UN chief praises reforms in Qatar

HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani meeting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at Al Wajbah Palace yesterday evening. Developments in the region and a number of issues of mutual interest were discussed at the meeting which was attended by HE Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Saud al-Thani, private secretary to HH the Emir, and HE Mohamed bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi, assistant foreign minister for follow-up affairs. HH the Emir later hosted  a dinner banquet at Al Wajbah Palace in honour of the UN secretary general. HH Sheikha Mozah Nasser al-Misnad, HH the Emir's wife, attended the banquet.

Staff Reporter

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has described the reforms being carried out in Qatar under the wise leadership of HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani as "a wonderful development".

Addressing a press conference at the Ritz-Carlton Doha yesterday, he said he was particularly  impressed by the empowerment of women in Qatar.

"If women are kept aside and not allowed to use their talents, a nation stands to lose 50% of its human resource potential," he said.

On the democratic process currently underway in the Qatar, Annan said it was a welcome development which has been taking place in many other parts of the world as well.

"I applaud what is happening here," he added.

Annan is in Doha on a two-day visit to Qatar.

---

Iraq govt to take custody of Saddam

Saddam Hussain just after his capture in December last year.

BAGHDAD: Former president Saddam Hussain will be handed over to Iraqi justice today, two days after the country regained sovereignty from Washington, but US soldiers will still guard him to ensure he does not escape.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday Saddam and up to 11 top members of his ousted government would appear before Iraqi judges to be charged tomorrow, although a trial was still months away.

Saddam would be charged with crimes against humanity for a 1988 massacre of Kurds, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, said Salem Chalabi, a lawyer leading the work of a tribunal that will try the former Iraqi leader.

French lawyer Emmanuel Ludot, one of a 20-strong team appointed by Saddam's wife to represent him, said the former president would refuse to acknowledge any court or any judge.

"It will be a court of vengeance, a settling of scores," Ludot told France Info radio, saying any judge sitting in the court would be under pressure to find Saddam guilty. Ludot said he expected Saddam to say last year's US-led war was illegal.

Allawi's new government is under pressure to demonstrate to ordinary Iraqis that a break from the past has been made, while also showing it is tough on violence blighting the country.

Three US Marines were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad yesterday, raising to 632 the number of US soldiers killed in action since the US-led invasion in March last year.

"I don't know why the terrorists want to kill us. We just want to help Iraqis," said a Marine at the scene.

Allawi told a news conference: "This government has formally requested the transfer of the most notorious and high-profile detainees. These people...will face justice before the special Iraqi court created in January to try members of the former regime for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes."

Saddam, accused by Iraqis of ordering the killing and torture of thousands of people during 35 years of Baathist rule, has been held as a prisoner of war since US forces found him hiding in a hole near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, in December.

Allawi said the US-led multinational force would keep physical custody of Saddam and the other 11 until Iraq's nascent police force was capable of detaining them securely.

The tribunal would give them a fair and open trial, but it would not start for several months, Allawi said.

Highlighting the security problems facing Allawi's government, Doha-based Al Jazeera television aired a video tape showing what militants said was the execution of a US soldier.

The soldier was named in the video footage as Private Keith Maupin, 20, seized by guerrillas in April.

A gunman was seen firing a shot at the soldier, wearing greenish overalls and seen only from behind. The body fell into a hole.

There was no independent confirmation Maupin was the man killed.

While uncertainty shrouded his fate, three Turkish hostages were freed by a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused by Washington of links to Al Qaeda.

His group had threatened to behead the Turks yesterday unless their government told companies to stop dealing with US forces in Iraq. Ankara rejected the demand.

"Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad announces the release of the Turkish hostages for the sake of Muslims in Turkey and their demonstrations against (US President George W) Bush," a masked man said on a video tape.

A three-day visit by Bush to Turkey for a Nato summit prompted Turkish demonstrators to take to the streets to protest against his policies in Iraq.

Another two Turks seized in Iraq have told their families they were well and would return to Turkey within a week, Turkish media reported.

Kidnap groups have threatened to kill a US Marine and a Pakistani. The Pakistani's captors said on Sunday he would be beheaded within three days unless Iraqi prisoners were released.

A day after Iraq regained its sovereignty, ambassadors from three nations in the US-led coalition - the United States, Australia and Denmark - presented their credentials to the new government, formally resuming diplomatic ties.

John Negroponte, the new US ambassador, who was previously Washington's envoy to the United Nations, said he looked forward to working with the Iraqi government. - Reuters

---

Emir names new minister

HE al-Mana being sworn-in yesterday as minister of wakfs and Islamic affairs.

HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani yesterday issued an Emiri Order reshuffling the Council of Ministers.

The order provided that HE Mohamed bin Abdul Latif bin Abdulrahman al-Mana be appointed as minister of wakfs and Islamic affairs.

HE al-Mana was later sworn-in before HH the Emir at the Emiri Diwan.

The swearing-in was attended by HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Also yesterday, HH the Emir issued an Emiri Order, appointing HE Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Marri as an adviser to HH the Emir with ministerial rank.

In another decree, HH the Emir issued a decree appointing Faisal bin Abdullah al-Mahmoud as an undersecretary of the Ministry of Wakfs and Islamic Affairs. - QNA

---

More rockets hit Israeli town

GAZA CITY: Palestinian guerrillas launched rockets at an Israeli town during a visit there yesterday by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who pledged to prevent such attacks before and after a planned Gaza pullout.

The two rockets, fired from the northern Gaza Strip by the Hamas group, landed harmlessly on the edges of the southern town of Sderot while Sharon was meeting with municipal officials.

Sharon visited Sderot a day after a rocket that exploded near a kindergarten in the town killed a three-year-old boy and a man, aged 49. They were the first people to be killed in Israel in a rocket attack in nearly four years of violence.

Israel responded by sending more than 25 tanks and armoured personnel carriers into the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a regular launching ground for rockets barely 2km from Sderot, for what could be a lengthy stay.

"We are determined to take extensive action to ensure that what happened will not be repeated - not now, before we have moved out of the Gaza Strip, and not after we leave," Sharon, referring to Monday's rocket attack, told reporters in Sderot.

Witnesses in Beit Hanoun said the makeshift rockets, trailing white smoke, had streaked over Israeli tanks sent into the area to stop the launchings. - Reuters

---

Gas producers form group

By Dania Saadi

DUBAI: Opec members and other gas-producing countries have set up a 15-member group to monitor gas production along the lines of the 11-member oil group, the newspaper Al Hayat  reported, citing unidentified oil officials in the United Arab Emirates.

The new gas-producing group includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Qatar, Venezuela and Nigeria, all of which are members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and non-Opec states Russia, Angola and Oman, the London-based newspaper said, citing the unidentified officials.

The new gas-producing group will hold its first meeting on July 5 and 6 in Cairo to discuss the group's agenda, which includes monitoring gas prices and production. The group was created out of a meeting of gas-producing countries that was held in April in Cairo, the paper said.

Opec, which supplies more than a third of the world's oil needs, was created in 1960 in Baghdad to control oil production and monitor oil prices among its members. - Bloomberg

---

Powell urges action on Darfur

KHARTOUM:  US Secretary of State Colin Powell flew in to Sudan late yesterday with a call for the Khartoum government to take "action now" to end the humanitarian crisis in the western region of Darfur.

"I hope to give them a very direct message about how the United States and the international community sees the horrific situation in Darfur," said Powell, the highest-ranking US official to visit Khartoum since 1978.

"We have got to act now because we are running out of time," Powell told journalists travelling with him on a flight from the Nato summit in Istanbul.

"We need to see action promptly because people are dying and the death rate is going to go up significantly over the next several months," Powell said. "Time is of the essence and action is of the essence."

Asked whether the violence being committed by some militias against indigenous minorities supportive of the Darfur rebels amounted to "genocide," Powell said a review under way in the State Department had already found "indicators and elements" that point to such a conclusion. "What we are seeing is a disaster, a catastrophe. We can find the right label for it later, we have got to deal with it now," he said. - AFP

---

Portuguese PM gets EU job

BRUSSELS: Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso yesterday pledged to unite Europe and heal the wounds of the Iraq war after EU leaders unanimously nominated him as the next European Commission president.

He also promised at a trilingual news conference marked by flashes of self-deprecating humour to show fairness to small and large countries alike as head of the EU executive and shrugged off suggestions he was picked as a lowest common denominator.

"It's true the Iraq question divided Europe," said Barroso, a 48-year-old conservative lawyer. "It's important that we concentrate on what unites us," he added.

"The answer was given by the heads of state and government just now. By consensus, they decided to elect me president of the European Commission. It shows there was no division."

At a special summit that lasted barely half an hour, the 25 leaders also unanimously reappointed Javier Solana as foreign policy 'high representative'. They declared that he would become the EU's first foreign minister when a constitution agreed this month comes into force, possibly in 2007. - Reuters

---

Police thwart hijack

BERLIN: Three men yesterday tried to hijack a plane from Munich to Istanbul carrying 150 passengers but the pilot was able to return to Munich airport where special forces stormed the plane, German television reported.

Bayerischer Rundfunk television reported that police said the pilot hit an alarm button after the plane, run by the company Free Bird, had been in the air for 10 minutes.

The television said the 150 passengers were unhurt. It said special forces overpowered the three kidnappers and one of them jumped from the plane onto the tarmac. - Reuters