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Oic hezbollah slam Isarael over building on muslim cemetery

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Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Hezbollah slamed Israel over building on Muslim cemetery in Al Quds.

The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, expressed his strong condemnation of the decision made by an Israeli court to allow bulldozing Maman Allah cemetery in the City of Al Quds, as the graveyard is an Islamic Waqf that includes Islamic endowed buildings and the remains of tens of thousands of Muslims, notably the Prophet’s Companions, Muslim martyrs and scholars.

The Israeli High Court on Wednesday rejected appeals by two Muslim organisations which complained that the museum would be built over part of an ancient Muslim cemetery.

The Secretary General considered that the desecration of graves and the remains of dead Muslims is a gross violation of the sanctity of the dead, just as it is a blatant infringement of Muslim endowments built on the same site.

Ihsanoglu noted that since Israel engaged in the desecration of the graveyard and the exhumation of Muslim graves, the OIC has issued a warning about the gravity of the Israeli attacks on Muslim graves. He also initiated contacts with the UN Secretary General and the Director General of UNESCO and a number of officials in the world to stop this flagrant aggression.

Ihsanoglu called upon the international community to intervene in order to hold Israel from carrying through its criminal act and put an immediate end to the desecration of Muslim cemeteries and aggression against Muslim property and sacred sites.

Also, Lebanese Hezbollah on Sunday slammed Israel for allowing the construction of a "Museum" on the site of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

A statement said, Hezbollah issues "its strongest condemnation for the desecration of a historic Islamic cemetery in occupied Jerusalem permitted by the (Israeli) enemy by allowing an American company to build a museum on the site."

Hezbollah called for Arab, Muslim and international action to put an end to these racist and inhumane practices.

"They cannot transform the original identity of the sacred city from its original Palestinian identity," the statement added.

Agencies

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Hamas urges fatah to release political prisoners in wbank jails

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A senior Hamas delegation will travel to Egypt on Monday to put its view to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is steering Cairo’s initiative, senior Hamas official said.

Hamas wants Fatah to halt a campaign of "arrests and repression" against the Islamist group in the West Bank, a top Hamas official said on Sunday.

Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas’s group, along with smaller Palestinian factions to a meeting in Cairo on Nov. 9 to settle the conflict between the two heavyweights, which deepened after Hamas seized control of Gaza last year and Abbas started talks with Israel.

"It is impossible for Hamas to participate in the dialogue with a single prisoner remaining in Abbas’s jails," Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital.

"The campaign of arrests and repression is expanding as the date for the Cairo dialogue nears. It is competing with the Israeli occupation in viciousness," he added.

Rishq said Fatah was holding some 400 Hamas members in West Bank jails it controls and was extending a crackdown on Hamas in Hebron, the West Bank’s biggest city, to surrounding villages.

A senior Hamas delegation will travel to Egypt on Monday to put its view to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is steering Cairo’s initiative, he added.

Suleiman has been holding separate talks with all the Palestinian factions. A previous attempt to bring Hamas and Fatah together in Cairo failed, Palestinian sources said.

"We have communicated with Egyptian leadership, explained how dangerous the situation is in the West Bank and asked them for quick action to make the Cairo dialogue a success," said Rishq, who lives in exile in Syria along with other high-level members of Hamas, including its leader Khaled Meshaal.

Amending paper

Hamas and Fatah disagree on how to approach talks with Israel and how to resolve the dispute which led to Hamas taking control of the tiny Gaza Strip.

Hamas routed Abbas’s forces in Gaza in June 2007. In response, Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led Palestinian government and appointed a new administration in the occupied West Bank, where Fatah holds sway.

On Saturday Abbas sent hundreds of security officers to Hebron, where a minority of Jewish settlers live, as part of an Israeli- and Western-backed strategy to strengthen his control over the occupied West Bank.

Hamas recently released around 20 members of Fatah it described as political prisoners in Gaza, in what it said was a gesture before the Palestinian unity talks, and Rishq said the group no longer holds any Fatah members in Gaza.

He said Hamas wants Egypt to amend a reconciliation paper due to be discussed at the Nov. 9 meeting.

Hamas wants the paper to leave out issues such as extending Abbas’s presidential term, which expires in January, unless this is part of a comprehensive settlement, and giving him a new mandate to negotiate with Israel.

"We have observations about the Egyptian paper and we insist on reaching a consensus on it before the talks are under way," Rishq said.

Reuters

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Libyas kadhafi touts energy ties in talks with russian leader

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Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi focused on oil and gas ties in a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today, starting talks which are also expected to touch on arms purchases and nuclear energy.

"Cooperation in the gas and oil sphere is extremely important now.

We have common approaches to gas and oil policies," the leader of energy-rich Libya told Medvedev, speaking through a Russian translator.

"We will discuss economic issues and coordination in the foreign-policy sphere, matters which are very important at the moment," Medvedev said.

Kadhafi arrived at the Kremlin dressed in a tan coat draped over his trademark robes and accompanied by a stern-looking female bodyguard in green uniform and red beret.

He was due to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin later at 1400 GMT, after arriving Friday on his first visit to Moscow since Cold War days in 1985.

Kadhafi may sign a pact on Russian-Libyan nuclear energy cooperation, the Vedomosti newspaper reported today, citing a source involved in preparations for his visit.

The source did not give details but Russia has reportedly been in talks to build a nuclear power plant in Libya, a longtime pariah that has sought to rejoin the international fold in recent years.

Other expected topics include a multi-billion-dollar deal to upgrade Libya’s Soviet-era arsenal and lucrative contracts for Russian firms.

Libya might also offer to host a Russian naval base at the Mediterranean port of Benghazi, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Friday.

"The Russian military presence will be a guarantee of non-aggression against Libya from the United States," it said.

Kommersant added that Moscow wants Tripoli to join a "gas OPEC" with itself and Qatar. Russia, Iran and Qatar said last month they were forming a joint forum for gas projects but stopped short of advocating an OPEC-style cartel.

However, on Saturday Russian papers seemed more interested in the Libyan leader’s unusual travel arrangements, with the Izvestia daily running the headline: "Kadhafi set up his tent in the Kremlin." Kadhafi brings a traditional Bedouin tent along with him on state visits which he uses to host guests. He does not usually sleep in it.

An AFP journalist saw a small fire burning in front of the khaki-coloured tent Saturday in the Kremlin’s Tainitsky Garden, whose name derives from the Russian word for "secret."
The garden is named after the nearby Tainitsky Tower, built in 1485, which once contained a secret passage that let Kremlin residents escape in times of siege.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Kremlin source said ahead of the visit that the two would discuss "the peaceful atom" as well as "military-technical cooperation," a term that typically describes arms purchases.

Libya could buy more than two billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) of Russian arms including surface-to-air missiles, tanks and fighter planes, Interfax news agency reported Friday, citing a Russian defence industry source.

Relations have warmed this year between Russia and Libya, which began to shed its pariah status in 2003 when it renounced weapons of mass destruction and took responsibility for a 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people.

In April, during a visit to Tripoli by then-president Putin, Moscow agreed to cancel billions of dollars of Libyan Soviet-era debt in exchange for big contracts with Russian companies.

According to Libyan sources in Moscow, Kadhafi is expected to visit Ukraine and Belarus after his visit to Russia.

Sapa-AFP

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Egypt calls urgent meeting to fight piracy

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A fisherman sits on the bank of the Suez Canal in Ismailia 

 REUTERS/Aladin Abdel Naby/Files (EGYPT)

A fisherman sits on the bank of the Suez Canal in Ismailia. Winding through this small Egyptian town like an artery, pumping cash into its hospitals and schools and beyond into the wider economy, the Suez Canal has flourished as a shipping shortcut. Now the faltering global economy, coupled with a rise in piracy to the canal’s south, looks set to end the high times for the waterway and the town Egyptians call its bride.

Egypt has called an urgent meeting of Arab countries bordering the Red Sea to combat rampant piracy off Somalia, the foreign ministry said today.

Egypt and Yemen will coordinate the meeting, which will be held later this month, the ministry said in a statement, without specifying a date.

Cairo has said that piracy has not harmed traffic through the Suez Canal — which is Egypt’s third largest source of revenue after tourism and remittances from expatriate workers.

Last month the British think tank Chatham House said in a report that increasingly brazen hijackings by Somali pirates, who commandeered a Ukrainian freighter carrying a shipment of tanks in September, threatened Suez traffic.

"The danger and cost of piracy (insurance premiums for the Gulf of Aden have increased tenfold) mean that shipping could be forced to avoid the Gulf of Aden/Suez Canal and divert around the Cape of Good Hope," it said.

"At a time of high inflationary pressures, this should be of grave concern," the report added.

Earlier this week pirates seized a Turkish bulk carrier carrying iron ore off the coast of Somalia, and in a separate incident opened fire at an Italian-operated cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden.

According to the International Maritime Bureau, 77 ships have been attacked off Somalia since January. Thirty-one were hijacked and 10 are still being held for ransom. Pirates are holding about 200 crew members.

Piracy is rife and well-organised in the area where Somalia’s northeastern tip juts into the Indian Ocean, preying on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world’s oil passes.

NATO has sent a number of destroyers and frigates to the region to escort civilian shipping.
Egypt says a solution must be found to the root problems that have led to piracy off Somalia, citing the chaotic political situation there.

In September, Somali pirates released an Egyptian ship with 25 crew on board after holding them for three weeks.

Egypt denies paying a ransom to the pirates, who held a record 374 hostages in September, according to the risk-assessment group Risk Intelligence.

Sapa-AFP

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