Tag: InternationalNews

{{Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave as planned by the end of next year.}}

Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday — one outside the Afghan Defense Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province — show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to help show that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.

“The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents,” he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.

There was no immediate response from the U.S.-led military coalition, which is gradually handing over responsibility for securing the country to Afghan forces.

{{Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Saturday vowed to inject new blood into her party and urged members to rise above petty differences as they elect new leadership for the first time in the 25-year history of the National League for Democracy.}}

“Choose leaders without any personal grudge,” she told the assembled crowd of more than 1,000 delegates and guests. “Don’t think of yourself. Don’t think of your friends. Have firm policies and conviction and the courage to sacrifice, if you want to claim yourself a politician.”

The three-day NLD congress, which opened Friday, is an important step toward making the party more reflective of its democratic ideals. It is a sign of how far Myanmar has come with political reform that the gathering is allowed at all.

But it’s also a test for the NLD, which is working to transform itself from a party of one into a structurally viable political opposition in time for national elections in 2015.

That transformation has not come without conflict, as the party struggles to infuse its ranks with new faces, expertise and diversity without sidelining long-standing members.

Suu Kyi said it is important to learn from past weaknesses and vowed to decentralize decision-making and inject the leadership with “new blood.”

“The NLD has been accused of using centralized systems. It is partly true because we were unable to operate freely,” she said. “But the situation has changed.”

On Friday, the congress elected seven members, including Suu Kyi, to its top leadership body, the central executive committee. All come from the ranks of party faithful and most are in their late 60s.

The NLD plans to elect around a dozen more members to body. They have also elected 100 of a planned 150 members to the party’s second-line central committee.

Suu Kyi concluded her 20-minute speech with a broad call for unity, welcoming ethnic minority leaders, new party members and a vice-chairman of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, Htay Oo, as honored guests.

“This is very positive for the future and it will be very beneficial for the people if we walk hand in hand,” she said.

{{Nicolas Maduro so far has led by imitation, seeking to fill the shoes of a president whose uncanny vigor, mischievous humor and political wiles sowed a revolution and transformed a nation.}}

As Hugo Chavez did during his 14-year presidency, Maduro has stoked confrontation, and shed tears.

While steering Venezuela through the trauma of Chavez’s death, Maduro has pinned his move to the top on his beloved predecessor.

Yet there are serious doubts, even among die-hard Chavistas, about his ability to lead the nation.

At his swearing-in Friday evening as acting president in the National Assembly chamber where less than a decade ago he was just another lawmaker, Maduro pledged his “most absolute loyalty” to Chavez.

Then he launched into another fiery, lionization-of-the-masses speech punctuated by tears, Chavez-style harangues and attacks on capitalist elites and the international press.

“This sash belongs to Hugo Chavez,” he said, choked up, after assembly speaker Diosdado Cabello slid the presidential band over his head. Hours earlier at Chavez’s funeral, Maduro delivered a speech similarly strident in content and tone.

Maduro, 50, hasn’t stopped idolizing the outsized leader who made him Venezuela’s foreign minister, then vice president and, before going to Cuba for a final cancer surgery in December, publicly selected him as the presidential successor.

{{North Korea formally rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution on Saturday that demands an end to its nuclear arms program, as China called for calm, saying sanctions were not the “fundamental” way to resolve tensions on the Korean peninsula.}}

Pyongyang said it would pursue its goal of becoming a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, despite the sanctions which were unanimously imposed on Friday by the Security Council.

The sanctions aim to tighten financial restrictions and crack down on North Korea’s attempts to transport banned cargo.

The resolution, the fifth since 2006 aimed at stopping the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, coincides with a sharp escalation of security tensions on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test on February 12.

“The DPRK, as it did in the past, vehemently denounces and totally rejects the ‘resolution on sanctions’ against the DPRK, a product of the U.S. hostile policy toward it,” the North’s foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.

DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The world will clearly see what permanent position the DPRK will reinforce as a nuclear weapons state and satellite launcher as a result of the U.S. attitude of prodding the UNSC into cooking up the ‘resolution.’

The North’s sole major ally China has said it wants sanctions fully implemented, but Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a news conference on Saturday the best way to resolve the problem was still through dialogue.

“We always believe that sanctions are not the end of Security Council actions, nor are sanctions the fundamental way to resolve the relevant issues,” Yang said, urging all sides to exercise calm and restraint.

“The only right way to resolve the issue is to take a holistic approach and resolve the concerns of all parties involved in a comprehensive and balanced manner through dialogue and consultations.”

{{An Iranian official has accused the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran of taking bribes from the United States, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Friday.}}

The report quoted Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary general of Iran’s high council for human rights, as saying Ahmed Shaheed received money from the U.S. He said that was why he could only parrot U.S. allegations against Iran.

“The money the special rapporteur has received from the U.S. State Department has led to a situation that he cannot write about anything except their anti-Iran desires,” Larijani was quoted as saying, without giving evidence.

Iran has barred Shaheed from Iran since 2011, saying there is no need for a special rapporteur because Iran has always answered questions from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Larijani said Iran has provided U.N. with considerable evidence of violations by Shaheed, the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on Iran. He did not provide details.

He said Shaheed behaves like a TV celebrity, appearing on western television stations to make comments against Iran.

“The special rapporteur has no right to take a stance against the country he is assigned to,” Larijani said, charging that in TV interviews, Shaheed “repeats the words of the U.S. and Israel” against Iran.

Shaheed has produced four reports on alleged violations of human rights in Iran. Iran denies the charges.

{Wirestory}

{{The stage is set for President Hugo Chavez’s last appearance on the world stage, with leaders from five continents in Venezuela’s anxious capital for a funeral Friday to remember a man who captivated the attention of millions and polarized his nation during 14 tumultuous years in power.}}

The ceremony will mark a dramatic exit for a president who quarreled publicly with presidents and kings and ordered troops via live television to defend his country’s borders.

It promises to also give his successors a prime opportunity to rally public support for continuing his political legacy.

Yet with basic details about the event unknown just hours before its scheduled start, the funeral also reflected a leader who tightly controlled all aspects of his government.

Government officials said it would begin at 11 a.m. local time, but didn’t specify where it would take place or what would actually happen.

For nearly two years, and even after his death Tuesday, Chavez’s government has been similarly tight-fisted with information about Chavez’s cancer, not indicating exactly where or what it was.

More than 30 heads of government, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were scheduled to attend. U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, represented the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year.

Two hours before midnight Thursday, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello added yet more complications to the day’s schedule, appearing on national television to announce that Vice President Nicolas Maduro will also be sworn in on Friday.

That drew criticism from former Venezuelan Supreme Court Judge Blanca Rosa Marmo, who said the government would be violating Venezuela’s Constitution, which specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly, currently Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president can’t be sworn in.

The government has designated Maduro, Chavez’s hand-picked successor, as the official socialist party candidate in a special presidential election that the constitution requires be held within 30 days.

{{The US has charged Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law with conspiring to kill US nationals, after government sources said he was arrested overseas and brought to New York City to stand trial.}}

Suleiman Abu Ghaith, reportedly a 47-year-old Kuwaiti and allegedly one of the chief propagandists of the al-Qaeda network, is expected to be arraigned before a US district judge on Friday morning.

Abu Ghaith stands accused of conspiring “to kill nationals of the United States”, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.

Eric Holder, US attorney-general, said the arrest showed that the US would never relent in its pursuit of the fighters who launched the attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington.

“No amount of distance or time will weaken our resolve to bring America’s enemies to justice,” he said.

“To violent extremists who threaten the American people and seek to undermine our way of life, this arrest sends an unmistakable message.

“There is no corner of the world where you can escape from justice because we will do everything in our power to hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

US authorities accuse Ghaith of assisting bin Laden, who was killed in a 2011 raid by American commandos, and of taking to the airwaves to promote al-Qaeda’s war against America after the 9/11 attacks.

{{Delegates attending a global biodiversity conference in Bangkok this week are debating a U.S. proposal to streamline international customs checks for travelers with musical instruments that legally contain endangered wildlife products like exotic hardwoods, ivory or tortoise shell.}}

The goal is not to burden musicians, but to make foreign travel easier by doing away with cumbersome import and export permits and ensuring legal instruments aren’t confiscated, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, who is leading Washington’s delegation to the 178-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.

The proposal is expected to be voted on as early as Friday. If approved, travelers would be able to carry a “musical instrument passport” valid for three years.

The CITES framework was signed in 1973 to ensure the survival of the world’s flora and fauna by regulating international trade in threatened species. About 35,000 species are presently protected.

Ashe said he was not aware of any cases of international customs agents seizing instruments, and if it has happened, it’s been extremely rare.

But concern over the issue within the U.S. music industry rose sharply in 2011, when federal agents raided the factories and offices of Gibson Guitar to seize what they said was illegal ebony wood shipped to the guitar maker from India.

Gibson was the subject of a similar raid in 2009 for using wood allegedly exported illegally from Madagascar.

After the raids, “people started raising serious questions about their instruments,” Ashe told The Associated Press in an interview in Bangkok this week.

“They said, ‘If my guitar contains Brazilian rosewood … if my violin bow is made of exotic hardwood, is it going to be taken away from me when I travel?’”

Violin bows are a major concern. Some are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the last thing their owners want is to risk having them confiscated.