The New Nation - Internet Edition

Carter defends ME peace efforts, calls Gaza blockade a crime

Reuters, Cairo

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the blockade of Gaza a crime and an atrocity on Thursday and said U.S. attempts to undermine the Islamist movement Hamas had been counterproductive.

Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders from Gaza, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death," receiving fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. it's a crimet I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on," Carter said. Israel has been blockading Gaza mort of the time since Hamas took control of the impoverished coastal strip in June last year, allowing only basic supplies to enter.

Israel has not accepted Hamas proposals for a truce including an end to Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and to Israeli attacks on Hamas personnel in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli officials say a truce would enable Hamas to rearm.

Carter said Israel and its ally the United States were trying to make the quality of life in Gaza markedly worse than in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah group is in control.

"I think politically speaking this has worked even to strengthen the popularity of Hamas and to the detriment of the popularity of Fatah," he added. The United States has been trying to achieve the opposite outcome.

Carter, who helped make peace between Egypt and Israel while president in the 1970s, said the Hamas leaders he has met so far told him they would accept a peace agreement with Israel negotiated by Mahmoud Abbas-the Fatah leader and Palestinian president-if the Palestinians approved it in a referendum.

Israel and the United States say they refuse to deal with Hamas as long as the Islamist movement does not recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce violence. But Carter said Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, had to be involved in any arrangements that could lead to peace.

"One of the reasons I wanted to come and meet with the Syrians and Hamas was to set an example that might be emulated by otherst I know that there are some officials in the Israeli government that are quite willing to meet with Hamas and maybe that will happen in the near future," he added.

Carter's talks in Cairo were with former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar and former Interior Minister Saeed Seyam, who did not speak to reporters. Zahar and Seyam came to Cairo on Wednesday after the Israeli authorities refused to let Carter into Gaza from the Israeli side.

Nepal Maoists on track to dominate new govt

AFP, Kathmandu

Nepal's Maoists are set to dominate a new assembly tasked with rewriting the Himalayan nation's constitution but are likely to be short of an absolute majority, officials said Friday.

With the count from the April 10 elections still in progress and 601 seats in a constitutional assembly up for grabs, the former rebels have won nearly half of the 240 seats allocated by the first past the post system.

They are also on track to win around a third of the 335 seats allocated by proportional representation, election official Dilliram Bastola told AFP.

This would give them a total of around 230 or more seats in the assembly-making them the largest single bloc but still required to work with their mainstream rivals. The count is expected to be finished next week, after which a new interim government will also be formed on the basis of the results. "The Maoists will not be able to get a clear majority," political analyst Bhaskar Gautam told AFP.

"They will need around 60 percent of votes under the proportional representation system, which is impossible.

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle’

AP, Washington

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush 's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins , a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

It was published by the university's National Institute for Strategic Studies , a Defense Department research center.

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion .

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

Abbas urges Middle East conference in Moscow

AFP, Moscow

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas called on Thursday for a Middle East peace conference in Moscow "as soon as possible," saying this was needed to spur talks with Israel that were "We want the Moscow conference to be held as soon as possible and we hope it will succeed in pushing the peace process forward," Abbas said in a lecture to Moscow university students.

Confirming that discussions were still under way on a date, Abbas said a new impetus was needed to follow up a conference last November hosted by US President George W. Bush in Annapolis, Maryland.

"I regret to say that there are obstacles hindering the application of what was agreed upon in Annapolis," said Abbas, whose visit was intended to lay the ground for the new conference.

"The negotiations are not advancing at the required pace or yielding the progress necessary for us to reach the agreed objectives by the agreed dates."

Palestinian officials have mentioned June as a possible date for the conference but Russia's foreign ministry confirmed that the timing had not been finalised, Interfax news agency reported.

Abbas is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

At the Annapolis meeting, Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert formally restarted negotiations after a seven-year freeze in the peace process, aiming to conclude a comprehensive agreement by the end of 2008 -- just before Bush leaves office.

10 Afghans die of eating poisioned wheat, 100 sick

AFP, Kabul

Ten Afghans have died and more than 100 have fallen ill with liver disease after eating wheat contaminated with a poisonous plant, heightening food insecurity in the country, officials said Thursday.

The plant, known locally as Charmak, grows in wheat fields and was harvested at the same time in the remote Gulran district in western Herat province bordering Iran, said health officials.

A similar outbreak of the disease in Afghanistan in 1974 killed dozens of people. There have also been cases in India and some central Asian nations in recent years.

"Yes, I confirm more than 100 people have been affected and 10 people have died. We learnt about it in early February," public health ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim told AFP.

France to double food aid over crisis: Sarkozy

AFP, Paris

France will double its food aid this year, spending 60 million euros (100 million dollars) as part of its response to the world crisis over soaring food prices, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday.

"We must act urgently to strengthen food security at a time when 37 countries are going through a very serious food crisis," Sarkozy told a major meeting on climate change in Paris.

"We cannot remain indifferent to the unrest among those people who, in the developing countries, can no longer satisfy their hunger."

Parliament of Pacific island nation Nauru dissolved

AP, Suva

The president of the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru declared an emergency Friday, dissolved parliament and called new elections next week in a bid to boost his grip on the government amid a fierce row with the opposition.

The political crisis in the impoverished country of 12,000 people stems from the fact that President Marcus Stephen's government holds only half of the 18 seats of parliament while feuding with opposition lawmakers.

Rioters last month set fire to the main police station during a weekend protest by about 100 young people in Nauru, a 8.4-square-mile island halfway between Australia and Hawaii. There were unconfirmed rumors that opposition politicians fueled the riots.

Stephen said in a statement Friday that Nauru's political process was "seriously compromised" by the opposition's "self-serving agenda of economic destruction, which is now starting to hurt every Nauruan."

Iran progress on atom centrifuges slow: IAEA

Reuters, Berlin

Iran's progress in developing uranium enrichment is slow and recent additions to its nuclear fuel production complex have only been older-model centrifuges, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog chief said on Thursday.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had between 3,300 and 3,400 centrifuges of the 1970s vintage P-1 type operational in the Natanz enrichment hall, up from 3,000 at the end of last year.

Landmine blast kills two Pak soldiers

AFP, Quetta

A landmine blast ripped through a vehicle carrying Pakistani soldiers Friday, killing two of them and wounding another in restive southwestern Baluchistan province, an official said.

The paramilitaries, said to be involved in mine-clearing operations in the region, were driving to the town of Dera Bugti when their vehicle hit the mine planted on the road, a local security official said. The official said the mine was planted by tribal rebels.

Pakistan has effective nuclear command: PM

Reuters, Islamabad

Pakistan has an effective command and control structure for its nuclear weapons and they are fully safe and secure, the country's new prime minister said on Thursday.

Pakistan is the only nuclear-armed Muslim nation and is a staunch ally of the United States in its campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban.

An unprecedented wave of suicide bombings by the Islamist militants in recent months, particularly after the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a gun and bomb attack on Dec. 27, raised concerns among its western allies about the safety of its nuclear weapons.

Zawahri says US war on Iraq a failure

Reuters, Dubai

Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri said in an audio message to mark five years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that Washington's war had met with nothing but failure and defeat.

Zawahri mocked George W. Bush's decision to suspend troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer, saying the U.S. president was scared of admitting defeat and was trying to pass the "problem" on to his successor instead.

"What the American invasion of Iraq has reached, today, after five years, is t failure and defeat," Zawahri said in the tape posted on a website used by Islamist groups.

Obama likely to defeat McCain than Clinton: Poll

AP, Philadelphia

Hillary Clinton, already fighting with her back to the wall, got more bad news - Democrats now see her rival Barack Obama as better able to defeat Republican presumptive candidate John McCain.

A poll by ABC News/Washington Posed released on Wednesday shows that Democrats now believe that Obama is more likely to win in November elections by a huge margin of 62 to 31 per cent. This takes away her major argument to super delegates, who are likely to finally decide on the candidate, that she is more likely to win the election.

This new figures show dramatic support for Obama who was trailing Clinton by five percentage points in February. The poll finds other pronounced problems for Clinton. Among all Americans, 58 percent now say she's not honest and not trustworthy, 16 points higher than in a pre campaign poll two years ago. Obama beats her head-to-head on this attribute by a 23-point margin.