LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
March 16/08

Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 1,16.18-21.24. Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah. Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Chaldean Catholic Faith and Resolve: 'They Will Not Scatter the Chaldean Flock. 15/03/08
Samantha Power and Democratic evasion on Iraq. By Michael Young. 15/03/08
Iraq's neighbors bear much of the blame for a people's suffering-The Daily Star. 15/03/08
Miscellaneous News with Significant Meanings and Implications-By: Raghida Dergham Dar Al-Hayat. 15/03/08
Excuses Ahead of Time for the Anticipated Failure in Lebanon-By: Walid Choucair- Dar Al-Hayat 15/03/08
An uneasy status quo-Al-Ahram Weekly- 15/03/08

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for March 15/08
'Israel threatened Syria with strike if Hizbullah attacks' Jerusalem Post
Israel secretly warned Syria about Hezbollah Reuters South Africa
Dakar Summit Backs Arab Plan on Lebanon, Slams U.S. Over Sanctions against Syria-Naharnet
March 14 Conference Draws Opposition Criticism-Naharnet
Moussa: Joint Arab Efforts Needed to Make Progress on Lebanon Crisis-Naharnet
Saniora: Lebanon Determined to Overcome Crisis-Naharnet
Cheney to Discuss Lebanon, Other Issues during Mideast Tour-Naharnet
Geagea: Lebanese will Continue their Struggle for Freedom-Naharnet
France Reiterates its Support of Arab Initiative-Naharnet
Saniora: Lebanon Determined to Overcome Crisis-Naharnet
'Israel threatened Syria with strike if Hizbullah attacks'-Jerusalem Post
Travel bans hit Lebanon's tourism business hard-Monsters and Critics.com
Easiest Way to Engineer Lebanon Crisis Failure is to Slam U.S.-Naharnet
In Lebanon, a 'Revolution' Gone Sour-Naharnet
Ban says Hariri tribunal ready to conduct trials-Daily Star
Fadlallah blames crisis on 'lack of trust, not ideas'-Daily Star
Rival Lebanese brace for outcome of regional conflicts-Daily Star
Siniora banks on allies to help keep 'conflicts of others' at bay-Daily Star
March 14 endorses resistance 'that serves national interests'-Daily Star
Spring poses problems for asthma patients-Daily Star
Lebanese women complete agricultural training in Italy-Daily Star
Much pomp and circumstance as ruling coalition seeks more coherent image-Daily Star
International Committee of the Red Cross celebrates 40th year of work in South-Daily Star
Bringing Hizbullah's side of the story to the UK-Daily Star
Aoun chalks off March 14 unity to personal interests-Daily Star
First installment of Bank Audi ski event hits the slopes-Daily Star
Lebanon hits snag over parliamentary law-United Press International
Israel secretly warned Syria about Hezbollah-Reuters South Africa
Berlusconi eyes new Iraq role, changes in Lebanon-Reuters
Iranian Stamp Commemorates Slain Hezbollah Commander-FOXNews
In Lebanon, a 'Revolution' Gone Sour-TIME
Lebanon rally marks anniversary of Cedar Revolution-AFP
Italy: Call for Lebanon troop withdrawal sparks outrage-Adnkronos International English
Brazil-Lebanon anti-drug agreement becomes effective-ANBA
Some governments promote anti-Semitism, report says, citing Iran ...CNN
SYRIA: Offering Lebanon an olive branch, or a booby trap?Los Angeles Times
Lebanese media reports highlight Syria's invitation to Arab summit-Xinhua
Syrian Workers Take Brunt of Lebanon Crisis-Naharnet
Lebanese PM Congratulates Abdullah Over Election Win-Bernama
Lebanon's majority starts convention to set political platform-Monsters and Critics.com

'Syria threatened if Hizbullah attacked'
By JPOST.COM STAFF -15/03/08
Israel has secretly warned Syria that it may strike the country if Hizbullah attacks the Jewish state, Reuters reported on Friday.
In early February Hizbullah threatened Israel with revenge following the assassination of the group's chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh. Israel has denied involvement in his death. According to senior Israeli and European officials quoted by the news agency, later that month Israel secretly conveyed a message to Damascus through a third party that it would hold it accountable for any Hizbullah assault. "The message was passed around late February, before the last round of fighting in Gaza," an Israeli official said. "It has become clear to us [that] Syria has to understand there is a price for its use of proxy terrorism, especially as Damascus is itself a proxy - the long-arm of Iran." A European source said the message made it clear that Syria could be targeted, even if Hizbullah attacked from Lebanese soil. The sources said Israel was mainly concerned that the terror organization would barrage the north with rockets in the event of a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile an unnamed British official told the news agency that any flare-up in the north would be "a disaster."
"The death of Mughniyeh [and] the threatened Hizbullah retaliation does leave a specter of a wider regional conflict," he said, adding that Israeli-Syrian peace talks under the circumstances were unlikely. "There's an interest on both sides but I think it's very difficult to move forward on it."

March 14 Conference Draws Opposition Criticism
Naharnet/The pro-government ruling March 14 Alliance commemorated the third anniversary of the Cedar Revolution with renewed calls on the rival political parties to put differences aside and work hand-in-hand to build a strong, independent and sovereign Lebanon. The conference held at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure (BIEL) Center on Friday was the first by the coalition to mark three years since the launch of the Cedar Revolution which led to the pullout of Syrian troops from Lebanon after ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination. "We extend our hand and reiterate our call on all factions to overcome disagreements and participate in molding our common destiny," Fares Soueid, the coalition's secretary, told around 2,500 people at the conference entitled "Beirut Spring 2008."
"Together for the salvation of Lebanon, together for defending our right to live, together for living peacefully in a sovereign, democratic, and modern state," read the political declaration's opening lines. The opposition was quick to react to the March 14 rally.
The Free Patriotic Movement of Gen. Michel Aoun criticized the "festival," saying March 14 leaders "fiercely attacked the opposition before extending a hand" to the Hizbullah-led March 8 Forces. Meanwhile, Hizbullah's al Manar television, slammed the March 14 statement for labeling both Israel and Iran "enemies" of Lebanon. "There is a contradiction between this (claim) and extending a hand to the other party," al Manar said on Friday's evening newscast.
March 14 rejected having two armies in Lebanon. The declaration warned that "Lebanon should not have two armies which take orders from two authorities -- the Lebanese state and a foreign country," in reference to Hizbullah which is backed by Syria and Iran.
"Any form of resistance that leads to weakening the state and dividing the people cannot be described as true resistance," the declaration said.
"Internal unity safeguards and consolidates our independence," Soueid said, but lamented that "Lebanon, throughout its modern history, never witnessed the acute divisions we observe today." The ruling coalition also called in its political declaration for a fresh start of relations with the Assad regime only if Damascus "acknowledges Lebanon's sovereignty and independence" through establishing diplomatic ties."Damascus must stop treating Lebanon as if it is a district of Syria," Soueid said. MP Samir al-Jisr stressed in a speech during the inauguration of the conference that the March 14 forces were "determined to preserve Lebanon's independence and sovereignty."
Al-Jisr said: "We have failed to elect a president and enforce the authority of the state across the entire Lebanese territory, and there are still private security zones," in reference to Hizbullah's so-called Security Square in Beirut's southern suburbs. Al-Jisr stressed the need to implement the Arab initiative which calls for the election of Army Chief Gen. Michel Suleiman president, the formation of a national unity cabinet and the adoption of an electoral law. He warned that attempts to block Suleiman's election were "tantamount to destroying the state.""Presidential elections are not a luxury but a necessity," he stressed.
Al-Jisr called for writing down a timetable for the full implementation of the Taef agreement which was not possible in the past years due to "international and regional conditions."The conference initiated several workshops that would discuss fundamental issues such as the Taef accord, activating constitutional institutions, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, national reconciliation, economic development, Lebanese-Syrian relations, the Lebanese-Israeli conflict and Lebanese-Palestinian relations. The conference ended by an announcement that a youth and immigrant's conference will be held in the coming weeks.Beirut, 14 Mar 08, 19:49

Dakar Summit Backs Arab Plan on Lebanon, Slams U.S. Over Sanctions against Syria
Naharnet/A summit of Muslim nations on Friday supported an Arab initiative to end Lebanon's political crisis and agreed on measures to give their group greater global clout, as the head of the world's most populous Muslim country Indonesia called for an "Islamic Renaissance."
The summit's final declaration attacked the United States, which has named a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, for passing sanctions against Syria. It also condemned "pressure" being put on Iran over its nuclear program, but "strongly condemned" the Taliban militia and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The OIC summit adopted a new charter allowing faster decision making and creating new institutions for the 57-nation body.
OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the Dakar summit had been "historic" because of the unanimous adoption of the new charter, replacing a 1972 version that he insisted was outdated. The new constitution streamlines the OIC's operations, allowing new countries to join with just a majority vote instead of the usual unanimous agreement for which decisions are normally taken.
Agreement was reached after several days of intense talks and despite the absence of several prominent leaders -- including Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, Libya's Moamer Kadhafi and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. The OIC leaders used the summit to strongly complain about Islamophobia in the West, complaining that Muslims were often unjustifiably treated as terrorists. Many leaders called for stronger action by the OIC and western governments to stop "insults" such as cartoons published in Denmark which lampooned the Prophet Mohammed and the looming release of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch far-right MP.
In a speech to the summit, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for a jihad of peace, including greater democracy and efforts to empower Muslims to improve the religion's image and boost its influence. "The possibility of an Islamic Renaissance lies before us," Yudhoyono told the summit, but first, he added: "We need to get our act together as an organization of Muslim nations. "When the Islamic Renaissance comes it will be the natural fruit of a peaceful and constructive 'jihad'." Yudhoyono said the OIC was "unique" because it covers three continents and "Muslim countries supply 70 percent of the world's energy requirements and 40 percent of its raw material exports."
But he said "protracted conflicts in Muslim societies bring shame" to the Muslim world and meant that "Islam has unjustly been associated with violence."
"We must disabuse the world of this terrible misconception," he said, calling for greater efforts against 'Islamophobia' in the West but also greater democracy in Muslim nations. "We must strive for good governance and attend to our democratic deficit." Indonesia, with more than 230 million people, is the world's most populous Muslim nation and its third biggest democracy. "History tells us that Muslims in the past contributed immensely to the march of civilization through groundbreaking achievements in the sciences, as well as in arts." But Yudhoyono added that Islam was now "on the defensive". He called for efforts to "improve the plight of the Muslim peoples," adding that this meant "extensive economic cooperation among ourselves ... pooling of resources and plugging of the development gaps all over the Muslim world." Yudhoyono said there should be investment schemes and "Islamic free trade areas". The summit's final declaration "condemned" the United States over its sanctions against Syria last year which the leaders called "blatant prejudice in Israel's favor".
Sada Cumber, an American-Pakistani, attended the summit less than a week after he was announced by President George Bush as the first U.S. special envoy to the United States. The declaration attacked the "terrorist and criminal activities" of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, specifically highlighting the growing number of suicide attacks.The next OIC summit will be held in Cairo in 2011.(AFP) Beirut, 15 Mar 08, 00:05

France Reiterates its Support of Arab Initiative
Naharnet/France has reiterated its support of the Arab initiative and stressed the need to elect a president at the next parliamentary session set to take place on March 25 after 16 postponements. "The last deadline to elect a president is on March 25," French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani said Friday, adding that Paris hopes a president will be elected on that date. "We hope a change will occur before the scheduled deadline on March 25 and we adhere to our support of the Arab initiative and the election of (Army commander) Gen. Michel Suleiman president," Andreani added. The Arab initiative calls for the election of Suleiman president, the formation of a national unity government and the adoption of a new electoral law. Beirut, 14 Mar 08, 20:48

Moussa: Joint Arab Efforts Needed to Make Progress on Lebanon Crisis
Naharnet/Arab League chief Amr Moussa said in remarks published Saturday that there are "a number of factors" which hinder attempts to reconcile bickering Lebanese parties. "A number of factors prevent reconciliation in Lebanon and do not make room for progress," Moussa told the Russian daily Frimia Novosti.
"It's impossible to lay the blame on one party only," he said. He said Syria has influence over Lebanon "which nobody can deny," adding that the impact of foreign powers on Lebanon is also "tangible," citing France as an example. "Joint Arab efforts are needed in order to achieve progress in Lebanon … There is an Arab initiative which Syria supports," he said, without elaborating. "Electing a president in Lebanon will make room for a quick solution to the disputes," Moussa added.
He said the various political sides also have to agree on the structure of the new government so they could move to parliamentary elections in conformity with a new electoral law. Beirut, 15 Mar 08, 09:17

Saniora: Lebanon Determined to Overcome Crisis
Naharnet/Prime Minister Fouad Saniora has said Lebanon was determined to overcome the ongoing political crisis pitting the government against the Hizbullah-led opposition. "Lebanon is determined to overcome the crisis by electing a new president, setting up a national unity government, and energizing the Lebanese state's paralyzed institutions," Saniora said Friday at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) summit in Dakar. "The Lebanese are willing and determined to overcome their crisis with the help of the Arab and international communities," Saniora said, stressing that "Lebanon should no longer be an arena for conflicts of others." Beirut, 15 Mar 08, 05:16

Cheney to Discuss Lebanon, Other Issues during Mideast Tour
Naharnet/U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will discuss among other things Lebanon's political crisis during his trip to the Middle East, Cheney's top national security adviser John Hannah, has said. "The agenda, I expect, will be a very rich one," Hannah said Friday in previewing Cheney's trip, which is to begin on Sunday. "Clearly our ongoing efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan will be discussed at just about all the stops, Middle East peace, Iran, the situation with Syria and Lebanon, violence in Gaza, energy — it's a very long list," he added. Soaring U.S. gas prices also will be key topics in Cheney's private talks with leaders in the Sultanate of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Turkey. However, U.S. President George Bush said Monday that the goal behind Cheney's visit to the region is to get Israelis and Palestinians to hold firm to the promises they've made toward peace. Bush made clear he expects Cheney to prod the leaders to stick to their obligations under the U.S.-backed road map, which calls on the Palestinians to disarm militants and for Israel to halt settlement construction. "Those obligations are clear," Bush said.(AP-Naharnet) Beirut, 15 Mar 08, 07:12

Geagea: Lebanese will Continue their Struggle for Freedom
Naharnet/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has said on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Cedar Revolution that the Lebanese will continue their struggle for an independent Lebanon. Geagea, speaking at a ceremony held in the U.S. Congress Friday, said the "Lebanese people will continue their brave struggle for the freedom and independence of their country.""The road to freedom is a long one, but we will eventually succeed," Geagea said at the ceremony marking the third anniversary of the Cedar Revolution which led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops, bringing an end to Syria's 29-year control of its tiny neighbor. Beirut, 15 Mar 08, 05:36

Syria expands 'iron censorship' over Internet
Authorities have ordered Internet cafe users to reveal their identity
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Reuters-updated 4:11 p.m. PT, Thurs., March. 13, 2008
DAMASCUS - Syrian authorities have ordered Internet cafe users to reveal their identity, the latest measure in their "iron censorship" of cyberspace, a Syrian monitoring group said on Thursday. Security officials ordered Internet cafe owners this week to take down the names and identification cards of their clients as well as the times they come and leave, Mazen Darwich, head of the Syrian Media Centre, told Reuters. The records are to be presented regularly to the authorities, who targeted bloggers and Internet writers in recent months as part of a renewed campaign against dissent. "These steps are designed to terrorize Internet users and spread fear and self censorship in violation of the right to privacy and free expression," Darwich said. "The government has been methodical in extending the scope of its iron censorship," he said. There was no comment from the government. Officials had said Internet controls were needed to guard against what they described as attempts to spread sectarian divisions and "penetration by Israel."Several Internet cafes confirmed the new regulations.
Restrictions have also increased on surfing the World Wide Web and online publishing. An increasing number of Syrians who have voiced opinions on the Internet were being jailed, Darwich said. The Syrian Media Centre, an independent body that tracks curbs on media, said at least 153 Internet sites are blocked in Syria with bans expanding over the past few weeks to Googleblog and the Arab Maktoobblog. "Open forums have been used by thousands of Syrians to launch a counteroffensive against the government's curbs on public expression," Darwich said. The forums also provide a way for users to share information on how to bypass government blocking of sites through what is known as Internet proxies, he said. Facebook and YouTube are already banned as well as sites for Syrian opposition parties, Lebanese newspapers and Lebanese groups opposed to what they call Syrian interference in Lebanon. The site of the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat newspaper is blocked although the daily has a correspondent in Damascus. The government last year ordered Internet sites based in Syria to provide the "clear identity and name" of those behind any article or comment they publish. A poet is facing trial at a state security course for publishing articles on a civic society forum. Another writer spent a week in prison for an Internet piece about fuel and electricity shortages, Syrian human rights organizations said. A teacher from the farming province of Reka is facing trial for criticizing online what he described as patronage and nepotism in the state-run education system. The Internet spread in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his late farther, Hafez al-Assad in 2000. The country is ruled by the Baath Party, which took power in a coup in 1963, imposed emergency law and banned all opposition.Copyright 2008 Reuters. Click for restrictions. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23616541/

An uneasy status quo
Talk of an imminent war between Israel and Hizbullah, or a wider regional escalation, subsided in Lebanon slightly this week, allowing a brief respite from the constant fear of escalation.
Progress on bridging the gaping political divide remained elusive, however, with the presidential election postponed for the 16th time to 25 March, four days before the Arab Summit convenes in Damascus. Lebanon has been without a president since November, when Emile Lahoud stepped down with no nominated successor, due to the rift between the Western- supported anti-Syrian government and Hizbullah and its allies in the opposition, who demand a greater share in power. The White House condemned the decision to postpone the election as "unacceptable" and blamed Syrian meddling.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have threatened not to attend unless a Lebanese president is elected in time, raising fears that the regional battle lines are growing clearer, but also hopes that this threat might result in a last- ditch solution in Lebanon. It remains unclear whether pro- Western Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora would attend instead, a step that would likely be unacceptable to the opposition led by Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah.
"The situation is escalating and there seems to be a covert confrontation going on from the assassination of Imad Mughniyah all the way up to today," said Osama Safa, head of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, referring to the killing of a Hizbullah military commander three weeks ago. "I really don't see any signs of a rapprochement or a thaw in the region, which I think is unfortunate for this country. I think it probably will prolong the crisis."
Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said after the killing of Mughniyah that Israel was welcome to an "open war" if that was what it wanted, making clear retaliation was a certainty. But talk of an all-out conflict subsided this week, with many predicting that Israel had no taste yet for renewed conflict.
That impression was bolstered by an annual Israeli intelligence report, which warned that escalating its attack on Gaza could expose Israel to renewed conflict with Hizbullah. According to a report on Israel's Ynet news service, Hizbullah has fully prepared for a new conflict, as the group itself has said.
Safa said the "war" had in fact started, with Mughniyah's assassination and an attack at a Jewish Talmudic school in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian gunman shot eight students dead. "I think this is the new face of that war, it's not going to be confrontation, it's not going to be air strikes. It'll be covert operations back and forth," Safa said.
With the three-year anniversary of the mass anti-Syrian protest of 14 March 2005 this week, the eponymous 14 March movement said it would announce a new "political platform" at a conference on Friday. Analysts expect little new from the 14 March communiqué, and most expect an uneasy status quo until after the Arab summit. "It's going to be calmer, with this eerie stability, until after the summit," said Safa. "I think Gaza is being used to convey messages at the moment."
Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri expressed hope the Islamic Summit underway in Dakar, Senegal, would yield a path to a solution before the Damascus meeting. Berri accused the United States of foiling an Arab League initiative to end the crisis, which has so far made no progress. "Those who don't support the Arab initiative and who have blocked more than one plan to solve the Lebanese crisis, cannot make us believe that they want the election of a president more than us," Berri, an opposition leader, said in a statement.
Neither of the two sides appear prepared to give an inch on the central issue of power sharing in the next government. The opposition wants a guaranteed third of the seats to ensure a say in major decisions against a backdrop of growing domestic and international pressure on Hizbullah. The government refuses and argues that it has a parliamentary majority.
More crucially, neither do their backers, with the battle- lines drawn between the pro-US, so-called "moderate", Arab states and Iran, Syria and Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements, sharpened by the dispute over the Arab summit and reactions to Israel's bloody campaign in Gaza.
At the forefront is the Syrian-Saudi dispute that flared up after the July 2006 war, when Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad accused Arab leaders who failed to support Hizbullah's resistance to Israel of being "half-men".
Many analysts say the dispute reflects US pressure to isolate Damascus and Hizbullah. But supporters of 14 March say the international tribunal to try the suspects in former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri's 2005 killing is at the heart of the tussle.
A Daily Star editorial last week tied the Saudi-Syrian dispute to Lebanon and the Hariri killing. "Damascus has pleaded innocence in that crime -- and all the political killings that have followed -- but it remains the prime suspect in most quarters," the paper said. "Riyadh has tried mightily to position itself as a neutral observer in the Lebanese political context, but Hariri was a favoured son with close ties to the royal family. As though Lebanon were not already hosting a sufficient number of regional tugs-of- war, yet another has been going on in which the contestants show no sign of giving up."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

SYRIA: Offering Lebanon an olive branch, or a booby trap?
Is Syria just playing games or is it really trying to repair its acrid relations with the Lebanese government?
That was question this week after Damascus dispatched an official for an express visit to Beirut. His mission: deliver an official invitation to Lebanon's government for this year's controversial Arab Summit, scheduled for Damascus at the end of March.
The invitation was addressed to western-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. He represents an anti-Syrian front, which blames Damascus for a string of political assassinations and continuing interference in the Lebanon internal affairs.
Voices in Siniora's western-backed camp are already calling on him and his government to snub the summit. Walid Jumblatt, one of Lebanon's most hawkish anti-Syrian leaders, told the Arabic service of BBC radio that Syria might as well be considered a puppet of Iran rather than part of the Arab world.
Here's one of his comments as translated and quoted by the online Beirut-based Naharnet:
Lebanon should boycott the Damascus summit because its participation would be similar to acquitting the Syrian regime which along with its allies has hampered the presidential elections… There is a Persian empire in the Gulf [that] has reached Syria. The Syrian regime has lost its Arab belonging because it is in the Persian orbit.
For the few past weeks, the summit, which is supposed to be about fomenting Arab unity, has instead stirred up tensions between the Arab capitals. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries were toying with a boycott of the annual meeting to punish Syria and its leader Bashar Assad for blocking the voting for a new Lebanese head of state since last November.
Lebanon has been torn for several months between the anti-Syrian majority and an opposition backed by Iran and Syria and led by the militant group Hezbollah. Some voices are calling for all sides to set aside their differences and accept the invite. An editorial in the Lebanese English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, urged Lebanese leaders to grasp the opportunity of the summit to reconcile:
What is needed is a mature response that respects the ideal of "no victor, no vanquished," not yet another challenge that can only prolong an impasse that has already slowed Lebanon's economy and made emigration a way of life for another generation of its people. Both sides have too often taken the low road over the past 16 months, as have their respective foreign backers. This is yet another chance for at least partial redemption.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is calling on its pals leading the so-called moderate Arab states to isolate Syria by boycotting the summit. The State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted in an AFP article:
In contemplating whether or not they attend a meeting in Syria, it certainly bears keeping in mind what Syria's role (has been) to this point in not allowing a Lebanese electoral process to move forward.**Raed Rafei in Beirut

Excuses Ahead of Time for the Anticipated Failure in Lebanon
Walid Choucair
Al-Hayat - 14/03/08//
Before any new round of contacts and efforts to come up with new ideas or exits that will satisfy the various Lebanese parties and thus end the country's presidential vacuum, a resounding, destructive campaign is kicked off. This campaign accuses the parliamentary majority in Lebanon and the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of rejecting and aborting the proposed solutions and initiatives at the request and behest of "their masters, the Americans." Television screens, news agencies and radio stations carry the speeches and statements by leading opposition members, accusing the US administration of trying to abort the initiatives and prevent them from yielding positive results.
These opposition campaigns serve as declarations ahead of time about the implicit plan to thwart these initiatives. The easiest way to engineer the failure of these solutions, which are based on electing Army Commander Michel Suleiman president as a means to end the destructive presidential vacuum in Lebanon, is to accuse the US policy of this tactic before things actually fail. This is because the US policy is "a perfect fit," as we say, since both the opposition and the government camps reject the US policy in the region because of its blind, inhumane bias toward Israel and the massacres it carries out. In addition, no one supports the US' plans, which are at times malicious and at others just stupid, to pressure the countries' regions, under the banners of democratization, achieving peace or fighting terror, as it overlooks the state terror practiced by Israel.
As it is so easy to accuse America of anything, just because the parliamentary majority leaders meet its ambassador or visit Washington to obtain reassurances that it will not make a deal with Syria at Lebanon's expense, it is clear that the opposition is readying this accusation ahead of time.
This is what's happening today with the promised efforts made on the sidelines of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar to elect Suleiman president during a parliamentary session scheduled for the 25th of this month. Perhaps some Arab states might convince Syria and Iran to end the vacuum, by facilitating their allies' participation in the election. When the campaign precedes these efforts, one should conclude beforehand that Damascus and Tehran will not make things easier and will not be responsive to these efforts.
Naturally, directing accusations at America is an indication of patriotism and nationalism, which does not require any proof when it comes to its policies toward the Palestinian issue, the rights of Arabs vis-à-vis the Jewish state, Iraq, its concept of fighting terror, its use of absolute force and its role in fueling the clash of civilizations and mobilizing feelings of hatred of America among the world's Muslims… However, if we go back to some of these facts, we should also respect people's intelligence.
The leaders of the Lebanese opposition and officials in Syria accuse Washington of sabotaging the French initiative. Meanwhile, French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, openly accused Syria in statements to the media, several times in December, of sabotaging French diplomacy. This accusation prompted Sarkozy to halt the French presidency's contacts with Syria. Before this French initiative, there were other European initiatives with Syria, which all reached a dead end. Several European officials declared this openly, the last one being Javier Solana, who said in Beirut, using diplomatic language, that Syria was not cooperating enough.
While the opposition and Damascus accuse Washington of sabotaging the Arab initiative, the architects of this initiative are saying something different. If the accumulation of events has confused some people, that does not mean that we should employ selective memory. The Arab League launched an initiative last June, when it tasked a high-level Arab delegation to visit Lebanon and renew dialogue between the majority and the opposition in order to arrive at an accord on a national unity government. The delegation came back empty-handed, disappointed by the opposition's refusal to resume dialogue. The background for this involved the Syrian side's telling the Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa that the solution in Lebanon would be discussed in an Egyptian-Syrian-Saudi summit. This was rejected by Cairo and Riyadh, which stipulated that a solution in Lebanon precede such a summit. The Secretary General's report on the revived initiative that was launched at an Arab-European-US meeting in Paris in January, as an alternative to the failed French initiative, indicated in December 27 that the conditions set down by the opposition caused the initiative's failure. Moussa's report, which was not published in March, repeated these comments, attributing failure to the opposition's conditions and varying enthusiasm for the candidacy of General Suleiman. At no time in these three instances was America mentioned.
If Washington is the one sabotaging all of these initiatives, then why is the opposition calling for an inter-Arab reconciliation? Why is it stepping up its calls for improving Saudi-Syrian relations as a condition for a solution in Lebanon? Perhaps the political mentality that says clashing with America when unnecessary, while avoiding a confrontation when necessary has begun to prevail among the Lebanese

International Christian Concern: Nun Survives Murder Attempt in Lahore, Pakistan
2020 Pennsylvania Ave. NW #941, Washington DC 20006-1846
www.persecution.org / Email: icc@persecution.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
You are free to disseminate the following news. We request that you reference ICC (International Christian Concern) and include our web address www.persecution.org. Contact Jeremy Sewall, Policy Analyst, 1-800-ICC (422)-5441, jeremy@persecution.org.
(March 14, 2008) The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) www.persecution.org has just learned that Sister Nusrat Shafi, a 30-year-old Nun of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, survived a murder attempt in Lahore by an unknown person on March 8, 2008, which was also International Women's Day.
The parish priest of St. John's Catholic Church, Fr. Emmanuel Asi, told that Sr. Nusrat was alone in the convent in Youhanabad, the biggest Christian neighborhood in Pakistan, when the assailant came in at about 5:00pm on March 8, 2008. He attacked the young sister and slashed her neck twice with a dagger, attempting to slit her throat. Thinking that he had accomplished his mission, the attacker left her for dead.
The other four sisters who worked at the convent were participating in services elsewhere, and had left Sr. Nusrat alone because she was not feeling well. When they returned, they were alarmed to find Sr. Nusrat lying in a pool of blood and rushed her to the Lahore General Hospital. She was still undergoing medical care when this report was written.
ICC's source said that she was recovering but that her doctors have advised her not to talk. Local church leaders submitted an application for police to investigate the incident at the Nishtar police station on the same day. Police finally registered the First Information Report on March 11, 2008, but have still not made any arrests. In addition, the sisters have complained that the police have not paid a single visit to the convent for investigations.
Fr. Asi condemned the attack, calling it an act of terrorism. He urged the authorities to provide protection for religious minorities and bring the culprit to justice. The priest said that this was the fourth incident in Youhanabad targeting religious leaders within the past 11 months.
Local church leadership and laity, including politicians, merchants, teachers - both men and women - are paying regular visits to the sisters to show their solidarity.
The convent is situated on the premises of a Home for Aged People which has been run by the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary for the past 40 years. The sisters also run a boys' school and a girls' school in Youhanabad and pay regular visits to Christian families in the evenings.
ICC Policy Analyst, Jeremy Sewall, said, “Not only was this an act of terrorism, it was an act of cowardice. If Muslims want to defend their religion, let them come forward like men and meet ideological challengers with legitimate arguments. Attempting to murder a helpless, innocent, charity worker only serves to de-legitimize the truth claims of those who seek to defend Islam.”
# # #
ICC is a Washington-DC based human rights organization that exists to help persecuted Christians worldwide. ICC delivers humanitarian aid, trains and supports persecuted pastors, raises awareness in the US regarding the problem of persecution, and is an advocate for the persecuted on Capitol Hill and the State Department. For additional information or for an interview, contact ICC at 800-422-5441.

AUANEWSWATCH
Besieged Iraqi Christians Need A Safe Haven, Supporters Say
Patrick Goodenough
International Editor
(CNSNews.com) - The best thing the church worldwide can do for Iraq's beleaguered Christians is support a push for a secure province for the community, an activist campaigning for autonomy for Iraq's ethnic Assyrians said Friday.
A province in the north of the country -- the original homeland of Assyrians is a rural area near Mosul known as the Nineveh plain -- would provide the protection needed to persuade those many Christians who have left Iraq to return home, said Ken Joseph.
Joseph, an ethnic Assyrian, commented after the body of an archbishop was found in Mosul on Thursday, less than two weeks after gunmen abducted him at his church and killed three men with him. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed al-Qaeda and said his government was committed to protecting Christians.
Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, is the most senior Iraqi Christian to have been killed in what many believe is a concerted effort by Islamic extremists to drive Christians, a mere three percent of the population, from the country.
Iraqi Christians are being targeted by jihadists who "seek to drive them from their ancestral homes and create a pure Islamic caliphate," said Faith McConnell, director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's religious liberty programs.
She called on American Christians to stand up for the church in Iraq, and said the U.S. government must acknowledge that Iraqi Christians were being singled out and must be protected.
Assyrians are a non-Arab ethnic group which long predated the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia, and was among the first peoples to embrace Christianity. The Chaldean Catholics are the largest Christian denomination; others include Syriac Orthodox and Armenians.
According to the Assyrian International News Agency, previous attacks targeting Iraqi churchmen in Mosul include the June 2007 fatal shooting of a Chaldean priest and three deacons, the November 2006 abduction and shooting of a Protestant pastor, and the October 2006 kidnapping of a Syriac Orthodox priest whose abductors subsequently beheaded and dismembered him.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled since 2003.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent body that advises Congress and the administration, says that according to the Iraqi government, "nearly half the members of Iraq's non-Muslim minorities have fled abroad."
Joseph argued that Christians abroad should not encourage Iraqi Christians to immigrate, as "this would devastate one of the last remaining major Christian communities in the Middle East and will be extremely harmful."
"What is most needed is for individuals and organizations to support the Iraqi government in their efforts to help the Assyrian Christians and encourage their own governments to support the Assyrian province [concept]."
Joseph said he recently met with Malaki, prayed with him, and had been assured of his support for the Assyrians.
The Assyrian Universal Alliance, an umbrella body of Assyrian federations and organizations set up in 1968, has also been appealing for the establishment of an Assyrian province in northern Iraq
"Obviously, the aim of these evil people by carrying out barbarous attacks is to demoralize the Assyrians as a nation and to drive us out from our ancestral lands," the alliance's executive board said in a statement issued after Bahho's kidnapping but before his body was found.
An Assyrian province would enable the community to provide its own security, it said.
Supporters of an Assyrian province base their hopes on a provision in Iraq's constitution: "This constitution shall guarantee the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights for the various nationalities, such as Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians and all other components. This will be organized by law."
Joseph said because an Assyrian province would have to be formally approved by parliament, it would take some time.
Despite the current situation, he expressed optimism about "the possibility of a province, autonomy and ultimately a nation."
International Christian Concern, a rights group focusing on the persecution of Christians, said in a recent report that the development of an autonomous region for Assyrian Christians "may be the only means of protection and hope so that the Christians who have fled can safely return to the land of their fathers."

Death Comes for the Archbishop
GMT 3-14-2008 19:57:33
Assyrian International News Agency
The Catholic Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was found dead Thursday in a shallow grave in that northern Iraq city. On February 29, Islamist extremists had abducted the 65-year-old prelate while he prayed, in Aramaic, the language of Jesus himself, the Lenten Stations of the Cross at his church.
There could be no starker statement that Christians are targeted for their faith in a ruthlessly intolerant Iraq. Cardinal Delly, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, weeps in Baghdad; he weeps for his martyred friend, and for the bitter fate of Iraq's ancient Christian Church.
Many other Iraqi Christians have been terrorized and murdered over the last four years: Fr. Paulos Iskander was beheaded, Fr. Mundhir al-Dayr assassinated in his Protestant church, Fr. Ragheed Ganni and three deacons gunned down and their car booby trapped as they went about their ministries. The list includes many lay people; even Christian children have turned up dead from torture, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently documented.
From southern Basra to northern Kirkuk, all across Iraq, the Christian community has suffered bloody reprisals for failing to conform to Islamic behavior -- in their dress, their social patterns, and their occupations, as well as in their worship. Forty churches have been bombed, mostly in Baghdad and Mosul. During the surge last summer, Sunni militants from a mosque in Baghdad's religiously integrated Dora neighborhood issued a fatwa specifically commanding the 2,000 Christian families residing there to convert or be killed. Criminal gangs from the majority population have found easy prey in the religious minorities, who, dealing with indifferent security forces and lacking militias of their own, are utterly defenseless.
Iraqi-American Christians, who have joined together to form the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council, believe that religious persecution, above all, has driven out most of Iraq's Christians -- whether Chaldean Catholic, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian, or Protestant. Affirming this, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration & Refugee Services reported in July: "Especially critical is the plight of Iraq's minority religious communities, including Christians and Mandeans (or Sabeans). These groups, whose home has been what is now Iraq for many centuries, are literally being obliterated -- not because they are fleeing generalized violence but because they are being specifically and viciously victimized by Islamic extremists and, in some cases, common criminals."
These exiles have taken temporary refuge across the border in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and elsewhere. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports that 40 percent of Iraqi refugees are Christian -- a staggering number, considering that Christians accounted for only some 4 percent, or 1.5 million, of Iraq's total pre-invasion population. Hundreds of thousands more have fled north to Iraq's Nineveh Plains, a mostly vacant, fertile area outside Mosul and south of Kurdistan where many of the ethnic Assyrian Christians had ancestral villages (before being forcibly uprooted during a prior persecution).
Over the past 2,000 years, Iraq's Christians suffered oppressions and great indignities. The ones who survived through the Hussein era, when dozens of their northern villages were obliterated, were reputed to be the die-hards: They hung on out of devotion to their unique churches, culture, and language (the dying Aramaic). Even now, Pascale Warda -- a Chaldean women's activist, a former cabinet minister in the transition government, and a survivor of four assassination attempts -- is an exemplar of those who remain.
Apart from Christians, remnants of Iraq's other non-Muslim communities are all rapidly shrinking into extinction: Jews number in the double digits (only seven remained in Baghdad as of last July); Mandeans count about 5,000 (the Patriarch of these followers of John the Baptist has recently counseled the community to leave); Yizidis, no more than 500,000 (residing in Nineveh and in the north). They all suffer severe persecution because of their religious status and their numbers continually shrink as their members flee into exile.
Archbishop Rahho was a dynamic leader, and a man of great hope. Despite the odds, he founded the new parish of St. Paul in Mosul, started a "Youth Week" in his diocese, and founded the Fraternity of Charity and Joy, with the aim of assisting sick people and guaranteeing them a dignified life. Anglican canon Andrew White, who works to help Iraqi Christians, eloquently expressed the reaction of that community to the murder of the archbishop: "We are devastated." Condolences have poured in from around the world, from Christians and non-Christians. It feels like a defining moment.
The Bush administration has yet to acknowledge that the Christians and other defenseless minorities are persecuted for reasons of religion. No policies exist to address their specific needs in Iraq or facilitate their finding refuge abroad. No programs exist to train and support them to police their own villages -- more critical than ever now that the military surge has flushed terror northward. No checks are in place to ensure that their villages in Nineveh and elsewhere in the north share equitably in U.S. largesse. No senior administration official has ever even met to hear the views of their American leaders as a group and forge solutions.
The archbishop knew the risks of staying but told his flock that he "wanted to remain in Iraq until the end." Without urgent administration action, the end may well be near.
Copyright (C) 2008, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

Besieged Iraqi Christians Need A Safe Haven, Supporters Say
Patrick Goodenough
International Editor
(CNSNews.com) - The best thing the church worldwide can do for Iraq's beleaguered Christians is support a push for a secure province for the community, an activist campaigning for autonomy for Iraq's ethnic Assyrians said Friday. A province in the north of the country -- the original homeland of Assyrians is a rural area near Mosul known as the Nineveh plain -- would provide the protection needed to persuade those many Christians who have left Iraq to return home, said Ken Joseph. Joseph, an ethnic Assyrian, commented after the body of an archbishop was found in Mosul on Thursday, less than two weeks after gunmen abducted him at his church and killed three men with him. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed al-Qaeda and said his government was committed to protecting Christians.
Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, is the most senior Iraqi Christian to have been killed in what many believe is a concerted effort by Islamic extremists to drive Christians, a mere three percent of the population, from the country. Iraqi Christians are being targeted by jihadists who "seek to drive them from their ancestral homes and create a pure Islamic caliphate," said Faith McConnell, director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's religious liberty programs. She called on American Christians to stand up for the church in Iraq, and said the U.S. government must acknowledge that Iraqi Christians were being singled out and must be protected.
Assyrians are a non-Arab ethnic group which long predated the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia, and was among the first peoples to embrace Christianity. The Chaldean Catholics are the largest Christian denomination; others include Syriac Orthodox and Armenians.
According to the Assyrian International News Agency, previous attacks targeting Iraqi churchmen in Mosul include the June 2007 fatal shooting of a Chaldean priest and three deacons, the November 2006 abduction and shooting of a Protestant pastor, and the October 2006 kidnapping of a Syriac Orthodox priest whose abductors subsequently beheaded and dismembered him.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled since 2003. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent body that advises Congress and the administration, says that according to the Iraqi government, "nearly half the members of Iraq's non-Muslim minorities have fled abroad."
Joseph argued that Christians abroad should not encourage Iraqi Christians to immigrate, as "this would devastate one of the last remaining major Christian communities in the Middle East and will be extremely harmful."
"What is most needed is for individuals and organizations to support the Iraqi government in their efforts to help the Assyrian Christians and encourage their own governments to support the Assyrian province [concept]."Joseph said he recently met with Malaki, prayed with him, and had been assured of his support for the Assyrians. The Assyrian Universal Alliance, an umbrella body of Assyrian federations and organizations set up in 1968, has also been appealing for the establishment of an Assyrian province in northern Iraq "Obviously, the aim of these evil people by carrying out barbarous attacks is to demoralize the Assyrians as a nation and to drive us out from our ancestral lands," the alliance's executive board said in a statement issued after Bahho's kidnapping but before his body was found. An Assyrian province would enable the community to provide its own security, it said. Supporters of an Assyrian province base their hopes on a provision in Iraq's constitution: "This constitution shall guarantee the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights for the various nationalities, such as Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians and all other components. This will be organized by law."Joseph said because an Assyrian province would have to be formally approved by parliament, it would take some time. Despite the current situation, he expressed optimism about "the possibility of a province, autonomy and ultimately a nation."
International Christian Concern, a rights group focusing on the persecution of Christians, said in a recent report that the development of an autonomous region for Assyrian Christians "may be the only means of protection and hope so that the Christians who have fled can safely return to the land of their fathers."

Guest Editorial: Should People Be Forced to Terrorism?
-14-2-2008
Assyrian International News Agency
To unsubscribe or set email news digest options, visit http://www.aina.org/mailinglist.html
Södertalje, Sweden (AINA) -- This is an article that should give you some thought. The situation below is imaginary, but this is what happens when desperation forces people to become terrorists. Our adversaries do these things every day purely for provocation.
A group that calls itself "Stop the Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq" (STECI) has hijacked a packed plane flying between Dubai and Frankfurt and threatens to kill all the passengers. They are demanding that all Assyrians (also known as Syriacs and Chaldeans) in Iraq be given immediate protection. Otherwise, they will begin to execute the passengers on the plane.
The Imam who was kidnapped last week was found dead outside Mosul. STECI declares that it had tortured him, defiled his body and then murdered him.
Seven mosques have been bombed in three Iraqi cities inside two hours today. At least two hundred persons are feared to have been killed. STECI states that additional mosques will be bombed the following days if there isn't an assurance that Assyrians in Iraq will be protected.
A number of bombs have been found in Washington, Brussels and London. "Next time we will detonate them," STECI declares in a letter to the editors of the International Herald Tribune.
None of the above has happened and hopefully none of this will happen.
Thursday 13 March: I sat for two hours in a meeting with a Kurdish social anthropologist who needed background information for a new study he had just begun. Among other things he wanted to know how Assyrians aka Syriacs and Chaldeans, view the invitation that Turkey has made for some of them who reside in the Diaspora to demand occupied land in the south eastern part of the country.
When we had finished talking I switched on my cell phone and found three messages that informed me that the kidnapped Chaldean-Catholic Bishop was found dead.
"What do we have to do the make the world wake up? Do we have to hijack a plane, kidnap an American, become terrorists, or what?" a young man I met on a street in Södertälje yelled at me.
I opened my internet mailbox and found fourteen mails about the murdered bishop. Thirteen wanted to inform me of the murder, the fourteenth was from a young man who asked "Are the terrorists the only ones who are heard? Shall we also begin to kill?" He continued with several more basic questions, "Of what importance is it that the Pope condemns kidnapping? Not a damned thing! The murders don't give a damn what the Christian leader in the west says or believes. What's even worse, is that he appeals to the Iraqi government to protect Christians in Iraq. How? You and many others have stated that the government has no legitimacy in Iraq." I googled the murder and found an interesting statement by Staffan de Mistura at the UN News Centre: "It is horrible that attacks continue against communities who have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.
Statements like Mistura's frighten me. These are statements that are built of ignorance and naivety, and contribute to the ethnic cleansing that has continued uninterrupted through the centuries. When the bishop was kidnapped both the UN and the EU had rapidly condemned it. Condemned, condemned, what does that really mean? Not a damned thing! Who really cares what the UN and the EU condemns? No one. It's action that counts. The UN and the EU should have immediately (if they really meant the word "condemn") sent a military force to protect the non-Muslims in Iraq. In 1991 the Kurds in north Iraq needed protection and they received it. Now its non-Muslims who need protection.
I have produced and directed documentary films, reported on the radio, written articles in magazines and newspapers. I have interviewed hundreds of refugees in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. A number of my reports have been sent to the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament. Many of the reactions contained the sane ignorance and naivety as shown by Mistura. American and European politicians have written that non-Muslims in Iraq need protection -- but nothing happens.
By Nuri Kino
***Nuri Kino is a journalist in Sweden specializing in investigative journalism, and is one of the most highly awarded journalists in Europe (CV). He is an Assyrian from Turkey. His documentary, Assyriska: a National team without a Nation, was awarded The Golden Palm at the 2006 Beverly Hills Film festival.

Miscellaneous News with Significant Meanings and Implications
Raghida Dergham
Al Hayat - 14/03/08//
New York -- Below are six deeply-related miscellaneous news stories:
a- The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, intends to revise and upgrade the charter of the 57-member organization to combat extremism and poverty, adopt a discourse that "reflects Islam's moderation and tolerance" and "focus on development and solidarity in action among members," as he said.
b- Iran's postal service has issued a commemorative postage stamp featuring a picture of Hezbollah's military leader Imad Mughniyyeh. In a statement to the Kuwaiti daily Rai al Aam, Iran's Minister of Post and Communication Mohamed Soleimani said, "the stamp is decorated with the signature of the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will be exhibited at thirty international museums, and a copy will be sent to Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah."
c- Israel and Hamas are observing a mutually-denied, implicit truce in Gaza, while President Mahmoud Abbas announces that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are negotiating with Israel to avoid targeting their leaders. At the same time, ousted Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh vows to "assist" Egypt's efforts to mediate the calm between Israel and Hamas, which seems to draw American enthusiasm.
d- The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says: The international tribunal to try those involved in terrorist political assassinations in Lebanon, notably the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and his comrades, has now crossed the point of no return. I know of no one searching for guarantees for Damascus to ensure that the international tribunal will not involve members of Syrian President Bashar Assad's family.
e- Bleak estimates by the Israeli intelligence have indicated that Iran is the primary threat on five fronts and that there is a high probability of renewed confrontations with Hezbollah, which may inflame other fronts.
f- The US Vice President Dick Cheney kicks off on Sunday a tour in the region to offer assurances on the US commitment to the peace process.
To start with, the OIC Secretary General's efforts to upgrade the organization's charter must be commended, regardless of whether these efforts meet success or failure with the end of the Islamic conference in Senegal today. His efforts are momentous because they bring to the forefront the need to combat radical extremists and violence amidst concerns over anti-Islamic sentiments. Moreover, he is pushing forward the recipe for fighting poverty and extremism at the same time if there is to be a chance for understanding between Islam and the rest of the world. He is prodding an extremely important organization in terms of membership to resist the drive toward adopting and praising extremism as an inherent aspect of Islam. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Iran raises the banner of extremism and blackmails the principle of resistance to expand and impose its radical ideological and religious model on other countries in the region. In fact, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki participated in Imad Mughniyyeh's funeral in Lebanon even though the latter was wanted in 42 states. Later, the Iranian Minister of Post and Communication boasted of a postage stamp issued by Iran in commemoration of Mughniyyeh and "ornamented" by Khamenei's signature. The stamp may not be exhibited at thirty international museums, as Soleimani claims it would be, but, coupled with the public participation of Iran's foreign minister in the funeral, it represents a new variety of defiance messages whose significance must be comprehended by the Islamic world and the west. These messages bear the following meaning: We offer you radicalism and we push extremism at you. Iran became the stronghold of extremism when Khomeini's revolution took over and consumed the revolution of those other Iranians who believed they were taking Iran to a future completely different from the present rule of the Mullahs in the Islamic Republic. Iran is manufacturing extremism in the Middle East. Its allies are not solely restricted to Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, but also include an invisible and most prominent partner, the Israeli government.
This radical alliance does not want a peaceful solution through negotiations, a solution that results in the establishment of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. The members of this alliance are dancing to the tune of enticement in one place and hostility in another in a persistent and bitter rhythm, whose cost is borne by civilians in Palestine and Lebanon. So is the case in Iraq where the radical alliance has multiple invisible and explicit allies among the militias, organizations, intelligence agencies and other lethal apparatuses. This is of course on top of the political partnerships such as that between Iraqi government officials and Iran's leaders.
Returning to the radical polarization within and in the name of Palestine, what stands out as remarkable is the developing "truce," "negotiation" or "deal" between the government of Israel and Hamas in its two headquarters, the first in Gaza where it is represented by Ismail Haniyyeh and the second in Damascus where it is represented by Khaled Meshaal. It is not the peculiarity of the deals or understandings between Israel and Hamas that is remarkable, especially since Israel had encouraged the formation of Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). What is remarkable is that the "calm" or "truce" may be aimed at the common objective of circumventing the process of negotiations.
The Israeli government share with Hamas and its allies one common goal: to thwart the peaceful negotiations. There are those within the Israeli government who do not want to reach peace with the Palestinians or to implement the Road Map leading to the establishment of the Palestinian state. In the same vein, the Hamas camp and the radical alliance group every party that rejects the two-state solution as well as the peaceful negotiations and wishes to go away with the "Palestinian Authority" headed by Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayad. The Israeli government, especially Defense Minister Ehud Barak, has no willingness to accept the Palestinian state or peace. At the same time, Hamas does not even have the least inclination to accept a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.
Hamas wants to perpetuate its roles that represent a natural contradiction between armed resistance, peaceful negotiation, and religious and spiritual leadership. It is willing to offer everything possible to survive.
Meanwhile, the stances of the Israeli government are incredible if it truly seeks a peaceful solution through negotiations. The requirements of such a peaceful solution are crystal clear and its vehicle is none but moderation. Consequently, if the Israeli intelligence estimates indicate that the radical Arab-Iranian alliance represented by Iran will encircle it on five fronts, it is very strange that Israel is not getting engaged in serious negotiations with the Palestinian Authority to achieve tangible results that would go away with extremisms and reinforce moderation.
The gist of what Salam Fayad informed the US administration during his visit to Washington a few weeks ago was that "the Palestinian Authority cannot tolerate Israel's continuous rejection to take such measures on the ground and in the negotiations that would enable the moderate Palestinian side to survive." He also made it clear to the US officials that "the Palestinian Authority is incapable of playing the absent witness to the crimes committed by Israel." He also added, "there are no real negotiations and nothing positive is happening on the ground," and with Gaza evolving into a huge, dominant, and uncontrollable power like an 800-ton gorilla, the US administration has to refocus on what the peace process really needs.
It is quite very suspicious that efforts are made by various players with contrasting associations to picture the current situation as a failure for the Palestinian Authority and its moderation and as an acknowledgement in Israel and the US administration that negotiating with and through Hamas has become inevitable. This is nonsense that reflects political stupidity despite the good intentions of a few among those who propagate it. Just for their information, this is none but the discourse of the neoconservatives who paved the path to collapse for those with such good intentions. This is an organized campaign to promote extremism at the expense of moderation.
At the renowned Princeton University, Jordan's King Abdullah II delivered a message of moderation that was conscious in its content and beautiful in its impact. He spoke of Israel's international isolation because "a third of the world population" are not and will not be at peace with Israel as long as its occupation continues. He warned against the failure "to take the necessary steps to resolve the core problems of the region," Palestine. He also added that failure would make it significantly harder for the countries of the Middle East to "work in partnership with America in the future."
Furthermore, the Jordanian King insisted on additional and serious US involvement because if the opportunity to lay down the foundations of a Palestinian state is missed in 2008, peace will be set back, "extremists will continue to act, and the forces for moderation and positive change will weaken." During his meetings with the UN Secretary General and US officials in Washington, the Jordanian monarch discussed his fears about the current situation in the region and shared his reading of the Syrian fears with respect to two central matters: the concern of exclusion from the peace process, which would deprive Damascus of the opportunity to evoke the issue of the Golan Heights, and the fears over the international tribunal concerning Lebanon.
Naturally, no responsible person would consider or accept to carry the following message from Damascus to New York and Washington: In return for guarantees to the Syrian regime to protect members of the Syrian president's close circle from any charges at the international tribunal, Syria would facilitate matters in Lebanon, exert pressure on Hezbollah and Hamas to arrive at a settlement in Lebanon and keep a lid on the situation in Palestine. Any sensible person in any office in any country knows quite well that there is no room to discuss an immunity deal for the President's family at a tribunal established by the UN Security Council. The international tribunal has been outside the realm of trade-ins and bargains ever since its establishment under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. No rational party can conceive of a deal that offers guarantees and immunities because any involvement in such a deal could constitute obstruction to justice, an act that not only condemns those who committed the actual crimes, but also those who tried to cover them up.
No sane person will consider this logic because it undermines credibility, destroys those attempting to outsmart reality, and uncovers those who rule with the double-edged sword of absolute power. There is no turning back on the tribunal regardless of who will be dragged to court, and this is exactly what terrifies Damascus even if shows a brave face. What really matters is dealing with the fear of intimidation. Syria's neighbors are scared of the power that Syria derives from its alliance with Iran; some are terrified of the two powers' revenge and harassment. Those who claim to be at the center of the moderate camp, however, have no right to give up on moderation as a regional strategy just because they may pleasantly give priority to bilateral relations, even if this required fomenting extremism

Samantha Power and Democratic evasion on Iraq
By Michael Young -Daily Star
Saturday, March 15, 2008
There is a passage in Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell," her Pulitzer PrizeAnd-the-Winner-Is-Them-Again -winning book on how the United States dealt with genocide throughout the 20th century, worth pondering for what it says about hypocrisy in the formulation of foreign policy. It is also worth pondering for what it tells us about Power herself, an academic who resigned last week as an advisor to Barack ObamaClinton-and-Obama-Economic-Plans Mar-08 after calling his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an exchange with a Scottish newspaper.
Here, Power is writing about Anthony Lake, who in 1970 resigned from the National Security Council in protest against the Nixon administration's expansion of the Vietnam War to Cambodia. A year after his departure, Lake and a colleague published an article describing what they viewed as a problem in the way America shaped its overseas behavior. Power quotes a paragraph from that article in the context of her own chapter on the war in Bosnia, management of which landed in Lake's lap after he became national security adviser to President Bill Clinton in 1993.
In their article, Lake and his colleague argued, "A liberalism attempting to deal with intensely human problems at home abruptly but naturally shifts to abstract concepts when making decisions about events beyond the water's edge. 'Nations,' 'interests,' 'influence,' 'prestige,' - are all disembodied and dehumanized terms which encourage easy inattention to the real people whose lives our decisions affect or even end."
Power follows this observation with an admonition. She reminds us that "[w]hen Lake and his Democratic colleagues were put to the test" - in other words when Lake was appointed a senior Clinton administration official - "although they were far more attentive to the human suffering in Bosnia, they did not intervene to ameliorate it."
You have to wonder how Lake feels about Power's phrase today, because if Power was an adviser to Obama, Anthony Lake happens to still be one. In reading her criticism, what comes to his mind? That Power, even if what she said was partly justified, had gone a bit overboard in picking Lake as the exemplar of American lethargy in Bosnia? That she had misleadingly depicted him as an armchair moralist, when the fact is he had written his earlier article after years of being "put to the test" at the State Department, and had even interrupted a promising career out of a sense of moral compunction? That Power, though a journalist in the former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1996, was herself perhaps something of an armchair moralist for having distributed stern moral verdicts from a safe perch at HarvardB-School-Isnt-What-It-Used-To-Be University, where she wrote her book - the kind of uncompromising verdicts she would later slice and dice and measure and dilute once she had stepped into the pit of political calculation as an Obama confidante?
The dilutions notwithstanding, weeks before her resignation Power had become a lighting rod for criticism directed against Obama. Her outlook on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had provoked the ire of supporters of Israel, amid signs that Obama was having trouble with Jewish voters. Obama's case was not helped any by the unearthing of a comment Power made in 2002, seemingly advocating American military intervention on the Palestinians' behalf. So bizarre was her proposal that Power later told an Israeli reporter, "Even I don't understand it ... This makes no sense to me."
Power's self-immolating comment on Clinton was made during a trip to the United Kingdom. She had the good grace to end it all quickly, though another Obama adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, insisted an apology would have been enough. However, Power showed more political acumen than he did. By hanging on, she would have only remained a magnet of controversy, detracting from Obama's homilies, with the likelihood that the campaign would have eventually jettisoned her anyway.
But Power made a much more significant statement in London, one in which she talked about Obama and Iraq. That the Clintonites brought out their knives in response, that what Power said was valuable only as a weapon in the ongoing pursuit of convention delegates, a weapon doubly lethal for being added to her rash attack on Hillary Clinton, showed how incapable the Democrats are of debating Iraq's future in a forthright way.
In an interview with the BBC program HARDtalk, Power was asked about Barack Obama's plan to remove American troops from Iraq. In her response, she described the candidate's tight withdrawal timetable as "a best-case scenario," which he would "revisit" once elected. That sliced and diced answer prompted the show's host to inquire whether Obama's commitment to withdraw most soldiers within 16 months was, actually, no commitment at all. Power's reply was revealing:
"You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a US Senator. He will rely upon a plan - an operational plan - that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think - it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, 'Well, I said it, therefore I'm going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.'"
Between Power's "monster" quote and her admission that Barack Obama was being less than candid about his intentions in Iraq, suddenly there was too much light shining onto Obama's studied ambiguities. Campaign manager David Plouffe denied there was any change in the candidate's thinking on Iraq, then welcomed Power's exit. Yet Power had not said anything so very different than Obama himself. For example, asked in February by Steve Kroft of CBS whether he would stick to his withdrawal timetable even if sectarian violence ensued, Obama had responded: "No, I always reserve as commander in chief, the right to assess the situation."
And that was nothing compared to what Obama said in 2004, the day after his keynote address at the Democratic national convention in Boston. Speaking at a lunch sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, he had declared: "The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster. It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died ... It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."
Power's sin was to be frank, as the debate over Iraq continues to be distorted by falsehood. What none of the Democratic candidates will admit to, even as they deftly contradict themselves to later justify an about-face, is that there is little prospect of the US leaving Iraq without sectarian conflict ensuing. Allowing this outcome would indeed be the betrayal Obama warned against in Boston, before betraying his rejection of such a betrayal by issuing his promise of a timed pullout that he is again likely to betray.
But thanks to Anthony Lake's 1971 co-authored essay, we now know that the human implications of withdrawal will carry less weight than the withdrawal's bearing on US national interests. And what is the appeal to US interests in Iraq? That Washington cannot afford to leave the country because that would favor Iran, which would interpret an American exit as the long-awaited opening to impose itself as the paramount power in the Persian Gulf, possibly with a nuclear weapons capacity in the coming years.
It's difficult to brand Power a victim, however, because she added to the ambient deceit on Iraq. In an interview with Salon in February, for example, she answered a question as to how the US would get out of Iraq by glutinously suggesting that Washington might have to accept the "idea of sectarian or ethnic relocation if people are in a mixed neighborhood and feel that they'd be safer in a more homogenous neighborhood." She also strongly favored doling out a lot of money - to Iraq's neighbors for having taken in refugees (though Power failed to consider their contribution to the carnage in Iraq), and to internally displaced people.
It was a pitiful response from someone who had written so effectively about how American inaction, even mendaciousness, had allowed mass murder to go on in such places as Nazi-controlled Europe, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda - not to mention Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Yet here Power was with not a word to say about the possibility of mass murder in a post-American Iraq, proposing instead that the US essentially consent to ethnic cleansing. There was nothing in what she told Salon about ignoring "some plan" that Obama had crafted as a candidate. There was nothing about relying on the sound judgment of people on the ground in Iraq. You could almost hear Tony Lake laughing out loud as Power's crystal ball of self-righteousness shattered into a thousand little shards of duplicity and elision.
But we have to hand it to Power that she subsequently blundered into coming clean. We have to hand it to her that she realized that coming clean meant she couldn't last in the Obama campaign. And we have to admit that her BBC comments were about as close to the truth on America's choices in Iraq as we're going to hear from any of the Democratic campaigns.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR and a contributing editor at Reason, where this commentary first appeared.

Chaldean Catholic Faith and Resolve: 'They Will Not Scatter the Chaldean Flock'
3/14/2008
Chaldean.Org (www.chaldean.org/)
“May Bishop Raho rest in the arms of our Lord and may God show mercy on those that continue to hate. They will not scatter the Chaldean flock because they have killed our shepherd. Our faith will now grow even stronger.”
The grief over the death of beloved Chaldean Archbishop Rahho gripped the Chaldean Catholic Community in Iraq and around the world.Details of his death are only now beginning to be confirmed. Newest reports are that an autopsy revealed the he was dead for five days before the kidnappers notified the Church.
MOSUL, IRAQ (Chaldean.org) – The Chaldean community around the world stand numb and in disbelief as news of Archbishop Bishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul is dead. Outcry from world leaders swayed no influence as fanatical terrorists proved once more that no women, children, medical providers, and now spiritual leaders are safe from their killing spree.
“These are innocent people that want to help bring peace. They kill them, because they are filled with hate. These barbarians have no faith in anything, but their own rise to power,” said Omar Touma, a recent refugee and Chaldean parishioner of the Good Shepherd Chaldean Church in Canada.
Text of the news, mournful cries, and prayer messages quickly traveled via e-mail and phone messaging reporting the sorrowful news. Our Bishop is dead, decried one message as images of weeping families huddled together comforting one another.
The kidnappers had been demanding a heavy ransom, Church officials say. When requests were made to speak to the Archbishop the kidnappers replied that the archbishop was dead and gave gave instructions on how Church officials could recover the archbishop's body.
The Chaldean archbishop of Mosul had been dead for at least five days before his body was found this morning by some members of the Church, following information provided by the kidnappers themselves. This timeline is provided by the autopsy conducted on the body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, found in an abandoned area outside of the city, which is in part used as a trash dump.
Archbishop Rahho was seized outside the Holy Spirit cathedral in Mosul after conducting a Stations of the Cross service on Friday, February 29. Three parishioners were killed by the gunmen who abducted the archbishop.
In the days since the kidnapping, Church leaders had pleaded in vain for some clear evidence that Archbishop Rahho was alive and well. The archbishop, who was 69, suffered from a serious heart condition and needed daily medication.
The identity of the kidnappers remains unknown. Although Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki had ordered an all-out effort to locate the archbishop and secure his release, troops were unsuccessful in their search around Mosul-- a city dominated by insurgents and terrorists.
While the kidnappers did ask for a large money ransom, they were evidently not motivated solely by the desire for financial gain. Church spokesmen said that their demands included political conditions-- an indication that the archbishop's abduction was arranged by a terrorist group rather than simply a criminal gang.
Mosul confirms its place as the most dangerous city for the Christian community, the presence of which has dropped by over 75% since 2003. Christians remain the soft target for insurgents terrorists and criminal gangs to raise money and fund their ongoing operations.
After the Iraqi government and coalition forces systematically began turning off funding sources for these militant and criminal groups, their focus turned towards Christians. Iraqi Christians tend to be educated professionals and considered wealthy. They also offer less of a risk in way of having a pro-Islamic police force aggressively peruse the crimes since the victims are Christians and maintain a dhimmi status under Islamic law.
The attacks have created a brain-drain in Iraq as the professionals flee the country in large numbers. Professors, doctors, scientists, and engineers have fled into neighboring regions or across the ocean seeking safe harbor.
After Fr Ragheed Gani was slaughtered on June 3 information revealed that the terrorists were politically motivated to drive Christians out of Iraq. Many consider the indigenous Iraqis that were able to maintain their Christian identity and keep from being converted or conquered by Muslim raiders in the early centuries a moderate balance to the region. The belief is held strongly by fanatical Muslims who are systematicaly driving out the church in hopes of creating a more fundamental Islamic Iraq.
The latest wave of violence against the church came from January 6-17, 2008, when a series of explosions struck the Chaldean Church of Mary Immaculate, the Chaldean Church of St Paul, which was almost destroyed, the entryway to the orphanage run by the Chaldean sisters in al Nour, a Nestorian church, and the convent of the Dominican sisters of Mosul Jadida.
“Our faith is in Jesus who died for the sins of humanity. He will find favor in our Chaldean Martyr who offered nothing but peace, hope, and love,” says Touma. “May bishop Raho rest in the arms of our Lord and may God show mercy on those that continue to hate. They will not scatter the Chaldean flock because they have killed our shepherd. Our faith will now grow even stronger.”
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=27187