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Hindu nationalist leader Lal Krishna Advani Friday criticised the Indian government for scrapping an anti-terror law which he said was crucial to deter attacks such this week’s storming of a disputed religious site.
   Six people were killed Tuesday when militants blasted their way into the heavily-guarded religious complex in Ayodhya and tried to attack a makeshift temple built by Hindu zealots in 1992 after they demolished the ancient Babri mosque.
   ‘A special law is required to deal with terrorism—we had made one but to please a particular section of the society the government repealed it,’ Advani told reporters on his way to Ayodhya.
   The Prevention of Terrorism Act, which gave the security forces extended counter-terrorism powers, was pushed through parliament in March 2002 by the then-Bharatiya Janata Party government, of which Advani was home minister.
   But a Congress-led coalition which ousted the Hindu nationalist BJP from power last year scrapped the law in December, saying it was too harsh.
   Advani said countries affected by terrorism had realised the need for special laws but the first thing the Congress-led government did was to trash the anti-terror legislation.
   ‘The only country where government has removed it is India,’ the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying.
   Advani, now leader of the opposition, later inspected the scene of the attack at Ayodhya and was shown where the militants had blasted a portion of a barricade to enter the compound.
   Advani is one of eight Hindu leaders accused of inciting a mob which tore down the historic Babri mosque in December 1992.
   This week a court overturned an earlier legal ruling that cleared Advani of the accusations and the Hindu hardline leader was ordered to appear before it on July 28.
   Meanwhile, security had been increased around the Babri mosque complex, one of the most bitterly contested religious sites in the world, in the wake of Tuesday’s attack, PTI said, quoting unidentified official sources.
   More concrete barricades had been erected and more security personnel deployed at the periphery of the disputed site, while all vehicles were being checked and people frisked, the report said.
   The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who is attending the Group of Eight industrialised nations’ summit in Britain, said the Ayodhya attack and Thursday’s London bombings underscored that ‘terrorism is a global scourge’.
   ‘Just a couple of days back, India faced a major terrorist attack and these incidents show that global terrorism does not recognise international boundaries and we all need to work together to counter it,’ Singh said.

Ten members of the cabinet of Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, resigned Friday and urged the Philippine leader to step down, saying she has been crippled by an election scandal and has lost the ability to govern.
   But a defiant Philippines president Gloria Arroyo vowed Friday to remain in office as key allies and senior aides abandoned her, joining business leaders in calling for her resignation over alleged vote-rigging.
   With former president Corazon Aquino and eight cabinet members urging her to give way to vice-president Noli de Castro, and with leaders of the influential Roman Catholic church expected to do the same, analysts say she appears doomed.
   But Arroyo, an US-educated economist dug her heels in, naming new finance, budget, trade, education, social welfare and agrarian reform ministers. She did not replace two presidential advisers of cabinet rank who also quit Friday.
   ‘With all due respect to former president Aquino and others, I say that their actions cause deep and grievous harm to the nation because they undermine our democratic principles and the very foundation of our constitution,’ Arroyo said.
   The political crisis erupted early last month after audio tapes surfaced in which Arroyo was purportedly heard plotting to fix a million-vote victory against movie icon Fernando Poe in the May 2004 presidential election.

Indonesia Friday downplayed international criticism of its failure to account for atrocities committed by pro-Indonesian forces during East Timor’s 1999 independence vote, saying it was time to leave the past behind.
   Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said Indonesia and East Timor would proceed with reconciliation plans through a joint panel called the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) rather than dwell on past events.
   ‘There are those who do not agree with us, but what is important is our relationship, our shared destiny. Hence, we will forge ahead according to our own light on what is true, just and sensible,’ Wirayuda said.
   He was speaking during a meeting with an East Timor delegation led by Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta.
   ‘The CTF presents a unique opportunity for our two countries, being the most directly concerned, to bring both truth and justice into the light of day, thereby consolidating our friendship,’ Wirayuda said.
   Indonesia has rejected a recommendation by the UN Commission of Experts that an international tribunal be set up to judge military officers and others accused of atrocities in East Timor in 1999.
   Pro-Indonesian militia gangs, allegedly directed by Indonesian army officers, went on a rampage before and after East Timorese voted for independence from Jakarta in a UN-sponsored ballot in August of that year.
   They killed about 1,400 independence supporters and laid waste to much of the infrastructure.

Several Palestinian militant groups have rejected an offer by the president, Mahmoud Abbas, for them to join a national unity government.
   Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine made a counter-proposal for a committee to oversee Israel’s pullout from Gaza.
   Hamas has described Abbas’ latest offer as a ploy to avoid commitment to the elections.
   Abbas was in Damascus on Thursday, where some militant leaders are based.
   The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, said he would support attempts by Palestinian factions to end divisions.
   Speaking after a meeting with Abbas on Thursday, he said national unity was the best guarantee for achieving the legitimate goals of the Palestinian people.
   Correspondents said the Palestinian leader’s visit to Damascus also indicates a warming in relations between the two sides, which were frosty under his predecessor Yasser Arafat.
   Abbas has now gone on to Lebanon, for the first visit there by a Palestinian leader since that country’s 1975-90 civil wars.
   Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abu Shallah said his group had told Abbas that they would not join the cabinet.
   PFLP Damascus representative Maher Taher said the question of its participation was ‘excluded for the moment’.
   Hamas rejected the offer earlier in the week.
   But its political bureau deputy head Moussa Abu Marzouk said his group wanted a national committee instead.
   ‘We are with national unity both in terms of our policy and practices, but we are not with the government of national unity,’ he said.

Australia said it has granted a permanent visa to a fugitive Chinese diplomat and his family who wanted political asylum.
   Chen Yonglin, a former political consul in Sydney, has been in hiding in Australia with his wife and six-year-old daughter since May.
   Chen has said he was defecting because of China’s continued persecution of dissidents.
   The Chinese government said Chen made up stories to avoid going home.
   Chen has said he feared for his safety if forced to go back to China.
   The diplomat, who alleged that the Chinese have an extensive spying network in Australia, was responsible for monitoring Chinese dissident activity in Australia, including the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
   He said Australian authorities had initially refused his asylum request on 26 May.

A post-Soviet arc of crisis stretching from the oil-rich Caspian Sea to the mountains of Central Asia is beginning to worry regional experts that fresh upheavals and revolutions are on the horizon.
   Varying mixtures of social misery, authoritarianism, corrupt governance, and outside agitation continue to fuel political and social turmoil. Violence has already marked the run-up to Sunday’s election in Kyrgyzstan to replace the former president, Askar Akayev, who fled the country in March after after a one-day, lightning revolution.
   Making the region increasingly important to Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, many of the six mainly-Muslim former Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan contain vast reserves of oil and gas.
   Most are also allies in the battle to contain Islamic extremism and fight terrorism. The US has maintained air bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to provide support for its effort in Afghanistan. But on Tuesday, a regional alliance led by China and Russia called for the US to set a deadline for its departure from the region.
   Many see this as a move by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to bolster the regional clout of China - hungry for Central Asian resources - and remove US influence from Russia’s own backyard.
   Because these countries are on the doorstep of Afghanistan, where there is a post-Taliban surge in poppy production, they are also known as a lucrative throughway for narcotics. Some Russian experts said drug lords often make common cause with religious extremists, to sow rebellion and expand their influence.
   All of these countries face near-term social and political challenges that threaten to ignite upheavals, which in turn could spread shock waves around the region.
   In Kyrgyzstan, since Akayev was unseated, the country of 5 million has staggered through economic stagnation and political crisis under its provisional president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
   Riots rocked the southern city of Osh last month, where unrest in Uzbekistan has radicalised many, experts said. Two weeks ago a crowd supporting banned presidential candidate Urmat Baryktabasov stormed Bishkek’s main government compound before being ejected by baton-wielding security forces.
   Six candidates are vying in Sunday’s presidential polls, with an electoral alliance between Bakiyev, who hails from the ethnically diverse south, and northern strongman Felix Kulov considered the most likely victor.
   In Uzbekistan, an uneasy calm has set in since government forces put down a rebellion centred in the Ferghana Valley town of Andijan in May.
   The president, Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country of 26 million with a heavy hand since Soviet times, blamed ‘Islamic militants’ for the uprising. The government insists that 176 people died mostly armed rebels. Human rights groups said more like 750 mostly innocent people were killed.
   Perhaps the most stable state in Central Asia is Kazakhstan. The oil-rich country of 17 million has seen blistering economic growth under the long-time president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
   Turkmenistan is a North Korea-like dictatorship, run by former Communist Party chief Suparmurat Niyazov. The country of 5 million has the world’s fifth-largest natural gas reserves but no observable public politics. Experts said the crunch will come when Niyazov dies, and rumours persist that he may be unwell.
   Azerbaijan is the first post-Soviet dynasty. Presidency of this oil-rich Caspian state of 8 million was passed from ailing strongman Gaidar Aliyev to his son Ilham in 2003 elections - widely regarded as rigged. Though oil revenues are pouring in, and may grow when the US-backed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline begins pumping Caspian crude later this year, poverty is widespread.
   Thousands of oppositionists took to the streets of Baku last month, many sporting orange banners - symbols of Ukraine’s democratic revolution - and portraits of President Bush, to demand that November’s upcoming parliamentary polls be free and fair.

Four Islamic rebels and four Indian soldiers were killed in a fierce gun battle Friday in restive Indian Kashmir, the defence ministry said.
   The gunfight occurred at Bimbher Gali in Rajouri district 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of the winter capital Jammu when Indian border guards spotted border infiltrators, ministry spokesman colonel DK Badola said.
   ‘The infiltrators equipped with sophisticated weapons opened indiscriminate fire on our soldiers resulting in the death of one armyman,’ he said, adding troops retaliated killing two rebels.
   Another three Indian soldiers and two rebels were killed later, he said. Large quantities of arms and ammunition were recovered from the dead militants.
   Violence has continued in Kashmir despite a 19-month-old peace process between India and Pakistan to resolve their pending disputes, including the vexed question of Kashmir.
   The two neighbours hold the Himalayan region in part and claim it in full.
   More than 44,000 people have died in Kashmir since the eruption of the insurgency against Indian rule nearly 16 years ago.
   India accuses Pakistan of sending in Islamic rebels from its zone of the disputed region to stoke the rebellion in Indian-held Kashmir.
   Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support to militants it regards as freedom fighters engaged in a struggle for self-determination.

The US military in Japan on Friday put troops at the biggest US base in Asia under a night curfew after outrage on the southern island of Okinawa over a serviceman’s alleged sexual assault of a young girl.
   The 23,000 residents of Kadena Air Base, who include civilians, will be required to be on site or in off-base quarters from 1:00 am to 6:00 am until further notice, a military statement said.
   ‘The standdown is in response to a heightened number of safety and disciplinary incidents during the past year, most of which occur between 1:00 and 6:00 am,’ the statement said.
   It said Kadena’s leadership wanted all members of the base to ‘serve as good ambassadors of the United States and always uphold high standards of conduct and discipline, on base and off base, on duty and off duty.’

Sri Lanka’s shaky minority government said Friday it expected to survive a crucial budget vote later this year and would not be forced to hold snap elections, despite losing the support of its main Marxist ally.
   Sri Lanka’s constitution requires that the government resign if a finance bill is defeated on the floor of the house. Unless the opposition agrees to take over power, the country must face a snap election.
   The JVP walked out last month protesting a tsunami aid-sharing deal with Tamil Tiger rebels.

G8 leaders, defying a bloody terrorist bombing in London, announced Friday a major commitment to increase annual development aid to Africa and other countries.
   A statement at the end of a three-summit said commitments from the Group of Eight and other donors would mean an increase in aid to Africa by $25 billion (21 billion euros) a year by 2010, more than doubling aid to the continent compared with 2004.
   The statement, citing an estimate from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, that donor pledges to official development assistance for all developing countries would increase by around $50 billion a year by 2010.
   The British prime minister, Tony Blair, speaking of a ‘new partnership with Africa,’ said the G8 leaders had agreed a ‘$50 billion uplift in aid’ that was apparently destined for all developing countries.
   A British government official said later that most of the money would be earmarked for Africa.
   The British charity Oxfam said the $50 billion increase by 2010 fell short of the UN Millennium Development Goals by $50 billion. It said current development aid amounts to just under 80 billion dollars a year.
   Blair said the Group of Eight’s promise of help for the world’s poor contrasted starkly with the cruelty of terrorism shown in Thursday’s bombings.
   The package also includes ‘the signal for a new deal on trade, the cancellation of the debts for the poorest nations, universal access to AIDS treatment,’ said Blair.
   He did not make clear over what period the aid would be delivered, but the draft anti-poverty plan discussed ahead of the summit mentioned an extra 50 billion dollars in aid a year by 2010.
   Nor did Blair specify how much debt was cancelled. G8 finance ministers agreed last month to immediately write off 40 billion dollars to 18 of the world’s poorest nations, most of them in Africa.
   Blair also told reporters there was a plan for a new peacekeeping force in Africa in exchange for the commitment of African leaders to democracy, good governance and the rule of law.
   ‘All of this does not change the world tomorrow, it is a beginning, not an end,’ he said. ‘None of this today will match the same ghastly impact of the cruelty of terror.’
   Blair was speaking at the Gleneagles golf resort with the leaders of the G8 industrial countries and five African countries beside him.
   The G8 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Shaken but defiant, Londoners headed to work on trains and buses Friday barely 24 hours after a wave of deadly bomb blasts tore through the city’s public transport system, but many commuters also chose to stay away.
   The London underground, closed after three separate explosions ripped through the network within minutes of each other, resumed partial service, although transport police said two of the lines hit by the blasts would remain closed all day. Buses were also running after the attacks that killed at least 37.
   Police and rail staff stood guard in station entrances and along the web of passages that lead to the underground train platforms, offering a sense of security to commuters as they headed to work with the horror of Thursday’s carnage—which also injured hundreds—still fresh in their minds.
   The usual morning rush hour, however, failed to materialise with many people clearly electing to stay at home or to avoid public transport to get to the office.
   ‘It’s my first journey after the attacks. It’s very good to get it over and done with,’ said Ian Hunt, a 48-year-old accountant who took an over ground train to Liverpool Street, where at least seven people were killed the previous day, before transferring to the underground.
   ‘It feels just like a Sunday though because there are so few people,’ Hunt said as he emerged from Tottenham Court Road station—usually a hive of commuter activity, but the crowds were much thinner than usual even at 8:00 am (0700 GMT).
   The atmosphere at stations and on the underground trains was tense as passengers warily looked around themselves or buried their faces behind newspapers, emblazoned with shock headlines about the previous day’s attacks.
   Highlighting the tension, a sports bag left on the forecourt of Liverpool Street, a main London terminal on the edge of the financial district, sparked a brief scare after it was accidentally forgotten by its owner.
   She sheepishly returned to claim it, apologising profusely to watching police, while some alarmed commuters shouted insults at her absent mindedness.
   ‘I don’t feel safe because of what happened,’ said Edyta Tziubi, a 25-year-old Polish assistant shop manager as she prepared to head for Paddington, on the western fringe of the city centre, from Liverpool Street station.
   Tziubi said that people on the train she had taken to travel into the city were ‘checking each other out—because maybe somebody amongst us is a bomber.’
   An underground official who was not on duty on Thursday meanwhile returned to work to confess: ‘I am nervous. I mean, we are trained for this sort of thing.

Europe’s press reacted with horror Friday to the string of bomb attacks in London which left at least 37 people dead, warning that the atrocities represented a threat that reached beyond Britain’s borders.
   Many newspapers across the continent also said the blasts proved that the so-called global ‘war on terror’ launched by US president George W Bush had not yielded any significant results.
   The German economic daily Handelsblatt said it was repugnant that the attacks occurred as Group of Eight (G8) leaders were meeting in Britain, ‘deciding to make a great effort in the fight against poverty’.
   ‘This shows the extent to which Islamist terrorism is divorced from western concepts,’ it added.
   The Paris-edited International Herald Tribune said in an editorial that it was ‘impossible to miss the twin ironies’ of the attacks, which took place as G8 leaders were meeting and after London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
   Several dailies said the London attacks showed that Bush’s ‘war on terror’ had not been a success, with the center-left Greek paper Ta Nea saying: ‘The West showed itself to be weak in facing up to the problem.’
   ‘We must remain vigilant. The fight against terrorism must be an absolute priority,’ said the popular Dutch daily De Telegraaf.
   ‘It is... only by standing together that we can confront and in the end win over the terrorists,’ added Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter.
   In Denmark, the Politiken daily, referring to the US-led offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq, warned against any further military action in the ‘war on terror’.
   ‘Now it is however important for Western leaders to throw cold water on the flames. A heated response to the terror attacks in the shape of new military actions would be a very dangerous course to take,’ it wrote.
   ‘The attack should make the West, and especially Denmark, reevaluate our strategy in the war on terror.’
   Like many European newspapers, the left-leaning French daily Liberation praised Londoners for their courage under fire, saying: ‘An absence of panic and an impressive composure is the measure of a people whose spirit of resistance we have become familiar with since at least 1940’.
   Meanwhile, France’s main sports daily L’Equipe broke with tradition by splashing world news onto its front page.

An Iraqi government spokesman said Friday that Egypt needs to clarify how far it went in reaching out to insurgents, after the murder of its top envoy at the hands of his alleged al-Qaeda kidnappers.
   And in the wake of the London attacks, Iraq called for more resolve by the international community to support Baghdad in its fight against al-Qaeda-linked militants operating in the country.
   The Egyptian president’s office confirmed a website statement by the group of al-Qaeda’s Iraq front man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that it had executed career diplomat Ihab al-Sharif.
   Sharif, 51, was abducted in the capital at the weekend in the first kidnapping and killing of a head of mission since a spate of foreign hostage-takings began in Iraq more than 13 months ago.
   A senior official at Egypt’s foreign ministry said Sharif was the charge d’affaires and denied having elevated him to ambassadorial status despite a statement by the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, in late June that Egypt was the first Arab country to name an ambassador to Baghdad.
   ‘The body has not been recovered,’ Iraqi government spokesman Leith Kubba said, adding that the only sources on Sharif’s murder so far were the Internet statement and the Egyptian government confirmation.
   ‘But one element we are looking into is the fact Egypt tried to help in reaching out to Sunni Arab militant groups and even insurgents,’ Kubba said.
   ‘That could provide some insight into how he left his home without guards and was kidnapped from the street.’
   Sharif was nabbed by gunmen after stopping near a kiosk in the tense Al-Jamiaa neighbourhood on Baghdad’s west side.
   A short video on the website that posted the statement of Sharif’s killing showed him blindfolded and recalling his career, which included a stint at the Egyptian embassy in Israel.
   ‘We know that Egypt worked broadly on reaching out to Sunnis. It is up to the Egyptian government to clarify how far they went,’ Kubba said.
   Egypt, a predominantly Sunni country, has long had a strained relationship with Iraq.
   While opposing the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein, it has had to tread a fine line given the strong Islamist, anti-American and anti-Iraq war feelings in Egyptian society.
   Egypt is home to Al-Azhar, the highest authority in mainstream Sunni Islam.
   Sunni Arabs who dominated Saddam’s rule before its fall in March 2003 are now blamed for fuelling Iraq’s raging insurgency.
   Although they boycotted the January election, the Iraqi government has made efforts to bring them into the political process.

Nearly 90 countries including the world’s largest nuclear powers agreed on Friday to close loopholes in an international pact on the protection of atomic materials against terrorists and saboteurs.
   The United Nations nuclear watchdog said 89 countries at a conference in Vienna adopted changes to a 1979 treaty that will require states to boost security at nuclear sites and cooperate more to track down stolen or smuggled atomic materials.
   A key change extends the convention’s existing rules for securing international shipments to cover nuclear materials being shipped or stored within a country, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.
   ‘This new and stronger treaty is an important step toward greater nuclear security by combating, preventing, and ultimately punishing those who would engage in nuclear theft, sabotage or even terrorism,’ IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said.
   The changes to the 1979 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material were proposed by the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and 20 European states and backed by Russia and China.
   According to the IAEA’s Web site, among the countries not party to the CPPNM are Iran, Georgia and Kazakhstan—all states that at some time represented significant nuclear security threats, according to non-proliferation analysts.
   The amendments require signatories to protect nuclear material by adopting proper legislation, ensuring that a competent regulatory body is chosen and taking any other appropriate measures.
   The IAEA said the new rules will come into effect once they have been ratified by two-thirds of the 112 states that are parties to the original convention, a process that is expected to take several years.

Cuba on Friday braced for the arrival of ‘major’ Hurricane Dennis after the storm dumped rain on Jamaica, while Florida authorities issued a state of emergency and ordered evacuations.
   The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said an ‘Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft indicates that major Hurricane Dennis has continued to strengthen,’ packing winds in excess of 215 kilometers per hour, with intense rain. The centre also warned that storm surge flooding and mudslides were possible within the path of the hurricane.
   The full brunt of the storm, which was upgraded to a category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale—on which five is the maximum—looked set to hit the central part of Cuba.
   At least 200,000 people have been evacuated from their homes on the island, civil defence officials said. The Cuban president, Fidel Castro, went on national television to reassure the population that the country was ready to meet the challenge.
   ‘We have an important organisational and defence plan functioning like clockwork,’ Castro said, adding that the goal was to ‘save people, that not one life is lost.’
   The centre of the powerful hurricane skirted past the eastern tip of Jamaica Thursday afternoon but dumped rain and flooded roads on the island as well as on parts of southern Haiti.
   In Florida, governor Jeb Bush, the US president’s brother, declared a state-wide emergency, and evacuations started in the Florida Keys, a highly exposed chain of islands linked to the mainland by a single road and a series of bridges.
   Forecasts by the US hurricane centre showed that the storm could eventually make landfall in north-western Florida.

Mobile phone footage captured just seconds after the four attacks on London’s transport network brought home the full horror of the carnage, the worst the city has seen since the end of World War II.
   Dozens of terrified passengers on three underground trains and near a bus attacked in Thursday’s rush-hour blasts reached for their phones not just to call loved ones but also to record the carnage virtually as it happened.
   The pictures clearly showed the blackened faces of passengers who had managed to escape, as well as one woman curled up in agony in the fetal position on the pavement. Blood spattered nearby buildings.
   Survivors found their mobile phone calls jammed immediately following the blasts as tens of thousands of people tried to contact loved ones. Operators logging more than a million calls as the system went into meltdown.
   One man, Alex Chadwick, took pictures of one of the attacks on the London Underground with his mobile, capturing passengers covering their mouths as acrid smoke swirled around them.

The bombers who spread death and chaos across London’s transport network slipped under the radar of police and intelligence services who said there was no advance warning of the capital’s worst militant attack.
   Security analysts said it was far too early to apportion blame to the intelligence community over an operation that some suspected was the work of a small, autonomous group of local militants inspired by al-Qaeda.
   The home secretary, Charles Clarke, confirmed media reports that intelligence chiefs had reduced the threat level from al Qaeda from ‘severe -general’ to ‘substantial’ recently following Britain’s general election.
   But he said even if the alert level had been higher, it was unlikely the bombers could have been stopped.
   ‘At the end of the day we are looking for needles in a very large haystack, the city of London,’ Clarke said.
   ‘We’re obviously looking very, very carefully at all our intelligence to see whether anything was missed, but in fact we don’t believe anything was missed and it simply came out of the blue.’
   But Anthony Glees, an intelligence specialist at Brunel University, said questions would be asked as to why the threat level was reduced shortly before Britain was due to host a Group of Eight summit of the world’s most powerful leaders.
   ‘They did downgrade the threat even though it was objectively quite clearly a time of heightened political interest. I think questions will be asked about it,’ he said.
   Britain has reformed its security structures, creating a new body—the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre—to bring together the domestic, foreign and military intelligence services, the GCHQ communications interception centre and the police.

Hundreds of survivors of the 1995 massacre in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica began a three-day march here Friday ahead of the 10th anniversary commemorations on July 11.
   The marchers are retracing the route they used a decade ago to escape the UN-protected town as Serb forces overran it and began a week-long killing spree which left some 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead.
   They will eventually join some 50,000 people who are expected to gather Monday at the memorial cemetery outside Srebrenica to mark the anniversary of the slaughter, the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.
   ‘Every day, every hour was horrifying,’ said Ilias Pilav, 40, a surgeon who was among the few thousand men who managed to flee the massacre, classified as an act of genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
   ‘Maybe once we face this path again it will be easier to live with the memories of the past.’
   Srebrenica remains a synonym of the brutality of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, and a stain on the reputation of the United Nations whose peacekeeping forces betrayed the hopes of thousands of residents.
   ‘I have unfinished matters here. I didn’t witness the massacre but I feel part of it,’ said Gerry Kremer, a doctor who was with the Dutch peacekeepers charged with protecting Srebrenica at the time.
   The remains of another 610 victims of the massacre—aged between 14 and 75 — are due to be buried at the memorial centre alongside over 1,300 already laid to rest there.

Taliban vows to kill ‘captured’ American
The US military searched for an eleventh day on Friday for an American commando missing in eastern Afghanistan, while the Taliban said their guerrillas were interrogating the man and would kill him within days. The US military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar province on June 28, has been captured. And Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi has given no evidence to back his claim that the guerrillas are holding him. Speaking from an undisclosed location on Friday, Hakimi told Reuters he was unable to provide the name or a description of the commando due to difficulties contacting guerrillas holding him.

KL court jails author for false info on Anwar Ibrahim
A Malaysian court Friday sentenced the author of a book that argued against the former deputy premier, Anwar Ibrahim, becoming prime minister to a year in jail for publishing false information. Khalid Jafri, 65, wrote the book ‘50 reasons why Anwar cannot become PM’ in 1998 which alleged that Anwar had an affair that resulted in an illegitimate daughter. The book was circulated at the general assembly of the ruling United Malays National Organisation in May that year. Khalid was found guilty last month of spreading false information by a Kuala Lumpur court, which ruled that the child was the legitimate offspring of Anwar’s former private secretary, Mohamad Azmin Ali.

Suicide bombing attempt in China
A town in China’s northeast on Friday was coming to grips with a shopping centre bombing that maimed 47 bystanders, the latest in a series of blasts across the country in recent weeks, state press reports said. The shoppers in Liaoyang were wounded in a suicide-murder plot Wednesday that went awry when the alleged perpetrator realised the person he was targeting was not his intended victim, the China Daily reported. Upon realising his mistake, the man threw 21 kilogram’s of explosives down the building’s stairwell, where the device exploded, and then attempted to flee. Police arrested Ma Yuanxi as the suspected bomber.

Buddhist shot dead in southern Thailand
A Buddhist workman was shot dead on Friday in Thailand’s troubled Muslim south, where more than 800 people have been killed in 18 months of unrest, police said. Suspected Islamic militants fired assault rifles at nine workers trimming trees around power lines in Rangae district of Narathiwat province, killing 20-year-old Daranai Chinbodim shortly before noon, police said. ‘He was shot twice in his temple,’ case officer Sub-Lieutenant Sornpetch Tantiamornchaikul said. ‘He fell and died immediately at the scene.
— AFP

3 soldiers, 2 policemen killed in Chechnya
Three Russian soldiers and two pro-Russian Chechen policemen have been killed in the last 24 hours in Chechnya, an official in the local government said on Thursday. The official, who asked not to be named, said two of the soldiers were killed when the lorry they were travelling in ran over a mine in the village of Duba-Yurt, southeast of the regional capital Grozny. The third soldier was accidentally shot by a colleague in Khankala, south of the capital. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, said earlier this week that so far this year, 51 soldiers have been killed as a result of separatist attacks, shoot-outs and mine blasts in Chechnya.

Romanian prime minister resigns
The prime minister, Calin Tariceanu, on Thursday announced his surprise resignation, a day after the constitutional court partially rejected laws that were part of reforms essential for Romania’s EU accession. ‘Tonight I shall inform the president Basescu of my decision,’ Tariceanu said after a cabinet meeting, which he said was ‘irreversible.’ The premier’s resignation after barely six months in office triggers early elections, which could take place in September or early October, officials said. The constitutional court Wednesday threw out part of the laws that would have overhauled the justice system, a demand by the European Union ahead of Romania joining the bloc in 2007.

UN aid workers halt Darfur registration
UN aid workers have halted attempts to register people who have fled their homes in Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region after violence in several camps, agency officials said Friday. Trouble erupted in camps around El Geneina in West Darfur; as staff from the World Food Programme and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees were drawing up lists of people due to receive food aid. Groups of young men armed with sticks began attacking aid workers as people lined up to be registered Friday morning in several camps, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.

Portugal wildfire threatens homes
More than 200 fire-fighters were on Friday battling a large wind-fuelled fire in central Portugal which threatened homes and forced the closure of a key highway, officials and emergency services said. The blaze near the central town of Albergaria-a-Velha, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Lisbon, had five active fronts and was approaching three villages, a fire spokeswoman said. ‘The situation is complicated but under control. Our priority is to protect houses and factories nearby,’ the mayor of the town, Joao Agostino, told state radio RDP. Firefighters were being aided by 60 vehicles and three water-dropping aircraft.

Sasser worm maker gets suspended sentence
The self-confessed mastermind behind the Sasser Internet worm that disabled millions of computers worldwide last year received a suspended sentence from a German court Friday. Sven Jaschan, now 19, was handed a suspended juvenile sentence of one year and nine months, a court spokeswoman said after the closed-door hearing. He was also ordered to perform 30 hours of public service in a hospital or retirement home. The Sasser worm struck on May 1, 2004 and in less than a week hit thousands of companies and as many as 18 million computers worldwide, forcing some businesses to shut in order to debug their systems and causing millions of dollars in lost productivity.
— AFP