Sri Lanka arrests General Fonseka

General Sarath Fonseka, the defeated candidate in Sri Lanka's presidential election, has been arrested at his office in Colombo on charges of plotting to overthrow the country's government, defence officials have said.

General Prasad Samarasinghe, a military spokesman, said the arrest related to "military offences" from Fonseka's time in the army, which ended in November when he quit and entered the presidential race.

"General Fonseka has been arrested on charges of committing military offences," Samarasinghe said in an official statement on Monday.

The former army chief "was dragged away in a very disgraceful manner in front of our own eyes", Rauff Hakeem, Sri Lanka's Muslim Congress leader, told the Reuters news agency.

'Coup plot'

Al Jazeera's Minelle Fernandez, reporting from Colombo, said: "The director-general of Sri Lanka's Media Center for National Security, Lakshman Hulugalle, has confirmed the arrest of Fonseka by the military police.

"Hulugalle said Fonseka will face trial before a military court on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government, violating military laws and sowing dissension among members of Sri Lanka's armed forces."

Many credit Fonseka with winning the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May.

However, he fell out with Rajapaksa soon after and the pair fought a bitter election campaign.

Fonseka was defeated by Rajapaksa last month by six million votes to four million.

The former army chief has refused to accept his election defeat, saying his supporters were intimidated and the result fixed. He vowed to challenge them in court.

General Fonseka has been accusing the government of trying to frame him. He also alleges there is a plot to kill him. Several senior military officials, close to him, have also been purged since his defeat in the election.

The government has been seeking legal advice to bring a court martial against the general on charges of plotting to overthrow the administration.
Source: Al Jazeera

New sanctions urged over Iran move

The United States and France have called for fresh sanctions against Iran after Tehran formally said it would begin enriching higher-grade nuclear fuel to a level of 20 per cent.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said Iran should face "strong sanctions" over its nuclear programme, a French official said following a meeting between the two men in Paris.

Earlier on Monday, Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Tehran had informed the UN atomic agency that it would begin enriching the fuel from Tuesday.

Soltanieh said that Iran would use its nuclear stockpile to enrich uranium to supply its Tehran research reactor which produces medical isotopes.

Earlier, speaking to al-Alam, Iran's Arabic-language state television station, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the country's atomic energy organisation, said Tehran planned to build 10 new facilities over the next year where the enrichment could be carried out.

Iran had said in November that it planned to build the enrichment plants but had not given a timescale.

US pressure

PJ Crowley, a spokesman for the US state department, told Al Jazeera that Washington was "looking at how we can apply pressure on Iran, on the government itself".

"We have no interest in creating additional hardships on the Iranian people but we'll be looking at a variety of options particularly focused on the Revolutionary Guard Corps that's played an increasing role in not only Iran's security but also its economy.

"We should try to support the Iranian people … but certainly we have to look at ways in which we can apply pressure on the government and its various entities so that should Iran continue to act in contradiction to UN Security Council resolutions, that it will pay a price for that intransigence."

Recognising that "there is a legitimate humanitarian need in having additional fuel that can provide the Tehran research reactor the ability to produce medical isotopes that have a valuable role for the Iranian people", Crowley said the US had not "given up on engagement".

"We're willing to sit down with Iran as we did last fall in a good faith effort - Iran has to be willing to meet us halfway," he said.

Sanctions call

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said on Monday that he did not believe Iran had the ability to raise the enrichment level of its uranium and that the move by Tehran was "blackmail".

"One could call it diplomacy, but if that is what is then it is truly negative," said Kouchner.

Gates also said more pressure had to be applied to the Iranian government.

"The only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track but it will require all of the international community to work together," Gates said.

"We must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue."

Asked about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran over its nuclear programme, Gates said: "Everybody's interest is in seeing this issue resolved without a resort to conflict."

Kouchner said all the major powers apart from China were in favour of a fourth round of UN-backed sanctions.

However, he said there was no deadline for reaching an agreement and added that he did not fear that any Israeli action was imminent.

Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the United Nations in New York, said officials, seeing Iran's enrichment move over the weekend as evidence that negotiations are not working, were talking more about the "pressure track".

But while there was general agreement that more pressure needed to be put on Iran, there was no consensus on what that pressure would look like, our correspondent said.

Western powers accuse Iran of attempting to build nuclear weapons but Tehran says its nuclear programme is for purely civilian purposes.

Stronger position

Alireza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, said: "It's a new phase in Iran's nuclear achievement, but it is not going to happen overnight.

"A very difficult design process will have to take place. They'll need to change the existing capacity that consists of 4,000 - 5,000 centrifugal machines.

"It will also infringe upon Iran's current capacity for enriching uranium to a level of 3.5 - 4 per cent, which is necessary for its current nuclear programme.

"Regardless, these are the things that many conservatives in Iran think will make the country's hand stronger in negotiations with the West."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, on Sunday instructed Salehi to start the production of higher-grade nuclear reactor fuel.

But Salehi has also suggested that production would be halted if Iran received fuel enriched to 20 per cent from abroad.

Iran has expressed its readiness to exchange its low-enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel, but has demanded amendments to the UN-drafted IAEA plan, under which Iran would export its low-enriched uranium abroad for enrichment.

"Iran would halt its enrichment process for the Tehran research reactor any time it receives the necessary fuel for it," Salehi said.

The UN plan was drawn up in early October in a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, between Iran and six world powers - the UK, China, France, Russia, the US and Germany - and later refined at a meeting in Vienna.

The talks in the Austrian capital came up with a draft proposal that would take 70 per cent of Iran's low-enriched uranium to reduce its stockpile of material that could be enriched to a higher level, and possibly be used to make nuclear weapons.

That uranium would be returned about a year later as refined fuel rods, which can power reactors but cannot be readily turned into weapons-grade material.

Ahmadinejad had last week appeared to support the deal in an interview on state television, but on Sunday he blamed the West for the stalemate over the deal.

UK Plans "Illegal" Searches in Olympics

British police are planning to use the anti-terror measures recently banded illegal by the European Court for Human Rights to stop and search people during the 2012 London Olympics, drawing immediate rebuke from rights groups.

"We are planning on the assumption that there will be a severe threat to the UK during the Games, on the basis that we can then scale down rather than quickly scale up," Steve Thomas, the Olympic National Transport Security Coordinator for the Home Office, told The Times on Monday, February 8.

Thomas said police are considering applying Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, under which they could stop and search members of the public without any suspicion, nationwide.

"If there is a severe level of threat we will be looking to use Section 44 at every underground and railway station."

This would be the first time that the powers would have been used across such a wide area, according to the British daily.

It added that police officers are being trained to use behavioral profiling to spot suspicious characters during stop-and-search operations.

London will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games from 27 July to 12 August 2012.

The major event will feature 26 sports and a total of 38 disciplines.

Over 3500 athletes will participate in London Olympics, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of fans.

Rebuke

The plan drew immediate criticism from privacy and civil liberty groups which warned the move could increase tensions between the public and police.

"It would be incredibly dangerous to build Olympic security on such a legally flawed foundation," Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, told The Times.

Last month the use of the stop and search procedure was ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Court said it violates individual freedoms guaranteeing the right to private life.

The British government was also ordered to pay £30,400 in costs for Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton who brought the case to the court after being stopped by police outside an arms fair in London in September 2003.

"The history of stop and search in this country is abhorrent," Simon Davies, the Director of Privacy International, told The Times.

"I wouldn’t trust the police to make the right judgment."

He warned the use of the controversial procedure during the Olympics would prejudice religious and ethnic minorities expected to be the main target.

"It is well known that stop-and- search powers have created extraordinary tensions among a range of ethnic groups," he stressed.

"There’s no doubt that extension of the use of those powers would exacerbate those tensions."

Egypt Crackdown on Brotherhood Before Polls

Egyptian security forces arrested several Muslim Brotherhood leaders on Monday, February 8, in a major crackdown on the opposition group ahead of this year’s elections.

"This is part of the state's campaign against the group,” Mohamed el-Katatni, member of the Brotherhood’s guidance bureau, told Reuters.

Fourteen Brotherhood leaders were arrested early Monday in a pre-dawn swoop by Egyptian police.

Among those detained were Brotherhood deputy leader Mahmud Ezzat and senior leaders Essam El-Erian and Abdel-Rahman el-Berr.

"This campaign of arrests is unjustified,” lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud said in a statement on the group’s website.

“We expect that more people have been arrested as Brotherhood lawyers are still receiving the names of those detained from the various provinces."

A security official confirmed that several Brotherhood leaders were arrested.

"(They) are accused of membership in an outlawed group," the official told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Authorities frequently crack down on the officially outlawed but tolerated Brotherhood, Egypt's main opposition group.

The new arrests were the first since Mohammed Badie was chosen as the group's new head in mid-January, replacing Mohammed Akef.

Clipping Wings

The arrests are seen as a government bid to clip the group’s wings ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections.

“The group is now getting ready for parliamentary elections and this campaign is to stem such activities," Katatni, the guidance bureau member, said.

Egypt will elect members of the Shura Council, the parliament’s upper house, in April.

Elections for the lower house of parliament are expected in autumn, while the presidential ballot is scheduled for next year.

"The regime wants to obstruct the Brotherhood's participation in the next elections," Hamdi Hasan, the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc spokesman, told AFP.

He said the authorities have intensified their campaign against the Brotherhood ever since the group announced plans to contest the Shura Council elections.

Hossam Tammam, an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, agrees.

“(The arrests) were part of a strategy by the regime to strike at the Brotherhood in order to weaken them, but without entering with them in a total confrontation," he told AFP.

The Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed since 1954, made a stunning breakthrough in the legislative elections of November and December 2005.

Running as independents, its candidates won one fifth of seats in the 454-member People's Assembly (the lower house of parliament).

Since then, a fierce government crackdown has left many prominent members behind bars, a move seen as aiming to distance them from political life.