19.7.2007 by admin.

Former Bosnian Serb minister acquitted of war crimes

19/07/2007

Momcilo Mandic, the highest-ranking official in former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s government to be tried for war crimes by a local court, was acquitted Wednesday.

(AP, Reuters, DPA, AKI, RFE/RL, Fena - 18/07/07; Balkan Investigative Reporting Network — 17/07/07 - 18/07/07)

Former RS Justice Minister Momcilo Mandic (centre) was acquitted by Bosnia’s State Court of war crimes charges on Wednesday (July 18th). [Court of BiH]

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) war crimes court acquitted a senior member of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s government Wednesday (July 18th), citing lack of evidence.

A former deputy interior minister and then justice minister, Momcilo Mandic is the highest-ranking former Bosnian Serb official to be indicted by local prosecutors. He was charged with four counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged involvement in atrocities stemming from the 1992-1995 war in the Balkan country.

Prosecutors alleged that Mandic led a Bosnian Serb attack on a police training centre in the Sarajevo suburb of Vraca in April 1992.

They also held him responsible for the operation of all detention facilities established in the Sarajevo area and the eastern town of Foca during his tenure as justice minister between May and December 1992. He was charged in connection with the persecution, torture and killing of some 150 Bosnian Muslims there.

“Mandic had an ambiguous role — he held an important position but has had no executive role,” Reuters quoted Trial Chamber Chairman Davorin Jukic as saying at the end of the nine-month trial on Wednesday. “There is no evidence that he was present at the sites nor that he was supervisor to those who committed the crimes.”

More than 200 pieces of material evidence were reportedly presented during the hearings. Among the dozens of witnesses who testified during the hearings was former BiH Interior minister Alija Delimustafic.

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19.7.2007 by admin.

Albania’s Albtelecom sold

19/07/2007

Two years after the initial bid, Albania’s state-owned fixed telephony company has been purchased by a Turkish consortium.

By Jonilda Koci for Southeast European Times in Tirana – 19/07/07

Albanian Minister of Economy, Trade and Energy Genc Ruli (right) and Calik Enerji Ahmet Calik Chairman sign the agreement on the sale of Albtelecom last month in Tirana. [Getty Images]

Albania’s government has sold 76% of the state owned fixed telephony company Albtelecom to Calik Enerji Telecommunications, a Turkish consortium consisting of Calik Enerji and Turk Telekom. The price was 120m euros.

“We hope to complete the share transfer operations for Albanian Telecom in the near future,” a statement released by the Calik Group chairman said. Albanian government authorities say the deadline for the transfer will be in September.

The sale — which was completed late last month — also includes a license to provide Albania’s third mobile phone network. The government included the license in the privatisation package as an incentive. However, it will be up to the investor to actually build the network, to be called Eagle Mobile.

“Albania will soon have serious investments in fixed telephony and a new mobile company, which will guarantee competitiveness, quality and lower prices,” Albanian Minister of Economy Trade and Energy Genc Ruli said after signing the contract on June 19th.

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setimes

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19.7.2007 by admin.

Karzai has been called an American stooge

News Online profiles the man elected to head Afghanistan’s new transitional administration.

Hamid Karzai’s brush with death in a failed assassination attempt is not the first time the Afghan leader’s life has been in danger. He had two narrow escapes last year after secretly crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan during the US military campaign.

A powerful Pashtun leader from the Taleban’s former stronghold of Kandahar, Mr Karzai has led the country’s interim government since December 2001.

In June, he was endorsed as head of state by Afghanistan’s loya jirga or grand council.

Zahir Shah: Bitter arguments over the former king’s role

In that time, the charismatic 44-year-old has carved out a high profile at home and abroad.

Mr Karzai swept onto the international stage in January at an international donor’s conference in Tokyo, where he managed to persuade donors to pledge more than $4bn to help rebuild Afghanistan.

He than embarked on a tour of world capitals. Well educated, Westernised and stylish, Mr Karzai was feted by foreign governments and proved a shrewd statesman.

He even won praise from the Gucci fashion house for his trademark green-and-white chapan - traditional Uzbek coat - and ceremonial karakul hat.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2043606.stm 

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19.7.2007 by admin.

U.S. says Iraqi militant nonexistent
The man known as Abu Omar Baghdadi is an actor and the group a front for Al Qaeda in Iraq, the military says.
By Tina Susman, Times Staff Writer
July 19, 2007

BAGHDAD — In March, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, and his purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV. But on Wednesday, Abu Omar Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq, was declared nonexistent by U.S. military officials, who said he was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terrorist organization.

An Iraqi actor has been used to read statements attributed to Baghdadi, who since October has been identified as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq group, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner.

Bergner said the new information came from a man captured July 4, described as the highest-ranking Iraqi within the Islamic State of Iraq.

He said the detainee, identified as Khalid Abdul Fatah Daud Mahmoud Mashadani, has served as a propaganda chief in the organization, a Sunni Muslim insurgent group that swears allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.

According to Bergner, Mashadani helped create Islamic State of Iraq as a “virtual organization” that exists in cyberspace and is essentially a pseudonym for Al Qaeda in Iraq, another group that claims ties to Bin Laden. The front organization was aimed at making Iraqis believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a nationalistic group, even though it is led by an Egyptian and has few Iraqis among its leaders, Bergner said at a news conference.

“The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest effort by Al Qaeda to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people,” Bergner said.

Islamic State of Iraq has been widely described as an umbrella organization of several insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda in Iraq.

There was no way to confirm the military’s claim, which comes at a time of heightened pressure on the White House to justify keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. Critics of the Bush administration say the president has been trying to do so by linking Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network to the conflict in Iraq, even though the organization had no substantial presence here until after the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

“The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people” in Iraq, Bush said Tuesday.

The U.S. military’s announcement Wednesday was the latest bizarre twist surrounding the figure known as Baghdadi. If the Iraqi government’s reaction was anything to go by, it won’t be the last.

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari rejected the U.S. assertion, insisting that Baghdadi is real. “Al-Baghdadi is wanted and pursued. We know many things about him, and we even have his picture,” Askari said. However, he said he could not release a photograph or additional information because it could jeopardize attempts to capture Baghdadi.

The man known as Baghdadi emerged last year when Islamic State of Iraq was formed after the slaying of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In March, the Iraqi government announced it had captured him, but then said that it was someone else. In May, confusion reigned when both Iraqi and U.S. officials announced the death of a high-ranking Islamic State of Iraq member. Iraqis identified the man as Baghdadi and showed a body they said was his on television.

The Americans said it was someone else and they had the DNA to prove it. The Iraqis countered by insisting it was the same man, but dropped the matter.

At that time, U.S. officials hinted that they had doubts about Baghdadi’s existence.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Bergner said Islamic State detainee Mashadani had grown disenchanted with the group’s foreign leadership,…………..
The announcement was the latest in a series of statements from U.S. officials here blaming foreign elements for Iraq’s violence. They accuse Iran of providing weapons and training to Shiite militias and Sunni extremists, and say Al Qaeda-linked groups are pouring foreign fighters into the country. Earlier, the U.S. had said Iraq’s Shiite militias were the biggest problem facing security forces………………..

U.S. says Iraqi militant nonexistent

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19.7.2007 by admin.

Gül: Ties with US would collapse if arms to PKK claims confirmed
Turkish-US relations would break apart if rumors of US supply of arms to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Iraq are proven correct, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül said.

Former PKK members fleeing camps in northern Iraq have recently said in their testimonies to security officials and prosecutors that members of the terrorist group in Iraq were being supplied with US weapons. Gül earlier said that Turkey has formally requested an explanation from Washington over the claims and officials said Ankara’s concerns were not based solely on confessions of the former PKK members.

Asked whether Ankara has evidence to support claims of the former PKK members, Gül said in an interview with private Kanal A television on Sunday night that there has been no confirmation of the charges. “We have not confirmed anything. But there is such an allegation and there are convincing confessions,” Gül said, emphasizing that the charges were being investigated. “We have requested information [from the US].”

He said if the US really supplies arms to the PKK, this would eventually be revealed. “If such a thing happens, our relations would break apart,” he said. But he added that the allegations could well be part of a plot to undermine Turkish-US ties and said it did not seem logical for the US to supply weapons to the PKK in Iraq openly. “But since there is such an allegation, we have to investigate it,” he said.

The foreign minister said Ankara was aware that weapons supplied to the Iraqi army sometimes turned up in PKK hands amid the chaos in Iraq. “Of course the US military and several European countries give weapons to Iraq as there is a new army being built there. Some of these weapons could end up in PKK hands and indeed we found out that some of the PKK weapons seized were those that had been given to the Iraqi army in good faith.”

The US classifies the PKK as a terrorist organization and has pledged to take steps to counter the threat it poses to Turkey. But few tangible outcomes have emerged from its fight against the group. Impatient with US slowness, Ankara has warned it could carry out a cross-border operation to strike the PKK bases in northern Iraq.

Gül declined to comment when he was asked whether there could be a cross-border operation in the next month, but added everything could change depending on the circumstances.

17.07.2007
Today’s Zaman 0stanbul

Pipeline-Deal zwischen Türkei und Iran ärgert US-Regierung

Florian Rötzer 19.07.2007

Neue Konflikte zeichnen sich in der Region ab, die die US-Regierung mit dem Sturz Husseins energiepolitisch sichern wollte

Die Spannungen zwischen der US-Regierung und der Türkei nehmen derzeit zu. Die Türkei droht schon länger mit einem Einmarsch in den Nordirak, um dort gegen PKK-Rebellen vorzugehen und zu verhindern, dass die irakischen Kurden mit den Erdölressourcen beginnen, einen eigenen Staat aufzubauen, der dann auch Anspruch auf die kurdischen Gebiete in der Türkei erheben könnte. Jetzt wirft Ankara den USA vor, sie würden die PKK mit Waffen aufrüsten, während die US-Regierung das Abkommen der Türkei mit Iran missbilligt, durch die Pipeline Nabucco Gas aus Iran und Turkmenistan nach Europa zu liefern. Außenminister Abdullah Gül warnte gestern, die Türkei würde, wenn der Irak und die USA nichts unternehmen, die “Sache selbst in die Hand nehmen und die PKK eliminieren”.

Der türkische Außenminister Abdullah Gül hatte dem amerikanischen Botschafter letzte Woche ein Dossier übergeben, aus dem hervorgeht, dass die PKK-Rebellen mit amerikanischen Waffen Angriffe ausführen. Frühere PKK-Mitglieder, die aus dem Irak geflohen seien, hätten berichtet, die Rebellengruppe sei von US-Militärfahrzeugen mit amerikanischen Waffen versorgt worden. Gül erklärte, dass es zu einem Bruch der Beziehungen mit den USA käme, wenn sich dies bestätigen sollte. Möglicherweise seien die Waffen aber auch der irakischen Armee gegeben worden und von dieser irgendwie an die kurdischen Rebellen gelangt. Gleichwohl verlangte er eine formale Erklärung seitens der US-Regierung.

Das US-Außenministerium hat den Vorwurf als grundlos zurückgewiesen, Waffen an die PKK zu liefern. Die türkische Regierung ist davon noch nicht wirklich überzeugt. Ministerpräsident Erdogan sagte, viele der konfiszierten Waffen der PKK seien US-amerikanischer Herkunft. Dass sie von abziehenden US-Truppen zurückgelassen und so an die Rebellen gelangt seien, sie nicht überzeugend. Allerdings sei nicht klar, ob die USA den Rebellen die Waffen liefern oder diese von anderer Seite stammen. Man habe die US-Regierung aber schon oft darauf hingewiesen.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/25/25744/1.html 

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