Just Foreign Policy News
October 4, 2010
IJDH: Help Rep. Waters stop US tax dollars from supporting unfair elections in Haiti
The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti is supporting a Congressional letter initiated by Rep. Waters to Secretary of State Clinton urging her to use U.S. influence to demand that all Haitian political parties be allowed to compete in the upcoming elections. Urge your Rep. to sign the Waters letter for fair elections in Haiti by calling the Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121, and asking to be transferred to your Rep’s office.
More info:
http://ijdh.org/archives/14798
Rep. Waters letter:
http://ijdh.org/archives/14792
Harry Belafonte: Iraq & Afghanistan Wars Are "Immoral, Unconscionable and Unwinnable"
Democracy Now leads its coverage of the "One Nation" rally with Harry Belafonte’s denunciation of the war in Afghanistan.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/4/harry_belafonte_iraq_afghanistan_wars_are
Jon Stewart/Democracy Now: Sen. Tom Coburn [R-OK] holds up Haiti reconstruction aid
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/10/1/watch_jon_stewart_gets_haiti_news_from_democracy_now
Venezuelan Ambassador responds to the Washington Post on Venezuela’s election
Bernardo Álvarez corrects the lies and distortions of the Washington Post’s editorial.
http://bit.ly/cLq3RP
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Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The coup attempt in Ecuador was encouraged by Washington’s support for the overthrow of democracy in Honduras, argues Just Foreign Policy President Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian. As South American governments feared, Washington’s support for the coup government in Honduras over the last year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of rightwing coups against democratic left governments in the region.
2) The Obama Administration has taken initial steps towards a negotiated settlement with the Afghan Taliban but is still sticking to demands it knows are unrealistic in the belief that this will improve its bargaining position, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service. The fact that the administration’s thinking about a negotiated settlement has not advanced beyond the stage of maximalist demands suggests its policy will have to through a series of stages before adjusting fully to the reality that it cannot control the post-occupation politics of Afghanistan, Porter argues.
3) Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Doyle McManus says his takeaway from Bob Woodward’s book is that Obama is serious about next summer’s drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan and will not agree to military demands to extend the deadline.
4) Responding to charges from Afghan officials that civilians were killed in two attacks over the weekend, the US military apologized for one episode in which a child was killed and two other children wounded and said it was investigating the deaths of several civilians in the other episode, the New York Times reports.
5) Dilma Rousseff led the vote tally in Brazil’s presidential election but failed to achieve the 50% necessary to avoid a second round, the New York Times reports. Analysts expressed little doubt that Rousseff would prevail in the second round on Oct. 31. Rousseff pledged to continue Brazil’s anti-poverty programs that have expanded under Lula and defended Brazil’s relations with Venezuela and Iran.
Pakistan
6) Gen. Petraeus apologized to Pakistan for the recent deaths of Pakistani soldiers in US air strikes, Dawn reports from Pakistan, suggesting the conflict which resulted in a partial shutdown of NATO supply lines was nearing resolution. An attack on oil tankers carrying NATO fuel in Shikarpur, analysts said, was an indication of what could happen if Pakistan were to stop providing security to the convoys.
7) Aid workers say more than 2 million cases of malaria are expected in Pakistan in the coming months in the wake of devastating floods, the Guardian reports. More than 250,000 cases of suspected malaria have been reported, according to the WHO.
Iraq
8) Prime Minister Maliki appeared almost assured of a second term in office after securing the support of the Sadrists, the New York Times reports. Obama administration officials had made clear they did not favor a government that included the Sadrists, who oppose the presence of US troops. The NYT report suggests it will be more difficult for the US to negotiate an extension of the US military presence in Iraq past the current deadline of end-2011 if Sadrists are in the government, as it now appears they will be.
Israel/Palestine
9) The PLO said Saturday there would be no resumption of peace talks without a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, the Washington Post reports. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said there was a firm consensus talks could not proceed as long as Israeli settlement building continued. "How can you have a two-state solution if you are eating up the land of the other state?" Ashrawi said.
10) An Israeli military court convicted two soldiers of using a 9-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield by forcing him to check bags for explosives in Israel’s 2008-9 Gaza war, the New York Times reports. But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient and that Israeli troops carried out a number of atrocities that require outside investigation. The Goldstone report cited four episodes in which Israeli soldiers were said to have used Palestinians as shields, but those were all adults in other parts of Gaza.
Iran
11) Iran and Egypt made an agreement Sunday to resume direct flights between Tehran and Cairo for the first time since 1979, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Guatemala
12) The US apologized Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis, Reuters reports. Wellesley women’s studies professor Susan Reverby, who recently reported the project to US officials, found that the Guatemala project was conducted by John Cutler, a Public Health Service physician who was later part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Alabama in the 1960s, in which black men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis. Records suggest that not all the deliberately infected Guatemalans were probably cured, Reverby said. US officials said it was unclear if any compensation would be offered.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Attempted Coup in Ecuador Fails, But Threat Remains
This was a coup attempt – encouraged by Washington’s shameful support for the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya last year
Mark Weisbrot, Guardian, Friday 1 October 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/01/rafael-correa-ecuador-coup
In June of last year, when the Honduran military overthrew the social-democratic government of Manuel Zelaya, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador took it personally. "We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I’m next," said Correa.
On Thursday, it turned out to be true. Some analysts are still insisting that what happened was just a police protest over possible benefit cuts that got out of hand. But to anyone who watched the prolonged, pitched gun-battle on TV last night, when the armed forces finally rescued President Correa from the hospital where he was trapped by the police, this did not look like a protest. It was an attempt to overthrow the government.
The co-ordinated actions in various cities, the takeover of Quito’s airport by a section of the armed forces – all this indicated a planned coup attempt. And although it failed, at various points during the day it was not so clear what the outcome would be.
[…] Correa had warned that he might try to temporarily dissolve the congress in order to break an impasse in the legislature, something that he has the right to request under the new constitution – though it would have to be approved by the constitutional court. This probably gave the pro-coup forces something they saw as a pretext. It is reminiscent of the coup in Honduras, when Zelaya’s support for a non-binding referendum on a constituent assembly was falsely reported by the media – both Honduran and international – as a bid to extend his presidency.
Media manipulation has a big role in Ecuador, too, with most of the media controlled by rightwing interests opposed to the government. This has helped build a base of people – analogous to those who get all of their information from Fox News in the United States, but proportionately larger – who believe that Correa is a dictator trying to turn his country into a clone of communist Cuba.
The US state department issued a two-sentence statement from secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who late Thursday urged "all Ecuadoreans to come together and to work within the framework of Ecuador’s democratic institutions to reach a rapid and peaceful restoration of order." Unlike the White House statement in response to the Honduran coup last year, it also expressed "full support" for the elected president. This is an improvement, although it is unlikely that it reflects a change in Washington’s policy toward Latin America.
The Obama administration did everything it could to support the coup government in Honduras last year, and, in fact, is still trying to convince the South American governments – including Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and the collective organisation of UNASUR – to recognise the government there. South America refuses to recognise the Lobo government because it was elected under a dictatorship that did not allow for a free or fair contest. The rest of the hemisphere also wants some guarantees that would stop the killing of journalists and political activists there, which has continued and even got worse under the "elected" government.
As the South American governments feared, Washington’s support for the coup government in Honduras over the last year has encouraged and increased the likelihood of rightwing coups against democratic left governments in the region. This attempt in Ecuador has failed, but there will be likely be more threats in the months and years ahead.
2) U.S. Still Taking a Hard Line on Peace Talks with Taliban
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, October 1, 2010
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53031
Washington – Following serious setbacks to the U.S. military’s war plan in Afghanistan, the Barack Obama administration has taken the first tentative step toward a negotiated settlement of the conflict by actively seeking to ascertain the willingness of the Taliban to enter into negotiations, according to a source familiar with the administration’s thinking about the issue.
But the administration is still sticking to demands on the Taliban that it knows are not realistic, in a manner that is strikingly similar to the demands stated publicly by the United States in the early stage of the Vietnam War.
Obama has yet to make a crucial political decision to separate a military settlement with the Taliban from the negotiation of a settlement between the Taliban and the Hamid Karzai government, according to the source.
The source confirmed to IPS that the Pakistani military has been in discussions with Taliban leaders and had been sharing its notes of the meetings with U.S. and Saudi officials, as had been reported by Syed Saleem Shahzad in the Asia Times Sep. 11.
But the source suggested that, contrary to the implication of the Shahzad story, the Pakistani conversations with the Taliban are not aimed at preparing the way for a separate U.S.-Taliban deal. The administration is still in the stage of intensive intelligence gathering, according to the source, rather than conducting an indirect political dialogue with the Taliban leadership separate from contacts between Karzai and the Taliban.
[…] The source indicated that the Obama administration has not suggested any willingness to agree to a U.S. troop withdrawal in return for a Taliban commitment to reject al Qaeda and to ensure that it will not be able to operate from Afghan soil. Such a troop withdrawal-for-al Qaeda deal could satisfy the U.S. national security interest in the war as articulated by the Obama administration itself.
Contrary to the Shahzad article, the Pakistanis have not conveyed anything to the Taliban as concrete as asking whether the Taliban would agree to a deal under which U.S. troops would evacuate from the south but remain in the north.
The U.S. continues to assert that full U.S. troop withdrawal would only come in conjunction with a settlement between Karzai and the Taliban.
The administration is fully aware that the final settlement in Afghanistan will bear no resemblance to the demand for Taliban submission that is the official U.S.-Karzai position at present, according to the source.
That demand is roughly equivalent to the position taken by the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1965 that the insurgents in South Vietnam could participate in elections if they would "lay down their arms" and "accept amnesty".
The source explained the rationale for maintaining that unrealistic maximalist position as being the belief that it will result in a better deal than going to the U.S. "bottom line" immediately.
Underlying that posture is the assumption that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan gives the United States significant leverage on the Taliban with regard to the internal settlement with Karzai.
Even if the United States were to withdraw two-thirds of its troops, the source indicated, it would still have such diplomatic leverage, partly because it would increase domestic support for the war, in the same way that President Richard Nixon’s withdrawal of troops from Vietnam from 1969 through 1972 made it possible for him to lengthen the war.
In the Pakistani-Taliban talks on a settlement, the Taliban leaders have insisted on a complete U.S. troop withdrawal, according to Shahzad.
The Taliban has also confirmed what had been signaled in an article on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan website last December – that it is prepared to give legal assurances that al Qaeda and other global jihadist organisations would not be allowed to operate in Afghanistan after the war against foreign military forces.
In an interview with IPS last January, Arsalaan Rahmani, a former deputy minister of education in the Taliban regime who participated in a small team that had served as intermediaries between Karzai and the Taliban, said any negotiations between the Taliban and Karzai regime would have to be preceded by agreement with the United States on the key international issues of withdrawal of all foreign troops and the Taliban’s renunciation of ties with al Qaeda.
[…] The fact that the administration’s thinking about a negotiated settlement has not advanced beyond the stage of maximalist demands suggests that its policy will have to through a series of stages before adjusting fully to the reality that it cannot control the post-occupation politics of Afghanistan.
3) Obama’s Afghan war strategy: End it
Bob Woodward’s new book sheds light on the president’s intentions. He clearly wants out.
Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-column-woodward-afghani20101003,0,4687378.column
What are President Obama’s intentions in Afghanistan? He told us 10 months ago, at the conclusion of an agonizing, weeks-long strategy debate, that he would give his generals the 33,000 additional troops they wanted and 18 months to show what they could do with them. Then we would begin drawing down. But did he mean it?
Bob Woodward’s new book, "Obama’s Wars," for all its reconstructed conversations and unspecified sourcing, is at its most useful in helping answer that question. It helps clarify where things stand inside the Obama administration as it must decide whether to stick to the timetable it laid out.
According to Woodward, Obama is determined to get out of this war. Time and again in the narrative, we hear the president say he’s looking not for victory but for closure. "I want an exit strategy," he’s quoted as saying. "This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan." What worries him most, it seems, is the "opportunity cost" that the war exacts – the money and attention it’s diverting from other, more important priorities.
So when Obama decided late last year to cap the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan at about 100,000 and begin drawing them down next July, he was serious. In recent weeks, aides to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in the war, have begun suggesting they might seek an extension of that deadline – to October instead of July, for example – to improve their chances of success. But if Woodward has it right, that won’t happen.
Woodward does show a deep divide in this administration between hawks and doves, but the doves include all the people closest to Obama. The White House is populated by Democratic political aides who don’t want to continue this war and don’t think Petraeus’ plans are likely to succeed. The Pentagon, on the other hand, is led largely by counterinsurgency enthusiasts who think Petraeus can succeed if the White House gives him enough troops and enough time.
Last year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sided with the hawks, and their voices helped tip the balance in favor of escalation. But that balance may have shifted by the next time a decision has to be made. One of the most important results of last year’s White House debate on Afghanistan, according to Woodward, may have been the lesson Obama learned from it: Don’t trust everything the generals tell you.
Time and again, in Woodward’s telling, military leaders gave the president only one real option for the war – the option the generals preferred – and resisted opening the discussion to alternatives. White House aides fumed at the generals’ recalcitrance, but in the end Obama essentially bowed to their wishes, giving them almost as many troops as they requested (and, the generals admit, a number that was probably their bottom line all along).
Next year’s decision, though, will be made under different conditions. By July, Petraeus will have been running the war for a year with all the troops he wanted; if his strategy isn’t working by then, it will be difficult to hide. Gates, the most influential exponent of a robust pursuit of the war, will be on his way out the door if he’s not already gone. (The Defense secretary has said he has made up his mind to leave next year, and sounds as if he prefers sooner to later.) And though the president has said that any withdrawal will be based on conditions on the ground, two of the conditions on Obama’s mind will be the approaching 2012 election and the public’s weariness with the war. Those factors seem likely to strengthen the doves, not the hawks.
[…]
4) U.S. Military Apologizes for Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan
Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, October 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/asia/04afghan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – In the wake of charges from Afghan officials that civilians were killed in two attacks over the weekend, the American military apologized for one episode in which a child was killed and two other children wounded and said it was investigating the deaths of several civilians in the other episode.
On Sunday in Logar Province, insurgents fired on a police checkpoint and a nearby American base. The Americans returned fire and later discovered that they had killed two civilians, according to a NATO spokesman and local Afghan officials. Din Mohammed Darwish, the spokesman for the Logar provincial governor, said one of the dead was an 8-year-old girl. Two boys, ages 6 and 9, were wounded, he said. The American military issued a statement apologizing for the deaths.
On Saturday, the American military killed the Taliban shadow governor and several other Taliban commanders in an air assault on a meeting of Taliban leaders in the Nad Ali district of Helmand Province, according to a NATO spokesman and the local police. However, three civilians were among the dead, and three boys, ages 11, 12 and 16, were wounded, said Mohammed Hakim Angar, the provincial police chief. The episode is under investigation.
[…]
5) Runoff Will Decide the Presidency of Brazil
Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, October 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/americas/04brazil.html
São Paulo, Brazil – Dilma Rousseff was leading late Sunday in her bid to be Brazil’s first female president, but election officials said she had failed to come up with enough votes to avoid a second round.
With about 99.6 percent of the votes counted, Ms. Rousseff, the former chief of staff of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had 46.8 percent of the votes to 32.6 percent for her closest rival, the former governor of São Paulo, José Serra. Ms. Rousseff needs to exceed 50 percent of the vote total to win outright.
With Ms. Rousseff coming up short, the election will now be decided with an Oct. 31 runoff. Ms. Rousseff was denied her victory by a strong showing by a third candidate, Marina Silva, the Green Party candidate and a former environmental minister, who captured more than 19 percent.
Analysts expressed little doubt that Ms. Rousseff, 62, would prevail in a second round against Mr. Serra. Despite her lack of political experience and public charm, she has ridden a wave of prosperity and good feeling in Brazil under the leadership of Mr. da Silva, whose approval ratings hover near 80 percent.
[…] Both Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Serra have vowed to continue the economic formula that has allowed Brazil to rise into a bigger global power during the past decade. That includes the subsidy programs for the poor that have been greatly expanded under Mr. da Silva to more than 12 million people.
Ms. Rousseff has promised to create millions of jobs and housing units, and to "dramatically" reduce Brazil’s interest rates, which are among the highest in the world. She also said she would greatly expand the number of health care centers and adapt a program to forcibly oust drug lords from Rio de Janeiro slums for use in other cities. During the campaign, she defended alliances Mr. da Silva forged with Iran and Venezuela, despite criticism from the United States about those leaders’ democratic values.
[…]
Pakistan
6) Petraeus calls Kayani, regrets strikes
Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn (Pakistan), Saturday, 02 Oct, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/moves-afoot-to-defuse-crisis-petraeus-calls-kayani,-regrets-strikes-200
Islamabad: As fury mounted over this week’s aerial incursions into the tribal areas, the commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan regretted on Friday the Nato strike that killed three Pakistani troops the previous day. "International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Commander Gen Petraeus called (army chief) Gen Kayani and expressed his sincere regrets over the death of Pakistani soldiers," US military spokesman in Pakistan Lt-Col Patrick Ryder told Dawn.
The three troops were killed in an early morning raid on Thursday when Nato choppers fired at a Pakistani military post 200 metres inside the border in Kurram Agency.
This was the fourth aerial violation in less than a week, but the first in which soldiers were killed. Reacting to the incident, Pakistan partially shut down a Nato supply route and lodged a protest with the Nato command in Brussels, demanding an apology.
Col Ryder further said the US remained committed to sharing all information related to the incident with Pakistan military as part of efforts to investigate the incident.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, had also spoken to Gen Kayani after the earlier strikes over the weekend.
Pakistani military commanders confirmed that high-level contacts were taking place to defuse the rising tensions. "Both sides are communicating and conveying their positions," an official said.
The contacts clearly helped lower the flaring tempers in Pakistan. Sources said Nato supplies would be restored after things cleared up.
[…] About 80 per cent of Nato’s supplies transit through Pakistan, which is the most convenient route for its troops.It is believed that the temporary stoppage was meant to remind Washington how much it depended on Pakistan for sustaining the military operations in Afghanistan.
[…] An attack on oil tankers carrying Nato fuel in Shikarpur, analysts said, was just an indication of what could happen if Pakistan were to stop providing security to the convoys. Nato fuel convoys are normally given security cover, but these vehicles appeared to be travelling undefended, probably because of withdrawn security.
[…]
7) Malaria threatens 2 million in Pakistan as floodwaters turn stagnant
Pools of standing water in southern Sindh province potentially home to disease-carrying mosquitoes that breed and hatch
Declan Walsh, Guardian, Sunday 3 October 2010 22.00 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/03/pakistan-malaria-floods
Islamabad – More than 2m cases of malaria are expected in Pakistan in the coming months in the wake of the country’s devastating floods, aid workers have warned.
Two months into the crisis, large areas remain submerged in southern Sindh province, creating stagnant pools of standing water that, combined with the heat, are powerful incubators of a disease spread by mosquitoes that breed and hatch in the pools.
More than 250,000 cases of suspected malaria, including some of the fatal falciparum strain, have been reported, according to the World Health Organisation.
Aid agency Plan International worries the figure will surpass 2m. "The most vulnerable are women and children," said its Pakistan director, Haider Yaqub.
The malaria threat is part of a wider health emergency, with more than 20 million people affected by the floods struggling to cope as the winter approaches.
Last night the UN reported 881,000 cases of diarrhoea, 840,000 cases of skin diseases and almost 1m cases of respiratory disorders.
[…]
Iraq
8) Accord Paves Way for Re-election of Iraq Premier
Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, October 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html
Baghdad – Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq appeared almost assured of a second term in office on Friday after securing the support of an anti-American Shiite Islamic movement whose return to political power could profoundly complicate relations with the United States. The deal came as a breakthrough after nearly seven months of bare-knuckle back-room bargaining that followed the country’s election on March 7.
[…] [Maliki] owes his new support to the extraordinary political resurrection of Moktada al-Sadr, the self-exiled cleric whose fighters once battled in the streets of Baghdad, Basra and other cities with Iraqi and American troops. Until days ago he fiercely opposed Mr. Maliki’s re-election.
Mr. Maliki’s success reflected his tenacity – tinged with authoritarianism – to retain power, despite widespread opposition to his leadership. It also showed his willingness to disregard – for political expediency – American concerns about the return of Mr. Sadr’s followers to the center of political power.
[…] While Obama administration officials insisted over months of quiet diplomacy that they preferred no candidate, only a broadly inclusive government, they made it clear that they did not favor a government that included the Sadrists, who are closely allied with Iran and oppose the presence of American troops.
[…] Mr. Maliki, who is 60, now has the backing of at least 148 lawmakers in the new 325-member Parliament to form a government, just short of a majority. The Kurds, with 57 seats among several parties, indicated Friday that they, too, would support his re-election, though only with concessions on territorial, economic and political issues.
[…] The Sadrists proved to be more effective and disciplined campaigners, with strong grass-roots support among Iraq’s Shiites. Having embraced politics, they are now poised to wield influence they have not had since they withdrew from the previous government in 2006.
The Sadrist leaders present on Friday did not explain their drastic and sudden swing toward Mr. Maliki. But in a statement two days ago, issued from Iran, where he is studying theology, Mr. Sadr sounded the pragmatic note of a seasoned politician.
He cited a saying of his father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shiite leader who was killed in 1999 under Mr. Hussein’s regime. "Politics has no heart," Mr. Sadr said, in response to a letter from a follower. "Be informed, politics is giving and taking."
One of the main issues facing Iraq in the coming year is what, if any, American military presence will continue after a deadline in December 2011 for withdrawing the remaining 50,000 American troops here.
Diplomats and military commanders here have already signaled an interest in maintaining a close security relationship with Iraq as it rebuilds its armed services and solidifies its fragile democratic institutions.
While many Iraqi political and military leaders have expressed support for that, the Sadrists remain opposed to what they call "a foreign occupation."
Israel/Palestine
9) Palestinians: Peace talks hinge on Israeli settlement construction
Joel Greenberg, Washington Post, Sunday, October 3, 2010; 6:00 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100200797.html
Jerusalem – The Palestinian leadership said on Saturday that there would be no resumption of peace talks without a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, backing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a dispute that has imperiled recently renewed negotiations.
[…] Abbas met at his headquarters in Ramallah with members of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the central committee of his Fatah movement ahead of consultations at an Arab League summit in Libya next weekend.
"The leadership affirmed that the resumption of negotiations requires tangible steps that demonstrate their seriousness, first and foremost halting settlement without qualifications or exceptions," said a statement read out by Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official.
"The Palestinian leadership holds the Israeli government responsible for the suspension of the negotiations and the political process," the statement said, accusing Israel of seeking "to use the negotiations as a cover to pursue this settlement policy."
The U.S.-sponsored talks, renewed in early September, have foundered after a 10-month moratorium on new construction in Israeli settlements expired last Sunday and Netanyahu said it would not be renewed, despite pressure from Washington.
The U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, failed to break the impasse on Friday after two days of shuttling between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. On Saturday he traveled to Qatar and Egypt to enlist the help of Arab leaders to broker a compromise.
[…] Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that there was a firm consensus among all factions at the Ramallah meeting that talks could not proceed as long as Israeli settlement building continued. "How can you have a two-state solution if you are eating up the land of the other state?" Ashrawi said. "The Israelis have to understand once and for all that they just can’t continue with this approach. . . .We can’t afford it anymore. The two-state solution is disappearing."
10) Israeli Soldiers Convicted of Using Boy as Shield
Ethan Bronner, New York Times, October 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html
Jerusalem – An Israeli military court convicted two soldiers on Sunday of using a 9-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield by forcing him to check bags for explosives in Israel’s 2008-9 Gaza war. The court said that the two soldiers, both infantry sergeants, had taken part in an operation to seize an apartment building in Tel al-Hawa, a southern suburb of Gaza City, while under attack from Hamas fighters.
A summary of the court’s judgment provided by the military spokesman’s office said the two had rounded up civilians and come upon bags in a bathroom. They grabbed the child and ordered him to check the bags for booby traps. "The boy, who feared for his fate and was pressured by the situation, wet his pants," the judges said, pointedly noting that, "unlike the soldiers, the boy had no means of personal protection."
[…] Sunday’s convictions, which could carry prison terms, are the first serious ones in Israel’s criminal investigations into the conduct of its soldiers during the three-week Gaza invasion aimed at stopping rocket fire at Israeli communities. The army says it looked into 48 cases, and a third of them are still in progress.
In July, the army indicted several officers and soldiers for actions during the offensive, including a staff sergeant accused of deliberately shooting at least one Palestinian civilian who was walking with a group of people waving a white flag.
But human rights groups say that the military’s criminal proceedings are insufficient and that Israeli troops carried out a number of atrocities that require outside investigation.
The United Nations Human Rights Council commissioned a South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, to lead an inquiry into the war’s conduct. His report, issued a year ago, said there was compelling evidence of war crimes by both sides.
[…] The Goldstone report cited four episodes in which Israeli soldiers were said to have used Palestinians as shields, but those were all adults in other parts of Gaza.
[…]
Iran
11) Iran, Egypt agree to resume direct flights for first time since 1979
Borzou Daragahi and Amro Hassan, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-iran-egypt-aviation,0,4169597.story
Beirut and Cairo – Iran and Egypt, two countries that long have been openly hostile to each other, made a surprise agreement Sunday to resume direct flights for the first time since radical clerics ousted Iran’s monarchy in 1979.
Civil aviation and tourism authorities meeting in Cairo signed an accord to begin 28 weekly flights between the two countries but did not specify a start date, media in both countries reported.
[…] "This move has been long in coming," said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. "What’s remarkable isn’t the resumption of direct flights between Tehran and Cairo, the two largest cities in the Middle East, but the fact that it has taken over 30 years for it to happen."
Iran appears to be seeking business opportunities to make up for economic troubles caused in part by international sanctions.
Rapprochement between Egypt and Iran could change the diplomatic balance of the Middle East, but many hurdles remain. Tehran calls Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, a U.S. lackey while Cairo considers the Islamic Republic an exporter of extremist Islam and terrorism.
Egyptian officials have complained for years that Iran continues to publicly hail the assassin of Anwar Sadat, who signed Cairo’s peace deal with Israel. Egypt hosts the tomb of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and annually honors the late monarch, which ruffles Iran.
Guatemala
12) U.S. apologizes for syphilis experiment in Guatemala
Maggie Fox, Reuters, Fri Oct 1, 5:24 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101001/hl_nm/us_usa_guatemala_experiment
Washington – The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis. In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic.
"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.
"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the statement said.
Guatemala condemned the experiment as a crime against humanity and said it would study whether there were grounds to take the case to an international court. "President Alvaro Colom considers these experiments crimes against humanity and Guatemala reserves the right to denounce them in an international court," said a government statement, which announced a commission to investigate the matter.
Guatemalan human rights activists called for the victims’ families to be compensated, but a U.S. official said it was not clear there would be any compensation.
President Barack Obama called Colom to offer his personal apology for what had happened, a White House spokesman said.
The experiment, which echoed the infamous 1960s Tuskegee study on black American men who were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, was uncovered by Susan Reverby, a professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
[…] "In total, 696 men and women were exposed to the disease and then offered penicillin. The studies went on until 1948 and the records suggest that, despite intentions, not everyone was probably cured," she said in a statement. Her findings, to be published in January in the Journal of Policy History, link the Tuskegee and Guatemalan studies.
"In 1946-48, Dr. John C. Cutler, a Public Health Service physician who would later be part of the Syphilis Study in Alabama in the 1960s and continue to defend it two decades after it ended in the 1990s, was running a syphilis inoculation project in Guatemala, co-sponsored by the PHS, the National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government," she wrote.
[…] Arturo Valenzuela, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said it was not yet clear whether any compensation would be offered. It was also not clear whether any of the people who were experimented upon could be traced, but he said an investigation had been launched.
[…]
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
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