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Envoys to North Korean disarmament talks on Sunday suspended their meetings for three weeks, deadlocked over the North’s insistence on retaining a peaceful nuclear programme.
   The latest round of six-nation talks lasted 13 days. They are to resume the week of August 29, Chinese vice foreign minister Wu Dawei told reporters. However, he warned that even after the break, ‘I can’t say for sure that we will reach agreement.’
   The American envoy, the assistant secretary of state, Christopher Hill, said contacts between Washington and Pyongyang would not have
   to stop during the break.
   ‘Sure, we’re willing to be in contact,’ Hill said. ‘We will continue to share our views. We won’t let issues of protocol ... get in the way. We are going to work aggressively to take care of this problem.’
   North Korea repeated that it is building nuclear weapons and said the United States must change its policies to break the deadlock over its atomic programmes.
   ‘Our dialogue partner is asking us to give up the right to peaceful nuclear activities. During this round of talks I had expected the United States to accept our demand but the United States did not make such a decision,’ said the North’s chief envoy to the talks, Kim Kye-gwan.
   ‘This is a fundamental reason why we produced no agreement out of these talks.’
   Kim said the success of six-party negotiations when they resume in three weeks after a recess depended on ‘a political will by participating countries to change their policy.’
   ‘During the recess I hope the United States will change its policy that it would not allow us any nuclear activities,’ he said.
   The talks are deadlocked over Pyongyang’s insistence not only to be allowed nuclear programmes for peaceful purposes but for it to use light water reactors to generate energy. The United States has said this will not be considered.
   Kim added that the United States must also give a commitment that it will not attack if a solution to the three-year standoff is to be found.
   ‘We are building nuclear weapons because the US threatened to strike us with nuclear weapons. The United States must give us a commitment not to launch a nuclear attack on us but also establish a legal and institutional device,’ he said.
   Some 32,500 US troops are based in South Korea, but Washington says no nuclear weapons are deployed there and that it has no intention of invading the North.
   Kim said he expected the United States to ‘change its policy on not letting us have any kind of nuclear activities during the recess period.’
   The suspension was announced after chief envoys from China, Japan, the two Koreas, the US and Russia met Sunday morning in a final effort to produce a statement of principles meant to guide future negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to give up nuclear development.
   China, the meeting’s host, issued a ‘chairman’s statement’ instead of a planned joint statement.
   The governments ‘reaffirmed that the goal of the six-party talks is the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner and agreed to issue a common paper to this end,’ the statement said.
   ‘The six parties conducted in-depth and useful discussions on the paper and reached agreement in many aspects,’ it added. ‘They decided to have a brief recess so that the delegations can go back to report to their respective governments, further study each other’s positions and resolve differences which still exist. During the recess, the parties will continue mutual communication and consultation.’
   Diplomats said the talks also deadlocked over what North Korea would receive in return for giving up its arms programme.
   Pyongyang says it will not give up such weapons until Washington discards its ‘hostile policies’ toward the North, removes any nuclear threat from the Korean peninsula and normalises relations with the country’s Stalinist government.

A Pakistani crackdown on militants has raised the ire of the religious right but is backed by the country’s moderates, exposing divisions in a society that denounces extremism but sympathises with the Islamists’ cause.
   Although Pakistan’s 150 million people are more than 90 per cent Muslim and the nation was carved out in 1947 from colonial India’s Muslim-majority areas amid horrific violence, the opposition to radical Islam is well-entrenched.
   But there is considerable anti-US and anti-Western sentiment and a strong network of fundamentalist Islamist groups in the country.
   Managing the contradictions is a major job for the president, Pervez Musharraf, but some say the former military chief is keeping the divisions alive to ensure he gets continued support from the West.
   ‘Secularism is alien to most Pakistanis, but they don’t want violence and extremism. They just want to get on with their lives,’ said Irfan Husain, a Karachi-based political commentator.
   A cross-section of people back that view.
   ‘If Musharraf takes action against the people who talk about extremism, the majority will support him,’ said Faiza Jamshed, a student, as she shopped in Karachi’s upmarket Clifton district.
   Atif Sherazi, who makes $67 a month running public phone booths in Rawalpindi, the garrison town next to Islamabad, says he approves of Musharraf’s plan for checks on madrasas, or religious schools, to ensure they are not fomenting extremism.

Anwar Ibrahim is storming back onto Malaysia’s political landscape with ambitions to transform the nation’s race-based party system, as the centrepiece of a campaign to become prime minister.
   The former deputy premier last week took another step towards putting the ugly saga of his sacking and imprisonment behind him, winning damages and an apology from the then-police chief who famously beat him after his 1998 arrest.
   Anwar, 57, is legally barred from holding political office until 2008 after being convicted of corruption—a charge he says was manufactured to prevent him threatening the dominance of his former mentor Mahathir Mohamad.
   But he said in an interview that even if the government times the next general elections to ensure he is excluded, a win by the opposition People’s Justice Party, led by his wife Wan Azizah, could see him claim the top job.
   ‘If the public, the Malaysian electorate, endorses you, what does it matter whether I contest or not,’ he said.
   His advisers say that if the People’s Justice Party, known as Keadilan, established a majority with the support of its allies, it could appoint an interim prime minister until Anwar’s ban expired and he contested a by-election.
   ‘It is a decision of the party in power. So if they want my role, then the party has to decide and the people have to back the party,’ Anwar said.
   His inability to stand for office would only make ‘a difference for a few months’, in the event of a Keadilan poll victory, he said.
   ‘Just a few months. If the party wins, then the party will decide.’
   Despite the brave words, Keadilan suffered a crushing defeat in the 2004 elections and faces a daunting task in unseating the UMNO party which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957.
   However, Anwar is their best hope for success and after his release from jail last September, thanks to the overturning of a sodomy conviction which was part of the charges against him, he is now emerging from the political wilderness.
   Since winning his freedom, Anwar travelled extensively to re-establish his networks both domestically and abroad.

India and Pakistan took important steps towards reducing the risk of an accidental nuclear war and pushed forward their peace process with a series of weekend agreements, commentators said Sunday.
   After two days of discussions in the Indian capital, the rivals agreed Saturday to set up a telephone hotline to prevent accidental nuclear conflict and also agreed to notify each other before testing ballistic missiles.
   The hotline would be established in September 2005, said a joint statement after the talks, the third such meeting since a peace process was launched in January last year.
   ‘The two sides emphasised the importance of early operationalisation of the hotline link proposed to be established between the foreign secretaries... to prevent misunderstandings and reduce risks relevant to nuclear issues,’ the statement said.
   The foreign secretaries are second to the foreign ministers in both countries.
   In a separate agreement India and Pakistan decided formally to notify each other before flight-testing ballistic missiles, most of which can carry nuclear warheads.
   The neighbouring countries conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998 and came to the brink of war in 2002. The historical rivals, who fought three earlier wars, routinely carry out tests of nuclear-capable missiles.

Malaysian Muslim men are allowed four wives under Islamic law, but a survey has found that the majority are satisfied with just one spouse, a report said Sunday.
   The poll of 13,000 Malaysians by the Universiti Putra Malaysia showed that nearly 90 per cent of Muslim men are one-woman men, while only five per cent have two wives and 4.3 per cent have three, the New Straits Times reported.
   While bigamy is outlawed for non-Muslims, the survey, carried out last year to track behavioural habits that could lead to HIV infections, found that four per cent of Chinese men an three per cent of Indian men had two wives.
   Couples interviewed by the newspaper told of their lasting marriages and their recipes for a happy partnership.
   ‘You marry just once, that’s all. You don’t marry another for no reason. When you’re contented with one person, why should you take another?’ said Zainal Ibrahim, 71. His spouse, Norshidah, 68, said a wife had to focus on her husband’s strengths and acknowledge her own imperfections.
   ‘Now women think they are equal. I don’t agree. You must always respect your husband and know your place,’ she
   was quoted as telling the newspaper. Polygamy is legal for Malaysian Mulsims, but the issue is controversial and has sparked campaigns by women’s rights groups to curb the practice.

Survivors of the deadly blasts that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago joined hundreds of activists in support of a global ban on nuclear weapons.
   They rallied Saturday at the birthplace of the atomic bomb, outside the national labs that feed today’s nuclear arsenal, on the tiny island where the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima with its deadly payload, and in the nation’s capital.
   Bombing survivor Koji Ueda attended a rally in the Los Alamos park where there were research laboratories when the Manhattan Project developed the world’s first atomic bomb.
   ‘No more Hiroshimas. No more Nagasakis,’ Ueda said. ‘We send this message to our friends all over the world, along with a fresh determination of the ‘hibakusha’ to continue to tell about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aiming at a planet set free of wars of nuclear weapons.’
   In Oak Ridge, Tenn, 15 protesters from a group of more than 1,000 were arrested for blocking a road outside the heavily guarded weapons factory that helped fuel the bomb during Second World War.
   At the Nevada Test Site, about 200 peace activists, including actor Martin Sheen, gathered for a nonviolent demonstration outside the gates. Dozens were given citations and released after crossing police lines. There was no immediate count of exactly how many were detained.

The move to open alternative routes to Manipur, affected by the economic blockade, has run into problems as stretches of those routes pass through terrorist-infested areas, the defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said on Sunday.
   ‘Certain alternative routes were identified, but those pass through areas infested with terrorists. The Silchar-Jiribam Road is also not safe. Therefore, search is on for new alternatives,’ Mukherjee told reporters here.
   ‘This blockade, unfortunately has been a long one. Whenever there is an agitation in any part of the north-east, the first casualty is the communication system.

The Israeli finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tendered his resignation Sunday over his opposition to this month’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, official sources said.
   Netanyahu, a former prime minister and stalwart of prime minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party, resigned shortly before a cabinet vote to give the final go-ahead on the evacuation of a first batch of Gaza settlements.
   The hardline minister is vehemently opposed to the pullout—Israel’s first ever from occupied Palestinian land—and had announced he would vote against the withdrawal.

The Israeli cabinet Sunday approved the evacuation of a first batch of Gaza Strip settlements despite the shocking resignation of the finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the controversial pullout.
   The resignation of prime minister Ariel Sharon’s main rival was a political bombshell that ratcheted up further tension amid already intense security concerns 10 days before the evacuation.
   Critics of the pullout in the fractious cabinet hoped the Likud stalwart’s shock resignation could cause the collapse of the government before the start of the disengagement plan.
   But the evacuations of the three most isolated settlements in the Gaza Strip—Netzarim, Kfar Darom and Morag—nevertheless easily won cabinet approval, official sources said.
   During the meeting, Sharon ordered security chiefs to step up their investigation into the killing of four Arab Israelis by a Jewish extremist opposed to the pullout, due to begin on August 17.
   The shootings have compounded fears that radicals are plotting attacks, such as the assassination of the prime minister or against the Al-Aqsa mosque—the third-holiest site in Islam—in a bid to torpedo the withdrawal.
   ‘I appeal to all those involved in the investigation... to do whatever is necessary to hasten the investigation and to take all necessary steps so that such events do not recur,’ Sharon told the cabinet meeting.

Taking strong exception to the incident involving Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, on Saturday expressed concern that not many leaders and parties had condemned it.
   ‘It is a very sad day for Indian democracy,’ he told reporters here referring to the incident in which Banerjee threw a bunch of papers at the deputy speaker. However, he did not mention her by name.
   Expressing concern that many leaders and parties have not come out condemning the incident, he said ‘these are disturbing situations but let us hope this is a one-time aberration.’
   ‘Parliament is the highest forum where people’s problems and issues are discussed in a manner which gives some expectation to the people’s hope that their views are being expressed and some solution will be found,’ he said adding but ‘if we do not utilise the time, we are not doing justice.’
   There was no alternative to Parliamentary democracy and ‘we have to strengthen and make it very efficient and effective, Chatterjee said.

The British government declined to comment Sunday on reports that Saudi officials warned well ahead of last month’s deadly London bombings that terrorists were planning to attack the British capital.
   Two newspapers cited sources in Riyadh and London as indicating that Saudi officials alerted Britain several weeks before the July 7 bombings that left 56 people dead.
   ‘We don’t comment on intelligence issues,’ said a spokesman for the Foreign Office, although the prime minister, Tony Blair, has previously rejected suggestions of an intelligence failure.
   The July 7 bombings were the deadliest attack ever in the British capital, and were followed two weeks later by an attempted copycat attack in which the explosives, stuffed into rucksacks, failed to go off.
   The Observer newspaper quoted a security official in the Saudi capital Riyadh as saying that information was passed to MI5 and MI6, Britain’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies respectively.
   The Sunday Telegraph quoted the Saudi ambassador to Britain as saying that details of a possible conspiracy to attack London—apparently extracted from terrorism suspects in Saudi Arabia—had been given to British intelligence.
   ‘There were reports passed on to your authorities several months ago in general terms of a heightened expectancy of attacks on London,’ said the ambassador, Prince Turki al-Faisal, and a former chief of Saudi intelligence.
   Another source said that money transfers were thought to have been made from Saudi Arabia to Britain in the first six months of the year through businesses in the two countries.
   ‘It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the United Kingdom. We passed on all this information to both MI5 and MI6,’ said the source.
   In Riyadh meanwhile, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said his country had passed on information to Britain that may be related to last month’s terror attacks.
   But he gave no further details on the content of the information or whether it had been relayed to British authorities prior to the attacks.
   ‘There is continuous cooperation and contacts between the two countries and there is a committee working here to pass information back and forth,’ Faisal said at a news conference.
   ‘I am sure that there is some information (that) may be linked to these events in London,’ he said.
   British security sources played down the newspaper reports. The Observer quoted one source as ‘categorically’ denying that any specific information had been received that could have averted the July 7 attacks.
   The source said they ‘did not recognise’ the details of the Saudi claims, which came to light one month to the day after the attacks.
   The reports said the investigations revolve around two Moroccans, identified as Kareem al-Majati and Younes al-Hayari, both alleged to have been senior figures in Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
   The two were killed in separate shootouts in Saudi Arabia in the weeks before July 7.

Seven exhausted Russian sailors returned to dry land Sunday after a dramatic operation by a British undersea robot freed their mini-submarine three days after it became trapped on the Pacific Ocean floor.
   The rescue, some 75 hours after the Priz AS-28 mini-sub became snagged on the seabed 190 metres underwater during military exercises, was completed with just hours of oxygen supplies left for the stranded crew.
   ‘We believed the whole time that we would be saved,’ the AS-28’s captain, Vyacheslav Milashevsky, told ITAR-TASS news agency after reaching Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the regional capital.
   The men, wearing naval uniforms, looked drained as they stepped onto dry land, but there was no disguising the joy in Russia that they had not shared the fate of the 118 sailors on the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk five years ago.
   ‘I cried from happiness and danced,’ Milashevsky’s wife Yelena said on state-run television.
   The sailors were pronounced in good health and taken to hospital for further check-ups.
   The key to the submariners’ rescue from the seabed roughly 70 kilometres from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, was the arrival of a British navy team with a sophisticated Scorpio underwater robot.
   Using powerful cutters, the Scorpio slashed through the cables of a coastal defence antenna and fishing net in which the AS-28 had become trapped. In six hours, the submarine was able to surface.
   Its crew, who had spent the last days mostly in darkness and wearing thermal suits against the cold, opened the hatch themselves and emerged into the air and light.
   The defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, who arrived just as the British team was going to work, was shown on national television cheering from a ship at the scene.
   The sudden success of British rescue experts was in marked contrast to several futile efforts by Russian ships to haul up both the mini-sub and the cables in which it was entangled.
   ‘The rescue operation has had a happy ending. I thank everyone, including of course the British rescuers,’ Pacific fleet commander Admiral Viktor Fyodorov said.
   British naval Commander Jonty Powis said the mission was a close shave, since the stranded submariners had just 10 to 12 hours before oxygen supplies ran out.
   ‘We were conscious that the crew were running out of oxygen and that we could not afford any great delays in cutting them free,’ Powis said. ‘

Iran on Sunday reiterated plans to resume uranium conversion this week and said it was unconcerned about referral of its nuclear case to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
   ‘Although we think referral of Iran’s case to the Security Council would be unlawful and politically motivated, if one day they refer Iran’s case...we won’t be worried in the least,’ said the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi.
   Britain, Germany and France, heading nuclear negotiations with Iran for the European Union, have called an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors on Tuesday to discuss Iran’s case.
   The EU trio say they will recommend referring Iran to the Security Council if it goes ahead with plans to break UN seals and resume work at the Isfahan uranium conversion plant.
   Iran, which on Saturday rejected an EU package of economic and political incentives designed to persuade it to halt nuclear fuel work for good, says it will restart the Isfahan plant as soon as IAEA surveillance equipment is in place.
   ‘The European proposal has no value,’ state television quoted the foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, as saying.
   ‘We will insist on our rights and have decided to resume Isfahan activities as the first step of our measures. This does not mean we will stop negotiations with Europe,’ he added.
   Asefi, speaking at a weekly news conference, said IAEA technicians would be at the Isfahan plant on Monday to install additional cameras.
   He said the 35-page EU proposal, which contained an offer of help with developing a civilian nuclear programme, was rejected because it did not recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Iran’s official reply will be delivered to the EU on Monday.
   ‘I suggest that the Europeans avoid the language of threat,’ Asefi said. ‘The only way is to encourage Iran and respect its rights.’
   Iran says its nuclear programme is solely designed to produce much-needed electricity and is not, as Washington insists, a cover for making atomic bombs.
   It says that as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has the right to produce its own fuel for nuclear reactors, a process that can also be used to make bomb-grade material.
   The new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at his swearing-in ceremony on Saturday, said Iran would not be intimidated by threats from the West.
   A religious conservative fiercely loyal to the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad is expected to adopt a tougher position on the two-year-old nuclear negotiations with the EU, analysts and diplomats say.

The US president, George W Bush, took a political beating this weekend after a second opinion poll, taken after a spike in US casualties in Iraq, showed a sharp drop in public support for his Iraq policy.
   The survey by Newsweek magazine indicated only 34 per cent of Americans approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq while 61 per cent expressed their disapproval.
   The findings, made public Saturday, represented the president’s lowest rating on Iraq ever, which thus far has hovered above the 40-per cent mark.
   They echoed a sampling conducted this past week by Ipsos-Public Affairs for the Associated Press, which indicated that just 38 per cent of respondents approved of what Bush is doing in Iraq while 59 per cent disapproved of the policies and two per cent had mixed feelings about them.
   At least 38 US military personnel have died in Iraq in the last 10 days—in one of the deadliest outbreaks of insurgent violence since the March 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
   Iraqi guerrillas mounted one of their most spectacular attacks on Wednesday when a powerful roadside bomb blew up a US armoured personnel carrier near the northwest town of Haditha, killing 14 marines on board.
   As of Saturday, the overall death toll for the US military in Iraq stood at 1,823, according to the Pentagon tally.
   The count did not include two US soldiers killed later in the day in a bomb attack near Samarra.
   Bush moved on Wednesday to cushion an anticipated backlash against his policies as he assured in a speech in Grapevine, Texas, that his administration had ‘a strategy for success’ in Iraq.
   ‘And the families can know that we will honour their loved one’s sacrifice by completing the mission, by laying the foundations for peace for generations to come,’ the president said.
   The Newsweek survey showed the plea may have fallen on deaf ears.
   Reflection a gloomy mood setting in the country, half of those polled said the United States was losing ground in its efforts to establish security and democracy in Iraq. Only 40 per cent had the opposite point of view.

Astronauts completed flight control checks aboard space shuttle Discovery and practiced landing on a computer simulator as they made final preparations to return to Earth.
   ‘It’s time to come home and keep working on getting the shuttle better and ready to fly in the future again,’ Commander Eileen Collins said during a series of interviews Sunday.
   Discovery’s astronauts spent nine days of their 13-day mission respelling the orbiting lab and two spacewalking astronauts replaced a gyroscope, which stopped working in 2002. They also restored power to another gyroscope, which stopped spinning in March.
   The station’s crew waited until Discovery undocked to rev up all four gyroscopes at once.
   ‘There’s lots of cheering on board Discovery right now,’ Collins radioed back to the ground.
   While on orbit, Discovery’s crew unloaded the station’s trash, conducted intense inspections of their shuttle for damage and tested repair techniques developed after the 2003 Columbia tragedy.
   During an unprecedented spacewalk to repair the ship, astronaut Stephen Robinson pulled two strips of protruding tile filler from beneath Discovery’s belly. Engineers on the ground had worried if the strips weren’t removed, they could cause dangerous overheating during re-entry and lead to repeat of Columbia’s disastrous descent, based on a hole pierced by a piece of foam in that ship’s left wing during launch.
   ‘It’s been an outstandingly successful mission,’ deputy shuttle programme manager Wayne Hale said of Discovery. ‘We accomplished everything that we set out to do and more.’
   However, the daunting, suspenseful and dangerous task of getting Discovery home remained.
   Discovery’s pilot Jim Kelly said he has no concerns about landing and likened a shuttle during descent to a runaway freight train.
   ‘That’s a little bit what it feels like — a very exciting, exhilarating process that ends with being at home,’ he said.

The ruling military council set up after a coup in Mauritania freed on Sunday around 20 alleged Islamic extremists jailed by the ousted regime, including a leader with alleged links to a pro-al-Qaeda group in neighbouring Algeria.
   The release of the activists, including Islamic leader Mohamed Elhacen Ould Dedaw, was greeted by a jubilant procession through the streets of Nouakchott, capital of the northwest African state.
   The head of the public prosecutor’s office said however that the suspects had only been given a conditional release, although one of their lawyers said he expected the charges against them to be thrown out.
   Ould Dedaw was arrested in late April along with around 50 alleged Islamic extremists and charged with membership of illegal organisations and links with the al-Qaeda-linked Algerian rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.
   Meanwhile, the Mauritanian prime minister, Sghair Ould M’Bareck, who had remained in post after a military coup in the northwest African state, on Sunday, handed in his resignation and that of his government, sources close to the presidency said.
   Ould M’Bareck announced his resignation following a meeting with Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, the head of the ruling Military Council for Justice and Democracy that was set up after last Wednesday’s coup.

The top US Middle East commander has outlined a plan that would reduce US forces in Iraq by some 20,000 to 30,000 by next spring, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
   Citing three senior military officers and defence department officials, The Times said that the assessment by general, John Abizaid, the head of the military’s Central Command, was contained in a classified briefing given to senior Pentagon officials last month.
   The plan was in line with the general George Casey’s remarks in a briefing late last month with the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that Washington hoped to reduce US forces in Iraq sharply within the next year.
   ‘I do believe that if the political process continues to go positively, if the developments with the (Iraqi) security forces continue to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to make fairly substantial reductions after these elections–in the spring and summer of next year,’ Casey, the US commander in Iraq, told Rumsfeld on July 27.
   However, Abizaid added the caveat in his assessment that it was possible that the Pentagon might have to keep the current levels of some 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq through 2006 if security and political trends do not favour a withdrawal, The Times said.
   The US president, George W Bush, has consistently refused to set a date for withdrawal from Iraq, reiterating on Wednesday that the timetable ‘depends on our ability to train the Iraqis, to get the Iraqis ready to fight.’
   The number of troops is expect to increase temporarily in December to about 160,000 troops, achieved through overlapping the normal rotation of incoming forces and those who have finished their tours, to provide security for elections to a new National Assembly, scheduled for December 15, The Times said.

The angry mother of a fallen US soldier staged a protest near the US president, George W Bush’s ranch Saturday, demanding an accounting from Bush of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.
   Supported by more than 50 demonstrators who chanted, ‘W. killed her son!’ Cindy Sheehan told reporters: ‘I want to ask the president, ‘Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?’’
   Sheehan, 48, didn’t get to see Bush, but did talk about 45 minutes with national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin, who went out to hear her concerns.
   Appreciative of their attention, yet undaunted, Sheehan said she planned to continue her roadside vigil, except for a few breaks, until she gets to talk to Bush. Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an army specialist, a Humvee mechanic.
   ‘They (the advisers) said we are in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that the world’s a better place with Saddam gone and that we’re making the world a safer place with what we’re doing over there,’ Sheehan said in a telephone interview after the meeting.

Thirteen people are confirmed dead from the crash off Sicily of a Tunisian plane carrying Italian tourists, while two people were missing and there are 23 survivors, Italian officials said Sunday.
   Admiral Vicenzo Pace, the commander of the Palermo harbourmaster’s office, said 38 people were on the plane that crash-landed into the sea on Saturday.
   Italian officials had earlier said 39 people were on board, and that three were missing, while Italian news agency Ansa had reported 14 dead.
   The new figures were confirmed by Toto Cuffaro, the head of Sicily’s regional council, who visited the hospital in Palermo where 11 injured from the accident were still being treated.
   Operations continued overnight and into Sunday morning to find the two missing—the plane’s technician and another person whose identity was not known—in the waters off the north-western coast of the Italian island of Sicily.
   The remains of the ATR-72 plane, which was flying from the southern Italian city of Bari to the Tunisian resort of Djerba when it crashed on Saturday, were retrieved from the water.

Myanmar facing ‘devastation’
Military-run Myanmar is headed for ‘devastation’ and the UN Security Council should address the crisis there, activists and exiled politicians warned Sunday, marking 17 years since a doomed democracy uprising. Repression and poverty were now prevalent in the country formerly known as Burma, where an army crackdown on August 8, 1988 killed hundreds if not thousands of people, activists said at a seminar in the Thai capital. Scholars, pro-democracy activists and anti-regime groups agreed that the junta’s self-declared ‘roadmap to democracy’ had failed and that conditions in impoverished Myanmar had deteriorated badly. ‘The stalled transitional process to democracy and an elusive national conciliation process have prompted early warning signs in Burma today that Burma is on the verge of devastation,’ the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma said in a statement.
— AFP

Pakistani admits role in Pearl murder case
An Islamist militant suspected of bringing murdered US reporter Daniel Pearl to his kidnappers has confessed he was working for two key al-Qaeda-linked operatives, the police said on Saturday. Mohammad Hashim Qadir was arrested last month in Gujranwala in the central province of Punjab. Security sources believe he set up a meeting between Pearl and militants who later kidnapped and killed him. ‘He has confessed to his role in the Pearl case and to some robberies,’ Gujranwala police chief Zafar Abbas said. No-one was available to give comment from Qadir himself.
— Reuters

11 killed in northern India landslides
At least 11 people have been killed in landslides or other accidents following heavy rain in north India and hundreds were made homeless when their houses were submerged by an artifical lake, a report said Sunday. Eight members of a family at Rachi village in Pithoragarh district of Uttaranchal state were killed Saturday when a wall of mud slammed into their house, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Rescue teams have recovered four bodies so far, the report said. Another landslide killed two others in Uttaranchal’s Chamoli district while a local official died when his jeep skidded off the road and into a ditch.
— AFP

Eight suspected Taliban killed
Eight suspected Taliban militants were killed and three captured as Afghan and US-led troops raided their hideouts in southeastern Afghanistan, an official said Sunday. The raids by Afghan security forces, supported by members of the 19,000-strong US-led coalition, were conducted Saturday in the Shar-i-Safa district of Zabul province, said local police commander Ghulam Rasoul Aka. ‘During the operation we killed eight Taliban and captured three others,’ he said. Separately, one Afghan policeman was killed and another wounded Saturday when militants attacked a police checkpoint in eastern Wardak province, interior ministry spokesman
said.
— AFP

UN issues ‘anguished appeal’ to save Niger’s starving
A United Nations aid official in the famine-stricken West African state of Niger on Saturday issued an ‘anguished appeal’ for international aid to save lives, as some 32,000 severely malnourished children were said to be facing almost certain death. ‘From here at Garin-Goulbi, we launch an anguished and urgent appeal to the world to save lives,’ said Michele Falavigna, UN coordinator for Niger, speaking from a village in the worst-affected region. More than 2.5 million people lack food supplies and tens of thousands of children suffering from severe malnutrition are ‘at risk of dying if they do not receive food and necessary treatment,’ Falavigna said.
— AFP

Sudan urged to speed peace deal implementation
The United Nations on Sunday called on Khartoum and southern Sudan’s ex-rebels to speed up the implementation of a landmark January peace deal as a tribute to late guerrilla chief John Garang. A day after tens of thousands of Sudanese mourned Garang’s death in emotional funeral ceremonies here, UN special envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk said both parties to the historic agreement had been slow to put in place key provisions of the pact. In particular, he said a political commission to oversee the truce between Khartoum’s troops and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement fighters and a panel to monitor progress of civilian aspects of the accord had yet to be set up.
— Reuters

Muslim leader for end to Iraq war
A Somali-born Islamic cleric on Sunday used a rally commemorating the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to call for an end to the United States-led war in Iraq. Sheikh Issa Musse told the 500 people gathered in the southern Australian city of Melbourne that Australia should pull its troops out of Iraq. The imam at the city mosque in West Melbourne also likened America’s wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
— AFP

Families begin funerals for Ohio Marines
The flag-draped caskets of two of the 16 Ohio Marines killed in recent attacks in Iraq arrived at Cleveland’s airport Saturday evening, one saluted by his brother and fellow Marine. Lance Eric Montgomery stood in his dress uniform on the tarmac as a military honour guard carried the body of his 26-year-old brother, Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery, to a hearse. The Ohio Marines suffered heavy losses in three attacks starting July 28, when Williams and another Marine were killed in a gun battle. On Monday, Montgomery, Deyarmin and three other Ohio Marines were killed in an ambush, and nine were killed Wednesday when an armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
— AFP

Forest fires continue to rage in Spain
Several forest fires were raging out of control in Spain on Sunday, the day after two fire-fighters were killed battling blazes in the centre and northwest of the country, which is experiencing both very hot weather and its worst drought in 60 years. The Spain environment minister, Cristina Narbona, blamed ‘the exceptional situation of heat and dry ground’ for the fires, and warned that ‘the slightest negligence can turn into tragedy.’
— AFP