NEw SARS-likE viRUS EMERGES iN MidEASt - Kuwait Times

INTERNATIONAL
Forest fire forces 2,000 to evacuate in Spain
VALENCIA: Firefighters battled a forest fire
whipped up by strong winds in the Spanish region
of Valencia yesterday, forcing the evacuation of
about 2,000 people, officials said. The blaze broke
out Sunday afternoon and spread quickly, threatening
villages about 50 kilometres (30 miles) inland
of the eastern city Valencia, which lies on the
Mediterranean coast.
About 2,000 people have been evacuated from
villages in the area since it broke out Sunday afternoon
and several roads were cut off, Valencia officials
said. Some 500 firefighters on the ground,
backed by 27 aircraft, were attempting to get the fire
under control, they said.
“We are trying to protect areas of housing,” said
senior Valencia region government policymaker
Turkey clips military’s
wings in landmark verdict
Court jails more than 300 officers
ISTANBUL: The jailing of hundreds of Turkish army
officers including top generals accused of plotting
to topple Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan underscored
how far he has come in gaining control of
the country’s once all-powerful military.
But Erdogan, 10 years in power, must grapple
with suspicions among critics and even some sympathisers
that he is using this and other coup investigations
to silence opposition as he sets about
taming a militant secularist establishment. Far from
flinching, he may seek more power in a revamped
presidency. The verdict against 325 officers at the
end of the 21-month trial on Friday would have
been unthinkable a decade ago, when generals
regularly intervened in policy-making as selfappointed
guardians of Turkish secularism.
Judges in the case, dubbed Sledgehammer,
handed down prison sentences ranging from six to
20 years against the officers for plotting to wreck
Erdogan’s rule almost 10 years ago, soon after his
Islamist-rooted party swept to power with the
biggest share of the vote in decades.
Hilmi Ozkok, who was head of the armed forces
at the time, rejected accusations the court’s decision
was driven by revenge.
“The ruling will serve as a deterrent and has a
lesson for everyone ... in understanding how much
Turkey and the rest of the world has changed,”
Ozkok told Milliyet newspaper on Sunday.
Turks reading such words from the mouth of the
former armed forces chief will gain a measure of
the scale of change since Erdogan’s AK party was
first elected in 2002. The generals then made no
secret of their disdain for a man who had served a
brief prison sentence for relgious incitement and
had backed a short-lived Islamist government they
eased from power in 1997 When AK was elected for
a second term in 2007 with an even larger margin
of victory, an emboldened Erdogan launched a
series of investigations into officers, lawyers, politicians,
journalists and others that exposed several
alleged conspiracies against the government.
The plots consisted of plans to foment unrest
and pave the way for an army takeover.
Sledgehammer, a war game scenario played out at
a barracks in Istanbul in March 2003, included plans
to bomb historic mosques in Istanbul and trigger
conflict with Greece. For many, it was all to easy to
believe. Turkey’s military, NATO’s second biggest,
staged three outright coups between 1960 and
1980 and pressured a fourth government, the first
Islamist-led, from power in 1997.
ANKARA: Turkey’s Chief of Staff Gen. Necdet Ozel, left, and his Somalian counterpart Gen.
Abdikadir Sheikh Ali Dini inspect guard of honour at the Turkish army headquarters in
Ankara, Turkey, yesterday. — AP
Under Erdogan, a devout Muslim, curbs on religion
have been relaxed. Women are allowed to
more freely wear the Islamic headscarf, alcohol is
heavily taxed, and students at religious high
schools are able to more easily attend university.
Journalists complain of pressure to write
favourable stories about the government, and a
number of writers are among those arrested under
another plot investigation, “Ergenekon”. “This
(Sledgehammer) case is an important step towards
ending the army’s political role but it’s not enough
to stop it completely,” said Sahin Alpay, professor of
political science at Bahcesehir University and a
columnist for Zaman, seen as close to the government.
“Now we need a new constitution and laws that
place the army under civilian supervision and
reform military schools to reflect the values of a liberal
democracy,” he said. A new constitution is now
under consideration to replace a restrictive code
Sudan, S Sudan leaders meet
for deal on conflict issues
ADDIS ABABA: The presidents of Sudan and South
Sudan met for a second day yesterday as pressure
mounts to settle long-running bitter disputes that
have brought the rivals to the brink of renewed conflict.
Former civil war foes President Omar al-Bashir
of Sudan and his Southern counterpart Salva Kiir are
facing the looming threat of UN Security Council
sanctions unless they reach a deal, after they missed
a Saturday deadline.
The protracted talks under African Union mediation
began in the Ethiopian capital several months
before South Sudan split in July 2011 from what was
Africa’s biggest nation, following an independence
vote after decades of war.
The leaders met Monday for talks hosted by
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in
the presidential palace, alongside AU chief mediator
and former South African president Thabo Mbeki.
“The presidents met, now they are discussing
issues,” including contested border areas and oil,
said top South Sudanese official Deng Alor, as the
leaders broke mid-morning for discusions with their
own teams.
Face-to-face meetings expected to resume later
yesterday, Alor added. The pair kick-started the talks
with a two-hour meeting late Sunday, following
marathon efforts by rival delegations to close gaps
on a raft of issues left unresolved when the South
became independent last year.
Little information has filtered out about progress
of the meeting, but both leaders have been seen
smiling and chatting in each other’s company.
“There is still optimism some form of a deal can be
settled,” said a Western diplomat.
Key issues include the ownership of contested
regions along their frontier especially the flashpoint
Abyei region-and the setting up of a demilitarised
border zone after bloody clashes.
The buffer zone would also potentially cut support
for rebel forces in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan
and Blue Nile regions that Khartoum accuses Juba
of backing. The UN set a deadline for a deal after
brutal border clashes broke out in March, when
Southern troops and tanks briefly wrested the valuable
Heglig oil field from Khartoum’s control, and
Sudan launched bombing raids in response.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon has called on the leaders
to tackle their remaining differences, “so that their
summit concludes with a success that marks an end
to the era of conflict”.
For once, the mood in the long-running talks
appeared largely positive, with both Khartoum and
Juba apparently keen to end conflict and a stalemate
over stalled oil production that is crippling
both their economies.
While the two leaders have met several times in
recent months, delegates said there was a real sense
some form of a deal was possible.
A comprehensive deal-as opposed to another
stepping-stone agreement-would have to include
settlement on Abyei, a Lebanon-sized border area
claimed by both sides and currently controlled by
Ethiopian peacekeepers.
But amidst the diplomatic optimism, there
seemed little chance of a breakthrough to solve the
growing humanitarian crises in Sudan’s civil war
states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.
However, it was hoped the summit would settle
the details of last month’s deal to fix the oil export
fees that landlocked South Sudan will pay to ship
crude through Khartoum’s pipelines to the Red Sea.
At independence, Juba took two-thirds of the
region’s oil, but processing and export facilities
remained in Sudan. In January, the South shut off
oil production after accusing Sudan of stealing
its oil. — AFP
Serafin Castellano. “Right now our biggest enemy is
the weather, a lot of wind,” he told COPE radio.
Dramatic images in the Spanish media showed
flames lighting up the night sky and illuminating
clouds of smoke that billowed along hillsides just
behind houses.
Enrique Silvestre, mayor of one of the evacuated
villages, Chulilla, said the situation was “very diffi-
inherited from the military after a 1980 coup.
Turkey may well emerge from the debate with a
presidential republic and a powerful president in
Erdogan. Alpay acknowledged there were questions
about the case with so many defendants on
trial at once, the judges’ refusal to allow in some
defence evidence and the lengthy sentences.
A key issue at appeal is likely to be the defence’s
inability to submit legal expert testimony that computer
documents submitted as evidence appeared
fake. Defence lawyers said they would appeal the
verdict this week to Turkey’s upper court and, if
necessary, eventually apply to the European Court
of Human Rights.
Generals Cetin Dogan and Halil Ibrahim Firtina
and retired admiral Ozden Ornek, who were considered
Sledgehammer’s ringleaders were given life
terms, reduced to 20 years because the coup plot
had failed. Critics of the government have said the
trial was a purge of the government’s opponents in
the army’s ranks.
“This isn’t really a legal case,” said Pinar Dogan,
Cetin Dogan’s daughter and a lecturer at Harvard
University. “It’s a wider operation with powerful
forces behind it ... and we see those with firm secularist
beliefs are the ones targeted.” She said her
mother Nilgul Dogan, 60, faces three years in prison
in a separate case for planting a rose bush near the
courthouse to protest against the trial.
Others said the case failed to go far enough.
Gultan Kisanak, co-chairwoman of parliament’s
pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, said the
indictment did not include crimes she says were
committed in a 28-year long war with the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) that has killed more than
40,000 people.
“Military tutelage, a tradition of coups, contraguerrilla
activities, extrajudicial killings and other
dark events are all part of our recent political history,”
she said. “While we need a process to confront
and reconcile our past, the government instead
opted to settle its own scores.” Sledgehammer is
one of a series of trials that has raised questions
about whether the government is using the courts
to silence political opponents.
Others include the “Ergenekon” case, which
involves a web of alleged plots against Turkey’s
government, and the “KCK” trials which accuse
thousands of Kurdish journalists, academics,
lawyers and others of belonging to the PKK, viewed
as a terrorist group by the United States and Europe
for its campaign of violence for greater autonomy
in southeastern Turkey.
The court ruling also has the potential to undermine
morale in the military as it battles the PKK in
the heaviest fighting in more than a decade and
faces a growing challenge maintaining security
along its southern border with war-torn Syria.
A hundred or so people gathered near Taksim
Square in central Istanbul to protest the verdict.
“This case was an effort to silence those who
defend the secular republic,” said Hanife Kopuz, 55,
clutching a cloth banner of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
who founded the modern Turkish republic from the
ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
“This may be a turning point, reducing support
for the government. They can’t stay in power
forever but I fear what they will leave in their
wake,” she said. — Reuters
SUSSEX: An undated handout picture released
by Sussex Police yesterday shows missing
British teenager Megan Stammers. — AFP
Police hunt teen
who fled
with teacher
LONDON: British police were liaising with French
colleagues yesterday in an effort to track down a
missing 15-year-old girl said to have fled across the
Channel with a married teacher twice her age.
Megan Stammers, 15, was last seen on Friday
and “is believed to be in France with Jeremy Forrest
from Ringmer, East Sussex”, according to a statement
from Sussex Police. Several British newspapers
cited police sources as saying that Forrest, 30, was
her maths teacher at Bishop Bell Church of England
School in Eastbourne, southeast England.
Forrest, who plays in a rock band under the stage
name Jeremy Ayre and is married to a 31-year-old
woman, had hinted at a “moral dilemma” in a blog
four months ago. Police have appealed to him and
Megan to make contact after CCTV footage showed
them in a Ford Fiesta car boarding a ferry from
Dover to the French port of Calais on Friday. They are
thought to have remained in France.—AFP
MINSK: Not a single opposition politician
won a seat in Belarus’ parliament in a weekend
vote that has been condemned by international
observers and looks set to deepen
the former Soviet nation’s diplomatic isolation.
Critics also said the 74.3 percent turnout
reported by the Central Elections Commission
chairman yesterday was way too high and
indicated widespread fraud. The main opposition
parties, which were ignored by state-run
media, boycotted the election to protest the
detention of political prisoners and ample
opportunities for election fraud.
The vote filled the parliament with representatives
of three parties that have backed
the policy agenda of President Alexander
Lukashenko. “This election was not competitive
from the start,” said Matteo Mecacci,
leader of the observer mission of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe. “A free election depends on people
being free to speak, organize and run for
office, and we didn’t see that in this campaign.”
Belarus’ parliament has long been considered
a rubber-stamp body for Lukashenko’s
policies. He has ruled the former Soviet
nation since 1994 and Western observers
have criticized all recent elections in Belarus
as undemocratic.
Local independent observers estimated
the overall turnout as being almost 19 percent
lower than the official 74.3 percent figure.
“Belarus gets ever closer to the worst
standards of Soviet elections,” said Valentin
Stefanovich, coordinator of the Rights
Activists for Free Elections group.
At least 20 independent election
observers were detained, according to rights
activists. Political analyst Leonid Zaiko said
the way the elections were held highlighted
Lukashenko’s desire to prepare for another
beckoning economic crisis. “He plans to control
the situation with an iron fist. He has no
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
cult”. “The wind is not helping at all and the night
was terrible,” the mayor told Cadena SER radio.
Spain is at particularly high risk of fires this summer
after suffering its driest winter in 70 years.
Flames destroyed more than 184,000 hectares
(454,000 acres) of land between January 1 and
September 16, the largest amount in a decade,
according to agriculture ministry figures. — AFP
MINSK: The Head of the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission, Antonio
Milososki (R) speaks, while the Head of the OSCE PA delegation, Matteo Mecacci (L),
looks on during their press conference in Minsk, yesterday. Western observers
slammed the weekend election in Belarus as neither competitive nor free, after
results showed every seat in parliament was won by factions loyal to authoritarian
President Alexander Lukashenko. — AFP
Belarus elects entirely
pro-govt parliament
UNITED NATIONS: Britain, France and
Germany have officially called for new
European Union sanctions against Iran
over its nuclear program, diplomats said.
The foreign ministers of the three countries
wrote to EU foreign policy chief Catherine
Ashton last week calling for tougher measures
as the showdown with Tehran
becomes more tense, a European diplomat
told AFP Sunday on condition of anonymity.
The EU is working on more sanctions as
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seeks
to counter the pressure on his country at
this week’s UN General Assembly in New
York. Ahmadinejad met UN leader Ban Kimoon
on Sunday as the EU foreign policy
chief held talks on Iran and other topics
with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in
New York.
Details of the new EU measures are still
being worked on but foreign ministers
from the 27-nation bloc will discuss the
move at a meeting in Brussels on October
15. The United States and its European
allies say that Iran is working toward a
nuclear bomb. Iran says its research is for
peaceful energy purposes. There has been
mounting speculation in recent months
that Israel is planning a military strike on
Iran’s bunkered nuclear facilities.
The United States, Britain and France
warned at the UN Security Council last
week that time is running out for a negotiated
solution with Iran.
“It is necessary that we sharpen the
sanctions,” said a second western official,
confirming the request by foreign ministers
William Hague of Britain, Laurent
Fabius of France and Guido Westerwelle of
Germany. “We think there is still time for a
political solution, a diplomatic solution,
time for any opposition, not on the street and
certainly not in parliament,” Zaiko said.
Lukashenko’s landslide win in the 2010
presidential election triggered a mass street
protest against election fraud that was brutally
suppressed. Some of the 700 people arrested
at that protest are still in jail, including
presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich.
Opposition politicians have cautioned
supporters to refrain from holding protest rallies
this time. The opposition had hoped to
use this election to build support, but 33 of
35 candidates from the United Civil Party
were barred from television, while the stateowned
press refused to publish their election
programs.
The United Civil Party and another leading
opposition party, the Belarusian Popular
Front, pulled their candidates off the ballot
and urged voters not to show up at the polls
a week before the election.
The United States and the European Union
have imposed economic and travel sanctions
on the Belarusian government over its crackdown
on opposition groups and independent
news media.
“The aim of giving President Lukashenko’s
regime the appearance of democratic legitimacy
has clearly failed,” German Foreign
Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement.
“In view of the glaring irregularities in
these elections, it is clearly visible for everyone
what Belarus is today: the last dictatorship
in the heart of Europe.”
Westerwelle said Germany and its
European partners would step up their efforts
to push for the release of political prisoners
and isolate Lukashenko and his regime. EU
foreign ministers are due to hold talks in
Brussels next month on political freedoms in
Belarus. They are expected to consider possible
revisions to sanctions against the country
aimed at more specifically targeting those in
the leadership deemed responsible for the
political crackdown. — AP
Britain, France, Germany
call for new Iran sanctions
and this is what we are working for. But we
cannot accept nuclear weapons in the
hands of Iran,” said the official, also speaking
on condition of anonymity.
Ashton is to chair a meeting in New
York on Thursday of the six nations-the EU
three, plus the United States, Russia and
China-who have been seeking to negotiate
a solution with Iran.
The international community has pursued
a dual track of pressure through sanctions
while seeking to negotiate. But the
US and European nations say Iran is refusing
to talk.
UN chief Ban “urged Iran to take the
measures necessary to build international
confidence in the exclusively peaceful
nature of its nuclear program,” said a UN
spokeswoman, Vannina Maestracci.
Ban and Ahmadinejad also discussed
the war in Syria and the protests in the
Muslim world against a US-made film that
mocks Islam.
The showdown with Iran is one of the
key topics at the UN assembly where
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
is also scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad,
who will address world leaders on
Wednesday, is probably making his last
appearance at the UN assembly where he
has become a controversial figure. Western
nations regularly walk out of his speeches
in protest at his anti-Israeli comments.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama
compared Israel’s insistence on tougher
approach to Iran to noise he tries to ignore,
according to remarks aired Sunday. Obama
told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program that he
understood and agreed with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence
that Iran not be allowed to obtain nuclear
weapons.—AFP