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Weekend by-elections failed to fill all the seats in Thailand’s parliament, officials said Monday, raising new questions about how to end the crisis that forced the prime minister to step aside.
   Outgoing prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s party won 17 seats in Sunday’s voting, while tiny fringe parties took nine, the Election Commission announced.
   But 14 seats remain empty, mostly in districts where Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party failed to meet a 20 per cent minimum vote requirement in unchallenged races.
   That poses a new political headache for TRT, because Thai law requires all 500 seats to be filled before parliament can convene.
   Anti-Thaksin protesters who drove the prime minister from office earlier this month have already vowed to act if parliament opens with seats unfilled.
   The Election Commission was meeting Monday to decide whether new by-elections for the 14 empty seats could be held this week, spokesman Ekachai Warunprapa said.
   ‘If another by-election is held, probably on Saturday, it is likely that we can fill the empty seats,’ Ekachai said.
   Another option would be for parliament to convene with the 14 seats still empty, and for the lawmakers to vote on whether to organise new by-elections, he added.
   Thaksin’s TRT party was also meeting Monday to consider asking the Constitutional Court to change that requirement.
   Political analyst Sukhum Chalueysab said that TRT could argue to the court that opening parliament and preventing a legislative deadlock was in the best interests of the nation.
   ‘Now the chances are good that the parliament will convene on May 1 with some empty seats,’ he said.
   But that will do little resolve the crisis of confidence created after the opposition boycotted April 2 snap polls, he said.
   The main opposition parties have refused to contest a single seat for parliament. A handful of fringe parties have collectively won only 10 of the chamber’s 500 seats.
   ‘Even if parliament can convene, the crisis is unlikely to end because there is doubt about how the parliamentary process can function properly without opposition,’ Sukhum said.
   Senate elections held April 19 did little to improve the situation. Although senators are barred from joining political parties, about half of the winners have links to Thaksin’s TRT, according to experts and media reports.
   All sides agree that the new parliament should focus on constitutional reform to weaken the powers of prime minister, and then hold new elections in about one year.
   But Thaksin’s rivals are unlikely to agree with reforms created through a TRT-dominated parliament.
   The People’s Alliance for Democracy, which spearheaded months of protests against Thaksin, has already threatened to return to the streets if it is not satisfied with the new parliament.

Four people were shot dead in fresh Sri Lankan violence on Monday, while the killing of six Sinhalese farmers by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels the previous day raised fears of more ethnic riots.
   Some 100 people have died in just over two weeks after a series of suspected Tamil Tiger ambushes on the military were followed by attacks on Tamil civilians.
   Both sides say they are still working towards talks that were scheduled for last week in Switzerland, but are now indefinitely postponed. But diplomats say the peace process seems deadlocked and some fear a return to the island’s two-decade civil war.
   In eastern Sri Lanka, troops shot dead two suspected rebels setting up a fragmentation mine ambush, the army said. One soldier was wounded.
   An explosion in the northern town of Jaffna hurt no one, but two Home Guard troopers were later shot dead in Vavuniya, another own in Sri Lanka’s north.
   An army spokesman said troops had increased their presence around the village where six farmers were shot dead late on Sunday, in the northeastern district of Trincomalee. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, whose campaign for a Tamil homeland has killed more than 64,000 people on both sides, accuse the almost exclusively Sinhalese army of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the island’s northeast, as well as increasingly frequent murders of Tamil civilians.
   There is no doubt deaths are occurring, but analysts say it is the Tigers who are deliberately provoking confrontation to pressure the government in the knowledge that deeper ethnic divisions will drive more Tamils to their side.

Eight people, including four police, were injured after a grenade was hurled at a crowded polling booth during by-elections in revolt-hit Indian Kashmir, witnesses said.
   Three voters and an election official were injured in the blast at Palhalan, the witnesses said, adding that the policemen were injured afterwards by an angry crowd who blamed them for the grenade attack.
   ‘These people (policemen) and the activists of the People’s Democratic Party came in a vehicle and hurled a grenade to scare away voters,’ said local resident Nazir Ahmed on Sunday.
   Ahmed said the attack came because voters in the northern Kashmir locality favoured the opposition National Conference Party. A senior policeman on the scene however denied security forces were involved in the attack.
   ‘How can you expect a policeman hurling a grenade at voters? We are investigating,’ policeman Mohan Lal said.
   Voting for the four state assembly seats began Monday amid tight security at 364 booths after overnight attacks on three polling stations, said state election official Mohammed Aslam. The polling is set to end at 5:00pm (1130 GMT).
   Only 20 voting stations have been declared normal, while the rest have been marked as ‘sensitive and hyper-sensitive’ to violence, he said.
   Suspected rebels late Sunday hurled grenades at three voting stations in two constituencies in Patan and Sangrama, injuring a paramilitary trooper, a police spokesman said.
   Three politicians have already been killed by suspected Islamic rebels during campaigning and several candidates have escaped assassination attempts.
   Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is one of 17 candidates running for the four seats. About 288,000 people are eligible to vote in the four districts.

In the Al-Shifa hospital, the walls are decrepit and dirty. The elevators are broken. It is a sign of the times in Gaza City, brought to its knees by the international community’s refusal to do business with a Hamas-led government.
   ‘If this continues, the majority of our services will cease to operate in two weeks’ time,’ said Dr Jumaa al-Saqqa, the spokesman at the impoverished Gaza Strip’s main hospital.
   Al-Shifa has effectively served as a combat hospital, saving thousands of lives over the course of the five-year Palestinian uprising.
   But now the medical facility faces its toughest challenge yet. Its staff are struggling to provide health care to the Gaza Strip’s 1.3 million people in the wake of the Palestinians’ sudden international isolation.
   ‘Our reserve supply of 200 medicines is almost depleted. We lack the most basic things like bandages and oxygen,’ Saqqa said.
   Dwindling supplies include antibiotics, anti-cancer treatments and replacements parts for scanners and dialysis equipment.
   ‘I do not want to sound like I’m making this out to be a catastrophe, but the truth is it’s turning into a disaster,’ Saqq added.
   Doctors in white lab coats tend to patients in the emergency room, which boasts the Gaza Strip’s best medical equipment, and is constantly packed with urgent cases being rushed in.
   ‘How can we care for our patients if we have so little means?’ asked Dr Abdullah Zidan, nervously smoking a cigarette in a small room decorated with photos of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
   ‘We have ordered materials in Israel, but they’ve closed Karni crossing so nothing can be delivered.’
   Al-Shifa doctors express a mix of anger, resignation and despair over the grim situation. None of them have received a salary since the beginning of March.
   ‘We’ve had a humanitarian crisis for quite some time, but these last weeks, it’s gotten worse,’ said surgeon Doran al-Hato, sipping tea in a breakroom where the windows have been shattered by gunfire.
   ‘What can we do? Should we close and then people die,’ said anaesthesiologist Nahed Gharben. ‘I haven’t had any anaesthesia supplies for 10 days now.’
   The doctors now prioritise their cases. ‘We’ve stopped operating on patients whose lives aren’t in danger.’
   The Gaza Strip had already been badly hit by Israel’s near constant closure of its borders since the beginning of the year.
   The territory has suffered periodic shortages of foods and other basic commodities as a result. However, the situation deteriorated after a government led by the radical Islamic Hamas movement was sworn in last month and Western governments suspended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority.
   Although Washington and the European Union have vowed to send humanitarian funds through the United Nations, the medical sector has been hard hit by the crisis.

Six Philippine legislators and a former senator were indicted Monday on charges of allegedly conspiring with communist rebels and rightwing soldiers to topple the president, Gloria Arroyo, the justice department said Monday.
   Senior state prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco accused House of Representatives members Crispin Beltran, Teodoro Casino, Rafael Mariano, Liza Maza, Satur Ocampo, and Joel Virador of being communist guerrillas who had used their elective posts to destabilise the government.
   He said the six plotted with ex-army colonel Gregorio Honasan, who served two terms in the senate after winning a presidential pardon for leading a series of failed coup attempts in the 1980s and two fugitive right-wing military rebels, as well as 40 unidentified leftists.
   Velasco asked a lower court in Manila to deny bail to the accused who face life imprisonment if found guilty.
   The charges stemmed from an alleged left-right conspiracy foiled by Arroyo on February 24, when she mounted a crackdown against a number of key military and police officers who she said were preparing to act against her.
   Beltran is in police custody at a government hospital, where he is being treated for a bad heart. The five other legislators have sought sanctuary at the House of Representatives compound to avoid arrest, while Honasan and the two rebel military officers are at large.

Germany may offer India more help with its civilian nuclear programme subject to the ratification of a US deal to provide New Delhi with nuclear technology, chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.
   ‘If the process carries on the way it’s been going, I think we can step up our co-operation in the field of civilian nuclear energy,’ Merkel said. ‘We’re on a positive pathway.’ It would also depend on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s assessment of the matter, she added.
   Merkel, who was opening an industrial trade fair in the central city of Hanover with the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said it was ‘very important’ that India said it was committed to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
   India agreed a deal with Washington in March which would allow it to receive American nuclear technology and fuel, even though it is not a signatory to the benchmark arms control pact, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Ehud Olmert was facing a revolt Monday in the ranks of his Kadima party with senior figures furious at losing out on key portfolios in the new Israeli coalition government to Labour rivals.
   Newspaper headlines made uncomfortable reading for the prime minister designate with a number of top Kadima candidates in last month’s election accusing him of reneging on agreements and caving in during coalition talks.
   Uriel Reichman, who had been expected to be made education minister, announced late Sunday that he was quitting political life after it became clear that the post would be one of seven in the new cabinet allotted to Labour.
   ‘There was an explicit commitment from Olmert and Arik Sharon,’ said Reichman who had been one of Kadima’s most high-profile recruits when the party was founded last November by the now coma-stricken Sharon.
   ‘This isn’t a good sign of things to come.’

Masked gunmen Monday set fire to dozens of newspapers in Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan because the publications failed to describe them as holy warriors, officials said.
   Two suspected militants torched copies of the Urdu-language dailies at two stalls in a main market of Mir Ali, a town in the restive North Waziristan tribal region, a local administration official said.
   The gunmen said they burned the papers because they were biased against them and had called them ‘miscreants’, instead of ‘mujahedeen’ or holy warriors as they prefer, local residents said. Pakistani officials use the term ‘miscreants’ to refer to a wide variety of insurgents, including Islamic militants in the northwest, rebel tribesmen in the troubled southwest and members of sectarian extremist groups.

Japan’s ruling party has suffered a political setback with its defeat in a weekend by-election against a resurgent opposition as the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, prepares to bow out, analysts said.
   Sunday’s vote, which is likely to have been Koizumi’s final election test, was viewed as a litmus test of the public’s mood as the popular premier prepares to step down in September after five years in office.
   In the closely contested by-election, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan’s Kazumi Ota, a 26-year-old former bar hostess, narrowly won the poll with 87,046 votes in Chiba Prefecture’s No. 7 constituency, just east of Tokyo.

North Korea Monday asked South Korea for rice and fertiliser during high-level talks in Pyongyang, South Korean pool reports said.
   ‘The North’s side asked us to offer 500,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of fertiliser in aid,’ an unnamed South Korean negotiator was quoted as saying.
   During the talks, which opened Friday and are scheduled to end late Monday, South Korea urged Pyongyang to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and also to repatriate South Koreans it says are held in the Stalinist state.
   North Korean responses were not immediately known. North Korea has relied on outside help to feed its 23 million people for the past decade.
   South Korea, a key humanitarian aid donor, has already shipped 150,000 tonnes of fertilizer to the North this year. It also sent 350,000 tonnes of fertilizer and 500,000 tonnes of rice in 2005.

A 78-year-old Indian woman killed herself by jumping on to her husband’s funeral pyre, the police said on Monday, following the ancient Hindu custom of Sati outlawed in the 19th century.
   Sita Devi’s body was found on Saturday at the cremation site in the eastern state of Bihar.
   Sati, an act of devotion which means ‘faithful wife’, was common until it was banned by India’s British colonial rulers in 1829.
   The practice largely disappeared from public view until 1987 when a young woman dressed in her bridal costume jumped on to her husband’s cremation pyre watched by thousands of people, many egging her on.
   Her death sparked national outrage and forced the government to ban the glorification of sati, making it an offence punishable with a maximum sentence of seven years and a fine of up to 30,000 rupees.

Iran’s hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed a UN Security Council call for the Islamic republic to freeze sensitive nuclear work by the end of this week.
   ‘They shouldn’t think they can baptise a wrong decision with the help of the Security Council. Change your decision and we’ll sit and talk,’ he told a news conference just days away from the Friday deadline set by the Council for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment.
   ‘The Security Council should act within the framework of the law. It shouldn’t be pressured by a few countries and say we don’t want Iran to have nuclear technology.’
   The UN Security Council is unlikely to impose sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, Ahmadinejad claimed.
   ‘I see it as unlikely that they would be so unwise to do such a thing,’ he replied when asked about the impact of possible sanctions against the Islamic republic.
   When asked if any package incentives could prompt Iran to reinstate a suspension of its nuclear programme, he replied: ‘We don’t want anything. Let the Iranians live their lives.’
   Iran says it only wants to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel to generate electricity, as is authorised by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But Western powers want a suspension of the work—which can be extended to make weapons—while suspicions over Iran’s nuclear programme remain.
   He said that Israel ‘cannot survive’, adding that migrants to the Jewish state should go back to where they came from.
   ‘Logically, this fake regime cannot survive,’ Ahmadinejad told a news conference in the latest of a string of verbal attacks against Israel.
   ‘Why did you force them to take refuge in Palestine? Why do you think they are comfortable in Palestine? They left because of your anti-Semitism,’ he said of European states.
   ‘Open the doors of this big jail and let people decide for themselves. You will see they will return to their motherland,’ he said, repeating his view that Jews who have settled in the former Palestine should go back to their countries of origin.
   ‘Why should the Middle East pay 60 years on’ from the end of World War II, he added.
   The president also appeared to dismiss comparisons in the West between himself and Adolf Hitler.
   ‘You propagate that what’s his name is like that criminal,’ Ahmadinejad said. ‘When we say let the Palestinian people decide, they say this person supports killing Jews.’
   But he added that Iran was the ‘only country where religious minorities have equal rights.’
   Ahmadinejad also said Germany should stop being ‘bribed by a bunch of Zionists’—referring to German reparations for the Holocaust.
   ‘Today’s generation of Germany—what have they done wrong that they have to be belittled? Why should they be born indebted politically, culturally and economically and bribed by a bunch of Zionists in order to suppress Palestinians?’ he said.
   ‘This is not fair. I have no doubt the great nation of Germany will not accept this.’

A senior Democrat said on Sunday that Congress could pass a bill to revamp the nation’s immigration laws if President Bush would take on his Republican Party’s right wing, which opposes it.
   ‘There’s strong support for it,’ senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said of the bipartisan measure that he crafted largely with Republican senator John McCain of Arizona.
   ‘If the president were take on the right wing of his own political party, we could get this legislation and pass it very, very quickly,’ Kennedy told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
   Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said it would be tough but that the Senate and US House of Representatives could resolve differences and produce a final bill for Bush to sign into law.
   ‘This country needs immigration reform, and I think we can get it if we work at it,’ Specter told CNN’s ‘Late Edition.’
   Congress returns on Monday from a two-week recess with Democrats and Republicans seeking common ground on the hot-button, election-year issue of immigration reform.
   Bush was scheduled to speak in California on Monday about the importance of passing immigration legislation.
   ‘This is a top priority, and the president wants to see the Congress press ahead and get something done, in a comprehensive way,’ White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters travelling with Bush.
   The bill before the Senate would tighten border security, but also give most of the estimated 11.5 million to 12 million people in the United States illegally a chance for citizenship—provided they pay back taxes and fines, hold a job and clear other hurdles, like showing a knowledge of English.
   It also contains a guest-worker programme favoured by Bush.
   Critics have denounced the bill as an amnesty, a characterisation backers reject.
   California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he favours a balanced approach that mixes compassion with border control.
   Appearing on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ the Republican governor said, ‘I don’t believe in amnesty at all. I think that amnesty doesn’t work.’
   But, he said, ‘I agree that there should be a way to earn your citizenship, especially people that have been here for a long time—people that have contributed to our economy, that have contributed to our society.’
   The House has passed a get-tough bill that would erect a fence along much of the US-Mexican border and declare illegal immigrants felons.
   Following nationwide demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of immigrants angered by the House bill, Republican leaders backed off making illegal immigrants felons and punishing those who give them aid once in the United States.

The White House said Sunday a new audiotape by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is authentic, citing intelligence officials.
   ‘I just heard from the intelligence community that they believe it is authentic,’ White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in Twentynine Palms, where president George W Bush visited US marines.
   In the tape, which surfaced on Al-Jazeera television Sunday, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden called on Muslim fighters to go to Sudan to wage war against ‘crusader thieves’ and slammed the international isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
   If the tape proves genuine, it would be the first from bin Laden since January 19.
   Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, Monday responded to the new audiotape from Laden by saying he wanted to see the fugitive dead or captured.
   ‘Well, I’d like to see him either in captivity or deceased of course,’ Howard told reporters.
   ‘But he’s been around now for quite a number of years since the attack in September of 2001 and I think the important thing is to maintain the fight against terrorism, not to give up, not to in any way be intimidated by something like that.’
   Howard, who is a strong ally of the US president, George W Bush, and has deployed troops to fight alongside American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, said bin Laden did not represent the ‘decent mainstream of Islam’.
   ‘He is a terrorist and an enemy of freedom-loving people, whether they are Christian, Islamic or some other belief,’ he said.
   Bin Laden is believed to have escaped capture by US troops in Afghanistan in late 2001.
   Separately, Howard said that despite bloodshed in Iraq, the US-led military campaign which ousted Saddam Hussein had not been a disaster.
   ‘I think we impose unreasonable standards,’ he told ABC radio.
   ‘I don’t believe the verdict on Iraq is by any means in, and I don’t accept that it’s been a disaster.’

Yinusa Gbadamasi has a degree in sociology, a post-graduate qualification in education management and is working on a PhD.
   But his achievements count for little in his current job: parking attendant, central London.
   Gbadamasi, from Nigeria, is one of thousands of Africans who have come to Britain legally in search of skilled jobs but have become victims of ‘occupational downgrading’.
   Unable to find work in their fields of expertise, they reluctantly take up the unskilled jobs that many Britons are no longer prepared to do.
   Anyone living and working in London cannot help but be struck by the number of immigrants working in the city as street vendors, taxi drivers, private security guards, road cleaners and community carers.
   They often work long hours and night shifts, forming a kind of twilight underclass, and while many are unskilled and unqualified, some are highly educated.
   Not only are they failing to put their own talents to use, but their absence from their home countries is contributing to the ‘brain drain’ which economists say is shackling Africa’s development.
   ‘Everybody loses from this,’ Gbadamasi told Reuters after a long day walking London’s streets handing out parking tickets.
   ‘We lose out because we are not fulfilling our potential, our host countries lose out because we are not contributing much to society and Africa loses out too.
   ‘Many Africans here see this as a kind of second slavery,’ he said. ‘There are no shackles this time, no chains, but it is a slavery nevertheless.’
   The extent of the problem is hard to judge—research is sparse and official figures do not usually indicate what level of skills new arrivals have. But evidence suggests occupational downgrading is widespread among Britain’s large African diaspora.
   ‘There are certainly people with PhDs in this country working as carers,’ said Dr Alice Bloch, from the Department of Sociology at London’s City University, who has published a study on Zimbabwean migrants to Britain and South Africa.
   Her research found that 97 per cent of Zimbabweans who came to live and work in Britain had some sort of formal academic qualification. Of those, 43 per cent had a degree or a post-graduate qualification.
   ‘They were very highly qualified,’ Bloch said. ‘Much more qualified, in fact, than the British population as a whole.’
   One of the problems these migrants faced was that their qualifications, gained in colleges and universities across Africa, carried less weight in Europe than at home.
   ‘You might have a doctor from Somalia, for example, who arrives with good qualifications, but those qualifications are not recognised in Britain and they have to retrain,’ Bloch said.
   ‘That’s a big barrier to people getting jobs commensurate with their skills.’
   Faced with the prospect of a long and possibly expensive retraining course, or a lengthy search for a skilled job, some migrants are tempted by the ‘quick fix’ of an unskilled job with instant rewards.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, hosted Daniel Ortega on his Sunday talk show to promote the Nicaraguan socialist presidential candidate and a regional trade pact.
   ‘The Sandinista Revolution, the Sandinistas and their leader Daniel Ortega, are more alive than ever,’ Chavez said on his weekly talk show, ‘Hello, Mr President.’
   Ortega was Nicaragua’s first elected leader 1985-1990, after dictator Anastasio Somoza was toppled in 1979 by the Sandinistas, named for Nicaraguan liberation leader Augusto Sandino.
   Chavez also announced that Ortega and 51 Sandinista mayors would on Tuesday sign an alternative to the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas, Chavez’ Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.
   ‘We feel full of that strength, of that energy of that community (in Nicaragua) as the people turn around, now that we are moving ahead, which shows that this is an authentic revolution,’ Ortega said on the show.
   ‘On Tuesday we are going to sign a commitment to integrate (economically) the Bolivarian government of Venezuela and a group of revolutionary mayors in Nicaragua,’ Chavez said.
   Chavez named his revolution for Simon Bolivar, the liberator of much of South America from Spanish rule.
   Managua mayor Dionisio Marenco also appeared on the programme.

The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of a veteran employee last week included an unusual lie detector test for CIA inspector general John Helgerson, The New York Times reported Monday.
   The CIA fired the intelligence officer, identified in published reports as Mary McCarthy, after she acknowledged leaking classified information to members of the media.
   Citing unnamed intelligence officials with knowledge of the investigation, the newspaper said the special polygraphs, which have been given to dozens of employees since January, are part of a broader effort by CIA director Porter Goss to re-emphasise a culture of secrecy at the agency.
   As the inspector general, Helgerson was the supervisor of McCarthy, who was fired Thursday after admitting she had told reporters about secret CIA detention centres and other subjects, The Times said.
   Goss and CIA deputy director vice admiral Albert Calland voluntarily submitted to the polygraph tests during the leak investigation to show they were willing to experience the same scrutiny they were asking other employees to undergo, the report said.
   Helgerson’s submission was more unusual because of his status as the independent inspector general—a post to which he was appointed by the president and from which only the president can remove him, the paper said.

Car bombings and shootings killed 19 people and wounded more than 100 in Baghdad Monday as Washington stepped up pressure for Shia premier designate Jawad al-Maliki to form a government and halt Iraq’s slide into civil war.
   Insurgents set off seven car bombs, two of them at a Baghdad university, security officials said. Five people died in the coordinated attack on the Mustansiriya University that also wounded 25.
   A car bomb in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Bab al-Muhaddam killed three people and wounded 25, while another in Tahrir Square in the city centre wounded 15.
   Two car bombs also went off within minutes of each other in east Baghdad, wounding nine. A seventh bomb exploded in the upscale Mansur neighborhood, wounding seven.
   Two car bombs also went off within minutes of each other in east Baghdad, wounding nine. A seventh bomb exploded in the upscale Mansur neighborhood, wounding seven.
   The latest wave of violence came as US President George W. Bush stepped up pressure on Maliki to quickly form a national unity government, with the US military facing one of its bloodiest periods in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
   About 60 US servicemen have been killed in Iraq already this month, taking the military’s death toll since the invasion to 2,392, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

US, Japan
resolve dispute
The United States and Japan have agreed to share the cost of relocating US troops from Japan to Guam, the Japanese defence chief announced. ‘We agreed,’ Japanese public broadcaster NHK and Jiji Press quoted Fukishiro Nukaga as saying after he emerged from the US defence department on Sunday. He did not offer any details about the deal. The Pentagon declined to comment. Nukaga had flown to Washington for talks with his US counterpart defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the dispute, which has held up the completion of plans for a major realignment of the US military presence in Japan. The head of the Japanese Defense Agency had said late Friday that ‘slight differences’ remain over the matter, Japanese media reported.

Taiwan holds wargame on China attack
Taiwan on Monday kicked off a five-day computerised wargame simulating an invasion by rival China, the defence ministry and newspapers said Monday. The defence ministry’s spokesman Wu Chi-fang would not provide details of the exercise to be followed by an upscale live-fire wargame codenamed ‘Han Kuang 22’ slated for sometime between June and July. The United Daily News said the scenario of the wargame was that ‘the Chinese communist forces attack from behind, landing on the northeastern part of the island.’ A Pentagon report has warned that China is building up its military at a pace that is tipping the balance against Taiwan and could pose a credible threat to other armies in the region.

Sihanouk threatens
to sue critics
The former king of Cambodia threatened to sue newspapers that defame or criticise him, according to a statement Monday on his official website. 'From now on, please let me know if any newspapers ... defame or accuse me of something so that I can correct, respond, or file lawsuits in Cambodia's courts,' ex-monarch Norodom Sihanouk said in a letter to the Royal Palace, which appeared on his website. The cancer-stricken Sihanouk, who left for Beijing in August to undergo medical treatment, is now staying in Pyongyang where Cambodia's current king, Norodom Sihamoni, is visiting him.

5 dead in Afghan plane crash
Five people were killed, five missing and 10 injured after a plane leased to US anti-drugs agents crashed in south Afghanistan Monday, a spokesman for the military coalition said. Two of the 16 people on board the plane died and eight were medically evacuated by helicopter after the crash in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province, Canadian military spokesman major Quentin Innis said. Another three people on the ground were killed and two were injured when the Antonov 32 transport plane ploughed into a nomad camp at the end of the runway, Innis said.
– AFP

Solomons
lawmakers sworn in
Heavily armed security forces cordoned off parliament in the Solomon Islands Monday as lawmakers were sworn in, while police swooped on figures suspected of orchestrating rioting last week. Opposition members of parliament warned the arrests, including those of two of their own MPs, could provoke fresh violence in the capital of the impoverished South Pacific archipelago. The election by MPs last Tuesday of Prime Minister Snyder Rini, accused of corruption, unleashed two days of violence in the capital Honiara which left dozens of Chinese-owned businesses in smoking ruins.
— AFP

Iranian women allowed into
stadiums
The hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced Monday that Iranian women can go to stadiums to watch sporting events, putting an end to a ban imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution. ‘It should be planned in a way that women are respected and are given the best places to watch the national and important games,’ the president was quoted as saying by state television. ‘Unlike the perception and propagation by some people, experience has proven that when women and families are allowed into stadiums, ethics and chastity will prevail,’ he said in an order to the head of Iran’s Physical Education Organisation.
— AFP

Tajik man murdered in Moscow
A Tajik man has been murdered in a knife attack in Moscow, Interfax news agency quoted police as saying Monday, as police announced the arrest of a suspect in another killing of a member of an ethnic minority. The attack took place on Sunday in eastern Moscow when unidentified assailants repeatedly stabbed two men from the Central Asian state of Tajikistan, Interfax reported. One man died on the way to hospital and the other, said to be in his 20s, was being treated in intensive care, the report said. There was no immediate information on the identity of the attackers or their motive.
— AFP

Zimbabwean white ex-MP seeks asylum in S Africa
Zimbabwean white former opposition member of parliament Roy Bennett is seeking political asylum in South Africa because he fears for his life, a party spokesman said Monday. Bennett, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change was released from prison in June last year after serving eight months for shoving the justice minister during a heated parliament debate. He fled Zimbabwe last month after police said they wanted to question him following the security services’ discovery of an arms cache in eastern Zimbabwe that they claimed was to be used to overthrown President Robert Mugabe’s government.
— AFP

Humala to face Garcia in Peru run-off
Social democrat Alan Garcia will face nationalist Ollanta Humala in a runoff for Peru’s presidency, according to a ballot tally Sunday from the April 9 vote. Despite lack of an official announcement, writer Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the harshest critics of Garcia’s 1985-1990 presidency, asked voters to back him over Humala, whose presidency he said would be a ‘catastrophe’. Centre-right presidential candidate Lourdes Flores was in third place and continued to dispute the drawn-out vote count from the elections two weeks ago. Garcia and Humala returned to campaigning around the South American country in anticipation of the runoff vote, which could be held as early as
May 28.
— AFP