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Hezbollah chief warns against Israeli-US spies

BEIRUT- Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned the Lebanese government on Monday against sharing telecommunications information with the United States, saying any such move would be tantamount to collaborating with the Israeli enemy.

The Shiite militant leader also called for any Lebanese citizens convicted of spying for Israel in a series of trials in recent months to face the death sentence.
"The US embassy is sending letters to ministries and security forces asking for information," Nasrallah said via video link to his supporters massed in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs.
"This is dangerous as it is a violation of Lebanon's sovereignty, but its real danger lies elsewhere," he said.
"Because of the strategic relationship and unity between the United States and Israel ... any information gathered through such requests, like spy rings, reaches Israelis.
"In other words, it is giving Israel information by proxy on a silver platter, and we hope there are no Lebanese citizens collaborating with the US embassy in the matter," he said.
A US request for confidential data on Lebanon's telecommunications sector prompted an emergency meeting of Lebanese MPs and top officials on Monday, after local media accused Washington of spying.
The request by the US embassy in Lebanon was submitted in April last year but was turned down by then-energy minister Gebran Bassil, reports said.
Bassil on Monday confirmed that he had turned down the embassy's request for "very detailed information on the mobile phone service providers in Lebanon -- the stations, the antennas, technical information."
US embassy officials would not comment.
Nasrallah also demanded the death penalty for convicted spies as Lebanese authorities press on with an expanding crackdown on suspected Israeli spy rings launched last year.
"I have said before, and I repeat today, yes to the death sentence for these spies."
A Lebanese arrested last month on suspicion of spying for Israel on Monday confessed to his involvement a 2004 bomb attack that killed Hezbollah official Ghaleb Awali, a security source said.
"We have almost solid proof that he was behind the bombing, which he does not deny, although he has backtracked a few times on his confession," the source said on condition of anonymity.
Lebanon and Israel remain technically at a state of war, and convicted spies face life in prison with hard labour or the death penalty if found guilty of contributing to Lebanese loss of life.

EU 'strongly condemns' murder passports abuse

BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers strongly condemned Monday the misuse of European passports by alleged Mossad assassins of a Hamas commander in Dubai, as their Israeli counterpart faced tough questioning in Brussels.
"We strongly condemn the use of fraudulent EU member states' passports and credit cards acquired through the theft of EU citizens' identities," the foreign ministers said in a statement drawn up during a meeting in Brussels.

"We are extremely concerned that European passports... can be used in a different manner for a different purpose," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters as he arrived for the meeting.
Extremist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was to meet Moratinos and other European foreign ministers during the day, over Tel Aviv's connection with the use of British, Irish, French and German passports by the murderers of Hamas officer Mahmud al-Mabhuh in January.
While the EU foreign ministers were not talking about Mossad by name, it was clear that the spotlight was on Israel's notorious secret service, which has used fake passports in previous operations.
Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Saturday that he foresaw no crisis in relations with Europe over the affair.
Britain, Ireland, France and Germany last week called in Israeli envoys for talks at their foreign ministries after passports from those countries were implicated in the assassination.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who was to meet Lieberman Monday, called on the Israelis to cooperate "fully" in investigating the incident.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Monday the culprits must be punished, stressing that such political assassinations "have no place in the 21st century."
Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas' armed wing, was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20.
Dubai police, accusing Mossad, released the names and photos of 11 suspects who entered the United Arab Emirates on European passports -- six from Britain, three from Ireland, one from Germany and one from France.
The passports mainly belonged to people with dual nationality living in Israel who were shocked to learn of their being linked to the case.
"I think it is very important now that we fully support the investigation ongoing in Dubai, said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. "Misuse of European passports is not to be tolerated."
Lieberman was to meet Moratinos, Miliband, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton among others.
Ashton's spokesman Lutz Guellner said she "shares the concern over fraudulent use of passports."
The row over the Hamas killing cones as Europeans seek to encourage the resumption of Middle East peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The foreign ministers of France and Spain said Monday that Europe would push for a tight timetable for a final round of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
In a joint editorial published in the daily Le Monde, France's Bernard Kouchner and his Spanish counterpart Moratinos said the talks should lead to the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Gunmen murder two Iraqi families

BAGHDAD
Gunmen murdered two Iraqi families, mostly children, beheading some of the victims and killing 12 people on Monday, as a spate of brutal attacks hit the country less than two weeks before elections.
Nine children were among those killed in their homes in and around Baghdad, while 11 other people died in violence across Iraq, including three in a suicide car bombing and a police commando who was shot dead by a sniper.
The worst incident occurred in Al-Wehdah, a predominantly Shiite Muslim town in an ethnically-mixed area about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Eight members of the same family, including six children younger than 12, were gunned down and several were beheaded.
"A terrorist group carried out at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) a brutal crime against a family in Al-Wehdah," the Baghdad Operations Command said in a statement.
"This gang killed eight members of this family using silencer pistols. The criminals have beheaded some of them."
Beheadings have been the trademark of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, particularly Al-Qaeda militants in the violence that flared after the 2003 US-led invasion, although the motive for the attack was unclear.
Baghdad police said they later apprehended four people carrying silencers in connection with the murders, after receiving a tip-off.
A second family, comprising a mother and her three daughters, was shot dead overnight in their home in the mostly Shiite north Baghdad district of al-Hurriyah, a police official said, on condition of anonymity.
The execution-style killings occurred ahead of parliamentary elections on March 7, the second legislative polls since dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted after the invasion.
Meanwhile, in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, a suicide car bomb struck an interior ministry detention centre, killing a man, his six-year-old son and a policeman, said a police officer and a doctor at the city's hospital.
The attack left four other people wounded, including two policemen.
Ramadi, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad, is the capital of Anbar province and was a key insurgent base in the wake of the invasion, but violence has dropped as local Sunni tribes have since 2006 sided with the US military.
The city, however, has seen a spate of attacks in recent months, including three bombings of the provincial governor's offices since October.
Violence was also seen in the centre of Baghdad, when a police commando was shot dead by a sniper in Saadoun street while he was checking a car for explosives.
A higher education ministry official and university professor Thamer Kamil was also gunned down while he was in the east of the capital, a policeman said.
Five civilians were earlier wounded when several mortars hit Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which is home to several foreign embassies and government departments, an interior ministry official said.
Further north, in the restive northern city of Mosul two Iraqi soldiers and two police were killed when their respective checkpoints came under fire from unidentified gunmen on Monday morning, police officials said.
The nationwide trail of bloodshed was completed when two people were killed in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, also north of Baghdad, according to security officials.
Police Lieutenant Kamaran Ali Hassan was

Dubai hunts Mabbuh murderers

DUBAI - Police are hunting 11 suspects with European passports, including a woman, for the murder in a Dubai hotel room of a top militant of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the Gulf emirate's police chief said on Monday.

The hit team which killed Mahmud al-Mabhuh last month was made up of six British passport holders, three with Irish passports, including the woman, and the holders of a German and a French passport, Dhafi Khalfan said.
"We have no doubts that it was 11 people holding these passports, and we regret that they used the travel documents of friendly countries," he told a press conference.
While not ruling out "the involvement of (Israel's spy agency) Mossad or other parties in the assassination," Khalfan said the names on the passports had been passed on to Interpol to request arrest warrants.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has accused Israel of killing Mabhuh, 50, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room in Dubai on January 20, and vowed revenge.
Its members have acknowledged that Mabhuh, who was based in Damascus, was on a visit to Dubai to buy weapons for the militant group's armed wing.
Mabhuh, who was born in northern Gaza, confessed to his involvement in the 1989 killings of two captured Israeli soldiers, in a video aired more than two weeks after his death.
Last month, Khalfan said "it seems (Mabhuh) opened the door" of his room, letting his killers in. "Mabhuh was suffocated," he said, adding that "strangulation is possible."
According to Khalfan, Mabhuh entered the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, a day before his death using a passport that did not bear his family name.
Amid official silence in the Jewish state, Israeli newspapers have hailed the killing, with the rightwing Jerusalem Post calling it "another blow to the 'axis of evil.'"
According to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, citing unidentified Middle East sources, Mabhuh on arrival in Dubai was followed by two men described by local police as "Europeans carrying European passports."
The hit squad injected Mabhuh with a drug that induced a heart attack, photographed all the documents in his briefcase, and left a "do not disturb" sign on the door, it said.
It added that the Hamas leader was on a mission to buy arms from Iran, and was tracked from the moment he boarded Emirates flight EK 912 from Damascus on January 18.
Over the years, a number of Hamas leaders have died in what Israel calls "targeted killings."
In 2004, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza. One month later, another Hamas leader in the enclave, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed when two missiles hit his car.
In 1997, Israeli agents tried to poison Hamas's exiled political supreme Khaled Meshaal in Amman, while in 1995.

Clinton: Iran headed for 'military dictatorship'

DOHA - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that she feared Iran is moving "toward a military dictatorship," with enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard "supplanting" the government.
The US chief diplomat told students in Qatar that the United States was not seeking to use military action against Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions but rather seeking to use international pressure through the UN Security Council.
Such pressure "will be particularly aimed at the those enterprises controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran," Clinton said.
"We see the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," Clinton told students at the Qatari branch of Carnegie-Mellon University.
In a speech in Doha on Sunday night to the US-Islamic World Forum, Clinton said: "I fear the rise of the influence and power of the Revolutionary Guard... poses a very direct threat to everyone."
The United States last week imposed a fresh round of sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and hopes for UN sanctions to target the group blamed for Iran's nuclear program.
"I would like to figure out a way to handle it," she told a conference in Qatar, which lies across the Gulf from Iran.
"Certainly we don't want to be engaging while they're building their bomb," she said.
She told students that her talks with leaders in the region revealed great concern about Iran and its intentions.
"They worry about Iran's intentions. They worry about whether Iran will be a good neighbor" and live peacefully, she said.
"I think people have reason to worry. The question is what can Iran do to allay the fears of its neighbors. And yet I don't see much progress there."
Clinton on Sunday urged Muslim leaders to help halt Iran's sensitive nuclear work and detected a possible shift in China toward supporting sanctions against Tehran.
Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones said earlier in Washington that the United States is pressing for "very tough" new sanctions against Iran this month, suggesting the move could help bring about "regime change."
"We're... going through the UN this month to present sanctions," President Barack Obama's national security advisor, retired general James Jones, told Fox News Sunday.
Jones said additional sanctions could have that effect.

Saudi: no Israel recognition despite handshake

RIYADH - A senior Saudi diplomat said Sunday his handshake with Israel's deputy foreign minister at a Munich security conference was no step toward recognition of Israel.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the country's former intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to the United States, said his handshake Saturday with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon only came after Ayalon apologised for actions that Turki objected to.
"This event should not be taken out of context or misunderstood," Turki said in a statement received in Riyadh.
"My strong objections and condemnations of Israel's policies and actions against the Palestinians remain unchanged.
"It is clear that Israel’s Arab neighbours want peace, but they cannot be expected to tolerate what amounts to theft, and certainly should not be pressured into rewarding Israel for the return of land that does not belong to it in the first place," Turki said.
"Until Israel heeds US President Barak Obama’s call for the removal of all settlements, the Israelis must be under no illusion that Saudi Arabia will offer what they most desire -- regional recognition."
Turki, who though currently with no official government title continues to carry out diplomatic work for the Saudi government, said the handshake came after Ayalon publicly reprimanded him for not sitting together on a panel at the annual international security conference in Munich.
"I objected to sitting on the same panel with him not because he is the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Israel but because of his boorish conduct with the Turkish ambassador to Israel Ahmet Oguz Celikkol," Turki said.
In January Ayalon made a show of publicly humiliating Celikkol to demonstrate displeasure with a Turkish television show critical of Israel.
Turki also said he objected to Ayalon's allegation that Saudi Arabia has not provided any aid to the Palestinian Authority -- when in fact Riyadh has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the authority.

Israel 'stole' 2 billion dollars from Palestinians

Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than US$2 billion (Dh7.4bn) by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists revealed this week.
A new report, “State Robbery”, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers.
According to information supplied by Israeli officials, most of the deductions from the workers’ pay were invested in infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories – a presumed reference to the massive state subsidies accorded to the settlements.
Nearly 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel – following the easing of restrictions on entering Israel under the “economic peace” promised by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – and continue to have such contributions docked from their pay.
Complicit in the deception, the report adds, is the Histadrut, the Israeli labour federation, which levies a monthly fee on Palestinian workers, even though they are not entitled to membership and are not represented in labor disputes.
“This is a clear-cut case of theft from Palestinian workers on a grand scale,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist and one of the authors of the report. “There are no reasons for Israel to delay in returning this money either to the workers or their beneficiaries.”

Obama firm on Dalai Lama
meeting despite China warning

US President Barack Obama intends to go ahead with plans to meet the Dalai Lama despite warnings from China not to, a White House spokesman has said.
Mr Obama told China's leaders last year in Beijing that he would meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
China has warned that ties with the US would be undermined if the meeting takes place.

No date has been set but it is expected to take place later this month.
"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.
"The Dalai Lama is an internationally respected religious and cultural leader and the president will meet with him in that capacity," he said.
The comments came after Communist Party official Zhu Weiqun said such a meeting would "threaten trust and co-operation" between Beijing and Washington.
Relations between the world's largest and third-largest economies have already been strained by trade disputes, US arms sales to Taiwan and a row over internet censorship.
China, which took over Tibet in 1950, considers the Dalai Lama a separatist and tries to isolate the spiritual leader by asking foreign leaders not to see him.
The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and has been living in India since then.
Mr Obama declined to see the Dalai Lama last year when he visited the US, saying he would meet him later.
A White House spokesman said last month that the two men intended to meet when the Tibetan monk visited Washington later in February.
"If the US leader chooses to meet with the Dalai Lama at this time, it will certainly threaten trust and co-operation between China and the United States," said Mr Zhu, executive deputy minister of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department.

Hamas: Talks on Shalit and prisoner swap stopped

Leading Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar has said talks on swapping Palestinian prisoners for the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit have collapsed.
Late last year a German-mediated deal emerged in which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged for Gilad Shalit.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Zahar blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the talks' failure.
Gilad Shalit was captured in a raid by Palestinian militants in 2006.
Speaking on the BBC's Hardtalk program, Mr Zahar maintained Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed for stricter conditions for the release of several high-profile Palestinian prisoners.
"As regarding negotiations, as of now the process has failed. The main cause, well known to everybody, well known to the mediator, that after the interference of the political element, after the appearance of Netanyahu personally, there was a big regression and retraction. For this reason negotiations have now stopped," he said.
Mr Zahar, one of the founders of Hamas, said the prospect for future talks looked uncertain.
"We are looking to set free our people and also to give a chance for the family of the Israeli soldier to live as a human being also. We demanded a considerable number of prisoners, but the Israeli side, after hundreds of rounds of talks, reached backward too much."
Sgt Shalit, 23, was captured in a raid into southern Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza, in 2006.
Hamas want hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, including senior militant leaders that Israel holds responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israeli citizens, to be freed in exchange for Sgt Shalit's release.
Israel holds about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in jail on security grounds - a major bone of contention with the Palestinians.

Israeli minister warns of new war with Hezbollah

TEL AVIV - Israel is heading toward a new war with Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah, a cabinet minister warned Saturday in remarks carried by military radio and the Ynet news website.

"We are heading toward a new confrontation in the north but I don't know when it will happen, just as we did not know when the second Lebanon war would erupt," said Yossi Peled, a minister without portfolio and a reserve army general.
He was referring to the devastating war Israel fought with Hezbollah in 2006, which killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
However, Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the war.
Hezbollah is part of a new coalition government formed in November by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
"Although Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, the latter has no influence on it," Peled said.
"Unlike many others (officials) I consider that peace is not a goal in itself but only a means to guarantee our existence," said Peled.
But in a statement issued on Saturday after Peled made his comments, hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that "Israel does not wish at all to have a confrontation with Lebanon."
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Friday against launching a new war against Lebanon.
Nasrallah said that Israel was again beating the drums of war to try to restore its military's reputation as an invincible regional force.
Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.

Blair due at Iraq war inquiry next week

LONDON - Former prime minister Tony Blair will give long-awaited testimony to Britain's Iraq war inquiry at the end of next week on January 29, officials said Monday.

Blair, who controversially backed the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq alongside president George W. Bush, will face a full day of questioning at the Chilcot inquiry, according to an updated schedule on the probe's website.
The former premier has long been expected to be the star witness at the inquiry, which was launched in November after the withdrawal of virtually all of Britain's forces, six years after the invasion.
Last month Blair admitted in a television interview that he would have backed the war even if he knew Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), triggering fresh criticism.
Blair, who quit as premier in 2007 and is now the Middle East Quartet's envoy, told the BBC it would "still have been right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.
Interest in Blair's appearance at the inquiry is intense: a public ballot was held Monday for public seats at the hearings, and the lucky few will be allowed into either the morning or afternoon sessions, but not both.
Blair stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush over the 2003 invasion, but faced a major backlash in Britain over the decision.
He resigned as prime minister two and a half years ago despite having led his Labor Party to three successive election wins, handing the role to his finance minister Gordon Brown.
An Internet campaign has been launched for Blair to face tough questions about why he took Britain into the unpopular war, amid criticisms the inquiry panel has been too easy on some witnesses.
Also due to appear at the inquiry next week is Peter Goldsmith, the former British attorney general who advised Blair on the legality of the war.
Two key ministers from the time of the Iraq war are due to appear this week: then defense minister Geoff Hoon on Tuesday, and then foreign secretary Jack Straw on Thursday.
Blair's chief of staff at the time, Jonathan Powell, was due to give evidence later Monday.
His former chief spin doctor Alastair Campbell appeared before the inquiry last week, and fiercely denied "sexing up" a dossier which claimed Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.
In a defiant appearance, Campbell said that while the controversial document could have been "clearer", he still defended "every single word" of it -- and the invasion itself.
Current Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- who Campbell said was one of the "key ministers" Blair consulted in the run-up to war -- will appear after this year's general election, expected in May.
Brown, who was Blair's finance minister at the time, insisted last week that he has "nothing to hide" over the Iraq war.
Nearly one quarter of Britons want former prime minister Tony Blair to be tried as a war criminal over the Iraq war, according to a poll published on Sunday.
A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times newspaper found that 23 percent of those surveyed think that Blair should face war crimes charges.
The weekly newspaper added that 52 percent believe that Blair deliberately misled the country in the run-up to the 2003 war.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is viewed by critics as an 'act of aggression' that violated international law.
Subsequent US occupation policies caused the country to descend into almost total chaos, bordering on civil war.
An estimated 1.3 million Iraqis have been killed in Iraq as a direct result of the invasion, while millions more have fled the country.

Turkey, Lebanon slam Israeli 'terrorism'

ANKARA - The prime ministers of Turkey and Lebanon on Monday lashed out at Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and air strikes in Gaza, warning they were undermining prospects for peace in the region.
"Attacks on Lebanon is terrorism itself... We have to stand shoulder by shoulder against the enemy's plans... We have to stop Israel," visiting Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri told a press conference.
Lebanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire on four Israeli warplanes which were violating its airspace at low altitude on Monday, the military said.
Hariri's counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country's once-flourishing ties with Israel took a sharp downturn last year, said that Turkey "will never stay silent" on Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace.
He slammed the Israeli over flights as "unacceptable action that threatens global peace."
Erdogan also questioned a deadly Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip Sunday.
"Is the Israeli government in favor of peace or not?... Gaza was bombed again yesterday. Why?... There were no rocket attacks," Erdogan said.
"They (the Israelis) have disproportional capabilities and power and they use them... They do not abide by UN resolutions... They say they will do what they like. We can in no way approve of such an attitude," he said.
Israel's ties with Turkey, a key regional ally, were poisoned by its massive offensive on Gaza last year, which prompted an unprecedented barrage of criticism from Erdogan's government.
In October, Turkey excluded Israel from joint military drills and said ties would continue to suffer unless Israel ends "the humanitarian tragedy" in Gaza and revives peace talks with the Palestinians.
Erdogan also renewed criticism of pro-Israeli powers on Monday for pressuring Iran on its nuclear activities while tolerating Israel, considered the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power.
"We are against the development of nuclear weapons by any country in the region," he said.
"Israel has nuclear weapons... Those who are cautioning Iran must also caution Israel," he said.
"If we fail to display a fair attitude in this region, the problems will hit not only the region, but will spread elsewhere as well. The unrest of the Middle East is the unrest of the world," he said.
Hariri hailed Turkey's improving ties with Arab countries and increased activism in peace efforts in the Middle East.
The two premiers witnessed the signing of an accord on visa-free travel between their countries and other deals envisaging cooperation in the military, agriculture and transport realms.