Israeli diplomats have started wearing jeans and sandals to work and caused a series of diplomatic faux pas in a protest over salary conditions, a foreign ministry official said Tuesday.
The increasingly public dispute has compounded Israel’s diplomatic woes at a time when it is struggling to contain the backlash from a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid fleet last month that frayed relations with key ally Turkey.
“For several days now foreign ministry employees have come to work in jeans and sandals, without wearing ties, to protest their treatment,” the official said.
“They are following orders from the employees’ committee,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
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Indian jailed in Oz for killing wife
Sydney, June 29: An Indian man beat his wife “to a pulp” with a stake as she wept down the phone to their daughter, a judge in Australia said on Tuesday, jailing him for 17 years for the murder.
Punjab man Sukhmander Singh, 44, pleaded guilty to murdering his wife Mohinder Kaur as they strolled near a lake in northern Melbourne in May 2009, ending a lifetime of violent abuse. Judge Terry Forrest said the couple’s daughter, Sarabjit, 21, was speaking with her mother on the phone when Singh attacked her, and she was forced to listen to the fatal beating. “She heard what sounded like a crack, and the last words she heard her mother utter were: ‘Neena, your father is killing me’,” said Mr Forrest. —AFP
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N-swap talks to continue, says Tehran
Tehran, June 29: Iran said on Tuesday that its decision to freeze talks with world powers for two months relates only to its overall atomic programme and does not include discussions on a nuclear fuel deal.
Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters the issue of Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment programme is separate from that of a proposed swap deal that would ensure a fuel supply for the Tehran research reactor. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday ruled out talks with the P5+1 world powers — Britain, France, Russia, China, the US and Germany — on Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme until the end of the Iranian month of Mordad, around late August. —AFP
The hardliner said Iran wanted more countries to be involved in talks over its nuclear programme, and added world powers must clarify Israel’s status of nuclear arsenal and what exactly they sought from the discussions.
Asked at a news conference on Tuesday whether the freeze declared by Mr Ahmadinejad includes discussions on a fuel swap deal, Mr Mottaki replied: “The question of Mordad is (only) about the five-plus-one. Negotiations about the fuel swap are only about the fuel swap and negotiations with five-plus-one are about the common points of the proposed packages... these two things are separate.”
—AFP