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November 28, 2002 News http://www.aljazeerah.info |
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Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
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3 Arabs and 3 Israelis killed in a Mombasa, Kenya, blast, 80 Israelis injured An Israeli airplane targeted with three missiles.
A suicide car bomb hit the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, today at 8:30 a.m. local time. Three Arabs were allegedly identified as the suicide car bombers. They ran into the Israeli-owned hotel, which is usually occupied only by Israeli guests. It was estimated that there were 80 injured Israelis. There were three confirmed suicide bombers, who were killed in addition to four Israelis and six Kenyans. The press attache of the Egyptian Embassy in Kenya, Suhair Hassan Younis, said that the number of the dead reached 13 people. Two names were mentioned in the news as possible suicide bombers. These were Abdallah Ahmed Abdallah and Fahed Ali Hassan. Both were known as living in Kenya as Alqaeda operatives. An Israeli plane with 261 Israelis on board was also targeted moments after taking off from the Mombasa airport. Three missiles were launched at it but failed to hit it (Abu Dhabi TV, aljazeera.net, 11/28/02).
6 Israelis and 3 Palestinians killed in a fire exchange in Beisan, northern Israel
Three Palestinians attacked with machine guns and hand grenades a polling center in Beisan (Beit Shaen), northern Israel. This mid afternoon attack targeted a bus station near a Likude Party election center, in which members of the ruling Likude Party were about to cast their ballots. They were to choose one of the two extremist Israeli politicians, Sharon and Netanyahu, to be the Party leader. The winner will run against the pro-peace candidate, Amram Mitzna, who was elected as the Labor Party leader. The three Palestinian attackers and six Israelis were killed in the fire exchange that led also to injuring about 20l other people, ten of whom had serious injuries (aljazeera.net, 11/28/02). Nobody claimed responsibility yet but the day before yesterday Israeli occupation forces killed the two local leaders of Hamas an Al-Aqsa Brigades in Jenin refugee camp. This could be a retaliation.
5 Palestinians killed
ahead of Likud primaries OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 28 November 2002 — Five Palestinians died as
violence swept across the occupied territories yesterday, setting a tense
stage for the Likud party primaries expected to help Ariel Sharon remain
Israel’s prime minister. A 33-year-old Palestinian was killed in the evening when Israeli
soldiers patrolling the reoccupied town of Bethlehem opened fire on his
car, Palestinian medical sources said. The incident occurred shortly after
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed his outrage at Israel’s
military operations and canceled Christmas celebrations in the southern
West Bank city. "There won’t be any Christmas," he told
reporters in Ramallah, describing Israel’s recent closure of Bethlehem
as an "international crime". Following last week’s Jerusalem bus bomb which left 11 people dead,
the army moved back into Bethlehem and declared the town a closed military
zone under an order valid until Dec. 30. In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a local leader of the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Arafat’s Fatah, and senior member of
the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, were killed in
an overnight blast. The deaths sparked Palestinian accusations that Israel had resumed its
policy of assassinations, following reports by Palestinian security
sources the men were killed when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile on
a building they were in. But an army spokesman denied "any
involvement". In Nablus, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who was going door to
door in Nablus’ Askar refugee camp, waking up fellow Muslims for "suhoor",
the last meal before the start of the dawn-to-dusk fast during Ramadan. A
member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was
also arrested by the army in the camp, the security sources said. A Palestinian blew himself up near the northern crossing point of Erez,
after both Israeli and Palestinian security tried to stop his car. The Abu
Ali Mustafa Brigades said his attack was aimed at the Israeli side of a
nearby liaison office, but the blast only set fire to an empty Palestinian
security building. The Israeli army also staged another one of its almost daily raids in
the southern Gaza Strip overnight when helicopters badly damaged a school
in Khan Yunis, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. Meanwhile, Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qorei met with his
Israeli counterpart, Avraham Burg, in East Jerusalem to discuss ways of
resuming peace negotiations between the two sides. "There is no better time to clear our misunderstandings around the
negotiations table rather than between funerals," he said. "If
we don’t now, who knows what will happen when the genie of extremism
comes out of his bottle?", he asked. Qorei, a veteran negotiator for the Palestinian side, said
"parliamentarians have a duty to work together for an end to all
forms of violence." He nevertheless blamed Israel for the latest
surge in violence, charging that Palestinian " bombings are a
reaction to things like what happened last night". Iraq inspectors begin work AL-AMIRIYAH, Iraq, 28 November 2002 — Digging into Iraqi computers, surveying scenes with detectives’ eyes, UN specialists finally got down to the business of weapons inspection yesterday at the start of a demanding, months-long job that could make or break peace in the Middle East. On their first day, the international inspectors revisited an Iraqi missile testing site and its nearby graphite rod factory and a motor plant potentially linked to nuclear activities. They sounded satisfied with Iraqi attitudes. "We hope the Iraqi response today represents the future pattern of cooperation," said Jacques Baute, the nuclear inspectors’ leader. The Iraqi side also sounded a business-like note. "We opened doors and submitted to inspection openly," said Ali Jassam Hussein, director of the missile site here along the Euphrates River, 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Baghdad. The UN teams did not immediately disclose any significant new findings from their surprise inspections. They may never do so. In the volatile atmosphere surrounding Iraq, the inspectors are expected to leave it to their New York and Vienna agency chiefs to inform the world of serious problems in the campaign to strip Iraq of any capability in chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Those tensions sharpened on the inspectors’ first working day when an air-raid siren wailed in Baghdad, and Iraqi officials said a "hostile flight" had overflown the capital. The US military, whose warplanes have routinely patrolled Iraqi airspace since the 1991 Gulf War, had no comment. The United States has warned it will disarm Iraq by force if the inspections fail, with or without international help. Most other governments say only the UN Security Council can authorize such a move. The UN teams will continue their field missions daily — difficult, detailed inspections of hundreds of sites. They’ve resumed under Security Council mandate after a four-year break, to assess whether the Baghdad government is still committed to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. In New York, Norway’s UN Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby, who chairs the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against Iraq, said it appeared the first day’s inspections had gone well. "I think that was very positive," he said. "It looks to me as so far so good — that they carried out inspections. That’s what we all hoped for. Soon there will be more inspectors, and then they will carry on and we’ll see." (AP)
Kuwait to revise its school curriculum Jordan Times, 11/28/02 KUWAIT CITY (AP) — After a long-running debate over the Islamic content of state education, Kuwait's deputy prime minister has announced that the school curriculum is to be revised. In an interview published Wednesday, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah told Al Rai Al Am newspaper that the cabinet had asked the education ministry to “develop and modernise school curricula.” Sheikh Sabah, who is also Kuwait's foreign minister, did not say how the modernisation would affect the religious content of the curriculum, but he said the change was not a response to any requests from Washington. The revision was required by “local indications,” Sheikh Sabah said. “We will not allow anyone to impose internal policies on us.” In the past two months, Kuwait has been shocked by an unprecedented series of attacks on soldiers of the United States, the protector of this small oil-rich state. Some 10,000 US troops are stationed in Kuwait as part of a defence agreement signed after a US-led coalition liberated the country from Iraqi occupation in 1991. In the worst attack, two Kuwaiti Islamic fundamentalists shot US Marines on an island on Oct. 8, killing one Marine and wounding another. At least one of the attackers, who were gunned down by other Marines, was a follower of the leader of Al Qaeda terror group, Osama Ben Laden. Kuwait's Westernised liberals have long argued that the school textbooks on Islam are partly responsible for producing religious zealots. They also charge that the teachers at state-run religious schools come from fundamentalist groups such as the Social Reform Society — Kuwait's version of the Muslim Brotherhood. The country's fundamentalists, who are politically strong, deny that the style of religious education is promoting violence. They say Washington's foreign policy, especially its support for Israel against the Palestinian people, is the main cause of anti-Americanism. Scores of Kuwaitis have fought for Islamic armed groups in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia. The spokesman of Al Qaeda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, was Kuwaiti until the government stripped him of his nationality last year after he appeared on television threatening Westerners with attacks. Sheikh Sabah said the newly formed Security Strategy Committee, a government body, would assist the Education Ministry in the modernisation of textbooks. The committee would consult academics and specialists about the changes that need to be introduced, he said.
Inspectors don't want journalists in sites 'for fear they might draw wrong conclusions' By Bassem Mroue Jordan Times, 11/28/02
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The inspectors don't want journalists at their elbows. The Iraqis say they'll give them free rein. With their cameras and instant analysis, international journalists have become an early point of contention in the tense showdown over Iraq. When the two leaders of the inspection programme — Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei — met with Iraqi officials last week, they made clear that they did not want journalists tagging along with the inspectors, especially at suspected weapons sites. "We don't want journalists to be with us in the facilities," said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We believe we can't carry out our professional job" with journalists in tow. But Iraq, which maintains one of the most restrictive press policies in the Mideast, is now championing free access for journalists — at least as far as covering the inspections is concerned. Iraqi officials say they want maximum media coverage to prove to the world that they don't have weapons of mass destruction, despite Washington's claims to the contrary. "We will allow everybody to follow in order that international public opinion be acquainted with what is going on in our country, and from our point of view, the press will be granted full access to every single site," an Iraqi official said on condition of anonymity. "Taking into consideration the transparency of our position, we are not hiding anything. Every journalist is allowed." UN officials appeared concerned that reporters, lacking the inspectors' technical and scientific expertise, might be too quick to report that no banned materials had been found before the experts had time to draw their own conclusions. Apparently realising the impossibility of excluding the media entirely, the UN team proposed that a limited number of journalists representing print, photos and television be allowed to go along on the first inspection Wednesday. The UN team proposed that it organise and manage the media pool. The Iraqis, however, insisted it was their country and that they would be responsible for media arrangements. On Tuesday, the information ministry told each news organisation that it would be permitted to send at least two representatives along with the inspectors. It was unclear, however, how the arrangement would work and whether journalists would be permitted to enter the sites. Senior inspector Dimitriou Perricos told reporters Tuesday that journalists could accompany the teams to the site but must stay outside. "We have lots of work to do," Perricos said. "We want to be friends." The UN team is clearly reluctant to have journalists reporting what the inspectors have or have not found, especially since those findings may not be clear to the professionals themselves without lengthy analysis of data. Blix told the UN Security Council on Monday that he had advised the Iraqis that inspections were "serious business" and "could not be allowed to turn into some circus." "We want to be the ones who draw the conclusions about what we see," Fleming said. "We are the experts. Our nuclear inspectors know what given `dual use' items might mean, whereas a journalist doesn't. So we don't think it will be helpful at all to have the media with us during inspection. We hope to be as forthcoming as we can, after an inspection to provide a certain amount of information."
U.N.
arms monitors report Iraqi cooperation
Alitalia hijack fails; man arrested in France Jordan Times, 11/28/02 LYON, France (R) — A mentally disturbed former policeman made a failed bid to hijack an Alitalia flight from the Italian city of Bologna to Paris on Wednesday, officials and the airline said. Police arrested Italian Stefano Savorani, aged around 30, after the plane carrying at least 57 passengers was diverted and landed at Saint Exupery Airport in the southern French city of Lyon. During the short, confused drama, Savorani variously claimed to be hijacking the plane in the name of Saudi-born dissident Osama Ben Laden's Al Qaeda group and staging a terrorist action “against Ben Laden.” His mother told Italian news agencies her son was schizophrenic and had been receiving treatment following several previous hijacking attempts. “Oh my God, he did the same thing before,” she said when told of the latest incident. Savorani threatened to blow up a Marseille-to-Paris flight in 1999. In that case, he brandished a fake remote control bomb detonator. The plane landed at Paris's Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport and he surrendered after a three-hour stand-off. In Wednesday's attempted hijacking, Savorani sprang from his seat in mid-flight and shouted “I am a terrorist, I am part of Al Qaeda,” French LCI television reported. It soon emerged the device in his hand was a remote control device, possibly for a television, police sources said. An official of the Italian air controllers authority said the hijacker wanted to stage a terrorist action “against Ben Laden”. But it was unclear what this meant. Washington accuses Ben Laden of masterminding the September 11 hijacking attacks last year. Fernando Petrasso, a spokesman for the Italian air controllers authority (ENAV), said the hijacker struck while the plane was in French airspace and the plane was immediately diverted to Lyon. “This was an isolated act from a clearly disturbed person,” Guillot Yves, chief of police for the Rhone region, told a news conference in Lyon. He said it was the pilot who had made the decision to divert the jet to Lyon. He said the pilot had a conversation with the hijacker but gave no details of what they said. Yves said he could not confirm reports that the attempted hijacker had mentioned Al Qaeda. Alitalia said in a statement that the MD-80 plane, flight AZ 364/AF 9851, was carrying 57 passengers, none of whom were harmed. French police said there were 67 passengers and seven crew. Italian news agencies said that in 1998 Savorani also tried to take over a Milan-Rome train and demanded that the driver head for Paris. He was swiftly overcome and sent to a psychiatric hospital for care. Savorani's mother, Orella, said her son had asked her for euro 500 earlier on Wednesday, telling her he needed the money to pay for his university fees in Bologna. “I was so worried because he didn't return for lunch,” she said. “I thought he was normal,” she added, referring to his treatment for schizophrenia. After his arrest for the 1999 hijacking attempt, Savorani said he belonged to a religious movement called “Vitalunismo”, which he said promoted political unity in Europe, and that he was looking to raise the group's profile. A policeman from 1992 until 1997, colleagues were shocked when Savorani hijacked the Air France plane, saying they had always thought he was a sound colleague from a good home. In 1991, an Alitalia DC-9 with 130 passengers and seven crew was hijacked over Sardinia by an armed Tunisian who complained of being mistreated while an immigrant in Italy. All passengers and crew were freed safely in Tunis and the man was arrested.
MQM
withdraws support for Jamali
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