Plans for Gaza Strip

The UN has expressed alarm after Hamas said it intended to implement a number of death sentences in Gaza, where the Palestinian Islamist group is dominant.

The UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, said he had serious doubts as to whether capital trials there met fair trial standards.

Mr Mladenov added that he was disturbed by reports that some of the executions might be carried out in public.

One Palestinian group has documented 67 executions in Gaza since 2007.

However, that figure does not include the killings of people accused by Hamas of being collaborators during wartime. At least 25 were shot dead after the 2014 conflict with Israel.


Last week, Hamas-affiliated members of the Palestinian parliament announced they had approved a measure allowing executions to be carried out in Gaza without having first been ratified by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the West Bank.

"We found it was important to implement the death penalty rule to maintain civil peace in society and to prevent cases of murder," Hamas MP Yehia Mousa told the New York Times.

It was not clear what authority the MPs had to authorize executions in the coastal territory, given that the full Palestinian Legislative Council has not met since Hamas reinforced its power in Gaza in 2007 following a violent rift with Mr Abbas' Fatah movement.

But the move came a week after Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said 13 Palestinians had been sentenced to death by courts in Gaza and would be executed as soon as possible.

Last month, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said a military court had sentenced three men to death for collaborating with Israel. 

That took the total number of death sentences issued so far this year in Gaza to 10, it added.

The Hamas authorities mostly stopped carrying out the death penalty in June 2014, when a government of national consensus was formed and officially placed in charge of Gaza. 

However, that government never exercised authority there and, in July 2015, it was reshuffled without Hamas' inclusion or input.

In February, Hamas' military wing executed one of its commanders "for behavioral and moral violations". 

Mahmoud Eshtewi was accused of theft and of having sex with another man, the New York Times reported.

In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Mr Mladenov stressed that international law limited the application of the death penalty to the "most serious crimes" and pursuant to a trial and appeals process that scrupulously follow fair trial standards.

Rich Bribed by China

BONN, Germany, June 6 (Reuters) - China led calls by emerging economies recently for the rich to raise financial aid to the poor as a precondition for a United Nations deal to combat global warming.

Many countries at U.N. climate negotiations from June 4-15 have welcomed news this week that the United States plans to slash emissions from power plants, but emerging nations said cash was just as important to unlock progress.

"When the financing is resolved, this will set a very good foundation to negotiate a good agreement," China's chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua told delegates from about 170 nations.

A global U.N. deal to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions is meant to be decided in Paris in late 2015 to slow global warming that a U.N. panel of experts says will cause more heat waves, floods and rising sea levels.

Xie said developed nations, which have promised to raise aid to $100 billion a year by 2020, should have legally binding obligations to provide finance and technology to emerging economies, along with legally binding cuts in emissions.

But European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it would be hard to treat promises for cash in the same legal way as cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.

"More than one finance minister would say: 'how are we going to do that?'" she told a news conference.

Developed nations agreed in 2009 to raise aid to developing nations to the $100 billion target by 2020 from an initial $10 billion a year from 2010-12.

But austerity cuts in many nations mean they have not set clear milestones for raising aid between 2012 and 2019, money meant to go to everything from expanding the use of solar power plants to flood defenses along vulnerable coastlines.

Last month, a "Green Climate Fund" - a U.N. body based in South Korea due to channel billions of dollars to developing nations - said it was ready to start accepting cash after agreeing details of how it will work.

Donors will also meet in July, in a venue yet to be decided.

Peru's Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who will host a U.N. climate conference in late 2014, said he hoped for contributions for the Green Climate Fund of $10 billion this year.

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Give Peace a Chance

Congolese soldiers outside Goma:
Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

Rwanda has accused the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of firing bombs and rockets into its territory, warning that "provocation can no longer be tolerated" and raising the prospect of all-out war. Such an outcome could result in the UN's first offensive force – whose arrival has inadvertently triggered the crisis – being dragged into a regional conflict or forced into a humiliating retreat.

The UN intervention brigade has been backing the Congolese army against the M23 rebel movement – alleged to be receiving support from Rwanda – in some of the most intense fighting of the past year near Goma in eastern Congo. There was hope of a respite on Friday when the M23 declared a ceasefire and said it had pulled back three miles from the frontline.

The M23 president, Bertrand Bisimwa, told the Associated Press: 

"We have decided to decree a unilateral ceasefire and we have started pulling our forces out of Kanyaruchinya in order to allow the investigation into the shelling. This announcement, which was made unilaterally, is meant to allow the Congolese to return to the negotiating table … and to give peace a chance."

But there were signs that the ceasefire alone would not resolve underlying tensions between Congo and Rwanda. A Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende, said: 

"It's our opinion that the only interesting proposition would be to see M23 demobilised, and to see them dissolve and cease all military action. Any other proposal is unacceptable."

Rwanda alleges that the Congolese army, or FARDC, has launched 34 attacks on its territory in the past week. A bomb fired on Thursday morning killed a woman and seriously injured her two-month-old baby in a market in the town of Rubavu, it claimed.

Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda's foreign affairs minister, said: 

"The persistent shelling of Rwandan territory is unacceptable, as it would be to any sovereign nation. Rwandan civilians are being targeted by DRC forces. We have remained restrained for as long as we can but this provocation can no longer be tolerated. We have the capacity to determine who fired at us and will not hesitate to defend our territory. Rwanda has a responsibility to protect its population."

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Possible Use of Chemicals

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations will launch an investigation into the “possible use of chemical weapons in Syria,” Secretary General Ban Ki moon announced Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters, Ban said that his top advisers are still trying to determine the scope of the mission, the composition of the team and the steps required to guarantee the safety of U.N. personnel during their probe.

Their immediate task will be to investigate the possible use of chemical weapons in an attack Tuesday on a village near Aleppo. But Ban hinted that the team’s mandate could be broader, saying “there are other allegations of similar cases involving the reported use of chemical weapons.”

The Obama administration signaled its support for a wide-ranging probe, with U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice saying in a statement that officials back an investigation that “pursues any and all credible allegations of the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.”

Although the facts have not been established, President Obama said Wednesday that he was “deeply skeptical of any claim that it was the opposition that used chemical weapons,” noting that only the regime has the capacity to carry out such an attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 26 people, including 16 Syrian soldiers, died in the attack. But the observatory’s director, who uses the pseudonym Rami Abdulrahman, said he could confirm only “that there was a rocket attack but not that any chemicals were used.”

Photographs posted online by the official Syrian Arab News Agency showed alleged victims in hospital beds flanked by medical staff in surgical masks. State television featured an interview with an elderly man wearing a face mask and a white bandage on his forehead. “They fired a missile, and it exploded with something like a powder,” the man said.

In the same TV report, a doctor said the patients appeared to have been exposed to “phosphorus material or some poisonous material,” which he said had led to “heavy vomiting and difficulty in breathing, almost appearing like extreme suffocation cases.”

Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vitaly I Churkin, denounced the European initiative, which is backed by the United States and many other council members, as a delaying tactic and insisted that Ban limit its immediate investigation into the single case in Aleppo. “There is just one allegation of the use of chemical weapons,” he said. “This is really a way to delay the need for immediate urgent investigation of allegations pertaining to March 19 by raising all sorts of issues.”

Churkin made it clear that the 15-nation council would not be in a position to agree on a plan for a wider probe into possible use of chemical weapons in Syria.

But Ban said that he has authority to act on his own. Ban hinted that his mandate would go beyond the specific Syrian request, saying that he hoped the mission “would contribute to ensuring the safety and security of chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria. The investigation mission is to look into the specific incident brought to my attention by the Syrian government. I am, of course, aware that there are other allegations of similar cases involving the reported use of chemical weapons.”