SERVIZIO A CURA DELLA ASSOCIAZIONE NAZIONALE AZAD-ROMA
(AGI) - Diyarbakir, 2 nov. - Ha provocato il ferimento di almeno 23 persone lo scoppio di un'auto-bomba avvenuto in piena notte a Semdinli, cittadina situata vicino a Diyarbakir nella provincia turca di Hakkari, all'estremita' sud-orientale dell'Anatolia, che confina con l'Iraq e l'Iran. Lo ha reso noto l'ufficio del governatorato provinciale attravrso un comunicato, nel quale si precisa che tra le vittime sono compresi quattro soldati regolari, tre poliziotti e sedici civili. Ben 67 edifici adiacenti sono rimasti lesionati. Il veicolo imbottito di esplosivo era stato lasciato in sosta accanto al quartier generale della gendarmeria turca. Questo dettaglio, e il fatto che nella zona siano molto attivi i separatisti curdi, ha fatto subito puntare il dito contro la guerriglia, e in particolare contro il Pkk: il Partito dei Lavoratori del Kurdistan gia' guidato da Abdullah Ocalan, da anni messo al bando in Turchia.
02NOV 05
--------------------------------------------------------------
ITALIA-IRAQ/ JALAL TALABANI IN VISITA
Sarà a Roma 5 giorni, dal 7 all'12 novembre
Roma, 31 ott. (Apcom) - Il presidente iracheno Jalal Talabani, leader del partito curdo Unione Patriottica del Kurdistan, sarà a Roma dal 7 al 12 novembre in visita ufficiale assieme a una folta delegazione che dovrebbe includere anche il ministro degli Esteri Hoshiyar Zebari, e i ministri dei Trasporti e dell'Agricoltura.
Talabani, secondo fonti diplomatiche, arriverà a Roma il 7 novembre all'aeroporto di Ciampino e secondo una prima bozza del programma lo stesso pomeriggio sarà ricevuto al Quirinale dal presidente della Repubblica, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Fra l'8 e il 9 novembre sono previsti incontri con il presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi, i presidenti della Camera e del Senato, Pier Ferdinando Casini e Marcello Pera; diversi leader del centrosinistra fra cui Romano Prodi, Francesco Rutelli, Piero Fassino; il presidente di Confindustria Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.
Il 10 novembre sarà invece la giornata dedicata al Vaticano, dove Papa Benedetto XVI riceverà il capo di Stato iracheno. Nel pomeriggio Talabani dovrebbe tenere una conferenza stampa; mentre il giorno successivo incontrerà alcuni bambini iracheni curati in Italia, alla presenza di un canale televisivo iracheno. Il 12 novembre il presidente iracheno dovrebbe spostarsi in Austria.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Turkey told to speed up reforms
Nicholas Watt in Brussels
Wednesday November 2, 2005
The Guardian
The pace of reform in Turkey over human rights, free speech and freedom of religion has slowed to an unacceptable level, the European commission will tell Ankara next week. A month after European leaders hailed the start of Turkey's EU membership talks as "historic", Ankara is to be criticised for failing to meet its side of the bargain by intensifying reforms.
The criticisms will be made in the commission's annual "progress report" on Turkey's preparations for EU membership. It will say that Turkey has introduced some important reforms over the past year, most notably to the penal code.
According to sources in Brussels, Olli Rehn, the enlargement commissioner, is particularly concerned by the impending court case against the country's best-known novelist. Orhan Pamuk has been charged under the penal code after he told a Swiss newspaper: "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."
One source said: "Turkey can expect a rap over the knuckles for allowing things to drift over the past year."
Another said: "These reports are usually critical. They never praise countries because you do not want to give them a sense of complacency. There has been progress but there will be criticism."
The commission will reinforce its criticisms by publishing a second "accession partnership" report on the same day next week which will set Turkey a series of goals, including an end to torture and a guarantee of freedom of religion within two years. The goals, which are known in the report as "short- and medium-term objectives", also include establishing parliamentary oversight of military policy, ending the right of military courts to try civilians and guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Times November 01, 2005
Kurds' Dream City a beacon of hope for a nation weary of war
By James Hider
Hard cash is dragging an ancient region into the 21st century
ON THE ground, Dream City looks like nothing more than another walled compound in a country full of ruined army bases.
It is only when watching the promotional film that the future of this particular site is revealed as a complex of 1,200 luxury homes, a shopping mall, parks and schools: in short, a slice of Western suburbia grafted on to an Iraqi city.
(AGI) - Diyarbakir, 2 nov. - Ha provocato il ferimento di almeno 23 persone lo scoppio di un'auto-bomba avvenuto in piena notte a Semdinli, cittadina situata vicino a Diyarbakir nella provincia turca di Hakkari, all'estremita' sud-orientale dell'Anatolia, che confina con l'Iraq e l'Iran. Lo ha reso noto l'ufficio del governatorato provinciale attravrso un comunicato, nel quale si precisa che tra le vittime sono compresi quattro soldati regolari, tre poliziotti e sedici civili. Ben 67 edifici adiacenti sono rimasti lesionati. Il veicolo imbottito di esplosivo era stato lasciato in sosta accanto al quartier generale della gendarmeria turca. Questo dettaglio, e il fatto che nella zona siano molto attivi i separatisti curdi, ha fatto subito puntare il dito contro la guerriglia, e in particolare contro il Pkk: il Partito dei Lavoratori del Kurdistan gia' guidato da Abdullah Ocalan, da anni messo al bando in Turchia.
02NOV 05
--------------------------------------------------------------
ITALIA-IRAQ/ JALAL TALABANI IN VISITA
Sarà a Roma 5 giorni, dal 7 all'12 novembre
Roma, 31 ott. (Apcom) - Il presidente iracheno Jalal Talabani, leader del partito curdo Unione Patriottica del Kurdistan, sarà a Roma dal 7 al 12 novembre in visita ufficiale assieme a una folta delegazione che dovrebbe includere anche il ministro degli Esteri Hoshiyar Zebari, e i ministri dei Trasporti e dell'Agricoltura.
Talabani, secondo fonti diplomatiche, arriverà a Roma il 7 novembre all'aeroporto di Ciampino e secondo una prima bozza del programma lo stesso pomeriggio sarà ricevuto al Quirinale dal presidente della Repubblica, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Fra l'8 e il 9 novembre sono previsti incontri con il presidente del Consiglio Silvio Berlusconi, i presidenti della Camera e del Senato, Pier Ferdinando Casini e Marcello Pera; diversi leader del centrosinistra fra cui Romano Prodi, Francesco Rutelli, Piero Fassino; il presidente di Confindustria Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.
Il 10 novembre sarà invece la giornata dedicata al Vaticano, dove Papa Benedetto XVI riceverà il capo di Stato iracheno. Nel pomeriggio Talabani dovrebbe tenere una conferenza stampa; mentre il giorno successivo incontrerà alcuni bambini iracheni curati in Italia, alla presenza di un canale televisivo iracheno. Il 12 novembre il presidente iracheno dovrebbe spostarsi in Austria.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Turkey told to speed up reforms
Nicholas Watt in Brussels
Wednesday November 2, 2005
The Guardian
The pace of reform in Turkey over human rights, free speech and freedom of religion has slowed to an unacceptable level, the European commission will tell Ankara next week. A month after European leaders hailed the start of Turkey's EU membership talks as "historic", Ankara is to be criticised for failing to meet its side of the bargain by intensifying reforms.
The criticisms will be made in the commission's annual "progress report" on Turkey's preparations for EU membership. It will say that Turkey has introduced some important reforms over the past year, most notably to the penal code.
According to sources in Brussels, Olli Rehn, the enlargement commissioner, is particularly concerned by the impending court case against the country's best-known novelist. Orhan Pamuk has been charged under the penal code after he told a Swiss newspaper: "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."
One source said: "Turkey can expect a rap over the knuckles for allowing things to drift over the past year."
Another said: "These reports are usually critical. They never praise countries because you do not want to give them a sense of complacency. There has been progress but there will be criticism."
The commission will reinforce its criticisms by publishing a second "accession partnership" report on the same day next week which will set Turkey a series of goals, including an end to torture and a guarantee of freedom of religion within two years. The goals, which are known in the report as "short- and medium-term objectives", also include establishing parliamentary oversight of military policy, ending the right of military courts to try civilians and guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Times November 01, 2005
Kurds' Dream City a beacon of hope for a nation weary of war
By James Hider
Hard cash is dragging an ancient region into the 21st century
ON THE ground, Dream City looks like nothing more than another walled compound in a country full of ruined army bases.
It is only when watching the promotional film that the future of this particular site is revealed as a complex of 1,200 luxury homes, a shopping mall, parks and schools: in short, a slice of Western suburbia grafted on to an Iraqi city.
The $300 million (£170 million) project, the brainchild of an Iraqi exile businessman, is quickly rising on the outskirts of Arbil, one of the boom towns of the Kurdish region of Iraq. The skyline of the region´s other main city, Sulaymaniyah, is also a web of cranes and semi-built apartment blocks, the main street a long building site of hotels, offices and houses rapidly shooting up to accommodate the sudden flood of workers to the area.
Much of the muscle going into the building boom is provided by Iraqi Arab companies and labourers from the south who have moved to this once war-torn region of northern Iraq to escape the horrors of the rest of the country.
A bubble of relative security, with a quasi-democratic, quasi-authoritarian government, the Kurdish region of Iraq is benefiting from the dilemma of businessmen wanting to invest in an oil-rich country that is also one of the most dangerous places on earth. "Of course it is better to invest here than in Baghdad," said Talib Ali Ahmed, head of Sulaymaniyah´s Chamber of Commerce.
Many international investment companies seem to agree. In Sulaimaniyah alone, there are 48 Turkish and 30 Iranian companies, as well as contractors from China, Singapore, the Gulf States and several European countries. They blast new roads through the mountains, build bridges, tunnels and underpasses and create the endless housing developments.
About one hundred Arab companies have moved here from other parts of the country. The fact that the region - impoverished and attacked under Saddam Hussein, then racked by civil war after gaining de facto independence in 1991 - has no infrastructure provides investors with a blank sheet for vast building projects. The surge of investment is lifting the rugged region out of poverty and rushing it into the 21st century.
Next to the ancient souk in Arbil, where merchants sell honeycombs and goats´ cheese and pistachio nuts in a hive of crumbling alleyways, a vast shopping precinct of four 30- storey buildings is going up, with 6,000 retail spaces. On the road between the boom towns, peasants still live in Iron Age villages of stone and mud-brick huts, grazing sheep and travelling by donkey. Even in the centre of Arbil, people live in hovels carved from the ruined facades of Ottoman mansions on the Qalal, a hilltop fortress that has been lived in for 7,000 years - the world´s oldest continuously inhabited site.
There is little trace of sentimentality for the passing of the old ways. "We feel really happy watching our city being rebuilt," said Ahmed Abdelhadi, a retired teacher working at his son´s shoe shop in the winding alleys of Arbil´s souk. "It used to be just sewage in the streets."
Halor Sherkar, a member of the Sulaymaniyah Chamber of Commerce, has lost track of how many projects are rising from the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, close to the border with Iran. "In five years´ time, it´ll look like Paris," he said with a laugh.
The key to this success has been the stability brought by an army of 90,000 Peshmerga paramilitaries. Their presence is felt everywhere, manning checkpoints and scrutinising drivers. The security and job opportunities have attracted thousands of Iraqi Arabs like Hamid Rahil, 22, a Shia from Kut, just south of Baghdad. The killings in his area became so bad that he came to Sulaymaniyah with his cousin, a graduate of Russian literature unable to find work in the depressed south.
"It´s well paid. I get around $10 to $15 a day working on the construction of an underpass," he said. The Kurds treat him well, he added, although he had decided not to go out to the market after two suicide bombers killed 12 people in the city earlier this week, the first bombing inside the Kurdish region in months. "I´ve never been arrested, but people think I´m a terrorist because I´m an Arab," he said.
----------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
Mercoledì 2 novembre 2005 Edizione di: CESENA
Cinque curdi clandestini "sbarcati" da un camion
Camminavano attorno alla mezzanotte di due notti fa lungo la via del mare. Cinque personee dall´aria disorientata. Si trattava di 5 cittadini Curdi, da poco scaricati clandestinamente in zona probabilmente da un mezzo pesante, sul quale ora sono in corso indagini. A rintracciarli una pattuglia di polizia. Che vedendo quelle persone vagare nella notte, ha capito subito che c´era qualcosa che non andava.I cinque hanno collaborato per la loro identificazione con l´Ufficio Stranieri del Commissariato. Non hanno opposto alcun tipo di resistenza nemmeno quando hanno capito che per loro sarebbe stato programmato il rimpatrio.
Much of the muscle going into the building boom is provided by Iraqi Arab companies and labourers from the south who have moved to this once war-torn region of northern Iraq to escape the horrors of the rest of the country.
A bubble of relative security, with a quasi-democratic, quasi-authoritarian government, the Kurdish region of Iraq is benefiting from the dilemma of businessmen wanting to invest in an oil-rich country that is also one of the most dangerous places on earth. "Of course it is better to invest here than in Baghdad," said Talib Ali Ahmed, head of Sulaymaniyah´s Chamber of Commerce.
Many international investment companies seem to agree. In Sulaimaniyah alone, there are 48 Turkish and 30 Iranian companies, as well as contractors from China, Singapore, the Gulf States and several European countries. They blast new roads through the mountains, build bridges, tunnels and underpasses and create the endless housing developments.
About one hundred Arab companies have moved here from other parts of the country. The fact that the region - impoverished and attacked under Saddam Hussein, then racked by civil war after gaining de facto independence in 1991 - has no infrastructure provides investors with a blank sheet for vast building projects. The surge of investment is lifting the rugged region out of poverty and rushing it into the 21st century.
Next to the ancient souk in Arbil, where merchants sell honeycombs and goats´ cheese and pistachio nuts in a hive of crumbling alleyways, a vast shopping precinct of four 30- storey buildings is going up, with 6,000 retail spaces. On the road between the boom towns, peasants still live in Iron Age villages of stone and mud-brick huts, grazing sheep and travelling by donkey. Even in the centre of Arbil, people live in hovels carved from the ruined facades of Ottoman mansions on the Qalal, a hilltop fortress that has been lived in for 7,000 years - the world´s oldest continuously inhabited site.
There is little trace of sentimentality for the passing of the old ways. "We feel really happy watching our city being rebuilt," said Ahmed Abdelhadi, a retired teacher working at his son´s shoe shop in the winding alleys of Arbil´s souk. "It used to be just sewage in the streets."
Halor Sherkar, a member of the Sulaymaniyah Chamber of Commerce, has lost track of how many projects are rising from the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, close to the border with Iran. "In five years´ time, it´ll look like Paris," he said with a laugh.
The key to this success has been the stability brought by an army of 90,000 Peshmerga paramilitaries. Their presence is felt everywhere, manning checkpoints and scrutinising drivers. The security and job opportunities have attracted thousands of Iraqi Arabs like Hamid Rahil, 22, a Shia from Kut, just south of Baghdad. The killings in his area became so bad that he came to Sulaymaniyah with his cousin, a graduate of Russian literature unable to find work in the depressed south.
"It´s well paid. I get around $10 to $15 a day working on the construction of an underpass," he said. The Kurds treat him well, he added, although he had decided not to go out to the market after two suicide bombers killed 12 people in the city earlier this week, the first bombing inside the Kurdish region in months. "I´ve never been arrested, but people think I´m a terrorist because I´m an Arab," he said.
----------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
Mercoledì 2 novembre 2005 Edizione di: CESENA
Cinque curdi clandestini "sbarcati" da un camion
Camminavano attorno alla mezzanotte di due notti fa lungo la via del mare. Cinque personee dall´aria disorientata. Si trattava di 5 cittadini Curdi, da poco scaricati clandestinamente in zona probabilmente da un mezzo pesante, sul quale ora sono in corso indagini. A rintracciarli una pattuglia di polizia. Che vedendo quelle persone vagare nella notte, ha capito subito che c´era qualcosa che non andava.I cinque hanno collaborato per la loro identificazione con l´Ufficio Stranieri del Commissariato. Non hanno opposto alcun tipo di resistenza nemmeno quando hanno capito che per loro sarebbe stato programmato il rimpatrio.