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Asia has marked International Women’s Day with rallies and protests against a wide range of gender inequalities and acts of violence, although there were some celebrations for hard-won victories.
   In Bangladesh, where hundreds of women continue to be disfigured each year from acid attacks, victims were due to converge on the capital of Dhaka to call for greater government efforts to stop the brutal practice.
   Nearly 2,000 women in Bangladesh have had acid thrown on them since 1999, according to the Acid Survivors’ Foundation, with their attackers most often men who have had their advances rejected.
   ‘On Women’s Day, our slogan is law, justice and good governance will help fight acid attacks,’ one of the rally’s organisers, Rahman, said.
   The United Nations-mandated Women’s Day was being marked in Pakistan by a similar battle to end ‘honour crimes’.
   In the central city of Multan, high-profile gang rape victim Mukhtiar Mai led a rally of several hundred women on the eve of Women’s Day, less than a week after a court controversially acquitted her alleged attackers.
   ‘I shall continue my struggle for the rights of women ‘til the last breath of my life and I will not bow before tyranny, exploitation, tradition or customs,’ Mai told the march.
   The 30-year-old was raped for more than an hour in a village in Punjab province in 2002 as punishment for her brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a powerful rival clan.
   A Pakistani court last week freed five men earlier sentenced to death for the attack, while a sixth man’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
   In the Philippines, the decades-old campaign for justice by women who were forced into sexual slavery at the hands of Japanese Second World War occupation forces, was again a rallying cry on Women’s Day.
   Twenty elderly women who say they were sex slaves staged a protest at the Japanese embassy because they were ‘still bereft of justice and recognition by the Japanese and Philippine governments,’ women’s group Kaisa Ka said.
   In China, women’s rights were one of the ‘hot topics’ among lawmakers gathered in Beijing for the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper.
   The All-China Women’s Federation is campaigning at the NPC for a law to protect women in the workplace, following a recent survey in Beijing that showed 86 per cent of women had been victims of sexual harassment.
   At a forum in Bangkok to mark International Women’s Day, the United Nations and rights groups warned last December’s tsunami disaster had led to wide-ranging follow-up dangers for female survivors.
   ‘The Indian Ocean tsunami... has produced some very gender-specific aftershocks, ranging from women giving birth in unsafe conditions to increased cases of rape and abuse,’ Cholpon Akmatova, from the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, told the forum.
   ‘Women, marginalised and disempowered under normal circumstances are more at risk because of their socio-economic status, barriers to choice and lack of access to resources.’
   However it was not all bleak news for Asia’s women on Tuesday. In South Korea, women’s groups staged plays, dances and exhibitions to mark a victory for gender equality—the abolition of a century-old family registration.
   The National Assembly last week voted to abolish by 2008 the ‘hojuje’ system under which children take the family name of their natural father.
   Women’s groups say the system adds to the stigma of divorce and discriminated against children of divorced women.
   Events were also decidedly more upbeat in the modern city-state of Singapore, where the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations was due to celebrate its 25th anniversary with a gala dinner on Tuesday night.
   Aside from raising money for traditional causes such as charities and women’s support groups, the council will for the first time also support a sporting cause—a planned all-women Mt Everest climbing expedition for 2008.
   ‘We felt the Singapore Women’s Everest Team 2008 encapsulates how far we women have come in recent times and hope the team will be a source of inspiration for all women,’ the anniversary dinner’s chairperson, Jennifer Lee, said.

China lifted the veil on a much-anticipated anti-secession law which will give its military the legal basis for attacking Taiwan, prompting Taipei to warn that peace in the region was under threat.
   War might be the only option left for China’s decision makers if all other avenues to reunify Taiwan are exhausted, according to Wang Zhaoguo, vice chairman of the National People’s Congress, or parliament.
   ‘Using non-peaceful means to stop secession in defence of our sovereignty and territorial integrity would be our last resort when all our efforts for a peaceful reunification prove futile,’ he told lawmakers in Beijing.
   He said the bill, which is expected to be passed on Monday, provides for the use of force ‘in the event that the Taiwan independence forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China’.
   China’s military might could also come into play if ‘major incidents entailing Taiwan’s secession from China should occur or (if) peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted.’
   Details of the law were not announced, but China made clear it had not yielded an inch from its insistence to retake Taiwan, which has been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.
   ‘Reunifying Taiwan is the wish of all the Chinese people and is a task handed down through tens of thousands of generations,’ the foreign minister Li Zhaoxing, told reporters.
   Wang argued that China’s basic policy remains ‘peaceful reunification and one country, two systems,’ referring to the formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return from British rule in 1997.
   ‘The one country, two systems formula not only embodies the principled position of achieving national reunification and safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ he said.
   ‘It also allows a high degree of flexibility by taking into account Taiwan’s past and present circumstances.’
   The Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian, has stated he does not consider the ‘one-country, two-systems’ solution appropriate for the island.
   The formula allows Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, but critics have said it gives Beijing undue influence in the city. Ironically, it was originally coined with Taiwan in mind.
   Taiwan responded by lodging the ‘strongest protest’ against China’s ‘malicious threats.’
   ‘The law exposes China’s attempts to annex Taiwan by the use of force and to dominate the region. It’s like issuing a blank check to its military,’ said vice chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, Chiu Tai-san.
   ‘Our government lodges the strongest protest against (China’s) malicious attempts and threats resorting to violent means which will jeopardise peace in the region and cross-strait stability,’ Chiu told reporters.
   The anti-secession legislation has sparked concern that it could end the ‘strategic ambiguity’ over Taiwan’s status that has ensured decades of peace in the Taiwan Strait.
   Last month, the United States and Japan jointly issued a statement which described Taiwan as a common security issue amid China’s military build-up.
   China Tuesday took a swipe at ‘outside forces’ interfering in its internal affairs.
   ‘Solving the Taiwan question and achieving China’s complete reunification is China’s internal affair,’ said Wang. ‘On this question we will not submit to any interference by outside forces.’

The Indian government on Monday imposed direct federal rule in the lawless state of Bihar where legislative polls last month produced a hung assembly, officials said.
   Cabinet of the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, also placed Bihar’s provincial assembly in ‘suspended animation’ and sent its recommendations to the president, Abdul Kalam, to endorse government officials said.
   ‘The cabinet recommended president’s rule as the term of the 12th Bihar assembly ended last midnight and no political party or group could claim a simple majority required for the formation of the government,’ an official from the prime minister’s office said.
   ‘A presidential notification to this effect is expected later Monday night,’ he added.
   Presidential rule empowers federally-appointed provincial governors with sweeping powers including the authority to reconvene suspended state legislatures and holding of fresh elections.
   The railways minister of Singh, Laloo Prasad Yadav, and the steel minister, Ramvilas Paswan stayed away from the crucial cabinet meeting.
   No political group including Singh’s ruling Congress party could muster the needed majority of 122 members in the 243-seat house in the ballot, which pushed Bihar into political turmoil, prompting Governor Buta Singh to call overnight for federal rule.

Political activists rounded up in the wake of Nepal king Gyanendra’s power grab are not being given adequate medical care and their health is beginning to deteriorate, a human rights group claimed.
   Ishwor Koirala, programme officer of the Human Rights Organisation of Nepal, said according to HURON sources at least 450 people have been detained since Gyanendra sacked the government on February 1, assumed absolute power and imposed emergency rule.
   The authorities have not said how many people are in detention but on Friday officially announced they were extending by two months the house arrest of two former prime ministers and four other top political leaders.
   ‘The health condition of most of the political detainees is gradually deteriorating as they have not been able to see proper doctors and get medicines,’ Koirala said on Tuesday.
   ‘A team of HURON members met about 70 political detainees at different detention centres inside and outside the Kathmandu valley on Saturday and Sunday,’ he added.
   ‘During their inspection, the rights activists found that some of the political detainees were suffering from diabetes, heart problems, typhoid, fever and other ailments,’ Koirala said, adding that health checkups were being done by health assistants rather than doctors or specialists.’
   Besides demanding regular checkups by qualified doctors, detained activists and political leaders—some in their 80s—want access to newspapers, radio and television, telephone connections and contact with people outside their immediate family.
   The HURON president, Sudeep Pathak, handed the list of four demands Monday to the home minister, Dan Bahadur Shahi, Koirala said.
   The detainees had not complained about their meals or the behaviour of the security personnel, he said.
   ‘They can take showers and the place where they are been detained is also clean,’ he said. ‘There is also a separate section for women detainees.’
   Ten senior political leaders were divided into two groups, Koirala added, and were being detained at Kakani, 35 kilometres north of here.
   He said they included senior leaders of the Nepali Congress party—Narhari Acharya, Laxman Ghimire, Gopali Raj Pahadi, Gopal Rai, Madhu Acharya, and former Kathmandu mayor Haribol Bhattarai.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel Tuesday of undermining peace efforts by dragging its feet over promises to free prisoners and pull back from West Bank cities.
   Addressing the Palestinian parliament, Abbas voiced his toughest criticism of Israel since agreeing a cease-fire with the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, a month ago. Israel froze peace moves after a Palestinian suicide bombing on February 25.
   ‘The Israeli delay in implementing the commitments constitutes a threat to what we have succeeded in achieving and gives excuses to those who are plotting to sabotage the entire peace process,’ Abbas said, in a copy of the speech obtained in advance by the Reuters.
   Hopes for Middle East peace have risen since Abbas replaced the late Yasser Arafat and agreed the truce.
   But after the bombing killed five people in Tel Aviv, Israel put a halt to a planned handover of West Bank cities and prisoner releases. Sharon said Abbas had to take firm action against militant groups.
   ‘We have proven our commitment and seriousness ... despite continued occupation and poor capabilities,’ Abbas said.

Indonesians, Vietnamese and Filipinos are among the earliest risers in the world while many Taiwanese, South Koreans and Hong Kongers are night owls, according to a global survey of sleeping habits.
   The survey by consumer and market research firm ACNielsen was conducted in October last year and covered 14,000 consumers in 28 countries spanning Asia, Europe and North America.
   Fully 91 per cent of Indonesians, who are predominantly Muslim and pray before dawn, said they are out of bed before 7 am, while 88 per cent of Vietnamese and 69 per cent of Filipinos said likewise.
   On the opposite end, 69 per cent of Taiwanese,  68 per cent of South Koreans and 66 per cent of Hong Kongers sleep after midnight.
   Seven of the top 10 late-sleeping nations in the survey are in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
   Globally, Portugal had the most late sleepers with 75 per cent staying up past midnight.
   The earliest to bed in the Asia-Pacific region are Australians, 24 per cent of whom are in bed by 10 pm, followed by New Zealanders at 19 per cent.
   Australians also log the longest sleeping hours with 31 per cent catching more than nine hours of slumber per day, followed by 28 per cent of Kiwis.
   The Japanese are the most sleep-deprived people among the Asians surveyed, with 41 per cent getting six hours or less.

The Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, promised greater efforts to strengthen trade and transit ties with landlocked Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday during a two-country Central Asian tour.
   Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan would work to boost infrastructure ties and ensure that Kyrgyzstan benefits from Pakistan’s new port of Gwadar, in which China has been a key investor, Musharraf said.
   ‘We need to enhance our trade and commercial ties—this can easily be done through improving the communication linkages between our two countries, through facilitating interaction of the private sector and through easing the visa regimes,’ Musharraf said after talks with the Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek.
   Musharraf was speaking during a Central Asian tour that also took in Uzbekistan, reflecting increased interest by both Pakistan and its arch-rival India in the former Soviet Central Asian republics.
   As well as enhancing trade ties Pakistan is also studying whether it could import electricity from this mountainous republic and of providing military training and supplies for Kyrgyzstan, Musharraf said.

Indonesian forces have put a battalion of marines on standby for deployment to disputed and potentially oil-rich waters off Borneo island, turning up the heat on Malaysia’s claim to the area.
   Indonesia’s military, which has dispatched warships and fighter jets to the area, announced its readiness to up the ante Tuesday, on the eve of high-level talks between the two countries aimed at defusing the row.
   ‘There is no special order yet, but we anticipate if the order comes through we can be mobilised there,’ the Marine brigadier general, Baharuddin, said after a televised inspection of the battalion, based on the main Indonesian island of Java.
   The dispute is the biggest test of relations between the two mainly Muslim neighbours for many years. Gunboat diplomacy has been rare since a 1963-66 conflict between Indonesia under former president Sukarno and British-backed Malaysia.
   Both nations rely heavily on oil and gas and each have awarded exploration contracts in the region where the dispute is centred. Last year, Indonesia awarded one to US-based oil firm Unocal Corp, then Malaysia granted exploration rights to Anglo-Dutch oil firm Royal Dutch/Shell.

Three men were shot dead as the death toll from a fresh wave of violence in Sri Lanka rose to 10 amid fresh diplomatic moves to end a deadlock in the island’s peace bid, officials said.
   The three men were gunned down in separate incidents in the restive Eastern province overnight and early Tuesday in what the military described as an upsurge in rebel internecine clashes. Seven had been killed on Saturday.
   ‘We are noticing an increase in clashes,’ military spokesman Daya Ratnayake said. ‘The indications are that this killing cycle will continue as both factions try to demonstrate their strength.’
   The de facto number two in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led an unprecedented split in March last year and since then the main rebel outfit has been trying to retake control over the east where the renegades are active.

Intolerance and discrimination towards Muslims has risen in western Europe since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, a report by a human rights group said Monday.
   ‘As the perceived threat of religious extremism has been given wide attention in public debate, pre-existing prejudices and discrimination against Muslims have been reinforced,’ said the Helsinki International Federation of Human Rights.
   ‘Muslims have increasingly felt that they are viewed with distrust and hostility and that they are stigmatised because of their beliefs.’
   The IFH reported increases in verbal and physical attacks on Muslims and Muslim institutions and property, unbalanced and stereotypical media portrayals of Muslims as ‘aliens’ and an ‘enemy within’, discrimination in employment and aggressive political rhetoric by popular right-wing parties.
   ‘No country has escaped this phenomenon,’ said the IFH president, Ulrich Fishcer, referring to the federations’ member countries; Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and Sweden.
   ‘The situation is getting worse and is marked by regular upsurges, as happened during the passing of the law in France against the wearing of the veil by Muslims in schools or the murder of (Dutch film maker) Theo van Gogh,’ said the IFH director, Aaron Rhodes.
   The report said it had become ‘more ‘legitimate’ to openly express hostility against Muslims in the post-September 11 period, and it is now possible to publicly use intolerant language against Muslims in a way that was not previously acceptable’.
   The report warned that ‘the fact that Muslims have increasingly experienced hostility, discrimination and exclusion since September 11 may enhance their susceptibility to propaganda by organisations that advocate violent methods’.
   ‘It is only by scrupulously defending the rights of their Muslim minorities that the EU member states can retain the confidence of these minorities and fruitfully promote their integration in the long run,’ the IFH said.
   The enlarged Europe has about 20 million people of Muslim origin with around 5 million in France, three million in Germany, 1.5 million in Britain, according to the IFH.
   The IFH groups 44 human rights organisations from the country members of the European Organisation of Security and Cooperation.

The US president, George W Bush, says his drive to spread democracy and freedom is the best way to combat terrorism and calls this a hopeful time in the Middle East.
   Bush was outlining his case in a speech Tuesday at the National Defence University, a centre for professional military education at Fort McNair in Washington.
   The president plans ‘to update the American people on the progress that we’re making in the war on terrorism and to talk about the remarkable developments that are taking place in the broader Middle East,’ said White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. In particular, he cited elections in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan and pressures in Lebanon for Syria to withdraw its troops.
   Bush’s speech marks a return to the trademark theme of his successful re-election campaign. After the election, Bush turned his focus to an uphill battle to radically redesign the Social Security programme by offering personal investment accounts, a step that would be accompanied by a reduction in future benefits.

Government proposals to fight terrorism suffered a blow when the upper house of parliament voted to allow judges, to impose restrictions including electronic tagging and curfews on suspects.
   The unelected House of Lords voted by 249 to 119 in support of the opposition Liberal Democrat amendment, which came during the detailed committee stage of debate on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill.
   The decision modifies the Labour government’s initial anti-terrorism legislation, which gave the home secretary the right to authorise ‘control orders’ ranging from tagging, curfews and bans on phone and Internet use to full house arrest.
   The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has already conceded judicial involvement for house arrest orders in an attempt to achieve consensus in the House of Commons.
   But parliamentary opposition to the bill remains strong, as even members of prime minister Tony Blair’s Labour government have demanded that judges be allowed to rule on other control orders as well.
   The Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed only narrowly by the House of Commons last week in a 272-219 vote amid a revolt among backbench Labour lawmakers.
   It is meant to replace a previous anti-terrorism measure allowing foreign suspects to be jailed indefinitely without trial, which was ruled unlawful last December.
   That law – the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 – expires on March 14.
   When it was struck down by the Law Lords, a dozen foreign terrorism suspects were being held in British prisons, prompting critics to draw comparisons with the US detention of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
   The government gave no indication whether it would seek to overturn the amendment when the Prevention of Terrorism Bill returns to the House of Commons.
   A home office spokesperson said: ‘The government continues to believe that the bill as passed by the House of Commons strikes the right balance between protecting the security of the nation and safeguarding individual liberty.’
   ‘The Commons will consider the bill as returned by the Lords.’
   The setback came a day after the former head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Lord John Stevens, warned in a newspaper column that perhaps 200 trained al-Qaeda militants were at large in Britain.
   His statement echoed a broadly similar claim last week by Blair, who is gearing up for a general election that is expected to take place in May.
   Trying to overturn the amendments in the Commons is a potentially dangerous option for the government, political analysts said.

The Cuban foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, vehemently defended Cuba’s widely-criticised human rights record ahead of a fence-mending trip to Europe.
   Perez Roque, who will travel to Europe Tuesday, said he would seek better relations with the European Union but not at the expense of Cuba’s sovereignty.
   Relations deteriorated after Cuba rounded up 75 opponents of president Fidel Castro’s communist regime in 2003 and executed three Cubans found guilty of hijacking a ferry.
   The European Union responded with sanctions, which were suspended in January after Castro’s regime released some dissidents and signalled a re-opening of diplomatic contacts with EU embassies in Havana.
   ‘I will discuss with European authorities Cuba’s willingness to improve relations with EU nations, but only on the basis of respect of Cuba’s sovereignty and independence,’ Perez Roque told reporters here.
   EU aid commissioner Louis Michel warned last month that European sanctions could be reinstated if Cuba does not meet Brussels’ human rights requirements.
   ‘I saw commissioner Michel’s statement and I propose to discuss it with him with frankness,’ Perez Roque said.
   But, he added: ‘Cuba does not have to give an explanation about what it does in its territory to any European official.’
   Perez Roque also said he was to meet with British junior foreign minister Bill Rammel in Havana Monday in what he described as a ‘significant high-level visit’ by an EU member.
   The Cuban foreign minister said he will attend a high-level meeting of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where Cuba
   annually has to fight off motions critical of its record, before heading to other European nations.
   ‘Cuba hopes that this year no Latin American government will again act like a traitor in the Human Rights Commission,’ he said. Uruguay and Honduras have introduced motions against Cuba in the international panel in recent years.
   Perez Roque also took aim at Havana’s archrival, the United States, taking it to task over the US State Department’s annual global human rights report issued last week.
   ‘We categorically reject the accusations contained in the US state department report and we invite them to present any evidence backing up their accusations,’ he said.
   The report has ‘no credibility’ and ‘is full of lies about our country,’ he added.
   In its annual global report on human rights abuses, the state department said: ‘Fidel Castro added another year to his record as the longest serving dictator in the world.’

A senior Iraqi official was gunned down by guerrillas on Tuesday as the furor over the US shooting of an Italian intelligence agent threatened to carve a deep rift between Washington and Rome.
   The US military’s conduct in Iraq was under the magnifying glass over the shooting of the Italian and a Bulgarian soldier in a separate incident, and the release of a video of soldiers abusing at least one wounded prisoner.
   The deputy director of the Iraqi interior ministry’s naturalisation department, Ghazi Mohammed Issa, was killed in broad daylight outside his Baghdad home by masked gunmen in a car, ministry official Sabah Kadhim said.
   Issa, an expert on naturalisation, was due to leave Tuesday for Iran to vet Iraqi refugees expelled from under Saddam Hussein’s old regime who now wished to return home, Kadhim said.
   The assassination was claimed in a statement posted on the Internet by al-Qaeda’s group in Iraq headed by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was impossible to verify its accuracy.
   Despite major US-led assaults and the arrest of hundreds of suspects over the past six months, including a massive onslaught on rebels in Fallujah last year, the insurgency continues to cause chaos in Iraq.
   In Rome, the Italian foreign minister, Gianfranco Fini, demanded answers over the differences in US and Italian versions of the killing of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari and wounding of freed journalist Guiliana Sgrena Friday by US soldiers at a Baghdad checkpoint.

A woman was led away by police after she bared her breasts at Prince Charles as part of an anti-royalist protest in which he was called a parasite during his visit to New Zealand’s capital on Tuesday.
   Carrying placards reading ‘honour the treaty’—a reference to the Treaty of Waitangi between New Zealand’s Maoris and its British colonial rulers—and ‘death to the monarchy’, a group of about six demonstrators chanted in front of a crowd of 500 people gathered to welcome the heir to the British throne.
   Another protester waved a red flag with a picture of Argentinian-born Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara on it.
   As Charles conducted a walkabout chatting with some of the fans who had waited to see him, clapping and cheering on his arrival, the protesters called the prince a parasite and recited a history of what they maintained were the wrongdoings of the royal family.
   The topless protester, who identified herself as Hannah Plant, 23, was standing on a wall outside the city library when she removed her shirt exposing her bare breasts and shouting ‘shame on colonisation’.
   The message ‘Get your colony shame off my breasts’ was scrawled over her chest.
   But as she was led away by police, Prince Charles appeared unfazed and he smiled towards the protesters as he entered City Gallery for the launch of an environmentally friendly local plan known as the Urban Design Protocol.
   Another protester was dragged away earlier from the crowd near where the prince was shaking hands.
   Charles arrived in New Zealand at the weekend unaccompanied by his bride-to-be Camilla Parker Bowles after a five-day trip to Australia, which was overshadowed by a tour of the country by Denmark’s Australian-born Princess Mary.
   Charles’ last visit to New Zealand in 1994 was marked by an incident in which an anti-royalist protester attempted to attack the prince with a can of air freshener on Auckland’s waterfront.
   Police have issued a statement saying they were taking “all appropriate security steps to ensure the safety” of Charles on his current visit.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, on Monday pressed the Security Council to take urgent action on Sudan’s Darfur region, saying it should reach agreement on a major stumbling block this week.
   ‘I am worried that we are not moving fast enough to deal with the appalling situation in Darfur,’ Annan said in a statement read to reporters by spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
   ‘We keep getting reports which show that the killing and raping and burning are still going on,’ he said after convening an urgent meeting with all 15 council members to discuss the crisis.
   The council has been divided over where trials would be held for those responsible for possible war crimes or crimes against humanity in Darfur during the past two years of conflict.
   At least 70,000 people are believed to have died—the true figure could be much higher—after Sudan enlisted proxy militia to help put down a rebellion against the Arab-led government in Khartoum.

Syrian troops were starting to move out from positions in Lebanon after Beirut and Damascus announced a long-awaited pullback that has nevertheless failed to impress the international community.
   France and the United States in particular stepped up the pressure on Damascus for a quick and complete withdrawal of its troops who have been stationed in neighbouring Lebanon for almost three decades.
   The White House bluntly said it wanted ‘action not words’ from Damascus.
   Syria on Monday pledged to pull back its troops in Lebanon towards the eastern Bekaa Valley by the end of March but stopped short of announcing a full pullout called for under a UN Security Council resolution.
   The declaration after a summit between the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud came on the eve of the 42nd anniversary Tuesday of the arrival of the Baath party to power in Syria.

Politician killed in Kashmir
Suspected Islamic militants shot dead a popular ruling party politician in Indian Kashmir while soldiers killed three militants, police said. Ghulam Nabi Ganai, regional president of the governing Peoples’ Democratic Party, was gunned down by rebels in Kulgam town, 70 kilometres south of summer capital Srinagar, as he returned from praying at a mosque. ‘Ganai was returning home after offering morning prayers in a mosque when militants shot him dead,’ a police spokesman said on Tuesday, adding he was a ‘very popular’ local politician. Troops, meanwhile, shot dead three rebels in two clashes in snowbound southern Doda and northern Baramulla districts Tuesday, officials said.
— AFP

Bashir appeals terrorism conviction
Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on Tuesday filed an appeal in a bid to overturn a 30-month sentence for involvement in an alleged conspiracy that led to the Bali bombings. Lawyers representing Bashir argued that the guilty verdict against Bashir was solely based on a police statement purportedly made by a convicted Bali bomber named Mubarok but whose veracity was not proven during the trial. A Jakarta court on Thursday sentenced Bashir for his involvement in an ‘sinister conspiracy’ that led to the Bali bombings but cleared him of more serious charges of planning terrorist attacks. Judges said his words to key Bali bomber Amrozi and Mubarok during a meeting in the Java island city of Solo in 2002 constituted the conspiracy.
— AFP

Jiang’s career ends as resignation accepted
China’s parliament has voted to accept the resignation of former supreme leader Jiang Zemin as chairman of the state Central Military Commission, formally ending his political career. The largely ceremonial position was Jiang’s last high-level post in the government apparatus and his stepping down marks his full retirement. In his resignation letter, Jiang said he ‘had always looked forward to the complete retirement from leading positions.’ He proposed president Hu Jintao succeed him. At the Great Hall of the People, 2,853 delegates attending the National People’s Congress voted to accept the 78-year-old’s resignation, eight were against and five were undecided.
— AFP

Seven more human bird flu cases in Vietnam
Seven Vietnamese patients who initially tested negative for bird flu have been found to be carrying the virus, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday after further tests by a laboratory in Tokyo. ‘The results were positive in Tokyo in a WHO reference laboratory,’ said Peter Horby, a WHO epidemiologist in Hanoi. Earlier this year, staff from the WHO, Japans National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, began working with health authorities in Vietnam to improve the reliability of laboratory tests. ‘Retesting detected H5N1 in specimens from seven persons,’ WHO said in a statement on its website.
— AFP

Bush picks Bolton for UN job
The US president, George W Bush, named Monday a self-confessed United Nations critic and a hardline diplomat, John Bolton, to be ambassador to the world body. Bolton, the current under secretary of state for arms control, was picked for the key job ‘because he knows how to get things done,’ the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said. ‘He is a tough minded diplomat. He has a strong record of success and he has a proven track record of effective multilateralism,’ she told a media conference with Bolton by her side. Bolton is a sharp critic of North Korea and other hardline regimes and had slammed the United Nations on many occasions.
— AFP

Kosovo prime minister resigns
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, will resign and fly to the Netherlands to face war crimes charges at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague, a senior government source said on Tuesday. ‘We have to face it,’ a senior official in the Kosovo government told Reuters. ‘He has informed the President. He will resign today ... and will fly to The Hague tomorrow.’ Details of the indictment against Haradinaj have not been made public, but the UN court has investigated him over his role in the 1998-99 guerrilla war against Serb forces.
— Reuters

Confce on terrorism opens in Madrid
An international conference on terrorism opened Tuesday in Madrid, kicking off four days of discussions that are to culminate with commemorations marking the first anniversary of the March 11, 2004 train bombings in the capital blamed on al-Qaeda. Leaders and top government officials from more than 20 countries are attending the symposium, which was being carried out under tight security. Spain’s Prince Felipe inaugurated the conference by saying it underscored the international community’s condemnation of terrorism.
— AFP

Clinton won’t attend conference in Madrid
Former US president Bill Clinton has pulled out of a conference on terrorism starting in Madrid Tuesday because of poor health, organisers said. Clinton had been expected to be among the dozens of high-profile participants at the four-day conference, which is to culminate with speeches and ceremonies Friday marking the one year anniversary of the train bombings in the city blamed on al-Qaeda that killed 191 people. ‘No, he is not coming. He cancelled four days ago for health reasons,’ a spokesman for the conference organisers, Andy Hazel, said. Clinton had also cancelled a meeting with Spanish King Juan Carlos that was to have taken place Thursday, he said.
— AFP

Iran, EU resume crucial nuke talks
Negotiators from Iran and the European Union resumed key technical talks Tuesday in the Swiss city of Geneva on Iran’s controversial nuclear policy, a source close to the talks said. The confidential talks, involving diplomats and experts from Britain, France and Germany, as well as Iran, are due to last three days, the diplomat added. The new round of meetings is taking place amid Iran’s continued rejection of a demand to permanently abandon uranium enrichment, a fuel process which can assist in the functioning of nuclear power stations but also produces material for nuclear weapons. The United States maintains that Iran is trying to covertly develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists that its programme is purely meant to fill civilian energy needs. The diplomat said the first day of talks would focus on political cooperation, with the key nuclear issue only due to be broached on Wednesday and Thursday.
— AFP