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Indian lawmakers called for the railway minister to resign on Wednesday, a day after two passenger trains hurtled head-on into each other killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens.
   On Wednesday, another inter-state train ran into a jeep at a railway crossing in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu killing five people travelling in the car, an official said.
   Opposition deputies slammed the government for the spate of accidents on one of the world’s largest rail networks and demanded the railway minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, accept responsibility and resign.
   ‘When there was an accident during our government, the railway minister had offered to resign. Where is the railway minister now?’ the former prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, asked in the lower house of parliament amid noisy protests.
   ‘Shame, shame,’ MPs from Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party shouted before trooping out of the chamber in protest. Yadav was not in parliament at the time.
   Several coaches went off the tracks when the Jammu Tawi express crashed into a local train near Mukerian town in Punjab state on Tuesday.
   A railway spokesman said the death figure from the accident had risen to 38, and 53 people were in hospital with injuries.
   Another official said two station masters had been suspended for alleged dereliction of duty and the railways had filed a police report to bring charges of criminal neglect against them.
   ‘How could they have allowed two trains to be running into each other on the same track,’ a railway ministry spokesman said. ‘Were they asleep ?’
   But newspapers and commentators said successive governments had failed to upgrade the railway’s vital infra-structure, and safety standards had been falling over the decades.
   ‘An accident waiting to happen,’ the Indian Express said, adding its investigations showed that one reason for the train crash in Punjab was colonial-era signalling equipment that had broken down a day before the accident.
   The Express said it found a ‘crumbling communication network and virtually non-existent infrastructure’ in the rural stretch of Punjab where Tuesday’s accident took place. ‘Killing laxity’, read a headline in The Hindustan Times.
   The railway minister who toured the accident site promised strong action against those found responsible for what he called a ‘brutal murder’.
   The Indian rail network operates nearly 14,000 trains a day, carrying more than 13 million passengers, but has about 300 accidents a year.
   The rail system is saddled with huge losses because of its rock-bottom fares and a bloated workforce, leaving little for investment in infrastructure and safety.
   ‘There has always been talk of upgradation in terms of tracks, communication, but it has happened only in certain sections,’ said political commentator, TR Ramachandran on state-run Doordarshan television.
   ‘Human life is precious, but it’s not taken seriously here,’ he said.
   Meanwhile, the Indian police were looking for two railway stationmasters blamed for a head-on collision between two passenger trains, officials said on Wednesday.

China is ratcheting up pressure for the lifting of its EU arms embargo to remove the stigma of sanctions but also because it needs the technology to upgrade its existing systems, analysts say on Wednesday.
   During the Sino-European summit this month in the Hague, Europe refused to lift the 15-year-old ban but indicated that it could do so within six months if member states could agree on a code of conduct on weapons sales.
   China has repeatedly denied any interest in acquiring European weapon systems, arguing instead that the embargo was political discrimination and an expression of Europe’s refusal to deal with China on an equal basis.
   ‘To demand the lifting of arms sales embargo does not mean that China would like to buy advanced weapons from Europe,’ The premier, Wen Jiabao, told journalists at the summit.
   ‘Rather, it is aimed to oppose political discrimination against China,’ he said.
   The embargo, imposed following Beijing’s bloody quelling of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, did not conform to improving Sino-EU relations nor to the stated hopes by both sides to build a “strategic partnership,’ Wen said.
   Analysts said Wen was choosing his words carefully.
   ‘China is doing what governments and politicians always do. They are playing with semantics,’ Robert Karniol, Asia specialist for Jane’s Defence Weekly, said.
   ‘When they say they don’t want any weapons, they are talking about things that actually shoot.’
   ‘China has not been interested in European weapons platforms, and to a lesser extent weapons systems. What they are looking at are sub-systems, like radars and sonars.’
   There is plenty of dual-use technology and other military hardware, including engines, naval systems, avionics, radars, sonars and command and control systems, that China would like if the embargo were lifted, he said.
   ‘If China could get the EU arms embargo lifted, they will bring pressure to Russia, which also has some restrictions on its arms sales and technology transfers to China,’ said Arthur Ding, a specialist on China’s People’s Liberation Army at Taiwan’s Institute of International Relations.
   ‘If the EU lifts its embargo, that could pressure Russia to lift its restrictions.’
   Purchases of European technology could also be used to upgrade China’s existing Russian weapons systems, he said.
   With Europe and the United States maintaining arms and
   high technology sanctions on China, Russia has been
   China’s main arms supplier since 1989.
   It has sold its neighbour billions of dollars worth of advanced fighter jets, advanced destroyers, submarines and other weapons systems.
   ‘Even if the embargo is lifted, China might not buy a lot of arms from Europe because its main goal is to build up its own technology,’ Ding said.
   ‘China’s emphasis is on technology transfer to build up their own capabilities.’
   This means that China could be satisfied with just procuring a few weapons systems or sub-systems in order to study the technology and see if it could be reproduced, he said.
   Despite the embargo, China has still been able to procure weapons and weapons technology from Europe in recent years.
   This includes helicopters and missiles from France, advanced radars from Britain and diesel engines for their submarines from other European manufacturers, Ding said.
   European press reports said that China procured some 280 million dollars of weapons-related technology from Europe in 2002 alone, with half the sales coming from France.
   Even the United States, which has been one of the most vocal opponents of lifting the EU embargo, has managed to sell weapons and weapons-related hardware to China despite its own sanctions, Jane’s Karniol said.
   ‘The US managed to find a way to get around its own sanctions on China during the last decade and sold jet engines for China’s J-8 trainer/light attack aircraft,’ Karniol said.
   ‘China then turned around and sold the planes to Myanmar and Pakistan, both of which are sanctioned by the United States. So if you really want to find a way to get around these sanctions, you can find a way.’

North Korea warned Japan on Wednesday that it would treat economic sanctions as a ‘declaration of war’ and threatened to try to exclude Tokyo from six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programmes.
   Calls are growing from the Japanese public and politicians for the government to impose sanctions on North Korea after Tokyo said bones Pyongyang had identified as those of Japanese it had kidnapped were from other people.
   ‘If sanctions are applied against the North Korea due to the moves of the ultra-right forces (in Japan), we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method,’ a spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo.
   North Korea handed over the bones at talks in Pyongyang in November, saying they were the remains of Megumi Yokota and Kaoru Matsuki, two of 13 Japanese who Pyongyang has admitted abducting in the 1970s and 1980s to teach its spies about Japan.
   Japan, which has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, lodged a protest with Pyongyang and demanded clarification on the fate of 10 Japanese who Tokyo believes were kidnapped. North Korea has said eight of the 10 are dead and two others unaccounted for.
   North Korea’s spokesman said it was ‘unimaginable’ that the bones handed over by Yokota’s North Korean husband were not hers.
   The North admitted in 2002 to kidnapping the 13 Japanese, and Japan believes another two were also abducted.
   Five have returned to Japan.
   Pyongyang has said in the past that any imposition of sanctions by Japan would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
   A hefty majority of Japanese citizens favour economic sanctions on North Korea, media polls have shown.
   However, the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has taken a cautious stance, apparently for fear of jeopardising the six-party process.
   ‘We must find out where their real intention lies,’ Koizumi told reporters when asked about North Korea’s remarks.
   A Japanese foreign ministry official said on Wednesday that the six-party talks among the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia were unlikely to be held before the president, Bush, was sworn in for a second term on January 20 and might be delayed until March, Japanese media reported.
   South Korea, meanwhile, said that sanctions were not a good option.
   ‘I would like to repeat that it is desirable to make real progress through peaceful dialogue by making North Korea join the dialogue table rather than sanctions or blockade,’ the South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, told a news conference.
   North Korea’s spokesman said Pyongyang might call for Japan to be excluded from the talks on its nuclear programmes, which also involve the two Koreas, China, Russia and the United States.
   ‘We will seriously reconsider the issue of taking part in the six-party talks together with Japan as long as such premeditated and provocative campaign of the ultra-right forces against the North Korea goes on,’ he said.
   Three rounds of six-party talks have made little progress and a fourth round set for September did not materialise.
   Pyongyang said on Monday it was seriously reconsidering its role in the talks because of what it sees as a concerted campaign to topple its ruling system.
   The five regional powers are seeking to persuade the North to ditch its nuclear weapons ambitions in return for aid and security guarantees.

Egypt is generating new hope for Mideast peace after four bleak years, transforming the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, from pariah to peacemaker and seeking to draw Arab leaders and a wary public into its efforts.
   The peace drive has included appeals to Arab rulers to support the new Palestinian leadership and an economic deal Tuesday that is arguably the biggest step in Israeli-Egyptian relations in 25 years.
   Egypt appears determined to show Israel and the president, Bush, who has said a Palestinian state by 2009 is realistic, that the matter can be settled in 2005.
   Egypt’s plan is to follow an old one — the internationally backed ‘road map’ for peace — and every step holds the potential for a set-back, though it is making fresh commitments to lessen risks.
   ‘We are trying to prepare the atmosphere (so) that the two parties can sit down and start to talk,’ said Mohammed Bassiouni, Egypt’s former ambassador to Israel, who insists Egypt’s goals are realistic.
   Egypt’s diplomatic efforts envision, according to Bassiouni, a March meeting in Cairo with representatives of all Palestinian factions to sign on to a protocol laying out their roles after a planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
   A British-proposed international peace conference early in the year could lay out provisional borders for a Palestinian state, and Bassiouni said a second conference could be held around July for a final settlement.
   But Egypt has a lot of persuading to do.
   Neither the Israelis nor the Americans have embraced the British proposal. Saudi Arabia, the other Arab heavyweight, also has sounded reserved.
   The Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said Monday that even with all the optimism following Yasser Arafat’s death, a solution is still ‘very difficult.’

Soldiers patrolled the largest city in India’s volatile northeast and frisked bus passengers on Wednesday after a series of grenade attacks blamed on a powerful underground group killed a man and wounded 50.
   The co-ordinated blasts in six places in oil and tea-rich Assam on Tuesday came less than a week after the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom rejected an offer of peace talks with the government.
   Security was tightened in the commercial capital Guwahati and across Assam, outside government buildings, oil installations and shopping centres—all sites which the Liberation Front, fighting for an independent state, has targeted in the past.
   Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but police said they had intelligence intercepts suggesting the Liberation Front was behind the blasts.
   ‘They are trying to show their strength after rejecting the government’s peace offer,’ said police inspector general DK Pathak. The group spurned the talks offer by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, saying it could not accept Singh’s demand that they first give up violence.
   India’s northeast is home to hundreds of tribes and dozens of insurgent groups, some fighting for secession and others for autonomy.
   They blame New Delhi for plundering the region’s resources of oil and timber and neglecting the local economy.
   Tuesday’s blasts took place exactly a year after India’s tiny neighbour Bhutan launched a military offensive against the Liberation Front to throw them out of the Himalayan kingdom where they had set up dozens of camps.
   Pathak said police had intercepted messages from the Liberation Front commanders instructing cadres to launch strikes to observe ‘Revenge Day’ on December 14, to mark the first anniversary of the operation against them in Bhutan.
   Another police official said it was not easy to prevent grenade attacks, despite advance warning and heavy security checks.
   ‘Throwing a grenade is not at all difficult for the militants because they can hide it in their body or inside handbags and then hurl it in a crowded place,’ said police superintendent Hiren Nath.
   But in the neighbouring state of Nagaland, two exiled leaders of another powerful rebel group urged followers to support a peaceful end to their revolt in which thousands have been killed.
   The chief of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Isak Chishi Swu, and general secretary, Thuingaleng Muivah, returned home to a hero’s welcome on Tuesday.
   The group, which has been fighting for a separate Naga nation for more than half a century, has been observing a ceasefire with Indian forces in Nagaland since 1997, but talks to end the revolt have made slow progress.

China said Wednesday weekend election results in Taiwan proved most Taiwanese favour peace with the mainland and were fed up with President Chen Shui-bian’s separatist activities.
   ‘Recently all that Chen has done was aimed at provoking the continent,’ Li Weiyi, spokesman of the Cabinet-level Taiwan Affairs Office said at a briefing in China’s first official reaction to the polls.
   ‘The separatist activities didn’t win people’s hearts. The result of the election has shown that the majority of public opinion in Taiwan is for peace and for developing relations with China.’
   In Saturday’s poll, Taiwan’s Pan Blue grouping of the Kuomintang, People First Party and New Party won most of the 225 seats, frustrating Chen’s Pan Green alliance in its bid to take control of parliament.
   Chen Tuesday resigned as leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, taking blame for the result.
   Despite the setback for Chen, Chinese state media have warned it is not a decisive blow and that the Taiwan leader still has the executive power to introduce pro-independence policies.
   China, which claims the island as its territory despite their split in 1949, has repeatedly threatened to invade if Taiwan makes formal moves to break away.

The main Marxist coalition partner of the Sri Lankan president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is undermining Norwegian-led peace efforts, the country’s foreign aid donors warned Wednesday.
   Japan, the United States and the European Union, which co-chair efforts to drum up international financial support to rebuild Sri Lanka, said they were concerned about the activities of the JVP, or People’s Liberation Front.
   ‘They expressed deep concern about the ongoing JVP-led actions against the peace process in Sri Lanka and the government of Norway’s
   efforts as facilitator of that process,’ the donors Wednesday said in a strongly-worded statement.
   Donor representatives met Kumaratunga on Tuesday to warn her about the JVP activities and urge her to control the Marxists and bring them in line with the government’s own thinking on the peace effort.
   The JVP has been staunchly opposed to Oslo’s role in the peace bid and has repeatedly asked them to quit.
   The JVP also opposes any concessions to Tiger rebels in order to revive talks which have been stalled since April last year.
   “The representatives urged the president to address the problem,’ the statement said adding that they strongly supported Norway’s role as a peace facilitator in Sri Lanka.
   The statement came as a top Norwegian envoy, Erik Solheim, arrived here in a bid to try and salvage the faltering peace process amid threats to a fragile ceasefire that has been in place since February 2002.
   Scandinavian truce monitors have warned stepped-up violence in the island’s embattled north-east could seriously jeopardise the peace process and take the country back to its decades old separatist conflict.
   More than 60,000 people died in fighting between 1972 and 2002 before the truce went into effect.

For the United States president, George W Bush, a re-elected Republican who will spend the next two years working with a bolstered Republican majority in Congress, the trouble may be just beginning.
   If Bush faced rough going in the passage of the popular intelligence-reform bill reaching his desk this week, analysts said on Tuesday, just wait until he attempts to overhaul the Byzantine tax code and revamp a Social Security system facing a mountain of debt.
   Bush insists he made his best case for the intelligence bill, which the House and Senate approved last week. But many believe he must sharpen his lobbying for the tougher challenges ahead, with even an aide to the house speaker, Dennis Hastert, said on Tuesday the president was not personally engaged enough during the legislative debate.
   Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the independent September 11 commission that recommended the changes, sees a lesson for Bush.
   ‘What you would assume is that a president coming off a solid election victory would have very strong–if not overwhelming– political clout with the members of his own party,’ said Hamilton, a Democrat who was a congressman from Indiana for 34 years. ‘What this experience shows is that he does not. It says that the president cannot automatically expect the support of even Republicans in the House.
   ‘I think more broadly what is happening is that Congress is beginning–and maybe Republicans because they control the Congress are beginning–to assert independence,’ he added. ‘Will it develop
   into a full-scale rebellion? I think probably not.’
   The work ahead is daunting. Much of Bush’s second-term agenda can be reduced to one word: reform. In his view, the federal tax code cries out for reform. His approach to Social Security: reform it. His approach to legal liability: reform it. Immigration laws: reform them.
   But the president’s concept of reform, in some cases, means little more than ‘sabotage’ to his opponents. Democrats say his changes would help the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. What few dispute is that Bush is seeking ambitious overhauls in long-established systems.
   It’s not only entrenched Democratic opposition that Bush faces. If the hard-fought rearrangement of the nation’s intelligence community is any measure, the president faces a challenge in a Congress solidly controlled by his party–especially because many Republicans are deeply concerned about the ballooning budget deficit.
   The intelligence measure, which will empower a national director to oversee the spending of most federal intelligence agencies, was popular in public opinion polls. Backed by the non-partisan September 11 commission, it was endorsed by Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress.
   Yet objections from a few Republican congressmen brought the bill to the brink of failure.
   The president’s first-term domestic successes–particularly in education and cutting taxes–relied upon bipartisan support from legislators. But with an emboldened Republican-run Congress for at least two years, Democrats seem much less likely to acquiesce to Bush’s agenda.
   Bush faces scepticism throughout Congress and among the public over his plans for revamping Social Security, which faces financial problems as Baby Boomers begin to retire. He wants to allow recipients to invest some of their retirement savings in the stock market, which Democrats have portrayed as reckless.
   In tackling the tax code, Bush is inviting another battle. In seeking to limit the awards people could win in lawsuits, he faces huge opposition.
   And in seeking guest-worker status for undocumented immigrants, Bush may be seeking the impossible. The president maintains that employers who cannot find workers for certain jobs should be able to hire Mexicans and others living in the country illegally.
   Still, the next two years should present a golden opportunity for him. The Senate, with the GOP holding 55 seats, will rest more firmly in Republican control than it has since Herbert Hoover’s presidency in the late 1920s. House Republicans will rule that chamber with a 30-seat margin.
   But the president likely will find little success in his reforms without improving his relationship with Republicans in Congress.
   ‘Obviously, the Congress is allied with the president, and we share the same agenda,’ said Hastert spokesman, John Feehery.
   ‘But that doesn’t mean we work for him,’ he added. ‘We work for our constituents. What this means is that, when the president brings legislative issues to the Hill, he has to sell them.’
   Feehery suggested Bush was not personally involved enough in the intelligence bill, saying, ‘Part of the problem is that the president was campaigning during most of this.’
   As Bush approaches social security reform, he has started summoning leaders of both parties to the White House.
   Last week, the president laid an important marker on the table, insisting that meeting Social Security’s nearly $11 trillion long-term debt will exclude new taxes.
   Bush has drawn this line while promising to halve the record-high federal deficit. But he will encounter GOP forces concerned about the deficit and about borrowing money to balance Social Security’s ledgers.
   ‘The deficit is the biggest thing he faces,’ said Wayne Steger, professor of political science at DePaul University. ‘That is what’s going to make fiscal conservatives in his own party nervous about supporting him. He does face a huge battle’.
   ‘He is going to need to probably scale back and concentrate his efforts. If he tries to push everything, he is going to end up with nothing,’ Steger added.

Two years after shutting what critics called a deceptive propaganda office, the Pentagon is embroiled in a new high-level debate over how to polish the fading United States image abroad, defence officials said on Wednesday.
   The discussion, also involving the White House and state department, has been sparked by increasing violence and deaths in Iraq, the war on terrorism and a perception in much of the Muslim world that America is the enemy.
   Pentagon officials said military commanders were concerned about blurring the lines between using misinformation to fool an enemy and providing accurate information to a Unites States and worldwide audience.
   ‘The lines must always be what people focus on because they are not always clear,’ the chief Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said. ‘There is a bright line of distinction between the age-old art of military deception and transmitting accurate information to the public in a timely manner.’
   The office was secretly created after the September 11, 2001, attacks as part of a broader mission by the United States government to influence public opinion in the Islamic world.
   An October incident illustrated how traditional military public affairs operations can be mixed in with ‘psychological operations’ intended to manipulate an enemy.
   Three weeks ahead of the Marine-led offensive in Fallujah, a Marine Corps spokesman, 1st lieutenant Lyle Gilbert, went on CNN to make an announcement suggesting the all-out assault had begun.
   American officials said Gilbert’s televised remarks were intended to fool rebels in Fallujah into believing the offensive had begun in order to scout how they would defend themselves in a city that at the time was a sanctuary for the militancy.
   A military official said the ploy may have ‘gained some tactical-level advantage’ for Marines on the ground, but asked: ‘In the big strategic picture, what was the cost’ to United States military credibility?
   This official advocated ‘clearly defined lanes’ between military public affairs operations, whose comments reach a broad United States and world audience, and information operations and psychological operations aimed at manipulating an enemy.
   One defence official confirmed that Rumsfeld signed a secret order late last year called ‘Information Operations Roadmap,’ a 74-page classified directive that the Times quoted officials as calling ‘a plan to advance the goal of information operations as a core military competency.’
   ‘There’s a lot of interagency discussion on whether we need new institutions, or to revive old ones,’ Di Rita said. He mentioned the Voice of America, the United States Information Agency, Radio Free Europe and other Cold War efforts.
   The top United States commander in Iraq, General George Casey, last summer combined his public affairs operations with psychological and information operations into a unified strategic communications office.
   The chairman of the military’s joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, is concerned United States goals in Iraq and counter-terrorism could be undermined if people doubt the veracity of statements by military spokesmen and commanders, officials said.

The White House defended defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, against criticism by a prominent Republican senator over the Pentagon’s handling of the continuing militancy and mounting American casualties in Iraq.
   In widely-quoted comments in the American media Tuesday, United States senator, John McCain, said he had ‘no confidence’ in Rumsfeld, and expressed disappointment that the Pentagon had not sent a greater number of United States troops to help stabilise Iraq.
   The remarks reprised a recent television interview in which the Arizona senator said that while he could not give Rumsfeld a vote of confidence, he would do his best to set his reservations aside.
   ‘I want to work with secretary Rumsfeld because he will be the secretary of defence for an undetermined length of time,’ McCain said Fox News recently.
   ‘The president of the United States was re-elected by a majority of the American people, and I respect his right. I will work with the president, obviously, and with the secretary of defence,’ said McCain, a Vietnam War hero and one of the most respected members of the United States Congress on defence matters.
   At a White House press conference Tuesday, spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the criticism has not eroded Bush’s confidence in his defence secretary.
   ‘Secretary Rumsfeld has been doing a tremendous job during some very challenging times. During a time when we are in the middle of the war on terrorism, he has helped us make great progress to dismantle and disrupt the terrorist networks across the world,’ said McClellan.
   ‘We appreciate his leadership at the department of defence. And that’s why the president asked him to continue his service,’ he said.
   The flap comes as other Republican lawmakers have become increasingly vocal in expressing displeasure over Bush’s decision to retain Rumsfeld as the Pentagon’s top civilian manager.
   That criticism increased markedly following remarks last week by Rumsfeld during a visit with troops in Kuwait, in which he responded to a soldier’s question about the lack of body armour for US forces in Iraq.
   ‘You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,’ the defence secretary said.
   That answer incensed many lawmakers, including longtime Rumsfeld critic Republican senator, Chuck Hagel.
   ‘That soldier and those men and women there deserved a far better answer from their secretary of defence than a flippant comment– not when you’re putting these men and women in harm’s way,’ said Hagel, a decorated war veteran, who offered litany of complaints about Rumsfeld’s ‘irresponsible’ handling of the Iraq war.
   ‘I don’t like the way he has done some things. I think they have been irresponsible. I don’t like the way we went into Iraq,’ he said in a television interview with CNN this week.
   ‘We didn’t go into Iraq with enough troops. He’s dismissed his general officers. He’s dismissed all outside influence. He’s dismissed outside counsel and advice, and he’s dismissed a lot of inside counsel and advice from men and women who have been in military uniforms for 25 and 30 years,’ he said.
   The Nebraska senator pointedly refused to endorse Bush’s decision to ask Rumsfeld to stay on.
   ‘The president’s decision is his decision. He will live with that decision. He’ll have to defend that decision,’ Hagel said.

United States Marines fired a pistol in a mock execution involving four young Iraqi looters and shocked another Iraqi detainee with an electric transformer until he ‘danced,’ a document made public on Tuesday showed.
   The June 16, United States Navy document detailed 10 ‘substantiated’ incidents of detainee abuse in Iraq involving 24 Marines dating back to May 2003. The Marine Corps said 13 Marines were convicted in courts-martial stemming from the incidents, getting prison sentences of up to 15 months.
   The document was written seven weeks after pictures of United States Army soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail became public, triggering worldwide condemnation.
   It was one of numerous Navy documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. In a June 14 e-mail, a Navy criminal investigator wrote that his Iraq ‘caseload is exploding, high visibility cases are on the rise.’
   ‘The Defence Department has insisted from the outset that abuse, to the extent that it occurs at all, is aberrational,’ said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer. ‘I think we now have overwhelming evidence that that’s not true, but that abuse was widespread and that it was systemic in the sense that it was the result of policies adopted by the Defence Department.’
   Air Force lieutenant colonel John Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman, said, ‘We’ve never denied that misconduct sometimes occurs. But in all instances, we thoroughly investigate cases to determine the facts and hold responsible individuals accountable.’
   The June 16 document listed a series of previously unknown incidents of detainee abuse by Marines, as well as 10 cases that Navy investigators, who handle cases involving Marines, examined as possible abuse but deemed ‘unsubstantiated.’
   It described an April 2004 incident at Al Mahmudiya in which Marines shocked an Iraqi detainee with an electric transformer, placing live electrical wires on the detainee’s shoulder, noting that ‘the detainee ‘danced’ as he was shocked.’’
   The Marine Corps said four Marines were convicted of charges including assault, cruelty, maltreatment, and making a false official statement, with prison sentences ranging from 60 days to 15 months. A fifth Marine was given administrative punishment.
   The document described incidents in June and July 2003 in Adiwaniyah. It stated that Marines ‘ordered 4 juvenile Iraqi looters to kneel beside 2 shallow fighting holes & a pistol was discharged to conduct a mock execution.’ It did not give the age of the Iraqis. Marines in the case also were accused of locking looters in an abandoned tank and spraying looters with a fire extinguisher.

Tony Blair is unlikely to sway the US president, George W Bush, on global warming when he leads the G8 nations in 2005 but the British premier could help his own re-election bid by appearing to stand up to Washington, analysts say.
   They say Blair could shed a ‘poodle’ image acquired for his staunch support of Bush on Iraq – and might even convince Washington to accept the basic science of climate change.
   Blair has pledged to put green issues at the top of his agenda for the 12 months starting in January that Britain has the helm of the Group of Eight rich nations club.
   But his high-profile commitment to the environment contrasts sharply with the Bush administration, which has refused to sign up to the benchmark Kyoto treaty to combat global warming.

The Iraqi defence minister, Hazem Shaalan, accused Iran of orchestrating terrorist attacks in Iraq, saying its neighbour country was the ‘most dangerous enemy of Iraq’.
   Iran is the most dangerous enemy of Iraq and all Arabs,’ Shaalan said. ‘The source of terrorism in Iraq is Iran.’
   The two countries fought a brutal eight-year war from 1980 under then leader Saddam Hussein and lingering tensions remain with many Iraqis still convinced that Iran is trying to undermine their country.
   ‘Terrorism is Iraq is orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence and Saddam loyalists. The financing and training of the terrorists comes from Syria and Iran,’ he said.
   His comments came as campaigning opened for Iraq’s landmark national elections, and a day after the prime minister, Iyad Allawi said Saddam Hussein’s top henchmen would go to trial next week for crimes against humanity.
   Wednesday also marks the end of voter registration across the violence-wracked country, and the deadline for parties to present their lists of candidates for the January 30 vote.
   Allawi is widely expected to be among the candidates running from his Iraqi National Accord party, and his announcement of trials for former regime members has been seen as a bid to give him a political boost ahead of the polls.
   Saddam, seized by United States forces along with 11 of his top Baathist lieutenants, is being held at Camp Cropper, a vast American base near Baghdad’s international airport, the human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, confirmed.

Australia warns of Indonesia attack
Australia has received new information warning that a terrorist attack could be carried out soon in Indonesia, possibly targeting international hotels, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Wednesday. ‘We have received credible new information suggesting terrorists are ready to carry out an attack shortly in Indonesia, possibly targeting a Hilton Hotel,’ the department said in a new travel warning. ‘Other targets cannot be ruled out.’ It advised Australians in neighbouring Indonesia, where Islamic militants linked to the al-Qaeda militant group have launched several major bomb attacks in recent years, to avoid all international hotels and other places where foreigners are likely to gather.
— AFP

Fresh violence kills 3 in south Thailand
A village chief and two other Buddhists were shot dead in southern Thailand in one of the bloodiest days of violence in recent weeks in the Muslim-dominated region, police said. The deaths, all in isolated attacks in Narathiwat province, came as security sources said they had arrested a prime suspect in the Islamist separatist insurgency which flared to life in January. More than 560 people have been killed since then. Village headman Kliang Jankong, 52, was shot three times by unknown attackers in Bacho district after seeing his daughter off to school, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. ‘Police are convinced the killing was part of the ongoing violence in the southern provinces,’ Bacho police superintendent Colonel Somchai Sawasdisak said in a report.
— AFP

Two killed, 625,000 homeless in SL floods
A policeman and a child have been killed and an estimated 625,000 people forced from their homes by severe flooding in three districts in Sri Lanka, the social services department said. The constable was washed away in floodwaters that swept Kalmunai in the island’s east where a child also drowned Tuesday, officials said Wednesday, adding relief supplies were being rushed to affected areas. ‘About 125,000 families, or 625,000 individuals have moved out of their homes due to flooding or the threat of flooding,’ a spokesman said. The districts of Anuradhapura, Ampara and Polonnaruwa were worst hit.
— AFP

Five shot dead on Kashmir border
Indian soldiers shot dead five men on the Kashmir border with Pakistan, the army said, as a troop pulled out continued in the revolt-hit state. Indian security forces opened fire at Babarnallah in Hira Nagar district, 100 kilometres from Indian Kashmir’s winter capital Jammu Wednesday. ‘Indian troops spotted five young men trying to cross the border and asked them to surrender,’ said army spokesman Colonel RK Chibber. ‘When they refused... they were gunned down. The identity of the intruders is being established,’ he said. Security sources said the men may have been Bangladeshi migrants trying to reach Pakistan.
— AFP

Democrats lose charge in Washington govt race
Washington State’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit brought by Democrats to review all disqualified ballots in last month’s gubernatorial election for a hand recount that is already under way. The ruling reduced the chances for Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire, the state’s attorney general, to pick up extra votes from the November 2 election against Republican Governor-elect Dino Rossi. Rossi, a real estate agent, was named governor-elect nearly a month after a machine recount narrowed his lead over Gregoire from 261 votes to just 42 out of a total 2.8 million votes.
— Reuters

Bush awards Medal of Freedom to three
The US president, George W Bush, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to three figures who were central to his Iraq policy, the former CIA director, George Tenet, former Iraq administrator, L Paul Bremer, and retired General Tommy Franks. Democrats suggested Bush should have looked elsewhere, at least in the case of Tenet, in awarding the government’s highest civilian honour. Bush lauded all three for playing ‘pivotal roles in great events’ and for advancing the cause of liberty in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tenet, who left the CIA in July after seven years as director, has been criticised for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war. Tenet spoke up before the terrorist attacks about his belief that the al-Qaeda terror network was planning something big. But specific information was never forthcoming, and the attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
— AP

Blair, Schroeder meet to discuss ‘EU issue’
The British prime minister, Tony Blair and German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, held talks over dinner in advance of a weekend summit meeting of the European Union, a spokesman for Blair said. ‘They’re obviously speaking about European issues, and especially the agenda of the forthcoming European Council meeting at the end of the week,’ the spokesman said. Blair and Schroeder will be among 25 European Union heads of government meeting in Brussels later this week to decide whether the bloc should open membership negotiations with Turkey.
— AFP

US renews warning on Sudan travel
Officials renewed a travel warning for US citizens against all travel to Sudan due to continued terrorist threats in the region. The United States government ‘has received indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western interests in Sudan. Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, bombings, or kidnappings,’ the American State Department said in the travel warning. American citizens ‘should be aware of the risk of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in public places, which include tourist sites and locations where westerners are known to congregate, and commercial operations associated with United States or western interests.
— AFP

UN calls for immediate end to Congo fighting
The United Nations called on Monday for an immediate cease-fire in eastern Congo as fighting between rival army factions flared for a third day. The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo also called on the vast central African country’s power-sharing government, set up after a five-year war, to clarify what was happening in the area. A senior official in North Kivu province said the violence that broke out over the weekend had resumed on Monday. ‘The fighting had stopped last night but it started again early this afternoon,’ said Albert Semana, the province’s director of security.’ ‘We still don’t have an idea of casualties, but the fighting is heavy and heavy weapons are being used.’
— AFP