THE NATION WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013
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FOREIGN NEWS
Obama joins new Israeli-Palestinian peace push
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RESIDENT Barack Obama brought senior Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to the White House yesterday to give a boost to his administration’s third bid to relaunch stalled Middle East peace talks. Obama was meeting with the teams on the second day of an initial round of negotiations that began late Monday with a dinner hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry at the State Department. Before seeing Obama on Tuesday, the negotiators met together without American mediators. After leaving the White House they were to return to the State Department for a threeway meeting with Kerry and top aides. Kerry is expected to close out the round with a statement detailing any progress. U.S. officials sought to dampen expectations, saying Kerry might say only that the two sides had agreed to meet again. A second round would likely to be held in the region in the coming two weeks and would be overseen by Martin Indyk, the new U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the meetings publicly. In announcing Indyk’s appointment before the talks, Kerry urged both sides to make “reasonable compro-
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•Middleeast peace negotiators at Washington, DC ... yesterday.
mises” on the most serious issues that divide them over the course of the next nine months. The parties have agreed to keep at it until at least the end of next May. Kerry spent six months of furious shuttle diplomacy in an effort to restart the negotiations that broke down in 2008. An attempt to restart them in 2010 failed after a single day. And before that, scores of diplomats have failed to broker peace de-
PHOTO: REUTERS
cades. After five years of stalemate, there has been a flurry of activity in recent days to set the stage for the talks that all sides agree will be protracted and difficult. Diplomats long have stressed the urgency of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but Kerry thinks there are more reasons than ever to move quickly. In his thinking, time is running out. Even if Israel wanted to, it
would be difficult to remove mushrooming Israeli West Bank settlements whose population has doubled since 2000. Demographers have warned that it will be only a matter of a few years until Arabs outnumber Jews in the Holy Land. And last year, the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem - a move that could let the Palestinians take their complaints over settlements
to the International Criminal Court. The Israeli side is led by chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister who was active in the George W. Bush administration’s illfated peace talks with the Palestinians in Annapolis, Md., and Yitzhak Molcho, a veteran adviser to Netanyahu who was part of the Israeli team involved in Obama’s two previous attempts to broker negotiations.
N an operation carried out with military-like precision, Taliban fighters disguised as police and armed with bombs broke 250 prisoners out of a Pakistan jail yesterday with the help of what appeared to be insider informants. The attack in the city of Dera Ismail Khan showed
the ability of the al Qaedalinked Pakistani Taliban to strike at the heart of Pakistan’s heavily guarded prison system and walk away with dozens of senior Taliban fighters and commanders. The overnight assault on the Central Prison took place despite reports that
regional officials had received intelligence days, if not weeks, ago suggesting such an attack was imminent. Officials blamed a combination of negligence and lack of communication among Pakistan’s many security agencies, but some
suggested there may have been a degree of insider help. Just hours before the attack, army and police units had met at the jail to discuss security, one source said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
as a whistleblower. The U.S. government called him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor. Manning stood and faced the judge as she read the decision. She didn’t explain her verdict, but said she would release detailed written findings. She didn’t say when she would do that. The charge of aiding the enemy was the most serious of 21 counts Manning faced and carried a potential life sentence.
He faces up to 128 years in prison. Manning’s court-martial was unusual because he acknowledged giving the anti-secrecy website more than 700,000 battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. In the footage, airmen laughed and called targets “dead bastards.” Manning pleaded guilty earlier this year to lesser offenses that could have brought him 20 years behind bars, yet the government continued to pursue the original, more serious charges. Manning said during a pre-trial hearing in February he leaked the material to expose the U.S military’s “bloodlust” and disregard for human life, and what he considered American diplomatic deceit. He said he chose information he believed would not the harm the United States and he wanted to start a debate on military and foreign policy. He did not testify at his court-martial.
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Pakistan: Taliban gunmen frees 250 in jail break
WikiLeaks: Manning acquitted of ORE than three sentencing hearing on the aiding enemy His years after U.S. convictions begins Wednesday.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was arrested for giving classified secrets to WikiLeaks, a military judge acquitted the former intelligence analyst Tuesday of aiding the enemy but convicted him of espionage, theft and computer fraud charges. The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated for about 16 hours over three days before reaching her decision in a case that drew worldwide attention as supporters hailed Manning
Syria:Car bomb kills Kurdish politician
LOSS OF DOCUMENTS This is to notify the general pubic and Benue State Min. of Land and Survey that the certificate of occupancy with plots nos. BNA 625, BNB 2379 and BNB 2380 issued to Air commodore NSIKAK EDUOK by the Benue State Military Administrator is declared missing. Anybody with useful information recovery of the documents should please contact the undersigned. Air Mashal Nsokak Eduok (Rtd) 08062821145
•Manning after the verdict at Fort Mead, Maryland, USA ... yesterday
PROMINENT Syrian Kurdish politician has been killed in a car bomb attack in Syria’s northeastern town of Qamishli, near the Turkish border, officials say. Isa Huso was a member of the Supreme Kurdish Council, aimed at bringing together Syrian Kurdish groups, and an opponent of President Bashar al-Assad. Syria’s main Kurdish militia later issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists operating in the north. It follows weeks of intense fighting between Kurds and jihadist groups. Mr Huso was leaving his home in the border town when a bomb planted inside his car detonated, Kurdish political sources told Reuters news agency. He was a member of the foreign relations committee in the Kurdish council, an umbrella group for regional Kurdish factions. Isa Huso, 60, was described by Kurdish activists as a moderate. He had reportedly been imprisoned several times under Mr Assad’s rule for campaigning against human rights abuses. “Huso sought to promote Kurdish rights within a united Syria free from the grip of the Assad regime,” his former neighbour, Massoud Akko, told Reuters news agency. “No-one knows who killed him but the fingers point to the militant Islamists. They are the only ones who are targeting Kurds as Kurds,” he added. Responding to Huso’s killing, Kurdish fighters known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) issued a call to arms. “(The YPG) called on all those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters, Al-Nusra Front and other battalions,” a London-based Syria watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe vows to step down if defeated IMBABWE’s President Some names also appear
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Robert Mugabe has said he will quit after 33 years in power if he loses today’s election. “If you lose you must surrender,” the Zanu-PF party leader said. His remarks came as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the vot-
ers’ roll. Zanu-PF denied the accusation, saying it was the responsibility of the electoral commission, which released the roll only on the eve of polls. The BBC’s Farayi Mungazi in the capital, Harare, has seen the document and says it features the names of thousands of dead people.
twice or three times with variations to their ID numbers or home address. Mr Mugabe will be facing Mr Tsvangirai in the presidential ballot. The two long-time rivals have been sharing power since 2009, under a deal brokered by the regional bloc to end conflict that marred elections in 2008.
Ousted Egypt leader Morsi in good health, says EU chief
•Morsi
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U foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi is “well”, but that she does not know where he is being held.
Baroness Ashton said she had two hours of “frank, indepth” discussions with Mr Morsi on Monday, without giving further details of the conversation. Mr Morsi had access to news and followed developments, she added. She is the first foreign diplomat to meet Mr Morsi since he was detained after being overthrown on 3 July. Lady Ashton’s second visit to Egypt in 12 days comes after more than 70 Morsi supporters were killed in clashes with security forces on Saturday. She held talks with the in-
terim leadership, including army chief Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and representatives of Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. The ousted leader’s allies said they were planning a major protest in Cairo on Tuesday, and the interim government has warned that any violation of the law will be dealt with “firmly”. The EU is one of the few outside parties capable of stepping in and trying to help the alienated and mutually suspicious Egyptian parties move away from confrontation and towards a political solution.