“I’m bitter,” Sir Knavely told me. He raised his glass and drank. His furry chin went deep into his Tiger’s Milk. Then he set it…
Posts Tagged ‘Lebanon’
Christopher Herbert and Victoria Kataoka Rebuffet: Weekly Foreign Affairs Roundup
July 24th, 2009 |
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The Week’s Top Stories in Foreign Affairs :The Geopolitical Importance of Syria SI Analysis: Engagement with Syria seems to be a priority for many…
Abraham H. Foxman: Unsettling Signs: The U.S. Takes on Israel on Settlements
July 24th, 2009 |
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While some may believe America has acknowledged a special relationship with Israel, the record of U.S. policy toward many significant issues in the conflict shows something entirely different.
Richard Z. Chesnoff: Saving the Islamic World’s Christians
July 24th, 2009 |
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Here’s a good question. Why do the majority of American Christians remain so oblivious to the increasingly bitter fate of their fellow Christians in the…
Berlusconi ‘hid ancient graves’
July 24th, 2009 |
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Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has failed to declare the presence of 30 ancient tombs on his land, according to newly published recordings said to be of him.
The recordings allege Mr Berlusconi told escort Patrizia D’Addario of 30 Phoenician tombs at his Sardinia villa.
The tombs date from 300BC, a man said to be Mr Berlusconi was heard saying.
But officials say there is no record of him reporting any finds – a legal requirement for all Italians – and opposition MPs have called for a probe.
In the conversations, said to be between Mr Berlusconi and Ms D’Addario, the man boasts to her about his sprawling villa in Sardinia, where Mr Berlusconi has his own ice cream parlour and artificial lakes.
"Here we found 30 Phoenician tombs from [around] 300 BC," the voice said to be Mr Berlusconi is heard to say.
The Phoenicians were merchants and traders based around modern-day Lebanon, whose maritime expertise helped them extend their reach into the Mediterranean.
Finding a collection of tombs from the Phoenician era would be of major archaeological significance, opponents of Mr Berlusconi said.
Under Italian law archaeological discoveries made on private property must be reported to the authorities for inspection.
Newspapers in Italy reports that Sardinia’s Department of Culture has said it has no knowledge of any such tombs on Mr Berlusconi’s land, the BBC’s Duncan Kennedy reports from Rome.
"We want to know if they exist or not and if so, whether they have been reported," opposition parliamentarian Andrea Marcucci told Reuters news agency.
Rumbling on
The latest revelations from Patrizia D’Addario’s audio recordings were published after a series of more intimate conversations between a man alleged to be Mr Berlusconi and Ms D’Addario.
The taped conversations are said to have been recorded by Ms D’Addario at Silvio Berlusconi’s private residence in Rome and then leaked to Italy’s left-of-centre press, who have published a series of stories about the prime minister’s private life in recent months.
In conversations published earlier this week, Ms D’Addario discussed intimate sexual details with the man said to be Mr Berlusconi.
When questioned earlier this week on the sex allegations, Mr Berlusconi admitted he was "no saint".
"I am not a saint, you’ve all understood that," he said. "I hope those at La Repubblica also understand it," referring to one of the left-leaning newspapers publishing the tapes.
Patrizia D’Addario told L’Espresso magazine she had made the tapes during a visit to Mr Berlusconi’s official Rome residence.
In one conversation, a man can be heard telling a woman to wait for him in "Putin’s bed".
Mr Berlusconi – whose personal life has been under scrutiny since his wife filed for divorce in May – has not denied Ms D’Addario attended a party at his home, but insists he did not pay for sex.
However, our correspondent says accounting for ancient undeclared tombs may need a little more explanation.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Lebanon detains 10 for ‘UN plot’
July 21st, 2009 |
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The Lebanese army says it has broken up a cell of militant Islamists who had allegedly planned to attack soldiers and UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.
An army official said the men were part of "a terrorist network linked to al-Qaeda", and were a cell the army had long been trying to capture.
The men have been accused of smuggling fighters into Lebanon, and plotting attacks outside and inside the country.
Most of the suspects were not Lebanese but came from Arab states.
An army statement said the suspects had been planning to smuggle terrorists out of Ain al-Helweh, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps.
Deteriorating security
The army said the network had also been plotting to bring militants from the extremist jihadi Fatah al-Islam group into the camp, near the southern coastal town of Sidon.
The aim, said the army statement, was "to carry out attacks from Lebanon on targets abroad and create terrorist cells to monitor Unifil and the army in order to carry out terrorist attacks on them".
Set up in 1978 after Israel invaded Lebanon, Unifil (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon) has a remit to monitor the Israeli border.
It was expanded after Israel’s 2006 war with militant Shia group Hezbollah.
Tuesday’s arrests come in the midst of a deteriorating security situation in the south of the country, along the border with Israel, says the BBC’s Natalia Antelava.
Last week, an arms cache belonging to Hezbollah exploded only 20km (12 miles) from the Israeli frontier.
Israel said the explosion was a gross violation of the UN Security Council resolution which ended the 2006 war.
In an official complaint to the UN, Israel also accused some of the peacekeepers of collaborating with Hezbollah.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Jeremić in Egypt ahead of NAM summit
July 13th, 2009 |
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Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić departed for Egypt this Monday, where he will attend a three-day summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). During the summit, Jeremić will hold separate bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers of Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, Thailand, China, Qatar, Ecuador, Singapore, Chile, Oman and Kenya, the Foreign Ministry stated.
Muted opposition
July 11th, 2009 |
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By Lina Sinjab
BBC News, Damascus
In a quiet neighbourhood in the centre of Damascus Michel Kilo sits in his small flat sipping coffee as his wife shells beans for lunch.
His TV is tuned to an Arabic news channel, his reading glasses sitting on his nose as he catches the latest developments from Tehran.
Weeks after finishing a three-year prison sentence, Mr Kilo dedicates his time to family life, while the enthusiasm that characterised his writing before his arrest is now directed solely at articles focusing on pan-Arab and regional issues, rather than local ones.
In 2006, Mr Kilo and 10 other activists were arrested after signing the Damascus-Beirut declaration.
The statement, backed by Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals, called for normalising bilateral relations after decades of Syrian domination of its smaller neighbour Lebanon.
International thaw
At the time, with Syria under severe international pressure, the authorities’ tolerance of the move was very limited.
Damascus faced accusations of supporting insurgency in Iraq, and involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
But today, the situation has changed. The country is no longer isolated by the West and key Western leaders have approached Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to help stabilise the region.
The country has attracted both foreign investment as well as tourism – signs it is beginning to come in from the cold.
But the authorities show no sign of relinquishing the tight control which the Baath Party has exerted since it took power in a 1963 coup and banned all opposition.
"The priority is not to have any opposition or independent voices and it is successful in oppressing this scene," says Yassin Haj Saleh, a writer and human rights activist.
Clampdown
A campaign of arrests has left an estimated 6,000 people in jail as political prisoners.
Meanwhile, about 400-450 people are subject to official travel bans, although the real number could be in the thousands, human rights groups say.
The measures are extended to young bloggers and some internet users, as well as civil society activists and some artists.
"Civil society needs to be revived and reactivated and this is only in the hands of the authorities""
Mohannad al-Hassani
Lawyer and human rights activist
"There is a continuous deterioration in the human rights situation in Syria," says lawyer and head of Syrian Human Rights Organization Mohannad al-Hassani.
But the worst situation is suffered by the Islamists, according to Yassin Haj Saleh.
"There are many young people who are arrested for their Islamic affiliation, but they are not organised. They are mostly villagers and their families are being harassed and pressured," he says.
The crackdown has attracted little media attention, especially in suburbs and rural areas.
Last year, riots erupted in Sadnaya prison. A number of prisoners were reported killed. The government said then the prisoners were Islamists.
Human Rights Watch recently called on the Syrian government to provide information on the incident.
"The Syrian government should end the anguish of the prisoners’ families, disclose the names of those injured or killed, and immediately grant them access to their loved ones," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
‘Lack of vision’
There is no organised opposition in Syria, just individuals who oppose government policies.
And even these figures are fragmented and lack vision says Omar Amirallai, an intellectual and filmmaker.
"The opposition in Syria is in need of self-criticism, reform and reconciliation," he says.
But others believe that even with more vision and organisation, their efforts will come to nothing under current government restrictions.
The streets of Damascus have the feel of a relaxed and bustling city.
Around cafe and restaurant tables, discussions are heated about global and regional politics – but no one talks about the political situation in Syria.
Mohannad al-Hassani believes the country should embrace international and regional changes with its own progress on the level of civil and human rights.
"Civil society needs to be revived and reactivated and this is only in the hands of the authorities.
"They should look into these needs seriously as it is difficult for Syria to continue in isolation from what the whole world is moving towards."</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A fleet for the future
Britain’s national security depends on our efforts at sea – on well-equipped, versatile naval forces
Strategy is often misunderstood; it is about consequences and outcomes, the plan by which all the instruments of national power – diplomatic, intellectual military and economic – are to be employed in achieving identified goals in support of the national interest. That necessitates making choices and setting priorities, now and for the future, because ours is an uncertain world characterised by a rapid, often confounding rate of change – pandemics, climate change, resource constraints, conflicts fuelled by ideology, ethnicity and more, all of which present security challenges, some novel.
Last month’s update to the government’s national security strategy – Security for the Next Generation – affirms the commitment to agile, deployable armed forces as vital contributors to the nation’s security, at home or overseas. The government recognises that the UK’s interests are governed by geostrategic truths: we are an island nation with global trading interests, we have many UK overseas territories and nationals living abroad, and we very much depend on our ability to influence events through multilateral engagement. Those truths inform and define the UK’s interests. The role of strategy, which has to be sufficiently adaptable to accommodate the uncertainties of a changing world, is to determine where the priorities for protecting and promoting our national interests lie.
Current operations have to be the priority. The armed forces are doing a remarkable job conducting joint operations in Afghanistan, while continuing to meet a range of standing commitments that contribute so much to the defence and security of our country by dealing with threats at arm’s length.
Our focus on enduring campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan should not blind us to the longer-term implications of the UK’s geostrategic reality. Our ability to deploy globally and use the seas in support of operations is key to the success of the armed forces in war and time of tension; whether it means dropping Royal Marines into Iraq from carriers in the Gulf, as we did in 2003, or using warships to evacuate UK nationals from Lebanon in 2006. The sea can be a barrier or a highway, depending on who controls it, so the Royal Navy can shape future events as well as determine them.
But, even more fundamentally, the global sea lanes are the arteries along which the economy of this island nation flows. We are increasingly and heavily reliant on imported raw materials, goods, food and especially energy. We live in a “just enough, just in time economy” – if the sea lanes are denied to us, the supermarket shelves fall empty and the lights go out. The strategy for the UK has to be a balanced one, to offer the government the greatest possible range of options. There is an important maritime dimension to this and it is a dimension to which all of our armed forces, alongside other instruments of national power, can contribute strongly. First, global interdependence and our reliance on the sea mean that the potential for conflict between other states to directly affect the UK has grown. At the same time, the scramble for resources and valuable raw materials is increasingly being played out at sea: the “cod wars” of the 1970s have given way to disputed maritime boundary claims as states vie to establish their access to the sea and the mineral and food wealth beneath it. In the Pacific and Indian oceans, states are expanding maritime forces and establishing strategically positioned naval bases to promote and protect their growing influence and wealth.
For those prepared to think longer-term, the UK’s national interests will continue to rely in large part, as they always have, on a Royal Navy that is sufficiently capable of underwriting the country’s security and prosperity.
That means a fleet, not of extravagant size, but big enough to have a meaningful presence, and with a balance of capabilities that give it global reach and the ability to guarantee the delivery ashore and protection of land forces. A globally capable fleet brings many benefits to the UK. Key among them are, first, the ability to act strategically with low political overheads, to deliver influence, support or military force without having to commit land forces. Second is the ability to build alliances and trust as a hedge against an uncertain future through multinational operations at sea with the maritime forces of many other countries. As a nation, you can surge military forces in response to a developing crisis, but you can’t surge familiarity, trust and co-operation.
In the final analysis, a capable fleet is as much about deterring aggression and influencing friends as it is about delivering combat power at sea or from the sea. While we will always need to fight and win if necessary, when it comes to the future we shouldn’t overlook the value to this country of the wars we won’t have to fight as a result of using the Royal Navy strategically as an instrument of national power.