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		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Deep concern
US President George Bush and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed deep concern about the escalation of violence in the Middle East. Bush described the Middle East as being a ''cauldron of violence." Talking to reporters during a visit to a youth camp on Tuesday, Bush insisted the cycle of violence must end for any peace process to begin. He called on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to clamp down on suicide bombers and said Israel had got to show restraint.
Kofi Annan said in a statement issued on Tuesday that Israel's incursion into the West Bank town of Jenin, in an area under the entire control of the Palestinian Authority, would only escalate tensions. He urged all parties to "exercise restraint" and return to the peace process, AP reported.
Defaming Syria
A LEBANESE military judge has charged six anti- Syrian Christian dissidents with endangering the country and defaming the Syrian army. The official National News Agency said the judge sent the six dissidents to the martial court for trial on Tuesday after interrogation.
The arrest warrants included crimes of carrying out activities and writing speeches of a nature banned by the government, exposing Lebanon to aggressive acts and affecting its relations with a neighbouring country, Reuters reported. The six were among about 200 members of groups backing the exiled Christian rebel general Michel Aoun and jailed militia chief Samir Geagea arrested by security forces last week and accused of trying to destabilise the country.
The groups have been campaigning to remove Syria's 20,000 troops in Lebanon and end its political and military influence in the country.
Lebanon's top security body last week banned groups led by Aoun and Geagea groups from any political activity.
Second attack
FOR the second time in less than a week, US warplanes bombed a radar site in south Iraq, in another attempt to disable the increasingly effective air defences Iraq uses against allied pilots. US officials said "a few" US Air Force F-16 fighter jets used precision-guided weapons to target a single site. They added that damage assessment was underway. A spokesman for the Iraqi air defence division said there had been an air attack on ''infrastructure facilities'' in Missan province, southeast of Baghdad, but gave no report of casualties, Reuters reported.

Narrow agenda
SOUTH African communists say they will demonstrate outside the United States embassy in the capital, Pretoria, today. In protesting Washington's stance on a world conference against racism, they will be joined by trade unionists and civil rights activists. A similar demonstration is expected outside the US consulate in Durban, where the World Conference Against Racism will be held from 31 August to 7 September.
The US and some European countries have resisted moves, led mainly by African states, to persuade delegates at Durban to press for reparations for centuries of slavery. "The protest will be against the narrow US agenda and its threat to boycott the conference simply because it does not want to equate Zionism with racism and is against reparations for slavery," a spokesman for the South African Communist Party said.

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