SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2013
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Karabakh leader urges action on Azerbaijan threats PARIS: The international community must take Azerbaijan’s threats of regaining the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh seriously and condemn Baku’s ongoing arms-buying spree, the breakaway territory’s leader said yesterday. Seized by ethnic Armenian separatists in a war in the early 1990s that left more than 30,000 dead, Karabakh is at the heart of long-simmering tensions between ex-Soviet neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia. Violence continues to flare on its borders, with a least six soldiers killed so far this year, and a new conflict would threaten to draw in regional powers like Armenia’s ally Russia, Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey and Iran. Baku has vowed to retake control of the small mountainous region, whose self-declared independence has not been recognized by any state, including Armenia. In France for a three-day visit, the region’s president Bako Sahakian said he saw no signs of a breakthrough in peace talks and warned that Azerbaijan was stoking ten- PARIS: The president of the Nagorny Karabakh region’s unrecognized government, Bako Sahakian (right) is sions with enormous arms purchases. “We seen during an interview in Paris. —AFP can only be worried by the policy of militarization and over-arming undertaken by euros) - almost 15 percent of the entire state term last year, said that while talks have ticipants from Nagorny Karabakh,” Sahakian Azerbaijan, because there are also clear and budget. Officials from Christian Armenia and failed to result in a peace deal, they have at said. He said he believed a negotiated soluexplicit threats against our country,” he said. Muslim Azerbaijan have met repeatedly for least been useful in preventing another war. tion was possible and insisted authorities in “The international community must react to peace talks since a ceasefire was signed in But he said the negotiations should be Karabakh would not be the ones to start a this situation,” he said. 1994, with negotiations mediated by the expanded to include representatives of the new war. “It is a complex conflict, you cannot Fuelled by the oil-rich country’s energy Minsk Group chaired by France, Russia and authorities in Karabakh, which is home to expect a solution from one day to the next. exports, Azerbaijan’s defense spending has the United States. about 150,000 people. “To have real and seri- But there is no alternative to peace and diaskyrocketed in recent years, with this year’s Sahakian, a former soldier and security ous progress in the negotiating process the logue,” Sahakian said. Experts have warned military budget at $1.9 billion (1.4 billion service chief who was elected to a second format must be re-established to have par- that a fresh conflict would be even more
Injured Indian spy fights for survival Indian on death row in Pakistan LAHORE: An Indian national on death row in Pakistan who was attacked by fellow inmates armed with bricks has been put on a ventilator as he fights for his life, officials said yesterday. Sarabjit Singh, who was sentenced to death 16 years ago on espionage charges, was rushed to hospital on Friday with multiple wounds, including a severe head injury, after an argument in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail. “Singh’s condition is critical with multiple wounds on his head, abdomen, jaws and other body parts,
police officer investigating the case told AFP, identifying the suspects only by single names Aamir and Mudasir. “These inmates attacked Singh while he was doing his evening walk. We don’t exactly know at the moment what was the reason for this attack but initial investigation reveals that they had exchanged hot words with Singh,” he said on condition of anonymity. Singh’s lawyer Owais Sheikh told AFP his client had received threats following the execution of a Kashmiri separatist
AMRITSAR: Dalbir Kaur (right), sister of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner held in Pakistan, is checked by a doctor as family members look on in Amritsar yesterday. —AFP and he has been put on ventilator,” a senior doctor in Lahore’s Jinnah hospital said on condition of anonymity. Singh is fighting for his life in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU), and the next 24 hours are critical, the doctor said, adding that the head injury was “quite severe”. “He needs surgery but the doctors are not performing it because they don’t want to take any chances and want him to stabilize,” he said. Singh was hit with bricks and other blunt objects by two inmates, a
in India. Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi on February 9 for his part in a deadly Islamist attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemned the attack as a “dastardly act” and called on the government to make a thorough inquiry into the matter and punish the guilty persons. “The authorities have obviously failed to do their elementary duty” of providing him safety and security, the commission said in a state-
ment. The attack on Singh was frontpage news in Indian newspapers yesterday, with Indian television stations running frequent updates on his condition and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh describing it as a “very sad incident”, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Sarabjit Singh’s sister, Dalbir Kaur, said Indian government officials had told her that Pakistan has granted visas for four family members to travel to Lahore and is also allowing one person to stay with him in the hospital. “We want to be with Sarabjit in this difficult time. He is all alone. We don’t even know what his condition is,” Kaur told AFP in Amritsar, a holy Sikh city in northern India. Pakistani foreign office spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry confirmed, in a statement, that the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi has been instructed to facilitate the provision of visas to Singh’s family members. Chaudhry also said that “the government provided timely consular access and permitted two officials of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad to travel to Lahore and visit the prisoner late last night”. Singh was arrested following a bombing in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore in 1990 in which 14 people were killed. He was sentenced to death after being convicted by a Pakistani court on spying charges. His family has filed mercy petitions to Pakistani authorities seeking Singh’s release. Pakistan maintains he was an Indian spy, but Singh’s family say he is a farmer who accidentally crossed the border into Pakistan while drunk. Pakistan last year released an Indian man who had served three decades in a Pakistani jail on espionage charges. Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India have fought three wars since the division of the subcontinent in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between them and claimed by both. —AFP
Hope and tight security for Tunisia’s Jewish pilgrimage DJERBA: Jewish pilgrims took part on Friday in an annual ritual at Tunisia’s Ghriba synagogue, the oldest in Africa, amid hope that this year will mark a turning point despite a rise in Islamist unrest across the region. After a sale of ornaments and sacred objects that raised about 1,000 euros for Tunisia’s tiny Jewish community, about 200 people joined a short, joyful procession near the synagogue, which they ended by singing the national anthem. Dozens of police and soldiers armed with automatic rifles supervised the march, on the Mediterranean resort island of Djerba, with the Jewish quarter cordoned off. “A big thanks to the Tunisian authorities. It has made us so welcome that I’m sure next year there will be 10,000!” said Marco, who helped with the auction. After Saturday, the Jewish day of rest, the organizers hope to welcome at least 1,000 pilgrims for the main day of the pilgrimage. Around half of them will be foreigners, including several dozen Israelis coming for the first time since the 2011 revolution. The Islamist-led government has deployed tight security for the two-day pilgrimage to prevent any attacks by radical Muslim groups, blamed for a wave of violence since the mass uprising that toppled ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. More than a dozen army trucks were stationed at Ghriba, where an Al-Qaeda attack in 2002 killed 21 people, and police checkpoints were set up around the Jewish neighborhoods and on the road linking the airport to the tourist zone. The discreet crowd of faithful began the rituals late-morning, gathering inside the 2,500-year-old synagogue barefoot and with their heads covered, lighting candles, drinking a local fig wine and receiving blessings from the rabbis. Amid the cries of the women, singing and prayers, dozens of people wrote the names of their loved ones on candles, or on
eggs that they placed inside a cave, in supplication for fertility, peace or prosperity. “Thank God this year is as it should be, not like in the last two years. I came then, but out of solidarity. There were no real festivities,” said Meyer Sabbagh, 63. The real estate developer, who left Djerba for Paris after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, said his cousin had also come from Israel, and praised the security laid on by the authorities. The anticipated number of pilgrims is still far below the 8,000 that came before the 2002 attack, and even the 3,000 that had returned prior to the uprising that forced Ben Ali to flee in January 2011. The event was cancelled that year with the country on edge after the mass uprisings, but it resumed discreetly in 2012. Kamel Essid, an adviser at the religious affairs ministry, said he had come “to show our Jewish brothers that we respect all religions,” adding that it was the government’s duty to make every effort to ensure the gathering’s success. Friza Haddad, known as Micha, a Tunisian singer and familiar voice at the annual Ghriba ceremonies, said he wanted to believe there was a future for the pilgrimage, on an island where Jews and Muslims have coexisted harmoniously. “Here there is no problem; we live as a community. There are Jews here, and Muslims there. But it’s only on Djerba that things are like that. In the last two years there have been problems elsewhere” in Tunisia, said the old man. As well as the attacks by Islamist militants, some groups have raised concerns in recent months over an apparent rise in anti-Semitic language in Tunisia. A minorities support group in March accused the judiciary of failing to prosecute individuals inciting hatred, including Ahmed S’hili, an imam who called openly for a “divine genocide” of the Jews in a sermon late last year. —AFP
devastating than the 1992-1994 Karabakh war-one of the bloodiest of the many regional conflicts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Karabakh survives thanks largely to financial and military backing from Armenia and supporters in the widespread Armenian diaspora, including in France. Sahakian said he was hoping to drum up investment in France in the hopes of boosting the region’s small economy, which relies mainly on agriculture, manufacturing and some mining. He said he also expected progress soon on one of the region’s key efforts resuming commercial flights into a revamped airport in the capital, Stepanakert. Karabakh is deeply isolated, accessible only by an eight-hour drive from the Armenian capital Yerevan along a winding mountain road that is often unusable in winter. Sahakian said Karabakh was “not very far” from being prepared to restore flights into the region and that he hoped they could resume this year. The Armenians have been under diplomatic pressure to move carefully on restoring flights, after Azerbaijan warned it will not tolerate planes bound for Karabakh violating its airspace. “This initiative must not be linked with resolving the conflict or be seen in this context,” Sahakian said. “Civil flights that will be established between Yerevan and Stepanakert are aimed simply at helping us emerge from the isolation that has been imposed on us.” —AFP
Taleban declares ‘spring offensive’ KABUL: Taleban insurgents in Afghanistan yesterday announced the start of their annual “spring offensive” against the USbacked government, vowing a nationwide series of attacks as foreign troops withdraw. The Islamist extremists said that multiple suicide bombings, “insider attacks” by Afghan soldiers and “special military tactics” would target international airbases and diplomatic buildings to inflict maximum casualties. They warned Afghans working for President Hamid Karzai’s “stooge” regime to distance themselves from the government to avoid being caught up in the promised violence, and called for young people not to join the police or army. This year’s “fighting season” is seen as crucial to
Afghanistan’s future as its much-criticized security forces pit themselves against the insurgents who have fought against the Kabul government since 2001. NATO combat operations in Afghanistan are due to end next year, and coalition commanders say that the local army and police have made enough progress to provide security and keep the Taleban at bay. Afghanistan’s fighting season traditionally begins in April or May as snow recedes from the mountains, and in recent years the Taleban have marked the occasion with a public declaration of their intent to bring down Karzai. The insurgents’ latest statement celebrated the start of the NATO withdrawal, saying that “the enemy, with all its military might, has been over-
whelmed and finally forced to flee from their military bases”. It added that this year’s offensive, named after 7th-century general Khalid bin Waleed, would start on Sunday “in unison throughout the country... against the transgressing invaders and their degenerate backers”. Last week a study by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office found attacks by the Taleban and other insurgents rose 47 percent in JanuaryMarch compared with the same period last year. The United Nations has separately reported a rise of almost 30 percent in civilian casualties in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, with 475 civilians killed and 872 wounded. —Agencies