Western Nations Back New Palestinian Government

By Meredith Buel Washington 18 June 2007

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Western nations are working quickly to support the new Palestinian government in the West Bank, following the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamic militant group Hamas. The United States and European Union have announced they will resume financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, now that Hamas is no longer a part of the government. Middle East analysts say the current situation in the Palestinian territories is unprecedented, as we hear in this background report from VOA correspondent Meredith Buel.

A member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's guard, 18 Jun 2007

The bloody takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas has split the Palestinian government, with the Hamas leadership in Gaza headed by deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and the new Fatah-allied cabinet in the West Bank sworn in by President Mahmoud Abbas.

In announcing the resumption of direct aid to Mr. Abbas' government, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Hamas is attempting to divide the Palestinian people, a move the United States rejects.

"Hamas has made its choice," said Condoleezza Rice. "It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Now responsible Palestinians are making their choice, and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace."

Analysts say the division between the West Bank and Gaza has endangered the Palestinians' goal of forming an independent state in the two territories, which are located on opposite sides of Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

President Abbas seeks peace with Israel while Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, wants to destroy the Jewish state. The United States, Israel and the European Union consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

Robert Malley, the Director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, says the Hamas takeover of Gaza means the Palestinians have entered an extraordinary period of uncertainty.

"Are goods going to be able to come in from Israel? Is the border with Egypt going to be open? What is going to happen to the maritime border? Those are questions that everyone is asking right now because, frankly, this is a new situation, it is an unprecedented situation and nobody has any guidebook to go by," said Robert Malley.

While western nations are restoring aid to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and are pledging more money to help the United Nations fund assistance in the Gaza Strip, fears are being raised about a possible humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is home to about 1.4 million Palestinians.

Ghaith al-Omari, a visiting fellow at the New American Foundation who has served as a senior advisor to President Abbas, says Palestinians in Gaza will face international isolation.

"We will start seeing two different realities in the West Bank and Gaza," said Ghaith al-Omari. "In Gaza, most likely, it [Hamas] will be unable to receive any international funding, any international support. We will see further poverty, further deterioration there. The West Bank might fare a little bit better."

Hamas began its rise to prominence in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Following the Oslo peace accords in the early 1990s, the group's armed wing launched a campaign of suicide attacks against Israeli targets.

Early last year Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections, defeating the Fatah-led government, which was seen as corrupt and ineffective.

The group's popularity is partly due to its extensive network of social services, including schools, health clinics and mosques.

Following Hamas' victory at the polls, western nations cutoff aid to the Hamas-led government, and Israel froze hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenues.

Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group says the international pressure helped fuel the internal fight between Hamas and Fatah.

"Part of what has happened between Fatah and Hamas is very much the superposition of an internal struggle of power over who was going to control the security services, who was going to control the Palestine Liberation Organization, who was going to control the Palestinian Authority and overlaid on that was a regional and international struggle and, unfortunately, one fed the other," he said.

Some analysts are expressing concern that a total boycott of Hamas could turn the Gaza Strip into a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Former advisor to the Palestinian Authority Ghaith al-Omari.

"If central authority in Gaza crumbles, if Hamas crumbles, it will not now be replaced by Fatah," he said. "It will have to be replaced by either small gangs, regionally or locally based gangs, and more frighteningly it might be a good ground for al-Qaida-type organizations to start flourishing."

Analysts say the United States and Israel are backing President Abbas to send the message that more is to be gained by negotiations than by violence.

Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group.

"In the short term I think the strategy is going to be to try to decouple the West Bank and Gaza," said Malley. "To build a showcase of success, if that is possible in the West Bank, and to contrast it with Gaza."

The general outlines of a peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians have been known for years, although no significant progress has been made since the Oslo process collapsed.

Analysts say achieving a two-state solution appears more difficult than ever, now that the Palestinians are virtually split into two separate states themselves.

US Envoy Says North Korea Should Shut Down Nuclear Facilities Soon

By Daniel Schearf Beijing 18 June 2007

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The chief U.S. negotiator at talks on North Korea's nuclear programs says Pyongyang may already have its money back from a Macau bank and should shut down its nuclear facilities in a matter of weeks. As Daniel Schearf reports from Beijing, finding a bank to receive the formerly frozen North Korean funds has proven a big obstacle to restarting the nuclear talks.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill meets with the media in Seoul, 18 Jun 2007

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill says North Korea's nuclear shutdown should go forward after a Russian bank last week agreed to receive more than $20 million in North Korean funds that had been frozen in Macau.

Hill told reporters in Beijing the money was in the Russian banking system as of last Saturday and may have already arrived in North Korea. He said it should be only a matter of weeks before nuclear talks can continue.

"It took us a long time, longer than any of us suspected. I think all of us have learned a lot about banking in the process, for what that is worth. But, I think now we have made an important turn and we are back onto the subject at hand, which is denuclearization," he said.

Hill says it should not take North Korea more than a couple of weeks to shut down its nuclear facilities.

"I think political will is something we are going to need," added Hill. "But, from a technical point of view I think all of it is quite doable. What we need to do is be very active diplomatically and, frankly, imaginative diplomatically to get back on our timelines."

North Korea agreed in February to shut down its main nuclear reactor and allow U.N. inspections in return for heavy fuel oil, a security guarantee, and diplomatic incentives.

But Pyongyang refused to move forward with the agreement because of a delay in transferring its frozen funds and missed an April deadline to shut down the reactor.

Macau authorities froze the accounts in 2005 after U.S. suspicions that a bank in the Chinese territory was aiding North Korean money laundering. North Korea boycotted nuclear discussions for over a year and only returned to the table last December after Washington promised to discuss unfreezing the money.

After an investigation, the United States concluded the bank had indeed aided illicit North Korean activity, including counterfeiting and drug dealing. But U.S. officials still agreed to unfreeze the cash to get North Korea back to negotiations.

No bank could be found that was willing to transfer the suspected illicit funds until last week, when Russia agreed to transfer the money to Pyongyang.

Hill, who is in Seoul, says South Korea may ship the first batch of heavy fuel oil to North Korea as early as this week.

Coalition Air Strike Kills Seven Children in Eastern Afghanistan

By Benjamin Sand Islamabad 18 June 2007

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A U.S.-led coalition air strike in eastern Afghanistan killed at least seven children along with several militants. The U.S military says it is saddened by the deaths in what it says is another example of al-Qaida terrorists using innocent civilians to shield themselves. Also, local Afghan officials say up to 60 civilians and more than 50 Taleban insurgents have been killed during fierce fighting in the past three days in southern Uruzgan province. From Islamabad, VOA Correspondent Benjamin Sand reports the civilian deaths are fueling opposition to the U.S.-backed central government.

The air strike occurred Sunday in Paktika Province, not far from the Pakistan border. U.S. officials say the target, including a mosque and religious school or madrassa, was a confirmed al-Qaida safe house.

Coalition Spokesman Major Chris Belcher says there was absolutely no indication that there were children inside the compound when they ordered the attack, and that local witnesses confirmed al-Qaida fighters were present.

"Coalition forces confirmed the presence of nefarious activity occurring at the site before getting approval to conduct an air strike on the location," he said.

Local Afghan officials immediately condemned the attack and are calling for an investigation.

The incident comes as the rising number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is provoking a major anti-government backlash. Protesters, many chanting death to America, are now a common sight in major cities and towns across the country.

NATO officials say Taleban militants killed almost 700 civilians last year, causing the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths.

But security experts say that public attention remains fixated on U.S. and NATO forces, and by extension, Afghanistan's U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai.

Norine MacDonald is the Afghan-based president of the Senlis Council, which researches Afghan development and security issues. She says every time a civilian dies, popular support for President Karzai plummets.

"If we are here to support the Karzai government we should not be alienating his political base," she said. "If we do not care about it from a humanitarian point of view, the suffering of these people, we should care from the point of view of the politics of keeping Karzai in power and stabilizing his political base."

MacDonald says the number of civilian deaths caused by coalition forces increased significantly when the hunt for Taleban insurgents in Southern Afghanistan intensified.

"NATO is doing a great job, but they have insufficient forces there to actually win the battles on the ground in the villages without air support," she said. "Well it is very hard to avoid civilian casualties when you are bombing a village."

VOASE0618_Science In the News

18 June 2007

How a Revolution in Thought Shook Scientists' Understanding of Earth
Modern research showed how Earth's surface is cracked like a giant eggshell. The pieces are called tectonic plates and as they move, they can cause earthquakes.

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VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Bob Doughty. Scientists who study the Earth tell us that the continents and ocean floors are always moving. Sometimes, this movement is violent and might result in great destruction.

VOICE ONE:

Today we examine the process that causes earthquakes.

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VOICE ONE:

The first pictures of Earth taken from space showed a solid ball covered by brown and green land masses and blue-green oceans. It appeared as if the Earth had always looked that way -- and always would. Scientists now know, however, that the surface of the Earth is not as permanent as had been thought.

Scientists explain that the surface of our planet is always in motion. Continents move about the Earth like huge ships at sea. They float on pieces of the Earth’s outer skin, or crust. New crust is created as melted rock pushes up from inside the planet. Old crust is destroyed as it rolls down into the hot area and melts again.

VOICE TWO:

Only since the nineteen sixties have scientists begun to understand that the Earth is a great, living structure. Some experts say this new understanding is one of the most important revolutions in scientific thought. The revolution is based on the work of scientists who study the movement of the continents -- a process called plate tectonics.

Damage in Islamabad, Pakistan, after the October 2005 earthquake centered in Kashmir

Earthquakes are a result of that process. Plate tectonics is the area of science that explains why the surface of the Earth changes and how those changes cause earthquakes.

VOICE ONE:

Scientists say the surface of the Earth is cracked like a giant eggshell. They call the pieces tectonic plates. As many as twenty of them cover the Earth. The plates float about slowly, sometimes crashing into each other, and sometimes moving away from each other.

When the plates move, the continents move with them. Sometimes the continents are above two plates. The continents split as the plates move.

VOICE TWO:

Tectonic plates can cause earthquakes as they move. Modern instruments show that about ninety percent of all earthquakes take place along a few lines in several places around the Earth.

These lines follow underwater mountains where hot liquid rock flows up from deep inside the planet. Sometimes, the melted rock comes out with a great burst of pressure. This forces apart pieces of the Earth's surface in a violent earthquake.

Other earthquakes take place at the edges of continents. Pressure increases as two plates move against each other. When this happens, one plate moves past the other, suddenly causing the Earth’s surface to split.

VOICE ONE:

San Francisco lies in rubble following the 1906 earthquake

One example of this is found in California, on the West Coast of the United States. One part of California is on what is known as the Pacific plate. The other part of the state is on what is known as the North American plate.

Scientists say the Pacific plate is moving toward the northwest, while the North American plate is moving more to the southeast. Where these two huge plates come together is called a fault line.

The name of this line between the plates in California is the San Andreas Fault. It is along or near this line that most of California’s earthquakes take place, as the two tectonic plates move in different directions.

The city of Los Angeles in Southern California is about fifty kilometers from the San Andreas Fault. Many smaller fault lines can be found throughout the area around Los Angeles. A major earthquake in nineteen ninety-four was centered along one of these smaller fault lines.

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VOICE TWO:

The story of plate tectonics begins with the German scientist Alfred Wegener in the early part of the twentieth century. He first proposed that the continents had moved and were still moving.

He said the idea came to him when he observed that the coasts of South America and Africa could fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.He proposed that the two continents might have been one, then split apart.

Later, Alfred Wegener said the continents had once been part of a huge area of land he called Pangaea. He said the huge continent had split more than two hundred million years ago. He said the pieces were still floating apart.

VOICE ONE:

Wegener investigated the idea that continents move. He pointed out a line of mountains that appears from east to west in South Africa. Then he pointed out another line of mountains that looks almost exactly the same in Argentina, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He found fossil remains of the same kind of an early plant in areas of Africa, South America, India, Australia and even Antarctica.

Alfred Wegener said the mountains and fossils were evidence that all the land on Earth was united at some time in the distant past.

VOICE TWO:

Wegener also noted differences between the continents and the ocean floor. He said the oceans were more than just low places that had filled with water. Even if the water was removed, he said, a person would still see differences between the continents and the ocean floor.

Also, the continents and the ocean floor are not made of the same kind of rock. The continents are made of a granite-like rock, a mixture of silicon and aluminum. The ocean floor is basalt rock, a mixture of silicon and magnesium. Mister Wegener said the lighter continental rock floated up through the heavier basalt rock of the ocean floor.

VOICE ONE:

Support for Alfred Wegener’s ideas did not come until the early nineteen-fifties. American scientists Harry Hess and Robert Dietz said the continents moved as new sea floor was created under the Atlantic Ocean.

They said a thin valley in the Atlantic Ocean was a place where the ocean floor splits. They said hot melted material flows up from deep inside the Earth through the split. As the hot material reaches the ocean floor, it spreads out, cools and hardens. It becomes new ocean floor.

The two scientists proposed that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean is moving away from each side of the split. The movement is very slow -- a few centimeters a year.

In time, they said, the moving ocean floor is blocked when it comes up against the edge of a continent. Then it is forced down under the continent, deep into the Earth, where it is melted again.

Harry Hess and Robert Dietz said this spreading does not make the Earth bigger. As new ocean floor is created, an equal amount is destroyed.

VOICE TWO:

The two scientists also said Alfred Wegener was correct. The continents move as new material from the center of the Earth rises, hardens and pushes older pieces of the Earth away from each other. The continents are moving all the time, although we cannot feel it.

They called their theory "sea floor spreading." The theory explains that as the sea floor spreads, the tectonic plates are pushed and pulled in different directions.

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VOICE ONE:

Mount St. Helens in Washington state exploding May 18, 1980

The idea of plate tectonics explains volcanoes as well as earthquakes. Many of the world's volcanoes are found at the edges of plates, where geologic activity is intense. The large number of volcanoes around the Pacific plate has earned the name "Ring of Fire."

Volcanoes also are found in the middle of plates, where there is a well of melted rock. Scientists call these wells "hot spots." A hot spot does not move. However, as the plate moves over it, a line of volcanoes is formed.

The Hawaiian Islands were created in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as the plate moved slowly over a hot spot. This process is continuing, as the plate continues to move.

VOICE TWO:

Volcanoes and earthquakes are among the most frightening events that nature can produce. The major earthquake in South Asia in October of two thousand five, for example, killed more than seventy thousand people. More than three million people were made homeless because of the earthquake. At times like these, we remember that the ground is not as solid and unchanging as people might like to think.

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VOICE ONE:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Nancy Steinbach. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Bob Doughty. Internet users can read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

VOASE0618_Agriculture Report

18 June 2007

Singer Aims to Grow Interest in Local Farming
Money from Adrienne Young's new CD ''Room to Grow'' will help support community gardens.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

(MUSIC)

Country singer and songwriter Adrienne Young brings together music and agricultural activism.

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She even included seeds in the album cover of her first CD.

Adrienne Young wants people to know that she supports the movement in America to increase local farming. She offers information about agricultural issues on her Web site. And now part of the money from her third and newest release, "Room to Grow," will be donated to help support community gardens.

Adrienne Young's family has lived in Florida for seven generations. Her ancestors helped develop the agriculture industry there. The state of Florida is the nation's second largest producer of fruits and vegetables, after California.

Adrienne Young has said that her interest in nature was shaped by the fact that she did not grow up on a farm. She grew up in a house her grandfather built on what had been farmland two generations ago. But the land was developed and was now partly a large highway.

Adrienne Young has teamed up with two organizations that support local farming and gardening efforts. One is the American Community Gardening Association. The other is FoodRoutes, a group she has represented for several years.

FoodRoutes says buying locally grown food is not only about taste and freshness. The group says buying locally also helps to strengthen local economies and protect the environment. Experts say food in the United States travels an average of more than three thousand kilometers from farm to store.

We leave you with Adrienne Young and the title song from her new CD, "Room to Grow."

(MUSIC)

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Dana Demange. You can learn more about American agriculture at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Katherine Cole.