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

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplement «

Iraq’s parliament approved six new ministers on Sunday hoping to fill the political void that has stoked the insurgency, but one minister turned down the job, leaving the cabinet still incomplete three months after polls.
   The prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, had announced the cabinet was complete after months of bickering to agree the balance of power between competing sectarian and ethnic blocs, and vowed to crack down on an escalating insurgency.
   But proposed human rights minister Hisham al-Shibli said he had been picked purely to placate Iraq’s restive Sunni Arab minority, and said he was rejecting the post.
   ‘This post was given to me without anyone consulting me. I was surprised when they nominated me. It was just because I am a Sunni,’ he said. ‘This is something I reject completely. I am a democratic figure ... and I am completely against sectarianism.’
   The Sunni Arab minority dominated Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule but was sidelined after the elections, when most Sunni Arabs stayed away from the polls due to a boycott and fears of insurgent violence. There are only 17 Sunni Arab lawmakers in the 275-member parliament.
   Wary of fuelling sectarian and ethnic tension and determined to defeat an insurgency dominated by Sunni Arab guerrillas, the Shia and Kurdish blocs that dominate parliament pledged to include several Sunni Arabs in their cabinet.
   The confusion over the human rights portfolio is the latest embarrassment for Iraq’s leaders, who have infuriated many Iraqis by taking so long to agree a cabinet.
   Other appointments announced on Sunday included the important defence and oil ministries.
   Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab former military officer with tribal ties to Iraq’s rebellious western Anbar province, was named defence minister. The government hopes that putting a Sunni Arab in the post will help undermine the insurgency.
   A Sunni Arab was also appointed to the industry ministry, and a Sunni Arab deputy prime minister was named to join Shia and Kurdish deputies already appointed.
   A respected Shia official, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, was named oil minister, a key post in the oil-rich nation.
   ‘Our new motto in the ministry is fight corruption and boost production,’ Bahr al-Uloum told a news conference.
   Jaafari had hoped that with a new cabinet fully in place, he would press ahead with efforts to defeat the insurgency.
   ‘We will take all necessary steps to fight this monstrous phenomenon,’ he said.
   But the debacle over the human rights post underlines the divisions in government that have hampered efforts to tackle violence. Insurgent attacks escalated over the past 10 days, with at least 300 people killed in suicide attacks and bombings.
   Gunmen assassinated senior transport ministry official Zobaa Yassin as he drove to work on Sunday, police said.
   On Saturday, al Qaeda’s network in Iraq hit a foreign security convoy with a car bomb in the heart of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people including two Americans. Dozens were wounded, including several pupils at a nearby girls’ school.
   The previous day, a suicide car bomb at a vegetable market in Suwayra, south of Baghdad, killed 31 people, and another suicide bomber blew up his vehicle beside a police minibus in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, killing at least nine policemen.
   The US military said it had struck back against insurgents in the western town of Qaim on the Syrian border, killing six and capturing 54 in a raid on Sunday.
   It said fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, were active in the area.
   ‘Multiple sources of intelligence indicate that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s key lieutenants, suicide bombers and a large population of foreign fighters are located in the region,’ a military statement said.

Sri Lanka’s president failed to win support from the main opposition party on a plan to distribute tsunami aid with the Tamil rebels after they rejected her offer of a briefing on the issue, political sources said Sunday.
   The main opposition United National Party rejected an invitation by the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, to discuss the proposed ‘joint mechanism’ for tsunami aid.
   ‘The deliberate avoidance of this opportunity to receive a briefing on the main features of the proposal and of contributing your views on it... is deeply regrettable,’ Kumaratunga said in a letter to opposition chief Ranil Wickremesinghe released Saturday.
   Kumaratunga defeated the main opposition United National Party in elections last year in a bitter campaign that criticised moves by the former prime minister, Wickremesinghe, for entering into a ceasefire with the rebels in February 2002.
   The effort to reach out to her rival on the tsunami aid deal, seen as crucial to keep a Norwegian-backed peace process alive, was rejected Saturday.
   Kumaratunga needs the backing of the opposition to muster the mandatory two thirds majority in parliament for any constitutional changes to accommodate a deal with the rebels.
   The rejection effectively narrows the options for Kumaratunga to rally support for the aid package with the rebels as the main partner in her coalition government, the Marxist JVP or People’s Liberation Front, has also reiterated its opposition to a deal.
   The JVP announced it would stage a separate protest rally here Tuesday to oppose the ‘joint mechanism’ with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   The JVP has said it would quit the coalition if the president went ahead with her plan, which would reduce the coalition to a minority in parliament.
   Kumaratunga’s shaky Freedom Alliance administration has a slender majority in the 225-member assembly where the JVP controls 39 seats.
   The government needs an agreement with the Tamil rebels to get foreign aid distributed in LTTE-held areas, some of which suffered heavy damage in the December 26 disaster that killed nearly 31,000 people in Sri Lanka.
   Kumaratunga announced that the proposed deal could be the foundation for a final peace deal with the guerrillas, but in her latest letter to the opposition appeared to take a step back.
   ‘The proposal for the establishment of a post-tsunami operational management structure (which you refer to as the ‘Joint Mechanism’) is in fact, not part of the peace process...,’ Kumaratunga said in her letter to the opposition.

Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar on Sunday scrapped a mass rally against an outlawed ethnic minority group for fear of a repeat of deadly bomb blasts that killed at least 11 people in Yangon, an official said.
   Several thousand people were converging on the ancient city of Bagan for a rally led by the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a prominent government social organisation, to denounce a recent declaration of independence by a group of exiled Shan ethnic leaders.
   ‘The mass rally was aborted after yesterday’s bombings in Yangon,’ a source close to the military government said.
   USDA officials who had already reached Bagan were hastily brought back to the capital, while the crowds convening on the historic site were being told to disperse, the source added.
   Tensions also remained high in Yangon one day after the worst attack of its kind since the military junta assumed power in a coup more than 40 years ago.
   Military-ruled Myanmar draped a tight security blanket over the sites of three bombings in the capital, with the junta blaming the unprecedented attacks on ethnic guerrillas and pro-democracy activists.
   According to the junta’s figures, the devices hidden in bags and set off by timer Saturday afternoon at two upscale shopping malls and a convention centre killed at least 11 people. Witnesses, however, reported dozens dead.
   Armed security forces were deployed around the sites. Windows and doors of the Dagon and Junction Eight shopping complexes were boarded up and the surrounding areas cordoned off, with nearby shops closed.
   An explosion also ripped through the Yangon Trade Centre, where a Thai trade fair was taking place, according to the official New Light of Myanmar, which described the bombings as ‘despicable acts perpetrated in collusion by the terrorists undermining the state and community peace and tranquillity.’
   One bomb was left among seats in front of a stage at the Yangon Trade Centre, another at the bag check counter at a grocery store at Junction Eight, and a third near the ground floor escalator at the Dagon shopping centre, the paper said.
   An official at the home affairs ministry said a fourth bomb was placed near a generator at Dagon.
   City residents were shocked by the attacks.
   ‘This is terrible. It has never happened before, this deliberate aim to kill innocent people,’ one Yangon businessman said.
   Little of the damage had been cleaned early Sunday. At the Dagon complex, an outer back wall of the structure had been blown out, leaving debris scattered over a parking lot.
   State television showed images of mangled metal ceilings and twisted aluminium rafters at the three sites. Authorities have blamed an unlikely alliance of ethnic rebel armies and a pro-democracy exile group for the bombings.
   Three of the groups, representing Shan, Karen and Karenni ethnic groups, quickly issued denials.
   The blasts, and the junta’s finger pointing at the ethnic and exile groups, provoked animated reaction Sunday.

More than three months after Nepal's king declared himself the absolute ruler of this Himalayan nation, the country's seven political parties announced a common platform that demands a return to democracy and a constitutional limit on the monarchy's power.
   King Gyanendra seized power, declared a state of emergency and suspended most civil liberties on February 1, saying that successive governments had failed to quell a Maoist insurgency. The emergency was lifted last week, apparently under international pressure, but the king still rules the country through a royal council of appointed ministers.
   'Reinstating parliament is the starting point in our common agenda,' Mahesh Acharya, a senior official of the Nepali Congress party, said on behalf of the seven parties.
   The common agenda would also include constitutional reform to restrict Gyanendra's powers and demand that the monarch release all political detainees, restore press freedom and scrap a royal anti-corruption body that many say targets the king's political opponents, said Madhav Nepal, chief of the Communist Party of Nepal.
   The full agenda was to be announced after Girija Prasad Koirala, president of the Nepali Congress party, returns to Kathmandu later Sunday. Koirala's party was in power during most of the past 14 years of democratic rule.
   Some 3,000 politicians, student leaders, journalists and rights activists were arrested after the royal takeover in an effort to block dissent. Though the emergency has been lifted and many detainees have been released, more than 200 protesters still remain in detention.
   Meanwhile, the deputy speaker of Nepal's dissolved parliament was prevented from leaving the country on Saturday for a third time since the king sacked the government on February 1, a party source said.
   Chitra Lekha Yadav was stopped as she tried to board a flight to New Delhi, the Nepali Congress (Democratic) party source said.
   'It was the third time Yadav had been stopped at the airport since February 1,' the source said.
   Politicians, human rights activists and journalists have been prevented from leaving the country since king Gyanendra seized power to deal with a paralysing insurgency by Maoists fighting to install a communist republic.
   Maoist rebels have shot and killed an army officer and a police inspector in an attack in southwestern Nepal, the Nepalese army said Sunday.
   'The Maoists killed lieutenant Rajendra Khattri Chettri and police inspector Nirmal Gurung in an attack on a security patrol team at Rajpur bazaar in Bardiya district on Saturday,' an army official said.

If George W Bush wants to spread freedom across the globe, he couldn’t find a corner more remote than a patch of western China where eight million Chinese Muslims are battling cultural extinction.
   Few westerners have heard of the Uighurs, a proud, Turkic-speaking people descended from nomads, who today scratch out a living in the rugged mountains and deserts of landlocked Xinjiang Province.
   But supporters see them as a prime example of a beleaguered population caught in the crunch between the United States’ vaunted worldwide drive for democracy and the realpolitik of its war on terror.
   For since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, China has billed a clampdown on Xinjiang’s Muslims as a drive against al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. Uighurs and their friends vehemently dispute the claim.
   ‘This is one of the pre-eminent fights for freedom on the planet,’ Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher told a congressional hearing here last week.
   Rights groups have long raised the alarm about the situation in the oil- and mineral-rich Uighur Autonomous Region, which has seen a huge influx of ethnic Chinese settlers and entrepreneurs in the last decade.
   Human Rights Watch accused Beijing last month of waging ‘a crushing campaign of religious repression’ against the relatively westernised Muslims that threatened to wipe out their religion, culture and way of life.
   It said the Chinese were using the anti-terror war as cover to tighten surveillance and controls on Islamics and Uighur nationalists. Protesters faced arrest, torture and even execution.

India said on Sunday it would change the design of a dam it is building in disputed Kashmir if it is unable to address Pakistan’s objections to it under a decades-old water sharing treaty.
   The water project is among a range of issues the nuclear-armed rivals are discussing, including negotiations on the Himalayan region of Kashmir, as part of a slow-moving peace process.
   India’s assurance came on the first day of talks in the Pakistani city of Lahore on the 330-megawatt hydro-power project, which Pakistan says violates the 1960 Indus Water treaty.
   ‘It is our responsibility to remove the objections Pakistan has on the Kishanganga project,’ India’s Water Commissioner DK Mehta told reporters.
   ‘If we are unable to remove the objections of Pakistan under the Indus Water Treaty, we will have to change the design of Kishanganga,’ he said.
   Pakistan depends to a great extent on rivers that flow from Indian Kashmir for its hydro-power and irrigation needs, and some political analysts say water might in future be a much more contentious issue than Kashmir, over which the neighbours have fought two of their three wars since 1947.
   Under the Indus Water Treaty, India has rights to the waters of the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers while Pakistan has rights to the waters of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum. All the rivers flow from India to Pakistan.
   The Kishanganga project involves the diversion of water from one tributary of the Jhelum river to another, which according to India is permissible under the treaty. Pakistan says it is not.

Japan’s cherished dream of becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council looks as murky as ever with poor relations with China hanging over its bid.
   The foreign minister, Nobutaka Machimura, spearheaded Japan’s latest lobbying drive when he chaired a two-day session of the 38-nation Asia-Europe Meeting, trying to rekindle momentum to implement historic UN reforms at the world body’s September summit.
   But the meeting which closed Saturday saw only a few nations such as Finland and Slovenia throwing their backing behind Japan to join the club of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States which wield veto power at the UN.
   ‘In Asia, China has already been working hard as a member of the UN Security Council,’ Machimura told the meeting of top diplomats in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto.
   ‘In order to raise Asia’s presence as a whole, Japan is also ready to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council,’ Machimura said. ‘We would like to get your understanding.’

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, delivered a new blow to the troubled Middle East peace process Sunday by deciding to place an agreement for the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners on hold.
   Palestinians reacted furiously to the move, saying it would only serve to undermine an ongoing truce.
   The 400 prisoners were due to have been released by Israel as part of an agreement reached with the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, at a summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh three months ago.
   However a spokesman in Sharon’s office said that the prisoners would remain behind bars until the Palestinians showed a willingness to crack down on militant groups such as the Islamist movement Hamas.

A number of Labour Party members said they want Blair to step down as early as a year from now and make way for his powerful and popular finance minister, Gordon Brown.
   The British prime minister, Tony Blair, resisted a chorus of calls over the weekend to resign before he finishes the historic third term he just won, amid discontent over his leadership from fellow party members.
   ‘The prime minister is the prime minister, he has made as clear as he could possibly make it that he intends to serve for a full third term,’ the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, said on Sky Television late Saturday.
   ‘Our job now from the prime minister onwards is to make sure that we get our shoulders to the wheel,’ she said.
   Blair stirred up rebels within his party by taking Britain to war in Iraq in 2003. The rebels say the chickens are coming home to roost now that voters in Thursday’s election have slashed the huge majorities he won in 1997 and 2001.
   At the same time the divisions have raised concerns about whether the Labour Party can remain an effective force and prompted comparisons with the bickering that tore the prime minister, John Major’s Conservatives apart a decade ago.
   A spokesman for the prime minister reminded journalists of Blair’s statement last September in which he said that if re-elected he would serve a full third term. ‘There has been no change,’ the spokesman said. The prime minister only committed himself then not to run for a fourth term, which prompted immediate complaints he had made himself a lame-duck leader.
   Labour obtained 356 seats in the 646-seat House of Commons, against 197 for the main opposition Conservatives and 62 for the Liberal Democrats.
   The outcome meant Blair’s majority has been slashed by more than half to a projected 66 but is still healthy compared with previous governments.
   If Blair can hold on until November, he will have beaten Thatcher’s 11 years in power.
   The manoeuvrings are set against the backdrop of growing calls by Labour members of parliament for Blair to step down.
   MP John Austin told The Sunday Times Blair ‘was a liability and not an asset in this election. You can’t beat about the bush. Blair was a negative factor on the doorstep, time and time and time again.’ MP Ian Davidson said: ‘It needs to happen sooner rather than later.
   MP John McDonnell said Blair elicits widespread ‘animosity’ and he predicted Brown, who has long made no secret of his ambition to become prime minister, ‘looks as if he’s a shoo-in.’
   MP Christine McCafferty said: ‘My take on it is that within a year the prime minister will stand down. I would like to see the process take place, but we have just had the election so we need a pause for breath.’
   David Taylor predicted ‘I expect to see Blair go within a year to 18 months.’
   MP Clive Efford said The Sunday Telegraph: ‘It will be impossible for Tony Blair to stay on for long. I favour an orderly transition to Gordon Brown. The outcome is inevitable.’

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, and the US president, George W Bush, were bound together in the war against Iraq, and the conflict provided a backdrop for their re-election campaigns - with its nightly images of casualties, shifting justifications for removing Saddam Hussein and waves of antiwar sentiment.
   But as became clear on Friday after the British election that is where the similarities ended. Six months after Bush won a second term, Blair returned to 10 Downing Street visibly chastened. His party’s delegation to Parliament was slashed by nearly 100 seats, a sobering setback that Blair’s advisers attributed largely to his partnership with Bush in advocating the war.
   In the American campaign, Bush arguably succeeded in turning the war into an electoral asset, linking the pursuit of Hussein to the fight against terrorism that he began after the September 11 attacks. Even the failure to find illicit weapons and the continuing violence in Iraq seemed not to matter to American voters, to the frustration of Senator John Kerry, his Democratic opponent.
   But Blair’s situation could not have been more different. His campaign became gripped and battered in the final two weeks by the very kind of Iraq news that seemed to roll off Bush: the death of a British soldier, the appearance of the dead soldier’s tearful mother denouncing Blair and orchestrated leaks of government documents that challenged the truthfulness of the case he had made for war.
   ‘The leak of documents really created an Iraqi firestorm that shifted a lot of voters,’ said Mark Penn, an American pollster working for Blair. ‘It brought back a protest on Iraq that had died down.’
   There has been no recent terrorist attack in Britain, so the visceral argument that Bush made to American audiences for invading Iraq has far less potency here. ‘Britain wasn’t attacked in September of 2001,’ said Daniel Finkelstein, associate editor of The Times of London and a former Conservative Party official. ‘It has a different attitude to the war on terror.’
   This campaign also took place six months after the American elections, a period in which frustration among opponents of the war here has grown. ‘The troops are still there and are still being killed - there’s no endgame here,’ said Christopher J. Bailey, a professor of politics at Keele University in Staffordshire.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, hosts world leaders here Monday for World War II anniversary ceremonies that Russia sees as a tribute to its unrivalled sacrifice in defeating Nazi Germany but that have been darkened by passionate debate over Moscow’s post-war behaviour in Europe.
   With Moscow locked down under unprecedented security measures, dignitaries ranging from US President George W. Bush to communist-era Polish dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski will stand on Red Square to observe a military parade in an almost surreal celebration of Soviet wartime fortitude.
   But while the official programme centres on commemorating the Allied victory 60 years ago, it is the unscripted crescendo of recriminations between Russia and the many countries it dominated from the end of the war until recently that may determine how the this week’s events are remembered.
   The angry diplomatic exchanges reached a fever pitch as Bush arrived in Latvia ahead of his trip to Russia, with leaders of the three ex-Soviet Baltic republics demanding that Moscow apologize for post-war Soviet occupation of their countries and Putin saying Moscow has done enough already.
   According to fresh official figures, the Soviet Union lost 26.6 million people in four years of savage fighting with Germany, far more than all other Allied countries combined. And it is the Soviet Union, many historians agree, that deserves the most credit for defeating the Nazis.
   It is precisely this point—the notion that the Soviet Union in fact ‘liberated’ anyone at all after defeating the Nazis—that has reignited latent passions in Europe rekindled historical debate and as a result, to an extent, subverted Russia’s V-Day celebration even before it began.
   In a letter to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga prior to his arrival in Riga, Bush expressed sympathy with the grievances of former Soviet-bloc states in Eastern Europe.
   For them, he said, the end of World War II ‘marked the Soviet occupation and annexation’ of the Baltic States ‘and the imposition of communism’ in much of central and eastern Europe. The Latvian leader said Bush’s very presence in Riga was an acknowledgment of the ‘double meaning’ of the war.
   Speaking to German media last week, however, Putin took a slightly more conciliatory position. The Soviet takeover of the Baltic states, he said, was a ‘tragedy’ for the Baltic peoples, but the former Soviet leadership had already repudiated the 1939 secret deal that let it happen.
   Among the other 56 foreign dignitaries due to attend Monday’s commemorative ceremonies were the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and the Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski.
   The parade on Red Square was scheduled to begin at 10 am (0600 GMT) followed by a formal lunch at the Kremlin at 12:30pm (0830 GMT).

Strongly refuting American criticism on democracy in Russia, the president, Vladimir Putin, has bluntly said the United States that it should first examine shortcomings in its democracy, before criticising Moscow.
   In an interview to CBS ‘60 minutes’ to be broadcast Sunday, Putin said the US should not try to export its democracy, as it is trying to do in Iraq.
   A summary of the interview has been given by CBS on its website. Responding to a question on the Russian principle of appointing governors, Putin made a reference to the Indian system of appointing State Governors by the Central Government, saying that it was not a sign of lack of democracy in Russia.
   When the questioner asked, ‘There was a time when regional leaders were elected, correct?’ Putin said, ‘No, no, no. I shall appoint the governors.’ That’s democracy? That’s not democracy the way I understand it.’

From driver’s licenses, to passports, to plane tickets, the paperwork necessary to enter and move about America may soon be subject to more restrictive rules - all in the name of homeland security.
   In some cases (licenses) the paperwork may be difficult to get. In others (passports) it may have to be proffered more
   often. These changes, added together, may have the biggest effect on Americans’ routines of any made for security’s sake since the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001.
   Some analysts say that the changes are more oriented toward controlling illegal immigration than fighting terrorism. Others argue that those two efforts are inextricably linked - and that the US has to start somewhere, given the number of undocumented people that cross the nation’s borders every year.
   ‘Unless we discourage
   people from entering the US, our border security problem is unsolvable,’ says James Jay Carafano, senior fellow for national security and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.
   The prospective change that may affect the most people is probably the move to make it more difficult to obtain driver’s licenses.

Iran said on Sunday it was getting ready to resume some uranium enrichment-related work, despite warnings from Washington and the European Union that doing so would see its nuclear case sent to the UN Security Council.
   Iran, which insists its atomic ambitions are peaceful, is threatening to re-start uranium processing but has promised to maintain its freeze on actual uranium enrichment, a process which can be used to make bomb-grade fuel.
   ‘We have decided to resume part of our activities in Isfahan,’ the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said.

UN worker, two Afghans killed
in blast
A Myanmar engineer working for the United Nations was among three people killed in a suspected suicide bombing at an Internet cafe in Kabul, the interior ministry said Sunday. The explosion Saturday evening destroyed the cafe and injured six other people. The dead engineer was identified by his passport and a UN card found in his pocket, interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said, correcting an earlier statement that the dead man was from the Philippines. ‘He was from Burma not from the Philippines. He was identified from his passport and UN card,’ Mashal said.

Taiwan negotiator stresses ‘one China’
China’s top negotiator with Taiwan told the island’s opposition politician James Soong Sunday that Taipei must respect the ‘one China’ policy before the two sides could resume dialogue. ‘Our stance is consistent on the issue of the resumption of cross-straits dialogues and negotiations,’ said Wang Daohan, president of China’s quasi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait. ‘The mainland and Taiwan are both part of the Chinese territories and both sides belong to one China,’ he was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying. His reiteration of Beijing’s official policy on Taiwan came during his meeting with Soong, the chairman of the People’s First Party, who is in China for a nine-day trip.

Pak PM begins
visit to
Thailand
The Pakistan prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, arrived Sunday in Thailand where the head of a fact-finding panel will brief him on conditions in the country’s troubled Muslim-majority south. Aziz, in the midst of a four-nation swing through Southeast Asia, was scheduled to meet Monday with his Thai counterpart Thaksin Shinawatra to discuss the breadth of bilateral ties before an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit. He is then due to meet with former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, who chairs the National Reconciliation Commission investigating the deaths of nearly 200 Thai Muslims in southern unrest last year.

170 infected by meningitis in Delhi
The number of rare bacterial meningitis cases in the Indian capital rose by at least 30 to 170 with 15 confirmed deaths from the disease, a spokesman for the New Delhi Health Ministry said Sunday. ‘There were about 30 new cases reported in the past 24 hours,’ the spokesman said, bringing the total number of cases reported to 170. ‘We have not got any new reports of deaths due to the disease in Delhi,’ the spokesman said. On Friday, a New Delhi municipal officer said 15 people had died due to the disease in the city which has a population of about 14 million. Earlier this month, several cases of the disease were first reported from Old Delhi, the heart and most congested part of the city, but bacterial meningitis has now been reported from all parts of the capital, the spokesman said.
— AFP

New political force in Venezuela
Two leading opposition figures in Venezuela say they are forming a new party to take on both the president, Hugo Chavez, and the existing opposition. Claudio Fermin, a former mayor of Caracas, and fellow activist Carlos Melo say their Popular Assembly party will ‘rescue political discourse’. The move comes more than eight months after a failed opposition bid to end Chavez’s presidency by referendum. The vote was the most recent stage in a bitter campaign to unseat Chavez. The president has also survived a coup attempt in April 2002 and a two-month general strike that ended in February 2003. Chavez’s opponents accuse him of being a hard-left demagogue who draws inspiration from Fidel Castro’s Cuba, while his supporters praise him for improving the lives of the poor with extensive social programmes.
— BBC

No deal in Cote d’ Ivoire arms talks
Representatives of the rebels and army in Ivory Coast have failed to reach agreement on a disarmament timetable after five days of talks. But they did say they would meet again in the next few days. Under a peace agreement mediated by South Africa in April, government forces and rebels who control the north were due to lay down arms this month. Both sides began pulling back heavy weapons from the front-line last month, as part of the agreement. The prime minister’s representative, Alain Richard Donwahi, said the talks in Ivory Coast’s capital, Yamoussoukro, had been positive. A timetable would be presented to military chiefs from both sides next Friday for approval; he was quoted by Reuter’s news agency as saying.
— AFP

Pope vows to uphold tough stance
Pope Benedict XVI says he will follow his predecessor’s tough line on abortion and euthanasia. He said that, like Pope John Paul II, he would remain ‘unequivocal’ about the ‘inviolability of human life from conception to natural death’. The pontiff was outlining his vision of his papacy in a sermon at the ancient basilica of St John’s in Lateran. Meanwhile, a US priest has resigned as editor of a moderate Catholic magazine following pressure from the Vatican. A pope ‘must constantly bind himself and the Church to the obedience of the word of God in the face of all the attempts to adapt it or water it down,’ Pope Benedict told a packed congregation.
— AFP

16 killed in Colombia torrential rains
Heavy rains across several Colombian regions in the last two weeks have killed 16 people, injured 30 others, left seven missing and 41,500 people displaced, officials said Saturday. Areas close to rivers and mountains have fared the worst due to flooding and some mudslides, Civil Defence director Eugenio Alarcon said. In all, 21 houses have been destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged. In the worst case, in Floridablanca in Santander province, rains caused an avalanche on April 18 that affected 1,700 families and killed three people. Alarcon said people often ignored construction guidelines when building homes, leaving some homes at risk due to poor drainage.
— AFP

40 killed in Peru bus accident
A bus travelling in western Peru tumbled down a 300-meter deep ravine Saturday, killing at least 40 and injuring 16 of its 60 passengers, police said. The bus, owned by Andia Transportation Company, crashed in the Pacific coast province of Ancash in an area usually drenched by rain at this time of the year, police said. The bus was travelling from Lima to Tayabamba in the north. The cause of the accident was under investigation, police said.
— AFP