Diplomacytoday

Sunday, 1 November 2015

Blair denies ministers were told to 'burn' Iraq war legal advice

Tony Blair has denied reports that ministers were instructed to ‘burn’ a report questioning the legality of the Iraq war less than three weeks before British forces invaded the country.
The Mail on Sunday quotes an unnamed senior No 10 figure saying that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, presented a 13-page legal opinion on 7 March 2003 that suggested the war could be challenged under international law because of the lack of UN backing.
The paper’s source says: “There was pandemonium. The date when war was expected to start was already in the diary, and here was Goldsmith saying it could be challenged under international law. They said ‘burn it, destroy it’ and got to work on the [attorney general].”
A spokesperson for the former prime minister said that to Blair’s knowledge the reports were “nonsense”. “No one ever said that in his presence and in any event it would be quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy any such document,” they said.
“Mr Blair and Lord Goldsmith dealt with all the circumstances surrounding the advice at the [Iraq] inquiry at length and with all the documents. The fact is the advice given was that the action was legal and it was given for perfectly good reasons.”
On Thursday, Sir John Chilcot announced he would publish his long-awaited report into the Iraq war in June or July next year, giving government officials up to three months to carry out national security checks on its findings. In a letter to the prime minister, Chilcot said the text of his report – which is expected to be around 2 million words long – would be finalised in the week of 18 April 2016.
Blair’s office denied that he was the cause of the delay, saying he had replied to documents he received as part of the Maxwellisation process – in which witnesses who are to be criticised are given a right to reply – in August this year after receiving them in January.
Blair’s spokeswoman said: “Tony Blair has always wanted the inquiry to report as soon as it properly can and he looks forward to responding to the inquiry’s report. Mr Blair also wants to make it clear that the timetable of the inquiry and the length of time it will have taken to report is not the result either of issues over the correspondence between him as prime minister and President Bush, or due to the Maxwellisation process.”

Islamist group al Shabaab attack Somali hotel, kill at least 11

Two bombs ripped into a hotel in the Somali capital on Sunday and security forces fought Islamist al Shabaab gunmen who stormed inside the building for hours afterwards, police and witnesses said. At least 11 people were killed.

Al Shabaab, which has frequently launched attacks in Mogadishu in its bid to topple the Western-backed government, said it was behind the assault on the Sahafi hotel where government officials and lawmakers stay.

"Mujahideen (fighters) entered and took over Sahafi hotel where enemies lived," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, said.

The incident mirrored tactics used before by al Shabaab, in which it detonates bombs to break through security at targets and then sends in fighters.

Major Ahmed Nur, a police officer, told Reuters that a car bomb rammed the entrance to the hotel and was followed by second blast, which a security guard said was a second vehicle bomb.

Police said at least 11 people were killed, including the hotel owner, a lawmaker, a former military commander, a radio journalist and other civilians.

"We have also rescued many government officials by a ladder through the back wall," said Major Ismail Nur, another police officer.

Police exchanged fire with attackers inside the hotel for about three hours after the morning assault began. One police officer said fighters had fired on them from the rooftop.

African Union's AMISOM force, which has been leading a campaign with Somali troops against al Shabaab, were also at the scene, helping to clear the hotel of fighters.

A spokesman for AMISOM said the troops were "still mopping (up) floor by floor", and that there were four storeys.

The hotel lies near a busy area in Mogadishu known as K-4. Plumes of smoke rose above the capital on the Indian Ocean coast.

"We got phone calls from staff hiding in hotel rooms saying that there are several injured people in the hotel," police officer Ismail Nur said. "Some government officials are inside the hotel. The death toll may rise."

A Reuters witness saw wrecked cars and destroyed motorbikes in the area, as well as two dead civilians lying outside. At least three others were injured.

Turks head to polls in tense rerun of parliamentary election

The HDP favours the resumption of peace efforts to end the Kurdish conflict. Mr. Erdogan has lashed out at the party, calling it the political arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party

Turks headed to the polls Sunday for the second time in five months in a crucial election that will determine whether the ruling party can restore the parliamentary majority it enjoyed for 13 years.

The contest is a rerun of a June election in which the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, surprisingly lost its one-party rule. The key question on Sunday is whether the party gets enough seats for an outright majority in Parliament or whether it will have to form a coalition in order to govern.

The election comes as Turkey is facing its worst violence in years. Renewed fighting between Turkey’s security forces and Kurdish rebels has killed hundreds of people and shattered an already-fragile peace process. Two recent massive suicide bombings at pro-Kurdish gatherings that killed some 130 people, apparently carried out by an Islamic State group cell, have also increased tensions.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is calling on voters to choose stability and give AKP a new majority. Opposition parties hope to force Mr. Davutoglu into forming a coalition.

More than 54 million people are eligible to vote at more than 175,000 polling stations. Turnout is expected to be high.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not on the ballot, but voters will determine whether he can continue to be Turkey’s primary political power by guiding the ruling party in Parliament.

Mr. Erdogan called for new elections after Mr. Davutoglu failed to form a coalition with any of the three opposition parties in parliament in June. Some believe, however, that Mr. Erdogan never wanted a coalition government, and goaded Mr. Davutoglu into trying to win back a majority in a new election.

“Unfortunately, it was a difficult and troubled period of election campaigning. Lives were lost,” said Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, after he cast his vote in Istanbul.

“My wish is that a great hope for peace and calm emerges [from the vote],” he said.

In the June vote, his party for the first time cleared a 10 percent threshold needed for representation as a party in parliament, taking seats mostly at the ruling party’s expense.

The HDP favours the resumption of peace efforts to end the Kurdish conflict. Mr. Erdogan has lashed out at the party, calling it the political arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which Turkey and most Western countries consider a terrorist organisation.

British Airways to continue flying over Sinai despite crash

British Airways and easyJet have said they will continue to fly over the Sinai peninsula, despite major Middle Eastern and European airlines announcing they will avoid the area of Egyptian airspace where a Russian plane came down on Saturday.
The biggest Gulf airline, Emirates, and its subsidiary flydubai, as well as Air Arabia, said on Sunday that they were rerouting flights around the peninsula, where a Russian Metrojet flight crashed soon after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.
Lufthansa and Air-France-KLM have also decided to stop flying over the peninsula while the risks were assessed after an Islamic militant group claimed to have shot the plane down - a claim that Moscow has so far dismissed.
EasyJet said it would continue to fly holidaymakers to Sharm el-Sheikh - a popular winter sun destination on the southern tip of Sinai, as planned, but that it would actively review the safety of flights to Egypt.
BA said it had no plans to alter its flights to Sharm, but that it would not comment on exact flight routes.
“The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our top priority, and we would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so,” a spokeswoman said.
“Our safety team continually liaises with the appropriate authorities around the world, and we conduct very detailed risk assessments into every route we operate.”
An easyJet spokesman said: “EasyJet can confirm that following the incident in Egyptian airspace involving a Russian airline it is currently assessing the situation and taking advice from all the relevant authorities.
“Based on the information received to date, easyJet plans to continue to operate to Egypt to carry holidaymakers as planned to and from Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, but will continue to actively review the situation.”
EasyJet said passengers who no longer wanted to fly would be offered either an alternative flight or a voucher. “The safety of our customers and crew is our highest priority,” the spokesman said.
The Metrojet Airbus A321-200 has reached 31,000 feet before it crashed, and experts have been sceptical that militants in Sinai would have weapons capable of shooting down a plane at such an altitude. That said, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was flying at 33,000 feet when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.
The majority of the 298 victims of MH17 crash were Dutch, and AirFrance-KLM faced criticism in the Netherlands in its aftermath for continuing to fly over war zone. It acted quickly to rule out flights over Sinai after Saturday’s Metrojet crash.
Last year the International Air Transport Association called for better sharing of information between airlines in the wake of the MH17 crash and other threats. Such information is often jealously guarded and has led to airlines taking very different decisions over which airspace is deemed safe. BA has continued to fly over Iraq, but was already avoiding eastern Ukraine before MH17 was shot down.
Rerouting adds to carriers’ fuel costs.
The cause of Saturday’s crash is not yet known, but the black boxes have been recovered from the wreckage of the aircraft, which was bound for St Petersburg when it came down suddenly in a remote mountainous area. Egyptian security forces have been fighting local Islamic militants in Sinai for years.
The majority of the 224 victims were Russian holidaymakers, including 25 children.

Blair denies ministers were told to 'burn' Iraq war legal advice

Taxi Tehran review – Jafar Panahi’s joy ride

Much loose talk is bandied around in the film world about directors’ bravery and the heroism of “guerrilla” film-making – but those terms genuinely mean something when applied to Iran’s Jafar Panahi. After making several robust realist dramas about the challenges of everyday life in his country – among them The Circle, Crimson Gold and the exuberantly angry football movie Offside – Panahi fell foul of the Iranian government, which threatened him with imprisonment, prevented him from travelling and banned him from making films for 20 years. He has protested by working under the wire to make three extraordinary works, contraband statements that are at once a cri de coeur from internal exile, and a bring-it-on raised fist of defiance.
This Is Not a Film (2011, directed with Mojtaba Mirtahmasb) showed Panahi cooling his heels under house arrest in his Tehran flat, and evoking the film that he would have made had he been allowed to pick up a camera. He wasn’t technically making an actual film, Panahi argued – yet he was manifestly making one anyway, as the world saw when the result was smuggled to Cannes on a USB stick hidden in a cake. However, the less successful Closed Curtain (2013, directed with Kambuzia Partovi) was a claustrophobically self-referential chamber piece, and suggested that Panahi’s plight was getting the better of him.
However, his survivor spirit and delight in cinema’s possibilities have endured, and re-emerge to sparkling effect in Taxi Tehran (or plain Taxi, as it was called when it won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin film festival). For this spare, witty exercise, Panahi rigged a taxi with three hidden video cameras and surreptitiously filmed a drive round Tehran, with himself at the wheel ferrying assorted passengers – presumably actors for the most part. One assumes that everything is staged; such is the feel of brisk spontaneity that it’s hard to tell.

Deadly twin bombings hit hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia

Somali police have said at least nine people died and 10 were injured after two bombs ripped into a hotel in the centre of the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday morning. Gunmen thought to be from the al-Shabaab terrorist group then stormed the building, taking hostages and exchanging fire with police, authorities said.
“They have killed the owner of the hotel, a former military general and other officials during the attack,” said police Captain Mohamed Hussein by phone from the scene. “There’s a hostage situation inside the hotel.”
Al-Shabaab, the Islamic extremist rebels waging an insurgency against Somalia’s weak UN-backed government, claimed responsibility for the attack on its radio station.
The African Union said its troops went to the scene along with the Somali forces they are supporting in Mogadishu.
The incident mirrored tactics used before by al-Shabaab in which it detonates bombs to break through security at targets and then sends in fighters. Al-Shabaab wants to topple Somalia’s western-backed government and has promised more attacks.
A Reuters witness saw wrecked cars and destroyed motorbikes in the area, as well as two dead civilians lying outside. Parts of the hotel were damaged.
The hotel, which lies near a busy area in Mogadishu known as K-4, is often used by lawmakers and government officials.
Two French security advisers were abducted from the hotel by militants in 2009.
Despite being forced out of Mogadishu and many other cities and towns across Somalia, al-Shabaab continues to launch lethal attacks in the capital and elsewhere.