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Hundreds of Workers began a massive cleanup and rescuers searched for survivors under mountains of debris in western India after record monsoon rains claimed 920 lives, officials said Saturday.
   Soldiers, police and rescue workers used bulldozers, cranes and their bare hands to remove boulders and rubble from areas hit by landslides as 130,000 municipal workers set about repairing pot-holed roads, clogged drains and electricity and drinking water services.
   RS Pardeshi of the Police Control Room in Mumbai said the bodies of 37 people were recovered from the city overnight, taking the financial hub’s death toll from the floods to 407 and that of Maharashtra state to around 920.
   ‘The total death toll in the state, including Mumbai city, is more than 900,’ said S Jadhav, a senior police official with the Police Control Room.
   State deputy chief minister RR Patil on Friday, however, put the toll at 696 but did not explain why his figures differed from those of the police.
   Soldiers used their bare hands, spades and shovels in the southern Mumbai region of Konkan to recover bodies and clear debris in one of the worst-hit areas, Jui village.
   Rescue workers were searching for more bodies in Kotiwala in western Mumbai where flash floods left more than 40 dead.
   Mumbai received 944.2 millimetres of rainfall in a one-day period ending mid-morning Wednesday, the most rainfall ever recorded in a single day in India.
   Heavy rains accompanied by strong winds continued to lash the city Saturday and hampered recovery operations.
   Flights from Mumbai’s airport, India’s busiest, were impacted for few hours Saturday after an Air India Boeing 747 from the southern city of Bangalore skidded off a wet runway, officials said. None of the 333 passengers were hurt.
   Flights from the Mumbai airport are back to normal, officials said.
   Johny Joseph, the municipal commissioner of Mumbai, said he hoped the city would recover completely within a few days.
   ‘This disaster is unprecedented in the history of Mumbai,’ he said. ‘The crisis worsened due to a combination of high tide, flooding and continuous rainfall. Rail and road traffic was disrupted totally and is almost restored now.’
   ‘The biggest challenge of ‘Operation Recovery’ now is to the clear the mud, muck and garbage that has been piled on the roads and pavements. It must be removed on a war footing,’ he said.
   Joseph said Mumbai’s 15 million residents normally throw out 5,000 tonnes of garbage daily, but during the past week it had gone up three times that amount.
   ‘Things got wet and unusable and people are dumping them on the streets. To clear the garbage we require a huge amount of manpower and machinery which has been pressed into service,’ he said.
   Thousands of bloated animal carcasses also littered the streets of Mumbai, fuelling fears of disease with estimates saying the carcasses of 17,000 goats and more than 1,000 buffaloes and cows were scattered throughout the city’s western and eastern suburbs.
   ‘The disposal of carcasses is another priority area. To add to the woes our department is also in charge of post-mortems. Water and electricity will be restored in all areas within two days. We are grappling with that too,’ Joseph said.
   In the aftermath, Mumbai faces a new problem as people search for cars abandoned when the rains hit.
   Many people abandoned their vehicles as the water in the city touched waist-high levels Wednesday and officials towed many of them to sites throughout the city.
   SG Danle, deputy municipal commissioner of Mumbai, said 30,000 health workers spread out into the city and its suburbs to prevent the outbreak of water-borne diseases.

Indian troops stormed a building in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar on Saturday, killing two militants who had held them off for more than 24 hours with automatic rifles and grenades.
   ‘We killed two militants and the operation is over,’ Indian Border Security Force spokesman Virender Manhas said.
   Security officials said after killing one militant, who was holed up in a hotel, troops shot dead another guerrilla hiding in a nearby shopping complex.
   Two soldiers were wounded during the assault.
   About 40 people, trapped since Friday in a nearby newspaper office and a hotel, were brought out safely by soldiers.
   The militants had positioned themselves in two buildings in central Srinagar after they raided the main business centre on Friday afternoon, sparking a fierce battle with troops.
   In the initial gunbattle on Friday, 20 people, including seven journalists, were wounded. One TV cameraman was critically wounded after being shot in the stomach.
   Earlier on Saturday, the police and soldiers rescued at least 20 civilians, including some children, who had been stranded in a bank in the area as shots were exchanged between the guerrillas and troops, a police officer said.
   Two Islamic groups fighting New Delhi’s authority over Kashmir, Al-Mansuriyan and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the raid on the city’s business centre.
   New Delhi has said that despite a peace process with nuclear rival Pakistan, Islamabad allows Muslim militants to infiltrate into Indian Kashmir.
   On Friday, the Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, tried to ease Indian concerns over reports that militant camps were re-opening on his country’s side of the line, saying the situation was ‘on the mend’.
   More than 45,000 people have died in the revolt in mainly Hindu India’s only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Bush administration has approved an initial shipment to Pakistan of two F-16 fighter jets, a down payment on what is expected to be a larger sale of newer US fighters over Indian objections, congressional sources briefed on the plan said on Friday.
   The decision to initially provide Pakistan, a war on terrorism ally, with two older but refurbished F-16s comes less than two weeks after the president, George W Bush, reversed long-standing US policy by promising to help India, Pakistan’s nuclear rival, develop its civilian nuclear power sector.
   India had expressed concern to Washington about its proposed sale of F-16s to Pakistan.
   Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan have fought three wars and were on the brink of another in 2002.
   One congressional source said of the timing of the decision, ‘They (Bush administration officials) didn’t want to start moving F-16s to Pakistan until after the Indian prime minister had come and gone.’
   Bush and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, held talks at the White House on July 18.
   Notifying Congress just before the start of the month long August recess could also help ‘blunt any backlash among the friends of India in Congress, of which there are many,’ the congressional source added.
   Key lawmakers were notified on Friday of the decision, and administration officials made clear a larger sale of newer fighter planes to Pakistan was still in the works.
   The White House initially announced plans in March to sell F-16s to Pakistan but offered few details about the number of fighters and specifications.
   The sale had been blocked for 15 years to punish Pakistan for its nuclear weapons programme.
   Administration officials said the policy change on the planes reflected Islamabad’s role helping the United States in the region after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Bush last year named Pakistan a major non-NATO ally, making it easier for the country to acquire US arms.
   The single engine, multirole F-16 is built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels should take their lead from the Irish Republican Army, lay down their weapons and abandon a two-decade armed struggle for self-rule, the island’s government said on Friday.
   But Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka’s civil conflicts are worlds apart—the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam control a de facto state in the South Asian island’s northeast and are locked in a standoff with the military that threatens to rupture a 2002 ceasefire.
   ‘We welcome the announcement of the IRA. We hope the LTTE would also fall in line,’ government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva told reporters.
   ‘We appeal to them, that is the trend in the world in Aceh and (with) the IRA, to give up their arms. That would be the best thing,’ he added. ‘It is high time the LTTE followed.’
   The IRA formally ended its 30-year armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland on Thursday and said it would pursue its aims through politics.
   Analysts say a return to talks stalled since 2003 aimed at forging lasting peace after a conflict that has already killed over 64,000 people is a long way off, let alone any future push for disarmament.

People blew car horns, pressed sirens, rang temple and church bells in south India to create a public racket on Saturday about the danger of AIDS in a nation which is home to millions carrying the HIV virus.
   ‘My generation needs more knowledge and awareness about the use of condoms,’ 22-year-old Prakash Kumar said as he pressed a horn on his motorcycle in Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh state. Nearby, other vehicle owners tooted their horns.
   This unusual campaign against AIDS in India, which has a HIV/AIDS caseload of more than 5.1 million, was organised by authorities in Andhra Pradesh.
   India has around the same number of HIV/AIDS cases as the AIDS capital, South Africa, and authorities have started campaigns to fight the disease in a country where many people do not talk about sex openly.
   Earlier this month, India’s federal National AIDS Control Organisation started issuing safe sex advertisements in newspapers in the cricket-mad nation, warning people to save their ‘wickets’ from unwanted ‘googlies’ as part of a campaign that mixed cricket and humour.

North Korea nuclear crisis talks entered uncharted territory on Saturday, with host China presenting a draft joint statement for discussion by the six parties in the longest negotiating session yet.
   The main protagonists, the United States and North Korea, appear as entrenched as ever, diplomats say, with Pyongyang sticking to its demands for security guarantees and aid and Washington insisting the nuclear programmes be dismantled first.
   The North had even rejected a South Korean offer of energy aid in exchange for scrapping the programs, the JoongAng daily said, citing an official in Seoul. North Korea wants the energy aid but it wants light-water nuclear reactors too, it said.
   Still, the first round of six-way talks in more than a year has seen an unprecedented level of bilateral contact between the US and North Korean sides. They have met six times this week after sticking to scripted position statements in earlier rounds.
   ‘I have the impression that the United States and North Korea have deepened their understanding of each other’s positions after hours and days of bilateral discussions,’ a Japanese delegate said on Saturday.
   ‘But I believe the two sides remain far apart. Our work to draft a joint document will get into full swing today,’ he said.
   A South Korean official said China had presented a draft joint statement for discussion. Previous rounds have failed to secure a common position.
   Meanwhile, North Korea wants to resume a nuclear energy project frozen since 2003 amid a standoff between the United States and Pyongyang over the North’s nuclear weapons programme, a report said Saturday.
   North Korea made the request in talks with the United States and South Korea in Beijing where six-party talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear programme have been ongoing all week, Kyodo News reported, quoting negotiation sources.
   The construction of two light-water nuclear reactors was part of a 1994 framework agreement between North Korea and the United States designed to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
   The reactors would produce significantly less weapons-grade nuclear material than an old nuclear plant built during the Soviet era.
   But the project has been suspended since December 2003, more than a year after the US claimed North Korea admitted to having a secret uranium enrichment programme.
   Apart from the resumption of the energy project, North Korea has also demanded the United States withdraw its ‘nuclear umbrella’ for South Korea, prompting heated debate in the bilateral talks, Kyodo said.

Amitabh Bachchan couldn’t have a bath for 72 hours, wife Jaya complained on Friday. Her husband and son Abhishek were stuck at their Juhu home, Prateeksha, in Mumbai, without power and drinking water, she added.
   ‘Five-feet water gushed into the ground floor and basement. Water level rose up to the dining table. It took eight hours to pump out water from the basement and ground floor,’ reports different newspapers Saturday.

India said the conviction of former Nepal premier Sher Bahadur Deuba for alleged corruption was regrettable and would harm national reconciliation in the troubled Himayalan kingdom.
   ‘It is regrettable that harsh sentences have been meted out to former prime minister Deuba and former minister Prakash Man Singh,’ official spokesman Navtej Sarna said on Friday.
   He added the conviction would make ‘would only further vitiate the atmosphere and complicate efforts for reco-
   nciliation’ between the monarchy and political leaders in Nepal.
   Deuba was sentenced to two years in prison earlier this week for corruption over a road contract along with former public works minister Man Singh on the same charge. The two men were also fined 90 million rupees (1.26 million dollars) each.

President Gloria Arroyo’s spokesman has accused the opposition of resorting to a ‘trial by publicity,’ against the Philippine leader, saying they lacked any evidence of her alleged wrongdoing.
   ‘If they have credible charges against her with strong evidence behind them, they should not resort to this trial by publicity. They should go to the right venue and file a case in court,’ spokesman Ignacio Bunye told local radio.
   ‘But they don’t do that. Instead, they have this trial by publicity,’ Bunye said, referring to congressional hearings in recent weeks on opposition allegations that Arroyo cheated in last year’s elections and that her family had profited from illegal gambling.
   The allegations have resulted in a widespread clamour for Arroyo’s removal from power with key allies, including some cabinet members, calling on her to resign.

Middle East quartet envoy James Wolfensohn promised Palestinians in the impoverished Gaza Strip a ‘better life’ after Israel’s planned pullout, following talks with the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas.
   ‘I think it is extremely important that the Palestinian people understand that this is not now just another political game,’ Wolfensohn told reporters.
   ‘This withdrawal has to lead to a better life for the Palestinians living here and in the northern West Bank and hopefully throughout the occupied territories,’ he said.
   ‘I am well aware that among the average Palestinians in the street in Gaza there are some measure of uncertainty and reluctance to feel hopeful. I can understand that but... it is going to be possible to deliver a better future.’

China on Saturday blasted The Japanese foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, who said this week he was confident that Japan’s bid to join the UN Security Council would succeed.
   Japan has joined forces with Brazil, Germany and India to form a Group of Four (G4) that want permanent seats on an expanded council, a move that could be vetoed by China or other current permanent members.
   Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Machimura’s remarks were ‘groundless and with ulterior motives,’ according to a statement on the ministry’s website.

Nearly 2,100 incidents of rape and other sexual violence were recorded in US prisons in 2004, US justice authorities said Friday.
   The Department of Justice said that the highest rate of prison rape and other forced sexual acts was in state-run juvenile prisons, and that the largest portion involved prison staff abuse of inmates.
   According to a department report on prison sexual violence, a total of 8,210 cases of sexual violence were reported in adult prisons, local jails and juvenile correctional facilities in 2004.
   This amounted to 3.2 allegations per 1,000 inmates.
   Roughly half of the alleged incidents that the Justice Department investigated could not be substantiated, however.
   Of the 7,000 investigations completed by the department, about one-third of cases, or about 2,100, were substantiated, the report said.
   Nearly 42 per cent of reported cases of sexual violence involved prison staff abuse of inmates, while 37 per cent was inmate-on-inmate violence.
   Males comprised 90 per cent of inmate-on-inmate violence.
   The report also noted that sexual violence in state-run youth prison facilities was 10 times higher than that in adult prisons.
   US prisons held more than 2.1 million people in 2004, not including juvenile offenders.

British police on Saturday were questioning four prime suspects behind failed bomb attacks on the London transport system, looking for any links to a wider network that authorities fear could strike again.
   The four men are suspects in attacks on July 21, two weeks after four bombers, all British Muslims, killed themselves and 52 other passengers in blasts on three underground trains and a bus in London.
   On Friday, police swooped on a housing estate in west London, arresting two men who identified themselves as Ibrahim Muktar Said and Ramzi Mohammed.
   They were forced to strip before their arrests to show they had no explosives strapped to them.
   Italian police arrested a third man in Rome who was named as Hussain Osman.
   He will be extradited back to Britain, having left the country after the attacks.
   The Italy interior minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, said Saturday, giving the first details of his arrest to parliament that he had left London by train on July 26, five days after the failed bombings on the city’s transport system.
   ‘It has been possible to document in real time the stages of Osman Hussain’s escape from England, from July 26 when he left London via Waterloo Station,’ Pisanu said.
   Newspaper reports Saturday said police had located Hussain in Paris on Wednesday July 27 by monitoring his mobile phone, before picking up his trail again on Thursday in Milan and Bologna before he arrived by train in Rome.
   Sky TV, citing police sources, said another man arrested in London on Friday was thought to be a brother of Mohammed. A police spokesman declined to confirm the man’s identity.
   ‘We’re treating all of the arrests as significant,’ the spokesman said on Saturday.
   Police arrested Yasin Hassan Omar, suspected of trying to explode a bomb on the underground railway network, earlier this week.
   The police sources said they believed they had rounded up all four men suspected of trying to explode bombs on the capital’s transport system, images of whom were released to the public in recent days.
   ‘The investigation–is still continuing. It is dynamic and it is wide-ranging.
   There will be more very visible police activity,’ anti-terrorist police chief Peter Clarke told reporters late on Friday.

Casting a wary eye on terrorist attacks in Britain, the US Senate late Friday voted to make permanent most of a controversial law that vastly expands the government’s search and surveillance powers.
   But it struck down some of the key items from the Bush administration’s wish list and refused to follow the lead of the House of Representatives that last week offered the Federal Bureau of Investigation broader powers to spy on Americans.
   Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist said the London bombings reminded Americans that terrorists continue to plot new attacks against them and their allies.
   ‘We must stay vigilant and tireless in our pursuit—breaking up their cells, chasing down the money trail, and bringing each and every collaborator to justice,’ Frist said shortly after the Senate moved to reauthorise the USA Patriot Act by voice vote.
   ‘The Patriot Act will help defeat terrorist cells operating right here in America,’ he added.
   Enacted barely six weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the act is seen by the Bush administration as a key legal tool in the war on terror.
   It gives the federal government greater search and surveillance powers by streamlining procedures and eliminating red tape.
   Under its provisions, investigators can obtain warrants to intercept telephone conversations conducted by a terrorism suspect or monitor his or her e-mail traffic from any telephone or computer terminal.
   The law also makes it possible for the government to obtain a suspect’s banking, medical or library records.

Two British security guards and at least 17 Iraqis were killed in attacks across the country on Saturday as MPs worked against the clock to try to reach agreement on a draft constitution by Monday.
   In Amman, Saddam Hussein’s defence team charged that the ousted dictator had been attacked by an unidentified man during a court hearing on Thursday discussing charges over the brutal 1991 suppression of a Shia uprising.
   The two British security contractors were killed when their consular convoy was targeted by a roadside bomb near the southern city of Basra, the Foreign Office said in London.
   Two Iraqi children were also wounded by the blast, which damaged two vehicles in the convoy, a British army officer said.
   Southern Iraq, where British forces are based, is relatively calm compared to the rest of the country which is in the grip of a deadly militancy mainly targeting US-led troops and Iraqi forces.
   Another five people were killed and 25 wounded when a suicide car bomber attempted to ram a police patrol near the national theatre in the centre of Baghdad, police said.
   Police reinforcements had been called in to the area to provide security for a public meeting to discuss the draft constitution.
   Members of the constitutional committee must decide by Monday whether they have made enough progress for parliament to vote on a draft by August 15, or whether they will require a six-month extension as envisaged by interim constitutional rules.
   In another attack in Baghdad, several people were hurt when a bomb blew up near a US military patrol in the south of the city, the US military said.
   An Iraqi interior ministry official said at least one civilian was killed.
   Another 11 people were killed in separate attacks in Ishaki and al-Dur north of Iraq, officials said.
   In other violence, a senior Baghdad airport official and two employees were found with their throats slit after they were reported kidnapped three days earlier, and a top official at Iraq’s health ministry, Imane Naji Abdelrazzak, was herself abducted from her home, an interior ministry official said.
   Saturday’s attacks followed a suicide bombing Friday on an army recruitment centre in the northern town of Rabia, near the Syrian border, which police said killed 48 people.
   It was claimed the group of al-Qaeda’s Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
   The victims were all young men waiting to enlist in the new Iraqi army whose numbers are being increased to allow for them to take over security responsibilities from US-led forces.
   ‘The recruitment drive was being held over two days—Thursday and Friday—which was a big mistake from a security point of view as it allowed the suicide bomber to time his attack,’ said police colonel Yehya Al-Shummari.
   Army and police recruitment centres have repeatedly been attacked by suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of would-be recruits, most of them young unemployed men seeking steady work.
   More than 1,000 Iraqis join the new army each month, according to the US military. In July alone, insurgents killed more than 50 other would-be Iraqi army recruits in similar attacks.

The US defence department on Friday announced the names of 11 army bases it will close in Germany by October 2007 as part of a plan to withdraw tens of thousands of troops from the country.
   The bases are currently home to the 1st Infantry Division which, along with another armoured division, will return to the United States in 2006 to be replaced by a much smaller combat brigade considered better able to fight the war on terror and react rapidly to emerging threats.
   Five sites in Kitzingen in the southern region of Bavaria will be handed back to German authorities, while three bases in Wuerzburg near Frankfurt in central Germany will be shut. The other three closures will be in Giebelstadt, a small town near Wuerzburg.
   Two additional facilities, a hospital and a barracks in Wuerzburg, will be retained
   ‘until they are no longer needed’, according to a statement from US European Command.
   The base closures will affect around 6,100 soldiers, 11,000 family members and around 2,000 civilian staff.

A giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars.
   The photographs were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board Mars Express, the European Space Agency probe which is exploring the planet.
   The ice disc is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’ far northern latitudes.
   The existence of the water-ice patch on Mars raises the prospect that past or present life will one day be detected.
   It also boosts the chances that manned missions could eventually be sent to the Red Planet - because they would probably need accessible water to survive.
   The highly visible ice lake is sitting in a crater which is 35 kilometres (23 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of about two kilometres (1.2 miles).
   Scientists believe the water-ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states.
   Researchers studying the images are sure it is not frozen carbon dioxide (CO2), because CO2 ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap at the time the image was taken.
   The team has also been able to detect faint traces of water-ice along the rim of the crater and on the crater walls.
   Mars is covered with deep gorges, apparently carved out by rivers and glaciers, although most of the water vanished millions of years ago.

Two Discovery astronauts began early Saturday the first spacewalk of their historic mission that marked the US’ return into space after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus.
   After depressurising an airlock between the shuttle and its open cargo bay, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and American Steve Robinson switched to the autonomous batteries of their spacesuits, a procedure that, according to NASA officials, formally marks the beginning of the spacewalk.
   They also opened a massive hatch and began making their way into the shuttle’s cargo bay to start six and a half hours of work that will include training for possible emergency repairs on Discovery. The walk formally began at 4:46am (0946 GMT).
   After moving to the back of the bay and setting up tools, the two will coat purposely-damaged protective tiles with caulk-like material to test equipment and techniques developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for contingency repairs, according to space officials.
   The experiment reflects NASA’s desire to avoid another disaster following the February 1, 2003, fiery demise of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven crew members.
   An expert commission that investigated the Columbia tragedy has determined it was caused by a chunk of foam separating the shuttle’s external fuel tank during lift-off and damaging Columbia’s protective tiles.
   Discovery has been equipped with cameras enabling its crew to inspect the tiles and NASA has developed procedures to repair them if necessary.
   After the emergency tools are tested, the astronauts will begin work on an external stowage platform that is necessary to continue assembly work on the International Space Station, the officials said.
   Noguchi will also replace a global positioning system antenna on the station’s truss structure, while Robinson is scheduled to do preparatory work for replacing one of the station’s defective gyroscopes.
   The gyroscope will be replaced during the second of three spacewalks planned for this mission.

It’s only a matter of time before little Aminou takes his last halting breath under the white tents of an MSF clinic in this town in south central Niger, weakened by such severe malnutrition that every exhalation makes his brittle ribs clatter.
   Aminou, aged four, was admitted to the therapeutic feeding centre here nine days ago, after his mother walked more than 40 kilometres to deliver him to another treatment centre just south of Maradi, which decided to transfer him here.
   His tiny body, weighing just 11.2 kilos, was wracked by full-body chills and covered with sores—symptoms of the late stages of the most severe form of malnutrition known as kwashiokor, which gives children a bloated, puffy appearance when they are really completely empty of all vitamins and nutrients.
   ‘His situation is very, very serious,’ said a sober Doctor Maazou Aichatou.
   ‘It is very rare that children in this state survive. We can save a few, but not when their skin starts to develop lesions of this nature.’
   As Niger enters another phase in the food crisis that threatens one in three of the vast northwest African state’s 12 million people, mortality rates among its most vulnerable populations—children under five like Aminou—are likely to climb higher.
   ‘The situation of children in Niger is critical and we are in a race against time to save their lives,’ said Aboudou Karimou Adjibade, Niger’s country director for the UN Children’s Agency UNICEF.

After more than two centuries of sustained presence in Georgia, the last Russian troops still there began leaving the country Saturday, when a first column of military vehicles pulled out of a base and headed back to Russia as agreed last spring, officials said.
   The column of nine wheeled vehicles and accompanying soldiers departed from a Soviet-era base at Georgia’s south-west Black Sea port city of Batumi under the terms of an accord calling for the closure of that and the other remaining Russian base at Akhalkalaki by the end of 2008, they said.
   The convoy, escorted by Georgian police, was bound for a military installation in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz and the removal of Russian military hardware and personnel would continue in the weeks ahead, the officials said.
   The start of the historic final pullout had been scheduled to begin on Friday but was delayed by a day because of what Russian officials said was a failure by Georgian authorities to deliver visas and permits for the removal of military hardward from the country on time.
   Both sides however said the problem was quickly resolved and the start of the withdrawal was witnessed by senior military officials from both countries.

Iran said US accusations that its president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had helped take dozens of US diplomats hostage after the 1979 Islamic revolution were due to its failure to influence Iran and its elections.
   The White House accuses Ahmadinejad of being a leader of the radical students who stormed the US embassy in Tehran, but says it is still trying to determine if he was one of the hostage-takers that held 52 US diplomats for 444 days. Ahmadinejad, a conservative opposed to rebuilding ties with the United States, takes over as president next week.
   ‘Such remarks in the run-up to the transfer of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran derive from US disillusion with Iran’s independent policies and our nation’s ignoring the White House demand to boycott the elections,’ the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said in a statement late on Friday.
   The United States says the Islamic Republic is a state sponsor of terrorism and accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, charges Tehran strongly denies.
   Ahmadinejad was the surprise winner of June elections which ended eight years of reformist government in Iran. The United States and Iranian opposition exiles called for a boycott of the polls, but turnout was still higher than 50 per cent.
   Iran denies Ahmadinejad had anything to do with the seizure of the embassy, known as the ‘nest of spies’ in Iran.
   A CIA analysis has concluded Ahmadinejad was not the man in photographs of a hostage-taker identified by former US hostages as the newly elected Iranian leader and widely published in US media last month.
   ‘As expressed earlier and confirmed by American sources, the president-elect had no role in the incident at the nest of spies,’ Asefi said. ‘America’s enormous security bodies are incapable of assessing simple, clear issues.’
   Former hostage-takers, many of them now mellowed into middle-aged reformists, also deny Ahmadinejad was among them.

US soldiers hurt in Afghan blast
A blast wounded two US soldiers and an Afghan interpreter on Saturday while they were on patrol in south-central Afghanistan, the US military said in a statement. The incident took place in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province, some 410 kilometres southwest of the capital Kabul. ‘Two US service members and an Afghan interpreter were wounded early today when their patrol was struck by an improvised explosive device north of Deh Rawood in Uruzgan province,’ said the US military, adding that their injuries were not serious. ‘The unit was conducting a security patrol and was not in contact with enemy forces. The injured were transported to the US base at Kandahar Airfield for treatment.’

Indian jet skids off runway
An Air India plane carrying more than 300 passengers skidded off the runway in India’s monsoon-lashed commercial hub of Mumbai Saturday, an airline spokesman said, adding that all passengers were safe. Flight 127 from the southern city of Bangalore overshot the runway at Mumbai’s international airport and got stranded in soft ground, spokesman Jitender Bhargava said. The 333 passengers were all safe and the Boeing 747-400 plane later continued on as scheduled en route to Frankfurt and Chicago. ‘After 90 minutes the aircraft was towed back to the runway and the airport is back to normal. Flights are taking off and landing,’ Bhargava said.

Tornado kills 15 in east China
At least 15 people were killed and 37 injured when a tornado swept through a county in east China Saturday, state media said. Eight of the victims were killed on the spot when the tornado flattened a factory in Lingbi county, Anhui province, Xinhua news agency said, citing sources in the local civil affairs department. Local governments were carrying out rescue work for victims, it said. No further details were immediately available. At least nine people were killed and 14 others injured last month when a tornado hit a small village in northeast China.

One shot dead in south Thailand
A Muslim village headman was shot and killed in his house in Thailand’s restive southern provinces, the police said on Saturday. Marosa Lorma, 49, a village headman in Mai Kean district of Pattani province, was shot several times on Friday night by an unknown number of gunmen and died instantly. ‘He was shot while sitting in his house,’ a police officer in Mai Kean said. ‘The motive of the killing is still under investigation.’ Some 840 people have been killed in the past 18 months in near daily attacks that authorities and analysts say are the product of a mix of Islamic separatists, organised criminals and narcotraffickers.
— AFP

Uruguay endorses Brazil-G4 plan for UN
Uruguay gave its support Friday for the so-called G4 plan for reforming the UN Security Council which would give neighbouring Brazil a permanent seat on the Council. Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez called his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to announce his endorsement, according to the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim. The move places Uruguay behind Brazil, Germany, India and Japan in their bid to implement their reform plan for the Council. The G4 draft backed by more than 30 countries, including France and Britain.

Top US diplomat for Americas resigns
The top US diplomat for the Americas region, Roger Noriega, resigned his post, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said Friday. Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, has held the position for two years. The spokesman denied Noriega’s move was related to the naming Thursday of Caleb McCarry, a Republican congressional staffer, as the US ‘Cuba transition coordinator,’ tasked with helping speed Fidel Castro’s downfall.

US closes its Mexico embassy after shootout
The US consulate in Nuevo Laredo will close for a week due to a months-long wave of violence in Nuevo Laredo, on the US border, the US embassy here said Friday. A violent battle, which included unusual advanced weapons, took place between armed criminal groups late Thursday in Nuevo Laredo,’ the US ambassador, Tony Garza, said. ‘With this alarming incident in mind ... I have decided to suspend operations, except for emergency consular services, for a week,’ he said in a statement.

UN extends Georgia mission
The UN Security Council voted Friday to extend the mandate of a small force observing the ceasefire between the Georgian government and its breakaway region of Abkhazia for another six months. The 15-member council unanimously endorsed the extension, which is set to expire January 31, 2006. The United Nations Observers Mission in Georgia, which includes 132 military observers, was set up in August 1993 after a bitter war that ended with Abkhazia gaining de facto independence from Georgia, a former Soviet republic, and sparked an exodus of 250,000 Georgians from the region.

Lebanon parliament to vote on new govt
The new Lebanese government headed by Fuad Siniora, the first of the post-Syrian era, is set to win parliamentary approval on Saturday after three days of debate. The main anti-Damascus alliance which nominated Siniora has an eight-seat majority in the 128-member legislature following parliamentary elections in May and June. Siniora’s 24-member line-up is the first elected government since Syria ended its three-decade military presence in its smaller neighbour in April in the face of intense international pressure.

90 illegal Chinese detained in Ukraine
Ukrainian border guards said Saturday they had arrested 90 illegal Chinese immigrants in the northern Sumy region who had likely crossed into the country from Russia en route to Western Europe. The group of immigrants, which included dozens of women, were found aboard two trucks, the border guards said in a statement, which specified that the group was thought to have come from Russia.
— AFP