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April 8, 2005 |
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***** Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz has sent a cable of congratulations to Bangladesh's president Iajuddin Ahmad on the anniversary of his country's national day. In his own name and on behalf of the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques wished the President continuous health and happiness and the Bangladeshi people steady progress and prosperity. King Fahd lauded the existing relations between the two countries. Similar cables were sent to President Iajuddin Ahmad by Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard, and Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Prime Minister has sent a cable of congratulations to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf on the anniversary of his country's national day. In his own name and on behalf of the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Monarch wished the President continuous health and happiness and the Pakistani people steady progress and prosperity. King Fahd lauded the existing relations between the two countries. Similar cables were sent to President Iajuddin Ahmad by Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard, and Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General. Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard, received at the royal court at Al Yamamah palace in Riyadh today princes, senior officials and citizens who came to greet him. The Crown Prince also received Lebanon's Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani and his accompanying delegation. Crown Prince Abdullah also received a delegation of Qurayyat Governorate-based Al-Masaleekh Tribe from Anzah who condemned the criminal acts perpetrated by the deviant group. The Crown Prince thanked them for their support for the Saudi leadership and their loyalty to their religion and homeland. The audiences were attended by a number of princes and officials. Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard, received at the royal court at Al Yamamah palace in Riyadh Member of U.S. House of Representatives Sue Kelly and the accompanying delegation. The audience was attended by Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General, other princes, officials and U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom James Oberwetter. Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General, received Sheikh Mohammed Rasheed Kabbani, the Mufti of Lebanon, and the accompanying delegation. They reviewed issues of mutual interest. Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General received a number of princes, senior officials and a group of citizens who came to greet him. On the other hand, Prince Sultan received Yemeni ambassador to the Kingdom Khalid Isma'il Al-Akwa, who delivered to him two written messages from Yemeni Premier Dr Abdel-Kadir Bajamal and Defense Minister Major-General Abdullah Oleiwa. Prince Sultan Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General, will patronize on the 12th of April the activities of Symposium of the Engineer and His Role In The Building of National Economy, which will be held at the same time with the first general meeting of the Saudi Organization for Engineers at the King Fahd Cultural Center. Prince Salman Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Governor of Riyadh region, received Sheikh Mohammed Rasheed Kabbani, the Mufti of Lebanon and the accompanying delegation. He also received today Advisor of King Abdullah of Jordan, Okeil Beltaji. At the two meetings, issues of mutual interest were reviewed. Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister received in Riyadh U.S. House of Representatives Member, Financial Services Committee's Member and Chairman of Subcommittee of Supervising Investigations Sue Kelly and the accompanying delegation. During the meeting, they discussed aspects of cooperation between the two countries particularly the fight against terrorism and the enhancement of bilateral relations. The U.S. side commended the extent of cooperation and the measures taken by the Kingdom to combat and confront terrorism, also lauding the International Counter-terrorism Conference recently held in Riyadh and its important recommendations which showed the Kingdom's keenness on fighting terrorism. The reception was attended by Prince Dr. Turki Ibn Mohammed Ibn Saud Al-Kabeer, Assistant Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry for Political Affairs and Head of General Department of International Organizations. The Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are working to find a "simple partial settlement" concerning the borders the two states finalized over it since 31 years. The Saudi daily Okaz quoted Prince Saud as saying that "the issue of the border was issued and this is settled and what is left is very simple technical matter relating to the defining of the water passage, and efforts are continuous between the two countries to fulfill this side." On what was broadcasted by certain media that there are border differences between the kingdom and the UAE, al-Faisal said "there are no differences with the UAE." He expressed his regret that "certain media create stories of differences between the Arab states for special objectives." In February, Prince Naif Ibn Abdul Aziz Minister of the Interior denied any border differences with Abu Dhabi. This was in reactions to statements by Gulf officials in which they indicated tension between the two states over the emergence of an old conflict. In August 1974, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates signed "Jeddah agreement" which stated that Abu Dhabi keeps the 6 villages of al-Breimi area including "al-Ein, the base of al-Breimi oases, most of al-Zafra desert," and on the other hand, al-Riyadh got Khour al-Aided which includes a coastal area which separates between the lands of the UAE and Qatar and parts of Mattei swamp and some 80% of the oil fields of al-Sheiba. King Mohammed VI of Morocco has received a written message from Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The message was delivered by Sheikh Hilal bin Khalid Al Ma'wali, civil service minister, when he was received by the Moroccan king at the royal palace. The meeting was attended by Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Farsi, Sultanate's ambassador to Morocco. Algeria has renewed its commitment to the annihilation of weapons of mass destructions around all over the world. The Algerian permanent delegate to the IAEA Bin Sha'a Dani said this commitment derives from the deep Algerian belief to take part in the international efforts to annihilate the dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destructions and their use by terrorist groups. The meeting of the joint technical committee in charge of fibre optic link between the Sultanate and Yemen concluded with signing an agreement for supply of fibre optic cables for the Public Corporation for Telecommunication of Yemen by Oman Telecommunication Company (Omantel) worth $1 million. Eng. Mohammed bin Ali Al Wahaibi, Omantel executive president, signed the agreement from the Omani side and Kamal Al Jebri, director-general of the Public Corporation for Telecommunication (PCT), signed for the Yemeni side in the presence of Engineer Abdulmalik Al Ma'alami, minister of telecommunication and information technology, and Abdullah bin Hamad Al Badi, Sultanate's ambassador to Yemen. Kamal Al Jabri said the two sides agreed on the future phases of the project which will accomplish its arrangement for the inauguration of the project during the 15th National Day of the Repulic of Yemen and thus establish scope for future cooperation between the two countries. He said discussion was also held on utilising the fibre optic cables for non-telephone communication such as Internet and oil company services. The Secretary General of Higher Commission for the Development of Hail Region Dr. Hamad Al-Uqla signed minutes with Tunisian National Bureau for Conventional Industries. The signing ceremony was attended by Saudi ambassador to Tunisia Ahmed bin Ali AL-Qahtani. Then the two sides attended a banquet held by Al-Shahthely Al-Qaraoui, the Bureau's Director General who signed the minutes on behalf of the Tunisian side. Contacts made by President Hosni Mubarak ahead of the current Arab Summit helped ease the financial crisis of the Arab League, said Egyptian Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awwad. In press statements, Awwad said Mubarak, at the summit's closed session, pinpointed Egypt's vision on reforming and modernizing the Arab League. Mubarak at the closed session and during side talks with Arab leaders noted that the AL like any other regional institution derives its momentum from its member states and their financial support to its activities and program, according to the spokesman. As for reform in the Arab world, President Mubarak said that a statement on reform which was adopted at Tunis Summit should be put into effect, added the spokesman. Tony Blair has said that he does not believe that politics in the UK would benefit from the intimate attachment with religion common in American politics. The Prime Minister told the audience of religious leaders that whilst faith was "very important" and integral to individuals, he would be reluctant to see it used overtly in the political process. He added: "I don't want to end up with an American-style type of politics with us all going out there and beating our chests about our faith." But throughout his speech, Mr Blair was keen to praise the importance of faith to improving society and to political dialogue. A Palestinian official has unveiled news about the Israeli forces use of killer radiation in its war against the inhabitants of the occupied territories. The Director of Al Shifa complex in Gaza Jomaa Al Saqa said the Israeli occupied forces force the Palestinian crossing the borders from Egypt and Jordan to enter into close chambers, remove their clothes and subject them to electromagnetic radiations. He added that electromagnetic radiations cause dangerous effects that appear after few years and these include damage in the blood cells, breaking of blood platelets, cancerous tumours, blindness, mental retardation, and infertility in both male and female. At least eight followers of a slain rebel preacher were killed in clashes with the army and police in northwest Yemen after they shot dead four policemen, local government sources said. Army and police units launched an offensive in Saada province against supporters of Hussein Badruddin Al-Houthi, who was killed by the army last year. It followed a dawn attack by the militants against a police patrol in Nushur, northeast of the town of Saada, which killed four police and wounded three. A local official said seven police were killed in the ambush. "At least eight members of the Faithful Youth organization, which Houthi headed, were killed," one local source said. Another 12 members of the security forces, who bombarded strongholds of the militants, are believed to have been wounded in the clashes, the source added. Within the framework of a security pact signed between the two countries, Saudi Arabia and Yemen exchanged a total of 33 wanted criminals including 25 Saudis, according to the Interior Ministry. "Security agencies in the Kingdom have received 25 Saudis wanted for security-related issues while eight Yemenis detained for security reasons were extradited to the authorities in Sanaa," the Saudi Press Agency said, quoting an official. Minister of Labour Dr Ghazi Al-Quseibi, who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) presided a meeting of the Fund's Board of Directors. They reviewed issues pertaining to the role of the Fund in employing Saudis. Dr Mohammed Al-Sahlawi, the Fund's Director General said the Board approved the Fund's final accounts for 1424-1425AH. Lebanese senior officials warned against the current dangerous situation that surrounded Lebanon, poiting out that these circumstances may negatively affect security and economic situation in the country. Former Lebanese Prime Minister, Salim al-Hoss, and Lebanese Minister of Expatriates, Talal Arslan, stressed during a meeting the necessity of forming a new national government to supervise the Lebanese forthcoming election. They both stressed the importance of starting a serious national dialogue to overcome the current Lebanese crisis. Al-Hoss announced strong rejection of some Lebanese parties calls to send for international forces into Lebanon. In a statement, al-Hoss said the call for these forces that does not enjoy satisfaction of all Lebanese, "will make a new national split that is difficult to predict its dimensions and consequences over Lebanon's stability and civil peace." He called for national unity and aversion of political conflicts and divisions to face any strikes that will damage the country stability and security. Weeks after a Pakistani Ministers admission that country's disgraced scientist provided centrifuge system to Iran, President Musharraf has said he is considering to send parts of nuclear centrifuges to Vienna for inspection. "To end the issue once and for all we want to send nuclear centrifuges to Vienna for inspection and the matter is under consideration," said President Musharraf in an interview to a private news channel. The president said that during the nuclear proliferation probe in Iran, IAEA got suspicious about how and from where Iran had nuclear centrifuges. The president said that this revelation added new dimensions to the probe against Dr A. Q. Khan's black market network. He said the focus of investigations was about finding out those involved in proliferation to Iran. Minister of Labor Dr. Ghazi Al-Qusaibi, called on the owners of establishments, which do not cope up with the percentage of Saudization, and the establishments, which turns to illusory Saudization, to utilize the campaign of recruitment of Saudis and to employ Saudis coming from labor offices. Dr. Al-Qusaibi clarified the advantages of recruiting Saudis such as paying half of their wages for two years by the Human Resources Development Fund. He also referred to imposition of sanctions against the violating establishments, which included a foreign recruitment ban on them for 5 years and denying them benefit from the projects offered by the government to the private sector. Morocco's king Mohammed VI has held two meetings with Algeria's president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, during the first visit to Algeria by a Moroccan monarch since the late 1980s. Given a decades-long diplomatic standoff between the two countries over the disputed territory of the Western Sahara, observers see the meetings as significant. After the meeting between the Algerian and Moroccan leaders, Algeria's foreign minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem talked of a "relaxation of relations between Algeria and Morocco", which was enthusiastically picked up by local observers, including the media. The two leaders also met, on the sidelines of the Arab League summit in Algiers. Education Minister Abdul-Salam al-Jawfi met with the Saudi education undersecretary Khalid Ibn Abdullah Ibn Duhaish and his accompanying delegation. In the meeting, they discussed educational experiences in the two brotherly countries, affirming the importance of exchanging the educational experiences between the two countries to make use of them in developing the educational sector in the both countries. The Saudi education delegation met also with top education ministry officials and discussed with them topics of the common concern. The United States has agreed to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, despite concerns from India that the deal could destabilise a fragile peace process between the rival nuclear powers. US President George W Bush discussed the decision with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a telephone conversation, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. A senior US official, said the agreement to sell military aircraft to Pakistan was part of a new strategic approach for the subcontinent. The sale was to make Pakistan more secure and was not viewed by the US as having a negative impact on balance of military power in the region, the official said. "It's in the interest of India, Pakistan and the United States that Pakistan feels more secure," the unnamed official reportedly said. The United States has committed "grave violations of human rights" against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Foreign Affairs Committee of Britain's parliament said in a report last Friday. The report also called on the British government to make clear whether it uses intelligence passed on by other countries that may have been gathered by torturing suspects. "We conclude that United States personnel appear to have committed grave violations of human rights of persons held in detention in various facilities in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan," the committee wrote in its influential annual report on human rights. "We recommend that the government make it clear to the United States administration, both in public and private, that such treatment of detainees is unacceptable." The committee said it was "surprising and unsettling" that the government had twice failed to answer whether London receives information extracted under torture by a third country. "The arguments for evaluating information which purports to give details of, for example, an impending terrorist attack, whatever its provenance, are compelling," the committee said. "We further conclude, however, that to operate a general policy of use of information extracted under torture would be to condone and even to encourage torture by repressive states." The treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the rising threat from terrorism has sparked a heated debate in Britain about torture. Human rights groups have criticized conditions at the camp and interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation or subjecting detainees to extreme temperatures, some of which they say are akin to torture. The committee also called for better training of British troops on the treatment of prisoners to prevent further abuses of inmates like those seen in Iraq since the conflict. Foreign ministers from Arab and Latin American countries laid the groundwork in a two-day meeting for an unprecedented summit of their leader scheduled for Brasilia in May. "We have paved the way for South-South cooperation that we can increasingly use in our dealings with the countries of the northern hemisphere," Morocco's minister Mohamed Benaissa told AFP. A draft final statement for the Brasilia summit drawn up by the ministers of the 22 members of the Arab League and a dozen Latin American states pledged to coordinate the policies of the two regions in international economic and financial bodies. It highlighted the opportunities for cooperation in the economic, social, technical, scientific and cultural fields and called for joint mechanisms to be set up for investments and partnerships in areas such as energy, telecommunications and transport as levers for development. The conference also covered cooperation in air and sea transport to enhance the very limited trade between Arab and Latin American countries, which have virtually no direct shipping routes. Other projected areas of cooperation included the fight against desertification, water resources management, agriculture, biotechnology and genetic engineering. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, whose country co-chaired the meeting with current Arab League head Algeria, said, "The South is always looking at the North, we must do more between us." The idea of the summit, to be held on May 10 and 11, came from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva. Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa and Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem for their part hailed the planned summit as a major opportunity for cooperation for two regions, which knew each other comparatively little. |