NATO credibility at stake in Afghanistan
Agence France-Presse . London
Britain warned that the credibility of NATO was at stake in Afghanistan after it was surprised by the strength of resistance from the Taliban, the country’s hardline former rulers. In a speech in London, defence secretary Des Browne underlined the need for London’s allies to share the burden of fighting in the volatile south of the war-scarred country. Britain remains confident of ultimate victory, he said. But he admitted: ‘We do have to accept that it’s been even harder than we expected. ‘The Taliban’s tenacity in the face of massive losses has been a surprise, absorbing more of our effort than we predicted it would and consequently slowing progress in reconstruction,’ he told the Royal United Services Institute. Instead, Browne called for a recommitment of all 26 NATO members to the task of bringing peace and stability to the war-ravaged country, despite recent heavy losses. Browne said that there were ‘understandable concerns’ among member countries at bolstering the reconstruction and stability force in Afghanistan because of the risks posed to troops in the country. ‘But those of us who are already fully committed in the south – ourselves, the Canadians, the Dutch and the Estonians and the ever-present Americans – must remind our partners that it was their agreement of support that brought us to this point,’ he told the audience. ‘The mission is vital, as it has always been. In fact, it is vital not only for Afghanistan but also for the threat that a lawless Afghanistan poses to the region and to the world and also, now that NATO has taken it on, for NATO’s own credibility,’ he said. Browne said the mission had reached the point where they were tackling the most difficult region – the lawless south of Afghanistan. ‘NATO nations must decide whether to back their investment, reaffirm their original intent and to send a clear signal to the Taliban and to the Afghan population that NATO has an alliance as strong and determined to see the task through,’ he added. Browne said the ‘fundamental point’ was that NATO is an alliance and that when it decides to use military force ‘all partners should be prepared to face equal risk’. He added: ‘We must persuade our partners and help them to persuade their publics’ about the task in hand and help push the message to the Afghan people that NATO was there to effect ‘real change’ across the whole of society. The transformation will be ‘massively worth’ achieving for the Afghan people, the wider region and for the international community, he added, although he accepted that it looked ‘some way off’. ‘In part this was inevitable at this stage. NATO has been in charge in the south for less than two months and we always knew that the south would be hard...,’ he said. In a question and answer session after the speech, Browne called on neighbouring Pakistan to step up its efforts to stem the flow of fighters and aid crossing the notoriously porous border. ‘Pakistan is part of the problem but it is also part of the solution,’ he added.
US, Israel caution Abbas over unity deal with Hamas
Agence France-Presse . United Nations
The United States and Israel have put pressure on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas not to cut a deal with a Hamas government that refuses to renounce violence and recognise Israel. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the Israel foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told Abbas in separate talks in New York on Monday that there could be no compromise on the conditions that had been set by the international community. ‘Secretary Rice was very clear about the need to see the three Quartet principles without anything else,’ Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian lawmaker and close associate of the Palestinian leader, told reporters. He was speaking after more than an hour of talks between Abbas and Livni, their first in five months, after an earlier meeting between the Palestinian leader and the top US diplomat. Livni told reporters: ‘From Israel’s perspective, there is a need for any future Palestinian government to meet completely the three requirements of the international community.’ After Hamas won the Palestinian election in January, the diplomatic Quartet–the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations, which drew up the Middle East peace ‘road map’–demanded that the Palestinian government acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence and recognise past agreements with the Jewish state.
Indo-Pak pact deserves a fair trial: Manmohan
Reuters . New Delhi
A proposed India-Pakistan pact to jointly fight terrorism deserves a fair trial, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said, but would be threatened if Islamabad does not do more to curb militant groups. Under the plan agreed last week at a meeting between Singh and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of a summit of Non-Aligned Movement nations in Cuba, the two countries will set up a joint agency to tackle terrorism. ‘I do think it is a new beginning. I hope it works, but if does not work, then also we have to deal with the consequences,’ Singh told reporters on board his aircraft before he returned to New Delhi late on Monday. ‘It is quite obvious to Pakistan that things cannot be business as usual if terrorism is not under control – or if the government of Pakistan is seen not to be willing to work with us to control terrorism,’ Singh said in comments posted on his official Web site. Singh and Musharraf also agreed that top diplomats would return to the negotiating table after India put off peace talks as investigators suspected a Pakistani hand in the July 11 bombings in Mumbai, which killed 186 people. ‘There is an explicit commitment on the part of Pakistan to say they will work with us to do all that is in their control to control this scourge,’ Singh said. Islamabad rejects Indian allegations that it allows its territory to be used for organising militant attacks in India.
War planes target Tigers after Muslim massacre
Agence France-Presse . Colombo
Sri Lankan air force jets pounded suspected Tamil Tiger targets in the island’s east, officials said, a day after troops and the guerrillas blamed each other for the massacre of 10 Muslim men. Israeli-made Kfir war planes bombed positions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the district of Batticaloa, the government’s defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said on Tuesday. ‘We have taken identified LTTE targets in Batticaloa today,’ Rambukwella said without elaborating. He also said authorities were sending investigators to the adjoining district of Ampara where 10 Muslim men were found hacked to death Monday. The Tigers and local residents accused security forces of involvement while the government blamed the Tigers for the massacre. ‘We want to get to the bottom of this,’ Rambukwella said. ‘The circumstantial evidence suggests it is the LTTE, but if anyone of us is involved, we will mete out maximum punishment.’ Residents told reporters flown by the military to the massacre site Monday that police commandos were at loggerheads with locals and accused them of carrying out the killings. The police chief Chandra Fernando said there would be a full investigation. Inspector-general Fernando, who was visiting the area some 325 kilometres east of Colombo, said the friction with the locals was over police cracking down on illegal logging in neighbouring forests. Journalists saw the victims had been hacked and their throats slit. The LTTE has previously been accused of killing members of the Muslim community in the volatile, multi-ethnic east of the island, while government forces were accused by Nordic truce monitors of killing 17 employees of a French charity in August. Both sides have denied the charges. The deaths of the Muslims came a day after Sri Lankan armed forces sank a suspected Tiger gun-running ship off the coast of the Ampara district. The new wave of violence has come even as peace broker Norway moved to arrange face-to-face talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers early next month in Oslo. Both sides agreed last week to work to salvage a wilting truce in place since February 2002. More than 1,500 people have died in an upsurge of tit-for-tat violence in the past 10 months.
Japan, Australia slap fresh sanctions on N Korea
Agence France-Presse . Washington
Japan and Australia slapped financial sanctions Tuesday on North Korea in the first fresh measures against the communist state since the UN Security Council demanded action over its July missile tests. The two US allies blacklisted companies and an individual for alleged links to weapons programmes in North Korea, which says it has a nuclear bomb and may be preparing to test one. In Japan, the sanctions were announced by chief cabinet secretary Shinzo Abe, a sworn hawk on North Korea who is all but certain to win a vote Wednesday to replace prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. ‘The government wants to use this occasion to call again on North Korea to respect the UN Security Council resolution, to stop missile-related activities, confirm its moratorium on missile launches and to return unconditionally to the six-way talks,’ Abe told a news conference. North Korea–which fired a missile over Japan in 1998 – has boycotted the six-nation talks on ending its nuclear drive since November to protest separate US financial sanctions on a Pyongyang-linked bank. The Security Council on July 15 called for nations to impose sanctions on North Korea’s missile programme in response to its test-firing of seven missiles in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) 10 days earlier. The resolution, backed by Japan and the United States, was watered down to target only missiles, not the North Korean economy as a whole, to meet concerns by veto-wielding Russia and China, the North’s main ally. China criticised the new Japanese sanctions.
More cows than cars in Myanmar’s new capital
Reuters . Yangon
It is nearly a year since Myanmar’s military rulers abruptly abandoned their leafy, colonial-era capital in favour of a ‘command and control’ centre in jungle-clad hills along the road to Mandalay. The generals have grandly named their new capital Nay Pyi Taw, or ‘Royal City’, but besides a few reception halls the former Burma’s answer to Brasilia boasts little more than dusty building sites, deserted highways and disgruntled civil servants. ‘There are more stray dogs and cows on the roads than any type of transport,’ one diplomat said after a recent visit to the new town around 400 km north of Yangon, near the former logging centre of Pyinmana. ‘It’s a bit like those photos you see of Pyongyang – great wide roads but no cars, no people, no life.’ The junta argues the site, midway between Yangon and the second city of Mandalay, will work better as a national capital, especially as it is closer to the ethnic border areas where civil war has raged almost since independence from Britain in 1948. But exile dissident groups suggest alternative motives, ranging from paranoia about a possible US invasion or popular uprising in Yangon, to astrological prognostications whispered into the ears of junta supremo Than Shwe. Other analysts have suggested the 73-year-old senior general is merely walking in the footsteps of Burmese kings who liked to build a new capital every time they proclaimed a new dynasty. Whatever the reasons, Nay Pyi Taw looks set to stay. Google Earth satellite images reveal construction sites stretching over more than 40 km, including a new airport, a string of identical government ministry buildings, barrack-style housing units and two vast parade grounds. Word is, the junta – the latest face of more than four decades of military rule – is even planning a life-size replica of Yangon’s gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, the country’s holiest Buddhist shrine that towers 98 metres above the city. ‘It shows how serious the regime is about moving the capital,’ a retired government officer said. ‘They want to take everything up there.’
Eight killed in eastern India caste clash
Agence France-Presse . Ranchi
Eight people have been killed in a clash between a tribal group and low-caste Hindus in eastern India, the police said Tuesday. The violence erupted after members of the Mahto caste insulted tribal group members in the eastern Indian state of Jharkand, senior local police official Gauri Shankar Rath said. ‘Six tribals and two members of the Mahto caste were killed,’ he said, explaining the low-caste Hindus had opened fire on their pursuers and were eventually lynched. The incident took place late Monday in the state’s Gumla district, 170 kilometres from state capital Ranchi.
Muslim bomber found guilty of 1993 Mumbai bombing
Agence France-Presse . Mumbai
A court convicted a Muslim man for the single deadliest attack of a two-hour bombing blitz on India’s economic heartland 13 years ago that killed 257 people. Abdul Gani Ismail Turk dumped a four-wheel drive vehicle packed with explosives outside a shopping area in Mumbai that exploded killing 113 people and wounding 227 during India’s most deadly terrorist attack. He faces a possible death sentence. The explosion was one of a dozen bomb and grenade attacks from 1:30pm on March 12, 1993, allegedly masterminded by the west coast city’s Muslim-dominated underworld. The 47-year-old became the eighth person convicted so far over the ‘Black Friday’ attacks carried out in revenge for Hindu-Muslim religious clashes several months earlier that left hundreds dead.
Abe set to clinch spot as PM
Agence France-Presse . Tokyo
Shinzo Abe is set to win Wednesday’s vote and become Japan’s youngest prime minister since Second World War, with an unabashedly conservative agenda that includes revising the pacifist constitution. Abe would also be the first prime minister born since the war if he wins the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s election to replace Junichiro Koizumi, who is retiring after five years. ‘On this final day before the party election, I want to renew my appeal to the public on points I have been making for the past weeks,’ Abe told reporters Tuesday. Abe, the conservative scion of a political dynasty, said when he launched his candidacy earlier this month: ‘I hope to create a beautiful Japan which is respected by the world and which children can be proud of.’ ‘I want to create a new diplomacy under which Japan at times takes leadership and asserts opinions to set the world’s rules,’ said Abe, who will turn 52 on Thursday.
Call for calm in Taiwan after protest turns violent
Agence France-Presse . Taipei
Taiwan’s politicians appealed for calm Tuesday the day after a protest against president Chen Shui-bian, who is under pressure to resign over a string of corruption allegations, turned violent. Six people were arrested, two of them with injuries, after Monday morning’s clashes in the southern city of Kaohsiung, a traditional stronghold of Chen’s ruling independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. It was the only major violence between Chen’s supporters and his opponents since pro-democracy veteran Shih Ming-teh launched his campaign to oust the president on September 9. Interior minister Lee Yi-yang condemned the violence and ordered that ‘those responsible for the clashes be punished in accordance with the law.’
Nepali Maoist leader rearrested
Reuters . Chennai
A senior Nepali Maoist leader was rearrested immediately at the behest of another Indian state after being released from an Indian jail on Monday. Chandra Prakash Gajurel, 63, had been in a prison Chennai, where he was arrested in 2003, for using a forged passport to flee to Europe. He was also on the police wanted list in West Bengal on sedition charges. As soon as he was released in Chennai, he was rearrested and returned to the prison. Gajurel’s lawyers protested to the high court, which said it would hear their petition on Tuesday. Gajurel is one of more than 100 Nepali Maoists in Indian jails. He handled international affairs for the rebels before his arrest. Nepal’s Maoists, who agreed to peace talks with the new Nepali government in May, have been demanding that all their comrades in Indian jails be freed.
Most Japanese want Yasukuni shrine to be non-religious
Agence France-Presse . Tokyo
Most Japanese favor stripping the controversial Yasukuni war shrine of its Shinto religious affiliation in a step to smooth relations with neighbouring countries, a poll said Tuesday. Outgoing prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has visited the shrine every year since taking office, infuriating nations invaded by Japan which see the site as a symbol of Japan’s militarist past. Sixty-three per cent of voters supported making the shrine a memorial without religious affiliation, said Jiji Press, which surveyed 2,000 eligible voters, of whom 71 per cent gave valid responses.
Annan warns of civil war in Iraq
Agence France-Presse . Baghdad
Iraqi lawmakers are set this week to debate a controversial draft law to divide the war-torn country into autonomous regions, after UN chief Kofi Annan voiced fears of all-out civil war. The UN secretary general, Annan, warned that immediate steps were essential to bring Iraq back from the ‘brink of a civil war.’ Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Annan joined appeals by Iraqi leaders for a quick and massive international effort to strengthen the embattled government in Baghdad and ‘bring Iraq back from the brink’. ‘If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war,’ Annan said. Annan's warning came as a wave of violence over the past week that has left hundreds of people killed in Baghdad -- the epicentre of Shia-Sunni sectarian violence. Violence continued unabated Tuesday, with two people killed and 11 wounded in a car bomb attack in Baghdad, a day after 62 people died in a series of attacks across the country. Parliament is likely to debate the draft on Tuesday or Wednesday. The draft focuses on mechanisms of how to form the autonomous regions, although Saghir said there was an agreement ‘not to start forming the regions before the committee on constitutional review ends its work.’ Sunni lawmakers have called for the constitution to be amended before Shia plans for a southern autonomous region are implemented. Iraq's newly empowered Shia United Iraqi Alliance has been pushing to form autonomous regions in the country's largely Shia south along the lines of the Kurdish autonomy in the north. But the country's former elite Sunni Arabs have staunchly opposed the law, fearing it would divide the country and rob them of the vast oil reserves concentrated in the north and the south of Iraq. The draft law is backed by the powerful Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq although it has also seen strong opposition from within the UIA. British, Iranian consulates attacked in Basra The Iranian and British consulates in the southern Iraqi city of Basra came under attack early Tuesday, Iraqi police and British officials said. Two rockets crashed into the outer wall of the Iranian consulate while a third hit a police vehicle guarding the building, Basra police said, adding that there were no casualties.
Bush to promote ME strategy at UN
Associated Press . New York
President Bush will try to convince sceptical world leaders to embrace his vision for the Middle East in a speech before the United Nations on Tuesday where he is calling on the world to ‘stand up for peace’ in the face of violent extremism. Bush’s challenge is to build international support to confront multiple problems in the region: unabated violence in Iraq, a stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, armed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Iran defiantly pursuing its nuclear programme. The Iranian issue was at the top of the agenda for Bush’s morning meeting with the French president, Jacques Chirac, who is balking at the US drive to sanction Iran for defying UN Security Council demands that it freeze uranium enrichment. Chirac proposed on Monday that the international community compromise by suspending the threat of sanctions if Tehran agrees to halt its uranium enrichment program and return to negotiations. The US and other countries fear Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists its uranium enrichment program is to make fuel for nuclear power plants. Besides Chirac, Bush also was meeting with the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, and the General Assembly president Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa. Bush’s speech was the last in a series on the war on terror, timed to surround last week’s fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to set the tone for the final weeks of the US midterm elections. Bush was allotted 15 minutes for his annual address to the general assembly, and White House aides said he planned to use the time to call on the world to support moderate governments and help build up weak democracies in Iraq and Lebanon, as wells as the Palestinian Authority. With remarks aimed especially at people living in the Middle East, Bush was drawing a distinction between the moderate governments that want peace and extremists who want to spread terror and violence. He was describing his vision for moderates to choose the future instead of the extremists, pointing out that the same principles are in the UN charter and its declaration of human rights, aides said. He planned to describe how every nation in the civilised world has a stake in the region, but especially the Muslim countries.
Iran to make proposal on ‘how to manage world’
Agence France-Presse . Tehran
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Tuesday that Iran wanted to make suggestions on how to ‘manage the world’, ahead of a key address to world leaders at the UN General Assembly. Ahmadinejad told Iranian reporters after arriving in New York that the world faced numerous threats and ‘you cannot find anyone who can decisively say the human race has a clear future.’ But he said on the tarmac of John F Kennedy international airport in remarks broadcast on state television that Iran has ‘very clear and transparent views about how to the manage the world. ‘The Islamic republic of Iran and our people has an efficient system on how to manage the world and will suggest it and will discuss it,’ he added, without specifying if he would be referring to this proposal in his speech.
Report criticises US in Canadian torture case
Associated Press . Toronto
The United States ‘very likely’ sent a Canadian software engineer to Syria, where he was tortured, based on the false accusation by Canadian authorities that he was suspected of links to al-Qaeda, according to a new government report. Syrian-born Maher Arar was exonerated of all suspicion of terrorist activity by the 2 1/2-year commission of inquiry into his case, which urged the Canadian government to offer him financial compensation. Arar is perhaps the world's best-known case of extraordinary rendition the US transfer of foreign terror suspects to third countries without court approval. ‘I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada,’ Justice Dennis O'Connor said Monday in a three-volume report on the findings of the inquiry, part of which was made public. Arar was traveling on a Canadian passport when he was detained at New York's Kennedy Airport on Sept. 26, 2002, on his way home from vacation in Tunisia. Arar said US authorities sent him to Syria for interrogation as a suspected member of al-Qaeda, a link he denied. He spent nearly a year in prison in Syria and made detailed allegations after his release in 2003 about extensive interrogation, beatings and whippings with electrical cables.
Saddam genocide trial resumes
Agence France-Presse . Baghdad
The genocide trial of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein resumed on Tuesday with further harrowing witness testimony about the military campaign that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s. ‘The fighting started in the village of Qaram Pasha and lasted for three days,’ Rauf Faraj Abdallah, a middle-aged Kurd in traditional dress, told the court. ‘Out of fear, we fled towards the mountains, as our village was bombed with chemical weapons.’ Saddam and six of his former associates are on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are accused of leading the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, which prosecutors say killed 182,000 Kurds after their villages were bombed, burned and razed to the ground. If found guilty they face execution by hanging.
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WORLDLINE
Congress gains Jharkhand
The ruling Congress party and its allies gained another state on Monday when they backed an independent deputy to form the government in Jharkhand. Four lawmakers withdrew their support for the Bharatiya Janata Party coalition last week, forcing the state government’s collapse. The Congress backed the legislators and on Monday, their leader Madhu Koda, was sworn in as the next chief minister. Koda has to establish a majority by September 25. The Congress and BJP rule most of India’s 29 states. Congress and its allies now govern 14 states against eight run by the BJP and its partners. The rest are ruled by regional or leftist parties.
— Reuters
Vietnamese
journalist held
for blackmail
The police in Vietnam have arrested a journalist after he apparently forced a local company to give him 10,000 dollars not to expose alleged wrongdoing, officials and state media said. Nguyen Hung Son, 37, a reporter at ‘Dien Dan Doanh Nghiep’ (The Companies’ Forum), was detained on Sunday evening. ‘Son was caught red-handed as he was receiving 10,000 dollars in cash from the company’s director in a cafe in Hanoi,’ said an official at the city police. Last week, the journalist visited headquarters of the private-owned Hai Van transport company, based in northern Hai Duong province, and said he had enough documents to prove wrongdoings in the sales of vehicles. He then asked for money to keep silent.
— AFP
1,700 firearms collected in
East Timor
Close to 2,000 guns have been rounded up in restive East Timor in an ongoing effort to get firearms off the country’s violent streets, the head of the multinational forces said. ‘More than 1,700 firearms have already been collected and the weapons collection is proceeding,’ brigadier-general Mick Slater said in a UN statement released late Monday. ‘Thousands of traditional weapons have also been collected and destroyed.’ Some 3,200 peacekeepers were deployed to East Timor in May amid a breakdown in security in the capital, which left at least 21 people dead. Military and police factions waged bloody street battles after some 600 deserting soldiers were sacked, while gangs aligned along eastern and western divisions also waged attacks on each other.
— AFP
Women health workers hurt in Pak blast
A roadside bomb targeting an aid group exploded in a lawless Pakistani tribal area Tuesday, wounding four people including two female health workers, officials said. The remote-controlled device hit a vehicle carrying staff of the National Commission for Human Development as it headed for a rural health centre in Bajaur area, which borders Afghanistan. The two women aid workers were seriously injured and their driver and a passer-by were also hurt in the blast near the region’s main town of Khar, local administration chief Tariq Hassan said. ‘It was a terrorist act,’ he said, adding that no group had so far claimed responsibility.
— AFP
Filipina in US rape case calls for
prosecution change
A Filipino woman at the centre of a controversial rape trial of four US Marines, attacked her prosecuting team Tuesday demanding that they be replaced. ‘I am the victim in this case and I have the right to remove anyone,’ the 22-year-old woman said at a press conference after the Justice Department rejected her earlier call to replace the prosecution over alleged incompetence. The woman, identified only as ‘Nicole’ due to laws requiring that rape victims names be kept secret, reiterated that the prosecution had not handled the case properly, particularly the cross-examination of the main accused, lance corporal Daniel Smith.
— AFP
Bush approval rating rebounds in new poll
The president, George W Bush's approval rating has rebounded to 44 percent, the highest level in a year, in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the newspaper reported on Tuesday. Bush's approval rating jumped five points from 39 percent in the previous poll conducted earlier this month. The bounce comes with seven weeks before elections to deicide control of Congress amid falli Iraq war and to portray Republicans as more competent than Democrats on security, the newspaper said. Bush's approval rating edged up largely on the strength of Republicans coming back to the fold with 86 percent saying they support him now, compared to 70 percent in May, USA Today said.
Defiant Hungary PM urges calm after riots
The Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, defied opposition pressure to quit on Tuesday after anti-government riots he called ‘the longest and darkest night of the republic.’ The worst riots in Hungary since the end of communism followed the leak of a tape on Sunday in which Gyurcsany said he and his Socialist party had lied for four years about Hungary’s budget in order to win a general election in April. Thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Budapest late on Monday, attacking the state television building in clashes which left 150 injured.
Yemen arrests terrorist over US attack plot
Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh announced Tuesday the arrest of a ‘terrorist’ -- allegedly linked to his main election rival and to Osama bin Laden -- accused of plotting attacks against US interests. ‘We have arrested a major terrorist who was planning operations against American installations and the Movenpick hotel,’ Saleh said at a press conference on the eve of the presidential poll. He said the suspect was a bodyguard for Faisal bin Shamlan, his main challenger in Wednesday's presidential race. Saleh's private secretary Abdo Burji said the suspect, Hussein al-Jerdani, was arrested on Sunday and had close links with the Al-Qaeda terror chief.
Somalia appeals for help in bombings probe
The Somali government on Tuesday appealed for international help to investigate a failed bid to assassinate president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed blamed on the al-Qaeda network which killed 11 people. As authorities interrogated two suspects arrested after the country's first ever suicide bombing, government spokesman Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari said they needed foreign expertise to investigate the attack outside the parliament building in Baidoa. ‘Our local investigators are already probing the attack, but we really need international help and expertise on the whole exercise,’ Dinari said. ‘Since al-Qaeda was involved in the attack, we really do not have the expertise to uncover the whole attack that was well organised by the same groups that are carrying out attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ the spokesman for the country's interim government added.
Polish coalition govt splits
Poland's four-month-old government was on the brink of crisis Tuesday as a junior partner in the ruling coalition contested prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's pledge to send 1,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, and called for early elections. ‘There are numerous points on which members of the coalition disagree, in particular the pledge to send Polish soldiers’ to Afghanistan, Andrzej Lepper, head of the populist Samoobrona party, which joined a coalition government in May with Kaczynski's conservative Law and Justice party and the far-right League of Polish Families, said. New anti-govt demonstration in Budapest
— AFP
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