Support for European economic fund

Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, has said that a proposed European Monetary Fund (EMF) is an "interesting" idea that could be a reality in the "medium term".

Fillon's comments came after he held talks in Berlin with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who has emerged as a leading advocate for an International Monetary Fund-like body that would help European states in times of need.

"We are in agreement about discussing instruments for the medium term if crises of this kind [like Greece] repeat themselves, including a proposal on the table for a European monetary fund," said Fillon.

Merkel said: "The details still have to be nailed down by the experts, but the EMF is, so to speak, at the end of a chain of sanctions that I see as necessary."

The chancellor said that she had also talked with Fillon about "more effective sanctions ... that have more teeth" against eurozone members that run up extremely high budget deficits.

"The highest priority is to ensure that such a situation doesn't happen again," she said.

Both leaders made clear they did not see any danger of the mooted fund competing with the IMF.

'Unhelpful' idea

The idea for the fund came after a series of strikes and protests in Greece which is struggling to deal with huge debts and has asked its eurozone neighbours for help.

Supporters of the plan say the fund would send a clear signal that there will be no breakup in Europe's currency union.

Current EU budget rules require members of the euro currency to stick to limits on debt and deficit.

Any new fund would need such rules to be changed and require the assent of all members of the eurozone.

The idea has faced opposition from some quarters with Axel Weber, the head of Germany's central bank, saying the idea was "unhelpful".

Juergen Stark, chief economist at the European Central Bank, said that the fund "could be very expensive, create the wrong incentives and finally, burden countries [that have] more solid public finances."

Christine Lagarde, the French economy minister, called the idea on Tuesday an "interesting approach" but one that "does not appear to me to be the absolute priority in the short-term".

No bailout

Earlier this week, Merkel said the idea was "good and interesting" but stressed that the scheme would only work if "sanctions" were imposed to penalise spendthrift nations.

The chancellor has also warned that the plan should not been seen as a bailout fund for European countries.

On Tuesday, she said: " It should be seen as a last resort that should be able to deal with a state's insolvency but with all the measures that are involved with these sort of things.

"There are also a whole cascade of sanctions that need to be reviewed. It would mean that the country it affects would not be able to decide itself and many many questions would need to be asked."

Iran attacks US Afghan role

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has accused the US of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan, following talks in the country with his counterpart Hamid Karzai.

The accusation, made in the capital Kabul on Wednesday, was the same as that made against Iran by Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, on a trip to Afghanistan this week.

Asked at a news conference with Karzai about Gates' comments, Ahmadinejad responded: "The question is what are you [Gates and troops] doing here in this region?

"You are 12,000km away on the other side the of the world. What are you doing here? This is a serious question.

"They are not successful in their fight against terrorists, because they are playing a double game. They themselves created this excuse of terrorism themselves, and now they say that they want to stop them. It is not possible.

"The fight against terrorism is not a military one it requires the work of intelligence, through respecting nations and to separate people from terrorists."

'Double dealing'

While on a three-day visit to assess a US and Nato troop increase in the country, Gates had said that Tehran is "double dealing" in Afghanistan by stating that they are a good neighbour to Kabul while providing "low level support" to the Taliban.

Gates was on the last day of his visit in Afghanistan when Ahmadinejad arrived on Wednesday.

Ahmadinejad and Karzai had met to talk about "bilateral relations between the two countries and expansion of economic relations between the two countries", Siamak Hirawi, Karzai's spokesman, said.

Common concerns

Al Jazeera's James Bays, in Kabul, said, that until the issue of the US arose, the news conference mostly concerned regional co-operation.

"The two sides [Afghanistan and Iran] share a very long border," he said.

"They are both concerned about the Taliban and [the illegal trade in] opium."

It is the first meeting between Karzai and Ahmadinejad since they were both re-elected in disputed elections in 2009.

The US military invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to remove the Taliban, who they accused of supporting al-Qaeda operatives, from power following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US of the same year.

Washington's forces remain in Afghanistan in an attempt to quell Taliban and al-Qadea attacks against Karzai's government.

Haiti's 'orphans' kept from parents

Nine of the 10 Christian missionaries that were detained in Haiti after they illegally tried to take 33 Haitian children across the border - following January's devastating earthquake - have been freed and are now back at home in the US.

They were released after some parents of the Haitian children came forward to the court admitting that they willingly gave away their children to the US missionary group in hopes of providing them "a better life".

However, the children have been living in limbo waiting to be reunited with their parents in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

"I wouldn't say things are not good here ... but I want to see my mum and dad", one of the children said about the orphanage where he is staying in the mountain village of Callebasse.

SOS orphanage, asked by the government to care for the abandoned children, is also unsure about their future.

"Honestly we don't know. I mean the kids have been in our care for five weeks," Line Wolf Nielson, a worker at the orphanage, said.

"As it is we have no timeframe on when we can reunite the kids with their families."

'Hostile authorities'

The parents of the children say they have been met with hostility by Haitian authorities over requests to get their children back.

"We feel like the government is punishing us for what we did," one parent said.

"The childcare workers are rude, they ignore us and they keep giving us the runaround."

When Al Jazeera's Steve Chao tried to talk to child welfare services to get some answers about the fate of the children, he was refused an interview.

Al Jazeera's investigation into what happened these children after the media storm around their abduction ended, came on the same day that Barack Obama, the US president, said that conditions in the country remained dire and promised that the US would be a reliable partner in reconstruction efforts.

Obama, speaking at the White House after meeting with Rene Preval, the Haitian president, on Wednesday, said only a global response to the country's crisis could help it recover.

Crisis 'ongoing'

"The situation on the ground remains dire and people should be under no illusions that the crisis is over," Obama said.

He said many Haitians were still in desperate need of shelter, food, and medicine, a situation that would only grow worse with the onset of spring rains.

"The challenge now is to prevent a second disaster, and that's why at this very moment, thousands of Americans, both civilian and military, remain on the scene at the invitation of the Haitian government," he said.

Preval praised the swiftness and size of the international response to the disaster and expressed gratitude to Obama for making the US rescue and relief effort a priority.

"I thank you not only for the material support but the moral support, the psychological support that made us know we were not alone,'' the Haitian leader said.

At the same time, he said, rebuilding must take place in a way that benefits the entire country, not just the most devastated areas.

He said spreading "health care, education and jobs for all men and women'' across Haiti would prevent "migratory flows to the big cities'' which produced the sprawling and poorly build slums of Port-au-Prince.

Al-Azhar Grand Imam Passes Away

Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the highest seat of religious learning in the Sunni world, passed away on Wednesday, March 10, of a heart attack.

Sheikh Tantawi breathed his last during a visit to Saudi Arabia to attend the annual King Faisal awards ceremony, reported Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA).

The Egyptian TV said Sheikh Tantawi, 81, suffered severe pain while boarding a plane early Wednesday morning and fell on the stairs.

He was rushed to the Amir Sultan hospital in Riyadh where doctors proclaimed him dead of a sudden heart attack.

The Egyptian TV said the body was likely to be flown back to Cairo later on Wednesday.

However, the Doha-based Al-Jazeera TV channel quoted Amr, Sheikh Tantawi's eldest son, as saying that family wanted him to be buried in Saudi Arabia.

In 1996, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appointed Tantawi, then the Grand Mufti, as Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.

Established in 359 AH (971 CE), Al-Azhar mosque drew scholars from across the Muslim world and grew into a university, predating similar developments at Oxford University in London by more than a century.

Al-Azhar, which means the "most flourishing and resplendent," was named after Fatima Al-Zahraa, daughter of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

The first courses at Al-Azhar were given in 975 CE and the first college was built 13 years later.

Al-Azhar first admitted women students in 1961, albeit in separate classes.

Also in 1961, subjects in engineering and medicine were added to classes on Shari`ah, the Noble Qur’an and the intricacies of Arabic language.

Controversial Opinions

During his tenure as Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the late Tantawi issued several controversial opinions and was accused by many as toeing the government's line.

In 2004 he angered many Muslims by supporting the French government's decision to outlaw the hijab in state schools and institutions.

At the time Sheikh Tantawi issued a fatwa allowing girls to take off their headscarves while attending school, on the ground of the lesser of two evils principle.

The same year he approved a draft law allowing women to abort a pregnancy that is the result of rape, creating controversy especially that Egyptian Mufti Gomaa opposed the bill.

In 2009, Tantawi issued an order banning face-veils in schools where both the students and teachers are females, insisting that the niqab was a tradition and has nothing to do with Islam.

He also applied the same rules in university dormitories where the residents and the supervisors are all females.

The late Tantawi also supported a decision by the Egyptian government to build a steer barrier on the border with the besieged Gaza Strip on the ground of stopping arms smuggling.

His position was contrary to that of many renowned scholars including Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).

Despite all the controversies, Sheikh Tantawi, who had his PHD in Hadith and Tafseer, remained a prominent scholar.

Towards the end of 2009, he was named one of the top 10 most influential Muslims in the world in a study by Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan and Georgetown University.