4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
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Messages from an ignominious past
BRITISH government files released on Monday reveal that the late King Hussein of Jordan made a plea -- the only one ever recorded from an Arab country -- for Israeli military support during the 1970 "Black September" crisis in which the Jordanian army confronted Palestinian guerrillas based there.
The official documents, disclosed under Britain's 30-year rule, reveal that the King asked, via Britain and the United States, for Israeli air raids on the Syrian army, which was supporting Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan.
According to the documents, the British prime minister of the time, Edward Heath, and his cabinet received messages of concern from King Hussein on 21 September, 1970. In one of them, the monarch "appealed for the moral and diplomatic support of the United Kingdom and the United States, and had also asked for an air strike by Israel against the Syrian troops," the files revealed.
The response of Israel's prime minister of the time, Golda Meir, remains unknown to this day, but Israeli intervention finally proved unnecessary, for Hussein's forces managed to inflict severe blows on the Palestinians, causing them to dub the month "Black September."
Algerian-Sudanese rapprochement
ALGERIAN President Abdelaziz Bouteflika arrived in Khartoum on Sunday on the first visit to Sudan by an Algerian head of state for more than 30 years. The Algerian president said the Algerian people were "happy at the disappearance of the dark clouds that shrouded the relations between the two countries in the past."
Relations between Khartoum and Algiers were strained over most of the last decade when Sudan was regarded as sympathising with the violent Islamist movement fighting the Algerian government.
In a speech delivered at a celebration he attended with Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to mark the 45th anniversary of Sudan's independence, Bouteflika expressed his country's willingness to help achieve national reconciliation in Sudan.
He said that he would "join hands with President Al-Bashir for solving all issues that need contribution and coordination with other parties for achieving national reconciliation in Sudan."
Bouteflika also called on all Sudanese opposition groups and the government to "sit down for negotiations, putting aside their differences for the sake of the interests of the country and the people." Bouteflika told reporters at Khartoum airport that relations between the two countries had begun to improve since Al-Bashir visited Algiers in March.
Confessed murders
AN IRANIAN Intelligence Ministry chief has confessed to ordering the murders of liberal dissidents in a trial that has shocked the public and embittered Iran's rival political factions.
The official IRNA news agency said Mostafa Kazemi, a former head of internal security, "confessed to his role as the mastermind of the killings of writers and intellectuals," in the third closed-door hearing of the case on Saturday. Eighteen men, including a number of secret police agents, are accused of murdering four liberal dissidents in late 1998.
Many reformists allege that the murders of nationalists Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, and writers Mohamed Mokhtari and Mohamed Jafar Pouyandeh, were part of a wider campaign by state-sponsored death squads to silence opposition.
Two reformist journalists and a former interior minister are now in jail after they charged that several senior clerics in the conservative establishment were implicated in the conspiracy.
The most senior government agent arrested in connection with the killings died in custody after drinking hair remover. Many question the official verdict of suicide.
Syrian president marries
SYRIAN President Bashar Al-Assad has married a young Syrian woman who grew up in London, Syrian official media reported on Tuesday.
In a brief front-page story, accompanied by a large photograph of Al-Assad, but none of his bride, the state newspaper Tishreen said Al-Assad and Asma Al-Akhras were married at a New Year's Day ceremony.
Speculation had been rife that the 35-year-old president was preparing to marry -- or perhaps already had -- and much of the talk had focused on Al-Akhras, who is in her 20s. Al-Akhras, the daughter of a Syrian cardiologist practising in London, comes from a prominent family in Homs, north of Damascus, and has a degree in computer science from a British university. She is believed to have spent most of her life in Britain, where Al-Assad, an eye doctor, studied medicine.
Satellite curbs
A PARLIAMENTARY panel has approved three proposals calling for curbs on satellite dishes and Internet firms in Kuwait in a bid to stop the spread of pornography, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Sunday.
The proposals were submitted by hard-line Islamist MP Waleed Al-Tabtabai to the parliamentary committee for education, culture and guidance affairs, and are now to go before parliament proper and the government, according to Al-Anba' newspaper.
One proposal called for a "ban on the sale and promotion of dishes for certain satellites that transmit pornographic, indecent and immoral programmes."
The two other proposals demanded that Internet service providers in Kuwait introduce proxy servers to block pornographic sites and that Internet cafés prevent users from surfing "immoral web sites."
Although Kuwait is a religiously conservative state, it imposes no restriction on the installation and use of all types of satellite receivers and dishes. Al-Tabtabai has been outspoken in his criticism of all forms of "non-traditional and immoral" entertainment, including anything that involves mixing of the sexes.
Compiled by Rasha Saad
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