Fury as Iranian president refers to ‘mysterious September 11 incident’ and accuses Nato of sanctioning drug trafficking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has launched a stinging attack at the United Nations on the US and other major powers as militarist, imperialist and unfit to dominate global governance. Ahmadinejad’s verbal assault on the west and Israel promoted walkouts by diplomatic delegations. US diplomats were the first to leave, when Ahmadinejad referred to the “mysterious September 11 incident” as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Later, he criticised the US for killing Osama bin Laden and burying his body at sea, saying the al-Qaida leader should have been brought to trial. Other delegations, including those from the UK and France, walked out later when the Iranian leader said that if European countries were still paying a “fine or ransom to the Zionists” because of the Holocaust, they should also pay reparations for slavery. In other parts of his speech he spoke of Zionists being responsible for “mass murder and terror against the Palestinians”, and said the US and west “view Zionism as a sacred notion and ideology”. The Israeli delegation had decided not to attend. Ahmadinejad, apparently in an attempt to strengthen his political position in Iran, dedicated much of what is likely to be judged as one of his most controversial speeches to asking rhetorical questions about who was responsible for slavery, colonialism and wars over the generations. He also asked which countries’ economies relied on military spending; who provoked Saddam Hussein to attack Iran; and “who used the atomic bomb against defenceless people?” Ahmadinejad accused Nato of occupying Afghanistan and of sanctioning drug trafficking, claiming that narcotics production has risen since the US-led invasion a decade ago. Later, he accused the US and its allies of targeting Iran, which is under sanction over its nuclear programme, because it has challenged orthodoxy. “By using their imperialistic media network which is under the influence of colonialism, they threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military actions,” he said. The Iranian leader said this made the US and its allies unfit to dominate the international system, and called for change to the structure of the UN security council. But he made no direct reference to the issue that has dominated diplomatic wrangling in New York this week – the Palestinian request for statehood to the security council. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is expected to lay out his case for going to the security council in a speech to the UN on Friday, while insisting it is not meant as an alternative to negotiations. Abbas is also expected to say that the move is not a threat to Israel. That is not how the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, sees it. He may use his speech, later in the day on Friday, to repeat his assertion that the security council move is destabilising, could result in false expectations and violence, and undermines the negotiating process. The tone of the two leaders’ speeches will be set in part by Barack Obama’s address on Wednesday, which was strongly praised by Israel but has been met with widespread criticism among UN delegations, many of whom regard it as a piece of electioneering as the US president seeks to defuse Republican criticism that he has not backed Israel strongly enough. Critics said the tone of the American president’s remarks, and his failure to speak directly about occupation or mention the continued construction of Jewish settlements, added weight to a call by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for an end to US domination of mediation in the conflict. Abbas is expected to submit the request to the security council after his speech, but the Palestinians have backed away from pressing for an immediate vote, under intense pressure – particularly from Europe – to avoid forcing the US to carry out a threat to veto the move and to give a breathing space to try and relaunch peace negotiations. The Palestinians also have reason to pause, because it is not certain that they have enough votes to win in the security council whether or not the US vetoes the request. Abbas needs the support of nine of the 15 members, but not all have publicly declared their position. Some of those thought to be sympathetic to the Palestinian position – notably Bosnia and Gabon – are under intense pressure from the US to abstain. However, while Netanyahu received strong backing from the White House, the Israeli prime minister was warned by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, that he is facing his last chance to make peace, and he should not be wasting political capital opposing the Palestinian request to the security council. “As tensions grow, I cannot but feel that we in the region are on the verge of missing an opportunity – one that we cannot afford to miss,” Olmert wrote in an article for the New York Times . “The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared publicly that he believes in the two-state solution, but he is expending all of his political effort to block Mr Abbas’s bid for statehood by rallying domestic support and appealing to other countries. This is not the wisest step Mr Netanyahu can take.” Olmert said the Arab spring is changing the political dynamic in the Middle East, and that it is important for Israel to cement existing peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, as well as reaching a deal with the Palestinians. “We Israelis simply do not have the luxury of spending more time postponing a solution. A further delay will only help extremists on both sides who seek to sabotage any prospect of a peaceful, negotiated two-state solution,” Olmert said. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran United States United Nations Middle East Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rick Perry has made his record of job creation as governor of Texas the centerpiece of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. But a new study is drawing attention to a side of the Lone Star State’s recent jobs boom that Perry might not be so quick to tout. At the heart of Perry’s
Continue reading …Troy Davis had already eaten his last meal Wednesday night as 7 p.m.–his scheduled execution time–came and went. A few minutes later, Georgia prison officials announced they would delay his execution so that the U.S. Supreme Court could consider the prisoner’s last-minute request for an appeal. Over the next four hours, Davis’ supporters in Georgia
Continue reading …It’s debate time yet again tonight, and Karl Rove offers four of the 2012 presidential contenders some advice in the Wall Street Journal : Rick Perry : Instead of focusing on turning Social Security over to the states, he should continue making the “compelling case” for reform that he started in the…
Continue reading …The House’s failure to pass a Republican spending bill to keep the government running last night was an embarrassing defeat for John Boehner, underscoring that he can’t count on his own caucus, Politico observes—and can’t move if Democrats are united against him. “He can’t pass this bill with his…
Continue reading …Pope Benedict XVI is back home for his first state visit to Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Christian Wulff, and Cabinet members met the pontiff upon his arrival at a Berlin airport today, the first of his four-day visit, as howitzers fired and fighter jets flew overhead. He is also…
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US student and ex-boyfriend hope unreliable DNA evidence will see their conviction for Meredith Kercher’s murder overturned The answer could be complex. But the question before the court as the appeal by Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito enters its closing stages on Friday is simple enough: what, if anything, remains of the prosecution case that they murdered the British student Meredith Kercher ? A third person, Rudy Guede, a small-time drugs trafficker from Ivory Coast, has been convicted of murdering Kercher . Evidence of his presence at the murder scene in Perugia four years ago was discovered only after the American student, then 20, and the Italian Sollecito, then 23, had been arrested. The sole forensic evidence directly linking either of the appellants to the bedroom in which Kercher, 21, was found dead was a trace of DNA, identified as Sollecito’s, on the British student’s bra clip. The other crucial support for the prosecution’s claim that Kercher died resisting a four-way sex game was a trace of the victim’s DNA on a knife in Sollecito’s kitchen that had also been handled by his girlfriend. But in June, two independent court-appointed experts dismissed both pieces of evidence as unreliable. The bra clip DNA, overlooked by police for more than six weeks, could have come from contamination, while the knife trace might not have been Kercher’s. Knox’s stepfather, Chris Mellas, said: “She’s starting to think, maybe, this time she can actually do it; actually get out. She’s allowing herself just a little bit of hope.” Barbie Latza Nadeau, the author of Angel Face: The True Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox, agrees that “too many mistakes were made for this to be a clean conviction”. But she thinks the appellants’ tentative optimism may be misplaced. “Knox and Sollecito were convicted with more than 400 pages of reasoning [by the judges], of which less than 25% was devoted to DNA.” Steve Moore, a retired FBI agent who is one of Knox’s most impassioned supporters, counters that “My heart accounts for less than 5% of my body. But it’s the part without which I cannot live. Nothing [in the trial verdict] makes sense if the DNA doesn’t hold up.” Sending Knox and Sollecito for trial in 2008, judge Paolo Micheli acknowledged the improbability of a murder agreed in a matter of hours between three people, two of whom – Guede and Sollecito – were not even known to have met. But, in a crucial passage, he added that if the forensic evidence put them all in the room “it is not essential to find the telephone call with which an appointment was fixed with Guede … nor the witness who remembered or photographed their meeting”. By the same reckoning, without Knox and Sollecito at the crime scene, no amount of circumstantial evidence can uphold their conviction. In its efforts to put them back there, Mellas believes, the prosecution may return to the question of the “bloodied” footprints. Using luminol , a chemical that glows blue when it encounters an oxidant such as the iron in haemoglobin, forensic experts believed that in the corridor outside Kercher’s room they had found footprints belonging to Knox which showed she had stepped in the victim’s blood. But Luminol also reacts to bleach and, says Mellas, a more precise test came back negative: “All you can say is that they found some footprints on the floor of the house where she lived.” Knox testified that, the morning after the killing, she returned from Sollecito’s flat and, unaware Kercher was lying dead just metres away, took a shower before leaving. “She probably rehydrated some floor cleaner after her shower,” says her stepfather. Latza Nadeau argues that non-forensic evidence could still weigh heavily with the two professional and six lay judges. Top of her list is the statement Knox made to police which led to her arrest: she said she was in the house, that she heard Kercher’s screams and named the killer as Patrick Lumumba, a man who ran a local bar and was later cleared of any involvement. Her statement, which she immediately withdrew, claiming it had been made under duress, was ruled inadmissible. Yet it was cited at the trial because it was central to an action for damages by Lumumba, and, since he is also joined to the appeal proceedings, could feature again in the closing arguments that begin on Friday. An equally contentious issue is the evidence of a break-in at the flat. The appellants say it is genuine and bears out their explanation: that Guede was burgling the house when he was surprised by Kercher; that he tried to rape her and, when she resisted, killed her. The prosecutors claim the evidence was faked. They point to the fact that nothing was stolen and that one of Knox and Kercher’s Italian flatmates testified that she found shattered glass on top of her rumpled bedclothes, suggesting her room was ransacked before the window was smashed. Finally, there is the allegedly suspicious behaviour of Knox and Sollecito after the crime. On the night of the murder they both switched off their mobiles (Knox for the first time since buying an Italian sim card) and switched them on again the following morning at around 6.30am, though they said they slept late. Not even Moore has an answer for it. But he says: “Anything could explain that. That is not murder evidence.” Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy United States Meredith Case John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi is most senior member of ousted Libyan regime captured since rebel takeover Muammar Gaddafi’s last prime minister has been arrested in Tunisia, becoming the most senior member of the former Libyan regime to be detained since the government’s overthrow by Nato-backed rebels a month ago, it emerged on Thursday. Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi was caught near the border with Algeria and jailed for six months for illegal entry, though he is likely to be handed over to Libya to face investigation, since the government in Tunis recognises the new ruling national transitional council (NTC) in Tripoli. Gaddafi himself and his sons Seif al-Islam and Mutasim are thought to be still on the run or hiding inside Libya, while other family members have fled to Algeria and Niger. Other prominent Gaddafi supporters escaped to Niger after the fall of the key southern town Sebha on Wednesday, an NTC military spokesman said. The NTC also confirmed that banned chemical weapons had been found in the newly-captured area. Al-Mahmoudi remained prime minister until the fall of Tripoli, when he crossed into Tunisia. He later appeared to try to create the impression that he had in fact defected when he told an Arabic TV channel he supported the rebels. But most Libyans are likely to see him as a man who stayed loyal to Gaddafi almost to the end. Viewed as a technocrat, he also served as chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. In May he put out feelers towards the rebels – prompting speculation that he was trying to circumvent Gaddafi – but nothing came of the initiative. News of his detention came on the day the US formally re-established its diplomatic presence in Tripoli after the end of fighting in most of the country. Its ambassador, Gene Cretz, was forced to leave last November because of what he called a “visceral” reaction to his unflattering descriptions of Gaddafi’s personality, habits and regime that were exposed in documents released by WikiLeaks. The diplomat said he had been “physically threatened” and had to return to the US immediately. In a short ceremony at which the stars and stripes was raised and Libya’s new national anthem played by a brass band, Cretz said he believed it was only “a matter of time” before the Gaddafi forces were defeated. Britain’s diplomats, led by John Jenkins, previously based in the rebel capital of Benghazi, are still living and working under stringent security in a Tripoli hotel after the main embassy building was ransacked and burned out. In another diplomatic advance, Algeria said on Thursday it was now ready to recognise the NTC – having previously conspicuously refrained from doing so. Libya’s acceptance at the UN this week seems to have persuaded remaining waverers to follow most of the rest of the world and accept that the Gaddafi era is finally over. The chemical weapons stocks were reportedly found in the Jufra area, 435 miles south of Tripoli. Libya was supposed to have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons in early 2004 as part of a British-engineered rapprochement with the west. It also abandoned a rudimentary nuclear programme. But the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had stated it believed that Libya had kept 9.5 tonnes of mustard gas at a secret location: it is that which appears to have now been seized and secured. The latest rebel advances in the south have not been matched by parallel progress on two other fronts. Loyalists are still holding out in Gaddafi’s birthplace of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, though there have been signs a new offensive is looming there. The capture of Sirte would clear the way for an unbroken link between Tripoli and Benghazi. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Tunisia Middle East Africa Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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DoH assessment contradicts health secretary’s warning about the number of hospitals ‘at risk of collapse’ due to PFI debt Andrew Lansley’s claim that 22 hospital trusts are at risk of collapse over their private finance initiative (PFI) debts has been laid open to question by NHS performance data rating most of them as financially sound. The health secretary said on Wednesday 22 trusts in England were “on the brink of financial collapse” because they had been “landed with PFI deals they simply cannot afford” by the Labour government. But the Department of Health’s own latest quarterly assessment of the NHS’s performance rated 17 of them as “performing” financially between January and March 2011. Only four were deemed “underperforming”, while the performance of one, South London Healthcare, is “under review”. Lord Crisp, the chief executive of the NHS when many of the PFI deals were agreed under Labour, also cast doubt on Lansley’s dramatic warning by pointing out that the cost of repayments under those contracts amounted to only about 1% of the entire service’s annual budget of more than £100bn. Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the influential King’s Fund health thinktank , said it was wrong to argue that the NHS’s financial problems were caused by such deals. “To simply blame PFI is simply misleading at best,” he said. Shadow health secretary John Healey accused Lansley of “trying to offload blame for the present problems his policies are causing in the NHS”. Lansley, who said some trusts had told him that they could not afford their PFI repayments, was forced to partially retract the claim when an aide conceded that “we’re not pretending PFI is the only problem they [hospitals] face”. The DoH later insisted its assessment of trusts’ financial stability was unrelated to Lansley’s list. “The list of 22 trusts is 100% accurate and is based on returns from NHS trusts to the DoH setting out the main issues that need to be addressed for organisations to achieve financial stability. The 22 listed are those that specified [in April] that their PFI was one of the issues affecting them,” said a spokesman. But one of the 22, the North Bristol NHS Trust , voiced “puzzlement” that it was on Lansley’s list. The £374m PFI deal it had struck to build the new Southmead Hospital would not interfere with its ongoing application to become a semi-independent foundation trust hospital, a spokesman said, adding: “The PFI deal equates to yearly repayments of less than 7% of our overall annual turnover. Repayments have been factored into our long-term financial plans, so we know they are affordable.” Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said: “We are pleased that the government has been upfront with the fact that PFI is a problem for many hospitals. But PFI is not the principal cause of the NHS’s financial problems. “Repayments on PFI debt is likely to be £1.5bn this year, yet by 2014-15 the NHS needs to find savings of £20bn. To address this we need to start looking at the NHS’s big-ticket costs, such as how we deliver care and where. We need pragmatism and leadership to do this as it will involve some extremely difficult decisions. A political blame game is a waste of time.” Health policy NHS Private finance initiative Health Andrew Lansley Public services policy Polly Curtis Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
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American commander asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 in Kabul The American Nato commander in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb headed for his troops during a meeting in Islamabad earlier this month, two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul. In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to “make a phone call” to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan. Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence — for the September 10 bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the US embassy in Kabul three days later that killed 20 people and lasted over 20 hours. The US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency”; he earlier accused the ISI of fighting a “proxy war” in Afghanistan through the group. Pakistan’s defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as “baseless”. “No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state,” he said. The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On September 8 General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb during a meeting with the Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in Islamabad . Kayani promised Allen he would “make a phone call” to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. “The offer raised eyebrows,” the official said. But two days later, just after Allen’s return to Kabul, an explosives-rigged truck ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak , 50 miles southwest of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians. Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis . “They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan,” he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt. General Allen’s spokesman said Nato “routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities” but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani. The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: “Let’s suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato?” he said. “This is just a blame game”. US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director Stephen Kappes flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar . On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to “disconnect” the ISI from the Haqqanis . In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivered a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio. “We’ve changed our message in private too,” one US official said. “Before we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying ‘this has to stop’.” The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan with 71 deaths. Now Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of Berhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai’s peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. The killer gained access to the former president by playing down the insurgency’s links to Pakistan. A blood-stained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that “Pakistan is not our boss.” American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation that still provides vital counter-terrorism support. There was some hope of resuscitated fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. Officials from both countries hailed an August 28 joint operation to arrest Younis al Mauritani, a senior al Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On September 5 the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistan-American cooperation ; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations. [ But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seemed to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest. US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have private advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold of Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt. Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009. There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI’s relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppet-master scenario. “It’s not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs (executive orders),” he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: “It’s murkier than that.” But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is ‘actively tolerating’ the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt the groups’ activities. He warned that Pakistan was headed towards international isolation. “If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring”. Pakistan Afghanistan US military United States Nato Declan Walsh Jon Boone guardian.co.uk
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