Deal with the past, urges McGrory

The head of Northern Ireland's prosecution service has questioned if politicians have the will to tackle the fallout from the decades of violence in the region.

There is a long-running debate on how to deal with the legacy of the Troubles, with some victims calling for prosecutions in unsolved murders, and others demanding information on how and why their loved ones were killed.

Barra McGrory, director of the Public
Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland,
addresses the Committee on the Administration of Justice

Barra McGrory was a high profile defence lawyer before recently being appointed director of public prosecutions.

In a speech to leading human rights watchdog the Belfast-basedCommittee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), he said the question of dealing with Northern Ireland's past should be a priority.

"I think there is an imperative in the public interest that society finds a mechanism to deal with the past," he said.

"Whether that be simply giving more resources to the investigators to get on with the investigating, and then consequentially the prosecution service to prosecute cases if the evidence emerges, or whether or not society is ready for a solution to the past outside of the prosecutorial system, is a matter that I think this society needs to confront.

"In my view, the sooner it confronts it the better, but confront it it needs to."

Mr McGrory has said his decision to become a lawyer was heavily influenced by his late father Paddy McGrory, who acted in a series of high profile cases across the political divide but who rose to international prominence as legal representative for the families of three unarmed IRA members shot dead by security forces in Gibraltar in 1988.

He said that during his time as a defence lawyer, he rarely had reason to consider how the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) decided whether or not to proceed with prosecutions.

But Mr McGrory said his role in public inquiries had stirred a greater interest in the issue. He added: "I think, perhaps even it would be safe to say that my representation of the (sectarian murder victim Robert) Hamill family was one of the reasons why I perhaps took an interest in this job, in that, for the first time as a lawyer I had to confront the difficulties faced by victims of a crime and how they related to the prosecution and how the prosecution related to them. And that brought home to me the importance of the role."

©Press Association

UN Security Council discusses Syrian crisis

The U.N. Security Council on Friday was discussing an Arab League-backed plan to respond to the crisis in Syria, diplomats said as they headed into the closed-door consultations.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud said council members expected a presentation by the Moroccan ambassador, whose country joined the council this month.

Araud said a new Arab-European draft resolution reflecting the Arab League's demands on Syria would be introduced, and he hoped that it would be voted on next week. "We have waited too long," he said.

The U.N. says at least 5,400 have been killed in a months-long Syrian government crackdown on civilian protests.

European diplomats have been meeting this week with diplomats from Arab countries, including Morocco and Qatar, on a resolution that would strongly back an Arab League bid to end the crisis.

"There is now a chance that the Security Council will finally take a clear stand on Syria. That is long overdue," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Friday at the General Affairs Council in Brussels. The comments were provided by the German mission to journalists at the U.N.

On Tuesday, the Arab League secretary-general and Qatar's prime minister will brief the Security Council on the situation in Syria.

"We hope now that council members will seize this new window of opportunity and find common ground," German Ambassador Peter Wittig said.

But approval was far from guaranteed.

Permanent council members Russia and China used their veto powers last fall to block an earlier European resolution on Syria. On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying Moscow will oppose a new draft U.N. resolution on Syria because it fails to take Kremlin's concerns into account.

South African Ambassador Baso Sangqu said it was important that supporters of the resolution assure other countries, including his, that the draft was not a plan for regime change.

Russia and some other countries believe NATO misused last year's Security Council's resolutions on Libya as a pretext for regime change in that nation.

Anti-Syrian regime protesters
wave Syrian revolution flags

Russia has been a strong ally of Syria since Soviet times, when the country was led by the president's father Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons.

The new Arab-European draft resolution on Syria, obtained by The Associated Press, expresses support of the Arab League's Jan. 22 decision "to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system."

The draft does not mention sanctions, but calls for the adoption of unspecified "further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States," if Syria does not comply within 15 days.

The draft also condemns the "continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities" and demands that the Syrian government immediately stop all human rights violations.

The Arab League earlier this month sent observers to Syria, but the mission was widely criticized for failing to stop the violence. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission Tuesday, asking the Security Council to intervene because the Syrian government has not halted its crackdown.

The head of Arab League observers in Syria said in a statement that violence in the country has spiked over the past few days. Sudanese Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi said the cities of Homs, Hama and Idlib have all witnessed a "very high escalation" in violence since Tuesday.

Associated Press writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

Male sex drive 'to blame for wars'

Male sex drive is at the root of most conflict in the world, from football violence to world wars, scientists have claimed.

A review of psychological evidence concludes that men are shaped by evolution to be aggressive towards "outsiders".

The tendency, at the heart of all inter-tribal violence, emerged through natural selection as a result of competition for mates.

Today it can be seen in large-scale conflicts between nations as well as clashes involving rival gangs, football fans or religious groups, say the researchers.

Male sex drive is at the root of most conflict in the world, f
rom football violence to world wars, say scientists

Women, on the other hand, are said to have evolved to resolve conflicts peacefully. Natural selection has programmed them to "tend and befriend" to protect their offspring.

Professor Mark van Vugt, from the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, said: "A solution to conflict, which is an all too common problem in societies today, remains elusive. One reason for this might be the difficulty we have in changing our mindset, which has evolved over thousands of years.

"Our review of the academic literature suggests that the human mind is shaped in a way that tends to perpetuate conflict with 'outsiders'. Our research finds that conflict between rival groups of men has presented opportunities to gain access to mates, territory and increased status.

"We believe this has resulted through natural selection in an evolved psychology amongst men to initiate and display acts of inter-group aggression."

The findings, which support the so-called "male warrior hypothesis", are published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

In all cultures and throughout history men rather than women have sought to get their way by initiating violence, the psychologists claim. Men were more likely to demonstrate prejudice and discrimination against other men viewed as outsiders, according to the research.