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Southeast Asian nations are frustrated and embarrassed by Myanmar’s deteriorating human rights record, the deputy US secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, said on his return from a visit to the region.
   ‘I had a sense that every country in the region I spoke to is frustrated about the lack of progress’ on Myanmar’s refusal to embark on democratic reforms,’ he said late Thursday after a regional swing covering Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
   ‘Some of them had a real problem in that Burma is their neighbour,’ Zoellick said using Myanmar’s old name.
   The United States and Europe have told the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that they might boycott its meetings if member state Myanmar assumes the grouping’s rotating presidency next year.
   One of the key issues is Myanmar’s refusal to release democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and lift a ban on her National League for Democracy party.
   Aung San Suu Kyi is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Her party won 1990 elections but was never allowed to rule. Its offices have been shut down.
   Speaking at a private sector forum in Washington on reconstruction of economies ravaged by the December 26 tsunami, Zoellick said he got an impression during his visit that Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia were prodding Myanmar to change for the interest of ASEAN.
   Officials said Thailand was already discussing with Myanmar on a plan that could see the state forego its 2006-2007 chairmanship of ASEAN.
   The Thai foreign minister, Kantathi Suphamongkhon, speaking to reporters in Washington, said even if Myanmar skipped chairing ASEAN, member nations would continue pushing it to forge national reconciliation.
   ‘Just as an example, if they were to postpone their chairmanship then there would be a strong incentive for them to also complete that process of national reconciliation so that they could come back and participate actively in ASEAN,’ he said.
   Zoellick also said the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, had asked the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to try to talk to Myanmar’s military chiefs on the need to move towards democracy.
   Last year, Yudhoyono, an ex-military general, contested and won Indonesia’s first direct presidential elections in the history of the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
   ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Indian government ordered a new probe Friday into the so-called ‘Tehelka scam’ in which top politicians and army brass were secretly filmed apparently taking bribes from reporters posing as arms dealers.
   The Congress-backed government threw out a 41-page report of an inquiry by judge SN Phukan into the 2001 incident that had been ordered by the previous Hindu nationalist-led Bharatiya Janata Party government of prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, saying it was ‘not complete’.
   The order for the new inquiry followed sensational footage shot on March 13, 2001 that nearly brought down the government and rocked the military establishment. The videotape showed 31 national politicians, bureaucrats and top defence officers allegedly accepting money from fake arms dealers.
   The sting operation was carried out by upstart news site www.tehelka.com, which now functions as an investigative weekly broadsheet.
   A government spokesman said the allegations that those filmed took bribes were being handed to the national police agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, for a full investigation.
   ‘The (Phukan) commission has given its report only on two of the terms of reference instead of the four made to it, and so it is not complete and therefore the government has rejected it,’ the government spokesman said.
   The BJP government-ordered inquiry finished its probe in October last year, 47 months after being set up.
   Journalists from tehelka.com secretly videotaped then BJP president, Bangau Laxman, and senior defence officials apparently accepting bribes in return for favours to their fictitious firms.
   Laxman, shown on tape apparently shovelling money into his desk drawer, was promptly dismissed as party president.
   The tape was filmed at the home of former defence minister, George Fernandes, and led to his resignation.
   Fernandes, who was not present at the time of the filming, was later reinstated as minister, while the home and office of the owner of the website, Tarun Tejpal, were repeatedly raided by government agencies, including the tax department and intelligence bureau.

Hundreds of people left hungry and homeless by Nepal’s relentless Maoist insurgency protested outside of government offices on Thursday demanding food.
   Chanting ‘we are hungry, we need food,’ and ‘our stomachs are empty’, the protesters also blocked the entrance to the Nepal Food Corporation prompting intervention by the police, witnesses said.
   The chairman of the Maoist Victims Association, Dharma Raj Neupane, told reporters the government had shown no concern for the plight of thousands of families displaced by the conflict.
   ‘Tons of rice is rotting inside the NFC while displaced people have nothing to eat,’ Neupane said.
   Maoist rebels have been fighting for a communist republic in Nepal since 1996 and the uprising has already claimed more than 11,000 lives.
   This has also forced families from eastern and western Nepal to flee into the capital where they are now living in tents inside an open air theatre.
   ‘Non-governmental organisations in Kathmandu sometimes give us food and clothing but the government does not care about us,’ said one of the protesters who declined to be named.
   ‘We have to beg for food and vegetables from the local market,’ he said.
   ‘The government is doing nothing to help us, we are unable to stay in our villages because of the Maoists and we have nothing in Kathmandu either.’

A series of brutal rapes across India in the past few months has triggered street protests and calls for better security for women in a country where rape victims often face social ostracism.
   Dozens of girls marched through New Delhi this week after a 20-year-old college student was raped by four men in a car before being dumped on the road.
   The incident caused a furore in parliament where the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party demanded the home minister’s resignation after city police failed to take action despite being informed within 15 minutes of the girl’s abduction.
   ‘More women are killed or injured in sexual assault than through terrorism. Yet, how often have you seen the issue debated in parliament or figuring on political agendas?’ leading activist Brinda Karat told the Times of India.
   Angry residents in Bombay also took to the streets after a drunken policeman raped a girl in daylight on a beachfront boulevard in the city, considered India’s safest for women.
   Delhi women demanded night roadside food stalls be closed, saying they were a meeting point for spawned crimes such as kidnapping and rape.
   Some women have called for laws for rapists to be hanged, but most women’s groups say the existing legal system must be tightened so rape cases do not linger for years because of lack of evidence and other legal loopholes.
   A recent opinion poll on safety and security of women in Delhi and Bombay for Star News television showed 89 percent of respondents favoured hanging rapists.
   ‘It’s not about whether they should be castrated or given capital punishment,’ the executive director of the Centre for Advocacy and Research, Akhila Shivdas, said. ‘The criminal justice system needs to be tightened so that it becomes the biggest deterrent.’
   The outrage follows a series of nasty rapes: a pregnant woman killed herself after being raped in the city of Pune, an 80-year-old was raped in Delhi and a school principal raped a 16-year-old Delhi student by luring her with the promise of getting her a matriculation certificate.
   In a widely condemned bid for a softer sentence, one rapist offered in court to marry his victim—because no one else would now—and on Thursday, a 19-year-old Delhi woman was beaten up by the relatives of her accused.
   Also on Thursday, two motorised-rickshaw drivers were arrested for raping a 47-year-old German tourist in the tourist city of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, a state that draws thousands of tourists for its fabulous forts and palaces.

China is more concerned about regime meltdown in North Korea than its development of nuclear weapons and is unlikely to cave in to US calls to cut oil supplies and exercise more ‘robust diplomacy,’ according to analysts.
   ‘There is no question that China fears instability and regime change in North Korea more than it fears nuclear weapons,’ said Brad Glosserman, a North Asia expert at the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum, a foreign policy research institute.
   ‘China wants North Korea as a buffer state, it wants (North Korea leader) Kim Jong-il in power. They know him and they know he is not the threat the US makes him out to be.
   ‘The big question would be who would take Kim’s place. There are still people in North Korea worse than Kim, someone without his restraint.’
   The United States is ratcheting up pressure on China to push its Stalinist neighbour harder to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons ambitions.
   Washington is counting on China, North Korea’s closest ally, to persuade it back to the negotiations that also include Russia, Japan and South and which collapsed last June after three sessions.
   Pyongyang has cited alleged US intentions to topple its government as its primary reason for pulling out of the talks and on February 10 announced that it possesses nuclear weapons.
   But so far Beijing has resisted any punitive actions, rebuffing a US request to cut oil supplies to the insular and unpredictable Marxist state.
   David Zweig, a political analyst at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said this stance would likely continue.
   Like Glosserman, he agrees that collapse of the Kim dictatorship, which could be precipitated by sanctions, would be a disaster that China was not willing to let happen.
   ‘A meltdown of the regime is of more concern that developing nuclear weapons. They are afraid of any scenario that would precipitate collapse,’ he said.
   ‘It could easily cause millions of refugees to flood over the border into China, South Korea could take over North Korea, US troops could be on China’s border.’
   Beijing’s reluctance to act, however, would all change if North Korea carried out a nuclear test, according to Dong-bok Lee, a Seoul-based security affairs expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
   ‘Down the road, when the time comes, China has in its mind the possibility of imposing certain sanctions—suspending oil supplies, grain supplies and deploying its military to seal the border,’ he said.
   ‘If there is a nuclear test, China will take this very seriously and it would move to the next stage of its policy and that could be sanctions.

The Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, Friday said while his country had done much to smash the al-Qaeda network and destroy other militant groups, an end to the war against terror was not in sight.
   Pakistan, which borders war-ravaged Afghanistan and is believed to be home to al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden, has been an ally of the United States in efforts to end terrorism since shortly after the September 11 attacks.
   ‘For Pakistan, the first and foremost challenge is the threat of terrorism and its role as a frontline state in the war against terrorism,’ the minister said during a speech to a foreign policy think-tank in Sydney.
   ‘Nobody knows where the war against terrorism will take us and therefore how it will end.’
   While Pakistani authorities had apprehended and deported almost 600 suspected al-Qaeda operatives and affiliates, the Western world also needed to look to troublespots around the world to kill breeding grounds for terror and counter sentiment that Muslims received a raw deal in the current world order.
   ‘We know very well that there is the feeling in the Islamic world that there is selectivity in the application of UN Security Council resolutions,’ he said.
   Kasuri said Australia had faced indignation from the Muslim world when it led an intervention force in 1999 into East Timor, which had previously been controlled by the world’s most populous Muslim nation Indonesia.

Leading Sri Lankan journalists have received death threats after they condemned the killing of a senior Tamil editor, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.
   The previously unknown Therapuththabhaya Brigade had claimed responsibility for the killing of Sivaram Dharmeratnam, 46, an editor of the pro-Tamil Tiger rebel website tamilnet.com, and then threatened journalists who condemned the slaying.
   ‘We are alarmed by the rising threats against our colleagues and call on authorities to find those responsible for these crimes,’ CPJ executive director, Ann Cooper, said in a statement.
   The death threats were sent to the editor of the anti-government Ravaya newspaper, Victor Ivan, and the former editor of the Yuktiya, Sunande Deshapriya, both also members of media rights group the Free Media Movement.
   The letter said the Tamil editor had been ‘defacing and darkening the international face of Sri Lanka with the help, encouragement and sponsorship of a sinful, traitorous herd, calling themselves media men.’

India, armed with nuclear weapons and developing its atomic power industry, passed a bill in its lower house of parliament on Thursday that bans illegal proliferation of nuclear technology.
   India and its rival Pakistan stunned the world in 1998 by carrying out tit-for-tat nuclear tests, drawing sanctions by the United States on both South Asian powers.
   ‘We have adopted the most responsible policy on sensitive and dual-use nuclear and missile-related technologies,’ the foreign minister, Natwar Singh, said before lawmakers passed the measure, The Weapons of Mass Destruction and Their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Bill, by a voice vote.
   ‘We are committed to ensure that these do not fall into the wrong hands, especially the terrorists and non-state actors.’
   Neither India nor Pakistan has signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
   India has been seeking to develop its civilian nuclear industry with Russian and US assistance. Currently, only about three per cent of India’s total power requirement is met by nuclear energy which it aims to increase to around 25 percent by 2050.

A Pakistani court in the first verdict of its kind has declared valid the marriage of a 12-year-old girl, a lawyer and court officials said Friday.
   A judge sitting at the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore gave the ruling on the grounds that in Islam a female can marry if she has reached puberty, the officials said.
   He accepted a joint petition by the girl, named as Zeenat Bibi, and her 25-year-old husband Babar Javed and dismissed charges of rape which were filed by her father.
   ‘This is the first time that a court has validated marriage of a 12-year-old girl in Pakistan,’ her lawyer Azeem Sarwar said. The decision was handed down on Wednesday.
   The ruling also overrides the Muslim Family Law under which the marriageable age for girls in Pakistan is 16 years, he added.

Violent insurrection erupted Friday in Uzbekistan’s eastern city of Andijan, killing at least nine people, as the president Islam Karimov rushed to the scene and a huge crowd gathered to demand his resignation.
   Insurgents stormed a military garrison, the city administration building and a prison.
   More than 2,000 prisoners were freed, Saidjahon Zainobidinov, spokesman of the Appelatsia rights group in Andijan, said.
   Uzbek television reported at least nine people killed and 34 wounded in the city, which is near the border of Kyrgyzstan in the densely populated and impoverished Ferghana valley. A correspondent for the local Ferghana news agency told AFP he had counted four bodies of civilians and one dead soldier.
   It was one of the most serious crises to shake the energy-rich ex-Soviet republic, which is run by an authoritarian government and hosts a major US air base used for operations in Afghanistan.
   ‘An armed criminal group attacked a military garrison in Andijan and a police station. They took dozens of weapons and then attacked a prison, where they freed a group of detainees,’ state-run television said.
   A foreign ministry spokesman in Tashkent told AFP that security forces had brought the situation under control, but an AFP correspondent said the rebels still held the administration building.
   In a sign of the depth to the crisis, thousands of demonstrators gathered in the city centre, calling on Karimov to resign and protesting the country’s lack of democracy.
   Karimov was on his way to the city and was expected to make a television statement later Friday, his spokesman said.
   Karimov’s office announced that talks with the rebel gunmen—initially reported to number between 60 and 100–were starting, Russia’s Interfax news agency said.
   The authorities blocked broadcasts of BBC and CNN television. State television showed films and entertainment programmes. The country’s border with Kyrgyzstan was shut.
   The unrest in Andijan, which has a population of 300,000 and is the fourth largest city in Uzbekistan, started with protests against a trial of 23 men charged with forming a cell of the outlawed Islamic group Akromiya.
   For days a crowd of some 2,000 people had demonstrated in support of the men, saying they were victims of repression.
   A man describing himself as one of the rebel leaders denied being connected to Islamic extremism. He also said he had been one of those freed from the prison.
   ‘We are believers, nothing more,’ he said, adding that he wanted the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to intervene.
   The man described himself as a businessman of 35, but would not give his name.
   The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, appeared to rule out intervention, saying the disturbance was ‘an internal affair’ of Uzbekistan.
   Witnesses described their terror as the violence broke out.
   ‘The shooting started at 11:45 at night,’ a kindergarten teacher, who asked not to be named, told AFP. ‘It was very close. I was afraid a bullet could hit my children. We didn’t sleep at all and everyone’s afraid.’
   ‘No one’s going out. I haven’t even got bread to feed my children. There are special forces and police on the streets with guns,’ she added.
   Meanwhile in the capital Tashkent, the US embassy initially reported that a would-be suicide bomber had been shot outside the Israeli embassy. However, Uzbek officials later said the man turned out to be unarmed.
   Bombings at the US and Israeli embassies last year killed two people and were claimed by a group calling itself the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
   However, independent analysts say Karimov’s autocratic government has used the fear of Islamic rebellion as cover for the suppression of any opposition to his rule.
   The Akromiya group, to which the men on trial in Andijan allegedly belong, is an off-shoot of the better known Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create an Islamic state throughout the Central Asian former Soviet republics.

Moscow’s spy chief said on Thursday foreign intelligence services were planning uprisings on the lines of Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ to further undermine Russian influence in the former Soviet Union.
   Federal Security Service head Nikolai Patrushev’s comments reflected Russian distrust for the new pro-Western leaders of Ukraine and Georgia. He said foreign spies were using non-governmental organisations as a front.
   Russia had uncovered US, British, Kuwaiti and Saudi spies trying to weaken Russia, he said.
   ‘Foreign secret services are ever more actively using non-traditional methods for their work and with the help of different NGOs’ educational programs are propagandising their interests, particularly in the former Soviet Union,’ he told deputies of the State Duma lower house of parliament.
   ‘Our opponents are purposefully and step-by-step trying to weaken Russian influence in the former Soviet Union and the international arena as a whole. The latest events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan unanimously confirm this.’
   Youth groups and NGOs, many funded by foreign pro-democracy groups, led protesters who took to the streets in Kiev last year until rigged election results were overturned.
   In the re-run of the poll, pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko defeated his Moscow-backed rival. The Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev, was overthrown in March, while a 2003 revolution in Georgia helped install a Western-leaning leadership.
   Patrushev said he had met counterparts from security agencies in other ex-Soviet republics in April to discuss the threat of further liberal revolutions.
   Patrushev said, in comments confirmed by Belarussian security chiefs, that the main target for Western-financed activists would be to set up youth pro-democracy groups in Belarus, which holds presidential elections in October 2006.

The United States sought to stem Muslim anger over reports of the desecration of a Koran at its ‘war on terror’ detention camp, with the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, calling such disrespect ‘abhorrent’ and promising to punish any offenders.
   But the top US military officer, the general, Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said no evidence had been found yet to back allegations that a Koran had been put down a toilet at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.
   Rice used an appearance before a Senate committee to make a special statement ‘directly to Muslims in America and throughout the world’ on the reported incidents.
   ‘Disrespect for the holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States,’ she said.
   ‘We honour the sacred books of all the world’s great religions. Disrespect for the holy Koran is abhorrent to us all.’
   Rice said US military authorities were fully investigating the allegations. ‘If they are proven true we will take appropriate action.’
   ‘During the past few days, we have heard from our Muslim friends around the world about their concerns on this matter. We understand and we share their concerns. Sadly, some people have lost their lives in violent demonstrations.
   ‘I am asking that all our friends around the world reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterise our intentions.’
   Rice said religious freedom was one of the founding principles of the United States and something taken very seriously by Americans. ‘Guaranteeing religious rights is of great personal importance to the president and to me,’ she said.
   Pakistan and Afghanistan Friday braced for fresh protests over the alleged desecration.
   The main Islamic alliance in Pakistan, a key US ally in the war on terror, said its workers would hold peaceful rallies after Friday prayers from mosques in cities and towns across the country.
   The multi-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Front, staged demonstrations in two major cities on Thursday where hundreds of people condemned the alleged desecration reported by US magazine Newsweek last week.
   ‘We want to give a clear message to the US that Muslims will not tolerate insults to their faith and values,’ the alliance’s spokesman Shahid Shamsi said.
   The top leader of the alliance, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has written letters to Islamic organisations in different countries to collectively demonstrate their anger at the Guantanamo Bay allegations.
   The US has promised an inquiry and action against soldiers who allegedly defiled copies of the Koran by leaving them in toilet cubicles and even stuffing one down a lavatory to rattle Muslim prisoners.
   Speaking in Sydney, the Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, called for severe punishment for any US soldiers proved to have been involved in any abuse of the Koran.
   ‘I have no doubt that the entire Muslim world is outraged. So I urge the United States administration to take very strong action against the culprits.’
   ‘Even the worst enemy of the United States could not harm the image of the United States in the Muslim world as effectively as they’ve done if this is correct,’ he said.
   In Afghanistan officials said Friday that police and security forces were on high alert after seven people died and nearly 80 others were wounded in three days of violent clashes between protestors and government forces.
   Two protesters were killed on Thursday when gunfire broke out as police stopped them marching into the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad from a district just to the northwest.
   On Wednesday four people died also in Jalalabad when police opened fire to control a mob that torched the buildings of several aid agencies, the Pakistani consulate and the governor’s house.

The Syrian president, Bashar al- Assad, is committed to reform but fears US calls for democratic change mask a desire to destabilise a staunch foe of Israel, Syria’s ambassador to Britain said on Thursday.
   Syria’s pullout from Lebanon has deprived that seeking regime change in Damascus of a pretext, Sami Khiyami said.
   He said next month’s long-awaited Baath conference would signal the ruling party’s adaptation to economic and political reform, but was only part of a wider process of change.
   ‘The president has set his mind completely to put reform on the rails,’ Khiyami said.
   ‘Will it take time? Political reform must go with economic, administrative and judicial reform.
   ‘Whether we are able to accomplish all this quickly is really a matter of willingness, not only by the Syrian government but Syrian society as a whole. Syrians must acknowledge that they have large steps to take to adapt themselves to the new world economy and political situation.’
   Assad, 39, who succeeded his autocratic father Hafez al- Assad in 2000, disappointed early hopes he would shake up Syria’s state-dominated economy or cede real political freedoms.
   Syrians have seen only tentative moves to liberalise the economy and temper repression, even as their country has drawn ever fiercer criticism and sanctions from a Bush administration angered by its policies towards Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.
   Assad promised a ‘great leap’ in reform when he announced plans to withdraw from Lebanon in March, but his capacity to overcome bureaucratic inertia and resistance from powerful figures who benefit from the status quo remains an enigma.
   His willingness to wrench Syria from the mould set by his father is also uncertain, given his often strident foreign policy rhetoric and his handling of Lebanon.
   A Lebanese and world outcry over the February 14 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri forced Syria to end its 29-year military presence in its neighbour. Damascus denies Lebanese opposition accusations that it was behind the ex-prime minister’s death.

More than 660,000 Africans, including many children, are still trapped in slavery, forced labour and prostitution despite increasing efforts by governments to free them, the UN labour agency said Friday.
   According to a report released in Nigeria by the International Labour Organisation—a follow-up to an global report released this week in Geneva—African slave labour is worth 159 million dollars (126 million euros) a year.
   ‘In Africa the eradication of, and even the clear understanding of, forced labour poses complex challenges in a context of poverty and tradition,’ the agency noted, in what it described as the most detailed study yet compiled.
   ‘Unpaid services can be part of traditional kinship arrangements. There are reports that west Africans of slave descent still suffer discrimination and labour exploitation at the hands of their former masters,’ it noted.
   ‘In some African countries forced labour has occurred in a context of severe political violence and inter-ethnic conflict. Problems include slavery and abductions, debt bondage, forced overtime and forced domestic labour.’
   The ILO estimates that there are 660,000 forced labourers in sub-Saharan Africa, of whom perhaps a fifth have been trafficked across borders by people smugglers, while more are known to have been taken beyond the continent.
   Of those enslaved in Africa ‘80 per cent are subject to economic exploitation, 11 per cent to state-imposed forced labour and 8 percent to commercial sexual exploitation,’ it said.
   The agency praised African governments for stepping up their measures to protect young women from being trafficked to Europe to be used in prostitution or pornography.
   It singled out the trade in young women between Nigeria and Italy, where they are threatened with violence and forced to prostitute themselves to pay back so-called debts totalling up to 50,000 euros each.
   But the ILO regreted that action had concentrated in this high-profile area when the majority of cases of abuses in Africa were of economic exploitation of agricultural and quarry workers and of domestic servants.
   In Cote d’ Ivoire, for example between 10,000 and 15,000 Malian children are though to work in cocoa plantations.
   The UN agency said more study was needed into the problem in Africa, which is less well documented than in other regions, and that it was helping government to raise awareness and campaign against exploitation.

The US president, George W Bush, is coming under increasing pressure to withdraw his nomination of outspoken conservative John Bolton for UN ambassador.
   A leading Democrat senator, Joe Biden, told the BBC the time had come for Bush to think again about his choice.
   The Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined on Thursday to back Bolton, who has been plagued by charges of bullying and arrogance.
   A key Republican senator said Bolton was the wrong man for the job.
   The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says it is highly unusual for a committee where the president’s party is in the majority to fail to support one of his nominations for office.
   If the White House does not withdraw his name, the Democrats have two options open to them.
   They could try to persuade as many Republicans as possible to oppose Bolton in the full Senate vote and thus embarrass the White House with the closeness of the result.
   Or they could try to mount a filibuster, talking the nomination out and forcing the White House to back down.
   As assistant secretary of state under George Bush senior, helped organise anti-Saddam alliance.

Russia will hit back if pro- Western Georgia imposes threatened sanctions on two Russian military bases on Georgian soil, Moscow said on Thursday as the war of words between the ex- Soviet neighbours grew shriller.
   The speaker of Georgia's parliament had said earlier the legislature will press ministers for sanctions against the bases unless by Sunday Moscow bows to Tbilisi's demands for their speedy closure.
   The sanctions include denying Georgian visas for the Russian military and restricting their movements in the country.
   'We will not respond to blackmail-but if steps are taken to create a threat to our bases-then I can assure you, we will not stand idly by,' the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russian lawmakers when asked about the sanction threat. Lavrov did not specify what measures Russia might take.
   Moscow and Tbilisi have been quarrelling for years over the bases-leftovers from Soviet rule which Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili says are akin to occupation.

Connecticut prison officials put serial killer Michael Ross to death by lethal injection on Friday in the first execution in liberal-minded New England in 45 years.
   State officials said that shortly after 2 am EST, Ross was administered a chemical cocktail at the Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut. The drugs sedated him, paralyzed his muscles, and stopped his heart.
   Ross, who admitted killing eight women in the 1980s, was pronounced dead at 2:25am EST (0625 GMT), a senior Connecticut correctional official said. Ross made no statement before his death.
   Witness Gerry Brooks, from Connecticut NBC affiliate WVIT TV, said that as Ross received the intravenous fluids ‘there was gasp and there was a shudder and he did not move again.’

Four killed in Andhra police firing
At least four opposition party political activists were killed and seven injured when the police opened fire Friday on a rampaging mob in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, police said. The incident took place in Ananthapur, 360 kilometres from the state capital Hyderabad, when members of the ruling Congress party clashed with rival Telugu Desam Party activists, police chief Swaranjit Sen told reporters. Sen said the police were forced to open fire to disperse the unruly mob. The trouble began when opposition leader P Sunitha went to file her nomination papers for a byelection due to be held there June 2, he said. The chief minister, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, told reporters he had asked the police to quickly restore law and order.

Indonesian troops kill seven rebels in Aceh
Indonesian troops have killed seven separatist rebels in the latest violence in tsunami-ravaged Aceh province, the military said Friday. The Free Aceh Movement rebels were killed in two separate clashes in Bireuen and North Aceh districts on Thursday, said a local military officer who refused to be named. A rebel spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. The Indonesian government said Thursday it planned to lift Aceh’s one-year-old state of civil emergency but would continue its anti-rebel military operations. The civil emergency, giving civil authorities the power to impose curfews and other measures, replaced martial law which was declared in Aceh in May 2003 after the collapse of peace talks between the government and the rebels. Civil emergency will come to an end on May 18.

US-Asia military exercises wrap up
One of Asia’s biggest war games, the Cobra Gold drills co-sponsored by the United States and Thailand, wrapped up on Friday after a series of exercises aimed at boosting responses to natural disasters like the December tsunami. The 12 days of exercises involved forces from the US, Thailand, Singapore and Japan, observers from other nations, and officials from the United Nations and non-governmental organisations. The exercises achieved all the goals it was intended to meet, the US embassy said in a statement. ‘It improved capabilities in helping people through relief efforts, particularly in the tsunami hit areas,’ it said.

Parcel bomb kills three in Kashmir
A Muslim man, his daughter and son were killed in a ‘gift’ bomb explosion while troops shot dead seven rebels in separate clashes in restive Indian Kashmir, the police said Friday. The explosion occurred in the house of Mohammed Sayeed, 45, late Thursday in the southern Kashmir town of Bijbehara, a police spokesman said. ‘Sayeed and his two children died on the spot while his wife was seriously injured,’ the spokesman said. The son was aged 20 while the daughter was 22. The Police said they were mystified why the family was targeted as they had no political affiliations.
— AFP

US officer blames superior over abuse
The former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq blamed a ranking officer for introducing the use of human pyramids and dog leashes in the abuse of detainees and said in an interview on Thursday that abuse may be continuing there. Colonel, Janis Karpinski, a former one-star Army Reserve general who was punished in the scandal, blamed general, Geoffrey Miller, for the methods that were used to humiliate detainees. Miller headed the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and was sent to Iraq to recommend improvements in intelligence gathering and detention operations there. ‘I believe that general, Miller, gave them the ideas, gave them the instruction on what techniques to use,’ she said in an interview on the ABC News ‘Nightline’ programme.
— Reuters

Iran agrees to talks with Europe
Iran has indicated its willingness to negotiate with European nations before deciding whether to resume its nuclear programme; The Washington Post said quoting US, European and Iranian diplomats. The overture, mentioned in private by a senior Iranian diplomat who remained anonymous, followed a letter from Britain, France and Germany warning Iran that if it broke a November 2004 agreement to freeze nuclear fuel cycle activities it would face ‘consequences’. The Iranian diplomat, according to the daily, said his government had responded positively to a European offer for a four-way meeting to discuss the issue, which it wants to be held in Tehran in deference to Iranian officials who are preparing for the June 17 presidential
elections.
— AFP

Rape, violence on rise in Darfur: UN
Rape, kidnapping and attacks on civilians increased last month in Sudan’s Darfur region despite a growing international effort to end the bloodshed, a senior UN official said Thursday. Hedi Annabi, the deputy head of UN peacekeeping operations, said African Union troops were effective in helping to stem the violence where deployed but underlined the importance of the AU’s plans to beef up the force. ‘Instability, violence and civilian suffering in this troubled region continue,’ he said in a briefing to the UN Security Council, adding that there were also attacks on aid and relief workers. He called the attacks a ‘worrying trend in light of the role played by the humanitarian community in sustaining the 2.45 million conflict-affected civilians in Darfur.’
— AFP

Somali PM seeks peace force soon
The Somali prime minister has called for the urgent deployment of African Union peacekeepers to support the relocation of the government from Kenya by June. Ali Mohammed Ghedi told the BBC he wanted the AU force to begin with the disarmament of some 60,000 militia. But the AU says it will only deploy when it is safe, and warlords in the capital do not support the force. There are fears that fighting may break out, as the rift threatens to split the new government. Somalia has been wracked by violence and anarchy for 14 years, since the overthrow of the last functioning national government. The AU said the force will protect the government wherever it is based, help safeguard humanitarian aid and train a new security force.
— AFP

Colombia minister held for murder
A former Colombian justice minister has been arrested on suspicion of planning the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in 1989. The ex-minister, Alberto Santofimio Botero, was arrested after new evidence emerged linking him to the killing, the attorney general’s office said. Galan was gunned down at an election rally near the capital, Bogota. At the time, the crime was linked to drug lord Pablo Escobar, and one of his associates was convicted for it.
— Reuters