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Hamas said Wednesday it was prepared to consider holding talks with Israel but vowed not to disarm, two months before the radical Islamist group contests its first Palestinian legislative elections.
   ‘Negotiations are not our intention, negotiation is a method,’ said Mahmud Zahar, leader of the powerful movement in its Gaza Strip stronghold, in a rare interview with Israeli radio.
   ‘If the method is able to liberate our land, to liberate our people from Israeli jails, to reconstruct what was destroyed by the long-standing Israeli occupation, at that time we can discuss,’ added Zahar, speaking in English.
   His interview comes just over two months before Hamas is to contest its first parliamentary polls, only the second ever ballot of its kind in the Palestinian territories.
   Hamas, the most powerful Islamist faction in the territories, is expected to make significant gains, undercutting the decade-long power monopoly exercised by the more moderate Fatah party of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
   Israel says it will not facilitate the crunch vote as long as Hamas—whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state—insists on running.
   But looking ahead to the post-election period, when Hamas members will probably take up seats in parliament and even join a coalition Palestinian cabinet, Zahar did not rule out talks.
   ‘It depends on the other side, because the Israelis are not intending to make negotiation ... Let us wait and see after the elections,’ the Hamas official said.
   Zahar called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem and ‘to give the Palestinians a chance to live as human beings’.
   He flatly ruled out any question of Hamas disarming, as demanded by Israel, and called the Jewish state a foreign body in the Middle East.
   Israel, which has denounced Hamas’s decision to join the political mainstream while still bearing arms, dismissed Zahar’s declarations as tactics designed only to undercut intense Israeli pressure on the movement.
   ‘There is nothing to negotiate as long as Hamas sticks to its ultimate objectives and continues to carry out attacks and fire rockets,’ senior defence ministry official Amos Gilad told public radio.
   ‘The only point to these statements is to allow Hamas to participate in the ballot. They reflect no will to compromise,’ said the adviser to Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz.
   On Sunday, the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, repeated his oft-stated position that Israel could not facilitate the parliamentary elections so long as Hamas takes part.
   ‘Israel’s position is that we cannot cooperate with elections in which Hamas, in its present state, plays a role,’ he told cabinet ministers.

A year has passed since the death of Yasser Arafat, yet the mystery surrounding his dramatic demise seems just as impenetrable, with many senior officials still holding strong to the belief their leader was poisoned.
   The 75-year-old Palestinian leader died on November 11 last year in a hospital near Paris. Airlifted to France on October 29, he soon lapsed into a coma from which he never emerged.
   Suspecting foul play at the hands of the Israelis who long uttered dark threats towards their grizzled leader, the Palestinians immediately set up a ministerial committee to probe the cause of his death.
   But despite a year-long investigation, the committee drew a blank, leaving the people and their leaders none the wiser over their veteran leader’s collapse and decline.
   The medical report published by specialists who tested Arafat in Paris listed the immediate cause of death as a massive brain haemorrhage resulting from an infection.
   But nowhere in the 558-page report does it say what caused the infection.
   Although the French report found no trace of any known poison, it has done little to dispel gnawing doubts that Arafat was the victim of foul play.
   Faruq Qaddumi, the Tunis-based Palestinian official who heads the dominant Fatah faction, is the most senior official to endorse the poisoning theory.
   ‘I can categorically confirm that Abu Ammar (Arafat) was poisoned,’ he said in July, claiming the poison was hidden in his food and medication. Qaddumi has never produced any medical evidence to support his claim.
   Other officials have been more circumspect with foreign minister and Arafat nephew Nasser al-Qidwa admitting that although no traces of known poison were discovered, he could not rule out the possibility.
   Mustafa Barghuti, a medical doctor and politician who came a distant second in the January ballot that elected Mahmud Abbas as Arafat’s successor, says it is impossible to discard the poisoning theory.
   ‘Given the lack of medical explanation for his illness, whether it be infection, bacteria or haematological disease in the bone marrow... and since these symptoms are compatible with poisoning, one can conclude there is a high probability that this was the case,’ he said.
   Barghuti, who examined the main findings of the French report, is convinced that the specialists did not run exhaustive toxicology tests and that Arafat could have been infected by a rare, unknown substance.
   ‘There are some countries, like Israel, which have access to poisons which are not known and that are powerful,’ he said, referring to an infamous attempt by the Israeli secret service to poison top Hamas official Khaled Meshaal while he was in Jordan in 1997.

The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said on Tuesday the government’s image was unmarred after his foreign minister stepped aside during an inquiry into claims he benefited from irregularities in the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq.
   ‘Our image has not been spoilt,’ Singh told a press conference in the eastern city of Patna in Bihar state.
   The foreign minister, Natwar Singh, quit the foreign minister’s job on Monday, the first political casualty of a report by former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who said many politicians profited from the $64-billion programme.
   Natwar Singh is now minister without portfolio and Manmohan Singh has taken extra charge of the foreign ministry.
   Natwar Singh was named in the report along with the ruling Congress party, which heads the federal coalition. Both have denied any wrongdoing or having anything to do with oil-for-food contracts or oil allocations made by the Saddam Hussein regime.
   Manmohan Singh earlier this week ordered two probes into the Volcker report, despite the references to the Congress and Natwar Singh being ‘unsubstantiated’, he said.
   ‘We want to go deep into this...and find out what the truth is,’ the prime minister said. ‘This is a matter of pride for our government.’

A Kashmiri militant has confessed in detention to planting one of three bombs that exploded in New Delhi and killed 62 people last month before a Hindu festival, the Indian army said Wednesday.
   ‘The army has picked up Ghulam Mohiuddin Lone of Banihal area in Doda district of Kashmir, who has confessed that he was involved in the Paharganj bomb blast in New Delhi,’ said colonel DK Badola, spokesman for the Indian army in Jammu.
   Paharganj was one of two markets that were hit by blasts on October 29, days ahead of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Another blast occurred on a bus.
   Badola said Lone had been handed over to police in Jammu, winter capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.
   A military intelligence source said Lone had said he was paid 23,000 rupees (500 dollars) by a commander of the pan-Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
   ‘He was first paid 3,000 rupees (65 dollars) before the blast, then 20,000 rupees (435 dollars) after the blast,’ said the source.
   A militant group calling itself the Islamic Revolutionary Group had claimed responsibility for the Delhi explosions.
   New Delhi police have linked it to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is among a dozen or so rebel groups battling Indian troops in Kashmir, where a Muslim separatist insurgency has been raging since 1989.
   The intelligence source said Lone arrived in Delhi on October 28 by bus, where he was told to await the arrival of two people at a local transport company the following day.
   ‘Two persons came around 5:30 pm in an autorickshaw ... They gave him one bag (weighing) 15 kilograms (33 pounds). He planted the bag in the Paharganj area near Vivek Hotel.’
   Lone told the intelligence officials that he did not recognise the men who handed him the bag but they were speaking Urdu, the source said.
   Lone was given blades and shaving material to change his identity before travelling back to Kashmir.
   ‘He’s around 22 years old, active in militancy since 2002 and he was working as a courier and overground worker,’ the intelligence source said.
   Army spokesman Badola said Lone appears to have only recently joined Lashkar.

The US president, George W Bush, said Tuesday he would seek greater Asian efforts to battle terrorism and avian flu and uphold and strengthen democracy during his trip to the region this month.
   Bush would leave next week on visits to Japan, China, South Korea and Mongolia. He would also attend a summit of 21 economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the South Korean city of Busan where efforts to open up global trade would top the agenda.
   ‘I’m really looking forward to my trip,’ said Bush, who last visited the region in 2003 when he attended the APEC summit in Bangkok with trips to Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia
   ‘So this is a chance for me to continue to talk about the war on terror, the need for all of us to work to spread freedom,’ he said in an interview with reporters from the countries he would visit.
   The United States has an anti-terrorism pact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations while APEC members Australia, South Korea and Japan are among nations with troops supporting US forces in Iraq.
   In China, Bush is expected to raise a host of trade and economic issues, including the need for currency flexibility and respect for intellectual property rights.
   The sensitive topic of human rights would also be raised with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
   ‘I will continue to remind president Hu about, for example, my personal faith and the belief that people should be allowed to worship freely,’ Bush said.
   ‘And a vibrant, whole society is one that recognises that certain freedoms are inherent and need to be part of a complete society.’
   Bush said without elaborating that Hu had ‘made some very positive statements, and interesting statements about different aspects of freedom.’
   Human rights is a major stumbling bloc to better US-China relations as Washington continues to pressure China to allow greater freedom to its people.
   On Taiwan, another contentious issue with China, Bush stressed US respect for the One China policy but at the same time highlighted US legal obligations to offer Taiwan a means of self-defence if its security is threatened.

Global media watchdog Reporters without Borders urged Thailand’s prime minister on Wednesday to increase protections for press freedom, which the group says have been eroded in the last year.
   In an open letter to the premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, the group urged his government to take six steps to improve conditions for journalists in Thailand, including withdrawing several defamation lawsuits.
   Thaksin had questioned RSF’s annual report, in which Thailand’s rank among countries which respect press freedoms fell from 59th last year to 107th this year.
   ‘There are simple measures that can be taken to improve press freedom in Thailand and it is your duty to halt this sharp decline,’ RSF’s secretary general Robert Menard said in the letter dated November 7 from Paris.
   ‘Do not lose this chance to keep your country at the forefront of the struggle for democracy in a region where press freedom already has enough problems.’

Nepal Wednesday freed 194 prisoners across the country to mark the 15th anniversary of the promulgation of the Himalayan country’s modern constitution, state-owned news agency RSS said.
   The prisons department freed the prisoners after they were pardoned their remaining jail terms, the report said.
   The constitution came into being in 1990 with the re-establishment of multi-party democracy, after 30 years of the partyless Panchayat system which collapsed following a 50-day protest movement by political activists.
   King Gyanendra, however, dismissed the elected government in February this year and seized full executive powers. He said he needed to put down a Maoist rebellion which has seen some 12,000 people killed since it was launched in 1996.
   The king’s move has been widely condemned internationally and India and Britain suspended the sale of arms needed by the Nepalese army to take on the rebels.

Laos on Wednesday denied US charges that it persecutes religious minorities and rejected a State Department report on the subject as ‘interference’ in its internal affairs.
   A Vientiane foreign ministry spokesman, however, welcomed a part of the report which noted there had been no deterioration in religious freedoms in the communist-ruled Southeast Asian country.
   ‘Although we do not agree with the interference in our internal affairs by any country, at the same time we notice that they recognise that there is no worsening of the situation,’ said the spokesman, Yong Chanthalangsy.
   The State Department’s seventh annual report on international religious freedom released Tuesday criticised several countries, also including China, Myanmar and North Korea, for suppressing the freedom of worship.
   On communist ruled but predominantly Buddhist Laos, it said ‘there was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom’.

For the first time in nearly two weeks France saw a clear fall in the number of overnight attacks Wednesday, raising cautious hopes that the worst wave of urban unrest since May 1968 might be receding.
   According to interior ministry figures, there were 617 car-burnings across the country, compared to more than 1,100 the night before.
   ‘It is a very significant drop,’ said Claude Gueant, a senior aide to the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.
   The easing-off came after the government of the president, Jacques Chirac, invoked emergency powers dating from the Algerian war to allow regional governors–or prefects–to impose curfews, conduct house searches without warrants and ban public meetings.
   The measures came into force overnight but were only put into effect in one place–the northern city of Amiens where authorities imposed a curfew for unaccompanied children under the age of 16.
   Three other towns–Orleans in the centre and the Paris suburbs of Raincy and Savigny-sur-Orge–have decreed nighttime’s curfews for minors under a different administrative procedure.
   In the southern city of Toulouse–which saw serious unrest at the start of the week–police reported only 21 torched cars and six arrests. ‘The intensity has fallen markedly,’ said a senior official.
   Police in major cities such as Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes and Rennes recorded a sharp decrease in the number of attacks, while the Paris suburbs–where the trouble erupted on October 27–were also relatively calm.
   In another hopeful sign, reinforcements for the fire service who were brought to the capital to cope with the violence have been withdrawn, according to the interior ministry. This was due to the ‘extremely clear’ fall in the number of arson attacks in the Paris region, a spokesman said.
   However Gueant said that some 300 people were detained overnight across the country, bringing to around 1,800 the number of arrests since the start of the disturbances.
   In what has been described as one of its worst crises since World War II, France has seen an explosion of violence in its poor out-of-town estates as youths mainly from the Arab and black minorities burned cars and properties and attacked police.
   The unrest has left one civilian dead and dozens of policemen injured, caused hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in economic damage, and cast a cruel light on the failures of France’s model of integration for immigrants from its former African colonies.
   In a poll Wednesday a vast majority of the French supported the tough security measures adopted by the government—despite accusations from the political left that resorting to a law from the Algerian war was a provocation.
   Some 73 per cent supported the use of curfews, while 86 per cent said they were either ‘scandalised’ or ‘unhappy’ at the riots. Only 12 per cent said they understood the protests, and just one per cent was ‘sympathetic,’ according to the CSA poll in Le Parisien newspaper.
   Meanwhile the government published a decree setting out the geographical limits for the state of emergency allowed under the 1955 law.
   Areas affected include the entire Paris region and around 30 towns and cities such as Toulouse, Marseille, Nice, Rouen, Strasbourg, Lille, Dijon and Avignon.

A secret CIA report warned in early 2004 that some post September 11 interrogation techniques approved by the agency might violate an international agreement against torture, The New York Times said Wednesday.
   The report, issued at about the time the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, lists 10 techniques authorized in early 2002, including feigned drowning, that went beyond those used by the US military on prisoners of war.
   While stopping short of labelling them as torture, the report drafted by CIA inspector general John Helgerson said the techniques appeared to violate the international Convention against Torture, according to current and former CIA officials who described the report for the daily.
   Drafted by the United Nations and ratified by the US Senate in 1994, the convention bans torture and prohibits lesser abuses deemed ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading.’
   Debate within the US administration has flared over whether humane treatment of prisoners should be defined with language taken directly from the Geneva Conventions.
   The United States has long refused to extend Geneva Convention protections to prisoners captured in the war against al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, while pledging to treat them humanely.
   Adding fuel to the torture debate is last week’s revelation by the Washington Post that since September 11, 2001 top al-Qaeda captives have been held in secret, CIA-run prisons in at least eight countries.
   The Central Intelligence Agency, which is not part of the Defence Department, operates in secrecy, and the rules under which it works are not publicly known.
   The vice president, Dick Cheney, has pressed Congress to exempt the CIA from legislation sponsored by senator John McCain that would ban ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners in the detention of the US government’.
   Helgerson’s report, according to the officials who described it to The New York Times, was sceptical of the Bush administration’s view that CIA interrogations of non-US citizens overseas were exempt from any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The murder of a second defence lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial threatens to unravel the proceedings of the US-supported court and raises questions about the legitimacy of the process, experts said.
   Lawyers for Saddam and his seven co-defendants in the trial for crimes against humanity that opened October 19 have suspended contacts with the court, issuing a 10-point list of demands.
   The Saddam defence lawyers have said they want UN protection for meetings of the defence committee and the hiring of 15 bodyguards per lawyer to ensure their protection.
   If the court cannot even protect the defence lawyers, ‘one has to question the legitimacy of the proceedings’, said Raymond Brown, a US international law expert who in 2004 served as a defence co-counsel at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
   ‘It raises the fundamental legitimacy of the process,’ Brown said. And if the defence lawyers refuse to participate, ‘that may precipitate a crisis’.
   Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for Saddam’s Jordan-based defence team, said the lawyers planned to meet in Amman on Wednesday or Thursday to ‘evaluate’ the situation.
   Foreign defence counsels, who include big names like former Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella and former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, will also be joining the meeting, he said.
   However, presiding judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin has the authority to order the defence team to court and force them to accept government or US security, said Michael Scharf, a US professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
   ‘Judge Amin has to sit down and read them the riot act,’ said Scharf, who was on an international team that helped train the Iraqi High Tribunal judges in 2004 and 2005.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday unanimously extended until the end of next year the mandate of the US-led force in Iraq, a move immediately hailed by Washington and London ahead of key Iraqi polls next month.
   The council voted 15-0 ‘to extend the mandate of the multinational force, as set forth in Resolution 1546 until December 2006.’
   The extension had been requested by the Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, in a letter sent to the council late last month.
   Top Iraqi officials have repeatedly said they want the US-led force to stay because the country’s fledgling army and police forces are too weak to maintain internal order.
   ‘The unanimous adoption of this resolution is a vivid demonstration of broad international support for a federal, democratic, pluralistic and unified Iraq,’ US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said after the vote.
   In a concession to French and Russian objections, Washington had agreed that the Security Council would review the mandate on June 15 of next year, diplomats said.
   The resolution, sponsored by the United States, Britain, Japan, Romania and Denmark, said the mandate of the force ‘shall be reviewed at the request of the government of Iraq, or no later than June 15, 2006, and declares that it will terminate this mandate earlier if requested by the government of Iraq.’
   It also decided to extend until December 31, 2006 arrangements for depositing into the Development Fund for Iraq proceeds from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas.
   It said provisions for depositing those proceeds shall be reviewed at the request of the Iraqi government, or no later than June 15, 2006.
   ‘Addressing these issues now will facilitate continued international support for Iraq’s security and will give the newly elected Iraqi government time to assume office, address constitutional questions and consolidate its authority before confronting issues such as those addressed in this resolution,’ Bolton said.
   Britain’s UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry said Tuesday’s vote ‘underlines the support of the international community again for the sort of outcome we want in Iraq.’
   ‘Terrorist efforts by the insurgency...will only delay the completion of the multinational force mandate,’ said the British diplomat, whose country is the second largest contributor to the multinational force.

A suicide bomber detonated his car Wednesday near a police patrol in Baquoba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, killing five policemen and wounding five others, officials said.
   US Air Force jets destroyed a building near the Syrian border Wednesday where al-Qaeda guerrillas hid weapons, the US military said.
   The attack occurred early in the day in the village of Bu Hardan near the cities of Qaim and Husaybah where American and Iraqi troops conducted a major operation in the past four days.
   Meanwhile, a driver for the Sudanese Embassy was shot dead Wednesday as he left the Palestinian mission in the Iraqi capital, police and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said. The shooting occurred in the Mansour area of western Baghdad, where gunmen have attacked foreign diplomats and businessmen in the past.

The Australian government should ensure that reactionary ‘rednecks’ do not exploit the arrest of 17 Muslim men on terrorism charges, a moderate Islamic leader said Wednesday.
   The president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Ameer Ali, said he planned to meet with government ministers to seek extra protection for the Muslim community.
   ‘I want the government to assure my community that they will not allow the rednecks in this country to exploit this situation and create disharmony in this society,’ Ali said.
   ‘My people are afraid that it is on occasions like this the rednecks can create havoc.’
   Ali said violence against Muslims was on the rise even before a series of pre-dawn raids in Sydney and Melbourne on Tuesday led to the arrest of 17 men who have been charged with plotting a terrorist attack or membership of a terrorist organisation.
   ‘The law enforcers (should) give some extra protection to the places of worship, the Muslim schools and areas where the Muslims are living in concentration so there will be more police patrols taking place so these elements can be kept out,’ he said.
   Ali also urged radical Islamic clerics to tone down their rhetoric.
   ‘I tell the clerics, please guard your language when you talk,’ he said. ‘This is a country that believes in pluralism, it’s a multicultural society, we live in a plural society. ‘Your religion does not preach intolerance and I ask them not to hijack the religion.’
   Prime Minister John Howard has sought to reassure Muslims that they were not being targeted after the arrests.
   Howard called on members of the Islamic community, which numbers some 300,000 out of a population of 20 million, to support the fight against terrorism.
   ‘But we also want you to understand that people who have anti-social attitudes, people who support terrorism, are your enemies as much as they are the enemies of the rest of the Australian community.’

Modern terrorism is driven by ‘perverted, fanatical Islam,’ the Australian prime minister, John Howard, said Wednesday, a day after the arrest of 17 men on terrorism charges.
   In a radio interview following Tuesday’s arrests, which police said had foiled a major attack, he insisted that terrorism was not a ‘true representation’ of Islamic faith.
   ‘Its important to use the words perverted and fanatical,’ said Howard, a staunch US ally who has sent Australian troops to US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   ‘The common thread of the contemporary terrorist threat is perverted, fanatical Islam,’ he said.
   ‘Its not being prejudiced to say that, because the utterances of people involved in terrorism all go back to their conception of a jihad and their desire to have some kind of Islamic caliphate,’ he said.
   Howard used a series of radio and television interviews on Wednesday to try to reassure the country’s Muslim minority that they were not being targeted.
   He called on members of the Islamic community, which numbers some 300,000 out of a population of 20 million, to support the fight against terrorism.
   ‘I say to my fellow Australians who are Muslims—you are part of our community, we value you, we want you to fully participate in Australian life.
   ‘But we also want you to understand that people who have anti-social attitudes, people who support terrorism, are your enemies as much as they are the enemies of the rest of the Australian community.’

The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly urged the United States on Tuesday to end its 44-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, a call US ambassador John Bolton dismissed as ‘a complete exercise in irrelevancy.’
   It was the 14th straight year that the 191-member world body approved a resolution calling for the US economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed ‘as soon as possible.’
   The vote was 182 to four, with one abstention, a higher ‘yes’ vote than last year’s vote of 179-4 with one abstention. Many delegates in the General Assembly hall burst into applause when the result was flashed on an electronic screen.
   The United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against the resolution, while Micronesia abstained. Four countries did not indicate any position at all — El Salvador, Iraq, Morocco and Nicaragua.

Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla wrapped up an eight-day tour of the United States that failed to generate much enthusiasm but seems to have established them among the US public as a couple.
   The royals flew home from San Francisco after stops in New York, Washington and New Orleans, where they hobnobbed with celebrities, dined at the White House, visited schools, and promoted the prince’s environmental causes.
   Though the official reason for the trip was to promote transatlantic ties, it was clear that the heir to the British throne was also keen to test public sentiment toward his new bride in a country still enamoured with his late ex-wife Princess Diana.
   However, a poll published on the eve of the couple’s arrival to the US set the tone as it indicated that eight out of 10 Americans simply were not interested in the visit and that one in three Americans would rather meet Prince Harry or Prince William rather than Charles and Camilla.
   And by the end of the trip it was clear by most accounts that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, had failed to entrance America as Diana did 20 years ago when she visited the country and famously danced with John Travolta at the White House.

David Davis is now much more popular amongst Conservative voters than his rival David Cameron in the race to be the new leader, according to a poll published on Wednesday.
   A Populus poll for the Times carried out last weekend found that 50 per cent of Tory voters backed shadow the home secretary, Davis, compared to 37 per cent who supported Cameron.
   The Times said the findings suggested that Davis had gained backing over his pledges for tax cuts and referendums on Europe, as well as a strong performance in a live BBC televised debate.
   However, the paper said bookies’ favourite Cameron was still ahead among the public generally and the poll only reflected the views of Tory voters rather than the specific party members who are entitled to vote for the new leader.Davis and Cameron go head to head again on Wednesday in a debate on BBC radio’s Woman’s Hour programme as both candidates seek to woo the party’s female support.
   Last week, ballot papers were sent out to the 254,000 Conservative members who can vote to decide who to back for their fifth leader in just over eight years.

China, US to resume military contacts
The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, and the US president, George W Bush, will endorse a full-scale resumption of exchanges between the two countries’ militaries during their summit in Beijing next week, a report said Wednesday. Citing unnamed sources, the South China Morning Post said the leaders will back talks between their governments and militaries to explore the possibility of sending observers to take part in each other’s military exercises. The move would be aimed at promoting military ties between the world’s two largest militaries and raise the level of trust between the two.
— AFP

Complaints delay final Afghan vote results
Afghanistan’s election authorities were unable to announce final results of September’s landmark parliamentary vote on Wednesday as expected, with claims of fraud delaying the tally for a key province. The Joint Electoral Management Body had been expected to announce final results. The September 18 poll was for the war-torn country’s first parliament for more than three decades and for 34 provincial councils. JEMB operational director Peter Erben said however that the Electoral Complaints Commission was still dealing with allegations of fraud in the southern province of Kandahar. ‘We expect it to be fully adjudicated within following days,’ he said.
— AFP

N Korea protests about locked door
North Korea issued a protest Wednesday about a locked door that it said was raising tension on the border with South Korea. US troops deliberately locked the door last month to a hut straddling the inter-Korean border at the truce village of Panmunjom where an armistice ending the 1950-53 Korean War was signed, North Korea’s official news agency said. ‘As taught by lessons in the past, the area is so acute and sensitive that even a small accidental case may cause unpredictable grave consequences,’ the agency said. The demarcation line dividing the peninsula runs through the middle of the one-room hut that serves as a conference room and has become a tourist attraction for visitors from both sides.
— AFP

Two Buddhists killed in south Thailand
Suspected Islamic militants shot dead two Buddhists on Wednesday, while a Muslim village official was seriously wounded in Thailand’s troubled south, the police said. Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Chavalit Singpimai, 41, as he drove a pickup truck with his 15-year-old son Chakri, the police said. They were collecting payments from villagers for Chavalit’s furniture business. After his father was killed, Chakri managed to take control of the car and sped to a military outpost one kilometre away. Chavalit was killed around mid-day Wednesday in Ra Ngae district of Narathiwat province, but had come from the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima province.
— AFP

Schwarzenegger’s reform measures rejected
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lost his bid to push through a broad package of government reforms in a special off-year election on Tuesday that he called in an attempt to flex his political muscles. With more than 85 per cent of the votes counted, Schwarzenegger trailed on all four of the initiatives he had championed, and four other measures also appeared to have lost. As a result, the most expensive special election in California history–at least $300 million including advertising and administering the poll–appeared to have failed to change public policy and left the Republican governor wounded a year ahead of his re-election bid.
— Reuters

Ahmadinejad withdraws oil ministry nominee
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was Wednesday forced to withdraw his choice for oil minister after failing to win parliamentary support ahead of a confidence vote. It is the second time that Ahmadinejad has been dealt a political blow by parliament over his cabinet nominations since he took office in August. The parliament refused to give their vote of confidence on August 24 to Ahmadinejad’s first candidate for oil minister, Ali Saidloo, along with candidates for the ministries of education, welfare and cooperatives. The hardline president’s second choice for the crucial oil portfolio, Seyed Sadegh Mahsooli, had also been heavily criticised for lacking any experience in a sector that accounts for 80 per cent of the Islamic republic’s revenues.
— Reuters

Bloomberg re-elected New York mayor
Republican New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was re-elected to a second term by a large margin on Tuesday after what is believed to be the most costly race in the city’s history. With some 95 per cent of the votes counted, Bloomberg had 58 per cent and Democratic challenger Fernando Ferrer trailed with 39 per cent, according to unofficial election results. Polls have shown New Yorkers giving Bloomberg, a political novice when he first ran four years ago, high marks for leading the city in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, steering the economy and keeping New York alert to security threats. ‘Still in shock, still in mourning, we really did four years ago worry about our future. Some wondered whether we’d even have one,’ Bloomberg said in his victory speech in a Manhattan hotel.
— BBC

US justice deptt mulls probe into CIA leak
At the CIA’s request, the Justice Department is weighing whether to open a criminal investigation into the leak of possibly classified information on secret prisons to The Washington Post. A story the newspaper published on November 2 touched on a number of sensitive national security issues, including the existence of secret CIA detention centres for suspected terrorists in Eastern European democracies. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue deals with classified information, said the CIA’s general counsel made the referral to the Justice Department shortly after the story appeared last week.
— AP

Thousands flee Darfur amid renewed violence
Thousands of black villagers in Sudan’s western Darfur region are fleeing for the safety of refugee camps amid fresh violence between anti-government rebels and nomadic Arab militias. The latest movement of people into the camps was sparked by members of the splintered Sudan Liberation Army who attacked militias known as Janjaweed that the rebels say are backed by the Arab-led government based in northern Sudan.
— Reuters