Just Foreign Policy News
August 5, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
A Historic Opportunity to Cut Military Spending
The agreement in Washington to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for deficit reduction has made a lot of people very unhappy. But the agreement had one important positive aspect: it created a historic opportunity for significant cuts in projected military spending.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/a-historic-opportunity-to_1_b_918985.html
Take Action: Urge Congress and the President to Put Military Cuts First in Line
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/cutpentagonfirst
AFL-CIO: Any cuts must be at least 50% military
The AFL-CIO and other key Democratic constituency groups wrote to Democratic Congressional leaders, insisting (among other things) that any cuts must impact national security spending at least as much as domestic spending.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/986
125+ Groups & 25,000+ Individuals: Don’t Veto Palestinian UN Membership
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation delivered today to the State Department an open letter signed by more than 125 groups, including 30 national organizations, and petitions signed by more than 25,000 people urging the Obama Administration not to veto Palestinian UN membership. Code Pink, Grassroots International, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Just Foreign Policy contributed petition signatures.
http://endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=3076
J Street statement on reports of negotiations resuming
J Street notes that in proposing to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 borders if the Palestinians abandon their bid for UN recognition, Netanyahu is accepting the Obama policy he pretended at the time was outrageous.
http://jstreet.org/blog/j-street-statement-on-reports-of-negotiations-resuming/
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Defense Secretary Panetta effectively told Congress to raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare before taking another swipe at the Pentagon budget beyond defense cuts already called for in the [first round of] the debt-ceiling deal, the New York Times reports. Panetta took the position that the joint committee created by the debt ceiling legislation should make no further defense cuts. The White House, however, has not ruled out further defense reductions. The committee, to be composed of six Democrats and six Republicans, would also be unlikely to take them off the table, the New York Times notes.
2) Also reporting on Panetta’s statement that Congress should cut Social Security and Medicare and raise taxes rather than further cut the military budget, the Washington Post notes that defense spending represents about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending, and the military’s budget has increased by more than 70 percent since 2001. Although the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the Pentagon upward of $1 trillion, nearly half of the growth in defense spending in the past decade has been unrelated to the wars.
3) A NATO service member was killed in eastern Afghanistan by a man dressed as an Afghan policeman and another was killed elsewhere in the region by insurgents, Reuters reports. Most of the NATO forces serving in the east are Americans, although there are also French troops in the area, Reuters notes. 340 NATO troops have been killed so far this year.
4) Herbert Richardson, the acting special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction is stepping down after only six months on the job, leaving that troubled office without a leader for the second time this year, The Cable reports. Concerned lawmakers had been hopeful that Richardson was improving the performance of the SIGAR office. Now those offices are back to voicing their usual disappointment and skepticism. "He stopped some of the suck that was going on there, but it was only six months," one GOP senate aide said. "At this point they are supposed to be firing on all cylinders. And now that he’s leaving, who knows." "He came in with such fanfare and their team said there would be a ‘culture change’ with his arrival," said a House Democratic staffer. "So much for culture change if it was dependent upon leadership."
Libya
5) An influential group of lawyers and judges which includes many who helped start the uprising called for the resignations of several top rebel officials, including the vice-chairman of the rebel executive branch and the defense minister, the New York Times reports. The group said the officials should be investigated for their role in the killing of the rebels’ military commander. The group also demanded the disbanding of the dozens of militias that operate in rebel areas.
A spokesman for NATO said it was looking into accusations its planes had hit a civilian home, killing a mother and two children. Neighbors told foreign journalists a destroyed house been hit by a bomb about 6:30 a.m., killing a mother and two children and wounding their father as he returned from morning prayers. At a funeral at a nearby mosque, journalists saw an injured man who appeared to be the father as well as three coffins. Two were uncovered to reveal the bloody bodies of two small children.
Pakistan
6) In 2009, Congress passed a five-year, $7.5 billion aid plan to prove Washington’s long-term commitment to Pakistan’s weak civilian government, but two years later, only $500 million has been spent as the program has run into bureaucratic delays, disagreements over priorities and fears about corruption, the Washington Post reports. Congress is expected to shrink the aid package. But some Pakistanis say the aid program is working and needs more time, and the delays are attributable to a correct decision to work through Pakistani institutions, rather than international contractors, because working through the Pakistani institutions requires more vetting.
Haiti
7) Some of the worst examples of abuses by UN peacekeepers have been in Haiti, writes Hannah Armstrong for Current Intelligence. In addition to introducing cholera to Haiti, members of the Haiti mission have been accused of multiple sex crimes against children. "There is strong sentiment that the UN has failed to take responsibility for [its] role in the introduction of cholera into Haiti, and that the UN and MINUSTAH behave as an arrogant supranational organization without the responsibilities of a sovereign state," said a senior Western aid official in Port au Prince. UN troops in Haiti are immune from Haitian law, so Haitians cannot file charges against them. MINUSTAH is the only Chapter VII deployment occurring in a country with no active conflict or civil war. A Chapter VII mission authorizes peacekeepers to use force for reasons other than self-defense. "MINUSTAH troops patrol Haitian streets in tanks with their weapons drawn at unarmed civilians," said Nicole Philips of IJDH.
Honduras
8) The Israeli government summoned Honduras’s ambassador to protest a statement by the country’s president saying Honduras would support the Palestinian statehood recognition bid, the Jerusalem Post reports. The Israeli government was concerned that this would lead to a "domino effect" in Central America, with El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama following suit, the JPost says.
Mexico
9) An entire 20-man police force has resigned in the northern Mexican town of Ascension after a series of attacks that killed the police chief and five officers over the last three months, AP reports. Ascension is south-west of Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Panetta Pleads For No More Cuts In Defense Spending
Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, August 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/us/05military.html
Washington – Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta effectively told Congress on Thursday to raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare before taking another swipe at the Pentagon budget beyond defense cuts already called for in the debt-ceiling deal.
In his first Pentagon news conference, Mr. Panetta, a former budget director in the Clinton White House, lent his voice to the Obama administration’s strategy of putting pressure on Congress to consider raising revenues when a special committee meets this fall to recommend $1.5 trillion in additional deficit-reduction measures. Mr. Obama signed a debt-ceiling deal on Tuesday calling for an initial $1 trillion in cuts.
Mr. Panetta’s argument was that defense had given up enough – about $350 billion of that $1 trillion over 10 years – and that further cuts would have dire consequences. He then segued into a brief discourse on "discretionary" federal spending, like defense, and "mandatory" federal spending, like Social Security and other entitlements.
"Let me for a moment put a budget hat on," said Mr. Panetta, who is a month into his job as defense secretary. "You cannot deal with the size deficits that this country is confronting by simply cutting the discretionary side of the budget. That represents less than a third of the overall federal budget.
"You’ve got to, as the president’s made clear, if you’re going to look at those size deficits, you’ve got to look at the mandatory side of the budget, which is two-thirds of the federal budget. And you also have to look at revenues as part of that answer."
Mr. Panetta made his comments on the second straight day of a Pentagon pushback to hundreds of billions of dollars of budget cuts potentially coming its way, the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that it has faced shrinking spending.
Both Mr. Panetta and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, who joined Mr. Panetta at the news conference, used words like "disastrous" and "unacceptable" to describe across-the-board cuts that would automatically kick in if the new committee failed to agree on reductions this fall.
Mr. Panetta also took the position that the committee should make no further defense cuts, either. The White House, however, has not ruled out further defense reductions. The committee, to be composed of six Democrats and six Republicans, would also be unlikely to take them off the table.
[…]
2) Panetta Warns Against Additional Cuts In Pentagon Budget
Greg Jaffe and Jason Ukman, Washington Post, August 4
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/defense-secretary-leon-panetta-warns-against-more-cuts-in-pentagon-budget/2011/08/04/gIQAWM8AvI_story.html
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade.
"We’re already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough," Panetta told reporters in his first news conference as defense secretary. "I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense."
The initial round of Pentagon cuts is part of a debt-reduction package that would slice about $1 trillion from agency budgets over 10 years. A second round of cuts, totaling as much as $1.5 trillion, will be prepared by a bipartisan congressional panel later this year.
Senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country’s security. Instead of slashing defense, Panetta said, the bipartisan panel should rely on tax increases and cuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings.
[…] Defense spending represents about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending, and the military’s budget has increased by more than 70 percent since 2001. Although the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the Pentagon upward of $1 trillion, nearly half of the growth in defense spending in the past decade has been unrelated to the wars.
[…]
3) 2 NATO Troops Killed As Violence Flares In Afghanistan
Mohammad Hamid and Paul Tait, Reuters, Friday, August 5, 2:33 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2-nato-soldiers-killed-as-afghan-violence-flares/2011/08/04/gIQAffDkvI_story.html
Kunduz, Afghanistan – A NATO service member was killed in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday in an apparent "rogue" shooting by a man dressed as an Afghan policeman and another was killed elsewhere in the region by insurgents, the coalition said. The deaths brought to at least four the number of NATO troops killed in a bloody 24 hours in one of Afghanistan’s most volatile areas.
With violence flaring across the country since the first phase of a security transition began last month, an Afghan security official was also killed by a car bomb in the northeastern city of Kunduz, officials said.
In a brief statement, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said the latest killing of one of its troops came when "an individual wearing an Afghan National Police uniform turned his weapon against the service member." It said ISAF and Afghan officials were investigating, but gave no other details.
Most of the NATO forces serving in the east, where a fractured and violent insurgency has developed over the past 18 months, are American, although there are also French troops in the area.
The killing of the ISAF member was the latest in a string of apparent rogue killings by Afghan police and soldiers or by insurgent infiltrators. Such killings have underscored the challenges as NATO scrambles to hand over security responsibility to Afghan forces across the country by the end of 2014. The first phase of that gradual process began last month.
In its statement, the coalition said another service member had been killed in a separate attack by insurgents in the east Thursday.
[…] Late Wednesday, the coalition also said two of its troops had been killed by a roadside bomb. At least six ISAF troops have been killed in August, mirroring a steady, year-long trend of violence.
A total of 711 foreign troops were killed in 2010, the deadliest year of the war for the coalition, and at least 340 have been killed this year, according to independent monitor iCasualties.org and figures kept by Reuters.
[…]
4) Top Afghan oversight official stepping down
Josh Rogin, The Cable, Thursday, August 4, 2011 – 2:50 PM
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/04/exclusive_top_afghan_oversight_official_stepping_down
The Cable has learned that Herbert Richardson, the acting special inspector general
for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) is stepping down after only six months on the job, leaving that troubled office without a leader for the second time this year.
Richardson has been running the SIGAR office since the January firing of Arnie Fields, who was finally removed from his position after more than a year of complaints by senior senators including Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Susan Collins (R-ME). Fields was criticized for running an oversight office that failed to produce results in the effort to find waste, fraud, and abuse in the tens of billions of dollars in contracts for Afghanistan reconstruction.
Richardson was never nominated to be permanent SIGAR and was leading the office as acting chief. But he will return to the private sector this month, according to four sources with direct knowledge of his decision. The SIGAR office declined requests for comment and said that Richardson was unavailable, in meetings all day. There’s no word yet on who will take over as SIGAR.
On Capitol Hill, concerned lawmakers and staffers were actually hopeful that Richardson was improving the performance of the SIGAR office. Today, those congressional offices are back to voicing their usual disappointment and skepticism.
"He stopped some of the suck that was going on there, but it was only six months," one GOP senate aide told The Cable. "At this point they are supposed to be firing on all cylinders. And now that he’s leaving, who knows."
"He came in with such fanfare and their team said there would be a ‘culture change’ with his arrival," said a House Democratic staffer. "So much for culture change if it was dependent upon leadership."
Coincidentally, SIGAR officials were on the Hill this morning to brief staffers on their quarterly report. Richardson was expected to attend but did not show up. One staffer who attended the briefing said that SIGAR officials failed to mention that Richardson is leaving and the briefing itself left a lot to be desired.
"It was a weak briefing because they have a weak product," this House staffer said. "They just aren’t producing convictions at a pace comparable to the results being produced by their counterparts at [the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction] SIGIR in terms of Iraq."
[…]
Libya
5) Major Libyan Rebel Group Seeks Shake-Up In Ranks
Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, August 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/world/africa/05libya.html
Benghazi, Libya – Rebel leaders, still reeling from the assassination of their top military commander last week, braced for a reshuffling in their ranks on Thursday, while law enforcement officials said a full-fledged investigation into the murder of the rebel general had gotten under way.
An influential group of lawyers and judges, the Coalition for the Revolution of the 17th of February, called for the resignations of several top officials, including the defense minister and a prominent judge. The group released a statement on Wednesday night calling for the resignations of the vice chairman of the rebel executive branch, Ali al-Essawi; the judge, Jumaah al-Jazwi al-Obeidy; and the defense minister, Jalal el-Digheily, and a deputy, Fawzi Bukatef, who also leads a coalition of armed rebel brigades separate from the army.
The group, which includes many people who helped start the Libyan uprising, said Mr. Essawi and Judge Obeidy should be investigated for their roles in ordering the arrest of the murdered general, Abdul Fattah Younes. According to the murky timeline that has emerged about his last hours, General Younes was escorted by a large group of rebel fighters to Benghazi for questioning shortly before unknown gunmen killed him last week.
Mr. Digheily and Mr. Bukatef should resign, the statement said, because they were out of the country in Egypt while Mr. Younes was being arrested. The group, named for a date symbolically marking the uprising’s birth, , saying, "There is no legitimacy to any other armed force but the national army."
Jamal Benour, the justice coordinator for Benghazi, who is helping to oversee the investigation, conceded that despite orders by the rebel leadership for militias to gather under a single leadership, 10 percent of the groups were still holding out.
It was unclear how much weight the Feb. 17 coalition’s recommendations would carry. On Thursday, a rebel spokesman said, "There is a reshuffle possibly pending."
But Mr. Essawi, reached on Thursday evening, said, "I’m planning on staying in my job."
Law enforcement officials in Benghazi said a committee formed to investigate the killing of General Younes and two of his aides had already started its work. Three prosecutors and four detectives will be responsible for sorting through a mystery that has exposed raw divisions in the rebel movement, raised fears about score-settling by militant Islamists and distracted a leadership struggling with battles on three fronts.
[…] A spokesman for NATO said Thursday that it was looking into accusations that its planes had hit a civilian home, killing a mother and two children, in an early morning airstrike on the town of Zlitan, near a front line in the rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The Qaddafi government bused foreign journalists to the site of a destroyed house, which neighbors said had been hit by a bomb about 6:30 a.m., killing a mother and two children and wounding their father as he returned from morning prayers.
At a funeral at a nearby mosque, journalists saw an injured man who appeared to be the father as well as three coffins. Two were uncovered to reveal the bloody bodies of two small children. "Martyrs, martyrs for you, Libya," a crowd chanted.
[…]
Pakistan
6) U.S. aid plan for Pakistan becomes new flash point in ties
Karin Brulliard, Washington Post, August 4
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/civilian-aid-program-to-pakistan-faces-cuts/2011/07/29/gIQAQY59uI_story.html
Islamabad, Pakistan – In 2009, Congress passed with fanfare a five-year, $7.5 billion aid plan intended to prove Washington’s long-term commitment to Pakistan’s weak civilian government. Both countries touted the package as a way to reset relations long centered on military ties.
But two years later, only $500 million has been spent as the program has run into bureaucratic delays, disagreements over priorities and fears about corruption. Now the remainder of the funding is under scrutiny in the Republican-led House, where two panels have approved broad cuts in foreign aid and stringent conditions on assistance to a number of countries, including Pakistan.
Although the Obama administration is fighting the cuts, U.S. officials say they expect lawmakers to shrink the aid package while requiring greater evidence that Pakistan is fighting terrorism and that the funding is reaping benefits.
[…] In Washington, lawmakers frequently complain that Pakistanis seem ungrateful for U.S. assistance. "It’s time for us to take a look at the money we’re giving away to Pakistan," said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) during a House hearing last week. "The billions of dollars that we give them, what do we have to show for it?"
But efforts to win greater recognition for U.S.-funded projects – and with it, greater affection for the United States – have frequently fallen flat.
Security threats mean American officials often cannot visit project sites. Spending has been poorly explained to the public, according to a report by the D.C.-based Center for Global Development, which cited a "mystifying lack of information on what has been done." And new requirements that aid recipients "brand" assistance with U.S. logos have prompted some organizations to decline funding.
"We wouldn’t want a grenade thrown into our office," said Samina Khan, the chairperson of a Pakistani humanitarian network, explaining why she considered it too risky for her own organization, the Sungi Development Foundation, to seek U.S. assistance.
[…] Criticism aside, some Pakistani officials say that the U.S. aid plan is making strides and that money must keep flowing. Simi Kamal of the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights organization, said USAID auditors rated her group as "high risk" when it first sought funding. To win a $40 million grant, Aurat undertook reforms – including investing in an expensive computer-based accounting system and hiring more qualified staff members – that she said were "tough" but helpful.
"You’ve got to let it run two to three years," Kamal said of the decision to funnel more assistance through Pakistani institutions. "It was a step in the right direction."
And in at least some corners, there are signs of appreciation. Last summer, USAID used $500 million to help Pakistan cope with ruinous floods. More than $60 million went toward seed and fertilizer for farmers whose crops were flooded out in villages such as Jangi, in the northwest, where anger pulsates over CIA drone strikes in the nearby tribal belt.
On a recent day, farmers in the village said they had expected to lose this spring’s wheat harvest. Instead, there was a bumper crop, and they attributed the success to U.S.-funded seeds and canals. "Earlier, it was our perception that the United States was only for destruction," said Noor Nabi, a community leader in the village. "But in that critical time, it helped us."
Haiti
7) Peacekeeping and Impunity in Haiti
Hannah Armstrong, Current Intelligence, August 5, 2011
Is there a culture of impunity in Haiti’s long-running MINUSTAH operation? Hannah Armstrong explores the vulnerability of populations under peacekeeping mandate.
http://www.currentintelligence.net/features/2011/8/5/peacekeeping-and-impunity-in-haiti.html
Until recently, the National Museum in Phnom Penh featured a wax sculpture of a UN peacekeeper, wearing the iconic blue beret, with his arm around the throat of a downcast Cambodian prostitute. It is an image in striking contrast to the UN’s preferred self-depiction, exemplified by an image of a meek-looking peacekeeper cooking for Darfur refugees on the newly-launched UN Conduct and Discipline Unit website.
The new millennium witnessed a surge in peacekeeping missions. Nine were launched between 2002 and 2007, and the 2010-2011 budget totalled US$7.83 billion. But it has also brought a crescendo of complaints regarding peacekeeper delinquency and immunity to prosecution that highlights the acute vulnerability of populations under peacekeeping mandate.
Some of the worst examples have been in Haiti. A cholera epidemic that killed more than 5,500 Haitians and infected at least 300,000 has been convincingly linked to a Nepalese battalion of the UN Mission to Stabilise Haiti (known by its French acronym of MINUSTAH). New evidence published in the July issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases presents the strongest case yet that contamination of the Artibonite River was caused by poor sanitation at a MINUSTAH camp. This is merely the latest in a string of scandals that have dogged the mission since it begain in 2004. Aside from allegations of run-of-the-mill kickbacks and corruption, members of the Haiti mission have been accused of multiple sex crimes against children. The UN expelled more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers after charges of underage prostitution could no longer be ignored.
Allegations of sexual exploitation of local women and children are common enough among modern military operations. They clash with liberal narratives of peacekeeping presented by Western institutions.
Contemporary peacekeeping operations have many dimensions. They are meant, according to the UN, not only to maintain peace and security, but also to "facilitate the political process, protect civilians, assist in the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants; support the organization of elections, protect and promote human rights and assist in restoring the rule of law." These tasks entail monitoring and "rehabilitating" post-conflict populations to promote security and democracy. A number of academics have argued that these therapeutic depictions of peacekeeping are misleading, and actually help to rationalise coercive international intervention.
Carol Harrington, for instance, has argued that the rise of peacekeeping operations programmes in the "new wars" environment of the past two decades has served to "re-make individuals in post-conflict populations according to liberal norms set by the ‘international community’ and give credibility to narratives of violent liberal intervention."
"The picture that emerges when peacekeepers are monitored by the same criteria as the locals is deeply disturbing for peacekeeping projects," she writes.
And yet, measures to prosecute criminality among peacekeepers are minimal at best. Many feel that UN inactivity and blame-shifting add to a culture of impunity within peacekeeping missions. A UN panel sidestepped the role of peacekeepers in introducing cholera in Haiti, choosing to focus instead on local conditions such as poor access to healthcare that widened the scope of the outbreak. "It’s like blaming a building for catching fire to take pressure off the guy who dropped the match," tweeted AP Haiti correspondent Jonathan Katz at the time.
"There is strong sentiment that the UN has failed to take responsibility for [its] role in the introduction of cholera into Haiti, and that the UN and MINUSTAH behave as an arrogant supranational organisation without the responsibilities of a sovereign state," said a senior Western aid official in Port au Prince, where street graffiti commonly denounced the UN "occupayson" well before the disease outbreak.
Peacekeeper impunity is often institutionalised by loopholes in international law. Status of forces agreements (SOFA) signed by the UN and host countries effectively waive all criminal and civil liability, erecting "a big barrier to accountability for UN members, especially military" according to Nicole Philips, staff attorney with the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. This means that Haitians cannot file charges against the Sri Lankans who hired underage sex workers in Haiti while working as UN representatives, as they are not subject to host country jurisdiction.
"The SOFA’s lack of any real accountability for civil or criminal human rights violations of MINUSTAH members breaches the occupied country’s sovereignty," said Philips. (You can read the IJDH’s report here). There is no evidence that the expelled Sri Lankan peacekeepers were ever prosecuted for their crimes back home.
Finally, MINUSTAH is the only Chapter VII deployment occurring in a country with no active conflict or civil war. A Chapter VII mission authorises peacekeepers to use force for reasons other than self-defence. "MINUSTAH troops patrol Haitian streets in tanks with their weapons drawn at unarmed civilians," said Philips. And yet, "Haiti has had a democratically elected government since 2006 and has experienced no acts of aggression that threaten its peace and stability or that of its neighbors."
The wax sculpture was eventually removed from the Phnom Penh historical museum, and it appears that no charges have been brought against the alleged sex offenders who served in Haiti. But if history has a habit of erasing the outward signs of peacekeeper misconduct, marks of abuse are surely engraved in popular memory.
Honduras
8) J’lem protests Honduran support for PA statehood bid
Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for Latin America express Israel’s "surprise," "disappointment" at support by Honduras.
Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, 04/08/2011
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=232364
In a step aimed in part at showing the international community that Israel was taking every country’s vote at the UN in September seriously, Jerusalem summoned Honduras’s ambassador this week to protest a statement by the country’s president saying Honduras would support the Palestinian statehood recognition bid.
After a recent meeting with Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo placed a statement on his presidential website saying that Honduras would support the Palestinian move at the UN.
As a result, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for Latin America, Dorit Shavit, called Honduran envoy Jose Isaias Barahoan Herrera into the Foreign Ministry to express Israel’s "surprise" and "disappointment" and to ask for clarification.
Shavit said that in recent months Lobo, during talks with Minister Yossi Peled – and the Honduran foreign minister, during a meeting with deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon – had revealed "understanding" for Israel’s position that the Palestinian unilateral move would constitute a setback for the diplomatic process. She said the Honduran leaders expressed support for a settlement reached through direct negotiations.
[…] One diplomatic official pointed out that unlike every South American County except for Colombia, Honduras – like most other Central American countries – had not recognized a Palestinian state, and Lobo’s announcement was only that it would support the PA at the UN.
[…] There was no indication yet that Lobo’s statement would lead to a domino effect in Central America, with El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama following suit, but this was definitely a concern in Jerusalem.
[…]
Mexico
9) Mexico town’s entire police force quits after officers gunned down
Drug gangs blamed as 20-strong squad resigns in Ascension after series of targeted attacks on new force
Associated Press, Friday 5 August 2011 03.26 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/05/mexico-town-police-force-quits
Ciudad Juárez -An entire 20-man police force has resigned in a northern Mexican town after a series of attacks that killed the police chief and five officers over the last three months, state officials confirmed.
The officers’ resignation on Thursday night left the 13,000 people of Ascension without local police services, Chihuahua state chief prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas said. State and federal police have moved in to take over police work, he said.
The mass resignation appeared to be connected to a Tuesday attack by gunmen that killed three of the town’s officers, Salas said. But it wasn’t the first deadly attack on the police department this year.
In mid-May, police chief Manuel Martínez, who had been in office just seven months, was gunned down with two other officers on a nearby highway. The three had been kidnapped a day before police found their bodies riddled with bullets in the back seat of a sedan.
[…] Ascension is south-west of Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso, Texas, that is one of Mexico’s most violent cities. The state of Chihuahua has had the most homicides blamed on organised crime and drug trafficking since the government’s anti-drug offensive began in December 2006.
[…]
–
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