Pakistan’s military ruler president Pervez Musharraf is battling serious dissent within his own party, weakening a crucial cornerstone of the US-led ‘war on terror,’ analysts and party officials say.
   The man who survived at least two al-Qaeda assassination attempts stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suspended the country’s top judge, chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, on March 9.
   Opponents say he wanted to intimidate the judiciary before seeking re-election in uniform from the outgoing parliament—despite the fact that the constitution says he should quit as army chief by the end of 2007.
   After trying to present a united front in the face of nationwide protests, newspapers reported this week that Musharraf had blasted members of his ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid.
   ‘I bluntly say you always leave me alone in times of trial and tribulation,’ The News, a respected daily, quoted a ‘shaken’ Musharraf as telling the members on Wednesday.
   He reportedly warned that without him, the country risked ‘Talibanisation’ by militants from the Pakistan-Afghan border.
   But hours after he spoke, fresh divisions emerged when prime minister Shaukat Aziz abruptly suspended tough curbs on the media that Musharraf himself had introduced three days earlier.
   Part of the problem, analysts say, lies in the ragtag origins of the PML-Q, which is named after Pakistan’s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
   To back him in 2002 elections, Musharraf gathered disaffected members from the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, the premier he overthrew in a 1999 coup, and the Pakistan People’s Party of ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
   But the hybrid party is largely conservative and has failed to support some of Musharraf’s measures to tackle sexism and religious extremism.
   It now faces trouble in a general election expected late this year.
   ‘The president is solely responsible for destroying the party. He never considered it important to seek its opinion,’ Kabir Ali Wasti, one of several PML-Q vice-presidents, said.
   So far the party has held only a handful of rallies to support its embattled president after commandeering local buses to bring in supporters.
   Musharraf’s strongest backing has come from his allies in Karachi, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. However, they have been accused of involvement in violence there on May 12 that claimed more than 40 lives when Chaudhry tried to speak in the city.
   ‘I have told the president there is no consultative process in the party. We need to regroup to survive,’ said Farooq Amjad Mir, a PML-Q legislator from the eastern city of Lahore.
   ‘Even on the judicial issue there was no parliamentary meeting called to work out a strategy in the face of the opposition and media onslaught.’
   Speculation has naturally turned to the military, general Musharraf’s ultimate powerbase and the recipient of billions of dollars in US aid since Pakistan came over to Washington’s side after the September 11 attacks.
   The army last month issued an unprecedented statement that it fully stood behind him.
   ‘Other than the military which is duty-bound by discipline to support him, there are very few political forces behind Musharraf. He is a worried man now,’ political analyst Shafqat Mahmood said.
   Musharraf’s best hope may lie with his Western allies, despite their calls for him to hang up his uniform and hold free elections, said Rasool Bakh Raees, professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences.
   ‘They want him to stay in power because he is chief of the army and can get favourable results in the war on terror. But this is no guarantee that they can save him from political upheavals,’ he said.
   But railways inister Sheikh Rashid, considered close to Musharraf, rubbished talk of disunity in the party.
   ‘The president’s advice during the meeting to the lawmakers was to be active but he never criticised any allies,’ he said.

A Sri Lankan probe into a series of rights abuses blamed on the security forces and Tamil Tiger rebels is riddled with flaws and fails to meet international standards, foreign observers said on Monday.
   Experts appointed by the international community to observe a presidential commission probe abuses — including the massacre of 17 aid workers that Nordic truce monitors have blamed on the — military saw ‘hardly any noticeable progress’.
   ‘We remain concerned the current measures taken by the government of Sri Lanka and the commission to address issues such as the independence of the commission, timeliness and witness protection are not adequate and do not satisfy international norms and standards,’ the panel said in statement.
   The panel said it was also concerned that the attorney general’s department acts as legal counsel to the commission, appointed by president Mahinda Rajapaksa amid outrage over the aid worker killings and widespread rights violations.
   The fact that members of the attorney general’s department now aiding the probe were involved in initial investigations into some of the 16 rights abuse cases being probed, means they may find they are investigating themselves, the panel added.
   ‘We consider these to be serious conflicts of interest, which lack transparency and compromise national standards of independence and impartiality,’ it said.
   The experts are also worried by what they say are insufficient measures to ensure the protection of witnesses, particularly as reports of abductions and disappearances mushroom amid a new chapter in a two-decade civil war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983.

The US president, George W Bush, turning from adulation in the Balkans to difficulties back home, said Monday that his stalled immigration overhaul would be revived and his embattled attorney general would not fall under a Senate vote of no-confidence.
   ‘I believe we can get it done,’ Bush said of the immigration bill that has run into deep trouble on Capitol Hill. ‘I’ll see you at the bill signing.’
   Warmly welcomed in both Bulgaria and Albania, the president spoke at a news conference with Bulgarian the president Georgi Parvanov on the last stop of his eight-day trip in Europe. Bush said he would make a trip to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to lobby lawmakers in person on immigration.
   He dismissed a planned Senate vote against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as purely political, and said it would have ‘no bearing’ on Gonzales’ fate. ‘I’ll make the determination as to whether he’s effective,’ Bush said.
   The no-confidence vote follows months of investigations and the disclosure of internal Justice Department documents that contradicted Gonzales’ initial assertions that the firing of federal prosecutors was not politically motivated or directly coordinated with the White House.
   ‘They can have their votes of no-confidence but it’s not going to make the determination about who serves in my government,’ Bush said.
   Sofia is the president’s last stop on his trip, which also took him to the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Italy and Albania.
   On a sunny, cool morning, thousands of Bulgarians lined the cobblestone main street through Nevsky Square as an honour guard played both countries’ national anthems.
   Bush and Parvanov walked past a line of Bulgarian troops wearing white coats trimmed in red and navy pants tucked into high black boots. After watching troops goose-stepping to upbeat military music, Bush prayed before a wreath at an eternal flame that marks Bulgaria’s tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that the ‘brewing confrontation’ with Iran over its atomic ambitions ‘must be defused.’
   ‘I am increasingly disturbed by the current stalemate and the brewing confrontation — a stalemate that urgently needs to be broken, and a confrontation that must be defused,’ ElBaradei told a meeting in Vienna of his International Atomic Energy Agency.
   The IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors began Monday a week-long meeting that could bring Tehran one step closer to a third round of sanctions against its nuclear programme, which the United States claims is designed to develop atomic weapons.
   The United States says it wants a diplomatic solution,
   it but has not ruled out military action, and it has placed
   sizeable naval forces in the
   Gulf.
   ElBaradei said: ‘I continue to believe that dialogue and diplomacy are ultimately the only way to achieve the negotiated solution foreseen in the relevant Security Council resolutions.’
   ‘The earlier that conditions are created to move in this direction, the better,’ he said, according to a copy of his speech made available to the press.
   The UN Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran to get it to suspend uranium enrichment, which makes reactor fuel but can also produce atom bomb material, and to come forth with information about suspect nuclear activities that could be weapons-related.
   But, said ElBaradei: ‘The facts on the ground indicate that Iran continues steadily to perfect its knowledge relevant to enrichment and to expand the capacity of its enrichment facility’ in Natanz.
   Iran is also continuing ‘with the construction of its heavy water reactor at Arak,’ which can produce plutonium, like enriched uranium a potential bomb material, ElBaradei said.

The president, Nicolas Sarkozy’s right wing party was headed for a landslide victory that would hand him a sweeping mandate to reform France, after the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday.
   One month after Sarkozy’s presidential election victory over Socialist Segolene Royal, his UMP party and its allies were projected to win up to 501 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly.
   Based on estimates after the close of polls, the Union for a Popular Movement and its centrist allies were predicted to secure 383-501 seats after next Sunday’s run-off. The UMP holds 359 seats in the outgoing lower house.
   The prime minister, Francois Fillon, urged French voters to turn out en masse next Sunday to give his government ‘a majority to act’.
   ‘The drive is there, but it can only take shape through a large, coherent presidential majority, determined to move forwards,’ he said.
   Sarkozy’s party has been riding high on the president’s popularity since he came to power promising to revive France’s ailing economy, control immigration and crack down on crime.
   Confident of an electoral triumph, Sarkozy has promised a special session of parliament in July to push through a raft of tax and job market reforms, a toughening of crime and immigration rules and more autonomy for universities.

Israel successfully launched a new satellite on Monday, the defence ministry announced, with the device reportedly capable of spying on arch-foe Iran.
   ‘The overnight launching increases Israeli defensive capacities and is evidence of Israel’s technological power,’ the ministry said in a statement.
   The 300-kilogram Ofek-7 (Horizon-7) satellite developed by Israel Aircraft Industries was launched on a Shavit rocket from the Palmahim base south of Tel Aviv. ‘It adds to the Ofek-5 satellite launched in 2002 and assures a better surveillance of far-away countries, including Iran,’ a military source told public radio.
   The source said that the quality of the images received from the satellite will not be able to be verified for another three days.
   Israel considers Iran its arch-foe due to repeated calls by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
   Widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel along with the West believes Iran’s nuclear programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge that Tehran denies.

Factional violence flared again in Gaza on Monday between Hamas and Fatah after three weeks of calm, with loyalists of the rival parties shot and flung to their deaths from high-rise buildings.
   Seven people, including one civilian, have been killed in the lawless territory since the latest bout of fighting erupted on Thursday.
   Egyptian mediators, who for months had been trying to calm tensions between the two sides, on Monday once again persuaded the rivals to agree to a new truce, but shots were heard shortly after it was due to take effect.
   Numerous previous ceasefires had been violated within hours of taking effect since the first major bout of factional violence erupted in December. Since then, more than 160 people have been killed. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called for an end to the bloodshed after warning last week that the strife left Palestinians on the brink of a civil war and was as damaging, if not more so, than the 40-year Israeli occupation.
   ‘What’s happening in Gaza is regrettable and very harming. Both parties are working seriously with the Egyptian brothers to put an end to it,’ Abbas told reporters in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Majority Democrats in the Senate are forcing their Republican colleagues on the record about whether embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should keep his job.
   No one is predicting that a symbolic resolution expressing no confidence in Gonzales will survive even the test vote Monday. Most Republicans are likely to vote no, dismissing the whole exercise as a ploy to embarrass
   president Bush.
   At a news conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, the last stop on a weeklong visit to Europe, the president reaffirmed his support for Gonzales, a long time friend and legal adviser.

Floodwaters engulfed homes and farms and swept through areas north of Sydney on Monday while disaster workers began a massive clean-up following deadly storms which battered Australia’s east coast.
   New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said the level of destruction around Maitland, some 130 kilometres north of Sydney in the Hunter Valley, was heartbreaking.
   ‘It’s unbelievable, the amount of water. It’s almost as if the entire valley is covered in water,’ he said after flying over the region.
   The prime minister, John Howard, said the water, dumped on Sydney and regions to the north during several days of severe storms starting Friday, had rendered the area almost unrecognisable from the air.
   ‘It is a vivid illustration to me, as it has been to other people, just how savage the storms have been,’ he said.

Sporadic firefights continued on Monday between Lebanese troops and diehard Islamist militiamen at an impoverished refugee camp where a deadly showdown is now in its fourth week.
   The sound of assault rifle and machinegun fire interrupted long stretches of uneasy calm since late Sunday around the Nahr al-Bared camp where the army has been besieging Fatah al-Islam since fighting first erupted on May 20.
   Monday’s shooting came after a weekend of fierce gun battles that left 17 people dead, bringing to 123 the number killed in the deadliest internal feuding since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
   The death toll includes 58 soldiers and 50 members of Fatah al-Islam, a shadowy al-Qaeda inspired Sunni Muslim gang which first emerged in Lebanon late last year.
   The high weekend casualties came after the army staged an operation to storm Fatah al-Islam positions inside the camp on the shores of the Mediterranean in northern Lebanon.
   The army tried to overrun positions held by the militia, advancing 50 metres (yards) inside the camp, but encountered fierce resistance, losing troops to booby-trapped bomb blasts and grenades.

Astronauts of the US shuttle Atlantis prepared for the first space walk of their mission Monday to begin installing power-generating equipment on the outpost hundreds of miles above the Earth.
   Two of the crew, mission specialists John ‘Danny’ Olivas and Jim Reilly, were spending the night in an airlock on the station in preparation for the 6.5-hour space walk set for 1:53pm, the US space agency NASA said.
   Monday’s job is to install a new 16-tonne truss segment containing solar panels, to be attached with the help of the station’s giant robotic arm.
   The shuttle docked with the International Space Station Sunday, after performing a dramatic backward somersault in space.
   The space station crew rang a bell as shuttle astronauts came aboard through opened airlocks connecting the vessels and all shook hands and talked. The arrival was captured in images broadcast by NASA.
   Shuttle commander Rick Sturckow brought the shuttle to a rest after a nearly 48-hour voyage from Earth, some 350 kilometres away.
   Before docking, Atlantis turned slowly over for station crew to photograph insulation on its underside, NASA said in a statement.
   A delicate parking manoeuvre followed, as Sturckow slowed the 100-tonne shuttle to a mere three meters (10 feet) per second and steered it into dock at 3:36 pm.