INTERNATIONAL
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Two Ethiopia opposition members killed, rerun calls ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian police shot dead two opposition members in the sensitive Oromia region after an election the ruling party won by a landslide, an opposition party and the government said yesterday. The electoral board said on Tuesday the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and allied parties had won 534 seats out of 536 declared, giving Prime Minister Meles Zenawi most seats in the 547-member parliament. The shootings occurred over a two-day period, the opposition said. “One was shot on Sunday and one was shot yesterday,” Merera Gudina, leader of the opposition
Oromo People’s Congress (OPC) told Reuters. “The government is trying to prevent protests by massively repressing the people.” Government head of information, Bereket Simon, said one man was shot after trying to storm an office where ballots were being counted and the other was shot a day later by a policeman whom he had beaten during the same incident. “It is unfortunate that the men were killed,” Bereket told Reuters. “But these are isolated incidents. It is nothing to do with any instruction from above.” He said there was a warrant for the policeman’s
arrest. An eight-party opposition coalition called Medrek, which includes the OPC, called yesterday for a rerun of the election and said it would not be deterred by the ruling party’s desire to have a single-party state. “In spite of all the sacrifices paid, both by the nation and by the respective parties, this election simply does not pass the test so we are calling for a rerun of the whole election in the presence of independent election administrators and observers,” said Beyene Petros, the chairman of Medrek. “This election-let me take that word back, this activity that took place on May 23,
we don’t consider it a genuine election but rather a drama acted by the EPRDF,” he told a news conference in the capital Addis Ababa. Medrek has won only one seat in parliament so far. The country’s second biggest opposition party, the All Ethiopian Unity Organization, also rejected the result of the elections and called yesterday for a rerun. A European Union observer mission said the election was marred by the EPRDF’s use of state resources for campaigning, putting the opposition at a disadvantage ahead of the vote, but this did not mean the count itself was invalid. The United States
said Ethiopia’s election failed to meet international standards and called for stronger democratic institutions in the country, a key U.S. ally in Africa. Western diplomats are watching closely to see how the opposition will react after many of its senior leaders lost their seats in the parliamentary victory for Meles, who is looking to foreign investors to help accelerate development. At the last election, an opposition coalition cried foul after the EPRDF and its allies won 327 seats. Riots erupted in the capital on two separate occasions. Security forces killed 193 protesters and seven policemen died.
Oromia is home to the Oroma, Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group with 27 million out of 80 million people. The area produces most of the coffee in Africa’s biggest grower, along with oil seeds, sesame and livestock, which are major exports. Oromo had been seen by analysts as an opposition stronghold but the EPRDF won all 178 of the region’s parliamentary seats. Oromo politicians said the government was cracking down on them ahead of the poll. Both the government and the opposition said members were murdered in Oromia by the other side in the four weeks leading up to the May 23 poll. —Reuters
Beshir set for new term as cracks still threaten Sudan International war-crimes indictment hanging over Sudanese prez KHARTOUM: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is to be sworn in for a new term today, ahead of a vote on southern independence and with an international war-crimes indictment hanging over him. Beshir’s latest mandate in his
NICOSIA: Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias reacts as he arrives at a UN compound before meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu, unseen, and UN Envoy Alexander Downer, unseen, in the UN buffer zone of the divided capital of Nicosia, Cyprus yesterday. —AP
Cyprus peace talks resume after two-month pause NICOSIA: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Cyprus’ rival leaders yesterday not to let slow-moving reunification talks fall apart, warning that time is working against them. Ban made the appeal as the island’s Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and the newly elected president of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots Dervis Eroglu resumed peace talks after a two-month pause. “A settlement is within your grasp and this opportunity must be seized, as time is not on your side,” Ban said in a statement read out by his special Cyprus envoy Alexander Downer. “Achieving an agreement will require vision, statesmanship and courage. Your communities want and expect a settlement.” Although the talks have no set deadline, Ban said he believes the two leaders can reach a peace deal “in the coming months.” Yesterday’s meeting at a UN compound inside the buffer zone separating the Greek Cypriot south from the Turkish Cypriot north was the first between Christofias and Eroglu , a hardliner , who beat the moderate incumbent Mehmet Ali Talat in an April 18 poll. Cyprus was ethnically split in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared an independent republic in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it and maintains 35,000 troops there.
Eroglu’s election win raised fears that his longstanding advocacy for separate Turkish Cypriot sovereignty , instead of a partnership in a federation envisioned by leftists Talat and Christofias in 19 months of talks ,would derail the open-ended process. Failure would, in turn, further endanger Turkey’s troubled bid for European Union membership and hobble closer EU-NATO cooperation. Given the stakes, Ban moved to allay those fears, saying he was “encouraged” that both leaders agreed not to backtrack and restart talks from where they left off. The UN chief also hailed the “strong progress” the two sides made on power sharing and governance before the talks’ suspension in an apparent tip to Christofias who has been under criticism over his handling of the negotiations. Downer said the leaders yesterday moved onto the key issue of homes and property lost during the 1974 war. The two sides remain far apart on the issue , Greek Cypriots want the original owners to have first say on what will happen to the property, while Turkish Cypriots prefer an arrangement based on financial compensation or a property swap. Other sticking points include granting military intervention rights to Turkey and mainland Turks who have settled in the north. —AP
UK govt reveals size of its nuclear stockpile LONDON: Britain’s foreign secretary offered the first complete accounting of the country’s nuclear arsenal yesterday, revealing that it has 225 warheads. The announcement, made without fanfare in the House of Commons, follows the Obama adminstration’s disclosure this month that the United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and “several thousand” more retired warheads awaiting the junk pile, the first description of the secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly. “We believe that the time is now right to be more open about the weapons we hold,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said. “We judge that this will assist in
building a climate of trust between nuclear and nonnuclear weapons states and contribute therefore to future efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons worldwide.” Britain had earlier revealed that it had 160 operational warheads, but Hague’s comments that the country has 225 warheads overall was the first time the size of the total stockpile was revealed. Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt told a briefing for UN reporters that Hague sent him to New York, where intense negotiations on a final document for the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty review conference are taking place, to emphasize the importance of the announcement in the House of Commons.
“We are very conscious that everything relating to nonproliferation depends on confidence, the confidence between those who are parties to the treaty, those who are nuclear weapon states and those who are not.” The new government is also conscious that over the last decade the treaty had come under pressure with no outcome from a review conference in 2005. “We wanted to make an immediate and positive contribution to that process,” Burt said. For that reason, Burt said that Hague announced “two particularly strong confidencebuilding measures” , the maximum number of warheads in Britain’s stockpile and review its policy on the use of weapons.—AP
EU-US talks on privacy may take up to 2 years BRUSSELS: Negotiations for trans-Atlantic privacy protection agreement could take two years and limit governments’ access to personal data while forcing them to delete inaccurate information, an EU official said yesterday. The European Union’s justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, has asked EU governments to back a negotiating mandate for a deal setting out how the bloc’s 27 countries and the United States must protect the privacy of individuals in any law enforcement case. “We want, once and for all, to have a basic fixing of the general values which are common between the United States and Europe,” Reding said, adding that “one to two years will be necessary” to complete such a deal. “These discussions are not going to be easy because the systems on the two sides are so different.” Reding said that, in the talks, she would
insist any private data be used for legitimate purposes to fight crime and terrorism, and that anyone mentioned in such cases have the right of legal redress, as well as the right to have one’s personal data corrected or erased if it is found to be inaccurate. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Reding said, the EU has felt that American anti-terrorism officials have asked “for very much in terms of personal data” on Europeans. Reding is holding talks this week with US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and meeting next week with US Attorney General Eric Holder in Brussels. Until the umbrella privacy agreement takes effect, the EU must reach deals with Washington on airline passenger rights and privacy in financial transfers. EU lawmakers in February vetoed a deal on the latter, saying it did not offer proper privacy guarantees.—AP
“The biggest challenge Sudan faces in the next five years-I would even say in the coming months-is whether it will head toward unity or slide into division,” said Abdel Moneim Suleiman, an opposition activist. Beshir will oversee the run-up to a referendum on the independence of the south which is scheduled for January 2011. The vote was promised as part of a peace deal between the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Khartoum government that ended Africa’s longest-running war in 2005. Salva Kiir, who heads the SPLM, was sworn in as the first elected president of the autonomous region of south Sudan on Friday. In a speech celebrating his disputed re-election victory last month, Beshir vowed to campaign for unity against the ambitions of southerners. And on Monday, newly elected parliament speaker Ibrahim Ahmed alTaher focused on the referendum in his inaugural speech. “The assembly’s first task is to call upon southerners to preserve the unity of Sudan because that is what serves their interests,” said Taher, a member of Beshir’s National Congress Party, which controls parliament. “Separation will only bring division and war,” he added. Taher said parliament “will also have to resolve the conflict in Darfur. “Weapons and murder have not provided an answer to the demands of the people and it is up to the representatives of the people to complete the path to peace,” he said. But there are few signs that Beshir, who won the first multiparty vote since he seized power in a 1989 coup, plans to cooperate with his opponents, further undermining hope for unity. Just last week Sudanese authorities arrested Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, once Beshir’s mentor but now one of his fiercest critics. Like many observers, critics say a vote backing southern independence is now largely inevitable. “I do not think that the Sudanese of the north will stop feasting on oil,” a resource largely found in the south, Suleiman said. “But I also think that the southerners will not give up their demand for self-governance,” he added. The heads of state of only four countries have confirmed their attendance at Beshir’s inauguration today, namely the presidents of Eritrea, Djibouti and Chad, and newly re-elected Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Diplomats from Japan, Spain and the European Union will also be present at the celebration. But international human rights organizations and one of the main Darfuri rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, have called for a boycott of the ceremony, few details of which have yet emerged. “The presence of international representatives will be an offence to the victims of Darfur,” JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam told AFP by phone from London. In March 2009, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Beshir for alleged war crimes in Darfur. But Beshir continues to reject the jurisdiction of the ICC, the world’s only independent permanent court with authority to try genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Darfur, an arid region the size of France, has been gripped by civil war since 2003 when minority rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated government, complaining of marginalization. The war has left 300,000 people dead and displaced around 2.7 million, according to the United Nations. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.—AFP
21-year rule is considered crucial for the future of Africa’s largest country, where former southern rebels are seeking to secede and with deadly violence continuing to plague the western Darfur region.
KHARTOUM: Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir (L) reviews an honor guard with his Eritrean counterpart Isaias Afwerki at Khartoum airport yesterday. —AFP
French anger at Israel as Netanyahu visits PARIS: Boycott calls, street protests, criticism from Jewish intellectuals-French opposition to Israeli policy is growing as Paris prepares to welcome Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At first sight, Netanyahu’s visit today represents a victory, as he will mark Israel’s entry into the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, the Parisbased club of the world’s richest democracies. As usual, the visit will be accompanied by street protests from various leftist proPalestinian groups that have long opposed Israeli policy. But this time, his delegation might detect something else at work, as anger over Israeli state policy spreads beyond the extremes of left and right into the mainstream and even into French Jewish opinion. Israel’s friends in France now fear that frustration at Netanyahu’s intransigence over Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank will translate into opposition to the existence of the state itself. An online petition dubbed the “European Jewish Call for Reason” or “JCall” has gathered more than 6,000 signatures, including prominent Jewish figures such as philosophers Bernard-Henri
Levy and Alain Finkielkraut. “Israel faces existential threats,” the group warns, criticizing the Netanyahu government’s “pursuit of settlements in the West Bank and in the Arab districts of East Jerusalem.” “These policies are morally and politically wrong and feed the unacceptable delegitimisation process that Israel currently faces abroad,” it says. Mainstream Jewish representative groups in France have distanced themselves from the petition-even if some of their members have signed-but agree that radical opposition to Israel is gathering recruits. “Anti-Israeli criticism in France has spread beyond the far left, because extreme left thinking has a strong influence on society as a whole,” said Gilles William Goldnadel, chairman of the France-Israel Association. For Goldnadel, this influence promotes “the delegitimisation of the state of Israel, notably by means of protests and boycott calls.” Calls for protests and boycotts against Israel are common in France. Today’s visit will see street rallies, and already this week a pressure group has launched a lawsuit against a French cosmetics chain it accuses of selling Israeli products produced on occupied Palestinian land.
A pressure group, Generation Palestine, is to stage a protest and a concert in Paris on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit, accusing Israel of pursuing a policy of “Jewification” in Jerusalem. But if protests were limited to radical leftist and Muslim groups, they would be easier for Israel’s supporters to dismiss. Increasingly, formerly pro-Israeli supporters have begun weighing in, especially since the return to power last year of Netanyahu and a coalition led by his rightwing Likud party. “Jewish intellectuals are uncomfortable with the criticism and feel obliged to distance themselves from the Israeli government,” Goldnadel said, adding that he personally saw no change in Israeli policy since the vote. The JCall petition has been criticized in some quarters as a betrayal of Israel by European Jews playing into the hands of its enemies, but its organizers insist they still have the state’s best interests at heart. “And it’s because we continue to have confidence in it that we are calling it out in this way,” wrote Paris lawyers and JCall signatories Michel Zaoui and Patrick Klugman in Today’s edition of Le Monde.—AFP
LONDON: Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (L) talks with US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (R) during a meeting at 11 Downing Street in London yesterday. —AFP