Doha summit to back Bashir

DOHA: An Arab summit in Qatar today is expected to back Sudan over an international arrest warrant for the Sudanese president and try to heal a deep rift between Arab states over how to deal with Iran.

President Omar Bashir arrived in Qatar yesterday, after visits to Egypt, Eritrea and Libya in the weeks since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the warrant for his arrest and accused him of masterminding war crimes in Darfur.

Qatar, which hosts a key US military base, said last week it had faced unspecified pressure not to receive Bashir but it repeated an invitation for him to attend.

Bashir’s presence poses a challenge for the summit of the 22-member Arab League, but it is expected to voice support for him.

In the Sudanese capital Khartoum, an official played down any risk of Bashir being apprehended during the trip. “There is no power on earth that will intercept the president when he travels. If he flew to France maybe they would try to apprehend him there, but none of them is going to come all this way to apprehend him,” said Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol at Sudan’s Foreign Ministry.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is leading the Kingdom’s delegation to the summit. The king, who arrived here in the evening, held talks with Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani on the conference’s agenda.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has also flown in to the Qatari capital, will attend the summit despite the presence of Bashir, a UN official said.

“Sudan is a member of the United Nations while the International Criminal Court is an independent judicial body, which does not prevent the United Nations from dealing with Sudan,” the official said.

The Doha meeting had been expected to see Arab League states seeking to close ranks split largely over how to respond to Israel’s 22-day onslaught on Hamas-ruled Gaza, and amid the growing influence of Iran in the region.

Qatari Premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani urged foreign ministers who met ahead of the summit to strive for a unified front, beyond the show of solidarity with Sudan. “We have to live up to our responsibilities and work toward closing ranks,” he said.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is staying away from the summit. Egypt will instead be represented by its legal and parliamentary affairs minister, Mufid Shehab.

Arab foreign ministers on Saturday approved a draft declaration calling for the annulment of the ICC measures against Bashir and urging all Arab states to reject the arrest warrant.

Source : Agencies

RI supports UN resolution condemning Israeli human rights violations

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia had supported the United Nations Human Rights Commission`s resolution which strongly condemned the Israeli military assaults and human rights violations in the Gaza Strip, a statement said.

The resolution was endorsed in the Commission`s 9th special session in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday (Jan 12) with the support of 33 votes, 13 abstentions and one (Canadian delegation) opposing, a statement issued by the Indonesian permanent representative to the United Nations, WTO and other international organizations in Geneva received by Antara here Tuesday said.

Apart from supporting the resolution, Indonesia was also the main sponsor of the draft resolution which was filed last Friday.

Previously, Indonesia condemned the violation of human rights by Israel in the Gaza Strip and asked the international community to urge Israel to respect international and human rights laws.

The resolution, in addition to condemning Israel, also urged the Zionist country to immediately stop its military attacks in all its occupied territories in Palestine, causing various heavy human right violations against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which had killed more than 900 people and 4,000 injured, including children and women.

The UN resolution also asked Israel to stop its rocket attacks on Palestine.

The statement said, the resolution also urged Israel to stop using civilians and medical facilities as targets of its military attacks, open access for humanitarian relief aid and pave the way for the media to enter the conflicting areas.

Israel was also urged to withdraw all of its troops from the Gaza Strip, end its occupation of Palestinian land and respect its commitment to the peace process particularly in efforts to setting up a sovereign Palestine with East Jerussalem as its capital city.

Other important points in the resolution include the immediate setting up of an international independent fact finding mission to investigate the human right violations committed by Israel against Palestinian people.

In the meantime, the Indonesian delegation stated that the international community could not keep quiet with regard to the escalation of the human rights violations and humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.

The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.