NEWS,23.03.2013

Kerry, Abbas discuss 'new' peace efforts

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday told US Secretary of State John Kerry that Israeli settlements "endanger" peace efforts, at a meeting in the Jordanian capital to discuss a "new" peace push, the Palestinian ambassador said."Kerry and Abbas discussed possible steps to revive a new political process for peace," Palestinian ambassador in Amman Attallah Kheiry said."Abbas stressed that Israeli settlements endanger the peace process and that Israel should free Palestinian prisoners."The two sides, Kheiry said, "evaluated US President Barack Obama's visit to the Palestinian territories".During his four-day visit to the region, Obama, met top Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah, but there was no visible breakthrough in the impasse between the two sides.Kerry, who accompanied Obama, was to hold a separate meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the evening.The US secretary of state will be Obama's new pointman on the Middle East, as part of the renewed US efforts to push the sides back to negotiations.Israel and the Palestinians have not had direct talks for over two years.

Obama ends Middle East trip

US President Barack Obama strolled among the ancient Jordanian ruins at Petra on Saturday, before heading home after a four-day Middle East tour dominated by his embrace of Israel.Obama flew by helicopter to view the rose-coloured stone ruins of the ancient Nabataean city, after winds from a sandstorm abated and allowed him to make the 55-minute trip across the rugged plains and mountains of Jordan.On Friday, high winds in Israel forced Obama to take his motorcade instead of his Marine One chopper to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and there had been fears his jaunt to Petra would also be scrapped.But Obama was able to spend two hours at the fabled tourist spot before returning to Amman, where Air Force One lifted off headed to Washington in the early afternoon.The US president, on the first foreign journey of his second term, had earlier emerged into a sunlit square facing the iconic Treasury building at Petra, carved out of the towering walls of sandstone in southern Jordan."This is pretty spectacular," Obama, in a blue windbreaker, sweater, khaki pants and sunglasses said, peering up at the rocky cliffs."It's amazing."Obama arrived at the ruins through a famous passageway squeezed between rock formations, and was led through the World Heritage Site by Dr Suleiman al-Farajat, a University of Jordan tourism professor.The visit to Petra, Jordan's most visited tourist site, wrapped up a four-day stay in the Middle East designed to assure Israel he is serious about its defence from Iran and to keep Israeli-Palestinian peace hopes alive.Obama also warned on Friday that he was worried that Syria could become an enclave of "extremism" as his own policy towards the vicious sectarian war threatening to tear the nation apart came under scrutiny."[Extremists] are very good about exploiting situations that, you know, are no longer functioning. They fill that gap," Obama said at a news conference with King Abdullah II.Obama's reluctance to arm opposition groups in Syria, fearing they are, or could become, extremist Islamist foes with links to al-Qaeda, dogged him during questioning by journalists. On Friday, a Jordanian reporter asked him why superpower America had no plan to end the killing in Syria, prompting Obama to defend US diplomatic efforts to isolate Syria and to note hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid.He also said he would ask Congress to provide $200m in budget support for Jordan this year as it cares for more than 450 000 Syrian refugees. "This will mean more humanitarian assistance and basic services, including education for Syrian children so far from home, whose lives have been upended," he said. At least 120 000 Syrian refugees are in the sprawling northern border camp of Zaatari alone, and Jordan has repeatedly complained that the growing numbers of Syrians, expected to reach 700 000 this year, are draining its resources. Obama also warned during his visit that the use of chemical weapons by Syria's armed forces would be a game changer that would invite international action.He wrapped up his first visit to Israel as president on Friday by giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he had feuded in his first term, a hug.He also pulled off an unexpected coup, engineering a deal to restore diplomatic relations between estranged US allies Israel and Turkey, concluded in a tarmac telephone call at Tel Aviv airport before he departed for Jordan.Netanyahu apologised to Turkey and his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a deadly raid on a Gaza aid flotilla and announced a full resumption of diplomatic ties as well as compensation to end a near three-year row.The centrepiece of Obama's visit to Israel was a powerful direct appeal to young Israelis on Thursday when he declared the two-state peace solution was very much alive and their only hope of true security, urging them to try to see the situation through Palestinian eyes.He also accepted that Israel had a right to ensure its self-defence, but urged time for his diplomatic push to work to halt Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

White House will push gun laws - Biden

The White House will keep pushing for tough gun ownership laws despite little support in Congress, Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday, as fellow Democrats vowed to introduce a bill to halt violence."I'm not going to rest and nor is the president until we do all of these things," Biden told a press conference in New York with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and bereaved parents from Newtown, where 20 elementary school children were shot dead in December."For all those who say we couldn't or shouldn't ban high-capacity magazines, I ask them just one question: think about Newtown,"Biden said in a brief but emotional speech in which he referred to the "beautiful little babies" killed at Sandy Hook Elementary.Turning to face the parents of the school teacher who was killed when she tried to confront the Newtown shooter, Biden said: "It's time for the political establishment to show the courage your daughter showed."Senate Democrats have conceded that their proposed ban on assault rifles, like the gun used by a deranged intruder in the Newtown slaughter, has no way of passing in Congress.But Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was introducing a bill with three other gun violence prevention measures, including a requirement for background checks for all gun sales, and would bring it to a vote in April."I hope negotiations will continue over the upcoming break to reach a bipartisan compromise on background checks, and I am hopeful that they will succeed," Reid said in a statement ahead of a two-week congressional recess.The Senate's top Democrat had dropped the assault weapons ban from the broader legislation earlier this week, saying he wanted a bill with a chance of passage.But in what appeared to be a concession to the ban's chief sponsor, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, Reid said he would "ensure that a ban on assault weapons, limits to high-capacity magazines, and mental health provisions receive votes" on the Senate floor. "In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for all of these provisions to receive votes, and I will ensure that they do. "Bloomberg, a billionaire who has focused heavily on reducing crime in New York and on a broader anti-gun campaign across the United States, joined Biden in hammering Congress. "The only question is whether Congress will have the courage to do the right thing," he said, highlighting the huge, barely reported death toll from gun violence around the country."It has been 97 days since Newtown. In that time, we estimate that more than 3 000 Americans have been murdered. "If Congress does nothing, another 12 000 people will be murdered with guns this year alone. "Despite the divide in political circles, polls show Americans overwhelmingly support universal background checks on gun purchasers, among other new regulations. "We remain optimistic Congress will take action... because the American people could not be more clear about where they stand," Bloomberg said.Gun control is one of the most politicized issues in a country rich in gun lore and where the Constitution is interpreted as guaranteeing the right of citizens to bear arms.Opponents to any new gun laws, including the politically powerful National Rifle Association, argue that legal restrictions are the thin end of a wedge into constitutional rights and that criminals can in any case buy weapons illegally when needed.However, Biden said Americans back "common sense" measures like background checks and alerts to the authorities when someone tries to amass weaponry."Not one (new rule) infringes on anybody's Second Amendment constitutional rights," he said.One of the weapons used in Newtown, the popular military-style Bushmaster .223 rifle, is "a weapon of war," Biden said. "That weapon of war has no place on American streets."The vice president also asked whether the shooter would have been capable of spraying so many bullets had he been forced to use smaller ammunition clips as the White House wants rather than the 30-round clips that allowed him to keep firing for longer.Neil Heslin, whose young son was killed in Newtown, had difficulty keeping his composure as he addressed the press conference, saying: "Quite honestly, I'm really ashamed to see that Congress doesn't have the guts to stand up."

UN: Easier to find a phone than a toilet

The United Nations says six billion of the world's seven billion people have mobile phones - but only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or latrines.So the UN is launching a global campaign to improve sanitation for the 2.5 billion people who don't have it.UN Deputy secretary general Jan Eliasson calls their plight "a silent disaster" that reflects the extreme poverty and huge inequalities in the world today.Eliasson said on Thursday that toilets and open defecation, which is a fact of life for 1.1 billion people, are rarely talked about at the UN.But he said the problem must be addressed immediately for the world to meet the UN goal of halving the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015.

Cyprus under pressure to rethink levy

Cypriot politicians were facing increasing pressure to rethink their rejection of a levy on bank deposits, as a deadline to secure an EU bailout loomed closer on Saturday. They approved the first three of eight measures put forward by the government in their bid to meet the terms of the EU bailout in a late-night session late on Friday. But with the clock ticking down to a crunch Sunday meeting with eurozone finance ministers, MPs still have to debate more contentious issues, such as a tax of up to 15% on bank deposits of €100 000 and more. The government needs to seal the package by Monday or face being denied European Central Bank emergency funds, a blow that would devastate the island's banks and its economy. On Tuesday, MPs flatly rejected proposals for a 9.9% tax on bank deposits over €100 000, with a 6.75% levy on deposits of €20 000-100 000.The original proposal had also proposed to tax savings below €20 000, but the parliament's financial committee had dropped it before the vote. The levy would have hurt many ordinary Cypriots as well as many Russians, including wealthy tycoons. They hold between a third and half of all Cypriot deposits and are believed to have more than $30bn in private and corporate cash in the island's banks. With the EU deadline approaching, Cyprus's chamber of commerce and employers' federation have joined its major banks in calling on deputies to reconsider their rejection of the levy. Some of the bank employees demonstrating outside parliament were among those calling for a rethink on the tax, or "haircut". In Friday's late-night session, the MPs backed a national solidarity fund to be set up through the nationalisation of public and private sector pensions.They also approved capital controls to prevent a run on the island's troubled banks when they finally reopen on Tuesday after more than a week. And they passed a restructuring plan drawn up by the central bank that will separate good debts from bad in the island's troubled banks, particularly second largest lender Popular Bank - Laiki in Greek.This bill, easily the most contentious of the three approved, passed by 26 votes to two, with 25 abstentions. Acting ruling Disy party leader Averof Neophytou has appealed to MPs to back the legislation, saying it would guarantee all deposits of up to €100 000. Those with larger balances however might have to wait years to get all their money back.Neophytou said the plan would also secure some 8 000 jobs in Popular Bank, although a few hundred might be lost through restructuring.Friday's emergency session came after angry bank employees, fearful for their jobs, demonstrated outside parliament as rows of riot police lined up behind barriers facing them.MPs adjourned the session shortly before midnight with no time set to resume debate on the rest of the government's package. It is aimed at raising €5.8bn to unlock loans worth €10bn.German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Cyprus against "exhausting the patience of eurozone partners" at a meeting Friday with the parliamentary group of her junior Free Democratic Party coalition partners, participants told AFP.Some EU sources have said the bloc is ready to eject Cyprus from the eurozone to prevent contagion of other debt-hit members such as Greece, Spain and Italy.While bank employees demonstrated on Friday in favour of pushing through a levy on deposits, other protesters vehemently oppose the measure. A group of about 30 hooded youths burned a European flag next to the parliament building in front of police barricades. "The haircut is robbery," they chanted. Eurozone finance ministers and IMF chief Christine Lagarde will gather in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to finalise the Cyprus rescue before Monday's deadline.