2008 Woodie Awards
News From Around the World
Jonathan Stone
Issue date: 3/9/05 Section: News
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On Wednesday, 2 March, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met with European Union officials in Brussels, Belgium. Their goal was to discuss and to start planning the creation of Palestine as an independent state, in Abbas's words, "as soon as possible."
"Now we are talking about a new era of peace and hope. I hope this support will continue ... let's be optimistic," said Abbas.
"Unfortunately until now, this dream has not been possible. We will continue to work to get this as soon as possible," Abbas, who was at EU headquarters in Brussels for the first time, continued.
"The most important message is our readiness, our full readiness to work for the internal security. We have deployed forces and we have taken a final decision on uniting the security apparatus, and we will continue applying this decision."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the host of the meeting, stated that the conference helped build "practical steps needed" to establish a Palestinian state; "What we have today is an agreement -- not just on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which has got to usher in such a state, but also on behalf of the whole of the international community -- as to the practical steps, the foundation stones necessary to create that viable state," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "We will keep doing all we can in the months and years ahead."
BOMBER CONVICTED OF CONSPIRACY
On Thursday, 3 March, an Indonesian court convicted Abu Bakar Ba'asyir of an "evil conspiracy" for his involvement in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, killing 202 people, 82 of which were Australians. He was sentenced to only 30 months in jail, to the disappointment of Australia and the United States.
Ba'asyir, however, wasn't found guilty on the more serious charge of killing 12 in the bombing of the JW Marriot Hotel on 5 August 2003 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
"It's of some concern to us that the sentence is as short as it is. We're disappointed about that. We'd like to see a longer sentence," Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
He continued, "I have instructed our embassy in Jakarta to raise this whole question of the short sentence with the Indonesian authorities and to say from our perspective we'd like to see a longer sentence. We ask that the length of the sentence be appealed in the Indonesian courts."