Egypt's Mufti slams Swiss vote on minarets

Cairo - The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, slammed the vote in Switzerland to disallow the building of minarets as an "insult" to all Muslims, media reported Monday. In a statement carried by Egypt's MENA news agency, Gomaa said the vote in favor of the initiative in the Alpine land was an "attack" on the freedom of religion.

The mufti - the highest appointed religious figure in the most populous Arab state - encouraged Swiss Muslims to use legal means to protest and to engage in a dialogue within their society.

A large majority of voters on Sunday passed a referendum banning the construction of minarets, in what was a surprise outcome. The government in Bern had been opposed to the ban.

Some 400,000 Muslims live in Switzerland.

Birthday parade for 81-year-old Thai king postponed indefinitely

Bangkok - Two important events marking the 82nd birthday in early December of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, have been indefinitely postponed, his principal private secretary said Monday. A parade in which the revered monarch takes the salute of the military has been put off for the first time for decades, and the king's birthday speech has also been postponed, said the royal office.

King Bhumibol, widely seen as a critical stabilizing force in an often turbulent society, has been hospitalized since mid-September.

He is due to be represented at other ceremonies by his heir apparent Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed get-well wishes at tables set up in the hospital and millions more have signed books set up in government offices around the country.

Bhumibol, who will turn 82 on December 5, has been hospitalized on several occasions over the past decade to receive treatment for heart ailments and fever.

Dutch Freedom Party wants minaret ban in Netherlands

Amsterdam - The rightist Freedom Party PVV said Monday it would ask the Dutch government to hold a referendum on banning the construction of minarets, following a similar vote in Switzerland. On Sunday, a large majority of Swiss voters cast ballots in favor of banning construction of the slender towers attached to mosques, despite opposition to such a move by the government.

"We will call upon the government to make a similar referendum possible in the Netherlands," PVV leader Geert Wilders told Dutch daily Volkskrant.

Congratulating Switzerland on what he called the "great result of the minaret referendum," Wilders said: "If the government is unwilling to hold a referendum, the PVV will present its own bill to parliament. What is possible in Switzerland should also be possible here."

The PVV, known for its criticism on Islam and migrants, currently holds nine seats in the 150-member legislature.

Opinion polls show that if elections were held today, the party would win 27 seats, making it the second largest after the Christian Democrats on 35 seats.

UAE firm to build 5 star hotel in Iraqi city of Karbala

Cairo - A firm from the United Arab Emirates plans to construct a five star hotel with a capacity for 3,000 guests in the Iraqi sacred city of Karbala, a news report said Monday. The name of the firm was not revealed, according to the Voices of Iraq news agency, but construction will begin next year.

The city, located about 100 kilometers south-west of Baghdad, is sacred to Shiite Muslims and attracts many religious pilgrims.

UAE investments in Iraq are estimated to make up a quarter of all foreign direct investment in the country.

However, the Gulf country's own property sector has taken massive hits in the global recession. Last week, Dubai World, a UAE giant with development sectors, asked for a six-month freeze on all debt payments.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/296954,uae-firm-to-build-5-star-hotel-in-iraqi-city.html.

PREVIEW: UN court to hear Kosovo independence case

The Hague - Public hearings on the legitimacy of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia are scheduled to begin at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Tuesday. Until December 11, the Hague-based ICJ is to hear oral statements from the parties involved and 30 United Nations member states on the question of whether the declaration was in accordance with international law.

The case was brought to the UN-court after Kosovo's Provisional Institutions of Self-Government unilaterally declared independence on February 17, 2008. Serbia protested the secession, calling it "illegal."

Six months later, the UN General Assembly approved with 77 to six votes and 74 abstentions in favor of Serbia's proposal to approach the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the matter.

The parties involved and 36 UN member states have since filed written statements that have so far not been made the public.

Serbia and Kosovo have each been allocated three hours for their oral statement on Tuesday. In the following days, other UN member states have each 45 minutes to comment on the matter. Among others, the United States, China, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, as well as Saudi Arabia, Burundi and Vietnam are due to speak.

Kosovo has so far been recognized by altogether 48 countries, including the US and 22 of the 27 European Union members.

The 2008 declaration marked the second declaration of independence by Kosovo's Albanian-majority political institutions, the first having been proclaimed on September 7, 1990.

The ICJ, operational since 1946, is the primary judicial organ of the UN, located in the Peace Palace in The Hague. The court settles legal disputes submitted by member states and gives advisory opinions on legal questions.

Whereas judgments on legal disputes are legally binding, the court's advisory opinions are not.

Swiss minaret ban is religious oppression, Kouchner says

Paris - Sunday's vote by Swiss voters to ban the construction of additional minarets in the country is an expression of intolerance and religious oppression, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday. The vote "is negative regarding what worries even the Swiss because if the construction of minarets is not allowed this means that a religion is oppressed," Kouchner told RTL radio.

"I'm a little scandalized by this decision," Kouchner added, which he compared to the banning of bell towers. "It's an expression of intolerance and I detest intolerance."

Kouchner added that he hoped the Swiss would reverse the decision "quickly."

However, the Swiss vote may find a sympathetic echo in France, where controversy has been brewing over the wearing of the burqa by a small number of Muslim women and the construction of a large mosque in Marseille that will have two 25-meter-high minarets.

Iran demands change in IAEA structure

Iran's top nuclear envoy says the structure of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gives an unfair advantage to Western states.

"The structure of the Board of Governors has been molded in such a way that gives Western states the majority votes and so the ability to manipulate the Agency's activities," Iran's ambassador to the IAEA told a local news agency on Sunday.

"The IAEA statute allows the more developed countries of every region to take up a permanent seat at the Board of governors and that is how 10 states have managed to prevent any real change in the structure of the Agency," he added.

Soltanieh was referring to efforts underway by Iran and other developing states to make a change at the IAEA by supporting a motion that would see the number of seats on the Board increase from 35 to 41, giving Middle Eastern states greater power.

The envoy said that the motion had been passed at the General Assembly but had not been implemented as it awaited parliamentary approval in at least two thirds of member states.

Soltanieh's comments came just days after the IAEA Board of Governors issued a new resolution, calling on Iran to halt the construction of its Fordo enrichment plant, located to the southwest of Tehran.

The resolution was passed despite a recent IAEA report confirmed for the twenty first time that Iran's nuclear program had not diverted off the peaceful path.

Iranian politicians have criticized the Agency over the resolution, calling it a political move, made under pressure from Britain and the US.

During the Sunday interview, Soltanieh once again announced that Iran's stance had not changed.

Brazil and some countries from the Non-Aligned Movement including Indonesia, and Egypt also criticized the passage of the resolution.

Brazilian envoy to the IAEA who abstained from voting to censure Iran over the construction of the Fordo enrichment plant said "dialogue is better than confrontation."

Imposing more sanctions on Tehran "will only lead to a hardening of the Iranian position," Ambassador Antonio Guerreiro said on Saturday.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told journalists on Saturday: "The resolution on the Iranian nuclear dossier does not take into account its regional aspect,"

He added that the UN nuclear watchdog's resolution should have also mentioned Israel's nuclear arsenal and nuclear disarmament in the Middle East.

Barcelona wins El Clasico to go to top of La Liga table

Barcelona's Swedish supersub Zlatan Ibrahimovic stole the limelight against Real Madrid to move his team to the top of the La Liga table by two points after a 1-0 victory.

In the 56th minute, Dani Alves curled a delightful pass across the face of the goal to substitute Ibrahimovic, who wasted no time to volley a superb left-footed winner past Real Madrid goalie Iker Casillas.

Shortly afterward, Barca midfielder Sergio Busquets foolishly picked up his second yellow card to leave the home side a man short for almost 30 minutes.

However, Real could not take advantage, handing over FC Barcelona the needed three points in the enthralling 'El Clasico' at Camp Nou stadium on Sunday.

Barca now have 30 points from 12 games, two ahead of Real, who slipped back to second place.

Earlier, former Real Madrid striker Roberto Soldado got his second hat trick of the season as Getafe heaped more misery on bottom side Xerez with a 5-1 thrashing at the Coliseum.

It was a second treble for the striker following his hat trick in a 4-1 win over Racing Santander.

3 Spanish tourists kidnapped in Mauritania

Three Spanish tourists, including a woman, traveling from the capital Nouakchott to Nouadhibou in northwest Mauritania have been kidnapped.

The tourists, traveling in a car in the last vehicle of a convoy, were kidnapped by armed men in a 4X4 vehicle near the town of Chelkhett Legtouta, AFP quoted a source, who requested anonymity, as saying.

According to the source, the convoy had earlier delivered aid to Nouadhibou and was transporting donations and they intended to hand over a specific amount in every town along the route.

Several kidnappings have occurred in the region over the past few months, including the recent abduction of a French citizen in the northeast of neighboring Mali. The Frenchman was being held in the Sahara by Al-Qaeda militants of the North Africa branch, a Malian source said.

Mauritanian authorities confirmed the incident and said they are searching for the kidnappers.

AI condemns Islamophobic Swiss vote

Amnesty International has expressed deep regret over the Swiss voters' approval of a ban on minarets, calling it a violation of religious freedom for Muslims.

"The 'yes' vote comes as a surprise and a great disappointment," David Diaz-Jogeix, Amnesty International's deputy program director for Europe and Central Asia, said on Monday.

"That Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and the provision of refuge to the persecuted, should have accepted such a grotesquely discriminatory proposal is shocking indeed," Diaz stressed.

He also added that the ban violates the right of Muslims to manifest their religion in Switzerland, and is incompatible with the international conventions signed by the European country.

Sunday's referendum followed a controversial campaign against the symbolic architectural feature of Islamic mosques, spearheaded by far-right Swiss politicians, the Swiss People's Party (SVP).

The SVP's campaign posters depicted a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a head-to-toe veil.

The poster, which was condemned worldwide for inciting hatred towards Islam, plays on fears that Muslim immigration will lead to an erosion of Swiss values.

Though the government opposed the ban, 57 percent of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons (or provinces) voted in favor of it, meaning minarets can no longer be erected anywhere in Switzerland.

The ban is expected to be rejected by either the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland or the European Court of Human Rights.

Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity, and its followers represent over 4 per cent of the country's population.

Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned.

None broadcast the call to prayer.

Turkey developing internet search engine

The Turkish telecommunications watchdog has announced that the country's engineers are developing an internet search engine and aim to launch it in 2010.

The chairman of Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Board (BTK), Tayfun Acarer, said that all major search engines used worldwide are based in foreign countries, which is a risk for communications, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

“All internet communication data goes to foreign countries and then it returns. This activity has a security aspect,” Acarer noted.

“Existing search engines can not meet Turkey's needs and are sometimes deaf to country's sensitivities,” Acarer said, adding that problems occur because of Turkish letters which do not exist in the standard English version of the Latin alphabet.

“I believe that our search engine will be popular in Turkic countries and Muslim countries, and I am confident that these countries will trust our search engine,” Acarer stated.

He also said that another project, 'the Anaposta', was initiated under the search engine project.

“Under this project, all of our 70 million citizens will be given an e-mail address with a quota of 10 gigabytes. Every child will have an e-mail address written on his/her identity card from birth, and thus will have a mobile network that can be used thanks to ID number match, and foreign networks, such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, will not be used anymore,” he stated.

The software infrastructure of the project has been completed and is now being tested, Acarer explained.

Morocco Delays F-16 Program

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Morocco, strapped for funding, has delayed its F-16 multi-role fighter program.

Industry sources said Morocco has delayed delivery of the F-16 for at least two years. They said the first F-16 would arrive in the North African kingdom no earlier than 2012.

Egypt Concerned Over Jihad Revival

CAIRO [MENL] -- Egypt has been on alert for the revival of an Al Qaida-aligned insurgency movement.

Security sources said the Interior Ministry and domestic intelligence community have been monitoring signs of a revival by the Jihad movement. The movement, which waged an insurgency in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, was believed to be reorganizing with help from Al Qaida.

Tajik Grip on Afghan Army Signals New Ethnic War

Written by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (IPS) - Contrary to the official portrayal of the Afghan National Army (ANA) as ethnically balanced, the latest data from U.S. sources reveal that the Tajik minority now accounts for far more of its troops than the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

The massive shift in the ethnic composition of ANA troops in recent years is leading to another civil war between the Pashtuns and a Tajik-led anti-Pashtun ethnic coalition similar to the one that followed the fall of the Soviet-supported regime in 1992, according to some observers.

Tajik domination of the ANA feeds Pashtun resentment over the control of the country's security institutions by their ethnic rivals, while Tajiks increasingly regard the Pashtun population as aligned with the Taliban.

The leadership of the army has been primarily Tajik since the ANA was organized in 2002, and Tajiks have been overrepresented in the officer corps from the beginning. But the original troop composition of the ANA was relatively well-balanced ethnically.

Gen. Karl Eikenberry, then chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan, issued guidelines in 2003 to ensure ethnic balance in the ANA, according to Chris Mason, who was a member of the Afghanistan Inter-agency Operations Group from 2003 to 2005. Eikenberry acted after then Defense Minister Marshall Mohammed Qasim Fahim had packed the first group of ANA recruits to be trained with Tajiks.

The Eikenberry guidelines called for 38 percent of the troops to be Pashtun, 25 percent Tajiks, 19 percent Hazaras and eight percent Uzbek.

Since then U.S. officials have continued to put out figures indicating that the ethnic balance in the ANA was in line with the Eikenberry guidelines. As recently as 2008, the RAND Corporation was given data showing that 40 percent of the enlisted men in the ANA were Pashtun and that Tajiks accounted for less than 30 percent.

The latest report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, issued Oct. 30, shows that Tajiks, which represent 25 percent of the population, now account for 41 percent of all ANA troops who have been trained, and that only 30 percent of the ANA trainees are now Pashtuns.

A key reason for the predominance of Tajik troops is that the ANA began to have serious problems recruiting troops in the rural areas of Kandahar and Helmand provinces by mid-2007.

At least in the Pashtun province of Zabul, the percentage of Pashtuns in the ANA has now been reduced to a minimum. In Zabul province, U.S. officers embedded in one of the kandaks (battalions) reported earlier this year that they believed only about five percent of the troops in the entire brigade are Pashtuns, according to a report by Army Times correspondent Sean D. Naylor published in the Armed Forces Journal last July.

The brigade commander in Zabul is a Tajik.

Meanwhile, Tajiks have maintained a firm grip on the command structure of the ANA.. Marshall Fahim put commanders from the Tajik-controlled Northern Alliance in key positions within the Ministry of Defense as well as the ANA command.

Mason recalled that the United States thought it had an agreement with President Hamid Karzai under which the command structure of the ANA would be reorganized on the basis of ethnic balance, starting with the top 25 positions.

But Karzai never acted on the agreement, Mason said.

Even after Fahim was stripped of his government and military positions by Karzai in 2004, his appointee as ANA chief of staff, Gen. Bismullah Khan, remained as head of the army. Tajiks have continued to occupy the bulk of the positions in the Ministry of Defense.

A United Nations official in Kabul estimated that, as of spring 2008, no less than 70 percent of all kandaks were commanded by Tajiks, as reported by Italian scholar Antonio Giustozzi.

Even in overwhelmingly Pashtun Zabul province, there are only two Pashtun kandak commanders out of a total of six, Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul until he submitted his resignation in September in protest against the war, told IPS in an interview.

Mason views the process by which the ANA is coming to be seen as an increasingly Tajik institution as making a civil war between the Pashtuns and the Tajiks and other ethnic minorities virtually inevitable.

"I believe the elements of a civil war are in play," Mason told IPS.

Mason said the refusal of Pashtuns in the south and east to join the ANA is part of a "self-reinforcing spiral". The more Dari, the language spoken by Tajiks, becomes the de facto language of the ANA, said Mason, the more Pashtuns will see it as an alien institution.

"The warlords have already started rearming," said Mason.

Although the United States "has done as good a job as it could have" in trying to make the ANA mirror the broader society, Mason said, it can only "attenuate" rather than prevent such a war in the future, even with a larger troop presence.

Hoh believes a civil war between the Pashtuns and a Tajik-led alliance of ethnic groups has already begun but could get much worse. "It is already bad now," he said, but unless U.S. policy changes, "we could see a return of the civil war of the 1990s."
To avoid that outcome would require putting priority on political reconciliation in order to "integrate all elements of society into the Afghan government and security forces", said Hoh. That, in turn, would require an international framework, probably involving the United Nations, he said.

Hoh recalled a scene he witnessed in Zabul suggesting that Tajik commanders view the ANA as belonging to the Tajik-led Northern Alliance. At an Afghan independence day event at a military base Aug. 19, attended by hundreds of ANA and national police, the large photograph adorning the wall was not of President Karzai but of the Tajik commander of the entire Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated by al Qaeda two days before the 9/11 attacks.

The previous civil war between Pashtun and Tajik-led armies was triggered by the disappearance in 1992 of the national army of the Soviet-supported Najibullah regime, which had maintained a tenuous balance between the two major ethnic groups.

The collapse of the Najibullah regime and its army was followed immediately by fierce fighting between the Northern Alliance, which had gotten to Kabul first, and the forces of the Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had previously been allied with the non-Pashtun mujahedeen against the Soviet-backed regime.

In a sign that Tajik commanders don't trust Pashtuns in the south and east, the Tajik senior ANA officer in Zabul, Maj. Gen. Jamaluddin Sayed, dismissed the locally recruited national police in the province as being under Taliban influence and called for recruitment of police from outside the province.

"If we recruit ANP [Afghan National Police] people from Zabul province, probably they have some relationship with the Taliban," Jamaluddin told Army Times reporter Naylor.

Source: Uruknet.
Link: http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=60586&s2=29.

Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

November 28, 2009

The U.S. set the stage for the Afghan (and Pakistan) war eight years ago, when it handed out drug dealing franchises to warlords on Washington's payroll. Now the Americans, acting as Boss of All Bosses, have drawn up hit lists of rival, "Taliban" drug lords. "It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol."

American Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

"U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists."

If you’re looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it’s the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

An article in the current issue of Harper’s magazine explores the inner workings of the drug-infested U.S. occupation, it’s near-total dependence on alliances forged with players in the heroin trade. The story centers on the town of Spin Boldak, on the southeastern border with Pakistan, gateway to the opium fields of Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The chief Afghan drug lord is also the head of the border patrol and the local militia. The author is an undercover U.S.-based journalist who was befriended by the drug lord’s top operatives and met with the U.S. and Canadian officers that collaborate with the drug dealer on a daily basis.

The alliance was forged by American forces during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and has endured and grown ever since. The drug lord, and others like him throughout the country, is not only immune to serious American interference, he has been empowered through U.S. money and arms to consolidate his drug business at the expense of drug-dealing rivals in other tribes, forcing some of them into alliance with the Taliban. On the ground in Pashtun-speaking Afghanistan, the war is largely between armies run by heroin merchants, some aligned with the Americans, others with the Taliban. The Taliban appear to be gaining the upper hand in this Mafiosa gang war, the origins of which are directly rooted in U.S. policy.

"It is a war whose order of battle is largely defined by the drug trade."

Is it any wonder, then, that the United States so often launches air strikes against civilian wedding parties, wiping out the greater part of bride and groom's extended families? America’s drug-dealing allies have been dropping dimes on rival clans and tribes, using the Americans as high-tech muscle in their deadly feuds. Now the Americans and their European occupation partners have institutionalized the rules of gangster warfare with official hit lists of drug dealers to be killed or captured on sight – lists drawn up by other drug lords affiliated with the occupation forces.

This is the "war of necessity" that President Barack Obama has embraced as his own. It is a war whose order of battle is largely defined by the drug trade. Obama's generals call for tens of thousands of new U.S. troops in hopes of lessening their dependency on the militias and police forces currently controlled by American-allied drug dealers. But of course, that will only push America's Afghan partners in the drug trade into the arms of the Taliban, who will cut a better deal. Then the generals were argue that they need even more U.S. troops.

The Americans created this drug-saturated hell, and their occupation is now doomed by it. Unfortunately, they have also doomed millions of Afghans in the process.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

Source: Uruknet.
Link: http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=60590&s2=29.

Prostitution flourishing in Iraq, say activists

Nizar Latif

The National, November 28, 2009

BAGHDAD // With her family mired in deepening poverty, Sajida Mohammad was happy enough that her father accepted the proposal of marriage when it came. The man who would become her husband was a stranger to them all, but he promised financial help and there seemed to be no other options.

It was, however, a decision the 28-year-old Iraqi woman came to bitterly regret because, within a month, her hopes had collapsed and the newlywed found herself being sold as a prostitute by her spouse.

"For a short time he was nice to me, and did give my family some money and that was good," she said. "Then we moved house, to a small apartment and one day he invited some friends over and told me I must do anything they wanted, even if it was something that should only be between a man and his wife.

"I rejected the idea, but my husband was drunk and he beat me."

According to Ms Mohammad, the attack was so severe that she lost consciousness. After recovering, she said, her husband laid down the law: she would work for him and have sex with whomever he brought back to their flat in Karrada, in central Baghdad. If she complained, he would stop giving money to her parents or even kill her.

"I didn’t have any choice and so I did what he told me," Ms Mohammad explained. "I lived that kind of life for a year. I slept with any man he brought to me. I didn’t see any way to escape from it, and I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening."

In Iraq, as in other Middle Eastern countries, it is not uncommon for the victims of sexual crimes to be heavily stigmatized by what has happened to them. Women who are raped are often deemed to have sullied their family’s reputation and can be disowned or even murdered by their own relatives in so-called honor killings.

For that reason, Ms Mohammad suffered in silence, refusing to say anything to her parents or sisters. The ordeal only came to an end by chance when, little more than 12 months after she was married, the police came to search her home. They had arrested and imprisoned her husband on terrorism charges.

As a result of the police investigation, Ms Mohammad discovered the man she had married had been part of a gang involved in prostitution. He had a number of wives and a number of identities. She had never even known his real name.

While the authorities dealt with her case, she met someone from the Baghdad Women Organization (BWO), a group of activists who campaign for women’s rights and provide practical care for those in need, including women who have been sold into prostitution. Volunteers helped her get a divorce and safely reunited her with her family, which welcomed her back into their fold.

Ms Mohammad described herself as "recovering", explaining that she still bore the scars from her ordeal. "This kind of thing did not just happen to me, it has happened to many others, and there is no one to protect women from being put through this kind of hell," she said. If it had not been that her husband was involved in other criminal activity, she said, she had no doubt that she would still be trapped with him.

Although no official figures are available for such incidents, Lisa Nisan, head of BWO, said the trade in women forced into prostitution had "flourished" since the US-led invasion of 2003 and was getting worse. According to her estimate, at least 200 Iraqi women were sold into sex slavery annually, a number she believed was rising.

"We have been involved in more than 200 cases of abuse and prostitution" since the fall of Saddam, she said in an interview. "Iraqi women and children are cheap and end up being sold to brothels in the Gulf and even Europe.

"There are well-structured organizations behind this and there are some government officials who facilitate their work by providing paperwork, especially for those women who are transferred outside of the country."

Ms Nisan criticized the Iraqi authorities for not doing more to stop the trade or deal with its consequences. "We have warned the government about this," she said. "Yet still we rely on donations from Iraqi businessmen, some humanitarian organizations and even Iraqi MPs who give us money from their own pocket. We get no funding from the government."

On the ground there is little sign of this type of trafficking stopping or even slowing down. Umm Habib works as a matchmaker in east Baghdad’s Zafraniyah neighborhood, a semi-traditional role by which men wishing to marry can be found a suitable wife. The would-be husbands hand over a fee and specifications and, using their knowledge of the local women, the matchmaker tries to find a suitable candidate and make the necessary introductions.

"The truth is that some of the men who come to me are surely working as traffickers," Umm Habib said. "But it’s not something that I can find out beforehand, I only hear about it afterward. The woman might disappear and I only know about it when the family comes to me and asks where their daughter or sister has gone."

The 58-year-old, who sees herself as an important social catalyst in modern-day Iraq, said some of her clients had been government officials who come to look for "beautiful, young poor girls" and whom she suspected might have been involved in trafficking.

"Most of my customers are legitimate," she said. "But it is hard to tell and I think I’ve had some government officials who have come for girls and who have sold them into prostitution.

"Conditions are hard now in Iraq and society today is making my work more in demand, not less."

Source: Uruknet.
Link: http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=60584&s2=29.

Israeli ministers from Netanyahu's party slam settlement freeze

Jerusalem - Ministers in Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party voiced opposition Sunday to a decision to freeze construction in the West Bank, with the most senior critic, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, saying the move was "unnecessary." Shalom, who in recent months has positioned himself to the political right of Netanyahu, was quoted in media reports as saying the freeze would not lead to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, and added that "harming the (West Bank) settlements will have implications on the country's future."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has made a restart of peace talks conditional on a total halt to Israeli construction in West Bank settlements.

He has rejected Netanyahu's decision, announced Wednesday night after a vote of the inner security-diplomatic cabinet, to freeze housing starts in the West Bank - but not in East Jerusalem - for 10 months.

Another Likud official, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, said orders issued by Defense Minister Ehud Barak Friday to stop construction in the West Bank were "extreme" and could even "pose a threat to settler's human rights."

The Jerusalem Post daily said Sunday that 11 out of 30 cabinet ministers, including at least four from the Likud, oppose the freeze.

Opposition to the freeze has also percolated down to rank-and-file Likud lawmakers. Back-bench legislator Danny Danon organized a meeting Saturday night to express opposition to the construction halt.

Speakers at the meeting, who included settler leaders, did not mince words, attacking US President Barack Obama, who initially demanded that Israel freeze all settlement construction.

Avi Naim, head of the Beit Ariyeh settlement, said the Obama Adminstration was "and enemy of the Jews" and "the worst regime there ever was for the State of Israel."

On Thursday night, Sport and Culture Minister Limor Livnat, launched a verbal attack on the US Administration, which she termed "terrible".

Netanyahu's office was quick to distance itself from Livnat's remarks, saying her comments did not in any way reflect the view of the prime minister.

Sudan: Peace Agreement Proving Less Than Comprehensive

(WARNING): Article contains propaganda!

* * * * *

Jedi Ramalapa
27 November 2009

Pretoria — The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended one of Africa's longest and complex civil wars, with nominal agreement reached on security, wealth sharing, and governance issues. But there are renewed fears that conflict could erupt again in the country as divisions between the north and the south deepen.

Academics attending the Sudan Studies Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, say unity for the troubled country will be almost impossible to achieve. The conference was the eighth in a series of high level academic conferences on the Sudan.

Scholars from Sudan and around the world were discussing the future of the country beyond 2011, when the CPA agreed between the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) expires.

Adam Cholong, an SPLM member of the national assembly in Khartoum, says 90, if not 99 percent of the people in South Sudan want independence from the Northern government. But, he says, the Khartoum government is deliberately frustrating this aspiration, slowing down the drafting of legislation that will allow a 2011 referendum on the future of the south.

"The government in North Sudan seems to know that quite a number of South Sudanese people will vote for independence in the referendum," he said, adding that this is the reason why, the government has now stated that in addition to achieving a simple majority vote of yes to independence, there has to be an extremely high turn-out of voters in the referendum.

Khartoum began by demanding a 75 percent yes vote to confirm South Sudanese independence, before agreeing that 50 percent plus one will be enough, so long as a minimum of two thirds of registered voters will have to cast their ballots.

It's the latest skirmish in negotiations over the details of the crucial referendum which are already two years behind schedule.

Religious differences are also a huge stumbling block in a country now governed - Muslim and Christian alike - by shariah law. The experts assembled in Pretoria say this still remains a big question mark.

Sudan has a majority Muslim population, but the imposition of shariah throughout the country by the Numayri government in 1983 was a factor that precipitated civil war.

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, an expert in Islamic law and society based at Rhode Island College in the United States, says during the negotiation of a peace agreement in 2004, it was decided that there would be shariah in the north and secularism in the south.

"Many people were skeptical about that because, millions of southerners, most of them non-Muslims, who had fled to the North as a result of the civil war would now have to be subjected to shariah law."

Since the CPA was finalized in 2005, says Fluehr-Lobban, the Khartoum government has demonstrated little political will to implement this provision.

"What my research has shown from 2004 to now is that harsh punishments - not the cutting off of hands anymore, but lashing for criminal offenses, improper dress for women, the brewing of alcohol - have continued to be practiced on non-Muslims in the capital city and IDP camps."

A commission to deal with the status of non-Muslims in Khartoum was put together a few years ago, but it has not been effective. The question of the law will have to be resolved regardless of how the referendum goes in 2011.

"If they decide to unite, they would have to adopt a more secular society. If they separate, there would still be the question of the large population of non-Muslims living in the north," says Fluehr-Lobban.

Negotiating agreement on such matters is not helped by frequent stand-offs at the highest levels. Cholong says SPLM MPs have had to boycott cabinet meetings because the NIF/NCP refused to discuss vital issues like the referendum law, national security and the redrawing of North-South borders.

He sees no future for a united Sudan. "Unity is the cause of the civil conflict in the country. "Unity (of the country) has been the core of conflict, and it's clearly not what people want, otherwise would have been peace in Sudan."

Swiss ban mosque minarets in surprise vote

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA – Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland's international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

"The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment."

About 300 people turned out for a spontaneous demonstration on the square outside parliament, holding up signs saying, "That is not my Switzerland," placing candles in front of a model of a minaret and making another minaret shape out of the candles themselves.

"We're sorry," said another sign. A young woman pinned to her jacket a piece of paper saying, "Swiss passport for sale."

The referendum by the nationalist Swiss People's Party labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 percent by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.

Muslims comprise about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and about one in 10 actively practices their religion, the government says.

The country's four standing minarets, which won't be affected by the ban, do not traditionally broadcast the call to prayer outside their own buildings.

The sponsors of the initiative provoked complaints of bias from local officials and human-rights group with campaign posters that showed minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman. Backers said the growing Muslim population was straining the country "because Muslims don't just practice religion."

"The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls," the sponsors said. They said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared mosques to Islam's military barracks and called "the minarets our bayonets." Erdogan made the comment in citing an Islamic poem many years before he became prime minister.

Anxieties about growing Muslim minorities have rippled across Europe in recent years, leading to legal changes in some countries. There have been French moves to ban the full-length body covering known as the burqa. Some German states have introduced bans on head scarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Mosques and minaret construction projects in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovenia have been met by protests.

But the Swiss ban in minarets, sponsored by the country's largest political party, was one of the most extreme reactions.

"It's a sad day for freedom of religion," said Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. "A constitutional amendment that's targeted towards one religious community is discriminatory and abhorrent."

He said he was concerned the decision could have reverberations in other European countries.

Amnesty International said the vote violated freedom of religion and would probably be overturned by the Swiss supreme court or the European Court of Human Rights.

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government had spoken out strongly against the initiative but the government said it accepted the vote and would impose an immediate ban on minaret construction.

It said that "Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others, and live according to their beliefs just as before." It took the unusual step of issuing its press release in Arabic as well as German, French, Italian and English.

Sunday's results stood in stark contrast to opinion polls, last taken 10 days ago, that showed 37 percent supporting the proposal. Experts said before the vote that they feared Swiss had pretended during the polling that they opposed the ban because they didn't want to appear intolerant.

"The sponsors of the ban have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way," said Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zurich. "Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore."

The People's Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.

Geneva's main mosque was vandalized Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin's call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

Ballot box gives ex-guerrilla Uruguay's presidency

By MICHAEL WARREN, Associated Press Writer

Jose Mujica, now president-elect of Uruguay, seemed like he could hardly believe the transformation himself in his rousing victory speech Sunday night, delivered as rain drenched thousands of supporters along the Ramblas, Montevideo's coastal avenue.

"The people gave us this victory!" Mujica shouted, moving back and forth as aides struggled to cover the 74-year-old with umbrellas. "There are those who believe that power is up above, and they don't notice that it's actually in the hearts of the great masses. Thank you! It cost me an entire life, perhaps, to learn this. Thank you, and until forever!"

Mujica won more than 50 percent of the votes cast Sunday, compared to about 45 percent for former President Luis A. Lacalle, according to exit polls by Cifra, Factum and Equipos Mori, the South American nation's leading pollsters. The Electoral Court was slowly releasing official results, but the conservative Lacalle conceded the race.

Mujica thanked all his "brothers" across Latin America in his victory speech, but there is one president in particular that he has claimed as his inspiration: Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also rose from militancy, as a union chief, to become a popular centrist at the helm of government.

Mujica repeatedly denied Lacalle's claims that he would hijack Uruguay's stable parliamentary democracy and install a radical socialist state modeled on Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. He said he would seek consensus wherever possible and continue the policies of President Tabare Vazquez, who enjoys a 71 percent popularity rating as he prepares to leave office March 1.

In one typical speech, Mujica vowed in July to distance the left from "the stupid ideologies that come from the 1970s — I refer to things like unconditional love of everything that is state-run, scorn for businessmen and intrinsic hate of the United States.

"I'll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!"

The Tupamaro guerrillas, co-founded by Mujica, caused so much chaos in the 1960s that Uruguayans initially welcomed a dictatorship that ruled from 1973 to 1985. Mujica spent all that time in prison, enduring torture and solitary confinement for killing a policeman — a crime he denies committing. He says prison cured him of any illusion that armed revolution can achieve lasting social change.

Mujica's future wife, fellow Tupamaro Lucia Topolansky, also emerged from prison committed to transforming the rebels into a legitimate political movement that became the driving force within the Broad Front, a center-left coalition that pulled more than 20 leftist factions together five years ago to give Vazquez a presidential victory. It was the first time in 150 years that the office wasn't won by Lacalle's center-right National Party or the right-wing Colorado Party.

Many voters said the single five-year term required by Uruguay's constitution wasn't enough to consolidate the successes of Vazquez, who imposed a progressive income tax and used the revenue to lower unemployment and poverty, provide equal access to health care to everyone under 18 and steer the economy to 1.9 percent growth this year even as many other economies shrank.

Lacalle, a scion of Uruguay's political elite, championed privatizations during his 1990-95 term and had vowed this time to eliminate the income tax and "take a chain saw" to state bureaucracies. But he also acknowledged Vazquez's successes in the economy.

The Broad Front held on to a narrow majority in Congress, where Topolansky earned the most votes in the Senate and will therefore be third in line to the presidency, after Vice President-elect Danilo Astori.

As for Mujica, he still has the appearance of an anti-politician, a gruff old man more comfortable driving a tractor on his farm than shuffling through marbled halls. Topolansky has said she'll only reluctantly endure the protocols of a first lady.

As Uruguay's first couple, they could finally taste luxury, in the official presidential residence in Montevideo as well as at Parque Anchorena, a beautiful presidential estate in the city of Colonia.

But the couple have said they prefer to stay in their "chacra," a little flower farm in the Rincon del Cerro, a working-class community with dirt roads and small plots on the edge of the capital.

Vazquez, the outgoing president, also chose to stay in his own home and use the mansion only for official functions.

Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuelan banks

By Walker Simon

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday he could nationalize private banks unless they comply with the law, adding he had "no problem with that because the banks don't want to extend credit to the poor."

In a broadcast from nationalized farmland in central Venezuela, he said: "To all the country's private bankers ... (I'm saying) he who slips up loses; I'll take over the bank, whatever its size."

"You want me to nationalize the banks?" he said during the broadcast of his weekly TV show "Alo Presidente."

"I have no problem with that because the banks don't want to extend credit to the poor, they don't comply, they don't want to comply with the bank's purpose for existence, and that is the law."

Chavez said the purpose of banks was not to enrich a small group of people but "should be to collect funds and savings to help aid the country's development by making loans, extending credits for housing."

In power for a decade, Chavez has nationalized broad swathes of the economy.

His banking nationalization threats on Sunday appeared to be broader in scope than his well-publicized warnings in recent years to nationalize Spanish-owned banks in Venezuela.

He repeatedly threatened to seize Spanish bank subsidiaries in Venezuela unless Spain's king apologized for telling him to "shut up" in November 2007 at a regional summit where Chavez branded a recent ex-Spanish prime minister a fascist.

But the only major private bank, foreign or Venezuelan, to fall into state hands under Chavez's rule was Spain's Banco Santander unit Banco de Venezuela, sold to Venezuela in July for $1.05 billion.

The government's last banking takeover was on November 20, when it seized four small banks, accounting for about 6 percent of Venezuela's deposits.

Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez then said the move stemmed from concerns about credit portfolios, problems explaining the source of funds and failure to comply with some obligations.

BANKERS NOT IN COMPLIANCE - CHAVEZ

Chavez spoke Sunday from the countryside behind a table strewn with a jumble of books, maps and documents, against the background of farmland growing black beans.

Addressing the banking theme, he said unnamed bankers "are not complying, they do not want to comply with the function for which a bank should exist (such as) that is in the law.

"This is occurring right now with a group of private banks, that's a demonstration that those private banking sectors don't want to learn, they don't want to accept that there is a constitution ... and that there are laws."

Venezuela's banking sector is dominated by 10 banks that control 70 percent of the total funds.

Chavez said he ordered the nation's chief prosecutor to investigate why a state bank, Banfoandes, deposited "a giant amount of resources in private banks."

"How is it that state resources, which belong to the people ... end up being placed in private banks?" he asked in his broadcast. "This is counterrevolutionary."

The four banks seized on November 20 were Banco Confederado, Banco Canarias, Banco Provivienda and bolivar Banco.

On Friday, a court acting on prosecutors' request banned travel abroad of 16 executives -- eight from Confederado, six from Provivienda and two from bolivar Banco.

Chavez said if it were up to him, he would have jailed the 16 executives due to flight risk. "They have (their own) light aircraft and private airports and (can) leave."

Chavez also criticized what he termed as excessive spending by state entities in the private medical sector.

"We have made a gift of millions and millions of bolivares this year to the bourgeoisie, which owns the private clinics, the great insurance companies," he said. "Enough already."

He said those funds should go directly to "the people."

Egypt not to host handball tournament in Algeria spat

CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt withdrew on Sunday as the host of an upcoming African handball championship in the aftermath of a bitter row with Algeria over a World Cup qualifier.

The Egyptian Handball Federation took the decision after the African Handball Federation turned down its request to delay the tournament, due to be held in February 2010, state news agency MENA reported.

The agency said the move stemmed from a meeting attended by the country's sports associations, who decided to be "prudent" in holding sports events attended by Algerian players and to avoid games in Algeria for safety reasons.

The Egyptian team, the reigning African handball champions, will still play in the championship if it is held in another country, the agency reported.

Algeria and Egypt engaged in a diplomatic row after Algerian fans attacked the buses of Egyptians fans in a World Cup qualifier hosted by Sudan earlier this month, which Algeria won.

Egypt withdrew its ambassador in response.

The trouble started before an earlier match hosted in Cairo, when a bus carrying the Algerian football team was pelted with stones, leaving three players wounded.

Algerians reacted by ransacking Egyptian businesses in Algiers.

Iran plans enrichment sites in defiance of UN

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran approved plans Sunday to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of U.N. demands it halt enrichment and a move that is likely to significantly heighten tensions with the West.

The decision comes only days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran over its program and demanded it halt the construction of a newly revealed enrichment facility. The West has signaled it is running out of patience with Iran's continuing enrichment and its balking at a U.N. deal aimed at ensuring Tehran cannot build a nuclear weapon in the near-term future. The U.S. and its allies have hinted at new U.N. sanctions if Iran does not respond.

The White House said the move "would be yet another serious violation of Iran's clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself."

"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband described Iran's move as a provocation.

"This epitomizes the fundamental problem that we face with Iran," he said. "We have stated over and again that we recognize Iran's right to a civilian nuclear program, but they must restore international confidence in their intentions. Instead of engaging with us Iran chooses to provoke and dissemble."

On Friday, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued a strong rebuke of Iran over enrichment, infuriating Tehran. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani threatened on Sunday to reduce cooperation with the IAEA.

"Should the West continue to pressure us, the legislature can reconsider the level of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA," Larijani told parliament in a speech carried live on state radio.

Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also Iran's nuclear chief, said Sunday's decision was "a firm message" in response to the IAEA. He told state TV that the agency's censure was a challenge aimed at "measuring the resistance of the Iranian nation."

Any new enrichment plants would take years to build and stock with centrifuges. But the ambitious plans were a bold show by Iran that it is willing to risk further sanctions and won't back down amid a deadlock in negotiation attempts.

Iran currently has one operating enrichment facility, at the central town of Natanz, which has churned out around 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) of low-enriched uranium over the past years — enough to build a nuclear weapon if Iran enriches it to a higher level. Iran says it has no intention of doing so, insisting its nuclear program aims only to generate electricity.

The revelation of a second, previously unannounced facility, under construction for years at Fordo near the holy of Qom, raised accusations from the United States and its allies that Iran was trying expand enrichment in secret out of inspectors' sight. Iran denied the claim.

On Sunday, a Cabinet meeting headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building five uranium enrichment plants at sites that have already been studied and propose five other locations for future construction within two months, the state news agency IRNA reported. All would be at the same scale as Natanz.

The new sites are to be built inside mountains to protect them from possible attacks, said Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief. They will also use a new generation of more efficient and more productive centrifuges that Iran has been working to construct, he and Ahmadinejad said.

In Vienna, spokeswoman Gillian Tudor said the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency would have no comment on Tehran's announcement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for "a concentration of sanctions and pressure on the Iranian regime, which is vulnerable economically" to rein in its nuclear ambitions. Israel has not ruled out military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites if its program is not stopped.

The IAEA censure against Iran on Friday was seen as a show of international unity behind demands that Tehran rein in its nuclear program — though there does not yet appear to be consensus on imposing sanctions.

The IAEA resolution criticized Iran for secretly building the Fordo site and defying the U.N. Security Council call for a suspension of enrichment.

It noted that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei cannot confirm that Tehran's nuclear program is exclusively geared toward peaceful uses, and expressed "serious concern" that Iran's stonewalling of an agency probe means "the possibility of military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program" cannot be excluded.

The U.N. seeks to stop Iran's enrichment, because the process can be used to produce either fuel for a reactor or a warhead. In the process, uranium gas is spun in centrifuges to be purified — to a low degree for fuel, to a higher level for a bomb. Iran denies U.S. claims that it secretly aims to produce a nuclear weapon.

The United States and the top powers at the U.N. have been focused on winning Iran's acceptance of a deal under which it would ship abroad most of its low-enriched uranium stocks to be processed into fuel rods for a research reactor in Tehran. The move would leave Iran — at least temporarily — without enough uranium to produce a bomb.

But Iran has balked, presenting a counter-proposal with various changes. The West has demanded it accept the proposal as is.

In the wake of the IAEA rebuke, Iran has sought to signal that it can lash back if pushed. On Saturday, one hard-line lawmaker warned that parliament might withdraw the country from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and stop all U.N. inspections — a move that would sharply escalate the standoff with the West and cut off the U.N.'s only eyes on Iran's nuclear program.

But parliament took a lesser step on Sunday: 226 of the 290 lawmakers signed a letter urging the government to prepare a plan to reduce Tehran's cooperation with the IAEA in response to its resolution.

Iran touted the expansion of enrichment as necessary for its plans to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through multiple nuclear power plants in the next 20 years.

Ahmadinejad said 500,000 centrifuges will be needed in the new plants to produce between 250 to 300 tons of fuel annually, IRNA reported. About 8,600 centrifuges have been set up in Natanz, but only about 4,000 are actively enriching uranium, according to the IAEA. The facility will eventually house 54,000 centrifuges. The Fordo site is smaller, built for nearly 3,000 centrifuges.

Mysterious 'Saddam Channel' hits Iraq TV

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein.

The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar's anniversary of his 2006 execution.

No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it's Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.

The Saddam channel, he said, "didn't receive a penny from the Baathists" and is for Iraqis and other Arabs who "long for his rule."

Jarboua has clearly made considerable efforts to hide where it's aired from and refuses to say who is funding it besides "people who love us."

Iraqis surprised to find Saddam on their TVs responded with the kind of divided emotions that marked his reign.

"Iraqis don't need such a satellite channel because it has hostile intentions," said Hassan Subhi, a 28-year-old Shiite who owns an Internet cafe in eastern Baghdad.

Others said they felt a nostalgic sorrow at the sight of their late leader, a Sunni Arab.

"All my family felt sad," said Samar Majid, a Sunni high school teacher in western Baghdad, mentioning images shown from Saddam's execution, and pictures of his two sons and grandson.

The channel, which is broadcast across the Arab world, dredges up the sectarian divisions that Saddam inspired among Shiites and Sunnis at a time when Iraq is gearing up for crucial national elections. Iraqi politicians have been arguing over parliamentary seat distribution in a dispute that has inflamed the splits. The wrangling will likely delay the vote beyond its constitutionally required Jan. 30 deadline.

Saddam's hanging three years ago was on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar. His execution — and the day it was done — remains a sore point for Saddam sympathizers still smarting over images of the defiant leader in his final moments as Shiites in the death chamber shouted curses.

The Saddam Channel debuted on Friday, the first day of this year's Eid for Sunnis. The holiday started Saturday for Shiites. The station's official name alternates between "Al-Lafeta" ("the banner") and "Al-Arabi" ("the Arab").

It is mostly a montage of flattering, still images of Saddam — some of him dressed in military uniform, others in a suit, even one astride a white horse. One image shows his sons Odai and Qusai smiling with their father, and another their bodies after they and Saddam's grandson, Mustafa, were killed in a July 2003 gunfight with U.S. troops.

One prominently displayed image is that of a man burning an American flag. Another shows graves covered with Iraqi flags.

All the pictures are set against audio recordings of Saddam making speeches and reciting poetry. Patriotic songs urge listeners to "liberate our country." None of the pictures appear to be recent, and no announcers or commentators appear or speak.

A media adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, brushed off the station and its message, and refused to comment on whether the government will seek to shut down the channel.

Al-Maliki adviser Yassin Majid said in an interview that he had not seen the channel but had heard of it. He called it "an attempt from the dissolved Baath Party to return to Iraq's politics." Since Saddam's fall, Baathists have spread out around the region, mainly to Syria and Jordan but also to Gulf countries and Yemen.

Among the many mysteries surrounding the channel is where it is being broadcast from.

In a telephone interview Sunday from Damascus, Jarboua said he is Algerian and that the Saddam Channel is based in Europe but refused to say where, citing safety concerns for its employees.

"There are threats that the Iraqi government will shut it down, kill its employees, that they will liquidate it," Jarboua said.

He said he started al-Lafeta nine months ago in Lebanon, and has employees in Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Ziad Khassawneh, a Jordanian Baathist who once headed Saddam's defense team, said wealthy Iraqis living in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries are funding the channel. He declined to give names.

Saddam's oldest daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, who lives in Jordan, has denied any connection to the channel.

One Jordan-based Iraqi Baathist said the station broadcasts from Libya and is run by followers of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's No. 2 and a top leader of the outlawed Baath party. Douri's whereabouts is unknown.

Another former Baathist official said the Saddam Channel broadcasts out of Damascus. Both men spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they needed to protect the security of the channel's employees.

A Mideast satellite expert said al-Lafeta's operators tried to hide any clues to their identities and broadcast sites by using a variety of satellite services and frequencies. The channel airs via Noorsat, a Bahrain-based satellite service. It also has purchased a frequency on Egypt-owned NileSat, which is run by Eutelsat, a European consortium.

Some Iraqis shrugged off the broadcast as harmless.

"This channel doesn't mean anything to people," Muhammad Abdullah, 35, an Iraqi journalist, said in northern Baghdad. "It has no effect on the Iraqi people now."