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Globalisation has ushered in an age of pervasive insecurity, eroding US power while helping Asian rivals and giving extremist groups room to exploit the discontented, a US intelligence report warned Thursday.
   The study by the US government’s National Intelligence Council, ‘Mapping the Global Future,’ forecast impressive, but unevenly spread economic growth until 2020. It rated the likelihood of great power conflict as lower than at any time in the last century.
   But it said the key factors that spawned international terrorism show no sign of abating over the next 15 years.
   ‘We expect that by 2020 al-Qaeda will be superceded by similarly inspired Islamic extremist groups, and there is a substantial risk that broad Islamic movements akin to al-Qaeda will merge with local separatist movements,’ the report said.
   Information technology will give terrorists greater manoeuvrability and may let them acquire biological weapons as know-how and technology moves online, the report suggested.
   ‘Our greatest concern is that terrorists might acquire biological agents, or, less likely, a nuclear device, either of which could cause mass casualties,’ the report said.
   Officials said more than 1,000 US and foreign experts were consulted and some 30 conferences were held around the world to give the analysis a global dimension.
   Acknowledging uncertainties as to where globalisation will lead, the report laid out four scenarios to illustrate the possibilities—from the relatively benign ‘Davos World’ to the nightmarish ‘Cycle of Fear.’
   Under that scenario, fear of proliferation ‘might increase to the point that large-scale intrusive security measures are taken to prevent outbreaks of deadly attacks, possibly introducing an Orwellian world.’
   Another scenario, dubbed ‘New Caliphate,’ examines how a global movement fuelled by a radical religious ideology could challenge western values.
   How the United States might survive radical changes in the political landscape to form a new global order is the subject of a third scenario, ‘Pax Americana,’ which questions the cost of bearing such a burden.
   ‘Davos World’ illustrates how robust economic growth led by India and China over the next 15 years could reshape the globalisation process and give it a more non-western face.
   ‘We foresee a more pervasive sense of insecurity—which may be as much based on psychological perceptions as physical threats—by 2020,’ the report said.
   A central preoccupation of the report is the rise of China and India, likening it in significance to the emergence of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century.
   Their emergence as ‘new global players ... will transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries,’ the report said.
   Forecasts indicate China’s gross national product will be second only to that of the United States by 2020, and India’s will have overtaken most European economies.
   Both countries are well positioned to become technology leaders, it said.
   Japan also will face an age crisis that could crimp its economic recovery and force it to re-evaluate its role. ‘Tokyo may have to choose between ‘balancing’ against or ‘bandwagonning’ with China,’ the report said.
   ‘The United States, too, will see its relative power position eroded, though it will remain in 2020 the most important single country across all the dimensions of power.’
   Global corporations will be more Asian and less western oriented, and growing numbers will be based in countries like China, India or Brazil, according to the report.

Japan will not forget its militarist past and will keep in mind the ‘dignity’ of Asian neighbours as Tokyo takes a higher international profile, the defence chief said Friday.
   ‘While we get along with Southeast Asian nations, we should never forget’ the past, the defence agency chief, Yoshinori Ono, said when asked about possible unease over Japan’s dispatch of troops to tsunami-hit areas.
   ‘We must build relations in which we can tell that the partner country thinks we have good intentions,’ he told reporters. ‘We should pay full respect to the dignity of the other country while looking at the past as it was.’
   Noting this year marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Second World War, Ono said: ‘We want to be reborn and cooperate for the sake of a new era.’
   Ono, who was just back from a tour of countries ravaged by the tsunamis, said he ‘felt the dignity’ of an independent country when Indonesian leaders told him that Japanese troops’ mission should last no longer than three months.
   The United Nations has voiced concern over the deadline Indonesia imposed on foreign troops, who are credited with reaching some of the most far-flung tsunami survivors.
   Nearly 1,000 personnel from the Japanese military are heading to countries battered by the December 26 waves that killed more than 165,000 people.
   The deployment is the biggest since Second World War by Japan, whose US-imposed constitution renounces the use of force.
   Japan is striving to show itself as an Asian power in the tsunami crisis and has also pledged 500 million dollars in grant aid to disaster-hit countries and offered to share its system to predict tsunamis.
   Ono said Japan was now ‘at a crossroad’ on whether its alliance with the United States should mind only the safety of the two countries or also work for world peace.
   Ono said the Japanese foreign minister and he hoped to hold talks with their US counterparts in February to discuss the US military transformation around the world.

Nearly half of all American adults believe US efforts for the Asian quake and tsunami relief are adequate, according to a poll out Thursday.
   Forty-eight percent of those surveyed in a poll by the Pew Centre for the People and the Press believe the US government’s contribution to tsunami victims is ‘about right.’
   Thirty-six per cent however believe the US government has done ‘more than its fair share,’ while 10 per cent who believe it should do more.
   The US president, George W Bush, has committed 350 million dollars for tsunami relief operations. US naval forces are also deployed throughout the disaster area providing emergency assistance.
   Also, three in 10 Americans said they have donated money to tsunami disaster relief and an equal number said they plan to donate, according to the Pew poll.
   Among those who have given, 36 per cent went to a church or religious group involved in relief efforts.
   And the quake and tsunami disaster was the most followed foreign news story in the United States in years that did not involve US troops, hostages or political leaders, according to the poll.
   Fifty-eight per cent of Americans followed the story very closely, according to the poll.

Palestinian militants killed six Israelis in a bombing and shooting attack at the main commercial crossing into Gaza, mounting their strongest challenge yet to president-elect Mahmoud Abbas and his call for non-violence.
   Israeli troops killed three gunmen in an ensuing exchange of fire at the Karni border terminal between Israel and Gaza, the army said. Militants said the men blew themselves up after infiltrating the heavily guarded compound late on Thursday.
   Three militant groups claimed the attack: Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Abbas’s Fatah movement.
   ‘We will continue to chase you and disrupt your sleep until you leave the land you occupied,’ the groups said in a statement on Friday. ‘(The attack) affirms the consensus of the resistance factions on the choice of Jihad (holy struggle).’
   Hours after the incident, there was no comment from Abbas, while Israel signalled it would weigh its response to the operation carefully to avoid weakening a leader it has said it could do business with after years of shunning Yasser Arafat.
   The Israeli transport minister, Meir Sheetrit, said on Israel Radio the terminal, a major lifeline for supplies to 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, would remain closed until further notice as a result of the attack.
   Abbas swept to power with an overwhelming victory in last Sunday’s presidential poll in the West Bank and Gaza and will be sworn in on Saturday to replace Arafat, who died on November 11.
   The new Palestinian leader has urged a cease-fire in more than four years of bloodshed to allow resumption of talks with Israel on peace and Palestinian statehood, a call rejected by militants he has said he planned to co-opt rather than confront.
   The Karni attack was the bloodiest incident in more than a week in Gaza, which Israel plans to leave later this year. It caused the highest number of Israeli deaths since a tunnel rigged with explosives blew up on December 12, killing five troops.
   ‘Israel must press ahead with ... its own military moves in order to try to prevent the next attack,’ the Israeli justice minister, Tzipi Livni, told Army Radio.
   But she said: ‘We must try to strengthen Abu Mazen (Abbas) as a leader, assuming that at some time or other he will be able take control of the terror organizations.’
   In a statement, the Israeli army said that militants had planted a large explosive at a door separating the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the terminal, blasting a hole through which three gunmen went through.
   ‘As a result of the explosion and during exchanges of fire which evolved at the scene, six Israeli civilians and three Palestinians were killed,’ the army said.

Respect for human rights was routinely flouted across the Middle East in 2004, including torture of prisoners and suppression of women’s rights, US-based Human Rights Watch reported Thursday.
   In its annual world review of human and civil rights, the group noted that the climate for human rights actually worsened in Iran last year, while little if any improvement was seen in the rest of the region.
   Egypt’s human rights record was marred in 2004, as in past years, by routine torture in prison and the suppression of non-violent dissent.
   Street children, homosexuals and prisoners detained in run-of-the-mill criminal cases were as likely as political detainees to become targets of torture and mistreatment, the rights watchdog said, and little progress has been made in amending discriminatory laws that undermine the status of women.
   Human Rights Watch found that basic human rights deteriorated in Iran, where solitary confinement is used indiscriminately and where plain clothes intelligence agents and paramilitary groups often violently attack peaceful protests. Freedom of expression and opinion are routinely suppressed.
   Authorities have shut down many newspapers, while numerous others self-censor to avoid government crackdowns.
   The rights group deemed the situation in Iraq to be ‘grave’ as violence escalates between armed rebels and US- and Iraq-led counter-insurgencies.
   ‘Both US forces and insurgents have been implicated in serious violations of the laws of armed conflict, including warcrimes,’ the report said.
   HRW noted that civilians have been hard-hit by insurgent attacks, becoming targeted by executions and the unfortunate victims of suicide bombings.
   The group noted a marked increase last year in abductions, which has had a particularly chilling effect on the free movement of girls and women.
   The situation in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip continued to be dismal in 2004, with armed clashes continuing to impinge on the civil freedoms.
   ‘In 2004, the Israeli army and security forces made frequent, and in the Gaza Strip, large scale, military incursions into densely-populated Palestinian areas, often taking heavy tolls in terms of Palestinian deaths and injuries as well as property destruction,’ the report said.
   The report noted ‘conditions of lawlessness’ throughout the occupied territories as ‘Palestinian gunmen carried out lethal attacks against persons alleged to have collaborated with Israeli security forces.’
   ‘Pervasive’ human rights violations persist in Saudi Arabia, despite international and domestic pressure for reform, Human Rights Watch wrote.
   Saudi women remain largely excluded from participation in the economy, politics, media and society.
   The situation is especially bleak for foreign workers, particularly female workers who are routinely mistreated and often sexually abused.

Aid agencies have prevented disease spreading through Indonesia’s tsunami-stricken Aceh, but the UN special coordinator for the disaster, Margareta Wahlstrom, said efforts to prevent the spread of disease should not be relaxed.
   ‘There are no alarm bells ringing, but we cannot slacken our efforts. The threat is still there,’ Wahlstrom told a news conference in Jakarta after returning from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.
   ‘As long as people live in groups where they haven’t yet got good sanitation and good health access, that will have to be given very top-level attention.’
   About 700,000 people were made homeless in Aceh by the December 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean and ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 162,000 in 13 countries. Thousands of Indonesia’s survivors are now living in makeshift camps.
   At a large public hospital in Banda Aceh, Belgian paediatrician Bert Suys, 38, said he had treated at least 13 children this week suffering from pneumonia after ingesting dirty water either during or after the tsunami.
   ‘We have actually had two children die this Wednesday night and one yesterday of severe pneumonia,’ Suys said.
   The bottom floor of the hospital was severely damaged in the tsunami and ruined medical equipment, furniture and beds are stacked around the muddy grounds outside the building.
   Suys said he was surprised he had not seen any cases of cholera or dysentery, considering the lack of clean water, and raised concerns about how Indonesia would cope once the foreign medical teams had left.
   ‘I think that once the Australians over here and the Germans and we are gone everything will collapse again. I’m afraid for that,’ he said, referring to other foreign medical teams staffing the hospital.
   But the comments from Wahlstrom and Suys contrast with an assessment
   overnight by the UN’s World Health Organisation, which said the risk of large disease fatalities was fading, particularly the threat from water-borne diseases.
   WHO said malaria was a key worry and the agency has started spraying areas in Aceh to kill the growing number of mosquitoes that spread the disease, which was already endemic in the region.
   Philip Maher, an emergency specialist with the aid group World Vision in Banda Aceh, said fast relief work could usually slow or stop the spread of most disease.
   Yet Suys and Fauzi Arief, 40, the deputy director of a military hospital in Banda Aceh, did not indicate there had been any increase in the normal number of malaria cases with Arief also backing Suys concerns about a cholera or dysentery outbreak.

Some 59 per cent of Israelis support prime minister Ariel Sharon’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip this year, according to a public opinion poll published on Friday.
   Thirty-two per cent oppose the plan, ratified in October by the Israeli parliament, while the remaining nine per cent expressed no view, according to the poll published in the daily Haaretz newspaper.
   Israelis, however, were less certain about the ability of the new Sharon government, sworn in on Monday, to implement the plan in the face of opposition from Jewish settlers, all of whose settlements in the Gaza Strip are to be closed, along with four isolated ones in the north of the West Bank.
   The poll showed only 44 per cent believed Sharon would succeed, while 29 per cent thought the contrary and 27 per cent had no opinion.

Pakistani authorities have helped 36 foreigners leave a Himalayan town which is under curfew following a flare-up of sectarian violence, officials said Friday.
   Among those evacuated from Gilgit—where a prominent Shia religious leader was to be buried Friday following a fatal ambush—are 14 South Koreans, five Chinese, one Japanese and 16 Afghans, a local official said.
   The authorities have also shifted 70 Chinese construction engineers and workers from the construction site of a hydro-electric project near Gilgit to a safer location, he said.

It was President Bush’s chief argument for waging war with Iraq–claims that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. But now, nearly two years after he ordered the US led invasion the search for weapons of mass destructions has ended without success.
   News Channel 8 talked with three people who are following this war very closely, and not one was surprised to hear they never found those weapons of mass destructions.
   One is studying the war as an academic, one protested the war from the beginning and one had a son right in the middle of it all.
   For three years the reason for the war in Iraq was the search for weapons of mass destruction.
   ‘Iraq’s the size of the state of California, it’s got all kinds of tunnels, caves, all kinds of complexes,’ the president Bush said in May of 2003. ‘We’ll find them.’
   That was 20 months ago. Now the White House has officially ended the search with none found.
   ‘It makes me feel that we were perhaps tricked,’ says Cindy Troy, whose son Jim was wounded fighting in Fallujah.
   ‘Did he think he was there to look for weapons of mass destruction?’ ‘I don’t think he ever did,’ she said.
   ‘There were never any weapons of mass destruction, and many of us said that back in 2002,’ said Rev Louise Higginbotham from the United Church on the Green.
   Back then, Rev Higginbotham was leading anti-war rallies.
   ‘It’s not I told you so, its tremendous sorrow–because these are American lives and Iraqi lives.’
   More than 1,300 Americans and around 100,000 Iraqis are dead. Rev Higginbotham wishes her protests could reach the president.
   ‘And I would ask him to repent of what he has done. Bring the troops home, to make amends to the Iraqi people.’
   But the damage to Iraq is already done, according to international experts like David Ives from the Schweitzer Institute.
   ‘I do not think they thought it through very well in terms of how they would handle this down the road and I think you’re seeing the results of it,’ he said. ‘I think a civil war is very possible.’
   But Cindy Troy still thinks her son and the troops she always supported did make a difference.
   ‘I think that if Saddam had stayed in power, or his sons had gone into power, I think the potential was definitely there for weapons.’
   That’s one of the reasons the White House says it’s good that we invaded Iraq. Democracy is another. Iraq is supposed to hold its first free elections in a couple of weeks, although the people we spoke with today doubt democracy will really work in Iraq.

The US president, George W Bush, said he regretted sending the wrong impression of the United States when he used phrases like ‘Bring ‘em on’ and ‘dead or alive’ in his first term and pledged to be more diplomatic.
   In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters to be broadcast on Friday, Bush said some of his past remarks were too blunt.
   ‘’Bring it on,’ was a little blunt,’ the president said in a transcript of the interview released on Thursday.
   ‘I remember when I talked about Osama bin Laden; I said we’re going to get him dead or alive. I guess it’s not the most diplomatic of language,’ Bush said.
   The president in July 2003 used the phrase ‘Bring ‘em on’ when speaking of violence attacks on the American forces in Iraq. The comment was widely interpreted as a challenge to the guerrillas but Bush said his intent was to rally the US troops.
   Days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Bush said he wanted to catch Osama bin Laden ‘dead or alive,’ a phrase that reinforced the US president’s international image as a cowboy.
   Bush said his wife, Laura, disapproved and ‘chewed me out right after that.’
   ‘So I do have to be cautious about, you know, conveying thoughts in a way maybe that doesn’t send wrong impressions about our country,’ he said.
   Asked about bin Laden, who remains at large, Bush reiterated his vow to ‘bring him to justice.’
   Bush’s expressions of regret over his use of language contrasted with his comments at a news conference in April 2004, when he struggled for an answer to a reporter who asked him to name his biggest mistake since the September 11 attacks.
   The president said he felt his administration had done a poor job bolstering its image in the Muslim world.
   ‘Our public diplomacy efforts aren’t–very robust, and aren’t very good, compared to the public diplomacy efforts of those who would like to spread hatred and–and vilify the United States,’ Bush said.
   But he said he thought the American efforts to aid victims of the tsunami would help improve Washington’s image abroad.
   Turning to domestic politics, Bush played down expectations that his brother Jeb, who is governor of Florida, would someday run for president.
   ‘I don’t think he’s interested in running,’ the president said.
   In a separate interview in USA Today, Bush said he was concerned about the Education Department’s decision to pay conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote his ‘No Child Left Behind’ law, which sets accountability standards for the US public schools.

Russia said it may take a long time to negotiate an official peace agreement with Japan ending hostilities dating back to Second World War and stuck firmly to its position on the disputed Kuril Islands.
   The comments marked a cold welcome to the Japanese foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, who was due to arrive Thursday ahead of talks aimed at soothing relations that have for decades been blighted by the border dispute.
   A top Russia foreign ministry official said he expected negotiations over the Kurils to drag on – comments that also put in jeopardy a planned trip to Japan by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
   ‘This work is ongoing and will continue. It is not easy and may require a lot of time,’ the news agency quoted the deputy foreign minister, Alexander Alexeyev, as saying.
   Russia has offered to hand back two of the four Kuril islands that Soviet troops grabbed from Japan at the end of Second World War as Stalin mulled an invasion of Nazi Germany’s ally.
   However, Tokyo demands the return of all four islands – which are known as the Northern Territories in Japan – before it can sign a peace agreement.
   Alexeyev, however, stuck firmly to Russia’s position and made it clear that Moscow was not prepared to hand back all four.
   ‘I have the impression that the Japanese side continues to insist that all four of the Kuril islands are Japanese territory,’ Alexeyev told the news agency.
   ‘In this, I see a fundamental disagreement, which is responsible for the difficulty of this question, and which is why it will require a lot of detailed negotiation,’ he said.
   Machimura’s visit was also aimed in part at paving the way for a mooted visit to Japan by Putin that had been tentatively planned for this month but which now appears to have been put on hold.
   The visit is meant to commemorate the signing of the first treaty between Japan and tsarist Russia 150 years ago.
   But some analysts speculate that it may be cancelled altogether should there be no progress to report on the island dispute.
   It appears unclear how the two sides can bridge their dispute because they insist on putting completely opposing interpretations on a 1956 agreement whose original aim was to put the disagreement to rest.
   Russia reads that deal as saying that Moscow would hand back two islands simultaneous with the signing of a peace treaty with Tokyo. It would then return the other two at an unspecified later date.
   But Tokyo says the 1956 deal requires Russia to return all four islands together and does not force Japan to sign anything before then.
   The dispute has far more than diplomatic ramifications.
   Japanese investment in Russia has been miniscule as a result despite the country’s proximity to Russia’s most important Far Eastern outpost Vladivostok and the Nakhodka port which services much of north-eastern Asia.

Hypertension will become a paramount global health problem by 2025, according to a study which predicts that 20 years from now the proportion of adults with high blood pressure will rise from one in four to one in three.
   The research, published on Saturday in the British medical weekly The Lancet, is an overview of 30 studies, published over 13 years, which looked at blood pressure in the population of dozens of countries.
   In 2000, according to the investigators, the total number of adults with high blood pressure was 972 million, comprising 333 million in rich countries and 639 million in developing nations.
   By 2025, this tally will rise by about 60 per cent, to reach 1.56 billion, or one in three of the projected adult population of the world.
   Developing countries will bear the brunt of the rise.
   Incidence of hypertension there will rise by 80 per cent—and the authors say this may be an under-estimate, given the rapid change of lifestyle in fast-growing countries—whereas the increase will be 24 per cent in developed countries.
   The causes for the explosive rise are ascribed to rising tobacco use, especially in Asian countries, fatty foods which cause artery-clogging cholesterol, physical inactivity and high levels of salt in processed foods.

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of ‘professionalised’ terrorists, according to a report released Saturday by the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency director’s think tank.
   Iraq provides terrorists with ‘a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,’ said the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, David B Low. ‘There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.’
   Low’s comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 US and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq’s new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.
   The president, Bush, has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of the US efforts to combat terrorism. But the council’s report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war. ‘At the moment,’ NIC Chairman Robert L Hutchings said, Iraq ‘is a magnet for international terrorist activity.’
   Before the US invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al-Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Britain’s Prince Harry, having made a ‘full and public apology,’ has no further plans to react to the furore over his appearance in a Nazi costume, a spokesman said.
   ‘We feel that Harry gave a full and public apology Wednesday as soon as it became clear that the photos could cause pain to people,’ a spokesman said.
   ‘And he feels that was a full explanation of ... an apology for what he did and that’s fine,’ the spokesman said.

UK, Thai embassies in Indonesia closed
The British and Thai embassies in Indonesia were closed Friday after bomb threats that sparked a security alert in the world’s largest Muslim-populated country as it struggled to cope with the tsunami disaster. The British embassy shuttered its building in Jakarta’s central business district and closed a consular facility in a neighbouring office block that is home to several foreign media organisations and near hotels frequented by Westerners. Police deployed bomb squads and anti-terror teams in force to the area and said they were taking seriously the threat against it and the nearby Thai embassy. Dozens of extra police, some carrying rifles, were on guard outside the two embassies Friday. Several armoured vehicles were also stationed outside.
— Reuters

Natwar to visit Pakistan next month
The Indian foreign minister, Natwar Singh, is to visit Pakistan next month in a bid to bolster the fragile peace process between the two south Asian neighbours, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday. Singh’s three-day tour, which begins on February 15, will be his first bilateral visit to Pakistan as foreign minister. The spokesman gave no further details. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir. They have, however, come a long way in patching up their differences since going to the brink of another war in 2002. The peace process has been at a delicate stage with both countries trying to keep it alive despite failing to achieve a breakthrough after several rounds of talks.
— Reuters

6 Afghan soldiers die in Taliban attack
Six Afghan soldiers were killed by Taliban-linked militants, while another four were injured by a bomb in a separate attack, officials said Friday. The six soldiers were killed Monday and their bodies were found the next day in the Washore district of Helmand, one of the most troubled provinces in Afghanistan’s south, provincial intelligence chief Dad Mohammad said. ‘They were ambushed by the Taliban as they patrolled in the region,’ he said. Militants from the Taliban, whose fundamentalist regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001, regularly attack foreign and local troops, mainly in the south and southeast of the country.
— AFP

Two shot dead in south Thailand
Two civilians were shot dead and six other people, including one policeman, were injured in a string of bomb attacks and ambushes by suspected Islamic separatists in southern Thailand, police said Friday. Suspected militants staged four shootings and three bombings in the southern provinces of Yala and Pattani since midday Thursday, police said. Suparerk Tassana, 45, a government official working on community development projects, was shot dead late Thursday at his friend’s house by five suspected militants. A five-year-old girl was wounded in the shooting.
— AFP

Russia brushes off Syria arms talks
Russia said Friday its relations with Syria were absolutely transparent and once again denied reports that it planned to sell a powerful new high-tech missile to Israel’s sworn enemy. ‘There are no negotiations taking place over this particular issue. There are preparations for the visit of President (Bashar) al-Assad to Moscow at the end of this month,’ the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters. Israel charges that Russia is planning to sell its latest-generation Iskander missiles to Syria, which harbours several militant groups, supports the Lebanese- based militia Hezbollah and is technically at war with the Jewish state. The issue was raised Thursday by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom during talks with Russian officials.
— AFP

Another US soldier faces court martial
A US soldier faces charges of murder at a court martial in Iraq Friday in connection with the killing of a severely wounded Iraqi teen-ager in a Baghdad slum district during a Shia uprising last year. The staff sergeant, Cardenas Alban of the 41st Infantry Regiment, from Fort Riley, Kansas, is charged with murder under the US Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Last month, Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was sentenced to three years in jail, reduction in rank and dishonourable discharge from the military after pleading guilty to charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Another US military officer, 2nd Lieutenant, Erick Anderson, has also been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder over the incident.
— Reuters

9 killed in Russian plane crash
All nine people aboard a Russian plane that went missing on Thursday have been killed, an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said on Friday. The wreckage of the aircraft was found early on Friday near an airfield in Siberia. ‘All nine people have died,’ the Emergencies Ministry spokesman said. Russian news agencies reported that local administration officials had been travelling on the Antonov-2, a small Russian-built passenger plane. On Thursday, the Emergencies Ministry said a plane with 10 people aboard disappeared from controllers’ radar screens in Siberia. It was not clear what caused the plane to crash, but officials said there would be an investigation. ‘Already on Friday a special commission will begin determining the reason for the catastrophe,’ a local administration official told Interfax news agency.
— Reuters

Yanukovich appeals
vote results
with court
Ukraine’s defeated presidential candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, on Friday filed his last appeal with the supreme court over a rerun vote won by his liberal rival, Viktor Yushchenko, Interfax reported. Yanukovich’s campaign members told Interfax that they filed the complaint with the high court early on Friday morning. A confirmation from the court was not immediately available. The filing of the complaint has been eagerly awaited in Ukraine because once the high court issues its ruling—which Yanukovich has admitted is unlikely to change the election results—a date can be set for Yushchenko’s inauguration.
— Reuters

Tajik opposition leader barred
from election
The leader of Tajikistan’s opposition Democratic Party will be barred from standing in legislative elections next month because he has been charged in connection with several serious crimes including terrorism, election authorities said here Friday. ‘In line with election law in Tajikistan, citizens suspected by the authorities of particularly serious crimes do not have the right to stand as candidates in legislative elections, the election commission said in a statement announcing the decision.
— AFP