Pessimism rules at G20 summit

World's leading economies hold talks in Seoul on trade imbalances and currency policies that threaten world growth.

A strong sense of pessimism has shrouded the first day of the G20 summit of rich and emerging economies, with world leaders sharply divided over currency and trade policies.

The US clashed with exporting giants China and Germany on Thursday over a plan to rebalance skewed trade between deficit and surplus countries.

The summit, held in Seoul, South Korea's capital, has become the centrepiece of international efforts to revive the global economy and prevent future financial meltdowns.

Behind the scenes, negotiators squabbled over the language in a closing statement to be issued at the summit's conclusion on Friday, but so far, officials cannot even agree on the agenda, much less a draft statement.

Barack Obama, the US president, who is working to salvage a deal at the summit after suffering an economy-linked drubbing in US elections last week, said his administration wanted to boost growth via "prudent" economic policies.

"It is difficult to do that if we start seeing the huge imbalances redevelop that helped to contribute to the crisis that we just went through," he told a news conference with the summit's host, Lee Myung-Bak, the South Korean president.

"I don't think this is a controversial proposition."

Currency controversy

Several G20 members are upset after the US Federal Reserve's decision to pump a further $600bn into the faltering US economy, in a step that foreign critics say is likely to trigger tit-for-tat currency devaluations.

Chinese officials sought to throw the onus back on the US by arguing that Beijing has an "unswerving" commitment to reform its currency regime, but needs stability in the world economy to do it.

"If you're sick yourself, don't ask others to take medicine," Yu Jianhua, the commerce ministry spokesman, said, demanding the debt-ridden US fix its own house first.

In one-on-one talks with Obama, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, said: "I believe that with the concerted efforts of all the parties, the summit in Seoul will produce positive outcomes."

David Cameron, the UK prime minister, conceded that the G20 was not in a "heroic phase" compared to its determined response to the 2008 financial crisis, and that it needed to do "a lot more work" on fixing economic imbalances.

Harried negotiators have been meeting long into the night all week in Seoul to try to pin down language that the G20 leaders can adopt in the closing communique.

The talks were likely to drag long into Thursday night, South Korean officials said, after the G20 heads of government opened their two-day summit with a working dinner of Korean beef and halibut.

"China is being very difficult in finalising the texts, so there might be brackets left for the leaders to fill in after all," a German government source said on Thursday.

Final statement

South Korean and German officials said tha at best the G20 may settle for a watered-down deal to task the International Monetary Fund with crafting guidelines to trim the yawning imbalances between creditor and debtor nations.

Ahead of her own bilateral meeting with Obama, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, lashed out at a more detailed US plan to rectify lopsided commerce by limiting the current account surpluses of big exporters.

The US wants the G20 to agree to curtail "excessive imbalances" as a back-door way of forcing China to realign its currency, which critics say is keeps deliberately cheap to support Chinese exporters.

But the proposal has run into trouble not just from China but from an array of nations including Germany, another export champion that insists its own trading prowess has nothing to do with any currency chicanery.

"To set political limits on trade surpluses and deficits is neither economically justified nor politically appropriate," Merkel told a G20 business summit.

Emerging economies around the world are worried that the billions in new money from the Federal Reserve will stoke speculative flows of foot-loose "hot money", and some are resorting to capital controls in a bid to stem the tide.

There is anxiety that G20 nations could be heading for a return to 1930s-style trade protectionism, with damning consequences for the world economy two years after the start of the global financial crisis.

Naoto Kan, the Japanese prime minister, said the risk was of "competitive devaluation of currencies reminiscent of the Great Depression".

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Hezbollah to block Hariri arrests

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has warned that his group will "cut off the hand" of anyone who tries to arrest members of his Shia movement over the 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister.

"Whoever thinks the resistance could possibly accept any accusation against any of its jihadists or leaders is mistaken - no matter the pressures and threats," Nasrallah said on Thursday.

"The hand that attempts to reach [our members] will be cut off," he added, prompting thunderous applause from hundreds of his party supporters gathered in a stadium in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.

The Hezbollah chief held his speech, aired via closed-circuit television, to mark the group's Martyr's Day.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), a UN-backed investigation into al-Hariri's murder, is reportedly set to issue an indictment soon that will implicate high-ranking members of Hezbollah as being involved in his death.

Nasrallah, whose party fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006, said his movement would defend itself against any accusation through whatever means it found appropriate.

"Whoever thinks that the resistance will not defend itself and its honour against any accusation or attack by whatever means it finds appropriate in agreement with its allies in Lebanon is mistaken," he said.

Prepared for war

Nasrallah, who has not appeared in public for more than two years, also said his movement - the most powerful military and political force in the country - was ready for another round with Israel, its arch-foe.

"We await the day the indictment will be released," he said. "We are ready for any Israeli war on Lebanon and will again be victorious, Inshallah [God willing].

"Whoever thinks that threatening us with another Israeli war will scare us is mistaken.

"On the contrary, whoever speaks of another war is bearing good news and not threatening us."

Nasrallah's speech was the latest move in an increasingly heated campaign to fend off the anticipated STL findings in connection with the killing of Hariri and 22 others in a Beirut bombing on February 14, 2005.

The head of the Iranian and Syrian-backed movement has warned against any accusations by the tribunal and said further Lebanese co-operation with the court would be tantamount to an attack on Hezbollah.

Despite Nasrallah's warnings, Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister and son of the slain former premier, has vowed to see the tribunal through.

Analysts have warned the standoff could lead to the collapse of the government and a repeat of the 18-month political deadlock that degenerated into deadly clashes and brought Lebanon close to civil war in May 2008.

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Yemeni leader arrest sparks protest

Thousands of separatists have marched through two cities in southern Yemen to demand that authorities release a leader of the southern secessionist movement.

Thursday is the second day of protests sparked by the arrest of Hassan Bamoum, the leader of the southerners' main faction, The Supreme Council for the Peaceful Southern Movement. The reason for his arrest was not clear.

Abdu al-Maatari, a spokesman for the southern movement, said around 5,000 protesters set fire to tyres and blocked streets in the city of Daleh on Wednesday before security forces cleared the crowds

On Thursday protesters attacked a military checkpoint and also tried to break into a jail, according to local officials.

The checkpoint clash occurred hours before about 4,000 people, according to local residents, took to the streets in the city of Daleh for a second day.

Hours after the protest, armed men threw a grenade at a military vehicle at a checkpoint, setting it ablaze and wounding four soldiers.

Two of the armed men, suspected to be separatists, were wounded in the attack, a security official said.

Other marches were held in Habilayn and Loder, two centres of protest in south Yemen, where marches are held every Thursday to advocate the release of prisoners.

Many in the south, home to most of impoverished Yemen's oil facilities, complain of discrimination by a government that freely exploits the area's resources.

The Arabian Peninsula state is under international pressure to quell domestic conflicts like the southern separatist movement and bolster a shaky truce with Shia rebels in the north in order to focus on fighting a resurgent wing of al-Qaeda, which is said to be exploiting the country's instability.

North and south Yemen united in 1990 under Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is still the president. The bumpy merger led to a brief civil war in 1994 won by the north.

Yemen surged to the forefront of Western security concerns over the past year and last month the United Arab Emirates and Britain intercepted US-bound parcel bombs sent from Yemen and claimed by al-Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing.

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Obama: US-Muslim mistrust must end

Building on his Cairo speech, the US president said much more needs to be done to repair frayed US-Muslim relations.

Delivering a keynote speech in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, the US president has said much more needs to be done to repair frayed US relations with the Muslim world.

Barack Obama addressed a 6,000-strong audience, mainly students, at the national university in the capital, Jakarta, on Wednesday.

"Just as individuals are not defined solely by their faith, Indonesia is defined by more than its Muslim population," he said.

"But we also know that relations between the United States and Muslim communities have frayed over many years. As president, I have made it a priority to begin to repair these relations."

Obama, who spent four years in Indonesia as a young boy, praised the world's most populous Muslim nation as an example of successful religious co-existence.

"Even as this land of my youth has changed in so many ways, those things that I learned to love about Indonesia - that spirit of tolerance that is written into your constitution, symbolised in your mosques and churches and temples, and embodied in your people - still lives on," he said.

'New beginning'

His speech was an update to a major address he gave 17 months ago in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, where he declared a "new beginning" in US-Muslim relations after the tensions over the 9/11 attacks on the US and the former US administration's response to them.

"In the 17 months that have passed we have made some progress, but much more work remains to be done," Obama said.

"I said then, and I will repeat now, that no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust. But I believed then, and I believe today, that we have a choice. We can choose to be defined by our differences, and give into a future of suspicion and mistrust. Or we can choose to do the hard work of forging common ground, and commit ourselves to the steady pursuit of progress."

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said Obama's speech went down very well in Indonesia.

She said Indonesians were generally receptive to the president's speech.

Middle East peace

Mentioning the Middle East specifically, Obama said the Israeli-Palestinian peace process faces "enormous obstacles" after he relaunched talks in September only to see the dialogue bogged down over disputes between the parties.

"But let there be no doubt: we will spare no effort in working for the outcome that is just, and that is in the interest of all the parties involved: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security."

The president gave his speech on a twice-postponed visit to Indonesia, which was the second stop in his four-country tour of Asia.

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US panel faults oil spill firms

A White House inquiry into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has strongly criticised the three companies involved in the deadly accident and called for change.

The panel in Washington DC, the capital, said on Tuesday that BP, Halliburton and Transocean lacked a safety culture and that they need "top-to-bottom reform".

It said that while no entity purposefully traded safety for reduced costs and therefore profits, a number of perceived acceptable risks were taken that added up to the incident that caused the deaths of 11 workers. About 650 million litres of oil were spilled into the sea.

The panel highlighted more than 12 decisions that led to the April 20 rig failure, saying they were both questionable and explainable.

The panel said that BP was hurried and made confusing, last-minute changes to plans that were unusual in the complex environment of deep water.

'Rush to completion'

In the first apolitical and independent investigation of the disaster, the panel leaders said that the findings in sum exposed a lack of safety culture on the rig, with Reilly stating that all three companies were "laggards" in the industry and in "need of top-to-bottom reform".

They said BP could have operated more safely if the company took the time to get the necessary equipment and materials.

"We are aware of what appeared to be a rush to completion,'' William K Reilly, a commission co-chairman, said.

Reilly said that it was unclear what drove people to determine they could not wait for equipment and materials to perform operations more safely.

'Pressure'

The investigation spoke to an engineer who alleged that workers were pressured to complete work on the well, before the explosion.

"I know that there was pressure on this group of people to get done and move on," Steve Lewism, the petroleum engineer, said.

"I have seen internal BP communications at the senior management level inquiring as to whether or not the well was going to be done on time, whether or not the rig would be released on time," he said.

The firms' representatives asserted that no corners were cut in safety procedures due to cost on the BP-leased offshore drilling rig.

While commission officials said they were not excusing BP, they wanted to stress that there was no clear single decision that came down solely to money that led to the disaster.

"Anytime you are talking about a million and a half dollars a day, money enters in. All I am saying is human beings did not sit there and sell safety down the river for dollars on the rig that night," Fred H Bartlit Jr, the commission chief attorney, said.

However, Bob Graham, the commission co-chairman, said that a general culture of cost-cutting could not be completely dismissed as an issue.

Graham, the former Florida senator and governor, ended Tuesday's proceedings by stating that he was worried that there was "a compulsion" to get the rig completed by a April 19-20 timetable set for it.

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Cameron urges democracy in China

British prime minister calls for greater political and press freedoms during a visit to Beijing.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, has urged China to introduce greater political and press freedoms, saying it would ensure social stability and economic growth.

"The rise in economic freedom in China in recent years has been hugely beneficial to China and to the world," he said in a speech at Peking University on Wednesday.

"I hope that in time this will lead to a greater political opening ... because I am convinced that the best guarantor of prosperity and stability is for economic and political progress to go in step together."

His comments come a day after Chinese officials barred the lawyer for Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel peace prize winner jailed for calling for political reform, from travelling to Britain.

Some British press have viewed Cameron's comments as direct condemnation of the Chinese government's human rights record, but Paul Brennan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in London, said the remarks were "frank dialogue rather than criticism".

"David Cameron has been under significant domestic pressure to raise the issue of human rights with his Chinese hosts, but without going so far as to sour what has been a highly successful trade visit.

"His political aides will hope that the measured tone of his speech to Beijing students will be enough to appease both sides," he said.

Press freedoms

Cameron did not specifically mention Xiaobo or any cases of political repression during his speech, but is believed to have brought up the case of Xiaobo in meetings with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier.

He also talked about the virtues of the rule of law and Western-style democracy in Communist Party-ruled China, noting that a British government was always subject to the rule of law.

"At times they can be frustrating when the courts take a view with which the government differs," he said.

"But ultimately we believe that they make our government better and our country stronger."

He added that having free media was important despite the criticism and discomfort it sometimes brings for governments.

China defended its human rights record on Tuesday, saying its citizens were "enjoying more extensive rights and freedoms".

Cameron is the first Western leader to visit China since dissident Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8 - an honour hailed in the West but condemned by Beijing as tantamount to "encouraging crime".

The British prime minister also called on Beijing to exert more pressure on Myanmar, which has just held elections condemned as a farce by the West, to improve the human rights situation there.

"I believe China can work with us to improve the situation for the Burmese people," he said.

"China is one of the few countries that Burma [Myanmar] will listen to on this point."

Trade ties

His speech comes on the second and final day of a visit focused on boosting business ties as part of Cameron's stated aim of doubling bilateral trade by 2015 to more than $100bn.

The British prime minister, who is travelling with Britain's largest-ever delegation of bosses and ministers to China, wants to take their trade relations "to a new level".

By far the biggest deal announced on Tuesday was worth $1.2bn between Rolls-Royce and China Eastern Airlines Corp under which the British group will provide jet engines to power 16 Airbus A330 aircraft.

Cameron is travelling with 43 bosses from major British companies and four government ministers on his first official visit after taking power in May.

However human rights advocates have accused Cameron of soft-pedalling political criticism of his hosts as he pursues trade ties.

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Blackberry, iPhone or Android: Which Wholesale Cell Phones Are Better?

Wholesale cell phones dealers get fired a lot of tough questions from their customers: how is this model better from this model, what’s this manufacturer’s track record, and how does this brand compare to other brands? And the hottest topic of the moment seems to be whether the Blackberry, iPhone or Android is better. Here is a quick overview of each of these wholesale cell phones.

1. Blackberry - The Blackberry started out as business device, and although it’s now widely used, it’s still primarily a business phone. It has fewer apps than other phones, and the apps it does have are business-focused.

Experts say that of all the smart wholesale mobile phones, the Blackberry offers the best email platform, thanks to its rock-solid Enterprise Server, the most user friendly keyboard, and an excellent security and remote monitoring system. Also, apps can be run in the background, unlike with the iPhone. Experts also agree that the Blackberry is built to last: it has the toughest hardware of all the smart phones, and it also has a long battery life.

Blackberry can be used with the main carriers – AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile – along with smaller carriers such as Metro PCS.

2. iPhone - The iPhone started out as a personal, consumer device, and this is still its primary function, though more consumers are using it for business purposes. Many Blackberry users originally switched to the iPhone as it offered device consolidation: the iPhone was a smart phone and an iPod in one. According to experts, the iPhone’s biggest weakness is that Apple has no central management portal, which means security is not nearly as strong as Blackberry’s. Also, you can’t run apps in the background on an iPhone, and you can’t swap out the battery. The iPhone is not as hardy as the Blackberry, and broken screens are a common problem for users. But weaknesses aside, most users swear by their iPhone, saying that it allows them to do everything they’d do at their desk: write emails, listen to music, surf the web, watch videos, and more. AT&T is the only carrier for the iPhone.

3. Android – Google’s Android is the new kid on the block, and, after hitting the market just two years ago in 2008, it’s already proving a formidable force to beat in the smart phone world, giving Apple a run for its money. A recent Nielsen report showed that the Android represents 27 percent of new smart phone purchases in the United States, while the iPhone commands only 23 percent of purchases.
Wholesale cell phones experts agree that the Android’s biggest strength is its open platform, which is allowing a large community of developers to create powerful and flexible platforms that improve the functionality of the devices and enhance the user experience. Currently, there are 70,000 apps (and counting) available for Android, which is now supported by every phone carrier in the U.S.

So, there are pros and cons to Blackberry, iPhone and Android, and the choice comes down to which device best suits your wholesale cell phones customers’ main requirements.

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