Turkey Determined to Mediate in Zionist-Syrian Dispute

ANKARA (Press TV) – Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Ankara is determined to resume mediating peace talks between Damascus and Tel Aviv to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East region.
"Turkey is determined to go forward regarding a Mideast peace agreement. Turkey expresses appreciation to President Bashar al-Assad for putting his trust in Turkey as a mediator. Ankara is steadfast to advance on this track," Davutoglu said in Damascus on Sunday.
US President Barack Obama said earlier that the Turkish mediation should be conducted between Syria and Israel without pressure and expressed hope that Turkey would hold productive mediation talks once both sides were ready.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised Turkey's mediation but expressed regret that the Israeli side was unwilling to make efforts to establish peace.
Under the auspices of Turkey, Israel and Syria launched peace talks in May 2009, seeking to reach a comprehensive peace agreement.
However, negotiations reached a stalemate in September after the resignation of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Syria later withdrew from talks in protest at the Gaza war of December 2008 to January 2009, during which at least 1,400 Palestinians lost their lives.
Syria has called for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights as a precondition for peace between Damascus and Tel Aviv. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed the Syrian territory in 1981.
Raising Damascus' ire further, Israeli warplanes destroyed Syria's al-Kibar military site in 2007, accusing the country of harboring a nuclear reactor there — a claim Syria rejected
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has expressed opposition to Turkey resuming its role as a mediator in indirect talks with Syria.
"After all the verbal attacks and insults toward us expressed by the Turks, they cannot be considered mediators between us and the Syrians," Lieberman said.
Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Turkey would not be an 'honest broker' in any renewed peace talks with Syria, adding that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not a 'fair mediator.'
Tensions flared between Ankara and Tel Aviv in October 2009 after Turkey banned Israel from participation in a NATO air force drill.
Ankara strained relations further when it refused to take a television drama depicting Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian civilians off the air.
Last December, the Turkish ambassador to Tel Aviv, Oguz Celikkol, was given an official reprimand in a dispute over the Turkish television drama "Valley of the Wolves," which depicted Israeli diplomats as masterminds of a child abduction ring.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoglu in Damascus on Sunday.


Biden Leaves US for Middle East

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – US Vice President Joe Biden headed to the Middle East Sunday for talks with the Zionist regime, the Palestinian territories and Jordan, as Palestinian officials agreed to US-mediated indirect peace talks.
Biden left Washington Sunday night for Al-Quds, where he was to meet with Zionist President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Tuesday.
Wednesday, he was to hold talks with Tony Blair, special envoy for the Quartet negotiating group as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Biden, who is traveling with his wife Jill, will then travel onto Amman, Jordan Thursday where the US vice president will meet with Jordanian King Abdullah.
A scheduled stop in Egypt was postponed because Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is out of the country having surgery.
The visit comes as Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, announced that the Palestinians would embark on US-mediated talks, despite deep skepticism about the prospects of success.
Talks between the two sides have been on hold for more than a year, despite US efforts to relaunch the peace process.
US Vice President Joe Biden in Washington, DC


British Reporters Face Afghan Clampdown in Poll

LONDON (AFP) – British journalists will have access to Afghan military operations curbed during the election campaign here to prevent claims the forces are being used for political purposes, officials said Monday.
An opposition lawmaker blasted the news as a "truth blackout" and said he would demand answers from the government. The decisions comes as British soldiers take part in a major anti-Taliban push.
British journalists will be banned from joining troops on the frontline in so-called embeds after a date for the British election is announced, military sources said.
This is where reporters live in a military unit or at a base to record events from the frontline under armed forces protection.
Under the new guidance, it is understood senior officers will not be allowed to make public speeches and official defense websites will contain only factual information. Soldiers' views on the war will be deleted.
"During the period between an election being called and taking place, communications activity across government is restricted in order to be fair to all political parties," the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said, confirming a report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
It is understood that foreign journalists will still be allowed to embed with British forces.
Britain has some 4,000 troops committed to Operation Mushtarak, a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Helmand province involving 15,000 international troops.
Pressure has been growing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the war in Afghanistan, a topic which is set to be a key battleground in the coming election. The vote is expected on May 6 and must be held by June 3.
The leader was accused of using British troops as a "party political prop" after visiting them in Afghanistan on Saturday, the day after he gave evidence at a public inquiry into the Iraq war.
Defense officials stressed Monday that factual updates on the Afghan conflict would continue to be issued.
"The MoD recognizes that it is vital to continue to tell the public about the efforts and achievements of our forces in Afghanistan during this period and has agreed principles... that allow this," said a ministry statement.
But opposition defense spokesman Liam Fox criticized the move, telling the Telegraph: "It's a truth blackout. Nothing, especially the truth, is to stand in the way in Brown's election.
"This is the grotesque endgame of New Labour. They want to bury bad news and bury the truth," he added.


Hamas Founder's Son Details Life as Zionist Spy

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The son of a founder of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas detailed his years spying for the Zionist regime’s domestic security agency Shin Bet.
Mosab Yussef told CNN he fed Shin Bet information about Hamas attack plots for 10 years because he found the group was practicing "exceptional cruelty" against its members and "killed people for no reason."
Zionists waged a brutal three-week war in the Gaza Strip that ended in January 2009 after 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Zionists were killed.
Hamas, which has ruled the tiny coastal enclave ever since it seized power from the US-backed Palestinian Authority in June 2007, has also launched retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel from the territory.
"They offered me to work for them. My goal was to be a double agent and attack them from the inside," Yussef, 32, said of his initial contacts with Shin Bet.
But the views of the man who came to become a top informer codenamed "The Green Prince," changed after a stay in prison.


Strong Turnout in Iraq Polls; Maliki Ahead

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq's general election saw a strong turnout of at least 50 percent in most areas, initial forecasts showed Monday after a ballot hit by rocket, mortar and bomb attacks that killed 38 people.
Millions voted in the poll, winning international praise for their courage and determination in a crunch test of the war-shattered nation's young democracy less than six months before American combat troops quit the country.
US President Barack Obama paid tribute to all those who cast ballots in the nationwide poll on Sunday, the second parliamentary election since US-led forces ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
"I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence, and who exercised their right to vote," Obama said in his first reaction to the ballot.
His comments came at the end of voting on a warm spring day that saw long queues at polling stations in Baghdad, in Sunni towns that mostly boycotted the 2005 parliamentary vote, and elsewhere across the country.
The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said in preliminary estimates that voter turnout was 50 percent or more in all but one of the 16 provinces it was able to provide figures for.
Turnout was strongest, 76 percent, in Arbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region, and in the disputed province of Kirkuk, 70 percent, which is at the centre of a battle for control between Arabs and Kurds.
The Sunni stronghold provinces of Nineveh -- 65 percent -- and Anbar -- 64 percent -- were not far behind, according to data compiled late Sunday, IHEC officials told AFP.
Full election results are not expected until March 18, and after that it will likely take months of horsetrading before a new government is formed as no single political bloc is set to emerge dominant from the vote.
The United Nations praised voters and election organizers, while urging caution about premature predictions of the outcome.
"This day has been a triumph of reason over confrontation and violence," Ad Melkert, the UN's envoy to Iraq told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday.
"The polling process was well-organized, orderly... and polling procedures were properly applied," he said after visiting voting centers in the Iraqi capital and the northern city of Kirkuk.
Baghdad bore the brunt of Sunday's violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni areas.
The cities of Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra and several other areas were also hit by mortar rounds or bombs, many of them exploding near polling stations.
Twenty-five of the dead perished when a rocket flattened a residential building in the north of the capital, and all the other deaths were in or near the city.
A total of 110 people were wounded in the attacks, which came despite the 200,000 police and soldiers deployed in Baghdad and hundreds of thousands more across the country.
An Al-Qaeda group, which sees the election as validating the government and the US occupation, warned Friday that anyone voting ran the risk of being attacked, heightening an already tense security situation.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the attacks "are only noise to impress voters but Iraqis are a people who love challenges and you will see that this will not damage their morale."
Al-Maliki emerged Monday as the front-runner after Iraq's general election, according to estimates AFP obtained from local officials across the country.
The key estimates from the Baghdad region, whose results could swing the election, were not yet available.
Maliki, the Shiite head of the State of Law Alliance, was leading in Shiite regions while Allawi, a former premier who heads the secular Iraqiya list, was ahead in Sunni areas, according to the unofficial estimates.
Maliki's State of Law Alliance was in pole position in the nine Shiite provinces of the south while Iraqiya was ahead in the Sunni majority provinces north or west of Baghdad, according to the estimates.
Iraqiya was in second place in three Shiite provinces but in third place in six others, behind the Iraqi National Alliance that is dominated by two Shiite religious parties and includes ex-deputy premier Ahmed Chalabi.
In the ethnically mixed and disputed province of Kirkuk, the Kurdistani list, a joint slate composed of the northern Iraqi region's two dominant parties, was leading, followed by Allawi's list.
Initial official results from Sunday's key election were not due until Thursday, with full election results expected around March 18.
These then have to be certified by the Supreme Court at the end of the month.
An Iraqi woman casts her ballot at a polling center for the Iraqi elections, in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, March 7, 2010.


Ashkenazi's US Visit Draws Protests

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – As the Zionist regime’s military chief Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is heading to the US, dozens of organizations in America are planning protests against the head of the Zionist war-mongering Forces.
More than 25 American, Jewish and Israeli organizations plan to stage a protest against Ashkenazi in New York's Manhattan on Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Protest organizers have described Ashkenazi as the "butcher of Gaza" where thousands of civilians were killed during Israel's three-week offensive in December 2008.
According to the IDF, the Israeli military chief will hold meetings with government, military, security and public diplomacy officials in Washington and New York beginning Monday.
Ashkenazi's visit to the US comes as US Vice president Joe Biden is starting a tour of the Middle East in a bid to rally support for resuming indirect peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinians.
The US-sponsored "proximity talks" have received opposition from both Palestinian movements, Hamas and Fatah.
Biden is expected to meet Zionist, Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders starting on Monday.


Gates in Kabul Warns of Tough Fight Ahead

KABUL (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew into Kabul on Monday on an unannounced visit, warning of "hard fighting" still ahead despite signs of progress in the eight-year war against Taliban insurgents.
"There is no doubt there are positive developments going on, but I would say it's very early yet," Gates told reporters on his plane before landing in the Afghan capital.
He cautioned that there would be "some very hard fighting, very hard days ahead" as US, NATO and Afghan forces step up pressure on Taliban militants in the south as part of a new strategy designed to end the war.
Gates acknowledged "bits and pieces of good news" when asked about the recent capture of senior Taliban leaders in neighboring Pakistan, but said it was probably too soon to say momentum had shifted to coalition forces.
"I think more needs to be done," he said, adding that a surge of US reinforcements was still in its initial stages.
About 6,000 of the 30,000 additional troops have arrived in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama announced the surge in December, Gates said, with the rest due to deploy by the end of August.
It was the Pentagon chief's first visit to Afghanistan since NATO and Afghan troops swept into the former Taliban stronghold of Marjah on February 13, in an assault seen as a pivotal test of Obama's bid to turn around the war.
Gates said he would discuss the results of the offensive -- billed as the biggest since the 2001 US-led invasion -- with the commander of US and NATO troops, General Stanley McChrystal, as well as operations planned this year.
Military leaders have said coalition forces will move on to other Taliban bastions in the south, and have signaled that Kandahar -- the militia's spiritual capital which neighbors Helmand -- will likely be the next target.
Gates said he wanted to "get an update on the campaign not only in Marjah but the next steps as we look to spring, summer and fall".
The defense secretary was also due Monday to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who visited Marjah on Sunday and appealed to wary residents to back his government.
In his talks with Karzai, Gates said he would discuss the president's plans to promote reconciliation with Taliban and other insurgent leaders at peace talks later this year.
"I think frankly we need to flesh out these ideas and see what President Karzai has in mind," the Pentagon chief said.
He denied there was any "serious gap" in opinion among NATO allies on the issue, and that all agreed any bid to persuade the Taliban to choose politics over violence had to be "Afghan-led".
But he repeated his view that senior Taliban leaders would only be ready to make concessions and lay down their arms "when they see the likelihood of their being successful has been cast into serious doubt".
"My guess is they're not at that point yet."
US Marine helicopters land in Marjah, southern Afghanistan.


Zionists OK 112 New Illegal Homes

BEIT-UL-MOQDDAS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime has given the green light for the building of 112 new homes in a settlement in the occupied West Bank despite a partial moratorium on such construction, a minister said on Monday.
The houses will be built in the Beitar Ilit settlement near Bethlehem, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan told public radio.
The regime’s continued expansion of settlements is one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, now suspended for more than a year.
The new project came to light the day after the Palestinians agreed to indirect peace talks with Zionists but warned that the US-mediated negotiations could collapse if they continued expanding settlements.
The Palestinians insist they will only return to direct negotiations if the regime agrees to a complete freeze on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including east Beit-ul-Moqddas.
Zionists announced a 10-month moratorium on new building permits for settler homes in the occupied West Bank in late November but it excludes east Beit-ul-Moqddas, public buildings and works already under way.
The international community considers all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land illegal.
A Palestinian woman whose house could be demolished stands at the balcony of her home in the Al-Bustan area in Silwan.


Arrest Frenzy in Saudi Arabia

RIYADH (Press TV) – Riyadh has gone on an arrest spree which has most recently saw more than 50 people north of the Kingdom detained, says a Saudi human rights group.
Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) said in a statement that the campaign was being carried out in Buraidah, Qassim's provincial capital, AFP reported.
The 50-plus individuals recently arrested in the northern province of Qassim are mostly youths and adolescents, the report added.
"We don't know why they were arrested, they arrested entire families and they still have some of the fathers," Mohammed Fahd al-Qahtani, a founder of ACPRA, told the agency.
Alongside the detainees was Thamer Abdulkareem Al-Khather described in the statement as, a member of "the youth movement that calls for constitutional reform" in the Kingdom.
Thamer, a university student "interested in human rights" and "an advocate of prisoners' rights," and his father, one of the founders of the ACPRA, "have been constantly harassed by the (interior ministry's General Investigation Directorate) DGI's clandestine detectives a week before Thamer's arrest," the statement said.
Saudi Arabia has arrested thousands of people over the past years, many of whom remain in detention without being charged.


2 Missing Darfur Peacekeepers Found

CAIRO (AP) – The U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur says two of its peacekeepers who went missing after an ambush on their patrol earlier this week have safely returned to base.
The two soldiers were declared missing after gunmen attacked their convoy in south Darfur on Friday, seizing some 60 peacekeepers and their vehicles.
UNAMID says the two missing soldiers were able to evade capture during the attack and escaped. They then traveled at night to avoid detection and contacted a UNAMID outpost Sunday with the help of locals. The pair were suffering from dehydration but were in stable condition.
The peacekeepers who were captured during the ambush were released by the gunmen Saturday.
UNAMID deployed to Darfur in 2007 to protect civilians and improve security.