Pro-peace Afghan Muslim cleric killed

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=126752&sectionid=351020403

A popular Muslim religious leader who has been pushing for peace in eastern Afghanistan is assassinated along with two members of his family.

Cleric Rahman Gul was killed on Sunday along with his brother and another relative in the Chapa Dara district as they were returning to their homes, police in Kunar province said.

The killing is the latest in a series of assassinations targeting Afghan government figures and others aligned with the international forces.

Gul was chief cleric in his district and a member of a clerical council for eastern Afghanistan. In recent days, he has been stressing the importance of "peace and stability" across the country.

Elsewhere, two NATO soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on Sunday.

According to official announcements, 2009 was the deadliest year for foreign troops with a total of 520 US-led soldiers killed in action.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan was launched with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the country.

North Korean special train arrives in China

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122329§ionid=351020405


A special train, possibly carrying the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, has entered the border city of Dandong in Liaoning Province in northeastern China.

The train that arrived in Dandong at about 2:50 a.m. local time (18:50 GMT Friday) on Saturday appeared to be carrying Kim but could also be an advance train preceding his trip, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The North Korean leader rarely travels abroad and only under tight security. He last visited China in January 2006.

Kim's possible trip to North Korea's most important ally and biggest aid provider, China, comes as the United States and regional powers are trying to win Pyongyang's willingness to return to six-party talks and resume the stalled multilateral negotiations aimed at dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

The six-party talks, involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), the United States, the Republic of Korea, China, Japan and Russia, have been frozen since April last year.

Pyongyang has set two conditions for its return to the talks: Lifting UN sanctions against it and holding peace talks aimed at formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean War.

But Washington, Seoul and Tokyo say Pyongyang must first return to the talks and show notable progress before its conditions can be considered.

Israel arrests Hamas leader

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031473515920917.html


Israeli security forces have arrested a leading member of Hamas’s military wing in the occupied West Bank.

A spokesman for the Israeli military on Sunday said that Maher Udda had been wanted for his involvement in attacks that killed more than 70 Israelis.

He described Udda as one of Hamas's founders in Ramallah and said the arrest took place on Saturday night.

The attacks that Udda was allegedly involved in included one at a bus stop near the Tsrifin army base southeast of Tel Aviv, which killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 in 2003.

Another attack the same year targeted a cafe in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighbourhood, killing six and wounding 40.

Hamas accusation

Fawzi Barhum, a Hamas spokesman, said the arrest was "the fruit of dangerous security co-ordination between the Palestinian Authority and the [Israeli] occupation, because he was wanted and hunted by both parties".

"The continuation of this security co-ordination is going to bury reconciliation alive because it comes in the context of uprooting Hamas and strengthening Fatah [rival Palestinian group]," he told AFP.


Born in 1963, Udda is a father of four. He formed a Hamas cell in his village Ein Yabrud, northeast of Ramallah, in early 1990s.

Long-running tensions between Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party boiled over when Hamas fighters drove his forces from Gaza in June 2007, seizing power in the coastal enclave.

Since then each movement has accused the other of persecuting its rivals within the territory under its control.

Iraq's Hakim: Ties with Iran priority

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120178§ionid=351020201


The leader of Iraq's largest Shia party, Ammar al-Hakim, says Baghdad does not allow conditioning of improved ties with neighboring Arab states to discounting warm relations with Iran.

"We believe that Iraq must establish close ties with Iran, Turkey, and Arab states," the clerical figure, who leads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, said in an interview with Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency.

"Some sensitive issues exist in relations between Iran and Arab states. The same goes for Iran and the US. [However,] Iraq's national interests make it necessary for us to establish the closest ties with Tehran," he added.

Hakim pointed out that Iran was the first country to recognize Iraq's new government after the fall of former dictator Saddam Hossein, adding that this move showed that Tehran had the interests of the Iraqi people at heart.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Iran has played a major role in the country's reconstruction effort.

The construction sector is still the area in which Tehran is most active. Many state companies have invested consistently in the post-conflict reconstruction.

In 2008, Iran offered a loan of one billion dollars for projects in Iraq. Early the next year, Iran was awarded the 1.5 billion dollar contract for the proposed construction of a complex of houses, schools, hotels and shops in Basra.

Several Iranian companies have invested with public participation in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, pilgrimage sites for Shias worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit the sites every year come from Iran.

The governor of Najaf says close to 20 million dollars have been allocated as an annual sum for projects that involve improving the cities' infrastructure.

Dubai: Israeli premier faces arrest

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201033465170139.html

The head of the Dubai police is planning to seek the arrest of the prime minister of Israel and the head of the country's secret service, Mossad, over the killing of a Hamas leader.

Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told Al Jazeera he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for Binyamin Netanyahu and Meir Dagan this week.

Tamim said he was "almost certain" Israeli agents were involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, at a Dubai hotel in January.

Israel has has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in al-Mabhouh's murder.

The police chief said Mossad had "insulted" Dubai and Western countries whose fraudulent passports were used by suspects in the assassination.

Investigation expanding

And a UAE newspaper reported that Dubai had also asked the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into prepaid credit cardsissued by the Meta Financial Group's MetaBank which the suspects used.

Citing an FBI source, The National newspaper said the investigation would look into any Israeli involvement in the killing.

Quoting Dubai police, the newspaper said: "Thirteen of the 27 suspects used prepaid MasterCards issued by MetaBank, a regional American bank, to purchase plane tickets and book hotel rooms."

MetaBank said it followed proper procedures when it issued the cards.

Authorities told the bank that the suspects appeared to have used stolen passports to get employment with US companies, MetaBank said in a statement on Tuesday.

Dubai police have published details of 26 suspects together with passport photographs, and claim to have DNA evidence of the identity of at least one of the killers.

As a consequence of the assassination, UAE officials say they will prevent Israeli citizens travelling on foreign passports from entering the country.

Dubai police last Sunday issued a statement saying the "killers used the drug succinylcholine to sedate al-Mabhouh before they suffocated him" and that "assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural".


Al-Mabhouh's killing has led investigators to Britain, Ireland, Australia and Germany - countries whose passports the assassins allegedly used.

Haniyeh to Israel: Recognize us first

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=117886§ionid=351020202


Democratically-elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says Israel must recognize the rights of the Palestinian people before asking for recognition.

"They have to recognize us first, the right of the Palestinian people, we are the victims. Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders," Haniyeh said on Wednesday.

Palestinians want their future state based on borders before the Israeli occupation of June 1967, as recognized by the international community, with its capital in East Jerusalem (Al-Quds), said the senior Hamas member.

Haniyeh also pointed out that the Islamic Resistance Movement is ready for dialogue with the international community, including the United States and the European Union.

"Hamas is ready for dialogue with the world, international community, the US, the Middle East Quartet and the Europeans," he said.

Haniyeh said he was determined to "establish Palestinian reconciliation and to have fair elections... in all Palestinian homes, including Jerusalem (Al-Quds)."

Hamas has been in power in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip since June 2007 after it drove Fatah forces out of the coastal sliver, to prevent a US-backed coup.

Under pressure from Israeli lobbies, the US and the EU refuse to hold formal talks with the democratically-elected movement, which came to power following general elections in 2006.

Rwanda's genocide leader 'lives freely in France'

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116928§ionid=351020603


A Rwandan rebel leader belonging to Armed Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and accused of genocide is reportedly living as a free man in a suburb of Paris.

Callixte Mbarushimana, executive secretary of the FDLR rebel group, coordinates the rebels' daily activities in Rwanda and its neighboring countries, AP reported Saturday.

Based on the report, the 46-year-old former UN employee is able to regularly send out press releases from his apartment in the French capital.

FDLR is one of several groups accused of creating instability in the African nation as many of its members are accused of taking part in Rwanda's genocide.

The Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government.

An estimated 800,000 people were massacred in the genocide.

French Foreign Ministry has refused to extradite Mbarushimana to Rwanda whose men are accused of killing at least 700 civilians last year.

"France does not extradite the citizens of countries which apply the death penalty, as was the case in Rwanda, or whose justice systems do not fully guarantee their rights," French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Relations between two countries have reached a new low as Rwanda's government accuses France of playing an active role in the 1994 genocide.

The FDLR group is also accused of decapitating several hundred people a few months ago in the village of Busurungi in DR Congo.

The war, centered mainly in eastern DR Congo, has involved nine African nations and directly affected the lives of 50 million Congolese.

An estimated 5 million people died in Congo from disease and hunger as a result of the civil war which raged from 1998 to 2003.