Replies

Afghan clerics threaten Muslim holy war over Koran

By Qurban Ali Hamzi

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A group of Afghan Muslim clerics threatened on Sunday to call for a holy war against the United States if it fails to hand over in three days military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran.

The warning came after 16 Afghans were killed and more than 100 hurt last week in the worst anti-U.S. protests across the country since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted President Bush to handle the matter honestly "and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment."

"If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America," said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in a mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

The statement was read out by Abdul Fatah Fayeq, the top judicial official in the mountainous, conservative province near the borders of Tajikistan and China.

Muslim clerics have traditionally been teachers and leaders in Afghan society and throughout its history they have rallied public opinion and sometimes led uprisings against unpopular rulers and foreign occupiers.

Newsweek magazine said in its May 9 edition investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators "had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.

The United States has tried to calm global Muslim outrage over the incident, saying disrespect for the Koran was abhorrent and would not be tolerated, and military authorities were investigating the allegation.

GROWING RESENTMENT

The protests began in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Tuesday. Violence broke out there on Wednesday and clashes occurred in several different places on Thursday and Friday. Scattered protests on Saturday were mostly peaceful.

Three people were killed and 21 hurt in Badakhshan on Friday.

While some Afghan analysts say Muslim rage over the desecration report sparked the protests, not hatred of America, there is growing resentment of U.S. troops, especially in southeastern areas where they are most active.

The United States commands a foreign force in Afghanistan of about 18,300, most of them American, fighting Taliban insurgents and hunting militant leaders, including bin Laden.

President Hamid Karzai, a staunch U.S. ally, has urged the United States to punish anyone found guilty of desecrating the Koran. He said foreign hands were behind the disturbances, but did not identify them.

The anti-U.S. protesters have also criticized Karzai and his U.S.-backed government, attacking and torching provincial offices and police stations as well as U.N. and aid agency compounds.

President 'has assassination plan'

By Pascal Fletcher in Caracas, Venezuela

May 16, 2005

IF Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was assassinated, his Government had a contingency plan to prevent his enemies from taking control of the world's No. 5 oil exporter, the President said.

"Some people might want to kill me, but they don't dare ... because if they did, they fear what would happen the next day," the Venezuelan leader said in a television broadcast.

Mr Chavez, a firebrand nationalist who often accuses the US Government and domestic opponents of plotting to topple or kill him, and who survived a coup in 2002, said his ministers, the armed forces and his supporters would know what to do if he were ever assassinated.

"We have a plan worked out in the event something happens to me. Those who are thinking about it should know this and that they won't have a good time of it if this happens," he said during his weekly "Hello President" TV and radio show.

Mr Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, did not detail the plan. But he has said before that if he were killed, Venezuela would become ungovernable and its oil shipments to its biggest client, the US, would be halted.

US officials dismiss his allegations of a US assassination plot as ridiculous. But they often criticise him as a left-wing trouble maker allied to Cuba's communist president, Fidel Castro, a long-time foe of Washington.

Mr Chavez, who won a referendum on his rule last August, said if his enemies did kill him, he did not think they could govern Venezuela. A recent opinion poll put his popularity level at 70.5 per cent, a five-year high.

In a message to his supporters yesterday, he said, "You can't let anyone come and seize our country".

"The revolution should be intensified," he added in a four-hour broadcast in which he criticised the US model of capitalism and expressed his preference for socialism.

Mr Chavez has been spending Venezuela's oil wealth to fund free health and education services for the poor and distribute subsidies and credits for workers' co-operatives he says should be the basis for a new kind of socialism.

His critics say his statist and interventionist economic policies, and systematic persecution of political opponents, are turning Venezuela into a replica of Castro's Cuba.

But Mr Chavez denies this. "The Cuban model can't be copied. We don't want to copy it and we won't," he said yesterday.

Military explosives used in Yangon blasts: junta

Thai nationals disembark from a special C-130 aircraft at the Royal Thai airport in Bangkok, 08 May 2005 following their evacuation from Myanmar due to the bombings. Military-grade explosives were used in last week's triple bombing in Yangon that left at least 19 dead, Myanmar's junta said, blaming foreign-trained 'terrorists' for the attacks.(AFP/File /Saeed Khan)

Sun May 15, 3:53 PM ET

YANGON (AFP) - Military-grade explosives were used in last week's triple bombing in Yangon that left at least 19 dead, Myanmar's junta said, blaming foreign-trained "terrorists" for the attacks.

Traces of the explosives, known as RDX, were found at the blast sites in two upscale shopping centers and a convention hall, the information minister, Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan, told a press conference.

"The RDX cannot be produced in Myanmar, and it is not available in the country. It can only be produced by superpower nations for use by their militaries," he said.

"RDX is found in a neighboring country," he said, apparently referring to Thailand.

Kyaw Hsan said timers on the bombs used advanced technology and that a "world-famous organization" -- the junta's usual way of referring to the US Central Intelligence Agency -- gave 100,000 dollars to the bombing operation.

The bombers were among a group of 20 people trained by three foreigners, including a journalist, near the Thai border at an ethnic Karen rebel camp called Zala, the minister said.

He did not identify the foreigners.

"The terrorists were well-trained saboteurs," Kyaw Hsan said.

He also added three political and student groups to the list of ethnic rebel and pro-democracy organizations the military blames for the attacks: the National League for Democracy-Liberated Areas, the Democratic Party for a New Society, and the All Burma Students' Democratic Front. The groups have no history of collaboration in their activities.

Four other organizations already blamed by the junta have denied involvement.

Myanmar's police chief, Brigadier General Khin Yee, said the government has offered a five million kyat (about 5,250 dollar) reward for information about the blasts.

"We have put a reward of five million kyats to whoever can give information leading to the arrests of these saboteurs," he told the press conference.

Police have printed 10,000 pamphlets announcing the reward and were distributing them on street corners, he said.

The May 7 bombing left 19 dead, according to the military, but neighboring Thailand put the number at 21. Witness accounts said dozens may have died.

Kyaw Hsan said 59 people remained in hospital.

Among the targets of the May 7 attack was a convention hall where a Thai trade fair was underway.

The bombings were the worst to hit the capital since the military took power about 40 years ago.

Myanmar watchers could provide no consensus on who was behind the blasts, but agreed that the military's claims were not credible.

Among the possible explanations proposed by analysts were that the blasts were set by radical ethnic fighters from the border areas, or by the military itself, or that the bombs were some sort of internal score-settling, or even a flare-up of Islamic extremism.