History > 2011 > USA > International (XII)

 Jillian Tamaki

The Long Overdue Palestinian State

NYT

16.5.2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17abbas.html

The Long Overdue Palestinian State

May 16, 2011
Reuters
By MAHMOUD ABBAS

Ramallah, West Bank

SIXTY-THREE years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to leave his home in the Galilean city of Safed and flee with his family to Syria. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. Though he and his family wished for decades to return to their home and homeland, they were denied that most basic of human rights. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine.

This month, however, as we commemorate another year of our expulsion — which we call the nakba, or catastrophe — the Palestinian people have cause for hope: this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and that our state be admitted as a full member of the United Nations.

Many are questioning what value there is to such recognition while the Israeli occupation continues. Others have accused us of imperiling the peace process. We believe, however, that there is tremendous value for all Palestinians — those living in the homeland, in exile and under occupation.

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.

Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.

Our quest for recognition as a state should not be seen as a stunt; too many of our men and women have been lost for us to engage in such political theater. We go to the United Nations now to secure the right to live free in the remaining 22 percent of our historic homeland because we have been negotiating with the State of Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state of our own. We cannot wait indefinitely while Israel continues to send more settlers to the occupied West Bank and denies Palestinians access to most of our land and holy places, particularly in Jerusalem. Neither political pressure nor promises of rewards by the United States have stopped Israel’s settlement program.

Negotiations remain our first option, but due to their failure we are now compelled to turn to the international community to assist us in preserving the opportunity for a peaceful and just end to the conflict. Palestinian national unity is a key step in this regard. Contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asserts, and can be expected to repeat this week during his visit to Washington, the choice is not between Palestinian unity or peace with Israel; it is between a two-state solution or settlement-colonies.

Despite Israel’s attempt to deny us our long-awaited membership in the community of nations, we have met all prerequisites to statehood listed in the Montevideo Convention, the 1933 treaty that sets out the rights and duties of states. The permanent population of our land is the Palestinian people, whose right to self-determination has been repeatedly recognized by the United Nations, and by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Our territory is recognized as the lands framed by the 1967 border, though it is occupied by Israel.

We have the capacity to enter into relations with other states and have embassies and missions in more than 100 countries. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have indicated that our institutions are developed to the level where we are now prepared for statehood. Only the occupation of our land hinders us from reaching our full national potential; it does not impede United Nations recognition.

The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter. Once admitted to the United Nations, our state stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel. A key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.

Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another, however, and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us.

We call on all friendly, peace-loving nations to join us in realizing our national aspirations by recognizing the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and by supporting its admission to the United Nations. Only if the international community keeps the promise it made to us six decades ago, and ensures that a just resolution for Palestinian refugees is put into effect, can there be a future of hope and dignity for our people.

 

Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization
and the president of the Palestinian National Authority

    The Long Overdue Palestinian State, NYT, 16.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17abbas.html

U.S. accuses Syria of inciting Israel border clashes

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Mon May 16, 2011
3:14pm EDT
Reuters

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House accused the Syrian government on Monday of inciting deadly border clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators, saying Damascus was trying to distract attention from its own violent crackdown on protests.

White House spokesman Jay Carney expressed regret for the loss of life in confrontations on Israel's frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday but said the Jewish state "has the right to prevent unauthorized crossing at its borders."

"We urge maximum restraint on all sides," Carney told reporters on Air Force One as President Barack Obama flew to Tennessee.

Israeli troops opened fire at three separate border locations to prevent crowds of demonstrators from crossing, killing at least 13 people.

Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinians infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a front line that has been largely tranquil for decades.

The White House put the onus on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the violence that broke out on the Israeli-Syrian border.

Carney said the administration was "strongly opposed to the Syrian government's involvement in inciting yesterday's protests in the Golan Heights."

"Such behavior is unacceptable and does not serve as a distraction from the Syrian government's ongoing repression of demonstrators in its own country," he said.

"It seems apparent to us that this is an effort to distract attention from the legitimate expressions of protest by the Syrian people, and from the harsh crackdown that the Syrian government has perpetrated against its own people," he added.

The Obama administration has tightened sanctions on senior Syrian officials to try to pressure Damascus to halt its crackdown on pro-democracy protests, but international human rights groups have criticized Washington for not taking stronger action.

 

(Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Eric Beech)

    U.S. accuses Syria of inciting Israel border clashes, R, 16.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/16/us-palestinians-israel-idUSLDE74E0DM20110516

Syrian Border Violence May Hold Message for Israel

May 15, 2011
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

BEIRUT, Lebanon — For 37 years the border between Israel and Syria, still technically at war, has proven as quiet as any of the Arab-Israeli frontiers silenced by peace agreements. On Sunday, it was not, and the tumult on the Golan Heights could augur a new phase of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and the web of international relations he is navigating.

Predictably, Israel and Syria blamed each other for the bloodshed — Israeli soldiers killed four people as hundreds stormed the border. But the message was far more important, since the Syrian government, which controls access to the border, allowed crowds to venture to a place it had all but declared off limits until now. For the first time in his 11-year reign, Mr. Assad demonstrated to Israel, the region and world that in an uprising that has posed the greatest threat to his family’s four decades of rule, he could provoke war to stay in power.

Few questioned the sincerity of the Palestinian refugees who flocked to the border; the day that marks Israel’s creation remains a searing date in the Palestinian psyche, and they cited the upheavals of the Arab Spring as inspiration. But as is often the case in modern Arab politics, they may have found themselves in a more cynical conflict that involves power, survival and deterrence and in which, to varying degrees, Iran, Israel, Turkey and the United States have a stake in the survival of a government that is bereft of legitimacy except as a force for a notion of stability.

“It’s a message by the Syrian government for Israel and the international community: If you continue the pressure on us, we will ignite the front with Israel,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian dissident and visiting scholar at George Washington University.

The message carried profound risks in a combustible region. Israel is perceived as preferring Mr. Assad’s government to an alternative that could empower Islamists, though Israeli officials stringently deny that. Poorly equipped and neglected, Syria remains utterly incapable of waging war, with its military deployed across the country in a ferocious crackdown on the two-month uprising. And even in Syria, some suspected that the Palestinians were being manipulated, though some warned that an even more aggressive Israeli response could quickly change that.

“Oh, Maher, you coward, send your army to the Golan,” protesters chanted just last week at Mr. Assad’s brother, who leads the elite Republican Guard and the Fourth Division, which has taken the lead in military operations against restive cities.

“The idea of war against Israel hasn’t even been part of Syria’s mindset for a long time,” said Louay Hussein, a prominent dissident who met with an adviser to Mr. Assad last week in what the government has called the beginning of a dialogue. “The Syrian government doesn’t have a strategy. Its political performance is based on improvisation.”

Unlike the Lebanese border, still a tense region where Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating and inconclusive war in 2006, Syria’s border on the Golan Heights has remained remarkably quiet since a truce in 1974 that followed war a year earlier. Seized by Israel in the 1967 war, it remains at the heart of the two countries’ enmity, though Syria has long indicated it holds out little chance to recover it except through negotiations.

To many in the Arab word, the frontier’s longstanding quiet has even become a source of jokes, especially as Syria chose to pressure Israel through proxies beyond its borders, particularly with Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Arabic, Assad means lion, thus the taunt of Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez: “A lion in Lebanon, but a rabbit in the Golan.”

The uprising, though, has already recast regional relations, placing Syria squarely on the defensive. Though government officials claim the upper hand, the military is deployed from the southern steppe to the Mediterranean coast. Seven people were reported killed on Sunday in Talkalakh, near the Lebanese border, the latest target of the military’s attempt to quell dissent. Relations with Turkey have soured, and the United States and Europe have imposed sanctions.

In Lebanon, Syria’s ally Hezbollah is said to be anxious, and its television station, al-Manar, conspicuously omits almost any mention of the uprising in Syria. In a frank interview last week in Damascus, Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s most powerful businessman and a confidant and childhood friend of Mr. Assad, warned the international community against imposing pressure on the Syrian government. Syria’s instability, Mr. Makhlouf said, would mean instability for Israel, too.

“To have stability in Syria is the most important thing for the stability of the neighbors,” he said in the interview. “Which neighbors? Israel.”

The frontier along the Golan Heights, a strategic rocky plateau, is the most sensitive in Syria, and checkpoints proliferate. Even for Syrians, permission is required to enter some parts of it. In an authoritarian state, the government also keeps relentless surveillance over the 10 official Palestinian camps and three unofficial ones.

Mr. Ziadeh, citing informants in Damascus, said at least four buses were seen Saturday leaving two camps where factions most loyal to Syria exert control.

“For 40 years, the Syrians have very effectively prevented infiltration, which shows that the Syrians have their hand on the faucet,” said Yoni Ben-Menachem, an Israeli analyst. “This also demonstrates the unwillingness of both Israel and the U.S. to see the removal of Bashar Assad” — as long as he keeps the border with Israel quiet.

Relatively poor, with a population that pales before countries like Egypt, Syria has long played an assertive role in the region by making itself a linchpin. Though avowedly secular, it has deep ties with Islamist movements like Hamas in the Palestinian territories. The same goes for the Islamic republic in Iran, its closest ally.

The ambiguity of its foreign policy has prompted American officials to hold out hope that Syria could be lured away from its alliance with Iran and its allies. Mr. Assad’s geniality — he is famous for agreeing but not delivering — helped lead Turkey to deepen its relationship with a country it saw as a hub for its vision of regional integration.

Both the United States and Turkey have denounced the crackdown, but stopped short of calling for Mr. Assad’s departure, a step with far-reaching implications for the leadership’s survival. That was in part motivated by fear of what might follow Mr. Assad’s fall, analysts say, an anxiety that the government has relentlessly sought to cultivate since the uprising began. The violence on Sunday, analysts say, might have been stage-managed foreshadowing.

“It’s going to be messy,” an Obama administration official said of the government’s determination to survive. “He’s going to hang on for dear life.”

    Syrian Border Violence May Hold Message for Israel, NYT, 15.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/world/middleeast/16golan.html

Israeli Troops Fire as Marchers Breach Borders

May 15, 2011
Tjhe New York Times
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Israel’s borders erupted in deadly clashes on Sunday as thousands of Palestinians — marching from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank — confronted Israeli troops to mark the anniversary of Israel’s creation. More than a dozen people were reported killed and scores injured.

With an unprecedented wave of coordinated protests, the popular uprisings that have swept the region touched Israel directly for the first time. Like those other protests, plans for this one spread over social media, including Facebook, but there were also signs of official support in Lebanon and Syria, where analysts said leaders were using the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from internal problems.

At the Lebanese border, Israeli troops shot at hundreds of Palestinians trying to force their way across. The Lebanese military said 10 protesters were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Israel said it was investigating the casualties.

In the Golan Heights, about 100 Palestinians living in Syria breached a border fence and crowded into the village of Majdal Shams, waving Palestinian flags. Troops fired on the crowd, killing four people. The border unrest could represent a new phase in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

In the West Bank, about 1,000 protesters carrying Palestinian flags and throwing stones and occasional firecrackers and gasoline bombs fought with Israeli riot troops near the military checkpoint between Ramallah and Israel. Scores were injured, local medical officials said.

In Gaza, when marchers crossed a security zone near the border, Israeli troops fired into the crowd, wounding dozens.

In Jordan and Egypt, government security forces thwarted protesters headed to the border.

Every year in mid-May, many Palestinians observe what they call “the nakba,” or catastrophe, the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 and the war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes through expulsion and flight. But this was the first year that Palestinian refugees and their supporters in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, inspired by the recent protests around the Arab world, tried to breach Israel’s military border from all sides.

“The Palestinians are not less rebellious than other Arab peoples,” said Ali Baraka, a Hamas representative in Lebanon.

At day’s end, as a tense calm returned to the country’s borders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the protests had been aimed at destroying Israel, not creating a Palestinian state alongside it.

“The leaders of these violent demonstrations, their struggle is not over the 1967 borders but over the very existence of Israel, which they describe as a catastrophe that must be resolved,” he said. “It is important that we look with open eyes at the reality and be aware of whom we are dealing with and what we are dealing with.”

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, saluted the protesters in a televised speech, referring to the dead as martyrs. “The blood of the nakba fatalities was not spilled in vain,” he said. “They died for the Palestinian people’s rights and freedom.”

Officials and analysts have argued that with peace talks broken down and plans to request the United Nations to declare Palestinian statehood in September, violence could return to define this conflict, relatively quiet for the past two years.

“This is war,” said Amjad Abu Taha, a 16-year-old from Bethlehem who joined the protesters in Ramallah, a rock in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “We’re defending our country.”

Nearby, hundreds of Israeli troops roamed the area, using stun guns and tear gas.

In Gaza, the Hamas police stopped buses carrying protesters near the main crossing into Israel, but dozens of demonstrators continued on foot, arriving at a point closer to the Israeli border than they had reached in years and drawing Israeli fire.

Later, in a separate episode, an 18-year-old Gazan near another part of the border fence was shot and killed by Israeli troops when, the Israeli military says, he was trying to plant an explosive.

At the Syrian border, an Israeli military spokesman said, troops fired only at infiltrators trying to damage the security barrier and equipment there. Some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks.

The chief Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said on Israel Radio that he saw Iran’s fingerprints in the coordinated confrontations, although he offered no evidence. Syria has a close alliance with Iran, as does Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, and Hamas, which rules in Gaza.

Yoni Ben-Menachem, Israel Radio’s chief Arab affairs analyst, said it seemed likely that President Assad of Syria was seeking to divert attention from his crackdown on the popular uprisings there by allowing confrontations in the Golan Heights for the first time in decades.

“This way Syria makes its contribution to the Nakba Day cause, and Assad wins points by deflecting the media’s attention from what is happening inside Syria,” he added.

There were also signs of grass-roots support for the protests.

Palestinian activists have called on the Internet for a mass uprising against Israel to begin on May 15. A Facebook page calling for a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising, had gathered more than 300,000 members before it was taken down in March after complaints that comments posted to it advocated violence.

In Egypt, political organizers worked for weeks to rally Egyptians around the idea of a third intifada.

In Lebanon, activists had urged Palestinians to protest at the border town of Maroun al-Ras. Posters went up on Lebanese highways reading, “People want to return to Palestine,” playing on the slogan made famous in Egypt and Tunisia, “People want the fall of the regime.”

Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. Israelis celebrate the anniversary according to the Hebrew calendar, which this year was last Tuesday.

The day’s troubles began when an Israeli Arab truck driver rammed his truck into cars, a bus and pedestrians in Tel Aviv, killing one man and injuring more than a dozen in what the police described as a terrorist attack.

Later, hundreds of Lebanese joined by Palestinians from more than nine refugee camps in Lebanon headed toward Maroun al-Ras, scene of some of the worst fighting in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Though the Lebanese Army tried to block them from arriving at the border fence, some reached it. They placed Palestinian flags at the fence, and after Israeli troops fired on them, some threw rocks at the soldiers, witnesses said.

In Egypt, too, the government tried to prevent an international confrontation, sending troops to the border in anticipation of a planned march there from Cairo.

About 250 people were stopped at El Arish, in the northern Sinai, where they were demonstrating for Egypt to open the border with Gaza, expel the Israeli ambassador and stop selling natural gas to Israel. About 30 activists made it around military checkpoints to stage a small demonstration at the border crossing.

Several thousand Egyptians protested in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, waving Palestinian flags, clapping and chanting “Down with Israel.” After midnight some protesters tried to storm the embassy and were repelled by Egyptian Army guards, witnesses reported.

In Jordan, 800 Palestinians were bused to the border, but security officials and local residents prevented them from going further. During the clashes that resulted, 14 demonstrators and three police officers were hurt, one critically, according to Jordan’s public security office.

The fact that protesters made it to the border in Lebanon and Syria raised questions about whether those governments had endorsed the actions.

Protesters in Lebanon said they received permission from the army to enter the border area near Maroun al-Ras, classified as a militarily sensitive region.

Hezbollah was believed to have helped coordinate the march. A field hospital affiliated with the group, the Martyr Salah Ghandour Hospital, which operates in Bint Jbeil, a large town in southern Lebanon, was at the scene.

In Syria, dozens of checkpoints safeguard the border area, which has been relatively peaceful since a truce in 1974. The arrival of hundreds, if not thousands, would require government permission, or at least official acquiescence.

A Syrian dissident, citing accounts from Damascus residents, said pro-government Palestinian groups began busing people to the border on Saturday night.

 

Reporting was contributed by Nada Bakri and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Fares Akram from Gaza, Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan, and David D. Kirkpatrick and Liam Stack from Cairo.

    Israeli Troops Fire as Marchers Breach Borders, R, 15.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html

Israel-Palestinian violence erupts on three borders

JERUSALEM | Sun May 15, 2011
10:48pm EDT
Reuters
By Douglas Hamilton

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot Palestinian protesters who surged toward its frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 13 people on the day Palestinians mourn the establishment of Israel in 1948.

In the deadliest such confrontation in years of anniversary clashes usually confined to the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire in three separate border locations to prevent crowds of demonstrators from crossing frontier lines.

The new challenge to Israel came from the borders of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza -- all home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in 1948.

Combined with a public relations disaster last year over the killing of pro-Palestinian activists in a Gaza aid flotilla and a determined Palestinian diplomatic drive to win U.N. recognition of statehood in September this year, the bloody border protests raised the stakes further for Israel.

Israel's leaders condemned the incidents as provocations inspired by Iran, to exploit Palestinian nationalist feeling fueled by the popular revolts of the "Arab Spring," and to draw attention from major internal unrest in Syria, Iran's ally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.

"We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled: we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty," Netanyahu said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement holds sway in the Israeli occupied West Bank and is ready to negotiate peace with Israel, said in a televised address that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.

"Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilled for the sake of our nation's freedom," Abbas said.

 

HAMAS PRAISES CLASHES

But Islamist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and which last month sealed a surprise reconciliation pact with its bitter rival Fatah, issued a warning that Palestinians would accept nothing less than return to all lands lost in 1948.

Spokesman Taher Al-Nono praised the "crowds we have seen in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon" as evidence of "imminent victory and return to the original homes as promised by God."

In an apparent contradiction of suggestions that Hamas might ditch its rejection of Israel's right to exist, he said there was no alternative to recovering all land lost in 1948.

Israeli security forces had been on alert for violence on Sunday, the day Palestinians mourn the "Nakba," or catastrophe, of Israel's founding in a 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of their brethren fled or were forced to leave their homes.

A call had gone out on Facebook urging Palestinians to demonstrate on Israel's borders.

Lebanon's army said 10 Palestinians died as Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish State from Lebanese territory.

They said 112 people had been wounded in the shooting incident in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.

"The protesters overcame the Lebanese army and marched toward the security fence and started throwing stones," Reuters cameraman Ezzat Baltaji said, from Maroun al-Ras village.

Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinians infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a front line that has been largely tranquil for decades.

Syria condemned Israel's "criminal activities."

"This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home," said a senior Israeli government official, who declined to be named.

"Syria is a police state. People don't randomly approach the border without the approval of the regime."

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters flooded the lush green valley that marks the border area, waving Palestinian flags. Israeli troops attempted to mend the breached fence, firing at what the army described as infiltrators.

"We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," said the army's chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai.

Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees and its leadership, now facing fierce internal unrest, had in previous years prevented protesters from reaching the frontier area.

To the southeast, on Jordan's desert border with Israel, Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists gathered at a border village.

Israeli forces did not fire over the Jordanian border.

On Israel's tense border with Gaza, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators nearing the fence, medics said. Israeli forces said they shot a man trying to plant a bomb near the border.

In Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.

Police were trying to determine whether that incident was an accident or an attack. Witnesses said the driver, who was arrested, deliberately ran amok with his truck in traffic.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian youths and Israeli forces clashed for hours at the main checkpoint dividing the Ramallah from Jerusalem, a constant flashpoint.

Palestinians threw rocks and soldiers fired rubber bullets and teargas to drive them away from the Qalandia checkpoint.

In Egypt, police fired teargas to force back several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had broken through a barricade in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, witnesses said.

 

ALERT

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the border challenge was foreseen, but not easy for Israel to handle.

"For months we have been discussing the possibility of the organization of mass processions. I don't think there is a magic solution for all situations," he told Israeli television.

"The Palestinians' transition from terror carried out by suicide bombers to mass demonstrations, on purpose without weapons, is a transition that poses many challenges. And we will deal with them in the future," Barak said.

The day's bloodshed will complicate decisions to be made by President Barack Obama, who is due to deliver a major Middle East policy speech on Thursday.

U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down last year and no new negotiations are in the offing, with the U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell announcing his resignation last week.

    Israel-Palestinian violence erupts on three borders, R,15.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/16/us-palestinians-israel-idUSLDE74E0DM20110516

Moroccan forces disperse opposition protest

RABAT | Sun May 15, 2011
8:19pm EDT
By Souhail Karam

RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan forces used truncheons to disperse a pro-democracy protest on the southern outskirts of the kingdom's capital Rabat on Sunday, wounding several people, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

Dozens of protesters belonging to the February 20 anti-government movement were attempting to hold a protest picnic in front of what they allege is a secret government detention center in the Temara area where Islamists are held.

The government denies it runs secret detention centers. It later granted permission for the general prosecutor and national human rights council to inspect the headquarters of the domestic intelligence service, the state MAP news agency said.

Anti-riot police chased the protesters before the rally could begin, beating some with long rubber truncheons. Police said no arrests were made.

At a later rally on Rabat's outskirts, security forces beat into a coma one of the founders of the February 20 movement, Oussama ElKhlifi, a doctor and activists said. No independent verification of the report was immediately available.

The February 20 movement is linked to reform protests and uprisings this year elsewhere in the Arab world.

"This is the latest in a series of violent interventions by the security forces which shows that the authorities no longer tolerate the group's peaceful protest," said Nizar Benmate of the movement.

The government's chief spokesman Khalid Naciri was quoted as saying by the private Atlantic radio station that the Temara protest was broken up because it had been banned.

He denied there was a secret detention facility in the vicinity, saying the building singled out by the protesters was a local government administrative office.

 

GOVERNMENT DENIAL

Moroccan officials deny allegations from opposition groups and some human rights campaigners that they run secret detention centers and say all detainees are treated in strict accordance with the law.

Human rights activists say Islamists, political activists and others have been held and tortured at the Temara building.

MAP did not say when the inspection visit to Temara would take place. King Mohammed created the human rights council in March amid the protests.

The agency said about 100 "extremists" blocked a road in the northern city of Tangiers. It reported a similar incident in Fez where it said some protesters carried knives and al Qaeda flags. There was no independent confirmation of the reports.

Some 50,000 people gathered in the evening for a pro-reform rally in Casablanca, organisers said. Independent sources put the number at around 15,000.

The national press union criticised authorities for rough treatment of journalists at the Temara protest. Security forces beat two journalists, manhandled two others and confiscated some equipment, a Reuters witness said.

 

(Writing by Matthew Bigg and Christian Lowe)

    Moroccan forces disperse opposition protest, R, 15.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/16/us-morocco-protest-idUSTRE74F02P20110516

Factbox: Five facts about the Golan Heights

Sun May 15, 2011
10:00am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead four people on its disputed border with Syria on Sunday, as protests by Palestinians to mark what they term "the catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948, turned violent in numerous locations.

Israel's border with Syria along the Golan Heights has been quiet for decades but on Sunday, for the first time in memory, protesters tore through the flimsy frontier fence at the Druze village of Majdal Shams.

Here are some facts about the Golan Heights, which stand at the heart of a long-standing conflict between Israel and Syria.

-- The Golan Heights form a strategic plateau between Israel and Syria of about 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles). Israel captured it in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981 in a move not recognized internationally.

-- Between 1967-2008 some 18,000 Israeli settlers had moved to the Golan, which also borders Jordan. Some 20,000 Druze Muslims also live there. Israel gave the Druze the option of citizenship though most rejected it.

-- Syria tried to regain the Golan Heights in the 1973 Middle East war, but the assault was thwarted. The two signed an armistice in 1974 and the Golan had been relatively quiet since. Syria is home to about 470,000 Palestinian refugees.

-- The Golan contains important water sources and has further strategic value because it overlooks northeastern Israel including the Sea of Galilee, a tourist attraction and Israel's biggest open reservoir.

-- In 2000, Israel and Syria held their highest-level talks over a possible return of the Golan and a peace agreement. But the negotiations collapsed and subsequent talks, mediated by Turkey, also failed.

 

(Jerusalem Newsroom)

    Factbox: Five facts about the Golan Heights, R, 15.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/15/us-palestinians-israel-golan-idUSTRE74E1US20110515

Two Egyptian protesters shot, blast near Sinai tomb

CAIRO | Sat May 14, 2011
6:46pm EDT
Reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) - Two Egyptian protesters were shot in Cairo during Christian and Muslim demonstrations and an explosion occurred near the tomb of a prominent Muslim sheikh in the Sinai Peninsula, state news agency MENA said.

A car driving on a bridge over the area where the protesters were gathered, which is in front of the state television building, fired gunshots into the crowd, wounding two people late Saturday.

The agency did not say the religion of the victims, but a security source said they were Christians. There were no further details about the Sinai blast, but both acts of violence will add pressure on Egypt's military rulers to ensure stability and security following the popular revolt that forced out President Hosni Mubarak in February. Although Muslims and Christians came together to overthrow Mubarak, interfaith tensions have since grown and 12 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in recent clashes.

Sectarian strife often flares in Egypt over conversions, family disputes and the construction of churches.

State television aired footage Sunday of fighting between what it said were Christians and unknown people, with 10 people hurt.

"Cairo's security forces have managed to arrest one of the shooters and he is currently being questioned to know who his partners are and the motives behind such violent action," MENA said.

Last Saturday, violent confrontations between some of Egypt's majority Muslims and minority Christians prompted angry protests by Egyptians from both faiths who called on army rulers to use an "iron fist" against the instigators. Egypt's interim ruling military council which took over after Mubarak stepped down on February 11 vowed Friday to use all means to crack down on what they described "deviant groups" threatening stability and security.

 

(Writing by Yasmine Saleh; Editing by Matthew Jones)

    Two Egyptian protesters shot, blast near Sinai tomb, R, 14.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us-egypt-protesters-shooting-idUSTRE74D22F20110514

Libya buries imams it says NATO killed in air strike

TRIPOLI | Sat May 14, 2011
5:17pm EDT
Reuters
By Joseph Logan

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Tears, chants and volleys of gunfire fired into the air punctuated the funeral for nine imams Libya said NATO killed in an air strike, but the alliance said the building it struck was a command-and-control center.

NATO is bombing Libya as part of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. Some NATO members say they will continue until Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who taunted the alliance as cowards whose bombs could not kill him, is forced out.

The nine imams were among 11 people killed in a strike on a guest house in the eastern city of Brega on Friday, the government said. The other two were buried elsewhere.

"May God defeat their (NATO) forces on land, sea and air," shouted a crowd of about 500 at the funeral held at a cemetery near Tripoli's port.

Mourners hoisted the plain wooden coffins above their heads to carry them into the cemetery and they were open to show what looked like bodies wrapped in green shrouds and garlanded with flowers, a Reuters witness said.

"It (NATO's campaign) is one insult after another to the living and the dead," said onlooker Abdulrahman.

In a statement, NATO defended its action: "We are aware of allegations of civilian casualties in connection to this strike and although we cannot independently confirm the validity of the claim, we regret any loss of life by innocent civilians when they occur."

Libyan state television broadcast audio remarks by Gaddafi on Friday apparently aimed at quashing speculation about his health sparked by Italy's foreign minister who said he had likely been wounded in a NATO strike and left Tripoli.

"I tell the cowardly crusader (NATO) that I live in a place they cannot reach and where you cannot kill me," said the man on the audio tape, whose voice sounded like Gaddafi's.

"Even if you kill the body you will not be able to kill the soul that lives in the hearts of millions," he said.

NATO struck his Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli on Thursday but government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said he was unharmed, in good spirits and in Tripoli.

 

INFILTRATION ATTEMPT

Rebels have mounted a three-month-old uprising against Gaddafi's rule and control Benghazi and the oil-producing east of Libya. Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting.

Rebels have failed to achieve their main military target of toppling Gaddafi and taking Tripoli and the war has reached a virtual stalemate, with recent fighting centered on the port city of Misrata in the west and in the Western Mountains region.

Rebels seized Misrata airport this week in a significant breakthrough.

They now also control al Dafiniya, the western entrance to Misrata, and Tammina, about 25 km (16 miles) east, said a witness called Ghassan by telephone on Saturday, quoting rebels.

A doctor at Misrata hospital, Khalid Abufalgha, said by telephone: "The city is coming back to life. People are going out. Not everything is available but to some extent people are finding what they need in terms of food essentials."

One rebel was killed on Saturday in fighting and 20 others lightly wounded, he said. There was no independent confirmation.

Another Misrata source said rebels were fighting through the day on the outskirts of the town of Zlitan, some 60 Km (35 miles) to the west.

Libya's border with Tunisia near Dehiba is another focus of fighting since it provides a conduit for rebel supplies to the Western Mountains.

On Saturday, Tunisia turned back a column of around 200 pro-Gaddafi soldiers in 50 vehicles at the Gare Ayoub crossing, said the Tunisian news agency, TAP, adding there was no violence. The Libyans were apparently trying to attack a rebel-held frontier post near the Tunisian town of Dehiba.

 

DIPLOMATIC FRONT

Rebel leaders met senior officials at the White House on Friday in a boost to their bid for international legitimacy.

At a news conference in Benghazi on Saturday, rebels said they were pleased with the international support they had received and rejected partition as a solution for the country.

"There is no stalemate. We are making progress on all fronts .... We don't see progress as only military progress because this revolution was a peaceful humanitarian revolution that was simply calling for simple human rights," said Aref Nayed, support coordinator for the council.

In a fresh sign of diplomatic activity, Greece will send officials to Benghazi to work as a contact group with rebels, Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas said on Saturday after talks in Athens with the U.N. envoy for Libya Abdelilah al-Khatib.

A small team will travel to Libya next week with a humanitarian aid ship, a foreign ministry official said.

 

(Reporting by Souhil Karam in Rabat, Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Mohammed Abbas in Benghazi, Tarek Amara in Tunisia and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; writing by Matthew Bigg; editing by Andrew Roche)

    Libya buries imams it says NATO killed in air strike, R, 14.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110514

Pakistan's parliament warns U.S. over bin Laden raid

ISLAMABAD | Sat May 14, 2011
1:27pm EDT
Reuters
By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's parliament condemned on Saturday the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, warning Pakistan might cut supply lines to U.S. forces in Afghanistan if there were further military incursions.

According to one legislator, Pakistan's intelligence chief told a closed session of MPs he was ready to resign over the bin Laden affair, which has embarrassed the country and led to accusations Pakistani security agents knew where the al Qaeda chief was hiding.

There has been criticism of the government and military, partly because bin Laden had apparently remained undetected in Pakistan for years, but also because of the failure to detect or stop the U.S. operation to get him.

"Parliament ... condemned the unilateral action in Abbottabad which constitutes a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty," it said in a resolution issued after security chiefs briefed legislators.

The covert raid by U.S. special forces on bin Laden's house in the garrison town of Abbottabad, 50 km (30 miles) north of Islamabad, has strained already prickly ties with the United States and prompted revenge attacks by his supporters.

On Saturday, a bomb ripped through a bus in Khairian, a small garrison town in central Pakistan, killing at least five people and wounding more than a dozen, police said.

The attack came a day after two suicide bombers attacked a military academy in a northwestern town killing 80 people in what Pakistani Taliban militants said was their first act of revenge for bin Laden's death on May 2.

Pakistan has dismissed as absurd any suggestion that authorities knew bin Laden was holed up in a high-walled compound near the country's top military academy.

The U.S. administration has not accused Pakistan of complicity in hiding bin Laden but has said he must have had some sort of support network, which it wants to uncover.

U.S. Senator John Kerry said the United States wanted Pakistan to be a "real" ally in combating militants but serious questions remained in their relations.

"But we're not trying to find a way to break the relationship apart, we're trying to find a way to build it," said Kerry, a Democrat close to the Obama administration and who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters in Afghanistan.

Kerry is due to visit Pakistan in the coming days.

Members of the two houses of parliament said the government should review ties with the United States to safeguard Pakistan's national interests and they also called for an end to U.S. attacks on militants with its pilotless drone aircraft.

They also called for an independent commission to investigate the bin Laden case.

 

SUPPLY LINES

Pakistan officially objects to the drone attacks, but U.S. officials have long said they are carried out under an agreement between the countries.

The legislators said U.S. "unilateral actions" such as the Abbottabad raid and drone strikes were unacceptable, and the government should consider cutting vital U.S. lines of supply for its forces in Afghanistan unless they stopped.

Earlier, a U.S. drone fired missiles at a vehicle in North Waziristan on the Afghan border killing five militants.

It was the fourth drone attack since bin Laden was killed.

Police in Charsadda said they had recovered for analysis body parts of the two suicide bombers who killed at least 80 struck at a paramilitary force academy.

A Taliban spokesman said on Friday the attack was in revenge for bin Laden's death and vowed there would be more.

The killing of bin Laden could trigger a backlash from his supporters across a giant area surrounding Afghanistan, the Shangahi Cooperation Council (SCO) regional security body said.

Dominated by China and Russia, the SCO also unites the mostly Muslim ex-Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

"Craving for revenge, the supporters of al Qaeda, the Taliban movement and other terrorist and extremist organizations may cause a new wave of terror," Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzgan Kazykhanov told a meeting with his SCO counterparts in Almaty.

 

CIVILIAN CONTROL

Pakistani intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the military's main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, told parliament in a closed-door briefing he was "ready to resign" over the bin Laden affair, a legislator said.

Pasha, who was asked tough questions by some members of parliament, told the assembly he did not want to "hang around" if parliament deemed him responsible, legislator Riaz Fatyana told reporters.

"I am ready to resign," Fatyana quoted the ISI chief as saying.

Opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said civilian leaders, not the security agencies, should be deciding policy toward India, the United States and Afghanistan.

"The elected government should formulate foreign policy. A parallel policy or parallel government should not be allowed to work," Sharif told a news conference.

 

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov, Bashir Ansari; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Matthew Jones)

    Pakistan's parliament warns U.S. over bin Laden raid, R, 14.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us-binladen-idUSTRE7410D320110514

Three killed in Syrian town and hundreds flee to Lebanon

AMMAN | Sat May 14, 2011
11:21am EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Three people were killed after Syrian troops and gunmen entered the town of Tel Kelakh on Saturday, a rights campaigner said, and hundreds fled what they said was fierce fighting into neighboring Lebanon.

The violence came a day after activists said at least six people were killed during nationwide protests which erupted in defiance of a military crackdown aimed a crushing opposition to the autocratic rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

One of the three who died had been evacuated to Lebanon from the border town of Tel Kelakh, where fleeing residents reported seeing soldiers and black-clad gunmen loyal to Assad, and said they heard the sound of machine gun fire.

"There was a peaceful demonstration in Tel Kelakh yesterday but today there are clashes," said one woman who fled the restive town for Lebanon, declining to give her name.

The United States and European Union have imposed targeted sanctions on Syrian officials and condemned Assad's repression of the eight-week uprising, in which rights groups say about 700 people have been killed by security forces.

Authorities blame "armed terrorist groups" for most of the violence and say 120 soldiers and police have been killed.

Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, said the toll from Friday's protests had risen to nine -- four in the central city of Homs, three in towns around Damascus, and two in the southern city of Deraa.

But the bloodshed after Friday prayers was still less than in previous weeks. There were fewer clashes and the numbers of protesters were lower in areas where Assad dispatched troops and tanks to stamp out rallies.

Witnesses to at least two demonstrations on Friday said security forces backed off from confrontation, apparently heeding a reported order from Assad not to shoot protesters.

Assad has tried a mix of reforms and repression to stamp out the dissent, but with neither protesters nor government breaking the deadlock after two months of unrest, authorities announced on Friday plans for a "national dialogue."

 

CALLS TO FREE PRISONERS

Prominent activists said that dialogue would only be serious if the government freed thousands of political prisoners and allowed freedom of expression and assembly.

Aref Dalila, an economist who met Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban last week, said "the domination of the security apparatus over life in Syria" must end for different opinions to be represented.

A Syrian rights group said security forces have kept up a campaign of mass arrests despite the promised talks.

Scores were arrested on Friday in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, rural Damascus, Homs, the Kurdish region of Ifrin north of Aleppo and other regions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On Thursday writer Ammad Dayyoub and physician Jalal Nofal were charged with riot after they took part in a peaceful pro-democracy protest in central Damascus demanding the lifting of siege on Syrian cities, the Observatory said.

Assad's Baath Party has run Syria with an iron fist since a 1963 coup, most of that time with his late father Hafez al-Assad as president. On his death in 2000, Bashar took power.

Bashar has reinforced Syria's alliance with non-Arab Iran and continued to support militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, while holding intermittent, indirect peace talks with Israel.

Rights groups have chided the United States and its European allies for a tepid response to the Syria violence, in contrast with Libya where they are carrying out a bombing campaign they say will not end until Muammar Gaddafi is driven from power.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, in an interview with the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, condemned Assad's response to the protests, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world.

Asked whether he considered Assad still had legitimacy to rule Syria, Juppe replied: "A regime which fires on its own people loses legitimacy ... Unless the regime changes its position, it should be punished."

 

(Writing and additional reporting by Dominic Evans)

    Three killed in Syrian town and hundreds flee to Lebanon, R, 14.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110514

Assad broadens Syria crackdown, tanks push south

AMMAN | Thu May 12, 2011
3:31pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian forces spread through southern towns Thursday and tightened their grip on two other cities, broadening a crackdown ahead of what could prove a pivotal day for protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

While Assad has promised reforms in the hope of dampening dissent, tanks advanced in the southern towns of Dael, Tafas, Jassem and al-Harra before Friday -- the Muslim day of prayer which has become the main day of protests across the Arab world.

A Geneva-based jurists' group said troops have killed 700 people and rounded up thousands while indiscriminately shelling towns during the nearly two-month crackdown, the biggest challenge to Assad's 11-year authoritarian rule.

Friday prayers offer the only chance for Syrians to assemble in large numbers, making it easier to hold demonstrations. This week will be a particularly important test after the government said it had largely put down the unrest.

Tanks were deployed in areas on the Syrian coast, the central region of Homs, outside the city of Hama to the north and now across the southern Hauran Plain, regions which cover large swathes of the country of 20 million people.

The official SANA news agency said army units were chasing "armed terrorist groups," backed by Islamists and foreign agitators, whom authorities have blamed for the violence. The government says about 100 soldiers and police have been killed, including two Wednesday in the cities of Homs and Deraa.

Foreign journalists have been barred from the country, making independent accounts difficult to obtain.

The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists said reports it had received from lawyers and rights groups in the country described attacks on civilians that amounted to crimes under international law.

"More than 700 people have reportedly been unlawfully killed and hundreds subjected to enforced disappearances," it said. "The ICJ continues to receive credible reports that bodies have been left in the streets for days and the injured blocked from accessing medical facilities."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington and its allies would hold Assad's government to account for "brutal reprisals" against protesters and may tighten sanctions, but she stopped short of saying Assad should leave power.

Washington and its European allies have been criticized for a tepid response to the violence in Syria, in contrast with Libya where they are carrying out a bombing campaign they say will not end until leader Muammar Gaddafi is driven from power.

The United States and Europe so far have imposed economic sanctions on a handful of senior Libyan officials, not including Assad himself.

"President Assad faces increasing isolation and we will continue to work with our international partners in the EU and elsewhere on additional steps to hold Syria accountable for its gross human rights abuses," Clinton said.

Asked if Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule, she demurred but said Washington had watched with "great consternation and concern as events have unfolded under his leadership."

UPRISING

A prominent lawyer in the southern Hauran region, where the uprising erupted in March, said hundreds of people had been arrested in the region since Wednesday, when a rights activist said 13 people were killed by tank shelling in the area.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities.

In the besieged coastal city of Banias and nearby village of Baida, security forces arrested scores of residents Thursday, two Syrian human rights organizations said.

"The sound of heavy gunfire was heard as security forces made the arrests," a spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Homs, security forces arrested a veteran human rights campaigner, Naji Tayara, Thursday, the group said. Tayara had been an outspoken critic of a military incursion into the city's residential neighborhoods.

A main residential neighborhood in Homs remained sealed by security forces after it was shelled by tanks Wednesday and at least five people were killed, a witness said.

"I passed by a major road block at the main entrance to Homs off the highway to Damascus. Armed security men were checking names and they asked me what business I had going into Homs," a woman who traveled to Homs from Damascus to see relatives said.

Assad has responded to the unrest with promises of reform, lifting a 48-year-old state of emergency and granting stateless Kurds Syrian citizenship last month. Rights groups say thousands have been arrested and beaten since he made the promises.

The 45-year-old president, who had been emerging from Western isolation before the unrest and strengthening ties with NATO member Turkey, has reinforced an alliance with Iran.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan criticized Syria's use of force, saying this week: "it's not an armed group you're firing at ... it's just people in this case."

Protests have continued for nearly eight weeks, but the two main cities of Damascus and Aleppo have not seen major unrest.

In rare public remarks, the head of Israel's domestic security service, the Shin Bet, said Syria would be "soaked in blood," because Assad's ruling Alawite Shi'ite minority sect was "fighting for its life" in the majority Sunni Muslim country.

 

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman,
Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Andrew Quinn in Nuuk, Greenland,
and Dan Williams in Jerusalem;
Editing by Jon Boyle)

    Assad broadens Syria crackdown, tanks push south, R, 12.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/12/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110512

700 dead in Syria crackdown, jurists' group says

GENEVA | Thu May 12, 2011
2:10pm EDT
Reuters

GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian authorities have killed more than 700 people and rounded up thousands while shelling cities indiscriminately in their military crackdown on protesters, an international jurists' body said Thursday.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a Geneva-based panel of senior lawyers and judges from around the world, said attacks by security forces on civilians amounted to crimes under international law.

The group said it had received accounts of the crackdown from lawyers and human rights defenders within Syria. Syria has barred foreign journalists since launching its crackdown on protests, making independent accounts hard to obtain.

"More than 700 people have reportedly been unlawfully killed and hundreds subjected to enforced disappearances since the Syrian authorities began their crackdown on 15 March in Deraa, Homs, Banias and other cities," the ICJ said in a statement.

"The ICJ continues to receive credible reports indicating that bodies have been left in the streets for days and the injured blocked from accessing medical facilities," it said.

"In addition, a number of people trying to leave the country have been tracked down and prevented from doing so by security services at the borders."

Syrian forces spread through southern towns Thursday and tightened their grip on two other cities, broadening their military crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government.

"The Syrian government is using armed forces and tanks to indiscriminately shell cities, effectively imposing a siege on the population, in order to counter largely peaceful protests," Wilder Tayler, ICJ Secretary-General, said.

The U.N. Security Council should consider options, including invoking Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, he said, referring to a document which can be used to authorize measures including economic and diplomatic sanctions as well as military action.

 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay)

    700 dead in Syria crackdown, jurists' group says, R, 12.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/12/us-syria-jurists-idUSTRE74B5SS20110512

Clinton Toughens Tone Toward Syria

May 12, 2011
Reuters
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

NUUK, Greenland — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday moved the United States a step closer to calling for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as she denounced an intensifying government crackdown on protesters there.

“The recent events in Syria make clear that the country cannot return to the way it was before,” she said at the opening of remarks with Denmark’s foreign minister before a meeting here among Arctic nations. “Tanks and bullets and clubs will not solve Syria’s political and economic challenges.”

The Obama administration has criticized Syrian government repeatedly and imposed largely symbolic sanctions on three senior security officials, but it has stopped short of calling for Mr. Assad’s removal or pursuing more aggressive diplomatic measures at, for example, the United Nations Security Council. Its patience appears to be running out.

Mrs. Clinton said that the United States would pursue “additional steps to hold Syria responsible for its gross human rights abuses,” which she cataloged in her remarks: hundreds of deaths, unlawful detentions, torture and the denial of medical care to the wounded.

“There may be some who think this is a sign of strength,” she said, “but treating one’s own people in this way is in fact a sign of remarkable weakness.”

A senior official elaborated that the administration was now considering imposing sanctions on additional Syrian officials. That could include Mr. Assad himself. The American sanctions have so far frozen the assets of three officials, including Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and a brigade commander involved in the military operations against protesters. Since Syrian leaders are believed to keep their money in European or Middle Eastern banks, putting it beyond the reach of the United States Treasury, the impact of those sanctions is minimal.

Foreign Minister Lene Espersen of Denmark, however, echoed Mrs. Clinton’s condemnation. She said that Denmark, through the European Union, was prepared to tighten sanctions “if the Syrian leadership does not deliver on reform” and end the violence.

Mrs. Clinton went on to deride Syria’s diplomatic support. “Relying on Iran as your best friend and your only strategic ally is not a viable way forward,” she said. “Syria’s future will only be secured by a government that reflects the popular will of all of the people and protects their welfare.”

    Clinton Toughens Tone Toward Syria, NYT, 12.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/middleeast/13clinton.html

Crime Wave in Egypt Has People Afraid, Even the Police

May 12, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

CAIRO — The neighbors watched helplessly from behind locked doors as an exchange of gunfire rang out at the police station. Then a stream of about 80 prisoners burst through the doors — some clad only in underwear, many brandishing guns, machetes, even a fire extinguisher — as the police fled.

“The police are afraid,” said Mohamed Ismail, 30, a witness. “I am afraid to leave my neighborhood.”

Three months after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a surging crime wave in post-revolutionary Egypt has emerged as a serious threat to its promised transition to democracy. Businessmen, politicians and human rights activists say they fear that the mounting disorder — from sectarian strife to soccer riots — is hampering a desperately needed economic recovery or, worse, inviting a new authoritarian crackdown.

At least five attempted jailbreaks have been reported in Cairo in the past two weeks, at least three of them successful. Other similar attempts take place “every day,” a senior Interior Ministry official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly.

And newspapers brim with other lurid episodes: the Muslim-Christian riot that raged last weekend with the police on the scene, leaving 12 dead and two churches in flames; a kidnapping for ransom of a grandniece of President Anwar el-Sadat; soccer fans who crashed a field and mauled an opposing team as the police disappeared; a mob attack in an upscale suburb, Maadi, that sent a traffic police officer to the hospital; and the abduction of another officer by Bedouin tribes in the Sinai.

“Things are actually going from bad to worse,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the former international atomic energy official who is now a presidential candidate. “Where have the police and military gone?”

The answer, in part, is the legacy of the revolution: Public fury at police abuses helped set off the protests, which destroyed many police stations. Now police officers who knew only swagger and brutality are humbled and demoralized.

In an effort to restore confidence after the sectarian riot last weekend, the military council governing the country until elections scheduled for September announced that 190 people involved would be sent to military court, alarming a coalition of human rights advocates.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf emerged from an emergency cabinet meeting to reiterate a pledge he had made before the riots: that the government backs the police in using all legal procedures, “including the use of force,” to defend themselves, their police stations, or places of worship.

It was an extraordinary statement for a prime minister, in part because the police were already expected to do just that. “This may be the first time a government ever had to say that it was fully supporting its police,” said Bahey el-din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. “It is an indication of the seriousness of the problem.”

Many Egyptians, including at least one former police officer, contend that the Egyptian police learned only one way to fight crime: terrorizing suspects.

Now police officers see their former leader, Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption and facing another trial for charges of unlawful killing. Scores of officers are in jail for their role in repressing the protests.

“They were arrogant, and they treated people like pests, so imagine when these pests now rise up, challenge them and humiliate them,” said Mahmoud Qutri, a former Egyptian police officer who wrote a book criticizing the force.

“They feel broken.”

Mr. Hassan, who has spent his career criticizing the police, said he sympathized. Police officers who fought to defend their stations from protesters are in jail, while those who went home to bed are not facing any trial, he said.

“So the police are asking, ‘What is expected of us?’ It is a very logical question, and the problem is they don’t have an answer,” he said, blaming higher authorities.

Shopkeepers say the police used to swagger into their stores bluntly demanding goods for just half the price. Now, Mr. Ismail said, the witness to the jailbreak at the police station, the officers who come into his cellphone shop murmur “please” and put the full price on the counter. “The tables have turned,” he said.

The change in public attitudes is equally stunning, said Hisham A. Fahmy, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. “It’s: ‘Talk to me properly! I am a citizen!’ ”

The spike in crime is a remarkable contrast to life under the Mubarak police state, when violent street crime was a relative rarity and few feared to walk alone at night. “Now it is like New York,” said Mr. Fahmy, adding that his group, which advocates for international companies, had been urging military leaders to respond more vigorously.

At a recent soccer match pitting a Cairo team against a Tunisian team, a cordon of police ringed the field until a referee made a call against an Egyptian goalie. Then the police seemed to vanish as a mob of fans assaulted the referee and the visiting team. Five players were injured, two of them hospitalized, and the referee fled the scene.

“When the violence erupted, the police just disappeared,” said Mourad Teyeb, a Tunisian journalist who covered the game. The one policeman he found told him, “I don’t care, I don’t assume any responsibility,” Mr. Teyeb said, adding that he feared for his life until he found refuge hiding in the Egyptian team’s dressing room.

Some see a reactionary conspiracy. “I think it is deliberate,” said Dr. Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, another organizer of the Tahrir Square protests, contending that officials were pulling back in order to invite chaos and a crackdown. “I think there are bigger masterminds at work.”

Officials of the Interior Ministry, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the security situation, said the destruction of police stations during the revolution had contributed to the disorder. The remaining stations are overcrowded with prisoners from other facilities. Of the 80 prisoners who escaped in Shobra, 60 have been recaptured, an officer said.

Mansour el-Essawy, the new interior minister, has called the lawlessness an inevitable legacy of the revolution. Of the 24,000 prisoners who escaped during the revolution, 8,400 are still on the run, and 6,600 weapons stolen from government armories have not been recovered, Mr. Essawy said in a recent interview with an Egyptian newspaper, Al Masry Al Youm.

After the revolution, he said, the police justifiably complained of working 16- hour shifts for low pay. Bribery customarily made up for the low compensation, critics say. So the ministry cut back the officers’ hours, and as a result also cut back the number on duty at any time. And the sudden loss of prestige made it harder to recruit. “People are not stepping forward to join the police,” he complained.

Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting.

    Crime Wave in Egypt Has People Afraid, Even the Police, NYT, 12.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/middleeast/13egypt.html

Libyan TV shows first film of Gaddafi in two weeks

TRIPOLI | Thu May 12, 2011
12:06am EDT
Reuters
By Joseph Logan

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan state television showed footage of Muammar Gaddafi meeting officials in a Tripoli hotel, ending nearly two weeks of doubt over his fate since a NATO air strike killed his son.

The Libyan leader, who had not been seen in public since the April 30 strike on his Tripoli compound killed his youngest son and three of his grandchildren, made his appearance on Wednesday in his trademark brown robe, dark sunglasses and black hat.

"We tell the world these are the representatives of the Libyan tribes," said Gaddafi, pointing to the officials and naming a few of them.

"You will be victorious," an old man told Gaddafi, referring to the three-month-old revolt in the North African country against the Libyan leader's 41 years of rule.

A screen behind Gaddafi showed a morning chat show on state al-Jamahirya television. A zoom-in on the screen showed Wednesday's date displayed in the corner.

Reuters journalists based at the same hotel said some rooms had been sealed off during the day for an event, but they had not seen Gaddafi. In the past he has made high-profile entrances accompanied by a large staff of minders and aides.

A Reuters correspondent said he heard at least two blasts in Tripoli early on Thursday and that they were believed to have been the result of NATO strikes. The blasts rattled the windows of the hotel, he said.

Libyan officials said two people had been killed in NATO strikes and showed foreign journalists two bodies at a hospital. Staff at the hospital said they had treated more than 20 people who had been wounded.

On Wednesday, rebels trying to overthrow Gaddafi said they had captured the airport in the city of Misrata in heavy fighting. Hailing it as a major victory, the rebels said they had also seized large quantities of weapons and munitions.

No independent verification of the rebels' account was available.

Misrata, besieged by Gaddafi's forces for eight weeks, is strategically important to rebel hopes of winning the war because it is the only city they hold in the west of the North African country. It also has a key port.

The war, linked to this year's uprisings in other Arab countries, has reached a stalemate. The rebels hold Benghazi and other towns in the oil-producing east while the government controls Tripoli and almost all of the west.

Thousands have been killed in the fighting.

Tripoli's consul in Cairo said he was quitting his post to join rebel ranks, the latest Libyan official to break ties with the government.

CEASEFIRE CALL

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Wednesday for an "immediate, verifiable ceasefire" but the rebels dismissed the idea.

"We don't trust Gaddafi ... This is not the time for a ceasefire because he never respects it," said a rebel spokesman called Abdulrahman, speaking by telephone from Zintan in the Western Mountains region.

"He bombards civilians immediately after his regime speaks of willingness to observe a ceasefire," the spokesman said, adding that Gaddafi's forces fired 20-25 Grad missiles at rebels on Wednesday, killing one and wounding three.

Gaddafi's government has made several ceasefire declarations but has continued attacks on Misrata and other rebel-held areas including the Western Mountains near the Tunisian border.

The government says the rebels are armed criminals and al Qaeda militants and that the majority of Libyans back Gaddafi.

It says NATO's intervention is an act of colonial aggression by Western powers intent on stealing the country's oil. NATO says it wants to protect Libyan civilians.

In an effort to drum up more aid for the rebels' cause, one of their senior leaders will visit London on Thursday.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council, was due to meet British Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the possibility of obtaining more non-lethal equipment supplies.

The United States has also been providing the rebels with help, delivering its first shipment of food rations as part of a $25 million non-lethal aid package.

 

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Deepa Babington in Benghazi
and Isabel Coles in Cairo, writing by Sylvia Westall, editing by Ralph Gowling)

    Libyan TV shows first film of Gaddafi in two weeks, R, 12.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/12/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110512

Libyan woman who made rape claims arrives in Doha

DOHA | Wed May 11, 2011
4:20pm EDT
Reuters

DOHA (Reuters) - A Libyan woman whose allegations she had been gang raped by pro-government militiamen caused a furor at a Tripoli hotel full of foreign journalists has flown to Qatar, Libyan rebels said Wednesday.

Eman Al-Obaidi, who was bundled away by security but was later released after making a desperate plea to journalists in Tripoli in March, fled to Tunisia and arrived in Qatar by air, officials from the rebels' Transitional National Council said.

Two officers escorted her across the Tunisian border and assisted her in boarding a flight to the Qatari capital, Ali Zaidan, spokesman for the Libyan League for Human Rights, told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of Libyans in Doha.

"She's very strong, very sure. It has not been easy," Zaidan, a former Libyan diplomat who brokered French recognition of the council, said.

In March, Obaidi burst into a Tripoli hotel and, weeping, told the media that she had been held for two days and raped by 15 militiamen loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations has said troops loyal to Gaddafi increasingly have been engaging in sexual violence, with some issued the impotency drug Viagra.

"Gaddafi has used rape as a tool of war. That shows how evil he is," Fawzia Bariun, representative from the Consortium of Libyan Women, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Doha meeting.

"Eman is only one example. She was so courageous to scream and shout."

British charity Save The Children has said that children as young as eight have been sexually assaulted during the conflict between rebels trying to oust Gaddafi and forces loyal to him.

It was unclear how long Obaidi would stay in Doha.

 

(Reporting by Regan E. Doherty; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Michael Roddy)

    Libyan woman who made rape claims arrives in Doha, R, 11.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-libya-rape-qatar-idUSTRE74A6CP20110511

U.S. terrorism trial may raise tensions with Pakistan

Wed, May 11 2011
Reuters
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pakistani-born man accused of aiding militants in the 2008 Mumbai attacks is set to go on trial in Chicago next week in a legal battle that may worsen strained relations between the United States and Pakistan.

The trial follows the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in an operation that raised questions about whether Pakistani authorities knew of the al Qaeda leader's presence and about their commitment to fighting militant groups.

Pakistani-born Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who has Canadian citizenship, goes on trial on Monday in U.S. federal court for allegedly helping an American named David Headley find targets in Mumbai and in Denmark for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Long an enemy of India, the group killed 166 people, including six Americans, in an attack in Mumbai in 2008. It has been closely tied to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). Pakistan's government banned LeT and froze its assets in 2002.

U.S. prosecutors have accused Rana of running a Chicago immigration services firm that served as a cover for Headley as the American scouted targets for LeT.

Rana, 50, is charged with providing material support for terrorism, including serving as a conduit for messages between Headley and a man known as "Major Iqbal" believed to be part of the ISI. Iqbal is also charged but is not in custody.

Headley, a key trial witness who admitted ties to LeT and the ISI, has pleaded guilty to helping with the Mumbai attacks and plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons lampooning the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

'ATTACK THEIR CREDIBILITY'

"The timing of this is going be read in Pakistan as an ongoing effort to embarrass or attack their credibility," said Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism official under former President George W. Bush.

Zarate said there was not a similar case with the potential for such a geopolitical impact in recent memory and that it will be viewed in Pakistan as piling on at a critical moment.

While U.S.-Pakistani relations long have been marred by mistrust, bin Laden's holing up in a Pakistani garrison town has worsened matters. Pakistan denies providing support to bin Laden or knowing he was in Abbottabad.

Evidence presented during the trial could provide more ammunition for U.S. lawmakers who have called for pulling back on giving Pakistan billions of dollars in foreign aid every year, putting pressure on President Barack Obama to act.

The trial also could help Obama look tougher on terrorism.

Lawyers for Rana have said they are planning to use statements Headley gave to the Indian intelligence service and the FBI to help prove their client was duped by Headley.

"According to Headley every big action of LeT is done in close coordination with ISI," India's National Investigation Agency said in a confidential report after interviewing Headley last year, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

Headley told the Indians that top LeT members were handled by ISI officials, and one of his handlers was Iqbal.

U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber, overseeing the trial, already has rejected an attempt by Rana's lawyers to use as a defense that their client believed that his actions were legal because he thought he was working for the ISI.

He "cannot rely on the authority of a foreign government agency or official to authorize his violations of United States federal law," Leinenweber wrote last month.

James Kreindler, an attorney in New York, filed suit against ISI seeking unspecified monetary damages on behalf of victims of the Mumbai assault.

"If you asked me a week or two ago, on a foreign relations point of view, the U.S. doesn't want to alienate Pakistan. But now it's a different ballgame," he said, citing bin Laden's proximity to a Pakistani military base and Iqbal's indictment.

 

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Will Dunham)

    U.S. terrorism trial may raise tensions with Pakistan, R, 11.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-pakistan-usa-trial-idUSTRE74A6VR20110511

Syrian tanks shell towns, at least 19 killed

AMMAN | Wed May 11, 2011
11:03pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian tanks shelled residential areas in two towns and at least 19 people were killed across the country, rights campaigners said, as President Bashar al-Assad's forces fought to crush a seven-week uprising.

Assad, fighting the most serious challenge to his 11-year rule, has sent troops and tanks into several cities in the last two weeks to try and end protests inspired by Arab revolts which toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.

Wednesday was one of the bloodiest days apart from the main Friday protest days, when thousands use the platform of weekly Muslim prayers to demonstrate. Most of the violence occurred in the southern Deraa province, where unrest erupted on March 18.

Protesters, who first called for reforms and greater freedoms, have hardened their demands with many chanting for the overthrow of the president who inherited the authoritarian powers of his father Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000.

Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, said 13 people were killed in the town of Harra, about 60 km (40 miles) northwest of Deraa city.

Most were killed when tanks shelled four houses. Two people -- a child and a nurse -- died in gunfire, he said.

Tanks also shelled a residential district in Syria's third largest city Homs and at least five people were killed, a rights campaigner in the city said. A sixth person was killed by a sniper shot to the head as he stood in front of his house.

"The security forces are terrorizing urban centers," said Najati Tayara, the activist in Homs.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities, who have banned most international media from Syria, making it difficult to verify accounts of events.

In Syria's second city Aleppo near the border with Turkey, security forces used batons to disperse a pro-democracy demonstration by 2,000 students on Wednesday at a university campus, a witness said.

Another resident of Aleppo said secret police had closed the main road leading from the center of the city to the campus in the western Furqan district.

The violence has been denounced in the West, where countries have imposed limited sanctions on Syrian leaders but stopped short of calling for Assad to step down, as they have in the case of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

 

SYRIAN WITHDRAWAL

Syria withdrew its candidacy on Wednesday for a spot on the top U.N. human rights body. Its ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja-afari, said Damascus was "reconsidering our priorities" and would try again in 2013.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Syria's bid was blocked by Asian nations with the "good sense" to withdraw support from a country "in the process of killing its own people on the streets, arresting thousands and terrorizing a population that is seeking to express itself through largely peaceful means."

In Damascus, Syrian forces had arrested opposition leader Mazen Adi, from the People's Democratic Party founded by Syria's top dissident, Riad al-Turk, according to rights activists.

They said thousands of pro-democracy Syrians had been arrested and beaten in the last two months, including scores on Wednesday in Homs and in the coastal city of Banias.

Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said this week authorities had "passed the most dangerous moment" of the protest and that she had met a group of veteran opposition figures, promising them a freer press, political parties and an election law.

Assad has responded to the unrest with promises of reform, lifting a 48-year-old state of emergency. The state news agency SANA said on Wednesday a government committee had been formed to draft a new election law, but gave no details.

Activists say the reforms are cosmetic, and the crackdown on demonstrations shows Assad will not risk loosening the grip his family has held for 41 years. Rights groups say at least 650 civilians have been killed in the crackdown.

Long a foe of Washington and part of an anti-Israel bloc with Iran, Assad had nonetheless been gingerly emerging from Western isolation before the unrest.

In Banias, protesters held up pictures of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to salute him for his stand against what they perceive as Assad's iron-fist policy toward opposition.

Erdogan maintains close trade and diplomatic ties with Assad but has disputed the official Damascus account of the violence.

Syrian officials have blamed most of the violence on "armed terrorist groups," backed by Islamists and foreign agitators, and say about 100 soldiers and police have been killed.

Erdogan said more than 1,000 civilians had died in Syria's upheaval. He said he did not want to see a repeat of the 1982 bloodshed in Hama, where Assad's father crushed an Islamist uprising, or the 1988 gassing of Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

 

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut;
Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Gowling)

    Syrian tanks shell towns, at least 19 killed, R, 11.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/12/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110512

Thirteen killed in Syrian shelling, gunfire: activist

BEIRUT | Wed May 11, 2011
12:38pm EDT
Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Thirteen people were killed in the southern Syrian town of Harra on Wednesday in tank shelling and gunfire, activist Ammar Qurabi said.

He said tanks shelled four houses in the town, killing 11 people.

Another two people, a child and a nurse, were killed in gunfire, said Qurabi, who heads the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

 

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny)

    Thirteen killed in Syrian shelling, gunfire: activist, R, 11.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110511

Analysis: Stray Libyan small arms may threaten region

Wed May 11, 2011
Reuters
7:57am EDT
By David Lewis DAKAR

By David Lewis DAKAR (Reuters) - The thought of al Qaeda's Sahara wing getting its hands on Libyan surface-to-air missiles is chilling for the West. But a new flow of small arms and return of battle-hardened fighters may pose the bigger regional threat.

The fall-out southwards from the civil war in the North African country has so far been mainly limited to waves of returning migrant workers.

But governments in the Sahel believe fighters of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have received convoys of weapons including SA-7 missiles looted from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's abandoned arms caches.

Targeting airliners would take training and moving al Qaeda cells nearer cities, so experts believe any heavy weapons are more likely to be used defensively in case of airborne attacks on the Islamist militants.

However the remote and often volatile corners of countries such as Mauritania, Mali and Niger, where Islamists operate alongside rebels, local criminals and smugglers, are extremely vulnerable to the spillover effects of Libya's conflict.

"The situation in Libya poses quite some problems for West African countries," said Kwesi Aning, a senior official at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in Ghana.

"It is natural that some of the weapons would get into very bad hands ... There is no government control in the northern parts (of the Sahel fringing Libya)," Aning told Reuters.

AQIM emerged out of the Algerian Salafist movement in 2007 and, under pressure from the Algerian army to the north, has become increasingly active in the Sahara region.

The group, believed to number no more than a few hundred, has taken advantage of poor cross-border coordination to mount sporadic attacks on local armies and kidnap Westerners, earning some $50-70 million in ransoms so far, analysts say.

A recent flurry of regional diplomacy has underscored pressing concerns over a spillover from Libya. Fears of a reprisal after the killing of Osama bin Laden are also high.

WEAPON OF CHOICE?

The leaders of Mali and Chad believe looted weapons have reached AQIM bases in northern Mali, with Chad's president warning they could become the best-equipped force in the region. An Algerian official spoke of several convoys.

Others say there is no proof yet, though few think it would take much for AQIM, which is plugged into weapons smuggling networks and flush in cash from ransoms, to obtain them.

"There are enough floating around that it would be extremely easy for people keen to get hold of them to do so," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, who has spent weeks documenting the looted arsenals in Libya.

Much of the focus has been on missing SA-7 shoulder-launched missiles, used by al Qaeda operatives who tried, but failed, to shoot down an Israeli charter plane in Kenya in 2002.

"It is a top concern because this is one of the favorite weapons of al Qaeda groups," Bouckaert said, noting that militants in Iraq showed how stolen weapons could also be turned into bombs.

Officials are acutely aware of the threat and fears of a "spectacular" attack in retaliation for the killing of bin Laden are real, but due to their short range, SA-7s would have to be moved by militants from remote desert bases to near airports by major cities if airliners were to be targeted, experts say.

"They are probably more useful as defensive weapons," said one diplomat who monitors the group's activities.

After mostly opportunistic kidnappings, attacks this year in Niamey and Nouakchott have proven AQIM's ambition to hit capital cities. But another hurdle is the weapon itself, according to Nick Pratt, a terrorism expert at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

"It is not a weapon you just pick up and shoot ... The big issue is that it takes a long time to train," said Pratt, whose military experience included taking part in covert U.S. efforts to arm Mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan.

"Old Soviet-era (missiles) in the Sahara are less of a security concern than a truckload of AK's (assault rifles)."

HISTORICAL PATTERNS

It may not just be the weapons that flow south either.

There are widespread reports of Gaddafi recruiting fighters, especially Tuareg nomads, to swell his ranks. Some of these new recruits, as well as fighters from the region who had long been in his ranks, will return home one day, officials say.

Similar flows of experienced fighters back into marginalized parts of Mali and Niger were factors in rebellions during the 1990s. These countries' governments are still struggling to heal wounds after the most recent uprisings between 2007 and 2009.

"There is something of a historical pattern we don't want to repeat," said Andre LeSage, Africa expert at the U.S-based National Defense University.

Northern Mali, with its grinding poverty and isolation, is particularly susceptible. AQIM has turned it into a rear base, integrating into local tribes through marriage and seeking to drive a wedge between the government and local populations.

Profitable smuggling networks also zigzag through the barren zone, undermining law and order and fuelling corruption.

Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure last week sought out support among community leaders, warning them of the risks of the flow of weapons and fear of AQIM recruiting new fighters.

"We need community leaders to be on good terms with national governments so there isn't popular support for any movement ... so they don't gain traction," LeSage said.

    Analysis: Stray Libyan small arms may threaten region, R, 11.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-libya-sahara-weapons-idUSTRE74A2KX20110511

Tunisia arrests nearly 200 after protests

TUNIS | Tue May 10, 2011
9:21pm EDT
Reuters

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian authorities have arrested nearly 200 people after a series of anti-government protests that culminated in a street battle at the weekend in the capital, the state TAP new agency reported on Tuesday.

Security officials and the army made the arrests in raids on Monday and Tuesday across the North African country where tensions remain high after the ousting in January of autocratic leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The 197 were charged with various crimes including attacking police with stones, breaking a recently imposed curfew, theft and vandalism, TAP said, quoting the Interior Ministry.

Riot police used tear gas on Sunday to break up a fourth day of protests by scores of youths demanding the departure of the government and Prime Minister Beji Caid Sebsi.

The spark for the protests was a warning from a former interior minister that there would be a coup d'etat if the Islamist group Ennahda won a planned July election.

The protesters say they fear the interim administration will renege on its commitment to guide Tunisia toward democracy after the decades of autocratic rule under Ben Ali.

The streets have been calm since Monday, with only small, peaceful protests by groups of workers.

The popular revolution in Tunisia has inspired uprisings across the Arab world.

 

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall)

    Tunisia arrests nearly 200 after protests, R, 10.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/11/us-tunisia-arrests-idUSTRE74A0AC20110511

Ally of Assad Says Syria Will Fight Protests Till ‘the End’

May 10, 2011
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s ruling elite, a tight-knit circle at the nexus of absolute power, loyalty to family and a visceral instinct for survival, will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle East into turmoil and even war, warned Syria’s most powerful businessman, a confidant and cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

The frank comments by Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon who has emerged in the two-month uprising as a lighting rod for anger at the privilege that power brings, offered an exceedingly rare insight into the thinking of an opaque government, the prism through which it sees Syria, and the way it reaches decisions. Beset by the greatest threat to its four decades of rule, the ruling family, he suggested, has conflated its survival with the existence of the minority sect that views the protests not as legitimate demands for change but rather as the seeds of civil war.

“If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,” he said in an interview Monday that lasted more than three hours. “No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.”

Asked if it was a warning or a threat, Mr. Makhlouf demurred.

“I didn’t say war,” he said. “What I’m saying is don’t let us suffer, don’t put a lot of pressure on the president, don’t push Syria to do anything it is not happy to do.”

His words cast into the starkest terms a sentiment the government has sought to cultivate — us or chaos — and it underlined the tactics of a ruling elite that has manipulated the ups and downs of a tumultuous region to sustain an overriding goal: its own survival.

Though the uprising has yet to spread to Syria’s two largest cities — Damascus, the capital, seemingly tranquil, was bereft of any military buildup this week, and Aleppo, a key conservative bastion, has been relatively quiet — the protests have unfurled in Damascus’s suburbs and across much of the rest of the country, building on longstanding neglect of the countryside and anger at corrupt and unaccountable security forces. While the government offered tentative concessions early on, it has since carried out a ferocious crackdown, killing hundreds, arresting thousands and besieging four cities.

“The decision of the government now is that they decided to fight,” Mr. Makhlouf said.

But even if it prevails, the uprising has demonstrated the weakness of a dictatorial government that once sought to draw legitimacy from a notion of Arab nationalism, a sprawling public sector that created the semblance of a middle class and services that delivered electricity to the smallest towns. The government of Mr. Assad, though, is far different than that of his father, who seized power in 1970. A beleaguered state, shorn of ideology, can no longer deliver essential services or basic livelihood. Mr. Makhlouf’s warnings of instability and sectarian strife like Iraq’s have emerged as the government’s rallying cry, as it deals with a degree of dissent that its officials admit caught them by surprise.

Mr. Makhlouf, a childhood friend and first cousin of Mr. Assad whose brother is the intelligence chief in Damascus, suggested that the ruling elite — staffed by Mr. Assad’s relatives and contemporaries — had grown even closer during the crisis. Though Mr. Assad has the final say, he said, policies were formulated as “a joint decision.”

“We believe there is no continuity without unity,” he said. “As a person, each one of us knows we cannot continue without staying united together.”

He echoed an Arabic proverb, which translated loosely, means that it will not go down alone.

“We will not go out, leave on our boat, go gambling, you know,” he said at his plush, wood-paneled headquarters in Damascus. “We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end.” He added later, “They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.”

Mr. Makhlouf, just 41 and leery of the limelight, stands as both a strength and liability of Mr. Assad’s rule, and in the interview he was a study in contrasts — a feared and reviled businessmen who went to lengths to be hospitable and mild-mannered. To the government’s detractors, his unpopularity rivals perhaps only that of Mr. Assad’s brother, Maher, who commands the Republican Guard and the elite Fourth Division that has played a crucial role in the crackdown. Mr. Makhlouf’s name was chanted in protests and offices of his company, Syriatel, the country’s largest mobile phone company, were burned in Dara’a, the poor town near the Jordanian border where the uprising began in mid-March.

The American government, which imposed sanctions on him in 2008, has accused him of manipulating the judicial system and using Syrian intelligence to intimidate rivals.

Asked why he believed he was sanctioned, he replied, “Because the president is my cousin, or I’m the cousin of the president. Full stop.” He suggested that anger at him arose from jealousy and long-standing suspicions that he serves as the family’s banker.

“Maybe they are worried about using this money to support the regime,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe. But the regime has the whole government, they don’t need me.”

He said he was aware of the anger, but called it “the price I have to pay.”

More than just an icon of outrage, Mr. Makhlouf represents broader changes afoot in the country. His very wealth points to the shifting constellation of power in Syria, as the old alliance of Sunni Muslim merchants and officers from Mr. Makhlouf’s Alawite clan gives way to descendants of those officers benefiting from lucrative deals made possible by reforms that have dismantled the public sector.

He serves as an instrument, too, in Mr. Assad’s vision of economic modernization, where Syria serves as a crossroads of regional trade and a hub for oil and gas pipelines that link Iraq and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and Europe. Cham Holdings, a vast conglomerate with a portfolio of $2 billion, in which Mr. Makhlouf owns a quarter of the shares outright, is at the forefront of that faltering scheme.

Turkey’s recent anger at Syria’s crackdown has fed feelings of betrayal in the government because Turkey was viewed as a centerpiece in that vision. Concerns are growing, too, over the uprising’s economic impact, deepened by Syria’s growing isolation and flight of capital — a legacy that may very well prove more threatening to the government than the protests.

Mr. Makhlouf suggested that economic reform would stay primary.

“This is a priority for Syrians,” he said. “We have to ask for economic reform before speaking about political reform.” He acknowledged that change had come late and limited. “But if there is some delay,” he added, “it’s not the end of the world.”

He warned the alternative — led by what he described as Salafists, the government’s name for militant Islamists — would mean war at home and perhaps abroad.

“We won’t accept it,” he said. “People will fight against them. Do you know what this means? It means catastrophe. And we have a lot of fighters.”

    Ally of Assad Says Syria Will Fight Protests Till ‘the End’, R, 10.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11makhlouf.html

Four dead as security forces fire on Yemen protest

SANAA | Mon May 9, 2011
9:02pm EDT
Reuters
By Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni forces fired at protesters blockading a government building on Monday, killing a shopkeeper and three protesters in Taiz, a city that has seen some of the largest demonstrations against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, witnesses said.

Security forces, some in armoured vehicles, moved in to disperse the protest, wounding at least 80 protesters in the industrial city.

The latest violence came as the Arabian Peninsula country's main opposition group awaited word on whether Gulf Arab states could revive a deal to edge Saleh out of power within a month.

Saleh, who refused to sign the transition deal, has clung to power despite three months of street protests that regularly draw tens of thousands of people, even though many of his allies have deserted him including a general who has backed protesters.

"A large force of police and army attacked protesters and then chased them in residential areas. They opened fire and used tear gas heavily," said Bushra al-Maqtari, an activist in Taiz.

A shopkeeper who ran a small kiosk was killed by a stray bullet, and two protesters were also shot dead amid heavy gunfire as security forces tried to disperse a protest near the education ministry, a doctor treating the wounded said.

A third protester later died of his wounds, the doctor said.

Thousands of demonstrators in Taiz shouted anti-Saleh slogans and demanded the postponement of school exams, while protests erupted elsewhere in the impoverished country that Saleh has ruled for nearly 33 years.

Clashes were reported in the Red Sea port city of Hudaida, where security forces stormed a university campus to break up protests, wounding six, activists said. Six more people were wounded in clashes in Dhamar province, south of Sanaa.

The unrest has included workers' strikes. The Canadian oil company Nexen Inc, said it halted production at its Yemen operations because of a labor disruption.

Yemen produces around 280,000 barrels per day of oil, including about 110,000 barrels of light crude, which is in short supply globally after the loss of Libyan output in February.

OPPOSITION

The United States and neighboring oil giant Saudi Arabia want the Yemen standoff resolved to avert chaos that could enable al Qaeda's Yemen wing to operate more freely. But neither has been successful in mediation efforts so far.

Yemen's opposition coalition, which includes Islamists and leftists, said it still had hope that Yemen's wealthy Gulf neighbors, meeting in a summit in Riyadh on Tuesday, could bring the deal to end the crisis back to the negotiating table.

"The Gulf initiative is the last initiative the opposition can work with. We are waiting for decisions of the Gulf summit, and based on that we will take a decision," said Sultan al-Atwani, a senior opposition leader.

"We expect the Gulf leadership to stick to the initiative as it is, and if that does not happen then we will meet to decide what (move) to take," he said.

The opposition had said the deal, which Saleh refused to sign on April 30 in a last-minute reversal, was modified to let Saleh sign as party leader rather than president, as he demands. But Atwani said the opposition did not accept those changes.

The opposition now wants the Gulf states to raise the pressure on Saleh to commit to a transition. Yemeni youth groups leading mass protests have called on the Gulf states, under the umbrella of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to withdraw the plan.

Many demonstrators across Yemen -- who include students, tribesmen and activists -- have vowed to stay on the streets until Saleh goes. At least 154 have been killed in the unrest.

"We expect the Gulf leadership to take a practical position on the distortions of President Saleh and supporting the choices of the Yemeni people," Atwani said.

A deal, if revived, may see Saleh appoint a prime minister from the opposition to lead a transitional government and set a presidential vote for 60 days after he leaves. It would also grant immunity from prosecution to Saleh, his family and aides.

 

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa and Khaled al-Mahdi in Taiz; and by Scott Haggett and Amruta Sabnis in Canada; Writing by Cynthia Johnston and Firouz Sedarat; editing by Myra MacDonald)

    Four dead as security forces fire on Yemen protest, R, 9.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/10/us-yemen-idUSTRE73L1PP20110510

Egypt religious strife kills 12, challenges government

Sun, May 8 2011
CAIRO | Sun May 8, 2011
7:57pm EDT
By Sarah Mikhail

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's military-led government faced a major challenge after two days of clashes between Muslims and Christians in which state media reported 12 people died and 238 were injured.

Egypt's worst sectarian strife since 13 people died on March 9 when a church was burned was triggered by rumors Christians had abducted a woman who converted to Islam.

The army said that 190 people would be tried in military courts over the violence that erupted on Saturday.

On Sunday, hundreds of young Christian men ran through central Cairo toward the main state television building calling for the removal of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the military council ruling Egypt since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February.

A crowd of Muslim men met them and some sought to calm the Christians' anger but fights broke out and the two groups pelted each other with stones. The state news agency MENA said 42 people were injured in the fighting.

The clashes later died down, but hundreds of protesters remained in the area late into the night.

Authorities stationed military vehicles near churches in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba on Sunday after a dozen people died in clashes between Christians and Muslims there the previous day, witnesses said.

Injured Muslims and Christians being treated in hospital showed reporters small holes that looked like shotgun wounds. State media said on Sunday 12 died and 238 were wounded. Medical sources said 65 of the injured were shot.

 

PRIME MINISTER CANCELS TOUR

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf canceled a tour of Gulf Arab states to chair a cabinet meeting where the government decided to deploy heavier security near religious sites and toughen laws criminalizing attacks on places of worship.

"Gatherings around places of worship will be banned to protect their sanctity and ensure the security of residents and prevent sectarian strife," Justice Minister Mohamed el-Guindy said in a statement read on state television.

Authorities cordoned off streets near Imbaba's Saint Mina church, where about 500 conservative Salafist Muslims massed on Saturday to call on Christians to hand over a woman they said was being held there.

Gunfire broke out as more people converged on the church and both sides traded firebombs and stones, witnesses said. Soldiers and police fired shots in the air and used teargas to separate the sides but stone-throwing went on into the night.

A power cut plunged the neighborhood into darkness, making it harder for the security forces to quell the violence.

A nearby church, Saint Mary's, was badly burned. One witness said thugs started the fire at Saint Mary's and that the Salafists had tried to stop them.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group widely regarded as Egypt's best organized political force, denounced the violence.

"The Brotherhood, and Islam before them, condemn all means of terrorism," the Brotherhood's leader Mohammed Badie was quoted as saying by MENA. "There is nothing like this criminality present in Islam."

Egypt's highest religious authority, Al-Azhar, held an emergency meeting to discuss the clashes, and the Grand Mufti called for a conference of national reconciliation.

"I think the army is in a state of confusion," Gamal Eid, a prominent author and human rights activist, said. "It is afraid to take serious action against extremists so as not to be accused of suppressing these movements."

Lawyer Peter el-Naggar, a Christian, blamed the clashes on Salafists seeking the support of more moderate Muslims.

"They want to gain the sympathy of the Egyptian Muslims and they think that by doing what they are doing, they would reach this goal and gain political ground," Naggar said.

Sectarian strife often flares in Egypt over conversions, family disputes and the construction of churches. Muslims and Christians made demonstrations of unity during the protests that overthrew Mubarak, but interfaith tensions have grown.

Some Christians said security forces had been too slow to disperse the crowd in front of Saint Mina and looked on as tension got out of hand. Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 80 million population.

Secular Egyptians have also voiced unease at what they see as a lax approach to Salafists violence since Mubarak's ouster.

Hundreds of protesters also gathered and attempted to block roads in the northern port city of Alexandria as they called for religious unity and punishment for those who took part in Saturday's violence.

"They must strike with an iron fist against anyone who has killed an Egyptian, regardless of their religion or political orientation," Christian college student Mina Gergis, 22, said.

 

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Dina Zayed, Abdelrahman Youssef and Amr Dalsh; Writing by Sami Aboudi and Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Michael Roddy)

    Egypt religious strife kills 12, challenges government, G, 8.7.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-egypt-church-idUSTRE7470GJ20110508

Assad tightens grip on Syria's restive third city

AMMAN | Mon May 9, 2011
5:05pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Government forces backed by snipers on rooftops tightened their grip on Syria's third city on Monday, rights groups said, after President Bashar al-Assad sent in tanks in a sharpening crackdown on protests against his rule.

A human rights campaigner in Homs said snipers deployed in several residential neighborhoods as the sound of gunfire died down in districts of the city that tanks stormed on Sunday.

"There are snipers visible on rooftops of private and public building in al-Adawiya, Bab Sebaa and al-Mreijah neighborhoods. Hundreds have fled from three villages just to the southwest of Homs where tanks had deployed," the campaigner said.

Homs, the hometown of Assad's Western-educated wife Asma, lies in the middle of an agricultural region on the highway between Damascus and Syria's second largest city Aleppo. One of Syria's two oil refineries is in Homs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three civilians were killed on Sunday in Homs, a merchant city of one million people 165 km (100 miles) north of Damascus.

Activists said the authorities had widened a shutdown of Internet and phone services.

Syrian authorities have banned foreign media from reporting from the country.

Security forces dispersed a small pro-democracy demonstration in the center of the Damascus on Monday, arresting opposition writer Ammar Mashour Dayoub and several students, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In the capital's district of Barzeh, 20 people were arrested in another demonstration, a resident of Barzeh said.

In the south, tanks deployed around the towns of Inkhil, Dael and Nawa, widening a sweep into the strategic region that borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A man was killed on Sunday when security forces smashed their way into his home in the town of Tafas, a rights campaigner said.

REGIME BASE

Syria's upheaval began on March 18 when protesters, inspired by revolts across the Arab world, marched in the southern city of Deraa. Assad initially responded with vague promises of reform, and last month lifted a 48-year-old state of emergency.

But when the demonstrations persisted he sent the army to crush dissent, first in Deraa and then in other cities, making clear he would not risk losing the tight control his family has held over Syria for the past 41 years.

Assad is from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, while the majority of Syria's 20 million population is Sunni Muslim.

Alawites dominate Syria's power structure.

Hundreds of people were arrested on Monday in Homs and in Banias on the Mediterranean coast, the latest focus of Assad's escalating military swoop on protesters, as well as in other regions, the Observatory said.

A human rights campaigner said Military Intelligence agents arrested five employees at a state-owned wheat milling company in the mostly Ismaili city of Salamiya east of Hama for refusing to sign declarations promising not to demonstrate.

The Observatory said around 50 people were arrested in Salamiya on Monday, among them 70-year old former political prisoner Hassan Zahra, a leftist.

Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said security forces have killed at least 800 civilians since demonstrations first broke out. The Syrian Observatory says 634 civilians had died by April 30.

A Western diplomat last week estimated that around 7,000 people had been detained.

Before the uprising, Assad had been emerging from a period of Western isolation imposed because of Syria's support for militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas and its informal anti-Israel alliance with Iran.

Washington announced new sanctions against Syrian figures last month while the European Union last week agreed to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions against up to 14 Syrian officials it said were responsible for the violent repression.

Syrian authorities have blamed the nearly two months of protests on "armed terrorist groups" they say killed civilians and security personnel and are operating in Deraa, Banias, Homs and other parts of the country.

 

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

    Assad tightens grip on Syria's restive third city, R, 9.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110509

Egypt tightens security amid inter-faith tensions

CAIRO | Mon May 9, 2011
4:21pm EDT
Reuters
By Yasmine Saleh and Sarah Mikhail

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt stepped up security around churches in Cairo Monday after two days of clashes between minority Christians and Muslims that killed 12 people and highlighted rising inter-faith tensions.

The violence that left a church wrecked by fire and more than 238 people wounded at the weekend was triggered by rumors that Christians had abducted a woman who converted to Islam.

Egypt's ruling military council met the prime minister and several cabinet members Monday to discuss how "to bury the sectarian strife and to deal with the security breakdown," the state MENA news agency reported.

The clashes pose a challenge for Egypt's new military rulers, under pressure to impose security and revive the ailing economy while seeking to avoid the tough security tactics against Islamists used by Hosni Mubarak.

A tight security cordon restricted access around Saint Mina church in Imbaba, the Cairo district where the clashes erupted Saturday evening and extended into Sunday. Another church, Saint Mary's, was damaged by fire.

The army has said that 190 people arrested after the clashes would be tried in military courts over the violence.

Security sources said 15 other people were detained on Monday, including the husband of the woman at the center of the violence, as well as a Christian coffee shop owner.

 

SALAFISTS, MUBARAK LOYALISTS BLAMED

Hundreds of Christians have also staged a sit-in in front of the television station in central Cairo calling for Muslims who had killed Copts and burned churches in recent months to be put on trial.

In the northern city of Alexandria, hundreds of Christians blocked the main coastal road to protest against the Cairo violence, sparking clashes with drivers.

Dozens of Muslims and Christians earlier chanted: "It is the same play and Copts are the victims."

"Oh Tantawi, where are you? They burned down my church in front of you!" they said in reference to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads the ruling army council.

Members of Egypt's Christian minority and even some Muslims have blamed the tensions on the emergence of Salafists, followers of a strict interpretation of Islam who were seen to have been repressed by Mubarak's security forces.

Others believe remnants of the Mubarak regime are to blame.

"I have been living in the neighborhood all my life and I have never seen those Salafists here before," said Sameh Samy, a 31-year-old Coptic Christian who was inside Saint Mina Church when the attacks began.

Mohamed Tarek, 20, a Muslim resident of Imbaba, said: "I think the old regime is behind this."

Some Christians said they were thinking of leaving the country.

"There is no more opportunity for Copts especially as the authorities are leaving ignorant people to burn down churches," said Fawzi Nabeeh, a Coptic Christian engineer, who blamed the incident on "a rise in (Islamic) fundamentalism."

Four army and security vehicles were outside the Cairo cathedral where Nabeeh spoke.

Political analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah, of the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Islamists and remnants of the old regime were behind the violence.

"Salafists ... are trying to win ground after the revolution and they think that violence will get them power," he said. "And of course, they are doing so with the help of remnants of the old regime."

 

REBUILDING

Ali Abdel-Rahman, the governor of Cairo's Giza region that includes Imbaba, pledged to rebuild Saint Mary's, the state news agency reported.

Christians make up about a tenth of Egypt's 80 million people. Sectarian strife often flares over conversions, family disputes and the building of churches. Muslims and Christians made demonstrations of unity in protests that overthrew Mubarak on February 11, but inter-faith tensions have intensified.

The clashes Saturday and Sunday were Egypt's worst inter-faith violence since 13 people died on March 9. That incident was prompted by the burning of a church.

Justice Minister Mohamed el-Guindy said gatherings around places of worship would be banned to prevent sectarian strife.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group widely regarded as Egypt's best organised political force, denounced the violence.

Egypt's highest religious authority, Al-Azhar, and the Grand Mufti have also warned against allowing strife to tear the fabric of the country.

 

(Additional reporting by Dina Zayed; Writing by Edmund Blair and Sami Aboudi;
Editing by Andrew Heavens)

    Egypt tightens security amid inter-faith tensions, R, 9.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/09/us-egypt-church-idUSTRE7470GJ20110509

U.S. takes heat off Pakistan on bin Laden's hideout

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD | Sun May 8, 2011
10:22am EDT
Reuters
By Donna Smith and Zeeshan Haider

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Obama administration took some heat off Pakistan on Sunday, saying it had no evidence that Islamabad knew Osama bin Laden was living in the country before he was killed by U.S. commandos in a garrison town a short drive from the capital.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is scheduled to "take the nation into confidence" in parliament on Monday, his first statement to the people more than a week after the attack embarrassed the country and raised fears of a new rift between Islamabad and Washington.

Suspicion has deepened that Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have had ties with the al Qaeda leader -- or that at least some of its agents did.

Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions and says it has paid the highest price in human life and money supporting the U.S. war on militancy launched after bin Laden's followers staged the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

The U.S. national security adviser said that while bin Laden's residence for several years in a compound in Abbottabad, 50 km (30 miles) north of Islamabad, "needs to be investigated," there was nothing to suggest the government or security establishment knew he was there.

"I can tell you directly that I've not seen evidence that would tell us that the political, the military, or the intelligence leadership had foreknowledge of bin Laden," Tom Donilon told NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked if Pakistan was guilty of harboring the al Qaeda leader.

"How could this have happened in Pakistan?" Donilon said. "We need to investigate it. We need to work with the Pakistanis. And we're pressing the Pakistanis on this investigation."

 

DOUBTS ABOUT BIN LADEN'S INFLUENCE

Donilon said Pakistani officials also needed to provide U.S. authorities with intelligence they had gathered from the compound where bin Laden was killed, and access to three wives who are in Pakistani custody.

But he added that despite difficulties in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, "We've also had to work very closely with Pakistan in our counter-terror efforts. More terrorists and extremists have been captured or killed in Pakistan than anyplace else."

Pakistani security officials reacted with skepticism to a U.S. assertion that bin Laden was actively engaged in directing his far-flung network from his compound in Abbottabad where he was killed on May 2.

Washington said on Saturday that, based on a trove of documents and computer equipment seized in the raid, bin Laden's hideout was an "active command and control center" for al Qaeda where he was involved in plotting future attacks on the United States.

"It sounds ridiculous," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. "It doesn't sound like he was running a terror network."

Pakistani officials said the fact that there was no internet connection or even telephone line into the compound where the world's most-wanted man was hiding raised doubts about his centrality to al Qaeda.

Analysts have long maintained that, years before bin Laden's death, al Qaeda had fragmented into a decentralized group that operated tactically without him.

"It's bullshit," said a senior Pakistani security official, when quizzed on a U.S. intelligence official's assertion that bin Laden had been "active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions" of the Islamist militant group from his hideout.

On Saturday, the White House released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound, most of them showing the al Qaeda leader, his beard dyed black, evidently rehearsing the video-taped speeches he sometimes distributed to his followers.

None of the videos was released with sound. A U.S. intelligence official said it had been removed because the United States did not want to transmit bin Laden's propaganda. But he said they contained the usual criticism of the United States as well as capitalism.

While several video segments showed him rehearsing, one showed an aging and grey-bearded bin Laden in a scruffy room, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a ski cap while watching videotapes of himself.

"This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control center for al Qaeda's top leader and it's clear ... that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group," the U.S. intelligence official said in Washington. "He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions."

 

DUELLING NARRATIVES

The duelling narratives of bin Laden reflect both Washington's and Islamabad's interests in peddling their own versions of bin Laden's hidden life behind the walls of his compound.

Stressing bin Laden's weakness makes his discovery just a few minutes' walk from a military academy less embarrassing for Pakistan, but playing up his importance makes the U.S. operation all the more victorious.

The competing claims came as senior Pakistani officials said bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for more than seven years before he was shot dead.

One of bin Laden's widows, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told investigators bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad.

Abdulfattah, along with two other wives and several children, were among 15 or 16 people detained by Pakistani authorities at the compound after the raid.

She said that before Abbottabad, bin Laden had stayed in a nearby village for nearly two-and-a-half years.

Residents of the village of Chak Shah Mohammad, at the end of a bumpy road flanked by fields of wheat, were both puzzled and a little scared to find themselves at the focus of the investigation.

"Everyone in the village knows when a cow has a calf so how could bin Laden and his family hide here?" Mohammad Naseer, a 65-year-old retired soldier, said as he took a break from working his fields. "I can say for sure he wasn't here."

The village is made up of about 120 small, brick buildings, homes and sheds, and has a population of about 400 people, although many have left for work in cities.

Pakistani security agents have been going house to house, searching for clues.

"Police never used to come to our doors but now these guys are turning up all suspicious of us," said school teacher Ahmed Sultan.

"My young kids are asking 'Dad what happened, what did you do?'" he said. "We have nothing to do with bin Laden. We're Pakistani ... We don't feel anything for him."

 

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in Chak Shah Mohammad and Chris Allbritton in Islamabad; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Rob Birsel)

    U.S. takes heat off Pakistan on bin Laden's hideout, R, 8.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-binladen-idUSTRE7410D320110508

Thousands demand reform in Morocco rally

MARRAKESH, Morocco | Sun May 8, 2011
9:47am EDT
Reuters
By Souhail Karam

MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters marched in Morocco on Sunday to demand reform in the Arab world's longest-serving dynasty and to oppose militant violence after a deadly bomb attack.

The rally in Marrakesh is the latest in a series organized by the February 20 youth movement and presents a challenge to the government of King Mohammed, which is wary that the protests could build into an Egypt-style revolt.

The march began at the Bab Doukkala gate and will go past a cafe where 17 people including eight French nationals died in a bomb attack on April 28. Authorities last week arrested three suspects and said the ringleader is loyal to al-Qaeda.

The group's north African wing, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, said on Saturday it was not responsible for the bombing that raised tension in Morocco, in part because it was the first such attack since 2003.

A government official put the number of marchers at up to 3,000 but independent reports estimated around 8,000 took part.

Protesters held signs with slogans such as: "We are for freedom and security; We oppose terrorism and intimidation." Other banners voiced opposition to corruption.

"This sort of protest must happen every day so that our country moves forward in fighting corruption," said car mechanic Abdelali Hamra, 44, as he watched the march.

"We suffer a lack of opportunities and jobs. The police must also treat us as equals," Hamra told Reuters.

"We are here today to denounce terrorism and to support these youths' demands for change. There is too much corruption and a lot of other bad things," said marcher Marie Atif, a French national resident in Marrakesh since 1993.

 

REFORMS

A separate, and much smaller, march in support of the establishment was due to cross the February 20 rally's path later, witnesses said.

The uniformed security presence at the rally was light with security forces parked on nearby side streets, but plain clothes officers could be seen writing down details of the march and speaking into cell phones, a Reuters witness said.

Officials say the fact that authorities let such rallies proceed is a testament to Morocco's status as one of the most tolerant societies in the Arab world.

Protests in Tunisia which toppled veteran leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali gathered decisive momentum when trade unions put their weight behind them, but Moroccan unions did not join Sunday's march, or a parallel one set to take place in Casablanca.

The government announced in April it would increase public sector salaries and raise the minimum wage in the latest of a series of handouts aimed at preventing any spillover from revolt in other Arab countries.

It also appointed a committee to reform the constitution in order to cede more powers, promised to make justice independent and freed some political prisoners.

 

(Writing by Matthew Bigg, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

    Thousands demand reform in Morocco rally, R, 8.7.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-morocco-protest-idUSTRE74716020110508

Was bin Laden really calling the shots? Doubts in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD | Sun May 8, 2011
9:01am EDT
Reuters
By John Chalmers

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - It didn't figure. U.S. Intelligence released footage of a grey- bearded, dishevelled figure wrapped in a shawl and wearing a woolen hat, and then it said that this same old man had been calling the shots on al Qaeda's plots around the globe.

There was doubt and derision in Pakistan on Sunday at the suggestion that Osama bin Laden's hideout north of the capital, Islamabad, was somehow an "active command and control center" for al Qaeda.

"It sounds ridiculous," said a senior intelligence official. "It doesn't sound like he was running a terror network."

For one thing, there was no internet connection or even telephone lines into the compound that U.S. commandos raided a week ago, killing the world's most-wanted man.

More critically, analysts have long maintained that, years before bin Laden's death, al Qaeda had fragmented into a decentralized group that operated tactically without him.

"It's bullshit," said another senior Pakistani security official, when quizzed on a U.S. intelligence official's assertion that bin Laden had been "active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions" of the Islamist militant group from his secret home in the town of Abbottabad.

"They will say whatever they like. I can say tomorrow that he was planning to make nuclear or chemical weapons ... Would you believe it? I think there's an element of exaggeration. They're playing it up."

A senior U.S. intelligence official said in Washington information carted away from the compound by U.S. forces after the May 2 raid, including the videos, several clips of which were released, represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.

The official said the materials showed that bin Laden had remained an active leader of al Qaeda, which made the operation that led to his death "even more essential for our nation's security."

 

TWO COUNTRIES, TWO VERSIONS

Pakistan's military, caught off guard by the Abbottabad swoop and now facing accusations that it was either too incompetent to catch bin Laden or complicit in hiding him, has sought to depict the al Qaeda leader as a man of diminished influence.

Both countries have an interest in peddling their own versions of the clout that bin Laden carried from behind the walls of his compound.

Stressing bin Laden's weakness makes his discovery in the middle of a garrison town less embarrassing for Pakistan, but playing up his importance makes the U.S. operation all the more glorious.

Analysts say that bin Laden's centrality to the network had already faded. While the man behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States served as an inspirational figure, strikes on Western targets were increasingly plotted and instigated by autonomous splinter groups.

"As a matter of leadership of terrorist operations, bin Laden has really not been the main story for some time," Paul Pillar, a former senior U.S. Intelligence official told Reuters last week.

Talat Masood, a Pakistani defense analyst and retired general, said bin Laden distributed videos occasionally and he may have passed computer disks with ideas for strikes to his couriers, but it was hard to see how that would put him at the nerve center of operations.

"The only thing he could have done in that house is to record video and audio messages," a senior security official said in Islamabad.

"How could he control the whole of al Qaeda from there while he has no communications system? How can he control the entire al Qaeda when he was living with two guards, an 18-inch television and no big weapons. It's just an exaggeration."

 

(Additional reporting by Zeehan Haider, Chris Allbritton and Kamran Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)

    Was bin Laden really calling the shots? Doubts in Pakistan, R, 8.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-binladen-plots-idUSTRE7470ZR20110508

Bin Laden directed Qaeda from Pakistan compound

WASHINGTON | Sun May 8, 2011
8:49am EDT
Reuters
By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden was actively engaged in directing his far-flung network in plots against the United States from the compound in Pakistan where he was killed, a senior U.S. intelligence official said as new video images of the al Qaeda leader were released on Saturday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said information carted away from the compound by U.S. forces after Monday's raid, represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.

"This compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control center for al Qaeda's top leader and it's clear ... that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group," the official said. "He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions."

President Barack Obama's administration released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound, most of them showing the al Qaeda leader, his beard dyed black, evidently rehearsing the videotaped speeches he sometimes distributed to his followers.

None of the videos was released with sound. The intelligence official said it had been removed because the United States did not want to transmit bin Laden's propaganda. But he said they contained the usual criticism of the United States as well as capitalism.

While several video segments showed him rehearsing, one showed an aging and gray-bearded bin Laden in an austere setting, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a ski cap while watching videotapes of himself.

The official said the personal nature of the videos was further evidence that the man killed in the raid was bin Laden, who carefully managed his public image.

The revelations came as senior Pakistani officials said bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for more than seven years before he was shot dead by U.S. Navy SEALS, a disclosure that could further strain relations between the two countries.

One of bin Laden's widows told Pakistani investigators that he stayed in a village for nearly two and a half years before moving to the nearby garrison town of Abbottabad, close to the capital of Islamabad, where he was killed.

The wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, said bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad, where one of the most elaborate manhunts in history ended on Monday.

"Amal (bin Laden's wife) told investigators that they lived in a village in Haripur district for nearly two and a half years before moving to Abbottabad at the end of 2005," one of the security officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Abdulfattah, along with two other wives and several children, were among 15 or 16 people detained by Pakistani authorities at the compound after the raid.

The senior U.S. intelligence official said bin Laden's identity had been confirmed after his death in several ways -- by a woman at the compound, by facial recognition methods and by matching against a DNA profile with a likelihood of error of only 1 in 11.8 quadrillion.

An initial review of the information taken from the compound showed bin Laden continued to be interested in attacking the United States and "appeared to show continuing interest in transportation and infrastructure targets," the official said.

 

NOT "A FIGUREHEAD"

"The materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group," the official said. "He was far from a figurehead. He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation's security."

Pakistan, heavily dependent on billions of dollars in U.S. aid, is under intense pressure to explain how bin Laden could have spent so many years undetected just a few hours drive from its intelligence headquarters in the capital.

Suspicions have deepened that Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, which has a long history of contacts with militant groups, may have had ties with bin Laden -- or that at least some of its agents did. The agency has been described as a state within a state.

Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions and says it has paid the highest price in human life and money supporting the U.S. war on militancy launched after bin Laden's followers staged the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

Security officials said Pakistan had launched an investigation into bin Laden's presence in the South Asian country seen as critical to stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan.

"It is very serious that bin Laden lived in cities (in Pakistan) ... and we couldn't nail it down fully," said one of the Pakistani officials.

The U.S. intelligence official said Washington assumed Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, was likely to assume control of the organization following bin Laden's death, but that was uncertain because he was disliked in some quarters.

"To some members of al Qaeda he's extremely controlling, is a micromanager and is not especially charismatic," the official said.

 

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in Chak Shah Mohammad, Pakistan; editing by Christopher Wilson)

    Bin Laden directed Qaeda from Pakistan compound, R, 8.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-obama-statement-idUSTRE74107920110508

Women Against the Hangman

May 7, 2011
The New York Times
By ROGER COHEN

Benghazi, Libya

Amal Abdullah-Ali is 44, so she has known only two years without Muammar el-Qaddafi, and one effect on her of his life-draining 42-year Libyan dictatorship has been that she “never wanted to give birth in this rubbish country.”

She looked at me hard through thick glasses, the childbearing half of her life lost in Qaddafi’s grim labyrinth. When she was in high school, she had to read his Green Book, which lauds the masses in a state that tramples the masses. In college, her class was taken to see people Qaddafi had hanged — pour encourager les autres.

“He’s tried to change everything, even our memory,” she said. “Now we win or we die.”

People ask: Who are the Libyan “rebels”? Who are the people who now control the eastern part of the country, and besieged western pockets, and battle to wrest Libya from Qaddafi’s brutal hired hands? They are women like Abdullah-Ali, a teacher, people who want a state where, in the words of her cousin Farija Mohamed, “The walls don’t have ears.”

In Tehran, where in 2009 they prodded more cowardly men to face down the regime’s thugs, and in Tunis and Cairo, where they were at the barricades, I’ve watched brave Muslim women who, like the majority of people across the Middle East today, seek a balance between faith and modernity — embracing both, denying neither. It’s not the West or the Islamist anti-West they want. It’s their own expression of a decent society where a child has a future.

Qaddafi’s Libya is a rubbish country. With oil and gas and a small population, it might have been Dubai. Instead, Benghazi makes Lagos look gleaming. The only recent construction I saw in the east was transmitter towers for the two cellphone companies controlled by one of the despot’s squabbling sons. Every institution has been dismembered for the dictator’s whimsical pleasure. Dust and debris and decay dot the eastern Libya he distrusted. One name alone exists, that of the leader whose book, to Libyans, was black.

We were seated in Mohamed’s apartment, with her 14-year-old daughter Najjije, who said she was happy she would not have to study the Green Book. Her dark hair curled around her bright-eyed face. Her mother, elegant and straight-backed in her headscarf, said she was having some issues: Najjije was refusing to cover her head.

“She tells me, ‘No, forget about it.’ ”

Najjije smiled, yep that’s true. No way she will wear a headscarf, although all her friends now do, except one. Would her mother insist? It would, Mohamed said, be better for her daughter to find her own way to what was appropriate.

Eastern Libya, beneath its new-old tricolor flag, is a rather wondrous place, a tabula rasa where everyone is trying to make their way to what is right. One thing about a personality cult is that when the personality goes there’s nothing left.

Bullets and shrapnel pockmark the walls less than 20 miles south of Benghazi, the point at which NATO’s bombardment stopped Qaddafi’s advance in March. It’s imperative now to finish the job, use every military, diplomatic and economic pressure to oust Qaddafi. So that Najjije and her generation are not poisoned by the Green Book.

“When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say,” President Obama said of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Good strong words — and equally applicable, I’d say, to the tyrant behind the downing of Pan Am 103.

Amal Obeidi is a social scientist trying to conjure up the society that will fill the blank. She’s helping coordinate committees of academics and professionals — on a post-Qaddafi transition, the economy, media, security, oil. Despite the chaos, the vacuum, people are excited, she told me. “They have nothing to lose.”

With a doctorate from a British university, Obeidi, a bundle of energy, has emerged as an important figure. She once worked on a project that Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the dictator’s most ambitious son, had for a new constitution offering — of all things — some basic rights. Seif al-Islam means sword of Islam. She now calls him “Sword of empty dreams.” He’s the loser who imagined his father’s megalomania had bounds.

Obeidi had to make a speech recently outside the Benghazi courthouse that is a symbol of Libya’s uprising for a state of laws. A friend advised her to wear a headscarf. She declined. This is a transition period. It’s important to make some things clear. One, for Obeidi, is: Accept women as they are, with a veil or not.

A great mystery of the Arab world has been its immobility. All these women, in different ways, are saying, “It’s time for us, it’s our turn, our turn to have a say over our lives.” Time for the West to ditch the binary thinking that saw only terror or antiterror, Western values or Islamism, and so contributed to the dictators’ lockdown. Time to make sure Najjije keeps that smile and the hangman departs.

    Women Against the Hangman, G, 7.5.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/08cohen.html

At least five dead in Egyptian sectarian clash

CAIRO | Sat May 7, 2011
7:23pm EDT
Reuters


CAIRO (Reuters) - At least five people were killed in a sectarian clash in Egypt on Saturday over a Christian woman who allegedly had converted to Islam, according to officials.

Interfaith relationships often cause tension in Egypt, where Christians make up about 10 percent of its 80 million people.

The strife represents another challenge to Egypt's military rulers who are trying to restore law and order after President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down in a popular uprising in February.

Witnesses said some 500 conservative Islamists known as salafists gathered at the Saint Mina Church in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba demanding to take custody of a woman they said had converted to Islam.

A shouting match ensued between church guards and neighbors and the Islamists. The verbal clash developed into a full-fledged confrontation during which the two sides exchanged gunfire, firebombs and stones.

"I just left one young man dead inside the church," one Christian witness told journalists at the scene.

Authorities deployed large numbers of soldiers and police, backed by armored vehicles, to the area. The army fired shots in the air and used teargas to separate both sides, witnesses said.

A security source put the death toll at six and said 75 had been wounded, according to the state MENA news agency. The director of the health department in Giza province, Abdel-Halim al-Behairi said five had died and 54 had been wounded. He told MENA that three of the wounded were in serious condition.

A Reuters witness said later that another church in the same area was on fire and had been severely damaged. There were no reports of any further casualties.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa, a senior Islamic religious figure, called for calm.

"All Egyptians must stand shoulder to shoulder and prevent strife," he told MENA.

He also urged the military council to stop anyone from meddling with the security of Egypt.

Christians complain about unfair treatment, including rules they say make it easier to build a mosque than a church.

Last year Egypt saw more than its usual share of sectarian strife, and a rights groups has said such clashes have been on the rise. Muslims and Christians had been brought together during the protests that ousted Mubarak.

 

(Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Michael Roddy)

    At least five dead in Egyptian sectarian clash, R, 7.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/07/us-egypt-church-idUSTRE7462QG20110507

Syria army attacks Banias, raising sectarian tension

AMMAN | Sat May 7, 2011
4:07pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian forces shot dead six civilians in an attack on Sunni districts in the mixed city of Banias on Saturday, rights campaigners said, raising sectarian tension in a country gripped by pro-democracy protests.

The attack came hours after the United States, reacting to the death of 27 protesters on Friday, threatened to take new steps against Syria's rulers, who are from the Alawite sect.

Banias has seen some of the most persistent demonstrations since unrest first erupted in the southern city of Deraa seven weeks ago, with activists calling for political freedom and an end to corruption.

Rights group Sawasiah said the number of civilians killed in the violence across the country had reached 800, a figure disputed by the government.

Army units with tanks entered Banias, a Mediterranean coastal city of 50,000 people, from several directions, advancing into Sunni districts but not Alawite neighbourhoods, the human rights campaigners said. Banias is around 70 percent Sunni Muslim and 30 percent Alawite.

Four women were killed when soldiers fired at a small all-women protest marching on the main coastal highway from Marqab village near Banias, they added.

"Residents are hearing the sound of shelling and heavy machineguns," one of the human rights campaigners said.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London, earlier told Reuters regular and special army units were in the city.

"They are conducting search operation in several areas. The army has lists and is looking for people based on it," he said.

Most phone and Internet communication with Banias has been cut but the campaigners said they were able to contact several residents.

Sawasiah said the authorities had intensified a clampdown on communication networks to disrupt the flow of information about their "bloody repression of non-violent demonstrators."

Mobile 3G Internet services by the country's two operators has been cut in Damascus as well since Friday, Sawasiah said.

Syrian tycoon Rami Makhlouf, Assad's cousin, owns the country's largest operator Syriatel, while South African group MTN controls the second operator.

Syrian authorities have banned foreign media from reporting from the country.

Syrian forces earlier raided Marqab, arresting scores of men, women and teenagers, the Observatory said.

State authorities said Banias was a "center of Salafist terrorism" and that armed groups had killed soldiers near the city. Salafism is an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam.

Civic leaders in Banias denied the accusation and said the government was trying to spread fear among Alawites, who occupy most senior positions in the army and security apparatus.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said the protesters are part of a foreign conspiracy to cause sectarian strife.

His father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled for 30 years until his death in 2000, brutally suppressed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982 in which around 30,000 people were killed.

INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS

International criticism has increased against Assad, who is trying to preserve his family's 41-year-old grip on power in the country of 20 million people.

European Union governments agreed on Friday to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on up to 14 Syrian officials, alongside other sanctions, in response to Assad's violent crackdown.

The United States also imposed sanctions against figures in the Syrian government last week. On Friday it threatened to step up pressure to try to stop the violence.

Syrian officials give a lower death toll from the unrest and say half the fatalities have been soldiers and police, blaming "armed terrorist groups." They say demonstrators are few in number and do not represent the majority of Syrians.

The state news agency SANA said on Saturday that "terrorist groups" had killed 11 soldiers and policemen in Homs, listing the names of those dead.

Security forces killed four protesters in Deir al-Zor on Friday, a local tribal leader said, the first deaths reported from the region that produces most of Syria's 380,000 barrels per day of oil.

A Western diplomat said 7,000 people had been arrested since mid-March.

 

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

    Syria army attacks Banias, raising sectarian tension, R, 7.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/07/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110507

U.S. drones kill 17 in NW Pakistan; protests over bin Laden

ISLAMABAD | Fri May 6, 2011
1:49pm EDT
Reuters
By Augustine Anthony

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles into a house in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Friday, killing at least 17 suspected militants as Islamists protested against the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Four drones took part in the first such attack since U.S. special forces killed the al Qaeda leader on Monday not far from Islamabad, further straining ties between the strategic allies whose cooperation is needed to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.

Facing relentless suicide bombings by Islamic militants and struggling with a stagnant economy, Pakistan's leaders now face criticism from all sides on bin Laden.

Both Islamists and ordinary Pakistanis are questioning how their leaders can just stand by while the United States sends commandos deep inside the country into a garrison city to eliminate the al Qaeda chief.

At the same time, suspicions that some Pakistani security forces might have known he was hiding in the country threaten to strain already uneasy ties with Washington.

"The country's political and military leadership should immediately resign as they have failed to ensure the country's integrity," said Fareed Ahmed Paracha, a senior leader of the biggest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore.

"This is an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty," said Paracha of the raid by Navy SEALS that ended one of the most extensive manhunts in history.

Pre-dominantly Muslim Pakistan has yet to see any major backlash since bin Laden's killing, but is death has angered Islamists.

About 1,500 Islamists demonstrated near the city of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province in the southwest, saying more figures like bin Laden would arise to wage holy war against the United States.

"Jihad (holy war) against America will not stop with the death of Osama," Fazal Mohammad Baraich, a cleric, said amid shouts of "Down with America."

"Osama bin Laden is a shaheed (martyr). The blood of Osama will give birth to thousands of other Osamas."

In Abbottabad, where the U.S. operation took place, dozens of Islamists marched through streets calling on the United States to stay out of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"America is the world's biggest terrorist," read one placard.

Small protests were also held in the cities of Multan, Hyderabad and Abbottabad.

Anti-American sentiment runs high here, despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid for nuclear-armed, Pakistan.

Pakistan's religious parties have not traditionally done well at the ballot box, but they wield considerable influence on the streets of a country where Islam is becoming more radicalized.

The U.S. war on militancy is unpopular in Pakistan because of the perception of high civilian deaths from drone attacks against suspected militants along the Afghan border and the feeling they are a violation of the country's sovereignty.

The Pakistani government said bin Laden's death was a milestone in the fight against militancy although it objected to the raid as a violation of sovereignty.

Pakistan has denied any knowledge of his whereabouts and the army threatened on Thursday to cut intelligence and military cooperation with the United States if it mounted more attacks.

Some Pakistanis are too overwhelmed by the daily grind in a politically and economically unstable nation that offers poor government services and education, to react to the fact that the world's most wanted man was living here for years undetected.

"This is just another instance of us becoming insensitive to all the chaos around us as a nation, and Osama's death is just another day, another incident for us," said Jibran Jawaid, a film producer in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi.

"Frankly, when people are so worried about high food prices, no power, security and everything, they cannot be blamed for being insensitive. A roti (bread) costs so much, bombs go off every now and then, people are robbed daily, so should they worry about that or the U.S. raid?"

 

(Reporting by Gul Yousafzai in Quetta, Haji Mujtaba in North Waziristan, Kamran Haider in Abbottabad and Faisal Aziz in Karachi; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Michael Georgy)

    U.S. drones kill 17 in NW Pakistan; protests over bin Laden, R, 6.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-binladen-pakistan-protest-idUSTRE7453UQ20110506

Timeline: Violence in Syria

Fri May 6, 2011
6:11am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Here is a timeline of events in Syria since protests started in March.

March 16 - Security forces break up a silent gathering in Marjeh square in Damascus of about 150 protesters holding up pictures of imprisoned relatives and friends. Witnesses say at least 30 people are arrested.

March 18 - Security forces kill three protesters in southern Deraa city on the Jordanian border, residents say.

March 20 - Crowds set fire to the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party in Deraa, residents say.

March 23 - Syrian forces kill six people in an attack on protesters in the Omari mosque in Deraa and later open fire on hundreds of youths marching in solidarity.

-- An official statement says President Bashar al-Assad has sacked Deraa regional governor Faisal Kalthoum.

March 24 - Assad orders the formation of a committee to raise living standards and study lifting the law covering emergency rule, in place for 48 years.

March 25 - At least 200 people march in Damascus. In Deraa, thousands march at funerals for some of the dead, chanting "freedom." Hundreds of people chant "freedom" in Hama, where in 1982 thousands were killed in a crackdown on Islamists.

March 27 - Assad sends troops to Latakia.

March 29 - Government resigns. Assad appoints Naji al-Otari, head of the government that stepped down, as caretaker prime minister.

March 30 - Assad says a minority of people tried to "spark chaos" in Deraa. Security forces have been told not to harm anyone during the protests, he tells parliament in his first public comments since protests erupted.

March 31 - Assad sets up a committee to look into replacing the emergency law with anti-terrorism legislation.

April 3 - Thousands call for freedom at funeral of 8 protesters. Assad appoints former agriculture minister to form new government.

April 8 - Protests erupt across Syria, sources say 22 people are killed in Deraa. In the east, thousands of ethnic Kurds demonstrate for reform.

April 9 - A Syrian rights group accuses security forces of committing a crime against humanity by killing at least 37 people during Friday's nationwide demonstrations.

April 14 - Assad unveils a new cabinet and orders the release of detainees arrested during a month of protests.

April 19 - Government passes bill lifting emergency rule.

April 21 - Assad ratifies the law ending emergency rule.

April 22 - Security forces and gunmen loyal to Assad kill at least 100 protesters, rights group says.

April 23 - Security forces fire on mourners calling for the end of Assad's rule at mass funerals of pro-democracy protesters shot a day earlier, killing at least 12 people.

April 25 - Troops and tanks pour into Deraa, killing more than 20 in effort to crush resistance.

April 29 - The United States imposes new sanctions on figures including Assad's cousin Atif Najib and his brother Maher, who commands the army division which stormed into Deraa.

-- Rights group Sawasiah says 62 killed during protests in Deraa, Latakia, Homs and the town of Qadam, near Damascus.

-- In Rastan security forces kill 17 demonstrators, residents say. Some 50 members of the ruling Baath Party resign, according to a human rights activist.

April 30 - Sawasiah says security forces have killed at least 560 civilians since protests started.

May 2 - Human rights campaigner Diana Jawabra arrested for a second time.

May 3 - Security forces take control of the coastal city of Banias, where demonstrators have challenged Assad.

-- Hundreds of Syrians including activists and community leaders, have been charged with "maligning the prestige of the state," a Syrian rights group says.

May 4 - Tanks and armored personnel carriers deploy around the town of Rastan, witnesses say. Army units also set up checkpoints in Sunni districts in Banias.

May 5 - Army units begin withdrawing from Deraa after 10 days. Armed troops also deploy in the Damascus suburb of Erbin and in the town of Tel, where security forces have arrested at least 80 people, Sawasiah says.

-- Wissam Tarif, executive director of the Insan human rights group says at least 260 people have been detained in Saqba and more than 800 people in Deraa.

 

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit,

    Timeline: Violence in Syria, R, 6.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/06/us-syria-events-idUSTRE74357220110506

Bin Laden killing highlights perils deep inside Pakistan

ISLAMABAD | Wed May 4, 2011
9:55am EDT
Reuters
By Michael Georgy

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - It is saddled with a feckless government, dogged by poverty and corruption and now, with the revelation that the world's most-wanted man was holed up in its backyard, Pakistan looks more like a failed state than ever.

Pressed into an alliance with the United States in its "war on terror" days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, nuclear-armed Pakistan has never been able to shake off doubts about its commitment to the battle against Islamist militancy.

When U.S. Special Forces killed Osama bin Laden in a dramatic helicopter raid on Monday, it turned out that -- contrary to popular imagination -- the al Qaeda leader had not been hiding in a mountain cave along the violence-plagued border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an area U.S. President Barack Obama once described as "the most dangerous place in the world".

He had in fact been living in a respectable townhouse a two-hour drive up the road from Islamabad and a short walk from a military academy that counts among its alumni the army chief.

The government denies it knew where bin Laden was, but for many the discovery will only confirms Pakistan's reputation as "al Qaeda central".

"Pakistan is truly at the epicenter of global terrorism," Lisa Curtis, senior researcher on South Asia at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a paper on bin Laden's killing.

The suspicion that Pakistani security agents might have been playing a double game, shielding bin Laden from the world's biggest manhunt have led to calls for punishment.

"Perhaps the time has come to declare it a terrorist state and expel it from the comity of nations," British-Indian author Salman Rushdie wrote of Pakistan in a column this week.

 

PROBLEMS FROM BIRTH OF THE NATION

Pakistan is beset by a host of problems, some of which have bedeviled it since the bloody partition of British-ruled India and its independence in 1947 as a home for South Asia's Muslims.

Its economy is propped up with an International Monetary Fund loan and about a third of its people live in poverty.

Levels of literacy and education are dire, especially for women. So-called ghost schools, with no teachers or children and corrupt officials pocketing the budget, are rife.

Violent religious conservatism is becoming more mainstream: this year alone two senior officials have been assassinated for challenging a law the stipulates death for insulting Islam.

Pakistan's population -- at 170 million the world's sixth-largest -- is growing at more than 2 percent a year. The threat of environmental catastrophe such as water shortages, especially in the longer term when glaciers melt in the Himalayas and rivers run dry, raise a nightmare scenario of deprivation.

All the while, a venal elite defends its privileges, squabbling politicians enrich themselves and the army, which has ruled for more than half of the country's 64-year history, looms over public life with the prospect of intervention a constant.

But it is the cocktail of Islamist militants and nuclear weapons that raises the biggest fears around the world.

Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, days after arch-rival India conducted tests, and it now has what experts believe is the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal with about 80 bombs, material for scores more, and a range of missiles to deliver them.

Former CIA official Bruce Riedel wrote in a piece in the Wall Street Journal last month that Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear warheads is on track to become the fourth-largest in the world by the end of the decade, behind only the United States, Russia and China.

 

INDIA OBSESSION

Compounding fears of what its enemies see as a loose-cannon nuclear power, the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed in 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Khan was pardoned by the government, although placed under house arrest for five years, leading to suspicions of official complicity in the world's most serious proliferation scandal.

The government and military denied any involvement in the proliferation ring and they regularly reject concern over the security of the country's nuclear weapons program.

At the heart of many of Pakistan's woes, and its support over three decades for Islamist militants, is its rivalry with India. The two countries have gone to war three times since their partition after World War Two.

Pakistan, along with the United States and Saudi Arabia, nurtured the Islamist fighters, including bin Laden, who drove Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Since its creation, Pakistan has seen a friendly Afghanistan -- into which its forces could withdraw in the event of an invasion by a much bigger Indian army -- as a central plank of national security.

That, too, was the reason for its support of the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s: the perceived necessity of a friendly, ethnic Pashtun-dominated Taliban government in Kabul rather than one led by pro-Indian north Afghan factions.

Even today, nearly 10 years after signing up to the U.S. campaign against militancy, Pakistan is refusing to move against Taliban factions based on its side of the border because of its fear of an Indian-dominated Afghanistan.

Similarly, Pakistan for years nurtured militants fighting Indian forces in its part of the Kashmir region, the source of most bitterness between the neighbors since their independence.

It is conceivable that bin Laden was protected by Pakistan's security service, not because of any support for his vision of global holy war, but because bin Laden might have been seen as a valuable asset, like an ace to play, in the event of a show-down with India.

All this does not necessarily mean the country is failing, said Pakistani security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi.

"Pakistan can't be described as a terrorist state. The problem is that there are people who are sympathetic to militants," he said.

"The state of mind that has been created in Pakistan is a problem and the military has a role in it but Pakistan has the capacity to overcome this."

 

AFGHAN CONDUIT

Pakistan's role in bin Laden's killing remains murky.

The United States has hinted at Pakistani help in tracking bin Laden down, but said the country's security agencies were kept in the dark about the operation to kill him because of fear the al Qaeda leader would have been tipped off.

Pakistan has given similar mixed signals, denying knowledge of the raid but saying Pakistan's main security agency had been passing on information to the CIA about the bin Laden compound since 2009.

Pakistani political analyst Mosharraf Zaidi said both Islamabad and Washington appeared to be making a coordinated effort to create the impression Pakistan was kept in the dark.

That would provide Pakistan with "plausible deniability" in the event of a public backlash over bin Laden's killing.

"That bin Laden was alive and well till May 1 because the Pakistanis were helping him, and that he is dead and buried, because the Pakistanis helped kill him - both can be simultaneously true. And they probably are," Zaidi wrote in an commentary this week.

The full truth may never be known but, for now at least, the United States needs Pakistan's help to bring the Afghan war to some sort of conclusion as it heads toward the start of a troop drawdown this summer.

Let alone its influence over the Taliban, Pakistan is the conduit for a large volume of supplies going to U.S. forces in landlocked Afghanistan -- from drinking water to food and fuel.

In the event of a complete breakdown in relations with the United States over bin Laden, which looks unlikely, Pakistan can always count on fair-weather ally China for support.

And despite the predictions of its imminent implosion, Pakistan will probably muddle through this crisis, as it has every other crisis since its formation.

There's even cause for some hope after the dust settles from bin Laden's killing.

Talks with India are back on, though no breakthroughs are expected, and a government that has been in power since 2008 has bolstered its position with a new coalition partner and could become Pakistan's first-ever civilian government to complete a full term.

Despite signs of growing intolerance in society, there is at least some hope that the security agencies, locked in a bloody struggle with Pakistani Taliban militants, are beginning to realize the danger of courting extremism.

realize "It will take some doing to dismantle it," Zaidi said of Pakistan's militant infrastructure, or "second-line of defense" against India.

"Religious zeal was easy to inject into the Pakistani bloodstream, it will be difficult to extract. The process cannot and must not be rushed."

Rizvi said the security establishment had to decide whether militants would be given free rein or suppressed.

"The future of Pakistan, honestly speaking, is to me uncertain. But in my opinion, Pakistan will neither be declared a failed state or a terrorist state. It is a state mired in difficulties and problems."

 

(Writing by Rob Birsel; Editing by John Chalmers)

    Bin Laden killing highlights perils deep inside Pakistan, R, 4.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/04/us-binladen-pakistan-idUSTRE7432Z120110504

Pakistan denies sheltering bin Laden amid U.S. doubts

WASHINGTON/ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan | Tue May 3, 2011
1:11pm EDT
Reuters
By Mark Hosenball and Kamran Haider

WASHINGTON/ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's president on Tuesday denied suggestions that his government may have sheltered Osama bin Laden but admitted his security forces were left out of a U.S. raid to kill the al Qaeda chief.

U.S. officials kept Pakistani authorities in the dark out of concern that they might "alert the targets" and jeopardize the special forces assault on Monday that ended a long manhunt for bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Time magazine.

The revelation that bin Laden had holed up in a luxury compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, possibly for five to six years, prompted many U.S. lawmakers to demand a review of the billions of dollars in aid Washington gives to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, issuing his first response to questions about how the world's most-wanted militant was able to live for so long in comfort and undetected near Islamabad, did little to dispel suspicions.

"Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing," Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. "Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn't reflect fact."

It was the first substantive public comment by any Pakistani leader on the airborne raid by U.S. forces on bin Laden's compound that brought to an end a long manhunt for the al Qaeda chief who had become the face of Islamic militancy.

Pakistan has faced enormous international scrutiny since bin Laden was killed, with questions over whether its military and intelligence agencies were too incompetent to catch him, or knew all along where he was hiding and even whether they had been complicit.

Reflecting U.S.-Pakistani relations strained by years of mistrust, Islamabad was kept in the dark about the raid until after all U.S. aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.

Pakistan denied any prior knowledge of the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden, but said it had been sharing information about the targeted compound with the CIA since 2009.

While Islamabad hailed the killing of bin Laden as an important milestone in the fight against terrorism, Pakistan's foreign ministry said it had expressed "deep concerns" that the operation was carried out without informing it in advance.

"He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone," Zardari wrote, without offering further defense against accusations his security services should have known where bin Laden was hiding.

"Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world."

Facing pressure to produce absolute confirmation of bin Laden's demise, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said the United States was considering whether to release photographs and video taken during the raid as proof that bin Laden had died in the raid.

The Afghan Taliban on Tuesday challenged the truth of bin Laden's death, saying Washington had not provided "acceptable evidence to back up their claim" that he had been killed. They also said aides to bin Laden had not confirmed or denied his death.

 

(Reporting by Reuters bureau worldwide; Writing by Dean Yates and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by John Chalmers and Jackie Frank)

    Pakistan denies sheltering bin Laden amid U.S. doubts, 3.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/03/us-obama-statement-idUSTRE74107920110503

Gaddafi's son mourned, NATO hits Misrata outskirts

TRIPOLI | Mon May 2, 2011
1:54pm EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Crowds chanting support for Muammar Gaddafi gathered in Tripoli on Monday for the funeral of his son, killed in a NATO air strike that has raised questions about the West's role in the uprising against the Libyan leader.

Gaddafi's forces halted their bombardment of the port in the rebel-held city of Misrata after NATO air strikes but the port remained closed, a rebel spokesman said, thwarting efforts to bring supplies in by sea to the besieged city.

NATO planes also struck overnight on positions held by Libyan government forces near the rebel-held town of Zintan.

The developments highlighted the reliance of the faltering rebel movement on military backing from the West. But Saturday's NATO air raid on a Gaddafi compound, which the government says killed his 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab and three young grandchildren, added a new twist.

The announcement of the deaths triggered attacks by angry crowds on the British and French embassies and the U.S. diplomatic mission in Tripoli, and accusations from the Libyan officials that NATO had been trying to assassinate Gaddafi.

About 2,000 people carrying flags and pictures of Gaddafi turned out for the funeral. They pumped their fists in the air and vowed to avenge the death of Saif al-Arab.

"We are all with Gaddafi's Libya," read one placard.

Saif al-Arab's coffin, covered in flowers and wrapped in the green flag that has represented Libya since Gaddafi took power in a 1969 coup, was carried through the crowds to the grave at Hani cemetery in the Libyan capital.

Gaddafi did not appear to be at the funeral but Saif al-Islam, the most prominent of his seven sons, attended along with his elder half-brother Mohammed.

Saif al-Arab had no children but three of his nieces and nephews, all under three years old, were killed in Saturday's blast, the government says. They were the children of Saif al-Arab's siblings Hannibal, Aisha and Mohammed Gaddafi.

EXCEEDING THE MANDATE?

Despite denials from Western leaders that the air raid was an assassination attempt on Gaddafi, it has provoked renewed debate on whether the British and French-led strikes are exceeding a United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

South Africa, which has led an African peace plan, condemned the attack and said the U.N. resolution which authorized air strikes did not cover the assassination of individuals.

"The attacks on leaders and officials can only result in the escalation of tensions and conflicts on all sides and make future reconciliation difficult," it said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said NATO would intensify military operations in Libya.

"Time is not on the side of the Gaddafi regime," he said during a visit to Cairo. "The policy is to continue to increase pressure on the Gaddafi regime -- diplomatic, economic and military pressure. We have increased the pace of the military operations under U.N. resolution 1973 and will go on doing so."

Britain's Independent newspaper said the air strike was a strategic error and gave the impression that the conflict was a confrontation between Gaddafi and the West.

"They leave the Libyan opposition looking helpless on the sidelines. That turns an internal revolt against a vicious dictator into another Western military adventure," it said.

The Times, however, said NATO must step up its attacks on command and control centers despite the risks: "This is a war that cannot be allowed to drag on."

Libya's deputy foreign minister said Saturday's attack was the fourth attempt on Gaddafi's life. NATO jets struck near the state television building earlier the same day, as Gaddafi gave what was billed as a live address in which he called for peace.

The television image flickered with each blast and Gaddafi left abruptly at the end, taking off his microphone and walking out as the camera rolled.

News that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. special forces in a raid in Pakistan on Monday may also give the Gaddafi camp pause for thought.

Libyan officials had no comment on the bin Laden killing but a rebel spokesman said Gaddafi should face the same fate.

"We are very happy and we are waiting for the next step. We want the Americans to do the same to Gaddafi," Colonel Ahmed Bani said in Benghazi.

MISRATA UNDER FIRE

Misrata, which has become a bloody symbol of resistance to the leader, weathered renewed bombardments early on Monday but a rebel spokesman said these ceased after NATO air strikes.

"There were strikes by NATO on the outskirts of the city today at around midday (1000 GMT)," the spokesman, called Reda, told Reuters by telephone. "The port is still closed. Gaddafi's forces bombarded it earlier today. The bombardment has now stopped."

Rocket barrages hit the port area on Sunday as an aid ship was trying to unload. Libyan state television said it was shelled to stop NATO from delivering weapons to the insurgents.

An aid ship was still waiting off the coast of Misrata for bombing to stop and mines to be cleared before trying to deliver supplies and evacuate some 1,000 foreigners and wounded Libyans, the International Organization for Migration said.

At least one mine was still visible between the ship and the port, IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said in Geneva.

Rights groups say hundreds of people, including many civilians, have been killed in Misrata, about 200 km (120 miles) east of Tripoli. Officials in Tripoli deny targeting civilians, and say they are fighting armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathizers.

Meanwhile people in the besieged rebel town of Yafran, about 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Tripoli, are running out of food, drinking water and medical supplies, residents said.

Fatma Douri, 35, arrived with her family two days ago at a refugee camp in the Tunisian border town of Dehiba after fleeing Yafran.

"If I had stayed there my two little daughters would have been among the dead," she said. "Just imagine, they were without milk or food for weeks."

Massoud Chaben said he had come from Yafran to buy fuel and food in Dehiba.

"The situation is miserable. There isn't even any drinking water," he said.

Western Mountain rebels seized control of the Dehiba-Wazin border crossing at the weekend from government forces, allowing some supplies to reach rebel towns. On Monday the green, black and red rebel flag was flying over the border post.

 

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara and Abdelaziz Boumzar in Dehiba, Deepa Babington and Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Maher Nazeh and Larbi Louafi in Tripoli, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Mariam Karouny in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Angus MacSwan; editing by Andrew Roche)

    Gaddafi's son mourned, NATO hits Misrata outskirts, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110502

Security forces arrest hundreds across Syria

AMMAN | Mon May 2, 2011
1:17pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian security forces going house to house rounded up more people in a clampdown on pro-democracy unrest across the country on Monday, rights activists said, after taking control of Deraa, cradle of the uprising.

Human rights campaigners said hundreds of pro-democracy sympathizers had been arrested since Sunday in an attempt to quell the six-week-old revolt, the gravest challenge ever to the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

"They are continuing their arrest operation in all the cities of Syria. They have lists and they are going into houses looking for people," activist Ammar Qurabi told Reuters.

"These are arbitrary arrests, it is happening without a warrant. We do not know what their charges are. Nobody knows."

Looking for men under 40 years old, security forces broke into houses in the old quarter of Deraa that a tank-backed force led by Assad's brother Maher shelled into submission on Saturday, witnesses told Reuters by telephone on Sunday.

The state news agency SANA said on Monday army units tracked down "terrorist groups that have terrorized civilians (in Deraa)...and killed 10 of its members and arrested 499 of them."

SANA quoted an army source as saying that in addition to the 10 dead, security forces also killed five snipers who were shooting at pedestrians. The source told SANA that two members of the security forces were also killed in clashes.

Syrian protesters deny that they have weapons and are using them in the unrest, targeting 48 years of Baath Party domination in Syria and inspired by other popular Arab revolts that have overthrown the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt this year.

Prominent rights campaigners were also arrested in the eastern cities of Qamishli, Raqqa and in suburbs of Damascus, along with scores of ordinary Syrians active in the mass protests demanding political freedoms and an end to corruption.

Qurabi said the security forces arrested writer Omar Khoush upon his return from Ankara. The reasons were not clear, he said.

CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL AT 560--RIGHTS GROUPS

Syrians kept up protests despite the arrests and violent repression that has resulted in the killing of at least 560 civilians by Assad's security forces, human rights groups say.

In the central city of Homs, thousands marched on Sunday chanting "downfall of the regime!"

In Rastan to the north, a funeral was held for 17 men killed when military intelligence agents fired at a protest on Friday during which the names of 50 resigning members of Assad's Baath Party were being read out.

Signs of discontent have been also emerging in the majority Sunni Muslim ranks of the army commanded by officers from the minority Alawite sect, to which the Assad family belongs.

Two thousand Kurds in the village of Karbawi near Qamishli attended the funeral of 20-year-old conscript Ahmad Fanar Mustafa. His father accused security forces of killing him for refusing to take part in the repression.

Fanar Mustafa refused to let the governor of the province attend the funeral of his son. "They kill and then they want to march in the funeral of the murdered," the father was quoted as saying by a witness at the funeral.

In Deraa, where the protests first broke out on March 18, a witness said young men in the old quarter fled to safety in neighboring villages to the west as security forces dragged 450 men under the age of 40 from their homes.

The witness, a trader who ducked Syrian security and crossed into the Jordanian city of Ramtha on Sunday, said the authorities were cleaning Deraa of blood from dozens of youths killed by machinegun fire.

Security forces drove away two trucks with the bodies of 68 civilians killed since Assad sent tanks into Deraa on Monday.

"Bullets are their response to the people's revolt. The security forces who came to Deraa told us 'Go buy bread from a bakery called Freedom. Let's see if it feeds you'," said a prominent lawyer in Deraa who declined to be identified further.

Foreign media are banned from Syria, making it harder to confirm accounts of events in the country.

 

(Writing by Mariam Karouny; additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi;
editing by Mark Heinrich)

    Security forces arrest hundreds across Syria, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110502

In Bin Laden’s Death, a Critical Moment for the Arab World

May 2, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

In the early days of the Arab Spring, President Obama frequently told his aides that the movement sweeping from Cairo to Yemen — one place where Al Qaeda found its intellectual roots, the other where it has taken refuge — created what he called an “alternative narrative” for a disaffected generation.

There were no pictures of Osama bin Laden being paraded through the streets, he noted. Nor were there chants of “Death to America.” The question now is whether Bin Laden’s death at the hands of American Special Forces and the C.I.A. spurs the movement to promote democracy in the region or — a very real alternative — fuels the Islamist forces now trying to fill the new power vacuum in the Arab world.

The White House, not surprisingly, argued late Sunday evening that the killing of Bin Laden came at just the crucial moment, when the Arab world was turning its back on Al Qaeda’s ideology.

“It’s important to note that it is most fitting that Bin Laden’s death comes at a time of great movement towards freedom and democracy that is sweeping the Arab world,” one of Mr. Obama’s national security aides told reporters in a telephone call late Sunday night, after the spectacular raid on Bin Laden’s high-walled compound was over. “He stood in direct opposition to what the greatest men and women throughout the Middle East and North Africa are risking their lives for: individual rights and human dignity.”

If the Obama White House proves right in its interpretation of events, the death of Al Qaeda’s leader will represent far more than simply bringing to justice the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It would underscore the argument that Al Qaeda’s pathway to change in the Middle East — through violence — never unseated a single dictator and never brought real change. For that reason, Al Qaeda’s appeal was already fading before Bin Laden met his end.

It could also mark the beginning of a new era in which the global war on terror, as the Bush administration called it, no longer remains the raison d’être of American foreign policy, as it has been since the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. For years, America’s relationships with the world were measured almost entirely by Washington’s judgment about whether countries were helping or impeding that war. As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to change that, even while pursuing a counterterrorism strategy — and the hunt for Bin Laden — relentlessly.

But until now, Mr. Obama’s hopes of steering America in a radically different direction amounted to more aspiration than plan. He has tried to refocus American attention toward Asia, where the country’s economic future lies, and pursue a striking agenda to vastly reduce the role of nuclear weapons around the world. But those efforts were always subsumed by the leftover issues of the “legacy wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq: the 30,000-troop “surge” in Afghanistan to keep the country from becoming a Qaeda haven again; the failed effort to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the plunge in the testy relationship with a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The Arab Spring added a confusing new element, as Washington sought to guide events that promised a new relationship with a region that was casting off its dictators and, perhaps, on the cusp of embracing some form of democracy. But as the more candid of Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged, it is a movement that, at its core, is out of Washington’s control.

Now, the elimination of the central symbol of Al Qaeda offers a new opportunity for Mr. Obama to argue that the group no longer needs to be a fixation of American policy. “Until now, we’ve done a good job of disrupting Al Qaeda,” one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers said this year, as the intelligence agencies were secretly zeroing in on the luxurious compound in the suburbs of Islamabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden was killed. “We’re still not at ‘dismantle,’ and certainly not at ‘defeat.’ ”

Today, Mr. Obama can argue he is closer to both those goals. In fact, his aides contended on Sunday evening that Bin Laden’s presumed successors, including Ayman al-Zawahri, have none of his charisma and appeal, and that his death will lead to a fracturing of the organization. The decision to bury Bin Laden’s body at sea was part of a carefully-calibrated effort to avoid having a burial place that would turn into a shrine to the Qaeda leader, a place where his adherents could declare him a martyr.

But none of that assures that the “alternative narrative” Mr. Obama frequently speaks about will take hold. With the Muslim Brotherhood showing some success in organizing for coming elections in Egypt, and extremist groups hoping to profit from the civil war in Libya and the protests in Syria, it is far from clear that the revolutions under way today will not be hijacked by groups that have a closer affinity to Al Qaeda ideology than democratic reform.

Henry Kissinger noted recently that revolutionaries “rarely survive the process of the revolution.” There is usually a “second wave” that can veer off in a different direction. Whether that second wave will follow the path laid out by the young creators of the Arab Spring, or Bin Laden’s acolytes seeking revenge, may well determine whether Mr. Obama can use Bin Laden’s death to put a coda on a grim decade.

    In Bin Laden’s Death, a Critical Moment for the Arab World, NYT, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/03policy.html

Heat on Pakistan as bin Laden killed near capital

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan | Mon May 2, 2011
6:25am EDT
Reuters
By Kamran Haider

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan declared the killing of Osama bin Laden a "major setback" to global terrorism, but it will inevitably come under pressure to explain how the al Qaeda leader was holed up in a mansion near a military facility.

Bin Laden was killed in a dramatic night-time raid by U.S. helicopters and troops on his hideout in Abbottabad, home to Pakistan's main military academy and less then two hours' drive from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"Osama bin Laden's death illustrates the resolve of the international community, including Pakistan, to fight and eliminate terrorism," the government said in a statement. "It constitutes a major setback to terrorist organisations around the world."

However, it was not clear whether the Pakistan military was involved in the operation and there was no official comment from the government for several hours, raising the possibility that Islamabad was taken by surprise.

That bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was not hiding in mountains along the border but in relative comfort in a town hosting the main military academy and home to scores of retired and serving officers will bolster those who have long argued that Pakistan has been playing a duplicitous hand.

Just 10 days ago, Pakistan's army chief addressed cadets at that very academy, saying the country's military had broken the back of militants linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Washington has in the past accused Pakistan of maintaining ties to militants targeting U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Relations have soured in recent months over U.S. drone attacks and CIA activities in the country.

Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the ISI, has long been suspected of links to the Haqqani network, cultivated during the 1980s when Jalaluddin Haqqani was a feared battlefield commander against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's arch-rival, India, was quick to comment, saying the news underlined its "concern that terrorists belonging to different organisations find sanctuary in Pakistan".

"For some time there will be a lot of tension between Washington and Islamabad because bin Laden seems to have been living here close to Islamabad," said Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani security analyst.

"If the ISI had known, then somebody within the ISI must have leaked this information," Gul said. "Pakistan will have to do a lot of damage control because the Americans have been reporting he is in Pakistan ... this is a serious blow to the credibility of Pakistan."

 

FLAMES, GUNSHOTS, A BLAST

Abbottabad is a popular summer resort, located in a valley surrounded by green hills near Pakistani Kashmir. Islamist militants, particularly those fighting in Indian-controlled Kashmir, used to have training camps near the town.

A Reuters reporter in the town on Monday said bin Laden's single-storey residence stood fourth in a row of about a dozen houses, a satellite perched on the roof above a walled compound. A helicopter covered by a sheet sat in a nearby field.

Mohammad Idrees, who lives around 400 meters from the house, said local residents were woken in the night by the sound of a big explosion.

"We rushed to the rooftop and saw flames near that house. We also heard some gunshots," Idrees said. "Soon after the blast, we saw military vehicles rushing to the site of the blast."

Another resident, Nasir Khan, said that commandos had encircled the compound as three helicopters hovered overhead.

"All of a sudden there was firing toward the helicopters from the ground," said Khan, who had watched the drama unfold from his rooftop. "There was intense firing and then I saw one of the helicopters crash."

Amir Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the province where Abbottabad is located, told reporters in Karachi that Pakistan had been kept in the dark on the raid.

"We were not in the loop," he said. "(We) were not informed, there was an explosion around 1:15 a.m., and when following the explosion, police reached there, the area was already cordoned off."

Local media reported a helicopter crashed in Abbottabad on Sunday night, killing one and wounding two. Initial reports were that it was a Pakistani helicopter, but Pakistan has limited night-flying capabilities for its choppers and other reports and witnesses said it was a U.S. helicopter that had suffered mechanical failure and was ditched.

Witnesses reported gunshots and heavy firing before one of two low-flying helicopters crashed near the academy.

Around Pakistan, reaction was mixed. Muhammad Ibrahim, who is in his early 60s, said in Peshawar the killing of bin Laden would have no affect on most people's lives.

"If Osama is dead or alive it will not make any change in our life. This dirty game will continue," he said.

Muhammad Tahir Khan, working as a telephone operator in a private organization, said that killing bin Laden was good news.

"He Osama is responsible for violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," he said.

Sohaib Athar, whose profile says he is an IT consultant taking a break from the ratrace by hiding in the mountains, sent out a stream of live updates on Twitter about the movement of helicopters and blasts without realizing it was a raid on the world's most hunted man.

Some of his early tweets were: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. (rare event); Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter."

Then he reported his window rattling and a bang. "I hope it's not the start of something nasty," he tweeted.

Soon after there were blasts. There were two helicopters, one of them had gone down, Athar wrote.

When he learnt it was bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, he tweeted: "ISI has confirmed it << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood."

(Additional reporting by Rebecca Conway, Zeeshan Haider, Augustine Anthony, Faisal Mehmood and Chris Allbritton; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

    Heat on Pakistan as bin Laden killed near capital, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-pakistan-idUSTRE7411C020110502

Analysis: Arab revolts turned bin Laden into bloody footnote

BEIRUT | Mon May 2, 2011
5:37am EDT
Reuters
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden, slain by U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, seems curiously irrelevant in an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppressive leaders.

"Bin Laden is just a bad memory," said Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, in Beirut. "The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers."

The al Qaeda leader's bloody attacks, especially those of September 11, 2001, once resonated among some Arabs who saw them as grim vengeance for perceived indignities heaped upon them by the United States, Israel and their own American-backed leaders.

Bin Laden had dreamed that his global Islamist jihad would inspire Muslims to overthrow pro-Western governments, notably in Saudi Arabia, the homeland which revoked his citizenship.

He espoused jihad largely in anger at what he viewed as the occupation of Muslim lands by foreign "infidel" forces -- the Russians in Afghanistan, the Americans in Saudi Arabia in the 1990 Gulf crisis, or the Israelis in Palestine.

But al Qaeda's indiscriminate violence never galvanized Arab masses, while his networks came under severe pressure from Arab governments helping Western counter-terrorism efforts.

"Bin Laden's brand of defiance in the early days probably excited some imaginations, but the senseless acts of violence destroyed any appeal he had," Houry said.

Nowhere was this change of heart more marked than in Iraq, where anger at Muslim casualties inflicted by al Qaeda suicide bombings -- and the Shi'ite sectarian backlash they provoked -- eventually drove Sunni tribesmen to ally with the Americans.

Popular sympathy for al Qaeda also evaporated in Saudi Arabia after a series of indiscriminate attacks in 2003-06.

If the ideological appeal of bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who advocated the restoration of an Islamic caliphate, was already fading, the pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world have further diminished it.

"At some stage Arab public opinion looked on bin Laden as a hope to end this kind of discrimination, the West's way of dealing with Muslim and Arab nations, but now these nations are saying, we will do the change ourselves, we don't need anyone to speak on our behalf," said Mahjoob Zweiri, of Qatar University.

He said bin Laden's killing would affect only a few who still believe in his path of maximizing pain on the West.

ARABS CHOOSE OWN PATH

"The majority of Muslim and Arab nations have their own choice. They are moving toward modern civil societies," Zweiri argued. "People believe in gradual change, civil change, they don't want violence, even against the leaders who crushed them."

Peaceful Arab protests have already toppled autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia and are threatening the leaders of Yemen and Syria, while a popular revolt against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi has turned into a civil war with Western military intervention.

These dramas appear to have shocked al Qaeda almost into silence. Even its most active branch, the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has mounted no big attacks during months of popular unrest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Martin Indyk, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, described bin Laden's death as "a body blow" to al Qaeda at a time when its ideology was already being undercut by the popular revolutions in the Arab world.

"Their narrative is that violence and terrorism is the way to redeem Arab dignity and rights. What the people in the streets across the Arab world are doing is redeeming their rights and their dignity through peaceful, non-violent protests -- the exact opposite of what al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have been preaching," said Indyk, now at the Brookings Institution.

"He hasn't managed to overthrow any government, and they are overthrowing one after the other. I would say that the combination of the two puts al Qaeda in real crisis."

Bin Laden may have become a marginal figure in the Arab world, but the discontent he tapped into still exists.

"The underlying reasons why people turn to these kinds of violent, criminal, terroristic movements are still there," said Beirut-based commentator Rami Khouri, alluding to the "anger and humiliation of people who feel that Western countries, their own Arab leaders or Israel treat them with disdain."

Nevertheless, he predicted a continued slide in al Qaeda's fortunes, particularly as U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and later from Afghanistan remove potent sources of resentment.

"The Arab spring is certainly a sign that the overwhelming majority of Arabs, as we have known all along, repudiated bin Laden," Khouri said. "He and Zawahri tried desperately to get traction among the Arab masses, but it just never worked.

"People who followed him would be those who would form little secret cells and go off to Afghanistan, but the vast majority of people rejected his message.

"What Arabs want is what they are fighting for now, which is more human rights, dignity and democratic government."

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

    Analysis: Arab revolts turned bin Laden into bloody footnote, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-arabs-uprisings-idUSTRE7412EQ20110502

Bin Laden death good for peace: Palestinian Authority

RAMALLAH/GAZA | Mon May 2, 2011
5:21am EDT
Reuters
By Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi

RAMALLAH/GAZA (Reuters) - The Western-backed Palestinian Authority said on Monday the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces was "good for the cause of peace."

There was no immediate reaction from the rival Hamas Islamist movement which governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas is critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East and deeply hostile to Israel.

"Getting rid of bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods -- the violent methods -- that were created and encouraged by bin Laden and others in the world," PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.

Palestinians hit the headlines after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, carried out by al Qaeda, when a small group were filmed celebrating in East Jerusalem.

At the time, there were bigger demonstrations in the Gaza Strip in support of the attacks. Palestinians partly blame their national plight on U.S. support for Israel.

However, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat banned such public displays and voiced sympathy for the dead in the United States.

In Ramallah, the PA's view was shared by Ahmed Saleh, a 58-year-old retired Palestinian. "The world is better without bin Laden. It has removed a pillar of evil from the world," he said. "His heinous actions were exploited to allow hostile policies toward the Arabs and Muslims."

But Umm Mohammed, a veiled woman, said she hoped news of bin Laden's death was a lie. "God willing, he will continue to conquer the West," she said.

In Gaza, Hamas now faces a challenge from al Qaeda-inspired groups that consider it too moderate. One such group was behind last month's killing of a pro-Palestinian Italian activist in the territory.

Abdel-Qader Abu Shaaban, a 53-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, described bin Laden's killing as "a very criminal act."

"This is not a victory. If they assassinated bin Laden, there will be others stronger than him: politicians and military people," he said.

 

(Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp)

    Bin Laden death good for peace: Palestinian Authority, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-palestinians-idUSTRE7411NG20110502

Pakistan says

bin Laden's death a "major setback" to militancy

ISLAMABAD | Mon May 2, 2011
3:44am EDT
Reuters

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan said on Monday that Osama bin Laden's death was a major setback to terrorist organisations around the world.

"This operation was conducted by the U.S. Forces in accordance with declared U.S. policy that Osama bin Laden will be eliminated in a direct action by the U.S. Forces, wherever found in the world," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony; Editing by Rebecca Conway)

    Pakistan says bin Laden's death a "major setback" to militancy, R, 2.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-binladen-pakistan-setback-idUSTRE7411X820110502

Libya's Gaddafi survives air strikes, son killed - government

TRIPOLI | Sun May 1, 2011
1:21am EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI, May 1 (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi survived a NATO air strike on a Tripoli house that killed his youngest son and three grandchildren, a government spokesman said on Sunday.

Libyan officials took journalists to the house, which had been hit by at least three missiles. The roof had completely caved in places, leaving mangled rods of reinforcing steel hanging down among splintered chunks of concrete.

"What we have now is the law of the jungle," government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told a news conference. "We think now it is clear to everyone that what is happening in Libya has nothing to do with the protection of civilians."

NATO denied targeting Gaddafi, or his family, but said it had launched air strikes on military targets in the same area of Tripoli as the bombed site seen by reporters.

"NATO continued its precision strikes against regime military installations in Tripoli overnight, including striking a known command and control building in the Bab al-Aziziyah neighborhood shortly after 1800 GMT Saturday evening," the alliance said in a statement.

NATO's commander of Libya operations, Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, said the target was part of a strategy to hit command centers that threaten civilians.

"All NATO's targets are military in nature ... We do not target individuals," he said in a statement.

Ibrahim said Gaddafi's youngest son, Saif Al-Arab, had been killed in the attack. Saif al-Arab, 29, is one of Gaddafi's less prominent sons, with a limited role in the power structure. Ibrahim described him as a student who had studied in Germany.

The grandchildren killed were pre-teens, Ibrahim said.

The appearance of an assassination attempt against Gaddafi is likely to lead to accusations that the British- and French-led strikes are overstepping the U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

"I am aware of unconfirmed media reports that some of Gaddafi's family members may have been killed," said Bouchard. "We regret all loss of life."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a long-time ally of Gaddafi, called it attempted murder.

"There is no doubt the order was given to kill Gaddafi. It doesn't matter who else is killed, kill Gaddafi ... a murder, this is a murder," he said in Caracas.

 

SECOND CLOSE CALL IN 24 HOURS

Gaddafi, who seized power in a 1969 coup, is fighting an uprising by rebels who have seized much of eastern Libya. He describes the rebels as religious extremists and Western agents who seek to control Libya's oil.

Inside part of the villa hit late on Saturday, a beige sofa was virtually untouched, but debris had caved in on other striped upholstered chairs. The blasts were heard across the city.

A table football machine stood outside in the garden in a wealthy residential area. Glass and debris covered the lawns and what appeared to be an unexploded missile lay in one corner.

It appeared to be the second NATO strike near to Gaddafi in 24 hours. A missile struck near a television station early on Saturday when the Libyan leader was making an address in which he said he would never step down and offered talks to rebels.

The rebels insist they cannot trust Gaddafi. The last few days have seen fierce shelling of rebel outposts in the west. A rebel spokesman in the mountain town of Zintan said government forces has showered the city with up to 30 powerful Grad missiles late in the evening.

Tripoli has also declared a sea blockade on the western outpost of Misrata, potentially robbing the rebels of a vital aid link to their eastern heartland.

 

"FIGHT AND FIGHT"

Celebratory rifle fire and car horns rang out in the rebels' eastern capital of Benghazi as news of the attack spread.

"The leader himself is in good health. He wasn't harmed," Ibrahim said. "His wife is also in good health.

"This was a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country. This is not permitted by international law. It is not permitted by any moral code or principle."

The announcement of the attack was made live on state television which later showed Tripoli residents marching on the streets, chanting "the martyr is the beloved of God". Some fired guns into the air.

U.S. White House press secretary Jay Carney said the White House was aware of Libyan media reports Gaddafi's son had been killed and was monitoring the situation.

Gaddafi's daughter was killed in a U.S. air strike in 1986, ordered after a bomb attack on a West Berlin discotheque killed two U.S. servicemen. Washington linked Tripoli to the attack.

"We will fight and fight if we have to," Ibrahim said. "The leader offered peace to NATO yesterday and NATO rejected it."

Fighting in Libya's civil war, which grew from protests for greater political freedom that have spread across the Arab world, has reached stalemate in recent weeks with neither side capable of achieving a decisive blow.

Libyan forces had reached the gates of Benghazi last month when Gaddafi appeared on television declaring he would crush the rebellion, showing "no pity, no mercy". Days later the United Nations passed its resolution allowing the air strikes and saving the rebels from defeat.

 

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara and Abdelaziz Boumzar in Dehiba, Deepa Babington and Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Matthew Tostevin in Tunis, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; Writing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Jon Hemming and Robert Birsel)

    Libya's Gaddafi survives air strikes, son killed - government, R, 1.5.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/01/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110501

NATO says air strikes not targeting Gaddafi

BRUSSELS | Sat Apr 30, 2011
11:04pm EDT
Reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO denied targeting members of Muammar Gaddafi's family on Sunday after a Libyan government spokesman said the leader had survived a NATO air strike in Tripoli that killed his youngest son and three grandchildren.

The Western alliance, which is conducting air strikes to protect civilians during an anti-Gaddafi rebellion, confirmed one of its targets included a command center in the Tripoli neighbourhood late on Saturday in which the Libyan spokesman said Gaddafi and his family were targeted.

"NATO continued its precision strikes against regime military installations in Tripoli overnight, including striking a known command and control building in the Bab al-Azizya neighborhood shortly after 1800 GMT Saturday evening," it said.

NATO's commander of Libya operations, Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, said the target was part of a strategy to damage Gaddafi's ability to plan and conduct attacks on civilians.

"All NATO's targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Gaddafi regime's systematic attacks on the Libyan population ... We do not target individuals," he said in a statement.

"I am aware of unconfirmed media reports that some of Gaddafi's family members may have been killed," he said. "We regret all loss of life, especially the innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict."

On Saturday, the alliance dismissed an offer of a truce and negotiations from Gaddafi, saying it was not credible and reiterating its stance that it will target his military equipment and facilities while civilians are being threatened.

NATO has been in command of Western military operations in Libya for a month, fulfilling a U.N. mandate to enforce a no-fly zone over the north African country and an arms embargo.

Its strikes on Gaddafi's firepower have helped rebel forces but failed to tip the balance in a bloody civil war.

Bouchard also reiterated that NATO air strikes had not overstepped the alliance's U.N. orders.

"NATO is fulfilling its U.N. mandate to stop and prevent attacks against civilians with precision and care - unlike Gaddafi's forces, which are causing so much suffering."

 

(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Jon Hemming and Robert Birsel)

    NATO says air strikes not targeting Gaddafi, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/01/us-libya-nato-gaddafi-idUSTRE74007P20110501

Syrians protest from rooftops after army action

AMMAN | Sat Apr 30, 2011
8:50pm EDT
Reuters
By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Women and children in the besieged Syrian city of Deraa chanted "God is greatest against the tyrant" from rooftops in the night after troops backed by tanks intensified a crackdown on the city, a resident said.

Troops stormed into Deraa, cradle of a six-week-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian rule, a week ago to try to crush protests that have spread across the country of 20 million. Power and communications have been disrupted.

On Saturday, tanks shelled the old quarter of the southern city and security forces stormed the Omari mosque, a focal point for protests.

"The shelling has intensified. It is the worst night. Women and children are on their rooftops chanting 'God is Greater' against the tyrant," one resident, who lives in the Manshia neighborhood in the old quarter told Reuters by telephone.

He said security forces were entering homes and dragging men onto buses.

The chants echoed the calls of Iranian protesters who took to rooftops in Tehran chanting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Greatest) during post-election unrest in 2009.

Foreign correspondents have largely been excluded from Syria since the protests escalated and the crackdown began.

A Syrian rights group said at least 560 civilians have been killed in the six-week-old uprising in support of demands for greater political freedom and action against corruption that has flourished under the Baath Party, in power since 1963.

The uprising, unthinkable only months ago, flared after mass protests toppled authoritarian leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Demonstrations spread in Bahrain and escalated to civil war in Libya.

 

EMERGENCY LAW LIFTED

Newly appointed Prime Minister Adel Safar was quoted by state news agency SANA as saying his government would in the coming weeks draw up a "complete plan" of political, judicial and economic reforms.

The pledge was unlikely to dampen the intensity of protests. A severe crackdown followed the once-unthinkable gesture of lifting a decades-old emergency law this month.

The government also has little influence as Assad, his family and the security apparatus has a stranglehold on power.

Syria blames armed groups for the violence. On Friday soldiers killed 19 people when they fired on protesters who were trying to enter Deraa from nearby villages in a show of solidarity, a medical source said. Syrian rights groups put Friday's death toll at 62.

SANA quoted an official military source as saying on Saturday that army and security forces units had been chasing "armed terrorist groups" who had attacked properties in Deraa.

The source said six members of the group were killed in the operation, 149 wanted people were arrested, and a large cache of weapons and ammunition had been seized. Two members of the security forces were also killed and seven wounded.

 

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman;
Writing by Yara Bayoumy in Beirut; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

    Syrians protest from rooftops after army action, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/01/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110501

Egypt's Brotherhood contests half of parliament seats

CAIRO | Sat Apr 30, 2011
2:17pm EDT
By Yasmine Saleh

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said on Saturday its newly formed party will contest up to half the parliamentary seats in an election scheduled for September but would not field a candidate for the presidency.

The group is regarded as the most organized political force in Egypt following the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising in February and the dissolution of his National Democratic Party.

In a statement issued after a rare meeting of its decision-making shura (consultative) council, the group said it had decided to contest "between 45 and 50 percent of parliament's seats."

The Muslim Brotherhood expects to win up to 30 percent of votes in a free election. The group won 20 percent of parliamentary seats in 2005 but failed to win a seat in the 2010 poll which was tainted with allegations of fraud.

The Brotherhood said after Mubarak's fall that it did not seek power through a majority in parliament and would not go after the presidency.

But its announcement is likely to alarm secular Egyptians who fear the group, eyed with suspicion in the West, might want to take control and turn the country into an Islamist state.

Analysts said the group could win about a third of the votes in the September election and emerge as the biggest bloc in parliament.

"The Brotherhood will certainly have a decisive influence over the debates of the assembly, its decisions and the formation of a new constitution," political analyst and university professor, Mustapha al-Sayyid said.

"The Islamist group will have more power to block legislation it does not like more than passing new laws if they were largely opposed by other members."

 

DEEP ROOTS

The Brotherhood is an Islamist group founded in the 1920s and has deep roots in Egypt's conservative Muslim society. Though formally banned under Mubarak, it was tolerated as long as it did not challenge his power.

At a news conference on Saturday, the group's secretary general, Mahmoud Hussein, confirmed that the group would not field a candidate in a presidential election, due after the parliamentary vote.

But Mohamed Mursi, the newly appointed head of the Brotherhood's Justice and Freedom Party, refused to rule out contesting a presidential vote and said it was too early to discuss the party's plans.

"When the brotherhood group says its party is independent it means it," he said.

Mursi said the group will announce the program and regulations of its new political party this week.

The group named two of leaders, Essam Elarian and Mohamed Saed Elkatatny, to be the party's deputy leader and secretary general respectively. The party's three top officials will resign from their posts in the group before joining the party.

The revolution was ignited by online activists and brought together Egyptians from across the political spectrum, from Islamists to leftists.

Though the Brotherhood did not play a role organizing the protests at the outset, it was one of the main winners from Mubarak's removal and has moved to the heart of Egyptian public life since he was toppled on February 11.

(Writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Robert Woodward)

    Egypt's Brotherhood contests half of parliament seats, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-egypt-elections-brotherhood-idUSTRE73T0ZP20110430

Libya's Gaddafi offers ceasefire, but will not leave

TRIPOLI | Sat Apr 30, 2011
12:03pm EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Saturday he was ready for a ceasefire and negotiations provided NATO "stop its planes," but he refused to give up power as rebels and Western powers demand.

The rebels and NATO rejected Gaddafi's offer, saying it lacked credibility. A spokesman for the insurgents said the time for compromise had passed and NATO said air strikes would go on as long as Libyan civilians were being threatened.

Weeks of Western air strikes have failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, instead imposing a stalemate on a war Gaddafi looked to have been winning, with government forces held at bay in the east and around the besieged city of Misrata while fighting for control of the western mountains.

With neither side apparently able to gain the upper hand, Gaddafi struck a more conciliatory tone in an 80-minute televised address to the nation in the early hours of Saturday.

"(Libya) is ready until now to enter a ceasefire," said Gaddafi, speaking from behind a desk and aided by reams of paper covered in what appeared to be hand-written notes.

"We were the first to welcome a ceasefire and we were the first to accept a ceasefire ... but the Crusader NATO attack has not stopped," he said. "The gate to peace is open."

Gaddafi denied mass attacks on civilians and challenged NATO to find him 1,000 people who had been killed in the conflict, kindled by pro-democracy uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

"We did not attack them or cross the sea ... why are they attacking us?" asked Gaddafi, referring to European countries involved in the air strikes. "Let us negotiate with you, the countries that attack us. Let us negotiate."

But as he spoke, NATO warplanes hit three targets close to the television building in Tripoli in what state media said was an attempt to kill Gaddafi who has ruled since a 1969 coup.

The air strikes left a large crater outside the attorney general's office but did not damage the building, and hit two other government offices housed in colonial-era buildings. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

The rebels' transitional national council dismissed Gaddafi's gesture, saying the Libyan leader had repeatedly offered ceasefires only to continue violating human rights.

 

"LOST CREDIBILITY"

"Gaddafi's regime has lost all credibility," council spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga said in a statement. "The time for compromise has passed. The people of Libya cannot possibly envisage or accept a future Libya in which cannot Gaddafi's regime plays any role."

The rebel military spokesman, Colonel Ahmed Bani, said Gaddafi was "playing dirty games" ... He doesn't speak honestly. We don't believe him and we don't trust him."

In Brussels, a NATO official told Reuters that Libyan authorities had announced ceasefires several times before only to continue attacks on cities and civilians.

"We need to see actions, not words ... Any ceasefire must be credible and verifiable," the official said.

"NATO will continue operations until all attacks and threats against civilians have ceased, until all of Gaddafi's forces have returned to base and until there is a full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access to all people in need of assistance," he said.

The NATO official declined to comment whether NATO would be open to meeting Gaddafi's representatives for talks, if contacts for such talks were made.

 

DIGS IN

Gaddafi refused to leave his North African homeland or quit, the central demand of the rebels, the United States, and also of France and Britain which are leading the NATO air campaign.

"I'm not leaving my country," Gaddafi said. "No one can force me to leave my country and no one can tell me not to fight for my country."

Gaddafi's forces showed no sign of giving up the fight either, claiming to have captured the port of the city of Misrata on Friday, the last major rebel outpost in western Libya, but NATO said it saw no evidence of that.

Libya's government has threatened to attack any ships approaching Misrata, potentially depriving insurgents of a lifeline to their heartland in the east of the country.

NATO said Gaddafi forces had laid mines on the approach to the harbor, which has been under siege for weeks, and forced a temporary halt in humanitarian shipments.

"NATO forces are now actively engaged in countering the mine threat to ensure the flow of aid continues," the alliance said.

Further west, the war spilled into Tunisia when Gaddafi's forces overran a rebel enclave at the frontier. The Libyan army shelled the Tunisian border town of Dehiba, damaging buildings and wounding at least one person, witnesses said. They said Libyan soldiers drove into the town in a truck chasing rebels.

 

BORDER CLASHES

Tunisian Deputy Foreign Minister Radhouane Nouicer, speaking on Al Jazeera television, said casualties, including a young girl, were inflicted when the conflict spilled over on Friday.

"We summoned the Libyan envoy and gave him a strong protest because we won't tolerate any repetition of such violations.

The Libyan government said rebels had briefly pushed its forces into Tunisia and that it was coordinating with Tunis to avoid a disaster in the border area.

"We are respecting the sovereignty of the Tunisian country and state," spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said.

A Reuters cameraman who crossed into Libya from Dehiba saw the bodies of three Gaddafi soldiers on the ground. It was not clear if they had been shot by rebels or by Tunisian forces.

Tunisian border guards had shut down the border, he said. They were laying barbed wire and fortifying their positions.

Libyan refugees fleeing the fighting in the Western Mountains were reaching the crossing but unable to get through.

Rebels seized the Dehiba post a week ago. It controls the only road link which their comrades in the Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine.

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara and Abdelaziz Boumzar in Dehiba, Deepa Babington and Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Matthew Tostevin in Tunis; writing by Jon Hemming; editing by Mark Heinrich)

    Libya's Gaddafi offers ceasefire, but will not leave, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110430

Libya's Gaddafi calls for negotiation with NATO

TRIPOLI | Sat Apr 30, 2011
12:13am EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar al- Gaddafi said Saturday he was ready for a ceasefire and negotiations provided NATO "stop its planes," but he refused to give up power as rebels and Western powers demand.

Weeks of Western air strikes have failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, but have instead imposed a stalemate on a war Gaddafi looked to have been winning with government forces held at bay in the east and around the besieged city of Misrata, while fighting for control of the western mountains.

But with neither side apparently able to gain the upper hand, Gaddafi struck a conciliatory tone in an 80-minute televised address to the nation in the early hours of Saturday.

"(Libya) is ready until now to enter a ceasefire," said Gaddafi, speaking from behind a desk and aided by reams of paper covered in what appeared to be hand-written notes.

"We were the first to welcome a ceasefire and we were the first to accept a ceasefire ... but the Crusader NATO attack has not stopped," he said. "The gate to peace is open."

Gaddafi denied mass attacks on civilians and challenged NATO to find him 1,000 people who had been killed in the conflict.

"We did not attack them or cross the sea ... why are they attacking us?" asked Gaddafi, referring to European countries involved in the air strikes. "Let us negotiate with you, the countries that attack us. Let us negotiate."

But as he spoke, NATO warplanes hit three targets close to the television building in Tripoli in what state media said was an attempt to kill Gaddafi who has ruled Libya for 41 years.

The air strikes left a large crater outside the attorney general's office but did not damage the building and hit two other government offices housed in colonial-era buildings. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

"I'M NOT LEAVING"

Previous ceasefire offers have been rebuffed by NATO as Libyan government forces continued to fight on, something which looked as though it would be repeated as Gaddafi indicated he wanted both sides to stop fighting at once, saying "a ceasefire cannot be from one side."

More importantly though, the Libyan leader refused to leave the country or step down, the central demand of the rebels, the United States, and also of France and Britain which are leading the NATO air campaign.

"I'm not leaving my country," Gaddafi said. "No one can force me to leave my country and no one can tell me not to fight for my country."

Gaddafi's forces showed no sign of giving up the fight either, claiming to have captured the port of the city of Misrata Friday, the last major rebel outpost in western Libya, but NATO said it saw no evidence of that.

Libya's government has threatened to attack any ships approaching Misrata, potentially depriving insurgents of a lifeline to the country's eastern insurgent heartland.

NATO said Gaddafi forces had laid mines on the approach to the harbor, under siege for weeks, and forced a temporary halt in humanitarian shipments.

"NATO forces are now actively engaged in countering the mine threat to ensure the flow of aid continues," the alliance said.

Further west, the war spilled into Tunisia when Gaddafi's forces overran a rebel enclave at the frontier. The Libyan army shelled the Tunisian border town of Dehiba, damaging buildings and wounding at least one person, witnesses said. They said Libyan soldiers drove into the town in a truck chasing rebels.

BORDER CLASHES

Tunisian Deputy Foreign Minister Radhouane Nouicer, speaking on Al Jazeera television, said casualties, including a young girl, were inflicted when the conflict spilled over on Friday.

"We summoned the Libyan envoy and gave him a strong protest because we won't tolerate any repetition of such violations. Tunisian soil is a red line," he said.

The Libyan government said rebels had briefly pushed its forces into Tunisia and that it was coordinating with Tunisia to avoid a disaster in the border area.

"We are respecting the sovereignty of the Tunisian country and state," spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said.

A Reuters cameraman who crossed into Libya from Dehiba saw the bodies of three Gaddafi soldiers on the ground. It was not clear if they had been shot by rebels or by Tunisian forces.

Tunisian border guards had shut down the border, he said. They were laying barbed wire and fortifying their positions.

Libyan refugees fleeing the fighting in the Western Mountains were reaching the crossing but unable to get through.

Reuters photographers in Dehiba, a short distance from the border, saw several abandoned pick-up trucks which Gaddafi loyalists had driven. One had a multiple rocket launcher on the back. Another, which had overturned and lay upside down in the sand, was fitted with a heavy caliber machine gun.

Rebels seized the Dehiba post a week ago. It controls the only road link which their comrades in the Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine.

"Right here at this point I'm looking at the new flag flying up there at the border. The rebels have got control of it, the freedom fighters. We're just in the process of opening it up," rebel Akram el Muradi said by telephone.

After nightfall, Gaddafi's forces resumed their bombardment of the post in an apparent attempt to return and the government said it had regained control over the Libyan side of the border.

 

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara and Abdelaziz Boumzar in Dehiba, Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Matthew Tostevin in Tunis; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Robert Birsel)

    Libya's Gaddafi calls for negotiation with NATO, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110430

U.S. Moves Cautiously Against Syrian Leaders

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — A brutal Arab dictator with a long history of enmity toward the United States turns tanks and troops against his own people, killing hundreds of protesters. His country threatens to split along sectarian lines, with the violence potentially spilling over to its neighbors, some of whom are close allies of Washington.

Libya? Yes, but also Syria.

And yet, with the Syrian government’s bloody crackdown intensifying on Friday, President Obama has not demanded that President Bashar al-Assad resign, and he has not considered military action. Instead, on Friday, the White House took a step that most experts agree will have a modest impact: announcing focused sanctions against three senior officials, including a brother and a cousin of Mr. Assad.

The divergent American responses illustrate the starkly different calculations the United States faces in these countries. For all the parallels to Libya, Mr. Assad is much less isolated internationally than the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. He commands a more capable army, which experts say is unlikely to turn on him, as the military in Egypt did on President Hosni Mubarak. And the ripple effects of Mr. Assad’s ouster would be both wider and more unpredictable than in the case of Colonel Qaddafi.

“Syria is important in a way that Libya is not,” said Steven A. Cook, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is no central U.S. interest engaged in Libya. But a greatly destabilized Syria has implications for Iraq, it has implications for Lebanon, it has implications for Israel.”

These complexities have made Syria a less clear-cut case, even for those who have called for more robust American action against Libya. Senator John McCain, along with Senators Lindsey Graham and Joseph I. Lieberman, urged Mr. Obama earlier this week to demand Mr. Assad’s resignation. But Mr. McCain, an early advocate of a no-fly zone over Libya, said he opposed military action in Syria.

Human rights groups are even more cautious. “If Obama were to call for Assad to go, I don’t think it would change things on the ground in any way, shape or form,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, which had supported military action in Libya. In this case, he said, sanctions were the right move.

Those measures freeze the assets of three top officials, most notably Maher al-Assad, President Assad’s brother and a brigade commander who is leading the operations in Dara’a. But Syrian leaders tend to keep their money in European and Middle Eastern banks, putting it beyond the reach of the Treasury.

The measures also take aim at Syria’s intelligence agency and the Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite paramilitary unit already under heavy sanctions from the United States. Iran, officials said, is using the force to funnel tear gas, batons and other riot gear to Syria.

The administration did not impose sanctions on President Assad, saying it focused on those directly responsible for human-rights abuses. A senior official said the United States would not hesitate to add him to the list if the violence did not stop. But the White House seemed to be calculating that it could still prevail on him to show restraint.

“Our goal is to end the violence and create an opening for the Syrian people’s legitimate aspirations,” said a spokesman for the National Security Council, Tommy Vietor. “These are among the U.S. government’s strongest available tools to promote these outcomes.”

The European Union said Friday that it was preparing an arms embargo against Syria and threatened further sanctions and cuts in aid. And in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the violence, though the statement was diluted from one drafted by the United States.

The debate over the United Nations resolution demonstrated the difficulty in marshaling international censure of Syria. In Geneva, 26 countries supported the resolution, but nine voted against it, including Russia and China. The two countries blocked a similar effort to pass a resolution at the Security Council this week, a stark contrast to the tough action on Libya.

Even for the Obama administration, abandoning Mr. Assad has costs. For two years, it cultivated him in hopes that Syria would break the logjam in the Middle East peace process by signing a treaty with Israel. The United States tried to lure Syria away from Iran, the greatest American nemesis in the area.

Even the possibility of a change in leadership in Syria had reverberations this week, with the surprise agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to form a unity government. By most accounts, Hamas was motivated in part by a fear that if Mr. Assad were forced from power, it could lose its patron in Damascus.

Disarray in Syria could threaten Israel’s security more directly. While Israeli officials point out that Mr. Assad has hardly been a friend of Israel, if he were replaced by a militant Sunni government, this could pose even greater dangers.

Israel’s sensitivity about Syria is so acute that when reports began circulating this week that Israeli officials were pressing the White House to be less tough on Damascus, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, called reporters to insist that his government was doing nothing of the sort.

Among other countries that are sensitive: Turkey, which shares a border with Syria and a Kurdish population that could be stirred up by unrest; and Saudi Arabia, which does not want to see another Arab government topple. While Mr. Assad’s fall would damage Iran’s regional ambitions, analysts offer caveats.

“The regime coming down in a speedy, orderly transition to a Sunni government would be a setback for Iran, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We’re headed for something much messier. The Iranians can play around in that.”

As the administration weighs its options, it faces a sobering fact: The United States has little influence over Damascus. Still, some analysts said the United States must leave open the possibility of tougher measures.

“If a Benghazi-style massacre is threatened, we would have to consider a humanitarian intervention under the same principle,” said Martin S. Indyk, Brookings Institution’s director of foreign policy. “Hard to imagine at this point when the death toll is 400. But if it rises to tens of thousands?”

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels.

    U.S. Moves Cautiously Against Syrian Leaders, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/world/middleeast/30policy.html

Syrian forces kill 62, U.S. tightens sanctions

AMMAN | Fri Apr 29, 2011
11:16pm EDT
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - The United States imposed new sanctions on key Syrian government figures after security forces killed more than 60 people across Syria during demonstrations demanding the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

A medical source told Reuters that soldiers in Deraa killed 19 people on Friday when they fired on thousands of protesters descending from nearby villages in a show of solidarity with the southern city where Syria's uprising broke out six weeks ago.

Syrian human rights group Sawasiah said it had the names of a total of 62 people killed during protests in Deraa, Rustun, Latakia, Homs and the town of Qadam, near Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a similar death toll.

Friday's bloodshed came after demonstrators across the country again defied heavy military deployments, mass arrests and a ruthless crackdown on the biggest popular challenge to 48 years of authoritarian Baath Party rule.

President Barack Obama imposed new sanctions against Syrian figures, including a brother of Assad in charge of troops in Deraa, the first reprisal for Syria's violent crackdown.

Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the intelligence agency, Assad's cousin Atif Najib and his brother Maher, who commands the army division which stormed into Deraa on Monday. Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard was also targeted, accused of helping the Syrian crackdown.

"The sanctions that were announced today are intended to show the Syrian government that its behavior and actions are going to be held to account," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters.

Shortly after Obama's move, European Union diplomats said they had reached preliminary agreement to impose an arms embargo on Syria and would "urgently consider further appropriate and targeted measures." These, diplomats said, were understood to mean measures against individuals.

 

NATIONWIDE PROTESTS

Obama's sanctions, which include asset freezes and bans on U.S. business dealings, build on U.S. measures against Syria in place since 2004, but they may have little impact since Assad's inner circle are thought to hold few U.S. assets.

One official said the White House was "not ready" to call on Assad to step down because Obama and his aides "do not want to get out in front of the Syrian people."

But thousands of Syrians took to the streets across the country after Friday prayers demanding his removal and pledging support for the residents of Deraa.

"The people want the overthrow of the regime!" demonstrators chanted in many protests, witnesses said.

More demonstrations flared in the central cities of Homs and Hama, Banias on the Mediterranean coast, Qamishly in eastern Syria and Harasta, a Damascus suburb.

Damascus saw the biggest protest in the capital so far, with a crowd swelling to 10,000 as it marched toward the main Ummayad Square before being dispersed by security forces firing tear gas, rights campaigners said.

Syrian rights group Sawasiah said this week at least 500 civilians had been killed since the unrest broke out six weeks ago. Authorities dispute that, saying 78 security forces and 70 civilians died in violence they blame on armed groups.

 

DERAA SHOOTING

State news agency SANA blamed "armed terrorist groups" for killing eight soldiers near Deraa. It said groups had opened fire on the homes of soldiers in two towns near Deraa and were repelled by guards. SANA said security forces detained 156 members of the group and confiscated 50 motorbikes.

But a witness in Deraa said Syrian forces fired live rounds at thousands of villagers who descended on the besieged city.

"They shot at people at the western gate of Deraa in the Yadoda area, almost three km (two miles) from the center of the city," he said.

A rights campaigner in Deraa said on Friday makeshift morgues in the city contained the bodies of 85 people he said had been killed since the army stormed the city, close to Syria's southern border with Jordan, on Monday.

Assad's violent repression has brought growing condemnation from Western countries which for several years had sought to engage Damascus and loosen its close anti-Israel alliances with Iran and the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

The top United Nations human rights body condemned Syria for using deadly force against peaceful protesters and launched an investigation into killings and other alleged crimes.

A U.S. official said Friday's sanctions were meant to show that no member of the Syrian leadership was immune from being held accountable. "Bashar is very much on our radar and if this continues could be soon to follow," the official said.

 

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Beirut, Mark Hosenball and Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels;
Editing by Jon Hemming and Robert Birsel)

    Syrian forces kill 62, U.S. tightens sanctions, R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110430

U.S. slaps new sanctions on Syria over crackdown

WASHINGTON | Fri Apr 29, 2011
7:13pm EDT
Reuters
By Mark Hosenball and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States slapped sanctions on Syria's intelligence agency and two relatives of President Bashar al-Assad on Friday in Washington's first concrete steps in response to a bloody crackdown on protests.

Assad, Syria's long-serving ruler, was not among those targeted under an order signed by President Barack Obama but could be named soon if violence by government forces against democracy protesters continued, a senior U.S. official said.

"The sanctions that were announced today are intended to show the Syrian government that its behavior and actions are going to be held to account," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters after a meeting with Japan's visiting foreign minister.

Sanctions for alleged human rights abuses were imposed against Maher al-Assad, Bashar's brother, and Atif Najib, one of his cousins, together with Syria's General Intelligence Directorate and its chief.

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard was also targeted, accused of helping Syria's crackdown.

The action, details of which were first reported by Reuters, marks a more assertive approach by Washington, which has been criticized by human rights groups for not doing more to curb Assad's efforts to crush an uprising against his autocratic 11-year rule.

But another U.S. official said the White House is "not ready" to call on Assad to step down -- as it has done with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi -- because Obama and his aides "do not want to get out in front of the Syrian people."

The White House said in a statement: "We call on President Assad to change course now, and heed the calls of his own people."

The sanctions, which include asset freezes and bans on U.S. business dealings for those on the list, build on broader U.S. measures against Syria in place since 2004.

There are questions, however, whether new sanctions against Assad's inner circle will have any dramatic impact since they are thought to hold few U.S. assets. But U.S. officials said they hoped European and Asian governments would follow suit.

"In addition to actions that we are taking, the United States believes that Syria's deplorable actions toward its people warrant a strong international response," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

He welcomed the decision by the U.N. Human Rights Council to condemn Syria for its crackdown.

Separately, ambassadors from European Union nations discussed a package of possible economic sanctions which could be imposed on Syria to protest its violent crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Two Western diplomats told Reuters that the measures under discussion could include suspending work on a proposed free trade agreement between the EU and Syria and cutting off EU funding for Middle Eastern "cooperation" projects in Syria.

Washington has stepped up pressure but has still moved cautiously after working for the past two years to try to woo Damascus away from its alliance with U.S. foe Iran.

The Obama administration is also worried about stoking instability on U.S. ally Israel's borders and wants to avoid another military entanglement in the Muslim world, where it is involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

In his executive order, Obama said the Syrian government had committed "human rights abuses, including those related to the repression of the people in Syria, manifested most recently by the use of violence and torture.

A U.S. official said the new sanctions were meant to show that no member of the Syrian leadership was "immune" from being held accountable. "Bashar is very much on our radar and if this continues could be soon to follow," the official said.

"It puts Syria's leaders on notice that decisions to kill unarmed civilians have consequences," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.

A Syrian rights group said at least 500 civilians had been killed since the unrest broke out in Deraa on March 18. Authorities dispute the death toll, saying 78 security forces and 70 civilians died in violence they blame on armed groups.

Despite that, Obama's response to the Syrian crisis so far has been limited compared to Washington's role in a NATO-led air campaign against Gaddafi's forces in Libya and its call for his ouster.

Maher al-Assad is a brigade commander in the Syrian Army's 4th Armored Division that has played a key role in Deraa, where protesters have been killed by security forces, the White House said. Najib was described as former head of the Political Security Directorate for Deraa during the deadly crackdown.

The new sanctions also target the General Intelligence Directorate and its director, Ali Mamluk. The spy agency is accused by U.S. officials of repressing dissent and of involvement in the killing of protesters in Deraa.

The fifth target is Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force, which is already under U.S. sanctions for supporting militant groups around the world.

The Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian government's principal security agency which operates outside Iran, is accused of being the "conduit" for material support Tehran has provided to Syrian authorities to suppress protests.

In addition, the U.S. Commerce Department revoked licenses for the export to Syria of parts for aircraft it said were used by senior members of the Syrian government. One of the licenses would have allowed the Syrians to obtain a luxury aircraft for Assad's use, U.S. officials said.

Obama also renewed Bush-era sanctions on Syria in effect since 2004, saying in a statement that while the Syrian government had reduced the number of foreign fighters bound for Iraq its actions and policies continued to pose a threat to U.S. national security and the economy.

 

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Andrew Quinn; Editing by Eric Walsh)

    U.S. slaps new sanctions on Syria over crackdown, R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-syria-usa-sanctions-idUSTRE73S4PP20110429

Syrian forces kill 15 in Deraa shooting: medic

AMMAN | Fri Apr 29, 2011
3:35pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian forces killed 15 people when they fired on thousands of protesters trying to enter the southern city of Deraa, the heart of a six week uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, a medical source said on Friday.

The bloodshed occurred as demonstrations again erupted across the country, defying heavy military deployments, mass arrests and a ruthless crackdown on the biggest popular challenge to 48 years of authoritarian Baath Party rule.

The medical source in Tafas, 12 km (8 miles) north-west of Deraa, said the local hospital received 15 bullet-riddled bodies, and 38 wounded villagers after the clash near Deraa.

Assad's violent repression has brought growing condemnation from Western countries which for several years had sought to engage Damascus and loosen its close alliance with Iran and move toward a peace deal with Israel.

Sources in Washington said on Friday the United States would tighten sanctions against Syria, targeting five individuals and entities for human rights violations. The U.N. Human Rights Council also adopted a resolution criticizing Syria.

A Syrian rights group said this week at least 500 civilians had been killed since the unrest broke out in Deraa on March 18. Authorities dispute the death toll, saying 78 security forces and 70 civilians died in violence they blame on armed groups.

State news agency SANA said on Friday an "armed terrorist group" killed four soldiers and kidnapped two Deraa, where Assad sent tanks and troops to crush resistance on Monday.

But a witness in Deraa said Syrian forces fired live rounds at thousands of villagers who descended on the besieged city.

"They shot at people at the western gate of Deraa in the Yadoda area, almost three km (two miles) from the center of the city," he said.

The latest violence broke out after Friday prayers as thousands of people hit the streets across the country demanding Assad's removal and pledging support for the residents of Deraa.

"The people want the overthrow of the regime!" demonstrators chanted in many protests, witnesses said.

More demonstrations flared in the central cities of Homs and Hama, Banias on the Mediterranean coast, Qamishly in eastern Syria and Harasta, a Damascus suburb.

The old Midan district of Damascus saw the biggest protest in the capital so far, with 10,000 people marching until they were dispersed by security forces firing tear gas, rights campaigners said.

Wissam Tarif, director of the Insan human rights group, said two people were killed in protests in Latakia. The killings could not be immediately confirmed. Foreign journalists have mostly been expelled from Syria.

A rights campaigner in Deraa said on Friday makeshift morgues in the city contained the bodies of 83 people he said had been killed since the army stormed the city, close to Syria's southern border with Jordan, on Monday.

 

REGIONAL IMPACT

Inspired by uprising which brought down Egypt and Tunisia's leaders, the upheaval could have regional repercussions since Syria, straddling Middle East political fault lines, is allied with Iran and backs the Hezbollah and Hamas militant movements, while holding intermittent indirect peace talks with Israel.

Syria's exiled Muslim Brotherhood, which has been largely on the sidelines of the protests so far, called on Syrians to take to the streets on Friday in support of Deraa.

It was the first time that the Brotherhood, ruthlessly crushed along with secular leftist movements during the 30 years of Hafez al-Assad's rule, had called directly for protests.

The group said government accusations that Islamists were behind the unrest were baseless and aimed at fomenting civil war and undermining demands for political freedoms.

But a Jordanian Islamist, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, said that Muslims were obliged to join the protest and that the overthrow of Assad's minority Alawite rule would be a step toward implementing Sharia law in the mainly Sunni Muslim state.

Friday, the Muslim day of rest and prayers, has been the main opportunity for protesters to gather, challenging repeated warnings by the authorities not to demonstrate.

Security forces shot dead 120 protesters on Friday April 22, according to a Syrian rights group, in the biggest protests Syria has seen since the uprising ignited in Deraa on March 18.

Three days later an army division under the control of Assad brother's Maher stormed into Deraa. That echoed their father's 1982 attack on Hama to crush an armed revolt led by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing up to 30,000 people.

In a sign of rare dissent within ruling circles, 200 members of the Baath Party resigned on Wednesday in protest at the bloody crackdown.

EU ambassadors were to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss the possibility of imposing sanctions against Syria, which could include asset freezes and travel restrictions on key officials.

"I'd expect a political signal toward sanctions but maybe not a decision yet," an EU diplomat said. Other EU measures against Syria could include freezing financial aid, which amounts to 43 million euros ($64 million) a year.

 

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman,
Yara Bayoumy in Beirut)

    Syrian forces kill 15 in Deraa shooting: medic, R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110429

Pro-Gaddafi forces clash with Tunisian military

DEHIBA, Tunisia | Fri Apr 29, 2011
3:32pm EDT
Reuters
By Tarek Amara

DEHIBA, Tunisia (Reuters) - Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fought a gun battle with Tunisian troops in a frontier town on Friday as Libya's conflict spilled over its borders.

Pro-Gaddafi forces shelled the town of Dehiba, damaging buildings and wounding at least one resident, and a squad drove into the town in a truck chasing anti-Gaddafi rebels.

Tunisia summoned Libya's ambassador to protest.

Tunisian deputy foreign minister Radhouane Nouicer, speaking on Al Jazeera television, said casualties had been inflicted, including a young girl.

"We summoned the Libyan envoy and gave him a strong protest because we won't tolerate any repetition of such violations. Tunisian soil is a red line and no one is allowed to breach it," he said.

The Libyan troops were chasing rebels from the Western Mountains region who fled into Tunisia in the past few days after Gaddafi forces overran a border post they had earlier seized.

A Reuters cameraman who crossed into Libya saw the bodies of three Gaddafi soldiers on the ground. It was not clear if they had been shot by the rebels or by the Tunisian military.

Tunisian border guards had shut down the border, he said. They were laying barbed wire and fortifying their positions.

Columns of Libyan refugees fleeing the fighting in the Western Mountains were reaching the crossing but were unable to get through.

Reuters photographers in Dehiba, a short distance from the border, saw several abandoned pick-up trucks which Gaddafi loyalists had driven. One had a multiple rocket launcher on the back. Another, which had overturned and lay upside down in the sand, was fitted with a heavy caliber machine gun.

Tunisia's defense ministry said the Libyan soldiers who crossed the border had all been gathered up and taken home.

Tunisia toppled its own veteran leader, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in a revolution earlier this year that triggered turmoil through the Middle East and many Tunisians are sympathetic to the rebels fighting Gaddafi's forces.

VITAL ROUTE

While Dehiba was under fire, the rebels, who are fighting to end more than four decades of Gaddafi rule, announced they had recaptured the border post.

Rebels seized the post a week ago. It controls the only road link which their comrades in the Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine.

"Right here at this point I'm looking at the new flag flying up there at the border. The rebels have got control of it, the freedom fighters. We're just in the process of opening it up," rebel Akram el Muradi said by telephone.

After nightfall, Gaddafi's forces resumed their bombardment of the post in an apparent attempt to return.

The main crossing into Libya, two hours' drive to the north, remains firmly under Libyan government control.

Friday's clashes marked the first time government ground forces had crossed the border and entered a Tunisian town.

Inside Libya, NATO air strikes hit Gaddafi troops attacking rebel-held Zintan, a rebel spokesman said from there. But that did not stop the loyalists from firing 20 rockets into the city later in the day, the spokesman said.

In the rebel stronghold Benghazi, a doctor said shelling by Gaddafi's forces in the besieged city of Misrata killed 12 people on Thursday, including two women. He said the dead were victims of rocket and mortar fire.

NATO accused Gaddafi's forces of placing mines at Misrata harbor to block humanitarian access. Libyan state television later said the port to the rebel-controlled city had been rendered "non-functional" and warned ships not to try to enter.

 

(Additional reporting by Abdelaziz Boumzar in Dehiba, Michael Georgy in Benghazi, Tarek Amara and Matthew Tostevin in Tunis and Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

    Pro-Gaddafi forces clash with Tunisian military, R, 29.4.2011
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110429

President Assad’s Crackdown

April 28, 2011
The New York Times

When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, as Syria’s president in 2000, the United States and many others hoped that Syria might finally stop persecuting its people and become a more responsible regional power.

That didn’t happen. Now Mr. Assad appears determined to join his father in the ranks of history’s blood-stained dictators, sending his troops and thugs to murder anyone who has the courage to demand political freedom.

More than 400 people have died since demonstrations began two months ago. On Monday, the Syrian Army stormed the city of Dara’a, the center of the popular opposition. Phone, water and electricity lines have been cut and journalists barred from reporting firsthand what is really happening there.

Mr. Assad finally outlined a reform agenda last week, abolishing emergency laws that for nearly 50 years gave the government a free hand to arrest people without cause. But his bloody crackdown belied the concession, and he is fast losing all legitimacy.

President Obama came into office determined to engage Syria and nudge it away from Iran and toward political reform. Even after the violence began, Mr. Obama and his aides kept quietly nudging in hopes that Mr. Assad would make the right choice.

In retrospect, that looks naïve. Still, we have sympathy for Mr. Obama’s attempts. Years of threats from the George W. Bush administration only pushed Syria further into the arms of Iran — and did nothing to halt the repression or Syria’s support for Hezbollah.

The president’s patience has apparently run out. Last Friday — the bloodiest day of the uprising — he issued a statement condemning the violence and accusing Mr. Assad of seeking Iranian assistance in brutalizing his people. That is a start, but it is not nearly enough.

Let’s be clear: Another war would be a disaster. Syria has one of the more capable armies in the region. And while there is no love for Mr. Assad, he is no Qaddafi, and the backlash in the Arab world would be enormous.

What the United States and its allies can do (British, French and Italian leaders have also been critical) is rally international condemnation and tough sanctions. They can start with their own unilateral punishments — asset freezes and travel bans for Mr. Assad and his top supporters and a complete arms embargo.

Washington and its allies need to press the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council to take strong stands. Muammar el-Qaddafi had no friends, so the league had little trouble supporting action against Libya. Syria is far more powerful, and Mr. Assad’s autocracy uncomfortably familiar to many Arab leaders.

So far, all the Arab League has been willing to do is issue a statement declaring that pro-democracy protesters “deserve support, not bullets” — conspicuously without mentioning Syria. If the Arab League and its leaders want to be taken seriously, including in their own countries, they are going to have to do better.

The Security Council hasn’t even been able to muster a press statement. Russia and China, as ever, are determined to protect autocrats. That cannot be the last word.

The International Criminal Court should investigate the government’s abuses. And we welcome the Obama administration’s push to have the United Nations Human Rights Council spotlight Syria’s abuses in a session on Friday. Ultimately, Syrians will determine their country’s fate. Mr. Assad commands a powerful security establishment, but he cannot stifle the longing for freedom forever.

    President Assad’s Crackdown, NYT, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/opinion/29fri1.html

Morocco says Marrakesh blast a "terrorist attack"

MARRAKESH | Fri Apr 29, 2011
1:41am EDT
Reuters
By Youssef Boudlal

MARRAKESH (Reuters) - Morocco said a bomb that killed at least 14 people, including 10 foreigners, in its busiest tourist destination was a terrorist act, the interior minister said.

The blast ripped through a cafe overlooking Marrakesh's Jamaa el-Fnaa square, a spot often packed with foreign tourists.

Interior Minister Taieb Cherkaoui said 14 people were killed and 23 wounded in the deadliest attack Morocco has seen since 12 suicide bombers killed 33 members of the public in coordinated strikes on the business hub Casablanca eight years ago.

"Preliminary investigation ... suggests that this was a terrorist act caused by an explosive device," the official MAP news agency quoted Cherkaoui as saying.

Security experts said the attack bore all the hallmarks of a plot by Islamist militants.

"The majority of plots are detected in their early stages because Moroccan authorities retain a very effective network of informants right down to street level," said Anna Murison of Exclusive Analysis, a consultancy.

"However, the regular recurrence of plots ... mean it is likely that a few will slip through the net," she said.

State-run 2M television put the death toll at 15 and said they were six French nationals, five Moroccans and four foreigners whose nationality it did not give.

Two Marrakesh residents who were near the square told Reuters the explosion was carried out by a suicide bomber, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Quoting an unnamed security familiar with the investigation, the independent news portal Lakome.com also said it was a suicide attack. According to the source, the bomber was freed from prison two months ago after having been sentenced to eight years in jail for rape.

If confirmed as the work of Islamist militants, the attack would be the first such major attack in Morocco since the Casablanca suicide bombings of 2003.

MASSIVE BLAST

The blast is likely to hurt Morocco's tourism trade, a major source of revenue, which is already struggling to cope with the effects of the global downturn and protests that have swept north Africa.

Morocco's ruler, King Mohammed, has promised to reform the constitution to placate Moroccan protesters who have been inspired by uprisings in other part of the Arab world. But a fresh round of protests is planned for Sunday.

A doctor at a Marrakesh hospital said at least one of those killed was a French citizen, and that some of the wounded had lost limbs in the blast.

"I heard a massive blast. The first and second floors of the building were destroyed," said one local woman, who did not want to be identified. "Some witnesses said they saw a man carrying a bag entering the cafe before the blast."

The cafe is in the Marrakesh medina, or old city, which is designated by the United Nation's cultural arm as a World Heritage Site. It is usually packed with stalls, story-tellers and snake-charmers seeking to attract tourists.

"You can't find a more emblematic target than Jamaa el-Fnaa square," said a Frenchman who owns a restaurant in the city.

The roof over the cafe's upstairs terrace was ripped off by the force of the explosion and pieces of plaster and electrical wires hung from the ceiling.

"I heard a very loud blast in the square. It occurred inside Argana cafe. When I approached the scene, I saw shredded bodies being pulled out of the cafe," a Reuters photographer said.

"The first floor bore the brunt of the damage while the ground floor was almost intact ... There are a lot of police who, with forensics, are sifting through the debris."

Last week, men claiming to be Moroccan members of al Qaeda's north African wing appeared in a video posted on YouTube threatening to attack Moroccan interests.

A masked speaker, who identified himself as Abu Abdulrahman, said the planned attacks were to avenge the detention of Islamists by Moroccan authorities.

 

(Additional reporting by Souhail Karam and Zakia Abdennebi in Rabat, Catherine Bremer in Paris and William Maclean in Bradford, England; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jon Hemming)

    Morocco says Marrakesh blast a "terrorist attack", R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-morocco-blast-idUSTRE73R39T20110429

U.S. says Gaddafi troops raping, issued Viagra: envoys

UNITED NATIONS | Thu Apr 28, 2011
8:59pm EDT
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council on Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

Several U.N. diplomats who attended a closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice raised the Viagra issue in the context of increasing reports of sexual violence by Gaddafi's troops.

"Rice raised that in the meeting but no one responded," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.

Pfizer Inc's drug Viagra is used to treat impotence.

Diplomats said if it were true that Gaddafi's troops were being issued Viagra, it could indicate they were being encouraged by their commanders to engage in rape to terrorize the population in areas that have supported the rebels. That would constitute a war crime.

Several diplomats said Rice provided no evidence for the Viagra allegation, which they said was made in an attempt to persuade doubters the conflict in Libya was not just a standard civil war but a much nastier fight in which Gaddafi is not afraid to order his troops to commit heinous acts.

"She spoke of reports of soldiers getting Viagra and raping," a diplomat said. "She spoke of Gaddafi's soldiers targeting children, and other atrocities."

RAPE AS WEAPON?

Rice's statement, diplomats said, was aimed principally at countries like India, Russia and China, which have grown increasingly skeptical of the effectiveness of the NATO-led air strikes, which they fear have turned the conflict into a protracted civil war that will cause many civilian deaths.

Most council members, diplomats said, had expected Gaddafi's government to collapse quickly. They said the frustration felt by India, Russia and China would likely grow if the war dragged on.

The use of rape as a weapon during wartime has received increasing attention at the United Nations. Last year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a special envoy on sexual violence during armed conflict, Margot Wallstrom.

Earlier this month, Wallstrom chided the Security Council for failing to mention sexual violence in two recent resolutions on Libya, despite having made the subject a priority.

Wallstrom said at the time that reports of rape in Libya remained unconfirmed but she cited the highly publicized case of Eman al-Obaidi, the woman who burst into a journalists' hotel in Tripoli last month saying she had been raped by pro-government militiamen.

The International Criminal Court is already investigating whether Gaddafi's government committed war crimes in its violent crackdown against demonstrators who demanded greater freedoms. The crackdown sparked a rebellion that has turned into a civil war.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations declined to comment.

 

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Peter Cooney)

    U.S. says Gaddafi troops raping, issued Viagra: envoys, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-libya-usa-viagra-idUSTRE73R7N420110429

Bahrain sentences four to die over police killing

MANAMA | Thu Apr 28, 2011
8:12pm EDT
Reuters

MANAMA (Reuters) - A Bahraini military court ordered the death penalty for four men Thursday over the killing of two policemen in recent protests, state media said, a move that could increase sectarian strife in a close U.S. ally.

The ruling came amid heightened antagonism between Bahrain's Shi'ite Muslim majority and its Sunni ruling family after the island kingdom crushed anti-government protests last month with military help from fellow Sunni-led Gulf Arab neighbors.

It was only the third time in more than three decades that a death sentence had been issued against citizens of Bahrain, a U.S. ally which hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

One of the prior death penalty cases came in the mid-1990s, during the greatest political unrest Bahrain had seen before this year. A protester was put to death by firing squad for killing a policeman during that time.

Three other defendants in the current case got life sentences, state media said.

The United States, which critics accuse of not reacting forcefully enough to Bahrain's political crackdown due to the tiny nation's key strategic significance, issued a measured statement on the sentences.

"We strongly urge the government of Bahrain to follow due process in all cases and to abide by its commitment to transparent judicial proceedings," State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke-Fulton said in an e-mailed statement.

"Security measures will not resolve the challenges faced by Bahrain. We are also extremely troubled by reports of ongoing human rights abuses and violations of medical neutrality in Bahrain. These actions only exacerbate frictions in Bahraini society," she said.

Rights groups and relatives of the condemned men, all Shi'ites, dismissed the proceedings as a farce.

"They were activists in their villages and we think they were targeted because of their activities," said Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. "This will deepen the gap between the ruling elite and the population."

Lebanon's Shi'ite group Hezbollah condemned the sentences, saying they were part of the "continuous crime committed by the regime in Bahrain against the people of Bahrain ... (who) are exposed to severe oppression because of their request for their legitimate rights."

Bahrain's state news agency said the verdicts could be appealed and defendants had "every judicial guarantee according to law and in keeping with human rights standards," a statement disputed by relatives of the condemned men who attended the sentencing.

"Even the accusations contradicted each other," said a relative of one of the men sentenced to death. He said there were discrepancies between statements by prosecutors and coroner reports issued at the time of the killings.

Rights group Amnesty International said Bahrain should not use the death penalty.

Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's Director for the Middle East and North Africa, noted that the accused had been tried by a military court and could only appeal to a military court "raising great fears about the fairness of the entire process."

At least 29 people have been killed since the protests started, all but six of them Shi'ites. The six included two foreigners -- an Indian and a Bangladeshi -- and four policemen.

FURTHER PROSECUTIONS LOOMING

The recent turmoil began with Shi'ite-led political protests in February demanding greater political liberties, a constitutional monarchy and an end to sectarian discrimination. A few Shi'ite groups called for the abolition of the monarchy.

Bahraini Shi'ites say the ruling family systematically denies them equal access to employment and land.

Bahrain, blaming the protests on regional powers including Shi'ite neighbor Iran, declared martial law and called in troops from Sunni-led Gulf neighbors to back its forces.

Earlier this week it expelled an Iranian diplomat it said was part of a spy ring based in Kuwait, which in March sentenced two Iranians and one Kuwaiti citizen to death for espionage.

Bahrain's crackdown signaled the end of a tentative experiment with political liberalization that began in 2000 and saw the end of security courts used to prosecute dissidents in the 1990s, one analyst said.

"It's clear hardliners in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are moving to deliver a fatal blow to Bahrain's political opposition," said Toby Jones, a historian of the Gulf at Rutgers University. "They see it as an opportunity to crush what has been a nagging presence for the last decade."

Government officials have said that four policemen were killed during the recent protests, at least three of them run over by cars around March 16.

Since then, Bahrain's security forces have detained hundreds of people, at least three of whom have died in custody.

Bahrain says it has taken steps only against those who committed crimes during the unrest. The state news agency on Wednesday said 312 people detained under martial law had been released and about 400 others referred for prosecution.

Separately, it said classes at Bahrain University -- site of clashes between Shi'ite and Sunni students last month -- would not resume before the end of an investigation into a "broad scale terrorist, saboteur plot" behind that incident.

Thursday's verdicts were the first to emerge from prosecutions related to the protests and their aftermath. Relatives of the condemned men who attended the sentencing said there was no indication of when sentences might be carried out.

(Additional reporting by Peter Apps in London; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Bill Trott)

    Bahrain sentences four to die over police killing, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-bahrain-verdicts-idUSTRE73R6KZ20110429

Syria's Assad facing dissent over Deraa crackdown

AMMAN | Thu Apr 28, 2011
12:56pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad faced rare dissent within his Baath Party and signs of discontent in the army over violent repression of protesters that a rights group said on Thursday had killed 500 people.

Two hundred members of the ruling party from southern Syria resigned on Wednesday after the government sent in tanks to crush resistance in the city of Deraa, where a six-week-old uprising against Assad's authoritarian rule erupted.

Diplomats said signs were also emerging of differences within the army where the majority of troops are Sunni Muslims, but most officers belong to Assad's minority Alawite sect.

The Baath Party says it has more than a million members in Syria, making Wednesday's resignations more a symbolic than a real challenge to Assad's 11-year rule.

But along with the resignations last week of two Deraa parliamentarians, they would have been unthinkable before nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations flared last month.

One diplomat said soldiers had confronted secret police at least once this month to stop them shooting at protesters.

"No one is saying that Assad is about to lose control of the army, but once you start using the army to slaughter your own people, it is a sign of weakness," he said.

Criticism of Assad has intensified since 100 people were killed in protests last week and tanks rolled into Deraa. The United States says it is considering tightening sanctions and European governments will discuss Syria on Friday.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd called on Thursday for international sanctions on Syria over the crackdown and said the United Nations should send a special envoy to investigate the killings.

But a European push for the U.N. Security Council to condemn the crackdown was blocked by Russia, China and Lebanon. China said on Thursday that Damascus should resolve its problems through talks, while Russia said Syrian authorities should bring to justice those responsible for the killings.

The upheaval could have major regional repercussions since Syria straddles the fault lines of the Middle East conflict.

Assad has bolstered an anti-Israel alliance with Shi'ite Iran and both countries back the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups, although Syria still seeks peace with the Jewish state.

CLASH NEAR LEBANON BORDER

Syria has blamed armed Islamist groups for the killings and accused politicians in neighboring Lebanon of fomenting violence, allegations they have denied.

Around 1,500 Syrian women and children crossed into northern Lebanon on Thursday, witnesses said, fleeing gunfire in the Syrian border town of Tel Kelakh. It was not clear how many people were hurt in the clash but Lebanese security sources said the army had stepped up patrols in the area.

Syria has expelled most foreign correspondents, making it difficult to verify the situation on the ground.

Al Jazeera television said on Thursday it had suspended some operations in Syria, a move which a media watchdog said was the result of restrictions and attacks on Jazeera staff.

Syria says dozens of soldiers and police have been killed in the unrest, and state television has broadcast many funerals, but diplomats say some have been killed by Assad's own forces.

"The largest funerals in Syria so far have been for soldiers who have refused to obey orders to shoot protesters and were summarily executed on the spot," a senior diplomat said.

Assad sent the ultra-loyal Fourth Mechanised Division, commanded by his brother Maher, into Deraa on Monday.

Reports from opposition figures and Deraa residents, which could not be confirmed, said that several soldiers from another unit had refused to fire on civilians.

The state news agency SANA denied the reports.

Gunfire was heard in Deraa on Wednesday night. Water, electricity and communications remained cut and essential supplies were running low, residents said.

Rights campaigners reported shooting and arrests on Thursday in Zabadani, about 35 km (20 miles) southwest of Damascus.

The Syrian rights group Sawasiah said the death toll in six weeks of protests had risen to at least 500.

"We call on civilized governments to take action to stop the bloodbath in Syria and to rein in the Syrian regime and halt its murders, torture, sieges and arrests. We have the names of at least 500 confirmed killed," Sawasiah said in a statement. "The shelling of Deraa is a crime against humanity."

Turkey's intelligence chief met Assad on Thursday as part of a delegation sent to Damascus to suggest reforms to help end the uprising. Assad lifted Syria's 48-year state of emergency a week ago, but opposition figures said the death of 100 people in protests the next day made a mockery of his move.

Syria has been dominated by the Assad family since Bashar's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, took power in a 1970 coup. The younger Assad kept intact the autocratic political system he inherited in 2000 while the family expanded its control over the country's struggling economy.

Assad's decision to storm Deraa echoed his father's 1982 attack on the city of Hama to crush a revolt led by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

The latest bloodshed in Syria has been on a far smaller scale, but the unrest -- involving mostly peaceful protesters, not armed militants -- has spread much more widely.

"It is an open question how much killing will it take for Sunnis in the army to move, and how many cities will erupt before the loyalist units cannot cope," one diplomat said.

 

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, Writing by Dominic Evans,
Editing by Samia Nakhoul/David Stamp)

    Syria's Assad facing dissent over Deraa crackdown, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110428

Surprise Palestinian unity deal challenges Israel

JERUSALEM | Thu Apr 28, 2011
12:54pm EDT
Reuters
By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Thursday a Palestinian unity deal would sabotage prospects for peace and stemmed from panic by Hamas and Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas over popular uprisings in Syria and Egypt.

The surprise reconciliation between the Islamist group that runs Gaza and Abbas's Fatah movement that exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank presented a new challenge for Israel as it mounts a diplomatic drive against a Palestinian campaign to win U.N. recognition of statehood ambitions in September.

"The agreement between Fatah and the terror organization Hamas is a fatal mistake that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and will sabotage chances of peace and stability in the region," Israeli President Shimon Peres said.

Peres, a respected elder statesman, said in a statement he feared Hamas would ultimately take over the West Bank after a Palestinian election envisaged by the unity deal and that the influence of Hamas ally Iran would be strengthened as a result.

Peace talks between Israel and Abbas's administration resumed in September in Washington but quickly fizzled after Prime Minister Benjamain Netanyahu refused to extend a partial building freeze in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the reconciliation pact was unveiled on Wednesday, Abbas signaled negotiations with Israel would still be possible during the term of a new interim government formed under the agreement.

He said the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which he heads and to which Hamas does not belong, would still be responsible for "handling politics, negotiations."

But Abbas said Palestinian unity is vital.

"Dislike, agree or disagree (with Hamas) -- they're our people. You, Mr Netanyahu (are) our partner," Abbas, speaking in English, told Israeli peace activists who met him.

Israeli leaders have said they cannot talk to Hamas, which has spurned Western demands to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept existing interim peace agreements.

"This (unity) deal ... stems from panic -- a huge panic," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Army Radio, a view echoed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a separate interview.

"(Hamas leader) Khaled Meshaal, sitting in Damascus, sees his patron President (Bashar) al-Assad shooting up mosques, tanks firing deliberately (at civilians), and understands the ground is burning under him," the far-right minister said.

DIVIDE

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians said the unity accord was born of a deep-seated popular desire to overcome the Hamas-Fatah divide and reflected frustration over the slow move toward statehood.

"The signing of the agreement is very, very good and I pray to God to make it succeed because we are one people in one trench," said Salman al-Dairi, 50, who described himself as a Fatah supporter in Gaza.

Lieberman also said Abbas had "leaned for years" on Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president toppled by a pro-democracy revolt in February, and now felt his own position was shaky.

The result, according to Lieberman, was an alliance between Palestinian factions that "crossed a red line" for Israel.

He held out the possibility of withholding Palestinian tax revenues that Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority and a suspension by Congress of crucial financial aid to Abbas's administration if it shares power with Hamas.

Abbas has said he will not return to U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations until settlement-building is halted in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want as part of a future state.

Israel has called that an unacceptable pre-condition, and has been urging Western governments to oppose Palestinian plans to ask the U.N. General Assembly in September to recognize a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza.

Next month, Netanyahu is due to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, a speech that had been widely expected to include new, interim steps toward a peace agreement.

Speaking on Wednesday after the unity deal was revealed, Netanyahu said: "The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both."

But Barak, who heads a small center-left faction in Israel's rightist coalition, questioned whether the Palestinian unity deal, which charts the formation of an interim administration and elections later this year, would be implemented.

Hamas won the last Palestinian legislative election held in 2006. A unity government it formed with Fatah did not last long, collapsing into a brief civil war in which the Islamists seized Gaza in 2007.

Hamas's founding charter calls for Israel's destruction but it has raised the possibility of a long-term ceasefire if a Palestinian state is created in the West Bank and Gaza.

 

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Mark Heinrich)

    Surprise Palestinian unity deal challenges Israel, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-palestinians-israel-idUSTRE73R2BY20110428

Bomb attack in Morocco tourist cafe kills 14

MARRAKESH | Thu Apr 28, 2011
12:06pm EDT
reuters
By Youssef Boudlal

MARRAKESH (Reuters) - A bomb killed 14 people including foreigners in Morocco's bustling tourist destination of Marrakesh, officials said on Thursday, in an attack that bore the hallmark of Islamist militants.

The blast ripped through a cafe overlooking Marrakesh's Jamaa el-Fnaa square, a spot that is often packed with foreign tourists. A Reuters photographer said he saw rescuers pulling dismembered bodies from the wreckage.

If the bombing is the work of Islamist militants, it will be the first time they have carried out a major attack in Morocco since 2003, when a series of suicide bombings in the commercial capital, Casablanca, killed more than 45 people.

The latest blast is likely to hurt Morocco's tourism trade -- a major source of revenue -- which is already struggling to recover from the effects of the global downturn.

Two residents in Marrakesh who were near the square told Reuters the explosion was carried out by a suicide bomber, but there was no immediate confirmation of this.

"I heard a massive blast. The first and second floors of the building were destroyed," said one local woman, who did not want to be identified. "Some witnesses said they have seen a man carrying a bag entering the cafe before the blast occurred."

The cafe is in the Marrakesh medina, or old city, which is designated by the United Nation's cultural arm as a World Heritage Site. It is usually packed with stalls, story-tellers and snake-charmers seeking to attract tourists.

"You can't find a more emblematic target than Jamaa el-Fnaa square," said a Frenchman who owns a restaurant in the city.

"With this attack and amid the worrying unrest in the region, tourism will hit the doldrums for some time," said the businessman, who did not want his name published.

The roof over the cafe's upstairs terrace had been ripped off by the force of the explosion and pieces of plaster and electrical wires hung from the ceiling.

"I heard a very loud blast in the square. It occurred inside Argana cafe. When I approached the scene, I saw shredded bodies being pulled out of the cafe," the Reuters photographer said.

"The first floor bore the brunt of the damage while the ground floor was almost intact ... There are a lot of police who, with forensics, are sifting through the debris."

TOURISM TARGETED

The explosion took place at a time of growing concern about stability in the Middle East, rocked by months of political unrest and mass protests against autocratic leaders.

"People are panicking. This is a terrorist act and it will affect the economy and tarnish the country's image," said a trader on Morocco's stock exchange. The market fell more than 3 percent on the blast but recovered to close down 1.6 percent.

The Interior Ministry said the explosion killed 14 people, including an unspecified number of foreigners, and injured another 20 people.

"Analysis of the early evidence collected at the site of the blast that occurred on Thursday at a cafe in Marrakesh confirms the theory of an attack," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official MAP news agency.

King Mohammed, Morocco's ruler, ordered a speedy and transparent investigation into what he described as a "criminal explosion," the agency reported.

An official source had earlier told Reuters it appeared the blast was caused by gas canisters in the cafe catching fire.

Security experts said the attack was in line with Islamist militants' previous attempts -- most of them disrupted by security services -- to undermine Morocco's rulers by targeting the tourism industry.

"The majority of plots are detected in their early stages because Moroccan authorities retain a very effective network of informants right down to street level," said Anna Murison of Exclusive Analysis, a consultancy.

"However, the regular recurrence of plots .... mean it is likely that a few will slip through the net," she said.

Last week, men claiming to be Moroccan members of al Qaeda's north African wing appeared in a video posted on YouTube threatening to attack Moroccan interests.

A masked speaker, who identified himself as Abu Abdulrahman, said the planned attacks were to avenge the detention of Islamists by Moroccan authorities.

(Additional reporting by Souhail Karam and Zakia Abdennebi in Rabat and William Maclean in Bradford, England; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

    Bomb attack in Morocco tourist cafe kills 14, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-morocco-blast-idUSTRE73R39T20110428

Timeline: Attacks and explosions in Morocco

Thu Apr 28, 2011
12:06pm EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - An explosion killed 14 people, on Thursday in the Moroccan tourist destination of Marrakesh, and authorities said initial signs were that it was a criminal act.

Here is a short timeline of attacks and explosions in Morocco since 2003:

May 16, 2003 - Suicide bombers set off at least five explosions in Casablanca, Morocco, that hit a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel and a Jewish community center. Forty-five people are killed, including 13 bombers, and about 60 are wounded.

March 11, 2007 - A Moroccan blows himself up in a Casablanca Internet cafe killing himself and wounding four people after a tussle with the owner of the cafe.

April 10 - Three suicide bombers detonate their explosive belts, killing themselves and at least one police officer and wound more than 20 people in a police raid on a safe house in Casablanca, Morocco, during which a fourth was shot dead.

April 14 - Two suicide bombers kill themselves in an attack on U.S. diplomatic offices in Casablanca.

-- Police arrest a third bomber as he tries to flee the scene.

April 28, 2011 - Fourteen people are killed when a blast rips through the second storey of a cafe overlooking Marrakesh's Jamaa el-Fnaa square.

-- The Interior Ministry says it appears to be a bomb. It says those killed include an undisclosed number of foreigners. The blast also injures another 20 people.

 

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)

    Timeline: Attacks and explosions in Morocco, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-morocco-blast-list-idUSTRE73R4LP20110428

U.S. helps Libyan rebels as fighting rages in west

TRIPOLI | Wed Apr 27, 2011
8:24pm EDT
Reuters

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The United States took steps to throw a financial lifeline to rebels controlling eastern Libya while forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi focused their firepower on pockets of resistance in the west.

Rebels said Gaddafi's forces fired Russian-made Grad rockets, which rights groups say should not be used in civilian areas, at the rebel-held western towns of Misrata and Zintan following NATO strikes to free Misrata's port.

In Zintan, the rebels struck back.

"Rebels attacked posts belonging to Gaddafi forces east of Zintan in the early evening. The posts have been used to fire rockets into Zintan," the spokesman, called Abdulrahman, told Reuters.

"The rebels destroyed at least three tanks and captured two others."

Remoter areas of western Libya also came under fire from forces loyal to Gaddafi, trying to break an uprising against his four-decade rule that has put most of the east in rebel hands since it began in mid-February.

"Many in the Western Mountains in towns such as Yefrin, Zintan and Kabau are being killed by this indiscriminate shelling," senior rebel National Council spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga told a news conference in Benghazi in the east.

The United States voiced confidence in the Benghazi-based main opposition council Wednesday as the U.S. Treasury moved to permit oil deals with the group, which is struggling to provide funding for the battle-scarred areas under its control.

The order by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control may help to clear up concerns among potential buyers over legal complications related to ownership of Libyan oil and the impact of international sanctions.

The first major oil shipment from rebel-held east Libya, reported to be 80,000 tons of crude, was expected to arrive in Singapore on Thursday for refueling but oil traders told Reuters finding a buyer was not straightforward, with many of the usual traders still worried about legal complications.

A tanker booked for Italian oil company Eni to carry crude to Italy from Gaddafi-held territory in Libya never arrived in port and left empty last week because the sanctions meant the government would not have got paid, trade sources said.

"They didn't want the crude to go, because they wouldn't have gotten any money for it," an industry source said on Wednesday, adding, "They could use it to refine into gasoline."

 

FIGHTING OUT OF SIGHT

Residents say pro-Gaddafi forces have been surrounding mountain-top towns in western Libya, cutting them off from food, water and fuel supplies and unleashing indiscriminate bombardments on their homes with rockets and mortars.

Libyan officials deny targeting civilians, saying they are fighting armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathizers who are terrorizing the local population.

Rebels who seized a remote post on the western border with Tunisia hurriedly dug trenches after hearing that forces loyal to Gaddafi were on their way to re-take the crossing.

The sound of distant explosions could occasionally be heard coming from the Libyan side of the border, signs of a battle that has been going on for weeks in the Western Mountains region, largely out of sight of the outside world.

The rebel spokesman in the Western Mountains town of Zintan, scene of some of the region's most intense fighting, said there was heavy bombardment there on Wednesday, that at least 15 people were wounded and five houses destroyed.

Misrata also came under fire from Grad missiles, the rebels said, after NATO air strikes forced Gaddafi's troops away from the port, the only connection the besieged city has with the outside world.

Both the rebels and the European Union said the shelling of the Misrata port threatened a vital supply and rescue route.

"We are receiving reports of hospitals being overwhelmed by a growing number of wounded," EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.

An aid ship took advantage of a brief lull in the fighting to rescue Libyans and a French journalist wounded in the fighting in Misrata, along with migrant workers, from the western rebel enclave and headed for Benghazi, center of the rebel heartland in the east.

"Despite heavy shelling of the port area ... about 935 migrants and Libyans have been rescued and are now safely en route to Benghazi," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

A U.N. human rights group is in Libya to investigate accusations pro-Gaddafi forces have violated human rights and attacked civilians.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Algiers, Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Deepa Babington and Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Jon Hemming)

    U.S. helps Libyan rebels as fighting rages in west, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110428

NATO strikes in Misrata but shelling resumes

TRIPOLI | Wed Apr 27, 2011
5:38pm EDT
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - NATO air strikes forced Libyan government troops to withdraw from one of their positions in the besieged city of Misrata overnight but they resumed bombardment of the port area using Grad missiles, a rebel spokesman said.

Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi also fired the Russian-made Grad, a multiple-volley system which rights groups say is highly inaccurate, into the center of the rebel-held town of Zintan.

"There was intense bombardment this morning. Around 15 Grad rockets landed in the town center, two of them landed where I'm standing now," the spokesman, called Abdulrahman, said by telephone from Zintan, in the Western Mountains region.

"Five houses were destroyed. Nobody was killed, luckily, but some children were slightly wounded," he said.

Later on Wednesday, Gaddafi's forces began firing mortar rounds at a district in the west of Misrata, a rebel spokesman said. "They carried out intense bombardment, using mortars," the spokesman, called Safieddin, said by telephone from the city.

A U.N. human rights group arrived in Libya to investigate accusations pro-Gaddafi forces have violated human rights and attacked civilians. Libya says security forces were forced to act against armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathizers trying to seize control of the oil exporting country.

An aid ship took advantage of a brief lull in the fighting to rescue Libyans and a French journalist wounded in the fighting in Misrata, along with migrant workers, from the western rebel enclave and headed for Benghazi, center of the rebel heartland in the east.

"Despite heavy shelling of the port area ... about 935 migrants and Libyans have been rescued and are now safely en route to Benghazi," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

Misrata has become the focus of Gaddafi's drive to break a rebellion against his four-decade rule. But neither the army nor rebels backed by British and French-led NATO air strikes have achieved a decisive victory in weeks of fighting that have destroyed large areas of the town.

"Gaddafi's forces retreated from the port area where they were positioned yesterday after air strikes by the NATO forces," a rebel spokesman called Reda told Reuters in Algiers by telephone from Misrata. "The strikes completely destroyed 37 military vehicles."

"Gaddafi's forces this morning started bombarding an area about 10 km (6 miles) north of the city. It is known as the Steel area. The bombardment is still going on. They are using Grad missiles ... Warplanes are flying over Misrata's outskirts but I don't hear any sound of strikes," he said by telephone.

Human Rights Watch says the Grad, which takes its name from the Russian word for "hail," is one of world's most inaccurate systems and should never be used in civilian areas.

RIGHTS GROUP IN LIBYA

U.N. investigators arrived in Tripoli and met Libyan officials.

"We have a number of questions dealing with indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, civilian casualties, torture and the use of mercenaries and other questions," said Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian legal expert and member of the U.N. commission.

A rebel spokesman in Misrata, Libya's third-biggest city, said eight local people had been killed in fighting on Tuesday, up from the previous figure of three killed. The rebels also noted shelling of the port had prevented some evacuations, after a Red Cross ship had to leave in a hurry on Tuesday.

Military deadlock in Libya has exposed growing international rifts, with critics of NATO bombing calling it another case of the West trying to overthrow a regime by stretching the terms of a U.N. resolution.

The rebels themselves have sometimes accused NATO of not doing enough to drive back Gaddafi's forces. Hampered by inexperience and a shortage of weapons, they also face problems with food supplies and financing for areas under their control.

The first major oil shipment from rebel-held east Libya, reported to be 80,000 tonnes of crude, was expected to arrive in Singapore on Thursday for refuelling but oil traders told Reuters finding a buyer was not straightforward, with many of the usual traders still worried about legal complications.

Britain's Defense Secretary said the campaign in Libya had made progress since U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen said last week the conflict was nearing stalemate, with rebels controlling the east and Gaddafi entrenched in the capital Tripoli.

"I don't think we're in a position of stalemate," Liam Fox said in parliament, citing a decision by Italy to join air raids, Kuwaiti funding for rebels and U.S. deployment of unmanned drones to support his argument.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Algiers, Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Adrian Croft, Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas in London, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Ralph Boulton; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

    NATO strikes in Misrata but shelling resumes, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110427

Libyan rebels brace for attack at desert outpost

DEHIBA, Tunisia | Wed Apr 27, 2011
4:30pm EDT
By Abdelaziz Boumzar

DEHIBA, Tunisia (Reuters) - Libyan rebels who seized control of a remote border post hurriedly dug defensive trenches on Wednesday after hearing that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi were on their way to re-take the crossing.

The rebels hoisted their flag over the post last week after government forces melted away from that corner of the Western Mountains region, where pro-Gaddafi forces are trying to stamp out an uprising.

Rebels threw themselves into a frenzy of activity after reports surfaced that government forces were now about 8 km (5 miles) away and heading toward the Dehiba-Wazin crossing.

The sound of distant explosions could occasionally be heard coming from the Libyan side of the border.

At the crossing -- in the desert about 100 km from the nearest Tunisian town -- rebel fighters were using excavators to dig trenches. On the Tunisian side, the military who patrol the border posted units on nearby hills.

Convoys of lorries carrying fuel crossed into Libya as the rebels rushed to re-supply before the border cut off their lifeline to Tunisia.

"Gaddafi is pretty determined to take back the Wazin checkpoint," said a Libyan aid worker who has been helping send in supplies to the Western Mountains from Tunisia.

UNSEEN BATTLE

The scenes at the border are the outward sign of a battle that has been going on for weeks in the Western Mountains region, largely out of sight of the outside world.

The area, an arid mountain range running from east to west, is populated largely by Berbers, who speak their own language, are ethnically distinct from most other Libyans and have traditionally been viewed with suspicion by Gaddafi.

Residents say pro-Gaddafi forces have been surrounding mountain-top towns, cutting them off from food, water and fuel supplies and unleashing indiscriminate bombardments on them with rockets and mortars.

Libyan officials deny targeting civilians, saying they are fighting armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathizers who are terrorizing the local population.

A rebel spokesman in the Western Mountains town of Zintan, scene of some of the region's most intense fighting, said there was heavy bombardment there on Wednesday, that at least 15 people were wounded and five houses destroyed.

"Rebels attacked posts belonging to Gaddafi forces east of Zintan in the early evening. The posts have been used to fire rockets into Zintan," the spokesman, called Abdulrahman, told Reuters. "The rebels destroyed at least three tanks and captured two others."

He said he heard loud blasts after NATO planes flew over and he believed they had carried out an airstrike nearby.

Tarek Cabawe, a Libyan aid worker inside Tunisia, said Gaddafi's tanks shelled houses in the town of Yafran and detained around 30 men there on Wednesday. He said Libyan forces had suffered heavy casualties this week near the town of Nalut.

 

(Additional reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers and Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

    Libyan rebels brace for attack at desert outpost, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-mountains-idUSTRE73Q6OF20110427

U.S. permits oil deals with Libya opposition

WASHINGTON | Wed Apr 27, 2011
4:27pm EDT
By Andrew Quinn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States voiced confidence in Libya's main opposition council on Tuesday as the U.S. Treasury moved to permit oil deals with the group -- a potential financial lifeline for the anti-Gaddafi uprising.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz said deepening contacts with the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council (TNC) showed it was "a political body which is worthy of our support" although not yet full diplomatic recognition.

"They continue to say the right things. They are reaching out to the international community. They're trying to be as inclusive as possible," Cretz, who is working in Washington to coordinate policy on the Libyan conflict, told reporters.

The United States this week took steps to boost aid to the opposition council and to approve oil exports made under its auspices, creating a loophole in U.S. sanctions that could mean millions of dollars in revenue for rebel coffers.

The order by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control covers oil transactions handled through Qatar Petroleum, which has agreed to help market oil for the council, or the Vitol group of companies.

The order may help to clear up concerns among potential buyers over legal complications related to ownership of Libyan oil and the impact of international sanctions.

A tanker with the first major oil shipment from rebel-held territory is expected to arrive in Singapore on Thursday for refueling before heading to China.

The Treasury's move on Libyan oil came as President Barack Obama on Tuesday approved the release of up to $25 million in nonlethal U.S. supplies and other aid to support groups, including the TNC, protecting civilians threatened by Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

The assistance, which could include items such as radios and military uniforms, comes atop some $47 million in U.S. emergency relief aimed at alleviating the humanitarian crisis caused by Libya's civil war.

WORKING OUT THE BUGS

Despite the increased assistance, Cretz said the United States had still not made a decision on formally recognizing the TNC -- a step that key allies including France, Italy and Qatar have already taken.

Senator John McCain, on a recent visit to Libya, urged the Obama administration to give full recognition to the council and to transfer frozen Libyan assets to them.

But Cretz said the United States was still studying the legal and procedural implications of such a move.

A U.S. special envoy to the TNC, Chris Stevens, has been in Benghazi meeting with council leaders including Mustafa Abdel Jalil and military chief of staff Abdel Fattah Younes al Abidi who are spearheading the rebel drive to oust Gaddafi.

"They are working through the normal bugs that would be part of any stand-up transitional government ... in a country where you have not had politics for 40 years," Cretz said.

"As our mission is able to provide us more information, we will be looking at the different things that we might be able to do to step up cooperation."

Cretz said other assistance, including possible arms transfers, remained under consideration but that no decision had yet been taken.

Cretz said the United States and its allies continued to hear from members of Gaddafi's government who wanted to break with the leader but were too terrified to do so.

"The time is fast approaching where they have to make the decision, and they can make a decision to either go down with the ship or else change sides," he said.

(Editing by John O'Callaghan and Cynthia Osterman)

    U.S. permits oil deals with Libya opposition, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-usa-opposition-idUSTRE73Q6SI20110427

Gunmen kill five in Yemen anti-government protests

SANAA | Wed Apr 27, 2011
12:58pm EDT
Reuters
By Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA (Reuters) - Plainclothes gunmen killed five people and wounded dozens in Yemen's capital Wednesday when they opened fire on protesters demanding the immediate ouster of the president, whom Gulf Arab mediators want to ease from power.

The killings capped a day of demonstrations by tens of thousands of Yemenis, many protesting against a plan supported by the government and the main opposition group which would give President Ali Abdullah Saleh a month-long window to resign.

The deal, brokered by Gulf Cooperation Council, would also give him and his family immunity from prosecution.

The protesters in Sanaa were attempting to reach an area beyond the district where they have been camped out since February, and were demanding Saleh leave office immediately, witnesses said.

"We received bodies and have taken them to a private hospital," said Mohammad al-Qubati, who is a physician at the field hospital where protesters have gathered.

Earlier, protesters blocked access to a key Red Sea port, and clashed with security forces in south Yemen. One protester and one soldier were killed in those clashes, hospital and local officials said.

"The people want a departure, not an initiative," the protesters shouted outside the port of Hudaida, where maritime operations functioned as usual.

Separately, security forces shot at least four protesters in the southern Lahij province, witnesses and medical sources said.

The deal aimed at ending Yemen's political standoff was expected to be signed Sunday in Riyadh, three months after Yemenis first took to the streets to demand Saleh's ouster, inspired by revolts that toppled rulers in Egypt and Tunisia.

The balance of power has tipped against Saleh, who has been a key ally of the West against al Qaeda, after weeks of violence, military defections and political reversals.

In Hudaida, protest organizer Abdul Hafez Muajeb said the coastguard had welcomed demonstrators and had raised a banner saying they would not use weapons against the people.

"We will close the port because its revenues are used to fund the thugs," said protester Muaz Abdullah, referring to plainclothes security men who often use daggers and bats to break up protests.

 

PROTESTS REJECT GULF TRANSITION PACT

The large turnout at protests shows the ability of the mostly young protesters, including students, tribesmen and activists, to act as potential spoilers of the Gulf deal. They have vowed to stay in the streets until their demands are met.

It is also not clear that opposition parties, comprised of Islamists, Arab nationalists and leftists who have been in and out of government in recent years, could halt the protests even if required to by the transition agreement.

Washington and neighboring oil producer Saudi Arabia want the standoff resolved. They fear a descent into more bloodshed in the Arabian Peninsula state would offer more room for a Yemen-based al Qaeda wing to operate.

The Gulf deal provides for Saleh to appoint a prime minister from the opposition, who would then form a transition government ahead of a presidential election two months after his resignation. But the one-month window for Saleh to resign has sparked fears it may offer time for potential sabotage.

Mohammed Basindwa, a senior opposition leader regarded as a top candidate to lead a transition government, said he expected a deal to be signed without further negotiations, and said Saleh was not expected to attend the Riyadh meeting.

Saleh, who has ruled for 32 years, would sign the agreement in Sanaa while the opposition would sign in Riyadh in the presence of a government delegation, Basindwa said.

Asked if he was confident Saleh would step down after the 30-day window, Basindwa said: "The United States and the European Union and Gulf states guaranteed that all sides will stick to implementing the agreement."

Other clashes erupted in the main southern city of Aden when young protesters tried to enforce a general strike that has paralyzed the port city as most businesses and schools closed, a local government official said.

Strikes were also under way in Taiz, which has seen some of the largest anti-Saleh protests, and in Ibb, south of Sanaa.

Elsewhere in the south, gunmen shot dead two more soldiers and wounded five in an attack on a military checkpoint that was blamed on al Qaeda loyalists, a local official said.

Around 130 protesters have been killed as unrest swept Yemen, where some 40 percent of its 23 million people live on $2 a day or less, and a third face chronic hunger.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Cynthia Johnston;

Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

    Gunmen kill five in Yemen anti-government protests, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-yemen-idUSTRE73L1PP20110427

Libyans brace for long wait at refugee shelter

BENGHAZI, Libya | Wed Apr 27, 2011
12:29pm EDT
By Deepa Babington

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - When Abu Ibrahim fled fighting near the Libyan town of Ajdabiyah a month ago, he was sure he would be back home in a few days -- after all, NATO had just begun to bomb Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

A month later, Ibrahim finds himself still stuck at a temporary shelter for displaced Libyans in Benghazi, his hopes of going home dashed as fighting between Gaddafi loyalists and Libyan rebels stalls west of Ajdabiyah and both sides dig in for what could be a protracted war.

"I came here thinking I'll be here only a day or two but it keeps getting longer," Ibrahim, who declined to give his full name, said at a Benghazi university dormitory where about 950 displaced people have been put up in dreary cement blocks.

"All of us thought NATO would finish everything quickly but NATO has taken very long."

Refugees say they were overcome by a generous welcome from Benghazi residents, but the gratitude is turning to frustration for many as the possibility of a months-long wait sinks in.

Among those increasingly desperate is Youssef Saeed, 51, who left Ajdabiyah last month with his family and the clothes on his back after a bomb exploded meters away from his young daughter.

Relief at shelter in the relative safety of Benghazi is now giving way to panic as Saeed grapples with the likelihood of running out of money in two weeks.

He says he has begun to frantically hunt for a job, but none are available for a teacher like him -- all schools are shut.

Other jobs are just as scarce, given a large chunk of business activity in the city ground to a halt after the uprising began in mid-February.

"I'll work on any job, even at a farm, or do manual labor, but there are no jobs," he said, sitting on a mattress on the floor in the small room where his family has been living for nearly a month.

FOOD DONATIONS SCARCE

Sheets have been strung up in the room with clothes pegs for privacy, shielding prying eyes from two mentally disabled girls in his extended family who require special care.

Saeed's son-in-law Ibrahim Mohammed, a civil engineer who worked at a construction company in Ajdabiyah but has not seen a paycheck in four months, said he was worried food rations would taper off at the shelter as the war drags on.

"The first two weeks we had three meals a day, there was everything you wanted," he said. "But now there's only a bag of rice and some tomato sauce and oil every week."

Volunteers at the refugee shelter acknowledge that food donations have grown more scarce as the conflict wears on and Benghazi residents fret about feeding their own families.

"Many families gave what they could at the start, but now people don't have that much to give," said Mohammed Salim, a volunteer at the shelter.

Foodstores are still well-stocked with staples such as rice and bread, but prices of oil and cheese have been rising, Benghazi storeowners and residents say.

Food imports into the rebel-held east are being hit as the interim national council struggles to establish lines of credit and foreign traders fear they will not be paid.

At the same time, the shelter continues to expand.

A group of injured men who were evacuated from the besieged Western city of Misrata to Turkey have now been set up in one block, where Benghazi residents with strong ties to Misrata have been nursing them back to health with fresh fruit and juice.

Most of the injured are eager to return to their hometown despite nursing injuries such as a broken leg and arm -- even if Misrata has had little respite from bombing by Gaddafi's forces.

"I have to go back, I can't stay here because my wife and children are in Misrata," said Ahmed Ramadan, a 50-year-old diver as he lay on a bed with a cast on his leg. "I don't know what's happened to them."

Mohammed Ahmed Mufta, a 39-year-old engineer who broke his arm and had pieces of shrapnel lodged in his back during a bombing, was in a similar position.

"Since I've left I've had no news from my family," he said, wincing in pain from his wounds. "There is just no way to know. I have to go back."

    Libyans brace for long wait at refugee shelter, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-refugees-idUSTRE73Q5Q720110427

NATO strikes in Misrata but shelling resumes

TRIPOLI | Wed Apr 27, 2011
11:54am EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - NATO air strikes forced Libyan government troops to withdraw from one of their positions in the besieged city of Misrata overnight but they resumed bombardment of the port area using Grad missiles, a rebel spokesman said.

Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi also fired the Russian-made Grad, a multiple-volley system which rights groups say is highly inaccurate, into the center of the rebel-held town of Zintan.

"There was intense bombardment this morning. Around 15 Grad rockets landed in the town center, two of them landed where I'm standing now," the spokesman, called Abdulrahman, said by telephone from Zintan, in the Western Mountains region.

"Five houses were destroyed. Nobody was killed, luckily, but some children were slightly wounded," he said.

A U.N. human rights group arrived in Libya to investigate accusations pro-Gaddafi forces have violated human rights and attacked civilians. Libya says security forces were forced to act against armed gangs and al Qaeda sympathizers trying to seize control of the oil exporting country.

An aid ship used a lull in shelling overnight to dock at the port of Misrata, a besieged western enclave offering a sealink to the eastern rebel heartland. It was not immediately clear whether it had had enough time to take on migrant workers and wounded rebels for evacuation before firing resumed.

Misrata has become the focus of Gaddafi's drive to break a rebellion against his four-decade rule. But neither the army nor rebels backed by British and French-led NATO air strikes have achieved a decisive victory in weeks of fighting that have destroyed large areas of the town.

"Gaddafi's forces retreated from the port area where they were positioned yesterday after air strikes by the NATO forces," a rebel spokesman called Reda told Reuters in Algiers by telephone from Misrata. "The strikes completely destroyed 37 military vehicles."

"Gaddafi's forces this morning started bombarding an area about 10 km (6 miles) north of the city. It is known as the Steel area. The bombardment is still going on. They are using Grad missiles ... Warplanes are flying over Misrata's outskirts but I don't hear any sound of strikes," he said by telephone.

Human Rights Watch says the Grad, which takes its name from the Russian word for "hail," is one of world's most inaccurate systems and should never be used in civilian areas.

RIGHTS GROUP IN LIBYA

U.N. investigators arrived in Tripoli and met Libyan officials.

"We have a number of questions dealing with indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, civilian casualties, torture and the use of mercenaries and other questions," said Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian legal expert and member of the U.N. commission.

Hours before the shelling resumed at Misrata, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said a vessel had docked in Misrata with the aim of evacuating Libyans wounded in the fighting, as well as migrant workers, to the eastern rebel heartland of Benghazi.

"The Red Star One has just docked and is unloading aid supplies, including ambulances," a spokesman said during a lull in the shelling.

A rebel spokesman in Misrata, Libya's third-biggest city, said eight local people had been killed in fighting on Tuesday, up from the previous figure of three killed.

Military deadlock in Libya has exposed growing international rifts, with critics of NATO bombing calling it another case of the West trying to overthrow a regime by stretching the terms of a U.N. resolution. The rebels themselves have sometimes accused NATO of not doing enough to drive back Gaddafi's forces.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said British support given to Libyan rebels including body amour and military advisers was not the first step toward arming them.

"We have been very clear that this is mentoring, not training," Fox told the parliamentary Defense committee. "We believe this is vital to their stated role and their ability to help protect the civilian population better. So it is not a first step, nor is it intended to be," he said.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Algiers, Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas in London; writing by Ralph Boulton)

    NATO strikes in Misrata but shelling resumes, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110427

Syrian army tightens control over protest hotspots

AMMAN | Wed Apr 27, 2011
11:34am EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops tightened control on Wednesday over flashpoints of protest against President Bashar al-Assad, who faced growing international calls to end violence that a rights group said had killed over 450 people.

Tanks patrolled the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad erupted nearly six weeks ago, troops poured overnight into the Damascus suburb of Douma and security forces surrounded the restive coastal city of Banias.

Germany said on Wednesday it strongly supported European Union sanctions against the Syrian leadership, and the bloc's executive body, the European Commission, said all options were on the table for punitive measures against Damascus.

France summoned Syria's ambassador to protest at the violence and said Britain, Spain, Germany and Italy were doing the same. "Syrian authorities must meet the legitimate demands of their people with reforms, and not through the use of force," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

The United States, which imposed a limited economic embargo against Syria in 2004, says it is considering further targeted sanctions in response to the "abhorrent and deplorable" violence by security forces deployed in the crackdown on protesters.

A witness told Reuters that a convoy of at least 30 army tanks headed early on Wednesday from southwest of Damascus, near the Golan Heights front line with Israel, in a direction which could take them either to Douma or to Deraa.

Overnight, white buses had brought hundreds of soldiers in full combat gear into Douma, from where protesters have tried to march into the center of the capital in the last two weeks, only to be stopped by bullets.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had names of at least 453 civilians killed during the protests across the country against Assad's 11-year authoritarian rule.

Syria has been dominated by the Assad family since Bashar's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, took power in a 1970 coup. The younger Assad kept intact the autocratic political system he inherited in 2000 while the family expanded its control over the country's struggling economy.

The unrest could have serious regional repercussions because Syria straddles the fault lines of Middle East conflict.

Assad has strengthened Syria's ties with Shi'ite Iran, and both countries back the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups, although Damascus still seeks peace with Israel. Syria and Israel are technically at war but the Golan frontier between them has been quiet since a 1974 ceasefire.

 

BODY "RUN OVER BY TANK"

A resident in Deraa, where electricity, water and phone lines were cut when the army rolled in at dawn on Monday, said fresh food was running out and grocery stores were giving away their produce. "It's mostly tinned food they are distributing to us," he said by telephone.

A relative said his neighbor saw a tank driving over the body of a young man in the main Tishrin square on Tuesday.

"They are telling us: 'You have to accept us and we will remain forever your rulers, whether you like it or not. And if you resist us, this is your fate'," he said.

He said the army push into Deraa was also a warning to other cities of what they could expect if protests continued. "But God willing, we are steadfast and this only strengthens our resolve to get rid of them -- not tomorrow, today," he added.

Diplomats said the unit Assad sent into Deraa on Monday was the ultra-loyal Fourth Mechanised Division, commanded by his brother Maher. Reports from opposition figures and some Deraa residents, which could not be confirmed, said that some soldiers from another unit had refused to fire on civilians.

Syria has blamed armed groups for the violence. Protesters say their rallies have been peaceful and security forces have opened fire on unarmed demonstrators.

State television broadcast what it said were confessions of a Deraa resident, who said he was offered money and weapons to join the protests. It also said an "extremist terrorist group" was arrested in the coastal city of Jabla, where rights groups say at least 13 people were killed on Sunday.

International criticism of Assad's response to the protests was initially muted but sharpened after the death of 100 protesters on Friday and Assad's decision to storm Deraa, which echoed his father's 1982 suppression of Islamists in Hama.

His attempts to appease discontent by lifting emergency law, while keeping draconian powers of the secret police and the Baath Party's monopoly on power, have not stopped protests.

But Assad, a member of Syria's Alawite minority, retains some support, especially among co-religionists who dominate the army and secret police and could lose preferential treatment if majority Sunni Syria was to transform into a democracy.

An alliance between the ruling minority and the Sunni merchant class, forged by the elder Assad through a blend of coercion and the granting of privileges, still holds, robbing protesters of financial backing and a foothold in the old bazaars of Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's second city.

Demonstrators' demands, however, have hardened into calling for Assad's overthrow. They have chided the president for sending forces to shoot at his own people rather than liberating the Golan Heights.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amma; writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Alistair Lyon and Mark Heinrich)

    Syrian army tightens control over protest hotspots, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110427

Factbox: Protests in Middle East, North Africa

Wed Apr 27, 2011
7:38am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Here are details of some of the protests against governments in the Middle East and North Africa.

* SYRIA - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that at least 453 people have been killed during almost six weeks of pro-democracy protests in Syria.

-- On April 21 President Bashar al-Assad lifted Syria's 48-year state of emergency and abolished a hated state security court. A day later, security forces and gunmen loyal to Assad, killed at least 100 people when they fired at protesters.

-- Assad spoke in public on March 30 for the first time since the unrest began. He said he supported reform but offered no commitment to change.

* LIBYA: NATO air strikes overnight forced Libyan government forces to pull back from positions in the city of Misrata but they resumed bombardment of the port area on Wednesday, a rebel spokesman said. Misrata, Libya's third city, rose up with other towns against leader Muammar Gaddafi in mid-February.

-- More than a month of air strikes in a British and French-led NATO mission to protect Libyan civilians have failed to dislodge Gaddafi or bring gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya. Gaddafi said on March 31 he would stay in the country "until the end," a day after his Foreign Secretary Moussa Koussa defected and flew to Britain.

* YEMEN: -- Thousands of Yemenis stepped up protests against a Gulf peace plan on Wednesday, blocking access to the Red Sea port of Hudaida, as Gulf mediators appeared close to sealing a deal for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to cede power. The peace deal could be finalized on May 1.

-- Protests also broke out in the main southern city of Aden.

-- An opposition coalition of Islamists, leftists and Arab nationalists on April 25 agreed to participate in a transitional national unity government, reversing their initial refusal.

-- Saleh agreed on April 23 to step down in weeks in return for immunity from prosecution.

-- Around 130 people have been killed since protests started, including the March 18 killings of 52 anti-government protesters by rooftop snipers in Sanaa, which prompted Saleh to declare a state of emergency.

* EGYPT: -- Egypt's public prosecutor ordered on April 24 that ousted President Hosni Mubarak be transferred to a Cairo prison hospital pending a corruption and murder probe.

-- More than 100,000 protesters had packed Cairo's Tahrir Square on April 8 to press the ruling military council to meet demands including the prosecution of Mubarak, who was toppled on February 11.

-- Egypt will hold presidential elections after a parliamentary vote scheduled for September, a member of the ruling military council said on March 30.

* BAHRAIN: -- Bahrain's health ministry on April 26 sent to the prosecutor the names of 30 employees suspended following protests for "acts which appear to constitute crimes."

-- A day earlier Bahrain said it was seeking the death penalty for a group of protesters accused of killing two policemen during the demonstrations.

-- At least 13 protesters and four police were killed during the clashes. -- Bahrain's crown prince said on April 7 he was committed to reform but warned there would be "no leniency" for those who tried to divide the kingdom.

-- On March 16, Bahraini forces cleared protesters off the streets, including from the camp at Pearl roundabout in Manama that had become the symbol of an uprising by the Shi'ite Muslim majority.

* OMAN: -- Some 3,000 protesters took to the streets after

prayers on April 22 in Oman's southern port of Salalah.

-- Omani demonstrators have focused their demands on better wages, jobs and an end to graft.

-- Sultan Qaboos bin Said promised a $2.6 billion spending package on April 17 after nearly two months of demonstrations inspired by popular uprisings across the Arab world. * TUNISIA: -- Senior members of Tunisia's former ruling party will be banned from a July 24 election and the vote will be run by an independent body for the first time, Prime Minister Beji Caid Sebsi said on April 27.

-- President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by mass protests in a "Jasmine Revolution" on January 14 after 23 years of autocratic rule.

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)

    Factbox: Protests in Middle East, North Africa, R, 27.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-mideast-protests-idUSTRE73Q32U20110427

Egypt gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan attacked: source

CAIRO | Tue Apr 26, 2011
11:56pm EDT
Reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) - Saboteurs blew up a pipeline running through Egypt's North Sinai on Wednesday that supplies gas to Israel and Jordan, a security source told Reuters.

"An unknown armed gang attacked the gas pipeline near Arish city," the security source said, adding that the flow of gas to Israel and Jordan had been hit.

"Authorities closed the main source of gas supplying the pipeline and are working to extinguish the fire," the source said, adding there was a tower of flame at the scene.

An earlier attack on the same pipeline, located south of the North Sinai town of el-Arish, was staged on February 5 during an 18-day-uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak from power on February 11.

On Saturday, Egypt's public prosecutor ordered former Energy Minister Sameh Fahmy and six other officials to stand trial on charges of squandering public funds related to the natural gas deal with Israel.

The decision, part of a probe on graft during the 30-year-rule of Mubarak, said the deal in question caused Egypt losses worth more than $714 million and enabled a local businessman to make financial profits.

Israel gets 40 percent of its natural gas from Egypt, a deal built on their landmark 1979 peace accord.

(Reporting by Marwa Awad; Editing by Jon Hemming)

    Egypt gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan attacked: source, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-egypt-attack-idUSTRE73Q0RR20110427

Deadlock in Libya exposes international rifts

TRIPOLI, April 27 | Tue Apr 26, 2011
10:11pm EDT
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI, April 27 (Reuters) - Military deadlock in Libya has exposed growing international rifts, with critics of NATO bombing calling it another case of the West trying to overthrow a regime by stretching the terms of a U.N. resolution.

"Is there a lack of such crooked regimes in the world?" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asked Tuesday. "Are we going to bomb everywhere and conduct missile strikes?"

And a senior African Union official accused Western nations of undermining an AU peace plan that would not require the departure from power of Muammar Gaddafi.

British and U.S. officials met Tuesday to discuss how to step up military pressure on Gaddafi, as the Libyan leader's army fought fierce clashes with rebels in besieged Misrata.

More than a month of British and French-led NATO air strikes have failed to dislodge Gaddafi or bring major gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya.

Warplanes flattened a building in Gaddafi's compound on Monday in what his officials called an assassination attempt. NATO denies trying to kill him.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Britain's Chief of the Defense Staff General David Richards met U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

After the Washington talks, Gates said the coalition was not targeting Gaddafi specifically. Fox said there had been some "momentum" in the Libyan conflict in recent days.

Western forces have run out of obvious targets to bomb, say analysts, without achieving a clear military result.

Putin accused the coalition of exceeding its U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

"They said they didn't want to kill Gaddafi. Now some officials say, yes, we are trying to kill Gaddafi," he said during a visit to Denmark. "Who permitted this, was there any trial? Who took on the right to execute this man?

Libya's state news agency Jana said Tripoli had urged Russia to call an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, where Moscow has a permanent seat. A Russian official said no instructions for such a call had been made.

The war has split the oil producer, Africa's fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by disorganized but dedicated rebels.

MIGRANTS STRANDED

Troops loyal to Gaddafi have extended their campaign to pound Berber towns in the Western Mountains while battling rebels around the port of Misrata, apparently with the aim of severing the western city from its one lifeline, the sea.

At least one migrant from Niger was reported killed and 10-20 injured in the shelling of the port, the International Organization for Migration said.

They were among at least 1,500 migrants, many from Niger, awaiting evacuation. An IOM-chartered rescue ship has been forced by the fighting to wait offshore.

While world attention has been on Misrata and battles further east, fighting has intensified in the Western Mountains.

Flanked by deserts, the mountain range stretches west for more than 150 km (90 miles) from south of Tripoli to Tunisia, and is inhabited by Berbers who are ethnically distinct from most Libyans and long viewed with suspicion by the government.

Western Mountains towns joined the wider revolt against Gaddafi's rule in February. They fear they are now paying the price while NATO efforts to whittle down Gaddafi's forces from the air are concentrated on bigger population centers.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 30,000 people had fled the Western Mountains for Tunisia in the past three weeks, leaving the towns of Nalut and Wazin virtually deserted.

Around the coastal town of Brega to the east, the Libyan army reinforced its positions and dug in its long-range missile batteries to conceal them from attacks by NATO planes, a rebel army officer said Tuesday.

ADDIS ABABA TALKS

The African Union has been holding separate talks with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa.

The rebels have rebuffed an AU plan because it does not entail Gaddafi's departure. The United States, Britain and France also say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.

Ramtane Lamamra, AU's Commissioner for Peace and Security, accused the West of failing to support the Ethiopian-based bloc's own peace proposal. "Attempts have been made to marginalize an African solution to the crisis," he said.

Obeidi said Tripoli wanted a special AU meeting "to identify the ways that enable our continent to mobilize capabilities to face the external forces which aggress against us."

A representative of the rebels at the Addis Ababa talks said they would continue to engage with the AU to "find a solution that will lead to the aspirations of the Libyan people, including the departure of the regime."

"How can you have peace with him (Gaddafi) around? He is not a man of peace, he is a man of war and violence," Al Zubedi Abdalla, a representative of Libya's opposition, told reporters after talks with AU officials.

The AU proposal is gathering momentum, Libya's deputy foreign minister said. A meeting of all Libyan tribes would be held before the end of next month to decide "whether they want to have a monarchy system or republic ... system," Khaled Kaim told reporters in Tripoli. "It is up to the Libyans."

A delegation of Libyan officials is also in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday.

"Who gave them the right to do this? It's crazy," Chavez said of NATO military strikes. "Because they don't like the leader Gaddafi, because they want to take Libya's oil and water ... they are chucking bombs everywhere."

"A delegation sent by Gaddafi has arrived in Venezuela and we are seeking a peaceful outcome," he said during a speech.

(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas in London; writing by Andrew Roche; editing by Myra MacDonald and Sanjeev Miglani)

    Deadlock in Libya exposes international rifts, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110427

Syrian troops pour into Damascus suburb

AMMAN | Tue Apr 26, 2011
8:48pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poured troops into a suburb of the capital overnight while his tanks pounded Deraa to crush resistance in the southern city where the revolt against his autocratic rule began on March 18.

White buses brought in hundreds of soldiers in full combat gear into the northern Damascus suburb of Douma, a witness told Reuters on Wednesday, from where pro-democracy protesters have tried to march into center of the capital in the last two weeks but were met with bullets.

More than 2,000 security police deployed in Douma on Tuesday, manning checkpoints and checking identity cards to arrest pro-democracy sympathizers, said the witness, a former soldier who did not want to be identified.

He said he saw several trucks in the streets equipped with heavy machineguns and members of the plainclothes secret police carrying assault rifles. He believed the soldiers to be Republican Guards, among the units most loyal to Assad.

Diplomats said Assad sent the Fourth Mechanised Division, commanded by his brother Maher, into Deraa on Monday where demonstrations demanding political freedom and an end to corruption erupted more than a month ago.

Syria has been ruled by the Assad family since Bashar's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, took power in a 1970 coup. The younger Assad kept intact the autocratic political system he inherited in 2000 while the family expanded its control over the country's struggling economy.

Assad has strengthened Syria's ties with Shi'ite Iran, both countries back the Hezbollah and Hamas militant groups, while Damascus still seeks peace with Israel. Syria and Israel are technically at war but the Golan frontier between them has been quiet since a 1974 ceasefire.

CASUALTIES MOUNT

The 45-year old president had dismissed suggestions that the tide of the Arab revolutions could reach Syria, until pro-democracy protests erupted in Deraa on March 18.

Assad's attempts to appease discontent by lifting emergency law while keeping the draconian powers of the secret police and the ruling Baath Party's monopoly on power have not stopped the protests.

But Assad, a member of Syria's Alawite minority, still retains support, especially among co-religionists who dominate the army and secret police and could lose preferential treatment if majority Sunni Syria was to transform into a democracy.

An alliance between the ruling minority with the Sunni merchant class, forged by the elder Assad through a blend of coercion and the granting of privileges, still holds, robbing protesters financial backing and a foothold in the historic bazaars of Damascus and in Syria's second city Aleppo.

Demonstrators' demands, however, have hardened into calling for Assad's overthrow, with protesters chiding the president for sending forces to shoot at his own people rather than liberating the Golan Heights.

"The people want the overthrow of the regime," chanted protesters in Banias on Tuesday as security forces deployed in the hills around the coastal city in preparation for a possible attack similar to Deraa, according to a protest leader.

Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said security forces have killed at least 35 civilians since they entered Deraa at dawn on Monday.

The organization, founded by jailed human rights lawyer Mohannad al-Hassani, said electricity, water and telecommunications remained cut in Deraa and tanks kept firing at residential buildings, with supplies blood at hospitals starting to run low.

At least 400 civilians have been killed by security forces in their campaign to crush the protests, Sawasiah said, adding that the United Nations Security Council must convene to start proceedings against Syrian officials in the International Criminal Court and "rein in the security apparatus."

"This savage behavior, which is aimed at keeping the ruling clique in power at the expense of a rising number of civilian lives, calls for immediate international action beyond condemnations," Sawasiah said in a statement sent to Reuters.

"The murderers in the Syrian regime must be held accountable. The rivers of blood spilled by this oppressive regime for the past four decades are enough," the statement said.

International criticism of Assad's response to the protests was initially muted but escalated after the death of 100 protesters on Friday and Assad's decision to storm Deraa, which echoed his father's 1982 suppression of Islamists in Hama.

European governments urged Syria to end the violence. Washington said it was studying more targeted sanctions against Syria, while Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal proposed the European Union suspend aid to Damascus and impose an arms embargo and sanctions against its leaders.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

    Syrian troops pour into Damascus suburb, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110427

Moroccan unions win wage hikes as protests grow

RABAT | Tue Apr 26, 2011
7:05pm EDT
Reuters
By Souhail Karam

RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco has agreed to raise public sector salaries in a handout estimated at more than $5 billion over three years as demands for reform put pressure on the Arab world's longest-serving dynasty.

State television channel RTM said on Tuesday Prime Minister Abbas Al Fassi had signed a draft memo with unions over the wage deal as well as an increase in the overall minimum wage.

It is the latest in a series of handouts as King Mohammed's government tries to prevent a spillover of popular revolt from other north African countries. Thousands of Moroccans marched peacefully on Sunday to demand reforms.

"This is quite generous," said Mustapha Khalfi, editor of Attajdid newspaper, mouthpiece of the main opposition party, which is linked to a union that took part in the talks.

He estimated the total government cost at 43 billion dirhams ($5.4 billion) over three years and said it would be financed in part by a reduction of 10 percent in spending by all government ministries and some other state bodies.

State television said public sector employees would get a net 600 dirhams ($80) per month increase as of May 1. The minimum pension for public and private sector pensioners would go up almost 70 percent to 1,000 dirhams per month.

The minimum wage for private sector employees would be raised by 10 percent from July and 5 percent at the start of 2012, it added. The current minimum wage is 2,110 dirhams.

Finance ministry officials could not be reached for comment on the potential cost of the package.

State television also quoted Agriculture Minister Aziz Akhennouch as saying the debt of 100,000 farmers would be lowered and rescheduled.

Agriculture is the top employer in the country of more than 32 million.

SUBSIDIES

Morocco, which unlike other Arab monarchies has no oil and natural gas of its own, almost doubled funds allocated to subsidies in February to counter an increase in global commodities prices and rising food costs.

The government has also promised jobs in the public sector for 4,300 graduates and higher wages and benefits to its 47,000-strong auxiliary forces, used to tame protests and fight riots.

Khalfi said the latest handout would not end demands for change. His paper speaks for the main Justice and Development opposition party, a moderate Islamist entity affiliated to a union which was part of the wage talks.

"People's expectations, like anywhere else in the Arab world, are very high and the majority is silent and watching how far the government will give. But there are pockets of resistance to serious change," Khalfi said.

The youth-led February 20 Movement has been putting King Mohammed and his government under pressure to reform a political system that critics say puts too much power in the hands of the royal court at the expense of elected officials.

On Sunday, thousands responded to the group's call for a third day of peaceful protests in three months.

Analysts had been expecting the government to speed up an agreement with the unions ahead of Labour Day, May 1, when the February 20 Movement has said it will join trade unions in their marches.

"The number of those taking part in the protests organized by the movement is not declining," said political analyst Ahmed el-Bouz. "What is interesting is that protests by the movement are attracting people with social and even individual grievances."

The Alaouite dynasty has ruled Morocco for 350 years.

(Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

    Moroccan unions win wage hikes as protests grow, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-morocco-protests-wages-idUSTRE73P7A120110426

Libya rebels try to impose order, boost credibility

AJDABIYAH, Libya | Tue Apr 26, 2011
3:12pm EDT
Reuters
By Michael Georgy

AJDABIYAH, Libya (Reuters) - Libya's rebel army has replaced ragtag volunteers with polished officers to guard the flash-point eastern town of Ajdabiyah, as it seeks to bolster its image as a credible adversary of Muammar Gaddafi.

The move suggests it had little confidence in the hundreds of rebels stationed in the area, men from all walks of life -- from plumbers to civil engineers -- who took up arms against Gaddafi after the uprising began on February 17.

Those are the types of fighters that make up the bulk of the rebel movement in the east which Gaddafi has vowed to recapture.

"We need order here, discipline," said Abdul Salam Mohammed, who was in command of the western gate on Tuesday and had earlier served in Gaddafi's army special forces for 10 years.

"These rebels just did what they pleased. They acted on whim, driving up and down the highway with no strategy. It had to stop," he told Reuters.

Defending Ajdabiyah is critical. The town is the gateway to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and home to the rebel transitional national council.

In the past two weeks, rebels controlling the western gate vowed to recapture the oil town of Brega 80 km (50 miles) away, but abandoned their plans several times after positioning vehicles with mounted machineguns and anti-airgraft units for assaults.

The stakes have become higher since then as both sides try to break a stalemate.

Mohammed and other former army officers said Gaddafi has built up his forces in Brega and two other towns to the west to 3,000 and were digging tunnels to hide rockets to evade NATO aircraft that have been pounding his tanks.

Rebels who were able to take a few positions just outside of Brega were pushed back. Now Gaddafi's forces control an area that reaches east from Brega to a petrol station 40 km before Ajdabiyah along a desert road, rebels say.

ONE BULLET CAN FORCE A RETREAT

"All it takes is one bullet and the rebels retreat," said Mohammed, as another one of Gaddafi's former soldiers nodded in agreement, and puffed on a cigarette through a black holder.

"The system had to change. The rebels still work with us but they have been sent elsewhere. We run the show here now."

He did not elaborate.

Ajdabiyah has changed hands several times. In a recent battle government forces, militiamen and snipers infiltrated the town, which has been largely abandoned by the local population of about 100,000.

Losing it would be a big blow to the rebels, who made big gains then lost one town after another as Gaddafi's troops and militiamen hit back in recent weeks.

The tall green arches over Ajdabiyah's western gateway, which made it such an easy target as scores of rebels gathered there each day, speeding up and down in vehicles mounted with machineguns and anti-aircraft units, eating sandwiches and arguing often, have been torn down.

A group of rebels who tried to drive west through the gateway were turned back by Mohammed. "Where do you think you are going? You must turn around," said Mohammed, a hefty man wearing a crisp beige camouflage uniform from the old days.

"Beware of the dangers. Snipers ahead," said a sign a few feet away, in an attempt to impose order at a checkpoint where rebels often wasted ammunition firing their guns in the air.

Others stood around with crude weapons such as javelins and machetes.

Muhammad said the new arrangement was paying off. "We use tactics. We are managing to surround Gaddafi's people. The other day we took some Gaddafi forces by surprise and captured a few while they were eating a fish dinner."

There were only a handful of fighters there on Tuesday, including one who was recently fiddling with a machinegun bullet belt and accidently fired off rounds, wounding two comrades.

"It's a batter arrangement now. It is organized," conceded the man, Waleed Khalifa, whose finger is still in a cast following the accident.

Former Libyan soldiers sat in a clearly marked "Special Forces" truck on the roadside equipped with devices rebels said they needed badly when they were controlling the checkpoint.

Unlike the fighters who predicted victory at all times of day, they are more cautious. "You can't just say you will capture Brega. You have to think it through," said one of them, Hussein Mohammed Hussein.

Proper binoculars and wireless communications equipment are now being used, instead of simple cellphones which rarely get through to anyone.

One of the doctors who spends his days at the checkpoint with an ambulance says the number of wounded has fallen dramatically since the less trained rebels were deployed elsewhere.

But everyone's bottom line -- including the former army officers -- is that victory won't be possible unless NATO steps up its aerial bombardment of Gaddafi's tanks.

"It's nice that more experienced people are at the gate now," said Fawzi, one of the few residents still in the town, smiling nervously at a line for bread. "But let's face it, Gaddafi's people can take Ajdabiyah any time. Any time. Only NATO can save us."

(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer and Maria Golovnina)

    Libya rebels try to impose order, boost credibility, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-libya-east-rebels-idUSTRE73P5D820110426

U.S. and Britain aim to step up pressure on Gaddafi

TRIPOLI | Tue Apr 26, 2011
3:09pm EDT
Reuters
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - British and U.S. officials met on Tuesday to discuss how to step up military pressure on Muammar Gaddafi, as the Libyan leader's army fought fierce clashes with rebels in besieged Misrata.

More than a month of air strikes in a British and French-led NATO mission have failed to dislodge Gaddafi or bring major gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya, raising fears of a stalemate.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Britain's Chief of the Defense Staff General David Richards met U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

"The meeting will be about how we can put military pressure on the regime, and that will include the tooth and the tail -- the people pulling the trigger to kill civilians in Misrata and the people supplying them," a Ministry of Defense source said.

Planes flattened a building in Gaddafi's compound on Monday in what his officials called an assassination attempt. NATO denies trying to kill him.

After the Washington talks, Gates said the coalition was not targeting Gaddafi specifically. Fox said there had been some "momentum" in the Libyan conflict in recent days.

Western forces have run out of obvious targets to bomb, say analysts, without achieving a clear military result.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the coalition of exceeding its U.N. mandate to protect civilians.

"They said they didn't want to kill Gaddafi. Now some officials say, yes, we are trying to kill Gaddafi," Putin said during a visit to Denmark. "Who permitted this, was there any trial? Who took on the right to execute this man?

"Is there a lack of such crooked regimes in the world? What, are we going to intervene in all these conflicts? Look at Africa, look at Somalia," he said. "Are we going to bomb everywhere and conduct missile strikes?"

Libya's state news agency Jana said Tripoli had urged Russia to call an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, where Moscow has a permanent seat.

As Libya has descended into civil war, counter-attacks by government forces have underlined that Gaddafi has no intention of being overthrown like the leaders in Egypt and Tunisia in the tide of unrest that has rolled across the Arab world.

The Libyan leader has vowed to fight to the death, blaming foreign powers and al Qaeda for the insurgency.

The war has split the oil producer, Africa's fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ragged but dedicated rebels.

 

FIERCE FIGHTING IN MISRATA

Troops loyal to Gaddafi have extended their campaign to pound Berber towns in the Western Mountains while battling rebels around the port of Misrata, apparently with the aim of severing the western city from its one lifeline, the sea.

"The troops launched an attack on an eastern area in a bid to control the port. Fierce fighting is taking place there now," rebel spokesman Abdelsalam said by phone from Misrata.

While world attention has been on Misrata and battles further east, fighting has intensified in the Western Mountains.

Flanked by deserts, the mountain range stretches west for over 150 km (90 miles) from south of Tripoli to Tunisia, and is inhabited by Berbers who are ethnically distinct from most Libyans and long viewed with suspicion by the government.

Western Mountains towns joined the wider revolt against Gaddafi's rule in February. They fear they are now paying the price while NATO efforts to whittle down Gaddafi's forces from the air are concentrated on bigger population centers.

A rebel spokesman, called Abdulrahman, told Reuters from the town of Zintan in the Western Mountains: "It is quiet today but we fear shelling tonight. Gaddafi's forces have bombarded us with Grad rockets for four days after sunset."

"Four people were killed on Sunday including an elderly woman. Three people were also wounded including a 11-year old girl," he said, adding:

"We have not heard any air strike by NATO forces for, I think, four days. They attacked Gaddafi's soldiers in an area north of Zintan on Friday but the troops are still there hiding in valleys."

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 30,000 people had fled the Western Mountains for Tunisia in the past three weeks, leaving the towns of Nalut and Wazin virtually deserted.

"Only a few men could be seen there -- no women and children," the agency said in a statement.

A British military spokesman, Major General John Lorimer, said British planes were in action at the weekend around Misrata, Yafran, Ajdabiyah and Brega, destroying tanks, rockets, missile launchers and armored personnel carriers.

Around Brega, the Libyan army reinforced its positions and dug in its long-range missile batteries to conceal them from attacks by NATO planes, a rebel army officer said on Tuesday.

Comments by rebel officer Abdul Salam Mohammed suggested Gaddafi now had clear control of the fought-over town.

"There are 3,000 government troops in Brega and the next two towns. They have been building up their presence," he told Reuters on the western edge of the town of Ajdabiyah.

"We are controlling the area from here to al-Arbeen (halfway to Brega) but they still have snipers in the area, hiding in the desert behind the sand dunes, and they are active," he added.

The United States, the United Nations and European Union imposed sanctions on the Libyan government and selected Libyan companies in late February and in March.

But Libya imported gasoline from Italian refiner Saras in April, taking advantage of a loophole in U.N. sanctions that permits purchases by companies not on a U.N. list of banned entities, according to shipping sources.

 

LIBYAN OIL TANKERS INTERCEPTED

Fox said on Monday Western forces were interdicting tankers carrying refined oil products.

Britain's Foreign Minister William Hague told the cabinet on Tuesday to "prepare for the long haul" in Libya. London hopes for international agreement soon on setting up a fund to help the rebel national council in the east, he told parliament.

The African Union has been holding separate talks with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa to discuss a ceasefire plan.

The rebels had earlier rebuffed an AU plan because it did not entail Gaddafi's departure, while the United States, Britain and France say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.

Ramtane Lamamra, AU's Commissioner for Peace and Security, accused the West of failing to support the Ethiopian-based bloc's own peace proposal. "Attempts have been made to marginalize an African solution to the crisis," he said.

Obeidi said Tripoli wanted a special AU meeting "to identify the ways that enable our continent to mobilize capabilities to face the external forces which aggress against us."

(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas in London; writing by Andrew Roche; editing by Myra MacDonald/Maria Golovnina)

    U.S. and Britain aim to step up pressure on Gaddafi, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110426

Iran wants Shourd to return from U.S. for trial

TEHRAN | Tue Apr 26, 2011
11:34am EDT
Reuters

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran wants Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans arrested in 2009 on spying charges, to return from the United States to stand trial in May, her lawyer was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

Sarah Shourd was released on $500,000 bail last September while her two male companions, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, remain in jail in Tehran.

They appeared in court for the first time in February and pleaded not guilty but Shourd did not appear.

The next hearing is set for May 11. Lawyer Masoud Shafiee told official news agency IRNA a subpoena had been sent to Shourd through Iran's Foreign Ministry but he did not expect her to appear.

"In the court notice which I received as their lawyer, the presence of Sarah Shourd has been considered mandatory," he said. "In the phone conversation that I had with Ms Shourd, she told me she had gathered more evidence and proof for being innocent and will present it as defense to the court."

"The possibility of her attending the second court session which is due on May 11 at 10 a.m. local time (0530 GMT)... is not much," he added.

The trio, in their late 20s and early 30s, say they were hiking in the mountains of northern Iraq and, if they crossed the unmarked border into Iran, it was by mistake.

Under Iranian law, espionage can carry the death penalty.

The case has further complicated relations between Tehran and Washington, which have had no diplomatic ties since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the occupation of the U.S. embassy by revolutionary students.

(Writing by Ramin Mostafavi; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

    Iran wants Shourd to return from U.S. for trial, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-iran-usa-trial-idUSTRE73P4BD20110426

Heavy fighting in Misrata and Libyan mountains

TRIPOLI | Tue Apr 26, 2011
6:16am EDT
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya's rebel-held city of Misrata won no respite from two months of bitter siege as Muammar Gaddafi's forces bombarded the city and battled rebel fighters, despite pulling out of the city center.

Gaddafi's forces were also pounding Berber towns in Libya's Western Mountains with artillery, rebels and refugees said, in a remote region far from the view of international media.

Italy said its warplanes would join the British and French bombing of Libyan targets for the first time and NATO flattened a building inside Gaddafi's Tripoli compound, in what his officials said was a failed attempt on the Libyan leader's life.

Late on Monday, the "crusader aggressors" bombed civilian and military sites in Bir al Ghanam, 100 km (60 miles) south of Tripoli, and the Ayn Zara area of the capital, causing casualties, Libyan television said, without giving details. A Reuters correspondent heard explosions in Tripoli.

The report said foreign ships had also attacked and severed the al-Alyaf cable off Libya's coast, cutting communications to the towns of Sirte, Ras Lanuf and Brega.

But more than a month of air strikes did not appear to be tipping the balance decisively in a conflict increasingly described as a stalemate.

People in Misrata emerged from homes after daybreak on Monday to scenes of devastation after Gaddafi's forces pulled back from the city under cover of blistering rocket and tank fire, said witnesses contacted by phone.

Nearly 60 people had been killed in clashes in the city in the last three days, residents told Reuters by phone.

 

"BODIES EVERYWHERE"

Although rebels' celebrations of "victory" on Saturday turned out to be very premature, it was clear they had inflicted significant losses on government forces in Misrata.

"Bodies of Gaddafi's troops are everywhere in the streets and in the buildings. We can't tell how many. Some have been there for days," said rebel Ibrahim.

Rebel spokesman Abdelsalam, speaking late on Monday, said Gaddafi's forces were trying to re-enter the Nakl Thaqeel Road, which leads to Misrata's port, its lifeline to the outside.

"Battles continue there. We can hear explosions," he said by phone. He said Gaddafi's forces positioned on the western outskirts of the city had also shelled the road from there.

Another rebel spokesman, Sami, said the humanitarian situation was worsening rapidly.

"It is indescribable. The hospital is very small. It is full of wounded people, most of them are in critical condition," he told Reuters by phone.

U.S. officials said relief groups were rotating doctors into Misrata and evacuating migrant workers.

Mark Bartolini, director of foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said aid organizations were aiming to create stocks of food in the region in case Libyan supply chains began breaking down.

Among the places in particular need of food aid were isolated towns in the Western Mountains, from where tens of thousands of people have fled to Tunisia from the fighting.

 

REFUGEES FLEE MOUNTAINS

"Our town is under constant bombardment by Gaddafi's troops. They are using all means. Everyone is fleeing," said one refugee, Imad, bringing his family out of the mountains.

NATO said its attack on the building in the Gaddafi compound was on a communications headquarters used to coordinate attacks on civilians. A Libyan spokesman said Gaddafi was unharmed and state television showed pictures of him meeting people in a tent, which it said had been taken on Monday.

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam said the Libyan government would not be cowed.

"The bombing which targeted Muammar Gaddafi's office today ... will only scare children. It's impossible that it will make us afraid or give up or raise the white flag," he was quoted as saying by the state news agency, Jana.

Italy said its warplanes would join British and French aircraft in carrying out bombing of Libya. Geographically the closest major NATO member state to Libya, Italy had until Monday provided bases and reconnaissance and monitoring aircraft only.

The surprise decision immediately opened a fissure in Italy's coalition government.

The African Union held separate talks on Monday with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa to discuss a ceasefire plan.

The rebels had earlier rebuffed an AU plan because it did not entail Gaddafi's departure, while the United States, Britain and France say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.

(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo; writing by Andrew Roche; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

    Heavy fighting in Misrata and Libyan mountains, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110426

Analysis: Arab shocks demand risk rating rethink

SINGAPORE | Tue Apr 26, 2011
4:16am EDT
Reuters
By Daniel Magnowski

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Attempting to predict the future, rather than imagining possible versions of it, may have blinded risk analysts to the likelihood of this year's uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

Concentrating on what precedent taught was probable, and trying to pick the likeliest of those eventualities, left only a narrow range of events considered -- like a sports bookmaker not even offering odds on an outsider winning a competition.

Some inside the industry, and some investors who use that research, think the fact that among traditional analysts, the 'Arab Spring' wasn't even on the cards should be the cue for changes in how political risk analysts do their work.

"Most if not all risk rating agencies ... were comfortable with the future outlook despite highlighting the fact that 2011 (was) the year for political succession (in Egypt)," said Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman, chief executive for Egypt at Kuwaiti asset management firm Global Investment House.

The most radical scenario postulated, he said, was opposition party the Muslim Brotherhood winning the election scheduled for later in the year.

"Other than the election outcome there was no concern whatsoever over the political situation."

Though on the face of it the preservation of the status quo may have been the likeliest outcome, investors would be better served by a more imaginative approach that considers the possible events that would mark a departure from the established narrative, rather than analysis that aims to forecast the future.

"The key lesson for political risk consultancies is not about how better to predict the kind of events we have been witnessing: that is simply not possible," said Nigel Inkster, director for transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"Rather they should look at regimes like Egypt's and ask more 'what if' questions which don't just assume the status quo will continue."

Investors and others interested in the country in question would then be able to examine a range of possible futures, and consider how they might respond to each.

By doing this, they would be better prepared to cope with an actual future which is unlikely to be identical to any they have imagined, but would at least have elements of some of them, he said. Scenario planning would be more constructive than trying to rank potential outcomes by likelihood.

"Many investors and some analysts use the recent past as a guide to the future which is often misleading at best," said Elizabeth Stephens, head of credit and political risk analysis at insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group.

LISTENING TO THE STREETS

At the core of popular revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya was deep, widespread unhappiness about being poor, repressed and denied opportunity by regimes run by coteries of corrupt, lavish-spending officials and their families.

But for years, unequal societies and unbending governments had been seen as the price of stability, and as a result there was little expectation among observers that street-level misery would blow up into revolt.

"It is difficult to calculate the impact of discontent as local grievances don't often flare into regime change," said JLT's Stephens.

One of the key lessons for risk analysts is that big-picture economics and politics should not overshadow events and sentiment on the ground.

"While the basic risk metrics for analyzing regime stability may not necessary have changed, they are more nuanced now," said Christopher McKee, chairman of U.S.-based political risk analysis firm The PRS Group. "Analysts must look deeper into the various sources of discontent and the resources the disaffected have at their disposal to effect change."

Among the most powerful of those resources are new social networking websites and mobile communications, which activists in the Middle East and North Africa used to organize and mobilize anti-regime protests.

"(Analysts) have to realize that, given the widespread use of public networking sites, as an example, the material conditions of life are an incredibly important factor shaping public action now," McKee said.

DECLINE AND DENIAL

Others believe that, when trying to imagine possible scenarios, analysts and investors should try to discern and take account of larger global, historical trends, and whether a possible event may fit into that trend.

David Murrin, chief investment officer at Emergent Asset Management and author of 'Breaking the Code of History' argues that the great "empire" of the West, the United States, is in decline.

He believes the inability of the West to foresee events in the Middle East and North Africa was due to its failure to adjust to its lesser military, diplomatic and economic status.

That blindness left it unable to perceive the level of hostility and capability of regimes aligned against it, and the disaffection of those traditionally aligned with the U.S.

"Failures to predict unrest in the Middle East and North Africa by the West are symptoms of a system in decline. When you're old, you're in denial. Old systems are in denial," Murrin said.

"The general decline of America means those countries that were affiliated with it don't want to be any more. They have rejected American power and there's no going back to that."

On a practical level, the geopolitical theory that informs Murrin's writing and Emergent's investment strategy holds that the rise and fall of nation states is repetitive and can be predicted. Those rises and falls create volatility in financial markets, which are trading opportunities.

That the Arab revolts came as such a shock was not a methodological failure of analysis, but a result of an inability to see the new evolving world as it is, Murrin said.

"Detailed analysis doesn't work. You need to look at the whole process and see what are the large forces at work. When you're growing, you see the bigger the picture, you get stronger. When you're contracting, you're so busy fighting fires you think the big picture is the same, but it isn't."

(Editing by Andrew Marshall)

    Analysis: Arab shocks demand risk rating rethink, R, 26.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/businesspro-us-risk-ratings-idUSTRE73P1C320110426

Residents tell grim story of assault on Syrian city

AMMAN | Mon Apr 25, 2011
2:25pm EDT
Reuters
By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Residents of the city of Deraa, cradle of the pro-democracy protests that have swept Syria, painted a chilling picture on Monday of an assault by security forces using tanks, heavy artillery and machine guns.

Artillery pounded the town, electricity and most telephone lines were cut and soldiers took over mosques and other key locations, residents reported.

Foreign correspondents are being kept out of Syria so the reports could not be verified, but residents contacted by telephone painted a consistent picture of a ruthless attempt to subjugate the city through military force.

A prominent activist said at least 18 people were killed by gunfire and tank shelling, adding to the grim toll of a month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad which human rights groups say has already cost 350 lives.

"Army units are pounding Deraa at this moment. There seems to be no end to the sounds of heavy machinegun fire and occasional mortars," said resident Abu Salem, several hours after the tanks rolled in at dawn.

Another witness said he had seen bodies lying in a street near the Omari mosque after eight tanks and two armored vehicles were deployed in the old quarter. A pall of black smoke hung over the city.

Most residents sought refuge indoors, but a few groups of defiant youths played cat-and-mouse with the troops patrolling on foot, shouting "down, down with Bashar."

It was a dangerous game.

"Anywhere they find people coming out in the streets, they attack with heavy ammunition," said another resident.

Clouds of black smoke from the gunfire filled the sky above the city, said Abu Salem, from the large al-Masalmah tribe.

Deraa, which in its heyday was a stopping place on the Hijaz Railway built during Ottoman rule a century ago, was more recently known as a recruiting ground for cadres of the ruling Baath Party and agents of the secret police.

In the past six weeks, the Sunni Muslim city has emerged as a center of defiance against the autocratic rule of Assad and his minority Alawite family.

CALL TO PRAYER DROWNED OUT

Hours before troops stormed the city center and the old quarter, nearly 2,000 people gathered in the old Omari mosque, focal point of almost daily protests.

One community leader after another criticized what they termed the "inhumanity and criminality" of the security forces during recent crackdowns, and called for the peaceful popular uprising against Assad to spread, residents said.

Abu Salem said the echo of gunfire drowned out the dawn call to prayer after the tanks and soldiers arrived.

"They occupied several mosques, including the Omari mosque and Sheikh Abdul Aziz (mosque), to ensure that even volunteers or imams cannot use minarets to ask for blood or urge medics to help the wounded," he added.

He said dozens of tanks and scores of armored personnel carriers took up positions in the old quarter and the main squares in Mahatta, the heart of the commercial area.

"They stationed tanks even in public gardens and security patrols seem to have orders to shoot on the spot."

Witnesses described how black-clad snipers took up positions on high government buildings.

"It's terrifying and shows the authorities will not spare anyone to subdue people and end our resistance and yearning for freedom," said one witness.

Asked whether the residents were fighting back -- Deraa is a region where tribal traditions of vengeance are strong -- Abu Salem said that, until Monday, most residents had resisted calls to avenge the dozens of deaths.

"Defenseless people cannot just watch as they get slaughtered. There is hardly a family that does not have a martyr now," he said.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Andrew Dobbie)

    Residents tell grim story of assault on Syrian city, R, 25.2.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-syria-deraa-idUSTRE73O4QX20110425

Air strike flattens building in Gaddafi compound

TRIPOLI | Mon Apr 25, 2011
1:46pm EDT
By Lin Noueihed

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - NATO forces flattened a building inside Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound early on Monday, in what a press official from his government said was an attempt on the Libyan leader's life.

Firefighters were still working to extinguish flames in part of the ruined building a few hours after the attack, when foreign journalists were brought to the scene in Tripoli.

The press official, who asked not to be identified, said 45 people were hurt in the strike, 15 of them seriously, and some were still missing. That could not be independently confirmed.

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam said the Libyan government would not be cowed by such attacks.

"The bombing which targeted Muammar Gaddafi's office today... will only scare children. It's impossible that it will make us afraid or give up or raise the white flag," he was quoted as saying by the Jana state news agency.

"You, NATO, are waging a losing battle because you are backed by traitors and spies. History has proved that no state can rely on them to win."

Libyan authorities have contacted Russia, China, Italy, Turkey and other countries to complain about the strike on Gaddafi's compound, a government statement said.

The compound has been hit before, but NATO forces appear to have stepped up the pace of strikes in Tripoli in recent days. A target nearby, which the government called a car park but which appeared to cover a bunker, was hit two days ago.

 

AU DIPLOMACY; MISRATA BOMBARDED

The attack on the compound coincided with a fresh flurry of diplomacy by countries seeking a way out of the Libyan conflict.

Russia, which has been critical of the western air strikes as exceeding the U.N. mandate to protect civilians, urged Tripoli on Saturday to implement an immediate ceasefire.

The African Union was also holding separate talks on Monday with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa to discuss a peace plan.

The rebel representatives -- former ambassadors to South Africa and Uganda -- and Obeidi were also due to meet separately with representatives of the United Nations and the European Union.

"This will be the first time that they (rebels) are attending a meeting here. We will meet both sides one after the other," Ramtane Lamamra, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, told Reuters.

The rebels rebuffed an earlier AU peace plan because it did not entail Gaddafi's departure, while the United States, Britain and France say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.

The African Union does not have a good track record in brokering peace deals, having failed recently to end conflicts or disputes in Somalia, Madagascar and Ivory Coast.

The talks brought no relief for people in the besieged western city of Misrata, where residents reported intense bombardment in the early hours of Monday which tailed off when NATO planes flew over.

The weekend saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the two-month siege in Misrata despite an announcement by Gaddafi's forces on Friday that they were pulling back.

Medics said more than 20 people were killed on Sunday and 28 on Saturday. A rebel spokesman put the death toll even higher. Three corpses were charred beyond recognition and one child was killed, but many of the shells fell on waste ground.

Residents said Gaddafi's forces had been pushed away from Tripoli Street, center of the recent battles, to the outskirts of the city, from where they were shelling occasionally when NATO planes were not around.

"Bodies of Gaddafi's troops are everywhere in the streets and in the buildings. We can't tell how many. Some have been there for days," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a resident whose cousin was killed at the weekend. He was speaking by phone.

A rebel spokesman, Sami, said the humanitarian situation was worsening rapidly.

"It is indescribable. The hospital is very small. It is full of wounded people, most of them are in critical condition," he said by phone. "The quantity of food available in the city is also decreasing. The state of the city is deteriorating because it has been under siege for about two months."

A government spokesman in Tripoli said the army was still carrying out its plan to withdraw from the city, but had fired back when retreating troops were attacked.

"As our army was withdrawing from Misrata it came under attack by the rebels. The army fought back but continued its withdrawal from the city," Mussa Ibrahim told reporters.

The government says it will leave it to local tribes to resolve the situation in Misrata. Rebels say the announcement may be part of a ruse to mask troop movements or stir violence between rebels and locals in nearby towns.

 

FUNDS FROM KUWAIT

Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told a news conference in Kuwait the Gulf state had agreed to give 50 million Kuwaiti dinars ($177 million) to his rebel council to help pay workers in the eastern part of the country under its control.

"This amount will help us a lot in paying the salaries of employees who did not receive their little salaries for two months," he said. "We are capable of only covering 40 percent of this amount. We are in need of urgent aid."

The rebels have been seeking international recognition as well as material support from the west and the Arab world.

Hampered by their lack of firepower, equipment and training, they have been unable to advance from eastern Libya. Fighting with Gaddafi's troops has swung back and forth along the coast road between the towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega.

Abdel Jalil also said the rebels had received weapons from "friends and allies," but did not name them.

(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo; writing by Myra MacDonald; editing by Andrew Roche)

    Air strike flattens building in Gaddafi compound, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110425

Syria sends tanks into Deraa where uprising began

AMMAN | Mon Apr 25, 2011
1:34pm EDT
Reuters
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops and tanks poured into Deraa on Monday, seeking to crush resistance in the city where a month-long uprising against the autocratic 11-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad first erupted.

A prominent activist said at least 18 people were killed in the first reported use of tanks inside a population center since peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations began in the southern city, close to the border with Jordan, on March 18.

The White House, deploring "brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people," said President Barack Obama's administration was considering targeted sanctions to make clear that "this behavior is unacceptable."

A U.S. official said that measures under consideration included a freeze on assets and a ban on U.S. business dealings.

Security forces have killed more than 350 civilians across Syria since unrest broke out in Deraa, rights groups say. A third of the victims were shot in the past three days as the scale and breadth of a popular revolt against Assad grew.

Assad lifted Syria's 48-year state of emergency on Thursday but activists say the violence the following day, when 100 people were killed during protests across the country, showed he was not serious about addressing calls for political freedom.

A leading human rights campaigner said security forces, which also swept into the restive Damascus suburb of Douma, were waging "a savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats."

Monday's raids on Deraa and Douma suggested Assad, who assumed power when his father died in 2000 after ruling Syria with an iron fist for 30 years, was determined to crush the opposition by force.

Opposition activist Ammar Qurabi, in contact with the Syrian opposition from Egypt, said at least 18 people were killed by gunfire and tank shelling in Deraa alone, with many more wounded or missing.

TANKS OUTSIDE MOSQUE

Earlier, a witness in Deraa told Reuters he could see bodies lying in a main street near the Omari mosque after eight tanks and two armored vehicles deployed in the old quarter.

"People are taking cover in homes. I could see two bodies near the mosque and no one was able to go out and drag them away," the witness said.

Snipers were posted on government buildings, and security forces in army fatigues had shot at random at houses since the tanks moved in just after dawn prayers, the witness said.

Tanks at the main entry points to Deraa also shelled targets in the city, a resident named Mohsen told Al Jazeera, which showed a cloud of black smoke hanging over buildings. "People can't move from one street to another because of the shelling."

Abdallah Abazaid, another activist, told Al Arabiya television there were "20 martyrs," and that five officers and 10 soldiers refused orders to shoot residents.

"They have quit their positions because they found us unarmed," Abazaid said. His comments about army defections could not be confirmed but another witness told Al Jazeera that a unit commander and his troops fired on their own side, apparently to allow people to drag the wounded from the street.

Foreign journalists have mostly been expelled from the country, making it impossible to verify the situation on the ground. Grisly footage posted on the Internet by demonstrators in recent days appears to show troops firing on unarmed crowds.

Officials have blamed armed groups for the violence and say dozens of soldiers and police have been killed.

"OUTRAGEOUS VIOLENCE"

Assad has deepened his father Hafez al-Assad's alliance with Iran, clawed back influence in Lebanon and backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants, but he has kept Syria's front line with Israel quiet and held indirect peace talks with the Jewish state.

Western criticism of the crackdown was initially muted, partly because of fears that a collapse of his minority Alawite rule in the majority Sunni country might lead to sectarian conflict. But on Friday Obama urged Assad to stop the "outrageous use of violence to quell protests."

Suhair al-Atassi, a leading Syrian human rights campaigner, said authorities had launched "a savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats."

"President Assad's intentions have been clear since he came out publicly saying he is 'prepared for war'," Atassi said, referring to a March 30 speech to parliament.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay denounced the escalation of violence and called for detained activists and political prisoners to be released.

"The first step now is to immediately halt the use of violence, then to conduct a full and independent investigation into the killings, including the alleged killing of military and security officers, and to bring the perpetrators to justice."

Writers from all Syria's main sects issued a declaration denouncing the crackdown and urging intellectuals "who have not broken the barrier of fear to make a clear stand.

"We condemn the violent, oppressive practices of the Syrian regime against the protesters and mourn the martyrs of the uprising," said Monday's declaration, signed by 102 writers and journalists, in Syria and in exile.

As well as the crackdown in Deraa and Douma, activists said troops and gunmen loyal to Assad had shot dead at least 13 civilians since they swept into the Mediterranean town of Jabla on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

The forces deployed in the old Sunni quarter of Jabla after a pro-democracy protest and a warning by the governor of the province against any public assembly, rights campaigners said.

A wave of arrests since Friday's demonstrations continued on Monday, the SOHR said, saying more people had been detained in the provinces of Idlib, Deir al-Zor and Raqqa.

Officials in neighboring Jordan said Syria closed all land border crossings between the two countries on Monday, cutting a major transit point for freight between Turkey and Europe and the Gulf.

(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Mahmoud Habboush in Dubai and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Paul Taylor and Mark Trevelyan)

    Syria sends tanks into Deraa where uprising began, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110425

Guantanamo documents

name Pakistan ISI as al Qaeda associate

ISLAMABAD | Mon Apr 25, 2011
12:30pm EDT
By Chris Allbritton

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military classified Pakistan's top spy agency as a terrorist support entity in 2007 and used association with it as a justification to detain prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, according to leaked documents published on Sunday that are sure to further alienate Pakistan.

One document (link.reuters.com/tyn29r), given to The New York Times, say detainees who associated with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate "may have provided support to al-Qaida or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or Coalition forces."

The ISI, along with al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence, are among 32 groups on the list of "associated forces," which also includes Egypt's Islamic Jihad, headed by al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The document defines an "associate force" as "militant forces and organizations with which al-Qaida, the al-Qaida network, or the Taliban has an established working, supportive, or beneficiary relationship for the achievement of common goals."

The ISI said it had no comment.

The "JTF-GTMO Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants" likely dates from 2007 according to its classification code, and is part of a trove of 759 files on detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The secret documents were obtained by WikiLeaks and date from between 2002 and 2009, but they were made available to The New York Times from a separate source, the paper said.

They reveal that most of the 172 remaining prisoners have been rated as a "high risk" of posing a threat to the United States and its allies if released without adequate rehabilitation and supervision, the newspaper said.

The documents also show about a third of the 600 detainees already sent to other countries were also designated "high risk" before they were freed or passed to the custody of other governments, the Times said in its report late on Sunday.

SEAT-OF-THE-PANTS INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

The dossiers, prepared under the Bush administration, also show the seat-of-the-pants intelligence gathering in war zones that led to the incarcerations of innocent men for years in cases of mistaken identity or simple misfortune, the Times said.

The documents are largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics at Guantanamo that drew global condemnation, the newspaper reported.

The Times also said an Obama administration task force set up in January 2009 had reviewed the assessments and, in some cases, come to different conclusions. "Thus... the documents published by The Times may not represent the government's current views of detainees at Guantanamo."

WikiLeaks previously released classified Pentagon reports on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 State Department cables. Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old U.S. soldier accused of leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks has been detained since May of last year.

Last week, the Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pakistani media that the ISI had a "longstanding" relationship with the Haqqani Network which is allied to al Qaeda.

"Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners. And I have a sacred obligation to do all I can to make sure that doesn't happen," Mullen told Pakistan's daily Dawn newspaper.

"So that's at the core -- it's not the only thing -- but that's at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship," Mullen said.

Pakistan's powerful ISI has long been suspected of maintaining ties to the Haqqani network, cultivated during the 1980s when Jalaluddin Haqqani was a feared battlefield commander against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

U.S.-Pakistan ties have been strained this year by the case of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore on January 27, as well as by tensions in Pakistan over U.S. drone strikes that have fanned anti-American sentiment.

(Editing by Andrew Marshall)

    Guantanamo documents name Pakistan ISI as al Qaeda associate, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-pakistan-usa-guantanmo-idUSTRE73O2L920110425

Yemen protests kill 3 as opposition haggles

SANAA | Mon Apr 25, 2011
11:45am EDT
reuters
By Mohammed Ghobari and Mohamed Sudam

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni security forces shot dead three more protesters against President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday while opposition politicians debated whether to cooperate with a Gulf plan for the veteran autocrat to step aside.

The risk of Yemen, the poorest Arab state long on the brink of collapse, descending further into bloodshed is a major worry for Saudi Arabia and the United States, which fear an active al Qaeda wing could strengthen a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula.

Witnesses said security men opened fire to stop protesters marching through the city of Taiz, south of the capital. They were trying to join a pro-democracy rally that would take them past a palace belonging to Saleh.

"There were thousands in a march who came from outside Taiz, but the police, army and gunmen in civilian clothes confronted them, opening fire with bullets and tear gas," said Jamil Abdullah, a protest organizer.

"They opened fire heavily from every direction."

A woman watching the clash from her balcony was shot dead, and medical sources said 25 others were shot and wounded in the town, scene of some of Yemen's largest anti-Saleh protests.

Both Western and Gulf Arab allies of Yemen have tried to mediate a solution to a three-month crisis in which protesters inspired by Arab revolts against autocratic rule in Egypt and Tunisia have sought Saleh's immediate ouster.

Saleh, seeing political allies desert him en masse, agreed in principle to a proposal by Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers to step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself, his family and aides.

But the plan, yet to be formally agreed, would allow Saleh to stay in power for a further 30 days before stepping down. Analysts say that could leave room to make trouble.

MEETING WITH DIPLOMATS

In Taiz, clashes lasted for several hours, with heavy gunfire reported. Dozens were arrested, activists said.

Similar clashes broke out in the town of Ibb, where one protester was shot dead and a dozen were wounded by live fire as police tried to break up a march, witnesses said.

Security forces also shot dead a protester in the southern province of al-Baida while trying to disperse a protest.

Yemen's main opposition coalition, made up of Islamists and leftists, has welcomed the Gulf plan but stopped short of a full endorsement and said it would stay out of a unity government during a transition period.

Some opposition members, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Sunday they did not want to be associated with a unity administration in case Saleh, a shrewd political survivor, did not resign after a month.

The arrangement proposed by Gulf states would involve Saleh appointing a prime minister chosen by the opposition to form a unity government made up of ministers from all sides. He would resign, handing over to a vice president from the ruling party.

An opposition refusal to take part could stymie the plan, and opposition sources said the U.S. ambassador had pushed the group to come on board fully in a meeting on Sunday.

Opposition leaders met on Monday to formulate a stance and may talk again with Gulf and Western diplomats as early as Tuesday to give a response. They were expected to issue a statement on their position within hours.

"We met with Gulf and Western ambassadors in Sanaa to discuss the Gulf initiative and receive clarifications (on the Gulf plan's stance) on the continuation of protests," an opposition source said, adding that more meetings would follow.

Protesters, who want Saleh prosecuted over a crackdown in which more than 125 protesters have died, remain unconvinced by the proposed deal and have called for more demonstrations.

The mostly young protesters, who include large cross sectors of Yemeni society from tribesmen to northern Shi'ite rebels and southern separatists, have expressed fears that Saleh's inner circle could slow or stop his departure.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Cynthia Johnston, editing by Paul Taylor)

    Yemen protests kill 3 as opposition haggles, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-yemen-idUSTRE73L1PP20110425

Analysis: West's caution on Syria jars with Libya action

PARIS | Mon Apr 25, 2011
10:21am EDT
Reuters
By Paul Taylor

PARIS (Reuters) - An authoritarian Arab ruler unleashes his security forces and irregular militia gunmen to crush peaceful pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds of people including women and children.

Does the West a) issue statements condemning the excessive use of force; b) seek U.N. sanctions and an International Criminal Court investigation; c) provide practical support for pro-democracy protesters, d) intervene militarily?

The answer, to many human rights campaigners, seems to vary unacceptably depending on the state concerned.

Western powers which took up arms against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, citing the United Nations principle of the responsibility to protect civilians, have confined themselves so far to verbal outrage at the killing of some 350 people in Syria.

The balance of Western economic and security interests and humanitarian values is different in each case but the perceived double standard is causing anger in the Middle East and among Western publics.

"After Friday's carnage, it is no longer enough to condemn the violence," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at pressure group Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Faced with the Syrian authorities' 'shoot to kill' strategy, the international community needs to impose sanctions on those ordering the shooting of protesters."

When the Gulf Arab kingdom of Bahrain called in Saudi troops last month to help quash a pro-democracy movement led mostly by the Shi'ite Muslim majority, the United States and Europe uttered a few pro-forma words of disapproval, then fell silent.

"DIFFERENT SITUATIONS"

The killing in Bahrain was on a smaller scale than in Libya or Syria, and the ensuing arrests, dismissals and disappearances of opponents have drawn less media coverage.

More importantly, Bahrain is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which keeps an eye on Shi'ite Iran across the Gulf and patrols the world's most vital oil-export sea lanes.

The ruling family in the Gulf island state is so close to former colonial power Britain that the crown prince was invited to this week's royal wedding in London until he declined the invitation to spare British embarrassment.

There are strategic, political and practical reasons behind divergent Western responses to events in Syria, Libya and Yemen, after the initially hesitant Western embrace of democratic change in Tunisia and Egypt.

"All of these situations are different," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on BBC television when questioned about apparent inconsistency.

"So we mustn't think that just because we're doing certain things in Libya, that we would be able or willing to do those things in other countries of the Arab world."

Hague said that in Libya, there was a direct appeal for help from the opposition and the Arab League had asked the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution and to take action for a no fly zone. Western governments say they prevented an imminent massacre that Gaddafi had threatened to unleash in Benghazi.

Gaddafi had lost control of more than a third of his country and his armed forces were brittle and poorly equipped.

By contrast, Syria has a well-trained army with Russian missiles and combat aircraft, and suspected chemical weapons, making any Western military intervention utterly implausible.

AVOID Destabilization

A key strategic consideration is that the West is keen to ensure that Arab uprisings, and the rulers' responses, do not destabilize the entire Middle East, threatening oil supplies to the industrialized world or triggering wider conflict.

Oil has already risen to nearly $125 a barrel from around $80 last year, partly due to a drop in Libyan supply but also because Saudi Arabia has cut back output, forcing prices up.

Riyadh's move is seen partly as driven by the need to fund huge hand-outs promised by King Abdullah to interest groups to pre-empt any possible unrest in his absolute monarchy.

It may also reflect tension between Saudi Arabia and Washington. Some diplomats say Saudi rulers were incensed by the way U.S. President Barack Obama dropped Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a veteran pro-American stalwart in the region.

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the United States' priority in the region has been to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability which Western and Arab strategists say would be profoundly destabilizing.

Syria is Iran's closest ally and Western powers have been trying for the last two years to woo President Bashar al-Assad away from Tehran and encourage the British-trained eye doctor to reach a peace deal with Israel that could remove a major source of regional friction.

After years of unsuccessfully trying to corner Syria over the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the United States sent an ambassador back to Damascus this year.

France appointed a special envoy last summer to facilitate back channel contacts between Syria and Israel, and Turkey, Spain and Germany have also been involved in passing messages, diplomats say.

If the West seeks a Security Council condemnation of Assad or a referral of the repression to the ICC, Russia, an historic ally of Libya, may well veto any resolution.

Western diplomatic action could push Syria more tightly into the arms of Iran and risk retaliation by Syrian-allied Hezbollah forces in Lebanon either against Israel or European troops policing a southern Lebanese buffer zone.

Western diplomats say they are also concerned at the risk of sectarian conflict in Syria, dominated for nearly five decades by an Alawite minority close to Shi'a Islam. Violence involving Sunni Arabs, Alawites, Kurds and Druze could embroil neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq.

So while Western governments are likely to step up rhetoric against Assad and explore the scope for targeted U.N. sanctions and an ICC referral, there is little they can do to affect the outcome of the popular uprising.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

    Analysis: West's caution on Syria jars with Libya action, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-syria-west-idUSTRE73O35K20110425

U.S. mulling sanctions on Syrian officials

WASHINGTON | Mon Apr 25, 2011
12:38pm EDT
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is considering sanctions against senior officials in the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a bid to ratchet up pressure for an end to a violent crackdown on protesters, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The measures, which could freeze those officials' assets and ban them from doing business in the United States, would likely come in the form of an executive order signed by U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. official said.

But a final decision has yet to be made on the exact timing of such a move and there was no immediate word whether Assad might be among those targeted for sanctions, as human rights groups have urged.

Sanctions would mark an escalation of the U.S. response to Assad's efforts to crush a month-long uprising against his autocratic 11-year rule.

Obama's response so far has been limited to tough words but little concrete action against the Syrian government, in contrast to Washington's role in a NATO-led air campaign against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Washington is mindful of its limited ability to influence Damascus, which is closely allied with U.S. foe Iran and has had chilly relations with the United States. It is cautious about further military entanglement in the Muslim world where it is already involved in long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite that, U.S. officials were looking for new pressure points with Assad's government as Syrian troops and tanks poured into Deraa on Monday where anti-government activists said at least five people were killed.

OBAMA DENOUNCES CRACKDOWN

Obama, in a statement on Friday, told Syria that its bloody crackdown on protesters "must come to an end now" and accused Damascus of seeking Iranian help to repress its people.

"The brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people is completely deplorable," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Monday.

"The United States is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown and make clear that this behavior is unacceptable," he said. "The Syrian people's call for freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the ability to freely choose their leaders must be heard.

Assad lifted Syria's 48-year state of emergency on Thursday but activists say the violence the following day, when 100 people were killed during protests across the country, showed he was not serious about addressing calls for political freedom.

Questions have been raised whether imposing U.S. sanctions against Assad and his inner circle -- like the measures taken against Gaddafi and his loyalists -- would have much tangible impact.

The United States and other Western powers have been trying for the last two years to woo Assad away from Tehran and encourage the British-trained eye doctor to reach a peace deal with Israel that could remove a major source of regional friction.

The Obama administration sent an ambassador back to Damascus this year. Even while maintaining support for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas militants, Assad has kept Syria's border with Israel quiet.

Western sanctions could push Syria more tightly into Tehran's embrace and risk further regional instability. Independent analysts have also raised concern that the collapse of Assad's minority Alawite rule in the majority Sunni country might lead to sectarian conflict.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Editing by Sandra Maler and Deborah Charles)

    U.S. mulling sanctions on Syrian officials, R, 25.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-syria-usa-sanctions-idUSN2520154620110425

Behind front-lines, Libyan rebels escalate media war

BENGHAZI, Libya | Mon Apr 25, 2011
8:30am EDT
By Alexander Dziadosz

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - While Libyan rebels fire rockets and heavy machine guns against Muammar Gaddafi's troops in the east, a group of young volunteers are adding newsprint, television cameras and microphones to the arsenal.

Writers, cartoonists and musicians have been taking their work to the public after a popular uprising shook off decades of autocratic rule and state media dominance in the east, which the insurgents largely control.

Vibrant graffiti covers the walls in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, rap songs attacking Gaddafi blare from speakers, and there is a crop of new media outlets.

Two radio stations, a television station and about a dozen newspapers and magazines have so far been licensed by the Benghazi-based rebel national council, Mohammed Fannoush, communication director for the council's media committee, said.

"It is a very easy-to-get license," he said, sitting in a spacious office in the former government building where much of the new media is based. "They write their names and the type of newsletter or newspaper, and I okay it."

As the country is now at war, much of the newly released creative energy has been used to refute statements by the official media still under Gaddafi's control and broadcast the aims of the uprising against his 41-year rule.

"Media is another one of our weapons now, after military equipment," said Mohamed bin Katou, an 18-year-old writer for the Omar al-Mukhtar magazine, named after the legendary Libyan insurgent who battled the Italian occupation.

"You need to confront what they're saying on the Libyan channels, like that we're al Qaeda."

Libyan state television often refers to the rebels as armed gangs or militant Islamists and its programing is overwhelmingly dominated by footage of pro-Gaddafi rallies.

TELEVISING THE REVOLUTION

The Berenice Post, a weekly journal of articles and poems in Arabic and English, is one of the more lively examples of the newly found freedom of the press in eastern Libya.

Its latest issue -- the first with a glossy cover -- shows a pair of hands pressed together, as in prayer, with the word "Libya" written across the palms.

Volunteers working there said they saw dislodging Gaddafi's rule as a chance to give local media a modern touch.

"The old newspapers and magazines were a bit boring. No colors, and the quality of the paper was very poor," writer Farah Gtat, 19, said. "As young people, we wanted something that looks more attractive."

With schools shut, Gtat and others said they had been volunteering at the weekly in the hope it might help enliven the media scene and help counter stereotypes about Libya.

"We're not all journalists. I'm still a student in high school. I haven't found out what I want to do in the future, but I'm doing this because I have to do something," writer Dilara Colakoglu, 17, said.

Rebels are also planning to launch a television channel, Libya Hurra, or "Free Libya," which they want to use to spread word of the revolt and its goals to countrymen in the west, which Gaddafi's forces control.

The station grew out of a livestream video feed set up in the Benghazi courthouse that was the early center of the revolt which began in earnest on February 17.

Several volunteers used the equipment to send images of the demonstrations, and the ensuing government crackdown, to foreign media. Rebels estimate over 300 people died in the early days of the protests in Benghazi alone.

One of those killed was Mohamed Nabbous, who set up the original video feed. Friends say he was shot by a government sniper just days after launching Libya Hurra. His image is now displayed prominently in the station's offices.

INDEPENDENCE

Volunteers are working to turn Libya Hurra into a proper news outlet. Rolls of carpeting, crates of halogen lighting and the scent of fresh paint fill the gallery where they plan to set up the studio.

Young broadcasters practice their on-air voices with teachers who help them brush up on the classical Arabic used by most Arab media outlets.

The station is already a source of pride for journalists such as Selma Bashir, 21, who returned from Egypt where she was studying journalism when the revolt began.

"The media in Libya was always talking about Gaddafi and his family, how great Gaddafi is, what an amazing human being he is," she said.

"Now, we can do something better, we can tell the truth about Gaddafi, about our country, about the good things and the bad things."

It will take a long time for Libya to develop a fully independent, critical press. But the rebels are so far keeping their hands off the new publications -- with the sole exception of anything pro-Gaddafi, Fannoush said.

"After the liberation, if Gaddafi's people were to come and say, well, we want to publish a newspaper, I think they would be allowed to," he said. "But now, since we are at war, we have to control this."

    Behind front-lines, Libyan rebels escalate media war, R, 25.4.2011
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/25/us-libya-media-idUSTRE73O2ID20110425

Egypt should block funds to Gaddafi: Libya rebels

CAIRO | Sun Apr 24, 2011
6:36pm EDT
Reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) - Libya's rebel national council has asked Egypt to stop Libyans based there from trying to destabilize rebel-held eastern Libya and funding Muammar Gaddafi's government, the head of the council said on Sunday.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil said he had contacted Egypt's interim government and asked it to prevent Gaddafi's cousin Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam and his aides from selling Libyan assets in Egypt to raise money for the Tripoli government, which is subject to U.N. financial and economic sanctions.

He also told Al Jazeera television Gaddaf al-Dam had paid Egyptians to enter eastern Libya and stir up opposition to its rebel leaders.

Gaddaf al-Dam denied the accusation: "I am astonished at this report which is devoid of truth and I remind our brother Abdel Jalil that the sons of the desert never were nor will be anyone's mercenaries or agents," he said in a statement.

Egypt's ruling military council also said Jalil's statements were wrong.

"The military council stresses that what the media has lately picked up about Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam recruiting Egyptians to work as mercenaries in Libya is false," it said in a statement on its official Facebook page.

Earlier on Sunday, Abdel Jalil said a delegation of east Libyan sheikhs were heading for Egypt to try to thwart an attempt by Gaddafi's followers to turn tribal elders in border regions against the rebel leadership.

"First of all, we have confirmed information that Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam and some of his aides from Gaddafi's group are operating in Egypt through big investments," Abdel Jalil told Al Jazeera by telephone.

"They send cash to Tripoli and also into the pockets of some Egyptians ... to enter through Libya's eastern border and sow discord and chaos inside Libya," said Abdel Jalil, who was speaking from Kuwait.

He said some 15 Egyptians had been arrested, but gave no details.

Gaddaf al-Dam backed up media reports from late February, which said he had split from Gaddafi in protest at his cousin's bloody crackdown on civilians rebelling against his rule.

"Our brother Abdel Jalil knows that since I announced my resignation at the beginning of the events I have not taken sides in this struggle, which I condemned from the outset."

Gaddaf al-Dam, a rarely-seen figure with a strong likeness to Gaddafi, was born in Egypt to a Libyan father and an Egyptian mother and has spent many years acting as a go-between for Cairo and Tripoli.

Economic ties between the North African neighbours deepened after the West began lifting sanctions on Libya more than a decade ago. Gaddafi has diverted part of Libya's growing oil revenues into investment projects in Egypt.

Since the Libyan rebellion began, Egypt's military rulers have avoided publicly taking sides but have kept the border with Libya open, ensuring that supplies of food and aid can reach the rebel-held east.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Writing by Tom Pfeiffer)

    Egypt should block funds to Gaddafi: Libya rebels, R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-libya-rebels-egypt-idUSTRE73N1UP20110424

Berber Rebels in Libya’s West

Face Long Odds Against Qaddafi

April 24, 2011
The New York Times
By SCOTT SAYARE

DHIBA BORDER CROSSING, Tunisia — For decades, the remote mountains of western Libya have simmered with resentment. An enclave of the Berber minority, mistrusted and neglected by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Arab nationalist government, the region’s isolated hamlets were among the first to join the uprising, raising the rebel flag on the first day of the revolt.

But the Nafusah Mountain range, which rises out of the desert at the Tunisian border as a sudden, hazy shadow and runs several hundred miles east in a narrow chain, is hardly a rebel stronghold. Rebel fighters in the region estimate their ranks at just a few hundred ill-equipped and untrained young men.

It came as a shock, then, when they captured a border crossing near Wazen last week, a strategic victory for the beleaguered rebel forces that thrust the desert region under the world’s gaze. Colonel Qaddafi has also turned his attention to the region, escalating a low-grade war of attrition into what may prove an important battlefront.

Having put down more serious challenges to his rule in Zawiyah and Zawarah, on the northern coast between Tripoli and Tunisia, and pulled troops out of Misurata, the second largest western city, on Saturday, Colonel Qaddafi has massed troops along the mountains and launched missiles on its towns, according to residents and rebel fighters.

The fighting has driven about 30,000 Libyans into Tunisia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Libyans there said they had been under siege weeks before the recent escalation. Government troops have held the desert plains below the mountains since mid-March, they said, cutting off supplies of food, gasoline and medicine, and, several witnesses said, poisoning the wells of at least one town.

“He has been trying to starve us,” said Jamal Maharouk, 47, a gaunt, weathered former soldier of Colonel Qaddafi’s army, now a rebel fighter. He had driven to a Tunisian hospital in Tataouine, about 50 miles northwest of the Libyan border, to visit a young cousin wounded in battle outside the town of Zintan and secreted across the border for treatment.

Like other fighters, Mr. Maharouk insisted that rebel actions in the area were purely defensive. “By my god, these are peaceful people fighting against an evil regime,” he said.

The government denies that it has cut off food and utilities, poisoned wells or even that the refugees in Tunisia are really refugees.

Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Qaddafi government, said the refugees were lying in order to win support from NATO. He said the government had intercepted and recorded phone calls among rebels planning to stage a bogus refugee crisis by forcing members of their families to cross the border into Tunisia and report atrocities.

“They are fake refugee camps,” he said. “Qatar is paying for them.”

Before the rebels captured the border crossing at Wazen, the region seemed to hold little strategic value, raising questions about why the government would divert resources from more pressing battles elsewhere. The border crossing, which now gives the rebels a supply route in the west, may be part of the explanation.

But Colonel Qaddafi has long harbored antagonism toward the Berbers, a non-Arab ethnic group of mostly Ibadi Muslims in a country that is majority Sunni. He has accused them of being Zionists and agents of the C.I.A., said Mansouria Mokhefi, the director of the Middle East and Maghreb program at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.

Berbers and the region in general have been largely excluded from the distribution of oil revenues, she said, and residents complain of little government investment in schools or infrastructure. “Development never came all the way to them,” she said. “They have truly lived in a sort of exclusion.”

Beyond neglect, Colonel Qaddafi has forbidden citizens from giving their children Berber names, disallowed the teaching of the Berber language in schools and banned Berber festivals and holidays. Protests in the 1990s demanding the right to practice their culture openly were put down forcibly by the police and followed by a series of public hangings, instilling a profound animosity toward the government.

Shortly after the uprising began in mid-February, Colonel Qaddafi offered the families of Zintan and other towns across the Nafusah range a bribe, residents said, a onetime payment of about $1,200 in exchange for their allegiance. Most declined.

The missile strikes began soon after.

Salim Issa, 50, an electrician, fled the town of Nalut on Friday after what he called heavy missile strikes the night before. He arrived in Medenine, Tunisia, with his wife, sister and nine of his children. Fearing for the two sons he left behind, he declined to give his full name.

He said there were rumors that loyalist forces had orders to kill everyone in the city, and that soldiers had been given Viagra and explicit orders to rape.

The town of Yafren, about 100 miles east of Nalut, was reported to have been captured by government forces over the weekend. But by then the town was all but deserted. Just a handful of rebel fighters and elderly residents, too weak to flee, were thought to remain, hiding in basements.

Salim, 32, a nurse’s assistant, said Yafren had been surrounded by Qaddafi forces and under fire for about a month, leaving it with no water, food or electricity. “No nothing,” he said, adding that the only food had been smuggled in across the desert.

Perhaps even more than on the eastern front, the rebels in the Nafusah Mountains are outmatched.

Mounir Ramdan, 25, a youthful fighter from Nalut who was visiting his family in Tataouine, said about 40 government pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers were stationed near the road between Nalut and Zintan, to the east. Mr. Ramdan, who has no gun, has been acting as a scout.

For each rebel fighter with a weapon, “you find 50 without guns,” said Fathi, a rebel being treated at the hospital in Tataouine.

He had been operating a machine gun mounted in the back of pickup when he was tossed from the vehicle during a skirmish near Zintan, breaking his left femur and dislocating his right hip. At the time of his injury, the rebels in Zintan had four or five 14.5-millimeter machine guns, stolen from government troops, he said, but most were armed with antique Italian rifles, knives or home-forged iron swords.

The government forces have been ordered to “clean” Zintan, he said, and he had little doubt about their ability to do so. Without heavier NATO airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s armor and more weapons, he said, it will be “90 percent impossible” for the rebels to hold their ground in the western mountains.

Colonel Qaddafi, he warned, “will kill us all.”

Other fighters were less bleak. Puffing on the stub of a cigarette at the Tunisian border, a tall, bearded fighter named Toufik guessed that the rebels in the region were outnumbered by loyalist troops five to one.

Asked how they had succeeded in capturing the border post last week, he grinned and pointed an index finger to the sky.

“God gave us a victory,” he said.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Tripoli, Libya.

    Berber Rebels in Libya’s West Face Long Odds Against Qaddafi, NYT, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/world/africa/25western.html

President Obama and the Peace Process

April 24, 2011
The New York Times
 

President Obama began his presidency vowing to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace. He backed off in the face of both sides’ obstinacy and after a series of diplomatic missteps. Since then, the stalemate, and the mistrust, have only deepened, and it is clear that nothing good will happen until the United States fully engages.

It is time for Mr. Obama — alone or, better yet, in concert with Europe, Russia and the United Nations — to put a map and a deal on the table.

The outlines of a deal are no secret. They were first proposed by President Bill Clinton in 2000. But neither side has been willing to make the necessary concessions — on land swaps, how Jerusalem can be shared and how many displaced Palestinians can go home, or not. The Israelis need to know that their closest ally won’t enable more inaction. The Palestinians need to know they will have American support so long as their demands are realistic. Mr. Obama needs to speak up before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pre-empts the debate with what is certain to be an inferior proposal when he addresses a joint meeting of Congress next month.

Mr. Netanyahu has made some concessions, most notably giving Palestinians more control over their own security in the West Bank. But he has long insisted that the Palestinians aren’t serious about negotiating a final deal, and he is now hinting that he will unilaterally offer them an interim, step-by-step arrangement that will put off statehood to some undefined future.

He also has used the upheavals in the Middle East as one more excuse not to act, rather than a reason to reinforce Israel’s security with a durable peace deal.

Mr. Netanyahu — who is coming to speak at the invitation of Representative John Boehner, the House speaker — seems to think that the Republicans’ new power means he has carte blanche in Washington. So long as Mr. Obama sits on the sidelines, he will surely continue to believe that.

The address to Congress isn’t the only deadline Mr. Obama has to worry about. The Palestinians are threatening to ask the United Nations General Assembly — which admitted the state of Israel in 1949 — to declare a Palestinian state when it meets in September. Israel and the United States dismiss this as theater. But it is certain to pass, further isolating Israel. If Washington votes against it, as it inevitably will, it would further isolate this country.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his aides have been building their capacity to govern in the West Bank. But Mr. Abbas isn’t helping his cause by refusing to return to the negotiating table. He suspended talks last fall after Israel refused to extend a moratorium on settlement construction. Holding to his position only gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse not to seriously engage.

The status quo is not sustainable, as a recent surge of violence should make clear. And the options on the ground for creating a territorially coherent Palestinian state keep narrowing as Israel steps up settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel could oust the settlers — and will have to in certain areas. But the more settlers they let in, the harder it will be politically for any Israeli leader to cut a deal.

Last month, Robert Gates made the first visit to the West Bank by an American defense secretary to reinforce Washington’s commitment to a Palestinian state. But President Obama’s peace envoy, George Mitchell, who is supposed to move the process forward, hasn’t been to the region since December.

Mr. Gates was absolutely correct when he declared in Israel that despite the uncertainty caused by the upheaval in the Arab world, “there is a need and an opportunity for bold action to move toward a two-state solution.” He was talking to the Israelis and the Palestinians. We hope President Obama was listening closely, too.

    President Obama and the Peace Process, NYT, 24.4.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/opinion/25mon1.html

Misrata comes under heavy bombardment: Libya rebels

BENGHAZI, Libya | Sun Apr 24, 2011
3:32pm EDT
Reuters
By Alexander Dziadosz

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi bombarded Misrata on Sunday, a day after rebels celebrated the pullback of government troops from the western Libyan city, a rebel spokesman said.

"The situation is very dangerous," rebel spokesman Abdelsalam said by telephone from Misrata. "Gaddafi's brigades started random bombardment in the early hours of this morning. The bombardment is still going on."

Captured government troops said on Saturday they had been ordered to retreat from Misrata -- the only major rebel-held city in western Libya -- after a siege of nearly two months, and rebels fighting to overthrow Gaddafi had claimed victory.

But the mood of victory was short-lived and the prospect of a turning point in the two-month conflict dimmed on Sunday.

Government forces bombarded three residential areas and the city center, including Tripoli Street, the thoroughfare that has been the scene of intense fighting in recent weeks, Abdelsalam said.

Rebel spokesman Safieddin said a large part of Tripoli Street was under the control of rebels, and that insurgents had launched an attack on the remaining Gaddafi forces after NATO air strikes on the city in the early hours.

Rebels have so far been unable to advance from eastern Libya as they fight with Gaddafi's troops on the coastal road between the towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega, outgunned and lacking cash for equipment and state-building.

Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told a news conference in Kuwait on Sunday that the oil state would contribute 50 million Kuwaiti dinar ($177 million) to Libya's rebel council.

Fellow Gulf Arab state Qatar, which has joined the Western military operations in Libya, has been marketing Libyan oil on behalf of the rebels to help them generate income.

An arms embargo on Libya is being enforced by NATO, but the rebels also need money to try to create the infrastructure of a state from scratch and care for victims of the conflict as they pursue their two-month-old battle to shake off Gaddafi's rule.

"This amount will help us a lot in paying the salaries of employees who did not receive their little salaries for two months," Abdel Jalil said. "We are capable of only covering 40 percent of this amount. We are in need of urgent aid."

DOUBTS OVER WITHDRAWAL

Hundreds have been killed in the fighting for Misrata, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis in the besieged city.

Safieddin said at least 36 people had been killed there by Gaddafi's forces since Saturday: eight during Sunday's bombardment and 28 on Saturday, many killed by booby-traps left behind by retreating forces. More than 100 had been wounded.

A Qatari ship docked at the Tunisian port of Sousse overnight carrying 127 Libyans and 11 Tunisians from Misrata, the Tunisian state news agency said. Ninety were wounded.

Rebels in their eastern stronghold Benghazi said they had no expectations of an early end to fighting in Misrata.

"I don't think this is a real withdrawal," rebel military spokesman Ahmed Bani told Reuters.

He said government loyalists might be trying to stoke tensions between Misrata and neighboring towns, and that Gaddafi's troops might return to the city later under the guise of intervening to protect local tribes from the rebels.

Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim had said the army would "leave it to the tribes and the people around Misrata to deal with the situation, whether by using force or using negotiations."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC he doubted Gaddafi's forces were really going to withdraw. "This may be cover for using more insurgent-type warfare without any uniforms and without tanks."

Britain and France have been leading air strikes against Gaddafi's forces in an operation mandated by the U.N. Security Council on March 17 to protect civilians in Libya.

The United States has also deployed Predator drones, using the unmanned plane for the first time on Saturday to attack the site of a multiple rocket launcher near Misrata.

Libyan state news agency Jana quoted a military source as saying the use of drones was aimed at political assassination.

Western powers have been bombing Libyan positions for more than a month. The United States, Britain and France say they will not stop their air war until Gaddafi leaves power.

JANA said on Saturday that Prime Minister al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi had spoken by telephone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

While speaking with Papandreou he "reiterated Libya's commitment to United Nations resolutions," JANA said.

The Libyan government has repeatedly announced ceasefires, but failed to halt military operations.

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle in London and Lin Noueihed in Tripoli; Writing by Myra MacDonald and Alison Williams; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

    Misrata comes under heavy bombardment: Libya rebels, R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110424

Israeli shot by police in West Bank, army says

NABLUS, West Bank | Sun Apr 24, 2011
2:32pm EDT
By Hassan Titi

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - A Palestinian policeman shot dead an Israeli and wounded four others after they entered a holy site in a West Bank city without permission on Sunday, the Israeli military said.

The group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish worshippers were shot at Joseph's Tomb, which some Jews believe to be the burial place of the biblical patriarch, in the Palestinian city of Nablus.

The man killed, Ben-Yosef Livnat, was in his mid-twenties and a nephew of Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party.

"An Israeli civilian was killed and four others injured after entering Joseph's Tomb in Nablus un-permitted," the military said in a statement in English.

The military said it had been notified by Palestinian officials that "the civilians were shot by a Palestinian policeman who, after identifying suspicious movements, fired in their direction."

Israeli and Palestinian security officials will meet to investigate the shooting, the statement said.

The governor of Nablus, Jibreen al-Bakri, said the group of Israelis had "entered the area without coordinating it with the Palestinian Authority, as is the understanding with Israel."

"We have detained the forces responsible for securing the area and are investigating what happened," Bakri told Reuters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement condemning the killing and demanded that "the Palestinian Authority take harsh steps against the perpetrators who carried out the criminal act against Jewish worshippers."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said a lack of coordination did not justify the shooting and called on the Palestinian Authority to "take all necessary measures" against those responsible.

A tearful Livnat said at her nephew's funeral in Jerusalem that he was "an innocent victim murdered by a terrorist in the guise of a Palestinian policeman while on his way to prayers during the Passover holiday."

It was the first reported fatal attack on Israelis in the West Bank since the killing of five family members last month in the settlement of Itamar in a nearby area in the central West Bank.

After Sunday's incident, some settlers threw stones at Palestinian vehicles near the Hawara checkpoint close to Nablus, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Violence in the West Bank has fallen significantly since its peak during a Palestinian uprising a decade ago.

Some 500,000 settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians say the presence of the enclaves will deny them a viable state on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Robert Woodward)

    Israeli shot by police in West Bank, army says, R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-palestinians-israel-violence-idUSTRE73N09320110424

Thousands of protesters demand "A New Morocco"

CASABLANCA, Morocco | Sun Apr 24, 2011
1:12pm EDT
Reuters
By Souhail Karam

CASABLANCA, Morocco (Reuters) - Thousands took to the streets of Morocco on Sunday in peaceful demonstrations to demand sweeping reforms and an end to political detention, the third day of mass protests since they began in February.

Desperate to avoid the turmoil that toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, authorities have already announced some changes to placate demands that King Mohammed cede more powers and limit the monarchy's extensive business influence.

Some 10,000 people joined the protest in Casablanca, the largest city in one of the West's staunchest Arab allies. Marchers in the capital Rabat also denounced corruption and torture as well as unemployment, very high among youths.

Policing has been low-key for protests by the February 20 Movement, named after the date of its first march, particularly compared to the turmoil elsewhere in North Africa.

"This is more about the young ones than it is about us," said Redouane Mellouk, who had brought his 8 year-old son Mohamed Amine, carrying a placard demanding "A New Morocco."

"Our parents could not talk to us about political issues. They were too afraid. This must change," said Mellouk.

Although levels of popular anger have risen, ratings agencies assess Morocco as the country in the region least likely to become embroiled in the type of unrest that toppled Tunisian and Egyptian regimes and led to the conflict in Libya.

In Rabat, several thousand people marched through poor districts with high levels of unemployment and away from the center, where the previous monthly demonstrations have been held. There was no sign of trouble.

DISAFFECTED YOUTH

A 74 year-old man in Casablanca who gave his name only as Ahmed said Morocco's youths were right to protest.

"Look at them. They are educated and like most young educated Moroccans, they are idle," he said. "Everything in this country is done through privileges. You need an uncle or a relative somewhere to get somewhere."

Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, but the constitution empowers the king to dissolve the legislature, impose a state of emergency and have a decisive say in government appointments.

King Mohammed last month announced constitutional reforms to give up some of his powers and make the judiciary independent, but protesters want more.

There is also resentment at the royal family's business interests through its holding company SNI.

One of the banners waved by the Casablanca marchers depicted the King's holdings as an octopus with tentacles stretching out to subsidiary companies. "Either money or power," it said.

Islamists also joined in the protests, demanding the release of all political prisoners. Authorities freed 92 political prisoners, most of whom were members of the Islamist Salafist Jihad group, earlier this month.

In Rabat, the wife of Islamist Bouchta Charef, who has said he was tortured in prison while accused of terrorism, called for all Islamists to be freed.

"They have made my children homeless," Zehour Dabdoubu told Reuters. "Every month I move from one house to another. I'm persecuted because people think I am the wife of a terrorist."

The banned Islamist opposition group Al Adl Wal Ihsane has maintained a low profile at the February 20 demonstrations, but said it supports them.

"It's excellent what's happening in Morocco. It's a quiet revolution," Nadia Yassine, daughter of the movement's founder, told Reuters by telephone. "We're moving slowly but surely."

(Additional reporting by Zakia Abdennebi and Barbara Lewis in Rabat; Writing by Barbara Lewis; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

    Thousands of protesters demand "A New Morocco", R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-morocco-protest-idUSTRE73N13T20110424

Thousands call for Assad overthrow at Syria funeral

AMMAN | Sun Apr 24, 2011
12:28pm EDT
By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Thousands of Syrians called for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday at a funeral for protesters killed by security forces in the southern town of Nawa, a witness said.

"Long live Syria. Down with Bashar!" mourners chanted, their calls audible in a telephone call during the funeral in Nawa, 25 km (15 miles) north of the city of Deraa where demonstrations against Assad's authoritarian rule first erupted last month.

"Leave, leave. The people want the overthrow of the regime."

The witness said four people were killed on Saturday in Nawa as they gathered to protest against shootings a day earlier.

At least 100 people were killed across Syria on Friday, the highest toll in five weeks of unrest, when security forces shot protesters demanding political freedoms and an end to corruption in their country, ruled for 41 years by the Assad dynasty.

Activists described Friday's killings as a turning point which exposed the hollowness of Assad's announcement that he was lifting a 48-year state of emergency and abolishing a hated state security court.

At least 12 more people were killed on Saturday at mass funerals for the slain protesters, and rights campaigners said secret police raided homes near Damascus and in the central city of Homs on Sunday, arresting activists.

Assad assumed power when his father died in 2000 after ruling Syria for 30 years. The hostile chants in Nawa on Sunday reflect a steady hardening of the demands of protesters who first called for greater freedoms but now seek his overthrow.

Despite deepening his father Hafez al-Assad's anti-Israel alliance with Iran, clawing back Syrian influence in Lebanon and backing militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, Assad has kept Syria's front line with Israel quiet and held indirect peace talks with the Jewish state.

International condemnation of Assad has also intensified. Western criticism was initially muted because of lingering hopes that Assad might implement genuine reform and because revolution in Syria would reshape the political map in the Middle East.

"I deplore the increasing violence in Syria, and am appalled by the killing of demonstrators by Syrian security forces," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sunday, advising all British nationals to leave Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Assad on Friday to stop the "outrageous use of violence to quell protests." Syrian authorities, who blame the violence on armed groups, dismissed Obama's comments.

Turkey called for "maximum self-restraint" and the continuation of reforms.

CIVILIAN SHOT

A rights campaigner said security forces shot dead at least one civilian on Sunday as they deployed in the coastal town of Jabla following a pro-democracy protest the previous night.

The weekend protests stretched from the port city of Latakia to Homs, Hama, Damascus, its suburbs and southern towns. The death toll rose to around 350, with scores of missing since the demonstrations broke out on March 18, rights campaigners said.

An eminent jurists' group said on Sunday the U.N. Security Council must investigate "mass killings" by the security forces which it said may warrant prosecution by the International Criminal Court. Human Rights Watch also called for a U.N. investigation and for international sanctions on Syria.

"Those ordering and carrying out these attacks, including those firing live rounds into crowds, must be held criminally accountable," said Wilder Tayler, secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of people were arrested by security forces after the demonstrations on Friday, including nine in Idlib province, four in Syria's second city of Aleppo and five in eastern Raqqa province.

Mansour al-Ali, a prominent figure from the minority ruling Alawite sect, was arrested in Homs after he spoke out against the shooting of protesters, an activist in Homs said.

The violence in Nawa, a town of 60,000 residents in the southern Hauran Plain which was the cradle of Syria's uprising, broke out when residents tried to gather in protest on Saturday, the witness at the funeral said.

Security forces opened fire on protesters, who overran headquarters of the state and military security branches. Residents said four protesters were killed. The official SANA news agency, apparently referring to the same clashes, said seven army soldiers were killed by "criminal armed groups."

Assad has ejected most foreign media from the country, so independent reports of the violence are difficult to verify.

Demonstrators have been using the Internet to get out pictures of the violence, many of which have been explicit.

One video posted on Internet site YouTube showed a crowd marching near Abbasside square in Damascus, purportedly on Friday, chanting "the people want the overthrow of the regime," before the sound of gunfire was heard.

Demonstrators raised their hands to show that they were unarmed. The fire intensified. One youth fell, with blood spurting from his head and back. His comrades lifted him but dropped his body when the sound of bullets resumed.

In a move unthinkable in Syria just five weeks ago, two Deraa lawmakers in Syria's rubberstamp parliament resigned on Saturday to protest against the killings of protesters.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alison Williams)

    Thousands call for Assad overthrow at Syria funeral, R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-syria-idUSLDE73N02P20110424

Israeli killed in West Bank shooting - army

JERUSALEM | Sun Apr 24, 2011
2:41am EDT
Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli was killed and at least two others were wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, the Israeli army said.

"I can confirm that shots were fired toward a group of Israelis who entered the West Bank without authorization. One person was killed and two others wounded are in moderate condition," an Israeli army spokesman said.

Israel Radio reported that one man was killed and that three others were wounded. The Zaka rescue service earlier said a group of Jewish worshippers had been attacked at a site known as Joseph's Tomb near the Palestinian city of Nablus.

It was the first fatal attack on Israelis in the West Bank since the killing of five family members last month in the settlement of Itamar in a nearby area in the central West Bank.

Violence in the occupied territory has dropped significantly since its peak during a Palestinian uprising a decade ago.

Some 500,000 settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians fear the presence of the enclaves will deny them a viable state on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Peter Graff)

    Israeli killed in West Bank shooting - army, R, 24.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/24/us-palestinians-israel-violence-idUSTRE73N09320110424