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Well aware that any shake-up at the top of the Israeli government will impact on the Middle East conflict, Palestinian leaders are closely watching the political earthquake in Jerusalem.
   While the Palestinian Authority remains officially guarded over its preferred outcome of a springtime general election, its Ramallah headquarters is clear that they want a man capable of securing the ever elusive peace.
   ‘The only thing that matters to us is to have a government in Israel interested in the peace process and capable of signing a settlement with us,’ the prime minister, Ahmed Qorei, said opening a new library in Jericho.
   Likening Ariel Sharon’s resignation from the right-wing Likud to form a new liberal party to an ‘earthquake’, Qorei said the latest developments had ignited ‘big hopes’ among Palestinians.
   ‘It is important for us to see a government in Israel reflecting the Israeli people’s desire for peace,’ he said.
   Israeli opinion polls were predicting Tuesday that Sharon will be re-elected premier at the head of his new party when the country goes to polls in March.
   Overturning three decades of party politics, Sharon on Monday reiterated his commitment to the roadmap which targets the creation of an independent Palestinian state but which has stalled since its launch in 2003.
   Palestinians have lambasted the former general for doing everything possible to sink the internationally drafted peace plan and for trying to strengthen Israel’s hold over the more populous and Biblically important West Bank.
   ‘I don’t see Sharon’s new party as a centrist party. It’s a party that represents a unilateral approach,’ said independent MP Hanan Ashrawi.
   ‘He wants to annex most of the West Bank and impose a unilateral solution on the Palestinians,’ she added.
   Despite Sharon’s historic pullout from the Gaza Strip in September, Palestinian minister without portfolio Ahmed Majdalani makes no secret of his preference for Moroccan-born Labour leader Amir Peretz.
   Considered a ‘dove’ in the Middle East conflict, Peretz has supported the Peace Now movement that opposes Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, construction that Sharon once spearheaded as housing minister in the 1990s.
   Majdalani believes that the results of Palestinian legislative elections slated for January—a likely showdown between the moderate Fatah party and radical Islamist movement Hamas—will influence a March vote in Israel.
   A Fatah win ‘will strengthen the peace camp in Israel, particularly with the presence of a new political leader at the head of the

Ariel Sharon is on course to win Israel’s coming election, opinion polls showed on Tuesday in an initial boost for the prime minister a day after he quit his rebellious right-wing Likud to form a centrist party.
   With an early election likely in February or March, the surveys gave Sharon 30-33 seats in the 120-member parliament, enough to make his still-unnamed party the biggest faction in a governing coalition and virtually ensure him a third term.
   Sharon, in a move that could reshape Israeli politics for years to come, bolted the party he co-founded three decades ago, saying he could not push for peace with the Palestinians while ‘wasting time’ battling far-right rivals in the Likud.
   However, he gave no ground in his bedrock demand, part of a US-backed peace ‘road map’ whose terms both sides have failed to fulfil, that the Palestinian Authority disarm militants before talks on statehood can resume after five years of bloodshed.
   ‘We will work to set the permanent border of the nation while insisting on the dismantling of terrorist groups,’ Sharon said.
   Appearing to be in high spirits, the 77-year-old ex-general popularly known as ‘the Bulldozer’ ruled out further unilateral Israeli withdrawals from occupied land following a Gaza pullout completed in September that split the Likud.
   
   Three candidates vie for Likud leadership
   Three heavyweight candidates are to compete to succeed the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, as leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud party in order to contest a looming general election.
   Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and the foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, have or will declare their intention to stand in a party leadership race.
   Shalom, who like Netanyahu stands to the right of the three-decade-old party now in crisis, is set formally to announce his candidature at a Tel Aviv news conference later on Tuesday.
   
   EU launches Gaza border mission
   The European Union gave the green light Monday for a monitoring mission to the Gaza Strip to help the Palestinians run a key border crossing into Egypt.
   ‘We’ve agreed to set up a monitoring mission that is going to be launched on Thursday,’ said the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
   The mission will be led by Italian Carabinieri police general Pietro Pistolese, who arrived in the region on Monday, and will eventually comprise 40 observers plus communications, logistics and headquarters staff.
   It will provide expert advice to Palestinian police and customs officers at the Rafah crossing terminal, under an agreement secured between Israel and the Palestinians last week to open the Gaza Strip’s borders.
   ‘This is of fundamental importance in ensuring that Gaza does not in the future stay as a prison, (that) it opens up economic and social relations,’ Straw said.
   The move follows Sharon’s decision overnight to call early elections, which EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said would not affect the mission, despite its impact on Israeli politics.

India and China must avoid mutual paranoia and ending up in ‘opposing camps’ if Asia is to take its place in the world, Singapore’s former premier Lee Kuan Kew was Tuesday quoted as saying.
   ‘Whether Asia will take its place in the world...depends on how both India and China work together as they rise and actively set out to avoid ending up in opposing camps,’ Singapore’s founding father said in a lecture Monday.
   Lee’s statements reported by The Hindu newspaper echo warnings from Indian opposition political leaders and analysts that New Delhi should not be drawn too closely into the US orbit and must balance that relationship through ties with China.
   India’s links with the United States have been warming rapidly amid increasing economic and military ties after the two countries were on opposite sides of the fence during the Cold War.
   ‘They (India and China) must not be paranoid and suspicious of each other in a game of one-upmanship,’ Lee told an audience that included the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the ruling Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi.
   ‘Instead they can cooperate and compete economically, and each improve its performance by using the other’s progress as benchmarks for what they should do better,’ said Lee, credited with transforming Singapore into a prosperous high-tech centre.

Sri Lanka’s new government will maintain a state of emergency and the national parliament will be asked to ratify the tough laws, officials said.
   The president, Mahinda Rajapakse, who was sworn in Saturday after his victory at Thursday’s election, was due to prorogue parliament later Monday and summon the assembly on Friday, officials said.
   ‘After parliament holds its ceremonial sitting with an address by the new president, the assembly will meet again that afternoon to ratify the state of emergency,’ the official said.
   The current emergency laws were declared by former president Chandrika Kumaratunga on August 13, a day after foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was assassinated by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels.
   Emergency laws give sweeping powers to police and security forces to arrest and detain suspects for lengthy periods without warrants.
   Meanwhile, new president delayed swearing in his cabinet Tuesday because of heavy rain, a government spokesman said, although political sources blamed it on wrangling for top jobs.
   Rajapakse is constitutionally required to hold the defence portfolio and by convention the finance ministry too. However, he is expected to appoint two juniors for defence and finance for the day-to-day running of the ministries.
   ‘Because of the rains today we were forced to put off the ceremony,’ a spokesman for Rajapakse said.
   The ceremony for inducting the new cabinet was scheduled for Wednesday morning after it had been aborted three times.
   A senior government politician, who declined to be named, said Rajapakse faced pressure from coalition allies over cabinet posts.
   ‘The original plan was to limit the number of ministers to 25, but given pressures from coalition partners we may have to increase it to about 30,’ the politician said. ‘But we are trying to stick to the original number.’
   ‘The president has also put his foot down and rejected some demands by key political figures, but he is facing a lot of problems to accommodate all interests within the coalition.’

New evidence has emerged to suggest that Dr AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, was in the pay and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States since 1975.
   According to a report appeared in The Tribune newspaper, former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, in an interview with VPRO Argos Radio, revealed that Dr Khan was first arrested in 1975 for espionage and again in 1988 for entering Netherlands illegally. Lubbers said that on both occasions, he was set free after the CIA intervened.
   The paper further goes on to quote Dr Lubbers as saying that in 1992, Dr Khan wanted to visit Holland to see his ailing father-in-law (his wife is a Dutch). The case for visa was sponsored by no less a person than the then head of the Dutch secret service, BVD, Arthur Dokters Van Leeuwen.
   Dr Lubbers also confirmed that a BVD person received Dr Khan on his arrival at Schipol Airport. The BVD was presumably acting under instructions from American intelligence agencies.
   ‘If you were to study the archives, you would find that the American intelligence agencies - I am absolutely certain of it - kept a record of how closely they watched the man and what he was up to.’
   When the interviewer pointed out that Khan was allowed to continue his activities in spite of the information about his clandestine activities, Dr Lubbers replied, ‘Yes, but that is the shortcoming of the management.’
   He, however, said that the Dutch secret service was very prompt in informing the CIA about Dr Khan’s nuclear proliferation activities, but was clearly told to let him be.

A Japanese panel that wants to let a woman sit on the throne will still favour a boy if Crown Princess Masako bears a male child, a newspaper said Tuesday.
   The panel has already decided to propose letting the first-born child of the emperor—regardless of gender—ascend the throne of the world’s oldest royal line, to which no boys have been born since 1965.
   But the panel would leave to the government to decide whether to let three-year-old Princess Aiko—the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Masako—sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne if she has a younger brother, the Asahi Shimbun said.
   ‘This is out of consideration for the desire for a male birth that still exists in certain corners,’ the Asahi said in its evening edition.
   The panel would say that the first-child rule should be applied after Aiko’s generation, according to the report.
   The 10-member panel of scholars and opinion leaders is due to present its final report Thursday to the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi.
   The recommendation on Aiko could put further pressure on 41-year-old Masako, a former career diplomat who makes few public appearances due to stress.
   Opinion polls show wide public support for letting Aiko assume the throne in her time amid sympathy for the crown princess.
   But the idea of a female monarch is resisted by some traditionalists.
   Prince Tomohito, a cousin of Emperor Akihito, has proposed the resumption of the practice of keeping concubines to produce a male heir.
   And a senior lawmaker on Sunday said that allowing a woman on the throne would ruin the family’s genetic ‘treasure.’

China wants an Asian to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary-general when his term runs out next year, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
   Declared candidates to date include the Thai deputy prime minister, Surakiart Sathirathai, currently visiting Beijing, and Sri Lankan peace negotiator Jayantha Dhanapala.
   ‘Asian people haven’t taken the important post for 34 years and Asia is the most populous continent,’ foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference, referring to U Thant of Burma, now Myanmar, who served from 1961 until 1971.
   Those who have expressed interest in the job also include the South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-Moon, and East Timor senior minister for foreign affairs Jose Ramos-Horta.

Malaysia’s former prime minister told Thai leaders he did not support total autonomy for troubled southern Thailand during talks focused on the growing insurgency there, Thai officials said Tuesday.
   Mahathir Mohamad last year urged Thailand to consider giving autonomy to the south in a bid to reduce the violence that has killed at least 1,035 people since January 2004.
   But the suggestion angered Thai officials who have rejected any sort of self-rule in the Muslim-majority provinces bordering Malaysia.
   ‘I have discussed with Mahathir his remarks on autonomy, which he said does not mean total independence, but still being governed by the central government,’ said Anand Panyarachun, former Thai prime minister and Chairman of National Reconciliation Commission, formed to find solutions to the problems in the south.
   ‘I have told him that the Thai people are not happy with this,’ he said Tuesday after private talks with Mahathir.

India’s Supreme Court has ruled that moonlight viewing of the country’s white marble monument to love, the Taj Mahal, would continue beyond the designated date of November 25, a report said.
   ‘We extend the moonlight viewing of Taj Mahal till further order,’ said the ruling by judges Ruma Pal, SB Sinha and SH Kapadia, the Press Trust of India news agency reported on Monday.
   The 17th century marble monument was first opened for night viewing for three months last November after a gap of 20 years when a ban on moonlight viewing was lifted.
   Up to 400 tourists, in batches of 50, were let in on full moon nights and on the evening before and after from 8:30pm to half-past midnight.
   The night viewing ban was imposed after the 1984 Indian army assault to flush out militants from the Golden Temple, Sikhdom’s holiest shrine, at Amritsar in northern India.
   The government said it feared the attack could trigger a retaliatory strike on the Taj by Sikh separatists.

North Korea’s foreign ministry has threatened to multiply its deterrent force a thousand times in an angry response to a UN vote expressing serious concern about Pyongyang’s human rights record.
   The ministry dismissed
   the UN General Assembly vote as an ‘absurd attempt’ by Washington to topple the Stalinist regime.
   The UN resolution adopted Thursday expressed concern about reports on torture, public executions, and the imposition of the death penalty for political reasons and the extensive use of forced labour in communist North Korea.
   ‘If one is to protect human rights one should have state power among other things and powerful deterrent to defend its state power,’ said the ministry statement carried late Monday by the official Korean Central News Agency.
   North Korea uses the term deterrent to refer to nuclear weapons it says it has developed.

Middle East leaders want Syria to cooperate with a UN inquiry into the killing of a former Lebanese leader but fear a UN confrontation with Damascus could lead to ‘another Iraq,’ secretary-general Kofi Annan said on Monday.
   During a recent tour of the region, every capital Annan visited wanted to see Syria convinced to cooperate through diplomatic means rather than via a change in regime or military action as occurred in neighbouring Iraq, Annan told reporters.
   The region’s leaders ‘are all concerned and anxious to see Syria cooperate and to see the issue settled diplomatically and not lead to a situation that destabilises possibly Syria and Lebanon,’ he said. ‘They are worried if we are leading to another Iraq situation.’
   Annan said he assured them the UN Security Council wanted only ‘to get to the truth and ensure that the culprits are brought to justice.’
   The 15-nation council ordered the UN inquiry into the February 14 murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in a Beirut truck bombing, and also demanded that Syria cooperate.
   Top US leaders have repeatedly warned Syria in recent weeks to fully cooperate with the investigation.
   Some US officials have also hinted that Annan was stepping on investigators’ toes by pressing for a compromise after Detlev Mehlis, who heads the UN inquiry, insisted on questioning six top Syrian officials in Lebanon—where he has the power to detain suspects—and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad refused.
   But Annan defended calls he made last week to Assad in search of agreement on a site where Mehlis could question the officials.
   Mehlis ultimately rejected the compromise proposed by Assad and Annan—that he use UN offices in the Golan Heights.
   Meanwhile, Mehlis returned to Lebanon on Tuesday, preparing to wrap up his inquiry into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.
   German prosecutor Mehlis has until December 15 to report back to the UN Security Council on his findings into the assassination of Hariri by truck bomb in Beirut in February.
   He has yet to get the full cooperation of Syria despite a Security Council resolution last month threatening further action against Damascus if it does not do so.
   Mehlis held talks with a Syrian official in Spain last week but could not agree on a venue to question six top Syrian officers over the murder. Diplomats say Mehlis might go back to the Security Council before December 15 if Syria does not cooperate.
   Mehlis has insisted on questioning the six Syrians in Lebanon—where he has the power to detain suspects—but Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has refused.
   Discussions on a venue in a third country are continuing.
   The six military and intelligence officials include Assad’s brother-in-law and head of Syrian military intelligence, major general Assef Shawkat.
   In an interim report last month, Mehlis implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese officials in the murder. Syria denies any role.
   Four pro-Syrian generals are currently under arrest in Beirut on charges of planning the murder. Investigators earlier this month questioned Lebanese President Emile Lahoud for six hours.

The US president, George W Bush, planned to bomb pan-Arab television broadcaster al-Jazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror said, citing a Downing Street memo marked ‘Top Secret’.
   The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily which is against the war in Iraq.
   The transcript of the pair’s talks during Blair’s April 16, 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel’s headquarters.
   Blair allegedly feared such a strike, in the business district of Doha, the capital of Qatar, a key western ally in the Persian Gulf, would spark revenge attacks.
   The Mirror quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush’s threat was ‘humorous, not serious’.
   Al-Jazeera’s perspectives on the war in Iraq have drawn criticism from Washington since the US-led March 2003 invasion.
   The station has broadcast messages from al-Qaeda terror network chief Osama bin Laden and the beheadings of Western hostages by insurgents in Iraq, as well as footage of dead coalition servicemen and Iraqi civilians killed in fighting.
   A source told the Mirror: ‘The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.
   ‘He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.
   ‘There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do—and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.’
   Another source said: ‘Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men.’
   A spokesman for Blair’s Downing Street office said: ‘We have got nothing to say about this story. We don’t comment on leaked documents.’
   The Mirror said the memo turned up in the office of then British lawmaker Tony Clarke, a member of Blair’s Labour Party, in May 2004.
   Civil servant David Keogh, 49, is accused under the Official Secrets Act of handing it to Clarke’s former researcher Leo O’Connor, 42. Both are bailed to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London next week.
   Clarke returned the memo to Downing Street. He said O’Connor had behaved ‘perfectly correctly’.
   He told Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency that O’Connor had done ‘exactly the right thing’ in bringing it to his attention.

The United States and Europe are to delay a possible move this week to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its disputed nuclear programme, diplomats said.
   Instead, Russia—which opposes a referral, something which could pave the way for sanctions—will be given more time to broker a compromise deal.
   Moves to call on the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to bring Iran before the Security Council ‘will not happen at this week’s meeting’ of the IAEA in Vienna, a Western diplomat told AFP.
   The European Union negotiating trio of Britain, France and Germany, the so-called EU-3, as well as Russia, ‘are committed to allowing their diplomacy more time to succeed’ and want to defer any decision on putting the issue before the Security Council, the diplomat added.
   Instead, the EU-3, Russia and the United States will ‘maintain pressure’ on Iran to comply with previous requests by the IAEA, he said.
   Another diplomat added: ‘Everyone wants to give the Russian proposal a chance to fly. It’s still in the air.’
   Washington and the EU fear that Iran is using a civilian nuclear power programme to hide covert development of atomic weapons, something Tehran has denied.
   The IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors meets in Vienna on Thursday and will review progress since it called on Iran in September to cease all nuclear fuel work, cooperate with an IAEA investigation and return to talks with the EU.
   The board has already found Iran in contravention of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a ruling that opens the way to bringing the matter to the Security Council for possible enforcement measures.
   But Russia, which is building Iran’s first nuclear reactor, and China, which also has strong economic ties with Tehran, support the Islamic Republic’s right to civilian nuclear technology. Both oppose a Security Council referral.
   Iran has continued with uranium conversion and has insisted on its right to such nuclear fuel work, although Moscow is offering a compromise under which it would enrich uranium for Iran in Russia. Iran has currently suspended uranium enrichment.
   Conversion makes the gas that is processed in centrifuges into enriched uranium, which can be used both as fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or the raw material for atom bombs.
   Earlier Monday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov backed a possible future referral to the Security Council but argued that this was not yet required.
   ‘We do not exclude that the Iran question could be referred to the UN Security Council if a real threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction appears, primarily of nuclear weapons,’ Russian news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying on a visit to Brussels.

US media organisations are now skewering President George W. Bush over his case for ousting Saddam Hussein, but few questioned the pro-war juggernaut in the run-up to battle.
   Now, with the White House’s once feared public relations machine misfiring, Bush’s approval ratings plumbing their lowest depths, and US troops still dying in foreign fields, many commentators and journalists are piling on.
   As the White House and suddenly bold Democratic rivals trade bilious charges over Iraq, a new book by award-winning journalist Kristina Borjesson demands an accounting from the media on its own pre-war errors.
   In ‘Feet to the Fire, the media after 9/11’, 21 reporters reflect on the Bush administration’s case for the preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the grounds Saddam could offer weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
   ‘The bottom line is that in this era of twenty-four hour cable news, there is less hard news and real information than ever on television about what is going on in this nation’s arena of power and around the world,’ Borjesson writes.
   ‘There is propaganda and fake news masquerading as real news courtesy of the US government,’ she wrote of a media establishment in which many luminaries seemed as keen to wage war as anyone in the White House.
   ‘Feet to the Fire’ features a roll-call of Washington reporters and war correspondents, including veterans Peter Arnett, Walter Pincus, and ABC News correspondent Ted Koppel.
   It prompts questions over whether the US media was duped by the White House, was negligent or complicit in the rush to war, and whether senior reporters were too close to government sources.
   ‘With few exceptions, both print and television provided very poor coverage,’ said independent intelligence expert and reporter James Bamford, in the book, exempting the Washington Post’s Pincus and the Knight Ridder operation which feeds regional US papers.
   ‘The problem was, these people were fighting an entrenched mind-set that was accepting the Bush administration’s rationales for going to war, when they should have been doubting.’

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that an immediate US withdrawal from Iraq would be ‘a big mistake.’
   The New York Democrat said she respects Rep Jack Murtha, D-Pa., the Vietnam veteran and hawkish ex-Marine who last week called for an immediate troop pullout. But she added: ‘I think that would cause more problems for us in America.’
   ‘It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us,’ she said.
   At the same time, Clinton said the Bush administration’s pledge to stay in Iraq ‘until the job is done’ amounts to giving the Iraqis ‘an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves.’
   Clinton, who is running for re-election to the Senate and is seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2008, suggested that the United States wait for Iraq’s December 15 elections for an indication about how soon the Iraqis can take over.
   ‘Until they vote for a government, I don’t know that we will have adequate information about how prepared they are,’ she said.
   She blamed the problems facing the United States in Iraq on ‘poor decision-making by the administration,’ but added: ‘My view is we have to work together to fix these problems.’
   White House spokesman Ken Lisaius responded Monday: ‘Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war ... but members of Congress saw the same intelligence and reached the same conclusions about going into Iraq.’

A Nigerian state governor who skipped bail in Britain to dodge a money-laundering charge escaped the country disguised as a woman, the head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency told reporters Monday.
   Nuhu Ribadu, the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said Bayelsa State’s Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha used fake travel documents and female clothing to leave London and fly back to Nigeria, where he enjoys immunity from prosecution.
   ‘We know he dressed as a woman. We know that he forged documents to gain entrance and pass through all the security checks both at the UK side and also at the Nigerian side undetected,’ he told a press conference in Abuja.
   The EFCC has been working with British police to prove charges that Alamieyeseigha hid a total of 1.8 million pounds (3.2 million dollars, 2.7 million euros) in embezzled Bayelsa government funds at his London home and in two British bank accounts.
   State governors cannot be charged with crimes in Nigeria, however, and now that the suspect has apparently escaped trial in Britain it is not clear what will become of the investigation.
   ‘What happened this morning is a very sad development. It is not something that we are proud of, but unfortunately it is a Nigerian that is involved, and a powerful Nigerian,’ Ribadu said.
   ‘The changed Nigeria will not be a safe haven for fugitives. Even though we may have handicaps, we may have hurdles in bringing a certain group of people to justice in this country, but it is temporary,’ he warned.

EU states will write a joint letter to the United States seeking clarification after allegations that Washington ran illegal prisons in Europe as part of its ‘war on terror,’ an official said on Tuesday.
   Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the 25-member EU, said it had been asked to draft the letter at a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels on Monday.
   ‘Several foreign ministers requested that the presidency write a letter and we agreed to do so,’ a spokesman for the British presidency said.
   The Washington Post newspaper reported this month that the CIA had been interrogating suspected al-Qaeda captives at a secret facility in eastern Europe that was part of a covert global prison system with sites in eight countries.

A Dutch businessman sold chemicals to Iraq knowing Saddam Hussein would use them to carry out poison gas attacks that killed thousands of people, prosecutors told the start of his trial on Monday.
   Frans van Anraat, 63, is charged with complicity in war crimes and genocide for supplying agents for poison gas used by Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran and against its own Kurdish population, including a 1988 attack on the town of Halabja.
   ‘He is being accused of delivering raw materials necessary to build Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons. The use of those weapons by the regime in Baghdad led to the death of thousands in Iraq and Iran,’ prosecutor Fred Teeven told the court.

Howard, Aziz hold talks on quake aid
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, met his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz for talks on the aftermath of last month’s devastating South Asian earthquake. Howard Tuesday indicated that Australia may add to the 10.4 million dollars it has already donated towards victims of the October 8 disaster, which left more than 74,000 people dead and three million homeless. ‘Australia has already contributed significantly to the relief and rescue efforts. Tomorrow when I visit those areas I will have something further to say on that issue,’ Howard told reporters in the capital Islamabad. The Australian people conveyed their condolences on the ‘terrible humanitarian consequences of the earthquake,’ said Howard.

New human bird flu case in Vietnam
A 15-year-old boy in Vietnam’s northern port city of Haiphong has tested positive for the H5 bird flu virus, a local doctor said Tuesday citing initial tests, but authorities in Hanoi denied the information. ‘Initial tests show that the boy is positive to the H5 virus. He is in stable condition,’ said Le Thi Song Huong, deputy director of Haiphong’s preventive health care department. However, a senior official of Hanoi’s Institute of Epidemiology, where the tests were done, denied the patient had tested positive.

Quake shakes southern Japan
An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale shook southern Japan Tuesday in the latest major quake to hit the archipelago, but there were no reports of damage, officials said. The quake rocked wide areas of the main southern island of Kyushu at 12:36am (1536 GMT Monday), the meteorological agency said. It was focused off Tanegashima island, 1,000 kilometres southwest of Tokyo. ‘We have no reports of damage or injuries,’ a Kyushu police spokesman said. The tremor did not cause tsunami waves. An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale shook northern Japan a week ago, forcing hundreds of residents to flee their homes as small tsunami waves hit the Pacific coast.

Fresh attack kills 3 Philippine soldiers
Communist guerrillas killed three soldiers and wounded nine others in the latest of a series of attacks in the Philippines, a military statement said Tuesday. Guerrillas from the New People’s Army also bombed a cellular telephone communications tower near the town of Lucban south of Manila. NPA rebels attacked an army patrol in Tiaong town, east of the capital, killing three soldiers and wounding nine before fleeing in different directions on Monday, the military said in a statement. Bloodstained clothes of the rebels were found at the area indicating that wounded guerrillas may have changed their clothes to blend in with the local populace, the military added.
— AFP

Kenyans set to reject referendum
A landmark referendum in Kenya on a draft constitution looked set to fail after a vitriolic campaign that deeply split the east African country’s government, according to television projections. Kenya’s independent Nation Television and KTN networks said early partial returns compiled by their staff at bellwether polling stations gave the ‘no’ camp a widening lead in the bitterly contested plebiscite. With some 380,000 ballots counted, Nation Television said opponents of the draft held a 63 per cent to 37 per cent lead over supporters of the new charter, backed by President Mwai Kibaki. Earlier numbers given by both networks had ‘no’ votes outpacing ‘yes’ votes by only a 10-percent margin.
— AFP

Pinochet arrest imminent
Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet faces arrest at any time in connection with the disappearance decades ago of scores of left wing activists who opposed his hardline regime, court officials said Monday. His imminent arrest is tied to Operation Colombo, in which 119 members of the militant Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR) disappeared in 1975 while in custody, only to turn up dead later in Argentina and Brazil, the sources said. Pinochet, who turns 90 later this month, ran Chile with an iron fist from 1973-1990, but claims no knowledge of Operation Colombo.
— AFP

Ex-DeLay aide
pleads guilty
An ex-aide to former House majority leader Tom DeLay and partner to a powerful Republican lobbyist pleaded guilty to conspiracy on Monday under a deal in which he is cooperating with prosecutors probing alleged influence-buying involving the lobbyist and lawmakers. Michael Scanlon, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in defrauding Indian tribes of millions of dollars and lavishing gifts upon a member of the US Congress. He was ordered to pay $19.7 million in restitution to the tribes, could serve up to five years in prison and be fined $250,000 and must cooperate with prosecutors. Scanlon left Delay’s office and become a partner to wealthy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been indicted for fraud in a separate case in Florida.
— Reuters

New Jersey city again ranked most dangerous
Camden, New Jersey, was the most dangerous city in the United States for the second consecutive year, according to an annual survey released on Monday. The survey ranked the rates of serious crimes including murders, rapes and robberies in 369 US cities, based on 2004 statistics reported by the FBI last month. Camden, a city of 80,000 people near Philadelphia, was listed as the most dangerous, followed by Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; and Flint, Michigan, according to a survey by Morgan Quitno Press, a research and publishing company based in Kansas. Camden’s murder rate was more than 10 times the national average and its robbery rate was seven times the national average, the study said.
— Reuters

Italian police arrest 42 in Mafia swoop
Italian police said Tuesday that they had arrested 42 people, including local officials and businessmen, in a huge anti-Mafia swoop targeting the Cammarata family in central Sicily. Vincenzo Giannone, head of Riesi municipal council and a member of the Christian-Democratic UDC party that is part of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition, was one of those arrested, police said. In the operation, code-named Odessa, about 300 officers supported by two helicopters swooped on the central Sicilian province of Caltanissetta while police made further arrests in other parts of Italy.
— AFP