QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If I were in Russia’s position, I wouldn’t be very happy.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a day after the United Nations adopted a resolution condemning Russia’s takeover of Crimea Article, this page
In Egypt, 4 killed in el-Sissi protests
CAIRO - Hundreds of supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi took to the streets Friday to protest the decision by the country’s former military chief to run in presidential elections next month, leading to scattered clashes that killed four people .
The former military chief, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, led the ouster of Morsi in July after millions joined demonstrations demanding he step down. El-Sissi resigned from the military and made his announcement launching his presidential campaign Wednesday. He is widely expected to win.
Friday’s rallies took place in several cities, including areas in and around the capital, Cairo, and in the northern city of Alexandria. Demonstrators attempted to use burning tires to block a main road in Cairo that leads to the famed Giza pyramids, and students from the Islamic university of Al-Azhar threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at security forces.
Among those killed was a female journalist named Mayada Ashraf, who died while covering clashes in the eastern Cairo district of Ain Shams.
A witness said Ashraf was shot in the head by security forces using live ammunition, but an Interior Ministry spokesman, Hani Abdel-Latif, blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for her death and the three others Friday.
U.N. chief criticizes Syria for aid delays
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations’ humanitarian chief criticized the Syrian government’s lack of progress in allowing desperately needed aid to people in Syria, telling the Security Council on Friday that the regime’s delays in withholding cross-border aid deliveries are “arbitrary and unjustified” - and against international law.
Valerie Amos gave her first such report since the council last month approved a resolution demanding the government and opposition allow immediate access everywhere in the war-ravaged country to deliver aid.
Council members said they will meet in the coming days and weeks to discuss the “further steps” that the resolution threatens if its requirements are not met. That will be difficult, as key Syria ally Russia insisted that a reference to sanctions be dropped from the resolution.
Russia has blocked three previous resolutions that would have pressured President Bashar Assad to end the conflict.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said 3.5 million people are estimated to need aid in hard-to-reach areas in Syria, an increase of 1 million since the beginning of the year. Overall, more than 9.3 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian aid, including 6.5 million internally displaced, Ban said.
U.N. calls for N. Korea rights probe
GENEVA - In one of its stronger resolutions, the United Nations Human Rights Council urged global powers Friday to back an international criminal investigation of North Korea for purported crimes against humanity and to consider targeted sanctions against those responsible.
In a resolution that the council’s 47 members adopted by a vote of 30-6, with 11 abstentions, it called on the U.N. Security Council to take action, including referring North Korea to some form of international judicial process “in order that those responsible for human-rights violations, including those that may amount to crimes against humanity, are held to account.”
The reaction from North Korea was blunt.
“Mind your own business,” its ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, So Se-pyong, told the Human Rights Council, rejecting the resolution as “a product of confrontation” and rebuffing calls for cooperation with U.N. rights monitors. “No person on Earth would be so stupid as to keep the door open to a gangster who is attacking with a sword,” the ambassador said.
Former Norwegian premier to lead NATO
BRUSSELS - Former Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway will lead NATO starting Oct. 1, the alliance announced Friday.
Stoltenberg, 55, whose appointment by NATO member countries was widely expected, will succeed Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a Dane who will have served more than five years in the post when he steps down in October.
Stoltenberg was prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 to 2013. He is also the leader of the Labor Party in Norway and serves as a United Nations special envoy on climate change.
Among the challenges Stoltenberg faces is figuring out how the alliance should define collective security if Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to expand Russia’s influence in Ukraine and into other countries that were part of the Soviet bloc but that are not members of NATO.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/29/2014