February 24, 2006

THE SAUDI COUNCIL OF MINISTERS PRAISES THE KING'S CONDEMNATION OF CLASHES OF CIVILIZATIONS AND HIS CALL FOR REPLACING IT WITH A CONSTRUCTIVE AND PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS. THE CABINET CONDEMNS ISRAEL FOR WITHHOLDING DUE SUMS FROM THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY. REACTIONS AGAINST THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE DANISH CARTOONS CONTINUE AND THE BIRD FLU VIRUS APPEARS IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz chaired the cabinet's weekly session at Al-Yamamah palace in Riyadh. At the outset of the session, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques briefed the cabinet on the contents of meetings, consultations and contacts held over the previous days with a number of countries' leaders and their envoys on bilateral relations and the situations in the region and the world. In a statement to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) following the session, the Minister of Culture and Information Iyad bin Amin Madani said that the cabinet pursued with interest the apology and deep regret issued by various Danish bodies with regard to the publication of the cartoons offensive to Prophet Mohammed ( Peace Be Upon Him). The Cabinet commended the speech addressed by the King to Al-Janadriyyah Festival's guests: scholars, men of letters, thinkers, businessmen and members of the mass media from the Kingdom and abroad. In his speech, the King condemned the idea of clashes of civilizations and called for replacing the idea with a constructive and peaceful coexistence among the civilizations. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques also demanded that the next stage in relations between countries and nations be a stage of real dialogue in which mutual respect dominates, including respect of one's sacred beliefs, religion and identity. The King called on intellectuals and thinkers to highlight the real image of the nation: the image of tolerance, justice and moderation. Reviewing the situation on the Palestinian arena, the Cabinet laid stress on respecting the will of the Palestinian people and condemned Israel for withholding due sums from the Palestinian authority. The Cabinet hoped that the peace process should continue according to the resolutions of international legitimacy, Arab peace initiative and the ''Road Map", the Minister said. The Minister of Culture and Information said the Cabinet then approved the appointment of Abdullah bin Ali bin Mohammed Milfy as Consultant on Employment and Job Classification at the Ministry of Civil Service; Ibrahim bin Salih bin Mohammed Aljihaiman as Assistant Undersecretary for Employment and Job Classification at the Ministry of Civil Service, and Dr. Abdullah bin Salih bin Mohammed Almiqbel as Director General of the Minister of Education's office. On another development Saudi Arabia is expected to slap a ban on the import of birds and poultry from Egypt after cases of bird flu were detected in that country, said an official from the Ministry of Agriculture. "Our policy is to ban import of birds and poultry from any country where cases of bird flu have been detected," Jaber Al-Shehri, director of the ministry's branch office in Jeddah said. "We have stopped importing from Asian countries with the exception of a few companies that have been proven to be disease-free," he said. According to a ministry official quoted by AFP news agency, the Kingdom has already banned poultry imports from Egypt. But Al-Shehri said until yesterday his office had not received any such instructions. Authorities in Cairo said that poultry has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus in several provinces across Egypt despite the government's efforts to contain the disease. Al-Shehri said the ban would not affect business in the Kingdom as only a limited quantity of birds and poultry is imported from Egypt. The bulk of our bird and poultry imports come from Germany and Netherlands, he pointed out. Saudi companies supply most of the Kingdom's poultry demand. Al-Shehri confirmed that no cases of bird flu have so far been detected in the Kingdom but did not rule out the possibility of its reaching the Kingdom. He referred to the government's efforts to prevent a bird flu outbreak in the country. A Saudi medical society also spoke about the strong possibility of avian flu spreading in the Kingdom. "There is a possibility of the disease appearing among the Kingdom's birds in large scale as it can spread through migrating birds," said Dr. Muhammad Al-Hajjaj, president of the Saudi Medical and Chest Surgery Society. The society advised farmers and poultry firms not to touch dead or sick birds and keep them in cages so that they would not mix with other birds. Al-Hajjaj said the disease still does not pose any danger to humans. The H5N1 strain has claimed at least 90 lives, mostly Asians, since late 2003. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could be transmitted easily among humans. Meantime the Iraqi Ministry of Health is testing 13 suspected new human cases of bird flu, one in Maysan province and 12 in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq, according to the United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Networks news service. Another 25 people from the area are also being tested, as they are exhibiting early symptoms. There have been two confirmed cases of human infection in Iraq, both in Sulaimaniya. The first to die was a 15-year-old girl. Her uncle, who cared for her during her illness, was the second victim. Both died from the disease, which is believed to be contracted by handling infected birds. Fourteen other suspected cases of bird flu were proven negative by lab tests. "We were not expecting a crisis like this one, and we'll have to dislocate budgets from other sectors for the prevention campaigns because it's an emergency situation," Ibtissam Azize, a spokesman for the bird flu program at the Health Ministry, said. The bird flu has been contained in Asia for the last five years, but has spread rapidly across the globe in the last few months. New cases of infected birds have been reported in France, India and Egypt. In Muscat Nasr bin Ali Al Wahaibi, director-general of livestock at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, has said in a statement that the Sultanate is free from bird flu and that all precautionary measures have been taken in coordination with the ministries and departments concerned to prevent the spread of the disease in the Sultanate. He also added that quarantine has been formed in cooperation with the international organisations concerned to follow up the case. Quarantine centres are already established at all sea, land and air entry points, he added. The ministry has banned import of live and frozen birds and poultry from the countries affected with the disease, he said. The Sultanate has banned import of live pet and wild birds, their products, derivatives and waste from Egypt, India, France, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Germany. The decision, issued by Sheikh Salim bin Hilal Al Khalili, agriculture and fisheries minister, came on the recommendation of the veterinary authority concerned. Germany has confirmed that two swans found dead in the north of the country had the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus. The birds were found on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea, off Germany. Austria has also confirmed its first cases of bird flu, in two dead swans. Sweden and Denmark have ordered poultry to be kept indoors as a precaution. The United Nations food agency has urged governments in Western Europe not to panic, but warned the virus could spread further when birds migrate. The H5N1 strain of the virus, which can kill humans through contact with infected animals, has recently been found in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. An exclusion zone has been imposed in the area where the swans were found in Germany. German health authorities are holding an emergency meeting to discuss the situation. Germany's top medical research authority, the Robert Koch Institute, which carried out the tests, says there is no cause for panic in Germany. The Hungarian authorities have restricted access to the two villages where the swans were found and put measures in place to prevent the spread of the disease. Another eleven swans found in the north of Hungary near the border with Slovakia. EU veterinary experts meeting in Brussels have backed plans to increase surveillance of wild birds and stricter bans on imports - particularly of untreated feathers from all non-EU countries. The German government announced it was bringing forward to next week a ban on keeping poultry outdoors, originally scheduled to come into effect at the beginning of March. Restrictions on poultry have already been brought into effect in Mellach, near Graz in Austria, where two cases of bird flu were found. The authorities have set up a protection zone within a 3km (two-mile) radius of Mellach and a 10km surveillance zone beyond that. Slovakia has banned the sale of poultry in markets following the Austrian cases. While urging calm, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that the virus could spread further into Europe as migrating birds return after wintering in Africa. "We need to be aware that there's a real risk for Europe when the birds migrate northwards this spring," Samuel Jutzi, director of the FAO's animal production and health division, told reporters in Rome. The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 90 people since early 2003, mostly in South-East Asia. The virus can infect humans in close contact with birds. There is still no evidence that it can be passed from human to human. India said it was testing dozens of people for bird flu, India, the world's second most populous nation and a major poultry producer, reported its first bird flu cases in poultry last Saturday, after 50,000 birds died in Maharashtra. Indonesia confirmed that a 19th person had died of bird flu, which has been reported in chickens and other domesticated fowl in most provinces of the sprawling country of 220 million people. On another development the Danish opposition parties called for an independent investigation into the right-leaning coalition government's handling of a row over Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) cartoons that have sparked violent protests in Muslim countries. "The prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has insisted that he has no reason to blame himself and has laid most of the responsibility for the crisis on imams in Denmark, which is far from accurate," Frank Aaen, a spokesman for the formerly communist Unity List party, told AFP on Monday. Aaen, supported by the other leftist and centrist opposition parties, has called for an explanation in writing from Rasmussen and an investigation into the cartoon affair as soon as the protests die down. "This investigation is necessary because things are too murky. The head of the government has said himself that Denmark is facing its biggest challenge since World War II. So it is obvious that we should cast some light on this serious crisis," the head of the centrist Radical Party, Marianne Jelved, told AFP. Rasmussen's effigy has been torched in the streets across the Muslim world, and his name has been blazoned across banners at violent protest rallies against 12 caricatures of Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him), first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September. The prime minister has refused to apologize for the publication of the cartoons, insisting that the government has no sway over what appears in the media in Denmark, where freedom of expression is fundamental. Instead, the government has laid most of the blame for the global uproar over the drawings on a group of Muslim clerics in Denmark who, angered by the Danish government's lack of response to their protests, travelled to the Middle East last year to present a dossier including the 12 cartoons and three other more inflammatory pictures that had not appeared in the paper. "The government carries the greater responsibility for its misinterpretation of a letter by the 11 Muslim ambassadors protesting against these drawings and for underestimating and ignoring the repeated warnings from Egypt last fall," Aaen said. The 11 diplomats in October requested a meeting with Rasmussen to express their outrage over the cartoons, but he declined, and Egypt reportedly cautioned early on that the row could escalate out of control if Denmark did not issue an official apology. Jelved criticized Rasmussen for having only presented the letter from the ambassadors as a protest against the drawings, when in fact it also condemned "the anti-Muslim atmosphere in Denmark". Members of Rasmussen's coalition government, and especially of government ally the extreme-right Danish People's Party, have openly referred to Muslims and Islam in derogatory terms. "The prime minister focused only on the (protest against the) drawings in this letter, avoiding to talk about the ambassadors' other grievances," Jelved said. On the other hand Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said a $1m (£573,000) offer by a cleric in Pakistan to anyone who killed one of the cartoonists was incitement to murder and "un-Islamic". In the Vatican Pope Benedict XVI said that mutual respect for the world's religions and their symbols was "urgent and necessary" for peace and understanding, in the wake of Muslim outrage over blasphemous caricatures. "In the current international context, the Catholic Church remains convinced that to encourage peace and understanding between peoples and individuals it is necessary and urgent that religions and their symbols be respected, and that the faithful not be subjected to provocations injuring their outlook and religious feelings," he said. The pope's comments, made in French while speaking to Morocco's new ambassador to the Vatican, were his first public remarks about the controversy over a set of 12 Danish blasphemous cartoons. A delegation of Danish Christian clerics regretted and rejected on Saturday 18/2/2006 the publication of cartoons criticizing Prophet Muhammad in the daily Jyllands-Posten. At a meeting with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, the delegation, headed by Bishop of Viborg Karsten Nissen, said Danish Christians were as offended as Muslims. Sheikh Tantawi called on clerics and scholars from all the world over to join forces and press for the enactment of an international law criminalizing blasphemy. "We want an international law criminalizing insults to religions, prophets and sanctities," he said after the meeting with the Danish delegation. Sheikh Tantawi said religious leaders "do have the power to press for such a law" if supported by the media." "The current standoff will only come to an end if this law sees the light," he said. Meantime Sheikh Mohammed Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi will preside over an international conference organized by the Muslim Council for Call and Relief in Cairo to discuss the repercussions of the crisis around the publishing of caricatures depicting the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him. Representatives from 19 Muslim countries will take part in the conference which will discuss amongst many issues the activation of Muslim dialogue and its mechanism, as well as dialogue between civilizations. In Pakistan the leader of Pakistan's main Islamic alliance has said there will no let up in protests against cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammed Peace Be Upon Him. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of six-party MMA, made the comments after being released from house arrest. Qazi Hussain said his group will carry out a series of rallies in the run-up to US President George W Bush's visit to Pakistan next month. "Our protests will continue. The European countries should realise the sentiments of Muslims. They should apologise to the Muslim world," another senior MMA leader, Liaqat Baluch, is quoted as saying by the Associated Press. In Germany former West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has criticised the west for the publications of the caricatures depicting the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him and said Muslims are being subjected to humiliation especially after the war in Iraq and the attacks against Iraqi prisoners which are against human rights laws. He called for respect and equality between civilizations. In Europe while Solana was expressing regret about the publication of the caricatures during his Middle-Eastern tour, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso condemned violence against Danish and EU diplomatic missions over the Prophet Mohammed Peace Be Upon Him, cartoons and urged dialogue to cool tensions. The Commission president has expressed solidarity with Denmark and given strong backing to the principle of freedom of expression in the 'cartoon affair'. Citing his personal experiences under the Portugese Salazar dicatorship, Commission President José Manuel Barroso, has delivered a strong defence for Denmark in an interview with the Danish daily Berlingske Tidende, on 14 February: "Freedom of speech is not up for negotiation. It is a crucial value in our open European democratic society." While expressing his understanding of the "discomfort and anger" that the infamous Prophet Mohammed PBUH cartoons have provoked with muslims, he insists on non-violent expression of protest: "Use demonstrations and arguments. Never violence," said Barroso, who called the avalanche of boycotts and anger against Denmark unfair. Meanwhile Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, continued his tour of the Middle East in a bid to calm the international row: "We believe freedom of the press entails responsibility and discretion and should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions," a statement from Solana said. His spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, reportedly said: "They want mechanisms to guarantee this is not repeated and we should be able to find it in the UN convention on human rights." Most Swiss are in favour of freedom of expression, but find it was a mistake to publish the controversial cartoons, a survey has revealed. Meanwhile Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has called for dialogue, a day after 1,000 Muslims held a peaceful protest over the cartoons in the Swiss capital, Bern. Calmy-Rey called for more dialogue over the affair, but condemned the violent reactions that have taken place in the wake of the publication of the caricatures. The foreign minister told the SonntagsZeitung that as a neutral country and the depositary of the Geneva conventions, Switzerland should encourage dialogue between all sides. "I am convinced that only dialogue and the readiness to listen allows for respect and understanding between societies and cultures," wrote Calmy-Rey in the SonntagsBlick. She said that Switzerland could not take sides in the dispute. However, the minister defended freedom of expression, but added that there were not only legal but also ethical limits to be respected. These limits started "where it begins to affect the dignity of other human beings," she said in the SonntagsZeitung. Although EU condemns publishing of Prophet Mohammed PBUH cartoons, it expresses solidarity with Danes, saying boycott of Danish goods by some Islamic countries is by definition boycott of European goods In violence, gunfire and rioting erupt as over 70,000 join Pakistan's biggest protest ever, killing 3 and wounding dozens The European Union condemned both the publishing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed PBUH and the subsequent "systematic incitement" to violence against European diplomatic missions. Austrian President Heinz Fischer, whose country holds the EU presidency, denounced violence in Islamic nations over the drawings as an inappropriate response. But he told the European Parliament that freedom of expression - seen in Western nations as an overriding principle - must not go against the need to protect religious sensitivities and values of other cultures. EU lawmakers and the executive Commission expressed solidarity with Danes, saying that a boycott of Danish goods by some Islamic countries was by definition a boycott of European goods. Finland's foreign minister, whose country wasn't among those who published the cartoons, said Finland will use its presidency of the EU later this year to try to repair ties between Europe and Muslim countries. In a letter sent to newspaper editors in the Middle East, Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja appealed to the Islamic world for restraint and calm over the publication of drawings, and denounced the violent protests by demonstrators in several countries. "I would like to appeal for mutual restraint and calm, in the spirit of friendship and mutual respect," Tuomioja said in the letter to editors in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and several other countries. He described the publication of the cartoons as "unwise," adding that "it is but common sense to regret and apologize for them." But he also condemned the violent protests. "It is necessary to underline that the reaction, when it has taken violent forms, including the burning of diplomatic missions and aggression against international peacekeepers, is unacceptable," Tuomioja wrote. Tuomioja said Finland, which takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU in July, will seek to improve ties with Muslim countries. Police battle protesters in Pakistan's 3rd day of violent protests Gunfire and rioting erupted as more than 70,000 people joined Pakistan's biggest protest yet against the cartoons, burning movie theatres, a KFC restaurant and a South Korean-run bus station. Three people died and dozens were injured in two cities, police and witnesses said. The massive crowd went on a rampage in the Northwestern city of Peshawar, torching businesses and fighting police, who struck back with tear gas and batons. It was the third straight day of violent demonstrations in the Islamic nation. The rioters ransacked the offices of the Norwegian mobile phone company Telenor, three cinemas and offices of Mobilink - the main mobile phone operator in the country, witnesses said. They also burned a bus terminal operated by South Korea's Sammi Corp. Flames were shooting out of some of the buses, private TV station Geo reported. Paramilitary forces were deployed, and the government announced that schools and colleges would be closed in northwestern Pakistan for one week to protect students from violence. Authorities also announced a ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan for an indefinite period. Demonstrations around Asia and the Middle East over the cartoons - which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have been reprinted by other newspapers, mostly in the West - have subsided in recent days, including in Afghanistan, where 11 people died in riots last week. But the protests have gathered momentum in Pakistan this week. Islamic groups and traders' associations have organized shutdowns and street rallies that have descended into violence. Meanwhile, Pakistan said it has received an apology from Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg over the cartoons. Stoltenberg apologized to Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, by telephone, said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.