Israeli reservists refuse to serve

Thirteen reservists from the Israeli army’s top commando unit declared on Dec. 21 they would no longer serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reflecting growing unease with Israel’s hard-fisted policy in the Palestinian areas.

“We cannot continue to stand silent,” they wrote, charging that Israeli military activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are depriving “millions of Palestinians of human rights” and endangering “the fate of Israel as a democratic, Zionist, and Jewish country.”

The reservists, including three officers, serve in “Sayeret Matkal,” the top commando unit in the Israeli military and its most prestigious. Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was once its commander, and another former premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, also served in the force, known for daring operations outside Israel’s borders.

In Sept. 27 reserve and retired pilots wrote a similar letter, refusing to take part in air strikes in the West Bank and Gaza. Several hundred Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories and have been sentenced to prison terms. (Associated Press)

Prodi is unhurt by anarchist bomb

Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, escaped unhurt on Dec. 27 when a letter bomb he opened at his home in Bologna failed to explode.

Two small bombs had exploded near Mr. Prodi’s home last week, also without harming anyone.

A previously unknown anarchist group claimed responsibility for those attacks, saying it targeted him as a representative of a repressive “new European order.”

Two small bombs hidden in rubbish bins exploded a few feet from Mr. Prodi’s Bologna home last Sunday. The devices went off when the house was empty. Later, a group calling itself the Informal Anarchic Federation, under the acronym FAI in Italian, claimed responsibility in a letter sent to La Repubblica newspaper. (Independent (UK))

Observers fault US for pursuing mini-nukes

Research on a new generation of precision atomic weapons by the Bush administration threatens to undermine international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms and to tarnish recent successes, according to diplomats and nonproliferation experts.

The criticism focuses on the administration’s decision to lay the groundwork for developing low-yield weapons — known as mini-nukes — while pursuing President Bush’s doctrine of preemptive strikes against “rogue states.”

The diplomats and independent experts said Washington’s strategy weakens support for more stringent controls at a time when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty faces serious challenges from North Korea and Iran and amid widespread fears of terrorists acquiring atomic weapons. The US strategy, critics say, may cause other countries to pursue nuclear arms.

The Bush administration argues that mini-nukes would provide flexibility to respond to changing threats and small-scale conflicts that do not require full-size nuclear armaments.

Nonetheless, some US allies are alarmed. A senior Western diplomat called the prospect of mini-nukes “politically stupid” and said it would complicate US security by weakening support for tougher nuclear controls. (L A Times)

Cuba decries detainees’ treatment

Cuba has for the first time attacked the use of Guantanamo Bay as a center for detaining people the US suspects of links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

A Cuban parliament statement called the leased US facility a “concentration camp” and said inmates were subjected to “indescribable humiliations.”

The prisoners are “totally isolated, without the possibility of communicating with their families or access to appropriate legal defense,” the Cuban statement said. “They commit very serious attacks on human dignity, in an atmosphere of hysteria and fear nurtured by North America’s far-right,” it continued.

The Guantanamo Bay base is leased under an agreement signed before Fidel Castro took power in 1959. The Cuban leader routinely describes that agreement as illegal and pointedly refuses to cash the checks for rental which the US sends every year. (BBC)

Castro, Venezuelan president meet

Cuban President Fidel Castro met revolutionary ally, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, at a Caribbean island retreat on Dec. 22 in a visit to the Venezuelan leader, who faces a campaign to vote him out of office.

Chavez said he and Castro had discussed growing medical and energy cooperation between their nations. They also reviewed the political situation in Venezuela, where the Populist president is resisting a determined opposition bid to trigger a referendum next year on whether he should stay in power.

State television showed the two leaders embracing. It also broadcast an interview with Castro in which he praised Chavez as an influential leader spearheading the fight in Latin America against US-style global capitalism. “I challenge the world to produce a more generous man,” the Cuban leader said. (Reuters)

Ex-leader told not to leave Argentina

Former president Fernando de la Rua will be barred from leaving Argentina while prosecutors investigate his possible role in a corruption scandal that led to his resignation.

The decision by Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral Dec. 22 came three days after a congressional aide testified that he delivered suitcases filled with $5 million to opposition lawmakers in 2000 in exchange for their approval of unpopular labor legislation. The aide said that the bribes were ordered by de la Rua, who was forced from office in December 2001 — halfway through his term — as the economy slid into the worst crisis in the country’s history.

Payoffs had long been rumored in the passage of the labor bill, which weakened workplace protections and lowered costs for employers by making it easier to hire and fire workers. The bill was fiercely opposed by trade unions and by lawmakers for the Peronist party, the principal opposition to de la Rua’s coalition government. (Washington Post)

Libya ‘no bomb threat’

Libya’s feared nuclear weapons program had failed to take even the first step towards making a bomb, the United Nations’ chief watchdog said last night as he flew to Tripoli.

International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed El Baradei said it appeared Libya was not even close to making a nuclear weapon.

However, El Baradei warned he had yet to discover how cooperative the Libyans were being with his inspection team.

Libya’s decision earlier this month to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program and allow in international observers was seen as a major coup for the UK and US, who had been putting pressure on Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.

For much of Qaddafi’s rule, Libya has been under US or UN sanctions, accused of sponsoring or carrying out terrorist acts ranging from Lockerbie to training foreign guerrillas. But the oil-rich country now wants to lose its pariah status and be able to trade freely with other countries. (The Scotsman)

South Africa announces apartheid pay-outs

South Africa has started paying reparations to thousands of victims of apartheid, the government says. They were identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent seven years examining the crimes committed under apartheid.

The government is giving a one-off payment equivalent to about $4,500 to the victims of apartheid. The TRC examined decades of human rights abuses and identified about 20,000 victims earlier this year.

The government says it has processed payments for 9,000 people, but more than a third of these payments have already been returned because victims supplied invalid bank accounts. The government is paying far less in reparations than was recommended by the TRC.

It also rejected suggestions in the TRC’s final report that it raise more money for reparations by imposing a special tax on big business.

This has led to bitter complaints from some of the victims that they are not being adequately compensated. (BBC)

Court orders Guatemalan govt. to pay damages in killing

Guatemala violated several human rights provisions while investigating the 1990 murder of an anthropologist, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights has ruled, ordering the government to pay damages to her family and to continue to push for prosecution of those responsible.

The Costa Rica-based IACHR found the government ignored several provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights in its handling of the killing by state security forces of Myrna Mack, whose case has become a symbol of the prevailing impunity in Guatemala for abuses committed by its army over some 30 years.

The ruling, issued last week, comes at a critical moment in Guatemala, where citizens are scheduled to vote next weekend in a run-off election for a new president. (IPS)

Iraqi hangover clouds French ties with US

The diplomatic tension that arose between France and the United States over the invasion of Iraq was put aside formally, but it is far from over.

The United States blocked selection of a French installation last week for a major new nuclear experiment. The French in turn opened dormant investigations into dealings of the US firm Halliburton that was headed until recently by Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The French nuclear institute Cadarache was one of two sites under consideration for the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER). This is an experiment for developing technology for nuclear fusion at extremely high temperatures to release high energy levels, the so-called energy of stars. The alternative site is Rokkasho in Japan.

The French are hitting back in their own way. Prosecutors have reopened an inquiry into Halliburton over its oil interests in Nigeria. (IPS)