*National Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Netanyahu invited to Egypt while Suleiman meets Liberman.( The Daily News Egypt ).
*Regional and International Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Israel: No Preconditions to Talks With Syria . ( The New York Times).
2. Clinton Reiterates Iraq Commitment ( The Washington Post ).
3. Clinton in Beirut ahead of key vote ( The Houston Chron. Com)
4. North Korea says it's resuming nuclear activities. ( The Los Angeles Times)
5. Turkey is critical of Obama's statement ( The Los Angeles Times).
6. Final Results Show Resounding Victory for A.N.C. in South Africa. ( The New York Times).
U.S:
1. Obama Off to Solid Start, Poll Finds ( The Washington Post)
2. Pentagon to Release Prisoner Abuse Photos.( The Washington Post)
*National Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Netanyahu invited to Egypt while Suleiman meets Liberman.( The Daily News Egypt ).
Egypt has extended an invitation to new Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to visit Egypt, an invite which was relayed by Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman during his visit to Israel.Some reports indicate that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also been invited to Egypt, but President Hosni Mubarak confirmed that the invitation was extended to Netanyahu only. “The Israeli prime minister is coming alone. His cabinet chief will come with him. He will not bring any other minister with him,” he said in a speech Thursday.The announcement of the possible visits of the new hardliners in the Israeli government was met with a negative response from opposition groups. “When Egypt invites Netanyahu or Lieberman, it is going against the wishes of the Egyptian people,” head of the Arab Socialist Party Waheed Al Aqsari told Daily News Egypt, “The regime is not deferring to the will of the people but rather they are deferring to the current reality.” “This invitation goes against the pride of Egyptians, especially after what Lieberman has said. These things only lead to ridicule of the Egyptians,” he added.Suleiman met Netanyahu on Wednesday in a meeting which lasted almost two hours and which was also attended by Mossad Director Meir Dagan and National Security Council Director Uzi Arad.According to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, the two discussed, “bilateral relations, the diplomatic process, the struggle against terrorism, the situation in the Gaza Strip and [captured Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit.”Suleiman also met with Lieberman whose appointment has raised concern in Cairo due to past remarks in which he indicated that President Hosni Mubarak could “go to hell” for not visiting Israel as well as urging for the bombing of the Aswan Dam.
http://64.34.254.246/article.aspx?ArticleID=21288
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*Regional and International Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Israel: No Preconditions to Talks With Syria . ( The New York Times)
Israel's foreign minister said Sunday he would be willing to immediately hold peace talks with Syria, but only without preconditions. Syria recently said it would be willing to resume indirect peace talks with the new Israeli government, which broke off last year after Israel called early elections, as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights .Israel captured the strategic plateau from Syria in the June 1967 Mideast warb. ''I'd be glad to negotiate with Syria this evening, but without preconditions,'' Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio.''They say, first go back to '67 lines and give up the Golan. If we agree to that, what is there to negotiate?'' he said . Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is in the process of formulating his government's foreign policy. But he and Lieberman both have said they would not be willing to cede the territory Syria wants Israel has held several rounds of talks with the Syrians, most recently indirect
negotiation made by Turkey last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/26/world/AP-ML-Israel-Syria.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
2. Clinton Reiterates Iraq Commitment ( The Washington Post )
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton promised the people of war-torn Iraq on Saturday that the Obama administration will not abandon them as it begins to pull out U.S. troops.Clinton flew to the country Saturday morning on the heels of four suicide bombings in two days that killed more than 160 people. The violence signaled the difficulties the Obama administration may face as it tries to shift troops from Iraq to the escalating war in Afghanistan. "I wanted to come today to repeat the commitment that President Obama and I and our government have to the people and nation of Iraq," Clinton said at a town hall-style meeting at the U.S. Embassy that was broadcast on Iraqi television. "As we make this transition, the United States will stand with the people of Iraq," she said. Violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the worst days of the war, from an average of 180 attacks daily in June 2007 to 27 a day in January, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But the death toll has spiked lately, with insurgents demonstrating that they are still able to obtain explosives and outwit Iraqi security forces. Many attacks are thought to have been carried out by Sunni insurgents, who recently announced a campaign of violence code-named Good Harvest. They appear to be trying to destroy the credibility of the Shiite-led government.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042500409.html
3. Clinton in Beirut ahead of key vote ( The Houston Chron. Com)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Beirut visiting Lebanese officials ahead of a critical election that could see a pro-U.S. government ousted by the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and its allies.Clinton flewunannounced into Lebanon on Sunday, a day after a similarly secret trip to Iraq, to show support for the country's fragile democracy before the June 7 vote. Hezbollah is gaining strength and some fear turmoil if it wins enough votes to play a dominant role in a coalition. A strong showing by Hezbollah might also see its sponsors Iran and Syria gaining influence in the region and harming Arab-Israeli peace efforts. The U.S. and Israel regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, although it plays a role in Lebanon's current government.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6392923.html
4. North Korea says it's resuming nuclear activities. ( The Los Angeles Times)
North Korea said Saturday that it had begun harvesting plutonium from spent fuel rods at its main nuclear plant to build up its atomic arsenal. The move, in defiance of tightening U.N. sanctions, threatened to further damage efforts to dismantle the communist nation's nuclear program."This will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defense in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from hostile forces," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Saturday.North Korea carried out a nuclear test in 2006 and is thought to have enough weaponized plutonium to make more than half a dozen bombs. Five nations -- Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and the United States -- have been negotiating for years with North Korea on ending its nuclear weapons program, but it has walked away from the talks.Saturday's announcement, which could not be independently verified, came just hours after the United Nations imposed new sanctions on three North Korean companies in response to the country's controversial rocket launch April 5.North Korea says it sent a satellite into orbit as part of a peaceful bid to develop its space program. The U.N. Security Council called the rocket launch a violation of resolutions barring North Korea from missile-related activity, since the delivery systems for satellites and missiles are similar.North Korea retaliated by quitting the disarmament talks and vowing to restart its atomic facilities. Officials in Pyongyang, the capital, this month expelled international nuclear monitors from the main nuclear site at Yongbyon.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-nuclear26-2009apr26,0,738311.story
5. Turkey is critical of Obama's statement ( The Los Angeles Times).
The president of Turkey said Saturday that President Obama failed to honor Turks slain by Armenians in a message remembering the dead in massacres nearly a century ago.Obama refrained Friday from branding the World War I-era massacre of an estimated 1.2 million Armenians in Turkey a "genocide," and instead referred to the killings that began in 1915 as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th century."The phrasing of Obama's statement attracted heightened scrutiny, as using the "genocide" label could have angered U.S. ally Turkey and disturbed reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia.Turkish President Abdullah Gul said, however, that Obama should also have expressed sympathy for the "hundreds of thousands of Turks and Muslims" killed during the same period, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported."Everyone's pain must be shared," Gul reportedly said outside a meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. "It is not possible for politicians, for statesmen to make decisions on historic events."Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that though Obama tried to be "balanced," the statement was "not satisfactory."Turkey's Foreign Ministry also complained that certain points in Obama's statement had been "unacceptable."Many scholars view the events in the final years of the Ottoman Empire as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending that the toll has been inflated and that the casualties were victims of civil war and other causes. It says Turks also suffered losses at the hands of Armenian gangs.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-turkey-obama26-2009apr26,0,4095597.story
6.Final Results Show Resounding Victory for A.N.C. in South Africa.( The New York Times).
Final results released Saturday showed that the governing African National Congress won the April 22 election with 66 percent of the vote, less than its victory margin in 2004 but an impressive tally nonetheless after a dissident group had broken away to form its own party. The A.N.C., led by its presidential candidate, Jacob Zuma, won in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces, the only exception being Western Cape, where it lost to the Democratic Alliance, a political sanctuary for the nation’s white and mixed-race minorities. That party, led by Cape Town’s mayor, Helen Zille, received 51 percent of the provincial vote.Whites and blacks populate Western Cape Province in near equal numbers, but the largest block of votes is people of mixed race and this time many of them deserted the A.N.C.Ms. Zille, a 48-year-old former journalist, will become premier of Western Cape. As mayor, she won the 2008 World Mayor Prize by City Mayors, an international urban research organization.“We will try to govern as well as we can to show that life is better for everybody” under the Democratic Alliance, she told a South African news agency.But Ms. Zille’s party won only 17 percent of the national vote, and while that was an improvement over the 12 percent it received in 2004, the Democratic Alliance is still largely seen as a white-dominated organization in a nation that is four-fifths black.The group that broke away from the A.N.C., the Congress of the People, or COPE, won only 7 percent of the national vote. Some political analysts said this was a promising start for a party only months old, but it was a mere fraction of the support expected when the party was conceived.More than 77 percent of South Africa’s 23 million registered voters cast ballots in the election, which was praised for its fairness by international observers. Many voters stood patiently in line for several hours, enthusiastic about the opportunity to participate.The A.N.C. has now won all four national elections in post-apartheid South Africa, with 63 percent of the votes under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, 66 and 70 percent under Thabo Mbeki, and now with 66 under Mr. Zuma.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world/africa/26SAFRICA.html?ref=global-home
U.S:
1 . Obama Off to Solid Start, Poll Finds ( The Washington Post)
Barack Obama's performance in the first 100 days of his presidency draws strong public approval in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but there is decidedly less support for his recent decision to release previously secret government memos on the interrogation of terrorism suspects, an initiative that reveals deep partisan fissures. Overall, the public is about evenly divided on the questions of whether torture is justifiable in terrorism cases and whether there should be official inquiries into any past illegality involving the treatment of terrorism suspects. About half of all Americans, and 52 percent of independents, said there are circumstances in which the United States should consider employing torture against such suspects. Barely more than half of all poll respondents back Obama's April 16 decision to release the memos specifying how and when to employ specific interrogation techniques. A third "strongly oppose" that decision, about as many as are solidly behind it. Three-quarters of Democrats said they approve of the action, while 74 percent of Republicans are opposed; independents split 50 to 46 percent in favor of the decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042101692.html
2) Pentagon to Release Prisoner Abuse Photos.( The Washington Post)
The Pentagon, in response to a lawsuit, will end a Bush administration legal battle and release "hundreds" of photos showing abuse or alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. personnel, according to defense officials and civil liberties advocates. The photographs, to be released by May 28, include 21 images depicting detainee abuse in facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan other than the Abu Ghraib prison, as well as 23 other detainee abuse photos, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and a letter from the Justice Department sent to a federal court in New York yesterday. In addition, the Justice Department letter said "the government is also processing for release a substantial number of other images" contained in dozens of Army Criminal Investigation Division reports on the abuse. "This shows that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not aberrational but was systemic and widespread," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney involved with the 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that led to the promise to release the photographs. "This will underscore calls for accountability for that abuse."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042401516.html