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Hermit
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Schadenfreude foreshadowed
« on: 2007-06-14 03:04:51 » |
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Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures
[Hermit: Worth citing de Soto in bits not quoted from the 52 page report but which made its way into the Washington Post (which seems to be wanting to pretend to be reporting news again).]
Quote:American prestige in the Arab world is at "historically low levels" and U.S. officials "clearly pushed for a confrontation" between Hamas and Fatah, the secular movement that backs the pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. De Soto described a Quartet meeting on the eve of the February Palestinian peace talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which were aimed at ending the fighting between the two Palestinian factions. A U.S. representative, he recalled, said: "I like this violence . . . it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."
[Hermit: Also not mentioned is that many Palestinians see Fatah as fatally corrupt, and strongly suspect Abbas of having conspired with Israel to poison Arafat in exchange for the leadership position he now holds. Apropos of this, given the amazingly similar symptoms and death shared by Alexander Litvinenko and Arafat, what a pity that the French didn't know to look for residuals of polonium-210. And what a pity his widow didn't allow a post mortem.] |
Source: The Guardian
Authors: Rory McCarthy (Jerusalem), Ian Williams (New York)
Date: 2007-06-13
External Link: Full text of report(PDF)
Envoy's damning verdict revealed as violence takes Gaza closer to civil war
The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:- The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was "at best extremely short-sighted" and had "devastating consequences" for the Palestinian people
- Israel has adopted an "essentially rejectionist" stance towards the Palestinians
- The Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the EU, Russia and the UN - has become a "side-show"
- The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst"
Mr de Soto acknowledges in the report that he is its sole author. It was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats. Last night, Mr de Soto, who is in New York, told the Guardian: "It is a confidential document and not intended for publication."
In January last year, the Quartet called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.
Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position "effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue".
The EU said yesterday that there was an imminent risk of civil war if fighting went on, and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged support for Mr Abbas's efforts "to restore law and order".
In the heaviest day of fighting in Gaza for months, Hamas appeared to make its first concerted effort to seize power in Gaza. There was a wave of co-ordinated attacks, which appeared to overwhelm the larger but less effective Fatah force. "Decisiveness will be in the field," said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing.
Fatah's central committee called an emergency meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and said it would suspend the activities of its ministers in the government. Fatah would pull out of the government if the fighting failed to stop, it said.
For the first time in several weeks, fighting spread to the West Bank when Fatah gunmen attacked a Hamas television studio in Ramallah and kidnapped a Hamas deputy cabinet minister from the city.
The day began with a rocket attack on the private house in Gaza of Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister and a Hamas leader. He was in the building but was not hurt. Fighting spread across Gaza City and within hours Hamas fighters issued warnings over loudspeakers calling on all Fatah security forces to pull out of their bases and return home. At about 2pm Hamas gunmen seized control of several small Fatah bases and one large base in northern Gaza, where there were heavy casualties when Hamas fighters fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the compound.
Several Fatah officers complained that they had received no orders during the day. Mr Abbas tried calling for a truce, and later Fatah ordered its officers to fight back.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Schadenfreude foreshadowed
« Reply #1 on: 2007-08-15 07:47:35 » |
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Arafat's doctor: There was HIV in his blood, but poison killed him
Source: H'aretz
Authors: Danny Rubinstein (Haaretz Correspondent)
Dated: 2007-08-12
Late Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat's blood contained the deadly HIV virus, Arafat's personal physician told Jordanian media over the weekend. Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi stressed, however, that Arafat did not die of AIDS - which is caused by the virus.
Jordanian news site Amman quoted al-Kurdi - a former Jordanian health ministry official - as saying that the virus had been injected into Arafat's bloodstream close to his death, and that the real cause of the chairman's death was poison.
Hours earlier, al-Kurdi was interviewed on television news station Al-Jazeera. However, the network cut short the live interview with al-Kurdi as soon as he mentioned that the former chairman had contracted HIV.
To Amman, al-Kurdi said that Arafat's death was suspicious in several other respects. "I would usually be summoned to attend to Arafat immediately, even when all he had was a simple cold," said al-Kurdi, who served as Arafat's personal physician for 18 years. "But when his medical situation was really deteriorating, they chose not to call me at all."
According to al-Kurdi, Arafat's wife, Suha, refused to allow the doctor to visit Arafat in the private Paris hospital where he was being treated. Al-Kurdi added that he was denied access to Arafat's body after his death. In the Amman interview, he demanded the French government set up a commission of inquiry.
However, al-Kurdi did not explain why he did not come forth sooner and reveal the information. On September 9, 2005, al-Kurdi told Haaretz that "any doctor would tell you that [Arafat's symptoms] are the symptoms of a poisoning."
Arafat was pronounced dead on November 11 at the age of 75. The exact cause of his illness is unknown. Arab journalists and opinion-shapers have repeatedly accused Israel under former prime minister Ariel Sharon of poisoning Arafat. [Hermit: What isn't reported here, but is a common Palestinian opion, is that Abbas delivered the poison and has subsequently been rewarded by Israel. Whether true or not, this goes a long way towards explaining the personal antipathy towards him.]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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