Spain aims at military-civilian satellites

Madrid (UPI) Jun 22, 2011

Spain is on track to become the first European country to have a dual Earth observation system, radar and optical, for both civilian and military use.

Defense Minister Carme Chacon said radar technology installed on the satellite, which is totally of Spanish design and manufacture, will enable up to 100 images of the Earth's surface to be taken per day at a resolution of up to 1 yard.

In three years' time, this capacity will be joined by that of the Ingenio satellite and its optical technology.

"With the Paz and Ingenio satellites, our military will have their own observation systems, thus multiplying our autonomy in terms of obtaining information and better protecting the interests of Spain," she said.

Chacon made her remarks at a formal presentation of the Paz satellite this month.

The presentation ceremony took place at a facility of EADS CASA Espacio, and was attended by the Chief of Defense Staff Jose Julio Rodriguez; State Secretary for Defense Constantino Mendez; and the Secretary-General for Industry Teresa Santero.

Officials from Hisdesat and Astrium Espana were also in attendance.

The Paz satellite was ordered from Hisdesat by the Ministry of Defense at the end of 2007 under the National Earth Observation Plan to meet the operational requirements of the Spanish armed forces.

Hisdesat contracted the design and manufacture of the satellite to EADS CASA Espacio, meaning this is the first time that the Spanish space industry has undertaken the challenge to build a satellite of this size and complexity to be assembled and manufactured entirely in Spain.

Chacon stressed that the Paz satellite, which will be in orbit in 2013, will be able to detect the position of any ship in the world that could possibly become the victim of hijacking through an automatic AIS identification system. It also will enable the tasks of border control monitoring, the verification of international treaties, the monitoring and assessment of natural disasters and environmental control to be carried out more easily and effectively.

"The Paz satellite will multiply the operational capabilities of our armed forces both within and beyond our borders," she said.

Spain's aerospace industry was credited for the innovation that made such progress possible.

"Thanks to the support from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, we have traveled the long and arduous path to creating a satellite fitted with sophisticated technology that will enable our country to play a very important role in the field of high-resolution satellite imaging," Managing Director of Hisdesat Roberto Lopez said.

Hisdesat said the satellite will be launched from Russia near the end of next year.

The Paz satellite, which has been designed for a 5 1/2-year mission, measures about 6.5 feet in height and about 3.8 feet in diameter. It has a total weight of nearly 3,100 pounds.

Spain's National Institute for Aerospace Technology is responsible for developing the terrestrial aspects of the program, which include control and monitoring stations in Torrejon, near Madrid, and Maspalomas in the Canary Islands, as well as data processing and storage centers.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Spain_aims_at_military-civilian_satellites_999.html.

Iranian opposition daily resumes work after 15-month ban

Jun 18, 2011

Tehran - An Iranian opposition daily resumed work on Saturday after a 15-month ban.

The license of the newspaper Etemad (Trust) was revoked in March last year, but a Tehran court this month ruled in favor of its renewed publication.

Etemad owner Elias Hazrati, a former reformist-oriented parliament deputy, wrote in an editorial Saturday that he was lucky that 'a fair judge' ordered the resumption of his daily's publication.

Hazrati said in the editorial that, despite its critical approach, the daily would respect national interests and not challenge the establishment.

Former president Mohammad Khatami praised the restart of the daily and hoped that it would continue to inform its readers 'truthfully.'

Reformist dailies in Iran are usually closed under the pretext of having insulted religious and political figures or fomenting public discord and working outside the press law. Such charges led to Etemad's closure.

The local press is restricted in reporting about the opposition. Foreign media have been banned since July 2009 from directly covering activities by the opposition, especially its street protests.

The government has accused some foreign media of having staged a 'soft war' against the Islamic establishment, through false and exaggerated reports about internal political rifts.

Source: Monsters and Critics.
Link: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1646249.php/Iranian-opposition-daily-resumes-work-after-15-month-ban.

Iranian Parliament Rejects Ahmadinejad's Sports Ministry Candidate

June 21, 2011

Iran's parliament has rejected the candidate of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as the first-ever sports minister of the country, dealing the president a fresh blow on an increasingly fractious political scene.

Fars news agency reported that more than 55 percent of the deputies rejected the nomination of 43-year-old Hamid Sajadi, an Asian champion long-distance runner in the 1990s.

The move was another signal of the parliament's opposition to the president. Ahmadinejad had explicitly asked legislators to approve the minister and the new ministry as being in the national interest.

Meanwhile, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh, has resigned under pressure from hard-liners and lawmakers who sought to impeach him. Fars reported that his resignation had been accepted.

Ahmadinejad was recently chastened by parliament amid ambitious cabinet reforms when lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to report him to the judiciary over "illegally" trying to put himself in charge of the Oil Ministry. The parliamentary move came after the powerful Guardians Council rebuked him on the same topic.

He has also clashed publicly with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who ordered the reinstatement of Iran's intelligence chief, Heyday Moslehi, after Ahmadinejed dismissed him.

After a prolonged hiatus from official appearances, the president took the unusual step of downplaying talk of a rift with Khamenei in a state television interview in mid-May.

Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE / RL).
Link: http://www.rferl.org/content/iran_parliament_rejects_ahmadinejad_sports_ministry_candidate/24241617.html.

China: Libyan rebels increasingly represent public

BEIJING (AP) — China's foreign minister sought to bolster ties with Libya's rebels on Wednesday, telling the opposition leader that his Transitional National Council represents a growing segment of the Libyan public.

Yang Jiechi's remarks to Mahmoud Jibril on Wednesday were China's strongest endorsement of the council yet, marking an attempt to hedge China's bets over the outcome to the Libyan conflict and dealing a further diplomatic setback to Moammar Gadhafi.

"Since the Transitional National Council was formed, it has become more representative by the day and is becoming an important political force," Yang said, according to a statement issued by the ministry.

"The Chinese side regards it as an 'important dialogue participant,'" he said.

Yang repeated China's stance that both sides in the conflict should stop fighting and negotiate a political settlement. China would not seek to gain from the conflict and regards it as an internal matter to be settled by the Libyan people, he said.

"China hopes that both sides in the conflict will ... truly give peace a chance," Yang said.

Beijing has criticized the NATO bombing campaign in support of the rebels. Yet, recent weeks have seen Beijing engage with the rebels in an indication that China regards a victory for Gadhafi as far from certain.

According to the ministry, Jabril responded to Yang by saying the council appreciated China's "active role" in resolving the crisis. He pledged in future that the council would "take necessary measures to protect Chinese personnel and property in areas under its control" — a reference to China's extensive economic interests in Libya prior to the conflict.

After fighting began, China was forced to evacuate 35,000 of its citizens working in Libya, while China-backed deals such as a half-finished public housing project being built by state-owned contractor China State Construction Engineering Corp., were abruptly put on hold. Other Chinese engineering, telecommunications and energy companies also face massive losses.

Estimates of China's investments in Libya before fighting began run as high as $18 billion.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

End of consultation on political reforms ordered by President Bouteflika

21 June, 2011

ALGIERS - The political consultations ordered by the head of state Abdelaziz Bouteflika to reform his country ended Tuesday as scheduled after a month, it was learned from official sources, but they were boycotted by large opposition groups.

Senate President Abdelkader Bensalah surrounded by two presidential advisers surveyed a host of parties and leaders to hear their suggestions or demands.

"The meetings planned with political parties and personalities have been completed but the forum for consultations on the reforms will continue to work to develop a report to be delivered to the president," told AFP a source close to the proceeding.

In a speech April 15, Bouteflika announced reforms in response to the wave of social and political protest that shook Algeria in the wake of the Arab revolt.

"The department held an average of three meetings per day. It has received political parties except the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and Socialist Workers Party (PST)" said the source.

The RCD has rejected the initiative, calling it "monologue against change" while the FFS found the reforms "not credible".

Many organizations and personalities, including former head of state Ali Kafi (1992-1994) have followed their path, the latter holding that "the regime does not want real change."

The parties of the ruling presidential alliance presented their suggestions, including the National Democratic Rally (RND) of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia in favor of a presidential term limits.

Bouteflika had removed during a partial revision of the constitution in 2008, limiting to two the number of successive presidential terms which allowed him to have a third five-year term in April 2009.

These consultations should lead to proposals. Bouteflika will present his final version, which the government will submission to the National Assembly in September.

Source: Ennahar.
Link: http://www.ennaharonline.com/en/news/6888.html.

India restores military exchanges with China

(TibetanReview.net, Jun20, 2011) India and China are resuming their military ties with the dispatch by the latter of a army delegation on Jun 19, reported AFP Jun 17. The ties had remained frozen since Jul 2010 after China refused to provide visa to the of India’s Northern Army Command, which has Jammu and Kashmir under its jurisdiction, saying he controlled a disputed territory. India retaliated by calling off all military exchanges between the two sides, including by canceling a Chinese officer’s scheduled visit.

China controls a sliver of Kashmir and regards the region, which is also split with Pakistan, as disputed territory.

India is now sending an eight-member delegation headed by Major General Gurmeet Singh who heads the Delta Force, part of a specialized anti-insurgency unit deployed in Kashmir. China now does not seem to have a problem issuing a visa. The report said the delegation will travel to Beijing and Xinjiang (East Turkestan) on a six-day visit.

The report cited media reports as suggesting the decision to resume defense cooperation was reached during talks between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Hu Jintao in China in April.

The resumption of military exchange with India takes place in the backdrop of China’s recent new assertiveness and angry exchanges with Vietnam and Philippines over disputed archipelagos which are both strategic and also said to be rich in oil, gas and fish resources.

Source: Tibetan Review.
Link: http://www.tibetanreview.net/news.php?cat=10&&id=9105.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: Free in body, not voice

Thursday, June 23, 2011

BEIJING (AP) — Outspoken artist and government critic Ai Weiwei talked about giving himself a haircut Thursday but said little else in his first day out of detention, living under a gag order that underscores concerns about China's growing use of extralegal methods to muzzle dissent.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Ai was released from nearly three months of detention late Wednesday after confessing to tax evasion and pledging to repay the money owed. His family denies the allegations and activists have denounced them as a false premise for detaining an artist who spoke out against the authoritarian government and its repression of civil liberties.

The Foreign Ministry said the conditions of Ai's parole require him to report to police when asked and bar him from leaving Beijing without permission for one year. A ministry spokesman did not mention the gag order, but ever since his unexpected release, Ai has told the foreign reporters thronging the gate to his suburban Beijing workshop and home that he is not allowed to talk.

On Thursday, he emerged from the doorway with freshly cut hair and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with his name in giant black letters.

"I cut my own hair, looks more spirited," he explained in Chinese. But he said he couldn't give any interviews or say anything about his case.

"Of course, it's great to be home," he said.

In a sign of Ai's continued appeal among some Chinese, several supporters showed up outside his compound Thursday, despite a police presence. Two Chinese men pasted posters, one in English and other in Chinese, that read "I love you Ai Weiwei" to the door of his compound.

In a phone conversation, Ai's wife Lu Qing, said Ai had been forbidden to discuss conditions of his detention and release and was being followed by plainclothes officers whenever he left the house.

"It may take a few days to get back to reality," said Lu, who with Ai's mother had been called to pick him up from a police station on Wednesday afternoon.

Internationally renowned for mocking, satirical art, the 54-year-old Ai became the highest profile casualty in a spring crackdown to stop Chinese from imitating the democratic uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Dozens of rights activists, lawyers and others have been detained, put under house arrest or disappeared, and several of those who have been released have kept almost totally silent ever since.

Like some others detained, formal charges against Ai have never been announced.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular press briefing that Chinese investigators alleged Ai "evaded a huge amount of taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents."

Hong said authorities decided to release Ai because of his "good attitude in confessing his crimes and because of the chronic disease he is suffering from and his repeated expression of his willingness to pay the taxes he has evaded."

Human rights groups and Chinese legal experts, however, noted that even if the allegations were true, economic crimes are usually handled by fines.

Beijing-based rights activist and lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said Ai's detention was "politically motivated, and so is his release."

"The whole incident is only 'legal' in appearance," said Pu, a friend of Ai.

Jerome Cohen, a top expert on Chinese law at New York University, wrote in an editorial posted to the website of NYU's U.S. Asia Law Institute that Ai's release "has little to do with the rule of law, but everything to do with the untrammeled exercise of discretion enjoyed by Chinese authorities."

Cohen told The Associated Press authorities could reopen the case at any time, meaning Ai faces the ever-present threat of being detained again on the same accusations.

Ai's detention put a famous face on the crackdown the authoritarian Chinese government has vigorously pursued with little regard for China's laws. The U.S. had urged the release of the former New York resident, as did other Western governments.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed Ai's release, but said it "can only be a first step" to clearing the charges in a legal way, her spokesman said late Wednesday.

Amnesty International called on China to account for four of Ai's colleagues who have also gone missing. A driver, Zhang Jinsong, was expected to be released Thursday, said a studio employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared official retribution. There was no word on the fate of the other three: studio assistant Wen Tao, accountant Hu Mingfen and designer Liu Zhenggang.

Why authorities chose to release Ai now remains unclear. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will soon travel to Hungary, Britain and Germany, and was likely to have heard loud calls for Ai's release, but the government has generally resisted such appeals.

Ai has also benefited from residual affection in the party for his father, one of China's most beloved modern poets.

On Thursday, China's government released another prisoner: Xu Zerong, a Hong Kong-based political scientist sentenced in late 2001 to 10 years in jail for leaking state secrets and another three years for illegal business operations. Rights groups say the main charge against him was that he had obtained and copied books on the Korean War and provided them to a scholar in South Korea.

Ai fearlessly challenged the government before his detention. He blogged and Twittered constantly on subjects including the deaths of students in shoddily built schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; children killed or sickened by tainted infant formula; and a deadly high-rise fire in Shanghai that killed 58 and was blamed on negligent workers and corrupt inspectors. He had also kept an informal tally on Twitter of people who disappeared into police custody.

Ai's Twitter account has remained dormant since his release. The last posting is from April 3, just before he disappeared.

Associated Press reporters Isolda Morillo and Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report.

Medical Crisis Worsening in Gaza

By Eva Bartlett

GAZA CITY, Jun 19, 2011 (IPS) - "During the first years of the siege, we could still manage, but nowadays we have no alternatives," says Dr. Hassan Khalaf, Deputy Health Minister in Gaza. "It is a major crisis: many health services have stopped, and I'm afraid this will spiral out of control, because Gaza doesn't have the essential medicines and supplies needed."

Cancer, kidney, heart and organ transplant patients, as well as patients needing routine surgeries, including eye and dental surgery, have been suffering for the last five years under the Israeli-led, internationally-backed siege of the Gaza Strip. Year by year, the warnings of Gaza's health crisis grow more dire, with the latest warning from Gaza's Ministry of Health stating the Strip is at emergency levels of medical supplies.

Following the democratic elections in 2006 that brought Hamas to power in Gaza, the population has been constrained under a siege which bans food items, construction materials, and school supplies among thousands of items. Medical supplies and equipment do not escape the blacklist, for years now depriving Palestinians in Gaza of basics like baby formulas, antibiotics, and MRI and X-Ray machines, which Israel reasons could be used for "terror" purposes.

While alarming zero-stock levels of drugs were already being reported in 2007 – when 80-90 drugs of the 480 deemed essential were at zero - Palestinian physicians could still find ways around the shortages. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in November 2008 reported that "medical staff try to cope by using the next best solution which is not always a good one - for example, if they need tubes for a medical procedure, they will use a tube size smaller or bigger than the appropriate one." While the alternatives were not optimal and could result in inadequate and painful treatments, there were at least alternatives. But with each year of the total siege on Gaza, particularly after the 23 days of Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-2009, the already dilapidated medical system in Gaza has been rendered more sickly. During the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli warplanes bombed over half of Gaza's hospitals, as well as 44 clinics and the medical storage facility of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

In February 2011, an Israeli bombing destroyed a medical warehouse in Jabliya. "We lost a large amount of stocks we had finally received from Ramallah just a few days prior to the bombing," says Dr. Khalaf.

In June 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a call for "unimpeded access into the Gaza Strip of life-saving medical supplies, including equipment and medicines, as well as more effective movement of people in and out of the territory for medical training and the repair of devices needed to deliver appropriate healthcare and respond to the population's humanitarian health needs."

But prolonged shortages of medical supplies have set-off new alarm bells.

"During 2008, Gaza received less than half of the needed medicines and supplies," says Dr. Khalaf. The WHO reported that in 2010 Gaza received even less, only 40 percent of the Strip's needs transferred to Gaza. "As of now, in 2011 we've received only third of what is needed," says Khalaf.

With years of delays by both the Israeli-led siege and the Ramallah Health Ministry, Gaza's zero-stock items list - now at 180 items - has grown as has the number of items temporarily re-stocked in hospitals and clinics.

"We're missing painkillers and anesthetics, cancer and epilepsy drugs, antibiotics, infant formulas, medicines for dialysis, even rubber gloves," says Khalaf.

The ministry's warning is echoed by the WHO, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which noted on Jun. 13 that Gaza has not received medical supplies since February 2011. PCHR reports that the medical shortages affect "ICUs, nurseries of premature infants; operation rooms; anesthesia and recovery; emergency; cardiac catheterisation; hematology and oncology; nephritic diseases; and pediatrics."

According to Dr. Khalaf, hundreds of patients await "eye surgeries, endoscopic, vascular and pediatric surgeries, and neurosurgery" among others.

A group of Norwegian doctors surveyed Gaza's hospitals and clinics in February this year. Their study, reported in the Lancet, highlighted the difficulties for cancer patients in Gaza who receive only part of their chemotherapy treatments. Many have died as a result.

"Oncologists said 100 of 260 cancer patients at Gaza's largest hospital were unable to receive effective treatment because the required combination of several drugs was not obtainable," reported the Lancet.

To alleviate the current medical crisis, the ICRC on Jun. 14 gave its stocks of medical supply to hospitals in Gaza. The Ramallah-based Ministry of Health announced it would send medical supplies from its warehouses and that Egypt would soon send essential medicines.

Having dealt with the issue of delayed and banned medical supplies for years, the Ministry of Health in Gaza sees this as a temporary and insufficient fix.

"Israel and the Ramallah government hold mutual responsibility for Gaza's medical crisis," says Dr. Khalaf, citing Israeli obstacles and delays on permissions and shipments via the Israeli-controlled crossings as well as what he says is the Ramallah Ministry's intentional negligence.

"When international donors first cut aid to Gaza, it was resumed via the Ramallah government, with the understanding that Gaza receives 40 percent of the total donations, according to our population needs," he says.

This system worked until the ministry in Ramallah stopped coordinating with the ministry in Gaza, relying instead on its own contacts in Gaza.

Dr. Khalaf believes neither the Israeli siege nor the Ramallah government's reluctance to send medical supplies to Gaza could occur without international compliance. "It is intentional, it's part of the siege on Gaza's government," he says. "The international donor countries and Ramallah Health Ministry give us temporary, interrupted solutions."

Whether or not it is intentional, the severe lack of medical supplies harms Gaza's 1.5 million residents, not the Hamas government.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56141.

Experts Fear Israeli Design to Balkanize Arab States

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jun 18, 2011 (IPS) - Developments in Libya have raised fears among Egyptian analysts and political figures of the possible break-up of the North African nation into two warring halves. To support the assertion, they point to longstanding Israeli designs - supported by the western powers - to balkanize the Arab states of the region.

"Libya could be split in two, with Gaddafi staying on in the west of the country and a revolutionary government loyal to the western powers in control of the east," Mohamed al-Sakhawi, leading member of Egypt's as-yet-unlicensed Arabic Unity Party, told IPS.

For three months, Libya has suffered internationally sanctioned air-strikes by the western NATO alliance, launched with the stated aim of supporting the ongoing popular uprising against the Gaddafi regime. Revolutionary forces based in Ben Ghazi now hold most of the country's eastern half, while forces loyal to Gaddafi continue to control the country's western half from the capital Tripoli.

Yet the fact that NATO - despite its overwhelming air superiority - has so far failed to dislodge the Gaddafi regime has led many local observers to question the western alliance's intentions.

"The western campaign against Libya wasn't undertaken to protect human rights or foster democracy," said al-Sakhawi. "It was launched with the aim of breaking Libya up politically so as to prevent the unification of three revolutionary Arab states - Egypt, Libya and Tunisia - which together might pose a threat to Israeli regional dominance."

Walid Hassan, international law professor at Alexandria's Pharos University, agreed for the most part, saying that NATO - with Israeli encouragement - "hopes to replace Gaddafi with rulers loyal to the west in advance of breaking the country into small statelets, as they are doing in Iraq.

"The primary objective is to weaken the Arab states of North Africa, which, if they ever united, would represent a potential threat to Israeli and western interests," Hassan told IPS. "Libya's significant oil wealth, of course, constitutes a secondary reason for the intervention."

Al-Sakhawi pointed to the region's century-old legacy of balkanization at the hands of foreign powers.

"The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France drew artificial borders across the region and fragmented the Arab world into nation states," he said. "And in recent years, the drive to further balkanize the Arab world - by Israel and the western powers - has only accelerated."

Egyptian analysts point to several proposals written to this effect by Israeli strategists, the most well known of which is a 1982 treatise entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s." Written by Oded Yinon, then a senior adviser for Israel's foreign ministry, the essay explicitly calls for breaking up the Arab states of the region along ethnic and sectarian lines.

"The Zionist plan to politically fragment the Arab Middle East so as to keep Arab states in a perpetual state of instability and weakness has been well known for the last three decades," Gamal Mazloum, retired Egyptian major-general and expert on defense issues, told IPS.

While the Yinon document does not devote much space to Libya, it talks in detail about the need to divide Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon into small, ineffectual statelets.

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas… is Israel's primary target on the eastern front in the long run," the author writes. For Yinon, oil-rich and ethnically-diverse Iraq - which he describes as "the greatest threat to Israel" - constitutes a chief target.

"In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines… is possible," he writes. "So, three states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."

As for Egypt, Yinon calls for breaking the country up into "distinct geographical regions." The establishment of an independent Coptic-Christian state in Upper Egypt, he writes, "alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government…seems inevitable in the long run."

Yinon goes on to mention Sudan in similar terms, describing it as "the most torn-apart state in the Arab-Muslim world today…built upon four groups hostile to each other: an Arab-Muslim Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, pagans and Christians."

According to Mazloum, political maneuvering in recent years by Israel and the western powers - both overt and covert - appears to conform to this strategy of balkanization.

"Israel and the U.S. have both helped break up Iraq by encouraging the emergence of an independent Kurdish state and fostering Sunni-Shiite division," he said. "And in Sudan, Israel actively contributed to the war between north and south by providing the latter with weapons and military training."

Southern Sudan is set to declare independence from the northern Khartoum government next month in a move that will officially split Africa's largest country in two.

"Israel has an interest in breaking up Sudan and instigating sectarian strife in Egypt so that the latter is faced with crises on both its internal and external fronts," said Mazloum. "Israel and its western patrons are determined to keep Egypt - the most populous Arab nation by far - in a state of perpetual weakness so that it cannot aid the Arab cause in places like Palestine and Iraq."

Earlier this month, Mohamed Abbas, a leading member of Egypt's Revolutionary Coalition Council (RCC), likewise warned of an ongoing "conspiracy" aimed at breaking Egypt into three petty states. The RCC consists of several political movements that played prominent roles in Egypt's recent Tahrir Uprising.

"This conspiracy is part of a wider scheme to fragment the Arab states - as has happened in Sudan, is happening in Libya and has been attempted in Iraq - in order to render Egypt so weak that the Zionist entity will be sure to remain the dominant power in the new Middle East," Abbas was quoted as saying by independent daily Al-Shorouk on Jun. 4.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56140.