Catalysts for peace: three women receive Nobel Prize

OSLO: Liberia’s president, a fellow Liberian and a Yemeni activist received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo Saturday for showing how women facing war and oppression can shed the mantle of victimhood and lead the way to peace and democracy.

“You represent one of the most important motive forces for change in today’s world: the struggle for human rights in general and the struggle of women for equality and peace in particular,” Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland said before handing out the prestigious award.

At the lavish ceremony in a colourfully flower-decked Oslo city hall, and with Norway’s royal family and other dignitaries in attendance, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her compatriot and “peace warrior” Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni “Arab Spring” activist Tawakkol Karman received their gold medal and diploma.

“You give concrete meaning to the Chinese proverb which says that ‘women hold up half of the sky’,” Jagland told the laureates.

As Syrian security forces killed more civilians Saturday, the Nobel Committee chief said the laureates’ work should serve as a warning to autocratic leaders such as those in Syria and Yemen.

“The leaders in Yemen and Syria who murder their people to retain their own power should take note of the following: mankind’s quest for freedom and human rights can never stop,” Jagland said.

Gbowee, a 39-year-old social worker who led Liberia’s women to defy feared warlords and bring an end to her country’s bloody 1989-2003 civil war, hailed the Nobel Committee for shining the spotlight on women’s struggle for peace and human rights, insisting “this prize could not have come at a better time than this.” “It has come at a time when in many societies where women used to be the silent victims and objects of men’s powers, women are throwing down the walls of repressive traditions with the invincible power of non-violence,” Gbowee, wearing a colourful headdress, said in her acceptance speech.

“Women are using their broken bodies from hunger, poverty, desperation and destitution to stare down the barrel of the gun,” she said, noting that “ordinary mothers are no longer begging for peace, but demanding peace, justice, equality and inclusion in political decision-making.”

Gbowee, a mother of six who inspired Christian and Muslim women alike to wage a sex strike in 2002 and refuse to sleep with their husbands until the violence ended, pointed out that “we succeeded when no one thought we would, we were the conscience of the ones who had lost their consciences.” Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected woman president who last month won a second term, also hailed the Nobel Committee’s focus on women’s struggles after the world in recent decades has witnessed “unprecedented levels of cruelty directed against women” in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and her own Liberia.

“The number of our sisters and daughters of all ages brutally defiled over the past two decades staggers the imagination, and the number of lives devastated by such evil defies comprehension,” she said.

But in the face of such adversity, women still dare to stand up and fight for peace, said the 73-year-old grandmother, wearing a majestic purple dress and headdress.

“Find your voice! Raise your voice! Let yours be a voice for freedom!” she said.

An example of someone who found a powerful voice despite almost insurmountable odds is Karman, who at 32 is the youngest person to win the Peace Prize and the first Arab woman to receive a Nobel in any category.

The journalist and mother of three, wearing a white headscarf with a lilac and green pattern, expressed confidence that the “Arab Spring” uprising would succeed even in her country, where she helped push 33-year-ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down early next year.

“I see on the horizon a glimpse of a new world,” she said, according to an English translation of her speech given in Arabic.

Karman however expressed frustration with the lack of Western support for the Yemen uprising.

“I should note that it did not get the international understanding, support or attention of the other revolutions in the region. This should haunt the world’s conscience,” she said, calling on the “democratic world, which has told us a lot about the virtues of democracy and good governance,” to support people struggling for freedom.

“All of that is just hard labour during the birth of democracy which requires support and assistance, not fear and caution,” she said.

Jagland meanwhile stressed the importance of women in the uprisings.

“The promising Arab Spring will become a new winter if women are again left out,” he cautioned.

At a separate ceremony in Stockholm, the winners of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Economics were to receive their prizes later Saturday.

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Libya ready to forgive Qadhafi fighters: NTC chief

TRIPOLI: Libya’s new rulers are ready to forgive the forces of slain leader Muammar Qadhafi who battled rebels trying to topple his autocratic regime, National Transition Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Saturday.

“In Libya we are able to absorb all. Libya is for all,” Abdel Jalil said in Tripoli as he launched a national reconciliation conference organised by the NTC.

“Despite what the army of the oppressor did to our cities and our villages, our brothers who fought against the rebels as the army of Qadhafi and we are ready to forgive them,” he said.

“We are able to forgive and tolerate,” he added.

The conference, the first of its kind since the NTC on October 23 declared the total liberation of Libya, was attended by delegates from the major Libyan tribes and ethnic groups, as well as from Qatar and Tunisia.

Libya’s new interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib echoed Abdel Jalil.

“National reconciliation is an essential condition to build the constitutional institutions of a state,” he told the conference.

“The future cannot be built with revenge as a base.”

Kib announced his government on November 22, just a month after the capture and lynching of Kadhafi who ruled the country with an iron fist for 42 years.

A statement issued last month said the new government will help efforts by the NTC “to achieve national reconciliation” in Libya.

It will also strive to rebuild the army and the security forces and promote “the integration of interested citizens into these institutions,” said the statement.

Meanwhile Kib’s government is under heavy pressure to disarm hundreds of former rebels who toppled Kadhafi’s regime and who are now enforcing security on the streets.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said after the death of Kadhafi on October 20 that for the transitional authorities in Libya “inclusion and pluralism must be the watchwords,” urging all sides to avoid revenge attacks.

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Five Afghans killed in three blasts across country

KABUL: Afghan authorities say five civilians have died in three explosions in southern and northern Afghanistan.

Spokesman for the southern Kandahar province Zalmai Ayubi says the first explosion occurred Saturday morning in Khakrez district, when a four-wheel-drive taxi in a rural area hit a roadside bomb, killing three civilians.

In neighboring Maiwand district, an Afghan man was killed when his motorcycle hit a road mine Saturday morning.

In the north, a government transportation director was killed in an explosion midday Saturday.

Police spokesman in Kunduz province Sarwar Hussini says 16 others were wounded when a remote-controlled bomb planted on a bicycle detonated as the official’s car was passing.

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Afghan war not becoming sectarian war: Ryan Crocker

KABUL: The US ambassador to Afghanistan said Saturday that he does not think this week’s deadly suicide bombing at a Shia shrine in Kabul will spark a sectarian war between religious groups in the country.

In a briefing with reporters at the US Embassy in Kabul, Ryan Crocker also said he believed that the attack was likely to have been planned in Pakistan.

”I do not see this turning into a sectarian conflict just looking at the reactions on the part of the Shia leadership, calling for calm,” Crocker said.

He said that Tuesday’s attack, which killed 56 people and wounded more than 160 others, might have been orchestrated by a consortium of militant groups outside the country.

”Virtually every significant attack I’m aware of — where I have gotten some information — either came out of tribal areas in Pakistan or (the southern Pakistani region of) Balochistan. There does indeed seem to be a pattern,” he said.

Many in Afghanistan blame the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi for the attack, which occurred on the last day of Ashoura, a Shia festival marking the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.

Crocker, who spent three years as US ambassador to Pakistan, said he could not say authoritatively that the bombing was carried by Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

He said that the group was weak, and he doubted that the group had any Afghan affiliate.

”They were a pretty seriously weakened organisation when I was there (in Pakistan),” he said. ”It could have been a consortium, but I don’t think it was a consortium that was put together in this country.”

There have been bombings at mosques and other religious sites in Afghanistan before, but this one was different because it was aimed at Shias gathered to commemorate Ashoura. It was the first major sectarian attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime a decade ago.

Crocker noted that many Afghan leaders from various ethnic factions reacted by saying, ”We’re all Afghans together — Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns.”’

”I am struck by the reaction — the Afghan reaction — which is what makes me think that whoever the architects were — they don’t have much Afghan support. I was really struck by the reaction by the palace, the president cutting his trip short, and then every single community saying ‘We denounce this, this is an act of terrorism.”’

Crocker said he did not know whether the Pakistan-based Haqqani network was involved. The Haqqani network has been blamed on several previous attacks in the Afghan capital.

”As we have all seen, the Haqqanis have been the most lethal, the most effective in delivering ordnance on target, but I’ve got nothing that says they were a part of this,” he said.

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Karzai will not seek third term: spokesman

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not secretly planning to change the country’s constitution to seek a third term in power, his spokesman insisted on Saturday.

Recent media reports, citing a document set out by Germany’s foreign intelligence service, said Karzai was seeking special dispensation to guide the country through uncertainty after Nato ends its combat mission in 2014.

But Aimal Faizi said Karzai, the only leader in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban, was not planning to change the constitution, which allows two terms as president.

“Karzai has no intention to remain in power after his second term,” Faizi told AFP.

“The president has made it very clear, including in his loya jirga speech, that he will not run again,” he said, referring to a speech at a traditional gathering of elders last month.

“He has no plan to run again. He’d rather give the chance to someone new.

“We dismiss the recent media reports citing some intelligence that said President Karzai is running for a third time,” Faizi said.

Karzai was sworn in as interim leader of Afghanistan in December 2001, shortly after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban.

In 2004, he won the country’s first direct presidential elections with 55.4 per cent of the vote.

But his re-election in 2009 was mired in allegations of corruption, in which challenger Abdullah Abdullah abandoned a second-round run-off and investigators threw out a third of Karzai’s original votes because of fraud.

Karzai has previously also denied rumours he is planning to cling to power when his second term comes to an end in three years’ time.

Some 140,000 international troops are stationed in Afghanistan but all Nato-led combat forces are due to leave by the end of 2014, when Kabul will assume full responsibility for the country’s security.

While Western officials in the capital praise the transition process so far, they acknowledge that challenges remain, including Afghan government corruption, a weak state and the lack of a properly functioning justice system.

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India probes hospital fire as death toll reaches 90

KOLKATA: Indian police were on Saturday investigating the cause of a fire that killed 90 people in a hospital in Kolkata when poisonous fumes spread from the blaze in the building’s basement.

Patients were lowered down the outside of the hospital on ropes after the fire broke out in the early hours of Friday at the privately-run AMRI hospital, engulfing the multi-storey premises in thick smoke.

Firefighters and staff smashed glass windows to evacuate some of the 160 patients, with local media alleging that fire alarms and extinguishers had not been working.

“In all, 90 bodies have been extricated from the hospital. 88 of these bodies have been identified and handed over to the relatives,” Damayanti Sen, joint commissioner of police, told AFP on Saturday.

Sen, who is heading the team appointed to investigate the tragedy, added that all the deaths were due to the inhalation of toxic fumes which filled the wards in the middle of the night. Four staff were among the dead.

Initial investigations suggested the fire might have been started by a short circuit in the basement, which was used to store oxygen cylinders, plastic pipes, fibre coils, chemicals and medical equipment.

Fire engines had trouble reaching the hospital, which is surrounded by narrow roads, while hundreds of angry and distraught relatives gathered outside during the rescue operation.

Javed Khan, head of the fire service in West Bengal state — of which Kolkata is the capital — said the incident suggested gross negligence and serious violations of safety norms.

“There was a fire in 2008 in the same hospital and we are trying to probe how the authorities got their fire licence renewed,” Khan told AFP.

Six senior executives from the two companies that co-owned the hospital were due to appear in court later Saturday.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who visited the site on Friday, said they could face charges of culpable homicide.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh voiced his “shock and anguish” at the heavy loss of life.

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US, Britain voice concern as deaths mount in Syria

DAMASCUS: Syrian forces killed another 24 people in flashpoint cities on Friday, rights activists said, as the opposition warned of an impending “massacre” by regime troops ringing the central protest hub Homs.

The United States and Britain separately voiced concern over the bloodletting in Homs, where 11 of Friday’s deaths occurred, and Washington urged President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to allow independent monitors into the country in line with an Arab League peace plan.

Damascus, which blames “armed terrorist gangs” for the violence, meanwhile appealed to the international community to help it find an “honourable exit” to the crisis, notably by stopping the flow of weapons into Syria.

On the ground, four children were among 24 people killed when regime forces opened fire in several cities across the country after the weekly Muslim prayers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Observatory said 11 civilians were killed in and around Homs, while five died near Damascus, two in Daraa, cradle of anti-regime protests since March, four in the restive city of Hama and two in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Pro-democracy activists had called on citizens to turn out in support of a “dignity strike which will lead to the sudden death of this tyrant regime.”

An Arab League ministerial task force was due to meet on Saturday in Qatar to mull a response to Syria after it refused to allow observers on its territory.

The pan-Arab bloc, who last month suspended Syria’s membership and hit it with sweeping sanctions, has warned it of more punitive measures unless it complies.

The opposition Syrian National Council warned of a looming bloody final assault on Homs using the pretext of what the regime had called a “terrorist” attack on Thursday on an oil pipeline.

“The regime (is) paving the way to commit a massacre in order to extinguish the revolution in Homs,” said the SNC, a coalition of Assad opponents.

Homs, an important central junction city of 1.6 million residents mainly divided along confessional lines, is a tinderbox of sectarian tensions that the SNC said the regime was trying to exploit.

“The regime has tried hard to ignite the sectarian conflict using many dirty methods, which have included bombing and burning mosques, torturing and killing young men, and kidnapping women and children,” the SNC said.

Witnesses in Homs, already besieged for months, have reported a buildup of troops and pro-regime “shabiha” militiamen in armoured vehicles who have set up more than 60 checkpoints, the SNC said.

“These are all signs of a security crackdown operation that may reach the level of a total invasion of the city,” it added, calling for international organisations to take action.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Assad would be responsible for any further deaths and expressed Washington’s deep concern for developments in Homs.

“There are reports today that the government may be preparing a very serious new assault on the city of Homs in a very large-scale way,” said Nuland.

London echoed Washington’s concern, with Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt saying: “The Syrian government should immediately withdraw its forces from Homs and exercise restraint.”

The regime’s crackdown on dissent since mid-March has hit Homs particularly hard and activists say a great number of defecting soldiers have set up camp there to protect the protest movement.

“Our view is that President Assad bears responsibility for what the security forces of his country do, despite his comments to the contrary on television,” Nuland said.

Assad, speaking to ABC News this week, denied responsibility for the bloodshed.

He drew a distinction between himself and the military, saying only a “crazy” leader would kill his own people.

But Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi told a news conference in Damascus Friday evening that ABC had “distorted” Assad’s comments.

“It deliberately deformed the president’s words by airing videos (of violence) to incite” action against Syria, said Makdisi.

He said Assad was “appalled by the ongoing violence” and has promised “accountability”, adding that Damascus needed international help to stop the flow of weapons into the country as a way to end the unrest.

“We are appealing to the outside world and our brothers in the Arab world to help Syria (prevent the) channelling (of) weapons” into the country, Makdisi said, speaking in English.

“If we all work together we can find an honourable exit to the crisis.”

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and UN human rights chief Navi Pillay both hit back at Assad’s claim that the United Nations had inflated its figures for the number of people killed in the crackdown.

“All the credible information is that more than 4,000 people have been killed by the government forces,” Ban said in Kenya.

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