Greek austerity talks stalled, minister heads to Brussels

 

Greek leaders failed on Thursday to agree on a reform and austerity program, the price of a financial bailout to avoid a messy default, forcing Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos to go to the country s financial backers with an incomplete deal.

 

Venizelos will travel to Brussels later on Thursday, where his fellow euro zone finance ministers had hoped he would present a commitment to make budget savings worth 3.3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) this year.

 

But after all-night talks with leaders of the three parties in the Greek coalition and with officials from the EU and IMF, Venizelos emerged shortly before dawn to say that one issue remained unresolved.

 

“I am leaving for Brussels in a short while with the hope that the Eurogroup meeting will be held, and a positive decision on the new program will be taken,” he told reporters.

 

“The financial survival of the country in the coming years depends on the new program … It is time of responsibility for everyone.”

 

Venizelos did not say what the problem was or why he was not certain the Brussels meeting on the 130 billion euro bailout would go ahead.

 

A spokesman for the socialist PASOK party said disagreement over pension reform had been the stumbling block.
A senior government official said the party chiefs had agreed on how to make about 90 percent of the promised savings, leaving a relatively small hole in the calculations.

 

Athens had to close this gap quickly, said the official. “Greece has another 15 days to specify fiscal savings worth 300 million euros,” he said on condition of anonymity.

 

PM HOPES

 

Earlier, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said he hoped the party leaders could sort out their differences before the euro zone finance ministers meet at 1700 GMT.

 

Prospects for a long-awaited deal on Greece s second bailout since 2010 appeared to brighten when the finance ministers  chairman Jean-Claude Juncker called the Brussels meeting – which IMF managing director Christine Lagarde will also attend – to examine the bailout and accompanying bond swap.

 

On offer from the European Union and International Monetary Fund is a package involving the new rescue funds – which Greece needs to avoid a chaotic default when big debt repayments fall due on March 20 – and a bond swap with private creditors to ease the nation s huge debt burden.

 

In return, Athens must accept conditions requiring big cuts in many Greeks  living standards. The smallest member of the coalition, the far-right LAOS party, was particularly uncomfortable with the measures.

 

“The president of LAOS George Karatzaferis expressed serious reservations,” said Papademos, a former central banker brought in when a PASOK government collapsed last November.

 

Panos Beglitis, spokesman for PASOK which is in the coalition along with LAOS and the conservative New Democracy party, said they had disagreed over the level of cuts to supplementary pensions needed to safeguard the pension system.

 

However, Beglitis told reporters the leaders had agreed to cut the minimum wage by 22 percent as part of efforts to make the economy more competitive. Plans to scrap bonuses paid to private sector workers at Christmas, Easter and in the summer had been dropped.

 

Two sources close to the Athens talks said the government would promise spending cuts and tax rises totaling 13 billion euros from 2012 to 2015, almost double the seven billion it originally pledged.
 

Pakistan hunts for survivors as factory toll hits 19

LAHORE: Pakistani rescuers on Tuesday pulled more survivors and bodies from the rubble of a factory that collapsed in the city of Lahore, as the death toll rose to 19 after the disaster.

The three-storey building used to manufacture veterinary medicines came crashing down after a probable boiler and a gas cylinder explosion at the premises in the congested Multan Road area on Monday, police said.

There was jubilation more than 30 hours after the accident when an elderly woman aged about 70 was pulled out alive from the rubble. Rescue workers said they were also clearing a route to recover two boys also spotted alive.

Emergency teams spent night and day digging through the debris with their bare hands, increasingly desperate as cries for help started to recede from mostly women and children trapped beneath concrete slabs.

Workers and volunteers used everything they could — hammers, axes, chisels and shovels — to shift the rubble and pull out the injured, coated in dust.

“We hope to clear most of the rubble by tonight,” local rescue chief Rizwan Naseer told reporters, saying that workers were digging tunnels under the rubble to pull out more injured people and dead bodies.

“It is a very slow and difficult operation,” Naseer added, saying it took almost five hours to pull out two women alive overnight.

Police official Shoaib Khurram told AFP that 19 people had been killed. Among the dead were at least 11 women, three young girls and three boys.

The toll is thought likely to rise further with dozens still believed to be trapped under the concrete mass.

Police said the factory was illegal. Local residents said it had been shut down twice since 2008, but that the owners reopened the premises each time.

“The owners violated the court orders and broke the seals,” said top local administration official Ahad Cheema.

Most of those trapped under the rubble were believed to be women and children hired to package the medicines at Orient Labs (Private) Limited.

The factory spotlighted poor safety procedures among Pakistani manufacturers and the use of child labour.

The state-run Jinnah Hospital said it had received 31 injured people, seven of them still in the surgical ward which was smelly and crowded.

Welder Mohammad Amin, who suffered minor facial injuries, said he had just arrived at the factory on Monday morning then the explosion happened.

“The whole building shook with a huge noise and everything tumbled down as if a massive earthquake has struck,” he told AFP.

“The roof fell in. There was an iron table nearby and I survived with its support,” the 40 year old said. “I remained there and kept shouting for help, and eventually the rescue workers pulled me out three hours later.”

Saba Shafiq, sister of 12-year-old Mohammad Anis whose right arm was in a plaster cast, said poverty forced the family to send him out to work.

“We are poor people. My father is old and and sick. Our economic condition is bad, we found this factory in our neighbourhood,” she said.

“They paid him around 7,000 rupees ($77) which is not bad for a poor family like ours. It offered great help to our family,” she said.

Eight million people live in Lahore, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of the capital Islamabad. It is considered Pakistan’s cultural capital and perhaps the most liberal city in the conservative Muslim country. AGENCIES

Pak sacrifices saved US

In an interview with an American TV channel, Abdullah Haroon said the American allegation that Pakistan was supporting terrorists was baseless and shameful. He said Pakistan was a strong US ally on war on terror and the US should not make Pakistan a scapegoat for her failure in Afghanistan.

Haqqani network is created by the CIA. The American administration has admitted that the US with the help of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and former president Burhanuddeen Rabani were holding talks with the Taliban. The US also had asked the UN to lift ban on Taliban, Abdullah Haroon said and added the murder of Rabani was the failure of US security in Afghanistan.

Rally in Kabul wants NATO out

Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets of the country s capital to demand the immediate withdrawal of international troops ahead of the 10th anniversary of the US invasion.

Thursday s peaceful demonstration in downtown Kabul was meant to mark the Oct. 7 invasion of Afghanistan 10 years ago, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

The invasion came after Taliban leader Mullah Omar refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, purportedly because of his disbelief that the al-Qaida chief was responsible for the attacks and because it went against the Afghan tradition of hospitality and protection of guests.

US forces killed bin Laden in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan in May.

Syria comes under global reproach for crackdown

BEIRUT: Syria’s president held talks with neighboring Turkey’s foreign minister Tuesday as the regime faced a chorus of global reproach, with envoys from India, Brazil and South Africa also heading to Damascus to press for an end to the violent crackdown on a five-month-old uprising.

The visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was significant because Turkey until recently had close ties to Damascus. But Ankara has become increasingly critical of its neighbor over the bloodshed.

Turkey’s state-run news agency confirmed that Assad was meeting Davutoglu, but there were no details.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner lauded the visit and said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken to Davutoglu.

“They did talk about the situation in Syria, you know, and we believe it’s another opportunity to send yet another strong message to Assad that this crackdown on peaceful protesters cannot stand,” Toner said Monday.

India’s U.N. Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri said his country’s representative is scheduled to arrive in Damascus on Tuesday and will join representatives from Brazil and South Africa for a meeting with Syria’s foreign minister to appeal for an end to the crackdown and to promote democratic reforms.

The Syrian regime has shown no signs of scaling back its crackdown despite Damascus’ increasing diplomatic isolation. Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain and Kuwait in the Gulf, recalled their ambassadors this week.

In an editorial published Tuesday, the Al Baath newspaper of Syria’s ruling Baath party said the regime was hopeful that Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations will “quickly correct their stands.”

The latest wave of bloodshed started a week ago, on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, when tanks and snipers laid siege to Hama, a city in central Syria that had largely freed itself from government control earlier this year.

Residents were left cowering in their homes, too terrified to peek through the windows. The city is haunted by memories of the regime’s tactics: In 1982, Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez, ordered the military to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement there, sealing off the city in an assault that killed between 10,000 and 25,000 people.

Since the start of Ramadan, more than 300 people have been killed in cities including Hama and Deir el-Zour, an oil-rich but largely impoverished region known for its well-armed clans and tribes whose ties extend across eastern Syria and into Iraq.

Syria has blocked nearly all outside witnesses to the carnage by banning foreign media and restricting local coverage that strays from the party line, which states the regime is fighting thugs and religious extremists who are acting out a foreign conspiracy.

More than 1,700 people have been killed since March, according to activists and human rights groups.

On Monday, Assad replaced his defense minister with the army chief of staff, saying Gen. Ali Habib was being removed from his post because of health problems.

But some analysts said the general was unhappy with the crackdown. AGENCIES

Canada dissolves parliament, election set for May 2

OTTAWA: A general election will beheld in Canada on May 2, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Saturday after his minority Conservative government was brought down on a non confidence vote in Parliament the day before.

Opposition parties toppled Harper on Friday on the grounds that his government was tainted by sleaze, had managed the economy poorly and was in contempt of Parliament. Polls show the right-of-center Conservatives are set to retain power in what will be Canada”s fourth election in less than seven years.

Harper, in power since 2006 with two successive minority governments, says Canada does not need an election at a time when economic recovery is still fragile.

“Against our advice, the opposition parties have chosen to force an election the country doesn’t want and the economy doesn’t need,” he told reporters.

Harper spoke after visiting Governor General David Johnston– the representative of Queen Elizabeth, Canada”s head of state — to seek the dissolution of Parliament.

The prime minister says that unless the Conservatives get a majority, the three opposition parties will form what he calls an unstable and reckless coalition.

Michael Ignatieff, leader of the main opposition Liberal Party, issued a statement on Saturday saying he would not form a coalition with other parties. (Reuters)

Poll shows Sarkozy ratings up but new scandal looms

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy received a boost from a poll on Sunday showing his popularity rebounding from record lows, but he faced a growing scandal over allegations of back payments on 1990s naval deals with Pakistan.

The 55-year-old conservative leader hoped a cabinet reshuffle last week would help turn the page on a difficult year marred by allegations of illegal funding of his conservative UMP party and a series of national protests over his pension reform.

Sarkozy is also trying to use an ambitious agenda under France’s year-long presidency of the G20 group of nations, which began this month, as a platform for rebuilding his popularity in the run-up to a presidential election in early 2012.

A survey by pollsters Ifo published in the Journal du Dimanche offered Sarkozy some respite. It showed his approval rating inching up by 3 percentage

British press slams "brainless" student protestors

LONDON: British papers were Thursday mostly scornful of students who broke into Prime Minister David Cameron’s party headquarters during a turbulent protest against a threefold hike in tuition fees.

The activists who stormed 30 Millbank, home of the Conservative party, scored an own-goal by shifting debate from the coalition government’s plans to the limits of protest, according to the majority of the nation’s newspapers.

Around 50,000 demonstrators took to London’s streets on Wednesday with a small group breaching a surprised and undermanned police line to break into the six-storey tower block.

The Times ran with the headline “thuggish and disgraceful,” quoting Metropolitan Police chief Paul Stephenson, while the Sun splashed “brainless” across its front page, a jibe at the so-called “yobs” and unprepared police.

The right-leaning Daily Mail led with

Republicans Win the House in US Polls

Resurgent Republicans won control of the House and cut deeply into the Democrats’ majority in the Senate in momentous midterm elections shadowed by recession, ushering in a new era of divided government certain to complicate the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term.

House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, voice breaking with emotion, declared shortly before midnight Tuesday that the results were “a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people.”

Obama monitored returns at the White House, then telephoned Boehner with congratulations in a call that underscored the power shift.

On a night of triumph, Republicans fell short in their effort to gain control of the Senate and take full command of Congress, although they picked up at least six seats. They failed in an attempt to defeat Majority Harry Reid in Nevada, winner in an especially costly and brutal race in a year filled with them.

Boehner and his Republicans needed to gain 40 seats for a House majority, and they got them. They led for 11 more.

The victories came in bunches — five Democratic-held seats each in Pennsylvania and Ohio and three in Florida and Virginia.

Among the House Democrats who tasted defeat was Rep. Tom Perriello, a first-termer for whom Obama campaigned just before the election.

Obama was at the White House as the returns mounted, a news conference on his Wednesday schedule.

In Senate races, tea party favorites Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida coasted to easy Senate victories, overcoming months of withering Democratic attacks on their conservative views. But Christine O’Donnell lost badly in Delaware, for a seat that Republican strategists once calculated would be theirs with ease.

Democrats conceded nothing while they still had a chance. “Let’s go out there and continue to fight,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted supporters in remarks before television cameras while the polls were still open in much of the country.

But not long after she spoke, Democratic incumbents in both houses began falling, and her own four-year tenure as the first female speaker in history seemed near an end.

With unemployment at 9.6 percent nationally, interviews with voters revealed an extraordinarily sour electorate, stressed financially and poorly disposed toward the president, the political parties and the federal government.

Sen.-elect Paul, appearing Tuesday night before supporters in Bowling Green, Ky., declared, “We’ve come to take our government back.”

About four in 10 voters said they were worse off financially than two years ago, according to preliminary exit poll results and pre-election surveys. More than one in three said their votes were an expression of opposition to Obama. More than half expressed negative views about both political parties. Roughly 40 percent of voters considered themselves supporters of the conservative tea party movement. Less than half said they wanted the government to do more to solve problems.

The preliminary findings were based on Election Day and pre-election interviews with more than 9,000 voters.

All 435 seats in the House were on the ballot, plus 37 in the Senate. An additional 37 governors’ races gave Republicans ample opportunity for further gains halfway through Obama’s term, although Andrew Cuomo was elected in New York for the office his father once held.

Republicans were certain of at least six Senate pickups, including the seat in Illinois that Obama resigned to become president. Rep. Mark Kirk won there, defeating Alexi Giannoulias.

Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold in Wisconsin and Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas were turned out of office. In addition, Republicans scored big in races for Democratic seats without incumbents on the ballot. Former Rep. Pat Toomey won a close race in Pennsylvania, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven won easily there, and former Sen. Dan Coats breezed in a comeback attempt for the Indiana seat he voluntarily gave up a dozen years ago.

“Republicans will continue to stand up for the American people and for the priorities they voted for today, and we are hopeful that the administration and Democrat leaders will change course,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said in a written statement.

Democrats averted deeper losses when Gov. Joe Manchin won in West Virginia — after pointedly distancing himself from Obama — for the unexpired portion of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s term, and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was victorious in Connecticut, dispatching Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Sen. Barbara Boxer was elected to a fourth term in California, overcoming a challenge from Carly Fiorina.

The GOP gubernatorial gains came after a campaign in which their party organization spent more than $100 million, nearly double what Democrats had.

Among the incumbents who fell were Ted Strickland in Ohio, defeated by former Rep. John Kasich, and Chet Culver in Iowa, loser to former Gov. Terry Branstad.

In California, former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. was elected to the office he held for two terms more than a quarter-century ago.

In a footnote to the brutal politics of the campaign, Republican-turned- independent Lincoln Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island. Obama campaigned in the state in the campaign’s final week. But he declined to endorse the Democratic candidate, Frank Caprio, out of what the White House said was respect for Chafee, who had endorsed the president in his own presidential race two years ago.

A Republican takeover of the House would usher in a new era of divided government after two years in which Obama and fellow Democrats pushed through an economic stimulus bill, a landmark health care measure and legislation to rein in Wall Street after the near collapse of the economy in 2008.

Republicans opposed all three of the measures, accusing the president of supporting an ever-expanding role for the government with ever-rising spending.

Paul’s triumph in Kentucky completed an improbable rise for an eye surgeon making his first race. He drew opposition from the Republican Party establishment when he first launched his bid, then struggled to adjust to a statewide race with Attorney General Jack Conway.

Rubio, also running with tea party support, was gaining about 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race in Florida, months after he forced Gov. Charlie Crist to leave the Republican Party and run as an independent. Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek was running third.

But a third tea party-backed candidate, O’Donnell, who went from a virtual unknown to primary winner to fodder for late-night comedians in the span of a few months, lost overwhelmingly to Democrat Chris Coons in Delaware. Republicans had counted on taking the seat from the Democrats early this year, but that was before O’Donnell defeated veteran Rep. Mike Castle in a September primary. Democrat John Carney easily won the seat that was Castle’s for nearly two decades.

Not all the Republican newcomers were party crashers.

In New Hampshire, Republican Kelly Ayotte won a Senate seat, defeating Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes. Former Bush administration official Rob Portman won a seat in Ohio, and Rep. Jerry Moran won in Kansas and Rep. Roy Blunt in Missouri.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was re-elected to his seventh term and Barbara Mikulski her fifth. New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand also won, as did Sen. Ron Wyden in Oregon and Boxer in California In Hawaii, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye was elected for a ninth time to the seat he has held since 1962.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who won a second term in South Carolina, has been working to establish a nationwide standing among conservatives. He was instrumental in supporting tea party challengers in several primaries this spring and summer at a time the GOP establishment was backing other candidates.

In Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby was re-elected easily, as were Republican Sens. Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, Richard Burr in North Carolina, John Thune in South Dakota, Johnny Isakson in Georgia and Mike Crapo in Idaho.

The president gave a series of radio interviews pleading with Democratic supporters not to sit on the sidelines. “I know things are still tough out there, but we finally have job growth again,” he said in one. “It is all at risk if people don’t turn out and vote today.”

While Obama’s name was not on the ballot, his record and policies were. After nearly two years in power, he and congressional Democrats were saddled politically with the residue of the worst recession since the 1930s.

“I will honestly say that I voted for him two years ago,” said Sally McCabe, 56, of Plymouth, Minn., stopping to cast her ballot on her way to work. “And I want my vote back.”

In Cleveland, Tim Crews, 42, said he measures Obama’s performance by the number of paying miles he drives in his delivery van. His miles have tripled to 9,000 a month. Crews said of the economy: “It’s moving. I know, because I’m moving it.” He voted accordingly.

With so many contested races, and a Supreme Court ruling removing restrictions on political activity by corporations and unions, the price tag for the elections ran to the billions.

Much of the money paid for television advertisements that attacked candidates without letup, the sort of commercials that voters say they disdain but that polls find are effective.

Austerity cuts will change Britain forever: press

LONDON: Britain’s harsh austerity cuts are a watershed that will change the country forever and mark the start of a dramatic retreat by the state from its citizens’ lives, newspapers said Thursday.

Commentators were also in no doubt the 83-billion-pound (130-billion-dollar, 95-billion-euro) cuts package, unveiled Wednesday, was a huge bet with the Financial Times calling it “Britain’s biggest economic gamble in a generation.”

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, announced the deep spending cuts which slashed budgets by around a fifth and will likely lead to the loss of half a million public sector jobs.

They are designed to tackle a record 154.7-billion-pound deficit.

Some observers bemoaned the risk to the economy that Osborne was taking and the deep cuts faced by the welfare system, while others

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