Ain-Al-Yaqeen - January 7, 2005

		January 7, 2005

THE PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP UNDER THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF ABU MAZEN ATTACKS THE ZIONIST ENEMY FOR THE NEW MASSACRE IN THE GAZA STRIP.
GHAZI AL-YAWAR, CALLS ON THE UNITED NATIONS TO SAY WHETHER THE COUNTRY SHOULD GO AHEAD WITH ITS SCHEDULED JANUARY 30TH ELECTIONS.
BELGIUM PROPOSES THAT EUROCORPS PROVIDES AID TO THE VICTIMS OF SOUTH ASIA'S TSUNAMI DISASTER.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called Israel "the Zionist enemy" for the first time after an Israeli tank killed seven Palestinian youths in a Gaza strawberry field.

Abbas spoke during campaigning to be elected Yasser Arafat's successor in which he has tried to win over militants defying his agenda of a cease-fire and peace talks in pursuit of a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories.

But while Abbas later repeated criticism of militant violence as counterproductive, his resort to language used by radicals sworn to Israel's destruction was certain to stir doubt about the scope for a diplomatic breakthrough.

The Israeli Army said it had targeted militants who had crept into the strawberry field and fired mortar bombs into a nearby Jewish settlement in the north of the occupied territory. Palestinian witnesses and medics in the village of Beit Lahiya said the militants had fled by the time the tank shell crashed and all the dead were youths aged 11-17 from two farming families. Fifteen people were wounded, several critically.

The field, where the youths had been harvesting strawberries, was spattered with blood and body parts. Thousands of people joined a funeral march for the seven.

Word of the incident clearly angered Abbas, widely tipped to win the presidential election, as he continued campaigning in Gaza despite further fighting in the small coastal strip between Israeli forces and militants waging a four-year-old revolt.

"We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell to the shells of the Zionist enemy," Abbas told a rally in the south Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis, a hotbed of militants.

It was his first known use of a phrase favored by Islamic militants. Abbas, 69, long known as a pragmatic Palestinian nationalist, has revived peace hopes since Arafat's death by condemning militant violence in favor of talks with Israel.

Abbas later tried to visit the wounded in a Beit Lahiya hospital but drove away without getting out of his car because of tank bursts nearby in response to a rocket volley by militants into Israel, which caused no casualties.

"This will not bring peace for anyone. If such aggression continues we will not be able to engage in a peace process," Abbas told reporters, referring to the killing of the youths. Israel says it is trying to stop intensifying mortar and rocket fire by roving bands of Gaza militants who have spurned Abbas's call for restraint.

"But I also condemn all pointless (mortar and rocket) actions happening here and there," Abbas said. "These actions are wrong and I will not apologize for (saying) that."

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom criticized a recent sharpening in Abbas' statements, in which he has praised militants as "freedom fighters".

"We are very disappointed with the last statements made by (Abbas). I don't think this is the way to move together to solve our conflict," Shalom told reporters in Jerusalem.

But Health Minister Danny Naveh played it down as electioneering. "I hope these statements made on the eve of elections do not mean anything with respect to what we can expect later, because in the end we all expect to see a Palestinian leadership that changes direction," he said.

To forge peace Abbas must gain broad domestic stature hitherto held only by Arafat. Abbas is the heavy favorite to win but only because uprising leader Marwan Barghouthi, jailed for life in Israel, did not run.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said: In a new Israeli carnage committed early Tuesday against citizens of Beit Lahya city, northern Gaza Strip, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed eight citizens and wounded others, witnesses said.

They told WAFA that an Israeli tank launched three shells against a group of farmers in a strawberry field in Fad'ous area of the city, killing eight citizens, and wounding scores, including children.

Medics in the city confirmed that eight citizens were killed as their dead bodies turned into burned pieces. "We collected the bodies, three of them were teenagers, in a strawberry farm. The bodies were blown to pieces by a tank shell," medics at Kamal Odwan hospital said.

Some of the victims were identified as three cousins, Hani Ghaban, Mohammed Ghaban, Rajeh Ghaban and Rajeh Kaseih. Several pupils and employees were wounded.

In the West Bank city of Qalqilia, two citizens, Mahmoud Matar 18, and Salah Hourani 24, were arrested. Israeli soldiers installed a military checkpoint at the eastern entrance of the city.

In Bethlehem, an Israeli military court sentenced a Palestinian prisoner, Ibrahim Sarahna, a resident of al-Dehaisheh refugee camp, to 6 terms of life-time imprisonment.

On the other hand Turkey could help mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts if it persuades the Palestinians to stop carrying out terror attacks, President Moshe Katsav told Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul during a meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday, according to Israel Radio.

Katsav was responding to comments by Gul, who said Turkey could play a role in negotiations with both Syria and the Palestinians, since it has the trust of all the parties concerned.

Gul, who is being accompanied by a large delegation of businessmen, journalists and government officials, is currently on his first visit to Israel since taking office in March 2003.

The foreign minister said in an interview with the Israeli media that Turkey believes Syria is serious about making peace with Israel, and Ankara hopes to receive a positive response from Jerusalem to the message that Gul is bringing with him from Damascus.

However, Gul declined to detail the content of the message he will deliver to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at their meeting Tuesday, but stressed that "in my estimation, the Syrian signals are serious and their intentions are good. They want to take part in the peace process; they expressed willingness to resume negotiations without preconditions; and they expect a positive Israeli response."

Gul added that he was "optimistic" about obtaining such a response from Sharon. "You must remember that the atmosphere in the region has changed, and we must take advantage of that. This is the time to act," he said.

"There are positive signals from Israel about the peace process," he added, citing Sharon's new government and the disengagement plan. But he stressed that Israel should take advantage of the "new atmosphere" to make peace not only with the Palestinians, but with Syria and Lebanon as well.

Israel-Turkey relations took a turn for the worse last year when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of committing "state terrorism" and the Turkish press began calling Sharon a "terrorist." Gul described Turkey's relations with Israel as an "asset," with particular emphasis on the growth in bilateral trade.

Asked whether Turkey no longer thought that Israel practiced "state terrorism," he responded: "We need to put all that behind us because of the new atmosphere in the region. This is not the time to criticize, but to look at the positive things. If we begin discussing these things, we will find that there are charges and counter charges, and this isn't the time to deal with them."

Asked whether Erdogan would also visit here, Gul responded: "Why not? Usually, the foreign minister prepares the ground for the prime minister's visit, and that's true here as well; but no date has yet been set."

On the Iraqi arena Iraq's interim president, Ghazi Al-Yawar, is calling on the United Nations to say whether the country should go ahead with its scheduled January 30 election despite the violence that could scare voters away from the polls.

Iraq's interim government and its US allies have repeatedly said that the vote would not be delayed, but Al-Yawar says the elections will fail if a raging insurgency keeps a significant number of Iraqis away from voting stations.

The president also warned the US and Coalition forces in Iraq that the military campaign to capture Falluja in November 2004 must not be repeated in the city of Mosul.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said elections will take place on time at the end of January after another minister said they might be delayed to placate opposition from the Sunni community.

"The official position is that elections will take place on schedule and there has been no decision to delay or postpone them," Zebari told reporters.

On Monday Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan said the elections may be delayed if Sunni groups, who have vowed to boycott the vote, could be convinced to take part.

"We have asked our Arab brothers, particularly in Egypt and Gulf countries, to get Iraqi Sunnis to participate in the elections and if such a participation requires a delay to the election date, they could be delayed," he told AFP in an interview in Cairo.

Both Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and US President George W. Bush have been adamant about holding the legislative vote on Jan. 30 despite the mounting violence.

More Iraqi interim government officials are calling for the postponement of Jan. 30 elections to ensure a higher Sunni voter turnout, a sign that a campaign of violence might be taking its toll on Iraqi resolve. The country's electoral commission, however, insists that voting take place as scheduled.

Sunni Arab clerics have called for a boycott and Iraq's largest Sunni political party announced it was pulling out of the race because of poor security that has seen insurgents kill scores of Iraqi security forces, as well as several election officials, in recent weeks.

Several proposals have been floated lately to counter the threat of a low Sunni turnout that would undermine the legitimacy of the vote the country's first free elections since monarchy in 1958. Iraqis are to choose a legislative assembly to draft a constitution.

Shaalan told reporters in Cairo that he has asked Egypt to try to persuade the Sunnis to participate in the elections.

"And if they agreed, then we could postpone the date to let all Iraqis go to the polls in one day," he said.

It is not clear, however, who the Egyptians would negotiate with or if they would in fact take up the offer in the absence of a definitive Sunni leadership in Iraq that parallels the hierarchal Shiite religious authority.

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations suggested the election could be delayed by two or three weeks. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post last week, Samir Al-Sumaidaie proposed that idea and a host of others, including reserving some seats for groups who do poorly if their supporters don't vote a clear reference to the Sunnis.

Al-Sumaidaie suggested a number of seats could be left vacant for the Sunni provinces, where elections could be held after Jan. 30.

"Such a solution would have the merit of satisfying all those who want elections as soon as possible, thus denying terrorists a victory while producing a legitimate elected government that could focus on stabilizing the country," he wrote.

But Fareed Ayar, a spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission, seemed adamant that there would be no delay.

"The commission is still working on holding the elections on its scheduled time and according to the timetable we have," Ayar said.

Commenting on the floating proposals to postpone the elections, including the defense minister's, Ayar said the commission has not been officially notified of any such ideas.

"We read and hear about those statements in the newspapers and the media like others, but we have not formally received anything," Ayar said.

In Sanaa President Ali Abdullah Saleh met on Tuesday with chief of the US central command Gen. John Abizaid.

In the meeting, they discussed the Yemeni-American mutual cooperation relations, especially in military field, fighting terrorism as well as the situations in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.

Abizaid praised the development of the Yemeni-American bilateral cooperation relations and coordination of anti-terrorism efforts.

He underlined the U.S keenness to strengthen its relations with Yemen in various fields for serving interests of the two friendly countries.

Minister of Defense Abdullah Ali Aliwah along with Chief of the General Staff Mohammed Ali al-Qasimi held a meeting with the visiting chief of US Central Command John Abizaid.

In the meeting, they discussed mutual military cooperation between Yemen and United States and the role of Yemen in fighting terror.

They also discussed means of enhancing cooperation between the armies of both countries.

On the other hand deliberations on the vulnerability and future of small island developing states (SIDS) will go ahead as planned in Mauritius next week, despite the tsunami that devastated sections of Asia.

In fact, the conference is seen now as even more imperative as millions attempt to recover from a disaster that international experts agree could have been mitigated with better warning systems.

Mauritius, the UN said, was "relatively spared" by the December 26 waves.

The conference will address as a matter of priority the need for better preparedness in small islands against natural disasters such as tsunamis and cyclones, said a UN statement.

"Destruction of life and property to the low-lying coastal areas, once again highlights the vulnerability of the small island developing states," said Anwarul K Chowdhury, UN Under Secretary-General and the Secretary-General of the UN International Meeting on SIDS, extended sympathies to the people and governments of the tsunami-affected countries.

"This wave of destruction comes on the heels of a number of recent climatic disasters where the impact of sudden climate change has never before been more evident than the recent devastating widespread hurricanes and tropical storms affecting small island developing states, most vulnerable to global climate change," he added.

The Mauritius conference will convene 37 island nations to discuss challenges from natural disasters, climate change, trade losses and market access, and threats from HIV/AIDS, and how to present these issues to the international community in the search for help.

Said Chowdhury: "I am sure the issue of some kind of global early warning system will be proposed by many states and I am one of the people who believe such an early warning system should be set up immediately."

Over 2,000 participants are expected in Mauritius for the January 10-14 talks, including 25 heads of state and government, said the UN.

They will review the implementation of the 'Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States', which was agreed a decade ago in Barbados.

Meanwhile United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said here on Thursday that the United States will continue to stand with the tsunami-hit countries in relief and reconstruction efforts.

In a speech to the Special ASEAN Leaders' Meeting on Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami, Powell said that he has personally witnessed the unprecedented cruelty of the disaster which has been inflicted upon the people.

"I've been involved in many, many humanitarian relief operations... but nothing in my experience prepared me for this disaster. It is truly unprecedented," said Powell.

The US secretary of state said that "a core group" of nations consisting of several US allies will from now "fold itself into the broader coordination efforts of the United Nations."

He said US President George W. Bush has "already mobilized the United States Government, including our emergency response resources and our military assets."

"The US Agency for International Development's Disaster Assistance Response Teams were quickly deployed to India, Thailand,Sri Lanka and Indonesia. These teams consist of food, water and sanitation specialists, military liaisons, and search and rescue squads from a number of US cities," he said.

Powell said that in coordination with Thailand, the United States Marines have established a support center in Utapao as a support center.

In Washington taxpayers making donations this month to aid the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami will be able to claim deductions on their 2004 tax returns under legislation passed by Congress last Thursday.

The bill sent to President Bush was aimed at encouraging private donations to the tsunami relief effort. Under current law, taxpayers would have had to wait until next year to claim a tax deduction for contributions made in January this year.

It passed both the House and Senate by voice vote.

"The American people are some of the most generous in the world, and this proposal will give them an extra incentive to support this great cause," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who sponsored the measure with Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Belgium has proposed that Europe's five-nation Eurocorps provide military aid to victims of south Asia's tsunami disaster, possibly involving other European states too, officials said.

Defence Minister Andre Flahaut is seeking support for such action from France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain, its partners in Europe's fledgling armed force, said a ministry spokesman. Flahaut "has made contact with his .. counterparts to discuss organizing military support" to help the millions of survivors of December 26 killer waves which have left over 146,000 people dead, he said.

"The plan is to provide military aid at a European level and to find synergies involving transport of people and equipment," added spokesman Gerard Harveng, confirming a report in the Spanish press.

The German defence ministry said it was studying the proposal "on the basis of the availability" of forces, but noted that Eurocorps is heavily engaged in leading the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

"Of course our priority remains fulfilling individual (military) missions, and we had not planned to expand our commitment in the region affected by the catastrophe," said a German defence ministry spokesman.

Eurocorps is made up of detachments from its five member states. Created in 1992 by France and Germany, it was later put at the service of the European Union and is certified as a NATO rapid reaction force.

The Belgian proposal was made at the start of the week, and discussions are ongoing. "Countries are interested. Everyone wants to contribute its stone to the building, and to do so in a coordinated way," he added.

For example one way this could be done would be to integrate Belgian military doctors with a German armed force in Indonesia, he said.

"The aim was to start with countries which are used to working with each other militarily, which does not exclude other participants" from Europe, he said.

The European Union (EU) has long struggled to beef up its joint armed wing, amid persistant resistance from key member states to share control over military forces.

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said this week that one reason the United States had such a high profile in responding to the Asia crisis was because it had huge military resources available.

Spain will ask the Paris Club to grant a debt moratorium for the tsunami-hit countries, said the Spanish government on Wednesday.

The Economy and Finance Ministry said the postponement of the repayments will let the countries have more resources to meet the need of the victims of the disaster and reconstruction.

The Paris Club will discuss the issue in Paris on Jan. 12.

On Dec. 26, an 8.7-magnitude underwater earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra and triggered tsunami which also hit India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and four other Asian countries, killing about 150,000 people.

Analysts estimate the disaster has caused about 14 billion US dollars of losses.

The Asian countries owe Spain 513 million euros (about 667 million US dollars). Of the debt, 80 percent goes to Indonesia, the most affected country by the disaster.

The Spanish government is to push for discussions on details ofthe moratorium, which would represent a debt relief of 2.25 billion euros (about 2.9 billion dollars).

The Paris Club is an informal group of official creditors whoserole is to find coordinated and sustainable solutions to payment difficulties experienced by debtor nations.

Last week, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on the Paris Club to put a debt moratorium on tsunami-hit countries.

While the latest reports indicate that number who died in the quake and tsunami that hit South Eastern Asia last week has reached 145,000, the number of injured has been estimated at half a million.

Now, there is a high level of concern that epidemics such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhoea will spread in the region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that already half a million people have been injured because of tsunami and that if water is not provided in the region a "health disaster" will occur. A spokesperson for WHO, Fadela Suayip, said that they have already started to prepare a $600 million relief fund in case of a health disaster.

World leaders pledged to work together to help tsunami-shattered regions recover from the worst natural disaster in memory, but warned that it was a race against time to get aid to survivors before they succumb to disease.

The secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, urged nations to immediately come forward with billions of dollars in aid they have promised, amid warnings that the death toll of 150,000 may double because of outbreaks of disease from unsanitary and crowded conditions in relief camps.

World leaders gathered for a day in Indonesia, the country hardest hit by the Dec. 26 disaster, to figure out the best way to speed aid to victims. While nearly $4 billion, or € 3 billion, has been pledged worldwide, the United Nations has warned that - as in previous disasters - some of the promises might not be honored.

As the conference ended, delegates issued a declaration pledging to work together to help the devastated region recover and to set up a tsunami warning system to ensure that the next time such a wave is generated, coastal residents will have time to flee to higher ground.

"This unprecedented devastation needs unprecedented global response in assisting the national governments to cope with such disaster," the declaration said.

"No longer must we leave ourselves so vulnerable and so exposed," said Thailand's foreign minister, Surakiart Sathirathai. Thailand's southern coast was devastated by the waves.

There is no formal warning system for tsunamis in southern Asia, where they rarely occur. Countries in the Pacific, where tsunamis are more frequent, have access to a warning network based in Hawaii that is credited with saving thousands of lives.

Annan said the United Nations would help put a system in place.

The Dec. 26 tsunami was triggered by a massive magnitude-9.0 undersea quake near Indonesia's Sumatra island. The waves that fanned out across the Indian Ocean took hours to reach some nations, including ones in East Africa.

An Indonesian Foreign Ministry official said several countries, including Japan, had promised to lead the efforts to put the warning system in place.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan confirmed Tokyo would cooperate with the international effort to create a system and set up a special session to discuss the network at a UN conference on disasters to be held in Kobe, Japan, this month.

Beijing will also host an international seminar on early warning systems Jan. 25-26, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said at a news briefing in Beijing.

Annan appealed earlier Thursday for $979 million to be promised to specific projects, covering basic humanitarian needs for an estimated five million people in the next six months.

"What happened on 26 December, 2004 was an unprecedented, global catastrophe. It requires an unprecedented, global response," he said, calling it the largest natural disaster the world body had faced.

The meeting in Indonesia, focusing on longer-term aid, was also set to endorse debt relief to help nations rebuild.

The World Health Organization warned before the summit that access to safe drinking water remained inadequate, encouraging diarrheal diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

If basic needs "are not urgently restored to all populations by the end of this week, WHO fears that outbreaks of infectious disease could result in a similar number of fatalities as occurred due to the direct impact of the tsunami," it said.

The "core group" of countries established this week by Secretary of State Colin Powell of the United States to lead the relief effort will be dissolved at the meeting, leaving the task to the United Nations, a U.S. State Department official said Wednesday.

The core group, consisting of the United States, Japan, India and Australia, was "designed to respond to a short-term need," the official said, adding: "Now that the relief efforts are broader and more long-term, the appropriate place for them to be coordinated is the UN."

Even as relief officials were increasingly confident that a corner was being turned, they cautioned that help was often arriving too late for increasing numbers of the injured who were succumbing to infections and that years of work remained ahead to rebuild communities here and in other places where serious hurdles remained.

The hurdles include insufficient warehouse space to keep the supply lines moving smoothly, an inability for now to add protein-rich foods, like fish or even cooking oil, to diets and little progress in improving sanitation - with few working toilets for thousands of homeless people - leaving the area vulnerable to a major disease outbreak.

But despite those obstacles, in Banda Aceh, provincial capital of the hardest-hit region that Powell toured on Wednesday, UN officials said the relief drive - including food, water, medicine, housing and other assistance - could reach as many as 800,000 people in the province.

Powell said he and the top Indonesian official in charge of the recovery, Alwi Shihab, had agreed on the need to increase the number of landings by American C-130 transport planes delivering aid.

The number of flights had been limited by flight-control operations, said Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, but should be increased over the next day or so.

The agency has rented 80 trucks to move rice, soybeans, water-purification kits and other supplies overland to Banda Aceh, Natsios said.

But the roughly 480-kilometer, or 300-mile, trip from the city of Medan takes three days because of damaged roads and the threat of violence in a continuing conflict between Aceh separatists and Indonesian government troops. A firefight two days ago halted the relief trips for eight hours, he said.

The Indonesian government and the United Nations have also reached an agreement to construct formal camps for the hundreds of thousands of displaced residents, which should gradually replace the dozens of makeshift and often unsheltered gathering spots that homeless victims have assembled, the officials said.

A water-purification plant provided by the Australian government is producing 480,000 liters a day of drinking water that is being sent by truck to the homeless camps.

As of Wednesday, at least around Aceh Province, truckloads of biscuits, rice, noodles and other supplies were totalling about 100 metric tons a day, an official said.