Thousands of people have taken to the streets in the Turkish city of Istanbul and around the world to denounce Israel over its attack on the convoy of Gaza-bound aid ships that left at least 19 people dead.
Around 10,000 people marched from the Israeli consulate in Istanbul towards the city's main square shouting slogans and waving banners saying "Killer Israel".
Bulent Arinc, Turkey's deputy prime minister, said there were up to 400 Turks among those aboard the Mavi Maramara, the Turkish cruise vessel which was leading the so-called Freedom Flotilla.
Other demonstrations denouncing the Israeli raid have been held in many cities around the world, including the capitals of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and the UK.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank clashed with Israeli security forces who responded with tear gas, injuring many people.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, condemned Israel's actions and called for an investigation.
European anger
Pro-Palestinian campaigners marching in London spoke of their fears about the fate of British citizens aboard the flotilla.
Several hundreds activists blocked Whitehall, the main administrative area for the UK government, shouting "Free Palestine" and carrying flags and banners with slogans such as "Stop Israel's War Crimes in Gaza" and "End the Criminal Siege of Gaza".
Hundreds of protesters marched in London against the Israeli raid [Jacqueline Head]
Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who joined the demonstration, said: "Obviously we have great support for the humanitarian convoy which has gone there to try and bring relief to the people in Gaza.
"It is devastating and deplorable that the Israeli forces have attacked civilians on the flotilla.
"We have close friends on the boat on which people were killed and we are here waiting for news.
"We are trying to get through to them but we are not getting any answers."
Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Sweden have all summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective countries to protest against the assault.
Greek police fired tear gas at demonstrators protesting outside the Israeli embassy in Athens after about 2,500 protesters rallied outside the building, chanting "Hands off Gaza".
In Paris, hundreds of protesters also clashed with police after charging at the Israeli embassy.
Police responded by firing tear gas, and some officers used police batons to beat back protesters.
Paris police headquarters said about 1,200 people had joined the demonstration.
Consulate stormed
Earlier on Monday, protesters in Istanbul attempted to storm the consulate, scaling over the compound's walls, but were blocked from going further by police.
Protests also took place in Ankara, the Turkish capital.
A charity in Turkey has said most of those killed in the raid on six ships in international waters were Turkish nationals.
Israel has advised its citizens to avoid travel to Turkey and instructed those already there to keep a low profile and avoid crowded downtown areas.
Arinc said that the nation would be cancelling three joint military exercises and recalling a youth football team from Israel.
Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Istanbul, said relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated since Israel's recent war on Gaza.
"Up until that point they had ... a constructive military alliance and for many years they saw the issue of domestic terrorism as one they had to share information about," she said.
"But since the Gaza war relations have nose-dived and it would be absolutely fair to say that this is the lowest point."
International condemnation
Israeli forces stormed the flotilla, which was carrying 700 pro-Palestinian activists and 10,000 tonnes of aid, while they were 65km off the Gaza coast in international waters.
people on board
Two Palestinian's who are also members of Israeli parliament
Swedish author Henning Mankell (unharmed according to the Swedish foreign ministry)
Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire
Aengus Snodaigh, member of the Irish parliament
Irish writer and historian Fintan Lane
Three German parliamentarians
The action has brought widespread condemnation, with the EU foreign affairs chief demanding that Israeli authorities mount a "full inquiry" into the attack.
Catherine Ashton also reiterated a longstanding demand for "an immediate, sustained and unconditional opening of the crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons to and from Gaza," a spokesman said.
France and the UN's Middle East envoy have also condemned the attack, while Greece suspended a military exercise with Israel and postponed a visit by Israel's air force chief.
There are about 700 activists on board the flotilla, included people from the US, Britain, Australia, Greece, Canada, Malaysia, Algeria, Serbia, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Kuwait.
The majority of people on the ships are from Turkey.
By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 1, 2009
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has a message for despots and dictators: We can talk.
The world's top diplomat has had more face time with autocratic leaders than any of his recent predecessors, jetting off for tete-a-tetes with Burma's senior general, Than Shwe, and pulling aside Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at summits for discreet chats.
Ban has said he is confident that his trademark "quiet diplomacy" can help nudge the most recalcitrant leaders to mend their ways. He says he has pried open the door for aid workers in cyclone-ravaged Burma, gotten thousands of international peacekeepers into Darfur and helped raise the international profile of climate change.
"It is human relationships which can make a difference," Ban said in a recent interview, adding that he doesn't find it productive to scold foreign leaders in public but won't shrink from delivering tough messages in private. "Some might think I have been quite soft, but I have been quite straight, very strong in a sense."
The approach, however, has recently exposed the U.N. chief to criticism that he too often remains silent in the face of atrocities by the very leaders he seeks to cultivate, and that he has exaggerated his accomplishments. His frequent contacts with unsavory leaders have contributed to the United Nations' reputation as a forum for grubby compromises, detractors say.
"The main image people have of him is sitting down with the bad guys and getting nothing," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said of Ban.
As the Obama administration explores the merits of engagement with its adversaries, including Iran, North Korea and Syria, Ban's diplomatic strategy offers insights into some of the political risks of haggling with the world's most difficult political leaders. Halfway through his first term, Ban is facing a leadership crisis as U.N. civil servants and diplomats here increasingly portray him as an ineffective administrator whose reluctance to hold outlaw leaders to account for bad behavior has undercut the United Nations' moral authority.
For Ban, perhaps the greatest test of engagement as a policy came earlier this year.
In Sri Lanka, where the government was pushing to crush the ruthless Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the secretary general reached out to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to persuade him to show restraint to protect the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians forced to serve as the Tigers' human shields.
In an effort to maintain a cordial working relationship with Rajapaksa, Ban and his top advisers withheld criticism of the government, advising U.N. human rights officials not to publish U.N. estimates of the civilian death toll in the conflict, arguing that they were not convinced of their credibility, according to officials familiar with the discussions. In the end, Ban's diplomatic intervention achieved a brief weekend pause in the fighting but did little to stem to slaughter, which cost the lives of 7,800 to 20,000 civilians.
Ban says he won commitments from Sri Lankan leaders to improve conditions for displaced people and to pursue reconciliation, but his handling of such crises has raised questions among some U.N. diplomats about his viability for a second term.
Norway's U.N. ambassador, Mona Juul, wrote that Ban is a "spineless and charmless" leader who has failed to convey the U.N.'s "moral voice and authority," according to a confidential memo to Norway's foreign minister. Juul, whose husband, Terje Roed-Larsen, serves as one of Ban's Middle East envoys, sharply criticized Ban's handling of the crises in Sri Lanka and Burma in the memo, which was first published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
"The Secretary-General was a powerless observer to thousands of civilians losing their lives and becoming displaced from their homes," Juul wrote of Ban's role in Sri Lanka. "The moral voice and authority of the Secretary-General has been missing."
Ban has been stung by the criticism and said he is striving to improve his performance. But he suggested that the criticism stemmed from a misunderstanding in the West of his Asian diplomatic approach. "We need to be able to respect the culture, tradition and leadership style of each and every leader," Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, told reporters in a visit to Oslo on Monday. "I have my own charisma, I have my own leadership style."
Mission to Burma
Despite the criticism, Ban still enjoys the support of the United Nations' most powerful countries, including the United States, China and Britain, and of the U.S. Congress, which has recently voted to pay off American debt to the United Nations.
Ban's advisers say the criticism is patently unfair and does not take into account his willingness to speak out against abuses. Ban infuriated China by criticizing its treatment of ethnic Uighurs in western China, he has spoken out against Iranian President Mamhoud Ahmedinijad's nuclear ambitions and his frequent anti-Israeli remarks, and he has publicly scolded the powerful Group of Eight industrial powers for not committing to steeper emissions cuts.
Still, U.N. officials and diplomats are concerned that the criticism of Ban's political mediation is overshadowing what they believe is his most important accomplishment: rallying international support for a treaty that would reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
The Obama administration has publicly praised Ban's performance. But before joining the administration, Samantha Power, the White House's top U.N. specialist, was a sharp critic of Ban's diplomatic style, characterizing his handling of the Darfur crisis as "extremely disappointing."
"Can we afford to do without a global figure, a global leader?" she told the New Statesman, a British magazine, last year.
U.S. officials say that Power's comments do not reflect the views of the administration and that they were made before she had an opportunity to work closely with Ban.
"Secretary General Ban has one of the most difficult jobs in the world," Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement. "I believe he is principled, hard-working, cares deeply and is willing to take risks to carry out his mission." Rice also credited Ban with increasing the number of women in senior posts and "bringing countries together to tackle challenges such as climate change and global health."
But Rice has differed with Ban over his engagement strategy, and she cautioned him against traveling to Burma in July. Rice argued that a high-profile meeting with the Burmese military ruler would make him look weak unless he extracted a clear commitment to democratic reform, according to U.N. officials.
During his visit, Than Shwe bluntly rejected Ban's appeal to release opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi; Ban's request to meet with her also was denied. Five weeks later, a Burmese court sentenced Suu Kyi to 18 additional months under house arrest, ensuring that she will not participate in the country's national elections next year.
But Burma's ruler subsequently allowed another visitor, Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), to meet with Suu Kyi and to take home a U.S. citizen, John Yettaw, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for paying an unauthorized visit to her villa.
Ban bridles at the suggestion that his trip was a failure, saying he has established a vital personal channel to the Burmese leader. Ban said he also prevailed upon Than Shwe to allow him to address a gathering of Burmese officials, academics and relief groups, where he sharply criticized Burma's human rights record and publicly chided Than Shwe for rebuffing his request to see Suu Kyi. "That was unprecedented," Ban said.
Burmese opposition leaders say that while they appreciate Ban's efforts, they do not think he has moved the country toward democracy. "I don't want to say it was totally nothing," Burma's exiled prime minister, Sein Win, said during a recent visit to U.N. headquarters. "When you look at the immediate impact, of course, we could not see anything."
'Spotlight' on Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, Ban and his advisers sought to perform a delicate balancing act. They pressed the country's leader in private to halt the shelling of civilian zones, while avoiding an open confrontation with cautiously worded public statements about the violence.
Human rights advocates faulted Ban for not pressing hard enough to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its actions. Days after the war ended, the secretary general signed a joint agreement with Rajapaksa committing Sri Lanka to pursue political reconciliation with ethnic Tamils and to release hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnic Tamils in government-controlled camps.
In exchange, Ban dropped a U.N. push for an independent investigation into war crimes, leaving it to Sri Lanka to determine whether its military was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the final offensive. Two days later, Sri Lankan diplomats, citing the agreement, quashed a proposal by the top U.N. human rights official to create an independent commission of inquiry to probe war crimes in the country.
Some diplomats have defended Ban's handling of the crisis, saying he pushed far more aggressively to protect Sri Lankan civilians than did any government, including the United States, India, China, Russia and key European powers.
"He put a spotlight on what was happening in Sri Lanka," said John Sawers, Britain's U.N. ambassador. "So it's not perfect in Sri Lanka; far too many civilians got killed and there is still an outstanding problem with the civilians in the [Internally Displaced Persons] camps. But I believe Ban's engagement made the situation less bad than it would otherwise have been."
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