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Palestinian security forces were getting ready to deploy around settlements in the Gaza Strip Wednesday as preparations for Israel’s pullout accelerated one week before the start of the evacuation.
   Palestinian security sources said that a 5,000-strong force was being assembled to ensure that the pullout, due to begin on August 17, takes place free of violence after an appeal for calm by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
   ‘Forces from the national security branch and the police will be deployed at the start of the week in the zones bordering the Israeli settlements and by the roads used by settlers leading to the green line (border into Israel),’ one senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
   ‘Some members of the national security branch have already taken up positions in some of these areas and they are going to receive significant reinforcements in preparation for the start of the Israeli pullout,’ the source added.
   The source said that the deployments had been agreed on after coordination talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials.
   Both Israeli and Palestinian security sources said that the main task of the Palestinian force would be to prevent rocket attacks by militants from groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad during the pullout.
   A total of around 5,000 security personnel, drawn from a number of Palestinian security branches, are expected to take part in the operation.
   In a speech to the Palestinian parliament on Tuesday, Abbas appealed for the pullout to take place in a ‘civilised manner’ in order to strengthen the case for independence and reiterated calls for an end to the rocket firing.
   The Israeli parliament was holding its own debate on Wednesday about the pullout. Benjamin Netanyahu, who quit as finance minister on Sunday in protest at the disengagement plan, was among those expected to speak at the session.
   Netanyahu, a former prime minister who has made no secret of his plan to return to the highest office, was taking heart Wednesday from polls among members of the main governing Likud party which indicated that he could unseat the current premier Ariel Sharon in a straight contest.
   An opinion poll whose results were carried by Channel 10 revealed 42 per cent of the right-wing party’s membership would choose Netanyahu in party primaries, while only 27 would cast their votes for Sharon.
   It confirmed the trend suggested by another survey published in Haaretz and released Tuesday night on public television, which credited Netanyahu with 47 per cent of voter intention against Sharon’s 33 in a straight runoff.
   Sharon retains high opinion poll ratings but his determination to push ahead with the evacuation of the 8,000 Gaza settlers—the first time that Israel has ever left occupied Palestinian territory—has alienated large swathes of Likud.
   Sharon has insisted that there are no further pullouts in the pipeline, and has argued that leaving Gaza voluntarily will help Israel hold onto its large West Bank settlement blocs.
   However a survey published by Haaretz found that 73 per cent of Israelis believe that the pullout ‘constitutes a first step towards an extensive evacuation of West Bank settlements.’
   Likud primaries are expected to take place several months before the next election which is not due until November 2006.
   Since returning to power in 2001, Sharon has courted the political center and currently heads a coalition with the Labour party.

The Pakistani prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, on Wednesday called on Britain to ‘look within’ for the roots of Islamic extremism, saying no links had been drawn between his country and the London bombings.
   ‘We have found no evidence whatsoever of any of the incidents which happened in the UK linked to anybody in Pakistan, absolutely none,’ Aziz told reporters on a visit to Tokyo.
   ‘The truth is that we publicly said the British authorities ought to look within Britain to see what caused this, and we have cooperation with them,’ he said.
   Three of the four suspected suicide bombers in the July 7 attacks in London were British Muslims of Pakistani origin and at least two visited Pakistan prior to the attacks.
   After the attacks which left 56 people dead, Britain has pressed Pakistan to move against radical madrassahs, or Islamic schools.
   Aziz said Pakistanis living in the former colonial ruler tended to be ‘economic migrants.’
   ‘Every country has people living overseas,’ Aziz said.
   ‘Pakistanis living around the world are peaceful, they are hard workers, they would never be involved in any such activities,’ he said.
   Aziz is on a four-day visit to Japan to meet business and political leaders, including a meeting Wednesday with the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.
   During the visit, Japan formally resumed low-interest loans to Pakistan which were suspended after the country and its rival India carried out nuclear tests in 1998.

The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, considered resigning after leftist allies blocked his reforms and he received little support from colleagues, a newspaper said on Wednesday, but a party spokesman dismissed the report.
   Quoting senior sources in the Congress party which heads the federal coalition, the Economic Times reported Singh was especially upset after the government put off plans last week to sell a 10 per cent stake in state-run engineering blue chip firm Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. due to communist pressure.
   ‘Frustrated at the government’s inability to push through critical reforms, he, at times, is understood to have even indicated a wish to relinquish charge,’ said the front page story.
   ‘He feels left alone on almost all controversial issues with little or no backing from his party,’ the newspaper quoted an unnamed political source as saying.
   The Congress party dismissed the report as speculative.
   ‘This is subjective speculation in the press without any objective or verifiable material,’ Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told Reuters.
   ‘Such speculative rumination cannot be the basis for any response.’
   Analysts said Singh was frustrated but was unlikely to follow up on any threat to quit.
   ‘I don’t think he is a quitter,’ political commentator Pran Chopra said. ‘But he is embarrassed by the handicaps under which he works while running the government.’
   Singh, the architect of India’s slow but steady reforms, has been buffeted by criticism from the communists on a host of issues including his push for closer ties with the United States that entails civilian nuclear energy cooperation with Washington.
   The Congress has 146 MPs and needs the support of 61 left parliamentarians and regional allies to cross the halfway mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.
   Singh was handpicked as prime minister by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former premier Rajiv Gandhi, after she led the party to an election win in May last year.
   The buoyant benchmark Bombay stock exchange discounted reports that Singh was thinking about quitting and rose nearly one per cent in early afternoon trade on Wednesday.
   The prime minister, India’s first Sikh premier, has also faced flak from opposition parties and fellow Sikhs this week over a report that named Congress leaders in connection with anti-Sikh riots that left nearly 3,000 Sikhs dead in 1984.
   The inquiry report into the riots by retired judge G.T. Nanavati, which was placed in parliament on Monday, said junior minister Jagdish Tytler may have instigated the riots but the government has not taken any action against him, sparking criticism.

A Taiwanese military court has sentenced an intelligence officer to life in prison for leaking secrets to rival China, the defence ministry said Wednesday.
   ‘Chuang Po-hsin, a major at the intelligence unit of the electronic information development division in the military, received a life sentence for leaking military information,’ said defense ministry spokesman Liou Chih-jein.
   He was sentenced on Tuesday, Liou said.
   Prosecutors immediately appealed the verdict at the military’s supreme court, Liou told AFP. Chuang was arrested by military police in May on suspicion of spying for China, an offence punishable by the death penalty or life in prison.
   Chuang’s division is in charge of electronic surveillance of China. The major was convicted of stealing information his division had collected about China’s military activities and technological research. Defense officials have denied media reports that Chuang had provided China with data on Taiwan’s missile program and said the secrets he leaked were non-essential.
   Taiwan’s United Daily News reported last April that Chuang sold the missile data to the mainland through a retired military officer surnamed Huang for one million Taiwan dollars (32,250 US dollars.)
   The report said Huang, also involved in a credit card crime ring, had introduced Chuang to Chinese intelligence agents.
   Prosecutors accidentally discovered Chuang’s espionage work during investigation of the credit card crime ring.
   Beijing has viewed Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, since the two sides split at the end of a civil war in 1949.

The killing of at least 40 Nepalese soldiers in the deadliest attack since King Gyanendra seized power in February has exposed his pledge to put down a violent Maoist rebellion, analysts said Wednesday.
   The soldiers were lined up and shot in the head after an attack on an army camp near the northwestern town of Kalikot, according to the army which said another 75 servicemen are missing. The rebels say 26 of their fighters were killed.
   It was the worst incident since the Maoists, whose battle for a communist republic has claimed 12,000 lives in the past nine years, killed 36 people by bombing a crowded bus in June.
   ‘Excepting for Kathmandu, the Maoists are showing their muscle everywhere,’ said Mahendra Prasad Bhusan, political professor at Tribhuvan University here.
   ‘They have challenged the army by attacking (their camp),’ he added, referring to Sunday’s assault.
   Gyanendra sacked a four-party coalition government on February 1, pledging to restore security and improve services in the impoverished Himalayan kingdom.
   The move drew sharp condemnation from around the world and isolated Nepal diplomatically, with India, Britain and the United States reviewing supplies of military and humanitarian aid.
   US ambassador James Moriarty warned on Tuesday that Nepal risked sliding into chaos unless the king re-establishes democracy and restores civil rights.
   ‘Unless the principles of freedom, civil rights, and democracy once again take root through a process of true reconciliation among the legitimate political forces, I fear Nepal will inexorably slide towards confrontation, confusion and chaos,’ Moriarty said.
   ‘The continuing divisions between the royal palace and the political parties aid only the Maoist rebels and their plan to turn Nepal into a brutal and anachronistic state.’
   Bhusan said Gyanendra had not made good on his promises and that the Maoists looked stronger than ever. He warned the monarchy itself was at risk and that Nepal was in danger of becoming a failed state.
   ‘If the king does not reform his policy and establish democracy, it may create a grave situation. (He) has to act seriously and thoughtfully otherwise a situation will evolve in Nepal which may sweep away the monarchy itself,’ Bhusan said.
   Political analyst and professor Lok Raj Baral also believes security is deteriorating in the Hindu kingdom.
   ‘Despite the king’s pledge of maintaining peace and security in the country, (the) law and order situation is turning from bad to worse except in Kathmandu,’ Baral told AFP earlier this month.
   President of the human rights group Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC) Subodh Raj Pyakurel said Gyanendra had failed in every aspect since he took over the administration.
   ‘The law and order situation in the country has been very badly affected as the Maoists have begun to spread everywhere, showing their muscles,’ Pyakurel said.
   ‘It seems the Maoists are in (even) stronger position after attacking the security men at Kalikot,’ he said.
   The Maoist attack came after Gyanendra’s recent claim that the insurgency had been curtailed. Information and Communications Minister Tanka Dhakal said just days ago that the Maoists would soon be ‘crushed’.
   ‘The position of security has been strengthened and Maoists have been weakened and are in process of being crushed soon,’ he said.

Japan needs to reconsider its decades-old ‘defence only’ policy and become prepared to strike first to ward off attack from existing and new threats, an influential think-tank said Wednesday.
   The government should also form a central intelligence agency to cope with an increasingly complex global security situation, the Japan Forum on International Relations said in a report handed to the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.
   Japan adopted a pacifist constitution after its defeat in World War II and now refers to its military as the ‘self-defence forces.’
   But the forum—made up of leading corporations, lawmakers and academics, including prominent conservative thinkers—said the country needed to change to cope with the rapid militarisation of old foes China and North Korea and the new threat of terrorism.
   ‘We need to consider seriously reviewing the ‘defence-only’ policy or possessing capabilities to strike strategic bases (of an enemy) under a new definition of ‘defence-only’,’ the report said.
   For example, Japan ‘must have the resolve and capabilities to prevent it when it becomes certain that North Korea started the procedure of a missile attack,’ it said.
   The recommendation on pre-emptive strikes is similar to a controversial call made in an October report by an advisory board to Koizumi. The reference was dropped in the final version approved by the government in December.
   Wednesday’s report acknowledged that even a change in Japan’s defense posture would not reduce its reliance on assistance from the United States, a key ally.
   ‘If Japan became capable of striking strategic bases after reviewing ‘defence-only’, the effect by itself would be small,’ it said.
   ‘Therefore, it is needless to say it would be wise to maintain and enhance the current defense policy of depending on the US military (in emergency) without overestimating the effect from reviewing ‘defence-only’.’
   The report also said Japan should keep ‘constant watch’ on China as its ‘rapid economic growth has made it possible to expand its air and navy forces.’
   It predicted a push at home and abroad for Japan to develop nuclear capabilities if China caught up to the United States in nuclear capacity.
   As the only nation ever attacked with atomic bombs, Japan officially believes that all nuclear weapons should be abolished.
   The report, endorsed by 81 academics and business leaders who belong to the Forum, highlighted Japan’s lack of a central intelligence agency.
   ‘Japan does not possess the kind of full-blown intelligence organization that generally exists within a state,’ it said, noting that collected data was currently analyzed by several government bodies.
   ‘The increasingly complex security environment requires a change in this area,’ it said.
   Japan’s intelligence gathering capacity was ‘particularly weak’ because of the ‘somewhat naive’ perception in Japan after its surrender in World War II 60 years ago that spying was bad, said a chief author of the report, Takushoku University professor Masamori Sase.
   ‘The Japanese believe an intelligence agency like every other country has is very immoral or, to use strong words, a dirty tool,’ he told reporters.
   The report urged the government to ‘show the courage to lead the public toward a new and deeper understanding’ of defense issues.
   Koizumi’s decision in 2003 to deploy troops to Iraq on Japan’s first military mission to a nation where there is fighting since World War II was particularly controversial here.
   ‘Greater public tolerance of the risks involved in such overseas missions is needed so that the Japanese do not falter when faced with these critical situations,’ the report said.

The bloodstains have disappeared but the memories have not of deadly anti-Sikh riots that shook India two decades ago after the assassination of Congress party premier Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
   Now a new inquiry into the carnage has stirred fresh controversy with Sikhs, the opposition and the media demanding that the Congress government led by India’s first Sikh premier, Manmohan Singh, act against its perpetrators.
   ‘The riots are a blot on independent India’s history,’ said former Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party premier Atal Behari Vajpayee outside parliament, where proceedings were halted Tuesday by opposition protests.
   ‘The government should take action to punish the guilty.’
   The report by retired judge G.T. Nanavati, tabled in parliament this week, linked some Congress party members to the 1984 riots in which nearly 3,000 died. It also said a junior minister, Jagdish Tytler, may have incited rioters.
   But it cleared the Congress party, which was in power at the time, of any blame, leading to cries of ‘whitewash’ from critics.
   ‘The fact is it was a very cynical, diabolic act perpetrated by the state,’ Rahul Bedi, a Sikh who covered the riots as a young reporter, told AFP.
   Bedi, now a journalist for Jane’s Defence Weekly, recalled the riots as ‘a numbing experience—everything just fell apart, except the rule of the mob.’
   The killings began hours after Gandhi’s 1984 assassination and continued in New Delhi for more than three days until authorities finally intervened.
   Police first turned a blind eye as roving gangs wielding iron rods and sticks invaded homes, dragging out Sikh families, killing men and boys, witnesses said. Some victims were set ablaze, others bludgeoned to death.

A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said Tuesday.
   The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing on-line battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.
   Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on Aug 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.
   ‘We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion,’ a Taegu provincial police official said by telephone.

Saudi Arabia intensified security Tuesday around foreign compounds in Riyadh after the United States, Britain and Australia warned that terror attacks may be imminent in the wealthy oil kingdom.
   Canada also warned its citizens later Tuesday not to travel to Saudi Arabia.
   ‘There are credible reports of renewed terrorist attacks in the final planning stages in Saudi Arabia,’ Canada’s foreign affairs office said on its website.
   Britain and Australia said on Monday that terrorists were planning attacks in Saudi Arabia in the near future, a day after a US move to temporarily shut missions in the Gulf country pushed oil prices to record levels.
   The spate of warnings over possible militant strikes came just days into the reign of newly enthroned King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz over the world’s top oil exporter, which has been battling Islamist violence for two years.
   A Saudi official who did not wish to be named told AFP that ‘let them issue the warnings they want, as for us we have our own procedures that we follow in order to confront and prevent any terrorist operation.’
   Officers, backed by military vehicles, enforced strict security measures at foreign residential compounds and the diplomatic quarter where most Western embassies and their staff reside in Riyadh, an AFP correspondent said.
   Heavily-armed soldiers manned two checkpoints at the entrance of the Hay al-Wahidain, the heavily-protected diplomatic neighborhood, to check vehicles and identity cards of passengers.
   ‘Security has been heightened at the diplomatic neighborhood ... and this usually takes places after security warnings of terrorist acts,’ said an Arab diplomat who did not wish to be identified.
   The Cordoba compound in northern Riyadh has been transformed into a bunker, with hundreds of meters of cement blocks and barbed wire protecting the residential complex.
   The manager of the compound, which was the target of a terror bombing attack in May 2003, told AFP that security measures have been recently raised in and around the complex.

South and North Korea on Wednesday set up a first cross-border military hotline and conducted a trial run in an effort to avoid accidental clashes between the two sides, officials said.
   The two sides, still on truce since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, agreed last month to run the hotline between communication liaison offices on either side of the western border.
   ‘It is the first direct communications linkage between the military authorities of the two Koreas,’ a South Korean defence ministry official said after a test run on the telephone and fax line.
   Both Koreas have since maintained a handful of cross-border telephone and fax lines between their Red Cross authorities, not military authorities.
   The South’s defence ministry said the new military hotline would run 24 hours a day and get maintenance checks at least twice a day.
   The ministry expected the new cross-border communication line to help prevent accidental clashes along the western sea and land border.
   The navies of the Koreas have a history of bloody gun battles. Since 1999, dozens of casualties have been reported on both sides. The last clash in June 2002 left six South Korean sailors dead.
   The two Koreas have yet to replace the 1953 Korean War armistice with a peace treaty.

Terrorists are sizing up the City of London, Europe’s premier financial centre, and an attack on the teeming district is only a matter of time, its chief of police warned Wednesday.
   James Hart faulted big corporations based in the so-called ‘square mile’–which includes the offices of major US, European and Japanese financial institutions–for failing to take the threat seriously.
   ‘Every successful terrorist group pre-surveys its target,’ Hart, commissioner of the City of London police said.
   ‘There’s no doubt we’ve been subjected to that surveillance,’ he said adding that ‘that sort of thing has been successfully disrupted’.
   Potential targets staked out have included iconic sites, business and prominent buildings—’anywhere where the maximum damage can be inflicted on the financial systems of the City of London’.
   Yet, he said; despite the July 7 attacks on three Underground subway trains and a double-decker bus that killed 56 people, including four apparent suicide bombers, only half of businesses in the City have contingency plans in place.
   The City of London, in the very heart of the capital, maintains its own police force that works closely with the Metropolitan Police, which covers greater London and doubles as Britain’s lead anti-terrorist force.
   As a financial district, the City is without peer in Europe, and ranks alongside New York and Tokyo in global significance. Its iconic sites include St Paul’s Cathedral, one of London’s top tourist attractions.
   It is no stranger to terrorism. In the 1990s it was targeted by the Irish Republican Army, which notably set off a truck bomb in Bishopsgate April 1993 that killed one person, injured 40 and caused massive damage.
   The July 7 attacks—linked by the British government to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network—touched the City
   as well, in that one of the bombed subway trains was near Aldgate station, on its eastern edge.
   The police chief’s comments came as a debate continued to rage over how to deal with hardline Islamists suspected of promoting terrorism among the nation’s 1.6 million Muslims.
   Michael Howard, leader of the main opposition Conservatives, criticised judges for citing the Human Rights Act to undercut legislation intended to combat terrorism and extremism.
   The act was introduced government by the prime minister, Tony Blair, in 1998; a year after his Labour Party won power from the Conservatives.
   ‘Aggressive judicial activism will not only undermine the public’s confidence in the impartiality of our judiciary. It could also put our security at risk—and with it the freedoms the judges seek to defend.’

Saudi Arabia’s outgoing ambassador to Britain blasted the British government for ignoring constant Saudi warnings on Muslim extremists, a British newspaper reported.
   Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former chief of Saudi intelligence, told The Times he had been ‘going round in circles’ with British authorities over the threat posed by Saudi dissidents in Britain.
   The prince, 60, has been ambassador to London since January 2003 but is soon to transfer to Washington.
   He said his warnings had been passed around government departments.
   The situation got so bad that crown prince Abdullah, now king, warned British ministers’ relations between the two nations would be damaged if no action was taken, the ambassador said.
   The prince’s chief grievances were over two Saudi dissidents, Saad Faqih and Mohammad al-Masari.
   Faqih is on the United Nations terror list accused by the US of involvement in the 1998 bombing of their Nairobi embassy. Al-Masari runs a ‘jihadi’ website, posting videos of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq.
   He said when Abdullah raised the pair with the prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2003; the British premier said there was nothing he could do. No action was taken after Blair then promised to change the law on Abdullah’s suggestion.
   Eventually, Faqih’s assets were seized once he was placed on the UN terror list in 2004.
   Abdullah rammed the message home that relations would be damaged on August 3 when Blair met him at the funeral of the late king Fahd, Prince Turki said, adding he doubted much would be done before his departure in September.

Iran Wednesday removed seals placed by the UN nuclear watchdog at a key atomic plant, allowing the facility to return to full capacity and raising the stakes in a standoff with the international community.
   The International Atomic Energy Agency gave the final go-ahead for the removal of seals it put on the uranium conversion facility on the outskirts of Isfahan when Iran suspended sensitive nuclear activities in November.
   Iran sparked grave international concern when it ended the nine-month suspension of uranium conversion on Monday but up until the cutting of the metal seals on key machinery the resumption has only been partial.
   ‘We have started,’ Iran’s atomic energy agency vice-president Mohammad Saidi told AFP. ‘It is happening under the supervision of the Agency.’
   Throughout the current escalation of tensions Iran has been at pains to emphasise it was resuming conversion activities in concert with the IAEA, whose inspectors have installed surveillance equipment to monitor the process.
   While it was Iranian workers who removed the seals, the process has taken place under IAEA supervision. Mindful of playing by international rules, Iran waited for the agency to finish installing surveillance equipment before breaking the seals.
   ‘The seals are in the process of being cut. Once the removal of the seals is completed we will confirm this to the board,’ IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
   The IAEA ‘told us in a letter that there was no obstacle and that (the agency) authorises us to remove the seals, which will be returned to them afterwards,’ said Saidi.
   The move comes as the European Union tries to win approval at an emergency IAEA meeting in Vienna for a draft resolution calling on Iran to reverse its decision to push ahead with the nuclear fuel work.
   Indicating the difficulties of forging an agreement, a planned formal IAEA meeting Wednesday was cancelled because diplomats remained locked in closed-door talks on the EU resolution.
   Conversion turns uranium ore or yellowcake into a feed gas for making enriched uranium, which can be the fuel for reactors or the explosive core of atomic bombs.
   Iran had suspended uranium conversion and enrichment as a goodwill gesture during nine months of talks with the European Union aimed at staving off UN Security Council intervention. The prospect of the talks succeeding has been dealt a severe blow by Iran’s resumption of conversion.
   Iran emphasises that its right to the nuclear fuel cycle is legally enshrined under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and it has infringed no international rules by resuming the activities.
   The United States accuses Tehran of seeking to manufacture a nuclear weapon, a charge vehemently denied by Iran, but Washington points to Iran’s past failure to transparently report nuclear activities as grounds for suspicion.
   The new president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, has described the offer of nuclear, commercial and political cooperation made on Friday by the Europeans in exchange for Iran renouncing the activities as an ‘insult to the Iranian people’.
   ‘The Europeans talk as though the Iranian people were a backward people, as if they were still in the last century when they dominated our country,’ he seethed.
   But while Ahmadinejad’s comments published on Tuesday appeared to confirm Western fears he will adopt a tough line on the nuclear issue, he also emphasised he was leaving the door open for more talks with the Europeans.

Four US soldiers were killed and six others wounded when guerrillas attacked their patrol in a northern Iraqi city, while a car bomb targeting a joint US-Iraqi patrol in Baghdad killed seven people, officials said Wednesday.
   The 10 Task Force Liberty soldiers were on patrol when they came under attack late Tuesday in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, a military statement said Wednesday.
   Guerrillas fired on the convoy with rocket-propelled grenades, damaging two Humvees and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, said Beiji police lieutenant, Ali Abdul-Hameed. Witnesses in the area said the Bradley fell into a canal and a US helicopter transported the casualties.
   The car bomb in Baghdad exploded in the western neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, said 1st lieutenant, Thair Mahmoud. Four civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Another seven people were injured. It was unclear whether any US troops were injured.
   On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber struck a US convoy waiting at an intersection in Baghdad, killing seven people — including one American soldier — and wounding more than 90.
   The United States hopes progress on the political front, including adoption of a democratic constitution, will help deflate the Sunni Arab-led rebellion and enable the Americans and their partners to begin withdrawing troops next year.
   Late Tuesday, representatives of political factions met for a second round of talks aimed at breaking the deadlock over the constitution, which the parliament must approve by August 15. Talks were postponed Monday by a severe sandstorm.
   The constitution also needs approval from voters in an October 15 referendum. Passage would lead to elections in mid-December.
   At the beginning of the meeting, presidential spokesman Kamran Qaradaghi told reporters the latest talks would focus on federalism, distribution of wealth and the elections law.
   Kurds demand that Iraq be transformed into a federal state so they can continue to run their autonomous mini-state in the north. Sunni Arabs oppose federalism because they fear the Kurds want to secede and dismember Iraq.
   Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani joined the talks Tuesday. Barzani, who had been stranded in northern Iraq by the sandstorms, has vowed not to compromise on federalism.

Although its goals were met, the Discovery’s mission shows that NASA still has a lot to learn about the space shuttle, a leading US daily said Wednesday while a former NASA engineer urged that the space shuttle be scrapped altogether.
   The Discovery’s flight ‘was supposed to vault the shuttle fleet back into space after a prolonged grounding for repairs,’ said The New York Times in reference to the two and a half year hiatus in the US shuttle programme following the February 2003 Columbia disaster.
   ‘But given the repeat of the very problem that two years of retooling was supposed to resolve, the verdict is necessarily mixed,’ added the daily.
   A large piece of foam insulation broke off the Discovery when it was launched on July 26. Although no damage was caused to the shuttle, NASA was distraught to see an almost identical flaw in the foam covering of the shuttle’s external fuel tank that had caused the destruction of the Columbia and the death of its seven astronauts.
   While the Discovery appears to have returned to Earth with fewer nicks and gouges than previous shuttle flights, showing that some improvements have been made over the past two years, the Times said, there is still room for concern.
   ‘Successful as it was, this flight and the visible uncertainties of its managers left the unsettling impression that there is a lot NASA doesn’t know about the performance of the spacecraft it has relied on for the past quarter-century,’ the editorial concluded.
   More critical of the shuttle programme was Homer Hickam, a retired NASA engineer who in a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal said the shuttle ‘is still not a reliable vehicle and never will be.
   ‘You simply don’t place a fragile bird at the base of a big, quaking nightmare of rocket engines and a massive, debris-shedding fuel tank and get anything but an engineering debacle,’ Hickam said before recommending the shuttle fleet to the junk heap.
   ‘When your design stinks, Engineering 101 says admit your mistakes and go back to the drawing board,’ said Hickam, asserting that most of the engineers he knows at NASA ‘have wanted to retire the shuttle for a very long time and build a reliable spaceship worthy of our country.’
   The trouble, added the retired engineers, is that former and current astronauts—’around 100, an awful lot...’—’carry too much clout ... and they are mostly acolytes of the space shuttle.’

The four-star general who headed the US Army’s training and recruiting efforts has been relieved of his duties after an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, defence officials said on Tuesday.
   In a rare punishment of a four-star officer—the highest rank in the military—Gen Kevin Byrnes, 52, was fired as commanding general of the Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe in Virginia by the army chief of staff general, Peter Schoomaker, the Army said in a statement.
   Army officials did not rule out the possibility of criminal charges or additional administrative discipline.
   ‘The investigation upon which this relief is based is undergoing further review to determine the appropriate final disposition of this matter,’ the Army said.
   ‘He was relieved for matters of personal conduct,’ said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
   A defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the disciplinary action followed an investigation by the defence department inspector general’s office into ‘allegations of personal misconduct of a sexual nature.’
   The official offered no further details of the allegations against Byrnes, who is married.
   As head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, Byrnes was in charge of Army training programmes, creating war-fighting guidelines and recruiting new soldiers. He oversaw 50,000 people in 33 schools and centres at 16 Army installations.
   Byrnes, a New York native who held the post since 2002 and has served in the Army since 1969, was relieved of his duties on Monday, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said. Byrnes commanded a multinational division serving in Bosnia in 1998 and 1999.

A French lawyer who was part of a defence team for Saddam Hussein sacked by Saddam’s daughter this week said the dismissal went against the former Iraqi leader’s stated wishes.
   ‘The president himself expressed several times... his wish to keep a big committee around him, one that is as international as possible, to denounce the Americans’ behaviour in his country,’ Emmanuel Ludot told RTL radio.
   He said Saddam made his position known during jail visits by his Iraqi lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi.
   Saddam’s daughter Raghad on Monday issued a statement on behalf of her family saying: ‘From today, none of the lawyers, except Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi, will have the right to act on behalf of Saddam.’

A purported al-Qaeda-made video shows militants in Afghanistan — including Europeans, Arabs and others — preparing to attack US troops and showing off what they said was a US military laptop.
   The video, parts of which have been shown by Al-Arabiya television, including a
   segment aired Tuesday,
   features interviews with a masked man yelling ‘As you bomb us, you will be
   bombed!’ and shows a group of men packing explosives into bombs.
   The authenticity of the videotape could not be confirmed. The Air Force captain, Lennea Montandon, a spokeswoman for US Central Command in Qatar, said the military would not comment because it had not seen the broadcast.

The US president, George W Bush, warned Tuesday that Iran may face UN sanctions over its nuclear ambitions as he cautiously welcomed signs Tehran is ready to resume talks to defuse the issue.
   Speaking one day after the Islamic republic resumed sensitive atomic activities, Bush said he was ‘deeply suspicious’ of Iran’s ‘desires’ but recommitted himself to negotiations led by Britain, France and Germany.
   ‘We will work with them in terms of what consequences there may be, and certainly the United Nations is a potential consequence,’ the president told reporters on his ranch near this tiny town.
   ‘Just as I was walking in here, I received word that the new Iranian president, (Mahmood Ahmadinejad) said he was willing to get back to the table,’ he said.
   ‘If he did say that, I think that’s a positive sign that the Iranians are getting the message, that it’s not just the United States that’s worried about their nuclear programmes, but the Europeans are serious in calling the Iranians to account and negotiating,’ Bush said.
   ‘We’ll have to watch very carefully, however,’ he added. ‘They have, in the past, said they would adhere to international norm and then were caught enriching uranium. And that’s dangerous.’
   ‘We don’t want the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon,’ he said. ‘We’ll work with our friends on steps forward, on ways to deal with the Iranians if they so choose to ignore the demands of the world.

Pak copters rescue Slovenian climber
Pakistani army helicopters saved a top Slovenian mountaineer Wednesday after he spent six days trapped on a Himalayan peak, in what climbing experts said was one of the most daring rescues ever made. Tomaz Humar was plucked from a narrow, snow-covered ledge 6,310 metres up Nanga Parbat mountain which is nicknamed The Killer, the military and the Alpine Club of Pakistan said. ‘I am born again, I didn’t think I’d make it,’ a friend quoted 36-year-old Humar as saying after he was lowered to base camp at the end of a rope dangling from one of the two military helicopters.
— AFP

Three shot dead in south Thailand
Three men were shot dead in southern Thailand Wednesday in attacks police blamed on Islamic separatists. Dech Thongdaeng, 63, was shot four times while riding a motorcycle to collect rubber at his plantation in Narathiwat province, police said. He died in hospital. Two men shot Gasem Hayiuseng, 43, several times with an AK-47 while he was travelling to work at a government-run school in Yala province, police said. He died immediately. In the third killing, an unidentified man thought to be in his 30s was shot dead in Narathiwat by militants who suspected him of being a government informant, the police said.
— AFP

Fire kills nine
in Indonesia
Nine people were killed early Wednesday when a fire razed their house in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, reports said. The victims—family members and two housemaids—were sleeping when the fire broke out at dawn, the state Antara news agency said. ‘They were trapped and could not escape because the house had security railings,’ Antara quoted a firefighter as saying. He said the house caught fire after a gas stove exploded in the kitchen.
— AFP

Two killed in
Manila clash
Security forces shot dead two communist insurgents and captured nine others, the military said Wednesday, after the government vowed to step up offensives against the rebels following the collapse of peace talks. One New People’s Army fighter was killed and four captured after they clashed with elite Scout Rangers in the eastern Bicol region on Monday, the military said. A soldier was wounded in the battle and a rebel rifle confiscated, it said in a statement. On the same day soldiers and police raided an NPA safehouse in Tangub city on the southern island of Mindanao, triggering a battle that left one rebel dead and three wounded. Five NPA guerrillas, including the three wounded, were captured, the military said.
— AFP

US judge denies bail for Pakistani imam
A US immigration judge denied bail to a Pakistani imam living in California on Tuesday after hearing testimony that he was the contact man for a young Pakistani-American who trained at an al Qaeda camp. Shabbir Ahmed, 39, who had served as the imam at a mosque in Lodi, California, south of the state capital Sacramento, was arrested as part of an anti-terrorism probe into the Pakistani community there. At a court hearing in San Francisco, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Gary Schaaf drew a link between Ahmed and Hamid Hayat, who is charged with lying to officials about attending terrorist or jihadist training camps.
— Reuters

US court orders retrial of Cuban spies
A US appeals court has ordered a retrial for five Cubans convicted in 2001 of spying on the United States for the communist government in Havana, their attorneys said Tuesday. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled that the five men could not get a fair trial in Miami, home to many Cuban exiles who hate Fidel Castro’s regime. It ordered that the new trial take place outside Miami. They were accused of monitoring US military installations, including the US Southern Command headquarters and a Key West air base, and infiltrating Cuban-American exile groups. Three of the men were sentenced to life in prison, one to 19 years and the fifth to 15 years.
— AFP

Copter crashes
with 12 on board
in Baltic Sea
A helicopter with 12 passengers and two crews on board crashed Wednesday in the Baltic Sea, rescue officials said. ‘The tail of the helicopter can be seen sticking out of the water but there is no sight of any people,’ Helena Loorents, spokeswoman for the Estonia border guard which is in charge of the rescue operation said. ‘The water at the site of the crash is 60 metres deep,’ she said. The helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76 C+, was operated by the Copterline company and serviced a regular route between Tallinn and the Finnish capital, Helsinki, 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. Rescue officials were alerted to the crash at 12:45 pm, he said, but was unable to give information about the fate of the people on board the helicopter.
— AFP

Bird flu confirmed
in Kazakhstan
Kazakh authorities said Wednesday that bird flu found close to the border with Russia was of the H5N1 sub-type that can be transmitted to humans. ‘According to the Centre for Scientific Agricultural Research of Kazakhstan–the form of avian influenza that has been discovered is of type A, sub-type H5N1’ transmissible to human beings, a statement by Kazakhstan’s agriculture ministry and quoted by the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency read. The announcement comes after authorities in neighbouring Russia said they had found H5N1 in three Siberian
provinces.
— AFP

Kenya vows ‘ruthless’ war against graft
Kenya’s justice minister has admitted his government is losing the fight against corruption and vowed a ‘ruthless’ anti-graft war in a stark admission of longstanding donor complaints, in remarks published Wednesday. In a rare acknowledgement of rampant official malfeasance and failing efforts to curb such abuses, Kiraitu Murungi said the credibility government of the president, Mwai Kibaki, was on the line as corruption persisted despite repeated vows to end it.— AFP
— AFP