Absence…
Layla Anwar, Uncensored Arabwomanblues
Am sure you are all saturated with words, an overcharge, overflow of words… An accumulation, a hoarding of words… Neatly packed, neatly filed, neatly arranged words… I am saturated with words too – yours and mine. I will not offer more words tonight, the basic minimum only. Instead, I want to have this song on my blog…

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FLASHBACK: 30 December 2006 – a day of infamy
Gabriele Zamparini, The cat’s dream
30 December 2006 will be remembered as a day of infamy. In violation of international law and human decency, the quisling government of occupied Iraq, a puppet, sectarian regime installed by the American occupation and supported by Iran, assassinated the legitimate President of the Republic of Iraq, Saddam Hussein….

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CHALLENGES 2007-2008: Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst
Analysis by Dahr Jamail
Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq. One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop “surge” by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000. By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises. The Bush administration said the “surge” was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent….

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New video of Bhutto gunman
The Age, Australia
A Pakistani television station released footage early today claiming that opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was shot dead by an assassin before an accomplice detonated a suicide bomb, contrary to official government claims. The new, exclusive images from the Pakistani-based DawnNews TV show a young gunman, wearing sunglasses and dressed in a light-brown sports jacket, firing at Bhutto as she stood atop the sunroof of her white security Range Rover following an election campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi on Thursday. The footage clearly shows Bhutto collapsing into her armoured-vehicle before the suicide blast, contradicting official government claims that she recoiled only after the blast and cracked her skull on the sunroof…

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The Palestinian Resistance Will Never Extinguish
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
The Israelis have in recent weeks open threatened to murder the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the Gaza Strip – but the Palestinian resistance will never extinguish and the Palestinian people can never be forced to submission under Zionist fascism. The Palestinian people will continue its righteous cause to resist the Israelis occupation…

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IRAQ: Contacts to form new alliance – MPs
Voices of Iraq
MP from the Iraqi National List (INL) unveiled on Friday contacts made with some political blocs to form a new alliance “the Iraqi national project”. “There are contacts made by the Iraqi National List with some political blocs to form a new alliance “the Iraqi national project” that gathers some political forces,” Usama al-Negefi told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Iraqi Islamic Party signed last Monday a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the city of Sulaimaniya. The three parties said that the MoU was signed to boost ties among them and to foster Iraq’s unity. “The contacts include the national dialogue front, Islamic Fadila (virtue) party, the Sadrists, the Independent Arab List as well as some independists from the Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC),” al-Negefi explained….

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READING THE NEWS WITH BLINDERS ON
Desert Peace
Some people absolutely refuse to see the truth even when it’s right in front of them. They are so biased, so full of hatred that they cannot conceive something they believe in is being criticised. Zionists fall into this category, refusing to see the evil deeds committed by the State of Israel. There was a featured article published this week in the Wall Street Journal critical of Israeli polices in the occupied West Bank. It is presented below, followed by a response to it found in a zionist Website, condoning all that was said in the original article…. proving my point that many people read the news with blinders on…

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2,000 Jordanians commemorate Saddam on anniversary of execution
The Associated Press
About 2,000 Jordanians demonstrated in the capital on Saturday to commemorate former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on the one-year anniversary of his execution. Some supporters in Amman’s commerical downtown district waved black, white, green and red flags of Saddam’s ruling Baath party and distributed a party newspaper, “al-Wahda,” meaning unity, bearing Saddam’s picture on the front page….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 29 December 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 10:35am Baghdad time Saturday morning, the Yaqen News Agency reported that Resistance fighters of the Jaysh al-Mujahideen Resistance organization bombarded the military base in as-Saqlawiyah, 17km north of al-Fallujah (which is 60km west of Baghdad) on Saturday morning. Yaqen reported witnesses as saying that an armed group of about 10 fighters driving in four unmarked cars under a black flag emblazoned with the words “Jaysh al-Mujahideen” took up positions near the as-Saqlawiyah base, which is occupied by US and puppet army troops. They fired five heavy 120mm mortar rounds into the base, sending plumes of smoke rising from within the facility. US aircraft then flew into the area shortly after the attack….

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Palestinian police arrest three Israelis in Bethlehem
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC
The Palestinian police arrested three Israelis who were in Manger square just outside the Nativity church located in the center of the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem on Saturday morning. Security sources told IMEMC that the three Israelis were armed but wearing civilian clothes. The sources added that the three were arrested by the police forces that were guarding the church of Nativity then were handed over to the Israeli army at an Israeli military checkpoint at the western entrance to Bethlehem…

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Sunni groups smell a sellout by Hashemi in the North
Arablinks
Most of the mysterious three-party memorandum of agreement between Hashemi’s Islamic party and the two big Kurdish parties (signed Dec 24; consisting of 21 very brief clauses) is boilerplate about righting the wrongs of the past via democracy, Clause 140 of the Constitution, and amicable arrangements mentioned only in very general terms, but there is also clause 17, which reads: [The parties agree on] formation of branch committees in contiguous areas and disputed areas, to arrive at solutions in those areas in pursuit of a sound relationship (the attached addendum which relates to the governate of Ninawa is part of this memorandum of understanding)…

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Pro-Taliban fighters deny Bhutto killing link
Aljazeera.net
The commander of a pro-Taliban group in Pakistan has told news agencies by phone that Baitullah Mehsud, another pro-Taliban figure, denies any involvement in Benazir Bhutto’s death. Maulana Omar said on Saturday: “He [Mehsud] had no involvement in this attack. This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies.” A Pakistani official had said on Friday it had evidence that Mehsud was responsible for the death of Bhutto, a former prime minister…

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Palestinian Hajj-Pilgrims Returning from Mecca – Denied Secure Home-Coming
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
In November beginning of December 2200 pilgrims left through Rafah border crossing to travel to Mecca via Egypt for the celebration of Muslim Hajj. The Israelis and its allies in United States opposed loudly. what appeared to be an agreement between the Egyptian government and the Hamas government on Gaza Strip. Some 1700 home-coming Palestinian pilgrims returning from Mecca have been at the sea waiting for more then 3o hours on a ship outside the Egyptian Red Sea post of Nuweiba. The stranded Palestinians have been forced to stop the crew members of the ship intended to return to Jordan….

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Iraq to discuss border agreement with Iran
Aseel Kami, Reuters
Iraq will send a delegation to neighboring Iran in the coming days to seek slight changes to the agreement that defines the two countries’ borders, Iraq’s deputy foreign minister Labeed Abbawi said on Saturday. The announcement came after the two countries appeared to resolve a diplomatic quarrel over the 32-year-old agreement, which erupted this week when Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani said the treaty was now void. Talabani subsequently reversed himself and said the treaty was still valid, although he said Iraq would like to negotiate changes in it. “We support Talabani’s recent stance that the 1975 treaty between Iran and Iraq is valid,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted on Saturday as saying by the student news agency ISNA….

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Iraqi widows, divorcees in need of support
IRIN News
Iraqi women parliamentarians and activists are pressing for a new law to help the increasing number of widows and divorced women in their war-torn country. “We are in the process of presenting a new draft law which portrays the tragedy of the women who have no one to support them, like widows and the divorced,” said member of parliament (MP) Nadira Habib, deputy head of Iraq’s parliamentary committee for women’s and children’s affairs. Nadira explained that there were no fewer than one million Iraqi widows who had lost their husbands in wars or as a result of internal violence over the past three decades….

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Israeli army invades and occupies Hebron hospital
International Solidarity Movement
At approximately 6PM on December 27, Human Rights Workers (HRWs) received notice that the Israeli military had invaded the Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron. . The occupation of Al Ahli hospital was part of a number of military actions by the Israeli military in response to the killing of two off-duty soldiers by Palestinian militiamen in the Hebron area midday Friday. HRWs arrived on the scene at approximately 6:20PM to find armored military vehicles blocking both the entrance and the exit to the hospital. Also present were more roughly a dozen military jeeps and other armored vehicles. Periodically, stone-throwing youths pelted the vehicles…

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Addendum to my last post
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Just heard it now — seems American occupation troops are on “high alert” tonight and tomorrow and the day after — just in case “something” takes place in memory of the 30th of December – the day that President Saddam Hussein was lynched in an American- Iranian/Shia-sectarian morbid setting. On another note, an Iraqi delegation will be sent next week to Iran – to ratify “a few clauses” in the Algiers agreement of 1975. What will they do? Add the whole of Basrah to Shatt al-Arab and hand it over to Iran? and give Basrah the official title of an Iranian province ? On yet another note but all related – Muqtada Al-Sadr sent a delegation to Kerbala today to ratify a few “local laws.” Kerbala has its own laws it seems… Welcome to the disunited statelets of Iraq….

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Holiday Viewing: Did Bush Watch the Torture Tapes?
Scott Horton
…In this regards, the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is a formulation frequently used to avoid perjury charges, a sort of way of saying “no” without really saying “no.” In between these statements, two more things unfolded that have a bearing on the question….

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FLASHBACK: Final Letter from President Saddam Hussein to the People of Iraq
Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic of Iraq and the Chief Commander of the Combatant Armed Forces
…”Here I am presenting myself as a sacrifice; if the Merciful wishes, he will take my soul up to where he sends the martyrs and the faithful, and if He decides otherwise, it will be up to Him, because He is the Merciful and the Compassionate, He is our creator, and we all return to Him, “patience is most fitting against the unjust people, it is God (alone) whose help can be sought.” “O brothers and great people, I call on you to preserve the ideals that made you worthy of being believers, of being the bright lamp of civilization, and of belonging to the land that gave birth to the father of prophets, Abraham, and also of other prophets. These ideals have made you the bearer of the official and authentic greatness. “Saddam Husayn is ready to sacrifice his life for the country and the people….

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Stop the killings of Women in Iraq!
EUROPEAN TURKMEN FRIENDSHIPS
Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic htat Abd al-Jalil Khalaf, the police chief of Basra, told the al-Arabiya satellite news channel on Wednesday that a shadowy group calling itself “Commanding the Good and Forbidding what is Prohibited” has recently killed 50 women in the southern port. It is probably a puritanical Shiite group, and it says it objects to make-up (tabarruj or the wanton display of oneself in public). The women killed have been for the most part Muslims (both Sunni and Shiite), though two were Christians. (The above has been posted by Juan Cole on his ‘Comments’ blog) What Juan Cole fails to comment is that before the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US-UK in 2003, Iraq was the most progressive country in the Arab world as far as women’s rights are concerned…

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Ilan Pappe interviewed in Italy
ETHNIC CLEANSING GOES ON AND ISRAEL WANTS YOU TO ACCEPT IT
Emanuela Irace, il manifesto – Translated by Diego Traversa, Peacepalestine
…After having denounced in recent months the impossibility of working peacefully in a hostile milieu, namely at Haifa University, Pappe moved to Britain where he now teaches at Exeter University. Historian of dissent, “revisionist”, born in 1954 in Israel, son of Jews who fled from the Germany of the ‘30s, he has published a half dozen books. Amongst the most recent works there is “The ethnic cleansing of Palestine”, not yet translated into Italian. The core of the exploration by the great historian is the Zionist policy comprised of deportations and compulsory expulsions carried out against the Palestinians during and after the 1948 war, when some 400 villages were evacuated, razed and destroyed in the space of five years…

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A one way ticket — hopefully
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Al Jazeera announced that Iraqi P.M (hahaha) Al-Maliki is on his way to London for a “routine medical examination.” Roads to Iraq, heard on another TV channel, Al-Sharqiya, that a permission was sought from his family – “Why is he unconscious?” she rightfully asks. I ask another question, why on the 29th of December, one day before the murder of the late President Saddam Hussein ? Is Maliki really unconsciously ill ? or Does he want to spend New’s Year’s eve with Gordon Brown? or Something is being prepared in the coming days?….

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Sunnis recall Saddam’s parting words before he fled Baghdad
AFP
“His last words to us were ‘I promise the people of Adhamiyah golden monuments once we defeat the Americans’,” remembered Abu Rima one year after the deposed dictator was hanged in the Iraqi capital. “The image flashes in front of my eyes even now like a scene from a film. It was April 9 and a Wednesday. That date is in my blood. Saddam is in my blood,” Rima said, his voice choking with emotion. Rima lives in the notorious Sunni bastion of Adhamiyah in north Baghdad where Saddam made his last public appearance on April 9, 2003… “If America had attacked us alone we would have defeated them. But they came with many evil partners. But look at the courage of the martyr. He talked to us even when American helicopters were above searching for him,” Rima said. “Look at what is happening now. In Saddam’s time there was no Shiite-Sunni conflict,” said Rima…

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Yes, Extremists Killed Benazir Bhutto. But Which Extremists?
Winter Patriot
…Who killed Benazir Bhutto? It could have been anybody. She betrayed everybody except the Americans who wanted her to return to Pakistan, and for all we can tell she may have secretly betrayed them as well. But motive isn’t everything; Who could have penetrated the deep security? In accepting this power-sharing enticement from the Americans, she betrayed her own party, straight into the hands of Musharraf. Is this fact relevant? I wouldn’t be surprised….

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Iraq suicide attacks again on rise
Tina Susman and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Although overall violence in Iraq has dropped to levels not seen consistently since the summer of 2005, suicide bombings appear to be making a comeback, according to figures released today by the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Iraq’s leader, meanwhile, flew to London today for what an aide said was a routine medical checkup. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who has faced increasing criticism for presiding over a paralyzed government, decided to take advantage of the recent ebb in violence to make the trip and was expected back within days, said Yasin Majeed, a media advisor….

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Hamas warns of human crisis if Gaza pilgrims are not allowed to return
Palestinian Information Center
The Hamas Movement said on Saturday that the safe return of Gaza pilgrims was hinged on the Jordanian and Egyptian governments and called on both to reject Zio-American pressures that enjoy PA leadership’s backing. The Movement in a statement read out at a press conference in Gaza said that Hamas supports the pilgrims’ insistence on returning via the Rafah crossing from where they got out to preserve their dignity and to avert any security threats against them in the event they returned via other Israeli-controlled crossings. Hamas asserted refusal of the return of those pilgrims via any other terminal, adding that the Palestinian people were following news of the stranded pilgrims with deep concern especially when 60% of them were women….

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Defining Israeli Zionist Racism: Part 1
Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri
Responding to issues raised by the article “Defining Racism,” Barbara Kay, a columnist with the Canadian newspaper National Post, employed a standard Zionist gimmick devoid of elementary principles, historical validity, or logical thematic constructs. Kay’s defense of the Zionist dispossession of Palestinians coupled with heinous crimes against humanity is patently manipulative since she flagrantly attempts at confounding the fundamental subject that defines Israeli Zionist racism in its factual historical context and sequence of events….

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Petition: Israel stalling on permits for terminally ill in Gaza
Aviram Zino, Ynet
A baby with an inborn cardiac defect, a two-year-old with kidney disease, a cancer patient with a liver tumor, and another with a brain tumor – these are only a few of the 17 terminally ill Gazans whose entry into Israel has been delayed and whose cases were raised Thursday in a petition submitted by Physicians for Human Rights to the High Court of Justice (HCJ)…

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Deer hunters
Gideon Levy, Haaretz
After a night of rain, the sun broke through the clouds. Two brothers and their brother-in-law decided to go for a hike in the wild, through the spectacular valley of olive trees, west of Ramallah in the West Bank. Around midday they suddenly noticed a herd of deer descending pell-mell into the valley. They stood and watched, certain that in the wake of the frantically fleeing animals, other people would appear. And, in fact, a few minutes later they spotted a group of soldiers slowly making their way into the valley….

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Palestinian woman dies after being barred from getting treatment abroad
Palestinian Information Center
Palestinian medical sources announced on Friday night the death of a Palestinian woman called Awatif Ibrahim, 52, who was suffering from chronic diseases, because the IOA refused to let her travel to receive necessary medical treatment abroad. Her death brings the number of Palestinian patients that died because of the Israeli unjust siege imposed on the Gaza Strip to 53 victims. The popular committee against siege warned that there is acceleration in the death toll in Gaza, stressing that serious symptoms started to appear amongst the Gaza people which foreshadows a serious health disaster….

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Breaking news: Maliki transferred to the hospital in London urgently
Roads to Iraq
Reported right now on Al-Sharqiya news channel that Al-Maliki transferred to London urgently for health problem. The interesting news is Al-Sharqiya added that his doctors asked the permission of his family to transfer him to London immediately…

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Stranded Palestinian refugees at Iraqi borders to resettle in Sudan within days
Palestinian Information Center
The Sudanese government has declared that all preparations were finalized on the resettlement of 2,000 Palestinians refugees in the outskirts of the capital, Khartoum, within the few coming days. The Palestinian refugees, who have fled persecution in Iraq at the hands of American occupation forcers and sectarian militias, have been stranded at the Iraqi borders with Syria and Jordan for years….

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Israel Loses a Friend (Benazir)
The Fanonite
The ex-Shah of Iran and Mobutu were both of the view that the road to power in Washington lies through the Israel lobby. Musharraf in his biography had forwarded the same view. It isn’t entirely surprising then that Benazir should have tried to grease her way back into power with friendly overtures to the Apartheid regime over Jerusalem. That will perhaps also explain why the quickest to mourn her departure were the US congress’s inhouse ogre, Tom Lantos, and the Lobby’s other water-boy, Arlen Specter…

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Another Palestinian prisoner dies of medical neglect in Israeli jails
Palestinian Information Center
A Palestinian prisoner called Fadi Abu Al-Rub died Friday night due to the policy of deliberate medical neglect adopted by the Israeli prisons authority (IPA) against Palestinian detainees, where hundreds of them are in need of urgent medical treatment. The website of the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot quoted the IPA as saying that the Palestinian prisoner, who died in the Israeli Jalbo prison to the north of occupied lands occupied in 1948, had informed the prison administration about his serious deteriorating health, but they ignored him….

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Bhutto assassination heightens threat of US intervention in Pakistan
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
With Pakistan erupting in violence over the assassination of its former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and amid conflicting accounts as to both the identity of her assassins and even the cause of her death, official Washington and the American mass media have coalesced around a version of events that has been crafted to suit US strategic interests. Without any substantive evidence, the crime has been attributed to Al Qaeda, while Bhutto herself has been proclaimed a martyr both in the struggle for democracy in her own country and in the US “global war on terror.”…

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Sadrists meet with Karbala administration to launch law-backing initiative
Voices of Iraq
A delegation representing Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr had talks with the local government in Karbala province to discuss means to launch a law-backing initiative, the Karbala governor said on Saturday. “We had talks with the representatives of Sadr to enhance the law and cooperation among Karbala’s socio-political fabric,” Uqeil al-Khazaali said in a press conference attended by Sadr’s representative, Sheikh Muhannad al-Gharrawi, and Sadr’s office director in Karbala, Sheikh Abdul-Hadi al-Muhammadawi. “The talks were positive”…

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Olmert: ‘Bhutto could’ve been bridge to Muslims’
HERB KEINON AND MICHAL LANDO, Jerusalem Post
Israeli leaders paid tribute to slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday, even though Israel and Pakistan do not have diplomatic ties. “I saw her as someone who could have served as a bridgehead to relations with that part of the Muslim world with whom our ties are naturally limited,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told The Jerusalem Post. He said the assassination was a “great tragedy,” and that he received the news “with deep sadness.”…

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Pakistan policy in disarray
U.S. had counted on Bhutto to be a key ally in helping dealing with the nation’s myriad challenges.
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
For months, the Bush administration’s hopes for stability in Pakistan rested on the rising influence of Benazir Bhutto. Her death Thursday shattered those hopes and threatened to paralyze U.S. priorities there: fighting terrorism, ensuring the safety of the country’s nuclear weapons and preventing regional chaos. The administration had a huge stake in the pro-Western former prime minister. U.S. officials were banking that Bhutto’s party would win enough seats in upcoming elections to become an effective force in the government again. In Pakistan, her death leaves the party in disarray, and the elections in doubt. For the White House, it leaves a void that will take time and work to fill….

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Hamas warns of human crisis if Gaza pilgrims are not allowed to return
Palestinian Information Center
The Hamas Movement said on Saturday that the safe return of Gaza pilgrims was hinged on the Jordanian and Egyptian governments and called on both to reject Zio-American pressures that enjoy PA leadership’s backing. The Movement in a statement read out at a press conference in Gaza said that Hamas supports the pilgrims’ insistence on returning via the Rafah crossing from where they got out to preserve their dignity and to avert any security threats against them in the event they returned via other Israeli-controlled crossings. Hamas asserted refusal of the return of those pilgrims via any other terminal, adding that the Palestinian people were following news of the stranded pilgrims with deep concern especially when 60% of them were women….

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