6A
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011
MiamiHerald.com
WORLD NEWS
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
THE MIAMI HERALD
U.S. spied on NATO’s top official, cables show BY SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press
BRUSSELS — Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables appear to show that the United States has been snooping on NATO’s top official using secret sources on his own staff. Confidential cables from the U.S. mission to NATO released Friday by WikiLeaks, the site that has published many secret government memos, said U.S. diplomats
received information on the private conversations of Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen from “a member of the NATO international staff.” Instead of the staffer’s name, the phrase “strictly protect” was inserted in a cable dated Sept. 10, 2009. The cable dealt with Fogh Rasmussen’s proposal to improve ties with Russia by establishing contacts with the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, a Russia-dominated security alliance. The cable was signed off by U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder. NATO’s 28 member nations, and a number of partner countries including Russia, maintain diplomatic offices inside the alliance’s sprawling compound on the outskirts of Brussels. While their envoys regularly monitor developments within the alliance, there has been no known case
in the past of a nation spying on the secretary-general. Another cable, signed by John Heffern, deputy chief of the U.S. mission, cited “a usually reliable source” as saying that a report by Fogh Rasmussen after a Dec. 17, 2010 meeting with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “conveyed additional details — that were not reflected in the secretary-general’s report on the visit.”
“Based on information from someone present at the Moscow meetings, the source reported that while Russian President Medvedev was polite, neither he nor PM Putin had expressed any real interest in cooperating with NATO,” Heffern reported. He contrasted that with the generally positive tone of Fogh Rasmussen’s official report submitted to the 28 NATO allies about the pros-
pects of future cooperation, particularly in Afghanistan. The alliance has condemned the release of the secret diplomatic cables, which were carried by several European newspapers on Friday. “NATO does not comment on alleged leaked documents,” spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said. The U.S. mission to the alliance said it could not comment on the documents or their veracity.
Southern Sudan Photo of Afghan woman wins award fighting claims nearly 140 lives BY TOBY STERLING Associated Press
BY MAGGIE FICK
Associated Press
KAMPALA, Uganda — Two days of fighting in Southern Sudan between the region’s army and a rebel faction has killed nearly 140 people, mostly civilians, a southern army spokesman said Friday. A former high-ranking southern army member who rebelled against the southern government following April elections broke a January cease-fire by attacking the towns of Fangak and Dor on Wednesday, said Col. Philip Aguer, the spokesman for the southern army. Renegade commander George Athor’s troops captured Fangak on Wednesday, and the fighting continued through Thursday until the southern military retook it, Aguer said. No new fighting was reported on Friday. Aguer said 89 civilians in the two towns were killed, along with 20 southern soldiers and police officers. Aguer also said 30 of Athor’s men were killed. The Associated Press attempted to reach Athor and his top aide for comment but the phone calls to the remote region did not go through. In September, Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir offered Athor and several other men who had launched armed uprisings against his government amnesty offers. On Jan. 5, four days before the south held an independence referendum, Athor signed a cease-fire with the army in what then appeared to end one of the
largest security threats to the south in the run-up to its self-determination vote. The independence referendum passed overwhelmingly, according to final results released Monday, and Southern Sudan is set to become the world’s newest nation in July. The vote was the culmination of a 2005 peace agreement that ended more than two decades of war between north and south Sudan. “We were preparing for peace and we don’t know why he is waging war at the time when war has ended in Sudan,” Aguer said. “Meanwhile we still maintain the spirit of reconciliation because the amnesty is still holding. So if Athor stops fighting we will welcome him for reconciliation.” A U.N. spokesman, Kouider Zerrouk, said Friday that the U.N. mission in Sudan “is very concerned about the renewed fighting — and the resulting civilian casualties.” U.N. leaders have engaged both sides and are urging an immediate end to the attacks, Zerrouk said. Last week in Upper Nile state, more than 60 southern soldiers who are members of the northern Sudanese army died in a mutiny related to the imminent breakup of the country. Ongoing insecurity, the widespread presence of small arms, and severe underdevelopment due to decades of civil war are just some of the problems facing Southern Sudan in the run-up to its independence declaration.
AMSTERDAM — A South African photographer’s portrait of an Afghan woman whose husband sliced off her nose and ears in a case of Taliban-administered justice won the World Press Photo award for 2010 Friday, one of photojournalism’s most coveted prizes. Jodi Bieber’s posed picture, which contrasts the woman’s arresting beauty against the results of the violence done to her after she fled an abusive marriage, was published on the cover of Time magazine Aug. 1. Bieber, 44, a winner of eight previous World Press Photo awards since 1998, is a freelance photojournalist affiliated with the Institute for Artist Management/Goodman Gallery. She has published two books on her native South Africa. Jury members said the photo, though shocking, was chosen because it addresses violence against women with a dignified image. The woman, 18-year-old Bibi Aisha, was rescued by the U.S. military and now lives in the United States. “This could become one of those pictures — and we have maybe just 10 in our lifetime — where if somebody says ‘you know, that picture of a girl’ — you know exactly which one they’re talking about,” said jury chairman David Burnett of Contact Press. The picture also gains part of its resonance from its similarity with the iconic 1984 National Geographic photograph of a beautiful young Afghan woman with a piercing gaze. Time’s publication of the
JODI BIEBER/AFP-GETTY IMAGES
A PICTURE OF STRENGTH: Bibi Aisha fled an abusive marriage in Afghanistan and now lives in the United States. picture provoked international debate over the ethics of publishing — or not publishing — such a disturbing image. “It’s a terrific picture, a different picture, a frightening picture,” said Juror Vince Aletti, a U.S freelance critic. “It’s so much about
not just this particular woman, but the state of women in the world.” In a video commentary on Time’s website, Bieber said, “It was more about capturing something about her — and that was the difficult part.” She said she did not want
Online campaign rescues abducted Chinese children BY ELAINE KURTENBACH Associated Press
SHANGHAI — An online campaign to gather photos of Chinese kids begging on the streets is pressuring authorities to crack down on gangs that kidnap children for exploitation and is helping reunite them with families. Many of the children seen begging in Chinese cities, often in the arms of women who are not their mothers, are snatched from their real families by kidnappers and then sold into virtual slavery, forced to beg by gangs that sometimes maim them to elicit greater sympathy. Several families have been reunited with their abducted offspring since Beijing-based social researcher Yu Jianrong launched a campaign last month urging people to post photos of beggar children on microblogs — websites similar to Twitter. The effort is winning fresh support for efforts to protect children from such abuses, though some visitors to the microblogs have expressed worries over privacy issues and possible retaliation against kids by their abductors. Yu would not comment directly when contacted Friday, saying only that he would not speak to foreign media before hanging up. In his blog comments, he has urged media to “cool” their coverage of his campaign — likely out of concern over official sensitivities. Using children under the age of 14 for begging is ille-
12PGA06.indd 6
EUGENE HOSHIKO/AP FILE
UNDERBELLY: Many of the children seen begging in Chinese cities, often in the arms of women who are not their mothers, are kidnapped from their families. gal in China, but like many other outlawed practices it is often tolerated, even in big showcase cities like Shanghai. Some, barely big enough to walk, stumble through subway trains, hands outstretched. Others sit out in the cold, on grimy sidewalks. Children are sometimes forced to beg by their own relatives. But others are used by gangs that have kept alive a long tradition of trafficking in children, women and the disabled. The Public Security Ministry issued a statement Thursday urging citizens to tell the police if they see children or
the handicapped being used for begging. But it said the vast majority of cases were not kidnapped but were being used or “rented” by their families for begging. Yu began encouraging China’s increasingly online citizens to post photos of children they saw begging after receiving a request from a follower of his microblog appealing for help with finding his missing son. The sites on Chineselanguage sina.com and qq.com have since posted more than 2,500 photos of children seen begging in cities across China. At least six missing children
had been rescued as of Thursday, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported. The campaign is part of a growing trend to use the Internet to help track down missing family members. “Microblog Miracle: Child Lost for Three Years Recovered,” said a headline in the usually staid Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily. It showed a picture of Peng Gaofeng holding his 6-year-old son Wenle, who was recovered after Internet users spotted the child begging in a village far from the southern Chinese city where he was abducted.
Internet users had spotted the child after his picture was posted on another microblog last fall. Wary of the potential, as in Tunisia and Egypt, for social media to be used as a tool for dissent, China generally blocks access to foreign sites like Facebook and Twitter. But domestic versions of such social media are thriving. Such forums are a promising way to help address such social problems and a reminder of their potential for fostering positive changes, said Yu Hai, a sociologist at Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University. At the same time, “This is an alert that the government needs to do more for people,” Yu wrote. “I’m optimistic about this in the long run, but obviously there is a need for more official support.” Earlier this week, authorities in Taihe, a district in neighboring Anhui province that is known to be home to some organized begging rings, issued a notice ordering people using disabled children for begging to turn themselves in within 10 days or face “harsh penalties,” according to a photographed notice posted online by the Shanghai newspaper Oriental Morning Post. Chinese police have set up a DNA and photo database as part of a crackdown on human trafficking that began in the spring of 2009. As of September, 813 children had been returned to their families.
to portray Aisha as a victim. “I thought, no, this woman is beautiful.” Aisha posed for the Time cover photo because she wanted readers to see the potential consequences of a Taliban resurgence, the magazine said when it was published.
Gay English bishop Rawcliffe dies at 89 LONDON — (AP) — Derek Rawcliffe, the first Church of England bishop to be open about his homosexuality, has died. He was 89. St. Aidan’s Church in Leeds, which will celebrate a requiem Mass for Rawcliffe on Sunday, said he died Feb. 1. Rawcliffe disclosed his homosexuality on television in 1995, when he was serving as an honorary bishop in Ripon and Leeds diocese. He was dismissed the following year for conducting blessings of same-sex couples. In an interview with the Yorkshire Post in 1995, Rawcliffe said he faced the issue of his sexual identity when he was working in Melanesia, and realized he loved a young man who had made approaches. “I began to love everybody in a new way and to see that in spite of our sins and failings, God loves us,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. Later, however, Rawcliffe befriended and corresponded with Susan Speight, who had what he called a “miraculous healing” from a disease which had put her in a wheelchair. He said he asked, “God, do you want me to marry her?” and he did so in 1977. She died in 1989.
2/12/2011 4:15:33 AM