Jordan's Rifai Named Premier, Vows to Make Economy a Priority

By Massoud A Derhally

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Samir Rifai, a former minister of Jordan’s Royal Court, was appointed prime minister by King Abdullah and said he will make the economy a priority.

The appointment of Rifai, 43, comes as Jordan, a U.S. ally, deals with a slowing economy and dwindling foreign investment. He was previously chief executive officer of Jordan Dubai Capital, an affiliate of Dubai International Capital. Rifai has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree from Cambridge University.

“The economy will be one of our priorities,” Rifai said in a telephone interview after his appointment. “We will be looking at the particulars set out by his Majesty in the royal decree in detail and we will be addressing each and every point comprehensively.”

The king asked Rifai to form a new government after the resignation today of Nader Dahabi’s cabinet. The monarch dissolved parliament on Nov. 23 and said today that legislative elections must be held no later than the last quarter of 2010.

“We began years ago a reform and modernization process, and we are determined to continue this process,” Abdullah told Rifai, according to a Royal Courtstatement on the state-run Petra news agency. “We want a government that works in confidence and transparency and team spirit serving the public without fear of making decisions.”

Rifai is the son of Zeid Rifai, a former prime minister and currently senate president.

The new prime minister “is well-educated, highly connected, open-minded, knows the problems and the challenges of the country close-up, and has an appropriate private-sector mentality,” Nashat Masri, a partner at Foursan Group, a Jordanian private equity firm and son of a former prime minister, said in a telephone interview.

Performance Targets

The monarch said Rifai’s new government should set specific targets for each ministry with clear criteria to assess performance.

The economy slowed to a 2.8 percent annual growth rate in the second quarter, half the rate for all of 2008. At the same time, the country received 144.5 million dinars ($204 million) in foreign grants in the first 10 months of 2009, a 71 percent drop amid the global financial crisis, according to Finance Ministry data.

“The government is hunkering for a long recession and these dramatic changes in the political order appear to be prompted by growing alarm at the country’s economic prospects,” Robert Powell, an economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York, said today in a telephone interview. “Although Jordan has ridden out the recession and the global financial crisis relatively well its huge reliance on foreign aid and investment leaves it vulnerable.”

Tax Plans

Lawmakers in the 110-seat parliament have resisted legislation proposed by the cabinet, such as a social security bill and a new corporate tax law to spur foreign investment.

The government had aimed to cut taxes to stimulate foreign investment, which dropped 65 percent to 310.3 million dinars in the first half of the year from the same period a year earlier.

The plan would have reduced company taxes to 12 percent, from a range of 15 percent to 35 percent, except for banks, insurance and mining companies, which would pay at a 25 percent rate, outgoing Finance Minister Bassem Salem said in an April interview. The personal income tax rate would have changed to 12 percent, from a range of 5 percent to 25 percent, and customs tariffs would have become streamlined.

The new government will need to “stimulate domestic economic activity, which means overwhelming changes to the business environment including revisions to the corporate tax law and simplification of tax system and streamlining bureaucracy,” Powell said.

New German super-computer to predict climate changes

Hamburg - German scientists inaugurated Thursday what they describe as the world's most powerful climate-predicting super-computer. The custom-built machine at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) in the port-city of Hamburg can take any region and forecast how that place's climate will alter with global warming.

Scientists said the supercomputer enables much more detailed climate calculations than were possible until now.

"It's the biggest computer in the world to be dedicated solely to climate research," said German Science Minister Annette Schavan at the inauguration.

The 35-million-euro "brain" has been working since April but its official commissioning was delayed to coincide with the Copenhagen climate summit.

The computer, rated at 160 teraflops, a measure of calculating speed, is 60 times faster than the model it replaces and can cope with around 10 times as much data, saving 10,000 terabytes of data a year, said a spokesman.

Supercomputers tend to be heavy users of power, but the experts at the DKRZ said it was carbon neutral because DKRZ only purchases for it "green" electricity generated by wind and from other renewable sources.

Obama accepts Nobel peace prize, defends use of force - 2nd Update

Oslo - US President Barack Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, saying he was a "living testimony to the moral force of non-violence," while at the same time defending the use of force. Crediting the achievements of non-violence proponents like Mahatma Gandhi and 1964 laureate Martin Luther King, Obama also underlined that he was "the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars," referring to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world," he said in his acceptance speech in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

The prize was awarded to Obama in October for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples".

He said "force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war," calling for the need to strengthen UN and regional peacekeeping.

The US "cannot act alone," he added, and said the US "must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war," citing his order to close the Guantanamo prison camp and banning torture.

While seeking nuclear disarmament, he said Iran and North Korea should not flout rules and warned against ignoring "the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia."

Noting that he was at the start of his "labors on the world stage," Obama acknowledged that "compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize - (Albert) Schweitzer and King; (George C) Marshall and (Nelson) Mandela - my accomplishments are slight."

Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland hailed Obama's presence, saying it showed that "so much of Dr King's dream has come true."

Attending the ceremony was US First Lady Michelle Obama, members of the Norwegian royal family and government.

Obama is the third sitting US president to win the prize. It was previously awarded in 1906 to Theodore Roosevelt and in 1919 to Woodrow Wilson.

Earlier Thursday, Obama said he had been surprised at being awarded the prize.

"I have no doubt that there are others who may be more deserving," Obama said at a joint news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

"My task here is to continue on the path that I believe is not only important for America, but important for lasting peace and security in the world," he added.

He cited "a host of initiatives," ranging from climate change to a world free from nuclear weapons, strengthening mechanisms to avert the spread of nuclear weapons and stabilizing countries like Afghanistan - all of which he had launched this year.

The president arrived early Thursday amid massive security, with some 2,000 officers on duty in central Oslo, in addition to some 200 US security staff. Low-flying helicopters also flew over the city.

Security fences have been raised along main streets, sharpshooters have been posted on many buildings, and motorists were advised to expect delays.

A banquet at the Grand Hotel Thursday evening caps the formal events for the president, whose entire visit is only scheduled to last some 26 hours.

The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics were to be handed out later Thursday in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.

Haidar vows to return to Sahara 'dead or alive'

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain - Hunger-striking Western Sahara activist Aminatou Haidar vowed Thursday to return to the Moroccan-controlled territory "dead or alive," while expressing hope that Morocco would give in to international pressure to allow her to go back. The award-winning activist gave a press conference at the airport of the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where she has been on hunger strike for 25 days, sparking diplomatic tension between Spain and Morocco.

Pressure has increased on the two countries to resolve the situation of the activist as her health deteriorated.

Haidar, who campaigns for the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco, launched a hunger strike after Morocco barred her from entering the Western Saharan capital Laayoun. The Moroccan authorities seized her passport and deported her to Lanzarote.

The activist, who has rejected Spain's offers to grant her Spanish nationality to allow her to travel, said she would return to Laayoun "with or without a passport."

Haidar also made public a letter accusing Morocco of expelling her illegally, Spain of keeping her illegally at the airport, and launching an "urgent appeal for the protection of the rights of the Saharan people."

Morocco, meanwhile, refused to make concessions. Moroccan Justice Minister Abdelouahed Radi said Haidar had created her own problem. The solution was "in her hands," Radi told a press conference in Madrid.

Others who had rebelled against Morocco had recognized their error and asked King Mohammed VI to forgive them, Radi said. Morocco refuses to give Haidar a new passport unless she admits to being a Moroccan rather than Saharan national.

Radi stressed Morocco's interest in maintaining "excellent" relations with Spain.

The Western Saharan independence movement Polisario Front has sought the independence of the desert territory since Morocco annexed it after 1975.

Food labels advice change over Palestinian territories

UK food labels are set to distinguish between goods from Palestinians in the occupied territories and produce from Israeli settlements.

Food packaging guidelines advise a change from labels usually naming only Israel or West Bank as the source.

The government said it was opposed to a boycott of Israeli goods, but that the settlements posed an obstacle to peace.

The Palestinian general delegation to the UK welcomed the move, but Israel said it was "extremely disappointed".

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The new guidelines recommend that food labels in supermarkets should bear the phrases "Israeli settlement produce" or "Palestinian produce".

Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian general Delegate to the UK, said: "We welcome this. We have been calling for this for two years, since we began lobbying major British supermarkets when we discovered that they were routinely selling products marked 'produce of the West Bank' which were in fact the produce of illegal settlements.

"This is a very positive response by the British government."

But the Israeli embassy said it was "extremely disappointed".

"We think this is singling out Israel and it plays into the hands of those who are calling for a boycott of Israeli goods," it said.

Israel arrests Palestinian barrier protest leader

By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer

RAMALLAH, West Bank – A leader of the most persistent Palestinian protest movement against Israel's West Bank separation barrier was asleep in his home when troops broke down his door and arrested him.

Supporters of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, a 38-year-old teacher, say his pre-dawn arrest on Thursday by dozens of troops is part of a recent, heavy-handed campaign by Israel to shut down a five-year-old movement that is the last source of unrest in the West Bank.

Since 2005, demonstrators led by Abu Rahmeh have marched every Friday from the West Bank village of Bilin to the nearby separation barrier that slices off 60 percent of the village land. Their acts of protest, which have also included chaining themselves to trees, have won praise from Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu and support among Israeli peace activists.

About two years ago, villagers in nearby Naalin started similar marches.

Some demonstrators routinely throw stones at Israeli soldiers, who fire tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and occasionally live rounds. One Bilin man and five in Naalin have been killed and hundreds have been wounded over the years. Israeli troops have also suffered some — though far fewer — injuries, including a soldier who lost an eye.

Israel considers the protests illegal and portrays them as riots, not nonviolent demonstrations.

Israel says the barrier — a wall in some places, a system of roads, cameras and fences in places like Bilin — seeks to keep out Palestinian attackers, including suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a tool to steal land, since it juts far into the West Bank in some places.

Abu Rahmeh's Israeli lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said Israel is trying to stifle legitimate protest.

"The Israeli army has decided to crush the demonstrations by putting their leaders behind bars in complete violation of the right of freedom to demonstrate and freedom of speech," she said. Israel has declared the area a closed military zone, banning civilians and making it a violation of Israeli law to be there.

The weekly protests in Bilin and Naalin are the only remaining pockets of unrest in the West Bank. The rest of the territory — controlled by Israel, with Palestinians given limited self-rule in some areas — has been pacified; many Palestinians are simply too tired to take to the streets after several years of bloody clashes with Israeli forces.

But the military has failed to end the Bilin and Naalin marches, even though it has tried different tactics, such as spraying demonstrators with foul-smelling liquids and imposing curfews.

Since June, troops have arrested 31 Bilin residents involved in the marches, among them 12 minors, organizers said. The arrests have focused on members of the village's organizing committee and teens accused of throwing stones. Thirteen are currently in detention, five of them minors.

Abu Rahmeh's lawyer said this was her client's fourth arrest in five years, and that Israel has indicted him on charges of breaking curfew, interfering with police work and disturbing the public order. He was released pending trial before his new arrest Thursday, she said. Authorities have not said how long he will be held this time.

Most arrests happen at night, with large numbers of soldiers entering homes, villagers said. Detainees are often bound and blindfolded and sometimes beaten before being taken away for questioning, villagers said.

Detention ranges from a few days to several months, and a few are charged with crimes like incitement or stone-throwing, Bilin residents said.

Abu Rahmeh said in an interview in October that the army tried to arrest him in September, sending 50 soldiers to his Bilin home. He fled, then hid out in the nearby city of Ramallah, though he continued to attend the Friday marches.

Later, troops left a written summons for him to report to Israel's security service. Abu Rahmeh didn't go. "We practice popular resistance. We don't do anything illegal, but they try to come up with counterfeit stories and use those to arrest us," he said in October.

Early Thursday, nine jeeps surrounded Abu Rahmeh's Ramallah apartment, said his wife, Majida.

"We were sleeping when they knocked, and there was all this noise downstairs so we knew right away," she said. Four soldiers broke down the door before the family could open it and took her husband away, she said.

The small village of 1,800 people about seven miles (12 kilometers) west of Ramallah won a rare victory in 2007, when they Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the route of the barrier near Bilin had little to do with security and more to do with giving land to a nearby Jewish settlement.

The ruling would return 25 percent of the village's land, but it has been tied up in appeals.

So the villagers keep marching.

Privacy advocates slam Facebook change

by Glenn Chapman

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Privacy advocates slammed revamped Facebook privacy controls on Thursday, saying the change masks a move to get members to expose more information online.

"These new privacy changes aren't so great for privacy," said Nicole Ozer, northern California technology and civil liberties policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) rights group.

"It's great that 350 million people are being asked to think about privacy, but if what Facebook says is true about giving people more control over their information, they have a lot more work to do."

Online rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) labeled aspects of Facebook's privacy change "downright ugly."

The world's leading online social network fired back, saying its critics are wrong and that time will prove that Facebook is taking "a giant step forward."

The controversy came a day after Facebook began requiring users to refine settings with a new software tool that lets them specify who gets to be privy to each piece of content uploaded to the website.

While the Facebook privacy overhaul has laudable features, there is a push to get the online community's members to expose information, according to EFF.

"Facebook's new changes are obviously intended to get people to open up even more of their Facebook data to the public," EFF lawyer Kevin Bankston said in a blog post.

"The Facebook privacy transition tool is clearly designed to push users to share much more of their Facebook info with everyone, a worrisome development that will likely cause a major shift in privacy level for most of Facebook's users, whether intentionally or inadvertently."

Prior to the change, Facebook users could keep everything but their names and networks private.

A newly created "public" category at Facebook now includes names, profile pictures, home cities, pages users have joined as "fans," gender and friend lists.

"There is a whole lot more information that users have no ability to keep private," Ozer noted.

Software that walks people through modifying privacy settings recommends making more personal information public and doesn't allow stricter settings than were previously in place, according to the ACLU.

"If users aren't careful, the transition tool will transition them to less privacy," Ozer said.

The privacy change doesn't address the ability of third-party applications installed in Facebook profiles to mine data from the social network, according to the ACLU.

"Facebook's system now is if I am friends with you, I am friends with all the stupid apps you run too," Ozer said. "Even if your friend takes a quiz, they could be giving away your personal information."

Names, profile pictures and claimed home cities are public, so people can find friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances they want to connect with in the online community, according to Facebook.

Users are not required to provide profile photos or specify the town where they live.

"It is not that big of a change," said Facebook director of global communications Barry Schnitt.

"The vast majority of users have already made this information available to everyone."

More than 20 million Facebook members used the new privacy tool Wednesday night and more than half selected their own settings instead of relying on automated recommendations, according to Schnitt.

"This data shows that privacy advocates are wrong and that users are much smarter in paying attention to privacy than advocates think," he said.

"The process is more transparent and transformative than they give us credit for. When they see how many people around the world have made choices about privacy this will be hailed as a giant step forward."

Facebook said its privacy settings let members avoid being listed in Internet search engines or receiving unsolicited messages.

"People come to Facebook to connect and share, not to hide," Schnitt said. "When users find their friends or are found by friends, they get a much better experience and that is what they want."

New Russian missile failure sparks UFO frenzy

by Stuart Williams

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia's new nuclear-capable missile suffered another failed test launch, the defense ministry said Thursday, solving the mystery of a spectacular plume of white light that appeared over Norway.

The Bulava missile was test-fired from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi in the White Sea early Wednesday but failed at the third stage, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The pre-dawn morning launch coincided with the appearance of an extraordinary light over northern Norway that captivated observers.

Images of the light that appeared in the sky above the Norwegian city of Tromso and elsewhere prompted explanations ranging from a meteor, northern lights, a failed missile or even a UFO.

Describing the latest failure of the Bulava as a major embarrassment for the military, leading Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the images were consistent with a missile failure.

"Such lights and clouds appear from time to time when a missile fails in the upper layers of the atmosphere and have been reported before," he told AFP.

"At least this failed test made some nice fireworks for the Norwegians," he joked.

The White Sea, which is the usual site for such missile tests by Russian submarines, lies close to Norway's own Arctic region.

This was the 12th test launch of the Bulava and the seventh time the firing has ended in failure, the Interfax news agency said.

The submarine-launched missile is central to Russia's plan to revamp its aging weapons arsenal but is beset by development problems.

"The first two stages of the rocket worked but in the final and third stage there was a technical failure," the defense ministry said in a statement.

The statement said the problem was with the engine in the third stage, while in past launches the first stage had been faulty.

The problems with the Bulava have become an agonizing issue for the defense ministry, which has ploughed a large proportion of its procurement budget into ensuring the missile becomes the key element of its rocket forces.

The previous failure in July forced the resignation of Yury Solomonov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology which is responsible for developing the missile.

Felgenhauer said that it had dealt a serious blow to Russia's bid to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent.

"By the year 2030, Russia could lose its position as a global nuclear power if the problems are not solved. And it could be that these missiles will never fly properly.

"The Russian defense industry has disintegrated to such an extent that it simply cannot make such a complicated system work. Technology and expertise have been lost," he said.

The problems are also a major political embarrassment, coming as Russia negotiates with the United States the parameters of a new arms reduction treaty to replace the 1991 START accord.

The treaty expired on December 5, and despite intense negotiations the two sides have yet to agree the text of a new deal.

In a separate development, a successful test-firing took place of Russia's intercontinental surface-to-surface ballistic missile Topol RS-12M, news agencies quoted a statement from the strategic rocket forces as saying.

The missile -- introduced to the rocket forces before the fall of the Soviet Union -- was fired from the southern Russian region of Astrakhan and hit its target at a testing range in neighboring Kazakhstan.

The Bulava, which can be equipped with up to 10 individually targeted nuclear warheads, has a maximum range of 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles).

It is the sea-based version of the Topol-M, Russia's new surface-to-surface intercontinental missile, and designed to be launched from Moscow's newest Borei class of submarines.

Defense analysts say that a further headache for the military is that the new submarines are designed to be compatible with Bulava and if the new missile fails to work the vessels will be virtually useless.

Hamas: EU proposal on Jerusalem "incomplete step"

GAZA, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haneya said on Wednesday the European Union (EU)'s call for negotiations on Jerusalem status was an "incomplete step."

"This is a half step," Haneya told reporters in Gaza, adding that "this step must be completed and Jerusalem must be upheld as the capital for the (future) Palestinian state."

"The Palestinian people are still expecting a more advanced position from the EU regarding Jerusalem and the Palestinian rights," Haneya added.

EU foreign ministers on Tuesday urged Israel to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians as part of a Middle East peace agreement and make the holy city to be the capital of both the Jewish state and a future Palestinian state.

Hamas immediately rejected the proposal, saying it was "below the level and doesn't meet the Palestinian people's hopes."

But the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) took a different stand.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said on Wednesday that the EU declaration "was important and could be built upon to develop collective European acceptance to demarking the Palestinian state's borders in the Security Council."

The PNA seeks UN recognition of a future state. Peace talks between Israel and the PNA came to a stop a year ago due to the settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The EU foreign ministers said in Brussels Tuesday that they were seriously concerned about the suspension of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The EU calls for negotiations "that will lead, within an agreed time-frame, to a two-state solution with the state of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," a statement by the EU council said.

The EU statement stressed that Jerusalem must be shared between Israel and the Palestinians who want the eastern part of the holy city as their capital.

"If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states," the statement said.

Cobra's Anger Will Lead to Great Regrets

Thursday, 10 December 2009

Last week, the invading and brutal foreign armies stationed in Helmand, launched vast operations in Nawzad district and a few other areas of the province. Since then, they have been prosecuting, torturing and harassing common people of this land of the Mujahideen (Helmand) under operations christened Cobra’s Anger. Still, according to recent reports from the province, the invaders have not gained any remarkable success, nor they have been able to destroy any stronghold of the Mujahideen as yet. Similarly, the foreign forces have not taken any area of vital importance to Mujahideen militarily. So far, they have been roaming in empty deserts. Despite that, they constantly claim of having captured kilometers of areas from the Opposition.

It is an immovable fact that the Mujahideen of Helmand province like Mujahideen of other areas of the country have given exemplary lessons to the brutal forces of the invaders during the past eight years particularly during the past six months that they should expectedly not have dared to throw down the gauntlet again or in other word to test the pious people of this land once more. But the moribund foreign forces want to show some achievements at the field because they are facing humiliation and taunt from their public and from rival countries of the West. They ask them why you are losing the ground in face of a small country, being under- armed and ill-equipped people-- still more your cutting-edge technology have been failed to hit the mark. They are now confused and unfortunately, not able to ponder over the results of their previous military operations.

Rationally, in the light of the ground realities, they should have reached the conclusion that their next operations will bring in nothing except failure and that ultimately, they will not be able to avoid their historical defeat or could not at least superficially save their face.

One can draw from their naming of Cobra’s Anger that the enemy has lost its hope of victory and is waiting for the day of retreat and route. Therefore, they are taking it on the miserable and defenseless common Afghans to present it to their people as a military victory. Thus they can tell people back home that though we lost thousands of soldiers in Helmand province-- the land of Mujahideen--but we also killed their people including children and women.

In our view, the operations now going in Helmand is a mistake which has already been repeated. All their ploys and war stratagems are doomed to failure and lacks to achieve any objective. In general, their military strategies are not practicable.

The barbarism and brutalities perpetrated by the invaders during the past eight years did not give them any victory nor did they achieve any tangible result. It is now for the generals and rulers of America and Britain not to push their soldiers into the mouth of death for realization of strategies that have already been tested and failed, nor they should shed the blood of the oppressed and miserable Afghans in order to conceal their eventual defeat. Still if they are bent on continuing their brutalities and want to vent their anger on the people, they will inevitably have great regrets.

Thailand to register migrant children

Dec 10, 2009 (DVB)–Children of migrant workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia will soon be registered by the Thai government and eligible to enroll in school, migrant organizations have announced.

The process is already underway in a number of towns on Thailand’s border with Burma, and Thai government officials are reportedly collecting lists of migrant children to ready for registration.

To register the children, parents must hold migrant workers identification cards or migrant registration forms.

There are estimated to be between two and three million Burmese migrants in Thailand, most of whom work in low-skilled labor industries, such as fishing and construction, with little pay.

The deadline for registration is 18 December. A Burmese migrant in Bangkok told DVB that he had already submitted applications for his two children.

“To apply for the registration, two photos and personal details of the child and the parents are needed,” he said. “The children whose parents have no legal stay in the country cannot apply.”

Migrant NGOs in Thailand’s border town of Mae Sot said that applications are already being accepted at the municipal office and at the town’s administration office.

Ko Aye, from the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP) foundation office in Mae Sot welcomed the initiative, while Htoo Chit, from the Human Right Education and Development group, said the program could “bring light to future of migrant children in Thailand”.

According to statistics from Thailand’s labor ministry, around 700,000 Burmese migrant workers registered for labor documents this year.

A number of centers have already been set up along the Thai-Burma border to register Burmese migrant workers living in Thailand. Without legal status, access to education and healthcare in Thailand is heavily restricted.

The agreement between the two countries was technically formalized in 2003, although progress on it has been slow. Thailand also has similar agreements with Cambodia and Laos.

Criticism was leveled at the scheme in July after it was revealed that Burma’s ethnic Rohingya group would be barred from registering. The Burmese government refuses to recognize the Muslim minority and thus grants them no legal status.

Reporting by Aye Nai

2009: A year in human rights

By Andrew Wander

With a new US president, international crises from Gaza to Sri Lanka, and continued political impediments to international justice, 2009 has been a busy year for those working in the field of human rights.

On Human Rights Day (December 10), Carroll Bogart, the associate director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), shares her views on some of the key moments of the past year and looks ahead to what 2010 might hold.

Al Jazeera: At the end of 2008, there was a tremendous amount of hope being invested in Barack Obama, the US president. But then there was the reality of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and the human rights issues that went along with that. What was HRW's take on what happened in Gaza, and on the silence from the president-elect?

Carroll Bogart: I'm not sure that realistically we would have expected anything different from any US administration, since they certainly have a policy of avoiding any discussion of justice where Israel and the Middle East are concerned.

So that was not new, and I wouldn't say we were surprised. At the same time, of course we were disappointed, because we think the only way to have a genuine peace process is [to have] one that is based on justice and recognition of crimes committed by both sides in Operation Cast Lead.

We were really disappointed that the rhetoric on the Goldstone Report was so sharp. They slammed the door on Goldstone. They could have done that differently, and I think it was a mistake.

What would you have liked to have seen done differently?

For the US administration to say it is extremely important that both sides investigate and punish the perpetrators of any war crimes or other serious violations of human rights in the context of the Gaza War. That's not so hard to do.

This was the best opportunity not only to hold the Israel Defense Forces to account for what happened in Gaza, but also to hold Hamas accountable for what happened in Gaza.

That needn't be seen, and shouldn't be seen, as a threat to US objectives in the Middle East.

The year 2009 also saw the International Criminal Court (ICC) issue an arrest warrant for Omar Bashir, the Sudanese president. As soon as the warrant was issued, he responded by expelling aid agencies from Darfur. What's more important; that international law is respected or that conditions on the ground are improved?

We don't see those two things in opposition. There has been a false dichotomy between justice and peace in a case like Sudan, where if we go ahead and indict Bashir, then that's going to be unhelpful to the actual realization of human rights.

I don't accept that. In other instances where heads of state indicted by the ICC or by other international bodies, like the [late Serbian president Slobodan] Milosevic case, or the Charles Taylor case, indictments were a way of stigmatizing and putting a nail in the coffin of dictators. It's been very effective in other cases.

Do you think human rights standards are being used politically?

By turning its back on justice in the Gaza situation, the international community is sending a signal that indeed, just as many African countries are arguing, this whole justice idea depends on the country committing the abuse.

The justice is not absolute, is not uniformly applied. Some countries get by, but not too many African countries. I don't believe that the ICC is a biased institution, but I do think it's a problem that the ICC's docket is dominated by Africa, and I do think it's a problem that efforts for justice by the UN, or anyone else, in the Gaza situation for example, get rebuffed, and blocked and don't go forward.

How would you like to see this change, and what can you do bring about that change?

The Goldstone recommendations [say] that there have to be real and true judicial procedures on both Israeli and Palestinian sides, or if there aren't, then some kind of international justice has to step in, has to become a player.

That's what we think should happen. Will Israel and Hamas actually pursue perpetrators of serious human rights violations and bring them to account? We'll find that out in 2010.

Another of the big stories of 2009 was the fallout from the Iranian elections. What is Human Rights Watch's position on the response of the Iranian government to the opposition protests?

It's a situation of grotesque human rights abuse. It's only grown worse in this year.

Obviously we believe that Iran should cease detaining people, beating people, torturing people, executing people, trumping up trials against them etc.

The question is what to do about it, because the government is rather stubborn, and rather impervious to external pressure.

The thing we are concerned about is that the nuclear issue continues to dominate the international diplomatic agenda, and its important that as Obama tries to engage with Iran, if he does continue to do that in 2010, that he not lose sight of the human rights dimension and do a deal on nukes that entails less criticism of Iran on human rights grounds.

We don't want the human rights agenda to be lost in nuclear talks.

Do you feel that this is what has happened with human rights issues in China, which is an important trading partner with Western countries? The Uighurs were the big story from 2009, but international criticism of the Chinese was muted.

I think that's a perennial issue. There are an awful lot of human rights issues at play in China.

The Uighurs are certainly a part of that, and it must be noted that the US has recognised the repression that Uighurs face by not returning Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay to China because there is a serious threat of torture and abuse if they are returned.

There are a whole host of human rights issues in China that Obama did not address directly in his trip to China. It wasn't that he didn't raise human rights. He did raise human rights, but he raised it in an abstract way, saying "freedom of expression is good" without saying "freedom of expression is currently being violated by the Chinese government and that's a problem".

He wasn't so unwise as to ignore the human rights question when he was in China, but I think he unwisely calculated that the US would be weaker, somehow, if he addressed those human rights concerns directly and bilaterally with the Chinese government.

How do you think Obama has handled some of his domestic human rights issues - Guantanamo Bay and Bagram for example? Has he lived up to expectations?

It's a mixed picture. Definitely announcing the intention to close Guantanamo Bay and desisting from torture was positive.

The relish with which the Bush administration was using torture was just appalling, and I think incredibly damaging to American support of human rights in other contexts. So to announce that all parts of the US government would stop using torture was important. Obama deserves credit for that.

But Guantanamo is not going to be closed on time, and more importantly, they're not closing Guantanamo, they are moving Guantanamo to Illinois.

They are continuing to hold some detainees without charge. Guantanamo is not a place, it's an idea, and the idea is you can hold people without charge, which violates US constitutional law, and also international law.

What do you see as some of the major issues that are going to concern Human Rights Watch in 2010?

I think that the justice issue is going to continue to be paramount. As we've touched on, the Bashir indictment, the double standards represented by a lack of justice in a place like Gaza, or places like Sri Lanka, those double standards are very damaging to the cause of justice where we have managed to get indictments.

We're going to struggle to bring those institutions of justice in better alignment with the reality on the ground.

Kuwait, Turkey Discuss Defense Ties

ANKARA [MENL] -- Kuwait and Turkey plan to expand defense cooperation.

Officials said Kuwait and Turkey have been discussing projects that would expand their defense cooperation. They said the two countries were examining the prospect of additional exercises and training.

Source: Middle East Newsline.
Link: http://www.menewsline.com/article-1173,18411-Kuwait-Turkey-Discuss-Defense-Ti.aspx.

Russia Targets Iran For Helicopter Sales

MOSCOW [MENL] -- A leading Russian defense company has signed a contract to market helicopters in Iran.

Russian Helicopters has signed an agreement with Iran's Fanavaran Aseman Giti to sell a range of helicopters in Iran. The accord called for the Russian firm to market civilian versions of the medium multi-role Mi-171 helicopters and the light multi-role Ka-226T.

Jordan Enhances F-16 Maintenance

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Jordan has launched a project to assemble a maintenance infrastructure for its F-16 multi-role fighter fleet.

The United States has agreed to help Jordan establish an infrastructure to maintain and repair engines for the F-16. The Defense Department would help Jordan set up a program to repair the F100-PW-220E engine, installed on the Hashemite kingdom's fleet of 47 F-16s.