EGYPT: Clerics enraged by Swiss minarets ban

New legislation prohibiting the building of minarets on top of mosques in Switzerland has been met by strong condemnation from Egypt's grand religious mufti as well as top Islamic clerics.

A nationwide referendum in Switzerland on Sunday, which was called for by the rightist Swiss People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union, saw 57% of the population vote in favor of banning the construction of minarets. Only four Swiss mosques had minarets as of the referendum's date.

"This proposal ... is not considered just an attack on freedom of beliefs, but also an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community in and outside Switzerland," Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said. "I call on all Muslims not to be affected by this provocation but I encourage Swiss Muslims to use dialogue and legal means to ban the contest," he added.

IRAN: Scholarship honoring slain protester Neda Agha-Soltan irks Iranian officials

Iranian officials are up in arms over a decision by The Queen's College at the University of Oxford in Britain to establish a scholarship fund in memory of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 27-year-old Iranian woman whose videotaped June 20 death at the hands of an unknown gunman made her an international symbol of Iran's opposition movement. 

Iran's Embassy in Britain formally condemned the decision.  In a letter to the school's chancellor, the embassy called it a ploy to attract students. 

"It was a politically-motivated move," said the letter, cited in an article on the website of Iran's Press TV. "It seems that Oxford University is involved in a criminal case, which is still under investigation by the Iranian police."

Iranian officials have suggested her death was caused by foreign operatives seeking to sully the image of the Islamic Republic.

EGYPT: Antiquities Council cuts ties with Louvre

Egypt this week severed cultural and artistic ties with the Louvre museum in Paris until the French government returns artifacts taken decades ago from a tomb in Luxor. The move follows Egypt's recent international embarrassment over the rejection of Cultural Minister Farouk Hosni to head the Paris-based United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.      

Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities, said on Wednesday that the Louvre had failed to return five painted wall fragments that were stolen from a tomb in Luxor in the 1980s before they ended up in the French museum in 2002 and 2003.

"The Louvre bought the relics knowing they were stolen," Hawass said. "Acts like these show that unfortunately some museums encourage the stealing and ruining of Egyptian antiques. All seminars and lectures that we held in collaboration with the museum will be stopped until those artifacts are restored. We will similarly suspend the Louvre's expedition works currently held in Saqqara, Giza."

IRAN: Swiss leak word of secret U.S.-Iranian talks

For six years, groups of American and Iranian academics and others have been secretly traveling to Geneva and other European cities for closed-door brainstorming sessions on how to break through three decades of hostility between the two nations, a Swiss newspaper is reporting. 

According to a lengthy and detailed report in the French-language Swiss daily Le Temps, the informal series of meetings took place with the full knowledge of authorities in Washington and Tehran.

About 400 people have taken part in the discussions -- called the "Track II" process -- including experts and scholars from Europe, the Arab world and Israel. None of the participants would speak on the record about the meetings.

But Switzerland's foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, told reporters that her government was fully aware of the contacts, the last of which took place from March 6 to 8.

"The talks are on a purely informal level and the foreign ministry is not involved,"  she said, according to an English-language report on the website of Swiss public broadcasting.

IRAN: Germans in talks with Tehran for Afghanistan support, says report

 

 

Iran's official news agency is reporting that German contractors are in talks with Iranians to use the Islamic Republic's territory to ship supplies to North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan.  

“The German sides negotiating with Iran are representatives of private firms that provide foodstuff and fuel for the German forces serving at NATO units in Afghanistan," said an unnamed German military official quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency's Berlin bureau. “These companies are after finding alternative routes from Pakistan to forward those goods to Afghanistan.”

The sourcing is sketchy, but there have been mutterings about such talks in the German media  for days. Perhaps more important, the report by IRNA suggests Iran wants, or at least is eager to give the impression that it wants, to be helpful to the American-led war in Afghanistan. 

MIDDLE EAST: Maker of Dutch film "Fitna" to face trial

The movie provoked anger among Muslims all over the world last year. 

But the Dutch maker of “Fitna,” a short film that equated Islam with terrorism, had managed to escape legal troubles.

No longer.

The right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders will have to answer to a Dutch court for what advocates said were his statements that incited hatred and discrimination against Muslims.

EGYPT: Paris exhibit chronicles Napoleon's encounter with the Pharaohs

A brash young Western leader, fresh off a traumatic national crisis, invades a Middle East country, ostensibly to spread democratic ideals. Instead he winds up violently resented by the locals and strengthening his rivals, who immediately exploit his weaknesses.

No, we’re not talking about George W. Bush and his post-Sept. 11 war against Iraq, but Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general whose forces invaded and briefly occupied Egypt nine years after a cataclysmic revolution.

His late 18th century adventures in the land of the Pharaohs are chronicled and dissected at a fascinating and extensive exhibit of paintings, manuscripts and artifacts, "Bonaparte and Egypt" at the gigantic Institut du Monde Arab along the Seine River in Paris.

Napoleon said he wanted to liberate Egyptians from the tyrannical rule of the Mamluk dynasty. But he also wanted to find another route to access to the east and undercut Britain's near-monopoly on trade with India.

At first, the Egyptians welcomed Napoleon as a liberator when he and his forces arrived on July 1, 1798, easily defeating the Mamluk forces.

IRAN: If no sanctions and no war, then what?

Iran has managed to escape sanctions, but it didn't walk away completely unscathed from the latest United Nations General Assembly meeting.

The U.N. Security Council over the weekend passed a largely symbolic resolution against Iran for its refusal to stop producing enriched uranium, a key step in a certain type of nuclear weapons program, as well as in producing fuel for peaceful power generation.

The five-paragraph resolution reaffirmed four previous resolutions containing three sets of sanctions and urged Iran to comply with U.N. demands "without delay."

Of course Iran was flabbergasted.

Its office at the U.N. issued a news release calling the unanimous move "unfortunate" and an "unpleasant surprise" for the whole world. Iran downgraded its participation in an International Atomic Energy Agency conference set to begin today, a reminder that it could also boot U.N. arms inspectors out of the country if it's pushed too hard.

But the resolution fell far short of the harsh punitive sanctions the U.S. and Israel wanted. With veto-wielding Russia virtually ruling out the possibility of even mild sanctions, it was the best deal they could get, affirming the Bush administration's ninth-inning conversion to the type of painstaking multilateral consensus-building it decried during its first years in power.

LIBYA: Making Italians pay $5 billion for their colonial past

Is Italy really trying to clear its conscience for its colonial past? Last weekend, the Italian government made a generous offer to Libya to redeem itself for decades of military occupation.

According to the terms of a "friendship and cooperation" deal sealed Saturday between the European country and the oil-rich North African nation, Italy will invest $200 million a year during the next 25 years in infrastructure projects in Libya. The deal also calls for student grants and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served alongside Italians during World War II.

Other European nations with colonial pasts, including France, Britain and the Netherlands, carry out developmental projects in African and Asian countries they once colonized.

But Italy made a point of framing its assistance to Libya as an apology for colonizing the country in the 1930s before it won its independence in 1951.

As he signed the accord, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters during a visit Saturday to the second-largest Libyan city, Benghazi:

This agreement should put an end to 40 years of discord. It is a concrete and moral acknowledgment of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era.

LIBYA: Gaddafi son's arrest leads to oil embargo on Swiss

Libya does not react lightly to authorities in another country getting in the way of its leader’s son.

The brief detention by the Swiss police of the youngest son of Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal, last week for allegedly beating two of his servants in a luxury hotel has sparked a serious international row between Switzerland and the North African nation.

Libya decided Thursday to cut its oil shipments to Switzerland as a result. The state-run shipping company threatened to take more actions against the Swiss if they do not apologize for the arrest.