U.N. says children tortured, raped in Syrian catastrophe

U.N. says children tortured, raped in Syrian catastrophe

Valerie Amos said Children have been murdered, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Many do not have enough food to eat. (AFP)

Syrian families have been burned in their homes, people bombed waiting for bread, children tortured, raped and murdered and cities reduced to rubble in Syria's two-year-old war that has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, the United Nations said on Thursday.

A quarter of Syria's 22 million people are displaced within the country and 1.3 million have fled to other states in the Middle East and North Africa, U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told the U.N. Security Council.

It was a rare public briefing of the Security Council on the conflict in Syria, which was called for by Australia, and Amos pleaded for the 15 council members to "take the action necessary to end this brutal conflict."

"The situation in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe with ordinary people paying the price for the failure to end the conflict," Amos said. "I do not have an answer for those Syrians I have spoken to who asked me why the world has abandoned them."

The Security Council has been deadlocked on how to end the conflict. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's close ally Russia, with the aid of China, has used its veto power to block any condemnations or attempts to sanction Assad's government.

The United Nations says the war in Syria, which began as peaceful protests that turned violent when Assad tried to crush the revolt, has claimed more than 70,000 lives.

"Children are among the ones who suffer most," Amos said. "Children have been murdered, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Many do not have enough food to eat. Millions have been traumatized by the horrors ... This brutal conflict is not only shattering Syria's present, it is destroying its future."

U.N. envoy on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, and U.N. envoy on children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, also briefed the council on the Syrian conflict.

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari blamed terrorism and sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and others for the plight of its people and accused neighboring countries of preventing refugees from returning to Syria.

"Syrian people will not forgive facilitating the movement of thousands of European and Western terrorists and jihadists, sponsored by well-known intelligence agencies ... to the Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders with Syria," he said.

"They are accommodated in training camps to then enter my country and spread destruction and sabotage, and shed innocent blood," Ja'afari told the Security Council in comments that echoed what Assad said in a television interview on Wednesday.

Starving children

Guterres said that since February, there have been 8,000Syrians a day fleeing across the country's borders and at that rate the number of refugees was forecast to more than double by the end of the year to 3.5 million.

"This is not just frightening, it risks becoming simply unsustainable. There is no way to adequately respond to the enormous humanitarian needs these figures represent," he told the Security Council. "And it is difficult to imagine how a nation can endure so much suffering."

He warned of the conflict spilling over into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq - Syria's neighbors bearing the refugee burden. He said that taking into account only registered refugees, Lebanon's population had grown by 10 percent.

"But taking into account refugees who are not seeking registration, and Syrian migrant workers, some even estimate that up to a quarter of the population of Lebanon may now be Syrian," Guterres said.

Amos said there were 6.8 million people inside Syria in need of aid.

She said that of the $1.5 billion pledged by international donors to cover Syria's humanitarian needs until June, only about half had been paid. She also painted a dire picture of international efforts to deliver aid within Syria.

Bureaucratic obstacles make it almost impossible for aid to be distributed and the Syrian government has reduced the number of aid groups approved to work in the country to 29 from 110,Amos said, adding that aid convoys were also regularly attacked or shot at and staff intimidated or kidnapped.

"People in opposition-held areas are in the most urgent need," she said. "I was horrified to hear accounts during my recent visit to Turkey of children dying from hunger in theseareas. We need to get aid into these hard-to-reach areas."

Amos warned that the limitations on the ground have left theUnited Nations "precariously close to suspending some criticalhumanitarian operations."

"Members of the international community, particularlymembers of this council, must urgently come together in supportof the Syrian people," she said.

19 Apr, 2013

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Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/04/19/U-N-says-children-tortured-raped-in-Syrian-catastrophe.html
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North Korea lays out tough pre-conditions for talks

North Koreans attend a rally held to gather their willingness for a victory in a possible war against the United States and South Korea in Nampo, North Korea. (Reuters)

North Korea offered talks Thursday with South Korea and the United States, but laid out pre-conditions that Seoul and Washington dismissed and analysts said would do little to reduce soaring tensions.

The demands laid out by the North's main military body included the withdrawal of U.N. sanctions and a permanent end to South Korea-U.S. joint military drills.

The offer followed a month of increasingly hostile exchanges between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington that have included threats of nuclear war and precision missile strikes.

The North's conditions were swiftly rejected by South Korea which, together with the United States, has made any talks conditional on the North putting its nuclear weapons program on the table.

"North Korea's demands are totally incomprehensible. It's absurd," foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also dismissed the North's conditions, which emerged after an offer from the diplomat during his weekend visit to the Korean peninsula for Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table.

"That's the first word of negotiation or thought of that we've heard from them since all of this has begun," Kerry told U.S. lawmakers.

"So I'm prepared to look at that as... at least a beginning gambit -- not acceptable, obviously, and we have to go further."

Dialogue has become the new focus of the blistering rhetorical battle that has trapped the Korean peninsula in an escalating cycle of military tensions ever since the North carried out its third nuclear test in February.

South Korea's new president, Park Geun-Hye, has made tentative -- and conditional -- offers of talks, but the North's initial response was to swat them away as a "crafty trick".

Some analysts see the North's engagement in a debate over dialogue -- no matter how unrealistic the conditions -- as a welcome shift from the apocalyptic threats that have been pouring out of Pyongyang.

"It's an initial show of strength in a game of tug-of-war that at least shows a desire to have a dialogue down the line," said Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

But others like Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea expert with the International Crisis Group, ruled out any softening of Pyongyang's position and said those hoping for dialogue were being willfully naive.

The North, Pinkston argued, had bound itself to a course that could only end with its recognition as a nuclear power -- a status that is anathema to the United States and its allies.

"So what is there to even talk about?" Pinkston said.

"The North is committed. It's burned its bridges. Any reversal could only be made at immense domestic cost to the regime.

"And there is simply no way any U.S. administration is going to sit down and confirm a change in the status quo with the North as a nuclear state," Pinkston said.

"We're still firmly on a collision course, and it's not going to end well," he added.

The first step demanded by the North's National Military Commission was the withdrawal of "cooked up" U.N. sanctions that were imposed after the nuclear test in February.

North Korea has repeatedly cited the sanctions as a prime trigger for the current crisis.

The other main bone of contention has been ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills, which have involved the deployment of nuclear-capable B-52s and B-2 stealth bombers.

Both countries must provide international guarantees that such "nuclear war drills" will never be repeated, the commission said.

"Dialogue and war games can never go together," it added.

President Park's dialogue overtures to the North received the backing of Kerry during his recent Northeast Asia tour and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged Pyongyang to "seriously" consider Seoul's offer.

Both Park and Kerry stressed any talks would have to be predicated on signals from North Korea that it would "change its ways" and respect its international obligations, especially with its nuclear program.

But in Thursday's statement, the North stressed it had no intention of bargaining away its nuclear weapons.

"Nothing is more foolish than pressurizing (North Korea) to show its will for denuclearization first," it said.

The North's statement made no mention of a possible medium-range missile test -- the expectation of which has kept South Korean and U.S. forces on heightened alert for the past week.

Intelligence reports suggest the North has two Musudan missiles primed to fire from its east coast, and most observers had predicted a launch on or around April 15, the birthday of the North's late founder Kim Il-Sung.

19 Apr, 2013

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Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2013/04/19/North-Korea-lays-out-tough-pre-conditions-for-talks-.html
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Iraqi official says Baghdad coffee shop bombing kills 15, wounds 32

A late-night bombing at a coffee shop in west Baghdad killed at least 15 people on Thursday. (Courtesy: AP)

A late-night bombing at a coffee shop in west Baghdad killed at least 15 people on Thursday, according to AP.

This is the latest spike in violence and comes just days ahead of Iraq's first elections since U.S. forces withdrew from the country.

The 10:00 pm (1900 GMT) blast struck in the mostly-Sunni Amriyah neighborhood and also wounded 32 people, security and medical officials told reporters.

Among the dead were at least three children, according to AFP.

An estimated 13.5 million Iraqis are eligible to vote for more than 8,000 candidates standing in Saturday's provincial elections, with 378 seats being contested.

Iraqi forces are solely responsible for polling day security, the first time they have been in charge without support from American or other international forces during elections since dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

U.S. forces eventually withdrew from Iraq in December 2011.

19 Apr, 2013

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Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/04/19/Iraqi-official-says-Baghdad-coffee-shop-bombing-kills-15-wounds-32-.html
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