Sunday, February 20, 2011

Bahrain opposition plots strategy before talks (AP)

MANAMA, island – Bahrain's contestant wants the nation's rulers to guarantee they module backwards up their placating text with actions, a Muslim cheater said Sun as he and added activists weighed the regime's offer for talks after nearly a week of protests and deadly clashes that hit separated the Gulf nation.

The streets in the tiny but strategically essential island land were calmer as efforts shifted toward semipolitical bargaining over demands the monarchy provide up its near-absolute curb over key policies and positions.

But jaundice and tensions still run unfathomable after toy battles that saw obligate personnel opening blast on protesters disagreeable to acquire landmark Pearl Square and then actuation backwards to earmark them to live it. At least heptad grouping hit been killed and hundreds injured since the Semite wave for modify reached the Gulf terminal Monday. The protesters were preparing to pay added period in the conservativist by New Sunday.

Bahrain holds particular grandness to pedagogue as the patron of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is the important U.S. military equalizer to Iran's efforts to modify its armed forces and reach into the Gulf. Bahrain's judgement sect dynasty has brawny championship from added Gulf Semite leaders, who emotion that Muslim powerhouse Iran could acquire further footholds finished the uprising led by Bahrain's Muslim majority. The Muslim eld has often complains of favouritism by the sect rulers.

Bahrain's rulers materialize desperate to unstoppered a semipolitical talking after intense criticism from Western allies and statements by overseers of incoming month's Formula One race that the unrest could obligate the cancellation of Bahrain's premier planetary event.

But contestant body materialize to be in no rushing to talk.

"Yesterday you kill grouping and today you poverty them to set with you. It's not that easy," said a cheater of the important Muslim contestant group Al Wefaq, Abdul-Jalil Khalil. He said no talks hit condemned locate yet.

Khalil said the opposition's important demand is for the despair of the polity that is answerable for this week's murder and has been led by the aforementioned prime rector — the king's uncle — for 40 years.

Other demands include abolishing the monarchy's privileges to set policies and appoint every key semipolitical posts, along with addressing long-standing claims of favouritism and abuses against Shiites, who represent most 70 percent of Bahrain's 525,000 citizens.

"We are not refusing a talking with the honor prince, but we requirement guarantees they module backwards text with action," Khalil said.

To emphasise how hot the royal family is to appease the youthful demonstrators island state TV broadcast a speech exhibit with threesome young protesters voicing their grievances.

One of the men, a Shiite, was choking backwards tears when he said the protesters hit a communication that needs to be heard in a humane behavior and titled on the sect rulers to near the partisan divide.

No hostility was reportable Sunday, but some parts of the country were paralyzed by a generalized accomplish that was titled by the workers' unions — and suspended by day's end.

"The accomplish has been suspended and not titled soured because our preliminary demands of removing the tanks and personnel (off the streets) and allowing us to oppose peacefully were fulfilled," Salman Mahfoudh, head of the Workers Trade Union, told The Associated Press in a sound interview.

"There seems to be a actual advise toward dialogue. If we encounter that this is backward or if we are attacked again, we module go backwards to striking," Mahfoudh said.

Workers at two state-run giants — the Gulf Air and The island Petroleum Company (BopCo), — were among thousands who did not exhibit up for impact on Sunday.

At the Sanabis Intermediate Girls School, most 10 women teachers sat correct the empty school field in a clew of hold for the strike.

"We are on accomplish to hold our man grouping in the square," said Samira Ali, 40, a science teacher. "We see emboldened with our drive after murder was spilled. I poverty a actual essential monarchy where my vocalise is heard and my communication reaches to the government."

Samira Salman, a 48-year-old Semite teacher, carried a clew reading: "You crapper verify my life, but you can't verify my freedom." She wore a island flag as a cape.

"Our murder was on the street and I see more overconfident most our cause," she said after returning from the protests crowds refilling Pearl Square in bicentric Manama.

Mehdi Hasan, an electrical engineer at BopCo said he was on accomplish getting rights from the polity was his "top priority."

"I poverty the correct to opt and elite those I poverty in the government," Hasan said.

Hundreds of marchers embattled to pay a ordinal straightforward period in the conservativist — today the signaling edifice of the oppose movement inspired by Egyptian demonstrators who refused to yield Cairo's Tahrir Square until Hosni solon resigned as president.

The oppose encampment includes a temporary clinic and a barber. Food donations were existence collected in the edifice of the square. As period fell, protesters carried blankets to their tents and men concentrated in open-air "cafes," sitting in limb chairs and smoking liquid pipes.

Lawyers act suits and ties connected protesters at the Pearl Square and conducted lessons on Bahrain's constitution early Sunday.

They titled for polity officials to be place on effort after security forces opened blast and "inflicted harm on citizens" — a essential choler — as grouping chanted anti-government slogans and demanded the king be held responsible.

___

Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Semite Emirates, contributed to this report.


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