Greece begins arrests of neo-Nazi members
ATHENS, Greece – Greece’s prime minister said Monday his government will do “whatever it takes” to completely eradicate the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, whose neo-Nazi leaders have just been arrested.
Antonis Samaras said the Greek people “are very smart” and are now seeing the party for what it really is.
“I believe that they will realize that they should not follow the party that has such extreme ideological positions and ideas,” he told a meeting in New York of AJC, the American Jewish Committee, which advocates globally on Jewish issues.
Samaras, in New York to attend the U.N. annual meeting of world leaders, added that he does not believe the party will return with greater popularity because its leaders will be viewed as victims or martyrs.
Golden Dawn, a formerly fringe nationalist group with neo-Nazi roots that started in the late 1980s, enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity during Greece’s financial crisis which began about six years ago. They won 18 seats in the 300-member Parliament in the 2012 election.
Kenya troops blamed for looting at mall
NAIROBI, Kenya - Jewelry cases smashed. Mobile phones ripped from displays. Cash registers emptied. Alcohol stocks plundered.
For the second time in two months, poorly paid Kenyan security forces that moved in to control an emergency are being accused of robbing the very property they were supposed to protect. First the troops were accused of looting during a huge fire in August at Nairobi’s main airport.
Now shop owners at Westgate Mall are returning to their stores after last week’s devastating terrorist attack to find displays ransacked and valuables stolen.
One witness told The Associated Press that he saw a Kenyan soldier take cigarettes out of a dead man’s pocket.
Shopkeepers spent Monday carting merchandise and other valuables out of their stores and restaurants to prevent any more thefts. No one can say for sure who is responsible, but Kenya’s security forces are strongly suspected.
Soon after the attack began on Sept. 21, Kenyan officials put a cordon around the mall.
Cease-fire to be OK’d soon, Myanmar says
UNITED NATIONS – Myanmar says it expects to soon sign a nationwide cease-fire with ethnic armed groups that have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy.
Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin also told the U.N. General Assembly Monday that the government hopes to start a new round of political dialogue to strike a “comprehensive and lasting peace agreement.”
Ethnic rebellions have dogged Myanmar’s modern history, but fighting has subsided – although not ended – under the reformist government that replaced a repressive junta in 2011.
The minister says there is “no turning back” on path toward democracy. He is promising “zero tolerance” of ethnic hatred – a response to explosions of Buddhist-Muslim unrest in the past year.
Associated Press
