The Obama administration is urging Congress to hold off on a resolution declaring the Ottoman era killing of Armenians as genocide. The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee was scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday, and appeared likely to endorse it. But White House spokesman Mike Hammer said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken with the committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, on Wednesday and indicated that such a vote would jeopardize reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia. The move breaks a campaign promise by President Obama to brand the killings genocide. Turkey, a NATO ally with a pivotal role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has warned the resolution could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia.
II. TORONTOSUN - Hamas spy calls God of Quran a terrorist
Mosab Hassan Yousef, who helped Israel's security forces kill and arrest members of the Islamic militant group Hamas, is probably marked for death. He should be keeping silent. But he's got a story to tell, one he delivers in his new book published this week, "Son of Hamas." In his memoir, Yousef, the 32-year-old son of a Hamas founder, claims he was one of the Shin Bet security agency's best assets and was dubbed The Green Prince, a reference to his Hamas pedigree and the Islamists' signature green colour. During his 50-minute interview, for which he arrived with armed security, Yousef criticized Hamas leaders including political chief Khaled Meshaal. He lashed out at Hamas, saying the organization lives in the Middle Ages. And he hurled his most inflammatory comments at Islam, which he called a religion that teaches people to kill. "It is not a religion of peace," said Yousef, who converted to Christianity. "The biggest terrorist is the God of the Quran. I know this is very dangerous and this will offend many people. The more you follow the steps of the prophet of Islam and the God of Islam, the more you get close to being a terrorist." Yousef said he started working with the Shin Bet after he was arrested and witnessed Hamas brutalities inside prison. When he was released in 1997, he started meeting with the Shin Bet and gravitating toward Christianity. Yousef thought he could do some good, preventing the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. "I got a chance to stop killing," he said.
III. NYTIMES - German Politicians to Greece: Sell Some Islands!
Scoring easy points with a German electorate unwilling to rescue Greece from its own deficit, public figures and politicians said the indebted Mediterranean country should consider privatizing state holdings — like its islands. “The bankrupt one has to do everything he can to make money for the sake of his creditors,” said Josef Schlarmann, a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party who heads a lobby of small and midsize businesses that back the CDU. “Greece possesses buildings, businesses and uninhabited islands, which can be used to pay down debt.” The harsh words are not the first shot that German publications have sent across the bow as Greece’s prime minister prepares to meet with the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday seeking signs of solidarity. Focus, a German magazine, ran a retouched photo of the Venus de Milo, her waist wrapped in a Greek flag, raising one restored arm to show the reader her middle finger next to the title: “Swindler in the Euro-family.” The Greeks responded by invoking the Nazi occupation of the country during World War II, and a diplomatic incident was only narrowly avoided. Most Greeks are prepared for the government cuts, a poll last week showed, but some pensioners and unions have protested the austerity plan, with a three-hour nationwide strike called for Friday. Germany, like most of the developed world, has struggled with high unemployment since the financial crisis. In February, the jobless rate stood at 8.2 percent, hardly down from a year ago and up from 7.5 percent in December. Europe’s largest economy has one of the lower budget deficits in the region, at 3.3 percent of its GDP, but that it still above what it is allowed under EU rules, and some analysts expect it to almost double this year, which means Germany faces deep budget cuts without the additional expense of a Greek rescue.
Italy will respect the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Kosovo, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has stated. The highest UN court is expected to this year give its advisory opinion on the legality under international law of the Kosovo Albanian unilateral independence declaration, made over two years ago. In an interview for Belgrade daily Večernje Novosti Thursday, Frattini pointed out that Serbia's candidacy for the EU membership could be on the agenda already at the next Council of Ministers session. "It is now up to the European Commission to make a complete analysis of Serbia's application for EU membership on a technical level," Frattini said, adding that he believes this should be done quickly. "Italy is, if I may say so, a good advocate of Serbia's European path. But this requires 'technical time'," he added. When asked if the year of 2014 is realistic for Serbia in terms of full EU membership, Frattini said that everything depends on negotiations and that it is too early to talk about this now. "When it comes to Kosovo, we will continue with a very balanced approach," Frattini said. "We appreciate the fact that Serbia has decided to achieve a result with legal rather than political means regarding its disapproval of Kosovo's independence. Of course, we will respect whatever the decision the court makes," he underscored.
V. THEWASHINGTONTIMES - The blackmail of America: How the United States became Albania's enforcer
Something happened after President Clinton's 1999 war in Kosovo: It never ended. Its continuation was characterized by anti-Serb arson, kidnappings, bombings of NATO-escorted civilian buses and efforts to kill everyone from schoolgirls to octogenarians, plus the rare peacekeeper who tried to prevent any of this. Toward the end of 1999, several major newspapers reported on findings that mass graves such as the infamous Trepca zinc mine turned up empty, as did the stadium we were told was being used as a concentration camp. Anyone reading this one-time follow-up also would have learned that the "cleansing" of 800,000 Albanians had more to do with NATO bombs and Kosovo Liberation Army orders than with the outrageous claim that Serbia was trying to empty the province of 90 percent of its population. But the bombshell postwar story had no legs. No media outlet, human rights organization or congressional subcommittee launched an investigation, and the press moved on, taking the public with it. So Americans don't know that within months of our serving as the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) air force, the Albanian insurgents also tried to seize the Presevo Valley area in southern Serbia and by early 2001 started a civil war in Macedonia, which had sheltered 400,000 refugees during the Kosovo war. At the same time, the Albanian fighters started to engage NATO troops openly. In February 2000, the U.N. and NATO in Kosovo issued a joint statement that "two young French soldiers, who came here as peacekeepers, are lying in hospital beds suffering from gunshot wounds inflicted on them by the very people that they came here to protect," the CATO Institute's Gary Dempsey reported. He added, "As a candid intelligence officer with the U.N. Mission in Kosovo [UNMIK] explained to me in November, 'We are their tool, and when we stop being useful to them, they will turn against us.'" In March 2000, The Washington Post reported, "A senior Pentagon official warned yesterday that U.S. troops in Kosovo this spring may have to fight their former allies, ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are rearming themselves and threatening cross-border attacks against Serbia. 'This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR [NATO Kosovo Force].' " But that didn't happen. Instead, we came around to seeing things the Albanian way. We didn't want Albanians to start killing us, so we let them keep killing Serbs. Rather than see what would happen if we tried saying "no" to Albanian demands and designs, and risk Americans discerning the real nature of their new best friends - which of course would compound the domestic terror threat - we guaranteed ourselves a bigger, more entrenched and more global problem. When Kosovo re-entered the headlines in 2008, some started catching on. In March 2008, Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich wrote in the New York Sun, "An important ingredient of Kosovo's success in achieving self-determination seems to be their constant threats of violence. The Kosovar prime minister ... often warned of 'dangers' and 'unforeseeable consequences' if the province were not allowed to secede. ... As a result, NATO and America have become parties to the carve-up of a sovereign state that they subdued by force. ... For international law, the entire process is a string of humiliations ... peacekeepers are hostages; and sovereignty is trumped by the threat of terror.".. An excerpt from a 1999 Q&A in Time magazine illuminates how far we swerved from our original goals: "The alliance wants Kosovo to be given autonomy within the Yugoslav federation, but opposes the full independence that the KLA is fighting for, fearing that creating a new Kosovar-Albanian state would further destabilize an already volatile region." Today, however, even the language is reversed: that which we knew would destabilize the region is now promoted as what is needed to "stabilize" the region. And so our military is being used to enforce KLA directives and make the last of the resisting Serbs comply with the new reality... Most of the last resisting Serbs are in the only remaining part of Kosovo where it is still safe to be Serbian, Northern Kosovska Mitrovica, along the boundary with Serbia. The Serbs there have been open to a partition that would allow them to stay within the internationally recognized borders of their country, Serbia. But we were informed by our Albanian "partners" that a partition was out of the question, ironically invoking "territorial integrity" - which our leaders then repeated.
US Ambassador to Russia John Bayerli returned to Russia a silver medallion of the last Russian Emperor’s family that had been stolen from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Ambassador Bayerli told Russian officials that the medallion was discovered in the course of an Internet auction in Seattle, Washington by investigators from Russia’s Prosecutor General Office. Art experts confirmed the authenticity of the precious artwork, and the US Department of Homeland Security secured the piece before its trip back to Russia. Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee said during Thursday’s handover ceremony in Moscow that the medallion’s recovery was possible due to close cooperation between Russian investigators and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the US Department of Homeland Security. Aleksandr Kibovsky, head of the Russian Federal Surveillance Service for Cultural Heritage Protection, said the starting bid for the rare medallion was $500, “but that price would certainly increase to at least $5000” over the course of the auction, he added. The silver medallion, which carries an engraving of Peter the Great, was delivered to the US embassy in Moscow in October of last year. It was among 221 exhibits stolen from the Hermitage, an event that made front-page news in the summer of 2006. The Hermitage has already recovered 34 of the pieces, according to the Russian Investigative Committee. Markin also mentioned at the ceremony that the Russian Federation plans to sign a memorandum of cooperation with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the US Department of Homeland Security.
Seasonal rains in Haiti are aggravating the humanitarian situation caused by the earthquake and putting the populace at increasing risk for mosquito-borne infectious diseases, such as malaria. In response to the urgent health needs of Haitians, many who are still without adequate shelter following the January 12 earthquake, International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) is providing more than $350,000 in emergency health kits that contain basic medicines, consumable medical supplies for surgeries and wound care treatment. The medical shipment has been underwritten through a grant of $25,000 from The John G. Rangos Sr. Family Charitable Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pa. "There is growing concern among those responding to Haiti of the increased risk of wide-spread public health problems," said Mark Ohanian, IOCC senior programs coordinator, who recently returned from a nine-day trip to Haiti to oversee IOCC relief efforts. "While we continue to support the efforts of our Orthodox Christian and ecumenical partners in providing immediate food, shelter and other basic needs, we witnessed significant threats to public health while in Haiti." Ohanian noted that most open spaces in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding cities have been taken up by temporary shelters, many made of materials scavenged from homes and buildings that were destroyed. "Most of the shelters do not provide adequate protection from the rain or the elements, much less protect against mosquito-borne and water-borne diseases. Proper sanitation and protection are primary concerns for the survivors to prevent further loss of life." The medical shipment is part of a larger effort by IOCC partner, Medical Teams International, to provide up to 20,000 people with basic medical assistance. The shipment will include medications to treat malaria.