SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday the cease-fire in Gaza is a temporary respite, at best, and that peace negotiations throughout the Middle East require a nimble rethinking of conventional assumptions.

“The truth is, we’re at an impasse,” Blair said at a Yale University panel on world crises. The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas “doesn’t alter the long-term problem.”

Blair was joined on the panel at Battell Chapel by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, who is a member of the Yale faculty, and Yale President Richard C. Levin. Their conversation ranged from Iran’s nuclear program and the Syrian civil war to Europe’s economic collapse and the need to combat climate change.

Blair said he’d just returned from his 90th trip to Jerusalem as a peace negotiator since leaving office.

“My wife said to me, ‘It’s not actually the number of visits, it’s the progress that counts,’ which I didn’t think was remarkably supportive, I may say,” Blair remarked.

He said there’s a danger in trying to assess Middle Eastern hotspots using outdated analysis. For example, Israel now looks at a world in which its two closest regional negotiating partners, Egypt and Turkey, have been politically transformed.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, that country’s demographics have dramatically shifted. Egypt’s dominant age group is young people  most of them worried about jobs and economic prosperity. Yet in Egypt and elsewhere, economic programs are linked in the minds of the citizenry with the old, dictatorial regimes.

There is “no way” democracy will take hold anywhere in the region without effective economic policies, Blair said.

As for Iran, Blair predicted that unless Iran curtails its nuclear program, world leaders will have “some difficult decisions to make” over the next year or two.

“We’ve got one last chance to make diplomacy work,” he noted.

Ongoing economic sanctions against Iran are having a “huge” impact, Blair said, but “we’re just not at a point where we can say it worked.”

Moving on to the unrest in Syria, Blair said Western leaders have been tentative in their response because they’re worried about who would take power if the current regime were toppled. “Disentangling it is going to be very difficult,” he said.

Zedillo said diplomacy wasn’t given enough of a chance in Syria. “We’re moving rather fast to something that will be rather ugly,” he said.

Blair also talked about the ironic truth that world leaders often have to grow into their jobs, especially with regard to international affairs.

“In the five years since I left office I’ve learned so much,” he said. “It’s embarrassing, actually.”

Blair said the “journey of being a leader is that you start at your least capable and most popular, and end at your most capable and least popular.”

Both Blair and Zedillo said President Barack Obama’s re-election was an “opportunity” for the U.S. to become more engaged in fighting climate change. They also said the rest of the world is counting on America to recover its economic swagger and stand up for values of freedom and justice. Of course, that doesn’t mean the world won’t have criticisms.

“Give up on being loved,” Blair told his American audience. “That’s not your role in life.”

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Over 300 Muslims have been killed in recent attacks by Buddhist extremists in Myanmar as a new wave of ethnic and sectarian violence has targeted Rohingya Muslims in the country, reports say.

A Muslim community leader told Press TV on Tuesday that at least 50,000 Rohingyas have been displaced in the fresh round of violence in the country’s western regions.

Authorities said on Monday that 88 people were killed this month.

"Altogether 49 men and 39 women have been killed," a government official -- who did not want to be named -- told AFP, bringing the total death toll since June to about 180.

"About 300 houses were burnt down in Pauktaw town on Sunday but there were no casualties in that incident," the official added.

However, rights groups fear that the actual death toll could be much higher.

Earlier on Tuesday, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said that there is a shortage of food, water and medical help at the already overcrowded camps in western Myanmar.

"It is clearly urgent that law and order be restored to prevent further violence, and that access is facilitated so that aid can be provided to those in need," the agency said in a statement.

The statement also said that over 28,000 people have been forced to escape from their homes this month as a result of escalating sectarian violence in the country.

Thousands of mainly Muslim Rohingyas in Rakhine state have sought shelter in the UN camps already struggling to cope with the 75,000 people displaced by earlier violence sparked in June.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued separate statements, calling for Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremist Buddhists.

The government in Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas as citizens and holds the opinion that the only solution to the crisis is to send the one-million-strong community to other countries willing to take them.

Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origin, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.— www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Hla Thein, the vice chairman of the National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD), said on Friday that over 100 Muslims have lost their lives over the past week in clashes between extremist Buddhists and Rohingyas.

The deadly violence peaked on Tuesday night, but people have been killed every day this week, said the leader of the Muslim political party that won four seats in Myanmar’s 2010 election.

Tensions have heightened across Rakhine, forcing Muslims to flee to emergency camps located in the state’s capital Sittwe.

The violence led the United Nations to warn on Friday that Myanmar’s “reforms and opening up process being currently pursued by the government is likely to be jeopardized” if the communal unrest was not stopped.

“The vigilante attacks, targeted threats and extremist rhetoric must be stopped,” said a spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Myanmar army forces allegedly provided the Buddhists with containers of petrol to set ablaze the houses of Muslim villagers and force them out of their houses.

The Buddhist-majority government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas and has classified them as illegal migrants, even though the Rohingyas are said to be Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan origins, who migrated to Myanmar as early as the 8th century.— www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Abna

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Muslims in the US face the greatest prejudice from their fellow citizens compared to any other group, a survey conducted by the Arab American Institute has shown.

The results of the survey, which was completed on Aug. 15-16 and conducted on 1,052 people who answered the survey questions online, were posted on the Internet. The survey found that Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans and American Muslims have the lowest favorable and highest unfavorable ratings among the groups covered. Fourteen religious groups were included in the survey.

Forty-one percent of respondents expressed an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, 39 percent expressed an unfavorable opinion of Arabs, 33 percent an unfavorable opinion of Muslim Americans and 31 percent of Arab Americans.

The survey found that Muslims were the only group with a net unfavorable rating. The researchers also said, “Note that one in five Americans were either unfamiliar with or not sure of their attitudes toward these communities.”

Sikhs and Mormons also fare poorly compared to other groups, but one in four Americans said they were either “unfamiliar” with or “not sure” about Sikhs.

Republicans tend to have higher negative attitudes toward Muslims, and in fact other groups, as well as older people. “Democrats and Obama voters give no group a net negative rating. Republicans and Romney voters only give strong negative ratings to Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans and American Muslims,” the Arab American Institute noted in its report on the survey.

The researchers also noted, “There is a deep generational divide, which is reflected in a partisan divide,” and “Younger Americans (18-25) rate Arabs and Muslims up to 17 points higher than the older generation. They also rate Arab Americans and American Muslims higher.”

Interestingly, the survey also found that younger respondents rated Catholics and various Protestant groups covered in the survey almost 20 points lower than did older Americans, classified as people who are 65 and above in the survey.

Not only age and political inclination but racial background also influences attitudes toward Muslim groups, the survey found. “Favorable attitudes toward Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans and American Muslims are significantly higher among African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans.”

In response to the question “If a Muslim American were to attain an important position of influence in government, would you feel confident that person would be able to do the job, or would you feel that their religion would influence their decision-making?” 38 percent of respondents said they were confident they could do their job, while 38 percent said their ethnicity would influence their decisions. Twenty-three percent said “Not sure,” indicating that 61 percent of respondents were not confident that a Muslim American could do their job without religion getting in the way.

In comments about these findings, the researchers noted: “Voters, as a whole, are divided as to whether Arab Americans and American Muslims, if appointed to a government post, could do the job without their ethnicity or religion influencing their work. Again, there is a deep partisan divide on this question.”

Party preferences also influenced attitudes regarding the question about the possibility of a Muslim American being in an important public office. Researchers said, “By a two-to-one ratio, Democrats and Obama voters are confident that Arab Americans and American Muslims could do the job, but a strong majority of Republicans and Romney voters fear that their ethnicity or religion of members of these communities would influence their work.”—www.shafaqna.com/english

Source: Sundays Zamana