NEWS,29.04.2012

Strauss-Kahn makes dramatic return to French election

 Disgraced ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to win France's presidential vote, made a dramatic incursion into the campaign Saturday with a claim Nicolas Sarkozy orchestrated his downfall.The accusation came as the battle between Sarkozy and Francois Hollande grew ever more bitter, with the incumbent accusing the front-running Socialist of subjecting him to a "Stalinist trial" over his bid to woo the far right.Strauss-Kahn, in his first major newspaper interview since his disgrace a year ago, told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that his spectacular fall was orchestrated by opponents to prevent him standing as Socialist candidate.The ex-International Monetary Fund boss had been favoured to win the vote until May last year, when he was arrested in New York and accused of sexually assaulting hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo. The charges were later dropped.Strauss-Kahn said that although he did not believe the incident was a setup, the subsequent escalation of the event into a criminal investigation was "shaped by those with a political agenda"."Perhaps I was politically naive, but I simply did not believe that they would go that far -- I didn't think they could find anything that could stop me," he told the British daily.The Guardian said it was clear that the "they" refers to people working for Sarkozy and his UMP party.A New York lawyer representing Diallo in an ongoing civil lawsuit against Strauss-Kahn dismissed the claim as "utter nonsense", while Sarkozy himself flatly rejected the accusation."Enough is enough! I would tell Mr. Strauss-Kahn to explain himself to the law and spare the French his remarks," he said in central France while on the campaign trail to get himself re-elected on May 6.Opinion polls say Hollande will win the run-off against Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn said he was sure he would now be in Hollande's shoes had it not been for the events at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan on May 14 last year."I planned to make my formal announcement on 15 June and I had no doubt I would be the candidate of the Socialist Party," said Strauss-Kahn, who refused to discuss with The Guardian a separate sex scandal that has erupted in France.Sarkozy said that when he thought of all the "scandalous, shameful episodes" that Strauss-Kahn had allegedly been involved in in the United States and France, he was shocked that the ex-IMF chief should dare to speak out now."Mr. Strauss-Kahn starts giving lessons in morality and saying I am the only one responsible for what happened to him, well, that really is too much!", he said.Sarkozy was again under pressure Saturday over the financing of his 2007 campaign after a news website reported late Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi's regime had agreed to fund the election bid to the tune of 50 million euros.His campaign spokeswoman Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet dismissed the latest report as "ridiculous" and a "clumsy diversion" orchestrated by Hollande's camp.She said Sarkozy's 2007 campaign funds had been cleared by the Constitutional Council after the elections with no queries.Hollande and Sarkozy were expected to call a brief truce later Saturday when both head for a soccer match at the Stade de France in Paris to watch third-tier outsiders Quevilly battle Lyon for the French Cup.But the gloves have come off in recent days, with Hollande accusing his rival of "transgression" in his bid to secure the votes of the 6.5 million who plumped for far-right leader Marine Le Pen in last Sunday's first round.

Syria derides UN chief

Syria has derided UN chief Ban Ki-moon as biased and called his comments "outrageous" after he blamed the regime for widespread cease-fire violations - the latest sign of trouble for an international peace plan many expect to fail.In new fighting on Saturday, activists said regime forces battled army defectors near President Bashar Assad's summer palace in a coastal village and shelled a Damascus suburb in pursuit of gunmen. State media said government troops foiled an attempt by armed men in rubber boats to land on Syria's coast, the first reported attempt by rebels to infiltrate from the sea.The regime's verbal attack on the UN secretary general raised new concerns that Assad is playing for time to avoid compliance with a plan that could eventually force him out of office.Under special envoy Kofi Annan's six-point road map, a ceasefire is to be followed by the deployment of as many as 300 UN truce monitors and talks between Assad and the opposition on Syria's political future. The head of the observer team, Norwegian Major General Robert Mood, is to arrive in Damascus on Sunday to assume command, said spokesman Neeraj Singh.Annan's April 12 ceasefire deadline has been widely ignored. The regime continues to attack opposition strongholds, while rebel fighters keep targeting security forces with roadside bombs and shooting ambushes. Defying a major truce provision, the Syrian military failed to withdraw tanks and soldiers from the streets.Ban and Annan have cited violations by both sides, but generally portrayed the regime as the main aggressor. On Friday, Ban said Syria's repression of civilians reached an "intolerable stage" and demanded that the regime "live up to its promises to the world." His comments came just hours after a suicide bombing the regime blamed on anti-government "terrorists" killed 10 people in Damascus.An editorial on Saturday in the state-run Tishrin newspaper said Ban has avoided discussing rebel violence in favour of "outrageous" statements against the Syrian government. The editorial said the international community has applied a double standard, ignoring "crimes and terrorist acts" against Syria and thus encouraging more violence, according to excerpts carried by the state-run news agency SANA.Mass protests against Assad erupted in March 2011, but gradually turned into an insurgency in response to a violent regime crackdown. Assad's regime denies it faces a popular uprising, claiming it is being targeted by a foreign-led terrorist conspiracy.Saturday's comments were the regime's harshest against the UN since Syria announced last month it would abide by the Annan plan. The Syrian opposition and its Western backers argue Assad is not sincere and just buying time to consolidate his hold on Syria.The regime "wants to make the UN a party to the conflict, rather than a mediator, and to stretch out the process to prevent any kind of serious change," Rami Khoury, an analyst at the American University of Beirut, said of Saturday's editorial.However, the regime and its supporters argue that the world intentionally ignores rebel ceasefire violations, such as targeted killings of security officials, said Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group think tank who has travelled in Syria."In the regime's narrative, its use of force is only a reaction to such assaults," he said. "Officials and sympathisers cling to the idea that they are fighting a legitimate struggle against a fifth column of extremists."Russia, Syria's main ally, repeatedly has demanded that more attention be paid to rebel violations of the Annan plan.In fighting on Saturday, government troops exchanged fire with about 30 soldiers after they defected at a military base near Assad's summer palace in the coastal village of Burj Islam, according to Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.

NEWS,26.04.2012.

The man behind Sarkozy's tilt to the right

Paris - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to woo far-right voters ahead of the 6 May presidential polls, the spotlight falls on the man suspected of being behind his shift rightwards."Evil genius, prodigious strategist ... who really is Patrick Buisson?" the right-wing French weekly Figaro Magazine asked last month, as curiosity and controversy surrounding the aide began to mount.Referred to as Sarkozy's principal advisor by the French media, the former far-right journalist is said to have steered Sarkozy toward the anti-immigrant and borderline eurosceptic tactics at the centre of his campaign.Though the tough rhetoric failed to win Sarkozy enough votes to secure the top spot in the first round of the election on 22 April, he is now counting on it to give him an edge in the upcoming second and final round.As he goes head-to-head with Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande - who won round one by a thin margin of 28.6% to Sarkozy's 27.2% - Sarkozy believes he will have to reach out to National Front voters to win.With National Front candidate Marine Le Pen coming in third with a historic 18%, opinion polls suggest that Sarkozy must siphon away at least 70 to 75% of her votes to beat Hollande. Enter Buisson, the 63-year-old advisor and poll expert who was instrumental in Sarkozy's 2007 victory and who has since risen above the rest of the entourage to become Sarkozy's key confidant.As head of the polling firm Publifact, Buisson and his team conducted €1.5m worth of surveys for the Sarkozy government in 2008, according to the French court of auditors.Though he has no official position in Sarkozy's government nor in his re-election campaign, Buisson is nevertheless credited with having inspired several of Sarkozy's campaign tactics, according to French media.The aide who came from the strongest French far-right tradition is said to have been behind Sarkozy's speech on immigration, in which he vowed to halve the annual number of arrivals into France to 100 000 from 180 000.Buisson is likewise said to have inspired Sarkozy's vow to suspend the Schengen agreement allowing visa-free travel and to have convinced Sarkozy to present himself as "the people's candidate" against the elite.This oft-repeated credo - "I want to be the French people's candidate and not that of a small elite" - has almost become a campaign slogan since Sarkozy announced his candidacy in mid-February."I want to talk to the powerless. I want to talk to the rural folk who don't want to starve, I want to talk to workers who don't want the unemployed to earn more than them," Sarkozy said again on 23 April.Bald and with rimless glasses, Buisson is a discreet man who runs the television channel Histoire and honed his chops at the far-right weekly Minute, where he wrote from 1981 to 1987.There he criticised the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterand and celebrated the National Front's notorious founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who at the time was emerging from relative anonymity to a leading role.Now, under the leadership of Le Pen's daughter Marine, the far right is at the centre of political calculations ahead of the 6 May election run-off.But, though Buisson is considered the mastermind behind Sarkozy's tilt toward the National Front, the aide rejects the idea that Sarkozy has shifted."This idea of 'a move to the right' is the surest sign of the mental confusion that has taken hold of some minds," Buisson said in mid-March in the French newspaper Le Monde. "If 'a move to the right' consists of taking into consideration the suffering of the most at-risk and vulnerable French, it's because the old political categories no longer make any sense," he added.Buisson thinks that Hollande's Socialist Party has become "the mouthpiece of the new dominant classes" and that it follows an "ideology of globalisation" that the French people will reject.

No change in Tibet stand: Dalai Lama

 The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, said on Wednesday he would not alter his non-violent quest for greater Tibetan autonomy, even after Beijing blamed him for inciting a wave of unrest.A total of 34 Tibetans, many of them Buddhist monks and nuns, are reported to have attempted to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire in China's Tibetan-inhabited areas since the start of 2011 in protest at Chinese rule.Many of the protesters - who criticise Beijing for what they see as repression of their culture - have reportedly died from severe burns.Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama of inciting the self-immolations in a bid to split the vast Himalayan region from the rest of the nation, a charge he denies."Recently things become very, very difficult but our stand - no change," the Dalai Lama told the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates."Independence, complete independence is unrealistic - out of [the] question," the Dalai Lama said, saying his non-violent "Middle Way" of seeking change from Beijing still has the support of 90% of Tibetans."So we can continue," he said in a press conference at the conclusion of the summit.Tibet's leadership-in-exile in India remains committed to "meaningful talk" with the Chinese government in order to establish "meaningful autonomy" for the Tibetan minority, he said.The latest self-immolations by a pair of young Tibetan men occurred last week in the prefecture of Aba in a rugged area of Sichuan province, overseas Tibetan rights groups said.China has imposed tight security to contain simmering discontent in Tibetan regions since 2008, when deadly rioting against Chinese rule broke out in Tibet's capital Lhasa and spread to neighbouring Tibetan-inhabited regions.Many Tibetans in China complain of religious repression and a gradual erosion of their culture blamed on a growing influx of majority Han Chinese to their homeland.China denies any repression and says it has improved the lives of Tibetans with investment in infrastructure, schools and housing and by spurring economic growth.Twelve Nobel laureates including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu have urged China's president to resume talks with the Dalai Lama, but the Buddhist monk said that up until now, negotiations had not been productive."Sometimes I describe totalitarian regimes as no ear, only mouth," he told the summit with a laugh.The Chinese officials "lecture us, never really listen" and are angry that "I am not acting like 'yes minister'," he said."Our approach failed to bring some concrete or positive result from the government, but the Chinese public, or Chinese intellectuals, or students who study in foreign countries - they are beginning to know the reality," he said."That, I think, is a positive side, a significant result."The Dalai Lama also expressed the need for patience in the decades-long struggle."Sometimes people have the impression [this is] some crisis very recently happened," he said."I meet some Chinese. They are frustrated. Very hostile. Then I tell them long stories... 60 years of stories. Then they understand, oh - the Tibetan issue is really a very, very complicated issue."