Karzai hopeful of Taliban joining mainstream - Qatar Tribune

Gulf / Middle East
Sunday, March 31, 2013
13
New reformist
Jordan govt
takes charge
Syrian Free Army fighters, in Dael near Jordanian border, in Daraa province on Friday. (AP)
Syrian rebels enter strategic
Aleppo neighbourhood
AP
BEIRUT
SYRIAN rebels pushed into a
strategic neighbourhood in
the northern city of Aleppo
after days of heavy clashes,
seizing control of at least part
of the hilltop district and
killing a pro-government
Sunni Muslim cleric captured
in the fighting, activists and
state media said on Saturday.
While there were conflicting
reports about the scale of
the rebel advance into the
Sheik Maqsoud neighbourhood,
the gains marked the
biggest shift in the front lines
in the embattled city of
Iraq to step up
searches of
Iran overflights
to Syria
AFP
BAGHDAD
IRAQ said on Saturday it will
step up searches of Iranian
flights via its airspace to Syria,
days after US Secretary of
State John Kerry publicly criticised
Baghdad for turning a
blind eye to them.
But while Prime Minister
Nuri al Maliki’s spokesman
spoke of newly tightened
restrictions on Iranian flights
to Syria, the head of Iraq’s
civil aviation authority
acknowledged that no planes
had been searched since
October.
“Because of a lot of information
which referred to transportation
of weapons, we have
increased the activity of
inspections,” Maliki’s
spokesman Ali Mussawi said.
“We will carry out more
random searches, to be
assured that there is no
weapons transfer.”
Asked if the move was in
response to Kerry’s comments
last Sunday during a surprise
visit to Baghdad, Mussawi
replied: “No one has provided
us with evidence — just information.”
Kerry had told reporters
while in Baghdad that he
“made very clear to the prime
minister that the overflights
from Iran are in fact helping
to sustain President (Bashar)
al-Assad and his regime.”
He told Maliki that
American politicians were
“watching what Iraq is
doing” and noted that anything
that helped Assad was
“problematic”
Aleppo in months. The city,
Syria’s largest and a former
commercial hub, has been a
key battleground in the country’s
civil war since rebels
launched an offensive on it in
July, seizing several districts
before the fighting largely settled
into a bloody stalemate.
The Aleppo Media Center
opposition group and Aleppobased
activist Mohammed
Saeed said rebels seized full
control of Sheikh Maqsoud
late Friday.
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human
Rights, however, said rebels
took only the eastern part of
the neighbourhood, and
AP
CAIRO
EGYPT’S state prosecutors
issued an arrest warrant on
Saturday for a popular television
satirist for allegedly insulting
Islam and the country’s
president, in the latest legal
action to take aim at a critic of
the nation’s Islamist leader.
The warrant against
Bassem Youssef is also the latest
in a series of legal actions
against the comedian, who
has come to be known as
Egypt’s Jon Stewart. Youssef’s
widely-watched weekly show,
“ElBernameg” or The
Program, has become a platform
for lampooning the government,
opposition, media
and clerics.
The fast-paced show has
attracted a wide viewership,
but has also earned itself its
reported heavy fighting there
on Saturday.
Sheikh Maqsoud, which is
predominantly inhabited by
minority Kurds, is located on
a hill on the northern edge of
the city, making it a strategic
location overlooking Aleppo.
The Observatory said rebels
captured a pro-government
Sunni Muslim cleric in the
fighting, killed him and then
paraded his body around the
neighbourhood.
State-run Al-Ikhbariya TV
identified the cleric as Hassan
Seifeddine. It said he was
beheaded and his head was
placed on the minaret of Al
Hassan Mosque where he
fair share of detractors.
Youssef has been a frequent
target of lawsuits, most of
them brought by Islamist
lawyers who have accused him
of “corrupting morals” or violating
“religious principles.”
The comedian has faced
several court cases in the past,
also accusing him of insulting
President Mohammed Morsi.
One of Youssef’s attorneys,
Gamal Eid, said this is the first
time an arrest warrant has
been issued for the comedian.
In a post on his official
Twitter account, Youssef said
he will hand himself in to the
prosecutor’s office Sunday. He
then added, with his typical sarcasm:
“Unless they kindly send
a police van today and save me
the transportation hassle.”
Eid said the warrant fits into
a widening campaign against
government critics, media
used to lead the prayers.
The SANA state news said
Seifeddine’s body was “mutilated”
after the “assassination.”
The reports of the mutilation
of the cleric’s body
could not be independently
confirmed.
The killing of Seifeddine
comes nearly 10 days after a
suicide bomber blew himself
up inside a mosque in the
heart of the Syrian capital of
Damascus, killing top Sunni
preacher Sheik Mohammad
Said Ramadan al-Buti as he
was giving a sermon. The
March 21 blast killed 48 others
and wounded dozens.
Al Buti, like Seifeddine, was
personalities, and activists.
“The prosecution has
become a tool to go after the
regime’s opposition and
intimidate it,” Eid said.
A call to a top aide to the
country’s chief prosecutor,
Hassan Yassin, for comment
went unanswered.
Opposition figures have
expressed concerns about
a strong supporter of the
Assad regime, which is dominated
by members of the president’s
minority Alawite sect,
an off-shoot of Shiite Islam.
The opposition is made up of
mostly Sunnis, who are the
majority among Syrians.
Extremists have been playing
a bigger role among the
rebel groups. They include the
Islamic Jabhat al Nusra, a
powerful offshoot of Al Qaeda
in Iraq, which has claimed
responsibility for most of the
deadliest suicide bombings
against regime and military
facilities and, as a result, has
gained popularity among
some rebels.
Egypt issues arrest warrant for TV satirist
Israeli Arabs deploy a giant Palestinian flag during a rally, in the
northern Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin, on Saturday. (AFP)
Egyptian TV host Bassem Youssef
freedom of expression and
assembly for what they call a
crackdown on dissent at a
time of deep polarization in
Egypt’s politics.
The political standoff pits
Morsi, a Brotherhood veteran,
and his Islamist allies in one
camp against a mostly secular
and liberal opposition backed
by moderate Muslims, minority
Christians and a large segment
of women in the other.
The opposition charges that
Morsi and the Brotherhood
have failed to tackle any of the
nation’s most pressing problems
and are trying to monopolize
power, and breaking
promises of inclusiveness.
Morsi blames the country’s
woes on nearly three decades
of corruption under his predecessor,
Hosni Mubarak, and
accuses the opposition of stoking
unrest for political gain.
REUTERS
AMMAN
JORDAN’S King Abdullah
swore in a reformist government
on Saturday tasked with
pushing through austerity
measures required under a
loan agreement with the
International Monetary Fund.
The cabinet line-up was confirmed
after nearly three weeks
of unprecedented consultations
led by Prime Minister
Abdullah Ensour, who himself
was reappointed on March 9
after the king canvassed members
of parliament.
The monarch’s rare consultations
follow constitutional
changes devolving powers
away from the palace - a
response to calls for reform
prompted by uprisings across
the Arab world and smaller
scale protests inside Jordan.
King Abdullah previously
hand-picked his prime ministers
without consulting parliament
and the 150 member
assembly did not play a role in
forming governments. The cabinet
announced on Saturday
was the smallest in four
decades, with 18 ministers.
The appointment of former
central bank governor Umayya
Toukan as finance minister signalled
a desire by lawmakers to
press ahead with unpopular
reforms sought by the IMF in
return for a $2 billion loan.
US-educated Toukan is a
strong advocate of fiscal steps
to reduce years of overspending
by successive governments.
The IMF pushed the kingdom
to liberalise fuel prices last
November, sparking several
days of civil unrest, mainly
across rural and tribal areas.
Ensour has faced down
street protests, arguing a shift
from broad subsidies towards
targeted cash transfers to the
poor was the only way to deal
with a financial crisis that
drove the deficit to over 12 percent
of gross domestic product
(GDP) and forced Jordan to
seek IMF help.
The Fund has urged the
country to continue to overhaul
its costly subsidy scheme
and raise electricity tariffs,
which officials say will be hiked
in June.
The IMF this month completed
its first review of last
year’s stand by arrangement
with Jordan and applauded
Ensour’s economic reforms,
saying it saw some signs of economic
recovery.
It said on March 11 its executive
board could consider
Jordan’s request for completion
of the first review as early
as April, making available the
second tranche of about $385
million.
Jordan’s financial crisis has
been deepened by a drop in
Gulf aid which traditionally
tops up the country’s coffers,
and the economy has been
strained by a flood of refugees
from the two-year-old civil war
in neighbouring Syria.
Ensour, untainted by corruption
allegations, has held
senior government posts in
successive administrations.
He was appointed in October
after the king dissolved parliament
halfway through its fouryear
term to prepare for the
country’s first parliamentary
elections since the Arab Spring
uprisings of 2011.
The constitutional changes
transferred some of the
monarch’s powers to parliament,
which critics said had
become sidelined, and restored
to the government some executive
powers which had shifted
to the palace and security
forces.
Arab Israelis, Palestinians mark ‘Land Day’
AFP
SAKHNIN
ARAB Israelis and
Palestinians rallied on
Saturday, some clashing with
Israeli forces, to commemorate
Land Day, marking the
1976 killing of six Arab Israelis
protesting plans to confiscate
Arab land.
Thousands marched from
the centre of the northern
Israeli town Sakhnin to the
central event at the memorial
site dedicated to the six, killed
by Israeli forces during mass
protests against plans to confiscate
Arab land in the Galilee
region.
They waved Palestinian
flags and shouted slogans honouring
the dead and
Palestinian prisoners held by
Israel.
Some 1,000 people rallied in
Israel’s southern Negev
region, expressing support for
Palestinian prisoners and a
Palestinian state.
They also protested the
state’s plan to resettle tens of
thousands of desert-dwelling
Bedouin in permanent townships
and take thousands of
hectares (acres) now inhabited
by the Bedouins.
Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza also held rallies,
some erupting into clashes
with Israeli forces.
In the contested West Bank
zone east of Jerusalem
referred to as E1 known locally
as Bab Al-Shams, a delegation
of 20 Palestinians, including
prime minister Salam Fayyad,
planted olive trees to mark
Land Day.
Fayyad’s office quoted him
as saying the act also reiterated
“that our people’s presence in
Bab Al-Shams and every corner
of our land will remain
deeply rooted, just like olive
trees are rooted in our land.”
Twice in recent weeks,
Palestinians have formed
encampments in the zone by
that name that Israel evacuated.
King Abdullah previously
hand-picked
his prime ministers
without consulting
parliament and the
150 member
assembly did not
play a role in forming
governments.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II (right) arrives for the swearing-in ceremony
for the new cabinet at the Royal Palace, in Amman, on
Saturday. (AFP)
Israeli police spokeswoman
Luba Samri said police dispersed
the event and confiscated
the saplings.
A few dozen Palestinians
held a rally outside
Jerusalem’s Old City and, on
the nearby Mount of Olives,
some 200 Palestinians planted
trees on land belonging to
a Palestinian family. Samri
said three people were arrested
for trespassing on stateowned
land.
At the West Bank
Qalandia checkpoint near
Jerusalem nearly 200
Palestinians clashed with
Israeli forces, who responded
with tear gas.