Sunday, April 29, 2012

Saudi man divorces wife during live radio talk with religious scholar

Saturday, 28 April 2012

Sheikh Ghazi al-Shammari said his advice was legitimate and not damaging to marital relations. (File photo)

By Al Arabiya
DUBAI

A Saudi man accepted the advice of a prominent religious scholar on Saturday and divorced his wife during a live radio program tackling marital issues.

The man phoned the program to complain to Sheikh Ghazi al-Shammari that his wife disobeyed him by travelling without his approval from the Saudi port city of Jeddah to the capital Riyadh for a business conference.

The unnamed man said his wife “offended his manhood.”

He told Shammari that before his marriage he had accepted his wife’s demands to work on condition that work would not interfere with their marital life.

Shammari advised the man to divorce his wife as a punitive measure for “committing such a mistake against her home and husband.”

The husband immediately heeded the advice and divorced her during the live program although Shammari advised him to remarry her if she repents.

Shammari told Al Arabiya that the man’s story was enough for him to issue the advice and stressed that he was convinced his advice was legitimate and not damaging to marital relations.

“The husband called me in my program this afternoon and told me that he was financially capable and did not want his wife to work and that he is having problems with her about this issue for more than 10 years and that he has been patient for long. But the issue has developed to the extent that she would travel without his approval,” Shammari said.

“He was surprised that she sent him a text message from the airport telling him that she was traveling alone... and this is why I advised him to divorce her because she was not obeying her husband, a matter that is very important in Islam.”

“I did not make a mistake with my advice to the man, because what the wife did, travelling without his consent from Jeddah to Riyadh, is a serious matter and a cause for doubt,” He said.

“Such a wife is suspicious because she insisted to travel alone to Riyadh and without ample reason,” the scholar said. I did not rush with the advice because I saw that the issue was dangerous and we should not remain silent more about it.”

(Khaled Shaea contributed to this article from Riyadh.)

Qaeda-linked group frees 73 Yemeni soldiers

Sunday, 29 April 2012

The newly-released Yemeni soldiers were taken hostage by Ansar al-Sharia during an attack on the city of Zinjibar. (Reuters)

By Reuters
Aden

An al-Qaeda-linked group on Sunday freed 73 Yemeni soldiers it captured during a major assault in the south of the country last month, residents said, after mediation by religious scholars and tribal elders.

Residents of the southern town of Jaar, controlled by militants who call themselves Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), saw the soldiers being let out of the school building where they were being held.

In a statement, the group said Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing, had authorized their release after negotiations with tribal elders and religious scholars who visited Jaar, which the militants have renamed “the emirate of Waqar.”

Wuhayshi’s involvement is further evidence of Ansar al-Sharia’s links to Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which CIA director David Petraeus described last year as “the most dangerous regional node in the global jihad.”

It was not clear what, if anything, the group had been offered in return for the soldiers’ release. Not long after their capture, it threatened to harm the soldiers unless the Yemeni government released Islamist militants from jail.

A Yemeni journalist at the handover said the group had explained they were freeing the soldiers “for the sake of God” and in response to the appeals of the captives’ families and local tribal mediators.

“The militants invited local journalists, tribal mediators, human rights activists and the soldiers’ relatives to their stronghold, Jaar, to attend the ceremony,” said Wajdi al-Shaib. “The soldiers are now with their families on the way to Aden.”

Militants have exploited a year of political upheaval to firm their foothold in Yemen, especially in the south, where they have seized swathes of territory and launched frequent attacks on security forces.

The soldiers were taken hostage by Ansar al-Sharia in one such attack on the city of Zinjibar during which more than 100 other conscripts were killed.

Attack on church services in Nigeria kills around 20

Sunday, 29 April 2012

Boko Haram’s increasingly bloody insurgency in Nigeria has claimed more than 1,000 lives, mostly Christians, since mid-2009. (Reuters)

By AFP
Kano Nigeria

Attackers armed with bombs and guns opened fire at outdoor church services at a Nigerian university Sunday, killing around 20 people as worshippers tried to flee, witnesses and officials said.

A powerful explosion and gunfire rocked Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, with witnesses reporting that two church services were targeted as they were being held outdoors on the campus.

Officials were unable to confirm casualty figures, but an AFP correspondent counted six bullet-riddled bodies near one of the two sites.

At least another dozen bodies could be seen on a roadside by the university, but the exact number was unclear.

Musical instruments and half-eaten meals could be seen at the site of one of the services.

An army spokesman confirmed the attack but could not provide a casualty toll. Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi told AFP that it appeared the attackers used bombs and gunfire in the assault.

Witnesses said the attackers arrived in a car and two motorcycles, opening fire and throwing homemade bombs, causing a stampede. They said worshippers were gunned down as they sought to flee.

“They first attacked the open-air service outside the faculty of medicine,” one witness said. “They threw in explosives and fired shots, causing a stampede among worshippers. They now pursued them, shooting them with guns. ... They also attacked another service at the sporting complex.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the attack was similar to others carried out by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

Boko Haram claimed the January 20 attacks in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, when coordinated bombings and shootings left at least 185 dead in the extremists’ deadliest attack yet.

On Thursday, bomb attacks at the offices of the ThisDay newspaper in the capital Abuja and the northern city of Kaduna left at least nine people dead.

The group has previously targeted churches, including on Christmas day when at least 44 people were killed in a bombing at a church outside Abuja.

A bombing on Easter Sunday in Kaduna near a church that killed at least 41 people was a stark reminder of the Christmas attacks, but Boko Haram is not known to have claimed it.

Boko Haram’s increasingly bloody insurgency has claimed more than 1,000 lives since mid-2009. Police and soldiers have often been the victims of such attacks, although Christians have been targeted as well.

It also claimed responsibility for an August suicide attack at U.N. headquarters in Abuja which killed at least 25 people.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.

Boko Haram initially claimed to be fighting for the creation of an Islamic state in Nigeria’s north, but its demands and structure have become less clear in recent months.

It is believed to have a number of factions, including those with political motives as well as a hard-core Islamist wing. Criminal groups are also believed to have carried out violence under the guise of Boko Haram.

An attempt at indirect dialogue between the group and the government in March collapsed, with a mediator quitting over leaks to the media and a spokesman for the Islamists saying they could not trust the government.

President Goodluck Jonathan, during a visit Saturday to the newspaper offices in Abuja hit by Thursday’s suicide attack, did not answer directly when asked whether dialogue was necessary to stop the violence.

“You may dialogue, you may not dialogue depending on the circumstances,” Jonathan told reporters, adding: “But we will exploit every means possible to bring this to an end.”

Israel’s former Shin Bet chief warns against ‘messianic’ war on Iran

Saturday, 28 April 2012

The former head of Israel’s powerful internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, says the country’s political leaders are misleading the public on a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear program. (File photo)

By Dan Williams
REUTERS / OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

A former Israeli spymaster has branded the country’s leaders unfit to tackle the Iranian nuclear program and “messianic” in the strongest criticism from a security veteran of threats to launch a pre-emptive war.

Other veterans have come out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

But the censure from Yuval Diskin, who retired as head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service last year, was especially strong and unusual in using the language of religious fervor that Israelis associate with Islamist foes.

“I have no faith in the prime minister, nor in the defense minister,” Diskin said in remarks broadcast by Israeli media on Saturday. “I really don’t have faith in a leadership that makes decisions out of messianic feelings.”

The Prime Minister’s Office and Defense Ministry had no immediate response to Diskin’s remarks. But Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rebuked Diskin and questioned his motives.

The catastrophic terms with which Netanyahu and Barak describe the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran have stirred concern in Israel and abroad of a possible strike against its uranium enrichment program. Iran says the project is entirely peaceful and has promised wide-ranging reprisals for any attack.

World powers, sharing Israeli suspicions Iran has a covert bomb-making plan, are trying to curb it through sanctions and negotiations. Those talks resume in Baghdad next month, but Barak on Thursday rated their chance of succeeding as low.

Although Israel has long threatened a pre-emptive strike if diplomacy fails, some experts believe that could be a bluff to keep up pressure on the Iranians, making it harder to interpret the swirl of comments from the security establishment.

In a commentary on Diskin’s remarks, Amos Harel of the liberal newspaper Haaretz wrote that the temperature was rising ahead of the nuclear talks.

“Nothing has been determined in the Iranian story, and the spring is about to boil over into another summer of tension,” he wrote.

False impression

Diskin spoke days after Israel’s top military commander, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, told Haaretz he viewed Iran as “very rational” and unlikely to build a bomb, comments that apparently undermined the case for a strike.

The former Shin Bet chief was specifically damning of Netanyahu and Barak, who have often crafted strategy alone and whose rapport dates back four decades to when they served together in a top-secret commando unit.

“They’re creating a false impression about the Iranian issue,” Diskin told a private gathering on Friday, where the comments were recorded. “They’re appealing to the stupid public, if you’ll pardon me for the phrasing, and telling them that if Israel acts, there won’t be an (Iranian) nuclear bomb.”

Diskin said he was not necessarily opposed to an attack on Iran, though he cited experts who argue this risked backfiring by accelerating its nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s former Mossad foreign intelligence director, Meir Dagan, last year also ridiculed the Israeli war option.

Diskin went a step further by saying that Netanyahu and Barak were not up to the job of opening an unprecedented front with Iran and, potentially, with its allies on Israel’s borders.

Netanyahu is a second-term premier with solid public approval ratings and a broad conservative coalition. Barak, a former prime minister, is Israel’s most decorated soldier.
“I have seen them up close,” Diskin said. “They are not messiahs, the two of them, and they are not people who I personally, at least, trust to be able to lead Israel into an event on such a scale, and to extricate it.”

Foreign Minister Lieberman said questions such as how and if to tackle Iran “are not made by the prime minister and defense minister. They are usually made in the security cabinet or cabinet.”

Lieberman suggested to Israel’s Channel Two television that Diskin might be angry at being passed over for the job as head of the Mossad.

U.S. pastor burns Quran, Prophet image; gets fine for ‘book burning’ hazard

Sunday, 29 April 2012

U.S. pastor Terry Jones had set a deadline for the release of Iranian cleric Youcef Nadakhani otherwise he warned of a repeat of last year’s Quran burning. (File photo)

By Eman El-Shenawi
AL ARABIYA

This time, U.S. pastor Terry Jones received a $271 fine and a slap on the hand by a local fire department.

Indeed, Pastor Jones had stuck to his promise: to burn copies of the Quran and images depicting Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) by Saturday April 28 at 5 p.m. if an Iranian Christian cleric on death row was not released by then.
And sure enough, the clock struck 5 and Jones began to give a speech to about 20 people that had gathered in front of his church in Florida for the planned burning.

From afar, “a few people watched the scene, but there were no protesters,” the Florida-based Ocala website reported, adding that the event was streamed online.

The pastor was joined by another clergyman who also gave a speech at a podium, demanding the release of the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani from an Iranian prison.

Nadarkhani has been charged with apostasy and sentenced to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity.

Moments later, Jones began to burn copies of Islam’s holy book and an image supposedly depicting Prophet Mohammed in front of his church, as seen in a 38 minute-long video on the website of Jones’ organization, Stand Up America Now.

But the pastor was soon interrupted by officers from both the local police and fire departments.

The Gainesville Fire Rescue department issued the church a citation for violating the city’s fire ordinances. According to a fire department official, Jones “had approval for a burn but did not have the required authorization to burn books,” Ocala reported.

Jones was then handed a $271 fine, which included court costs.

He was fined because the Florida city of Gainesville has “restrictive fire ordinances,” which dictate that “books cannot be burned without authorization because of environmental concerns over the burning of glue and bindings in books,” the local fire chief said.

Now, this was a spanner thrown in the works that perhaps Jones wasn’t even expecting. He could not even retort back with a “constitutional right to protest” argument; the environmental safety regulations had spoken.

Last week, the pastor’s threats had reached the Pentagon, after which a spokesman came out and essentially pleaded with Jones not to carry through with his threats, reminding the world of last year’s uproar when he had first burned copies of the Quran.

“The last time Pastor Jones burned a Quran, back in March of 2011, more than 16 people died and more than 90 people were injured from the resulting protests. We hope Pastor Jones will take into account the safety and welfare of deployed U.S. military personnel before engaging in such an activity again,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Bill Speaks told the Guardian.

The other fear was that Jones’ behavior could be used as insurgent propaganda, inspiring an Islamist militant backlash.

Last year, Jones burned a Quran also on the grounds of his church in Florida which prompted attacks on a U.N. compound in Afghanistan where seven people died.

When he threatened to burn the books again this time round, he was asked about the cost in terms of the lives lost in his previous escapade; Jones told the Guardian that the impact of his Quran burning was not his responsibility.

“What happened last time and what could happen this time is not our responsibility. All we did was burn a book. It posed no threat to anyone else, yet riots broke out several thousand miles away – which just proves how extreme Islam is,” he said.

He had also threatened to burn more books on last year’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks but after international outrage, the burnings never took place. Jones had told authorities he received numerous death threats because of the planned protest, which he called off amid the increasing pressure from world leaders.

Interestingly, this time there was no widespread rioting and reports of condemnation from around the world both leading up to and after the burning. In fact, Saturday’s Quran burning was scarcely reported and the local Florida news website was one of the few reports available online.

A few Facebook pages were launched in recent weeks with the titles: “We Protest Against Burn the Quran Day (by Pastor Terry Jones)” and “Pastor Terry Jones is back” but no major Islamic body or rights organization has spoken out against the burning as of yet.

Could this be the quiet before the storm? Had the world grown tired with Pastor Jones’ threats? Or could many have been relying on America to stop him in his tracks?

“It is the job of the Americans to stop this person, otherwise the militants, the insurgents will use this opportunity and the people will help them,” Jamshed Hashimi, a 45-year-old teacher at one of the private universities of Kabul, told the Guardian.

“Islam doesn’t allow us to dishonor the Christian holy book, so it is the job of Christians to respect the holy Quran as well,” he added.

Indeed these arguments are rich with religious magnitudes that should always be discussed, but perhaps the intervention of a local fire department effectually dumbed down Jones’ statement as a self-professed scourge of Islam this time round.

After all, one could always ask, just where were Gainesville Fire Department’s “restrictive fire ordinances” last year, when Jones burned copies of the Quran on the same Florida church grounds in 2011?

Protests at Saudi embassy in Cairo ‘express Egyptian dignity:’ Muslim Brotherhood

Sunday, 29 April 2012

Egypt’s foreign ministry bemoaned “irresponsible actions” by protesters at the Saudi embassy and said they were at odds with “deeply rooted Egyptian-Saudi ties”. (AFP)

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

The political branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), issued a statement Saturday night asking Saudi Arabia to “reconsider its decision to shut its embassy in Cairo and consulates and to recall its ambassador for consultations.”

The FJP was responding to Saudi Arabia’s decision Saturday to recall its ambassador and temporarily shut its missions in Egypt in response to protests by angry Egyptians calling for the release of a human rights lawyer Ahmed al-Gazawi detained in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has said he was arrested for smuggling drugs into the kingdom. Activists in Egypt, however, claim he was detained for insulting the king.

The Saudi Press Agency reported the kingdom’s decision to shut its mission was a result of the “unjustified protests” in Egypt and attempts to storm the Saudi embassy and consulates which “threatened the safety of its employees.”

The Brotherhood said the protests in front of the Saudi embassy reflected Egypt’s dignity.

“Protesters demonstrating in front of the embassy over the past few days were merely expressing the Egyptian people’s aspiration to preserve the dignity of their fellow citizens who visit, live or work in Arab countries,” it said in its statement.

“The people are voicing their conviction that insulting the dignity of Egyptians abroad is no longer tolerated, not after the peaceful revolution which restored their will, their voice and their dignity,” the statement added.

The FJP stressed that Egyptian-Saudi relations were far greater than any problem, adding that dialogue and transparency in these relations can solve any problem.

It also asked for an Egyptian team to join the investigations in Gazawi’s case.

“The FJP calls upon the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, as the de facto ruler of Egypt at present, to take concrete steps to solve the Gazawi issue in a manner which ensures Egyptians’ dignity, and at the same time preserves the strong Egyptian-Saudi relations,” the statement ended.

Government criticizes irresponsible protesters

Egypt’s ruling military sought to contain the fall-out from what it said was a surprise move by Saudi Arabia.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military council, called the authorities in Riyadh to “heal the rift” while the Egyptian cabinet stressed Egypt’s “love and respect” for Saudi Arabia.

Egypt’s foreign ministry bemoaned “irresponsible actions” by protesters at the embassy and said they were at odds with “deeply rooted Egyptian-Saudi ties”.

In response to a request by Tantawi to reopen the Cairo embassy and Saudi’s consulates in Suez and Alexandria, Saudi’s King Abdullah said he would look into the matter in the coming days, the Saudi news agency reported.

Monday, April 23, 2012

EU woos India for piracy battle

- Bloc pursues political project

SUJAN DUTTA

Northwood Headquarters, UK, April 22: Trophies from a war waged 30 years back decorate the Falklands Room in the officers’ mess of this military establishment of the UK just outside London.

Thirty years after that war in the South Atlantic, Northwood Headquarters is directing another overseas military mission, this time for the European Union, in the Indian Ocean.

The European Union is asking India to put its navy on board a new “forward from the seas” policy.

The new policy authorises warships and aircraft to bomb suspected pirate bases on Somalia’s coast.

“We now have permission to isolate pirates’ logistics sites,” said Admiral Duncan L. Potts, commander of Operation Atalanta — the name for the EU naval mission in the Indian Ocean.

In Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Union, the chief of the EU Military Staff, Lt Gen. Ton Van Osch, said: “I now have the political mandate to engage India.”

The changed rules of engagement in the counter-piracy war, the political mandate to militaries and the outreach to India come at a time the eurozone crisis has made it difficult for western European nations to sustain and underwrite the costs of long-distance armed conflict, even if that is to be waged against desperadoes from one of the world’s poorest countries, Somalia.

The EU is seeking Indian involvement in aerial surveillance, and for Autonomous Vessel Protection Detachments (AVPDs, or armed guards on board ships) and replenishments. The outreach to India is part of an EU programme under its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

“I know that in India the EU is seen as a trade bloc. But, in the end, the EU is a political project, not an economic project,” said David ’Sullivan, chief operations officer of the EU’s External Action Service, its foreign relations wing. The EU is also seeking deeper collaboration in counter-terrorism and cyber security.

But it is the naval mission on India’s western seaboard that the EU has prioritised for a military collaboration.

Operation Atalanta is being directed from Northwood Headquarters. In the 30 years since Operation Corporate — as the UK called its mission to free the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean of Argentine occupation in 1982 — Northwood Headquarters itself has changed.

The base, used for overseas operations of the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, Joint Staff, Nato and the European Union, now accommodates an international staff.

At the MSCHOA (Maritime Security Centre for the Horn of Africa), the naval team is peopled by naval personnel from countries across Europe — not all of them EU member-states — each with the flag of his/her country next to desktop computers that track ships and aircraft in the Indian Ocean in real-time from so many thousands of miles away.

The EU’s military staff say there is room for the Indian Tricolour.

Operationally, an Indian warship that has been escorting Indian convoys in the Gulf of Aden for four years now co-ordinates its movements with the EUNAVFOR (European Naval Force).

There is operational co-ordination between the Indian Navy and the Chinese navy, as there is with a Nato force.

The big difference in the EU’s invitation to India for closer co-operation now is in the changed rules of engagement (RoE) that it has given to its multinational naval deployment. So far restricted to escorting UN food programme vessels and deterring pirates at sea, the EU warships under Operation Atalanta were last month authorised to attack suspected pirate bases on Somalia’s coastline.

This they will do by firing from ships and from aircraft (likely to be ship-borne helicopters) but without putting “boots on the ground” — landing troops on the African country’s beaches.

The new RoE have not yet been in evidence. There is concern that they will lead to greater “collateral (civilian) damage”.

The new RoE are an extension of America’s concept for its navy in 21st-century warfare, summed up in a doctrine called “Forward... from the seas.”

“We have 2.4 million square miles of (the Indian) ocean to protect. The pirates attack at sea but piracy originates on land. These are sophisticated gangsters and criminals. We have permission to isolate logistics sites on shore. Our mission is intrinsically an ‘economy of effort’ operation,” said Adm. Potts, who commands Operation Atalanta.

He said that between January and March this year, India, China and Japan had shared intelligence with EUNAVFOR through an inter-agency outfit in the Seychelles.

In New Delhi, senior navy officers acknowledge the importance of deterring pirates on land. But they add that the new RoE for the EU warships are sensitive and fraught with consequences for civilians unless backed by sharp intelligence.

For more than a decade, Somalia has been without an effective centralised administration. The EU is supporting a transitional government militarily by training its soldiers in Uganda before sending them back home.

Indian officials worry about the impact of offensive military action in a continent where New Delhi has huge stakes and where it is competing with China for strategic space.

New Delhi is also sticking to its policy of deploying its military overseas only under the UN blue flag. The anti-piracy mission has a UN mandate but there is no UN force.

But Indian Navy officers admit that piracy originating in Somalia is getting dangerously close to home.

Indian defence sources are also sceptical of operations inside Somalia though they admit that piracy threatens to take a heavy toll on Indian lives and businesses.

In 1994, India sent about 4,500 soldiers into Somalia and a naval task force to patrol the waters off Mogadishu under UNOSOM II (United Nations Operations in Somalia). UNOSOM II was touted as a humanitarian mission with mostly US military escort.

It failed — its failure immortalised in the Hollywood film Black Hawk Down, based on an incident in which Somali militia shot down an American helicopter and dragged the bodies of the US soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu.

The Indian Army understood better than the Americans that the militia in Somalia operate on the basis of clans and tribes.

(The correspondent was recently in Brussels, Paris and London at the invitation of the EU for briefings on its security and defence policy)

Navy chief calls for demarcation of waters

World | India

Littoral navies plan strategy to tackle problem

IANS
Published: 00:00 April 23, 2012

New Delhi: India has called for "clear demarcation" of the pirate-infested waters of the Indian Ocean to warn merchant vessels and the navies of the threat and to prevent incidents such as the killing of two Indian fishermen by Italian commandos guarding a cargo ship.
This demand was made by Indian Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma at the recent biennial Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) held in Cape Town, South Africa, where the issue of piracy which afflicts the Gulf of Aden was the key focus of discussions.
The IONS meeting, attended by 22 navies of the 35 littoral nations of the Indian Ocean, also decided to have common procedures for jointly fighting piracy in the region, apart from developing concepts for cooperative efforts at Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), according to Indian Navy's assistant chief (Foreign Cooperation and Intelligence) Rear Admiral Monty Khanna.
Apart from the naval and shipping aspect to Verma's demand for clear demarcation, a major area of concern for the trade via the sea, particularly for those in India, was the high premium they have to pay for insuring the goods passing through the Indian Ocean.
Since Somali pirate activity was observed in eastern Arabian Sea in October-November 2010, the London-based maritime agencies designated the region as pirate-infested and hiked insurance premium for cargo vessels passing through the region.
However, the Indian Navy has pointed out that it has, apart from deploying a warship in Gulf of Aden since October 2007 to escort cargo ships, had increased its patrol of the eastern Arabian Sea from October 2010 and since then, there has been no pirate-related incident closer to the Indian sub-continent.
India, hence, wants the international agencies to rationalise the demarcation at regular intervals and tweak insurance premium for cargo ships passing through eastern Arabian sea. It also pointed out that the Italian commandos had fatally attacked the Indian fishermen in the eastern Arabian Sea, since they were still under the impression the area is infested by pirates, all due to irrationality of piracy notifications.
The IONS meet also wanted the littoral navies to evolve common strategies to tackle piracy in the Indian Ocean region.

Somalia and Palestine re-establish diplomatic relations

Updated:- 21 hours ago| 0 Commnets

The Palestinian National Authority has appointed a new ambassador to Somalia, joining the Arab League members Sudan, Libya, Djibouti and Yemen in setting up representation in the increasingly stable country.

Envoy Kamil Abdallah Saturday presented his credentials to Somalia President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed at the state house in Mogadishu.

The diplomat also passed on to President Ahmed a special message from the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

With the fundamentalist Al-Shabaab group having vacated most of its positions in the Somali capital, more countries and agencies have set up shop.

Ethiopia and Turkey are represented, as are European Union members Italy and Britain.

The UN also moved its Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) there earlier this year.

Almost all diplomatic staff were eveacuated from Mogadishu at the start of Somalia’s civil war in January 1991 when Gen Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime collapsed under pressure from rebel groups.

Elsewhere, at least ten people were reported dead after armed men from different pirate groups triggered heavy fighting in Haradhere district, some 400 kilometres north east of Mogadishu on Saturday.

At least a dozen were taken to hospital, reports said.

Source: Africa Review

HORSEED MEDIA

Updated:- 21 hours ago|