Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic arrested; Obama seeks state on '67 borders; Yemen's uprising turns deadlier
Ratko Mladic, Europe’s most wanted man and the former head of the Bosnian Serb army during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, was
arrested in Serbia on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Mladic
was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in 1995 and charged with the
killing, deportation and forcible transfer of non-Serbs as part of a
wider ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia in 1992-3. The indictment
against him charges that he was the mastermind behind Europe’s worst
atrocity since World War II. In the
Srebrenica massacre, more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered.
He was one of two remaining fugitives still wanted by the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The other is Goran Hadzic, a
former leader of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, believed to be hiding in
Serbia.
Barack Obama addressed the changing contours of the Middle East during three policy speeches this week. During the first, the US president laid out his
vision for the region and
praised the Arab Spring pro-democracy movements.
The second speech was to AIPAC, in which Obama said US support for Israel was "
ironclad"
and affirmed that the US would block Palestinian efforts to declare
statehood at the UN in September. Obama again endorsed the two-state
solution, but called the recent unity deal between Fatah and Hamas "an
enormous obstacle to peace".
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu followed with a speech of his own to the US congress, rejecting a return to the
1967 borders
and vowing he would not compromise on Jerusalem as Israel's eternal,
undivided capital. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas criticised
Netanyahu's speech and said in the absence of negotiations the
Palestinians would pursue
UN recognition of their state.
Obama's speech to the
British parliament reaffirmed the historical ties between the US and the UK and addressed NATO's ongoing operation in Libya.
Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, called for the
arrest of a dissident tribal chief, Sadiq al-Ahmar, following
deadly clashes
in Sanaa between forces loyal to the two rivals. Al-Ahmar, a vocal
opponent of Saleh, is the leader of the Hashid tribe, which includes the
president's tribe.
The threat of
civil war loomed in Yemen, as violence spread from the capital, threatening to embroil the country in civil war.
Heavy shelling
this week targeted residential areas of Sanaa, following months of
political unrest that has left scores dead. The death toll since Monday
has neared 70.
President Saleh, 65-years-old, refused to sign a
GCC-brokered exit pact that could have brought an end to his 32 years of rule within 30 days and made him immune from prosecution.
