PM leaves for Berlin today

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Author / Source : Independent Online/unb

Dhaka: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina leaves for Berlin Saturday morning to attend the World Health Summit-2011.

The Prime Minister will deliver a keynote speech at the Summit on October 23 (Sunday).

She will lead a high-powered delegation that will include the Health and Family Welfare Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador at Large at the Prime Minister’s Office, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Health and Family Welfare Secretary, and five distinguished personalities.

The Prime Minister will also be accompanied by a business delegation from the apex trade body, Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI).

During the visit, Hasina will have official talks with German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel on October 25 (Tuesday), followed by a luncheon and a joint press briefing.

The Prime Minister will be given the federal military honor.

A Foreign Ministry release said this will be a bilateral visit. Entire gamut of bilateral relations will be reviewed during the summit meeting.

The Prime Minister will attend a reception to be hosted by students of Bangla Pathsala at Bangladesh House in Berlin today.

On October 23 (Sunday), she will attend another reception to be hosted by Non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) in Germany at Hotel Adlon Kempiniski in Berlin.

After attending the World Health Summit, Hasina will join the presidential reception.

On October 24 (Monday), she will attend a seminar titled `Emerging Market-Bangladesh’ at Hotel Adlon in Berlin, to be organized by German Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and participated by leading German business leaders and potential investors.

Later, the Prime Minister will call on the President of German parliament (Bundestag).

Hasina is likely to attend a dinner to be hosted by the German-South Asian Parliamentary Group at Regent Hotel in Berlin.

German Environment Minister Rottgen, Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Dirk Niebel and Foreign Minister Dr Guido Westerwelle will meet the Prime Minister on October 25.

Hasina is expected to return home on October 26.

Source: theindependentbd.com

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Gaddafi family demands body; NATO ends Libya war

MISRATA: NATO called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.

In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.

"We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.

At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.

Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.

"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."

The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.

Gaddafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respect his rights.

NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gaddafi was already dead when he picked up the body.

"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gaddafi was lynched.

The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.

BURIAL DISPUTE

In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on a mattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market on Friday. There was a bullet hole in his head.

"He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.

Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.

"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."

In Tripoli, Gaddafi's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castle and candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists in English. "Boom boom."

"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death with our children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."

RISKS OF DIVISION

Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials to have escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.

Without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descent into the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya's new rulers have quarreled but not fought.

"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting," Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised to explain how Gaddafi was killed.

"They're dealing with the death itself as well as the aftermath in as transparent a way as I think they can," he said. "They've fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And, you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday."

Source: theindependentbd.com

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Pakistan, three others elected to UN council

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Author / Source : Independent Online/reuters

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan, Morocco, Togo and Guatemala were elected on Friday to the 15-nation U.N. Security Council for 2012 and 2013, and Islamabad's envoy said he looked forward to working with fellow council member India.

The race for a fifth council seat, representing Eastern Europe, was adjourned until Monday after neither of the two candidates, Azerbaijan and Slovenia, was able to win a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly after nine votes.

In the most competitive council elections for years, only Guatemala ran unopposed within its region. Pakistan scraped through in the first round of voting, defeating Kyrgyzstan for an Asian seat with the minimum required tally.

Morocco scored an easy first-round victory, while the small West African state of Togo won out in the third round with a tally more than double Mauritania's. That saved sub-Saharan Africa the embarrassment of ending up with only one of the continent's three seats against two for Arab North Africa.

For Eastern Europe, Azerbaijan and Slovenia battled it out all day after a third candidate, Hungary, pulled out after trailing in the first ballot. The race swung both ways, but Azerbaijan led Slovenia by the end of the day with 113 votes to 77, still 14 votes short of clinching a win.

Pakistani Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon welcomed his country's election to the United Nations' elite body and said he expected to work well with the ambassador of Pakistan's archrival India, Hardeep Singh Puri, next year.

"You have seen that the usual tendencies have not erupted between us and that is a good factor," Haroon said. "Perhaps both of us have been beneficial in starting dialogue between both the countries."

India joined the council this year and will stay through 2012. India and Pakistan have fought three wars, mainly over Kashmir, since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

The last time the two nuclear-armed states served together on the council was in 1977. U.N. diplomats said they do not expect any regional tension as a result of Pakistan joining again. Pakistan has served six previous council terms,

RESISTING SANCTIONS

The Security Council is the powerhouse of the United Nations, with the ability to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeeping forces.

There are five veto-holding, nuclear-armed permanent members of the council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- and 10 temporary elected members without vetoes. With India and Pakistan on the council next year, seven of the 15 members will be nuclear powers.

Lebanon, Nigeria, Gabon, Bosnia and Brazil come off the council in January. The four temporary members that will remain through 2012 besides India are Colombia, Germany, Portugal and South Africa.

Western diplomats said it is likely that Pakistan will take over from Brazil by joining Russia and China, India and South Africa in resisting renewed U.S. and European pressure to sanction nations like Syria and Iran.

In Africa, the African Union endorsed only Togo and Mauritania. Morocco does not belong to the AU, having pulled out of its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, in 1984 after a Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic proclaimed by the independence-seeking Polisario Front in the disputed Western Sahara was admitted to the OAU.

Morocco's crushing council victory, with 151 of the 193 assembly members supporting it, looked likely to bolster Rabat in its continuing dispute with Polisario. Morocco annexed Western Sahara after colonial power Spain pulled out in 1975.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri told reporters that his country had prevailed "despite the attempts which have been made, but in vain, to exclude Morocco from this competition" because it did not belong to the AU.

"Today a broad majority of African states decided to show solidarity with Morocco, to show confidence in Morocco, to support Morocco," he said. "Our candidature was legitimate because of the principle of rotation."

Morocco has been on the Security Council twice before, most recently in 1992-1993.

Source: theindependentbd.com

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