Thesun 2008-12-22 Page14 Mugabe Turns Back On Power-sharing

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theSun

| MONDAY DECEMBER 22 2008

news without borders

briefs Greek youths clash with police ATHENS: Street violence raged into a third week in Athens as protests sparked by the fatal shooting of a teenager fused with political tension hours from the parliament’s budget vote today. Clashes between youths and police extended deep into the night after hundreds of people gathered late on Saturday in the Exarchia district, at the site where Alexis Grigoropoulos, 15, fell from a policeman’s bullet on Dec 6. In Athens, protesters occupying the Athens Polytechnic university hurled firebombs and rocks at police who responded with tear gas, while police cars, a government building and banks were targeted in the capital, city of Piraeus and island of Crete. – AFP

Mumbai hotel reopens with prayers MUMBAI: Indians of Muslim and Hindu faiths held roses and chanted religious verses to mark the reopening of Mumbai’s Trident hotel yesterday, three weeks after it was damaged in a militant attack. Police with sniffer dogs patrolled outside the hotel, which welcomed guests for the first time since gunmen attacked the Trident and nine other sites in Mumbai last month. Guests were handed pink roses as they listened to prayers by leaders of the Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist faiths gathered in the 550-room hotel. – Reuters

China’s online porn sensation detained SHANGHAI: A Chinese woman who became an online sensation after posting a homemade pornographic film of herself on the internet has been detained in Shanghai, according to state media. The 12-minute-video showed the woman, surnamed Huang, performing “sex acts”, the official China Daily said. “It soon became one of the most popular downloads on the mainland, with thousands of people downloading it last month.” The woman set up a blog, hoping to profit from her notoriety and sell interviews with herself for up to 30,000 yuan (RM15,000) a time, the newspaper said. – Reuters

Mugabe turns back on power-sharing Speed up approval for refurbishment of bus stops pg 16

LONDON: Robert Mugabe (pix) is to drop the pretence of power-sharing talks with the opposition in Zimbabwe and form a government without them this week. If he goes ahead, after gaining the backing of his ruling Zanu-PF party, it would end any immediate hope of outside help for the country, which is beset by a series of crises. The defiant gesture comes shortly after he taunted neighbouring countries that they did not have the stomach to confront him, capping a week of increasingly wild statements from the self-styled liberator. He had told delegates to his party’s conference on Friday that “Zimbabwe is mine”, and

accused Britain of wanting a war. On Saturday, the 84-yearold closed the conference with no reference to the cholera epidemic, economic implosion or the abduction of opponents. Zimbabwe has now been without a legitimate government since March. The official death toll from cholera stands at more than 1,123, while inflation has moved into the sextillions and at least 41 opposition officials and rights activists have been abducted. With an increasing number of international leaders calling on him to stand down, Mugabe has sought to change the subject by railing against Western plots to topple his government. Attempts to implicate neighbouring Botswana in an alleged plan to provide military support to opposition forces were dismissed by the SADC regional bloc. He openly mocked the “courage” of neighbouring leaders, saying: “What would they come and do military here? All that they would

come and really pose is a threat to our stability.” For months Mugabe has tried to bully the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into accepting a deal in which he would retain the major ministries, including defence and home affairs, as well as control of the central reserve bank and the security services. The MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, earlier warned the government to stop its intimidation campaign and release abductees, or the opposition would be forced to “suspend” power-sharing talks. Now Mugabe is signalling that he will rule without the opposition, disregarding the power-sharing deal he signed in mid-September. “We have waited for too long and our people are impatient and suffering,” said a Zanu-PF official, speaking at the conference in Bindura, outside Harare. There could even be fresh elections early in the new year, and Mugabe warned his supporters to be ready to avoid the “disaster of March”. Those elections saw Zanu-PF lose its parliamentary majority, while he finished a distant second to Tsvangirai in the presidential vote. That setback was overturned at the end of June after a statesponsored crackdown on the opposition saw thousands of MDC people beaten up and more than 150 murdered. – The Independent