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Thatcher papers reveal Tory party split over Falklands

March 23, 2013 / By Armoured Cars / In security

Senior Tories were initially sceptical about going to war over the Falklands, newly released papers from Margaret Thatcher’s personal archive show.

A note from the whips’ office following Argentina’s 1982 invasion reported solid support for military action from some Tory MPs, but others were privately hostile.

The papers have been released in Cambridge by margaretthatcher.org.

They show for the first time how deeply split the party was over the Falklands.

One Tory MP is quoted by the Whips as having said “we’re making a big mistake, it’ll make Suez look like common sense”.

Cyprus crisis: Coming hours ‘to decide’ fate

March 23, 2013 / By Armoured Cars / In security

The coming hours will decide Cyprus’ fate as it struggles to meet the terms of an international financial bailout, a government spokesman has said.

“Any solution involves pain,” Christos Stylianides said in the capital Nicosia, without giving details.

Parliament will debate plans to raise the 5.8bn euros (£4.9bn; $7.5bn) needed to qualify for the 10bn-euro bailout, having rejected an earlier deal.

Without it, the cash supply to the euro member’s struggling banks may be cut.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Cyprus’ eurozone partners are running out of patience with its efforts to secure the bailout.

Bosco Ntaganda: Kagame promises to help transfer to ICC

March 23, 2013 / By Armoured Cars / In security

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has given his backing for the speedy transfer of Congolese war crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Known as “The Terminator”, he surrendered to the US embassy in Kigali on Monday.

Rwanda would help facilitate his transfer to The Hague “as fast as possible”, Mr Kagame said.

Gen Ntaganda has been a key figure in the conflict in eastern DR Congo.

The ICC has charged him with 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, accusing him of using child soldiers, keeping women as sex slaves and participating in the murder of at least 800 people in 2002 and 2003.

Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman dies after illness

March 23, 2013 / By Armoured Cars / In security

The president of Bangladesh, Zillur Rahman, has died after a long illness, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office in Dhaka has announced.

The president, 84, had been undergoing treatment at a hospital in Singapore.

President Rahman was elected by parliament to the largely ceremonial role in February 2009.

Mr Rahman was a stalwart of the Awami League – now in power in Bangladesh – and a close friend of the country’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Sheikh Mujib was the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Mr Rahman was sentenced to 20 years in jail during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan and was again imprisoned for four years after Sheikh Mujib’s assassination in 1975.

Obama tours symbolic sites in Israel and West Bank

March 23, 2013 / By Armoured Cars / In security

US President Barack Obama has concluded his trip to Israel and the West Bank by paying his respects to victims of the Holocaust and visiting Bethlehem.

Mr Obama went to the Yad Vashem museum after seeing the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin.

He later toured Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity and and flew to Amman for talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

On Thursday, Mr Obama urged Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks.

The president told an audience of some 2,000 young Israelis in Jerusalem that they could be “the generation that permanently secures the Zionist dream” or “face growing challenges to its future”.

“The only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realisation of an independent and viable Palestine,” he warned.

Hours earlier, after holding talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, he urged Palestinians to return to the negotiating table even if Israel did not meet their condition of halting Jewish settlement construction.