News Update Place

In a speech to bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil on Sunday, Benedict said indigenous people of the Americas had welcomed European priests after conquest.

“It’s arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs,” said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief co-ordinator of Coiab, an Amazon Indian group.

The pope had said the peoples of the Americas had a “silent longing” for Christianity and welcomed European priests’ arrival.

He said the church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Colonisation

Since Colombus’s landing, millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonisation backed by the Roman Catholic church through murder, disease or enslavement.

“To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening”

Sandro Tuxa, leader of the movement of northeastern tribes
Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

Indian groups sent a letter to Benedict last week asking for support in defending their ancestral lands and culture.

The letter said the Indians had suffered a “process of genocide” since the first European colonisers had arrived.

Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on tribal Indians.

‘Poorly advised’

Other tribal leaders also voiced their criticism on Monday.

Dionito Jose de Souza, a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state, said: “The state used the church to do the dirty work in colonising the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that … so is the pope taking back the church’s word?”

Pope John Paul II spoke in 1992 of mistakes in the evangelisation of native peoples of the Americas.

“We repudiate the [pope's] comments,” said Sandro Tuxa, leader of the movement of northeastern tribes.

“To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening.

“I think [the pope] has been poorly advised.”

The Roman Catholic church’s own Indian advocacy group in Brazil also criticised Benedict’s speech.

Voter turnout in Sunday’s election run-off was about 85 per cent - the highest since 1981.

Sarkozy supporters celebrate on the Champs-Elysees in Paris

The 52-year-old Sarkozy won 53.1 per cent of the vote in the second-round ballot.

He presented himself as the “candidate of work”, promising to loosen the 35-hour work week by offering tax breaks on overtime and to trim fat from the public service, cut taxes and wage war on unemployment.

He will succeed fellow conservative Jacques Chirac, who was president for 12 years.

Sarkozy’s face flashed up on television screens after polling stations closed at 8pm (18:00 GMT), signalling his victory and setting off jubilant scenes among thousands of supporters who had gathered in central Paris.

But there were also skirmishes between leftist supporters and police in at least one city square and reports of sporadic violence in two suburbs near the capital.

At the Socialist headquarters there was gloom after the party crashed to its third consecutive presidential election defeat. It now faces the prospect of tough internal reforms to make itself more appealing to voters.

Call for unity

In a speech at the UMP headquarters, Sarkozy said: “To all those French who did not vote for me, I want to say, beyond political battles, beyond differences of opinion, for me there is only one France. I want to tell them that I will be president of all the French.”

European Union leaders congratulated Sarkozy, who promised to put France back into the driving seat of Europe after the country voted down the EU constitution in a 2005 referendum.

Said Sarkozy after his win: “I want to launch a call to our European partners, with whom our destiny is deeply linked, to tell them that I have been European all my life, that I believe deeply, that I believe sincerely, in European construction and that tonight France is back in Europe.

George Bush, the US president, also telephoned to offer his congratulations and said he expected good relations with Sarkozy, who has made a priority of repairing the damage to French-US relations caused by tensions over the Iraq war.

Disagreeing friends

Sarkozy told the US “that France will always be by their side when they will need her”.

People Views

“With Sarkozy as president, there will be a new France … aligned on the US foreign policy, very close to Israel and less concerned with international legality”

al_morro, Mexico

“But I want to tell them as well that friendship is accepting that one’s friends can act differently, and that a great nation like the United States has the duty to not obstruct the fight against global warming but on the contrary to head this struggle because what is at stake is the future of all humanity. France will make this struggle its first struggle.”

Although opinion polls regularly suggested Royal, who was seeking to become France’s first female head of state, was more likeable, voters seemed to see the uncompromising Sarkozy as a more competent leader with a more convincing economic programme.

Talking before her supporters, Royal said: “I hope the next president of the republic fulfils his role in the service of all French people … I will continue with you and near you…You can count on me to deepen the renovation of the left … that is the condition of our future victories.”

The Newsweek poll released on Saturday found Bush’s rating one percentage point lower than his father at the lowest point in his term in office.

Almost 62 per cent of Americans disapprove
of Bush’s execution of the Iraq war

Almost 62 per cent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s execution of the Iraq war, while 30 per cent think his actions show he is “willing to take political risks” to do what is right, Newsweek reported.

The last US leader to be as unpopular as Bush was Jimmy Carter who also scored 28 per cent in 1979 in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis.

Bush burden

Bush’s unpopularity may hurt Republican hopes of keeping the White House in 2008.

People Views

“The US has to withdraw completely from Iraq”

Munzir Baig, Muscat, Oman

The poll also suggested that Democratic frontrunners have a promising lead over potential Republican contenders across the board, with Barack Obama, the Illinois senator, recording the best performance so far.

Obama bested Rudolph Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner and former New York mayor, by 50 per cent to 43 per cent among registered voters who responded to the Newsweek poll.

He also topped John McCain, the Arizona senator, by 52 per cent to 39 per cent and defeated Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, by 58 per cent to 29 per cent, the poll indicated.

The other popular Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, who is New York senator, topped Giuliani by 49 per cent to 46 per cent, and beat McCain by 50 per cent to 44 per cent.

She led Romney by 57 per cent to 35 per cent, the poll found.

The poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International on Wednesday and Thursday, interviewed 1,001 adults 18 and older.

Qamar Abbas, a provincial leader from former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s party was killed as he left a wedding in Peshawar.

Abbas’s family suspect members of a rival political family are behind the attack and have filed a complaint naming five members of that family as suspects, police said on Monday.

Two senior members of the Awami National party were among those named.

Abbas, a former provincial government minister, was accused of involvement in the killing of a member of the rival family and two other people in an election clash in 1997 but he was never convicted.

“Abbas and his nephew were riding a motorcycle and as they reached a deserted place the assailants, who were probably chasing them in a car, opened fire and killed them both,” Faraz Khan, a police officer said on Monday.

But the chief executive of Kenya Airways said on Sunday that he had no news about the aircraft’s condition or about the 114 people who were on board.

Titus Naikuni said: “We have no confirmed information about survivors or any possible casualties.”

The wreckage was found about 20km southeast of coastal Douala, along its flight path, but it was unclear if it might have been returning to the airport.

Naikuni said it had been difficult to spot, because it was hidden by a thick canopy of trees.

“All I can say for now is that the wreckage of the plane has been located in the small village of Mbanga Pongo, in the Douala III subdivision. We are putting in place rescue measures,” Hamidou Yaya Marafa, Cameroon’s minister for territorial administration told a news conference.

“For now we cannot say whether there were any survivors or not. Access to the area is very difficult,” he said. “We are beginning a new painful phase. Our task will be more difficult now, the task of recovering the corpses.”

Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology at Douala airport, said: “We are actively looking for survivors.”

“We are beginning a new painful phase. Our task will be more difficult now, the task of recovering the corpses.”

Hamidou Yaya Marafa, Cameroonian government minister

The Nairobi-bound Boeing 737-800 departed from Douala airport early on Saturday, an hour late because of rain, with 105 passengers and nine crew members on board.

The airliner issued a distress call, but then lost contact with the radio tower between 11 and 13 minutes after takeoff.

It was not immediately clear if it had deviated at any point from its flight path, and officials did not discuss the question of why it travelled so short a distance in the elapsed time.

The search initially focused on the thickly forested mountains near the town of Lolodorf, about 140km southeast of Douala.

Naikuni said that, because of the swamp, vehicles could not drive all the way to the crash site, and rescue workers would have to complete the trip on foot in the dark.

‘Close to airport’

Sobakam said officials had been led to believe the passenger jet had crashed in the vast, hard-to-access forest because of an incorrect satellite signal, possibly emitted from the aircraft.

He said: “It was the fishermen… who led us to the site. It’s close enough that we could have seen it from the airport, but apparently there was no smoke or fire.”

One of the many unanswered questions is why the aeroplane stopped emitting signals after an initial distress call.

The aircraft is equipped with an automatic device that should have kept up signals for another two days.

Captain Paul Mwangi, head of operations for Kenya Airways, said an exhausted battery could be one reason

Mwangi said: “It is very unlikely, but the device can actually be destroyed. The impact would have to be very, very severe.”

Family members gathered at the Nairobi and Douala airports, many openly weeping.

And a car bomb killed 35 people and wounded 80 next to a crowded market in the Shia Bayaa district of western Baghdad which has been a repeated target of attacks, Iraqi police said.

The Bayaa blast targeted a busy market, killing 35 people in the Shia area

The two were among the bloodiest incidents on a day when nearly 100 people were either killed or found dead.

The attack on the six US soldiers in Diyala was one of the most lethal single strikes against US forces in months.

The military recently sent about 1,000 more troops to the province.

Two other US soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks on Sunday, the military said, one of them in Baghdad.

More bombs

Also on Sunday, a series of explosions killed at least a further 12 people.

A car bomb exploded near a bus stop a short distance from the municipalities and public works ministry in Bayaa killing
at least four people, ministry sources said.

North of Baghdad, two car bombers attacked police positions in Samarra, killing at least eight people in apparently co-ordinated attacks in which armed men also fired mortar bombs, police and army sources said.

Abdullah Jubara, the deputy governor of Salah al-Din province, said Abdul Jalil Naji, Samarra’s police commander, was killed in one of the attacks, which took place at a police checkpoint.

Air strikes

Meanwhile, US and Iraqi special forces raided a building in Sadr City and called in air strikes.

Several houses in Sadr City were destroyed in
a pre-dawn raid by US and Iraqi forces [AFP]
The US army said the raid was against an Iranian-backed Shia armed cell involved in assembling armour-piercing explosives to target US forces.

US forces estimated that between eight and 10 fighters were killed in the raid.

“Coalition forces destroyed a torture room, a large cache of weapons and improvised explosive device-making materials on Sunday morning while targeting terrorists in Sadr City,” the US military said in a statement.

Armed groups fighting the Shia-led government and 150,000 US soldiers in Iraq have switched tactics and stepped up co-ordinated attacks against Iraqi and US security bases.

Pre-dawn raid

Fighting broke out during the pre-dawn raid by US and Iraqi forces on Sadr City in which at least six people were wounded. Several houses were bombed out, Iraqi police and hospital officials said.

Aircraft flew over the Shia neighbourhood destroying four homes and reducing one to a pile of rubble, police and witnesses confirmed.

Witnesses said at least one person had been killed and that the number of injured was eight, while police described the attack as an “air strike”.

Several cars were also charred and badly damaged.

One resident, Abu Hammad, said: “We were sleeping and we heard aircraft, both helicopters and planes, flying over us very low and there was lots of shooting so we lay down on the ground.”

The raid appeared to be part of a series targeting members of the Mahdi Army headed by Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shia cleric. The fighters have been implicated in sectarian attacks on Sunnis.

‘Triangle of death’

A day earlier, south of the capital, in the so-called “triangle of death”, a bomb exploded in the town of Iskandiriya, wounding 10 people.

Police Lieutenant Karim al-Wael said two of the casualties were in a serious condition.

Late on Saturday, Captain Salam Zankana, of the Kirkuk police, said that three mortar shells crashed down on a southern neighbourhood of the northern oil city killing one woman and wounding four others, among them a child.

US and Iraqi forces are carrying out raids in the town of Yathrib, in the Sunni province of Salah al-Din, after the assassination on Saturday of Jabbar al-Tamimi, a police Colonel.

“Al-Tamimi was visiting a water purification project in the al-Bujaili district in Yathrib when he was attacked by gunmen and riddled with bullets,” a police officer, who requested anonymity, said.

The report, released on Friday, also found that less than half of the soldiers and marines surveyed would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi.

US involvement in Iraq have been dogged by claims of mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians

“Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants,” Major General Gale Pollock, the acting army surgeon general, told reporters at a press conference.

The most common mistreatment reported by soldiers and marines was that of insulting non-combatants in their presence, the report said.

The survey showed that 55 per cent of US army soldiers, and only 40 per cent of marines, would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent non-combatant.

The survey, which shows increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments in Iraq, was the first to include questions on ethics and ethical training.

As such, the report stresses the findings cannot be compared “with any other group of military personnel”.

Survey findings

Physically hit or kicked non-combatants when it was not necessary:
Marines - 7%
Soldiers - 4%

Torture

More than a third of the 1,320 soldiers and 447 marines surveyed said that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or marine, while almost 38 per cent said torture should be allowed in order to gather “important information about insurgents”.

“These men and women have been seeing their friends injured and I think that having that thought is normal,” said Pollock, but she added: “They’re not acting on those thoughts. They’re not torturing the people.”

The survey showed only 47 per cent of soldiers and 38 per cent of marines agreed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect.

US operations in Iraq have been dogged by claims of mistreatment of Iraqi detainees and civilians, including revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and reports of the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha in November 19, 2005.

Mental health

Only 47 per cent of soldiers agreed non-combatants should be treated with dignity

The main aim of the report was to assess the mental health of soldiers and marines involved in operations in Iraq.

The report showed the rate of anxiety, depression and acute stress stood at 22 per cent among soldiers deployed in Iraq for more than six months.

It also recorded an average of 16.1 suicides per year per 100,000 soldiers for those involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Overall, about 20 per cent of army soldiers and 15 per cent of marines showed mental health symptoms of either anxiety, depression or acute stress.

Among army soldiers, 27 per cent of those with more than one tour of duty tested positive for a mental health problem, versus 17 per cent for soldiers on their first deployment.

Morale among soldiers was worse than among marines, which it said was explained in part by the marines’ shorter six month tours.

The report recommended that the army’s year-long tours in Iraq either be shortened or soldiers be given 18 to 36 months between deployment to recover.

But instead, the army is moving in the opposite direction, with Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, announcing extended tours for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan of up to 15 months instead of one year.

The army is struggling to allow units a year at home between deployments.

Samir Sadagatoglu, chief editor of the Senet weekly newspaper, was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday, while Rafik Tagi, a journalist at the paper, was given three years.

The skyline of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, reflects the country’s mix of modernity and tradition [EPA]

he court ruled that their article ‘Europe and us’ was insulting to Islam and Muslims for saying that European societies were more successful than Muslim ones because Christian teachings were based on peace and tolerance while Islamic values, based on the teachings and actions of Muhammad, were not.

It was announced during sentencing that … the article contained ideas charged with hatred for Islam and the Prophet Mohammad and these actions of the paper were directed towards inciting religious hatred and enmity,” the court’s spokesman said after the guilty verdict was announced.

The newspaper article provoked widespread anger in Azerbaijan, a secular but predominantly Shia Muslim country, and elsewhere in the region when it was first published on November 9, 2006.

Soon after the article appeared, an Iranian cleric - angered by its depiction of Islam as a violent religion - offered his house to anyone who killed the journalists, Reuters reported on Friday.

Freedom of speech

The two journalists - both of whom are Muslims - have said that the trial in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, was an attack on their right to freedom of speech.

“A person can’t be condemned for their opinions,” Sadagatogli told the court.

Isakhan Ashurov, the lawyer for the two Azeri journalists, said the trial had violated articles of the European Convention on Human Rights which protect freedom of expression.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog, criticised the court’s decision.

“While it is understandable that some members of the public may have been shocked by the article’s content and tone, the imposition of prison sentences and fatwas is outrageous,” the organisation said in a statement posted on its website.

“It should be remembered that these are not criminals but two journalists who were just expressing their views.”

At the court’s final session in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, fighting broke out in the courtroom as Muslims who were watching the proceedings tried to kill the two journalists, the AFP newsagency reported.

Iranian fatwa

Last November, Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Muhammad Fazel Lankarani, a senior Shia scholar from Tabriz, a mainly Azeri city in northern Iran, ruled that the two journalists should be killed for writing and publishing the article.

“Such a person is an apostate in view of his confessions, if he is a Muslim,” Lankarani ruled in a fatwa - or religious ruling - published on his website.

“If he had been an unbeliever (Kafir), he is considered as someone who has insulted the Prophet and in any case, given his confessions, it is necessary for every individual who has an access to him to kill him.

“The person in charge of the said newspaper, who published such thoughts and beliefs consciously and knowingly, should be dealt with in the same manner. We pray to Almighty Allah to grant Muslims and Islam protection from the evils of their enemies.”