United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed today the violence in Syria must stop but gave no sign of agreeing on how to do it even as Syrian security forces pounded opposition areas across the country.

Intense artillery fire was reported in Douma, a town 15 kilometres outside the Syrian capital Damascus that for weeks has been under the partial control of rebels who have joined the 15-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

At least 79 people were killed in violence that has escalated since international observers suspended their mission, activists said.

A Russian naval source said Moscow was preparing to send marines to Syria in the event it needed to protect personnel and remove equipment from its naval facility in Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartous, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russia is one of the Syrian government’s staunchest backers.

International efforts to halt the violence are deadlocked because Russia and China, which wield vetoes in the United Nations Security Council, have blocked tougher action against Assad. They say the solution must come through political dialogue, an approach most of the Syrian opposition rejects.

Obama and Putin held two hours of talks – longer than originally planned – at a Group of 20 summit in Mexico after a week of Cold War-style recriminations between US and Russian diplomats over Syria. Putin frowned and Obama wore a sober expression during remarks to reporters after the meeting.

“We agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war,” Obama told reporters.

“From my point of view, we have found many common points on this issue” of Syria, Putin said, adding the two sides would continue discussions.

Obama said they pledged to “work with other international actors,” including UN/Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, to find a resolution.

Obama and Western allies want Russia to stop shielding Assad from further Security Council sanctions aimed at forcing him from power. Putin is suspicious of US motives especially after the NATO-assisted ouster of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi last year, and has offered little signs of softening his stance.

Though the United States has shown no appetite for a new Libya-style intervention, Russia is reluctant to abandon Syria, a longtime arms customer, and risk losing its last firm foothold in the Middle East, including access to a warm-water navy base.

Russia supports Assad’s argument that foreign-backed terrorists are behind the unrest. Russia has repeatedly urged Western and Arab countries, who mostly back the rebels, to rein in their support in order to stem the violence.

International outrage over Syria has grown in recent weeks after two reported massacres in which almost 200 civilians were killed, most of them from the Sunni Muslim majority that has led the revolt. Assad comes from Syria’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has mostly backed the president.

Heavier fighting and apparent sectarian killings have led many, including the head of U.N. peacekeeping forces, to brand the violence a civil war.

 

SOURCE:ONENEWS

(Reuters) – At least 52 people were killed in religious rioting sparked by three suicide bombings against churches in northern Nigeria, where the dead were piled up on Monday in mortuaries and cemeteries in the city of Kaduna.

Rioting broke out on Sunday after suicide car bombers attacked three churches in northern Nigeria, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens.

Christian youths had set up roadblocks and dragged Muslims from cars or motorbikes and killed them, witnesses said.

Although there has been no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s church bombings, Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is waging an insurgency in the northeast against President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, had claimed deadly church attacks on the previous two Sundays, as well as others.

A Reuters reporter visited two hospitals in Kaduna. At the St Gerald Hospital, spokesman Sunday Aliyu said there were 40 bodies in the hospital morgue and 72 people being treated for burns and other wounds. At Barau Dikko Hospital, Matron Hassana Garba confirmed 12 dead and two injured people being treated.

GUNFIRE IN DAMATURU

On Monday evening residents reported gunfire and explosions in Damaturu, the capital of northeast Yobe state and the site of several previous attacks by Boko Haram.

“We are all indoors, the explosions and gunshots have been going on since 5pm. It’s boom, boom, boom, everywhere,” Oluchi Jonah, a local resident, told Reuters by phone.

Local police were not available for comment.

In November, 65 people were killed in attacks claimed by Boko Haram on churches, mosques and police stations in Damaturu, where security forces often clash with Islamists in gun battles.Corpses littered church grounds in parts of Kaduna on Monday. They were piled one on top of the other in an old cemetery, some charred. A soldier guarding the site said there were at least 30 bodies of people killed in the violence there.

They had been dragged to the secluded cemetery, in a majority Christian neighbourhood, by the mobs, he said.

“Some people were killed and dumped down wells. We’ve had violence before, but this is the worst I’ve seen,” he said.

A 24-hour curfew imposed by the Kaduna state government on Sunday largely succeeded in restoring order, residents said.

The violence stoked fears of wider sectarian conflict in Nigeria, an OPEC member and Africa’s top oil producer that is home to the world’s largest equal mix of Christians and Muslims.

Mohammed Inuwa said he was lucky to escape with his life. He hid in a bush when rampaging Christian youths pulled Muslims off their motorcycles and beat them to death.

“They were mostly killing okada riders (motorbike taxis). I was hiding in the bush while all this was going on. If they saw me, that would be it,” the second-hand clothes seller said, estimating 15 people were killed right by where he was hiding.INFLAMING TENSIONS

Boko Haram church bombings seem calculated to trigger wider sectarian strife, often striking at the heart of Nigeria’s volatile “Middle Belt”, where the mostly Christian south and Muslim north meet.

The Islamists’ leader, Abubakar Shekau, has said the attacks on Christians were in revenge for the killings of Muslims.

But such attacks have usually failed to spark sustained conflict in a nation whose Muslims and Christians mostly co-exist peacefully, despite periodic flare-ups of sectarian violence since independence from Britain in 1960.

The Vatican issued a statement on Sunday condemning the “systematic attacks against Christian places of worship” which it said proved the existence of an “absurd plan of hate” in Nigeria.

Religiously mixed Kaduna is near the Middle Belt and has several times been a flashpoint. Riots killed hundreds there in April last year when Jonathan, a southern Christian, defeated northern Muslim Muhammadu Buhari in elections.

SOURCE:REUTERS

ONE of the Muslim world’s best-known and most successful motivational speakers, Tareq Al Suwaidan, is about to start another tour of Australia, following a sell-out visit two years ago.

He is a man with two very different messages, however.

His opening address, this Saturday, will be at the Robert Blackwood hall at Monash University in Melbourne, before further lectures in Melbourne and Sydney, finishing on June 18.

Dr Suwaidan – his doctorate is in petroleum engineering, from Tulsa University in the US, where he lived for many years – is now based in his home country, Kuwait, with his wife and six children.

The 58-year-old earns more than $1 million a year from his talks and TV shows.

His CD Lives of the Prophets has sold well over two million copies, and his two-day management courses cost $500 a head.

His Australian tour is organised by Human Appeal International, which describes itself as “a non-governmental humanitarian organisation seeking funds from supporters to assist in providing services to thousands of poor and needy people”.
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Dr Suwaidan – who lectures in English in Australia – is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, and general manager of Al-Resalah (The Message), an Arabic language satellite TV station funded by Prince al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.

He presents himself to English-speaking audiences as moderate, a supporter of free speech and freedom of religion.

But what he has said elsewhere points to a darker program.

He asked rhetorically on an Arabic TV station a year ago: “Is what I am doing any less important than jihad?”

In an interview for Al-Quds, a TV station affiliated with Hamas, he said 10 weeks ago: “I can change the positions of some Westerners, but at the end of the day, power lies with the politicians, who are influenced by two things only: money and the media, both of which are controlled by the Jews.

“So we must not rely on Western aid or on Western popular sympathy. These are minor things. We rely upon Allah and then upon our armed resistance in obtaining our rights.”

He said his foremost cause is that of Palestine and Jerusalem. “The most dangerous thing facing the Muslims is not the (Arab) dictatorships. The absolutely most dangerous thing is the Jews. They are the greatest enemy.”

At a conference of the Islamic Circle of North America in 2000 he said: “We must tell the West that we are extending a hand of peace now, but it will not be so for long.

“Even if a civilisation is ready to crumble – like the West, with all the characteristics of deterioration of past fallen empires – it will not fall until we, the Muslims, strive to give it that last push, the last straw that will break the camel’s back.”

Ali Kazak, the then representative of the Palestinian Authority in Australia, told ABC TV’s Lateline in 2003: “I have stopped giving (Human Appeal International) any donations. People should not give a contribution until it makes it public and clear as to how much it collects and where the money is going.”

Five years after this, Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak banned 36 funds around the world, including HAI Australia, that were deemed “part of Hamas’s fund-raising network”.

But Sydney-based Bashar al-Jamal, the Australian manager of HAI, said yesterday: “We believe strongly that Dr Suwaidan is one of the heads of moderation in the Middle East, and his approach is friendly, trying to tackle things from a smart, peaceful approach.

“Two years ago he really contributed positively, and our community benefited from him a lot. It’s crucial for us as a humanitarian organisation that we invite people promoting moderation and harmony, and those ethical values we are really behind.”

He said that as the leader of HAI since it started in Australia in 1991, “I’d challenge anyone if they can show we have any relation with Hamas”.

“This (the claims of Hamas links) is just lies and accusations.”

He said HAI had started working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.

Dr Suwaidan is speaking on Monday at a “Syria fundraising dinner” in the Prime Minister’s constituency in Altona North.

The HAI website explains that “Syria is in the midst of a tragic crisis as a result of the internal conflict . . . The cold winter is taking its toll on their hope for peace and they are relying on you to help them”.

A spokeswoman for Monash University said: “Monash is not hosting this conference nor does it have any affiliation with this organisation. The booking was made and charged as per any booking for the Robert Blackwood Hall by community groups etc. We do not endorse the topics or presenters, and have simply provided a venue space.”

Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades have been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Australia, but not the Hamas organisation itself.

SOURCE:THE AUSTRALLAN