State TV: At least 12 killed, 232 wounded in clashes at Cairo church

Cairo (CNN) -- Egypt's prime minister called for an emergency Cabinet meeting Sunday, a day after officials reported at least 12 people were killed in sectarian clashes outside a Cairo church.

Officials said the violence began over rumors that a Christian woman who converted to Islam was being held at the church against her will.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf postponed a trip to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to discuss the church attack, according to EgyNews, Egypt's official news agency. Egyptian state TV said 10 people died and 232 were wounded in the violence Saturday. At least 190 were arrested.

Tensions between Egypt's Muslim majority and its Coptic Christian minority have been on the rise in recent months, with a number of violent clashes reported between the two groups. 

During clashes on Saturday, witnesses said an armed group of Muslims marched on Saint Mena Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the oldest churches in Egypt.

Witnesses said Muslims and Christians exchanged gunfire, sending people running for cover.

"With my own eyes I saw three people killed and dozens injured," said Mina Adel, a Christian resident. "There's no security here. There's a big problem. People attacked us, and we have to protect ourselves."

There were conflicting reports about who attacked the church.

Some witnesses said the group was made up of Muslim fundamentalists, known as Salafists. Others, including Interior Ministry spokesman Alla Mahmoud, said it was angry Muslims from a nearby mosque.

Mahmoud said the clashes were sparked by reports of a Christian woman who married a Muslim man and was allegedly being held inside the church.

Military, special forces and riot police were called in to try to break up the violence, firing warning shots in the air, according to witnesses.

At the same time, at the nearby Coptic Church of the Holy Virgin, firefighters responded to a blaze that witnesses said appeared to have been started by the members of the same group that attacked the other church.

Hundreds of residents in the working class neighborhood of Imbaba stood outside as the church burned and two men were seen jumping from a window of the building, according to witnesses.

Across the street, residents standing outside the Al Wehda mosque blamed "thugs" for the violence.

"It was thugs who burned the church, not Salafists (fundamentalists)," said Jamal El Banan. "We never had such sedition before the revolution."

Tensions were high in the neighborhood following the clashes, with soldiers firing shots into the air overnight to break up the crowd, witnesses said.

CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman, based in Cairo, described the crowd as "very hostile," saying he was forced to leave the neighborhood after his vehicle was targeted with rocks.

A Coptic church in the town of Alexandria was bombed on New Year's Day, killing 23 people -- the deadliest attack on Christians in Egypt in recent times.

Ten days later, a gunman killed a Christian man and wounded five others on a train in Egypt.

In November, a group with ties to al Qaeda in Iraq announced that all Christians in the Middle East would be "legitimate targets," as the group's deadline for Egypt's Coptic church to release alleged Muslim female prisoners expired.

The group's claim that the Coptic Church in Egypt is holding female prisoners is based on widespread rumors of Coptic women in Egypt converting to Islam and being detained by the church in an attempt to compel or persuade them to return to their original faith.

About 9% of Egypt's 80 million residents are Coptic Christians. They base their theology on the teachings of the Apostle Mark, who introduced Christianity to Egypt, according to St. Takla Church in Alexandria, the capital of Coptic Christianity.

The religion split with other Christians in the 5th century over the definition of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Timor Leste in ASEAN: Sooner rather than later

 Dewi Fortuna Anwar: JP/Arief Suhardiman

In early March 2011, Timor Leste formally submitted its application to join ASEAN. Since it gained formal independence in 2002, after a traumatic and violent separation from Indonesia in 1999, the leaders of Timor Leste have indicated that they saw Dili’s future as being part of ASEAN.

In July 2006, Jose Ramos Horta, attending his first ASEAN meeting as Prime Minister, stated in Kuala Lumpur that Timor Leste had already made the strategic decision to join ASEAN. Ramos Horta admitted then, however, that it would take a few years, maybe five or more, before his country could join ASEAN as a full member, given the quite onerous responsibilities that full membership in ASEAN would entail, not least the hundreds of meetings that take place every year.

Timor Leste, after all, had only gained independence a few short years earlier, facing many internal problems associated with a new state with limited means and, therefore, needed time to focus on internal consolidation. Indonesia has stated its support for Timor Leste’s eventual membership of ASEAN from the very beginning.

Despite the unhappy history of East Timor’s experience under Indonesia and the painful separation marked by violence in 1999, both Jakarta and Dili were determined to leave the past behind and begin a new chapter in their relations as two sovereign neighbors living in peace and harmony.

The challenges faced in deepening regional integration are well-known and adding new members, especially ones with very different levels of economic development and/or different political values, will clearly not make integration any easier. The European Union faced this problem as it enlarged its membership over successive periods, and ASEAN is still struggling with the challenges brought in by new members when Laos Myanmar became full members in 1997, and Cambodia joined in 1999. Vietnam joined the regional grouping in 1995.

The new members needed more time to carry out all of the obligations that they have signed, especially on economic issues. The greater diversity in social and political outlooks have also made the desire to develop and adhere to common norms and values as the bases of an ASEAN Community envisioned for 2015 extremely difficult to realize.

Yet Indonesia believes that it is better that Timor Leste be admitted as a full member of ASEAN sooner rather than later. Of course it is understood that a full membership has to go through a certain process, so it is unlikely that Timor Leste will be inducted as a member of ASEAN by the end of this year, even if the 18th ASEAN Summit held today in Jakarta endorsed Dili’s membership application. There are at least three major reasons why Jakarta is so keen to have Timor Leste be part of the ASEAN Community.

First, actively sponsoring Dili’s application for membership in ASEAN, especially in the face of resistance among a few members, is the final healing process in the relations between Indonesia and Timor Leste. There should be no doubt of Indonesia’s sincerity in this.

Second, there are the geo-political considerations. Indonesia clearly has no desire to have an enclave within its archipelago whose foreign policy orientation may not always be in step with Jakarta. While the Cold War has been over for two decades and relations between Indonesia and the giant communist power in the region, China, have become very close, the earlier geopolitical considerations have not entirely disappeared.

This writer fully agrees with Kavi Chongkittavorn, who wrote in his article, titled “East Timor and ASEAN: New Strategic Imperatives” (The Nation, Jan. 17, 2011), that the logic for ASEAN to admit Timor Leste as a member is similar to the imperative for admitting Myanmar in 1997, namely that alone Timor Leste, like Myanmar may become too dependent on Beijing. As Kavi pointed out, “Burma and East Timor share one commonality — intimate ties with China. Both nations are rich in energy resources”.

Third, as the ASEAN Community becomes fully realized and the economies of the ten member countries are increasingly integrated, it is not in Indonesia’s national interest either to have a territory sharing an island and a border with Indonesia being left out in the cold.

It is not going to be easy for Timor Leste to join ASEAN at this point in time when ASEAN is just four years away from its target of achieving an ASEAN Community. However, it will be doubly hard for Timor Leste to have to join an already full-fledged ASEAN Community. As ASEAN is willing to extend a helping hand to the other relative new comers, it is to be hoped that it will be willing to extend this assistance to Timor Leste.

Unlike some of the other new members of ASEAN Timor Leste has several distinct advantages in its favor. Its size and population is fairly small, and though its people are still poor, it has oil and gas, it has long enjoyed the goodwill and support of the international community — particularly western donor countries. In addition, Timor Leste is already a functioning democracy so that it will not have any troubles adhering to the values enshrined in the ASEAN Charter.

Let’s hope that in the not too distant future ASEAN will add its eleventh and final member into its midst.

Dewi Fortuna Anwar is research professor for Intermestic Affairs at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and currently serves as the Deputy Secretary for Political Affairs to the Vice President of Indonesia.

FPI to pray for Bin Laden

The Islam Defenders Front (FPI) says it is planning to organize a mass prayer after the killing of wanted terrorist and Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden by US troops on the weekend.

In a text message sent to tempointeraktif.com on Monday night, the organization said it wanted to pray for Bin Laden.

The event, the message says, would be held at the FPI headquarters in Petamburan, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The message, however, did not provide further information as to who else had been invited to the event.

Osama Bin Laden was found dead after a massive blitzkrieg by a group of US Navy Seals on Sunday night in the upmarket area of Abbottabad in Pakistan. US officials said Osama's remains had been quickly buried at sea after being treated in an Islamic way.

Sources: US in possession of Osama's body

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, is dead, and the U.S. is in possession of his body, a person familiar with the situation said late Sunday.

President Barack Obama was expected to address the nation on the developments Sunday night.

Two senior counterterrorism officials confirmed that bin Laden was killed in Pakistan last week. One said bin Laden was killed in a ground operation, not by a Predator drone. Both said the operation was based on U.S. intelligence, and both said the U.S. is in possession of bin Laden's body.

Officials long believed bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, was hiding a mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the president's statement.

The development comes just months before the tenth anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, orchestrated by bin Laden's al-Qaida organization. The attacks killed more than 3,000 people.

The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America's entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.

Al-Qaida organization was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.