Excerpts: Abbas re PLO reshuffle bid. Tajikistan concerns re IS.Mounting
protest against Lebanese government August 29, 2015

+++SOURCE:Saudi Gazette 28 Aug.’15:”Abbas heats up Palestinian politics in
PLO reshuffle bid”,byNidal Al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta,Reuters

SUBJECT:Abbas re PLO reshuffle bid

QUOTE:” Pres.Mahmoud Abbas is acting to shake up Palestinian politics with
peace talks with Israelin deep freeze and unity efforts with Hamas Islamists
who run the Gaza Strip stalled”

FULL TEXT:President Mahmoud Abbas is acting to shake up Palestinian politics
with peace talks with Israel in deep freeze and unity efforts with Hamas
Islamists who run the Gaza Strip stalled.”

In power for more than a decade, and facing a mounting challenge to his
stewardship, Abbas, 80, resigned last week as chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, its top decision-making body.

But few saw the move, in which nine of Abbas’s colleagues on the 18-member
committee also stepped down, as little more than a maneuver to bolster his
own standing and weaken his opponents.

Under PLO rules, Abbas’s step forces the 714-member Palestinian National
Council, or parliament, into session within 30 days to elect a new
committee. That is when, his critics say, he will be re-elected committee
chairman and pack it with cronies.

If, as widely expected, Israel bars legislators living in Gaza or in exile
from attending the Sept. 15 meeting of the legislature in Ramallah, in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, Abbas loyalists will likely be the ones choosing
the committee.

Abbas supporters said the president was only trying to pump new blood into
the PLO, the former main Palestinian guerrilla group and now its umbrella
national independence movement.

“(Critics) have been saying the PLO has aged and is paralyzed and that it
needs to be rejuvenated — and when we try to develop it, they call it a
settling of scores,” Ahmed Majdalani, a committee member allied with Abbas,
told Voice of Palestine radio.

Palestinian political analyst Hani Al-Masri, however, said Abbas, who was
elected to a four-year term as president in 2005 and has not faced a vote
since then, was signaling he did not plan to step down any time soon. “He
wants everything to be in his hands,” Masri told Reuters.

Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, wrote on its website that the resignations were “likely internal
political maneuvers aimed at consolidating power”.

Fueling such sentiments, Abbas last month unexpectedly dismissed the
secretary-general of the PLO, Yasser Abed Rabbo, who had been critical of
his decision-making.

Abed Rabbo said that some of Abbas’s close aides were behind what he called
“silly conspiracies” inside the PLO in the bid to remove rivals like
himself.

Mohammed Dahlan, a former official in Abbas’s Fatah party who is now one of
his main critics, issued a statement accusing the president of carrying out
a “palace coup”.

Hamas, which is not a member of the PLO but slated under a 2012 unity pact
to be part of a committee — which has never met — to reform the
organization, called Abbas’s move a “retreat from the reconciliation
agreement”. — Reuters



+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 29 Aug.’15:”Tajikistan Accuses Islamic Party
of IS Ties”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT:Tajikistan concerns re IS
FULL TEXT:Tajikistan on Saturday[29 Aug] accused the country’s beleaguered
Islamic Party of ties with IS group presently in Iraq and Syria
Members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) have been "in
active contact with militants in Syria" and have responded to the militants
request to "raise the black flag of IS," an interior ministry spokesman
said.

"Activists and members of the IRPT directly engaged in the propaganda of
IS's extremist ideas, destabilizing the peaceful situation in different
parts of Tajikistan by raising the black flag of IS," the spokesman told
Agence France Presse.

He said "around 20" people had been arrested in connection with flag-raising
incidents in the southern provincial towns of Shaartuz and Nurek but did not
say how many were members of IRPT.

An IRPT spokesperson in Nurek confirmed one of its members had been arrested
but said the party lacked enough information to comment further. Party
representatives in Shaartuz could not be reached for comment.

Critics of Tajikistan's highly authoritarian secular government will view
the arrests as further pressure on a party it recognized as legitimate
following a bloody five-year civil war that ended in 1997.

Citing the party's lack of formal representation in almost 60 regions and
cities, the Central Asian country's justice ministry on Friday ordered IRPT
to "cease its illegal activities" in a move seen as an effective ban on the
country's largest opposition party.

On Tuesday[25 Aug], an economic court in the Tajik capital sealed off the
party's headquarters.

The party became an umbrella opposition bloc following the U.N.-backed 1997
peace deal struck in Moscow between the government and the United Tajik
Opposition (UTO) but failed to win a single seat in a disputed March vote
that left 62-year-old President Emomali Rakhmon's party unchecked in the
parliament.

Analysts have warned that the government crackdown on the party could
radicalize the moderate Muslim opposition.

Tajikistan's security structures say up to 600 nationals are fighting with
radicals in Iraq and Syria.



+++SOURCE:Naharnet(Lebanon)29 Aug.’15:”Thousands of Lebanese Demonstrate
against ‘Corrupt’ Politicians,Issue Ultimatum”, by Associated
Press,Naharnet, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Mounting protest against Lebanese government

QUOTE:”campaign started over the fetid piles of trash… but it has mushroomed
into a movement against the entire political structure”

Thousands of anti-government protesters marched on Saturday[29 Aug.] from
the interior ministry in the capital's Hamra thoroughfare to downtown
Beirut's Martyrs Square in an anti-government protest organized by civil
society, which is frustrated with the political class.

"You Stink,” which started as an online movement, is the main activist group
behind the protest.

A “You Stink” member said in a speech at the protest that its battle will
continue until the resignation of Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq
and the election of a president.

It gave the government 72 hours to meet its demands, warning that after the
deadline expires it will take escalatory measures not just in Beirut.

The movement's campaign started over the fetid piles of trash mounting in
the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon after the government closed last
month the country's main landfill in Naameh, but it has mushroomed into a
movement against the entire political structure.

It sees the political class as corrupt and incapable of providing basic
services to citizens.

Many of the protesters waved Lebanese flags and wore white T-shirts that
read "You Stink."

They chanted anti-government slogans, urging politicians to leave their
posts.

In the absence of political party flags which normally dominate such events
in Lebanon, the crowd carried banners mocking politicians.

"Ali Baba and the 128 thieves," read one, in reference to Speaker Nabih
Berri and the 128-member parliament.

"Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do," read another.

One protester held a placard saying “Politicians are like sperm, one in a
million turns out to be human being.”

Reflecting concern over renewed clashes, "You Stink" said it deployed 500
volunteers to coordinate with security forces and prevent violence.

The Lebanese army and police also ran a joint operations room to guarantee
the well-being of protesters.

The military deployed troops around Martyrs Square while policemen were
present inside the square.

The protest came as the London-based rights group Amnesty International
called on Lebanese authorities to investigate allegations that security
forces have used excessive force to disperse two rallies held last weekend.

The rallies outside the Grand Serail drew up to 20,000 people. Security
forces fired live rounds, used rubber bullets and hurled stones or beat
protesters, leaving scores hospitalized.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq acknowledged there were "mistakes" that
led to the excessive use of force and said an investigation, whose results
will be released next week, was under way.
============
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA