Archive for October, 2009

Leaders recall Berlin Wall’s fall

Three Cold War leaders from the Soviet Union, West Germany and US who saw the Berlin Wall fall two decades ago have been reunited in Germany’s capital.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl and George Bush Senior paid tribute to the ordinary people who were behind the peaceful revolution of 1989.

The trio also praised one another during the two-hour reunion.

Major celebrations are planned for 9 November, the 20th anniversary of the wall’s collapse.

The event ushered in the end of Soviet communism and Germany’s reunification.

“We Germans don’t have very much in our history to be proud of,” said Mr Kohl, 79, who was chancellor of West Germany and then the reunited Germany from 1982-98.

“But we’ve got every reason to be proud about German reunification.”

The people were the heroes Mikhail Gorbachev Former Soviet leader Berlin Wall road trip: Map

Mr Kohl, who has used a wheelchair since fracturing his hip last year, added: “There has never been a relationship that reached the level of my relations with these two gentlemen.”

Correspondents say the trio clearly enjoyed each other’s company at their first reunion in many years.

Mr Bush, 85, who was US president from 1989-93, said the historic events behind the wall’s collapse had grown “in the hearts and minds of the people who so long had to strive for their God-given rights”.

“The wall could never erase your dream, our dream of one Germany, a free Germany, a proud Germany,” he said.

Newly re-elected German Chancellor Angela Merkel was among the dignitaries who attended Saturday’s reunion.

“The people were the heroes,” said Mr Gorbachev, 78. “The three of us don’t want to take credit for the accomplishments of the previous generations.”

The last Soviet leader also remembered two absent Cold War leaders: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who has dementia, and ex-French President Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996.

Mr Bush, now walking with the help of a cane, was full of praise for Mr Gorbachev, a Nobel Peace laureate who was in office between 1985-1991.

“Through it all he stood firm, which is why he’ll also stand tall when the history of our time in office is finally written,” said the former US president.

UK rejects pirates’ ransom demand

The government has insisted it will not make a ransom payment to Somali pirates who have kidnapped a British couple.

Paul and Rachel Chandler, aged 59 and 55 and from Kent, were taken hostage by gunmen as they sailed their yacht in the Indian Ocean early on 23 October.

A ransom demand of $7m (£4.3m) was made in a phone call to the BBC on Friday.

The Foreign Office said the couple were “blameless tourists” but said no payment would be made nor advice given to relatives on how to make a payment.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office added: “We are aware of reports that a ransom demand of $7m has been made. [Her Majesty's Government] HMG’s policy remains clear: We will not make substantive concessions to hostage takers, including the payment of ransoms.”

‘Entirely unjustified’

The Chandlers, of Tunbridge Wells, had been travelling to Tanzania from the Seychelles. Their yacht was later found in international waters.

In the phone call to the BBC one of the pirates said: “If they do not harm us, we will not harm them – we only need a little amount of seven million dollars.”

Rob Macaire, British High Commissioner, Kenya, told the BBC: “We are not in direct contact with whoever is holding the Chandlers.

“Our main concern is to make them understand that what they are doing is entirely unjustified and that they should release the Chandlers immediately and unconditionally.”

Armed pirates boarded the Chandler’s yacht, the Lynn Rival, in the Indian Ocean while they slept.

Mr Chandler’s brother-in-law Stephen Collett has previously insisted that the couple are “not rich people” and that most of their money is tied up in their yacht.

‘Divisions’ reported

In an interview with the BBC, a local Somali official said through a translator that he believed a number of groups were involved in handling the couple.

He said the pirates had “many cars” and had hired extra people to help them.

He added that divisions had emerged among the groups and while all wanted a ransom paid, others wanted the release of pirates recently detained by European Union warships.

Earlier, the BBC’s East Africa Correspondent Will Ross said in previous cases pirates had begun negotiating with an extremely high figure, and then settled for far less.

In a phone call on Thursday, the Chandlers said they were first moved from their yacht to a container ship, the Kota Wajar, which had also been seized by the pirates.

It is thought they were then moved to another ship anchored off the eastern coast of Somalia on Friday.

The BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner has been told by Whitehall officials that the government has appointed a hostage negotiator who is on standby to deal with the case.

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Abdullah to make run-off decision

President Hamid Karzai’s rival in the second round of the Afghan presidential poll says he will announce on Sunday whether he intends to quit the race.

Mr Abdullah Abdullah called for the resignation of key election officials and others as a way to mitigate fraud and corruption in the vote.

But those demands were rejected earlier in the week in talks with Mr Karzai.

A senior adviser said that in talks on Friday, Mr Abdullah’s team decided he should not take part in the poll.

But Mr Adbullah’s campaign said on Saturday that no final decision had been made, and that the former foreign minister would announce his next move on Sunday.

The BBC’s Ian Pannell in Kabul says that if he withdraws it will raise serious questions about the credibility of the election.

However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a runoff with only one candidate would not necessarily threaten the legitimacy of the process.

“We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward,” Mrs Clinton told reporters in the United Arab Emirates.

‘Nothing has changed’

Hundreds of thousands of votes were discounted from August’s first round of voting.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission’s (ECC) action meant Mr Karzai’s total was reduced to below the 50% plus one vote threshold for outright victory, indicating a run-off poll was needed.

Among the “minimum conditions” Mr Abdullah has set for holding a relatively fair and free contest to be accepted, is sacking of the head of the country’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), Azizullah Lodin.

KARZAI V ABDULLAH Hamid Karzai: First popularly elected president of Afghanistan Opposed Soviet occupation in 1980s Critics say he has done little to rein in corruption Abdullah Abdullah: Tajik-Pashtun, doctor by profession Senior Northern Alliance leader during Taliban rule Removed from Karzai’s cabinet in 2006 Profile: Hamid Karzai Profile: Abdullah Abdullah

The deadline for those conditions to be met expires on Saturday.

On Monday, Mr Adbullah said Mr Lodin had “no credibility”. Mr Lodin denies allegations that he favoured Mr Karzai.

One of Mr Abdullah’s senior advisers, Ahmed Wali Massoud, said he was unhappy that nothing had been done to redress the electoral system’s problems.

“The fact is that the infrastructure of this fraud is still there. Almost 1.5 million votes were rigged. Nothing has changed,” he told the BBC.

“So if you go back and do the second round election, it means that it will happen again. So, therefore, I don’t think that we would be willing to participate.”

Earlier, the IEC announced that it planned to open 6,322 polling stations for the run-off – more than it did during the first round.

The ECC had recommended cutting the number from 6,000 to about 5,800 – to make sure there would be enough monitors to limit fraud and troops to ensure security.

Mr Abdullah served as foreign minister in the short-lived government headed by the Northern Alliance, and continued as “foreign minister in exile” throughout the years of rule by the Taliban, which was ousted in 2001.

He continued in that role under the Karzai government that was formed after the fall of the Taliban, leaving the government in 2006.

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