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The India’s foreign minister, Natwar Singh, arrives in Islamabad on Tuesday for talks with Pakistani leaders aimed at restoring faith in a peace process that South Asia’s nuclear rivals began a year ago.
   No one expects a major breakthrough on the core issue of Kashmir, the Himalayan region at the centre of two of the three wars fought between the neighbours following their partition when they became independent from Britain in 1947.
   ‘I don’t think anything is going to happen on the Kashmir front,’ said Riffat Hussein, a defence analyst at Quaid-e-Azam University, who rued the lack of progress over the past year on a range of issues, not just Kashmir.
   The peace process certainly needs a boost as relations between Islamabad and New Delhi have cooled following a series of irritants in recent months.
   ‘This visit is a positive movement in a slow and steady process—there are bound to be some hiccups. I’m optimistic but with a small O,’ said Jasjit
   Singh, an independent analyst of strategic affairs based in New Delhi.
   Those hiccups included a violation of the ceasefire along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir last month, and the breakdown of talks over a dam being built by India that Pakistan claims will reduce the flow of water on its side of the border.
   Pakistan was also irked by the cancellation of a South Asia summit in Bangladesh due to New Delhi’s concerns about security in Dhaka and a political crisis in Nepal.
   Islamabad had hoped the meeting would have given another chance for the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, to give the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, a nudge
   on the peace process.
   Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani foreign secretary who has been involved in recent diplomatic exchanges, said he hoped Singh can lift some of the gloom.
   But the best that analysts hope for from Singh’s three-day visit is some tangible step forward. And no one is quite sure what that step could be.

India’s premier said Saturday he wanted the government to consider state election funding in a desperate bid to weed out corruption caused by political financing in the world’s largest democracy.
   ‘Political financing is emerging as a major source of black income,’ said the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, the
   architect of India’s economic reforms who took over after elections last May.
   More than 5,000 contestants from scores of national and regional parties were in the fray for seats in the Indian parliament’s lower house which accommodates 543 elected representatives.
   ‘Maybe a time has come when the issue of state funding of elections should be on the agenda of the nation so that it can help to clean up our politics of the curse of corruption,’ Singh said in the southern city of Bangalore.
   Singh said none of the country’s known political entities can claim to be clean.
   ‘We should move towards a system of greater transparency in the financing of political parties and in the spending on elections (as) no single party can claim it can deal with the problem by itself,’ said Singh, a member of the Congress party, India’s oldest political entity.
   India’s autonomous election commission has laid out a detailed blueprint for electoral conduct but most of the
   ules are flouted by parties and candidates in the run-up to provincial or national balloting in India.

The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said last week’s sacking of Nepal’s elected government by king Gyanendra was a setback to democracy in the Himalayan kingdom.
   ‘The political developments in Nepal are a setback to democracy and we sincerely hope things can be set right,’ Singh said during a visit to the southern Indian city of Bangalore on Saturday.
   Singh said India hoped the elected government and the royal family could co-exist without friction in Nepal, where the king has declared a state of emergency, imposed censorship and launched a clampdown on political dissent.
   ‘Constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy are twin pillars of Nepalese society. It is our hope that Nepal will move in that direction,’ Singh told reporters in Bangalore.
   The comments came as India on Saturday said it has called its chief envoy to Nepal, Shiv Mukherjee, to New Delhi, officials said.
   The ‘external affairs minister, Natwar Singh, has called our ambassador in Nepal to New Delhi on Monday for consultations,’ foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
   ‘Mukherjee will update the minister on the current situation in Nepal and also brief the government on the discussions he had with the Nepalese king on February 9,’ another ministry official said.
   India, which shares a nearly 1,600-kilometer border with the Himalayan kingdom, is concerned the Maoist violence in Nepal, which has claimed 11,000 lives since 1996, could spill into Indian states where the radical leftist groups are powerful.
   India, along with the United States and Britain, has been an important backer of Nepal in its drive to crush the insurgency that has sapped the economy of one of the poorest countries in the world.

Severe flooding and avalanches have killed around 350 people in Pakistan, officials said Sunday after a week of torrential rain and heavy snow, while 2,000 others were missing and tens of thousands left homeless.
   At least 250 people were killed in heavy flooding in the southwest. Another 40 were meanwhile feared dead in a new series of avalanches in the north of the country, where more than 50 people had already been confirmed killed by the snow.
   The dead in the flooded south-western province of Baluchistan included 80 people whose bodies were recovered after a dam burst late Thursday. The remainder came from six other districts inundated by around 10 days of heavy rain.
   ‘We have confirmed reports that 250 people have died in Baluchistan due to floods,’ the provincial chief minister’s media consultant, Raziq Bugti, said.
   More than 2,000 people were missing, while 40,000 had lost their homes in Lasbella, Gwadar, Khuzdar, Awaran, Ketch and Panjgoor districts, Bugti said.
   The air force, navy and army have mounted a massive relief operation in Baluchistan to rescue people and provide them with shelter, medical aid, clean drinking water and food.
   Paramilitary troops, police and private relief organisations are also taking part. The president, Pervez Musharraf, flew over the area Saturday and announced compensation of 100,000 rupees (1,694 dollars) to each family that has lost a member.
   He promised to help rebuild damaged infrastructure.
   The heavy rain caused the Shadi Kor dam near the town of Pasni to collapse late Thursday, washing away entire villages, roads and bridges. The 25-metre-high, 147-metre-long irrigation dam was built in 2003.
   Crisis management cell officials told the agency another seven people were killed and more than a dozen were missing after the small Gaggo dam burst in neighbouring Lasbella district late Saturday leaving about 100 people homeless.
   Four more people died in Babarshore village in Pasni district due to heavy rains, a senior official at Baluchistan’s crisis management cell said.

A festering illegal migrant problem is expected to dominate a landmark meeting between the Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, here Monday.
   Yudhoyono chose Malaysia to kick off a traditional round of visits by new leaders to fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—a sign of good relations, officials say—but the migrant issue is sensitive on both sides.
   Malaysia has reluctantly extended a conditional amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants after Indonesia said it was ill prepared to handle mass deportations after the December 26 tsunami disaster.
   But Kuala Lumpur has warned that a threatened crackdown under which illegal workers will be jailed and whipped will go ahead if they do not take the opportunity to go home voluntarily, with the chance of returning legally.
   For its part, Jakarta has complained that some Malaysian companies are refusing to pay the illegal workers ahead of their expulsion and has engaged lawyers to take legal action against them—a move which has raised eyebrows in Kuala Lumpur.

Fears of a post-tsunami disease explosion in Indonesia prompted the influx of huge medical resources, but with no sign of epidemic, a surfeit of foreign doctors is now struggling to find patients as hospital beds lie empty.
   In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, medical facilities that survived were inundated with casualties as what remained of the traumatised staff tended to injuries and sickness with limited equipment and medicine.
   Horrific scenes of hospital corridors lined with sick and wounded and concerns that tropical dangers like malaria, dengue and typhoid could spread like wildfire resulted in many nations mobilising teams of doctors.
   In the absence of major outbreaks and with most tsunami maladies limited to wounds or fractures that have now been treated, doctor caseloads have fallen sharply, but foreign medics continue to pour into stricken Aceh province.
   On February 5, the USNS Mercy—a 1,000-bed US navy hospital ship stationed at San Diego, California—arrived off the province’s coast to join the relief effort. In a week of activity, it has admitted just 68 patients. ‘To be honest, there’s more than enough foreign doctors here now,’ said Fauzi Arief, a senior army physician at the Kesdam military hospital in the devastated provincial capital of Banda Aceh.
   ‘The problem is now under control, although we do welcome the foreigners because they want to participate. But what we really need most now is medical equipment, particularly lab gear and resources.’
   With no emergencies to
   tend to, foreign teams from countries including Australia, Germany, Japan and Malaysia have found themselves mainly engaged in vaccination missions and the treatment of common ailments.
   ‘We were expecting that patients would still have wounds from the tsunami, but that was only for a few days,’ said the lieutenant colonel, Walter Schmidt, spokesman for a 30-doctor German medical team based at Banda Aceh’s battered Zainoel Abidin hospital.
   ‘Now we have a lot of patients that come to us just to know if they are sick or not with every little problem. So as far as I understand, there are no major outbreaks of disease or sickness from the tsunami.’
   Aceh’s citizens have been quick to seize on the unexpected glut of highly qualified physicians that has now built up in their province.
   ‘People come here because they have confidence in the German doctors. We’re pretty sure a lot of patients are visiting first Indonesian doctors and then the foreign ones to get a second and maybe even third opinion,’ said Schmidt.

Japan plans to penalise people who receive or carry counterfeit passports or pass them to others, as part of efforts to stop criminals including terrorists from entering the country, a newspaper reported Sunday.
   The justice ministry plans to submit legislation during the current parliament session to revise the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, quoting government sources.
   The planned revised law will punish those who receive, carry or pass to a third party forged passports or other documents with the aim of helping others illegally enter the nation, the mass-circulation daily said.

A grenade was tossed into a Tamil Tiger office in northern Sri Lanka, killing a person, while six others were hurt in clashes at protests against the murder of a rebel leader, the guerrillas said.
   The grenade was tossed into a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam office in the northern town of Mannar on Saturday evening, a report on the rebel’s website Tamilnet.com said.
   A civilian was killed and two people, including a LTTE political worker, were injured.
   Six people were meanwhile wounded in Jaffna, further north, when security forces and protesters clashed at a demonstration to condemn the killing Monday of a senior rebel leader and his colleagues by attackers in military uniforms.

A Sri Lankan couple is confident the release of DNA test results next week will reunite them with their baby boy, whom they say was torn from them by the deadly Indian Ocean tsunamis seven weeks ago.
   A court said Sunday it had received the results of DNA tests on the couple and baby, who was found under a pile of garbage after the December tsunamis that killed 31,000 people in Sri Lanka, and the magistrate would read them on Monday.
   ‘It is in a sealed packet and the magistrate will open it in his chamber on Monday,’ court registrar MS Mohamed
   Nazeer in the eastern city of Kalmunai said.

The US intelligence community, chastened by its fiasco in Iraq, has launched a broad review of its classified data on Iran to assess its suspected drive to manufacture nuclear weapons, US officials have said.
   The review, ordered by the National Intelligence Council, was expected to produce two major papers—a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and a so-called ‘memo to holders,’ the officials said.
   ‘It involves the entire intelligence community to write these products,’ said one of the officials.
   The official gave no specific date but said the new National Intelligence Estimate was ‘coming out’ while the memorandum was expected ‘several months from now.’
   The official made a point to say that the ‘memo to holders’ was ‘self-initiated.’ ‘It is not that somebody has requested it,’ the official added.
   The United States relied extensively on a similar intelligence review in arguing its case to go to war on Iraq in 2003, but the intelligence community has not produced a formal estimate on Iran since 2001.
   Analysts said the new focus on the country likely reflected new strategic priorities for the administration of the president, George W Bush, who has accused Iran of ‘pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.’
   A report in The Washington Post Sunday meanwhile revealed that the United States has been flying drones over Iran since April 2004, seeking evidence of nuclear weapons programmes and probing for weaknesses in Iran’s air defences.
   Such aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an eventual air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation, the Post pointed out.
   Officials familiar with the programme told the daily the surveillance had thus far added little new information about Iran’s nuclear activities.
   The CIA-led intelligence review was expected to parallel a reassessment of information about Iran being undertaken by the Senate intelligence committee, which was to hold a series of closed-door hearings on the matter in coming months, according to congressional officials.
   In its most recent report on proliferation matters, the Central Intelligence Agency suggested International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and safeguards would most likely prevent Tehran from using its declared nuclear facilities for its weapons programme as long as Tehran remains a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   In an international security conference in Munich, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for international and legal affairs said on Saturday the United States was the only country not convinced by repeated inspections that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons,
   Gholamali Khoshroo said an ‘unprecedented’ number of international inspections in Iran had shown that the country only had peaceful objectives
   in its nuclear programme.
   ‘The more they have searched, the more they have found that Iran has done nothing forbidden,’ Khoshroo said.
   ‘Sometimes I am saying that maybe America is the only country that is unhappy that these results have come out and that Iran is not looking for weapons.’
   ‘Iran is not looking for weapons of mass destruction, why is America not happy?’
   Britain, France and Germany are trying to offer economic and political rewards to convince Iran to dismantle an enrichment programme that the United States says is part of a covert plan to develop atomic weapons.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, warned here on Sunday of the danger of a ‘cascade’ of nuclear proliferation unless new steps are taken to prevent it and called for help to stop the killings in Darfur.
   Annan told a conference of defence ministers and security experts that ‘the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has helped prevent a cascade of nuclear proliferation.
   ‘But unless new steps are taken now, we might face such a cascade very soon,’ he said.
   Annan said a high-level panel which has proposed far-reaching reforms of the United Nations has also made ‘many forward-looking recommendations’ to beef up the system to prevent states from developing nuclear weapons.
   Without making direct reference to the current nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea, Annan said: ‘Member states must summon the will to act to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.’
   On Darfur, Annan called on NATO and the European Union to take action in the western Sudanese region to end violence between ethnic minority rebels and government-backed forces.
   A UN panel found that the civilian population in Darfur ‘has been brutalised by war crimes, which may well amount to crimes against humanity,’ Annan said.
   ‘People are dying, every single day, while we fail to protect them. Additional measures are urgently required. Those organisations with real capacity—and NATO as well as the European Union are well represented in this room—must give serious consideration to what, in practical terms, they can do to help end this tragedy,’ Annan said.
   ‘Remember this: our current collective shortcomings are measured in lives lost,’ he added.
   The UN Security Council is currently considering how to hold those responsible for the killings in Darfur to account for their crimes.
   Annan said the conflicts in Sudan—including the north-south conflict which has recently been the subject of a peace accord—should never have been allowed to develop.
   ‘It would have been far better if the chronic problems of governance that have long plagued Sudan had been addressed earlier,’ Annan said.
   ‘Our eventual goal must be a world of peaceful and capable states, able to exercise their sovereignty responsibly, and to deal with internal stresses before they erupt in conflict.’
   Annan called on the world to strengthen collective defences ‘to give us the best chance of preventing latent threats from becoming actual’.

Russia is concerned about the activity on its territory of US government-financed programmes ostensibly aimed at promoting democracy and civil society, the Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, said here Sunday.
   Asked if he saw a problem with US support for such programmes in light of a popular ‘orange revolution’ late last year in Ukraine that was encouraged by the US-funded groups, Ivanov stated: ‘Yes, I do.’
   ‘The notion of ‘democracy’ is not exactly one of a potato that can be transplanted from one field to another,’ Ivanov said at a news conference on the sidelines of the Munich security conference.
   Contrary to a picture of democratic roll-back in Russia painted by some Western media and governments, democracy ‘has been developing well’ in Russia albeit in a way that takes account of the country’s recent history and immediate priorities, he said.
   ‘If you look at Russian newspapers, you will see that most of them are critical of the Russian government,’ Ivanov said.
   Ivanov said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin and the US president, George Bush, would discuss later this month ‘in a frank and open manner’ Moscow’s questions about Washington’s intentions in relations with Russia during Bush’s second term.
   ‘We are prepared to stay the course’ of democracy, Ivanov said. ‘But we would like to remain masters of our own house at home.’

The new US commerce chief heads to Brussels this week, the latest administration member preparing for a landmark visit by he president, George W Bush, but despite the heavyweight wooing clear transatlantic strains remain.
   Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez’s visit, days before the US president arrives here next Sunday, follows trips last week by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
   Rice hailed a ‘new chapter’ in US-Europe ties battered by the Iraq war, while Rumsfeld welcomed European pledges to help NATO train Iraqi security forces, and played down the ‘ups and downs’ of the last few years.
   But neither could completely disguise continuing tensions, focused in particular on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as European Union plans to lift an arms embargo on China.
   Amid the handshakes and smiles, the French defence minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, underlined that turning a diplomatic page does not mean that the plot has been forgotten.
   ‘That everyone loves each other, that is fundamental,’ she said after talks with Rumsfeld at a NATO ministerial meeting in Nice Friday. ‘But that everything be forgotten? No,’ she said.
   If not forgotten, Washington hopes that Iraq war differences will at least be kept out of the spotlight during Bush’s trip to Europe, the centrepiece of which will be summit talks at NATO and the EU on Tuesday, February 22.
   The re-elected US leader has made much of his desire to bury the hatchet with Europe, making Brussels his first foreign trip since starting his second term in the White House last month.
   Perhaps almost as symbolically, Bush will have dinner on the eve of the summit with the French president, Jacques Chirac, who spearheaded Europe’s opposition to the 2003 Iraq conflict.
   Both sides will no doubt make much of their reconciliation for the cameras. But behind closed doors it is difficult to imagine that all will be sweetness and light.

Howard Dean, whose high-flying presidential bid collapsed in disarray one year ago, won the post of Democratic chairman on Saturday and promised an aggressive drive to mobilise voters and rebuild the party ‘from the grass roots up.’
   Today will be the beginning of the re-emergence of the Democratic Party,’ the former Vermont governor told Democratic National Committee members after he was elected party chairman by acclamation.
   ‘We are going to recognise that our strength lies at the grass roots,’ Dean said.
   Dean promised to plunge immediately into the effort to broaden the party’s appeal in all 50 states and lead Democrats back from a bruising election in November, when they lost the White House and more seats in both houses of Congress.
   Some Democrats have questioned whether Dean, an early and fierce critic of the president, Bush and the Iraq war whose blunt talk often sparked controversy on the campaign trail, was the right choice to lead a Democratic resurgence in conservative Southern and mountain states.
   But Dean countered those concerns in recent months by wooing party leaders with promises to focus on state operations, energise the grass roots and build an army of small donors similar to the one that supported his presidential bid.
   ‘We cannot run 18-state presidential campaigns and expect to win,’ Dean told DNC members on Saturday. ‘People will vote for Democratic candidates in Texas and Utah and West Virginia if we knock on their door, introduce ourselves and tell them what we believe.’

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, will warn Labour supporters today that complacency could cost them a third term in power as he sends the strongest signal yet that he will call an election for May.
   Polls point to a Labour
   victory, albeit with a reduced parliamentary majority, but
   Blair fears apathy and protest votes over the Iraq war could jumble the election arithmetic
   and let the opposition Conservative Party win by default.
   ‘He will say the election is not a foregone conclusion,’ a party aide said of Blair’s speech on Sunday to a Labour rally.
   ‘That we have to work for every vote and every seat and that if people do not come out and vote for us Britain goes back to a Tory government,’ the spokesman said.
   Labour won a landslide in 1997, after 18 years in opposition to the Conservatives, and again in 2001. Blair must name the poll date, expected to be May 5, about a month in advance.

For 20 years, Sarah Scantlin has been mostly oblivious to the world around her — the victim of a drunken driver who struck her down as she walked to her car. Today, after a remarkable recovery, she can talk again.
   Scantlin’s father knows she will never fully recover, but her newfound ability to speak and her returning memories have given him his daughter back. For years, she could only blink her eyes — one blink for ‘no,’ two blinks for ‘yes’ — to respond to questions that no one knew for sure she understood.
   ‘I am astonished how primal communication is. It is a key element of humanity,’ Jim Scantlin said, blinking back tears.
   Sarah Scantlin was an 18-year-old college freshman on September 22, 1984, when she was hit by a drunk driver as she walked to her car after celebrating with friends at a teen club. That week, she had been hired at an upscale clothing store and won a spot on the drill team at Hutchinson Community College.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, insisted in an interview broadcast on Sunday that his resignation was not ‘on the cards’ despite an escalating scandal over the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq.
   ‘Resignation is not on the cards for me at the moment,’ Annan told the BBC in an interview filmed during a trip to London earlier in the week.
   The final conclusion of an ongoing investigation into the oil-for-food scheme would help the public to understand its complexities, Annan said. From 1996 to 2003, the 64-billion-dollar programme was intended to help Iraqis cope with international sanctions imposed over Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which sparked the Gulf War.

Troops sent to crush Jolo rebels, 3 killed
The Philippines sent hundreds more troops to the southern island of Jolo to crush a week-old rebellion by Muslim separatists, as the latest clashes left three soldiers dead and 13 wounded. A battalion of infantry, comprising about 500 soldiers, arrived at the port of Jolo aboard a landing craft early Sunday to reinforce six army and Marine battalions and one army special forces company on the mainly Muslim island. Later in the day, more than 500 heavily-armed troops boarded the landing craft which set off for another part of the island. The troops refused to comment on their mission. The military said its forces had surrounded about 100 gunmen loyal to jailed Muslim politician Nur Misuari after six days of clashes that left more than 70 dead.

Japan may accept more Thai workers
Japan is considering accepting more Thai workers by relaxing employment conditions for cooks, masseurs and caregivers under free trade agreement talks. With the offer, Tokyo hopes to proceed with the talks with Thailand at a meeting in late February with the aim of reaching a basic FTA accord in a few months, the Kyodo news agency reported quoting unspecified sources. In their FTA talks, the two countries are ironing out details on elimination or reduction of import tariffs on sensitive agricultural products, including Thai rice. The proposed move may help foreigners secure greater access to the Japanese labour market as Japan gears up for FTA talks with other nations following one reached with the Philippines in November, which will allow Filipino nurses and caregivers to work in Japan, the report said.

Straw due in Pakistan for talks
The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, will Monday begin a visit to Pakistan for talks on rebuilding Afghanistan, fighting terrorism and curbing the spread of nuclear weapons, the foreign ministry said. Straw will meet the president, Pervez Musharraf, and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, as well as his counterpart Khurshid M Kasuri, a ministry statement said. It said the resumption of dialogue between Pakistan and India would also be on the agenda. During his three-day visit Straw will also visit the eastern city of Lahore where his programme includes a lecture on ‘Enlightened Moderation’.

Two aftershocks jolt Aceh
Two strong aftershocks less than an hour apart hit Indonesia’s tsunami-devastated Aceh early Sunday, prompting some panic in the provincial capital, witnesses said. Seismologists in Jakarta said the first quake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale struck at 8.22am (0022 GMT), followed by another tremor 40 minutes later at a slightly lower magnitude of 5.4. Both the aftershocks were cantered some 30 kilometres under the ocean floor around 88 kilometres southwest of the ravaged provincial capital Banda Aceh, they said.
— AFP

Castro warns of US threat against Chavez
The Cuban, Fidel Castro, warned that the life of leftist the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, is in danger, and said he would blame the United States if his close friend and ally are killed. Castro’s remarks came during a six-hour speech that lasted until 4:00am Saturday and closed an international globalisation conference in Havana attended by hundreds of economists. The Cuban leader said Chavez’s left-leaning ‘revolution’ threatens the interests of powerful people who tried to oust him with a short-lived coup in 2002 and several political campaigns against him. An eventual attempt to kill Chavez would aim to halt the changes happening in the South American nation, Castro said — the same way the United States and others tried to eliminate him as he turned Cuba into a socialist country.
— AFP

Annan concerned over Togo situation
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, is concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Togo after two people were killed and two injured in an opposition demonstration against the son of Togo’s late ruler, Gnassingbe Eyadema, a spokesman said Saturday.‘The secretary general is concerned over the deteriorating security situation in Togo,’ UN spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said in a statement.‘He expresses his sadness over deaths and injuries that have resulted from the violent incident in Lome ... He calls on all sides to exercise maximum restraint while efforts continue to find an early and peaceful solution to the country’s current crisis.’ — AFP
— AFP

Marchers demand US signs Kyoto
Hundreds of protestors marched in London to demand that the United States backs the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. The environmental campaigners marched with flags from the 136 countries which have ratified the protocol. The protest, organised by Campaign against Climate Change, finished outside the US Embassy, in Grosvenor Square, where a rally took place. In spite of pouring rain, more than 350 campaigners beat their drums and made speeches in an attempt to get their voices heard.
— Reuters

British charity accused of funding terrorism
The US authorities have accused a British charity of funding terrorist activities abroad, according to a report. The weekly Sunday Telegraph quoted a US treasury spokesman describing the Islamic Relief Agency, based in the central English city of Birmingham, as a group responsible for ‘terrorism funding’. It also said the ISRA’s blacklisting by Washington accounted for the expulsion last year of Yusuf Islam, the singer-songwriter formerly known as Cat Stevens, since he had at one time given money to it. Islam, 57, was deported from the United States to Britain last September after his name appeared on a security watch list when he was travelling on flight to Washington from London.
— Reuters

American nun shot dead in Brazil
A 74-year-old American nun was shot to death early on Saturday in Brazil’s Amazon jungle, where she worked for decades to defend peasant farmers and the rain forest from illegal loggers and ranchers. Two gunmen approached US missionary Dorothy Stang and shot her three times in the back at a settlement of landless peasants, 30 miles from the town of Anapu in the state of Para, police and fellow religious workers said. ‘She had no fear; this was her life, her fight,’ Ze Geraldo, a ruling Workers Party federal deputy, told Reuters by telephone after helping bring her body back to Anapu, where he said she would be buried, after an autopsy.
— AFP