Jamil al-Sayyed accused Lebanon’s judiciary of supporting fabricated evidence in the Hariri investigation

Abbas says Israel’s security cannot be a pretext to justify its settlement activities[EPA]

The Palestinian president has warned that Israel would be to blame if resumed direct talks with Israel failed over the Jewish settlements issue.

Mahmoud Abbas said in a televised speech on Sunday that “the Israeli government alone will bear the responsibility of threatening these negotiations with collapse and failure if it continues settlement expansion in all its forms in all the Palestinian lands it has occupied since 1967″.

“We support the need of Israel and our people for security, but this cannot be a pretext to justify settlement activities and taking away other people’s land and rights.”

The Palestinians have earlier threatened to pull out of the direct talks due to begin on September 2 in Washington, unless Israel extends the self-imposed freeze on West Bank settlement building, which expires on 26 September.

Abbas, who repeatedly stated that he does not believe Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is ready for peace, said: “We hope that we can find in Israel a partner capable of taking fundamental and responsible decisions towards ending the occupation and guaranteeing true security for the Palestinian and Israeli people.”

Freeze ‘unacceptable’

Meanwhile, Silvan Shalom, Israel’s vice prime minister, told Reuters news agency that he viewed Palestinians’ calls for a further freeze before the talks began as “unacceptable” and voiced concern the demand could trigger a crisis in Israel’s pro-settler government and lead to an early national election.

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Iraq’s most senior military officer has said that his security forces will not be able to secure the country until 2020 and that the US should delay its planned withdrawal.

The US government plans to withdraw its combat troops by the end of August, and to remove all troops by the end of 2011.

But Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari said that his forces – particularly the air force - were not ready to take over.

He said the planned withdrawal will create a “problem” and increase instability in Iraq.

“At this point, the withdrawal is going well, because they are still here,” Zerbari told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.

“But the problem will start after 2011 - the politicians must find other ways to fill the void after 2011. If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020.”

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Lebanon criticises US aid freeze

Some US politicians have said the lines between Lebanon’s army and Hezbollah are ‘blurred’ [AFP]

Lebanon has criticised the US decision to block $100m in aid to the country’s military, calling the move “unwarranted” after a US politician alleged that Hezbollah may have links with the army.

“The last thing the US army or any other friend of Lebanon should do is to weaken the effort to build up our national army,” Mohamed Chatah, an adviser to Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, said on Tuesday.

Howard Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Monday that he had suspended assistance to Lebanon on August 2.

Iranian offer

On Monday, Iran, which financially supports Hezbollah, offered to fund the Lebanese army.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon met with Jean Kahwaj, the Lebanese army chief, and said Tehran was ready to “cooperate with the Lebanese army in any area that would help the military in performing its national role in defending Lebanon”.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, is expected to visit Lebanon next month and the US is concerned about the Islamic Republic’s influence in the region.

Israel regards Iran as a threat and worries about its role in supporting armed groups in Lebanon.

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The bodies were found in a remote dense forest in the northern province of Badakhshan [EPA]

The Taliban has said it shot dead eight foreign aid workers in a remote northern region of Afghanistan, accusing them of being “Christian missionaries”.

“Yesterday at around 8am, one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all,” Zabihulla Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban movement, said on Saturday.

“They were carrying Persian language bibles, a satellite-tracking device and maps,” he said.

The bullet-riddled bodies of five men, all Americans, and three  women, an American, a German and a Briton, were found in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Friday, the provincial  police chief said.

Mujahed said the group was lost and the victims were killed as they tried to escape.

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Two Lebanese soldiers, one Israeli soldier and a Lebanese journalist were killed in the clash [AFP]

The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has confirmed that Israeli troops did not cross into Lebanon during Tuesday’s deadly border skirmish.

The clash started after an Israeli army unit tried to cut down trees near the Blue Line, the UN-administered border between Israel and Lebanon. Both countries said the trees were on their side of the line.

At a press conference in New York on Wednesday, Alain le Roy, the head of UN peacekeeping, confirmed that the trees were on the Israeli side of the border.

“Unifil established… that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side,” le Roy said, reading from a Unifil communique issued earlier on Wednesday.

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The killing of Turkish activists prompted Ankara to sever diplomatic ties with Israel [EPA]

Israel has said that it will co-operate with a United Nations inquiry into Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The UN announced on Monday that the inquiry panel be chaired by Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, and Alvaro Uribe, the outgoing president of Colombia.

It will also include one Israeli and one Turk.

Nine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli troops raided the flotilla in May.

The Israeli government, which often accuses the UN of bias in its treatment of Israel, said it had no problems with the panel

“Ultimately we are sure that the facts are on our side,” Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesman, said.

“We have no problem whatsoever with a credible, objective panel.”

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Iraq violence ‘worst in two years’

Daily attacks are still carried out, despite increasingly well-trained Iraqi forces [AF

At least 535 people have been killed in Iraq in the month of July, making it the country’s deadliest since May 2008, according to Iraqi government figures.

The US military on Sunday, however, took the unusual step of disupting those numbers, saying the real death toll for July stood at less than half of that.

Figures from the Iraqi health, defence and interior ministries show 396 civilians, 89 policemen and 50 soldiers were killed, with another 1,043 people left wounded.

But in a statement e-mailed to reporters, the US military said that 222 people were killed in July, with 782 people wounded.

“The claim that July 2010 was the deadliest month in Iraq since May 2008 is incorrect,” the statement said.

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The research reactor is at the centre of a stalled plan to swap Iran’s uranium with fuel [File: EP

The United States has said it hopes to hold talks with Iran soon and would be prepared to follow up on a plan to provide fuel for Iran’s research reactor in exchange for low-enriched uranium.

The plan was mooted in Geneva last October at a meeting between Iranian officials and senior diplomats from the five permanent UN Security Council members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – along with Germany.

“We obviously are fully prepared to follow up with Iran on specifics regarding our initial proposal involving the Tehran research reactor … as well as, you know, the broader issues of trying to fully understand the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme,” PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said on Wednesday.

“We hope to have the same kind of meeting coming up in the coming weeks that we had last October.”

“There have been contacts between Iran” and Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative, about a “prospective meeting,” he said.

Last October’s meeting was called to discuss the proposed deal, which would have seen Iran send some of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further purification into fuel for a medical isotopes reactor in Tehran.

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Politicians argued that bullfighting’s popularity in the region had declined in recent years. [AFP]

Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region has become the country’s first mainland region to ban bullfighting after a heated parliamentary debate.

Cheers broke out in the local 135-seat legislature on Wednesday after the
speaker announced the ban had passed by a vote 68 to 55 with nine abstentions.

The vote came after animal rights activists under a platform called “Prou!”, which means “Enough”, collected 180,000 signatures in a petition calling for a ban.

Politicians also argued during the parliamentary debate that bullfighting was seeing declining popularity in the region, with fewer and fewer people attending events.

“There are some traditions that can’t remain frozen in time as society changes,” Jose Rull, member of parliament for the Catalonian Nationalist Party, Ciu, said.

“We don’t have to ban everything, but the most degrading things should be banned.

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Iran: Medvedev mouthpiece of enemy

Medvedev, right, has backed US accusations that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons [AFP]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has denounced Dimitry Medvedev, his Russian counterpart, as a “mouthpiece” of Iran’s enemies, highlighting rising tensions between the two countries.

Ahmadinejad made the comments after Russia joined the US and the EU in accusing Iran of having a hidden agenda for its controversial nuclear programme.

Russia had already upset its past ally when it backed US-led calls for more sanctions against Iran.

“In a meeting with his ambassadors, [Medvedev] said we have knowledge that Iran is moving towards the bomb,” Ahmadinejad said in pre-recorded footage broadcast by state television on Saturday.

“We regret that Medvedev has become the mouthpiece for the plans of Iran’s enemies.”

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Tribal leaders and Shia Houthi rebels gather in Harf Sufyan, in northern Yemen on July 25, 2010 [AFP]

Shia rebels in north Yemen have captured a strategic army post and several soldiers in clashes that killed 10 people and threatened a fragile truce in the area, army officials and rebels have said.

Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday accused the rebels, known as Houthis after the name of their leaders’ clan, of trying to ignite a new war with the government.

Both the government and the rebels confirmed that a number of soldiers had been taken hostage at the Zuala army base in the flashpoint north district of Harf Sufyan, but neither side would give an exact number of how many men were seized by the Houthis.

Among those killed in the clashes were rebels, soldiers, and tribesmen from the Ibn Aziz tribe which allied with the government against the Houthis in the northern war.

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Cambodia’s UN-backed court has found Kaing Guek Eav, the chief of the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 prison, guilty of crimes against humanity.

The only senior member of the Khmer Rouge government to face justice in an international court was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Monday.

Prosecutors had asked for a 40-year sentence from the court, which could have imposed a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Riot police had lined up outside the court on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh, on Monday as the court opened to hand down its verdict and Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, arrived in a bullet-proof car.

The 67-year-old remained impassive as the verdict on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder was read out on Monday.

The 78-year-old French engineer Michel Germaneau was kidnapped in April in Niger [AFP]

Al-Qaeda in North Africa says it has killed French engineer Michel Germaneau, who was abducted in Niger in April.

In an audio statement broadcast by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the head of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said his group killed the Frenchman on Saturday in response to a raid by France and Mauritania against the group.

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