Free Republic

Baghdad doesn’t know the score By Fawaz Turki Pre-emption? Well, two can play at this game of diplomatic poker. As the UN Security Council prepared to work on a resolution demanding that Iraq readmit its weapons inspectors into the country or face dire consequences, the Baghdad government indicated on Monday that it is ready, promptly and unconditionally, to allow the inspectors in. With President Bush having opted to take the UN route, which most of the international community has urged him to do all along, the ball was now in the Iraqi court, and Iraqi leaders would’ve had no one...

Al-Haramain steps up activities despite US accusations By Muhammad Al-Harbi, Arab News Staff RIYADH, 19 September — Al-Haramain Charitable Foundation has intensified its humanitarian activities across the world despite US accusations that the organization has financed the activities of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. The Riyadh-based charity recently opened a large Islamic center in Bosnian capital Sarajevo. "It’s our organization’s largest Islamic center in Europe," Hisham Al-Mashari, chairman of Al-Haramain’s committee for Europe, told Arab News. The facility includes a cultural center, a dormitory for university students and a prayer hall for men in addition to administrative offices. Al-Haramain established...

Ignorance Arab News Editorial 19 September 2002 Prior to Sept. 11, Saudi Arabia hardly ever figured on the American media horizon: ignorance bred disinterest. Today, while there is much about Saudi Arabia in the US media, the ignorance is not any less. The coverage shows a disdain for the truth, for facts. So much of it is based on innuendo, half-truths, prejudice and scorn. A good example of that was a recent snide piece by Pulitzer Prize winner William Safire in the New York Times and syndicated around the world about supposed rivalries in the Saudi royal family. The New...

LONDON (March 25) - The suicide bombers of the Aksa Martyrs' Brigade are educated, middle-class, and led by a second-year university student in international relations, according to Lebanese Muslim writer Hala Jaber, who recently spent four days with the group. In an article published in the London Sunday Times yesterday, Jaber, author of a book on Hizbullah, provided a unique insight into the profile, recruitment, and mind-set of the killers. She described traveling to Gaza, where she was blindfolded and driven for 20 minutes to a secret location for her meeting with brigade leader Abu Fatah and a group of...