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The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said on Tuesday he was ready to hold talks over the disputed region of Kashmir with the Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, who visits New Delhi next week.
   Musharraf will be in the Indian capital to watch an India-Pakistan cricket match on April 17 and to hold talks with Singh to push forward a cautious peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
   ‘Though it is not a state visit and is an informal one, we are prepared to discuss anything with our honoured guest including Kashmir, further confidence-building measures and having a common security,’ Singh was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying.
   He gave no further details.
   Ties between the edgy South Asian neighbours, who have fought two out of their three wars over Kashmir, have improved over the past 17 months as part of a tentative peace process.
   Efforts at building greater trust between the two sides received a boost last week after both nations began a bus link between the capitals of Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.
   In Kashmir, the moderate faction of the main political separatist alliance urged hardliners on Tuesday to unite ahead of planned talks with Musharraf. He was due to meet Kashmiri separatist politicians in New Delhi.
   ‘We have decided to convey to Musharraf that Pakistan should take all separatist and militant groups into confidence before taking any steps towards the resolution of the Kashmir dispute,’ said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
   ‘At this crucial juncture of history we appeal to all separatist groups to effectively play their role in reuniting Hurriyat,’ Farooq told a news conference.
   Hurriyat is an alliance of about two dozen political separatist groups, some of them fighting for Kashmir’s independence and others for its merger with Pakistan.
   The Hurriyat was significantly weakened after a hardline faction, backed by Muslim guerrillas fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, walked out, opposing peace talks with New Delhi.

Construction of new housing proceeded at full speed in Maaleh Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, despite pointed criticism from president Bush that clouded a Texas summit with Israel’s leader.
   The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, deflected Bush’s remarks, but the renewed dispute ruined what Sharon had hoped would be a warm endorsement of his plan to exit Gaza and part of the West Bank in the summer. Sharon met Tuesday with the vice president, Dick Cheney, and Congressional leaders in Washington.
   Israel recently confirmed plans to build an additional 3,650 houses between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem, five miles to the west — effectively cutting off the Arab section of the city from the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians say this would make it impossible for them to create a state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital.
   At his ranch on Monday, Bush told Sharon that any further building in settlements would violate the ‘roadmap’ peace plan. Making the dispute public at a news conference after their talk, Bush said, ‘I’ve been very clear. Israel has an obligation under the road map. That’s no expansion of settlements.’
   Sharon said Israel has built settlements to solidify control over areas of the West Bank it deems vital to its security. ‘It was not to antagonise the US, but to keep areas that seem strategic to Israel,’ Sharon said.
   Construction in Maaleh Adumim has continued unabated through various Mideast peace plans, and it proceeded on Tuesday. Finishing touches were being put on apartment buildings at the edge of the settlement, home to 30,000 Israelis in the barren Judean desert.
   Large cranes hoisted equipment on and off the buildings, bulldozers cleared rubble, workers in yellow hard hats lay down cement bricks, and the sound of banging hammers echoed in the air.
   Work on some of the buildings began more than a year ago. The construction is not connected to the plan to expand the settlement to complete a Jewish ring around the Jerusalem.
   ‘This is not an expansion at all. It’s building in Maaleh Adumim territory,’ said Benny Kashriel, mayor of the settlement. ‘Expansion is when you are taking more land ... and giving it to Maaleh Adumim.’
   Kashriel said his settlement is widely considered part of Israel and noted that Bush has indicated in the past that the US considers it part of Israel as well. In 2004, Bush broke with longstanding US policy and announced that any final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal would have to take into account existing Jewish population centres.
   The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Tuesday there were no legal settlements and urged Israel to halt its construction.
   ‘We hope that Prime Minister Sharon will heed president Bush’s call to have a full cessation of settlement activities,’ Erekat said. ‘This is Israel’s main obligation in the first phase of the road map: to stop all settlement activities.’ After meeting the Israeli vice premier, Shimon Peres, in Tel Aviv, Erekat said Bush’s remarks would ‘re-energise the roadmap.’
   Bush presented the road map in June 2003, but it stalled when neither side carried out the initial phase. Israel was to halt settlement activity and Palestinians were to dismantle violent groups responsible for attacking Israelis.
   Sharon had hoped the focus of the Texas summit would be warm US political support for his Gaza pullout plan, which is facing stiff domestic opposition.
   Reflecting Israeli concerns over that opposition, a senior military officer said Tuesday that 10,000 soldiers would be trained for the evacuation.
   The officer, who is involved in preparations for the withdrawal, gave details of five security perimeters to be set up for the pullout.
   He said an inner circle, responsible for removing the 9,000 Gaza and West Bank settlers from their homes, would be chosen from among 10,000 soldiers who are to begin training in late May or early June. Policemen will also be part of this inner circle.
   Forces in this contingent will not be armed, said the officer.
   The officer said four additional rings of security personnel would be established, to prevent Palestinians from attacking soldiers and settlers and to keep Israeli sympathizers from interfering with the operation.

The current tensions between Japan and China could derail plans to reform the United Nations Security Council, a senior UN official said in remarks published by the Financial Times.
   Mark Malloch Brown, UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s chief of staff, said the tensions were indicative of the extreme sensitivity of the plan to enlarge the Security Council.
   The tensions ‘are indicative of a core uneasiness about ...
   an enlargement that creates an even more entrenched group of big states with no accountability to their regions,’ Malloch Brown told the newspaper.
   He said it was up to Japan, Germany and India—three of the major powers seeking permanent membership of the Security Council—to reassure their neighbours.
   ‘Germany and Japan and India really need to listen to their regions and give their regions an assurance that they are not going to use their membership to settle old scores within the region but to genuinely accept a sense of accountability for their region,’ he said.
   Malloch Brown’s comments follow mass streets protests in China over the weekend targeting Japanese interests, which on occasion turned violent.
   The protests were triggered by Japan’s approval of a new history textbook that China says whitewashes Japanese wartime atrocities, but among the demonstrators’ demands was for Tokyo to be denied a Security Council seat.
   The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, also raised the stakes on Tuesday during a visit to India. He supported the home nation’s Security Council candidacy, but said Japan should face up to its wartime past before being admitted.
   Annan has called for the major reforms to the UN to be agreed by September, offering two separate models for the trickiest issue, the changes to the Security Council.
   One option would add six new members to its five permanent powers: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
   The other would add a third tier of semi-permanent members to the council, the top UN body for international peace and security.
   Brazil, Germany, India and Japan have launched a joint campaign to get four permanent council seats.

Lebanon sought to promote unity as it marked the 30th anniversary Wednesday of the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war but remained mired in political deadlock and still without a government.
   The people of Lebanon have been called on to take part in national reconciliation events for the first time since end of the war that killed 150,000 and opened up fault-lines across society that are still evident today.
   Lebanon has been without a government for six weeks since pro-Syrian premier Omar Karameh resigned in late February in the face of massive opposition protests over the killing of his popular predecessor Rafiq Hariri.
   Karameh failed again on Monday to form a government, raising opposition charges that the pro-Syrian regime was manoeuvring to delay crucial polls due to be held by the end of May.
   Hariri, whose assassination on February 14 was blamed by many on the pro-Syrian regime and its political masters in Damascus, is synonymous with the rebuilding of Beirut after the damage inflicted by the 15-year war.
   After his assassination, massive anti-Syrian demonstrations swarmed Beirut’s central Martyrs’ Square before being matched by shows of strength by pro-Syrian supporters.
   Hariri’s murder set off a chain of events that led Damascus to announce it would end its 29-year military presence by the end of April in the face of massive international pressure.
   On Wednesday, Syrian intelligence services evacuated a major headquarters in the eastern city of Zahleh while on the political front, prominent MP Walid Joumblatt travelled to France for meetings with EU and French officials.
   Lebanon’s ‘Celebration of Unity’ has been called by Hariri’s sister, MP Bahia Hariri, who asked Lebanese of all denominations to take part in events such as marches and joint Muslim and Christian prayers along the former demarcation line that separated east and west Beirut during the war.
   A giant Lebanese flag made up of 18 pieces of cloth that symbolise the 18 different faiths in the country of almost four million is to be planted near Hariri’s tomb on Martyrs’ Square before being taken to the Lebanese parliament.
   Other events will include concerts by Lebanese singer Magida al-Rumi, backgammon competitions in the capital’s cafes and restaurants as well as spiritual music in places of worship.
   Late Tuesday, US soprano Jessye Norman wept a tear as she sang the Ave Maria in a performance broadcast live from a New York church to Martyrs’ Square, where thousands cheered her message of peace.
   former Czech president Vaclav Havel also sent a message of greeting to the Lebanese who are ‘pursuing goals similar to the ones that we in central Europe set ourselves more than 15 years ago.’
   ‘The path of freedom and independence, complete withdrawal of the occupying troops and renewal of the democratic system’ said Havel, an emblematic figure of the downfall of communism.
   The civil war started in 1975 when Christian militias fought against Palestinian guerrillas, accused of seeking to take over the country, and anti-regime leftists lured by the ‘Palestinian revolution’.
   A year after the outbreak of the war, the Syrian army deployed in Lebanon, with Washington’s approval, to bail out the Christian militias which were losing to the Lebanese leftists and Palestinian guerrillas.
   In 1978, the Israeli army intervened to oust Palestinian guerrillas.
   Foreign intervention culminated with the 1982 Israeli invasion that brought in soldiers from Israel, Syria, the United States, Britain, France and Italy, alongside the Palestinians and Revolutionary Guards from Iran.

Nepal’s elite private schools said Maoist rebels have told them to shut down in 24 hours unless they cut fees and meet other demands, but the schools have vowed to defy the order.
   A group representing Nepal’s private schools said Wednesday the rebels demanded the institutions close on Thursday unless they lower admission and tuition costs, scrap singing of the national anthem and remove photographs of king Gyanendra.
   The demands are part of a drive by the Maoists to install their own ‘people’s education’ system in schools and coincides with the start of the new academic year in Nepal.
   The Maoist warning is the latest challenge to the authority of king Gyanendra.
   ‘We’ve been receiving warnings from the students’ union by letter, e-mails and phone to close from Thursday for failing to meet their demands,’ Umesh Shrestha, head of the Private and Boarding School Organisations-Nepal, said.
   ‘But we’re not going to comply with the demand to shut.’
   The outlawed All Nepal National Free Student Union-Revolutionary is the student wing of the Maoists who have been fighting since 1996 to set up a communist republic. The conflict has claimed more than 11,000 lives in the Hindu kingdom of 27 million.
   The students’ union also wants children of top government officials excluded from private schools and forced to go state schools and an end to teaching Sanskrit, the priestly language the rebels link to Hinduism’s high castes.
   Nepal’s army said the Maoist rebel death toll from a clash last week hit 148 with the discovery of 35 more bodies while 300 wounded guerrillas were holed up near the battle site.
   The battle in which authorities said the rebels stormed an army base at Khara village in Maoist-dominated western Nepal last Thursday was believed to be the deadliest since king Gyanendra seized power February 1.
   Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 148 with the recovery of the 35 bodies and ‘the search for more bodies is continuing’ the army said in a statement.
   ‘We’ve received reports that 300 terrorists injured in the clash’ are hiding in rugged terrain near the forest battle scene, a senior army official said, declining to be identified.
   ‘But we haven’t arrested or killed them on humanitarian grounds,’ he said.
   Earlier this week, Nepal, under pressure from nations concerned about reports of human rights abuses, said it would allow UN observers into the country to monitor the situation.
   The army official said the information about the injured Maoists came from local villagers.
   There has been no comment from the Maoists on the clash which took place 400 kilometres from the capital Kathmandu. It was impossible to independently verify the army report due to the remoteness of the battle site.
   The army said soldiers found the rebel bodies in hastily dug graves. The army said three of its soldiers died in the battle and nine were wounded.
   It said it had inflicted a ‘big setback’ on the rebels who have been waging an increasingly deadly struggle since 1996 to overthrow the king and install a communist republic.
   Gyanendra dismissed the government and imposed emergency rule in the poverty-stricken Himalayan kingdom, saying the move was necessary to tackle the revolt.

The new chief of Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M), which shores up the ruling coalition, said on Wednesday his group would fight moves to allow foreign investment in the retail sector and in pension funds.
   Prakash Karat, general secretary of the CPI-M said the party could not guarantee support to the coalition led by the reformist prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for its entire five-year term.
   But he ruled out an immediate threat to the 10-month coalition.
   ‘We are opposed to this,’ Karat said when asked about the government’s plans to allow foreign investment in retail, banks and pension funds and raise the foreign investment cap in the insurance sector to 49 percent from 26.
   ‘These will be under critical scrutiny. We support the government but it is not blind support,’ he said in an interview. ‘There will be areas of cooperation...areas of tension and also areas of struggle with the government.’

The US-Philippines alliance remains strong, president Gloria Arroyo’s government said Wednesday, a day after Manila protested an American diplomat’s comments that the southern Philippines risked becoming the next Afghanistan.
   ‘The strategic (Philippines-US) alliance is as strong as ever in the campaign against terrorism and in vital areas of assistance to fight poverty,’ Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement.
   The foreign department on Tuesday delivered a diplomatic note to Joseph Mussomeli, number-two official of the US embassy, several days after he told Australian television that the Mindanao region was becoming ‘the new ‘Mecca’ for terrorism’ and could become the next Afghanistan.
   Washington is Manila’s main military aid donor and top foreign investor.
   The Philippines is scheduled to begin peace talks with Mindanao’s largest separatist guerrilla group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in Malaysia next week.
   ‘The Afghanistan statement is a closed book in so far as we are concerned,’ Bunye said. ‘The Philippine government has stated its case and has done the proper sanctions. We hope this unfortunate incident is not repeated,’ he said.

South Korea is willing to begin paying for the cost of unification with the North even before it occurs, but there will be no major aid until a nuclear crisis is resolved, the South’s president has said in Germany.
   South and North Korea have been divided since the end of World War II and are technically at war since an armistice, and not a peace treaty, ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
   ‘We have a policy to support the North Korean economy and help it stand on its feet,’ President Roh Moo-hyun said during a visit to Germany on Tuesday. The South Korean presidential Blue House provided the text of Roh’s comments on Wednesday.
   ‘But the North Korean nuclear problem must be resolved for substantive assistance to be possible,’ he told German leaders.
   The capitalist South is more than 30 times as prosperous as the communist North and twice as populous.
   ‘The South Korean people will probably not object, even before unification, to taking on the cost of ensuring the success of North Korea’s economic reform and opening,’ he said.
   But South Korea did not believe unification could be realised soon, he said. South Korea believes the North’s economy must grow substantively before the two Koreas can merge.

The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday flagged off the first train on a cross-Kashmir service which will eventually link the militancy-wracked northern parts of the Himalayan region with the rest of India.
   The train between Jammu, Kashmir’s southern winter capital, and Udhampur, about 55 kilometres further northeast, will eventually end in Baramulla, 55 kilometres west of the summer capital Srinagar—all areas considered to be hotbeds of Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the state.
   Flagging off the first stretch of the route, which cost about 5.1 billion rupees (1.2 million dollars), Singh declared that the entire project would be completed by 2007.
   ‘We want to start a new phase in Jammu and Kashmir—a phase of not just peace but also of prosperity and development,’ Singh told a rally at the inauguration ceremony organised under a heavy security blanket.
   ‘When this route is completed, it will help promote trade, commerce and tourism in the region,’ he added.
   A train service to the mountainous region has been a long-standing demand of people of the region who accuse the Indian government of neglecting development in the state.
   The foundation stone for the line was laid in 1984.
   In the second phase of the project, the train will connect Udhampur to the town of Katra, which is visited by about six million Hindu pilgrims annually who come to pray at the Vaishno Devi shrine.

Iraqis are increasingly calling on US forces to leave their troubled nation, emboldened by a newly elected parliament and the growing presence of their blue-uniformed police forces — even though the new Iraqi leaders say it’s too early to talk about a US pullout.
   The calls gained momentum when Shia and Sunni religious clerics called for protests to mark the two-year anniversary of Baghdad’s fall, prompting four days of demonstrations across the country.
   Tens of thousands of mostly Shia protesters, largely followers of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, filled central Baghdad’s streets Saturday, holding the largest anti-American protest since the invasion. Demonstrations have continued, all echoing the same demand: It’s time for US troops to leave.
   Still, some Iraqis say it’s too early for the Americans to leave because Iraqi forces aren’t ready for the daily attacks that have killed thousands in the past two years of the insurgency.
   ‘If the Americans leave Iraq now, the political forces will fight each other in order to get power and the victims will be the Iraqi people,’ said Rashid Abass, a 61-year-old waiter.
   Even the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, which has been accused of ties to insurgents, has called for a timetable for a US withdrawal, not an immediate exit.
   But the protests reflect a growing impatience with American troops, viewed here both as protectors and antagonisers. Insurgents fuelling the conflict direct their rage at US troops and Iraqis seen as cooperating with them. That, in part, has delayed any talk of a pullout, with US leaders saying they will only leave when the Iraqi government asks them to go.
   On Sunday, protesters shouted anti-American slogans in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of the capital. A day later, a similar demonstration was held in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
   On Tuesday, in the troubled city of Samarra, tribal, city and religious leaders gathered along with students in the shadow of a spiral minaret, throwing rocks at US tanks and shouting for the Americans to leave.
   ‘The Iraqis will fight until they force (the Americans) to leave and let us live in peace and security,’ Hassan Neama, 33, said Tuesday in Baghdad. ‘They are the source of all of Iraq’s problems. We consider the Americans our enemy, not our savoir from the Saddam Hussein regime.’
   Some Iraqis argue the country is ready to take care of itself — after the January 30 elections, the first free vote in 50 years, and last week’s naming of an interim prime minister, Shia Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
   ‘The American troops should leave our country because there is an elected government in Iraq now. If they stay longer, things won’t get any better,’ said Abdul Rahman Hatam, a 21-year-old cook in Baghdad. ‘We, as Arabs, don’t accept any foreigner controlling our country.’
   Iraq’s new leaders, however, have cautioned against a pullout, saying they need more time to train Iraqi police and soldiers whose ranks are growing each day.
   The country is also still at least eight months away from electing a permanent government. New lawmakers must first write a permanent constitution by August 15, and the document must be approved during a referendum in October.
   In an interview with CNN’s ‘Late Edition’ on Sunday, new interim president, Jalal Talabani, said he didn’t agree with the protests, arguing that US forces were needed in Iraq until the country can rebuild its security forces — something he said could take two years.
   In a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday, the defence secretary, Donald H Rumsfeld, didn’t address the topic of a US withdrawal. But he called on the country’s new leaders to avoid delays in drafting a permanent constitution and building a strong police and army — a reminder the United States doesn’t plan to stay forever.
   ‘Anything that would delay that or disrupt that as a result of turbulence or incompetence or corruption in government would be unfortunate,’ Rumsfeld said.
   President Bush has refused to set a timetable for withdrawal — even though more than a dozen countries have already pulled out of Iraq and several more are considering leaving the US-led coalition.
   Speaking to soldiers Tuesday at Fort Hood, Texas, Bush said US troops would come home only once Iraqis are able to control their country.

The UN General Assembly is expected Wednesday to adopt an international convention to combat nuclear terrorism, said the UN under secretary general for Legal Affairs, Nicholas Michel.
   Six member states—the United States, Egypt, Russia, Indonesia, India and Pakistan—are slated to make general statements following plenary action on the draft anti-nuclear terrorism resolution and convention.
   The convention proposal, which Michel called ‘a breakthrough after more than seven years of negotiation,’ was passed on April 1.
   With its adoption, it would be presented for signing by heads of state and government when they meet for the annual UN General Assembly in September, Michel said.
   ‘It is a decisive move in a field where there was a strong perception of a deadlock’ he said, adding that the bill’s adoption will amount to ‘an important improvement of the existing anti-terrorism legal framework.’
   Twelve conventions already exist, and the adoption of this, the 13th, ‘means that now most of the possible forms of terrorism are covered by the existing legal instruments,’ said Michel.
   The special commission put in charge of drafting the convention was created by the General Assembly in December 1994.
   Adoption of the convention is one of a series of proposals the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, is seeking to get adopted by the world community between now and September’s summit, as part of the major reforms planned at the United Nations to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

Outgoing World Bank chief, James Wolfensohn, said on Tuesday he spent his last five years at the helm of the development agency mostly at odds with the Bush administration, which kept him at arm’s length.
   ‘The Bush administration had less confidence in me ... although I am saddened by it because I was never partial to Democrats or Republicans,’ Wolfensohn, who will be replaced by administration insider Paul Wolfowitz in June, said in an interview at his Washington office.
   The Australian-born Wolfensohn, a Clinton appointee who became an American citizen to take the job, failed to win a third term when the Bush administration made it clear it wanted its own person to take control at the development bank.
   Wolfowitz fit the bill and his appointment was confirmed on March 31 despite quiet misgivings by some member countries about his role as an architect of the Iraq war.
   Wolfensohn clashed with the Bush administration over how the bank gave out funds to poor countries. The administration wanted more evidence that projects were reducing poverty and not being wasted in ill-conceived programs or bureaucracy.
   In the interview, Wolfensohn said he personally believed Wolfowitz would do well in the job because he is part of president Bush’s inner circle.
   ‘We got our work done but I never had the backing ... and in case of most presidents of the bank they have been backed by somebody,’ Wolfensohn, who will this weekend preside over his final World Bank spring meeting in Washington, said.
   ‘That is not a bad thing but it would have been very comfortable if I could have called somebody and said I need your help on something.’
   Instead, Wolfensohn said, he sought advice on how to run the development agency from outside the United States.
   By tradition, an American leads the World Bank while a European takes the top post at its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.
   Wolfensohn said he advised Wolfowitz, who is in the process of moving from the Pentagon, to listen and not jump to conclusions.
   ‘He should take six months in which he tries to get to know an extraordinary complex set of issues and it seems to me that is what he is doing,’ he said.
   According to Wolfensohn, his successor says he does not plan any major directional shifts for the bank, ‘and it will be my hope that he doesn’t.’
   ‘The analysis and diagnosis of what needs to be done is already there,’ he said. ‘I don’t think if he does three more years of analyses he will come up with a different answer.
   ‘He needs to know, and this is where I hope he will be effective, to mobilise political support to deal with the prescriptions and I think he has a good chance of doing that.’
   Looking ahead, the World Bank chief said he plans to stay in the same line of work, focusing on poverty, development and job creation in developing countries.
   That could mean working for himself or for another organisation based in Washington, said Wolfensohn, who is an accomplished concert cellist. The Harvard-educated former investment banker said he also hoped to resume business activities tied to developing nations.
   ‘I hoped to focus on seven to eight things but regrettably I have a list of 28 things. So at this point, I need to define my focus—I have discovered I am interested in so many things,’ he said.
   Wolfensohn looked back on his decade at the World Bank with pride, saying he believes he will leave a significantly changed institution in both performance and reputation.
   ‘I think we have a relationship with our clients which is more of a partnership now and less of being perceived as a policeman or a professor,’ he said.
   ‘I think also this is a place now that understands that economic growth is at the centre and also understands that economic growth without regard to the human condition is not enough.’
   Wolfensohn said the institution now regarded poverty ‘not as an anonymous clinical activity’ but as a human drama.

Small parties in Britain’s election race, from Welsh nationalists to the Greens, said Tuesday they hoped to profit from anger with the main political movements and a growing desire to save the planet.
   Plaid Cymru of Wales and the Green Party took centre stage on a relatively calm day of campaigning in the run up to the May 5 polls, while the governing Labour Party, main rival Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats traded barbs.
   ‘People in Wales and throughout western Europe are disaffected,’ said Adam Price, Plaid Cymru’s parliamentary candidate for the Welsh constituency of Carmarthen East and Dinefwr.
   ‘They don’t trust the political class because they have been lied to and let down,’ he told AFP by telephone from his party’s election campaign launch in Cardiff.
   ‘They are looking toward alternatives, and in Wales the alternative is their own party... a party which is in tune with their values and their aspirations.’
   People in Wales—which also has its own regional government, the National Assembly, with the power to pass secondary legislation—feel alienated by Labour because it has shifted to the right to woo Conservative voters in England, said Price.
   ‘On top of that people are very angry with the deception over the Iraq war,’ he said, noting that his party led a campaign to impeach the prime minister, Tony Blair, over his alleged duplicity.
   Plaid Cymru has four seats at Westminster, having gained 0.7 per cent of the vote in Britain’s 2001 election, the best-ever showing for a party that has been around since 1925.

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, confirmed that he would step down as leader of the Labour Party after a possible third term in office, in an unusual step at the launch Wednesday of his party’s election manifesto.
   The main opposition Conservatives and smaller Liberal Democrats jumped on the acknowledgement as a sign that people had lost their confidence in Blair due to the war in Iraq and a string of pledges they said he had broken.
   ‘I have said that this is my last election. At the election following there will be a different leader,’ Blair told an audience of reporters at a London conference hall after unveiling his party’s manifesto, which emphasises the country’s economic gains under his leadership.
   Flanked by six other ministers, including his most likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Blair insisted, however, that he would serve a full third term in government if his party won a record third successive victory in the May 5 polls.
   ‘I believe this country is better, stronger, fairer than the country we inherited from the Conservatives in 1997, but we can do so much more,’ he said.
   ‘By combining progressive values with radical means these are the commitments in detail that we can make today,’ he said, referring to a hefty 110-page manifesto that offers detailed prescriptions on everything from health care and schools to policing, pensions and immigration.
   Blair and his key ministers, with the notable exception of the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, each took turns at the podium to outline their various policy pledges.

Philippines ‘dangerous’ for journalists
The Philippines is the world’s most dangerous country for journalists after Iraq because attackers are rarely punished, an international media watchdog said Wednesday, increasing pressure on the government to take action. Jean Francois Julliard, a representative of Reporters Without Borders, said at the end of a fact-finding visit that more journalists are killed in the Philippines not only because of a widespread gun culture, but the judicial system’s failure to take action against the killers. The Paris-based group has recorded 51 journalists killed in the Philippines since democracy was restored in 1986. Last year, it listed six slain Filipino journalists, and two this year.
— AP

Rumsfeld arrives in Afghanistan
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, arrived here on a surprise visit to Afghanistan during which he is expected to discuss the prospect of setting up permanent US bases in the war-torn country. A day after visiting Iraq, Rumsfeld flew into the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold, at around 10:30am (0600 GMT) to meet US troops and inspect provincial reconstruction efforts. He will later travel to Kabul for talks with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on security, counter-terrorism operations and strategies to flush out Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants on the Afghan-Pakistan border, officials said.
— AFP

11 Pakistanis
charged over
Spanish terror plot
Spanish authorities have charged 11 Pakistani nationals over suspected links with al-Qaeda sympathisers who carried out the Madrid train bombings a year ago, judicial sources said Wednesday. One of the 11, Shahzad Ali Gujar, is suspected of having transferred funds to members of al-Qaeda, including Amjad Farooki, who Pakistani security forces killed last September and who was implicated in the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl was executed by Islamic extremists in the Pakistani city of Karachi in early 2002. Farooki is widely believed to have been an al-Qaeda recruiter.
— AFP

US rights worker in China detained
An American rights worker on a grant from the US National Endowment for Democracy was detained by police Wednesday and interrogated about his work before being fined for not carrying his passport. Adam Briscoe, who works for the Chinese non-government organisation Empowerment and Rights, said he was taken from the group’s Beijing offices and questioned for several hours about his work in China. The group has been documenting human rights issues and large-scale petition movements linked to the widespread requisition of land by Chinese officials and government entities.
— AFP

Ugandan peace process in critical condition
Efforts to negotiate an end to nearly 19 years of brutal civil war in northern Uganda are in critical condition and require sustained international resuscitation if the region is to see peace in the foreseeable future, a respected think-tank said Tuesday. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group said only a concerted push amounting to ‘shock therapy’ could jumpstart the ailing peace process between Kampala and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. ‘The peace process aimed at ending Northern Uganda’s extraordinarily brutal 18-year war is in critical condition, but it may still be possible to resuscitate it if the Ugandan government and international community act decisively,’ the
ICG said.
— AFP

UN calls for Rwandan Hutu rebels to disarm
The UN Security Council challenged Rwandan Hutu rebels Tuesday to surrender their arms to demonstrate their commitment to peace, following the rebels’ condemnation of the 1994 Hutu genocide in central Africa. The council welcomed the March 31 statement by the Rwanda Democratic Liberation Forces that they were abandoning their armed struggle against the Kigali government. However, the Security Council president, Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, called on the FDLR to ‘turn their positive words into action’ by turning over their arms to the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
— AFP

NATO may reorganise Kosovo forces
NATO surpreme commander, US General James Jones, announced Tuesday a broad review of the alliance’s forces in Kosovo which could lead to a cut in troop numbers, at a crucial moment for the future of the territory. ‘It has nothing to do with a decrease in commitment. The goal is not to do less but to do more ... using the force differently,’ Jones said at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s military headquarters. ‘We’re looking at a proposal from our commander on the ground (French General Yves de Kaemabon) to prune the tree to achieve greater efficiency,’ Jones told journalists. The review is the result of NATO’s failure to stop three days of bloody anti-Serb riots in March last year that left 19 dead and more than 900
wounded.
— AFP

5 killed in Chechnya combat, explosions
A soldier, three policemen and one insurgent died fighting in Chechnya over the last 24 hours, an official with the pro-Russian local government said Tuesday. A clash in the mountainous Vedeno district left one locally recruited pro-Russian soldier and one rebel dead and two more pro-Russian soldiers wounded, the official, who asked not to be named, said. Two locally recruited policemen died in the Urus Martan area when their vehicle hit a landmine, the source said. In the devastated capital Grozny one policeman was killed in an explosion while inspecting a residence. Six Russian regular soldiers were wounded in fighting, that included Russian artillery strikes in the mountainous Itum-Kale and Nozhai-Yurt areas.
— AFP

Remains of 2nd World War flyer identified
Remains of a crew member of a US bomber that crashed in Hungary during World War II have been identified through DNA testing and will be turned over to his family for burial with full military honours, the Pentagon said Tuesday. The remains of Staff Sergeant Robert McKee was recovered from a cemetery in Bohonye, Hungary near where his B-24L ‘Liberator’ went down on December 17, 1944 on a flight from Italy to bomb targets near Blechhammer, Germany. Nine crew members parachuted to safety, but McKee, a gunner, and another crew member were killed.
—AFP