Israel refuses talks with Syria, for now
Israel’s foreign minister on Sunday ruled out peace talks with Syria for now, saying Damascus must first end its support for Lebanese and Palestinian extremists.
Tzipi Livni told Israel’s Channel 10 TV a move to open peace talks with Syria now would disrupt efforts to stabilize Lebanon after a 34-day war between Israel and the Hezbollah guerrillas.
“The tools are in place to free Lebanon from Syria,” she said. “To add other Syrian interests to this ‘salad,’ if you’ll pardon the expression, would in my opinion complicate a process that is acceptable to everyone.”
Syria “must understand that (international) demands of it are clear,” she said. They are “stopping support of terrorism – Palestinian as well as Lebanese – and this brings on the issue of sequence,” she said.
LONDON
Islamic school subject of search
Detectives searched an Islamic school among other sites across London Sunday following raids to round up suspects accused of running terrorist training camps in Britain, police said.
A three-mile exclusion zone was set up around the Jameah Islameah School as officers examined the former convent near Crowborough, 40 miles south of London. Forensic specialists were sweeping buildings and woodlands and planned to search a lake on the grounds, police said.
Charles Hendry, a lawmaker representing the area where the school is located, said the jailed radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri had visited the school with a group of followers. Al-Masri is serving a seven-year prison sentence for inciting his followers to kill non-Muslims.
Police arrested 14 people late Friday and early Saturday in raids at a halal Chinese restaurant and locations across London in an operation targeting a ring suspected of training and recruiting people for terror attacks.
KHARTOUM, Sudan
Tense Somalian peace talks begin
Negotiators for Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed interim government held peace talks Sunday with delegates from an increasingly powerful Islamic militia that controls most of the country’s south, including the capital.
The talks revolve around a June agreement to discuss political, security, social and economic issues as well as reconstruction, according to a copy of the agenda.
On Sunday, Somali parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden was seen leading delegates from the Somali government into the closed-door talks with Islamic courts representatives led by Ibrahim Hassan Adow.
Aden and Adow made no statements going into meeting, but on Saturday they said they were committed to peace.
Adow warned, however, that foreign interference in Somalia would be “a recipe for the renewal of civil war,” alluding to reports that Ethiopian troops had taken up position in three Somali towns.