Police make new arrest in Savile case

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have arrested a man in his 60s from the central English county of Bedfordshire as part of an investigation into alleged child abuse centering on former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile.

Police said in a statement the man, who they declined to name, was arrested on Thursday morning on suspicion of sexual offences and taken into custody.

It said that so far 450 victims have come forward and that police had recorded 200 allegations of sexual assault.

Police are dividing their investigation into three strands: offences allegedly committed alone by Savile, who died last year aged 84, offences committed by him with others and offences committed by others alone.

The statement said Thursday's arrest fell into the third category, "others." It was the fourth arrest in an operation police have codenamed "Yewtree".

The allegations of abuse have shaken Britain's state-funded broadcaster and shocked fans of Savile, who was as famous for his charity work as he was for his eccentric TV style.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

China names conservative, older leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party unveiled an older, conservative leadership line-up on Thursday that appears unlikely to take the drastic action needed to tackle pressing issues like social unrest, environmental degradation and corruption.

New party chief Xi Jinping, premier-in-waiting Li Keqiang and vice-premier in charge of economic affairs Wang Qishan, all named as expected to the elite decision-making Politburo Standing Committee, are considered cautious reformers. The other four members have the reputation of being conservative.

The line-up belied any hopes that Xi would usher in a leadership that would take bold steps to deal with slowing growth in the world's second-biggest economy, or begin to ease the Communist Party's iron grip on the most populous nation.

"We're not going to see any political reform because too many people in the system see it as a slippery slope to extinction," said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.

"They see it entirely through the prism of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring and the Colour Revolutions in Central Asia, so they're not going to go there."

Vice-Premier Wang, the most reform-minded in the line-up, has been given the role of fighting widespread graft, identified by both Xi and outgoing President Hu Jintao as the biggest danger faced by the party and the state.

The run-up to the handover has been overshadowed by the party's biggest scandal in decades, with former high-flyer Bo Xilai sacked as party boss of southwestern Chongqing city after his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman.

Bo, who has not been seen in public since early this year, faces possible charges of corruption and abuse of power.

One source said an informal poll was held by over 200 voting members in the party's central committee to choose the seven members of the standing committee from among 10 candidates. Two of them who had strong reform credentials - Guangdong party boss Wang Yang and party organization head Li Yuanchao - failed to make it, along with the lone woman candidate Liu Yandong.

The source, who has ties to the leadership, told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Wang and Li Yuanchao, both allies of Hu, did not make it to the standing committee because party elders felt they were too liberal.

However, all three are in the 25-member Politburo, a group that ranks below the standing committee. It was earlier believed the voting was confined to the Politburo.

OLDER

In the end, the seven-member leadership has an average age of 63.4 years compared with 62.1 five years ago. Xi led the others out in a parade at the Great Hall of the People, with all seven dressed in identical dark blue suits, all but one set off by red or maroon ties.

The final line-up of the team and even the number was speculated on for weeks. The committee was cut to seven members from nine, which should ease consensus building and decision making.

Except for Xi and his deputy Li Keqiang, all the others in the standing committee - the innermost circle of power in China's authoritarian government - are 64 or above and will have to retire within five years, when the next party congress is held.

That means the party may just tread water on the most vital reforms until then, although after that, Xi would probably have more independence in choosing his team. The current line-up has been finalized by Xi and Hu, and by former president Jiang Zemin, who has wielded considerable influence in the party after the tumult over the Bo Xilai scandal.

Wang and Li Yuanchao could make it to the standing committee at the next party congress in 2017, perhaps along with so-called "sixth generation" leaders like Inner Mongolia party chief Hu Chunhua.

"The leadership is divided," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong Baptist University, adding however that the new leadership would find it easier to make progress on economic reform rather than political change.

"It's easier for them to move to a new growth model. I think they agree upon that and that won't be the hardest task. But I see a lot of political paralysis."

Tony Saich, a China politics expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said: "To me it smacks of a holding pattern. I think the understanding is that Wang Yang has a good shot in five years' time."

"SEVERE CHALLENGES"

Besides party chief, Xi was also appointed head of the party's top military body, which gives him two of the three most important posts in the country. He will take over from Hu as president in March.

Jiang, who was Hu's predecessor, did not give up the military post until two years after giving up the party leadership.

Xi said in an address that he understood the people's desire for a better life but warned of severe challenges going forward.

"We are not complacent, and we will never rest on our laurels," he said after introducing the standing committee at the Great Hall of the People in a carefully choreographed ceremony carried live on state television.

"Under the new conditions, our party faces many severe challenges, and there are also many pressing problems within the party that need to be resolved, particularly corruption, being divorced from the people, going through formalities and bureaucracy caused by some party officials."

North Korean-trained economist Zhang Dejiang is expected to head the largely rubber-stamp parliament, while Shanghai party boss Yu Zhengsheng is likely to head parliament's advisory body, according to the order in which their names were announced.

Tianjin party chief Zhang Gaoli and Liu Yunshan, a conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash, make up the rest of the group. Zhang should become executive vice premier.

"Words from the new leadership will be reform-minded, but deeds would be very cautious at least in economic and financial restructuring," said Alberto Forchielli, managing partner at Mandarin Capital Partners in Shanghai.

Advocates of reform are pressing Xi to cut back the privileges of state-owned firms, make it easier for rural migrants to settle in cities, fix a fiscal system that encourages local governments to live off land expropriations and, above all, tether the powers of a state that they say risks suffocating growth and fanning discontent.

With growing public anger and unrest over everything from corruption to environmental degradation, there may also be cautious efforts to answer calls for more political reform, though nobody seriously expects a move towards full democracy.

The party could introduce experimental measures to broaden inner-party democracy - in other words, encouraging greater debate within the party - but stability remains a top concern and one-party rule will be safeguarded.

In contrast to the mounting excitement until the announcement of the standing committee at the Great Hall of the People, the unveiling barely caused a ripple in China's vast countryside.

"We're not really that interested," said Chen Yongjiang, a fruit and vegetable farmer in Chenjiapu, a snow-covered village in Hebei province.

"For those of us in the farmlands and the mountains, as long as they make life better for us, we're happy."

(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim, Sabrina Mao and Sally Huang; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Ireland to clarify abortion rules after woman's death

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's government on Thursday pledged to clarify its abortion laws after a woman, who was denied a termination, died from septicemia in an Irish hospital.

Thousands held a candle-lit vigil outside parliament on Wednesday after news broke of the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian Hindu, following a miscarriage 17 weeks into her pregnancy.

Activists in Ireland, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country which has some of the world's most restrictive laws on abortion, say a lack of legal clarity about when termination's are justified may have contributed to her death.

"I was deeply disturbed yesterday by what Savita's husband said. I don't think as a country we should allow a situation where women's rights are put at risk in this way," Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told parliament on Thursday.

"There is no question of equivocation. We need to bring legal clarity to this issue and that is what we are going to do," he said.

Irish law does not specify under what circumstances the threat to the life or health of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide.

After several challenges, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2010 that Ireland must clarify its position.

The government has received recommendations from an expert panel after a delay of several months and would report before the end of the month, Gilmore said. Critics say the government has been dragging its heels to avoid confronting the issue.

The fact that Halappanavar is a foreign national has heightened the government's embarrassment. The story was on the front of several large Indian newspapers on Thursday.

The Indian government said on Thursday it deeply regretted Halappanavar's death. "The death of an Indian national in such circumstances is a matter of concern," a spokesman said.

Her death has dominated debate in Ireland's parliament since news of it broke on Wednesday.

Her photograph was spread across the front pages of all Ireland's major newspapers on Thursday, while editorials demanded action from politicians, who have failed for decades to clarify the law.

In 1992, when challenged in the "X-case" involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted when the woman's life was at risk, but an earlier constitutional amendment banning abortion remains in place.

Despite a dramatic waning of the influence of the Catholic Church, which dominated politics in the country until the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Dehli; Editing by Louise Ireland)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Russia threatens tough response if U.S. backs rights bill

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia warned the United States on Thursday to expect a tough response if Congress passes "unfriendly and provocative" legislation designed to punish Russian officials for human rights violations.

The Foreign Ministry said U.S.-Russian ties were sure to suffer if lawmakers back a move directing the U.S. government to deny visas to Russian officials involved in the detention, abuse or death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in jail in 2009.

"Such a step will unavoidably have a negative effect on the whole range of Russian-U.S. relations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a news briefing.

"We will certainly not leave the introduction of essentially anti-Russian visa and financial sanctions without consequences," he said. "We will have to react, and react toughly, depending on the final version of this unfriendly provocative act."

It did not specify how Russia would react to passage of what has become known as the Magnitsky bill, under which any Russian officials accused of involvement in the case would have any assets they hold in U.S. banks frozen.

Magnitsky has posthumously become a symbol of corruption and abuse of Russians who challenge the authorities. Adoption of the bill could undermine efforts to smooth relations at the start of President Barack Obama's new term.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has welcomed Obama's re-election and said he wants to improve ties and increase trade, but has made clear he will not tolerate criticism from the United States about human rights.

Lukashevich used tough language to condemn the state of human rights in the United States.

"Considering very crude violations of human rights in the United States itself, including the practical legalization of torture and the indefinite holding of inmates without trial in special CIA prisons and at the Gauntanamo base (in Cuba), the United States has no moral right to preach or moralize to other countries," he said.

The United States must establish "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with Russia if it wants to ensure U.S. companies receive all the market-opening benefits of Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization in August.

Russia joined the WTO after 18 years of negotiations with strong support from the Obama administration, whose push to bring Russia into the global trade rules body was part of the U.S. president's first-term "reset" of relations with Moscow.

Establishing PNTR requires lawmakers to lift a Cold War-era provision, the Jackson-Vanik amendment, that tied favorable U.S. tariffs on Russian goods to the rights of Soviet Jews.

LINKING TRADE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The amendment is outdated, but U.S. lawmakers are reluctant to remove it without passing legislation to keep pressure on Moscow over their human rights concerns, which have deepened since Putin returned to the presidency in May.

The U.S. House of Representatives was expected to vote on Friday on a package that would combine the PNTR bill with the Magnitsky legislation.

"Today's commentary is being made in order to show the American lawmakers that the movement should be in the exact opposite direction," Lukashevich said.

He said Russian-U.S. relations were moving in a positive direction but added: "This positive could very easily evaporate, unfortunately."

Russian officials have indicated Moscow might respond in kind by barring entry to Americans deemed to have violated human rights. Other moves cannot be ruled out.

Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 on suspicion of tax evasion and fraud, charges colleagues say were fabricated by police investigators he had accused of stealing $230 million from the state through fraudulent tax refunds. The Kremlin's own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.

Obama's administration says it understands concerns over rights abuses but that the bill, being pushed by lawmakers, is redundant because Washington has already imposed visa restrictions on some Russians thought to have been involved in Magnitsky's death. It has not disclosed their names.

(Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; editing by Timothy Heritage and Keiron Henderson)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Spain suspends home evictions for most needy

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain approved measures on Thursday to help the most needy families facing eviction, a growing problem in the recession-bound nation highlighted last week by the suicide of a woman whose home bailiffs came to seize.

The government said it would suspend evictions for two years for vulnerable homeowners who can no longer pay back debt, including those with small children, the disabled and long-term unemployed.

"This is an emergency response to mitigate the effects of the worst of the economic crisis," Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said at a weekly press conference.

In a country where a million homes lie empty, the legacy of a decade-long housing boom that crashed in 2008, Spain will also increase the amount of social housing available at low rents for people who have lost their homes, she said.

Spanish banks, many of which are about to receive the first funds from a 100 billion euro ($127 billion) credit line from a European bailout, have repossessed 400,000 properties since 2008, though not all of these are residential.

The trend is growing, with 50,000 repossessions in the first half of the year, compared with 77,000 for the whole of 2011.

Though most evictions following the real estate crash involved immigrants, more Spaniards are now losing their homes, experts say, as unemployment benefit runs out and family networks fray in the worst recession in half a century.

"Over the last year, more and more Spaniards have been affected rather than immigrants who have less family support," said Mauricio Valiente, a lawyer who helps evicted people.

The death last Friday of 53-year-old Amaia Egana, who jumped from her fourth-floor flat in the Basque Country as bailiffs came to turn her out of her home, grabbed headlines and pushed the issue to the top of the political agenda.

It was the second such suicide in as many months.

The eviction moratorium will only apply to families with household income of less than 19,200 euros a year.

The government is wary of creating the image that Spain is relaxing rules on the payment of mortgage debt. Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the measures would not have an effect on the Spanish mortgage market.

"The problem in Spain is not residential mortgages but loans to real estate developers," he said. Developers owe nearly 300 billion euros to banks, about 30 percent of gross domestic product.

Mortgage law in Spain is among the toughest in Europe. Homeowners remain liable for what they owe on their loan, even after returning the house to the bank, if the value of the house does not cancel out the entire mortgage debt.

In a country where home ownership is over 80 percent, residential mortgages classified as doubtful at end-June stood at 3 percent of the total, a fraction of the 27 percent classed as doubtful on loans to real estate developers, Bank of Spain data shows.

By contrast, 11 percent of residential mortgages in Ireland - also suffering the aftermath of a housing crash - were in default at end-June.

A point of concern for investors is that any change in the mortgage law could affect mortgage-backed bonds, a major source of financing for Spanish banks.

Spanish banks have 426 billion euros of these securities in circulation, according to the Spanish Mortgage Association, with a large part parked in the European Central Bank as collateral for funding.

If rules were relaxed on paying back mortgages, defaults could shoot up, weakening the loans backing these securities.

But borrowers facing eviction will already be several months, perhaps years, in arrears, and a moratorium for the most needy would not affect covered bonds, analysts said, as these loans would probably already have been written off by banks.

"What would concern investors is if a change in law reduces collateral to issue mortgage-backed bonds in the market or access the European Central Bank," said Bernd Volk, covered bond analyst at Deutsche Bank. "But I can't see this happening because of a freeze in foreclosures."

($1 = 0.7856 euros)

(Additional reporting by Aimee Donnellan in London, Paul Day in Madrid and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; editing by David Stamp and Will Waterman)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

War looms over Gaza as death toll rises

GAZA (Reuters) - A Hamas rocket killed three Israelis north of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, drawing the first blood from Israel as the Palestinian death toll rose to 15 in a military showdown lurching closer to all-out war and an invasion of the enclave.

On the second day of an assault Israel said might last many days and culminate in a ground attack, its warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza city, where tall buildings trembled.

Plumes of smoke and dust furled into a sky laced with the vapor trails of outgoing rockets.

The sudden conflict, launched by Israel with the killing of Hamas's military chief, pours oil on the fire of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of revolution and an out-of-control civil war in Syria. Palestinian allies, led by Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, denounced the Israeli offensive.

After watching powerlessly from the sidelines of the Arab Spring, Israel has been thrust to the centre of a volatile new world in which Islamist Hamas believes that Mursi and his newly dominant Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will be its protectors.

The Palestinian Islamist group claimed it had fired a one-ton, Iranian-made Fajr 5 rocket at Tel Aviv in what would be a major escalation, but there was no reported impact in the Israeli metropolis 50 km (30 miles) north of the enclave.

"The Israelis must realize that this aggression is unacceptable and would only lead to instability in the region and would negatively and greatly impact the security of the region," Mursi said, although there was no immediate sign of robust action by Egypt, Israel's most powerful Arab neighbor.

The new conflict will be the biggest test yet of Mursi's commitment to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which the West views as the bedrock of Middle East peace.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which brought Mursi to power in an election after the downfall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, has called for a 'Day of Rage' in Arab capitals on Friday. The Brotherhood is seen as the spiritual mentors of Hamas.

ASSASSINATION

The offensive began on Wednesday when a precision Israeli airstrike assassinated Hamas military mastermind Ahmed Al-Jaabari, and Israel shelled the enclave from land, air and sea.

The 15 killed in Gaza included Jaabari and six Hamas fighters plus eight civilians, among them a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and three infants, according to the enclave's health ministry. Medics reported at least 130 wounded.

At Jaabari's funeral on Thursday, supporters fired guns in the air celebrating news of the Israeli deaths, to chants for Jaabari of "You have won." His corpse was borne through the streets wrapped in a bloodied white sheet. But senior Hamas figures were not in evidence, wary of Israel's warning that they are now in its crosshairs.

The Israeli army said 156 targets were hit in Gaza, 126 of them rocket launchers. It said 200 rockets had struck Israel since the start of the operation, 135 of them since midnight.

Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system has so far shot down 81 rockets headed towards residential areas, the military said.

One of those that got through caught its victims before they could reach the blast shelters that are everywhere in the Negev region, prey to sporadic Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza for the past five years.

Israeli police said the three died when a rocket hit a four-story building in the town of Kiryat Malachi, some 25 km (15 miles) north of Gaza. They were the first Israeli fatalities of the latest conflict to hit the coastal region.

Expecting days or more of fighting and almost inevitable civilian casualties, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in Gaza telling residents to stay away from Hamas and other militants.

The United States condemned Hamas, shunned by the West as an obstacle to peace for its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel.

"There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel," said Mark Toner, deputy State Department spokesman.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting late on Wednesday to discuss the Israeli assault, but took no action.

In France, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: "It would be a catastrophe if there is an escalation in the region. Israel has the right to security but it won't achieve it through violence. The Palestinians also have the right to a state."

"GATES OF HELL"

Israel's sworn enemy Iran, which supports and arms Hamas, condemned the Israeli offensive as "organized terrorism". Lebanon's Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia Hezbollah, which has its own rockets aimed at the Jewish state, denounced strikes on Gaza as "criminal aggression", but held its fire.

Oil prices rose more than $1 as the crisis grew. Israeli shares and bonds fell, while Israel's currency rose off Wednesday's lows, when the shekel slid more than 1 percent to a two-month low against the dollar.

A second Gaza war has loomed on the horizon for months as waves of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli strikes grew increasingly intense and frequent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favored in polls to win a January 22 general election, said on Wednesday the Gaza operation could be stepped up.

His cabinet has granted authorization for the mobilization of military reserves if required to press the offensive, dubbed "Pillar of Defence" in English and "Pillar of Cloud" in Hebrew after the Israelites' divine sign of deliverance in Exodus.

Hamas has said the killing of its top commander In a precision, death-from-above airstrike, would "open the gates of hell" for Israel. It appealed to Egypt to halt the assault.

Israel has been anxious since Mubarak was toppled last year in the Arab Spring revolts that replaced secularist strongmen with elected Islamists in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, and brought civil war to Israel's other big neighbor Syria.

Cairo recalled its ambassador from Israel on Wednesday. Israel's ambassador left Cairo on what was called a routine home visit and Israel said its embassy would stay open.

Gaza has an estimated 35,000 Palestinian fighters, no match for Israel's F-16 fighter-bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and other modern weapons systems in the hands of a conscript force of 175,000, with 450,000 in reserve.

(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Erika Solomon in Beirut, John Irish in Paris. Marwa Awad in Cairo.; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Peter Graff)

(This story was corrected to remove reference to U.N. Security Council calling for halt to violence in paragraph 20. The Council met and India's ambassador, who is president of the body, called for a halt to violence, but he spoke on behalf of India not on behalf of the Council.)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Britain accuses Spain of new naval incursions in Gibraltar

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain condemned what it called "provocative incursions" into waters around the British territory of Gibraltar by Spanish navy and customs ships, and summoned Spain's ambassador on Thursday to express its concern over the issue.

The spat is part of a long-running dispute over Gibraltar, a peninsula in southern Spain ceded to the British in 1713.

Britain's Minister for Europe David Lidington noted two "serious incursions" into Gibraltar's waters on Tuesday.

"The UK has repeatedly made diplomatic protests to Spain over attempts by Spanish state authorities to exercise jurisdiction in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters," Lidington said in a statement.

"I condemn these provocative incursions and urge the Spanish government to ensure that they are not repeated," he said.

British Foreign Office Permanent Under Secretary Simon Fraser has summoned Spanish ambassador Federico Trillo, the Foreign Office said.

No one at Spain's Foreign Ministry or at the Spanish embassy in London was immediately available for comment.

Earlier this year, Spain accused police from Gibraltar of chasing its fishermen from Spanish waters and deployed Civil Guard officers to protect their boats.

Gibraltar and Britain said the police were enforcing fishing laws within their waters.

Spain's Queen Sofia pulled out of a lunch to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Britain's Queen Elizabeth earlier this year as the dispute escalated.

Spain's centre-right government led by Mariano Rajoy has taken a strong line on Gibraltar, which houses traditional British red phone boxes, pubs and fish and chip shops.

(Reporting by Mohammed Abbas; Editing by Louise Ireland)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Powers to map Iran strategy, Tehran wants to meet soon

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Major powers will discuss negotiating strategy towards Iran next Wednesday amid signs of a renewed push to resolve the nuclear dispute peacefully after U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election last week.

Obama and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator this week have separately made clear their desire to resume diplomacy that has been deadlocked since a meeting between six world powers and Iran ended without a breakthrough in June.

Obama's November 6 election victory raised hopes of a revival of negotiations after speculation that Israel might strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will host a meeting of representatives of the six powers in Brussels on Wednesday, as part of efforts to dissuade Iran from its nuclear program, a spokeswoman for Ashton said on Thursday.

"This is part of the ongoing ... consultations to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue," the spokeswoman said, giving no further detail.

The six powers are the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. Western powers suspect Iran is secretly developing the ability to produce nuclear bombs. Tehran denies this, saying its program is entirely peaceful.

Obama told a news conference on Wednesday that reports that emerged before his re-election of impending U.S. talks with Iran were "not true and ... are not true as of today." But he said diplomacy remained his preferred option.

In Tehran, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, reaffirmed Iran's "constant readiness" for talks, Iran's English-language state Press TV quoted him as saying in a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Wednesday.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that the P5+1 group will return to the negotiating table at the earliest (possible time)," its website quoted him as saying.

The six big powers have sought to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear program through economic sanctions and diplomacy.

They have failed to achieve a breakthrough in three rounds of talks since April. But neither side has been willing to break them off, in part because of concerns that this could lead to a new war in the Middle East if Israel attacked its arch-foe.

EU and U.S. sanctions have made it harder for Iran to sell and transport its oil, but Tehran has shown no sign of backing down on the nuclear work.

Western diplomats expect the U.N. nuclear agency's next quarterly Iran report, likely to be submitted to member states on Friday, to show the Islamic state further expanding its uranium enrichment capacity.

(Reporting by Sebastian Moffett; additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Jon Boyle)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

U.S. stops short of recognizing Syrian opposition body

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States declined to follow France in fully recognizing a fledgling Syrian opposition coalition on Wednesday, saying the body must prove its worth, after its predecessor was dogged by feuding and accusations of Islamist domination.

Syria decried the new grouping, which it said had closed the door to a negotiated solution with President Bashar al-Assad.

"The whole world, and Syria too, says the problem in Syria should be solved in a peaceful framework and through a national dialogue, (but) the first decision taken after forming the coalition in Doha was to reject dialogue and to continue the war," Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said.

"They want to destroy Syria," he told Russia Today in an interview that was also carried on Syria's state news agency.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the formation of the coalition, which supersedes the widely discredited Syrian National Council as the face of the Syrian opposition, was an important step, but did not offer it full recognition or arms.

"We have long called for this kind of organization. We want to see that momentum maintained," Clinton told reporters in the Australian city of Perth. "As the Syrian opposition takes these steps and demonstrates its effectiveness in advancing the cause of a unified, democratic, pluralistic Syria, we will be prepared to work with them to deliver assistance to the Syrian people."

The new body brings the Syrian National Council, the hapless former main opposition group seen as under the sway of Islamists and out of touch with rebels on the ground, into a broader bloc with factions inside and outside Syria including rebel fighters, veteran dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities.

On Tuesday France hailed the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces "as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people and as future government of a democratic Syria" - the first Western power to go that far.

Six Gulf Arab states had taken that step the day before, but the Arab League and most European countries hung back.

President Francois Hollande's decisive posture on Syria recalled that of his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy on Libya last year, when France led calls for NATO action to protect civilians that effectively helped Libyan rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi.

The European Union bans weapons sales to Syria, but Hollande said the question of arming rebels would be examined once the coalition formed a transitional government. Paris had previously ruled this out, fearing arms could reach Islamist militants.

"NO EXCUSE"

Suhair al-Atassi, a vice president of the new coalition, said that once it had proved it represents "revolutionary forces" on the ground, there would be no pretext for Western powers not to provide some form of military backing.

"The ball now is in the international community's court," she told Reuters in an interview in Doha, blaming Western reticence to arm the rebels for the rise of extremism in Syria.

"There is no more excuse to say we are waiting to see how efficient this new body is. They used to put the opposition to the test. Now we put them to the test," she declared.

Syrian insurgents have few weapons against Assad's air force and artillery, which can pound rebel-held territory at will.

A Syrian warplane bombed the town of Ras al-Ain near the Turkish border again on Wednesday, rocking buildings on the frontier and sending up huge plumes of smoke, in the latest of several air strikes since rebels captured the town last week.

Air force jets also attacked rebel enclaves in Damascus, an opposition activist in the Syrian capital said.

"The planes are firing rockets at the neighborhoods of Qaboun and Jobar. They are flying high and you can hear the impact of the rockets," Yasmine al-Shami said by phone.

Israel, which twice shot back this week after stray Syrian fire hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, said rebels held most of the villages on the ridge's eastern slopes.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on a trip to the Golan that Assad's grip was undergoing "painful disintegration" and his military was becoming less efficient.

"Almost all of the villages at the foot of this ridge, and on upward, are already in rebel hands," Barak said on the Golan, captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The conflict in Syria has already cost more than 38,000 lives in the past 20 months. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict via a network of contacts, reported 210 deaths on Tuesday alone.

Assad's foes have been divided throughout the struggle, but a more inclusive opposition coalition, led by Damascus preacher Mouaz Alkhatib, emerged on Sunday after days of talks in Qatar.

Alkhatib will fly to London on Thursday and meet Britain's foreign minister and senior French and Qatari officials the next day, according to Syrian coalition officials.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the Syrian leader had also been invited to Paris.

Clinton announced an extra $30 million in aid to those affected by the war in Syria, to be delivered via the United Nations' World Food Programme, which is supplying food to more than a million people in Syria and to 408,000 Syrian refugees.

The United States says it is sending only humanitarian aid and non-lethal assistance to Assad's opponents, but acknowledges that some of its allies are arming the rebels - something which Russia says shows Western powers want to decide Syria's future.

Russia and China have blocked any U.N. Security Council action on Syria, prompting Washington and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.

So far, concerted action on Syria has been thwarted by divisions within the opposition, as well as by big power rivalries and a regional divide between Sunni Muslim foes of Assad and his Shi'ite Muslim allies in Iran and Lebanon.

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general blamed Western, Turkish and Arab meddling for the bloodshed in Syria.

"They must leave the government and people of Syria alone so they can take the necessary decision about the kind of government in Syria," Brigadier-General Massoud Jazayeri was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, John Irish in Paris, David Brunnstrom in Perth, Australia, Rania El Gamal in Doha, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Jonathon Burch in Ceylanpinar, Turkey; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More

Pakistan to consider releasing former Taliban second-in-command

KABUL (Reuters) - Pakistan will consider freeing former Afghan Taliban second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, if current releases of lower level members help to advance peace efforts, officials from both countries said on Thursday.

"After releasing 13 Taliban, Pakistan promised to free Mullah Baradar if these releases prove effective in peace negotiations," a senior Afghan official close to talks between Islamabad and Kabul told Reuters.

Afghanistan has been pushing Pakistan to release Afghan Taliban captives who could provide leverage in any peace talks with the movement.

Kabul has long been suspicious of its powerful neighbor's intentions. Pakistan has gained credibility in the Afghan peace process by agreeing to release mid-level Taliban over the last two days.

But Pakistan is under growing pressure to free senior Taliban figures such as Baradar to boost reconciliation efforts, as most NATO combat troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and anxiety grows over the country's security.

Afghan officials believe he may command enough respect to persuade the Taliban to engage in talks with the Kabul government.

Asked if Baradar would also be freed, a senior Pakistani foreign ministry official said that was possible if the release of the Taliban figures "produced results".

"We've released about a dozen mid-level Taliban commanders now. The impact of this on reconciliation efforts and the peace process will determine the number and pace of future releases, as well as releases of high-level prisoners."

In August, senior officials from both countries said Afghan delegates held secret talks with Baradar, who was caught in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010.

The Afghan government believes Baradar is more open to dialogue than many of his comrades. It is not entirely clear whether Baradar would promote peace or war against President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government if he returns home.

As military chief of the Taliban, he supervised ambushes and roadside bombings that proved highly effective against some of the world's most powerful armies. But he was also known as a leader that could secure compromises.

In the months before his arrest, Baradar authorized contacts with United Nations representatives to explore the possibility of dialogue, former U.N. and Taliban members said.

Afghan officials have often viewed Pakistan as a reluctant partner in its attempts to broker talks with the Taliban.

They believe Pakistan is holding Baradar and other senior Taliban figures to influence any settlement of the Afghan war now in its 11th year.

Afghans fear failure to secure a peace deal before 2014 could trigger a civil war, or give the Taliban a chance to seize power again.

A senior Afghan official told Reuters last week that no breakthrough was expected anytime soon. The Taliban said in March they were suspending separate peace talks with the United States held in Qatar because of "vague" U.S. statements.

Pakistan joined the U.S. war on militancy after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks in 2001.

But U.S. officials accuse it of using Afghan insurgent groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani network as proxies to counter the influence of India in Afghanistan.

Pakistan denies the allegations and says it has sacrificed more than any other country in the fight against militancy.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi in KABUL and Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Islamabad; writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Keiron Henderson)

00.25 | 0 komentar | Read More