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A united China and Japan kept up the pressure on North Korea on Sunday following landmark talks overshadowed by global jitters at the Stalinist regime's stated plan to test an atom bomb.
   The visiting Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, reaffirmed their commitment to a non-nuclear Korean peninsular, after the first top level Sino-Japanese summit in Beijing since 2001.
   The two countries, who have been uneasy neighbours in recent years, were meeting one day after a shooting incident on the heavily fortified Korean border set off alarm bells around the world.
   'Both sides expressed deep concern about recent situations over the Korean peninsula, including the issue of nuclear tests,' said a joint statement after Abe's meetings with Wen and Chinese president Hu Jintao.
   It also said both nations would 'work hard' to push for the resumption of the stalled six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear issue.
   China and Japan were committed to realising 'a non-nuclear Korean peninsula as well as maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia,' according to the statement.
   The North Korean issue has cast a shadow over Abe's visit to China, his first foreign trip since becoming prime minister two weeks ago. He is due to travel to Seoul on Monday for talks with the South Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun.
   The world has been on alert after North Korea said last week it would test its first atom bomb, a threat that could theoretically be carried out at any time.
   Before leaving Tokyo, Abe, who forged his career as a hardliner on North Korea, said he would 'exchange frank opinions' with Beijing and Seoul.
   'We have to stop North Korea from conducting a nuclear test,' he said.
   China and South Korea have in the past adopted a more conciliatory line and warned against further isolating impoverished North Korea, a reclusive regime enveloped by a personality cult surrounding Kim Jong-Il.
   In North Korea, official media reported patriotic celebrations marking the ninth anniversary Sunday of Kim taking office as ruling party chief, praising his Songun (military-first) policy.
   'We should display the might of Songun Korea and bring about a great surge in the building of a great prosperous, powerful nation under the leadership of Kim Jong-Il,' the state news agency KCNA said.
   It made no reference to the plans for a nuclear test announced Tuesday by the regime, nor has there been any official reaction to a UN Security Council statement Friday urging Pyongyang to drop the idea.
   On Saturday, South Korean soldiers fired dozens of warning shots at North Korean troops who had strayed over the frontier, the most heavily defended in the world.
   It was the first time since May that troops from the North had crossed the military demarcation line into the sensitive no-man's land separating the two nations, which remain technically at war after the 1950-1953 Korean War.
   The five men, one of whom appeared armed, later returned to their own side, but the incident jarred nerves already frayed by intense speculation over when a test might go ahead.
   In Seoul, a senior foreign ministry official said that Chun Yung-Woo, the South's chief delegate to stalled six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear programme, would meet Monday in Beijing with Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei.

The Gulf press warned of the 'imminent' threat of a Palestinian civil war after Islamist prime minister Ismail Haniyeh renewed his refusal to recognise Israel as called for by moderate president Mahmud Abbas.
   'Palestinian domestic affairs are more dangerous than ever,' the Saudi daily Okaz said in an editorial, headlined: 'Palestinian civil war imminent.'
   'The tell-tale signs of civil war are more present and pressing after the huge demonstration organised by Hamas,' the paper said, referring to the rally in Gaza City Friday addressed by Haniya.
   'A massive clash between the two main factions of the Palestinian people,' the Islamist Hamas and Abbas's Fatah, threatens to erupt in the 'near future', the paper added, calling on the 'wise men of the (Arab) nation to intervene rapidly and forcefully'.
   'The most painful aspect is that civil war is precisely what Israel wants the most,' the paper concluded.
   The United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan concurred, saying: 'Israel would love to see the Palestinian people tear themselves apart in a bloody confrontation.
   'It is necessary that the hand of reconciliation be extended to defuse the ticking bomb of sedition aimed at destroying Palestinian national unity.'
   In the gas-rich emirate of Qatar, the Al-Sharq newspaper warned the Palestinian president and his Western backers that they could not simply ignore Hamas and its concerns.
   'The large number of Palestinians who rallied around Haniya deserve to be taken into account' in any settlement of the crisis, it said.
   A dozen people have been killed in clashes between supporters of Fatah and Hamas in recent days.
   
   Palestinian killed by Israeli army in West Bank
   A Palestinian militant was killed early Sunday by Israeli soldiers who were staging an incursion into the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank, a Palestinian security source said.
   The victim, Hussamah Saleh, 23, was a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is loosely affiliated to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party.
   Three other Palestinians were wounded in the exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops, the security source said.
   The Israeli army confirmed the incident.
   'Soldiers saw an armed man and opened fire, wounding or killing him,' a spokesman said.
   The latest death brings to 5,408 the number of fatalities since the 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, the large majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

An Australian company developing a revolutionary super-fast weapons system has been approached secretly by China in an attempt to secure the technology, the company said Sunday.
   The weapon, with an electronic firing mechanism which enables it to fire at a rate of up to a million rounds a minute, is partly funded by the United States and Australian governments, a Metal Storm Ltd executive said.
   'The company confirms that it has received phone calls from a particular individual who it turns out was acting on behalf of the Chinese,' chief operating officer Ian Gillespie said.
   Confirmation of the approach comes after inventor Mike O'Dwyer told Australia's Nine Network television last week that the Chinese military had offered him more than 100 million US dollars to move to Beijing.
   O'Dwyer, who left the publicly-listed company some two years ago, said China had been pursuing the technology for several years.
   He said a Chinese official told him in a telephone call in which the 100 million dollars were offered: 'We don't need any Metal Storm weapons, we don't need any of the paperwork, none of that.
   'What we want is you. We want you and your family in Beijing.'
   O'Dwyer said he refused the offer and informed the Australian government, which has invested some 10 million US dollars in the project.

Tamil Tiger rebels Sunday accused Sri Lankan government troops of bracing for a fresh offensive around the northern peninsula of Jaffna after both sides suffered losses in a battle elsewhere.
   The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam also called on Norwegian peace monitors to step and check the frontlines, the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website reported.
   'We have reliable military intelligence that suggests that the Sri Lanka military is in full preparation to launch offensive operations into our territory,' the LTTE's political wing leader SP Thamilselvan was quoted as saying.
   'We want to ensure that we are not blamed for the outbreak of war as consequence to any Sri Lankan offensive,' Thamilselvan said.
   The area saw heavy fighting in August, which Nordic peace monitors said the Tigers initiated. After two weeks, the military regained territory lost to the guerrillas following intense fighting that claimed hundreds of lives of both sides.
   There was no immediate reaction from the military to the latest LTTE allegations, but the defence ministry has maintained that it was engaged only in defensive operations.
   The Tiger charge also followed heavy fighting in the east of the island. The defence ministry said 12 government soldiers were missing Sunday following fierce fighting with Tamil rebels in the district of Batticaloa.
   There were conflicting statements on casualties from the government and the LTTE after the skirmishes, which erupted Friday and carried on into the following day.
   The rebels said they had recovered the bodies of 13 government soldiers and had taken another prisoner.

A bodyguard for Hollywood couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt allegedly assaulted a British photographer outside their
   luxury hotel in the western Indian city of Pune, media reports said.
   Indian television channel Headlines Today broadcast footage of a man it identified as a security employee of the couple grabbing the photographer by the neck.
   'I am totally shaken by the treatment I got from the private security official,' photographer Sam Relph was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying pm Simdau.
   Relph had been trying to take pictures of the couple's two bodyguards when the alleged incident took place, PTI said.
   It said the bodyguard in question had ordered Relph to stop following the couple. PTI did not name Relph's employer.
   Jolie and Pitt arrived in India on Thursday to shoot a movie based on the murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.
   Aarti Surendranath, who is making arrangements for the movie shoot, had no comment on the alleged incident.
   The news reports quoted Relph as saying he was considering filing a police complaint.
   'I have not yet filed any case. But I am considering (it),' PTI quoted him as saying.
   The couple are expected to spend a month in India filming 'A Mighty Heart,' based on the book of the same name by Pearl's widow Mariane about her husband's abduction and murder by Islamic militants in Pakistan in 2002.
   Jolie plays Mariane while Dan Futterman plays Pearl.
   The arrival of Pitt and Jolie in Pune has sparked a media frenzy as journalists try to track them down.
   PTI said they took a ride through the city on Friday in a three-wheel 'auto-rick-shaw' taxi.

Kofi Annan, the first son of sub-Saharan Africa to head the United Nations, is standing down after a decade in which the continent’s respect for the body sank even if it did not hold him responsible.
   South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon was set to be formally endorsed as the new UN chief on Monday, bringing to an end the former Ghanaian diplomat’s ten-year tenure of the world body. While leaders of the world’s poorest continent have paid tribute to Annan’s personal qualities, they have never been more frustrated at their lack of influence nor less welcoming of a UN presence on their turf.
   The United Nations can point to few successes in Africa during Annan’s turn at the helm, while his failure to implement reform of the decision-making Security Council has left the continent on the brink of revolt.
   South African president Thabo Mbeki recently described Annan as ‘an outstanding global leader who has done Africa proud’ but his verdict on the institution he leads was less complimentary verdict.
   ‘Why must we listen to them?,’ he asked at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana. ‘When we are not represented properly in these institutions, why do they think they have the capacity to take decisions for us?’
   According to Norman Mlambo, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Africa Institute, Annan has done little to shift the focus of world attention towards the continent.
   ‘There is no sense that Africa got a better deal during the time of Kofi Annan,’ said Mlambo. ‘I do not think there was any real shift to focus on Africa. It was business as usual for the UN.’
   The UN was confronted by no shortage of African crises during the Annan era, including conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur.
   One of the largest challenges was in Sierra Leone, where a 17,000-strong UN force helped end a 10-year civil war and oversee democratic elections.
   It can also point to a degree of success in neighbouring Liberia, with warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor eventually arrested after a UN tribunal issued a war crimes warrant.
   In the third West African trouble spot, the Ivory Coast, the record has been less successful. A UN-imposed deadline for elections later this month, designed to resolve a conflict simmering since 2002, has been rejected by local leaders.

A group of prominent Myanmar politicians best known for fighting in the 1940s liberation war against Britain on Sunday urged the military government to release six activists detained last month.
   'We appeal for you to show compassion to them and release them as soon as possible,' the Veteran Politicians group said in an open letter to the ruling junta's supreme leader senior general Than Shwe.
   The letter, signed by the group's octogenarian leader Thein Pe and dated Saturday, said many of those arrested had already served lengthy prison sentences over their role in a 1988 pro-democracy uprising.
   'They have gone through many hardships in their lifetimes.

North Korean state media heaped praise on leader Kim Jong-Il on Sunday’s ninth anniversary of his rise to communist party chief, but stayed silent over the regime’s threat to test a nuclear bomb.
   Official media in Pyongyang ran editorials or commentaries praising Kim’s Songun (military-first) policy, according to the (North) Korean Central News Agency monitored here.
   ‘We should display the might of Songun Korea and bring about a great surge in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful nation under the leadership of Kim Jong Il,’ it said.
   But the agency and other official media made no reference to the threatened nuclear test, according to Seoul’s Yonhap news agency which monitors all North Korean media.
   ‘Our dear leader has exerted his extraordinary foreknowledge and superior political talent to bring the all-out development of our-style socialism,’ the party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said.
   ‘Our people’s army, the core of our wholehearted unity, is the top death-defying corps that upholds and implements the ideas and routes of our leader,’ it said.

Six Taliban militants and an Afghan army soldier have been killed in clashes across insurgency-hit Afghanistan over the past few days, the Afghan defence ministry said Sunday.
   Five of the rebels were killed during a gunfight with Afghan and US-led troops in eastern Paktika province on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement.
   An armed rebel was captured following the fighting, it said.
   An Afghan soldier was killed the same day in a similar battle elsewhere in the restive province on the Pakistan border, the ministry said, without providing more details.
   On Thursday militants fired from a moving vehicle at an Afghan army patrol in southern Helmand province but failed to cause any casualties. However, one of the attackers was killed in return fire, the statement said.

The commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan is to travel to Pakistan in the coming days for talks with president Pervez Musharraf over the Taliban insurgency, the NATO-led force said here Sunday.
   Britain's general David Richards, who last week became commander of foreign troops across Afghanistan, is to hold 'full and frank' discussions with the Pakistan leader, a spokesman for the force said.
   The International Security Assistance Force would not give a date for the visit to Islamabad for security reasons. Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said the trip was due on Monday.
   ISAF also dismissed the newspaper's claim that Richards would 'confront' Musharraf about the insurgency and try to persuade him to rein in his military intelligence service, alleged by some to be involved in training Taliban.

Taiwan's government warned Sunday that rival China could launch a fresh diplomatic attempt to lure away allies from the island as it prepares to celebrate National Day.
   Foreign ministry spokesman Michel Lu said that while Taiwan enjoyed 'stable' diplomatic relations with 24 countries, the island was 'stepping up alert ... to keep close eye on any new development'.
   Taiwan will celebrate its national day on Tuesday, a day known as the 'double tenth'.
   Lu said Beijing, which regards the island as part of its territory to be reunified with China by force if necessary, had changed its behaviour in recent years, often aggressively courting Taipei's diplomatic partners.

A video lampooning the Prophet Muhammad (SM) broadcast in Denmark has angered groups in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.
   Denmark's national TV2 channel on Friday broadcast excerpts from the video showing Muhammad as a beer-drinking camel and as a drunken terrorist attacking Copenhagen.
   The video, filmed in August, was made by members of the far-right Danish People's Party.
   It shows the Prophet being mocked during a summer party, with some portraying Muhammad as dressed in a turban and wearing a belt with explosives, as others look on and laugh.
   Said Fausan Al Ansori, a spokesman for the hardline Indonesian Muhajehdin Council, 'Danish authorities should think seriously, are they going to defend, in the name of human rights, one or two of its citizens who clearly insulted the Prophet Muhammad (SM), and sacrifice its relations with the Islamic world?'

Iran on Sunday urged world powers against using the ‘language of threats’ over its nuclear programme as UN Security Council diplomats prepared to draft a resolution proposing sanctions against Tehran.
   In a meeting late on Friday, representatives from the five permanent US Security Council members plus Germany agreed to discuss sanctions against Tehran after it failed to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment operations.
   Senior US official Nicholas Burns said the so-called ‘5+1’ group would start drafting this week a sanctions resolution, although he admitted finding a consensus on the extent of punitive measures would be difficult.
   ‘I recommend to the 5+1 group not to talk to Iran with the language of threat and sanction,’ retorted Iran’s conservative parliamentary speaker Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel.
   He reaffirmed that Iran was ready to negotiate over its nuclear programme and said talks between the top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had been fruitful for both sides.
   ‘Though both sides have expressed satisfaction, some comments made in 5+1 meeting smell of threats and sanctions.’
   ‘We are ready to continue negotiations since our comments are sensible and we do not want to violate international and International Atomic Energy Agency regulations.’
   ‘If with all our talks, they still talk about threats and sanctions, then it becomes evident that our nuclear issue is only a pretext for some powers like the United States to put pressure on our nation.’
   However the momentum towards imposing some kind of UN sanctions regime on Tehran appears strong after the London meeting, which included US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and top diplomats from the five other countries.
   In a statement issued by host Britain, the group agreed to discuss sanctions and lamented Tehran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, but insisted that the door remains open to negotiations if Tehran were to back down.
   Burns, the US under secretary of state for political affairs, said that work on a new Security Council resolution under Article 41 of the UN charter, which allows for diplomatic and economic sanctions, would start next week.
   It would probably kick off Tuesday or Wednesday with a video conference involving him and his five counterparts before it is pursued a day later at the level of the ambassadors at the United Nations of the six powers, he added.
   ‘I am quite confident that we are now heading towards a sanctions resolution,’ Burns told BBC radio on Saturday.
   ‘There will be tough negotiations ahead to define the specific nature of those sanctions. This is always a complex business.’
   It remains to be seen what kind of sanctions regime will be acceptable to Russia and China, who have both always insisted on the importance of a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

A sex scandal and embarrassing revelations about the Iraq war one month before US legislative elections have left president George W Bush’s Republicans more vulnerable than ever to losing control of Congress to opposition Democrats.
   Accusations that Republicans had sought to cover up a House of Representatives lawmaker’s sexual overtures to underage boys, and a spate of damaging reports alleging government duplicity and failure in Iraq have given the Democrats their first chance since 1994 to capture Congress.
   No pollster is ready to promise a Democrat victory, as races in too many districts and states are too close to call.
   But a Newsweek poll out Saturday shows that the recent news has devastated the Republicans even on issues such as morality and national security that voters had once overwhelmingly trusted the party on.
   A Democrat victory in one or both of the bodies could force major policy compromises on the Bush presidency, whose confident command for nearly six years has relied on the Republican lock on the legislature.
   ‘The majority is certainly endangered in the House, the Senate is still leaning Republican, but just leaning,’ said political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.
   National polls show Americans now favour the Democrats: 51 per cent plan to vote for the Democrats compared to 38 per cent for Republicans, according to a Pew Institute poll released Thursday. On Friday Time reported 54 per cent for Democrats and 39 per cent for Republicans.
   For Bush’s party, their election message that they have made Americans safer since the September 11, 2001 attacks has suddenly been jeopardised.
   In late September a high level intelligence report was released that said the US occupation in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism.
   Just days later, a new book by acclaimed journalist Bob Woodward, ‘State of Denial’, rocked the White House with allegations that it was hiding the truth about the war in Iraq.
   And just as the White House got to grips with Woodward’s book, Republicans were hit with the scandal of Florida Representative Mark Foley’s sexually explicit solicitations to teenage male congressional aides.
   The news came with allegations that Republican House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert had known of Foley’s behaviour for years without stopping it. The Republican vulnerability comes despite selling themselves as the party best able to uphold ‘family values’ and protect the country, their strong point in the last elections.

The United States is putting prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and fellow Iraqi leaders on the clock, as frustration in Washington mounts at his government’s inability to stem raging violence.
   A fearsome week in Iraq which saw Baghdad’s worst rash of bombings in three years and a surge in the numbers of US soldiers killed, tightened the political screws on president George W Bush’s administration ahead of crucial November elections.
   Top US officials further sharpened the public US message towards the Maliki government—a process which started with anonymous quotes by US officials leaked to US newspapers in September—and reached a new pitch when secretary of state Condoleezza Rice flew into Baghdad on Thursday.
   Comments by influential Republican Senator John Warner, meanwhile, fuelled perceptions that a new debate may be emerging on the direction of Iraq policy among members of the administration and political allies.
   ‘The security situation is not one to be tolerated, and is not one that is helped by political inaction,’ Rice said on her trip to Baghdad this week, which started with the uncomfortable image of the US secretary of state being forced to circle the airport for 45 minutes because of a rocket attack.
   
   30 killed in Iraq violence
   The US and Iraqi forces killed 30 militia fighters Sunday during a fierce street battle in this southern city in which a US main battle tank was severely damaged.
   Fighting erupted in the southern city of Diwaniyah after an Iraqi and US force attempted to arrest a local Shiite militia leader accused of slaughtering Iraqi soldiers during a previous clash in August, officials said.
   After a battle in which a US Abrams tank was put out of action by a salvo of rocket-propelled grenades, the snatch squad returned and arrested the suspect, identified by Iraqi sources as a local leader of the Mahdi Army militia.

Nuclear power is poised for a renaissance as governments turn to the technology to face down fears about global warming and energy security, the head of the Nuclear Energy Agency believes.
   In an interview with AFP, NEA director-general Luis Echavarri explained how changes in the political climate have cast nuclear energy in a new light, putting a number of countries on the path to vast new investment programmes.
   ‘The important element is the change in the mind of policymakers,’ Echavarri says.
   ‘More policymakers are telling their populations that energy security is a big concern, that we have to be careful, and that protection of the environment is another concern,’ says Echavarri.
   The tripling of oil prices since 2002, instability in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute at the beginning of the year have made securing reliable future sources of energy a matter of national priority.
   The main resource required for nuclear power is uranium, more than half of which is produced in relatively stable OECD countries, all developed industrialised democracies, according to NEA data.
   The NEA is the nuclear research arm of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a multilateral economic coordination agency based in Paris.
   Furthermore, nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases, giving it advantages over rival technologies at a time when climate change and its apparent danger for the planet are in the spotlight.
   ‘If you put these two things together (energy security and global warming), it is very logical that policymakers are now looking at nuclear with the interest of newcomers,’ he says.
   In a broad look at likely new projects in the next few years, Echavarri says that China is expected to build 30 new reactors in the next 20-25 years while 15-20 nuclear units are under consideration in the United States.
   He says that 6-10 reactors are being reviewed in Britain, while Finland and France have begun construction of new plants.
   Japan and South Korea have never stopped their nuclear programmes, while Russia and India already have nuclear experience and it is ‘very realistic’ to expect them to add capacity to provide the electricity required to fuel their economic development.
   However, Echavarri says that nuclear power will remain steady as a proportion of total electricity production in the next 20 years—despite these new projects—because of surging demand.
   His statement reveals more about the need to find increased capacity from other sources of energy to meet demand than it does about the world’s dependence on nuclear power.

Despite cheerful words being publicly uttered by president Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the situation in Iraq is growing worse each passing day. That the condition is far from normal became evident from the fact that the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, now on a visit to Baghdad, was seen wearing a bullet-proof jacket.
   The intelligence reports here in the US and Britain, coupled with the devastating disclosures made by Bob Woodward, all point to a grim situation in Iraq. Senator Warner, who returned to Washington after a trip to Baghdad, said things that are not much different from the views
   expressed by the intelligence agencies in US and Britain and accounts given by Woodward in his book. Warner painted a gloomy picture. The United States may redraw its Iraq strategy after the mid-term congressional elections.
   More than 4,000 Iraqi soldiers have died and 8,000 others have been wounded in the last few months. More than 800 Iraqi soldiers have been involved in kidnapping. The violence is rising instead of ebbing. This was reported by the BBC World News this evening.
   Meanwhile China has threatened to hit back at EU for slapping a ban on the import of Chinese footwear. High tariff rates for two years will be imposed by EU on Chinese shoes.
   Pakistan’s star batsman Younis Khan, who declined to lead Pakistan in the ICC championship trophy now being played in India, will lead Yorkshire in the coming English cricket season. Yousuf Khan (formerly Yousuf Youhana), who converted to Islam from Christianity, will lead the Pakistan side.
   Pakistan’s president, Parvez Musharraf, has been the target of blistering attacks in the media here and in Britain. The media is questioning Musharraf’s honesty in dealing with ‘Islamic Jihadists’.
   The suspicion has been reinforced after Pakistan signed a truce with the rebels in Waziristan.
   Musharaff, however, agreed to find Osama bin-Laden if the US and Britain lead the way. The US has a strong presence in Pakistan, and there is no reason why its agents should fail to pinpoint the exact location where the most wanted man in the world is hiding.
   President Bush has full faith in Musharraf. Afghanistan’s president complained to Bush that Pakistan was not doing much to contain the cross-border movement of the suspected terrorists. Karzai and the media in US
   and Britain believe that terrorists have safe sanctuaries and training centres in Pakistan.
   People living in the areas that were hit by an earthquake last October in Pakistan are bracing themselves to face another bitter winter this year.
   Nothing much has been done to provide shelter to people whose homes were razed to the ground by the earthquake, in which more than 80,000 people perished.

Russia’s military would go to the defence of Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia if the Georgian government launched an assault, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday.
   Ivanov said that Russia did not want war with Georgia, but if there was fighting in Abkhazia or South Ossetia, ‘that is another matter’.
   ‘Our peacekeepers are there and there are many Russia citizens there, as well as in Georgia,’ he was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency during an interview with state-run Vesti channel.
   ‘And if the Georgian leadership attacks our peacekeepers and Russian residents in a military sense, if ethnic cleansing and genocide starts there, then Russia will not stay on the sidelines,’ he was quoted as saying.
   Russian peacekeepers patrol both regions, which are officially part of Georgia, but broke away in the early 1990s when the Abkhaz and Ossetian ethnic groups revolted against central Georgian rule, resulting in the mass expulsion of ethnic-Georgians.
   Moscow has given Russian citizenship to nearly all remaining residents in both regions, although technically they remain in Georgia.
   Relations between Russia and Georgia are in crisis following the recent arrest in Georgia of four alleged Russian spies. In the wake of the spy scandal, Moscow ordered a complete cut of transport links with its neighbour and a ban on most trade.

Britain’s prince Harry will not be allowed to fight on the front line in Afghanistan, The Mail on Sunday newspaper said, citing senior sources in the prince’s regiment.
   Harry, third in line to the throne, reportedly threatened to quit the British Army if he was blocked from active service due to safety fears and any such decision is likely to infuriate the 22-year-old.
   Although a formal decision has yet to be made, sources in the Household Cavalry told the weekly tabloid that they thought it was too dangerous for him to deploy in Afghanistan.
   The southern Helmand province, where the bulk of about 4,500 British troops in Afghanistan are operating, has seen fierce fighting this year as soldiers take on resurgent Taliban rebels loyal to the deposed Islamist regime. Senior officers reckon the intensity of Taliban attacks is so severe that they could not risk a constitutional crisis by putting Harry’s life on the line, The Mail on Sunday said.

The United States said it was ‘shocked and profoundly saddened’ by the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a vocal critic of president Vladimir Putin.
   There was still no word from the Kremlin on the killing of Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two who won worldwide fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin’s government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya.
   She was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow in a killing prosecutors said was linked to her work.
   Paying tribute to the indomitable journalist, the US state department said Politkovskaya was ‘personally courageous and committed to seeking justice even in the face of previous death threats.’

Nelson Mandela led South Africa’s elite in honouring Desmond Tutu at a gala dinner to mark his 75th birthday, where the outspoken
   Nobel laureate was lauded for being the nation’s conscience keeper.
   The Sophiatown Swing party, themed on a musical genre that evolved in a famous Johannesburg suburb whose black residents were forcibly removed by the white minority government in 1955, took place late Saturday in the city’s upscale Sandton quarter.
   Tutu’s friend and another leading anti-apartheid icon and Nobel winner, Nelson Mandela, toasted him with a tongue-in-cheek remark that alluded to Tutu’s childlike demeanour.
   ‘You are an old man and please act your age,’ Mandela, himself a sprightly 88, said.

The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez sent Nicaragua a shipment of cut-price diesel fuel on Saturday in a demonstration of his support for Nicaragua’s leftist opposition leader, Daniel Ortega, before a November 5 presidential election.
   In a ceremony at the Atlantic port of El Rama, Ortega, a former president and now the front-runner in the election, welcomed the 84,000 gallons of diesel—the first delivery of 200,000 gallons pledged by Chavez to help alleviate frequent power blackouts in Nicaragua.
   Ortega was flanked by an alliance of Nicaraguan mayors who signed the agreement and officials from Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA.

Eight militants
killed in Kashmir
The army said on Sunday its soldiers shot dead eight suspected Muslim militants as they tried to cross into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan. An officer and a soldier were also killed in the two separate gunbattles in Gurez and Poonch areas along the Line of Control, a de facto border splitting Kashmir between India and Pakistan. 'We have foiled two infiltration attempts and killed eight militants along the LoC,' an army spokesman said. The encounter at Poonch, 450 km southwest of Srinagar, the state's summer capital, occurred on Sunday morning while clashes at Gurez, 120 km to the north, began on Saturday night and were continuing more than 12 hours later.
— Reuters

Four killed in
south Thailand
Three Muslims and a Buddhist have been killed in separate shootings by suspected Islamic militants in Thailand's troubled south, the police said Sunday. A Muslim rubber plantation tapper was shot dead Sunday morning in Pattani, one of three southern provinces bordering Malaysia that has been plagued by separatist violence and other unrest. His death followed three killings late Saturday. In Pattani, a Muslim policeman was shot dead as he travelled to work, while in Yala province a Muslim villager who worked as an informant for the military was shot dead in front of his house. In Narathiwat province, a 65-year-old Buddhist villager was shot four times by two men on a motorcycle as he walked home. He died
instantly.
— AFP

Rebels ambush Philippine
airport site
About 30 communist guerrillas on Sunday attacked an international airport under construction in the central Philippines, using bombs to destroy equipment and seizing guns from guards, the police said. The New People's Army rebels did not harm any workers in the attack on the sprawling site at Silay City in Negros Occidental province, but assault could delay completion of the Japanese-funded project by several months, the police said. 'This is an act of terrorism, an act of economic sabotage,' Silay police chief Superintendent Celestino Guara told The Associated Press by telephone as he inspected damage at the airport. The Maoist guerrillas, disguised as policemen and armed with assault rifles, barged into the construction site shortly after midnight and disarmed the guards.
— AFP

Smoke worsens
in SE Asia
Visibility plunged to 50 metres in parts of Borneo island on Saturday and Singapore recorded its highest pollution reading in nearly a decade as fires in Indonesia sent acrid smoke across Southeast Asia. Singapore issued its first haze-related health warning this year. The daily air pollution index hit 128, the National Environment Agency said on its Web site. A reading above 100 is rated unhealthy. In Central Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo, visibility in some places had plunged to 50 metres governor Agustin Teras Narang told Elshinta radio.
— Reuters

Bolivia hints at expropriating mines
Bolivia’s president said Saturday the government should expropriate mines where private owners have not invested sufficiently, taking aim at the industry after clashes between rival bands of miners left at least 16 dead. On Friday, Bolivian president Evo Morales replaced his minister of mines and the head of the state mining company. Morales nationalised the country’s petroleum reserves on May 1, giving all foreign oil companies six months to negotiate new contracts that cede majority control of their Bolivian operations to the state or leave the country. Hundreds of miners belonging to independent cooperatives and state-employed miners have fought each other with gunfire and dynamite over access to the Huanuni mine.
— AP

Pope urges racial reconciliation
in Australia
Pope Benedict XVI has called on Australians to do more towards racial reconciliation between settlers and the country’s Aborigines, many of whom live impoverished and marginalised lives. The Pope made the call in a message read on his behalf to a gathering of Aboriginal Catholics in the outback town of Alice Springs on Saturday night, to mark the 20th anniversary of a visit by his predecessor Pope John Paul II. Australia still had much to achieve on the path to racial reconciliation between the mostly-European settlers and the indigenous people, Pope Benedict said in the message.
— AFP

Oscar-nominated child star pregnant
Oscar-nominated child star Keisha Castle-Hughes has announced she is pregnant to her teenage boyfriend and is to give birth next year. The 16-year-old New Zealand actress is ‘extremely happy about it’, her agent Gail Cowan told the Herald on Sunday newspaper. Neither Castle-Hughes or her mother could be contacted, nor could the baby’s 19-year-old father. She had a brief role in ‘Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith’ and will next be seen as Mary in ‘The Nativity Story’, about the life of the Virgin Mary before the birth of Christ, set for release on December 1. The story, to be told with a strong female perspective, will follow Mary and Joseph’s life before the birth of Christ as their love, faith and beliefs are tested.
— AFP

Somali militiamen arrest 100
protestors
Dozens of people protested Saturday against an Islamic militia that has seized much of southern Somalia, a day after the group appointed a new administration in the country’s third largest city. One person was injured when militiamen fired into the air as they tried to disperse the crowd in Kismayo, a key seaport about 260 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu. Abdu-kadir Ahmed, the newly appointed officer in charge of security in Kismayo, said about 100 demonstrators had been arrested for taking part in protests Friday and Saturday. Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, throwing the country into anarchy.
— AFP

New wall not expected to stop migrants
Rising from the Pacific surf and zig-zagging along the border for 14 miles, Tijuana’s border fence has done little but push illegal migrants into the Arizona desert and feed the smuggling industry since it went up in 1994. Today, as the US prepares to build a high-tech barrier with 700 miles of extra fencing, motion detectors and remote controlled devices, smugglers are already figuring out how to beat the new security. ‘It doesn’t matter what they do. There isn’t a wall that can stop people because there will always be someone who finds a way to cross,’ said 37-year-old Jose Lopez. Because he has three children still in the US, Lopez is considering crossing again, even though he risks three years in jail because of prior arrests for carrying fake ID.
— AP