Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:48 AM
Filed Under: Cairo, Egypt
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/31/1236952.aspx
CAIRO, Egypt – A relative newcomer to Arab TV, the Turkish soap opera "Noor" has helped narrow the gender gap between men and women across the Middle East.
Women see the lead female character – the independent, aspiring fashion designer Noor -- as a role model. Meantime, her husband on the show -- the blue-eyed former model and athlete Mohannad -- has become the region’s first pin-up boy.
The nightly soap opera has mainly female viewers glued to their TV sets not only because Mohannad is a cuter version of Justin Timberlake, but because he offers something many lack in their lives: romance, tenderness and a supportive partner to his independent wife. Mohannad has become the standard against which many Arab men are being judged, much to their chagrin.
Too much to live up to
According to Arab newspapers, marriages in Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have dissolved because wives insisted on putting Mohannad's picture on their mobile phone display, or on their bedroom wall. In Bahrain, a woman allegedly begged her husband to have plastic surgery to look like the actor. Another recent divorcee allegedly told her husband "I want to sleep with Mohannad one night and then die."
In Saudi Arabia, where about one in seven people tunes in each night, men circulated the rumor that Kivanc Tatlitug, the actor who plays Mohannad, is gay, which left female viewers distraught until the rumor was dispelled.
Saudi society abounds with Mohannad jokes such as this one: A Saudi woman was touring Turkey with her husband and son when her husband went missing. As she described him to the police, her son shouted, "But that's not what Daddy looks like." "Be quiet," she whispers, "They might just give me Mohannad."
"Mohannad" and "Noor" are now the hottest babies' names in Saudi – even though the religious establishment has condemned the show. A top Saudi cleric forbade viewers from watching the "malicious" soap operas that "corrupt and spread vice" and has also declared that any TV station airing them is against God. This has put Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), which airs the show three times a day, at loggerheads with Saudi religious leaders.
Saudi clerics may have an uphill battle: The Turkish serial has so wooed Saudis with its scenic backdrops of the Bosporus, and green, clean vistas of Istanbul that Turkish tourism officials say it has caused Saudi tourism to the country to more than double.
The series has not only made Saudi women aware of the failings of their partners, but the advantages engendered by a more liberal, tolerant Islamic society such as Turkey.
"It is eye opening for Saudi women. They haven't seen such a sensitive, passionate, giving personality," explained Dr. Fawzaya Abu Khalid, a writer and women's activist based in Riyadh.
For many women, the show has opened a whole new world and a lot of men aren’t happy about it. "Men feel threatened. It is the first time women have a role model for male beauty and passion and can compare him with their husbands," said Abu Khalid. "It is the first time they found out their husbands are not nice, that they are not being treated the way they should be, and that there is an option outside."
Glued to TV across the region
Filled with scheming relatives, corny romantic scenes, melodramatic acting and amateurish effects, the sequence bombed in its native Turkey, but found new life among Arab women of all ages from Riyadh to the West Bank, when MBC began airing a dubbed Arabic version four months ago.
Reem, a young Saudi businesswoman who prefers to use her first name only, was introduced to the show by her nieces, ages seven and eight. Reem explained the show’s allure. "Romance is not here, living in a dry desert. Saudi women are missing something in their lives, in the treatment in the family, the wife with her husband and the husband with his wife. What I see from my female customers is that they are attracted by the love and romance and the way the man is treating the woman."
And in east Jerusalem, every night at 10 p.m., the streets are suddenly empty – everyone is glued to the TV watching "Noor" there, too.
Bakiza, the matriarch of a large household in Jerusalem’s Old City, surrounds herself every night with her children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. They each take something different from the show. "I admire the story of Mohannad and Noor because of what it shows about how a family should be," said Bakiza. "The grandfather, Fikhry, is the one who takes care of the whole family, decides everything, and solves all the problems. Everyone respects him."
Malouk, a 15-year-old niece of Bakiza, has her own reason for watching the show. "I can only watch it because of Mohannad. He is handsome, romantic, and takes care of his wife. In fact, he is better than his wife."
The popularity of the series goes beyond the family room. It is also a business success story in the local communities. Restaurants, coffee shops, and clothing stores, proudly display posters of the couple in their windows to attract business. In Ramallah, nargila cafes (where water pipes are smoked), have their TV sets tuned for the channel of the series, to keep the customers there.
Even small children are onto the show and are making purchases based on the series’ merchandising. Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Old City, says, "I was surprised how children from 6 to 15 years old, are buying from me only the potato chips with their pictures on it!" said Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Jerusalem’s Old City.
A positive role model for women
To some young women, the aspiring fashion designer Noor, provides a positive female role model and encourages them to raise the bar not only on future spouses but on themselves.
In Cairo, Na'ama Hegazy, a single 25-year-old, watches "Noor" three times a day and says it has influenced the way she sees her future.
"I want a romantic [man] who treats me like how Mohannad treats his wife. Every day he brings her flowers and tells her romantic words," said Hegazy. "The life will be very good when a husband treats his wife [like that]."
But Hegazy also wants to emulate Noor who is a both a good wife and mother, and a self-reliant professional. "When she has troubles with Mohannad, she wants to him to leave her alone. She wants to work and doesn't want anything from him. This means any woman who falls out with her husband can work and depend on herself."
NBC News’ Lawahez Jabari contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
28 July 2008
Female suicide bombers kill 57, wound dozens
Attackers target Shiite pilgrimate in Baghdad, Kurdish rally in Kirkuk
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25880699/
Associated Press
updated 11:19 a.m. ET, Mon., July. 28, 2008
BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.
Three female suicide bombers blew their explosive vests in the middle of pilgrims in Baghdad, moments after a roadside bomb attack, killing at least 32 people and wounding 102, Iraqi officials said.
In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, 25 people were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting a draft provincial elections law, officials said.
Local police said remains recovered from the scene showed the attacker was a woman. The U.S. military confirmed a suicide bombing but said there was no indication the attacker was a woman.
Blow to confidence
The bombings were a devastating blow to the Iraqi public's growing confidence of recent security gains that have seen violence in Iraq drop to its lowest levels in more than four years.
A senior U.S. military official blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attacks in Baghdad. The attacks come ahead of U.S. and Iraqi military operations in early August aimed at routing out insurgents from rural hideouts in northern Iraq and solidify recent security gains in urban areas.
"At about 8 a.m. three female suicide bombers detonated themselves among pilgrims heading to Kazimiyah," the main Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said in a statement posted on his Web site.
The pilgrims are marking the death of an eighth-century saint. The attacks took place in the mainly Shiite Karradah district, which is several miles away from the destination of the pilgrimage in Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. Most of the dead were women and children, police and health officials said.
"I heard women and children crying and shouting and I saw burned women as dead bodies lied in pools of blood on the street," Mustapha Abdullah, a 32-year-old man who was injured in the stomach and legs, said from the hospital where he was being treated.
It was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah, a neighborhood that saw some of the worst Shiite-Sunni slaughter in 2006.
Power-sharing tension
In Kirkuk, the suicide bomber targeted Kurdish demonstrators who were protesting a provincial elections measure blocked in parliament because of disagreement over a power-sharing formula in the disputed city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich area.
Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir, a Kirkuk police spokesman, said police found a car bomb nearby and detonated it safely.
After the suicide explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no one was hurt in the attack and that the party offices were placed under police protection.
Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints.
Women searching women
But security forces have deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine.
Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites.
In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb attack on Monday killed four civilians near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25880699/
Associated Press
updated 11:19 a.m. ET, Mon., July. 28, 2008
BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.
Three female suicide bombers blew their explosive vests in the middle of pilgrims in Baghdad, moments after a roadside bomb attack, killing at least 32 people and wounding 102, Iraqi officials said.
In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, 25 people were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting a draft provincial elections law, officials said.
Local police said remains recovered from the scene showed the attacker was a woman. The U.S. military confirmed a suicide bombing but said there was no indication the attacker was a woman.
Blow to confidence
The bombings were a devastating blow to the Iraqi public's growing confidence of recent security gains that have seen violence in Iraq drop to its lowest levels in more than four years.
A senior U.S. military official blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attacks in Baghdad. The attacks come ahead of U.S. and Iraqi military operations in early August aimed at routing out insurgents from rural hideouts in northern Iraq and solidify recent security gains in urban areas.
"At about 8 a.m. three female suicide bombers detonated themselves among pilgrims heading to Kazimiyah," the main Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said in a statement posted on his Web site.
The pilgrims are marking the death of an eighth-century saint. The attacks took place in the mainly Shiite Karradah district, which is several miles away from the destination of the pilgrimage in Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. Most of the dead were women and children, police and health officials said.
"I heard women and children crying and shouting and I saw burned women as dead bodies lied in pools of blood on the street," Mustapha Abdullah, a 32-year-old man who was injured in the stomach and legs, said from the hospital where he was being treated.
It was the deadliest attack in Baghdad since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah, a neighborhood that saw some of the worst Shiite-Sunni slaughter in 2006.
Power-sharing tension
In Kirkuk, the suicide bomber targeted Kurdish demonstrators who were protesting a provincial elections measure blocked in parliament because of disagreement over a power-sharing formula in the disputed city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich area.
Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir, a Kirkuk police spokesman, said police found a car bomb nearby and detonated it safely.
After the suicide explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no one was hurt in the attack and that the party offices were placed under police protection.
Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints.
Women searching women
But security forces have deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine.
Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites.
In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb attack on Monday killed four civilians near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.
26 July 2008
Saving Pompeii From the Ravages of Time and Tourists
July 26, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/arts/design/26ruin.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
POMPEII, Italy — Citing threats to public security and to the site itself, the Italian government has for the first time declared a yearlong state of emergency for the ancient city of Pompeii.
Nearly 2,000 years after Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii under pumice and steaming volcanic ash, some 2.6 million tourists tramp annually through this archaeological site, which is on Unesco’s World Heritage list.
Frescoes in the ancient Roman city, one of Italy’s most popular attractions, fade under the blistering sun or are chipped at by souvenir hunters. Mosaics endure the brunt of tens of thousands of shuffling thongs and sneakers. Teetering columns and walls are propped up by wooden and steel scaffolding. Rusty padlocks deny access to recently restored houses, and custodians seem to be few and far between.
This month the government drafted a retired lawman, Renato Profili, the former prefect of Naples, to map out a strategy to combat neglect and degradation at the site. Mr. Profili has been given special powers for one year so he can bypass the Italian bureaucracy and speedily bolster security and stop the disintegration.
The hope is that many houses and villas now closed to the public and exposed to looting and vandalism will soon be opened and protected.
“Pompeii is a calling card of Italy for foreigners, and it’s important that their impression be positive,” said Italy’s culture minister, Sandro Bondi. He directed Mr. Profili to crack down on “blatant abuses” like unlicensed tour guides and the souvenir vendors who aggressively approach tourists.
Mr. Bondi also said that Mr. Profili would explore “new forms of innovative management” in which private sponsors might be recruited to finance improvements.
Government red tape is blamed for some of the inefficiencies at Pompeii. “If I have to fix a broken wall,” said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the superintendent of the ruins, “I first have to put out a tender for an architect to evaluate the damage.
“Then I have to put out a tender for a company to fix the wall. Then I have to see if I have enough money in my budget to pay for the repair, and then finally the work begins.
“If he can bypass all that, it would be very positive.”
“Is there an emergency? I don’t know, I’ve always been very clear about the problems at Pompeii,” Mr. Guzzo added. “The situation here is so immense that ordinary means haven’t been able to control it.”
The 109-acre ruins, about an eighth the size of Central Park (50 more acres or so are underground), are severely understaffed. Workers are prone to wildcat strikes that can leave visitors standing outside locked gates. Local criminal organizations must constantly be kept at bay when bids are solicited for maintenance work or for operating public concessions at the site.
Still, Mr. Guzzo said he had made some progress since he assumed his post in 1995. Visitors now have access to 35 percent of the ruins, compared with 14 percent when he first arrived. He admitted, however, that this improvement was “a drop in the bucket.”
Some experts say Mr. Profili will not have an easy time of it. “I truly hope that he’s able to do everything he wants to, but at Pompeii no one wants to change anything,” said Luigi Crimaco, an archaeologist.
Mr. Crimaco should know. For about two and a half years ending in 2006, he was part of a three-man team responsible for managing Pompeii. He said he had often been hamstrung by restrictive laws leaving him little leeway to address problems.
“The preservation of cultural heritage means ensuring that they survive forever,” Mr. Crimaco said. “To protect Pompeii, it’s necessary to invest and bring in people and outside capital able to inject vitality into the ancient city.”
Ticket-sale proceeds and financing from the European Union and local governments have not met Pompeii’s bottomless financial needs. “Modern cities are constantly plagued by unforeseen expenses,” said Giuseppe Proietti, the culture ministry’s secretary general. “Just put that in the context of an enormous ancient site exposed to the elements.”
That chronic shortfall has brought suggestions that investors should operate Pompeii. The ruins should “be put in a condition where people can best appreciate their beauty, because that’s money to the area,” said Antonio Irlando, an architect and the president of a local conservation group that meticulously monitors Pompeii’s cracking walls, falling stones, abandoned work sites and flaking intonaco, the thin layer of plaster on which a fresco is painted. “This is an area with high unemployment and that shouldn’t be the case, because it has an immense patrimony.”
Claudio Velardi, culture and tourism chief for the Campania region, which includes Pompeii, has suggested an “American style” sponsorship of the site, in which a business would reap image benefits if not a tangible financial return.
But around the globe there is always considerable unease with the notion of the privatization of cultural heritage. “Pompeii is a government responsibility; it’s a World Heritage site, and they don’t want it to become too much of a Disneyland,” said Steven J. R. Ellis of the University of Cincinnati, a director of a research project at Porta Stabia, one of Pompeii’s ancient gates.
“The concern is that private investment will swing interests into making money at Pompeii rather than its cultural upkeep and the assurance that funds are given over to conservation,” Dr. Ellis said.
Despite the deterioration and the bad publicity, the ruins still inspire awe.
“It’s wonderful,” said Maria Nappi, a tourist from Connecticut who was visiting with her family. She said the site gave her a “wonderful sense of life back then, and their art and love of beauty.”
As for the crumbling state of the ruins, she said it “was just Mother Nature taking over,” adding, “It doesn’t matter if it’s here, or France, or the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/arts/design/26ruin.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
POMPEII, Italy — Citing threats to public security and to the site itself, the Italian government has for the first time declared a yearlong state of emergency for the ancient city of Pompeii.
Nearly 2,000 years after Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii under pumice and steaming volcanic ash, some 2.6 million tourists tramp annually through this archaeological site, which is on Unesco’s World Heritage list.
Frescoes in the ancient Roman city, one of Italy’s most popular attractions, fade under the blistering sun or are chipped at by souvenir hunters. Mosaics endure the brunt of tens of thousands of shuffling thongs and sneakers. Teetering columns and walls are propped up by wooden and steel scaffolding. Rusty padlocks deny access to recently restored houses, and custodians seem to be few and far between.
This month the government drafted a retired lawman, Renato Profili, the former prefect of Naples, to map out a strategy to combat neglect and degradation at the site. Mr. Profili has been given special powers for one year so he can bypass the Italian bureaucracy and speedily bolster security and stop the disintegration.
The hope is that many houses and villas now closed to the public and exposed to looting and vandalism will soon be opened and protected.
“Pompeii is a calling card of Italy for foreigners, and it’s important that their impression be positive,” said Italy’s culture minister, Sandro Bondi. He directed Mr. Profili to crack down on “blatant abuses” like unlicensed tour guides and the souvenir vendors who aggressively approach tourists.
Mr. Bondi also said that Mr. Profili would explore “new forms of innovative management” in which private sponsors might be recruited to finance improvements.
Government red tape is blamed for some of the inefficiencies at Pompeii. “If I have to fix a broken wall,” said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the superintendent of the ruins, “I first have to put out a tender for an architect to evaluate the damage.
“Then I have to put out a tender for a company to fix the wall. Then I have to see if I have enough money in my budget to pay for the repair, and then finally the work begins.
“If he can bypass all that, it would be very positive.”
“Is there an emergency? I don’t know, I’ve always been very clear about the problems at Pompeii,” Mr. Guzzo added. “The situation here is so immense that ordinary means haven’t been able to control it.”
The 109-acre ruins, about an eighth the size of Central Park (50 more acres or so are underground), are severely understaffed. Workers are prone to wildcat strikes that can leave visitors standing outside locked gates. Local criminal organizations must constantly be kept at bay when bids are solicited for maintenance work or for operating public concessions at the site.
Still, Mr. Guzzo said he had made some progress since he assumed his post in 1995. Visitors now have access to 35 percent of the ruins, compared with 14 percent when he first arrived. He admitted, however, that this improvement was “a drop in the bucket.”
Some experts say Mr. Profili will not have an easy time of it. “I truly hope that he’s able to do everything he wants to, but at Pompeii no one wants to change anything,” said Luigi Crimaco, an archaeologist.
Mr. Crimaco should know. For about two and a half years ending in 2006, he was part of a three-man team responsible for managing Pompeii. He said he had often been hamstrung by restrictive laws leaving him little leeway to address problems.
“The preservation of cultural heritage means ensuring that they survive forever,” Mr. Crimaco said. “To protect Pompeii, it’s necessary to invest and bring in people and outside capital able to inject vitality into the ancient city.”
Ticket-sale proceeds and financing from the European Union and local governments have not met Pompeii’s bottomless financial needs. “Modern cities are constantly plagued by unforeseen expenses,” said Giuseppe Proietti, the culture ministry’s secretary general. “Just put that in the context of an enormous ancient site exposed to the elements.”
That chronic shortfall has brought suggestions that investors should operate Pompeii. The ruins should “be put in a condition where people can best appreciate their beauty, because that’s money to the area,” said Antonio Irlando, an architect and the president of a local conservation group that meticulously monitors Pompeii’s cracking walls, falling stones, abandoned work sites and flaking intonaco, the thin layer of plaster on which a fresco is painted. “This is an area with high unemployment and that shouldn’t be the case, because it has an immense patrimony.”
Claudio Velardi, culture and tourism chief for the Campania region, which includes Pompeii, has suggested an “American style” sponsorship of the site, in which a business would reap image benefits if not a tangible financial return.
But around the globe there is always considerable unease with the notion of the privatization of cultural heritage. “Pompeii is a government responsibility; it’s a World Heritage site, and they don’t want it to become too much of a Disneyland,” said Steven J. R. Ellis of the University of Cincinnati, a director of a research project at Porta Stabia, one of Pompeii’s ancient gates.
“The concern is that private investment will swing interests into making money at Pompeii rather than its cultural upkeep and the assurance that funds are given over to conservation,” Dr. Ellis said.
Despite the deterioration and the bad publicity, the ruins still inspire awe.
“It’s wonderful,” said Maria Nappi, a tourist from Connecticut who was visiting with her family. She said the site gave her a “wonderful sense of life back then, and their art and love of beauty.”
As for the crumbling state of the ruins, she said it “was just Mother Nature taking over,” adding, “It doesn’t matter if it’s here, or France, or the United States.”
15 July 2008
Getting tourists to Afghanistan's 'Grand Canyon'
By Alastair Leithead,
BBC News, Band-e Amir
2008/07/15 08:57:47 GMT
It takes eight bone-shaking hours on a dirt track road to reach Afghanistan's first national park from the capital, but the beauty and serenity is worth crossing the world for.
Imagine the Grand Canyon flooded with deep sapphire lakes, bluer than the cloudless sky, with sheer golden cliffs plunging into turquoise shallows.
High above the Band-e Amir valley in Bamiyan province the Hindu Kush mountains glow an almost-pink, framing the beautiful long pools that overflow into gushing waterfalls.
It's a paradise, an oasis, in central Afghanistan - a bubble of security and peace in a country which is more used to war and instability.
'Better security'
Some tourists do make the tortuous journey and on Fridays the pedalo man with his brightly coloured swan-shaped boats usually has a very busy day.
Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict
Governor Habiba Serobi
Afghans travel out to Band-e Amir for picnics, a favourite family pastime at weekends and take a refreshing dip. The boats are a good way of seeing the sights for $8 an hour.
"Any improvements would help attract more visitors here," said Ismael Alaa, poring over the book where he notes down which boats have been hired.
"But particularly, we need better roads to bring in people and supplies - and better security, even though it's not bad here."
There are a few accommodation tents and trinket stores plonked near the car park - just a few tables set up to serve the tourist trade.
One or two places will even slaughter a lamb for lunch if they think the group is big enough to make it worth their while.
Attaqulla cooked our kebabs on a narrow metal barbecue, but his full time job is with the local department of tourism.
He explained the attraction of the new national park: "It's not an artificial lake, it's natural and really deep.
"Because of the way it's been formed, almost like it's been blocked at one end, people look at it as a miracle and come from all over the country to see it.
"But local people from Bamiyan believe the third caliph of Islam came here once, so they treat it as a religious site and come to pray at the shrine."
Standing high on the edge of the canyon the views are truly breathtaking, but the one thing missing is people.
There are very few visitors to the area, not least because of the roads, but also because of the deteriorating security situation in the surrounding provinces.
It's one of the most peaceful parts of Afghanistan, but the Governor, Habiba Serobi, the only female governor in the country, believes if more money isn't put into the area then the situation could worsen.
'Destroyed'
"Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict - that's where the international community puts more money," she said.
"They don't care about Bamiyan if it is safe and secure, but the danger is people will be angry and disappointed with the central government and the international community.
"So in the future the distance between the government and the people will be bigger and it will be a cause of problems."
There is a small military presence of troops from New Zealand in the province and there are some developments - a new town hall has just been finished and work has started on building new roads in the city.
But there is a lot of poverty and near to the mountain where the famous Buddhas once stood before they were destroyed by the Taleban in 2001, families are living in caves.
This beautiful and peaceful part of a violent country has huge potential to make Afghanistan a lot of money, but only when the majority of foreign visitors here aren't carrying guns and fighting an insurgency.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7506146.stm
Published: 2008/07/15 08:57:47 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
BBC News, Band-e Amir
2008/07/15 08:57:47 GMT
It takes eight bone-shaking hours on a dirt track road to reach Afghanistan's first national park from the capital, but the beauty and serenity is worth crossing the world for.
Imagine the Grand Canyon flooded with deep sapphire lakes, bluer than the cloudless sky, with sheer golden cliffs plunging into turquoise shallows.
High above the Band-e Amir valley in Bamiyan province the Hindu Kush mountains glow an almost-pink, framing the beautiful long pools that overflow into gushing waterfalls.
It's a paradise, an oasis, in central Afghanistan - a bubble of security and peace in a country which is more used to war and instability.
'Better security'
Some tourists do make the tortuous journey and on Fridays the pedalo man with his brightly coloured swan-shaped boats usually has a very busy day.
Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict
Governor Habiba Serobi
Afghans travel out to Band-e Amir for picnics, a favourite family pastime at weekends and take a refreshing dip. The boats are a good way of seeing the sights for $8 an hour.
"Any improvements would help attract more visitors here," said Ismael Alaa, poring over the book where he notes down which boats have been hired.
"But particularly, we need better roads to bring in people and supplies - and better security, even though it's not bad here."
There are a few accommodation tents and trinket stores plonked near the car park - just a few tables set up to serve the tourist trade.
One or two places will even slaughter a lamb for lunch if they think the group is big enough to make it worth their while.
Attaqulla cooked our kebabs on a narrow metal barbecue, but his full time job is with the local department of tourism.
He explained the attraction of the new national park: "It's not an artificial lake, it's natural and really deep.
"Because of the way it's been formed, almost like it's been blocked at one end, people look at it as a miracle and come from all over the country to see it.
"But local people from Bamiyan believe the third caliph of Islam came here once, so they treat it as a religious site and come to pray at the shrine."
Standing high on the edge of the canyon the views are truly breathtaking, but the one thing missing is people.
There are very few visitors to the area, not least because of the roads, but also because of the deteriorating security situation in the surrounding provinces.
It's one of the most peaceful parts of Afghanistan, but the Governor, Habiba Serobi, the only female governor in the country, believes if more money isn't put into the area then the situation could worsen.
'Destroyed'
"Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict - that's where the international community puts more money," she said.
"They don't care about Bamiyan if it is safe and secure, but the danger is people will be angry and disappointed with the central government and the international community.
"So in the future the distance between the government and the people will be bigger and it will be a cause of problems."
There is a small military presence of troops from New Zealand in the province and there are some developments - a new town hall has just been finished and work has started on building new roads in the city.
But there is a lot of poverty and near to the mountain where the famous Buddhas once stood before they were destroyed by the Taleban in 2001, families are living in caves.
This beautiful and peaceful part of a violent country has huge potential to make Afghanistan a lot of money, but only when the majority of foreign visitors here aren't carrying guns and fighting an insurgency.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7506146.stm
Published: 2008/07/15 08:57:47 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
First Guantanamo video released
Go to link at the bottom of the page to see the video...
2008/07/15 13:16:05 GMT
The video was filmed secretly through an air duct
A videotape of a detainee being questioned at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay has been released for the first time.
It shows 16-year-old Omar Khadr being asked by Canadian officials in 2003 about events leading up to his capture by US forces, Canadian media have said.
The Canadian citizen is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.
He is seen in a distressed state and complaining about the medical care.
The footage was made public by Mr Khadr's lawyers following a Supreme Court ruling in May that the Canadian authorities had to hand over key evidence against him to allow a full defence of the charges he is facing.
'Help me'
Mr Khadr, the only Westerner still held at the jail, was 15 when he was captured by US forces during a gun battle at a suspected al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
During the 10-minute video of his questioning in Guantanamo a year later, he can be seen crying, his face buried in his hands, and pulling at his hair. He can be heard repeatedly chanting: "Help me."
I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth
Dennis Edney
Lawyer for Omar Khadr
At one point he lifts his orange shirt to show the foreign ministry official and agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) wounds on his back and stomach which he says he sustained in Afghanistan.
"I'm not a doctor, but I think you're getting good medical care," one of the officials responds.
Khadr says: "No I'm not. You're not here... I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!" in reference to how his vision and physical health were affected.
"No, you still have your eyes and your feet are still at the end of your legs, you know," a man says.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Mr Khadr tells the officials several times: "You don't care about me."
In an accompanying classified document describing the interrogation, Mr Khadr also says he was tortured while being held at the US military detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
One of Mr Khadr's lawyers, Dennis Edney, said they hoped the video would cause an outcry in Canada and pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand the US not prosecute their client.
"I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth," Mr Edney told the Toronto Star.
"Canadians should demand to know why they've been lied to."
Mr Harper reiterated last week that he would not interfere in Mr Khadr's military tribunal, due to begin at Guantanamo on 8 October.
Mr Khadr, now 21, faces multiple terrorism-related charges, the most serious of which is murder. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7507216.stm
Published: 2008/07/15 13:16:05 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
2008/07/15 13:16:05 GMT
The video was filmed secretly through an air duct
A videotape of a detainee being questioned at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay has been released for the first time.
It shows 16-year-old Omar Khadr being asked by Canadian officials in 2003 about events leading up to his capture by US forces, Canadian media have said.
The Canadian citizen is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.
He is seen in a distressed state and complaining about the medical care.
The footage was made public by Mr Khadr's lawyers following a Supreme Court ruling in May that the Canadian authorities had to hand over key evidence against him to allow a full defence of the charges he is facing.
'Help me'
Mr Khadr, the only Westerner still held at the jail, was 15 when he was captured by US forces during a gun battle at a suspected al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
During the 10-minute video of his questioning in Guantanamo a year later, he can be seen crying, his face buried in his hands, and pulling at his hair. He can be heard repeatedly chanting: "Help me."
I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth
Dennis Edney
Lawyer for Omar Khadr
At one point he lifts his orange shirt to show the foreign ministry official and agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) wounds on his back and stomach which he says he sustained in Afghanistan.
"I'm not a doctor, but I think you're getting good medical care," one of the officials responds.
Khadr says: "No I'm not. You're not here... I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!" in reference to how his vision and physical health were affected.
"No, you still have your eyes and your feet are still at the end of your legs, you know," a man says.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Mr Khadr tells the officials several times: "You don't care about me."
In an accompanying classified document describing the interrogation, Mr Khadr also says he was tortured while being held at the US military detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
One of Mr Khadr's lawyers, Dennis Edney, said they hoped the video would cause an outcry in Canada and pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand the US not prosecute their client.
"I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth," Mr Edney told the Toronto Star.
"Canadians should demand to know why they've been lied to."
Mr Harper reiterated last week that he would not interfere in Mr Khadr's military tribunal, due to begin at Guantanamo on 8 October.
Mr Khadr, now 21, faces multiple terrorism-related charges, the most serious of which is murder. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7507216.stm
Published: 2008/07/15 13:16:05 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
14 July 2008
Sudanese president charged with genocide
Ilhamdi'allah!!! Something may finally happen!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/07/14/darfur.charges/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
(CNN) -- The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has filed genocide charges against Sudan's president for a five-year campaign of violence in Darfur.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Monday urged a three-judge panel to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to prevent the deaths of about 2.5 million people forced from their homes in the war-torn region of Darfur and who are still under attack from government-backed Janjaweed militia.
The five charges against al-Bashir include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in the war-torn region with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.
In an exclusive interview with CNN's Nic Robertson in the Dutch city of The Hague, the prosecutor said he had a responsibility to bring charges against al-Bashir.
"The (U.N.) Security Council referred the case to me and requested me to investigate," Moreno-Ocampo said. Read a transcript of the interview
"After three years I have strong evidence that al-Bashir is committing a genocide. I cannot be blackmailed, I cannot yield. Silence never helped the victims. Silence helped the perpetrators. The prosecutor should not be silent."
The judges must now decide whether to issue the warrant, and it is widely expected that they will; the judges have approved all 11 of Moreno-Ocampo's previous submissions to the court.
If issued, the warrant would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide. Watch as ICC prosecutor targets al-Bashir »
In his request, Moreno-Ocampo says there are reasonable grounds to believe that al-Bashir bears criminal responsibility for five counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of war crimes.
The alleged crimes stem from a brutal counter-insurgency campaign the Sudanese government conducted after rebels began an uprising in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003. The United States and much of the world has already characterized the campaign as genocide.
The authorities armed and cooperated with Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents there, according to the United Nations, western governments and human rights organizations. The militias targeted civilian members of tribes from which the rebels draw strength.
About 300,000 people have died in Darfur, the United Nations estimates, and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes. Watch a tour of Darfur's deserted Northern Corridor »
Moreno-Ocampo says al-Bashir targeted three ethnic groups living in the region -- including the Fur group, for whom Darfur is named -- solely on account of their ethnicity.
Al-Bashir bears responsibility, Moreno-Ocampo says, because he sat at the apex of the government.
"For such crimes to be committed over a period of five years and throughout Darfur, al-Bashir had to mobilize and keep mobilized the whole state apparatus; he had to control and direct perpetrators; and he had to rely on a genocidal plan," Moreno-Ocampo wrote as background for arrest warrant request.
Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations has already condemned the charges. Watch how some are concerned by the move
"It is a criminal move that should be resisted by all," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said Friday amid reports that the charges were imminent. "We will resist it by all possible legal means."
Mohamad accused Moreno-Ocampo of "playing with fire."
In Khartoum, a crowd of about 2,000 people greeted al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, when he arrived for an emergency meeting of his Cabinet Sunday to discuss the charges.
When he saw the crowd, al-Bashir climbed onto a pickup truck and pumped his fist in the air, whipping the group into a frenzy.
Some held signs saying, "You are joking... Ocamp-who?" and "Death to America."
A high-ranking ambassador at the presidential palace called the possible prosecution stupid and malicious, and warned that the Sudanese people would see it as proof of a larger conspiracy against the country. Watch why Sudan's leader has support in China »
In 2005, the Security Council cleared the way for possible war crimes prosecutions related to Darfur by the ICC, a permanent tribunal set up to handle prosecutions related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court is based on a treaty signed by 106 nations -- excluding Sudan.
In addition to Sudan, ICC prosecutors are investigating offenses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and the Central African Republic.
The attacks in Darfur over the past five years have followed a common pattern, Moreno-Ocampo's evidence says.
Members of Sudan's armed forces, often acting together with the militias and under al-Bashir's command, singled out villages and towns inhabited by tribal groups. Troops and militia members shot and killed civilians, and sometimes the Sudanese air force was called in to bomb villages and towns in support of the ground forces, the prosecutor's evidence says.
Residents who fled were often chased and attacked or left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, the evidence says.
The attacks, it says, undermined the ability of the targeted groups to survive in Darfur. The destruction of their homes scattered entire communities, and the pervasive rape and sexual violence against girls and women -- who are often targeted when they are out collecting firewood or water -- has torn families apart. Watch how UNICEF is trying to prevent rape in Darfur
"They are raping women, raping girls, raping in groups -- raping to destroy the communities," Moreno-Ocampo told CNN. "Rape is a tool in the genocide -- the most important tool today."
The chief U.N. humanitarian coordinator, John Holmes, said Friday that aid workers were already preparing for the effects of an arrest warrant against al-Bashir, making sure staff members are safe.
Moreno-Ocampo said any attacks on peacekeepers would be another reason to bring al-Bashir to justice.
The ICC has already indicted two men for Darfur crimes -- Ahmad Harun, Sudan's former minister of the interior who is now in charge of humanitarian affairs for the Sudanese government and militia leader Ali Kushayb -- but neither has been brought to justice.
Once the ICC indicts someone, authorities in that person's native country -- or the country in which the indicted person is located -- have the power to detain the indicted person for trial at the Hague.
Kushayb and Harun both remain in Sudan where they enjoy the protection of al-Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo said. Since they have not been arrested, the prosecutor says, it is unlikely al-Bashir will be -- and he says it will probably take a U.N. Security Council resolution for al-Bashir to be brought to justice.
Senior Sudanese government leaders have previously told CNN that reports of atrocities in Darfur are exaggerated.
"Yes, there has been a war and some people have died, but it's not like what has been reflected in the media," Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid said last month.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/07/14/darfur.charges/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
(CNN) -- The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has filed genocide charges against Sudan's president for a five-year campaign of violence in Darfur.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Monday urged a three-judge panel to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to prevent the deaths of about 2.5 million people forced from their homes in the war-torn region of Darfur and who are still under attack from government-backed Janjaweed militia.
The five charges against al-Bashir include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in the war-torn region with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.
In an exclusive interview with CNN's Nic Robertson in the Dutch city of The Hague, the prosecutor said he had a responsibility to bring charges against al-Bashir.
"The (U.N.) Security Council referred the case to me and requested me to investigate," Moreno-Ocampo said. Read a transcript of the interview
"After three years I have strong evidence that al-Bashir is committing a genocide. I cannot be blackmailed, I cannot yield. Silence never helped the victims. Silence helped the perpetrators. The prosecutor should not be silent."
The judges must now decide whether to issue the warrant, and it is widely expected that they will; the judges have approved all 11 of Moreno-Ocampo's previous submissions to the court.
If issued, the warrant would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide. Watch as ICC prosecutor targets al-Bashir »
In his request, Moreno-Ocampo says there are reasonable grounds to believe that al-Bashir bears criminal responsibility for five counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of war crimes.
The alleged crimes stem from a brutal counter-insurgency campaign the Sudanese government conducted after rebels began an uprising in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003. The United States and much of the world has already characterized the campaign as genocide.
The authorities armed and cooperated with Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents there, according to the United Nations, western governments and human rights organizations. The militias targeted civilian members of tribes from which the rebels draw strength.
About 300,000 people have died in Darfur, the United Nations estimates, and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes. Watch a tour of Darfur's deserted Northern Corridor »
Moreno-Ocampo says al-Bashir targeted three ethnic groups living in the region -- including the Fur group, for whom Darfur is named -- solely on account of their ethnicity.
Al-Bashir bears responsibility, Moreno-Ocampo says, because he sat at the apex of the government.
"For such crimes to be committed over a period of five years and throughout Darfur, al-Bashir had to mobilize and keep mobilized the whole state apparatus; he had to control and direct perpetrators; and he had to rely on a genocidal plan," Moreno-Ocampo wrote as background for arrest warrant request.
Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations has already condemned the charges. Watch how some are concerned by the move
"It is a criminal move that should be resisted by all," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said Friday amid reports that the charges were imminent. "We will resist it by all possible legal means."
Mohamad accused Moreno-Ocampo of "playing with fire."
In Khartoum, a crowd of about 2,000 people greeted al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, when he arrived for an emergency meeting of his Cabinet Sunday to discuss the charges.
When he saw the crowd, al-Bashir climbed onto a pickup truck and pumped his fist in the air, whipping the group into a frenzy.
Some held signs saying, "You are joking... Ocamp-who?" and "Death to America."
A high-ranking ambassador at the presidential palace called the possible prosecution stupid and malicious, and warned that the Sudanese people would see it as proof of a larger conspiracy against the country. Watch why Sudan's leader has support in China »
In 2005, the Security Council cleared the way for possible war crimes prosecutions related to Darfur by the ICC, a permanent tribunal set up to handle prosecutions related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court is based on a treaty signed by 106 nations -- excluding Sudan.
In addition to Sudan, ICC prosecutors are investigating offenses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and the Central African Republic.
The attacks in Darfur over the past five years have followed a common pattern, Moreno-Ocampo's evidence says.
Members of Sudan's armed forces, often acting together with the militias and under al-Bashir's command, singled out villages and towns inhabited by tribal groups. Troops and militia members shot and killed civilians, and sometimes the Sudanese air force was called in to bomb villages and towns in support of the ground forces, the prosecutor's evidence says.
Residents who fled were often chased and attacked or left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, the evidence says.
The attacks, it says, undermined the ability of the targeted groups to survive in Darfur. The destruction of their homes scattered entire communities, and the pervasive rape and sexual violence against girls and women -- who are often targeted when they are out collecting firewood or water -- has torn families apart. Watch how UNICEF is trying to prevent rape in Darfur
"They are raping women, raping girls, raping in groups -- raping to destroy the communities," Moreno-Ocampo told CNN. "Rape is a tool in the genocide -- the most important tool today."
The chief U.N. humanitarian coordinator, John Holmes, said Friday that aid workers were already preparing for the effects of an arrest warrant against al-Bashir, making sure staff members are safe.
Moreno-Ocampo said any attacks on peacekeepers would be another reason to bring al-Bashir to justice.
The ICC has already indicted two men for Darfur crimes -- Ahmad Harun, Sudan's former minister of the interior who is now in charge of humanitarian affairs for the Sudanese government and militia leader Ali Kushayb -- but neither has been brought to justice.
Once the ICC indicts someone, authorities in that person's native country -- or the country in which the indicted person is located -- have the power to detain the indicted person for trial at the Hague.
Kushayb and Harun both remain in Sudan where they enjoy the protection of al-Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo said. Since they have not been arrested, the prosecutor says, it is unlikely al-Bashir will be -- and he says it will probably take a U.N. Security Council resolution for al-Bashir to be brought to justice.
Senior Sudanese government leaders have previously told CNN that reports of atrocities in Darfur are exaggerated.
"Yes, there has been a war and some people have died, but it's not like what has been reflected in the media," Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid said last month.
12 July 2008
Gay Old Time in Sharia Land
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07072007/gossip/pagesix/gay_old_time_in_sharia_land_pagesix_.htm
July 7, 2007 -- THE ayatollahs may not slap him with a fatwah as they did Salman Rushdie, but fundamentalist clerics are bound to be enraged at Michael Luongo over "Gay Travels in the Muslim World" (Harrington Park Press), his book celebrating homosexuality in the Middle East. Luongo who compiled chapters by 17 writers covering Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Bangladesh, Turkey and Saudi Arabia had the foreword written by Afdhere Jama, the founder of Huriyah, "the world's first magazine for queer Muslims," who, he claims, number 150 million.
"There is something intoxicatingly beautiful about an Arab man who paints his eyes with kohl," Jama states in the book.
Luongo writes about his quest to find some man-on-man action in Afghanistan. "I was painfully curious what a gay party would be like in Kabul, but at the same time, I wondered if I were being led into a trap. I wanted a scoop, but I didn't want to be a gay Daniel Pearl," he writes.
Ushered into a "special room for men," Luongo said he found they "were not men who sip cosmos and discuss 'Queer Eye,' there was no doubt about their masculinity."
He then has fantasies of being "passed around as a party favor at an Afghan orgy" before spending the night "caressing and holding hands" with a Muslim man who would now and then say, 'I wish you were a girl,' which I found oddly disconcerting, and made me wonder if all we were doing was displacement for affections he could not express otherwise."
The author adds: "The truth about many young Afghan men is that although they've lived through hardship, treat guns like fashion accessories, and murdered for their country to free it from the Taliban, strict Islamic rule means that they have never seen a woman naked."
He wonders whether strict Muslim laws restricting interaction between men and women make gay sex more prevalent there than in the West. "Is it that they were opportunistic, being with one another if they could not have a woman?" he wonders.
"My time in Kabul was perhaps the most oddly romantic time I had ever had with other men from being wooed with flowers to stories of wartime bravery."
Luongo told Page Six he's ready to take the heat. "In August and September I will have some events for the book - likely fatwah-inducing, a la Salman Rushdie," he said.
If this interests you, check out the author's website
July 7, 2007 -- THE ayatollahs may not slap him with a fatwah as they did Salman Rushdie, but fundamentalist clerics are bound to be enraged at Michael Luongo over "Gay Travels in the Muslim World" (Harrington Park Press), his book celebrating homosexuality in the Middle East. Luongo who compiled chapters by 17 writers covering Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Bangladesh, Turkey and Saudi Arabia had the foreword written by Afdhere Jama, the founder of Huriyah, "the world's first magazine for queer Muslims," who, he claims, number 150 million.
"There is something intoxicatingly beautiful about an Arab man who paints his eyes with kohl," Jama states in the book.
Luongo writes about his quest to find some man-on-man action in Afghanistan. "I was painfully curious what a gay party would be like in Kabul, but at the same time, I wondered if I were being led into a trap. I wanted a scoop, but I didn't want to be a gay Daniel Pearl," he writes.
Ushered into a "special room for men," Luongo said he found they "were not men who sip cosmos and discuss 'Queer Eye,' there was no doubt about their masculinity."
He then has fantasies of being "passed around as a party favor at an Afghan orgy" before spending the night "caressing and holding hands" with a Muslim man who would now and then say, 'I wish you were a girl,' which I found oddly disconcerting, and made me wonder if all we were doing was displacement for affections he could not express otherwise."
The author adds: "The truth about many young Afghan men is that although they've lived through hardship, treat guns like fashion accessories, and murdered for their country to free it from the Taliban, strict Islamic rule means that they have never seen a woman naked."
He wonders whether strict Muslim laws restricting interaction between men and women make gay sex more prevalent there than in the West. "Is it that they were opportunistic, being with one another if they could not have a woman?" he wonders.
"My time in Kabul was perhaps the most oddly romantic time I had ever had with other men from being wooed with flowers to stories of wartime bravery."
Luongo told Page Six he's ready to take the heat. "In August and September I will have some events for the book - likely fatwah-inducing, a la Salman Rushdie," he said.
If this interests you, check out the author's website
11 July 2008
Afghan official: U.S. strike hit wedding party
47 civilians killed, commission chief says; U.S. says probe still under way
The Associated Press
updated 9:38 a.m. ET, Fri., July. 11, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. military airstrike this week killed 47 civilians traveling to a wedding, the head of an Afghan government commission investigating the incident said Friday.
The airstrike on Sunday in Deh Bala district of Nuristan province also wounded nine civilians, said Burhanullah Shinwari, the deputy chairman of the Senate, who led the delegation.
The U.S. military on Sunday denied that any civilians were killed in the incident. At the time Afghan officials said 27 civilians had been killed.
On Friday, U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said that "any loss of innocent life is tragic."
"I assure you that civilians are never targeted, and that our forces go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties," he said. "This incident regarding the air strike on July 6th is still under investigation by coalition forces."
Shinwari said that 39 of those killed in the airstrike were women and children, including the bride.
Dispatched by Karzai
The group was targeted twice on Sunday, as they walked along with the bride from her village toward the groom's house in another village, Shinwari said.
The nine-man commission was dispatched by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident on Tuesday. They returned to Kabul on Thursday. The commission included officials from the Ministry of Defense, the country's intelligence agency and parliament.
Shinwari said the group gathered information from eyewitnesses and victim's relatives.
All those killed in Deh Bala incident were buried in one cemetery near the village where the attack happened, Shinwari said.
"They were all civilians, with no links to al-Qaida or the Taliban," Shinwari said.
The members of the commission gave $2,000 for every person killed and $1,000 for those wounded, he said.
The issue of civilian casualties has caused friction between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO troops, and has weakened the standing of the Western-backed Karzai in the eyes of the population.
More than 2,100 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year. More than 8,000 people died in attacks last year, according to the U.N., the most since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25635571/
The Associated Press
updated 9:38 a.m. ET, Fri., July. 11, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. military airstrike this week killed 47 civilians traveling to a wedding, the head of an Afghan government commission investigating the incident said Friday.
The airstrike on Sunday in Deh Bala district of Nuristan province also wounded nine civilians, said Burhanullah Shinwari, the deputy chairman of the Senate, who led the delegation.
The U.S. military on Sunday denied that any civilians were killed in the incident. At the time Afghan officials said 27 civilians had been killed.
On Friday, U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said that "any loss of innocent life is tragic."
"I assure you that civilians are never targeted, and that our forces go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties," he said. "This incident regarding the air strike on July 6th is still under investigation by coalition forces."
Shinwari said that 39 of those killed in the airstrike were women and children, including the bride.
Dispatched by Karzai
The group was targeted twice on Sunday, as they walked along with the bride from her village toward the groom's house in another village, Shinwari said.
The nine-man commission was dispatched by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident on Tuesday. They returned to Kabul on Thursday. The commission included officials from the Ministry of Defense, the country's intelligence agency and parliament.
Shinwari said the group gathered information from eyewitnesses and victim's relatives.
All those killed in Deh Bala incident were buried in one cemetery near the village where the attack happened, Shinwari said.
"They were all civilians, with no links to al-Qaida or the Taliban," Shinwari said.
The members of the commission gave $2,000 for every person killed and $1,000 for those wounded, he said.
The issue of civilian casualties has caused friction between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO troops, and has weakened the standing of the Western-backed Karzai in the eyes of the population.
More than 2,100 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year. More than 8,000 people died in attacks last year, according to the U.N., the most since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25635571/
10 July 2008
Report: 4 suspects held in U.S. consulate attack
3 police, 3 assailants killed in Istanbul shootout; al-Qaida link probed
The Associated Press
updated 8:35 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Four suspects have been detained in connection with the attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Turkey news agency reported Thursday.
The Dogan news agency quoted Interior Minister Besir Atalay as saying that four were in custody. The attack Wednesday resulted in the deaths of three policemen and three assailants.
One of the assailants escaped in a getaway car. It was not immediately clear if he was among the four detained Thursday.
Meantime, investigators are trying to determine whether of one of the gunmen in the attack was linked to al-Qaida terrorists.
Erkan Kargin, one of the three attackers killed by police, had traveled to Afghanistan, said a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Police have said they suspect the armed men were linked to al-Qaida even though the assault did not match the terror group's usual hallmarks, such as coordinated attacks by suicide bombers that cause mass casualties.
"They chose one of the best protected buildings in Turkey, not because they wanted to blow it up, but because they knew it would attract world attention," said Ihsan Bal, head of terrorism studies at Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization.
All Turkish assailants
The bearded gunmen emerged from a car and shot a traffic officer dead, then swarmed the guard quarters at the entrance to the consulate, where two policemen were killed, according to security video. Officers fired back, killing three of the assailants — all Turks — as bystanders fled for cover.
Turkish authorities have been increasingly targeting suspected Islamic militants since al-Qaida-linked suicide bombers killed 58 people in 2003 by targeting two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul.
Turkey also has been cracking down on both ultranationalists who have attacked Christians and on Kurdish rebels, two groups it deems a threat to the country's security.
"There is nothing more sensational than attacking the U.S. consulate for an Islamic militant," said Emin Demirel, a Turkish terrorism expert and author of "Al-Qaida Elements in Turkey." "However, this attack certainly lacks the sophisticated hallmarks of al-Qaida."
The U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Turkey's foreign ministry said security around all American diplomatic missions in Turkey had been increased.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25618927/
The Associated Press
updated 8:35 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Four suspects have been detained in connection with the attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Turkey news agency reported Thursday.
The Dogan news agency quoted Interior Minister Besir Atalay as saying that four were in custody. The attack Wednesday resulted in the deaths of three policemen and three assailants.
One of the assailants escaped in a getaway car. It was not immediately clear if he was among the four detained Thursday.
Meantime, investigators are trying to determine whether of one of the gunmen in the attack was linked to al-Qaida terrorists.
Erkan Kargin, one of the three attackers killed by police, had traveled to Afghanistan, said a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Police have said they suspect the armed men were linked to al-Qaida even though the assault did not match the terror group's usual hallmarks, such as coordinated attacks by suicide bombers that cause mass casualties.
"They chose one of the best protected buildings in Turkey, not because they wanted to blow it up, but because they knew it would attract world attention," said Ihsan Bal, head of terrorism studies at Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization.
All Turkish assailants
The bearded gunmen emerged from a car and shot a traffic officer dead, then swarmed the guard quarters at the entrance to the consulate, where two policemen were killed, according to security video. Officers fired back, killing three of the assailants — all Turks — as bystanders fled for cover.
Turkish authorities have been increasingly targeting suspected Islamic militants since al-Qaida-linked suicide bombers killed 58 people in 2003 by targeting two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul.
Turkey also has been cracking down on both ultranationalists who have attacked Christians and on Kurdish rebels, two groups it deems a threat to the country's security.
"There is nothing more sensational than attacking the U.S. consulate for an Islamic militant," said Emin Demirel, a Turkish terrorism expert and author of "Al-Qaida Elements in Turkey." "However, this attack certainly lacks the sophisticated hallmarks of al-Qaida."
The U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Turkey's foreign ministry said security around all American diplomatic missions in Turkey had been increased.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25618927/
Report: Iran test-fires more missiles
Rice warns Tehran that U.S. will not renege on pledge to protect Israel
MSNBC News Services
updated 6:21 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the United States or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The weapons have “special capabilities” and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.
A brief video clip showed two missiles being fired simultaneously in the darkness.
‘We will defend American interests’
The launches come hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran that Washington will not back down in the face of threats against Israel.
“We are sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies,” Rice said Thursday in Georgia at the close of a three-day Eastern European trip.
“We take very, very strongly our obligation to help our allies defend themselves and no one should be confused about that,” Rice said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Among the missiles Iran said it tested Wednesday was a new version of the Shahab-3, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead.
That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan all within striking distance.
Wednesday’s missile tests were conducted at the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.
Iranian state TV and radio said that Thursday's missile tests took place during the night into Thursday.
“Deep in the Persian Gulf waters, the launch of different types of ground-to-sea, surface-to-surface, sea-to-air and the powerful launch of the Hout missile successfully took place,” state radio said without giving further details of the missiles.
Iranian satellite channel Press TV said Hout was a torpedo.
Oil prices jumped on news of Wednesday’s tests, rising $1.44 to $137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617591/
MSNBC News Services
updated 6:21 a.m. ET, Thurs., July. 10, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the United States or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The weapons have “special capabilities” and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.
A brief video clip showed two missiles being fired simultaneously in the darkness.
‘We will defend American interests’
The launches come hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran that Washington will not back down in the face of threats against Israel.
“We are sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies,” Rice said Thursday in Georgia at the close of a three-day Eastern European trip.
“We take very, very strongly our obligation to help our allies defend themselves and no one should be confused about that,” Rice said after meeting Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Among the missiles Iran said it tested Wednesday was a new version of the Shahab-3, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead.
That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan all within striking distance.
Wednesday’s missile tests were conducted at the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 40 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran has threatened to shut down traffic in the strait if attacked.
Iranian state TV and radio said that Thursday's missile tests took place during the night into Thursday.
“Deep in the Persian Gulf waters, the launch of different types of ground-to-sea, surface-to-surface, sea-to-air and the powerful launch of the Hout missile successfully took place,” state radio said without giving further details of the missiles.
Iranian satellite channel Press TV said Hout was a torpedo.
Oil prices jumped on news of Wednesday’s tests, rising $1.44 to $137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617591/
09 July 2008
Turkey consulate attack 'terrorism,' says U.S. envoy
Story Highlights
NEW: U.S. ambassador says shootout was 'obvious act of terrorism'
Turkey: Armed men have opened fire from a vehicle outside the U.S. consulate
CNN-Turk reports that at least six people were killed in the gun battle
People in the heavily fortified building were not hurt
ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) -- The shootout outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul which left six people dead was an "obvious act of terrorism," the U.S. ambassador to Turkey says.
Speaking to reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara, Ross Wilson said he had asked Turkey to implement additional security measures after gunmen Wednesday pulled up in a car and opened fire at a police security checkpoint at the consulate entrance.
"I'm not in a position to speculate on who this is or why they have carried out this action," Wilson said. "But any time there is an attack on diplomatic establishment... (it) is more or less by definition is an act of terrorism."
"Our countries will stand together to confront this as we have confronted some other problems in the past," he added. Watch emergency staff helping victim »
Three police officers and three assailants were killed in the shootout near the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, the city's governor said.
Two other police officers were wounded in the attack. A U.S. consulate official said no American citizens or employees were hurt. Are you there? Send photos, videos
Gunmen pulled up in a white car and opened fire at a police security checkpoint at the outer entrance of the consulate, Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler told reporters at the scene. Watch shootout victims being taken to hospital »
Police fired back, resulting in a three- to five-minute gun battle, Ivan Watson, a journalist with National Public Radio reporting from the scene, told CNN.
Guler said the dead included three police officers and three assailants. Authorities did not immediately know whether the attackers were affiliated with any organization, he said. Watch footage from the scene »
People waiting to obtain visas inside the heavily fortified building were not hurt. The outer entrance is more than 30m (100ft) from the main building which sits atop a hilltop.
At least three bodies remained on the ground as ambulances pulled up and police cordoned off the area with yellow tape and waved off onlookers.
The most recent attack on a foreign mission in Turkey was in November 2003 when a string of bombings in Istanbul targeted the British consulate, along with two synagogues and a British-owned bank. The blasts killed more than 70 people, including the British consul general, and wounded hundreds.
Turkey is a secular country that is predominantly Muslim. There has been a lot of tension in the country between secularist and traditional Muslims, and the state has been battling Kurdish separatists for many years.
CNN's Ben Blake and Nicky Robertson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/09/turkey.usconsulate/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
NEW: U.S. ambassador says shootout was 'obvious act of terrorism'
Turkey: Armed men have opened fire from a vehicle outside the U.S. consulate
CNN-Turk reports that at least six people were killed in the gun battle
People in the heavily fortified building were not hurt
ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) -- The shootout outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul which left six people dead was an "obvious act of terrorism," the U.S. ambassador to Turkey says.
Speaking to reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara, Ross Wilson said he had asked Turkey to implement additional security measures after gunmen Wednesday pulled up in a car and opened fire at a police security checkpoint at the consulate entrance.
"I'm not in a position to speculate on who this is or why they have carried out this action," Wilson said. "But any time there is an attack on diplomatic establishment... (it) is more or less by definition is an act of terrorism."
"Our countries will stand together to confront this as we have confronted some other problems in the past," he added. Watch emergency staff helping victim »
Three police officers and three assailants were killed in the shootout near the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, the city's governor said.
Two other police officers were wounded in the attack. A U.S. consulate official said no American citizens or employees were hurt. Are you there? Send photos, videos
Gunmen pulled up in a white car and opened fire at a police security checkpoint at the outer entrance of the consulate, Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler told reporters at the scene. Watch shootout victims being taken to hospital »
Police fired back, resulting in a three- to five-minute gun battle, Ivan Watson, a journalist with National Public Radio reporting from the scene, told CNN.
Guler said the dead included three police officers and three assailants. Authorities did not immediately know whether the attackers were affiliated with any organization, he said. Watch footage from the scene »
People waiting to obtain visas inside the heavily fortified building were not hurt. The outer entrance is more than 30m (100ft) from the main building which sits atop a hilltop.
At least three bodies remained on the ground as ambulances pulled up and police cordoned off the area with yellow tape and waved off onlookers.
The most recent attack on a foreign mission in Turkey was in November 2003 when a string of bombings in Istanbul targeted the British consulate, along with two synagogues and a British-owned bank. The blasts killed more than 70 people, including the British consul general, and wounded hundreds.
Turkey is a secular country that is predominantly Muslim. There has been a lot of tension in the country between secularist and traditional Muslims, and the state has been battling Kurdish separatists for many years.
CNN's Ben Blake and Nicky Robertson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/09/turkey.usconsulate/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
08 July 2008
Iran: Attack us and U.S. interests will 'burn'
BREAKING NEWS
updated 55 minutes ago
U.S., Czech Republic sign missile agreement
Countries agree defense shield will be based in the former Soviet territory
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The United States and the Czech Republic have signed an initial agreement to begin basing part of a U.S. missile shield in the former Soviet territory.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday in Prague that the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, though Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.
Rice said the next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, but she made the case that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.
Aide to top cleric warns that Tel Aviv, American ships will also be targeted
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25580681/
Reuters
updated 5:37 a.m. ET, Tues., July. 8, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards.
"The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned," Shirazi was quoted as saying.
Shirazi, a mid-level cleric, is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards.
'Jihad and martyrdom'
"The Iranian nation will never accept bullying. The Iranian nation is a nation of believers which believes in jihad and martyrdom. No army in the world can confront it," he added.
In Jerusalem, Arye Mekel, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, declined to comment on Shirazi's remarks.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb.
The United States says it wants to resolve the dispute by diplomacy but has not ruled out military action.
Iran says its nuclear activities are only to produce energy for civil use, not to make bombs.
Meanwhile, Iran started war games on Monday and its president rejected a demand by major powers that it stop enriching uranium as "illegitimate".
Missile units of the elite Revolutionary Guards' naval and air forces began war games, Iranian news agencies said, hours after the U.S. Navy said it had begun exercises in the Gulf.
Speculation about an attack on the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter over its nuclear program rose after a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike. Fears of military confrontation helped send world oil prices to record highs.
Covert weapons program?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium, work which Tehran says is aimed at generating power but which the West fears may be part of a covert nuclear weapons program.
It was Ahmadinejad's first comment on the dispute since Iran delivered its response on Friday to a package of incentives offered by world powers seeking to curb its nuclear activities. Details of the response were not made public.
"They offer to hold talks but at the same time they threaten us and say we should accept their illegitimate demand to halt (enrichment work)," Ahmadinejad told reporters in Malaysia, where he was attending a summit of eight developing countries.
"They want us to abandon our right (to nuclear technology)," the president said.
'New environment'
By contrast, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke during the weekend of a "new environment" for diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program.
The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany demand that Iran suspend its enrichment work before formal talks can start on their revised package of incentives, which includes help to develop a civilian nuclear program.
Tehran has repeatedly refused to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants, or, if refined much more, can provide material for nuclear weapons.
The offer of trade and other incentives proposed by the world powers was presented last month by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Iran has put forward its own bundle of proposals aimed at resolving the dispute and has said it was encouraged by common points between the two separate packages.
So far the Iranian government's formal response to the latest offer has not been made public and there have been mixed signals in statements by its senior officials.
updated 55 minutes ago
U.S., Czech Republic sign missile agreement
Countries agree defense shield will be based in the former Soviet territory
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The United States and the Czech Republic have signed an initial agreement to begin basing part of a U.S. missile shield in the former Soviet territory.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday in Prague that the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, though Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.
Rice said the next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, but she made the case that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.
Aide to top cleric warns that Tel Aviv, American ships will also be targeted
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25580681/
Reuters
updated 5:37 a.m. ET, Tues., July. 8, 2008
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran will hit Tel Aviv, U.S. shipping in the Gulf and American interests around the world if it is attacked over its disputed nuclear activities, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"The first bullet fired by America at Iran will be followed by Iran burning down its vital interests around the globe," the students news agency ISNA quoted Ali Shirazi as saying in a speech to Revolutionary Guards.
"The Zionist regime is pressuring White House officials to attack Iran. If they commit such a stupidity, Tel Aviv and U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf will be Iran's first targets and they will be burned," Shirazi was quoted as saying.
Shirazi, a mid-level cleric, is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the Revolutionary Guards.
'Jihad and martyrdom'
"The Iranian nation will never accept bullying. The Iranian nation is a nation of believers which believes in jihad and martyrdom. No army in the world can confront it," he added.
In Jerusalem, Arye Mekel, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, declined to comment on Shirazi's remarks.
Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb.
The United States says it wants to resolve the dispute by diplomacy but has not ruled out military action.
Iran says its nuclear activities are only to produce energy for civil use, not to make bombs.
Meanwhile, Iran started war games on Monday and its president rejected a demand by major powers that it stop enriching uranium as "illegitimate".
Missile units of the elite Revolutionary Guards' naval and air forces began war games, Iranian news agencies said, hours after the U.S. Navy said it had begun exercises in the Gulf.
Speculation about an attack on the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter over its nuclear program rose after a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike. Fears of military confrontation helped send world oil prices to record highs.
Covert weapons program?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday his country would not stop enriching uranium, work which Tehran says is aimed at generating power but which the West fears may be part of a covert nuclear weapons program.
It was Ahmadinejad's first comment on the dispute since Iran delivered its response on Friday to a package of incentives offered by world powers seeking to curb its nuclear activities. Details of the response were not made public.
"They offer to hold talks but at the same time they threaten us and say we should accept their illegitimate demand to halt (enrichment work)," Ahmadinejad told reporters in Malaysia, where he was attending a summit of eight developing countries.
"They want us to abandon our right (to nuclear technology)," the president said.
'New environment'
By contrast, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke during the weekend of a "new environment" for diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program.
The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany demand that Iran suspend its enrichment work before formal talks can start on their revised package of incentives, which includes help to develop a civilian nuclear program.
Tehran has repeatedly refused to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants, or, if refined much more, can provide material for nuclear weapons.
The offer of trade and other incentives proposed by the world powers was presented last month by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Iran has put forward its own bundle of proposals aimed at resolving the dispute and has said it was encouraged by common points between the two separate packages.
So far the Iranian government's formal response to the latest offer has not been made public and there have been mixed signals in statements by its senior officials.
05 July 2008
How Soap is Made in Aleppo
This is a really interesting website!! Part of it is in English and the rest is in German. Learn how soap is made in Syria :o)
http://www.historische-aleppo-seife.de/engl_story.html
http://www.historische-aleppo-seife.de/engl_story.html
02 July 2008
Palestinian Bulldozer Driver Goes on Jerusalem Rampage
http://voanews.com/english/2008-07-02-voa7.cfm
By Jim Teeple
Jerusalem
02 July 2008
At least three people were killed and about forty others injured - many severely when a Palestinian bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem early Wednesday afternoon. VOA's Jim Teeple reports the bulldozer driver was killed by police who are describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
Witnesses reported a scene of chaos and panic as the bulldozer plowed through cars, knocked over a bus and damaged buildings on a busy downtown street near the city's main bus station.
The driver of the bulldozer was shot by police. They say no motive is known in what police are describing as a terrorist attack.
"The employee of a contractor company working on the street here in Jerusalem directed his bulldozer in the direction of civilian vehicles - a bus and cars that are on the street all the time yelling Allah al-akbar, apparent to us based on things we have experienced in the past,' said Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government. "This is undeniably a terrorist attack."
Police say the attacker was a Palestinian who lived in East Jerusalem who held Jerusalem identity papers. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have access to Jewish West Jerusalem and carry out nearly all construction work in the city.
In March, another Palestinian from East Jerusalem attacked a Jewish seminary not far from where today's incident took place, killing eight students.
By Jim Teeple
Jerusalem
02 July 2008
At least three people were killed and about forty others injured - many severely when a Palestinian bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem early Wednesday afternoon. VOA's Jim Teeple reports the bulldozer driver was killed by police who are describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
Witnesses reported a scene of chaos and panic as the bulldozer plowed through cars, knocked over a bus and damaged buildings on a busy downtown street near the city's main bus station.
The driver of the bulldozer was shot by police. They say no motive is known in what police are describing as a terrorist attack.
"The employee of a contractor company working on the street here in Jerusalem directed his bulldozer in the direction of civilian vehicles - a bus and cars that are on the street all the time yelling Allah al-akbar, apparent to us based on things we have experienced in the past,' said Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government. "This is undeniably a terrorist attack."
Police say the attacker was a Palestinian who lived in East Jerusalem who held Jerusalem identity papers. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have access to Jewish West Jerusalem and carry out nearly all construction work in the city.
In March, another Palestinian from East Jerusalem attacked a Jewish seminary not far from where today's incident took place, killing eight students.
30 June 2008
Israel OKs Hezbollah prisoner swap
Deal could take place ‘within a few days,’ source says
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
The Associated Press
updated 3:38 p.m. ET, Sun., June. 29, 2008
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal gives a rare political victory for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closes a final chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against Hezbollah two years ago and hinted in the direction of a wider accommodation.
But critics warn that the heavy price could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers, and Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 in favor of the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war. Before the six-hour debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead.
Regardless, he pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.
"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Israel must release prisoner
The most difficult part of the trade for Israel is the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.
Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
On Sunday the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.
"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."
Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."
Israel's military chief of staff, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, the commander of the Shin Bet security service and other defense officials briefed ministers before the vote. The Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs opposed the deal, while the military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, supported it.
Critics of the deal
Critics argued that swapping bodies for Kantar was a dangerous precedent that would offer militant groups an even greater incentive to capture soldiers and less of a reason to keep them alive.
Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive. "There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."
Israel is simultaneously negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip. Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.
There are indications that the prisoner swap could signal a decrease of tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, though the warlike rhetoric on both sides is likely to continue.
On June 1, without prior notice, Israel freed a convicted Lebanese spy and Hezbollah returned parts of bodies of three soldiers. Also, Israel has been indicating at new flexibility about solving the other outstanding issue with Hezbollah — a rocket border hill known as Chebaa Farms.
Though the U.N. drew a border that leaves the small parcel outside Lebanon, Hezbollah insists it is part of the country. Israel indicates it would turn the land over to the U.N. as a deposit for a final decision, which could defuse tensions if both sides want that.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.
"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.
In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar," "the chain must break," and "freedom comes with blood not tears."
No signs that soldiers are alive
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were dead — killed during the raid or shortly after.
"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."
Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with the prime minister's declaration.
"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."
Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.
Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.
"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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© 2008 MSNBC.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
The Associated Press
updated 3:38 p.m. ET, Sun., June. 29, 2008
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal gives a rare political victory for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closes a final chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against Hezbollah two years ago and hinted in the direction of a wider accommodation.
But critics warn that the heavy price could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers, and Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 in favor of the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war. Before the six-hour debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead.
Regardless, he pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.
"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Israel must release prisoner
The most difficult part of the trade for Israel is the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.
Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
On Sunday the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.
"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."
Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."
Israel's military chief of staff, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, the commander of the Shin Bet security service and other defense officials briefed ministers before the vote. The Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs opposed the deal, while the military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, supported it.
Critics of the deal
Critics argued that swapping bodies for Kantar was a dangerous precedent that would offer militant groups an even greater incentive to capture soldiers and less of a reason to keep them alive.
Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive. "There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."
Israel is simultaneously negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip. Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.
There are indications that the prisoner swap could signal a decrease of tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, though the warlike rhetoric on both sides is likely to continue.
On June 1, without prior notice, Israel freed a convicted Lebanese spy and Hezbollah returned parts of bodies of three soldiers. Also, Israel has been indicating at new flexibility about solving the other outstanding issue with Hezbollah — a rocket border hill known as Chebaa Farms.
Though the U.N. drew a border that leaves the small parcel outside Lebanon, Hezbollah insists it is part of the country. Israel indicates it would turn the land over to the U.N. as a deposit for a final decision, which could defuse tensions if both sides want that.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.
"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.
In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar," "the chain must break," and "freedom comes with blood not tears."
No signs that soldiers are alive
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were dead — killed during the raid or shortly after.
"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."
Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with the prime minister's declaration.
"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."
Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.
Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.
"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
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© 2008 MSNBC.com
25 June 2008
Olmert Averts Split in Coalition
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; 9:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062500068.html?hpid=topnews
JERUSALEM, June 25 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought himself more time in office Wednesday, fending off a rebellion by coalition partners who had threatened to bring down his government if he did not resign amid a burgeoning corruption probe.
But in exchange for keeping his coalition together temporarily, Olmert was forced to allow internal elections in his centrist Kadima party by late September. Rivals within Kadima are already jockeying for his job, and it is unclear if Olmert will even run.
Olmert has been fighting for his political life for nearly two months, ever since allegations surfaced that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars -- much of it in cash -- from a New York business executive. Olmert has denied all wrongdoing, but testimony last month by the businessman, Morris Talansky, was considered especially damaging. Since then, Olmert has faced calls from erstwhile allies for him to step aside.
The most serious challenge to his authority has come from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who leads Kadima's largest coalition partner, the center-left Labor party. Barak had vowed to support a bill to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The vote was scheduled for Wednesday, and with Labor's support, the bill would have almost certainly passed. A last-minute deal in which Kadima agreed to a party primary within three months averted the showdown.
Olmert's term is slated to run until 2010, but if he sits out or loses the primary it would effectively end his 2 1/2 year premiership. It would also likely trigger new elections. Neither Kadima nor Labor is believed to be eager for that, however, since polls show the right-wing Likud party beating them both.
Olmert is hoping the extra time he won Wednesday will give him the chance to exonerate himself in court before any decisions are made about his political future. Talansky's cross-examination, scheduled for mid-July, is considered especially critical to that effort. Olmert is also hoping to push forward with a flurry of diplomatic initiatives, including negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria.
"We have stability for the coming months," said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. "There are very serious issues on the table, and we now have the time to move forward."
Talks with the radical Islamist group Hamas, mediated by Egypt, have already borne fruit in the form of a six-month cease-fire in Gaza. That truce was rattled on Tuesday, however, when the armed group Islamic Jihad fired three rockets from Gaza in response to an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus that left two of the group's members dead.
In retaliation for the rocket fire, Israel on Wednesday closed all commercial crossings leading to the coastal strip and would not say when they would reopen. Under the terms of the truce, Israel is supposed to gradually loosen the strict economic embargo that it imposed a year ago, when Hamas toppled a unity government with the rival Fatah party and took control of the territory.
Hamas said Israel's decision to close the crossings represented a violation of the truce. But Hamas also said it planned to continue to honor the week-old cease-fire, and the lack of an Israeli military response suggested that it does as well.
The truce is controversial in both Israel and Gaza, with hard-line critics in each place arguing that now is not the time for quiet.
Retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces, said that instead of holding its fire, Israel should be conducting targeted killings and medium-scale military operations so that, ultimately, Hamas "will cry for [a truce] without conditions."
Yaalon doubts the current ceasefire will last.
"It's not a stabilized situation, and it's not going to last for six months," he said.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; 9:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062500068.html?hpid=topnews
JERUSALEM, June 25 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought himself more time in office Wednesday, fending off a rebellion by coalition partners who had threatened to bring down his government if he did not resign amid a burgeoning corruption probe.
But in exchange for keeping his coalition together temporarily, Olmert was forced to allow internal elections in his centrist Kadima party by late September. Rivals within Kadima are already jockeying for his job, and it is unclear if Olmert will even run.
Olmert has been fighting for his political life for nearly two months, ever since allegations surfaced that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars -- much of it in cash -- from a New York business executive. Olmert has denied all wrongdoing, but testimony last month by the businessman, Morris Talansky, was considered especially damaging. Since then, Olmert has faced calls from erstwhile allies for him to step aside.
The most serious challenge to his authority has come from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who leads Kadima's largest coalition partner, the center-left Labor party. Barak had vowed to support a bill to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The vote was scheduled for Wednesday, and with Labor's support, the bill would have almost certainly passed. A last-minute deal in which Kadima agreed to a party primary within three months averted the showdown.
Olmert's term is slated to run until 2010, but if he sits out or loses the primary it would effectively end his 2 1/2 year premiership. It would also likely trigger new elections. Neither Kadima nor Labor is believed to be eager for that, however, since polls show the right-wing Likud party beating them both.
Olmert is hoping the extra time he won Wednesday will give him the chance to exonerate himself in court before any decisions are made about his political future. Talansky's cross-examination, scheduled for mid-July, is considered especially critical to that effort. Olmert is also hoping to push forward with a flurry of diplomatic initiatives, including negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria.
"We have stability for the coming months," said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. "There are very serious issues on the table, and we now have the time to move forward."
Talks with the radical Islamist group Hamas, mediated by Egypt, have already borne fruit in the form of a six-month cease-fire in Gaza. That truce was rattled on Tuesday, however, when the armed group Islamic Jihad fired three rockets from Gaza in response to an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus that left two of the group's members dead.
In retaliation for the rocket fire, Israel on Wednesday closed all commercial crossings leading to the coastal strip and would not say when they would reopen. Under the terms of the truce, Israel is supposed to gradually loosen the strict economic embargo that it imposed a year ago, when Hamas toppled a unity government with the rival Fatah party and took control of the territory.
Hamas said Israel's decision to close the crossings represented a violation of the truce. But Hamas also said it planned to continue to honor the week-old cease-fire, and the lack of an Israeli military response suggested that it does as well.
The truce is controversial in both Israel and Gaza, with hard-line critics in each place arguing that now is not the time for quiet.
Retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces, said that instead of holding its fire, Israel should be conducting targeted killings and medium-scale military operations so that, ultimately, Hamas "will cry for [a truce] without conditions."
Yaalon doubts the current ceasefire will last.
"It's not a stabilized situation, and it's not going to last for six months," he said.
24 June 2008
A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/world/middleeast/20blogger.html?ref=technology
May 20, 2008
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.
And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”
The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.
Ms. Novak, working from a laptop in her Monmouth County living room “while the kids are at school,” has started an Internet petition to free Mr. Khaiwani. She has enlisted Yemeni politicians, journalists, human rights activists and others around the globe. Her blog goes well beyond the Khaiwani case and has become a crucial outlet for opposition journalists and political figures, who feed her tips on Yemeni political intrigue by e-mail or text message.
She says her campaign is a matter of basic principle. “This is a country that lets Al Qaeda people go free, and they’re putting a journalist on trial for doing his job?” she said. “It’s just completely crazy.”
But Ms. Novak does admit to a personal interest in the case. She and Mr. Khaiwani have become close friends, though they have never met, and neither speaks the other’s language. One of the charges against him is receiving a cellphone text message from her, as part of an alleged plot (which he denies) to aid the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
“The penalty for this crime is usually death,” Mr. Khaiwani said during an interview at his home in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in January. A lanky 42-year-old with large, piercing eyes and a dark sense of humor, he has already been jailed four times by the authorities in connection with his journalism. Last year he was kidnapped and beaten by men he says were plainclothes police officers.
Mr. Khaiwani added, with a broad smile: “If you add to this my relationship with Jane Novak, it means the death penalty for sure.”
Ms. Novak does not fit the profile of a dilettante in exotic causes. A former sales manager for a textile company, she speaks with a distinct Brooklyn accent, having grown up in Flatbush. When a Yemeni government minister visited the United States last year and invited the notorious “Jane,” as she is known throughout Yemen, to go to Washington for a meeting, she turned him down. “It was too much, the money, the kids, all for a one-day trip,” she said.
Nor does she have any background in Middle East studies. One of her opponents in Yemen accused her of being a Zionist member of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “I had to Google it,” Ms. Novak said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know what it was.”
It was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Ms. Novak, who used to work not far from the World Trade Center, first took an interest in the Arab world. “I thought it would be a good idea to write in the English-language Arabic press on subjects we could all agree on, freedom of the press, equality, stuff like that,” she said.
In 2004, she started her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, adorned with a Stars and Stripes logo, and soon wrote an article defending Mr. Khaiwani, who was in prison. He wrote her a letter of thanks, addressing it to “Jane Novak, the American journalist and political analyst.”
“Leaders in our region transform into gods,” he wrote. “They even come to believe in their fake holiness, which we aim to shatter, as they know they are humans just like us. Democracy and freedom are not granted by a leader of a regime. It is a worldwide human achievement of all the free people on earth.”
Moved by the letter, Ms. Novak started her first petition campaign on Mr. Khaiwani’s behalf. Through translators, the two began corresponding.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” Ms. Novak said. “He really believes in democracy, and he’s paying the price for it.”
It was months after their first letters before Ms. Novak could bring herself to tell Mr. Khaiwani that she was not, in fact, a journalist and political analyst, but a homemaker blogging on a laptop at home. “I didn’t want to tell you before, because I didn’t want you to lose hope,” she wrote.
Mr. Khaiwani wrote back to say that the news made him even prouder of her and her work.
Since then, she has written numerous articles defending him in the Yemeni press.
By taking up Mr. Khaiwani’s cause, Ms. Novak was wading into one of the most obscure and complex conflicts in the Arab world. The Houthi rebellion began in 2004 when rebels began fighting with government soldiers in Saada Province, northwest of the capital near the border with Saudi Arabia. The government accuses Iran of aiding the rebels, a charge Iran denies. Thousands of people have died in the fighting.
For Ms. Novak, the basic issue was freedom of speech. The Yemeni government has banned journalists from traveling to Saada and has tried to suppress coverage of the conflict.
Mr. Khaiwani, almost alone among Yemeni journalists, managed to get vivid photographs and accounts of the bloodshed in Saada, which he published on his Web site, now defunct. His reports have helped spread a sense of outrage at the government’s raids, which appear to have extended the fighting by provoking Saada residents who did not initially side with the Houthi rebels.
“I have a very deep relationship with people in Saada,” Mr. Khaiwani said during the interview in January. “Many citizens in Saada wanted to show a real image of what is happening in the war there.”
The Yemeni government considers the Houthis terrorists and accuse Mr. Khaiwani of abetting their cause. He is being tried in Yemen’s State Security Court, which is used for terrorism cases.
Ms. Novak, whose blog includes a strong counterterrorism focus, says that is a bitter irony. Yemen has a long history as a refuge for jihadists, and the Yemeni government has released numerous men convicted of terrorism charges. One of them, Jamal al-Badawi, is wanted by the F.B.I. for his role in Al Qaeda’s bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. Mr. Badawi was apparently returned to prison last fall after American officials protested.
Ms. Nowak’s perpetual harping on these themes appears to infuriate the Yemeni authorities. In late 2005, Al Jazeera included her as a guest on a special about Yemen, along with a former United States ambassador, a leader of the Yemeni opposition, and a spokesman for the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. As soon as the spokesman came onto the line, he began a tirade, ignoring the moderator’s pleas to let others speak.
“She doesn’t speak Arabic, she’s never visited Yemen, and she’s not a real journalist!” the spokesman shouted. “She just has a Web site that she uses to attack Yemen!”
Some professional Arabists speak a little disdainfully of Ms. Novak’s blog and seem to consider her an amateur with a jingoistic American attitude and no real knowledge of the Arab world.
Ms. Novak readily admits that she is no expert, and that she cannot pronounce Arabic words properly. But she estimates that more than 2,000 Yemenis have contacted her since she began writing articles in 2004. She receives dozens of letters every month. Some are just a few words — “Thank you Novak don’t stop” — and some are long narratives of grief and anger.
Reaching out to people like Mr. Khaiwani, who are struggling thousands of miles away with Yemen’s poverty, injustice and corruption, has given her a new vocation, she said.
“Some say there’s no progress in the Middle East,” she said. “But if they could just see these people — they’re really modern heroes.”
Visit Ms. Novak's Blog: Armies of Liberation
May 20, 2008
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.
And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”
The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.
Ms. Novak, working from a laptop in her Monmouth County living room “while the kids are at school,” has started an Internet petition to free Mr. Khaiwani. She has enlisted Yemeni politicians, journalists, human rights activists and others around the globe. Her blog goes well beyond the Khaiwani case and has become a crucial outlet for opposition journalists and political figures, who feed her tips on Yemeni political intrigue by e-mail or text message.
She says her campaign is a matter of basic principle. “This is a country that lets Al Qaeda people go free, and they’re putting a journalist on trial for doing his job?” she said. “It’s just completely crazy.”
But Ms. Novak does admit to a personal interest in the case. She and Mr. Khaiwani have become close friends, though they have never met, and neither speaks the other’s language. One of the charges against him is receiving a cellphone text message from her, as part of an alleged plot (which he denies) to aid the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
“The penalty for this crime is usually death,” Mr. Khaiwani said during an interview at his home in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in January. A lanky 42-year-old with large, piercing eyes and a dark sense of humor, he has already been jailed four times by the authorities in connection with his journalism. Last year he was kidnapped and beaten by men he says were plainclothes police officers.
Mr. Khaiwani added, with a broad smile: “If you add to this my relationship with Jane Novak, it means the death penalty for sure.”
Ms. Novak does not fit the profile of a dilettante in exotic causes. A former sales manager for a textile company, she speaks with a distinct Brooklyn accent, having grown up in Flatbush. When a Yemeni government minister visited the United States last year and invited the notorious “Jane,” as she is known throughout Yemen, to go to Washington for a meeting, she turned him down. “It was too much, the money, the kids, all for a one-day trip,” she said.
Nor does she have any background in Middle East studies. One of her opponents in Yemen accused her of being a Zionist member of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “I had to Google it,” Ms. Novak said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know what it was.”
It was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Ms. Novak, who used to work not far from the World Trade Center, first took an interest in the Arab world. “I thought it would be a good idea to write in the English-language Arabic press on subjects we could all agree on, freedom of the press, equality, stuff like that,” she said.
In 2004, she started her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, adorned with a Stars and Stripes logo, and soon wrote an article defending Mr. Khaiwani, who was in prison. He wrote her a letter of thanks, addressing it to “Jane Novak, the American journalist and political analyst.”
“Leaders in our region transform into gods,” he wrote. “They even come to believe in their fake holiness, which we aim to shatter, as they know they are humans just like us. Democracy and freedom are not granted by a leader of a regime. It is a worldwide human achievement of all the free people on earth.”
Moved by the letter, Ms. Novak started her first petition campaign on Mr. Khaiwani’s behalf. Through translators, the two began corresponding.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” Ms. Novak said. “He really believes in democracy, and he’s paying the price for it.”
It was months after their first letters before Ms. Novak could bring herself to tell Mr. Khaiwani that she was not, in fact, a journalist and political analyst, but a homemaker blogging on a laptop at home. “I didn’t want to tell you before, because I didn’t want you to lose hope,” she wrote.
Mr. Khaiwani wrote back to say that the news made him even prouder of her and her work.
Since then, she has written numerous articles defending him in the Yemeni press.
By taking up Mr. Khaiwani’s cause, Ms. Novak was wading into one of the most obscure and complex conflicts in the Arab world. The Houthi rebellion began in 2004 when rebels began fighting with government soldiers in Saada Province, northwest of the capital near the border with Saudi Arabia. The government accuses Iran of aiding the rebels, a charge Iran denies. Thousands of people have died in the fighting.
For Ms. Novak, the basic issue was freedom of speech. The Yemeni government has banned journalists from traveling to Saada and has tried to suppress coverage of the conflict.
Mr. Khaiwani, almost alone among Yemeni journalists, managed to get vivid photographs and accounts of the bloodshed in Saada, which he published on his Web site, now defunct. His reports have helped spread a sense of outrage at the government’s raids, which appear to have extended the fighting by provoking Saada residents who did not initially side with the Houthi rebels.
“I have a very deep relationship with people in Saada,” Mr. Khaiwani said during the interview in January. “Many citizens in Saada wanted to show a real image of what is happening in the war there.”
The Yemeni government considers the Houthis terrorists and accuse Mr. Khaiwani of abetting their cause. He is being tried in Yemen’s State Security Court, which is used for terrorism cases.
Ms. Novak, whose blog includes a strong counterterrorism focus, says that is a bitter irony. Yemen has a long history as a refuge for jihadists, and the Yemeni government has released numerous men convicted of terrorism charges. One of them, Jamal al-Badawi, is wanted by the F.B.I. for his role in Al Qaeda’s bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. Mr. Badawi was apparently returned to prison last fall after American officials protested.
Ms. Nowak’s perpetual harping on these themes appears to infuriate the Yemeni authorities. In late 2005, Al Jazeera included her as a guest on a special about Yemen, along with a former United States ambassador, a leader of the Yemeni opposition, and a spokesman for the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. As soon as the spokesman came onto the line, he began a tirade, ignoring the moderator’s pleas to let others speak.
“She doesn’t speak Arabic, she’s never visited Yemen, and she’s not a real journalist!” the spokesman shouted. “She just has a Web site that she uses to attack Yemen!”
Some professional Arabists speak a little disdainfully of Ms. Novak’s blog and seem to consider her an amateur with a jingoistic American attitude and no real knowledge of the Arab world.
Ms. Novak readily admits that she is no expert, and that she cannot pronounce Arabic words properly. But she estimates that more than 2,000 Yemenis have contacted her since she began writing articles in 2004. She receives dozens of letters every month. Some are just a few words — “Thank you Novak don’t stop” — and some are long narratives of grief and anger.
Reaching out to people like Mr. Khaiwani, who are struggling thousands of miles away with Yemen’s poverty, injustice and corruption, has given her a new vocation, she said.
“Some say there’s no progress in the Middle East,” she said. “But if they could just see these people — they’re really modern heroes.”
Visit Ms. Novak's Blog: Armies of Liberation
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama
This article really made me, well sad. I mean I guess like everyone else I believed that with Obama's "Hope" campaign and his Muslim name that there would be some sort of Muslim identification or at least Arab, if Muslim is too scary for him... But he has continually sided with Israel, and now he's trying to back step over his Jerusalem comment... It just really let me down :o(
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
June 24, 2008
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.
While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.
In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”
Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.
In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)
“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”
The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.
After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.
Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.
“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.)
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”
“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.
Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.
Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.
A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.
As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.
“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”
In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.
The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.
“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”
Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.
Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)
Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)
Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.
Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.
“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.
For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.
Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”
“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”
As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.
“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
June 24, 2008
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.
While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.
In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”
Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.
In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)
“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”
The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.
After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.
Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.
“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.)
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”
“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.
Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.
Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.
A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.
As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.
“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”
In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.
The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.
“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”
Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.
Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)
Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)
Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.
Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.
“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.
For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.
Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”
“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”
As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.
“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”
18 June 2008
Israel Open to Deal With Lebanon on Disputed Land
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19lebanon.html?hp
By ETHAN BRONNER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 19, 2008
JERUSALEM — Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ mutual border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.
Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Mr. Olmert had spoken of his desire to start such talks in an internal Israeli meeting and had decided to make that desire public.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel at the weekend and made a surprise stop in Lebanon on Monday. On her trips, she spoke to both the Israeli and Lebanese governments about Washington’s desire to find a solution to the land dispute as a catalyst for solving bigger issues in the region, including strengthening the Beirut government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a senior Israeli official said, and Mr. Olmert agreed to this.
The announcement comes amid intense regional diplomatic activity, including the planned start on Thursday of a six-month truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which the Israeli government confirmed on Wednesday, and the end of a second round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria for a comprehensive peace treaty.
Since Syria has such strong influence in Lebanon, Mr. Olmert argued that the talks with Syria should lead logically to discussions with Lebanon, Mr. Regev said.
Israel is also very close to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that it fought a war against two years ago.
The disputed piece of land that will be under negotiation is known as the Shabaa Farms.
When Israel withdrew from the occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Security Council stated that the withdrawal was complete despite its holding onto the disputed area of land because Shabaa, the United Nations said, was part of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel.
But Lebanon and Hezbollah say the land is Lebanese and Syria has not contradicted them. Moreover, Hezbollah has used the Israeli hold over Shabaa as a pretext for keeping its men under arms despite United Nations resolutions calling for the disarming of all Lebanese militias.
Hezbollah says that as long as part of the Lebanese homeland is occupied, it needs its weapons because the national army is weak.
But the West, especially the United States and France, wants to reduce the power of Hezbollah, a client of both Syria and Iran, and has been looking for ways to strengthen the pro-Western government of Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese government nor Hezbollah made any immediate official statement on Wednesday. However, Al Manar television, which is run by Hezbollah, said “the real target behind Rice’s position on Shabaa Farms is the resistance’s weapons.”
Next month, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to brief the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In that report, it is likely that he will announce a revised or clarified stand on the sovereignty of Shabaa.
For Israel, the main concern in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s increasing power. Israeli military officials say that Hezbollah has far more rockets and far deadlier ones today than it did two years ago when the two fought a month-long war after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers.
It is unclear whether Shabaa and Hezbollah have been discussed by Israeli and Syrian officials negotiating in their talks, which are being mediated by Turkey. But the Israelis and Syrians say their latest round of talks went well and there is now the possibility that Mr. Olmert and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will find themselves at a table together in France next month. Both men have accepted an invitation to a regional conference there on July 13 on immigration, security and the environment, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said they will be seated at the same table.
In the past, the Lebanese government has consistently ruled out negotiations with Israel.
Last week, it issued a statement saying there were “pending bilateral issues between Lebanon and Israel which are governed by international resolutions which Israel must respect, and which cannot be the object of political negotiations."
Specifically, it said, Israel must “respect Lebanon’s sovereignty over its territory and its water, release prisoners, and provide maps on mines and cluster bombs” left over from the 2006 war.
Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon
By ETHAN BRONNER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 19, 2008
JERUSALEM — Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ mutual border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.
Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Mr. Olmert had spoken of his desire to start such talks in an internal Israeli meeting and had decided to make that desire public.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel at the weekend and made a surprise stop in Lebanon on Monday. On her trips, she spoke to both the Israeli and Lebanese governments about Washington’s desire to find a solution to the land dispute as a catalyst for solving bigger issues in the region, including strengthening the Beirut government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a senior Israeli official said, and Mr. Olmert agreed to this.
The announcement comes amid intense regional diplomatic activity, including the planned start on Thursday of a six-month truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which the Israeli government confirmed on Wednesday, and the end of a second round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria for a comprehensive peace treaty.
Since Syria has such strong influence in Lebanon, Mr. Olmert argued that the talks with Syria should lead logically to discussions with Lebanon, Mr. Regev said.
Israel is also very close to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that it fought a war against two years ago.
The disputed piece of land that will be under negotiation is known as the Shabaa Farms.
When Israel withdrew from the occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Security Council stated that the withdrawal was complete despite its holding onto the disputed area of land because Shabaa, the United Nations said, was part of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel.
But Lebanon and Hezbollah say the land is Lebanese and Syria has not contradicted them. Moreover, Hezbollah has used the Israeli hold over Shabaa as a pretext for keeping its men under arms despite United Nations resolutions calling for the disarming of all Lebanese militias.
Hezbollah says that as long as part of the Lebanese homeland is occupied, it needs its weapons because the national army is weak.
But the West, especially the United States and France, wants to reduce the power of Hezbollah, a client of both Syria and Iran, and has been looking for ways to strengthen the pro-Western government of Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese government nor Hezbollah made any immediate official statement on Wednesday. However, Al Manar television, which is run by Hezbollah, said “the real target behind Rice’s position on Shabaa Farms is the resistance’s weapons.”
Next month, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to brief the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In that report, it is likely that he will announce a revised or clarified stand on the sovereignty of Shabaa.
For Israel, the main concern in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s increasing power. Israeli military officials say that Hezbollah has far more rockets and far deadlier ones today than it did two years ago when the two fought a month-long war after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers.
It is unclear whether Shabaa and Hezbollah have been discussed by Israeli and Syrian officials negotiating in their talks, which are being mediated by Turkey. But the Israelis and Syrians say their latest round of talks went well and there is now the possibility that Mr. Olmert and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will find themselves at a table together in France next month. Both men have accepted an invitation to a regional conference there on July 13 on immigration, security and the environment, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said they will be seated at the same table.
In the past, the Lebanese government has consistently ruled out negotiations with Israel.
Last week, it issued a statement saying there were “pending bilateral issues between Lebanon and Israel which are governed by international resolutions which Israel must respect, and which cannot be the object of political negotiations."
Specifically, it said, Israel must “respect Lebanon’s sovereignty over its territory and its water, release prisoners, and provide maps on mines and cluster bombs” left over from the 2006 war.
Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon
17 June 2008
Israel and Hamas Agree to a Cease-Fire, Egypt Says
Ilhamda'allah!!
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ISABEL KERSHNER and GRAHAM BOWLEY
JERUSALEM — Israel and the Islamist group Hamas have agreed on a mutual cease-fire to take effect Thursday following negotiations brokered by Egypt, Egyptian state media announced on Tuesday.
The official Egyptian state-owned news agency MENA and state-run television quoted an unidentified senior Egyptian official as saying that the truce would start at 6 a.m. Thursday. Israeli officials would not immediately confirm or deny that any agreement had been reached.
Talks, brokered by Egypt, have been proceeding intensively between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. Both sides have appeared keen on achieving a cease-fire, but until the truce comes into effect neither side is likely to stop exchanges, and on Tuesday three Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army said.
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza said that at least six militants were killed in the strikes and two others wounded.
However, a Palestinian official quoted by Reuters said that despite the deaths the negotiations for a truce were still on track.
“The two sides agreed, and the implementation of the truce will begin” on Thursday, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to announce a deal, said.
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on al-Quds Radio: “We are so close to hammering out a final truce agreement. The cease-fire will include a cessation of fire, ending the blockade and reopening the closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip.”
On Monday, Ismail Haniya, a senior leader of Hamas, which controls Gaza, said that the talks brokered by Egypt for a period of calm with Israel were nearing completion and that he hoped for a “happy ending.”
Witnesses to the airstrikes on Tuesday said five of the six killed in the strikes were members of the armed wing of the radical group Islamic Jihad. The sixth was also a militant but was not immediately identified.
The Israeli military said the first two strikes hit vehicles carrying what they called “terror operatives.” The third strike was against “other activists,” the army said.
The medical officials in Gaza said four militants were killed in the first strike against a car driving on a road east of Khan Yunis, while the second strike was also on a car.
Towns and villages in southern Israel have been under continual rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in recent months, while Gaza has been subject to frequent Israeli military strikes aimed at militants and incursions.
Israel’s security cabinet decided last week to pursue an arrangement for mutual quiet, though it also instructed the military to prepare for more serious action should the talks fail or the truce break down.
The developments Tuesday come after Israel appeared to be making diplomatic progress on other fronts Monday: a possible prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and a second round of indirect talks with Syrian representatives in Turkey.
Israeli officials refused to comment about possible developments with Hezbollah and said it would be premature to draw any conclusions about understandings with Syria.
Some Israelis, meanwhile, have suggested that the current flurry of diplomatic activity is intended to distract attention from the political and legal troubles of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who the police say is suspected of receiving illicit funds.
The possibility of an imminent exchange with Hezbollah, involving the two Israeli Army reservists whose capture by the militant group set off the 2006 war in Lebanon, seemed more likely on Monday when Zvi Regev, the father of one of the reservists, said he had been told about the men’s possible return. Mr. Regev, the father of Eldad Regev, told Israel Radio that Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official in charge of the soldiers’ case, informed the family two weeks ago “that a deal was about to be carried out.”
Mr. Dekel did not go into detail, he said, and did not know about the soldiers’ condition. Both were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush across the Israeli border that led to their capture in July 2006; the Lebanese group has offered no proof that they are alive.
Two Lebanese newspapers, Al-Akhbar and As-Safir, reported on Monday that a prisoner exchange could take place as early as the end of this week.
On June 1, Hezbollah representatives unexpectedly handed over to Israel the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war, and Israel sent back across the border a Lebanese civilian who had completed a six-year prison term in Israel for spying for Hezbollah.
Any broader swap is likely to include the release of Samir Kuntar, the most notorious of the few remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel. He was sentenced to multiple life terms for killing four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl, during a terrorist raid in Nahariya in 1979.
Later on Monday, Turkish and Israeli officials announced that Israeli and Syrian representatives had completed two days of indirect talks through Turkish mediators. The talks were “serious, positive and constructive” and were to be continued, an Israeli government official said.
Israel and Syria announced three weeks ago that they were engaged in negotiations through Turkish mediators for a comprehensive peace treaty, the first talks in eight years.
The Israeli news media have been rife with reports that the Israeli team will try to persuade the Syrians to have their leaders meet face to face in Paris in mid-July at the conference, organized by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, to establish a Mediterranean Union.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, confirmed that Mr. Olmert had been invited to the Paris conference and that he hoped to attend. But “anything beyond that is speculation,” Mr. Regev said.
Turkish Foreign Minster Ali Babacan said Tuesday that the latest talks had been “completed with success” and “more importantly, the calendar was set for the next two meetings which will be held in July,” news agencies reported from Luxembourg, where the Turkish official was attending a European Union meeting.
But, Mr. Babacan said, he did “not wish to elevate the expectations because this is a very complicated matter,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. He added that Israeli and Syrian officials at the talks “left extremely satisfied with the negotiations.”
On Monday, Israeli troops killed three militants in Gaza as they were trying to plant explosives by the border fence. Islamic Jihad said the militants were laying a bomb meant to blow up an Israeli jeep on patrol.
Later, a rocket fired from Gaza by militants fell in a cemetery in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon about 10 miles north, and the military said one Israeli civilian was lightly wounded.
At least one militant was killed in a subsequent Israeli strike against a rocket-launching squad, the military said.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ISABEL KERSHNER and GRAHAM BOWLEY
JERUSALEM — Israel and the Islamist group Hamas have agreed on a mutual cease-fire to take effect Thursday following negotiations brokered by Egypt, Egyptian state media announced on Tuesday.
The official Egyptian state-owned news agency MENA and state-run television quoted an unidentified senior Egyptian official as saying that the truce would start at 6 a.m. Thursday. Israeli officials would not immediately confirm or deny that any agreement had been reached.
Talks, brokered by Egypt, have been proceeding intensively between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. Both sides have appeared keen on achieving a cease-fire, but until the truce comes into effect neither side is likely to stop exchanges, and on Tuesday three Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army said.
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza said that at least six militants were killed in the strikes and two others wounded.
However, a Palestinian official quoted by Reuters said that despite the deaths the negotiations for a truce were still on track.
“The two sides agreed, and the implementation of the truce will begin” on Thursday, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to announce a deal, said.
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on al-Quds Radio: “We are so close to hammering out a final truce agreement. The cease-fire will include a cessation of fire, ending the blockade and reopening the closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip.”
On Monday, Ismail Haniya, a senior leader of Hamas, which controls Gaza, said that the talks brokered by Egypt for a period of calm with Israel were nearing completion and that he hoped for a “happy ending.”
Witnesses to the airstrikes on Tuesday said five of the six killed in the strikes were members of the armed wing of the radical group Islamic Jihad. The sixth was also a militant but was not immediately identified.
The Israeli military said the first two strikes hit vehicles carrying what they called “terror operatives.” The third strike was against “other activists,” the army said.
The medical officials in Gaza said four militants were killed in the first strike against a car driving on a road east of Khan Yunis, while the second strike was also on a car.
Towns and villages in southern Israel have been under continual rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in recent months, while Gaza has been subject to frequent Israeli military strikes aimed at militants and incursions.
Israel’s security cabinet decided last week to pursue an arrangement for mutual quiet, though it also instructed the military to prepare for more serious action should the talks fail or the truce break down.
The developments Tuesday come after Israel appeared to be making diplomatic progress on other fronts Monday: a possible prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and a second round of indirect talks with Syrian representatives in Turkey.
Israeli officials refused to comment about possible developments with Hezbollah and said it would be premature to draw any conclusions about understandings with Syria.
Some Israelis, meanwhile, have suggested that the current flurry of diplomatic activity is intended to distract attention from the political and legal troubles of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who the police say is suspected of receiving illicit funds.
The possibility of an imminent exchange with Hezbollah, involving the two Israeli Army reservists whose capture by the militant group set off the 2006 war in Lebanon, seemed more likely on Monday when Zvi Regev, the father of one of the reservists, said he had been told about the men’s possible return. Mr. Regev, the father of Eldad Regev, told Israel Radio that Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official in charge of the soldiers’ case, informed the family two weeks ago “that a deal was about to be carried out.”
Mr. Dekel did not go into detail, he said, and did not know about the soldiers’ condition. Both were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush across the Israeli border that led to their capture in July 2006; the Lebanese group has offered no proof that they are alive.
Two Lebanese newspapers, Al-Akhbar and As-Safir, reported on Monday that a prisoner exchange could take place as early as the end of this week.
On June 1, Hezbollah representatives unexpectedly handed over to Israel the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war, and Israel sent back across the border a Lebanese civilian who had completed a six-year prison term in Israel for spying for Hezbollah.
Any broader swap is likely to include the release of Samir Kuntar, the most notorious of the few remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel. He was sentenced to multiple life terms for killing four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl, during a terrorist raid in Nahariya in 1979.
Later on Monday, Turkish and Israeli officials announced that Israeli and Syrian representatives had completed two days of indirect talks through Turkish mediators. The talks were “serious, positive and constructive” and were to be continued, an Israeli government official said.
Israel and Syria announced three weeks ago that they were engaged in negotiations through Turkish mediators for a comprehensive peace treaty, the first talks in eight years.
The Israeli news media have been rife with reports that the Israeli team will try to persuade the Syrians to have their leaders meet face to face in Paris in mid-July at the conference, organized by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, to establish a Mediterranean Union.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, confirmed that Mr. Olmert had been invited to the Paris conference and that he hoped to attend. But “anything beyond that is speculation,” Mr. Regev said.
Turkish Foreign Minster Ali Babacan said Tuesday that the latest talks had been “completed with success” and “more importantly, the calendar was set for the next two meetings which will be held in July,” news agencies reported from Luxembourg, where the Turkish official was attending a European Union meeting.
But, Mr. Babacan said, he did “not wish to elevate the expectations because this is a very complicated matter,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. He added that Israeli and Syrian officials at the talks “left extremely satisfied with the negotiations.”
On Monday, Israeli troops killed three militants in Gaza as they were trying to plant explosives by the border fence. Islamic Jihad said the militants were laying a bomb meant to blow up an Israeli jeep on patrol.
Later, a rocket fired from Gaza by militants fell in a cemetery in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon about 10 miles north, and the military said one Israeli civilian was lightly wounded.
At least one militant was killed in a subsequent Israeli strike against a rocket-launching squad, the military said.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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