6A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
POLITICS
TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2008
Carter tries for peace with Hamas
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, right, listens to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, center, as he looks at home-made rockets that were fired in the southern Israel city of Sderot, Israel on Monday. Carter deplored Palestinian militants' attacks on Israel as a "despicable crime" as he touched a rocket-battered town
BY BETH MARLOWE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AIRPORT CITY, Israel Former President Jimmy Carter defended his plan to meet with the top leader of the violently antiIsrael Hamas movement, saying Monday he hopes to become a conduit between the Islamic militant group and Washington and Israel.
"I can't say that they will be amenable to any suggestions, but at least after I meet with them I can go back and relay what they say, as just a communicator, to the leaders of the United States," he said.
Isolating Hamas is counterproductive, Carter said. Hamas rules the Gaza Strip but is ostracized by Israel, the U.S. and European Union as a terrorist group.
The U.S., EU and Israel have blacklisted Hamas for its history of killing some 250 Israelis with suicide bomber attacks and its refusal to renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state.
"I think it is absolutely crucial that in the final and dreamed-about and prayed-for peace agreement for this region that Hamas be involved and Syria will be involved," he told a business conference outside Tel Aviv.
Israel's top leaders are boycotting Carter during his nine-day Mideast trip, in part because he plans to meet later in the week in Syria with Hamas' exiled supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. government has "made clear our views that we did not think now is the moment for him or anyone to be talking with Hamas."
U. S. officials will be "happy to hear" Carter's reflections on his visit with Hamas, but that they aren't likely to change the administration's views on the militant
group, Casey said.
The Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee criticized Carter for meeting with Hamas. Carter "in effect is undermining a current policy which is not just American but held by many others." Rep. Howard Berman of California told The Associated Press.
Carter also offered to relay Hamas' views to Israel. If the U.S. agrees to hear what Hamas says, "I hope then the Israeli government will deign to meet with me — they have so far refused," he said.
President Shimon Peres, Israel's ceremonial head of state, was the only leader to meet with Carter since he arrived Sunday. Peres, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, criticized Carter for planning to meet with Mashaal, calling it a "very big mistake," a Peres spokeswoman said.
A schedule released by Carter's aides showed no plans for talks
with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The cold shoulder is a highly unusual brush-off to a former U.S. leader — especially one so closely linked to Mideast peacemaking.
In an interview published Monday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Carter said he intended to use his meeting with Mashaal to press for return of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. He said he would also try to get
Carter brokered Israel's historic peace accord with Egypt in 1979, the first treaty it signed with an Arab country. But his popularity fell in Israel after he published a book two years ago drawing comparisons between Israeli policies in Palestinian areas and apartheid in South Africa. The planned talks with Mashaal only fueled Israeli anger.
LAWSUIT
Hamas to accept an Arab plan for peace with Israel.
"The most important single foreign policy goal in my life has been to bring peace to Israel, and peace and justice to Israel's neighbors. I have done everything I could in office and since I left office to do that," the paper quoted Carter as saying.
On Monday, Carter toured Sderot, the southern Israeli town targeted most frequently by Palestinian rocket squads in the Gaza Strip. He was shown a house badly damaged by a rocket strike and piles of rusting projectiles collected after hitting the town. More than 1,000 rockets have exploded in Sderot in the past year.
"I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians, and my hope is there will be a cease-fire soon," Carter told reporters.
J.K. Rowling testifies Web site plagiarized her latest Potter book
BY LARRY NEUMEISTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
"We all know I've made enough money. That's absolutely not why I'm here," Rowling told the judge in U.S. District Court.
NEW YORK J.K. Rowling testified before a packed courtroom in a lawsuit to block publication of a Harry Potter lexicon, telling a judge that the book amounts to a "wholesale theft" of nearly 20 years of her hard work.
The British author sued Michigan-based RDR Books last year to stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon," claiming copyright infringement. Vander Ark runs the popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, and RDR wants to publish a print version of the site and charge $24.95.
Rowling claims the book is nothing more than a rearrangement of her own material and told the judge it copied so much of her work that it amounted to plagiarism.
"I think it's atrocious. I think it's sloppy. I think there's very little research," she testified Monday. "This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."
She also said she has recently started work on her own encyclopedia and plans to donate the resulting profits to charity — adding that she does not expect to complete it for two to three years because she wants to do it right. If Vander Ark's lexicon is published, "I'm not at all convinced that I would have the will or the heart to continue with my encyclopedia," she said.
RDR's lawyer, Anthony Falzone, in an opening statement defended the lexicon as a reference guide, calling it a legitimate effort "to organize and discuss the complicated and very elaborate world of Harry Potter." The small publisher is not contesting that the lexicon infringes upon Rowling's copyright but argues that it is a fair use allowable by law for reference books.
Rowling said she believed that a victory by Vander Ark could damage the Harry Potter name and embolden imitators.
"Should it be published, I firmly believe that carte blanche will be given to anyone who wants to make a quick bit of money, to divert some Harry Potter profits into their own pockets. ... I'm not delighted to have work I consider to be this shoddy associated with Harry Potter," she said.
The non-jury trial will be decided by U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson Jr., who must determine whether the use of the material is legal because Vander Ark added his own interpretation, creativity and analysis. The testimony and arguments could last most of the week. Rowling will spend her breaks in the seclusion of a jury room, away from fans of her wildly popular series.
The trial comes eight months after Rowling published her seventh and final book in the series. The books have been published in 64 languages, sold more than 400 million copies and produced a film franchise that has pulled in $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office.
In sometimes emotional testimony, Rowling recalled starting work on the first book in 1991 when she was 25 and so destitute that she sometimes had to choose between purchasing typewriter ribbon and food. She said the Harry Potter characters were a fantasy world to which she could escape from the hard work of raising a child on welfare as a single mother.
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