Sunday, Mar 08th
Last update09:10:26 AM GMT
International Glance
Washington has threatened to seize Iraqi assets and oil money if Baghdad rejects a controversial US-proposed security pact, Iraq says.
"Washington threatened to use any means to seize Iraqi assets if we do not support the security pact," Marsadiraq quoted Talabani as saying.
Washington currently seeks to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Baghdad to give legal basis to its military and political presence in oil-rich Iraq after a UN mandate defining its status expires on December 31.
Professor Zeev Sternhell's house on Jerusalem's Agnon Street is easily located by the iron gate with the broken glass. Sternhell says the bombing could have ended with him having to have both legs amputated.
Are the extreme right wing and settlers anti-Zionists?
"Certainly. The right wing advocating the greater Israel is the real post-Zionist body. Whoever supports the occupation, i.e. a binational state, is no Zionist. This could also be said of politicians who drag their feet in negotiations intended to bring about a two-state solution for two nations. They're putting off this solution to the unforeseeable future, endangering the Jewish state's future."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Monday that Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians and that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory.
He also dismissed as "megalomania" any thought that Israel should attack Iran on its own to stop it from developing nuclear weapons, saying the international community and not Israel alone was charged with handling the issue.
Israel has received an advanced U.S.-made radar, staffed by American personnel, as part of preparations to fend off any future ballistic missile attack by Iran, officials involved in the deployment said on Sunday.
The arrival of the X-band radar is a gauge of the depth of defense ties between Israel and the United States. But by cementing Israel's technical dependency on its ally, it may boost Washington's power to veto unilateral Israeli action aimed at denying Iran access to nuclear weapons.
A pipe bomb that exploded late on Wednesday night outside the Jerusalem home of Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University professor, left him lightly wounded and created only a minor stir in a nation that routinely experiences violence on a much larger scale.
But Mr. Sternhell was noted for his impassioned critiques of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, once suggesting that Palestinians “would be wise to concentrate their struggle against the settlements.” And the authorities found fliers near his home offering nearly $300,000 to anyone who kills a member of Peace Now, a left-wing Israeli advocacy group, leading them to suspect that militant Israeli settlers or their supporters were behind the attack.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also took the opportunity to sharply criticize the United States and Britain for opposing German attempts to put greater regulation, or at least reviews, of the financial sector on the international agenda last year, when she was chairing the Group of 7 industrialized nations.
"Everyone who produces a real product knows what it looks like and what standards it is up to," said Merkel, who was traveling in Austria. "One also needs to know with a financial product what's involved. Otherwise, these sorts of things happen that we then all have to pay for."
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