Habib Toumi

Kuwait’s immigration has asked its services not to allow maids into the country unless their sponsors had the approval of a manpower office.
“No domestic helper should be allowed to enter Kuwait without proper documents from a local manpower agency proving that they have endorsed him or her,” Al Shahed daily reported on Wednesday.
Kuwaitis and residents in the past could send the visa and the plane ticket to the recruited helper without resorting to a manpower office.
The new measures, according to unnamed sources, aims to ensure that the maids had a police clearance from their home countries.
However, several nationals and expatriates have complained that the new procedures are forcing them to pay “astronomical” sums to manpower offices, the paper said.
Around 700,000 women, mainly from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are employed in Kuwait as full-time live-in domestic workers. continue reading…

Shaikh Jaber and Merabishvili

Kuwait is moving towards allowing Georgian nationals to enter the country without a visa and staying up to 90 days, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) said.
The decision was announced during the visit of Georgian Interior Minister Ivan Merabishvili to Kuwait City where he reviewed with his Kuwaiti counterpart, Shaikh Jaber Al Khaled Al Jaber Al Sabah, on ways to bolster cooperation to combat terrorism and organized crime.
In a post-meeting statement, Shaikh Jaber said that the two countries would sign a memorandum of understanding to broaden joint action, stressing that terrorism had no religion and required common efforts.
Merabishvili said his country looked forward to the formation of a joint security cooperation commission. continue reading…

Diplomatic incident as Turkish envoy is under stress

Speculation mounted in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Turkey’s ambassador to Israel had asked his superiors in Ankara to transfer him to a new posting following his undiplomatic treatment by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

Quoting Jewish Army Radio, Israeli media reported that Ahmet Oguz Celikkol had asked his superiors in Ankara to transfer him to a new posting and that the envoy was expected to be posted to a major European capital.

A senior official at the Israeli foreign ministry confirmed that Celikkol put in a request with the Turkish Foreign Ministry to leave his current post, Ynetnews reported.

However, the Jerusalem Post said that a Turkish embassy diplomat in Tel Aviv denied the report, expressing surprise and saying that Celikkol did not ask for a new posting. continue reading…

MP Adel Al Mouawda

A leading Bahraini lawmaker has expressed “tremendous concerns” that claims about Al Qaeda in Yemen threats to world security would turn out to be as baseless as the ones made about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

“Al Qaeda in Yemen has been given incredibly impressive proportions which it does not deserve,” Adel Al Mouawda, an MP representing Al Asala, said. “It seems that the new dimension is being used by the US and subsequently by Britain to achieve their hegemony over the region, including regional and international waters. I am singularly afraid that the whole Al Qaeda issue and threats would end up like the alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” the Salafi leader said in a statement on Tuesday.

Al Qaeda should be condemned for its crime against humanity, but the superpowers had played a major role in boosting its capabilities. continue reading…

Patriot missile being launched

Tension is heightening up dramatically in the Gulf amid plans by the Gulf Cooperation Council countries to reinvigorate their security agreements in anticipation of a military confrontation in the region and Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani criticised blasting the US deployment in the Gulf as a “puppet show” and a “political fraud.”

According to a Kuwaiti daily, the GCC countries are working on invigorating a security agreement in anticipation of any deterioration of the situation in the region in the wake of the recent Iran-US escalation.

“The heads of the security forces in the GCC are planning a meeting to coordinate their efforts to confront any emergency following the announcement that the US is deploying a missile shield in the Gulf and moving ships into the Gulf to protect allies against constant Iranian threats to undermine security in the region,” Al Jareeda reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed “well-informed” sources. “It is obvious that any declaration from Washington or Tehran on the situation of the region is taken seriously.” continue reading…

Wajeeha Al Baharna

A Bahrain women’s rights group has stepped up pressure to make the citizenship issue among the top priorities in the application of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

“Temporary solutions or measures in addressing this critical issue and alleviating the suffering of Bahraini woman married with foreigners are not enough and will not help lift the ban on passing on the citizenship,” Wajeeha Al Baharna, the coordinator of the national campaign for citizenship, has said. “There is an urgent need to amend Article Four of the Bahrain Citizenship Law in lines with Bahrain’s constitution and CEDAW to empower Bahraini women to get their rights as full citizens without any discrimination or bias,” she said in a letter to the Women and Children Committee in the upper chamber, lobbying for greater support.

Under the law, Bahraini women do not have the right to transmit citizenship to their children, a clause that has left several children born to Bahraini mothers and non-Bahraini fathers with the Bahraini citizenship and the social, economic, and civil rights that it confers. continue reading…

Kuwait City

A Kuwaiti social affairs and labour ministry official has denied media reports claiming that visit visas can be turned into work permits.

“There is no truth to the reports that family visit or tourism visas can be changed to residence permits,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying by Al Siyassah daily on Tuesday. “Such a possibility is confined to business visits provided that the visa holder has an advanced qualification. The condition is to ensure strict limits on the number of unskilled and marginal labourers in the country”

A Kuwaiti daily last week, quoting immigration sources, said that Kuwait would start applying the new visa-swapping measures on Sunday.

According to the report, immigration officers were getting ready to implement the new policy allowing visitors to change their visas to residence visas. The only condition for the transfer, according to the report, was clearance from security officers. continue reading…

Woman's elections poster: the husband's picture and the brother-in-law's name

An Iraqi woman running in the March elections has appealed to voters to back her up, but put the picture of her husband instead of her own on her campaign poster. She also identified her brother-in-law to capitalise on his name.

 “Elect the one who is part of you … Mrs Shadha Razzaq Al Sultani … Wife of Ahmad Shaikh Jassem … Brother of Shaikh Malek,” the woman, also known as Um Sajed, wrote on the poster next to the picture of her husband wearing a two-piece suit and a tie.

 The poster, posted on Iraqi websites, drew sarcasm and scorn from readers who wondered how the woman would attend the parliament sessions if she ever got elected.

Hamid Karzai and Abdallah Gul

Turkish President Abdallah Gül is expected to visit Afghanistan in spring to officially open 68 schools built by Turkey.

The schools are part of Ankara’s multi-dimensional aid programme for Kabul that encompasses education, health, agriculture and human resource development,” the Turkish Daily News reported, quoting unnamed sources.

Afghanistan’s education minister Faruk Wardak said that his country was keen on learning from Turkey’s religious vocational high schools. ‘By learning from their experiences, we will be able to achieve a balance in our own Islamic education system,’ he was quoted as saying.

“The modernization of Islamic education is one of the most crucial issues. I visited a few imam-hatip schools in Ankara and saw that they give a balanced education. Sixty percent of their curriculum is normal education, 40 percent is Islamic. I have asked Turkish officials to establish some imam-hatip schools in Afghanistan,” said Wardak. continue reading…

The world economic forum on the Middle East and North Africa will be held in Morocco in October, sources have said.

“The forum will be hosted by the government of Morocco on October 26-28 in Marrakech,” the sources told Gulf News.

Last year, Claus Schwab the president of the World Economic Form said that the sixth World Economic Forum on the Middle East would be held in the Moroccan city in May 2010. continue reading…