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The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said Monday that peace talks with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan over Kashmir had achieved ‘some success’, as the nation celebrated its 58th anniversary of independence amid high security.
   Singh in an address also warned that security forces will deal with armed insurgents in the troubled Himalayan territory with an ‘iron hand’ but said all disputes could be resolved through talks.
   ‘There seems to be some success in our search for peace and harmony now,’ Singh said from behind a bullet-proof screen at the Mughal-built Red Fort in New Delhi.
   ‘The composite dialogue process with Pakistan is continuing,’ he said of peace talks which began in January 2004 and aim to resolve all differences, including the festering dispute over Kashmir.
   ‘As a result, we have been able to reopen the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway which was a long-pending demand of the people and restarted the bus service on this route, a step which has been widely welcomed.
   ‘Talks are also going on to open similar links from points in other states,’ the prime minister said of the first bus service in 50 years between the two divided zones of Kashmir which began in April.
   The comments came less than a week after India and Pakistan agreed to give each other advance notice of the testing of ballistic missiles and to set up a hotline to prevent an accidental nuclear conflict.
   Singh also said talks with Pakistan on the import of natural gas from Iranian oilfields were progressing well.
   ‘Discussions are also going on a gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan. Once this is completed, we will be able to address a major constraint affecting our economy,’ he said.
   The prime minister, however, urged Pakistan to end its alleged support for militancy in Kashmir, where more than 44,000 people have died in an anti-Indian rebellion since 1989.
   Meanwhile, suspected Islamic rebels opposed to New Delhi’s rule in Kashmir set off two blasts to coincide with India’s Independence Day celebrations, the police said, as the region’s political leader called for an end to ‘senseless violence.’
   A blast outside Bakshi Stadium, the venue of the main celebrations in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar, made a deafening noise but caused little damage and no casualties, a police officer said on Monday.
   ‘Ballistic experts are ascertaining whether it was an improvised explosive device or a grenade,’ the officer said, adding the blast took place 80 minutes before the start of the official celebrations.
   The explosion sparked panic among children participating in the event.
   Kashmir’s dominant Hizbul Mujahedeen guerrilla organisation and another lesser known group al Mansurain claimed responsibility for the attack through telephone calls to local news agencies.

Asia on Monday remembered the 60th anniversary of the end of Second World War with words of anger and regret, in a sign that the wounds of history have yet to heal in many parts of the region.
   As Japan reiterated an apology to its Asian neighbours for its wartime brutality, China accused Japanese leaders of failing to face up to the suffering caused by the country’s troops.
   North and South Korean officials also called on Tokyo to ‘stop distorting history’, while in Taiwan women forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese military marched through Taipei to demand an apology.
   The Australian prime minister, John Howard, meanwhile struck a more conciliatory note, describing Japan as a ‘cruel enemy’ but also praising the strength of current relations with Tokyo.
   In a ceremony in Tokyo, the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said Japan wanted to live in peace with its neighbours.
   ‘In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.
   ‘Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility. I express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology, and my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that war,’ he said.
   But while Koizumi refrained from visiting the Yasukuni shrine which honours Japan’s 2.5 million war dead including convicted war criminals, other members of his government descended on the Shinto monument in Tokyo in a move likely to anger many regional governments.
   Around 50 Japanese lawmakers including Health, welfare and labour minister Hidehisa Otsuji joined thousands of mourners at the shrine which many other Asians see as a symbol of Japan’s militarism.
   China and South Korea have accused Japan of not showing sincere remorse for World War II, pointing to its approval of a nationalist textbook that glosses over atrocities and repeated visits by Japanese leaders to Yasukuni.
   In editorials marking Monday’s anniversary, China’s official media lashed out at Japanese leaders for continuing the shrine visits, saying they showed blatant disregard for the wartime suffering Japan caused.
   ‘Even today the shrine is still full of material glorifying Japan’s past aggression, with no signs of repentance for wartime crimes,’ said the China Daily.
   The Xinhua news agency accused rightists in Japan of ‘still trying to glorify the war criminals and whitewash the military aggression that brought heinous disasters to China, the Korean peninsula and other victims in Asia’.
   South and North Korea came together Monday to celebrate ‘Liberation Day’ marking the end of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule.

With Sri Lanka’s foreign minister dead and the country under emergency rule, there is growing fear among the island’s minority Tamils that they may once again be targeted by the security forces fighting Tamil Tiger rebels.
   The Tigers have denied government claims they were behind Friday’s assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar — one of their most vociferous critics — and urged the military to look within its own ranks for the perpetrator.
   But nearly everyone seems to agree the murder was a severe blow to Sri Lanka’s fragile peace process.
   Now, ethnic Tamils who live outside areas controlled by the rebels in the north and east of the country say they could be faced with a nightmare scenario — the peace process collapsing and taking with it a measure of security Tamil civilians have enjoyed since a 2002 cease-fire.
   ‘There is fear everywhere. We are not as confident to go out to the road as we used to do,’ said F Lawrence, a Tamil-speaking advertising professional who lives in a suburb of the capital, Colombo.
   Discrimination against the Tamils led the Tigers to take up arms in 1983, and a resulting war with government forces on this tropical island of 19 million left more than 65,000 people dead before a cease-fire was brokered in 2002.
   The cease-fire has largely held and both the rebels and government pledged to respect it following Kadirgamar’s killing.
   Twelve Tamils have so far been arrested in connection with the killing, which the rebels deny being involved in — a statement government officials say they doubt.

Three weeks after Myanmar agreed to forego the chairmanship of ASEAN, the country’s military rulers have tightened the screws at home ahead of a new round of constitutional talks, analysts said.
   The junta agreed July 26 to skip its turn in the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, bypassing a showdown with the United States and the European Union which had threatened to boycott the group’s meetings under Yangon’s leadership.
   Analysts here said that decision had caused Myanmar to lose some face, but had staved off many other headaches, not least of which was the mounting pressure to free Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest before taking the chair.
   It also spared the junta from trying to control the inevitable invasion by foreign journalists who would have flocked to ASEAN meetings here.
   ‘We were let off the hook, thanks to the Americans,’ a high-level foreign ministry source said.
   US pressure to forego the chairmanship had ‘played right into our hands,’ the source said.
   With the spotlight now shifted away, the junta has returned its focus to implementing what it calls its seven-point ‘road map to democracy’. The junta has organised a series of public rallies where military-sponsored groups as well as ‘reserve forces’ such as the War Veterans and the Fire Brigade roundly denounce ‘internal and external destructionists’, condemn international groups like the UN’s International Labour Organisation, and loudly back the military’s political agenda.
   Drafting a new constitution is the first step on the road map, but the National Convention tasked with the job was suspended in late March.
   Preparations for a new round of talks have been stepped up, with information minister major general Kyaw San leading much of the effort to resume discussions, possibly after the rainy season ends in October.
   The military appears committed to the road map despite having sacked the man who created it last year, former premier Khin Nyunt, who was deposed in October and his powerful military intelligence dismantled.

Globalisation has made it easier for weapons of mass destruction to fall into terrorists’ hands, the Singapore defence minister, Teo Chee Hean, said Monday.
   Teo was speaking at the start of a five-day exercise which is part of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative to stop illegal exports of weapons technology.
   ‘The terrorists aim for disruption on a dramatic scale, so the destructive power of WMD has a clear attraction,’ he said.
   ‘Should the terrorists ever succeed in using WMD in their attacks, it is not just the physical consequences that would be catastrophic.
   ‘The psychological impact, in terms of the fear that would permeate across the globe, would be equally profound.’
   Teo said globalisation has made it easier for terrorists to acquire WMD and they would do anything to get hold of such weapons.
   ‘With globalisation has come the dense network of linkages across the world to enable the speedy and free flow of goods, people and ideas. These linkages are necessary for economic growth,’ Teo said.
   ‘But they have also created more conduits and opportunities for proliferators to do their nasty business... proliferation is truly a global enterprise.’
   Teo said the PSI, launched by the US president, George W Bush, in 2003, was one effective way for the world to stop such weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.
   ‘PSI provides the international community with a useful means of plugging the gaps in the existing counter-proliferation system,’ said Teo.
   ‘When domestic systems of export controls fail, and when the treaty regimes are circumvented, PSI creates an effective mechanism for states to work together to interdict WMD-related cargoes that are already in transit by sea, air or land,’ he said.
   The PSI allows for the seizure of missiles and other potential components of WMD while they are being transferred at sea or in the air.
   The five-day drill, the first to be held in Southeast Asia, involves 10 surface ships, six patrol aircraft and 2,000 personnel from 13 countries including the United States, Singapore, Australia, Japan, France and Britain.
   Asia’s cooperation is crucial in ensuring the success of a US-led effort to curb the trade in weapons of mass destruction, a senior US official said Monday.
   ‘Continuing to build cooperative relationships in the Asia-Pacific region will be essential to our ability to stop the trade in WMD materials and their means of delivery,’ said Robert Joseph, the undersecretary for arms control and international security.
   He said China has not formally endorsed or asked to join the PSI but has become more cooperative in responding to international efforts to contain the trade in WMD.
   China’s reluctance, Joseph said, was possibly due to concerns it might affect talks on scrapping North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
   ‘China has not sought to join PSI or to formally endorse PSI and that I believe is primarily because of the effect they believe that might have on the six-party talks, but again China is being cooperative on WMD trade,’ Joseph said.

Hand-pulled rickshaws will be banned in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to stop the ‘human indignity’ of the method of transport, the communist-ruled state of West Bengal announced Monday.
   ‘We cannot accept that a man, pouring sweat and straining every sinew, has to pull another for a living. It’s human indignity. It must be stopped immediately,’ said Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, chief minister of West Bengal, of which Kolkata is the capital.
   He said the police and state transport officials will rehabilitate the rickshaw-pullers, many of whom are suffering from tuberculosis because of their abject living conditions. ‘Kolkata’s tradition is not poverty and hand-pulled rickshaws. Our government has decided to phase out the rickshaws from the city in the next three to four months,’ Bhattacharya said.
   The number of hand-pulled rickshaws has dropped to 1,800 from 6,000 in the last few years as state authorities have stopped issuing new licences to prevent the streets from being clogged up.
   ‘Kolkata is the only Indian city to have hand-pulled rickshaws. The days of the human-drawn two-wheeled vehicles are gone. Authorities will provide alternative transport to the hand-pulled rickshaws,’ Kolkata’s mayor Bikash Bhattacharya said.

The Indonesian government and Muslim Aceh rebels signed a historic peace accord aimed at ending decades of bloodshed in a region devastated by last year’s tsunami.
   All hostilities were to end with the signing of the agreement, under which the separatists dropped their long-held demands for independence and agreed to disarm and demobilise their soldiers.
   Indonesia in turn promised an amnesty, to allow the creation of political parties in the province and to withdraw non-local security forces by the end of the year.
   The deal was signed in the Finnish capital Helsinki where the painstaking negotiations took place to end three decades of conflict that has left almost 15,000 people dead, most of them civilians.

Fighting across southern Afghanistan has left at least 28 suspected Taliban rebels dead as violence rages on in the countdown to crucial legislative elections next month, officials said Monday.
   The bloodiest battle occurred in Zabul province Sunday when Afghan forces attacked a group of suspected militants, killing 16 and arresting one, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
   Among the dead was a local Taliban commander, Mullah Nasir, it said.
   Separately in Zabul, alleged insurgents mistakenly detonated a mine that was intended to hit a convoy of US-led coalition and Afghan forces Sunday, killing one militant and wounding another, Sori district chief Rovi Khan said.
   On the same day in neighbouring Uruzgan province’s Dehrawud district, a gunbattle between Afghan soldiers and insurgents left five militants dead, the ministry statement said.
   Then in an adjacent district, Tirin Kot, police hunted down and killed six suspected guerrillas who attacked a highway checkpoint, provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said. Nine alleged militants also were arrested in a sweep of the area.
   No security forces were hurt in any of the clashes, according to the statement and governor.

Authorities in China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang region have detained a Uighur woman and 37 of her students, some as young as seven, for studying the Qur’an, a rights group said Monday.
   Aminan Momixi, 56, was teaching the Qur’an to the students aged between seven and 20 at her home on August 1 when the police burst in and arrested her, the German-based World Uighur Congress said.
   Her students, most of whom were primary and secondary school pupils, were also arrested and some remain in detention, it said.
   The police confiscated 23 copies of the Qur’an, 56 textbooks on the Qur’an, a hand-written manuscript and other religious materials, the organisation said.
   Momixi was accused of ‘illegally possessing religious materials and subversive historical information,’ the congress said, adding that she had been denied access to a lawyer.

The Iraqi tribunal trying Saddam Hussein on war crimes charges has blocked a bid by his family to fire his vast team of defence lawyers, saying only Saddam can make such a move, the family said on Sunday.
   Last week a lawyer acting for Saddam’s eldest daughter Raghd said the family had scrapped the team of more than 2,000 attorneys claiming to be representing Saddam and would build a new, better-organized defense team.
   But the Iraqi Special Tribunal, the court set up to try the former president and other senior members of his regime, blocked the family’s effort to shake up the defense team.
   ‘We want to clarify some issues relating to the request to revoke all powers of attorney. We are very surprised by such unlawful acts. The exclusive right to empower any lawyer or to cancel any power of attorney is for defendant Saddam Hussein,’ said a letter sent by the tribunal and obtained by Reuters.
   Saddam’s family says many of the lawyers claiming to represent him were never formally appointed and are more interested in self-promotion than mounting a serious defense. It says they often gave conflicting legal opinions.
   More than 2,000 lawyers had volunteered for Saddam’s defense team, including former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
   Others who said they were on the team included Anglo-Italian lawyer Giovanni di Stefano who once worked on behalf of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, and Roland Dumas, a colorful octogenarian who served as French foreign minister from 1988 to 1993 and acted as executor of Pablo Picasso’s estate.
   A letter sent by Raghd to the tribunal said the family was entitled to choose Saddam’s defense team because the ousted president was not able to make such decisions freely himself.
   ‘The family of the president is free to choose whoever it wants to defend him and to remove whoever it wants for as long as he is denied freedom of choice,’ Raghd’s letter said.
   Sources close to the family said they hoped the tribunal would change its position, possibly under US pressure.
   The family demanded the presence of newly recruited lawyers alongside Khalil Dulaimi, the Iraqi lawyer who attends Saddam’s court hearings, to ensure Saddam had adequate legal representation for a fair trial.
   Raghd said legal advice the family was getting from senior British lawyers whose identity has been kept confidential was to boycott the tribunal or any committee interrogating Saddam until her father was given access to heavyweight lawyers from abroad.
   The new team was ready to come to Baghdad as soon as the Iraqi special court gave them permission, Raghd said.
   ‘We all able and willing to send legal specialists as soon as your occupying masters allow them,’ the letter said, referring to US-led forces in Iraq.
   Raghd also criticized the tribunal for preventing her family from seeing Saddam, who aside from seeing a lawyer is isolated from the rest of the world. The tribunal denies that Saddam has had his rights infringed.
   So far Saddam has been formally charged in only one case—the killing of Shi’ite Muslims in the village of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt in 1982. Officials say his trial could begin within two months.
   If found guilty, he faces the death penalty.

The determined protest by a mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq has given US president George W Bush little escape from politics during an August vacation at his beloved Texas ranch.
   Barely two weeks into Bush’s holiday, the ongoing vigil by Cindy Sheehan outside the gates of the president’s Prairie Chapel ranch against the Iraq war has captured the attention of a nation increasingly uneasy with the course of the war.
   Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in April 2004 five days after he arrived in Iraq, launched her protest a week ago with a demand to meet Bush and a call for the US to withdraw its 138,000 troops from Iraq.
   ‘I want Bush to stop using my son’s sacrifice to justify the killing,’ said Sheehan, 48.
   ‘I don’t understand why he cannot spend ten minutes of his time to talk to somebody whose life he has devastated,’ she told reporters.
   By Sunday about 200 others had joined Sheehan’s growing silent vigil at the site they were calling ‘Camp Casey’, after Sheehan’s late son.
   Protestor Jean Prewitt, whose son Kelley was also killed in Iraq in April 2003, admitted she supported the war at first.
   ‘I still did, until about December 2003 — even if my son was killed—until we found out that the reason we started (the Iraq war) was a big lie,’ Prewitt said.
   The demonstrators have also planted some 500 white wooden crosses on the road to Bush’s ranch, each with the name of a US soldier killed in Iraq. They have called the installation ‘Arlington in Crawford’, a reference to the Arlington National Cemetery for soldiers in Washington.
   While the Bush administration anxiously awaited the finalization of a draft constitution in Baghdad by Monday’s deadline, the protest appears to underscore a decline in Americans’ support for Bush’s Iraq policy.
   With the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq now having surpassed 1,845, recent polls show that more than 60 per cent of Americans feel Bush is mismanaging the war, and Sheehan has become a symbol of that sentiment.
   The growing protest has disrupted life in this sleepy, sun-parched town of 750, with police putting up signs warning of heavy traffic and, on Sunday, one of Bush’s neighbors taking his frustrations out by shooting a gun into the air.
   Larry Mattlage, who lives next door to Bush, fired his shotgun twice before complaining to reporters about the crowds of protestors, media and government security officials occupying the road outside his own residence.
   ‘Five weeks of this is too much. We live here, this is our community,’ Mattlage said in footage show by CNN television, while insisting the gunshots were just him ‘getting ready for dove season.’
   ‘I shot at a bird, and missed it a while ago,’ he said.
   Asked if the gunshots had another message, Mattlage told reporters: ‘Figure it out for yourself.’
   Bush could hardly have missed seeing the protestors as he ventured out from his ranch Friday for a Republican Party fundraiser and for a Little League baseball game on Saturday in a fast-moving convoy of black Sports Utility Vehicles.
   On his way to and from the political fundraiser, his motorcade sped past the roughly 50 demonstrators gathered behind Sheehan, who clutched a sign that read ‘Why Do You Make Time for Donors And Not For Me?’
   But through Sunday, the president continued to refuse to meet with Sheehan.
   ‘Listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her position. And she has every right in the world to say what she believes,’ Bush said Thursday.
   ‘I’ve heard her position from others, which is: ‘Get out of Iraq now.’ And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so,’ he said.

A top aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the Al-Qaeda operation in Iraq and accused of masterminding high-profile suicide bombings in the country, has been killed by Iraqi security forces, defense officials have confirmed.
   But the battlefield success hardly impressed two leading US senators, who on Sunday questioned the Pentagon’s handling of the situation in Iraq and said they no longer had confidence in defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
   Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, was gunned down in the northern city of Mosul Friday, when he got caught in an ambush set up by Iraqi security forces, the officials said, confirming a report by Mosul police.
   ‘Abu Zubair’s death, as well as recent captures of terrorists in northern Iraq, is making a difference in coalition and Iraqi security forces efforts to disrupt terrorists operating in this part of the country,’ Colonel Bill Buckner, a spokesman for the multinational force, told reporters.
   He expressed confidence that bombings and other insurgent attacks ‘will not prevent Iraqi democracy.’
   But Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that judging by the way things were unfolding in Iraq, democracy there ‘will not happen in my lifetime.’
   He argued the most the Bush administration could hope for under the circumstances was a government that would be able to secure public safety and not be a threat to its neighbours.
   Criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy grew louder this month as the US casualty toll spiked, raising the possibility August will become one of the deadliest for Americans since the beginning of the year.
   ‘I think Rumsfeld should get his notice on Monday morning,’ Biden said as he appeared on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ program.
   Republican Senator John McCain, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, echoed the view, adding, ‘I don’t have confidence’ in Rumsfeld.
   McCain was particularly incensed by recent statements by General George Casey, the top US military commander in Iraq, and other Pentagon officials that substantial withdrawals from Iraq could begin as early as next year.
   ‘Look, I’ve got an idea for our Pentagon planners,’ the Arizona senator opined testily on the Fox News Sunday show. ‘The day that I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmed car down the highway to the ‘green zone’ is the day that I’ll start considering withdrawals from Iraq.’
   Biden, for his part, accused the defence secretary of being personally responsible for the US failure to get broader support for the US-led operation in Iraq from NATO allies.
   ‘As long as Rumsfeld’s in charge of this operation, as opposed to the uniformed military, they virtually have no confidence in our ability to get the job done,’ the Delaware Democrat pointed out.

President Robert Mugabe heads to a summit of southern African leaders this week, seeking support from friends to fend off mounting calls for political change in Zimbabwe.
   Mugabe is under pressure to open talks with the opposition on charting a new course for Zimbabwe following a disastrous government demolitions campaign that has been condemned by the United Nations for leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute.
   But presidential spokesman George Charamba expressed confidence that leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Botswana on Wednesday and Thursday would not add their voice to the outrage over Zimbabwe.
   ‘Zimbabwe is a priority for the western media but not for SADC leaders,’ Charamba told AFP. ‘They are very clear about the situation in Zimbabwe. They are under no illusions as to the state of affairs here.’
   He said Zimbabwe would not be singled out by SADC, which in March endorsed elections that handed victory to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, despite opposition claims that the vote was rigged.
   ‘Our expectation is that SADC will discuss SADC,’ said Charamba, adding that political talks were ‘a domestic issue and not an international issue.’
   In the runup to the summit, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ratcheted up the pressure on Mugabe when he, as chair of the African Union, appointed former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano as mediator.
   Chissano traveled to Zambia and Namibia for high-level talks ahead of the summit, stressing he was ‘ready’ to help broker negotiations between the government and the opposition ‘if they wish to talk.’
   Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he is ready to sit down with Mugabe, who has been in power for 25 years, but the president has stuck to his refusal to hold negotiations on a new constitution that would pave the way to fresh elections.
   ‘I am aware that there are shrill calls from many quarters including those which we expect to know better for so-called talks with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),’ Mugabe said last week.
   ‘Today we tell all those calling for such ill-conceived talks to please stop misdirecting their efforts.’
   MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said he expected ‘not much’ from the SADC summit ‘because there are too many divided opinions on Zimbabwe’ within the regional grouping.
   ‘If anything, SADC is just hoping that the Zimbabwe situation will resolve itself or disappear,’ he told AFP.
   A key player in SADC’s response to the Zimbabwe crisis will be South Africa, which is negotiating a loan of up to 500 million dollars to Harare on condition that it agrees to talks ‘with all stakeholders’ from civil society and from the political arena.

German conservatives and the press accused chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Monday of exploiting the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program ahead of next month’s election, in an echo of his stance on Iraq three years ago.
   Schroeder kicked off the campaign for his Social Democrats (SPD) with a speech in which he ruled out force to stop Iran from pursuing sensitive nuclear work, in what was widely seen as an attack on the US position.
   ‘Take the military options off the table,’ Schroeder told a rally in the northern city of Hanover Saturday. ‘We have seen that they do not work.’
   The remarks followed comments by US President George W. Bush on Israeli public broadcasting in which he said that ‘all options are on the table’ when asked if the use of force was an alternative to faltering diplomacy with Iran.
   Leading German conservatives, who have a double-digit lead in the polls ahead of the September 18 election, said Schroeder was repeating his 2002 re-election strategy in which he eked out a victory in part by stridently opposing a US invasion of Iraq.
   ‘The comments are a transparent attempt to use the nuclear conflict with Iran for domestic political aims,’ the deputy head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)’s parliamentary group, Wolfgang Bosbach, told Monday’s Berliner Zeitung.
   CDU foreign affairs spokesman Wolfgang Schaeuble said Germany, which has led negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program with European Union partners Britain and France, was playing with fire.
   ‘The chancellor is creating the disastrous impression that the international community is no longer united. He is thus accepting the fact that the danger of Iran getting an atomic bomb is growing,’ he said.
   The daily Financial Times Deutschland said Schroeder was on the verge of irreparably damaging the negotiations with Tehran.
   ‘Schroeder’s attempt to win the election again as the chancellor of peace is not only a transparent maneuver. It is also factually false and stupid,’ it said.
   ‘The Americans are in no way on the brink of attacking Iran as they were then with Iraq. But intelligent security policy always leaves all options open to maintain the pressure created by a threat.’

Most of the bodies recovered from the Cypriot plane that crashed into a mountain near Athens with 121 people on board were ‘frozen solid,’ a Greek defence ministry source said on Monday.
   ‘Autopsy on passengers so far shows the bodies were frozen solid, including some whose skin was charred by flames from the crash,’ the source, with access to the investigation, told Reuters.
   Rescue workers recovered the pilot’s body and said they had also found the plane’s black box flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations, crucial to determining the cause of the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot airline.
   At Larnaca airport in Cyprus, from where the doomed plane took off on Sunday, crew and passengers on Monday refused to board an aircraft belonging to Helios Airways, the state-run Cyprus News Agency reported.
   Sunday’s crash perplexed aviation experts astounded by what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet—nearly 10 kilometers (six miles) up, higher than Mount Everest.
   Many questions remained, including how the plane appeared to fly for nearly an hour with the pilot and co-pilot already unconscious or dead. Media speculated the plane may have been on auto pilot before its approach to Athens airport.
   There was also mystery over the last minutes of the flight which was declared ‘renegade’ when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate.

Two wars against separatist fighters in Chechnya have left 160,000 combatants and civilians dead, a top official in the local government loyal to Russia said Monday.
   Chechen state council chairman Taus Dzhabrailov said the total included those killed during a first war, which lasted from 1994-1996, and the second, which began in 1999 and continues today.
   Of the 160,000 total killed, about 100,000 were ethnic-Russian servicemen and civilians, and 30-40,000 were ethnic Chechen fighters and civilians, he told journalists, without giving a further breakdown, or explaining the gap of at least 20,000 in his tally.
   About 1.2 million people lived in Chechnya before the start of the first war. A large portion of the approximately 400-450,000 people in the capital Grozny were ethnic-Russians. The city was devastated by Russian air and artillery bombardments, resulting in massive civilian casualties.
   'They never thought they would have bombs dropped on their heads or be shot at by heavy weapons,' he said.

KL sends peace monitors to Manila
Malaysia has extended its peace monitoring mission in the southern Philippines, deploying Monday a fresh batch of troops to monitor a government truce with Muslim separatists. The 13 monitors were welcomed by the outgoing commander of the Malaysian contingent, major general Zulkifli bin Mohd Zin, and Rene Sarmiento, chief peace adviser to the Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo. Monre are due to arrive in the next three weeks to replace the existing batch of 60 monitors deployed in areas controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on the southern island of Mindanao.

Five dead in north Thailand floods
Five people including a girl have been killed and 11 are still missing in weekend flooding in northern Thailand which the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, described Monday as the worst in 11 years. The increase from Sunday’s total of two dead included two more bodies—including the girl—found in Pang Ma Pha district of Mae Hong Son province, and another body found in Lampang province, the interior ministry said in a statement. Floodwaters have swirled across seven northern provinces affecting nearly 60,000 people. Some 39 people have also been injured after flash floods hit northern provinces including Mae Hong Son, Lampang, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai.

Two die as elephant storms SL town
A wild elephant stormed into a town in eastern Sri Lanka Monday and killed two women, smashed at least 60 vehicles and damaged three homes before it was shot dead, the police said. The jumbo strayed into the town of Mahindapura in the district of Ampara, about 350 kilometres east of here by road, and ran amok attacking everything in its wake, local police chief Rohan Abeygunawardena said. At least three people were also seriously injured, he said when contacted by telephone. ‘The police decided to kill the animal because there was no vet immediately available to tranquillise and bring it under control,’ he said.

Floods kill nine in China
Torrential downpours and severe flooding have killed nine people in northeastern China’s Liaoning province and left at least 23 more missing, state media said Monday. Thunder, lightning and rain hit the province over the weekend, affecting 2.15 million residents, destroying more than 26,000 houses and damaging 326,000 hectares of crops, China Youth Daily said. Nine people were reported dead and 18 people were severely injured, it reported, adding that 23 people were missing. The rain also caused 68 reservoirs to overflow, it said. Fushun city was one of the worst hit areas with many highways, bridges and railway lines damaged, while electricity, water and food supplies were cut in some areas, it said.
— AFP

BA nearly back to normal at Heathrow
British Airways said its flights at London Heathrow airport were almost back to normal Monday as talks resumed on ending the dispute that caused days of chaos. A British Airways spokesman said the global carrier was running 100 percent of its British and European services, and anticipated having to cancel only five percent of its long-haul flights. ‘Services have yet to be cancelled because we are just seeing what we can do. Obviously were are trying to keep it going,’ he said. ‘We’re doing the best we can but we foresee that we will have to cancel three or four flights. We haven’t made any cancellations at the moment.’
— AFP

New Internet worm affects Windows users
A new Internet virus has been detected that can infect Microsoft’s Windows platforms faster than previous computer worms, said an anti-virus computer software maker. The ZOTOB virus appeared shortly after the world’s largest software maker warned of three newly found ‘critical’ security flaws in its software, including one that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer. The latest worm exploits security holes in Microsoft’s Windows 95, 98, ME, NE, 2000 and XP platforms and can give computer attackers remote access to affected systems, said Trend Micro Inc. ‘Hundreds of infection reports were sighted in the United States and Germany,’ Tokyo-based Trend Micro said in a statement released late last week.
— Reuters

Young Catholics converge on
Germany
Thousands of young Catholics were arriving in Germany on Monday on the eve of the World Youth Day jamboree which Pope Benedict XVI hopes will create ‘a new wave of faith among young people’. The pope himself will fly into the western city of Cologne on Thursday in his first visit abroad since his election in April. His visit will culminate in an open-air mass on Sunday which is expected to attract 800,000 worshippers from 193 countries. With the event due to begin on Tuesday, thousands of young pilgrims from around the world were taking up accommodation in Cologne 24 hours before.
— AFP

Twenty two die in Siberia road crashes
Twenty two people have been killed and 16 injured in two separate road crashes in Siberia, the Russian news agencies reported early Monday, quoting local officials. Fourteen people were killed late Sunday in Central Siberia’s Tomsk region as a truck collided with a bus that was in the process of passing a tractor, the agencies quoted a local traffic police official as saying. In a separate accident, eight people were killed early Monday in a collision involving a truck and two cars in Western Siberia’s Khanty-Mansiisk region, a spokesman for the Russian emergencies ministry’s regional office told RIA Novosti.
— AFP

Woman to head White House kitchen
The search for a new White House chef took six months and then ended right where it began: in the executive kitchen. Cristeta Comerford was chosen from hundreds of applicants to head the executive kitchen. A naturalised US citizen from the Philippines, she will be the first woman and first minority to hold the post. Comerford has been an assistant chef at the White House for 10 years. She worked under former executive chef Walter Scheib III, who resigned in February. Scheib said Sunday that Comerford was hands down the best assistant he has had in his 30-year career.
— AP