May 9, 2012

Page 1

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012

@alwatandaily

Issue No. 1429

20 PAGES

www.alwatandaily.com

150 Fils with IHT

Interior Minister grilling ends with no vote

Mohammed Al-Salman, Mohammed Al-Khaldi, Osama Al-Qatari and Ahmed Al-Shemmari

Staff Writers

KUWAIT: The grilling of the Minister of Interior Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud Al-Sabah ended on Tuesday without a non-confidence vote, as the government promised to address the issues raised in the interpellation. In the same vein, MP Mohammad AlJuwaihel, the interpellator, only exhibited certain supporting documents and kept others from being displayed to the dismay of members of the Minority Bloc, who were previously privy to the documents and the preparedness of Al-Juwaihel. The session witnessed heated exchanges involving members of the Majority and Minority Blocs, and the speaker was criticized for failure to ensure order during the session. Certain MPs and the general public in the gallery also traded insults amid screams and mockery. The discussion of the interpellation started roughly after Al-Juwaihel displayed a placard on the podium which read “Kuwait for Kuwaitis alone.” The move provoked members of the Majority who demanded that the placard be

MP Mohammad Al-Juwaihel gestures during the interpellation of the Interior Minister, May 8, 2012. The placard reads “Kuwait for Kuwaitis only”, refers to allegations made against the Minister of providing illegal dual nationality to citizens. (Al Watan)

Parliament Speaker Ahmed Al-Saadoun gestures towards the audience. Warnings were issued to observers that they would be removed if they continued to disrupt the session with outbursts and insults, on May 8, 2012. (Al Watan)

removed. On the contrary, members of the Minority defended the action, insisting that there is no provision in the

ing that there is nothing wrong with it, whereas MPs Faisal Al-Mislem, Al-Saifi Al-Saifi, Mubarak Al-Waalan and Khaled

Rules of Order that forbids such a thing. MPs Faisal Al-Duwaisan, Abdulhameed Dashti and Hussein Al-Qallaf yelled, say-

Officials warn of Syrian civil war, several killed

Islamization of laws is abuse of religion, says activist

Jameel W. Karaki

Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Kuwaiti Progressive movement organized a seminar titled “Don’t tamper with the Constitution’s Article 7, Yes for the Civil State” at the Women’s Cultural Society on Monday evening. A group of attending intellectuals, political activists, professors and lawyers shared their thoughts about the establishment of a civil state and the challenges facing this idea. Speakers agreed that some Islamists are exploiting Islam for political gains and defined some terminologies such as secularism and liberalism. Dr. Fawaz Al Farhan, the General Secretary of Kuwaiti Progressive Movement said that when the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution of Kuwait in 1962 and ratified it by the late Amir Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-

Sabah, it was clear that this Constitution laid the foundation with a modern democratic system. According to the General Secretary, the Constitution was subject to parliamentary tamper, which aimed to compromise the civilian character of the state through successive proposals since 1973 that called for revising Article two of the Constitution and the legislation laws to discriminate between people based on religion or sex, which is a breach of the principle of equality. “Based on our respect for the Islam, we clearly reject the exploitation of the religion and its use in political slogans, including what has been said about ‘Islamization of laws’. The laws legislated under this slogan is contradicting and is considered an unacceptable abuse to Islam and Islamic Sharia,” he said. More on 2

More on 4

Maids die in Singapore; Indonesia calls for safety

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Nepalese riot police detain a squatter residing on the banks of the Bagmati River in Katmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, May 8, 2012. Government forces have reportedly vacated more than 200 squatters who have set up their homes illegally along the banks of the river. (AP)

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi given first passport in 24 years YANGON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi received her first passport in 24 years on Tuesday ahead of a planned trip to Norway and Britain. An official from her National League for Democracy party said the passport was received Tuesday from the Home Ministry. The official asked not to be named because the matter was considered personal rather than party business. Suu Kyi applied for the passport following recent political reforms that culminated in her election to parliament last month. Last year, a long-ruling military junta handed over power to an elected, nominally civilian government. The passport is valid for three years. She has not had a passport since she returned to Myanmar in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother, and was

BEIRUT: Security forces killed at least seven people in fighting across Syria on Tuesday, activists said, in a 14-month-old revolt that the Red Cross and Arab League warned was becoming a civil war. Across Syria, clashes between state forces and rebels who have joined the uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad raged overnight and flared again on Tuesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Despite a shaky truce, the carnage in Syria has not stopped even as the government held a parliamentary poll a day earlier. Damascus promoted it as a milestone on its path to reform, but the opposition slammed the election as a sham and boycotted the vote. As election officials counted votes on Tuesday, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said fighting had been so intense in some parts of Syria that at times the conflict in those places qualified as a localized civil war. Jakob Kellenberger said he was very worried about conditions in Syria, where United Nations observers are being deployed to monitor a ceasefire agreement that has been repeatedly violated by state forces and by rebels. “I really hope that the UN observers will deploy rapidly,” he told reporters in Geneva, indicating concern for the fate of UN envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan for Syria. “I still hope it will not fail.”

required by law then to hand it in. After becoming leader of the country’s prodemocracy movement, she was put under house arrest for 15 of the following 22 years of military rule. During intermittent periods of freedom, Suu Kyi declined opportunities to go abroad for fear she would not be allowed to re-enter Myanmar, and so was unable to visit her British husband, Michael Aris, before his death from cancer in 1999. They last saw each other in 1995, after which the junta denied Aris a visa. Since her release in November 2010 from her last term of house arrest, Suu Kyi had been invited to visit by several foreign governments. Recently, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited her to the UN headquarters in New York where she once worked.-AP

Tymoshenko row causes Ukraine to call off summit

KIEV: Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Tuesday called off a regional summit rather than host a partly-boycotted meeting and face a lecture over his treatment of imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The foreign ministry’s announcement of the cancellation of the talks, planned for Thursday and Friday in Yalta, was an embarrassing setback for Yanukovich and a triumph for Tymoshenko, on hunger strike in prison in the city of Kharkiv. The presidents of Germany, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Estonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic had all said they were pulling out of the informal summit which was attended by 20 heads of state when it was held in Poland last year. The boycott followed allegations by Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, that she was beaten by prison guards last month. The authorities have denied any mistreatment of the charismatic Tymoshenko, who was a driving force in the 2004 Orange Revolution street protests which doomed Yanukovich’s first bid for the presidency. But the boycott threat, and the cancellation of the Yalta gathering, highlight Ukraine’s growing isolation as it prepares to host European soccer championships from June 8 to July 1. “Due to the inability of some European state leaders to take part in the summit ... Ukraine considers it sensible to delay it,” the ministry said in a statement. It said new dates for the gathering would be announced later. -Reuters

Shakheer insisted that the placard should be taken away. When Deputy Speaker Khaled Al-Sul-

tan asked for a vote on the issue, tension escalated which led him to temporarily adjourn the proceedings to restore order. At this point, Al-Juwaihel and Shakeer traded harsh insults. The latter attempted to attack Al-Juwaihel but the National Assembly Guard intervened to prevent any escalation into an outright scuffle. When the session was resumed, the National Assembly Speaker Ahmad AlSaadoun asked Al-Juwaihel to remove the placard. However Al-Juwaihel retorted, “If you want the placard to be removed do so yourself.” The speaker struck back, “You want to be kicked out of the Chamber?” Addressing the MPs, Al-Saadoun added, “This is happening before you in order to show that this interpellation does not target the interior minister, rather it is aimed at the Parliament.” Al-Juwaihel fought back, “I shall never remove the placard. I swear to God that the Parliament can be removed but the placard will not.” At this point, a number of MPs from the Minority stepped up to the podium to defuse the tension, but Al-Juwaihel remained adamant. His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah personally intervened and convinced Al-Juwaihel to remove the slogan. CONTINUED ON 2

Interpol issues ‘red notice’ for fugitive Iraq VP

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Palestinian negotiator Erakat suffers heart attack

RAMALLAH: Veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has undergone an operation after suffering a heart attack on Tuesday, his wife and medical sources told AFP. The 57-year-old “woke at dawn with chest pains and decided to go to the Palestine medical complex in Ramallah where he underwent medical tests,” said his wife, Naama Erakat, referring to the city’s main hospital. “It turned out he had suffered a heart attack, so they performed an emergency

catheterisation at hospital, which was successful,” she said. Hospital director Ahmed Bitawi said “a blood clot was found in one of his arteries which was opened during the operation.” Erakat was recovering from the procedure but “needed a period of rest,” he added. Erakat has been a member of every Palestinian negotiating team since 1991, with the notable exception of those who secretly conducted talks ahead of the 1993 Oslo Accords. -AFP

S. Korea cracks down on flesh capsules from China

PARIS: South Korea has intensified a crackdown on the smuggling of capsules from China containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, taken by some as a cure for disease or a way to boost sexual performance, a customs official said Tuesday. The gruesome practice came to light Sunday when Korea Customs said it had uncovered 35 attempts to import a total of 17,451 such capsules since last August. The pills -- filled with the dried and powdered flesh of fetuses or dead infants -- were intercepted in the mail or in customs searches at airports. The customs service said that apart from ethical questions the capsules were contaminated with “super bacteria” and other disease-causing organisms. Most pills were sent from the northeastern Chinese cities of Yanji and Jilin as well as cities including Qingdao and Tianjin at the request of customers in South Korea, it said. Some were hidden in packages of legitimate drugs to disguise their contents. Officials now closely monitor flights from “certain Chinese regions” and inspect all the luggage of all passengers far more often than before, Kim Soo-Yeon, a Korea Customs official in charge of customs clearance told AFP. Bringing in such pills breaches a regulation banning items that “violate social dignity and customs”, he said. No organized attempts to smuggle in the capsules have so far been detected, Kim said, and most offenders were individual travelers. Some claimed they were unaware of what they were carrying. More on 15

China prepared for escalation of maritime standoff BEIJING: Chinese vice foreign minister Fu Ying said Beijing was ready for “any escalation” of a tense maritime standoff with the Philippines over a disputed shoal. The month-long flare-up is one of the most high-profile incidents for years between the two countries over their competing territorial claims to parts of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop vast oil and gas deposits. “The Chinese side has... made all preparations to respond to any escalation of the situation by the Philippine side,” Fu told a Philippine diplomat Monday, according to a statement posted on China’s foreign ministry website Tuesday. The two countries have been locked in the row since April 8, when Beijing’s vessels blocked a Philippine warship from arresting crews of Chinese fishing boats near the disputed Scarborough Shoal - or Huangyan island in Chinese. Both Beijing and Manila have ships in the area, racking up tensions in the region. More on 5

This handout photo released by Korea Customs Service on May 8, 2012 shows capsules filled with powdered human flesh in Daejeon, officials reported. South Korea has intensified a crackdown on the smuggling of capsules from China containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, seen by some as a cure for disease, a customs official said. (AFP)


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