US President George W. Bush is trying to set Palestinians against each other with his call to move against militant groups, the Islamic Hamas charged on Thursday, after Bush met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington.
Bush praised Abbas for making progress toward an orderly Palestinian state, but he warned, "The way forward is confronting the threat armed gangs present to creation of a democratic Palestine."
Israelis noted that Bush did not call publicly for Hamas to be excluded from Palestinian parliamentary elections, set for January, but Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was furious with the US leader's call for a crackdown on militants.
Interference
"We consider this as serious American interference in our internal affairs aimed to create an internal conflict," he said.
Hamas does not recognize a Jewish state in the Middle East and has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis during the last five years of conflict.
Abbas has been reluctant to force a confrontation with the militants, preferring to negotiate an end to attacks against Israelis and co-opt them into the political process. At his joint news conference with Bush outside the White House, Abbas noted that all Palestinian factions could take part in the election.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Israel's Channel 2 TV that once Hamas takes a political role in elections and the parliament, it amounts to the first step toward giving up its weapons.
"The Palestinian election law is clear ... no one can use guns and no one can incite verbally and no one can use mosques," Erekat said, "No one can get their political goals through the means of force. So the election law provides that those persons and those parties and those factions who run for elections must understand that only through peaceful means can they make changes."
Abu Zuhri also rejected Bush's intention to appoint a new security envoy to replace General William Ward.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS