|
History > 2011 > USA > International (XV)
Assad
Says He Rejects
West’s Calls to Resign
August
21, 2011
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID and NADA BAKRI
BEIRUT,
Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria dismissed American and European
calls for him to step down as “meaningless” on Sunday, and he declared that
Syria’s ailing economy could withstand escalating international sanctions.
In an interview with Syrian television, Mr. Assad hardly mentioned the hundreds
of thousands of protesters this summer who have posed the gravest challenge to
his family’s four decades of rule.
He seemed intent on portraying a sense of strength and stability to a population
growing ever more anxious over the violence that has erupted across Syria and
the country’s increasing isolation.
“Syria will not fall unless there will be a crisis that will finish Syria and
this can’t happen,” he said, wearing a blue suit and seeming relaxed. “I am
reassured that the Syrians will come out of this crisis. I am not worried, and I
want to reassure everybody.”
Referring only obliquely to the protests, he suggested that the solution was
“political.” But despite insistent calls for him to refrain from using violence
against demonstrators, he suggested that the security forces would continue the
crackdown.
“The solution is political, but there are security situations that require the
interference of security institutions,” he said.
Given the scope of the crisis, some Syrians expected him to take more drastic
steps. Instead, as he has done in his speeches since the uprising began in
March, he offered far more tentative measures, dwelling on the familiar tropes
of his ruling Baath Party: laws, priorities and committees.
His statements suggested a yawning divide between the large segment of the
population that wants him to step down and his government, which believes its
notion of reform can satisfy demonstrations that have briefly wrested two of
Syria’s five largest cities from state control and turned another into an urban
battlefield.
Even for a government accustomed to bouts of isolation, the pressure from the
United States and Europe is unprecedented. Last week, President Obama joined
with European leaders in demanding that Mr. Assad surrender power “for the sake
of the Syrian people.” The United Nations commissioner for human rights said a
withering crackdown that, by the count of activists, has killed more than 2,000
people amounted to crimes against humanity. In August alone, the Syrian military
and security forces assaulted many of Syria’s biggest cities: Hama, Deir
al-Zour, Latakia and, most recently, Homs.
More sanctions lie ahead. The European Union is expected this week to ban
imports of Syrian oil, one of the government’s central sources of revenue.
Though Syrian oil exports are a tiny share of the global supply, an estimated 90
percent of them are shipped to Europe.
Still, Mr. Assad insisted Sunday, “We can get all the resources and materials we
need.”
When Mr. Assad assumed power in 2000, many Syrians looked to him as a potential
reformer in one of the Middle East’s most authoritarian countries. He did help
transform the economy, bringing at least a veneer of prosperity and consumerism
to Syria’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.
But political change was scant, and many of the ideas he discussed in the
interview on Sunday — a new law that would allow multiple political parties, for
instance — have been on the table since 2005.
He called the months ahead “a transitional period,” promising a new election law
in addition to the legislation to allow parties in a country where the Baath
Party leadership is enshrined in the Constitution. As he did in his last speech,
in June, he said the Constitution could be revised, and he promised new
parliamentary elections by February.
The government’s past steps have been dismissed by opposition figures as too
tentative or even meaningless. Mr. Assad lifted nearly five decades of emergency
law in April, but the crackdown that ensued, with more than 10,000 arrested and
reports of rampant torture, belies the claim that civil rights are now in force.
While it remains unclear how far the political reforms may go, many analysts and
diplomats expected them to move the country no farther toward democracy than
what Egypt looked like under President Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown in
February: a tame opposition, a somewhat more vocal media and a semblance of
contested elections.
Mr. Assad reserved his harshest criticism for the international pressure on
Syria, casting the steps against his government as part of a long history of
outside interference. He called American and European calls for his resignation
“meaningless.”
“This cannot be said to a president who was elected by the people,” said Mr.
Assad, who won, officially, 97.6 percent of the vote in a referendum in 2007.
(As usual, there was no other candidate.) “It can be said for a president who
was brought by America and to a people who are submissive to America and take
orders from it.”
He suggested that no step he took would satisfy the West.
“No matter what you do, they would still tell you it is not enough,” he said.
His leadership still enjoys some backing, particularly among the country’s
minorities and in Damascus and Aleppo. But there are signs of growing anxiety,
even among the government’s pillars of support, and some government supporters
complain that the crackdown has so far failed to stanch dissent.
Since the beginning of the unrest, the government has said that while some
protesters have legitimate grievances, the uprising is driven by militant
Islamists with foreign backing. Mr. Assad said that he believed the protests had
become more militant lately, especially last week, though he was not too
concerned.
Assad Says He Rejects West’s Calls to Resign, NYT,
21.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/middleeast/22syria.html
Israel
and Hamas Move to Restore Cease-Fire
August 21,
2011
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER
BEERSHEBA,
Israel — Egypt and the United Nations were working Sunday to restore an informal
cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls
Gaza, officials said, after days of intense rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli
airstrikes that have taken casualties on both sides.
The Egyptian involvement came in the wake of a diplomatic embroilment with
Israel over the death of three Egyptian soldiers on Thursday. Israeli forces
pursuing assailants who carried out a deadly terrorist attack near the Egyptian
border fired into Egypt, killing the soldiers and setting off an eruption of
Egyptian anger against Israel.
A retaliatory Israeli airstrike in Gaza, aimed at the militant group Israel said
carried out the attack, produced a wave of rocket fire from Gaza into southern
Israel.
An Israeli official said Sunday that Israel and Egypt, each for their own
reasons, had an interest in restoring the calm.
“We want to contain this crisis and lead it to a quick finish,” said the Israeli
official, who insisted on anonymity because of the delicate diplomacy involved.
Ismail al-Ashqar, a Hamas official based in Gaza, said the discussions were
still under way on Sunday night but that the Hamas authorities had already
reached understandings with smaller militant groups in Gaza and had deployed
forces to try to stop them from firing rockets into southern Israel.
Robert Serry, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace
process, issued a statement saying the United Nations was “actively engaged and
supporting Egypt’s important efforts” in trying to return to full calm. Mr.
Serry was in Cairo on Sunday.
Israel was also trying to turn down the temperature with Gaza.
A rocket fired by militants from Gaza crashed into a school in this southern
Israeli city on Sunday morning. The school was empty because a summer activity
had been canceled after a deadly rocket strike a few blocks away the night
before.
In response, Israel carried out airstrikes on two vacant militant training sites
in Gaza, shattering windows and wounding seven Palestinians in a house nearby.
“The military has been instructed to hit the terrorist groups in a surgical
manner and to avoid as much as possible hurting the civilian population of
Gaza,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister.
Scores of rockets have struck in and around southern Israeli cities since late
Thursday, when Israel bombed a house in Rafah, Gaza, killing several top
commanders of a Palestinian militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees.
Israel said the group was responsible for the attacks on Thursday, that killed
eight Israelis near Eilat.
It was the fiercest rocket fire since Israel’s devastating three-week offensive
in Gaza that ended in early 2009. Israel’s airstrikes on militant targets in
Gaza over the past four days killed 14 people, including four civilians.
Even as Israeli officials sought to tamp down the crisis, issuing a statement of
regret for the deaths of the Egyptian officers and vowing restraint in its
response in Gaza, there was anger among the Israeli public.
In Beerhseba, there were bloodstains on the sidewalk on the block where the
rocket struck on Saturday night. A man and a woman were caught in the street
while running for cover. He was killed. She was critically wounded.
“Israel should get rid of the Hamas leaders in one blow,” said Shai Damri, 33,
whose house was damaged by a rocket. “Then we can talk about a cease-fire.”
He said he was convinced that the lack of a strong Israeli response was merely
“the quiet before the storm.”
Mr. Damri, a driving teacher and bus driver, was particularly enraged by the
Egyptian demand of an apology from Israel.
“Let us not forget that the terrorist attack came from Egyptian territory,” he
said. “So first let them apologize, and if not, let them sit aside and keep
quiet.”
Fares Akram
contributed reporting from Gaza City.
Israel and Hamas Move to Restore Cease-Fire, NYT,
21.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html
Libyan
Rebels Pass Defense Ring and Enter Tripoli
August 21,
2011
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM
ZAWIYAH,
Libya — Libyan rebels marched into parts of Tripoli on Sunday evening, pushing
past the city’s outer defense lines and setting off celebrations in some western
neighborhoods of the capital, the final stronghold of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Rebel troops approaching from the west raced through Colonel Qaddafi’s “ring of
steel” defense that had been positioned outside Tripoli. Rebels driving pickup
trucks mounted with machine guns met little resistance as they reached Janzour
and Gargarish, Tripoli neighborhoods where Qaddafi forces appeared to melt away,
rebel leaders and residents said.
After six-months of inconclusive fighting the assault on Tripoli at a rapid
pace, with insurgents capturing a military base of the vaunted Khamis Brigade
where they had expected to meet fierce resistance, seizing a cache of armaments,
and then speeding toward Tripoli unopposed.Inside Tripoli, protesters took to
the streets and rebels clashed with Qaddafi loyalists in some parts of the city,
opposition leaders and refugees from the city said. Fighting had been heavy
earlier in the day Sunday, but by nightfall Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had
withdrawn from some districts without a major battle.
A rebel spokesman said insurgents had opened a new line of attack on Tripoli by
sending boats from the port city of Misrata to link up with fighters in the
capital. It was not clear how many fighters were involved in that operation.
Colonel Qaddafi issued a new audio message played over state television saying
that he would stay in Tripoli “until the end” and calling on his supporters to
help liberate the capital from a rebel offensive. He said he remained in Tripoli
but nothing in the scratchy message provided evidence of his whereabouts.
“The time is now to fight for your politics, your oil, your land,” Colonel
Qaddafi said. “I am with you in Tripoli — together until the ends of the earth.”
Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, confirmed on state television that a
small number of rebel fighters had engaged in hostile fire in Tripoli but said
that the city remained well defended by “thousands of professional and volunteer
soldiers” loyal to the government. “The situation is under control,” he said.
The turmoil inside Tripoli and the crumbling of defenses on its outskirts
suggested a decisive shift in the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi, the most
violent of the Arab Spring uprisings.
NATO troops continued close air support of the rebels all day, with multiple
strikes by alliance aircraft helping clear the road to Tripoli from Zawiyah.
Rebel leaders in the west credited NATO with thwarting an attempt on Sunday by
Qaddafi loyalists to reclaim Zawiyah with a flank assault on the city.
While rebels expressed hope that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were losing their will
to fight, support for the government could remain strong inside some areas of
Tripoli. Analysts said the crucial role played by NATO in aiding the rebel
advance in the relatively unpopulated areas outside the capital could prove far
less effective in an urban setting, where concerns about civilian casualties
could hamper the alliance’s ability to focus on government troops.
Most of the recent engagements between government and rebel forces have also
involved relatively light fighting, and it was unclear how rebel forces, largely
untrained and inconsistently commanded, would fare in intense urban warfare if
loyalist troops put up a robust defense of Tripoli.
A senior American military officer who has been following the developments
closely and who has been in contact with African and Arab military leaders in
recent days, expressed caution on Sunday about the prospects for any imminent
fall of the Qaddafi regime. Even if Colonel Qaddafi is deposed in some way, the
senior officer said, there was still no clear plan for a political succession or
for maintaining security in the country.
“The leaders I’ve talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all
play out,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
diplomatic delicacies surrounding the issue.
“Trying to predict what this guy is going to do is very, very difficult,” the
officer said, referring to Colonel Qaddafi.Of particular note on Sunday, the
rebels seemed to meet little resistance from the 32nd Brigade, a unit that NATO
had considered one of the most elite in Libya and commanded by Khamis Qaddafi,
one of the leader’s sons. The so-called Khamis Brigade was one of the crucial
units enforcing the defense lines around the capital, extending about 17 miles
outside Tripoli to the west and about 20 miles to the south.
Rebels said those points had been breached by Sunday afternoon despite the
expectation that Colonel Qaddafi would use heavily armored units and artillery
to defend them. It was unclear whether the government troops had staged a
tactical retreat or been dislodged by NATO strikes.
After a brief gun battle, rebels took over one of the brigade’s bases along the
road to Tripoli. Inside the base, rebels raises their flag and cheered wildly.
They began carting away stores of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades
and mortars.
While the bodies of several dead loyalist soldiers were left on the ground in
the base, it appeared the troops there had retreated rather than being forced
out in battle. At least one structure suffered significant damage from NATO
bombs.Earlier Sunday, rebels portrayed the uprising inside Tripoli as a sign
that the end of the Qaddafi regime was near.
“We are coordinating the attacks inside, and our forces from outside are ready
to enter Tripoli,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the mountainous region
in western Libya, speaking by telephone from Tunis. “If you can call any mobile
number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful sound of the
bullets of freedom.”
Phone calls to several Tripoli residents in different neighborhoods confirmed
that gunfire and explosions were widespread. And there were reports of frequent
NATO jet flights and airstrikes — a common accompaniment to the drumbeat of the
rebel advance in the past week.
While American officials say they are unsure how the battle for Tripoli will
play out, they say they are preparing contingency plans if and when Qaddafi’s
regime falls to help prevent the vast Libyan government stockpiles of weapons,
particularly portable antiaircraft missiles, from being dispersed.
Untold numbers of the missiles, including SA-7’s, have already been looted from
government arsenals, and American officials fear they could circulate widely,
including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian
airliners. "What I worry about most is the proliferation of these weapons," the
senior military officer said, noting that the United States has already been
quietly meeting with leaders of Libya’s neighbors in Africa’s Sahel region to
stem the flow of the missiles.
The officer said that small teams of American military and other government
weapons experts could be sent into Libya after the fall of Qaddafi’s regime to
help Libyan rebel and other international forces secure the weapons.
Colonel Qaddafi has issued several audio broadcasts in recent days claiming he
will turn back the rebel advance. But he has given no clear indication of where
he might be speaking from, a topic of increasing speculation as rumors have
swirled that he is preparing to flee, or has already left Libya.
If Colonel Qaddafi’s location remained unknown, it became increasingly clear
that even his most senior aides were making exits of their own.
The Tunisian state news agency reported Saturday that Libya’s oil minister,
Omran Abukraa, had defected to Tunisia after leaving Tripoli on what was
ostensibly a business trip abroad. If confirmed, his defection would be the
third of a senior government official in the past week.
Abdel Salam Jalloud, a former Qaddafi deputy, was reported to have defected
Friday. A senior security official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, flew to Cairo
with his family on Monday.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the rebel government, the National
Transitional Council, said that he hoped Colonel Qaddafi and the rest of his
inner circle would follow. “That would be a good thing that will end the
bloodshed and help us avoid material costs,” he said. “But I do not expect that
he will do that.”
After reports of the Tripoli fighting began, some residents said that a group of
rebel fighters had infiltrated the city from the east and were spearheading the
uprising, surprising the pro-Qaddafi forces who had fortified for an attack from
the western approach guarded by Zawiyah. Residents added that in recent weeks
rebels had also smuggled weapons into the city by boat to the beaches east of
Tripoli to prepare. Their claims could not be independently confirmed.
The latest phase of the battle began after rebels on Saturday drove the
remaining loyalists troops out of Zawiyah, the strategic oil refinery town 30
miles west of Tripoli. After a week of heavy fighting there, residents began to
celebrate in the main square.
The Arab news network Al Jazeera reported that Zlitan, a crucial Qaddafi
barracks town east of Tripoli, also had fallen to the rebels. They captured
Gharyan, the gateway to the south, last week.
Farther east, the rebels claimed to have seized the residential areas of the oil
port of Brega, a prize that has changed hands many times since the uprising
began.
A senior American official said Colonel Qaddafi’s days “are numbered.”
“It is clear that the situation is moving against Qaddafi,” Jeffrey D. Feltman,
an assistant secretary of state, said after meeting rebel leaders in Benghazi,
the rebel capital. “The opposition continues to make substantial gains on the
ground while his forces grow weaker.”
Rebel leaders were optimistic. “The end is very near” for Colonel Qaddafi, said
Mr. Abdel-Jalil, the leader of the rebel’s governing council. “We have contacts
with people from the inner circle of Qaddafi,” he said. “All evidence is that
the end is very near, with God’s grace.”
Amid worries from the West and humanitarian groups that rebel fighters might
seek revenge against Qaddafi supporters, the rebels’ National Transitional
Council said Saturday that it was reissuing a booklet reminding its mostly
novice fighters about the international laws of war.
But the battle was hardly over. In the past six months, the rebels have
frequently proven unable to hold captured territory, sometimes keeping it no
longer than a few days. Government forces were still fighting fiercely outside
Zawiyah, and in Brega they controlled the oil refinery.
Eric Schmitt
contributed reporting from Washington.
Libyan Rebels Pass Defense Ring and Enter Tripoli, NYT,
21.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/africa/22libya.html
Libyan
Rebels Pass Defense Ring Near Tripoli
August 21,
2011
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM
ZAWIYAH,
Libya — Libyan rebels advanced to within 10 miles of Tripoli on Sunday, pushing
past the city’s outer defense lines and vowing to combine forces with insurgents
who have waged intense battles inside the city, the final stronghold of Libyan
leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Rebel troops approaching from the west claimed to have broken Colonel Qaddafi’s
“ring of steel” defense that had been positioned outside Tripoli on the road to
Zawiyah, a strategic oil city now in rebel hands. Scores of rebels driving
pickup trucks mounted with machine guns raced toward Tripoli along the road
Sunday afternoon, and insurgents captured a military base of the vaunted Khamis
Brigade, seizing a cache of armaments there.
Inside Tripoli, protesters took to the streets and rebels within the city
clashed with Qaddafi loyalists in several neighborhoods on Sunday, opposition
leaders and refugees from the city said. Fighting was heavy but there was no
immediate indication that Colonel Qaddafi’s control of the capital had crumbled.
A rebel spokesman also said that insurgents had opened a new line of attack on
Tripoli at dawn on Sunday by sending boats from the port city of Misrata to link
up with fighters in the city. It was not clear how many fighters were involved
in that operation.
Colonel Qaddafi issued a new audio message played over state television on
Sunday saying he will stay in Tripoli "until the end" and calling on his
supporters to help liberate the capital from a rebel offensive. He said he was
"afraid that Tripoli will burn."
Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, confirmed on state television that a
small number of rebel fighters had engaged in hostile fire in Tripoli but said
that city remained well-defended by “thousands of professional and volunteer
soldiers” loyal to the government. “The situation is under control,” he said.
But with turmoil inside Tripoli, and a vaunted line of defense outside the city
appearing to have done little to contain the rebel advance, the events suggested
a possibly decisive shift in the six-month uprising against Colonel Qaddafi,
which has already become by far the most violent of the Arab Spring uprisings.
NATO troops continued close-air support of the rebels all day on Sunday, with
multiple strikes by NATO aircraft helping clear the road to Tripoli from
Zawiyah. Rebel leaders in the west credited NATO with thwarting an attempt on
Sunday by Qaddafi loyalists to reclaim Zawiyah with a flank assault on the city.
While rebels expressed hopes that Qaddafi forces were losing their will to
fight, support for the government could remain strong inside Tripoli. Analysts
said that crucial role played by NATO an aiding the rebel advance in the
relatively unpopulated areas outside the capital could prove far less effective
in an urban environment, where concerns about civilian casualties could hamper
NATO’s ability to target government troops.
Most of the recent engagements between government and rebel forces have also
involved relatively light fighting, and it is unclear how rebel forces, largely
untrained and inconsistently commanded, would fare in intense urban warfare if
loyalist troops put up a robust defense of Tripoli.
Of particular note on Sunday, the rebels seemed to meet little resistance from
the 32nd Brigade, a unit NATO had considered one of the most elite in Libya,
commanded by Khamis Qaddafi, one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons. The so-called Khamis
Brigade was one of the key forces enforcing the defense lines around the
capital, extending about 17 miles outside Tripoli to the west and about 20 miles
outside the capital city in the south.
Rebels said those points had been breached by Sunday afternoon despite their
expectation that Colonel Qaddafi would use heavy armored units and artillery to
defend them. It was unclear whether the government troops had staged a tactical
retreat or been dislodged from their posts by NATO strikes.
After a brief gun battle, rebels took over one of the brigade’s bases along the
road to Tripoli. Inside the base, rebels raises their flag and cheered wildly.
They began carting away stores of weapons, including rocket propelled grenades
and mortars.
While the bodies of several dead loyalists soldiers were left on the ground in
the base, it appeared the troops based there had retreated rather than being
forced out in battle. At least one structure on the base suffered significant
damage from NATO bombs.Earlier Sunday, rebels portrayed the uprising inside
Tripoli as a sign the end of the Qaddafi regime was near.
“We are coordinating the attacks inside, and our forces from outside are ready
to enter Tripoli,” said Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the mountainous region
in western Libya, speaking by telephone from Tunis. “If you can call any mobile
number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful sound of the
bullets of freedom.”
Phone calls to several Tripoli residents from different neighborhoods confirmed
widespread gunfire and explosions. And there were reports of frequent NATO jet
overflights and airstrikes — a common accompaniment to the drumbeat of the rebel
advance in the past week.
But in an audio message broadcast on state television, his second in a week,
Colonel Qaddafi rejected claims of rebel gains, saying his forces had beaten
back the Tripoli uprising within hours and announcing military successes in the
same cities rebels had claimed to seize on Saturday. He gave the date and time
several times to confirm that he was speaking as events were unfolding.
“The rebels are fleeing like rats, to the mountains,” Colonel Qaddafi said.
But even as he described a “collapse” among rebel fighters and NATO forces, he
railed at world leaders who were supporting the uprising, accusing them of
giving rebels “weapons to destroy our air-conditioners!”
He gave no indication of where he might be speaking from, a topic of increasing
speculation in recent days as rumors have swirled of his preparing to flee, or
perhaps having already left Libya.
If Colonel Qaddafi’s location remained unknown, it became increasingly clear
that even his most senior aides were making exits of their own.
The Tunisian state news agency reported Saturday that Libya’s oil minister,
Omran Abukraa, had defected to Tunisia, after leaving Tripoli on what was
ostensibly a business trip abroad. If confirmed, his defection would be the
third of a senior government official in the past week.
Abdel Salam Jalloud, a former Qaddafi deputy, was reported to have defected
Friday. A senior security official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, flew to Cairo
with his family on Monday.
Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the rebel government, the National
Transitional Council, said that he hoped Colonel Qaddafi and the rest of his
inner circle would follow. “That would be a good thing that will end the
bloodshed and help us avoid material costs,” he said. “But I do not expect that
he will do that.”
After reports of the Tripoli fighting began, some residents said that a group of
rebel fighters had infiltrated the city from the east and were spearheading the
uprising, surprising the pro-Qaddafi forces who had fortified for an attack from
the western approach guarded by Zawiyah. Residents added that in recent weeks
rebels had also smuggled weapons into the city by boat to the beaches east of
Tripoli to prepare. Their claims could not be independently confirmed.
The latest phase of the battle began after rebels on Saturday drove the
remaining loyalists troops out of Zawiyah, the strategic oil refinery town 30
miles west of Tripoli. After a week of heavy fighting there, residents began to
celebrate in the main square.
The Arab news network Al Jazeera reported that Zlitan, a crucial Qaddafi
barracks town east of Tripoli, also had fallen to the rebels. They captured
Gharyan, the gateway to the south, last week.
Farther east, the rebels claimed to have seized the residential areas of the oil
port of Brega, a prize that has changed hands many times since the uprising
began.
A senior American official said Colonel Qaddafi’s days “are numbered.”
“It is clear that the situation is moving against Qaddafi,” Jeffrey D. Feltman,
an assistant secretary of state, said after meeting rebel leaders in Benghazi,
the rebel capital. “The opposition continues to make substantial gains on the
ground while his forces grow weaker.”
Rebel leaders were optimistic. “The end is very near” for Colonel Qaddafi, said
Mr. Abdel-Jalil, the leader of the rebel’s governing council. “We have contacts
with people from the inner circle of Qaddafi,” he said. “All evidence is that
the end is very near, with God’s grace.”
Amid worries from the West and humanitarian groups that rebel fighters might
seek revenge against Qaddafi supporters, the rebels’ National Transitional
Council said Saturday that it was reissuing a booklet reminding its mostly
novice fighters about the international laws of war.
But the battle was hardly over. In the past six months, the rebels have
frequently proven unable to hold captured territory, sometimes keeping it no
longer than a few days. Government forces were still fighting fiercely outside
Zawiyah, and in Brega they controlled the oil refinery.
Libyan Rebels Pass Defense Ring Near Tripoli, NYT,
21.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/africa/22libya.html
Qaddafi’s Hold in Tripoli in Doubt as Rebels Advance
August 19,
2011
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
CAIRO — Six
months after the outbreak of the revolt against his 42 years in power, Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi’s hold on his Tripoli stronghold shows signs of slipping.
Residents of Tripoli, the capital, who for months had hesitated to talk openly
over the phone, said in calls Friday night that they believed Colonel Qaddafi’s
flight or ouster could be imminent. Three people said the feeling of fear was
ebbing in the streets.
“It is much quieter today than yesterday and the day before,” said one resident,
still not willing to reveal his name. “The situation is getting really tough
now.”
With unexpected swiftness, the ill-trained and ill-equipped rebels from the
western mountains this week overtook much of the strategic coastal town of
Zawiyah, with its enormous oil refinery, just 30 miles west of Tripoli. By
Friday they had also taken Gharyan, an important outpost along the trade route
to the south. Qaddafi troops had concentrated in both towns, and their retreat
in the face of the amateurish rebels raised new doubts about the loyalist
forces’ will and cohesion.
As a result of those victories, most of the main roads that had supplied Tripoli
have been closed. The city’s residents, accustomed to soaring food prices,
weeklong waits for gas and long electrical blackouts, say they are now coping
with a crime wave and uncollected garbage.
Many residents, fearing a bloody fight, are trying to flee. Rebels said that
among them was Abdel Salam Jalloud, a leading figure in the 1969 revolution that
brought Colonel Qaddafi to power. If confirmed, his would be the second
high-profile defection in five days.
Residents and officials of the Qaddafi government said the NATO assault on
Tripoli reached a new peak this week as bombs rained down on Colonel Qaddafi’s
compound and the palatial home of his intelligence chief and brother-in-law,
Abdullah Senussi.
Colonel Qaddafi has not made a televised appearance in three months, though on
Monday he released a low-quality audio recording exhorting Libyans to fight,
saying, “The blood of the martyrs is fuel for the battlefield.”
Yet some American officials cautioned on Friday that the intelligence about what
was happening in Tripoli remained murky. “Clearly, the regime is feeling the
pressure, and the opposition is gaining ground each day,” said one American
official familiar with the intelligence about Libya. But, he said, “How or when
that translates into a tipping point or what the endgame might look like is hard
to determine.
“At this stage,” he added, “Qaddafi might not know what he’s going to do from
one day to the next.”
This is by no means the first time the rebels have seemed to have Colonel
Qaddafi on the ropes. At the beginning of the uprising, Tripoli and most other
cities in the country rose up against Colonel Qaddafi, before his militias
reasserted control in the west and NATO stepped in to defend the rebel east.
There was fierce fighting on Friday in Zawiyah and in Zlitan, a coastal city
east of Tripoli, an indication that at least some elements of the well-equipped
Qaddafi forces remained determined to carry on the fight. Driven out by a NATO
attack overnight, the loyalists returned to Zawiyah with renewed force, lobbing
mortar rounds and rockets and retaking buildings around central Martyrs Square.
By the end of the day, however, rebel fighters were pouring in from other cities
to counter the Qaddafi forces, and a reporter for Al Jazeera in Zlitan said the
rebels had prevailed there. And early on Saturday the rebels claimed to have
finally captured the eastern oil city of Brega, which has repeatedly changed
hands during the conflict, The Associated Press reported.
As the fighting draws closer to Tripoli, residents are feeling the pressure. For
the first time, they say, they cannot easily leave the city. Hundreds have
clogged narrow back roads as they try to flee to the relative safety of the
rebel-held mountains to the south.
That the mountains would beckon as a refuge is a measure of their fear, since
conditions there are often hardly comfortable. Electricity and many supplies are
still scarce, and some towns were deserted when Qaddafi forces shelled them
earlier.
Officials of the Qaddafi government continued to insist that he would fight to
the end. A senior Foreign Ministry official, in a conversation in which he was
granted anonymity to speak about internal deliberations, said weeks ago that
Qaddafi supporters would not give up even if they ran out of trucks and fuel.
“We will ride camels,” he said.
While Qaddafi loyalists insisted that the capital remained stable, some
acknowledged feeling “bitter.”
Fouad Zlitni, Colonel Qaddafi’s personal translator and a Libyan diplomat,
argued in a telephone interview from Tripoli that the rebels did not deserve
credit for their gains in Zawiyah because it was NATO bombs that made their
advance possible. “They should say NATO took them to Zawiyah,” he said.
“Somebody is boxing and then you raise your hand and I say, ‘I won a round.’ But
it is not you.”
Musa Ibrahim, the government spokesman and a member of Colonel Qaddafi’s tribe,
continued to insist through the state-run news media that the government would
weather the current “crisis.” But news reports also said that his younger
brother, Hasan Ali Ibrahim, 25, was killed by gunfire from a NATO helicopter on
a visit to Zawiyah.
Zawiyah has been a pivotal marker for Colonel Qaddafi since the revolt began in
late February, when it rose up along with most other cities across the country
in the aftermath of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. When the city first
raised the rebel flag in February, Colonel Qaddafi delivered a now-famous
telephone address over state media, saying that Al Qaeda had drugged Libya’s
youths into rebellion, putting hallucinogens into their instant coffee. It took
his militia weeks to retake the city by force.
Rebels now control the eastern portion of Libya along the Egyptian border, the
commercial center in Misurata along the central coast, the western mountains
along the Tunisian border, and with Zawiyah a beachhead along the western coast.
But Colonel Qaddafi retains his bastions of support, most notably the home
cities of his tribe, the Qaddafa. One is the coastal city of Surt, which has
blocked the rebels from advancing toward Tripoli from the east. The other is the
southern city of Sabha, which rebels believe has enabled Colonel Qaddafi to keep
supply lines open to other African countries.
Many African governments are grateful for Colonel Qaddafi’s financial support
over the years, and if he did choose to leave Libya the other countries of the
continent are the most likely places to offer him refuge. But there is still no
firm evidence that he has any such plans. In a recent interview, his son Seif
al-Islam vowed that he and his family would never go anywhere.
Kareem Fahim
contributed reporting from Zawiyah, Libya,
and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.
Qaddafi’s Hold in Tripoli in Doubt as Rebels Advance, NYT,
19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/africa/20qaddafi.html
Egypt
Registers Complaint With Israel
Over
Killings of Officers
August 19,
2011
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ISABEL KERSHNER
CAIRO —
Egypt has registered a formal complaint with Israel over the killings of three
Egyptian officers at the Sinai border and demanded an immediate investigation,
state television reported Friday, as tensions threatened the once stable
alliance a day after armed attackers carried out deadly strikes near the Red Sea
resort of Eilat in Israel.
Eight Israelis were killed and more than 30 were wounded on Thursday in the
attacks. Israel said the attackers were Gazans who had crossed into Israel from
the Sinai, an assertion the Egyptians rejected. If Israel’s version proves
correct, the assault would be the most serious on Israel from Egyptian territory
in decades.
Egyptian security officials said that the three officers were killed when an
Israeli aircraft fired at people suspected of being militants who fled into a
crowd of security personnel on the Egyptian side of the border on Thursday.
The tensions underscored how the fallout from the Egyptian revolution —
lawlessness in the northern Sinai Peninsula and the government’s greater
responsiveness to the public’s deep anti-Israel sentiment — has frayed ties with
Israel.
On Friday, a few hundred people demonstrated outside the Israeli Embassy in
Cairo, demanding that the Israeli ambassador be expelled. And two Egyptian
presidential candidates issued strong statements about the killings.
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a liberal Islamist and former member of the Muslim
Brotherhood, released a statement asking the ruling military council to deal
with the incident as a matter of national security and demanded the expulsion of
the Israeli ambassador as well as a halt of Egyptian gas shipments to Israel.
The other candidate, Amr Moussa, the former Secretary General of the Arab
League, wrote on his personal Twitter account that “Israel has to realize that
the days in which our sons are killed without an appropriate and strong reaction
are forever gone.”
At the border, the fallout from the Eilat attacks continued. By Friday morning,
Gaza militants had fired more than 10 rockets at southern Israeli cities,
according to the Israeli military. One fell near a religious seminary in Ashdod,
apparently causing some injuries.
The Israeli military said in a statement early Friday that its warplanes struck
seven targets in the Gaza Strip overnight.
“In northern Gaza, the targets included a weapon manufacturing site and two
terror activity sites,” the statement said, without elaborating. “In southern
Gaza, the targets included two smuggling tunnels, a terror tunnel and a terror
activity site.”
On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had killed at least four of the
attackers in the desert near the Egyptian border, and then launched several
airstrikes on Gaza. In the first, six Palestinians, several of them members of a
militant group, were killed, according to the group’s spokesman and medical
officials in Gaza.
The attacks near Eilat were the deadliest in Israel since Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu took office two and a half years ago, and they come at a time
of great uncertainty as the Palestinians plan to seek recognition of statehood
at the United Nations in the fall.
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, described the attacks as “a grave terrorist
incident” that had originated in Gaza and could probably be attributed to the
“loosening” of Egypt’s hold over the Sinai since the revolution. Yet Israel
appeared reluctant to blame the Egyptian authorities, not wanting to inflame an
already delicate situation and preferring to use the events to urge what it
considers more constructive Egyptian action.
“Our hope,” one Israeli official said, “is that this tragedy will serve as an
impetus for the Egyptians to firmly exercise their sovereignty in all of Sinai
and to end the security vacuum that has started to emerge there.”
In a short televised address to the nation on Thursday night, Mr. Netanyahu did
not mention Egypt by name and directed the blame at Gaza, which is governed by
Hamas. Referring obliquely to that evening’s first swift airstrike on Gaza, he
said, “Those who gave the order to murder our citizens, while hiding in Gaza,
are no longer among the living.”
Egyptian officials denied that any attackers had crossed Egyptian territory to
get to the Eilat area. Hamas also rejected the Israelis’ accusations, calling
them part of a plot “meant to justify an Israeli aggression against Gaza.”
Officials in Gaza said the militants killed in the Israeli airstrike belonged to
the Popular Resistance Committees, a shadowy group that has worked with Hamas.
The group’s military commander was among those killed in the airstrike, which
hit a house in Rafah, in southern Gaza.
A spokesman for the group said that three of the commander’s assistants and a
3-year-old boy were also killed. The group later claimed responsibility for
firing three rockets at the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon in retaliation. No
one was killed in the rocket attack.
Further Israeli strikes hit Hamas training and security facilities. Officials in
Gaza said a 13-year-old boy was killed in a house near one of the sites; Hamas
had already evacuated the facilities.
Israeli analysts pointed to the group’s possible connections to the multipronged
attack near Eilat.
“If Hamas did not give the order, it must have known about plans for such a
large-scale attack,” said Ely Karmon of the International Institute for
Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
The attacks on Thursday began about midday when gunmen opened fire on an Israeli
passenger bus carrying soldiers and civilians from the southern city of
Beersheba to Eilat. The Israeli military said other attackers fired on a second
bus and on two civilian vehicles at another point on the road, which runs along
the Egyptian border, and detonated a roadside bomb near Israeli soldiers who
were on their way to the scene of the initial attack.
Israeli officials said six of the eight Israelis killed were civilians, and the
other two were soldiers.
The attacks unfolded over several hours, with the second of the soldiers being
shot to death at nightfall.
Television images from the scene showed shattered windows and bullet holes in
the first bus. The second bus, which was empty except for the driver, was a
burned-out shell. Military officials said it appeared that a suicide bomber had
detonated explosives alongside it.
The military shut down two highways near Eilat after the attacks, complicating
efforts to report from the scene.
Israel has repeatedly warned about the risks from Islamic extremists in the
Sinai desert. Israel blamed the military wing of Hamas for rocket attacks last
year on Eilat and the neighboring Jordanian resort of Aqaba, saying the fire
came from Sinai.
Under President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian forces had kept a close watch on the
Sinai border, in part to keep out Islamist radicals who Mr. Mubarak feared could
threaten his rule and in part to preserve ties with the United States and
Israel.
But the revolution has turned Egypt inward, ushering in a transitional
government that is more concerned with the approval of its own citizens than the
security of Israel, or even the threat of subversion.
Egypt’s new leaders have unnerved Israel by cultivating closer ties with Hamas
and Iran. And while they have focused on securing Cairo, they have allowed the
northern Sinai region along the Israeli border to slide into lawlessness,
leaving Bedouin tribes to keep the peace. The smuggling of goods and migrants
has surged through a network of tunnels under the Gaza border.
Egypt was forced to take action recently to restore order after a police station
in the regional capital of Arish was attacked by what the authorities said were
Islamist militants. In the last few days, the Egyptian military has sent more
than 1,000 troops to the area to apprehend the suspects.
Egyptian analysts acknowledged Thursday that the lax security might well have
played a role in the attacks on the Eilat area.
“The security situation in north Sinai is deteriorating, and now radical
militant elements got loose,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, the director of the Ahram
Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “It is not a remote
possibility for them to cross the border and launch attacks against Israeli
targets. It makes a lot of sense.”
Heba Afify
contributed reporting.
Egypt Registers Complaint With Israel Over Killings of
Officers, NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/middleeast/20egypt.html
Syria
Said to Fire on Protest in Defiance of Global Rebuke
August 19,
2011
The New York Times
By NADA BAKRI
BEIRUT,
Lebanon — Thousands of Syrians took to the streets across the country on Friday
calling for the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad, keeping up the pressure
in the five-month-old uprising a day after an alliance of nations led by the
United States publicly called on him for the first time to step down and
toughened sanctions against his government. At least 18 people were reported
killed, including some soldiers who disobeyed orders to shoot at protesters.
Syrians have been demonstrating on Fridays after noon prayers since the uprising
began in March, and activists on the official Facebook page for the Syrian
Revolution are calling this week’s demonstrations “Friday of the beginnings of
victory.”
Activists and residents reached in Syria reported shooting in several areas
across the country, despite Mr. Assad’s assertion two days earlier that all
military operations against the opposition had ended. They said that 15
demonstrators were killed in the southern Dara’a Province, where the first
protests began five months ago after security forces arrested and tortured high
school students caught scrawling antigovernment graffiti on walls.
Among the dead in Dara’a were five army soldiers who refused to open fire on
protesters, according to the Local Coordination Committees, a group of activists
who document and organize protests. They also said that two people died in the
suburbs of Damascus when their demonstrations came under fire and that one was
killed in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, where some of the biggest
demonstrations against the government of Mr. Assad have occurred.
The activists also said security forces were using live ammunition against
protesters in Latakia, along the Mediterranean coast, and in Homs, in central
Syria, and in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, which has seen only small
protests so far. Residents also said that security forces arrested dozens of men
who were leaving the Huzayfa Bin Yaman mosque in Aleppo.
Three people were also killed on Thursday, activists said, during demonstrations
held after an evening prayer performed only during Ramadan, a holy month when
Muslims fast from dawn to sunset.
In Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria, where military forces began an attack on
protesters two weeks ago, killing dozens, activists said that Friday’s
demonstration in the town attracted a big crowd despite the heavy presence of
security forces.
“Today people felt more confident,” said Maamoun, an activist in Deir al-Zour.
He said that demonstrators were chanting “the people want to execute the
president” and that armed men loyal to the government and known in Syria as
shabeeha chased them with batons.
On Thursday, the international community called on Mr. Assad to step down in a
coordinated action led by President Obama, who said in a statement released by
the White House that the Syrian president’s “calls for dialogue and reform have
rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people.”
The United States also banned all imports of Syrian oil and barred American
citizens from having any dealings with Mr. Assad’s regime. The top human rights
official at the United Nations also released a report that accused Mr. Assad’s
regime of committing atrocities in its repression of the uprising.
There was no official Syrian reaction to the international call for Mr. Assad to
leave office, but the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari,
rejected it and accused the United States of “instigating further violence in
the country, and giving the wrong message to the terrorist armed groups that
they are under American and Western protection so that they go ahead with their
insurrection and destructive activities in the country.”
An American ban on Syrian oil would not by itself be significant, but the Assad
government would feel the effects of a European ban on oil from Syria, which
exports more than a third of its annual production to Europe. In Brussels on
Friday, the European Union took a significant step toward such a ban, when
senior diplomats in Brussels requested that plans be drawn up to stop all
imports of Syrian crude oil.
The diplomats also agreed to add 15 names of individuals or companies to the
list of those already subjected to asset freezes or visa bans, and to look at
ways of widening the categories of those affected.
The European Union has already imposed asset freezes and visa bans on 35
individuals and placed restrictions on trade with firms linked to the Syria
suppression of dissent.
Reporting was
contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Stephen Castle from London and Rick
Gladstone from New York.
Syria Said to Fire on Protest in Defiance of Global
Rebuke, NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/middleeast/20syria.html
Biden
seeks to reassure China on U.S. debt
BEIJING | Fri
Aug 19, 2011
6:09am EDT
Reuters
By Jeff Mason
BEIJING
(Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday said China had "nothing to
worry about" concerning the safety of its vast holdings of Treasury debt, while
China's Premier Wen Jiabao gave a ringing endorsement of the resilience of the
debt-ridden U.S. economy.
The exchange came on the second day of Biden's five-day visit to China where he
is seeking to reduce distrust between the world's two largest economies and
build relations with Chinese leaders.
Wen said he was confident that the U.S. economy would get back on track for
healthy growth, echoing earlier comments from China's vice president and heir
apparent, Xi Jinping.
"It's particularly important that you sent a very clear message to the Chinese
public that the United States will keep its word and its obligations with regard
to its government debt, it will preserve the safety, liquidity and value of U.S.
Treasuries," Wen told Biden.
Both sides have been at pains to project a harmonious image during the trip,
although there was an unscripted note of discord on Thursday night when a
basketball game between a U.S. college team and a Chinese professional side
erupted in a fight.
Wen's comments were the first by a senior Chinese leader to directly address the
roiling debt crisis in Washington since this month's credit rating downgrade by
Standard and Poor's.
In response, Biden told Wen that Washington appreciated and welcomed China's
investment in U.S. treasuries.
"Very sincerely I want to make clear you have nothing to worry about," Biden
said.
"DON'T BET
AGAINST AMERICA"
Earlier, the U.S. vice president told his hosts that "no one has ever made money
betting against America," according to a transcript of remarks made with Xi.
Biden's China stop is the first leg of an Asia tour that will include visits to
Mongolia and Japan.
The upbeat tone from Wen and Xi, who is expected to be China's next president,
was in stark contrast to the sharp criticism by state media of Washington's
handling of its economy, for which China is the biggest foreign creditor.
Their words highlighted the complex and intertwined relationship between the
world's two-largest economies. While China has tussled with the United States on
trade, Internet censorship, human rights and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, it has
also sought to steady ties with Washington.
Chinese officials have long sought assurances that Beijing's vast holdings of
dollar assets including U.S. Treasury debt remain safe, despite the downgrade.
Chinese state media have repeatedly accused Washington of reckless fiscal
policies that have created uncertainty about Beijing's dollar assets. Analysts
estimate two-thirds of China's $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, the
world's largest, are in dollar holdings, making it the biggest foreign creditor
to the United States.
Wu Zhifeng, an economist with China Development Bank, a state bank in Beijing,
said Beijing can do little to divest its existing dollar holdings.
"Biden's promise is right in the sense that there will be no U.S. treasury
defaults, but his promise does not mean the purchasing power of China's treasury
holdings will not be eroded," Wu said.
"MORE
PRECIOUS THAN GOLD"
Xi said Biden had briefed him on Thursday "about the efforts of the U.S.
government in spurring growth and jobs, cutting (the) budget deficit, properly
handling the debt problem, and preserving the confidence of global investors."
"The U.S. economy is highly resilient and has a strong capacity for
self-repair," said Xi, who was speaking to business leaders at the roundtable
event. "We believe that the U.S. economy will achieve even better development as
it rises to challenges."
Xi reiterated the need for China the United States to work together to restore
confidence in international markets, adding that "confidence is more precious
than gold."
Dong Xian'an, chief economist of Peking First Advisory in Beijing, said China
and the United States "need to coordinate their macro policies and make their
fiscal system transparent to each other."
"China and the United States are walking through this crisis together. If one
loses, the other will, too," Dong said.
Earlier, Biden acknowledged that China had legitimate concerns about its access
to U.S. markets, just as Washington is worried about problems U.S. firms face in
China.
Xi voiced optimism that China would avoid a so-called hard landing and that
China hopes Washington will ease trade restrictions and provide fair treatment
to Chinese firms.
He said that China would give all businesses equal treatment when seeking
government contracts, addressing concerns raised by U.S. executives that they
were being shut out in some cases.
Separately, a U.S. official said the United States would announce nearly $1
billion in commercial deals between U.S. companies and China.
Despite the positive official statements, occasional discordant notes interfered
with the two sides' efforts to build trust. At one press conference, media
handlers suddenly ushered reporters out of the room while Biden was still
speaking, citing an arbitrary time limit.
The previous evening, goodwill between the two nations briefly unraveled at a
basketball court at the former Olympic grounds where a 'friendship' game between
the Georgetown University Hoyas and the Bayi Military Rockets degenerated into a
brawl.
(Additional
reporting by Langi Chiang and Zhou Xin; Writing by Sui-Lee Wee;
Editing by Ken Wills and Alex Richardson)
Biden seeks to reassure China on U.S. debt, R, 19.8.2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/19/us-china-usa-idUSTRE77H0HA20110819
New
Fighting Outside Tripoli as Foreigners Seek an Exit
August 19,
2011
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM and RICK GLADSTONE
ZAWIYAH,
Libya — Rebel soldiers fought running street battles on Friday with troops loyal
to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in the heart of this strategically important city,
just a half-hour’s drive from the Libyan capital of Tripoli, and there were new
signs that worried foreigners in Tripoli were urgently trying to leave.
The fighting centered on the city’s central Martyrs Square, where snipers and
other Qaddafi loyalists have taken up positions in a hotel, a bank building and
a government administrative office. While a rebel tank roamed around the square
shooting at the loyalist positions, shells and rockets rained down from Qaddafi
forces positioned on the eastern side of the city.
Neither side seemed to gain an advantage in the fighting. While NATO aircraft
could be seen overhead, they did not attack any targets.
But rebel forces maintained complete control of the sprawling oil refinery here
that they seized Thursday after three days of fighting. They also consolidated
their hold on the vital highway from Tunisia to Tripoli and were staffing
checkpoints on other roads leading out of Tripoli toward rebel-held areas.
With conditions deteriorating in Tripoli, with mounting food and gasoline
shortages, thousands of foreign nationals there are now requesting assistance to
leave the country, a major intergovernmental relief group that assists migrants
reported Friday.
The relief group, the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva,
said it was working on an evacuation plan that would take into account “the
highly complex logistical, political and security challenges” of extricating the
foreign nationals, many of them migrant workers and others who had elected to
stay in Tripoli despite the increasing chaos and uncertainty of the
six-month-old conflict between Colonel Qaddafi and the rebels fighting to topple
him.
Tens of thousands of other foreigners fled Libya in the conflict’s early stages,
many overland into neighboring Tunisia. But that route has now been effectively
blocked by increasingly emboldened rebel forces.
It is unclear whether Colonel Qaddafi, whose four-decade hold on power in Libya
looks increasingly tenuous, will authorize a foreign-supervised departure of the
remaining foreign nationals in Tripoli. There are still many thousands there, a
large number of them Egyptians.
“We don’t know how many migrants are left in Tripoli and how many in total want
to leave,” said Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the International Organization
for Migration, said in a telephone interview. “But we can say we’re seeing an
increase in the number of requests.”
Ms. Pandya said that she had no firsthand information about the deprivations in
Tripoli but “there seems to be an increasing concern among the migrants
themselves about the developments.”
The organization, which receives funding from the European Union, United States,
Japan and other countries, has helped at least 30,000 migrants leave Libya
during the course of the conflict, including at least 8,300 by boat from
Misurata, the site of some of the most intense fighting between Qaddafi
loyalists and rebel fighters.
Ms. Pandya said it was unclear at this point how her organization would
transport migrants out of the country but that “we’re looking at all possible
options. We have a very short window of opportunity. You don’t know what’s going
to happen.”
Kareem Fahim
reported from Zawiyah, Libya, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
New Fighting Outside Tripoli as Foreigners Seek an Exit,
NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/africa/20libya.html
Libyan
Rebels Gain Control of Oil Refinery
as
Qaddafi Forces Flee
August 18,
2011
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM
ZAWIYAH,
Libya — Rebel fighters claimed complete control of a sprawling oil refinery in
this coastal town on Thursday, seizing one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most
important assets after just three days of fighting and delivering the latest in
a string of small victories that have suddenly put the rebels at Tripoli’s door.
Despite what rebel leaders described as fierce fighting, many of them expressed
surprise that the Qaddafi loyalists were routed with relative ease. Some people
even wondered whether the chaotic exit by around 50 of the Qaddafi fighters —
who fled by boat before they were bombed by NATO warplanes, according to several
fighters — was some sort of a ruse.
“We hope this is it,” said Ajali Deeb, a petrochemical engineer at the seized
refinery. “I think he is weak. These are indications that the system has started
to collapse.”
The six-month history of the Libyan conflict is filled with similar predictions
made by one side or the other, usually in the face of nettlesome facts. Even so,
the rebels have taken substantial territory in western Libya over the past few
weeks, and Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have not mounted a forceful counterattack.
There were other signs of a conflict that had reached a critical moment, if not
its final stage. For days, the vital highway from Tunisia to Tripoli has
remained closed, controlled by the rebels in a harsh blow to the Qaddafi
government, which relies on the road for supplies of food and fuel.
Thousands of refugees are also fleeing daily from Tripoli, some to escape the
city’s mounting hardships but others expecting that they will be safer in
rebel-held areas. On the road, they pass through checkpoints staffed by
increasingly confident rebel fighters, many of them toting brand-new machine
guns supplied by one of several foreign allies now providing weapons to the
rebel forces.
Perhaps the clearest sign of collapsing morale among Qaddafi forces was found in
dozens of miles of untouched farmland, between the town of Bir Ghanem, which was
heavily contested for weeks, and Zawiyah. Qaddafi forces retreated along the
road between the towns last week, ceding 55 miles, and hardly putting up a
fight, rebel fighters said.
“It took one day. They were running,” said Mustafa Traiki, 30, who fought in
Zawiyah on Thursday. “I think they are getting weaker. Every day, we hear about
someone coming from the Qaddafi side to our side,” he said.
Colonel Qaddafi has rejected calls to leave power, defying defections by
subordinates, increased economic and political isolation and NATO air assaults.
Nevertheless, his government was said to be involved in French-brokered
negotiations with the rebels in the Tunisian city of Djerba this week, Reuters
said, citing a report in the newspaper Le Parisien. The former French prime
minister, Dominique de Villepin, who said he was present at the meetings, called
the talks “extremely difficult.”
As their foreign allies searched for a way to end the fighting, the Libyan
rebels tried to seize more territory and perhaps gain leverage in their
negotiations. Their successes have at least temporarily shifted attention away
from the rebel’s internal divisions, laid bare by the assassination of their top
military commander on July 28. There also remained the possibility that the
rebels, as they have in the past, would advance beyond their ability to hold
their ground.
And the Qaddafi forces, despite signs of weakness, have not stopped resisting.
Even as the rebels have extended partial or total control over key coastal
towns, including Sabratha and Surman, west of Zawiyah, there have been reports
of Qaddafi loyalists’ shedding their uniforms and continuing the fight inside
those towns. Rebels said they were in control of the city of Gheryan, which
straddles another crucial supply line to Tripoli. Clashes were reported Thursday
within a few miles of the city, Reuters reported.
A few miles from the port at the oil refinery, where fleeing Qaddafi soldiers
left their green fatigues on a dock, snipers shot at rebel fighters in the
center of Zawiyah, which is still held by government loyalists.
The six-day struggle for Zawiyah, the last major city on the western approach to
Tripoli that Qaddafi forces had managed to hold, has now settled into fierce
fighting on two fronts, rebel fighters said. There have been ongoing clashes
around Zawiyah’s eastern entrance, and in the center of town Qaddafi soldiers
have take up positions in a traffic circle and in several buildings, including a
bank, a hospital and a hotel that was under construction.
On Thursday, the hotel caught fire, sending a column of black smoke above the
city.
The Qaddafi soldiers still committed to the fight appeared less capable than the
troops that had repeatedly driven back the rebels in the early months of the
war. The mortar attacks this week — regular, and still deadly — lacked the
precision of the strikes that used to send rebel soldiers fleeing en masse from
towns like Brega and Ras Lanuf in the eastern part of the country.
As the smoke from the hotel provided cover for the rebels, they gathered their
dead, including two men whose bodies had been sitting in the road for days.
Eissa Korghly, an engineer turned fighter, used his pickup truck to take the
bloated bodies wrapped in floral blankets to a graveyard, where several men
helped bury them.
A few miles away, Qaddafi soldiers still had positions, a gravedigger said. Mr.
Korghly picked up his shotgun, and turned his truck around, headed back to
Zawiyah.
“We are pushing,” he said. “Maybe it’s hours. Not days.”
Rick Gladstone
contributed reporting from New York.
Libyan Rebels Gain Control of Oil Refinery as Qaddafi
Forces Flee, NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/africa/19libya.html
U.S. and
Allies Say Syria Leader Must Step Down
August 18,
2011
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON
— The United States and several of its major allies on Thursday called on
Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to give up power. The carefully
choreographed announcements came after months of popular protests and
increasingly deadly reprisals that the United Nations commissioner for human
rights said amounted to crimes against humanity by the Syrian authorities.
President Obama, who had faced criticism for not acting more assertively,
ordered the freezing of all Syrian assets within American jurisdiction, banned
imports of Syrian oil and barred American citizens from having any business
dealings with the Syrian government, which the administration once courted in
the hopes of improving relations.
He called on other countries to impose their own sanctions, focusing on Syria’s
oil and gas industry, and European leaders suggested those were now under
consideration.
The ultimate effect of the chorus of international condemnation and sanctions
remains to be seen, and the United States and its allies risked highlighting
their relative powerlessness to alter events inside Syria. But their decision to
turn up the pressure substantially could have a profound psychological effect on
a government that has survived for decades by retrenching during crises and
manipulating relations in the region — from Turkey to Israel, Lebanon to Iran —
to keep itself relevant, if not admired.
Diplomatically, at least, Syria now appears more isolated than at any other time
in the 41 years that Mr. Assad or his father, Hafez, has led the country.
Administration officials and diplomats said they hoped that fact alone could
break open fissures among the political and business elite cosseted under Mr.
Assad’s rule. Until now they appear to have bet on the government’s somehow
surviving.
It was Mr. Obama’s first explicit call for the Syrian leader to resign, and it
came after weeks of divisions within the administration and mounting criticism
from many in Congress, advocates of Syrian democracy and others that the United
States and other nations had responded too tepidly to the violent suppression of
protests that have swept Syrian cities for five months. It also followed
behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering in which Turkey took the lead in an
unsuccessful effort to persuade Mr. Assad to halt the violence.
“We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic
transition or get out of the way,” Mr. Obama said in a written statement
released Thursday morning after coordination with allies in Europe. “He has not
led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to
step aside.”
Almost simultaneously, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany issued a joint
statement urging Mr. Assad “to face the reality of the complete rejection of his
regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and
the unity of its people.” Canada made a similar appeal, as did the European
Union. The United Nations human rights office in Geneva issued a damning,
22-page report that concluded that Syrian government forces might have committed
crimes against humanity by carrying out summary executions, torturing prisoners
and harming children.
The United Nations report, overseen by the high commissioner for human rights,
Navanethem Pillay, accused Syria of grossly violating its citizens’ rights and
carrying out “numerous summary executions, including 353 named victims.” It also
said that members of the security forces “posed as civilians in order to cause
unrest and portray an inaccurate picture of events.”
The office recommended that the United Nations Security Council consider
referring Syria to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. In New
York, the Security Council met later on Thursday and discussed potential steps
against Syria.
The United States and European members of the Security Council pressed for a
resolution condemning Syria and were debating sanctions that could include an
arms embargo, a freezing of assets and a ban on travel by the country’s leaders,
diplomats there said. They would not say whether the Council would consider
referring the matter to the international court, but did say that Council
members expressed a desire to hold accountable those responsible for the
violence. At the United Nations, Syria said the United States was trying to use
the Security Council as an “instrument” to instigate further instability.
Even Russia, which has resisted punitive measures against Syria so far and
appears likely to veto an embargo, has sounded increasingly frustrated with Mr.
Assad’s government, which has ignored repeated calls to halt the violence,
including those from countries like Turkey with which it had closer relations.
While Mr. Assad told the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on
Wednesday that the crackdown had in fact ended, activists within Syria said the
violence continued unabated.
After Mr. Assad spoke on Wednesday, two people were reported killed in the city
of Homs after a nighttime prayer, held only during the month of Ramadan, when
Muslims fast from dawn to sunset; at least one more died in the city on Thursday
when security forces opened fire on a small protest in the neighborhood of Baba
Amr. Residents and activists also reported attacks and arrests in other cities,
including Deir al-Zour, Hama and the capital, Damascus. “The killings and
destruction haven’t stopped,” an activist in Homs, who would be identified only
as Mohamad, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “They haven’t withdrawn
from the city. On the contrary, the number of security forces has increased and
gunfire is heard every so often.”
In Washington, administration officials acknowledged that American sanctions
alone would have little effect. “No outside power can or should impose this
transition,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at the State
Department. “It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders, in a
democratic system based on the rule of law and dedicated to protecting the
rights of all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sect or gender.”
With Syria’s opposition barely organized and under constant harassment, there is
no obvious path to a transfer of power, even if Mr. Assad’s grip weakens
significantly. “Nothing about this is going to be easy,” a senior administration
official said.
The sanctions that Mr. Obama ordered took aim at Syria’s oil and petroleum
exports. Syria is a relative small energy producer, exporting only 148,000
barrels of oil a day, almost all of it to European nations, according to the
United States Department of Energy. Mr. Cameron, Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel said
in their statement that they would be “actively supporting” additional sanctions
through the European Union, but no new ones were announced Thursday. Like the
United States, the European Union has imposed sanctions on Mr. Assad and dozens
of other security officials and businessmen in Syria. The union’s foreign policy
chief, Catherine Ashton, said the union was discussing how to broaden its
sanctions.
The Obama administration has sharply criticized the violence in Syria from the
start, steadily intensifying its pressure on Mr. Assad with statements and with
actions. But in stark contrast to its comparatively swift calls for the ouster
of Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, or Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi,
the administration stopped short of doing so in the case of Syria.
The White House and State Department debated the issue intensely in recent
weeks, with Mrs. Clinton arguing that a call for Mr. Assad to go would be
meaningless without broader support and action. An administration official said
the president first broached calling for Mr. Assad’s departure in a phone call
with Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel on Aug. 5.
Mrs. Clinton persuaded the White House to delay its call until the sanctions
could be readied and to give Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, a
chance to press the Syrian leader to halt the violence and begin a reform
process that would include a unity government and new elections. As the violence
continued and intensified with the start of Ramadan, Mr. Obama spoke with
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said he wanted to move more
quickly, an administration official said.
Turkey, with a shared border and deep historic and economic ties to Syria, did
not join in the diplomatic chorus on Thursday. “Turkey was the first country to
say that there was no point in continuing talks with Syria while military
operations continued,” said a Turkish government official, who asked not to be
named because of his diplomatic position. “Turkey, however, is not at the point
mentioned in President Obama’s speech today.”
Reporting was
contributed by Mark Landler and Brian Knowlton from Washington, Neil MacFarquhar
from New York, Nada Bakri from Beirut, Lebanon, Alan Cowell from Paris, Nicholas
Kulish from Berlin and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.
U.S. and Allies Say Syria Leader Must Step Down, NYT,
18.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/middleeast/19diplo.html
Attacks
Near Israeli Resort
Heighten
Tensions With Egypt and Gaza
August 19,
2011
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
JERUSALEM —
Armed attackers, described by the authorities as Gazans who had crossed into
Israel from Egypt, carried out multiple deadly attacks near the popular Red Sea
resort of Eilat on Thursday, prompting fierce Israeli bombing raids overnight on
Gaza and threatening to escalate tensions there.
By Friday morning Gaza militants had fired more than 10 rockets at southern
Israeli cities, according to the Israeli military. One fell near a religious
seminary in Ashdod, apparently causing some injuries.
In response to both the rocket attacks and the assault near Eilat, the Israeli
military said in a statement early Friday that its warplanes struck seven
targets in the Gaza Strip overnight. “In northern Gaza, the targets included a
weapon manufacturing site and two terror activity sites. In southern Gaza, the
targets included two smuggling tunnels, a terror tunnel and a terror activity
site,” the statement said without elaboraitng further on the nature of the
targets. Eight Israelis were killed and more than 30 were wounded on Thursday in
the attacks near Eilat, the most serious on Israel from Egyptian territory in
decades. The attacks highlighted how the fallout from the Egyptian revolution —
lawlessness in the northern Sinai Peninsula and a softer line in Cairo toward
Iran and the militant group Hamas — had frayed ties with Israel.
The Israeli military said it had killed at least four of the attackers in the
desert near the Egyptian border. Hours later, it retaliated with several
airstrikes on Gaza. In the first such strike, six Palestinians, several of them
members of a militant group, were killed, according to the group’s spokesman and
medical officials in Gaza.
The attacks near Eilat were the deadliest in Israel since Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu took office two and a half years ago, and they come at a time
of great uncertainty as the Palestinians plan to seek recognition of statehood
at the United Nations in the fall.
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, described the attacks as “a grave terrorist
incident” that had originated in Gaza and could probably be attributed to the
“loosening” of Egypt’s hold over Sinai since the revolution. Yet Israel appeared
reluctant to blame the Egyptian authorities, not wanting to inflame an already
delicate situation and preferring to use the events to urge more constructive
Egyptian action.
“Our hope,” one Israeli official said, “is that this tragedy will serve as an
impetus for the Egyptians to firmly exercise their sovereignty in all of Sinai
and to end the security vacuum that has started to emerge there.”
In a short, televised address to the nation on Thursday night, Mr. Netanyahu did
not mention Egypt by name and directed the blame at Gaza, which is governed by
Hamas. Referring obliquely to that evening’s first swift airstrike on Gaza, he
said, “Those who gave the order to murder our citizens, while hiding in Gaza,
are no longer among the living.”
Egyptian officials denied that any attackers had crossed Egyptian territory to
get to the Eilat area. Hamas also rejected the Israelis’ accusations, calling
them part of a plot “meant to justify an Israeli aggression against Gaza.”
Officials in Gaza said the militants killed in the Israeli airstrike belonged to
the Popular Resistance Committees, a shadowy group that has worked with Hamas.
The group’s military commander was among those killed in the airstrike, which
hit a house in Rafah, in southern Gaza.
A spokesman for the group said that three of the commander’s assistants and a
3-year-old boy were also killed. The group later claimed responsibility for
firing three rockets at the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon in retaliation. No
one was killed in the rocket attack.
Further Israeli strikes hit Hamas training and security facilities. Officials in
Gaza said a 13-year-old boy was killed in a house near one of the sites; Hamas
had already evacuated the facilities.
Israeli analysts pointed to the group’s possible connections to the multipronged
attack near Eilat.
“If Hamas did not give the order, it must have known about plans for such a
large-scale attack,” said Ely Karmon of the International Institute for
Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
The attacks began about midday when gunmen opened fire on an Israeli passenger
bus carrying soldiers and civilians from the southern city of Beersheba to
Eilat. The Israeli military said other attackers fired on a second bus and on
two civilian vehicles at another point on the road, which runs along the
Egyptian border, and detonated a roadside bomb near Israeli soldiers who were on
their way to the scene of the initial attack.
Israeli officials said six of the eight Israelis killed were civilians, and the
other two were soldiers.
The attacks unfolded over several hours, with the second of the soldiers being
shot to death at nightfall.
Television images from the scene showed shattered windows and bullet holes in
the first bus. The second bus, which was empty except for the driver, was a
burned-out shell. Military officials said it appeared that a suicide bomber had
detonated explosives alongside it.
The military shut down two highways near Eilat after the attacks, complicating
efforts to report from the scene.
Israel has repeatedly warned about the risks from Islamic extremists in the
Sinai desert. Israel blamed the military wing of Hamas for rocket attacks last
year on Eilat and the neighboring Jordanian resort of Aqaba, saying the fire
came from Sinai.
The latest attacks threatened to create new strains in the relationship between
Israel and Egypt. Tensions have grown since the Egyptian revolution that
overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, a steadfast ally who helped hold in check the
public’s widespread sympathy with the Palestinians and hatred of Israel.
His security forces had kept a close watch on the Sinai border, in part to keep
out Islamist radicals who Mr. Mubarak feared could threaten his rule and in part
to preserve ties with the United States and Israel.
But the revolution has turned Egypt inward, ushering in a transitional
government that is more concerned with the approval of its own citizens than the
security of Israel, or even the threat of subversion.
Egypt’s new leaders have unnerved Israel by cultivating closer ties with Hamas
and Iran. And while they have focused on securing Cairo, they have allowed the
northern Sinai region along the Israeli border to slide into lawlessness,
leaving Bedouin tribes to keep the peace. The smuggling of goods and migrants
has surged through a network of tunnels under the Gaza border.
Egypt was forced to take action recently to restore order after a police station
in the regional capital of Arish was attacked by what the authorities said were
Islamist militants. In the last few days, the Egyptian military has sent more
than 1,000 troops to the area to apprehend the suspects.
Egyptian analysts acknowledged Thursday that the lax security might well have
played a role in the attacks on the Eilat area.
“The security situation in north Sinai is deteriorating, and now radical
militant elements got loose,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, the director of the Ahram
Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “It is not a remote
possibility for them to cross the border and launch attacks against Israeli
targets. It makes a lot of sense.”
Isabel
Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting
was contributed by Fares Akram in Gaza, Heba Afify in Cairo, J. David Goodman
and Rick Gladstone in New York and Alan Cowell in Paris.
Attacks Near Israeli Resort Heighten Tensions With Egypt
and Gaza, NYT, 19.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/world/middleeast/20israel.html
Cooperation Is Emphasized as Biden Opens Talks in China
August 18,
2011
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING —
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday praised China’s rapid economic
ascent while his Chinese counterpart emphasized cooperation between China and
the United States as the two began talks that will focus on the global economy,
trade and currency.
Mr. Biden arrived with Vice President Xi Jinping of China at 10:30 a.m. at the
Great Hall of the People, on the west side of Tiananmen Square. Under blue skies
made clear from a night of rain, the pair walked on a red carpet past an honor
guard that first played “The Star Spangled Banner” and then the national anthem
of the People’s Republic of China.
Both men walked into a meeting room at the Great Hall and exchanged opening
remarks. Mr. Biden spoke nostalgically of his first visit to China in 1979 when
he was a United States senator and visited the Great Wall. He said nothing had
impressed him more than the economic changes in China in recent decades. Before
Mr. Biden finished his remarks, foreign reporters were forcefully shoved out of
the meeting room by security staff. Mr. Xi praised Mr. Biden for his interest in
China and said, “I believe from this new situation, China and the U.S. have ever
more extensive common interests and shoulder ever more important common
responsibilities.”Mr. Biden arrived on Wednesday for the start of a four-day
whirlwind trip to Beijing and the southwestern city of Chengdu, during which he
will spend significant time with China’s presumed next leader, Mr. Xi, and
defend the economic policies of the United States.
After two sessions with Mr. Xi, Mr. Biden went with his granddaughter Naomi and
the new United States ambassador, Gary Locke, to a small restaurant north of
Tiananmen Square that specializes in bowls of intestine for breakfast. The
restaurant, tucked away behind the ancient building known as the Drum Tower, was
crowded with Chinese patrons at lunchtime, many eating small pork buns and
stir-fried vegetables. One yelled out “Beijing welcomes you!” in Mandarin
Chinese and others shook hands with the vice president. A woman spoke to him
about her relatives living in Minnesota.
Mr. Biden, on his first trip to China since becoming vice president, is touring
the country at a time when Chinese officials and scholars are raising questions
about the stability of Chinese investments in U.S. Treasury securities, given
the recent debt-ceiling debate and near-default by the United States government.
On Wednesday, the state-run newspaper Global Times ran an article about Mr.
Biden’s trip under the headline “Biden Faces Tough Talks in China.”
Shepherding Mr. Biden through some of the meetings will be Mr. Locke, the new
U.S. envoy and the former commerce secretary. Mr. Locke presented his
credentials to President Hu Jintao on Tuesday to formally begin his posting.
Mr. Locke’s trip here caused a stir among many Chinese. The sensation began last
week when a Chinese businessman posted a photograph on the Internet of Mr. Locke
buying coffee and carrying a black backpack at a Starbucks cafe in the Seattle
airport as Mr. Locke was en route to China with his family. The photo prompted
Chinese to comment online that Mr. Locke exhibited a humility many Chinese
officials lack.
That sense of humility, whether demonstrated by Mr. Locke or Mr. Biden, will be
put to the test in coming days.
China has shown anxiety about the downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit
rating by Standard & Poor’s and the potential effect on its investments. Yet it
has joined other large investors in continuing to pour money into Treasury
securities. The Treasury Department released statistics on Monday that showed
that China increased its holdings of the securities in June by $5.7 billion, to
$1.17 trillion. China is the largest foreign creditor of the United States.
On Monday, Lael Brainard, the undersecretary for international affairs at the
Treasury Department, said in a conference call with reporters that “the economic
side of the trip obviously is very important.” But she emphasized that Mr. Biden
would be trying to promote his country’s economic interests, noting that United
States exports to China had grown faster than exports to other parts of the
world, surpassing $100 billion over the last year. Mr. Biden plans to press
China to continue letting its currency appreciate. Many economists say the
renminbi is undervalued, giving Chinese exports an enormous advantage in the
global marketplace.
Chinese leaders look more at domestic pressures when setting currency policy.
They are trying to find the right balance between keeping the value of the
renminbi low, which allows for stronger exports and thus more jobs in the
manufacturing sector, and allowing it to rise enough to help tamp down
inflation.
The nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran — and China’s influence over those
two countries — are also of concern to the White House and are expected to be
discussed. Daniel Russel, senior director for Asian affairs on the National
Security Council, said Mr. Biden would also raise the issue of human rights.
On Tibet, Mr. Biden is “expected to reinforce the message to the Chinese that
there is great value in their renewing their dialogue with the representatives
of the Dalai Lama, with the goal of peacefully resolving differences.”
President Obama met with the Tibetan spiritual leader in Washington in July,
prompting relatively muted protests by Chinese officials.
For the Chinese, Taiwan is an equally sensitive issue, and Mr. Biden is not
expected to bring up the contentious topic of United States arms sales there,
though Chinese leaders will almost certainly raise objections to an upcoming
round of sales.
United States officials have said they will decide by Oct. 1 whether to sell 66
new-generation F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan that the island’s leaders requested.
Cooperation Is Emphasized as Biden Opens Talks in China,
NYT, 18.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/asia/19china.html
Protests
Grow in Israel, With 250,000 Marching
August 6,
2011
The New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM —
At least 250,000 Israelis took to the streets on Saturday night to demonstrate
against the high cost of living and lack of affordable housing, the largest in
three weeks of protests aimed at forcing social and economic issues onto the
government’s agenda.
The popular protest movement, which crosses the traditional Israeli political
lines of left and right, began with a Facebook call to pitch tents along a
stylish Tel Aviv boulevard. A tent city sprang up, and smaller ones have
mushroomed in parks all over Israel.
The young organizers, who struck a chord in a society that has long been
quiescent on domestic issues, have expressed surprise at the number of Israelis
who have joined their struggle.
An estimated 200,000 turned out on Saturday night in Tel Aviv, and 30,000 in
Jerusalem, according to the police. Several thousand held smaller demonstrations
in other cities, adding up to one of the largest protests in recent Israeli
history. Israeli television put the total at more than 300,000. Popular singers
performed at the rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as the crowds raised chants
paraphrasing demonstrators around the Arab world, saying, “The people demand
social justice.”
“We know that we cannot achieve everything,” Itzik Shmuly, the chairman of the
National Union of Students, acknowledged from the podium in Tel Aviv. “But
living here has become impossible, and we will not accept it.”
The wave of protests has been largely driven by Israel’s working middle classes,
who are afflicted by rising costs of basics like housing, food and gasoline, and
by high taxation. At the same time, the country’s social services have been
shrinking and there is a growing gap between the rich and poor.
In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem young people, retired couples and families marched.
Ayelet Kol, a 37-year-old graphic designer in Tel Aviv, said she has been
fighting a losing battle to get by financially even though she downsized into a
one-room studio apartment, canceled her gym membership and cable subscription
and has entirely cut out meeting friends at restaurants.
“Until now most people thought it was their fault that they could not get by,”
she said, “but now they are realizing it’s hard for everyone and that they are
not alone.”
The social awakening has come in the middle of what had so far been a quiet
domestic term for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While his coalition
government appears to be stable for now, the sweeping protests have undermined
his popularity.
Under pressure, Mr. Netanyahu announced a series of measures late last month
meant to alleviate the housing shortage. The organizers dismissed them as
insufficient. Mr. Netanyahu said he would set up a committee of senior officials
and experts to dialog with the protest leaders.
The organizers have been careful to avoid party politics in order to preserve
the broad appeal of the movement.
“We are not asking to change the prime minister,” Stav Shafir, one of the
founders of the Tel Aviv tent city, said on Israeli television on Saturday. “We
are asking to change the system.”
Dina Kraft
contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
Protests Grow in Israel, With 250,000 Marching, NYT,
6.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/middleeast/07jerusalem.html
Libya
Allying With Islamists, Qaddafi Son Says
August 3,
2011
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
TRIPOLI,
Libya — After six months battling a rebellion that his family portrayed as an
Islamist conspiracy, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent
said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a behind-the-scenes
alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out
their more liberal-minded confederates.
“The liberals will escape or be killed,” the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi,
vowed in an hourlong interview that stretched past midnight. “We will do it
together,” he added, wearing a newly grown beard and fingering Islamic prayer
beads as he reclined on a love seat in a spare office tucked in a nearly
deserted downtown hotel. “Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So
what?”
The leading Islamist whom Mr. Qaddafi identified as his main counterpart in the
talks, Ali Sallabi, acknowledged their conversations but dismissed any
suggestion of an alliance. He said the Libyan Islamists supported the rebel
leaders’ calls for a pluralistic democracy without the Qaddafis.
But the interview nonetheless offered a rare glimpse into the defiant, some say
delusional, mentality of the Qaddafi family at a time when they have all but
completely retreated from public view under the threat of a NATO bombing
campaign, now five months old, and a six-month rebellion.
On one level, Mr. Qaddafi’s avowed embrace of the Islamists represents a sharp
personal reversal for a man who had long styled himself as a cosmopolitan,
Anglophile advocate of Western-style liberal democracy. He continues to refer to
the Islamists as “terrorists” and “bloody men,” and says, “We don’t trust them,
but we have to deal with them.”
But it may also be simply a twist on an old theme, a new version of the Qaddafi
argument that by assisting the rebels the Western intervention could usher in a
radical Islamist takeover. In a further taunt to the West, he suggested that the
Qaddafis would even help the Islamists stamp out the liberals.
“You want us to make a compromise. O.K. You want us to share the pot. O.K., But
with who?” he said in imagined dialogue with the Western powers. The Islamists,
he said, answering his own questions, “are the real force on the ground.”
“Everybody is taking off the mask, and now you have to face the reality,” he
said. “I know they are terrorists. They are bloody. They are not nice. But you
have to accept them.” He seemed to enjoy repeating the notion that Western
capitals would be forced to welcome the ambassadors or defense minister of a new
Islamist Libya.
“It is a funny story,” he said, though he insisted in all seriousness that he
and the Islamists would announce a joint communiqué within days, from both
Tripoli and the rebels’ provisional capital of Benghazi, Libya. “We will have
peace during Ramadan,” he said, referring to the current Islamic holy month.
Less than a week after the mysterious killing of the rebels’ top military
commander, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, by rebel gunmen, Mr. Qaddafi also seemed to
be trying to capitalize on potential divisions within their ranks. There have
been suggestions that the general was killed by an Islamist faction, perhaps in
retaliation for his actions in his former role as Colonel Qaddafi’s interior
minister, charged with the detention and torture of radical Islamists.
“They decided to get rid of those people — the ex-military people like Abdul
Fattah and the liberals — to take control of the whole operation,” Mr. Qaddafi
said. “In other words, to take off the mask.”
He said that the rebel-held eastern city of Darna, long known as a hotbed of
Islamist activism, had already come to resemble the lawless regions of Pakistan.
“It is Waziristan on the Mediterranean,” he said, adding that he had reached an
agreement with local Islamists to allow them to make it “an Islamic zone, like
Mecca.”
His comments also conveyed a new disdain for peace talks — with either the
rebels’ governing council or its NATO backers — which Qaddafi spokesmen still
call for almost every day. Mr. Qaddafi attributed recognition by the United
States and other countries of the rebels’ governing council to “a lot of idiot
people around the world.” As for the rebels themselves, Mr. Qaddafi called them
“rats” and their council “a fake,” “a joke” and “a puppet.”
Rebel leaders and Western governments have long acknowledged the presence of
Islamists among the rebel fighters, including at least one who was previously
imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and another believed to have been in
Afghanistan when Al Qaeda ran training camps under Taliban rule. But Western
governments have so far accepted the Libyan Islamists’ pledges of support for a
pluralistic democracy after the ouster of Colonel Qaddafi, concluding that their
agenda is purely domestic and poses no broader threat.
Mr. Qaddafi, however, has his own history with Libya’s Islamists, many of whom
his father sent to jail during a long campaign to stamp out an organization
known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Under the umbrella of
liberalization, the younger Mr. Qaddafi led an initiative to rehabilitate many
of them.
“I released them from prison, I know them personally, they are my friends,” he
said, though he added that he considered their release “of course a mistake,”
because of their role in the revolt.
As for the future of an Islamist Libya, Mr. Qaddafi was vague on the details. He
said that he had assented to Islamist demands to prohibit any constitution other
than the Koran, though Mr. Sallabi, the Islamist leader, said he has written
publicly in support of a civil constitution.
And Mr. Qaddafi refused to discuss his own or his father’s future role. That was
a question for after negotiating a peace, he said. “It is like you shoot first
and ask questions later.”
Although in recent weeks the rebellion has edged forward on three different
fronts around Tripoli, Mr. Qaddafi insisted: “We are more united, relaxed, more
confident. The rebels are losing every day.”
Mr. Qaddafi also described some of his family’s contacts with rebel officials
that have stirred controversy. Many in the rebel ranks have suspected General
Younes, a former Qaddafi confidante, of maintaining ties to his former boss, and
the younger Mr. Qaddafi appeared to confirm those suspicions.
“We met him twice in Italy,” he said. “We told him, ‘You will be killed at the
end of the day because you are playing with the snakes,’ and he said,
‘Nonsense.’ ”
But he talked mostly about his conversations with Mr. Sallabi, who Mr. Qaddafi
called the “the real leader” of the rebellion and “the spiritual leader” of its
Islamists. “He said liberals, the secular people, they are drunk all the time,
they have no place here in Libya,” Mr. Qaddafi said. “These are our common
enemies, those nice people with jackets and ties, flying in on private jets from
Paris and London.”
But Mr. Sallabi said he welcomed the secular leaders. “Liberals are a part of
Libya,” he said. “I believe in their right to present their political project
and convince the people with it.” As for their conversations, Mr. Sallabi said
that Mr. Qaddafi was the one who contacted the rebels. “There were many
discussions between him and the opposition,” Mr. Sallabi said. “The first thing
discussed is their departure from power.”
Libya Allying With Islamists, Qaddafi Son Says, NYT,
3.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/world/africa/04seif.html
Syria
Sends In Tanks to Storm Center of Rebellious City
August 3,
2011
The New York Times
By NADA BAKRI and RICK GLADSTONE
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Ignoring global condemnation, Syria ordered its military to
storm through the rebellious city of Hama on Wednesday after three days of
shelling. Activists and residents there said that tanks, armored vehicles and
snipers had seized the central square, in what appeared to be a decisive step by
the embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, to crush opposition to his rule.
The activists and residents of Hama, a historically important center of
antigovernment resistance in Syria and an incubator of the nearly five-month
uprising against Mr. Assad, said the city was under nearly continuous gunfire in
the early hours of the day, and they reported many casualties, adding to the
toll of more than 100 people reported killed there since Sunday. They said some
residents had tried to stop the advancing armored columns with barricades but
stood little chance against such superior military might.
“The army is now stationed in Assi Square,” read a post on the Syrian Revolution
Facebook page. “The heroic youths of Hama are confronting them and banning them
from entering neighborhoods.”
Mr. Assad’s seizure of Hama came despite growing world opprobrium of his brutal
suppression of a democracy movement that has so far defied his military and
security forces, seeming to grow only more tenacious with each new move to
silence it. Activists have managed to get their message out despite the
government’s restrictions on outside media coverage, often through grisly
homemade videos of victims mangled by gunfire.
The Hama assault appeared to be a catalyst for the United Nations Security
Council, where members neared agreement for the first time since the uprising
started on issuing a statement condemning the violence in Syria. The rough draft
of the council’s presidential statement, while still needing final approval from
capitals of the council’s 15 members, clearly places the blame on the Assad
regime while calling for restraint on both sides. The United Nations and Western
nations led by the United States and European Union have grown increasingly
critical of Mr. Assad, and even Syria’s allies, Turkey and Russia, have
expressed anger over the crackdown. Deputy Prime Minister Arinc Bulent of
Turkey, in some of the strongest comments yet, said Wednesday: “what’s going on
in Hama today is an atrocity.” Those responsible, he said, “can’t be our friend.
They are making a big mistake.”
On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Mr. Assad
had “lost all sense of humanity.”
The violent occupation of Hama also coincided with the start of another
captivating event in the Arab world — the televised trial of Hosni Mubarak, the
former Egyptian president whose fall from power and prosecution have resonated
throughout the Middle East and were a reminder to Mr. Assad and other autocrats
of what can happen to them if revolutions succeed.
Online posts and social networking sites said water, electricity and
communication lines including Internet services were cut in Hama and its
surrounding villages and towns.
Omar Habbal, an activist with the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition
group involved in organizing and documenting protests, said that three tanks
took positions in Assi Square, and that snipers were positioned on rooftops
surrounding the square.
“They entered the city from all sides,” said Mr. Habbal, reached by phone in
Hama. “We don’t know where the fire is coming from, but despite that, people in
their neighborhoods are still shouting anti-regime slogans.”
Mr. Habbal said that at least one resident died when a bomb hit his house.
Shaam, an online video channel that is sympathetic to protesters, posted a video
dated Aug. 3 that showed at least one tank attacking a neighborhood. The
narrator says it is Hayy al-Hader in Hama. Heavy plumes of smoke could be seen
in the video rising into the sky.
The Local Coordination Committees said in an e-mail that the shelling was
concentrated in two neighborhoods that have been the scenes of large protests,
Janoub al-Mala’ab and Manakh. The group said that security forces were firing at
residents attempting to flee the city, and that one building and several houses
had collapsed from heavy shelling.
There was some speculation that the Syrian forces deliberately timed the
invasion of Hama to coincide with the trial of Mr. Mubarak, which was being held
in Cairo and covered live by most satellite news channels, some of which have
given heavy coverage to the Syrian popular uprising that started in mid-March.
“It’s obvious that they used the Mubarak trial to distract the public from the
attack,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human
rights, reached by phone in London. “We might be witnessing another massacre in
Hama.”
The army has surrounded Hama since Sunday when it carried out a predawn attack
on the city, which had largely been free of armed troops since June. Many did
not expect the army to invade Hama given its history. In 1982, under the orders
of Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, the military attacked the city to crush
an opposition Islamist group there, killing as many as 10,000 people, and
perhaps many more.
The Security Council’s draft statement on Syria opens by condemning “widespread
violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian
authorities.”
But it also called for halting attacks against state institutions.
In terms of action by the Syrian government, it said Damascus should respect
human rights and fulfill its commitment to implement real political change. The
only solution to the crisis, the statement said, is to address the “legitimate
aspirations and concerns of the population” including basic rights like freedom
of expression and assembly.
Although presidential statements are historically adopted unanimously by all 15
members, this one might prove a rare exception because Lebanon is expected to
opt out of condemning its neighbor. But the final decision was not expected to
be known until later Wednesday.
Ambassadors said the steady drumbeat of violence from Hama both helped break
down previous reluctance by some countries to act on Syria and spurred the need
to reach agreement relatively quickly.
Nada Bakri
reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was
contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut and Neil MacFarquhar from the United
Nations.
Syria Sends In Tanks to Storm Center of Rebellious City,
NYT, 3.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/world/middleeast/04syria.html
In Arab
World First, Mubarak Stands Trial in Egypt
August 3,
2011
The New York Times
By ANTHONY SHADID
CAIRO — An
ailing Hosni Mubarak, who served longer than any ruler of modern Egypt until he
was overthrown in a revolution in February, was rolled into a courtroom in a
hospital bed on Wednesday to face formal charges of corruption and complicity in
the killing of protesters. The televised trial was a seminal moment for Egypt
and an Arab world roiled by revolt.
Even the most ardent in calling for his prosecution doubted until hours before
the trial began that Mr. Mubarak, 83, would appear in a cage fashioned of bars
and wire mesh, a reflection of the suspicion and unease that reigns in a country
whose revolution remains unresolved. As a helicopter ferried him to the
courtroom, housed in a police academy that once bore his name, cheers went up
from a crowd gathered outside.
“The criminal is coming!” shouted Maged Wahba, a 40-year-old lawyer.
The sheer symbolism of the day, covered live by television and watched by
millions, made it one of the most visceral episodes in the Arab world, where
uprisings have shaken the rule of authoritarian leaders. In a region whose
destiny was so long determined by rulers who deemed their people unfit to rule,
one of those rulers was being tried by his public. On this day, the aura of
power — uncontested and distant — was made mundane, and Mr. Mubarak, the former
president, dressed in white and bearing a look some read as disdain, was
humbled.
“The first defendant, Mohammed Hosni al-Sayyid Mubarak,” the judge, Ahmed
Rifaat, said, speaking to the cage holding Mr. Mubarak and his co-defendants —
his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly and six
other senior police officers.
“Sir, I am present,” Mr. Mubarak replied into a microphone, from his bed.
“You heard the charges that the prosecutor made against you,” the judge said
from his podium in the wood-paneled courtroom. “What do you say?”
“I deny all these accusations completely,” he replied, wearily waving his hand.
Then he handed the microphone to his son Gamal.
With those words, the reverberations of those epic protests in Tahrir Square
were incarnated in one man, Mr. Mubarak, who last appeared in public on Feb. 10,
when he uttered a phrase that suggested the heedlessness of absolute authority.
“It’s not about me,” he said then, to the disbelief of hundreds of thousands
demonstrating in his capital. On this day, television captured him picking his
nose. The two lines were the only words he uttered to the judge. Hard of
hearing, Mr. Mubarak looked to his son to repeat the judge’s question to him.
“God brings glory to whoever he wants and humiliates whoever he wants,” several
onlookers said, quoting a verse from the Koran, as Mr. Mubarak appeared on the
screen.
The trial began precisely at its start time, 10 a.m.. While the other defendants
took a seat, Mr. Mubarak’s sons remained standing, the youngest, Gamal, seeming
to block the view of his father from the cameras in the courtroom. Mr. Mubarak
appeared tired but alert, occasionally speaking with his sons, who both held
Korans.
As Mr. Mubarak denied the charges in the proceedings, which were broadcast on a
huge television outside the police academy, his opponents gathered there roared
in disapproval.
“Then who did it?” some asked.
The scene was tumultuous there on a sun-drenched parking lot, with a few dozen
of Mr. Mubarak’s supporters sharing space with his opponents. At times, they
scuffled; in intermittent clashes, the two sides threw rocks at each other. As
Mr. Mubarak arrived at the courtroom, some of his supporters cried, waving
pictures that read, “The insult to Mubarak is an insult to all honorable
Egyptians.” Others shouted adulation at the screen.
“We love you, Mr. President!,” some chanted.
Those sentiments were overwhelmed by the denunciations of his critics, in a
trial that, for a moment, seemed to represent all the frustrations and
degradations of a state that treated its people as rabble. Someone was finally
being held to account, many said.
“Today is a triumph over 30 years of tragedy,” said Fathi Farouk, a 50-year-old
pharmacist who brought his family to watch the trial outside the academy. “We
suffered for 30 years, and today is our a victory. It’s a victory for the
Egyptian people.”
The trial has transfixed a turbulent Arab world, where autocrats in Libya,
Syria, Yemen and Bahrain have all been challenged by rebellion. Some Arab
officials have said the very spectacle of the trial — a president and members of
his family, along with his retinue of officials facing charges — would make
those leaders all the more reluctant to step down. On the very day Mr. Mubarak’s
trial began, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria escalated his own crackdown on a
city at the heart of the uprising against him.
But many gathered here said Arabs should take the opposite lesson from the
proceedings. “All of the Arab world has to know that any leader who makes his
people suffer will face this fate,” Mr. Farouk said. “From today, history will
never be the same.”
Indeed, the country was awash in cries for justice, calls for vengeance and, not
uncommon, expressions of regret for the fate of an old man who never seemed
quite as loathsome as some of his contemporaries. There was fascination at the
spectacle itself. “I am dreaming,” said Hossam Mohammed, as he watched the
trial. “Somebody pinch me.” Others saw a reckoning with the past.
“When you enter the cage yourself, then you’re freed after the revolution, then
you see the one who imprisoned you and his kids in the cage, it’s a magnificent
scene,” said Yehia Khalaf, a former Islamic militant jailed for 18 years under
Mr. Mubarak.
Mr. Mubarak’s health had remained an issue before the proceedings. Since April,
when he was first accused of the charges, he has resided in a hospital in the
Sinai resort of Sharm el Sheik, a favorite retreat during his time in power.
There were reports that he had stopped eating, become depressed and lapsed into
a coma, but Egypt’s health minister said the former president was well enough to
make the trip to the police academy in the capital.
Only the 600 people with permits were allowed inside the courtroom, along with
civil rights lawyers and a small number of the families of protesters killed in
the uprising.
As late as Wednesday morning, there was speculation that Mr. Mubarak would not
appear, given the remarkable humiliation that the trial represented. The
military council of 19 generals that has led Egypt since the revolution seemed
loath to put one of their own — their former commander, no less — in a
courtroom; in fact, many speculated that the council hoped he might die before
the date arrived. But frustration has grown lately at the military council,
whose decisions are opaque at a time that Egypt feels unmoored and especially
anxious, and some people believed that the threat of even more protests had
forced the military’s hand.
“This trial is going to end a lot of our problems and restore the trust between
the revolutionaries and the military council,” said Ahmed Gamal, a 65-year-old
retiree, who planned to watch the trial from beginning to end. “This is the most
important thing.”
Much of the trial’s opening was occupied by procedural matters, but even that
came as a surprise, as many expected a quick adjournment. Mr. Mubarak and his
sons were not even read their charges until the trial’s second hour, after a
brief recess. Wednesday’s sessions lasted about four hours and was then
adjourned until Aug. 15.
The judge promised speedy proceedings, though no one seemed to know whether that
meant weeks, months or longer. Egyptian officials said Mr. Mubarak would remain
in the capital for the duration of the trial, staying at a hospital on Cairo’s
outskirts.
Mr. Mubarak, the former interior minister and the six officers are charged in
connection with killing protesters. The charges can carry the death penalty. Mr.
Mubarak and his sons also face charges of corruption, though the accusations —
that they received five villas to help a businessman buy state land at a cheaper
price — paled before some of the more epic cases of corruption in a country
riddled with patronage and misrule.
The spectacle of the trial, though, seemed to matter more than the charges.
As a headline in a popular Egyptian newspaper read: “The Day of Judgment.”
Heba Afify
contributed reporting.
In Arab World First, Mubarak Stands Trial in Egypt, NYT,
3.8.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html
|
