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India will offer fresh initiatives during talks on Kashmir this weekend with the president, Pervez Musharraf, officials said, as the Pakistani leader called on both sides to find an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution to their decades-old dispute.
   The Indian proposals would include facilitating the reunion of families separated by the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan and more bus services between the two zones, India’s National Security adviser, MK Narayanan, said.
   ‘(Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh,) will certainly put forward on the table a series of new measures, each one hopefully adding to the levels of confidence... More meetings, more bus services,’ Narayanan told television channel NDTV.
   Increasing people-to-people contact through tourism in Kashmir could also be discussed, he said.
   ‘We have already put these suggestions and we will repeat them ... The prime minister will repeat them,’ Narayanan said.
   Musharraf is to arrive in New Delhi on Saturday for a hectic weekend in which he is to visit an Islamic shrine, hold talks with Singh, watch a cricket match between India and Pakistan and meet with Kashmiri separatists.
   The visit will be Musharraf’s first to India since a failed summit with then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in 2001.
   He has made it clear that as in 2001 the focus will again be on Kashmir, the trigger for two of the three wars since 1947 between the nuclear-armed neighbours who both claim the region in full.
   ‘Most of the meetings will be exclusively between the prime minister and president, Musharraf,’ Narayanan said.
   ‘When two heads of state meet, they are unlikely to talk about only (cricket) ... So we have been sort of catered to the fact that discussion would necessarily have Kashmir as an important item on the agenda,’ he said.
   The proposals for more people-to-people interaction comes a week after India and Pakistan launched the first bus service linking divided Kashmir in almost six decades.
   The Pakistani president said Thursday the peace process with India was ‘fairly irreversible’ and called the historic opening of a bus route between Indian and Pakistan Kashmir the first step toward a ‘soft border’ in the divided Himalayan territory.
   But Pervez Musharraf said in an interview aired on Indian television network NDTV ahead of a weekend visit to New Delhi that Pakistan would not accept the Line of Control military boundary splitting the region as a final solution to the longstanding row over Kashmir.
   ‘That (the bus) really is the first step to converting into a soft border. We’ve suggested the opening of more routes. That’s what a soft border implies.’
   The interview was aired two days ahead of the president’s visit to India.
   But ‘if you are talking of a solution (to the Kashmir dispute), we cannot accept the Line of Control to be a final solution,’ Musharraf said.
   Some analysts have suggested the lone way to break the impasse is to turn the Line of Control into a ‘soft border,’ allow trade and travel between the two zones and work toward a lasting resolution.
   Musharraf’s statement came as India urged Pakistan not to impose a deadline for a resolution over the Kashmir dispute.

The United States and India pledged Thursday to boost their strategic ties and launch senior-level talks on energy cooperation, including the use of civilian nuclear power.
   But the Indian foreign minister, Natwar Singh, appeared to come away from a day of talks here without specific US support for New Delhi’s long-cherished goal of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
   Singh met with the president, George W Bush, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, ahead of a planned visit here by the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in July and a Bush trip to India sometime later.
   One unresolved political issue appeared to be India’s eagerness for a seat on the UN Security Council if and when it is expanded from its current 15 members as part of sweeping reforms urged for the world body.
   Singh, who was on a three-day US visit, reiterated New Delhi’s position: ‘By any criteria that you apply, India qualifies for a seat in the expanded council as a permanent member.’
   But Rice, whose country supports Japan’s drive for council membership, was non-committal about India, saying only, ‘We believe UN Security Council reform needs to take place in the context of broader UN reform.’
   ‘It is my hope that we can do this in a way that builds consensus in the international community ... because what we do not need is acrimony as we try to move forward,’ she said.
   Singh’s visit came less than three weeks after US officials announced their intention to help make India a ‘major world power’ as part of a new strategy to boost ties to New Delhi and its rival Pakistan.

A top Indian police official has told a tribunal that the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, ordered him to ‘eliminate persons’ belonging to the Muslim community during riots in 2002.
   RB Sreekumar served as intelligence chief of western Gujarat state during 2002 riots in which about 2,000 people—mainly Muslims—were killed. He said he received directives from Modi and his government colleagues to tap telephones and ‘eliminate persons belonging to the minority community’.
   The police officer made the allegations in a written submission to India’s Central Administrative Tribunal which investigates complaints by civil servants.
   The tribunal is investigating Sreekumar’s complaint that he was passed over for promotion because he ignored Modi’s orders.
   Modi, who has been accused by opposition and human rights groups of doing little to stop the bloody riots, has until May 9 to file a reply to the tribunal.
   Gujarat state home minister, Amit Shah, has denied the officer’s claims as ‘baseless’ and said they were levelled by Sreekumar because he was bitter that he had been passed over for promotion.
   The riots were triggered after claims that a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindus at Godhra, killing 59 people. A subsequent official report said the train fire was an accident.
   Sreekumar said he had been asked by Modi ‘to concentrate on Muslim militants’ in controlling the riots.
   He said a senior civil servant, G Subba Rao, had told him to ‘eliminate’ any person trying to disrupt a Hindu religious event in the state.
   ‘He (Rao) added that this is the well-considered decision of the chief minister, Narendra Modi,’ Sreekumar wrote.
   He said he was also directed to ‘to tap the telephone of a very senior leader of the opposition Congress party’.
   Sreekumar was transferred to a relatively obscure position after he did not comply with the directions of Rao to present a picture of normalcy in the state to India’s election chief during a visit, he claimed.

The failure of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to take a strong stand over Myanmar’s repressive regime threatens the stability of the grouping and could even worsen the human rights situation in the country, analysts warned.
   The warning came after ASEAN foreign ministers failed this week to reach a consensus on whether Myanmar should take the chairmanship of the regional grouping in 2006, despite pressure from Western nations and criticism from within ASEAN.
   ‘They are putting the future of ASEAN in the hands of a
   military regime that has time and again lied about promised reforms, including the freedom of (opposition leader) Aung San Suu Kyi,’ said Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Bangkok-based Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma.
   ASEAN foreign ministers, who attended a retreat in the central Philippines, avoided making a decision on Myanmar’s chairmanship next year and instead asked Myanmar to make a decision at ministerial meetings in Laos in July.
   Political noises ahead of the retreat died down when the ministers cloistered themselves at a beachfront resort, and the Myanmar foreign minister Nyan Win was instead grilled on reforms during a 45-minute coffee break.
   That way, the chairmanship issue was left out of the official ASEAN agenda, a strategy to show Myanmar that the other nine members were not closing ranks against it, said a senior ASEAN diplomat after the meeting.
   The ministers preferred to use ‘gentle persuasion’ on Myanmar, which if pushed to the wall could take a more
   hardline stance against democracy fighters, the diplomat warned.
   ‘The only predictable thing about Myanmar is its unpredictability,’ he said.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Israel Thursday for its use of force against Palestinian civilians.
   A total of 29 states voted for a text condemning ‘systematic violations’ of the Geneva Convention in the West Bank and Gaza while 14 abstained.
   Among the 10 countries voting against the text were Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and the United States.
   Objections were raised on the grounds that while it called on Israel to take steps against acts of violence by Jewish settlers the text made no mention of Palestinian terrorist acts.
   A resolution calling on Israel to halt at once its policy of building settlements, as a first step towards dismantling colonies, was passed with 39 votes in favour and 12 abstentions, only Australia and the United States voting against it.
   Meanwhile, outgoing World Bank chief, James Wolfensohn, was named special envoy of the Middle East ‘quartet’ on Thursday, with the job of smoothing the way for Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
   The quartet, which groups the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, said the 71-year-old Wolfensohn would focus on Palestinian political reforms and economic needs but not security issues.
   In West Bank, the Palestinian leader accused Israel of violating a ceasefire agreement after undercover troops Thursday shot dead a militant during an arrest operation in the northern West Bank.

The European Union’s current leadership insisted Friday it still hopes the bloc can lift its arms embargo on China by June, but a key official cast new doubt amid growing questions over the move.
   Diplomats suggest it is increasingly likely a decision to end the 16-year-old arms sales ban may be delayed, possibly until next year, in particular following China’s adoption of a controversial law targeting Taiwan.
   The Luxembourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, whose country currently holds the 25-country bloc’s presidency, expressed hope shortly before the start of two days of informal talks with his EU counterparts.
   ‘I’m hopeful that we can find a solution but we have to find the solution with a consensus,’ he told reporters. ‘We have to work to find this consensus. We will do it.’
   The embargo has been in place since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and some EU countries, notably France and Germany, say it is now time to lift it.
   Despite fierce opposition, mainly from the United States and Japan, the EU leaders last December asked their foreign ministers to work toward lifting the ban by this June, when Luxembourg hands over the EU presidency to Britain.
   But since then, the question has been complicated by China’s adoption last month of an anti-secession law which authorises the use of force against Taiwan if the island moves towards full independence.
   Washington has warned an end to the EU ban would upset the balance of power between Beijing and Taipei.
   EU heavyweights France and Germany have led the drive to lift the ban, arguing it is ‘outdated’ given the political changes since 1989. In its place the EU has pledged to beef up a self-imposed code of conduct on arms sales.
   But critics say that Paris and Berlin are sacrificing concerns over human rights to curry favour with the emerging economic giant.
   The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm which administers the arms embargo on behalf of the bloc’s 25 member states, cast doubt over whether the ban could be lifted anytime soon.

At least 20 people, 10 of them children, were killed in an early morning fire that swept through a hotel in central Paris occupied by tourists and immigrant families, police said Friday.
   Several dozen people were injured in the blaze, 11 of them seriously, according to the updated toll, and officials warned that the death toll could continue to rise.
   Among the injured were French, Senegalese, Portuguese, Ivorian, American, Ukrainian and Tunisian nationals. No information was immediately available about the identities of the dead.
   Firefighters were continuing to search the upper floors of the hotel for victims, but access was difficult, with thick smoke still filling the rooms and floors weakened by the blaze.
   Some guests leapt from windows to escape the blaze, which destroyed the six-storey one-star Paris-Opera hotel, located in a narrow street behind the upmarket Galeries Lafayette department store, firefighters and witnesses said.

Major Chinese cities are gearing up for possible large-scale anti-Japanese protests this weekend as Japan’s diplomatic missions issued urgent alerts Friday for its citizens to adopt caution.
   Word was spreading on China’s anti-Japanese websites and Internet forums of a second wave of rallies following violent protests by tens of thousands last weekend.
   Demonstrations are planned in cities across the country including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Tianjin and Wuhan—with some to be held Saturday and others Sunday, they said.
   The protests coincide with the scheduled arrival Sunday of Japan’s foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura.
   It was unclear whether Beijing, under pressure from Tokyo to halt the demonstrations, will allow them to take place, especially as they come close to sensitive dates such as the start of the 1989 pro-democracy protests.
   ‘We’re still awaiting word from the city police department on whether to allow protestors on Tiananmen Square,’ said a police officer stationed in the area, where the Beijing protest is scheduled to start Saturday.
   In preparation, Japanese diplomatic missions in China issued an urgent alert to its nationals here, recommending they keep a low profile and avoid protest venues.
   It also advised them to be ‘careful in remarks and behaviour when coming in contact with Chinese people including employees (at Japanese companies)’ and ‘refrain from making provocative acts.’
   Last weekend, thousands of people took to the streets in three Chinese cities protesting perceptions that Japan has not atoned for its militarist past including its bloody 1931-1945 occupation of China.

South Korea said Friday it had vetoed a joint US and South Korean combined forces plan for armed intervention in North Korea in the event of instability there.
   The country’s National Security Council said it had ordered the classified plan to be scrapped because it could infringe on South Korean sovereignty.
   Under a bilateral treaty, the South Korean military comes under US command only in times of war.
   Analysts said the US military may have wanted control of South Korean forces to handle massive disruption envisaged by the potential collapse of impoverished North Korea which has been in a standoff with the outside world for more than two years over its nuclear weapons drive.
   The goal of the top secret military operation, codenamed 5029, would be to secure North Korea’s nuclear weapons sites and materials, they said.
   In a statement from the nation’s top decision-making body on security matters, the NSC said it had killed off the plan earlier this year.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday condemned what it described as a growing trend among nations like Britain and the United States for sending terrorist suspects to countries with records of torture.
   In a 91-page report, the New York-based watchdog named a host of countries it said were transferring suspects to abusive states on the basis of flimsy ‘diplomatic assurances’ that they would not be ill-treated.
   ‘Governments that engage in torture always try to hide what they’re doing, so their ‘assurances’ on torture can never be trusted,’ said the Human Rights Watch executive director, Kenneth Roth.
   ‘This is a very negative trend in international diplomacy, and it’s doing real damage to the global taboo against torture,’ Roth said.
   The list of abusive regimes included Algeria, Egypt, Russia, Syria, Turkey and Uzbekistan.
   Among those countries that have sought assurances to effect extraditions to such nations were Austria, Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States.
   Roth said the cases highlighted in the Human Rights Watch report provided mounting evidence that people who are returned to states that torture are in fact tortured, regardless of diplomatic assurances.
   ‘Governments that are using diplomatic assurances know full well that they don’t protect against torture,’ said Roth. ‘But in the age of terror, they’re convenient. Only pressure from the public in Europe and North America can stop this negative trend.’

Saddam Hussein’s human rights are being violated at ‘every moment’ and he probably will not get a fair trial after being ‘demonised’ by the United States, his attorney, a former US attorney general, said Thursday.
   Ramsey Clark, who served as attorney general under the president, Lyndon Johnson, in the late 1960s, defended in a television interview his decision to represent Saddam at his trial in Iraq.
   ‘His human rights are violated every moment,’ Clark said MSNBC’s ‘The Abrams Report.’
   ‘He has not seen a lawyer; he has not seen his family. He’s kept completely incommunicado. And it’s imperative that you in a crisis like this and cases of most importance that you fight hardest for human rights,’ Clark said.
   Clark, who said he opposes the war in Iraq ‘with all my heart and soul,’ joined Saddam’s defence team in December 2004.
   He visited Saddam in Baghdad in February 2003, just before the US-lead invasion, and has also been involved with the defence of former Yugoslav leader Solbodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes at a UN court in the Hague.
   ‘I’m here to say he’s entitled to a fair trial,’ Clark told MSNBC.
   ‘I will tell you that he’s been so thoroughly demonized that it’s almost impossible to hope for a fair trial. He’s been demonized for years and years. He’s been demonised by the media of the United States and by the government of the United States overwhelmingly.’

Lebanon was under pressure not to delay crucial elections after the pro-Syrian prime minister, Omar Karameh, quit efforts to form a government and the opposition prepared for more mass street protests.
   Karameh’s decision has deepened the crisis which has left the country without a cabinet for six weeks and fuelled charges the pro-Syrian regime was plotting to put off elections that the opposition expects to win.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said Karameh’s announcement Wednesday presented ‘an opportunity to move forward’ and warned against any delays in forming a new government to pave the way for the polls which are due to be held by the end of May.
   The country has been in turmoil since the killing two months ago of Karameh’s predecessor Rafiq Hariri in a bomb blast blamed by the opposition on the Beirut regime and its political masters in Damascus.
   Karameh’s decision came as Lebanon was marking the 30th anniversary of the start of the devastating 1975-1990 civil war that killed 150,000 people and opened up fault-lines across society that are still evident today.
   The French president, Jacques Chirac, also called for a prompt formation of a new government and for elections ‘in due time.’
    ‘This is the will of the Lebanese people and that of the international community, demonstrated by UN Security Council Resolution 1559,’ he said.
   The resolution, sponsored by Paris and Washington, calls for the pullout of foreign forces from Lebanon and respect for its sovereignty, in a clear reference to Syria which has held political and military sway over the country for three decades.
   Syria, charged by Washington of backing terrorism and playing a role in the insurgency in neighbouring Iraq, has since pledged to pullout all its troops from Lebanon by April 30.
   The Lebanese opposition was holding a meeting late Thursday to adopt a common stand at mandatory parliamentary consultations due to be held Friday by the president, Emile Lahoud, to designate a new premier.

US authorities rounded up more than 10,340 fugitives over six days this month in the largest operation against wanted suspects in US history, the Justice Department said Thursday.
   Sixteen foreign and international fugitives were apprehended in Operation FALCON, which deployed more than 3,000 law enforcement officers on the streets each day between April 4-10.
   The US Marshals Service, whose responsibilities include catching fugitives, coordinated Operation FALCON (Federal And Local Cops Organised Nationally), which involved several other
   law enforcement agencies.
   A man wanted in Connecticut for murder and assault after shooting three people was caught at his mother’s home in Jamaica, the Justice Department said. The man is being detained while awaiting extradition.
   The operation focused on people wanted for homicide, sexual assault, gang-related crime, kidnapping, major drug offences and crimes against children.
   ‘These defendants had long rap sheets and they have been free to roam the streets for far too long,’ said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
   Authorities ‘cleared 13,851 warrants, seized 243 guns, and arrested 154 gang members,’ Gonzales said.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal, played down any nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea and said she was confident Europe and China could rein in the two countries.
   Rice dismissed Pyongyang’s recent declaration that it had nuclear weapons and its decision to abandon the six-party talks on its nuclear programme as a bid for attention.
   ‘I do think the North Koreans have been, frankly, a little bit disappointed that people are not jumping up and down and running around with their hair on fire because (they) have been making these pronouncements,’ she said.
   She said that the Chinese, during her visit to Beijing last month, said they would try to persuade their north-eastern neighbours to rejoin the talks.
   ‘I did have good discussions with the Chinese while I was there about the fact that the North Koreans cannot be allowed just to continue to string the world along,’ she said.
   On Iran, Rice said she was confident European diplomacy had put Iran’s nuclear programme ‘under suspension,’ and that negotiations would ensure that the programme remains strictly non-military. ‘We think the diplomatic course that we’re on is the right course, but obviously at some point in time the UN Security Council is an option,’ she said, adding that ‘we probably want to make an assessment this summer and see where we are and how far we’ve gone.’

US prosecutors Thursday charged three people, including a Texas businessman, with scheming to pay millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime out of UN oil-for-food programme funds.
   Texan David Chalmers and Bulgarian national Ludmil Dionissiev were arrested Thursday morning in Texas, US attorney, David Kelley said. Extradition of the third defendant, British oil trader John Irving, was sought from England.
   According to the indictment, Chalmers and his two associates played a ‘pivotal role’ in fixing the price of oil that was traded under the program and facilitated payment of illegal surcharges on the oil to the former Saddam regime.
   ‘These secret payments were illegal kickbacks ... to front companies and bank accounts designated and controlled by the Iraqi regime,’ Kelley said.

Two fossilised eggs found in China inside the body of a dinosaur that roamed the earth 65 million years ago bear striking similarities to present day birds and reptiles, researchers said in a study published Friday in Science magazine.
   The specimen unearthed in southern China consists of a three-dimensional pelvis that contains a single pair of shelled eggs within the dinosaur’s body cavity, the researchers said.
   They believe the fossils belong to an oviraptosaurian, which is a subgroup of the theropods, the dinosaurs that are thought to have given rise to modern birds. It measured four metres.
   The finding has led researchers to believe the oviraptosaurians filled their nest by laying two eggs at a time, much the same as birds do although by laying only one egg at a time.
   Reptiles such as the crocodile lay several eggs at once that are not shelled but covered in a leather-like substance, said Tamaki Sato, a paleontologist with the Natural History Museum of Ottawa, Canada who headed an international team of researchers that made the find.
   The two fossilised eggs are very similar to modern birds’ eggs although their shell was not sufficiently formed to be absolutely sure, the researchers said.
   In conclusion, the researchers believe that some aspects of the reproductive system of the oviraptosaurians were similar to that of primitive reptiles and present day birds.
   The dinosaur retained two ovaries and oviducts, a primitive condition seen in crocodiles and other reptiles. In contrast, modern birds only have one set.
   Like birds but unlike crocodiles, each oviduct produced only one large, shelled egg at a time which means the dinosaur could not lay its entire clutch of eggs at once, the researchers said.

Pak hostage in Iraq appeals to Musharraf
An employee of the Pakistani embassy in Baghdad who was taken hostage last week has appealed for president Pervez Musharraf’s help to win his release, according to a video message broadcast by the Al-Jazeera channel on Friday. Malik Muhammad Javed, an assistant at the mission who does not have diplomatic status, went missing on Saturday night after going to a mosque for evening prayers. He is the fourth Pakistani to be abducted in Iraq. In the video, he appealed to the president, his minister of foreign affairs and the international community to win his release, Al-Jazeera said.

India to free 156 Pak fishermen
New Delhi has said it plans to release 156 Pakistani fishermen next week as a ‘humanitarian gesture’ in an announcement made ahead of a weekend visit by the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, to India. External affairs ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, said the fishermen would be freed April 19, the Press Trust of India news agency reported late Thursday. Each year India and Pakistan arrest dozens of fishermen from each other’s countries who stray inside their territorial waters to fish. The news agency said around 900 Indian civilian prisoners were believed to be in Pakistan’s custody, including 400 fishermen.

Nepal king meets Indian envoy
India’s envoy to Nepal held talks with king Gyanendra Friday, officials said, a day after the monarch announced municipal elections in a move to ‘reactivate’ democracy. India has sharply criticised Gyanendra’s seizure of power on February 1 and suspended military aid to Nepal which is seeking to crush an increasingly deadly Maoist revolt. Britain has also suspended arms sales while the United States has threatened to follow suit. The envoy’s audience at the royal palace with Gyanendra followed Indian media reports of feelers being sent by Nepal for a meeting between the king and the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the Asian-African Summit to be held in Jakarta from April 20-24.

Powerful quakes rock Java island
Two earthquakes, one measuring up to 6.5 on the Richter scale and felt in Jakarta, shook Indonesia’s Java island on Friday, but there were no casualties or damage, seismologists said. An undersea quake measuring between 6.0 and 6.5 occurred at 11:17am and was felt in the Indonesian capital and its outskirts, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said. The epicentre was in the Sunda Strait, a narrow stretch of water separating Java and Sumatra islands, in which the remains of the legendary Krakatoa volcano continue to smoulder.
— AFP

Filipino UN soldier killed in Haiti
A UN soldier from the Philippines was shot in the head Thursday in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood considered a bastion of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide supporters, a UN official said. The Filipino was the third UN soldier killed over a one month period, after soldiers from Sri Lanka and Nepal were killed in March. UN special envoy to Haiti Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg said the Filipino soldier was killed in the Cite Soleil neighborhood.
— AFP

Chirac tries to save EU constitution
The French president, Jacques Chirac, began his campaign to save the European Union constitution on Thursday by warning voters that France could ‘cease to exist politically’ in the EU if they reject it in a referendum. Chirac mixed warnings of dire consequences and gentle lecturing on the content of the constitution in a live televised debate with 83 young people, in which he began a mission to turn back a rising tide of opposition before the vote on May 29. He said the treaty could not be renegotiated if voters reject it but that he would not resign over the treaty on which he has staked his personal prestige.
— Reuters

Two shot dead in Mexico
Two people were shot to death late Thursday in a restaurant outside Monterrey, in northern Mexico, authorities said. Three gunmen got out of a car and shot their victims at point blank range, witnesses said. A third person was wounded in the shooting, a local police spokesman told media. In the last few months, more than 40 people have been killed in gangland warfare in northern Mexico.
— AP

Four Italian ministers resign
The Italian deputy prime minister, Marco Follini and three other cabinet ministers withdrew Friday from the centre-right coalition government of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, amid a deepening political crisis. The party ‘has approved the document for the withdrawal of the UDC ministerial delegation from the government,’ Minister Rocco Buttiglione said. The announcement came after Follini told key members of his Christian Democrat UDC party in emergency talks that the ministers should resign following a major defeat in regional elections earlier this month.
— AFP

Vietnam War era shells kill two in Vietnam
Two men were killed and one person injured in two separate incidents in central Vietnam when they tried to cut open bombs dating back to the Vietnam War, officials said Friday. Ngo Ngoc Thanh, who was 44, died on the spot Wednesday in the central highlands province of Kon Tum, and a man named Hung was killed in a suburb of Danang Thursday, officials said. The second man’s brother was injured in the accident. In both cases, the victims had been trying to cut M105 artillery shells to extract explosives.
—AFP

Czech parties agree on govt to end crisis
The Czech Republic’s three-party governing coalition agreed early Thursday on the formation of a new cabinet, resolving a drawn-out political crisis, Prime Minister Stanislav Gross announced. The agreement—reached after eight hours of talks—will allow the coalition formed in June 2002 to rule until the next election after previous attempts at forming a new cabinet had failed. While no details of the new cabinet were revealed, Gross, 35, is expected to step down because of a scandal over his family’s finances.
—AFP