JERUSALEM, Israel (The Dissociated Press) - With 99 percent of the votes from Tuesday's general elections now counted, the leaders of Israel's two main political parties have both claimed victory, leaving in question who will successfully form a ruling coalition.
The "centrist" Kadima party, headed by foreign minister Tzipi Livni, took the largest share of the votes, winning twenty-eight seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. However, Livni's main rival, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, might just as easily gather the necessary sixty-one seats to rule, after his right-wing Likud party nearly tied Kadima, winning twenty-seven seats.
Defense minister Ehud Barak's "leftist" Labor block came in a disappointing fourth in the election, finishing behind the ultra-nationalist Jews-for-Hitler party, led by Avigdor "Joe" Lieberman, which ran on the slogan, "Why negotiate with Palestinians when we can burn them for fuel?!!"
Many observers believe that, although Kadima finished first in the election, Netanyahu will have an easier time convincing Jews-for-Hitler and other ultra-conservative (read "lunatic") parties to join a government under his leadership than will Livni, who has openly embraced negotiating with Palestinians toward a "two-state solution" for Jews and Arabs, albeit with the two states being Israel and Guam.
Meanwhile, in...
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (The Dissociated Press) - In a gesture of special friendship toward the United States (that is, if you consider someone sticking a needle in your eye a gesture of special friendship), the Pakistani High Court last week declared atomic physicist A.Q. Khan to be "a free citizen," just days before President Obama's new special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, arrived to meet with the heads of the Pakistani government.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, 72, is widely revered here as the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He is also known to make a mean Peshawari Kebab, for which he claims the special garam masala he puts in the marinade to be the crucial ingredient.
But, in January 2004, Khan confessed to having sold highly sensitive nuclear weapons technology to ... well ... every country on Earth that could pay him, at least in a currency other than yak manure.
Khan, who once aspired to be an Olympic swimmer, attributed his weapons smuggling activities to "bad judgment."
"I was at a party with a lot of people, and somebody just handed me the bomb. I guess I thought passing it on to others was the appropriate thing to do," he told investigators.
It was only concerted pressure from the United States that convinced then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff that merely canceling Khan's subscription to "High Times Magazine," as Musharaff had planned to do, was not nearly severe enough a penalty for the crimes Khan had committed. In response, Musharaff placed Khan under house arrest, but he did allow him to continue receiving "High Times."
Last week, however, perhaps as a way of showing its "gratitude" to the U.S. for the many lethal missile attacks on Pakistani soil since last summer, the country's high court granted Khan his unconditional freedom. Pakistan has never allowed foreign investigators to question Khan.
The U.S. did not hide its displeasure at the development.
"We feel this to be an unwarranted and irresponsible act on the part of the Pakistani High Court," said State Department Deputy Spokesperson Gordon Duguid at a regular news briefing last Friday.
Duguid said top U.S. intelligence officials feel strongly that Khan poses a substantial "proliferation risk," which apparently means they see him as a threat to, at any time, spontaneously turn into quintuplets.
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