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Obama seeking congress nod for Syria action
Obama seeking congress nod for Syria action (Agencies) / 1 September 2013 Delaying what had loomed as an imminent strike, President Barack Obama abruptly announced on Saturday that he will seek congressional approval before launching any military action meant to punish Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons in an attack that killed hundreds. With Navy ships on standby in the Mediterranean Sea ready to launch their cruise missiles, Obama said he had decided the United States should take military action and that he believes he has “the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorisation.” At the same time, he said, “I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course and our actions will be even more effective.” Congress is scheduled to return from a summer vacation on September 9. The president didn’t say so, but his strategy carries enormous risks to his and the nation’s credibility, which the administration has argued forcefully is on the line in Syria. Obama long ago said the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that Syrian President Bashar Assad would not be allowed to cross with impunity. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who suffered a humiliating defeat when the House of Commons refused to support his call for military action against Syria, said on Saturday that he understood President Barack Obama’s decision to ask the US Congress to authorise military action against Syria. “I understand and support Barack Obama’s position on Syria,” the British prime minister said in a tweet. The developments marked a stunning turn in an episode in which Obama has struggled to gain international support for a strike, while dozens of lawmakers at home urged him to seek their backing. Halfway around the world, Syrians awoke on Saturday to state television broadcasts of tanks, planes and other weapons of war, and troops training, all to a soundtrack of martial music. Assad’s government blames rebels in the August 21 attack, and has threatened retaliation if it is attacked. Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he was appealing to a Nobel Peace laureate rather than to a president, urged Obama to reconsider. A group that monitors casualties in the long Syrian civil war challenged the United States to substantiate its claim that 1,429 died in a chemical weapons attack, including more than 400 children. The new timetable gives time for UN inspectors to receive preliminary lab results from the samples they took during four days in Damascus. Fully assessing the evidence collected by weapons inspectors could take up to three weeks, the organisation in charge of the investigation said on Saturday. United Nations inspectors arrive at the headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in The Hague, on August 31. -AFP The team, which included nine experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and three from the World Health Organisation, arrived at the OPCW’s Hague headquarters on Saturday evening after leaving Syria early in the morning. “The evidence collected by the team will now undergo laboratory analysis and technical evaluation according to the established and recognised procedures and standards,” the OPCW said in a statement. The group’s leader was expected to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday. Republicans expressed satisfaction at Obama’s decision, and challenged him to make his case to the public and lawmakers alike that American power should be used to punish Assad. “We are glad the president is seeking authorisation for any military action in Syria in response to serious, substantive questions being raised,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and other House Republican leaders said in a joint statement. “In consultation with the president, we expect the House to consider a measure the week of September 9th. This provides the president time to make his case to Congress and the American people.” It appeared that effort at persuasion was already well underway. The administration arranged a series of weekend briefings for lawmakers, both classified and unclassified, and Obama challenged lawmakers to consider “what message will we send to a dictator” if he is allowed to kill hundreds of children with chemical weapons without suffering any retaliation. While lawmakers are scheduled to return to work September 9, officials said it was possible the Senate might come back to session before then. Obama said on Friday that he was considering “limited and narrow” steps to punish Assad, adding that US national security interests were at stake. He pledged no US combat troops on the ground in Syria, where a civil war has claimed more than 100,000 civilian lives. With Obama struggling to gain international backing for a strike, Putin urged him to reconsider his plans. “We have to remember what has happened in the last decades, how many times the United States has been the initiator of armed conflict in different regions of the world, said Putin, a strong Assad ally. “Did this resolve even one problem?” Even the administration’s casualty estimate was grist for controversy. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that monitors casualties in the country, said it has confirmed 502 deaths, nearly 1,000 fewer than the American intelligence assessment claimed. Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the organisation, said he was not contacted by US officials about his efforts to collect information about the death toll. “America works only with one part of the opposition that is deep in propaganda,” he said, and urged the Obama administration to release the information its estimate is based on. In the hours before Obama’s Rose garden announcement, he was joined at the White House by top advisers. Vice-President Joseph Biden, who had planned a holiday weekend at home in Delaware, was among them. So, too, were Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry and other top administration officials. Continue reading
Time is over for Abu Dhabi govt staff to relocate
Time is over for Abu Dhabi govt staff to relocate Silvia Radan (Special Report) / 1 September 2013 Abu Dhabi govt employees who shift base from other emirates may find bigger space for a little more money, but their working spouses will now have the highway blue The deadline for Abu Dhabi government employees living outside the emirate to move to the capital has arrived. Starting today, thousands of Dubai and Sharjah residents working for a government office in Abu Dhabi should no longer be commuting. However, the first expected effect of this move, traffic ease on the Abu Dhabi – Dubai highway, has not been visible. “In the past couple of months I had to drive several times to Dubai and the traffic was as heavy as always,” said Diana Oliver, a six-year resident of Abu Dhabi. “I presume this decision was made to reduce the highway traffic, which would also lessen the environmental impact with less pollution on the roads, and also the traffic accidents, especially in the early morning hours when fog often occurs,” she said. Oliver recently moved to Khalifa City, just outside Abu Dhabi, where she is taking care of her two young children, but her husband is still driving daily to work into the city and feels the traffic has become heavier here. “He needs to leave five to 10 minutes earlier every morning since the end of Ramadan. Mind you, this may be also because of people returning from holidays and work hours going back to normal,” Oliver said. The family moved to Khalifa City in March this year, at a time when the property market was still reasonable. Since then, rent for both small apartments and villas have gone up gradually. Government employees living outside Abu Dhabi had over a year to change their residence and many preferred to do it earlier rather than at the last minute, to beat the expected rent rise – which economists say rose about eight per cent in the first quarter of the year alone. Among them was B.M., who spoke with Khaleej Times anonymously since most Abu Dhabi government employees are not allowed to speak publically without a prior approval. “We moved in April to avoid rents going up. We got a much better deal here than we had in Dubai,” he said. B.M. used to live in a flat in Dubai Marina, with one parking space. Now he and his family stay in a three bedroom villa in Al Reef, with a garden and a driveway for four cars – useful since his wife drives to work and needs her own car. “Last year we paid nearly Dh90,000 for the flat in Marina, but rents in Dubai are going up as the job market is improving, so this year we would have ended up paying almost the same as we do here, in Al Reef – Dh 110,000. And you can’t compare a villa with a flat; we have got more space now and a green area outdoors,” said B.M. Moving house, especially for a family with two children was not a cheap affair. In B.M.’s case, the cost was Dh8,000. Of this, Dh6,000 was the moving company costs, the rest being other related fees. According to various moving companies, the cost of relocating from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is mostly the charges for packing and unpacking – it only adds about Dh300-500 per truck. For B.M. it was certainly pricy, yet worth it. Living at a 15-minute drive from work, in a more comfortable house had made life much better for him, he said, with the added bonus of finding a good nearby school for his children. But it’s not happy days for everyone. “It’s all good for me, but now my wife has to commute. She has a really good job in Dubai and doesn’t want to leave it, so she drives there daily. I guess a lot of people in our situation do the same, so the highway traffic may ease off on one side, but pick up on the other.” The close proximity to the Dubai highway, where many family members of those who had to move still work and where social lives are often centred, is a reason for many to search for accommodation in areas such as Al Reef, Al Raha Gardens and Khalifa City. The rents are also much lower than downtown Abu Dhabi. For single individuals, Khalifa City remains the “Mecca”, with good facilities and a location near Abu Dhabi city centre, Dubai, Yas Island and Al Ain. Yet, Khalifa City is a red light for anyone looking for a flat. Intended for Emiratis who were granted land to build their homes there, most private developers built villas, got it approved by the municipality, then leased it to a real estate agency, which has split the villa into apartments – then rented to individuals illegally. Most people, especially those new to Abu Dhabi, were unaware of the legal status, and followed a fairly simple procedure of viewing properties with real estate agents, finding one they liked, signing the contract and moving in. Regular municipality raids in Khalifa City have now drawn tenants’ attention to the illegal status, and because their rent contract does not bear the municipality stamp some are landed with a fine and told they have two weeks to move out. Getting the rent back is out of the question, as the real estate companies are not found at fault by anyone, while those licensed by the municipality continue to rent out illegal properties to anyone who doesn’t know the rules. “Etihad Airways, which has its headquarters in Khalifa City, had 200 employees this year who lost their rentals and had to move out of their homes in Khalifa City,” revealed M.T., a new Etihad employee who moved from Dubai to Abu Dhabi a couple of months ago. “Initially I was planning to find accommodation in Khalifa City, but we were told to stay away from it as most villa flats come with illegal contracts. Only when you rent out a full villa do you get the municipality approved stamp on the contract,” she added. M.T. has found a Dh60,000 one bedroom flat in the 15 minutes drive further away Al Reef, which is Dh10,000 more expensive and smaller in space than what she initially found in Khalifa City, but at least she has “peace of mind”. silvia@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
Bounced cheques and courts’ workload
Bounced cheques and courts’ workload Marie Nammour / 1 September 2013 Cases of bounced cheques are seemingly a continual problem for banks and the business world and, in turn, a problem for courts — with one legal advocate suggesting banks adopt a stricter approach to issuing cheque books to customers. Bounced cheque cases which result from business dealings, leasing contracts, credit cards or real estate and contracting project deals worth millions of dirhams, constitute a huge workload for criminal courts which handle these cases on a daily basis. Though there have not been any recent figures on what percentage of criminal cases are bad cheque cases courts handled last year, officials say it is not a small part. According to the 2012 Annual Report of the Dubai Courts and the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, as many as 37,816 criminal cases were examined by the Dubai Courts in 2012 — an increase of 13 per cent from the previous year, when 33,432 criminal cases were heard. Though there are no available updated figures released by the Public Prosecution on the number of the bad cheque complaints received by Dubai police stations, media reports suggest local banks have received about 1.4 million dud cheques worth a total of $46.8 million in the year to February. Recovering the money In order to recover the money lost when a cheque bounces, complainants must file a civil lawsuit. A civil court starts to look into the lawsuit once the criminal side is determined by the Court of Misdemeanours or the two higher courts (if the defendant decides to appeal). “The claimant needs to wait for the 15-day legal deadline to pass and if the defendant does not appeal then (the claimant) can proceed with the civil lawsuit. He has to provide the civil court with copies and documents from the Public Prosecution stating that the verdict was final.” If the defendant is found guilty, the court will refer the civil lawsuit to the competent civil court and the claimant can pursue it to recover his money. “The case then falls in the hands of the execution judge who would compel the defendant to pay up the cheque or the latter would risk being jailed again.” Such civil lawsuits may take between three to four months at the Dubai Courts before a ruling could be issued. Al Dakhakhny said his firm’s smallest case was for a cheque worth Dh30,000, while the biggest case handled was for a cheque worth Dh3.5 million. mary@khaleejtimes.com Those bounced cheques constitute about a fifth of the overall cheques the local banks received as per statistics by the Central Bank in the same period of time. There has even been a proposal by the UAE Bank Association to the Ministry of Justice to set up courts specialised in the bounced cheque and financial cases to preserve the rights of the banks, the lending and financing firms and other parties. Cheques are a tool Counsel Ahmed Al Dakhakhny of Saeed Al Barq for Advocacy and Legal Consultancy, told Khaleej Times one way some cases could be prevented was through banks limiting issuance of cheque books. “The cheque is a means for settling one’s financial dues. If the banks adopt stricter criteria for issuing cheque books to their customers they would be contributing somehow to curbing the problem of misuse of cheques. The criteria would take into consideration, for instance, the customers’ financial conditions and whether they would be able later to respect the trust the other party gave to them by accepting their signed cheques.” He said when the Emirati legislator put the Penal Code together, he dedicated certain articles to the bounced cheque cases. “The cheque is a tool of financial settlement used in business dealings among people. By protecting the cheque, the legislator has protected the economy and the businesses.” He said bounced cheques severely interrupted the running of businesses and could threaten the ability of a business to deliver on agreements. “Giving a bad cheque can stall a whole process of dealings; to name a few the businesses of trading, exportation and importation, and construction and contracting”. Al Dakhakhny said the cheque was a way to fulfil one’s financial obligations without using cash and giving someone a cheque rather than cash suggested a certain trust by the receiver. However, when the cheque bounced, it meant the person who issued it betrayed that trust — which naturally entailed legal consequences. “A defendant on trial in a bad cheque case would face fraud and breach of trust charges”. Penalty depends on the Judge’s discretion According to article 401 of the Penal Code, any person who writes a bounced cheque shall be slapped with a fine of no less than Dh500 and given a jail sentence of no more than 3 years. Issuing a bad cheque, however, does not result in the defendant’s deportation, Al Dakhakhny pointed out. “The judge will look into the case circumstances, namely the cheque value, the defendant’s conditions and the reason why the cheque bounced. The penalty will depend on the judge’s discretion”. He revealed that his office had an average of four to five bounced cheque cases seen by the Dubai Courts on a daily basis. “Our clients in those cases are of different nationalities. They come from various backgrounds. We have the businessmen, the investors, the workers and other low-income employees. While the first category would take loans, and back it up by signing security blank cheques, to finance certain business projects, the second category would get indebted by an excessive and miscalculated use of credit cards. The low-paid people might also take loans just to survive till pay day.” Often, such people gave security cheques which they later failed to settle due to their cumulative interests, he said. “We have also other clients who were caught in such cases because of their carefree spending and their purchases of luxury goods. They wanted to buy an expensive flat TV set or a fancy sports car, for example, and they gave security cheques in return as a guarantee for re-payment of the debt. The cheques would most often bounce”. One of his clients is a 35-year-old Iranian investor who was sentenced to three years in prison by Dubai’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, after he lost an appeal on the charge of issuing a bad cheque worth Dh3.5 million. The court referred the civil lawsuit to the relevant civil court. In another case, another investor took a bank loan to finance his purchase of two residential units. The loan was worth more than Dh2 million. The investor was jailed after the bank took action against him when he defaulted the regular payment of instalments. He was told to settle two blank security cheques he had signed, worth in total Dh3.2 million. He was convicted and respectively sentenced to one year and three years in prison for both cases. In a different case, another accused has been ordered by the Court of Misdemeanours to pay a Dh5,000 fine for issuing a bounced cheque worth Dh250,000, and the civil lawsuit was referred to a civil court. What makes someone issue a dud cheque? According to the lawyer, in some cases, it is the lack of knowledge that pushes a person to such a crime as he would usually be oblivious to the legal effects that he might face when giving a cheque, with a high risk of bouncing, in any kind of transaction. In other, more common, cases, some might think their long-standing business deals with a particular party would spare or protect them from legal repercussions due to a relationship of good faith — which turns out to be unfounded. “They would not see the legal trouble coming until they are called to the police stations or served notice about a court case. mary@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
