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The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said Friday he expects US military ties with India to strengthen over the coming years and predicted that China’s influence will decline unless it moves to a freer political system.
   ‘It’s pretty clear where India’s going, and one would anticipate the relationship with India will continue to strengthen as we go through the period ahead,’ Rumsfeld said before he arrived here Friday afternoon.
   ‘With respect to China, it’s not completely clear which way they’re going because of the tension... between the nature of their political system and the nature of their economic system,’ he told reporters.
   Rumsfeld compared and contrasted the prospects of the two Asian giants as he flew here from Washington to attend an annual international security conference that draws defence ministers from around the region.
   In remarks to reporters travelling with him, he would not be drawn on the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme and eluded only glancingly to a Chinese military buildup that has caused concern in Washington.
   But he was expected to air US concerns on both North Korea and China’s military spending in a keynote speech Saturday to the conference organised by the International Institute of Strategic Studies as well as in one-on-one meetings with other defence ministers.
   His comments to reporters made clear that the Pentagon is looking to India as an anchor in its security relationships in the region. Rumsfeld recalled that he made the first overtures to India within weeks of becoming defence secretary in 2001.
   ‘We have what I would characterise as an excellent relationship with India. From a military-to-military standpoint it has improved in strength every year over the past four and a half years,’ he said.
   The military relationship, which has included joint exercises, ‘has been very much leading the other aspects of the relationship, which is a good thing,’ he said.
   ‘We are finding many things to cooperate on,’ he said.
   Calling India a ‘major power,’ the secretary highlighted its standing as the world’s largest democracy, its ‘relatively free economic system,’ and its educated population.
   ‘With respect to the Peoples Republic of China, it is what it is. It’s a big country, with a fairly rapid growth rate,’ he said.
   ‘Its defence budget is growing apace with their economy, and they are a major weapons purchaser in the world, largely from Russia but from other countries as well, and have been deploying a great many ballistic missiles and ships and other military capabilities over a period of years now,’ he said.
   ‘The tension will grow as they move through the years,’ he said.
   ‘To the extent that the Republic of China leans toward a freer political system they will be a considerably more successful country and a more influential country in the world,’ he said.
   ‘To the extent they don’t do that there will be pressures against their economy, they will grow less fast, and they will be a less influential country in the world,’ he said.
   This is only Rumsfeld’s third trip to Asia during his current tenure as defence minister.
   He is scheduled to travel to Thailand on Sunday, and then to Norway early next week for talks before a NATO defence minister’s meeting in Brussels.

India has offered to assist its southern neighbour Sri Lanka redesign its air-defence network after allegations that Tamil Tiger rebels have acquired at least two aircraft, a report said Friday.
   New Delhi told visiting Sri Lankan president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, it is willing to consider all proposals from Colombo, including training Sri Lankan personnel or guidance and advice in designing air defences, the Indian Express daily reported.
   Colombo will send a team of senior defence officials to India to discuss the technical details, it said.
   The offer was made during talks in New Delhi late Thursday between the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and Kumaratunga, who is on a three day-visit to India.
   Kumaratunga’s government charges that the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have built an airstrip in the north and possess at least two light aircraft.
   European truce monitors say they have seen the airstrip from the air but have been denied access by the rebels to investigate allegations they have aircraft.
   ‘Those two aircraft, if they have any, represent a very serious threat,’ Monitoring Mission chief, Hagrup Haukland, said last week, adding that the issue could re-ignite the war between the Tigers and government troops.
   India, which once armed and trained the Tigers, warned last month that they were acquiring aircraft.
   ‘We are concerned about the LTTE having built an airstrip and having two aeroplanes, and there’s news about more coming,’ India’s the foreign minister, Natwar Singh, said.
   The Indian Express, quoting unnamed sources, said India would also help provide Sri Lanka, which has focused more on maritime than air security, with radars to improve its air-space coverage.
   The island’s existing radar network is used for civil aviation purposes leaving a gap for small aircraft to operate at low altitudes, it added.
   Kumaratunga was Friday to hold talks with the leader of India’s ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, and oil minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar.
   India has made it clear that any air or sea capability of the Tigers would be a threat to its national security, India diplomatic sources in Colombo said recently.
   The guerrillas agreed in December 2002 to settle for a federal solution to the long-running conflict. But the Norwegian-brokered discussions have remained inconclusive since April 2003. Both sides, however, have largely abided by a truce struck in February 2002.

Moderate Indian Kashmiri separatist leaders Friday called for legislators in the Indian and Pakistani zones to draw up a joint plan to peacefully end the row over the divided Himalayan state.
   A nine-member delegation, including seven from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, arrived Thursday in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan’s sector, on the first such trip since they launched their campaign against Indian rule in Kashmir in 1989.
   ‘We must come out with a joint strategy to reap the benefits of sacrifices offered by the Kashmiris to achieve peace in the region,’ Bilal Gani Lone told a special sitting of the state assembly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
   Lone, a member of the APHC—an umbrella group of some two dozen pro-independence parties—also called for the involvement of Kashmiris in the ongoing peace dialogue between Pakistan and India.
   The delegates were given a hero’s welcome when they crossed the heavily militarised Line of Control Thursday near the town of Chakothi, 58 kilometres south of Muzaffarabad.
   Their trip is part of a peace process between India and Pakistan to end the bitter dispute over Kashmir, a nuclear flashpoint which has sparked two of the three wars between rivals India and Pakistan since 1947.
   Lone said Kashmiris must rise above their political differences to achieve a durable solution to the Kashmir dispute. On Thursday the Kashmiri leaders called for a three-way talks between Pakistan, India and Kashmiris.
   Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq paid a nostalgic visit on Friday to the grave of his grandfather in Muzaffarabad, where some 500 people had gathered to greet the group.
   ‘We have come here to hold consultation with people from all shades of life,’ Farooq told the gathering.
   ‘We are here to reinforce the message that without the participation of Kashmiri leadership there can never be a solution to the problem. The Kashmiris should talk to each other also.’
   Most of the people gathered at the graveyard were members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a staunch supporter of Kashmir’s independence from both India and Pakistan.
   The Hurriyat leaders are also expected to travel to Islamabad on Saturday for talks with Pakistani leadership.
   India gave the green light to the unprecedented trip after Pakistan last week invited leaders of the body as well as other prominent leaders seeking Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan or independence.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea turned up a notch this week, as the nations exchanged harsher words in their standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme.
   The war of words began when the vice president, Dick Cheney, told CNN television in an interview aired Monday that North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il was an ‘irresponsible’ leader who did not care for his people and ran a police state.
   In response, North Korea launched an anti-Cheney tirade.
   ‘Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and blood-thirsty beast, as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood,’ a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said.
   ‘What Cheney uttered at a time when the issue of the six-party talks is high on the agenda is little short of telling the DPRK not to come out for the talks,’ the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency.
   North Korea has boycotted the six-nation talks—which also involve China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the
   United States—since the last round a year ago. The talks are aimed at coaxing Pyongyang to stop its nuclear programme, which it relaunched in
   violation of a 1994 accord. Washington insists Pyongyang has several atomic bombs in its arsenal.
   White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, defended Cheney’s comments earlier Thursday.
   ‘We are going to call it the way it is,’ McClellan told reporters, reaffirming Washington’s determination to see international pressure make North Korea abandon its nuclear arms programme.

Children who live near overhead power lines may be at greater risk of early leukaemia, a study published Friday in the British Medical Journal said.
   British researchers found that children who had lived within 200 metres (250 yards) of high voltage cables at birth faced a 69-per cent higher risk of childhood leukaemia.
   But they admitted there was no known biological mechanism to explain this, and that some of the association may have been due to chance.
   The team looked through the records of more than 29,000 children in England and Wales who had had cancer, 9,700 of them leukaemia, and compared this with the location of their homes in relation to power lines.
   Compared with those who lived 600 metres (750 metres) from power lines, children who lived within 200 metres (250 yards) faced an increased risk of 69 per cent that they would develop leukaemia.
   Those born between 200 metres and 600 metres (250-750 yards) faced an increase of 23 per cent.
   The study stressed that there remained a lot of uncertainty and added that even if the link were confirmed, power lines could be blamed only for about one per cent of all cases of childhood leukaemia in England and Wales.
   The research was carried out by Gerald Draper and colleagues from Oxford University’s Cancer Research Group and John Swanson, a scientific advisor at National Grid Transco, which is in charge of Britain’s high-voltage infrastructure.
   It did not look into the level of exposure to magnetic fields.
   In 2001, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified low-frequency magnetic fields as ‘possibly carcinogenic’ but admitted that the data—both in lab tests on animals and from epidemiological studies—was sketchy.

Israeli public support for the planned pullout from the Gaza Strip has fallen from more than 60 per cent in recent months to just 50 per cent now, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.
   The poll, in the daily newspaper Maariv, said 34 per cent were opposed the pullout due to start in August, while 12 per cent were undecided. A total of 531 people were questioned and the survey had a margin of error of 4.1 per cent.
   Israeli soldiers and some 8,000 settlers from 21 settlements are due to quit the Gaza Strip along with settlers from four other small settlements in the north of the West Bank.
   ‘Public opinion seems tired with this project and people seem to be asking if all the upsets linked to it are worthwhile,’ Maariv commented.
   Haaretz newspaper, meanwhile, said 60 farmers in the main Gaza settlement of Gush Katif had signed compensation accords with the Israeli authorities.
   The 60, out of a total 166, would be given 160 hectare blocs near Zikim Kibbutz in the south of Israel; while 20 others would get land near Ashkelon town, it said.
   Israeli authorities were continuing to negotiate with a third group, with offers of land either in Israel’s Negev desert or in Gallilee, the paper said.
   A recent spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence in Gaza has seen some military officials call for the pullout to be delayed. Palestinian factions have warned that continued aggression is jeopardising a de facto truce.
   In the latest increase in tension, Israeli police said they had thwarted two suicide attacks planned by Islamic Jihad against targets in Jerusalem, one on a bus and another in a bar or club in the city,

Malaysia’s hardline Islamic party on Friday announced major reforms to broaden its appeal, and called for former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim to lead the opposition alliance.
   PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang backed the charismatic Anwar, who is currently banned from politics after being convicted of corruption and sodomy, to lead the charge to dislodge the ruling coalition led by the United Malays National Organisation.
   ‘PAS is now at a critical crossroads. We must work with all including Anwar. Now even some in UMNO are trying to get him back into the ruling party,’ Hadi said at the party’s annual assembly.
   ‘If Anwar is the opposition front, existing UMNO members may join the opposition. It will boost our strength and our credibility. We have accepted him as the leader,’ he added.
   Anwar was heir apparent to former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad before being sacked in 1998 and jailed on charges which he said were cooked up to prevent him challenging Mahathir for the premiership.
   Malaysia’s Federal Court overturned Anwar’s sodomy conviction last September, allowing him to walk free after six years in jail, but the corruption charge was not overturned and as a result he cannot stand for office until a ban expires in April 2008.
   The next general elections are expected to be held that year and Hadi said that because Anwar was the victim of a political conspiracy and had served his sentence, the government should lift the ban.
   The opposition front groups PAS and the People’s National Party led by Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

China on Friday said reform of the UN Security Council needed more in-depth discussion after vowing to block any move to give permanent seats to Japan, India, Brazil and Germany.
   ‘It needs extensive, transparent discussions and unanimous agreements,’ Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement on the ministry’s website.
   He said Security Council reform was ‘an issue of major importance that concerns the immediate interests of every country’. ‘That is the only way that can be truly conducive to the UN reform, to helping the UN play an effective and authoritative role in world affairs and maintaining unity among the UN member countries,’ he said.
   The comments came after China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya said Beijing would vote against any expansion plans.

Growing uncertainty over the EU’s future, as its leaders grapple for a way forward after twin blows to its constitution, risks severely damaging the bloc’s credibility on the world stage, analysts say.
   ‘Outside Europe, more than inside Europe, doubt is setting in, uncertainty reins,’ noted Luxembourg prime minister and currently EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, after Dutch voters roundly rejected the constitution on Wednesday.
   ‘It’s a dangerous situation that is by the way weakening and risks further weakening the influence of the European Union’s global policies,’ he said.
   The ‘no’ votes in France and the Netherlands against the text, aimed at making the expanding Union more administratively efficient, come at a time when the EU’s foreign policy ambitions have never been higher.
   The bloc has played a key role in the Iran nuclear standoff, is prodding forward Israel and the Palestinians, massively backs the Afghan authorities, and is helping hold the Balkans together after the wars in the 1990s.
   It is also moving into new territory in helping resolve the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region and will host a major international conference on Iraq in a few weeks.
   And as leaders in the 25-member Union cast about despairingly for another way forward now that the charter appears a dead letter, the doubt even seeped in at the high-profile EU summit with the United States.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, speaking on Thursday after the summit with a ‘troika’ of senior EU officials, sought to play down the impact of the votes but hinted that the nature of their future ties is unclear.
   ‘We understand that this has been a difficult period and that there will be some period of reflection going forward,’ Rice said. ‘But we continue to hope for an outward-looking Europe, not an inward-looking one.’
   She reaffirmed US support for a strong Europe and said the trans-Atlantic allies had many issues before them. ‘We are confident that this partnership will continue to grow and to be put to use in the service of great goals.’
   The Luxembourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, conceded that, following the French and Dutch voters, ‘Europe is a little bit hesitating’ after decades of integration. ‘Europe is not denied, not rejected by these two countries.
   ‘But it seems to be misunderstood,’ he added.
   US commentators agreed that the EU turmoil will inevitably impact on its international relations.
   ‘It’s going to be difficult for it (the EU) to serve as a useful partner for the United States going forward,’ said Robin Niblett of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
   ‘The impact is enormous,’ added Ulrike Guerot, an expert at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. ‘Our credibility in being able to organise a functioning political entity and play our role in the world is badly damaged.’
   In China, which is involved in a flaring trade war with the EU for its textile exports and under an EU arms embargo over human rights issues, Beijing University’s analyst Ye Zichenga predicted the bloc would turn inward.
   ‘Europe is going to be concentrating on digesting its difficulties and internal problems’, Ye said in an editorial.
   That opinion is shared by observers in Europe. ‘The message being sent out is that there is a huge gap between people and Europe’s bureaucratic structures,’ said Caroline Pailhe of the Brussels-based GRIP think-tank.
   ‘We are losing credibility, that’s for sure,’ she added.

UN satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, UN weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.
   UN inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the US-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to UN monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
   In the report to the UN Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he’s reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
   He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. ‘However, they can also be utilised for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair.’
   He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
   The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where UN inspectors monitored them.
   From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
   The commission, known as UNMOVIC, previously reported the discovery of some equipment and material from the sites in scrapyards in Jordan and the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
   Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared.

EU leaders may decide to scrap all other planned referendums on the bloc’s new constitution during their summit later this month in the wake of its rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands, the Portuguese foreign minister, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, has said.
   ‘What may happen at the next European Council is that the leaders of the 25 member states could conclude that it would be a useless and even painful exercise if it appeared that successive referendums would produced more ‘no’ results,’ he told state television RTP late Thursday.
   The referendums could either be temporarily suspended to give time for a period of relection or ‘the whole process could be terminated’, he added.
   ‘We can’t be blind to reality and we can’t pretend that nothing happened in France and the Netherlands, that nothing could happen with the British government. We can’t act like an ostrich,’ said Freitas.
   European Union leaders are expected to decide how to respond to French and Dutch rejections of the charter at their regularly scheduled June summit in Brussels, Belgium on June 16 and 17.
   The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is set to announce that Britain’s referendum on the EU constitution will be put on hold, senior officials in London were quoted as saying Thursday.
   Portugal has scheduled a vote on the charter—meant to streamline decision-making in the expanding bloc—for October.
   ‘Officially we maintain that Portugal should be consulted through a referendum,’ said Freitas.
   ‘But if there is a generalised consensus (in the EU to cancel or put on hold all future referendums), Portugal will certainly be a part of that consensus.’
   The EU constitution, which needs approval by all member states before taking effect, has so far been ratified by 10 countries including Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Germany.

Lebanon’s opposition urged Friday pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud to resign and planned mass protests after the assassination of an anti-Syrian journalist, blamed on the Beirut regime and its masters in Damascus.
   The killing of Samir Kassir, praised by the media as the ‘martyr of the free word’, in a Beirut bomb blast revived anger with the regime first unleashed by the February assassination of former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.
   Hariri’s assassination, which was also blamed on Lebanese and Syrian security services, had pushed Syria to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April.
   ‘It is true that some of the security chiefs have been removed after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, but its apparatus has not been dismantled,’ said an editorial in An Nahar daily, where Kassir was a prominent columnist.
   ‘And the head of this (security) regime remains in the presidency after his term in office was extended (under Syrian pressure) against the will of the people and unconstitutionally,’ it said.
   After an urgent meeting late Thursday, the opposition ‘demanded by democratic means the resignation of the president as he is the effective leader of the security/intelligence regime.’
   ‘Once again the hand of terrorism, under the protection of the president and the joint Lebanese-Syrian intelligence agencies and what is left of the regime, targets a symbol of the free press,’ said an opposition statement.
   But the united opposition which succeeded in rallying huge protests after Hariri’s assassination recently suffered breaks among its ranks due to electoral rows, mainly with retired general Michel Aoun.
   Crucial legislative polls which started in Beirut last weekend are to be held over the next three Sundays to elect a new parliament where the opposition expected to win a majority of seats and start procedures to remove Lahoud.
   ‘The assassination consecrates the conflict between the (opposition) and Aoun,’ who recently returned from 15 years of exile for waging a failed ‘war of liberation’ against the Syrians in Lebanon, said As Safir.

Now that ‘Deep Throat’ has been identified as a 91-year-old California grandfather, aficionados of unsolved mysteries have to look elsewhere. Luckily for them, there are plenty of places to look.
   Even after Tuesday’s revelation that former FBI No 2 Mark Felt was the Watergate super-source ‘Deep Throat,’ there are still unknowns swirling around the scandal that brought down president Richard Nixon in 1974.
   The main question remaining is what information was contained – and erased – in the 18 1/2 minute gap in a White House tape recording. The tape, made by Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, contained a discussion between the president and his chief of staff, HR Haldeman, pertaining to Watergate.
   Woods shot to notoriety for her inadequate explanations of how she came to erase part of the tape. She never told what the tape held before her death on January 22.
   A more contemporary Washington mystery is the source of the leak that led columnist Robert Novak to identify a CIA operative named Valerie Plame, an expert on weapons of mass destruction.
   Novak mentioned Plame by name in a July 14, 2003, column critical of Plame’s husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, after Wilson reported an Iraqi purchase of uranium ‘yellowcake’ from Niger was highly unlikely. Wilson’s report went counter to some in the Bush administration who sought a link between Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
   Novak has not said where he got the information, but denied it was a ‘planned leak,’ and said he was never told revealing Plame’s identity would endanger her or anyone else. A special prosecutor is investigating the case.
   The mystery that set Washingtonians buzzing in the summer of 2001 was the disappearance of 24-year-old Chandra Levy, a government intern who had a relationship with Rep Gary Condit, a California Democrat. Levy’s skeletal remains were found in a city park in 2002. How they got there remains unknown.
   Beyond Washington, there are historical mysteries that still resonate. Many observers wonder whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963, when president John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
   Conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination, some featured in popular movies, have focused on the possible involvement of groups ranging from the Mafia to anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the CIA. Questions have also been raised about what motivated Jack Ruby to kill Oswald in a Dallas police station two days after the assassination.
   The mystery surrounding former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa revolves around what happened to his body after he disappeared from a Michigan parking lot in 1975. The presumption is he was killed by the Mafia, but the whereabouts of his remains are unknown.
   The final fate of pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart has never been discovered, although theories abound. She was last heard from on July 2, 1937, on the Pacific leg of her attempt to be the first woman to fly around the globe. Extensive rescue attempts turned up nothing.
   Other disappearances that piqued mystery-lovers’ interest include DB Cooper, who hijacked a commercial airliner in 1971, extorted $200,000 from its owner and then leaped from the plane with 21 pounds (9.5 kg) of $20 bills strapped to his body. He has never been seen again, and his real identity remains unknown.
   ‘The Missingest Man In New York’ was state Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater, who seemingly vanished after hailing a cab on a New York street on August 6, 1930. He was officially declared dead in 1939, but sightings of the dandified jurist continued for years.

The Bolivian president, Carlos Mesa, faced with the worst social upheaval of his mandate, signed a decree on Thursday on two key demands in hopes of ending weeks of violent protests and narrowing the deep divide between rich and poor over energy resources.
   Bolivians will go to the polls on October 16 to elect members for an assembly to rewrite the constitution with the aim of redistributing power in favour of the poor indigenous majority, Mesa said.
   On the same day, he said, Bolivians will vote on a referendum for greater autonomy for provinces from La Paz, a demand of the wealthy eastern provinces where most of Bolivia’s gas and oil lies.
   Mesa announced his intervention after the fragmented Congress failed to reach a consensus for the third day in a row, while indigenous protests raged in the streets of La Paz and brought the capital to a standstill.

Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan warned the oil-rich state’s fledgling opposition Friday that a crackdown on pro-democracy activists would continue ahead of a rally.
   A spokesman for the administration of Baku, which is responsible for issuing permits to hold rallies in the capital, said it would ‘prevent’ an anti-government protest scheduled for Saturday if the opposition refuses to hold it out of sight in the city outskirts.
   ‘If the opposition wants artificially to create a confrontation in the centre of the city... that is unacceptable,’ the city official, Ehsan Zahidov, said.
   The opposition has however vowed to go ahead with Saturday’s rally in a central square in Baku.
   ‘Holding the rally is our constitutional right,’ the head of the opposition Popular Front of Azerbaijan party, Ali Kerimli, said.

US embassy in Jakarta warns of attacks
The United States on Friday issued the latest in a series of security alerts warning its citizens in Indonesia of a possible threat by terrorists to attack hotels in Jakarta. A message issued by the US embassy in the Indonesian capital said that it had learned of plans to strike at noon on an unspecified date, although the nature of the attack was not known. ‘The embassy has learned that as of June 1, 2005, there were plans by extremists to conduct bomb attacks targeting the lobbies of hotels frequented by westerners in Jakarta,’ it said. Last week the United States shuttered its embassy and diplomatic offices in Indonesia after an unspecified threat.

Taiwan names top negotiator with China
Former Taiwan premier, Chang Chun-hsiung, was named the island’s top negotiator with China Friday, and vowed to reconcile the two sides amid signs that the island’s pro-independence president could meet top Chinese leadership for the first time later this year. ‘I will push for reconciliation between the two sides with a sincere attitude, while safeguarding Taiwan’s sovereignty,’ said Chang, the newly-appointed chairman of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation. Chang, who served as prime minister between 2000 and 2002, also called for further talks between Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the island’s opposition parties, which favour closer ties with Beijing.

Quake hits Nias island
An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale shook the Indonesian island of Nias Friday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or property damage, a meteorologist said. The offshore quake hit at 7:41am (1241 GMT), with the epicentre 62 kilometres west of the main town of Gunung Sitoli, at a depth of 33 kilometres, said Yono of the Jakarta meteorology office. On March 28, an 8.7-magnitude earthquake killed more than 900 people on Nias off the southwest coast of Sumatra. Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

Fresh violence kills councillor in Kashmir
Suspected Muslim rebels Friday gunned down a municipal councillor in the main city of revolt-hit Indian Kashmir in the latest in a string of political killings, police said. Mohammed Ashraf was killed in a residential street of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir where a deadly insurrection has against New Delhi’s rule has raged since 1989. ‘Militants pumped bullets into his body. He was rushed to hospital but died on the way,’ the spokesman said. Ashraf, who belonged to the main opposition National Conference, was slain as he was headed towards his municipal council office.
— AFP

Russia to introduce biometric passports
Russia will begin introducing biometric passports with personal data stored on an electronic chip in 2007, officials said Friday. The new 32-page passports will have red covers, digitally stored data and digital photographs, the Goznak corporation, which prints Russia’s money, passports and stamps, said. The changeover from current passports, which will remain valid until their date of expiry, will cost the state about 14 billion roubles (500 million dollars), Goznak spokeswoman Natalya Nikiforova said. Some 400 passport control points will have to be reequipped, she said.

Syria tested 3 ‘Scud missiles’
Syria test fired three Scud missiles a week ago, one of which broke up over two Turkish villages causing no injuries, in an act of defiance to the United States and the United Nations, The New York Times said Friday quoting Israeli military officials. The officials said there was nothing unusual about the missile tests—Syria’s first since 2001 — other than the embarrassment it caused to Turkey, but that they decided to make them public because they were puzzled by US silence about them. In Tel Aviv, the Israeli officials told the daily that the missile tests—one older Scud B, with a range of 300 kilometres and two Scud D’s with a range of 700 kilometres – were part of a Syrian missile development project using North Korean technology.

Annan slates Cote d’Ivoire violence
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, on Thursday condemned violence in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing west that left dozens of people dead. Annan ‘strongly condemns the attack by Ivorian armed elements on the village of Guetrozon near Douékoué in western Côte d’Ivoire on 31 May and 1 June, which has reportedly resulted in the deaths of at least 41 people,’ a spokesman for the UN chief said. Nine people were killed in apparent revenge for a massacre that left some 50 dead, prompting a communal exodus and stirring fears that a fragile peace will dissolve completely.

African Union team visits Darfur
A high-level African Union delegation began a three-day visit to Darfur Thursday to assess the humanitarian situation in the war-torn western Sudanese region. The visit comes on the heels of a tour by the UN chief, Kofi Annan, who warned that the world was running ‘a race against time’ to solve the conflict. The AU team is monitoring a shaky ceasefire between Khartoum and Darfur’s ethnic minority rebels, and will meet Sudanese officials and aid workers and visit camps housing displaced people in Darfur. Between 180,000 and 300,000 people have been killed and 2.4 million made homeless in Darfur since a rebel uprising in early 2003 prompted Khartoum to unleash militias in a scorched-earth campaign.

UN peacekeeper hurt in Burundi firing
A South African UN peacekeeper was shot and wounded on Friday after unidentified gunmen fired at a polling station in Burundi as voters turned up for the country’s municipal elections, the United Nations said. ‘A South African peacekeeper accompanying election observers was wounded by a bullet this morning in a polling station in Gitanza,’ said Adama Diop, the spokesman for the military component of the UN Operation in Burundi. The injured soldier, whose wounds are not life threatening, was being treated in a Bujumbura hospital, Diop told AFP. ONUB has about 5,000 peacekeepers helping Burundi’s army and police oversee the elections. Gitaza, about 20 kilometres south of the capital, is located in Bujumbura Rural province, where the country’s lone remaining Hutu rebel group, the National Liberation Forces is still active.
— AFP