The US assistant secretary of state, Richard Boucher, said on Thursday Pakistan could have an election that was fair, if not perfect, if the president, Pervez Musharraf, lifts its state of emergency on December 16 as promised.
   ‘I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent election and a fair election,’ Boucher told a congressional hearing.
   ‘It’s not going to be a perfect election,’ he said. He was asked if Pakistan could have a free election if Musharraf lifted the state of emergency as promised.
   Boucher’s view contrasts with that of opposition politicians and rights activists who believe there may be too little time before the January 8 parliamentary contest for a free and fair election and who want Musharraf to reinstate ousted judges.
   Pakistani lawyers and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif took to the streets to demand Musharraf reinstate judges that he fired after imposing emergency rule on November 3 in a crackdown on opposition politicians, the judiciary and the media.
   Musharraf has freed more than 5,000 lawyers and opposition activists rounded up after he declared the emergency, but several Supreme Court judges including deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry are still being held under house arrest.
   The two main opposition parties are considering boycotting the vote, moves that would rob it of credibility and prolong instability in a nuclear-armed nation that is crucial to US efforts to fight al-Qaeda and bring peace to Afghanistan.
   At the Washington hearing, lawmakers asked Boucher sharp questions about the wisdom of US financial aid to Pakistan and protesters held up critical signs as he spoke, including ‘Stop Funding Dictators’ and ‘Lies.’
   Of the country’s recent turmoil, Boucher said, ‘One would not want to have such disruption ... this close to any election. That obviously changes the atmosphere.’
   But he added that he still believed it was possible to have ‘an election that really does reflect the choices made by the people of Pakistan.’
   Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, questioned this.
   ‘It’s hard to imagine how Pakistan can have a credible election without an independent judiciary. If Musharraf can get away with jailing the Supreme Court and removing all checks to his authority, why does the administration trust him to play by the rules in the election?’ Malinowski said.
   ‘To whom will the opposition turn if he tries to steal the vote?’ he added.

Myanmar’s ruling generals may face another ‘explosive’ situation if they ignore the deepening domestic economic crisis which triggered mass protests against the regime this year, an expelled UN official said.
   Charles Petrie, the top UN resident diplomat kicked out for highlighting the former Burma’s economic woes, said the regime’s refusal to acknowledge the grievances that fuelled the protests was a ‘pretty bad cocktail’ that could lead to further unrest.
   ‘There is this growing impoverishment and growing inability of people to meet their daily needs, which has the potential to be explosive,’ he told the news agency after leaving Yangon this week.
   ‘The more people are impoverished, the less educated they are, the more they have to confront diseases that push them more into poverty, the more difficult the situation is to govern’.
   ‘If you take all these elements together, you don’t necessarily have a train on a train track,’ said the 48-year-old Paris-born son of a British diplomat.
   Petrie, whose five-year posting was due to end in next July, was told in November that his statement on UN Day the previous month had damaged Myanmar’s image and he was no longer welcome.
   The statement said the protests that began in mid-August against shock increases in fuel prices and snowballed into a monk-led uprising against the junta were indicators of the dire state of the economy after 45 years of military rule.
   ‘That is something I think is very dangerous for the regime not to understand,’ said Petrie, fearing that the generals could use violence again to clamp down on public anger.
   ‘Some would argue that my expulsion was part of that intimidation, basically making the point that if others champion your cause, we can also take care of them,’ he said. At least 15 people were killed in the junta’s crackdown against the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years, drawing unprecedented international criticism and pressure to embark upon meaningful reforms.
   However, the generals have made clear they do not intend to do anything outside the framework of their seven-step democracy roadmap, which the West dismisses as a sham to solidify the army’s grip on power.
   Critics say the regime’s decision to restrict the drafting of a new constitution to a government-appointed panel was a clear snub of the UN’s effort to promote national reconciliation by including opposition and ethnic groups.
   The Myanmar information minister, Kyaw Hsan, told reporters in the new capital Naypyidaw on Monday that ‘no assistance or advice’ from others was needed.
   Petrie said the mission of UN Special Envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari, who visited twice after the protests and is expected to return this month, ‘is becoming more complicated’ but he did not see a loss of momentum.

The police have discovered unmarked graves in a cluster of Indian villages where there were violent protests against a communist state government, raising fears the death toll may be higher than official figures.
   The West Bengal state government, which is an ally of India’s federal government, has been roiled by protests over the killing by suspected communist cadres of villagers opposed to the seizure of land for industry.
   Government officials said six people had been killed over the last month in protests in Nandigram, bringing the toll to 34 since January. But some witnesses said many more deaths have been concealed.
   ‘Human bodies seem to have been buried in a hurry and the graves need to be dug up to find the truth,’ Alok Raj, a senior federal police officer, said.
   The communists lost control of Nandigram earlier this year after trying, unsuccessfully, to get villagers to vacate their land.
   Local opposition parties and Maoist rebels then moved in after villagers dug up roads and burned communist party offices.
   This month, communist party cadres broke that resistance by forcing their way in and shooting at villagers, locals said. Opposition parties said innocent villagers who fought communist cadres were killed and their bodies carried away.
   This week in a further embarrassment for the communists, the West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, admitted that Nandigram had been a ‘political and administrative failure.’

The United Nations refugee agency on Friday warned that tens of thousands of Iraqis returning to the country face deplorable living conditions and a highly dangerous security situation.
   ‘Many areas are still considered to be unsafe and conditions are not conducive for return in safety and dignity,’ UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman William Spindler told journalists.
   ‘There is a general lack of access to material, legal and physical safety and proper services’ such as food, drinking water and sanitation, he added.
   The UNHCR said it will nevertheless support any Iraqi refugees who do choose to return, and is coordinating its efforts with those of the Iraqi government.
   ‘Between August and end-November, our staff in Syria have received reports that 128,000 Iraqis were recorded as leaving (Syria) through the main border crossing, while 97,000 Iraqis arrived in Syria,’ Spindler said.
   He stressed that these figures include ‘all categories of Iraqis, including bus and taxi drivers, and not only refugees’.
   Earlier this week, the UN’s special representative in Iraq Staffan de Mistura said the UNHCR was contributing
   three experts and 11 million dollars to a joint UN-Iraqi emergency plan to assist returning refugees.
   The Iraqi Red Crescent said on Monday that between 25,000-28,000 refugees had come home from Syria since mid-September.

Women are still the victims of persistent gender inequality in the workplace, with very little change in their working conditions in Britain for almost two decades, according to a landmark report on Thursday.
   Women are working longer hours because they are still shouldering the bulk of household duties like cleaning and childcare, the Cambridge University report found.
   This was leading to a vicious circle in which women worked more part-time hours, preventing them from furthering their career.
   The report, ‘Gender and working conditions in the European Union’, said there was still segregation in the workplace while women were far less likely to earn high salaries than their male counterparts.
   It found that despite British female workers making up just under half of the workforce, fewer than one in six had senior management roles.
   The report, based on surveys of 30,000 workers in the 27 EU countries, revealed few women were represented in the armed forces, skilled manual work and senior management.
   More were in ‘caring’ professions and clerical support.
   ‘Our research revealed persistent gender inequalities in many, but not all, types of work and working conditions,’ said Brendan Burchell, who led the study.
   ‘There is still a very big difference in the way domestic work is shared — it is changing but it is changing slowly,’ he told Reuters. ‘Men are starting to take an equal shoulder of the housework but ... this still needs to change.’
   He said he was struck at how inequality, particularly in working conditions, in Britain had not changed since 1991.
   ‘In many ways we are an average country,’ he added. ‘We have lots of part time workers, second only to the Netherlands, which in some ways is good
   as it takes the pressure off families, but on the other hand it makes it more difficult for women to get back and
   become established in the labour market.’

The UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, on Thursday said Israel’s decision to expand a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem was ‘not helpful’ and he would discuss the matter with his partners in the diplomatic Quartet for Middle East peace.
   ‘The UN position on the illegality of settlements is well known,’ he told reporters.
   ‘This new tender for 300 new homes in east Jerusalem so soon after this Annapolis Middle East peace conference, I think, is not helpful,’ he added, referring to a recent US-hosted peace summit.
   ‘I will be discussing this matter with my Quartet partners.’
   On Tuesday Israel said it had invited bids to build more than 300 new housing units in
   Har Homa, a settlement in annexed east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians have demanded as the capital of their future state.
   Israel does not consider construction in east Jerusalem — which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day war — as settlement growth because it annexed the Arab part of the Holy City shortly after the conflict.
   But the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s powerful executive committee issued a statement in which it blasted the expansion project as a ‘serious violation’ and called on the United States and the UN Security Council to put pressure on Israel.
   Ban’s Quartet partners are the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
   The Quartet drafted the so-called roadmap which calls for establishing a Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel.
   The issue was discussed at the US-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland at which Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to revive the stagnant Middle East peace process and set the goal of a peace deal and a new Palestinian state by the end of 2008.

South Korean police Friday stepped up security for leading candidates in the December 19 presidential election after a driver ran down two soldiers and grabbed their weapons.
   One soldier died in hospital and the other was seriously injured after the driver of a heavy sports utility vehicle rammed them from behind and then savagely attacked them with a knife late Thursday.
   As a precaution police deployed anti-terrorist teams armed with sub-machine guns and sniper rifles to guard leading candidates, with the attacker still on the run.
   ‘We have urgently dispatched SWAT teams to enhance security around leading candidates,’ an official of the National Police Agency told the news agency.
   ‘Differently from ordinary police security guards, they will be armed with sub-machine guns. Snipers will also take positions on rooftops or in the windows of buildings when the candidates have to deliver speeches.’
   Yonhap news agency said some 300 police including SWAT members were protecting each of the three top candidates including frontrunner Lee Myung-Bak.
   Lee called off a rally in the central city of Cheongju, while leaders of his conservative opposition Grand National Party expressed concern at a possible attack.

A Swiss trekker was injured after being beaten by Nepal’s former Maoist rebels because he refused to pay a ‘donation’, an official said on Friday, the first known assault of a foreigner by the Maoists.
   Police said 31-year-old Steve Jeanneret was attacked at Birethanti, 150 km northwest of Kathmandu, on the Annapurna trekking trail, a popular route for Western trekkers in Nepal, after refusing to pay $28 to the former rebels.
   ‘He was stopped by two Maoist activists who asked for the donation and was beaten up by bamboo sticks,’ Sharad Pradhan, a spokesman of the Nepal Tourism Board said.
   Jeanneret told the Maoists that he had read in newspapers that their chief Prachanda had said donation to the ex-guerrillas was not compulsory and refused to pay them, according to Pradhan.
   ‘The Maoists then beat him up. His head is injured,’ Pradhan said adding that the trekker’s Nepali guide was also manhandled.
   Jeanneret has now returned to western resort town of Pokhara.
   There was no immediate comment from the Maoists who ended their decade-long civil war under a peace deal last year.
   Human rights activists and many politicians accuse the Maoists of continuing extortion, intimidation and abductions despite joining the peace process.
   The Maoists say their policy was not to harm foreign tourists, a key source of income for the impoverished country known for its scenic beauty and home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountains including Mount Everest.

A 146,000 tonne Hong Kong-registered tanker was hit by a crane while at anchor off the port of Taean, south of Seoul, causing a leak of 15,000 tonnes of crude oil, Seoul’s maritime ministry said on Friday.
   The tanker, Hebei Sprint, was anchoring near Taean to discharge crude brought from the Middle East at the port’s unloading facilities, the ministry said.
   Industry sources said the crude was being unloaded for South Korean refiner, Hyundai Oilbank, but the refiner was not immediately available for comment.
   Hebei Sprint was hit by the crane early on Friday, a Coast Guard official said, adding the equipment was in transit after being used to build a bridge in Taean.
   Friday’s spillage is the largest in South Korean waters since a 5,000 tonne crude discharge in 1995 at Yeosu, south of Seoul.

The death toll from a coal mine gas blast in north China has risen to 105 after rescuers found 34 bodies overnight, state television reported on Friday.
   The explosion hit the Xinyao mine in coal-rich Shanxi province late on Wednesday, but the managers did not report it until five hours later and instead tried to launch their own rescue operation, which Chinese media said probably increased casualties.
   The police were trying to confirm the exact number of people working underground, but it had ‘seriously exceeded safety limits’ and rescuers were searching for more victims, China Central Television said.
   There were 15 survivors.
   The village-run mine was licensed, but initial investigations showed the explosion was caused by mining along a coal seam that had not been authorised for production, Chinese media said.
   Police have arrested the mine’s head and legal representative, suspended its licence and frozen its bank accounts, while top safety officials had rushed to the site from Beijing, Xinhua news agency said.

A shock US report clearing Iran of nuclear military activity has further split the world and weakens the case for tighter sanctions to halt Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme, analysts say.
   Although the US president, George W Bush, is adamant that Iran remains a threat despite Monday’s appraisal by US intelligence that Tehran stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, the new assessment has taken the world by storm.
   Experts say it could widen the chasm between those trying to ratchet up pressure and others who argue that Tehran is within its international rights to reprocess nuclear fuel for its civilian energy needs.
   ‘It will exacerbate the divisions between Russia and China on the one hand and the others,’ Zhand Shakibi, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, told the.
   ‘But it also shows that the US is coming to the same conclusions as China or Russia — that you can work with the Islamic republic.’
   Russia and China have all but ruled out fresh UN sanctions against Iran after the new National Intelligence Estimate, which undermines Bush’s argument that Tehran poses an imminent threat and might require a military response.
   Russia has also strongly opposed US plans to set up a missile shield in eastern Europe and has rejected Washington’s claim that this was necessary to pre-empt a possible strike from Iran.
   The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the shock US report would weigh against a third UN sanctions resolution punishing Tehran, which Washington is pushing hard for at the UN Security Council.
   ‘We will judge the situation around the idea of a new UN Security Council resolution on the basis of all factors, including, of course, on the basis of public confirmation of the US information,’ Lavrov said.
   Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, echoed him when asked if the new assessment might change things, saying: ‘I think Council members will have to consider that, because... now things have changed.’
   Russia and China are two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and can veto any resolution. They have both been reluctant to back previous measures against Iran.
   Laleh Khalili, a lecturer in Middle East politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said the new intelligence could afford countries such as Germany, which have business interests in Iran, a chance to backtrack.
   ‘As long as the US administration will not be speaking in one voice, it will be quite difficult for the US to go to Iran, as they have done in Iraq,’ Khalili said.
   ‘The prospects for sanctions are much less than they were before. What happens depends on a lot of politicking between the Bush administration and the European states.’
   Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has already pleaded for tougher sanctions, while Britain and France favour continued pressure on Tehran to halt enriching uranium, a process which can be used in bomb making.
   Adrian Hamilton, a commentator in Britain’s The Independent newspaper, said the NIE had turned things upside down.
   ‘Consider that only a week ago, Britain and America had thought they had tougher measures in the UN Security Council in the bag ...and that President Bush was highlighting the threat of a nuclear Iran as the greatest danger to world peace, and you can see just what a huge impact the report is having,’ he said.
   ‘The intelligence report shows that the Americans, the Bush administration have realised that the Islamic republic is not run by a bunch of mad clerics, but in fact that they do cost and benefit analysis in their foreign policy,’ LSE’s Shakibi said.
   ‘In other words, they respond to pressure (and are) open to negotiations.’

A German Muslim group criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday for suggesting that mosque minarets should not
   be higher than church steeples, saying it hoped this topic
   would not be used as a campaign issue.
   Merkel, a Lutheran pastor’s daughter who grew up in communist East Germany, told a congress of her conservative Christian Democrats that ‘we must take care that mosque cupolas are not built demonstratively higher than church steeples’.
   Mosque-building is a sensitive subject in Germany. Merkel’s fellow conservatives in Bavaria have been saying for months that minarets should not dwarf steeples. Local residents are up in arms about plans to build mosques in Berlin, Munich and Cologne.
   Bekir Alboga, spokesman for the Coordination Council of Muslims, an umbrella organisation for Muslims in Germany, said he was worried that mosques could become a campaign issue in state elections coming up in some parts of Germany.
   ‘We must be on guard against sparking artificial discussions for political purposes which have little connection with reality,’ Alboga said in a statement.
   ‘Comments like Chancellor Merkel’s (about Mosques) ... take a back seat to the expert opinions of building authorities, who base their decisions on local conditions and consensus between the citizens and mosque communities,’ he said.

Bay US naval base, Cuba Osama bin Laden’s former driver and bodyguard said he felt an ‘uncontrollable enthusiasm’ when working for the al-Qaeda leader and helped him elude US retaliation after the September 11 attacks, a US federal investigator testified on Thursday.
   Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee facing war crimes charges, told agents he drove bin Laden and his son Othman when they evacuated their compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan, ahead of the attacks, investigators told a marathon pre-trial hearing that lasted about 14 hours with frequent short recesses.
   Although not initially with bin Laden on September 11, Hamdan returned to bin Laden’s side and continued to drive him for weeks as he moved from city to city and house to house to avoid US efforts to retaliate, said Robert McFadden, a defence department special agent who interviewed him.
   Hamdan heard bin Laden say he had expected up to 1,500 deaths in the attacks but was pleased to learn there were many more, said FBI agent George Crouch Jr, who interviewed Hamdan separately at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
   McFadden said Hamdan told him he had pledged an ongoing oath of allegiance or ‘bayat’ to bin Laden. Asked if Hamdan had described how he felt while serving bin Laden, the defence department agent said, ‘uncontrollable enthusiasm.’ The comments from the agents came as a judge began hearing the first witnesses in a US military war crimes proceeding since the end of World War Two. The Guantanamo war crimes tribunals first convened in August 2004 but no witnesses were called in any previous hearings.

There is a serious problem with rape in the US prison system, experts said Thursday.
   While it is difficult to get a true picture of how often inmates suffer assaults from their fellow criminals and by prison staff members, anecdotal evidence shows that the rape is an all-too common experience in the growing US prison complex.
   According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were more than 6,500 inmate allegations of sexual assault reported in 2006 to authorities. That is a rate of 2.9 claims per 1,000 prisoners, an estimate based on a sampling of prison facilities.
   ‘There are lot of prisoner advocates who would claim that this is a vast underreporting of the problem,’ said Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor of criminal justice policy at the University of Texas, who once served as a court-appointed monitor of a Texas prison reform lawsuit.
   ‘Correction officials would argue that the vast majority of these inmate allegations are not sustained. Everyone agrees that prison rape is an issue that needs to be addressed, but not everyone agrees on the scope of the problem,’ Deitch says.
   Congress estimates that one million inmates were sexually assaulted, during the 20 years preceding the signing of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 by the president, George W Bush.
   But that figure is also highly debated, experts say.
   Authorities, scholars and independent monitors of US prisons hope that the federal law’s requirement of mandatory reporting of sexual violence will soon yield more precise statistics.

Russia’s foreign ministry criticised US authorities on Friday for turning a blind eye to an academic conference in Washington that it said represented an incitement to terrorism.
   In a statement, the ministry said the conference by the Jamestown Foundation think tank on November 28 ‘spread slander’ on the security situation in southern Russia ‘with the help of terrorism abettors and pseudo-experts.’
   The conference was the foundation’s ‘latest anti-Russian action,’ it said.
   The subject of the conference was the Caucasus province of Ingushetia, where a spate of deadly attacks on security forces and ethnic-Russian inhabitants in recent weeks has been blamed on Islamic militants and separatist rebels.
   ‘It is surprising that such events take place before the very eyes of the US administration, which has taken on international obligations not to allow propaganda and incitement to terrorism,’ the statement continued.

A parliamentary session to elect a new president in Lebanon was postponed Friday for a seventh time, with a new date set for Tuesday, a spokesman for parliament speaker Nabih Berri said.
   ’The parliament speaker has decided to postpone today’s session to Tuesday, December 11 at 12 noon,’ said Mohammed Ballout, without giving further details.
   Lawmakers from the ruling Western-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition had earlier gathered in parliament to elect the army chief as the new president but confusion reigned for some time as MPs gave conflicting statements.
   MP Robert Ghanem told AFP after the session was delayed that he believes the vote would finally go through next Tuesday.
   He said a petition signed by 10 MPs would be submitted to parliament on Saturday calling for a constitutional amendment to allow General Michel Sleiman’s election to the presidency, which has been vacant for two weeks.
   ‘There will be two sessions on Tuesday, one to amend the constitution and another to elect the president,’ he said.
   Friday’s session was the seventh attempt by lawmakers to elect a successor to incumbent Emile Lahoud, whose term expired November 23.

Germany and France said on Thursday Iran’s nuclear programme was still a threat and the search for more UN sanctions should go on despite a US intelligence report that Tehran was no longer trying to build an atomic bomb.
   Speaking at a joint news conference with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the existing dual track policy of preparing sanctions against Tehran while leaving the door open to negotiations should go on.
   ‘I think that we are in a process and that Iran still poses a threat,’ Merkel said, adding that talks between mediator Javier Solana and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator should continue.
   Sarkozy said he fully agreed with Merkel, adding: ‘What has made Iran move until now is sanctions and firmness.’
   The US National Intelligence Estimate published Monday said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago. It said Iran was continuing to develop the technical means that could be applied to producing weapons.
   The report appears likely to increase resistance from Russia and China to US demands, backed by France and Britain, for a third round of United Nations sanctions against Iran over its atomic programme.

Shopping centres across America have stepped up security to protect shoppers during the busy holiday season in the wake of a deadly shooting in a Nebraska mall that left nine people dead.
   While several shopping malls increased patrols after a lone gunman fired an assault rifle into a crowded store in Omaha on Wednesday, industry officials acknowledged that such tragedies are difficult to prevent.
   Shopping centres, which are considered by security experts a ‘soft’ target for terrorism, already implemented tighter security measures following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
   But American shoppers are reluctant to accept even measures that would force them to go through metal detectors or be frisked by guards to enter their beloved malls, said Malachy Kavanagh, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centres.
   ‘We hope that we will not get to that point in this country because we live in a free society and respect people’s right to travel unimpeded,’ Kavanagh told the news agency.
   While Shoppers who were surveyed in focus groups indicated they would rather not have to go through metal detectors, they appeared willing to accept them if the government raised the terror alert level, he said.