Israel releases 9 Hamas lawmakers from prison, many still detained

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A Hamas legislator in the West Bank says Israel has released nine other Hamas lawmakers from Israeli prisons.

The legislator, Mahmoud Ramahi, says the men had all completed 40-month prison terms and their release Wednesday did not appear to be a gesture from Israel. Israeli officials had no comment.

Israel rounded up more than 30 Hamas lawmakers in 2006 after Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier, apparently as bargaining chips in efforts to free the soldier. He is still being held in Gaza.

Ramahi says 23 of Hamas' 74 elected lawmakers remain in Israeli prisons.

Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. The next year, Hamas overran Gaza, leaving the Palestinians with rival governments in Gaza and the West Bank.

Algeria Considers Amnesty to End Violence, State Radio Says

By Ahmed Rouaba

Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A general amnesty is being considered for Algerians involved in the conflict between insurgent Islamists and the government, which has claimed 100,000 lives since 1992, state-run Algeria Radio reported.

Farouk Ksentini, the head of the government human rights commission, told Algeria Radio today that he expects the amnesty granting immunity from prosecution to start in 2010.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decade in power has been marked by a crackdown on anti-government, Islamic militant groups, some of which disbanded in response to an amnesty he proposed.

Kesentini said on Algeria Radio those reconciliation measures have had a success rate of up to 90 percent.

Source: Bloomberg.
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601104&sid=aEjUmCkjPjMk.

Indonesian quake toll at 63, dozens still missing

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesian rescue workers pulled several bodies from the rubble of a giant landslide Friday, lifting the death toll from a powerful earthquake to 63. Dozens more people were still missing, feared dead.

Hopes of finding possible survivors were fading, two days after the quake, officials said.

The number of houses recorded as destroyed or damaged in Wednesday's magnitude 7.0 temblor, which was centered off the southern coast of the main island of Java, jumped to more than 87,000, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said.

Around 28,000 people were in need of shelter, he said. Aid agencies were distributing tents, blankets and basic provisions, but some rural areas were difficult to reach.

Two dozen bodies have been recovered from Cikangkareng village, in the badly hit district of Cianjur, where 33 people were still missing after 10 houses and a mosque were buried under tons of rock and mud.

"Their parents are still waiting at the scene, hoping we will find the bodies," rescue worker Agus Sobari said.

Other victims have been found under collapsed houses and debris in towns and cities across West Java province. More than 400 people were injured and 125 people were hospitalized with broken bones and cuts, the disaster agency said on its Web site.

The search for survivors would last a week, Kardono said, but the likelihood of finding anyone alive was becoming increasingly slim.

"We cannot conclude they have died until emergency response efforts are over," Kardono said.

Residents in Cikangkareng have described how after the quake struck Wednesday afternoon there was a deafening roar as giant boulders tumbled down the mountainside. Among the dead and missing are at least 13 children who had been playing video games.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago, straddles continental plates and is prone to seismic activity along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. A huge quake off western Indonesia caused a powerful tsunami in December 2004 that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, half of them in Aceh province.

Weather helping fight against massive LA blaze

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES – Crews say they're making excellent progress against a massive wildfire north of Los Angeles as cooler, moist weather allows them to set backfires.

The blaze in the Angeles National Forest had burned nearly 219 square miles, or 140,150 acres, by early Wednesday. It grew by about 20 square miles overnight but was 22 percent contained.

U.S. Forest Service Cmdr. Mike Dietrich says some strike crews could be released as the danger to foothill communities eases.

However, thousands of homes are still considered threatened. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger planned to visit the fire area Wednesday morning.

Dietrich also says Mount Wilson, which holds a major telecommunications center, is strongly defended and appears to be in good shape.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters made dramatic gains early Wednesday on a massive wildfire north of Los Angeles, buoyed by lower temperatures and higher humidity.

The fire had little active flame, fire spokeswoman Gail Wright said, adding: "This is a good day."

Firefighters early Wednesday touched off backfires behind homes along the edges of Angeles National Forest and bulldozers are scratching a line around the perimeter of the fire, which has burned nearly 200 square miles of tinder-dry brush. Dozers still have 95 miles of fire line to build.

Evacuation orders have been lifted in wide areas of La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta, but thousands of residents are still out of homes. Officials also were concerned that the wind, which had been calm overnight, would pick up Wednesday afternoon and move flames closer to homes and a historic observatory.

U.S. Forest Service incident commander Mike Dietrich was not willing to say a corner had been turned.

"Right now if I were in a boxing match, I'd think we're even today," Dietrich said Tuesday.

Firefighters on Tuesday lit backfires and hand crews and bulldozers combed the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, cutting broad and winding fire lines, raising containment to 22 percent. Since erupting Aug. 26, the blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced some 12,000 people to flee their homes.

In a hillside neighborhood of Glendale, Frank Virgallito stood in a group anxiously watching a controlled burn edge toward their neighborhood.

Virgallito said he and his neighbors had been on high alert since Friday but ignored a voluntary evacuation.

"You don't sleep well," Virgallito said. "I get up every hour and a half or two hours to get a good view of where the fire is. For four days we've been a little sleep-deprived. It's unnerving."

Virgallito said he saw deer, coyote and skunks scampering down his street away from the heat and ash of the smoldering wilderness.

Officials also worried about the threat to a historic observatory and TV, radio and other antennas on Mount Wilson northeast of Los Angeles. But on Tuesday, firefighters set backfires near the facilities before a giant World War II-era seaplane-turned-air tanker made a huge water drop on flames inching toward the peak from the north and west.

By nightfall, 150 firefighters and engines were stationed at the peak to defend the towers, said fire spokesman Paul Lowenthal.

The flames crossed the Angeles Crest Highway into the San Gabriel Wilderness to the east on Tuesday, Lowenthal said. Firefighters made progress on fire breaks to the north near Acton and southwest from Altadena to the Sunland neighborhood.

Firefighters and longtime residents know it could be so much worse. Autumn is the season for the ferocious Santa Ana winds to sweep in from the northeastern deserts, gaining speed through narrow mountain canyons, sapping moisture from vegetation and pushing flames farther out into the suburbs.

"If we had Santa Anas, we still have all this open land here on the western flank and islands of vegetation would throw embers into the air, which would blow down to the homes..." Fire spokesman Henry Martinez said, his voice trailing off as he imagined the worst-case scenario. "Let's hope that doesn't happen."

The wildfire season usually doesn't gather steam until the winds hit in October, but the Station fire has been driven by dryness instead of wind. The region is in the midst of a three-year drought, and the tinder-dry forest is ripe for an explosive fire.

Fire officials said 12,000 homes are threatened, but as evacuations are lifted, that number will likely fall.

Smoke billowed thousands of feet up in the air, forming what firefighters call an "ice cap," which dissipated and was pushed east for at least 800 miles.

In Colorado, smoke from the Station Fire combined with soot from local fires to block mountain views from Denver.

"That really speaks to the columns of smoke and how much burning was going on," said Norv Larson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, Colo.

"I've put haze in the forecast. I don't see it ending anytime soon," Larson said. "We've got our fires here, you've got your fires there."

Flames charred other parts of Southern California, including one that burned at least 1.5 square miles in the San Bernardino County community of Oak Glen and another that threatened 400 homes in Yucaipa and was at 70 percent containment.

"There's action everywhere," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said as a helicopter interrupted his comments at a news conference in San Bernardino County.

Lance Williams, 49, managed to save his aunt's home in Delta Flats, a remote community tucked in a canyon in the Angeles National Forest, but returned Tuesday to find his neighbors' homes in ashes.

"It looked like hell," Williams said. "The fire was creating its own winds. There was no way of predicting which way it would go."

He said he used a water pump to fight off the firestorm that raced down hillsides into the canyon. By the time he ran out of water, fire crews had arrived to defend the home that had been in his family since 1945.

Near the remains of house, the charred frames of animal cages swayed in a light wind. In one of the cages, the remains of three small dogs were found.

The massive fire also took a toll on firefighters who bunk down each night in tents at the huge fire command center. Glendale firefighter-paramedic Jack Hayes, 31, said he had not taken a day off for a week.

"You can't sleep," said Hayes, who had the beginnings of a beard and bloodshot eyes. "You're ready to go and there's always something you could be doing."

Two firefighters — Capt. Tedmund Hall, 47, of San Bernardino and firefighter Specialist Arnaldo "Arnie" Quinones, 35, of Palmdale — were killed Sunday when their vehicle plummeted off a mountain road. Quinones' wife is expecting a child soon, and Hall had a wife and two adult children.

Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics

Obama Facing Major Strategy Decisions

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military playbook, according to senior American military officials who acknowledged that the enemy's resurgence this year has taken them by surprise.

U.S. rules of engagement restricting the use of air power and aggressive action against civilians have also opened new space for the insurgents, officials said. Western development projects, such as new roads, schools and police stations, have provided fresh targets for Taliban roadside bombs and suicide attacks. The inability of rising numbers of American troops to protect Afghan citizens has increased resentment of the Western presence and the corrupt Afghan government that cooperates with it, the officials said.

As President Obama faces crucial decisions on his war strategy and declining public support at home, administration and defense officials are studying the reasons why the Taliban appears, for the moment at least, to be winning.

In the spring, Obama outlined a broad new direction for the war that he said his predecessor had starved of attention and resources. He changed the military leadership on the ground, asked Congress for additional money and authorized more manpower. The administration has said that it expects the strategy -- still barely off the ground -- to show results in a year to 18 months.

But many U.S. officials and their allies feel that they are in a race against time and the determination of a battle-hardened enemy that has learned from its own mistakes and those of U.S. and NATO forces over nearly eight years of combat. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, gave Obama an assessment this week of what he described as a "serious" situation.

"The point is that the Taliban, who have had a very clear aim and means from the very beginning, have been able slowly and steadily to get better at what they're doing," said a European official whose country's troops are fighting alongside U.S. forces. More U.S. and NATO troops have been killed in 2009 than in any year since the war began in late 2001; U.S. deaths in August reached an all-time monthly high of 47.

Although McChrystal's report has not been publicly released, officials said it calls for further significant strategic revisions. In the coming weeks, Obama will weigh the merits of McChrystal's recommendations and decide whether to provide whatever additional troops are necessary to implement them.

About a dozen military officials in Washington and at regional command headquarters here and abroad discussed Taliban capabilities and battlefield trends on the condition of anonymity. Most expressed optimism that with time the U.S. strategy could prevail, but said that the Taliban has gained psychological, as well as actual, ground.

"There are periods when an enemy does well and seems better trained and fights harder," one senior defense official said. "The number one indicator we have out there now is that they think they're winning. That creates an attitude, a positive outlook, and a willingness to sacrifice."

The positive outlook has a basis in fact, the official said, as areas of Taliban influence have expanded. "They have enough of the landscape that they control to be able to train more and in closer proximity to where they're fighting. And the people [living] there actually believe the Taliban can do something."

U.S. military officials differ on the extent of Taliban success and the reasons for it. Senior U.S. commanders in eastern Afghanistan, where insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani's network is dominant, said that the sophistication of the insurgents' attacks had increased markedly, beginning with bloody battles along the Pakistani border last summer. To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments.

"In some cases . . . we started to see that enhanced form of attack," said one Army general who oversaw forces in Afghanistan until earlier in the summer. As attacks in the east have increased this year, some officers have speculated that the insurgents are getting more direct help from professional fighters from Arab and Central Asian countries. These embedded trainers, the officers said, play almost the same role as U.S. military training teams that live with and mentor Afghan government forces. In recent months, the Taliban fighters have used mortars to force U.S. troops into defensive positions, where they are then hit with rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and machine guns. Insurgent units have learned to maintain "radio silence" as they move and to wet down the ground to prevent dusty recoil that would make them targets. They have "developed the ability to do some of the things that make up what you call a disciplined force," including treating casualties, the Army general said.

Israelis, Palestinians resume high-level talks

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Israel and the Palestinians held their first high-level talks since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March, sharing ideas on how to shore up a fledgling Palestinian economic recovery.

The meeting between Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Palestinian Economics Minister Bassem Khoury was the latest sign of a thaw in frosty relations. Last week, both sides said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could soon hold his first meeting with Netanyahu, despite Israel's refusal to freeze settlement construction.

The meeting Wednesday at a Jerusalem hotel was the first Cabinet-level encounter between the Netanyahu and Abbas governments. The agenda included easing restrictions on the entry of Palestinian businesspeople and VIPs to Israel; boosting Israeli meat exports to the West Bank and dairy imports from the West Bank to Israel; allowing more Palestinians to seek medical care in Israel; and joint industrial parks, Israeli officials said.

Khoury said he also brought up the movement of goods into and out of the Gaza Strip. The coastal strip, ruled by the rival Hamas militant group, is under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade.

Netanyahu has said he wants to make "economic peace" with the Palestinians, maintaining that prosperity could reduce the risk of violence and pave the way for more substantive talks on resolving the decades-long political conflict.

Many Palestinians fear Netanyahu is using "economic peace" as a fig leaf to avoid reaching a political accord on Palestinian statehood. And critics on both sides have noted that both Palestinian uprisings against Israel ignited at times of unparalleled gains in the struggling Palestinian economy.

"Our objective is economic peace," Shalom told reporters before the meeting. "That doesn't prevent political dialogue, but rather, assists it and gives it momentum."

After the meeting, Khoury said he hoped tangible improvements would follow.

"We hope it will not only be words but there will also be some actions on the ground as well so we can really see the end of these measures that are stifling the growth of the Palestinian economy," he said.

The two sides agreed to meet every four to six weeks and to set up teams to handle day-to-day issues, Israeli officials said.

Economic improvement in the West Bank could boost Abbas, sharpening the contrast to the misery of the impoverished and isolated Gaza Strip, ruled by his bitter rival, the Islamic militant Hamas. Popular support for Abbas has ebbed because he had nothing to show for a year of peace talks with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert.

Privately, some Palestinians concede that Netanyahu has done more to improve conditions for the Palestinians during his five months in office than Olmert did in three years, despite his oft-stated commitment to reaching a peace accord.

Since Netanyahu has taken office, he has taken down some roadblocks and eased other travel restrictions that were imposed years ago to keep militants out of Israel but also choked the Palestinian economy. This has allowed for a smoother movement of goods and a consequent upswing in the West Bank's retail and entertainment sectors.

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund predicted that the Palestinian economy could grow by 7 percent this year, its first optimistic forecast in three years.

Despite the recent gestures, significant constraints on movement in the West Bank remain, hobbling growth in industry, exports and investments. Gaza, meanwhile, remains under a tight Israeli and Egyptian blockade that is cracked open just enough to avert a humanitarian crisis.

Peace talks — held until late last year — have not resumed. The Palestinians insist that Israel first freeze settlement activities in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas where they hope to establish an independent state. The U.S. has similarly demanded a settlement halt but Israel has refused.

Israeli officials were to meet later Wednesday in New York with George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, to discuss the settlement issue.

In the absence of formal peace talks, Abbas aides have said he might meet with Netanyahu on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting later this month.

China set to approve 1-dose swine flu vaccines

BEIJING – China will soon approve domestically developed swine flu vaccines that manufacturers say can protect people against the virus with only one dose, an encouraging development for health officials racing to prepare for an expected spike in cases this winter.

Many health authorities are assuming two doses of vaccine are necessary while they await the results of trials by drug makers around the world to determine the appropriate dosage.

China's State Food and Drug Administration said on its Web site it will make a decision this week on approving two vaccines that completed clinical trials last month and passed reviews by panels of about 40 experts. Four other vaccines are being reviewed, it said.

The vaccine makers, Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Hualan Biological Engineering Inc., said the clinical trials show their products are effective in single doses when used on people aged three to 60 years. More than 3,000 people participated in the trials.

Sinovac says it has the capacity to produce up to 30 million doses of swine flu vaccine in a year while Hualan said it can make 160 million doses.

Stockpiling vaccines is China's latest move in its aggressive approach to contain the spread of swine flu in the country of 1.3 billion people and relatively limited medical resources. It has quarantined travelers on suspicion of contact with infected people and ordered schools to test students' temperatures.

The Health Ministry says around 3,700 cases of swine flu have been confirmed on the mainland — none fatal.

China aims to have enough swine flu vaccine for 5 percent of the public by the end of the year, and although health officials have not released detailed vaccination plans, they have said health workers, public service workers and students are priority groups.

International health experts say swine flu has not been as severe as initially feared. At least 2,185 people have died, but most cases are mild and require no treatment. Worries remain that a rash of new infections could overwhelm hospitals and health authorities, particularly in poorer countries.

Indian army kills 5 militants in gunfighting

Five militants were killed Wednesday morning in a gunfighting with Indian army on line-of-control (LoC), when they were trying to infiltrate in India-controlled Kashmir, defense officials said.

The gunfight broke out in Gurez sector, 130 km north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India-controlled Kashmir.

"The army has succeeded in foiling an infiltration bid along Gurez sector by killing five militants. The contact with the group was established late Tuesday night but the gunfight broke out early Wednesday morning and all the five militants were eliminated," said Indian army spokesman Lt. Col. Uma Maheshwar.

Though the firing has stopped, however the search operation is still going on in the area.

Maheshwar said that army has recovered five assault rifles from the possession of slain militants.

On Tuesday an Indian army soldier was killed after Pakistani troops allegedly fired at Indian posts in Poonch sector along LoC.

The gun fighting between militants and Indian army troopers in India-controlled Kashmir takes place intermittently.

Medical camp organized for physically disabled children in Kashmir

Srinagar, Sep 2 : A medical camp has been organized in Kashmir valley for the welfare of mentally disabled children.

Mission of the camp, MediFest, is to provide an opportunity to thousands of persons with intellectual disabilities to participate in Special Olympics, year-around sports training and athletic competitions.

Physical examination is necessary to register and participate in such competitions and with this aim Special Olympics Bharat organized medical screening under healthy athletes programme for the children with intellectual disabilities, in collaboration with special school in Srinagar where about 206 specially abled athletes are screened.

The social welfare minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Sakina Itoo blamed militancy in Kashmir for rise in the number of such children.

"In our society there are many physically disabled children who are being ignored. Through this function, our motive is to bring them at the mainstream so that they can lead a healthy life like other children as from the last 10-15 years the rate of such disabled children have increased because of the militancy in Kashmir," said Sakina Itoo.

Large number of parents from different parts of the Valley came up enthusiastically with their children for check ups and examinations.

"The volunteers of this medical camp came to us and informed us that if we have any mentally disabled children in our family, then we can bring them here and they will conduct health check ups so that those parents who are not aware about their children's health disabilities can be well informed," said Shareef-Ud-Din, father of a disabled child.

For the last two decades, not even a single non-governmental organization organized such programmes for these children because of militancy in the State.

As the situation has improved, people feel that such programmes should be held in future too for the benefit of these children.

New military chief of joint African Union-UN force in Darfur begins work

The new force commander of the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping operation in Darfur formally assumed his duties on Tuesday in the troubled western Sudanese region, Farhan Haq, the associate spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, told reporters.

Rwandan Lieutenant General Patrick Nyamvumba arrived in Darfur on Aug. 24 and has spent the past week meeting peacekeeping troops and civilian staff serving with the mission, which is known as UNAMID, Haq said.

Lt. Gen. Nyamvumba, 42, was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and AU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping in July to succeed Gen. Martin Luther Agwai of Nigeria, who had served as force commander of UNAMID since its inception at the start of last year.

The new force commander has extensive leadership and operational experience, and most recently served as the chief of logistics in the Rwandan defense forces.

When it reaches full deployment, UNAMID should have more than 19,500 military personnel spread across Darfur, a remote and arid region that is bigger in size than Iraq. It is expecting to reach 97 percent of its deployment numbers by the end of this year.

Source: People's Daily.
Link: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90856/6745920.html.

Pakistani religion minister wounded in ambush

By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer


ISLAMABAD – Suspected militants opened fire on a vehicle carrying Pakistan's religious affairs minister Wednesday, wounding him and killing his driver in a brazen attack in the heart of the capital.

Hamid Saeed Kazmi had been critical of militants blamed for scores of attacks in Pakistan over the last 2 1/2 years.

Fellow ministers said extremists were suspected in the shooting, which took place as police in Islamabad were on high alert amid fears of revenge attacks by Taliban militants following the Aug. 5 killing of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a CIA missile strike.

"We are not scared, we are not afraid of these cowardly acts," said Health Minister Ejaz Jhakrani. "Everybody is under threat because the government is committed and firm in the war against terror."

Kazmi was shot in the leg and was in stable condition, said Dr. Masood Pashad. Media reports said his life was not in danger. The driver of the car was killed and a guard was also wounded in the attack, said police officer Tahir Alam.

Authorities said two gunmen on a motorbike were involved in the shooting. They struck seconds after Kazmi's vehicle left his office, witnesses said.

Mohammad Salahuddin, a religious affairs ministry employee, said he rushed to the car following the attack and pulled the minister from it.

"I saw a man running across the road and jumping on a motorcycle before speeding away, but I could not see his face," said Salahuddin, his clothes covered in blood from those he pulled from the damaged vehicle.

Police officer Tahir Alam said the attackers dumped an assault rifle, two pistols and a hand grenade before fleeing.

The vehicle crashed into a tree during the attack. It had about a dozen bullet holes in its side and smashed front and side windows. Blood stains were visible on the back and front seats, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

Kazmi comes from Pakistan's Barelvi sect, which is traditionally more moderate than others in Pakistan. Its followers often pray at the tombs of saints, something that Sunni extremists such as the Taliban regard as a sin. His duties included regulating the country's thousands of Islamic schools, some of which are linked to extremist groups.

State Information Minister Sumsam Bukhari said terrorists were behind the attack.

"The fact of the matter is that (Kazmi) was spreading the message of peace and openly condemning the terrorists," he said.

Report: Afghanistan's Opium Boom May Be Over

By VIVIENNE WALT

Could Afghanistan's opium boom be over? Perhaps. According to the latest report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, opium cultivation has crashed in just one year, with prices at their lowest level since the late 1990s. "The bottom is starting to fall out of the Afghan opium market," says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the agency, which released its annual opium survey on Sept. 2.

The report's figures are startling. The U.N. agency's staff, made up of expatriates and Afghans, have been monitoring the country's poppy fields on the ground and from aerial surveillance cameras and they have found that farmers this year planted far fewer poppies - an estimated drop from last year of about 79,000 acres (about 32,000 hectares), or 22% of the country's entire opium crop. Afghanistan's output usually accounts for more than 90% of the world's heroin. The price that Afghan farmers get for their opium has also crashed, dropping by a third since last summer, from about $30 a pound ($70 per kilogram) to about $20 a pound ($48 a kilogram).

That's all good news. But there is a twist. Afghan poppy crops are now high-yield, say U.N. officials, thanks to better irrigation methods and especially good rains over the past year. While acreage devoted to the flowers fell, production of opium itself dropped only 10% in Afghanistan last year, to about 6,900 tons. Each hectare of poppies yielded about 123 lb. (56 kg) of opium - 15% more than last year.

That more efficient cultivation has hardly been addressed by the NATO campaign to eradicate opium, according to the report. U.N. officials call the military campaign "a failure," because the strategy has focused on destroying poppy fields, without offering farmers an equivalent income if they opt to grow other crops. Fewer than 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) have been eradicated - accounting for less than 4% of Afghanistan's opium crop. Despite that small result, Costa says the military campaign has made Afghanistan's farmers far more secretive, further complicating international efforts. "Before, opium stocks were in shacks and warehouses," he says. "Now they are underground, and not as visible."

Still, the U.N. report says, many Afghan farmers have apparently chosen to switch out of opium. The reasons might lie in simple market factors of supply and demand. In the years immediately following the Taliban's ouster in 2001, Afghan farmers, who had languished under a temporary Taliban ban against growing poppies, produced huge bumper crops. Those were harvested just as drug users in Europe, opium's biggest market, began to shun heroin in favor of cocaine and synthetic drugs like ecstasy. "There is definitely an issue of stocks over consumption," Costa says. "Starting in about 2006 Afghanistan has been producing a lot more opium than the world can digest."

That glut, however, could spell disaster down the road. U.N. drug officials estimate about 10,000 tons of opium have been unaccounted for since 2006 (the figure was about 8,000 tons a year ago). Costa believes the Taliban and drug traffickers in the region have stockpiled the drugs, fearing a crash in world prices if they sold the opium surplus. But the stockpiles could hugely complicate NATO's efforts to eradicate opium in Afghanistan and persuade farmers to grow other crops. That's because while some farmers seem to have switched their production, plenty of opium lies stored, potentially giving the Taliban and drug traffickers the ability to buy off officials with huge sums. Says Costa: "Opium is poisoning the society. It is corrupting leaders, politicians, members of parliament and police."

Pakistan to make its own drones

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Pakistan, which has been seeking drone technology from the United States, has decided to make the pilotless plane on its own for its air force.

Under a program launched this month, Pakistan's domestic version of the drone or unmanned aerial vehicle to be called Falco will be made in collaboration with Selex Galileo of Italy at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex in Kamra in Punjab province.

The Italian company is a leader in integrated sensor solutions and through-life capability management for defense systems and homeland security applications. It offers surveillance, protection, tracking, targeting, navigation & control and imaging systems.

Various Pakistani media reports quoted Air Marshal Farhat Husain Khan, chairman of the Kamra complex who presided at the launch ceremonies, as saying that the Falco would greatly enhance the air force's operational capability and help make Pakistan one of the few countries with the capability to make a modern tactical drone.

Husain Khan said it took engineers two years to set up the complex in Kamra, Dawn newspaper reported.

The UAV co-production facility is seen as a major step toward Pakistan's long-term goal of self-reliance in the military aviation industry.

"Falco is an advanced, tactical UAV designed by Selex Galileo Italy ... it would address current and future surveillance and reconnaissance needs of the Pakistan air force," an air force spokesman said, the Daily Times reported.

No precise date was given for the rollout of the Falco, but officials said it would be in the near future.

Initially, the Falco will only be able to provide reconnaissance and surveillance for the air force, as it may be large enough to carry both a missile and a targeting system. But future UAVs may be fitted with systems like laser-guided missiles for offensive purposes with outside help.

Pakistan has been asking for the drone technology from the United States. Missile attacks from suspected U.S. Predator drones have been especially effective in the fight against the Taliban in the tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

In one recent incident, a drone attack on Aug. 5 killed Baitullah Mehsud, the notorious leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan's argument for seeking the technology is that its people strongly resent their territory being used for missile attacks on the militants by foreign forces from across the border in Afghanistan.

A statement issued after a recent meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani and U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke said the drone attacks "have seriously impeded Pakistan's efforts towards rooting out militancy and terrorism from the area."

But the elimination of Baitullah Mehsud could help change that perception.

A U.S. counter-terrorism expert was quoted as telling Dawn: "With one blow, the Americans have killed Pakistan's greatest enemy in the tribal region," adding, "Even a full-fledged ground attack could not have achieved this target."

Whether the United States would part with its drone technology is not known. However, the Daily Times Thursday quoted U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia David Sedney as telling a private television channel that "the United States was working hard to provide to Pakistani security forces whatever they need to fight al-Qaida."

But the secretary also rejected any suggestion the United States may be under pressure from India not to give the drone technology to Pakistan, the report said.

Iran prepares for launch of UAV

TEHRAN, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Military commanders say a new version of Iran's radar-evading unmanned aerial vehicle may go into production as early as September.

Scale models of the new UAV will be tested in the coming weeks with full-scale production set to follow, the Fars News Agency reports.

Gen. Hassan Shah Safi, the commander of the Iranian air force, said the new drone, called Pahbad, would be launched in the coming months.

"The mass production of the drone will begin soon," he said.

Models of the new UAV passed early testing in August, showing its capability as a reconnaissance aircraft as well as a bombing and radar-evading vehicle.

Iran unveiled a series of military breakthroughs earlier this year, adding three new Ghadir-class submarines equipped with stealth technology to its naval fleet. Ground forces commanders are said to be working on "untraceable" weapons as well.

Iran in May launched its Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile that has a range capable of reaching Israel.

The UAV announcement comes on the heels of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that says Tehran is still defying the international community over its controversial nuclear program.

2nd South America-Africa Summit to be held in Venezuela: Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the second South America-Africa Summit (SAAS) would be held on Sept. 26 and 27 on Venezuela's Margarita Island, the presidency reported Tuesday.

He made the announcement at the African Union (AU) Special Summit, according to information reaching here from Tripoli, Libya, where Chavez is visiting.

During the SAAS summit, Chavez will present several proposals to strengthen coordination between the member states of the Union of South American Nations and African countries.

His proposals include the creation of a venture bank for Latin America and Africa, as well as the use of a single or local currency for the South's trade.

Chavez also seeks to propose establishing an education system linking the universities and institutes of both regions, as well as a common structure for the oil and gas companies there.

Source: People's Daily.
Link: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/6746419.html.

Powerful Indonesian quake kills 11; dozens injured

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A powerful earthquake rattled a large swath of southern Indonesia on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people, injuring dozens and causing extensive damage to houses and buildings.

The quake struck at 2:55 p.m. (0755 GMT) off the southern coast of the main island of Java with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0. It had a depth of about 30 miles (50 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. A tsunami alert was issued, but revoked less than an hour later.

Some of the victims were killed in a rock slide near the southern coast of Java island, while the others died when houses or buildings collapsed, disaster officials said.

Hospitals across the region were admitting scores of injured people.

"We all ran out in panic, we didn't even put our sandals on," said Muharaham Ardan, a university lecturer in the town of Tasikmalaya, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) from the epicenter.

Ardan said it was the biggest quake he had ever felt. "The neighbors were shouting: 'Get out of the house! Get out of the house!'"

At least 10 people died in the southern Cianjur district of West Java, and another in the coastal village of Pelabahan Ratu where dozens of buildings were severely damaged, said National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Satrio Nurhadiwibowo.

"A dozen houses were buried by a landslide triggered by the earthquake in Jeblong village," Nurhadiwibowo said.

The shaking was felt over roughly half of Java island, where the majority of the country's population of 235 million live.

In the capital, Jakarta, more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) away, panicked office workers ran onto the streets.

Health Ministry Crisis Center chief Rustam Pakaya said at least 27 people were admitted to the hospital in Jakarta and the number of injured was rising.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was powerful enough to cause a local tsunami, but there were no immediate reports of high waves. "Sea level readings indicate a significant tsunami was not generated," the center later said in a statement retracting the alert.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago, straddles continental plates and is prone to seismic activity along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. A huge quake off western Indonesia caused a powerful tsunami in December 2004 that killed around 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

Deputy spy chief among 23 killed in Taliban blast

By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer


KABUL – A Taliban suicide bomber detonated his explosives as Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence visited a mosque east of Kabul on Wednesday, killing the Afghan official and 22 others.

The attack struck at the heart of Afghanistan's intelligence service and underscored the Taliban's increasing ability to carry off complex and targeted attacks.


The explosion ripped through a crowd in Laghman province just as officials were leaving the main mosque in Mehterlam, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Kabul. Two top provincial officials from Laghman were among the dead, and the blast destroyed several government vehicles.

A Taliban spokesman said a suicide bomber on foot targeted Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy chief of Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security. The spokesman for Laghman's governor, Sayed Ahmad Safi, confirmed Laghmani was killed.

The National Directorate for Security, or NDS, is headed by an ethnic Tajik, and the killing of Laghmani, a Pashtun, could further exacerbate ethnic tensions as the country counts the results of the Aug. 20 presidential election. With about half the results in, President Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, leads Abdullah Abdullah, who is half Pashtun and half Tajik but is seen as a Tajik candidate.

The blast killed Laghmani, the executive director of Laghman's governor's office, the head of Laghman's provincial council, two of Laghmani's body guards, and 18 civilians, said Sayed Ahmad Safi, the spokesman for Laghman's governor.

U.S. troops cordoned off the blast site, right outside Mehterlam's main mosque, which sits in a crowded market area. Safi said Laghmani was visiting the mosque to discuss plans to rebuild it.

Taliban suicide attacks frequently target high-ranking government officials. Militants have warned Afghans for years not to work as government officials, teachers, or in the country's armed forces.

The Taliban is made up of ethnic Pashtuns, and the targeting of a top Pashtun security official could serve as another warning for Afghans to avoid government employment.

Taliban attacks have spiked the last three years and insurgents now control wide swaths of territory, momentum that forced President Barack Obama to send 21,000 additional troops to the country this year.

U.S. military officials may soon ask for even more troops to be sent to the country, but American public opinion is starting to turn against the almost eight-year war as U.S. troop deaths have reached an all-time high.

The National Directorate for Security suffered a second attack in the country's north. An intelligence officer kidnapped a few days ago by Taliban militants in Kunduz province was found Wednesday hanging from a tree on the outskirts of Baghlan city, said Kabi Andarabi, the provincial police chief.

In other violence, four militants were killed overnight when a roadside bomb they were planting detonated, said Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the deputy police chief of Kandahar.

US storm as Mohammed cartoons edited out of book

by Jane Mills – Mon Aug 31

NEW YORK (AFP) – Editors of a new US book on the controversy over cartoons caricaturing Muslims and the Prophet Mohammed have triggered a storm by deciding not to reprint the 12 sketches for fear of new violence.

"The Cartoons That Shook the World," due out in November by Yale University Press, examines the reaction of the Muslim world to the 2005 publication of the cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Author Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, reluctantly agreed to cut the cartoons from the book.

"I am sad personally because I feel it is a loss to the book to be published without the illustrations. It is also sad that we have a circumstance where an academic press feels compelled to go ahead and remove these illustrations," Klausen told AFP in a telephone interview.

Other images of Mohammed were also removed, including a 19th century Gustave Dore print illustrating a passage from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy of Mohammed in hell.

Director of Yale Press John Donatich made the decision after consulting with a "couple dozen" diplomats, intelligence and academic experts.

"I didn't feel this was a censorship issue," Donatich told AFP. "It had become a security issue," he said, adding he was concerned for the safety of Yale Press employees.

"I felt that the cartoons and the illustrations we are talking about here, they're not new information. It was gratuitous to publish them again if they were this troublesome. People were certain they would cause violence," he said.

The Mohammed cartoons originally appeared in Danish newspapers in September 2005, sparking protests across the Muslim world. Five people died in Pakistan in protests in February 2006.

But Klausen disputes the grounds for cutting out the cartoons.

"Security experts were asked to provide advice without having the manuscript, without having the context in which these illustrations were going to be reprinted," she said.

"I think it's very serious to suppress illustrations when not a single Muslim has protested the book and there were some Muslim reviewers."

In mid-August, the prestigious Yale University revealed that among the experts it had consulted were former US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte, and author and journalist Fareed Zakaria.

And in a written statement explaining Yale's to pull the cartoons, UN under secretary general Ibrahim Gambari is quoted saying: "You can count on violence if any illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots I predict from Indonesia to Nigeria."

Yale said the violence surrounding the cartoons continued pointing to a car bombing outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan in June 2008 which killed eight people.

"The next day Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing, calling it revenge for the 'insulting drawings,'" it said in its statement.

But Klausen countered: "I think it is ludicrous to think that an academic book written for undergraduate students as a case study of an international relations conflict could set off civil war in Nigeria."

The actions by Yale have triggered a storm of protest in the literary world.

Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens said in the online magazine Slate it was "perhaps the worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism -- particularly Muslim religious extremism -- that is spreading across our culture."

And Islam scholar Reza Aslan, author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam," pulled his jacket blurb praising the book in a failed attempt to get Yale to change its mind.

Aslan said Yale's experts misunderstand the original controversy.

"It wasn't just the cartoons, it was a deliberate attempt by the newspaper in Denmark to provoke the Muslim minority in Denmark, to give them a sort of citizenship test. The cartoons were seen by two polarized camps as an argument as to whether, A, Europe is Islamophobic or, B, whether Muslims have any place in Europe," he said.

"The reason the anger erupted was because of the racism embedded in the cartoons, their deliberate provocation of the Muslim community and the way the cartoons were manipulated to say that Europe is racist. That's where the mistake lies here, to think that the cartoons in and of themselves have the power to create this global crisis," he said.

But Zakaria said he was "certain that the publication of the book would provoke violence."

"I think it is a very difficult call whenever you are contemplating any kind of restraint on freedom of expression but I think that the judgment call that Yale made is exactly the right one," he said.

Obama hosts Iftar, calls Islam a great religion

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised American Muslims for enriching the nation's culture at a dinner to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalogue because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country," Obama said at the iftar, the dinner that breaks the holiday's daily fast.

The President joined Cabinet secretaries, members of the diplomatic corps and lawmakers to pay tribute to what he called "a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress."

Attendees included Congress' two Muslim members -- Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Andre Carson, D-Ind., as well as ambassadors from Islamic nations and Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.

Obama shared the story of Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, another invited guest, who broke a state record for most career points as a Massachusetts high school student.

"As an honour student, as an athlete on her way to Memphis, Bilqis is an inspiration not simply to Muslim girls -- she's an inspiration to all of us," he said.

Obama also noted the contributions of Muhammad Ali, who was not in attendance, though the president borrowed a quote from famous boxer, explaining religion.

"A few years ago," Obama said, "he explained this view and this is part of why he's the greatest, saying, 'Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams -- they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do -- they all contain truths.'"

Ramadan, a month-long period of prayer, reflection and sunrise-to-sunset fasts, began from August 22 in most of the Islamic world. It is believed that God began revealing the Quran to Muhammad during Ramadan, and the faithful are supposed to spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.

White House dinners marking the holy month are nothing new. Former President George W Bush held iftars during his eight years in office.

Obama has made a special effort since taking office to repair US relations with the world's Muslims, including visits to Turkey and Cairo. In a June speech at the Egyptian capital, as well as in one to another important Muslim audience, in Turkey, Obama said: "America is not -- and never will be -- at war with Islam."

Obama also released a video message to Muslims before the start to Ramadan. In the video, he said Ramadan's rituals are a reminder of the principles Muslims and Christians have in common, including advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Hurricane Jimena weakens to Category 2 storm

MIAMI – Hurricane Jimena has weakened to a Category 2 storm as it bears down on Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Jimena's maximum sustained winds decreased early Wednesday to near 110 mph (175 kph). And the hurricane is expected to continue weakening gradually before making landfall.

The change in status comes a day after Hurricane Jimena brushed passed the resort towns at the southern tip of the Baja California, lashing them with driving rain and winds.

Jimena is centered about 95 miles (155 kilometers) west-southwest of La Paz and about 110 miles (175 kilometers) south-southeast of Cabo San Lazaro.

Colombia's lower House Oks re-election bill

BOGOTA – Colombia's lower House has approved a bill calling for a referendum on whether to change the constitution to allow President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third term.

Lawmakers have voted 85-5 with 76 abstentions in favor of the referendum. The bill, which has already passed the Senate, must now go to Colombia's Constitutional Court.

The referendum would ask voters if Colombia should modify its constitution to allow presidents to run for two consecutive re-elections. The constitution, which was already modified once to let Uribe run for a second four-year term, allows for a single immediate re-election.

Uribe has not yet said publicly if he will run again.

The Chamber of Representatives's secretariat announced the result early Wednesday.

Chinese sentences dissident to 13 years jail

By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer


BEIJING – A Chinese dissident who tried to organize a national meeting of the banned China Democracy Party has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for subverting state power, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Xie Changfa, 57, was tried in April and sentenced Tuesday by the Changsha Municipal Intermediate Court in southern China's Hunan province, his lawyer Ma Gangquan said in a telephone interview. He plans to appeal, Ma said.

China allows a small number of officially recognized alternative parties, although they serve as advisers rather than competitors to the ruling Communist Party.

Founded by dissidents in mid-1998, the China Democracy Party was quashed six months later by the Communist Party. Dozens of founding members were arrested and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison, most on charges of subverting state power.

"The charges and judgment both say his crime relates to work he did to establish the party's Hunan chapter and to his efforts to organize a national party meeting, but we have maintained all along that such activities are not crimes but in fact are the constitutional rights of all Chinese citizens," said Ma.

A man who answered the telephone at the publicity office of the Changsha court said the spokesman was not immediately available to answer media queries.

Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to curb dissent, arresting or detaining leading dissidents and harassing lawyers who defend them, in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party's rule. The Oct. 1 celebration will be marked by a military parade.

Hunan police detained Xie in June last year after he discussed hosting a national congress for the China Democracy Party with fellow party members. In August, he was formally arrested and charged with subverting state power.

Xie's younger brother, Xie Changzhen, attended the sentencing and said he was surprised and infuriated by the harsh ruling. He noted that if the punishment is upheld, his brother will be more than 70 years old when he is freed.

"This sentence is an insult to the Chinese people, to people everywhere," he said.

Xie became active in the Hunan chapter of the party in 1998. Prior to that, he also served three years in a re-education-through-labor camp for a series of speeches denouncing the June 4, 1989, military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. A former factory worker, he is divorced and has two children, his brother said.

Also Wednesday, a human rights group said a well-known Chinese dissident who co-authored a bold political manifesto calling for an end to one-party rule is still under detention in Beijing and being investigated by police.


Liu Xiaobo was taken into police custody on Dec. 8 last year and formally arrested in June though he has yet to be charged. The Hong Kong-based rights advocacy group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said in a statement that Liu's lawyers met with him Monday and were told the investigation into his case has been extended until at least Sept. 23.

Seoul sees NKorea's overtures as tactical changes

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer


SEOUL, South Korea – A top South Korean official said Wednesday that North Korea's recent conciliatory gestures do not represent any fundamental changes, saying the communist country is showing no signs of ending its nuclear weapons program.

In April, North Korea quit the six-nation talks — involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan — aimed at ending its nuclear program. In another defiant move, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May, drawing international condemnation and new U.N. sanctions.

But the North has been reaching out to Seoul and Washington in recent weeks by freeing two American journalists and a South Korean worker detained for four months. The North also released four South Korean fishermen seized in late July after their boat strayed into northern waters.

The two Koreas also have restored regular traffic for their joint industrial park in the North and agreed to hold a new round of family reunions in later this month, signs of easing tensions. In yet another fresh conciliatory move, the two sides also restored a military hot line in the western section of their heavily fortified border Wednesday. The North had cut the line last year.

However, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told ruling party lawmakers Wednesday that the North's recent overtures are "just tactical changes because the North has neither declared its return to the six-nation talks nor changed its position" on its nuclear program.

Hyun is South Korea's point person on the North.

The North views its nuclear program as a security guarantee against what it claims is U.S. hostility and its alleged plans to attack against Pyongyang. The North has recently called for one-on-one negotiations with Washington on the nuclear program. The U.S. has said it is willing to hold direct talks with Pyongyang — but only on the sidelines of the disarmament talks.

North Korea dispatched a Foreign Ministry delegation to China on Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said, two weeks after Chinese nuclear envoy Wu Dawei visited Pyongyang. It was not immediately clear whether the delegation would discuss the nuclear issue.

North Korea has protested the hardline policies of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who wants to hold the North accountable for its nuclear disarmament commitments in return for aid to the impoverished neighbor.

However, he has recently stressed Seoul's commitment to helping North Korea if the North shows willingness to change. Lee made the comments to a North Korean delegation that came to Seoul last month to mourn the death of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified senior ruling party official.

Other newspapers also carried similar reports.

The U.S. fought with South Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, leaving the North and South still technically at war.

Project To Bury Holocaust Victims Is Planned

(JTA) -- An international initiative to give Holocaust victims interred in mass graves a proper Jewish burial will be launched in Eastern Europe.
The Dignity Return project is being organized by Yuri Kanner, president of the Russian Jewish Congress, in cooperation with Rabbi Marc Schneier, chairman of the World Jewish Congress American Section.
The project’s mission is to bury the remains of victims of mass execution from  Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Estonia in a manner acceptable under Jewish law.
Kanner and Schneier expect the initiative to inspire thousands of volunteers from around the world, according to a joint news release.
“It is increasingly up to those who were born after the Holocaust to preserve and protect [the victims’] stories and these sites so that Holocaust revisionists will be unable to change history, “ said Rabbi Schneier.
The founders of the Dignity Return initiative will present details of the project on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27.

Election talk heats up in Canada

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer

TORONTO – Canada's main opposition party vowed Tuesday to try to topple Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government at the first opportunity, which could force a fourth election in the last five years and the second in just a year.

Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff's announcement means the Conservative government could be toppled in a confidence vote if Canada's two other opposition parties also vote to bring down the government.

"Mr. Harper, your time is up. The Liberal party cannot support this government any further," Ignatieff said. "We will hold Stephen Harper to account, and we will oppose his government in Parliament."

Harper now needs support from at least one of three opposition parties to stay in power. The Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats would have to do an about-face to back Harper.

The Liberals will have their first opportunity to present a motion of non-confidence in the first week of October. At an election-style pep rally Ignatieff said the party would push for a vote at the first opportunity.

Ignatieff has been the party's leader since December and doesn't want to be seen as propping up the government, as former leader Stephane Dion did dozens of times before losing the election last October.

Harper's Conservative Party was re-elected last fall with a strengthened minority government, but still must rely on the opposition to pass legislation and to stay in power.

The three opposition parties hold the majority of the seats in Parliament with 162, while the Conservatives have 143 and there is one independent.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton met Harper last month and reiterated that it would be the least likely party to prop up the Conservatives.

But New Democratic deputy leader Thomas Mulcair immediately offered an olive branch to Harper on Tuesday.

"What I'm saying is: the last thing Canadians want is a fourth general election in five years, and we'd better have a bloody good reason for forcing a fourth general election in five years," Mulcair said. "So if Mr. Harper goes about being provocative as he has been in the past, going after key things that Canadians hold dearly — like women's rights and the environment — then we'll throw him out of office because he'll have provoked it.

"If, on the other hand, Stephen Harper comes into Parliament with a willingness to work in the public interest, then we're going to take it on a case-by-case basis. Our caucus will decide."

The Bloc hasn't backed Harper's government in recent years and is expected to comment on Wednesday.

Harper said now is not the time for another election.

"We had an election in this country less than a year ago. I haven't met a single Canadian who is saying they want to see another election right now," Harper said. "I think Canadians have been pretty clear.

"They want Parliament to focus on the economy. That is what the government will be doing in the fall session. It's certainly our view ... that going through more political games, more political instability does not serve the country's interest right now."

Conservative Transport Minister John Baird accused Ignatieff of putting his own interests ahead of Canadians. Baird also cast doubt that the Conservatives could work with the New Democrats, a union-backed party with socialist roots.

Ignatieff criticized Harper for the nation's high unemployment and rising budget deficit. He said his goal is to make Canada "the smartest, healthiest, greenest, most open-minded country there is" by 2017 — the 150th anniversary of Confederation.

Ignatieff, 62, left a prestigious post in 2005 as director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard to enter Canadian politics.

Turkey hopes to open border with Armenia by year-end

EU welcomes steps to establish ties between Two countries

Zerin Elci
Reuters

NICOSIA, Cyprus: Turkey hopes to open its border with Armenia by the end of the year under a protocol to establish diplomatic ties, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday. The two countries, which have no diplomatic ties and a history of animosity stemming from the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I, announced late Monday they would sign accords within six weeks under a plan to end a century of hostility.

“If everything goes as planned, if mutual steps are taken, the borders could be opened around New Year,” Davutoglu told Turkish NTV television during a visit to northern Cyprus.

The plan to normalize ties was announced in April, but Monday’s statement marked the first real progress.

Under the agreement, both sides would hold domestic consultations before signing two protocols on the establishment of diplomatic relations and development of bilateral ties.

The protocols would have to be ratified by parliaments of the two countries.

In his first comment on the issue, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stressed that the accords would not go into effect until the Turkish Parliament had approved them.

Reopening the border and establishing ties with Armenia would increase predominantly Muslim Turkey’s influence in the region and aid its faltering bid to join the European Union. The bloc has long asked candidate member Turkey to normalize ties with its neighbor and restoring diplomatic ties would also be beneficial for regional security.

The EU on Tuesday welcomed steps to establish bilateral ties and urged the two countries to implement the protocols rapidly.

“This agreement should contribute to peace and stability in the South Caucasus,” EU commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner and EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement.

Diplomatic ties would also give landlocked Armenia, reeling from the global financial crisis, access to Turkish and European markets.

Anticipation has been growing ahead of a planned visit by Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan to Turkey on October 14, when he is due to attend the return leg of a World Cup qualifying football match between the two countries.

Sarksyan has said he will not travel to the game, the first leg of which Turkish President Abdullah Gul watched last year in Yerevan, unless the border has reopened or there are clear signs it is about to open.

Turkey rejects Armenian claims the World War I killings amounted to genocide, and says many people were killed on both sides of the conflict. Turkey closed the frontier in 1993 in solidarity with Muslim ally Azerbaijan, which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists in the breakaway mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The normalization of ties with Armenia, which is backed by the United States as a step to improve security in the region, risks angering Azerbaijan, an energy supplier to the West and a key source of gas supplies for the planned Nabucco pipeline.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved, with Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces still facing off over a tense front line 15 years after agreeing a ceasefire.

Davutoglu spoke on the telephone with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday regarding normalizing ties with Armenia as well as Ankara’s desire to speed up a solution to Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkish diplomats said.

Tribal violence kills 46 people in south Sudan

Mohamed Osman
Associated Press

KHARTOUM: Tribesmen trying to steal cattle attacked a village in Southern Sudan, sparking a conflict that killed 46 people, including seven soldiers, the UN said Monday. The incident was the latest in a rising wave of tribal violence in the South that has killed more than 2,000 people, including many women and children, and displaced another 250,000, according to the UN.

UN and local officials have expressed concerns that the violence could hamper preparations for national elections scheduled for next year, which are a key component of a deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between the North and South.

Dinka Bor tribesmen attacked a village of the rival Lou-Nuer tribe Friday night in Twic East County, leaving 46 people dead and 15 in critical condition, said Ashraf Eissa, a UN spokesman in Sudan. Such conflicts have been rising in the rainy season as resources such as cattle become scarce, he said.

A local official said over 24,000 civilians have fled the area in Jongeli state in fear of further attacks.

“The civilians in the area have been shocked by recent attacks, which claimed dozens of lives and injured scores in the country,” county commissioner for Sudan, Deim Ackol Deim, told the UN-funded Miraya radio station.

He said the attackers wore new military uniforms and were using new machine guns, but did not provide their identity.

The violence is separate from the six-year-old conflict between rebels and government forces in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan.

Some Southern officials have said they suspect Northern political rivals of fueling tribal violence to hamper national elections or portray the Southern government as unable to protect its people.

Despite the 2005 peace agreement that ended the civil and created a semiautonomous government in the South, significant distrust remains between the two sides. The South, battered by the war, is also flooded with guns.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=105974.

Western Sahara rights activist jailed in Morocco - NGO

RABAT, Morocco: Ennama Asfari, the co-president of a Committee for the Respect of Freedoms in the Western Sahara, has been jailed for four months for insulting a policeman, a human rights group said on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said that a cousin of Ennama Asfari, Ali Roubiou, arrested during the same police check, was given a two-month suspended sentence in the trial on August 27.

According to the Moroccan news agency MAP, “the two accused refused to show their identity cards to police officers during a routine check on their way into a town.

Asfari, 39, who MAP said was a previous offender, was charged with “insulting a policeman in the exercise of his duty, assaulting police officers” and “refusing to show his vehicle’s papers.” Roubiou, 21, was accused of “refusing to present an identity card.”

In a statement, HRW said that Asfari had already been given a suspended jail term of two months in 2007, then was imprisoned for two months in 2008 after a trial “apparently inspired by the desire of the authorities to punish him for his political activities.”

Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa last week denounced “provocation by partisans of separatism [in the Western Sahara], who systematically break the law and are trying to politicize the process of common law in order to attract international sympathy for their separatist ideas.”

A former Spanish colony, the Western Sahara was annexed in 1975 by Morocco, which claims historical sovereignty of the colony and has proposed a plan for broad self-government, but no independence.

The Polisario Front, supported by neighboring Algeria, demands the independence of the territory and a referendum on self-determination.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=105977.

Yemen rejects Zaidi rebel truce pitch, boosts assault

UN agencies alarmed over unfolding humanitarian crisis

Yemen’s army intensified a three-week-old offensive against Zaidi rebels in the north on Tuesday after security chiefs rejected the rebels’ truce offer, while the UN aid agencies warned of an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Sadaa city. War planes conducted several aerial strikes on rebel positions in the rugged mountainous city of Saada close to the presidential palace, military officials said on Tuesday.

The military has launched the second phase of its operation “Scorched Earth” in the Harf Sufyan region in an attempt to reopen the road between the Yemeni capital Sanaa and Saada that has been severed by the rebels for three weeks, the officials said.

The army was backed by “Giant,” elite units engaging in battle with the rebels, according to the officials.

The intensification of the campaign comes after the Zaidis, led by Abdel-Malek al-Huthi and accused by the authorities of being backed by Iran, offered the government a truce, which the authorities rejected.

“The so-called ceasefire initiative announced recently by the rebels offers nothing new,” said a spokesman for Yemen’s high-security commission, which is supervising the military operation.

The unidentified spokesman, quoted by the official Saba news agency, was referring to a rebel offer which local media said ignored Sanaa’s conditions for an end to the army operation launched on August 11.

“The rebels must commit themselves to respecting the six points announced by the high security commission,” added the spokesman, making clear there was no question of a halt to the offensive.

Among Sanaa’s demands are the pullout of rebels from official buildings, the reopening of roads in the north, and the return of weapons seized from security services. The rebels have already rejected the demands.

There is no official figure of casualties in the conflict.

An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis – also known as Huthis – are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north and want to re-establish the imamate which was overthrown in a 1962 coup.

Thousands of people have been killed since the conflict first erupted in 2004.

Last week, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the army needed several more weeks to crush the rebellion.

Meanwhile, the UN warned of a humanitarian crisis in Saada city, where 35,000 have fled in the past three weeks.

“A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Saada city where the situation is deteriorating by the day,” said Andrej Mahecic, spokesman for the UN Refu­gees Agency.

Opening humanitarian corridors was “a top priority” for the UN as thousands continued to flee their homes in the Saada region near the Saudi border, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said on Tuesday.

“That would allow civilians to leave the conflict zone and humanitarian workers to deliver much needed humanitarian aid to thousands of displaced people in this remote part of the country,” Andrej Mahecic told reporters in Geneva.

Agence France Presse reported Tuesday that thousands of exiles who initially found refuge in Saudi Arabia had allegedly been sent back to Yemen.

The World Food Program was able to help 95,000 people in July but could only reach 10,000 in August, said spokeswoman Emilia Casella.

Meanwhile, local partners in Saada city had enough rations to feed 60,000 people for a month but could not distribute them because of the fighting.

“Access is really the most urgent issue,” said Casella, noting that attempts failed last week to negotiate safe passage for aid workers during a lull in fighting.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes will ask donor countries Wednesday to provide the global body with more money to fund its aid efforts in Yemen.

Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for his office, said for the money to be spent effectively the UN needed guarantees that aid groups could have immediate and unimpeded access to Sadaa city, Al-Jawaf Province and other areas.

Son of late Shiite cleric Hakim takes helm of Iraqi party

September 02, 2009
Suadad al-Salhy
Reuters

BAGHDAD: One of Iraq’s main Shiite Muslim parties on Tuesday appointed the son of its leader Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim as his successor following his death last week, averting a potentially damaging public power struggle. Ammar al-Hakim had been groomed for some time to take over the influential Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI) from his father, who died in Tehran where he had been receiving treatment for lung cancer. The cleric was buried over the weekend in the holy Iraqi Shiite city of Najaf.

His death cast fresh uncertainty over Iraqi politics at a time when alliances among Iraq’s majority Shiites are shifting ahead of a parliamentary election in January, and when recent progress toward stability has been rocked by bomb attacks.

“Voting for Ammar al-Hakim is normal because of the symbolism of his family name and the sacrifices that the family made,” said ISCI lawmaker Nabil Ismail, who said Ammar al-Hakim had been picked by the party’s advisory council.

The swift confirmation by the council of ISCI leaders that Hakim would take over indicated the party had managed to avoid a power struggle, at least in public, that could have weakened it before the election.

Some party insiders had said they opposed a dynastic succession while Hakim’s youth – he was born in 1971 – raised questions about his support base.

“We will work hard to make ISCI achieve a distinguished position in the political process in Iraq, with the help of all other political powers,” Hakim said in a statement broadcast on ISCI-owned television.

“We will work to achieve the highest levels of cooperation and harmony among the leadership of ISCI to succeed in this major task.” He said the party would work to bring Iraqis together.

ISCI has fought previous elections on an overtly religious, and sectarian, platform, using Shiite religious symbolism as a rallying call.

Political analysts say that after years of bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites, many voters have grown tired of appeals to faith, and instead want rulers who are pragmatic and effective.

ISCI has formed a new, mostly Shiite alliance to compete in January’s national polls without Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s smaller Dawa party, raising questions about possible fractures among Shiites.

ISCI was founded in Iran in exile during Iraqi Sunni leader Saddam Hussein’s rule. It has close ties to Iran’s rulers.

It and Maliki’s Dawa party swept to power in 2005 polls as part of a broad Shiite coalition, but the relationship has frayed, particularly after Maliki’s allies scored victories in provincial elections this year, largely at the expense of ISCI.

Source: Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Sep/02/Son-of-late-Shiite-cleric-Hakim-takes-helm-of-Iraqi-party.ashx.

Afghan tribal leaders call for Karzai to quit after detailing election fraud

James Hider

September 1, 2009

In a crowded conference hall in Kabul, hundreds of angry tribal elders and local officials from southern Afghanistan gathered today to protest against what they dubbed massive electoral fraud that robbed entire districts of their votes and allocated them to the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai.

In a string of searing testimonies, community leaders told of how villages that had been too terrified to vote because of Taleban threats, of mysteriously produced full ballot boxes, and with most of the votes cast for Mr Karzai, often by his own men or tribal leaders loyal to him.

Hamidullah Tokhy, a tribal elder from Kandahar province in the south, whose governor is Mr Karzai’s brother, said: "How is it that in a district which a governor can only visit once every two years, where it’s too dangerous for the police to go, where even Nato can’t fly, how come there were 20,000 votes collected?"

The meeting was chaired by Abdullah Abdullah, the main rival to Mr Karzai in the June 20 elections, which an increasing number of Western observers and local officials say have been fatally compromised by evidence of systematic voter fraud.

Mr Abdullah, trailing in partial results already released, swore to defend the rights of voters and pledged he would not to accept any position in government with Mr Karzai, ruling out hopes of a compromise government of national unity. He said that he was having to urge calm on outraged victims of the apparent fraud, as some called for mass protests or even armed resistance.

A day before international envoys, including Richard Holbrooke from the United States and Sherard Cowper Coles for the UK, were due to meet in Paris to discuss the possible outcomes of the elections, a picture emerged of large swaths of the country falling foul of electoral manipulation by the Government.

Abdulkayam Balets, a grey-bearded and turbaned elder who had been in charge of a polling station in Shurawaq, in the southern province of Kandahar, said no ballot boxes reached his facility. They were instead sent to the district office, where they were stuffed with votes for Mr Karzai by members of his party.

"We want Karzai to resign and an interim government installed, then we can have a free election that he can’t manipulate by force," he said.

Fazel Mohammed had a polling centre set up in his house in the same area, and confirmed all the ballot boxes were sent to the Shurawaq district office. "There were 30 people in there, voting for Hamid Karzai. I told them, 'This is not right, but they said 'We’ve got the guns and power, that’s why we’re doing it,’" he told The Times.

Haji Abdul Manan, an elder from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where British forces have been engaged in heavy fighting with the Taleban, said that most people had been too scared to venture out on election day. "In all the districts there was fraud. Nobody could vote, but the ballot boxes were full of votes for Hamid Karzai," he said.

Earlier, speaking on the podium, Mr Manan had called for a violent response to the fraud, a sign that disenchantment with the polls could further undermine Afghanistan’s already bloody political landscape. "I implore military resistance. I swear to God, if an Islamic government, a religious government, does not take office we're against it," he said. "The Americans are entering our houses. Our sons are being killed," he added.

Isatullah, an election official in Paktia, just south of Kabul, told The Times by telephone that bodyguards of a powerful tribal leader had shown up at his polling centre on motorbikes and cast around 60 ballots each for Mr Karzai in the ballot boxes. Officials were too afraid to stop them, he said.

Mr Abdullah said that he would not drop his protests against vote-rigging, although he urged calm on his people, amid fears that massive demonstrations could degenerate into the bloodshed that marked the anti-government protests in Iran this summer.

"My main concern today is that there is a lot of pressure from the people on me [to hold] demonstrations. Kandahar wants to do demonstrations. Khost wants to do demonstrations. Ghazni wants to do demonstrations. And I have to stop them," he said. "I ask them for calm, I ask them for patience."

"I still hope the Electoral Complaints Commission will be able to deal with this, but finally, I will not accept the outcome decided by this massive fraud," he said as he left the meeting.

Afghan War's Blowback for India's Children?

J. Sri Raman

Children in the Punjab are increasingly born with birth defects. The phenomenon may well be due to depleted uranium carried over by wind currents from Afghanistan. (Photo: Money Sharma / EPA) September 1, 2009 - t r u t h o u t Children born with abnormally enlarged or small heads, disproportionately short arms and legs, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other complications. Increasing instances of infertility among women. A spurt in cases of lung cancer and intestinal ulcer. Punjab, a state in India bordering Pakistan, has reason to be concerned about this scary picture emerging from surveys recently carried out in some of its areas. Not only Punjab, however. According to a section of the researchers particularly concerned with the cases of birth deformities, Punjab may be paying with the health of its people for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More precisely, depleted uranium reportedly used in wars in these countries may be the cause of the deformities and disorders on the rise in India's northwestern state, according to a team based in the city of Faridkot. Winds from Afghanistan may have carried to the state a large quantity of highly toxic uranium, which has contaminated water and increased uranium in bodies to dangerous levels. This apprehension was raised at least five months ago by the team of the Baba Farid Center for Special Children, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), where some of the affected kids have been undergoing treatment. In what would appear to be a scandalously successful cover-up, the question raised by the team has been kept away from major headlines in the Indian and international media, with New Delhi seeing no need even to take cognizance of it. In a downplayed report, which the most prominent media did not consider deserving of better display, Dr. Pritpal Singh, in charge of the Faridkot clinic, said the number of affected children had risen "dramatically in the past six or seven years." Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan was launched on October 7, 2001. The use of DU weapons in the Iraq war, started on March 20, 2003, may also have contributed to the tragic drama in Punjab, according to the team. The radioactive uranium, released in such cases, gets mixed in soil, air and water within a large radius. Areas within 1,000 miles from the place where the uranium is released can get affected. Parts of Iraq close to Iran fall within that distance. Afghanistan is just over 330 miles away from India's Punjab. Evidently, children of Pakistan, which occupies this distance, have also been exposed to the same danger. So are their counterparts in areas India adjoining Punjab. DU - defined as uranium containing a smaller percentage of uranium-235 than the 0.7 percent found in natural uranium - has found several military uses. Because of its high density, it is used in tank armor, sandwiched between sheets of steel armor plate. It is also used in armor-piercing, incendiary ammunition. It has also been used, above all, to destroy bunkers and tanks. According to US radiation specialist Leuren Moret, "DU weaponry largely meets the definition of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD)." In a newspaper article in 2005, she wrote: "Since 1991, the US has released the radioactive atomicity (through DU weapons) equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The US has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years." She also described DU weapons as "dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets." Experts estimate that 1,000 tonnes of uranium is already present in the Iraq-Iran region and Afghanistan. People from these areas have been found to have 100 times more uranium in their urine compared to those from other areas. The Faridkot center sent hair samples of 149 children - 116 below the age of 12 - to the laboratory of the Micro Trace Minerals in Germany in June 2008. The results came back in February 2009. The samples of children below 12 years revealed 82 percent of uranium and those of the rest, 87 percent. Singh found the results "astonishing as there is no atomic plant near Punjab." An investigation team of the Observer (London) has just days ago confirmed the "dramatic rise in birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers" in the state. The team, however, has linked the uranium contamination to ash from the region's coal-fired power stations. In a phone call with Truthout, Singh stressed that the matter called for a "scientific inquiry," which the Observer investigation was not claimed to be. He pointed out that there were complaints of such consequences from the DU weapons in other places. On May 1, 2008, the One Planet program of the BBC World Service quoted doctors in Kabul and Kandahar saying that the incidence of birth defects, including premature births and malformations, had doubled in under two years. Among the malformations were "neural tube defects and malformation of limbs; for example, the head is smaller than normal, or the head is larger than normal, or there is a big mass on the back of the baby." Though the George Bush regime protested innocence, the program cited the Canada-based Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) as saying that the cause might be depleted uranium. In 2002 and 2003, the center carried out analyzes of urine from Afghans. In some, it found levels of uranium hundreds of times greater than in Gulf War veterans. As for Iraq, shockwaves were sent across the world by disclosures of a large-scale rise in children's deformities and deaths in Fallujah after two massive bombing campaigns in 2004. In November 2005, the Pentagon was forced to admit the use of white phosphorous and DU ammunition during these campaigns. Deafening is the silence of New Delhi on the possible consequences of the use of DU weapons in a war at India's doorstep. Does the Bush-built "strategic partnership" on South Asia demand callous indifference to the plight of deformed and dying children in Punjab?