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By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA | Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:54am EST

GAZA (Reuters) – The leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has effectively abandoned his headquarters in the Syrian capital, Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said on Friday.

« Meshaal is not staying in Syria as he used to do. He is almost out all the time, » said a diplomat in the region who spoke on condition on anonymity.

A regional intelligence source, who also did not wish to be identified, said: « He’s not going back to Syria. That’s the decision he’s made. There’s still a Hamas presence there, but it’s insignificant. »

Damascus is isolated following a bloody, 10-month uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and is not secure, the diplomat said, adding that Meshaal was no longer able to receive international visitors there.

Analysts say Meshaal was also embarrassed by Assad’s violent crackdown, with more than 5,000 people reported killed. Many victims of the security forces have been Sunni Muslims allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose support Meshaal relies on.

Assad is backed mainly by his minority Alawite sect and other minorities.

The sources said Meshaal would not publicly shut down the political headquarters of Hamas in Syria, where it has long been hosted by Assad and by his father before him.

« In the past month he may have only stayed five days in Syria and the rest he spent in Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, » said the diplomat. « But he did not close the headquarters in Syria in full and there are some Hamas officials still there. »

« Our belief is that Hamas will not announce a departure from Syria even if it happened, » the diplomat added.

The sources said Meshaal was currently in Egypt. But « there was no agreement to open an office in Cairo. Not yet, » said the diplomat. « The expected residence for Meshaal is Qatar where he may stay most of the time until the Syria smoke has cleared. »

Qatar is the Arab world’s most outspoken critic of Assad. Qatari mediation was helpful in arranging Meshaal’s upcoming visit to Jordan next week, restoring ties with the monarchy more than a decade after Hamas was ejected from the kingdom.

Hamas, founded in 1987 and regarded by Israel and the West as a terrorist organization, has long been backed by Iran, a strong ally of Syria’s Assad. But funding has apparently stalled in the past four months, the diplomat said.

« Iran used to give $250 million to $300 million to Hamas but there have been interruptions in the payments in past year. Our understanding is that there has been no payment since August 2011, » he said.

Hamas Gaza Strip leader Ismail Haniyeh was thought to have « received promises from Turkey to provide the movement and his administration with $300 million a year to help Gaza ».

Turkey is also a strong critic of the crackdown by Assad in its southern neighbor, Syria. Haniyeh is scheduled to travel to Iran in the coming days.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-syria-hamas-idUSTRE80Q0QS20120127

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WASHINGTON | Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:15pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has warned Iraq not to « blow this opportunity » to become a prosperous, unified nation, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday, saying it must start to act like a democracy and embrace compromise.

Iraq has suffered its worst political crisis in a year with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s move to arrest Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi last month, which has raised fears of renewed sectarian violence following the U.S. troop withdrawal.

Speaking in a question-and-answer session with State Department employees, Clinton said U.S. ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey has taken the lead in urging Iraqi politicians including Maliki, a Shi’ite, to settle their differences peacefully.

« He is constantly … reaching out, meeting with, cajoling, pushing the players, starting with Prime Minister Maliki, not to blow this opportunity, » she said. « This is an opportunity to have a unified Iraq and the only way to do that is by compromising. »

Hashemi, a Sunni, was accused of running death squads. He has denied the charges and sought refuge in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, where he is unlikely to be arrested.

The current political crisis threatens to break up the country’s fragile coalition government, raising fears it could slip back into the sectarian carnage that broke out following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Clinton said despite the downfall of Saddam Hussein, whose Sunni-dominated regime oppressed Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, Iraqis’ « minds are not yet fully open to the potential for what this new opportunity can mean to them. »

She said the United States would do whatever it could to help « but at the end of the day, Iraq is now a democracy but they need to act like one and that requires compromise. »

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Vicki Allen)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-iraq-usa-idUSTRE80P1MG20120126

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TRIPOLI | Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:21pm EST

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has halted its work in detention centers in a Libyan city because it said its medical staff were being asked to patch up detainees mid-way through torture sessions so they could go back for more abuse.

Rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about torture being used against people, many of them sub-Saharan Africans, suspected of having fought for Muammar Gaddafi’s forces during Libya’s nine-month civil war.

The agency said it was in Misrata, 200 km (130 miles) east of the Libyan capital and scene of some of the fiercest battles in the conflict, to treat war-wounded detainees but was instead having to treat fresh wounds from torture.

« Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for more interrogation, » MSF General Director Christopher Stokes said in a statement.

« This is unacceptable. Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions. »

The agency said it has raised the issue with the authorities in Misrata and with the national army. « No action was taken, » said Stokes. « We have therefore come to the decision to suspend our medical activities in the detention centers. »

Reports of the mistreatment and disappearances of suspected Gaddafi loyalists are embarrassing for Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, which has vowed to make a break with practices under Gaddafi and respect human rights.

The allegations are also awkward for the Western powers which backed the anti-Gaddafi rebellion and helped install Libya’s new leaders.

An official with the Libyan government said it paid attention to all credible reports of abuse.

« There is no doubt that there are acts of violation of human rights but these are to do with the mentality of the people who are in charge of these prisons, » the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

« Neither the government, nor the NTC, nor any Libyan group supports these acts. These actions are individual acts and the authorities will take a very serious view of them. »

DETAINEE « BEATEN AND WHIPPED »

But the ability of the government in Tripoli to rein in torture is limited because, in most cases, it is carried out by locally based militias who are outside the NTC’s chain of command.

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, speaking to the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, said that detainees from Libya’s civil war held by revolutionary brigades continue to be subjected to torture despite efforts by the provisional government to address the issue.

Human rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday it had evidence of several detainees dying after being subjected to torture, including some in Misrata.

It quoted one man who said he had been tortured earlier this month in the headquarters of Misrata security forces.

« They took me for interrogation upstairs. Five men in plain clothes took turns beating and whipping me, » Amnesty quoted the man as saying.

« They suspended me from the top of the door by my wrists for about an hour and kept beating me. They also kicked me. »

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that it has visited 8,500 detainees across Libya but declined to comment on the MSF decision to suspend its work.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Christian Lowe; Edited by Diana Abdallah)

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BAGHDAD — Iraq will take legal action to ensure justice for the families of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians killed in a U.S. raid in Haditha seven years ago, a government spokesman said Thursday, after the lone U.S. Marine convicted in the killings reached a deal to escape jail time.

Residents in Haditha, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold of about 85,000 people along the Euphrates River valley some 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, have expressed outrage at the American military justice system for allowing Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich to avoid prison.

« The Haditha incident was a big crime against innocent civilians, » said Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi government. « We will follow up all legal procedures and judiciary measures » to seek justice in the case, he added.

Al-Moussawi did not offer specifics and the Iraqi Justice Ministry declined to comment.

Marine Corps officials said they do not comment on such announcements made by foreign governments.

Neal Puckett, Wuterich’s attorney said: « We have no comment about the stated intentions of the Iraqi government. Our client’s military justice case has concluded. So far as we are concerned, the matter is closed. »

Wuterich was convicted of a single count of negligent dereliction of duty. He faces having his rank reduced but he will not go to jail as a part of a plea agreement that ended his long-awaited manslaughter trial.

He has apologized for the loss of life, but has said his squad did not behave badly or dishonorably. He also has defended his order to raid homes in Haditha as a necessary act and acknowledged to instructing his men to « shoot first, ask questions later » after a roadside bomb killed a fellow Marine.

Wuterich’s sentence Tuesday ended a six-year prosecution that failed to win any manslaughter convictions in one of the worst attacks on Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops during nine years of war. Eight Marines were initially charged in the case. One was acquitted and six others had their cases dropped.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/haditha-trial-iraq_n_1233988.html

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By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya

MOSCOW | Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:46am EST

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Kremlin-funded English language channel Russia Today has given WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange his own TV talk show, the station said this week.

Filming for Assange’s television debut is already underway from Britain, where he remains under house arrest outside London while appealing an extradition order to Sweden, it said.

Russia Today – considered a Kremlin exercise in image enhancement by critics – said Assange will invite 10 « key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries » for interviews on a show dubbed « The World Tomorrow, » due to air in mid-March.

« Everything we do on the air is different from the English-language mainstream, that is something we have in common with Assange, » RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan told Reuters.

« The show is a perfect fit for RT’s motto: ‘Question more’, » she said. « We are counting on it attracting the interest of a wide audience. »

Simonyan refused to say how much Assange will be paid for the chat show.

Beamed to 430 million cable subscribers worldwide, the Kremlin channel offers a rare public platform for a man whose WikiLeaks website has come under intense pressure after publishing a raft of secret U.S. diplomatic cables and seen its ability to fund itself crippled.

Assange, a 40-year-old Australian, has said the refusal of many financial transactions firms – including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union – to work with WikiLeaks have damaged the website’s ability to continue its work.

Assange is expected to appear before Britain’s Supreme Court on February 1 to appeal an extradition order to Sweden, where he has been accused of sexual misconduct by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers.

Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia since 2000 as president and prime minister, has blasted Assange’s 2010 arrest as « hypocritical. »

Russia Today kept secret about the names of potential guests, saying only Russian opposition figures may be among them, but speculation was rife on social media websites about who could be invited onto the show.

Media analyst Konstantin von Eggert said he expected to see Assange interview Russian allies and anti-establishment guests such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and left-leaning U.S. academic Noam Chomsky.

« Julian Assange is famous for his anti-American and anti-Western views, that is exactly why Russia Today is hiring him as a journalist, » said von Eggert, a commentator for Kommersant FM radio.

« So this partnership is logical…. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech or real journalism. »

Russia Today – whose YouTube channel has had a record half a billion viewers – made headlines a year ago when U.S. airports refused to put up one of its controversial advertisements.

The billboards comparing Ahmadinejad and U.S. President Barack Obama with a tagline asking, « Who poses the greater nuclear threat? » did appear at airports across Europe.

(Reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Paul Casciato)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-russia-assange-tv-idUSTRE80P0TV20120126

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RAMALLAH, West Bank | Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:10pm EST

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) -

Israeli-Palestinian talks aimed at reviving peace negotiations ended in Jordan Wednesday without achieving any progress and President Mahmoud Abbas plans to consult fellow Arabs on his next move, Palestinian officials said.

The options being considered by the Palestinians include pushing ahead with United Nations membership and reconciliation with the rival Islamist Hamas group — moves opposed by Israel.

« The Israelis brought nothing new in these meetings, » said one Palestinian official familiar with the talks. « We are now going to assess our options and will consult our brothers in the Arab League on February 4. »

The talks came as part of a proposal by the Quartet of Middle East mediators – the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations – which set a three-month deadline last October for the two sides to make proposals on issues of territory and security.

The aim is to reach a peace deal by the end of this year.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, is on a regional visit to nudge Israelis and Palestinians to maintain the talks begun this month.

She has been seeking Israeli confidence-building measures for Palestinians, including freeing some prisoners and more freedom in areas of the West Bank held by Israel.

Israelis and Palestinians held five sessions of talks, in which the Israelis offered a document comprising 21 points that Abbas had dismissed as worthless.

Despite strong opposition from the United States and Israel, the Palestinian Authority applied to the U.N. Security Council last September for U.N. membership. But a committee to consider the application failed to reach consensus, and the Palestinians have not so far requested a formal vote in the council.

Peace talks foundered in late 2010 with Palestinians demanding that Israel suspend settlement building in the occupied West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem.

Abbas also demanded that Israel agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state on all lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war before resuming negotiations.

Israel has rejected both demands and said it was ready to resume negotiations immediately with no preconditions.

(Reporting by Ali Sawaftah and Sami Aboudi in Ramallah; editing by Robert Woodward)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-palestinians-israel-idUSTRE80O2OR20120125

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DAMAS, 26 janvier – RIA Novosti
Des manifestations massives de soutien aux réformes du président el-Assad se déroulent actuellement dans plusieurs villes syriennes, annonce jeudi la télévision publique de Syrie.

Des centaines de milliers de personnes se sont rassemblées dès le matin sur les places centrales de Damas, Alep, Lattaquié, Tartous, Deir ez-Zor et Hassake pour exprimer leur soutien à la politique du président el-Assad. Les manifestants, munis de portraits du leader syrien et des drapeaux nationaux, condamnent la récente décision de la Ligue arabe, la qualifiant de « violation flagrante de l’indépendance et de la souveraineté de la Syrie ».

Lundi 23 janvier, la Ligue arabe a appelé Bachar el-Assad à déléguer ses prérogatives à un vice-président en vue de la formation d’un gouvernement d’union nationale et à organiser dans le pays des élections indépendantes. Damas a catégoriquement rejeté ce plan qualifié d’ »ingérence ».

Selon la télévision syrienne, les manifestants protestent contre « une campagne agressive incessante menée par certains pays arabes dans le cadre d’un complot extérieur visant la Syrie ». Ils condamnent aussi « des groupes terroristes armés dont les actions menacent la sécurité, la stabilité et l’unité de la Syrie ».

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20120126/193155498.html

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MOSCOU, 26 janvier – RIA Novosti
Le parlement iranien pourrait adopter dimanche un projet de loi visant à interdire l’exportation de pétrole vers l’UE avant l’entrée en vigueur de l’embargo européen le 1er juillet prochain, a fait savoir le député iranien Emad Hosseini cité par le Financial Times.

« Si le projet est approuvé, le gouvernement devra interdire la vente de pétrole aux Européens avant qu’ils n’appliquent leurs sanctions », a déclaré M.Hosseini.

« Plusieurs députés, dont moi-même, sommes impatients d’adopter la loi interdisant aux Etats européens ayant pris l’Iran pour cible (…) de recevoir la moindre goutte du pétrole iranien », a lancé un autre député du Majlis, Nasser Soudani, cité par le journal iranien Tehran Times.

D’après ce dernier, les sanctions occidentales se répercuteront sur l’Europe elle-même. M.Soudani estime que les pays européens ne seront pas capables de remplacer le brut iranien, tandis que l’embargo imposé par l’UE contre Téhéran provoquera une flambée des prix sur le marché pétrolier. Le député conclut que les Européens devront, au bout du compte, acheter du pétrole iranien via des intermédiaires, augmentant ainsi leurs dépenses.

Le 23 janvier dernier, le Conseil de l’Union européenne a approuvé l’adoption d’un embargo sur les livraisons de brut iranien afin d’obliger Téhéran de coopérer avec la communauté internationale sur son programme nucléaire controversé.

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20120126/193154949.html

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By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA | Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:58am EST

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Some forty years ago, Dilma Rousseff was a guerrilla fighter working clandestinely to bring a version of Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s communist revolution to Brazil.

How times change. When Rousseff makes her first visit to Cuba next week as Brazil’s president, she’ll have capitalism on her mind, specifically the building of a container terminal at the port of Mariel aimed at future trade with the United States when Washington one day lifts its 50-year-old embargo on Cuba.

The $800 million modernization of the natural harbor west of Havana is being done by Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht with funding from Brazil’s state development bank BNDES. It is part of a vast and growing constellation of Brazilian-run projects in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere that has paralleled Brazil’s recent rise as an economic power.

The business-focused nature of Rousseff’s Cuba trip highlights a shift in Brazil’s foreign policy since she took office early last year, with trade trumping all other considerations.

Her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva valued commercial ties too but also sought more overtly political relations with controversial leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – whom Rousseff has all but ignored since taking office.

Rousseff’s interest in business ventures abroad has been heightened by the global slowdown that brought the booming economy of Latin America’s largest nation to a halt in the third quarter of 2011, forcing her to focus on restoring growth.

Her first major trip abroad after taking office in January 2011 was to China, which dislodged the United States as Brazil’s top trading partner in 2009.

Rousseff’s advisers say that her focus in Cuba will be on economic cooperation but that she has also asked to meet with Castro, who inspired a generation of left-wing Latin Americans.

Rousseff was a committed leftist who joined an armed group to fight military dictatorship in Brazil in the late 1960s. She was arrested in 1970, tortured and imprisoned for three years.

After democracy was restored in 1985, Rousseff evolved into a pragmatic, left-leaning politician. A year ago she became Brazil’s first woman president, running an economy that has relied on foreign investment and smart financial management to lift tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty — thus accomplishing one of the dreams of her socialist youth.

SYMPATHY FOR CUBA

Rousseff’s trip means she will visit Havana before she goes to Washington – a decision that has raised some eyebrows given Brazil’s recent confrontations with the United States over trade and other issues.

Advisers play down any symbolism, and note that Rousseff is due to visit President Barack Obama in Washington early this year, though no date has been decided.

« We have good relations with the United States, even though we have differences in international affairs, » said Rousseff’s foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia.

Brazil is offering Cuba sugar-cane ethanol technology and $200 million in credit for small private farmers to acquire tractors and harvesting and irrigation equipment.

Garcia said sympathy for Cuba in its David-versus-Goliath Cold War era feud with the United States runs deep in Brazil and other Latin American nations that reject the U.S. trade embargo on the Caribbean island.

Brazilian sources say the government would like to see a democratic opening in Cuba and is closely watching economic reforms adopted by President Raul Castro, but that it will not push hard.

Garcia said political reform was up to the Cubans. « We will not tell them what to do. »

The death last week of a hunger-striking dissident in a Cuban jail has put pressure on Rousseff to raise the issue of human rights in Havana. Dissidents have asked to meet with her, but Brazilian media reports said she is unlikely to and would only raise human rights concerns privately.

IRRITATING IRAN

Once a victim of abuses, Rousseff has made human rights a priority of her government and she has changed Brazil’s foreign policy stance, most notably by supporting a U.N. human rights investigation on Iran last March.

That shift cooled growing ties between Brazil and Iran, much to the relief of U.S. officials in Washington who see the chance for better relations with Brazil under Rousseff.

In his last year in power, Rousseff’s predecessor and mentor Lula led a diplomatic campaign to mediate on Iran’s nuclear program, angering the United States and other Western powers.

Rousseff has taken a lower profile internationally as she concentrates on pressing challenges at home like upgrading the country’s decrepit infrastructure in time for hosting the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympic games.

« Her government is more grounded in reality, » said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, who sees Brazil as « less aggressive in tone and less defiant » towards the United States than it was under Lula.

Iran’s government is not happy with Rousseff. The Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported that Iran held up thousands of tons of beef exports by Brazilian company JBS for three weeks in port out of irritation with her change of policy.

« The Brazilian president undermined everything Lula had achieved. She destroyed years of good relations, » the spokesman for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, told the newspaper this week. « We miss Lula a lot. »

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brian Winter and Kieran Murray)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-brazil-cuba-idUSTRE80O1QX20120125

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Despite fresh EU sanctions against Iran’s oil exports, China has shown interest in Iran’s oil with hiring at least two supertankers to ship oil from the country.

Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world’s largest shipbroker, announced the two supertankers were booked to carry about 2 million barrels of crude from Iran’s Khark Island to China.

Qi Lian San, a large crude carrier anchored near Singapore, was booked to load 270,000 tons of crude at Khark Island from Feb. 3 to Feb. 5 and carry the cargo to China, Clarkson said.

The Chinese oil trader, Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., also booked an unidentified ship owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co. to load 265,000 tons of crude in Khark Island on Jan. 29 and sail to the Chinese port city of Ningbo.

Two other ships, Davar and Hoda, which called at an Iranian oil terminal, are heading for China, Bloomberg reported.

Ship-tracking data show Davar is sailing to Ningbo after leaving Iran’s Soroush terminal on Jan. 11, and Hoda is bound for Shui Dong. The National Iranian Tanker Co. owns both very large carriers.

Customs data also showed that China imported 2.4 million metric tons of crude from Iran last month.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers in Brussels agreed to embargo Iranian oil that involved an immediate ban on all new oil contracts with Iran.

Earlier this month, China’s vice foreign minister said his government « opposes imposing pressure and sanctions. »

AGB/PKH/IS

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/222821.html

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