Excerpts: Russia to supply helicopter gunships and training for Lebanese
army.Saudi leads efforts to help Yemen.Backgrounder on new Yemeni
danger.Egypt sells gas to Israel February 28, 2010

+++SOURCE: JORDAN TIMES 28 Feb.'10:"Russia to supply Lebanon helicopters"
Agence France Presse
SUBJECT:Russia to supply helicopter gunships anf training for Lebanese army

EXCERPTS:BEIRUT (AFP) - Russia has agreed to supply Lebanon with Mi-24
helicopter gunships instead of the MiG-29 fighter jets originally agreed,
the office of Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said on Saturday(27 Feb).
"The Russian authorities agreed to replace the MiG-29 fighters, initially
foreseen in their military aid, with Mi-24 helicopters as the Lebanese army
urgently needs this type of aircraft equipped with rockets and sophisticated
means of defence," a statement said. Sleiman on Thursday held talks with his
Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, in the first ever visit by a
Lebanese head of state to Russia. Lebanon's Defence Minister Elias Murr told
reporters 10 Mi-24s would be delivered instead of 10 MiG-29s. The statement
from Sleiman's office said that while in Moscow the president also signed a
"military cooperation agreement providing for the supply of equipment to the
Lebanese army and the training of its officers and men".

+++SOURCE: SAUDI GAZETTE 28 Feb. '10:"Kingdom Saudi Arabia, Yemen ink pacts
on
security and economic development"
SUBJECT: Saudi leads efforts to help Yemen.

RIYADH - Security and economic development were the main topics of
discussion at a meeting of the Saudi-Yemeni Coordination Council in Riyadh
on Saturday (27 Feb.).
The meeting was jointly chaired by Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz,
Deputy Premier, Defense and Aviation Minister and Inspector General and Dr.
Ali Muhammad Mujawwar, the Yemeni Prime Minister.. . . the Crown Prince
said the council meeting coincided with the meeting of the donors in Riyadh,
which was another part of the Kingdom's efforts to ensure Yemen's continued
development and security. . . .He emphasized that one of the major mutual
goals is comprehensive security for both countries.
. . .Other agreements include: a financial grant agreement of SR150
million for water and sanitary drainage for urban towns; a SR187.5 million
deal for the 5th Energy Project in the Republic of Yemen; SR75 million for
financing a hospital project in Hudadah and SR18 million grant for equipping
workshops and laboratories at the faculties of engineering and education in
Taz. . . ..
The Crown Prince expressed his regret at the events that took place in
Yemen, which had extended to the Kingdom's southern borders: "I swear that
King Abdullah, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, did not wish for a
single drop of blood to be shed. But as the King said the Kingdom will never
be lenient with anyone who tampers with the Kingdom's stability and
security.". . .
.
+++SOURCE: NEW YOK TIMES 27 Feb., '10:"In Yemen's South, Protests Could
Cause
More Instability",By ROBERT F. WORTH

QUOTE: "North and South Yemen are fundamentally differest societies."
SUBJECT: Backgrounder on new Yemeni danger.

FULL TEXT:ADEN, Yemen - Less than an hour's drive outside this dilapidated
port town, the Yemeni government's authority is scarcely visible, and a
different flag appears, that of the old independent state of South Yemen.
The flags are one sign of a rapidly spreading protest movement across the
south that now threatens to turn into a violent insurgency if its demands
are not met. That could further destabilize Yemen, already the poorest and
one of the most troubled countries in the Arab world, and create a broader
haven for Al Qaeda here.
The movement's leaders say the Yemeni government - based in the north - has
systematically discriminated against the south, expropriating land,
expelling southerners from their jobs and starving them of public money.
They speak with deep nostalgia of the 128-year British occupation in South
Yemen, saying the British, who withdrew in 1967, fostered the rule of law,
tolerance and prosperity. The north, they say, respects only the gun.
In recent months, calls for secession have grown louder after a harsh
government crackdown on demonstrations and opposition newspapers. The
movement's leaders say that they believe in peaceful protest, but that their
ability to control younger and more violent supporters is fraying.
"It is too late for half measures or reforms," said Zahra Saleh Abdullah,
one of the few Southern Movement leaders who agreed to be identified in
print. "We demand an independent southern republic, and we have the right to
defend ourselves if they continue to kill us and imprison us."
Another movement leader, sitting across the room, held up a coin minted
under the British in 1964 and pointed to the words engraved on it: South
Arabia.
"This is our true identity, not Yemen," he said. "A southern republic or
death."
Public outrage swelled last month after Yemeni security forces laid siege to
the house of a prominent newspaper editor in Aden, setting off a barrage of
rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire as the editor and his young children
cowered inside. (The government said he was stockpiling weapons.) They were
not injured, but the clash left at least one of the family's guards dead and
others wounded, fueling more demonstrations. All told, more than 100 people
have been killed in clashes with the police since the movement began in
2007, its leaders say, and about 1,500 supporters remain in prison.
In some rural areas of South Yemen, police officers refuse to wear their
uniforms for fear of being shot, according to several accounts from local
residents.
The Yemeni government has largely dismissed the movement as a small band of
malcontents and has repeatedly accused its leaders of being affiliated with
Al Qaeda.
The movement's leaders call that an outrageous perversion of the truth: they
say that they stand for law, tolerance and democracy, and that it is the
north that has a history of using jihadists as proxy warriors. But some
human rights workers say a shared hatred of the government could be creating
a sense of unity between some members of the movement - which is broad and
very loosely organized - and members of Al Qaeda.
Perhaps a greater danger, some say, is the spread of lawlessness across the
south if the movement's demands for greater equity are not addressed and it
grows more violent. The movement's own internal contradictions also pose a
real threat.
"There is no clear leadership, everyone wants to be the boss," said Afra
Khaled Hariri, a lawyer here who has represented arrested members of the
movement. The movement's leaders include socialists and Islamists with
wildly different goals and unresolved disputes dating to internal conflicts
between socialist factions that left thousands of southerners dead during
the 1980s.
"If the movement succeeds in making a separate state, I expect disaster
because of our bloody past," Ms. Hariri said. And Aden - the heart of the
British protectorate and the base of the south's intelligentsia - would be
the chief victim, she added.
For that reason, some in the south say, the best solution is not secession,
but a political accommodation in which the north agrees to address some of
the movement's main grievances about land expropriation and job
discrimination. Many also say that moving away from Yemen's highly
centralized system of government and granting the provinces more power to
govern themselves would ease tensions.
So far the government has shown little sign it intends to do that.
Behind the Southern Movement's protests is an old belief that North and
South Yemen are fundamentally different societies, and that their
unification - achieved with great fanfare on both sides in 1990 - has been a
failure.
The differences are apparent even to a first-time visitor. Aden has
churches, parks, a smaller model of Big Ben and a stately garden where a
statue of Queen Victoria presides. The roads, though a little faded, are
generally better than those in the north. It is a commonplace that people
respect red lights and driving lanes here, unlike in the north.
The people of the south are generally better educated, a legacy not only of
the British but of the Socialist government that ruled here during the
1970s. Although they shattered the economy and suppressed their opponents
brutally, the Socialists also put an end to harmful tribal practices like
child marriage, championed women's equality and achieved some of the highest
literacy rates in the Arab world.
All those achievements have since collapsed: literacy and education have
dropped precipitously across the south, child marriage has returned and
lawlessness prevails.
Many here blame the north for all that. A brief civil war broke out in 1994,
during which the north used jihadists who had fought in Afghanistan as proxy
fighters.
"They want to push us into backwardness so we are like them," said Ali Abdo,
a professor of transportation engineering at Aden University and a member of
a party that supports decentralization but not secession. "Aden was
tolerant: there were Jews, Christians, Muslims all living together here. The
North is not."
The Southern Movement began in 2007 with protests led by former military
officers who said they had been mistreated and denied pensions after the
1994 civil war. Gradually, it has grown to encompass other groups. Last
year, it received a large boost when Tareq al-Fadhli, a former Afghan
jihadist and ally of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, defected to the movement.
The movement now includes a substantial body of powerful tribal figures as
well as Aden-based intellectuals and political figures. There is a 42-member
leadership committee, though it is not clear how many of the movement's
supporters it represents. Most supporters seem to acknowledge Ali Salim
al-Bidh, the exiled former president of South Yemen, as their leader. Mr.
Bidh emerged from years of silence recently and began actively advocating
southern independence.
The movement has its own songs, which can be heard blasting from the open
windows of cars in southern towns. "We swear to God, we will not put up with
this corrupt dictator and his gang, even if the whole sky erupts in fire,"
goes one song by Aboud Khawaja, a singer now based in Qatar.
This month, a 27-year-old man named Faris Tamah was arrested near Aden while
playing that song from his car stereo, and he was later shot to death in
prison after being tortured, said several movement supporters who know his
family and say they saw a medical report. Yemen's government-run newspapers
later ran an article saying that Mr. Tamah was arrested for drunken driving
and committed suicide in custody by grabbing an officer's gun and shooting
himself. "The movement began with demands, but they were refused and the
pressure grew," Professor Abdo said. "Now, the movement is in every house in
the south."

+++SOURCE: EGYPT DAILY NEWS 28 Feb.'10:"Egypt court overturns ban on Israel
gas sales", Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Egypt sells gas to Israel
EXCEERPTS:CAIRO - An Egyptian court overturned on Saturday (27 Feb) a ruling
banning gas sales to Israel, the official news agency MENA reported.
The court had previously ordered a stay of a lower court's ban in November
2008, which the government appealed and ignored, pending a legal review. It
comes weeks after a deal to increase the supply of gas came into effect.. .
.Its decision cannot be appealed, effectively ending the legal dispute since
Egypt agreed to export gas to Israel in 2005.. . .Oil and gas export
treaties and the peace treaty with Egypt "gave Israel the right to acquire
Egyptian oil and gas like any other country, without the slightest
discrimination," MENA quoted the court ruling as saying.
Egypt's privately owned East Mediterranean Gas began exporting fuel to the
state-owned Israel Electric Corp in May 2005, agreeing to supply 1.7 billion
cubic metres (5.6 billion cubic feet) a year for 20 years.Earlier this
month, Ampal-American Israel Corp, which has a 12.5 percent interest in EMG,
said a September 2009 deal to increase the supply to 42 billion cubic metres
had come into force.It said the contract was worth roughly $6 billion (4.4
billion euros).
======================================
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA