Other Conflicts

"When former military liberation movements come to power, the very 'command character' that ensured success against the enemy tends to become the structural flaw which impedes their building of the democratic institutions required by civil society ... The much-celebrated attainment of formal peace with the north and, maybe eventually, independence for the south, should not be equated with liberation, and certainly not with the creation of lasting democracy." [more]

"northern Arabized minority groups led by Bashir may junk the peace accord and attempt a power grab. In fact, some Islamic fundamentalists have issued fatwas against anyone renting places or giving support to the SPLAs in the capital city." [more]

"Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country, pre-election tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftwing agenda. The new phase of Zapatista action 'is not to draw lines, is not to promote the armed fight in another state', Marcos said. He added: 'It is to go and ask the people what they think and how their problems are being resolved.'" [more]

"Now, suddenly, in June 2005, the Zapatistas proclaimed a red alert, calling all their communities to leave their villages and come into the forest for a massive "consultation" of the base. The reason? They said they could no longer afford simply to wait indefinitely as the Mexican state ignored the promises they had made a decade earlier in the truce agreements. ... The Zapatistas declared that they had ended the first phase of their struggle, and that it was time to move on to a second stage, one that would be political and not military." [more]

"U.S. broadcast media are failing to provide even minimal coverage of the ongoing crisis — some say genocide — in Darfur, Sudan, according to a new report, which concludes that media fixation with celebrity, as well as the Iraq war, is crowding out news of important events that deserve global attention 10 years after the genocide in Rwanda." [more]

"The Pentagon is now convinced that air strikes on Syria have become necessary to overthrow the Assad regime, liberate Lebanon and stop support of insurgents waging a guerrilla war against American forces in Iraq as well as Palestinian militants against Israel, the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra TV network says." [more]

"The Israel Defense Forces recently began to distribute 'resident' stickers to West Bank settlers to be affixed to their cars' windshields. The stickers are intended to allow settlers to drive quickly through army checkpoints along the Green Line." [more]

"The public anger has dented Mr. Putin's ratings and rattled his government ministers, who responded slowly and confusedly to the first wave of protests over pensions before retreating in part on changes that the Kremlin had pushed through a pliant Parliament last summer. Mr. Putin's appointees have attributed the demonstrations to a disgruntled few, incited by agitators, but the protests show little sign of dissipating. A coalition of political, social, environmental and labor organizations has called new rallies across the country for Saturday, including two in Moscow." [more]

"Without a resolution of the fighting in Darfur, peace in Sudan is only partial. Despite this, Secretary of State Colin Powell has signaled Washington's intention to relax sanctions and allow U.S. companies to take advantage of Sudan's oil wealth." [more]

"Hundreds of Pakistanis staged rallies against President Pervez Musharraf in a day of protests after he reneged on his pledge to quit as army chief." [more]

"The deal, three years in the making, gives the southern rebels seats in the government and guarantees them revenue from the country's oil wealth to spur development. It also integrates the militaries and grants the southern region a chance to opt for self-determination after six years. ... The accord does not cover the conflict in Darfur." [more]

"We are planning three parallel operations: The first operation is called Operation Double (Mivtza Makhpil) in which each family in the Qatif Bloc will join up with a family from outside the Bloc. Their relatives or friends will take up permanent residence here already in the first stage." [more]

While Russia and the West fight for the soul of Ukraine, the domestic political storm that followed the election has abated, for now. It has been agreed that a re-run of the second round will take place on December 26th, following a ruling last week by Ukraine’s Supreme Court. [more]

For four years, Palestinian victims were almost anonymous to most members of the Israeli public. Now the preoccupation with these victims, and with the ethical questions involved in the army's blame for their killing, has become an almost daily question. [more]

Officials, as well as most of the Palestinian public, have few doubts that Israel will seek and find another pretext to avoid engaging in any process that might bring an end in sight to 37 years of military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem [more]

If Israel is genuinely willing to move in the direction of peace, argues the diplomat, then Arab countries will move in the direction of normalisation. He added that several Arab capitals are receiving messages that with the death of Arafat -- who was snubbed by Sharon and Bush -- Washington is willing to pressure Israel to pick up the Middle East peace file. [more]

"The Palestinian nonviolent movement is as old as the Palestinian liberation movement itself. As far back as the 1930s, Palestinians engaged in nonviolent protests and demonstrations against the British Mandate authorities. This form of protest peaked with the breakout of the 1987 intifada." [more]

Labor does not need the security portfolio to demand that the pullout from the northern West Bank not end with the evacuation of only four settlements, as Sharon wishes it to be, or to demand that the separation fence route, the roadblocks and closures do not rupture the life fabric of tens of thousands of residents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. [more]

"There is no talk about a truce now at all," Mahmud Al-Zahhar, a top Hamas leader, said on Sunday. [more]

Mr Fabius has taken a calculated risk that, if it pays off, would utterly reverse the French Socialist party's current hierarchy. Unfortunately, for many Europeans both inside and outside France, his strategy amounts to little more than playing with the future functioning of the EU for his own personal political advantage. [more]

"Last Thursday morning, Natalia Dimitruk, an interpreter for the deaf on the Ukraine's official state UT-1 television, disregarded the anchor's report on Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich's 'victory' and, in her small inset on the screen, began to sign something else altogether." [more]

"Six days on and still they chant, still they march, still they seek to overturn the election result that cheated them. The crowds and the momentum are on their side, but nothing in Ukraine is that simple." [more]

"While the gains of the orange-bedecked 'chestnut revolution' are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes." [more]

"A senior Western diplomat in Kiev, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the political situation, portrayed the Ukrainian leadership as being at an impasse, stung by public and diplomatic reaction, and unsure of how to react to the growing protests." [more]

There are things that settlers have been doing lately to the army that if they were done by Palestinians would be defined as violence, and even as terrorism. [more]

The officer, identified by the army only as Captain R, was charged this week with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and other relatively minor infractions after emptying all 10 bullets from his gun's magazine into Iman al-Hams when she walked into a "security area" on the edge of Rafah refugee camp last month. [more]

"We are all encouraged. We reaffirmed our determination to work with the Palestinian leadership to support the election" for a successor to Arafat, UN chief Kofi Annan told reporters. [more]

State investigators in Baden-Württemberg said they have been closely watching developments in the Netherlands, but that there was no evidence of similar ethnic tensions in the region. [more]

"Like so many conflicts in West Africa, the one in Ivory Coast is in large part a contest for the country's most valuable asset: the land on which cocoa is grown. Making it particularly entrenched are issues that were never fully resolved at independence: Who is a citizen of Ivory Coast, who can rule, who can own land?" [more]

"Last week, the Nyala relocations prompted a chorus of international condemnation, with the United States accusing Khartoum of violating UN principles concerning internally displaced people and UN security council resolutions on Darfur." [more]

"A United Nations team has begun investigating allegations of genocide against the Sudanese Government as ethnic-minority rebels accuse the army and its militia allies of destroying the evidence of mass graves in Darfur." [more]

"Tuesday's attack on civilians was just one of many, and anti-government rebel groups are growing more violent and numerous. From Bosnia to Sierra Leone, the world has a painful history of putting peacekeepers into situations where there is no peace to be kept. Darfur may be one more." [more]

"Rape in war, if committed by combatants, is both a grave human rights violation and a war crime. Yet it has long been mischaracterized as a private crime, the ignoble act of wayward soldiers. Worse still, it has been accepted precisely because it is so common." [more]

But a complex set of political challenges appears to have all but assured that an even earlier end to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's current government is a matter of when, not if. [more]

In a confused, post-modern, deconstructed world, the settlement movement spokesmen offer the ultimate temptation to the confused Israeli looking for an answer to the question of why there's no end to the cycle of violence and what, if any, should be the price of the peace (or at least the quiet). [more]

"The Treasury Department lists the Jewish Legion and the Voice of Judea as Kahanist aliases and prohibits U.S. citizens from transactions with them. The group's Web site invites volunteers to Israel for a paramilitary training program in West Bank Jewish settlements." [more]

"(The force) is evolving into a mission to maintain peace... with probable logistical support from the United States," Thiam explained. [more]

Officials have warned that failure to secure a compromise by Friday could set back efforts to pry open multi-billion dollar agriculture markets, especially for poor countries, by years. [more]

Qorei's announcement, which came 10 days after he tendered his resignation, followed extensive mediation efforts by MPs who said they had secured an agreement by Arafat to implement reforms and crack down on corruption. [more]

"In a report to be released Monday, Amnesty International said the sexual attacks in Darfur amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it said it did not have sufficient evidence to show that the Janjaweed, as the government-backed militias are known, have carried out genocide in Darfur, as some critics of Sudan's government maintain." [more]

"Two rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army — took up arms against the Sudanese government in February 2003, demanding a greater share of power and wealth in Africa's largest nation. Violence in Darfur has since made more than 1m homeless and killed an estimated 30,000 people." [more]

"The world will help Zimbabweans, but they must first help themselves. And helping themselves must mean going far beyond tame protests 1,000km away from Harare." [more]

Last December, the United Nations General Assembly voted to ask the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the barrier. On Friday July 9th, the court published its ruling, declaring the barrier illegal under international law, demanding the dismantlement of those parts that already encroach on the West Bank and calling for compensation for the many Palestinians whose rights have been “gravely” infringed by it. [more]

Israel is counting on the US to use its veto in the UN Security Council to block any Palestinian attempts to have the ruling enforced. [more]

"'This incident has shown me first hand the indiscriminate violence faced by Palestinians on a daily basis,' Baroness Northover said./ 'If the Israeli Defense Forces are prepared to shoot at a delegation of parliamentarians under the supervision of the UN, one wonders what treatment ordinary Palestinians are given,' she said." [more]

"'Why do you think the Erez industrial estate is still attractive for 200 factories that have stayed put despite all the terrorist attacks?' asked Gabi Bar. 'The most important motive is the low wages paid to the workers: around 1,500 shekels ($332) as against 4,500 shekels ($995), which is the minimum wage in Israel. What is more, the employers don’t have to abide by Israeli labour laws.'" [more]

Colonel Erez "argued that Israel's decision to use ground troops, rather than simply bomb the neighborhood from the air, showed its concern for Palestinian civilians and 'maintaining our moral posture.' Several wounded Palestinians interviewed in the last 24 hours said they were shot by snipers when they stepped out into the street. Noting the curfew, Colonel Erez said, 'Someone who exits is obviously someone who is looking for trouble' and was therefore 'a legitimate target.' " [more]

"Last week, Bush decided to allow Cuban Americans to visit relatives in Cuba only once every three years and lowered their daily spending limit while on the island to $70 from $228." [more]

"It is only through continuous struggle, which will lead to revolution, that we can today find true freedom. To create a world where equality and welfare will not be a dream, where the essence of progress will not be connected with the modern brutality of high technology. Instead, it will find its reward in the ability of society to guarantee equality in front of the law, and the power of each person to participate in the formulation of its social and financial role." [more]

"Since the September 11 attacks in the United States, neo-conservatives who dominate policy making within the Bush administration have tended to view violence in the Middle East and Central Asia through the prism of what Roy termed the international jihadist struggle. This tendency encourages authoritarian practices in the two regions by effectively giving a green light to governments to engage in repression, while shunning needed economic and political reforms." [more]

"On that day, the current war ceased to be a war on terror. It ceased to be a war for Israel's existence. On May 2, 2004, the war became a war of not-a-single-settlement. Not a single outpost. Until the last mobile home." [more]

"... as President Akhmad Kadyrov saluted troops parading past, the stadium was rocked by an explosion leaving a cloud of dust which cleared to reveal a jagged hole where the president and his entourage had been standing moments before." [more]

"US President George W. Bush said on Saturday the 'roadmap' 2005 target for a Palestinian state was unrealistic./ 'I readily concede the date has slipped some. I think the timetable of 2005 is not as realistic as it was two years ago,' Bush told the Egyptian semi-official daily Al-Ahram, adding that it 'may be hard' to achieve the 2005 target." [more]

"The jury in New York supported Swiss Re’s claim that it had signed up to a policy which clearly defined the destruction of the twin towers as one event, rather than two." [more]

"During the ceremony it was also announced that plans to build additional housing in other Gaza Strip communities have been approved." [more]

"The US has announced it might declare shortly imposing sanctions on Syria, according to a decision approved with the aim to punish Damascus, which Washington accuses of supporting terrorism." [more]

Several castes and communities still feel that they are not getting their share of power and government jobs as compared to tiny number of upper caste privileged groups. Similarly the minority communities like Muslims feel that they have been given a raw deal... [more]

"...the recent interview of Benny Morris in Haaretz has alarmed many Palestinians, who fear that it foreshadows official Israeli policy. Morris, the leading Israeli revisionist historian, showed from documentary evidence that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and that most of them did not (as Israel has alleged) leave voluntarily. He now justifies this 'ethnic cleansing' as necessary to the establishment of a Jewish state and predicts that it may be necessary again." [more]

"By simultaneously increasing despair and anger, Sharon is hoping to raise the stakes in this conflict. It is astonishing to think it, but Sharon has been restrained thus far. He has been held back by world opinion, the US and Israeli public opinion. But the hold of each of these over Sharon diminishes as Palestinian violence increases." [more]

"Passions boiled over on Monday as the protesters, many of them highland Aymara Indians, seized the town officials. Mayor Robles was dragged, tied to a post, beaten and left for dead beneath a bridge, according to local news reports. He later bled to death." [more]

"'Pre-emptive strikes will continue because they undeniably weaken terrorist organisations,' Yaalon told public radio in an interview marking Remembrance Day, which is observed each year to commemorate the country's fallen soldiers." [more]

"The DPRK [North Korea] made the remarks in a statement issued by the spokesman for the Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People's Army (KPA), saying the 'US decision to take even its small force out' of the JSA and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 'indicates that the US preparations for a preemptive attack upon the DPRK are under way at a final phase.'" [more]

"The Polisario, backed by Algeria, has since 1976 been claiming independence of this territory despite the local populations' refusal to be separated from the Kingdom./ On Thursday, the Moroccan Government ruled out any negotiation on the independence of these Southern Moroccan provinces." [more]

"The London raids were the start of a week of concerted police sweeps throughout Europe. Cops in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, as well as Turkey, launched similar 'antiterror' raids, arresting a total of 63 people, most of them Turks. The pretext was 'minimizing a terror threat ahead of June’s NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey' and 'increased international security cooperation before the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece,' according to an April 2 Associated Press dispatch. Police claimed those arrested had 'ties' to a banned Turkish organization, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army/Front." [more]

"The Palestinians blamed the United States for emboldening Israel to assassinate Rantisi by vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning last month's 'extrajudicial execution' of Hamas' founder." [more]

"Defense counsel Norman Sepenuk also questioned the decision of the original trial chamber that killing 7,500 men and deporting Srebrenica`s 25,000 women and children was tantamount to genocide." [more]

"As I reflect on lessons learnt from the Rwandan genocide, the most powerful one remains the reality that African lives do not matter to the leaders, and the majority of the citizens, of the world's most powerful nation and its European allies./ Their non-interventionist attitude is couched in references to lack of strategic interest. But the underlying reason is an entrenched racism that prevents them from reacting with the urgency and emotional commitment that has propelled them to intervene in less extensive acts of mass murder among their kinsmen in Europe." [more]

"'We've called it a humanitarian crisis,' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters on April 6. 'But I really hesitate to use the G-word at this point, not really having considered it in that light.'" [more]

"The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of 'driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war' with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea." [more]

"The Sudanese Government must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population and must provide unrestricted access to humanitarian aid agencies. I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President Bashir of Sudan." [more]

"In interviews with the Maariv, Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz dailies, Sharon defended the plan, saying it serves Israel’s interest, not that of the Palestinians. 'The Palestinians understand that this plan is to a large extent the end of their dreams, a very heavy blow to them,' he told Haaretz." [more]

"The ABC letter said Spain had until April 4 to end its support for the United States and withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan./ 'If these demands are not met, we will declare war on you and ... convert your country into an inferno and your blood will flow like rivers,' the letter said." [more]

"Turkish Ambassador to the United States Faruk Logoglu has reacted to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell who described Turkey as an Islamic Republic, and stressed, 'Turkey is a democratic and secular republic.'" [more]

"...Tamil Tiger rebels today warned they would renew their fight to win their demands if the new government denied them autonomy./ The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said their overwhelming sweep of the island's north and east in Friday's general election was a 'major victory' and an endorsement of their nationalist struggle." [more]

"Most of the 'erased' are fellow former Yugoslavs, whom many Slovenes regard as poor Balkan cousins who failed to show sufficient loyalty to independent Slovenia. Supporters of the law and opponents of the referendum called the 4 April vote a victory for xenophobia and injustice." [more]

"The Queen has warned Britain and France that they cannot afford to be divided while facing threats to their security./ Her state visit, which began in Paris, follows a series of tensions between the two countries, most recently over the war in Iraq." [more]

"Fighting in Darfur broke out more than a year ago, when rebels attacked government targets, saying black Africans were being oppressed in favour of Arabs. Mr Egeland described it as one of the world`s worst humanitarian crises." [more]

"On each side thousands of citizens greeted the people leading the demonstration with applause and irrintzis (long yells). They later joined the march bearing Basque flags, flags of Navarre and posters saying Autodeterminazioa orain (Self-determination now). The Askapena organisation carried its own banner saying 'No to occupation; peoples’ self-determination! Long live the peoples’ resistance!' and in this group many flags of Palestine and Iraq could be seen among the Basque ones." [more]

"Marcus maintains that the World Bank is ignoring, or is possibly unaware of, the fact that the very PA universities they will be strengthening all have official student branches of Hamas (called Al-Kutlah Al-Islamiyah) and Islamic Jihad (called Al-Jama'ah Al-Islamiyah), both terrorist organizations found on the U.S. and E.U. terrorist lists." [more]

"'No one threw stones (before the police action),' Waqf director Adnan Husseini told Reuters. 'They (police) started doing this every Friday to scare elderly worshippers as younger ones are already banned. This is flagrant violation of freedom of worship.'" [more]

"Following the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last week, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said that the responses of Arafat and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Ahmed Nasrallah showed that 'they understand that this is approaching them.'" [more]

"NATO more and more ressembles a terrorist organization with every day that passes. Its arbitrary decisions on who is guilty of war crimes never takes into consideration the fact that this organization itself was responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths during the Kosovo campaign and in Afghanistan." [more]

"The Uzbek government has been systematically persecuting Muslims for more than five years, jailing roughly 7,000 believers for engaging in non-state-sanctioned forms of religious expression. Some reports suggest the current Uzbek arrest spree is merely an extension of the ongoing crackdown on Islam, with Muslims being indiscriminately arrested. According to one British Broadcasting Corp. report March 31, one woman asserted that four of her sons were taken into custody because they share the same name as an militant who was captured March 30." [more]

"'I don’t think this is going to be resolved with the current regime,' Gilinsky said. 'What we need to do is wait them out and hem them in as best we can and use other ways to soften them up and have the juices of capitalism maybe corrode their spirit,' he added." [more]

"The hearings have highlighted serious gaps between Dr Rice's statements about what the White House did before September 11 and evidence from Mr Clarke that is backed by classified White House documents. In particular, Dr Rice's claim that a White House plan to 'destroy' al-Qaeda was radically different from president Bill Clinton's plan has been brought into question." [more]

"The independent An-Nahar in Lebanon said the United States wanted the summit to fail in order to ensure that its own initiative would have no competition./ 'American pressure undermined the summit,' it charged, since Washington was 'indisposed by an Arab document on reforms since it wants to impose its "Greater Middle East" initiaitive.'" [more]

"The government has claimed that Islamic radicals, with international terrorist connections, are behind the violence. Radical groups operating in Uzbekistan, including Hizb-ut-Tahrir, have not claimed responsibility. Scattered bits of information coming to light raise questions about an international terrorist connection, lending credence to the notion that the violence is a popular reaction to government repression." [more]

"Kamerhe and Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba both refused to comment on diplomats' accounts of the attack, which they said was linked to the recent discovery of an arms cache buried in Kinshasa./ During the fight, authorities seized six rocket-propelled grenades, two mortar launchers, 30 grenades, 75 AK-47 assault rifles and thousands of rounds of various ammunition, the army said." [more]

"According to unofficial information, at least five people were killed in the Uzbek capital in the two blasts, up to 30 blast victims were brought to the first Tashkent city hospital. A female suicide bomber set off an explosive device fixed on her body at the Chorsu marketplace near the entrance to the three-story shop Detski Mir ('Children’s World'). There were luckily few visitors in the morning." [more]

'US ambassador to Uganda, Mr Jimmy Kolker, has said there are no parallels between LRA and Al Qaeda terrorist organisations. He was responding to a question in an interview with Irin that donors are urging the government to talk to Kony, yet America can’t do the same with Al Qaeda because that would amount to ‘appeasing terrorists’." [more]

"The scale of the ruling coalition's losses makes it likely President Jacques Chirac will next week reshuffle Raffarin's two-year-old government, reducing the number of ministers and bringing more professional politicians into the cabinet, said academics such as Laurent Dubois of the Paris Institut d'Etudes Politiques." [more]

"In a further bid to quell such concerns, Mr. Erdogan did not field any female candidates, who wear the Islamic style headscarf in Sunday's polls. And in a gesture to non-Muslim Turks, the AKP ran three ethnic Armenians for smaller municipal districts in Istanbul." [more]

"Israel has prohibited vehicles belonging to the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies from crossing the Erez checkpoint into Gaza for the last three weeks, the statement said, and staff must go through on foot. Food shipments through Karni, the only commercial crossing point in Gaza, have also been obstructed." [more]

"Whatever the sum involved, it vanished from the UN-administered Iraq Oil For Food programme, and unlike last year's petty looting, those at the centre of suspicion aren't lowly bureaucrats but a tight cluster of high-up insiders centred on the office, family and inner circle of Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself." [more]

"Does it really make sense that two European Union member countries hold a veto power on the Security Council while the Third World (outside of China) is completely unrepresented? The EU does not have a common foreign policy and it will not have one in the foreseeable future, but this is no reason to continue to provide a preference to France and Britain." [more]

"'They are not content with building the huge sinister wall around the West Bank; they want to build a wall around every Palestinian town, village and hamlet. They are learning from the Nazis and the Russians.'" [more]

"So the future of US-India ties will depend largely on the election results. RSS-supported economists believe that the world has entered the era of economic warfare with the developed nations and that by kowtowing to the US, India is merely prolonging its status as a developing country. This is also the view of India's president, missile scientist Dr Abdul Kalam, whom the RSS sponsored for the post of the president, even though he is a Muslim. The ideas expressed in his books - about economic warfare - are very popular in the country." [more]

"A conservative party in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government presented legislation Wednesday to limit the building of new mosques, calling them 'political places' used to spread hatred for the West." [more]

"'We know for sure this is a fabricated story from A to Z. Would you believe that a 13 or 14-year old would agree to blow up himself in return for a hundred shekels which he would receive after his death?'" [more]

"Mark Lance, associate professor of justice and peace at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, argues that two recent major attacks on important international leaders make a mockery of the international legal system. 'The elected president of Haiti was driven from office, and the spiritual leader of Hamas, along with 10 civilian bystanders, was executed,' he told IPS." [more]

"According to reports in the highly politicised press supporting President Gbagbo, the planned protest actions of the opposition and the Forces Nouvelles however aim at stopping just this UN deployment by creating political violence. The same media however are nourishing conspiracy theories against the opposition and the ex-rebels, strongly contributing to the increased level of conflict." [more]

"In theory the companies should be accountable under guidelines produced by the Paris-based agency, the Organization for Co-operation and Development./ But Thursday’s report said no progress has been made in pursing the companies by their own governments." [more]

"...since the 1980s, the sources of most urban anxiety have not been terrorists, but stigmatised ethnic and racial minorities, immigrants, criminals, drug-users and the poor. Following the US model, in which surveillance and punishment are the preferred methods of social regulation, European cities have expanded their police forces and toughened penalties, resulting in dramatically increased rates of incarceration across the Continent. New anxieties will accelerate this trend, but with a twist: Arabs and North Africans will be subjected to heightened ethnic or racial profiling, and citizens will begin monitoring each other more aggressively." [more]

"The boys’ deaths on Wednesday triggered days of rioting, looting and arson by ethnic Albanians against Serbs that left 28 people dead, 600 injured." [more]

An accountant in Long Beach, Calif., is leading a violent and bloody campaign to overthrow the government of Cambodia. Why doesn't the U.S. government seem to care? [more]

"The left-wing opposition has sought to turn the regional elections, in theory based on local issues, into an anti-government vote, allowing them to recoup some of the ground lost in the 2002 polls./ Opposition parties believe they have profited from the knock-on effect of of last Sunday's surprise Socialist victory in Spain." [more]

"By making Syria a pariah nation, Bush has helped to realize a goal of current Israeli policy: to secure US help in weakening its unfriendly neighbors. In addition, by getting Congress to condemn Syria for alleged weapons development, Israel refocused attention away from its own nuclear arsenal." [more]

"The eruption of violence was fuelled by tit-for-tat incidents in recent days and showed how tense Kosovo remains, despite almost five years of UN peacekeeping. With Albanian hardliners in the ascendant in Kosovo and a new nationalist government in power in Serbia, the portents are dismal." [more]

"The intended target, the use of plastic explosives, the cooperation between militant groups and the fact that Palestinian bombers managed to slip out of Gaza for the first time since 2000 were all seen as signals of escalation in tactics." [more]

"But oil is just one reason for West Africa's growing demand for guns for hire. The US, for instance, is now more engaged in West Africa. But with troops tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, it's increasingly hiring private security firms to represent it." [more]

"At his briefing in Washington on March 8, Gen Wald acknowledged US interest in establishing 'forward operation locations' in sub-Saharan Africa for American military forces. The facilities would not amount to full-scale bases but would instead serve as refuelling and equipment-storage points." [more]

"Corrupt Russian army officers and local Chechen officials have a financial stake in keeping the war going, getting rich from black market deals on everything from oil to weapons sales. On the other side, many Chechen field commanders long ago stopped answering to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. With whom, then, can the Russian government negotiate?" [more]

"Mr Mohadi went on explaining that Mr Moto, a controversial Equatoguinean opposition leader exiled in Spain, had hired the 'mercenaries' to do the job. Mr Moto and the 'mercenaries' had received logistic aid from the secret services of the US, the UK and Spain, he said." [more]

"The new allegations against President Kagame surely will not improve the already strained French-Rwandan relations. Since the current government came to power ... Paris has been hostile towards the leaders in Kigali. Several French sources have tried to connect Mr Kagame to the assassination of President Habyarimana, while it is official knowledge in Rwanda that France protected the genocidal government of 1994." [more]

"The expansion of the geographical boundaries of the region dilutes the importance of the Palestinian problem and demotes it from its central position on the political stage of the Middle East to a marginal position as just one of several "hot" issues plaguing a much wider region. Moreover, given Washington's fixation on terrorism, it could well use the new rationale to classify the Palestinian struggle for nationhood as just one more example of the terrorism that is widely propagated throughout the greater Middle East." [more]

"Aristide flew out from the same airport with US help on Sunday morning, under pressure from a mounting insurrection and abandoned by the international community. Aristide's departure 'was the result of perfect co-ordination' between Washington and Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said." [more]

"...the transfer of the exercise's venue out of Mindanao has alarmed the New People's Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines. They claim the exercises are just a disguised offensive against local communist insurgents." [more]

"The Security Council tonight, acting in response to the deteriorating political, security and humanitarian situation in Haiti, authorized the immediate deployment of Multinational Interim Force for a period of three months to help to se