Egypt starts building steel wall on Gaza Strip border

Egypt has begun constructing a huge metal wall along its border with the Gaza Strip as it attempts to cut smuggling tunnels, the BBC has learned.

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Cairo:  When it is finished the wall will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long and will extend 18 metres below the surface.

The Egyptians are being helped by American army engineers, who the BBC understands have designed the wall.

The plan has been shrouded in secrecy, with no comment or confirmation from the Egyptian government.

The wall will take 18 months to complete.

For weeks local farmers have noticed more activity at the border where trees were being cut down, but very few of them were aware that a barrier was being built.

'Impenetrable'

That is because the barrier, made of super-strength steel, has been hidden deep underground.

The BBC has been told that it was manufactured in the US, that it fits together in similar fashion to a jigsaw, and that it has been tested to ensure it is bomb proof.

It cannot be cut or melted - in short it is impenetrable.

Intelligence sources in Egypt say the barrier is being sunk close to the perimeter wall that already exists.

They claim 4km of the wall has already been completed north of the Rafah crossing, with work now beginning to the south.

The land beneath Egypt and Gaza resembles a Swiss cheese, full of holes and tunnels through which the Palestinians smuggle the everyday items they are denied by the blockade.

But the Israelis say the tunnels are also used to smuggle people, weapons, and the components of the rockets that are fired at southern Israeli towns.

The wall is not expected to stop all the smuggling, but it will force the Palestinians to go deeper and it will likely cut the hundreds of superficial tunnels closer to the surface that are used to move the bulk of the goods.

'US arrests' in Pakistan

PAKISTAN:  The FBI is investigating five American Muslim students who are thought to have been arrested in Pakistan yesterday on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks after disappearing from their homes in the U.S. last month.

Pakistani police said they arrested the five men, aged between 18 early 20s, in a raid on the house of a member of the banned militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, in the town of Sargodha in the eastern province of Punjab.

The FBI has yet to confirm their nationalities or identities, but Pakistani officials said the men were all U.S. citizens, including three of Pakistani descent, one of Egyptian descent and one of Yemeni descent, and had been staying at the house since November 30.

Their arrest came as David C. Headley, another U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, pleaded not guilty yesterday to terrorism charges in a case that has raised fears about Islamic militant groups' ability to recruit and operate inside the United States.

Muslim leaders in Washington said the five men -- all students -- had been living with their families in northern Virginia state until they disappeared last month, and one had left behind a Jihadist-style "farewell" video message.

Officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) told reporters that the men's families contacted the organization after they went missing.

Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director, declined to give the men’s names, ages or nationalities, but one of them has been identified as a dental student at Howard University in Washington.

Mr Awad said the families brought along a video that included war images and Koranic verses and showed one of the five men delivering a "final statement".

"It's like a farewell," he said of the 11-minute, English-language video that one of the families reportedly found in their home.

"There were... images of conflict," he added. "It was generic, but you can draw your own conclusions."

After viewing the video, CAIR contacted the FBI, which appeared to have been unaware of the men's activities, said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's national communications director.

The FBI said in a statement that it was aware of the arrests in Pakistan and was now working with families and local law enforcement to investigate the missing students.

"We are working with Pakistan authorities to determine their identities and the nature of their business there, if indeed these are the students who had gone missing," said Lindsey Godwin, an FBI spokeswoman.

"Because this is an ongoing investigation, we will not be able to provide further details at this time," she added.

An FBI team is currently visiting India and Pakistan principally to gather and share evidence on the case of Mr Headley, 49, who is charged with helping to plan terrorist attacks in Denmark and India.

Mr Headley -- who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 -- pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges including plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, and scouting targets for last year’s militant attacks on Mumbai.

The son of a Pakistani diplomat and his American socialite wife is also accused of providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group blamed the Mumbai attacks, and attending training camps in Pakistan run by the banned group.

Bin Laden is key to defeating al-Qaeda: McChrystal

WASHINGTON:   The general in charge of the war in Afghanistan says capturing Osama bin Laden is the ultimate key to defeating the al-Qaida terror network.

General Stanley McChrystal told Congress on Tuesday that bin Laden is an "iconic figure" whose very survival eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks serves as a recruiting tool for al-Qaida. U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden is in hiding in Pakistan, along that country's rugged border with Afghanistan.

McChrystal says finding bin Laden isn't the key to winning the war in Afghanistan. But he says he does not think that the United States will defeat the terror network outright until bin Laden is found and brought to justice.

Sarkozy warns against religious "provocation"

PARIS:  President Nicolas Sarkozy warned French believers to refrain from religious "ostentation and provocation" on Tuesday after the Swiss vote to ban minarets stoked debate about Islam in France.

The president made the statement in an opinion piece in Le Monde daily, wading into an increasingly tense debate over national identity that has zeroed in on immigration fears in France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority.

"Christians, Jews, Muslims, all believers regardless of their faith, must refrain from ostentation and provocation and ... practice their religion in humble discretion," wrote Sarkozy.

"Anything that could appear as a challenge" to France's Christian roots and republican values would lead to "failure" in efforts to promote a form of moderate Islam in France, he warned.

With Islam now the nation's second faith, France has sought to reaffirm its staunchly secular tradition which sees religion as a strictly private affair while seeking to avoid a clash of civilizations within its borders.

Islam allows mixing of the sexes: Saudi scholar

JEDDAH:   Mixing of the sexes is permissable in Islam and is a natural part of life, the president of the Mecca branch of the religious police told a Saudi paper, adding he did not understand why there was so much outrage when the co-ed university, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), was opened.

Those who oppose mixing of the sexes are contradicting themselves as they most likely mix with the opposite sex on a daily basis, such as having female servants, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Qassim Al-Ghamdi, the head of Mecca's Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice committee, told Saudi's Okaz newspaper.

Al-Ghamdi added that it is only a minority of scholars that ban mixing of the sexes and said these scholars had no strong evidence to support their claims and were leading today's Muslims astray from the Muslims during the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

The sheikh went on to say that mixing of the sexes was never prohibited during the Prophet's times and was a natural part of life of the Sahaba's, or Prophet's companions.

Al-Ghamdi also argued that the term "mixing" could not be found in Shariah, or Islamic law, and said Shariah says nothing about banning non-married men and women from working, studying and socializing with each other.

"Islamic law says nothing about mixing unlike the numerous laws on things such as divorce, trading and war. Mixing of the sexes does not have official laws or concepts."

Al-Ghamdi said the term mixing was coined simply because some scholars have exaggerated the so-called taboo of mixing of the sexes despite the fact that it is natural.

"It is dangerous when the term mixing is being connected with the science of Islamic law this affects the heritage of islamic law negatively because have given a fake idea merit," which al-Ghamdi said leads to chaos.

There is usually strict segregation between men and women in Saudi circles and the sexes do not mix in schools, universities, officies and even restaurants and malls have female only areas.