Tokyo—Japan’s
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Friday said he
does not plan to make a decision on the
relocation of a controversial US military base
before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo next
week. Hatoyama’s centre-left government, which
took power in September, has promised to review
a pact under which a new US base would be built
on southern Okinawa island, while Washington has
insisted Tokyo stick to the agreement. The issue
has clouded ties ahead of Obama’s visit next
Thursday and Friday.
Riyadh—Saudi Arabia
said on Friday it will keep up its offensive
against Yemeni rebels until it has cleared them
from its territory after gunmen infiltrated the
kingdom and attacked border guards. A Saudi
government adviser said Riyadh had launched
heavy air strikes on rebels in northern Yemen
after the Shi’ite insurgents’ cross-border raid
this week. But the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said
on Friday the strikes were “focused on in-filtrators
in Jabal Dukhan and other targets within the
range of operations within Saudi territory.”
Jerusalem—Israel is keen on
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas staying in
office despite his announcement that he will not
seek re-election, officials said on Friday, as
the Arab League urged the moderate to
reconsider. The Israeli government has refrained
from officially commenting on Abbas’s an-nouncement
late on Thursday that he would not stand in the
Palestinian general election he has called for
January. “This is an internal (Palestinian)
affair,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon
told public radio. “We don’t interfere in
others’ internal affairs. “But it is evident
that Israel and the United States are interested
in a Pales-tinian leadership that is responsible
and pragmatic,” he said. A senior Israeli
official told AFP that hawkish Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu sees Abbas “as a partner for
peace.”
Moscow—The head of Russia’s
powerful military intelligence agency said
Thursday that Georgia might again attack South
Ossetia, the pro-Moscow region over which the
two countries fought a war last year. Alexander
Shlyakhturov, who in April took over command of
the GRU - the Russian acronym for Russia’s Chief
Intelligence Agency - said the situation was
strained and accused Nato of continuing to
supply arms to Georgia.
TWENTY years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Helmut Kohl’s dream of a united Germany leading
to a politically united Europe remains
unfinished business. It is set to stay that way
despite the expected entry into force of the
European Union’s Lisbon Treaty in the near
future. German unification triggered possibly
the last great leap forward in European
integration, with the landmark agreement in
Maastricht in 1991 to establish an economic and
monetary union with a single currency and a
common foreign and se-curity policy. Resistance
by Eurosceptical Britain and reluctance by
France to share more sov-ereignty prevented the
EU moving any further towards Kohl’s dream of a
full po-litical union akin to Germany’s own
federal system of governance.
