ID :
15161
Thu, 08/07/2008 - 11:00
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/15161
The shortlink copeid
Roundup of Russian press for August 6
MOSCOW, August 6 (Itar-Tass) - Russian printed media focus in their Monday issues on a new doping scandal in the national Olympic team, the situation in the Gaza Strip where Hamas has completely squeezed out the Fatah movement, and the record high exports of Russian weaponry.
***
Another doping scandal has befallen the Russian national Olympic
team, Kommersant Daily writes. First, Russia's Cycling Federation decided to expel the leader of the cycling team, Vladimir Gussev, whose doping test exposed a higher than admitted content of hemoglobin. In the follow-up to it, the Track and Field Federation said the world champion in 20 km race walking, Vladimir Kanaikin, is not going to Beijing as the use of erythropoietin has been incriminated to him. This brings the total dropout of sportsmen from the national Olympic team to seven over the past six days.
When the 'Sovetsky Sport' sports daily turned to Valentin
Balakhnichev, the president of the Track and Field Federation, asking
him if there are any more candidates for expulsion, he said that a
runoff doping control - the second one over a space of three weeks -- is in progress,
"We'd like to be sure we're taking a clean and cleared team to
Beijing and if someone's test proves positive, that person will stay back at home," he said.
Vremya Novostei says the possibility of introduction of criminal
punishments for the use of dopes has again been raised in the wake of
the latest scandals. It quotes Nikolai Durmanov, an anti-doping expert
who says: "If you take responsibility in terms of sports, sanctions of
some kind are unavoidable because such are the rules in sports. But if
you take criminal responsibility, the situation is far more
complicated." Although some hotheads suggest that doping should be
listed in the same category as 'cheating', Durmanov says that the
Russian authorities already classify about 40 anabolic steroids as
narcotic drugs, and their circulation and misuse is thus regarded as a
criminal offense entailing punishment by imprisonment.
This means that criminal responsibility for sports dopes is not at
all a new thing in Russia, Vremya Novostei says.
***
Russian media comment extensively on developments around the Gaza
Strip, recalling that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a warning Tuesday the Israeli authorities might break up the ceasefire with the radical Palestinian grouping Hamas and resume a military operation in Gaza. Practically all the activists of the moderate Palestinian movement Fatah have withdrawn from this part of the Palestinian autonomy. The last remaining proponents of Fatah's leader Mahmoud Abbas had to flee Gaza Tuesday after fierce clashes with Hamas militants.
The newspapers say Israel also plans to reinforce the blockade of
the Strip that is controlled by militant Islamists. As part of the effort, Israeli technical experts will help Egypt to build a wall along the border with that part of the Palestinian autonomy.
Barak said among other things that the people feeling a shortage of combat operations in Gaza should not worry, as new combat actions
apparently in the cards there. He thus made it clear that Israel may at any time disrupt the ceasefire agreement signed June 19.
Barak said it just a day after the expulsion of Fatah
representatives from Gaza.
After the armed seizure of power in the Strip a year ago, the Hillis clan was widely regarded as Fatah's last major bastion there. During the past twelve or so months, members of the clan did their best to deny the radicals an opportunity to start repressions but the situation changed after July 25 when four Hamas activists were killed in a seaside cafÊ in a terrorist act, which prompted the militant radicals to apportion all blame to Fatah.
Moscow-based newspapers indicate that the forces of law and order
controlled by Hamas launched amassed searches in residential houses in
Shujaiyyah, a suburb of Gaza City where most members of the Hillis clan lived. Hamas leaders claimed that Fatah members hid the organizers of the terrorist act there and they demanded a handover of these masterminds.
Ahmad Hillis, the head of the clan denied the accusations but the
situation went out of control when a large cache with weaponry was found in one of the houses.
Hillis shouted to reporters over the phone against the background of dinning gunshots that a moment had come to choose between a life
trampled by Hamas or a fight for one's dignity.
Clashes between the conflicting camps spread all around the city,
with both sides using submachine-guns, grenade-launchers and mortars. Yet the sides had uneven strength, and the Hillis clan's resistance was broken down eventually. Losses of human lives stood at no less than eleven by that time and more than 80 people were wounded.
Hillis members were seized by the dozens and Hamas officials claimed many of their opponents had tried to flee in the guise of female dresses.
About 180 Fatah activists managed to get through to the Nahal Oz
checkpoint on the border with Israel. Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas asked Israel to let them transit the Israeli
territory and Egypt supported his request.
All in all, 188 people were withdrawn from the Gaza Strip and 22 of them needed an emergency medical assistance.
Most Palestinians evacuated from the Gaza Strip were taken to an
Israeli military base where they were questioned by intelligence
officers. It was supposed then that they would be shipped to the West
Bank of the Jordan subsequently but many of them were returned to the
Gaza Strip in the end. This was done at Abbas's request. With assistance from Egypt, he secured Hamas's guarantees for the safety of his allies.
However, the radicals' law enforcement agencies arrested the very first group of Fatah supporters upon their return for what was described as the purposes of investigation.
Newspapers also say that other members of the Hillis clan were
luckier, as 67 of them were taken to the West Bank and placed in a tent camp in Jericho Monday night.
The future of another 60 people who had escaped persecution remains under scrutiny for the time being.
Russian publications quote experts as saying that the Hillis clan's flight means a total collapse of the positions that Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas had in the Gaza Strip. They believe that now this part of the Palestinian National Authority will turn into Hamas's fiefdom.
Still, some of the media quote the Gaza-based analyst Hani Busbus,
who believes that the prospects for the future are not at all so gloomy. He says that 30% to 40% of the 1.5 million people living in the Strip support Fatah, and although Abbas has lost the military organization and political institutions in that part of the autonomy, Fatah still exists there as an ideology.
***
Russia's exports of weaponry are expected to reach a record high
8.5 billion U.S. dollars, Mikhail Dmitriyev, the director of the Federal Service for Cooperation in Defense-Related Technologies said Wednesday.
The information appeared on the eve of opening of the 3rd
International Exhibition of Armaments and Defense Technologies
/MVSV-2008/, due at the Krasnaya Presnya exhibition center from August
21 through August 24.
The exhibition will gradually transfer from a display of weaponry
and technologies for ground troops to a general display of weaponry and technologies.
Exhibited at it will be more than 8,000 samples of defense products from 400 to 450 Russian manufacturers and about 50 manufacturers from 25 foreign countries.
Guests from almost a hundred countries will attend.
The display of combat technologies holds promise of being quite
entertaining, as 18 items of armor and air defense weapons will be
positioned on an area of several thousand square meters. The list
includes a 152 mm self-propelled howitzer, a 120 mm self-propelled
artillery gun Nona-S, practically the full spectrum of salvo systems,
the T-90 tanks, and some elements of the S-300V system.
Like any other such exhibition, MVSV-2008 aims to expand
international cooperation in defense technologies or in other words at an increase of weaponry exports, Vremya Novostei writes. However, it is impossible to draw a direct line of dependence in this sphere, all the more so that major agreements are signed at exhibitions of this kind seldom enough.
And yet the exports of Russian defense products are growing, as is
shown by the revenue target of 8.5 billion U.S. dollars this year versus 7.5 billion U.S. dollars last year.
***
Another doping scandal has befallen the Russian national Olympic
team, Kommersant Daily writes. First, Russia's Cycling Federation decided to expel the leader of the cycling team, Vladimir Gussev, whose doping test exposed a higher than admitted content of hemoglobin. In the follow-up to it, the Track and Field Federation said the world champion in 20 km race walking, Vladimir Kanaikin, is not going to Beijing as the use of erythropoietin has been incriminated to him. This brings the total dropout of sportsmen from the national Olympic team to seven over the past six days.
When the 'Sovetsky Sport' sports daily turned to Valentin
Balakhnichev, the president of the Track and Field Federation, asking
him if there are any more candidates for expulsion, he said that a
runoff doping control - the second one over a space of three weeks -- is in progress,
"We'd like to be sure we're taking a clean and cleared team to
Beijing and if someone's test proves positive, that person will stay back at home," he said.
Vremya Novostei says the possibility of introduction of criminal
punishments for the use of dopes has again been raised in the wake of
the latest scandals. It quotes Nikolai Durmanov, an anti-doping expert
who says: "If you take responsibility in terms of sports, sanctions of
some kind are unavoidable because such are the rules in sports. But if
you take criminal responsibility, the situation is far more
complicated." Although some hotheads suggest that doping should be
listed in the same category as 'cheating', Durmanov says that the
Russian authorities already classify about 40 anabolic steroids as
narcotic drugs, and their circulation and misuse is thus regarded as a
criminal offense entailing punishment by imprisonment.
This means that criminal responsibility for sports dopes is not at
all a new thing in Russia, Vremya Novostei says.
***
Russian media comment extensively on developments around the Gaza
Strip, recalling that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a warning Tuesday the Israeli authorities might break up the ceasefire with the radical Palestinian grouping Hamas and resume a military operation in Gaza. Practically all the activists of the moderate Palestinian movement Fatah have withdrawn from this part of the Palestinian autonomy. The last remaining proponents of Fatah's leader Mahmoud Abbas had to flee Gaza Tuesday after fierce clashes with Hamas militants.
The newspapers say Israel also plans to reinforce the blockade of
the Strip that is controlled by militant Islamists. As part of the effort, Israeli technical experts will help Egypt to build a wall along the border with that part of the Palestinian autonomy.
Barak said among other things that the people feeling a shortage of combat operations in Gaza should not worry, as new combat actions
apparently in the cards there. He thus made it clear that Israel may at any time disrupt the ceasefire agreement signed June 19.
Barak said it just a day after the expulsion of Fatah
representatives from Gaza.
After the armed seizure of power in the Strip a year ago, the Hillis clan was widely regarded as Fatah's last major bastion there. During the past twelve or so months, members of the clan did their best to deny the radicals an opportunity to start repressions but the situation changed after July 25 when four Hamas activists were killed in a seaside cafÊ in a terrorist act, which prompted the militant radicals to apportion all blame to Fatah.
Moscow-based newspapers indicate that the forces of law and order
controlled by Hamas launched amassed searches in residential houses in
Shujaiyyah, a suburb of Gaza City where most members of the Hillis clan lived. Hamas leaders claimed that Fatah members hid the organizers of the terrorist act there and they demanded a handover of these masterminds.
Ahmad Hillis, the head of the clan denied the accusations but the
situation went out of control when a large cache with weaponry was found in one of the houses.
Hillis shouted to reporters over the phone against the background of dinning gunshots that a moment had come to choose between a life
trampled by Hamas or a fight for one's dignity.
Clashes between the conflicting camps spread all around the city,
with both sides using submachine-guns, grenade-launchers and mortars. Yet the sides had uneven strength, and the Hillis clan's resistance was broken down eventually. Losses of human lives stood at no less than eleven by that time and more than 80 people were wounded.
Hillis members were seized by the dozens and Hamas officials claimed many of their opponents had tried to flee in the guise of female dresses.
About 180 Fatah activists managed to get through to the Nahal Oz
checkpoint on the border with Israel. Palestinian Authority Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas asked Israel to let them transit the Israeli
territory and Egypt supported his request.
All in all, 188 people were withdrawn from the Gaza Strip and 22 of them needed an emergency medical assistance.
Most Palestinians evacuated from the Gaza Strip were taken to an
Israeli military base where they were questioned by intelligence
officers. It was supposed then that they would be shipped to the West
Bank of the Jordan subsequently but many of them were returned to the
Gaza Strip in the end. This was done at Abbas's request. With assistance from Egypt, he secured Hamas's guarantees for the safety of his allies.
However, the radicals' law enforcement agencies arrested the very first group of Fatah supporters upon their return for what was described as the purposes of investigation.
Newspapers also say that other members of the Hillis clan were
luckier, as 67 of them were taken to the West Bank and placed in a tent camp in Jericho Monday night.
The future of another 60 people who had escaped persecution remains under scrutiny for the time being.
Russian publications quote experts as saying that the Hillis clan's flight means a total collapse of the positions that Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas had in the Gaza Strip. They believe that now this part of the Palestinian National Authority will turn into Hamas's fiefdom.
Still, some of the media quote the Gaza-based analyst Hani Busbus,
who believes that the prospects for the future are not at all so gloomy. He says that 30% to 40% of the 1.5 million people living in the Strip support Fatah, and although Abbas has lost the military organization and political institutions in that part of the autonomy, Fatah still exists there as an ideology.
***
Russia's exports of weaponry are expected to reach a record high
8.5 billion U.S. dollars, Mikhail Dmitriyev, the director of the Federal Service for Cooperation in Defense-Related Technologies said Wednesday.
The information appeared on the eve of opening of the 3rd
International Exhibition of Armaments and Defense Technologies
/MVSV-2008/, due at the Krasnaya Presnya exhibition center from August
21 through August 24.
The exhibition will gradually transfer from a display of weaponry
and technologies for ground troops to a general display of weaponry and technologies.
Exhibited at it will be more than 8,000 samples of defense products from 400 to 450 Russian manufacturers and about 50 manufacturers from 25 foreign countries.
Guests from almost a hundred countries will attend.
The display of combat technologies holds promise of being quite
entertaining, as 18 items of armor and air defense weapons will be
positioned on an area of several thousand square meters. The list
includes a 152 mm self-propelled howitzer, a 120 mm self-propelled
artillery gun Nona-S, practically the full spectrum of salvo systems,
the T-90 tanks, and some elements of the S-300V system.
Like any other such exhibition, MVSV-2008 aims to expand
international cooperation in defense technologies or in other words at an increase of weaponry exports, Vremya Novostei writes. However, it is impossible to draw a direct line of dependence in this sphere, all the more so that major agreements are signed at exhibitions of this kind seldom enough.
And yet the exports of Russian defense products are growing, as is
shown by the revenue target of 8.5 billion U.S. dollars this year versus 7.5 billion U.S. dollars last year.
