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The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, warned on Saturday that peace in South Asia would not be possible if Kashmiris were denied a chance to decide their future.
   ‘Establishment of peace in the region is not possible nor can the confidence-building measures proceed unless the Kashmir issue is resolved in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the Kashmiris,’ he said in a message as Pakistan observed a day of ‘solidarity’ with the people of Kashmir.
   Musharraf, called on Saturday for Kashmiri leaders to be involved in talks with rival India to resolve their main dispute over Kashmir.
   Musharraf said the Himalayan region was of ‘vital national interest’ to Pakistan and would never compromise on this point.
   ‘Pakistan will accept only that solution of the Kashmir problem which is according to the wishes and aspirations of Kashmiris,’ he said in a message to legislators of Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.
   The message was read out by Sardar Siab Khalid, speaker of the legislature of the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir, as bad weather prevented Musharraf from flying to the state capital, Muzaffarabad.
   Musharraf, who has initiated a peace process with India to resolve all issues through dialogue, said Kashmiris would have to be included in the dialogue process.
   Rallies were held here and elsewhere in Pakistan expressing solidarity with the people of Kashmir fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan state.
   ‘It is the basic right of the Kashmiris to decide their future on their own. I want to make it clear that Kashmir cause is our vital national interest and we cannot think of compromising it,’ Musharraf said.
   Islamic rebels in Indian-held Kashmir launched an insurgency in 1989 which has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Most of the rebels want to join mainly-Muslim Pakistan although some want independence.
   Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India, has sparked two of their three wars since independence in 1947. The two countries resumed dialogue under international pressure after coming close to their fourth war in 2002.
   They have since launched a number of confidence-building measures but no concrete progress has been made on Kashmir and other issues so far.
   Musharraf said Pakistan would not accept any solution which was not in line with the wishes of Kashmiris. ‘The government of Pakistan has made its position very clear to the Indian leadership and world leaders.’
   He also assured the Kashmiris that ‘the whole Pakistani nation was with them in their struggle for freedom and they would always enjoy the moral, political and diplomatic support of Pakistan.’
   The president paid tribute to ‘more than 80,000 martyrs who had laid down their lives in Indian-held Kashmir during the ongoing freedom struggle.’
   ‘The blood of martyrs will not go in vain. These sacrifices will soon bear fruit and Kashmiris will achieve their basic rights.
   ‘I am sure at long last the Kashmiris will get peace and freedom,’ he added.

A United Nations rights investigator examining the situation in Afghanistan said Saturday foreign troops had mistreated and possibly tortured people in the war-torn country.
   ‘There is a very unusual practice in Afghanistan, mainly foreign forces, who have taken upon themselves the right, without any legal process of
   arresting people, detaining them, mistreating them and possibly even torturing them,’ said Cherif Bassiouni, the UN-appointed Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan.
   A US-led offensive in late 2001 drove the fundamentalist Taliban from power after they refused to hand over al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
   Bassiouni, who leaves Monday after a week exploring the human rights’ situation in Afghanistan, said the information would be in his scheduled report to the next session of the UN’s Human Rights Commission in March.
   ‘There is not (a) legal basis for coalition forces to hold people as prisoners,’ Bassiouni said.
   ‘If they’re held as prisoners of war, then they have to observe the Geneva convention. If they’re held as common prisoners, then they have to conform with afghani law and constitution. They’re (foreign forces are) not doing it,’ he said.
   On a previous visit to Afghanistan in August 2004, the expert expressed concerns about the legality of detention centres run by the US military and called for them to be opened to independent inspectors.
   The US Army acknowledged in December that eight prisoners have died in US military custody in Afghanistan since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime, two more than were previously disclosed.
   Three of the eight cases were the subject of inquiries, three were waiting for judicial procedures to start, one trial had ended, and the status of the eighth case was unknown at the time, the army said.
   The US military has come under fire from rights groups for its methods at detention centres in Afghanistan.
   Bassiouni said it was a ‘matter of great concern’ that an independent expert had been denied access to Bagram camp, 50 kilometres north of Kabul.
   Top UN and Afghan rights officials said last month that war crimes suspects in Afghanistan, including key figures in the country’s former administrations, must be prosecuted if stability is to be achieved.

Palestinians urged Israel Friday to expand a prisoner release to ensure the success of a summit both sides hope will result in a formal declaration to end violence.
   Israel disappointed the Palestinian leadership by refusing to include those jailed for deadly attacks among the 900 prisoners whom Sharon and top cabinet ministers agreed Thursday to release in a goodwill gesture.
   Freedom for some 8,000 prisoners, especially Islamic militants and veteran inmates, is key to Abbas’s aim of consolidating power, ending bloodshed and reviving a US-backed peace ‘roadmap’ charting mutual steps to Palestinian statehood.
   ‘The revolutionary council of Fatah is holding an important meeting in the presence of Abu Mazen (Abbas) to discuss the summit, political and security questions and the results of contacts with Israel,’ said Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina. ‘We intend to work so that a mutual ceasefire can be declared between the Palestinians and Israelis at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit,’ he said.
   ‘We are also demanding the liberation of 8,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and hope to be able to sort out the differences in this respect in 48 hours,’ he added.
   A group of senior Israeli ministers has approved the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners, with the first 500 to be freed soon after the summit. It has also okayed an army pullback from five West Bank cities and the transfer of security control to the Palestinians.
   But the Palestinians have expressed disappointment at the prisoner offer, both in terms of numbers and criteria.

Nine people were found dead in two cars outside Tokyo, in what were believed to be the latest in a series of macabre suicide pacts involving charcoal burners that have swept Japan.
   Six people, three men and three women mostly aged in their 20s, were found in the morning in a rented minivan parked on a farm road on the scenic peninsula of Miura at the mouth of Tokyo Bay, police said Saturday.
   Hours later, the bodies of one man and two women, in their 30s and 40s, were found in a rented sedan on the grounds of a villa on a Pacific coast in Higashi Izu, some 100 kilometres southwest of Tokyo.
   Police found several charcoal burners inside the two vehicles.
   In the Miura case, the six dead included a 40-year-old women, police said.
   They had apparently died of carbon monoxide poisoning or an overdose of sleeping pills a day earlier.
   ‘We found four charcoal burners and sleeping pills as well as a number of notes suggesting suicide inside the vehicle,’ a spokesman for the Misaki police station said.
   ‘It is highly possible that the six people from different domiciles have committed a group suicide,’ he added.
   One of the notes said, ‘I am tired of living. I am sorry.’ Another said, ‘Please spray my ashes around.’
   The two separate cases appear to be the latest in a string of such group suicides using traditional terracotta charcoal burners in Japan, many of which have involved strangers who met over the Internet to die together.

Al-Qaeda-linked militants who over the past month fought four bloody gunbattles with Kuwaiti security forces had plotted to kidnap and execute US soldiers and Westerners, a newspaper reported Saturday.
   Nasser Khlaif al-Enezi, a senior member of the group who was killed on January 30, ‘plotted to kidnap US soldiers and Western civilians and execute them and film the process,’ his brother Amer, the alleged leader of the group, told interrogators, Al-Qabas daily said.
   Amer said that his brother received training on such operations while he was in Iraq fighting against US-led coalition troops, the paper said, quoting sources close to the investigation.
   Nasser also received instructions from ‘armed terrorist groups’ in Iraq to attack US military convoys on their way to Iraq from bases in Kuwait in a bid to obstruct supplies headed for Baghdad, the daily said.
   The alleged executions were supposed to have taken place at a house in Umm Al-Haiman, south of the capital, which is close to the largest US military base at Arifjan and also near US supply lines.
   Security forces raided the house on January 15, killing a Saudi militant and arresting three other militants while an unspecified number fled.
   The government told parliament in a closed doors session Tuesday that documents seized from the group show the
   militants plotted attacks on US military convoys, Western
   civilian targets and the headquarters of the State Security Agency, the emirate’s secret police.
   Security for US military convoys, using the emirate as a passage to neighbouring Iraq, has been boosted with more Kuwaiti police cars accompanying the convoys. Traffic is stopped on some occasions.
   There are some 25,000 US troops stationed in staunch Washington ally Kuwait which serves as a transit point for coalition forces moving in and out of Iraq.
   Kuwait meanwhile remained on a state of alert in the wake of violence that left 14 people dead as security forces continued the hunt for a number of fugitives after killing eight of them and capturing 14 others.
   Armoured vehicles and heavily-armed police stood guard around foreign embassies, some government buildings and at the facilities of the emirate’s lifeline oil industry. Kuwait sits on 10 percent of global oil reserves.
   Fortifications around key installations, some buildings inhabited by Westerners and a number of foreign embassies have also been reinforced with huge concrete barriers.
   Mobile checkpoints have been set up at various roads and entrances of key residential areas by armed security men who carry laptops for an instant search of the names of wanted people.
   Raids by special forces on suspected hideouts of wanted men continue on almost daily basis in pursuit of several militants that have remained at large since the first clash on January 10.
   Four policemen were killed and 10 others wounded in the clashes. Two civilians—a Bahraini and a Kuwaiti—also died.
   The government told parliament in a closed doors session Tuesday that police dismantled a 24-member terror cell,
   killing eight of them, including two Saudis, and arresting 14. The remaining two remain at large.
   Police are also hunting for Khaled al-Dosari, who has been at large since July and is wanted in connection with recruiting fighters for Iraq.

Nepal’s king could begin releasing arrested political leaders soon, local media reported on Saturday, as the new government said it was setting up a panel to fight corruption.
   In its first meeting, King Gyanendra’s appointed cabinet drafted a strategy focusing on corruption and poverty, the state-run Rising Nepal newspaper said on Saturday, but announced no moves to seek peace with Maoist rebels fighting the monarchy.
   The army said on Friday it would step up its offensive against the guerrillas to force them back into peace talks after Gyanendra seized power on Tuesday, suspended civil rights and isolated the tiny country from the world.
   The Chief army spokesman, Brigadier General Dipak Gurung, said some political leaders – hundreds have been jailed or placed under house arrest around the country – could be released soon, the Kathmandu Post reported.
   At the same time, authorities continued rounding up activists, including sacked prime minister Sher Bahadu Deuba’s chief spokesman, Minendra Rijal, who had been one of the few political leaders left free to speak to reporters.

Hundreds of Sri Lankan youths marched through the capital Colombo, saying the world had already started to forget the tsunami tragedy six weeks after it struck the region.
   Wearing jeans and white T-shirts bearing the words ‘Let’s piece together the future of Sri Lanka’ and holding banners reading ‘Let’s build one Sri Lanka’, they marched from the city’s Hyde Park to the Independence Square public park, collecting funds along the way for tsunami victims.
   ‘We feel that the spirit behind the relief work for the tsunami victims is dying as Sri Lanka and the world is slowly forgetting the tragedy,’ said Aashiq Aminuddin, organiser of the march and a student from the Sri Lankan wing of the Malaysia-based Asia-Pacific Institute of Information Technology.
   ‘Our march today is an attempt to keep that spirit alive and tell the world not to forget what we have suffered. The victims need us for a long time.’
   Nearly 31,000 people died in the December 26 tsunami tragedy that devastated three quarters of Sri Lanka’s coastline and almost half a million are still homeless.

The prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, is poised to become the first Thai leader ever elected to a second term in polls here Sunday, in which analysts say the only question is how powerful he will emerge.
   Thaksin’s party aims to win a comfortable majority of the 500 seats up for grabs in the House of Representatives when Thailand’s 44 million eligible voters hit the ballot booth.
   ‘We want to be a single-party government,’ the billionaire tycoon turned champion of the poor reportedly told a cheering crowd in Bangkok at his last rally Friday, distancing himself from coalition partner party Chart Thai.
   His critics fear that if Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party scoops up the 350 seats it is aiming for, parliament will lose its ability to check his government’s grip on power.
   Despite accusations that he runs the government like a dictatorship, Thaksin has proved a popular leader, with 54.1 per cent of respondents to a survey saying their opinion of the premier had risen due to his high-profile handling of the tsunami disaster.
   ‘My mission is to rid Thailand of poverty,’ he said at the rally.
   ‘Our fellow countrymen have entrusted Thai Rak Thai and my government to continue to solve the nation’s economic problems.’
   In a country where every previous elected government has fallen either to military coups or political squabbling, Thaksin’s is the first to survive a full four-year term.
   The telecom mogul has largely delivered on his promises to revive Thailand’s fortunes after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. His so-called ‘Thaksinomics’ policies have revitalised the economy, with growth projected at 6.2 per cent last year.
   With the election campaign unfolding in the wake of the deadly December 26 tsunami, political debate has been overshadowed by the massive effort to rebuild following the disaster, which left 5,400 people dead in Thailand.

Conditions at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Naval Base put detainees at risk of psychiatric deterioration with irreversible damage, United Nations experts warned here Friday.
   ‘The conditions of detention, especially of those in solitary confinement, place the detainees at significant risk of psychiatric deterioration, possibly including the development of irreversible psychiatric symptoms,’ said a joint statement by UN investigators into the detention centre where the United States is currently holding some 550 international terror suspects from more than 20 countries.
   Noting that there was no longer any international conflict in Afghanistan or Iraq, the statement quoted the Third Geneva Convention which states that prisoners of war must be released without delay when hostilities end.
   They also noted that the exact numbers and names of persons held at Guantanamo remained unknown to the outside world.
   ‘Many of the inmates are completing their third year of virtually incommunicado detention, without legal assistance or information as to the expected duration of their detention, and in conditions of detention that, according to numerous observers, amount to inhuman and degrading treatment,’ the statement said.
   ‘This situation is extremely disconcerting and is conducive to the unacknowledged transfer of inmates to other, often secret, detention facilities, whether run by the United States or by other countries,’ it continued.
   Several experts had approached the US, Afghan and Iraqi authorities to be able to visit the facility and interview prisoners.
   While the United States government had not yet agreed to the request, it had indicated an interest in establishing a dialogue with the experts to consider the possibility of a visit.
   The UN investigators criticised the situation of uncertainty regarding any criminal charges that might be pending.
   Most prisoners had no access to lawyers in proceedings in the United States. The UN team also expressed doubts about the independence of the special US military tribunals set up last year by the Pentagon in Washington.
   They said they were concerned about allegations of torture during interrogations.
   The US justice department on Thursday appealed a federal court ban on military tribunals for international terror suspects held at the US Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba.
   Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled on Monday that the prisoners had rights as provided under the US constitution.
   The administration of the president, George W Bush, expressed disagreement and said it would appeal, saying the Guantanamo-held prisoners, as ‘enemy combatants,’ do not have such rights.

Guerrilla intimidation of Iraqi soldiers has hampered the US efforts to build a reliable security force, the US general in charge of training Iraqi troops said Friday.
   Army lieutenant general, David Petraeus, speaking from Baghdad to reporters at the Pentagon, said the Iraqi units had suffered ‘losses due to severe intimidation,’ but he offered no specifics.
   He did not cite an absentee or desertion rate.
   By next week, when 3,500 replacements become available for duty, the 90 battalions of police, army and other types of security forces will be at 80 per cent of their intended manpower levels, Petraeus said.
   Referring to the overall state of training, Petraeus said ‘considerable momentum has been achieved’ toward reaching the point where Iraqi forces can take the lead role in fighting the militancy. He said Iraqis already are taking the lead in 12 of the country’s 18 provinces.
   On Thursday, the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said that with the election in Iraq over he believes some 15,000 US troops can be withdrawn in the short run, reducing the American military force to 135,000.
   ‘I think we’ll be able to come down to the level that was projected before this election,’ Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
   Still, he struck a caution tone in his appearance before the committee on Thursday, warning that ‘Iraq still faces a difficult road ahead to defeat the terrorist threat and achieve stability, much less freedom and democracy.’
   The defence secretary, Donald H Rumsfeld, said reporters at a Pentagon news conference he believes the elections may stiffen the resolve of ordinary Iraqis to fight in cooperation with American forces.
   ‘I expect that level of violence and the militancy to continue,’ Rumsfeld said. But at the same time, the voting may have marked a ‘tipping point’ at which Iraqis who had been intimidated by the guerrillas decide to step forward and join the army or other security force or provide useful information to the US forces, he said.
   ‘I think it means that intelligence is going to improve, I think that it means that there will be more people who will be willing to provide information– about people who were trying to intimidate them and control their cities, and over time’ support for the government will grow, he said.
   Rumsfeld also said the US forces are making good progress in training Iraqi security forces, but he cautioned that it was a gradual process.
   ‘Nobody should expect that Iraqi security forces are going to come out of some pipeline,’ he said.
   The president, Bush, meanwhile, brushed aside calls for a withdrawal strategy from Iraq.
   ‘They ask me, ‘Is there a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq?’ Here’s the answer to that: You don’t set timetables,’ Bush said in Great Falls, Mont., during an event to push his idea for Social Security reform.
   ‘You don’t want the enemy to say, ‘we’ll just wait them out,’’ he said. ‘The timetable is as soon as possible, and it’s going to be based on the willingness and the capacity of the Iraqi troops to fight the enemy.’
   Some Democrats on the armed services panel made clear they want US troops to return immediately.
   ‘When are the Iraqis going to fight for their own country? When are they going to start shedding their own blood–as American servicemen with this amount of training are ready to shed theirs,’ said senator, Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
   Senator, Carl Levin and senator, John McCain, R-Ariz., both pressed for an estimate on how many guerrillas US and Iraqi forces are battling.
   ‘I don’t know how you defeat militancy unless you have some handle on the number of people that you are facing,’ McCain said. ‘I think the American people should know the nature of the enemy that we are facing.’

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is in Europe to promote American policies in Iraq and the Middle East, but the start of her first trip as chief diplomat has been dogged by the spectre of Iran.
   Two days into her week-long tour, Rice has been besieged by questions about the US policy towards the Islamic Republic’s suspected nuclear weapons programme and bleak human rights record.
   She has tried to ease European fears the Americans might launch a pre-emptive military strike and has warded off queries on whether Washington was officially seeking regime change in Tehran.
   She has heard suggestions the United States is undermining the nuclear negotiations by keeping quiet, or alternatively compromising the talks by speaking out too loudly on human rights.
   The persistent probing and inconclusive the US response have forced Rice on the defensive, where she had hoped to put Tehran. ‘It is the Iranians that are isolated on this issue, not the United States,’ she pleaded Friday.
   This was not entirely the trip envisioned by one of the US president, George W Bush’s most trusted aides when she embarked on a tour of eight European capitals, Israel and the West Bank.
   The trip, a warm-up to Bush’s own European swing later this month, was billed as a fence-mending mission aimed at capitalizing on the success of Iraq’s national elections and new momentum in the Middle East peace process.
   She also raised eyebrows by ducking repeated questions on regime change–even as her spokesman in Washington was telling reporters that officials ‘have been very clear that we do not have a policy of regime change toward Iran.’
   Officials travelling with Rice would neither confirm nor deny whether a new, more muscular policy towards Iran was in the works. But they acknowledged at least a change in tone on the issue of democratic reforms.
   ‘The president and the secretary have made it more explicit that we support the aspirations of the Iranian people to control their own government,’ said a senior official, who asked not to be named.
   The United States has been sharpening its rhetoric against Iran for weeks. Bush, who famously lumped Tehran in his ‘axis of evil’ three years ago, called it Wednesday ‘the world’s primary state sponsor of terror’.
   The vice president, Dick Cheney, said last month that Iran was ‘right at the top of the list’ of global trouble spots and worried that Israel might launch its own strikes to shut down Tehran’s nuclear programme if nobody else does.
   With the US officials refusing to take any option off the table, Rice sought Friday to allay fears among US allies of a strike against Iran, saying ‘the question is simply not on the agenda at this point’.
   Emma Udwin, spokeswoman for EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, was worried by Rice’s addendum ‘at this point’ and said, ‘I don’t know if that clarified matters.’
   Germany, Britain and France have been trying to persuade Iran to renounce its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions. Rice said the United States was hoping for the best, but had yet to see any sign of real cooperation from Tehran.
   But the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, defended Washington against complaints by some Europeans that the Americans were staying aloof or, worse, waiting for the ‘EU-3’ talks to fail.
   ‘This is a joint diplomatic effort, albeit those three countries are directly involved in the negotiation,’ Straw told a news conference after he and the prime minister, Tony Blair, met with Rice early Friday.
   Schroeder and Straw both basically endorsed the United States’ tough line on democratic reforms in Iran. But the EU’s Udwin was less enthusiastic.
   In the stand-up, stay-seated, cheer-wildly, applaud-tepidly atmosphere of the State of the Union address, the American political divide always gets one of its most thorough airings of the year, with members of the president’s party leading the robust standing applause while the opposition often sits in silence.
   But this year, Republicans stamped their support the foreign policy of president Bush on their index fingers, passing around a tin of purple stamp ink in homage to Iraqi voters, who marked their fingers similarly Sunday when they cast their ballots.
   While both sides of the aisle applauded throughout the speech when Bush mentioned the election in Iraq, GOP members stood and wagged their purple fingers as a clear signal that the election stemmed from their president’s campaign for democracy in Iraq.
   But the seriousness of the war quickly came back into focus in perhaps the evening’s most poignant moment, when Bush introduced the parents of Marine sergeant, Byron Norwood of Pflugerville, Texas, who was killed in the assault on Fallujah.
   Bush read from a letter that Norwood’s mother, Janet, wrote him after her son was killed.
   ‘When Byron was home the last time, I said that I wanted to protect him like I had since he was born. He just hugged me and said: ‘You’ve done your job, mom. Now it’s my turn to protect you.’‘
   In another sign of unity over the Iraq election if not the war, Republicans and Democrats cheered when the president introduced Safia Taleb al-Suhail, a leader of the Iraqi Women’s Political Council, who held up her own purple index finger in a symbol of the vote. She and Janet Norwood, choking back tears after the president told of her son’s death, hugged as Democrats and Republicans alike applauded at length.
   ‘Both parties, regardless of our differences about this war, when it comes to these soldiers, we stand together,’ he said.
   With Iraq’s election fresh in the minds of many of the lawmakers, a brief moment before the speech recalled America’s own election. As Bush walked up the aisle shaking the hands of senators, his Democratic rival in last fall’s election, senator, John Kerry of Massachusetts, exchanged a quick thumbs-up sign with him.
   Despite those fleeting moments of bipartisanship, both sides of Congress still largely played their traditional roles.
   Republicans clapped profusely and frequently as Bush recited a litany of popular conservative stances, such as support for tort reform and a constitutional amendment to ensure marriage is between a man and a woman. Democrats groaned audibly when Bush outlined his plans to overhaul Social Security That topic drew most of the Democrats’ attention prior to the speech, with many members roaming the Capitol halls pushing their view that the president’s proposal to allow younger workers to put some of their payroll taxes into personal savings accounts would undermine the safety of Social Security.
   In a pre-emptive strike, a group of House Democrats, including US Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, invited seniors and other constituents who oppose Bush’s Social Security plan.
   ‘Clearly Democrats are on the offensive here when it comes to Social Security,’ Schakowsky said. ‘We are going to win this fight.’
   Other political messages were more sublime. Illinois Republicans wore lime green wristbands to announce their support for tort reform, a cause Bush drew attention to in a recent visit to Collinsville.

An interim report on corruption in the former UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq draws attention to the world body’s limitations and should be praised for pointing fingers, but it needs to shed more light on the scandal, two leading US dailies said Saturday.
   Friday’s report by former the US Federal Reserve banking chairman, Paul Volcker, ‘is not a whitewash–did name names’ and was not swept under the carpet by the UN chief, Kofi Annan, as many had suspected, wrote The Washington Post.
   The interim report said Benon Sevan, who headed the oil-for-food programme, obtained allocations of oil from Iraq, which was trying to buy his influence. It also found UN competitive bidding rules were broken in hiring three contractors. Annan has ordered disciplinary action.
   While the corruption scandal raises questions about the United Nations, said the Post, critics ‘should look harder at the behaviour of American, British and other companies in Iraq ‘that were benefiting, one way or another, from the Iraqi sanctions’ in place after the 1991 Gulf War.
   ‘More to the point,’ added the Post editorial, the ‘UN Security Council members, including the United States, turned a blind eye to allegations of corruption while it was going on, and they may have even used it to benefit US allies in the region.’
   For those who seek to expand the UN’s role the world, the daily said, the affair should make them ‘think twice’ about the organisation’s limitations, both in managing complex financial and political programmes and operating in war zones such as Bosnia or Congo, or in deeply corrupt countries such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.’
   Volcker’s report, said The New York Times, ‘sheds some light, but not much, on the nature and the scope of this much-ballyhooed scandal.’
   It is not clear whether it deals with a ‘small-scale corruption by a greedy official or a large-scale subversion of the entire programme,’ nor does it answer the ‘core element of the scandal: how was Iraq able to manipulate the programme to amass perhaps 2 billion dollars in illicit revenues to sustain the regime and buy embargoed goods?’
   The report is also ‘murky’ on how deeply UN bidding rules were violated and how dirty Seven’s hands got in the affair, if at all, said the Times, reminding its readers that the UN official is claiming he was used as a scapegoat.

Iraq said it wanted its money back from the scandal-tainted UN oil-for-food programme on Friday as the secretary general, Kofi Annan, vowed to get to the bottom of wrongdoing by UN staff.
   ‘Huge sums of money which should have served the needs of the Iraqi people who were suffering at that time—a lot of these resources were squandered and misspent,’ said Iraq’s UN ambassador, Samir Sumaidaie.
   Iraq, he said, should at minimum not have to pay for the independent probe set up by the United Nations from remaining oil-for-food funds. The inquiry panel has spent $30 million so far, with the approval of the Security Council.
   A new report by Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman appointed by Annan to probe the $67 billion programme, found that the director of the plan, Benon Sevan, helped steer oil contracts to a relative of former UN secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
   The report does not accuse any UN officials of getting bribes. But it says Sevan received $160,000 from an aunt in Cyrus, who has since died and had few resources.
   ‘We are as determined as everyone to get to the bottom of this. We do not want this shadow to hang over the UN,’ Annan said as he arrived at headquarters.
   Annan said UN officials would be disciplined and diplomatic immunity would be lifted if criminal acts were committed.
   Among other questionable deals in the report was one in which another UN official, Joseph Stephanides, colluded with a former British UN ambassador so that Lloyd’s Register Inspection Ltd could get a lucrative contract. Volcker said Stephanides was anxious to get the programme underway.
   The report said a more thorough audit of the humanitarian programme might have uncovered cheating by Saddam Hussein’s government. A Central Intelligence Agency report estimated Saddam skimmed $1.7 billion from the programme and another $8 billion through illegal oil sales outside it, some permitted by the Security Council.
   Investigators questioned Boutros-Ghali for choosing the Banque Nationale de Paris, now BNP-Paribas, to handle the programme’s account. He did so after council members asked him to select a bank but was criticised for asking Iraq its preference.
   The programme began in late 1996 and ended in November 2003, after the United States overthrew Saddam. Iraq was allowed to sell oil to buyers of its choosing and contract for food and other necessities to ease hardships caused by UN sanctions.
   In Washington, state department spokesman Adam Ereli said, ‘One should not let the corruption and the distortion of the programme completely overshadow the fact that it did, to an important extent, serve the purposes for which it was designed.
   Volcker’s 240-page report was a preliminary survey, with a final one to be produced in June. He said he may have another interim report on the alleged role of Annan’s son, who had worked for a Swiss company that replaced Lloyd’s in 1998.
   The Iraqi ambassador said the United Nations received $1.14 billion to administer oil-for-food and wanted to see how much reached its destination or was squandered by outside contractors working for the world body.
   ‘The question arises whether the secretariat is subject to its own political culture, which tends to subvert the will of the Security Council,’ said Sumaidaie. ‘This is serious.’

The European Union on Friday called for an immediate end to what it called the ‘impunity’ in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region after a UN investigative commission charged crimes against humanity had been committed there.
   The statement issued by Luxembourg, the current EU president, also called on suspects to be tried before the International Criminal Court.
   ‘The EU resolutely condemns these crimes and stresses the importance of putting an immediate end to the impunity in Darfur,’ it said.
   It added that ‘it is up to the United Nations Security Council to decide’ on whether suspects should be taken before the International Criminal Court, but noted that the investigation commission had recommended this.
   The statement stressed the ‘constant support’ of the EU for the International Criminal Court.
   During deliberations ahead of the statement, Britain had been against the EU making a direct appeal for suspected culprits to be transferred to the International Criminal Court, which is not recognised by the United States, EU sources said.
   However, the sources said no one wanted to create extra problems between the Europeans and the US over Darfur.
   Washington has instead proposed that a special tribunal should be set up instead at Arusha, in Tanzania, where a UN tribunal is already trying war crimes in Rwanda in 1994.
   The EU expressed concern about the contents of the UN report on Darfur which accused Sudanese government forces and Arab militias of conducting indiscriminate attacks in Darfur, including murder, tortures, kidnapping, destruction of villages, rape, looting and forced displacement.
   It spoke of crimes against humanity but did not accuse the Sudanese government of genocide.
   The EU also noted the UN commission’s conclusion that rebel forces too had been responsible for acts that could be considered war crimes.
   The vast region of Darfur in western Sudan has faced what UN experts call a major humanitarian crisis, created by a February 2003 uprising by black Darfur locals against the Arab government in Khartoum.
   Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur, many from hunger and disease, while some 1.5 million others have been displaced, many into squalid and dangerous camps.

Sergeant Javal Davis, who admitted abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003, was sentenced Friday to six months in a military prison and given a bad-conduct discharge from the Army.
   A nine-man military jury deliberated for about 5 ½ hours before sentencing Davis, a former Abu Ghraib guard who earlier this week confessed to stepping on the hands and feet of a group of handcuffed detainees and falling with his full weight on top of them.
   After the verdict was read, Davis’ mother sobbed uncontrollably in the courtroom. Davis gave his father a long hug while a tear rolled down Davis’ face.

Saudi calls for int’l anti-terror centre
the Saudi crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, whose country has been hit by a wave of terror attacks, called Saturday for the establishment of an international centre to combat and preempt terrorism. ‘I call on all countries to set up an international centre for combating terrorism. Those working in it would be experts in this field,’ Abdullah told delegations from some 50 countries and international bodies at the opening of a four-day counter-terror conference here. Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, said he hoped the gathering would herald a new chapter in the global fight against terror. ‘I have great hope that this conference will open a new page of effective international cooperation to establish an international community free of terrorism,’ he said.
— AFP

Indian executed
in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia executed on Saturday an Indian convicted of murder in the southern region of Aseer, the Interior Ministry said. Indian national Gotham Krishna was sentenced to death for setting light to a fellow Indian in his sleep because of a dispute between them, the ministry said in a statement. Saudi Arabia, which implements a strict interpretation of Islamic law, executes convicted murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading with a sword. Saturday’s execution brought to at least nine the number of people put to death this year in the conservative kingdom.
— Reuters

Bangkok subway closed after
power blackout
The Thai capital’s subway was evacuated and shut down when a power failure brought all trains to a halt just five days after the system was reopened following a major accident, officials said. ‘There was a power blackout at all subway stations, but we managed to safely evacuate all commuters from the trains and the platforms,’ head of the Mass Rapid Transit Authority, Prapat Chongs-anguan, said Saturday. Chongsanguan predicted the system, shut down at about noon, would be operational later Saturday. Metropolitan Electricity Authority chief Chalit Ruengvisesh said a major transformer had exploded in suburban Bangkok cutting off electricity to the subway.
— AFP

Two killed in
Kashmir violence
Two people were killed and a Muslim candidate in ongoing municipal elections wounded in a surge of separatist violence in Indian Kashmir, police said Saturday. A police official said a top-ranking rebel commander of the dominant militant group Hizbul Mujahedin was shot dead by Indian troops overnight in the southern Kashmir district of Rajouri. In the same district, police said suspected militants abducted three Hindus late Friday. ‘One of them was shot dead, while two others managed to give slip to their captors,’ a police spokesman said. In the state summer capital Srinagar, suspected militants overnight shot and wounded Sheikh Mohammed Amin, police said.
— AFP

British envoy’s
graft allegations
anger Kenya
Kenyan officials have reacted angrily to corruption accusation by the British envoy to Kenya, saying the government has been taking great and persistent efforts to tackle corruption. The vice president, Moody Awori, said that the ongoing war on corruption was not in any way pegged on pressure by outsiders, butis a homegrown initiative by Kenyans themselves for their own benefit. Responding to criticism by British High Commissioner Edward Clay, Awori stated that Kenyans would not allow themselves to be dictated by foreigners and that Kenyans would themselves pursue avenues that they deem best for their interests.
— Xinhua

Associate of Georgian PM commits suicide
A member of the Georgian presidential clemency commission has committed suicide, police said Saturday, two days after the death of the late prime minister, Zurab Zhvania. Officials denied any political connection between the victim and the premier. Georgy Khelashvili, 32, was found dead at his home Friday night of a gunshot wound, said Tbilisi police official Irakli Pirkhalala. Khelashvili was a member of the presidential commission on pardons. Initial media reports said he also had been a member of Zhvania’s former United Democrats political bloc. But Karlo Tskhitishvili, head of the parliament’s protocol staff, said Khelashvili did not have any political affiliation with Zhvania, whose United Democrats later merged into the National Movement political bloc.
— AP

Timoshenko endorsed as new Ukrainian PM
Ukraine’s parliament overwhelmingly endorsed Yulia Timoshenko as the country’s new prime minister, sealing a dramatic political transformation that swept away the ex-Soviet republic’s pro-Russia regime and brought Western-leaning democratic reformers to power. Timoshenko, a charismatic but controversial politician who has served previously as a deputy prime minister and whose powerful public speeches fuelled the ‘orange revolution’ that sidelined the former regime late last year, voiced gratitude after the vote and promised honest government. ‘Like anyone, I might make some technical mistakes.
— AFP

Scandals rock
Greek church
The Greek Orthodox Church has suspended a senior bishop over a scandal that has engulfed the clergy and the judiciary. He is one of several clergymen alleged to have tried to influence or bribe judges to fix the outcome of trials - some involving drug dealers. Another priest was arrested on Friday accused of involvement in a series of allegedly fixed trials, as well as the illegal trade of antiquities. Four judges have been charged with serious disciplinary offences. More than a dozen other members of the judiciary are now under investigation. The Metropolitan Bishop Panteleimon of Attica region was summoned to appear before the Orthodox Church’s governing body, the Holy Synod, on Friday morning.
— BBC

Ex-Somali police vow to defend govt
Graying members of Somalia’s former police and military pledged Friday to defend a new government formed in neighbouring Kenya. But in the lawless streets of Mogadishu, clan factions still held sway. Some 30 parliamentarians, some of them warlords themselves, arrived in Somalia on Wednesday to assess conditions for their relocation from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi — the first time the new government has presented itself in its Horn of Africa homeland. The speaker of Somalia’s Parliament was too due to arrive Sunday, and the prime minister and other members of Cabinet were expected within days.
— AP