Briefs

---

Bahrain bans Israeli goods

BAHRAIN's parliament urged the government to reverse a decision to lift a ban on Israeli goods that Manama said formed part of a free trade agreement with the United States.

Twenty-nine of around 30 MPs who attended a session of the house voted in favour of four non-binding resolutions calling on the government to "reverse its decision to lift the embargo on Israeli goods" and to re-open an office charged with enforcing a trade boycott of the Jewish state.

The resolutions also asked the government not to take any crucial decision without consulting the 40-member elected chamber.

"How has the government taken such a decision without consulting the legislative authority?" asked MP and second deputy speaker Adel Maawda.

"It isn't because the people of Bahrain have no money that they want the opening of markets," said MP Mohamed Khaled of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Newly-appointed Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa reiterated the government line that the move did not amount to "normalisation [of ties] with Israel".

The move was a prerequisite for ratification by the US Congress of the free trade pact concluded between Manama and Washington in September 2004, he said.

Finance Minister Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mohamed Al-Khalifa, whose Gulf Arab state is a close Washington ally, said the decision was dictated by developments that followed the signing of the pact with the United States.

"We left it up to citizens to decide for themselves if they want to deal with the products of a particular country, be it Israel or anyone else," he told the parliament.

The lifting of the embargo, which has proved very unpopular in Bahrain, was announced by the Manama government late last month.

Islamist returns to Algeria

AN EXILED Algerian Islamic leader Saturday said he will return home in response to a reconciliation plea by President Abdul-Aziz Boutefliqa.

Anwar Haddam, a member of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Movement, said in a statement published in Algiers, "I announce to the Algerian people that I accepted an invitation by the president of the republic to return home and continue political action from inside in order to achieve true national reconciliation.

"What made me accept the invitation is that I believe minimum freedom is available now to enable us to contribute effectively in national efforts for reconciliation which necessitate achieving justice and ending harassment of activists for their ideas and political stances," he said.

Haddam has been living in exile in the United States for 13 years and said he will return to Algeria 29 October.

Algerians voted last month in favour of Boutefliqa's programme for peace and national reconciliation to end more than a decade of internal turmoil.

Iran gets reprieve on nukes?

THE UNITED States and the European Union will hold off taking Iran before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme until they get the Russian backing and may even allow Tehran to do some nuclear fuel work.

"If the Russians don't come around, there could not be referral in November," a European diplomat said, referring to a 24 November meeting of the Vienna-based UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which could send Iran to the Security Council.

"The next month is all about Russia handling the situation," a Western diplomat said about efforts to win Moscow's support.

The United States and EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany fear Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and want it brought before the Security Council, which has the power to impose penalties such as trade sanctions.

But Russia, which has a lucrative contract to build Iran's first nuclear power reactor, has a veto on the Security Council.

The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors in September found Iran in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, paving the way for the matter to be referred to the Security Council if Iran does not halt nuclear fuel work and cooperate fully with an IAEA investigation.

Defence counsel murdered

IN A PRESS release Wednesday, the Emergency Committee for Iraq, which includes as members Ahmed Ben Bella, former president of Algeria, Mahathir Mohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia, Roland Dumas, former foreign minister of France and Ramsey Clark, former US attorney general, called for an urgent international investigation into the kidnapping and murder in Baghdad last week of Sadoon Al-Janabi, defense attorney for Awad Hamed Al-Bander, a co-defendant with Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court (IHCC).

Al-Janabi, who was outspoken against the proceedings at the opening of court hearings 19 October, was kidnapped from his office late evening 20 October and found with two bullets in his head within the hour.

Referencing a New York Times article published in the weekend quoting sources in Iraq saying the men who abducted Al-Janabi wore suits and identified themselves as being from the Ministry of Interior, the Emergency Committee wrote in a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan that "The truth about the kidnapping and murder of Mr Janabi is critically important to the future of Iraq, peace in the Middle East and beyond and 'to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.'"

The committee is calling for an immediate international investigation because it holds that investigations by the interim government of Iraq and the United States will have no credibility. The Ministry of Interior in Iraq has faced numerous accusations in recent months of harbouring Shia death squads that hunt down Sunni Arabs with links to Saddam Hussein. Further, "The failure of the US and Iraq to provide protection to the defense and access to the defendants [before the IHCC] requires the transfer of any trials to a legal international forum if there is to be fairness in appearance and fact."