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/ 4 December 2007
United States intelligence agencies undercut the White House on Monday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified on Monday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates.
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/ 3 December 2007
The United Nations’s top aid official, John Holmes, arrived in Somalia on Monday, calling for more to be done to help the Horn of Africa country where almost 6 000 civilians have been killed in fighting this year. UN officials say Somalia’s humanitarian crisis is Africa’s worst, with one million people displaced.
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/ 1 December 2007
Iran was not to blame for the disappointment expressed by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana after key talks in London on the nuclear crisis failed, chief negotiator Saeed Jalili said on Saturday. Solana said on Friday he was ”disappointed” after the last-ditch talks in London failed to produce a breakthrough.
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/ 26 November 2007
Serbia will not give up ”an inch” of Kosovo, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Monday as talks on the breakaway province’s future entered a critical phase before a United Nations deadline next month. ”Serbia will not let an inch of its territory be taken away,” a defiant Kostunica told reporters.
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/ 21 November 2007
China has committed to sending an engineering unit of peacekeepers to Darfur at the end of the week, the top United Nations peacekeeping official said on Wednesday. China has about 1 800 peacekeepers deployed abroad, making it the second-largest contributor after France.
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/ 7 November 2007
Iran has achieved a landmark in its controversial uranium-enrichment programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday, suggesting that the country now has 3 000 centrifuges fully operating. ”We have now reached 3 000 machines,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of Iranians gathered in Birjand, eastern Iran.
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/ 4 November 2007
Sudan’s former foes have agreed on steps to implement a 2005 peace deal, First Vice-President Salva Kiir said on Sunday, indicating the country’s worst political crisis in years may be resolved soon. The announcement raised hopes that ministers from the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement’s will soon return to the national coalition government.
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/ 31 October 2007
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has accused Gordon Brown of deliberately undermining the Darfur peace talks and has demanded a public apology after the British prime minister’s threat of new sanctions against Sudan if the talks fail.
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/ 31 October 2007
A bolstered United Nations-African Union force charged with bringing peace to Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region ”may be” operational by early next year, the head of the mission said on Wednesday. Rodolphe Adada made the announcement during the inauguration of the new force’s headquarters in Darfur’s main city of Al-Fasher.
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/ 31 October 2007
Major powers plan to meet in London this week to discuss new sanctions on Iran amid a spat between Washington and the United Nations over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, United States officials said on Tuesday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech on Tuesday that Iran would not retreat in the dispute.
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/ 30 October 2007
The crew of a foreign cargo ship seized by Somali pirates overpowered their hijackers on Tuesday and retook control of the latest vessel to run into trouble in some of the world’s most dangerous waters. The East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme said the North Korean ship had been hijacked late on Monday or early on Tuesday.
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/ 20 October 2007
The military regime in Burma is still holding up to 2 500 people in prisons and labour camps around the country, and continues to arrest suspected dissidents, the British government claimed on Friday. The crackdown on the protest movement has only served to make Burma more unstable, a senior British diplomat said.
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/ 18 October 2007
World trade talks appeared to be making progress on Wednesday as the leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa said they were committed to reaching a deal. The leaders said differences with rich countries were still blocking agreement in the Doha round, launched nearly six years ago to help developing countries grow out of poverty and boost the world economy by opening up global trade.
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/ 16 October 2007
Leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India meet this week to bolster an alliance that is challenging the United States and Europe for access to resources in the developing world and influence on the global stage. The three leaders have joined forces to ease the reliance of Asia, Latin America and Africa on trade with northern-hemisphere economies.
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/ 15 October 2007
Lebanon said on Monday it had arrested a gang of foreigners who were plotting attacks on United Nations peacekeepers, four months after six troops were killed in a bombing against a Spanish contingent. ”The Lebanese army’s secret service arrested a network of non-Lebanese terrorists,” the army said.
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/ 10 October 2007
The party of Burma’s detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday it had not yet heard from the junta despite the appointment of a general to hold talks with her. Burma’s junta cracked down on protests led by monks in Rangoon last month, unleashing baton charges, tear gas and live rounds.
Sudan’s army bombed Muhajiriya, the main Darfur town held by the only rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal with Khartoum, injuring at least two dozen people, the African Union force commander said on Tuesday. Martin Luther Agwai said it was not yet clear why the fighting began on Monday.
The Burma junta reduced security in Yangon sharply on Sunday, apparently confident it would face no further mass protests against military rule, but the streets remained unusually quiet and arrests continued. The few people on the streets said they were still fearful and the internet remained cut off.
Key United Nations powers stepped up calls for Burma to release political prisoners after an envoy to the repressive state warned of ”serious international repercussions” from the bloody turmoil there. The United States signalled on Friday it may push for UN sanctions if the ruling junta kept up a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party dismissed the Burma junta’s offer of talks as surreal on Friday as a United Nations envoy warned of ”serious international consequences” from the junta’s brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the world could not stop the Islamic state’s nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear bomb, the official IRNA news agency said on Thursday. Ahmadinejad was speaking the day after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called on the European Union to take the lead in widening financial sanctions on Iran.
Burma’s military regime kept up the pressure on its people on Wednesday after last week’s bloody crackdown on protesters as the European Union agreed in principle to punish the junta with sanctions. Troops who last week killed at least 13 and arrested over 1 000 people continued overnight arrests and mounted patrols to strike terror into the population.
United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari may not have met Burma junta supremo Than Shwe at the weekend, but the fact he is still in the country suggests his mission is far from failed. The schedule for Gambari’s mission was threadbare — 24 hours and one meeting with Than Shwe.
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/ 28 September 2007
Eritrea, in a letter published on Friday, urged the United Nations to force its arch-foe, Ethiopia, to urgently implement a border ruling, warning it feared Addis Ababa was preparing to resume war. In the letter, Foreign Minister Osman Saleh said he believed that Ethiopian threats to scrap the Algiers peace deal that ended their bloody 1998 to 2000 border war were a precursor to an attack.
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/ 28 September 2007
Fuelled by ”revulsion” at Burma’s violent crackdown on popular protests against military rule, South-east Asia rounded on the generals on Friday and critics planned demonstrations at embassies across the region. Burma state media said nine people were killed when soldiers fired on crowds in Yangon on Thursday.
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/ 27 September 2007
Troops cleared protesters from the streets of central Yangon on Thursday, giving them 10 minutes to leave or be shot as the Burma junta intensified a two-day crackdown on the largest uprising in 20 years. At least nine people were killed, state television said, on a day when far fewer protesters took to the streets after soldiers raided monasteries in the middle of the night.
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/ 27 September 2007
Burma riot police charged a crowd of more than 1Â 000 protesters after they pelted soldiers with rocks and water bottles in central Yangon on Thursday and at least one person collapsed as shots were fired, witnesses said. One man was on the ground, unconscious, but it was not clear whether he was alive or dead.
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/ 27 September 2007
Burma’s generals launched pre-dawn raids on rebellious monasteries on Thursday in their crackdown on the biggest anti-junta protests in 20 years, defying desperate international calls for restraint. It was unusually quiet on the streets of Yangon, where troops killed an estimated 3Â 000 people in the ruthless suppression of a 1988 uprising.
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/ 26 September 2007
World governments vowed on Wednesday to hold Burma’s military rulers to account for a bloody crackdown on mass street protests, as the United Nations Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session and European Union officials began drawing up new sanctions.
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/ 26 September 2007
The leaders of Zimbabwe and Iran are looking to form a ”coalition for peace” after receiving a tongue-lashing from United States President George Bush. ”The United States and its allies are so bloodthirsty they don’t want to see peace anywhere in the world,” said Zimbabwe Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga.
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/ 25 September 2007
Ethiopia said on Tuesday it may terminate the pact ending its border war with Eritrea, accusing its smaller neighbour of breaching the deal on several fronts including coordinating ”terrorist activity”. Relations between the two nations are at their lowest since a 1998 to 2000 border war killed 70 000 people.
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/ 25 September 2007
President George Bush announced new United States sanctions against Burma on Tuesday as world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly focused on rising protests against military rule in the South-East Asian state. Bush urged all nations to ”help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom”.