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India has agreed to resume military aid to Nepal following its suspension after king Gyanendra dismissed his prime minister and seized power on February 1, local media reported Sunday.
   The Hindu newspaper, quoting an unnamed senior Indian official, said New Delhi would deliver a consignment of arms to the Royal Nepalese Army ‘very soon’.
   New Delhi’s reported change in stance came after a meeting between the Nepalese king and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta on Saturday.
   The king, for his part, told Singh that democracy would be restored ‘sooner than later’ in Nepal, the Hindu reported on Sunday.
   The Press Trust of India news agency quoted Singh as telling the king that he would ‘look at this (request) from the proper perspective’.
   India had sharply criticised Gyanendra for sacking the government and suspending civil liberties in a move the monarch said was needed because squabbling political parties were unable to end a raging Maoist insurgency that has claimed more than 11,000 lives since 1996.
   Britain also suspended military aid to Nepal while the United States has threatened to follow suit.
   New Delhi has been pushing for the restoration of democracy and the release of political prisoners taken into custody after Gyanendra’s assumption of absolute power.
   The meeting between Gyanendra and Singh, the first since the takeover, followed talks between the monarch and the Indian foreign minister, Natwar Singh, on Friday.
   Most Indian newspapers Sunday noted a change in India’s policy towards the royal coup in Nepal with the Hindustan Times describing the meeting between Gyanendra and Singh as a ‘climbdown’ on India’s part.
   Reacting sharply to the reports, a key ally of India’s coalition government, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said Sunday that any planned resumption of arms sales would be ‘wrong and unjustified,’ PTI reported.
   ‘There should be no question of resuming arms supplies to a despotic king who suppressed the elementary democratic rights of the people.
   ‘The appreciation and goodwill it (India) earned with its firm stand in defence of democracy and popular government in Nepal will disappear and it will be held responsible for abetting (the) king’s authoritarianism,’ it said, quoting a party statement.
   The Congress Party-led government needs the 61 votes of the various communist parties in the 545-seat lower house, or Lok Sabha, to remain in power.

Despite crisis talks that brought together the top leaders from China and Japan amid an ongoing row between the Asian superpowers, analysts say little ground was given by either side and see no immediate end to their rocky relations.
   Weeks of anger in China over Japan’s war time atrocities forced the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, and the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, together for talks on the sidelines of a summit in Jakarta on Saturday.
   Although there were smiles and handshakes, it was clear there was no break in the impasse as resentment remained, despite a very public apology a day earlier from Koizumi for his country’s brutal wartime record.
   ‘Their disagreements are far from solved,’ said Shi Yinhong, international relations professor at Beijing’s People’s University.
   ‘The high level of tensions has been remarkably reduced, that is positive, but real issues such as territory and energy have not been resolved.’
   Shi said that Koizumi’s pursuit of a showdown with Hu was a diplomatic tactic as Japan seeks Asian support in its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
   Beijing opposes Tokyo’s bid to win a Security Council seat, with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, saying last week that Japan should not be given the veto power wielded by permanent members until it faces up to its wartime past.
   China, according to Shi, consented to talks as a way to check massive protests at home amid fears they would escalate into more extreme unrest.
   Weeks of sometimes violent demonstrations erupted in major Chinese cities over Tokyo’s approval of a history textbook that China and South Korea say glosses over its wartime
   atrocities.
   Both countries suffered greatly during Japan’s militaristic rise to power and occupation of large swaths of Asia before and during Second World War, and after their encounter Hu urged Japan to ‘reflect deeply’ on the hurt it had caused Asian nations and to fully atone for its past aggression.
   ‘We’ve heard your words but what we treat more seriously is deed’—that’s China’s position now, said Shi.
   But Koizumi shrugged off pressure from Hu to address his controversial visits to a Tokyo shrine honouring fallen soldiers, including war criminals, saying there was ‘no change’ on his policy of visiting the shrine.
   Since taking office in April 2001, Koizumi has never missed the annual pilgrimage to the Yasukuni shrine, which is widely seen in the rest of Asia as a symbol of Japan’s militarism and has provoked strong protests in neighbouring nations including China, Taiwan and the two Koreas.
   Liu Jiangyong, professor of international relations at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, said Koizumi’s apparent unwillingness to give ground on the shrine visits was enough to call into question any hope of rapprochement.

Two US servicemen and six people were killed in separate bomb attacks over the weekend as Iraqi guerrillas pressed their bombing campaign in and around the capital.
   A US soldier was killed Sunday morning when the vehicle he was riding in struck a roadside bomb in east Baghdad, the military said.
   ‘The unit on patrol struck an improvised explosive device,’ at 7:00 am, a statement said without elaborating.
   His death follows that of a US sailor attached to the Marines, who was killed in a bomb blast in the volatile city of Fallujah, west of the capital, on Saturday, the military said.
   ‘A sailor assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, Second Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), was killed yesterday by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations in Fallujah,’ a statement said.
   The deaths bring to 1,564 the number of US troops who have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on the latest Pentagon figures.
   Two suicide bombers detonated powerful car bombs outside a police academy and an army liaison office in the northern Iraqi town of Tikrit Sunday, killing at least six people and injuring 26, police and hospital officials said.
   The first bomb exploded outside the academy in the hometown of ousted president Saddam Hussein at 8:10am as recruits were preparing to travel to Jordan for training, police colonel Abdallah Ali said.
   The second blew up 20 minutes later outside an army office of liaison with US forces.
   ‘We have received the bodies of six dead and 26 wounded,’ Raad Tikriti, a doctor at the local hospital said.
   Police casualties included four dead and 18 wounded, said Ali.
   US forces in the area confirmed there had been at least one car bomb explosion targeting the police academy.
   Iraq’s security forces are a frequent target of attack by guerrillas.

A deal on joint tsunami relief operations between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka could be completed by the end of May, a senior diplomat involved in the peace process said Sunday.
   Oslo’s special peace envoy to the troubled island nation, Erik Solheim, left here last week without a firm word on whether the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government will accept a deal he brokered to set up a joint mechanism to distribute almost two billion dollars in relief for the survivors of the December 26 tsunamis.
   But a diplomat close to the peace process said the talks last week pushed the process forward and there is hope that the aid will start flowing five months after the waves struck the island killing nearly 31,000 people and leaving almost one million homeless.
   ‘Solheim stressed the need for both parties to abide by the ceasefire (in place since February 23, 2002),’ the diplomat said, requesting anonymity. ‘They are still hopeful of a deal in three to four weeks.’
   President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said the joint mechanism would be the foundation for a final peace settlement in a country where more than 60,000 people were killed in separatist violence between 1972 and 2002.
   The final stumbling block to the tsunami aid deal comes from the main Marxist party in Sri Lanka’s ruling coalition.
   Last week it repeated a warning to Kumaratunga not to proceed with the Oslo-proposed joint mechanism for tusnami aid or risk a collapse of the government.
   The Marxist JVP, or People’s Liberation Front, holds the balance of power in the 225-member parliament led by Kumaratunga’s Freedom Party.
   However, government sources said Kumaratunga was keen to ensure that Sri Lanka benefited from the international outpouring of sympathy
   and cash for tsunami survivors and there should be a
   mechanism to distribute such aid.
   The proposed joint mechanism is meant to make it possible for international aid to reach areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the country’s northeast.
   It will also make it possible for foreign donors to provide aid indirectly as domestic laws do not allow them to do business with the LTTE which has been listed as a terrorist organisation by many countries.

North Korea’s military chief vowed Sunday to ‘steadily bolster’ the Stalinist nation’s nuclear deterrent as a result of hostile moves by the United States.
   Kim Yong-Chun, chief of the general staff of the North Korean People’s Army, warned the United States that it would face any aggression head on.
   ‘The army and the people of the DPRK will never remain a passive onlooker to the US moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK, but steadily bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defence to cope with the enemies’ reckless moves for military aggression,’ he said in a speech carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
   ‘Should the US start a war..., the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will mobilise the military deterrent force built up for years and... win a final victory in the stand-off with the US.’
   The remarks, made in a speech marking the 73rd anniversary of the North’s military, came as Washington was hardening its position towards Pyongyang for boycotting six-way nuclear disarmament negotiations.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, warned Thursday of referring the issue to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions on North Korea in case the talks failed to deliver.
   The talks, which involve the two Koreas, China, Russia, the United States and Japan, have stalled since three rounds ended inconclusively in June, 2004.
   The North failed to show up for a fourth round scheduled for September 2004.
   The Stalinist state declared in February that it had built nuclear weapons to use in self-defence against the United States.
   North Korea shut down its only functioning nuclear reactor earlier this month and told a visiting US specialist that it planned to unload spent nuclear fuel from the plant and reprocess it into weapons-grade plutonium.
   Nuclear fuel can be unloaded only after a reactor is shut down.
   Two years ago, North Korea said it unloaded and reprocessed spent fuel from the reactor, producing enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear bombs.
   US intelligence officials say they believe Pyongyang possesses one or two crude nuclear bombs made from plutonium diverted from the reactor in previous decades.

Border officials of India and Pakistan have agreed to swiftly return each others’ nationals who mistakenly cross borders of the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals, officials said Sunday.
   ‘Orders have been issued to local commanders to implement the decisions of the commanders’ meeting about the swift return of people crossing borders inadvertently,’ Pakistan Rangers spokesman Major Abid Hussain said.
   Border officials of Pakistan and India often arrest villagers who cross the frontier and fishermen who end up in each other’s territorial waters.
   The commanders of Pakistani and Indian border forces late Saturday concluded four days of talks in Karachi and signed an accord under which they agreed to the immediate return of inadvertent border violators, he said.
   Pakistan Rangers chief, Major General Javed Zia, told reporters that the measures were agreed to in view of the suffering of people who mistakenly stray across each other’s boundaries and are held indefinitely in prison.
   ‘We have agreed to make efforts to immediately return such individuals to avoid complicated repatriation procedure at the later stage,’ Zia said.

The Taiwan president, Chen Shui-bian, has given his ‘blessing’ to this week’s landmark China visit by the island’s main opposition leader, reversing earlier criticism of the trip, a senior government official said.
   Chen had repeatedly accused Kuomintang leader Lien Chan of being a ‘communist propaganda tool,’ given Beijing’s hostility towards the island.
   Another opposition leader James Soong, chairman of the People First Party, has also accepted Beijing’s invitation to visit the Chinese mainland.
   A group of officials from Soong’s party flew to Beijing Sunday to discuss the arrangements for the trip.
   But while addressing party members in Taipei on Saturday, Chen said the law does not bar the pair from travelling to China.
   ‘In the past, the two sides did not have direct contacts,’ he was quoted as saying by Presidential Office press secretary Chen Wen-tsung in an interview with the AFP.
   ‘Now Lien and Soong will have the chance of talking with Chinese leaders directly and therefore providing us with first-hand information,’ the president said.
   ‘We could regard the visits as ‘stones to be thrown to explore the roads ahead’ and give them our blessing,’ he added.

A new security leadership began its mission to end the armed chaos on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip Sunday after the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, pushed key allies of the late Yasser Arafat into retirement.
   Two months after a purge of the Arafat-era cabinet, Abbas unveiled a new line-up at the helm of the streamlined security services Saturday in a bid to further convince Washington of his reformist intentions.
   Among those relieved of their duties as part of the reshuffle was Musa Arafat, a cousin of Arafat, who was head of national security in Gaza. Another member of the old guard, general Amin al-Hindi, was standing down as head of military intelligence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
   The post of head of national security in the West Bank and Gaza went to general Suleiman Helef, while general Ahmed Abdel Karim was named as military intelligence chief and general Husni Rabaya as new national police chief.
   All are seen as members of the so-called young guard, untainted by accusations of corruption.
   Rabaya said he was determined to draw a line under the chaos which currently prevails in large parts of the Palestinian territories where armed militants openly flout the authority of the security services.
   ‘I am sure that we will succeed in imposing security because this is the demand of our people. They want to see the rule of law prevail,’ he told a press conference here.
   ‘With a stable security situation, we can prove to the whole world that we are people who deserve respect and our
   own state.’

A US human rights group has demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director, George Tenet, and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the torture and abuse of prisoners.
   Nearly a year after photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world, more than half a dozen official investigations have resulted only in prosecutions of lower ranking soldiers, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Saturday under the title ‘Getting Away with Torture?’
   ‘The evidence demands more,’ the report said. ‘Yet a wall of impunity surrounds the architects of the policies responsible for the larger pattern of abuses.’
   The report argues that the evidence indicates that decisions and policies made by Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials facilitated widespread abuse of prisoners in violation of US and international law, notably the Geneva Conventions.
   It cited mounting evidence that they knew or should have known violations took place, and failed to act to stem the abuse, making them legally liable for the actions of subordinates further down the chain of command.
   Besides Rumsfeld, the report cites Tenet; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former US commander in Iraq; and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of a military-run detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
   The known evidence, the report said, ‘already makes a compelling case for a thorough, genuinely independent investigation of what top officials did, what they knew and how they responded when they became aware of the widespread nature of the abuses.’
   It called for the appointment of a special prosecutor on grounds that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was himself deeply involved in devising the policies that led to the abuse, and thus had a conflict of interest.
   It also called on the US Congress and the president to establish a special commission to investigate the matter, and name a special prosecutor if Gonzalez has not already done so.
   At least seven investigations have been conducted since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
   But Human Rights Watch said all but one was conducted by the military on itself, and none examined the role of senior civilian leaders. The CIA also is reported to have conducted internal inquiries but no details have been made public.
   The report highlights Rumsfeld’s role in approving coercive interrogation techniques in December 2002 for use only on prisoners in Guantanamo—including the use of dogs to incite fear, ‘stress’ positions, and the stripping of detainees—which later migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq.
   Rumsfeld rescinded the approval for the use of the techniques January 15 after the Navy’s general counsel objected. But the US commander in Iraq later apparently drew on the list in devising his own interrogation guidelines in Iraq September 15, 2003, which itself was later rescinded.
   On the CIA, the report said Tenet was potentially legally liable for a policy of sending prisoners to countries that routinely practiced torture for detention and interrogations.
   Between 100 and 150 prisoners have been ‘rendered’ to governments in the Middle East such as Egypt and Syria, and ‘there is now credible evidence that rendered detainees have in fact been tortured,’ it said.
   The report said CIA continues to hold some prisoners in prolonged incommunicado detention in secret locations with no oversight and no access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
   It cited widespread reports that some had been subjected to techniques such as ‘waterboarding,’ in which a prisoner is submerged in water to create the sensation that he is drowning.

Britain’s chief legal officer warned the government before the Iraq war that there were a series of concerns about whether it was permitted under international law, a report said late Saturday.
   Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith gave prime minister Tony Blair’s government six reasons why the conflict might be illegal, the Mail on Sunday newspaper said.
   The paper said it had based the report on a copy it had obtained of Goldsmith’s confidential legal advice to the government ahead of the March 2003 US-led conflict, which Blair’s government backed.
   Goldsmith has repeatedly refused to release his full advice, but has insisted many times that his independent conclusion was that the war was legally permitted.
   According to the Mail on Sunday report, a 13-page written advice statement contained a series of concerns for Goldsmith.
   Among these was whether only the United Nations could properly decide if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in ‘material breach’ of UN resolutions passed about his suspected weapons of mass destruction programme, the stated reason for the war.
   Goldsmith also cautioned that the UN had not authorised the use of ‘all necessary means’ to enforce its resolutions against Saddam Hussein, meaning military action, according to the paper.
   The Attorney General also reportedly warned that a second UN resolution—which never took place—was necessary before hostilities began, along with other concerns.
   Blair has said that Goldsmith gave no full, written legal submission on the legality of the war but merely gave an oral presentation to ministers.

The run-up to Britain’s May 5 general election campaign has been dominated by relatively few issues, the bulk of which, some opinion polls show, play little part in how people will actually vote.
   In terms of national political debate and media fuss, one of the main sources of controversy has been immigration, something seized on by the main opposition Conservative Party as a potential vote-winner.
   Encouraged by tabloid newspapers—which regularly label the government’s immigration and asylum policy ‘chaos’—Conservative leader Michael Howard has pledged to put an absolute cap on immigrants.
   The prime minister, Tony Blair, whose period in government has seen a gradual rise in immigrants entering Britain, has accused his opponent of exploiting voters’ fears over the issue.
   Crime has also played a prominent role, with the Conservatives lambasting Blair for presiding over a massive increase in criminal offences, something his government rejects.
   Finally, the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats have slammed Blair for backing the US-led war in Iraq in March 2003.
   Iraq has been a particularly hot issue in cities with large Muslim populations of South Asian origin, where strategists from Blair’s Labour Party fear the government vote could be badly hit.
   And yet, for all the fuss, there is not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that all this sound and fury will change the course of the election.
   While surveys show that many millions of Britons are concerned about immigration levels and crime figures, they also suggest that when it comes to placing their actual vote, the bulk of people think more prosaically.
   Issues such as the economy, tax, education and the state of Britain’s free-care-for-all National Health Service have been repeatedly identified as most likely to sway voters’ choices.
   There has been debate on these issues, too, but it has tended to be less heated, in part because the three main parties agree on many issues connected to tax and public services.
   Although the Conservatives have traditionally been the champions of low tax and small government, polls show that most voters are reluctant to see spending cuts in education and health services.
   And while France has been gripped in recent weeks by its looming referendum on the European Union constitution, the issue of Europe has been curiously absent across the Channel.

Pope Benedict XVI was given the insignia of papal office Sunday, a woollen pallium and the Fisherman’s Ring, denoting his power as supreme spiritual leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide.
   The pallium, a circular band of fabric decorated with square crosses, was placed around his shoulders by Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez.
   On a finger was placed the Fisherman’s Ring bearing the image of St Peter, disciple of Jesus and the first pope in the 2,000-year history of the Church.
   It was the central ceremony of the pontiff’s inauguration on Saint Peter’s Square, in front of leaders and representatives of more than half the world’s nations and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.
   Benedict XVI, who is 78, was elected on Tuesday by his cardinal colleagues after the April 2 death of John Paul II.
   New Pope Benedict XVI has inherited a troubled legacy from his predecessor—Spain, the majority Catholic country which is breaking with traditional Vatican doctrine on major social issues.
   Despite Spain’s 80 per cent Catholic population and being home to the influential Vatican group Opus Dei, its new socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is overturning Vatican prohibitions.
   Zapatero has a legislative programme which includes bills to legalise gay marriage, allow adoption by gay couples, facilitate divorce and allow stem cell medical research, which uses special cells from human embryos and adults.
   The prime minister has shrugged off criticism from the Spanish bishops and the Vatican, saying he is only implementing the legislative programme for which he was elected in April last year, and which reflects the evolution of society.
   The latest Vatican confrontation occurred Friday, a day after the Spanish lower house of parliament passed a bill to allow gay marriages and adoption by gay couples.
   The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate and become law in a few months, making Spain only the second European country after the Netherlands to allow both gay marriages and adoption of children by same-sex couples.
   Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council on the Family, called on Spanish municipal officials, if asked to perform homosexual marriage ceremonies, to object on grounds of conscience, even it if meant they might lose their job.
   ‘A law as profoundly iniquitous as this one is not an obligation, it cannot be an obligation. One cannot say that a law is right simply because it is law,’ Trujillo said.
   However, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, the number two in the Spanish government, responded, saying that ‘public servants must apply the laws that the government proposes and that the parliament approves’.
   Pope Benedict XVI’s predecessor John Paul II was moved to make a more general criticism of the Spanish government in late January when he denounced the ‘permissive moral’ climate and called on the public authorities to guarantee the right to a religious education, during an address to Spanish bishops.
   However, the defence minister, Jose Bono, the only practising Catholic in the Zapatero cabinet, defended the government’s programme saying: ‘The Spanish government is not a preacher of Christianity’.

An emerging threat of uncertain dimensions looms in this working-class suburb, where a chemical used in rocket fuel and defence manufacturing has befouled nearly half the drinking water supply. But Rialto is just one of many communities facing this problem.
   The choices faced here — when to close wells, whom to sue and how not to get sued — confront officials in 36 states where the Environmental Protection Agency says perchlorate has been detected.
   In Rialto, concern spread along with the underground plume of water that carries the chemical from barren land that once housed Second World War munitions, Cold War weapons-makers and, now, fireworks warehouses and a dump.
   As one city well after another tested positive for perchlorate — six of the city’s 13 wells in all — projected cleanup costs ballooned to more than double Rialto’s $40 million annual budget. The town sued the Defence Department and dozens of other suspected polluters, pleaded with residents to conserve water and hiked water rates 65 per cent.
   Officials and townspeople, meanwhile, want to know just how hazardous perchlorate is. High amounts can be dangerous — the chemical can interrupt the production of thyroid hormones, which are needed for pre- and postnatal development. But how much exposure should be permissible sparks debate in governmental and scientific
   circles.
   The conclusion of city leaders: Piping any amount of perchlorate into homes posed an unacceptable gamble.
   Rialto is a case study of what can happen when a community refuses to take that risk.
   A majority black and Latino town of 98,000, Rialto has palm-dotted streets with small single-family homes, its downtown a mix of old-time churches, homes, businesses and strip malls. Residents work in manufacturing or retail jobs, some slogging through a 50-mile commute west into Los Angeles.
   The source of Rialto’s perchlorate problem is a 2,800-acre plot north of downtown, once isolated but now surrounded by new homes, notes Bill Hunt, a geologist consulting for the city.
   The military used the site as a pit stop for weapons bound for the Port of Los Angeles and then the Pacific theatre in Second World War. Later, Cold War defence contractors built, tested and stored rockets and munitions. Then came the fireworks industry and the county dump.
   With each successive tenant, city officials believe, came growing deposits of perchlorate, an oxidant used in fireworks and road flares and as an accelerant in rocket fuel.
   What the city does know is that 400 feet below ground begins a 7-mile plume of perchlorate that’s polluting Rialto’s aquifer, as well as groundwater drawn by residents of other nearby communities.

Withdraw or be pushed out by the White House. Survive the test of his professional life. Suffer a rejection by the Senate. That’s about what it comes down to for John R Bolton, president Bush’s besieged nominee to be UN ambassador.
   Bolton could weather the indignity of further investigation into his personal and professional behaviour and win confirmation by the Senate next month. He also could find his nomination scuttled. Or he could pull the plug before a scheduled May 12 vote by a Senate committee.
   Only a week ago, Bolton seemed assured of moving on to New York to be the ambassador who works toward Bush’s wishes for major changes at the United Nations.
   His new assignment, however, was thrown into jeopardy last week when moderate Republican senators said new allegations about Bolton gave them cause to reconsider whether he was the right person for the job.

The US president, George W Bush is pushing Congress to provide more money for combat and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan — funds the Pentagon says it needs by the first week of May.
   ‘I applaud the House and Senate for their strong support of my supplemental funding request for our troops serving on the front lines,’ Bush said Saturday in his radio address.
   ‘This funding will help provide the weapons, ammunition, spare parts and equipment that our troops need to do their job,’ he said. ‘I urge Congress to come together to resolve their remaining differences, and send me a bill quickly.’
   House and Senate negotiators are expected to act soon to sort out differences between their versions of the $81 billion spending bill. Both versions would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
   They give the president much of the money he requested, but the bills differ slightly over what part would fund military operations and how much would go toward foreign aid.

Tens of thousands of Armenians including the president and top officials filed through the towering Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on Sunday to commemorate the 90th anniversary of mass killings by Ottoman Turks.
   A silent procession headed by president, Robert Kocharian, laid flowers at an eternal flame as Armenia’s chief clergymen sang an emotional Gregorian Apostolic requiem service beneath the baking sun.
   In the run-up to the anniversary, Armenia has pulled out all the stops in an effort to make Turkey acknowledge the massacres as genocide.
   The events being commemorated are the mass expulsion and mass deaths of Christian Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire during First World War I.

Top Philippine
envoy murdered
A senior Philippine diplomat was murdered by three men who broke into her home in Manila in an apparent botched burglary, police said. Alicia Ramos, 64, was strangled to death while her sister, Leticia, suffered lacerations on her arms before escaping, Jovito Gutierrez, chief of police in the capital’s Makati district, said. Ramos, a former ambassador to Singapore and New Zealand, was an assistant secretary for Asia Pacific affairs at the foreign ministry. Her sister, Leticia, also worked at the foreign ministry.
— AFP

China mine flood traps 69 miners
Rescuers in northeast China worked Sunday to free 69 coal miners trapped in a flooded mine, the government said. The miners were working underground at the Tengda Coal Mine, run by the local government in Jiaohe, a city in Jilin province, when the shaft flooded around 7am, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The cause was under investigation. By Sunday afternoon, there was still no contact with the trapped miners. Jiaohe is about 590 miles northeast of Beijing. Accidents in China’s coal mines kill thousands each year. The government has repeatedly vowed to do more to crack down on safety violations, but explosions, floods, gas leaks, cave-ins and other disasters are reported nearly every week.
— AFP

12 dead in China chemical plant blast
Twelve people have been confirmed killed in an explosion at a chemical workshop in southwest China that left another seven missing, state media said Sunday. The blast occurred Thursday evening at the Dongxi Chemical Plant in Qijiang county, Chongqing municipality. Ten workers were injured, the Xinhua news agency said. The building was razed by the blast, with debris found up to 80 metres away. Ten tons of hazardous material have been removed from the factory’s warehouse to ensure safety during the cleanup operation. The Dongxi plant has raised 2.5 million yuan (300,000 US dollars) to cover the medical costs of the victims, Xinhua said.
— AFP

Bomb blast kills two in south Thailand
Suspected Islamic separatists detonated a bomb in southern Thailand on Sunday, killing two police officers and wounding three other people, just hours after the country’s queen appealed to the nation to condemn such attacks. The device, believed to have been triggered by a mobile phone, exploded in a small storehouse near a border police station and a market along the Malaysian frontier, said the police Lt Sittidej Ruansong. Two police officers were killed, while another officer and two villagers were wounded in the blast, he said.
— AP

Russian warplane violates airspace: Estonia
A Russian military airplane briefly violated Estonian airspace, an official at the Estonian defence forces headquarters said Sunday, although Russia denied the charge. ‘A Russian military airplane was on the way to Kaliningrad and entered Estonia airspace near Vaindloo island’ in north Estonia, Peeter Tali, spokesman of the Defence League of Estonia, said, adding that the incident occurred on Saturday at 1:49pm. In Moscow, a Russian air force spokesman said two of its planes had been in the Baltic region at the time the incident was alleged to have occurred, and both of them had strictly followed their normal flight paths.

Tensions high
for Togo’s
presidential poll
Voters in the west African state of Togo elect a new president Sunday, with tensions running high after a campaign tarnished by violence, with opposition militants threatening to take to the streets unless they win. Some 3.5 million eligible voters among a population of around five million have a choice essentially between Faure Gnassingbe, the 39-year-old son of long-time strongman Gnassingbe Eyadema, who died on February 5 after 37 years in power, and main challenger Emmanuel Bob Akitani, 74. Eyadema’s death triggered a constitutional crisis in the tiny state, but a short-lived bid to install Faure Gnassingbe as president without a popular vote collapsed under pressure from influential African leaders.

Oscar-winning British actor John Mills dies
Veteran British actor Sir John Mills, one of the country’s most beloved and best-known screen stars who appeared in more than 100 films, died on Saturday aged 97 after a brief illness. ‘Sir John Mills died peacefully at home after a short illness,’ a member of his staff said in a brief statement. The hugely respected stage, screen and television actor, whose career spanned more than 70 years, won a best supporting actor Oscar in 1971 for ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. His family was travelling to Britain from the United States and was expected to arrive by Monday, the BBC reported. Mills, whose daughter Hayley has also had a highly successful acting career, being discovered by actor and composer Noel Coward.

Moussaoui faces battle to avoid death penalty
Zacarias Moussaoui’s admission during an angry court appearance that he took part in al-Qaeda’s September 11 conspiracy has left him facing a desperate battle to avoid the death penalty. The 36-year-old Frenchman has said he was chosen by Osama bin Laden to fly a jet into the White House. US media emphasised how Moussaoui shouted ‘God curse America’ as he left Friday’s hearing in Alexandria, Virginia and US authorities announced straight away that they would press for his execution. Lawyers have warned, however, that a long court process remains—during which Moussaoui could renew calls to be allowed to question al-Qaeda leaders kept in secret detention by the United States—before a jury starts to decide whether he should be put to death.

Romania, Bulgaria to sign EU entry pact
Romania and Bulgaria will sign European Union entry accords paving the way to join the bloc in 2007, but officials insist the two countries still have much to do to meet that target date. The two countries’ presidents and prime ministers will travel to Luxembourg to sign the EU accession treaty in the sidelines of a regular meeting of EU foreign ministers. Also at the two-day meeting Croatia, which at one point hoped to join the EU at the same time as Bucharest and Sofia, will make a new bid to win a green light for EU entry talks, delayed in particular over a key war crimes suspect.
—AFP