From Washington, this is VOA News.
Pakistan and India resume cross-border conflict. But first, Syria's embattled president speaks to his people publicly for the first time in months.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has made a rare public speech reiterating support for a political solution to his country's civil war, while also denouncing opposition forces as terrorists and urging his people to fight them. In his first national address since last June, Mr. Assad appeared at the Damascus Opera House on Sunday, telling a crowd of loyalists that he is prepared to hold a national (reconciliation) conference as part of a political process leading to a constitution that he says would also include a new election. He said such a dialogue would exclude, however, anyone that has betrayed Syria, as he put it. The president's speech was frequently interrupted by chants of “With our soul, with our blood, we (sacrifice) ourselves for you.” Mr. Assad again denied there is an uprising against his family's decades-long rule.
Israel's prime minister has proposed construction of a security fence in the Golan Heights to separate territory controlled by Israel from Syria. Benjamin Netanyahu said today at the weekly cabinet meeting the new fence is needed because the Syrian army has backed off and global jihad operatives have taken its place. The prime minister said he is also concerned about Syria's chemical weapons. It was not immediately clear when the fence along the (armistice )line in the Golan Heights would be built.
Pakistan and India are accusing each other of starting a deadly incident Sunday along their disputed border in Kashmir. Pakistan's military said troops from India raided a Pakistani military post along the Kashmir border, killing one Pakistani soldier and (critically) wounding another. Pakistan, however, says it repelled the attack. Indian officials deny that any troops crossed the (border), and accuse Pakistan of starting the skirmish with a mortar attack on an Indian village. India says its troops responded with small arms fire. The only thing the two sides agree on is that both sides exchanged fire across the line of control, which divides the Indian and Pakistani sides of disputed Kashmir.
Meantime, official in northern Pakistan say a U.S. drone strike has killed at least nine people suspected of being Taliban fighters. Authorities say several missiles were fired into three hideouts Sunday in the South Waziristan tribal region. The Pakistani government has long condemned such (drone strikes).
Officials in southern Afghanistan say there was a twin suicide attack that killed at least three people and wounded at least another 10. Authorities say the two bombers attacked a meeting of (tribal) elders at a government compound Sunday in the town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province near the Pakistani border.
Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to start implementing outstanding agreements (immediately), as Marthe Van Der Wolf reports for VOA the two countries discussed all disputes during a two-day summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and President Salva Kiir of South Sudan ended a two-day summit in Addis Ababa on Saturday. African Union mediator and former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, says the two heads of state discussed the Abyei region, security, demarcation of the border zone and the (implementation) of the existing agreements.
“So what the presidents have said is that all existing agreements must be implemented without any preconditions.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn invited the two presidents for an extraordinary summit as Sudanese troops along the border were increasing in number as South Sudan accused its neighbor of ground attack within its (territory). Marthe Van Der Wolf for VOA News, Addis Ababa.
And Mamie Rearden, the oldest person in the United States, has died. Rearden, from the southeastern state of South Carolina was declared the oldest person in the U.S. a little more than two weeks ago. She was born September 7th, 1898, in Edgefield, South Carolina, where she lived all her life, worked as a school teacher, gave up her career to become a homemaker. She was married to a husband for 59 years until he died in 1979. They had 11 children, 10 of whom survive. She herself was 114 years old.
John Sheardown, a former Canadian diplomat, who sheltered fugitive U.S. Embassy staffers in his Tehran home during the Iran hostage crisis has died. Sheardown and his wife housed four of six fugitive Americans in their 20-room home in Tehran, when the group escaped from the U.S. Embassy after (militant) Iranian radicals took over and seized the embassy. He was 88 years old.
I'm Marti Johnson, VOA News, Washington. More news at voanews.com.
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