The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Palestinian Islamist group Hamas re-elects Meshaal as its leader
- Assange appoints British monarchy opponent for Australian Senate bid
- Dissident Cuban blogger gets warm reception from Miami exiles
| Palestinian Islamist group Hamas re-elects Meshaal as its leader Posted: 01 Apr 2013 08:30 PM PDT GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas re-elected Khaled Meshaal on Tuesday as the Islamist group's leader, at a marathon overnight closed-door meeting held in Cairo, an official with the organisation said. Once reviled as a hardliner but now seen increasingly in the Arab world and by some Westerners as a moderate, Meshaal, 56, has headed the movement that rejects Israel's existence and controls the Palestinian territory of Gaza, since 2004.
Born near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Meshaal steered Hamas through the upheaval unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings. He spent decades in exile and visited Gaza for the first time ever in December. Meshaal left Syria about a year ago after ties ruptured with President Bashar al-Assad over the bloody civil war there. Building on relations with Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, said to be an old friend, Meshaal moved on to win a delicate truce with arch-enemy Israel in November and has also sought to heal a rift with rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinian officials and analysts said Meshaal, dogged by Gaza critics of his ceasefire with Israel and efforts to reconcile with Abbas, had to be persuaded to continue as Hamas's leader for another term. "Meshaal was re-elected," a Hamas official said, reporting in a terse statement on Tuesday on the results of a meeting that began in the Egyptian capital on Monday. The official gave no other details of the vote by which about 60 top officials of the group had reaffirmed Meshaal anew as Hamas's political leader. Both Egypt and powerful Gulf emirate Qatar also lobbied strongly on Meshaal's behalf, a diplomat in the region told Reuters. "They saw Meshaal as a moderate and an example of a leader who saw the world more comprehensively than other hardliners in the group," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. European nations that boycott Hamas and list it as a terrorist group for its violence against Israel - including suicide bombings in an uprising a decade ago and rocket strikes on Israeli towns - were also seen as supportive of Meshaal retaining in his post. 'REAL ENGAGEMENT' WITH WEST? "I do not say Europe is going to open to Hamas tomorrow," said the diplomat, who saw an opening for a "real engagement with the West" if Meshaal persuaded Islamist colleagues to change their policies. Meshaal burnished his credentials as leader of the Palestinian militant group after surviving a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt. Hamas was founded in 1988 shortly after the launch of an uprising against Israel. In 2004, Meshaal succeeded Hamas's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, after the cleric was assassinated by Israel during a second Palestinian revolt against the Jewish state. On his watch, Hamas has emerged as an ever more important player in the Middle East conflict, weakening the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority by seizing control of coastal Gaza in 2007, and challenging Abbas's peacemaking with Israel. Despite his falling out with Syria over Assad's bloody attempts to quell a revolt, Meshaal has gone out of his way to maintain relations with Islamist Iran, which has supplied Hamas with weaponry including rockets it has fired at Israel. More lately though Meshaal has sought to overcome his differences with Abbas, leader of the Fatah movement founded by the late Yasser Arafat and head of a Palestinian self-rule authority in the West Bank. Two years ago he faced down angry Gazans by voicing support for Abbas's peace moves with Israel, though he remained sceptical whether the negotiations frozen since 2010 would ever secure the Palestinian goal of independent statehood. More recently Meshaal was involved in indirect talks with Israel mediated by Egypt, striking a truce that has largely silenced fighting along the Israel-Gaza frontier since a deadly eight-day conflict four months ago. (This version of the story corrects the third paragraph to show Meshaal's visit to Gaza in December was his first.) (Reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Eric Beech) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Assange appoints British monarchy opponent for Australian Senate bid Posted: 01 Apr 2013 07:51 PM PDT CANBERRA (Reuters) - Fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in London's Ecuadorian embassy for nine months, has appointed a high-profile opponent of Britain's monarchy to run his campaign for a seat in Australia's upper house of parliament.
Former Australian Republican Movement head and barrister Greg Barns said on Monday he would be campaign director for the WikiLeaks Party spearheading Assange's rare absentee bid for a Senate seat in Australia's September 14 election, which even if successful would not bring him any legal protection. "It's most definitely a serious campaign," Barns told Australian radio. "He does attract support from across the political spectrum. The party will offer a refreshing change from the Australian government culture of secrecy." The former computer hacker, an Australian citizen, announced last year he would run for the 76-seat Senate and would use the protection of parliament to champion free speech and break court suppression orders. Assange is considered a long shot to win a Senate seat as he would need to attract about 15 percent of votes in the Victoria state. If he wins, he would be able to take his seat from July 1, 2014, but would need to return to Australia to be sworn in. If he wins a Senate seat, he would be covered by Australia's parliamentary privilege rules, which protect politicians against legal action over comments made in parliament. Barns, a high-profile political campaigner at home, said Assange's party had already secured backing from a prominent Melbourne philanthropist -- former Citibank executive Philip Wollen -- and needed 500 members to fulfill party registration. Assange struck a defiant tone in a recent interview, telling Australian academic website The Conversation that he felt "no fear" about the legal accusations against him. "Truth is I love a good fight. Many people are counting on me to be strong. I want my freedom, of course. But confinement gives me time to think," he said. Assange, 41, whose website angered the United States by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables, took sanctuary in Ecuador's embassy in London last June, jumping bail after exhausting appeals in British courts against extradition to Sweden for sexual assault allegations. The silver-haired Assange burst into global prominence in 2010 when Wikileaks released secret footage, military files and diplomatic cables about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, prompting a furious response from the United States. (Editing by Michael Perry) Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Dissident Cuban blogger gets warm reception from Miami exiles Posted: 01 Apr 2013 07:21 PM PDT MIAMI (Reuters) - Cuba's best-known dissident, journalist Yoani Sanchez, received a hero's welcome on Monday from the Cuban-American exile community in Miami, her latest stop in an 80-day tour of more than a dozen countries.
It was the largest and most politically unified reception in at least a decade for a dissident from the island by Miami's Cuban-American exile community, which has often clashed with opposition figures in Cuba over political strategy. With many leaders of Miami's Cuban-exile community in attendance, Sanchez was introduced as "an authentic defender and heroine" of human rights in Cuba by Eduardo Padron, the president of Miami Dade College, which hosted the event. She was greeted by about 1,000 invitees with a standing ovation accompanied by shouts of "Freedom! Freedom!" as she took the stage at Miami's iconic Freedom Tower, a one-time processing centre in the 1960s for Cuban refugees. Seemingly surprised by the warmth and size of the reception, she smiled and flashed the V for victory sign in response, before receiving the keys to the city of Miami. Sanchez, a slender 37-year-old Havana resident with striking waist-length hair, has incurred the wrath of Cuba's government for constantly criticizing its communist system in her "Generation Y" blog and using Twitter to denounce repression. The blog has won several top international journalism prizes and is translated into 20 languages, while her Twitter account has nearly 500,000 followers. Few of these though are in Cuba, where the government severely restricts the Internet. In a prepared speech, Sanchez described in often poignant terms her empathy with the pain felt by many Cuban exiles who have left the island over the last half century following the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power. Sanchez blamed the Castro government for dividing the country and called for unity between exiles and Cubans still living on the island. "That's why I am here today with you so that nobody again can divide us," she said to roars of approval. "Without you (exiles) our country would be incomplete, like someone missing an amputated limb," she added. CUBA'S BERLIN WALL Sanchez compared Cuba to Germany before the Berlin Wall was brought down in 1990. Unlike the Berlin wall, Cuba's was "not made of concrete but of lies," she said, to another standing ovation. Despite her sharp attacks on Cuba's one-party rule, she plans to return to Cuba in May where she said she hopes to dedicate the rest of her life to practicing and teaching journalism. Sanchez defended her highly publicized criticism of the longstanding U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, saying it provided the Cuban government with an excuse for tough living conditions on the island under communist rule. "There are much more important things (than the embargo)," she said. "The (Cuban) government has exaggerated its importance," she added, saying different opinions about the embargo among opponents of the Cuban government were not a reason for division. Unlike other dissidents, who have been received with suspicion in Miami, Sanchez appears to have won the exile community over with her charm and wit, as well as her straight-talking blog. "No one has been more effective in denouncing what's going on in Cuba and the myths of the Cuban regime," said Carlos Alberto Montaner, a prominent Cuban exile politician and journalist. "I don't know of any dissident from the island who has been this warmly received," said Felice Gorordo, co-founder of Roots of Hope, a group of young, Cuban American professionals and university students. "She has the ability to speak to the pain of the exiles and to the daily struggles of life in Cuba." REFORM IN CUBA Sanchez's case is viewed as a test of the Cuban government's commitment to free travel under reforms announced late last year that require only a passport, renewed every two years, to leave the country. It is the first time Cuban authorities have allowed Sanchez to leave the island since 2004, when she returned from a two-year stay in Switzerland and began launching a string of digital publications. Cuba's leaders consider dissidents traitorous mercenaries in the employ of the United States and other enemies. Official bloggers regularly charge that Sanchez's international renown has been stage-managed by Western intelligence services. Asked on Monday how she has been able to finance her trip crisscrossing the Atlantic several times between the United States, Europe and Latin America, Sanchez praised the generosity of friends and universities that have invited her to speak. "The Cuban government says I am a millionaire. It's true. I have millions of friends," she said. Sanchez is in Miami this week for a string of public appearances at local universities and a family reunion with her sister, a pharmacist, and brother-in-law, as well as her niece, whom she has not seen since they left Cuba two years ago. She arrived in Miami after stops in Washington and New York that followed visits to Brazil and Mexico. She leaves for Peru on Thursday before returning to Europe, including stops in Germany. Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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