Israel assured of Saudi support in future Iranian nuke raid

London, July 5 (New Kerala): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been assured by the chief of the country's intelligence agency Mossad, Meir Dagan, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear sites.

Dagan held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility of such a raid earlier this year.

There were unconfirmed reports in Israeli press that high-ranking officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held meetings with Saudi colleagues.

"The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia," The Times quoted a diplomatic source, as saying.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defense source confirmed that Mossad maintained "working relations" with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

"None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn't trumpet it as a big success," Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, said.

Arab states would condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, he opined.

An Israeli intelligence expert said: "The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis."

The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear site at Natanz in the center of the country and other locations for four years.

Chinese go online to vent ire at Xinjiang unrest

By Ben Blanchard

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese are venting their anger online after ethnic violence in the Muslim region of Xinjiang left at least 156 dead but are playing a cat-and-mouse game with censors who appear to be removing some posts and blogs.

Many of the comments demanded swift punishment for those involved, echoing remarks in official state media blaming exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer for masterminding the riots in the regional capital of Urumqi on Sunday.

"Destroy the conspiracy, strike hard against these saboteurs, and strike even more fiercely than before," said an anonymous posting on a blog on www.sina.com.cn by a person known as "Chang Qing."

Yet authorities have been working fast to remove comments about the violence, apparently to prevent ethnic hatred from spreading or Internet users questioning government policies toward regions populated by ethnic minorities.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and Beijing has tried to control online debate about the violence across China.

Many blogs have simply posted articles from the domestic media about the unrest, but in the section where readers are invited to leave their thoughts is written: "There are no comments at this time" -- unusual, given the popularity of blogs in China with 300 million Internet users.

Some sites which had posted graphic images of beaten and bloody bodies, purportedly taken during or after the riots, also had them swiftly removed.

The government has cut access to the Internet in Urumqi, the city's Communist Party Chief Li Zhi said on Tuesday, to stop it being used to fuel further violence.

Also on Tuesday, access to social networking site Facebook seemed to be disrupted in some places. Users in Guangzhou Shanghai, Beijing and Chongqing said they could not reach the site, although Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said the company was not seeing any changes in traffic from China at this time.

This came on top of an apparent block on Twitter and search restrictions for Xinjiang topics on Chinese rival, Fanfou.com.

REVENGE VS UNDERSTANDING

Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs, a Turkic, largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

They have long complained Han Chinese reap most of the benefits from official investment and subsidies, while making Uighurs feel like outsiders.

Postings showed a mixture of suspicion and sympathy for Uighurs in the wake of violence that critics have called a separatist plot, but overseas activists have said was a spontaneous outpouring of long-standing grievances.

Some warned Hans, China's predominant ethnic group, would take revenge -- shortly before thousands of angry Han protestors took to the streets of Urumqi seeking Uighur targets.

"The blood debt will be repaid. Han compatriots unite and rise up," wrote "Jason" on search engine www.baidu.com.

Others have sought to invoke the spirit of Wang Zhen, the Chinese general who is reviled and feared by many Uighurs for repression when he led Communist troops into Xinjiang in 1949 to bring it into the newly formed People's Republic of China.

"Study this hard," wrote one posting above a potted history of Wang apparently taken from a Chinese history book.

Still, a few people appealed for greater understanding of Uighur grievances.

"If your family members have no rights, no power, are discriminated against and made fun of, not only will your family collapse, you will already have sown the seeds of hatred," wrote "Bloody Knife."

One person, called "zfc883919" and writing on Xinjiang portal www.tianya.cn, said he did not understand how the police could have let the death toll rise so high.

"What on earth were you doing? That was 156 living beings. I hope relevant authorities really learn a lesson, so that this kind of tragedy is not repeated."

Armed mobs spread ethnic strife in China's west

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer

URUMQI, China – The government imposed a curfew Tuesday night in this regional capital of western China after mobs of Han Chinese with meat cleavers and clubs roamed the streets looking for Muslim Uighurs who had earlier beaten up people in the country's worst ethnic violence in decades.

Rioting in the Xinjiang region broke out Sunday and killed at least 156 people. Tuesday's new violence came despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people in the often tense region.

Members of the Uighur ethnic group attacked people near Urumqi's railway station, and women in headscarves protested the arrests of husbands and sons in another part of the city. For much of the afternoon, a mob of 1,000 mostly young Han Chinese holding cleavers and clubs and chanting "Defend the country" tore through streets trying to get to a Uighur neighborhood until they were repulsed by police firing tear gas.

Panic and anger bubbled up amid the suspicion in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee). In some neighborhoods, Han Chinese — China's majority ethnic group — armed themselves with pieces of lumber and shovels to defend themselves. People bought up bottled water out of fear, as one resident said, that "the Uighurs might poison the water."

The central government has slowed mobile phone and Internet services, blocked Twitter — whose servers are overseas — and censored Chinese social networking and news sites and accused Uighurs living in exile of inciting Sunday's riot. State media coverage, however, carried graphic video and pictures of the unrest _showing mainly Han Chinese victims and stoking the anger.

The violence is a further embarrassment for a Chinese leadership preparing for the 60th anniversary of communist rule in October and calling for the creation of a "harmonious society" to celebrate.

Years of rapid development have failed to smooth over the ethnic fault lines in Xinjiang.

Ethnic Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) have watched growing numbers of Han Chinese move into the region, one of China's fastest-growing, where oil and gas industries make up most of the $61 billion economy. Trade, wheat farming and sheep herding has given way to plantation farms of cotton and sugar beets and natural resource extraction.

Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary, imposed traffic restrictions and ordering people off the streets from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 8 a.m. Wednesday "to avoid further chaos."

"It is needed for the overall situation. I hope people pay great attention and act immediately," he said in an announcement broadcast on Xinjiang television.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang blamed the violence on Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-exiled head of the World Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association.

"Using violence, making rumors, and distorting facts are what cowards do because they are afraid to see social stability and ethnic solidarity in Xinjiang," he told a regular news conference.

Qin said Kadeer was behind the violence, adding "she has committed crimes that jeopardize national security." Evidence had been found against her, Qin said, but refused to give details.

In Washington, Kadeer denied the Chinese accusations.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs over a deadly fight at a factory in eastern China between Han Chinese and Uighur workers. It then spiraled out of control, as mainly Uighur groups beat people and set fire to vehicles and shops belonging to Han Chinese.

On Tuesday, some among the Han Chinese mob retreating from the tear gas were met by Urumqi's Communist Party leader Li Zhi, who climbed atop a police vehicle and started chanting with the crowd. Li pumped his fists, beat his chest, and urged the crowd to strike down Kadeer, the 62-year-old Uighur leader.

"Those Muslims killed so many of our people. We just can't let that happen," said one man in the crowd, surnamed Liu. He carried a long wooden stick and said the Han Chinese were forced to take up arms. People walked by with eyes stinging from the tear gas.

To the east, on Xingfu road, Han Chinese residents stoned a car with two Uighurs inside until it crashed, pulling one passenger out and beating him until police arrived, residents said.

Earlier, about 200 people, mostly women in traditional headscarves, took to the streets in another neighborhood, wailing for the release of their sons and husbands who were arrested in the crackdown and confronting lines of paramilitary police. The women said police came through their neighborhood Monday night and strip-searched men to check for cuts and other signs of fighting before hauling them away.

"My husband was detained at gunpoint. They were hitting people, they were stripping people naked. My husband was scared so he locked the door, but the police broke down the door and took him away," said a woman who gave her name as Aynir. She said about 300 people were arrested in the market in the southern section of town.

The protesters briefly scuffled with paramilitary police, who pushed them back with long sticks before both sides retreated.

Foreign reporters on a government-run tour of the riot's aftermath witnessed the protest.

Groups of 10 or so Uighur men with bricks and knives attacked Han Chinese passers-by and shop-owners around midday outside the railway station until police ran them off, witnesses said.

"They were using everything for weapons, like bricks, sticks and cleavers," said an employee at a nearby fast-food restaurant who identified himself as Ma. "Whenever the rioters saw someone on the street, they would ask 'Are you a Uighur?' If they kept silent or couldn't answer in the Uighur language, they would get beaten or killed."

It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed in those reported attacks.

Li, the Communist Party official, told a news conference that more than 1,000 people had been detained as of early Tuesday and suggested more arrests were under way. "The number is changing all the time. We will let those who did not commit serious crimes go back to their work units."

The official Xinhua News Agency said earlier Tuesday that 1,434 suspects had been arrested, and that checkpoints had been set up to stop rioters from escaping.

Officials at the news conference said they could not give an ethnic breakdown of the dead.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by 1,000 to 3,000 people protesting the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. Xinhua said two died. Messages on Internet sites popular with Uighurs put the figure higher, raising tensions in Xinjiang.

In a sign the government was trying to address communal grievances, Xinhua said Tuesday that 13 people had been arrested over the factory fight, including three from Xinjiang. Two others were arrested for spreading rumors on the Internet that Xinjiang employees had raped two female workers, the report said, citing a police official.

The disturbances in Xinjiang carry reminders of the widespread anti-Chinese protests that shook Tibet last year and have left large parts of western China living with police checkpoints and tightened security. Like the Tibetans, Uighur unrest has not been muted by rapid economic development, although the government publicly is unwilling to address ethnic tensions.

Obama asks Russians to forge partnership with US

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – Working to turn Russia from antagonist to ally, President Barack Obama asked the Russian people Tuesday to "forge a lasting partnership" with the U.S., but he acknowledged after talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that on divisive issues there won't be "a meeting of the minds anytime soon."

Obama was wrapping up a two-day stay in Russia, during which he and President Dmitry Medvedev said they were determined by year's end to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty that would slash both country's arsenals by about one-third.

After breakfast at Putin's country home, Obama sped back to central Moscow to tell the graduating class of the prestigious New Economic School that the U.S. and Russia were not "destined to be antagonists."

Throughout his young presidency, Obama has hewed to a singular message about U.S.-Russian relations, insisting that both nations must get beyond the kind of thinking that gripped Moscow and Washington during the decades of the Cold War. He reprised that in his graduation speech.

"It is difficult to forge a lasting partnership between former adversaries," Obama said. "But I believe on the fundamental issues that will shape this century, Americans and Russians share common interests that form a basis for cooperation."

Before leaving for Russia, Obama had said that Putin had "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." After breakfast with the Russian leader, he told Fox News Channel: "I found him to be tough, smart, shrewd , very unsentimental, very pragmatic. And on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don't anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon."

Putin, the former Russian president, also spoke warmly of his country's hopes for improved U.S. ties with Obama in the White House.

"With you we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries," the former KGB official said, sitting next to Obama.

The White House had been hoping to reach a broader Russian audience with Obama's speech, but the address was not widely available on television. It was carried live on the 24-hour news channel Vesti, but not on any of the main, more widely watched Russian outlets such as First Channel, Rossiya, or NTV.

Obama used his speech to further define his view of the United States' place in the world and, specifically, to argue that the U.S. shares compelling interests with Russia.

"Let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia," he declared.

His upbeat comments showed Obama's determination to turn around public opinion in Russia, where polls show people are wary of the United States and take a skeptical view of Obama himself.

He said Russian and U.S. interests largely overlap in halting the spread of nuclear weapons, confronting violent extremists, ensuring economic prosperity, advancing the rights of people and fostering cooperation without jeopardizing sovereignty.

But he also sprinkled in challenges to Russia, particularly in the area of democracy. U.S. officials are wary of Russia's increasingly hard-line stand on dissent.

"By no means is America perfect," Obama said. But he also said: "Independent media have exposed corruption at all levels of business and government. Competitive elections allow us to change course. ... If our democracy did not advance those rights, I as a person of African ancestry wouldn't be able to address you as an American citizen, much less a president."

Obama said the U.S. will not try to impose any kind of governing system on another country. But he argued for democratic values "because they are moral, and also because they work."

On Georgia and Ukraine — two nations that have sought NATO membership to the chagrin of neighboring Russia — Obama tried a diplomatic touch. He defended the steps nations must take to join the alliance, adding, "NATO seeks collaboration with Russia, not confrontation."

The White House described the session positively, on the whole.

Both sides agreed to try to be better listeners and pay more attention to how each side is looking at the same issues, said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the private meeting that was described as "very candid."

Before the speech Obama held what the White House characterized as a "good meeting" with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The U.S. leader, accompanied by Medvedev, also met with U.S. and Russian business leaders. Obama also met with a diverse collection of non government leaders from both countries — health experts, environmentalists, reporters, human rights advocates — who held their own summit to re-engage engage bilateral cooperation.

Obama also met with Russian opposition leaders.

On Wednesday he heads to a G-8 summit in Italy. While there he will meet Pope Benedict XVI, before moving on to Ghana where he plans to deliver what the White House describes as a major foreign policy speech.

Han Chinese protesters seek Muslim Uighur targets

By Chris Buckley

URUMQI, China (Reuters) – Han Chinese armed with iron bars and machetes spilled down side streets and into the stairwell of an apartment building on Tuesday in looking for Muslim Uighur targets two days after bloody ethnic clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000.

Chinese riot police used tear gas to try to break up protests in the capital of the Muslim region of Xinjiang and will enforce an overnight curfew to try to quell the violence in which many people were wounded. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Some Han Chinese shouted "attack Uighurs" as both sides hurled rocks at each other. Some entered the stairwell of one apartment building and tried to smash open the door of another as residents rained down rocks from the roof. Police eventually dispersed the crowd.

Police used tear gas to try to disperse the crowd, but for a while it only emboldened the demonstrators, caught between two sets of anti-riot police 600 meters (yards) apart.

Some used water to wash the gas out of their eyes as they pressed toward police at the mainly Uighur end of the street.

"They attacked us. Now it's our turn to attack them," a man in the crowd told Reuters. He refused to give his name.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

The violence, which has showed signs of spreading in the volatile region, appeared to have little impact on China's financial markets. Stocks slipped on technical factors while the yuan was trading higher against the dollar.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities.

Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs, who launched a series of attacks to coincide with the buildup to last year's Beijing Olympics, say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

"TIME TO FIGHT BACK"

Part of the crowd briefly surged forward singing the Chinese national anthem before police drove them back with tear gas.

Anti-riot police armed with clubs and shields pushed protesters away from a Uighur neighborhood but hundreds managed to break through police lines.

Many of the Uighur protesters were women, wailing and waving the identity cards of husbands, brothers or sons they say were arbitrarily seized in a sweeping reaction to Sunday's rioting in the city of Urumqi.

"My husband was taken away yesterday by police. They didn't say why. They just took him away," a woman who identified herself as Maliya told Reuters.

Abdul Ali, a Uighur man in his 20s who had taken off his shirt, held up his clenched fist. "They've been arresting us for no reason, and it's time for us to fight back," he said.

Ali said three of his brothers and a sister were among 1,434 suspects taken into custody. Of the 156 killed, 27 were women.

Human rights groups have warned that a harsh crackdown on Uighurs in the wake of Sunday's violence could merely exacerbate the grievances that fueled ethnic tensions.

Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said demonstrators had the right to protest peacefully and that those arrested should be treated in line with international law.

"I urge Uighur and Han civic leaders, and the Chinese authorities at all levels, to exercise great restraint so as not to spark further violence and loss of life," Pillay said in a statement. "This is a major tragedy."

Urumqi Communist Party boss Li Zhi defended the crackdown and confirmed the government had cut internet services to parts of the city to prevent violence spreading.

"It should be said that they were all violent elements who wielded clubs and smashed, looted, burned and even murdered at the scene," he told a news conference.

UNREST SPREADING?

Some Xinjiang newspapers carried graphic pictures of the violence, including corpses, at least one of which showed a woman whose throat had been slashed.

Despite heightened security, some unrest appeared to be spreading in the volatile region, where long-standing ethnic tensions periodically erupt into bloodshed.

Police dispersed around 200 people at the Id Kah mosque in Kashgar in southern Xinjiang on Monday evening, Xinhua said. The report did not say if police used force but said checkpoints had been set up at crossroads between Kashgar airport and downtown.

Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs, while the population of Urumqi, which lies around 3,300 km (2,000 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han.

Chinese officials have already blamed the unrest on separatist groups abroad which it says want to create an independent homeland for Uighurs.

The Chinese embassies in Germany and the Netherlands were attacked by exiled pro-Uighur activists who smashed windows, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. China condemned the attacks.

Wu'er Kaixi, a Uighur and one of the best known dissidents from the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing 20 years ago, said there had been no improvement in China's human rights record.

"For a long time, Uighurs have been discriminated against and suppressed in China," he told a news conference in Taiwan. "So much so that we're almost colonized by China."

List of new US military guidelines in Afghanistan

By The Associated Press

The U.S. military made public new guidelines Monday for international forces in Afghanistan in an effort to reduce civilian deaths:

• Airstrikes must be very limited and authorized but can be used in self-defense if troops' lives are at risk.

• Troops must be accompanied by Afghan forces before they enter residences.

• Troops cannot go into or fire upon mosques or other religious sites. This is already U.S. policy.

Grenade attack in Afghanistan kills 1, wounds 28

By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer

KABUL – A hand grenade thrown at a police vehicle in eastern Afghanistan exploded in a crowd Tuesday, killing one civilian and wounding 28 others, officials said, a day after 10 foreign troops died amid escalating violence across the country.

The grenade attack in Khost province targeted policemen passing through the provincial capital, but the victims were mostly civilians, said Tahir Khan Sabari, the provincial deputy governor.

Four police and five children were among those wounded, said Abdul Majid Mangal, the deputy hospital director.

It was not clear who threw the grenade.

The attack happened a day after bombs and bullets killed seven American troops, while three NATO troops died in a helicopter crash in one of the deadliest days for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Four of the deaths Monday came in an attack on a team of U.S. military trainers in the relatively peaceful north, said Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, a U.S. military spokesman.

The deaths brought into focus the question of whether the U.S. is committing enough troops to secure a country larger than Iraq in both population and land mass. The Taliban have made a violent comeback after a U.S.-led coalition topped them from power nearly eight years ago.

Obama has ordered 21,000 additional American troops to this country, mainly in the south, where Marines recently launched a major anti-Taliban offensive. The U.S. expects 68,000 troops here by year's end, double last year's total but still half as many as are now in Iraq.

Two Americans were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan, Naranjo said. Another American soldier died in a firefight with militants in the east, a U.S. military spokesman said. There were no further details on those incidents.

It was the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since July 13, 2008, when 10 soldiers were killed.

Also in the south, two Canadian and a Briton serving with the NATO-led force were killed Monday when their helicopter crashed in Zabul province, said a spokesman for the military alliance, Lt. Commander Chris Hall.

The incident was not caused by insurgent fire, Hall said.