MORSi ROAStS IRAN - Kuwait Times

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 KUMASI: Ghana’s ruling National Democratic Congress met yesterday and was expected to endorse President John Dramani Mahama for December elections following the death of John Atta Mills last month. Mills had been set to run for re-election in the December vote before he died on July 24 at age 68. No official cause has been given, but there have been unconfirmed reports that he suffered from throat cancer. Some 2,000 delegates, including Mahama and former president Jerry Rawlings, were attending the congress in Kumasi in south-central Ghana, traditionally a stronghold of the opposition but where the NDC is seeking to make inroads. Mahama, who had been vice president before Mills’s death, was sworn in to serve out the remainder of the late leader’s term, as dictated by International Ghana ruling party meets to endorse prez candidate SENEGAL: Protesters gather outside the Gambian embassy yesterday to demand President Yahya Jammeh halt the mass execution of prisoners, and urging the international community to intervene. The banner reads: “Stop summary executions. The African Union and ECOWAS must react”. — AFP Senegalese protest mass execution of prisoners DAKAR: Scores of Senegalese protested outside Gambia’s embassy yesterday to demand that President Yahya Jammeh halt the execution of prisoners as another 38 convicts face the firing squad in coming weeks. Demonstrators implored the international community to intervene after nine prisoners, including two Senegalese citizens, were executed for their crimes last Sunday in the tiny country which is wedged into Senegal. The protesters chanted “Yahya assassin! Jammeh criminal!” and “Jammeh to the ICC (International Criminal Court)” as a handful of riot police kept watch. “We want to alert the international community to say there are 38 people on death row and if nothing is done ... these people will be executed and thrown into mass graves,” said Alioune Tine of the Dakar-based African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights. “As we speak no remains are in the hands of families.” Tine said the 47-yearold Gambian leader was a “modern day Idi Amin” referring to the former Ugandan dictator, and: “We must absolutely end the regime of this dictator.” The former soldier who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994, has vowed to carry out all death sentences by mid- September. Sheriff Bojang, a Gambian journalist exiled in Dakar like many of his colleagues who have fled persecution, is the first cousin of one of those executed on Sunday, Lieutenant Lamin Jarjou - one of three soldiers killed. He said his cousin was accused of involvement in a bloody counter-coup attempt in 1994, and another several years later. “That is what they said. He was tried, obviously they were beaten, coerced into signing things. We believed there was never a fair trial,” Bojang told AFP. Like most prisoners in Gambia, Jarjou was convicted by judges known locally as “machinery judges”, hired by Jammeh from Nigeria. “He has the right to fire and hire them anytime so they only do what he wants them to do.” In all the time Jarjou was in prison, the only person to see him was his brother, for 10 minutes, during a hospital stay, said Bojang. “Everybody was shocked ... nobody was aware of it,” he said of the execution. His body has also not been returned to the family for proper Muslim burial rites. Amnesty has said many on death row were tried on “politically motivated charges and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment to force confessions.” Last year eight military top brass, including the former army and intelligence chiefs and the ex-deputy head of the police force, were sentenced to death for treason. Jammeh, who claims he can cure AIDS, is often pilloried for rights abuses and the muzzling of journalists. He has in the past threatened to cut off the heads of homosexuals and heaps derision on any criticism from the West. Often accused by observers of paranoia, seeing coup plots around every corner and regularly reshuffling his government and top military officials, Jammeh rules the tiny nation with an iron fist. “We have information that he has become completely mad; it is that in fact, there is no explanation,” said Diene Ndiaye of Amnesty Senegal. Mahawa Cham, a former Gambian lawmaker (2001-2006) and member of Jammeh’s party, has no doubt that the president will continue his plans to execute the remaining prisoners. “I believe he will continue to carry out the executions. This is a man who doesn’t have sympathy for a human being. He thinks he is always right,” Cham said. Senegal has another citizen on death row awaiting execution and Jammeh’s move to execute its citizens has caused a diplomatic spat between the nations. On Wednesday Gambian Ambassador Mass Axi Gey was summoned by Senegal’s Prime Minister Abdoul Mbaye to inform him of “the unacceptable” nature of the executions and urge Jammeh to spare the life of the third prisoner. — AFP MOSCOW: Moscow yesterday sold off for $277 million its landmark Hotel Metropol near the Kremlin, an iconic Art Nouveau building where Lenin once gave speeches and stars like Michael Jackson have stayed. Starting at 8.7 billion rubles ($270 million), the auction rapidly ended after just two bids with the winner being a Russian subsidiary of the current operator, which is linked to the country’s largest hotel chain. No international chains were among the three participants in the auction. The winner, a company called Okhotny Ryad Deluxe, is a subsidiary of the current operator of the five-star hotel, spokeswoman for Moscow’s property department Oksana Vaghina told AFP. The operating company, also called Metropol, is controlled by the chairman of the board of Azimut Hotels, Russia’s largest hotel chain, Alexander Klyanchin, the Interfax news agency said. General director of Metropol Yevgeny Ustenko told journalists he would ensure that the establishment, just a short walk from the Red Square, was “the best hotel in Moscow”. Asked whether the hotel would become part of the Azimut chain, which specialises in business travellers, he said, “I can’t tell you yet, probably not.” The high-end auction was part of a drive to privatise thousands of publiclyowned non-residential properties in Moscow, which began in 2004. Experts said the city hall sold the hotel for a good price, since the starting price was high, and that international chains would be wary of taking on such a major project in Russia at present. “The starting price is high, appropriate to the market price,” said Olga Kochetova, director of valuation services at Knight Frank in Russia. “Probably international chains didn’t take part because they aren’t up to this at the moment. Considering the situation in Europe, they’re afraid to buy such properties in Russia and Eastern Europe, seeing such investments as quite risky.” “The amount of investment is large, and the starting price is high. There could not have been many participants. This isn’t unusual for such tenders,” said Sergei Lyadov, public relations chief at City-XXI Vek property developers. The auction sold off both the building measuring almost 40,000 square metres (430,000 square feet) and its land. It did not include the moveable contents, which the hotel’s website lists as hundreds of antiques from Meissen porcelain to hardwood furniture and the west African nation’s constitution. Mills’s death upended the presidential race in a country that recently became a significant oil producer and is praised as a stable democracy in an often turbulent region. The transition has so far gone smoothly. Analysts say the election is likely to be close. Mills won the 2008 vote with less than a one percent margin. — AFP Moscow sells celebrated Metropol hotel for $277m Drive to privatise thousands of non-residential properties MOSCOW: Cars pass five-star hotel Hotel Metropol in central Moscow, yesterday. — AFP paintings that still belong to the state. One of Moscow’s most ornate buildings, the hotel was designed by British architect William Walcot and completed in 1905 on the commission of one of Russia’s richest entrepreneurs and patron of the arts, Savva Mamontov. Its facade is decorated with a ceramic panel by Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel called the “Princess of Dreams” and bas-reliefs depicting the four seasons. The Bolshevik authorities took over the hotel, then the largest in Russia, after the 1917 revolution and Lenin used to declaim to supporters from a balcony in one of the restaurants. The hotel was managed by the Intourist travel agency during the Soviet era. It underwent a major refit of its 362 rooms in 1991, becoming the country’s first five-star hotel. Among those who stayed there were singers such as Michael Jackson and Montserrat Caballe, film stars Marlene Dietrich and Arnold Schwarzenegger and world leaders including former French president Jacques Chirac. However the Metropol’s glamour has faded lately and stars recently visiting Moscow such as singer Madonna and actor Johnny Depp have favoured another central hotel in the luxury Ritz- Carlton chain. The Metropol’s building and its interior is listed as a historic monument of national significance, meaning that the new owner must not destroy its period features in any restoration work. — AFP Hopes high for resolution at S African mine standoff JOHANNESBURG: World number three platinum producer Lonmin and mediators were optimistic about a breakthrough in talks with workers yesterday to end a three-week strike after violence left 44 people dead. Talks brokered by South African government officials resumed after negotiators met for 12 straight hours the day before in the northwestern town of Rustenburg. “I think today will be the deciding day in terms of the way forward. I think it’s D-Day,” mediator Bishop Jo Seoka from the South African Council of Churches told AFP. Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey said the government mediation was “very constructive”. “We hope to find a resolution today,” she told AFP. The company wants a “peace accord” sealed before starting negotiations on workers’ wage demands. But workers, who say they earn 4,000 rand ($470, 380 euros) a month and want 12,500 rand, insist they will not go back underground until their demands are met. Representatives of big player the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the smaller Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), whose bitter rivalry has been blamed for the unrest at the mine, were also at the talks. At the Wednesday meeting there was “a general understanding that everybody wants peace, a stable environment conducive to work,” said Seoka. But little progress was made on workers’ demands.—AFP
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012 SEOUL: A South Korean protester shouts slogans during a rally against Japan’s sovereignty claims over disputed islets called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima and demanding an apology and compensation for the victims during Japanese colonial rule yesterday. — AP Japan, N Korea meet for second day of talks BEIJING: Japan and North Korea were in close contact for a second day, officials said yesterday, as the countries seek to find enough common ground for possible future discussions at a higher level. Diplomats from the two sides held their first face-to-face encounter in four years Wednesday in Beijing, in relatively low-level talks Japan characterised as “matter-of-fact and frank.” The countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations, have long been at odds over numerous issues including North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens and the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. Beyond their bilateral relationship, however, the meetings in China’s capital are being closely watched for any clues as to whether North Korea’s foreign policy could change under new leader Kim Jong-Un. Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, took over leadership of the communist state after his father Kim Jong-Il died in December. Diplomats began the second day of meetings shortly before midday at North Korea’s embassy after having met the previous day at Japan’s diplomatic mission, according to a Japanese official, who declined to be named. Yesterday’s encounter ended after a little less than two hours and the two sides were keeping in touch, though it was unclear if they would gather again, said the official with the Japanese embassy. In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura emphasised that the talks were very much alive even if yesterday’s physical meeting had ended for the time being. “We have continued coordination with each other,” he told a news conference. Japanese broadcaster NHK television reported North Korean and Japanese diplomats were staying in contact by phone while receiving instructions from their governments. In another sign the sides were making some headway, news agency Jiji press said Japan’s delegation had postponed its return to Tokyo until today. A key issue for Japan is the fate of its citizens abducted by North Korean agents to help train spies, amid suspicions that Pyongyang has failed to provide all the information it has about them. “The abduction issue is among the most important of the various problems between Japan and North Korea,” Fujimura said. “As a matter of course, there won’t be any change in our stance that we want to discuss it.” Secretive North Korea admitted in 2002 its agents kidnapped Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies by teaching them Japanese language and culture, and later allowed five of them and their families to return home. It said a number of others died, though many in Japan hold out hope they remain alive. There are also suspicions that Pyongyang’s agents abducted more Japanese than they admitted. Japan says North Korea agreed to reopen investigations into the fate of abducted Japanese when the two sides last met in 2008. Impoverished yet highly militarised North Korea remains suspicious of Japan, which is a close military ally of the United States. Pyongyang also regularly blasts Japan for its colonisation of the Korean peninsula in the first half of the 20th century and treatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan. — AFP SEOUL: Twin typhoons are renewing fears of a humanitarian crisis in North Korea, where poor drainage, widespread deforestation and crumbling infrastructure can turn even a routine rainstorm into a catastrophic flood. Typhoon Bolaven struck the North on Tuesday and Wednesday, submerging houses and roads, ruining thousands of acres of crops and triggering landslides that buried train tracks - scenes that are all too familiar in this disaster-prone nation. A second major storm, Typhoon Tembin, pounded the Korean Peninsula with more rains yesterday. The storms come as North Korea is still recovering from earlier floods that killed more than 170 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That in turn followed a springtime drought that was the worst in a century in some areas. Foreign aid groups contacted yesterday said they are standing by in Pyongyang, but had not received new requests for help from the North Korean government. They had little information on the extent of damage and were relying on reports from state media. The country’s wariness toward the outside world, as well as a primitive rural road system, means aid may be slow arriving, if it is allowed to come at all. “These fresh storms, coming just a few weeks after the serious flooding - they do raise concerns because we see parts of the countryside battered again that have already been left in a vulnerable state,” said Francis Markus, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in East Asia. Tembin’s strong winds and hard rain were pounding South Korea yesterday, as residents of some cities waded through streets flooded with murky, knee-deep water. The national weather BEIJING: Giving up his successful career as the head of a medical research firm to spend his days at home reading from children’s story books was a tough choice for Chinese father Zhang Qiaofeng. But Zhang, one of a small but growing number of Chinese parents who are turning their backs on the country’s rigidly exam-oriented state-run school system, felt he had no choice. “China’s education system has special problems,” said Zhang, a wiry-looking graduate of one of the country’s top universities. “I want my son to receive a style of education which is much more participative, not just the teacher talking while students listen. Most of my son’s time is set aside for following his interests, or playing.” From a small apartment on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhang teaches his son Hongwu for four hours a day, in contrast to the six hours of compulsory classes the seven-year-old used to sit through at primary school. In the living room where he holds most of his classes, Zhang rattles through a long list of gripes with China’s education system, from what he calls its “obsession” with exam results to an overly authoritarian teaching style. China has made impressive progress in rolling out universal education across the country, with urban areas such as Shanghai claiming a perfect school enrolment rate. The United Nations says China has a youth literacy rate of 99 percent. But many parents complain about the focus on rote learning and passing exams, which means that children spend long hours in class. Chinese children spend an average of 8.6 hours a day in school, with some spending 12 hours in the classroom, according to a 2007 survey conducted by China’s Youth agency in Seoul said the storm would move off the peninsula’s east coast and that some cities in North Korea would see severe weather conditions. There were no deaths reported from Tembin; 20 people were dead or missing in South Korea from Bolaven. North Korea has yet to release casualty details, though heavy rains that might be little more than an inconvenience elsewhere can be calamitous there. Downpours trigger landslides that barrel down the country’s deforested mountains. For years, rural people have felled trees to grow crops and for fuel, leaving the landscape barren and heavily eroded. Rivers overflow, submerging crops, inundating roads and engulfing hamlets. Since June, thousands have been left without clean water, electricity and access to food and other supplies. That leads to a risk of water-borne and respiratory diseases and malnutrition, aid workers say. Because the North annually struggles to produce enough food from its rocky, mountainous landscape to feed its 24 International Twin typhoons raise fears in disaster-prone N Korea Second typhoon pounds S Korea, kills two million people, a poorly timed natural disaster can easily tip the country into crisis, like the famine in the 1990s that followed a similar succession of devastating storms. A North Korean land management official acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that widespread deforestation and a lack of basic infrastructure have made the country vulnerable to the typhoons and storms that batter the peninsula each year. “It’s important for the future of our children to make our country rich and beautiful,” Ri Song Il, director of external affairs for the Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection, said in June. He said a campaign is under way to replenish forests, build highways and construct proper irrigation at the order of North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un. He held up a green pamphlet on land management that was the first official document Kim published after taking power from his father. But it may be too little, too late, for this year’s summer rains. — AP SEOUL: A man carries his dog to safer place from the cage yesterday. — AP Parents reject China’s classrooms and Children Research Center. Lao Kaisheng, an education policy researcher at Beijing Normal University, said growing numbers of Chinese parents were demanding more of a say in how their children were educated. “There’s been a rapid rise in home schooling, especially in the past few years,” he told AFP. “Parents who home school tend to have more strict requirements for their children’s education, and feel that schools won’t meet their children’s individual needs.” No official figures are available for the proportion of Chinese parents educating their children at home, but Lao estimates it at less than one percent. One of the most prominent is Xu Xuejin, who moved from the booming eastern Chinese manufacturing hub of Zhejiang to the picturesque but sleepy southwestern town of Dali to provide a better environment for his two children. “Chinese children are taught to compete from a young age,” Xu told AFP by phone. “Students who can’t compete are eliminated... there’s too much pressure on them.” Xu, a Christian, said he wanted to give his children a more “Bible-centred” education than they could get in school, a key motivating factor in countries such as the United States where home schooling is becoming more popular. An Internet discussion forum he started in 2010 for Chinese home schoolers to swap classroom materials and discuss educational theory now has more than 4,000 registered members. Worries about the legality of home schooling feature heavily on the forum Chinese law states that children must be enrolled in school aged seven and receive compulsory education for nine years. — AFP
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