Despite US pressure and soothing words from the government, the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, is likely to hold off on elections until he has cemented his grip on power, analysts say.
   The government has given out mixed signals since Musharraf declared a state of emergency late Saturday and suspended the constitution, sparking a global outcry and calls for a swift return to democracy.
   Eight years after he grabbed power in a bloodless coup, he cited a wave of Islamist violence and a meddling Supreme Court as key factors in his move.
   But Musharraf’s step has thrown the political future of the nuclear-armed nation into chaos, notably over general elections scheduled for January 2008 and his previous promises to abandon his dual role as army chief.
   ‘Before holding elections Musharraf would like to secure himself,’ analyst Hasan Askari, the former head of political science at Punjab University, said.
   ‘He needs two things for security. One is that he is president for the next five years, the second is that he continues as army chief as long as he wishes to do so.
   ‘As long as these securities are not available he is not expected to hold elections or return to constitutional rule.’
   While lawyers protested Monday in several cities across Pakistan, Musharraf was reassuring foreign diplomats he would hold general elections ‘as close as possible to the schedule’ despite emergency rule, his spokesman said.
   The prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, was more specific on timing, saying they would be ‘on schedule,’ and the attorney general said parliament would be dissolved on November 15 and the general elections held before mid-January.
   But government spokesman Tariq Azeem said on Tuesday that there was no decision yet about when the polls would in fact go ahead.
   Musharraf’s own future had been in doubt before emergency rule because of a pending Supreme Court verdict on the legality of his re-election for another five years in a vote on October 6.
   He had promised to hang up his uniform by November 15 if his victory in the election was confirmed, but deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said that commitment was now ‘in limbo.’
   The US president, George Bush, normally his staunchest supporter, called on him to end the emergency, quit as army chief and restore democratic rule.
   Analysts agreed that the best policy was for Musharraf to end the state of emergency as soon as possible.
   ‘The only viable option for him is to backtrack and roll back his November 3 actions,’ said newspaper columnist and analyst Nasim Zehra.

North Korea’s first steps to roll back a nuclear arms programme launched about 40 years ago are going well, a US official said on Tuesday after visiting the North’s plutonium-producing atomic complex.
   Destitute North Korea struck a deal with regional powers last month to disable its Soviet-era nuclear complex in exchange for aid and an end to its international ostracism.
   ‘I think we are off to a good start,’ US State Department official Sung Kim said at Incheon airport near Seoul, according to a pool report. Kim was with a team of US nuclear specialists who arrived in North Korea last week.
   He said steps had been taken to reverse the operations at all three of the key facilities – the North’s ageing reactor, a plant that produces nuclear fuel and another that turns spent fuel into arms-grade plutonium.
   ‘Our North Korean colleagues have actually done a considerable amount of preparatory work on all three facilities.’
   Kim said he believed disablement at one facility would be completed this week. The team wants irradiated fuel rods removed from the reactor, which experts said would halt its operations and could pave the way for further decommissioning steps.
   The deal calls for North Korea to disable the three plants by the end of the year, provide a list of its nuclear arms activity, account for all its fissile material and answer US suspicions of having a clandestine programme to enrich uranium for weapons.
   Under the deal it reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the energy-starved North is to receive 1 million tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.
   The United States will also move towards taking North Korea off a US terrorism blacklist.
   US officials estimate the North has about 50 kg of plutonium. Proliferation experts say that is enough for six to eight bombs.
   A State Department spokesman in Washington said disablement had started on Monday. North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, shut the three facilities in July.

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left Washington reassured Tuesday after the president, George W Bush, called Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq a common enemy and promised greater help against them.
   A large-scale Turkish incursion into northern Iraq was now unlikely, said analysts. But they saw tacit US approval for surgical strikes on rebel targets across the border in Bush’s promise to provide Ankara with ‘real-time’ intelligence on Kurdistan Workers’ Party movements.
   Bush also announced better communication channels between the top echelons of the Turkish and US military and the top US commander in Iraq, general David Petraeus.
   Washington opposes unilateral Turkish action against the PKK in northern Iraq. It fears a possible confrontation between two allies – NATO-member Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds who rule the region – that could destabilise a relatively peaceful part of Iraq.
   ‘We understood each other well and agreed on the basic issues,’ Erdogan said Monday after his meeting with Bush, widely seen as the culmination of frantic US efforts to avert the threat of a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.
   He welcomed Bush’s promises, but said Ankara had no plans to withdraw some 100,000 troops massed along the Iraqi border.
   ‘Turkey will defend itself against terrorism in the absence of international cooperation,’ he insisted.
   Erdogan also appeared to take a softer line towards the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. Ankara has accused of harbouring and aiding the separatist PKK, which uses northern Iraq as a springboard for cross-border attacks.
   Iraq pledged at the weekend that the Baghdad government and the regional Kurdish administration in the north would both enhance measures to curb the PKK. ‘We have to trust them at the moment. We will see (their commitment) in time as we take (further) steps’ against the rebels, Erdogan said.
   The Turkish government has come under immense public pressure to crack down on PKK bases in northern Iraq after the separatists significantly stepped up their attacks.
   Tensions on the Iraqi border increased after October 21 when PKK rebels Turkey says came from northern Iraq ambushed a military unit, killing 12 soldiers and capturing eight others. The captives were released Sunday.
   The White House talks diminished the prospect of an imminent Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, veteran journalist Hasan Cemal commented.
   ‘The two sides will be working together and action (against the PKK) will be spread over time,’ he said.
   ‘There could be surgical strikes’ on rebel targets across the border, he added.
   Bush’s assurances will help heal Turkish frustration with the little help the United States has provided so far against the PKK, said another analyst, Cengiz Candar.
   ‘A sturdy rope now binds Turkey and the United States,’ Candar said. ‘At the same time, the United States has strongly committed itself to the struggle against the PKK.’
   Other analysts disagreed that Turkey would coordinate all its action with the United States.
   ‘Ankara seems poised for some serious steps – some of them with Washington’s support and approval, but also some without Washington’s knowledge and even in defiance of it,’ Rusen Cakir, an expert on the Kurdish question, wrote in the daily Vatan.

Japan’s main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa agreed Tuesday to stay on following a row within his party over whether to accept a power-sharing offer from the prime minister.
   Ozawa, who led the Democratic Party of Japan to a major upper house election victory in July, unexpectedly announced Sunday he intended to resign after his party rejected the offer to form a grand coalition.
   But senior party officials managed to persuade him not to step down.
   ‘Ozawa said he wants to work again as party leader after seeing the requests from members who want him to stay on,’ said DPJ secretary general Yukio Hatoyama.
   Ozawa agreed to retract his decision to resign after meeting with top party executives, including Hatoyama, late Tuesday.
   The DPJ’s vice president, Katsuya Okada, said earlier in the day that Ozawa had a ‘responsibility to rebuild the party.’
   ‘He should not throw away the position and run off now,’ Okada said.
   The prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, proposed a coalition in a one-on-one meeting with Ozawa on Friday in a bid to break the legislative stalemate over Japan’s refuelling support mission for US-led operations in Afghanistan.
   The mission, Japan’s main role in the US-led ‘war on terror,’ was halted last week after legislation authorising it expired.
   Ozawa had described the decision by DPJ executives to reject the offer as a ‘vote of no confidence’ in his leadership.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, will look to get his political fortunes back on track Tuesday with Queen Elizabeth II set to announce the government’s upcoming legislative programme.
   Brown’s star has dimmed considerably in the past month since he decided not to hold a snap general election. A new poll released Tuesday indicated his standing among voters had fallen since taking over from Tony Blair in June.
   Brown will look to put all that behind him, however, in what amounts to an attempted re-launch of his premiership at the state opening of parliament as Queen Elizabeth formally opens the new session.
   In a ceremony loaded with tradition, pomp and pageantry, the sovereign will ride in a horse-drawn carriage from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster to make her speech from the throne in parliament’s upper House of Lords.
   The queen will wear the glittering Imperial State Crown, normally on display at the Tower of London. Weighing two pounds, it is notoriously difficult to wear and contains 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and five rubies.
   Speculation over the queen’s speech has been relatively muted this year, however, as Brown broke 150 years of precedent by giving a preview of the government’s 23-bill agenda for public consultation.
   He told parliament in July that he would look to increase the number of days terror suspects can be held without charge by police from the current 28-day limit, though it is not expected that detailed proposals on the topic will be presented on Tuesday.
   ‘We all have to recognise there are serious challenges facing us. These are the sort of challenges we didn’t face 10, 20 years ago,’ housing minister Yvette Cooper said.
   On Monday, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 Jonathan Evans warned Britain was facing ‘the most immediate and acute peacetime threat’ that his century-old agency had ever known.
   Plans to give up the prime minister’s royal prerogative right to declare war are expected to be included in a Constitutional Reform Bill.
   Tackling problems caused by Britain’s sky-high property prices will also rank among the top priorities, along with more traditional areas of reform such as health and education.
   ‘Brownfield land is the priority for homes,’ Cooper said.
   ‘We have seen a reduction of homes being built on greenfield land.’
   Other proposals include a highly-publicised Climate Change Bill, which would make Britain the first country in the world to introduce a legal framework for meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets.

The top UN humanitarian official in Sudan, Ameera Haq, condemned European aid workers who tried to take 103 African children from Chad to Europe, saying it contravened UN principles.
   The French charity Zoe’s Ark arranged the operation, telling European foster families that they were bringing orphans from Sudan’s Darfur region, which borders Chad. But UN and Chadian officials said most of the children were from the Chad side of the border with at least one family member they considered a parent.
   ‘I strongly condemn the actions of the organisation ... attempting to remove children from Chad,’ Haq said in a statement issued late on Monday.
   ‘Such actions contravene all international laws and standards on the movement of children and infringe on the humanitarian principles we stand for as the United Nations.’
   Relations are tense between the Sudanese government and aid agencies involved in the world’s largest aid operation, helping more than 4 million people in Darfur. Many in the aid community feel the actions of Zoe’s Ark could make their work harder, increasing suspicion of foreigners working in Sudan.
   ‘In Chad and in Sudan, the UN and national and international organisations have been effectively responding to humanitarian needs,’ Haq added.
   ‘We must continue to work together with partners in government to ensure that advances in child protection, health and education are not derailed by the actions of an individual organisation.’

Former Philippines president Joseph Estrada on Tuesday blocked court moves to seize his assets 13 days after he was pardoned for corruption and released from detention.
   ‘These properties are mine. I acquired them way back when I was still a movie actor,’ Estrada scolded a court sherrif who tried to serve a seizure order on him at his Manila home.
   ‘I worked hard for it. I did not steal these from the government and is it my fault that I know how to invest?,’ he told the sherrif in an exchange aired on radio.
   ‘What is rightfully mine, you will never be able to get.’
   Estrada was freed on October 26 after more than six years in detention and to the delight of his euphoric supporters, a day after being granted a presidential pardon.
   However the Sandiganbayan graft court, set up in 2001 to hear the case against Estrada, on Monday said the pardon did not cover the forfeiture of his assets.
   It ordered sheriff Ed Urietta to seize over 700 million pesos (16 million dollars) in funds deposited under two accounts that the court said were owned by Estrada and was money amassed from an illegal numbers game called jueteng.
   A mansion in suburban Manila that Estrada allegedly built for one of his mistresses was also ordered seized.
   Estrada has repeatedly denied that he owned the funds and the mansion, and said that the government was welcome to take them.
   Prosecutors earlier found that the funds have dwindled over the past six years while the court case was being heard.
   ‘I am being ordered to satisfy the writ,’ Urietta said, adding that he has to make a report to the court within 30 days.

John Edwards, one of Hillary Clinton’s top rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, charged her Monday of duplicity and of facilitating a White House drive to war against Iran.
   Former vice presidential nominee Edwards further sharpened his rhetoric against the former first lady, as the Democratic race heated up two months before the first party nominating contests.
   He hammered Hillary for voting for a Senate resolution in September which called for the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.
   ‘Senator Hillary is voting like a hawk in Washington, while talking like a dove in Iowa and New Hampshire,’ Edwards said, referring to two crucial early-voting states.
   ‘She’s giving the administration exactly what it wants again.’
   Edwards also warned in a speech in Iowa City, that the Bush administration was trying to use attacks on US forces in Iraq, to justify a war with Iran.
   ‘George Bush, Dick Cheney and the neocon warmongers used 9/11 to start a war with Iraq, now they’re trying to use Iraq to start a war with Iran,’ he said.
   Later, in the small town of Oskaloosa, Edwards, who launched a fierce attack on Hillary a week ago in a campaign debate, argued that the Bush administration saw the Senate vote as a possible justification for a military strike on Iran.
   ‘We have heard this dance before, it’s all scarily familiar,’ he said in a conversation with Democratic supporters at a coffee shop.
   The Clinton campaign has repeatedly argued that the former first lady has spoken out sharply against any Bush administration rush to war with Tehran, and she advocates expanded US diplomacy with Iran.
   It has also accused Edwards, and another top Democratic challenger Barack Obama, of turning to negative politics in a desperate attempt to cut her lead in opinion polls.
   Edwards unveiled his own plan for Iran policy, saying that the Bush administration’s doctrine of a preemptive war should be thrown onto the ‘trash heap of history.’
   He called for ‘bolder, more targeted’ economic sanctions against the Islamic republic, and decried ‘reckless’ sanctions like declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terror group.

At least nine people were killed in Sri Lanka as Tamil Tiger rebels buried their political chief who died in a government air strike, officials said Tuesday.
   The defence ministry said six guerrillas were killed Monday in two clashes with government forces along the de facto border of a mini-state run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   Three people were found murdered in the deep south of the island where the LTTTE has been active in recent weeks, the ministry said, adding that the police investigations were under way.
   The latest killings came as rebels buried SP Thamilselvan on Monday at a military-style funeral in Kilinochchi where he was killed in an air attack last Friday.
   Thamilselvan was the public face of the guerrillas and the point man for Norwegian peace brokers.
   His successor, P Nadesan, and the LTTE’s intelligence chief Pottu Amman addressed the mourners before he was buried at the Tiger’s Kanakapuram Heroes cemetery, the Tigers said.
   Hindus usually cremate their dead, but the Tigers favour burials – the guerrillas say they ‘plant’ the dead so they can ‘grow’ again.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, on Tuesday assured China’s president Hu Jintao that the US government is ‘categorically’ opposed to any moves by Taiwan towards independence.
   Gates met with Hu in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People after two days of talks – characterised by both parties as ‘candid but friendly’ – that raised US concerns about China’s rapid military build-up and Iran’s nuclear programme.
   ‘I restated our position that we’re categorically opposed to any efforts by anyone to unilaterally change the status quo,’ Gates told reporters after his talks with Hu.
   ‘I basically reiterated that the US government has been quite clear in its messages to Taiwan not to change the status quo,’ he said.
   Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war, and while the island has since governed itself, Beijing considers it part of its own territory awaiting reunification.