Thursday, May 26, 2011

UPDATES: News and Links

 Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic arrested; Obama seeks state on '67 borders; Yemen's uprising turns deadlier


Ratko Mladic, Europe’s most wanted man and the former head of the Bosnian Serb army during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, was arrested in Serbia on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Mladic was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995 and charged with the killing, deportation and forcible transfer of non-Serbs as part of a wider ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia in 1992-3. The indictment against him charges that he was the mastermind behind Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. In the Srebrenica massacre, more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered.

He was one of two remaining fugitives still wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The other is Goran Hadzic, a former leader of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, believed to be hiding in Serbia.

Barack Obama addressed the changing contours of the Middle East during three policy speeches this week. During the first, the US president laid out his vision for the region and praised the Arab Spring pro-democracy movements.

The second speech was to AIPAC, in which Obama said US support for Israel was "ironclad" and affirmed that the US would block Palestinian efforts to declare statehood at the UN in September. Obama again endorsed the two-state solution, but called the recent unity deal between Fatah and Hamas "an enormous obstacle to peace".

Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu followed with a speech of his own to the US congress, rejecting a return to the 1967 borders and vowing he would not compromise on Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, undivided capital. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas criticised Netanyahu's speech and said in the absence of negotiations the Palestinians would pursue UN recognition of their state.

Obama's speech to the British parliament reaffirmed the historical ties between the US and the UK and addressed NATO's ongoing operation in Libya.

Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, called for the arrest of a dissident tribal chief, Sadiq al-Ahmar, following deadly clashes in Sanaa between forces loyal to the two rivals. Al-Ahmar, a vocal opponent of Saleh, is the leader of the Hashid tribe, which includes the president's tribe.

The threat of civil war loomed in Yemen, as violence spread from the capital, threatening to embroil the country in civil war. Heavy shelling this week targeted residential areas of Sanaa, following months of political unrest that has left scores dead. The death toll since Monday has neared 70.

President Saleh, 65-years-old, refused to sign a GCC-brokered exit pact that could have brought an end to his 32 years of rule within 30 days and made him immune from prosecution.

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