Friday, Jan 09th
Last update09:15:11 AM GMT
International Glance
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's second-in-command has strictly rejected the establishment of democracy in Egypt, alleging it could have dire consequences.
Deputy Premier Silvan Shalom said attempts at promotion of democracy in Egypt could strengthen what he called radical elements in the country, said Israeli website The Marker, a subdivision of the Ha'aretz newspaper.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office and transfer power only after September's presidential election. His comments confounded reports he was preparing to stand down immediately. He said he would ignore "diktats from abroad".
President Mubarak said he would delegate some powers to Vice-President Omar Suleiman.
Egypt's military earlier said it was standing ready to "protect the nation".
Textron Defense Systems of Massachusetts will provide sensor-fuzed weapons to India through a U.S. Air Force contract. The Foreign Military Sale agreement for 512 CBU-105 sensor-fuzed bombs is worth $257 million. The company said $126 million of the total amount is funded immediately.
"We believe that SFW is truly the best area attack weapon in the world," said Ellen Lord, senior vice president and general manager of Textron Defense Systems. "Through a process of rigorous research, testing and analysis, we have created a weapon that is reliable, safe and meets current clean battlefield standards."
Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a multi-billion dollar Texas oil refinery investment unless the U.S. government intervened to stop state company Saudi Aramco being sued in U.S. courts for alleged oil price fixing, according to U.S. diplomatic cables seen by Wikileaks.
Deputy Saudi Oil Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud at a July 8 meeting with U.S. embassy staff in Riyadh said he wanted the U.S. to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from lawsuits by ordering a Dept. of Justice statement of interest (SOI) on its behalf, one cable said.
The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel's who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret "hotline" to Cairo, leaked documents disclose. Mr Suleiman, who is widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel's preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.
As a key figure working for Middle East peace, he once suggested that Israeli troops would be "welcome" to invade Egypt to stop weapons being smuggled to Hamas terrorists in neighbouring Gaza.
Did the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s leadership have foreknowledge of the Gaza war? That question is raised - though never satisfactorily answered - by several exchanges revealed in The Palestine Papers.
In defending their handling of the Gaza war, Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, has long held that the PA warned Hamas - both in Gaza and through its Syrian-based leadership - that Israel was planning an attack on Gaza.
On October 2, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council was widely expected to pass a resolution supporting the Goldstone Report, the UN’s probe of war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
The Council instead agreed to delay a vote on the report until March 2010, following major reservations expressed by the Palestinian Authority, the United States and Israel. A UNHRC endorsement of the report would have brought Israeli officials one step closer to prosecution before a war crimes tribunal, an event many Palestinians were anxious to see.
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