National Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Trickle on final day of Rafah opening with more stranded. (The Daily Star Egypt)
The final day of the temporary opening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt saw 16 Palestinians cross through, the local coordinator for Palestinian affairs in the area told Daily New Egypt.
Around 570 Gazans seeking medical treatment had entered Egypt on Sunday, according to Abdel-Sattar El-Ghalban, but he stated there were still more Palestinians who were stranded in Gaza needing to get out.
Of the Palestinians seeking medical attention, 200 were wounded in Israeli strikes against Gaza, and 70 were children under the age of 16.
The Rafah crossing was opened on Saturday to allow Gazans seeking medical attention into Egypt, as well as permitting holders of foreign passports to leave the territory.
Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman was in Tel Aviv yesterday to meet with Israeli officials concerning a ceasefire agreement Egypt is brokering between them and Hamas.
Suleiman told reporters after holding talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he had “high expectations” about the success of reaching a ceasefire agreement.
Suleiman then met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Jerusalem.
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13652
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Economic Headlines
1. ITU Telecom Africa 2008 opens in Cairo. (The Daily Star Egypt)
President Hosni Mubarak inaugurated Telecom Africa 2008, which opened to the public Monday in Cairo, according to a statement released to the press
A showcase for the latest in information and communication technologies (ICT), which includes an industry exhibition, ITU Telecom Africa is a platform for brainstorming and networking for both governments and the private sector to chart the future course of the ICT industry.
Around 200 companies from 45 countries, including several from outside the African region, are exhibiting products, applications and services, according to the statement. Around 70 heads of international companies and 50 ministers along with key regulators and investment bodies are attending the event from May 12-15.
ITU Telecom Africa has already attracted over 5,000 participants from 93 countries, marking a record since the event was opened to countries from outside the region, and includes 600 forum participants and 200 media personnel.
While the exhibition underscores the latest developments in the ICT market, the forum sessions offer both regional and global insights on Africa’s position in the ICT sector, its unique market drivers, and the host of factors critical in sustaining its most effective enabling environment.
A highlight of the formal opening was the press launch of ITU’s regional report, “African Telecommunication/ICT Indicators 2008: At a Crossroads.” Following booming growth in the mobile telephony sector — which saw 65 million new subscribers in 2007— and an encouraging investment climate spurring economic development in the region, Africa is a continent on the move: the theme for ITU Telecom Africa 2008.
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13644
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Regional and International Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Lebanese army says it will use force to quell fighting. (The International Herald Tribune)
The Lebanese Army announced on Monday evening that it would start using force to stop fighting between supporters of the governing coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition, a step the army had not taken during almost a week of sectarian violence that recalled the country's 15-year civil war.
The announcement was made as violence eased across Lebanon, despite some renewed street battles in the north. Tensions were still high in the Chouf mountains overlooking Beirut, where armed fighters remained on the roads after a day and night of fierce clashes that appeared to have left dozens of people dead.
The army continued to deploy forces in the mountains east of Beirut and in northern Lebanon, as part of a plan to take over militia positions and quell the fighting. But there were signs that some government-allied figures were increasingly mistrustful of the army — widely viewed as Lebanon's one nonpartisan institution — because it did not interfere when Hezbollah supporters seized control of much of western Beirut on Friday.
In northern Lebanon, a plan for local groups to hand their weapons to the army has encountered some resistance because pro-government groups, which are a majority in the north, fear being left at the mercy of Hezbollah, said Misbah Ahdab, a member of Parliament from Tripoli. Sporadic gun battles took place on Monday between pro-government Sunni fighters in the Bab al Tabbaneh area of Tripoli, in the north, and pro-Hezbollah Alawites in neighboring Jebel Mohsen, Ahdab said.
Although both of Lebanon's major political camps still look to the army as an arbiter, government supporters have become increasingly critical of its passive role in the recent clashes.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/13/africa/13lebanon.php
2. In Lebanon, a Call for U.S. Action. (The Washington Post)
Politicians in Lebanon's Western-backed governing coalition criticized the United States on Monday for not doing enough to counter the opposition Hezbollah movement's recent takeover of West Beirut.
At the same time, President Bush, who will visit the Middle East this week, vowed continued support for the Lebanese government and its military, which announced that it would take a greater role in containing violence.
Christian, Sunni and Druze politicians -- members of a coalition known as March 14 -- said U.S. statements on the crisis have been too weak and called for more pressure on Hezbollah and its Syrian backers. The politicians said they felt abandoned by the United States.
The coalition members also want the United States to take the initiative in broadening a U.N. resolution that would place Beirut's airport and harbor in the hands of international peacekeeping troops.
"We need the U.S., but we are hearing nothing substantial from them," said Nayla Mouawad, a cabinet minister and leading member of the March 14 coalition.
Hezbollah is ideologically inspired by Iran, which backs the organization financially and militarily. "Iran is turning Lebanon into a Mediterranean forward post," Mouawad said.
Bush, in a statement Monday, promised continued U.S. support for Lebanese President Fouad Siniora and Lebanon's military. "The international community will not allow the Iranian and Syrian regimes, via their proxies, to return Lebanon to foreign domination and control," Bush said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202829.html
3. Iraq: Sadr City cease-fire signed after weeks of fighting. (The San Francisco Chronicle)
Iraq's main Shiite political bloc and supporters of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr signed a fragile cease-fire in Baghdad's Sadr City on Monday, hoping to end seven weeks of fighting that has left hundreds dead.
But the U.S. military has alleged that most Shiite extremists fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces in the teeming slum have splintered away from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and that the cleric's level of influence on those rogue groups is unclear. Many are thought to be trained and armed by Iranian forces. Iran denies the allegations.
Al-Sadr's representatives and the rival United Iraqi Alliance agreed to institute the four-day cease-fire starting on Sunday, but talks over the details of the truce were not finished until a day later. The deal allows Iraqi forces to take over security in the militia stronghold of Sadr City on Wednesday.
"The mutual efforts of all have stood against civil war, and thanks to God we have left it behind our backs," proclaimed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite.
The clashes erupted late March when Iraqi forces launched a crackdown in the southern city of Basra. The Sadrists accused al-Maliki, a political rival, of trying to sideline them ahead of expected provincial elections in the fall.
The fighting spread through the south and to the capital, where Shiite extremists in Sadr City began firing rockets and mortars toward the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Al-Sadr effectively stopped his militia from fighting in Basra within days of the crackdown. But clashes escalated in Sadr City, drawing U.S. attack aircraft and tanks into the fighting.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/10/international/i042455D40.DTL
4. Darfur rebel leader vows attrition war for Sudan. (The San Francisco Chronicle)
Darfur's most-wanted rebel leader vowed Monday to keep up his offensive against the Sudanese government, saying he can exhaust the military by fighting it all across Africa's largest nation.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Khalil Ibrahim said the military success of the Justice and Equality Movement is easy to explain. "We are more spread out and we move fast."
The speed of his forces was widely credited with allowing Ibrahim's men to reach the outskirts of Khartoum to launch an attack Saturday. They set out from the Darfur and Kordofan regions under cover of night in pickup trucks and, according to Ibrahim, vehicles similar to those used by the army. They were spotted by the military but outran pursuers as they raced across the vast arid terrain of central Sudan with little obstruction.
"The government can't keep up with the JEM," Ibrahim said. "It will be exhausted ... We can move from the north, south, west and east freely."
Ibrahim said he was speaking by phone while on the run in the capital's twin city of Omdurman, where his rebels staged the daring raid. It is the closest that Darfur's rebels have ever gotten to the seat of the government.
"I am still in Omdurman. I am not safe but I am with all my forces," Ibrahim said, disputing government claims that the attackers were crushed. He said reinforcements were on the way. Gunfire could still be heard in Khartoum on Monday morning.
The attack shocked the government, which was pursuing a full-scale manhunt for Ibrahim and cracking down on other opposition figures. Islamist opposition politician Hassan al-Turabi, accused of links to JEM, was detained for questioning Monday but was released without charge.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/10/international/i081551D16.DTL&hw=egypt&sn=005&sc=593
5. Partner Leaves Pakistan’s Cabinet. (The New York Times)
In an early sign of instability in the new government in Pakistan, the junior partner in the coalition said Monday that it was withdrawing from the cabinet over the government’s failure to reinstate the Supreme Court judges dismissed by President
Nawaz Sharif during a press conference in Islamabad on Monday.
The move by that partner, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, to vacate its 9 posts in the 24-member cabinet, including the Finance Ministry, was a step short of leaving the coalition and causing the collapse of the government altogether. But it was a clear indication of just how fragile the coalition remained.
The leader of the party, Nawaz Sharif, said he was standing firm on a pledge made by the coalition in March to bring back 57 supreme and high court judges, including the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after their dismissal under emergency rule last November.
In protracted negotiations that collapsed on Sunday, the senior member of the coalition, the Pakistan Peoples Party led by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, insisted that judges appointed during the emergency by President Musharraf as loyalists to him should also be retained.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/asia/13pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
6. S.Korea to discuss North's nuclear list with China. (The Washington Post)
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy goes to China on Tuesday for talks that could preface North Korea's return to international disarmament negotiations and the release of a long-delayed inventory of its atomic arms programme.
At the weekend, a U.S. nuclear envoy returned from Pyongyang with documents detailing the North's weapons-grade plutonium programme. Washington said this was an "important first step" in getting a full nuclear declaration.
South Korea's foreign ministry said envoy Kim Sook will be in Beijing for discussions on six-country nuclear talks, which have been on ice since North Korea missed an end-2007 deadline to provide the nuclear list.
North Korea is likely to make the declaration to China, host of the six-country talks, in the next two weeks, a South Korean official familiar with the process said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic maneuvering.
A new round of the talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States will probably take place in early June, and the main subject of discussions will be verification, the official said.
North Korea was required in a deal it struck with the five other countries to provide a full accounting of its fissile material and nuclear weaponry as well as answer U.S. suspicions that it enriched uranium for weapons and proliferated technology to Syria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051300073.html
7. U.N. Leader Tells Myanmar to Hurry on Aid. (The New York Times)
As the authorities in Myanmar raised the cyclone death toll to nearly 32,000 and admitted one American military aircraft, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pressed the junta on Monday to accept international assistance. He expressed “deep concern and immense frustration” with what he called “the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis.”
Burmese soldiers waiting on the tarmac at Yangon International Airport on Monday to unload aid flown in from Dubai.
In unusually blunt language for a United Nations leader, Mr. Ban said: “This is not about politics; it is about saving people’s lives. There is absolutely no more time to lose.”
The sharp comments from Mr. Ban came on a day when the authorities in Myanmar allowed a United States military aircraft to land with relief supplies, crossing one barrier that has hindered the delivery of large-scale aid to more than a million people affected by the May 3 cyclone.
State television has put the death toll at 31,938, with 29,770 people missing.
The United States landing was the most public example of what aid groups said was a slight easing of restrictions over the last day, though not nearly enough to provide for what they said was a desperate, growing need. On Monday, the United Nations estimated the dead at 62,000 to 100,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/asia/13myanmar.html?ref=world
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US:
1. Ex-officials: Bush admin. ignored Iraq corruption. (The San Francisco Chronicle)
The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.
Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.
Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.
The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.
Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the administration takes the issue of corruption seriously and pointed to its recent appointment of Lawrence Benedict as coordinator for anti-corruption initiatives at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Benedict's appointment "is another demonstration that we are working at very senior levels to help the Iraqis deal with this issue," Casey said. "Any assertion that we have not taken this issue seriously or given it the attention it deserves is simply untrue."
The Office of Accountability and Transparency, or "OAT" team, was intended to provide assistance and training to Iraq's anti-corruption agencies. It was dismantled last December, after it alleged in a draft report leaked to the media that al-Maliki's office had derailed or prevented investigations into Shiite-controlled agencies.
The draft report sparked hearings in Congress and prompted a showdown between Democrats and senior State Department officials on whether the public has a right to know the extent to which al-Maliki was involved in corruption cases.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/12/national/w111913D76.DTL
2. McCain differs with Bush on climate change. (The International Herald Tribune)
Senator John McCain sought to distance himself from President George W. Bush on Monday as he called for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to combat climate change.
McCain, in a speech at a wind power company, also pledged to work with the European Union to diplomatically engage China and India, two of the world's biggest polluters, if they refuse to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.
In the prepared text of his speech, e-mailed to reporters on Sunday night and Monday morning, McCain went so far as to call for punitive tariffs against China and India if they evaded international standards on emissions, but he omitted the threat in his delivered remarks. Aides said he had decided to soften his language because he thought he could be misinterpreted as being opposed to free trade, a central tenet of his campaign and Republican orthodoxy.
But he took a shot at Bush.
"I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears," McCain said pointedly. "I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/13/america/13mccain.php
3. Confronting questions, Obama assures Jews of his support. (The International Herald Tribune)
Faced with doubts about his support for Israel and American Jews, Senator Barack Obama has stepped up his efforts to reach out to the Jewish community over the past month, giving speeches and granting interviews to confront questions about the militant Palestinian group Hamas and his commitment to Jewish causes and values.
The efforts are part of "a very strong counteraction" against what the Obama campaign considers misinformation about the candidate, said Representative Robert Wexler, a Democrat from South Florida who often speaks on Jewish issues for the Obama campaign.
"We're going to continue to keep making this case with initiatives to make it clear that his support for Israel could not be more unequivocal," Wexler said.
Since the beginning of his campaign for president, Obama has combated rumors and e-mail campaigns suggesting that he was a Muslim or was hostile to Israel, a problem exacerbated by pro-Palestinian remarks made by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. But several other developments, here and abroad, have also played a role in the outreach effort.
In an interview made available on Monday on the Web site of the magazine The Atlantic, Obama responded to a statement made last month by an official of Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization. The official, Ahmed Yousef, said that "we like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/13/america/13obama.php