Region

Madagascar’s feuding leaders said on Sunday they had agreed a power-sharing deal and would hold elections on the giant Indian Ocean island within 15 months. A communique issued after talks in Mozambique’s capital said a national unity government would be set up comprised of a prime minister, three deputy first ministers and 28 members.

Mayors for Peace Conference counted with the presentation of NGO projects and experience regarding nuclear disarmament. Rafael de la Rubia presented the proposals of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence together with members of different Japanese and international NGOs, as well as the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is to appeal against being sentenced to another one and a half years of house arrest. Her lawyer says the verdict delivered against her has no basis in law. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced his disappointment and said it appears that the junta wants to put Ms Suu Kyi out of running for next year’s elections.

A worldwide campaign for immediate action of the UN Security Council is being promoted after the Junta’s decision yesterday. After thirteen years of detention, Burmese pro democracy hero and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has just been condemned to another 18 months on trumped up charges with the purpose of keeping her out of running for next year’s elections.

Was I dreaming? It looked like I was inside a spacecraft. It was leaving, but something was holding back the launch. Everything started trembling . And, suddenly I woke up. Yes, I realized that I was dreaming and yet something was going wrong. I looked up to the roof and I noticed chandelier swinging overhead. There was noise of plates and objects were shaking and bouncing.

This talk was given by Dario Ergas on July 18th, 2009, to the Laura Rodriguez Foundation. It deepens on nonviolent responses, as a way of life, a search for the sacred, and the manifestation of what is truly human. It is mainly a moral act. Nonviolence is the force that will transform the world because I will transform myself in order to not become those with whom I struggle.

(OneWorld.net) – Marking the 64th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed over 100,000 civilians, a disarmament group celebrated a day of peace last week. The annual Sadako Peace Day ceremony was inspired by a young girl who died from leukemia as a result of the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945.

In the first poll in 20 years, though Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s continues in office, an important overhaul of Fatah’s Central Committee changed 14 of the 18 members with younger representatives. Fatah’s position has rejected violence and proclaims “two states for two people”. Their main condition is the removal of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to further 18 months home imprisonment which would prevent her from participating in Myanmar’s elections in May 2010. Ms Suu Ky won the Peace Nobel Price in 1991. In 1990 she had won the right to be Prime Minister when her coalition won 59% of the votes but a military junta prevented her from assuming office.

The Copenhaguen conference calls for Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone to be demilitarized as Antarctica. It was attended by parliamentarians, academics, scientists, indigenous representatives and activists from Arctic countries and from established nuclear-weapon-free zones. Participants are flying to Thule military base, Greenland – site of B52 nuclear bomber crash in 1968.