[Kabar-indonesia] 'Rice Unwelcome in Beirut' After Israeli Strikes Kill 54 Civilians [+RI Protest]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

6 Mideast Crisis Reports: 

- Israel air strike kills 54 civilians [incl: 37 children,
   prompting Lebanon to tell U.S. Secretary of State 
  Condoleezza Rice she was unwelcome in Beirut 
  and fuelling world pressure for a ceasefire]
- Indonesian Muslims rally against Israel, US, wants 
  UN disbanded
- WP Analysis: Returning to Old Approach, U.S. Faces 
  Risky Path Ahead
- NYT: Rice Postpones Lebanon Trip After Israeli 
  Strikes Kill 54
- Rice tactics under scrutiny as Mideast deaths rise
- Malaysia rejects call for OIC to quit UN over Lebanon: 
  report

Israel air strike kills 54 civilians 

By Hussein Saad

QANA, Lebanon (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed 54 civilians, 
including 37 children, on Sunday, prompting Lebanon to tell U.S. Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice she was unwelcome in Beirut and fuelling world pressure for a 
ceasefire.

The raid on the southern village of Qana was the bloodiest single attack 
during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah. Rescue workers dug through the rubble 
with their hands for hours, lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of 
children.

The U.N. Security Council met for an emergency session to discuss Lebanon at 
the request of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Annan said he hoped council 
members would realize "how dangerous the situation is and how it can't escalate and 
get out of hand and the urgency for them to act."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep sorrow" at the bombing, 
but vowed the war against Hizbollah would go on. He told Rice the army needed 
another 10 to 14 days to press its offensive, a spokesman at his office said.

As anger convulsed Lebanon and the Arab world, several thousand protesters 
chanted "Death to Israel, Death to America" outside the United Nations 
headquarters in downtown Beirut and some smashed their way into the building.

Rice, who was in Israel, said she was saddened by the Qana air raid, but 
stopped well short of calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Her mediation drive in tatters, Rice will leave for Washington on Monday to 
work on a U.N. resolution that could achieve what the White House called a 
"sustainable" ceasefire.

It also said the Qana raid showed the critical need for Israel to take "the 
utmost care" to avoid civilian casualties.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would not hold negotiations 
before a ceasefire, scuppering Rice's visit. Rice later said she had called off 
her planned trip to Beirut.

Siniora, often at odds with Hizbollah, thanked its leader Sayyed Hassan 
Nasrallah and "all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and 
sovereignty of Lebanon".

Qana is already a potent symbol of Lebanese civilian deaths at Israeli hands. 
In April 1996, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at 
the base of U.N. peacekeepers in Qana during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" 
bombing campaign.

International outrage over that attack helped force Israel to end its 17-day 
campaign that killed more than 200 Lebanese.

SLAIN IN THEIR SLEEP

Police said Qana, about 11 km (seven miles) from the border with Israel, was 
bombed at 1:30 a.m. (2230 GMT on Saturday). The raid flattened a three-storey 
building where about 63 displaced people were in the basement. Many were 
killed as they slept.

"Why have they attacked one- and two-year-old children and defenseless 
women?" asked one bereaved man, Mohamed Samai.

The bodies were wrapped tightly in plastic sheets and assembled under an 
awning. Flowers were placed on the corpses.

Israel said it was unaware civilians were in the building and accused 
Hizbollah of firing rockets from Qana.

Hizbollah vowed to retaliate. "This horrific massacre will not go without a 
response," it said. The governing Palestinian movement Hamas also pledged to 
hit back with attacks on Israel.

About 115 rockets hit Israel on Sunday, wounding six people, police said. At 
least three slammed into the city of Haifa.

Another Israeli air strike killed five civilians, including two children, in 
their house in the southern village of Yaroun.

Rice said it was "time to get to a ceasefire", but insisted this required 
changing the status quo before the war, which erupted after Hizbollah seized two 
Israeli soldiers on July 12.

The United States says the priority is to remove the threat posed to Israel 
by Hizbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria.

At least 545 people have been killed in Lebanon, although the health minister 
estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis 
have also been killed.

Many Arab and European leaders condemned the Qana bombing -- Syrian President 
Bashar al-Assad described it as state terrorism -- and called for an 
immediate ceasefire. An exception was Britain, which continued to back the U.S. line.

Siniora demanded an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and an international 
investigation into "Israeli massacres".

SCENES OF HORROR

In Qana, rescue workers lay a girl's body on the ground and ran to search for 
more. They heaved hunks of concrete off a dead child crushed underneath. The 
rigid corpse of a young boy, his bloody face disfigured, lay near a pulverized 
building.

Hours later, rescuers were still clambering over rubble using their hands to 
extract corpses. Two mechanical diggers, one provided by U.N. peacekeepers, 
eventually joined the effort.

Israeli troops pushed into southeast Lebanon on Sunday and battled Hizbollah 
fighters after crossing the border overnight.

A spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers said Israeli forces were near the villages 
of Kfar Kila, Taibe and Deir Mimas.

The Israeli army said four soldiers had been wounded and five Hizbollah 
guerrillas killed. Hizbollah said it had lost three fighters, but did not say where 
or when they had died.

(Additional reporting by Beirut and Jerusalem bureaux)

----------------------------------

Indonesian Muslims rally against Israel, US, wants UN disbanded

JAKARTA, July 30 (AFP) -- Thousands of Indonesian Muslims on Sunday
held a street rally in the Central Java city of Solo to protest
Israel's actions in the Middle East and demand that the United Nations
be disbanded.

Demonstrators at the rally, organized by the Muslim political
organisation the Justice and Prosperity Party, burned US and Israeli
flags as well as pictures of US President George Bush, the Detikcom
online news service said.

Detikcom did not give a more precise figure for the number of protestors.

Speeches made by local party leaders condemned Israel's attacks on
civilian targets in southern Lebanon and Washington's "blatant
support" of the aggression.

The demonstrators also expressed disappointment the United Nations had
not reprimanded Israel and the United States, and demanded that the
international body be dismantled and replaced by a more effective and
egalitarian organisation, the report said.

Detikcom did not provide further details but said the protest
disbanded peacefully.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation has no
diplomatic ties with Israel.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has urged the United Nations
Security Council or general assembly to produce a solution to the
escalating conflict in the Middle East and proposed sending a
contingent of peacekeepers.

---------------------------------------

The Washington Post
July 30, 2006

Analysis

Returning to Old Approach, U.S. Faces Risky Path Ahead

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer

JERUSALEM, July 29 -- The Bush administration is now entangled in a risky new 
diplomatic venture in the Middle East -- and one with huge potential pitfalls 
even if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice succeeds in negotiating a 
cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in the days ahead, according to several 
former diplomats and specialists with long experience in the region.

The controversial U.S. position -- which has pitted Washington against most 
European and Arab allies that pressed unsuccessfully for an immediate 
cease-fire -- also reflects a shift back to the Bush administration's first-term 
strategy, foreign policy specialists said. With Rice at the helm of foreign policy, 
the second Bush term had been characterized by a more realistic and collegial 
approach to foreign policy, a shift from the hard-charging go-it-alone push 
epitomized by the Iraq war during the first term.

But now, analysts said, the administration is effectively back endorsing 
all-out force again, in defiance of allies, as part of its policy of trying to rid 
the Middle East of militants and radicals, or the "drain the swamp" policy.

In his weekly radio address, President Bush placed the Lebanon crisis in the 
context of Iraq and the broader U.S. war on terrorism. "As we work to resolve 
this current crisis, we must recognize that Lebanon is the latest flash point 
in a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the 
region," Bush said.

Rice has described the ongoing fighting as not just between Israel and 
Hezbollah but as part of the "birth pangs" of the "new" Middle East.

In the biggest challenge she has faced as secretary of state, Rice's 
diplomatic gamble has already deepened the chasm between the United States and the 
Islamic world, where recent surveys show that public opinion of Washington is at 
an all-time low and many feel the Bush administration is not genuinely 
committed to a fair peace, specialists and former diplomats said. Lebanon's most 
prestigious paper, an-Nahar, recently ran a cartoon that showed Rice using an 
eyedropper to put out the fires of strife.

"The U.S. is alienating even more world opinion, not to mention allies, for 
the sake of a strategy that is very likely to fail," said Augustus Richard 
Norton, an expert on Lebanese Shiite politics and a former U.N. peacekeeper in 
Lebanon.

The U.S. framework for resolving the current conflict is most vulnerable on 
at least three broad fronts -- political, regional and military.

Politically, the centerpiece of the plan requires Hezbollah to surrender the 
military force and formidable weapons arsenal it spent 24 years building, and 
which has given it special standing both in Lebanon and well beyond its 
borders. As the only Arab force that has ever made Israel retreat in six decades of 
regional warfare, Hezbollah would effectively have to give up being a regional 
player and make its own retreat to local Lebanese politics, where it would be 
just one of 17 recognized sects in a country 1,000 square miles smaller than 
Connecticut.

"Nothing will work unless Hezbollah agrees to it. And you can't expect 
Hezbollah to do something that is committing suicide," said Robert Malley, director 
of the International Crisis Group's Middle East program and a former Clinton 
administration National Security Council staffer. "You can't condition a 
cease-fire on steps that Hezbollah will not accept."

Any package will have to include enough provisions so that Hezbollah feels it 
is "compensated" for the steps it will be required to take to reduce the 
threat to Israel, Malley added.

The U.S.-Israel strategy of pounding Hezbollah could also backfire, former 
Bush officials warn. "Don't get me wrong -- if I thought that this air campaign 
would work and would eliminate [Hasan] Nasrallah and the leadership of 
Hezbollah, I think it would all be fine," former deputy secretary of state Richard L. 
Armitage said on National Public Radio this week. "But I fear that you can't 
do that from the sky and that you're going to end up empowering Hezbollah and 
perhaps introducing a dynamic into the body politic in Lebanon that will take 
some great period of time to recover from."

At the moment, the Shiite movement also has serious incentives not to 
cooperate -- or fully cooperate -- given many indications that its popularity is 
growing on streets throughout the Arab world, even in countries with Sunni Muslim 
majorities, in turn giving Shiites, the Islamic world's second sect, new 
prestige. Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which is Sunni, have traditionally been rivals. A 
cell of the Sunni extremist movement tried to assassinate Hezbollah leader 
Nasrallah in April. But this week al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 
called for Muslims to rally to Lebanon's side.

Regionally, the Hezbollah conflict with Israel increasingly looks like a 
proxy war between Iran and the United States, according to European diplomats and 
U.S. analysts. The U.S.-designed package to end it is premised on excluding 
Iran and Syria, despite their historic interests, geographic proximity and deep 
political ties to Lebanon, not only with Hezbollah.

Iran converted to Shiite Islam in the 16th century -- in large part to 
establish a different identity from the neighboring Sunni Ottoman Empire -- with the 
help of Shiite clerics from what today is Lebanon. Ties between the two 
nations' clergy have been close ever since. And Lebanon was part of Syria until 
France pulled it apart to create a haven for Maronite Christians, a Catholic 
sect. For decades, until very recently, the Lebanese and Syrians considered 
themselves one people in two nations.

"Our approach has been hampered from the beginning by our failure to initiate 
direct, high-level contact with Syria, perhaps the one party that can bring 
some meaningful pressure to bear on Hezbollah, besides Iran," said Wayne White, 
former deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and 
Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia.

Ignoring Syria or Iran could be seriously counterproductive, undermining the 
long-term prospects for a deal, former diplomats and analysts said. Any 
sustainable solution will require getting the "necessary buy-in" from Tehran and 
Damascus to ensure Hezbollah participates, said Edward P. Djerejian, former 
ambassador to both Israel and Syria and now head of Rice University's Baker 
Institute. "What is essential for success is that all the parties need to be engaged 
either directly or indirectly."

Washington has no ties with Iran, and has strained relations with Syria. But 
the two countries could be brought in through "muscular" diplomacy that 
involves both carrots and sticks, as they were in the run-up to the 1991 Persian 
Gulf War to liberate Kuwait and the subsequent Madrid peace conference, Djerejian 
said. Washington has resisted including either country even indirectly 
because it considers them part of the problem for creating, arming and abetting 
Hezbollah.

Armitage criticized his former colleagues as "a little lazy" for not talking 
with Syria. "I happen to feel we are, in large measure, in the right," he 
said. "But we have to be able to sit and listen to the Syrians in this case and 
see if they have the desire, the courage and the wisdom to get involved in a 
positive way. We get a little lazy, I think, when we spend all our time as 
diplomats talking to our friends and not our enemies."

Militarily, a new international force will be highly exposed and almost 
certainly controversial among some Lebanese long weary from the parade of foreign 
armies in the poor south -- Palestinian guerrillas for over a decade, then 
Israeli troops for 18 years. The last multinational force in Lebanon, led by the 
United States and including French, Italian and British troops, also went in as 
peacekeepers after Israeli's 1982 invasion but ended up becoming ensnared in 
Lebanon's civil war -- and becoming targets of Hezbollah suicide bombers. They 
departed abruptly in 1984, their mission incomplete.

The international force currently under discussion would not be formally 
charged with disarming Hezbollah, Rice said, but instead with helping the Lebanese 
army oversee Hezbollah's disarmament over time. The force would have at least 
an indirect role in the process -- and might well be perceived by many 
Lebanese as being dispatched to help defang Lebanon's last private army, said U.S. 
analysts and European diplomats.

"I think it's going to be a slippery slope," said Danielle Pletka, a Middle 
East expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "There's no multinational 
force that can disarm Hezbollah. Once you go down that road you make compromises, 
and compromises will be that whatever happens, Hezbollah is not disarmed."

"It's a risky approach," Pletka said. "It's doing something to do something 
for the appearance of doing something."

Staff writer Peter Baker in Washington contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------

The New York Times
July 30, 2006

Rice Postpones Lebanon Trip After Israeli Strikes Kill 54 

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and CHRISTINE HAUSER

photo: A rescue worker rushed toward a demolished building in the 
Lebanese town of Qana, where at least 54 people were killed by Israeli 
airstrikes. Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

QANA, Lebanon, July 30 -- A series of Israeli airstrikes in this small 
mountain town today killed dozens of people in the deadliest single attack in the 
war here so far, prompting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to postpone a 
trip to Lebanon, where she had been due to hold talks with government officials 
nearly three weeks into the conflict. 

At least 54 people were killed, including 37 children, in the attack in Qana, 
news agencies reported. Rescue workers and neighbors worked frantically to 
find survivors among the wreckage of a house, where two large extended families 
were hiding in a garage. Six small children, their mouths open and full of 
dirt, were brought out and laid on stretchers.

"I felt as if I was turning around, and the earth was going up, and I was 
going into the earth," said Mohamed Chaloub, a father of five who was thrown into 
a doorway and managed to escape. All five of his children, including a 
2-year-old child, were killed. His wife, sister and aunt were also killed.

Responding to the strikes on Qana, the White House urged Israel today to take 
more care to avoid civilian casualties in Lebanon. It said that Ms. Rice was 
working to arrange the conditions for a "sustainable" halt to the violence.

The strikes on Qana came after Ms. Rice returned to Israel on Saturday 
evening to press for a substantive agreement that could lead to a more rapid 
cease-fire and the insertion of an international force along the Lebanese border with 
Israel. 

Ms. Rice, on her way back to the region from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, had 
praised the Lebanese government, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, for 
agreeing on the outlines of a possible cease-fire package. 

But she canceled a visit to Beirut, Lebanon, today after the Qana strikes. 
Ms. Rice spoke to the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and told him that 
she felt that "this would not be the day for her to come to Beirut," according 
to R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.

"She felt she had work to do in Israel," he told CNN's Late Edition.

While there has been a sense that President Bush, after his meeting in 
Washington with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, had suddenly decided to give 
Israel a shorter period in which to attack Hezbollah forces in southern 
Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said in a statement today that Israel 
was not "rushing in" to a cease-fire before Israel had achieved its goals.

Mr. Olmert said today that Israel regretted the death of civilians in Qana, 
where he said Hezbollah had fired rockets at Kiryat Shmona and Afula.

The Israeli government said in a statement on its Foreign Ministry's Web site 
that the Israeli Army had attacked missile launch sites in the area of Qana, 
from where it said hundreds of missiles were launched towards the Israeli city 
of Nahariya and the communities in the western Galilee.

Mr. Burns said Ms. Rice supported the Lebanese government and wanted to see 
it strengthened, especially by extending its sovereignty down to the southern 
border with Israel, a region where Hezbollah had become a "state within a 
state".

"Obviously, what happened today in Qana is a tragedy and we hope very, very 
much this kind of incident will not be repeated in the future," he said. "But 
Israel does have a right to defend itself."

He said attention now needed to be turned to creating a "sustainable" 
cease-fire.

In Qana, neighbors said that they ran to the house after the first strike, 
around 1 a.m. local time, and that they heard screams and tried to reach people 
trapped inside, but the strikes persisted and they could not reach them. Later 
in the morning, rescue workers pulled bodies of 22 people out of the rubble, 
but neighbors said more bodies were inside. 

The death toll climbed as rescue workers retrieved more people from the 
collapsed building, carrying limp bodies away on stretchers and in blankets.

Thousands protested in Beirut today and a mob of young men started breaking 
windows and damaging buildings. Television footage showed crowds of men 
attacking a United Nations building in the capital.

The Israeli government said Hezbollah had "turned the suburbs of Lebanon into 
a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas." It said 18 
Israeli civilians have been killed and over 400 have been wounded by Hezbollah 
rocket attacks, which have disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of Israeli 
citizens. 

Israel said residents in Qana and the region had been warned several days in 
advance to leave the village. 

The United Nations Security Council met for an emergency session today to 
discuss Lebanon at the request of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Mr. Annan said he 
hoped council members would realize "how dangerous the situation is and how 
it can't escalate and get out of hand and the urgency for them to act," Reuters 
reported.

Ms. Rice is working to draft a Security Council resolution that would allow 
for the insertion of 15,000 to 20,000 international peacekeepers along the 
Lebanese border with Israel and along Lebanon's border with Syria, to prevent the 
rearming of Hezbollah. The force would also work with the Lebanese Army to 
enable it to begin patrolling the border itself. 

American officials said they might seek a resolution authorizing the force as 
early as Wednesday. The United States has been isolated in its refusal to 
call for an immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, 
arguing that the conditions were not ripe for a sustainable cease-fire. 

But the international cry for a halt to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon has 
been growing, especially after Israel hit a United Nations post, killing four 
United Nations observers. Israel denied the accusation by Mr. Annan that the post 
was deliberately hit, but with the death toll in Lebanon reported by 
officials there to be more 450 people, mostly civilians, pressure on the United States 
has been growing to give Mr. Olmert an earlier deadline. 

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Qana, Lebanon, for this article, and 
Christine Hauser from New York. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

----------------------------------------

Rice tactics under scrutiny as Mideast deaths rise

By Sue Pleming

JERUSALEM, July 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says 
she has not set a deadline for a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah but as 
the civilian death toll rises, this negotiating strategy will come under 
scrutiny.

The U.S. decision not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon is at 
odds with most U.S. allies and is seen as giving a green light to Israel to 
continue its bombardment.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who conducted his own 
Middle East shuttle diplomacy in the 1990s, praised Rice's "grace and bravery" 
during her diplomatic push in the Middle East last week but questioned her 
strategy.

Rice returned to the region on Saturday to try and push the leaders of 
Lebanon and Israel to agree to terms for a ceasefire that will be included in a U.N. 
resolution she hopes will be tabled early next week.

In a hard-hitting editorial in The Washington Post, Christopher said Rice's 
oft-repeated goal of reaching a long-term solution rather than putting an end 
to the immediate carnage and getting a truce was "wrongly focused diplomacy".

"My own experience in the region underlies my belief that in the short term 
we should focus our efforts on stopping the killing," he said.

An Israeli air strike killed at least 40 Lebanese civilians, including 21 
children, in the southern village of Qana on Sunday, in the bloodiest single 
attack during the war.

At least 523 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 51 Israelis have died in the 
fighting that began on July 12 after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a 
cross-border raid.

The Bush administration bristles at criticism it is taking sides in the 
conflict and Rice's staff says Washington is giving Israel a nod to continue 
bombing Lebanon are wrong.

PRESSURE FOR DEAL

They were irked by comments from Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon who 
said Israel was given a green light to continue attacks after the United States 
convinced Arab and European ministers not to call for an immediate truce at a 
Rome conference but rather to work with urgency to end hostilities.

"Any such statement is outrageous," said State Department spokesman Adam 
Ereli.

Rice says she will not get involved in the kind of Middle East "shuttle 
diplomacy" her predecessors, including Christopher, pursued in the 1990s. But she 
has done just that, moving between Beirut and Jerusalem to get both sides to 
narrow their differences.

Analysts say if she does not take home a deal of some kind this week it will 
support the opinion that the United States is not an honest broker in the 
conflict.

"America is being held responsible for Israel's behavior," said Shibley 
Telhami of the Brookings Institution. "If she goes back to Washington without a 
ceasefire she will have failed."

Rice says her diplomacy is geared toward getting a "sustainable and durable" 
solution that tackles the root causes of the conflict and that the United 
States is not interested in a quick fix.

She also talks of resolving the Lebanon-Israeli conflict in the interests of 
creating a "new Middle East" with moderate leaders such as Lebanon's Prime 
Minister Fouad Siniora and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rather than the 
likes of Hizbollah and the governing Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

"It is time for a new Middle East, it is time to say to those who do not want 
a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail, they will not," said 
Rice during an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week.

Arabs view her "new Middle East" talk with disdain, said Telhami, and are 
suspicious of U.S. motives just as they were with the Bush administration's 
democracy campaign.

Some analysts say the U.S. support for moderate governments could backfire, 
as it did in the Palestinian Territories when Abbas's Fatah movement was 
trounced by Hamas in parliamentary elections last January.

"There's a funny way in which new realities in the Middle East are often not 
better realities," said Jon Alterman of the Washington thinktank, the Center 
for Strategic and international Studies.

-----------------------------------------

Malaysia rejects call for OIC to quit UN over Lebanon: report

KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 (AFP) -- Malaysian premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
has dismissed calls from within his ruling party for Muslim countries
to quit the UN over its inability to force a ceasefire in Lebanon, a
report said Sunday.

His comments come ahead of a meeting in Kuala Lumpur Thursday of key
members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the
world's largest Muslim grouping, to discuss the escalating Middle East
crisis.

The Star newspaper said that the youth wing of the United Malays
National Organisation (UMNO) had called for OIC countries to withdraw
from the United Nations in protest over the United States' veto on
ceasefire calls.

"I reckon that the OIC members will not pull out of the UN because the
organisation can play an active role in raising issues in the world
body," Abdullah told the daily.

The prime minister said it was important for the 57 OIC members to
remain in the United Nations so that developing countries were
well-represented.

Malaysia's foreign ministry said Sunday that the leaders of eight
Muslim nations, including Bangladesh and Indonesia, were confirmed as
attending the August 3 OIC meeting. Iran has said it is also
attending.

Malaysia is the current chair of the Saudi Arabia-based OIC, but in
his latest stinging attack on his handpicked successor Abdullah,
former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has reportedly lambasted its
performance in the role.

"Our time as host and leader to the OIC is almost up. But
unfortunately, during three years as leader, we didn't do anything,"
Mahathir was quoted as telling a political meeting in Kelantan by the
news website Malaysiakini.

He said that Malaysia -- which is seeking to reach developed status by
2020 -- could not be viewed as a modern Islamic country capable of
setting an example and leading the Muslim world.

Israel launched its offensive against Lebanon on July 12 after
Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and its main regional ally
Syria, seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly raid.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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