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Hamas sources say truce with Israel near
- Story Highlights
- Israel signals gradual reopening of Gaza border possible if calm established
- Truce to take effect within three days, Hamas sources say
- Hamas took control in Gaza a year ago
- Hamas on U.S. list of terror groups
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GAZA CITY, Gaza (CNN) -- A truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas leaders will go into effect within three days, according to high-level Hamas sources.
Palestinian Hamas security men stand to attention at a training academy in Gaza City on Saturday.
A Hamas official said all the details of a truce agreement have been finalized, including a cease-fire and the reopening of border crossing terminals.
An Israeli official would not confirm whether Hamas and Israel have finalized an agreement but said that it would be a sequential process.
The official said Israel would reopen some of its terminals along the Gaza border after calm had been established. He said Israel is still calling for the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit as part of a broader cease-fire agreement.
Gaza militants kidnapped Shalit in June 2006.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker signaled that Egyptian efforts to mediate a Hamas-Israel cease-fire are still under way.
"Israel has announced previously that it is seeking to achieve calm in the south and giving preference to the Egyptian track, and we are still keen on achieving this," Baker said.
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Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between Hamas and Israel for months. Militants in Hamas-controlled Gaza have pummeled Israel with thousands of rocket and mortar attacks, prompting Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territory.
Hamas has been in control of Gaza since last year, ousting the Fatah faction in a series of violent confrontations.
Since Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006, and even more so since last year's takeover, Israel has tightened its siege of Gaza.
Israel has restricted supplies of gasoline, diesel and electricity to Gaza, limited the amount of food and other goods entering the strip and made it virtually impossible for manufacturers and farmers in Gaza to export anything to the outside world.
Israeli officials have said these measures are intended to pressure Hamas to stop its members and other factions from firing mortars and rockets into Israel.
Israel Defense Forces reports that 1,500 Qassam rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza in 2007, and 2,383 in the past six years.
The U.S. and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist outfit because it does not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. The group also refuses to renounce terrorism.EU deputies say ratification of treaty must continue
- Reuters
- , Tuesday June 17 2008
Zimbabwe: President Warns MDC-T
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The Herald (Harare)
17 June 2008
Posted to the web 17 June 2008
President Mugabe has warned MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and senior opposition officials that the Government will hold them responsible for the orgy of organised violence that has rocked some parts of the country and would soon invoke measures to curtail it.
Addressing thousands of Zanu-PF supporters at Siakobvu Business Centre in Kariba and Rimuka Stadium in Kadoma, President Mugabe said the Government had noted with grave concern the organised violence against people, especially Zanu-PF supporters, through the burning of houses and kidnappings, among other heinous crimes.
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Government, he said, would soon invoke what is known in law as "vicarious responsibilities and liabilities" against MDC-T leaders and senior party officials saying the terror attacks were premeditated and organised, exposing them to liabilities.
"Zvino chitema chakaipisa cheMDC mweya wehuSatani wekupisa dzimba dzevanhu. Zvino zvikarega kumira watichanenera ndiTsvangirai nevamwe vake.
"These cases of arson, kidnappings and violence on people coming from the MDC have shown a definite pattern which we read across the country. There is a definite plan of violence, an organised system of violence aimed at disturbing law and order. Let them be warned that we will invoke what is known as vicarious responsibility and liability which means we will hold them responsible for the violence across the country," he explained.
This invocation, he said, was only applied in special circumstances that threaten to disturb peace.
President Mugabe explained that normally parents are not held responsible for the misdeeds of their children, but when their operations show an organised streak then people are left with no choice but suspect complicity by the parents.
"This wave of violence has to stop and Government would not allow people to suffer and for people to wantonly disturb law and order . . . we cannot allow it to continue."
Cde Mugabe made the remarks after he was briefed about the violence being perpetrated by MDC-T supporters in Mola communal lands where they have reportedly barricaded roads using logs and have gone on a spree of arson that has displaced people and left others injured.
Three people have since been arrested in connection with the disturbances while some MDC-T supporters have left the opposition party to rejoin Zanu-PF.
Mr Fanta Masaka said he rejoined the ruling party after realising that MDC-T had nothing to offer.
He said people should not vote with their stomachs and desire for such niceties as sugar because they did not match the heritage that President Mugabe and Zanu-PF has bequeathed to them through land redistribution and indigenisation programmes.
Turning to the forthcoming run-off, President Mugabe said he was chosen by the people at the 2004 Zanu-PF congress and he accepted to return the people’s trust.
MDC-T, he said, dithered on whether to participate in the election while waiting for a signal from their masters in the West.
"VeMDC vakamboti hatidi, voti tinoda kunge musikana ari kunyengwa. Tsvangirai pazvakabuda kuti hapana ahwina akabva atizira kuBotswana uko akazongodzoka anzi naAmbassador wekuAmerica (James McGee) dzokera tikachiona chichidzoka chichimhanya. Akakumbira armoured car kubva kuBotswana namaguards asi vakati kwete kana uri murombo tinogona chete kukutengera ticket rendege rekuti udzoke kumusha ndokudzoka kwaakazoita," said the President amid laughter from the crowd.
President Mugabe said Zimbabwe was under threat from Western imperialist forces fronted by MDC-T and people need not look further than events after the March 29 elections when whites thought the opposition had won.
He said most farmers who lost their land and had gone to neighbouring countries such as Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, had returned to reclaim their land.
Cde Mugabe declared that the land would not be returned to the whites as long as war veterans and other progressive thinking Zimbabweans in the country were still alive.
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He said Anglo-Saxon interests vested in MDC-T were also evidenced by US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who parroted claims by MDC-T that they had won the presidential elections before the official announcement by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.
"Kamusikana kekuAmerica kakauya kachiti Tsvangirai ahwina vanofanira kutonga. Isu tikati ibva kuno. Kakanga kava kuzviramba kakadzokera kwavo."
He said Anglo-Saxons were working together to destabilise Zimbabwe by imposing sanctions in the vain hope that people would revolt against Government and vote for the puppet MDC-T to further the regime change agenda.
Serbia shuts down LTTE broadcast
Officials say a license granted to retransmit a broadcast from a Serbian-owned satellite to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East has been exposed as being linked to LTTE , an organization in Sri Lanka listed by the United States and most Western countries as a terrorist group, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense reported.
The discovery that the broadcast called the Voice of Tigers was linked to LTTE led to the immediate shutdown after nine days of transmission on a Serbian satellite. "LTTE, though influential contacts in the Middle East, obtained the services of EU TELSAT in Serbia for the transmission," the release said.
Sri Lankan officials say LTTE radio and television transmissions also have been removed recently from the U.S. INTELSAT-12 satellite and the AsiaSat, a satellite for Hong Kong.
Trimmed French military is no retreat
| By Jonathan Marcus Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News |
 Improved European defence is close to the president's heart |
There is no doubt that France's new defence policy bears the stamp of President Nicolas Sarkozy himself.
He is the most Atlanticist president to occupy the Elysee Palace since the inception of the Fifth Republic in the late 1950s.
If then President Gen Charles de Gaulle's decision to pull French troops out of Nato's integrated command structure in 1966 was a gesture of independence from Washington, then President Sarkozy's determination to bring them back into a reformed Nato is equally symbolic.
It may mean less in practical terms. French forces operate and train alongside their Nato colleagues as a matter of course and despite the rows with Washington over Iraq, France remains an important military player in Afghanistan.
'French exceptionalism'
Nonetheless the move back towards Nato's military structures in a way highlights the main theme of this French defence reform.
It signals an end to French exceptionalism. France is belatedly having to face up to the financial and strategic realities that other similar-sized military powers like Britain have already confronted.
Indeed the comparison with Britain has been made explicitly by the French Defence Minister Herve Morin himself.
 France has taken note of British military cuts |
Writing in the newspaper Le Monde, Mr Morin notes the very limited role French forces played in the war to liberate Kuwait - hampered by their inability to operate alongside other Western forces, they were limited to a supporting role on the flank.
Much has been done since then to improve France's ability to take part in coalition operations, be they under the auspices of Nato or the European Union.
But more needs to be done.
France's armed forces still display many of the traits of a conscript force despite the move towards a career military; large numbers of barracks and a huge supporting infrastructure.
Cutbacks
Again Herve Morin makes the comparison with Britain.
Is it necessary, he asks, to have 60% of France's defence personnel involved in administration and supporting roles and only 40% in operational duties?
In Britain, he notes, the ratio is reversed.
Quite apart from the long-standing deficiencies of the French military set-up President Sarkozy's White Paper also represents a belated attempt to address some of the new strategic realities in the post 9/11 world.
 Mr Sarkozy made it clear France still had great diplomatic ambitions |
The French government has determined that much more needs to be spent on intelligence gathering.
The money going to space assets - satellites and so on - will be doubled.
There will be a new inter-service Space Command.
There will be more money too for homeland defence.
The new defence plan sets out a range of potential threats from ballistic missile attack and terrorism to natural catastrophes and pandemic disease.
However, the only way to find new money is to cut back elsewhere.
Over the coming six or seven years the army will be cut by some 17%; the Air Force by 24%; and the Navy by 11%.
Disruption and discontent
In the short-term there will be disruption and discontent.
The key problem will be to try to ensure that money saved goes into improving capabilities and not simply into managing the change.
More capable and deployable forces in France will enable some bases in Africa to close - a policy pre-figured in a major speech by President Sarkozy on Franco-African ties earlier this year.
 Moving back into Nato undoes decades of French semi-detachment |
Overall this should not be seen simply as France drawing in its military horns. Far from it.
In presenting his plans President Sarkozy made it clear that France still had great diplomatic ambitions in the world and that he saw a significant military capability as an integral part of this.
Without the military capability there could not be the diplomatic weight.
France clearly retains ambitions to be a military player abroad but knows it must make better use of the money that it can afford.
Moving back into Nato's military command structure undoes decades of French semi-detachment from the Atlantic alliance.
But here too there should be no illusions.
Improving European defence capabilities is still very close to the president's heart.
France will remain a Nato player with a distinctive accent.
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