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North Korea on Saturday said the United States was seeking to invade North Korea in order to turn the Korean peninsula into a springboard for its dominance in Asia.
   Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the Stalinist country’s ruling Korean Workers Party, also accused Washington of exploiting ‘human rights’ issues in order to cover up its hegemonic agenda.
   The comments came two days after Pyongyang said it would no longer engage in multilateral talks aimed at resolving a stand-off over its nuclear programmes, declaring it had made atomic bombs to protect itself against a US attack.
   ‘It is an invariable ambition of the US to invade the North Korea and dominate Asia with the Korean Peninsula as a springboard and establish a global order of its domination,’ the daily said.
   ‘The US talk about ‘peace and human rights’ is nothing but a slogan for invading and dominating other countries and a subterfuge to cover up its criminal nature,’ the newspaper added.
   Analysts said that Pyongyang might have withdrawn from the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons in order to increase its leverage in the long-running negotiations.
   There have been three rounds of the six-party talks since August 2003, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.
   North Korea boycotted a fourth round in September 2004, complaining that the United States sticks to its ‘hostile’ policy toward the communist country.
   The United States on Friday rejected North Korea’s call for direct negotiations outside the context of six-party talks aimed at convincing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programmes.
   A top UN envoy on Friday blamed both the United States and North Korea for what he called an unhelpful war of words over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.
   The comments by Maurice Strong, special advisor to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, came after North Korea said publicly on Thursday it had nuclear weapons and that it would pull out of six-party talks about its programme.
   ‘It does elevate the climate of hostility and misunderstanding that has been the main impediment—a major impediment at least—to the continued discussions,’ Strong told a press briefing at UN headquarters in New York.
   ‘There’s no question when the dialogue is conducted at the level of bellicose rhetoric, which we have heard from both sides,’ he said, referring to Pyongyang and Washington.
   ‘This kind of thing may satisfy their desire to make their positions respectively known as strongly as possible, but they really don’t help in setting the stage for real good constructive negotiations,’ he said.
   Strong played down concern over Pyongyang’s announcement, saying the secretive Stalinist state had already privately indicated it had developed nuclear weapons.
   ‘Very few people who are close to the situation are surprised at anything but the timing, perhaps,’ he said, indicating it may be related to the second term of the administration of the US president, George W Bush, which started last month.

Nepal’s fractured political parties and student groups are crippled by infighting as they struggle to restore democracy after king Gyanendra seized power almost two weeks ago, diplomats and former students leaders say.
   Since the king sacked the government and declared a state of emergency on February 1, his opponents have done little to mount any sort of challenge to the monarch.
   Political parties, which claim up to 1,000 people, were rounded up when the king sacked the government and assumed absolute power, have vowed to make a stand.
   But a history of infighting will make any alliance unlikely, even in the face of the most recent crisis, said one diplomatic source, who described Nepal’s political organisations as ‘feudal parties, unable to get along on anything’.
   Perhaps their biggest obstacle is a long-standing disagreement over what shape democracy should take in the Himalayan outpost.
   The leading Nepali Congress party is demanding the return of the government dissolved by Gyanendra in 2002, while the mainstream Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist wants the election of a constituent assembly.
   Nepal’s trade unions and student groups, which are allied with various political parties, have never found enough common ground to form a unified platform.
   ‘This is a cause of weakness which prevents the unions from forming a powerful alliance and making it possible to fight for a common cause,’ said one former student leader, recalling that it was the students who pushed Nepal towards a multi-party system in 1990.
   Even a number of non-governmental organisations and rights groups have failed to come together in any meaningful way to protest the king’s power grab, leaving them vulnerable to a government crackdown on dissent.
   According to the Human Rights and Peace Society, hundreds of students have been detained and 54 political leaders arrested or put under house arrest, including the dismissed prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba.
   Also under arrest are the former head of Nepal’s Bar Association, Sindhunath Pyakurel, and a leader of the Federation of Journalists.
   ‘The wave of arrests is spreading from high political leadership and goes down to students’ movements,’ said a Western source.
   At least 10 HURPES activists were arrested when they staged an anti-monarchy protest Thursday—the only meaningful demonstration so far—that failed to get the support of any other local rights groups.
   ‘Now it is time for pro-democratic people to spend more time making plans for long-term strategy rather than reacting immediately because everybody will be arrested,’ countered one activist with another group, the Collective Campaign for Peace.
   Nepal’s NGOs have long been riven by rifts and jealousies, accusations of corruption and compromising alliances with the government or military.
   ‘But they all also suffer a credibility problem, with an indifferent public viewing them as enclaves of the elite,’ said one social worker.
   ‘They lack the popular voice of the under-represented. There is an enormous gulf’ between the NGOs and the average Nepalese, the worker explained.

Japan’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yashushi Akashi, Saturday said that the killings this week of a senior rebel leader and his colleagues had ‘poisoned’ the ceasefire in the island nation.
   Akashi made the statement at a press conference after holding talks in eastern Batticaloa district with senior leaders of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to a report on Tamilnet.com, the rebels’ unofficial website.
   ‘The killing of E Koushalyan and his colleagues has poisoned the ceasefire atmosphere in Sri Lanka,’ Akashi was quoted as saying.
   The envoy held talks with the LTTE political chief, SP Thamilselvan, the head of the movement’s peace secretariat Puleedevan, who uses only one name, and other senior rebel leaders Saturday near Kokkaddicholai village, the report said.
   ‘The assassinations and the equitable distribution of tsunami aid in the northeast regions were discussed at the meeting between the LTTE and the Japanese delegation,’ it added.
   Koushalyan and five others, among them a legislator from the Tamil National Alliance – seen as proxies of the LTTE—were shot dead Monday by gunmen dressed in military uniforms in the government-controlled area of Batticaloa.
   The government has blamed the act on a faction led by the former number two of LTTE, known as Karuna.
   But the rebels have accused the government military of helping rebel renegades in carrying out the attack. No one has claimed the responsibility for the shootings.
   Both sides have said the incident is a violation of the ceasefire agreement that has been in place since February 2002.
   Koushalyan was the most senior Tiger to be gunned down since the truce started. Peace talks have remained deadlocked since April 2003.
   Japan has taken a hands-on approach to the Sri Lankan peace process, helping coordinate 4.5 billion dollars in international pledges for the island to rebuild from the ethnic war which claimed more than 60,000 lives between 1972 and 2002 when a ceasefire went into effect.

The Myanmar leader general, Than Shwe, on Saturday warned his country to be alert against the West after his military junta was slammed for arresting pro-democracy leaders.
   ‘The old and new colonialists alike bent on occupying and holding sway over our union have hatched wicked schemes to weaken our national solidarity which is the foundation of our union,’ Shwe said. His message was read out at a ceremony to commemorate Union Day, which marks a key pre-independence event.
   It came after the United States and United Nations slammed the country’s military junta for arresting several pro-democracy leaders and prohibiting groups from commemorating the day.
   Among those held was Hkun Htun Oo, the chairman of the Shan National League for Democracy, which won 1990 elections in a result the junta refused to acknowledge.
   ‘The United States is deeply concerned’ about the arrest, the US state department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said Friday.
   Boucher also expressed concern the military had prohibited the United Nationalities Alliance, Myanmar’s leading coalition of pro-democracy ethnic political parties, from commemorating Union Day.
   The UN special envoy to Myanmar, Razali Ismail, on Saturday expressed concern about the arrest, saying the United Nations was ‘following the situation very closely’.
   The military junta’s official ceremony to mark the day at Yangon’s Peoples’ Park on Saturday was attended by senior generals from the regime and pro-military supporters including ethnic Shan, Kachin, Karen, Chin, Mon and Rakhine.
   ‘It is an unforgettable lesson of history that Myanmar fell into servitude for over 100 years as a direct consequence of collapsed national unity triggered by unscrupulous colonialists,’ Shwe said in his message.
   ‘At such an opportune time, it is necessary to make efforts to further cement nationalistic fervour and union spirit which are the foundation of the union as well as national strength,’ he said.
   A low-key ceremony to mark the day was also held Saturday by the National League for Democracy, whose leader Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest despite worldwide calls for her release.
   Union Day marks February 12, 1947, when various ethnic communities within what was known as Burma unanimously called for independence from Britain.
   Burma became independent a year later but has been ruled by a military dictatorship since the 1960s.

Today North Korea, tomorrow Iran? The world’s apparent failure to stop the communist nation from developing nuclear weapons seems to be a sobering sign that threats and cajoling will not deter a country bent on acquiring such arms.
   At a quick glance, Pyongyang’s example seems applicable to Tehran — and perhaps other countries waiting in the wings with still-to-be-revealed clandestine nuclear activities.
   Like Iran, the North exploited fears of its nuclear ambitions to wrest international concessions. Also like the Islamic Republic, it then held the world in thrall in on-off negotiations before the final steps that many fear Iran will also take — breaking with the rest of the world to make the bomb.
   In an apparent confirmation of world fears, North Korea boasted publicly for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons.
   President Bush has named both North Korea and Iran as part of an ‘axis of evil,’ along with prewar Iraq.
   But a closer look offers some hope that Iran and others countries that may have the capacity to go nuclear will not automatically follow Pyongyang.
   The threat level is one key consideration. For years the Northern regime appeared convinced it was about to become the target of a full US invasion — or nuclear attack. The country’s isolation fed such concerns to the point that Pyongyang tried to justify its move Thursday by asserting it was only responding to American threats ‘with a nuclear stick.’
   A senior official with the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN nuclear watchdog kicked out of North Korea two years ago — said the North’s response was typical of a country that ‘feels it has no choice but to acquire nukes.’
   ‘It will only get to that point if it feels totally insecure and without other options,’ said the official.
   Iran is not at that point — yet.
   A regional power of nearly 70 million people, it has no enemy at its doorstep, unlike North Korea, whose army faces hundreds of thousands of South Korean and US troops across the border. Neighbouring Iraq, Iran’s wartime foe under Saddam Hussein, has become less of a threat since his ouster. One main reason is the rise of Iraq’s long oppressed Shia Muslims, the brand of Islam largely practiced in Iran.
   Both Israel and the United States have refused to rule out pre-emptive strikes over fears Iran is trying to develop the bomb.
   That threat would only increase if Iran suddenly broke off negotiations with European powers or contacts with the IAEA and went underground – as did North Korea — because both the United States and Israel would see the move as further proof it was working on nuclear arms.
   Iran insists it does not want the bomb — and if that’s true it has much to gain by not turning into a hermit country. The talks with Britain, France and Germany could give it a toehold on things it wants, such as technical help, economic concessions and a greater voice in the world.
   But even if Washington is right in accusing Iran of lying, it appears in Tehran’s interest to keep talking. By doing so, it can keep suspicions at bay and the world guessing about its true intentions.
   Gary Samore, director at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, is among those who believe Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. Still, he says, it’s worthwhile to keep Tehran talking — to win time if for no other reason.
   ‘The Iranians have shown a reluctance to risk confrontation,’ he said. ‘They are afraid the big powers will act against them, and ... they are very nervous about possible US attack.’
   Samore, who followed Iran in the State Department and the White House in the 1990s, thinks interaction with the rest of the world — and the resulting pressure of world opinion — has kept Tehran from developing nuclear weapons up to now.
   ‘In the case of North Korea, it’s too late,’ he said. ‘In the case of Iran, there may still be some combination of threat and inducement to persuade them to delay.’

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met his political faction chiefs Saturday to draw strength for talks aimed at bringing Islamic militants into line with a ceasefire he declared with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
   Abbas convened the Fatah Central Committee ahead of evening meetings with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two days after the militant groups punctured the truce with a barrage of mortar bombs and rockets against Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
   After pledging to end more than four years of violence at a Tuesday summit with Sharon in Egypt, Abbas fired nine security chiefs and deputies for failing to prevent the salvoes. Aides predicted a similar resolve in his talks with the militants.
   ‘Abu Mazen will ask Hamas and Islamic Jihad to respect the (truce) agreement,’ a Palestinian official said. ‘We should all realise that this is a collective responsibility.’
   Elected on January 9 to succeed Yasser Arafat on a platform of non-violent struggle, Abbas is striving to fulfil a condition of calm to begin talks on a Palestinian state under a US-backed ‘roadmap’ peace plan that has been stalled by bloodshed.
   Israel demands he round up militants, but Abbas has said he prefers to co-opt them rather than confront them.
   Armed groups seized de facto power on the Palestinian streets during a four-year revolt against Israel. They began observing a general calm last month at Abbas’ behest but have rejected any formal truce and said they are not bound by his summit pledge.
   Hamas said the mortar and rocket attacks Thursday were revenge for the killing of a Palestinian which militants blamed on Israel. Israel did not retaliate, and officials said they would give Abbas a chance to rein in the gunmen.
   General calm prevailed across Gaza again Friday.
   ‘He (Abbas) will inform the factions of the positive results that were achieved in the successful summit in Sharm El-Sheikh,’ said Abbas aide Tayeb Abdel-Rahim.
   ‘I believe most of the results they demanded have been achieved in that successful summit.’
   Militant groups have demanded Israel stop its attacks in the West Bank and Gaza, including what it calls ‘targeted killings’ and Palestinians describe as assassinations.
   They also want Israel to release all 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails. Israel plans to free 500 next week, with another 400 to follow, as a goodwill gesture to Abbas.
   In what appeared to be another gesture, Palestinian officials said Israel had agreed to hand remains of 15 militants killed during attacks in Gaza to their families for burial. Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment.
   A spokesman for one militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees, said it would show restraint for now ‘to give a chance for the political leadership to reach a conditional truce.’

The prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has said the unrest in Thailand’s Muslim majority south is the greatest concern for his second term as another four people were killed in the latest attacks to hit the region.
   ‘I am very worried about the unrest in the south,’ Thaksin said in his first weekly radio address since his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party won a landslide victory in last weekend’s national elections.
   ‘The brunt (of the problems in my second term) will be tackling the unrest in the three southern provinces,’ he said referring to the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala where an insurgency has killed at least 590 people since January last year.
   ‘A special body to handle the unrest has been set up but its work still lacks coordination,’ Thaksin said.
   The statement came as police said Saturday another four people were killed in attacks by the suspected Muslim militants.
   Pisan Boonyuen, 29, was shot at his VCD shop in the provincial town of Yala by a gunman who fled on a motorcycle on Friday evening, police said, adding he was later pronounced dead at Yala’s hospital.

Two sensitive districts in revolt-hit Indian Kashmir went to the polls Saturday to elect their first municipal councillors in more than two decades, as some elected Kashmiris resigned after rebel threats.
   Voting in the two districts of Doda and Udhampur was slow with bad weather keeping most of the people indoors, election officer Deeraj Kumar said from Doda.
   ‘Voting has been very dull but peaceful,’ he said.
   Four previous rounds of voting have also been incident-free although in the lead up to the vote rebels had been bombing rallies and killing candidates, party workers and elected officials in an effort to scuttle the elections.
   Militants shot dead a frontrunner for the job of mayor of the summer capital Srinagar Wednesday, bringing to four the number of councillors and candidates killed in less than two weeks. No rebel group has claimed responsibility.
   Rebels as well as separatists oppose any polls in Kashmir, where a revolt against Indian rule has raged since 1989. They say elections are no substitute for the right to self-determination.

The daughter of a former Nepalese prime minister trekked across the Himalayan mountains for four days to escape to India after the king sacked Nepal’s government this month, a report said Saturday.
   Sucheta Koirala told the Press Trust of India she fled after soldiers began to harass her following king Gyanendra’s seizure of power on February 1, when her 81-year-old father Girija Prasad Koirala was put under house arrest.
   Girija Prasad Koirala has been prime minister of Nepal on three separate occasions. He was a key figure behind a protest campaign against King Gyanendra’s dismissal the elected government in 2002.
   ‘It was a tiring journey,’ Sucheta Koirala was quoted as saying. ‘I crossed villages controlled by Maoists with fear for my life. If they had got suspicious about us, it would have been my end.’

Subjected to conflicting pressure, the Saudi government has chosen a slow process towards political openness whose future course is uncertain but from which any turning back would be very difficult, analysts say.
   That women were excluded from the ultra-conservative kingdom’s landmark polls on Thursday is testament to this choice.
   ‘The country is now moving in the right direction,’ Sheikh Mohsen al-Awaji, a moderate Islamist and government critic, said.
   But ‘if the government continues with this pace of reform, it means that we will need several centuries to get our minimum rights,’ he said.
   Saudi men went to the polls Thursday to pick half the members of 38 municipal councils for the capital and surrounding areas.
   Voting in the second round, which covers the Eastern Province and the southwest, will take place on March 3.
   Voters in the western regions of Mecca and Medina, we well as the northern regions, will cast their ballots on April 21 in the final phase of elections for half the members of 178 municipal councils across the vast country.
   The other half will be appointed by the government.
   In this absolute monarchy, the country’s first nationwide ballot was not insignificant, as witnessed by the reactions of numerous voters.
   ‘It’s one stage,’ said 43-year-old businessman Abdulkarim al-Subaihi. ‘There will be other elections. For other countries, it’s a small step, but there will be no returning back.’
   John Purvis, a Euro MP from Scotland who visited a polling station in Riyadh, said ‘it’s a slow, step-by-step process,’ but it will be ‘almost impossible’ to go back.
   A seven-member delegation from the European Parliament met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who is also the kingdom’s de factor ruler.
   ‘We have to go at the pace of society. It would be dangerous to go beyond what society can accept,’ said Purvis, echoing the position of Prince Abdullah.
   ‘But,’ he added, ‘sometimes you have to push society.’
   Some in Riyadh said Prince Abdullah is more of a reformist than a large part of Saudi society, which is tribal by nature.
   ‘Democracy is an aspiration of the elite, not the people. The people want stability,’ said Subaihi.
   Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Saudi government has come under strong pressure from Washington to democratise the country, notably by allowing freedom of speech and reforming the educational system, considered by the US as the best way to prevent young Saudis heeding the calls of al-Qaeda.
   But the regime also has to consider the religious hierarchy, which has considerable influence in the kingdom, home to Islam’s two holiest sites.
   Another member of the EU delegation, French Socialist deputy Marie-Line Reynaud, believes Prince Abdullah ‘wanted to favour’ giving women the vote during the municipal polls, but would have come under ‘religious pressure’.
   For this reason, reforms are slow. The power of the Shura (consultative) Council, created in 1992 and whose members are appointed by the king, will this year increase from 120 to 150 members.
   Several council members said that on this occasion, women will definitely be named to the council for the first time.
   Also, numerous voters Thursday expressed their belief that the election of at least part of the council’s members is only a matter of time.
   But council president Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid, who is the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, said Wednesday that neither the election of council members nor the entrance of women to this body is on the cards.
   ‘We will recommend that women vote next time,’ Riyadh’s mayor, prince Abdul Aziz bin Ayyaf al-Muqrin, said Thursday after casting his ballot, in reference to the next municipal council elections in four years.

The US government has extended the visa clearances for foreigners studying or working in the United States in certain sensitive scientific and technical fields, the state and the homeland security departments announced on Friday.
   Visa applications for persons to study or work in certain sensitive scientific and technical fields in the United States are subject to an interagency clearance, called Visas Mantis, which has been used to screen against the illegal transfer of technology since 1998.
   In separate statements, the two departments said they have extended the validity of Visas Mantis clearances for the F (student), J (exchange visitors), H (temporary workers), L (intra-company transferees) and B (tourist and business) categories of visas.
   If the original visa has expired and a new visa application is filed to return to the previous study or work programme in the United States, another Visas Mantis clearance may not be required.
   International students (F visas) who have received a Visas Mantis clearance and been issued a visa will benefit from having that clearance be valid for up to the length of the approved academic program, to a maximum of four years, according to the statement issued by the State Department.
   Temporary workers (H visas), exchange visitors (J visas) and intra-company transferees (L visas) can receive a Visas Mantis clearance valid for the duration of their approved activity to a maximum of two years, while business visitors (B-1 visas) and visitors for pleasure (B-2 visas) can receive a Visas Mantis clearance valid for one year, provided that the original purpose for travel, as stated in the visa application, has not changed on subsequent trips, the statement said.
   Meanwhile, three so-called ‘visa-brokers’ were sentenced Friday after they had been found guilty of forwarding bribes to two former US government officials who then in return issued hundreds of illegal visas from American embassies in Sri Lanka, Fiji and Vietnam.
   The US justice department said in a statement that Vinesh Prasad, 33, and his brother Minesh, 30, both of California, and Kim Chi Lam, 53, also of California were sentenced to 57, 41 and 30 months respectively by a California judge for acting as visa-brokers in the scam.
   The three men’s sentencing follows the convictions of Long N Lee, 52, and her husband, Acey R Johnson, 34, two US officials who were found guilty of issuing 200 visas unlawfully, the department said.
   ‘In this era more than ever, it is vital to ensure integrity in the issuance of United States visas,’ US Attorney McGregor Scott of the Eastern District of California said in the statement.

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, called Saturday on the United States to ‘actively’ support diplomatic efforts led by three European Union countries to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for security guarantees.
   ‘I strongly encourage the US administration to actively support the Europeans’ diplomatic efforts,’ Schroeder said in a speech read at a security conference here by the German defence minister, Peter Struck, because the chancellor was ill.
   ‘Iran will only abandon its nuclear ambitions for good if not only its economic but also its legitimate security interests are safeguarded.’
   ‘In order to achieve this, it will be necessary to work with our American partner and in a dialogue with the region to develop sustainable security structures for the Gulf region,’ the German leader’s speech said.
   The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, called Saturday for transatlantic unity against Islamic extremism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction but said action should not be confined to issues where there is a NATO consensus.
   ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is the most impressive military alliance in the history of mankind, but it is what it is,’ Rumsfeld told the annual international security conference here.
   He said sometimes military action had to be taken quickly and to wait for consensus from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members would take too long.
   ‘The mission defines the coalition, but were you to reverse it and say the coalition defines the mission, that would have meant nothing would have happened in Liberia if you’re talking about that NATO coalition, or Haiti or any number of other activities,’ Rumsfeld said.
   ‘Our unity need not be a uniformity of tactics or views, but rather a union of purpose. Those who cherish free political systems and free economic systems share similar hopes.’
   Rumsfeld said North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had an essential role to play in confronting the major challenges facing the world today.

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, on Friday sharply criticised the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, saying she was a ‘slave’ to white masters in Washington who had branded Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny.
   Launching the election campaign of his ruling party, Mugabe referred to Rice as ‘that girl born out of the slave ancestry, who should know from the history of slavery in America, from the present situation of blacks in America that the white man is not a friend.’
   ‘She says Zimbabwe is one of the five or six outposts of tyranny. Ah well, she has got to echo her master’s voice,’ he declared.
   At a US Senate confirmation hearing in Washington last month, Rice, an African-American and one of the most influential members of president, George W Bush’s administration, branded Zimbabwe along with Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar and North Korea as ‘outposts of tyranny.’
   If Zimbabwe were indeed a tyranny, Mugabe argued, ‘the first person to lose his head would be Ian Smith’, who led the white-minority government in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was called before independence in 1980.
   ‘Smith, who was prime minister from 1965 to 1979, lives on a farm outside Harare and has remained an outspoken critic of Mugabe.
   ‘He enjoys the comfort of Zimbabwe, can travel–He writes books freely, against us even, and using that head, which, if we had been a tyrannical government, we would have long taken off,’ he added.
   ‘How many countries would have done what we did?’ Mugabe asked, adding that Smith enjoys ‘charity, generosity, kindness and forgiveness in our house.’

CNN’s chief news executive Eason Jordan resigned Friday, saying he wanted to protect the network from controversy over remarks he made during the World Economic Forum last month about the death of journalists in Iraq.
   According to some participants—he denies it—Jordan told an audience at the gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that US forces had deliberately targeted journalists.
   In a letter to colleagues Friday, cited on CNN’s website, Jordan said his remarks from January 27 were ‘not as clear as they should have been.’
   ‘After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq,’ Jordan’s letter said.
   Davos organisers have refused to release a transcript of the session where Jordan made the controversial remark, saying it was off-the-record, according to CNN.
   In his resignation letter Jordan underlined his respect for members of the US armed forces.

Anti-war protesters highlighted the ‘danger’ of an attack on Iran as they kept up their protests over coalition action in Iraq.
   Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chair Kate Hudson told the gathering in London: ‘Today we are calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq, but we must equally raise the call to build mass popular awareness of the danger - don’t attack Iran.’

Huge relief effort after deluge hits Pakistan
Pakistan launched a huge relief operation for some 20,000 people stricken by torrential rains in the southwest, as floods and avalanches pushed the death toll over 230 nationwide, officials said on Saturday. Authorities rushed in thousands of troops to help rescue efforts in the remote province of Baluchistan. Local government spokesman Razak Bugti said 500 people were missing after a dam burst following the country’s worst deluge in 16 years. Villages near the coastal town of Pasni bore the brunt of the destruction when waters breached the Shadikor dam, sweeping away people and houses. Provincial minister Sher Jan Baluch said the death toll from the disaster had risen
to 71.
— Reuters

French ISAF soldier commits suicide
A soldier belonging to the French contingent of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan has killed himself in Kabul, a spokesman from his battalion said Saturday. ‘He was going about his activities as normal and then committed suicide with his weapon at about 9:00am (0430 GMT)’ Friday, said the commandant, Xavier de Maillard. It was the first known suicide by a soldier from the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. In February 2004, a Canadian soldier was left with a serious head injury after attempting to take his own life. The identity, age and regiment of the French soldier would not be made public, Maillard said, adding that his suicide would be the subject of a police inquiry.
— AFP

Afghan cold weather claims 9 more lives
Nine more people have died in freezing weather in Afghanistan, raising the death toll in a winter cold snap to more than 76, officials said Saturday. The latest fatalities occurred in south-eastern Paktia region. Four people, including two infants, died from cold while five were killed when their vehicle slipped off a road late Friday, police officer Hay Gul Slimankhil said. On Friday the public health minister, Mohammad Amin Fatemi, said that more than 67 Afghans have died from freezing conditions as the war-battered country faces its coldest winter after years of droughts.
— AFP

Ten killed in China steel factory blast
Ten workers were killed and six were injured in a powerful explosion at a steel factory in north China’s Shanxi province, state media reported Saturday. The accident at the Zhaoxin Metallurgy factory in Nanguanzhuang village happened Wednesday after molten iron leaked from a furnace, the Beijing Youth Daily said. Of the 24 workers in the factory at the time, seven were killed immediately, while nine were hospitalised with injuries. Three of the injured later died, the paper said. Work safety supervision is notoriously lax in China, with 10,536 dying in industrial accidents in the first nine months of last year, according to the latest statistics available.
— AFP

US restriction on aid to Jordan waived
The US president, George W Bush, on Friday waived for six months a restriction on millions of dollars in aid to Jordan, which could have been blocked over Amman’s membership in the International Criminal Court. Under a US law passed last year, money from the 2.5 billion dollar economic support fund cannot go to countries that are parties to the court but have not signed agreements to give US citizens immunity from the tribunal. Jordan, a party to the court, signed a so-called ‘Article 98’ agreement on December 16, 2004, but the accord has yet to work its way through Jordan’s political process and go into force, according to a senior administration official.
— AFP

Protest against social reform in Russia
Thousands of people took to the streets across Russia on Saturday calling for the president, Vladimir Putin and the government to stand down over deeply unpopular social reforms. ‘These reforms are either the work of a president who is an enemy, or a president who is stupid,’ read the banners under which an estimated 3,500 people carrying red flags marched in Moscow. The Communists and some 20 organisations—unions, military and student groups gathered in the National Committee of Self-Defence—have called a nationwide day of protest Saturday against controversial welfare reforms.
— AFP

Two killed in Togo demonstration
Two people were killed and two policemen seriously hurt in an opposition demonstration Saturday against the assumption of power by Faure Gnassingbe, Togo’s Interior Minister Francois Akila Esso Boko said. ‘There were two dead,’ he said by telephone, adding that the police had fired in self-defence. ‘A group of gendarmes was surrounded by demonstrations in Be-Kpota district, they were going to be lynched,’ Boko said. ‘To escape, they fired warning shots that unfortunately hit two people, two demonstrators who were killed.’ Two gendarmes were seriously wounded and were taken to hospital in Lome, Boko said, adding, ‘Those are the only details we have at the moment.’
— AFP

Eight killed in Argentina riot
At least eight people have died during a prison riot in the city of Cordoba as hundreds of inmates held 20 guards and 42 other people hostages and threatened to throw some of them off the roof, officials said early Friday. Police said five inmates, two prison guards and one police officer had been killed in the rioting so far in Cordoba’s maximum-security prison of San Martin, 700 kilometres northwest of here. Unconfirmed television reports put the casualty toll since the riot began Thursday afternoon at nine dead and 30 injured, including nine police officers. More than 1,000 police and army troops joined by inmates’ relatives surrounded the facility as officials negotiated with riot leaders who are demanding reduced sentences and improved living conditions.
— AFP

Two Tajik men
killed in mine blast
Two Tajik men were killed and five injured when they wandered onto a minefield on the border between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Tajik interior ministry said Saturday. The men were herding goats and sheep at the time of the incident, officials said. At least 66 civilians including women and children have been killed and 50 seriously injured since Uzbek border guards mined the border in 2001 in an attempt to stave off Islamic rebels. The border has still not been clearly delineated by the two former Soviet republics, and the mined areas are not visibly marked, even those near villages, Tajik officials said.
— AFP