This article titled “Gaddafi killer faces prosecution, says Libyan interim government” was written by Martin Chulov and agencies, for The Guardian on Thursday 27th October 2011 18.21 UTC

Libya’s interim government says it will prosecute anyone found responsible for the death of Muammar Gaddafi after his capture, in a retreat from its earlier insistence that the dictator had been killed by crossfire.

The change in position comes after a week of sustained criticism of the Libyan leader’s captors, who used their camera phones to chronicle his death. The footage, including images of a wounded Gaddafi being sodomised with what looked like a bayonet, caused widespread revulsion outside the country.

Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy chief of the National Transitional Council, said it would try to bring to justice anyone proven to have fired the shot to the head that killed Gaddafi.

“With regards to Gaddafi, we do not wait for anybody to tell us,” he told the al-Arabiya satellite channel. “We had already launched an investigation. We have issued a code of ethics in handling of prisoners of war. I am sure that was an individual act and not an act of revolutionaries or the national army. Whoever is responsible for that [Gaddafi's killing] will be judged and given a fair trial.”

Attempts to launch an investigation are unlikely to be welcomed in Misrata, where the rebels who captured Gaddafi in his home town of Sirte are based. Asked this week about the questions surrounding his death by people outside Libya, Misrata’s military chief, Ibrahim Beit al-Mal, said: “Why are they even asking this question? He was caught and he was killed. Would he have given us the same? Of course.”

Talk of an inquest was being seen by Misrata officials as an attempt by the Benghazi-dominated NTC to claim prominence in post-Gaddafi affairs.

“Everybody knows who caught him and who fought the most during the past nine months,” an official said. “It was us. It was no one else.”

The identity of the man who allegedly pulled his 9mm pistol from his waistband and shot the wounded dictator in the left temple around 20 minutes after his capture is widely known in Misrata, as is the unit he belonged to, the Katiba Ghoran.

“They won’t come near us,” said the rebel who pulled Gaddafi from a drain last Thursday. “They won’t dare. Gaddafi was saying: ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ After nine months of blood, he was saying: ‘What’s this?’. What does he expect?”

There is little sympathy on the streets of Misrata for Gaddafi’s violent end, despite the troubling images and his rotting body being publicly displayed for the next four days.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi son and former heir apparent Saif al-Islam is thought to be in southern Libya approaching the Niger border, where Nigerien officials believe he is planning to join his brother Saadi and the former regime’s spy chief Abdullah Senussi in exile.

The NTC maintains that Saif al-Islam is interested in handing himself in to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant against him and Senussi. The court in The Hague says it has had no contact from Libya.

The United Nations on Thursday said it would terminatethe Nato mandate enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya at the end of October, formally ending an eight-month blockade of the country’s skies and military operations on the ground. The NTC had earlier asked for operations to continue until the end of the year.

“This marks a really important milestone in the transition in Libya,” Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant, said. “It marks the way from the military phase towards the formation of an inclusive government, the full participation of all sectors of society, and for the Libyan people to choose their own future.”

The security council said it looked forward “to the swift establishment of an inclusive, representative transitional government of Libya” committed to democracy, good governance, rule of law, national reconciliation and respect for human rights.

It strongly urged Libyan authorities “to refrain from reprisals”, to take measures to prevent others from carrying out reprisals, and to protect the population, “including foreign nationals and African migrants”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Alleged Iran plot could have been trigger for war in Middle East” was written by Julian Borger, for The Guardian on Tuesday 11th October 2011 22.55 UTC

Whoever was behind the Washington plot was ready to start a war in the Middle East. The region is already on the brink of conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme, with Israel increasingly twitchy over the progress Tehran is making towards a capacity to make nuclear weapons.

Leaked US State Department cables also make clear that the Saudi king, Abdullah, has repeatedly urged the US to “cut off the head of the snake” and attack Iran.

Against that backdrop, the assassination of the Saudi ambassador in Washington, with mass American casualties and perhaps an attack on the Israeli embassy too, would have ensured that the region went up in flames.

The US accuses the Quds Force (QF), the external operations wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, of being behind the plot. Given the hierarchy of the Iranian regime, such a huge undertaking would have required a direct order from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who personally controls the QF.

Khamenei’s involvement would be surprising, to say the least. Throughout his tenure – since the death of the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in 1989 – he has shown himself to be highly cautious and devoted to entrenching the power of the clerical regime.

Meir Javendafar, an Iranian-Israeli, said: “Khamenei’s first priority is regime stability, and then a distant second, safeguarding the nuclear programme.”

One speculative explanation circulating on Tuesday night was that Khamenei feels so threatened by internal opposition that he would provoke a foreign attack to allow himself to strengthen his grip on the country. But the opposition Green movement is currently in abeyance, and the nuclear programme is advancing steadily with little threat of concerted international action, or much global support for an Israeli strike.

The plot is also out of character for the QF. The unit is well-funded and has considerable freedom of action abroad. It is suspected of involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, the funding and arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon, of Shia militias in Iraq, and even the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2008, the head of the QF, Kassim Suleimani sent the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus a message in which he said, according to Petraeus, that he controlled Iranian foreign policy in the region.

However, to extend those operations to US territory would represent a significant leap in scope and ambitions. The way the plot was conducted would also suggest that the ruthlessly efficiently QF had lost its touch, being clumsy enough to transfer money from accounts under its control directly to US bank accounts.

Robert Baer, a former CIA agent with long experience of observing the QF, said: “This stinks to holy hell. The Quds Force are very good. They don’t sit down with people they don’t know and make a plot. They use proxies and they are professional about it. If Kassim Suleimani was coming after you or me, we would be dead. This is totally uncharacteristic of them.”

Another possibility is that this is a rogue operation, perhaps organised by a faction inside the QF, without the Supreme Leader’s blessing. There is an argument that it suited the purposes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently lost a bloodless power struggle with Khamenei.

If the attack succeeded, it would set in train events dramatic enough to turn the rigid, dusty hierarchy of the clerical republic on its head, giving Ahmadinejad the chance to seize the advantage.

Or the plotters could be fanatics inside the military establishment, bent on bringing the Revolutionary Guard to the top of the regime pyramid, beginning an open race to develop a nuclear weapon and confronting Israel directly.

“If this is a bunch of crazies, then anything is possible,” Baer said.

All such possibilities are speculative. They would fundamentally reshape the Islamic Republic, and yet – for Iran experts – they are scarcely any more far-fetched that the idea that the Iranian establishment was behind a plot as brazen and reckless as this.

The thwarting of the plot almost certainly averted a conflict, but regional tension will escalate nevertheless. Any remote hope of resumed nuclear talks is dead for now. More sanctions and UN Security Council resolutions will be on the table instead.

Conceivably, that could break Khamenei’s will to press on with the nuclear programme, and produce a compromise deal that defuses the threat of conflict.

Or it could just as plausibly convince him to accelerate the programme, persuaded that the regime’s enemies are closing in. In that case, this extraordinary plot could yet succeed in sparking a new conflict in a very fragile region.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Syria accused of torturing relatives of overseas activists” was written by Sam Jones, for The Guardian on Monday 3rd October 2011 21.54 UTC

The Syrian government has been accused of torturing the relatives of Syrians protesting overseas in an attempt to silence international criticism of President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime.

The charges are made in a report from Amnesty International – The Long Reach of the Mukhabaraat (the name of the Syrian secret police) – which details more than 30 cases of direct and indirect intimidation of activists in Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the UK and US.

One dissident, now living in Germany, told Amnesty that his brother had been arrested, held for a month and tortured by Syrian military intelligence because of his sibling’s anti-regime stance. In Sweden, another pro-reform activist said her activities on the internet and the streets of Stockholm had attracted the attention of the Syrian authorities.

At the end of May, she received a letter in Arabic using her maiden name, which warned her: “Keep quiet or neither you, nor your family in Syria is safe.” Not long after, her brother was arrested in Damascus, had both his hands broken and was forced to promise that the family would disown his sister.

Anti-regime activists in several countries have reported being harassed, intimidated and even assaulted.

Five weeks ago in Paris, a 35-year-old Syrian engineer and two fellow demonstrators were attacked by a group of men and women carrying pro-Assad flags. They say they were told by French police officers that no action could be taken against two of their assailants because they held diplomatic passports. Later that night, according to the engineer, more anti-regime protesters were attacked with baseball bats by the same group.

In the UK, the Foreign Office has raised concerns of intimidation on at least two occasions, while in the US, where concerns about Syrian diplomatic staff photographing and filming protesters have already led the state department to summon the country’s ambassador to Washington, there have been similar reports of intimidation.

According to the Amnesty study, the elderly parents of a US-based Syrian were badly beaten and locked in their bathroom in the city of Homs after their son – a pianist and composer – was filmed performing at a pro-reform demonstration in front of the White House. In Illinois, an expatriate Syrian activist reported receiving a menacing email after one of her Facebook friends in Syria was arrested for protesting at his university and being forced to open his account on the social network.

It read: “These words are directed at you, you agent, you traitor. Your messages have come to us … We are waiting for you to come to the airport so we can show you what is good for you and for what you are doing. We will make an example out of you.”

British-based demonstrators say they have also been filmed while protesting, phoned and visited at home by Syrian embassy staff, and threatened with death. One protester said Mukhabaraat officers raided his mother’s home in Damascus, asking questions about him and eventually forcing her to flee the country.

Another British-based protester, Ghias Aljundi, told the Guardian he had been called on his mobile in June by someone claiming to be from the embassy. “He said: ‘Don’t think you are protected. We can get you anyway. It’s better for you to stop what you are doing. You are a traitor’.” Aljundi added: “I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I know they’re not going to do anything to me, but I immediately had to call my brothers to see what was happening [in Syria].

“The regime is completely morally bankrupt and so they can do anything.”

Allegations of menacing behaviour by Syrian embassy staff in London have also prompted the Foreign Office to raise the issue of intimidation and harassment of protesters and their families on at least two occasions during meetings with the Syrian ambassador, who gave assurances that his staff were not involved in such activities. He said he would take action were evidence to emerge to the contrary.

The FO is also liaising with Scotland Yard and urging demonstrators to report any evidence of harassment or other crimes by embassy staff to the Metropolitan police.

Scotland Yard said it was aware of the allegations of intimidation and is investigating a claim of harassment made on 28 August.

Amnesty is calling on the Syrian government to immediately end its harassment of protesters and their families, and is asking the international community to make sure such intimidation does not go unchecked.

“We look to host governments to act on credible allegations of abuses without waiting for formal complaints,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty’s Syrian researcher.

“Many of the people we have spoken to are too scared of what could happen to them to make formal complaints with the police. We would expect that any official found responsible for such acts should be prosecuted, or – if diplomatic immunity prevents that – asked to leave the country.”

No one at the Syrian embassy in London could be reached for comment on the allegations.

Despite the apparent intimidation, UK-based Syrians are planning to stage an “I am not afraid” demonstration outside the Syrian embassy on Tuesday morning.

During the protest, they will hold placards inscribed with their names and home towns.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Israel approves new settler homes in East Jerusalem” was written by Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, for The Guardian on Tuesday 27th September 2011 19.27 UTC

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, joined a wave of condemnation of Israel’s approval of the construction of 1,100 homes in an East Jerusalem settlement on Tuesday, which puts at risk international efforts to persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to return to talks.

The move was “counter-productive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties”, Clinton said. “As you know, we have long urged both sides to avoid any kind of action which could undermine trust, including, and perhaps most particularly, in Jerusalem, any action that could be viewed as provocative by either side.”

Lady Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, called for the plan to be reversed, saying settlement expansion “threatens the viability of an agreed two-state solution”.

The expansion of Gilo, a settlement built across the Green Line, was authorised by a Jerusalem planning committee and would be subject to public consultation before final approval.

The Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the move a “slap in the face to all international efforts to protect the fading prospects of peace in the region”. Referring to criticism of its “unilateral” act in seeking recognition of its state, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said “there could be nothing more unilateral than a huge, new round of settlement building on Palestinian land”.

Following the PA’s submission of its request to be admitted to the UN as a full member state, the Middle East Quartet – the US, UN, Russia and the EU – called for both parties to return to the negotiating table. In a statement setting out a timetable for talks, the quartet urged the parties “to refrain from provocative actions”, which was interpreted as a coded call for Israel to hold back from settlement expansion. Neither party has formally responded to the quartet’s statement, but the Palestinians have made clear they want a further settlement freeze before more talks.

The UN announced it was concerned about the decision to build further in Gilo. “Today’s decision … ignores the quartet’s appeal of last Friday to the parties to refrain from provocative actions,” said a spokesman for Robert Serry, the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process. “This sends the wrong signal at this sensitive time. Settlement activity is contrary to the road map and to international law, and undermines the prospect of resuming negotiations and reaching a two-state solution to the conflict.”

The expansion of Gilo, a huge settlement built on land between Jerusalem and Bethlehem that was captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed, has been on the table for more than two years. The settlement is illegal under international law. The Israeli government asserts it has the right to build Jewish settlements anywhere in the city.

The approval came as the chairmen of several rightwing parties in Israel wrote to Netanyahu to urge him to annex all West Bank settlements and accelerate settlement construction in response to the Palestinian bid for statehood. They also called for financial sanctions and curbs on Palestinian construction in areas of the West Bank controlled by Israel.

Tensions in the West Bank between settlers and Palestinians have risen sharply this September with the demand for Palestinian statehood at the UN.

An Israeli police investigation concluded that a settler and his infant son, who were killed when their car overturned last Friday, had been struck by a rock thrown by Palestinians. At their funeral on Sunday night, a rabbi called for “collective punishment” of Palestinians, saying “there are no innocents in a war”.

The Israeli security service, Shin Bet, confirmed it had urged the education ministry to halt funding to a religious school in the settlement of Yitzhar. According to a report in the news service Haaretz, security services said senior rabbis were inciting students to attack Palestinian villagers.

A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers during a protest last Friday against settlers in the West Bank village of Qusra.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Palestinians ready to put statehood on backburner in favour of peace talks” was written by Chris McGreal in New York and Harriet Sherwood in Ramallah, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 22nd September 2011 01.21 UTC

The Palestinian leadership remains prepared to put statehood on the backburner at the UN security council in order to leave room for the revival of peace talks, according to senior Palestinian sources.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is said to have told Barack Obama at a meeting on Wednesday evening that he would agree to delaying a security council vote by several weeks, although the Palestinians are maintaining the line in public that any delays will be “procedural not political”.

The Palestinian offer comes despite Obama angering them by defending the US threat to veto the bid for statehood while praising revolutions in other parts of the Arab world.

Obama told the opening of the UN general assembly in New York that negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, not a security council resolution, was the way to ensure a lasting peace. But he was challenged by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who said US leadership on the issue had failed and called for a new initiative involving Europe and Arab states to create a Palestinian state within a year.

Sarkozy’s intervention fits with a plan being mapped out by the Quartet of the UN, US, EU and Russia to restart negotiations and avoid a showdown in the security council. The French president said there should be talks without preconditions. But the Quartet plan faces a major obstacle from a Palestinian insistence that it require Israel to halt all settlement construction during talks.

Obama said “the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own” and that vision had been delayed for too long. But he offered no new initiatives and, tellingly, did not repeat earlier calls – for which he has come under fire – for negotiations to be based on the borders at the time of the 1967 war, with agreed land swaps. He also made no mention of settlements.

Obama went from his speech to a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. The US president was dismissive of Abbas’s plan to ask the security council to recognise Palestine as a state.

“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN – if it were that easy it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security, on refugees and Jerusalem,” he said as Abbas shook his head.

The Palestinians responded by saying they would not be deterred from pursuing their request to the security council for full membership of the UN, and that if he US used its veto they would seek a vote in the general assembly, which has the power to grant observer status.

However, the Palestinians appeared to be pulling back from an immediate confrontation, having come under intense pressure from the Europeans as well as the Americans. Although Sarkozy staked out a position sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in his UN speech, he has advised Abbas to hold off from the security council move.

Another senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, said the Palestinians had an assurance from the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that a vote in the security council would not be delayed for political reasons, but only by procedure. He said that if there was no request for the vote, or the US exercised its veto, then the Palestinians would go to the general assembly. But he declined to put a timescale on such a move.

In a speech that was widely seen as his most supportive of Israel as president, Obama spoke about the US’s “unshakeable” commitment to the Jewish state’s security, and said that any lasting peace must recognise Israel’s “very real security concerns”. He spoke at length about Israeli suffering, but to the consternation of the Palestinians made no mention of the difficulties of life under occupation or the impact of expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Obama said: “Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbours that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them.

“Israel, a small country of less than 8 million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they were.

“Friends of the Palestinians do them no favours by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognise the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

Obama’s failure to offer any new hope of progress toward a Palestinian state stood in sharp contrast to his praise of the quest for freedom in parts of the Arab world and beyond. “Something is happening in our world. The way things have been is not the way they will be. The humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny is being pried open,” he said.

Sarkozy said the “miracle” of the Arab spring was a reminder of the moral and political obligation to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But without naming the US, he implied that its oversight of years of failed negotiations meant a new approach was required. “We can wait no longer. The method is no longer working? Change the method. Cease believing that a single country or a small group of countries can solve a problem of such complexity.”

Sarkozy called for a fresh set of negotiations, with wider involvement of European and Arab nations, based on a timetable that would see the borders of a Palestinian state agreed within six months and a final deal within a year. “We should not look for the perfect solution. Choose the path of compromise,” he said.

But Sarkozy also said the Palestinians were mistaken to seek full recognition as a state at the security council. He warned there could be violence if the bid went ahead and was vetoed by the US. The French president said the Palestinians should instead ask to be admitted as an observer state to the general assembly, which would give them hope.

Shaath criticised Obama’s speech for failing to address what he said was the primary obstacle to peace negotiations: the continued construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. “The serious gap in the speech had to do with the absolute minimum for the peace process … settlement policies, de-Arabisation of Jerusalem, the siege of Gaza,” he said.

Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian former negotiator who is part of Abbas’s delegation to the UN, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz he was angered by Obama’s speech.

“I did not believe what I heard, it sounded as if the Palestinians were occupying Israel.  There was no empathy for the Palestinians, he only spoke of the Israeli problems,” she said. “He told us that it isn’t easy to achieve peace – thanks, we know this.  He spoke about universal rights – good, those same rights apply to Palestinians.

“[The Americans] are applying enormous pressure on everybody at the UN, they are using threats and coercion. I wish they would invest the same energy in an attempt to promote peace, not threats.”

Obama’s speech was greeted with despair in the West Bank. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and former Palestinian presidential candidate, said he was disappointed. “It clearly shows the double standards of the US when it comes to the Palestinian issue. Obama spoke about freedom, human rights, justice in South Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt – but not for the Palestinians,” he said.

“His version of reality is wrong. He claims that Israel is the victim in this conflict and that’s not true. He doesn’t see that this is not a struggle between two equal sides, but between an oppressor and the oppressed, and occupier and the occupied.”

A Ramallah shop owner, Marwan Jubeh, said: “Israel and the US are one and the same: the US is Israel, and Israel is the US. Israel doesn’t want to give the Palestinians anything and Obama can’t do anything without Israel because Congress is pro-Israel.”

In contrast, Netanyahu praised Obama when the two met after the US president’s speech. The Israeli prime minister described Obama’s pledge to block the Palestinian move at the UN security council as a “badge of honour”.

Netanyahu said he was ready for talks with the Palestinians but was sceptical about what they could achieve. “I think the Palestinians want to achieve a state but they’re not prepared yet to make peace with Israel,” he said.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Palestinian statehood: plan emerges to avoid UN showdown” was written by Chris McGreal in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th September 2011 23.04 UTC

International efforts to forestall a showdown in the UN security council over the declaration of a Palestinian state are solidifying around a plan for the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to submit a request for recognition but for a vote on the issue to be put on hold while a new round of peace talks is launched.

The deal is being pushed by the Middle East “Quartet” of the UN, EU, US and Russia, which is attempting to persuade Abbas to back away from a diplomatic confrontation with Washington, which says it will veto the Palestinian bid.

The US president Barack Obama is expected to meet the Palestinian leader at the UN on Wednesday as Abbas comes under intense pressure from the US and Europe to compromise.

Diplomats said the proposed compromise would see Abbas submit his letter to the security council, which would then defer action. In parallel, the Quartet would issue the framework for renewed negotiations that would include a timeline for the birth of a Palestinian state.

The deal is intended to permit Abbas to follow through on his commitment to Palestinians to seek recognition for an independent state at the security council, a pledge he could not abandon entirely without considerable damage to his already battered leadership.

If the proposals under discussion come to fruition, Abbas could claim a victory for the Palestinians by saying he has achieved his principal goal in going to the UN of breaking the deadlock that has seen no serious movement towards a Palestinian state in years.

However, diplomats warned that a number of issues remain unresolved, including a Palestinian demand that the statement include a requirement that Israel halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Israel’s position is unclear. Its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, arrives in New York on Wednesday and has appealed for immediate talks with Abbas but without preconditions.

Diplomats said negotiations were likely to come down to the wire as Abbas plans to submit the request on Friday.

“The Palestinians are open to a way out of this,” said a diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations. “But they can’t abandon the security council vote without something to show. The question is how to turn this to their advantage. If the result is that there is a serious push to make peace talks work, then that’s a win for the Palestinians. I think everyone involved in this – the Americans, the Europeans – would like to see that happen.”

Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian spokesman, said Abbas remains committed to submitting the Palestinian request to the security council but he noted that the intention behind the move was to break the deadlock in the peace process, which may now be happening.

“There is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between our quest for United Nations full membership and any possible negotiations. In fact, we see them as very very complementary. We are seeking this to provide any future bilateral process with sufficient multilateral cover where we don’t waste another 20 years,” he said.

The proposals under discussion would have the Quartet statement say, at the Palestinians’ behest, that the goal is a Palestinian state based on the borders at the time of the 1967 war that led to the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. It will also meet an Israeli demand by saying that talks will result in two countries with Israel as a Jewish state.

A Palestinian official acknowledged the plan was a focus of discussion with the Quartet although he cautioned that the leadership is concerned to ensure there is real momentum and that Israel is not permitted to drag out negotiations.

Abbas has come under intense pressure from the US and European nations to avoid forcing Washington to wield its veto. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, met the Palestinian leader on Tuesday to press him to reopen talks.

Nabil Shaath, a senior member of Abbas’s delegation to the UN, said the US has attempted to dissuade the Palestinians from going to the security council with the threat of punitive measures. He did not say what they might be although there are demands in Congress for the $500m in US aid to the Palestinian Authority to be cut.

The Palestinians are also under pressure because it is far from certain they will win the necessary nine votes in the security council to win recognition. The US has been using its influence to get some security council members to abstain in the hope the Palestinians will lose the vote and that the US veto will not be required.

Nonetheless, Abbas can claim a diplomatic success in forcing the most serious effort to kickstart peace negotiations in years. The US insistence that it will veto the Palestinian bid for membership in the security council has strengthened the hand of European governments, which have generally be sidelined by Washington in the Middle East peace process.

Britain and France in particular, as permanent members of the security council, have attempted to use their votes as a bargaining chip in dealings with Abbas by suggesting that they could support a move to give the Palestinians greater recognition in the UN general assembly if a vote is not forced in the security council.

However, diplomats cautioned that the plan is far from complete and that obstacles remain.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This is the first time I’ve ever heard about this. The first “world leader” Obama called after being elected president was Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. That is absolutely stunning. He didn’t call Britain, Germany, France, or even China. He called the leader of a non-existent country that hates Israel. I think that says a lot about Barack Obama.

[Click here to see the report from Glenn Beck]

This article titled “US steps up pressure on Palestinians to drop UN statehood bid” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, for The Guardian on Wednesday 14th September 2011 16.15 UTC

The US is attempting to fire up a fresh round of Middle East peace talks in an attempt to head off a major diplomatic embarrassment over a looming Palestinian request for recognition of statehood at the United Nations.

Washington has again dispatched negotiators to meet Palestinian and Israeli leaders as it scrambles to find ways to avoid carrying out a threat to veto a Palestinian request for full membership of the UN, which is expected to be made to the security council or the general assembly next week.

If the request is made to the security council, a US veto of Palestinian demands for statehood – on the grounds that two decades of negotiations has failed to end the occupation – is likely to further damage America’s already battered reputation in the Middle East, particularly when Washington has strongly backed the uprisings in Libya and Syria and broadly welcomed the Arab spring.

The US is working with Tony Blair, special envoy of the quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia, to come up with a framework for talks that could lure the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. US envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross, the European foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Blair are due to meet Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

But Washington is also seeking support from Britain in particular in its stand against the Palestinian resolution, if it does come to a vote at the UN. Two other security council members, Russia and China, have openly backed the Palestinian move. France is sympathetic to the Palestinian demand but is seeking a compromise resolution that could be supported by Germany, which is opposed to UN recognition of a Palestinian state, in the hope of forging a common EU position.

Britain has so far not declared how it would vote, but diplomatic sources say that it is torn between American pressure to support the US position in the security council and concerns about what such a move would do to the UK’s standing in a changing Middle East, particularly while it is still heavily involved in Libya.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said he will take the request for full recognition as a state to the UN security council next week. But some Arab and European nations are pressuring him to downgrade the request to the general assembly, which can only offer observer status to the Palestinians, to save Washington the embarrassment of having to wield its veto.

Israel was also making last-minute efforts to persuade undeclared countries not to vote for a Palestinian resolution, amid threats to tear up previous agreements, impose financial penalties and annexe West Bank settlements if the Palestinians go ahead.

Obama confirmed the US would veto any request brought before the security council, describing the Palestinian push as “counterproductive”. But the White House wants to avoid such a step, knowing it will play badly among Arabs whose own moves for self-determination this year Obama has endorsed.

In Washington, the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee opened a hearing on Wednesday into whether American aid to the Palestinian Authority should be discontinued. Some members of the overwhelmingly pro-Israel US Congress have been pressing for a cut off in aid if the Palestinians submit their request to the UN. However, there is concern among others that such a move would leave Israel to pick up a greater share of the cost of occupation.

The European Union is at the centre of the efforts to avoid diplomatic meltdown. Its belief that only a negotiated settlement can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is given added force by its desire to avoid a damaging split among its 27 members.

But efforts to secure a breakthrough are constrained by Palestinian demands of guarantees that any talks would be based on the pre-1967 borders, plus a total settlement freeze. Israel is unlikely to sign up to that.

The Palestinians insist their approach to the UN does not preclude a return to negotiations later. “We see no contradictions between doing both,” said Dr Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior member of the team heading to New York.

The UN bid was “the beginning of the game, not the end,” he said. “It is a process.”

In public, Palestinian officials are standing firm in the face of “very serious pressure” to backtrack. Privately, there are suggestions of wavering.

However, the International Crisis Group warned this week that any climbdown now “could decisively discredit [Mahmoud Abbas's] leadership, embolden his foes and trigger unrest among his people”. It went on: “Most Palestinians do not strongly support the UN bid; but they would strongly oppose a decision to retract it without suitable compensation.”

Israel has engaged in its own diplomatic offensive to try to derail the Palestinian bid, instructing its diplomats around the globe to campaign vigorously for votes and lavishly hosting delegations from undeclared countries.

But Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, acknowledged that the “battle to stem the tide” was lost, and warned that “this unilateral course of action won’t lead to peace and won’t lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state”.

The Palestinians reject the claim that they are acting unilaterally, saying the UN path “is the ultimate expression of multilateralism”. They add that Israel’s apparent opposition to unilateralism has not stopped it acting without agreement, such as building and expanding settlements.

Sallai Meridor, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, said the move “weakens the chances for negotiation and agreement and increases the chances of frustration and violence. For Israelis it will strengthen the voices saying there is no one to talk to. Once you act unilaterally, the chances for negotiations are much lower.”

Israel is also alarmed at the prospect that the Palestinians could bring a case against it at the international criminal court, a possibility that would open up with enhanced UN status for the Palestinians. “No Israeli government could negotiate if it has criminal proceedings hanging over its head,” said a former official.

Retaliatory options raised by Israeli ministers should the Palestinian bid succeed include tearing up the Oslo accords, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza, annexing the West Bank settlements and withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA. The US Congress is also threatening to cut off financial aid to the Palestinians.

Violence in the aftermath of the UN move has been predicted by the Israelis for months, despite Abbas’s insistence that any demonstrations would be peaceful. “Non-violent demonstrations have a high risk of developing into something violent regardless of planning,” said Meridor. “When you take gasoline and play with matches, you run the risk of a big fire.”

The Israeli security forces have restocked with crowd-dispersal equipment, including teargas, rubber bullets and water canon. They are also training and arming settlers, fuelling fears on both sides that hardline elements could provoke violence.

How the bid for Palestinian statehood will work at the UN

• The main session of the 2011 UN general assembly opens in New York with a speech by Barack Obama on Wednesday 21 September.

• The Palestinians say they will submit a formal application for full membership as a state next week. The approval of the 15-member security council is required.

• The US will veto such an application. But it may set up a committee to examine the request in the hope of kicking the issue into the long grass.

• In the event of a veto, the Palestinians say they will request enhanced “observer member status” at the general assembly, which does not require security council approval but needs a two-thirds majority (129 votes).

• The Palestinians claim to have the support of 126 countries, equating to about 75% of the world’s population, including China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Ireland and Spain.

• Israel concedes it will lose a vote at the general assembly but hopes to claim the support of a “moral minority” of countries, including the US, Canada and Italy.

• The EU bloc of 27 countries is split. Of the “big three”, Britain and France have not explicitly declared their intentions, and Germany is opposed to full membership. France is inclined to back the Palestinians but is attempting to come up with a compromise acceptable to Germany in the interests of EU unity.

• The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is due to address the general assembly on Friday 23 September.

• Israel’s turn at the podium is also scheduled for 23 September. It has not been decided whether the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, or the president, Shimon Peres, will represent Israel.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Iran to free US hikers jailed for spying” was written by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, for The Guardian on Wednesday 14th September 2011 00.20 UTC

Iran has moved to reduce tensions with the international community by pledging to release two Americans held in the country and offering fresh nuclear talks ahead of President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United Nations in New York next week.

The two Americans sentenced to eight years in jail for espionage and illegally crossing the border are to be released on bail of $500,000 (£316,000), their lawyer said on Tuesday.

News of the deal came after Ahmadinejad revealed that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal would be allowed to return home in the next few days.

In reaction to Iran’s pledge, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said: “We are encouraged by what the Iranian government has said.

“We obviously hope that we will see a positive outcome.”

The hikers’ families said they were “overjoyed” the men may soon be released. They saidthey had no details but that the news was “a huge relief” and that they were looking forward to a reunion.

The men, both now 29, were arrested by Iranian security officials in July 2009 along with a friend, Sarah Shourd, 33, after walking across an unmarked border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Shourd – who became engaged to Bauer while in jail – was released last September on health grounds and for the same bail sum.

“The families of these two Americans and the Swiss embassy which hosts the US interests section in Tehran have been informed of this issue and Bauer and Fattal can leave Iran similar to Sarah Shourd,” the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Iran’s judiciary has a history of asking for large amounts of money as bail. For prisoners who leave Iran after securing the bail, it means buying freedom.

Ahmadinejad appears to be crediting himself for their expected release ahead of his attendance at the UN general assembly meeting this month. The Washington Post quoted him as saying Bauer and Fattal had been granted a “unilateral pardon”.

“I am helping to arrange for their release in a couple of days so they will be able to return home,” he said in an interview in Tehran. “This is of course going to be a unilateral humanitarian gesture.”

An Iranian court in August sentenced the two men each to three years for illegally entering Iran and a further five years for spying for the US. Their lawyer lodged an appeal against the sentences, and Amnesty International said the conviction made a “mockery of justice”.

The court’s verdict was at odds with earlier comments made by Iranian foreign ministry officials who said before the trial that the pair would be freed. The contrast highlighted a growing rift between Iran’s judiciary, which is close to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad’s government.

It is not clear why Iran has finally decided to grant them apparent clemency, but international pressure and Iran’s isolation in the region may have been factors.

A deal may have been struck for the lifting of a travel ban on Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency.

The offer to release the Americans comes two days after Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran was ready to resume nuclear talks with the EU.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said on Monday that he was “increasingly concerned” over Iran’s nuclear activities, which the west worries might have military dimensions. Iran insists it wants nuclear energy for producing electricity.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “US told: support Palestinian UN bid or risk ‘toxic’ reputation in Arab world” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 12th September 2011 16.15 UTC

A former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence and ex-ambassador to Washington, Turki al-Faisal, has warned that an American veto of Palestinian membership of the United Nations would end the “special relationship” between the two countries, and make the US “toxic” in the Arab world.

The warning comes as Washington is scrambling to avoid a scenario where it alone casts a veto in the UN security council against the Palestinian bid for recognition of statehood, which is expected to be formally requested next week. The US is putting considerable pressure on the Palestinians not to submit the request, and on Britain – the only other permanent member of the security council that has not publicly supported the Palestinian request – to also exercise its veto if necessary.

Al-Faisal says in an article in the New York Times that the US will jeopardise its close ties with Saudi Arabia and further undermine its position in a changing Arab world if it again sides with Israel.

“The United States must support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations this month or risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world. If it does not, American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region,” al-Faisal says.

“Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to co-operate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.”

He adds: “Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy.”

Al-Faisal, a vigorous advocate of Palestinian statehood who has previously accused the US of bias toward Israel, said that the two-decade long Oslo peace process has not yielded results and should be replaced with “a new paradigm based on state-to-state negotiations”.

This is a view shared by some European nations, including France, which regard the Oslo process as a trap that has failed to deliver statehood for the Palestinians and is unlikely to do so in the near future.

“American support for Palestinian statehood is therefore crucial, and a veto will have profound negative consequences. In addition to causing substantial damage to American-Saudi relations and provoking uproar among Muslims worldwide, the United States would further undermine its relations with the Muslim world, empower Iran and threaten regional stability,” al-Faisal writes.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said he will submit a request to the security council for full membership of the United Nations when he is in New York for the opening of the general assembly next week. If that is vetoed by the US, the request will move to the general assembly, which has the power only to grant enhanced observer status, but where Israel concedes the Palestinians are all but certain to win.

The prospect has alarmed the Americans and the Israelis, who say the move would undermine peace efforts and lead to further violence. The Palestinians say there is no peace process to speak of.

But the diplomatic fallout is of principal concern to the US. It will be hard for Washington, and for Britain, if it backs the American position, to explain to newly liberated parts of the Arab world why they are prepared to go to war against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and agitate against Bashar al-Assad in Syria but not support the Palestinian bid for statehood in the face of an intransigent Israel.

For Israel, the UN move comes as it is grappling with the collapse in relations with Turkey over the Israeli assault on the Gaza flotilla last year, in which Israeli forces killed nine Turks, and rising hostility in Egypt, which saw the Israeli embassy in Cairo ransacked last week.

Israel also looks to many as increasingly out of step with a changing region, in maintaining the occupation, expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and thwarting Palestinian independence in the near future.

The US has been pressuring the Palestinian leadership not to make the request, with promises to get peace negotiations going again. But Abbas said that the Americans came with no concrete proposals and the Palestinians have little confidence that the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is seriously interested in ending the occupation.

George Mitchell, until recently Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, said last week that he sees little chance of the US persuading the Palestinians not to submit the request.

The US Congress is also pressuring the Palestinians to withdraw the request by threatening to cut off funding. The House of Representatives is holding hearings this week on whether to continue financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Its principal witnesses are among the PA’s strongest critics, including Elliot Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state and former deputy national security advisor.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010