US Vice President Dick Cheney began Easter Sunday with a prayer and the singing of Amazing Grace at a chapel in Jerusalem, then launched into a day of talks about conflict: the Middle East peace process and the rising influence of Iran in the region.
"We are obviously dedicated to doing all we can as an administration to try to move the peace process forward, and obviously actively involved in dealing with the threats that we see emerging in the region -- not only threats to Israel, but threats to the United States as well," Cheney, a strong supporter of Israel, said in a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
It was clear that Cheney was referring to Iran, but Peres was more specific, saying the anti-Israel declarations that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes against Israel, and Iran's support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups, cannot be ignored.
"We have this problem of the Iranians who want to build two satellites, the Hezbollah [in Lebanon] and the Hamas in Gaza ... Nobody can control us and say that declarations by Ahmadinejad are less serious," Peres said. "We have to take it seriously."
He said time is of the essence in the peace process, but that he believes progress is achievable.
"The mere fact that in spite of the differences the negotiations go on is a great hope for the future," Peres said.
Israel has been pursuing peace with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas since the two sides relaunched talks at a US-sponsored conference last November. At the same time, it has been battling Hamas, which wrested control of the Gaza Strip in June from Abbas-allied forces and has bombarded southern Israel with rockets.
There has been a recent lull in the Gaza violence, however, amid Egyptian efforts to broker a truce.
Nimer Hamad, a political adviser to Abbas, said he saw no chance for an agreement this year if Israel continued settlement expansion and its military incursions.
"Without strong American intervention and pressure on Israel, there will be no progress in the peace talks," he said.
HAMAS
Hamas scoffed at the Cheney peacekeeping mission.
"All the visits of the American administration officials to the region have one goal, which is to give unlimited support to the occupation and the Israeli government, and to encourage their aggressions against our people," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
He said the "so-called peace process" was a "paralyzed and ailing" fiction, and said Cheney was visiting Abbas "to encourage him to practice more anti-Hamas policy and work against the unity of his people."
Cheney began the day with his wife, Lynne, and daughter, Liz, attending a nondenominational service at Lazarist Monastery, which rents out space to the US consulate for diplomatic work with the Palestinian Authority.
Afterward, he had breakfast with Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and went to meetings with Peres and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Later in the day, Cheney was going to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Also see: Primary architect of Israel's birth may face extinction
PEACE AT LAST? UN experts had warned of threats and attacks ahead of the voting, but after a turbulent period, Bangladesh has seemingly reacted to the result with calm The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) yesterday celebrated a landslide victory in the first elections held since a deadly 2024 uprising, with party leader Tarique Rahman to become prime minister. Bangladesh Election Commission figures showed that the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, compared with 77 for the Islamist-led Jamaat-e-Islami alliance. The US embassy congratulated Rahman and the BNP for a “historic victory,” while India praised Rahman’s “decisive win” in a significant step after recent rocky relations with Bangladesh. China and Pakistan, which grew closer to Bangladesh since the uprising and the souring of ties with India, where ousted Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina
FAST-TRACK: The deal is to be sent to the legislature, but time is of the essence, as Trump had raised tariffs on Seoul when it failed to quickly ratify a similar pact Taiwan and the US on Thursday signed a trade agreement that caps US tariffs on Taiwanese goods at 15 percent and provides preferential market access for US industrial and agricultural exports, including cars, and beef and pork products. The Taiwan-US Agreement on Reciprocal Trade confirms a 15 percent US tariff for Taiwanese goods, and grants Taiwanese semiconductors and related products the most-favorable-treatment under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the Executive Yuan said. In addition, 2,072 items — representing nearly 20 percent of Taiwan’s total exports to the US — would be exempt from additional tariffs and be subject only to
The Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) yesterday released the first images from its Formosat-8A satellite, featuring high-resolution views of Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), Tainan’s Anping District (安平), Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor (興達港), Japan’s National Stadium in Tokyo and Barcelona airport. Formosat-8A, named the “Chi Po-lin Satellite” after the late Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), was launched on Nov. 29 last year. It is designed to capture images at a 1m resolution, which can be sharpened to 0.7m after processing, surpassing the capabilities of its predecessor, Formosat-5, the agency said. It is the first of TASA’s eight-satellite Formosat-8 constellation to be sent into orbit and
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday approved a special pardon exempting a woman in her 80s convicted of killing her disabled son from imprisonment. After carefully reviewing the case, Lai pardoned Lin Liu Lung-tzu (林劉龍子) from the prison sentence while acknowledging her conviction, citing the extreme circumstances she faced, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. Under Article 3 of the Amnesty Act (赦免法), the two kinds of pardons are exempting an offender from the execution of a punishment or declaring the punishment to be invalid. Kuo said Lin Liu had spent more than 50 years caring for her son, before
RSS