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India Monday urged the international community to avoid a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme, saying it could worsen tensions in the region.
   ‘We remain hopeful that a solution acceptable to all sides will be found, we do not favour confrontation,’ the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, told parliament before a crucial meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna later Monday.
   ‘India has consistently stated that all sides must work to find a mutually acceptable compromise solution and that confrontation should be avoided at all costs.
   ‘For this to be possible, time must be given for diplomacy to work,’ he said.
   ‘We do not favour confrontation, rhetoric or coercive measures as these only exacerbate tensions in the region and beyond,’ Singh warned. ‘Confrontation is not in the interest of India or our region.’
   India last month voted with 26 other nations to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, which the United States asserts is a cover for trying to develop atomic weapons.
   It was the second time New Delhi voted for pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear programme, which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes.
   The ruling Indian coalition’s communist allies, on whose support the government relies for its survival in parliament, have denounced India’s vote, saying its foreign policy is being dictated by Washington.
   On India’s position at Monday’s meeting in Vienna, Singh said: ‘It is as yet not clear in what manner this issue will be taken up.
   ‘The government’s approach will be based on our consistent policy of promoting efforts for a resolution of issues through dialogue and discussions.’
   Singh said he had discussed the IAEA meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the weekend.
   The prime minister ‘welcomed Russia’s efforts to address the issue related to Iran’s nuclear programme through dialogue and consultations,’ a foreign ministry statement said late Sunday.
   Tehran and Moscow last week held unsuccessful talks on a Russian plan to jointly enrich uranium with Tehran for use as nuclear fuel—seen as a final attempt to defuse an international standoff.
   The Hindu newspaper Monday quoted sources as saying there was ‘little chance of a change in India’s position’ from the past.
   Ahead of the IAEA meeting, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said it would not freeze small-scale nuclear fuel work even if referred to the world body.
   Iran’s representative to the IAEA, Javad Vaidi, meanwhile said Tehran was open to compromise on its nuclear programme.
   ‘We are here to find a compromise ... which means we have to calm things down,’ Vaidi said Sunday as the United States warned of ‘tangible and painful consequences’ if Iran does not heed demands to halt uranium enrichment.

A key ally of Sri Lanka’s government urged it Monday to take a tougher stance against Tamil rebels and to beef up training for the country’s security forces to deter the Tigers from going back to war.
   ‘The government of Sri Lanka should speak softly and carry a big stick, which will greatly negate the LTTE threat of a return to hostilities,’ the Marxist JVP said after a routine meeting of political parties with the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, to discuss the island’s peace process.
   The JVP, or People’s Liberation Front, whose support is crucial for the survival of Rajapakse’s minority government, said in a statement it opposed Colombo making concessions to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during talks in Switzerland last month.
   After a break of nearly three years, the government and the Tigers opened talks at Celigny near Geneva. The next round is scheduled for April 19 at a venue in Switzerland still to be decided.
   At the talks, the government initially insisted on rewriting the February 2002 truce arranged by peace broker Norway. After the Tigers resisted the move, Colombo backed down and agreed to uphold the existing ceasefire.
   ‘We firmly believe that it is better to walk away from the negotiating table without any progress being made, rather than agree to any conditions that would be detrimental to the sovereignty of Sri Lanka,’ the JVP said.
   The government, it added, ‘should ramp up its strengthening and training of the armed forces so that the LTTE will realise that going back to war is not an option for them.’
   ‘By having a strong and fully prepared military at their disposal, the government will be negotiating from a position of strength,’ the JVP said, adding that previous governments had caved in fearing a return to hostilities.
   The strongly-worded JVP statement came as another government ally, the JHU, or the all Buddhist monks party, renewed moves to drop support for Rajapakse’s shaky coalition.
   The JHU was angry at the president’s failure to take a harder line on the Tiger rebels, who have been campaigning for independence for the island’s Tamil minority.
   The JHU has nine members in the 225-member national parliament while the JVP has 39 seats. Neither is a member of the government.
   The two parties have called for separate meetings with Rajapakse to air their grievances, official sources said.
   Their withdrawal of support may also encourage other parties, including the main opposition United National Party, to try to bring down Rajapakse’s Freedom Party-led minority government in parliament, analysts say.
   More than 60,000 people have been killed in the ethnic conflict in the past three decades and four previous peace attempts have ended in failure.

The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, called the neighbouring president, Hamid Karzai, oblivious to events in Afghanistan, stepping up a war of words between the two US allies in the ‘war on terror’.
   Musharraf renewed a months-long row with Afghanistan over cooperation in the search for Osama bin Laden and remnant Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, just days after the US president, George W Bush, visited both countries.
   He said that a list which Afghan officials gave to Islamabad containing details of Taliban militants allegedly in Pakistan, including the regime’s fugitive leader Mullah Omar, was ‘nonsense’.
   ‘There is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan by some (Afghani) agents, and president Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country,’ Musharraf told CNN’s ‘Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer’ on Sunday.
   Afghanistan’s foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah last week said of his concern that Islamabad was not following up on a list of Taliban rebels, which was handed over when Karzai visited Pakistan last month.
   But military ruler Musharraf, who abandoned Pakistan’s support for the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, said he was ‘totally disappointed’ by the intelligence the Afghans had provided.
   ‘We’ve already gone through it, this list. Two-thirds of it is months old, and it is outdated, and there is nothing,’ Musharraf said.
   ‘What there was, the telephone numbers that they are talking of, two-thirds of them are dead numbers, and even the CIA knows about it, because we are sharing all this information with them.
   ‘The location that they are talking of Mullah Omar is nonsense. There’s nobody there.’
   Musharraf also complained of a conspiracy against Pakistan within Karzai’s defence and intelligence departments, adding: ‘He better set that right.’

The president, Gloria Arroyo, is to hold a series of meetings with military officers after foiling an alleged coup plot by officers in elite units, her spokesman said Monday.
   Arroyo would discuss ‘all relevant and vital issues’ affecting the 120,000 strong military, presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement.
   Arroyo on February 24 placed the Philippines under a state of emergency, detaining a number of senior officers and filing charges of rebellion and attempting a coup d’etat against 16 people accused of toppling her government.
   She lifted emergency rule last Friday after her advisers said the threat had subsided.
   ‘It is important to know the underlying causes and reasons that drive our soldiers to meddle in politics and we are looking forward to the meeting or series of meetings at the soonest possible time,’ Bunye said.
   ‘All voices within the chain of command will be heard but the discussion must not be used as a vehicle for propaganda.’
   He said Arroyo hoped to ‘clear up’ issues raised by some sectors of the armed forces which ‘have been muddled by destabilisers and coup plotters.’
   The police meanwhile said they would arrest five leftist legislators who sought sanctuary in Congress if they stepped outside.
   The five House of Representatives members were among the 16 people charged in connection with the alleged coup conspiracy.
   The lifting of the state of emergency did not change the legal status of legislators Teodoro Casino, Liza Maza, Rafael Mariano, Satur Ocampo and Joel Virador, said police spokesman Samuel Pagdilao.
   ‘If they go out without the authority of the officer who has taken them under custody, they will be considered escapees or fugitives, so they can be arrested without warrant,’ senior superintendent Pagdilao told reporters.
   The five sought protection from the House leadership, and locked themselves in their offices last week to delay their arrest. They accuse the government of similar tactics to those employed by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
   ‘If they go out of the premises of the House of Representatives they will be arrested,’ Pagdilao added.
   Bunye said security forces were still ‘mopping up residual threats’ and the lifting of the emergency status did not mean cases against the legislators would be withdrawn.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, wrapped up a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia Monday without clinching a defence deal as oil giant Total eyed a contract to build a refinery in the oil-rich kingdom.
   ‘Saudi Arabia is actively pursuing a detailed study of different solutions,’ proposed to Riyadh in terms of cooperation in defence and security, Chirac told a news conference.
   ‘All this is taking place in an excellent climate,’ he said.
   At stake is the sale of French Rafale fighters and a border monitoring system to Saudi Arabia, which a French presidential spokesman had cautioned would not be finalised during the trip, Chirac’s fourth to the Gulf country.
   French aerospace group Dassault Aviation confirmed last April that talks had taken place on the purchase of the Rafale. The French daily Les Echos said at the time the discussions focused on the purchase of 48 fighters with an option for 48 more in a deal valued at 7.2 billion dollars.
   The fourth-generation Rafale, a multi-role combat jet which can carry out interception and reconnaissance missions as well as nuclear strikes, has yet to find an export market.
   The other potential deal involves the Miksa electronic border monitoring system, under which electronic defense manufacturer Thales would supply 225 radars to Saudi Arabia over a period of 12 years for 8.4 billion dollars.
   The sale of the Miksa—acronym for Ministry of Interior Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—would also include a telecommunications network, reconnaissance aircraft and about 20 helicopters.

Taiwan is to stage the island’s largest ever military exercises in July, a newspaper reported Monday, amid mounting tensions between Taipei and Beijing.
   More than 20,000 soldiers would be mobilised for the wargames to be held in northeast Ilan county, although 50,000 personnel would be involved in the exercises overall, the Apple Daily said.
   The report comes amid high tensions between Taipei and Beijing after Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian’s last week scrapped the advisory council on reunifying with the Chinese mainland.
   The drills were intended to ‘assess the defence capabilities backed up by some newly acquired weaponry,’ the Apple Daily quoted an unnamed defence ministry official as saying.
   Codenamed ‘Hankuang 22 (Han Glory)’, the wargames would begin in April with computer simulated events and climax with livefire drills in July, the paper said.
   On display would be Kidd class destroyers, F-16 jet fighters, AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters, and E-2C airbone early warning and command aircraft, it said.
   The defence ministry refused to confirm the timing or size of the drills, saying only that details of the wargames had yet to be finalised.
   Tensions spiked last week after Chen, defying pressure from Washington and Beijing, formally abolished the National Unification Council and its and guidelines designed to seek eventual reunification with the mainland.
   The council was considered largely symbolic and had been dormant since 2000 but Chen’s decision infuriated Beijing, which accused the Taiwan leader of pushing the region towards disaster.
   China itself carried out military exercises last week coinciding with the spike in tensions.
   Chen has defended his decision, saying it was prompted by Beijing’s persistent military threat and its attempts to use non-peaceful means to unilaterally change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
   Even though China and Taiwan separated after a civil war in 1949, Beijing still considers the island part of its territory and has threatened to retake the island by force if it moves towards independence.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, were Monday to discuss Australia’s embargo on uranium sales to India during talks that would also touch on trade and defence cooperation, officials said.
   ‘We would like to trade with Australia in all areas...we are short of uranium. We would very much like Australia to sell uranium to India,’ Singh told reporters after a formal welcome for Howard in the Indian capital.
   Howard, who on Sunday ruled out such a sale, was non-committal in his reply.
   ‘I think we will talk about this against the background of the policies and needs of the two countries,’ he said after the welcoming ceremony at the presidential palace.
   Singh was quoted by The Australian newspaper as saying that India needed ‘to import uranium and our needs will increase in years to come.’

Disgraced South Korean cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk has for the first time admitted playing a key role in fabricating stem cell research, Yonhap news agency said Monday.
   Hwang, under questioning for a fifth day by prosecutors, admitted telling a researcher working for him to fake key research that won him international acclaim in 2005, the agency said.
   ‘Hwang was admitting that he directed Kwon Dae-kee, a senior researcher at his laboratory, to manipulate samples for DNA testing of stem cell lines numbers 4-11 in connection with Hwang’s 2005 paper,’ the agency quoted an unidentified prosecution official as saying.
   Prosecutors declined to comment on the report.

The UN mission in Afghanistan said Monday it was worried about deteriorating security in the country’s insurgency-hit south, with increasing violence hampering sorely needed reconstruction.
   ‘We are concerned,’ spokesman Adrian Edwards said when asked about a string of attacks over the winter, a season which in previous years has seen a decrease in violence linked to Taliban rebels, other militants and criminals.
   ‘This does seem to be an increasing trend,’ Edwards said, citing 12 suicide attacks so far this year.
   Such attacks were rare in conflict-plagued Afghanistan until late September, marking an apparent ‘Iraqification’ of the insurgency launched by the Taliban after it was removed from government in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
   ‘Overall there seems to be a different threat, more sophisticated with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and suicide attacks. Some incidents are related to insurgency or terrorism, others to organised crime,’ Edwards said.
   Destitute Afghanistan’s efforts to rebuild after 25 years of war has been hobbled by the insurgency, which has included attacks on foreign and Afghan aid workers.
   Last week attackers destroyed 29 tonnes of wheat from the World Food Programme in central Uruzgan province.

The embattled Thai premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, urged his rivals Monday to agree to a compromise to end the nation’s political turmoil, as protesters called for civil disobedience to force him from office.
   ‘I can’t end this conflict alone, we need cooperation from the other parties involved,’ Thaksin told journalists Monday in the northeastern city of Khon Kaen, where he has been campaigning in one of his strongholds.
   ‘I won’t let this situation last for long. The country could not be under a shadow like this, because investment will be affected—even though so far we haven’t seen any effect’ on business, he said.
   Thaksin again offered to meet with his critics, but made no new concessions after at least 50,000 people marched overnight to his office in Bangkok to demand his resignation over claims of corruption and abuse of power.
   The anti-Thaksin protest Sunday was the fourth in as many weeks, and organisers vowed to renew their demonstration late Monday.
   Hoping to defuse the crisis, Thaksin dissolved parliament on February 24 and called snap elections. But the opposition shocked him with a boycott that threatens the legitimacy of the April 2 polls.

Hamas officials shrugged off the support offered by al-Qaeda’s No 2 leader, saying Sunday the Palestinian militant group has a different ideology than the terror network and won election through a moderate approach to Islam.
   In a video aired Saturday by Al-Jazeera, Ayman al-Zawahri called for jihad, or holy war, to reclaim Palestinian lands and implied al-Qaeda’s support for Hamas’ refusal to recognise Israel despite international pressure since the militant Islamic group swept parliamentary elections in January.
   A Hamas official in Gaza said the movement did not want to formally respond to al-Zawahri’s support, said: ‘Hamas believes that Islam is completely different to the ideology of Mr. al-Zawahri.’
   ‘Our battle is against the Israeli occupation and our only concern is to restore our rights and serve our people. We have no links with any group or element outside Palestine,’ the official said.
   Hamas is setting up a new Palestinian Cabinet after defeating Fatah, which had ruled Palestinian politics for four decades.

The US president, George W Bush, no stranger to a political scrap, must confront serious battles on several home fronts after his landmark trip to Asia.
   His opinion poll numbers are at a record low and the nuclear accord that he negotiated with India faces stiff Congressional opposition.
   The storm over the government reaction to Hurricane Katrina has returned, the Iraq war has worsened for US forces and Congress also stood up to the president over a deal to let a Dubai government-controlled company take over management at six US ports.
   In a mid-term election year, the Bush administration is in a sorry state, according to many analysts. His poll numbers are now as low as Richard Nixon’s just before he had to resign over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
   A recent CBS News poll said only 34 per cent of Americans approve of Bush’s administration. Two other polls last week put his popularity at 38 and 39 per cent.
   What worries Republican party chiefs is that even support within the party is ebbing away.
   Bush had not even left India before lawmakers started queuing to oppose the president’s nuclear deal with the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that would lift US restrictions on sharing civilian nuclear technology with India.
   But critics have zeroed in on what they say is a threat to nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
   ‘With one simple move the president has blown a hole in the nuclear rules that the entire world has been playing by,’ said Representative Edward Markey, co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation and senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
   More seriously, opposition to Dubai Ports World’s takeover of British firm P and O, whose assets include operations at six US ports, remains strong despite Bush’s support for the deal.
   Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the administration’s approval of the deal. Republican Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, has vowed to block the deal, with legislation if necessary.
   Opposition Democrats have also threatened blocking legislation, which Bush has said he would veto. He has never had to take such action during his five years as president.
   Republicans, with some fearing for their seats when mid-term elections are held in November, are starting to distance themselves from the administration.
   According to a poll for the Fox News Channel, 81 per cent of Americans fear that the conflict in Iraq could spiral into civil war despite the administration’s claims that progress is being made.
   John Murtha, a Democrat member of the House of Representatives, said Sunday that the president had misled the American public about Iraq for the past two years and that there is already a civil war.
   ‘There’s two participants fighting for survival and fighting for supremacy inside that country. And that’s my definition of a civil war,’ he said on CBS television.
   Bush’s absence also saw the broadcast of a video briefing on the eve of the August 29 Hurricane Katrina in which he was warned of potential devastation and insisted the administration was ‘completely prepared’. The storm killed more than 1,300 and the president has since had to take the blame for the lack of preparedness.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency expressed cautious optimism Monday on the chances of reaching an international agreement to defuse concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities and make UN Security Council action unnecessary.
   The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member board was not likely to discuss the Iran issue until Tuesday or Wednesday. But delegates said that whatever step the council might take would stop far short of sanctions.
   But as the board meeting opened, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei suggested the council might not need to get involved.
   ‘I am still very much hopeful that in the next week an agreement could be reached,’ ElBaradei told reporters, alluding to talks between Moscow and Tehran aimed at moving Iran’s enrichment programme to Russia and possible further contacts between Iran and Europe.
   He did not elaborate. But diplomats told the AP that recent talks have touched on the possibility of allowing Tehran to run a scaled-down uranium enrichment programme, despite its potential for misuse in building atomic weapons.
   That point was significant because the Europeans and the United States have for years opposed allowing Iran any kind of enrichment capability — a stance that Russia, China and other influential nations have embraced.
   Tehran has insisted on its right to conduct enrichment, saying it wants only to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity.

Heavy snow and high winds lashed Europe over the weekend, causing the deaths of at least 17 people in weather-related accidents and avalanches in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland.
   Thousands of people in France and southern Germany spent a night trapped in their cars, trains or emergency shelters after heavy snow blanketed the Alps, officials said.
   Packed with holidaymakers on ski trips, much of the area was placed under a maximum avalanche alert, with authorities closing off access to many ski resorts.
   Avalanches claimed two more lives in a season set to be one of the worst on record.
   One avalanche at Diablerets in the southern Swiss Alps on Sunday killed a 45-year-old woman snowshoeing, while another in the northeastern Italian province of Trento killed a 28-year-old Norwegian man.
   At the other end of Italy, on the French border, an avalanche trapped three people on Mount Jaferau but rescue workers were able to pull them out alive, the Ansa news agency said.
   Germany had the highest number of casualties, with 10 dead and hundreds injured due to accidents in heavy snow.
   Hessen state in the south, dealing with the heaviest snowfall in 15 years, saw five accident-related deaths, while four were killed in neighboring Baden-Wuerttemberg and one woman was run over while sweeping snow.
   The deep snowfall extended into central France where late Saturday a woman about 70 years old died after being knocked down by a vehicle near the town of Charite sur Loire.

Local authorities in Mexico City have fined a US-owned hotel, at the centre of a diplomatic row, $15,000.
   They said the branch of the Sheraton chain had discriminated against 16 Cuban officials by expelling them from its premises last month.
   The delegation was ordered out to comply with a US embargo against Cuba. A US law bans American companies from doing business with the island. The hotel denied discrimination and said it would appeal the decision.
   The Cuban delegation was due to meet a group of US businessmen opposed to the embargo at the Maria Isabel Sheraton hotel in Mexico City’s central Cuauhtemoc district on February 4.
   Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc, which owns the Sheraton chain, said the company was asked by the US Treasury Department to tell the Cubans to leave.
   The Mexican government launched an investigation saying the firm might have broken the law by expelling the delegation.
   The foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, insisted at the time that the US law could not be applied in a third country.

Brazil’s president says he’d like to get president Bush and ardent US critic Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to sit down together and talk out their differences.
   ‘I told president Bush that, before my term of office ends, I want to see him and Chavez seated at the same table,’ Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told The Economist in an interview published Friday on the British magazine’s Web site.
   Relations between Venezuela, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the US have gradually deteriorated, leading to the recent expulsion of diplomats from each country and threats by Caracas to cut oil shipments to the US.

Soldier kills four colleagues
in Kashmir
A soldier shot dead four colleagues before killing himself following an argument between members of two regiments at an army camp in Kashmir, a military official said. ‘From a simple conversation to an argument, one of the soldiers went berserk and killed four of his colleagues with a service weapon before eliminating himself,’ the official said. The incident took place late on Sunday at a military camp near Miran Sahib about 20 km southwest of Jammu. According to early reports troops belonging to the 21st and 22nd Rajput regiments were killed. Reports of soldiers killing each other are a regular occurrence in Kashmir where stress levels are high.
— Reuters

Denmark reopens embassy in Jakarta
The Danish embassy in Jakarta reopened Monday after closing last month following angry protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in the Scandinavian nation, an embassy staff member said. ‘We are now open again,’ a receptionist at the mission said. The 12 caricatures, which have infuriated devout Muslims, were first published in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in September and have since been reprinted elsewhere, igniting demonstrations in the Islamic world. Muslims consider all images of the prophet to be blasphemous.
— AFP

Pakistan gives two militants death sentences
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court Monday handed down fresh death sentences to two members of an al-Qaeda-linked group for an attack on a paramilitary vehicle which killed two people, lawyers said. Attaur Rehman and Shahzad Bajwa, both members of Jund Allah or Army of God, were condemned to death for the attack in March 2004 near the road to the airport in Karachi, public prosecutor Maula Bux Bhatti told reporters. ‘The court found both guilty for carrying out the fatal attack,’ he said. The two, along with nine others, were last month sentenced to death for a 2004 attack on an army general in Karachi which killed 11 people.
— AFP

Two die of suspected bird flu in Indonesia
A pregnant woman with symptoms of bird flu died in the Indonesian capital Jakarta Monday, while a boy who died elsewhere over the weekend was also suspected of carrying the virus, officials said. Yani Mulyani, 25, who was five months pregnant, died along with her fetus while she was being treated at Sulianti Saroso, the main hospital treating bird flu patients in the capital, said hospital spokesman Ilham Patu. Meanwhile a 10-year-old boy from Boyolali district in Central Java died Saturday while he was being treated in hospital as a suspected carrier of H5N1 in the city of Solo, a doctor treating him said.
— AFP

Explosions in Baghdad kill
11 Iraqis
A string of explosions in Baghdad and north of the capital Monday killed at least 11 Iraqis and injured 47. An American soldier was reported killed in insurgency-plagued western Iraq. The violence underscored a dangerous leadership vacuum as Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians increased pressure on the Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to abandon his bid for a new term and leaders of Iraq’s Shiite majority struggled to overcome internal divisions. Despite the political squabbling, President Jalal Talabani said he would issue a decree Monday calling the new parliament into session for the first time on Sunday, starting the clock on a 60-day period during which it would have to elect a new president and approve a prime minister and Cabinet.
— AP

Former Serb rebel leader commits suicide
Milan Babic, the Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, committed suicide in prison, the UN war crimes tribunal said Monday. Babic, who was serving 13 years for crimes against humanity, was found dead Sunday evening in his cell at the UN detention centre in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, said a tribunal statement. The Serb minority revolted after Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, setting off a war that lasted until 1995. With the support of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, Croatian Serbs proclaimed their own republic, with Babic as its president, and began an ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serbs.
— AP

Zuma pleads not guilty to rape
South Africa’s most explosive rape trial resumed Monday with former deputy president Jacob Zuma saying he had consensual sex with an HIV-positive woman but the alleged victim insisted she was violated by a father figure. Zuma denied guilt in the case that could seal the veteran’s leader’s political demise after graft allegations that cost him his job as South Africa’s number two and being a frontrunner in the race to succeed President Thabo Mbeki. But the alleged victim, an AIDS activist, said she had been raped by a man she considered her father and whom she had known since the age of five.
— AFP

Deadly bird flu confirmed in Poland
The deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed in two dead swans found in Poland, experts at Poland’s national laboratory said Monday. ‘Yes, we have confirmed that it is definitely H5N1. We are following all the procedures in force in the European Union. The samples will now be examined by the (EU) reference laboratory in Weybridge (England),’ the deputy director of Pulawy laboratory, Jan Zmudzinksi, said. The health minister, Zbigniew Religa, sought to reassure the public about risks to human health, saying ‘... the possibility of humans contracting the virus is close to zero,’ he said on television.
— AFP

Uzbekistan closes two more US NGOs
Two US non-governmental organisations have closed down after coming under pressure from Uzbek authorities in this authoritarian Central Asian state, the organisations said Monday. A Tashkent court ordered the closure of the Freedom House office in Uzbekistan after a request from city prosecutors, who accused the US-funded organisation of breaking Uzbek law. ‘Freedom House was already considering voluntarily closing down its office in Uzbekistan following a series of charges against us,’ Branko Sesto, Freedom House’s country director said. In January, a court suspended Freedom House for failing to provide statements on the organisation’s assets and providing free Internet access to unregistered human rights groups.
— AFP