Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplement «

Nepalese human rights activists and political leaders have condemned the pressing of corruption charges against former premier, Sher Bahadur Deuba, calling him a victim of ‘kangaroo court’ justice.
   Deuba, fired by king Gyanendra when he seized power on February 1, was charged Thursday with allegedly siphoning off 4.1 million rupees (58,238 dollars) in public funds for party supporters by an anti-corruption commission set up by the monarch.
   ‘This (the commission) is like a kangaroo court,’ said Subodh Raj Pyakurel, head of the Informal Sector Service Centre, a local human rights group.
   Former communist cabinet minister, Nilamber Acharya, said the panel, which has sweeping arrest and punishment powers, was unconstitutional.
   It is ‘invested with the authority to arrest, investigate charges, file cases and give verdicts,’ he said on Friday. ‘Nowhere in the world are all these functions put in a single hand.’
   Deuba is the most senior politician to be detained by the body.
   The charges against Deuba followed a weekend announcement by Gyanendra that he was ending the emergency rule he imposed when he took over.
   Deuba, arrested nine days ago, refused to testify before the commission, accusing it of waging a vendetta against politicians opposing Gyanendra’s takeover. He has denied any wrongdoing.
   Gyanendra has said he grabbed power to end an increasingly bloody Maoist insurgency in the Himalayan nation after squabbling politicians failed to do so. The nine-year revolt has claimed over 11,000 lives. Gopal Man Shrestha, acting president of Deuba’s party, the Nepali Congress (Democratic), called Deuba’s arrest ‘a prejudiced act’.
   ‘The commission has one aim—to single out political leaders and take action against them,’ he said.
   The commission alleged that Deuba distributed money from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund to party activists last October. Six other former ministers face similar charges.
   Under the Corruption Control Act, Deuba can ‘be detained for one week to six months for further investigation,’ a Supreme Court lawyer said. Commission spokesman, Prem Raj Karki, said Deuba had refused to pay bail of 3.9 million rupees.
   The commission is also probing alleged irregularities in the awarding of contracts by Deuba’s government.
   Since the emergency rule ended, several political leaders have been freed but hundreds of other party officials remain in jail.
   Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists said the king’s ending of emergency rule ‘might be a tactical ploy to convince’ donors to resume military aid.
   India, Nepal’s biggest military donor, and Britain suspended military supplies to Nepal’s ill-equipped army in protest over the king’s action.

A Taiwanese opposition leader came to China on Thursday and immediately rejected the notion of independence for the island, a position geared to win the approval of leaders in Beijing.
   James Soong, head of the People First Party, was greeted by Chen Yunlin, head of the Communist Party’s Taiwan Work Office, as he stepped off the airplane in the western city of Xi’an. Some 100 students were lined up on the runway, waving bouquets of flowers and chanting, ‘Welcome! Welcome!’
   ‘This party is not only against Taiwan independence, but also against two Chinas,’ Soong said in a 20-minute speech on the tarmac that was punctuated by applause.
   Soong, who leads Taiwan’s second-largest opposition party, heads to Beijing next week to meet with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. His visit comes two days after Lien Chan, chairman of Taiwan’s biggest opposition group, the Nationalist Party, wrapped up a historic eight-day tour of the mainland.
   The Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian, had discussed having Soong carry a message to Chinese leaders. But Soong declined, saying he did not want to act as Chen’s envoy.
   Beijing hopes to isolate Chen, whose party favours independence for Taiwan. The Nationalists and Soong’s party both want to unite the island with the mainland.
   In Taipei, Chen struck a conciliatory note on the visits by his political rivals.
   However, he added: ‘Regardless of which political party China wants to speak to, at the end of the day it will have to talk to Taiwan’s popularly elected president.’
   The United States also urged dialogue between China and Chen’s government.
   Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but has strong informal ties with Taiwan and is the island’s top arms provider.
   Supporters of Taiwan’s government have said Soong and Lien picked the wrong time to travel to China — the Beijing legislature passed an anti-secession law in March authorising a military attack if the island moves to make its de facto independence permanent.

A group of 27 scientists, nuclear experts and former officials urged Japan Thursday to rethink a nearly completed plutonium reprocessing plant that could produce fuel for 1,000 warheads each year.
   ‘Japan is about to join several nuclear-weapon states as a producer of separated plutonium on an industrial scale,’ the experts said in a joint letter posted on the Web site of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US nonprofit organisation focusing on environmental and nuclear safety issues.
   The letter said the plant could produce up to 8 metric tons of plutonium a year—enough for 1,000 weapons—for its plutonium-based reactors. It said Japan had no need to increase its already large stockpile of plutonium.
   ‘At a time when the nonproliferation regime is facing its greatest challenge, Japan should not proceed with its current plans for the start-up of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant,’ the letter said, adding that minimising global stocks of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium should be a top priority.
   Among those who signed the letter are Nobel Prize-winning physicists Sheldon Lee Glashow and Leon Lederman, former secretary of defence, William Perry, and nonproliferation expert and former US Pentagon official Henry Sokolski.
   The nuclear weapon states who signed the 1970 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China—have all halted their production of plutonium for warheads, and their production of high-enriched uranium, the letter said.
   However, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and India continue to extract plutonium on a large scale from spent civilian reactor fuel.
   ‘There continues to be a steady increase in the world stockpile of ... plutonium, which stood at 235 metric tons at the end of 2003.
   This ... is enough to make 30,000 nuclear weapons, each with a destructive power comparable to that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs,’ the letter said.
   ‘Japan has shown great wisdom in not joining the ‘club’ of nuclear-weapon states. We urge it to show equal leadership in deciding not to add to the accumulation of excess stocks of separated civilian plutonium,’ the letter said.

Asian and European foreign ministers meeting in Japan on Friday fretted about North Korea’s nuclear threat, while the European Union pressed Myanmar to release opposition leaders and improve its human rights record.
   Almost a year after the last round of six-country talks aimed at resolving the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear programmes, worries about an atomic test by the reclusive state are growing.
   The Japanese foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, told counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Korea and China that patience was running thin.
   ‘We can’t wait forever. There needs to be a sense of urgency,’ a Japanese official quoted him as saying. The United States has made clear it would consider taking the matter to the UN Security Council, a prelude possible sanctions, if Pyongyang refused to resume the talks. North Korea has said sanctions would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
   Machimura echoed the US view, saying other measures would need to be considered if there was no progress in negotiations.
   ‘For example, we need to think about the Security Council as a next option,’ he told reporters after meeting South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting in the city of Kyoto.
   Ban and the Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, urged North Korea not to do anything to make itself more isolated.
   ‘The ministers said any moves by North Korea that deteriorate the situation further would not help, and only further isolate itself,’ South Korean official, Park Joon-woo, told reporters after a separate meeting by the two ministers.
   The New York Times reported on Friday that US officials were assessing satellite photographs that appeared to show extensive preparations for a nuclear weapons test.
   On Sunday, North Korea test-fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, fuelling worries that it might be trying to merge its missile programs with nuclear weapons.
   Ban and Li also expressed concern about a verbal slanging match between Pyongyang and Washington, Park said.
   President Bush said in late April North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was ‘a dangerous
   person’ and ‘a tyrant’ who starved his people. North Korea then called Bush ‘a half-baked man in terms of morality’ and ‘a philistine.’
   Machimura is likely to use his meeting with Li on Saturday to urge Beijing—North Korea’s main backer—to try harder to bring Pyongyang back to the six-country talks.
   The two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China last met to discuss the issue in June 2004.

A six-day courtroom-style debate opened on Thursday in Kansas over what children should be taught in schools about the origin of life—was it natural evolution or did God create the world?
   The hearings, complete with opposing attorneys and a long list of witnesses, were arranged amid efforts by some Christian groups in Kansas and nationally to reverse the domination of evolutionary theory in the nation’s schools.
   William Harris, a medical researcher and co-founder of a Kansas group called the Intelligent Design Network, posed the core question about life’s beginnings before mapping out why he and other Christians want changes in school curriculum.
   School science classes are teaching children that life evolved naturally and randomly, Harris said, arguing that this was in conflict with Biblical teachings that God created life.
   ‘They are offering an answer that may be in conflict with religious views,’ Harris said in opening the debate. ‘Part of our overall goal is to remove the bias against religion that is currently in schools. This is a scientific controversy that has powerful religious implications.’
   Conservative groups are trying to convince state education officials to change guidelines for how evolution theory is taught in science classes at a time when Kansas education authorities are producing new science teaching guidelines.
   The hearings—organised by a committee of the Kansas Board of Education—were taking place 80 years after the so-called ‘Monkey Trial’ of John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher who was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution.
   There is renewed debate over evolution in more than a dozen US states and a resurgence across the nation in the influence of religious conservatives, who played an important part in the reelection of the Republican president, Bush, last year.
   The Kansas hearing drew a large crowd that included students, teachers and preachers. National and local scientific leaders for the most part boycotted the event.
   Pedro Irigonegaray, a lawyer defending evolution in the debate, said he planned to call no witnesses, though he did cross-examine witnesses, sometimes combatively.
   Harris acknowledged under questioning that there were many people who saw no incompatibility between religious beliefs that God created life and evolutionary teachings about how life evolved through natural processes.

The United Nations sounded an alarm for women’s rights in Afghanistan on Thursday after three young Afghan women were found raped, hanged and dumped on a roadside with a warning not to work for foreign relief organisations.
   Women’s groups rallied in the capital to protest the killings, which came weeks after another woman was murdered for alleged adultery — examples of brutality that appear to have survived the fall of the Taliban.
   The bodies of the women were found Sunday in Baghlan province, 120 miles north of Kabul, and officials and doctors said they had been raped and hanged. A note found with the bodies said they were killed for working for international aid groups.
   ‘While there is no confirmation that this was the case or the actual motive of the killing, this could constitute a threat to women working for non-governmental organisations, which (the UN) strongly condemns,’ UN spokeswoman Ariane Quentier said.
   ‘In a context where violence against women remains too often unprosecuted and unpunished, it is particularly important that the authorities spare no effort to bring swiftly the perpetrator of this crime to justice,’ she said.

The Fatah faction came out top Friday in municipal polls in the occupied territories, but Islamist group Hamas beat the party of the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, in four out of five major cities.
   Thursday’s elections in more than 80 municipalities throughout the Gaza Strip and West Bank had been seen as test of Hamas’ popularity two months before the fundamentalist group contests its first legislative polls.
   Preliminary results gave Fatah control of more than 50 municipalities and Hamas 28. The remaining councils fell to independents.
   But Hamas, triumphing in four of the five major towns where the polls took place, proclaimed a wider victory.
   ‘Hamas has taken 34 constituencies, particularly in the denser population zones,’ one of the movement’s principal leaders, Mahmud al-Zahar told a news conference in Gaza City.

Religious freedom in Vietnam remains one of the most complex issues in the difficult relationship between the communist nation and the United States.
   A visiting US official announced Friday that Vietnam’s prime minister, Phan Van Khai, would meet the US president, George W Bush, in the United States on June 21, the day after Washington announced that an accord had been signed with Hanoi on religious freedoms.
   The matter of the freedom to exercise religious rights is not likely to disappear that easily, however.
   Vietnam remains on the US state department’s black list of countries of ‘particular concern’ for violating religious freedoms, a move that ultimately could lead to economic sanctions.
   The United States is not the only Western country that has put pressure on Vietnam to release religious dissidents and allow churches not officially recognised by the ruling Communist Party to operate freely.
   Washington, however, has been the most vocal in pushing for change.
   ‘The European Union believes that it is not useful to carry the debate into the public arena and that the situation can be improved in confidential discussions. We have a more discrete approach,’ said a European diplomat.

The Iraq war inflicted serious damage on the Labour Party in Britain’s general election as Muslim voters ousted a loyal ally of the prime minister, Tony Blair, in London and boosted the anti-war Liberal Democrats.
   Labour won an unprecedented third successive election victory on Thursday, but lost its dominant majority, whittled down in part by public disaffection over Iraq, despite Blair’s efforts to sideline the issue.
   The worst thrashing over the March 2003 invasion was suffered by Oona King, the Labour incumbent in the heavily Muslim district of Bethnal Green and Bow, who was defeated by the anti-war lawmaker, George Galloway.
   Galloway, thrown out of the Labour Party two years ago over his virulent opposition to the war, ran on a Respect coalition ticket and beat King by a mere 823 votes, overturning her 10,000-vote majority from the 2001 polls.
   ‘Mr Blair, this is for Iraq. All the people you killed, all the lies you’ve told, have come back to haunt you,’ he told cheering supporters following the announcement.
   Galloway, who previously represented a Scottish constituency, specifically targeted King because her working-class seat contains an estimated 40 percent of Muslim voters, mainly of Bangladeshi origin.
   King, who is half-Jewish and half-black, won her seat in 1997 at only 30 years of age and a strong re-election mandate in 2001, but courted disfavour with locals by supporting the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
   ‘I’m not pro-war; I’m anti-genocide,’ she said earlier in the campaign, insisting she had been openly critical of Saddam since 1998, unlike Galloway, who had been on friendly terms with the Iraqi leader.
   King’s defeat, following a bitter campaign race that included physical and verbal attacks against both candidates by anti-war activists and Islamic extremists, was a major upset for Labour.

Public confidence in Britain’s elections has been undermined by questions of postal
   ballot fraud, the head of the election watchdog said Friday.
   ‘I think what is absolutely clear is that postal voting has knocked the public’s confidence in the system,’ said chairman of the Electoral Commission, Sam Younger.
   Younger, speaking to BBC radio after the Labour Party won a historic third consecutive victory in a general election Thursday, urged the prime minister, Tony Blair, and his future government to undertake reforms to improve fraud prevention and detection.
   He also said he was disappointed that the government had not carried out reforms recommended by the commission ahead of the vote.
   ‘It is urgent, it seems to me now, that the government ... will actually see as a high priority looking to implement a number of changes, many of which we have had in the public domain and recommended for the past two years, to underpin the security and the administration of the system,’ Younger said.
   Those changes, he added, included improving voter registration and clarifying the
   definition of electoral fraud in order to aid prosecution of criminals.
   The spectre of postal ballot fraud hung over this year’s election, as a record 6.5 million of 44 million eligible voters—some 15 per cent—registered to use the mail-in ballot system first introduced ahead of the 2001 vote.
   Recent cases of fraud exposed in Birmingham, central England, and Blackburn, near Manchester in the northwest, significantly eroded public confidence, according to opinion polls, while candidates traded charges during
   campaigning that rival parties were tampering with the system.
   A challenger to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, in Blackburn is writing to the Electoral Commission to
   report widespread vote rigging, according to the British press.

Lynndie England, the US soldier who became the face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, is expected to still see prison despite the mistrial declared at her court-martial.
   But experts say her eventual punishment will do little to repair the damage caused by the US military’s perceived refusal to punish high-ranking officers.
   ‘The administration is engaged in damage control that may work domestically but will do nothing for the rehabilitation of the United States internationally,’ said Reed Brody a lawyer at Human Rights Watch.
   ‘The privates are taking the fall for Abu Ghraib while the guys who wrote the policies are getting off the hook,’ Brody said in an interview.
   ‘It was Donald Rumsfeld and (Lieutenant) General (Ricardo) Sanchez, not Lynndie England who authorised the abuse of detainees.’
   The most senior soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal was Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who was sentenced to eight years in prison after he pled guilty.
   Several other officers received nonjudicial punishment, including Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the military police unit accused of mistreating prisoners, who was relieved of her command, demoted to colonel and reprimanded.
   Sanchez, the senior US military commander in Iraq at the time the scandal broke, and three other high-ranking officers were cleared of any wrongdoing by a US military probe released Thursday.
   Brody said that the publicity surrounding Abu Ghraib has masked the more serious problem of widespread mistreatment of prisoners.
   The US army had investigated more than 360 cases of detainee abuse since the beginning of military operations in Afghanistan in 2001, including some 74 resulting in death.
   Only 14 people had been convicted by court-martial as of March, while at least 70 soldiers received nonjudicial punishments, such as reprimands, rank reductions, or discharge from the military.
   Some critics say that the sentences handed down to the soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse are not sufficient.
   Of the eight soldiers charged, only the ringleader—Charles Graner, who is currently serving a 10-year-term—went to trial.
   Five soldiers pled guilty and all but Frederick received sentences of a year in prison or less while England’s plea bargain was reported to be just 30 months in jail. The final hearing that of Specialist Sabrina Harman, is scheduled to begin May 11.
   ‘These are extraordinarily lenient sentences,’ said Robert Goldman, a professor of interntional law at American University in Washington. ‘People could possibly get more years for marijuana possession.’
   Abu Ghraib has also illustrated the failure of the US military to sufficiently address crimes of command, said Eugene Fidell, president of the non-partisan National Institute of Military Justice.

The British finance minister, Gordon Brown, emerged stronger Friday as a potential successor to the prime minister, Tony Blair, after helping him win a historic third consecutive term in power for the Labour Party.
   Brown, whose popularity ratings have been higher than Blair’s, appeared constantly at the prime minister’s side for the last month to bolster the central campaign message that Labour would ensure economic stability.
   The partnership appears to have done the trick as Labour was returned to power, albeit with a sharply reduced parliamentary majority that government members admitted at least was partly to do with bitterness over the war in Iraq.
   Blair was singled out for having failed to deliver the landslide victories the party won in 2001 and 1997, with several pundits saying the public had given him a ‘bloody nose.’
   The Daily Telegraph said in an editorial ‘Gordon Brown was a picture of loyalty during the campaign, but he has allowed his impatience to show in the past and cannot be relied on to wait long for the inheritance he clearly thinks is his.’
   The Daily Mirror, a mass-circulation newspaper, ran a story under the headline: ‘How long will Blair be there? PM wants full four years but Brown is waiting.’
   Blair said in the run-up to polling day that if he won the election, he would stay on for the full term, which could be four or five years, though he would not run for a fourth term in office.
   But the Daily Mirror said few in Westminster think he would be able to survive as prime minister for that long, ‘with Gordon Brown poised as his anointed successor.’
   It said Blair loyalists believe he will hand over the top job towards the end of 2008, so that a new Labour leader would be in place for that year’s party conference.

The US president, George W Bush, ordered the demotion of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison, Thursday after an army investigation found her guilty of dereliction of duty and shoplifting, the army said.
   The action made Karpinski, an army reservist, the highest ranking officer to be punished in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal at the Iraqi prison.
   ‘Today, the president approved a recommendation to vacate the promotion of Brigadier General Karpinski from her rank of brigadier general,’ the army said in a statement. ‘This decision reduces her to the rank of colonel in the US Army Reserve.’
   Karpinski was arrested for shoplifting at a US air force base in the United States but failed to report it to her superiors or on official forms that asked if she had ever been arrested, an official familiar with the investigation said.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has called the Soviet grip on the Baltic states after Second World War a ‘tragedy’ for Baltic peoples but insisted Moscow had already repudiated the secret pact that opened the door to it and should not have to keep apologising.
   ‘In effect, these Baltic countries were treated as pawns in world politics. And that is a tragedy for these nations. This must be stated plainly,’ Putin said in an interview with two German televisions networks, a transcript of which was published on the Kremlin website Friday.
   Putin’s comment was a notable departure from standard Russian policy rhetoric on ties with the Baltic states and came as Moscow faced calls from the West to use World War II 60th anniversary commemorative events it is hosting to issue a formal apology for its almost half-century Baltic occupation.
   In an account of the interview published by the Kremlin he recalled that both the initial independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1918 and the Soviet occupation of 1939 were due to accords between Russia and Germany.
   Signed by the Soviet Union and Germany in 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact allowed for the Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries before they fell under Nazi rule in June 1941, when hostilities between Moscow and Berlin began. They returned to the Soviet fold in 1945.
   ‘As for our attitude to the 1939 pact—in 1989 the Soviet Union’s top representative power condemned them. It said just so—We condemn these agreements between Stalin and Hitler and think that this was Stalin’s personal decision, contrary to the Soviet nation’s interests,’ Putin said.
   However, ‘the only thing we hear now is that our country must admit the illegality of these decisions and condemn them. I repeat—we have already done so. Must we do this every day of every year? That is downright senseless!’ the Russian leader said.
   On account of the painful memories of the five-decade Soviet occupation, the leaders of Estonia and Lithuania will stay at home on Monday, when leaders of some 60 countries celebrate the 60th anniversary of the victory in Russia.
   The Latvian president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, said she will use the occasion to remind the world ‘that at the end of World War II half of Europe was not liberated,’ and urged Russia to re-affirm the Soviet Union’s condemnation.

The US president, George W Bush, pledged in interviews to press the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on democratic reforms and seek to ease tensions between Moscow and its Baltic neighbours.
   ‘I believe Russia’s interests lie to her west. I believe that Russia, by embracing the values that we share, will be able to deal with the many problems that she has,’ Bush told Estonia Television.
   The US president leaves Washington early Friday on a five-day trip that will take him to Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and Georgia—his second voyage to Europe since his new four-year term began in January.
   The visit, anchored on Russia’s celebration of 60 years since the end of World War II, has raised questions about Moscow’s relations with the Baltic States, for whom 1945 spelled the beginning of Soviet occupation.

The number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation made by and about UN personnel in 2004 was more than double the number reported in 2003, a development that is deeply distressing, and the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said on Thursday.
   ‘The total number of 121 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse registered in 2004 was more than double the 53 allegations reported in 2003. The increase in allegations is deeply troubling,’ Annan said in a report to the General Assembly.
   He said the recorded increase may result in part from the newly implemented measures to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation to sexual abuse, which encourage alleged victims to come forward.
   The report said 16 allegations, ranging from inappropriate verbal conduct to sexual assault and rape, were reported from all UN entities other than the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.
   The other 105 allegations came from the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and its 77,330 peacekeeping personnel. ‘Forty-five per cent of those allegations involved sex with minors and 15 per cent involved rape or sexual assault,’ it said.
   Thirty-five per cent of the allegations against peacekeepers involved prostitution with adult women and the remaining 6 per centinvolved other forms of sexual exploitation and abuse.

Britain’s Conservative leader Michael Howard said Friday he would resign before the next general election and as soon as a successor was found, following his party’s defeat in Thursday’s vote.
   ‘I’ve said that if people don’t deliver, they go. And for me, delivering meant winning the elections. I didn’t do that,’ he said in a speech to his party.
   ‘I want to do now what is best for my party and, above all, for my country,’ Howard added.
   The 63-year-old, a former cabinet minister who took the reins of the party 18 months ago, said he would stay on long enough for the Tories to modify their system for choosing a new leader.

Rancour between rival factions of Second World War veterans in the Ukraine still boils as the country gets ready to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the war’s end on May 9.
   During Second World War nationalist militias rose up to claim independence for Ukraine while many Ukrainians joined the Red Army to defend the Soviet Union, and there will be little love lost if veterans from the still rival factions meet at the celebrations.
   The country’s president Victor Yushchenko recently called for reconciliation between the two, but in a country ruled by the Soviet Union for more than 40 years and whose population is still divided along pro and anti-Soviet lines, his appeal made little impact.
   ‘It’s an inopportune initiative,’ said Kouzma Khobzey, 76, a former member the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists which spawned the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1942.
   ‘The president is making a political error,’ said Colonel Timofiy Makhaniok of a Soviet Red Army veteran’s organisation in Lviv, in the country’s west.
   Much of what is now the western territory of the Ukraine was under Polish rule until 1939 when Soviet troops displaced the Polish ones after the war broke out, and some Ukrainians took vengeance on their former masters.
   But the region soon fell again to the advancing Nazis, who were at first welcomed by the UPA in their drive for independence, before they engaged the Wehrmacht in a bloody conflict.

The US president, George W Bush, on Thursday renewed a broad series of sanctions he imposed on Syria one year ago, charging Damascus supports terrorism and undermines US efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.
   In a letter to leading lawmakers announcing his decision, Bush said Syria poses ‘a continuing, unusual, and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.’
   And he accused Syria of ‘supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq, and with respect to Lebanon.’
   The sanctions, which came on top of existing US terrorism penalties, include a near-blanket ban on US exports to Syria and the power to freeze Syrian assets in the United States, the White House said when they were imposed in May 2004.

India to overtake China with 1.4b people
India will outstrip China as the world’s most populous country by the year 2030 with over 1.4 billion people, the junior health minister, Panabaka Lakshmi told parliament Friday. Indians will number 1.449 billion in 2030 against 1.446 billion Chinese, Lakshmi told the upper house of parliament. By 2050, the world population is projected to be nine billion, with India and China accounting for 1.59 billion and 1.39 billion respectively, she said in a written statement reported by United News of India.

Hindu priest
killed in Nepal
Suspected Maoists rebels gunned down a leading Hindu priest Friday as he made an offering at a temple in western Nepal, police and a relative said. ‘Maoist suspects have shot dead the chairman of the World Hindu Council-Nepal, Narayan Prasad Pokharel, while he was performing a religious function in Butwal around 6:30am Friday morning,’ the police said. It was not clear why Pokharel was killed, they added. The council, or Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is one of South Asia’s leading Hindu religious groupings. Pokharel, 50, was carrying out the last day of a traditional Hindu offering known as ‘yagya’, to appease the gods and raise money for a local college, police said.

KL, Jakarta agree to ease tension
Malaysia and Indonesia Friday agreed to ease tension in the disputed oil-rich South Sulawesi Sea with Kuala Lumpur saying there was no need to stage shows of force in the area. ‘While we wait for a solution (to the dispute), we agreed today that the navies of the two countries will try to find a solution to reduce tension in the area,’ the deputy prime minister, Najib Razak, said in a joint news conference with visiting Indonesian vice president, Jusuf Kalla. ‘While there was no need to withdraw warships from the disputed waters, the two countries need not stage a show of forces, just normal presence will be alright,’ said Najib, who is also defence minister.

Kashmir rebel group says 14 members died
Indian Kashmir’s leading rebel group Hizbul Mujahedin said Friday 14 of its members were believed to have died in a fierce battle with Indian troops. The militant death toll from the clash Wednesday in northern Bandipora town was the biggest in years, police said. An Indian army spokesman said 10 bodies so far had been recovered from the battle site where witnesses said soldiers fired rockets, destroying six houses. Hizbul, which is battling to make Indian Kashmir part of Pakistan, said in a statement to media that ‘information available with us suggests 14 mujahedin (holy warriors) are believed to have been killed along with a number of security personnel.’
— AFP

US denies meeting of Rumsfeld-Saddam
The Pentagon denied on Wednesday that the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, met with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during his visit to the Mideast country last month. ‘The Al Quds news report out of London that Secretary Rumsfeld recently met with Saddam Hussein is not only false but the allegation that he negotiated with Saddam is absolutely ludicrous,’ Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said in a statement. Di Rita said the report was ‘an attempt to undermine the integrity of the Iraqi government and its new judicial system.’ He said Rumsfeld did meet with leaders of the recently elected Iraqi transitional government, and that Saddam remained in the custody of the Iraqi government and ‘his fate will be determined by the Iraqi people.’
— Xinhua

Castro blasts US for harbouring terrorist
The Cuban president, Fidel Castro, has accused the United States of harbouring a Cuban exile on terrorism charges and vowed to continue the battle for extradition, the local press reported on Thursday. Castro said he could not believe the US government does not know the whereabouts of Luis Posada Carrilles, who was accused of involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 passengers and crew aboard. Posada Carrilles, a Cuban-born exile with Venezuelan citizenship, was also accused of killing an Italian tourist in 1997 in a wave of bomb blasts in Havana.
— Xinhua

Wash. mayor under fire for gay sex chats
The Spokane-Review, a newspaper in Spokane, Wash., revealed that the city’s conservative Republican mayor—a gay rights opponent—used a gay Web site to meet young men. After a lengthy investigation, a newspaper in Spokane, Wash., revealed that the city’s conservative Republican mayor—a gay rights opponent—used a gay Web site to meet young men. He initiated sex with at least one young man and offered a City Hall internship to another. According to the Spokane-Review, Mayor Jim West, who fought pro-gay legislation during his two decades of service in the state Legislature, met a local 18-year-old man in a Gay.com chat room last summer.
— Reuters

Uzbekistan withdraws from regional group
Uzbekistan announced its withdrawal from GUAM, a regional organisation, which also groups Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, said reports from the Moldovan capital of Chisinau Thursday. The Moldovan president, Vladimir Voronin, who currently holds GUAM’s rotating chairmanship, received a letter on Thursday from his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov, who announced his country’s decision to withdraw from the group, according to a press bulletin released by the Moldovan Presidential Office. Uzbekistan was withdrawing as it cannot meet the organisation’s economic and security objectives due to its geographical position, Karimov explained in the letter.
— AFP

Africa, Nigeria work together for UN seats
South Africa is working with Nigeria to secure two permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council allocated for Africa under a plan to reform the world body, an official said Thursday. the deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, said in Pretoria that that the president, Thabo Mbeki, and his counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo would be major forces at the UN 2005 millennium summit where the reform of the United Nations would be discussed. South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are the three main candidates for the African seats which are also being contested by Senegal, Kenya and Ghana.
— Xinhua