Kuwait to try two over Twitter posts: official

Kuwait will put on trial two citizens for criticizing Gulf Arab ruling families on social media site Twitter, a security official said on Monday.

Nasser Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi'ite Muslim, was arrested for posting criticisms of the Sunni Muslim ruling families in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and Lawrence al-Rashidi posted defamatory comments of Kuwait's emir, he said.

He said both would remain in detention for two more weeks before a hearing is scheduled, where they will likely face charges of harming the Gulf Arab state's interests and defaming the country's ruler after being arrested earlier in June.

Democracy activists have used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to debate, organize and share information in Bahrain, where the kingdom's Sunni rulers crushed a protest movement in March led mostly by the country's Shi'ite majority.

Bahrain called in troops from Sunni-led neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enforce its crackdown. OPEC member Kuwait, which has a Shi'ite minority, sent naval forces.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/us-kuwait-twitter-idUSTRE75Q1UH20110627

Osama bin Laden praises Arab spring in posthumously released tape

A tape recorded by Osama bin Laden before his death in an American special forces raid earlier this month has been posthumously released onto Islamic militant websites.

The message, recorded some time in the ten weeks before the 54-year-old al-Qaida leader was killed in Pakistan on May 2, praises the "Arab Spring" protest movements across the Middle East and predicts that revolutions will spread.

"I think that the winds of change will blow over the entire Muslim world, God willing," bin Laden said in the 12-minute message.

The message, though a video clip, contains only an audio track and an old photo of the terrorist leader, probably indicating that it was designed to be edited with images but that al-Qaida media technicians were either unable to do so or that a decision was taken to upload the tape quickly.

The senior al-Qaida leadership were caught out by the unrest in the Arab World this spring and had difficulty framing an effective response to an outpouring of enthusiasm for democracy and pluralism.

In deposing President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine el Abedine ben Ali in Tunisia, protestors achieved fundamental aims of al-Qaida itself without violence.

In the recording, Bin Laden accused rulers in the Middle East of building themselves into idols and manipulating the media to stay in power.

Al-Qaida figures have frequently blamed the media for the failure of the majority of Muslims to heed its call to arms.

"So, what are you waiting for?" Bin Laden asked in the most recent tape. "Save yourselves and your children, because the opportunity is here."

Bin Laden, who is thought to have been living in a three-storey house in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad for up to five years, spoke in high rhetorical language and avoided the more violent or apocalyptic language of many previous statements.

A full transcript of the tape is yet to be made available but bin Laden appears not to have threatened the West directly as has previously often been the case.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/osama-bin-laden-tape-posthumous-arab-spring

Clinton: Arab resolution on Israeli settlements submitted to UN not helpful

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the State Department in Washington

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved through direct peace negotiations, not by submitting resolutions to the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlements, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

The United States has opposed a move by Arab countries to bring a resolution condemning the settlement, but has not said it would use its veto to block passage.

Clinton told reporters the issue needs to be resolved through direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, even as the United States has also condemned continued settlement construction.

"We dont see action in the United Nations or any other forum as being helpful in bringing about that desired outcome," she said, before adding that the United States is "working to keep the focus where we think it needs to be, and thats not in New York."

Early indications are the resolution, tabled on Wednesday had nearly unanimous support, but it likely will not come to a vote for a few weeks.

U.S.-brokered direct talks ended in September - just weeks after they began - when an Israeli moratorium on settlement building expired. The Palestinians have demanded a freeze as a condition for holding the negotiations.

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http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/clinton-arab-resolution-on-israeli-settlements-submitted-to-un-not-helpful-1.338303

Arab Nations to Seek UN Pressure on Israel to Stop Settlement Construction

A Palestinian man is seen through a water pipe as he gestures while removing rubble after an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 21, 2010. Israel carried out a series of air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, after militants from the Hamas-ruled territory fired rockets into southern Israel.

Arab nations and the Palestinian Authority are set to ask the United Nations Security Council to demand that Israel halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A draft resolution demanding that Israel “immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities” was to be given to the Security Council’s 15 member governments late yesterday or today, Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said in an interview.

The Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said that U.S. diplomats told him that the Obama administration opposes having the Security Council take up a resolution on the settlements issue. The U.S. mission to the UN didn’t respond to a request for a public comment on the draft resolution.

“The only road to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is through direct negotiations,” Israel’s Ambassador Meron Reuben said yesterday in an e-mail. “Palestinian attempts to bypass this road only move us further away from returning to the negotiation table. We hope that the international community won’t allow these moves to divert both sides from reaching the real goal: peace and stability in our region.”

The Security Council move stems from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s instructions last month to Mansour to begin talks in New York on a draft resolution.

Mansour said in an interview that the text was being distributed now so that Security Council members could study it over the next 10 days before formal talks are held in January. He said about 35 nations have agreed to co-sponsor the draft, which also condemns the continuation of settlement activity as illegal and a “major obstacle” to peace.

‘No Movement’

“We have to move on this track because there is no movement on any front,” Abdelaziz said. “We have a crisis situation. The Israelis have rejected the American proposal for a settlement freeze and they continue every day with settlement activity.”

The U.S. decided early this month to stop pressuring Israel to renew a moratorium on West Bank settlement construction. Palestinians refused to return to talks without an extension of the freeze, which expired in September.

The Arabs may have up to 14 votes for the draft resolution in the 15-member Security Council, and recognize that the measure would probably be defeated by a U.S. veto, said Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya’s deputy ambassador to the UN.

“If it gets 14 votes, they will put it to a vote,” Dabbashi said. “We know finally it will not pass.”

Libya introduced a similar draft resolution when it had a seat on the Security Council two years ago, but didn’t put the text to a vote.

“The situation is different now,” Dabbashi said. “Now there is practically no peace process. It is at a standstill. At the time, there was not an overwhelming majority to put it to a vote. It was not only the U.S. This time we feel it should have 14 votes.”

New Members

Abdelaziz said the entry of India and South Africa onto the Security Council as non-permanent members on Jan. 1 will create a body that will be “much in favor of movement” on the draft. The U.S., he said, might abstain rather than veto.

“Are the Americans even a little bit offended that the Israelis are brushing them aside all the time?” Abdelaziz said. “We will ask them to abstain.”

He said the Arabs haven’t received any signal from the Obama administration that abstention was a possibility.

About 500,000 Jews have moved to the West Bank and Jerusalem since Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Middle East war. The UN says the settlements are illegal, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says they breach the Fourth Geneva Convention governing actions on occupied territory.

Israel says the settlements don’t fall under the convention because the territory wasn’t recognized as belonging to any country before the 1967 war, in which Israel prevailed, and therefore isn’t occupied.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/arabs-to-seek-un-demand-for-end-to-israeli-settlement-building.html