The United States has no plans to attack Iran and its beefed-up naval presence in the Gulf region is meant to keep the area peaceful, the chief of US naval operations said Monday.
   Admiral Michael Mullen, who is visiting key US ally Pakistan for talks with officials, said efforts were focused on a diplomatic solution to resolve the ongoing row over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
   ‘There is no plan for an attack on Iran,’ Mullen told reporters after the talks.
   ‘We’ve had a strong naval presence in this part of the world for many, many decades. We recently added some ships that are meant to provide reassurances to our friends, to show continued commitment to the area,’ Mullen said.
   ‘This is a vital region and the goal is to provide the strength and stability that we need to ensure that it remains quiet and peaceful. So there is absolutely no plan that I am aware of that involves an attack on Iran.’
   The United States has two aircraft carriers in the Gulf, the highest level US naval presence in the strategic oil shipping channel since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
   Tensions rose there after Iran seized 15 British naval personnel in the northern Gulf on March 23 for illegally entering the country’s territorial waters. Britain said they were in Iraqi waters.
   Meanwhile, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, vowed on Monday that Iran would not give in to Western demands over its nuclear drive, saying Tehran would ‘resist to the end’ in the intensifying crisis.
   ‘The Iranian people will resist until the end on acquiring their rights and will not shift an inch,’ Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the southern city of Shiraz broadcast live on state television.
   ‘The Iranian nation will not be dissuaded in its drive and the Iranian nation is standing united on this,’ he told a cheering crowd of thousands gathered in a sports stadium for the rally.
   Ahmadinejad’s remarks appear to confirm that Iran has no intention of yielding to international demands that it suspend uranium enrichment work, a process the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.
   Iran’s defiance has already earned it two sets of UN sanctions and Ahmadinejad warned that if further sanctions were imposed Tehran would announce more progress in its nuclear drive, without specifying further.
   Tehran just last week said that its uranium enrichment work was now at an ‘industrial scale,’ although international observers have cast doubt over what stage its nuclear programme has reached.
   ‘The Iranian people will stand firm on the nuclear issue to acquire all their rights, will continue solidly to reach the summits of perfection and will raise their fists to insist on their rights,’ Ahmadinejad told the crowd.
   In a typically pugnacious speech — his first such public address since the crisis with Britain over the 15 captured navy personnel — Ahmadinejad also warned world powers not to misuse the UN Security Council.
   ‘Do not misuse the international organisations that you yourself have built. You cannot create a crack in the will of the Iranian people. ‘Give up your bullying methods! Otherwise rest assured that you will lose and you will impose great losses on your nations. What did you gain in Iraq, what did you gain in Palestine and Lebanon?’ he asked.

India’s defence minister on Monday accused arch-rival Pakistan of continuing to support cross-border terrorism in troubled Indian-administered Kashmir.
   ‘There is no change in Pakistan’s support to cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,’ defence minister AK Antony told a conference of top army officials in New Delhi.
   ‘This remains a cause of concern to us,’ a defence
   ministry statement quoted him as saying.
   India accuses Pakistani-backed Islamic militants of waging an insurgency in its sector of Kashmir and of triggering attacks in other parts of the country. Pakistan denies it arms or trains the militants.
   India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. They also massed troops on the border in 2002, after militants attacked the Indian parliament.
   They began a peace process in January 2004 focused on Kashmir and nuclear weapons but it has moved slowly, with few major steps except a trans-Kashmir bus service.
   The insurgency in Kashmir began in 1989 and has left more than 42,000 people dead by an official count. Human rights groups put the toll at 70,000, including 10,000 people who have disappeared and are presumed dead.
   The defence minister’s remarks came ahead of a meeting between pro-India Kashmir groups and the government, due to be held in New Delhi on April 24 and aimed at easing tensions in the revolt-hit state.

The US president George W Bush’s concept of the ‘war on terror’ has strengthened disaffected extremist groups and given them a sense of shared identity, a British government minister was to say Monday.
   According to the office of the international development secretary, Hilary Benn was to use a speech in New York to attack Bush’s rhetoric, which he said had made small, disparate extremist groups feel part of something bigger.
   ‘In the UK, we do not use the phrase ‘war on terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone, and because this isn’t us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,’ he was to say.
   ‘It is the vast majority of the people in the world — of all nationalities and faiths — against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger.
   ‘What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength.’ Such open criticism is likely to boost Benn’s standing among left-wing sections of Britain’s governing Labour Party, which have been unhappy at prime minister Tony Blair’s close alignment with Washington and involvement in Iraq.
   It could also help his candidature for Labour’s deputy leadership post, which is to be contested in the coming months.
   Elsewhere in the speech at the Centre for International Co-operation, Benn was to echo Blair’s call for a combination of military means and ‘soft power’ techniques like multilateral aid and development to combat extremism.
   He was also to endorse Blair’s view that the fight against extremism was essentially one of values and ideas.
   Bush coined the phrase ‘war on terror’ shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States by Islamist extremists.
   The Observer newspaper said last December that government ministers and diplomats had been told by the Foreign Office to drop the phrase and others seen liable to anger Muslims and increase tensions in the Islamic world.

Russia accused the United States on Monday of obstructing progress on the North Korean nuclear stand-off, saying Washington had failed to free up frozen North Korean funds.
   The US government is ‘not removing the obstacles to using this money and this is creating problems. We cannot move forward as long as the North Korean side says that it has not received the money,’ the deputy foreign minister said.
   Diplomatic efforts on North Korea should be focused not on imposing deadlines on Pyongyang but on fulfilling previous agreements, he added.
   ‘We need to talk not about deadlines but about fulfilling these agreements,’ he said.
   A deal reached in February at six-party talks on North Korea’s atomic programme set April 14 as the deadline by which Pyongyang was to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which produces the raw material to make plutonium for nuclear weapons.
   But the deadline slipped due to delays in freeing up 25 million dollars (18.5 million euros) in North Korean funds that had been frozen in a Macau bank at US instigation. Washington says the bank funds were freed for collection last week and there is no reason for further delay.
   
   US citizen jailed for
   spying for N Korea
   A Seoul court on Monday jailed an ethnic Korean US citizen for nine years for spying for communist North Korea, saying his crime endangered the state.
   Judges found Michael Jang, 44, guilty of providing confidential political and security information to the North, holding meetings with its spies, illegally entering Pyongyang and possessing material praising the North.

Kate Middleton’s mother may have been a cause of the split with Prince William, British newspapers speculated Monday as they dissected the end of the highest profile royal romance since Charles and Diana.
   The British prime minister Tony Blair’s warning that most of the stories written about the demise of the relationship would be ‘complete nonsense’ did nothing to moderate press fascination with the prince’s split form his long-time girlfriend.
   Various newspapers reported that multiple social faux pas committed by Middleton’s mother, Carole, did nothing to endear her to the future king’s friends and family.
   Carole and her husband Michael are self-made millionaires having built up a children’s party paraphernalia business, and the reports suggested William’s inner circle did not believe her to be sufficiently upper class.
   The Daily Telegraph reported that Carole Middleton’s use of the word ‘toilet’ rather than ‘lavatory’, and the phrase ‘pleased to meet you’ rather than ‘how do you do?’ rubbed William’s associates the wrong way.
   According to the paper, they would derisively whisper ‘doors to manual’ when Kate Middleton, 25, arrived, a veiled jibe at her mother being a former flight attendant. The news that Middleton and the second-in-line to the British throne had split after four years broke on Saturday, and surprised many royal watchers who had assumed the couple would marry.
   Several newspapers insisted that, contrary to previous reports, the fate of their relationship was not decided at a gathering of ‘The Firm’ — the nickname for the senior royals.

Civilian deaths from ‘war crimes’ and other attacks by Taliban-led insurgents have soared in the past 15 months, global watchdog Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday.
   The New York-based group condemned a wave of suicide bombings and other assaults by the Taliban and associated Islamist groups that it said had killed nearly 700 Afghan civilians since the beginning of 2006.
   ‘The insurgents are increasingly committing war crimes, often by directly targeting civilians,’ HRW terrorism and counter-terrorism director Joanne Mariner said in the report, titled ‘The Human Cost’.
   ‘Even when they’re aiming at military targets, insurgent attacks are often so indiscriminate that Afghan civilians end up as the main victims,’ Mariner said.
   Mariner said 2006 was the deadliest year for Afghan civilians since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban in a US-led invasion, with at least 669 civilians dying in more than 350 documented armed attacks.
   Most of these ‘appear to have been intentionally launched at civilians or civilian objects.’
   Another 52 civilians were killed in insurgent attacks in the first two months of 2007, the report said.
   The 116-page report was based on dozens of interviews with civilian victims of attacks and their families and a review of available documents and records, the group said.
   The report said the Taliban had stepped up targeted attacks against groups such as doctors, journalists, aid workers, religious leaders and government employees, often after falsely accusing them of spying.
   At least 177 civilians were killed in such assassinations last year, it said.
   ‘A recent and horrific example was the Taliban’s summary execution of Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi and his driver, Sayed Agha, in violation of the laws of war,’ the report said.
   Naqshbandi and Agha were abducted along with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo in March. The Italian was freed in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners, but the two Afghans were beheaded.
   The report goes on to say that insurgents regularly attacked military targets in densely-populated areas.

Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint on a road in northern Iraq on Monday and killed 13 soldiers, army major Qassim Abdullah said.
   ‘A large group of terrorists drove up in five cars and opened fire immediately on the Al-Hadhar checkpoint, before making off,’ the commander said in the northern city of Mosul.
   Four soldiers were wounded in the attack, Abdullah added.
   Hadhar is a remote town on a major road south of Mosul, 300 kilometres north of Baghdad in an area where Iraqi security forces often clash with Sunni insurgents linked to the al-Qaeda network.
   Separately, two university academics were gunned down in Mosul itself. Gunmen ambushed Talal Yunis, dean of the political sciences faculty of Mosul University, and killed him near the campus in the Shurat neighbourhood of northern Mosul, said police Major Mohammed Ahmed.

Thousands of truckers cheered wildly as Richard Gere kissed actress Shilpa Shetty on her cheeks during an event to promote safe sex and raise AIDS awareness among a high-risk group.
   Hollywood star Gere had joined Shetty, the winner of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ reality TV show in Britain this year, in an anti-AIDS drive among truckers in India, the country with the world’s largest number of people living with HIV.
   ‘No condom, no sex,’ 58-year-old Gere shouted in Hindi to thousands of truck drivers who roared his words back in unison at a dusty fairground late on Sunday.
   They whooped with delight and whistled loudly as Gere swooped down on a visibly delighted Shetty to kiss her. Authorities have been focusing on high-risk groups such as truckers, who have helped spread the virus across the country as many of them have sex with prostitutes during their journeys and infect their wives back home.
   ‘It is the emotional barrenness of the job which is the culprit,’ Gere told reporters before the event.
   ‘The trucker community has to help each other out to change their behaviour. That’s where real change will come.’
   India has around 5.7 million people living with the virus, according to the United Nations and thousands of truckers are HIV-positive.
   During the event, the men danced wildly to raunchy Bollywood numbers and Punjabi pop songs.
   The AIDS awareness show, organised by voluntary group Heroes Project and the Transport Corporation of India Foundation, also included actor Sunny Deol. Deol is known for his role as an honest truck driver in the film Gadar.

The parents of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in Gaza more than a month ago, on Monday appealed for an end to their ordeal after a Palestinian group claimed to have killed him.
   ‘This is a desperately worrying time for us,’ Graham and Margaret Johnston said in a statement, a day after Kataeb al–Jihad al–Tawheed (The Brigades of Holy War and Unity) said it had ‘executed’ the 44–year–old journalist.
   ‘We make a heartfelt appeal to anyone who may have knowledge of Alan’s situation and well–being to contact the authorities in Gaza.
   ‘Our son has lived and worked among the people of Gaza for the last three years to bring their story to the outside world and we ask everyone of them to help end this ordeal.’
   The British Broadcasting Corporation and the Foreign Office in London said Monday they were still working to secure independent verification of the claim.

Turkey’s parliament Monday began accepting candidacy applications for the country’s next president, officially kicking off the electoral process for the vote next month.
   Tensions have been running high over the possibility that the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a conservative with an Islamist political past, will run for the post, a prospect that has sparked objections by secularists.
   An estimated 500,000 people from across Turkey gathered in a mass rally in Ankara Saturday against any aspirations that Erdogan may have for the job.
   Erdogan now describes himself as a ‘conservative democrat’, but the secular elite suspects he still has a secret Islamist agenda.
   Presidential candidates have a 10-day period — until midnight on April 25 — during which to submit their applications.

Baton-wielding students from a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital took to the streets Monday after alleging that the government had sprayed them with irritant gases from a helicopter.
   Young men from a school attached to the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, blocked nearby roads, and their female counterparts shouted slogans from the roof after a chopper circled low overhead for around 15 minutes, witnesses said. Chief cleric Abdul Aziz, who earlier this month threatened to launch suicide attacks if Pakistani security forces raid the mosque, said the helicopter was part of a ‘mock operation’ by the government.
   ‘An army helicopter performed a low-level flight over the mosque for more than 15 minutes and discharged gases, which caused suffocation and irritation in the eyes of everyone present in the premises,’ Aziz said.
   His deputy and younger brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, said that a ‘white substance’ was released by the helicopter but did not say what the substance was.