Palestinian prime minister designate Ismail Haniya forged ahead Saturday in efforts to form a national unity government that can appease rival factions and end a punishing 11-month long Western aid freeze.
   Haniya, who resigned late Thursday only to be re-commissioned by his long-term rival president Mahmud Abbas with forming a unity administration, has said he hopes to form a new broad-based government within three weeks.
   The incoming Palestinian government and its stance on key conditions are likely to top Monday’s three-way talks between the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, Abbas and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
   Keen to allay concerns in the West, which boycotts Haniya’s Hamas movement as a terrorist group, the moderate Abbas has stressed that the question of negotiations with Israel will remain his exclusive domain.
   Israel, meanwhile, continued to express scepticism about Abbas’ power-sharing agreement with Hamas, ahead of the first meeting between Abbas and Olmert since December.
   ‘Monday’s meeting will allow us to hear from Abbas the precise details of the policy of the new Palestinian government and decide if it will meet the conditions of the quartet,’ Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said. The quartet of main players in the Middle East peace process–the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States–has called for any new administration to renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals.
   ‘That way we can know if we have a partner for the continuation of dialogue... or if, in fact, Fatah has sided with Hamas,’ he added.
   Rice has vowed to adopt a wait-and-see attitude and has postponed any decision about resuming aid to the beleaguered Palestinian Authority until after Haniya forms his power-sharing cabinet with Abbas’ Fatah faction.
   As Israel and Palestinian officials readied for Rice’s arrival, Haniya began to lay out the composition and governing programme of a unity cabinet.
   ‘The official talks will begin today,’ said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, insisted anew Saturday that the Iranian government be held responsible for the use of Iranian made weapons against US forces in neighbouring Iraq, even if no direct link can be proven.
   ‘I certainly can’t, and I don’t believe the US government can, give you chapter and verse about the involvement of the Iranian government,’ Rice told reporters travelling with her on an unannounced visit to Baghdad.
   ‘But I think you have to hold the Iranian government as a whole accountable for the activities of its constituent parts and that’s why we would appeal to the Iranian government to play a stabilizing role instead of a destabilising role in Iraq,’ she said.
   The US military unveiled evidence earlier this week of Iranian-made weapons used in attacks on US troops in Iraq, including sophisticated roadside bombs blamed for the deaths of more than 170 American soldiers in recent months.
   US officials say the weapons are brought into Iraq by the Qods Special Forces brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the government’s elite security arm.
   The president, George W Bush, has highlighted the Iranian government’s role in anti-US attacks in a recent escalation of aggressive rhetoric against the Islamic regime in Tehran.
   But General Peter Pace, the head of the US military, said early this week that there was no evidence that Iran’s top leadership was involved in the arms smuggling, something Tehran also denies.

The US House of Representatives on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to the president, George W Bush, over his new strategy on Iraq, in a rare wartime blow to the country’s commander-in-chief.
   The non-binding resolution was adopted by the Democrat-controlled House, winning the support of 17 of the chamber’s 201 Republican members.
   A total of 246 of the current 434 House members supported the motion, which says ‘Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W Bush announced on January 10, 2007’ to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.
   It adds that ‘Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States armed forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honourably in Iraq.’
   The vote, in which 182 lawmakers voted against, ended a week of debate, the most serious organised on the Iraq war since the US-led invasion in March 2003 to topple Dictator Saddam Hussein.
   ‘The passage of this legislation will signal a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home safely and soon,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, urging the House to back the resolution.

Armed police patrolled south London streets on Friday following the fatal shootings of three teenage boys, while the British prime minister, Tony Blair, admitted there was a problem with gun-toting gangs.
   Blair called the killings ‘horrific, shocking and tragic beyond belief’ as police, politicians and community leaders discussed how to combat spiralling gun violence following the three deaths within less than two weeks.
   The prime minister pledged solutions aimed at combating the gangs, guns and drugs culture blighting parts of Britain’s inner cities to be set out within days.
   Billy Cox, 15, was killed in his home Wednesday; Michael Dosunmu, 15, was gunned down in his bedroom last Tuesday, and James Smartt-Ford, 16, was shot dead at an ice rink on February 3, all within a five-mile (eight-kilometre) radius.
   ‘What has happened in south London is horrific, shocking, and for the victims and their families, tragic beyond belief,’ Blair told a youth conference in Glasgow, western Scotland.
   ‘This tragedy is not a metaphor for the state of British society, still less for the state of British youth today.
   ‘But it is a specific problem, in a specific criminal culture amongst specific groups of young people.

Pakistan has renewed a call for neighbouring Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban insurgents to stem the rise in violence in the war-torn country.
   Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, a former general who is now governor of the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, warned the Taliban-led insurgency was already turning into a ‘liberation war’ in Afghanistan.
   It is ‘developing into some kind of nationalist movement, a resistance movement, some sort of liberation war against the coalition forces,’ he told journalists in the provincial capital of Peshawar.
   Aurakzai was speaking ahead of a rare media trip to North Waziristan, an area used by Taliban militants close to the Afghanistan border.
   A group of journalists flew Saturday to Miranshah, the main city in North Waziristan where thousands of troops are deployed to stop Taliban cross-border movement, for a briefing by senior army officials.
   In September Aurakzai engineered a peace deal with militants in North Waziristan, evoking suspicions from Kabul and the commanders of international forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
   Pakistan has strongly defended the agreement, saying it has helped curtail infiltration across the porous frontier into Afghanistan.

Four days after a landmark nuclear accord with North Korea, an independent US report has warned that the Stalinist state’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, continues to distrust Washington and views US aid as a ‘poison apple.’
   The report by an influential panel of Asia specialists also ruled out the possibility of Kim emulating China’s former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in embracing economic reforms to open up reclusive and impoverished North Korea.
   ‘Our conclusion is that the Kim regime would prefer to muddle through, despite the dim future for 21 million North Koreans, than to take the risk of opening up a la Deng Xiaoping,’ said the report, ‘US-Japan Alliance: Getting Asia Right Through 2020.’
   ‘Thus, the often-touted ‘Grand Bargain’ is likely to remain elusive because Kim Jong-Il harbours deeply ingrained distrust of the United States and tends to view proffered US economic incentives as a ‘poison apple,’’ said the panel co-chaired by former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.
   Some experts have previously proposed a ‘grand bargain’ by which the United States and its allies could defuse North Korea’s military threat through deeper North Korean reforms and weapons cuts in exchange for more Western and regional aid and recognition.
   The report Friday highlighted major trends in Asia, and provided the bipartisan panel’s analysis with security and economic policy recommendations.
   But the chapter on North Korea painted a largely pessimistic picture despite a breakthrough deal with Pyongyang at six-party talks in Beijing last Monday that Washington has touted as a first step towards stripping the Stalinist regime of any nuclear weapons.

Iraq will re-open its borders with Iran and Syria, closed earlier this week in the initial stages of a security crackdown, a spokesman for the officer overseeing the plan said on Saturday.
   ‘Seventy-two hours have passed and the borders will gradually re-open, but it will take 60 days for the border crossings to return to normal,’ brigadier Qassim Moussawi said, without specifying exactly when they would be reopened.
   Moussawi said the borders would be open for a limited number of hours each day, under close scrutiny. They were closed on Wednesday.
   He said the closure was mainly to allow for the smooth deployment of additional security forces in Baghdad, where US and Iraqi troops have stepped up an operation to try to stabilize the violent capital.
   The US military had said the border checkpoints would be revamped, partly to establish ‘transfer points’ to search vehicles coming in.

Clashes broke out between police and an armed group following a bomb explosion in southeast Iran on Friday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
   The device in the city of Zahedan caused no casualties; an official was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Saturday.
   The clashes broke out in Zahedan late on Friday. Zahedan governor Hassanali Nouri said police were pursuing those behind the blast.
   ‘The armed bandits, in their new crime, exploded a percussion bomb and fled the scene,’ Nouri said.
   He linked the bomb to the ‘massive participation of people in the funeral of victims of Wednesday’s terrorist act.’

The motorcade of Nepal’s King Gyanendra was stoned as the monarch drove to a pilgrimage site in the capital to celebrate a Hindu festival on Friday but he was not hurt, officials and witnesses said.
   The attack was the first of its kind in Nepal where the monarch was traditionally regarded as an incarnation of Hindu god Vishnu but has become unpopular since King Gyanendra took power only to be forced down by weeks of violent protests last year.
   The 59-year-old monarchwas on his way to the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu to pray on the occasion of ‘Mahashivratri’ when crowds hurled stones at his motorcade as it neared the venue, they said. The stones hit one caraccompanying King Gyanendra’s vehicle before the heavily-guarded convoy made it to the temple where the monarch worshipped on the annual ‘grand night’ festival of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
   The crowd also shouted ‘Gyanendra thief, leave the country’ as a power shutdown plunged the area into darkness, Ishwar Dhakal, a witness said.
   The police said the crowd was batoncharged before the king was driven back to the palace safely.
   King Gyanendra has been isolated since he gave in to mass protests last year, stripped of most of his powers including the control of the powerful army and is rarely seen in public.
   Gyanendra was a businessman before he became king in 2001 after his brother, King Birendra, and eight other royals were shot dead in a drug-and-drink fuelled shooting spree by the then crown prince who later turned the gun on himself.

Australian journalist Ben Hills has lashed out at the Japanese government, likening it to North Korea, after a publisher backed down on releasing his biography on Crown Princess Masako.
   Hills said the publisher bowed to government pressure in cancelling the translation of his book, which blames overbearing palace minders for plunging the career woman-turned-princess into depression.
   But Hills said he was talking to other Japanese publishers to print his book and that the controversy was boosting interest in the English-language edition, first released in November by Random House Australia.

Britain’s Prince Harry, an army officer and third in line to the throne, could be deployed to Iraq by the end of February, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
   The 22-year-old will be sent to Basra, southern Iraq, where Britain has more than 7,000 troops, the Daily Mirror said, citing an unnamed senior military source.
   A royal family spokesman declined to comment on the report, while the Ministry of Defence said it was ‘entirely speculative.’
   ‘No final decisions have been made on which units are even taking over,’ a spokeswoman said. ‘When it is made, then parliament will be told first in the normal way.’

Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan has said he does not want to run for the Indian presidency, after several parties reportedly expressed an interest in nominating him.
   ‘I am deeply humbled and touched by the thought. But I am not worthy of such high distinction,’ the Times of India quoted Bachchan as saying Saturday.
   Bachchan had an unsuccessful stint as a national lawmaker in the 1980s. The actor said he would never return to politics after his name figured in a defence bribery scandal that brought down the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989.
   The Times this week reported that four parties wanted to nominate the superstar for president, ahead of elections later this year.