Top Somali Islamist leader lashes U.S. policy

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a radical Islamist leader in Somalia, on Saturday strongly attacked U.S. foreign policy towards the war-torn Horn of Africa country, two days after Somali President met with U.S. Secretary of State in Nairobi, Kenya.

Aweys, leader of the Hezbul Islam (Islamic Party), condemned what he termed as the U.S.'s hostile policy based on double standards on Somalia issue since the fall of the late Somali ruler Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1990.

In a statement issued in Mogadishu, the firebrand leader said he expected there would be a change in the U.S. policy towards Somalia under the new leadership of the current President Barack Obama.

But, the statement said "as things stand now, this administration still follows its predecessor's same policy of creating internal division among Somali people, support of the foreign agents and warlords".

The statement by Aweys, wanted by the U.S. for links with international terrorism, comes two days after the meeting between Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and U.S. top diplomat Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of a U.S.-Africa economic forum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Clinton pledged U.S.'s full support for the Somali government led by President Ahmed and condemned Islamist rebels in Somalia who are trying to topple the internationally recognized government.

Clinton also warned Eritrea of arming insurgent movements in Somalia, threatening action against Asmara if it did not stop. Eritrea categorically denies the allegations.

Source: People's Daily.
Link: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90855/6722592.html.

Eight killed in Sunni-Shiite clashes in northern Yemen

Fighting casts doubts over government control

SANAA, Yemen: Eight gunmen were killed in clashes in northern Yemen between Zaidi Shiite rebels and Sunni hardliners amid continuing tensions between the rebels and the authorities, local sources said on Saturday.

The overnight fighting between rebels and tribesmen described as Salafists took place in the border area of Baqim, north of the restive Saada region which is the rebels’ main bastion, sources close to the rebels said.

Salafists, from a Sunni Muslim school of thought that prevails in neighboring Saudi Arabia, despise the Shiites.

Two of the dead gunmen were Zaidi rebels and the other six were Salafists, the sources said.

Other local sources close to the rebels said clashes with government forces have continued for several days in the Mahazer area of Saada, and that the main road linking Saada with the capital Sanaa has been blocked.

They said tensions are high with strong expectations of all-out war once again erupting between government forces and the rebels, known also as Huthis.

An emailed statement apparently from the Huthis on Saturday accused the government of preparing to launch a new offensive on Saada.

Huthis charged that MiG fighter jets and helicopters were being readied in Sana’a to launch attacks on rebel strongholds.

Rebel leader Abdel Malek al-Huthi claimed in a statement that the authorities dropped leaflets on Friday over several areas of Saada urging people to fight the Huthis, according to the Saudi newspaper Ash-Sharq al-Awsat.

The latest round of fighting is a major escalation in the five-year-old rebellion in Saada Province.

The rebels’ successful offensives cast renewed doubt on the government’s control over security.

Yemen’s stability is a key concern to both its largest neighbor, Saudi Arabia, and the US because increased lawlessness could provide cover for Al-Qaeda militants who have sought sanctuary in this impoverished nation on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemen has allied with the US in its fight against terror, but the government has little authority in the mountainous areas outside the major cities. The country, which is the ancestral birthplace of Osama bin Laden, is also facing a growing separatist movement in the south that has sparked recent violence.

The escalation in Saada, which borders Saudi Arabia, could deepen the country’s security woes. The Shiite rebels fighting the Sunni-led government maintain that it is corrupt and too closely allied with the West.

France slams suicide blast near Mauritania embassy

France on Sunday condemned a suicide bombing near its embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott in which three people, two of them French gendarmes, were slightly injured. “France condemns with the greatest firmness the attack committed yesterday in Nouakchott near the French Embassy,” a Foreign Ministry statement said, and also assured Mauritania of its support in the fight against terrorism.

The bomber was wearing an explosives-laden belt, Mauritanian police said, adding he set off the explosives just before 1900 GMT Saturday near the wall of the French Embassy complex.

The source said no group had yet come forward to claim responsibility for the attack outside the embassy walls, which an eyewitness said caused no major damage to the building.

In Paris, a French diplomatic source said that local authorities had launched an investigation to identify the culprits. “They are investigating. We don’t know who did it or their motives, that’s the subject of the investigation,” he told Reuters.

The attack took place three days after Mohammad Ould Abdel-Aziz, who toppled Mauritania’s first democratically elected leader in a coup last year, was sworn in as president of the Islamic state promising to make the fight against Al-Qaeda a priority.

Defeated opponents denounced his poll victory last month as a fraud, but former colonial power France said it was ready to re-engage with the Saharan country, applauding his tough anti-terrorist stance.

Al-Qaeda activity has increased in northwest Africa and the Sahara desert, but attacks in Mauritania are infrequent.

In June, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist group’s north African branch, claimed responsibility for the shooting of an American aid worker in Mauritania, saying it was in retaliation for US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In December 2007, four French tourists were killed by group in Aleg, in the south of the country, and the Israeli Embassy was attacked in 2008.

Three men are in jail awaiting trial for the 2007 killings of the French tourists. The three are also suspected of being members of AQIM.

France is one of Mauritania’s biggest partners in both trade and aid. In 2007 it set aside $134 million in a four-year aid package, only 30 percent of which has been paid. Paris said this week it would look to release the rest.

The European Union suspended aid payments to Mauritania in protest at the military coup last August, but has since indicated it may be willing to restart cooperation.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=105093.

Revolutionary Guard wants Mousavi tried over unrest

TEHRAN: Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, a defeated presidential candidate and a former president should be tried for inciting unrest after a disputed presidential poll. The June 12 presidential polls plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Is?la?mic revolution, exposed deepening rifts in its ruling elite and set off a wave of protests and arrests that left 26 people dead.

“If Mousavi, [defeated candidate Mehdi] Karoubi and [former President Mohammad] Khatami are main suspects behind the soft revolution in Iran, which they are, we expect the judiciary … to go after them, arrest them, put them on trial and punish them,” said Yadollah Javan, a senior Guard commander, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Protests gripped Tehran and other cities after the vote, which moderates say was rigged to secure the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but officials say it was the “healthiest” vote in the past 30 years.

In an attempt to calm widespread anger, Iran jailed the head of the Kahrizak detention center after at least three people died in custody in the southern Tehran prison as the judiciary held trials of detainees arrested over post-election unrest.

“The head of the center has been sacked and jailed. Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well,” IRNA quoted Iran’s police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam as saying.

Kahrizak was built for jailing violators of Iran’s vice laws. A police statement issued Thursday confirmed that serious violations took place at Kahrizak.

Leading moderates including Mousavi and Khatami have demanded the immediate re?lease of detainees, saying that their confessions were made under duress.

In an attempt to uproot the opposition and to end street protests, Iran held two mass trials of moderates, including several prominent figures charged with offenses that included acting against national security by fomenting voter unrest.

An Iranian Revolutionary Court on Saturday charged a French woman, two Iranians working for the British and French embassies in Tehran and dozens of others with spying and assisting a Western plot to overthrow the system of clerical rule.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urged Iran to free the Frenchwoman, 24-year-old academic Clotilde Reiss, and rejected accusations against her of spying and helping a Western plot against Iran. “I want to clearly tell the Iranian authorities: these allegations are not true, Clotilde Reiss isn’t guilty of anything,” Kouchner said on LCI television.

“She did nothing but walk alongside protesters for an hour one time, and an hour and a half hours another time. She did not submit a report, she sent a brief note to the director of the French Institute for Iranian Research, which is a cultural institute,” he said, demanding she be freed.

In interviews aired Sunday, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser James Jones said Washington has little choice but to deal with the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regardless of US feelings about charges he was re-elected in a fraudulent election and sympathy for the thousands who have protested the outcome.

Clinton said the US had no illusions that Iran would accept overtures to return to negotiations about its nuclear program and would not wait much longer for Tehran to respond.

Under the Obama administration, the US has been trying to entice Iran back to the negotiating table, while voicing criticism at the cloudy circumstances surrounding Ahmadinejad recent re-election.

Fatah members vote for executive body, hope for renewal

BETHLEHEM, West Bank: The congress of the leading Palestinian party, Fatah, voted on Sunday for a new executive body and assembly filled with fresh faces to regain the lost trust of the Palestinian people.

The movement led by the late Yasser Arafat for 40 years wants to shed a reputation for corruption and cronyism that led in 2006 to a stunning election loss to its Islamist rival Hamas, which opposes peace with Israel.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in a civil war a year later, splitting the Palestinian independence movement.

Ninety-six candidates, six of them women, are standing for election to the 21-member central committee and 617 party members, including 50 women, will vie for the 80 places open in a 128-seat Revolutionary Council, the body’s Parliament.

Voting by secret ballot for these positions was launched on Sunday afternoon in a process expected to take at least 10 hours. Tabulating results could take about a day.

Delegates passed a motion earlier reaffirming that “the aim of Fatah as a liberation movement is to end the Israeli occupation and achieve independence for the Palestinian people in a state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” “Despite our commitment to the option of a just peace and our efforts to accomplish it, we will not drop any options and we believe resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right of occupied peoples in confronting their occupiers,” it said.

The congress of 2,355 delegates in Bethlehem – Fatah’s first in 20 years – began last Tuesday, marked by reformists’ charges of vote-buying and nepotism by the “old guard.”

If stalled peace talks with Israel resume, Fatah’s leader, the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, will be Israel’s main interlocutor, a position Hamas is certain to continue challenging whatever the convention’s outcome.

Holding its first meeting on Palestinian soil in 44 years of existence is part of Fatah’s efforts to underpin Abbas’s personal authority as the voice of all Palestinians.

Abbas would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel, roughly along borders created by the 1967 Middle East war.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak deplored Fatah’s anti-Israel rhetoric but stressed that “it must be understood there is no Middle East solution other than a comprehensive, broad settlement including us and the Palestinians.”

Abbas, 74, won unanimous endorsement by a show of hands on Saturday, telling the congress it must mark a new beginning.

“We’ve had many launches and setbacks. Sometimes we have reached the edge of the abyss but we have always emerged stronger,” he said to applause.

All eyes in the room were on the competition for leadership places by members of the younger generation of Fatah members, who say that the top ranks of the movement are long overdue for an overhaul.

But expectations must not be too high, Fatah veteran and Central Committee candidate Sami Musallam said.

“The chance of new faces coming into the Central Committee, I believe, are pretty slim. However I expect new faces to be well represented in the Revolutionary Council.”

Fatah is dominant in the West Bank, separated from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip by Israeli land. Together the territories would form a future Palestine in a peace deal with Israel – except that they are now governed by two hostile rivals.

Hamas stopped 300 Fatah members from leaving Gaza to attend the Bethlehem convention, creating a procedural headache.

1 million evacuated as powerful typhoon hits China

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – A powerful typhoon toppled houses, flooded villages and forced nearly 1 million people to flee to safety on China's eastern coast before weakening into a tropical storm Monday.

Named Morakot, the storm struck after triggering the worst flooding in Taiwan in 50 years, leaving dozens missing and bringing down a six-story hotel. It earlier lashed the Philippines, killing at least 22 people.

Morakot, or emerald in Thai, slammed into China's Fujian province Sunday afternoon as a typhoon carrying heavy rain and winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. At least one child died after a house collapsed in Zhejiang province.

By early Monday, the storm packed winds of 52 miles per hour (83 kilometers per hour) and churned at about 6 mph (10 kph), it said.

Hundreds of villages and towns were flooded and more than 2,000 houses collapsed, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

People stumbled with flashlights as the storm enveloped the town of Beibi in Fujian in darkness, Xinhua said. Strong winds uprooted trees or snapped them apart, while farmers used buckets to catch fish swept out of fish farms by high waves.

Village officials in Zhejiang rode bicycles to hand out drinking water and instant noodles to residents stranded by deep floods, while rescuers tried to reach eight sailors on a cargo ship blown onto a reef off Fujian, Xinhua reported.

About 1 million people were evacuated from China's eastern coastal provinces.

Morakot hit Taiwan late Friday and crossed the island Saturday causing the worst flooding in half a century.

Authorities used helicopters to drop food Monday at a mountainous village in southern Kaohsiung county, which was hit by a massive landslide. Official Yang Chiu-hsing said rescuers failed to reach the 1,300 villagers because bridges and roads were damaged by floods.

Taiwan's Disaster Relief Center said Morakot killed 12 people and another 52 were missing, including 14 people whose makeshift home was swept away. Two policemen were washed away while helping to evacuate villagers in southeastern Taitung county.

The government set up a task force to coordinate relief work in the worst-hit counties in the south, where many towns and villages remained inundated by floodwaters, officials said.

In Japan, meanwhile, Typhoon Etau slammed into the western coast Monday. Nine people were killed in raging floodwaters and landslides and nine others were missing, police said.

In the northern Philippines, the death toll from Morakot rose to 22 Monday with 18 injured and four missing, including three European tourists who were swept away.

Chavez urges military to be prepared for conflict

By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez told his military on Sunday to be prepared for a possible confrontation with Colombia, warning that Bogota's plans to increase the U.S. military presence at its bases poses a threat to Venezuela.

Chavez has issued near daily warnings that Washington could use bases in Colombia to destabilize the region since learning of negotiations to lease seven Colombian military bases to the United States.

"The threat against us is growing," Chavez said. "I call on the people and the armed forces, let's go, ready for combat!"

The former paratroop commander said Colombian soldiers were recently spotted crossing the porous 1,400-mile (2,300-kilometer) border that separates the two countries and suggested that Colombia may have been trying to provoke Venezuela's military.

"They crossed the Orinoco River in a boat and entered Venezuelan territory," Chavez said. "When our troops arrived, they'd already left."

Chavez said Venezuela's foreign ministry would file a formal complaint and warned Colombia that "Venezuela's military will respond if there's an attack against Venezuela."

Chavez said he would attend this week's summit of the Union of South American Nations in Quito, Ecuador, to urge his Latin American allies to pressure Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to reconsider plans to increase the U.S. military presence.

"We cannot ignore this threat," Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program, "Hello President."

Chavez also halted shipments of subsidized fuel to Colombia, saying Venezuela should not be sending cheap gasoline to an antagonistic neighbor.

"Let them buy it at the real price. How are we going to favor Uribe's government in this manner?" he said.

Colombian officials say Venezuela has no reason to be concerned, and that the U.S. forces would help fight drug trafficking. The proposed 10-year agreement, they claim, would not push the number of American troops and civilian military contractors beyond 1,400 — the maximum currently permitted by U.S. law.

Tensions between the neighboring South American nations also have been heightened over Colombia's disclosure that three Swedish-made anti-tank weapons found at a rebel camp last year had been purchased by Venezuela's military.

Chavez has accused Colombia of acting irresponsibly in its accusation that the anti-tank rocket launchers sold to Venezuela in 1988 were obtained by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Sweden confirmed the weapons were originally sold to Venezuela's military.

Chavez denies aiding the FARC. He claims the United States is using Colombia as part of a broader plan to portray him as a supporter of terrorist groups to provide justification for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

Chavez said Sunday that diplomatic relations with Uribe's government "remain frozen" even though he ordered Venezuela's ambassador to return to Colombia more than a week after he was recalled.