| Queen visits Ireland after bomb scare | ||
First visit by a British monarch in a century sparks security concern after three devices found near Dublin.
Queen Elizabeth II, the British queen, has arrived Ireland in the first visit by a UK royal in a century, despite a bomb being found on a bus near Dublin, the Irish capital. The four-day trip is intended to highlight good Anglo-Irish relations following years of animosity and peace in Northern Ireland. Earlier on Tuesday defence forces said they had carried out a controlled explosion on a "viable" explosive device found on a bus heading for Dublin. "It was on a bus and by the time our team was called in the bus was evacuated and parked at a bus stop," an army spokesman said. "The device was made safe in situ," he added. Andrew Simmons, Al Jazeera's reporter in Dublin, said: "The [first] device was on the outskirts in the commuter belt. It was inside a luggage compartment of a bus, and that bus was headed for the capital." "[There are] are no claims of responsibility but you can certainly say that it's highly likely that dissident Republican groups are involved in the attempts at disruption of this historic visit." A controlled explosion was also carried out on a second device, which turned out to be a hoax, the defence forces said. A third device found in the Summerhill area of Dublin also turned out to be a hoax. Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, said the queen's visit would not be affected by the incidents, and the British foreign office and Buckingham Palace, the monarch's official residence, said the state visit would still go ahead. "This is an historic and symbolic visit and it is dealing with the conclusion of the past and a message for the future," Kenny told RTE state radio. "These things happen when global personalities visit any countries ... and whether it be Ireland or other countries, adequate security arrangements are put in place." The queen is the first British monarch to visit Ireland since its independence from the UK in 1921. It severed its last ties to the British monachy in 1948, but the north of the island remains part of the United Kingdom. Queen Elizabeth II's itinerary includes a visit to Croke Park, a Gaelic sports stadium where British troops killed 14 people in 1920 during Ireland's uprising against British rule. Her arrival also coincides with the 37th anniversary of bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, the single bloodiest day in a three-decade sectarian battle over Northern Ireland. Thousands of police have shut down key roads in the Irish capital and erected pedestrian barricades for several kilometers, while 1,000 Irish troops are on standby for her visit. Tuesday's events come a day after British police said they had received a bomb threat for central London from Irish dissident republicans. |
Queen visits Ireland after bomb scare
Iranian aid ships turned back from Bahrain
| Iranian aid ships turned back from Bahrain | ||
Two ships carrying Iranian activists return to docks after facing "threats" from warships en route to Bahrain
Two ships carrying 120 Iranian activists sailed for Bahrain on Monday in an act of solidarity with the island country's Shia majority population. The Iranian government ordered the two boats to return, while activists threw into the water letters they were carrying as "moral support" to Bahraini Shia, a journalist for Iran's English-language Press TV reported live aboard one of the vessels. The ships turned back towards Iran at a halfway point after facing "the emergence of threats" from warships belonging to a coalition of Gulf states which have lent support to Bahrain in its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, the Washington Post reported, citing an announcement on the activists' website. Iranian authorities did not try to stop the ships' trip, the website said, according to the Washington Post. Mahdi Eghrarian, an organiser of the trip, earlier told the semi-official Fars news agency that the ships had embarked at the southwestern port of Dayyer. A third of the activists were women, 10 were children, and nobody on board was armed, Eghrarian said. The group is carrying 5,000 letters which convey the Iranian people's "moral support", he said, for the Shia of Bahrain. "We've started moving towards international waters. We will carry on sailing towards Bahrain's borders as far as possible in order to be able to hand over letters and messages of the Iranian nation to the Bahraini nation," Eghrarian said according to Fars. Last month, Iranian authorities stopped two boats carrying Iranian students from leaving the southern port city of Bushehr for Bahrain in a similar show of solidarity. Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Gulf, has a majority Shia population but is ruled by a Sunni king, who has cracked down on dissent since pro-democracy protests broke out in February. |
Pakistan protests over border strike
| Pakistan protests over border strike | ||
Two security personnel wounded as NATO helicopter opens fire on checkpoint near Afghan-Pakistan frontier.
Pakistan's army has lodged a strong protest and demanded talks with NATO commanders after an allliance helicopter hit a Pakistani checkpoint, injuring two security personnel. "It [the incursion] happened early morning," a Pakistani intelligence official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told the Reuters news agency. "The helicopter hit a Pakistani checkpoint on the border in the Datta Khel area." A Western military official in Kabul, told Reuters that two NATO helicopters supporting a base in eastern Afghanistan had returned fire after being attacked from Pakistan. Pakistan's military said it had sought a meeting with NATO commanders over the incursion, which came a day after US senator John Kerry met Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, amid tensions in the country's relations since the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this month. Pakistan has condemned the US for conducting that operation in violation of its national sovereignty. Tuesday's incident came hours before Yusuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, arrives in China on a visit seen by some as a diplomatic effort to seek closer and more productive ties with another major power. Taliban stronghold Many fighters loyal to al-Qaeda, including foreign ones, are based in Datta Khel, a frequent target of US drone strikes. The place is also a stronghold of fighters loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a key Pakistani Taliban commander. A drone attack in the same place on Monday left seven suspected fighters dead, Pakistani officials said. A Western military official said Tuesday's operation started before dawn, when a NATO base in Afghanistan came under intermittent direct and indirect fire from the Pakistani side of the border. Two helicopters flew into the area to provide support, one of which fired across the border after being fired at twice from the Pakistani side, the official said. In a statement, the Pakistani army said its troops fired on a helicopter after it entered Pakistani airspace in the early hours of the morning. Two of its troops were injured when the helicopter returned fire, it said. 'NATO investigating' NATO, which confirmed the incident, said it was still trying to determine whether the helicopter crossed into Pakistani airspace, Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian, the NATO spokesman, said. "We're investigating the incident to determine a flight path by examining GPS waypoints in the helicopter computer, to construct a sequence of events and ultimately determine what led to the exchange of fire," said Dorrian. He declined to say which coalition country was involved. But most of the helicopters that fly in that part of Afghanistan are American. Dorrian said NATO would work with the Pakistani government to determine what happened, saying they expect it will reflect the same good co-operation seen in recent military operations along the border. In recent weeks, NATO and Pakistan have launched co-ordinated offensives against fighters loyal to al-Qaeda on their respective sides of the border. "This is going to be transparently looked into," Dorrian said. North Waziristan is the base of the Haqqani network, a group of fighters allied to the Taliban which NATO says is fuelling the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan. US-led drone aircraft have repeatedly targeted the area over the past year. |
IMF chief moved to New York jail
| IMF chief moved to New York jail |
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| The allegations have seriously jeopardised Strauss-Kahn's political future in France [AFP] |
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fighting charges that he tried to rape a 32-year-old hotel maid, has been denied bail and sent to New York's Rikers Island jail.
Lawyers for Strauss-Kahn, who appeared in a New York court on Monday, said he would plead not guilty to the accusations.
The IMF chief, accustomed to luxury hotel suites and first-class plane travel, was moved to a bare cell at Rikers hours after being denied bail. He is due to appear in court again on May 20.
Making his first court appearance on the sex charges, the Frenchman looked grim-faced as he stood before a judge in a dark raincoat and open-collared shirt.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, said nothing as a lawyer professed his innocence and strove in vain to get him released on bail.
Lawyer claims alibi
The judge ruled against him after prosecutors' concerns that the wealthy banker might flee to France and put himself beyond the reach of US law.
Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, reporting from New York, said the judge's denial of bail was made on the basis of whether Strauss-Kahn was a perceived flight risk.
"This is a big blow for the defence's case, of course," our correspondent said.
"But this is very much a 'he-said, she-said' case at the moment. The defence lawyer said they have someone who was having lunch with Strauss-Kahn at the time he was allegedly assaulting the maid," she added.
Ryan Sesa, a police deputy spokesman, said charges against Strauss-Kahn included a "criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment and attempted rape".
The 32-year-old maid told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn's suite at the Sofitel hotel believing it was unoccupied but that the IMF chief emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway, pulled her into a bedroom and dragged her into a bathroom, police said.
She ultimately broke free, escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. She was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.
"The victim provided a very powerful and detailed account of the violent sexual assault," John McConnell, an assistant district atttorney, said.
He added that a forensic inquiry, to which Strauss-Kahn voluntarily agreed on Sunday night, may support her account.
Fresh charges
As Strauss-Kahn appeared in court, fresh charges of sexual assault emerged in his home country, with a writer saying she would make a complaint against the IMF chief for trying to sexually assault her in 2002.
Tristane Banon, a novelist and journalist, previously made the allegation against Strauss-Kahn in 2007 - on television and in an interview with a news website - but she had not made a formal complaint to the authorities.
Her mother, also a Socialist candidate, had previously urged Banon not to press charges.
"We're planning to make a complaint. I am working with her," Banon's lawyer, David Koubbi, said.
The allegations against Strauss-Kahn have thrown the 2012 French election into disarray as the IMF chief had been seen as a strong contender for the presidency.
Even if Strauss-Kahn's name is cleared, the case is likely to boost incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy's prospects of re-election, pollsters said.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who polls suggested would come second behind Strauss-Kahn in a first round vote, also stands to benefit given her long-running complaint about French politics as an elitist boys' club.
"It is the first time a judicial affair has had such an impact on the presidential election," Frederic Daby of pollsters IFOP told the Reuters news agency. "It's unprecedented in France's political history."
The Socialists, who have no other candidate to match Strauss-Kahn, have vowed to press on with their primary selection process.
IMF informal session
The IMF, meanwhile, issued a statement on Monday saying its executive board would "continue to monitor developments".
Caroline Atkinson, the fund's director of external relations, said the executive board had met in an informal session to "receive a verbal report from senior Fund officials ... on developments related to Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn".
"The Board was briefed regarding criminal charges that have been brought against the Managing Director during a private visit to New York City," she said.
London's Financial Times said the scandal threatened to undermine Europe's influence within the body at a time when the euro is in crisis.
"It may well force the organisation's members to confront wider issues of European influence over the fund, even as it prepares to extend more rescue loans to Western Europe," the paper said.
But the European Commission has said the case should have no impact on bailout plans for struggling eurozone nations.
Paul Brennan, Al Jazeera's reporter in Paris, the French capital, said the incident had sent shockwaves across France and the international community.
"We're hearing rumours that Mr Strauss-Kahn is considering stepping down from the IMF, notwithstanding any court appearance or whether or not the charges stick," our correspondent said.
NATO airstrikes pound Tripoli targets
NATO airstrikes pound Tripoli targets
A security services building and the headquarters of Libya's anti-corruption agency in Tripoli have been set ablaze after being hit by apparent NATO air strikes.
The two buildings on Al-Jumhuriya Avenue are close to the residence of leader Muammar Gaddafi, in an area where two explosions were heard at around 1.30am on Tuesday (1130 GMT).
By 3am firefighters were battling to control flames that were tearing through the two facing buildings, according to an AFP correspondent brought to the area by Libyan authorities.
The head of Libya's Ministry for Inspection and Popular Control, the anti-corruption agency, was at the scene and said that some ministry employees had been injured, but provided no further details.
Government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim later said that the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), based in eastern city of Benghazi, had directed NATO to attack the agency in a bid to destroy files related to former regime officials who have joined the rebellion.
"We believe that NATO has been misled to destroy files on their corruption cases," he told reporters.
Three explosions had also been heard earlier in the same area.
Parts of Tripoli have been targeted almost daily by NATO-led strikes carried out since a March 19 UN resolution called for the protection of civilians from Gaddafi's regime.
The assertion that Gaddafi is authorising the killing of civilians in a crackdown on anti-government rebels has prompted the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor to seek arrest warrants on Monday for the Libyan leader, his son and the country's intelligence chief.
Arrest warrants
But they could also harden his resolve to stand and fight, since the legal action has been seen in Libya as giving NATO more justification to go after him.Gaddafi's government denied the allegations.
The call for arrest warrants is the first such action in the Netherlands-based court linked to the Arab uprisings.
The warrants could further isolate Gaddafi and his inner circle and potentially complicate the options for a negotiated settlement.
Because the United Nations Security Council ordered the ICC investigation, UN member states would be obliged to arrest him if he ventured into their territory.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was seeking warrants against Gaddafi, his son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi for ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks.
Moreno-Ocampo said he had evidence that Gaddafi's forces attacked civilians in their homes, shot at demonstrators with live ammunition, shelled funeral processions and deployed snipers to kill people leaving mosques.
Judges must now evaluate the evidence before deciding whether to confirm the charges and issue international arrest warrants.
Still, an earlier case where the ICC did step in at the request of the UN did not result in the desired arrest.
Although Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has been indicted for crimes including genocide in the Darfur
region of Sudan, at least three countries have allowed him to visit without detaining him.
Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli that the government would pay no attention to the arrest warrants, saying the prosecutor had relied on faulty media reports and reached "incoherent conclusions".
In the eastern city of Benghazi, headquarters for the opposition movement, rebel spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said the rebels welcomed the ICC case.
"It is these three individuals who are primarily running the campaign for genocide of the Libyan people and the criminal activities that have taken place so far," he said at a news conference.
He said, however, that the opposition would like to see Gaddafi tried first in Libya, then before the world body.
During Gaddafi's more than four decades in power, the regime had "committed many crimes against the Libyan people, and the Libyan people want to see him punished for that,'' Ghoga said.
In Brussels, NATO said Moreno-Ocampo's announcement was "further proof that the international isolation of the Gadhafi regime is growing every day"
.
A security services building and the headquarters of Libya's anti-corruption agency in Tripoli have been set ablaze after being hit by apparent NATO air strikes.
The two buildings on Al-Jumhuriya Avenue are close to the residence of leader Muammar Gaddafi, in an area where two explosions were heard at around 1.30am on Tuesday (1130 GMT).
By 3am firefighters were battling to control flames that were tearing through the two facing buildings, according to an AFP correspondent brought to the area by Libyan authorities.
The head of Libya's Ministry for Inspection and Popular Control, the anti-corruption agency, was at the scene and said that some ministry employees had been injured, but provided no further details.
Government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim later said that the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), based in eastern city of Benghazi, had directed NATO to attack the agency in a bid to destroy files related to former regime officials who have joined the rebellion.
"We believe that NATO has been misled to destroy files on their corruption cases," he told reporters.
Three explosions had also been heard earlier in the same area.
Parts of Tripoli have been targeted almost daily by NATO-led strikes carried out since a March 19 UN resolution called for the protection of civilians from Gaddafi's regime.
The assertion that Gaddafi is authorising the killing of civilians in a crackdown on anti-government rebels has prompted the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor to seek arrest warrants on Monday for the Libyan leader, his son and the country's intelligence chief.
Arrest warrants
But they could also harden his resolve to stand and fight, since the legal action has been seen in Libya as giving NATO more justification to go after him.Gaddafi's government denied the allegations.
The call for arrest warrants is the first such action in the Netherlands-based court linked to the Arab uprisings.
The warrants could further isolate Gaddafi and his inner circle and potentially complicate the options for a negotiated settlement.
Because the United Nations Security Council ordered the ICC investigation, UN member states would be obliged to arrest him if he ventured into their territory.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was seeking warrants against Gaddafi, his son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi for ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks.
Moreno-Ocampo said he had evidence that Gaddafi's forces attacked civilians in their homes, shot at demonstrators with live ammunition, shelled funeral processions and deployed snipers to kill people leaving mosques.
Judges must now evaluate the evidence before deciding whether to confirm the charges and issue international arrest warrants.
Still, an earlier case where the ICC did step in at the request of the UN did not result in the desired arrest.
Although Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has been indicted for crimes including genocide in the Darfur
region of Sudan, at least three countries have allowed him to visit without detaining him.
Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli that the government would pay no attention to the arrest warrants, saying the prosecutor had relied on faulty media reports and reached "incoherent conclusions".
In the eastern city of Benghazi, headquarters for the opposition movement, rebel spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said the rebels welcomed the ICC case.
"It is these three individuals who are primarily running the campaign for genocide of the Libyan people and the criminal activities that have taken place so far," he said at a news conference.
He said, however, that the opposition would like to see Gaddafi tried first in Libya, then before the world body.
During Gaddafi's more than four decades in power, the regime had "committed many crimes against the Libyan people, and the Libyan people want to see him punished for that,'' Ghoga said.
In Brussels, NATO said Moreno-Ocampo's announcement was "further proof that the international isolation of the Gadhafi regime is growing every day"
.
Libyan rebels seek European support
Libyan rebels seek European support
A senior leader of the Libyan opposition council has met French president Nicolas Sarkozy for talks in a bid to garner further international support for the fight against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Mahmoud Jibril, who serves as the foreign minister of the opposition Transitional National Council, met Sarkozy in Paris on Saturday, for a discussion on the prospects for a political transition in Libya.
 |
France has been taking part, along with other international forces under NATO command, in air strikes on Libyan government sites in an effort to protect the country's civilian population.
The meeting on Saturday came a day after Jibril met Tom Donilon, the US president's national security adviser, at the White House in Washington, DC.
The White House called the council "legitimate and credible", but stopped short of granting full diplomatic recognition to the opposition.
"During the meeting, Mr Donilon stated that the United States views the [council] as a legitimate and credible interlocutor of the Libyan people," the White House said in a statement, released after the meeting.
"In contrast, Mr Donilon stressed that [Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi has lost his legitimacy to rule and reiterated [US] President [Barack] Obama's call for Gaddafi to leave immediately," it said.
Obama did not meet with the opposition leaders.
"Mr Donilon and Dr Jibril discussed how the United States and the coalition can provide additional support to the [council]. Mr Donilon applauded the [council's] commitment to an inclusive political transition and a democratic future for Libya," the statement concluded.
'Town hall' meeting
The recognition fell short of what the council had sought. In an op-ed published in the New York Times ahead of his meetings in Washington, Jibril had written that the council was seeking to be recognised as the "sole" legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
"I don't anticipate action like that," Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said.
Meanwhile in the rebel-held Libyan city of Benghazi, opposition leaders met for what was billed as a "town hall" meeting to discuss the uprising.
Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Benghazi, said the meetings were "part of an ongoing attempt to organise the body as a functioning, legitimate and transparent representative of the Libyan people".
The political developments came as Libyan opposition fighters announced they were gaining ground in their battle against forces loyal to Gaddafi.
The opposition said its fighters had taken over the town of Ad-Dafniyah, and were advancing towards Zintan, which is west of the city of Misurata.
NATO has been intensifying air strikes in several areas of Libya against Gaddafi's troops in a bid to weaken his campaign against the uprising.
But in an audio message, broadcast on state television on Friday, Gaddafi said NATO bombs would not reach him.
'Clerics killed'
Hours after Gaddafi's minute-long speech, the sound of four explosions, most likely caused by a NATO strike, could be heard in Tripoli.
 |
Shortly before Gaddafi's remarks were broadcast, regime spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed that a NATO air strike in Brega had targeted a meeting of dozens of clerics and officials from around Libya, a claim NATO denies.
Ibrahim said 11 imams were killed in their sleep at a guesthouse, and 50 people were wounded, including five in critical condition.
The alliance, responding to the claim, said it had attacked a military command-and-control centre, and that it could "not independently confirm the validity" of claims of civilian casualties.
"We're very careful in the selection of our targets and this one was very clearly identified as a command centre," said an official at NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, who spoke under the alliance's rules that he could not be named.
Unarmed Palestinians wounded in 'Nakba' clashes by israel terrorist
Unarmed Palestinians wounded in 'Nakba' clashes by israel terrorist
 |
| More than 40 Palestinians have been injured in clashes on the 63rd 'Nakba Day'. [AFP] |
Dozens of people have been injured in the Gaza Strip as thousands of Palestinians and activists marched to mark "Nakba Day", amid tight Israeli security.
A group of Palestinians, including children, were shot by the Israeli army after crossing a Hamas checkpoint and entering what Israel calls a "buffer zone" - an empty area between checkpoints where Israeli soldiers generally shoot trespassers, Al Jazeera correspondent Nicole Johnston reported from Gaza City.
Johnston said tank shelling and artillery fire were also heard from the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip.
Reports said at least 45 Palestinians were wounded in northern Gaza as Israeli troops opened fire on a march of at least 1,000 people heading towards the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
In south Tel Aviv, one Israeli man was killed and 17 were injured when a 22-year-old Arab Israeli driver drove his truck into a number of vehicles on one of the city's main roads.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the driver, from an Arab village called Kfar Qasim in the West Bank, was arrested at the scene and is being questioned.
"Based on the destruction and the damage at the scene, we have reason to believe that it was carried out deliberately," Rosenfeld said. He did not believe the motive was directly linked to the anniversary of the Nakba.
The Nakba, or "catastrophe", is how Palestinians refer to the 1948 founding of the state of Israel.
West Bank clashes
One of the biggest demonstrations was held near Qalandiya refugee camp and checkpoint, the main secured entry point into the West Bank from Israel, where about 100 protesters marched, Al Jazeera correspondent Nisreen El Shmayleh reported from Ramallah.
Some injuries were reported from tear gas canisters fired at protesters there, El Shmayleh said.
Small clashes were reported throughout various neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem and cities in the West Bank, between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli security forces.
Israeli police said 20 arrests were made in the East Jerusalem area of Issawiyah for throwing stones and petrol bombs at Israeli border police officers.
About 70 arrests have been made in East Jerusalem throughout the Nakba protests that began on Friday, two days ahead of the May 15 anniversary, police spokesman Rosenfeld said.
Tensions had risen a day earlier after a 17-year-old Palestinian boy died of a gunshot wound suffered amid clashes on Friday in Silwan, another East Jerusalem neighbourhood.
Police said the source of the gunfire was unclear and that police were investigating, while local sources told Al Jazeera that Ayyash was shot in random firing of live ammunition by guards of Jewish settlers living in nearby Beit Yonatan.
Lebanon and Syria
About 20,000 people are expected to gather by the end of Sunday at Ras Maroun, a Lebanese border town.
Matthew Cassel, a journalist en route to Lebanon's southern border with Israel, tweeted that dozens of buses were departing Nahr al-Bared and Baddawi refugee camps in northern Lebanon.
Some activists tweeted that the Lebanese and Jordanian authorities were prohibiting protesters from nearing the borders. The information could not be independently verified.
Israeli army radio said dozens were wounded in a shooting incident on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an area bordering with Syria.
Palestinian refugees from Syrian side of the border were shot for trying to break through the frontier fence, the radio report said.
Israeli army spokepersons' office said an Israeli army patrol shot in the air in an effort to desist "people trying to cross into Israel and trying to damage the fence." There was no comment on reports of the injured.
'End to Zionist project'
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemned Sunday's demonstrations.
“I regret that there are extremists among Israeli Arabs and in neighbouring countries who have turned the day on which the State of Israel was established, the day on which the Israeli democracy was established, into a day of incitement, violence and rage", Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.
"There is no place for this, for denying the existence of the State of Israel. No to extremism and no to violence. The opposite is true", he said.
Earlier Sunday Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas-controlled Gaza, repeated the group's call for the end of the state of Israel.
Addressing Muslim worshippers in Gaza City on Sunday, Haniyeh said Palestinians marked this year's Nakba "with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine".
"To achieve our goals in the liberation of our occupied land, we should have one leadership,'' Haniyeh
said, praising the recent unity deal with its rival, Fatah, the political organisation which controls the West Bank under Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' leadership.
Meanwhile, a 63 second-long siren rang midday in commemoration of the Nakba's 63rd anniversary.
Over 760,000 Palestinians - estimated today to number 4.7 million with their descendants - fled or were driven out of their homes in the conflict that followed Israel's creation.
Many took refuge in neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere. Some continue to live in refugee camps.
About 160,000 Palestinians stayed behind in what is now Israeli territory and are known as Arab Israelis. They now total around 1.3 million, or some 20 percent of Israel's population.
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