Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East Questions CMEP's Continuing Comments About Israeli / Palestinian Peace Proposals

NEW YORK, April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East questions a second statement appearing in the Churches for Middle East Peace ("CMEP") bulletin (April 8, 2011):  "[the Israeli] government has not yet responded to the Palestinian proposals on final status issues, presented two years ago to U.S. Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell."  Again, what exactly were these proposals?

In 2009 George Mitchell held discussions with Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in an unsuccessful attempt at relaunching direct peace talks.  Saeb Erekat reportedly gave Mitchell draft Palestinian Terms of Reference, which are assumptions on which negotiations would be based.  There were also (unsubstantiated) reports that Israeli representatives were presented with current Palestinian positions on core issues.  While both could have been useful if negotiations had begun, they were not peace proposals for Israel to respond to.
As Rev. Thomas A. Prinz, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Leesburg, Virginia and Fair Witness Executive Committee member points out, "One has to understand how the peace process works.  Ideas and positions are routinely exchanged.   But the only actual peace proposal put on the table in recent years came from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in late summer, 2008. Olmert offered a Palestinian state on 97 to 98% of the West Bank with safe passage to Gaza, 5,000 Palestinian refugees absorbed by Israel as a humanitarian gesture, a capital in East Jerusalem, Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty and the Holy Basin under international control."
According to PM Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas never responded to his offer. The documents in the Palestine Papers (published last January by Al Jazeera) support Olmert's claim. There have been no peace proposals made by either side since.
Fr. James Loughran, S.A., Director of the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute and Fair Witness Executive Committee member, says, "We should never present inaccurate versions of the peace process.  The role of the churches should be to help build an atmosphere of mutual trust that is the only hope for encouraging productive Israeli/Palestinian final status negotiations."

New Myanmar president hosts top Chinese official

Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Jia Qinglin (C) signs the guest book at the Shwedagon pagoda during his visit to Myanmar, in Yangon on April 4, 2011. Qinglin is on an official visit to Myanmar a few days after Myanmar's military made way for a nominally civilian government after almost half a century in power. -- PHOTO: AFP

YANGON (Myanmar) - A TOP official of China's ruling Communist Party has become the first high-ranking foreign visitor to meet with Myanmar's new president since a civilian government took office.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that Jia Qinglin, the Communist Party's fourth-highest ranking official, met with newly sworn-in President Thein Sein and pledged cooperation for political and economic development. Jia arrived Saturday for a four-day visit.

China has been the main ally of Myanmar, which is shunned by the West for its poor record on human rights and democracy.

Critics claim that last November's general election was unfair and meant to perpetuate military rule behind a democratic facade.

The new, nominally civilian government was sworn in March 30. -- AP

Vietnam dissident's attorneys file complaint

HANOI - THE defence team of a prominent Vietnamese dissident lawyer sentenced this week to prison has filed a complaint alleging the judge in his trial broke the law by obstructing their rights to hear all the evidence.

Cu Huy Ha Vu, 53, the well-known son of a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader, was sentenced to seven years in prison and three years under house arrest at the one-day trial on Monday on charges of conducting propaganda against the state.

One of Vu's four defence attorneys was ejected from the courtroom for repeatedly asking the judge to read in full or provide copies of 10 interviews Vu gave to foreign media, which were used as key evidence against him.

The three other attorneys walked out in protest, leaving Vu to defend himself.

In the complaint, posted at a popular dissident website and verified on Tuesday by lawyer Tran Dinh Trien, the defence team accused the judge of violating their rights as attorneys and the rights of their client by refusing to provide the full evidence.

'There has been a serious violation of laws during the investigation, prosecution and at the court,' said Mr Trien, one of the three lawyers who left the court in protest. 'According to the law, the evidence must be announced at the trial, but they did not. -- AP

Indonesian women repel armed Islamists

MEDAN - FURIOUS Indonesian women fought off a mob of armed Islamists after the religious fanatics tried to evict a mother and her newborn baby from a house, police and reports said on Tuesday.

Dozens of angry housewives forced the Islamists to flee for safety and attacked their leader's vehicle during the incident near Medan, northern Sumatra, reports said.

'What the housewives did here was spontaneous and it was because we care for our neighbours who are in trouble,' a witness identified as Evi was quoted as saying in the Jakarta Globe.

The melee erupted on Saturday when the women rushed to the defence of their neighbour, Nurhayati, and her two-week-old baby.

A group of about 12 stick-wielding men from the Islamic Defenders Front - a notoriously violent vigilante group that is tolerated by the authorities - had attacked her house over a land dispute.

Provincial Front leader Darma Bakti Ginting claims ownership of the land on which his cousin Nurhayati's house was built. -- AFP

Pakistan shrine suicide bombings kill 50

The device went off outside the shrine of Ahmed Sultan popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar in Dera Ghazi Khan district, local administration chief Iftikhar Sahu said. -- PHOTO: AFP

DERA GHAZI KHAN (Pakistan) - THE death toll rose to 50 on Monday after two suicide bombers unleashed carnage at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan where hundreds had gathered for a religious ceremony, officials said.

The bombers on Sunday struck the shrine of 13th century Sufi saint Ahmed Sultan, popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar, in Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab province, about 480km south-west of the capital Islamabad.

'We had 44 dead in our hospital. Six people died on the spot and their families took their bodies directly,' said Tariq Mehmood, an emergency ward official at Civil Hospital in Dera Ghazi Khan.

Local police officer Zahid Hussain Shah confirmed a death toll of 49. 'Most of the bodies have been identified and sent to their home towns for burial,' Mr Shah told AFP. It was the deadliest suicide attack in Pakistan since a mosque bombing killed 68 people on November 5 in the north-west area of Darra Adam Khel.

Islamist militants have increasingly targeted Sufi worshippers, who follow a mystical strain of Islam, in Muslim-majority Pakistan. Dera Ghazi Khan is close to the tribal area which is known as a hub of Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants. The rugged tribal region is described by Washington as the most dangerous place on Earth and an Al-Qaeda headquarters.

More than 4,200 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on homegrown Taleban and other Islamist extremist networks since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. -- AFP

Disasters put stress on children in Japan

Twenty-two-year-old mother Yoko Kamata sits with her baby Yuzuyu (left) and son Seiga (right) at a shelter in Kamaishi city in Iwate prefecture. -- PHOTO: AFP

KARAKUWA (Japan) - ZOOM in for a snapshot of apparent normalcy: children sitting in a circle, clasping playing cards tightly in their hands. They laugh, chat and occasionally hop up to break into a goofy dance.

Zoom out and the picture changes: The children are kneeling on mattresses in a chilly classroom they now call home. An elderly woman cries nearby, wondering whether her mother was killed by Japan's tsunami. Outside the school, a teacher fiddles with a radiation detector, checking to ensure the levels aren't high enough to make them sick - or worse.

Behind the smiling faces of thousands of children in shelters across this wave-battered wasteland, experts say there is often serious anxiety as everything these youngsters once held as normal is suddenly anything but.

'That's what is so wonderfully adaptive about children. They can move very easily into playing or laughing,' says psychologist Susie Burke, a disaster response specialist with the Australian Psychological Society. 'But that's not saying they're not deeply distressed and upset about what's going on.'

Reminders of the tiniest victims are scattered throughout the wreckage: a little girl's white shoe caked in mud, a red rubber ball coated in dust, a sodden comic book whose ink has run.

As many as 25,000 people may have been killed in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's north-east coast and damaged a nuclear plant, sending radiation spewing into the environment. Tens of thousands are still living in shelters. -- AP

Japan may review 2020 emission cut target

Japan's Prime Minister walks past his spokesperson and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. Mr Edano said the Japanese government has yet to decide whether to review its goals for cutting greenhouse gases. -- PHOTO: AP

TOKYO - JAPAN may review its emission reduction pledge for 2020 after a massive quake and tsunami last month set off a crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japanese media quoted a senior environment ministry official as saying.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano later said the government has yet to decide whether to review its goals for cutting greenhouse gases, as it still needs to understand the overall impact of the nuclear crisis and the prospects for post-quake reconstruction.

Japan's atomic crisis after the March 11 quake and tsunami has stretched to more than three weeks with engineers struggling to cool down the troubled nuclear plant in Fukushima, in north-east Japan, and to contain radiation leaks.

'It is true that our reduction target will be affected significantly,' Hideki Minamikawa, vice-minister for global environmental affairs, was quoted by the Yomiuri newspaper as telling reporters in Bangkok on Sunday. 'The target year and the size of the reduction will be up for review,' he added.

Speaking at a news conference, Mr Edano, also the top government spokesman, said Tokyo would need to look at the impact of the disaster on a variety of industries and policies, including those on climate change. But he added: 'At the moment, we have not decided whether to review the target and we are not at a stage where we can make a decision.'

Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto last week said Japan had no immediate plan to review its 2020 pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels, in the first official comment about whether the nuclear crisis had boosted the country's need for power from fossil fuels. -- REUTERS