WEST BANK: 18 years after Oslo, Palestinians try a new tack

On Sept. 13, 1993, current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and current Israeli President Shimon Peres signed at the While House the so-called Oslo Accords, ushering in a new era and hopes of peace in the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The agreement was signed in the presence of President Bill Clinton, former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

At a news conference in Ramallah in the West Bank on Tuesday to talk about the Palestinians' latest U.N. statehood bid, Palestinian Authority negotiator Muhammad Shtayeh made reference to that agreement.

“The Oslo Accords was an interim agreement that should have reached a conclusion on May 4, 1999,” he said. “It was supposed to bring results through bilateral Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.”

However, 18 years later, as the Israeli occupation that was supposed to end more than 10 years ago remains in place and an independent Palestinian state is far from being a reality, the Palestinian Authority decided to try another course of action, asking the United Nations' 193 member states to recognize “Palestine” as member No. 194, based on the 1967 borders.

“The bilateral arrangement of Oslo is now taking us to the multilateral road, which is the U.N.,” said Shtayeh.

Whether the Palestinians will succeed in changing their fate remains to be seen when the Palestinian Authority formally asks the U.N. Security Council for recognition in a couple of weeks.

But as the date for submitting that application gets closer, Palestinians are coming under intense direct and indirect pressure from the U.S. and Europe to withdraw their initiative.

Well informed sources said the pressure seems to have made headway with at least some Arab countries upon which the Palestinians were counting for support in their bid.

Abbas traveled to Cairo on Monday to ask Arab foreign ministers meeting there for their support for the Palestinian application. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was also there for the exact opposite goal: to ask the Arabs to dissuade the Palestinians from proceeding with their move.

According to the sources, the U.S. and European pressure have persuaded some allies to discourage Abbas from proceeding with his U.N. adventure.

At his last news conference in Ramallah before traveling to New York to join the Palestinian delegation there to prepare the final documents for the statehood application, Shtayeh denied what he called “rumors” that the Palestinian Authority was backing down under Arab pressure.

He insisted that the plan was still on, and with the Security Council, not the General Assembly. He said Abbas was going to submit the application to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a couple of days before speaks before the General Assembly on Sept. 23. In that speech, said Shtayeh, Abbas would "ask the member states to recognize Palestine as a state on the 1967 borders."

However, as the U.S. has already announced that it would veto such a proposal if it comes up for discussion at the Security Council, Shtayeh said that this initiative was not a one-time effort. The Palestinians may resubmit the application a second, third or tenth time until it finally succeeds, he said.

That process, as in Oslo, may take years.

-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

LIBYA: Foreign embassies defect

Numerous Libyan embassies switched allegiances this week, with more declaring support for the rebel government Wednesday.

At the Libyan embassy in Manilla, Libyan diplomats and students smashed portraits of Moammar Kadafi, shouted “Game over!” and raised the rebel flag, the Associated Press reported, as Libyan Consul Faraj Zarroug said that about 85% of his country's 165 diplomatic missions now recognized the rebels' interim government, the National Transitional Council.

“It's game over for Mr. Kadafi!” Zarroug said. “Probably in a few days, everything will be over, hopefully. I'm very happy.”

In London, officials at the rebel-held Libyan embassy unveiled a new doormat Wednesday -- bearing Kadafi's image -- that proved popular on Twitter.

Libyan missions to Switzerland and Bangladesh switched soon after the rebellion in February, but embassy officials in Japan and Ethiopia only replaced the government flag with the rebels' tricolor on Monday, according to the Associated Press.

The Libyan ambassador to the African Union, Ali Awidan, said he raised the new rebel flag Monday, changing sides at the last moment.

“I was not serving Gadhafi, I have been serving Libya,” he told the Associated Press in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Abbas not deterred by U.S. threats regarding Palestinian state recognition

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, does not seem deterred by U.S. threats of financial cuts or political castigation if he proceeds with plans to ask the U.N. for recognition of a Palestinian state in September.

Abbas Wednesday summoned his Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council, a 120-strong legislative body in exile, to ask its blessings for his plans.

He complained that he had tried every avenue possible to resume negotiations, stressing that negotiations was his first and foremost option for resolving the decades old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But when everything failed, he was left with no other choice but to go to the U.N.

“We tried, at U.S. persistence, to relaunch negotiations on Sept. 2 [in Washington] but we were not successful. Then we went to Sharm el-Sheik [in Egypt] and to West Jerusalem, but again we did not succeed. The reason was always because [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] did not want to discuss anything other than security,” Abbas said.

EGYPT: Protecting King Tut's gold mask and other treasures

The Egyptian army secured Cairo's famed antiquities museum early Saturday, protecting treasures that include the famed gold mask of King Tutankhamun from looters.

The greatest threat to the Egyptian Museum first appeared to come from the fire engulfing the ruling party headquarters next door Friday night as anti-government protests roiled the country.

Then dozens of would-be thieves started entering the grounds surrounding the museum. Suddenly other young men — some armed with nightsticks taken from the police — formed a human chain outside the main gates on Tahrir Square in an attempt to protect the collection inside.

“I'm standing here to defend and to protect our national treasure,” said Farid Saad, a 40-year-old engineer.

Twenty-six year-old Ahmed Ibrahim said it was important to guard the museum because it “has 5,000 years of our history. If they steal it, we'll never find it again.”

Four armored vehicles eventually took up posts outside the massive coral-colored building in downtown Cairo. Soldiers surrounded the building and moved inside to protect mummies, monumental stone statues, ornate royal jewelry and other pharaonic artifacts.

— Associated Press

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EGYPT: Embassy in Venezuela briefly taken over by protesters

The Egyptian Embassy in Caracas was briefly taken over by protesters opposed to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said.

The protesters entered the embassy peacefully under the pretext of collecting documents, Chavez said, according to news reports. They reportedly left after speaking with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.

“They wanted to protest, of course, but they shouldn’t have done that because we are obliged to protect all of the embassies, which are sovereign territory,” Chavez said on state television.

 -- Times wire reports

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WEST BANK: More document leaks show U.S. pressure, Palestinian frustrations

Al Jazeera's latest leak of hundreds of secret Palestinian negotiating papers is providing the kind of fly-on-the-wall insights to Mideast peace talks that usually only emerge many years later in the autobiographies of politicians and diplomats.

Though some of the initial coverage and spin by Al Jazeera and other organizations has been inaccurate or out of context, the documents themselves offer a treasure trove of detailed information about Palestinians' internal strategy and tactics. Most of the documents were produced by the Palestinian Authority's own attorneys, advisors and negotiators and include transcripts of private strategy sessions and internal talking points. It's a bonanza for Israel, which can get a peek into the Palestinian thought process as recently as last year.

One December 2009 document discusses "Palestinian Messaging and Implementation." Another lays out the legal risks of a premature declaration of statehood. An internal summary of where peace talks last broke down reveals that Palestinians were prepared in 2008 to limit the number of returning refugees to 15,000 a year for 10 years, or 150,000.

EGYPT: Trouble in Tunisia dominates Arab Economic Summit

The uprising in Tunisia and the toppling of President Zine al Abidine ben Ali dominated the annual Arab Economic Summit, which opened Wednesday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh amid fears that unrest could ripple across the Middle East.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa said the economic, poverty and development problems in Tunisia echo throughout the region: "The recent events in Tunisia are an example of big social shocks that many Arab societies are exposed to," Moussa said. "It is on everyone's mind that the Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and a general slide in indicators."

IRAQ: Baghdad preparing to host Arab League summit in March

A visit to Baghdad by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa was a boost for Iraq ahead of its scheduled hosting in March of the next Arab League Summit.

The summit, if it is pulled off, would be a triumph for the Iraqi government, which has often been cold-shouldered by its Arab neighbors in the years after 2003, and has not hosted such a meeting in over 20 years. The relationship between Iraq and Saudi Arabia is notoriously cold. Nonetheless, Baghdad secured the right to host the summit and has moved forward with an intense campaign to accommodate the 22-member Arab states. Hotels are being refurbished and the government will have to prepare for any number of possible security threats, from mortars to suicide bombers.

Now, with less than three months to go before the March 23 event, Moussa cheered the Iraqi government on.

WEST BANK: Mitchell searching for 'common ground' to salvage negotiations

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who arrived Tuesday on a Mideast trip to try to salvage the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, seemed determined to continue his efforts to bridge the fast-growing gap between Israel and the Palestinians on the issue of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Mitchell held one round of separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the last couple of days. He will now hold a second round in the next couple of days with both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, looking for what he called “common ground between the parties” to salvage the month-old direct negotiations.

It is not yet clear whether he will succeed in bringing Abbas and Netanyahu together again at the same table, as was the case before the settlement freeze expired Sept. 26.

ARAB WORLD: Media take aim at Palestinian Authority over renewed settlement expansion

Images of Israeli settlers cheering as the first cement for a new foundation was poured dominated much of the Arabic news cycle on Monday, the day after a 10-month partial moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank expired.

The tone of the coverage was subdued but also pointed. Pan-Arab satellite channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Al Hurra reported that construction began "within hours" of the settlement freeze "despite" pleas from the United Nations for Israel to extend the ban.

Al Hurra, which is funded by the U.S. government, appeared to make a half-hearted attempt to highlight some Israeli opposition to the government's decision to allow the ban to expire, while the Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera focused on the current government's dependence on its right-wing base.

In the eyes of regional media, the resumption of settlement construction threatens to seriously undermine the Palestinian Authority, which recently entered into peace talks with the Jewish state despite widespread skepticism among Arabs. The authority has not pulled out of talks so far, but has already lost considerable face.

The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a scathing editorial on Sunday that basically accused the leadership of selling out the Palestinian cause.

"The settlers wasted no time beginning construction yesterday throughout the settlements, while [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government committed itself to silence and the Palestinian Authority, its leadership and spokesmen disappeared from view, and there was a hushed agreement with their Israeli counterparts not to make statements to the press," the editorial said.

SUDAN: Opposition journalists sentenced to prison

A Sudanese court on Thursday sentenced three journalists from an opposition newspaper to prison on charges of spreading hatred against the country, spying, terrorism and false reporting.

The journalists work for Rai Alshab, the newspaper of the Popular Congress Party, headed by Hassan Turabi, the country’s leading Islamic opposition figure. Columnist Abuzar Alamin was sentenced five years in prison for criticizing President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and describing the national elections in April as rigged. Ashraf Abdul-Aziz and Tahir Abujawhara were each sentenced to two years in jail on similar charges.

The newspaper had investigated allegations of electoral fraud -- a charge widely alleged by international human rights groups -- and printed photographs of juveniles voting in different parts of the country. The three journalists were arrested in May by security forces in Khartoum. They were reportedly tortured before they stood trial. 

SUDAN: Print more news, please

While newspapers in the U.S. and other countries are facing dwindling pages and Internet pressures, Sudan is taking a different approach: The government has ordered the nation’s dailies to print more pages.

The strategy seems odd in a country where about half the population can’t read, but the government of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir says it wants to promote the print media. Naturally, journalists are suspicious, and it appears that the intentions by the Sudanese Press and Publication Council are less about press freedom than making money.