Blue Suite 21

JERUSALEM — Israel slammed Turkey on Monday for the broadcast of a television series that portrays Israeli agents as baby-snatchers, further ratcheting up tensions between the longtime allies.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon summoned the Turkish ambassador to protest the broadcast, the foreign ministry said in a statement. It is the second time Israel has protested over a Turkish TV show.

Israel issued a similar protest last October when another Turkish series showed Israeli soldiers shooting young Palestinian children in cold blood.

"We protest in the name of the Israeli government against scenes from this Turkish television series showing Israel and Jews as baby-snatchers and war criminals," the ministry statement said.

"It is unacceptable... It threatens Jewish lives in Turkey and bilateral relations," he said.

Ayalon was referring to the "Valley of the Wolves," a new series, originally aired on state television and rebroadcast on a private channel, which he said showed agents of Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence agency in a bad light.

Turkish programme-makers Pana defended their series.

"Valley of the Wolves will continue to tell the truth and expose the guilty parties," the company said in a statement carried by Turkey's Anatolia news agency.

"The Jewish state has been repeatedly declared guilty of war crimes in UN resolutions or in the reports of international human rights organisations.

"Why does the Israeli administration, which does not hesitate to bomb children seeking refuge under the UN flag, feel so uneasy about the real facts related in Valley of the Wolves?"

The production company was alluding to Israel's bombing of UN-run schools in Gaza during its devastating offensive a year ago, schools in which civilians fleeing the bombardment had taken refuge.

The latest Israeli protest came as Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined his Lebanese counterpart on Monday in lashing out at Israel for its air strikes on Gaza, during a visit by Saad Hariri to Ankara.

"They (the Israelis) have disproportionate capabilities and power and they use them... They do not abide by UN resolutions... They say they will do what they like," Erdogan said.

Israel's response came shortly afterwards, slamming Erdogan's "unbridled attack" and accusing him of seeking to harm ties.

"Israel is sensitive to Turkey's honour and seeks good bilateral ties, but we expect reciprocity," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Erdogan's declarations join the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic programme on Turkish television and other severe things said against Israel for over a year."

Turkey has been Israel's main regional ally since 1998 when the two signed a military cooperation deal.

Relations took a sharp turn for the worse when Turkey responded angrily to Israel's devastating Gaza offensive.

In a memorable outburst, Erdogan stormed out of a debate at the World Economic Forum, accusing Israel of "barbarian" acts and telling its President Shimon Peres, sitting next to him, that "you know well how to kill people."

But in December, Peres and his Turkish counterparty Abdullah Gul met in a bid to heal the rift.

KABUL — Ten civilians, mostly school children, have been killed during Western military operations in eastern Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's office said Monday, citing "initial reports".

Karzai condemned the killings, which his statement said took place in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, on Saturday.

"Initial reports indicate that in a series of operations by international forces in Kunar province... 10 civilians, eight of them school students, have been killed," the statement said.

"President Karzai strongly condemns the operation which caused civilian deaths and has appointed a delegation to investigate the incident," it said.

A senior official in the Afghan government, speaking on condition anonymity, said the death toll could change because investigations are ongoing.

When contacted Sunday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had no information on any operations or casualties in Kunar.

A senior Western military official told AFP that US special forces have been conducting operations against militants in the border regions of Kunar.

"They have been killing a lot of Taliban and capturing a lot of Taliban," he said, speaking on condition that he not be named.

The operations were conducted independently of NATO and coalition forces, which number more than 110,000, fighting to eradicate the Taliban, he said.

Politicians representing Kunar walked out of an important parliamentary session debating appointments to Karzai's new cabinet to protest against the civilian casualties, television showed.

The border regions of Kunar have long been volatile as Taliban fighters are said to cross the porous border from Pakistan to fight Western troops and Afghan government forces.

The Afghan Taliban is led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, believed to be based in Pakistan, who has promised a surge of his own to match the influx of almost 40,000 US and NATO troops pledged for the coming year.

The reinforcements are part of a new strategy as Western military leaders and politicians try to turn around an eight-year war that is seen increasingly going the Taliban's way.

"In 33 out of 34 provinces, the Taliban has a shadow government," a Western military intelligence official told reporters on Sunday.

Omar "has a government-in-waiting, with ministers chosen" for the day the government falls, he added.

"Time is running out. Taliban influence is expanding," the military official warned. "Where the (Afghan) government is weak, the enemy is strong" and able to exploit the corruption and unpopularity of Karzai's administration, he said.

US General Stanely McChrystal, who commands the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has been at pains to minimise civilian casualties in the fighting, although many are killed in Taliban suicide and roadside bomb attacks.

Civilian deaths cause widespread anger among Afghans exhausted by decades of war and are readily exploited in Taliban propaganda.

ISAF had no immediate comment on the Kunar operations.

US military sources said US Special Forces generally operate in Afghanistan outside the ISAF mission, as Operation Enduring Freedom.

Most recently, Karzai condemned the killing of six civilians during a NATO raid in early December as US Defence Secretary Robert Gates vowed US troop reinforcements would keep civilian deaths to a minimum.

Karzai's office said six civilians, including a woman, died when troops from ISAF conducted an operation in Laghman province on the night of December 2.

Earlier Monday, officials said Taliban-linked militants stormed a police post in northwestern Afghanistan, sparking a gunfight that killed two police and left three others missing.

The militants attacked the post late Sunday in Badghis province, killing two officers, provincial police chief Sayed Ahmad Sameh told AFP.

Three other policemen were missing, he added.

Thai troops have repatriated more than 4,000 ethnic Hmong to Laos amid criticism from the US and other nations that the returnees could face persecution by the government there.

The repatriation process all but ended the Hmong's three-decade search for asylum following their alliance with the US during the Vietnam War.

The US and rights groups have said the Hmong could be in danger if returned to the country that they fought, unsuccessfully, to keep from falling into communist hands in the 1970s.

The European Union said it was "deeply dismayed" by the forcible deportation and issued a statement that urged Laos to ensure the Hmongs' human rights are protected and international observers are granted "unfettered access" to them.

The Thai army said no weapons were used in the repatriation and the Hmong offered no resistance. The last of the group crossed the border early Tuesday.

Many Hmong, an ethnic minority from Laos' rugged mountains, fought under CIA advisers during Vietnam to back a pro-American Laos government -- a "secret war" -- before the communist victory in 1975.

Some former American soldiers and civilians who developed close bonds with the Hmong during the war believe that the US should have done more to help its one-time allies.

Since the war, more than 300,000 Lao, mostly Hmong, are known to have fled to Thailand and for years were housed in sprawling camps aided by international agencies. Most were either repatriated to Laos or resettled in third countries, particularly the US. Smaller numbers found refuge in France, Australia and Canada.

Among those deported were 158 Hmong who had been identified by the United Nations as refugees and were being held separately from the larger group at a detention centre near the Lao border.

"This is a departure from Thailand's long-standing humanitarian practice and it sets a very grave example," said Ariane Rummery, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Bangkok. Journalists and independent observers were barred from the camp.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Monday described a visit to Israel's Holocaust memorial as a disturbing encounter with hatred, days after his decision to move the controversial World War II-era pope closer to sainthood angered Jewish groups.

The German-born Benedict signed a decree Saturday on the virtues of Pope Pius XII, who has been criticized for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust. The decree means that Pius can be beatified — the first major step toward possible sainthood — once a miracle attributed to his intercession has been recognized.

The decision sparked further outrage among Jewish groups still incensed over his rehabilitation earlier this year of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.

Nevertheless, a planned visit by Benedict to Rome's main synagogue, scheduled for Jan. 17, is still on, said Ester Mieli, spokeswoman for Rome chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni. She dismissed a report in a Rome newspaper that the visit was in doubt following the Pius decision.

Benedict, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth and deserted from the Nazi Army, has repeatedly spoken out against the horrors of Nazism and anti-Semitism, but his efforts to improve relations with Jews have not always been smooth.

On Monday, he recounted his May trip to the Holy Land in a speech at the Vatican.

"The visit to the Yad Vashem has meant an upsetting encounter with the cruelty of human fault, with the hatred of a blind ideology that, with no justification, sent millions of people to their deaths," he said.

Yad Vashem is "first of all a commemorative monument against hatred, a heartfelt call to purification and forgiveness, to love," he said.

Benedict's speech during his Yad Vashem visit drew criticism in Israel, with some faulting the pope for failing to apologize for what they see as Catholic indifference during the Nazi genocide. Others noted that he failed to specifically mention the words "murder" or "Nazis."

Some Jews and historians have argued Pius, who served as pontiff from 1939-1958, should have done more to prevent the deaths of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. A caption of a photo of Pius at Yad Vashem's museum says he did not protest the Nazi genocide of Jews and maintained a largely "neutral position."

The Vatican insists Pius used quiet diplomacy to try to save Jews and didn't lash out at the Nazis for fear that such a public denunciation would only result in more deaths.

Jewish groups have argued that Benedict shouldn't have made any moves on Pius' beatification process until the now-closed Vatican archives of his pontificate are opened to outside researchers.

A Yad Vashem spokeswoman, Iris Rosenberg, said it was "regrettable" that the Vatican had acted before documents are made available.

The World Jewish Congress called any beatification of Pius "inopportune and premature" until consensus on his legacy is established, the World Jewish Congress said in a statement.

"There are strong concerns about Pope Pius XII's political role during World War II which should not be ignored," said Ronald Lauder, the president of the group. He called on the Vatican to immediately open all archives on Pius era and show "more sensitivity on this matter."

The European Jewish Congress argued that some Catholics are also opposed to beatification and urged the pontiff's advisers to persuade him to suspend the process.

"This is not just about Catholic-Jewish relations, but about the abuse of Holocaust memory and history," the group's president, Moseh Kantor, said in a statement.

The Vatican says its archives on the Pius era — about 16 million files — won't be opened to outside historians until 2014 at the earliest.

"It's not a matter of secrecy," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera. "Everything there is to know is already known."

Benedict has already visited two synagogues — in Germany and the United States.

BULANIK, Turkey — Two people were shot dead and several were wounded Tuesday during a Kurdish demonstration in southeastern Turkey on the fifth day of unrest triggered by a court ban on the country's main Kurdish party.

The violence in Bulanik town, in the mainly Kurdish province of Mus, came after protestors attacked shops during a march to denounce the banning of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), the town's mayor Ziya Akkaya told the NTV news channel.

A shopkeeper, armed with an assault rifle, opened fire on the crowd after the windows of his shop were broken and his vehicle was torched by the protestors.

Seven other people were wounded in the attack, the province's deputy governor Ali Edip Budan told the Anatolia news agency, adding that the assailant was detained.

The protestors stoned shops and banks along the route of the march and harassed shopkeepers who had not closed their stores in protest at the ban on the DTP, media reports said.

Closing shops is a traditional Kurdish protest method against the state and shopkeepers who refuse to do so are said to come under pressure from militant Kurds.

Television footage showed a crowd of several hundred people marching through the town and some pelting an armoured police vehicle with stones.

Black smoke was seen billowing out of a bank and a shop the protestors had set fire to with petrol bombs along a street that was littered with broken glass and debris.

"All the necessary security measures are in place and there is no problem at the moment. Police reinforcements are on their way" from the neighbouring province of Bitlis, Budan said.

Police also imposed tight controls on those entering or exiting the town.

There have been daily protests in the southeast and east of Turkey -- as well as major western towns with large numbers of Kurdish migrants -- since Friday when the constitutional court banned the DTP.

The court said the DTP had become a "focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation" through its links to Kurdish rebels waging a 25-year insurgency for self-rule in the southeast.

The ban undermined a government drive, launched in August, to expand the rights of Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurds in the hope of ending the conflict with the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has claimed some 45,000 lives.

The plan, which the government insists it will not abandon, has already triggered a nationalist backlash for granting specific group rights for Kurds, while Kurdish activists have deemed it inadequate.

The DTP has said its lawmakers would boycott parliament and would resign from their seats "as soon as possible" in protest at the verdict.

Under house rules, a lawmaker's resignation needs to be approved by an absolute majority in the 550-seat general assembly and analysts say it is highly unlikely the ruling party would give its blessing to DTP resignations.

The party was left with 19 members in the legislature after two deputies, including party co-chair Ahmet Turk, were stripped of their seats as part of Friday's ruling.

The DTP says it has "no organic links" with the PKK, but has refused to brand it a terrorist group as Ankara and most of the international community do.

The ban comes atop already high tensions amid violent street protests over claims of worsening prison conditions for jailed PKK leader Andullah Ocalan and a rebel attack that left seven soldiers dead.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Lieberman was for a Medicare expansion before he was against it.

Democrats circulated video Monday from a Connecticut newspaper's interview in September showing Lieberman voicing support for a so-called Medicare buy-in allowing uninsured people as young as 55 to purchase coverage. The Plum Line blog first reported on the video.

The Connecticut independent, whose vote is critical to the health care reform bill's prospects, had threatened Sunday to join Republicans in opposing health legislation permitting a buy-in. By Monday night his concerns appeared to be carrying the day, with Democrats preparing to jettison the buy-in to win him over, according to several senators.

The video from the September interview with The Connecticut Post shows Lieberman talking about the health care reform proposals he has backed over the years, including during his 2006 re-election campaign.

"My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid," the senator said.

Lieberman said he was focused on helping older people who needed health insurance get it at more affordable prices.

"When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they're too young to qualify for Medicare and what I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. "

Asked about the video on Monday, Lieberman said his comments were made before the Senate health care bill, which includes health insurance subsidies, was finalized. The subsidies would make a Medicare buy-in program unnecessary because the people who could benefit would get subsidies instead, he said.

"This was before the Finance Committee came out with its proposal and I was suggesting various ideas for health care reform that did not involve the public option that was the focus at that time," Lieberman told reporters.

Lieberman said he wants to vote for a health care bill.

"But the important thing is, I'm for health care reform, and if we get together we're going to deliver a health care reform bill that will provide the ability to get health insurance to 30 million people who don't have it now," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is hoping to pass health care reform legislation by Christmas, needs 60 votes to overcome Republican objections and had been counting on Lieberman to provide one.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, has angered many liberals who say he's trying to derail their sweeping health care reform push. Lieberman faces re-election in 2012 in a state where President Barack Obama is popular. He backed GOP Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential contest, a move that drew the wrath of many Democrats.

Lieberman lost the Democratic nomination for re-election the last time he ran, in 2006. He went on to win re-election as an independent. Even so, he retains his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, a post he holds at the pleasure of the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian government announced Tuesday that it is enforcing a boycott of goods made in Israel's West Bank settlements and has confiscated more than $1 million in merchandise from shops and companies.

Israeli products, including those made in settlements, are commonplace in the West Bank, either for lack of a Palestinian-made alternative or because consumers prefer them to local goods. As a result, previous Palestinian efforts to stem consumption of Israeli-made goods have failed.

The confiscation of settlement products, which began in November, marked the most serious government effort to date to enforce a boycott. Palestinians consider Israel's continued settlement expansion as the biggest obstacle to eventual independence and say Israel's recent pledge to curtail construction is insufficient.

About 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements and another 180,000 in east Jerusalem — land the Palestinians seek for their state.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said a boycott is counterproductive.

"I don't think by concentrating their efforts on boycotts they will achieve any of the political goals, if these still include reaching a peace agreement with Israel," Palmor said.

Palestinian Economics Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said the boycott of settlement products is long overdue.

"Consuming settlements' products is wrong, nationally, economically, politically, and must stop right away," Abu Libdeh told a news conference at the Information Ministry in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

He said about $1 million worth of merchandise were seized in November, another $66,000 on Monday evening and that the campaign would continue. Targeted items include juice, canned goods and cosmetics.

A ban of goods made in Israel would violate interim peace accords, but the international community agrees with the Palestinians that Israel's West Bank settlements are illegal. Several European countries are also making efforts to boycott settlement products.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the territory's Hamas rulers further restricted the movement of its 1.4 million residents. Gaza has been virtually cut off from the world since a violent Hamas takeover in 2007, with border closures enforced by Israel and Egypt.

Hamas recently announced that even the few still able to travel — university students, top business people, patients with life-threatening illnesses — need to get permission from Hamas to leave the territory.

The ruling has further complicated the already obstacle-ridden travel of those seeking treatment in Israel.

At Gaza's Erez crossing into Israel, medical workers said that Hamas police on Tuesday held up an ambulance carrying a baby boy for about an hour, demanding that his parents first get a travel permit. The boy had swallowed a battery and was headed to Israel for urgent treatment.

Dozens more patients were returned to Gaza and told to apply for permission, in line with the new policy, the medical workers said.

Hamas government spokesman Hassan Abu Hashish said the new policy was meant to minimize "chaos." He did not elaborate.

AP writers Diaa Hadid at the Erez crossing and Dalia Nammari in Ramallah contributed to this report.