Aid ships launch mission to defy Gaza blockade

A convoy of ships containing pro-Palestinian activists and aid destined for the blockaded Gaza Strip on Sunday steamed south from Cyprus towards Israeli naval vessels determined to stop them.

The five ships, carrying more than 700 passengers, are on the last leg of a high-profile mission to deliver tonnes of aid to Gaza, which has been subjected to a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.

“Five ships left Cypriot waters this morning at around 5:00 am (0200 GMT),” Audrey Bomse told AFP, adding that the fleet expected to reach Gaza territorial waters some time after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT).

Israel has slammed as “illegal” the convoy’s attempt to break its blockade on Gaza, and has naval forces at the ready to intercept the ships and detain the pro-Palestinian activists on board.

With the flotilla en route, several Israeli warships could be seen massing off the Gaza coast, an AFP photographer said.

Jamal Al-Khudari, an independent Palestinian MP who heads the Gaza-based Committee to Lift the Siege, said the convoy would stop just outside Gaza’s territorial waters and only try to dock early on Monday.

The boats will travel “in two stages,” he said: “First they will stop in international waters 30 nautical miles from (Gaza waters), and tomorrow (Monday) they will reach the shores of Gaza.”

In Gaza City, fishing boats decked with Palestinian, Turkish and Greek flags chugged out of the city’s port to greet the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” which is carrying hundreds of civilians and a handful of European MPs.

Demonstrators were also planning to release scores of balloons with pictures tied to them of children who were killed during Israel’s huge 22-day offensive against Gaza which ended in January last year.

Earlier, Bomse, legal adviser to the Free Gaza Movement, said that since the convoy set sail in the early hours, she had not been able to reach the satellite phones of any of those on board.

“We have had problems getting in touch with the boats, we have not been able to make contact with their satellite phones,” said Bomse, who is temporarily based in Cyprus. AFP was also unable to reach any of the activists on board.

Bomse said two vessels which had been due to join flotilla had been unable to set sail after sustaining damage over the weekend, in a move the convoy’s organisers claimed was “sabotage.”

“Now we are thinking of sending a second wave of boats including these two and the Rachel Corrie, which is still en route” from Ireland, she said, adding that the second convoy would probably set off around Tuesday.

“We’re going to see how the others get on-either they will reach Gaza or Israel will stop them and there will be a confrontation,” Bomse added.

The flotilla of cargo and passenger ships, which is carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid, had been due to reach the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday.

But its departure was delayed because of technical problems affecting two of the vessels.

Israel has made clear its intention to prevent the convoy from reaching Gaza, accusing the organisers of mounting a cynical political campaign.

“This is a provocation intended to delegitimise Israel,” deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon said late on Saturday.

“If the flotilla had a genuine humanitarian goal, then its organisers should have transferred something for the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit as well,” he said of the Israeli soldier snatched by militants in 2006 and held captive by the Hamas Islamist movement which runs the enclave.

Hamas’s refusal to release Shalit is cited by Israel as one of the main reasons for imposing the economic blockade on Gaza in 2007

“Their refusal to do so clearly indicates that humanitarian issues were not their goal. We will not allow the flotilla to enter Gaza, as this is an infringement of Israel?s sovereignty,” Ayalon said.

Pro-Palestinian activists have landed in Gaza five times, with another three unsuccessful attempts since their first such voyage in August 2008. The latest is their biggest operation.

To date, the amount of aid has been largely symbolic, but organisers say this convoy is laden with 10,000 tonnes of supplies, ranging from pre-fabricated homes to pencils.

Israel rejects new drive to ban nukes from Mideast

Israel, thought to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, has rejected a new U.N. call to come clean about its secretive nuclear program, calling it a “deeply flawed and hypocritical” act that ignores the threat posed by its sworn enemy Iran.

Israel declared late Saturday that it would not take part in a 2012 conference on establishing a nuclear-free Middle East – an Arab-led initiative backed by top ally U.S. and the 188 other signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Although a series of U.S. conditions put the conference in doubt, the resolution, and the surprising U.S. support it received, added new pressure on Israel to give up what is almost universally believed to be a sizable nuclear arsenal. Israel refuses to confirm or deny the suspicions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to discuss the resolution with President Barack Obama when the two meet in Washington Tuesday, the Israeli leader’s office said.

Netanyahu was traveling in Canada Sunday, and a government spokesman declined what contacts had been made with the U.S. over the resolution.

But an Army Radio reporter traveling with Netanyahu in Toronto said his office unsuccessfully lobbied the U.S. to block the resolution ahead of Friday’s vote.

Israel’s so-called policy of nuclear ambiguity is a cornerstone of its military deterrence. It has long said that a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace must precede such weapons bans.

Israel has never signed the non-proliferation treaty, which requires members to open nuclear facilities to inspection and to disarm. In its statement, it noted that since it’s not a member, it is not a party to the resolution.

“This resolution is deeply flawed and hypocritical: It ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world,” the government statement said.

It “singles out Israel” yet “the terrorist regime in Iran, which is racing to develop nuclear weapons and which openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map, is not even mentioned in the resolution,” it added.

Despite its assertions to the contrary, Iran is widely suspected to be seeking to build nuclear weapons.

Israel sees Iran as its fiercest threat because of its nuclear program, its ballistic missiles capable of hitting the Jewish state and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated references to Israel’s destruction.

The Arab proposal for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was first endorsed at a 1995 non-proliferation conference but never acted on. At this month’s review of the treaty at U.N. headquarters, many delegates considered a conference to begin talks on a nuclear-free Middle East to be a critical part of the final resolution.

The review’s spotlight on Israel put the Jewish state in an uncomfortable position. While it tirelessly lobbies the international community to preventing Iran from acquiring atomic weapons, it insists on maintaining a veil of secrecy around its own nuclear capabilities.

Details and pictures leaked in 1986 to the Sunday Times of London by Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, led foreign experts to conclude Israel has dozens of nuclear weapons.

After Friday’s vote, U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones said Mideast peace and full compliance by all countries in the region to their arms control and nonproliferation obligations “are essential precursors” of a nuclear-free Middle East.

The compliance demand appeared to be aimed at Iran, which is a party to the nonproliferation treaty.

Jones also faulted the resolution’s decision to single out Israel while failing to mention Iran, which he said poses the greatest threat of nuclear proliferation in the region.

A sticking point had been a passage naming Israel, reaffirming “the importance of Israel’s accession to the NPT,” a move that would require it to destroy its arsenal.

On the other hand, the final document did not single Iran out by name as a member nation that has been found to be in noncompliance with U.N. nuclear safeguards agreements.

China urges region to step back from Korea clash

China deflected pressure to censure North Korea at a regional summit on Sunday, instead urging its neighbors to calm tensions over the sinking of a warship and avoid any clash that could shake Asia.

Seoul and Tokyo blame North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-il visited China earlier this month, of torpedoing South Korea’s Cheonan corvette in March, killing 46 sailors-the deadliest military incident since the Korean War.

China, which is North Korea’s biggest trade partner and which fought alongside the North in 1950-53 Korea War, has declined to publicly join international condemnation of Pyongyang, saying it is still assessing the evidence.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao kept to that stance at the two-day summit in Seogwipo, a honeymoon resort on South Korea’s Jeju island, which was originally meant to focus on regional economic integration.

“The pressing task now is to respond appropriately to the serious effects of the Cheonan incident, to steadily reduce tensions, and especially to avoid a clash,” Wen said, standing next to Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at the end of the summit.

Wen did not mention North Korea by name, nor did he give any firm indication that China would accept any U.N. Security Council effort to condemn or sanction the North.

North Korea has repeatedly denied responsibility for the Cheonan incident. The official Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday the United States was blaming the North for the ship sinking in order to keep a U.S. Marine base in Japan and make China feel “awkward.”

South Korea last week announced a series of sanctions against its neighbor, including cutting trade, resuming propaganda broadcasts across the border, and launching naval exercises near the disputed Yellow Sea maritime border. It has also pledged to take its case to the U.N. Security Council.

China and Japan are the world’s number two and three economies and, with South Korea, account for close to 20 percent of global economic output. Instability on the Korean peninsula could have grave implications for the global economy.

“I think China was cautious because it does not want North Korea to lash out,” Hatoyama told reporters at a separate briefing after the summit.

North Korea needed to be taught a lesson so it will mend its ways, but war is not an option, said South Korean President Lee.

“We are not afraid of war, nor do we want one,” he told Wen and Hatoyama, according to Lee’s office. “We have no intention of fighting a war.”

South Korea’s Lee indicated that he expected China to back a U.N. Security Council response to the sinking. “China and Japan have very important roles to play in the international community and I fully expect them to have wisdom on this issue,” he said.

As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China has the power to veto any proposed resolution or statement.

“With regard to the Cheonan, China seems confident that tensions will eventually diminish,” wrote Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North East Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group, a non-government advisory organization, in an emailed response to questions.

Hatoyama said Japan will back Seoul when it takes the North to the U.N. Security Council. But Pyongyang may not bow even if China goes along with such steps, said Kleine-Ahlbrandt.

“We have seen plenty of cases in which external pressure has not worked on North Korea,” she wrote. “It is, therefore, questionable whether further measures will have the desired effect in this situation.”

North Korea has warned of war on the Korean peninsula if Seoul imposes sanctions, calling the South Korean government “military gangsters, seized by fever for a war.”

India, US seek to bridge prickly gaps in ties

India and the United States this week hold their first strategic dialogue, testing a pledge from the Obama administration that it really does consider New Delhi a global partner.

New Delhi is keen for the June 2-3 talks to go beyond mere symbolism and tackle tricky issues such as the tighter U.S. relationship with Islamabad, due to strategic concerns over the conflict in Afghanistan and the potential for instability in Pakistan.

Washington, in turn, will look for assurances that India is on track to open its vast market in power plants to U.S. firms, narrowing differences over trade and climate change, as well as getting New Delhi’s cooperation to sanction Iran over its nuclear programme.

“The Indian complaint is that the Obama administration has done all the right things at the level of symbols, but at the level of substance the proof is still wanting,” said Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

India is widely seen as a key geopolitical player for stability in South Asia, as well as playing a bigger role on global issues such as climate change and trade.

President Barack Obama has called India an indispensable partner. But the ties have lacked a central theme, such as the civilian nuclear pact that defined the relationship during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The talks led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterpart S.M. Krishna will focus on five areas-strategic cooperation, energy, climate change, education/ development, trade and agriculture-and also include deeper cooperation on security and intelligence.

“There is a commitment there, but we have yet to see the kind of dedicated focus and the motivation within the bureaucracy to really get down to the nuts and bolts of fleshing out the strategic dialogue,” said Lisa Curtis, a South Asia analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

President Bill Clinton started U.S. efforts to build ties with modern India when the Cold War ended nearly two decades ago and India began to liberalise its economy in the 1990s.

His successor George Bush elevated relations with a 2008 civilian nuclear deal that ended an embargo imposed in 1974 after New Delhi tested a nuclear bomb. Bilateral trade shot up from $5.6 billion in 1990 to $43 billion in 2008.

But New Delhi is concerned about the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, in which it has allied with Pakistan, seeing it as giving Islamabad more influence in Afghanistan at the expense of India.

“A fundamental disconnect has emerged between U.S. and Indian interests in Af-Pak,” said Harsh Pant of King’s College, London.

Among other nettlesome issues, Washington will be keen to get India to back its move on sanctions against Iran, something that New Delhi has so far refused to endorse.

The United States has clashed with Brazil and Turkey, which oppose sanctions against Tehran. As a major G20 member India’s view would be crucial for Washington.

The dialogue will also focus on India expediting a bill giving accident liability protection to American firms, opening up retail trade, and cooperating on climate change positions.

“The idea is to put the relationship on a new comfort level,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of the Hindu newspaper in India. “They will work on a set of short-term deliverables ahead of Obama’s visit (to India in November).”

BB unveils reform plans in financial sector

The central bank on Sunday unveiled its first ever long-term action plan for vigorous reforms in the country’s financial sector.

The plan, a guideline for the next five years, aims at a stable monetary policy, speedy automation and skilled development in the banking sector.

It also addresses development of agriculture, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and financial inclusion of rural majority to attain inclusive growth for establishing social parity.

Capacity building of the banking sector and developing an effective credit policy are also two major areas of attention of the plan.

“We should go far from our present position for ensuring a sound banking sector,” Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman said while unveiling the plan in the city.

He said Bangladesh banking sector showed resilience to the recent global recession, but the central bank prepared the strategic plan as a contingency policy to make this sector stronger.

The central bank prepared the plan after detail discussions with all banks and financial institutions, World Bank and International Monetary Fund and with leading chambers and trade- bodies.

The plan will assist boosting the capacity and efficiency of the banking sector through consistently endeavoring automation programme, stable monetary policy, skilled development, capacity building and a prudent credit policy.

In the past few years the banking sector had been modernised to some extent, but majority of bank branches were still running on a combination of old and modern system, leaving the vast majority out of efficient banking services.

The strategic plan will support banks to expand their automation programme to bring more people under institutional financial facilities with new and innovative products.

It underlines the importance of continuing support to the agriculture sector and increase assistance to the small and medium enterprises (SME) by two to three times of the present rate.

The overall investment will get more attention in the plan, but it will encourage more investment in the agriculture and SME sectors.

Human resource development will be another area of major development under the strategic plan.

The central bank will review the plan once a year to update it with new measures.

A monitoring team of the central bank, however, will oversee the implementation process regularly and will have meetings in every three or six months.

Industrial park to be set up: Light engineering, electronics, electrical industries at one place

A Cluster Industrial Park is likely to be set up in the country for the first time combined with four-type of industries- plastic, light engineering, electronics and electronical.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Foundation on behalf of the government is supervising the project where International Finance Corporation (IFC), an associate organisation of World Bank, is providing financial and technical assistance.

Sources said two locations have been selected for the project in Keraniganj area and the activities of the project are expected to commence in the beginning of the next year.

Syed Rezwanul Kabir, Chairman of the SME Foundation told The New Nation that the industrial park would accelerate production as well as reduce cost due to availability of all necessary raw materials in the same area. “Now these industries are situated in different places, especially in Dolaikhal area, a place renowned for light engineering. This hampers getting raw materials and related equipment easily,” he said,

adding, “Our target is to combine the plastic, light engineering, electronics and electronical industries under one roof which is also a demand of the industrialists for a long time.”

According to the plan all out preparations would be completed by December this year, the SME Foundation Chairman hinted, saying that ownership of the industrial park would be the owners of the industrial plots, not the government. But a government institution would supervise the activities of the industrial park, he added.

He said the importance of this sector is growing day by day nationally as it is contributing around Tk 10,000 crore in the national economy.

EPB sources said light engineering instruments worth US$190 million were exported in FY2008-09, US$219.68 million in 2007-08, US$237 million in 2006-07, US$111 million in 2005-06 and US$ 85 million in 2004-05.

About 40,000 light engineering industries are operating in the country generating employment opportunities to about six lakh people, according to the light engineering association.

The organisation said these cluster industries are the mother organisation of all industries as they produce capital machineries.

Water submerges Pakistani tourist town

Panicked people took everything they could carry, even doors and windows, as a lake threatened to flood dozens of villages in northern Pakistan, officials and witnesses said Monday.

The lake emerged on January 4 as a result of a massive landslide that killed 20, left about 25,000 people stranded and blocked Hunza river in a remote Himalayan region about 750 kilometres (450 miles) north of Islamabad. Water from the lake has submerged parts of Gulmit, a tourist resort on the main Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan with China, resident Rehan Shah said.

The highway has already been closed, badly affecting trade between the two countries. “We have suffered a loss of more than 500 billion rupees (about 59.3 million dollars) since January,” president of the Gilgit chamber of commerce, Javed Hussain, told AFP in Karimabad, the main town in the picturesque Hunza valley.

Trade convoys arriving in the border town of Sust are sent to Hussaini town from where they are loaded onto boats to cross the lake, Hussain said. Then private loaders, carrying goods on their back put the cargo on jeeps for onward shipment to Gilgit, he said.

Pakistani soldiers were seen helping residents to board the boats and leave their villages, an AFP reporter in the areas said.

Around 36 villages may be submerged if the banks of the lake burst as the water level continues to rise, Iqbal Jan, a local government official said.

“We have set up nine relief camps in Gilgit and 11 in Hunza and advised people to move now,” Jan said but admitted that most people preferred to go to friends or relatives.

Army engineers have already created a spillway and water was expected to start draining into it later this week.

Officials in jeeps fitted with an address system Monday called on people to leave their homes. Similar announcements have also been made from mosques in the area, an AFP reporter in Gulmit town said.

Reluctant people were seen hurriedly smashing wooden doors and windows of their shops and homes, an expensive item that can be used to help in a future rebuild.

Local official Asadullah Lodhi said around 18,000 people may be affected in case the lake bursts its banks.

Officials say 1,700 people have already fled their homes after floods swept through Ayeenabad and Shishkat villages in the district of Hunza, wiping out dozens of houses.

Obama extends sanctions on Myanmar

President Barack Obama on Friday formally extended sanctions against Myanmar, keeping US pressure on a military regime aiming to hold its first elections in more than two decades later this year.

Obama extended the emergency sanctions, first employed in May 1997, “because the actions and policies of the government of Burma continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” he said in a message to Congress.

The move, merely a formality, bars American firms from investing in Myanmar-formerly known as Burma-and bans Myanmar exports to the United States. The sanctions also target individuals in and linked to the Myanmar junta.

The extension comes just days after the National League for Democracy (NLD) headed by pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was forcibly dissolved after refusing to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register as a political party-a move that would have forced it to expel its own leader. The dissolution was prompted by widely criticized laws governing the elections, which are scheduled for some time later this year.

Under election legislation unveiled in March, anyone serving a prison term is banned from being a member of a political party and parties that fail to obey the rule will be abolished. The junta has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for nearly 20 years. The Nobel peace laureate led her party to victory in 1990 but the junta never allowed the election to stand.

The 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate was allowed to meet this week with a top US diplomat visiting the country.

Aung San Suu Kyi met for some 90 minutes Monday with assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell at a government guest house.

Campbell said after his talks with Suu Kyi and government officials that the United States was “profoundly disappointed” in the junta’s preparations for upcoming elections and wanted “immediate steps” to address fears that they would lack legitimacy.

No fraud in Baghdad recount: Election Commission

A recount of votes in Baghdad yielded no evidence of fraud, Iraq’s election commission said on Friday, more than two months after March elections from which no new government has yet emerged.

Results from the 12-day process were still to be entered into the commission’s computer system, with results expected on Monday, spokesman Qassim al-Abboudi told reporters.

“We finished the recount of 11,298 ballot boxes and no violations or fraud have been found,” Abboudi said at a news conference in the capital’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

He added that political parties could still contest the results from the recount, but offered no timetable for the complaints procedure.

Electoral authorities began a manual recount of votes in Baghdad, which accounts for 68 seats in Iraq’s 325-member Council of Representatives, on May 3, nearly two months after the March 7 general election.

The recount followed a successful appeal by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who alleged that he had lost votes because of violations at polling centres in Baghdad during the ballot.

On May 9, the commission submitted results from 17 of Iraq’s 18 provinces to the supreme court for ratification, with Baghdad the lone exception.

Preliminary nationwide results have shown that the Iraqiya bloc of secular ex-premier Iyad Allawi came first with 91 seats, followed closely by Maliki’s State of Law Alliance’s 89 seats.

The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, finished third with 70 seats. Maliki won 26 seats in the capital to Allawi’s 24, while the INA won 17.

Farakka Day today

With holding different programmes by different organisations, the historic Farakka Long March Day will be observed today in the city and across the country with due respect.

On the day in 1976, the country’s legendary leader Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani led a massive Long March from Rajshahi towards India’s Farakka dam demanding demolition of the dam. The dam is located in West Bengal State of India nearby the border of Rajshahi.

The Indian government was constructing the dam violating the International River Law and denying Bangladesh to divert flow of Ganges waters inside its territory, triggering the drying up of river Padma and desertification of Bangladesh.

At that time Maulana Bhasani called the programme and formed a massive long march to the Farakka dam in India. The people of the country had responded to his call in the country’s interest. Thousands of the people participated in the long march forgetting all little political differences and expressed their demonstration against the dam by India.

The Long March was the first popular movement against India demanding a rightful distribution of the water of Ganges. Since then historic Farakka Long March Day is observed in the country on May 16 every year.

To mark the day, Bhasani Smriti Sangsad yesterday organised a discussion meeting at Bhasani Bhaban in the city where leaders of different political parties addressed.

Farakka Committee will form a human chain in front of the National Press Club in the city today at 10.00 am. A discussion will also be organised by the committee at the National Press Club at 11.00 am.

Bangladesh National Awami Party (NAP) will hold a roundtable at the National Press Club tomorrow at 10.00 am marking the day.