Israel sees deal soon with Obama over settlements

By Adam Entous
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is negotiating a deal with Washington under which Israeli building in existing Jewish settlements could go forward in certain cases, Israeli and Western officials said on Tuesday.
In talks with U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, Netanyahu has asserted that his government does not have the legal authority to stop building in cases in which tenders for new structures have already been awarded or when homes under construction have already been purchased.
"I'm confident that we will be able to reach an agreement in the near future that will enable us to put the settlement issue aside and to move forward to what I regard as far more substantive issues in the peace process," Michael Oren, Israel's newly appointed ambassador to Washington, told Reuters.
Under pressure from Obama, Netanyahu this week publicly accepted for the first time the internationally backed goal of Palestinian statehood, but set a series of pre-conditions that were rejected by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu has refused to accept Obama's direct call for a full settlement freeze in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, defending building in existing blocs to accommodate growing Jewish settler families, known as "natural growth."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a halt to all building, including natural growth, as a condition for resuming stalled peace negotiations with Israel.
"It's not about tenders. It's not about technicalities. Any kind of settlement activity undermines the two-state solution," said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "I don't think the Americans will buy this."
"CREATIVE" PROPOSALS
Oren, in an interview in Jerusalem, said he could not provide details about what an agreement with Washington would entail. He said "creative" proposals have been presented by both the Netanyahu and Obama administrations to narrow differences, and asserted Israel's ability to halt all building was limited.
"This is a country of law, and citizens of the state of Israel have rights under that law," Oren said. "If a person has purchased a house, if a person has taken out a contract for building a house, if a corporation is involved in a construction activity, the Israeli government does not have a right under Israeli law to stop them."
"If it tries to, they will appeal to the (Israeli) supreme court and, my guess is, the supreme court will view in favor of those appellants," Oren added.
U.S. officials in the region had no immediate comment but a senior Western official said some in Washington were "sympathetic" to Netanyahu's position. A full settlement freeze could break up the prime minister's right-leaning coalition.
In an interview with Israel Radio, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman cited "understanding" among U.S. and European leaders about Israel's "basic demand to allow at least natural growth" in settlements.
But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a telephone conversation with Netanyahu, called for a "complete freeze" in line with a 2003 U.S.-backed peace "road map," his office said.
In an interview with U.S. television, Netanyahu said he would meet Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, during a visit to Europe next week to discuss settlements, and that he hoped to find "a common position." Continued...
Source: Reuters

Iraqis take control of Baghdad's Green Zone

By Daniel Wallis
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - As the armored car carrying Westerners cut to the front of the line at a checkpoint into Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, an enraged Iraqi leapt from his BMW and yelled at the occupants.
"Do that again and I'll call General Farouk. He'll take all your cards," the man shouted, before returning to his car.
He was talking about the cards issued by the U.S. military that since the 2003 invasion have placed mainly foreign security contractors and people associated with U.S. forces above Iraqi law -- and at the front of every queue.
But as U.S. soldiers pull out of towns and cities this month, they are handing control back to Iraqi security forces. The balance of power is changing and Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) cards, which once guaranteed swift passage in a separate lane past waiting Iraqis, have lost their clout.
Iraqi troops now man all the checkpoints leading into the sprawling zone of Iraqi government buildings and foreign embassies -- tense areas once staffed by U.S. troops and sometimes Peruvians employed by a private security firm.
Some Iraqi soldiers scowl as they stop Western bodyguards ferrying VIPs to meetings inside the district, once home to Saddam Hussein's palaces and monuments overlooking the River Tigris from its west bank. Two weeks ago, they would have driven straight past, holding up their MNF-I cards to a window.
JOKE ABOUT A GENERAL
Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, Iraq's interior ministry spokesman, said local security forces had made big advances in partnership with the U.S. military, which is due to leave the country by the end of 2011 under a bilateral security pact.
"Since January 1 we have started to rearrange the deployment of forces," Khalaf said. The Green Zone changes were merely "a sign of the improving performance of our security forces."
Journalists were called to a press conference on Monday with Iraq's defense and interior ministers alongside General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
Such news conferences have been routinely held at CPIC, the U.S.-run Combined Press Information Center, and that was where the U.S. military initially told reporters to go.
Later, amid considerable confusion, the venue was switched to the press center at the Iraqi Council of Ministers building.
The message, encapsulated in a joke told by Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh at the beginning of the press conference, was clear.
"I'm sorry for the delay. There are new procedures and the general had to get permission to enter the building," he said as reporters chuckled and the towering Odierno, listening to an Arabic translation through headphones, smiled slightly.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Lin Noueihed)

Source: Reuters

Campaign underway for Afghan presidential poll

By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Opponents facing an uphill battle to unseat Afghan President Hamid Karzai in August 20 elections rallied supporters and sent them out into the streets to put up posters on Tuesday, the official start of campaigning.
Karzai, widely seen as weak and vulnerable earlier this year, has consolidated his authority in recent weeks, persuading some of his leading opponents not to run, winning endorsements from others and leaving the remaining opposition divided.
A newly published opinion survey from last month by a U.S.-based group gave him a wide lead, despite growing public concern about deteriorating security and government corruption.
Forty-one candidates are standing in the second direct vote for a president in Afghan history, seen as crucial in a country which has been at war for decades and faces a spreading Taliban insurgency despite rising numbers of foreign troops.
Candidates include officials and ministers from past and present governments, a former Taliban commander sitting now in the parliament, and two women.
Their supporters began hanging colorful posters on walls and attaching them to vehicle windshields in Kabul and in some provinces on Tuesday as part of the start of the campaign.
Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster in 2001 and won the first presidential poll in 2004, was in Russia attending a summit of regional leaders.
The start of his campaign was announced by Deen Mohammad, a tribal leader from eastern Afghanistan, who resigned as governor of Kabul to oversee Karzai's re-election bid.
RIVALS RALLY
Among Karzai's main rivals, supporters of former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah gathered at a Kabul hotel and dispersed with campaign literature.
Another opponent, Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank expert and finance minister under Karzai, held a rally at his Kabul villa. He told hundreds of supporters Karzai's government was corrupt and promised to restore Afghanistan's "national pride."
The United Nations is helping organize the poll and Western donors, many with troops fighting the Taliban, are paying the $223 million bill, according to election officials.
The survey by the U.S.-based group showed 69 percent of the country had a favorable opinion of Karzai, against 25 percent unfavorable, making him by far the most popular public figure in the country.
He was the most popular choice of voters for president, with 31 percent support, it said. The poll was conducted before the field was set, and his second-place rival with 11 percent support -- a former interior minister -- has since dropped out.
Among candidates registered to stand, Abdullah was second with just 7 percent support, while Ghani had just 3 percent. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Developing world leaders show new power at summits

By Guy Faulconbridge
YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Leaders of emerging world powers discussed reducing their reliance on the United States, as well as boosting security and trade at two summits on Tuesday hosted by Russia but excluding the West.
The range of topics on the agenda and the line-up of presidents attending showed the growing economic and political power of the world's emerging nations, including India and China, and their desire to find new ways of co-operating.
Host president Dmitry Medvedev of Russia hailed the Urals Mountain city of Yekaterinburg as "the epicenter of world politics" in his remarks, adding that the need for major developing world nations to meet in new formats was "obvious."
The so-called BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China called for reform of international financial institutions, sweeping changes to the United Nations to give a bigger role to Brazil and India and a "stable and predictable" currency system, according to a draft communique.
Iran's president, re-elected in a disputed vote, fired a salvo at the United States, the leaders of India and Pakistan had their first one-to-one meeting since the Mumbai attacks and the four top emerging market economies held their first summit.
A common thread running through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, and the Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) meeting which followed it, was discussion about a new world order less dependent on the United States.
Medvedev told a news conference that existing reserve currencies, including the U.S. dollar, had not performed their function and said it was time for change.
"We are likely to witness the creation of a supranational reserve currency...which will be used for international settlements," Medvedev said. "The existing currency system is not ideal." Countries should use their national currencies more for trade, he added.
The Kremlin's top economic aide, Arkady Dvorkovich, said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should expand the basket of its Special Drawing Right (an international reserve asset) to including the Chinese yuan, the Russian rouble and gold.
The dollar fell 0.9 percent against a basket of major currencies on world markets after Medvedev's comments. The slide "underlines the likely sensitivity of the FX market to comments emerging from today's meeting," analysts at Barclays wrote.
Between them, the four BRIC nations represent around 40 percent of the world's population and 15 percent of its GDP. Russia and China lead the SCO, a security and economic co-operation forum which also includes four Central Asian states, plus Iran, Mongolia, India and Pakistan as observers.
"Such a type of coordination will allow us to better explain our positions to each other and work out a novel paths to resolving international financial problems and the reform of international financial relations," Medvedev said in his comments to BRIC leaders.
Underlining its growing economic influence abroad, Chinese President Hu Jintao offered Central Asian states $10 billion of credit support to help counter the global economic slump, though he did not mention the proposals for diluting dollar dominance.
Beijing, with its massive holdings of U.S. dollars and bonds, has been very cautious about the these ideas.
In another snub to the West, the SCO leaders welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, making his first foreign trip to attend the summit since his disputed re-election. Continued...
Source: Reuters

World "sleepwalking" into disasters: U.N. aid chief

By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA (Reuters) - The world is 'sleepwalking' toward preventable natural disasters whose effects could be cut significantly with a modest increase in spending on risk reduction, the United Nations aid chief said on Tuesday.
"The trends in disasters, particularly from climate change, are of enormous concern," said John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
"We can only expect that this kind of trend is going to continue," he told a news conference.
Holmes was speaking at the start of a four-day Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction which gathers over 1,800 participants from 169 governments and around 140 international and non-governmental organizations.
Risk reduction efforts had improved since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 250,000 people, but much more was needed, Holmes said.
"We're still to some extent sleepwalking our way into disasters for the future which we know are going to happen, and not enough is being done to mitigate the damage," he said.
Holmes hoped the Global Platform would agree to spend around $3 billion a year on disaster risk reduction, representing about 10 percent of the $8 billion spent each year on disaster relief, plus 1 percent of the $239 billion development aid budget.
By comparison, disasters in 2008 caused approximately $200 billion in damage, Holmes said. While the cost two years earlier was a quarter of that, the trend was clearly rising.
"The most damaging disasters in developing countries can seem to cause the least damage because the property being damaged is less expensive ... but the real damage done to lives and livelihoods is much greater," Holmes said.
It was important global efforts to deal with climate change include disaster risk reduction and look at adapting behavior as well as mitigating the effects of disasters, he said.
About 90 percent of disasters are climate-related, said Holmes, who noted cyclones in Brazil in 2004 and Oman in 2007 had been of an intensity never before seen in those regions.
The massive earthquake in Sichuan, China, last year, and another earthquake in Italy this year had shown both the need for tough building codes and the importance of enforcing them.
PREVENTATIVE MEASURES
Priorities for the Global Platform meeting include plans to disaster-proof schools and hospitals, build up early-warning systems, reduce human settlement in disaster-prone areas and restore and safeguard ecosystems.
Bangladesh, where many people live in a coastal area prone to flooding and cyclone-driven sea swells, has cut the death toll from disasters dramatically through early-warning systems. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Georgia angry after Russia vetoes U.N. monitors

By Matt Robinson
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia accused Russia on Tuesday of not wanting "witnesses" in Abkhazia after Moscow vetoed a resolution to extend the mandate of U.N. monitors in the breakaway region. Russia quashed a Western-proposed resolution at the U.N. Security Council late on Monday designed to buy time to negotiate a long-term plan for the 16-year-old monitoring mission in the Black Sea rebel region.
The mandate expired at 0400 GMT on Tuesday.
Russia's U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin said the draft resolution was unacceptable as it referred to a previous resolution reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity, a reference he said was "political poison" after last year's Georgia-Russia war.
"Our (U.N. Security Council) partners knew that we would not accept it because Abkhazia does not figure there as an independent state," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
"There is no doubt that the full weight of responsibility for the departure of U.N. observers and workers from the region ... rests with those Western states which for many months now have been demonstrating ideological obstinacy," it said.
Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states after crushing a Georgian assault on South Ossetia last August, and deployed thousands of troops to secure both regions.
"Russia does not need witnesses to register the results of the ethnic cleansing," Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told a news conference in Tbilisi.
"For Russia, the main target here was to somehow endanger the legal status of the occupied territories, to somehow achieve legitimization of the Sukhumi and Tskhinvali authorities, and to give some kind of legitimacy to the occupying armed forces of Russia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia."
MANDATE
Fellow U.N. Security Council member France said Russia's decision would have "weighty consequences."
"The Russian veto leaves a still fragile and unstable situation on the ground, which we call on the Security Council to keep monitoring," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Diplomats say it is unclear how long the U.N. mission has to pull out, or whether some kind of presence can yet be salvaged.
Military monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have suffered a similar fate.
Negotiations on extending their mandate in South Ossetia were halted after Russia insisted they be separated from the mission in Georgia. They have been denied access to South Ossetia since the war, and must leave Georgia by June 30.
Monday's U.N. veto leaves the European Union alone with a 225-strong mission, deployed after the war but unable to enter either South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Vashadze said he expected discussions in the near future on whether to expand the mission. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Iran rules out annulment, Tehran crowds gather

Iran ready to recount disputed vote
Play Video
By Dominic Evans and Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's top legislative body on Tuesday ruled out annulling a disputed presidential poll that has prompted the biggest street protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution but said it was prepared for a partial recount.
In what appeared to be a first concession by authorities to the protest movement, the 12-man Guardian Council said it was ready to re-tally votes in the poll in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway winner.
But the powerful Council rejected reformist calls to annul Friday's election that set off fast-moving political turmoil, riveting attention on the world's fifth biggest oil exporter which is locked in a nuclear dispute with the West.
Iranians outraged by Mirhossein Mousavi's defeat in what they viewed as a stolen election plan another rally on Tuesday, even though seven people were killed on Monday on the fringes of a huge march through the streets of Tehran.
Mousavi, however, urged his supporters not to attend the rally "to protect lives," saying it was canceled. Ahmadinejad's supporters called for a counter-rally at the same Tehran square, possibly setting the scene for more confrontation.
Further protests, especially if they are maintained on the same scale, would be a direct challenge to the authorities who have kept a tight grip on dissent since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah after months of demonstrations.
Iranian state television said on Tuesday the "main agents" in post-election unrest had been arrested with explosives and guns. It gave no further details in a breaking news headline.
The United States and its European allies have been trying to persuade Iran to halt nuclear work that could be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says it wants nuclear energy only to generate electricity.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who has sought to reach out to Iran asking its leadership to "unclench its fist," said he was deeply troubled by the post-election violence and that protesters who had taken to the streets had inspired the world.
A spokesman for the Guardian Council said only that it was "ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives."
"It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
ANNULMENT CANNOT BE CONSIDERED
"Based on the law, the demand of those candidates for the cancellation of the vote, this cannot be considered," Kadkhodai told state television.
Mousavi had asked the Guardian Council to annul the vote, but has said he was not optimistic about its verdict.
Despite the protests and upheaval, Ahmadinejad was in Russia for SCO talks on Tuesday on his first foreign trip since official results showed he secured a second term. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Israel pushes Obama to allow some settlement growth

By Adam Entous
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to negotiate a deal with Washington under which Israeli building in existing Jewish settlements can go forward in certain cases, Israeli and Western officials said Tuesday.
Under pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama, Netanyahu this week publicly accepted for the first time the internationally backed goal of Palestinian statehood, but set a series of pre-conditions that were rejected by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu has refused to accept Obama's direct call for a full settlement freeze in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, defending building in existing blocs to accommodate growing Jewish settler families, known-called "natural growth."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a halt to all building, including natural growth, as a condition for resuming stalled peace negotiations with Israel.
Western officials said Netanyahu's advisers have told their American and European counterparts that the Israeli government lacks legal authority to stop building in cases in which construction tenders have already been awarded or newly-built homes have already been purchased.
U.S. officials in the region had no immediate comment but a senior Western official said some in Washington were "sympathetic" to Netanyahu's position. A full settlement freeze could break up the prime minister's right-leaning coalition.
"I think there is understanding in the United States and in Europe concerning our basic demand to allow at least natural growth," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio during a visit to Europe.
WESTERN REJECTION
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a telephone conversation with Netanyahu Monday, made clear that Britain would accept no building, calling for a "complete freeze" in line with a 2003 U.S.-backed peace "road map," Brown's spokesman said.
Israeli officials say Netanyahu hopes his highly conditional acceptance of Palestinian statehood, made in a major policy address earlier this week, will persuade Obama to show more flexibility on the issue of settlements.
In an interview with U.S. television, Netanyahu said he would meet with Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell during a visit to Europe next week to discuss settlements, acknowledging that it remained an "issue of contention."
"And I hope that ... my government and the Obama administration can find a common position on this because we'd like to move the peace process forward," Netanyahu said.
A senior Western diplomat said Washington's focus was shifting somewhat, from the highly contentious settlement issue to ways to restart the negotiations.
One option under consideration by the Obama administration would be to expedite Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over the borders of a future Palestinian state, the diplomat said.
If a deal were to be reached on borders, construction could continue in those areas which would remain under Israeli control. Israel wants to keep major settlement blocs.
(Reporting by Adam Entous and Ori Lewis; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Source: Reuters

Georgia sees red after Russia vetoes U.N. monitors

By Matt Robinson
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia lashed out at Russia on Tuesday for vetoing a resolution to extend U.N. monitors' mandate in breakaway Abkhazia, saying Moscow did not want "witnesses" in the region. Russia quashed a Western-proposed resolution at the U.N. Security Council late on Monday designed to buy time to negotiate a long-term plan for the 16-year-old monitoring mission in the Black Sea rebel region.
The mandate expired at 12:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.
Russia's U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin said the draft resolution was unacceptable as it referred to a previous resolution reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity, a reference he said was "political poison" after last year's Georgia-Russia war.
"Our (U.N. Security Council) partners knew that we would not accept it because Abkhazia does not figure there as an independent state," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
"There is no doubt that the full weight of responsibility for the departure of U.N. observers and workers from the region ... rests with those Western states which for many months now have been demonstrating ideological obstinacy," it said.
Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states after crushing a Georgian assault on South Ossetia last August, and deployed thousands of troops to secure both regions.
"Russia does not need witnesses to register the results of the ethnic cleansing," Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told a news conference.
"For Russia, the main target here was to somehow endanger the legal status of the occupied territories, to somehow achieve legitimization of the Sukhumi and Tskhinvali authorities, and to give some kind of legitimacy to the occupying armed forces of Russia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia."
OSCE MONITORS LEAVING
Military monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have suffered a similar fate.
Negotiations on extending their mandate in South Ossetia were halted after Russia insisted they be separated from the mission in Georgia. They have been denied access to South Ossetia since the war, and must leave Georgia by June 30.
Monday's U.N. veto leaves the European Union alone with a 225-strong mission, deployed after the war but unable to enter either South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Vashadze said he expected discussions in the near future on whether to expand the mission.
U.N. mission head Johan Verbeke told Reuters that failure to extend the mission would undermine stability in Abkhazia and leave roughly 60,000 ethnic Georgians there unprotected.
Further instability would worsen tensions in Georgia, where masked police on Monday beat dozens of opposition protesters in Tbilisi. The opposition is demanding President Mikheil Saakashvili quit over the war and his record on democracy.
The country of 4.5 million sits on Russia's southern border, at the heart of a transit region for oil and gas to the West. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Iran ready for partial recount in disputed vote

Iran crisis poses dilemma for U.S.
Play Video
By Dominic Evans and Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's top legislative body on Tuesday ruled out annulling a disputed presidential poll that has prompted the biggest street protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution but said it was prepared for a partial recount.
In what appeared to be a first concession by authorities to the protest movement, the 12-man Guardian Council said it was ready to re-tally votes in the poll in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway winner.
But the powerful Council rejected reformist calls to annul Friday's election that set off fast-moving political turmoil, riveting attention on the world's fifth biggest oil exporter which is locked in a nuclear dispute with the West.
Iranians outraged by Mirhossein Mousavi's defeat in what they viewed as a stolen election plan another rally on Tuesday, even though seven people were killed on Monday on the fringes of a huge march through the streets of Tehran.
Mousavi, however, urged his supporters not to attend the rally "to protect lives," saying it was canceled. Ahmadinejad's supporters called for a counter-rally at the same Tehran square, possibly setting the scene for more confrontation.
Further protests, especially if they are maintained on the same scale, would be a direct challenge to the authorities who have kept a tight grip on dissent since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah after months of demonstrations.
Iranian state television said on Tuesday the "main agents" in post-election unrest had been arrested with explosives and guns. It gave no further details in a breaking news headline.
The United States and its European allies have been trying to persuade Iran to halt nuclear work that could be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says it wants nuclear energy only to generate electricity.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who has sought to reach out to Iran asking its leadership to "unclench its fist," said he was deeply troubled by the post-election violence and that protesters who had taken to the streets had inspired the world.
A spokesman for the Guardian Council said only that it was "ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives."
"It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
ANNULMENT CANNOT BE CONSIDERED
"Based on the law, the demand of those candidates for the cancellation of the vote, this cannot be considered," Kadkhodai told state television.
Mousavi had asked the Guardian Council to annul the vote, but has said he was not optimistic about its verdict.
Despite the protests and upheaval, Ahmadinejad was in Russia for SCO talks on Tuesday on his first foreign trip since official results showed he secured a second term. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Israelis liked PM speech, but peace still far: poll

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's keynote speech on Middle East peace this week received massive support from the Israeli public but they do not think it will further its aim, a poll showed on Tuesday.
The survey, published in the Haaretz daily, showed that 71 percent of respondents said they supported Netanyahu's agreement to endorse a Palestinian state and said it would help ease international pressure on Israel.
In his speech, Netanyahu said he would endorse the establishment of such a state but only if Israel received prior international guarantees that the new nation would have no army and only if Palestinians recognised Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinians voiced dismay on Monday over Netanyahu's terms and his failure to halt Jewish settlement expansion but he won guarded approval in Washington and Brussels for at least accepting Palestinian statehood.
It was a departure from his previous public refusal -- since taking office in March -- to back a state for Palestinians.
But despite the support, 67 percent of those polled said the words would not help the peace process with the Palestinians and 70 percent said they could not envisage the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state "in the coming years".
"The findings of the poll are clear: When Netanyahu deals with security policy without scaremongering, the public places support in him," the accompanying article said.
Netanyahu's speech came in answer to U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the Arab world earlier this in which he called on Israel to shift his position on Palestinian statehood and freeze all settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
Obama said he saw "positive movement" in Netanyahu's speech and again urged Israel to halt settlement construction.
"Both sides are going to have to move in some politically difficult ways in order to achieve what is going to be in the long-term interests of the Israelis and the Palestinians and the international community," Obama said on Monday.
About half of the respondents said the speech would help improve Israel's image abroad -- 52 percent -- although 34 percent said it would not help.
Palestinians said they were disappointed by Netanyahu's demand that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state while 20 percent of the population are Arab, and by his failure to commit to halt Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Netanyahu had "failed to meet the expectations of the international community" and did not commit to obligations outlined in a 2003 U.S.-sponsored "road map" for peace, he said.
Netanyahu told the American CBS network on Monday that Israelis could not accept a halt to natural growth in the settlements, although new settlements would not be built.
"I said ... that we would not build new settlements, that we won't expropriate additional land for the existing settlements," Netanyahu said.
(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Source: Reuters

Yemen offers reward for information on kidnappers

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen said Tuesday it was offering a reward of $25,000 for information leading to the capture of kidnappers thought to have shot foreign hostages.
Three women from a party of nine kidnapped foreigners were found dead in northern Yemen this week, in a rare killing that comes as separatist and militant tensions intensify in a country whose instability has alarmed Western countries and Saudi Arabia.
The reward of 5 million rials ($24,910) from Hassan al-Manna, governor of Saada province where the nine were seized last week, was announced on state news agency Saba.
It said the authorities were searching for the remaining hostages, but gave no more details.
Saba said Monday the three were part of a group of nine -- seven Germans, a Briton and a Korean -- that included three children and their mother, who were kidnapped last week in the mountainous Saada region bordering Saudi Arabia.
A source told Reuters Sunday that one of the German captives was a doctor at a local hospital which the other Germans were visiting. The Briton is an engineer and the South Korean was working with an aid agency.
Two of the dead women were German nurses and one was a Korean teacher, the Yemeni military said in a statement.
If the killing was carried out by tribal forces, it would mark the first time that women hostages have been victims. Two Belgian women, however, were killed in 2008 by gunmen in an ambush that authorities blamed on al Qaeda.
One analyst said the killings bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda but no claim of reponsibility has been has been made.
Yemen says it arrested last week a man described as al Qaeda's top financer in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is struggling with a revolt in the north, a secessionist movement in the south and growing al Qaeda militancy.
The unrest has raised concerns Yemen could slip into chaos and provide a base of operations for al Qaeda or pirates operating in the Indian ocean.
Yemeni authorities have blamed the Houthi tribal group, who belong to a Shi'ite Muslim sect, for kidnapping the nine foreigners, a charge the Houthis denied.
(Reporting by Mohammed Sudam; Writing by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Source: Reuters

Iraqi fishermen suffer in Iran, Kuwait border feud

By Mohammed Abbas
AL FAW PENINSULA, Iraq (Reuters) - Fins and gills flash silver in the dawn light as Iraqi fishermen offload their catch, relieved to be back from waters jealously guarded by two of Iraq's erstwhile war-time foes, Iran and Kuwait.
Iraqi fishermen say they often run into trouble with the Kuwaiti and Iranian navies that patrol maritime borders contested by Iraq and its neighbors, caught on the front line of a dispute that has previously led to war.
"The problem is the borders. They're not defined and that leaves us open to being stopped, robbed and beaten," said fisherman Khalil Abood, standing among mounds of fish spread before buyers at southern Iraq's Al Faw Peninsula docks.
Fellow fisherman Yassin Yasser agrees.
"When we go out, everyone's after us, the Kuwaitis and the Iranians," he said, while expertly treading the flimsy planks between the boats and dock.
Control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, a stretch of water between Iran and Iraq that passes Faw and opens out into the Gulf, was one of the main reasons for the costly and bitter war between the two countries that lasted through most of the 1980s.
The dispute over the boundary is still not settled, and as recently as 2007 Iran detained 15 British sailors for straying into its territory. Britain said they were in Iraqi waters.
Kuwait and Iraq have also yet to define a sea border in settlement talks since Iraq's 1990 invasion. Some at the docks say Iraqis are viewed with hostility by many Iranians and Kuwaitis still bitter over Iraq's wars against them.
"They treat us this way because of the wars. You think they're going to smile at a person who might have killed their father or brother?" said Abu Ahmed, who was waiting to buy fish.
Memories of the Iran-Iraq war are strong in Faw, which was on the front line. The unsmiling face of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's late revolutionary leader, glares across the water at Faw's docks from a billboard in the Islamic Republic.
Yet relations with Iran were not always so strained, some fishermen said, adding that tensions surfaced in the chaos that engulfed Iraq after Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. Much of the south was controlled by militias, and smuggling was rife.
TRESPASSING
"We used to be on good terms with them, but the wave hello we used to get when we went into their waters has turned into a slap," said fisherman Abdel Khaleq, adding that he had been detained in Iran three times for entering its waters.
"Iraqis started to steal their boats, that's when things changed. There was drug smuggling. They're trying to protect their territory."
Iraq's own navy is tiny, and more concerned with protecting the country's oil terminals, from which it derives most of its revenues, than policing fishing and stopping smuggling. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Iran protesters plan more rallies after one killed

Iran crisis poses dilemma for U.S.
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By Dominic Evans and Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Seven people were killed near a rally held by supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, state television said on Tuesday, as they prepared for more protests against a poll they say was rigged.
Backers of hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said they planned a demonstration on Tuesday at the same location as Mousavi supporters, raising the possibility of further clashes between the rival camps.
Ahmadinejad, who according to official results won a resounding re-election, was endorsed as "the new president" by the Russian government on Tuesday during his first foreign trip since Friday's poll.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he was deeply troubled by the post-election violence in Iran and demonstrators who had taken to the streets in three days of protests had inspired the world.
Iran's English-language Press TV said seven people were killed and several wounded at the end of Monday's rally -- a mainly peaceful gathering attended by many tens of thousands -- when "thugs" tried to attack a military post in central Tehran.
It gave no details of how the seven deaths occurred.
An Iranian photographer at the scene had said Islamic militiamen opened fire when people in the crowd attacked a post of the Basij religious militia.
The Iranian capital has already seen three days of the biggest and most violent anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and Mousavi supporters have pledged to continue their demonstrations.
Further protests, especially if they are maintained on the same scale, would be a direct challenge to authorities who have kept a tight grip on dissent since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah after months of demonstrations 30 years ago.
"Tomorrow at 5 p.m. (1230 GMT) at Vali-ye Asr Square," some of the crowd chanted at Monday's march, referring to a major road junction in the sprawling city of 12 million.
Ahmadinejad supporters plan a rally at the same square just an hour earlier, the semi-official Fars News said. It quoted an organization affiliated to the government as saying the gathering would be "in protest against the recent agitation and destruction of public property."
Press TV said Mousavi had called for calm at what it called his supporters' "illegally" planned rally.
LEADING REFORMIST ARRESTED
Leading Iranian reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice-president who backed pro-reform candidate Mehdi Karoubi in the election, was arrested early on Tuesday, his office said.
Reformist sources said another prominent reformer and Mousavi ally, Saeed Hajjarian, was arrested on Monday. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Son of North Korea's Kim visits China as heir-media

By Yoko Kubota
TOKYO (Reuters) - The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il secretly visited China last week and his hosts were told he had been appointed heir to the ruling family dynasty, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The report, citing unidentified informed sources, said Kim Jong-un met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders of the ruling Communist Party when he flew to Beijing around June 10.
Analysts have said North Korea's nuclear test on May 25 and other belligerent acts may be aimed at a domestic audience, with the elder Kim trying to bolster his position at home to secure the succession of his youngest son. The 67-year-old leader is believed to have suffered a stroke last year.
An aide to Jong-un told Chinese officials the younger Kim had been appointed heir and that he held an important post in the ruling Korean Workers' Party, the mass circulation Asahi said.
China's Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment on the report of the visit. North Korean state media has never told the country's public that leader Kim has offspring, let alone report on the journey of a son to Pyongyang's most important backer.
Jong-un is the Swiss-educated third son of Kim Jong-il and was born in 1983 or 1984. Earlier this month South Korean media, quoting informed sources, said Pyongyang had asked the country's main bodies and overseas missions to pledge loyalty to him, indicating he will take over from his father.
China is the closest thing North Korea has to an ally, and in theory Beijing wields more influence over Pyongyang than any other power, but experts say the relationship is brittle and China actually has limited room for maneuver.
Hu apparently asked North Korea not to go ahead with another nuclear test or test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Asahi reported. Jong-un was believed to have asked China for emergency energy and food aid, the newspaper said.
DILEMMA FOR CHINA
Beijing does not want its neighbor to build up a nuclear arsenal that could spark a regional arms race, but nor does it want to risk North Korea falling into chaos -- which could prompt a flood of refugees across their land border.
Traditionally reluctant to back sanctions, China agreed to a U.N. Security Council resolution last week that banned all weapons exports from the hermit state in response to the nuclear test, the country's second after one in 2006, but analysts say Beijing may take a soft approach to enforcing the resolution.
The resolution also authorized U.N. member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy shipped goods that violate the sanctions.
"The danger point is the ship inspections. North Korea might have a fierce reaction if their ships are stopped," said Jin Canrong, a North Korea expert at Beijing's Renmin University.
"China is unlikely to participate in stopping ships on the sea, but on the roads they might become more rigorous about inspection."
North Korea held a "mammoth rally" of more than 100,000 people in Pyongyang on Monday to denounce the U.N. sanctions, its official KCNA news agency said. Continued...
Source: Reuters

U.S. commander in Afghanistan reviews strategy: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan plans an immediate review of operations to ensure his troops are focused on safeguarding key population centers, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
U.S. General Stanley McChrystal said he plans to spend eight to 10 days meeting with his military commanders as well as some provincial and village leaders to make an assessment, the newspaper said.
In an interview in Kabul shortly after assuming command, McChrystal told the newspaper the review will focus on which areas U.S., NATO and Afghan troops could secure with current force levels.
"We are going to look at those parts of the country that are most important -- and those typically, in an insurgency, are the population centers," McChrystal said.
"We've got to ruthlessly prioritize, because we don't have enough forces to do everything, everywhere," he said.
McChrystal takes command midway through a massive build-up of U.S. forces which will see their numbers more than double from 32,000 at the end of 2008 to 68,000 by the end of this year. He also commands about 30,000 troops from other NATO allies.
The Post said McChrystal would likely take a hard look at the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have for several years been locked in an intense battle.
"The question in the Korengal is: How many of those fighters, if left alone, would ever come out of there to fight?" McChrystal said. "I can't answer it. But I do sense that you create a lot of opposition through operations" by the military. "So you have got to decide where you are going to operate."
The Post said the new commander also wants to revamp the way U.S. forces investigate and respond to civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths caused by foreign troops hunting insurgents have angered many Afghans and have been the main source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and the United States.
"The Afghan people, particularly the Pashtuns, have a sense of honor and equity that says if you commit a wrong that it has got to be adjudicated, and the person who commits that wrong has got to make some sort of compensation," McChrystal said. "We have to understand that process so that when we engage with the population, we don't make things worse."
(Reporting by Joanne Allen; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Source: Reuters

Berlusconi eyes concrete results for G8 summit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday, called for concrete results on financial regulation, climate change and trade at next month's G8 summit of world leaders.
Berlusconi, who will host the gathering in Italy, laid out his agenda for the Group of Eight, highlighting food security, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and boosting the world economy as key priorities.
"We want this G8 to reach concrete solutions," Berlusconi told reporters after meeting with Obama at the White House.
The Italian prime minister noted efforts by G8 economy ministers to develop a body of principles to prevent a major economic crisis similar to the current one from happening again, while adding that he and Obama believed a final agreement on those rules was unlikely at the July meeting.
"We both agreed on the fact that the G8 will certainly not be able to produce this body of rules, but this is going to be just one of the steps leading to that drafting of rules," Berlusconi said.
"There will be then the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which will work on it, but the hope is to finally reach a body of rules which can be shared by everybody."
The Italian prime minister said he hoped World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy's presence at the meeting would jumpstart the moribund Doha Round of trade talks.
"We hope that by inviting Lamy, who is the director of the WTO, to attend the G8 summit, that we can try and give another push to the Doha Round, hoping to achieve positive results," he said.
Obama, who will visit Russia before attending the G8 meeting in Italy, said he hoped nuclear non-proliferation would also be on the group's agenda.
"Prime Minister Berlusconi, who has strong relationships with the Russians, was able to offer some insight in terms of how to approach reductions in nuclear arsenals," Obama said.
"And that hopefully is going to be a topic at the G8 summit, as well."
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: Reuters

China to swap bullets for lethal injections

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's capital plans to use lethal injections in executions by the end of the year and firing squads will eventually be phased out across the country, state media on said on Tuesday, quoting law officials.
Lethal injections were "cleaner, safer and more convenient," the official China Daily quoted the director of China's Supreme People's Court, Hu Yunteng, as saying.
"As lethal injection is the most popular method for execution adopted by countries with capital punishment, China will follow suit ... it is considered more humane," Hu added, although a complete nationwide shift was a long-term goal because of costs.
In the capital, however, a new facility near a prison that houses most of the capital's death row inmates has rooms for execution, observation and storage of bodies, the Beijing News reported.
Special judicial police would be trained to deliver the prisoners and administer the injections, while medical staff would supervise the drugs and confirm the deaths, the report added.
Lethal injection was legalised in China in 1997, and was first used in southwestern Yunnan region the next year, the China Daily said. Beijing began using the method to execute some prisoners in 2000, but it is still rare.
China is probably the world's most prolific state executioner, with at least 7,000 people sentenced to death and 1,718 people executed last year, according to rights group Amnesty International.
It has drawn criticism from rights activists for the high execution rate and the range of crimes that carry the death penalty. It now applies to more than 60 offences in China, including many non-violent and economic crimes.
In January 2007, the Supreme People's Court regained the power of final approval of death penalties, devolved to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and it promised to apply the ultimate punishment more carefully.
In the United States, there was a de facto moratorium on the death penalty late in 2007 and early in 2008 as the Supreme Court considered whether lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The court ruled that it was not in April last year.
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Source: Reuters

Bomb kills two police, teacher shot in Thai south

YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - A bomb killed two policemen and a Buddhist teacher was shot dead Tuesday in the latest surge of violence in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south.
The bomb hidden in a motorcycle wounded two other officers outside a police station in Pattani, one of three southernmost provinces near the Malaysian border where roughly 3,500 people have died in five years of unrest.
Police said the device hidden under the seat was triggered by a cellphone when officers went to look at the motorcycle left in front of the building.
In neighboring Yala province, a female teacher was killed in a drive-by shooting as she travelled to work, police said.
The latest incidents occurred as Thailand's army chief, General Anupong Paochinda, was due to chair a meeting in Bangkok of army commanders from the three restive provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.
Thirty-one people have been killed and more than 50 injured in the region over the past 11 days, with police, soldiers, teachers, laborers and Buddhist monks among the victims.
The region's Buddhist minority has borne the brunt of the attacks since a June 8 shooting at a Narathiwat mosque, where unknown gunmen killed 10 Muslims at prayer and wounded 12 more.
No arrests have been made following the incident, which angry Muslim residents blamed on security forces. The military has denied involvement and says separatist militants seeking to cause sectarian rifts are the likely masterminds.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has vowed not to use military force to tackle the unrest and promised development aid to raise living standards in one of Thailand's poorest regions.
The government planned to invest heavily in tourism, fisheries and rubber and palm oil industries, Abhisit said on Sunday.
Buddhist Thailand annexed the region a century ago when it was part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate known as Patani.
(Reporting by Surapan Boonthanom; Additional reporting by Kittipong Soonprasert in BANGKOK; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Jerry Norton)

Source: Reuters

Berlusconi eyes concrete results for G8 summit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday, called for concrete results on financial regulation, climate change and trade at next month's G8 summit of world leaders.
Berlusconi, who will host the gathering in Italy, laid out his agenda for the Group of Eight, highlighting food security, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and boosting the world economy as key priorities.
"We want this G8 to reach concrete solutions," Berlusconi told reporters after meeting with Obama at the White House.
The Italian prime minister noted efforts by G8 economy ministers to develop a body of principles to prevent a major economic crisis similar to the current one from happening again, while adding that he and Obama believed a final agreement on those rules was unlikely at the July meeting.
"We both agreed on the fact that the G8 will certainly not be able to produce this body of rules, but this is going to be just one of the steps leading to that drafting of rules," Berlusconi said.
"There will be then the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which will work on it, but the hope is to finally reach a body of rules which can be shared by everybody."
The Italian prime minister said he hoped World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy's presence at the meeting would jumpstart the moribund Doha Round of trade talks.
"We hope that by inviting Lamy, who is the director of the WTO, to attend the G8 summit, that we can try and give another push to the Doha Round, hoping to achieve positive results," he said.
Obama, who will visit Russia before attending the G8 meeting in Italy, said he hoped nuclear non-proliferation would also be on the group's agenda.
"Prime Minister Berlusconi, who has strong relationships with the Russians, was able to offer some insight in terms of how to approach reductions in nuclear arsenals," Obama said.
"And that hopefully is going to be a topic at the G8 summit, as well."
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: Reuters

Russian veto deals death blow to U.N. force in Georgia

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, at odds with Western powers over Georgia, vetoed on Monday a Western plan to extend the mandate of a U.N. mission in the former Soviet republic, in a death blow to the 130-strong observer force.
A U.S.- and European-sponsored draft resolution would have extended for two weeks the mandate of the U.N. team in Georgia's breakaway zone of Abkhazia, which declared independence last year after Russia's brief war with Georgia.
"There is no point in extending it because it is based on old realities," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council in an explanation of his vote against the plan.
There were 10 votes in favor and four abstentions, one of which was China's. No country joined Russia in voting against.
The U.N. mission in Georgia was set up in 1993, after Abkhazia overthrew Tbilisi's rule, to verify compliance with a ceasefire between Georgia and Abkhaz forces. Since its mandate, which expires at midnight New York time (12 a.m. EDT Tuesday), has not been extended, the entire mission will be shut down.
The point of the two-week extension plan had been to give Russia and the Western members of the 15-nation Security Council time to try to agree on a long-term plan for the U.N. mission.
Churkin told reporters earlier that Russia rejected the draft resolution because it referred to council resolution 1808 from April 2008, which reaffirms Georgia's "territorial integrity." He described the reference as "political poison."
Any mention of resolution 1808 was unacceptable, Churkin said, because it was adopted four months prior to what he described as the "Georgian aggression" against South Ossetia, the Georgian breakaway province at the center of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war.
NOW UP TO EU MISSION?
Churkin told the council he had proposed extending the mission's mandate until July 15 to allow time for negotiations, "provided there are no offensive references in that resolution." Western council members rejected that idea.
But French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the Russians had wanted the council to take note of the existence of the "Republic of Abkhazia," which he said would be impossible for the Western powers.
"We could not and we will not compromise on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia," he said.
Western diplomats said the decision to push for a brief mandate extension came after months of negotiations between Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain on a long-term plan for the mission failed to produce an agreement.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press office issued a statement saying he regretted the inability of the Security Council to reach agreement and would instruct the mission to "take all measures required to cease (its) operations."
U.S. envoy Rosemary DiCarlo told the council Washington "deeply regrets" the Russian veto. She and other Western envoys reaffirmed their support for Georgia's territorial integrity. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Protesters plan more mass rallies in Iran

Iran crisis poses dilemma for U.S.
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By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian demonstrators called for more mass protests on Tuesday, a day after Islamic militiamen killed a man during a march by tens of thousands against a presidential election they say was rigged.
The Iranian capital has already seen three days of the biggest and most violent anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution after hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner of last Friday's vote.
"Tomorrow at 5 p.m. (8:30 a.m. EDT) at Vali-ye Asr Square," some of the crowd chanted at Monday's march, referring to a major road junction in the sprawling city of some 12 million.
Further protests, especially if they are maintained on the same scale, would be a direct challenge to authorities who have kept a tight grip on dissent since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah after months of demonstrations 30 years ago.
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he was "deeply troubled" by post-election violence in Iran.
"The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and need to be respected," he said.
The United States and its European allies have been trying to engage Iran and induce the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter to halt nuclear work that could be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says it only wants nuclear energy to generate electricity.
Obama said he would continue pursuing tough, direct dialogue with Tehran but urged that any Iranian investigation of election irregularities be conducted without bloodshed. The world was inspired by the Iranian protesters, he said.
"WE FIGHT, WE DIE"
Demonstrators filled a broad avenue in central Tehran for several km (miles) on Monday, chanting "We fight, we die, we will not accept this vote rigging," in support of Mirhossein Mousavi, the defeated moderate candidate.
Mousavi said he was "ready to pay any price" in his fight against election irregularities, his Web site quoted him as saying, indicating a determination to keep up the pressure for the election result to be annulled.
Some formed a human chain in front of a building of the Basij Islamic militia, but others broke through and the hardline volunteer paramilitaries opened fire on the crowds sending thousands fleeing in havoc.
One man was killed and many wounded, said an Iranian photographer who witnessed the shooting. Television footage showed one man, his leg covered with blood, being bundled onto the back of a taxi and driven away.
Britains' Channel 4 television showed footage of protesters surrounding the building and setting it ablaze. They hurled stones at militiamen on the rooftop, who fired into the air then into the crowd.
"Tanks and guns have no use any longer," chanted the protesters in a deliberate echo of slogans used leading up to the 1979 revolution. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Palestinian dismay, U.S. and EU cautious on Netanyahu

Netanyahu gives way on Palestine
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By Mohammed Assadi
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians voiced dismay on Monday over terms Benjamin Netanyahu set for a peace deal but the Israeli leader won guarded approval in Washington and Brussels for at least accepting Palestinian statehood.
In a speech on Sunday, Netanyahu responded to weeks of U.S. pressure by endorsing for the first time establishment of a Palestinian state, on condition Israel received international guarantees in advance that the new nation would be demilitarized.
Palestinians were disappointed by Netanyahu's demand that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state and his failure to halt Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
Salam Fayyad, prime minister in the Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Netanyahu's speech "dealt a new blow to efforts to salvage the peace process, and has undermined the possibility of resuming negotiations based on its terms of reference."
Netanyahu "failed to meet the expectations of the international community" and did not commit to obligations outlined in a 2003 U.S.-sponsored "road map" for peace, he said.
But U.S. President Barack Obama said he saw "positive movement" in Netanyahu's speech and again urged Israel to halt settlement construction.
"Both sides are going to have to move in some politically difficult ways in order to achieve what is going to be in the long-term interests of the Israelis and the Palestinians and the international community," Obama said. "On the Israeli side, that means a cessation of settlements."
The European Union described the speech as "a step in the right direction" but said it was not enough to raise EU-Israel ties to a higher level.
The Foreign Ministry of Russia, a member of the quartet of peace negotiators, noted "with satisfaction" Netanyahu's "adherence to the establishment of peace in the Middle East" and "his readiness to restart the negotiations immediately."
However, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in remarks to troops that the call to recognize Israel as a Jewish state "increases the complexity of the matter and aborts the chance for peace."
Palestinians argue that granting such recognition would effectively rule out any return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.
DIFFERENCES
Interviewed on U.S. television, Netanyahu said he hoped to narrow differences with Obama over settlements.
Obama has called for a full settlement freeze, in line with the road map, but Netanyahu wants building to continue in existing West Bank enclaves.
"President Obama and I are trying to reach a common understanding on this," Netanyahu told NBC television. "I think we'll find some common ground." Continued...
Source: Reuters

Russia hosts first BRIC summit, India-Pakistan meet

By Chris Buckley and Guy Faulconbridge
YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The world's biggest emerging market powers will seek to craft a united front on repairing the global financial system when they meet for the first formal BRIC summit on Tuesday.
Before the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China meet, a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) of Central Asian powers will also underline the growing international stature of China and Russia.
The four BRIC nations -- which account for 15 percent of the $60.7 trillion global economy -- will focus on ways to reshape the financial system after the economic crisis.
But immediate agreement on practical steps among the members of this loose and untested bloc appears most unlikely.
"These four countries are all quite influential in international economic development, and I think if in the meeting they raise some proposals and initiatives, that would be fair and reasonable," said Wu Hailong, a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official.
"Especially, some countries have proposed establishing a super-sovereign currency, and I think their impetus is ensuring the security of each country's foreign currency reserves."
Chinese and Russian officials have in recent days played down talk of a discussion on a new supranational reserve currency to reduce dependency on the U.S. dollar.
The BRIC term was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill in 2001 to describe the growing power of emerging market economies. Tuesday's summit in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg marks a step toward cohesion as a group.
INDIA, PAKISTAN
A one-on-one meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is planned on the sidelines of the SCO summit and could help break the ice between the two nuclear-armed powers.
The SCO summit is likely to produce general pledges to work together more closely for regional development and security.
Iran, while only an observer member of the SCO, has again stolen much of the attention at the SCO summit.
Doubt hangs over whether President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend the SCO summit this year, defying street demonstrations that have decried his re-election last week as rigged.
He did not arrive on Monday, when the SCO opened its two-day summit, but he may arrive on Tuesday.
As part of proposals to rebuild the financial system, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made proposals on giving a greater role to the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights that echo ideas from Chinese central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Son of North Korea's Kim visits China as heir: media

TOKYO (Reuters) - The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il secretly visited ally China around last week as a special envoy of his father and met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The report, which cites unidentified sources close to North Korea, comes days after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution banning all weapons exports from the hermit state, which raised regional tension by conducting a nuclear test in May.
Analysts have said the North's belligerence may be aimed largely at a domestic audience, with the 67-year-old leader, believed to have suffered a stroke last year, using it to bolster his position at home to better secure the succession of his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.
Jong-un, the Swiss-educated third son of Jong-il and born in 1983 or 1984, flew to Beijing around June 10 and met with Hu and other heavyweights of the Chinese Communist Party, the Asahi reported.
China is a neighbor and the biggest trade partner of North Korea and is the closest Pyongyang has to a major ally.
An aide to Jong-un told the Chinese side he had already been appointed heir to the ruling family dynasty and he holds an important post in the ruling Korean Workers' Party, the Asahi reported.
Jong-un is believed to have asked China for emergency energy and food aid, while Hu seems to have asked North Korea to stop its apparent plan to conduct a third nuclear test as well as to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Asahi reported.
North Korea has threatened to boost its nuclear program and has raised regional tensions in recent months by test-firing missiles and restarting a plant to produce arms grade plutonium. It conducted a nuclear test on May 25.
Jong-un also visited factories in Guangdong province, it said.
The succession has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in North Korea, and very little is known about Jong-un, whose youth is seen as a possible problem in a society that attaches importance to seniority.
(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Michael Watson)

Source: Reuters

Afghans housing crisis complicates revival efforts

By Emma Graham-Harrison
DEHSABZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - As night falls, Afghans at the desperate end of Kabul's housing crisis swarm up the steep hillsides that cradle the capital, taking advantage of the cover of darkness to throw up illegal mud and stone homes.
A city built for a few hundred thousand people now houses a population estimated at over four million, many crammed into tents or shanty homes, complicating efforts to revive a conflict-riven country and help returned refugees rebuild their lives.
The worries about bombs and kidnappings that plague foreigners in Kabul can seem almost irrelevant to many struggling to get by in one of the world's poorest countries.
Less than half the city's residents have running water, regular power or access to any kind of sewage system.
The sprawling, unplanned, low rise construction also means most face long commutes over gridlocked, muddy roads, using a transport network that all but collapses if there is heavy rain.
"There is a lot of need for shelter. Beside the influx of Afghans who have been living across the border, rising insecurity in the country as a whole is pushing people toward the urban areas," said Lex Kassenberg, Country Director for aid group CARE.
Many problems have their roots in overcrowding, as refugees returning after decades of civil war, or seeking an escape from poverty and violence in rural Afghanistan cram into the capital.
"When I first came here it was so hard to find a house. It took eight months," said cleaner Fereshte Shamseddin, who returned after years as a refugee in Iran and Pakistan and now spends nearly half her salary on $100 rent each month.
The city is already fraying at the seams. It could be home to as many as 8 million people by 2025, says Mahmoud Saikal, an Afghan architect and diplomat working on an ambitious solution to the capital's problems, an entirely new city.
"Kabul is now at the limits of its capacity. Water shortages, environmental degradation, traffic, all originating from high population growth, have started undermining life," he told reporters recently.
"Thousands of people are living in tents on the city outskirts, and 60 to 70 percent of built areas are illegal."
INVEST IN OLD KABUL?
Saikal hopes Dehsabz, or "green village," a sleepy cluster of villages some 20 kilometers north of the city, can be transformed into the high tech answer to these problems. He aims to unveil the masterplan for a new Kabul by the end of the summer.
It will be based in an area that is now a dusty rural plain, rattled by the roar of passing Black Hawk helicopters and littered with graveyards, bleak reminders of cycles of war that have splintered and then reunited Afghanistan over three decades.
That violence, and rising corruption, makes pouring billions into a new city seem risky at best. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Russia vetoes plan to keep U.N. team in Georgia

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, at odds with Western powers over Georgia, vetoed on Monday a Western plan to extend the mandate of a U.N. mission in the former Soviet republic, in a death blow to the 130-strong observer force.
A U.S.- and European-sponsored draft resolution would have extended for two weeks the mandate of the U.N. team in Georgia's breakaway zone of Abkhazia, which declared independence last year after Russia's brief war with Georgia.
"There is no point in extending it because it is based on old realities," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council in an explanation of his vote against the plan.
There were 10 votes in favor and four abstentions, one of which was China's. No country joined Russia in voting against.
The U.N. mission in Georgia was set up in 1993, after Abkhazia overthrew Tbilisi's rule, to verify compliance with a ceasefire between Georgia and Abkhaz forces. Since its mandate, which expires at midnight New York time (12 a.m. EDT Tuesday), has not been extended, the entire mission will be shut down.
The point of the two-week extension plan had been to give Russia and the Western members of the 15-nation Security Council time to try to agree on a long-term plan for the U.N. mission.
Churkin told reporters earlier that Russia rejected the draft resolution because it referred to council resolution 1808 from April 2008, which reaffirms Georgia's "territorial integrity." He described the reference as "political poison."
Any mention of resolution 1808 was unacceptable, Churkin said, because it was adopted four months prior to what he described as the "Georgian aggression" against South Ossetia, the Georgian breakaway province at the center of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war.
NOW UP TO EU MISSION?
Churkin told the council he had proposed extending the mission's mandate until July 15 to allow time for negotiations, "provided there are no offensive references in that resolution." Western council members rejected that idea.
But French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the Russians had wanted the council to take note of the existence of the "Republic of Abkhazia," which he said would be impossible for the Western powers.
"We could not and we will not compromise on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia," he said.
Western diplomats said the decision to push for a brief mandate extension came after months of negotiations between Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain on a long-term plan for the mission failed to produce an agreement.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press office issued a statement saying he regretted the inability of the Security Council to reach agreement and would instruct the mission to "take all measures required to cease (its) operations."
U.S. envoy Rosemary DiCarlo told the council Washington "deeply regrets" the Russian veto. She and other Western envoys reaffirmed their support for Georgia's territorial integrity. Continued...
Source: Reuters

ICC orders Congo warlord Bemba to stand trial

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court on Monday ordered former Congolese rebel warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape and pillaging.
Prosecutors have accused Bemba of leading rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo in a campaign of torture, rape and murder in the neighboring Central African Republic. Bemba, who was arrested in Belgium in May 2008, denies all the charges.
Judges at the Hague-based ICC said there was sufficient evidence to try Bemba on two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes. But they dismissed three other charges, including torture.
Prosecutors presented evidence to the court in January at a hearing to decide whether Bemba, the highest-profile suspect to date brought before the world's first permanent war crimes court, should be put on trial.
The charges focus on the period between 2002 and 2003 when Ange-Felix Patasse, president of the Central African Republic at the time, asked Bemba's Congolese Liberation Movement to put down coup attempts in his country.
The defense counsel for Bemba, who served as a vice-president to Joseph Kabila in the post-war transition after Congo's 1998-2003 war, argue their client cannot be held responsible for crimes committed by his troops because they were under the "command and control" of Patasse's government.
The court did not set a date for the trial and said the trial judges would be announced at a later date.
In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, the first issued against a sitting head of state by the court.
(Reporting by Aaron Gray-Block; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: Reuters

One Iranian dead as shots fired at Mousavi rally

Iran election protests turn deadly
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By Parisa Hafezi and Fredrik Dahl
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's hardline Islamic Basij militiamen killed at least one person on Monday and wounded more when their building was attacked by demonstrators protesting an election they say was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
An Iranian photographer at the scene witnessed the shooting, which came during a demonstration by tens of thousands in the capital Tehran in support of opposition candidate Mirhossein Mousavi who has appealed the election result.
Gunfire was also heard in three districts of wealthy northern Tehran, residents said.
Speaking before the shooting, Mousavi said he was "ready to pay any price" in his fight against election irregularities, his Web site quoted him as saying.
Members of Iran's security forces have at times fired into the air during two days of the Iranian capital's most violent unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and used batons to beat protesters who have pelted police with stones.
The Basij militia is a volunteer paramilitary force fiercely loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has the final say on all matters of state in Iran.
Earlier during the rally, a Reuters reporter said Mousavi supporters had formed a human chain outside the Basij building in order to prevent any trouble when demonstrators passed it.
Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), the crowds converged on Revolution Square, where Mousavi addressed part of the crowd through a loud hailer and held his fists clenched above his head, in a sign of victory.
Mousavi said he was not optimistic about his appeal against the result of Friday's election to the 12-man Guardian Council, six of them selected by Khamenei, six elected by parliament.
"Many of its members during the election were not impartial and supported the government candidate," Mousavi said, referring to Ahmadinejad. "I'm urging government forces to stop violence against people," Mousavi said.
The protest took place in defiance of an Interior Ministry ban and was a reply to Ahmadinejad's state-organized victory rally, which also drew vast crowds to Azadi Square on Sunday.
Residents said there had also been peaceful pro-Mousavi demonstrations in the cities of Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zahedan, and Tabriz on Monday.
"MILES OF PROTESTORS"
Supporters stretching along several kilometers (miles) of a Tehran boulevard waved green flags, Mousavi's campaign colors, and held portraits of him aloft as they tried to take pictures on their cellphones -- even though his words could not be heard above the noise of the crowd.
Mousavi, smiling and looking relaxed, had said he was ready in case the election was re-run, state television said. Continued...
Source: Reuters

North Korea's May nuclear test few kilotons: U.S.

Asia replies to N.Korea threat
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has determined that the nuclear test conducted by North Korea last month yielded an explosion of a few kilotons, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said on Monday.
"The U.S. intelligence community assesses that North Korea probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of Punggye on May 25, 2009," the office said in a statement. "The explosion yield was approximately a few kilotons."
North Korea's first nuclear test, in 2006, was about one kiloton.
Shortly after this year's blast, Russia said it estimated the explosion at about 20 kilotons, or about equal to the U.S. atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan in World War Two.
The Vienna-based Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization then assessed the strength of the test to be much smaller, saying it was just slightly larger than the 2006 test.
U.S. intelligence officials are still analyzing the nuclear explosion, the statement said.
North Korea has raised tensions in the past month by test-firing missiles, restarting a plant to produce arms grade plutonium and holding the May nuclear test, which put it closer to having a working nuclear bomb.
Its latest announcement on Saturday to restart a uranium enrichment program and weaponize its plutonium came in response to new U.N. sanctions agreed on Friday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said North Korea's "continuing provocative actions are deeply regrettable."
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday North Korea should abandon all its nuclear programs in a "complete, verifiable and irreversible manner."
(Reporting by Deborah Charles and Tabassum Zakaria, Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: Reuters

Russia threatens to veto West's U.N. Georgia plan

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, at odds with Western powers over Georgia, vetoed on Monday a Western plan to extend the mandate of a U.N. mission in the former Soviet republic, in a death blow to the 130-strong observer force.
The council voted on a U.S.- and European-sponsored draft resolution that would have extended for two weeks the mandate of a U.N. mission to the Georgian breakaway zone Abkhazia, which declared independence last year after Russia's brief war with Georgia.
"There is no point in extending it because it is based on old realities," Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council in an explanation of his vote against the plan.
There were 10 votes in favor and four abstentions, one of which was China. No country joined Russia in voting against.
The U.N. mission in Georgia was set up in 1993 after Abkhazia overthrew Tbilisi's rule to verify compliance of a ceasefire between Georgia and Abkhaz forces. Since its mandate, which expires at midnight New York time, has not been extended, the entire mission will be shut down.
The point of the two-week extension plan had been to give Russia and the Western members of the 15-nation council time to try to agree on a long-term plan for the U.N. mission.
Churkin told reporters earlier that Russia rejected the draft resolution because it referred to council resolution 1808 from April 2008, which reaffirms Georgia's "territorial integrity." He described the reference as "political poison."
Any mention of resolution 1808 was unacceptable, Churkin said, because it was adopted four months prior to what he described as the "Georgian aggression" against South Ossetia, the Georgian breakaway province at the center of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war.
NOW UP TO EU MISSION?
Churkin told the council he had proposed extending the mission's mandate until July 15 to allow time for negotiations, "provided there are no offensive references in that resolution." But Western Council members rejected that idea.
Western diplomats said the decision to push for a brief mandate extension came after months of negotiations between Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain on a long-term plan for the mission failed to produce an agreement.
U.S. envoy Rosemary DiCarlo told the council Washington "deeply regrets" the Russian veto. She and British Deputy U.N. Ambassador Philip Parham reaffirmed their support for Georgia's territorial integrity.
Parham told reporters before the vote that if the mission was shut down, the European Union would have to think about ways to beef up its monitoring mission in Georgia.
"We the UK will certainly want to look with EU partners at the role of that mission going forward in the light of the end of U.N. mission ... and how the EU mission would be able to help to ensure that there isn't a return to conflict," he said.
The last time a resolution was vetoed was when Russia and China joined forces to strike down a U.S.-British attempt to impose sanctions on members of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's inner circle of leaders. Continued...
Source: Reuters