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f3b8d0b138957f1dacf88f60703b2018 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2012-mar-04-la-fg-syria-homs-violence-20120305-story.html | Syria army shelling Homs and nearby villages, opposition says | Syria army shelling Homs and nearby villages, opposition says
Emboldened by its takeover of a rebel-held neighborhood of Homs, the Syrian army shelled other parts of the city and nearby villages Sunday in an effort to regain control of the area, antigovernment activists said.
Shells rained down through the day on the villages of Rastan, Tall Kalakh and Qusair, to which Free Syrian Army rebels were said to have fled from the battered Baba Amr neighborhood. The western city of Homs has suffered the most concentrated fighting and the highest number of casualties since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad began last March.
“They finished with Baba Amr, and now they have turned their attention to [another Homs neighborhood] Khaldiyeh and the surrounding villages,” said an officer with the rebel forces in Tall Kalakh. “They want to finish all of the Free Syrian Army, from Homs to its entirety. They will destroy the whole village just so they can get inside.”
Antigovernment activists put the day’s death toll at more than 50 nationwide, with most of those killed in Homs and in Hama province, where 13 factory workers were reported slain in a rural village when security forces fired on the minibus taking them to work.
In Homs, the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition network, reported that six activists were executed in a field in Baba Amr, in what is being described as reprisal killings.
Nidal, an activist in central Homs reached by Skype, said that residents in some neighborhoods were preparing for an onslaught and that people elsewhere in the city were getting ready to help out their fellow residents.
“We went to donate blood and we are storing medical supplies because we think they will be next,” he said.
Grisly videos from Rastan, which has become home to many soldiers who have defected, showed dead and injured victims of apparent mortar attacks and rifle fire, several of them young children. An activist in Rastan, Abu Marwan, said four children and two women were killed and about 50 people were injured.
As elsewhere in the region, the rebel officer said Tall Kalakh had no flour or bread and no electricity. Residents fear the water might be poisoned by the government, so they have resorted to drinking melted snow, he said.
Although the village has a heavy presence of rebel fighters, their light weapons cannot reach the government forces, which he said is shooting from a distance of about two miles.
“We can barely see them through the binoculars,” the officer said.
Nidal reported that the fallen Baba Amr neighborhood was being ransacked by soldiers.
“I have relatives in neighboring Inshaat who told me that cars with furniture, washing machines, TVs are leaving Baba Amr,” he said. “Today is the first day when land lines are working.... I managed to contact several families in Baba Amr and they are hiding. We are hearing about cases of rape in neighborhoods the army enters but nothing confirmed.”
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross was blocked for a third day from entering Baba Amr as the Syrian government continued to cite security concerns, including mines and booby-trapped buildings.
“We continue to negotiate with the authorities,” said Saleh Dabbakeh, the Damascus-based spokesman for the Red Cross. “We have the green light to go in and hopefully we will get in tomorrow.”
The Red Cross distributed humanitarian aid in the village of Abel, less than two miles from Homs, to those who had fled their city and to residents who had been helping them.
“Everybody needs assistance now,” he said. “There seems to be a lot of people who have actually left Baba Amr and went there.”
Marrouch is a special correspondent.
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3e63c9ca44c206d6538f518869d1d9ad | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2012-sep-06-la-fg-israel-eritrean-refugees-20120907-story.html | Israel to admit 3 Eritrean refugees stranded at border | Israel to admit 3 Eritrean refugees stranded at border
JERUSALEM — Under pressure from the United Nations and human rights groups, Israel agreed Thursday to allow into the country three Eritrean refugees from a group of more than 20 that had been stranded for a week along a new newly built border fence with Egypt in the Sinai desert.
Israeli officials said they would take in only two women and a teenager for humanitarian reasons and that the rest of the group would be removed from the fence area and taken to Cairo by Egyptian authorities.
“It is important that everyone understands that Israel is no longer a destination for infiltrators,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Government officials said the refugees agreed to the arrangement, but representatives for the group could not be reached to verify the statement. The Israeli military has prevented aid groups and activists from reaching the Eritreans to provide food, medical care and legal assistance.
Activists criticized the arrangement, saying that refugees previously returned to Egypt had been mistreated by authorities there.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli human rights group We Are Refugees petitioned the Supreme Court to order the Israeli government to assist all of the refugees, contending that leaving them at the fence was a violation of international law and Israel’s obligation as a signatory to the U.N. refugee convention.
Aid groups say the Eritreans had run out of food and water, were suffering under the desert sun and were afraid to turn back to Egypt because of Bedouin gangs of human traffickers in the Sinai who routinely rob, kidnap and kill African refugees trying to make their way to Israel to start new lives.
“These people are suffering behind a fence,” said Orit Marom, a coordinator for the Tel Aviv-based Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel. “But Israel does not let them in. It’s crazy. It reminds [the Jewish people] of a very bad period in our own history.”
Government officials refused to allow in the entire group, saying they were worried about setting a precedent that would encourage other African refugees to attempt to enter Israel. Since 2006, more than 60,000 African refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have flooded into Israel via the Sinai peninsula, according to the government.
Initially the military said it gave the Eritreans only water, but government attorneys told the court Thursday — before the reported agreement was reached — that authorities would start providing food.
William Tall, senior protection officer in Israel with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, called Israel’s actions “exaggerated and irrational.”
Tall noted that even though the refugees were blocked by the fence, Israel had acknowledged that the group was on Israeli territory because the fence was built on Israel’s side of the border.
“They are on Israeli territory and asking for asylum,” Tall said. “It’s absolutely clear that Israel has an obligation to review their asylum claims.”
The government disagreed, saying it has no legal obligation because under international practice and precedent, the fence should be considered the de facto border in this situation.
“Technically the land may be sovereign Israeli territory, but legally the fence constitutes the border,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
He said Israel does not want to set a precedent under which it assists all refugees who make it to the fence.
“Where does it stop?” he asked. “You have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise the fence is meaningless.”
The standoff is the latest controversy in Israel’s effort to cope with a surge in African refugees, who view Israel as the closest wealthy and democratic nation they can reach on foot.
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai this summer began deporting hundreds of South Sudanese who fled violence in their homeland. He also ordered the detention of hundreds of others.
Israeli officials say the refugees, along with migrant workers and other foreigners, pose a threat to the nation’s economy and Jewish majority. Many foreigners in recent months have been subjected to a violent backlash, including beatings and firebombs thrown at their homes.
Israel also sped up construction of the 150-mile fence along the Egyptian border. The crackdown appears to have slowed the influx. The number of refugees crossing the border fell from 2,000 a month at its peak last year to 200 in August, the government says.
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
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54ec2b4d71fbf6df081182da8b1f7282 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-apr-23-la-fg-syria-chemical-weapons-20130424-story.html | Israel’s claim about Syria chemical weapons highlights ‘red line’ | Israel’s claim about Syria chemical weapons highlights ‘red line’
JERUSALEM — Israel’s accusation that Syria used chemical weapons against rebels raises the prospect that Damascus crossed what President Obama has termed a “red line,” but appears unlikely to overcome deep resistance of the U.S. and its allies to military involvement in the country’s civil war.
Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel’s top military intelligence analyst, said at a security conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Syria used chemical weapons, probably a sarin-based nerve agent, in attacks March 19 near Aleppo and Damascus. He said the assessment was based on reports of victims foaming at the mouth and having constricted pupils.
The disclosure followed similar assessments last week by Britain and France, which asked the United Nations to investigate.
U.S. officials say they are evaluating the reports that the beleaguered Syrian government unleashed its stockpile of chemical weapons, by some estimates the third-largest in the world. Privately, U.S. officials say they remain unconvinced by the assessments of three close allies — even that of Israel, whose regional intelligence-gathering has long been crucial to the United States.
Britain and France “did not provide conclusive evidence of chemical weapons use” in their request to the U.N., said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Israeli military official criticized the international community for failing to respond to the Syrian attacks. “To the best of our professional understanding, the regime used lethal chemical warfare on a number of occasions during recent months,” Brun said. “The very fact that they have used chemical weapons without any appropriate reaction is a very worrying development, because it might signal that this is legitimate.”
Charges of chemical weapons use come as the U.S. and its allies struggle to find a viable approach to the Syrian conflict, now in its third year.
The White House has been trying to slowly build pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad, while stopping short of providing military aid to the rebels. Over the weekend, officials pledged an additional $123 million in nonlethal aid.
Yet the rebels remain badly divided, as do their foreign supporters. Worries about extremists in the rebel ranks are causing some of the strongest advocates for the rebels to think twice about how much support to provide.
Even while they allege that Syria used chemical weapons and push for the end to a European Union arms embargo, France and Britain appear to have softened their position, partly out of concern about Islamist extremists in the rebel camp. One of the strongest rebel groups, Al Nusra Front, recently declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda.
Syrian government forces have gradually pulled back to protect Damascus and a handful of major cities that they at least partially control, as well as key military bases they use to project air and artillery power. But reports from inside the country in recent weeks suggest they have gone on the offensive in some areas.
U.S. appeals to Russia to drop its support for Assad have not yielded any visible progress. Secretary of State John F. Kerry told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had agreed to work with him to open negotiations on a new Syrian government.
“I would say to you that it’s a very difficult road,” Kerry added. “No one should think there is an easy way to move forward on this.”
The Obama administration is divided on how much it should do to help the opposition. Obama has declared that chemical weapons use by Assad was a “red line” and a “game changer,” to which the United States would unquestionably respond. But he is known to be reluctant to step into the Syria conflict more forcefully.
Kerry urged nervous North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to begin considering how they would respond if the Syrian regime used chemical weapons.
Kerry told officials of the Western military alliance that they needed to “carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat.” NATO member Turkey has a long border with Syria and is a base for rebel groups.
But Kerry told reporters later that he wasn’t calling for more planning for how to respond to possible chemical weapons use.
U.S. officials revealed last week that the Pentagon was sending 200 troops to Jordan, Syria’s southern neighbor, the vanguard of what could be a much larger force that could be deployed if the administration concludes it needs to secure Syria’s chemical weapons or prevent the war from spilling over the borders.
One Pentagon study estimated it could require 70,000 troops to respond, though other analysts contend that figure is inflated.
Some senior officials like Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have openly warned about military involvement.
U.S. officials acknowledge that once the United States begins assuming a military role, the world will expect it to plunge in more deeply, because America has military capabilities that its allies lack.
Israel’s warning about chemical weapons, which occurred at the end of a visit by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, appeared to mark a sharp escalation in its effort to focus U.S. attention on the issue. Israeli officials do not want to appear to be asking for too much from Washington at a time when Iran is their first priority.
Kerry said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Brun’s assessment, and said the Israeli leader was not prepared to assert that Syria had used chemical weapons. However, a senior government official backed the intelligence analyst from the Israel Defense Forces.
“He is the IDF officer who is dealing with this threat, and we are not contradicting anything he said,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The official would not comment on what Israel believes the international community should do in light of its assessment. Israeli officials have warned against arming Syrian rebels, fearing weapons might fall into the wrong hands.
For Israel, the red line in Syria is the transfer of chemical weapons to extremists, not their use, the official said.
“We have always said that the most important thing to us in Syria is the transfer of dangerous weapons to extremists,” he said. “That’s our focus.”
According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Syria has more than 1,000 tons of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin. Israel is particularly concerned that such weapons might be seized by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon or Al Qaeda-inspired groups in Syria.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles appeared to remain under government control.
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Sanders reported from Jerusalem and Richter from Brussels. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.
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4a63e1bf87a1f7d5091a43ded1828887 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-apr-24-la-fg-egypt-deep-state-20130425-story.html | Egypt president sees ‘deep state’ as enemy within | Egypt president sees ‘deep state’ as enemy within
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi casts himself as a leader navigating a landscape bristling with conspiracies by corrupt businessmen and shadowy figures plotting from inside a vast bureaucracy his Islamist inner circle has been unable to tame.
While protesters march, workers strike, students rally and the economy is in a scary tailspin, the president’s more serious nemesis may lie behind the scenes in what is known as the “deep state.” The courts, police, army and intelligence agencies were shaped over decades by the secular rule of deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Many police and intelligence officials in particular remain loyal to the old guard, fearing Morsi is moving the country away from its Western alliances and toward religious fundamentalism.
Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which controls the government, accuse those connected to Mubarak of disrupting Egypt’s transition. Talk of intrigue is so pervasive that the Brotherhood’s website this month blamed “deep state corruption” for food poisoning that hospitalized nearly 500 students at Al Azhar, the country’s premier Islamic university.
Recent actions by the judiciary suggest state institutions are in fact moving to put limits on Morsi, who pushed through an Islamist-backed constitution and ignored legal decisions challenging his authority. Court rulings also have delayed parliamentary elections and called for Morsi to reinstate the general prosecutor he fired during a power grab in November. These verdicts came as police and internal intelligence officers — the core of Mubarak’s power — have staged work slowdowns and questioned Morsi’s legitimacy.
Security agents, police commanders and even clerks wielding rubber stamps are part of an imposing government labyrinth that encompasses the Interior Ministry and an edifice known as the Mogamma, a parallel universe of hundreds of thousands of public employees tied up in a system of patronage and favors.
His political opponents respond that Morsi, who was elected in June, is exaggerating the strength of the previous power structure — and that he wants to simply replace it with one loyal to him. Critics say he wants a Brotherhood version of his predecessor’s brand of control and cronyism.
The Brotherhood is backing a bill in the upper house of parliament that could limit judicial independence and force as many as 3,000 judges to retire. Judges claim the legislation is aimed at replacing them with jurists sympathetic to Islamists. Thousands of Brotherhood supporters demonstrated last weekend, calling for a “cleansing” of the courts.
Morsi and the Brotherhood have been “revealed as people who have no experience in ruling and are greedy for domination and power,” said Hassan Nafaa, a respected political science professor at Cairo University. “There’s a sentiment that the revolution was stolen and that there is an attempt at what many are calling the ‘Brotherhoodization’ of the state.”
The 85-year-old Brotherhood, once regarded as the only uncorrupted voice against the old regime, is now often compared to Mubarak’s disbanded National Democratic Party. A panel of judges, relying on a 1950s court ruling, has called for the Brotherhood’s dissolution, saying it was never a legal entity.
Morsi, however, speaks of hidden hands maneuvering to weaken his government from within and without: “Whoever sticks his finger inside Egypt, I will cut it off,” the president said recently. “I see the fingers of people getting inside who have no value in this world. They think that money makes them men.”
The president is seldom specific in identifying outsiders arrayed against him, but they are said to include Israeli agents and, at times, American officials. Egypt and the U.S. engaged in a brief but telling Twitter war recently over Washington’s criticism of Cairo’s interrogation of a popular television satirist charged with insulting Morsi. The State Department said Egypt was restricting freedom of expression; the Brotherhood accused Washington of “flagrant meddling.”
Conspiracies, real or imagined, are a dangerous topic in a country with deepening political and religious schisms, soaring inflation and joblessness, and an imploding economy.
The Brotherhood alleges that Mubarak loyalists and opposition leaders, who failed at the ballot box, want to spur a backlash against Islamist politicians. Antigovernment protests, including a growing number of labor strikes, have left scores dead and paralyzed Port Said and other cities in recent months.
Al Ahram newspaper quoted senior officials as saying Morsi “faces a coup attempt partially orchestrated and executed by the intelligence apparatus.” The paper went on to say that the president is worried about “certain loopholes” within the intelligence community.
But the disparate opposition rarely coordinates anything. It includes the largely secular National Salvation Front, ultraconservative Islamist Salafis, and businessmen and bureaucrats connected to former regime figures. Among the latter are Ahmed Shafik, whom Morsi narrowly defeated in last year’s presidential election, and Ahmed Ezz, a steel magnate and Mubarak family confidant imprisoned on corruption charges.
Ezz and Shafik, a retired general who fled the country after Morsi’s victory, are emblematic of the deep state’s nexus of politics and money.
Brotherhood supporters have accused old guard operatives of paying armed thugs to infiltrate antigovernment protests and spark riots. The deep state has also been accused of setting courthouse fires to destroy evidence against Mubarak allies, including Safwat Sharif, the former speaker in the upper house of parliament.
Instability has damaged Egypt’s stature as it negotiates a $4.8-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The desperate economic condition has forced Morsi to seek loans and aid from Qatar and Iraq. Neighboring Libya recently promised to deposit $2 billion into Egypt’s central bank.
The Brotherhood has steadily tightened its hold on public institutions. Morsi has appointed five Brotherhood members as governors. The prime minister’s office and key ministries, including justice, finance, health and interior, are controlled by the group or its sympathizers. Rural preachers have also accused the government of replacing imams at state-run mosques with Brotherhood supporters. Mosques are used as vital campaign stops during elections.
Some commentators say the political opposition’s best option is to advance a strategy of protest and unrest that would force a military coup to prevent economic collapse.
“The army will have to make up its mind again very soon. The state remains as vulnerable as it used to be,” said Ziad Akl, a senior analyst at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “If people decide to rise against the state, the army will be put in the same shoes they were in before.”
Others doubt the generals, who ruled for nearly 17 months after the 2011 fall of Mubarak, want to return to governing. Egyptians revered the army, but human rights abuses and political gridlock have tarnished its image. The military, despite recent veiled threats to intervene, has so far sided with Morsi, who this year backed a constitution granting the army wide autonomy and protecting its business empire.
The Brotherhood’s strategy has been to portray political enemies as spies and infidels, which, especially in the provinces, has raised suspicions about the National Salvation Front and other opposition parties.
“Anyone who speaks out against the crimes of the Brotherhood is soon bombarded with accusations and slander,” Egyptian novelist Alaa Aswany wrote last month in As-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper. “In their opinion, the Brotherhood’s opponents are either remnants of the Mubarak regime, agents of international Zionism, secret Freemasons or, at best, immoral, sexually [deviant] individuals whose main goal in life is to spread immorality in society.”
Parliamentary elections expected in the fall will be a barometer of the Brotherhood’s remaining popularity. Despite a marked slide in its appeal, it remains formidable in the provinces. That support could diminish if instability continues and ultraconservative Salafis broaden their reach into Morsi’s base.
“If they [the Brotherhood] lose the majority in elections, I think their political weight will end forever,” said Nafaa, the Cairo University professor. “It is clear that they are not an alternative to the previous despotic regime.”
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ingy Hassieb contributed to this report.
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d3496f937a42d44a72df59742f9de26d | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-aug-17-la-fg-syria-arms-20130817-story.html | U.S. has yet to deliver arms to Syria rebels | U.S. has yet to deliver arms to Syria rebels
WASHINGTON — More than two months after they were promised, U.S. weapons and ammunition have not reached America’s allies among the Syrian rebels, and their delivery date remains unclear, according to the Syrian opposition and Middle Eastern diplomats.
Khalid Saleh, an official of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, said in a telephone interview from Turkey that, while U.S. officials continue to promise arms, “nothing has come through yet, and we haven’t been given a specific date when we’ll see them.” The rebels, who have been pressing for months for anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons, have still not been told what kind of military aid they will receive, he said.
The White House announced June 13 that, in light of its conclusion that the Syrian government had used lethal chemical weapons in the 2-year-old civil war, the administration would provide “military assistance” to the rebels.
The deliveries, which White House officials promised in “weeks, not months,” were seen as a step toward greater U.S. military involvement. U.S. agencies have so far provided only nonlethal equipment, such as mobile radios, and $1 billion in humanitarian aid.
But, as the slow pace of the arms deliveries underscores, the administration remains conflicted about the move. Fearing that the arms could fall into the hands of Islamist militants who make up a growing part of the rebel forces, officials have been moving carefully to vet potential recipients of the arms.
The weapons are expected to be small arms and not the more powerful anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles rebels want. Saleh said coalition officials, who are in daily contact with U.S. officials, “have made our needs well known.”
The rebels are already receiving arms from Persian Gulf countries, and U.S. shipments are not expected to shift the balance in the war. But the move was intended to strengthen Washington’s ties to the rebels and send a message to the Syrian government, as well as its Iranian and Russian allies, that the United States could increase its involvement.
Though the White House announced in May that it would begin military assistance, it has not acknowledged publicly that it will send arms. But lawmakers have spoken publicly about the plans, and administration officials have also confirmed them.
Spokesmen for the CIA and White House declined to comment.
A diplomat from a Middle Eastern country, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, also confirmed that the deliveries have not begun.
Andrew Tabler, a veteran Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he reads the slow pace of deliveries as a sign of “Obama’s reticence to get involved.”
Even when the arms deliveries do begin, “I think what we see will be extremely incremental,” said Tabler, who advocates a more active U.S. role. “I don’t think we can anticipate any massive later shift in U.S. policy, and so I think the opposition will remain dissatisfied.”
Tabler noted that Sunday is the two-year anniversary of Obama’s declaration that Syrian President Bashar Assad should step down and Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of Obama’s warning to Damascus that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” for the U.S. Both were indications of the administration’s desire to limit its involvement, he said.
Some lawmakers contend that Congress should step in to halt even the limited U.S. plans.
Last month, planning for the arms deliveries was held up by objections from the intelligence committees. Some members argued that the deliveries were pointless because they would be too little to make a difference, while others worried that they could be the first step toward American military entanglement.
The committees, which are consulted by the White House but don’t have formal power to block the administration, eventually acquiesced.
But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the House Intelligence Committee and an opponent of arming the rebels, predicts that Congress will vote on whether to fund it. “If it were brought to a vote today it would go down,” he said.
Schiff said he believed only a massive supply of sophisticated weapons could change the course of the war. But even a limited supply of small arms could draw the United States deeper into the fighting because there would be a clamor for more help if the first deliveries didn’t produce results, he said.
paul.richter@latimes.com
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0f43added1b259086161427b3427beaa | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-aug-27-la-fg-punitive-strikes-20130827-story.html | Punitive strikes ineffective, even counterproductive, analysts say | Punitive strikes ineffective, even counterproductive, analysts say
WASHINGTON — The type of limited, punitive military campaign now being contemplated against Syria has failed to deter U.S. adversaries in the past, and at times emboldened them, military analysts say.
In two major episodes in 1998, the U.S. government unleashed a combination of bombs and cruise missiles against its foes — Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. In a more distant third case, in 1986, the U.S. bombed Moammar Kadafi’s Libya.
The bombs and missiles mostly hit their targets, and the U.S. military at the time declared the attacks successful. But in the end, they achieved little.
Two years after the U.S. bombed Tripoli, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 passengers and crew. Investigators later concluded that the U.S. attack was a primary motive for Kadafi to support the Lockerbie bombing.
Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people in attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Hussein kicked out international weapons inspectors and survived despite sanctions until a U.S.-led invasion deposed him in 2003. The benefit to the U.S. of that costly war and the occupation that followed remains in dispute.
In a paper reviewing the 1998 attack on Iraq, Mark Conversino, associate dean of the U.S. Air War College, cited the unease of some military experts about the use of air power within tight constraints.
“Many air power theorists had long cautioned against using air power in penny packets or in hyper-constrained political environments,” he wrote in the 2005 paper.
Yet presidents confronting limited options continue to consider such action. President Obama is said to be contemplating a limited series of cruise missile strikes in response to the apparent chemical weapons attack last week on civilians by the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.
Military analysts are warning about the limits of such an approach.
“If the U.S. does something and Assad is left standing at the end of it without having suffered real serious, painful enough damage, the U.S. looks weak and foolish,” said Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a former State Department official in the Bush administration, who has long been skeptical about reliance on air power.
“Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes,” said Anthony Cordesman, military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “Can you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer would be no. Should you limit yourself to just a kind of incremental retaliation? That doesn’t serve any strategic purpose. It doesn’t protect the Syrian people, it doesn’t push Assad out.”
Previous such punitive attacks were aimed at countries that had targeted or threatened American personnel or facilities. If Obama authorizes action against Syria, he would be striking a country that has posed no clear threat to the United States.
However, Obama did authorize U.S. participation in a U.N.-approved mission to protect civilians in 2011 that ultimately led to the fall of Kadafi’s government. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in a toughly worded statement Monday, cited what he called “the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians” in the attack last week in Syria.
In 1986, after officials concluded that Kadafi had ordered a bombing that killed two U.S. service members in a Berlin disco, President Reagan authorized an airstrike of 60 tons of munitions in 12 minutes on targets in Tripoli. Among the targets was Kadafi’s residential compound, but he had fled after having been warned.
In August 1998, days after Al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, President Clinton signed off on plans to target Bin Laden with cruise missiles, and the U.S. fired 75 of them into terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
Clinton’s operation also targeted a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that U.S. officials thought was making chemical weapons. Later evidence cast doubt on that claim.
Bin Laden canceled a planned meeting at one of the bombing sites, and he and many of his top lieutenants escaped unharmed. Documents declassified in 2008 suggested the strikes may have brought Al Qaeda and the Taliban closer politically and ideologically. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the 2001 attacks when the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden.
A few months later, in December 1998, Clinton ordered an operation designed to “strike military targets in Iraq that contributed to its ability to produce, store, maintain and deliver weapons of mass destruction,” according to a Pentagon history.
Later evidence showed Hussein had shelved his banned weapons programs by then, but the attacks were at the time considered a military success, having inflicted serious damage on Iraq’s missile development program.
However, Hussein’s government survived, and he ended United Nations weapons inspections. The attacks also weakened the international sanctions against him, analysts say, because some countries in the coalition were opposed to the operation and became less committed to the penalties afterward.
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
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b784b6b481d51a9b3a44021b945eec64 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-jan-24-la-fg-jordan-herak-20130125-story.html | Jordan democracy activists enjoy camaraderie, freedom to protest | Jordan democracy activists enjoy camaraderie, freedom to protest
AMMAN, Jordan — The king of Tafayla had just been elected to the parliament. He strode through the neighborhood in the Jordanian capital Thursday, dressed in a black tracksuit and wearing a 5 o’clock shadow, his hair matted down. A henchman fired a handgun into the air in celebration as supporters shambled down an alley on their victory parade.
There was, however, one group of men who heard the commotion from their dim clubhouse but opted to stay inside, stewing over black coffee and smoking Rothmans and Kents. The newly elected lawmaker represents everything the band of pro-democracy activists detests about Jordan’s political order. They say he bought votes from his tribe, and they know the rumors that he was the muscle for the monarchy, which sent goons downtown to beat up protesters at pro-reform rallies.
Like their nemesis, they are a product of Tafayla, a sprawling working-class district on Amman’s steep eastern hills, home to rows of brown concrete apartment buildings and narrow streets. Their families had settled here since the 1960s as migrants from the southern city of At Tafilah. Here everyone knows one another through family or by word of mouth.
They called themselves the Herak, a pro-democracy gathering committed to reforming what they see as the nation’s corrupt politics. There are Herak chapters across Jordan, hailing from the East Bank tribes, those from east of the Jordan River, who had been the traditional bulwark of support for the monarchy until the “Arab Spring.”
The uprisings that have swept the Arab world since early 2011 transformed this group of men, who each week generally hold two protests against the policies of King Abdullah II. Under the king’s father, Hussein, it would have been inconceivable to see such a fracturing of the monarchy’s support among the tribes.
But Jordan has changed so much from that sleepy country of old. They surveyed a landscape where most of the nation’s more than 5 million people struggled to get by. The industries that once employed residents of their towns in southern Jordan have been privatized, giving little benefit to the relatives they left behind. The activists were sure that only the wealthy friends of the king benefited.
On this day, other than the victory march they witnessed, the group debated election results. Slight gains for government critics meant nothing; the old order had dominated, seeming to justify the activists’ confrontational stance of boycotting the vote, pressing for change from outside the electoral system. Later in the day, there would be a meeting to debate their next steps.
But for now, they leaned back on their couches, played with the Internet and gossiped. All of them have become caught up in the spirit of the Arab uprisings, in politics and reform. They were brothers despite their varying ages and riding a giddy wave, enamored of the possibility of change, however unrealistic. Perhaps they could be happier than most because, whatever warnings they received from the government, they had yet to be dealt a cold and ruthless blow.
There was Bara Said, a 26-year-old poet, and then university student Anis Irbaihat, 23, and their elder Mohammed Harasis, likely in his 50s, who had converted his guest room into the movement’s political clubhouse. It was as much a barroom or barbershop, as the men shouted at one another and jabbed their fingers in clouds of cigarette smoke.
They seemed to delight in tweaking the king. In the days before the vote, they had set up a mock Facebook election page with fictional candidates, with names meant to taunt Abdullah: They named one party the Poker list, after what Jordanians insist is the king’s rumored gambling habit.
Sometimes, the men went to the roof of their clubhouse. There they enjoyed a view below of the leafy court grounds where King Hussein and his father, Talal, are buried. The men stared down and told stories of how long ago, families would be invited by the royals for feasts in honor of the birth of a child. But now they gossiped that the king was set to sell the land, even though his ancestors were buried there.
They could see the lights gleaming around Amman and dream of the democracy they aspired to: a constitutional monarchy in which power lies with a freely elected parliament and jobs are awarded by merit. As they bantered, all of them believed they could make a difference.
Still not everything had been easy. Said was arrested twice for participating in protests. The second time he was fired from his job as a laborer at Royal Jordanian airline. Even then, he received an unexpected confidence boost when the police jailed him; one of the officers, also an East Banker, told him in a tacit nod, “Keep your head up high.”
All of them smiled at the story. Irbaihat marveled at how much the last two years have been an education in politics and camaraderie.
“I am a child of the Arab Spring,” he said, with a smile that might not have been possible in countries like Egypt or Syria or Libya that have weathered tougher times. “If we are in a house, a coffee shop or a party, everything turns into a political meeting.”
He smiled again. For all of them, even after a rough election day, the world was still full of hope.
ned.parker@latimes.com
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12987d396124d44010432054d5460ada | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-jul-13-la-fg-syria-egypt-refugees-20130714-story.html | Syrian business owners who fled to Egypt give up on going back | Syrian business owners who fled to Egypt give up on going back
REHAB, Egypt — As fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo intensified last fall, Khalid Sabbagh decided it was time to move his business abroad.
He and his family had already fled months earlier to the safety of this palm-tree-lined Cairo suburb. But as Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub, descended further into the warfare that has ravaged much of his nation, Sabbagh finally decided to move his upholstery factory to Egypt and start anew.
Since antigovernment activists began their struggle to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2011, more than 1.6 million Syrians have fled the fighting, many to neighboring countries where they wait to return to their homes.
But as the conflict drags on with no resolution in sight, many Syrian industrialists and factory owners have relocated across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, where they have been reestablishing their businesses, possibly on a permanent basis.
Now, in the wake of the military coup that toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Syrian refugees here face a period of instability and insecurity just as they did at home.
Egypt has instituted new regulations requiring visas for Syrians; those arriving at Egyptian airports without visas have been put on return flights.
An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official told reporters that the restrictions are temporary but necessary because of the unrest in Egypt since the coup. Syrians have reported that some of their fellow nationals were deported after taking part in pro-Morsi rallies.
Although daily life for Syrians here is largely unchanged, there is concern that the welcome could eventually wear off, a fear that is especially acute because so many have invested all their savings in establishing themselves in Egypt.
More than 70,000 Syrians had registered with the Egypt office of the United Nations refugee agency as of July 8, but the Foreign Ministry says that as far back as March, the number in the country was 140,000.
The Syrian industrialists now in Egypt are part of a larger brain and economic drain from Syria that threatens to stymie efforts to rebuild the country after the fighting does end. And it is fueling fear of a generation of exiles like that in the early 1980s during an unsuccessful uprising against Assad’s father.
“The entire professional class has basically migrated,” said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. “You have a huge, huge drain — brain drain, business drain, professionals, doctors and engineers.”
Those leaving say they will return once the crisis, as they often refer to it, is over. The future of Syria could well depend on it.
“They have the means to help with the reconstruction and serve as the vanguards for reconciliation,” Gerges said. “They’re open-minded, sophisticated … they are globalized culturally.”
Without them, Syria’s ability to reconstruct and reconcile, after what has already been a destructive and fragmenting two years of war, would be uncertain.
Much like in the aftermath of Lebanon’s long-running civil war and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Syria is likely to be ruled in the near future not by the professional class but by warlords, Gerges said.
Even among the opposition, there is a creeping pessimism about the direction of the country. Clear victory, they worry, could remain elusive.
Last year, when the momentum seemed to be with the opposition, activists and rebel fighters would end meals and finish off their cups of tea saying, “With victory.” Now, as exhaustion at the length of the conflict has set in, they say, “With relief.”
“The situation is just getting worse,” said Sabbagh’s wife, Rima.
Among the intensifying problems is the abduction of people who have stayed behind. Kidnappers held Rima Sabbagh’s brother for three days until a ransom of more than $41,000 was paid. Another relative in the prominent Sabbagh family was held captive for a month.
Syrians worry that after the war ends, lawlessness in a country with a collapsed economy will become even more pervasive.
“These people who are paying all this money to settle here, they won’t return,” predicted Lena Hammal, Sabbagh’s friend and fellow refugee from Aleppo.
“That’s my fear,” agreed Rima Sabbagh. “I think, after we put all this effort, are we going to then leave? But then I think, am I going to live the rest of my life in Egypt? Everyone says we are going to return once the regime falls and the things return to normal and they will come rebuild.”
“I don’t think anyone is going to return,” Hammal said. “And no one is going to rebuild.”
At the Rehab Souk, an open-air market with a grand facade that belies a somewhat grungy interior, spits loaded with shawarma — once omnipresent on the streets of Syria — are visible everywhere. As in other Egyptian towns and neighborhoods that have become refugee enclaves, some call it Little Syria.
Almost hidden in a corner is Salloura, a 155-year-old cheese and pastry shop famous throughout Syria, which has closed most of its locations in the war-torn country and relocated to Egypt.
A woman with heavy makeup and dyed-blond hair walked in and looked worriedly at the empty glass case: “Is there no string cheese? Did it fly away?”
“It’s still coming,” Muhammad Sheikho, Salloura’s accountant, assured her. Like other refugees, she depends on the familiar to create a home in Egypt.
“The day we opened, they came from other cities when they heard that Salloura opened,” Sheikho said. “It’s something that reminds them of their country.”
Despite the homesickness, many refugees have found it easy to establish residency here among the largely welcoming Egyptian population.
Mohsen Ibrahim, an activist living in another Cairo suburb that teems with refugees, said Syrians back home — either unwilling or unable to leave — may resent those whom they regard as having abandoned their country.
But that hasn’t quelled the outflow as life in Syria becomes untenable.
“Anyone who has an opportunity to leave is leaving immediately,” Ibrahim said. “Only a small percentage is thinking, ‘I need to stay for the sake of the country.’”
When Amir and his wife, Suhair, who asked that their last names be withheld to protect family members in Syria, came to Rehab last year, they immediately rented a spacious apartment and bought new furniture. Around them other Syrians were renting cheap furnished units, thinking their stays would be short.
Amir has moved the entire inventory from his home insulation shop in Damascus to a nearby Cairo suburb, where he is opening a factory.
“I have transported all my money here, so I don’t know if I will go back,” he said. “Even my customers came here.”
Earlier that day, Suhair’s brother, a civil engineer who worked for the government, and his wife, a dentist, had just arrived from Syria. The couple, who lived in a suburb of Homs, brought clothes for all four seasons, unlike many of those who came before them looking only a month or two ahead.
“The country is finished,” Amir said.
“Yes, finished,” Suhair said.
“We don’t know what is waiting for us in Syria,” Amir said. “Is it going to be like Lebanon’s civil war and go on for 15 years? Or is it going to be, like they say, an ‘Arab Spring’ revolution?”
raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com
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8249fbfc995827dda865b6d94b319689 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-mar-14-la-fg-israel-deal-20130315-story.html | Israel prime minister forges deal for new coalition government | Israel prime minister forges deal for new coalition government
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached deals Thursday with two political rivals that will enable him to forge a broad-based, but potentially unstable, coalition government.
After weeks of hard-fought negotiations with the centrist party Yesh Atid and the nationalist Jewish Home, Netanyahu managed to persuade both to join his government with a combination of political promises and coveted ministry appointments.
The agreements were still awaiting final signatures Thursday night, reportedly delayed by discussion of government titles for some players. The deals give Netanyahu a 68-vote majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament.
That means Netanyahu will secure a third term as Israel’s leader but will be left with a more unruly coalition whose members often hold diametrical views on matters such as settlements and Palestinian peace talks.
The new coalition also forced Netanyahu to terminate, at least for now, his longtime alliance with Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties. They were left out of the government because the other coalition partners want to pass legislation to draft ultra-Orthodox young people into the army for the first time and cut government stipends that many religious families receive.
Angry leaders of the religious party Shas, which will join the left-leaning Labor Party in the opposition, said they would not forget what they view as a betrayal by Netanyahu.
“The boycott of the haredim is a stain that will never be erased,” Shas leader Eli Yishai said, referring to ultra-Orthodox Jews. Yishai served as Netanyahu’s interior minister in the most recent government.
The new alliance marks a setback for Netanyahu, who last year decided to bring down his coalition, one of the most stable in decades, in hope of increasing his political strength at the polls.
Instead Israelis, increasingly frustrated by the rising cost of living and perceptions that ultra-Orthodox citizens are not pulling their weight, shifted slightly to the center and left. In Israel’s Jan. 22 national elections, Netanyahu’s Likud Party saw its number of seats in the parliament shrink as those of his rivals on the right and left grew. Those results forced Netanyahu to bend to the will of two political newcomers: Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Naftali Bennett of Jewish Home.
Their surprise postelection alliance, despite ideological differences on some issues, prevented Netanyahu from playing them against one another.
The deadline for forming the new government would have been Saturday, after which another party leader would have been asked to try or a new elections would have been called.
Netanyahu had originally hoped to swear in a new government this week, well before the expected visit Wednesday by President Obama. Now the government is likely to be sworn in early next week.
According to the coalition agreements, the new government may take more progressive positions than the previous one, pushing to expand the military draft, standardizing school curriculum, reforming the electoral process and striving to restart Palestinian peace talks.
Another of Lapid’s key demands was reducing the size of the Cabinet, which is expected to have 21 ministers, down from 30 in the last government.
But coalition agreements are not always implemented, and it remains to be seen how many of those policies are carried out or become law. Once the government is formed, Netanyahu may regain the upper hand in setting the agenda, analysts say, daring coalition partners to quit if they disagree.
“As long as it deals with domestic issues, it will remain stable,” said Hebrew University political scientist Gideon Rahat. “On the other hand, gaps between coalition members on foreign policy are very wide.”
The coalition will include Netanyahu’s Likud with 20 seats and its nationalist election partner, Yisrael Beiteinu, with 11 seats. Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman is slated to return as foreign minister if he is cleared in a pending corruption case. Likud’s Moshe Yaalon is expected to be named defense minister.
Lapid brings his party’s 19 seats and will serve as finance minister. Other partners include Jewish Home with 12 seats and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s Movement party, with six seats.
Labor, with 15 seats, will lead the opposition, including the far-left Meretz, the religious parties and the Arab parties.
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
News assistant Batsheva Sobelman in The Times’ Jerusalem bureau contributed to this report.
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8f580d80736cb16c010c6fbe90701bda | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-mar-29-la-fg-israel-soldiers-qa-20130330-story.html | Balancing needs of women, ultra-Orthodox men in Israel’s military | Balancing needs of women, ultra-Orthodox men in Israel’s military
TEL AVIV — Israel’s highest-ranking female soldier says efforts to draft male ultra-Orthodox students into the Israel Defense Forces should not come at the expense of women’s advancement in the army.
Last year, the nation’s Supreme Court determined that a legal exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service was unfair, and the issue is a top legislative priority of the newly formed Israeli government.
Orna Barbivai, 50, Israel’s first female major general and commander of the army’s personnel department, says the nation has come a long way in integrating women into meaningful military professions, including allowing them to serve as pilots and in a special combat battalion with 60% female members. Though women are not sent to the battlefield, Israel is the only country in the world that drafts them.
With Israel’s defense challenges, Barbivai says the army needs all the soldiers it can get, including women and ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But balancing the needs of women and ultra-Orthodox men, whose religious beliefs demand segregation of the sexes in many circumstances, would present new challenges.
Can the ultra-Orthodox coexist with women in the army?
It requires effort and planning, but it is possible and well worth the investment. The army needs both the ultra-Orthodox and the women. Efforts must be made to provide a balanced, meaningful service for both.
With the understanding that 30% of first-grade pupils in Israel are ultra-Orthodox, the army has to plan ahead and ensure its ability to draft both men and women in a way that will enable the army to carry out its assignments. Combining the ultra-Orthodox draft with meaningful service for women will take careful, wise implementation and require a balance between the draft and universal values of equality. These values go beyond the specific issue of religious men. The task is to create conditions that allow men and women to share any environment effectively, not only a combat environment.
How do you feel about the U.S. move to open up combat positions to women?
This is a fascinating move, I am following it closely. We will be watching the implementation and results of this decision. I am keen to see how this develops, and perhaps we will learn from it too.
Israel has also experimented in this area with Caracal, a mixed combat battalion with 60% women. Women may hold combat positions but aren’t sent to the battlefield. What is the main obstacle to integrating women into the battlefield?
The determining factor is the assignment, the mission, and the ability to carry it out. Physical capabilities are also a factor.... Undoubtedly, there are women with physical capabilities that far exceed those of men. We see them every day in sports and many other fields. But they are still relatively few.
Is concern over abductions and captivity a factor in keeping women off the battlefield?
We have women pilots, and women who carry out operational assignments over the borders and beyond the lines with great success. We’ve turned a mental corner on this and I think there are no more psychological blocks to women in operations or questions about their capabilities.
How do you assess the army’s experience with Caracal?
The battalion’s abilities and its contribution to the security it provides citizens and the state are equal to that of any other combat battalion. Our evaluation is based on their performance, not gender.
The women soldiers of Caracal are in life-threatening situations, certainly, but they are trained for certain kinds of assignments. The army’s mission remains training the mass of its soldiers for the battlefield and, for now, women are not there. As more avenues open for women in the future, this may change.
Is the IDF ready to be led by a female chief of staff?
A chief of staff must be a commander who served in the field, commanded soldiers in the battlefield and rose through field ranks. A chief of staff orders soldiers into the battlefield into life-and-death situations. It must be the absolutely best and most experienced person to give such orders. So long as women are absent from the classic battlefield, they will lack the building blocks ultimately required for such a position.
What sort of accommodations has the army made to integrate women into more military professions?
Considerable effort has been invested in adapting infrastructure and technologies to afford better integration of women and better utilization of women in certain fields. If a position in a flight squadron required physical force for lifting of heavyweight bombs, a special lift was designed and deployed for this purpose to allow maximizing the potential of women’s placement in this position. Obviously men enjoyed this as well but this is an example of gender-minded planning already at the planning stage of opening more military professions to women.
Also as more women reach field positions, other accommodations include adapting gear such as body armor to better suit female anatomy; this enables women to carry it better, be more flexible and mobile and in turn be more effective. This too requires advance thought, the understanding that women are a resource to be integrated alongside men, it is a wise investment and well worth it.
Off the battlefield, are women entirely equal in the army?
The main difference remains the duration of service. Currently we would like to move in the direction of standardizing the length of service to correspond with profession rather than gender. Currently women serve two years, men three years. The current thinking is for men and women serving in identical positions to serve an identical length of time.
Forty-two percent of the women in every age bracket are not drafted, compared to 25% of the men. This is a disturbing figure that makes women’s service almost voluntary. Most are exempt on religious grounds, which the law enables quite easily, perhaps too easily as some declarations are found false. This is disturbing not only for military purposes but also in terms of equality and society as it perpetuates gaps.
Sobelman is a special correspondent.
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d6ad16ffc8f52338eff1029248ce3bd4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-mar-30-la-fg-libya-dangerous-20130331-story.html | Libya’s south teeters toward chaos — and militant extremists | Libya’s south teeters toward chaos — and militant extremists
SABHA, Libya — Their fatigues don’t match and their pickup has no windshield. Their antiaircraft gun, clogged with grit, is perched between a refugee camp and ripped market tents scattered over an ancient caravan route. But the tribesmen keep their rifles cocked and eyes fixed on a terrain of scouring light where the oasis succumbs to desert.
“If we leave this outpost the Islamist militants will come and use Libya as a base. We can’t let that happen,” said Zakaria Ali Krayem, the oldest among the Tabu warriors. “But the government hasn’t paid us in 14 months. They won’t even give us money to buy needles to mend our uniforms.”
Krayem is battling smugglers, illegal migrants bound for Europe and armed extremists who stream across a swath of the Sahara near the porous intersection of southern Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria. Since the 2011 Arab uprisings that swept away Moammar Kadafi and other autocrats, Western countries and Libya’s neighbors fear that this nation may emerge as an Islamist militant foothold.
Kadafi was replaced by a weak central government that has struggled with economic turmoil and the lack of judicial reform and a new constitution. The long-neglected south has grown more lawless. The Al Qaeda-linked militants, including Libyans, behind the January assault on a natural gas processing complex in Algeria that killed at least 37 foreigners traveled from Mali through Niger and Libya’s poorly patrolled hinterlands.
While the Libyan national army is rebuilding, the country is relying in part on ill-trained tribal militias rife with grievances, feuds and agendas. This volatile mix holds sway in the country’s southwest and in the northeast, where last year militants killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, and trafficked guns and missiles to extremists in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.
“Our concern is the Mali situation coming here,” said Fathallah Ali, assistant to the president of the local council in Sabha. “Much of the sophisticated and heavy weaponry looted from Kadafi’s military went to Islamic militants there and other parts of Africa. Al Qaeda is moving in this direction.”
Even under Kadafi, the nation produced Islamic militants who reached well beyond the country’s borders. Libyan extremists are now connected to an Al Qaeda branch in Algeria, rebels in Syria and the fighters trying to establish an Islamic caliphate in Mali. Security officials also are concerned about reports of militant training camps with caches of weapons hidden in the desert south of Sabha.
Government officials in the south shy away from discussing the region’s chaos. An activist was recently shot and killed after publicly criticizing the lack of law and order. Much of the danger stems from tribal animosities that were suppressed during four decades of Kadafi’s rule and are now playing out in the kind of security vacuum that Islamic militants have exploited in countries such as Somalia and Yemen.
The Tabu, who are Africans, have been battling the rival Arab Awlad Sulayman clan for more than a year. At least 130 people have died. Peace talks have been complicated by joblessness, rising drug and alcohol abuse and skirmishes over smuggling networks stretching from the borders of Algeria and Chad.
The streets of Sabha, the main city in the south, rattle with gunfire and the gripes of desperate men waiting for work, sitting on dusty curbs with buckets, paint rollers and chisels. Jailbreaks are common. Libyan news reports said in January that three bodyguards were wounded when gunmen fired on a hotel housing Mohammed Magarief, president of the national congress.
In the city’s hospital, doctors are pistol-whipped and patients shot in their rooms by rival tribesmen. The sick slump in hallways. There is no CT scan or MRI machinery; a trauma victim is likely to die before he can be driven 400 miles north to a better hospital in Tripoli.
“We’re treating illnesses we’ve never seen before in languages we don’t understand,” said Dr. Othman Habib, a pediatrician. “More and more migrants are coming from Chad and Mali. Libya’s borders are open and poorly guarded. We never saw malaria before, but now we see it all the time. We’re overwhelmed. The hospital is full of germs and bacteria. Rats. This is shameful, but it’s true.”
A bereft father, his tunic wet with the blood of a son hit by a car, walked past.
“One man was brought in with a gunshot wound not long ago,” said Habib. “We fixed him and put him in intensive care. But his enemies came to the hospital that night and shot him 18 times. We operated and he lived. We hid him in the women’s ward and then sneaked him out of town.”
Dr. Yusef Farag, a surgeon, listened and said, “We have 200 beds. We’ve turned 500 people away. This hospital serves the whole south, but we can admit no more. We have no neurosurgeon. We have no oncology doctor. There are too many weapons and too many comas. It’s a disaster.”
Despair permeates the dirt alleys not far from the hospital that curl through the cinder block slums of Tabu tribesmen.
“Clashes between border tribes have increased,” said Adam Ahmed Dazi, a Tabu councilman who sat at a desk stamping papers while complaining about the lack of financial support from Libya’s central government. “Tribal militias and smugglers have better arms. But smuggling is in the hands of rich people with trucks. The Tabu in this neighborhood barely have bicycles. But we are like a towel. Everyone wipes the bad on us.”
He sighed, his narrow frame almost lost in his coat.
“When you look at the revolution,” he said, “not much has changed in the southern tribal areas. It hasn’t gotten better, except that we are now free to practice our traditions without fear anymore of the racist Kadafi regime.”
The road out of Sabha cuts through a green blush of oasis and a series of checkpoints — the first controlled by a militia, the second by the national army — in a strange hodgepodge of overlapping interests. Krayem and his Tabu tribesmen, their faces covered with scarves and sunglasses, guard a third checkpoint near rock formations at the edge of blowing sands.
“The desert is wide with many roads,” said Krayem, a man seemingly wearing away bit by bit. His teeth are loose, a nostril is gouged and he is missing a finger that was shot off by soldiers exacting retribution for his defection from Kadafi’s army during the revolution.
“Anything forbidden they try to smuggle through here,” he said. “The military can’t control this territory on its own. If we left this checkpoint even for 30 minutes bad people would come. The government doesn’t pay us. We do this to protect our country.”
He tugged the brim of his camouflage hat.
“But men need to feed their kids,” he said. “That’s why many are moving into the smuggling trade.”
They traffic in rocket-propelled grenades, stolen cars, hashish and government-subsidized gasoline and flour. Krayem has seen it all.
He stepped toward the broken road as dusk fell across market tents, thicket and scrub. The wind cooled. A big truck, draped with boys and barrels and lumbering like a collapsing house on wheels, approached. His men checked their guns and prepared for night.
“The next checkpoint is 150 kilometers away,” he said, nodding to the outskirts of Sabha and the encroaching desert. “We don’t have enough patrols to cover all what’s in between.”
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
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b4ccd37ac0b8786ff94da6058eec493d | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-may-08-la-fg-iran-sanctions-20130509-story.html | Senate bill aims to toughen Iran sanctions | Senate bill aims to toughen Iran sanctions
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Wednesday that would sharply toughen U.S. economic sanctions on Iran despite administration calls for Congress to delay penalties that could disrupt diplomacy aimed at resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Advocates say the Senate proposal could, at least in theory, block Iran from accessing about one-third of the foreign exchange reserves it relies on to pay for government programs, to finance trade and to prop up its currency.
The lawmakers aim to combine the Senate measure with legislation pending in the House that would move the United States toward a full trade embargo against Iran in an effort to force it to comply with Western demands.
The U.S. has imposed a near-total commercial, economic and financial embargo on Cuba since 1962, but that has not changed the island’s policies. Enforcing an embargo on Iran, which has a far more developed and more diverse economy, may be a much greater challenge.
The United States and its allies already have imposed sanctions on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, its oil and gas industry, insurance and banking, financial sectors and other parts of the economy.
Advocates for tighter sanctions say new U.S. legislation is needed to block Iran from using the huge reserves of euros it holds in foreign banks. The measure would sanction international banks that facilitate trade with Iran in euros or other non-local currencies.
International negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program have not progressed, and “the time has come for the Senate to take action to close this loophole,” the senators said in a statement.
Supporters include Sens. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), Joe D. Manchin III (D-W.Va.) Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the administration is studying the bill. But she emphasized that a “comprehensive and unrelenting sanctions program” has increasingly severed Iran from the global financial system, driven down the value of its currency and led companies around the world to end their business with Tehran.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry implored Congress last month not to add more sanctions because they could become an issue in Iran’s presidential race, which is underway.
“We don’t need to spin this up at this time.... You need to leave us the window to try to work the diplomatic channel,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Analysts said the measure could force Democrats in Congress to decide between breaking with the White House to appear tough on Iran or giving the administration policy more time in hope of producing results.
“There will be some riptides in the Democratic Party over this,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist at the Eurasia Group consulting firm and a former State Department official.
But Kupchan said the proposal is likely to win broad congressional support. He noted that the White House has failed to halt most lawmakers’ sanctions bills, though it sometimes has watered them down.
Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-sanctions advocacy group, said the new legislation was “a strike at the regime’s economic lifeblood because it’s going at their bank accounts.”
Previous sanctions have cut Iran’s oil exports in half, yet the country still sold $60 billion worth of oil last year, its fourth biggest sales year on record, Dubowitz noted. He said the country’s total foreign exchange reserves are estimated at $60 billion to $100 billion.
paul.richter@latimes.com
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f1f3eca7b2f3987998aea9bfe7849e28 | https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-xpm-2013-may-10-la-fg-iraq-divided-20130511-story.html | Sword of division is poised over Iraq | Sword of division is poised over Iraq
BAGHDAD — Less than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq’s political leaders are openly debating the prospect of two dangerous paths for their country: de facto division or civil war. Perhaps both.
Tension between the Shiite majority, now in control of the levers of power, and the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam Hussein, has been building for months. But politicians on all sides agree that the country has entered a perilous new phase, highlighted in late April by an attack on a Sunni protest camp by security forces that killed at least 45 people.
As word of the shootings spread, fighting erupted around the country, leaving more than 200 people dead. Overall, the United Nations said, more than 700 people were killed in Iraq in April, the highest monthly toll in five years.
Polarized political leaders openly discuss the threat of more bloodshed and the gradual breakup of the country, either through an informal declaration of an independent Sunni Arab region, modeled on the Kurds’ region in northern Iraq, or outright war.
The problems are compounded by the increasingly sectarian war in neighboring Syria, where the Sunni majority forms the backbone of the insurgency against the government of President Bashar Assad.
In Iraq, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, who has been ostracized by fellow Sunnis for continuing to participate in the Shiite-led government, said he feared that one more deadly incident could push Sunni protesters to “return to violence, and once the violence starts, it will not end for 20 or 30 years.”
A package of reforms meant to address protesters’ demands has been left to a silent death in the parliament. The demands include an end date for punitive measures against former members of Hussein’s Baath Party, an amnesty act and legal reforms prohibiting the use of secret informants to convict people.
“They are legitimate demands, but are politically impossible,” said lawmaker Sami Askari, a close advisor to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who had lobbied for the package. Shiite parties signed off on the reforms when they were debated in Maliki’s Cabinet, but then reversed themselves in the parliament, he said.
Askari helped engineer Maliki’s unsuccessful effort in 2010 to form a government that would have crossed Iraq’s sectarian divide. The country has now entered a period of acrimony between Shiites and Sunnis, he said.
“The Sunnis want better conditions, better participation, and the Shiites are scared and fearful the past might come back again,” Askari said. “All of the region now is talking of a clash between Shia and Sunnis. You cannot ignore this now.... Even those Sunnis who are ready to strike a deal are under attack.”
Two investigations were launched after security forces attacked the Sunni protesters in Hawija on April 23. Senior government officials say the findings indicate that security personnel used disproportionate force, including shooting unarmed civilians. Video apparently recorded by security forces showed what appeared to be slain civilians gripping sticks, and a body that had fallen out of a wheelchair.
Maliki initially expressed regret over the assault but has since taken a harder line. He has vowed to fight what he calls terrorists among the protesters, and has massed troops outside Ramadi, a Sunni-majority city in Anbar province.
Protesters there have formed a tribal force to defend against a military attack, and Maliki has warned them that he could crush them easily if he wasn’t concerned about shedding Iraqi blood. His acting defense minister, Saadoun Dulaimi, called the protest camps incubators for terrorism.
The government assault in Hawija has further radicalized the Sunni protest movement. At a rally last week in Fallouja, a cleric told Sunnis that they had to choose their next step. The options included “the resignation of Maliki; civil war and sectarian conflict, which we don’t want ... or to divide the country in order to protect ourselves, and rule ourselves by ourselves.”
Some in the crowd, angry over the idea of federalism, threw water bottles at the stage; others shouted in praise of holy war.
Usama Nujaifi, a Sunni who is speaker of the parliament, said the government was pushing Sunnis to the brink. “The conditions for a civil war are present now,” Nujaifi said. “The first person responsible is the prime minister.”
A former Sunni fighter who goes by the name Abu Selim said Hawija and subsequent violence had given new life to armed groups that had been less active in recent years, including the Iraqi affiliate of Al Qaeda, the Baathist-inspired Naqshbandi Army and the Salafist-led Islamic Army.
“The Islamic insurgent groups had lost their mission … they were just waiting for an instance to take over again under an attractive banner,” he said. “Hawija was the zero hour they were waiting for.”
Sheik Ali Hatem Suleiman, one of the protest leaders in Anbar, is openly planning defenses in case of a military attack on Ramadi. The government has issued an arrest warrant for him on terrorism charges.
“The people are betting that if it starts, it will be a long war,” Suleiman said.
Askari said he doubted there would be a new civil war because Sunnis know how much they lost in the sectarian conflict during the U.S. occupation.
“Without the American Army, no single Sunni could have stayed in Baghdad. They would have been cleansed,” he said. “Now there are no Americans. If sectarian war ignited, for sure they would lose Baghdad and most of the other provinces.”
All that would be left is their stronghold, Anbar province, Askari said, where Al Qaeda would gain strength and terrorize the Sunni population.
Baghdad is gripped by fear and resignation. In western neighborhoods, slayings occur every week, thought to be the work of Shiite or Sunni gunmen staking out territory for the conflict to come.
On Monday, outside the high concrete walls meant to guard the neighborhood of Amariya, black banners announced the deaths of five men. Inside, most shopkeepers close up at 1 p.m., when the killers often come out.
“This is the bad time,” said Raad Hussein Abbas, who was rushing to shutter his women’s clothing store.
At Baghdad’s yellow stone Abu Hanifa mosque, a jewel of a building in Baghdad’s oldest Sunni neighborhood, Adhamiya, a gray metal stage stands ready in the front courtyard. The crowd on Fridays ranges in size from 2,000 to 5,000, depending on how many people are allowed into the neighborhood. Sheik Abdul Wahab Samarrai, the son of the senior cleric, said he feared a violent division of the country could be approaching.
Samarrai said he hoped that leaders could find wisdom and a sense of compromise. But he isn’t sure such people exist anymore.
He fell silent when he thought about what the country’s division into Sunni and Shiite sectors would mean for him. Already Sunnis are leaving his neighborhood under the pressure of checkpoints and nightly raids.
“I don’t want to make my choice at this time,” he said, glancing upward. “I hope it doesn’t happen.”
ned.parker@latimes.com
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6aa543b963828f795532a085b870e6d0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/population/la-fg-population-matters3-20120726-html-htmlstory.html | As the world’s population grows, hunger persists on a massive scale | As the world’s population grows, hunger persists on a massive scale
Nearly 1 billion people are malnourished, and a child dies of hunger every 11 seconds. By 2050, farmers would have to double crop production to meet the demand.
A farmer digs a trench in Kenya’s Mwingi district, hoping to capture any rainwater that might come. As the world’s population grows, researchers say, it will be increasingly difficult to produce enough food to feed everyone. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times
July 22, 2012
Third of five parts
DADAAB, Kenya — His rib cage rose and fell with tight, rapid breaths.
Saad Siyat looked shrunken beneath the hospital blanket. His wide-set eyes rolled up into his head, and his body burned with fever.
The boy was unconscious and convulsing when his aunt brought him to the hospital at Ifo camp, one of five massive camps in eastern Kenya filled with Somali refugees. The family had arrived months earlier after a nearly 300-mile journey across the desert.
Saad was suffering from pneumonia and chronic undernourishment — in particular, a protein deficiency known as kwashiorkor. The name derives from a West African term for “rejected one,” a child pushed from his mother’s breast to make way for a newborn.
Saad was 2½ years old. He weighed 18 pounds.
“This child has been sick a very long time,” Dr. Ibtisam Salim said as she made her rounds in the hospital’s stabilization center, a concrete building filled with emaciated children lying on squeaky metal beds.
She felt Saad’s forehead and questioned his aunt, who was shooing away flies and using a soiled rag to wipe mucus from his oxygen and feeding tubes. The boy’s mother was at home, tending to her seven other children.
Salim gently held up one of his feet, to show the swelling, a classic symptom of protein deficiency.
“Malnutrition opens up a very big window for infection,” Salim said. “It destroys their defenses.”
She heard a gasp and stiffened.
“Excuse me,” she said, wheeling around on her heels and digging in her bag. She pulled out a stethoscope and held it to the boy’s chest.
With the tips of three fingers, she began pumping rapidly on his frail torso.
A woman holds a severely malnourished child at the Ifo camp in Dadaab. More people die of hunger-related causes every year than succumb to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
Around the world, population is rising most rapidly in places where life is most precarious.
Across Africa and in parts of South Asia and Latin America, hundreds of millions of people live on the edge of starvation. A drought, flood or outbreak of violence can push them over the brink.
Many end up on the march, crossing borders in search of relief. Some arrive in places like Dadaab, famished and desperately ill. Millions more are displaced within their own countries.
They represent one face of hunger in a world that, on paper at least, produces enough food to feed all 7 billion inhabitants.
Somalia, a nation of 10 million, has one of the highest birthrates in the world, averaging 6.4 children per woman. Runaway population growth, food scarcity and political strife have combined to cause a mass exodus. One-fourth of Somalis have fled their homes.
Last year, during the worst of a three-year drought, shortage turned to famine. Forty percent of Somali children who reached the refugee camps in Dadaab were malnourished. Despite emergency feeding and medical treatment, many died within 24 hours.
More commonly, children live on tenuously, the effects of chronic malnutrition masked by the swelling caused by kwashiorkor. By the time their parents realize how sick they are and take them to the camp hospital, it can be too late.
It has been four decades since advances in agriculture known as the Green Revolution seemed to promise relief from this kind of mass suffering.
An American plant breeder named Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for helping to develop high-yield, disease-resistant varieties of wheat and other grains, making it possible to triple harvests around the world.
Mankind finally seemed to be gaining ground on its longtime nemesis: pervasive hunger.
Yet Borlaug cautioned against hubris: “The frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed,” he said. “Otherwise, the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only.”
Today, with nearly twice as many people on the planet, his words seem sadly prescient.
The farms have dried up. Some people had died of starvation.” — Shamsa Adow Hassan, a Somali refugee
Nearly 1 billion people are malnourished, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. At least 8 million die every year of hunger-related diarrhea, pneumonia and other illnesses — more than succumb to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. A child dies of hunger every 11 seconds.
In raw volume, the world’s farmers produce enough food for everyone. People go hungry in developing countries because they can’t afford to buy food and can’t grow enough on their own. Inadequate transportation and storage aggravate shortages.
By midcentury, global food production could simply be insufficient. There will be at least 2 billion more mouths to feed, and an expanding middle class will consume more grain-fed beef, pork and other meats.
To meet the demand, the world’s farmers will have to double their crop production by 2050, according to researchers’ calculations.
Jonathan Foley, a University of Minnesota climatologist, says it’s the challenge of the 21st century: “How will we feed 9 billion people without destroying the planet?”
Most of Earth’s best farmland is already under cultivation, and prime acreage is being lost every year to expanding cities and deserts, contamination from agricultural chemicals and other causes.
Carving large new tracts of farmland out of the world’s remaining forests and grasslands would exact a heavy toll, destroying wildlife and unleashing climate-warming gases now locked in soils and vegetation.
Complicating the problem is that rivers and aquifers are running dry, and heat waves and droughts associated with global warming are withering crops. Pests and diseases thought to have been vanquished are bedeviling farmers again, often in more virulent forms.
Major international research projects are underway to develop hybrid crops to withstand these challenges. But such efforts take decades, and there is no guarantee of success.
“The easy things have been done,” said Nina V. Fedoroff, a biotechnology expert at Pennsylvania State University. “The problems that are left are hard.”
The traditional low-tech solution to hunger — mass migration —is increasingly impractical on a crowded planet.
The looming crisis is expected to be most severe in Africa, where birthrates are high and where the Green Revolution never took hold. By midcentury, the continent’s population is expected to double — to 2 billion.
Africa already is home to nearly 30% of the planet’s chronically hungry. About 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $1.25 a day, most of which is spent on food.
Increasingly, they are competing with the appetites of wealthier nations, which are snapping up some of Africa’s best rain-fed farmland to secure long-term food supplies. The U.S., China and other countries are also using more grain to fatten livestock and make ethanol, pushing up prices.
All of this leaves more and more people on the edge.
At a camp in Dadaab, people lined up to receive food are funneled through tunnels similar to cattle chutes. Through openings at various intervals, aid workers scoop wheat flour, cornmeal, dried peas, soy protein powder and salt into the refugees’ gunnysacks. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
When it opened in 1991, the camp complex in Dadaab was intended as a temporary shelter for 90,000 Somalis. It now holds the world’s largest concentration of refugees: 472,000 and counting.
On a blistering morning, more than 1,000 new arrivals massed outside the fence. Most had trudged through the desert for days or weeks.
Guards bellowed at the mob with bullhorns and swatted men with switches to herd them into lines. Lone refugees were rare; the lines contained families of eight, 10 or more.
Nearly all the newcomers were skinny, some skeletal. As they shuffled through processing stations, workers measured their outstretched arms for body fat. Children were immunized against measles and polio and given a squirt of vitamin A.
Clutching her ration card in one hand and cradling a 2-month-old girl with the other, Shamsa Adow Hassan said she had fled her riverbank farm in Somalia with her husband and four children.
“The farms have dried up,” said Hassan, 32. “Some people had died of starvation.”
She decided to leave when a rocket struck and killed her father.
At the center of one camp, the new arrivals joined other refugees lining up with empty sacks, plastic jugs and tins to receive two-week rations of food staples. To keep women from being trampled, security officers in white coats put the men in separate lines.
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After some jostling and a sprint to the entrance, the refugees made their way through large tunnels similar to cattle chutes, fashioned from barbed wire, chain-link fencing and corrugated metal. Through openings at various intervals, aid workers scooped wheat flour, cornmeal, dried peas, soy protein powder and salt into the refugees’ gunnysacks.
Thousands of tons of food are distributed in these camps every year by the U.N.'s World Food Program and other aid organizations. The U.S. government pays most of the cost. Worldwide, the U.N. program feeds an average of 90 million people per year.
On this day, not far from the chutes, Mohamed Abdi Yussuf was holding forth, encircled by some of the camps’ younger leaders. They were talking about crowding, the lack of water and a shortage of flour.
Even so, Yussuf said he wanted to have as many children as possible.
At 26, with three children, he is just getting started.
How many does he want? “Seventy,” he said. “Sixty boys and 10 girls.”
This brought some tittering from his fellow youth leaders. He didn’t crack a smile.
“I think these guys will support me,” Yussuf said. “Our elders, our fathers, had many children. It’s a common idea.”
He hadn’t consulted his 21-year-old wife and said he planned to divorce her before she turns 40.
“When she stops breeding, I will jump to another young lady.”
Asked how he would provide for all those children, Yussuf shrugged.
“I don’t worry what the children will feed on,” he said. “They have their own fate. They have their own mouths, teeth. God knows what to put in there.”
James Mukunga, left, has dealt with years of drought-ruined crops on the small farm he shares with his wife and 12 children in eastern Kenya, about 200 miles from the refugee camps. The family chopped down their few remaining trees to make charcoal to sell. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
James Mukunga worries every day about how to feed his children.
Outside Dadaab, across the arid expanses of East Africa, farmers like him are struggling to provide for large families. Once-fertile grasslands have been overgrazed and trampled by herds of goats and cows.
Mukunga lives with his wife and 12 children, 27 goats and one donkey on a small farm 200 miles from the refugee camps.
The skinny Kenyan farmer wore tattered clothes and kicked at a shriveled patch of millet with sandals fashioned from car tires. Stunted stalks of corn, sorghum and other plants poked through sun-baked clay.
This year, like the one before, his crop had failed because of drought. “Since 2004, we have not had a reasonable harvest,” Mukunga said.
The family chopped down their few remaining trees to make charcoal to sell. Otherwise, they subsist on donated food from the United States. Their small granary is empty but for a few spent cans of vegetable oil labeled “USAID.”
Mukunga wonders if his goats, a source of meat and milk, will survive another dry year.
The family gets its water from a village borehole four miles away. It was a mob scene on this hot day. Dozens of women toting jerrycans waited in the shade of an acacia tree, next to herds of scrawny goats and cattle. A cow licked an empty spigot.
The water pump had run out of diesel fuel, and a few men had gone off to find some.
Hours passed as the thirsty waited for relief.
At the hospital at Ifo camp in Dadaab, Dr. Salim used her fingers to spread Saad’s upper and lower eyelids and shined a light into a pupil. Then she went back to work, compressing his chest.
Somali women covered head to toe in brightly colored scarves and dresses crowded around the bed.
A nurse squeezed through with a syringe of adrenaline.
“He’s gasping,” Salim said, tilting Saad’s head back to open his airways.
The boy’s aunt, with large frightened eyes, climbed onto the bed, squatting on her haunches. She poured water into his mouth from a red plastic cup.
“Mama, please, please, please ... Mama, please,” Salim said, gently moving the woman’s arm out of the way.
The doctor continued the chest compressions, faster now.
An assistant brought a hand-pumped respirator. Salim placed a clear plastic mask over the boy’s nose and mouth and began squeezing the bag.
As she pumped air into his lungs, she handed her stethoscope to a nurse and said: “Listen — listen to the heart.”
She watched as the nurse leaned over the child.
“Is there any heartbeat?”
The nurse met her gaze with a weary expression that left no doubt.
“There isn’t,” Salim said.
The doctor stepped away from the bed, leaned against the wall and silently wept.
ken.weiss@latimes.com
About the series
Los Angeles Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss and staff photographer Rick Loomis traveled across Africa and Asia to document the causes and consequences of rapid population growth. They visited Kenya, Uganda, China, the Philippines, India, Afghanistan and other countries.
Beyond 7 Billion
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c3878c86797ad0b0dac2682fc836d0f1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/population/la-fg-population-matters5-20120729-html-htmlstory.html | Philippines birth control: Filipinos want it, priests don’t | Philippines birth control: Filipinos want it, priests don’t
In the Philippines, contraceptives are available for the most part only to those with the means to buy them. The Catholic Church has fought a “reproductive health bill” in the legislature that would change that.
Women share beds after giving birth at Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila. The Philippine capital is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. A ban on contraception at public clinics there has put birth control out of the reach of most of the city’s poor. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times
July 22, 2012
Last of five parts
Shortly after sunrise, a woman with soulful eyes and short-cropped black hair hurried down a narrow alley in flip-flops, picking her way around clusters of squatting children, piles of trash and chunks of concrete.
Yolanda Naz’s daily scramble had begun. Peddling small shampoo packets in the shantytown of San Andres, she raced to earn enough money to feed her eight children.
She went door to door in the sweltering heat, charming and cajoling neighbors into parting with a few pesos. After several hours, she had scrounged enough to buy a kilo of rice, a few eggs and a cup of tiny shrimp.
“My husband and I skip lunch if there is no money,” Naz said as she dished rice and shrimp sauce into eight plastic bowls in the 10-by-12-foot room where the family eats and sleeps.
This was not the life Naz wanted. She and her husband, who sells coconut drinks from a pushcart, agreed early in their marriage to stop at three children. Though a devout Catholic, she took birth control pills in defiance of priests’ instructions at Sunday Mass.
But after her third child was born, the mayor of Manila — with the blessing of Roman Catholic bishops — halted the distribution of contraceptives at public clinics to promote “a culture of life.” The order put birth control pills and other contraceptives out of reach for millions of poor Filipinos, who could not afford to buy them at private pharmacies.
“For us, the banning of the pills was ugly,” Naz said. “We were the ones who suffered.”
At 36, she had more children than teeth, common for poor women after repeated pregnancies and breast-feeding.
Undernourished and living in close quarters, her children were often sick. Measles was sweeping through the shantytown, afflicting two of Naz’s sons and her 3-year-old daughter, Jasmine, who hung like a rag doll from her mother’s arms.
“I pray to God. I pray really, really hard,” she said. “Should God decide to take my kids, just don’t let them suffer.”
Yolanda and Noel sit in the alley outside their shack with two of their children. They scramble each day to get the money to feed the family. Although she is a Roman Catholic, Yolanda disagrees with the church’s opposition to contraception and is part of a lawsuit challenging the city ban on providing birth control at public clinics. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
In the Philippines, a country of 96 million people, access to birth control is mostly limited to those with the means to buy it. A “reproductive health bill” in the national legislature seeks to change that: It calls for public education about contraceptives and government subsidies to make them available to everyone.
The church and like-minded opponents have stalled the legislation for 14 years. Following Vatican dictates, Philippine bishops oppose any “artificial” measures to prevent pregnancy, sanctioning only natural means such as periodic abstention from sex.
It’s one example of how religious and political forces affect women’s control over childbearing and, as a result, the trajectory of population growth in the developing world.
The church’s stance puts it at odds with many of its followers in the Philippines. Eight out of 10 Filipinos are Catholic. Even for weekday Mass, popular churches draw huge crowds that tie up Manila traffic.
Polls show, however, that 70% of the population supports the reproductive health bill, which also calls for sex education in schools.
Birth control is a source of political dispute in many societies, including the United States. In the Philippines, however, the battle has been particularly acrimonious because of the church’s wide reach and influence.
Priests denounce the reproductive health bill during Mass. Some churches post billboards with gruesome images of aborted fetuses and the message “NO to Reproductive Health Bill — YES to the Gospel of Life.”
Lawmakers say the church threatens to deny them Communion if they vote for the legislation.
In 2010, Benigno Aquino III was elected president after pledging to sign the bill. Bishop Nereo Odchimar, then president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, suggested Aquino might be excommunicated if he followed through on the commitment.
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Neither man’s resolve has been tested: After years of debate, a consensus version of the law has yet to emerge from the Philippine Congress and reach the president’s desk.
For nearly four decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development was the major donor of contraceptives to the Philippines, spending about $400 million total. The administration of George W. Bush phased out the program in 2008, saying it was time for the Philippine government to take full responsibility.
Then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo refused, deferring to bishops who had supported her election. She acknowledged taking birth control pills as a young mother but said she had since sought forgiveness from a priest.
“The contraceptive pills do not only prevent conception, they even destroy conception once it is already there,” retired Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz said in an interview. “That is abortion.”
Since U.S. funding ended, affordable contraceptives have become scarce, particularly in Manila. A patchwork of programs funded mainly by foreign donors provides limited access for the poor.
According to a 2008 government survey, 39% of married Philippine women in their childbearing years said they wanted to avoid or postpone pregnancy but were not using modern contraceptives. By far, the most commonly cited reason was fear of side effects. Other reasons included a husband’s opposition, cost and lack of availability.
Half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended, the survey found.
A similar pattern holds across the developing world, where an estimated 222 million women want to avoid pregnancy but do not use modern birth control.
If they did, unplanned births in those countries would fall by two-thirds, as would the number of abortions, according to an analysis by the U.N. Population Fund and the Guttmacher Institute, a New York think tank that supports access to contraception and safe abortion.
First what I do is to pray to God and ask for forgiveness. I’m telling God I’m not charging a big amount.” — Erlinda A. Casitas, who performs illegal abortions
Under that scenario, the global population would keep rising but more slowly.
The Philippines has one of the fastest-growing populations in Asia. It is on track to increase by more than half, to 155 million, by 2050.
Greater Manila is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. About a third of its 12 million inhabitants live in poverty, many in teeming shantytowns that sprawl across trash dumps and cemeteries.
Still, former Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza, who ordered the removal of contraceptives from public clinics a dozen years ago, said he sees economic potential in a growing population.
“Our people are so talented and so skilled and brilliant and bright,” he said, citing Manila’s entrepreneurial street vendors and the 10 million Filipinos working overseas who boost the economy by sending money home.
“When you have more people, you have a bigger labor force. You have a bigger social security base. You have more productivity. You have more consumption. More production. The whole cycle of the economy moves faster.”
Atienza said he also opposes birth control because he believes it “weakens the family” and is in conflict with the Filipino Constitution’s protection of the unborn.
“Government should not spend government funds for this purpose,” he said.
Erlinda A. Casitas, a practicing Catholic, is also a hilot, one of the massage abortionists who perform a large share of the estimated 475,000 illegal abortions in the Philippines every year. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
Erlinda A. Casitas presses her thick thumbs into her thigh to demonstrate how she dislodges a fetus and massages it out of the womb.
“I usually feel for the baby, for the swelling, and then I apply pressure gradually downwards,” said Casitas, a middle-aged woman with wide-set eyes. “I’m very careful. If I apply too much pressure, the patient will experience shock or the woman will get bruises.”
Abortion is a crime in the Philippines, unless a board of medical professionals deems it necessary to save the mother’s life.
Casitas is a hilot, one of the massage abortionists who perform a large share of the estimated 475,000 illegal abortions in the country every year. Before she gives the aggressive massage, Casitas has her clients take three tablets of Cytotec, an ulcer medication sold on the black market and used to bring on uterine contractions.
Many women seeking abortions go to the area around Quiapo Church, in old downtown, where street vendors sell crucifixes and statues of the Virgin Mary, alongside bitter herbal brews such as “Pampa Regla” (which means “induce menstruation” in Tagalog) to end pregnancy. Cytotec is on sale, too, but kept out of sight.
“Everyone knows about Quiapo,” Casitas said.
Among her clients, she said, are “mothers who have many kids, who can no longer afford to have more children,” and mothers with children under a year old who want “birth spacing.”
Casitas said she doesn’t have a fixed fee. She often asks patients for a $20 donation, less if they are very poor.
“First what I do is to pray to God and ask for forgiveness,” said Casitas, a practicing Catholic who wears a small silver crucifix around her neck. “I’m telling God I’m not charging a big amount…. It’s just like helping the patient with her problem.”
“I think God hears my prayers because so far I haven’t had any patient who suffered any hemorrhage and has to be rushed to the hospital.”
Casitas said she quizzes clients on why they got pregnant. “I advise the women to use pills, injectables [hormones] or IUDs.”
She knows many will not follow her advice, or cannot afford to. But she said she has a strict rule: “I only allow myself to help a woman twice. So when she comes to me to abort her first pregnancy, I do it. If she comes back to me a second time, I do it. The third time, I refuse.”
When illegal abortions go awry, the patients often end up at Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila, the largest women’s hospital in the Philippines.
On a spring day in one ward, injured women lay on cots, one beside the other. One patient was moaning and barely conscious, her blood splattered at the base of the bed. She’d been rushed there, delirious from fever and infection. Her skin was ashen from losing a third of her blood.
She was 28, an upholsterer’s wife with four children. Pregnant again, she was three months along when she tried to abort the fetus by drinking a bitter herbal brew.
Some hospitals in the Philippines refuse treatment in such cases and call the police because staff members see the women as criminals and sinners, according to doctors and nurses at Jose Fabella.
Here, doctors say they ask few questions and treat the injured. Cleaning up botched abortions, however, is the second order of business at Jose Fabella.
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No. 1 is childbirth and keeping children alive.
More than 17,000 babies a year are born at the hospital — the nation’s busiest — inspiring its nickname, “Baby Factory.”
In the delivery room that day, teams of doctors and nurses had their hands full with two births in progress. A half-dozen women in various stages of labor waited on gurneys.
In the hallway, wheels clacked across the white tile floor. A gurney burst into the delivery room led by a nurse holding a newborn in outstretched hands. A coiled umbilical cord connected the blue-tinged baby to a woman lying on her back, hair matted.
She had just arrived by cab. The newborn girl couldn’t wait.
Dr. Maria Lu Andal moved in to clear the baby’s airways and snip the cord. The baby began to cry, turning bright pink as a crew of assistants swarmed mother and child, swabbing, draping, measuring and tagging.
In a room nearby, newborns lay shoulder to shoulder on tables for nurses to weigh and measure. Oversize recovery rooms contained rows of worn metal beds, each shared by two mothers and their newborns.
In the neonatal unit, 68 babies lay in incubators, many of them dangerously premature. On average, about a third die, doctors said.
Andal, in dark green scrubs, a hairnet and mask, recalled that she once delivered 36 babies in a four-hour shift.
“It’s like an assembly line,” said Dr. Ruben Flores, who directs the hospital and its 1,200 employees. “It never stops.”
This was the quiet season. Only 63 babies were delivered this day, about half the hospital’s capacity.
“That’s what they say: It’s a baby factory,” Flores said. “But I say, we didn’t produce the babies. We just deliver them. These babies were produced at home.”
The Naz family gathers for a meal, in the same room where everyone sleeps. When food is especially scarce, only the children eat. About a third of Manila’s residents live in poverty. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) More photos
Yolanda Naz began to stack up the plastic bowls and plates from the midday meal. Her family had devoured every morsel.
A boy came to the door with an orange garden hose. For a few pesos, Naz can fill a plastic barrel with water for cooking, cleaning and bathing.
Naz picked through the remaining coins from her shampoo sales to see if there was enough for the next meal.
On a good day, her husband, Noel, earned about $5 selling coconut drinks from his cart. That was enough to pay for rice, instant noodles, some eggs, vegetables, even some milk and a diaper for the baby. But Noel is afflicted with a racking cough that often keeps him from working.
Naz sometimes buries her pride and asks neighbors for a loan of 10 cents or a bit of food.
A few years ago, one of her neighbors asked her to join a lawsuit by women’s rights groups seeking to overturn Manila’s ban on contraceptives at public clinics. She became a plaintiff, along with 19 other poor residents of the capital.
These women and a few of their husbands are asking the court to grant them access to birth control pills, condoms and IUDs, a rare challenge to church authority.
The case has been thrown out twice, once by the Philippine Supreme Court because it lacked a signature from one of the 20 plaintiffs. It was refiled in a lower court, where it has been essentially frozen for three years.
Naz said she’ll always be a Catholic. That doesn’t mean she agrees with the priests on everything.
“When I go to Mass, I hear the priest give sermons saying that pills are bad,” Naz said. “But whenever I hear that, I just say to myself that for me, it’s not evil, it’s not bad or it’s not sinful.
“What is more sinful is to have more children than I can afford to feed.”
ken.weiss@latimes.com
About the series
Los Angeles Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss and staff photographer Rick Loomis traveled across Africa and Asia to document the causes and consequences of rapid population growth. They visited Kenya, Uganda, China, the Philippines, India, Afghanistan and other countries.
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58ffc3eda514dea858963b993c4ee03b | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-syria-confrontation-pictures-20130828-photogallery.html | Photos: Conflict in Syria | Photos: Conflict in Syria
A civil conflict has raged in Syria for more than three years, costing tens of thousands of lives and leaving vast swaths of the nation in ruins.
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e6a77b489aa634f94ccca40c6d37c94d | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-afghanistan-children-casualties-20130613-story.html | U.N. says child casualties in Afghanistan rise dramatically | U.N. says child casualties in Afghanistan rise dramatically
KABUL, Afghanistan — The number of children killed and injured in Afghanistan’s war has risen sharply this year, the U.N. Children’s Fund says, calling the trend “unacceptable” and “very worrying.”
At least 121 children were killed and 293 were injured in the first four months of the year, up 27% over the same period the previous year, according to figures released by UNICEF Thursday.
Roadside bombs and suicide attacks accounted for the largest number of casualties, 37%. The U.N. particularly criticized the Taliban’s use of indiscriminate weapons triggered by victims stepping on or driving over a pressure plate, calling it a possible war crime.
Violence is increasing in Afghanistan as the Taliban and other militants press an intense offensive against government targets before international troops hand over full security responsibilities to Afghans. The international coalition is set to end its combat mission by the end of 2014.
The escalating attacks have caused civilian casualties to soar, including among children.
Last week alone, a suicide attack near a school in the eastern province of Paktia killed nine children and wounded seven others, and a father and three children died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb.
On June 6, an airstrike by international military forces killed three children and injured seven in Kunar province.
UNICEF said that figures show 56% of child casualties were caused by insurgents and 14% caused by international and Afghan security forces. Another 30% showed no clear blame.
Meanwhile, six Afghan policemen were found shot at their checkpoint Thursday in the country’s southern Musa Qala district in Helmand province. Two other policemen were missing, raising suspicions they killed their comrades, district chief Nayamatullah Samim said.
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2648a9f3b743fffc9530c8b01a1abe06 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-afghanistan-taliban-prisoners-release-20140109-story.html | Defying U.S. concern, Afghan government to free 72 terrorism suspects | Defying U.S. concern, Afghan government to free 72 terrorism suspects
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top justice officials on Thursday ordered the release of 72 imprisoned terrorism suspects for lack of evidence to prosecute them, defying U.S. objections to freeing men still considered a security risk.
The prisoners at the Parwan detention facility at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, were captured by U.S. and NATO forces over the course of the 12-year-old U.S.-led war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al Qaeda-backed militants.
But a case review by Afghan officials of 88 prisoners deemed by the United States to be too dangerous to set free found enough evidence to prosecute only 16 of them, Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi told reporters after the president met Thursday with the Afghan attorney general and justice minister.
“We cannot allow innocent Afghan citizens to be kept in detention for months and years without a trial for no reason at all,” Faizi told foreign journalists in Kabul, the capital, the BBC reported.
The move is likely to further strain U.S.-Afghan relations, already damaged by Karzai’s refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement that would keep about 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan even after the NATO combat mission winds down this year.
Karzai, due to leave office in April after a new presidential election, surprised and angered U.S. officials in the fall when he decided to put off signing the post-withdrawal agreement, even though a 2,500-strong council of Afghan elders had approved the plan. U.S. officials warned that budget and deployment plans had to be in place by the end of 2013 to ensure a continued U.S. presence to fight terrorism and train Afghan security forces, but Karzai said he would leave it to his successor to make the decision.
The Obama administration has expressed its concern to Kabul about the imminent prisoner release, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday.
“These 72 detainees are dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes, including the use of improvised explosive devices, the largest killer of Afghan civilians,” Psaki said at a news briefing.
Faizi said the Afghan judicial review of the detainees’ files found that 45 of the men in question were “completely innocent,” and the evidence against 27 others was too flimsy to bring a case to trial, the Guardian reported.
The U.S. military-backed newspaper Stars and Stripes, however, quoted an unidentified Pentagon official with access to the detainee list as detailing the alleged crimes of four prisoners set for release. The men were said to have been involved in organizing suicide bombings, ambushes of Afghan and NATO forces and a fatal bombing at a school in Paktia province.
As U.S. and other NATO forces have prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this year, responsibility for security operations gradually has been transferred to Afghan forces. Kabul authorities took over the running of the Bagram prison in March, and have since released hundreds of inmates held for months or years without trial or charges against them.
The Karzai government’s decision to release 72 of the men on the U.S. list of those posing a continued threat suggests that the mercurial Afghan president has finally rejected the U.S. policy of “administrative detention,” which Washington has practiced for more than a decade.
Beginning with President George W. Bush and continuing with President Obama, the U.S. government has claimed the right to indefinitely imprison terrorism suspects for the duration of the proclaimed war on terror to prevent their returning to the battlefield.
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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cb72ac4796e4a8e2c39f9cd0973d04d6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-afghanistan-us-ambassador-karzai-pact-20131128-story.html | Afghanistan: U.S. ambassador says onus is on Karzai to sign pact | Afghanistan: U.S. ambassador says onus is on Karzai to sign pact
KABUL, Afghanistan — In his first public remarks in the weeklong standoff between the United States and Afghanistan over a post-2014 security agreement, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan James B. Cunningham challenged President Hamid Karzai to end the bitter stalemate and sign the 10-year pact.
Cunningham told Afghan reporters in the western city of Herat that it was up to Karzai to decide whether the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan’s security would extend past the withdrawal of combat troops next year. He indicated that Karzai had imposed unacceptable new demands since agreeing to draft text of the 24-page security pact last week.
The unusually pointed remarks were made Wednesday during a visit to the U.S. consulate in Herat and released Thursday by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Cunningham has been leading the American team in negotiations in Kabul with Karzai’s government.
Asked about a “zero option” in which the U.S. would keep no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 and end its longstanding security support, Cunningham put the onus on Karzai.
“Zero is not an option for us,” the ambassador told an Afghan reporter. “It could be a consequence of decisions that your government takes or doesn’t take.”
He added: “The question of withdrawing all of our forces is not really an option for us. It’s not something we forsee or want to pursue .... We have a good agreement and we’re ready to sign it in the near future.”
The United States thought it had a deal with Karzai after a telephone conversation between the Afghan president and Secretary of State John F. Kerry last week. President Obama followed up with a letter pledging that U.S. forces would enter Afghan homes on post-2014 combat missions only under extreme circumstances and when U.S. lives were at risk.
But Karzai infuriated U.S. officials -- along with many of his own supporters, as well as ordinary Afghans -- by making new demands. On Nov. 21, he abruptly refused to sign the deal until after the Afghan presidential election in April.
American officials have said that if the agreement is not signed by the end of this year, Washington and its NATO allies will not have time to plan for a post-2014 troop deployment and military aid while also withdrawing combat troops and equipment.
“There are important practical and political reasons for signing it in the next couple of weeks,” Cunningham said. He referred to “important military and budget planning decisions to support our future relationship” with Afghanistan.
In fact, the ambassador said, it was a special grand council convened by Karzai that set the end-of-the-year deadline. The council of influential Afghans, called a loya jirga, voted unanimously Sunday to approve the pact and asked Karzai to sign it by year’s end.
Some of the 2,700 council delegates demanded that Karzai sign within days. The loya jirga chairman, former President Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, 89, Karzai’s mentor and informal advisor, upbraided Karzai for defying the will of the Afghan people and putting the nation’s security at risk.
Karzai made no public comments Thursday in response to Cunningham’s remarks. His spokesman, Aimal Faizi, did not immediately respond to a request by The Times for comment.
In a Pashto-language interview Tuesday with Radio Free Europe, Karzai said he was ready to sign if the U.S. met his demands, including an immediate halt to U.S. forces entering Afghan homes on combat missions.
“Another condition is peace in Afghanistan,” Karzai said without elaborating. “If we don’t have peace, this agreement will turn into a disaster for Afghanistan instead of a blessing.”
He added: “It is up to the Americans whether they want to stay or go.”
The agreement’s collapse would end the U.S. troop commitment to Afghanistan after 2014 and deprive struggling Afghan security forces of vital training, equipment, weapons and logistical assistance. It would almost certainly end any post-2014 commitment by NATO forces. The billions of dollars spent on reconstruciton by the U.S. and international allies also would likely be significantly reduced.
Afghan military commanders have acknowledged that they cannot hold off a determined Taliban insurgency without U.S. backing. Afghanistan’s business community has panicked over the prospect of losing foreign aid that props up the country’s feeble economy, which otherwise relies on small-scale agriculture and the multimillion-dollar opium harvest.
Many Afghan politicians and former members of Karzai’s government are in open revolt, demanding that Karzai sign the deal immediately. Some have publicly questioned his state of mind and accused the president of cynically putting the nation’s security at risk for personal political aggrandizement.
Many ordinary Afghans also have openly condemned Karzai. They warn that failure to sign the deal could lead to a Taliban takeover or another civil war.
“The vast majority of Afghans want our partnership to continue,” Cunningham said.
Some Afghan politicians and analysts contend that Karzai is dragging out the agreement to remain politically viable as he enters a lame-duck period leading to the April election. He is prohibited by the Afghan constitution from seeking another term, but conspiracy theorists in Kabul speculate that he may either postpone the elections or find a way to stay in power.
Kazai said Sunday he had told U.S. officials: “You waited 12 years and you can’t wait another five months? If I sign it and peace does not come, who will be blamed by history?”
Karzai apparently does not want to leave a legacy of committing Afghanistan to a long-term military partnership with the United States. Among his other demands are that the U.S. get more deeply involved in peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban, not “interfere” in the Afghan election and release 19 Afghans from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Asked by an Afghan reporter about Karzai’s latest demands, Cunningham replied, “Those are new conditions on top of or in addition to an agreement we’ve already reached.” National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice made the same point after a testy meeting with Karzai in Kabul on Monday.
“We don’t think those conditions are relevant to concluding the agreement itself,” Cunningham said.
If approved, the agreement would allow U.S. military advisors to train and equip Afghan security forces, and permit U.S. special operations troops to conduct counter-terrorism missions beginning Jan. 1, 2015.
The United States seeks to keep Afghanistan from becoming a haven for Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks, planned by Osama bin Laden and his associates from Afghan soil.
“As the jirga recognized, this is a strong agreement that benefits Afghanistan and we believe it benefits the United States as well,” Cunningham said. “It provides clarity to Afghans about what the future looks like and it provides clarity to Americans.”
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1c10655485aa6d5dc0c5a8122a725bd4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-afghans-free-prisoners-20140213-story.html | Afghans free 65 prisoners deemed dangerous by U.S. | Afghans free 65 prisoners deemed dangerous by U.S.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Over strident U.S. objections, Afghanistan on Thursday released 65 prisoners whom it said it could not prosecute despite American warnings that they could return to attacking coalition forces and civilians.
The U.S. military had expected the move and denounced it in a series of news releases in recent weeks. But the Afghan government maintained that there was insufficient evidence to try the prisoners or continue to hold them at the formerly U.S.-run detention facility at Bagram, north of Kabul.
The detainee dispute has further inflamed tensions between the United States and Afghanistan in the final year of the U.S.-led military intervention. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has angered U.S. officials by refusing to sign a security agreement that would allow a few thousand American troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014, has sharply criticized the prison at Bagram, likening it to a “factory” for creating Taliban insurgents.
The 65 prisoners released to their homes Thursday are directly linked to attacks that have killed or maimed dozens of coalition soldiers and Afghan civilians, the U.S. military alleges. They are among 88 prisoners at Bagram whom the U.S. military had argued shouldn’t be released.
The dispute has simmered since early last year, when the United States turned over the prison to Afghan control as part of its plan to withdraw forces from Afghanistan. U.S. officials say that Afghanistan is violating agreements by letting the prisoners go free.
“The release of these dangerous individuals poses a threat to U.S., coalition and Afghan National Security Forces, as well as the Afghan population,” the U.S. military said in a statement Thursday. “Insurgents in the group released today have killed coalition and Afghan forces.”
The U.S. military even took the rare step of publicly releasing information about some of the prisoners, citing biometric data and explosives residue tests as indications that they were linked to the insurgency.
One man who was released Thursday, Mohammad Wali, captured by coalition forces in southern Helmand province in May, was described by U.S. military officials as “a suspected Taliban explosives expert” who placed roadside bombs targeting Afghan and coalition forces. Another, Nek Mohammad, allegedly participated in rocket attacks against pro-government forces and was found to be possessing artillery shells, mortar rounds and at least 25 pounds of homemade explosives.
Afghan officials said they carefully reviewed the evidence and leads supplied by the United States but judged them to be insufficient to prosecute the men.
Baktash is a Times special correspondent. Times staff writer Bengali reported from Mumbai, India.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
Twitter: @SBengali
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71069d9c22c0911ec7327c82917c8270 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-american-fighters-in-syria-20140204-story.html | Syria: At least 50 Americans have joined extremist units, U.S. says | Syria: At least 50 Americans have joined extremist units, U.S. says
WASHINGTON -- At least 50 Americans have joined the mix of extremist groups that are fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, and some could try to mount terrorist attacks at home, U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday.
Intelligence officials say the Syrian civil war has become one of the biggest magnets for Islamic extremists around the globe since CIA-backed militants fought to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s, a war that ultimately gave rise to Al Qaeda.
James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that “7,500 or so” foreign fighters are in Syria from 50 countries. Clapper had cited an estimate of 7,000 at a Senate hearing last week.
A U.S. intelligence official told The Times that the total includes at least 50 Americans, a more concrete estimate than authorities have given previously. He declined to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the figure publicly.
A report in January by the Israel-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center estimated that as many as 1,800 people from European countries have also fought in Syria.
CIA Director John Brennan said Tuesday that Al Qaeda is training foreign fighters at camps in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
“We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the Al Qaeda organization to recruit individuals … to use Syria as a launching pad” for attacks on the West, Brennan said.
Clapper said he was particularly concerned about a small cadre of Al Qaeda operatives who have fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and who aspire to attack the United States.
“Not only are fighters being drawn to Syria, but so are technologies and techniques that pose particular problems to our defenses,” Clapper said.
James B. Comey, the FBI director, has said that counter-terrorism officials are trying to track U.S. veterans of the Syrian war who have returned home.
Prosecutors last year charged U.S. Army veteran Eric Harroun, 31, a native of Phoenix, Ariz., with federal crimes related to fighting with the Nusra Front, a Syrian extremist group linked to Al Qaeda. Harroun pleaded guilty in September to a lesser charge and was released.
Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, of Flint, Mich., a convert to Islam who was married to a Saudi man, was killed in May with rebels in northwestern Syria.
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
Twitter: @KenDilanianLAT
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01ef29cfdd12bc6bdd5dda640601a7e2 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-australia-asylum-seekers-papua-new-guinea-20130719-story.html | Australia to send asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea | Australia to send asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s prime minister warned Friday that all refugees who arrive by boat will be resettled on the island nation of Papua New Guinea, a policy shift that rights groups immediately condemned.
The move, described by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “very hard line,” aims to deter an escalating number of asylum-seekers who travel to Australia in rickety fishing boats from poor, war-torn homelands through other countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
The growing influx is a major political problem for Rudd’s Labor Party, which is the clear underdog in elections expected within months.
“From now on, any asylum-seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees,” Rudd told reporters after signing a pact with Prime Minister Peter O’Neill of Papua New Guinea that will enable Australia to deport refugees there.
The policy was condemned by refugee advocates and human rights activists.
The new plan “shows not only a complete disregard for asylum-seekers but absolute contempt for legal and moral obligations,” said Graeme McGregor, Amnesty International’s refugee campaign coordinator for Australia.
David Manne, executive director of Australia’s Refugee and Immigration Legal Center, described it as “a fundamental repudiation of our commitment to protecting refugees.”
Manne described Papua New Guinea — which is near Australia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean — as an unsafe country where violence is widespread and serious human rights abuses are a daily occurrence.
Rudd said the policy met Australia’s obligations under the United Nations’ Refugee Convention. Papua New Guinea is a signatory of the same convention that sets out refugees’ rights.
The rules will apply to asylum-seekers who arrive from Friday onward.
Asylum-seekers who arrive by boat would continue to have their refugee claims assessed in Australia and at detention camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Australia would help genuine refugees settle in Papua New Guinea — a diverse tribal society of more than 800 languages and 7 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers. Those who are found not to be genuine refugees could return to their home countries or another country other than Australia.
By Friday, 15,728 asylum-seekers had arrived by boat this year. The arrivals are on track to exceed last year’s total of 17,202, as well as the government’s target of resettling 20,000 refugees a year.
Iran has become the biggest source country. Asylum-seekers from Iran last year accounted for one in seven arrivals. This year, they make up one in three.
Indonesia announced Thursday it will stop issuing visas on arrival to Iranians in a bid to stem the flow to Australia.
Australia is Papua New Guinea’s former colonial master and is now its largest source of foreign aid. In return for accepting the refugees, Rudd said Australia will redevelop a hospital in the country’s second-largest city and reform the country’s university sector.
The new policy echoes that of a previous Australian government that in 2001 also pledged that asylum-seekers who arrived by boat would never be accepted by Australia. That policy all but stopped the asylum-seeker traffic.
Some refugees spent years in an Australian-run detention camp on the tiny Pacific atoll of Nauru before Australia eventually resettled them because no other country would accept them.
A protest by 150 asylum-seekers on Nauru turned violent Friday with several demonstrators and their guards injured, Australia’s Immigration Department said in a statement.
The department said the unrest was unrelated to the new policy, which was announced later.
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259347a030cef71ae35964acfea089d0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-bolivia-oldest-person-123-20130815-story.html | At 123, Bolivian man may be the oldest human who ever lived | At 123, Bolivian man may be the oldest human who ever lived
Carmelo Flores Laura, a Bolivian cattle and sheep herder, was born in 1890 -- 123 years ago -- according to Bolivian public records. That’s a year before the invention of the rotary-dial telephone and two years before the first Ferris wheel spun at the Chicago World’s Fair.
If the records are accurate, Flores is the oldest living person ever documented.
Associated Press reporters recently visited Flores at his straw-roofed hut near Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca. Although he has no teeth and is nearly deaf, Flores walks without a cane and speaks in a firm voice, the news agency reported.
“I see a bit dimly,” Flores told the AP. “I had good vision before. But I saw you coming.”
A Bolivian official presented as evidence of Flores’ age a registry listing his birthdate as July 16, 1890. He said Flores’ birth predates the existence of birth certificates in Bolivia by 50 years.
Photos: World’s oldest man?
A Guinness World Records spokeswoman told the AP that she knew of no claim being filed for Flores. But if his age is correct, the Bolivian has bested by one year Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died in 1997 at the verified age of 122.
Flores chalks up his long life to a lot of walking.
“I go out with the animals,” said the longtime sheep and cattle herder.
He eats barley, instead of rice or noodles, and drinks water that originates on Illampu, the fourth-highest mountain in Bolivia.
As the Los Angeles Times reported in an obituary after Calment’s death, the French woman credited her longevity to an occasional glass of port wine and eating plenty of olive oil.
Calment smoked until 1995, when she became too blind to light her own cigarettes and disliked asking anyone else to do it for her.
On her 121st birthday, in 1996, she released a CD, “Time’s Mistress,” which showcased her reminiscences over a background of rap and other music.
As for Flores, he says he very much misses his wife, who died more than a decade ago. One of his children is still living, 67-year-old Cecilio. Most of his 40 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren have moved away from his small Bolivian hamlet.
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660736ffb55e4906234e4e3b0db7ec87 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-cambodia-opposition-sam-rainsy-election-20130719-story.html | Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns to stir up election | Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns to stir up election
The joyous scene of Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s return to Phnom Penh from self-imposed exile Friday has stirred expectations – some would say unrealistic ones – of young voters throwing their support behind an alternative to Southeast Asia’s longest-reigning leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Rainsy isn’t likely to be allowed to run in the July 28 election that Hun Sen, already in power for 28 years, is expected to win by a landslide.
But with Rainsy’s ardent campaigning plans for the next week, his Cambodian National Rescue Party could loosen the leader’s vice grip on all levers of power. Rainsy’s opposition faction, which has united with the former Human Rights Party to strengthen its joint run for seats in parliament, is hoping to improve its clout in the legislature at least enough to break Hun Sen’s supermajority of 90 in the 123-member body that gives him the power to amend the constitution whenever it suits him. Rainsy’s faction has 29 seats.
Hun Sen remains popular in Cambodia’s vast rural reaches, where older voters retain vivid memories of the murderous Khmer Rouge government that terrorized the country in the 1970s. The 61-year-old prime minister is credited with erasing the vestiges of Khmer atrocities in his long years in power, but Rainsy and his allies plan to target their campaign for change on the younger generation that didn’t live through the nightmare years. In the four years that communist dictator Pol Pot was in power, as many as 3 million Cambodians died in summary executions and the slave-labor conditions of collective farming and government work brigades.
Cheering youths were prominent among the estimated 100,000 who turned out to greet Rainsy upon arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport and along the streets leading into the capital center. The Nation, a Bangkok daily that covered the former finance minister’s tumultuous return, noted that 1.5 million young Cambodians are eligible to vote for the first time in the election barely a week away. In all, 9 million are eligible to vote.
“A lot of young voters gathered with cheers to listen to Sam Rainsy’s first speech via Skype last Friday night in Kandal province,” The Nation reported. “The younger generation is the group tipped by many political observers as the major voters for Sam Rainsy’s party.”
Rainsy had been living in France since fleeing criminal charges in 2009 stemming from his activism over foreign land grabs and border disputes with Vietnam. He was convicted in absentia in 2010 and sentenced to 11 years in prison on the charges that he contends were the work of the prime minister to stem the rise of a political rival.
At the request of Hun Sen, Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni last week pardoned Rainsy in a move hailed by the prime minister as a gesture of political reconciliation. It was, however, done only after the U.S. State Department threatened to cut Cambodia’s $70-million annual foreign aid unless the government acted to make the forthcoming elections more fair and inclusive.
Rainsy’s parliamentary seat was revoked with his conviction, and his name was stricken from the voter registry. It remained unclear after his return whether he will even be allowed to cast a ballot on June 28.
Radio Free Asia reported that lawyers for the opposition faction are combing the law books and legislative records for precedent to back their campaign to put Rainsy on the ballot. The deadline for registering a candidacy has long passed, but the legal experts argue that the royal pardon should expunge the punitive measures that stripped Rainsy of his elected office.
Rainsy’s return evoked the same atmosphere of euphoria exhibited by Burmese supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, when the Myanmar military dictatorship began easing its repression of the opposition leader there. But Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won an overwhelming majority of legislative seats when allowed to compete with the military junta in 1990, drawing the crackdown that kept her under house arrest for most of the following two decades. Neither the former Sam Rainsy Party nor its now-allied Human Rights Party ever came close to attaining that level of popularity.
“Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party remain clear favorites to win this election,” The Diplomat, a Southeast Asian foreign policy magazine, reported Friday. It credited the prime minister’s enduring political strength to “unprecedented growth in the aftermath of three decades of war which ended in 1998.”
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d47b9fbacf5424105b842d4197fd1765 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-canada-rail-crash-keystone-pipeline-20130711-story.html | Canada rail crash stirs debate over Keystone XL pipeline delay | Canada rail crash stirs debate over Keystone XL pipeline delay
As Canadian investigators sift through the gruesome wreckage of an oil train derailment and explosion in Lac Megantic, Quebec, the deadly crash has intensified a debate among environmentalists and energy-independence advocates as to whether it is safer to ship oil by rail or by pipeline.
The circuitous route the oil involved in the accident was taking to its ultimate destination – U.S. consumers – also illustrates the conundrum faced by North American producers eager to get their crude oil to a far-flung network of specialized refineries within easy onward delivery range of the intended markets.
All but one of 73 rail tanker cars on the runaway Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train that crashed Saturday were carrying crude oil from the Bakken fields in North Dakota to a refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, calibrated to handle that particular type of crude.
The train had been left unattended during a stop six miles from the crash site and had been boarded by firefighters summoned to extinguish an onboard blaze five minutes after the sole engineer set the brakes and left it unmanned. Authorities said this week that at least 50 people were presumed dead in the crash and explosions.
Whether Canada’s deadliest train disaster in more than a century was the result of human error or equipment failure remains to be determined. But the accident has supporters of the stalled Keystone XL pipeline project brandishing statistics that purport to show a superior safety record of pumped oil shipment over that carried by rail.
Railway carriage of oil in North America has more than doubled in the last year as plans for the 1,700-mile Alberta-to-Texas pipeline have hit a wall of environmental protest and doubt about the predicted economic boon for the U.S. economy.
U.S. government approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is on hold after the Environmental Protection Agency in April took issue with a State Department review that concluded that the tar-like oil from the Alberta sands that would be transported by the pipeline emits 17% more greenhouse gases than conventional crude oil. The EPA has insisted that the excess tar sands emissions, from extraction to automobile exhaust, would be much more than 17%.
Keystone is a priority project for Canada and the pipeline developers, TransCanada Corp., because only 4% of the country’s 170 billion barrels of proven reserves of oil sands crude has been developed. All but 1.5% of what little is extracted is sold to the United States at a considerable discount from global prices. Canada wants the pipeline to the Texas Gulf Coast refineries so it can ship more of its production to more lucrative foreign markets.
As the pipeline project idles, crude oil extractors have turned increasingly to the railroads to get their product to a complex network of North American refineries. Trains hauled a record 97,000-plus tankers of crude oil in the first quarter of this year, up 166% from the same period in 2012 and nine times what was delivered by rail five years ago, the Assn. of American Railroads reports.
What the Lac Megantic disaster demonstrates, Keystone backers were quick to claim, is that the rapidly expanding rail carriage poses more risk to human life and the environment than would the pipeline. And without Keystone, designed to handle 830,000 barrels a day, rail shipment of Canadian crude will continue to expand at breakneck speed to tap the Alberta bounty while global oil prices are riding high, industry analysts forecast.
Trains haul oil tankers through U.S. towns and cities every day and the Quebec disaster shows “why pipelines are safer and environmental opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided,” Investors’ Business Daily declared in an editorial Tuesday.
“The evidence is so overwhelming that railroads are far less safe than pipelines,” the newspaper, which has backed the Keystone project, quoted Brookings Institution energy security initiative director Charles Ebinger as saying.
One day after the Quebec disaster, Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, penned a commentary for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper reiterating the findings of her June study that oil spills are twice as frequent from trains as from pipelines.
“It is time to speed up the approval of new pipeline construction in North America,” wrote Furchtgott-Roth. “Pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil and natural gas, and we need more of them, without delay.”
The Assn. of American Railways concedes that trains spill 2.7 times more oil than pipelines. But the industry group and other sources note that pipeline accidents tend to be bigger and more costly in terms of cleanup and environmental damage than rail mishaps.
“All methods of transporting oil have risks. And there are lots of different kinds of accidents – this train didn’t have its brakes on and rolled into a town, which is very different from an oil spill into a wildlife refuge. How you compare those things is not simple,” Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, said in an interview.
Pipelines are cheaper to build and operate than are new railroad networks, and pipeline accidents are less frequent, Koomey said. But he sees the environmentalist opposition to Keystone as more of a tactical campaign in the fight against global warming than a strict risk and cost analysis. Stalling the pipeline forces oil extractors to look to rail for more capacity, and the expense and time involved to achieve that expansion puts pressure on the industry to reduce extraction, and by extension the higher emissions of greenhouse gases from the tar sands crude.
“The argument comes from an understanding that there is a fixed amount of carbon that we can emit and stay under the two degrees of warming,” Koomey said. He was referring to what scientists have calculated as the increase in the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere that would cause irreparable damage from melting Arctic ice and flooding lowlands.
“For the most part, transportation by rail is safe,” Michael Whatley, executive vice president of the industry-backed and pro-Keystone Consumer Energy Alliance, said in an interview with the Energy Wire news service. Speaking of the Lac Megantic disaster, he said, “We don’t need an overreaction that’s going to restrict rail access. ... I don’t want to punch the safety record of rails, because they’ve got a great record, but pipelines are safest.”
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A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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fafa0c10cb780c74a9fd02482e5a9e53 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-chemical-weapons-deadline-syria-20131023-story.html | Chemical weapons inspectors say they’ll meet first deadline in Syria | Chemical weapons inspectors say they’ll meet first deadline in Syria
WASHINGTON -- International inspectors expect to destroy Syria’s ability to produce new chemical weapons by Nov. 1, the first major deadline in the United Nations-ordered disarmament of the country’s entire chemical arsenal, officials said Wednesday.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the watchdog group overseeing the disarmament effort, said equipment used to produce or mix toxic gases and nerve agents has been destroyed at almost all of the declared facilities inside Syria.
OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said Syrian authorities continued to provide “complete” cooperation to its team of 27 inspectors, and the group was confident of meeting the first major milestone in the disarmament plan before Friday of next week.
Syria “will no longer have the capability to produce any more chemical weapons, and it will no longer have any working equipment to mix and to fill chemical weapons agent into munitions,” Luhan told a news conference in the Hague.
The positive report reflected continuing progress in the U.S.-backed plan to destroy, dismantle or impound President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014.
Since arriving in Syria this month, OPCW inspectors, escorted by Syrian forces, have visited 18 of 23 chemical weapons sites disclosed by Assad’s government and have had “good access” to the facilities in government-controlled areas, Luhan said.
But inspectors have yet to visit any sites located in areas held by rebels battling to overthrow Assad, Luhan said. Last week, the head of the OPCW, Ahmet Uzumcu, said that inspectors had to cancel a visit to at least one abandoned site in a rebel-held zone because they were unable to obtain security guarantees.
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Twitter: @SBengali
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
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2a81a44536a4f17086e29cd166c31ec8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-hornet-attacks-20131003-story.html | Swarms of hornets kill 42 people, injure hundreds in northwest China | Swarms of hornets kill 42 people, injure hundreds in northwest China
A rash of deadly hornet attacks in northwestern China has killed 42 people and injured more than 1,600, local officials said Thursday.
The attacks began in July and have centered on three cities in China’s Shaanxi province: Ankang, Hanzhong and Shangluo. Local authorities believe a particularly venomous species, known as the Asian giant hornet, is behind the attacks.
They say the hornets, which can grow up to 2 inches long, are most active in September and October, when they breed and migrate. But experts quoted by the state-run New China News Agency offered different reasons for the unusual number of attacks this year.
Huang Rongyao, an insect control expert in the worst-hit city, Ankang, said increased vegetation growth was attracting hornets to the area while warmer than usual temperatures were making the insects more active.
Hua Baozhen, a professor of entomology at Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, cited a decrease in the hornets’ natural enemies, including spiders and birds.
Police and firefighters have been destroying hornet nests and medical experts have been dispatched to the region to help treat critical patients, local news reports said.
One patient, Chen Changlin, told the official China Youth Daily that he was attacked while harvesting rice last month.
“I ran to the side of the road for help, but the hornets chased me about 200 meters [yards] and stung me for nearly three minutes,” he told the paper.
There have also been reports of hornet attacks in China’s southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Twenty-three primary school children, their teacher and six villagers who came to their aid were injured in one such attack last month, the official news agency reported.
The teacher, Li Zhiqiang, told the children to hide under the tables while he fought off the insects until he passed out, according to the report.
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Twitter: @alexzavis
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
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750fa9b6ad9b343f515f8c7bfa4cd7f1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-internet-rumors-crackdown-20130909-story.html | Spreading Internet rumors in China can mean jail time under new rules | Spreading Internet rumors in China can mean jail time under new rules
BEIJING -- Spreading rumors on the Internet could get you three years in prison in China, with the penalties rising if the rumor is reposted more than 500 times or viewed by more than 5,000 people.
So says a judicial interpretation issued Monday by China’s Supreme People’s Court and Procuratorate, the first nationwide ruling of its kind.
The Chinese Communist Party has waged campaigns against rumors for years, but this is the first time existing laws against defamation and instigating instability have been formally extended to the Internet.
“In recent years, the Internet has been used to maliciously fabricate facts and damage the reputation of others … and to concoct rumors that mislead the people, causing serious disruptions of social order and even mass incidents,” said Supreme Court spokesman Sun Jungong in a statement that was read live on television to maximize its effect.
Under the Chinese system, a judicial interpretation is the equivalent of a Supreme Court ruling and carries great weight. The ruling immediately drew concern from free speech advocates who have been worried about a wave of arrests of prominent microbloggers on Sina Weibo, the wildly popular website that is billed as the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
“This is the first time the government has clarified what is illegal on the Internet,’’ said Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing. “Before, there were rules governing pornography, but they had not addressed the issue of free speech on the Internet.”
Chinese censors routinely remove content they deem offensive or sensitive -- postings that criticize the Communist Party or leadership, or deal with Tibet or dissident activity – but they often cannot keep up with the flood of information.
Among those swept up in a new crackdown on rumors in recent weeks are Charles Xue, a U.S. citizen with 12 million followers on Sina Weibo who regularly reposts microblogs from activists. He was charged with soliciting prostitution.
Also arrested was a 28-year-old microblogger who had exposed official corruption by examining published photographs of officials wearing luxury watches. Others were arrested for questioning the achievements of Lei Feng, an early Communist hero who is an iconic figure in the party’s propaganda about altruism.
The Chinese state press has joined in the campaign in recent weeks against rumors spread by the Internet.
“Greater responsibility necessary for greater freedom online,” was the title of one recent editorial on the official Xinhua news service.
A government-backed “rumor monitoring” group last week released a list of what it called the top 10 rumors circulated by the Internet this year. Among them was a report that a soup was being sold in southern Guangdong province cooked from babies’ bodies. Another was a report on flooding in China that used a photograph from the Philippines.
Lawyers who read the judicial interpretation said that in order for somebody to be punished, it should be proven that they knew the rumor was false and that they distributed it with malice.
The penalties would not apply to reports in the mainstream press that later prove false. For example, early Sunday morning, Xinhua reported that the international Olympic committee had chosen Istanbul as the site of the 2020 summer Olympics. In fact, it was Tokyo that was chosen.
“They will not be dealing with errors on official sites,’’ said lawyer Liu.
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Twitter: @BarbaraDemick
barbara.demick@latimes.com
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830aa5bc3b260bc6f315b5181c9f6114 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-offshore-accounts-20140122-story.html | Leaked files reveal offshore holdings of rich, politically connected | Leaked files reveal offshore holdings of rich, politically connected
BEIJING -- From the brother-in-law of Chinese President Xi Jinping to a daughter of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, thousands of the rich and politically connected have been outed as having secret offshore holdings.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on Wednesday said it had obtained a cache of about 2.5 million files with information from two financial firms, Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet and Commonwealth Trust Ltd. of the British Virgin Islands, that helped wealthy customers set up offshore accounts.
When measured in gigabytes, the data is more than 160 times larger than the State Department documents released in 2010 by Wikileaks, the Washington-based nonprofit wrote. It did not disclose who leaked the data or the motives behind the disclosure.
The names published are a veritable who’s who of political elites from all corners of the globe: the wife of Russia’s deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, and top executives of Russian energy giant Gazprom. From Mongolia, the deputy speaker of parliament; from Azerbaijan, the daughters of President Ilham Aliyev; and from the Philippines, Imee Marcos, a provincial governor and the late leader’s eldest daughter.
Among the Americans was Denise Rich, a songwriter and the ex-wife of the late Marc Rich, a financier indicted on charges of tax evasion, illegal dealings with Iran and other crimes who was later pardoned by President Clinton.
The journalists’ group identified 37,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. The group said it would post the names beginning Thursday in an online database.
Among the Chinese named were Deng Jiagui, a businessman who is married to the president’s older sister. He was reported to own a 50% stake in a real estate company based in the British Virgin Islands. The report also named former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son, Wen Yunsong, and son-in-law, Liu Chunhang, both of whom have aroused suspicion because of the great wealth they accumulated during Wen’s tenure.
Former leader Deng Xiaoping’s son-in-law, Wu Jianchang, also made the list, along with ex-Premier Li Peng’s daughter, Li Xiaolin, and a cousin of former President Hu Jintao, Hu Yishi.
“China’s elites were aggressively using offshore havens to hold assets, list companies in the world’s stock exchanges, buy and sell real estate and conduct their business away from Beijing’s red tape and capital controls,’’ the journalist consortium wrote on its website.
There are legitimate uses for offshore accounts, and having one does not necessarily mean that a person acted illegally. But the expose is likely to cause great embarrassment, especially in China, where the Communist Party is in the throes of one of its episodic anti-corruption campaigns.
The Chinese government has cracked down on activists who have been calling for officials and their families to file disclosure statements of their assets.
On Wednesday, as the journalists’ expose was being published, crusading lawyer Xu Zhiyong went on trial in a closed Beijing courthouse on charges of “disrupting public order” for organizing an anti-corruption campaign. Foreign correspondents waiting outside the courthouse were hassled by Chinese security.
Any discussion about the personal riches of the Communist Party leadership is strictly taboo here. After publishing exposes in 2012 and 2013, the New York Times and the Bloomberg news service were unable to obtain new visas for China-based journalists and had their websites blocked.
Chinese journalists have been unable to touch the topic. The journalists’ consortium wrote that it had been working with a Chinese organization to analyze the data, but that the organization -- which it did not identify -- dropped out in November after receiving warnings from the Chinese government.
Twitter: @BarbaraDemick
barbara.demick@latimes.com
emick
barbara.demick@latimes.com
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39ea5882f201df8d389713bea6662173 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-sea-dispute-20140110-story.html | China asserts control over vast sea area, angering neighbors, U.S. | China asserts control over vast sea area, angering neighbors, U.S.
Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and the United States have criticized China for imposing new access rules for the vast South China Sea, saying Beijing’s demand that foreign vessels get approval to enter the disputed maritime area is provocative and potentially destabilizing.
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying retorted Friday that the rules that went into effect at the start of the year are simply “technical revisions” of existing laws governing the resource-rich waters off China’s Hainan province. She said foreign governments’ complaints that Beijing is courting trouble spring from “ulterior motives.”
The latest maritime dispute among the neighbors with overlapping claims to islands and resources in the busy East Asian waterways has ratcheted up tensions in the region, coming less than two months after China proclaimed an Air Defense Identification Zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea. Under the ADIZ, foreign aircraft flying through the zone are required to file flight plans with Beijing, although the United States, Japan and South Korea have flown military aircraft through the region without getting China’s permission.
“The passing of these restrictions on other countries’ fishing activities in disputed portions of the South China Sea is a provocative and potentially dangerous act,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “China has not offered any explanation or basis under international law for these extensive maritime claims.”
The Foreign Affairs Department of the Philippines issued a statement Friday saying the unilateral Chinese exertion of control over the fishing grounds “escalates tensions, unnecessarily complicates the situation in the South China Sea, and threatens the peace and stability of the region.”
Taiwan declared that it doesn’t recognize the proclaimed access rules as valid, and Vietnam called the Beijing power play “illegal and groundless.”
The revised rules stem from actions taken by authorities on the island of Hainan, the Chinese province closest to the sea where areas are also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
A year ago, Hainan authorities announced enforcement procedures that allow its police to board foreign ships not authorized to enter the area and to seize the vessels, fishing equipment and catch. Penalties for unauthorized access can also result in fines exceeding $80,000, the provincial rules state.
Hua, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, suggested the international outcry was political.
“If someone says a revision to local fishing regulations that have been in effect for many years constitutes a threat to peace and stability in the entire region, it is not a lack of basic common sense but a sign of ulterior motives,” Hua told reporters at a Beijing briefing on Friday.
The regional dispute over a cluster of tiny islets in the East China Sea that China claims as the Diaoyu and Japan as the Senkakus has escalated into a series of air and sea faceoffs. Analysts warn that the run-ins could result in accidents or miscalculations that could further heighten tensions among Asia’s leading powers.
At issue in the South China Sea is a triangular cluster of reefs known as Scarborough Shoal about 130 miles from the Philippines’ Subic Bay naval station. The Chinese call it Huangyan Island and complain that the Philippine navy has been harassing its fishing boats there.
The South China Sea and coastal passages from Malaysia to Russia are of vital economic interest to all who ply the shipping lanes used to ferry more than $1.2 trillion in goods annually between the United States and its Far East trading partners.
China’s increasingly ambitious assertions of sovereignty also reflect a power play with Washington, which continues to wield influence and professes commitment to defend longtime allies in Tokyo, Seoul and Manila.
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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4b2b9b40ec7386fba34119afd93aca80 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-constitution-vote-20140114-story.html | Egypt votes on new constitution; Muslim Brotherhood urges boycott | Egypt votes on new constitution; Muslim Brotherhood urges boycott
CAIRO -- Amid heavy security, Egyptians went to the polls Tuesday to vote on a new constitution -- the first major step in what the military-led government calls a path to democracy.
In some locales, long lines of voters had already formed when polling stations opened at 9 a.m., watched over by police and soldiers.
An explosion went off at a courthouse in a northwestern district of Cairo before the voting started, but caused no deaths or injuries, state media reported. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.
Egyptian leaders had repeatedly called on people to turn out in large numbers for the two-day referendum, which will continue on Wednesday. The rewritten national charter was drafted by a government-appointed panel.
The interim government, which took power six months ago after a popularly supported coup, hopes that a big turnout and a decisive margin of approval for the new constitution will bolster its own legitimacy. It has promised to hold presidential and parliamentary elections later this year.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the movement of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, called for a boycott of the vote. The Brotherhood, which the government has designated a terrorist organization, insists that Morsi is still the rightful president.
The group’s leadership and thousands of its rank-and-file members have been imprisoned. Authorities have also arrested secular activists, accusing many of violating a tough new anti-protest law. In recent days, still others were detained after putting up posters urging a “no” vote on the referendum.
Human rights groups have vigorously protested the wave of detentions, calling them politically motivated.
The new constitution would enhance the authority of Egypt’s military, judiciary and law-enforcement establishment -- all of which have been driving forces behind the coup against Morsi and the crackdown on his followers. The charter also reverses some overtly Islamist provisions that were written into the document under Morsi, and guarantees an array of personal rights -- although activists have questioned whether those provisions will be respected.
The referendum is expected to pass by a comfortable margin, but supporters of the new constitution hope to exceed the 65% approval of the previous constitution, and to garner a larger turnout than the one-third of the electorate that voted in the last constitutional referendum under Morsi.
laura.king@latimes.com
Twitter: @laurakingLAT
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819f1e0c9662ab37938a4ed839b87b42 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-morsi-charges-clashes-20130726-story.html | Egypt: At least 4 killed as tensions flare over Morsi charges | Egypt: At least 4 killed as tensions flare over Morsi charges
CAIRO -- At least four people were killed and dozens injured in fresh clashes Friday as supporters and opponents of Egypt’s deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, staged rival protests across the nation.
The country’s political divisions flared after state media reported that prosecutors had charged Morsi with espionage, murder and conspiring with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The allegations infuriated Morsi’s Islamist supporters, who have been camped for weeks outside Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque. They cursed the military and chanted “God is great.”
Anti-Morsi protesters surged into Cairo’s Tahrir Square to support the coup that overthrew the former president on July 3 and to back an anticipated crackdown against Morsi’s Islamist backers.
Egypt’s military commander this week called for mass demonstrations to support a crackdown on “violence and terrorism” that have spread since Morsi’s ouster. The call by Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi set the mood for a showdown Friday.
Fireworks exploded overhead and army helicopters buzzed city skylines. Police fired tear gas to disperse scuffles in the coastal city of Alexandria, where four people were reported killed. Skirmishes also broke out in Cairo. The Health Ministry said that 71 people had been injured nationwide.
As protesters on both sides massed, Egypt’s official news agency reported Morsi would be held for 15 days while prosecutors investigate charges that in 2011 he conspired with Hamas to attack police stations and jails, “setting fire to one prison and enabling inmates to flee, including himself, as well as premeditated killing of officers, soldiers and prisoners.”
The charges stem from a prison escape by Morsi and other political prisoners, including members of his Muslim Brotherhood movement, during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Morsi said in an earlier television interview that unknown men freed him and other Brotherhood members from Wadi Natroun prison. The criminal charges are widely seen as politically motivated. But they appear to give the army a legal basis to detain the president amid growing international criticism that Morsi has been held incommunicado for almost a month.
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Hassieb is a special correspondent.
Twitter: @JeffreyLAT
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
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7e64c9a039ed6acb77d0da16da6ed2ca | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egyptian-crackdown-secular-20140105-story.html | Egyptian crackdown targets secular activists as well as Islamists | Egyptian crackdown targets secular activists as well as Islamists
CAIRO -- In a case that was seen as part of a broadening crackdown on secular activists, a brother and sister who were active in the uprising against Hosni Mubarak were given suspended one-year jail terms on Sunday in connection with an attack on a campaign headquarters in 2012.
Liberal activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, his sister Mona Seif and 10 others were found guilty by an Egyptian criminal court of assault, property damage and theft in the attack on the headquarters of former presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq.
The verdict comes as human rights advocates decry a crackdown that began by targeting Islamist supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and now is reaching secular and leftist opposition youth.
The suspended verdict means that the defendants will not serve the jail term unless they are indicted on any other charges in the next three years -- a measure that could have a chilling effect on any further activism.
In December, activists Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel -- all veterans of the 2011 uprising against then-President Mubarak -- were sentenced to three years in jail plus a fine of more than $7,000 each for holding a demonstration without getting permission in advance from authorities, as mandated under a law that took effect in November. Nearly two weeks later, two more activists in the coastal city of Alexandria received a two-year jail sentence on similar charges.
The human rights group Amnesty International decried what it called a pattern of politically motivated prosecutions by the interim government meant to crush dissent. It said in Sunday’s case, the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of known criminals.
“A conviction that is not based on independent, impartial and adequate investigations and reliable evidence would be unfair. It could also be perceived as aimed at preventing... activists from carrying out their political and human rights work,” said Said Boumedouha, Amnesty’s acting director for the Mideast and North Africa.
The government that took power after removing Islamist president Mohamed Morsi from power in early July has waged a fierce separate campaign against Morsi’s supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organization. Thousands of its members are in jail, including the top leadership and Morsi himself.
Hassan is a special correspondent. Staff writer Laura King contributed to this report from Istanbul.
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3af5dbe65ec1e0fcc1faa66d38dcede9 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-erdogan-protesters-vandals-20130609-story.html | Turkish premier lashes out at protesters, calls them vandals | Turkish premier lashes out at protesters, calls them vandals
ANKARA, Turkey — In a series of increasingly belligerent speeches to cheering supporters Sunday, Turkey’s prime minister launched a verbal attack on the tens of thousands of anti-government protesters who flooded the streets for a 10th day, accusing them of creating an environment of terror.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the most inflammatory of his speeches as he arrived in the capital of Ankara. Erdogan belittled the protesters, again calling them “capulcu,” the Turkish word for looters or vandals. He made his speech in Ankara on an open-top bus, which then drove into the city in a motorcade.
“If you look in the dictionary, you will see how right a description this is,” Erdogan said, speaking to thousands of supporters who greeted him at the airport. “Those who burn and destroy are called capulcu. Those who back them are of the same family.”
Erdogan said his patience was running out with the protesters, who have occupied Istanbul’s main Taksim Square for more than a week and have held hundreds of demonstrations in at least 78 cities across the country. The increasingly fiery tone could inflame tensions. On two occasions, including one in the southern city of Adana on Saturday night, clashes have been reported between Erdogan supporters and protesters.
“All they do is to break and destroy, to attack public buildings. … They didn’t stop at that,” Erdogan said. “They attacked daughters who wear headscarves. They entered Dolmabahce mosque with their beer bottles and their shoes.”
Some of the injured in the initial clashes in Istanbul’s Besiktas area were treated in Dolmabahce mosque. The mosque’s imam has denied reports that people entered with beer. In the initial days of the protests, some women said they were verbally harassed. The majority of protesters, however, have denounced those who did it and have been welcoming toward them. Erdogan’s comment about shoes refers to the Muslim taboo against wearing shoes inside a mosque.
Anti-government protesters have turned Erdogan’s label of them as capulcu into a humorous retort, printing stickers with the word, scrawling it on their tents and uploading music videos onto social network sites.
The nationwide anti-government protests were sparked by outrage over police use of force against an environmental protest in Istanbul’s Taksim Square on May 31, and have grown into a general display of discontent toward Erdogan’s government.
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3ce20151ffe9e9016f260774f2ebc0ae | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-guatemala-rios-montt-trial-20130510-story.html | Former Guatemala dictator Rios Montt found guilty of genocide | Former Guatemala dictator Rios Montt found guilty of genocide
MEXICO CITY -- Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan military dictator who ruled his country during one of the bloodiest phases of its civil war, was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity Friday for the systematic massacre and displacement of ethnic Mayan people. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
The landmark ruling by a three-judge panel headed by Yassmin Barrios came after a dramatic trial that featured testimony from dozens of Maya who described atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army and security forces as they sought to clean the countryside of Marxist guerrillas and sympathizers during the 1982-83 period that Rios Montt, a general and coup leader, served as the country’s de facto leader.
The ruling is likely to be derided by Guatemalan conservatives, many of whom see Rios Montt as a hero who prevented the country from being overtaken by communist rebels who had been attempting to foment revolution in the poverty-stricken countryside for decades.
International human rights groups, however, had been hoping for such an outcome for decades.
A 1999 report by the country’s truth and reconciliation commission listed widespread human rights abuses during the civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996 and claimed more than 200,000 lives. The panel found that 93% of the rights violations were committed by the government or its paramilitary allies.
Guatemalan prosecutors accused Rios Montt of responsibility for the massacre of more than 1,700 Ixil Maya, as well as systematic rapes, tortures and the burning of villages.
Rios Montt and his attorneys had argued that as the country’s political leader he should not be held responsible for military matters that occurred in a rural province a few hours northwest of the Guatemalan capital.
“I never authorized, I never signed, I never proposed, I never ordered that a race, ethnicity or religion be attacked,” the 86-year-old Rios Montt said in a dramatic statement to the court Thursday evening. “I never did it!”
But the judges decided otherwise. “Rios Montt was aware of everything that was happening, and did not stop it, despite having the power to stop it,” Barrios stated on the panel’s behalf in a packed courtroom, which erupted on numerous occasions in applause.
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47d403052b7ed31dd9c106e911715b6f | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-honduras-election-hernandez-castro-20131125-story.html | Ruling party’s lead disputed in Honduran presidential election | Ruling party’s lead disputed in Honduran presidential election
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Chanting “take to the streets” Monday, Honduran supporters of the country’s first major pro-left political party vigorously protested official presidential election results that showed their candidate losing.
Backers of candidate Xiomara Castro accused electoral authorities of fraud, saying they were manipulating results to hand victory to her chief rival, an old-style politician from the conservative ruling party.
Castro, wife of the president ousted in a 2009 coup, was trailing the top vote-getter, Juan Orlando Hernandez, by a margin of about 5 percentage points, according to the official tally with more than half of the ballots counted.
“We do not accept the results,” Castro’s husband, the deposed former President Manuel Zelaya, said Monday.
Hernandez’s disputed victory, which is gradually being recognized by other Latin American governments, threatens to plunge the violent, dysfunctional country into an even deeper period of instability.
Behind the scenes, some diplomats and foreign observers were trying to persuade Castro to accept the results and use her remarkably good showing for a first-time party run to build a more effective political force.
But Zelaya seemed unwilling to countenance that, repeatedly telling reporters that no negotiation will be permitted that “betrays the Honduran people.”
Zelaya spoke at a meeting in a hotel ballroom to which journalists were summoned for what was billed as a news conference with Castro. She did not show up, and the conference was much more political rally than informative session.
Hundreds of party supporters who invaded the room where the supposed news conference was taking place spent a full hour chanting leftist slogans. Then they heckled most of the reporters who attempted to ask questions.
Zelaya hailed the significant electoral showing for his wife’s Free Party in its first run in a national election. But he and other party leaders contended that election officials have hidden 20% of ballots that would have gone in Castro’s favor. He demanded a recount “vote by vote, list by list, ballot box by ballot box.”
“Until we are shown otherwise, we have this victory: Xiomara Castro is the president-elect of Honduras,” Zelaya said. “If necessary, we will take to the streets.”
When he said that, the crowd erupted into some of the loudest chants of the session: “To the streets! To the streets!”
Asked by a Mexican reporter if that meant Zelaya was convoking popular rebellion, the crowd erupted angrily and pointed furious accusatory fingers at the journalist. Zelaya said the protest would remain peaceful.
When the hotel gathering ended, several hundred Free Party supporters streamed out into the streets of Tegucigalpa, a replay in some ways -- but on a smaller scale -- of the demonstrations that followed the 2009 coup. Police in riot gear followed close behind.
“These results are a joke on the Honduran people,” said Marlin Orlando Sanchez, 64, a seller of construction materials and dedicated supporter of Castro. “It’s like another coup.”
Several international election-monitoring organizations thought the vote count giving victory to Hernandez’s National Party was probably accurate. That’s in part because any fraud probably took place months ago, when Hernandez supporters could use the state machinery to offer jobs and discount cards in exchange for votes. Meanwhile, numerous irregularities and complaints of intimidation were reported on election day, Sunday.
The National Party is one of two conservative groups that have dominated Honduras for the country’s modern political history and clearly had a distinct advantage over opponents. The system was stacked against any challengers: Hernandez and his party control the election court and most of the judiciary, having removed unfriendly judges and prosecutors last year in what is often termed here as a technical coup.
Hernandez has already reportedly received several congratulatory telephone calls from other Latin American leaders, including Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, seemingly a more natural ally of Castro and Zelaya.
Hernandez held a victory rally Sunday night, starting with a fervent prayer led by his wife, then a speech in which he vowed to continue his controversial use of military police to fight Honduras’ wild homicide and crime rate.
“Today the people voted to leave behind the political crisis of 2009 that left thousands in Honduras jobless, migrating and divided, that left us alone and isolated,” Hernandez said, alluding to the coup that devastated the country, but without mentioning that he, like many other conservative politicians of the day, had enthusiastically supported it.
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wilkinson@latimes.com
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01f437ebe8d1cd8490ece1f2052156e6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-interim-nuclear-deal-iran-research-20140127-story.html | Interim nuclear deal allows Iran to continue centrifuge research | Interim nuclear deal allows Iran to continue centrifuge research
WASHINGTON – The interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers will allow Tehran to continue far more research and development on centrifuges to enrich uranium than has been publicly recognized, according to a veteran Washington nuclear analyst.
In a new report, David Albright, president of the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security, said the deal may delay development of new centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that haven’t yet been fed with uranium hexaflouride, a compound used to produce nuclear fuel.
But the accord, which went into effect Jan. 20, will allow Iran to continue research over the next six months on several types of advanced centrifuges already at Natanz. Iran also is likely to continue centrifuge research and development at other sites, including undisclosed locations, according to the report.
As a result, the deal is “not expected to seriously affect Iran’s centrifuge research and development program,” the report says.
The interim deal, signed Nov. 24, is aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear progress for six months to a year while negotiators from six world powers and Iran try to reach an agreement imposing longer-lasting curbs on the nuclear program. Many nations fear Iran is aiming for a nuclear weapons capability, despite its denials.
Albright said he hopes to persuade the six powers to push for much stricter limits on centrifuge research and development when they negotiate the final agreement.
The issue “has to be addressed much more aggressively,” said Albright, a former United Nations nuclear inspector who has been frequently consulted by U.S. administrations and Congress.
Centrifuge research is an important issue because advanced machines can generate nuclear fuel more quickly, giving Iran the capacity to reach nuclear bomb-making capability in a shorter time.
The Iranians already have used uranium hexaflouride at Natanz to test five types of centrifuges, the IR-1, IR2-M, IR-4, IR-5 and IR6 models, Obama administration officials said at a Jan. 13 briefing for reporters.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that the deal allows Iran to continue several kinds of centrifuge work. They say their goal was to put the brakes on additional installations to prevent Iran from moving ahead in learning how to generate enriched uranium on an industrial scale.
Albright said that although U.S. officials have clearly expressed their desire to roll back Iran’s nuclear program, it is not yet clear that they intend to press hard in the final negotiations for strict limits on centrifuge research and development.
He said it is likely to be a tough fight because the Iranians have made clear their intention to continue centrifuge work. Last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that Iran would not accept obstacles to its “scientific progress.”
paul.richter@latimes.com
Twitter: @richtpau
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3ae360087f0f37b9abae442431736129 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-iranian-president-hassan-rouhani-20140125-story.html | Iranian President Rouhani’s trip to Davos gets good reviews at home | Iranian President Rouhani’s trip to Davos gets good reviews at home
TEHRAN -- Last year he took New York by storm. This week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani continued his charm offensive at the world’s most high-profile economic summit in Davos, Switzerland.
At the ritzy Alpine resort, the Iranian leader delivered a clear message: Iran is open for business.
Rouhani touted investment opportunities in Iran, met with European oil executives and stressed Tehran’s desire to conclude a nuclear accord with world powers that could lift international sanctions.
Back home, reaction to the president’s Davos expedition have generally been positive.
Both liberal and conservative dailies have given a thumbs up to Rouhani’s Swiss excursion.
“Iran announced its readiness to interact with the world,” declared Iran, a moderate daily.
To some skeptics, however, Rouhani’s comments echoed remarks made in Davos a decade ago by then-President Mohammad Khatami. Khatami wooed the international community and tried to persuade foreign investors to return to Iran.
Many Iranians back then were hopeful of a broad democratic and economic transformation. Expectations are now largely scaled back to some marginal improvements in the nation’s faltering economy, battered by international sanctions.
“We do not want democracy now; we want jobs for our educated youth,” said Kamaran, 60, a civil engineer who asked that his last name not be used for privacy reasons.
Khatami eventually ran afoul of conservatives and left office without having accomplished the broad reforms he had promised. He was succeeded by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose combative administration was blamed for worsening Tehran’s relations with the world. Rouhani took office last year amid renewed hopes of reform.
The moderate daily Mardom Salari praised Rouhani’s remarks in Switzerland in an opinion piece titled “A different Iran.”
“Hassan Rouhani knows very well that the conduct of the previous government has tarnished the image of Iran in the world,” the column stated. “That is why he insists on behaving so well during his diplomatic visits so that the world knows that extremism has come to an end in Iran.”
Rouhani has already pushed for an accommodation with world powers on Iran’s controversial nuclear program, resulting in an interim deal with the United States and other nations. Iran has agreed to constraints on its nuclear efforts in exchange for a reduction in international sanctions.
Many analysts predict that Rouhani’s popularity will plummet should the nuclear deal fall through, dashing the public’s hopes for economic improvement.
“After his election victory last year, Rouhani is raising people’s expectations and if for any reason sanctions are not lifted and the [nuclear] deal ... fails, then we will witness a backlash of frustration,” Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour, an Iranian businessman, wrote on his website.
There was considerable buzz about Rouhani’s comment in Davos on Thursday that reopening of the U.S. Embassy “is not impossible” — a stunning statement considering the mutually hostile U.S.-Iran relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution and seizure of the embassy and 52 hostages.
Conservatives in Iran are still suspect of Rouhani’s planned opening to the West. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper noted Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s statement that the “military option” is still on the table should a nuclear deal with Iran fail. Accompanying that comment was Rouhani’s assurance: “We are not scared, we keep the resistance economy in Iran.”
Special correspondents Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Sandels from Beirut. Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Geneva contributed to this report.
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cc824a17954979e455b1b927b31c360e | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-iraq-attacks-funeral-20130921-story.html | ‘No one is safe in Iraq’ as attacks leave at least 92 dead | ‘No one is safe in Iraq’ as attacks leave at least 92 dead
BAGHDAD — Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, struck a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 92 people Saturday.
The assaults, the latest in a months-long surge of violence, are a chilling reminder of insurgents’ determination to reignite sectarian conflict more than a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.
Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violent attacks in recent months — a level of bloodshed not seen since 2008 — despite appeals for restraint from Shiite and Sunni political leaders.
The attack on the funeral was one of the largest single terrorist assaults on civilians in Iraq in recent years. It happened shortly before sunset in the densely populated Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad.
Police said at least 72 people were killed and more than 120 were wounded in that attack. One bomber drove up near the tents before detonating his deadly payload, and another on foot blew himself up nearby, police said.
The explosions set the tents and several nearby cars on fire, sending a towering plume of thick black smoke over the city.
“I saw several charred bodies on the ground and tents on fire and also burning cars. Wounded people were screaming in pain,” said Sheik Sattar al-Fartousi, one of the mourners. “The scene was horrible. The funeral turned into an inferno.”
He said the first blast went off as dinner was being served in one of several tents set up for the funeral of a member of the al-Fartousi tribe. He estimated that more than 500 people were attending the event.
Civilian pickup trucks loaded with casualties and ambulances with sirens blaring were seen racing from the scene.
Hussein Abdul-Khaliq, a government employee who lives near the bomb site, said the tents were packed with mourners when the blasts went off.
He described seeing several lifeless bodies on the ground, and wounded women and children. The clothes of several victims were soaked with blood, and firefighters had to leave the scene to refill tanker trucks with water as they struggled to contain an immense blaze, he said.
“This funeral was not a military post or a ministry building, yet it was still targeted,” Abdul-Khaliq said. “This shows that no place and no one is safe in Iraq.”
Less than two hours after the funeral attack, another car bomb blast struck a commercial street in the nearby Ur neighborhood, killing nine people and wounding 14, according to police.
Earlier in the day, insurgents launched a suicide attack on a police command headquarters in the city of Beiji, an oil refining center 115 miles north of Baghdad. Guards managed to kill one suicide bomber, but the three others were able to set off their explosive belts inside the compound, killing seven policemen and wounding 21 others, police said.
In other violence, gunmen shot and killed two prison guards after storming their houses in a village near the restive city of Mosul early Saturday. Two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their convoy in Mosul, more than 200 miles northwest of the Iraqi capital.
Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the day’s attacks. Al Qaeda’s local branch in Iraq frequently targets Shiite civilians and security forces in an attempt to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Saturday’s violence came as voters in the northern Kurdish autonomous region cast ballots in local elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s 111-seat legislature. Iraqi Kurds are looking to bolster their autonomy while insulating their increasingly prosperous enclave from the growing violence roiling the rest of the country.
The pace of violent attacks in parts of Iraq outside the three-province Kurdish region has spiked sharply since security forces carried out a deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq in April. Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs have been protesting against the Shiite-led government since late last year, alleging discrimination and criticizing the application of tough anti-terrorism measures against their sect.
Sunni extremists have sought to capitalize on those Sunni-Shiite tensions, which are being inflamed by the sectarian divisions reflected in the civil war in neighboring Syria.
More than 4,000 people have been killed in violent attacks between April and August, United Nations figures show. Another 489 have died so far in September, according to an Associated Press tally.
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c9e83077dd2ec438f8d2981301460233 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israel-palestinians-negotiations-20140330-story.html | Israelis, Palestinians at odds over delayed prisoner release | Israelis, Palestinians at odds over delayed prisoner release
JERUSALEM -- A delay in the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel is the latest disruption to the U.S.-brokered peace talks, with backstage efforts underway to break the impasse.
When the negotiations resumed in July, Israel agreed to release 104 long-serving Palestinians in four stages throughout the talks. In exchange, the Palestinians agreed to refrain from seeking U.N. actions backing their position for the duration of the negotiations.
Three groups of prisoners have been freed but Israel has yet to convene the relevant government committee to approve the final group slated for release at the end of March.
The nine months allotted by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry for the current format of negotiations have yielded little agreement.
The reported U.S. plan to draft an agreed framework to continue the talks beyond the initial period have not succeeded. Alternative efforts to extend the talks past April are tangled in the prisoner release.
Israel will free no more prisoners without a Palestinian commitment to extend the talks. Until it becomes clear what Israel will get in return, “there will be no deal,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. He also said any proposal for extending the talks would be subject to cabinet approval.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians reportedly refuse to consider any proposals for extending the talks until Israel goes ahead with the promised release, although chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement Sunday that “sensitive talks” were underway with the U.S. and Israel in attempts to resolve the issue.
Over the weekend, Israeli media reported an emerging deal for extending the talks involved the release of an additional 400 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied on Saturday that any deal had been reached and said the U.S. was continuing to “work intensively with both sides.”
Kerry has already interrupted a working trip to Europe once to fly to Jordan for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, while U.S. officials continue efforts to salvage the talks.
Sobelman is a special correspondent.
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a07091306b383b51334748ebabedc9aa | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-israel-palestinians-west-bank-economy-20131008-story.html | World Bank: Israeli restrictions cost Palestinian economy billions | World Bank: Israeli restrictions cost Palestinian economy billions
JERUSALEM-- Israeli restrictions in the West Bank cost the struggling Palestinian economy more than $3.4 billion a year, according to a report released by the World Bank on Tuesday.
More than half of West Bank lands are largely off-limits to Palestinians, the report said. Increasing access to these lands could boost gross domestic production by as much as 35%, generate $800 million in additional annual revenue for the Palestinian Authority, cut its deficit in half and reduce reliance on foreign aid, it said.
The report focuses on the economic potential of the approximately 61% of West Bank lands designated as Area C under the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
The agreement stipulated that the lands be gradually transferred to the Palestinian Authority by 1998, but they remain under Israeli security and administrative control. More than 320,000 Israeli settlers live in Area C, and about 70% of these lands fall under their regional councils.
The area has great economic potential, with possibilities for agriculture, Dead Sea minerals exploitation, stone mining and quarrying, construction, tourism and telecommunications, according to the report.
“Unleashing the potential from that ‘restricted land’ -- access to which is currently constrained by layers of restrictions -- and allowing Palestinians to put these resources to work, would provide whole new areas of economic activity and set the economy on the path to sustainable growth,” said Mariam Sherman, the bank’s outgoing country director for the West Bank and Gaza.
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Sobelman is a news assistant in The Times’ Jerusalem bureau.
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860148803638e2585d0ad78dbb2fd448 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-italy-migrant-ship-sinks-off-lampedusa-20131011-story.html | At least 27 drown in another migrant shipwreck south of Italy | At least 27 drown in another migrant shipwreck south of Italy
ROME – At least 27 people drowned Friday in the Mediterranean Sea after a boat packed with more than 240 would-be migrants capsized south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, scene of another deadly sinking last week.
Military aircraft from Italy and Malta dropped inflatable life rafts to scores of people in the water, as ships raced to the site of the accident.
An Italian navy spokesman said 221 people were rescued by vessels from both countries, with the injured taken to Lampedusa by helicopter.
The migrant ship was first spotted by a Maltese military aircraft in international waters, about 65 miles southeast of Lampedusa, according to news reports citing a statement from the Maltese navy.
On seeing the aircraft, passengers on the boat began to wave, upsetting the vessel and causing it to capsize, the statement said. The aircraft reportedly dropped a life raft.
The prime minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, said 27 people were confirmed dead, including three children.
Last week, at least 339 people drowned when a ship carrying about 500 Africans trying to reach Europe caught fire and capsized just half a mile from Lampedusa.
They are part of a desperate tide of humanity, fleeing poverty, persecution and armed conflict, that every year risks their lives in rickety boats for a chance to start over in more affluent Europe. This year alone, about 32,000 migrants have turned up on Italian and Maltese shores, the United Nations has said.
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Kington is a special correspondent.
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f98c36b1933bd40822dfe88f956b31ec | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-john-kerry-praises-syria-bashar-assad-20131007-story.html | Kerry offers rare, qualified praise of Syria’s Assad | Kerry offers rare, qualified praise of Syria’s Assad
BEIRUT -- U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry offered qualified praise Monday for the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, crediting Syrian authorities for cooperating with a United Nations mandate to destroy the nation’s stockpiles of chemical weapons.
In comments in Bali, where he is attending an international economic summit, Kerry said U.S. authorities were “very pleased” at progress in the chemical weapons disarmament plan, calling it “a terrific example of global cooperation,” according to a State Department transcript of Kerry’s remarks.
The top U.S. diplomat singled out Assad’s government for its collaboration with international inspectors now on the ground in Syria and working to carry out the ambitious disarmament blueprint.
“I think it is also credit to the Assad regime for complying rapidly as they are supposed to,” Kerry said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose government helped craft the Syrian chemical disarmament plan, averting threatened U.S. airstrikes against Syria. “Now, we hope that will continue. I’m not going to vouch today for what happens months down the road. But it is a good beginning and we should welcome a good beginning.”
It was a rare note of U.S. praise for Assad, however equivocal. The United States is aiding rebels fighting to oust Assad, and President Obama has publicly called for the Syrian president to step down.
But the chemical weapons destruction plan, and the continued disarray in the opposition ranks, may have provided Assad with some political breathing room. Kerry’s comments on Monday underscored the importance of Assad’s cooperation in the complex chemical disarmament effort, which is scheduled to continue until at least mid-2014.
On Sunday, the U.N. announced that the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles had begun.
Under the U.N. mandate, Syria’s chemical weapons would be eliminated by the middle of next year, an accelerated schedule that experts have called unprecedented, considering that a civil war is raging in the country.
On the ground in Syria, the more than 2-year-old conflict has failed to oust Assad, whose military has achieved some battlefield successes in recent months, helping to secure the capital, Damascus, and parts of the strategic central province of Homs.
Meanwhile, the presence of Islamist extremists in the fragmented rebel ranks, including Al Qaeda-linked fighters, has likely helped consolidate Assad’s support among some core Syrian constituencies, including minorities and the urban elite.
Officials of the United States and Russia have voiced the hope that a Syrian peace conference could be convened in Geneva by mid-November, but no plans for such a meeting have been finalized. Russia is a major ally of the Assad government.
U.S.-backed Syrian opposition factions have insisted that Assad must agree to leave office as part of any peace talks. Damascus has said it is willing to participate in a peace conference but will not accept preconditions calling for Assad to step down.
In recent weeks, Assad has gone on a publicity blitz of sorts, granting interviews to various global media outlets. Among other points, Assad has told foreign interviewers that he may consider running for election next year, when his current term expires.
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patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
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bef9ef039b5c85245818acb021a09715 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-jordan-libya-kidnap-20140415-story.html | Jordan’s ambassador to Libya kidnapped in Tripoli | Jordan’s ambassador to Libya kidnapped in Tripoli
Jordan’s ambassador to Libya was abducted by armed assailants Tuesday while heading to his Tripoli office, the latest official taken hostage in the unstable North African country.
Masked kidnappers opened fire on the vehicle in which Ambassador Fawaz Itan was a passenger, wounding the driver, said Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Nsour in a briefing to members of the lower house of parliament.
The driver was hospitalized, according to Jordan’s official Petra news agency.
The identity of the abductors and their motive have yet to be officially confirmed. Reuters news agency quoted Essam Baitelmel, a member of the team investigating the abduction, as saying the kidnappers wanted Islamist Libyan militant Mohamed Dersi to be released from a Jordanian prison in return for the envoy’s freedom.
Dersi has been serving a life sentence since 2007 for plotting to bomb the main airport in Jordan.
In January, gunmen briefly held five Egyptian diplomats after the arrest of Libyan militia leader Shabaan Hadia in Egypt. They were released after Egypt freed Hadia.
Kidnappings have surged in Libya since an eight-month civil war in the oil-rich country put an end to the autocratic rule of Moammar Kadafi, who was beaten to death in October 2011.
Attacks on Libyan officials and their families also are common. The son of Libyan interim Prime Minister Abdullah Thinni was kidnapped by a militia, which held him for four months, releasing him in January.
On Sunday, Thinni said he would resign after an additional “cowardly attack” by a militia on him and his family. Thinni was installed as interim premier only last month after his predecessor, Ali Zeidan, was dismissed by parliament, which was upset by chronic insecurity in the country.
Thinni, who will step down when parliament names a successor, promised full cooperation of state security agencies to secure Itan’s freedom, calling it a top priority.
Nsour, for his part, emphasized that Jordanian authorities will take all the appropriate measures to protect Itan’s life and ensure his release.
sherif.tarek@latimes.com
Tarek, a reporter from Cairo, is a visiting journalist at The Times sponsored by the Daniel Pearl Foundation in partnership with the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships.
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785e61ef5d525b109ef2948fc7b5fbb2 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kerry-israel-settlements-20140408-story.html | Israeli settlement plans sank peace talks, Kerry says | Israeli settlement plans sank peace talks, Kerry says
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday that Israel’s announcement last week of new housing for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem led to the breakdown of his eight-month effort to reach a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.
Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry said both sides had taken steps in recent days that stood in the way of progress. But he said a turning point came when an Israeli housing agency published tenders for 700 new apartments.
“Seven hundred settlement units were announced in Jerusalem and, poof, that was sort of the moment,” Kerry said.
With the talks seemingly at an impasse, Kerry announced Friday that he and President Obama would review whether the U.S-led peace effort should continue. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians, he said, were willing to make the sacrifices needed for a deal.
The announcement on the housing units came as the Palestinians were refusing to agree to continue the peace talks.
Four days earlier, Israel had decided to delay the planned release of 26 Palestinian prisoners because of the Palestinians’ refusal to commit to continuing negotiations.
Even so, Kerry insisted that the peace effort was not dead. He said Israelis and Palestinians had not halted all communications and that the U.S. stood ready to continue its role as broker if the parties could overcome the dispute over the prisoner release.
“My hope is the parties will find a way back,” Kerry said. “We’re working with them to try to do so.”
He said that even if the parties didn’t resume talks, his effort had been worthwhile because the secret discussions had yielded agreement on several points.
“There has been a narrowing of differences,” he said.
paul.richter@latimes.com
Twitter: @richtpau
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2ea0d8a577f913098dafa9d391db200e | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kerry-mideast-peace-bite-20130523-story.html | Kerry pursues Mideast peace a bite at a time | Kerry pursues Mideast peace a bite at a time
RAMALLAH, West Bank –- Secretary of State John Kerry nibbled away at a Mideast peace plan Thursday, taking time off from a busy political schedule to drop in to a West Bank restaurant for some regional specialties.
After meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Kerry stopped on his way out of Ramallah for a shawarma sandwich, Palestinian baklava and other sweets. (shawarma, a form of shredded, grilled meat, is a popular Middle Eastern snack.)
Kerry arrived in Ramallah in the early afternoon for the meeting with Abbas, his fourth since March, in his effort to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process stalled since 2010.
A Palestinian statement after the meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was short on specifics. It said Abbas reiterated his long standing position that he wants “serious and credible negotiations in order to salvage the two-state solution” and that Israel should stop all settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.
Palestinians are not optimistic Kerry will be able to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a settlement freeze.
At his snack stop, restaurant owner Samer Batrawi said Kerry had turkey shawarma, paid for it himself and chatted about the local economy. Afterward, Kerry walked around the area and talked with Ramallah businessmen.
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355466f723e2fa78b09f1758b3792a02 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kerry-russia-china-snowden-20130624-story.html | John Kerry admonishes China, Russia on Edward Snowden | John Kerry admonishes China, Russia on Edward Snowden
NEW DELHI – Washington would not look favorably if it turns out that China and Russia purposely chose to ignore American desires to apprehend National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on three felony counts, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said on a three-day visit to India.
Terming Snowden an indicted felon, Kerry said all appropriate countries have been notified of his status.
“It would be very disappointing if he was willfully allowed to board an airplane” from Hong Kong to Moscow, Kerry said at a news conference with Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, adding that he “would be deeply troubled” if Russia and China knew of Snowden’s plans, “and there would be, without any question, some effect and impact on the relationship and consequences.”
“I’d urge them to live within the law,” Kerry added. “It’s in the interest of everyone.”
Snowden, 30, an American citizen who has embarrassed the Obama administration by exposing the breadth of U.S. surveillance programs, has eluded U.S. efforts to arrest him. Considered a traitor by some and a folk hero by others, Snowden has kept a step ahead of U.S. authorities who have charged him with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property. The latest speculation is that the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor is headed for Ecuador by way of Cuba and Venezuela, although he appeared to have missed a flight to Havana that he had been expected to take.
Kerry took a swipe at the civil liberties of countries Snowden has chosen to work with in eluding the U.S. “I wonder if Snowden chose Russia or China for assistance because they are such bastions of Internet freedom,” he said.
Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
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Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong spares China a headache
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8b4a25230a34bdca1ec12951c3d8984c | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-kunming-knife-attack-china-uighur-20140302-story.html | China: Mass stabbing attack in Kunming shows depth of Uighur conflict | China: Mass stabbing attack in Kunming shows depth of Uighur conflict
KUNMING, China — Deng Wei, his wife and 8-month-old baby were having dinner in a little restaurant in an alleyway next to this city’s main train station Saturday night when a man and a woman, both in black, came striding by, clutching large knives.
“They were headed toward the station, and I decided to follow them, at a distance. They began slashing people, and when they passed the police kiosk on the corner of the square, the officers did nothing to stop them,” Deng, 26, recalled Sunday in front of the station. “People began screaming. It was chaos.”
The attackers charged into an open-air pavilion used as a waiting area, wordlessly plunging their knives into people at random, Deng and other witnesses said. At least eight more attackers followed, rushing into the ticket sales office and cutting down people as they queued, leaving victims lying in pools of blood on the floor.
PHOTOS: Knife attack in China
By Sunday evening, the death toll from what one newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party called “China’s 9/11” stood at 29 dead and 130 injured. More than 70 remained hospitalized in critical condition. Four attackers were also slain, shot dead by police at an intersection just in front of the station, and one woman was said to be in custody. But that meant at least five other suspects remained at large.
Authorities and witnesses said the assailants were Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but on TV, Chinese authorities displayed what they said was a black flag recovered at the scene calling for independence for the region, which some Uighurs refer to as East Turkestan.
Security chief Meng Jianzhu, visiting the wounded in Kunming, pledged to “mobilize all resources and adopt all means to break this case,” which he said exposed the “inhuman and anti-social nature of terrorists devoid of conscience.”
But whether Saturday’s shocking attack leads to a momentous shift in Chinese authorities’ approach to Uighur unrest and terrorism in general remains to be seen.
Chinese leaders have for years pledged to bring stability — and economic opportunity — to ethnically divided Xinjiang. Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese have been simmering for decades, and a riot in 2009 left nearly 200 dead in the city of Urumqi. Since then, Xinjiang has been beset by a steady string of deadly clashes at police stations and other government facilities.
Analysts said the location and nature of Saturday’s attack — a “soft target” in the balmy, tourist-friendly capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China -- indicates further bloodshed well beyond Xinjiang’s borders is likely.
“It shows that Uighurs are, like Chechens in Russia, expressing their discontent throughout the country, not just where they are based,” said Dru Gladney, a professor at Pomona College and author of “Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic.”
“It’s a sad day for China and a sad day for Uighurs,” he added. “Many Han think all Uighurs are violent, and this could lead to a real backlash.”
Elizabeth Van Wie Davis, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines who has studied Uighur separatism, said the timing — just ahead of two high-profile political gatherings in Beijing this week — was not coincidental.
“Doing it right before the Beijing meetings brings their cause and concerns to the attention of the country, and the international community,” she said.
Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, noted that there have been more than 200 incidents of violence in Xinjiang in the past 12 months, but most of those were on a small scale.
“This is very significant in terms of the numbers of attackers and victims,” he said. “It likely involved planning over several months and it shows they have developed the capacity for long-range attacks.”
Gunaratna called Saturday’s assault “even more significant” than another high-profile attack carried out by Uighurs in October, when a jeep plowed through pedestrians in Tiananmen Square and caught fire. Three Uighurs in the vehicle and two pedestrians died in that attack, and 40 others were injured.
Kunming has a very small population of Uighurs who work almost exclusively in menial jobs. Gunaratna said it was most likely that the attackers traveled to Kunming but had some kind of local support.
“This scale of attack can’t be carried out without local intelligence,” he said, adding that the assault also represented an intelligence failure on the part of security authorities.
Many Uighurs complain of discrimination at the hands of Han Chinese and chafe at policies that they say restrict their religious and ethnic traditions and freedom of assembly and movement. Uighur leaders also complain they have few avenues to express grievances.
They point to cases including that of Ilham Tohti, a Beijing-based professor widely regarded as an articulate and moderate advocate on Uighur issues, who was recently detained by Chinese authorities and charged with separatism.
Gladney said Chinese authorities need to find a way to give Uighurs a greater say in policy making and development projects, as well as occupational opportunities. “They need to get Uighurs more engaged,” he said. “Many feel marginalized and cut out.”
But Davis noted that in many Uighur communities, Uighurs who hold positions in government or on the police force are considered traitors, and reversing such attitudes isn’t easy.
In Kunming, university student Li Ming, 17, said Saturday’s attack was likely to make her more wary of Uighurs.
“I will be more on alert for Uighurs now when I meet them,” said Li, who was canceling a train trip out of fear that there might be more violent incidents in Yunnan. “I wouldn’t say I hate them. I know there are all kinds of Uighurs; some are bad guys but there are good ones too. But I will be more careful.”
Chen Bing, 39, another local resident, said the government “needs to do a better job in areas like Xinjiang and Tibet, improve the security situation and create more jobs for the people in those areas.”
“If you look at the options for Uighurs in Kunming, the only options are selling skewers and melons by the road,” he said. “They’re very low-end jobs.”
On Sunday, there were no Uighurs to be found on the streets of Kunming; it was unclear whether the normal contingent of kebab and melon hawkers had stayed away voluntarily or had been rounded up by authorities.
At the train station Sunday evening, a heavy contingent of police, a few armed with large rifles, stood at the main plaza. An impromptu memorial of flowers and candles lit up the night, attracting more than 100 onlookers.
PHOTOS: Knife attack in China
But aside from a few officers still gathering evidence in the open-air waiting area, the station was back to normal. There were no security checks for pedestrians or automobiles coming into the plaza or customers entering the ticket hall.
Deng, who first saw the attackers while having dinner, was anxious.
“I have my 8-month-old child and my wife here ... and we couldn’t leave as planned last night,” he said. “I am really scared, because the police didn’t do a lot to stop them last night, and today the police presence is not sufficient.”
julie.makinen@latimes.com
Twitter: @JulieMakLAT
Special correspondent Tommy Yang in Kunming and Beijing-based staff writer Barbara Demick contributed to this report.
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53186fd89e676390ed422bb83e2bc7ed | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-latvia-supermarket-collapse-prime-minister-resigns-20131127-story.html | Latvia’s prime minister resigns over deadly supermarket collapse | Latvia’s prime minister resigns over deadly supermarket collapse
Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis abruptly resigned Wednesday, saying he was taking “political responsibility” for a supermarket collapse that killed more than 50 people last week and caused outrage in the small Baltic nation.
Dombrovskis, who took office at the height of the European economic crisis in 2009, told reporters that the country needs a new, broad-based government that will have the support of Parliament.
“I wish to thank Latvia’s society for support during the trying period when the country was battling the economic and financial crisis to return to the path of growth,” Dombrovskis was quoted as saying by the Latvian news agency LETA. “I also apologize for all that we have failed to achieve.”
At least 54 people, including three firefighters, were killed and dozens injured in the Nov. 21 collapse at a Maxima supermarket in the Zolitude neighborhood of the capital, Riga. First, part of the roof caved in, then a wall came crashing down as rescue teams worked at the scene.
According to local news reports, it was the largest loss of life since Latvia declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Dombrovskis’s unexpected announcement followed a meeting Wednesday with President Andris Berzins, who has called the disaster “murder.”
“I wish to ask every person looking ahead to evaluate their responsibility and act accordingly,” Berzins was quoted as saying this week. He is expected to begin talks with political parties next week about forming a new governing coalition.
The cause of the collapse is under investigation, but officials have speculated that poor construction and lack of oversight may have played a part.
A national building inspectorate was phased out under Dombrovskis’ government as part of tough austerity measures introduced amid a deep recession. Latvia received a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund in 2008, but now has the EU’s fastest growing economy.
It enters the Eurozone on Jan. 1.
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Twitter: @alexzavis
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
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3264345199ad1dac39ba86ca15f6ade6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-los-angeles-gangbanging-syria-20140304-story.html | Two men in video say they’re from L.A. and ‘gangbanging’ in Syria | Two men in video say they’re from L.A. and ‘gangbanging’ in Syria
In an expletive-laced online video, two men say they are Los Angeles gang members who are “gangbanging” in Syria and fighting the “enemigos” in the bloody three-year conflict.
The men identify themselves as “Wino” from the Westside Armenian Power gang and “Creeper” from the Sun Valley GW-13 gang, which has links to the Mexican mafia.
Dressed in camouflage and ammunition vests and holding Kalashnikov rifles in an unknown location, the pair appear more interested in theatrics than ideology.
They fire their weapons in the general direction of the “enemigos” without aiming through the scope or explaining who the “enemigos” are. There is no return fire. They give shout-outs to friends around Los Angeles including Mr. Criminal, a rapper with online videos including one titled “Silver Lake Riders.”
Much of the dialogue during the brief YouTube video involves some sequence of the words: homie, Syria, gangbang and a range of expletives.
On his Facebook profile Wino says he is working with the Syrian army alongside the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, although there is no way to independently verify his claim.
The Glendale Police Department says that Wino is Nersis Kilajian, 31, a Syrian national who was living in the U.S. before being deported in 2012 for a felony offense elsewhere. He had several run-ins with Glendale police, authorities say, for offenses including driving under the influence and receiving stolen property. Various spellings of his name can be found on his criminal record.
Little is known about Creeper, though he appears in several photos on Wino’s Facebook profile that say he has been in Syria. In one online comment, Wino wrote that Creeper had also been deported.
U.S. intelligence officials have said that at least 50 Americans have joined extremist rebel groups fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad. But this could be the first time that people with links to the U.S. say they are fighting on the government’s side.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a grouping of local and federal agencies, “is aware of the video and investigating the content to determine any potential threat to Americans or U.S. interests.”
Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Michael Downing said the department’s counter-terrorism operation had spotted the video.
The video has garnered attention because of the incongruous pairing of L.A. gang signs and shout-outs with the Syrian conflict, which has left more than 130,000 dead and caused millions to flee their homes.
Wino is said to be a member of the Armenian Christian community and originally from Aleppo, once Syria’s vibrant commercial hub. Christians accounted for about 10% of Syria’s population before the uprising began in 2011 and have mostly remained uninvolved in the fighting.
But there have been increasing attacks and threats from some Islamist extremist groups, including desecration of churches and seizure of nuns as hostages.
On his Facebook profile, Wino has used an application to check in from two locations in government-held Aleppo.
On the most recent photo he uploaded, a friend commented: “the turkish sluaghterer. proud to have you protect our people dawg, its people like you gonna be written about in our history books to come. modern day fedayi homies.”
Fedayi were Armenian militias.
“I do anythink to portect my ppl,” Wino commented back. “Only my ppl all Armenians and ready to die for my ppl.”
raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com
richard.winton@latimes.com
Special correspondent Nabih Bulos in Boston contributed to this report.
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9f4260a3152beb169cca4b34d92c9e9a | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-malaysia-flight-370-plane-search-missing-20140312-story.html | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search is ‘unprecedented,’ official says | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search is ‘unprecedented,’ official says
BEIJING — Investigators appeared no closer to locating Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Wednesday, as officials defended their handling of the search for the aircraft that went missing five days ago.
At the latest count, there were 42 ships and 39 aircraft scouring the waters and jungles of Southeast Asia, searching for the plane. Twelve countries are now involved with Japan, India and Brunei the latest to pitch in.
“This is unprecedented what we are going through,” Malaysia’s acting transportation minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, said at a stormy televised news conference late Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur. “Coordinating so many countries together is not something that is easy. We are looking at so many vessels and aircraft, so many countries.”
As of Wednesday evening, the fifth day of the search had passed without any signs of the plane, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew members.
That surpassed the 36 hours it took in 2009 to locate the first debris from an Air France flight from Rio De Janeiro to Paris that crashed into the Atlantic, a far deeper body of water than the Gulf of Thailand where the Malaysian flight was last detected.
At the news conference, Malaysian military officials attempted to clear up conflicting statements that had infuriated the Chinese and Vietnamese. They said that the aircraft’s last confirmed contact with the flight was at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, about 50 minutes after takeoff, over the Gulf of Thailand. However, military radar detected an unidentified aircraft at about 2:15 a.m., over the Strait of Malacca, along the west coast of the Malay peninsula, about 330 miles away to the west.
“We are not sure whether it is the same aircraft,’’ said Malaysian armed forces chief Zulkefli Mohamad Zin.
Nevertheless, the search has been expanded from the Gulf of Thailand to two new areas — the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea — and covers a total of 27,000 nautical square miles, officials said.
Earlier in the day, China and Vietnam lashed out at Malaysia.
“We’ve decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia,” Vietnam deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu told reporters Wednesday. “We’ve asked Malaysian authorities twice, but so far they have not replied to us.’’
China’s Communist Party-controlled Global Times blasted the Malaysian government’s conflicting statements in an editorial Wednesday.
“We don’t know which information published by Malaysia is true and which is false, or whether they have released all the information they have so far,’’ the newspaper editorialized on Wednesday. “Is the Malaysian military intentionally hiding something?’’
The Chinese foreign ministry was only slightly less withering, with spokesman Qin Gang saying at a briefing in Beijing: “Right now there is a lot of information, and it’s pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had difficulty confirming whether it is accurate or not.”
Of the 227 passengers aboard the missing plane, more than 150 were Chinese nationals. Some others were of Chinese ethnic origins.
At a hotel in Beijing, family members huddled in a conference room, waiting for any nugget of new information.
“My only hope is for my son to be back. That is more important than anything else,’’ murmured a woman in her 50s, her face red and puffy, who was assisted by two family members as she walked outside the room.
Throughout the day, there were tantalizing clues -- bits of debris plucked out of the busy shipping waters of the Malacca strait, a life raft, but nothing that was confirmed to come from the missing aircraft.
The Beijing News reported late Wednesday that a dead body wearing a life preserver was found in the region, but again there was no indication that the finding had anything to do with Flight 370.
Experts agreed that the search effort is unprecedented in its complexity, because of the number of countries involved, with competing territorial claims in the region.
“The plane is from Malaysia. Most of the area where they are searching is Vietnam. The flight was headed to Beijing and had so many Chinese passengers,’’ said Gao Yuanyang, a professor of at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “It is rare to have so many countries involved in a plane crash.”
Jason Middleton, head of the school of aviation at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said Malaysia had been right to start the search where the plane first lost contact with civilian radar, before expanding the search area.
“The farther away you search, the larger the search area becomes,’’ said Middleton. “I can’t say that any other country would have done it differently or much better.’’
Middleton theorized that if the aircraft had veered so far off course to the west, the pilots might have passed out for lack of oxygen.
“It suggests perhaps a decompression either because of an explosion or a problem with the ... structure. If they turned to the west, looking for the shortest way back to a place to land and passed out, the plane would have kept heading west,’’ said Middleton. “It is just a hypothesis that is not particularly likely, but all the likely options by now have been eliminated.’’
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Twitter: @barbarademick
Nicole Liu and Tommy Yang of the Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
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924b9fb4aafb65f4dfe00346ca35349d | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-malaysia-plane-search-garbage-20140330-story.html | Malaysia plane: Confronting searchers is an ocean full of garbage | Malaysia plane: Confronting searchers is an ocean full of garbage
BEIJING -- The search and rescue teams working off the west coast of Australia seeking the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 discovered what oceanographers have been warning: Even the most far-flung stretches of ocean are full of garbage.
For the first time since the search focused on the south Indian Ocean 10 days ago, the skies were clear enough and the waves calm, allowing ships to retrieve the “suspicious items” spotted by planes and on satellite imagery.
But examined on board, none of it proved to be debris from the missing plane, just the ordinary garbage swirling around the ocean.
“A number of objects were retrieved by HMAS Success and Haixun 01 yesterday,’’ reported the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in a release Sunday. “The objects have been described as fishing equipment and other flotsam.’’
The disappointing results underscored the difficulty the search teams face trying to find out what happened to the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew. The plane disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Australian authorities said Sunday that a naval support ship, the Ocean Shield, will depart from Perth on Monday with a “black box detector” supplied by the U.S. Navy. The Towed Pinger Locator 25 is towed behind the ship and carries a listening device that should be able to detect the black boxes of the plane in waters as deep as 20,000 feet.
The search team is in a race against time because black boxes’ batteries last only 30 to 45 days. The odds are stacked against finding them in time without a trail of debris to guide them. Investigators for now are merely surmising that the flight crashed into the Indian Ocean, based on an analysis of the flight’s path according to engine data transmitted via satellite.
The best-known precedent is the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed over the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. It took two years to find the body of the aircraft and the black boxes, which recorded pilots’ conversation and data, even though pieces of debris were found within five days.
The south Indian Ocean is one of the most remote places on the planet, far from any islands, shipping lanes or flight paths. But the area accumulates surprisingly large amounts of garbage, trapped in the gyre of slowly rotating currents.
“In addition to foul weather, administrative bungling and the vastness of the search area, the search for MH 370 has been compounded by one other factor: the incredible amount of garbage already floating in the search area — and in oceans worldwide,’’ wrote Marc Lallanilla on the website, livescience.com, where he referred to the search for Flight 370 as a “needle in a garbage patch.’’
The lack of confirmed debris has prevented families from achieving any kind of closure over the deaths of their relatives. Chinese families, in particular, have rejected the assertion of the Malaysian government that the plane crashed with no survivors.
“We want evidence, truth and dignity,’’ read banners that Chinese relatives held at an impromptu demonstration at a Kuala Lumpur hotel on Sunday.
Malaysia Airlines said Sunday that it will fly families of passengers to Perth and will set up a family assistance center to providing counseling and logistical support, but will do so “only once it has been authoritatively confirmed that the physical wreckage found is that of MH370.’’
[For the record at 4 p.m. PDT on March 30: An early version of this post incorrectly referred to a Towered Pinger Locator 24 device. It is called a Towed Pinger Locator 25.]
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Twitter: @barbarademick
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759707b7a06661b0c272b95cdc824937 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mccain-syria-rebels-assad-20130527-story.html | Sen. John McCain makes surprise visit to Syria to meet rebels | Sen. John McCain makes surprise visit to Syria to meet rebels
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) paid a surprise visit to Syria on Monday and spoke with rebel leaders allied with the Free Syrian Army about the ongoing conflict with forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
McCain’s office confirmed his visit but declined to offer further comment or confirm details of the talks with rebel leaders in southern Turkey and northern Syria.
In contrast to the Obama administration’s restrained approach to an intervention, McCain has been a strong advocate for U.S. action in Syria, proposing airstrikes and “large-scale” training and arming of rebels in his Senate remarks this month. The senator’s visit came the same day that European Union officials reportedly decided to lift an embargo on providing arms to the Syrian opposition.
Elizabeth O’Bagy, political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprofit providing support to the opposition, said in a phone interview from Turkey that McCain’s office approached the task force two weeks ago about visiting with rebel leaders.
The visit came as part of the senator’s trip to the Middle East, where he met with officials from Egypt and Lebanon, spoke at the World Economic Forum in Jordan and visited American troops in Turkey.
O’Bagy, who accompanied McCain, said the senator met with FSA commanders in two meetings in Gaziantep, Turkey, and in one meeting about half a mile inside the Syrian border at the Bab Salameh border crossing; there, he held talks with Asifat al-Shamal (Northern Storm Brigade), which controls the crossing.
O’Bagy said the rebel commanders told him, “They don’t need more pizza, they need weapons.”
O’Bagy said Gen. Salim Idriss, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and other rebel commanders asked that the U.S. consider giving heavy weapons to the Free Syrian Army, set up a no-fly zone in Syria and conduct airstrikes on Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.
Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime has come into the full spotlight over the last week as government forces, with the support of Hezbollah militiamen, mounted an offensive against rebels in Qusair, a town near the Lebanese border.
O’Bagy said McCain did not meet with as many rebel commanders as planned because of the Syrian government offensive in Qusair.
“Part of the difficulty in arranging this meeting is that many of the commanders McCain was hoping to meet were on the front lines in Qusair,” O’Bagy said.
McCain, for his part, asked the rebels how they planned to reduce the presence of Islamic extremists in rebel ranks, O’Bagy said.
The rebels told the senator that one of their biggest problems was protection against government air raids.
“In an ideal situation, they would have a no-fly zone, and anything that would stop the bombing from the air would be a huge benefit to them,” O’Bagy said.
She added, “One commander said one real importance of a no-fly zone or a safety corridor was they could actually move the transitional government into Syria and build a real viable alternative to Assad’s government.”
The rebel military leader Idriss told the Daily Beast that McCain’s visit was “very useful” and that the rebels needed American help.
“What we want from the U.S. government is to take the decision to support the Syrian revolution with weapons and ammunition, antitank missiles and antiaircraft weapons,” Idriss said. “Of course we want a no-fly zone and we ask for strategic strikes against Hezbollah both inside Lebanon and inside Syria.”
Robert Ford, the American ambassador to Syria who has withdrawn from the country during its two-year insurrection, made a similar visit to Syria this month.
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d5cce77375b7c17368fa6b190deea3e0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexican-vigilante-arrested-homicide-20140312-story.html | Leader of Mexican vigilante group arrested in double homicide | Leader of Mexican vigilante group arrested in double homicide
MEXICO CITY — One of the best-known leaders of Mexico’s vigilante “self-defense” movement has been arrested on suspicion of participating in a double homicide, raising new doubts about the federal government’s strategy of partnering with armed campesino groups in the fight against a powerful drug cartel in Michoacan state.
Hipolito Mora Chavez, a lime grower who gained fame for leading one of the first local uprisings of autodefensa groups early last year in the small city of La Ruana, was arrested Tuesday evening by state officials. The state prosecutor’s office said Mora and other members of his group were suspected of “co-participation” in the slaying of Rafael Sanchez Moreno and Jose Luis Torres Castañeda, whose burned bodies were discovered in the nearby town of Buenavista Tomatlan on Saturday.
Many of the details in the killings remain murky, but the slayings occurred as tensions had risen between Mora’s group and another local vigilante faction, perhaps because of an inter-family spat over the love life of Mora’s niece. Such grudges are not uncommon in Michoacan, where a complex tangle of multigenerational blood feuds can be just as deadly as the dynamics of the drug game.
But the arrest has revived questions about the wisdom of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s strategy of deputizing the vigilante groups as members of Mexico’s Rural Defense Corps and having them work side by side with federal troops and police in the effort to rid Michoacan of the Knights Templar cartel.
“First we coddle the autodefensa groups. Then we put leader Hipolito Mora in jail,” Javier Lozano, a member of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN, tweeted Wednesday. “We’ll see how this schizophrenia ends.”
Peña Nieto’s decision not to disarm the vigilantes has drawn criticism, with warnings about the unintended consequences of ceding the state’s monopoly on power to armed amateurs. There have also been rumors that the Knights Templar has infiltrated the self-defense groups and that at least some of the vigilantes are being used by a competing drug cartel to fight a proxy war against the Knights Templar.
In late January, Mexican Atty. Gen. Jesus Murillo Karam said that at least some of the weapons used by the vigilantes had been supplied by the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel.
At the same time, however, the government has notched some successes since flooding Michoacan with thousands of troops and police in January and working alongside the vigilantes. Federal authorities have killed or arrested a number of Knights Templar members in recent weeks, including the group’s spiritual leader, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, who was slain in a shootout with troops Sunday morning.
Vigilante groups say they have been instrumental in providing the government with intelligence that led officials to Moreno and others.
On Monday, Mora’s vigilante group reportedly engaged in an armed standoff in La Ruana with a rival vigilante group led by Luis Torres Simon, nicknamed “El Americano.” Troops and police had to be sent in to head off a clash.
Jose Manuel Mireles, a vigilante spokesman, said in a radio interview Wednesday that Mora’s niece had been living with Torres but that the relationship soured, and Mora responded by kicking Torres’ mother out of town.
As for the two slain men, Mireles said they had fled the area months ago but had recently returned and had been asking Torres for help “in returning to their properties.”
Mireles said he believed that Mora had nothing to do with the killings.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Twitter: @RichardFausset
Sanchez is a news assistant in The Times’ Mexico City bureau.
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79812067f46c1b83b264acc4c6ac1d6e | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-michoacan-mayor-pacific-port-20140428-story.html | Mayor in Mexico’s Michoacan state accused of kidnapping, extortion | Mayor in Mexico’s Michoacan state accused of kidnapping, extortion
The mayor of Lazaro Cardenas, a major commercial port city in Mexico’s troubled Michoacan state, has been arrested and accused of kidnapping, extortion and links to organized crime, officials said Monday.
The arrest of Arquimides Oseguera was part of an effort to rid Michoacan state of drug lords and their suspected allies in state and local government. It came on the heels of the slaying or arrest of a number of leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel, and after the recent detention of Michoacan’s interior minister for questioning over suspected ties to narco groups.
Oseguera, a member of the liberal Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, took office in early 2012, according to Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper. His arrest was announced by the state prosecutor’s office and the head of the federal government’s special commission on Michoacan.
In recent months, federal forces have flooded Michoacan in an effort to break the Knights Templar’s grip on the state and avoid a confrontation between the cartel and the so-called self-defense citizen militia movement that sprang up in opposition to it.
In November, federal troops and police took over the security functions at Lazaro Cardenas, the country’s second-busiest container port, from the municipal police in hope of stamping out the Knights Templar’s use of the Pacific coast port for the import and export of illicit drugs, and shaking off the cartel’s control of a significant chunk of the non-drug commerce in the city.
Arguing that they had brought Michoacan largely under control, federal officials reached an agreement April 14 with self-defense leaders calling on militia members to register their arms with the government and disband by May 10. That process kicked off Monday, officials said, with registration drives in numerous cities. News media reported that the process was going smoothly as of late afternoon.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Twitter: @RichardFausset
Sanchez is a news assistant in The Times’ Mexico City bureau.
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e00aafe16e1ad384578d0c83f6f6a960 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-michoacan-pena-nieto-20140122-story.html | Mexico’s Peña Nieto denies growth of vigilante movement | Mexico’s Peña Nieto denies growth of vigilante movement
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said Wednesday that the vigilante “self-defense” groups of Michoacan had “in no way” been allowed to expand on his watch, even though the groups began to emerge three months after his inauguration and have indeed grown in scope and power since.
Michoacan’s armed vigilantes went on the offensive this month, seizing control of a number of towns and communities and declaring their intention to directly confront their enemy, the Knights Templar drug cartel, given the government’s inability to root it out of the southwestern state. Peña Nieto’s government was forced to send in a surge of troops and federal police last week to avert a bloodbath.
Peña Nieto’s comments came during a layover in Gander, Canada, as he was making his way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an event, he said, that would be a “great opportunity to promote Mexico.”
The president’s take on the self-defense groups may be part of his administration’s desire to downplay the crisis in Michoacan, which has garnered international attention at the expense of news about the president’s ambitious reform agenda.
At the same time, the administration’s massive response in Michoacan demonstrates that it recognizes the seriousness of the problem there. Alfredo Castillo, the head of a new federal commission created to resolve the crisis, said Tuesday that 4,500 troops and 4,800 federal police had been deployed to Michoacan’s unruly Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land, in an effort to keep the peace.
Federal forces have taken over the security functions in 27 of Michoacan’s 113 municipalities and have rounded up more than 1,000 local police, sending them to special centers that test police trustworthiness. Many local governments are believed to be controlled by the cartel, giving the criminal groups free rein to demand protection payments and otherwise harass and extort money from innocent people.
Speaking at a news conference, Castillo said the government had identified 26 cartel leaders whom it considered top-priority suspects. But he said the government’s most urgent goal in its war on the cartel was to snuff out the group’s ability to do business.
“We are talking about neutralizing their operational, organizational, recruiting and financing capacity,” he said.
For the most part, a tense peace has held in Tierra Caliente since the surge of federal forces. The self-defense groups, in some cases, are cooperating with federal police, helping them identify suspected allies of the cartels. But the vigilantes have also refused to lay down their arms until more cartel bosses are arrested.
The vigilantes are also clashing with the government about the way it is telling the story of the struggle. On Wednesday, vigilante leader Estanislao Beltran rejected a government claim that “isolated” gunshots had broken out the day before in the municipality of Paracuaro.
Instead, he said in a radio interview, a four-hour gun battle had broken out between suspected cartel members and vigilantes. As of Wednesday evening, there were no reports of casualties from the exchange.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Twitter: @RichardFausset
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
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186e1db3f9a6b0819a0bb31da13e4701 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-michoacan-self-defense-groups-20140127-story.html | Mexico to bring Michoacan’s ‘self-defense’ groups into existing force | Mexico to bring Michoacan’s ‘self-defense’ groups into existing force
MEXICO CITY — The leaders of the vigilante “self-defense” groups of Michoacan state have signed an agreement with the Mexican government that transforms them into an officially sanctioned security force, officials announced Monday.
The self-defense groups sprang up last year to confront the Knights Templar drug cartel and moved aggressively this month into territory where the cartel held sway. In an effort to prevent a widespread conflagration, the Mexican government sent thousands of troops and federal police into the contested region, promising to finally go after cartel leaders and demanding that the self-defense forces disarm. But the vigilantes refused.
Now, the government has apparently decided to co-opt rather than confront the vigilantes.
The new agreement transforms them into elements of the Rural Defense Corps, an existing organization under the control of the military. Known as rurales, these groups of armed volunteers have roots in Mexico’s tumultuous 19th century history and have long been used to keep the peace in rural areas when more formal security forces were unavailable.
As part of the agreement, the vigilantes have promised to register their members and their weapons with the federal government.
The accord calls the arrangement a “temporary” one and states that those vigilantes who eventually wish to join municipal police forces will have to meet preexisting guidelines for becoming full-fledged officers.
A number of municipal police forces were disbanded or severely depleted of officers this month after the federal government forced hundreds of officers to take tests measuring their trustworthiness. Many residents suspect their local police of being henchmen for the drug cartel.
The federal government also announced Monday that it had arrested one of the top leaders of the Knights Templar, Dionisio Loya Plancarte, after finding him early Monday hiding in a closet in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan. The government had offered a $2.25-million reward for information leading to his capture.
Though some of the self-defense group members appear to be motivated by a sincere distaste for the Knights Templar’s lawlessness, there is widespread suspicion that at least some of them are linked to a rival drug cartel.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Twitter: @richardfausset
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e903377d4d125202a76ec6623f6a1e5e | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-teen-cartel-member-el-ponchis-released-20131126-story.html | Mexico teen cartel member ‘El Ponchis’ released, headed to U.S. | Mexico teen cartel member ‘El Ponchis’ released, headed to U.S.
MEXICO CITY — A 17-year-old former Mexican drug cartel member, who admitted to killing four people while in the group’s employ, was released from a juvenile detention center early Tuesday morning and is headed to the United States, where he was born, Mexican officials said.
The youth, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, known as “El Ponchis,” was released from the juvenile center in the central Mexican state of Morelos at 2:30 a.m. He then traveled in a police escort to the Mexico City airport, where he was scheduled to fly to San Antonio, said Jorge Vicente Messeguer Guillen, the Morelos government secretary, in an interview with Mexico’s Milenio news channel.
Messeguer said that the youth, who had served all but about a week of his three-year sentence, had family in San Antonio. Once in the United States, Jimenez would be sent to what he referred to as a “support center” where he would be treated as a “boarder,” not as an inmate.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City released a statement Tuesday morning that shed little light on the fate of the youth, who was born in San Diego.
“We are aware of Edgar Lugo’s upcoming release by the Mexican authorities following completion of his sentence,” the statement said. “We are closely coordinating with our Mexican counterparts and appropriate authorities in the United States regarding Edgar Lugo’s release. Due to privacy considerations, we do not publicly discuss details of matters involving U.S. citizens.”
Jimenez caused a stir inside and outside of Mexico when he was arrested in December 2010. At the time, he was 14 years old and already a veteran criminal. His stark circumstances brought new attention to the plight of impoverished Mexican youth who are often recruited by the drug cartels.
After his arrest, he told reporters he had been working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in the gritty city of Jiutepec, near the weekend retreat of Cuernavaca. He said that the gang paid him $200 a week, and that he killed four people by cutting their throats.
He said that he was 11 years old when he made his first kill. He said he killed at the behest of a man who was a suspected cartel enforcer, who threatened to kill the boy if he did not follow orders.
In the 1990s, child welfare officials removed Jimenez and five siblings from their parents’ custody in San Diego. In a 2010 interview with The Times, Edgar’s father, David Jimenez, said that he and his wife had been known to fight violently.
Edgar Jimenez’s grandmother was appointed legal guardian and brought the children to Mexico. But she died in 2004, and Jimenez dropped out of school in the third grade.
“I’m not defending him,” Messeguer said. “But … his circumstances caused him to be a victim as well.”
In a separate TV interview, Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirez said that Edgar’s rehabilitation had been “notable,” and that he would continue it in the United States.
Ramirez said that the youth was not being extradited to the U.S. Rather, he was being sent there because his life was at risk if he remained in Morelos.
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Twitter: @RichardFausset
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Cecilia Sanchez in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
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52983ffac01d338112efb22d604cc3d5 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-middle-east-snow-storm-20131212-story.html | Storm brings unusually heavy snow to parts of Middle East | Storm brings unusually heavy snow to parts of Middle East
JERUSALEM -- A winter storm blanketed parts of the Middle East with unusually heavy snow this week, knocking out power, stranding motorists and closing schools, businesses and roads.
As the cold weather system descended on the region late Tuesday, the United Nations refugee agency expressed concern for people displaced by the brutal war in Syria, many of whom live in tents and other flimsy accommodation. High winds, heavy rain and snow were forecast for days in parts of Lebanon, Turkey and Syria, causing “immense additional hardship and suffering,” the agency said in a statement Thursday.
Such storms are rare in the region this time of year. Jerusalem received its heaviest December snowfall since 1953 on Thursday, Israeli news outlets reported.
“In almost all cases of snowfall since 1950, Jerusalem’s bounties were light” -- less than an inch, the Jerusalem Post said, citing figures from the Israel Meteorological Service. “Last year’s snowy event occurred in January, while the 2012 wintry mix hit the capital in the first week of March.”
The main roads into Jerusalem were blocked most of the day. Mayor Nir Barkat called in the Israel Defense Forces to help rescue what were believed to be hundreds of stranded motorists, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
More snow was forecast for Friday, and authorities in Jerusalem said schools would close for a second day.
The Golan Heights, Galilee mountains and large parts of the West Bank were also covered in white.
Most government offices were shuttered in Israel and the West Bank, although some opened in Ramallah for a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday. Thousands of electricity customers lost power, news reports said.
In the Gaza Strip, high winds and heavy rain brought down roofs in some of the poorer areas, including refugee camps. Streets flooded and sewage lines overflowed. At least 30 people were injured in storm-related incidents, Gaza authorities said.
Special correspondents Sobelman and Abukhater reported from Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively. Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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c660c38ac438c487a90d10bd472845d0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-myanmar-orders-doctors-without-borders-to-cease-operations-20140228-story.html | Myanmar orders Doctors Without Borders to cease operations | Myanmar orders Doctors Without Borders to cease operations
Doctors Without Borders has been ordered to cease activities in Myanmar, leaving tens of thousands of patients without medical care, the Nobel Prize-winning aid group said Friday.
Doctors Without Borders did not give a reason for the move. But local news reports said the government had taken issue with statements made by the group about sectarian violence in northern Rakhine state and accused it of bias toward the ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority.
In a statement, Doctors Without Borders said it was “deeply shocked” by the suspension of its operations after 22 years in Myanmar and “extremely concerned about the fate” of patients under its care around the country.
The group said it was forced to close clinics that provide life-saving treatment to 30,000 HIV/AIDS patients and more than 3,000 tuberculosis patients. It also has been providing primary care to tens of thousands of people living in camps after being displaced by the violence in Rakhine.
The decision came after Doctors Without Borders said it had treated 22 Rohingya Muslims following an attack last month in Du Chee Yar Tan.
The United Nations reported that at least 40 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in the incident, which it was told took place the same evening that a policeman was captured and killed. The government denied that a massacre was carried out by state security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
Despite reform efforts since military rule ended in 2011, journalists are barred from large parts of Rakhine, and humanitarian aid agencies also have limited access, making it difficult to confirm details of the violence that has afflicted the area.
A leaked government memo said Doctors Without Borders’ public comments amounted to “incitement to break the state’s security, rule of law, law and order and peace,” the state-run Myanmar Times reported. The organization was “seeking to create … conflicts there, bias on race and person,” the memo reportedly read.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut also criticized the group in the Myanmar Freedom newspaper for lack of transparency in its work and for hiring “Bengalis,” the term used by the government for Rohingya Muslims, the Associated Press reported.
Denied citizenship in Myanmar and required to obtain the government’s permission to marry, the Rohingya are considered by the United Nations to be one of the world’s most mistreated minorities.
If confirmed, last month’s attack would bring to about 280 the number of Rohingya killed since sectarian violence flared two years ago in Rakhine.
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said it was in discussions with the government about resuming operations across the country.
“In MSF’s 22 years of presence in Myanmar, MSF has proven that it delivers health care to people based solely on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender, HIV status or political affiliation,” the group said.
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Twitter: @alexzavis
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60e7d98e48b7cc7a9a271fe1e2fe6500 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mystery-malaysia-airlines-flight-20140310-story.html | Malaysian flight leaves trail of anguish, mystery -- and little else | Malaysian flight leaves trail of anguish, mystery -- and little else
BEIJING -- Every few hours, a shard of information would drift across the TV screen: An object -- perhaps a door -- had been spotted. A yellow item -- could it be a life raft? -- had been seen. A new oil slick had been discovered, and samples were en route to a lab.
Zhu Daoping spent Monday glued to news, watching for some hint of the fate of his longtime friend and colleague Liu Rusheng, an accomplished calligrapher from Nanjing, China, who also excelled at painting birds and flowers. Liu and his wife were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 early Saturday, bound for Beijing after a cultural exchange trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with a group of Chinese artists, when the plane vanished.
“He’s cheerful and has a great sense of humor. He’s been traveling a lot since he retired and enjoying it, both in China and outside. We went to Cambodia together,” Zhu said. “I’m very anxious -- I just keep watching the news. First, they say they found a door, then they say it’s not true. Then they say maybe it’s a terror attack, then they say, let’s not speculate.”
PHOTOS: Malaysia Airlines jet missing
Despite the efforts of some 40 boats and three dozen planes, the three-day search for the missing Boeing 777 off the southern coast of Vietnam has yielded nothing but dashed hopes for the friends and family members of the 239 people aboard. By Monday evening, Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities said they had yet to find anything linked to the airliner and that the search area was being expanded and the operation “intensified.”
With no material evidence from the aircraft, however, attention was focused on the fact that two passengers had used stolen passports, one Italian, one Austrian, to board the plane.
Malaysian authorities, who said earlier that they had closed-circuit video recordings of the passengers, revealed Monday that they had identified one of the two men who used the passports.
“I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian, but cannot divulge which country he is from yet,” Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told the Star, a major Malaysian newspaper. He added that the man is also not from Xinjiang, China -- a northwestern province of the mainland that is home to minority Uighurs.
Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, said the two men were “not Asian-looking men.”
That dampened speculation that Uighur separatists might have been behind the jet’s disappearance. Uighur separatists have been blamed for a knifing rampage in southwestern China this month that left 29 dead.
Security authorities have cautioned that use of stolen or forged passports is more frequent than commonly assumed and does not necessarily indicate that terrorist forces might have been involved in the plane’s disappearance.
Adding to concerns that foul play might be involved, however, a Taiwanese official said that officials received an anonymous tip last week warning terrorists were targeting Beijing’s international airport.
But the official, Cai Desheng, chief of Taiwan’s national security bureau, told Taiwan’s official news agency that the call received by his agency last Tuesday was “not likely’’ to be linked to the mysterious disappearance four days later of the flight from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Beijing.
Malaysian authorities say they have ruled nothing out as a cause of the Boeing 777’s disappearance. Nevertheless, the anonymous call was one of dozens of possibly inconsequential clues that investigators are examining as they struggle to explain how the flight simply vanished.
According to the report by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, a man speaking Chinese claimed to have information of planned attacks directed against Beijing’s airport and subway system by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group seeking independence for the Uighurs. The caller identified himself as a member of a French-based anti-terror network and said he had called Taiwan’s national airline because he couldn’t reach anybody in Beijing.
As a result, Cai said that Taiwan “stepped up security checks at the airport, especially for flights destined to Beijing.” Security officials also notified their counterparts in Beijing.
Taiwan, which has been self-ruled since 1949, is considered a breakaway province by Beijing, but today enjoys close economic relations with the mainland.
Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for the brutal knifing rampage March 1 at a train station in the city of Kunming in southwestern China. During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Beijing authorities claimed to have foiled amateurish plots by Uighurs to hijack or blow up airplanes.
The missing aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight included more than 150 mainland Chinese. With nerves fraying at a hotel near the Beijing airport where families had been told to gather, Chinese authorities urged Malaysia to step up efforts to locate the missing jet.
VIDEOS: Search continues for missing jet
“We hope Malaysia can fully understand China, especially the mood of the Chinese passengers’ families, and speed up investigation, search and rescue efforts,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
Search and rescue teams from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, New Zealand and the United States were participating in the effort. China’s state-run CCTV news said Beijing had mobilized 10 satellites to help locate the plane. A team of officials from China’s foreign ministry, public security ministry and aviation experts were also dispatched to Malaysia on Monday.
“We are grateful for these efforts,” Malaysia Airlines said in a statement Monday evening.
julie.makinen@latimes.com
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Twitter: @JulieMakLAT, @BarbaraDemick
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of the Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
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2568b775a53411aba9d80d482f9d8660 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-nelson-mandela-interpreter-20131211-story.html | Nelson Mandela memorial: Flap over ‘hand-flapping’ interpreter | Nelson Mandela memorial: Flap over ‘hand-flapping’ interpreter
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The official sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s state memorial service on Tuesday didn’t even know the gestures for “South Africa” or “thank you,” according to representatives of organizations for deaf people.
The man, whose identity has not been made public, just seemed to make up random gestures that bore no relationship to sign language interpreting for deaf people, the critics said.
“It was like getting somebody off the street and telling them to flap their hands around,” Cara Loening, director of Cape Town-based Sign Language Education and Development, told the South African Press Assn.
“There was zero percent accuracy,” said Delphin Hlungwane, of DeafSA, an organization representing the deaf. “He couldn’t even get the basics right. He couldn’t even say thank you,” she told Reuters. “He just invented his signs as he went along.”
Government spokesman Collins Chabane said the government would investigate the issue after events commemorating former president Mandela were over.
Organizations representing deaf people reacted with indignation at the bizarre interpretation, saying it made a mockery of them.
“Get him off,” tweeted Wilma Newhoudt, deaf South African lawmaker, during the service.
The scandal was one of several glaring problems in South Africa’s organization of the Mandela memorial events and funeral. For one thing, there was a large number of empty seats in the stadium for the Mandela memorial; secondly, there were many complaints of inadequate or nonexistent security checks on public attendees at the memorial, despite there being more than 90 world leaders in one place.
There was also the embarrassing booing of South African President Jacob Zuma in front of global leaders, described Wednesday by Chabane as “the wrong thing” and “undesirable.” As well, there was the state-owned television network’s attempts to cover up the jeering of the president.
Other logistical problems, including President Obama’s limousine getting caught in traffic and the government admission Wednesday that too few buses were provided to shuttle mourners to the Union Buildings on Wednesday to view Mandela’s casket lying in state. Hundreds who queued for hours were turned away.
Former South African newspaper editor Nic Dawes dubbed it an “omni-shambles.”
Others said problems were inevitable when pulling together an event of such magnitude in just a few days.
The interpreter in question has been used before at ANC events. South African media reported Wednesday that complaints had been made to the ANC last year about his signing abilities.
Newhoudt said DeafSA complained in mid-2012 about the man’s interpretation of a speech by Zuma but never got a response.
“I don’t know this guy. He doesn’t work for the ANC. It was a government event. Ask them,” spokesman Jackson Mthembu said, according to Reuters.
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Twitter: @latimesdixon
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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b6ed5b5b02cdf3c5874ae27d152e398f | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-antigay-law-uganda-20140216-story.html | Obama: Anti-gay law would ‘complicate’ relationship with Uganda | Obama: Anti-gay law would ‘complicate’ relationship with Uganda
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — President Obama warned Sunday that a harsh new anti-gay law in Uganda would “complicate our valued relationship” with the east African country, which receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year in U.S. aid.
In a last-ditch effort to derail the measure, national security advisor Susan Rice called Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni over the weekend and urged him not to sign the measure. The law includes a provision of life in prison for “aggravated homosexuality.”
But amid news reports that Museveni was intent on pressing forward, Obama said Sunday that the move would be “a step backward for all Ugandans” and would reflect poorly on the country’s commitment to protecting the human rights of its people.
“As we have conveyed to President Museveni, enacting this legislation will complicate our valued relationship with Uganda,” Obama said in a written statement released Sunday. “At a time when, tragically, we are seeing an increase in reports of violence and harassment targeting members of the LGBT community from Russia to Nigeria, I salute all those in Uganda and around the world who remain committed to respecting the human rights and fundamental human dignity of all persons.”
In his first term, Obama dispatched 100 U.S. troops to Africa to help hunt down the leaders of the brutally violent Lord’s Resistance Army in and around Uganda. In addition, the U.S. gave more than $256 million in foreign assistance to Uganda last year.
Obama did not say specifically what changes might come as a result of the decision. But an administration official said Sunday that, if Uganda enacts the legislation, the White House would “conduct a review” of the country’s relationship with the U.S.
christi.parsons@latimes.com
Twitter: @cparsons
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42c3ec7a173f1bd03fc24bc39d31f607 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-immigration-reform-south-korea-20140424-story.html | Obama to pitch U.S. immigration reform from South Korea | Obama to pitch U.S. immigration reform from South Korea
SEOUL -- President Obama plans to honor those who died in the Korean War with a surprising message for a foreign audience: a pitch for immigration reform back home.
At a naturalization ceremony Friday for 13 U.S. service members and seven military spouses stationed in South Korea, he will offer a tribute to the contributions that naturalized American citizens have made through military service, according to an official familiar with the event.
The ceremony offers a rare setting for a recurrent Obama message: that the U.S. will benefit if immigrants who already make the sacrifices of citizenship can enjoy the rights and privileges that go along with it.
The remarks, coming in the middle of an eight-day tour of Asia, will also be the opening message to a South Korean audience worried about national security and looking for reassurance from their ally. After the naturalization ceremony, Obama is to lay a wreath at the National War Memorial, remembering the U.S. role in the 1950-53 Korean War.
The promise of continued support is top of mind in Seoul. Its aggressive neighbor to the north is threatening more missile testing and live-fire artillery practice that typically follows the spring military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea.
The White House harbors no hope that North Korea will change that course of action anytime soon, but on his way to Seoul, Obama professed confidence that the long-term regional strategy and long-term U.S. presence eventually will make a difference.
“We can continue to apply more and more pressure on North Korea so that, at some juncture, they end up taking a different course,” Obama said at a news conference with the Japanese prime minister before leaving Tokyo.
Obama isn’t in Seoul to unveil new policy, but to emphasize the U.S. commitment to regional security.
“The meeting between the two leaders will be an important moment to show strength in the alliance, a strong show of deterrence, that will also be important for helping to stabilize the region,” said Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Obama arrives in Seoul bearing a set of Korean national treasures shipped out of the country by an American soldier during the Korean War.
Last fall, U.S. customs officials seized a cache of Korean treasures, including nine ancient royal seals, from the survivors of a Marine lieutenant who served in the conflict.
Among the artifacts are dynastic seals dating back several centuries. The White House is returning them as a gesture of respect for Korean history and culture.
While Obama focuses on nurturing relationships with Asian allies this week, his closest advisors are mindful of his relative silence on domestic policy back home.
The naturalization ceremony is the rare event that speaks to a foreign and domestic audience alike, one advisor said.
Military service doesn’t mean automatic U.S. citizenship, but special provisions of immigration law allow federal officials to expedite the application and naturalization process for those who have served.
Obama plans to salute those newly minted Americans, along with other U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, during his first hours in the country.
christi.parsons@latimes.com
@cparsons
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9107d1d7714014d7115564e214cdc7b1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-iran-sanctions-20131114-story.html | Obama cautions Congress against fresh sanctions on Iran | Obama cautions Congress against fresh sanctions on Iran
WASHINGTON -- President Obama urged Congress on Thursday not to slap Iran with new economic penalties that could disrupt diplomatic efforts to limit Tehran’s nuclear program, warning that the alternative of a military attack would be “messy” and “difficult” and would not prevent the Iranians from being able to build a nuclear bomb.
Even as he warned that the military option is “on the table,” Obama suggested at a news conference that the U.S. faces a stark choice between an interim deal that carries little risk and a bombing attack with unpredictable blowback.
“No matter how good our military is, military options are always messy, are always difficult, always have unintended consequences, and in this situation never complete in terms of making us certain that they don’t then go out and pursue even more vigorously nuclear weapons in the future,” he said.
Obama said that if the administration and other world powers seal an interim deal, the group would then have months to test whether Iran was committed to accepting curbs on its nuclear program. If the Iranians showed a lack of commitment, sanctions “can be ramped back up” to their current level, he insisted.
Many nations fear that Iran seeks a nuclear weapons capability, despite its denials.
Six world powers have offered Iran a deal under which it would freeze parts of its nuclear program in return for limited temporary relief from punishing sanctions on its oil trade and financial ties. The talks -- which involve the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- are to resume next week.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials have voiced similar reservations about a military attack.
Yet Obama’s comments could open him to criticism from conservatives and possibly U.S. allies that a public display of his reluctance to go to war weakens the pressure he seeks to apply by saying that all options, including military force, are “on the table.”
Some European and Middle Eastern allies have argued that the United States needs to do more -- such as building up its military forces around Iran -- to make its threats credible.
But Obama is seeking this week to make a powerful case to Congress against adoption of new sanctions that could drive Iran from the negotiating table or unravel the international coalition that cut back trade with Iran in hopes of persuading it to accept limits on its nuclear program.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, fearing that the pending deal doesn’t do enough to restrain Iran, are pressing for quick passage of tough new sanctions.
Critics of the likely interim deal, including Israel, contend that the world powers should use all their leverage to force Iran to accept an agreement that would dismantle its entire multibillion-dollar nuclear complex.
But Obama insisted that “it has never been realistic that we would resolve the entire program at once.” Instead, he said, the plan is for an interim deal that would “halt advances” in the program, dilute some of the most highly enriched uranium and impose more vigorous United Nations inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The deal would push off by “some additional months” the date at which Iran could gain a nuclear weapons capability, he said.
“Let’s test how willing they are to actually resolve this peacefully and diplomatically,” he said. “We will have lost nothing at the end of the day [if] it turns out that they are not prepared to provide the international community the hard proof and assurances necessary for us to know that they’re not pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
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Twitter: @richtpau
paul.richter@latimes.com
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0ba96519a73dcd09a4e26a6c0923add1 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-saudi-arabia-human-rights-20140329-story.html | Obama recognizes human rights advocate before leaving Saudi Arabia | Obama recognizes human rights advocate before leaving Saudi Arabia
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- President Obama honored a domestic-violence and child-abuse advocate here Saturday, giving attention to human rights struggles in Saudi Arabia before bringing to a close an overseas trip to Europe and the desert kingdom that was largely dominated by the crisis in Ukraine.
Obama met with Dr. Maha Al Muneef, the executive director of what U.S. officials say is the first organization in Saudi Arabia dedicated to the issues of domestic violence and child abuse.
Earlier this month, Muneef was among 10 women awarded the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award. The State Department says the award honors women who advocate “for peace, justice, human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment, often at great personal risk.”
Muneef, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases, founded the National Family Safety Program in 2005. The organization has led efforts to collect statistics on domestic abuse involving women and children, according to the State Department. Muneef also was closely involved in drafting legislation to protect victims of such abuse. The Protection from Abuse Law, passed by the Council of Ministers last year, for the first time defined and criminalized domestic violence in Saudi Arabia.
“To see the kind of progress that’s been made, her ability to work with the kingdom to persuade many that this is an issue that is going to be important to the society over the long term, I think makes the award fully justified,” Obama said as he formally presented the award to Muneef at his hotel in Riyadh. “We’re very, very proud of you and grateful for all the work you’re doing here. I’m looking forward to seeing you do even more wonderful things in the future.”
The meeting capped Obama’s overnight visit to the kingdom. The president arrived Friday for a meeting with King Abdullah. The visit was intended to underscore the U.S. commitment to the long-standing ally in the Middle East and smooth over tensions in the relationship. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have differed about how to approach the Syrian civil war and Iran’s nuclear program, among other issues.
Human rights abuses, along with other items on the formal agenda, did not get discussed in Obama’s two-hour meeting with the frail, elderly king. Officials said talks concerning Syria and Iran consumed the time allotted for the meeting at the king’s desert retreat northeast of Riyadh.
Shortly after the meeting, Obama received a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the dispute over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The two leaders agreed that their top diplomats would meet to discuss a U.S. proposal.
Obama did not answer a question from a reporter about whether he was hopeful after the phone call.
The president is due back in Washington on Saturday evening after making a stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany to refuel Air Force One.
kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com
Twitter: @khennessey
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8647bad0f60bf235eb07df2ceaeb5a85 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-syria-20130830-story.html | President Obama says response to Syria chemical attack would be limited | President Obama says response to Syria chemical attack would be limited
WASHINGTON – President Obama tried Friday to assure a war-fatigued American public that his response to the alleged chemical attack in Syria would be a “limited, narrow act” and not the beginning of another extended conflict in the Middle East.
“We’re not considering any open-ended commitment. We’re not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach,” Obama said in brief comments on Friday.
Obama said he had not decided how he would respond, although his administration has acknowledged it is considering missile strikes to send a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Obama made the comments before holding a meeting with Baltic leaders in the Oval Office. He spoke shortly after the White House released an intelligence report stating the U.S. government had “high confidence” that the Assad government had launched rockets loaded with a nerve agent on the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The report said 1,429 people were killed, including 426 children.
The White House and intelligence officials have briefed lawmakers on the findings, but aides have suggested Obama does not intend to ask Congress to authorize use of force.
On Thursday, the British Parliament voted not to participate in such a mission, dealing a major blow to Obama’s attempt to assemble a coalition.
“We have consulted with allies. We have consulted with Congress,” Obama said Friday, adding that he did not want the world to be “paralyzed.”
“There is a certain weariness, given Afghanistan. There is a certain suspicion of any military action post-Iraq. And I very much appreciate that,” he said. “It’s important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99% of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal… That is a danger to our national security.”
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U.S. intelligence: Syrian government undertook deadly chemical attack kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com
@khennessey
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6b9cc3bd56325c864bb1c24932fc4acc | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-palestinian-reconciliation-politics-20140423-story.html | Palestinian factions Fatah, Hamas reconcile, to form unity government | Palestinian factions Fatah, Hamas reconcile, to form unity government
GAZA CITY -- The two main rival factions of Palestinian politics and society announced a reconciliation deal Wednesday that would mend a seven-year rift by forming a unity government and holding new elections.
Following two days of discussions between delegations of Fatah and Hamas, leaders of the groups announced the agreement at a joint news conference.
“This is the good news to tell our people: The era of division is over,” Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared. Fatah leader Azzam al-Ahmad said the sides aimed at forming a national unity government within five weeks.
The transitional government is planned to be based on professionals and independent political figures, with no members of either political group.
The reconciliation agreement calls for elections for parliament and presidency to be held around six months after the unity government is formed.
Palestinian government was torn asunder in 2007, when Hamas forcefully wrested control of the Gaza Strip from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, after the Islamist militant movement won elections the year before.
Since then, Gaza has been ruled by a Hamas government headed by Haniyeh, with the West Bank under control of the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas.
The divide has crippled Palestinian politics for years. The current push for unity comes at a time both sides need bolstering. The isolation of Hamas and Gaza has deepened as Egypt’s new government has given it the cold shoulder, and Fatah is divided on how to handle the push for Palestinian statehood, among other things.
Reconciliation agreements between the rival groups have been reached in the past but not implemented.
Israel rejects Hamas as a terrorist group. The international community has demanded Hamas that renounce violence and recognize Israel and past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Abbas “must choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas, a murderous terror organization that calls for Israel’s destruction and is defined as a terror organization by the U.S. and EU. This evening, while talks to extend the negotiations are still being held, Abu Mazen has chosen Hamas and not peace. Anyone choosing Hamas does not want peace.”
The statement from Netanyahu’s office announced the meeting of the negotiating teams scheduled for the evening had been canceled. The teams had been struggling to find a formula that would allow extending troubled peace talks about to expire next week with no agreement and deep discord.
As the Palestinian accord was being announced, Israel’s air force struck targets in Gaza, injuring at least six people, according to Palestinian reports. Israel’s military said the strike was aimed at it stopping what it described as imminent plans to launch rockets at Israel.
Later Wednesday, several rockets were launched toward southern Israel. No injuries were reported.
Special correspondents Sobelman reported from Jerusalem and Abu Alouf from Gaza City.
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7e4054c33eeadf0071906d4426b853f9 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-philippines-typhoon-china-aid-20131114-story.html | China increases aid to Philippines after drawing fire | China increases aid to Philippines after drawing fire
BEIJING -- Stung by criticism that it was playing politics with disaster, the Chinese government said it was contributing money and aid worth $1.64 million to typhoon victims in the Philippines.
Beijing has come under fire at home and abroad for initially providing $100,000 in aid, seen as a reflection of a continuing territorial spat between the two countries over islands and reefs in the South China Sea.
Even the Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, editorialized against the Chinese government.
“If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses,” the newspaper wrote in a front-page editorial on Tuesday. “China, as a responsible power, should participate in relief operations to assist a disaster-stricken neighboring country.”
PHOTOS: Central Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan
Late Wednesday, the Chinese government said it was in fact providing a package that included blankets and tents worth $1.64 million in total.
“The Chinese are a nation who have a lot of sympathy, a people who love peace, who are happy to do good deeds,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a news briefing Thursday in Beijing. “I believe that the vast majority of the Chinese people are understanding and sympathetic toward the situation of the Philippine people.”
The Chinese Red Cross is also providing $100,000.
Jonathan Pollack, an Asia scholar at the Brookings Institution, said China had been missing an opportunity to exercise its “soft power” in the region with its response to the disaster.
“The Chinese dropped the ball,” said Pollack, who was attending a conference in Beijing. “They had the advantage of proximity. They could have offered to send in ships to help and the onus would have been on the Philippines to accept or reject it.”
Pollack noted that People’s Liberation Army troops on Tuesday began a disaster-relief training exercise with the U.S. military in Hawaii, an irony when the real-life experience is on their doorstep.
China’s contribution to help the Philippines is dwarfed by those of the United States, Japan, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, which have each pledged about $10 million.
To a large extent, the contributions reflect the underlying geopolitical tug of war in the South China Sea. Tensions with China have nudged the Philippines closer to the United States. In announcing the U.S. aid package, President Obama was quick to hark back to a historical alliance with the Philippines.
“The areas affected by this storm are some of the same places where Americans and Filipinos sacrificed together to liberate the Philippines during World War II. Today, our message to the Philippines is that we stand with you once more,”’ Obama’s statement read, referring to the 1944 landing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Tacloban, now wrecked by the typhoon, in the fight against the Japanese occupation in World War II.
“As you rebuild from this storm, you will continue to have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”
An estimated 2,500 people died in the Philippines typhoon, with the toll expected to climb.
After an earthquake in Pakistan in September in which 500 people were killed, China gave $1.5 million in cash and nearly $5 million in supplies.
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Twitter: @BarbaraDemick
barbara.demick@latimes.com
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0e5d4b7f19f95e73b7926fc208d8e651 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-pope-copacabana-20130728-story.html | Pope Francis draws millions to Copacabana beach, exhorts youth | Pope Francis draws millions to Copacabana beach, exhorts youth
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Pope Francis, speaking to an estimated 3 million people spread out over Copacabana beach, urged youth on Sunday to become religious disciples to “the fringes of society,” indispensable to a reinvigoration of the church.
Francis presided over the final Mass of nearly a week of activities as part of his first overseas trip as pope and the annual celebration of World Youth Day.
Among those attending the Mass were the presidents of Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia: Dilma Rousseff, Cristina Fernandez and Evo Morales, respectively.
PHOTOS: Pope Francis visits Brazil
As the Mass was winding down and worshippers took Communion, other pilgrims jumped into the sea for a brisk swim.
“Jesus is calling you to be a disciple with a mission!” the pope said. “There are no borders, no limits: He sends us to everyone.”
In his final homily, the Argentine-born pope urged the young to reach beyond their comfort zones to help rebuild a church that has suffered debilitating decline in Latin America, a region once dominated almost exclusively by Catholicism.
He allowed numerous elements into the Mass from the Catholic charismatic movement, a theologically conservative but theatrically boisterous strain that many see as the best answer to the down-to-earth evangelicals who have lured millions of worshipers away from the Catholic Church. Those elements included musical selections and the choice of certain charismatic priests to deliver greetings.
Charismatic Catholics may well be the “foot soldiers in [Francis’s] new evangelization of Latin America,” Andrew Chesnut, an author and professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in an interview. “If he doesn’t use them, he has no chance of stopping the hemorrhaging of Catholics from the church.”
Pope Francis departs for Rome later Sunday.
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be5dad717bbd6b7d516cc148c33a8663 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-pope-francis-mafia-target-20131114-story.html | ‘Nervous’ mafia could target Pope Francis, prosecutor warns | ‘Nervous’ mafia could target Pope Francis, prosecutor warns
Pope Francis’ campaign against corruption in the Catholic Church has made Italy’s most dangerous mafia organization “nervous,” which could make the prelate a target, a leading Italian prosecutor warned Thursday.
The pope’s vow to clean up church finances and break unholy alliances between priests and local crime bosses threatens the money laundering and investment strategy of the ‘Ndrangheta crime family that holds sway in the Calabria region, prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano.
“I cannot say if the organization is in a position to do something like this, but they are dangerous and it is worth reflecting on,” Gratteri told the newspaper. “If the godfathers can find a way to stop him, they will seriously consider it.”
Religion News Service, in a report from Rome, said the ‘Ndrangheta mafia group is considered the most dangerous, the most unified and the most difficult for law enforcement to penetrate.
The warning by Gratteri, one of Italy’s most active organized crime fighters and under protection himself against mob death threats, had little apparent influence on the pope, who has given Vatican security strategists fits with his habits of ditching his protective cordon and wading into crowds to commune with the faithful.
Francis showed up Thursday at Quirinale Palace in central Rome for a meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in his blue Ford Focus and only a handful of motorcycle escorts.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi downplayed the warning from Gratteri, saying, “It’s not appropriate to feed alarmism.” He described the pope and the Vatican staff as “very relaxed.”
Since his election in March to succeed retired Pope Benedict XVI, Francis has lashed out against extravagant lifestyles of clergy and called for a “poor church” to minister to what in many parts of the world is an impoverished congregation. He has also vowed to clean up the Vatican Bank, which has long been suspected of laundering mafia money.
“Those who have up until now profited from the influence and wealth drawn from the church are getting very nervous,” Gratteri said in the interview [link in Italian]. “For many years, the mafia has laundered money and made investments with the complicity of the church. But now the pope is dismantling the poles of economic power in the Vatican, and that is dangerous.”
Gratteri spoke with the newspaper, a relatively new publication with a reputation for anti-corruption crusading, about his newly published book, “Holy Water,” about church-mob alliances in southern Calabria through which much of Europe’s drug traffic flows.
The pope ratcheted up his crusade against corruption in a fiery sermon Monday, quoting the Gospel of St. Luke: “It would be better for [the corrupt man] if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea,” Francis said, according to the Religious News Service report.
“The mafia that invests, that launders money, that therefore has the real power, is the mafia which has got rich for years from its connivance with the church,” Gratteri said. “These are the people who are getting nervous.”
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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62e564d71234c5412976f97b7f57f9a7 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-pope-francis-syria-peace-20130903-story.html | Pope Francis condemns chemical weapons use, calls for peace in Syria | Pope Francis condemns chemical weapons use, calls for peace in Syria
Pope Francis resolutely condemned the use of chemical weapons in a message to his nearly 3 million Twitter followers on Tuesday, but has made it clear in recent days that he opposes military retaliation against Syria for the government’s alleged use of the banned armaments.
“With utmost firmness I condemn the use of chemical weapons,” the pope said in his 138th tweet since his March election as leader of the Holy See.
In Sunday sermons, the pope also called on Catholics and followers of all faiths around the world to observe a day of fasting and prayer on Saturday for peace in Syria and the Middle East.
“Today, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to add my voice to the cry which rises up with increasing anguish from every part of the world, from every people, from the heart of each person, from the one great family which is humanity: It is the cry for peace!” the pontiff told thousands gathered for Angelus prayers in St. Peter’s Square.
“War never again! Never again war!” Pope Francis declared in a tweet Monday.
TRANSCRIPT: Obama’s remarks on Syria
His preachings from the pulpit and from the keyboard appeared aimed at dissuading the religious from backing appeals by President Obama and other Western leaders rallying political forces for punitive airstrikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Obama and allied leaders say they have indisputable proof that Assad’s forces unleashed poison gas attacks in Damascus suburbs Aug. 21 that reportedly left more than 1,400 dead, including 426 children.
The White House has asked Congress to vote on its plan to attack Assad to dissuade him from further use of weapons of mass destruction. According to United Nations figures, at least 100,000 have died in the 2 1/2-year-old Syrian civil war, which shows no sign of ending soon.
“There are so many conflicts in this world which cause me great suffering and worry, but in these days my heart is deeply wounded in particular by what is happening in Syria and anguished by the dramatic developments which are looming,” the pope said, an apparent reference to the threatened airstrikes.
“I appeal strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from deep within me. How much suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed!”
The pope said judgments about responsibility for the deaths of innocents shouldn’t be made by laymen.
“There is the judgment of God, and also the judgment of history, upon our actions,” he said, “from which there is no escaping.”
DOCUMENT: U.S. chemical weapons intelligence report
In a Tuesday analysis for the National Catholic Reporter, Jesuit priest Father Thomas Reese examined the opinions expressed by theological ethicists on whether there exists moral justification for an attack on Syria. He found the religious leaders to be deeply frustrated by the lack of viable options for preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction and the uncertain consequences that would follow airstrikes that neither destroy the chemical weapons stockpiles nor create conditions for negotiating an end to the war.
Like politicians debating the need and efficacy of military intervention, Reese concluded, “moralists are appalled by what is happening in Syria but are just as unhappy about the options available.”
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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555b7916acb0c785f16f60599038bf5e | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-putin-obama-summit-snowden-20130807-story.html | Nixed Putin-Obama summit not really about Snowden, analysts say | Nixed Putin-Obama summit not really about Snowden, analysts say
President Obama’s decision to skip a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while he is in Russia next month has been cast by some political commentators and the White House itself as censure of the Kremlin’s grant of temporary asylum to fugitive espionage suspect Edward Snowden.
Two prominent Russia analysts responded with gloomy accounts of the summit cancellation and its significance for the future of U.S.-Russia relations, but both argued that Snowden had little to do with it.
The scrapped Putin-Obama meeting that was to have been on the eve of a Sept. 5-6 Group of 20 gathering in St. Petersburg “marks the formal end of President Barack Obama’s reset policy,” proclaimed Dmitri Trenin, a veteran political and security analyst who directs the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Although Snowden’s refuge in Moscow was identified by the White House as a significant factor in the decision, Trenin deemed it at most “a pretext.”
So, too, did Steven Pifer, a retired career foreign service officer who heads the arms control initiative at Brookings Institution. He dismissed the Snowden affair as a mere “distraction” in the deteriorating U.S.-Russian relationship brought on by a cascade of more fundamental disagreements.
Trenin lamented Obama’s decision to cancel on Putin as heralding a policy of putting more pressure on Russia to appease critics in Washington. Since the Kremlin gave Snowden permission to enter Russia after a five-week holdout at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, politicians in Washington have been clamoring for a retaliatory gesture, suggesting Obama skip the St. Petersburg meeting or, better yet, call a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in the southern Russian resort of Sochi.
A retired Red Army officer and former nuclear negotiator in the Soviet era, Trenin likened Obama’s cancellation of his meeting with Putin to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev calling off a 1960 summit with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to protest the U-2 spy plane incident.
“The decision will leave its mark on U.S.-Russian relations,” Trenin warned in a post. “The atmosphere will grow thicker, and cooperation even harder to obtain. The Kremlin will likely interpret the move by the White House as a sign of Obama’s political vulnerability and conclude that not much can be done with the present administration.”
Pifer, who spent much of his 25-year diplomatic career in the Soviet Union and its former empire, argued that it is Putin who has become irrelevant.
Obama wanted a more collaborative relationship with Moscow during his first four years in office because he wanted to show progress on nuclear arms control and get Russian cooperation on the flow of U.S. troops and equipment into Afghanistan for the fight against Muslim extremists.
Those first-term objectives have been fulfilled with a new START agreement framework and the winding down of U.S. military operations south of Russia’s Central Asian borders. And the prospects for progress on what have become more divisive issues -- Moscow’s backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad and its reluctance to sanction Iran over its nuclear program -- are so poor as to warrant no further investment, Pifer suggested in a commentary in The Moscow Times.
“Can the positive momentum in bilateral relations of 2009-10 be restored? Probably not. The broader dynamics of the relationship today differ,” Pifer said, noting that Putin’s crackdown on opponents and dissent in Russia have made him “less attractive as an international partner.”
In addition to their deep differences over Syria and Iran, Moscow and Washington have been engaged in an exchange of recriminations over each other’s human rights records. Russian lawmakers have cast foreign relief workers and democracy-building advisors as Western spies bent on undermining national security, and laws have been enacted banning American couples from adopting Russian orphans and criminalizing public displays of support for gay rights.
The U.S. Congress, for its part, has passed the Magnitsky Act, a law listing Russian human rights abusers and barring them from the United States.
The Kremlin’s decision last week to allow National Security Agency whistle-blower Snowden to take refuge in Russia from U.S. criminal charges of espionage and theft was a symptom, not the cause, of the former superpowers’ troubled relationship, both Trenin and Pifer argued.
Joining in the “it’s not about Snowden” commentariat was former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Strobe Talbott.
“Obama v Putin: Summits need deliverables,” Talbott said via Twitter. “The now-non-summit was likely to get nowhere on arms control, missile defense, trade/investment.”
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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e2295c9cbae704d26ed75e1ea3d70772 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-putin-security-olympics-20140119-story.html | Putin vows to keep Sochi Olympics terror-free | Putin vows to keep Sochi Olympics terror-free
MOSCOW -- The Kremlin understands the scope of the terrorism problem it faces in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics and is taking ample measures to prevent any potential attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview that aired Sunday.
“We do everything with ... the clear understanding of the operational situation developing around Sochi and in the region as a whole,” Putin said in an interview recorded Friday in Sochi with a number of Russian and foreign television networks, including ABC.
“We have a perfect understanding of the scope of the threat and how to deal with it and how to prevent it. I hope that our law enforcement agencies will deal with it with honor and dignity, the way it was during other major sports and political events,” he said.
About 40,000 police and special forces officers will be enforcing security at the Games under the command of a special round-the-clock headquarters, Putin said. Also, as of Jan. 7, a special regime of people and vehicles was introduced in the area around Sochi, he said.
“Our task as organizers is to ensure the security of athletes and guests at this major sports event, and we will do our best,” the president said. “We will protect our air and sea space as well as the mountain cluster.”
Putin added that the concentration of measures in and around Sochi will not undermine security in other parts of Russia.
“We have enough such means provided by the Federal Security Service, the Interior Ministry and the army units that will be engaged in ensuring security too, as I have already said, across the sea area and in the airspace,” Putin said.
“If anybody feels it is necessary for them to employ their own security measures, those are welcome as well, but it needs, of course, to be done in cooperation with the Olympic Games organizers and our special services.”
Security concerns have grown ahead of the Winter Games after three terrorist attacks have been carried out by suicide bombers, one in October and two at the end of December.
The attacks rocked the Russian industrial center of Volgograd, about 400 miles north of Sochi, killing more than 40 people and injuring dozens. They were followed by a number of lower-scale attacks and bombings in the southern province of Stavropol and in Dagestan, a volatile republic in the restive North Caucasus region.
North Caucasus Islamist resistance commander Duku Umarov declared in a a video statement distributed on the Internet last June that his fighters will use “maximum force” to keep the Sochi Olympic Games from being “held on the bones of our ancestors.”
Last week, the head of Chechnya and Putin’s staunchest Caucasus loyalist, Ramzan Kadyrov, said that since then, Umarov has been killed. Kadyrov said he based his assertion on intercepted phone conversations among rebel leaders, but the information has not been confirmed by Russian authorities.
Putin said that in matters of security, Russian officials have been maintaining “a direct professional interaction” with colleagues in other countries.
“Understanding the full scope of problems in terms of security, we still have great experience in hosting such events and we will use it,” he said.
sergei.loiko@latimes.com
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546d3a91cddc8a4c6cd5ceac7fb8af17 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-opposition-alexei-navalny-court-decision-20130719-story.html | Why did a Russian court reverse itself on Alexei Navalny? | Why did a Russian court reverse itself on Alexei Navalny?
MOSCOW -- Heads were spinning Friday when a Russian court ordered the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his former business partner the day after convicting the men of embezzlement and sending them to prison in handcuffs.
Even experienced lawyers and judges were taken by surprise.
“From the procedural point of view, what happened was totally by the book, but in terms of Russian judicial practice it was kind of unique,” said Tamara Morshchakova, a former deputy chair of the Constitutional Court. “I can hardly remember a case when prosecutors asked for the release of a convicted person the day after getting the sentencing they were working for.”
So what happened? There are a number of theories.
Nikolay Svanidze, a popular television anchor and member of the Presidential Council on Civic Society and Human Rights, said the Russian judicial system is essentially an extension of the government and probably was following instructions from the Kremlin.
“The fact that Navalny was ordered to be released the next day can only mean that the Kremlin was taken aback by the quick and uniformly negative reaction of the world political establishment and by a spontaneous and massive response from thousands of young people in Russia who joined protest actions in many cities and towns across the country,” Svanidze told The Times.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t afford to be seen to be suppressing civic society on the eve of a visit by President Obama and with the Winter Olympics coming to Sochi in 2014. The United States and a number of other Western governments had expressed concern about what they termed an example of biased, politically motivated justice.
“There must be some real infighting between two different factions in the Kremlin over what line to pursue toward Navalny and the opposition in general,” Svanidze said. “Or else the Kremlin doesn’t have a clue what to do next, and hence the embarrassing convulsions.”
Lilia Shevtsova, a senior researcher with Moscow Carnegie Center, suggested another reason. Navalny, a lawyer and popular blogger, was a candidate in the Moscow mayoral election in September. Although he garnered just 8% support in recent opinion polls, excluding him could taint a likely win by Putin’s preferred candidate, the president’s former chief of staff and Moscow’s acting mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.
Shevtsova said Putin is still “testing the water” and figuring out the degree of repression he can get away with.
“They realized at some point that they can still use Navalny to legitimize the forthcoming Moscow mayoral election and put him in prison later, when he loses at the polls,” she said.
The official reason provided by the court was that Thursday’s verdict did not take into account Navalny’s candidacy and that he should be allowed to campaign while a decision is made on his appeal. There was no reason to suspect that “the convict may hide away … continue his criminal activities, destroy the evidence or hamper the investigation in any other way,” the court said.
Sobyanin welcomed the court’s decision. “We have done our best to register him, so that Muscovites could have more options,” he told reporters Friday.
Navalny has been an outspoken critic of Putin, calling the Russian leader a thief and his party, United Russia, a group of swindlers and thieves. The criticism contributed to the ruling party’s humiliating 50% showing in parliamentary elections in December.
On Thursday, a district court in the regional capital of Kirov sentenced Navalny and his former business partner, Pyotr Ofitserov, to five and four years in prison respectively, and a $15,000 fine each for allegedly embezzling the equivalent of $530,000 from a local timber company in 2009.
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07e28efbbb6ed6db239c42861ae995bd | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snow-israel-egypt-20131213-story.html | Snow closes roads in Israel, is a source of wonder in Egypt | Snow closes roads in Israel, is a source of wonder in Egypt
CAIRO -- Snow coated domes and minarets Friday as a record Middle East storm compounded the suffering of Syrian refugees, sent the Israeli army scrambling to dig out stranded motorists and gave Egyptians a rare glimpse of snow in their capital.
Nearly three feet of snow closed roads in and out of Jerusalem, which is set in high hills, and thousands in and around the city were left without power. Israeli soldiers and police rescued hundreds trapped in their cars by snow and ice. In the West Bank, the branches of olive trees groaned under the weight of snow.
In Cairo, where local news reports said the last recorded snowfall was more than 100 years ago, children in outlying districts capered in white-covered streets, and adults marveled at the sight, tweeting pictures of snow-dusted parks and squares. In other parts of the city, rain and hail rocketed down.
Photos: Rare snow blankets Middle East
On social media, some joked that the snowfall was the mystical work of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, the military strongman who is the focus of something of a cult of personality among his followers. Sisi led the coup five months ago against the highly unpopular but democratically elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.
Storm-driven waves lashed Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, and fishermen in the ancient port city of Alexandria were warned by authorities against putting out to sea. In the Sinai Peninsula, snow fell on Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine’s monastery at its foot. Sleet washed the dusty fronds of desert palm trees.
The inclement weather worsened the situation for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, where many live in makeshift camps, abandoned buildings and other temporary sites lacking heat and protection from the elements.
In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, many refugees were digging out snow from their provisional shelters amid subfreezing conditions. The situation is likely worse for multitudes of displaced people inside rebel-held and contested areas of Syria, where clashes and blockades by both sides in the country’s civil war have severely hampered delivery of aid.
In Israel, where the storm was described as the heaviest December snowfall since 1953, thick clouds temporarily closed Ben-Gurion International Airport, causing the diversion of two international flights to Cyprus. Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, likened the storm to a snow tsunami.
Staff writer King reported from Cairo and special correspondent Sobelman from Jerusalem. Staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report from Beirut.
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304b63a3eba249c0fc1221634b177949 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-south-korean-prime-minister-offers-to-resign-over-ferry-sinking-20140426-story.html | South Korean prime minister offers to resign over ferry sinking | South Korean prime minister offers to resign over ferry sinking
JINDO, South Korea — South Korea’s prime minister offered to resign Sunday over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking, blaming “deep-rooted evils” and societal irregularities for a tragedy that has left more than 300 people dead or missing and led to widespread shame, fury and finger-pointing.
The resignation offer comes amid rising indignation over claims by the victims’ relatives that the government didn’t do enough to rescue or to protect their loved ones. Most of the missing and dead were high school students on a school trip. Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry that sank April 16, a prosecutor said.
South Korean executive power is largely concentrated in the president, Park Geun-hye, so the resignation offer by Prime Minister Chung Hong-won appears to be largely symbolic. There was no immediate word from Park about whether she would accept Chung’s resignation.
Chung was heckled by relatives and his car was blocked when he visited a shelter on an island near the site of the sinking a week ago. On Sunday, he issued an extraordinary statement to reporters in Seoul on the national tragedy.
“As I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as prime minister,” Chung said. “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”
Meanwhile, Yang Jung-jin of the joint investigation team said two helmsmen and two members of the steering crew were taken in on preliminary arrest warrants issued late Friday. Formal arrest warrants were issued Saturday night. Eleven other crew members, including the captain, had been formally arrested earlier.
All are accused of negligence and of failing to help passengers in need as the ferry Sewol sank. The captain initially told passengers to stay in their rooms and took half an hour to issue an evacuation order, by which time the ship was tilting too severely for many people to get out.
Divers have recovered 187 bodies and 115 people are believed to be missing, though the government-wide emergency task force has said the ship’s passengers list could be inaccurate. Only 174 people survived, including 22 of the 29 crew members.
The seven surviving crew members who have not been arrested or detained held non-marine jobs such as chef or steward, Yang said in a telephone interview from Mokpo, the southern city near the wreck site where prosecutors are based.
South Korean television aired video of police escorting the four men to court. All four wore baseball caps that hid their faces, and at least one was limping.
Capt. Lee Joon-seok told reporters after his arrest that he withheld the evacuation order because rescuers had yet to arrive and he feared for passengers’ safety in the cold water. Crew members have also defended their actions.
Helmsman Oh Yong-seok, one of those arrested Saturday, has said he and several crew members did their best to save people. He said that he and four crew members worked from nearby boats to smash windows on the sinking ferry, dragging six passengers stuck in cabins to safety.
Officials in charge of the search effort said divers had reached two large rooms where many of the lost may lie dead, but the search has been suspended since Saturday because of bad weather. Currents were also strong, as they were in the first several days of the search, when divers struggled in vain even to get inside the submerged vessel.
The two rooms where searchers hope to find more of the missing soon are sleeping units designed for many people — one in the stern and one in the bow. Fifty students from Danwon High School in Ansan were booked into one of them. Students from the city near Seoul make up more than 80 percent of the dead and missing; they had been on their way to the southern tourist island of Jeju.
Large objects that toppled when the ferry tipped over and sank are believed to be keeping divers from reaching bodies in at least one of the rooms.
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries also said it would soon change ferry systems so that passenger, vehicle and cargo information is processed electronically. There is not only uncertainty about how many people were on the Sewol, but a huge discrepancy regarding the amount of cargo it was carrying when it sank.
The Sewol was carrying an estimated 3,608 tons of cargo, according to an executive of the company that loaded it. That far exceeds what the captain claimed in paperwork — 150 cars and 657 tons of other cargo, according to the coast guard — and is more than three times what an inspector who examined the vessel during a redesign last year said it could safely carry.
Yang, the prosecutor, said that the cause of the sinking could be due to excessive veering, improper stowage of cargo, modifications made to the ship and tidal influence. He said investigators would determine the cause by consulting with experts and using simulations.
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675595e46ab363fa335af9a0b71d403c | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-state-congress-iran-sanctions-20131003-story.html | State Dept. official urges Congress to delay new Iran sanctions | State Dept. official urges Congress to delay new Iran sanctions
WASHINGTON – A senior U.S. diplomat urged Congress to delay tough new Iran sanctions legislation until after upcoming negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program for fear of undermining the talks.
Wendy Sherman, the State Department’s third-ranking official, told senators Thursday morning she would prefer a delay so that she could tell Iranian negotiators at the mid-October meeting in Geneva that “this is your chance” to propose an acceptable deal to curb Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
“We do believe it would be helpful for you to at least allow this meeting to happen on the 15th and 16th of October before moving forward to consider these new sanctions,” Sherman, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
She said the administration doesn’t necessarily object to new sanctions, and would be willing to work with Congress after the meeting to determine what kind of sanctions might build additional pressure on Iran. She stopped short of endorsing the pending legislation.
The negotiators will meet in Geneva for another attempt at a deal following weeks of conciliatory overtures from each side. President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone Friday about the new diplomatic effort after years of stalemate.
The administration has been wary about Congress’ desire to keep hitting Iran’s economy with new sanctions, fearing too much pressure could threaten the international coalition that is now cooperating with sanctions.
But administration officials have been happy to use the threat of sanctions to try to build pressure on Iran to agree to a nuclear deal, provided it doesn’t go too far and make Tehran unwilling to deal.
Sherman said administration officials will be happy after the meeting to “go back and look at what pressure needs to be added.”
A House bill that was passed in July and is now pending in the Senate is the toughest sanctions bill ever passed by the House. It would cut Iran’s oil exports, which provide 80% of government revenue, almost to zero.
Asked about the administration’s negotiating strategy, Sherman said officials wouldn’t lift major sanctions “any time soon” but might offer the Iranians other short-term relief if it took steps to delay its nuclear program.
“The fundamental large sanctions that we have in place should not disappear anytime soon, unless all of our concerns are addressed by the Iranians,” she said.
Sherman said officials were looking for steps that the Iranians could take to “build confidence” and provide time for negotiations, without allowing Iran an opportunity to keep pushing ahead with the program.
She said of the Iranians: “we know that deception is part of the DNA.”
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057d5e3228e8dc0266eb299bf80a024d | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-assad-denies-use-of-chemical-weapons-20130826-story.html | Syria’s Assad denies use of chemical weapons | Syria’s Assad denies use of chemical weapons
BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad labeled allegations that Syrian forces deployed chemical weapons as “preposterous” and “completely politicized,” according to comments published Monday from an interview with a Russian newspaper.
“How is it possible that any country would use chemical weapons, or any weapons of mass destruction, in an area where its own forces are located?” Assad asked in the interview with Izvestia, according to a translation provided by Syria’s official news agency. “This is preposterous! These accusations are completely politicized and come on the back of the advances made by the Syrian Army against the terrorists.”
For months, Syrian forces have been engaged in an aggressive offensive outside Damascus aimed at pushing back and eliminating rebels, whom the government routinely refers to as terrorists.
Opposition activists have alleged that hundreds of civilians were killed Wednesday in a poison-gas bombardment of the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a rebel stronghold. Though the opposition says the targeted districts were under rebel control, Assad pointed out that the disputed districts are adjacent to Syrian military positions.
Syrian authorities and their Russian allies have charged that it was the rebels who unleashed chemical agents in a bid to discredit the government and spur a U.S.-led military attack on Syrian forces. The opposition has denied using chemical arms.
Independent experts who have seen video of reported victims of last week’s suspected attack say the images are inconclusive, but could point to use of some kind of chemical agent.
The Syrian president’s comments -- his first public remarks about the alleged poison-gas strike -- came as United Nations inspectors reportedly headed early Monday to the area where the suspected attack took place. On Sunday, Syria agreed to allow access to a 20-member U.N. technial team that was already on the ground in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
In the interview, Assad said Syria had sought “guidelines” to ensure that any evidence gathered by the U.N. is analyzed in an unbiased fashion.
“The issue is not only how the investigation will be conducted but also how the results will be interpreted,” Assad told Izvestia. “We are all aware that instead of being interpreted in an objective manner, these results could easily be interpreted according to the requirements and agendas of certain major countries. Certainly, we expect Russia to block any interpretation that aims to serve American and western polices.”
On Sunday, the Obama administration dismissed as “too late” Syria’s decision to allow access for U.N. experts. The White House said there was “very little doubt” that Syrian forces had used poison gas against civilians, a statement that appeared to move the U.S. closer to a military strike against Syria in response.
On Monday, Russia said that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had warned his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, about the “extremely dangerous consequences” of launching military action against Syria.
In rejecting allegations that Syria deployed poison gas, Russian officials have argued that rebels had a clear motivation -- to spur a Western-led attack on Syrian forces -- while Assad had every reason to avoid any action that could spur international intervention at a time when his forces were winning the more than two-year war.
“The West does not want to answer the main question: Why would Assad use chemical weapons?” the head of Russia’s parliamentary international affairs committee, Aleksey Pushkov, asked on his Twitter account, according to BBC Monitoring, which translates foreign media reports. “To give grounds for invasion? To dig his own grave?”
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patrick.mcdonell@latimes.com
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86645e51d9da8403c148efc6d84ce586 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-chemical-weapons-deadline-20131209-story.html | Agency ridding Syria of chemical weapons warns deadline to be missed | Agency ridding Syria of chemical weapons warns deadline to be missed
The international effort to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons is likely to miss its Dec. 31 deadline for getting the most toxic of the poison gases out of the war-torn country, the mission chief said Monday.
“In view of the circumstances in this country, it will be quite difficult to meet this timeline,” Ahmet Uzumcu, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told a news conference in Oslo.
Uzumcu, in the Norwegian capital to collect his organization’s Nobel Peace Prize, said that a Feb. 5, 2014, deadline for removing a second tier of chemical arms from Syria would also likely see “a few days’ delay.”
Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad and rebel forces have been fighting for control of strategic highways connecting Damascus to the coast. Because of the volume of chemical arms and substances to be removed, the evacuation must be in overland convoys to the port of Latakia for at-sea destruction.
The Damascus government announced on television Monday that its monthlong offensive to recapture the route through the mountainous Qalamoun area had succeeded in ousting “terrorists,” the term it uses to describe the rebels. However, the British-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights warned that the road to the port of Latakia remained vulnerable to rebel attack.
In spite of the anticipated setbacks in the scheduled removal of the chemical weapons, Uzumcu said his organization expected to have all of the toxic gases and nerve agents out of Syria by the mission’s final deadline of mid-2014.
The Hague-based organization has been tasked with implementing an agreement between Russia and the United States to eliminate Syria’s estimated 1,300 tons of sarin, mustard gas and other lethal substances to prevent further use of the prohibited weapons. United Nations inspectors determined earlier this fall that sarin gas had been used in Aug. 21 attacks on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus in which more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed.
Assad agreed to cooperate with the U.S.-Russia plan to destroy his chemical arsenal under threat of airstrikes by the United States and other Western countries to punish what they said was a Syrian government-ordered massacre.
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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7f20b1f28224a07f56ce3c3a3b0e0e01 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-france-us-airstrikes-ally-20130830-story.html | France, ironically, stands as strongest U.S. ally in sanctioning Syria | France, ironically, stands as strongest U.S. ally in sanctioning Syria
As President Obama weighs options for sanctioning Syria over alleged chemical weapons use, France, which defiantly opposed U.S. intervention in Iraq a decade ago, has emerged as Washington’s staunchest supporter for punitive air strikes.
After the British Parliament on Thursday rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to authorize military action against Syria, French President Francois Hollande said Friday that the British decision wouldn’t weaken his government’s commitment to sanction the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“The chemical massacre of Damascus cannot and must not remain unpunished,” Hollande said in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. “There are few countries with the capacities to inflict sanctions with the appropriate means ... France is among those. It is ready.”
Hollande brushed off the 285-272 vote in Britain’s House of Commons against the measure authorizing military intervention in Syria as its right.
“Every country is sovereign in deciding whether or not to participate in an operation,” Hollande told the newspaper.
France, along with Germany, was one of the most vocal opponents of military action in Iraq in pursuit of U.S. claims that President Saddam Hussein had hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction. France’s then-Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin drew raucous applause at the United Nations in his Feb. 14, 2003, speech against the impending U.S.-led invasion that occurred weeks later.
Russia, China and Iran have issued warnings in the past few days that any strike against the Assad regime for the suspected Aug. 21 use of chemical weapons runs the risk of igniting a wider war in the Middle East.
Opposition to striking Syria, at least before a U.N. inspection team reports its findings from the site of suspected poison gas use, also intensified at a meeting of foreign ministers at the world body headquarters.
A group of U.N. investigators wrapped up its field work on Friday and was to leave Syria early Saturday to report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The delegation that visited the Damascus suburbs where chemical attacks are suspected was charged only with determining whether the prohibited substances were used, not with identifying whether it was Assad’s forces or insurgent groups that used them.
“If you do ask the United Nations to investigate something, it would be helpful, I have thought, to at least get the results of that investigation,” before acting to punish the suspected violators, said John Ashe, U.N. ambassador for Antigua and Barbuda and president-elect of next month’s U.N. General Assembly.
Argentina, which held the rotating U.N. Security Council presidency this month, also warned against premature action against Assad’s government. A statement from the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires said the U.N. inspection team would soon have “conclusive results, transparent, objective and impartial,” and that Latin American states believe any military operation carried out before that information is at hand “would not do anything but aggravate the situation.”
The British parliamentary vote Thursday effectively handcuffs any direct participation by Britain in air strikes against Syrian military targets. Other leading NATO states, including Germany, also have said they would not take part in military operations without U.N. Security Council approval.
Efforts earlier this week to get Security Council authorization for punishment, or even censure, of Assad failed because of opposition by Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally and one of five permanent members wielding veto power within the sole U.N. body empowered to impose sanctions.
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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8606c5eff80cb0b46820ae6fbd413945 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-homs-evacuate-20140207-story.html | Dozens of people evacuated from besieged area of Homs in Syria | Dozens of people evacuated from besieged area of Homs in Syria
HOMS, Syria — Dozens of people trapped in the historic center of Homs were evacuated Friday as part of a complex deal involving the Syrian government, the United Nations and armed rebels occupying the Old City district.
A total of 83 residents, mostly men but including some women and children, were able to leave in what officials called a successful first day of a plan to provide relief to the long-besieged area. A fragile cease-fire held up during the operation, despite an early violation.
“We had some bumps, but this was a good beginning,” said Yacoub Hillo, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Syria, who was at the scene helping to coordinate the relief effort. “In coming days we hope to do more to relieve the suffering of the people of Homs and of Syria.”
The plight of the residents of the Old City gained global attention during the Syrian peace talks last month in Geneva. But negotiators in Geneva were unable to work out a deal to evacuate civilians from the district and provide food and other aid to those stranded inside.
Many of those evacuated Friday had been trapped for a year or more inside the rubble-strewn streets of the Old City, where food and other staples were in short supply and the threat of snipers and shelling seldom abated.
“We lived on the edge between life and death,” said one evacuee as he and others wolfed down a meal provided by aid workers at a temporary shelter set up outside the district.
No humanitarian assistance had entered Old Homs since May 2012, aid workers said.
A cease-fire had been called for 6 a.m. and was violated when gunfire flared, officials said. It was unclear if anyone was hurt. But the evacuation proceeded.
In coming days, officials said, the hope was to evacuate more residents who want to leave and provide food and humanitarian aid to the remaining residents of the Old City.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Twitter: @mcdneville
Special correspondent Nabih Bulos contributed to this report.
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8d47377970f97e5b034833f90156673f | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-israel-intelligence-chemical-attack-20130827-story.html | Israel may have intercepted Syrian discussions about chemical attack | Israel may have intercepted Syrian discussions about chemical attack
WASHINGTON -- An elite Israeli intelligence unit intercepted conversations among high ranking Syrian government officials discussing last week’s apparent chemical attack outside Damascus as it unfolded, a German news magazine has reported.
Citing an anonymous Israeli ex-intelligence official, Germany’s Focus magazine said Saturday that Israel’s secretive signals intelligence agency, Unit 8200, eavesdropped on a conversation between senior Syrian officials about use of chemical agents.
On Friday, Israel’s Channel 2 reported that rockets containing chemical agents were fired by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division, a division under the command of the Syrian president’s brother, Maher Assad.
The shells were reportedly fired from a military base in a mountain range west of Damascus, the news channel said, without disclosing its sources.
Aaron Sagui, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment on the reports. But Israeli officials have said publicly that they believe last week’s attack was a chemical attack by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
The Syrian opposition says hundreds of people were killed in the Aug. 21 early morning shelling of rebel-controlled residential areas in the suburbs of Damascus and blames the government for the attack. Syrian officials deny any responsibility and have pointed the finger at elements of the opposition.
CNN cited U.S. officials Tuesday as saying that intercepted conversations would be included in a U.S. intelligence assessment that the White House will release to the public.
U.S. intelligence agencies long have relied on Israel to help provide intelligence about Syria. Israel’s spy services have many more Arabic-speakers than do the CIA and National Security Agency, and Israel is believed to have a network of spies within Syria.
Still, a former CIA officer with long Middle East experience advised skepticism of purported leaked intercepts. Israel would be reluctant to disclose that it could listen in on senior Syrian figures, he said.
“Because once you do that, it goes away,” he said, asking not to be quoted by name speaking about sensitive intelligence matters.
However, he acknowledged that Israel has superior intelligence coverage of Syria.
“They only do a few things, and they do them very well,” he said. “They collect mainly on the countries that border them, and because they focus only on those targets, they are very effective. Their technical ability is on par with much larger nations.”
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Twitter: @KenDilanianLAT
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
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4824371ac86096b4c4fd289e49eaaad5 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syria-obama-20130903-story.html | Obama urges prompt authorization of strike against Syria | Obama urges prompt authorization of strike against Syria
WASHINGTON -- Calling for a “prompt” congressional vote on authorizing a military strike against Syria, President Obama is making the case to top lawmakers Tuesday that the action would be “limited” and “proportional” but would also degrade Damascus’ ability to use chemical weapons.
Obama, before a meeting with congressional leaders and top administration officials at the White House, said he was open to changes in a draft resolution sent to lawmakers over the weekend to authorize a strike against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military.
He also said he was confident that Congress would ultimately support it.
“This is not Iraq, and this is not Afghanistan,” the president said. “This is a limited, proportional step that will send a clear message not only to the Assad regime but also to other countries that may be interested in testing some of these international norms that there are consequences.”
If the United States were not to act, Obama said, there is a chance that chemical weapons could be transmitted to non-state actors, posing a risk to allies such as Israel, Turkey and Jordan.
It would also, he said, send a message “that international norms around issues like nuclear proliferation don’t mean much.”
The president was meeting with leaders from the House and Senate as well as senior members of Congress’ national security committees.
Tuesday also marks the first public hearing on the administration’s plans, with Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel set to take questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the afternoon.
They are also scheduled to go before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and other administration officials are continuing to brief lawmakers in closed settings.
The president said he was serious about congressional consultation or he would not be calling for a vote, and that he was confident lawmakers were treating the issue with the “soberness and seriousness” it deserved.
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Twitter: @mikememoli
michael.memoli@latimes.com
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99221583a3941dcd7d38646eb012e221 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-tiananmen-square-attack-heart-of-china-20131028-story.html | Tiananmen Square attack sows terror in spiritual heart of China | Tiananmen Square attack sows terror in spiritual heart of China
BEIJING--It could hardly have been a more audacious attack or one that was aimed more directly at the bull’s-eye that is the spiritual heart of China.
At 12:05 p.m. Monday, a white sport utility vehicle entered a sidewalk and drove nearly 500 yards, plowing through tourists and police, until it stopped near the iconic portrait of Mao Tse-tung that hangs over the main gate in front of Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese state news reported that five people were killed and 38 injured. The dead included the three occupants of the car and two tourists, one a Filipina woman and the other a Chinese man.
There were some suggestions that police were looking at suspects from the Uighur community, Muslims from the northwest of China.
A purported police notice put out Monday, apparently after the incident, advised Beijing hotel owners to look out for a 25-year-old and a 42-year-old man from the towns of Pichan and Lukchun, who have been involved in deadly tit-for-tat violence since the summer. The notice, which was published on the Baidu.com Internet site, referred to an unspecified incident in Beijing, and said that the men had at least one light-colored SUV and several license plates.
Few other details were forthcoming from the official Chinese news organs and photographs were scrubbed clean from the Internet.
Nelson Bunyi, a Filipino tourist who survived the attack with a fractured leg, said he had been on the sidewalk with his wife and two daughters when they spotted the vehicle heading toward them.
“A lot of people were running and jumping, but it was too late for me,” said Bunyi, who was flat on his back in the hospital, oxygen tubes in his nose. “It was a white car and it was coming very, very fast. I fell to the ground. I remember there was smoke, not much else.”
The interview was interrupted when police, who were stationed in the hallway outside the hospital room, said the patient could not be questioned without written permission.
The Xinhua news service said only that the causes of the incident were “under investigation.” The circumstances, however, suggested that it was a deliberate attack at one of the most closely guarded locations in China.
At all times, Tiananmen Square is blanketed with paramilitary and police, uniformed and plain-clothed, mingling in the crowds. Cameras record every motion. Separating the street from the sidewalk are 5-foot-high white steel barricades—designed to prevent the type of attack that took place Monday.
However, the white sport utility vehicle appears to have entered at one of the few openings in the barricades, some 500 yards to the east of the square at the intersection of Nanchizi, a street running perpendicular to the main Chang’an Street. The driver then headed along the sidewalk toward the enormous Mao portrait, which hangs over the vermillion-walled “Gate of Heavenly Peace” (or Tiananmen Gate) that leads into the Forbidden City, erstwhile home of China’s emperors.
The vehicle appears to have crashed into a column, bursting in flames. Photographs taken immediately after showed plumes of white and brown smoke rising from the scene. It is unclear whether the car carried explosives or whether it caught fire after being stopped by police.
“The police were unprepared,” wrote one micro blogger, who gave his name as Ma Min, and who claimed to have information from eyewitnesses.
Another, writing under the name Chen Renda, complained, “We have yet to hear the story behind the story. What was the real identity of the people inside the jeep?... Were there weapons found? Were there any pamphlets?”
Best known as the site of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, Tiananmen Square is a frequent magnet for protesters and self-immolators. But most plots are foiled far from the square—such as a 2009 incident in which three people set themselves on fire in a car at the Wangfujing pedestrian mall, reportedly over personal grievances with the government.
Most of the injured appeared to have been tourists or police. A nurse at Beijing’s Tongren Hospital said that besides the Filipino family, there was a Japanese tourist and a 5-year-old Chinese boy.
The Chinese government appeared embarrassed by the apparent lapse in security at the heart of the city. There was no mention of the incident on the main 7 p.m. evening news, which led with a report on the 11th meeting of the All China Women’s Federation. A report on the incident ran on the late news.
Beijing police closed off subway stations near the square after the incident and blocked vehicles and journalists.
Using high-pressure water hoses, workers scrubbed the sidewalk clean and there was no trace of fire or explosion. But people knew what happened from the sketchy reports and word of mouth and appeared to be surprised, and a little shaken.
“I can’t believe this is happening in the center of Beijing,” an elderly man in a beret murmured to his wife.
Senior members of the Chinese Communist Party are due to convene next month inside the Great Hall of the People, which is on the west side of the square, for a plenum to chart the nation’s economic future. Mao’s mausoleum lies to the south and Zhongnanhai, the compound of the top leadership, just behind the vermillion walls to the west.
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30529b7387591083064a224c48bd7e5d | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-turkey-protests-warning-20130613-story.html | Turkey’s Erdogan issues ‘last’ warning to Istanbul protesters | Turkey’s Erdogan issues ‘last’ warning to Istanbul protesters
ISTANBUL, Turkey – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday issued what he said was a final warning: The protesters in Gezi Park would be removed within 24 hours, he told a meeting of his Justice and Development Party in the capital, Ankara.
“Our patience is at an end,” Erdogan was quoted as saying on the English-language website of the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. “I am making my warning for the last time. ... We cannot wait any more because Gezi Park does not belong to occupying forces but to the people.”
The demonstrations, which began as a sit-in to protest plans for a development project in the park, have escalated into nationwide protests against Erdogan’s government.
PHOTOS: Unrest in Turkey
In Gezi Park, protesters waited nervously Thursday. Scores of police were deployed in adjoining Taksim Square. As dawn broke, some stood in the center of the square; others slept, their faces pressed against the windows of the vehicles that bused them there.
“Today or tomorrow they will come,” said Gusel, a recent graduate of an Istanbul university who asked that his last name not be used for fear of arrest. “I have seen how the police act. We are all scared.”
Gusel said he was scared of the tear gas canisters that could come through the sycamore trees stretched skyward above him, scared of the plastic bullets and stun grenades that could come as well, and scared of Erdogan.
“We have not responded to punches with punches. From now on, security forces will respond differently,” the prime minister was quoted as saying late Wednesday after a meeting with a group of protesters.
The statement prompted outrage from advocacy groups that have urged the Turkish government to de-escalate the crisis, which Amnesty International said has given rise to “appalling levels of violence.”
“Prime Minister Erdogan’s outrageous statement is nothing short of a provocation, only likely to lead to more violence and more injured protesters.” Andrew Gardner, a Turkey researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
Throughout the crisis, the incendiary rhetoric of Erdogan, who rose to power more than a decade ago, has exposed schisms in his Justice and Development Party, or AKP.
Through two weeks of civil disobedience the government’s response has appeared schizophrenic, with Erdogan’s comments juxtaposed against President Abdullah Gul’s and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arnic’s more conciliatory statements.
While Erdogan talked of responding “to punches with punches,” senior ruling party officials announced late Wednesday on the prime minister’s behalf that there may be a referendum on the development plans for the park.
“We will respect the results of the referendum and do what the people decide in Istanbul,” said the party’s deputy chairman, Huseyin Celik, according to state media.
The protesters in Gezi Park argue that the government has betrayed them too often. They talk of the recent arrest of nearly 50 lawyers who were defending protesters. They complain that after the governor of Istanbul promised that protesters would not be harmed, the police stormed Taksim on Tuesday, three times entering Gezi Park.
“The thing is, how will they hold a referendum on this? What will the question be?” asked Temir Karadeniz, an activist. “I’m sure the government will manipulate the vote, twist the question.”
Erdogan, who has won three consecutive elections and retains considerable support, has dismissed the protesters as hooligans and militants.
Though there are radical groups participating in the protest -- the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front, for example -- they thus far do not define the movement, an Occupy-style demonstration driven by a secular, nationalist strand of nonviolent youth alienated by what they see as the creeping religious conservatism of the ruling party.
“Erdogan’s approach has inflated the radical groups’ view of themselves, while radicalizing the mainstream groups,” said Hugh Pope, head of the International Crisis Group’s Turkish wing.
“The way to start dealing with the crisis is to engage with the mainstream opposition, and ensure they feel their grievances have been listened to -- as Gul did,” he said.
Veins of lightning streak through the sky above Gezi Park. People quietly sweep rubbish into piles. Hard hats are on, gas masks hang from necks. A small group plays football on the fringes of Taksim Square, their gas masks demarcating goal posts. Police officers’ armored vehicles come to life.
The sense in the park, and on the streets of Istanbul, is that the demonstrations may have reached their final act. Everyone is holding his breath, waiting for whatever comes.
Ezgi, who also didn’t want to give her last name, is busy taping a flag to a tent. She is part of a Turkish youth group camped out in the park. Nearby, two men use trenchers to turn soil, planting a bed of flowers.
“The police will come with their gas and noise bombs,” she said. “I’m not afraid; I trust the people here to protect me.”
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Johnson is a special correspondent.
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cd54a1a5dd60113096a3d7c7bcd84057 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-two-dead-pakistan-polio-workers-20131007-story.html | Two dead in latest attack on Pakistani polio workers | Two dead in latest attack on Pakistani polio workers
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A bomb exploded near a government health center Monday in northwestern Pakistan as anti-polio kits were being distributed, killing two people and wounding at least 12, Pakistani officials said.
The explosion in a suburb of Peshawar, the capital of restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, was apparently detonated by remote control. It was the latest in a series of attacks on polio workers in Pakistan.
A policeman and a volunteer peace committee member were killed in the blast, which appeared to target police assigned to protect vaccinators shortly before they headed into nearby neighborhoods to administer the anti-polio vaccine, authorities said. The wounded, including seven policemen and five civilians, were taken to Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar’s largest.
“The police were the target,” said Najeeb-ur-Rehman Bagvi, a senior police officer.
Dr. Kalim Ullah Khan, assistant director of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s immunization program, said Monday was the final day of a three-day vaccination campaign involving some 10,000 children. That day’s immunizations were put on hold temporarily because of the killings.
“There’s a lot of fear everywhere,” Khan said.
Pakistan is one of only three countries worldwide, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still considered endemic. Eight new cases of the wild polio virus were reported here last week, one from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and seven from the neighboring Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bringing the total number of cases this year to 36, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private health program.
No one took immediate responsibility for the attack, although the Taliban is suspected. Efforts to stem the disease –- long eradicated in the Americas -- have been hampered by attacks on healthcare workers after the Taliban condemned vaccination as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Distrust of the West stems in part from the CIA’s use of a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in 2011 as part of an effort to locate and confirm the identity of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was then killed in a raid mounted by U.S. Navy SEALs.
More than 90% of new reported polio cases are from the country’s most restive areas, as many vaccinators lost enthusiasm in the face of rising danger and low pay. In March, the World Health Organization reported that approximately 240,000 children in tribal areas have missed their polio vaccinations because of security concerns.
Attacks like Monday’s dispirit vaccination workers. “These are hard-working people who put their lives at stake,” said Dr. Syed Asad Ali, a pediatrics and child health professor with Karachi’s Aga Khan University. “But the other side is, the effort hasn’t been derailed as much as people expected.”
In response to rising attacks against health workers, for instance, the central government has stopped well-publicized national immunization days in favor of targeted local campaigns carried out without much publicity, giving militants less time to mobilize. At least 11 polio vaccinators were killed in Pakistan in 2012, according to the United Nations.
“I’m sure the CIA [hepatitis] operation set things back,” Ali said. “But I also feel the real target isn’t so much polio as the international press the militants get when they attack polio workers. They’ve realized, if you want to be in the news, it’s a good way to do it.”
Monday’s bomb reportedly was planted near the main gate of the health center compound in the Peshawar suburb of Suleman Khel and detonated when police assembled to protect the vaccinators. Most health workers reportedly were spared since they were inside a building at the time.
Hameed Ullah, a Suleman Khel resident who witnessed the attack, said a second bomb was found and defused outside the medical center before it exploded. Local media said the second bomb contained approximately 17 pounds of explosive material, compared with 12 pounds for the first, and both were fitted with remote-controlled detonators.
Islamist-linked militant violence has increased in Pakistan recently, especially Peshawar, despite efforts by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to initiate talks with the Taliban. The frontier city has seen at least four attacks in the past month that have killed more than 150 people.
Pakistan started its first immunization program in 1994 under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the same year the Americas were declared polio-free, and initially made significant progress. By 2007, the number of new wild polio cases had fallen to 32 from 1,147 in 1997 before rising in recent years as security deteriorated.
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Mark.Magnier@latimes.com
Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar and staff writer Magnier reported from New Delhi.
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3e8c969d9722a815804451282c019b29 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-typhoon-haiyan-blasts-philippines-20131108-story.html | Typhoon slams Philippines, causing landslides, outages | Typhoon slams Philippines, causing landslides, outages
MANILA, Philippines — The strongest typhoon this year slammed into the Philippines on Friday, setting off landslides, knocking out power in several provinces and cutting communications in the country’s central region of island provinces. Four people died.
Telephone lines appeared down as it was difficult to get through to the landfall site 405 miles southeast of Manila where Typhoon Haiyan — one of the strongest typhoons ever — slammed into the southern tip of Samar island before barreling on to Leyte Island.
Two people were electrocuted in storm-related accidents, one person was killed by a fallen tree and another was struck by lightning, official reports said.
Close to 720,000 people had been evacuated from towns and villages in the typhoon’s path across the central Philippines, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said. Among them were thousands of residents of Bohol who had been camped in tents and other makeshift shelters after a magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit the island province last month.
Southern Leyte Gov. Roger Mercado said 31,000 people were evacuated in his landslide-prone mountainous province before the super typhoon struck, knocking out power, setting off small landslides that blocked roads in rural areas, uprooting trees and ripping roofs off houses around his residence.
The dense clouds and heavy rains made the day seem almost as dark as night, he said.
“When you’re faced with such a scenario, you can only pray, and pray and pray,” Mercado told The Associated Press by telephone, adding that his town mayors have not called in to report any major damage.
“I hope that means they were spared and not the other way around,” he said. “My worst fear is there will be many massive loss of lives and property.”
Television images from Tacloban city on Leyte Island showed a street under knee-deep floodwater carrying debris that had been blown down by the fierce winds. Tin roofing sheets ripped from buildings were flying above the street.
Visibility was so poor that only the silhouette of a local reporter could be seen through the driving rain.
Weather officials said that Haiyan had sustained winds at 147 miles per hour, with gusts of 170 mph when it made landfall. That makes it the strongest typhoon this year, said Aldczar Aurelio of the government’s weather bureau.
Gener Quitlong, another weather forecaster, said the typhoon was not losing much of its strength because there is no large land mass to slow it down since the region consists of islands with no tall mountains.
The typhoon — the 24th serious storm to hit the Philippines this year — is forecast to blow toward the South China Sea on Saturday, heading toward Vietnam.
Jeff Masters, a former hurricane meteorologist who is meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground, said the storm had been poised to be the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded at landfall. He warned of “catastrophic damage.”
But he said the Philippines might get a small break because the storm is so fast moving that flooding from heavy rains — usually the cause of most deaths from typhoons in the Philippines — may not be as bad.
As it approached the Philippines, the storm was one of the strongest on record.
The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said shortly before the typhoon made landfall that its maximum sustained winds were 195 mph, with gusts up to 235 mph. Those measurements differ from local weather data because the U.S. Navy center measures the average wind speed for 1 minute while local forecasters measure an average for 10 minutes.
Hurricane Camille, a 1969 storm, had wind speeds that reached 190 mph at landfall in the United States, Masters said.
Officials in Cebu province have shut down electric service to the northern part of the province to avoid electrocutions in case power pylons are toppled, said assistant regional civil defense chief Flor Gaviola.
President Benigno Aquino III assured the public of war-like preparations, with three C-130 air force cargo planes and 32 military helicopters and planes on standby, along with 20 navy ships.
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5af8a2aa8b6c3eb31d8cbecf30889718 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-ukraine-crimea-secession-vote-20140306-story.html | Crimea sets March 16 vote on seceding from Ukraine, joining Russia | Crimea sets March 16 vote on seceding from Ukraine, joining Russia
KIEV, Ukraine -- The Russian-controlled parliament of Ukraine’s Crimea area voted Thursday to secede and join Russia, and set a March 16 public vote on the latest move aimed at wresting the strategic peninsula from Ukraine.
Officials in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev said such a vote would be meaningless as the Ukrainian constitution requires that any changes to national borders or territory be voted on by the entire country.
The referendum on Crimea’s future, announced by the region’s first deputy prime minister, Rustam Temirgaliev, moved up the date for the controversial vote by two weeks.
Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council called an emergency session to respond to the Crimean action, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center reported.
Crimea has become the focal point of Russia’s political challenge to the new Ukrainian leadership that filled the power vacuum created when the country’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, fled Kiev on Feb. 21 after agreeing to early elections and an interim government of national unity.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced the interim Kiev leadership as illegitimate and accused the former opposition politicians in governing positions of unconstitutionally seizing power in a coup d’etat.
On a visit to Kiev on Thursday, the head of the European Union’s delegation to Ukraine said the Crimean referendum scheduled to take place in 10 days would be illegal as it violates Article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution, which sets out conditions for revising borders and territory.
“Altering the territory of Ukraine is resolved exclusively by an all-Ukraine referendum,” said Ian Tombinsky, the EU’s liaison with the government of interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk.
Yatsenyuk and Ukraine’s acting foreign minister were in Brussels on Thursday for an emergency meeting with EU leaders. Ukrainian Economy Minister Pavlo Sheremeta said at a news conference in Kiev that he believed the Crimean secession vote and referendum date to be “unconstitutional” and therefore without legal force.
Russian gunmen seized the Crimean parliament and government administration buildings in Simferopol a week ago, and other heavily armed troops in Russian military fatigues and Russian-registered vehicles have fanned out across the peninsula to take control of airports, military installations and vital services such as the eastern commercial port of Kerch. Roadblocks manned by Russian gunmen have also been screening anyone attempting to enter the Crimean peninsula by car.
At diplomatic gatherings in Western Europe that have been called to respond to the Ukrainian political crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied that the Kremlin is calling the shots in Crimea. Lavrov said the rebellion against Kiev’s authority is being waged by “local self-defense forces” who are not acting under Kremlin orders.
The regional Crimean parliament last week called for a referendum on the area’s future to coincide with a presidential election slated for May 25 throughout the country, then moved it up to March 30 over the weekend in an apparent effort to develop momentum toward breaking from Ukraine.
Thursday’s vote to secede and the speeding-up of the referendum may have been spurred by some signals from Moscow that the Russian government is trying to distance itself from the military incursion into sovereign Ukraine that has stirred worldwide condemnation of the Kremlin for “blatant aggression” against another sovereign state.
carol.williams@latimes.com
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
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40ed459c185261b7889d471108841630 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-ukraine-pro-russia-protests-20140406-story.html | Pro-Russia protesters seize buildings in eastern Ukraine | Pro-Russia protesters seize buildings in eastern Ukraine
MOSCOW -- Pro-Russia demonstrators on Sunday seized at least three government buildings in industrial cities of eastern Ukraine, which has been plagued by demonstrations in favor of stronger ties to Moscow.
Early in the day several hundred demonstrators carrying Russian flags pushed through a police cordon in front of the regional administration building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the UNIAN news agency reported. There were no officials or employees at work in the building and the police refrained from using force to stop the protesters, the report said.
The demonstrators demanded a referendum in the region aimed at joining Russia and called for the release of former riot police officers arrested in Kiev last week. The officers are being held on suspicion of shooting protesters in the Ukrainian capital during violent clashes in February that led to the overthrow of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovich.
Later Sunday several hundred pro-Moscow protesters seized the regional administration building in Donetsk and the regional Security Service building in Lugansk, UNIAN said.
No one was reported injured in the incidents in Kharkiv and Donetsk. At least two people were hurt in Lugansk, where authorities responding to the crowd’s demands released six people detained on separatism charges.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said police were ordered not to open fire. “Among the protesters there are many deceived persons who came out for money,” UNIAN reported Avakov as saying.
Ukraine remains deeply divided between those who favor greater ties with the rest of Europe and others, particularly in the eastern regions bordering Russia, who want closer ties with Moscow. Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region in late February after a widely criticized referendum has encouraged some in the east to seek secession.
With Sunday’s clashes, acting Ukrainian President Olexandr Turchinov canceled a planned visit to Lithuania, where he was expected to take part a conference with members of the European Union’s parliament. He met instead with law enforcement officials in Kiev, UNIAN said.
Many Ukrainians see Moscow’s hand in the continued unrest in the eastern regions of their nation.
The actions of separatists are part of Moscow’s plan to destabilize the situation in the region to the extent which would provide a pretext for Russia to move its troops into Ukraine, military and political analyst Dmitry Tymchuk charged on his Facebook page Sunday night.
“The main problem which arises is how to prevent a bloodshed,” wrote Tymchuk, head of the Kiev-based Center for Military and Political Research. “Fatal casualties are the main aim of the provocateurs, so that Russia could throw in its army … and hold a Crimea-like referendum in these regions.”
sergei.loiko@latimes.com
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c735707ace7ae60835db1d1349f5f706 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-ukraine-russia-crimea-airports-20140228-story.html | Russian gunmen patrol airports in tense Crimean standoff | Russian gunmen patrol airports in tense Crimean standoff
MOSCOW -- Armed Russian men in unmarked military uniforms took up positions at Crimea’s main airport in Simferopol early Friday, and there were reports that Russian naval forces had taken control of the military airport in Sevastopol, Moscow’s leased base for its Black Sea fleet.
Dozens of rifle-toting men, many of them masked, were patrolling the parking lot and entrance of the Simferopol airport, news agencies in the Russian-dominated Ukrainian territory reported.
Ukraine’s acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, accused Russian nationalist militants of attempting “an armed invasion and occupation,” Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported, citing Avakov’s Facebook page.
But Avakov said the situation would be dealt with “on the diplomatic level before armed clashes broke out,” RIA Novosti said.
PHOTOS: Deadly clases in Kiev
Russia’s Black Sea fleet denied involvement in the appearance of armed men at Sevastopol’s military airport, the Interfax news agency reported.
Sevastopol airport duty chief Anatoly Rechenko was quoted by UNIAN news agency as saying armed Russian troops were blocking the roads to the military airport, which was closed and its three charter flights scheduled for Friday canceled.
Gunmen representing themselves as “protectors of the Russian people in the Crimea” also appeared on the border between the Crimean republic and mainland Ukraine, a visitor said.
“I saw at least two checkpoints of local Russian residents with arms along the road as I was leaving Ukraine by car this morning,” Valery Balayan, a movie director and producer told The Times in a phone interview. “They had Russian flags hoisted over checkpoints.”
Crimea has become a flashpoint between Ukraine and Russia since an opposition movement last week forced out President Viktor Yanukovich, who was seen by Ukraine’s Russian minority as allied with Moscow and committed to protecting the Russian-speaking community’s rights.
Armed men in unmarked uniforms similar to those worn by the men occupying Simferopol airport on Thursday took control of the Crimean Autonomous Republic parliament and another government building. Clashes between pro-Russian demonstrators and Crimea’s Ukrainian minority and Tatar populations occurred outside the buildings a day earlier, exposing the region’s political and cultural tensions.
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The airport deployments were carried out by armed men that Avakov said had been identified as Cossacks, a reconstituted pre-Revolutionary Russian nationalist militia that is not part of Moscow’s official defense forces.
Sevastopol airport was not operating, Avakov said. Civilian flights out of Simferopol were operating normally, Western news agencies reported from the scene at Crimea’s main transportation hub.
Avakov said about 100 men who identified themselves as Cossacks had attempted to take over the Simferopol airport late Thursday but were repelled by Ukrainian police. Another 119 men in uniforms that appeared to be Russian military camouflage but without insignia showed up at 1:30 a.m. and settled in at the airport’s restaurant.
The soldiers refused to respond to queries from Interior Ministry officers about whether they were soldiers and if they had permission to be in the airport, according to Avakov’s statement as reported by RIA Novosti.
“I assess what is happening as an armed invasion and occupation. It is in violation of all international treaties and norms. This is a direct provocation to armed bloodshed on the territory of a sovereign state,” Avakov said.
Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov had warned Thursday that Russian military in Crimea should remain inside their bases to avoid an escalation of tensions on the peninsula.
“Any movement, particularly with weapons, outside official residences regulated by our agreement will be interpreted by us as military aggression,” Turchynov said.
The BBC showed video of the armed men smoking and patrolling the Simferopol airport parking lot as wary travelers went about their business. The British broadcaster showed video of one unidentified gunman saying they were there “to ensure general order” and to prevent “radicals from Kiev” intervening in the Crimean standoff.
Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency quoted Simferopol airport spokesman Igor Stratilati as saying the gunmen had left by late morning, although other news agencies said the armed men were still on site.
The Russian minority in eastern Ukraine has reacted with alarm at the sudden turnover of political power in the capital, Kiev. A three-month protest movement in demand of Yanukovich’s resignation flared into deadly clashes last week, leaving 82 protesters and police dead and forcing Yanukovich to sign a European Union-brokered agreement to cease fighting and submit to new elections.
Yanukovich, who has taken refuge in Russia, provoked the standoff in late November when he refused to sign an association agreement with the EU that would have boosted trade ties between Ukraine and the West, instead announcing that the country would stay integrated with Russia’s economy.
carol.williams@latimes.com
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
sergei.loiko@latimes.com
Times staff writers Williams reported from Moscow and Loiko from Kiev.
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9f46bb399ea68132415a091fee03100d | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-ukraine-russia-military-readiness-20140226-story.html | Putin orders test of Russian forces amid Ukraine crisis | Putin orders test of Russian forces amid Ukraine crisis
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered a test of the “battle readiness” of military forces deployed in the western and central areas of the country, a likely show of Kremlin muscle to reassure ethnic Russians in Ukraine that their rights and interests will be defended.
The announcement of the “immediate and thorough” readiness exercises was made by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and reported by the Interfax news agency.
“Putin ordered confirmation of troop capabilities for action in the event of a crisis situation that presents a threat to the military security of the country,” as well as anti-terrorism and emergency response readiness, Shoigu was quoted as saying by Interfax.
The readiness test was ordered amid growing tensions in Ukraine between the Russian-allied eastern areas of the restive country and pro-Western political forces now in control of the capital, Kiev, following a rebellion that drove President Viktor Yanukovich to flee his office.
[Updated 9:30 a.m. PST Feb. 26: In a televised reading of the military drills order, Shoigu suggested that the readiness maneuvers running through Monday and involving 150,000 troops, 880 tanks, 90 aircraft and 80 vessels were unrelated to events in Ukraine.]
Acting Ukrainian President Olexandr Turchynov was to address a public rally in Kiev’s Independence Square late Wednesday to announce proposed appointments to an interim Cabinet to govern Ukraine until a presidential election to replace Yanukovich on May 25 and parliamentary elections expected over the summer.
The current parliament, now largely devoid of lawmakers from Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, who either defected to the opposition or retreated to their home bases, was to vote on the nominations Thursday.
Russia had been backing Yanukovich with a promised $15-billion package of loans and energy subsidies after he angered liberal and nationalist politicians in late November by scrapping an association agreement with the European Union. That pact would have enhanced Ukrainian economic ties with the West and opened a path to eventual membership in the EU.
Yanukovich’s rejection of the EU deal in favor of strengthening ties with Russia, for centuries the dominant political force in Ukraine, set off three months of demonstrations that escalated into rioting last week and a bloody crackdown by security forces. At least 82 people died in the confrontations before an EU-brokered peace accord and agreement on early elections.
Pro-Western opposition politicians who led the rebellion have filled the power vacuum in Kiev, which triggered demonstrations in Russian-speaking areas of eastern and southern Ukraine, where industry remains elaborately entwined with Russia’s economy and Moscow keeps its Black Sea fleet based in Sevastopol.
Several dozen Russians worried about their status in a potentially opposition-ruled Ukraine have been demonstrating for the last three days outside public buildings in Sevastopol, Simferopol, Odessa and other southern cities, some demanding that Russia protect them or that the region secede and annex to Russia.
On Wednesday, rival demonstrations involving thousands of Crimean Tatars, who were exiled from Russia to Crimea by dictator Josef Stalin during World War II, pledged allegiance to Kiev and their place within Ukraine.
Shouts of “Ukraine is not Russia” and “Allahu Akbar” could be heard from the crowd of historically Muslim Tatars as they waved the yellow and blue Ukrainian and Tatar flags in defiance of the considerably smaller pro-Russian turnout, according to news agencies and Ukrainian television.
The Kremlin has taken a cautious approach to the evolving crisis in Ukraine, a country of 46 million and arguably Russia’s most important ally as most of Moscow’s exports of natural gas pass through pipelines on Ukrainian territory.
In Moscow, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament dismissed warnings by Russian nationalist politicians that the Kremlin would take military action against Ukraine if it senses any threat to ethnic Russians, who number about 7.5 million, or the nearly one in four Ukrainians who claim Russian as their mother tongue.
“This scenario is impossible,” said Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Federation Council. “Russia has been stating and reiterating its stance that we have no right and cannot interfere in domestic affairs of a sovereign state. We are for Ukraine as a united state, and there should be no basis for separatist sentiments.”
[For The Record, 9:52 a.m. PST Feb. 26: An earlier version of this post gave the number of Russian speakers in Ukraine as 7.5 million. There are 7.5 million ethnic Russians in the country, but nearly one in four Ukrainians claim Russian as their mother tongue.]
carol.williams@latimes.com
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
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78f915a07fa43a924c38d74dcf291c8f | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-un-syria-rebels-chemical-weapons-20130506-story.html | U.N.'s Carla del Ponte says Syrian rebels may have used sarin | U.N.'s Carla del Ponte says Syrian rebels may have used sarin
BEIRUT — A leading member of a United Nations investigatory commission says there are “strong concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that Syrian rebels have used the nerve agent sarin.
Carla del Ponte, a former prosecutor for U.N. tribunals investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, made the comment in an interview Sunday with a Swiss television channel, the BBC reported.
The U.N. panel, known as the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, emphasized in a statement Monday that it had reached no conclusions about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war.
“I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got ... about the use of nerve gas by the opposition,” Del Ponte told Swiss Italian broadcaster RSI.
She said the evidence emerged from interviews conducted by investigators with victims, physicians and others in neighboring countries.
Del Ponte did not rule out the possibility that President Bashar Assad’s government may also have used chemical agents on the battlefield.
Nonetheless, the comments were a blow to opposition activists who have alleged that the government has deployed chemical weapons on various occasions against rebel forces in Syria.
The Obama administration has said that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with varying degrees of certainty that sarin was used in Syria, but investigators have yet to determine whether it was released intentionally and by whom. Britain, France and Israel have made similar accusations in recent weeks.
President Obama has said that the confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria would be a “red line” that could trigger an unspecified U.S. response.
[Updated at 2:20 p.m., May 6: On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in Washington expressed doubts about reports that the Syrian opposition had used chemical weapons. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime,” he said.]
In an apparent reaction to Del Ponte’s comments, the U.N. commission said it “has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict.”
The panel, which is investigating allegations of violations of international law in Syria, declined further comment.
The statement, issued in Geneva, suggested that the commission may have been blindsided by Del Ponte’s comments, which were widely reported in the media and online, including on the website of the official Syrian news service, the Syrian Arab News Agency.
The Syrian government has accused the rebels of using poison gas on at least two occasions. Authorities alleged that their opponents wanted to make it appear that the military was deploying chemical weapons to spur an international intervention. The Syrian opposition has denied any use of chemical agents.
The United Nations has vowed an extensive investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria and has assembled an expert team. But that inquiry has been delayed by a dispute with Syrian authorities about access for investigators to sites inside Syria.
The Syrian government does not publicly acknowledge that it possesses chemical weapons, although international experts say it has a large arsenal, including sarin.
Syrian authorities have vowed never to use such weapons against a domestic enemy, even if they were in Syria’s possession. At the same time, however, they have consistently depicted the rebellion against Assad as a foreign-based “conspiracy” hatched by Syria’s enemies abroad, and not as an internal revolt.
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de8b8be6323feae9800ad9a9bba289e0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-afghan-talks-post-2014-agreement-20131120-story.html | No deal yet between U.S., Afghanistan on post-2014 pact | No deal yet between U.S., Afghanistan on post-2014 pact
KABUL, Afghanistan — Negotiations on a post-2014 security agreement between the United States and Afghanistan remained unresolved Wednesday, less than 24 hours before Afghan President Hamid Karzai was scheduled to address a gathering of tribal leaders who were expected to vote on the proposed pact.
Talks have stalled over the issue of U.S. troops entering Afghan residential areas in pursuit of insurgents or terrorists. The U.S. wants its special-operations forces to continue night raids after Western combat troops depart at the end of 2014, but Karzai has insisted for months that only Afghan troops carry out such missions.
With or without an agreement, Karzai has said he will proceed Thursday with a loya jirga, or traditional gathering of Afghan notables, who will vote on the pact. Karzai controls selection of the delegates, so he could prevail on delegates to reject any security deal that does not reflect his demands on night raids.
An official at the presidential office said in a brief telephone interview Wednesday night that the loya jirga will proceed on schedule with Karzai delivering the opening address. The Afghan leader has proposed presenting the 2,700 delegates with a draft document containing both the U.S. and Afghan positions on night raids — and ask them to approve one.
The United States has warned that without a bilateral security agreement, no U.S. troops would remain after 2014. If so, billions of dollars in annual military and development aid to Afghanistan also would be at risk, and NATO members would almost certainly make no post-2014 commitments to the Asian nation. Some aid agencies would likely cut back operations because of security concerns.
The United States seeks to deploy a limited number of U.S. military advisers after 2014 to train Afghan security forces and provide logistical assistance. Washington also wants access to nine military bases built by the U.S., which will be transferred to Afghan authority after 2014. Karzai surprised U.S. officials in May by suddenly naming the nine bases in a speech.
Afghan military commanders readily concede that their army and police could not sustain the fight against Taliban insurgents without continued infusions of U.S. cash for salaries, weapons and equipment, or without continued U.S. logistical support.
According to Karzai’s spokesman, a deal proposed Tuesday in a phone call between Karzai and Secretary of State John F. Kerry suggested a letter from President Obama acknowledging past “mistakes” by U.S. troops and the suffering of Afghans in cases of civilian casualties. The proposed letter also would commit the U.S. to avoid future mistakes in “a different environment” after 2014, according to the spokesman.
The security pact would include language authorizing U.S. military operations in residential areas under “extraordinary circumstances,” and only if the lives of U.S. troops were directly at risk, according to the Afghan version of events.
U.S. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki has refused to confirm discussions of any letter on night raids, and the Afghan government indicated Wednesday that no letter has been forthcoming. The only thing the two sides seemed to agree on during the day was that negotiations were continuing.
Some news agencies reported that Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said the Afghan leader had demanded a U.S. apology. Faizi did not mention an apology in a late-night briefing to reporters here Tuesday.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said in a statement issued Wednesday morning Kabul time: “Reports that the United States intends to apologize are not accurate. No apology has been discussed.
“We continue to consider how we can best provide the government and people of Afghanistan appropriate assurances as the loya jirga considers the bilateral security agreement,’’ Hayden added.
In Kabul, preparations continued Wednesday for the loya jirga. A news briefing with the gathering’s top two leaders was abruptly canceled, but reporters were later told to report to the site early Thursday morning for the event.
Kerry rejected an invitation to address the loya jirga to explain the U.S. position, according to a statement from Karzai’s office. Instead, Kerry offered to provide “clearly written assurances” that the U.S. government recognizes Afghan concerns about “mistakes” made in past U.S. military raids, the statement said.
When Karzai asked that the letter come directly from Obama, Kerry agreed to take the proposal to the president, according to Faizi.
The loya jirga is an advisory body only, but Karzai has indicated he will not sign the security agreement unless the assembly approves it. The Afghan parliament also must approve the pact.
Karzai, known for brinkmanship and volatility, made no public comments Wednesday as security forces extended their cordon around the loya jirga site in Kabul following a suicide car bombing Saturday that killed at least 13 Afghans and wounded 29 nearby. Faizi did not return calls and messages seeking comment.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman, Robert B. Hilton, declined comment Wednesday, citing embassy policy of not discussing ongoing negotiations. Ambassador James B. Cunningham is the top U.S. negotiator in Kabul for the security agreement.
The independent Afghanistan Analysts Network, an authoritative Kabul think tank, quoted Karzai’s national security advisor, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, as telling members of parliament over the weekend that the U.S. is requesting independent control of the massive Bagram air field north of Kabul and air access to and from Afghanistan from bases in Bagram, Kabul and three other Afghan cities.
Also Wednesday, a bomb exploded in a crowded restaurant in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, killing three civilians and wounding 22, Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said in a telephone interview. Faisal blamed the bombing on Taliban insurgents, who control much of Kandahar province.
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Twitter: @davidzucchino
david.zucchino@latimes.com
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750a8439234d69a1d334188c1bd5cff8 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-afghanistan-prisoners-20140211-story.html | U.S. complains that Afghanistan releasing dangerous prisoners | U.S. complains that Afghanistan releasing dangerous prisoners
KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military on Tuesday slammed Afghanistan for continuing to order the release of prisoners who the United States believes are dangerous, but who Afghan officials say cannot be prosecuted because authorities lack evidence.
The dispute over the prisoners at the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan, north of Kabul, is the latest spat between the United States and Afghanistan as the U.S.-led military coalition tries to wind down its presence here by the end of the year.
The United States has contended that of 650 prisoners still in custody at Parwan, 88 are a threat to security and should not be released. From that group, Afghanistan has decided to release 65 despite “extensive information and evidence” against them, the U.S. military said Tuesday.
“The release of these detainees is a major step backward for the rule of law in Afghanistan,” the U.S. military said in a statement. “Some previously released individuals have already returned to the fight, and this subsequent release will allow dangerous insurgents back into Afghan cities and villages.”
Afghan officials issued a sharp rebuttal, saying the attorney general’s office and the National Directorate of Security – Afghanistan’s CIA – had reviewed the U.S. information and found insufficient evidence to continue to hold the prisoners.
“According to Afghan laws there is no information gathered about these detainees to prove them guilty, so they were ordered released,” Abdul Shakoor Dadras, head of the Afghan government committee responsible for the prisoner issue, said in an interview Tuesday night.
The dispute comes as Afghan President Hamid Karzai continues to delay signing a security agreement that could provide for several thousand U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014 to conduct counter-terrorism and training operations. Karzai helped negotiate the terms of the deal, which were endorsed by an assembly of elders he also handpicked, but the Afghan leader has shown signs that he will not formally approve the agreement before the April 5 election to choose his successor.
The U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told a Senate panel Tuesday that he doesn’t think Karzai will sign the deal, the first such statement from a senior Obama administration official. The administration has not set a deadline for Karzai but has warned that all U.S. troops would depart Afghanistan if a deal isn’t signed quickly.
The prisoner dispute has escalated over the last year since the U.S. military handed control over the detention center at Parwan to Afghan authorities.
Last month, the United States protested Afghanistan’s decision to release some of the 88 detainees, citing evidence that 30% of them had wounded or killed 60 international soldiers and that more had been responsible for Afghan civilian casualties.
The U.S. accused Dadras and his Afghan Review Board of “releasing back to society dangerous insurgents who have Afghan blood on their hands.”
Dadras rejected the claims, saying the United States “must trust and respect the Afghan legal system.”
“We are not releasing those detainees who are disrupting the internal security of Afghanistan,” he said. “The ones who are creating problems for the people of Afghanistan have never been and will never be released.”
He said the 65 prisoners could be released within days and added that the remaining cases would be decided upon soon.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
Twitter: @SBengali
Special correspondent Baktash reported from Kabul and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.
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f4e6c23ac6b214836c68b525637acf98 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-gun-laws-violence-latin-america-20130731-story.html | U.S. gun laws blamed for worsening Latin American violence | U.S. gun laws blamed for worsening Latin American violence
Lax U.S. gun regulations are enabling the international trafficking of high-powered weapons and fueling the spread of gun violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Council on Foreign Relations argues in a report urging President Obama to take action on initiatives that have foundered in Congress.
More than 70% of the 99,000 weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 were traced to U.S. manufacturers and importers, the council report said, citing data from the eTrace program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The figure for guns of U.S. origin recovered in the Caribbean is over 90%, the study noted.
“The flow of high-powered weaponry from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean exacerbates soaring rates of gun-related violence in the region and undermines U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere,” states the council’s policy memo, written by Latin America studies director Julia Sweig.
The ATF statistics, as well as those of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, suggest the escalating flow of assault weapons from the United States is connected with a 30% higher rate of per capita gun-related homicides in Latin America than the global average. In Mexico, the U.N. homicide report for 2011 charts a more than tripling of firearms slayings in less than a decade.
Mexico’s consul general for Los Angeles, Carlos M. Sada, contends that the share of U.S. weapons recovered in his country from scenes of gun violence are even higher than the eTrace statistics have measured. He puts the guns of U.S. origin at more than 80% and says the issue is one of deep concern for his country as it battles to contain raging violence among the drug cartels.
“Out of the 60,000, or 70,000 or 80,000 people killed in Mexico, how many were killed by weapons smuggled from the United States?” Sada asked rhetorically. “This is an issue that is there and we haven’t been able to stop it.”
In an interview with The Times, Sada noted that it has been months since Obama nominated an ATF director but that his Senate confirmation was still pending early Wednesday, “which gives an idea of how much importance the issue gets in the U.S. Congress.”
Obama nominated B. Todd Jones, a U.S. attorney for Minnesota and acting ATF director since 2011, to head the bureau shortly after the December massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn. Jones has the support of gun-control advocates, which deterred conservative lawmakers from backing his confirmation. In an unexpected move later Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Jones’ appointment.
Sweig, in her report for the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that Obama, in the absence of congressional action, take executive and diplomatic steps to reduce trafficking of firearms throughout the Americas.
The recommended measures include expanding nationwide a federal rule in place since 2011 in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico that requires gun dealers to report sales of more than two semiautomatic rifles to the same person within a five-day period.
The report also proposed closer coordination on anti-trafficking efforts with Brazil, the hemisphere’s other firearms industry leader, and to eliminate weapons and ammunition from an export control initiative that would make it easier for U.S. manufacturers to ship weapons abroad.
Sweig said in an interview that she hoped the recommendations would encourage Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to support gun control initiatives at the state level in hope of building momentum toward more effective national restraints.
“This is a long-term strategy,” she said of the goal of reducing the sources of high-powered weapons available to traffickers supplying Latin American criminal operations.
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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72a9e51a441a08c81d9bc01607a09213 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-military-planes-said-to-take-fire-in-south-sudan-20131221-story.html | U.S. military planes take fire in South Sudan | U.S. military planes take fire in South Sudan
KAMPALA, Uganda — Rebel fire hit two U.S. military aircraft responding to the outbreak in violence in South Sudan on Saturday, wounding three U.S. service members and heavily damaging at least one of the aircraft, officials said. South Sudan blamed the attack on renegade troops in control of the breakaway region.
The U.S. military aircraft were heading to Bor, the capital of the state of Jonglei and scene of some of the nation’s worst violence over the last week. One American service member was reported to be in critical condition. Officials said after the aircraft took incoming fire, they turned around and headed to Kampala, Uganda. From there the service members were flown on to Nairobi, Kenya for medical treatment, the officials said.
Both officials demanded anonymity to share information not yet made public. Both officials work in East Africa and are in a position to know the information. It was not immediately known what the U.S. aircraft were doing in Bor. One official said it appeared the aircraft were Ospreys, the type of aircraft that can fly like a helicopter and a plane.
Officials at the U.S. military’s Africa Command did not immediately answer phone calls or emails on Saturday.
South Sudan’s military spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said that government troops are not in control of Bor, so the attack on the U.S. aircraft has to be blamed on renegade soldiers, he said.
“Bor is under the control of the forces of Riek Machar,” Aguer said.
South Sudan President Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, said this week that an attempted coup triggered the violence now pulsing through South Sudan. He blamed the former vice president, Machar, an ethnic Nuer. But officials have since said a fight between Dinka and Nuer members of the presidential guard triggered the initial violence late Sunday night. Machar’s ouster from the country’s No. 2 political position earlier this year had stoked ethnic tensions.
The violence has killed hundreds and has world leaders worried that a full-blown civil war could ignite in South Sudan. The south fought a decades-long war with Sudan before a 2005 peace deal resulted in a 2011 referendum that saw South Sudan break away from the north, taking most of the region’s oil wealth with it.
An International Crisis Group expert on South Sudan told The Associated Press on Friday that rebels have taken control of at least some of South Sudan’s oil fields, an issue that could bring Sudan into the conflict. South Sudan’s oil flows north through Sudan’s pipelines, providing Khartoum with much needed income.
The U.N. Security Council on Friday said the weeklong violence resulted from a “political dispute among the country’s political leaders” that could affect not only South Sudan, but neighboring countries and the entire region.
U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this week dispatched U.S. troops to help protect the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Juba. The U.S. Embassy organized at least five emergency evacuation flights to help U.S. citizens leave the country. Other countries like Britain, Germany and Italy also helped citizens evacuate.
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af884589eb27642dfd2513c6be992b09 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-pakistan-troubled-relationship-20131022-story.html | U.S.-Pakistan relationship has nowhere to go but up, analysts say | U.S.-Pakistan relationship has nowhere to go but up, analysts say
When President Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif meet in the White House on Wednesday for the first high-level contact between their countries in years, there will be plenty to talk about but little on which to agree.
The relationship between Washington and Islamabad has wavered between bad and abysmal for decades, despite common interests in bolstering regional stability in South Asia and fighting terrorism -- what both nations see as one of the gravest threats to their security.
The strains are bountiful: U.S. drone strikes that have killed innocent civilians as well as targeted militants, the Pakistani government’s inability to root out extremists from the lawless “badlands” along the Afghanistan border and blatant violations of Pakistani sovereignty that outrage and embarrass Islamabad, as when the May 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound revealed that the world’s most-wanted terrorist had been living under the Pakistani security forces’ noses.
But political analysts say the work to improve ties has to begin somewhere, and the high-profile talks between Obama and Sharif could provide an opportunity for a fresh start.
“There are not going to be breakthroughs or dramatic deliverables, but it is potentially important in that it represents an opportunity to start a process of changing a relationship that has been so bad in recent years,” said Robert Hathaway, Asia program director for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Obama and Sharif need to build a personal relationship to make any progress down the road in easing suspicions and resentments, Hathaway said, while cautioning that expectations should be kept low, at least at the outset.
“It’s not going to be warm and fuzzy anytime soon, but both Nawaz Sharif and Obama recognize the fact that we do have common interests” in fighting terrorism, ensuring a stable Afghanistan after U.S. forces withdraw and keeping the peace between nuclear-armed foes Pakistan and India, said Hathaway, a former House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer.
Cameron Munter, who was U.S. ambassador to Pakistan in 2010-12 and is now a professor of international relations at Pomona College, attended a speech by Sharif on Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington and expressed surprise at the “very positive gloss” that the Pakistani leader put on relations with Washington.
“He tried to say that we can put this back on a good footing,” said Munter. “Without trying to take on too much, he was saying we can move ahead.”
Sharif’s arrival in Washington coincided with a new report by human rights advocates Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch saying that U.S. airstrikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed far more civilians than American officials have acknowledged.
Drone strikes against suspected militants, which are deeply resented by Pakistanis for the “collateral damage” they can inflict, were expected to be high on the agenda for Obama and Sharif, Munter said. He described the discussions as likely to be difficult but “very healthy for that public debate to be taking place at this time,” as resolving differences over drone strategy is a necessary prelude to a broader consensus on how to fight the broader war on terrorism.
Pakistan’s help in evacuating huge convoys of military equipment from Afghanistan through its territory next year will be vital to the security of the withdrawal, Munter said. And common work to compel peace talks between the next Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban could ease fears for the post-2014 future of Afghanistan, when the foreign forces are gone, the former diplomat said.
Obama and Sharif also need to coordinate strategy and diplomacy ahead of major political changes in the region next year, when both Afghanistan and India elect new leaders, noted Daniel Markey, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for Indo-Pakistani affairs and author of the just-released “No Exit from Pakistan: America’s Tortured Relationship with Islamabad.”
Markey said he was concerned for the next eight months, when Afghan and Indian political campaigns are under way and the potential for violence and corruption elevated.
But Markey observed that Pakistan’s milestone democratic accomplishment this year -- the peaceful transition from one elected civilian leader to another -- has given rise to hopes that the volatile campaign seasons in neighboring countries could also produce new leaders without the usual disruptions.
With the subcontinent in transition, observed CFR.org editor Robert McMahon, “perhaps it is time to take stock in the region, to see the glass as half full rather than half empty.”
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A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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d90efd6aaa48212c2e6d3d52dc78f2e4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-syria-chemical-weapons-plan-20130918-story.html | U.S. backs off deadline for Syria to submit chemical weapons list | U.S. backs off deadline for Syria to submit chemical weapons list
WASHINGTON – The U.S.-Russian plan for the removal or destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough just days ago, appeared to run into trouble Wednesday as the Obama administration backed off a deadline for the Syrian government to submit a full inventory of its toxic stockpiles and facilities to international inspectors.
The State Department signaled that it does not expect Syrian President Bashar Assad to produce the list within seven days, as spelled out in the framework deal that Washington and Moscow announced last weekend in Geneva.
Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday that “our goal is to see forward momentum” by Saturday, not the full list. “We’ve never said it was a hard and fast deadline.”
PHOTOS: Conflict in Syria
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had described the deadline as the first of a series of “specific timelines” that would indicate whether Syria is committed to the pact, which demands that Assad’s government give up its chemical weapons in exchange for the United States shelving the threat of airstrikes.
“We agreed that Syria must submit within a week – not in 30 days, but in one week -- a comprehensive listing,” Kerry said Saturday. He said the U.S. would allow “no games, no room for avoidance or anything less than full compliance.”
Although Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, sought last weekend to portray the two powers as united, the gap between them has become more apparent in the days since and is threatening to snarl efforts to craft a United Nations Security Council resolution that lays out how Syria is to meet its obligations.
MAP: Potential targets in Syria
The resolution needs to be complete before the first steps can be taken to eliminate the arsenal. But diplomats said that Western nations split with Russia in a meeting Tuesday over Western demands for tough enforcement of the agreement.
Diplomats hope to complete the resolution by Friday, but if they fall short, the work may be delayed further because of a meeting next week of the U.N. General Assembly.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body based in The Hague, is expected to take several days to complete its analysis of Syria’s “initial declaration,” and then will submit its report to the United Nations.
“If the first deadline is going to slip, you’d better start watching the others,” said Paula DeSutter, who served as assistant secretary of State for verification, compliance and implementation in the George W. Bush administration.
Western diplomats close to the deliberations sounded wary that the Syrians might try to “cheat and retreat,” as the government has in the past, and as Saddam Hussein’s government did in Iraq, in the face of international weapons inspections.
“We’re not going to lose a lot of faith in the Syrians, because we’re not starting out with a lot,” said one diplomat, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
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Twitter: @SBengali
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
Twitter: @richtpau
paul.richter@latimes
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165b11bedb3812850dc962fde427007c | https://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-vatican-united-nations-abuse-children-20140116-story.html | U.N. panel grills Vatican officials about abuse of children | U.N. panel grills Vatican officials about abuse of children
ROME -- In their toughest and most public questioning to date about sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy, senior Vatican officials came under heavy criticism Thursday from a United Nations committee over their handling of such cases and promised that changes were underway.
“The Holy See gets it,” Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former sex crimes prosecutor, told the Committee on the Rights of the Child at a meeting in Geneva.
But Scicluna and a colleague maintained the Vatican’s position that, while it is responsible for responding to abuses committed within the confines of the Vatican state, it is up to local law enforcers to punish abusive priests around the world.
“Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s envoy to the U.N. in Geneva. “Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country.”
That contention does not satisfy the Vatican’s critics, who accuse senior officials in the Roman Catholic Church of actively trying to cover up cases of abuse.
“It seems disingenuous to claim that states are responsible for these crimes, when church officials have been obstructing justice,” Barbara Blaine, head of the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters.
Still, she described Thursday’s hearing as “historic,” saying the spectacle of Vatican officials being raked over the coals by the U.N. had “given hope to [abuse] survivors across the globe.”
The Holy See was summoned to Geneva to explain its compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Vatican signed in 1990.
Sara Oviedo, a committee investigator, quizzed the Vatican officials about the transfer of abusive priests to new dioceses, asking why there were “efforts to cover up and obscure these types of cases.”
Tomasi was asked specifically about the Vatican’s internal investigation of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, a former envoy to the Dominican Republic who was ordered back to the Vatican in August after allegations surfaced he had abused young men.
“They didn’t answer whether he would be turned over” to civil authorities, Blaine noted.
Pam Spees, a lawyer with the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights who attended the session, said it was “made clear your obligations don’t end at boundaries.”
“There is a clear responsibility. The committee is showing it understands that,” she said.
The panel is due to report its conclusions, which are non-binding, on Feb. 5.
Last month, Pope Francis announced the formation of a commission to figure out how to protect children from abuse by the clergy.
At his daily Mass on Thursday, Francis acknowledged the Vatican was suffering from “so many scandals,” calling them “the shame of the church.”
Kington is a special correspondent.
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