Two gatherings were held in Sarajevo, Bosnia, to mark 18 years since the crime in Dobrovoljačka Street, with heightened tensions in the town. On May 3, 1992, a retreating Yugoslav Army (JNA) convoy was attacked by Muslim forces in this Sarajevo street, resulting in death and injury of scores of soldiers. Memorial ceremonies were planned in East Sarajevo today, while several hundred Serbs from the Republic of Srpska (RS) for the first time also honored the victims at the scene of the crime. They carried white roses and candles through Dobrovoljačka Street, and honoring the victims of the crime for which no one has been held responsible to date. However, cantonal police stopped their buses this morning. Unofficially, police did so waiting for participants of another gathering to disperse. They were the Green Beret Association, who announced they would go to the same street today, “to honor the defenders of Sarajevo”. The association called on citizens to “gather peacefully” in the street, which has been renamed to Hamdije Kreševljakovića St. No incidents were reported from the two gatherings that were held in close proximity. The so-called Green Berets were a Muslim paramilitary formation during the 1992-95 war, which was later integrated into the Bosnian Army.
Talks to reunify divided Cyprus will not start from scratch after a hard-liner won a Turkish Cypriot leadership election last month, a U.N. envoy said Monday. Dervis Eroglu, who was elected president of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north, met with U.N. envoy Alexander Downer for the first time since the April 18 vote. Downer said Eroglu agreed to build on progress his leftist predecessor Mehmet Ali Talat made after 19 months of negotiations with Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias. Eroglu's election has raised fears that his long-standing support for separate sovereignty — instead of a partnership in a federation envisioned by Talat and Christofias — would derail negotiations. Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared an independent republic in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it and maintains 35,000 troops there. The island's internationally recognized Greek Cypriot government has said Eroglu's election could create "very serious problems" to the talks. Christofias said any deviation from a federal basis to an accord would be a deal-breaker. Downer said he told Eroglu that the talks should resume from where they left off — after a nearly two-month break for the election — and remain in line with what was previously agreed. "Mr. Eroglu has made it clear that he is happy for the talks to proceed on those bases, so we're pleased to hear that," Downer said after meeting Eroglu in the Turkish Cypriot northern half of the divided capital. "We think that's very constructive." The U.N. envoy said he hopes the open-ended talks can resume before June and that a specific date will be set after he meets with Christofias on Tuesday. "I do think that we need to get the momentum back into these negotiations," Downer said.
Time is passing and optimism for finding a solution to the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece will start waning, said French Ambassador to Skopje Jean-Claude Schlumberger in interview to Radio Free Europe, Macedonian Vecer newspaper writes. Schlumberger’s statement comes after the optimism for name dispute’s solution expressed by Spanish foreign minister who visited Macedonia recently. According to the French diplomat optimism is based on the willingness to cope with the issue shown by the two countries. “There is nothing impossible if there is political will. I believe that talks under the UN auspices should continue. It is important to have bilateral talks on all levels. This will allow creating better climate for issue’s solution,” Schlumberger remarked.
Delegates from around 200 countries have gathered at the UN for a conference aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Most eyes will be on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is to deliver a speech. In his speech, President Ahmadinejad is expected to criticize the International Atomic Energy Agency and international community for failing to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad is also likely to unload some verbal whiplash against the United States and its allies for – what he is accusing the West of – promoting fears about proliferation of nuclear weapons purely for the hidden alternative agenda of not allowing developing nations to have access to nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is what the conference will focus on, was signed 40 years ago and currently unites 189 states. It requires that non-nuclear signatory nations promise not to develop nuclear weapons and in return they are allowed to have peaceful nuclear programs. Five parties to the treaty are publicly recognized as nuclear states and include the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. The treaty is reviewed every five years.
V. RIANOVOSTI - Russians, Poles seek to build mutual trust
Russia and Poland have a common stake in building mutual trust, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a message to the Polish people on Constitution Day. "I am sure that the peoples of our two countries, who recently together went through a tragic event, are interested in the strengthening of mutual trust and understanding," Putin said in a congratulatory telegram to his counterpart, Donald Tusk, a government statement said. "The widening of genuine friendly and mutually-advantageous relations between Russia and Poland is likewise important from the point of view of the guarantee of stability and security in Europe," he added. Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash on April 10 near the west Russian city of Smolensk. He was on his way to a ceremony to pay tribute to the some 20,000 Polish officers killed by Soviet secret police during World War Two in Katyn and other locations across the U.S.S.R. This year will mark 20 years since Russian authorities first admitted that thousands of Poles were executed by the NKVD in "one of the gravest crimes of Stalinism."
VI. YNETNEWS - 'Atmosphere in Netanyahu-Mubarak meeting positive'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh has ended. The two met for over an hour-and-a-half on the backdrop of proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians slated to commence on Wednesday. According to Head of the National Information Directorate Nir Hefetz the private meeting "focused on the resumption of the peace process and other regional issues and was held under a positive and constructive atmosphere." Netanyahu's visit in Egypt comes in a sensitive time on the backdrop of an Egyptian bid to disarm the Middle East of nuclear weapons. An American-Russian initiative for a nuclear-free Mideast, supported by Egypt, will be discussed during the nuclear summit in New York. The initiative calls Israel to disarm itself of nuclear arms. A number of other issues are slated to be raised as part of Netanyahu-Mubarak talks, such as the anti-smuggling campaign on Israel's southern border and the war against radical Islamic terror following recent terror alerts in the Sinai region.
VII. PRAVMIR - On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is Risen! Jesus says remarkable things to the Samaritan Woman, speaking of a life that seems so far removed from what we experience in our daily lives. He says to her that if she drinks the water he offers she will never thirst again and that it will become a spring of water in her "welling up to eternal life." In another place he says, "out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water." What could he be talking about? Is such a thing possible for us? Why do our spiritual lives seem so barren? In today's Gospel the Samaritan Woman's experience points to some clue for us. It is a sacramental encounter. I want to focus on only one aspect of this morning. The necessity of repentance and purification. The Lord, at his most scandalous, initiates a dialogue with a Samaritan Woman at Jacob's well. He breaks so many religious, cultural and social laws it is hard to count them all! As Dn. Jeff told us last week, "God is both king and rebel." Here he is as the Glorious, Divine Rebel. The Lord knows the Woman at the Well is a sinful woman; that she has had many husbands and is living with another man, but He does not judge or condemn her. He gently, compassionately and masterfully leads her in confession, modeling for her the truth of who He is and who she may become. The Lord speaks and then graciously awaits her response. He reveals more and more as He perceives she is able to embrace transcendence. She asks to receive the living water and the Lord desires to grant her request, but first He helps to pave the way by revealing the things that stand in the way. She must first confess and repent of her sins. Purification is the first step in the spiritual life because virtue is the necessary foundation. If we attempt to embark on the spiritual life without this, we will be as the foolish man who built his house on the sand. At the first appearance of temptation the house crumbles because its foundation is weak. But the house built on the firm foundation of virtue stands firm. Not even a legion of demons could bring it down. One wise teacher wrote that "purification is the systematic pruning away of all sources of distraction." Jesus helps the Woman at the Well prune away the things in her life that distract her from an intimate relationship with God based on "spirit and truth." This is what the sacrament of Confession is all about; not just the listing of sins, but the uprooting of the causes of sin. As we progress in the spiritual life what we confess becomes more and more subtle, as we begin to work with the thoughts, emotions and conditioning that give rise to our sin. Denied the living water of God, we search for other sources of water we hope will quench our thirst, but they produce only more thirst. The soul's search for alternative gods turns into craving and addiction to things that satisfy only for a moment and then the moment is gone and with it, happiness. We must wake and be honest with ourselves and start to whittle away these distractions, to leave behind all our earthly cares and the half-baked solutions we concoct that do not, and never will, work. As the great Western mystic Meister Eckhart wrote: "It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else." If our spiritual lives are non-existent or barren, then be sure that at the root of the problem is that our hearts and minds are filled with distractions from the remembrance of God. It is a struggle. Have no doubt, but a struggle which produces fruit an hundred-fold. When there is nothing to hinder the cooperation between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit, the living water begins to flow. I recently watched an amazing video produced by the BBC. It documented the experience of an Anglican priest, Fr. Peter Owen-Jones as he followed in the footsteps of St. Antony the Great of Egypt. After visiting his monastery by the Red Sea he went up the mountain where the Great Saint lived in a cave continuing his struggle for many years. With teaching and the prayers of Fr. Lazarus, an Australian Coptic monk who was dwelling near the cave of St. Antony and had been for eight years, to help him Fr. Peter lives for three weeks virtually alone as St. Antony had done. At the end of three weeks of struggling with his own "demons," his fears, temptations, loneliness in a place where he could not grasp hold of the things he would normally use to distract him from the struggle, he reaches a place of peace at which he says, "I am actually beginning to enjoy this and that is a worry." Allow me to quote his final reflection. "The goodness is the struggle and to be aware that it is a struggle; to be aware that we are constantly making choices between the good and the bad - the good choice and the bad choice...I have come to acknowledge since being here of the importance of that struggle...not to engage in it means that we just fall asleep, we become numb and I was numb when I got here. I know that now...and I'm beginning to come alive again now. And it's painful. It's really painful, like being born, but it's true. So, there we go, another day. Another beautiful day." It is as simple and as difficult as this that we learn to always choose what is good, wise and skillful so that the Lord's work finds in us a willing partner. The struggle for purity is worth the sacrifice. "The proof," as they say, "is in the pudding."