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Abbas returns to hero’s welcome WARM WELCOME: Thousands of cheering Palestinians welcome their President Mahmud Abbas (poster) at his Ramallah headquarters upon his return from delivering a historic UN membership bid on Sunday. — AFP
NATO pounds Gaddafi’s hometown
Anti-Gaddafi fighters fire heavy artillery near Sirte on Sunday. — Reuters |
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Grave with 1,270 victims of 1996 massacre found
Pak Christian girl accused of blasphemy
Saudi King gives women right to vote
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Abbas returns to hero’s welcome
Ramallah, September 25 “We have confirmed to all that we want to achieve our rights through peaceful means, through negotiations, but not just any negotiations,” Abbas told a cheering crowd of thousands on his return to the West Bank city of Ramallah. “We will not accept (negotiations) until legitimacy is the foundation and they cease settlement completely,” he said, two days after presenting the application for Palestinian statehood and addressing the UN General Assembly in New York. US-brokered peace talks collapsed a year ago after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend a 10-month limited moratorium on construction in settlements in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians say the settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, would deny them a viable state. Israel cites historic and Biblical links to the West Bank, which it calls by its Hebrew names, Judea and Samaria. Netanyahu, who has termed a settlement freeze an unacceptable precondition, gave no indication in his own speech at the UN of any change in his position. He urged Abbas to return to peace talks. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has said it will block the statehood move in the Security Council, which is expected to convene on Monday to discuss the application Abbas made after 20 years of failed Israeli-Palestinian talks. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have responded formally to a plan from the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators-the United States, Russia, the European Union and the U.N.-for a return to direct negotiations. The forum urged Israel and the Palestinians to meet within a month and set a new agenda for talks, with the aim of achieving a peace deal by the end of 2012 that would result in the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Netanyahu welcomed the Quartet’s call but reserved an official reply until he meets with senior cabinet ministers after his return on Monday from New York. Abbas has said he would discuss the ideas with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leaders and other senior Palestinian officials. Hours before Abbas returned to the West Bank, Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said there would be “tough repercussions” if the UN approved the statehood application Lieberman, who heads a far-right party in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, did not spell out what action Israel might take. He said Israel had reservations about the Quartet’s proposal but was “ready to open immediate negotiations” with the Palestinians. — Reuters
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NATO pounds Gaddafi’s hometown Sirte, September 25 But Gaddafi loyalists showed they were still a threat by attacking the desert oasis town of Ghadames, on the border with Algeria. The interim government said the attacks had been repulsed but some reports said fighting was still going on. Earlier this weekend, the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) had pushed to within a few hundred metres of the centre of Sirte, one of the last bastions of pro-Gaddafi resistance in Libya, but later drew back to let the NATO jets do their work. “Yesterday our freedom fighters attacked Sirte city from two sides. That doesn’t mean that Sirte is free now, but it is an indication that Sirte will be free soon,” said Ahmed Bani, NTC military spokesman in Tripoli. “I’m asking now any militiamen fighting on the side of the tyrant (to realise) that the game is over.” On Sunday, the roar of jet engines could be heard overhead, and sporadic booms when NATO ordnance hit targets on the ground. One strike, giving off a deep thud, released a big cloud of smoke and dust over the south of the city. “NATO has dropped a lot of bombs today,” said one rebel fighter, who declined to give his name. “You can see the planes up above. They struck along here,” he said, gesturing with his hand across the area south of the city centre. NATO’s support for the anti-Gaddafi rebellion played a major part in toppling Gaddafi and the alliance says it will keep up its operations for as long as needed. In a statement, the alliance said its sorties on Saturday in the vicinity of Sirte had struck targets including 2 command and control facilities, a military staging area, a storage bunker and radar facility, and 29 armed vehicles. Taking Sirte would be a huge boost for the NTC as it tries to establish credibility as a government, and a blow for Gaddafi, widely believed to be on the run inside Libya. — Reuters
Grave with 1,270 victims of 1996 massacre found
TRIPOLI: Libya's interim authorities said on Sunday they had found a mass grave in the capital containing the bodies of more than 1,270 people killed by Muammar Gaddafi's security forces in a 1996 massacre at Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. The uprising that toppled Gaddafi last month was ignited by protests linked to the Abu Salim massacre. In February, families of inmates killed at the south Tripoli prison in 1996 demonstrated in the eastern city of Benghazi to demand the release of their lawyer.
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Pak Christian girl accused of blasphemy
Islamabad, September 25 Faryal Bhatti, an eighth grade student at Sir Syed Girls’ High School in the Pakistan Ordnance Factories colony at Havelian near Abbottabad, misspelt the word in an Urdu examination on Thursday. While answering the question on a poem written in praise of Prophet Mohammed, Bhatti misspelt the word ‘naat’ (hymn) as ‘laanat’ (curse). This was an easy error for a child to make as the written versions of the words are similar, The Express Tribune daily reported. The error led to accusations of blasphemy against Bhatti and uproar among local religious leaders. According to the school’s administration and religious leaders who took exception to the student’s mistake, the error was “serious” enough to fall within the realm of blasphemy. — PTI
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Saudi King gives women right to vote
Riyadh, September 25 “Starting with the next term, women will have the right to run in municipal elections and to choose candidates, according to Islamic principles,” he said. This means that women will be able to take part in the elections that will be held in four years as the next vote is due to take place on Thursday. Women rights activists have long fought to gain the right to vote in the kingdom that applies a strict version of Sunni Islam and bans women from driving or travelling without the consent of a male guardian. More than 60 Saudi intellectuals and activists have called for a boycott of the ballot for excluding women. — AFP
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Ramallah, September 25 
NATO bombing raids hammered the Libyan city of Sirte today to clear the way for fighters with the Libyan interim government who are trying to capture Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown.
