Some 10,000 marched in Casablanca June 19 in answer to a call from Morocco's youth-based February 20 Movement, which has rejected constitutional reforms proposed by King Mohammed VI. Among the marchers in the city's popular Derb Soltaine neighborhood were members of the Islamist Justice and Charity group. Rabat also saw a large march against the proposed reform package, and a much smaller march in support of the king was also held in Casablanca. The February 20 Movement said the proposed reforms would leave in place a network of privilege and patronage surrounding the king. While stopping short of a call for abolition of the monarchy, the movement is calling for democratic restrictions on the king's power. (AFP, MoroccoBoard News Service, June 19)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged on June 19 that the US had opened preliminary talks with members of the Taliban as part of an effort to end the war in Afghanistan. In an appearance on CNN’s "State of the Union," Gates cautioned that the talks were in preliminary stages and officials remain uncertain the Taliban participants are authentic representatives of leader Mullah Omar. He said the effort was being carried out by diplomats but did not directly involve the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. And he said several other countries are participating, though he did not name which ones. "We have said all along that a political outcome is the way most of the wars end," Gates said. "The question is when and if they are ready to talk seriously." (NYT, June 19)

NATO acknowledged June 18 that its aircraft had mistakenly hit a column of rebel military vehicles last week near the Libyan oil port of Brega, and early June 19 the Qaddafi government showed reporters a destroyed cinder-block house that neighbors and the government said was hit by an errant NATO air-strike in Tripoli. Two bodies were pulled from the rubble, and at the Tripoli Central Hospital, government officials showed reporters three others, including an infant and a child, who they said were killed in the house. Western media accounts called it the first time in three months of air-strikes that the Qaddafi regime has presented credible evidence of what appeared to be direct civilian casualties of NATO attacks. The destroyed building was far from any obvious military facility, in the Souq al-Juma area, which is actually known for its hostility to Qaddafi. In a statement NATO said: "A military missile site was the intended target of air strikes in Tripoli. However, it appears that one weapon did not strike the intended target and that there may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties." The air-strike was apparently carried out by French jets. (The Telegraph, June 19; NYT, June 18)

Walter Aduviri, leader of the Aymara protest movement in Peru's conflicted Puno region, on the morning of June 17 left the installations of Lima's Panamericana TV, where he had spent the last 24 hours holed up under threat of arrest, after authorities agreed not to carry out the warrant against him pending a review. Upon leaving the building, he was met with a tumultuous crowd of his Puneño supporters and the media. After telling reporters that the warrant against him "doesn't have legal or technical substance, nothing," he led the crowd to the Congress building, where a protest vigil is currently underway. Aduviri pledged to remain at chambers until he is granted the right to address the Congress over his demands that controversial mining leases in the Puno region be overturned. (La Republica, Lima, June 17)

Quechua indigenous leaders in on the Peruvian side of the Pastaza river basin, which is divided between Peru and Ecuador, reached an accord with the government last week for a survey to be conducted of health and environmental impacts of oil development in the area, where indigenous peoples have been opposing leases by the Argentine company PlusPetrol. Aurelio Chino Dahua, president of the Quechua Indigenous Federation of Pastaza (FEDIQUEP), said the organizaiton would meet again on July 12 to work out details with the regional government of Loreto. (TruthOut, June 9; Erbol, June 1) Just days earlier, however, Ramiro Cazar, Ecuador's sub-secretary of Hydrocarbons (a division of the Natural Resources Ministry), announced that Quito and Lima are studying a joint project to export oil from the Ecuadoran side of the basin to the Pacific through Peru's pipeline from the northern Amazon over the Andes. Cazar said a "commission to evaluate the project" had been formed. (AP, May 24)

Rolando Páucar, president of the Lima-based Institute for the Investigation of Energy and Development (IEDES), hailed the Peruvian government's official cancellation of the Inambari hydro-electric complex, saying that while he is not opposed to hydro-power in general, projects that would flood vast expanses of land must be rethought. "the Inambari project alone would inundate 47,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest," he said. But he proposed nuclear energy as an alternative to the project, calling upon president-elect Ollanta Humala to pursue development of a nuclear plant in Peru, as pledged in his official Plan of Government. The platform pledges that within his first 100 days in power, Humala will approve an expansion of uranium mining in Peru, as a first step towards a nuclear development plan. Páucar also proposed that Peru and Brazil jointly build a "binational" nuclear plant as a substitute for the 1,200-megawatt Inambari project, which would have exported electricity to Brazil. (La Republica, June 13)

Residents in potentially impacted areas of Puno and Madre de Dios regions of the Peruvian Amazon agreed to call off their protest roadblocks when the government announced cancellation of the Inambari hydro-electric dam this week. But Puno congressman Yonhy Lescano charged that the announcement was a "trick" by the government to defuse the protest movement and buy time to move ahead with the project definitively. "There hasn't been any solution to this issue, the concession has not been cancelled; they have only put an end to the temporary concession that the company had, but the process will continue," he said. "Already they are preparing the definitive concession, although the people of Puno are against it, and are demanding its cancellation."

Security forces shot dead at least 16 protesters at Friday demonstrations at several points across Syria on June 17, activists told wire services by telephone. The deaths included the first protester to be killed in Syria's second city, the commercial hub of Aleppo, the Local Coordination Committees said in a statement. Four people were killed in the northern flashpoint city of Homs, at least one in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, two in Dael in the southern province of Daraa, and one in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the activists said. (Reuters, AFP, June 17)