The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Turkey warns Syria not to provoke regional crisis
- New deal tabled at climate talks after rebellion
- Drone crash unmasks U.S. spying effort in Iran
| Turkey warns Syria not to provoke regional crisis Posted: 09 Dec 2011 04:06 PM PST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Turkey warned Syria on Friday it would act to protect itself if a Syrian government crackdown on protesters threatened regional security and unleashed a tide of refugees on its borders. At least 24 Syrians were shot dead as protesters took the streets following Friday prayers and ahead of a general strike called for Sunday, according to a network of anti-government activists reporting events to a website based in Britain. Other activist sources put the toll as high as 37 dead. Ten were killed in Homs, the hub of the nine-month-old revolt, where televised footage showed demonstrators against President Bashar al-Assad chanting "Syria wants freedom" and "Bashar is an enemy of humanity." Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu did not say what action Ankara might take, but he made clear Turkey would not hesitate to insulate the region's security from tumult in Syria. Turkey shares a 560 mile (900 km) border with Syria. "Turkey has no desire to interfere in anyone's internal affairs. But if a risk to regional security arises, then we do not have the luxury of standing by and looking on," Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara. Peaceful demonstrations calling for reform began in Syria in March, inspired by the Arab Spring, but were met almost from the outset by lethal force. "If a government that is fighting its own people and creating refugees, is putting not only their own security at risk but also that of Turkey, then we have a responsibility and the authority to say to them: 'Enough!'" Davutoglu said. Adding to the condemnation, a senior Saudi prince said Arab states would not turn a blind eye to violence in Syria. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, seen as influential though no longer holding public office, told a conference in Vienna he believed the Arab League would not "sit back and allow the continued massacre of the Syrian people." Activists say about 4,600 Syrians have been killed in nine months of protest and violent state suppression. Hundreds have fled over the border to Turkey which has established refugee camps. MISTAKES President Assad says some "mistakes" may have occurred but casualties have been overwhelmingly from the security forces, targeted by "armed terrorist gangs" who are motivated and directed by unnamed foreign influences. Syria has been hit by United States and European Union economic sanctions and suspended from the Arab League which is also threatening to impose sanctions. Russia and China, however, have effectively blocked any similar move at the United Nations and Moscow is warning the West not to interfere in the affairs of its longtime Arab ally. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 28 demonstrations in southern Deraa province, calling for the overthrow of the government, on what protesters are calling the "Friday of the Strike of Dignity" planned over the weekend. Security forces fired into a crowd outside the mosque in Al-Qusayr in Homs province, the Observatory said. Troops surrounded protesters as they came out of two mosques in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, and two children were killed in districts of Homs, the activist website reported. State television also reported violence but gave a different account. It said a girl was shot by "terrorists" in Deraa and civilians wounded by "terrorist armed groups." UN WANTS ACCESS Davutoglu has proposed that contingency plans be made for a buffer zone along the Syrian border should violence escalate to the point where a mass exodus is threatened. The United Nations said it was impossible to assess the situation until Damascus admits humanitarian relief teams. "I repeat my call to the Syrian government to really let us in," said Valerie Amos, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, in Stockholm. "If, as the government say, they have nothing to hide, then I think allowing us in to see that is the case and to do a proper assessment of what the implications of this are for the people of Syria is absolutely critical," Amos said. Speaking to reporters in New York, U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay repeated her call for investigators to be allowed into Syria to assess the situation there. Pillay is expected to brief the Security Council about the crackdown in Syria on Monday, as requested by France. Russia and China, which vetoed a council resolution condemning Damascus and threatening it with possible sanctions, resisted the idea of taking up the issue of Syria again in New York, Western diplomats told Reuters. Syrian National Council leader Burhan Ghalioun said he had pressed the leader of the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of armed rebels, to cease offensive operations that could provoke civil war. "We want to avoid a civil war at all costs," he told Reuters in Vienna. Assad this week denied all responsibility for civilian deaths and said he had given no shoot-to-kill order. NATO wants him to step down. But Russia, China, Iran and Brazil, among others states, say the West should not interfere. Syrian state television Thursday aired confessions by "terrorists" bent on destabilizing the country by attacking security forces, killing and sabotage. It said they admitted making and planting bombs but did not elaborate on their alleged political motive for such attacks. Anti-government activists say three unarmed civilians have died for every security force member killed since March. They say Syrian interrogators use torture to obtain confessions. (Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Sylvia Westall in Vienna, Daniel Dickson in Stockholm, Dominic Evans and Laila Bassam in Beirut, Louis Charbonneau in New York; editing by Rosalind Russell) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| New deal tabled at climate talks after rebellion Posted: 09 Dec 2011 03:40 PM PST DURBAN (Reuters) - Developing states most at risk from global warming rebelled against a proposed deal at U.N. climate talks on Friday, forcing host South Africa to draw up new draft documents in a bid to prevent the talks collapsing.
South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane suspended the talks in Durban after a coalition of island nations, developing states and the European Union complained the current draft lacked ambition, sources said. Delegates held overnight talks on a fresh draft and are expected to meet for a plenary session starting from 8 a.m. British time Saturday with many hopeful a deal could be reached that would bring on board the world's biggest emitters of the gases blamed for global warming. "There was a strong appeal from developing countries, saying the commitments in the proposed texts were not enough, both under the Kyoto Protocol and for other countries," said Norway's Climate Change Minister Erik Solheim. The European Union has been rallying support to its plan to set a 2015 target date for a new climate deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases, a pact that would come into force up to five years later. The crux of the dispute is how binding the legal wording in the final document will be. The initial draft spoke of a "legal framework," which critics said committed parties to nothing. The new draft changed the language to "legal instrument," which implies a more binding commitment, and says a working group should draw up a cuts regime by 2015. It also turns up pressure on countries to act more quickly to come up with emission cut plans. The changes should appeal to poor states, small island nations and the European Union but may be tough for major emitters, including the United States and India, to swallow, said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "One of the crunch issues that has been left out is the date by which the new agreement will enter into force, which could still be as late as 2020 and making it no better than the previous text on this issue," said Tim Gore, climate change policy advisor for Oxfam. The delegates are also expected to approve text on a raft of other measures including one to protect forests and another to bring to life the Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor nations tackle global warming and nudge them towards a new global effort to fight climate change. UNDER PRESSURE The EU strategy has been to forge a coalition of the willing designed to heap pressure on the world's top three carbon emitters -- China, the United States and India -- to sign up to binding cuts. None are bound by the Kyoto Protocol. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said earlier that a "small number of states" had yet to sign up to the EU plan and that time was running out for a deal in Durban. Washington says it will only pledge binding cuts if all major polluters make comparable commitments. China and India say it would be unfair to demand they make the same level of cuts as the developed world, which caused most of the pollution responsible for global warming. Many envoys believe two weeks of climate talks in Durban will at best produce a weak political agreement, with states promising to start talks on a new regime of binding cuts in greenhouse gases. "A crash is still a possibility. It is going to go on all night. That much is clear," said Gore of Oxfam. U.N. reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction. The dragging talks frustrated delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups outside as they tried to enter the main negotiating room. "You need to save us, the islands can't sink. We have a right to live, you can't decide our destiny. We will have to be saved," Maldives' climate negotiator Mohamed Aslam said. (Additional reporting by Andrew Allan, Agnieszka Flak and Stian Reklev; editing by Jon Boyle and Myra MacDonald) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Drone crash unmasks U.S. spying effort in Iran Posted: 09 Dec 2011 02:48 PM PST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The crash of a CIA drone in Iran has brought into the open what U.S. intelligence agencies would prefer kept secret: intense spying efforts in a country where the United States has no official presence.
Iran on Thursday aired with great flourish footage of the captured drone, which appeared largely intact. Pentagon and CIA spokesmen would not comment on whether it was the missing U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft. A person familiar with the situation confirmed that the drone that crashed was on a surveillance mission over Iran. It is believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. Although there are risks that Iran could attempt to reverse engineer the technology, or sell it to other countries, like China, U.S. officials believe that Iran will not be able to mine the drone's computer systems to learn details of the U.S. surveillance mission. U.S. surveillance of Iran through various means has been going on for years, U.S. officials and others with direct knowledge of the situation say. A private U.S. defence expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that when he visited the command centre at a U.S. military base in the Gulf region in 2008, it was clear that the installation was receiving multiple feeds of electronic surveillance information from inside Iran. Some of the information appeared to be transmitted from high-altitude aircraft and some from electronic sensors which the United States had somehow installed on the ground in Iran, the expert said. The United States has no official presence in Iran so it is difficult to determine exactly what is going on inside its borders. One recent incident has yet to be fully unravelled. EXPLOSION IN ISFAHAN On November 28, there were contradictory reports out of Iran on whether an explosion had occurred in the city of Isfahan, which is also home to a major nuclear site. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said he has been studying imagery of that area and no damage was detected at the Isfahan nuclear site. But, he said, "it is credible there was an explosion, but not at the nuclear site." He said it was puzzling that Iranians clearly said an explosion at a missile depot two weeks earlier had been an accident, but did not provide similar clarity about Isfahan. "We're trying to figure out what actually happened," he said. "Explosions are happening in Iran, and Iran is not making a big deal out of them. They are either calling them accidents or saying they didn't happen, and therefore when these things continue to happen it could be because intelligence agencies are actually now playing sabotage," Albright said. In the earlier November 12 incident, Iran said a massive blast at a military base west of Tehran killed 17 members of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including the head of its missile program, in an accident while weapons were being moved. When unexplained events occur that appear to be aimed against Iran's nuclear program, experts often question whether U.S. and Israeli intelligence services were at work. Iran also has had alleged covert operations against the West come to light. Recently, the United States arrested a man accused of being involved in a plot by Iranian agents to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. The U.S. government also accuses Iran of arming and funding Iraqi militias responsible for attacking American troops in Iraq. U.S. officials do not appear to be the least bit disturbed about mishaps to Iran's nuclear and missile programs that include the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site. "Whether it's due to technical difficulties, incompetence, or other reasons, some setbacks to Iran's activities are welcome," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Warren Strobel) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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