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India, which conducted a series of nuclear tests in May 1998, introduced a bill in parliament Tuesday to ban proliferation and the transfer of missile technology to non-nuclear states.
   The defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, introduced the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems bill on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the tests India carried with a series of weapons, including a 45-megaton thermonuclear device.
   The bill, which becomes law if endorsed by parliament’s two houses, would ‘provide an integrated legislative basis to India’s commitment to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,’ Mukherjee said.
   ‘The provisions of the act apply to export, transfer, re-transfer, transit and transhipment of material, equipment or technology relating to weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery,’ Mukherjee added.
   India has refused to sign two hallmark agreements on proliferation, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying they are discriminatory because they allow the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to keep their nuclear weapons.
   After the 1998 tests, which were matched by rival Pakistan the same month, India announced a moratorium on future tests and called for a time-frame for global disarmament.
   ‘In view of India’s status as a nuclear weapon state and its international commitments it was felt necessary to introduce this legislation,’ a statement accompanying the draft legislation said.
   In April, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, offered New Delhi greater access to high technology sales, including civilian nuclear power plants and fuel to meet its growing energy needs.
   India is currently barred from buying such equipment because it is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that forbids such sales to countries that do not agree to international inspection of nuclear plants and facilities.

Cracks widened in the government Tuesday over Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, as Sharon’s camp snubbed calls to freeze the pullout should Hamas triumph in Palestinian polls.
   Foreign minister Silvan Shalom’s comments that the plan be re-thought should the Islamist movement win parliamentary elections in July flew in the face of statements from Sharon loyalists and cabinet ministers.
   ‘We should not accept a process if it leads to suicide,’ Shalom told army radio. ‘It would be totally illogical to go on with the withdrawal plan as if nothing had happened.’
   The Palestinian Authority accused the foreign minister of looking for an excuse to scupper the Gaza pullout and Hamas slammed him for meddling.
   Likewise, the Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and a Sharon aide said there was no question of reneging on the so-called disengagement project.
   ‘The pullout will not be cancelled. It is a difficult process but essential for our future,’ said Mofaz, stressing that the army was ready to oversee the removal of all 8,000 Jewish settlers from the occupied territory.
   The interior minister, Ophir Pines, from the centre-left Labour party which entered into the coalition government primarily to shore up the pullout, told public radio that Shalom’s remarks were in fact liable to strengthen Hamas.
   Instead, he suggested strengthening Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and coordinating disengagement to better help his Fatah party win the elections.
   Meanwhile, the Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, said on Monday that the peace process launched between Israel and Palestinians was irreversible.
   ‘We have chosen the road of peace, the road of negotiations. It is irreversible,’ he said on Senegalese national television during a brief stopover in Dakar on his way to a summit between South American and Arab nations in Brasilia.
   He said the situation in the Palestinian territories had been ‘relatively calm for four months’, notwithstanding ‘outstanding questions’ including Israel’s controversial West Bank security barrier, Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and Palestinian prisoners.
   Abbas discussed the Middle East peace process during his stopover of one hour at a meeting with the Senegalese prime minister, Macky Sall.

More than 30 nations from South America and the Arab world begin Tuesday an unprecedented two-day summit in a bid to form a new alliance that could serve as a counterweight to US dominance and open up new regional markets to world trade.
   The Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, in a preparatory meeting Monday, called on participants to forge an ‘alliance of civilizations’ that he said began 150 years ago with a strong wave of migration to South America from Syria and Libya.
   Speaking to 21 delegations from the Arab League, the Palestinian Authority and 12 South American nations, Amorim said the summit would attempt to draw the two regions which are ‘symbols of the south’ together.
   Despite its lofty goals, the summit, which will mark Iraqi president Jalal Talabani’s debut on the world stage, has been largely ignored by the Arab nations: only five of the 22 members of the Arab League are represented by a head of state.
   Arab diplomatic sources in Brasilia said the United States had pressured several countries to stay away after the hosts turned down a US request for observer status at the summit.
   Besides Talabani, Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas and the heads of state from Algeria, Djibouti and Qatar will also be present.
   Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, whose country is the most populated in the region and strategically located between Africa and Asia, has delegated foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, to represent him at the summit.
   Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, and Morocco’s king Mohammed VI have both turned down the invitation.
   Tunisia’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Jordan’s king Abdullah II and Libyan president, Moamer Gaddafi, are also shunning the summit, along with Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
   The United States is closely watching the summit as the final declaration includes a clause critical of Israel that will call for the dismantling of all Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a draft obtained by AFP. Israel is to pull out from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank this year.
   Israel is said to be concerned by the summit statement but Arab League president Amr Mussa said Monday: ‘Their worries don’t concern me.’
   An Israeli diplomatic source here said Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is ‘clearly more sympathetic to the Palestinian discourse than to our positions.’

The number of foreign nationals in US prisons grew by 15 per cent over three years, said a government study released Monday, which traced the growing US prison population.
   The number of non-citizens in US prisons grew from 42,000 in 2001 to 49,000 in 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress.
   The total US prison population also grew during that period, so that foreign prisoners were 27 per cent of the population in both 2001 and 2004, the study said.
   The majority of foreign prisoners are Mexican, according to the GAO, which said Dominicans and Cubans followed in number.
   Between 2001 and 2004,
   the US government spent 5.8 billion dollars to house those prisoners, the GAO study said, adding that the amount did not reflect the total cost to state and local jails.

Pakistani and Indian officials Tuesday held talks on starting a new cross-border bus service while separate groups wrapped up discussions on a water row and met to boost maritime links.
   The meetings were the latest aiming to hammer out details of a range of confidence-building measures agreed by the South Asian nuclear rivals, who launched a historic peace process in January 2004.
   Transport chiefs opened two days of talks over the start of the bus link between the holy Sikh town of Amritsar in India and Pakistan’s second-largest city, Lahore.

Around 200 Maoist rebels, some armed with AK-47 assault rifles, attacked an aluminium mining complex in central India and used the company’s bulldozers to demolish all the buildings, a spokeswoman for mine operator Hindalco Industries said Tuesday.
   The Saturday night attack occurred at the remote Samri aluminium mines, 495 kilometres northeast of the capital Raipur in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, one of the country’s poorest areas.
   ‘The rebels attacked our office buildings, staff residences, guest house and burnt a company jeep,’ said Pragnya Ram, spokeswoman for India’s Birla Group, which owns Hindalco Industries.
   ‘There was no physical injury to any of our employees, but all buildings have been demolished using our own bulldozers.’
   She said the mines were shut down immediately after the attack, but were now operational again. The company’s overall operations had not been affected because Hindalco has other mines across the country.

Thailand is working to break the deadlock of military-ruled Myanmar assuming the chairmanship of the ASEAN bloc in 2006, the Thai foreign minister, Kantathi Suphamongkhon, said Tuesday.
   The announcement came after 78 of 200 Thai senators signed a petition Monday pressuring their government to oppose Myanmar taking up the rotating chair, and as sources said the junta could be seeking an exit from the role.
   ‘The government is
   ‘working on it and as a matter of fact we have the same goal (as the senators),’ Kantathi told reporters.
   ‘I can’t disclose any details because it’s a sensitive issue.
   ‘What I can say about my work is that it’s the best thing for ASEAN and Myanmar’s internal problems,’ he said, sidestepping questions of whether Myanmar was prepared to assume the chairmanship or step down.
   The senators’ motion follows similar moves by legislators in Malaysia and the Philippines to deny next year’s chairmanship to Myanmar, which has been run by the military since 1962, unless it implements democratic reforms.

Taiwan said Tuesday an upcoming World Health Organisation meeting gives China an opportunity to show some of the goodwill it promised the island’s main opposition leader during his landmark visit to the mainland. ‘I hope China does not publicly send vague messages while simultaneously blocking Taiwan’s bid to participate in the WHO,’ the Taiwan foreign minister said.

Russia and the European Union struck a landmark accord to boost cooperation Tuesday, in what the president, Vladimir Putin, said should forge a ‘greater Europe’ and ease recent strains in ties with Brussels.
   The Russian leader was speaking at a Russia-EU summit expected to formally approve four ‘roadmap’ accords to bolster cooperation in areas ranging from trade and investment to the fight against terrorism.
   ‘The strategic partnership with the EU is an important priority for Russia. I am convinced that adoption of these roadmaps which is expected today will allow us to build a greater Europe,’ he said.
   Shortly before the start of the talks Russia and an EU official confirmed ‘roadmap’ accords had been reached on four policy areas: the economy; freedom, security and justice; external security; and research, education and culture.
   Negotiations had been snagged notably on demands by the 25-nation EU for a firm linkage between an accord to ease visa rules and an agreement on the re-admission of illegal immigrants.
   But officials said this was virtually resolved and would be adopted by the EU leaders during the three-hour summit. ‘It should be done, there is no need to worry,’ said one EU diplomat.
   ‘The work between experts and official of Russia and the EU was not easy, but it is going ahead and I hope we will continue to cooperate constructively in the future,’ he added.
   The EU was represented by foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker,—whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, and EU commission chief, Jose Manuel Barroso.
   Barroso paid tribute to Russia as a ‘European’ country on the eve of the talks. ‘Russia is a bridge from Europe to Asia, and we can be happy that we share the same values,’ he said.
   The Moscow summit was aimed at repairing ties battered in recent years: an attempt to agree on the four ‘roadmap’ accords foundered last year when Russia was angered by perceived EU interference in Ukraine.
   Threats to a harmonious summit this time have focused on strains between Russia and the EU’s three ex-Soviet Baltic newcomer states, one of which had hoped until recently to sign a border accord with Moscow at the summit.
   Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied by Stalin’s Soviet Union following a Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939 and were forcibly assimilated into the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War.
   EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner conceded ahead of the talks that the Latvia-Russian border issue remains ‘delicate’ and is not yet resolved.
   ‘We understand that there are always difficulties of the past. We all have to work to get rid of these difficult memories. But at the same time this is really about looking to the future,’ she said.
   Another cause of concern for the EU are so-called ‘frozen conflicts’ in Russia’s ex-Soviet backyard near the expanded bloc’s borders.
   One EU official said the EU was ‘extremely disappointed’ that Moscow had failed to implement an accord signed in 1999 to withdraw Russian forces notably in Georgia and Moldova.

The peaceful revolution in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2003 was a model for other countries seeking democratic government and Russia will benefit from the emergence of democracies on its borders, the US president, George W Bush, said here Tuesday.
   ‘The rose revolution was a powerful moment in history,’ Bush said at a news conference with his Georgian counterpart, Mikhail Saakashvili.
   ‘Not only did it inspire the people of Georgia but it inspired others around the world’ who aspire to democratic values, he said.
   Bush, the first serving US president to travel to the Caucasus region long dominated by Russia, said Moscow should not fear the development of democracies in neighbouring states of the former Soviet Union.
   ‘When you have peaceful countries on your border, you benefit,’ Bush said, adding: ‘I’m sure that Russia will recognise the benefits of having democracies on her borders.’
   The United States has encouraged pro-democracy movements in Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet republics where popular revolts have ousted entrenched regimes in the past 18 months, raising alarm in the Kremlin about its rapidly-waning influence in its historic backyard.
   ‘We embrace freedom movements and we stand with young democracies and we want to help where we can help build institutions that outlast the moment,’ Bush said.
   Turning to separatist disputes with Georgia itself, the US president said they could be resolved ‘with our help’ but stressed that the ultimate responsibility for ending these divergences lies with the Georgian government and the separatist leaders themselves.
   ‘The United States cannot impose a solution, nor would you want us to,’ Bush said, referring to continuing disputes between the central Georgian government in Tbilisi and the pro-Russian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
   ‘What we can do is work with international bodies, work with the UN for example.... But this is an issue that will be resolved by the duly elected government of Georgia and the folks in the separatist regions.’

Re-elected British prime minister, Tony Blair, came under fire Tuesday after he appointed a millionaire party donor and a controversial adviser to the new government.
   Most of the furore was directed at Andrew Adonis, a Blair adviser who was named junior education minister, but also at Labour Party donor Lord Paul Drayson, the pharmaceuticals tycoon who became junior defence minister.
   The criticism echoed long-held complaints from inside and outside the Labour Party that Blair acts much like a US president who consults unelected advisers rather than a prime minister who consults elected cabinet officials.
   But it also reflected his aim to forge ahead with education reform, despite a perceived increased risk of angering party rebels emboldened by his failure last week to be re-elected with the massive majorities he had in 1997 and 2001.
   Phil Willis, spokesman on education for the opposition Liberal Democrats, denounced Adonis, who was recently appointed to the House of Lords, the unelected upper house of parliament, as a Blair ‘crony’ who ran education policy from the prime minister’s office.
   One of Blair’s closest advisers, Adonis stirred controversy by supporting an increase in university tuition fees as well as specialist schools financed in part by private businesses.
   Willis told BBC radio that the government was in a ‘sorry state’ if it could not find an elected member of parliament to serve in the post.
   ‘This is a man who has had no dialogue at all with the teaching profession, with parents, with other
   organisations, but has wielded unprecedented power, taking ideas direct from the United States and implanting them in the British education system,’ Willis said.

‘Considering the devastation that would be visited upon mankind ...’ is how it begins, a 2,400-word contract some would say saved the world.
   The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has helped keep the lid on that threat of devastation since 1970. Without it, dozens more countries might have joined the atomic-weapons club by now.
   But the heart of the contract, the deal, grows weaker year by year. Cheaters are found on the inside, nuclear bombs on the outside. And some of the ‘undersigned’ themselves wonder whether the deal they were handed 35 years ago was a raw one.
   Kofi Annan last week opened a monthlong conference on the NPT with an appeal to its 188 member nations to repair the troubled treaty regime.
   ‘You must come to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity,’ the UN secretary general said.
   Those dangers lie not only in the Hamgyong Mountains, where North Korea may be readying its first nuclear test blast, and outside ancient Isfahan, where a long-secret uranium-fuel plant could help Iran build a bomb. Many see danger, too, in the corridors of the Pentagon, where planners talk of new nuclear arms.
   The NPT deal is easily summed up: Countries without the doomsday weapons forever renounce them, in exchange for a commitment by five with the weapons — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — to negotiate toward giving them up. The ‘have-nots,’ meantime, are guaranteed access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Chechen refugees demonstrated Tuesday in the Georgian capital Tbilisi to ask visiting US president, George W Bush, to save Chechnya from Russian ‘terror’.
   About 50 people, mostly members of Georgia’s small Chechen diaspora, or refugees, gathered at the police cordon set up in central Tbilisi, where Bush was meeting with president, Mikhail Saakashvili.
   ‘Peace against Kremlin terror,’ one placard said. ‘America save Chechnya and Russia from the Kremlin,’ read another placard.
   Khizri Aldamov, one of the diaspora leaders, said: ‘Our refugees and poor people would like to tell Bush that we are not terrorists and that the terrorists sit in Moscow.’
   Russia has been fighting separatist rebels in Chechnya, which is on the mountainous border with Georgia, for much of the last 10 years.
   Moscow says the conflict is part of an international war against terrorism. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the crackdown.

Former UN chief arms inspector Hans Blix urged Iran and Israel on Monday to support a ban on nuclear enrichment across the Middle East as a possible compromise on curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
   Making the Middle East an enrichment-free zone would be in the interests of both Iran and Israel, Blix told a news conference on the sidelines of a month-long meeting of the 188 signatories of the 1970 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
   ‘I think Israel is extremely interested in having Iran refrain from moving on’ to resuming enrichment activities, Blix said. ‘I’m surprised the idea has not come up before.’
   Such a move would also reassure Iran without affecting any existing Israeli nuclear weapons, he said. While Israel neither admits nor denies having the bomb, it is estimated to have about 200 nuclear warheads.
   But to help seal the deal, he also encouraged Washington to offer security guarantees to Tehran as a further enticement for it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Aid delivery in Afghanistan blocked
Insecurity and spiralling bloodshed by Taliban rebels and other Islamic militants have hampered aid delivery in war-shattered Afghanistan, a report said Tuesday. ‘Escalating violence is impeding the ability of humanitarian workers to deliver aid and to implement urgently needed reconstruction and development projects in Afghanistan,’ the report by US-based CARE international said. A recent surge in attacks by the Taliban, whose ultra-conservative regime was ousted by a US-led military offensive in late 2001, has left more than 100 people dead in the past week, many of them militants.
— AFP

DPRK blames US for ‘fuss’ on nuclear
tests
Reports it could soon conduct an underground nuclear weapons test were speculation cooked up by Washington, North Korea said on Tuesday, but the secretive state did not deny outright that one might be planned. Media reports have said spy satellites show North Korea has apparently stepped up activity in its north-eastern region of Kilju. The area has been suspected of being where the North would conduct a test, US and South Korean officials have said. ‘The United States is making a fuss that our republic may proceed with an underground nuclear test in June and it will report its own view to the International Atomic Energy Agency and other countries, including Japan,’ the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.
— Reuters

Japan opens new consulate in China
Japan, whose diplomatic missions were targeted by angry Chinese protesters last month, has inaugurated a new consulate in the southwest municipality of Chongqing, state media reported Tuesday. ‘We set up this consulate to promote Japan’s cooperation with southwest China,’ consul general Masahiro Tomita was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying. Senior vice foreign minister Ichiro Aisawa, who is due to arrive in Beijing Tuesday for talks with Chinese foreign ministry officials, said the consulate would support Japanese investment in southwest China. ‘It is important for Japan to strengthen economic cooperation with China,’ he said.
— AFP

Two Americans freed from Malaysia
A Malaysian court has freed two US citizens detained for 10 days for allegedly distributing Christian religious pamphlets to Muslims, police and the US embassy said Tuesday. The two men were arrested on April 25 and a local court ordered them to be held for 14 days to assist in investigations, but they were released Wednesday, May 4, a police official said. It is an offence in predominantly-Islamic Malaysia to try to convert Muslims away from their faith. Police named the two men as Ricky Rupert, in his 30s, and Zachary Harris, in his 20s. Rupert is from Washington state and Harris from Colorado. A spokesman for the US embassy confirmed the release, saying: ‘All charges were dismissed, and they were freed.’
— AFP

Germany to open Holocaust memorial
Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, a controversial Holocaust memorial will open in the centre of the German capital on Tuesday. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe will be inaugurated in a ceremony attended by survivors of Nazi death camps and political leaders. The memorial, a field of 2,700 grey concrete blocks next to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag parliament building, has already attracted criticism. Its detractors say it is too big and too impersonal while others have asked why it took Germany so long to erect a permanent reminder of the worst chapter of its history.

Egypt parliament debates poll reform
Egypt’s parliament was to begin a debate Tuesday on a constitutional amendment that would allow multi-candidate presidential elections for the fist time in the country’s history. The vote comes amid a wave of opposition protests against veteran president, Hosni Mubarak, and calls for political reform. The 454-seat People’s Assembly dominated by Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party was expected to approve the amendments to article 76 of the constitution with little debate. Mubarak, 77, agreed in February to amend the constitution to allow rival candidates to stand.

Iran’s presidential hopefuls registering
The first of Iran’s presidential hopefuls put their names forward on Tuesday to stand in the June 17 battle to succeed incumbent reformist Mohammad Khatami, with suspense still surrounding the intentions of top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The interior ministry said several unknown figures were quick to submit their candidacies—which will be subject to a tough screening process—after registration opened at 8:00am. According to the ministry, no key personalities had yet come forward in the first few hours of the registration process. Powerful former president Rafsanjani—seen as a pragmatic conservative more open to improving ties with the West and determined to liberalise the economy—has signalled he is all but certain to stand but has yet to formally confirm a comeback bid.

German jailed for cannibal killing
A German who stabbed and dismembered his gay lover, stored some of his organs in the fridge to eat later and fed other body parts to his cat, was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Tuesday. The accused, identified in line with normal court practice only as Ralf M, 41, was convicted of stabbing to death Joe R, 33, a music teacher from Berlin, with a screwdriver. The case has drawn comparisons with a cannibal trial which intrigued and appalled Germany last year. The Berlin court also ordered the unemployed painter to be treated in a psychiatric clinic after experts concluded he was obsessed with butchery as part of a homosexual relationship.

Zimbabwean to face trial
A Zimbabwean arrested last month for shouting ‘abusive words’ against president, Robert Mugabe, has been granted bail ahead of his trial on May 26, a court official said Tuesday. Clifford Ruhukwa, 32, was waiting at a bus stop in Harare’s satellite town of Chitungwiza on April 18, when he was allegedly heard shouting insults against Mugabe. ‘He is out on 250,000 dollars (40 US dollars) bail,’ said an official at the Chitungwiza Magistrate’s Court who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that his trial that was due to begin on Tuesday was postponed until May 26. Ruhukwa appeared in court on charges of denigrating the president, an offence under Zimbabwe’s tough security laws that is usually punishable with a light jail sentence, fine or community service.
— AFP