Tentative moves towards peace are reported from Darfur, where the first group of some 200 internally displaced people left Kalma camp near Nyala, the provincial capital of South Darfur, on 20 trucks provided by the Sudanese government. They are part of the total 30,000 displaced people (or 6,000 families) the government plans to return to their areas of origin in West Darfur. With a population of 110,000, Kalma camp is one of the world's biggest camps for displaced people. Its inhabitants had fled attacks on their villages in 2003 and 2004 and walked for days before reaching what they felt was a safer place in South Darfur. The camp was visited by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan two weeks ago. (UNHCR, June 10) Sudan also announced that it has established its own special court to try Darfur war crimes suspects. (Xinhua, June 11) But African Union peacekeepers reported observing a new clash between government forces and the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) near El-Fasher--claims the Sudanese government denied. (PolitInfo, June 11)

Just as Bush is trumpeting claims that Syria is planning to re-intervene in Lebanon, comes a disturbing June 8 story from the New York Sun, claiming that the familiar "regime change" formula is about to be applied to Damascus:

At the State Department, the Bureau of Near East Affairs and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor have asked Congress for explicit legal authority to fund liberal opposition parties inside Syria through regional initiatives that have hitherto focused on reforming American allies such as Jordan and Egypt, two administration officials told The New York Sun.

We noted two weeks ago that police authorities in Edinburgh are refusing to grant permission for an anti-war march during the G8 Summit scheduled for the Gleneagles resort outside the city in July. Now comes this June 10 press release from Britain's Stop the War Coalition, noting that all protests will be barred from the area surrounding the resort:

An interesting commentary from Robert Fisk on watching Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven in Beirut. But we do wish the boy would learn a bit more about the part of the world he has built a career reporting from. The "Arabs of Somalia" aren't—they are Somalis. And he commits the same error again when he notes that Saladin was played by Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud, stating: "and thank God the Arabs in the film are played by Arabs." Saladin wasn't an Arab, he was a Kurd. Also, nobody was wearing "sandals" in either the film or the Crusades—those went out with the Roman Empire. Finally, Fisk's presumed thesis that the merciful Islam of Scott's Saladin is the "real" or truly representative Islam ignores all the death threats that Scott received from Islamic fundamentalists when he was filming the movie in Morocco....

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has launched a war crimes probe into the mass killings in the Darfur region of Sudan. Over the past 2 years at least 180,000 people have died in the region and over 2 million people have been left homeless. Although the Sudanese government has been implicated in the killings, the Bush administration has secretly resumed ties to the government.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the CIA has been holding secret meetings with Sudanese intelligence chief Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh even though he has been accused by members of Congress of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. (Democracy Now!, June 7)

The trial of former Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian began June 6 in Tampa. The government has accused Al-Arian and 8 others of racketeering, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. The government alleges that Al-Arian used an Islamic academic think tank and a Palestinian charity to illegally funnel money to the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Until his arrest, Al-Arian was one of the most prominent Palestinian academics and activists in the United States. He was invited to the White House during both the President Clinton and Bush administrations and he campaigned for President Bush during the 2000 election.

Germany’s high court on June 9 upheld the acquittal of Abdelghani Mzoudi, accused of assisting the 9-11 attacks on the US, but German officials said Mzoudi would be deported anyway. Prosecutors had appealed the February 2004 acquittal of the Moroccan student, who was acquainted with three of the 9-11 suicide pilots while they were studying at a university in Hamburg.

Despite the court’s decision to uphold the not-guilty verdict, the Hamburg Interior Ministry has said Mzoudi would be expelled from Germany on the grounds of his “support for a terrorist group

Speaking at Luxembourg on a tour of NATO countries one day after ruling out closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Donald Rumsfeld responded to reporters' questions on the issue: "Our goal is not to obviously have these people, but to have them off the street, but in the hands of the countries of origin, for the most part." However, he said Washington is waiting until Iraqi and Afghan authorities have the ability to handle dangerous prisoners.

"We have some that we would be delighted to release, large numbers as a matter of fact that we would like to give to the Iraqi government. But they lack the appropriate prisons, and the criminal justice system, at the present time to manage them and try them. We've been urging the Afghan government to get itself arranged with the appropriate kinds of prisons and criminal justice system, so that they could take the Afghans off our hands." (VOA, June 9)