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Sydney's firework go off with a roar
By Sam McKeith and Rashida Yosufzai, AAP
Updated December 31, 2012, 10:08 pm
Sydney NYE spectacular
Sydney's New Years Eve spectacular will cost $6.6million, but the city council reckons it's money well spent.
Sydney's skyline has exploded in gold, pink, green and blue as part of the traditional New Year's Eve family-oriented curtain raiser.
Sydney's lord mayor says the city is spending $6.6 million on its New Year's Eve event.
The ten minute spectacular at 9pm (AEDT)- which illuminated the city and dazzled spectators - is a warm-up for the city's midnight show-stopper.
Under balmy and clear skies, tens of thousands of revellers lined Darling Harbour and other viewing hotspots, and about 1.5 million filled the harbour foreshore.
As streams of incandescent colour shot into the heavens, families on picnic blankets cheered and clapped along with others aboard luxury yachts.
Colours streamed from four barges situated around the harbour, with gold flashes cascading like tinsel as a gold butterfly-like design lit up the bridge.
At one stage fireworks fell from the structure like a waterfall, with the display reaching a kaleidoscopic climax of green, red and blue fireworks.
"It was all great, amazing," said Lee Whittaker, from Denistone, who brought her kids Mel and Leon with her.
Kallya Alffonso, from Maroubra, said festivities in Sydney were much better than her native Brazil.
"Sydney is a very pretty city, the Harbour Bridge and Opera House make it looks spectacular," she said.
"It's the spirit too, everybody is here together, and it's just the whole atmosphere."
Event organisers estimate a record 130,000 people packed Sydney's Darling Harbour for the 9pm display.
"There is definitely more people here than last year," organiser Sal Sharah told AAP.
"We've had great weather and a great lead up to this evening."
The early show was greeted with cheers from the thousands of spectators at Lady Macquarie's Chair, many of whom had waited much of the day under a hot sun.
"I think they were awesome," said nine-year-old Nell Whittaker.
"I loved the sparkle effect, and they were really loud too."
A much-hyped show-stopper is then set to wow the world at midnight.
All eyes are on Sydney, one of the first major cities to ring in the new year, with more than a billion people expected to tune in to watch the $6.6 million party worldwide.
Many local partygoers are only now emerging to gather at pubs and clubs in time for midnight.
Others will cram onto rooftops or gather in backyards for a VB and sausage sambo to say goodbye to 2012
Celebrations in Sydney dwarf rival cities, with only 100,000 attending Paris fireworks, while 700,000 revellers gather for festivities in London.
Pop princess Kylie Minogue, chosen as the event's creative ambassador, will be honoured with a one-of-a-kind sparkling musical note firework at the turn of the year.
The semiquaver will be one of 100,000 individual pyrotechnic creations this year, including brand new koala, octopus and hand images up in lights.
People going to the CBD to watch the fireworks have been urged to leave their cars behind and take public transport, with road closures in place and extra + and buses laid on for the night.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge will be closed in both directions from 11pm on Monday to 1am on Tuesday.
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Happy New Year 2013_ Chúc Mừng Năm Mới 2013
Kính Chúc Quý Anh Chị Một Năm Mới Tây 2013 An Lành, Mạnh Khỏe và nhiều May Mắn .
conbenho
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Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
Syrian troops hit Homs, killing 23 children, activists say
By Alison Tahmizian Meuse
From: AFP
December 31, 2012 12:43AM
In this image taken from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, smoke rises from buildings from heavy shelling in Homs, Syria, on December 27. Picture: AP Source: AP
SYRIAN regime forces have pressed a fierce offensive in Homs after overrunning a key neighbourhood of the central city, according to a watchdog, which also listed 23 children killed in violence across the country.
The latest bloodletting came after international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned in Moscow that Syria was facing a choice between "hell or the political process" after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army, after Saturday seizing the Deir Baalbeh district in fighting which left dozens dead, fired off barrages of rockets into surrounding rebel-held neighbourhoods as it sought to capitalise on its victory.
Troops also bombarded the nearby opposition stronghold of Rastan.
The Britain-based Observatory, which gathers its information from a network of activists and medics in civilian and military hospitals, said the final death toll from Saturday's clashes had not been finalised due to communications difficulties in the area.
A video released by the Syrian Revolution General Commission, a grassroots network of anti-regime activists, showed the bodies of nine male victims from Deir Baalbeh lying on the ground, their faces bloody and mutilated.
In this December 17 photo, a man runs between debris after a mortar shell hit a street killing several people in the Bustan Al-Qasr district of Aleppo, Syria. Picture: Narciso Contreras
.The authenticity of the video could not immediately be verified.
Near the capital, loyalist troops carried out air raids on towns along the eastern outlying belt and on Daraya in the southwest, while fighting between rebels and the army erupted in the northeastern and southwestern suburbs.
The Observatory said 13 children were among the victims of bombardments in and around Damascus on Saturday, while 10 children were killed in air strikes across Aleppo province, including on rebel-held Aazaz near the Turkish border.
Analysts said the surge in air strikes by Syrian forces were a desperate attempt by President Bashar al-Assad's regime to reverse rampant gains by rebel fighters, especially in the north of the country.
Meanwhile, rebels made further advances in the battle for the Hamidiyeh military post in the northwest province of Idlib which they stormed the previous day, the watchdog said.
During the clashes, three insurgents were wounded by machinegun fire, while warplanes raided a nearby village, the Observatory said.
A takeover of the Hamidiyeh post would pave the way for a rebel offensive against the nearby Wadi Deif base, one of the government's last outposts in the north.
Opposition fighters, mostly from the jihadist Al-Nusra Front, have been closing in on the base since overrunning the nearby town of Maaret al-Numan in early October.
In the south, a rebel was killed in battles for control of several small border crossings along the regime-held frontier with Jordan, the Observatory said.
Syria and Jordan share a 370-kilometre-long border which hundreds of people cross on foot every day to escape the bloody civil war that the Observatory says has killed at least 45,000 people.
Mr Brahimi on Saturday held talks with Mr Lavrov on his end-of-year bid to accelerate moves to halt the Syria conflict.
He painted a stark picture of Syrian neighbours Jordan and Lebanon being overrun by a million refugees should heavy fighting for the seat of power break out in Syria's five-million-strong capital.
If this fighting "develops into something uglier ... (refugees) can go to only two places - Lebanon and Jordan", Mr Brahimi said.
"So if the alternative is hell or the political process, we have all of us got to work ceaselessly for a political process," he said.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/syrian-troops-hit-homs-kill-23-children/story-fndir2ev-1226545462420
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Clinton in hospital with blood clot
AFP
Updated December 31, 2012, 5:13 pm
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been admitted to a New York hospital after the discovery of a blood clot stemming from the concussion she sustained earlier this month. (Dec. 30)
NEW YORK (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is at a New York hospital, receiving treatment for a blood clot discovered in the aftermath of a concussion suffered earlier this month.
The latest health scare for the globe-trotting Clinton will likely keep her out of the public eye a bit longer, just as she prepares to step down after four years as America's top diplomat.
Clinton, 65, fell ill with a stomach bug on her return from a trip to Europe earlier this month that caused the former first lady to become severely dehydrated and faint, suffering a concussion.
"In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago," her aide Philippe Reines said in a statement.
"She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at New York Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours," he said.
"Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required," he added.
Reines did not elaborate further on her condition, and would not specify where the clot had formed. And the streets outside the hospital in Clinton's home state were deserted late Sunday on a cold December night.
Previously in 1998, when she was first lady in the White House of her husband and then-president Bill Clinton, Clinton suffered a blood clot in her leg that she has described as "the most significant health scare I've ever had."
"That was scary because you have to treat it immediately -- you don't want to take the risk that it will break loose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs," she told the New York Daily News in October 2007.
Clinton has been off work since her return from her last foreign trip on December 7, although her staff has said she has been working from home. Only a few days ago, Reines said she was expected back in Washington this week.
Her rare and lengthy absence from public life had sparked claims from some of her fiercer critics that she was trying to avoid testifying before lawmakers investigating a deadly attack on a US mission in Libya.
The American media have also been rife with speculation and rumors about her whereabouts and her condition, but it is not believed to be life-threatening.
Clinton's doctors said she had become severely dehydrated due to the effects of the stomach bug and fainted, suffering a concussion. They recommended she stay off work, and ordered her not to fly until at least mid-January.
Clinton has flown almost a million miles since taking office four years ago, visited 112 countries and spent some 400 days in a plane. She has been hugely popular as secretary of state, and has the highest ratings of any cabinet member.
Many believe she will try to run again for the White House in 2016, after she was narrowly defeated to the Democratic Party nomination by Barack Obama in 2008.
The secretary's health prevented her from testifying on December 20 to US lawmakers about the September 11 attack on the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
The assault, in which the US ambassador and three other American officials were killed, sparked a political firestorm in the United States.
Republican lawmakers and some media outlets opposed to the administration slammed Clinton's absence from the hearings, with her harshest critics suggesting she was faking illness.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday it was "absolutely essential that she'd testify. I want to know from the secretary of state's point of view, were you informed of the deteriorating security situation?"
Graham also told Fox News Sunday Republicans would not conduct the nomination hearings for Senator John Kerry, tapped to replace Clinton, until she has appeared before them.
"I've been told by Senator Kerry he wants that approach also. He needs to hear what she says so he can make comments about, 'I agree with her/I don't agree with her.' It makes sense to have her go first."
Read more: http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/15729872/hillary-clinton-hospitalized-with-blood-clot/
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Hunger in the Horn of Africa
Aug 4th 2011, 17:48 by The Economist online
NEVER again, said the world after the horror Ethiopia's famine in 1984. And for years famine seemed to have departed Africa. But after the worst drought in 60 years, it has returned. Northern Kenya, south-eastern Ethiopia, southern Somalia and Djibouti have been worst hit. The UN estimates that more than 12m people in the Horn of Africa need urgent help; tens of thousands have already died and hundreds of thousands more risk starvation. Livestock have been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into refugee camps in search of help. Malnutrition rates in some areas are five times more severe than the threshold aid agencies use to define a crisis. Many children are already dying of starvation.
KENYA, DADAAB: Abdifatah Hassan, who is 11 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition, lies on a cot at a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the biggest refugee camp in the world in Dadaab. (AFP Photo/Roberto Schmidt)
SOMALIA, MOGADISHU: A severely malnourished child lies down after being admitted to Banadir Hospital in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu. (AFP PHOTO/ Mustafa ABDI)
Read more: http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/08/pictures
(to be continued...)
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
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conbenho
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Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
India hungers for rupees while its children go without food
Date March 17, 2012
Ben Doherty
The hard plains of central India yield little.
The crops failed the year Ujala was born. Her mother was ill and there was nothing for anyone in her family to eat.
India remains one of the fastest growing economies of the world.
When the Herald first visited Ujala in 2009, she was four months old and weighed just 1.5 kilograms.
Malnutrition in Indian children
A little girl named Ujala, 4 months old from the village of Paretha in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, weighs 1.5 kg and is one example of malnutrition in this particular area. Photo: Brendan Esposito
The family have not weighed her since. They don't have the money for a doctor, nor can they see the point after their daughter was abandoned by the hospital last time, told she was too ill to treat, that she wouldn't survive.
But she did survive. Ujala is 3½ now, but it's doubtful she has put on much more weight since.
She cannot walk, speak or even sit properly unaided. All she can do is cry, piteously, a thin whine she makes when she is hungry.
The other face of India … Ujala, 3½ , sits in the arms of her mother, Geeta.
The lack of food for her and her mother in those first critical months have crippled her body and cruelled her brain development. She will never go to school, or work, or marry.
"She is not going to improve," her father, Raju, says, holding his slack-limbed daughter in his arms. "And I worry. How can I not worry for her? She is my child."
Ujala has a younger brother, born in a year the rains fell.
The other face of India … Ujala, 3½ , sits in the arms of her mother, Geeta.
At 11 months old, Roshan is runny-nosed and restless, a chubby, stumbling toddler who towers over his elder sister, at least twice her size.
But this is not just the story of Ujala, this is the story of the country in which she lives.
This is the tale of two Indias.
The train line near Ujala's dusty village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh runs to Mumbai, India's glitzy financial capital and a symbol of the country's burgeoning wealth.
In the same week the Herald revisited Ujala, India brought down its budget, promising gross domestic product growth of 7.6 per cent and 8.6 per cent over the next two years.
"India remains one of the fastest growing economies of the world," the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, boasted.
But for all of its economic growth, its ceaseless development and its nascent emergence as a global economic superpower, India remains home to half the world's poor and hungry. More than 400 million exist here on less than a dollar a day.
In this dichotomous place, more than half of all Indians own a mobile phone. Fewer than that have access to a toilet.
In parts of India - such as Ujala's village of Paretha - child malnutrition rates are worse than in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Hunger and Malnutrition survey released by the government found 42 per cent of Indian children were underweight, 59 per cent stunted by lack of food.
India has long been earmarked for greatness on the promise of its ''youth dividend'': its huge young population that will see it surpass an ageing China as the most populous country on earth, with the largest workforce.
This young generation - 40 per cent of Indians are under 18 - educated and aspiring, are to drive India to global eminence.
But ill-fed and uneducated, that youth dividend would become India's burden, a massive generation of unproductive, uneconomic adults.
As simple as it is, food matters. A Lancet survey found those who were malnourished as children earn 20 per cent less than those who had enough to eat.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has urged India to abandon its obsession with gross domestic product figures.
"You have to see how our lives are improving, '' Sen said in The Economic Times. ''India may have the second-fastest growth rate but we have the largest number of undernourished children in the world. We have lower literacy. In all the human development categories, girls' education, basic medical care … we are the worst performer among South Asian countries,"
"My worry is the sentiment of the country gets upset when it [GDP growth rate] goes from 8 per cent to 7 per cent. The sentiment of India doesn't get affected by the higher number of undernourished children than anywhere else."
The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called India's childhood malnutrition figures "a national shame".
"Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under nutrition in the country is unacceptably high,'' Singh said. ''We have also not succeeded in reducing this rate fast enough."
In the three years that Ujala has grown just a few centimetres, her country's wealth has increased by half a trillion dollars. Her family's has barely moved.
Her father is the youngest of five brothers.
There are 15 in the extended family that live in the two-room mudbrick house in Paretha, a dun-coloured collection of low-slung homes and dusty fields, huddled around a thin ribbon of black tar connecting it to the outside world.
Raju and his brothers leave home for three or four months at a time, seeking work at nearby farms or brick kilns. They send almost all their money home, but it's never enough.
The family, too, farms the land it owns, barely more than half a hectare of stony, unirrigated ground a few kilometres from the village.
They grow soya beans as a cash crop now, instead of wheat for their own tables, but they can only plant for the monsoon rains, which grow steadily less reliable.
Entering an economy in which they sit at the very bottom, has left families like Ujala's vulnerable - to bad crop years, to rising prices, to unscrupulous traders.
"Malnutrition is not today's problem, it is a whole process that has been going in India," Seema Prakash, from Sandap, a social services organisation says.
"It's only because the distance between people and their food keeps on increasing … that malnutrition gets worse. This problem is much worse with those people like tribals, dalits, who have very little earning capacity for nurturing their children."
Reetika Khera from the Delhi School of Economics says while economic growth will eventually raise standards of living across this diverse country, the benefits of India's last decade of growth have been wildly disproportionate.
"There has been an increase in income inequality in the past 10 to 20 years and the people who are poor, who are the at the very bottom end of the distribution network, are desperately poor in India, and they cannot wait for 10 years for their boat to be lifted by this rising tide," Dr Khera tells the Herald.
And the most fundamental measure of development, that people have enough to eat, has barely moved.
"In spite of this amazing growth in the past decade or so, there has hardly been any improvement in nutrition indicators, especially childhood nutrition indicators … GDP growth itself is not going to do very much about the nutrition indicators unless the government really takes this problem head on."
Government programs to feed India's poor have been stymied by bureaucracy and scandalised by rampant corruption. Huge amounts of grain - running into thousands of tonnes - are illegally siphoned off by crooked operators within the system.
At one time, in the state of Jharkhand, up to 90 per cent of the grain allocated by government to feed the poorest, never reached its destination. The situation is improving, but still half of the grain ''disappears'' before it reaches those without the means to get it anywhere else.
Ujala's entire extended family is entitled to one ration card, which entitles them to 35 kilograms of wheat grain a month. It's a little more than two kilograms each, the months when it does arrive.
"We can't rely on it," Ujala's mother Geeta tells the Herald, speaking in Korku, her tribe's language.
"We don't know what they will give us, one month or the next. The government does not help us. The government does not care.
"For now," she says, gently cradling Ujala, "the situation is better, but the future is uncertain."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/india-hungers-for-rupees-while-its-children-go-without-food-20120316-1vamm.html#ixzz2GZUniGr0
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
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conbenho
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Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
US childhood obesity dips for first time in decades: study
By Mira Oberman | AFP – Wed, Dec 26, 2012.
AFP/Getty Images/AFP/File - A child takes a plate of healthy snacks during the Shapedown program for overweight adolescents and children on November 20, 2010 in Aurora, Colorado. Obesity rates among small children …more
Obesity rates among small children may finally be on the decline after more than tripling in the United States the past 30 years, a study out Wednesday indicated.
The study found that obesity rates peaked in 2004 and then declined slightly among low-income children aged two to four who receive benefits from a federal food stamp program called SNAP.
"To our knowledge, this is the first national study to show that the prevalence of obesity and extreme obesity among young US children may have begun to decline," wrote lead author Liping Pan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"The results of this study indicate modest recent progress of obesity prevention among young children. These findings may have important health implications because of the lifelong health risks of obesity and extreme obesity in early childhood."
Obesity is most prevalent among minority and low-income families and has been associated with a range of health problems and premature death.
The researchers analyzed data from a pediatric nutrition surveillance system which monitors almost half of the children eligible for federally funded maternal and child health and nutrition programs.
They were able to access height and weight data from 27.5 million children aged two to four in the 30 states which consistently reported their data.
In 1998, obesity levels were at 13.05 percent of the children. This rose to a peak of 15.36 percent in 2004 before declining to 14.94 percent in 2010.
Extreme obesity rates rose from 1.75 percent in 1998 to a peak of 2.22 percent in 2003 before slipping down to 2.07 percent in 2010, the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. David Ludwig said the declines seen are not enough, and he urged an overhaul of the federal food stamp program (SNAP) to help low-income families tackle obesity by eliminating junk food and adding more fruit and vegetables to their diet.
"SNAP is essential for hunger prevention in the United States, but its exclusive focus on food quantity contributes to malnutrition and obesity, and is misaligned with the goal of helping beneficiaries lead healthier lives," wrote Ludwig, who works in an obesity prevention center at Boston Children's Hospital.
While other federal food programs, like the free meals offered in schools, have been revised to focus on healthful eating, SNAP has no regulations to influence the quality of food purchased.
Ludwig noted that it pays for an estimated $4 billion in soft drinks per year, which adds up to about 20 million servings of soda a day.
"The public pays for sugary drinks, candy, and other junk foods included in SNAP benefits twice: once at the time of purchase, and later for the treatment of diet-induced disease through Medicaid and Medicare," he wrote.
"The nation's $75 billion investment in SNAP could provide a major opportunity to reduce the burden of diet-related disease among low-income children and families if policies that promote nutritional quality are instituted."
More than a third of US children were overweight in 2008, the CDC found in a previous study.
Childhood obesity rates jumped from seven percent of children aged six to 11 in 1980 to 20 percent in 2008. The number of obese teens aged 12 to 19 jumped from five percent to 18 percent over the same period.
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Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
31122012
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
UN issues dire new warning on Syrian carnage
By Middle East correspondent Matt Brown, wires
Updated 5 hours 8 minutes ago
Photo: Bloody future? The UN is warning that up to 100,000 people could die next year if Syria's grim civil war drags on (AFP: Leal Olivas)
The international envoy to Syria has warned the war in the country is worsening by the day, and that as many as 100,000 people could die in the next year.
Lakhdar Brahimi says dialogue between the government of president Bashar al-Assad and the opposition remains the only way to avoid further bloodshed, but the opposition forces remain adamant that Mr Assad's government cannot be involved in any peace plan.
"The situation in Syria is bad, very, very bad." he said.
"It is getting worse, and worsening more quickly. If about 50,000 people were killed in nearly two years, and the war continues for another year, we won't have 25,000 more dead, we will have 100,000."
When former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan quit the role of envoy in frustration and Mr Brahimi took up the post in August, he said it was an almost impossible task.
Less than five months later the veteran trouble shooter is warning Syria could soon become a failed state ruled by warlords.
Mr Brahimi has been pushing a peace plan drawn up in Geneva in the middle of the year, with the support of Syria's key ally, Russia and the other permanent members of the Security Council.
After a series of meetings in Damascus and then Moscow, he has reported back to the Arab League in Cairo, telling a press conference there is still a chance a plan based on the Geneva agreement could be accepted by the international community and succeed in bringing peace.
"Geneva was a compromise and it's understandable that it has different interpretations," he said.
"But I think Geneva aims at a change that is total and a change that is acceptable to the people of Syria."
The Geneva agreement talks about a transitional government and movement toward elections, but it is silent on the fate of Mr Assad and the opposition is adamant he must have no role.
That is where the diplomacy has been stuck, as the bodies have piled up.
As Mr Brahimi headed to Moscow, there were faint hopes he might be making progress.
Russia has been stepping away from Mr Assad, acknowledging calls for him to go and offering to talk to the Syrian opposition, but Russia has also just reaffirmed that Mr Assad has no intention of stepping down.
And Mr Brahimi acknowledged that neither Mr Assad nor the opposition were willing to talk to each other.
"You know, this is the problem," he said.
"The problem is that both sides are not speaking to one another, are speaking across of one another. And this is where help is needed from outside to make sure that we, everybody speaks about the same thing."
ABC/AFP
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-31/brahimi-sounds-grim-new-warning-on-syria-conflict/4447932
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UN envoy says Syrian collapse threatens region
Lakhdar Brahimi talks in Moscow with foreign minister show no progress in settling crisis
The Associated Press
Posted: Dec 29, 2012 10:23 AM ET
Last Updated: Dec 29, 2012 11:56 AM ET
Comments (115)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and UN envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said in their meeting in Moscow on Saturday that the Syrian crisis can only be settled through talks, but the parties to the conflict have shown no desire for compromise. (Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press)
The UN envoy for Syria warned today that the country's civil war could plunge the entire region into chaos by sending an unbearable stream of refugees into neighbouring countries, but his talks in Moscow brought no sign of progress toward settling the crisis.
Lakhdar Brahimi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov both said after their meeting that the 21-month Syrian crisis can only be settled through talks, while admitting that the parties to the conflict have shown no desire for compromise. Neither hinted at a possible solution that would persuade the government and the opposition to agree to a ceasefire and sit down for talks on political transition.
Brahimi, who arrived in Moscow on a one-day trip following his talks in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this week, voiced concern about the escalation of the conflict, which he said is becoming "more and more sectarian."
Brahimi warned that "if you have a panic in Damascus and if you have one million people leaving Damascus in a panic, they can go to only two places — Lebanon and Jordan," and that those countries could break if faced with half a million refugees.
Brahimi said that "if the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then we have got all of us to work ceaselessly for a political process."
Russia opposes sanctions against Assad
Russia has been the main supporter of Assad's regime since the uprising began in March 2011, using its veto right at the UN Security Council along with China to shield its last Mideast ally from international sanctions.
Lavrov reaffirmed that Russia would continue to oppose any UN resolution that would call for international sanctions against Assad and open the way for a foreign intervention in Syria. And while he again emphasized that Russia "isn't holding on to Bashar Assad," he added that Moscow continues to believe that the opposition demand for his resignation as a precondition for peace talks is "counterproductive."
Smoke rises from buildings from heavy shelling in Homs, Syria, on Thursday, in image taken from video. (Shaam News Network via AP video/Associated Press)
"The price for that precondition will be the loss of more Syrian lives," Lavrov said.
Both Brahimi and Lavrov insisted that peace efforts must be based on a peace plan approved at an international conference in Geneva in June.
The Geneva plan called for an open-ended ceasefire, a transitional government to run the country until elections, and the drafting of a new constitution, but it was a non-starter with the opposition because on Russian insistence it left the door open for Assad being part of the transition process and didn't contain any mention of possible UN sanctions.
Brahimi said that while some "little adjustments" could be made to the original plan, "it's a valued basis for reasonable political process."
Lavrov denies giving Syrian weapons
With the opposition offensive gaining momentum, there was little hope that the initiative would have more chance for success than it had when it was approved.
Lavrov has said that Moscow is ready to talk to the main Syrian opposition group, even though it has earlier criticized the United States and other Western nations for recognizing the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
'
We aren't providing the Syrian regime with any offensive weapons or weapons that could be used in a civil war.'
—Sergey Lavrov, Russian foreign minister
On Friday, coalition leader Mouaz al-Khatib rejected the Russian invitation for talks and urged Moscow to support the opposition call for Assad's ouster. Lavrov said Saturday that al-Khatib's statement was surprising after his earlier contacts with Russian diplomats in Egypt in which they tentatively agreed on a meeting in a third country.
Lavrov argued that the coalition leader should "realize it would be in his own interests to hear our analysis directly from us."
Lavrov rejected the opposition claim that Russia's continuing weapons supplies to Assad's regime made it responsible for the massacre, saying that Moscow bears no responsibility for the Soviet-era weapons in Syrian arsenals. He said that defensive weapons like anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has continued to supply to Damascus couldn't be used in the civil war.
"We aren't providing the Syrian regime with any offensive weapons or weapons that could be used in a civil war," Lavrov said. "And we have no leverage over what the regime has got since the Soviet times."
Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed since the start of Syria's crisis in March 2011.
Flight to Aleppo cancelled due to fighting
In other news Saturday, Egyptian airport officials say Syria's national airline has cancelled a flight to Aleppo because of fighting near the city's airport.
The officials said the flight was supposed to stop in Aleppo before continuing to Damascus, but flew straight to Damascus "because of the deteriorated security situation" near the Aleppo airport.
It was the first time a flight to Aleppo had been cancelled, they said.
The Syrian government and its airline did not comment.
Rebels seeking to topple Assad have launched a campaign to seize government airports as a way to cut the regime's supply lines and strike a blow against its airpower, the biggest threat faced by rebel forces. While the rebels have yet to seize a major airport, they have disrupted traffic at some with heavy machine-gun fire, and flights to Damascus have been cancelled due to fighting near its airport.
Syrian airlines is the only carrier still flying to Damascus, running one flight per day, though some officials still consider the trip too risky.
*** 115 Comments
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/12/29/syria-envoy-moscow.html
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
30122012
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
