I'm Afraid To Speak To You: Hicks Letter

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, 31.01.07
By APP

Despite claims from terror suspect David Hicks, his father and his lawyers that Hicks is deteriorating by the day, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock today said the Adelaide-born man may simply not be "handling" his detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"People respond to detention in different ways," Mr Ruddock told reporters in Sydney today.

"I don't hear most people who are detained in Australia are found to be unfit to plead simply because they've been detained.

"Some people don't handle it well."

Hicks' father Terry insists his son's mental and physical condition is deteriorating as his detention at the US military prison stretches into its sixth year.

His Australian lawyer David McLeod says the terrorist suspect is showing symptoms of mental deterioration, has seen direct sunlight only three times in the past month and "shows all the signs of someone who has been kept in isolation for a very long time".

Hicks himself, in a letter to the Australian consul-general in Washington, John McAnulty, said: "I am not well, I am not OK."

Australian Democrats attorney-general spokesperson Natasha Stott Despoja believes Hicks has good reason for not handling his detention well, saying today it was an abuse of human rights that the Adelaide man was "being detained in this hellhole".

However, Mr Ruddock insisted Hicks had not been the subject of torture or coercion and that his conditions complied with those of standard US maximum security facilities.

"Advice that we have had is that he has been treated humanely and in accordance with the international standards for interrogations," he said.

The attorney-general said the sleep deprivation Hicks allegedly suffered was not torturous on its own.

"It depends upon what you do additionally," he said.

"If you use loud noise, or continuous light or subject people to pain to keep people awake ... I would say yes, it's unacceptable.

"But on its own, it doesn't of itself constitute either coercion or torture."

Mr Ruddock also questioned claims that Hicks was in isolation, saying he was now simply occupying a single occupancy cell after several moves to different accommodation within the camp.

"In the two latter facilities the accommodation was not shared accommodation," he said.
"Some people want to describe non-shared accommodation as isolation.

"He is allowed out for exercise. He's allowed out for reading and other recreational purposes. He's able to mix with other detainees."

I'm afraid to speak to you: Hicks letter
David Hicks has written a letter from his Guantanamo Bay prison cell in which he details his distrust of Australian embassy officials.

The letter comes as the US prosecutor preparing the case against Hicks said he expected the Australian to be charged by the end of the week.

Hicks wrote the letter when an Australian official arrived at Guantanamo "for an unannounced and clearly hastily arranged meeting with David Hicks", his Adelaide lawyer David McLeod said.

Mr McLeod and other members of Hicks's legal team, including US appointed military lawyer Major Michael Mori, are also at Guantanamo Bay.

Hicks has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years.

"I don't want to see you," Hicks wrote in the letter to the visiting Australian official.

"I am afraid to speak to you."

Hicks, who also wrote he is "not well", then detailed in the letter how he had been punished previously for speaking to Australian embassy officials.

The Adelaide man also alleges an American recently impersonated an Australian official.

"Only last week an American impersonated an Australian embassy official by claiming he was 'from the Australian embassy in Washington'," Hicks wrote.

"This deteriorates my trust even further.

"In the past I have been punished for speaking to you.

"I am not well, I am not OK and yet you have not done anything for me and the Australian Government keeps saying I'm fine and in an acceptable situation.

"To speak with you and tell you the truth and reality of my situation 'once again' would only risk further punishments.

"You are not here for me but on behalf of the Australian Government who are leaving me here.
"If you want to do something for me then get me out of here."

No concerns: Downer
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said 18 consular visits to Guantanamo Bay by Australian officials from Washington had raised no concerns about Hicks' treatment, and two previous allegations that Hicks had been tortured had been denied by the US.

But he said the government took such allegations seriously.

"As far as allegations of maltreatment are concerned, we'd obviously be very concerned if those allegations were true," Mr Downer told ABC radio.

"We've had the allegations (of torture) investigated on two occasions. If there's fresh information that somebody can bring forward, rather than a sort of Labor Party rant about being mean to al-Qaeda ... then we're obviously happy to investigate it.

"We're arguing for Hicks to be well treated."

Mr Downer said there was no evidence that Hicks was shackled in his cell.

"My understanding is he isn't shackled in his cell," he said.

"Consular officials have visited on a number of occasions and most recently in the last day and have visited the cell, and there isn't any evidence that he's being shackled in his cell."

He had been told the cell was "consistent with the high-security prisons that exist in the United States".

Labor said it was concerned about the interrogation techniques the US had approved for use on Guantanamo inmates and said the government had never requested that the methods not be used on Hicks.

They include hooding, stripping prisoners naked, questioning for up to 20 hours, exposure to extreme temperatures, reversal of sleep cycles and the use of prisoners' phobias, including fear of dogs, to induce stress.

Mr Downer said he would check what techniques had been approved for use on Hicks, adding that the United States had a different perspective on terrorist suspects.

"The perspective of the Americans after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre is that al-Qaeda and people associated with al-Qaeda are a very major threat to the security of their nation," he said.

"So naturally enough in those circumstances they've been pretty tough on people they believe to have been involved with al-Qaeda."

Unannounced Australian official
Mr McLeod said the unnamed Australian official arrived at Guantanamo unannounced this morning.

The lawyer said the official was given a tour of the new prison facility, Camp 6, where Hicks was now housed.

"Despite persistent unsuccessful requests for Hicks' legal team to see the facilities at Camp 6, the consul was given a guided tour this morning and taken into David's cell without Hicks knowledge or consent and while he was conferring with his legal team," Mr McLeod wrote in a statement released to the media.

"Subsequently the consul attended at the interview facility at GTMO (Guantanamo) where David was conferring with his legal team to meet with Hicks, but alerted to this, David said he did not want to see him.

"Instead he wrote a letter which David's military lawyer Major Mori provided to the consul in which he made it clear that he did not want to see him."

Despite the letter from Hicks, the Australian official was taken to see Hicks, Mr McLeod wrote.

"Notwithstanding this letter, the Australian consul was escorted by US camp lawyers to see David," he wrote.

"Currently we do not know the outcome of this forced interrogation which is clearly a cynical exercise in damage control."

Bogus claims: US prosecutor
The US prosecutor preparing the case against Hicks, Colonel Mo Davis, denied that Hicks was being held in harsh conditions and rejected claims the Australian was shackled to the floor of his cell in conditions that resembled a Nazi concentration camp.

"I just wanted to make sure that that was bogus, so I called to check on his condition and I'm told everything's fine," he told ABC Radio.

Attorney-General Ruddock has asked the US Government for a detailed assessment of Hicks's health and conditions of detention.

But he has urged caution about quick judgments on the situation.

"I've asked that an assessment be carried out and that that be dealt with as a matter of urgency," Mr Ruddock told ABC radio.

"I think informed views on this matter should await some more detailed assessment."

Labor said the Government's ready acceptance of assurances from the US was wrong.

"Those general assurances are inadequate," shadow attorney-general Kelvin Thomson said.

"It is simply not good enough for the Australian government to accept whatever assurances it is given."

A spokesperson at the Australian embassy in Washington DC could not be immediately reached.

Hicks, 31, has been in US custody since his capture near Baghlan, Afghanistan, in December 2001.

Judge Seeks 'CIA Flight' Details

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, 31.01.07

A Spanish judge has called for the declassification of all documents held by the country's secret services concerning CIA flights which have passed through Spain, legal officials have said.

The CIA's strategy of "rendition" involves flying terror suspects through European states to detention in third countries where they risk being tortured.

Ismael Moreno, a Madrid judge, presented the demand at the request of prosecutors from Spain's highest criminal court to find out if Spanish airports had been used by the CIA for the secret transport of 11 people.

The Spanish judge's investigation concerns 10 CIA-chartered flights through the Balearic islands between January 2004 and January 2005.

According to the text seen by AFP, he is seeking information concerning the suspected transport of Khaled el-Masri, Ahmed Agiza, Mohammed al-Zary, Hassam Oussama Mustafa Nasr, Bisher al-Rawi, Yamil el-Banna, Maher Arar, Muhammad Bashmila, Salah Ali Qaru, Mohammed Zammar et Binyam Mohamed al-Habashi.

European Union parliamentary inquiries into CIA flights through Spain have embarrassed the Socialist government, which denies that Spanish territory has been used for the illegal transfer of suspected terrorists.

The EU investigations called the Spanish Balearic archipelago an "important transit base" for the US intelligence agency.

Germany Issues CIA Arrest Orders

Taken from the BBC, 31.01.07

Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens.

Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent.

Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there.

He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man.

Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

Code names
Prosecutors in Munich said in a statement that the city's court had issued the warrants on suspicion of abduction and grievous bodily harm.

The information on which the warrants were based came from Mr Masri's lawyers and a journalist and officials in Spain, where the flight carrying Mr Masri is thought to have originated.

The names and nationalities concerned were not released but prosecutors said the names identified were thought to be the code names of CIA agents.

"The investigation will now focus on learning the actual names of the suspects," they said.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr Masri's lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said the arrest warrants were "a very important step in the rehabilitation of Masri".

"It shows us that we were right in putting our trust in the German authorities and the German prosecutors," he said.

German arrest warrants are not valid in the US but if the suspects were to travel to the European Union they could be arrested.

Italian case
Mr Masri says he was abducted by US agents in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, on 31 December 2003.

He is seeking to sue the US government over his detention, but in May a judge dismissed a lawsuit he filed against the CIA, citing national security considerations.

The US government is not assisting the German authorities with the case.

Meanwhile in the Italian city of Milan, court hearings to decide whether to indict 25 alleged CIA agents and several Italians accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in 2003 are under way.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, or Abu Omar, says he was abducted from the streets of Milan and then tortured in Egypt.

If the case proceeds to trial, it would be the first criminal prosecution over America's rendition policy.

The practice has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups, legal experts and the international community.

But last week a European Parliament committee approved a report saying EU states knew about secret CIA flights over Europe, the abduction of terror suspects by US agents and the existence of clandestine detention camps.

Historic Trial Puts Warlord In Dock Over child Soldiers

Taken from The Independent, UK, 30 Jan 2007
By Daniel Howden and Steve Bloomfield

A Congolese warlord accused of recruiting child soldiers is set to make history by becoming the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court.

The Hague-based court ruled yesterday there was enough evidence to put Thomas Lubanga, in the dock for recruiting children as young as 10 to fight on the frontline of a war for the control of gold, diamonds and timber in the vast Democratic Republic of Congo.

A three-judge panel found "substantial grounds to believe" Mr Lubanga was responsible "for war crimes consisting of enlisting and conscripting children".

Geraldine Mattioli from Human Rights Watch joined a chorus of rights groups heralding the prosecution: "This is a crucial test for a young institution and a trial that deals with horrific crimes," she said.

Mr Lubanga, 46, who holds a degree in psychology, is accused of forcibly recruiting young children, training them in military camps and pitching them into a ferocious ethnic war in the Ituri region in northeast Congo that cost the lives of at least 60,000 civilians. He denies the charges.

Mr Lubanga's trial brings an end to a four-year struggle to establish a permanent war crimes court to replace the ad hoc tribunals that have been used to prosecute war criminals in Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The United States fiercely opposed the creation of the ICC, fearing its soldiers and citizens would be the target of what it claimed would be politically motivated prosecutions. But despite Washington's refusal to ratify the international treaty creating the court, 104 countries have signed up and the ICC is now investigating war crimes in Congo, Rwanda and the Sudanese province of Darfur. The court has already issued warrants for members of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and is investigating alleged war crimes in Darfur.

With its credibility on the line in its first trial, the court has been accused of failing to bring additional charges of rape, torture and murder against Mr Lubanga.

"It's a big problem from our perspective," said Ms Mattioli. "We have documented a range of crimes from massacres to sexual violence... we are disappointed by the narrowness of the charges."

The court must keep going higher up the chain to identify those who instigated and profited from a war that killed as many as 400,000 people across five years of fighting.

The indictment against Mr Lubanga, who faces life imprisonment if found guilty, lays out in detail how his militia, the Union of Congolese Patriots, known by its French acronym UPC, and its armed wing, the FPLC, seized children off the streets and thrust them into camps where they were brainwashed and armed before being set on the rival ethnic groups in a campaign of rape and murder during an 18-month period of a tribal war between 1999 and 2003.

"The children in the FPLC training camps were subjected to strict military discipline," the indictment reads. "A detailed system of severe sanctions for misconduct was imposed on them, including beatings, detention and execution ...

"FPLC commanders gave the children instructions to kill all Lendu, without any instruction to differentiate between soldiers and civilians.

"Reluctant children, fearing to get killed during battle, were forced to participate in the hostilities by threats of execution. Afraid for their lives, they obeyed the orders, and repeatedly killed Lendu, both soldiers and civilians."

At the height of the war up to 30,000 children were fighting in Congo's civil war.

Weekly Round Up: Bush - The Worst President Ever, US Embraces Socialism, New Hope In N'Ireleand And British Firms Finance Mugabe Regime!

It’s been a quiet week in the world of politics, the main focus of the week has been the midweek speech by President Bush and the criticisms on trying send additional troops to their death beds in Iraq. Critics from around the world (including foreign governments) have long been saying he is sticking with a failed policy by send in more American troops it didn’t offer anything new. In Russia, Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov told the RIA-Novosti news agency that the Iraq plan could make Bush "the worst president of the USA in the past 100 years." I wonder if he cares. Another President in trouble is that of Israel. Moshe Katsav temporarily relinquished his powers as Israel's president, but defied demands from officials to quit outright and spare the nation more anguish over rape and sexual assault allegations levelled against him. Dozens of lawmakers, meanwhile, pressed ahead with a move to oust him. Veteran statesman Shimon Peres is expected to get this the prestigious post that slipped from his grasp seven years ago. Staying in Israel, the government had appointed a Arab Muslim to the cabinet for the first time in the history of the Jewish state, despite opposition from ultra-nationalists and some Arab lawmakers. Ghaleb Majadleh, 53, from the centre-left Labour party, becomes minister without portfolio in the coalition government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The bad news is that Majadleh, replaces former culture minister Ophir Pines-Paz who resigned in October in protest against racism.

Here is all the other news from around the world…

North America
Canada offers rendition victim compensation
The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, apologised and announced a C$10.5m (£4.5m) compensation package to Maher Arar, a victim of extraordinary rendition, who was sent to Syria and tortured.

Mr Harper repeated his call for the US government to remove the Ottawa engineer from any of its no-fly or terrorist watchlists and reiterated that his government would keep pressing Washington to clear Mr Arar's name.

The US government has repeatedly insisted it has reasons to leave the 37-year-old wireless technology consultant on its watchlists. The issue has grown into an unpleasant diplomatic row between the world's largest trading partners and closest allies. The new Democratic chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, earlier this month publicly scolded the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, for refusing to explain why the United States had sent a Canadian citizen to Syria.

Mr Arar, who came to Canada from Syria with his family when he was 17, is the best known case of rendition, a practice in which the US government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

US urges scientists to block out sun
The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.

It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).

The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects".

South America
Argentina may reveal Dirty War secrets
Argentina on Friday authorized officials to reveal state secrets if called to testify in human rights trials, a move intended to speed up prosecution of atrocities committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

In other developments, a federal judge probing right-wing death squads that operated during the chaotic, 20-month presidency of Isabel Peron issued a new warrant for her arrest in Spain.

President Nestor Kirchner's decree lifts the ban on former and current military, police and government officials from revealing state secrets in certain court cases.

Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as missing from the dictatorship era's state crackdown on leftist dissent. Human rights groups say the toll is closer to 30,000. Dirty War cases took on new life after Argentina's Supreme Court annulled 1980s amnesty laws two years ago. Those laws had shielded former military and police agents allegedly allied with the junta.

Former President Isabel Peron, who has lived in Spain since her 1981 exile, is awaiting an extradition request in connection with death-squad killings during her 1974-1976 rule.

Tijuana officers get their guns back
Police in this violent border city got their guns back Saturday three weeks after they were forced to turn over weapons to federal authorities because of allegations they were colluding with drug traffickers.

Tijuana Public Safety Secretary Luis Javier Algorri said soldiers returned all 2,130 guns to his department. The officers handed in their guns Jan. 4 after President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana to hunt down drug gangs.

Tijuana police initially stopped patrols after their guns were taken, saying it was too dangerous, but most later returned to work. In some cases, officers were accompanied by armed state police. Others patrolled in larger numbers than normal. One officer was seen holding a slingshot that he said was for his protection.

Drug gangs were blamed for more than 2,000 murders nationwide in 2006 and have left a particularly bloody trail in Tijuana, where more than 300 people were slain last year.

Europe
Sinn Fein votes to back police - a 1st
Sinn Fein members overwhelmingly voted Sunday to begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police, a long-unthinkable commitment that could spur the return of a Catholic-Protestant administration for the British territory.

The result — confirmed by a sea of raised hands but no formally recorded vote — meant Sinn Fein, once a hard-left party committed to a socialist revolution, has abandoned its decades-old hostility to law and order.

The vote, taken after daylong debate among 2,000 Sinn Fein stalwarts, represented a stunning triumph for Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams, the former Irish Republican Army commander who has spent 24 years edging his IRA-linked party away from terror and toward compromise.

It strongly improved the chances of reviving power-sharing, the long-elusive goal of the 1998 Good Friday peace pact, by Britain's deadline of March 26.

Some IRA veterans recalled beatings inflicted on them by detectives during interrogations. Others noted they had served long prison sentences for attacks on police, more than 300 of whom were killed during the IRA's failed 1970-1997 campaign.

Ex-spy's killers likely to slip the net
British police have told the widow of murdered Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko that their two main suspects will escape prosecution, even though they have enough evidence to charge them.

The Sunday Times reported that officers believe they have "no chance" of securing the extradition of the former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi and businessman Dimitri Kovtun.

"Marina [Litvinenko] was told that officers were very confident they knew who had done it and had cracked the case, but had no alternative but to close the file because they had no chance of extraditing their suspects," the paper quoted an unnamed source as saying.

Mr Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's Russian Government whose associates blame the Kremlin for his death, died in a London hospital on November 23. He was found to have large doses of the highly radioactive isotope Polonium-210 in his body.

On November 1, Mr Litvinenko drank tea with Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in London. He first complained of feeling unwell later that day after meeting an Italian contact in a nearby sushi bar. Police believe he was poisoned with a fatal dose of radiation in a cup of tea he drank at the hotel, according to reports on Britain's Sky News and ABC television in the US on Friday.

Government's proposed Olympic site is 'radioactive'
The Government's proposed site for the Olympic village which will house athletes at the 2012 London Games is contaminated by potentially dangerous levels of radioactive waste.

A report commissioned 14 years ago revealed that quantities of radium and uranium uncovered on land where the showpiece complex will be built are three times higher than recommended safety guidelines.

But the London Development Authority (LDA), which is preparing the land on which the venues will be built, received the document only last year.

The disclosure is a further embarrassment for Labour, which has been hit by a string of controversies since London won the bid in 2005 to host the Games.

Last year Jack Lemley, the US engineer hired to run the building scheme, quit after claiming the Government had ignored the high levels of radiation on the sites. A total of £220million has been allocated to clean up the area where the Games will be staged but experts have warned more cash will be needed.

Rift widens among nations over Kosovo
Russia is pressing for more time to examine a U.N. proposal for the future of Kosovo, Western and Russian officials said Friday, underscoring a widening rift between Moscow - a key ally of Serbia and the United States and its European allies.

Russia is a traditional ally of Serbia, which considers Kosovo the heart of its ancient homeland and insists that it remain part of Serbian territory. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority has been pushing for outright independence.

Kosovo has been under U.N. control since mid-1999 when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and is currently patrolled by a 16,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force.

International mediators have held yearlong talks between ethnic Albanian and Serbian leaders on issues such as giving self-rule to Serbs in areas where they form a majority, protecting their religious and cultural monuments and offering them constitutional guarantees so they are not overruled.

Fat people 'are given a slimmer wage packet'
Fatter people pay the price of being overweight by earning less, a Europe-wide study has found.
For every 10 per cent increase in body mass index (BMI), a man loses 3.27 per cent in earnings, and a woman 1.86 per cent.

The effect is much stronger in the countries of Southern Europe — the Olive Belt — than it is in the “beer belt” of Northern Europe, say the authors, Giorgio Brunello, of the University of Padua, and Béatrice D’Hombres, of the European Commission’s research centre in Ispra, Italy.

One explanation is that fatter people are so common in the beer belt that they are less likely to be discriminated against than are those living in the svelte world of the “olive belt”. But the issue is fraught with difficulties. The most obvious is distinguishing cause from effect: does being overweight reduce earnings, or do lower earnings cause people to be overweight? Poorer people may have an unhealthier diet, or do less exercise, for example.

Middle East
U.S. may censure Israel for misuse of cluster munitions
The U.S. State Department has completed a preliminary report on whether Israel misused American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.

State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said Saturday the report will be forwarded to Congress on Monday, but declined to disclose the findings, emphasizing that they are preliminary. The Israeli government is also taking quite seriously their responsibility in providing information, Cooper said. We are not making a final judgment.

The New York Times reported on its Internet site Saturday evening that the report will say Israel may have violated agreements with the United States by its use of American-supplied cluster munitions during last year's war in Lebanon.

A congressional investigation found Israel improperly used U.S.-made cluster bombs during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Then-President Ronald Reagan's administration then imposed a six-year ban on further sales of the weapons to Israel. Such sanctions are largely symbolic, however, since Israel also makes its own cluster munitions.

US to reopen Iraq's factories in $10m U-turn
US officials in Iraq are planning to re-open lumbering state industries set up as part of Saddam Hussein's command economy in an attempt to bring jobs to the country's most troubled areas.

Moribund government-owned plants, including ageing tractor factories, tyre manufacturers and cement companies, have been earmarked for a multi-million dollar scheme designed to lure Iraqis away from the insurgents' payroll.

The plan represents an extraordinary U-turn on the part of President George W Bush's officials in Baghdad, who in 2003 insisted on an aggressive privatisation programme which forced Iraq's 240 public enterprises to operate without subsidy, or close.

They viewed the bloated state sector, with its inflated workforce of 300,000 people, as little more than a tool of patronage used by Saddam to cement the rule of his Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party.

Now, however, with the country facing civil war, such Stalinist state enterprises are to get a second lease of life, this time courtesy of a Republican administration better known as a staunch advocate of free-market economics.

Mr Brinkley admitted that some sceptics had jokingly branded him a "Stalinist," but said: "We've looked at some of these factories more closely and found they aren't quite the rundown Soviet-era enterprises we thought they were.

Report: Iran almost ready to launch spy satellite into space
Iran has converted a 30-ton ballistic missile into a satellite launch vehicle that will soon be used to send a reconnaissance satellite into space, a move that could have wide security implications, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reported on its Web site on Thursday.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, spoke about the upcoming launch to religious students and clerics in Qom, the industry trade publication said.

The launcher is a version of the Shahab-3 missile that has a range of 800 to 1,000 miles (1,285-1,600 kilometers), the magazine said, citing unidentified U.S. agencies. A missile of its kind could reach Saudi Arabia and as far west as Turkey, the report said.

Additionally, improvements in space launches could help Iran build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of almost 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers), according to the magazine.

Iran's satellite launch will likely increase Western concern over its strategic capabilities and intentions, the magazine said.

The former head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, Uzi Rubin, said that, "ultimately, [Iran's] space program aims to orbit reconnaissance satellites like Israel's 'Ofek,' using an Iranian satellite launcher from Iranian territory."

Asia
India to set up aerospace defence command
India will set up an aerospace defence command to shield itself against possible attacks from outer space, officials said. The announcement came three days after Russia backed India's response to a Chinese satellite-destroying weapons test that demanded a "weapons free outer space."

Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Shashi Tyagi said it was in the process of establishing an aerospace defence command "to exploit outer space," the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported. Tyagi said IAF would seek civilian help for the project.

Military sources said the IAF would try and replicate the North American Aerospace Defence Command set up by the United States and Canada which detects and tracks threatening man-made objects in outer space.

The Indian command's charter will also include ensuring air sovereignty and air defence, they said. The IAF, the world's fourth largest with around 800 combat jets and some 400 support aircraft, plans to establish air superiority in Asia with the acquisition of 126 latest war jets at a cost of some seven billion dollars.

The IAF has developed air-launched cruise missile systems. It also has a key role in the deployment of India's nuclear arms arsenal. China, which fought a bitter border war with India in 1962, destroyed an orbiting satellite this month using a ballistic missile -- making it the third country after Russia and the US with such capabilities.

Psychologist evaluates 'jungle woman'
A Spanish psychologist met Tuesday with Cambodia's "jungle woman," hoping to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the woman who emerged from the forest, naked and unable to speak, after what may have been nearly two decades in the wild.

Hector Rifa, a doctor of psychology from Spain's University of Oviedo, said his priority was to ensure the woman was receiving proper treatment for whatever traumatic experience she has undergone.

But it was possible he may find clues to the woman's true identity — whether she is indeed a girl who disappeared in 1988 while tending water buffalo, as claimed by a family in northeastern Cambodia who has taken her in as their long-lost daughter.

Rifa said he plans to spend several days at the home of village policeman Sal Lou, who claims the woman is his 27-year-old daughter Rochom P'ngieng.

Rifa has been working with indigenous people in Rattanakiri province over the past four years for the Spain-based group Psychology Without Borders. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he thinks the woman's behavior shows she is having difficulty adapting to normal life, as would be expected if she had been lost in the jungle for an extended period of time.

Africa
British firms have financial links to Mugabe regime
Three British firms, including Barclays Bank, are reportedly providing millions of pounds (euros, dollars) worth of financial support to Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe.

Standard Chartered Bank and the insurance firm Old Mutual are the other firms reportedly linked to the regime, condemned by human rights organisations worldwide for its oppressiveness.

Citing an investigation by London-based newsletter Africa Confidential, the Observer said that Barclays provided a 30 million pound (46 million euro, 59 million dollar) loan to a state facility which aims to sustain land reform.

One of the most controversial of Mugabe's policies, this has seen the government seize at least 4,000 farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

In total, the three companies provide more than one billion pounds' (euros', dollars') worth of direct and indirect funding to the Mugabe regime, according to the Observer.

Rwanda to release 8,000 more suspects
Rwanda will release more than 8,000 prisoners convicted or awaiting trial in the country's 1994 genocide, many of them elderly and sick, the justice minister said.

There have been several similar prisoner releases since 2003, when President Paul Kagame ordered them as part of an effort to decongest Rwanda's crowded prisons and promote reconciliation. Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said Friday the new releases will begin in February.

Some 63,000 genocide suspects are detained in Rwanda, and justice authorities say at least 761,000 people should stand trial for their role in the 100-day slaughter, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists.

The suspects represent 9.2 percent of Rwanda's estimated 8.2 million people. A U.N. tribunal in Tanzania is trying those accused of masterminding the genocide.

Rwanda has the death penalty for crimes such as murder, but many of those convicted of genocide have been given lesser sentences because they proved they were forced to kill or did not plan the slaughter.

Rwanda's genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital, Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The slaughter ended after rebels, led by Kagame, ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the killings.

Australasia
Australian cop charged over Aborigine's death
A decision to charge an officer over an Aboriginal prisoner's death, hailed as a watershed for Australian indigenous relations, prompted police Saturday to threaten industrial action.

The attorney general of Queensland state, Kerry Shine, said charges would be laid early next week against Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley over the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island in November 2004.

Queensland's Director of Public Prosecutions, Leanne Clare, sparked widespread protest last year when she ruled there was there was not enough evidence to warrant any charges, despite a coroner finding the policeman was responsible for the death of Doomadgee -- also known as Mulrunji.

However, public outrage prompted an independent review by Sir Laurence Street, the former chief justice of New South Wales, which found enough evidence to charge Hurley with manslaughter.

The small island, with a population of about 2,000, lies 65 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of Townsville, off Australia's east coast. The Guinness Book of Records in 1999 described the island as the most violent place on Earth outside a combat zone, a claim disputed by the Queensland government.

Judge Asked To Throw Out Charges In 1964 Klan Killings

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 2007
By AP

The reputed white supremacist accused in the 1964 killings of two black men has asked a US judge to dismiss the charges, saying the statute of limitations has expired.

Assistant Federal Defender Kathy Nester filed the motion in Jackson, Mississippi on behalf of James Ford Seale, who pleaded not guilty on Thursday to two counts of kidnapping and one of conspiracy.

US Attorney Dunn Lampton said he had not seen the motion and could not comment.

Seale, 71, could be sentenced to up to life in prison if convicted in the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee.

Prosecutors said Moore and Dee were seized and beaten by white supremacist Ku Klux Klansmen, then thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

Seale's arrest on Wednesday marked the latest attempt by prosecutors in the South to close the books on crimes from the civil rights era that went unpunished. In recent years, authorities in Mississippi and Alabama won convictions in the 1963 assassination of NAACP activist Medgar Evers; the 1963 Alabama church bombing that killed four black girls; and the 1964 Mississippi killings of the three civil rights workers - the case that led to the discovery of Moore's and Dee's bodies.

The Justice Department reopened the case in 2000.

In the dismissal motion, Nester said prosecutors should have charged Seale under the law in effect at the time of the alleged offence. The statute of limitations on the federal crime of kidnapping is five years, meaning the deadline to charge Seale was 1969, she argued.

A second white man long suspected in the attack, reputed KKK member Charles Marcus Edwards, 72, has not been charged. People close to the investigation said Edwards was cooperating with authorities.

Seale and Edwards were arrested in the case in 1964. But the FBI - consumed by the search for three civil rights workers who had disappeared that summer - turned the case over to local authorities, who promptly threw out all charges.

Seale remained jailed pending a bail hearing set for Monday. His court-appointed lawyers said he is suffering from cancer. His trial is scheduled for April 2, though that is expected to be delayed.

Brazil Wants Church Leaders Extradited (Back To US)

Taken from Yahoo News, Jan 23, 2006
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil has requested the United States extradite two leaders of an evangelical church who allegedly used their followers' donations to buy mansions, a horse farm and apartments in Brazil and the U.S., the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Estevam Hernandes Filho, 52, and his wife, Sonia Haddad Moraes Hernandes, 48, were arrested by U.S. customs agents in Miami earlier this month on charges of carrying a large sum of undeclared cash.

According to Brazil's Justice Ministry, the United States has 60 days to decide whether the couple will be sent home, where they face charges of money laundering, larceny and fraud.

The two were arrested Jan. 9 after arriving in Miami with $56,467, but claimed to be carrying only $10,000, according to an affidavit.

The church has called the charges against Hernandes Filho and his wife "slander" and said there was simply a "mistake" in their customs declaration but declined to provide details.

"I can assure you that the recent events have in no way shaken the faith of our followers," Reborn in Christ spokesman Marcio Foffu said by telephone.

The couple's attorney, Luiz Flavio Borges D'Urso, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Hernandes Filho, a former Xerox marketing executive, and his wife founded the Reborn in Christ Church in 1986 and rode the wave of popularity of evangelical churches in Brazil, the world's largest Roman Catholic country.

The Reborn in Christ Church claims to have "hundreds of thousands" of faithful and some 1,200 temples, including three in the United States — Orlando and Deerfield Beach, Fla., and Boston.

----------------------------------------------------
Additional info -taken from International Herald Tribune, Report by AP, 10.01.07

# The two were charged with failing to declare U.S. currency and bulk cash smuggling, charges that each carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

# The churches have drawn millions in the country of 185 million with dynamic services that appeal to younger, working- and middle-class Brazilians. Critics say they exist to enrich their leaders, who demand big donations and offer vague promises that providence will reward the faithful with riches.

# Among the internationally known members of the church is soccer player Kaka, the midfielder who has starred for Italy's AC Milan and Brazilian national team.

# According to Brazilian media reports, the couple has accumulated a fortune that includes luxury homes, real estate and imported cars. Reborn in Christ also is said to possess newspapers, TV and radio stations, a recording company and the commercial patent on the word "gospel" in Brazil.

# Last year, some 3 million evangelical Protestants marched through Sao Paulo, South America's biggest city, singing hymns in a show of their growing influence.

# From 1991 to 2000, the number of Brazil evangelicals grew annually by 8 percent, while the number of Catholics grew by 0.3 percent. Brazil was nearly 100 percent Roman Catholic a century ago, but the percentage has dropped to 74 percent today.

Study: Little Jewish Property Returned

Taken from Yahoo News, 19.01.07
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press

JERUSALEM - Only one-fifth of the property that was stolen from Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators has ever been returned, leaving at least $115 billion in assets still missing, according to a new study obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

Many Western European governments paid restitution for only a fraction of the stolen real estate, investments, businesses and household items, while Eastern European countries under Soviet control paid almost nothing at all, according to the study.

Even the highly publicized campaigns over the past decade for more complete compensation barely made a dent in the problem, said the study, compiled by economist Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA and U.S. Treasury official.

Elan Steinberg, a former executive director of World Jewish Congress who helped spearhead the 1990s push for Holocaust restitution, said he was "shocked, but not surprised" by the study's figures and called for a rapid resolution to the problem to benefit destitute, elderly Holocaust survivors.

"This is an extraordinary finding and what makes it most tragic is that despite the efforts at restitution, we have so many Holocaust survivors at the end of their days ... who are not being taken care of," he said.

Zabludoff's study showed that before the Holocaust, Jews owned property in Europe that was worth between $10 billion and $15 billion at the time. Most of that was never repaid, translating into a missing $115 billion to $175 billion in current dollars, the study said.

An Israeli government report released two years ago estimated material damages to the Jewish people from the Holocaust at $240 billion to $330 billion. That report factored in lost income as well as unpaid wages from forced Jewish labor, which Zabludoff did not include in his study.

The new study is to appear in the April issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review, a journal published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli think tank.

It documents a 60-year history of neglect in efforts to obtain restitution, despite laws passed in many European countries during and after World War II mandating compensation, Zabludoff said.

Most of the assets eventually restored to survivors and Jewish organizations — about 15 percent of the total taken — were recovered in the years immediately following the war, he said.

A major obstacle to restitution was the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, where the majority of Jewish property had been held before the war, he said. Recovery rates were also hurt by a tremendous devaluation in the German currency after the war that left Jews with compensation for little more than 10 percent of their stolen property, the study said. Other Western European governments paid between half and two-thirds of what they owed, it said.

Efforts were further hampered by the difficulty in locating assets, since most property owners were killed and their heirs often did not know the details of their holdings, the study said.

The issue of restitution faded in the 1970s, but rose again in the 1990s, most prominently when Swiss banks were criticized by Holocaust survivors for allegedly stealing, concealing or handing the Nazis millions of dollars worth of Jewish holdings. The banks agreed in 1998 to pay $1.25 billion on dormant accounts held by Jewish Holocaust victims.

These later efforts, Zabludoff found, resulted in the return of only an additional 3 percent of the missing wealth before public attention faded.

"It became a popular issue in the mid '90s, but these issues tend to run their course after a while. Courts ruled against it. Public interest waned," he said in a telephone interview with AP.

"Because of that, it never really got the traction to make a significant contribution to returning assets."

There is little chance of a new push for restitution because Western European governments feel they already did their share, Eastern European governments feel they are too poor, Jewish groups are too splintered to mount a major campaign and the U.S. and Israeli governments are too preoccupied with other issues, the study said.

Mark Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, hoped the huge amounts cited in the study might inspire some families to pursue compensation — and lead to a more systematic accounting by governments.

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, said that the Jewish community will never be fully compensated for the stolen property.

"There will never be justice, only a small measure of justice," he said.

World Events Mark Holocaust Day

Taken from BBC, Saturday, 27 January 2007

International events are being held to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in memory of the six million Jews and other victims of the Nazi death camps.

Most of the commemorations take place on 27 January - the date on which the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Soviets in 1945.

Victims of more recent atrocities are also being remembered.

On the eve of the memorial, the UN General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution condemning Holocaust denial.

The resolution, proposed by the United States and co-sponsored by more than 100 countries, says "ignoring the historical fact of these terrible events increases the risk they will be repeated".

The resolution does not mention any particular country, but diplomats said it was aimed at Iran, which has cast doubt on the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War ll.

'Dignity of Difference'
Holocaust Memorial Day was set up by the UK Prime Minister in 2001 to create a lasting memorial to the people who perished in the concentration camps, and two years ago the UN designated 27 January as the date for international commemorations.

The events include a ceremony at the former concentration camp of Sachsenhausen in Germany.

There was also a wreath-laying ceremony on Berlin's Putlitz Bridge, where there is a plaque commemorating the deportation of the city's Jewish community during the Nazi regime.
The bridge has been targeted in the past by far-right groups.

At Saturday's ceremony, the head of the Green Party, Claudia Roth, said: "We all have a responsibility to combat anti-Semitic and far-right attitudes."

It was a view echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who urged "all courageous democrats" to fight against the far-right NPD party, which is represented in regional parliaments.

On Saturday evening, hundreds of people are expected to attend a concert at Berlin Cathedral. The proceeds will go to a group that provides counselling and support for survivors of the Holocaust living in Israel.

Events have been organised in the UK with the message "The Dignity of Difference" and with the aim of educating people about the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism and all forms of discrimination.

The victims of other atrocities of the 20th Century, including in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, are also being honoured.

Some six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust - the attempt by Nazi Germany to exterminate Europe's Jewish population during World War ll.

The Nazis also targeted other groups who were seen by them as racially inferior or degenerate, including Slavs, Roma, homosexuals and disabled people.

It is estimated that about 1.5m people were killed at Auschwitz, the biggest of the concentration camps.

Iran Offered To Cut Off Hezbollah In Overture To US In 2003: BBC

Taken from Yahoo News, 18.01.07

LONDON (AFP) - Iran offered to cut off aid and support for the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, and promised full transparency on its nuclear program in a secret letter to the United States soon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British media reported.

BBC Documentary: The problem of the Mujahadeen

According to the BBC, the letter, which it obtained, was unsigned, but the US State Department understood that it came with the approval of the highest Iranian authorities.

The Islamic republic also offered to use its influence to support stabilisation in Iraq, and in return asked for a halt in hostile American behaviour, an abolition of all sanctions, and the pursuit and repatriation of members of the Mujahedeen Khalq (People's Mujahedeen MKO).

The MKO is an exiled Iranian opposition group which fought alongside former Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein's army in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, and is currently based in Iraq.

Initially, the State Department was positive on the offer, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former US secretary of state Colin Powell chief of staff, who spoke to the BBC.

"As soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's (Dick Cheney) office, the old mantra of 'we don't talk to evil' ... reasserted itself," Wilkerson told the broadcaster.

"To our embarrassment at State ... the cable that I saw go back to the Swiss actually upbraided the Swiss for being so bold and audacious as to present such a proposal to us on behalf of the Iranians."

According to Wilkerson, the State Department was also offered a deal by the Iranians after it led the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 which involved Iran giving up senior Al-Qaeda terror network figures in return for help pursuing the MKO.

Powell and Wilkerson were unsure how high in the Iranian government the approach came from, however, and did not pursue the offer, the BBC said.

Aussie Refused Entry To Jet Over Shirt

Taken from Yahoo News, 23.01.06
By Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia - A man was removed from a Qantas flight to London because he would not take off a T-shirt with a picture of President Bush and the slogan "World's No. 1 terrorist."



Allen Jasson said Monday he was turned away last Friday at a Qantas departure gate in Melbourne.

Jasson said he wore the shirt unchallenged through official security checks, then approached a Qantas staff member at the gate to draw attention to it because he had been asked to remove it before boarding a domestic flight days earlier.

"I raised the issue, but I wanted primarily to thank Qantas for relenting when he told me: `I'm surprised you got this far, the staff should have stopped you,'" Jasson said.

Qantas Airways Ltd. said in a statement: "Whether made verbally or on a T-shirt, comments with the potential to offend other customers or threaten the security of a Qantas group aircraft will not be tolerated."

Jasson, an Australian who lives in London, said Qantas had offered to put him on another flight if he does not wear the shirt. But he has declined.

"I might forfeit the fare, but I have made up my mind that I would rather stand up for the principle of free speech," he said.

He said he was considering suing the airline, but it was not immediately clear under what law.

Israel's 'Invisible Hand' In Gaza

Taken from The BBC, 17 Jan 2007
By Alan Johnston

Although Israel withdrew from Gaza more than a year ago, its control over the lives of Palestinians there is in some ways even tighter than before, a new report by an Israeli human rights organisation says.

In the days after Israeli troops and settlers pulled out of the territory, the then Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon addressed the United Nations.

He declared "the end of Israeli control over and responsibility for the Gaza Strip".

But a study by Gisha challenges that claim. The organisation says it aims to "protect the fundamental rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories by imposing human rights law as a limitation on the behaviour of Israel's military".

"Israel continues to control Gaza through an 'invisible hand'," the organisation says, in a detailed, 100-page report.

"In contrast to the rhetoric used to describe the disengagement plan, Israel has not relinquished control over Gaza but rather removed some elements of control while tightening other significant controls."

Gisha argues that this means that Israel still has extensive legal obligations for the wellbeing of the territory's population that are not being met.

It says: "Gaza residents know that significant aspects of their lives - the ability to exit or enter Gaza, the supply of medicine, fuel and other basic goods, the possibility to transport crops to export markets, the ability to use electric lights - depend on decisions made by Israel's military."

The report begins by referring to the continued, overt military pressure on Gaza.

Until the ceasefire declared in November, Israeli air raids, artillery fire and armoured incursions led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

This was all part of the army's confrontation with militant groups - like the Islamic Jihad organisation - which are based in Gaza.

On an almost daily basis they launch crudely made missiles at towns and villages in neighbouring southern Israel - often describing their attacks as retaliation for Israeli army actions in the occupied West Bank.

Less visible controls
But the new study focuses more on the much less visible forms of continuing Israeli control over Gaza.

There is an air blockade. Israel has not allowed Gaza's international airport to re-open.

The Israeli navy continues to patrol the coastline in what it says in an effort to prevent arms smuggling. Palestinian fishing boats are sometimes fired on for straying outside Israeli-imposed zones.

The Israelis have also been able to maintain control over all Gaza's land links with the outside world - including the territory's border with Egypt.

There are no Israeli troops on the frontier any longer, but Israel's co-operation is required for the border crossing to function under an agreement struck between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the European Union.

That Israeli co-operation has frequently been withdrawn, and the border was closed for nearly half of the first year after Israel pulled out of Gaza.

Israeli control over the flow of goods in and out of the territory remains total. And frequent closures of the main cargo terminal at the Karni crossing point have had a devastating impact on the Gazan economy.

Security threats
The Israelis say the restrictions have been necessary on account of continual security threats. Two years ago there was an attack by militants at Karni that left several Israelis dead.

But Palestinians believe that the border closures are part of a deliberate effort to maintain pressure on Gaza by strangling its economy.

The report also highlights a range of administrative controls.

It points out that Israel has retained control of the Palestinian population registry. This enables it to decide who can be a resident of Gaza - and who can come and go.

The reports says that tens of thousands of people have been barred from the registry and consequently have no identity papers.

The study cites the case of Mirvat Alnahal, a lawyer of Palestinian origin and who has lived in Gaza since the mid-1990s.

"I am trapped here. I cannot leave for fear that I won't be allowed to return," she says.

"My husband's ID card says he is married, but the box for spouse's name is blank. My children were born in Gaza to a mother who, officially, does not exist."

Crippled economy
The report stresses the importance of Israel's continuing control over areas of the Palestinian tax system.

And in its effort to apply pressure on the Hamas government, Israel has withheld payment of tax revenue it owes the Palestinians worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The report points out that this has had a crippling impact on the services that the government has been able to provide - and the policy has constituted another example of Israel's ability to continue to exert significant control in Gaza.

The study ends by saying that despite the withdrawal of its soldiers, Israel's role in the territory means that it remains bound under international and humanitarian law to allow freedoms of movement and economic activity.

With continuing control comes continuing legal responsibility, the report says.

The Israeli government has completely rejected this conclusion.

Responding to the study, a foreign ministry spokesman said: "We would argue that to say legally that Israel has control of what goes on inside the Gaza Strip when there are no Israeli police, soldiers or civilians there is very far fetched.

"It doesn't hold water under international law."

Israel Seeking Builders For West Bank

If you thought that the continuous struggle by the Palestinians was their own fault you may think again….

Taken from Yahoo News, 15.01.07
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press

JERUSALEM - The government on Monday published plans to build 44 homes in Israel's largest West Bank settlement, violating a pledge to the United States as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the region on a peace-seeking mission.

The Housing Ministry published ads in Israeli newspapers asking developers to bid on the construction project in Maaleh Adumim, a community of more than 30,000 people outside Jerusalem.

Freezing settlement construction in the West Bank is a key element of the long-stalled "road map" plan for Mideast peace, which both Israel and Rice championed vigorously in public comments during her three-day visit.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was traveling with Rice, said he wasn't aware of the bid. But he added: "Our policy hasn't changed."

Palestinians, who are to gain independence under the peace plan, vehemently oppose any Jewish settlement in the West Bank, claiming all of the territory as part of their future state.

"Building 44 new houses in the Maaleh Adumim settlement is one more Israeli violation of signed agreements with the Palestinians," said Khalil Tofakji, a former Palestinian negotiator, referring to accords signed over the years in Oslo and Cairo.

Kobi Bleich, the Israeli Housing Ministry spokesman, said the timing of the bid's publication was motivated by professional considerations, and had no connection to the visit of foreign dignitaries.

While the U.S. officially remains opposed to all settlement construction, President Bush has signaled his support for allowing Israel to keep major settlement blocs, including Maaleh Adumim, under a final peace settlement. The vast majority of Israel's 250,000 settlers live in such blocs.

Under the road map, all Israeli construction was to have halted in the West Bank, including new construction to account for the natural growth of existing populations. But Israel has continued building in Maaleh Adumim and other settlements since the road map was presented in June 2003.

Despite the United States' repeated criticism of settlement construction, it has done little to halt construction.

Settlement expansion was one of the reasons the road map foundered soon after it was presented. The plan also calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups, a step they have failed to take.

What? - A Member Of Ruling Kuwait Family Condemned!

Well folks – I’m back. A lot has happened whilst I was away - most of the news media had been dominated by the controversial hanging of Saddam Hussein. Whilst Sunnis and Shias do their best to kill each other as well as kill American troops in Iraq, President Bush had agreed to send more troops to bolster the army. Hilary “I love Israel because Israel represented American Values during the war in Lebanon” Clinton has put her name for the Presidential running, Meanwhile Israel has agreed to give $100m in tax collections that it had been withholding from the Palestinian governments (question is when are they going to give the funds) and lastly friend of America - President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez told U.S. officials to "Go to hell, gringos!" and called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "missy" on his weekly radio show. His friend Bolivian President Evo Morales had a similar message at a recent rally. Poor America, I winder if Fidel Castro will outlast Hilary if she won the Presidency?

Anyway this is a great article I found on Yahoo News on 15.01.06. Usually In the Middle East you hear of Fake Sheiks high earning incomes from oil revenue, or in the past the amount of debt they occured whilst gambling in a Casino or the amount of wives they married but this is different...

By DIANA ELIAS, Associated Press Writer Mon Jan 15, 2006

KUWAIT CITY - A court has convicted a member of Kuwait's ruling family for drug trafficking and it condemned him to death, according to a ruling obtained Monday.

It is believed to be the first time that a member of a ruling family in one of the Gulf A
rab states received the death sentence for a drug offense.

The crimes of Sheik Talal Nasser Al Sabah "threatened society ... especially young people," who bought hashish and cocaine from him, Judge Humoud al-Mutawah said in his verdict Sunday.

Sheik Talal had "willingly walked the path of evil" and "deserved no mercy," al-Mutawah said.

It was not immediately clear how closely related Sheik Talal is to the head of the ruling family, which has hundreds of members.

Prominent criminal lawyer Najib al-Wugayyan hailed the verdict and sentence. "This is a magnificent indication to all that nobody is above the law," he said.

The judgment can be appealed.

The panel of three judges also found Sheik Talal guilty of laundering the money he made from trafficking, and illegal possession of two pistols and a shotgun.

The court said hashish and cocaine were found at his home, along with scales and a mixer used to prepare the drugs for sale.

In addition to the death sentence, the court fined Sheik Talal $35,000 for drug trafficking.

For illegal possession of firearms, the court sentenced him to three years in jail. And for laundering about $3 million from the trafficking, the court sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment and ordered him to pay an identical sum as a fine.

The laundering was done by investing the money in real estate in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

Sheik Talal's lawyer could not be reached for comment.

The court convicted three of Sheik Talal's associates — Faisal al-Enezi, Amirulislam Ali and Abdullah Shignab — of drug trafficking and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Two other associates — Tazhi Hamed and Fadi Habash — were sentenced to seven years in jail each for money-laundering. The court also ordered them each to pay $3 million in fines — the same amount as imposed on Sheik Talal.