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...

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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...

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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 passin...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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