Palestinian leaders vote to go for UN recognition (AP)

RAMALLAH, West Bank – The West Bank Palestinian leadership on Sunday formally decided to press ahead with efforts in September to win U.N. recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in what could be a blow to efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The leadership, made up of the Palestine Liberation Organization's decision-making body and officials of the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government in the West Bank, said in a statement that the goal was to bring a state of Palestine into the family of nations of the world.

It approved the approach in principle, according to the statement, without adding operative steps about how to follow on from recognition.

The idea of asking the U.N. General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state inside the cease-fire lines that held until the 1967 Mideast War is a reflection of Palestinian frustration with stalemated peace talks with Israel.

In recent weeks, however, Palestinian leaders have been giving signs of backing away from the initiative and toward softening their position over the renewal of peace negotiations, as both the U.N. initiative and their drive to set up a unity government with the rival Hamas in Gaza have foundered.

Some Palestinians believe that contrary to the notion that U.N. recognition would stymie peace talks, such world status would force Israel to make concessions when negotiations resume.

Recognition of a Palestinian state by the U.N. General Assembly would carry considerable diplomatic weight but would not carry legal clout. Only the U.N. Security Council can add a nation to the world body, and the U.S. government has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the move, while stopping short of saying it would veto such a resolution.

Israel has denounced the Palestinian U.N. initiative, charging that it torpedoes efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

President Barack Obama has offered a formula under which a Palestinian state would be set up with borders based on the pre-1967 war cease-fire lines that delineate the West Bank, with agreed upon swaps of territory between the two sides. Previous Israeli governments have agreed to the concept, but that did not result in a peace accord.

The current Israeli leadership, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has reacted coolly to the Obama proposal. Netanyahu has rejected an Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and wants to retain Israeli control of east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as their capital. Israel pulled out of Gaza unilaterally in 2005.

Palestinians have been insisting that peace negotiations can be resumed only if Israel stops all construction in its West Bank settlements and Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, also considered settlements by the Palestinians and much of the world.

That would go well beyond a 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in the West Bank that Netanyahu imposed as an incentive to restart the talks. The negotiations resumed nine months later, last September, but were halted when the moratorium ended and was not renewed.

Now Israel rejects preconditions for peace talks and says that all issues, including the future of the settlements, should be on the negotiating table.

The Palestinians would be assured of a comfortable majority in favor of recognition of their state at the General Assembly session in September, as about 100 nations have already recognized a Palestinian state in one form or another. A U.N. vote would boost Palestinian prestige and further isolate Israel, but the path from there to an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and from there to an actual independent Palestinian state, is difficult to chart.

The settlements in their already existing form are one of the main sticking points. About 300,000 Israelis live in more than 100 communities scattered across the territory. Israeli military posts and checkpoints dot the West Bank to protect them, limiting Palestinian access and freedom of movement.

The largest settlements are closest to the cease-fire line, virtual suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The smaller ones, in the heart of the West Bank, are home to some of the most strident Israeli nationalist and religious hard-liners who believe either that Israel must keep control of the West Bank for security reasons or that it is the biblical Land of Israel that belongs to the Jews — or both.

Even Netanyahu, who backed unbridled settlement activity for decades, has indicated in public that the settlements farthest from Israel proper would not be part of Israel in a peace deal, while the largest ones would be incorporated into the Jewish state. He has taken no steps toward implementing that idea, and if he did, it would cost him the support of most of his backers from hard-line and Orthodox Jewish parties, including his own Likud, and likely bring down his government.

Conflicting signals have been emanating from Ramallah, the seat of the West Bank government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. While frustrated over the stalemate in contacts with Israel, officials close to Abbas have begun signaling that they would ease their demands for a settlement construction freeze in order to facilitate resumption of peace negotiations because of difficulties with the U.N, initiative. Not only the U.S., but also some European nations have expressed reservations, declaring that the way to Mideast peace is through negotiations, not unilateral steps at the U.N.

Also, Abbas' efforts to patch up a rift with Hamas have run aground. The Islamic group overran Gaza in 2007 and expelled forces loyal to Abbas. Several weeks ago the two sides, with Egyptian mediation, announced a framework for reconciliation that was to lead to a joint government, ending the split. Such a unified government would be key to a push for a state.

Since the announcement, however, no further agreements have been announced. The two sides have failed to agree on a prime minister, and there is no sign of progress toward integrating their security forces, as Hamas insists on maintaining control of Gaza even after a unity government takes office.

In another development Sunday, Israel started dismantling a section of its West Bank separation barrier near the town of Bilin, scene of weekly demonstrations against the barrier by Palestinian villagers as well as Israeli and international activists. Israel is moving the section closer to the cease-fire line, in accordance with an Israeli Supreme Court decision, returning much of the town's land to its farmers. Israel built the barrier to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out.

___

Associated Press writer Mark Lavie in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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Afghanistan war: The limits of targeting Taliban leaders (The Christian Science Monitor)

By Ben Arnoldy, Tom A. Peter Ben Arnoldy, Tom A. Peter – Thu Jun 23, 4:51 pm ET

New Delhi; and Kabul, Afghanistan – In his Afghanistan drawdown speech last night, President Obama said the US would start withdrawing troops from a position of strength, with Al Qaeda under “enormous strain.”

He attributed those gains to the targeting, capturing, and killing of terrorist leaders. Intelligence from Osama bin Laden’s compound, the president said, revealed that the former Al Qaeda chief “expressed concern that Al Qaeda had been unable to effectively replace senior terrorists that had been killed.”

That achievement came about mainly from the use of special forces, intelligence gathering, and drones – not a heavy troop presence. This logic aids Obama’s case for withdrawing a significant number of troops as Americans tire of the war.

RELATED As troop drawdown nears, is NATO surge working in Afghanistan?

The problem for the US presence in Afghanistan, however, is that a similar campaign to kill Taliban leaders has not proven as successful. As troops begin to depart, US hopes for leaving behind a stable country grow more reliant on either the Afghan security forces dramatically raising their game or negotiations with the Taliban bearing fruit.

The Taliban have recently started negotiations with the US, but by all accounts the discussions remain preliminary. Shaun Gregory, a regional expert at the University of Bradford in England, expressed doubts that the Taliban are feeling much pressure given the meager number of low-level Taliban who have decided to disarm, despite major government efforts to get more of them to do so.

“With the new announcement by Obama that the troops are coming home in significant numbers by next summer, this is just not a moment [for the Taliban] to start compromising,” says Mr. Gregory.

US commander Gen. David Petraeus has said the Taliban’s mid-level commanders have taken “enormous losses” over the previous year. Those special forces killings and the deployment of surge troops into new areas have strengthened security in some areas.

Overall security hasn't improvedIn large parts of Helmand and Kandahar, residents now say that they have increased freedom of movement and face less intimidation from insurgents.

But the overall security picture in Afghanistan has not improved, with attacks increasing in number and geographic scope. Attacks by the armed opposition surged 51 percent in the first quarter of 2011 over that period last year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office in Kabul.

“We anticipate that 2011 will be the most violent year since we have been keeping records,” reads ANSO’s most recent report.

In theory, the targeting of militant leaders downgrades the overall skill and experience of a group and forces its members to communicate less freely. In practice, both the Taliban and Al Qaeda have replaced their lost leaders, prompting some analysts to question the strategya€™s effectiveness.

Stephen Biddle, a security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that's a given.

“It’s a little bit like saying: ‘Have injuries to the Washington Redskins really weakened the team’s performance?’ ” says Mr. Biddle. “The replacement is never as good as the person being replaced.”

Different groups, different strategiesBut others with knowledge of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and their different goals say the targeted killings have impacted the two groups differently.

Al Qaeda has taken more time than the Taliban replacing its leaders, says Sami Yousafzai, a senior Pakistani journalist. Thata€™s because there are only a few hundred Al Qaeda operatives in the region, and they tend to be more educated and skilled.

The Taliban, however, have been able to replace their leaders almost instantly.

“Becoming a subcommander doesn’t require a long history of being a Taliban,” says Mr. Yousafzai. As for higher-ranked commanders and shadow governors, few have actually been killed, he notes. The top-level leadership, meanwhile, remains in havens inside Pakistan where the security establishment is disinclined to help the US catch them.

Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorist plots against the West requires higher levels of education and ingenuity. The Taliban’s guerrilla war against foreigners, meanwhile, requires the sorts of fighting skills not uncommon in the rugged tribal areas of Afghanistan.

“We don’t face any gaps after someone dies. It doesn’t take a long time for us to replace someone,” says Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi. “In the Taliban, we don’t care if someone is knowledgeable and educated. We just look at who is a good fighter.”

Mr. Ahmadi claims the number of Taliban gets bigger every day thanks to civilian casualties by coalition forces.

Al Qaeda, meanwhile, faces strong headwinds against recruitment. The appeal of the group in the Arab world has suffered dramatic declines with the Arab Spring.

“We can fairly say that Al Qaeda has been isolated in the political mind-set of the Middle East and that the ideology of Al Qaeda appears to be irrelevant and problematic. The attention now is given to reform and democracy,” says Mohammad Al-Momani, a political science professor at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan. “The measures that have been taken to crack down on Al Qaeda seem to be working and Al Qaeda is having a harder time recruiting.”

RELATED As troop drawdown nears, is NATO surge working in Afghanistan?

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Cleric decries Bahrain protest leaders' sentences (AP)

MANAMA, Bahrain – Bahrain's top Shiite cleric on Friday sharply criticized the life sentences given to eight opposition leaders for their role in anti-government protests in this Gulf kingdom.

Sheik Isa Qassim's sermon is the latest signal that Shiite leaders could snub Sunni rulers' appeals for dialogue next month amid the crackdown in Bahrain, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

The cleric called the mass trials of Shiite opposition figures unfair and appealed to the nation's Sunni rulers to overturn the sentences.

"This is not an environment for a political solution, when people are suffering," the cleric said during the Friday sermon in Diraz, an opposition stronghold northwest of the capital, Manama. "These sentences and abuses are like a dam preventing people from participating in dialogue."

A special security court on Wednesday convicted 21 opposition figures of plotting to overthrow the royal family. Eight leaders received life sentences and 13 others got long prison terms.

In a statement Friday, Bahrain's government defended the sentences, saying that the activists were convicted of "plotting to violently topple Bahrain's government" and "passing sensitive information to a terrorist organization in a foreign country."

Authorities claim that Iran was behind the protests they say were aimed at overthrowing the 200-year-old monarchy. Sunni rulers across the Gulf fear that any Shiite gains in the country could open new footholds for influence by Shiite power Iran. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states sent troops to help quell the revolt.

Shiite leaders in Bahrain repeatedly have denied any ties to Iran and accuse leaders of using the fears of Iranian string-pulling to wage crackdowns. At least 31 people have died in the unrest and hundreds have been detained since February.

Bahrain's ruling dynasty has proposed opening talks with opposition delegates July 1, but the outreach has met a cool reception from Shiite leaders demanding that authorities roll back security measures and halt the trials against activists.

The security court was set up under martial law that was imposed in March to quell protests, and has promoted criticism from Bahrain's Western allies.

The U.S. had expressed concern about the severity of the sentences and the use of the military-linked security courts. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also has urged Bahrain's government to allow political activists to appeal their sentences.

Fourteen of the 21 convicted are in custody while the rest were sentenced in absentia.

The security court has presided over a series of cases linked to the protests, including issuing two death sentences against men accused of killing police officers during the demonstrations.

Earlier this month, it sentenced a 20-year-old woman to a year in prison for reading poetry critical of Bahrain's king.

A trial is scheduled to resume next week for more than 30 doctors and nurses accused of supporting the protests. Some of the medical personnel claim they were abused while in custody.

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Papua New Guinea leader's son faces murder charge (AP)

CANBERRA, Australia – Police on Thursday were preparing to charge the son of Papua New Guinea's acting prime minister with murder after the body of a 29-year-old waitress was found at the family home.

Theo Abal, 21, will likely make his first court appearance Friday once he is charged in the killing of the woman, police spokesman Dominic Kakas said. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

A guard at the house told police he saw Abal and the woman arrive home in the early hours of Monday and head for a garden on the premises. Police said that the guard later heard the woman scream and that Abal confessed to killing her.

Kakas said her throat had been cut. A kitchen knife found near her body was the suspected weapon, he said.

Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal said he personally reported the "alleged murder" to Police Commissioner Tony Wagambie on Monday after the woman's body was found at his home in the capital, Port Moresby.

He made no comment on his son's alleged confession but pledged to cooperate fully. He said in a statement Tuesday that if any of his relatives are involved, "they will face the full brunt of the law and will not be treated differently from anyone else."

Theo Abal was arrested at a Port Moresby hotel Tuesday night and was still in police custody Thursday.

Kakas said police expected to charge Theo Abal with willful murder but were waiting for relatives to identify the woman's body before filing, and Kakas said that could delay the process. Abal still had not been charged Thursday afternoon.

Kakas said the island nation has had the death penalty for only a few years and has yet to carry out an execution, though a handful of defendants have been sentenced to death.

Theo Abal, the younger of Sam Abal's two children, is unemployed and lives at his father's house.

Kakas said the dead woman worked as a waitress at a Port Moresby hotel. Her name has not been made public.

Wagambie said Tuesday that the acting prime minister was away from the house and was alerted to the death by the security guard, who found the woman's body in a banana garden.

The guard alleged that he opened a gate for Theo Abal and the woman shortly before dawn Monday and that the pair walked hand in hand into the garden, Wagambie said.

"The guard claims that some 20 minutes later, he heard the woman scream, and further claims that some time after, Theo comes out and tells him that he had killed the woman and left her body in the banana garden," Wagambie wrote in his statement.

Sam Abal is standing in for Prime Minister Michael Somare, who stepped down in December because of ill health and to clear his name before a tribunal that is investigating allegations that he failed to disclose his full income.

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Freedom Riders inspire Arab protest leaders

Freedom Riders flee a bus burned by an Alabama mob in 1961. The group now has a new fan base -- Arab protest leaders.Freedom Riders celebrate 50th anniversary
Epic civil rights campaign made international headlines
Young civil rights activists endured mobs and prison
Veteran activists discover they are popular in Middle East

(CNN) -- Joan Mulholland was watching television one day when something flashed across the screen that gave her chills.

Unarmed young men and women blocked rows of tanks. Giddy demonstrators placed flowers in soldier's bayonets. Protesters sang "We Shall Overcome" -- with an Arabic accent.

The images hurled the retired schoolteacher back to another moment in spring when she was a teenager risking her life for change. In May 1961, Mulholland joined the "Freedom Rides." She was part of an interracial group of college students who were attacked by mobs and imprisoned simply because they decided to ride passenger buses together through the Deep South.

"So much of what has happened in Egypt is like deja vu," says Mulholland, who appears on PBS Monday at 9 p.m. in a mesmerizing documentary called "Freedom Riders."

"The pictures that have been in the news have been almost interchangeable with the civil rights movement here years ago," she says about the Egyptian protests that toppled a dictator. "I've seen so many visual parallels that I'm starting to save pictures in a scrapbook."

The Freedom Riders were called communists and outside agitators. As they commemorate the 50th anniversary of their rides this month, another group of people in the Middle East is calling them something else -- inspiration.

Several leaders in the protests sweeping the Middle East say they are using the same nonviolent playbook Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists used years ago to resist oppression.

Dalia Ziada, North Africa director of the American Islamic Congress, a group that promotes interfaith tolerance, says some Egyptian protesters took heart from the disciplined nonviolent resistance activists once displayed during civil rights campaigns like the Freedom Rides.

A comic book on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is spreading across the Mideast.

"It was inspirational," she says. "I realized that no matter how long it takes, nonviolent tactics lead to success in the end. This made me and all my colleagues here in Egypt stand strong in the face of police brutality during revolution time.''

Reading MLK in Arabic

At first glance, there seems to be little connection between Freedom Riders and the "Arab Spring," a wave of civil uprisings sweeping the Middle East. The series of protests are being driven by people from various ideologies that have nothing to do with nonviolence.

Yet there are signs that the seeds of nonviolent resistance that Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists planted years ago in America are being scattered throughout the Arab Spring.

And some are now starting to sprout:

A 50-year-old comic book explaining the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of nonviolent resistance has been adopted by Egyptian protesters and distributed throughout the Mideast.

The comic book, republished in Farsi and Arabic by the American Islamic Congress, has attracted so much attention that Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider leader, has marveled publicly over its impact.

Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Global Voices, an international group of journalists that hosts conferences for Arab bloggers, says many Arab protesters have deliberately shunned violence.

"The protests began, at the very least, as explicitly nonviolent events," he says. "In many of the marches, not just in Tunisia and Egypt, but in Bahrain and Syria, protesters have chanted 'Peaceful, peaceful', making it clear that any violence from the military was an overreaction."

The New York Times ran a recent profile on Gene Sharp, an elderly American author of books like "The Politics of Nonviolent Action" who has discovered that his books are popular reference guides for protesters in Egypt and Tunisia.

One of the Freedom Rider leaders, Bernard Lafayette Jr., has already established three nonviolent training centers in Palestinian territories.

He says many Arabs can relate on a visceral level to the brutality Freedom Riders and other civil rights activists faced.

Freedom Rider Joan Mulholland after being arrested at age 19 for riding with black passengers on an interstate bus.

"There's a direct connection," Lafayette says. "They've gotten a chance to see the film footage and a chance to read the history of the movement in the U.S. and the success we've experienced."

One of those Palestinian leaders inspired by Lafayette is Sami Awad, executive director of the Holy Land Trust, a Palestinian nonprofit group that works to develop nonviolent approaches to ending what it calls the Israeli occupation.

Awad says he was inspired by the civil rights movement as a teenager. His uncle, a nonviolent activist, constantly invoked the movement's leaders and tactics.

"I even remember reading children's comic books, with stories of MLK, even in Arabic, that my uncle would smuggle into Palestine with other materials on nonviolence because they were illegal under Israeli occupation," he says.

Awad says the contemporary footage of Arab protesters confronting Arab dictators reminds him of the old civil rights films he has watched.

"Seeing the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria break the barrier of fear and be willing to stand in front of armies and tanks with open arms in nonviolence brings back immediate memories of what happened in the South during the '60s," he says.

'We were past fear'

Some of the Freedom Riders who broke through their own barriers of fear 50 years ago still sound amazed at their actions, the PBS documentary reveals.

Most didn't have any support except for one another. Their parents didn't approve. Nor did leading civil rights leaders. Federal and state officials warned them they couldn't protect them.

They stepped on the bus anyway for perhaps the same reason some Arab youths joined the crowds in their country -- they didn't want to miss history.

"It was like a wave or a wind that you didn't know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there," said Pauline Knight-Ofosu, a Freedom Rider, in the PBS documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson.

Courage, though, can evaporate once someone gets hit with a club upside the head. But that didn't happen to most of the estimated 400 students who eventually joined the Freedom Rides, the documentary says.

Though mobs burned a bus and beat riders, and state officials sentenced some to state prison, the Freedom Riders kept coming.

Joan Mulholland says there's a link between her Freedom Rider activism and Arab protests.

Some admitted, though, that there were moments when they doubted their decision.

Ivor "Jerry" Moore recalled walking into an Alabama bus station and locking eyes with a reporter as they both realized a mob was coming for Moore.

"Our eyes met and when he looked away, my very guts shook," Moore said in the film. "He must have thought we were doomed."

The mob attacked Moore and might have killed him if a photographer hadn't distracted them by taking their picture.

Mulholland, who traveled from her hometown in Arlington, Virginia, for the Freedom Rides, said their determination eventually eclipsed their fear.

"We were past fear. If we were going to die, we were going to die, but we can't stop," she said in the documentary.

What happened to the Freedom Riders afterward?

Their rides, first organized by James Farmer and a civil rights group called CORE, made international headlines. They attracted the support of King and embarrassed the Kennedy administration into acting.

At one point in the documentary, the camera captures then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy at a press conference where he defensively said that life for blacks was getting better.

There is no reason in "the foreseeable future that a Negro couldn't be president of the United States," he said.

Three months after Kennedy made that statement, while hundreds of Freedom Riders were in jail, Barack Obama was born.

So much of what has happened in Egypt is like deja vu.
--Joan Mulholland, Freedom Rider

The Freedom Riders eventually forced the federal government to issue a sweeping desegregation order for bus and rail stations. Five months after they began, they were victorious.

"It was the first unambiguous victory for the civil rights movement," says Raymond Arsenault, author of the book "Freedom Riders," on which the PBS series is based.

"They showed you could go into Alabama and Mississippi and win. They were willing to die to make a point."

Arsenault says he sees the same spirit in the Egyptian protesters.

"All they had was their courage and commitment. They didn't have weapons, huge amounts of funding or international support. It was the same with the Freedom Riders."

He says many Freedom Riders went on to become "shock troops" for other civil rights campaigns.

A half-century later, the wave they joined is still surging, he says.

"They had no reason to believe they could pull it off," Arsenault says. "Their elders in the movement were telling them that they were crazy and were going to set the movement back. But they weren't waiting for the courts or their leaders. They wanted freedom now, not freedom later."

CNN

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Opposition leader's return to Uganda met with renewed violence (The Christian Science Monitor)

Kampala, Uganda – Ronald Ssenkumbi was among the crowd who thronged Uganda's airport to greet Kizza Besigye, the opposition leader who many Ugandans consider the country's true president after February's contested polls.

“The people along this road here represent the real Uganda. We have come here spontaneously to greet Besigye and to show we want change,” says Mr. Ssenkumbi.

Mr. Besigye flew in from Nairobi on Thursday after spending almost two weeks there receiving medical treatment. He was injured when Ugandan security services arrested him as he led opposition protests against spiraling living costs.

MONITOR QUIZ: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

On the road to the airport, where Besigye supporters gathered in jubilant celebration, Ugandan police and military fired on the crowd with tear gas, live ammunition, and struck many with batons. At lease one person was reportedly killed in the violence.

Coming after weeks of unrest and a wave of opposition protests over rising prices, analysts say the unrest could be a sign of things to come as divisions between the opposition and government appear to be deepening.

Besigye's arrival came the same day that Ugandaa€™s veteran president, Yoweri Museveni, was sworn in for a fourth term in office that could extending his rule in Uganda to more than 30 years.

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Decked out in the bright yellow of the president’s ruling National Resistance Movement, Mr. Museveni's supporters gathered in downtown Kampala to listen as he pledged to make Uganda a middle-income country in the next five years and explained how his resounding victory in February elections proved the country was now more united than ever.

“We won an overwhelming victory in all regions,” Museveni said. “Since creation, this is the first time that Ugandans have coalesced into such consensus.”

In theory, Museveni has a lot to be optimistic about. With Ugandan troops in Somalia, he has managed to maintain good relations with the West. What's more, in the next few years, Uganda should start pumping the first of an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil believed to be in reserves along the country’s border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

But Museveni's quarter-century rule of Uganda could become one of his biggest problems as the opposition movement appears to be growing.

“In the end you undermine your own legitimacy and destroy any achievements that you’ve made,” says Levi Ochieng, an independent analyst. “The end is always destructive."

MONITOR QUIZ: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

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Leaders meet for ASEAN summit

The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) stand together for a group photo in Jakarta on Saturday.Indonesia chairs the summit this yearThe nation has been trying to mediate talks between Thailand and CambodiaThe border row is a result of a dispute over the ancient Preah Vihear templeThe Indonesian president urges member nations to promote peace

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met in Indonesia on Saturday for a two-day summit expected to focus on efforts to achieve economic integration by 2015.

The meeting started under the cloud of security issues such as the Thai-Cambodia border conflict.

Indonesia, which chairs the summit this year, has been trying to mediate talks between Thailand and Cambodia in their dispute over the ancient Preah Vihear temple.

Renewed fighting in the area has prompted displacement of thousands on both sides. Fighting along the turbulent border has raged since last month as the two sides accuse each other of trying to seize ancient temples.

Much of the border between the two countries remains in dispute.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urged member nations to promote peace.

"We realize that to ensure peaceful and stable east Asia region, we must ensure stability and security in the region," he said in his opening speech.

"History recalls that as one of the pioneers of regional integration in the world, ASEAN was established based on the strong desire to establish peace, building consensus, promoting stability through regional cooperation and integration."

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa met separately with his Thai and Cambodian counterparts on Friday.

Last month, both nations agreed to the deployment of an Indonesian observer team to the disputed area, but have not agreed on conditions set by either country. There are no indications so far that the leaders of both nations will meet on the sidelines of the summit.

Other issues expected to be discussed is Myanmar's bid to host the summit in 2016, two years before its turn to assume the chairmanship.

Human Rights Watch urged ASEAN leaders to reject the proposal.

"Rewarding Burma with ASEAN's chairmanship after it staged sham elections and still holds 2,000 political prisoners would be an embarrassment for the region," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "ASEAN leaders need to decide if they will let Burma demote ASEAN to the laughingstock of intergovernmental forums."

Myanmar was formerly known as Burma.

The regional group rotates the chairmanship every year among its members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. International pressure forced Myanmar to skip its turn in 2005.

Yudhoyono also stressed the need for ASEAN leaders to address the challenges of food and energy security.

"We must give serious attention and take concrete measures to address the soaring of food prices and world energy, which in turn will negatively affect the prosperity of our people," he said. "History shows that the rise of food and energy prices usually caused the increase in the number of people living in poverty."

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GOP Leaders Name Cantor, Kyl to Deficit Panel

Associated Press

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The No. 2 Republicans in the House and Senate have been named to a deficit panel led by Vice President Biden that is tasked with developing a bipartisan plan to curb federal budget deficits.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona join several Democratic stalwarts on the panel, which meets next month. President Barack Obama set up the panel last week.

It's the second such panel for Obama, who largely ignored the bipartisan but politically painful cuts and revenue increases the first panel came up with last year. The new group comes as must-pass legislation to maintain the government's ability to borrow comes to a head. Both Obama and Republicans say spending cuts must be part of that effort.

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Party Leaders Look to Center for Budget Support as Liberals, Conservatives Balk

AP

Shown here are Rep. Anthony Weiner, left, Rep. Michele Bachmann, center, and Sen. Rand Paul.

President Obama and congressional leaders are going to have to rely on the political center to pass their 2011 budget bill as Tea Party conservatives and dyed-in-the-wool liberals start to peel off. 

The text of that bill, released Tuesday morning, had a little bit for everyone -- cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and the elimination of some presidential "czars" for Republicans; protection of education programs like Head Start and Pell grants for Democrats.

But the bill also left a lot out. For starters, it only cut $38.5 billion, including about $12 billion in cuts that were already signed into law -- not enough for some Republicans, particularly freshmen who wanted their first big budget clash to result in seismic, not just historic, cuts. On the Democratic side, the fact some programs for the poor were not spared was a moral outrage. 

The mounting discontent means dozens of lawmakers from both parties will likely take a stand against the budget bill when it comes for a floor vote later in the week, presumably before the current stopgap budget expires. It may not be enough to derail the hard-fought deal, but their objections challenge the narrative that congressional leaders achieved a masterstroke with their 11th-hour, shutdown-averting compromise. 

"I'll probably vote against it if the cuts are as draconian as they have been," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., told Fox News. She was among a half-dozen members of Congress who protested the cuts Monday in New York City, claiming they would slash funding to low-income aid programs ranging from Women, Infants and Children (WIC) to Community Development Block Grants. 

Joining her were Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Charles Rangel, Eliot Engel, Anthony Weiner and Nydia Velazquez. Most of them voted against the stopgap budget early Saturday morning. The bill passed overwhelmingly on a 348-70 vote in the House, with more Democrats opposing it than Republicans. 

As the details of the broader plan were released Tuesday, even high-ranking Democrats were keeping their opinions close to the vest.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the Democrats' top vote counter in the House, said he's not yet sure whether he will support the bill. "There are a number of things I don't like," Hoyer said.

Hoyer said he does not know whether Republicans will ask him for help rounding up Democratic votes for the bill -- the GOP can only afford to lose 27 members before needing help from the other side to pass it. 

"My presumption is we don't know where our people are, and I don't think they know where their people are," Hoyer said.

But harder-line lawmakers from both parties are starting to generate clatter against the compromise ahead of a final vote. 

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, announced Tuesday that he would oppose the final package. 

"While I respect that some of my Republican colleagues will ultimately support this spending deal, I believe voters are asking us to set our sights higher," he said in a statement. 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also wrote in a letter to colleagues that he would vote "a resounding NO" on the deal, and urged others to join him. 

"The much-ballyhooed 2011 continuing resolution will leave the federal government spending $1.6 trillion more than it takes in," he wrote. "The only 'good news' from the 2011 CR would be that it adds less debt than President Obama's plan, but it does not appreciably change the accumulation of debt." 

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has also expressed disappointment in the plan, saying it didn't cut enough and lamenting that it carved out provisions to defund Planned Parenthood and the federal health care overhaul. 

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the champion of the Planned Parenthood measure, said in an interview over the weekend that while he appreciates the work House Speaker John Boehner did on behalf of his caucus at the negotiating table, the compromise is "probably not good enough" to win his vote. 

GOP leaders, though, claim they got the best deal they could for their side. Boehner and others have noted he was the sole GOP negotiator at a table full of Democrats and describe the compromise as a substantive first step toward bigger budget reforms. 

Both parties already are gearing up for a fight over raising the debt ceiling and, connected to that, the 2012 budget and entitlement reforms. Obama plans to outline a new deficit-reduction strategy Wednesday as he looks to haggle with Republicans who have proposed a sweeping plan which would overhaul Medicare while cutting trillions over the next decade. 

With that as the backdrop, party leaders are urging their rank-and-file to clear away the 2011 budget battle and move on to the next one. 

"There are going to be dozens of these battles over the next 18 months," Boehner told Fox News on Monday. "We just have been through the first one. We're about to engage in the second one. But this is going to go on and on and on." 

The final 2011 budget bill includes a provision preventing Guantanamo prisoners from being transferred to the U.S., as well as a provision restricting taxpayer funding for abortion in the District of Columbia. 

It reduces the military budget by $2 billion more than Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was an acceptable level, but strips out related earmarks and eliminates the controversial backup engine for the F-35 fighter jet. 

Other areas of the budget took a considerable hit. The EPA endured a 16 percent decrease, losing $1.6 billion from its budget. Transportation and housing budgets took an 18 percent budget cut compared with last year's levels. The bill would end funding for more than 55 programs, according to the House Appropriations Committee, extracting about $1 billion in savings. Plus the final bill would end funding for two programs in the health care overhaul and reduce the legislative branch budget by over $100 million. That includes a 5 percent cut to most House offices.

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