Tag: InternationalNews

{{Israelis and Palestinians have resumed direct talks for the first time in three years, with the United States urging negotiators to make tough compromises to reach a peace deal.}}

Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni and her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat sat side-by-side opposite top US diplomat John Kerry to share a traditional Muslim iftar meal in Washington DC on Monday.

Kerry, the US secretary of state, who has staked much of his reputation on bringing both sides back to the talks, first met with the teams separately.

He will also host a three-way meeting on Tuesday, before making a statement to reporters at around 11:00am local time (15:00 GMT), accompanied by the two negotiators.

Kerry was flanked at the dinner by seasoned diplomat Martin Indyk, who he named earlier as the US special envoy to the talks, and by White House Middle East advisor Phil Gordon.

US President Barack Obama has welcomed the start of the talks, calling the, a “promising step” forward but warning of “hard choices” ahead.

“The most difficult work of these negotiations is ahead, and I am hopeful that both the Israelis and Palestinians will approach these talks in good faith,” he said.

Obama promised the US is ready to support both sides “with the goal of achieving two states, living side by side in peace and security”.

{agencies}

Taliban militants have freed 243 prisoners in an assault on a prison in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

The attack in the town of Dera Ismail Khan began with huge explosions at around midnight on Monday (15:00 GMT).

Gunmen then opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns, police chief Sohail Khalid said. About 70 attackers were in police uniform.

Dera Ismail Khan is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, is next to Pakistan’s restive mountainous tribal region.

The town’s prison houses hundreds of Taliban and militants from banned groups.

Twelve people – including six police officers – were killed in the gun battle that raged for three or four hours after militants launched their assault.

The town’s civil commissioner Mushtaq Jadoon said that 30 hardened militants jailed for their involvement in major attacks or suicide bombings were among those who escaped.

Those released jail include two local Taliban commanders, Abdul Hakim and Haji Ilyas.

Also released is a sectarian militant, Waleed Akbar, the principle suspect in last year’s attacks on Shia mourners in Dera Ismail Khan during the Shia mourning month of Moharram.

Attackers used loudhailers to call the names of particular inmates, Mr Jadoon said.

Fourteen fugitives were later re-arrested by police, he said. A curfew has now been imposed on Dera Ismail Khan as police hunt for the remaining escaped prisoners, but correspondents say this will be a difficult task as they flee into tribal areas.

Katherine Houreld, a correspondent for Reuters news agency, told the BBC it had been a “very sophisticated attack – they blew the electricity line, they breached the walls and they set ambushes for reinforcements”.

Mr Jadoon told a local TV station that 14 explosive devices planted in the jail had so far been defused.

agencies

{{Russia’s defense industry is cutting down on its use of foreign electronics as a result of leaks by ex-U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, a Russian government official said on Monday.}}

Snowden’s actions in divulging details of U.S. government intelligence programs had shown the need for arms makers to be careful in importing any equipment that contained software capable of transmitting sensitive data abroad, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.

Rogozin specifically referred to foreign-made lathes.

“Those lathes contain software which can have certain settings. They could either shut down at some point or transmit certain data about the engineering parameters of an assignment (in progress),” Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry, told reporters after a meeting on arms contracts chaired by President Vladimir Putin.

Russian officials have denied that Snowden has been debriefed by Russian security services.

“If we talk about electronic components used widely in the navy, air force and armored vehicles, not to mention space … here we will also stick to the necessity of key electronic components being produced in Russia,” Rogozin, Russia’s former ambassador to NATO, said.

The Russian defense industry has been crippled by under financing after the fall of the Soviet Union and domestic electronic engineering has largely fallen behind, forcing producers to rely on foreign-made electronics.

Kremlin-backed project Glonass, its answer to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) system, has been marred by several botched launches which experts inside Russia have blamed on faulty foreign-made microchips.

Information leaked by Snowden, 30, includes details of a previously secret intelligence program, Prism, which internal National Spy Agency documents suggested gave it direct access to data held by Internet companies.

Russia has refused to extradite Snowden, stuck in Sheremetyevo airport since arriving in Russia from Hong Kong on June 23, although the United States has promised not to execute or torture him if he is sent home. The case has increased strains in Russian-U.S. relations.

reuters

{{France called on Monday for the European Commission to make public its mandate to negotiate EU-U.S. free-trade talks, citing what it said was an atmosphere of mistrust over efforts to forge a landmark pact.}}

The U.S. and EU launched the negotiations earlier this month despite European concerns about U.S. spying that had threatened to delay the start after nearly two years of preparation. France moreover only agreed to the talks after securing assurances that its entertainment industry would be ringfenced.

“The first week of discussions on a transatlantic partnership agreement closed in a climate of doubt,” Trade Minister Nicole Bricq wrote in French newspaper Liberation.

“The U.S. once again showed its splendid ambivalence. It is a country where everything seems possible and whose dynamism and energy we French envy. At the same time it is a prickly power incapable of resisting the temptations its supremacy gives it.”

Stressing the need for transparency in the talks, Bricq said she had asked EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht to break with usual procedure and make the EU’s negotiation mandate public.

“It doesn’t contain any secrets. It’s a political statement that calls for an agreement that respects our values and interests. It deserves to be debated,” she said.

The Commission said it would gladly publish the mandate, but noted any such decision could only be taken by the EU Council – the body composed of the EU’s 28 member states.

“It is a legal decision to be made by France along with all other member states as this is a Council document,” Commission spokesman for trade policy John Clancy said by email.

The Commission’s mandates to negotiate international trade deals are not made public because it could weaken the EU’s hand by revealing its limits to Washington and U.S. lobbies. That said, unofficial leaks of the mandate are common.

“If the talks with United States are for a partnership, and if we are working as equals, then our practices need to change so that we speak the same language,” she said.

Bricq also said the Commission should regularly inform the European Parliament of the progress of the talks. At present, the Commission must do so at the end of each round.

Clancy said the Commission was committed to keeping public, governments and the EU parliament up to date about the talks.

The first round of talks, which took place in Washington from July 8 to July 12, mainly set the stage for more substantive negotiations in the weeks and months ahead as the two sides strive to reach a deal by late 2014.

{agencies}

{{Attorney General Eric Holder has told the Russian government that the U.S. will not seek the death penalty for former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden.}}

In a letter dated July 23, the attorney general said the criminal charges Snowden faces do not carry the death penalty and that the U.S. will not seek the death penalty even if Snowden were charged with additional death penalty-eligible crimes.

Holder says his letter follows news reports that Snowden, who leaked information on largely secret electronic surveillance programs, has filed papers seeking temporary asylum in Russia on grounds that if he were returned to the United States, he would be tortured and would face the death penalty.

The attorney general’s letter was sent to Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov, the Russian minister of justice.

(AP)

{{The European Union’s foreign policy chief was scheduled to hold crisis talks in Cairo on Monday after the weekend killing of at least 72 supporters of Egypt’s deposed Islamist president plunged the pivotal Arab country deeper into turmoil.}}

Underscoring the risk of more bloodshed, several thousand supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood threatened to march on the military’s intelligence headquarters in defiance of a warning from the army to stay away.

They turned back early Monday, having left the site of a Brotherhood vigil in northern Cairo chanting, “Our blood and souls we sacrifice for Mursi.”

The dawn killings on Saturday, following a day of rival mass rallies, deepened the turmoil plaguing the country since the army shunted Egypt’s first freely elected president from power on July 3.

The West is increasingly concerned about the risk of broader conflict in the Arab world’s most populous country, a bridge between the Middle East and Africa and recipient of more than $1 billion in military aid from the United States.

Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, was scheduled to meet General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the Egyptian armed forces who led the overthrow of Mursi, the country’s interim president, Adli Mansour, and officials of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political wing.

Ashton, in a statement, said she would press for a “fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Thousands of Brotherhood supporters have been staging a weeks-long vigil outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northern Cairo to demand Mursi’s reinstatement, defying threats by Egypt’s army-installed authorities to disperse them.

France24

South Korea has proposed “final talks” on restarting operations at the joint Kaesong industrial zone, amid deadlock with North Korea.

The zone has been closed since April, when North Korea withdrew its workers.

The two sides have held six rounds of talks on a restart, but are deadlocked on Seoul’s insistence that Pyongyang agree not to unilaterally close the complex again.

On Sunday Seoul’s unification minister said a written guarantee was needed.

“We want a clear answer from the North on preventing a recurrence,” Ryoo Kihl-jae said.

“Otherwise, we will be left with no choice but to make a grave decision to prevent even bigger damages on our companies in the future.”

North Korea blames the shut-down on South Korean provocations, including military exercises.

{agencies}

{{It’s been two years since Myanmar’s new government promised its people a more open way of life, but still they come, plainclothes state intelligence officers asking where former student activist Mya Aye is and when he’ll be back.}}

Politicians, journalists, writers, diplomats, too, find themselves being watched: Men on motorcycles tailing closely. The occasional phone call. The same, familiar faces at crowded street cafes.

“It’s not as bad as it used to be,” said Mya Aye, who devotes much of his time today campaigning for citizen’s rights, “but it’s really annoying. They act like we’re criminals, harassing us, our families. It’s disrespectful and intimidating. It shouldn’t be this way anymore.”

Mya Aye was one of the student leaders of a failed uprising in 1988 against the repressive military junta that ruled for nearly five decades and employed a colossal network of intelligence agents to crack down on dissent.

In years past, he and thousands of other dissidents were hauled off to jail, instilling widespread fear in the hearts of a downtrodden population to ensure that nobody spoke out.

The level of oppression has eased markedly since President Thein Sein, a former army general, took office in 2011 after an opposition-boycotted election.

But while many political prisoners have been released, newspapers are no longer censored and freedom of speech has largely become a reality, the government has not ceased spying on its own people.

“Old habits die hard,” said lawmaker Win Htein of the opposition National League for Democracy party, who spent nearly 20 years in prison during the military reign. He spoke to The Associated Press by telephone in a conversation he feared was being tapped by police.

Every day, six to eight officers from various security departments can be seen at a tea shop across the street from the opposition party headquarters, jotting down who comes and goes and snapping the occasional picture.

It is unknown how many intelligence agents are active nationwide, but at least two major information gathering services are still operating: the Office of Military Affairs Security and the notorious Special Branch police, which reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

A well-connected, middle-ranking officer, speaking on condition he not be named because he didn’t have authorization to talk to the media, said there are no top-down orders these days to follow a particular individual. Young, often-inexperienced agents instead are told to keep tabs on new faces or unusual movement in their “patch,” and then inform their bosses.

And so they do, often in crude or comic fashion, with little or no effort to be discreet.

When Associated Press journalists went to the city of Meikhtila to inspect a neighborhood destroyed by sectarian violence earlier this year, the watchers were everywhere, two men trailing close behind on motorcycles.

Yet more waited outside the hotel in Mandalay as the reporting team tried to find ways to lose them — finally entering a crowded temple and then slipping out the back — so they could interview massacre survivors so worried of being harassed by authorities that they would not even speak in their own homes.

Presidential spokesman Ye Htut insisted those days are over: “Special Branch is no longer monitoring on journalists.” Asked to comment further, he said the story is “based on false assumptions,” so he could not.