14 
news without borders
Mugabe turns back
briefs
Greek youths clash with police
on power-sharing
ATHENS: Street violence raged into a third week in Athens as
protests sparked by the fatal shooting of a teenager fused with
political tension hours from the parliament’s budget vote today.
Clashes between youths and police extended deep into the
night after hundreds of people gathered late on Saturday in the
Exarchia district, at the site where Alexis Grigoropoulos, 15, fell
from a policeman’s bullet on Dec 6.
In Athens, protesters occupying the Athens Polytechnic uni- LONDON: Robert Mugabe
versity hurled firebombs and rocks at police who responded with (pix) is to drop the pretence of
tear gas, while police cars, a government building and banks were power-sharing talks with the
targeted in the capital, city of Piraeus and island of Crete. – AFP Speed up opposition in Zimbabwe and
approval form a government without them
Mumbai hotel reopens with prayers for this week. If he goes ahead, after
gaining the backing of his ruling
MUMBAI: Indians of Muslim and Hindu faiths held roses refurbish- Zanu-PF party, it would end any
and chanted religious verses to mark the reopening of
Mumbai’s Trident hotel yesterday, three weeks after it was ment of immediate hope of outside help
for the country, which is beset by
damaged in a militant attack. bus stops a series of crises.
Police with sniffer dogs patrolled outside the hotel, which pg 16 The defiant gesture comes
welcomed guests for the first time since gunmen attacked shortly after he taunted
the Trident and nine other sites in Mumbai last month. neighbouring countries that they
Guests were handed pink roses as they listened to prayers did not have
by leaders of the Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Bud- the stomach
dhist faiths gathered in the 550-room hotel. – Reuters to confront
him, capping
China’s online porn sensation detained a week of
SHANGHAI: A Chinese woman who became an online sensation increasingly wild
after posting a homemade pornographic film of herself on the in- statements from
ternet has been detained in Shanghai, according to state media. the self-styled
The 12-minute-video showed the woman, surnamed Huang, liberator. He had
performing “sex acts”, the official China Daily said. told delegates
“It soon became one of the most popular downloads on the to his party’s
mainland, with thousands of people downloading it last month.” conference
The woman set up a blog, hoping to profit from her notoriety on Friday that
and sell interviews with herself for up to 30,000 yuan (RM15,000) “Zimbabwe
a time, the newspaper said. – Reuters is mine”, and
theSun
accused Britain of wanting a
war. On Saturday, the 84-year-
old closed the conference with
no reference to the cholera
epidemic, economic implosion
or the abduction of opponents.
Zimbabwe has now been without
a legitimate government since
March. The official death toll
from cholera stands at more than
1,123, while inflation has moved
into the sextillions and at least
41 opposition officials and rights
activists have been abducted.
With an increasing number of
international leaders calling on
him to stand down, Mugabe has
sought to change the subject by
railing against Western plots to
topple his government. Attempts
to implicate neighbouring
Botswana in an alleged plan
to provide military support to
opposition forces were dismissed
by the SADC regional bloc. He
openly mocked the “courage” of
neighbouring leaders, saying:
“What would they come and do
military here? All that they would
| MONDAY DECEMBER 22 2008
come and really pose is a threat to
our stability.”
For months Mugabe has tried
to bully the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC)
into accepting a deal in which
he would retain the major
ministries, including defence and
home affairs, as well as control
of the central reserve bank and
the security services. The MDC
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai,
earlier warned the government
to stop its intimidation campaign
and release abductees, or the
opposition would be forced to
“suspend” power-sharing talks.
Now Mugabe is signalling
that he will rule without the
opposition, disregarding the
power-sharing deal he signed in
mid-September. “We have waited
for too long and our people are
impatient and suffering,” said a
Zanu-PF official, speaking at the
conference in Bindura, outside
Harare.
There could even be fresh
elections early in the new
year, and Mugabe warned his
supporters to be ready to avoid
the “disaster of March”. Those
elections saw Zanu-PF lose its
parliamentary majority, while
he finished a distant second to
Tsvangirai in the presidential
vote. That setback was overturned
at the end of June after a state-
sponsored crackdown on the
opposition saw thousands of MDC
people beaten up and more than
150 murdered. – The Independent