SOUTH ASIA

MUSHARRAF TO MEET WITH AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS LEADERS

When Pakistan’s president comes to the United Nations next month, he will be an invited guest of the American Jewish Congress, making Pervez Musharraf the first leader of his country to officially meet with the organization.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday quoted the group’s chairman, Jack Rosen, as saying, “Someone needs to break the ice so that Muslims, Westerners, Jews, and other religions can have a dialogue and end the confrontation that we’re in.” Not all Jewish leaders supported the visit. According to the agency, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said Pakistan has turned a “blind eye when it comes to terrorism against Israel, Jews.”

The meeting is not the first between Jewish leaders and the Pakistani leader. In 2002, Mr. Musharraf met with Jewish leaders on the sidelines of the opening U.N. parley.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL TO EXTEND SECURITY BARRIER IN WEST BANK

JERUSALEM – Israel has issued orders to seize Palestinian Arab land to build its separation barrier along a route that would effectively annex the West Bank’s largest Jewish settlement to Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry said yesterday, a day after Israel completed its historic evacuation of 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.

In Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab stabbed two young ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Old City, police said, calling it a terror attack. One of the victims later died of his wounds. The assailant escaped. Late yesterday, at least two Palestinian Arabs were killed in an exchange of fire after Israeli troops entered a West Bank refugee camp. Residents said the two dead were members of a terrorist group, Islamic Jihad.

The State Department registered its disapproval yesterday of Israel’s extension of a security fence into the large West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim and called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from several West Bank towns.

Yesterday, Israel proposed a dual crossing between Gaza and Egypt, defense officials said. The current Rafah crossing would allow for free exit of people and goods, and a new crossing would be built at the Gaza-Egypt-Israel border for entry under Israeli supervision.

– Associated Press

CLASHES ERUPT BETWEEN IRAQI SHIITES

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Clashes erupted between rival Shiite groups across the Shiite-dominated south yesterday. The confrontations in at least five southern cities followed the boldest assault by Sunni insurgents in weeks in the capital.

Dozens of insurgents wearing black uniforms and masks attacked Iraqi police in western Baghdad with multiple car bombs and small-arms fire that killed at least 13 people and wounded 43, police said.

The new violence came as the Pentagon announced it was ordering 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Iraq to provide security for the scheduled October 15 referendum on the proposed constitution and the December national elections.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

IRANIAN REFORMER SENTENCED IN ABSENTIA TO 7 YEARS IN PRISON

An Iranian political reformer who is currently a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mohsen Sazegara, learned this week that he had been sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison in his home country. The charges against him were not clear, he said.

Mr. Sazegara, 50, was a founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at the outset of the Iranian revolution in 1979 but evolved into an outspoken critic of theocratic rule. Mr. Sazegara said he became part of the reformist Kian circle, which included journalist Akbar Ganji, now in prison in Iran.

“Like Akbar Ganji, Mohsen Sazegara is being punished for directly challenging” Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Roya Hakakian, an Iranian author and rights activist based in New Haven, Conn. “These challenges … are truly addressing the heart of what is holding back Iran from reaching a democracy.”

– The Washington Post

IRANIAN REGIME TO OFFER NEW NEGOTIATION PROPOSAL TO EUROPE

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran will soon offer new proposals for negotiations with Europe over its controversial nuclear program, President Ahmadinejad said yesterday. The Bush administration responded by saying the European diplomatic process “still has legs.”

France’s foreign minister said yesterday that the European Union still believes negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are possible, despite the E.U.’s canceling an August 31 meeting in response to the resumption of reprocessing.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said, “We would encourage them to take an offer that is on the table. I think that the EU-3 offer is comprehensive, it’s constructive, and it addresses the issue.”

– Associated Press

EAST AFRICA

HOMEGROWN COURTS TRY SUSPECTED RWANDAN WAR CRIMINALS

GASABO, Rwanda – Village courts are being held across Rwanda to pass judgment on those who carried out the mass murder of an estimated 800,000 Rwandans during the genocide of 1994.

The courts have traditionally dealt with minor disputes. They have been enlisted to speed up the processing of tens of thousands of suspected perpetrators of the genocide. But even this rough-and-ready justice is in danger of being overwhelmed after the authorities this month conditionally released 23,000 prisoners who confessed to their part in the slaughter.

Prisoners will be treated leniently if they confess, beg forgiveness, and, crucially, name everyone they know who was part of the killing. The challenge the authorities have to deal with is their new evidence, which could mean the courts will have to judge up to 1 million cases.

– The Daily Telegraph

CENTRAL EUROPE

CZECH GOVERNMENT APOLOGIZES TO ANTI-NAZI GERMANS

The Czech Republic’s government apologized to anti-Nazi Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity who, after World War II, were either expelled from the country or were not treated as equal citizens.

The government today in Prague passed a resolution apologizing for the first time to all Czechoslovak citizens of German ethnicity who “actively fought fascism or suffered under Nazi rule” in World War II. The government today also agreed to donate $1.2 million to a foundation that will track down anti-Nazi ethnic Germans to record their personal histories.

– Bloomberg News