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GUYANA CHRONICLE Tuesday June 24, 2014
Kerry promises ‘intense and sustained’ support for Iraq
(Reuters) - SECRETARY of State John Kerry on Monday promised “intense and sustained” U.S. support for Iraq, but said the divided
country would only survive if its leaders took urgent steps to bring it together. Hours before Kerry arrived in Baghdad, Sunni tribes
who have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq seized the only legal crossing point with Jordan, security sources said, leaving troops with no presence along the entire western frontier which includes some of the Middle East’s most important trade routes. U.S. President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 American advisers to Iraq but held off granting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite Muslim-led government’s request for air strikes to counter the two-week advance by Sunni militants. Officials have meanwhile called for Iraqis to form an inclusive government. The insurgency has been fuelled largely by a sense of marginal-
US Secretary of State John Kerry
isation and persecution among Iraq’s Sunnis. “The support will be intense and sustained and if Iraq’s leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,” Kerry told reporters in Baghdad. He said Maliki had “on
multiple occasions affirmed his commitment to July 1” as the date to start the formation of a new government bringing in more Sunnis and Kurds to share power, a move Washington is keen to see. Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said tribal leaders were negotiating to hand the Turabil desert border post to Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who took two main crossings with Syria in recent days and have pushed the Shi’ite-led government’s forces back toward Baghdad. Iraq state television said late on Monday that the army had recaptured both the crossing with Jordan and the al-Waleed crossing with Syria. Reuters could not inde-
pendently confirm reports due to security restrictions. Ethnic Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving no government troops with no presence along Iraq’s 800-km (500-mile) western border. For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq. Kerry said: “Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq’s leaders have to beat that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands. The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks.”
Sudan death sentence woman ‘freed’ (BBC News) A SUDANESE woman sentenced to death for abandoning her Islamic faith has been freed from jail, her lawyer has told the BBC. Meriam Ibrahim’s death
She is married to a Christian man and was sentenced under Sharia law to hang for apostasy in May after refusing to renounce Christianity.
Daniel Wani visited his children at the prison near Khartoum
The couple got married in a church after meeting in 2011
penalty was overturned by an appeal court, the official Suna news agency reported.
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Her husband, Daniel Wani, said he was looking forward to seeing her.
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He wanted his family to leave Sudan as soon as possible, Mr Wani, who is a US citizen, told the BBC Focus on Africa radio programme. The death sentence for Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, who gave birth to a daughter in prison not long after she was convicted, sparked international outrage. “We are very very happy about this - and we’re going to her now,” Mrs Ibrahim’s
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lawyer, Elshareef Ali told the BBC. “They have released her... she’s on her way home,” he said. Mr Ali said Mrs Ibrahim had shown “extraordinary courage” during her ordeal. “It’s a victory for freedom of religion in Sudan... By Meriam’s strong position, we believe that in the future no-one will be subjected to such a trial,” he said.
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