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The Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas, said Monday an agreement had been reached with governing Islamist movement Hamas on the programme for an incoming national unity government.
   ‘We have finished defining the political programme of a national unity government, based on the national reconciliation document,’ which was agreed on by Palestinian factions on June 27, Abbas told reporters.
   The prime minister, Ismail Haniya, the head of the Hamas-led government, confirmed the deal.
   ‘This agreement was anticipated because the will was real and honest in the greater interest of the Palestinian people and to strengthen national unity and to protect (Palestinian) rights and principles,’ he said.
   Haniya's Islamist movement Hamas and Abbas's moderate Fatah party have yet to agree on the actual composition of the government.
   Palestinians hope that a unity government could lead to badly needed Western aid flowing back into the depressed territories, which have been gripped by a political and financial crisis since Hamas swept to power in March.

About 1,500 Lebanese protested against British prime minister Tony Blair’s visit to Beirut on Monday, accusing him of backing Israel’s 34-day war with Hezbollah guerrillas.
   Troops, riot police and barbed-wire barriers kept the demonstrators well away from the government building in downtown Beirut where Blair met the prime minister, Fouad Siniora.
   ‘I’m standing here because Blair is the killer of Lebanese children,’ said Ibad Malak, a 19-year-old student.
   Blair angered many Lebanese by his refusal to call for an early ceasefire in the conflict which killed nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
   He was discussing with Siniora a UN truce in effect since August 14 and Britain’s contribution to postwar reconstruction.
   ‘Beirut is free, Blair out,’ chanted the protesters. Some carried placards reading ‘Thank you Blair for delivering the intelligent bombs’—referring to US flights laden with bombs for Israel that refueled in Scotland during the war.
   ‘Blair you killer, go to hell,’ read another placard.
   ‘Tony Blair supports America and Israel and has supported the war, so how can we welcome him here,’ said Ali Shahine, 21, a hotel worker who was among the protesters.
   Security sources said about 1,500 people had turned out for the protests, organised by Hezbollah and its pro-Syrian allies.
   Blair had been due to meet the parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, but an aide to the Shia Muslim leader said he had left on a private visit abroad on Saturday.
   The aide would not say whether Berri had deliberately snubbed Blair, but said his trip had been previously planned.
   An aide to Blair said two Hezbollah ministers had declined to attend a planned meeting of the British leader with the Lebanese government. Blair had no plans to meet pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud during his visit.
   Top Shia cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said on Sunday Blair was not welcome because of his support for Israel and Washington. He also criticized Blair for allowing US arms to be shipped via Britain to Israel for use against Lebanon.
   Fadlallah said Blair should have been told to stay away so he would ‘know we are not so naive as to welcome him when he has contributed to killing us and slaughtering our children.’
   Blair began his Middle East tour in Israel on Saturday on a peace drive that analysts say is aimed partly at countering criticism of his pro-US stance during the Lebanon war and partly at bolstering his political legacy.
   Last week Blair was forced to concede he will leave office within a year to quell a rebellion in his Labour Party.

NATO and Afghan forces killed 92 Taliban rebels in air and artillery strikes in southern Afghanistan, the latest deaths in a major anti-insurgent offensive, the alliance said Monday.
   The figure brought to more than 510 the number of rebels NATO says it has killed since Operation Medusa was launched amid bitter fighting on September 2 near Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.
   The casualties came as the foreign and local troops counterattacked Islamist militants who were trying to strengthen their positions in restive Panjwayi and Zhari districts.
   ‘Further analysis of yesterday’s (Sunday’s) battle damage assessment reports that 92 insurgents were killed,’ a statement from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
   It said the latest deaths were separate from 94 Taliban said to have been killed in other battles overnight Saturday and early Sunday.
   ‘Afghan and ISAF troops kept the pressure up on Taliban fighters yesterday through joint fires and aggressive patrolling, gaining ground and driving them from strongholds in Kandahar’s Panjwayi and Zhari districts,’ it added.
   The Taliban, who are leading a stepped-up insurgency in southern Afghanistan, are firmly entrenched in the conservative desert districts, which lie around 35 kilometres (20 miles) from Kandahar.
   The area has seen several deadly attacks on foreign troops and civilians.
   Medusa is the biggest operation in the south since ISAF took over the area on July 31 from a US-led coalition that had driven the Taliban from power in late 2001.
   The Taliban rejected the alliance’s figures and said only two of its fighters had died on Sunday. ‘The invader troops are lying,’ spokesman Mohammed Hanif told AFP.

Around 40 Hindu activists stormed a girls convent school in Lucknow on Sunday after a few terrified pupils fainted because the school allowed a man to claim Jesus had entered his body, witnesses and police said.
   The activists belonging to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the nation’s main opposition party, broke windows of the school’s chapel and damaged flower pots and doors in the 134-year-old school in Lucknow.
   ‘We have already arrested three men,’ senior police officer GK Goswami said, adding further arrests would be made.
   BJP activists were angered the principal of the prestigious Loreto Convent school in Lucknow allowed the man to act as if he was a ‘medium’ for Jesus Christ, causing girls to faint in shock.
   An eyewitness told Reuters the man appeared on stage, first meditating and then writhing and shuddering on the ground as if in pain.
   ‘After a few agonizing moments he was up on his feet declaring Jesus was inside him and that he could bless anyone who sought his divine exaltation,’ the school girl said on the condition of anonymity.

Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger guerrillas continued shelling on the island’s northern frontline on Monday as the army consolidated its recent advance and threatened to strike again at rebel gun positions.
   The army stormed rebel bunkers along the frontline in the besieged northern Jaffna peninsula on Saturday in what it described as a ‘defensive’ operation to neutralise rebel gun positions.
   As the soldiers advanced a few hundred metres across the heavily mined frontline, 33 were killed and 132 wounded, the defence ministry said.
   Radio intercepts suggested 115 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels had also died, it added.
   On Sunday, the LTTE, which admits to losing just six fighters, accused the government of destroying what was left of a 2002 ceasefire agreement and declaring war on the rebels through its recent offensives.
   The government responded by blaming the LTTE for ignoring its appeals to come to the negotiating table and intensifying its attacks on civilians and the military.
   ‘In this backdrop, it will be imperative for the security forces to neutralise the enemy artillery and mortar threat to Jaffna peninsula, if the LTTE is to continue with their sporadic attacks against the civilians and the security forces in Jaffna,’ the defence ministry said in a statement on Monday.
   The ministry did not say if it intended to carry out air strikes against rebel gun positions or try to advance overland towards the strategic Elephant Pass, which controls the southern tip of the Jaffna peninsula.
   Hundreds of civilians, troops and Tiger fighters have been killed since Sri Lanka’s two-decade civil war re-erupted in late July, and more than 200,000 people have fled to refugee camps across the island’s rural northeast.
   The LTTE has appealed to Sri Lanka’s main donor nations to exert pressure on the government to halt its offensives at a meeting in Brussels due on Tuesday.
   But diplomats say it is difficult to see how to rescue the peace process with both sides apparently more interested in fighting than in talking.
   Tempers have risen further since the army captured a rebel stronghold last week near the strategic Trincomalee harbour in the northeast of the island after days of artillery battles.
   The rebels demand that the army vacate the area of Sampur, the first major capture of territory by either side since the ceasefire was signed.

The Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, said Monday he hoped to have substantive talks with the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba.
   He said his talks with the Singh carried ‘much importance’.
   ‘I hope and will make full efforts to make the talks substantive, so that these are result-oriented,’ Musharraf told reporters before leaving for Belgium en route to Havana.
   This will be the first high-level contact between the two countries since multiple blasts on commuter trains in India’s financial capital Mumbai in July stalled a peace process between nuclear armed rivals.
   India and Pakistan launched peace talks, aimed at resolving their decades-old dispute, in January 2004, two years after retreating from the brink of their fourth war.
   The rivals had completed three rounds of talks when New Delhi abruptly suspended the dialogue following the July 11 Mumbai attacks which killed 183 people and wounded more than 800.
   India pointed the finger at Islamabad and a Pakistan-backed Islamic rebel group for the blasts.
   Pakistan’s foreign ministry rejected as baseless the allegations that it was harbouring terrorists that carry out attacks in India.
   Musharraf, who last met Singh in April 2005 in India, said he would try to remove Indian misuderstandings.

Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamed said Monday that members of the ruling party had been bribed to vote against him in an election that blocked his bid to address its national assembly.
   In a major escalation of his clash with the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which has rocked Malaysia’s political scene in recent months, he called his successor a liar and said he would not stop his campaign of criticism.
   Mahathir suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday in a grassroots ballot in his Kubang Pasu constituency in Kedah state, placing ninth among 15 candidates vying for seven positions as delegates to the November assembly.
   ‘I am confident that the decision in the recent elections is caused by bribes. I can’t prove this but I know somebody saw money being passed to voters in envelopes ... it was money that decided the day,’ Mahathir told reporters.
   ‘I know that bribery happens in any politics but I did not think that the ruling party itself used money politics,’ he said.
   Mahathir said the envelopes contained 200 ringgit (54 dollars) and a list of numbers which corresponded to the nominees running in the party ballot.
   ‘This so-called defeat in Kubang Pasu has not changed my mind at all. Actually it was a defeat but for me it’s a moral victory.’
   The 81-year-old said the ruling United Malays National Organisation had gone to enormous lengths to silence him.
   ‘For this small election, the state government mobilised resources making it look like a presidential election,’ he said.
   ‘I say three cheers for this government ... you have used a big sledgehammer to kill a single mosquito.’
   Mahathir, who has been enraged by Abdullah’s decision to drop his pet projects and has accused him of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement, said the premier had lied to smooth over the cancellation of a proposed new bridge to Singapore.
   ‘Abdullah always makes statements which are actually lies,’ Mahathir said, adding that he had ‘developed a habit of lying’ after becoming friendly with the leaders of Britain, the United States and Australia.

Sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea’s military threat should be enforced unless it returns to six-nation disarmament talks, the US envoy to those talks said Monday.
   Christopher Hill described the communist state’s missile launches in July as ‘blackmail’ and said the missile-related sanctions ordered by the United Nations Security Council were a response to that threat.
   The North ‘needs to understand that if they get involved in this type of production of weapons of mass destruction, if they fire off missiles as an effort to intimidate their neighbours, as an effort to create a situation of blackmail, they should not be surprised if nations take actions which are essentially designed to protect us and our financial systems,’ Hill said.
   He was speaking after talks with the South Korean unification minister, Lee Jong-Seok, on the last leg of an Asian tour aimed at restarting the stalled talks.
   Hill offered carrots as well as sticks, saying the US is prepared to implement ‘every single word’ of the September agreement which ‘lays out a really bold path for a whole different future for the DPRK (North Korea).’
   North Korea last year declared it has developed nuclear weapons and media reports have said it may be preparing for an underground test.
   Hill said he discussed that possibility with Lee but had no information on whether any test—which would be seen worldwide as a ‘very provocative act, a very negative act’—was imminent.
   The US drive to enforce the missile-related sanctions is likely to be received unenthusiastically in South Korea, which is promoting a policy of engagement with its neighbour.
   But Hill, in earlier comments at the airport, said the North’s nuclear weapons drive was destabilising Northeast Asia and forcing other countries to reassess their own security needs.

An Israeli court on Monday found a Jewish settler guilty of killing four Palestinians in the West Bank last year as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
   Asher Weissgan, from the settlement of Alon Shvut, who ferried Palestinian workers to the Shilo industrial zone, shot two people in his car after snatching a rifle from a security guard on August 17, 2005.
   Continuing his rampage, he opened fire on a group of Palestinian workers, killing one and seriously injuring two others before he was wrestled to the ground and arrested. One of those injured later died of his wounds.
   The attack was part of attempts by extreme-right Jewish groups and individuals to thwart Israel’s withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank settlements after 38 years of occupation.
   At the time, then prime minister Ariel Sharon condemned Weisgann’s attack as a ‘Jewish act of terror’.
   Two weeks earlier, another Jewish extremist killed four Israeli Arabs in the town of Shfaram in northern Israel before he was lynched by angry crowd.
   It was not immediately clear when Weissgan would be sentenced.

Thailand has no secret CIA prisons, the foreign ministry said Monday, denying a US media report that the government allowed the United States to interrogate a top al-Qaeda figure here.
   ‘We never had a secret prison,’ foreign ministry spokesman Kitti Wasinond said, referring to the report published Saturday by the New York Times.
   The report said the Central Intelligence Agency brought Abu Zubaydah, a henchman of terror chief Osama bin Laden who was captured in Pakistan, to ‘a secret safe house in Thailand’ for interrogation in early 2002.
   He was the first top al-Qaeda operative captured by the US in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
   Earlier this month, the US president, George W Bush, for the first time confirmed the existence of secret overseas CIA prisons for suspected terrorists, and defended tough interrogations branded as torture by human-rights groups.
   The Washington Post also reported late last year that Thailand, a US ally in its fight again extremists, was one of several foreign countries involved in the CIA’s covert detention centres for top al-Qaeda suspects.
   The prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, denied the report, saying at the time the only terror suspect wanted by the US ever to be held in Thailand was Hambali, a key Indonesian member of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah extremist network who was seized north of Bangkok in August 2003.

Thousands of protesters came pouring back into the centre of Taiwan’s capital on Monday, heeding a call to keep up a round-the-clock rally urging President Chen Shui-bian to resign.
   The surge of arrivals boosted the morale of organizers who drew an estimated 200,000 people into the streets on Saturday, only to see those numbers dwindle Sunday amid chilly weather and a heavy downpour.
   ‘To tell the truth, we were surprised by the new arrivals,’ said Emile Sheng, spokesman for the anti-Chen campaign. ‘Doubtless this was a boost to our morale.’
   Sheng put the turnout early Monday evening at around 10,000.
   Chen has been under pressure to resign after his son-in-law Chao Chien-ming was detained and indicted on suspicion of insider trading and taking bribes. Chen has publicly apologised for Chao’s actions but said he would not resign.
   Prosecutors are also looking at whether Chen misused funds intended for national affairs and questioned him last month.

Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has offered a two-month suspension of uranium enrichment but did not say if this would be done in time to start talks to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis, an EU diplomat said.
   Larijani made the offer during talks in Vienna Sunday with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the diplomat said.
   ‘He offered a two-month suspension but there were no details and it was not clear when it would start,’ the diplomat said.
   But Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Iranian ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog in Vienna, denied that Larijani had said this.
   Gregory Schulte, US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters Monday that if Iran did suspend enrichment this would have to be ‘not for one or two months’ but that the ‘suspension needs to be in place as long as negotiations proceed.’
   Six world powers have offered Iran talks on a package of trade and other benefits if it suspends uranium enrichment, which makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material, and threatened UN sanctions if Tehran did not comply.
   Iran refuses to suspend enrichment and defied a UN Security Council August 31 deadline for it to freeze the strategic nuclear fuel work.
   Solana and Larijani said Sunday they had made progress in last-ditch talks to avert UN sanctions and would meet again this week.
   Solana said the two men ‘had cleared up some of the misunderstanding that existed’ over Iran’s response to the offer of benefits from six world powers.
   The United States is pushing for sanctions at the Security Council to punish Iran for its defiance in continuing uranium enrichment.
   Solana and Larijani were believed to be trying to find a face-saving deal.
   Iran says its nuclear programme is a peaceful effort to generate electricity but the United States charges that Tehran is secretly developing atomic weapons.
   
   Negotiation still best option to settle crisis: IAEA
   UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that negotiation remains the best option to settle the Iranian nuclear crisis and that he hoped for a breakthrough soon.
   ‘I think negotiation is the best option to find a durable solution,’ ElBaradei told reporters as a meeting began in Vienna of the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
   He was speaking the day after top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said they would hold another meeting this week after having made progress in last-ditch talks at the weekend to avert UN sanctions over Tehran’s uranium enrichment.
   ElBaradei said: ‘I hope that when they meet... that we will be able to see an agreement to go back to the negotiating table.’
   ‘The window of opportunity however is not very long,’ ElBaradei added.

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, has told his closest staff and colleagues to cease their personal attacks against finance minister Gordon Brown because he fears it is damaging his party’s chances at re-election, The Times reported in an early edition of its Monday paper.
   According to the newspaper, the prime minister told his closest allies that however angry they felt about last week’s events — where eight junior government members resigned and a letter was delivered to Blair demanding his resignation — they should not make the situation worse.
   Blair and Brown reportedly feuded over the prime minister’s belief that Brown was involved in the events which plunged the governing Labour Party into crisis over Blair’s future in office.
   Brown, the odds-on favourite to succeed Blair once he steps down, denied any involvement with the letter and the resignations in an interview with the BBC on Sunday.
   ‘Tony has issued an omerta,’ an unnamed minister told The Times, referring to the Mafia’s code of silence.
   ‘He is not happy with Gordon about what happened and neither are we, but he believes that Gordon will win and sees nothing but further turmoil from an open attempt to stop him.’
   The issue of when Blair will go has dogged his leadership for nearly two years. In 2004 he said he would not stand for a fourth consecutive term of office but did not say when he would hand over power.

A hardline Iranian newspaper on Monday described the September 11 attacks as a ‘black conspiracy inside the White House’, publishing what it said was evidence the strikes could have been staged by US officials, reports AFP
   The paper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, compiled a full page of reports from foreign press sources which it said cast serious doubts on the official version of events.
   The reports ‘show the involvement of the American officials in the event,’ it said.
   One of its sub headlines read: ‘The American (government) staged the 11 September event to justify its attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan,’ while the main headline read, ‘Black conspiracy inside the White House’.
   ‘Many Americans completely believe that their country’s officials have concealed their involvement in the September 11 tragedy,’ the paper said.
   Fellow hardline daily Jomhuri Islamic also raised questions about the official version of September 11, in a story headlined, ‘The Satanic project of September 11’.
   ‘Who benefited and will benefit from this event? Who was behind it? How and why did the towers (of the World Trade Centre) collapse?’ it said.
    ‘September 11 is history, since then five years have passed but the worries and concerns from terrorism and terrorists remain in the daily life of the Americans.
   ‘Until America deals with the roots of terrorism and does not only deal with its facade, security will remain an unattainable dream.
   
   Khatami condemns bin Laden
   On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami condemned Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings but also defended groups such as Hezbollah for what he characterised as resistance against Israeli colonialism, reports Reuters.
   Khatami praised the concept of democracy but said American politicians, since World War II, have been infatuated with ‘world domination.’
   Khatami, who spoke in Farsi and had his speech relayed through a translator, said he was one of the first world leaders to condemn ‘the barbarous acts’ of September 11.
   
   ABC shows ‘docudrama’ despite Clinton protests
   US network ABC aired ‘documdrama’ ‘The Path to 9/11’ late Sunday, despite angry claims by aides to former president Bill Clinton that it unfairly tarred his record on hunting terrorists.
   Clinton’s camp complained the movie, the first part of which was shown on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, contained fabricated scenes and misrepresented the Democrat president as slow to chase down Osama bin Laden.
   Ex-Clinton aides based criticisms on early previews of the movie, which they said inaccurately portrayed actions of senior figures like former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former national security advisor Sandy Berger.
   Despite going ahead with the movie, ABC included a disclaimer before the opening scenes, which reappeared after the first 90 minutes, which said noted the presence of ‘fictionalised’ scenes.
   ‘The movie is not a documentary,’ the disclaimer read, adding that its action was drawn from a number of sources, including the independent report into the September 11 attacks, personal interviews and other published materials.
   However the movie did contain scenes critical of the Clinton administration. In one, Berger was seen as unwilling to give the go-ahead on an operation to arrest bin Laden.
   Berger said in response to reports based on previews of the movie that such an incident never took place.
   Critics say the film blames Clinton, Albright, and other senior aides for not adequately pursuing bin Laden, leaving him free to plan the 2001 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died.

Cuba’s foreign minister said Sunday it was not certain that Fidel Castro will host a dinner for visiting leaders as noted in a schedule, raising doubts over whether the ailing leader would make his first public appearance since undergoing surgery.
   A dinner hosted by Castro for dignitaries attending this week’s Nonaligned Movement summit was mentioned in a schedule sent Sunday by the government to international media.
   But foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque said he could not confirm the leader’s participation in the Friday event. ‘Fidel is recovering satisfactorily, the worst has been left behind,’ Perez Roque said at a news conference.
   ‘I cannot yet confirm his presence at the dinner,’ Perez Roque said. ‘I can confirm that the head of the Cuban delegation at that moment will be offering those dignitaries that dinner.’
   The 80-year-old leader announced July 31 he had undergone emergency surgery for an undisclosed intestinal ailment and provisionally handed over power as Cuba’s president and Communist Party head to his younger brother, 75-year-old defence minister Raul Castro.
   ‘If Fidel is not there, then Raul will act as host at the dinner,’ Perez Roque said. ‘Logically, the physical absence of Fidel in all of the summit work constitutes a notable loss,’ Perez Roque said. ‘All of us would like him to head the delegation and be there all the time. If that does not occur, we have made great preparations under his personal direction.’
   After the news conference, a different version of the Nonaligned schedule was sent to international journalists permanently accredited in Cuba, with a note saying it was the ‘valid’ version. Although the Friday night dinner was still listed, any mention of Castro hosting it had been removed.

A mini-bus carrying new army recruits was blown up in Baghdad Monday by a suicide car bomber, killing 14 people, said interior ministry spokesman brigadier general Abdel Karim Khalaf.
   The minibus was rammed by a car rigged with explosives right next to Muthanna recruiting centre, an old airport in the western sector of the city, he added.
   The interior ministry originally said 11 had died, but when informed that the nearby Yarmuk hospital reported 14 charred corpses, the brigadier acknowledged the wounded must have perished.
   Recruiting and training Iraqis to join the security services is seen as key to restoring stability in the war torn country and allowing coalition forces eventually to leave.
   A joint US-Iraq operation is underway in Baghdad to restore stability.
   Also in the city, a car bomb went off near a row of shops on eastern Baghdad’s Palestine street wounding four people, while two other bombs elsewhere in the city wounded three others.

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein spoke out Monday about Iraq’s ongoing flag controversy in the midst of his trial for genocide against the Kurds, saying he had inherited the flag not created it.
   Before the judge cut off the sound to his microphone, Saddam mentioned Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani and maintained the flag was not ‘raised during the Anfal campaign’.
   Saddam is currently on trial for the 1987-88 campaign to supress a Kurdish rebellion in the north that claimed more than 100,000 lives and used poisonous gas.
   ‘The flag behind you,’ he said pointing at the judge. ‘We inherited it, I did not establish it.’
   On September 1, Barzani banned the flying of Iraq’s national flag in the northern Kurdish provinces, saying it was the flag of genocide against the Kurds. The move prompted fears of Kurdish secession — something Saddam’s campaigns were originally launched to prevent.

British Asians are more willing to fight for their country than non-Asians, according to a survey Monday.
   Nearly half–43 per cent—of Asians say they are willing to join the British armed forces, compared to 37 per cent for the non-Asian general population.
   Hindus were the most willing at 56 per cent, followed by 51 per cent of Sikhs, while 34 per cent of Muslims say they would take up arms for Queen and country, said the poll, and published by the BBC’s Asian network.
   While they are more willing to fight, less than one per cent of British armed forces are Asian, according to the survey.
   The survey was commissioned after the death of the first Muslim soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, in July.

Leftist opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Sunday that he was temporarily ending a mass protest over disputed election results that had paralyzed much of downtown Mexico City since July 30.
   Lopez Obrador, who officially lost the July 2 election by a razor-thin margin to president-elect Felipe Calderon, said the protest would be lifted to allow the popular September 16 Independence Day military parade to proceed.
   The protest has ‘nothing against’ the military, an ‘institution that guarantees our sovereignty,’ he told a downtown gathering of thousands of supporters.

Court tosses perjury case against Thai PM
A Thai court Monday rejected a bid by a US businessman to prosecute Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for perjury, saying the statute of limitations had run out on the case which could have seen the premier banned from politics. The complaint, filed by television operator William Monson, stems from a 17 year-old dispute over their joint investment in a Thai cable TV venture. Monson alleged that Thaksin had given false evidence in an embezzlement complaint against him which was later dismissed. But Bangkok’s criminal court refused to hear Monson’s petition, saying the 10-year statute of limitations had expired.
— AFP

Student goes on trial for insulting president
A university student went on trial Monday on charges of insulting the head of state and his deputy, actions if proved could see him jailed for up to six years. Fahrur Rohman, alias Pak Ung, 19, is accused of publicly insulting president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and vice-president Jusuf Kalla during a university protest in June, prosecutors told the South Jakarta district court. Speaking through a loudspeaker during the protest to demand that former president Suharto face court over corruption allegations, Rohman allegedly repeatedly called the leaders ‘scoundrels,’ ‘dogs’ and ‘cat excrement,’ prosecutor Didik Farkhan Ali Syahdi said.
— AFP

Japan launches spy satellite to watch NKorea
Japan on Monday successfully put into orbit its third satellite to monitor North Korea, its first launch of a spy craft since an embarrassing failure in 2003. The H-2A satellite can zoom in on objects on the ground as small as cars. With the third satellite, Japan will be able to spy on any spot in the world, officials said. The launch came two months after North Korea angered Japan by test-firing seven missiles and amid new concern that the communist state may be planning to test a nuclear bomb. The rocket carrying the H-2A satellite was launched at 1:35pm (0435 GMT) from Tanegashima Space Centre, a space agency spokeswoman said.
— AFP

Marine says he did not rape Filpino woman
A US Marine accused of raping a Filipino woman in a van last year told a Manila court on Monday that the sex was consensual, with her helping him to put on a condom. Taking the stand for the first time as the trial resumed after a three-week break, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith denied the rape charges against him and three other Marines who allegedly cheered him on. ‘I kind of asked jokingly if she wanted sex here (in the van). She said ‘yes’,’ Smith, 21, said in response to questions by his lawyer. ‘I kind of looked surprised. So I started to get undressed and she was doing the same.’
— Reuters

PM claims victory in Montenegro election
Tiny Montenegro steered a course toward the European Union Monday with Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic saying he had scored an outright majority in the republic's first election since proclaiming independence three months ago. ‘By giving an absolute majority to Djukanovic's coalition, the voters showed they were confident that it was only him who could lead them towards the EU,’ analyst Srdjan Darmanovic said. The election result ‘is an echo of (the May 21 independence) referendum victory of Djukanovic,’ the architect of Montenegro's independence, Darmanovic said. Earlier, Djukanovic told jubilant supporters gathered in the capital's government building that his coalition For a European Montenegro had won an absolute majority of parliament seats in Sunday's polls.
— AFP

Controversial ‘Death of a President’ film debuts
The controversial British film ‘Death of a President,’ a fictional documentary showing the assassination of President George W Bush, had its first public showing on Sunday, receiving mild applause from an audience that seemed more interested in how it was made than why. The 93-minute film, whose subject matter outraged many Americans, had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival before an audience of about 1,000 people. After a short burst of applause at the movie's end, about half the audience left the theatre quickly while the other half stayed around for a question-and-answer session with producer/director Gabriel Range, 32.
— Reuters

Astronauts check space shuttle for damage
Astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis conducted a close-up inspection of their ship's heat shield on Sunday as they sailed toward a linkup on Monday with the International Space Station. ‘Atlantis looks great,’ space shuttle deputy manager John Shannon said at a briefing Sunday, one day after launch. ‘We have a really good start to this very complex mission.’ Sunday's check of the shuttle's wings and nose with lasers and a sensor-laden boom comes after analysis of launch video on Saturday showed the craft's heat shield appeared to have weathered blastoff in good shape.
— Reuters

Hurricane Florence heads toward Bermuda
Florence gained hurricane status while barrelling toward Bermuda on Sunday, buffeting the wealthy British enclave with gusty winds as residents boarded up their homes and hauled their yachts onto beaches. Florence, the second storm of the Atlantic season, was expected to pass ‘very near’ the island Monday, according to the National Hurricane Centre in Miami. But it was too early to tell whether it will make a direct hit. Preparations to protect life and property ‘should be rushed to completion,’ the hurricane centre said. Shopkeepers and homeowners boarded up windows and doors, with one closed flower shop bearing the sign: ‘We've gone away to chase away Florence. Back Tuesday.’
— AP

Strong quake shakes Gulf of Mexico region
A rare but strong earthquake shook the Gulf of Mexico region on Sunday, the US Geological Survey reported, with no reported casualties or damage. The epicentre of the 6.0 magnitude quake was located in the ocean some 450 kilometres (280 miles) south-southwest of Tampa, Florida, and some 530 kilometres (330 miles) southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana. The quake struck just before 1456 GMT, the service said, updating and revising an earlier statement. ‘This earthquake was felt in parts of (the southern US states of) Florida, Georgia and Alabama’ as well as Louisiana, the USGS said in a statement.
AFP