastal Strip. But Israel says the underground passages are also used for smuggling weapons to Hamas.

Also in the morning, the Israeli warplanes raided an evacuated security compound run by Hamas administration in Khan Younis city.

Later in the morning, the Israeli troops, stationed in eastern Khan Younis borders, opened fire at the Palestinians who were working in a field, moderately wounding a farmer, according to witnesses.

The recent Israeli attacks followed the landing of a rocket that Palestinian militants fired from the Gaza Strip early in the morning.

Israel hooks solar plant to national grid

JERUSALEM, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Israel Electric Corp. has approved its first connection of a photovoltaic solar power plant to the national grid.

IEC will connect Arava Power Co.'s 80-megawatt solar power plant to its national grid, Globes reports.

The $400 million plant is owned by Kibbutz Ketura, with a 40 percent stake, and a group of U.S. investors led by Yosef Abramowitz.

Arava Power already has received a license from the Electricity Public Utilities Authority to build a 5-megawatt substation as part of the plant.

IEC hopes to approve and build a 161-kilowatt high-tension power line in Arava to transmit the power within four years.

Somalia: Explosion Kills Two in Mogadishu

Mogadishu — Two teenagers have died and two others injured Wednesday after anti aircraft bullet exploded to them in Gubta neighborhood in Mogadishu, witnesses told radio Shabelle.

Witnesses said the teenagers were playing with the bullet when it exploded. At first, one person died, but moments later the other one succumbed to his wounds from the bullet.

Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, has been a battle ground since 1991 when warlords overthrew late president Mohamed Siad Barre.

Experts warned residents of Mogadishu against landmines and explosives, after the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/200902180758.html.

Israel allows apples from Golan into rest of Syria

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Truckloads of apples were sent from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to Syria on Tuesday after Israel authorized the export of 8,000 tons to its longtime foe. The first shipments went through the Kuneitra crossing on Tuesday morning, a military spokesman said. "An apple transfer through the demarcation line between the occupied Golan and Syria ... is no everyday event," the International Committee of the Red Cross, which organized the operation, said in a statement.

"The ICRC is acting in its capacity as a neutral intermediary at the request of the farmers of the occupied Golan and with the approval of the Syrian and Israeli authorities," the humanitarian organization said in a statement.

"We hope this operation will help create an environment conducive to raising other humanitarian concerns, for example the fact that family members separated by the demarcation line cannot cross the gates to maintain family ties," said Jean-Jacques Fresard, who heads the ICRC delegation in Syria.

The transfer of the apples is expected to take between six and eight weeks, and marks the fourth time the ICRC has conducted such an operation.

Apple production is a main source of income for Syrian farmers in the Golan, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war and de facto annexed in 1981 in a move never recognized by the international community.

More than 18,000 Syrians, mostly Druze, are left from the Golan's original population of 150,000. The vast majority of the Druze have refused to take Israeli citizenship.

Nearly 20,000 Jewish settlers also live in the occupied Syrian territory.

Mossad's Dirty Secrets in Iran

By MEL FRYKBERG

JERUSALEM -- As the Israeli government continues to express concern about U.S. President Barack Obama's desire to hold dialogue with Tehran a British media report has accused Israel of sponsoring subversive political groups and sabotage in Iran as well as assassinating a number of Iranian scientists.

According to The Telegraph Western intelligence sources have stated that Tel Aviv is using front companies and double agents to disrupt Iran's illicit weapons project as an alternative to direct military strikes.

This comes in the wake of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warning senior military figures that Iran's continued nuclear program development could pose and "existential threat to the Jewish state."

Barak made the allegations during a meeting with top Israeli military commanders on Monday as he prepared them psychologically for what could be Israel taking unilateral action against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Barak explained that not only did the threat come from the regime in Tehran itself but also from the groups that are supported by Iran such as the Lebanese resistance organization Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas, which controls Gaza.

"It will be very difficult to stop the trickling of nuclear capabilities, even if primitive, to terrorist organizations," he said.

The defense minister also warned that once the Obama administration began to negotiate with Iran any military strike would become that much more difficult as he said Tehran would engage in steps and gestures aimed at obfuscating the issue of its nuclear program.

Meanwhile The Telegraph's report came against the background of Israeli officials privately acknowledging that the new U.S. administration was unlikely to approve any air attack on Iran.

According to a report in The New York Times several months ago, the George W. Bush administration, too, prevented an Israeli Air Force (AIF) strike on Tehran's alleged nuclear installation in Natanz.

American journalist James Risen reported recently that the CIA and Mossad had co-planned a number of sabotage operations against the Iranian program, including damaging power lines to nuclear sites in order to cause harm to computer systems and equipment.

Israel's plan is to delay Iran's development of nuclear weapons for as long as possible. Ultimately Tel Aviv acknowledges that this strategy will not prevent the Islamic republic's nuclear arsenal from becoming a reality, only delay it.

"Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don't realize what's happening. You are never going to stop it," a former CIA officer on Iran was quoted as saying.

"The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach," he added.

"We certainly don't want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It's a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks."

And another strategy the Israelis and American intelligence agencies have been involved with is the assassination of key figures involved in Iran's nuclear program.

Aardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant died in mysterious circumstances in 2007. It was reported that "gas poisoning" had lead to his demise.

But there have been a number of other individuals involved in the procurement and enrichment process in both Iran and Europe who have met premature ends at what is believed to be Israeli hit squads or agents working for the Israelis.

"With cooperation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear program and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain," said Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. private intelligence company with strong government security connections.

"As U.S.-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration's outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result," she added.

This would not be the first time Israeli agents were involved in assassinating scientists involved in developing the nuclear arsenal of countries Tel Aviv did not want to see acquire them.

Gerald Bull, a Canadian scientist, was the world's greatest expert on barrel ballistics. Israel had made several unsuccessful attempts to buy his expertise, but Bull had made clear his disdain for the Jewish state.

He instead offered his services to Saddam Hussein to build a supergun capable of launching shells containing nuclear, chemical or biological warheads from Iraq directly into Israel.

In 1989 Saddam ordered three of the weapons to be built at a cost of $20 million while Bull was retained as a consultant. The project was codenamed Babylon.

Former Mossad head Nahum Admoni consulted with Israeli premier Yitzhak Shamir and both men agreed Bull had to die.

On Mar. 22, 1990, three men drove a hired car to Bull's apartment in Brussels. As the 61-year-old Bull opened the door, he received five bullets in his head and neck according to the book "Gideon's Spies" by Gordon Thomas.

UN accused of failing to protect Congo civilians

By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer

DUNGU, Congo – Early in the morning the warnings came: Rebels notorious for vicious attacks on civilians were advancing on this eastern Congolese town of thatched roof huts along the winding Kibali River.

Aid workers alerted nearby U.N. peacekeepers, but for hours no one came.

So tens of thousands of townspeople fled — on foot, on bicycles, on motorcycles, anything to escape. Some did not get out on time and were slaughtered on the spot. Others were abducted and killed in the bush.

The failure to protect the people of Dungu and other towns from attack by the Lord's Resistance Army is a sign of the collapse of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in this sprawling Central African nation.

More than 1,500 civilians have been slaughtered since September, many hacked and clubbed to death in unspeakably brutal attacks, according to humanitarian groups. Aid workers and others say the U.N. force and Congolese military received almost daily alerts as the death toll mounted and the rebel offensives multiplied.

Critics say the 17,000-member U.N. mission has foundered despite being the largest and most expensive in the world — and with the strongest mandate ever issued to U.N. troops to use force to protect civilians.

U.N. officials say they simply do not have enough boots on the ground to perform effectively in Congo, a country more than twice the size of California and Texas combined, but with only 300 miles of paved roads.

With a population of more than 58 million, there is only about one peacekeeper for every 3,400 people.

During a tour last week of towns laid waste by the rebels in the remote Haut-Uele region, the top U.N. diplomat for humanitarian aid, John Holmes, said the peacekeepers have been given an impossible task.

"Can we do better? Yes. The fact that I am here is an admission that we need to do a lot more — more resources, more capacity on the ground, better security," Holmes told The Associated Press.

"In an area like this, where attacks are coming from all directions, it's impossible to protect every civilian. Even the big towns aren't particularly safe," he said.

Over nearly a decade, Congo's people have suffered through back-to-back civil wars that devastated the nation. Adding to the misery, the Lord's Resistance Army's more than 20-year insurgency in Uganda spilled over into Congo about five years ago.

Medecins Sans Frontieres holds the U.N. peacekeepers responsible for the hundreds of civilians killed by the Ugandan rebels, blaming the force for not doing more to protect them. And other agencies have joined the outcry.

The U.N. troops "are mere spectators in the massacres of these people whom they should be defending," Fides, the Catholic missionary news agency, wrote last week.

In July, Congo's army — supported by U.N. helicopters and planes — deployed more than 3,000 troops with a plan to contain the rebels in their hideouts near the border with Sudan. They hoped to encircle them, cut off their food and weapons supply, then flush out the rebels so they could be captured.

The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, which had set up an office in the town of Dungu in September, warned the U.N. peacekeepers of the risk of rebel reprisals on the civilian population, according to an official involved in setting up the office. But the U.N. force did nothing.

The rebels had killed only two people between January and mid-September, according to U.N. humanitarian and other aid workers. But after the army launched its offensive, the rebels struck as predicted and attacked some 20 villages on Sept. 17.

In some, every person was slaughtered, their heads smashed in with clubs, their throats slit with machetes or bayonets. In others, all the men were killed, and women and children were abducted to become sex slaves and forced labor.

A total of 620 civilians were killed between Sept. 17 and Dec. 24, according to aid groups. More than 900 others were slaughtered from Christmas until mid-January, although the toll is likely even higher, aid workers say.

After the September attacks, the people of Dungu rioted and attacked a U.N. base, setting ablaze a U.N. vehicle and storming the compound. U.N. troops abandoned the base, which now is littered with goat droppings and the vehicle's burnt-out carcass.

A Moroccan peacekeeper told an AP photographer the 240 U.N. troops now have no contact with the people they were sent to protect; they stay in their new camp at an airstrip, a 20-minute drive from town, according to the soldier, who would not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

After the rebel attack on Dungu in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 1, the peacekeepers finally arrived at 4 p.m. to evacuate aid workers from the town, U.N. officials said. By then, the Congolese troops had driven out the rebels.

"MONUC did nothing for us the day we were attacked," said Edoxie Babe, a market vendor, using the French acronym for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo. "I saw MONUC come in only in the afternoon, and then only to get the white foreigners to safety."

U.N. deputy mission chief Ross Mountain said the peacekeepers plan to set up protection units at their military bases to improve communication with and defense of civilians. The U.N. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, said the U.N. also is preparing a rapid reaction force to swiftly intervene in conflicts.

The belated action comes after the head of the U.N. mission in Congo, Alan Doss, pleaded for months for more soldiers. The U.N. Security Council in November approved 3,000 more troops for Congo, but only Bangladesh has responded with an offer of about 900 troops.

Bold New Missions to Jupiter and Saturn Planned

Tariq Malik
Senior Editor
SPACE.com – Wed Feb 18, 6:08 pm ET

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are pushing ahead with proposals to send ambitious new missions to explore Jupiter, Saturn and the many moons that circle both planets, the two space agencies announced Wednesday.

The proposed missions call for sending multiple spacecraft to the Jupiter and Saturn systems to explore the gas giant planets and their unique satellites, such as Jupiter's ice-covered Europa and Saturn's shrouded moon Titan.

"It's just a remarkable effort that I see," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, in a teleconference with reporters. "The communities have really come together on both sides of the pond."

NASA and ESA officials announced plans for the flagship mission proposals and a rough schedule for the first to fly - the Jupiter-bound expedition - on Wednesday after a meeting between the two space agencies in Washington, D.C., last week. NASA envisions launching its Jupiter and Saturn probes atop expendable Atlas 5 rockets, U.S. space agency officials said.

"The decision means a win, win situation for all parties involved," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science missions at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Although the Jupiter system mission has been chosen to proceed to an earlier flight opportunity, a Saturn system mission clearly remains a high priority for the science community."

Return to Jupiter

Dubbed the Europa Jupiter System Mission, the Jupiter-bound expedition would send two orbiting spacecraft to study the planet and its large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto in unprecedented detail, NASA officials said.

NASA would build one orbiter, the Jupiter Europa, while ESA would provide the other, Jupiter Ganymede. The spacecraft would launch in 2020 from different spaceports with the goal of reaching Jupiter by 2026 and spending three years studying the planet and its moons, NASA officials said.

NASA's share in the mission could cost up to $3 billion, while Europe has set aside about 850 million euro (about $1 billion) for its next flagship mission. The European Jupiter probe is also known as Laplace at ESA. While neither mission is currently fully funded, NASA is setting aside about $10 million to continue studying design challenges for its Jupiter Europa orbiter, Green said.

NASA's last dedicated mission to Jupiter was Galileo, which spent eight years studying the planet and its moons before intentionally plunging into the gas giant in 2003 to end its flight. The next probe slated to fly to the planet is NASA's Juno, which is scheduled for an August 2011 launch.

"For the Jupiter Europa mission, the overarching goal is to investigate the emergence of potentially habitable worlds around gas giants," said Curt Niebur, NASA's program scientist for the outer planets. "We'll take a close look at Europa, to better define its habitability."

Jupiter's moon Europa is covered with a thick crust of ice that hides what astronomers believe to be a vast liquid ocean beneath its frozen exterior. In addition to studying Jupiter itself and flying by its other large satellites, NASA's Jupiter Europa spacecraft would be able to orbit Europa and build global maps of the moon's surface, topography and composition. A ground-penetrating radar and gravity-measuring sensors would also probe Europa's interior to obtain definitive proof whether the underground ocean exists.

"We all firmly believe that there's an ocean under the ice of Europa," Niebur said. "This mission is going to verify that using three different lines of inquiry."

Europe's Jovian probe would mirror NASA's in-depth scrutiny of Europa at Ganymede, which is the largest of Jupiter's moons, as well as the largest natural satellite in the solar system. The moon is larger than the planet Mercury. While NASA's spacecraft will end its mission in orbit around Europa, Europe's would do so circling Ganymede, NASA officials said.

Sailing to Saturn

Like the proposed Jupiter mission, the Saturn expedition would consist of both NASA and European spacecraft.

Dubbed the Titan Saturn System mission, the flagship flight would include a NASA-built orbiter to study Saturn and its moons, as well as European lander and research balloon to continue the exploration of the planet's cloud-covered moon Titan. Saturn's moon Enceladus, which harbors ice-spewing geysers, is also major target for that mission. ESA officials have referred to their mission to Saturn and Titan as Tandem.

The daunting technical hurdles involved in assembling the mission will require more study and technology development before the flight can go forward, NASA officials said. Those hurdles, which include trying to keep spacecraft trim enough to fit on their rockets, led NASA and ESA officials to propose flying the Jupiter mission first, they added.

"Titan will not be forgotten," Green said.

Under NASA's current plan, the Titan Saturn System mission would take about 10 1/2 years to reach Saturn if it launched in the 2020 timeframe. NASA's orbiter would spend about two years circling Saturn to study the planet, Enceladus and other moons, and then spend about 1 1/2 years in orbit around Titan, Niebur said.

Niebur said Titan's major draw is its chemistry, which appears to have many parallels to what the early Earth may have been like in the ancient past. Images and data from the Cassini orbiter have found evidence of liquid methane lakes and rain on the cloudy Saturnian moon.

"Titan is felt to be a very Earth-like world in terms of the processes going on," Niebur said.

Meanwhile, the Cassini orbiter managed by NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency is currently in orbit around Saturn, where it has been studying the planet and its many moons since it arrived in June 2004. The orbiter's European-built Huygens lander successfully touched down on Titan's surface in January 2005.

Mission managers are pushing to extend Cassini's flight by seven years to 2017.

"This joint endeavor is a wonderful new exploration challenge and will be a landmark of 21st century planetary science," said David Southwood, ESA's director of science and robotic exploration. "What I am especially sure of is that the cooperation across the Atlantic that we have had so far and we see in the future, between America and Europe, NASA and ESA, and in our respective science communities is absolutely right. Let's get to work."

Iraq's Kurdish-Arab tensions threaten to escalate into war

By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers

MOSUL, Iraq — At the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul, Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Iraq's Nineveh province, is worried about the future.

Iraq's Jan. 31 provincial elections have been hailed as a sign that the country is putting its violent past behind it, is moving toward democracy and no longer is in need of a large U.S. military force. Along a 300-mile strip of disputed territory that stretches across northern Iraq, however, the elections have rekindled the longstanding hostility between Sunni Muslim Arabs and Sunni Kurds, and there are growing fears that war could erupt.

Al Hadbaa, an Arab nationalist party with some Kurdish and other members that vowed to retake disputed territory from the Kurdish security forces; halt Kurdish expansion and eject Kurdish militias, won 47 percent of the vote in predominantly Arab Nineveh, according to the preliminary election results. That means the Kurds will lose control of the provincial council.

The provincial elections also cost the Kurds their place as Iraq's kingmakers. Their main ally in advocating a loose federal system of semi-autonomous Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni regions, the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, lost power in all the southern provinces it once controlled.

Kurdish parties have installed security forces well south of the United Nations Green Line that's delineated Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region since 1991. Now Goran promises to seal the borders of the disputed areas of Nineveh if the central government and provincial forces start pressuring the Kurds to relinquish some of the turf they've seized from Arabs since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein's Sunni dictatorship.

"There is coldness in the region, and I am in the middle," said Goran, who's also the head of the KDP in Nineveh. "With al Hadbaa, there will be a problem, and the province will break. . . . If there is pressure on the Kurds, we will stay in our own region and not allow any interference."

Because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ran on a strong central government platform and America's restraining influence will wane as U.S. troops draw down during the next three years, there may be nothing to stop a Kurdish-Arab war.

"They will actually try to draw a new green line," said Joost Hiltermann, the deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. "Kurds have been strong since 2003, and now they're not as strong and they've somewhat overreached. The question is: Are they going to concede some things or are they going to fight over this?"

"Violence could happen for sure," Hiltermann said. "Eventually, the strongest is going to win. The question is, who is the strongest? The Kurds have pushed the bridge too far, and they don't have the power to realize it."

In his marble-lined mansion in Rabia, about 50 miles northwest of Mosul, Sheikh Abdullah al Yawar of al Hadbaa said Nineveh's Kurdish-dominated provincial council looked out for the Kurds and no one else. The first order of business, he said, will be to push the Peshmerga, the Kurdish militias, out of Nineveh.

"We will kick out all who work against Iraqi law and the Iraqi constitution," the sheikh said. "If you see a militia here, what will you do? I will ask the Iraqi security forces to help get them out. In government offices, only Iraqi flags should fly, and Iraqi forces from the Iraqi Army should be a mix of Kurds, Arabs and Christians."

Atheel al Najafi, the head of the Hadbaa movement who expects to become Nineveh's governor, said his party's demands include putting the entire province under provincial government control. This would halt the economic aid from the Kurdish region that funds some 400 schools, thousands of teachers and churches, and it would remove KDP soldiers from the region.

Goran said the Kurds won't withdraw from the disputed areas unless the issue of Kurdish autonomy is settled. Last year, central government and Kurdish forces nearly came to blows in Khanaqeen in neighboring Diyala province when Iraqi forces tried to push into that area. Only American intervention prevented them from coming to blows.

If the issue of the Kurds isn't settled, there will always be war, he said. Just before the provincial elections, Maliki deployed forces without informing the provincial government, and non-Kurdish candidates were brought to Baghdad to be schooled on the dangers of the Kurdish issue, he said. Kurds, Goran said, been treated like "traitors."

"Maliki does not believe in federalism," Goran said. "For us, it doesn't matter what the other people want. . . . If Maliki doesn't believe in this, there will be war again."

In Erbil, Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Kurdish nationalist Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region, said the problem isn't militias or Kurdish expansion. The Kurds, he said, want to reclaim areas of Iraq they believe are theirs. They want a referendum, which the Arabs consider a disgrace.

Arabs "only accept a Kurd when he is a slave and they are the masters," he said. "Centralism failed in Iraq. You cannot have a stronger leader than Saddam Hussein."

Zimbabwe to pay soldiers, teachers in US dollars

By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe tried to combat the world's highest inflation by widening the use of foreign currency Wednesday — the first act of a coalition government that gave the longtime opposition control of much economic policy.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, a veteran opposition leader, told reporters that some 130,000 soldiers, teachers, civil servants and other government workers will now receive payment in U.S. dollars instead of local currency. The $100 monthly salary will be a raise for most government employees, who had seen their buying power drop to the equivalent of $30 a month because of inflation.

Biti also scrapped licenses required for shops doing business in foreign currency. The change will allow more merchants to legally trade in dollars and South African rand.

But even as the new coalition took its first steps, a judge ordered the opposition's nominee for deputy agriculture minister jailed for at least two more weeks pending trial on terrorism charges.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, called Roy Bennett's arrest last week an attempt by factions in the President Robert Mugabe's party to derail the power-sharing deal, which forced several of his top aides to hand Cabinet posts to MDC politicians.

The detention of Bennett and several other opposition figures and independent human rights activists in recent weeks raises the pressure on Tsvangirai to convince supporters that joining a government with Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party was not a mistake.

The MDC called for the release of Bennett and said the new government must assure "Zimbabweans that it respects citizens' human rights."

Critics blame Mugabe — in power for nearly 30 years — for political repression and an economic collapse that has seen worsening hunger, a widening cholera epidemic and spiraling prices.

Ordinary Zimbabweans have long since stopped doing business in virtually worthless Zimbabwean dollars. Mugabe's party partially opened the economy to stable currencies like the U.S. dollar, rand and British pound. Schools and hospitals are allowed to charge in foreign currency. Crumbling power and water utilities also have been charging in foreign exchange. Bus drivers demand fares in foreign currency and even the Herald, the state-controlled daily newspaper, began printing its price as $1 over its masthead last month.

Biti's announcement represented a broadening of that strategy in an attempt to halt the skyrocketing inflation and wider economic disaster.

"Now that the country has embraced the use of multiple currencies which are relatively stable, the government expects all businesses to act responsibly on pricing ... in order to create the necessary confidence in the economy," Biti told reporters.

Last year, official inflation based on the tumbling local Zimbabwe dollar was given at 231 million percent but the state statistics office said it was no longer able to calculate the inflation rate because of acute shortages of gasoline, food and most goods that spurred black-market dealings.

Biti said new statistics on inflation would be released next month.

Other moves announced by Biti included raising interest rates on private bank accounts to foster "a savings culture." Previously, Zimbabweans had been reluctant to keep their money in banks because it lost value so quickly, and because limits on daily withdrawals had made it time-consuming to access.

Private companies would also be required to pay taxes in foreign currency.

Obsolete local credit cards were to be revived in hard currency as the country gradually moved away from cash transactions "to the use of plastic money," Biti said.

"We have to get Zimbabwe working again," Biti said.

Much of the foreign currency in use in Zimbabwe comes from some 4 million Zimbabweans — about a third of the population — who are living and working abroad after fleeing years of political and economic turmoil.

The hunger crisis in the former regional breadbasket has left up to 7 million people dependent on foreign handouts and the cholera epidemic blamed on collapsed water, sanitation and health services has killed over 3,600 people since August.

US commander: Troops 'stalemated' in Afghanistan

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have "stalemated" U.S. and allied forces.

Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — about 55,000 in all — will remain near those levels for up to five years.

Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.

McKiernan told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the extra Army and Marine forces will be in place by the summer, primed for counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban but also ready to conduct training with Afghan police forces.

McKiernan said what the surge "allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated.

"I'm not here to tell you that there's not an increased level of violence, because there is," he said.

The 17,000 additional troops, which President Barack Obama approved Tuesday to begin deploying this spring, will join an estimated 38,000 already in Afghanistan.

Another 10,000 U.S. soldiers could be headed to Afghanistan in the future as the Obama administration decides how to balance its troop levels with those from other nations and the Afghan army. The White House has said it will not make further decisions about its next moves in Afghanistan until it has completed a strategic review of the war, in tandem with the Afghan government.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Wednesday that the foreign ministers of those countries will travel to Washington next week to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials as the U.S. formulates a policy review.

Appearing on "The NewsHour" on PBS, Holbrooke was asked how the Obama administration sees victory in Afghanistan. "First of all, the victory, as defined in purely military terms, is not achievable, and I cannot stress that too highly," he said. "What we're looking for is the definition of our vital national security interests."

Holbrooke described his recent trip to the region and the delegations coming to Washington as "a manifestation of a new, intense, engaged diplomacy designed to put Afghanistan and Pakistan into a larger regional context and move forward to engage other countries in the effort to stabilize this incredibly volatile region."

Whatever the outcome of the review, McKiernan said, "we know we need additional means in Afghanistan, whether they are security or governance-related or socioeconomic-related."

The estimated level of 55,000 troops needs "to be sustained for some period of time," he said, adding that could be as long as three to five years.

Some of the 17,000 U.S. troops soon headed overseas will be training Afghanistan police while battling insurgents as the nation's August elections approach. They include an Army combat brigade from Washington state and a Marine expeditionary brigade made up of troops from Camp Lejune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in southern California.

McKiernan said they would be sufficient for what he believes needs to be done through summer, when the fighting tends to be heaviest.

With the added ground troops, McKiernan said it's possible the military will scale back airstrikes that have been blamed for civilian casualties and angered the Afghan population.

The Taliban insurgents, some of whom have worked in concert with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, have increasingly focused on what McKiernan described as small-scale attacks on government targets, police and official convoys. Last week militants launched a bold strike on government buildings in downtown Kabul.

McKiernan said the number of insurgents has not grown, but they are "very resilient" and "they have continuously adapted their tactics."

"We're not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture," McKiernan said.

Ultimately, the conflict will be solved not by military force — but through the political will of the Afghan people, the general said.

"The insurgency is not going to win in Afghanistan," McKiernan insisted. "The vast majority of the people that live in Afghanistan reject the Taliban or other militant insurgent groups. They have nothing to offer them. They do not bring any hope for a better future."

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army two-star general who visited southern Afghanistan last October as a military adviser, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he agrees there is essentially a stalemate in that area, which is a traditional stronghold for the Taliban movement. But he said that does not mean U.S. and allies forces are losing.

"It's reached the point where neither side has gained an advantage," Scales said, adding that he believes the south — particularly in the opium-producing Helmand Province — is the area with the greatest potential for U.S. gains against the Taliban, especially with more U.S. forces due to deploy there.

The rising violence in Afghanistan is conducted by militants who operate out of sanctuaries in Pakistan tribal regions along the border of the two nations. McKiernan called the stability of both countries "a regional challenge" and credited Pakistan with trying harder to secure the border.

"It's not enough; we need to do more," McKiernan said. "But it is a start."

He called it "in our vital national security interest to succeed" in Afghanistan.

"It's a country that is absolutely worth our commitment," McKiernan said. "And it's a region that is absolutely worth the commitment of the international community to ensure that it's stable at the end of this."