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Israel will give the Palestinians until the end of the year to prove they are willing to negotiate a final peace deal, and will unilaterally set its final borders by 2008 if they don’t, Israel’s justice minister said Wednesday, reports AP.
   The statement by the justice minister, Haim Ramon, a close associate of prime minister Ehud Olmert’s, was the first by an Israeli official to set a deadline for the Hamas-led Palestinian government to disarm and recognise the Jewish state.
   The Palestinians’ moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah party, has tried to persuade Israel to bypass Hamas and resume peace talks with him, but Olmert has said he wouldn’t negotiate with Abbas if Hamas didn’t change its violent ways.
   ‘Through the end of this year, 2006, there will be honest attempts to talk to the other side,’ Ramon told Israel’s Army Radio.
   ‘If it becomes clear by the end of the year that we really have no partner, and the international community is also convinced of this, then we will take our fate into our own hands and not leave our fate in the hands of our enemies,’ he added.
   Hamas thus far has refused to renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist, despite intense international pressure and the cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and Israeli transfer payments.
   Hamas on Wednesday insisted Israel wasn’t really interested in negotiating.
   ‘Haim Ramon’s assertion that Israel is ready for negotiations is no more than an attempt to trick the public,’ Palestinian government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said. ‘They don’t want negotiations, and even if there were negotiations, they would not give us our rights.’
   He repeated that Hamas was prepared to grant a long-term truce if Israel would agree to retreat to the lines it held before the 1967 Mideast war — a condition Israel categorically rejects.
   Olmert, who was a major force behind Israel’s
   Gaza Strip withdrawal last year, has said he intends to pull Jewish settlers out of heavily populated Palestinian areas in the West Bank while fortifying major settlement blocs and retaining the West Bank’s Jordan River Valley.
   Olmert has said Israel prefers to negotiate, but would act on its own if Hamas didn’t moderate. He never gave the Palestinians a deadline to head to the negotiating table, but has made it clear his patience was limited.
   ‘If we wait a month, two months, three months, half a year and we don’t see any change, then most likely we are going to move forward even without an agreement, without negotiations, in order to define the border lines which are acceptable for Israel,’ he told an international conference of mayors on Tuesday.
   Olmert originally had set a 2010 deadline for the pullback deadline, but a top aide said last month that Israel planned to conclude the process before the end of President Bush’s term in 2008.
   Ramon said it wouldn’t take more than 18 to 24 months.
   ‘I would like to believe that by the end of 2008 we will be deployed on a line that will signify Israel’s final borders and guarantee our existence here as a Jewish democratic state,’ he said.
   
   Israel accepts resumption of aid to Palestinians
   Israel on Wednesday accepted a decision by major Middle East peace brokers to resume aid payments to the Palestinian Authority—a move that could ease the intense economic pressure on the Hamas-led government, reports Reuters.
   The Authority relies hugely on foreign aid to pay public sector salaries and run health and welfare services, and the powers decided reluctantly on Tuesday that there was no other way to stave off a possible collapse into anarchy.
   It was not clear whether they would find a way to channel funds through the overall Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, without having them administered by Hamas—an Islamic militant group officially sworn to Israel’s destruction.
   But Israel, which had pushed hard and successfully for financial assistance to the Palestinians to be severed after the Hamas-led administration took power in March, took the view that this would be possible.
   ‘As far as we are concerned, the Quartet’s decision to give further humanitarian support to the Palestinian Authority, bypassing the Hamas government, is definitely okay,’ the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said on Army Radio.

A Japanese envoy Wednesday warned that the international community cannot restore Sri Lanka’s faltering ceasefire and urged the government and Tamil rebels to decide for themselves on war or peace.
   Tokyo’s special peace emissary Yasushi Akashi ended his four-day visit calling on both Colombo and the Tiger rebels to reduce the latest spate of violence, which he described as the worst since his appointment in late 2002.
   ‘It is very clear that the ownership of the peace process belongs entirely to the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,’ Akashi told reporters.
   ‘We in the international community play a supportive role in this process. Unfortunately too much is expected of us. Sometimes we are unduly criticised for doing too much or too little.’
   He said both sides must work towards reducing violence which had claimed more than 200 lives over the past month and threatened a ceasefire in place since 2002.
   ‘There is a deep anxiety over the escalating violence,’ Akashi said.
   This week he met president Mahinda Rajapakse as well as the head of the LTTE’s political wing SP Thamilselvan to discuss attempts to salvage the Norwegian-backed and internationally supported peace bid.
   Akashi said Sri Lanka’s key international backers, Norway, the US and the European Union. would meet in Tokyo at the end of this month to take stock of their involvement in the peace initiative.
   India, which has banned the LTTE since the group’s suspected involvement in the 1991 assassination of the former premier Rajiv Gandhi, will also be invited to the Tokyo meeting, Akashi said.
   ‘There will be soul-searching... where we are with the peace process. Where we should be going. Why there is not enough progress in the peace process.
   ‘Everyone involved, including the press, should do his or her best to de-escalate this extremely dangerous climate of violence. We should not do anything to worsen the situation,’ Akashi said.
   Akashi condemned the April 25 suicide bombing targeting army chief Sarath Fonseka, who survived, and said the Tigers must take note of the concerns of the international community about such attacks.
   He stressed that the parties must decide to push the peace process or abandon it and the international community can only play a ‘subsidiary role.’
   ‘We cannot substitute for the parties in conflict,’ he said.
   Akashi also met Rauf Hakeem, the leader of the main Muslim party in Sri Lanka, on ways to promote peace.
   The LTTE had told the Japanese envoy to pressure the government to halt alleged military attacks against them and warned that the island could face ‘doom’ if they retaliated.
   The government similarly called on the LTTE to halt violence.
   Talks on a permanent settlement have stagnated since April 2003 after six rounds of face-to-face discussions. More than 60,000 people have been killed in the separatist conflict since 1972.

Nepal’s Maoists are handing back land and houses seized during the decade-old revolt, a rebel spokesman said, as part of a deal with the main political parties who took power last month after weeks of anti-king protests.
   The properties were seized by the rebels in a bid to equally distribute assets among the people. However, they were rarely used though the owners were forced to flee the villages.
   ‘The process of returning the homes and properties unjustifiably captured has already started,’ rebel spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara said in a statement late on Tuesday.
   Mahara also urged the new multi-party cabinet, formed after King Gyanendra gave in to the street protests and restored parliament, to free Maoist leaders and activists held in jails in Nepal and neighbouring India.
   He said this would help create an atmosphere for peace talks with the new government. Both sides have committed themselves to the talks but no date has been fixed. The government, however, has matched a ceasefire by the Maoists.
   The two sides are preparing for elections to an assembly that would write a new constitution and decide the fate of the monarchy in the Himalayan kingdom.
   Meanwhile, Maoist rebels have kidnapped five police officers in southwest Nepal despite a ceasefire, police said Wednesday.
   Following weeks of mass protests across the country, King Gyanendra was forced to hand back power in April to parliament after 14 months of absolute rule.

The founder of one of the most feared militant groups fighting in Kashmir accused the United States on Tuesday of pandering to India and being anti-Islam by branding the charity he now runs as a terrorist organisation.
   ‘All this is being done at the behest of India,’ Hafiz Mohammad Saeed said in his first interview since the US State Department outlawed the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity and one of its affiliates earlier this month.
   ‘This decision is part of the anti-Islam attitude of America. Our only sin is that we are Muslims,’ said Saeed, a firebrand orator who once taught Islamic studies at an engineering university in Lahore.
   The United States and India have seen ties warm over the past four years and Saeed said the US ban was a goodwill gesture to India.

The Indian navy, racing to acquire the latest military hardware, is seeking cabinet clearance to buy three Russian ‘stealth’ frigates worth 665 million dollars, a spokesman said Wednesday.
   ‘All issues such as price negotiations and evaluation have been cleared and spadework done and it just requires the cabinet’s clearance,’ commander Vinay Garg said.
   The cabinet is expected to review the planned purchase by the end of May. The navy already has three such ships, which get the stealth tag because they are difficult to track by radar.
   The three Russian frigates awaiting cabinet approval would be armed with supersonic BrahMos cruise missiles. The weapons are jointly built by India and Russia. In addition, the naval spokesman said, Indian dockyards have been contracted to build three of the 4,000-ton stealth frigates as part of the 137-ship navy’s ambitions to build locally rather than import.
   ‘The project was launched three years ago and the first ship is likely to be launched in 2008,’ the spokesman added.
   The navy has also awarded contracts to build 33 other vessels to state-owned shipbuilders and has embarked on a mission to build an aircraft carrier.
   Military officials said the navy was also shopping for 30 long-range helicopters to replace its British-built Sea Kings and was awaiting an offer from the United States to lease two anti-submarine P-3 Orion aircraft.
   It is also awaiting delivery of a refurbished Soviet-era aircraft carrier from the Russians, a wide-bodied Ilyushin-76 aircraft reconfigured for maritime surveillance and six French Scorpene submarines.

Child mortality in the Asia-Pacific region could be significantly reduced if governments showed enough political will, United Nations’ agencies said in a statement Wednesday.
   Some 3,000 children under five years of age die in the region each day, according to the World Health Organisation and the UN Children’s Fund.
   ‘Most of these deaths, often associated with undernutrition, are from preventable and treatable conditions,’ they said.
   Interventions to address these conditions, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea, are widely known and their cost-effectiveness proven but they often do not reach those in greatest need.
   ‘With simple medical interventions, many of these child deaths could be averted,’ said Shigeru Omi, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.
   The agencies opened Tuesday a three-day regional workshop in the Laos capital Vientiane to launch the regional ‘Child Survival Strategy’.
   Omi called for long-term commitment, investment and cooperation, and urged governments to place the issue higher on their agenda.
   ‘For that to happen, we must make sure that there is political will at all levels of the government, starting from the very top,’ he said.
   The United Nations’ goal is to reduce by two thirds the under-five mortality rate between 1990 and 2015.
   Among the measures proposed are skilled attendance during pregnancy, care of the newborn, breastfeeding and complementary feeding, immunisation of children and mothers as well as the use of insecticide-treated nets in malaria-prone areas.

The communist parties, which keep the union government afloat, said on Wednesday they would oppose any move to raise the administered price of petroleum products despite soaring crude oil rates.
   ‘We will oppose any hike in petroleum products, including cooking gas,’ senior communist lawmaker Basudeb Acharya said ahead of a meeting with oil minister Murli Deora.
   The government, headed by the Congress party, has promised a decision on raising fuel prices, frozen since September, by the end of May.
   State-run oil refiners such as Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd have incurred huge losses as crude has soared on global markets while the state caps retail prices.

An earthquake which damaged a transmission tower and shut down four power plants left more than 10 million people in the central Philippines without electricity Wednesday, officials and residents said.
   The relatively mild quake, measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale, struck the island of Leyte at 10:02am (0202 GMT), the seismology office in Manila said, triggering a chain reaction of power generation units shutting down.
   One transmission tower in Ormoc city was toppled, said National Transmission Corporation president Alan Ortiz. No casualties were reported, the civil defence office in Manila said.
   The civil defence office as well as residents said the quake blacked out Cebu city, the country’s second largest, the rest of Cebu island, as well as the neighbouring islands of Leyte, Negros, Panay and Samar islands. The islands are home to 10.8 million of the country’s 85 million people.

The Palestinian Hamas-led government and president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah faction on Wednesday outlawed the carrying of arms by militants, issuing a joint statement announcing the unprecedented measure.
   ‘Anyone who carries arms will be considered an outlaw,’ Fatah spokesman Ahmed Hilles told a joint press conference with the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, following an emergency meeting in Gaza City aimed at ending a spate of armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas militants.
   A total of 14 Palestinians were injured in armed factional fighting on Tuesday, the day after similar Fatah-Hamas clashes left three people dead in the southern Gaza Strip.
   ‘We are giving clear instructions to all the militants to end their armed initiatives and to prevent the use of arms,’ Haniya said.
   ‘The government will use all its powers to impose the law,’ and ‘justice’ he warned, stressing that the meeting had ‘broken the ground for positive relations,’ between the two parties, whose relations have deteriorated since Hamas won legislative elections in January and taken power in March.

A Thai court Wednesday ordered the government and election authorities to set a date for new polls, as outgoing prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra remained coy about whether he would run again.
   The nation’s top judges had widely been expected to set a date for new elections on Tuesday, one day after the Constitutional Court scrapped last month’s controversial polls that left the country without a functioning parliament.
   But when the court released its 54-page ruling that nullified the polls, the judges said the government and the Election Commission should choose a date.
   ‘In order to ensure that the next election is free and fair in line with the spirit of the constitution, the court has asked the relevant authorities—the government and the Election Commission—to set the election date,’ court spokesman Paiboon Varahapaitoon told reporters.
   The court’s verdict offered little guidance for when the polls should be held, and Paiboon said the date depended on the readiness of the government and the commission to organise the elections.

The commander of US forces in the Pacific is in China for a seven-day visit aimed at improving military ties between the two countries, the US embassy said.
   Admiral William Fallon will meet with Chinese military officials in Beijing before visiting the northern city of Xian, eastern Hangzhou and Shenyang in the northeast, a US embassy spokeswoman said.
   ‘This is a follow-on to continue with improved military-to-military relations,’ the spokeswoman said.
   Fallon will meet with provincial and defence officials during his tour, before leaving China, she said.
   In March, Fallon called for increased military engagement with China, despite US concerns over Beijing’s continuing increases in military spending.
   ‘The absence of any engagement whatsoever would put us back where we were in the past couple of years where we have virtually gone on a parallel pass with no interaction,’ he said.
   China announced in March its military budget would increase by 15 per cent this year to 35 billion dollars.
   Fallon said at the time that the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had agreed to a significant increase in US-Chinese military interchanges this year.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday it was ‘too early’ to pronounce the international arms race over, saying it was instead continuing and rising to a ‘new technological level.’
   ‘It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race,’ Putin said in his annual state of the nation address.
   ‘Moreover, it is today going faster, it is in reality rising to a new technological level,’ the Russian leader said.
   He also said in a state of the nation speech Wednesday that Russia faces a ‘fortress’ United States and must embrace high technology to keep up in a growing arms race, as well as in fierce economic competition.
   Putin said that the United States spent 25 times more than Russia on its defence budget.
   ‘In the defence sphere, this is called ‘their house is their fortress.’ Well done! But it means that we must build our house strongly, reliably, because we see what’s going on in the world.’
   In his sweeping address, Putin also laid out a vision of a Russia switching from an ageing and uncompetitive Soviet-era infrastructure to an economy centered on high-tech areas such as nanotechnology.
   ‘In conditions of fierce international competition, the country’s economic development must be based, essentially, on its scientific and technological advantages,’ he said.
   ‘Unfortunately, one has to face that the majority of the technical equipment used in the national economy is not years behind the top level, but decades.’
   Putin said that modernisation of Russia’s huge but inefficient armed forces was vital to global stability and that the country must be ‘solid’ in the face of US attempts to build a ‘fortress.’
   ‘Key responsibility for standing up against threats, for guaranteeing global stability, will lie with the world’s leading powers possessing nuclear weapons and powerful military-political influence. That’s why modernising the Russian army is extremely important now,’ he said.
   The mostly conscript army must fill two-thirds of its ranks with professionals by 2008, he said.
   According to Putin, Russia continues to face gigantic problems in the wake of the Soviet collapse in 1991, chief among them the steadily worsening demographic situation.
   ‘The most serious problem in modern Russia is demography,’ Putin said, stating that the population of just fewer than 143 million people was falling by an average of about 700,000 a year.
   He outlined a raft of measures such as increased social benefits for mothers.
   Seeking to reassure Western markets over Russia’s reliability as an energy supplier, Putin said ‘we must do everything not only for our domestic development, but also to fully meet our obligations before our traditional partners.’
   However, he was adamant over Russia’s rights to look after its own interests, saying that Russia would join the World Trade Organisation only on its own terms.
   ‘Russia’s membership in the WTO should not be a subject of bargaining,’ he said, claiming that discussions over Russia’s entry were being linked to ‘issues that have nothing to do with the economy.’
   ‘We see negotiations on entering the World Trade Organisation only on terms that support Russia’s economic interests.’

Former communist Giorgio Napolitano, 80, was elected Italy’s new president Wednesday, gaining an absolute majority in a parliamentary vote which underlined the country’s political divisions.
   The election of centre-left leader Romano Prodi’s candidate was bitterly opposed by the conservatives of outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who marked their protest by voting with blank ballots.
   The election of the senator for life and former parliament speaker now clears the way for Prodi to form a government early next week, five weeks after winning a bitterly contested general election.
   A confident Prodi said his new government could be sworn in by the new president ‘between Sunday and Tuesday’ of next week.
   That would be followed by a parliamentary vote of confidence before the following weekend.
   Napolitano received 542 votes in the fourth-round ballot, the first to be decided by an absolute majority.
   All but a handful of the other votes cast by the 1,009 ‘Grand Electors’ — comprising both houses of parliament and regional representatives — cast blank protest ballots.
   The incoming president, who turns 81 next month, received a two-minute ovation from parliament when lower house speaker formally declared him elected.
   But Berlusconi voiced his opposition, telling reporters immediately after the vote: ‘This majority does not correspond to the wishes of Italians.’
   ‘We don’t see him as corresponding to the need for an impartial candidate,’ he said, adding that he wished the new president good luck.
   Questioned by reporters early Wednesday, Napolitano — a senior member of the former communist Democrats of the Left — insisted he would be an ‘impartial’ president as guarantor of the country’s constitution.
   In a sign of the difficulties posed by Berlusconi’s opposition, the previous three rounds of voting over Monday and Tuesday ended in stalemate, with no candidate acquiring the two-thirds majority required for those votes.
   Napolitano’s fortunes changed dramatically once the vote was thrown open to an absolute majority in the fourth round, with Prodi able to count on 542 votes, well in excess of the 505 required.

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a member of Saddam Hussein’s defence team, on Tuesday said the former Iraqi president’s trial was a sham designed to justify the US-led invasion.
   Saddam’s trial on charges of crimes against humanity was ‘a direct threat to international law, the United Nations, universal human rights and world peace,’ Clark said at a news conference. He demanded that proceedings be transferred from the Iraqi Special Tribunal to a new court that could work independently, free of prejudice.
   Clark, who was attorney general under the president, Lyndon Johnson, from 1967-1969, said the United States wanted the trial to ‘vindicate its invasion, to validate its occupation, and to make the world believe that the Iraqi people demanded that Saddam Hussein and leaders in his government be executed.’
   Clark has become known for his radical left-wing politics and for defending controversial figures, including ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor, former Yugoslav president
   Slobodan Milosevic, who died in April, and Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leader in the Rwandan genocide.
   Saddam’s trial has been rocked by the murders of two defence lawyers and one judge. It is currently adjourned until May 15 but Clark said the defence would seek at least another month to review documents.
   So far in the trial, he said Saddam’s defence lawyers have been denied exculpatory documents and evidence, as well as witnesses statements and court transcripts.
   The judges have either been Kurds or Shias, and the defendants with one or two exceptions Sunnis, he said. ‘It’s a sectarian persecution, if you will.’
   Clark said a fair trial in the midst of such widespread violence sweeping the country was impossible.
   He said it should be transferred to a court that was legal, independent, impartial and competent, working in a safe environment ‘free of prejudicial influences.’
   Saddam and seven others are on trial for the executions of 148 people in Dujail in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt. Clark said those executed had signed confessions and under Iraqi law, the death penalty was mandatory for treason.
   ‘It is common for the law to require the highest official of a state to approve and sign death warrants. George W Bush signed 152 such warrants as governor of Texas,’ he said.

Amnesty International in a report released Wednesday demanded the toughening of arms controls to stop a growing band of brokers from fuelling killings, rape and torture around the world.
   The human rights organisation said its document detailed how increasingly sophisticated freight transport and brokering operations were delivering hundreds of thousands of tons of weaponry around the world.
   An ever-greater proportion was going to developing countries where the weapons have fed some of the most brutal conflicts, Amnesty and TransArms said in their report, entitled ‘Dead on Time: arms transportation, brokering and the threat to human rights’.
   The report detailed the alleged activities of arms brokers and transporters from the Balkans, Britain, China, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
   It showed how a network of middlemen had made it easier for the major arms suppliers to target developing countries, which now absorb over two-thirds of world defence imports, compared to just over half in the 1990s, Amnesty said.
   The report said many arms transporting and brokering operations were unregulated, secretive and unaccountable.
   Among its case studies, the report alleged that weapons and ammunition from Bosnia-Hercegovina’s wartime stockpiles were exported clandestinely under the auspices of the US Department of Defence.
   It said that the alleged shipments were destined for Iraq and used a chain of private brokers and transport contractors, including an air cargo company that violated a United Nations arms embargo on Liberia.
   The report highlighted cases where the services of private contractors who have been involved in illegal arms shipments had also been employed to support UN peacekeeping missions and deliveries of humanitarian aid, at the expense of taxpayers.
   ‘It is clear that the existing patchwork of regulations is completely failing to keep pace with the expanding number and reach of international brokers, logistic firms and transporters,’ said Sergio Finardi of TransArms.
   ‘Such intermediaries may ensure that shipments of arms around the world arrive dead on time, but all too often they are used for the killing, rape, torture and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.’
   Amnesty made recommendations for robust and strictly enforced arms controls based on consistent international laws, including:
   • the immediate establishment of specific national laws, regulations and procedures to prevent arms brokering, logistics and transport activities contributing to gross human rights violations;
   • the development of an international protocol to regulate arms brokering and transport agents according to a common set of ethical standards set out in a global arms trade treaty;
   • making violations of UN arms embargoes a criminal offence in all states and in the case of serious violations, a crime with universal jurisdiction;
   stepping up international donor aid to enhance customs and other law enforcement control of cargo movements.

Guerrillas killed 12 people Wednesday across Iraq, including 11 in an ambush near the restive city of Baquba amid a crucial parliamentary session expected to reveal a new cabinet.
   At least 11 people were killed as gunmen ambushed a minibus travelling near Baquba, just north of Baghdad, a local police officer said.
   He said the gunmen ambushed the bus carrying employees of the local electricity company 10 kilometres (six miles) north of Baquba and ‘sprayed it with bullets, killing 11 people wounding four others.’
   ‘After the attack the police came to investigate, and at that time the bus exploded, wounding a policeman’. The attack came shortly after Tuesday night’s deadly suicide truck bombing in the northern town of Tal Afar which left 24 people dead.
   The US military said 134 others were wounded in the attack when the bomber exploded truck carrying flour in the marketplace in Tal Afar, a town hailed by the Bush administration a few months as an example of successful attempts to pacify the restive north.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, denied Tuesday that he wanted to expand Pentagon influence over US intelligence agencies with the nomination of an air force general to lead the CIA.
   ‘There is no power play taking place in Washington,’ Rumsfeld said, after several key personnel changes at the top of the Central Intelligence Agency.
   The president, George W Bush, nominated on Monday General Michael Hayden to lead the civilian CIA after the abrupt resignation three days earlier of director Porter Goss.
   The Washington Post reported Tuesday that another expected change is that Stephen Kappes, who quit the spy agency in November 2004 in a dispute with Goss, will return, replacing Vice Admiral Albert Calland.
   Also on Monday, Kyle ‘Dusty’ Foggo, the CIA’s third-ranking official resigned amid a corruption probe.
   The changes have sparked debate over whether Rumsfeld is expanding the military’s influence over intelligence matters with Hayden’s appointment.
   But Rumsfeld ridiculed such comments. ‘They are about theoretical conspiracies, they’re about theoretical bureaucratic turf fights, they’re all off the mark,’ He said.
   ‘The quality of debate on this subject is pedestrian and unimpressive.’
   In recent years Rumsfeld has expanded the Pentagon’s own intelligence operations, adding thousands of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars to information collection and analysis, in parallel to the CIA’s work.
   Rumsfeld also denied having differences with National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, for whom Hayden currently serves as a top aide, and rejected accusations that Hayden, with his background in military intelligence and electronic intelligence collection, is not suited for the CIA’s human-intelligence approach.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, on Tuesday ‘categorically’ denied ever having possessed a Japanese bank account, his office said, in response to an allegation by French weekly.
   ‘The president of the Republic categorically denies the information reported by the Canard Enchaine,’ a source close to Chirac said, requesting anonymity. ‘The President of the Republic has never had an account at the Sowa Bank.’
   The spy chief at the centre of a French dirty tricks scandal gave judges details of a multi-million-euro bank account held by Chirac in Japan, the French weekly said in its Wednesday issue.
   According to the newspaper, known for its investigative and irreverent reporting, General Philippe Rondot told magistrates that some 45 million euros (57 million dollars) were paid over past years into an account in Chirac’s name at the Tokyo Sowa Bank, by a ‘cultural founda-tion’.

Yudhoyono looks into Suharto’s graft case
Indonesia’s president wants to meet with leaders of several state institutions before deciding whether to pursue a graft case against ailing former dictator Suharto, an official said Wednesday. State secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra said president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would hold talks with leaders from the Supreme and Constitutional Courts, parliament and People’s Consultative Assembly late Wednesday. ‘The president deems it necessary to obtain suggestions and input from the heads of the state institutions on how to deal with this case, what should be our attitude in treating him as a former president and a former leader of our nation in the past,’ Mahendra told reporters.
— AFP

Four killed in Kashmir fresh fighting
Indian troops shot dead two Islamic militants along the de facto Kashmir border Wednesday while rebels killed two people in separate attacks, authorities said. The rebels were killed in Poonch district as they sneaked across the border into Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani zone of the divided Himalayan region, an army spokesman said. India has accused Pakistan of training rebels and pushing them into Indian Kashmir to stoke an insurgency against New Delhi’s rule. Islamabad denies the charge, saying it is doing its best to prevent rebel incursions.
— AFP

Five soldiers killed in Cambodia mine blast
Five Cambodian soldiers who were clearing landmines have been killed after one of the devices accidentally exploded, an official said Wednesday. The accident occurred Tuesday in the northwestern province of Oddar Meanchey, 445 kilometres northwest of Phnom Penh, said Thon Nol, provincial cabinet chief. ‘Five soldiers were killed instantly in the blast,’ he told AFP by telephone, adding that another soldier was also seriously injured. ‘They were demining in the area at the request of villagers who want to build a road,’ Thon Nol said. The area was one of the strongholds of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, accused of killing hundreds of thousand people during their 1975-1979 rule.
— AFP

Nine dead in China coal mine blast
Nine miners were killed and two others remained missing following an explosion on Wednesday at a coal mine in China’s southwest Sichuan province, state press reported. Twenty-eight miners were underground at the Aotian coal mine in Xingwen county when the gas blast occurred in the early hours, with 17 of the workers rescued, according to the Xinhua news agency. The mine has an annual capacity of 60,000 tonnes and is licensed, Xinhua said, adding the cause of the blast was under investigation. China’s coal mines are regarded as the most dangerous in the world, with 5,986 workers dying in the industry last year, according to official figures. Another 2,235 people were killed in ore mining accidents, government statistics show.
— AFP

UN appeals for end to Mogadishu clashes
The United Nations on Wednesday appealed to warring Somali factions to stop pitched battles in the streets of the bullet-scarred capital that have left dozens killed and nearly 200 injured. Francois Fall, the UN special representative for Somalia, urged Islamic militia and gunmen loyal to a US-backed warlord alliance to end three days of hostilities that have claimed at least 40 lives, mainly civilians. ‘Whatever the allegiances, the intermittent conflict between heavily armed camps has resulted in indiscriminate loss of life and has created fear and chaos for those civilians trapped in the crossfire,’ Fall said.
— AFP

Land programme draws protests
in Bolivia
A plan by Bolivia’s leftist government to redistribute up to 54,000 square miles of land to the poor generated protests Tuesday by leaders in the wealthy province of Santa Cruz — the stronghold of opposition to leftist President Evo Morales. The majority of the land to be redistributed — an area roughly the size of Iowa — lies in the eastern lowlands of Santa Cruz province, an agricultural region that is the impoverished Andean nation’s economic engine. The region contributes one-third of Bolivia’s GDP. It’s also where the most of the large and legally dubious land holdings exist, according to the government. Morales, whose government has close ties to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, has set May 31 as the date to begin redistributing the land the government says was obtained illegally and is not being used to grow crops.
— AP

US denies visa to Peruvian candidate
The US embassy in Lima stripped Peru’s nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala of his US visa, making him unable to attend a meeting with human rights groups, one of his spokesmen said Tuesday. Carlos Tapia said that Humala was informed of the US measure which Tapia said US officials justified by alleging that Humala had taken part in some act against a democratic government. Humala, 43, is a leftist populist and a cashiered military officer who has been accused of human rights abuses in battling Peru’s rebels. He won the first round but not with an absolute majority. He faces a runoff with social democrat Alan Garcia on June 4.
— AFP

Chavez to discuss poverty with
Pope Benedict
Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez will discuss poverty when he meets for the first time with Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday at the Vatican, the state news agency said Tuesday citing diplomatic sources. ‘Poverty is a shared problem in Latin America and in the case of Venezuela, Chavez’ current government is promoting programs geared to eliminating it,’ the state news agency ABN said quoting Caracas’ ambassador to the Vatican, Ivan Rincon Urdaneta. Since he began his presidency in 1999, this will be the third visit by Chavez to the Vatican, but his first visit with the German pontiff. Chavez says he is a fervent Christian and frequently quotes the Bible in his speeches.
— AFP

Tornado kills
three in Texas
Three people were killed and at least six injured when tornadoes moved through North Texas, a county official said Wednesday. At least one tornado touched down late Tuesday near Anna, a town of about 6,500 residents about 40 miles north of Dallas, said Jamie Nicolay, of the Collin County homeland security and health care services department. Tornadoes were also reported in the Texas Panhandle town of Childress and in south-eastern Oklahoma, but no injuries were reported. The North Texas victims included an elderly couple and a teenager, but their identities have not been released, Nicolay said. She did not know where they were when the tornado struck.
— Reuters