A South Korean envoy headed for Afghanistan Thursday to spearhead efforts to free 22 of his country’s citizens after the Taliban said they had spared the captives from another deadline.
   The militants dumped the bullet-riddled body of the leader of the Korean Christian aid team in a desert area on Wednesday and set what they called a ‘final’ limit for a prisoner swap, which expired overnight at 2030 GMT.
   ‘Since the last deadline no more Koreans have been killed,’ rebel spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said in a telephone call from an unknown location. ‘They are all alive so far.’
   South Korea identified the dead man as 42-year-old Bae Hyung-Kyu, a Presbyterian pastor and the head of the mostly female aid mission, which was reportedly in the country to provide free medical services.
   His body was en route to the main US military base in Bagram, near the capital Kabul, and would be brought back to South Korea on the first available flight, the Korean news agency Yonhap said.
   The rebels said they had killed him because talks with the Afghan government and South Korean officials to secure the release of eight insurgent prisoners had stalled.
   However, the governor of Ghazni province about 140 kilometres south of Kabul, where the South Koreans were kidnapped, said that the negotiations were still ongoing.
   ‘I am hopeful that we will get results very soon,’ governor Mirajuddin Pattan said.
   Seoul said that Baek Jong-Chun, chief presidential secretary for foreign and security policy, had left for Afghanistan on Thursday as a special envoy for president Roh Moo-Hyun.
   South Korea, which has 200 troops serving with US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, reiterated its opposition to any military rescue but highlighted the problems in negotiating with the captors.
   ‘Their demands are considerably fluid and not unified. The armed insurgents are divided into different groups and the hostages are being kept in different places,’ said presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-Seon.
   The South Korean president himself denounced the pastor’s murder. ‘The organisation responsible for the abduction will be held accountable for taking the life of a Korean citizen,’ Roh said in a statement.
   Roh’s spokesman said the government understood that the other 22 were still held hostage and confirmed that the captives ‘have had no major health problems up to now.’

Pakistan on Thursday successfully test fired its nuclear-capable radar-dodging cruise missile, the military said.
   The indigenously developed Babur (Hatf-VII) missile has a range of 700 kilometres and ‘near stealth’ properties, it said in a statement.
   The missile was last tested in March and first fired in 2005, since when its range has been increased from 500 kilometres.
   ‘The missile test is part of a continuous process of validating the design parameters set for this weapon system,’ the statement said.
   It said president Pervez Musharraf and prime minister Shaukat Aziz congratulated the scientists and engineers ‘on this very important success.’
   ‘The Babur, which has near stealth capabilities, is a low flying, terrain hugging missile with high manoeuvrability, pinpoint accuracy and radar avoidance features,’ the statement said.
   ‘The test will consolidate Pakistan’s strategic capability and strengthen national security.’
   Pakistan and India have routinely conducted missile tests since the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals carried out tit-for-tat nuclear detonations in May 1998.

A bi-partisan group of lawmakers warned that Congress could block a landmark US-India nuclear cooperation deal if it sidesteps safeguards to prevent military uses of the technology.
   The 23 legislators sent a letter to president George W Bush saying the so-called ‘123’ operating agreement, which reportedly allows India to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, could end up violating US law.
   ‘The agreement for nuclear cooperation is subject to the approval of Congress, and any inconsistencies between the agreement and the relevant US laws will call congressional approval deeply into doubt,’ said the letter from the 23 members of the House of Representatives.
   Edward Markey, co-chairman of the House Bipartisan Task Force on Nonproliferation, sounded his own warning.
   ‘If the 123 agreement has been intentionally negotiated to side-step or bypass the law and the will of Congress, final approval for this deal will be jeopardized,’ Markey said.
   Details of the agreement have been kept under wraps since it was finalised in Washington last week by senior officials of the two countries.
   The nuclear deal was agreed upon by Bush and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, two years ago to highlight strategic ties between the world’s two biggest democracies.
   The Congress approved the deal in principle last year and a bill to that effect was signed into law by Bush, but there was a delay in finalising the operating agreement, which has to be approved again by Congress.
   India has stood fast against accepting any curbs on its reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
   India also wants assurances that Washington will continue to supply fuel for its atomic plants in the event New Delhi conducts further nuclear weapons tests.
   Indian media reports said the United States had agreed in principle to New Delhi’s proposal to reprocess spent fuel in a dedicated national facility under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
   But Washington is reportedly reluctant to provide such reprocessing technology to India, which has been under three decades of US sanctions for nuclear tests and is not a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   Based on details of the implementing agreement that had been leaked, ‘three or four significant issues could be in conflict with US laws,’ Daryl Kimball, executive director of the US Arms Control Association, said.
   They pertain to reprocessing and safeguards, he said.
   The Indian Cabinet approved Wednesday the controversial agreement.

Afghan and US-led forces killed more than 50 Taliban in a 12-hour battle in the country’s opium-growing heartland, while 10 rebels and a policeman died in a separate clash, officials said Thursday.
   Coalition warplanes were called in to bomb rebel hideouts in the most intense clash, which broke out late Wednesday in the insurgency-hit southern province of Helmand, a US-led coalition said in a statement.
   ‘More than 50 insurgents were confirmed killed with an unknown number wounded. Sixteen Taliban compounds, three enemy motorcycles and five enemy trucks were destroyed as well,’ the statement said.
   One coalition soldier suffered a broken hand during the battle, while there were no civilian casualties, it added.
   The ultra-Islamic Taliban launched a bloody insurgency after they were toppled from power by US-led forces and Afghan warlords following the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of people have died since then.
   The Taliban were not immediately available to comment on the official casualty figures.
   Helmand has seen some of the most bitter fighting, particularly in rebel-infested Musa Qala district, near the scene of the latest battle, where the coalition says 160 militants have been killed since Sunday.
   The province produces most of Afghanistan’s opium, the source of the heroin that reportedly funds much of the Taliban’s operations.

Thousands of opposition activists and ruling party dissidents took to the streets of the Sri Lankan capital Thursday in protest against human rights violations and high living costs.
   Supporters of the main opposition United National Party and a group of ruling party dissidents led by former foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera marched from Campbell Park in Colombo to the nearby Hyde Park for a rally.
   Anti-government activists poured into the streets despite warnings by the government that Tamil Tiger rebels had infiltrated the city of 650,000 people with truck and car bombs.
   Fewer vehicles were on the streets Thursday as many people remained indoors fearing trouble during the opposition rally, police said, adding that they stepped up their presence.
   ‘We have placed anti-riot squads on stand-by,’ a police official at the rally said.
   The activists were denouncing the government over its human rights record and displayed a white van with photographs of hundreds of people who had ‘disappeared’ in the past year.
   International rights groups have said that about 1,000 people have been murdered or disappeared in the past year amid an escalation of fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels in the island’s north and east.
   President Mahinda Rajapakse on Saturday ruled out snap elections despite two of his key men forming a breakaway faction that supports the main opposition since last week.

The UN Mideast envoy warned Wednesday of impending economic collapse in the Gaza Strip unless Israel reopens the Hamas-led territory’s main commercial crossing to the outside world to ease international isolation.
   Michael Williams said the closure of the Karni crossing in early June has prevented the export of agricultural and industrial goods to Israel, the West Bank and elsewhere, as well as the import of materials needed for manufacturing and construction. The restriction has brought the Gaza economy to a standstill.
   The World Bank estimates that 75 per cent of Gaza’s factories have closed and more than 68,000 Palestinian workers have been laid off as a result, he said.
   ‘Unless the crossings are open for imports and exports, the downward economic spiral will lead to extensive hardship for an already impoverished Gaza Strip,’ Williams told the UN Security Council in his regular monthly briefing on the Middle East.
   Since Hamas took over Gaza in mid-June, Israel has only permitted shipments of food and basic supplies into Gaza through two smaller passages.
   Israel, which shuns Hamas as a terrorist organisation, says it cannot reopen Karni without forces it has ties with at the crossing to coordinate border traffic. Gaza militants also keep attacking Karni and other crossings, making it too dangerous for Israeli border officials to operate them.
   Williams said Palestinian militants fired 192 rockets and mortar shells at Gaza’s crossings and into Israel in the last month. He said Hamas’ military wing was responsible for most of the attacks on the crossings, while Islamic Jihad fired most of the rockets and mortars into Israel.
   ‘Israel is fully cooperating with the relative UN agencies to ensure the constant flow of foodstuff and medicine into Gaza to ensure there are no humanitarian shortages, and the international community confirms that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,’ Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said in Jerusalem.
   ‘Israel will be ready to reopen the crossings when the Palestinians get their house together regarding security at the crossings,’ he added.
   Williams also said 6,000 Palestinians are trapped in Egypt, unable to return to Gaza because of the closure of the Rafah border terminal since June 9.
   ‘It is particularly worrying that very little progress has been made to resolve the question’ of these Palestinians, he said.
   Israel has proposed rerouting the stranded Palestinians through the Kerem Shalom crossing, near the meeting point of Gaza, Egypt and Israel.

Japan said Thursday it would not rule out buying next-generation aircraft from a third country due to the US ban on exporting its state-of-the-art F-22 stealth fighter.
   Japan has officially been pacifist since Second World War but has been gradually expanding the role of its military, in part due to concern over nuclear-armed North Korea.
   The United States, Japan’s primary ally, has banned all exports of its F-22 Raptor, which is built to evade radar detection at supersonic speeds.
   ‘It is essential to continue seeking information on the quality of state-of-the-art fighter jets developed by foreign countries,’ chief government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters.
   ‘We will keep seeking cooperation in gathering information,’ he said.
   A defence ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Japan was looking at six models of aircraft including the Raptor.
   They include the Eurofighter, which is designed by a European consortium, and the F-35, built by the United States and Britain, the official said.
   ‘One of the deciding factors is whether the fighter model can address any possible threat from the air anticipated over the next 20 years in which the nation uses it,’ the vice defence minister, Takemasa Moriya, said separately.

The Congress party looked set to lose power in Goa on Thursday after a group of legislators withdrew their support to the coalition.
   The Congress and its ally the Nationalist Congress Party, with the help of independents and smaller parties, managed to retain power in Goa’s state elections last month.
   It had been a rare electoral victory for Congress after the party fared poorly in other state elections this year, including the massive and politically important Uttar Pradesh.
   But less than two months after forming the government, two legislators from a smaller party and two independents have now withdrawn support from Congress, and opted to back the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party to form a new government.
   A fifth legislator from the Congress has already resigned, reducing the strength of its ruling coalition from 23 to 18 in the 40-member house.

Talks aimed at averting bloody naval clashes between South and North Korea broke down Thursday when the communist state refused to recognise their sea border.
   ‘We’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t need these fruitless talks any more,’ North Korea’s chief delegate lieutenant-general Kim Yong-Chol said on the third and final day of a high-level military meeting.
   A red-faced and apparently angry Kim attacked the South for refusing to discuss replacing the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea with a new maritime border, calling the current line ‘illegal.’

The United States Wednesday stressed it was acutely concerned about infringing Pakistani sovereignty, after Islamabad bristled at its threats of strikes against al-Qaeda in restive tribal areas.
   But senior State Department troubleshooter Nicholas Burns said Washington would retain the option of targeting Osama bin Laden’s terror group in Pakistani-Afghan border areas in some circumstances.
   ‘We want to respect the sovereignty of the Pakistani government ... we want to work with the Pakistanis,’ Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, told a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
   ‘Are there any scenarios under which the United States might take its own action when we are dealing with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda? We can foresee some such scenarios,’ he said.
   ‘But it’s always going to be our preference to work with (Pakistan) ... we are partners of them, we don’t want to complicate their internal politics needlessly.’
   Burns was replying to a question from Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who expressed concerns about the political impact of any US action in the tribal areas on president Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the US ‘war on terror.’
   ‘We would have the potential of causing a ripple effect throughout the country which could truly destabilise the central government,’ Webb said.
   Burns appeared before the committee several days after Pakistan reacted angrily to threats of action against militant targets in tribal territories, where US intelligence says al-Qaeda and the Taliban are regrouping.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s coalition is on course for a crushing defeat in weekend elections, with the opposition in striking distance of taking the upper house, a survey said Thursday.
   Abe, an outspoken conservative who has championed security issues, has suffered plunging support rates due to a raft of scandals and mismanagement of the pension system.
   Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition needs to win 64 of the 121 seats in the upper house up for grabs on Sunday to retain its majority.
   But the Yomiuri Shimbun forecast that the Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner New Komeito were struggling to win even a combined 53 seats.
   The opposition, led by the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan, was on course to take a majority, said the newspaper, which polled 32,065 voters.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said the human rights situation in Nepal continues to be ‘worrying’, with the main concerns linked to issues of discrimination with regard to representation in the political process and inadequate law enforcement.
   In his report to the Security Council, Moon said the overall human rights situation in Nepal continues to be ‘worrying’.
   ‘The main concerns are linked to inadequate public security and law enforcement and to unresolved issues of discrimination regarding representation and inclusion in the political process,’ the secretary general said.
   ‘The enforcement of repeated bandhs, especially in the Terai, (planes bordering India) by a range of groups seriously affected freedom of movement, as some protests turned violent. The police responses ranged from passivity to excessive use of force,’ Moon said in a report presented to the Security Council at the UN headquarters on Tuesday.

Iraq warned of a humanitarian crisis on Thursday as it appealed to the international community to help countries hosting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis uprooted by war.
   ‘The Iraqi government calls on the international community, in particular neighbouring countries, to support Iraq to overcome this difficult stage,’ said Mohammed al-Hajj al-Hmud, secretary general of Iraq’s foreign ministry.
   ‘It’s their duty to provide all assistance to displaced Iraqis, ease their suffering and help them find a solution to their problem,’ he told a conference in the Jordanian capital.
   ‘The humanitarian duty calls upon all of us to look more seriously at the size of the problem and acknowledge that there is a real humanitarian crisis.’
   Hmud urged host countries to ‘facilitate residency permits for Iraqis and – enable them to stay until conditions are suitable for their return to their homeland’ and provide them with better health and educational facilities.
   He said some countries, which he did not identify, ‘deny entry to Iraqis and force them to return to Iraq’ while others ‘detain Iraqis in airports for several days for investigation’ before deciding whether to allow them in.
   ‘We urge these countries to adopt clear mechanisms for entry visas or set parameters for the issue in cooperation with the UNHCR (UN refugee agency) in order to organise the entry of Iraqis,’ he said.
   The one-day conference hosted by Jordan is also attended by representatives from Syria and Egypt as well as observers from the UNHCR, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Japan, the European Union, the United States and Britain.
   The United Nations estimates that some four million of Iraq’s 26 million people have fled the violence in the country, including those who left before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
   The UNHCR calls this the biggest wave of displacement in the Middle East since 1948, when the creation of Israel caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to take flight.
   It estimates that Syria hosts some 1.4 million Iraqis and Jordan about 750,000, including people who abandoned the country before 2003.
   Jordan, which said hosting Iraqis costs the desert kingdom around one billion dollars a year, asked the international community to provide more direct aid to local ministries and agencies.
   ‘This will help us continue our assistance to them and meet their educational and health needs,’ Mkheimar Abu Jamus, secretary general of the interior ministry said.
   Officially Jordan shies away from calling Iraqis on its territory ‘refugees’ and has commissioned a Swedish group to survey their numbers and identify their status.
   Although many commentators agree the influx of migrants has triggered concerns about inflation, job losses and the expansion of ghettos in Jordan, others blame the economic challenges on other factors.
   A report by the University of Jordan’s Centre of Strategic Studies this month blamed Jordan’s economic woes on ‘the end of subsidised fuel from Iraq, high international oil prices, exports of the domestic food supply and rising costs of food.’
   The UNHCR has urged the international community to ‘put its money where its mouth is’ and earlier this month it doubled to 123 million dollars its annual appeal to help boost medical care, shelter and other support for the Iraqis.

French green groups Thursday attacked plans to build a French reactor in Libya for water desalination as a perilous masquerade that would encourage Moamer Kadhafi to get a nuclear bomb.
   Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear) said the official reason for the reactor was a ‘deception’ as the civilian and military uses of nuclear technology were ‘indissociable.’
   ‘Delivering civilian nuclear energy to Libya would amount to helping the country, sooner or later, to acquire nuclear weapons,’ it said.
   Rich in oil and gas, Libya is ‘very amply self-sufficient in energy,’ the group argued. ‘If it wishes to diversify, it should logically give priority to solar energy: the country enjoys remarkable levels of sunshine all year long.’
   A memorandum on building the new reactor was signed on Wednesday as the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, held
   talks with Libyan leader Kadhafi, a day after Tripoli’s release of six foreign medics.
   Greenpeace France said the deal ‘poses an enormous problem in terms of nuclear proliferation’ and branded it as ‘in keeping with the French policy of irresponsible export of nuclear technology.’
   Greenpeace pointed out that previous French presidents had signed nuclear deals with the former shah of Iran, ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and with South Africa during the apartheid era.
   ‘Officially, the reactor being sold to Libya is to desalinate sea water to help the country’s supplies of drinking water. Who are they kidding?’ asked Frederic Marillier, in charge of Greenpeace’s energy campaign.

Alert levels remained high Thursday in south eastern Europe where a devastating heat wave persisted as environmentalists blamed many of the fires raging in Italy on arsonists.
   At least 4,500 hectares of protected areas have burned in the past three weeks in Italy, according to the environmental group WWF, charging widespread arson.
   ‘Most of the fires of the past few days have been of a criminal nature,’ the WWF said in a statement. ‘It is well known that fire almost always serves to get rid of trees and other natural obstacles to make way for new hotels, villas or pastures.’
   Public safety chief Guido Bertolaso accused ‘many cities’ of failing to update the property records of areas that are burned. Under Italian law, no new construction is allowed on burned land until 15 years after a fire.
   WWF says the hardest hit regions are Campania around Naples, in addition to Abruzzo, Calabria, Sicily and Apulia.
   On Tuesday, a fire in the Apulia region killed two elderly people, burning them alive as they tried to escape in their car.
   The Italian Farmers Confederation said that more than 5,000 hectares of farmland have also been destroyed, worth some 1.4 billion dollars.
   Temperatures were declining in Italy Thursday, where meteorologists expected highs in the low 30s Celsius in most of the country.
   In Slovakia a lightning strike sparked a huge forest fire that claimed at least 10 hectares of the Slovensky Raj (Slovakian Paradise) national park in the east of the country.
   In Greece meanwhile, two elderly women died in the Peloponnese village of Diakofto where a fire was burning for the third day, fire fighters said Thursday. The same fire had already claimed another life.
   A 76-year-old man died Wednesday evening in another fire in the village of Mamoussia that destroyed many homes not only in Mamoussia but also in two other towns, Pyrgaki and Melissia. All were evacuated.
   The inferno broke out in the area some 200 kilometres from Athens on Tuesday and has yet to be brought under control.
   A dozen other fires were still burning across the country Thursday including major blazes on the islands of Kefalonia and Zakynthos in the Ionian sea, at Chios island in the Aegean, Hydra south of Athens and in Kastoria and Kozani, in the north.

Bulgaria on Thursday brushed aside protests from Tripoli over the pardons granted to six Bulgarian medics freed this week from life sentences in Libyan prison.
   ‘There is absolutely no obstacle whatsoever to the pardoning of the Bulgarian medics,’ prosecutor general Boris Velchev told the BGNES news agency.
   The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-born doctor spent eight and a half years in a Libyan jail, half of it on death row after being convicted of deliberately infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus.
   They were extradited to Bulgaria on Tuesday on the basis of a bilateral prisoner exchange treaty and were pardoned on arrival here by president Georgy Parvanov.
   The exchange agreement ‘allows such a measure, which is a principle element in all treaties of this kind,’ Velchev argued.

More rains were forecast Thursday for flood-hit areas in Britain, where meteorologists said the three months from May to July were the wettest in England and Wales since records began in 1766.
   The heavy rains came in two waves, one on June 24 and 25, that flooded much of northern and central England, killing four people, and another on July 20 that submerged large swathes of western and south-central England.
   The second wave produced the worst flooding in 60 years, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without tap water, cutting electricity to tens of thousands of homes, and spreading chaos on both roads and railways.
   The figures released by the weather forecasting agency, the Met Office, showed that 387.6 millimetres of rain has fallen across England and Wales, the most since records were first kept in 1766. Even with the month not yet over, the total rainfall amount is already more than twice the May-to-June average, which is 186.3 millimetres.
   The worst of the day’s rain is due to fall in parts of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, which is well south of the flood zones.