When the smoke cleared from the fireworks set off by his supporters after Pakistan’s presidential election, Pervez Musharraf was left with an even more explosive set of options, analysts say.
   The military ruler, bankrolled by Washington because of his support for the ‘war on terror’, cannot officially be declared the winner until the Supreme Court has ruled later this month on challenges to the vote.
   The judges sit again on October 17, and Musharraf has several avenues by which he can try to remove final objections to Saturday’s one-sided ballot by the national and provincial parliaments.
   Should the court rule against him it will likely plunge the world’s only nuclear-armed Islamic nation into chaos, with the one-time commando, who seized power in a 1999 coup, set to declare martial law.
   And when Pakistan suffers, the world suffers.
   Political turmoil distracts from Islamabad’s military efforts in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, which US officials have pinpointed as al-Qaeda’s new base for launching international terror attacks.
   Yet if Musharraf is proclaimed the victor, Pakistan’s future remains on a knife edge, with general elections scheduled by January 15, 2008 – and in Pakistan political differences are often resolved with Kalashnikovs.
   Despite a vow to quit his military role after he wins, he would still face questions over his political legitimacy as the only army chief ever to be elected president in Pakistan’s 60-year history.
   ‘Musharraf has won his expected victory but it certainly does not reduce the political uncertainty in the country,’ political analyst Nasim Zehra, a commentator for the respected English-language daily The News, said.
   Step one for Musharraf is the Supreme Court – his nemesis since March when he sacked its chief justice in a disastrous bid to avoid exactly the kind of challenge to his rule that he now faces.
   The first of the legal challenges against the vote – that he was ineligible to stand as army chief – he can get around by quitting the position as promised by November 15, the end of his current term, his aides say.
   The second is more tricky: a legal bar on government servants, including soldiers, from standing for political office within two years of quitting their jobs.
   Musharraf may try to push through an amendment in parliament to overturn this, aided by the opposition party of Benazir Bhutto, which is now on his side since he gave her an amnesty on corruption charges last week.
   Finally the appeals argue that the presidential vote should have been carried out by a new parliament after the general election. The solution to this, officials say, is to seek a vote of confidence from the new assemblies.
   Given these factors and the prevailing unrest, the court is unlikely to rule against him, analysts say.
   ‘It would be a major surprise if the Supreme Court does not endorse his win,’ said Hasan Askari, the former head of political science at Lahore’s Punjab University.
   ‘If the Supreme Court does not, there will be a very big crisis in the country.’
   A source close to the presidency said that Musharraf would likely introduce ‘surgical martial law’ – presumably targeting certain institutions in a bid to minimise chaos – if the court rules against him.
   Musharraf has been on the verge of bringing in the tanks several times this year, not least amid a wave of violence sparked by a bloody government raid on Islamabad’s al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in July.
   But if he is declared winner of the presidential poll Musharraf must quickly shore up his political position – meaning that all eyes are on Bhutto’s return from exile on October 18, the day after the court reconvenes.
   ‘The whole paradigm of the country’s external and internal security has changed. That is why the establishment needs to incorporate a mainstream political party known for its liberal moderate credentials,’ said Najam Sethi, editor of the Daily Times newspaper.
   Bhutto’s role will be key as her Pakistan People’s Party and Musharraf’s current allies, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, jockey for position.
   Musharraf also needs to see off the ‘mullahs’ – the Islamic fundamentalist parties who had never won more than a handful of seats until the last elections in 2002.

Hundreds of angry protesters blocked roads in New Delhi after seven people were mowed down by a speeding bus, prompting fears of a major riot.
   Crowds of angry relatives and pedestrians blocked the roads near the scene of the accident Sunday, beating up the driver and trying to set the bus on fire, the police and reports said.
   The police used tear gas and batons to quell protests sparked by outrage over yet another deadly accident involving the city’s privately-owned buses, known as ‘Bluelines.’
   Bluelines – which account for more than half the 8,000 buses running in New Delhi – have a reputation for reckless driving. They have killed more than 90 people this year.
   The accident Sunday morning, in which a bus ploughed into a group of pedestrians, was one of the worst yet.
   Seven people, including five women, were killed and nine were injured, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
   The Delhi government promised to crack down on the private buses in July after several children were run over.
   The buses were briefly taken off the road, creating a commuter nightmare in the city of 14 million.
   Competition among Blueline owners is blamed for the high rate of fatalities.
   After bus owners promised to regulate their drivers better, the 4,500 buses on whom millions rely every day were allowed to return to the roads.

Sri Lanka’s military claimed it had virtually destroyed the ability of the Tamil Tigers to smuggle weapons into the island by sinking the rebels’ last gun-running ship.
   Officials said they believed at least 12 people were killed when the ship, identified as the ‘Matsuseema’ and believed to be the last of a guerrilla smuggling fleet, was attacked in international waters southeast of the island.
   ‘This is the last of the 10 ships operated by the Tigers,’ said a naval official who declined to be named. ‘Now they do not have a capability to smuggle in weapons using their own ships.’
   Three other rebel ships were destroyed in the same area last month.
   The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rely on ships to transport black market weapons to the northern part of the island under their control. The rebels have been fighting for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka since 1972.
   No independent confirmation of the military’s claim was available, and there was no immediate comment from the Tamil Tigers.
   Navy spokesman DPK Dassanayake nevertheless cautioned that the LTTE, which has an elaborate overseas fundraising network, could simply purchase more craft.
   ‘The LTTE are a guerrilla organisation and they have enough money to buy a ship even tomorrow, but according to our information, this is their last known floating arms ship,’ Dassanayake told reporters.
   Around 12-15 suspected Tiger rebels are believed to have been aboard the Matsuseema when it was sunk 1,700 kilometres off the Sri Lankan coast Sunday, he said.
   ‘There were no known survivors after we attacked and sank their ship.’
   The three naval craft involved in the attack left Sri Lankan shores a week ago and subsequently chased the suspected ship for one and a half days before they sank it, Dassanayake said.

Fifty years after independence, race and religion remain divisive issues in Malaysia, with the nation at times coming ‘close to the brink of disaster,’ the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said.
   Malay Muslims form about 60 per cent of the country’s population of roughly 26 million. Hindus, Buddhists and Christians dominate among the Indian and Chinese minorities.
   Many non-Muslims say the authorities and the courts are allowing their rights, including freedom of religion, to be trampled by the Muslim majority.
   Abdullah said the country would not be as successful if racial and religious issues were not addressed, newspapers reported on Sunday.
   ‘We have been solving one racial issue after another. That is a fact,’ Abdullah told a meeting of the mainly Chinese-backed Gerakan party, a component of the ruling coalition.
   ‘I do not want to pretend that everything is great and there are no problems, no weaknesses and no flaws. I do not want to be in a state of denial,’ he said.
   The growing racial and religious divide has stoked fears of more tension ahead of an anticipated early general election. Increasingly, leaders of the multi-racial government are urging Malaysians to heed the lessons of 1969, when racial tensions burst into deadly riots.
   Abdullah criticised those who were trapped in the mindset of turning everything into a racial or religious issue.
   ‘We respond readily when there is something that we perceive to be a racial issue. We respond quickly when someone we do not like brings these matters up. This makes the issue more complicated and harder to resolve,’ he said.

North Korea will likely begin disabling its nuclear facilities in mid-October under a disarmament-for-aid deal that should see the process completed by year’s end, a news report said Sunday.
   The disablement would take 45 days from the start until late November or early December, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency said quoting unnamed officials.
   The report came after top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said Washington was preparing to send a team of experts to North Korea this week ahead to discuss initiating the process.
   Seoul’s former unification minister Jong Se-Hyun, who met the North’s chief nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan in Pyongyang during the inter-Korean summit last week, has said Kim wants to quickly get disablement started.
   Under a six-nation deal announced Wednesday, North Korea will disable its five-megawatt plutonium producing reactor and two other facilities at Yongbyon and also declare all its nuclear programmes by December 31.
   In return, the United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea will provide the energy-starved North with another 900,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid, in addition to 100,000 tonnes already sent.
   As part of diplomatic rewards for the North’s disablement, Washington has promised to work towards removing Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and eventually normalising diplomatic ties.
   The United States has reiterated that normalisation would be possible only after North Korea is fully denuclearised. It is not known how much nuclear weapons material or how many nuclear detonating devices the North has.
   Meanwhile, Japan may keep its sanctions on North Korea no matter whether Pyongyang takes action in accordance with a fresh six-party deal to stem its nuclear drive, the foreign minister said Sunday.

For the United States, China increasingly holds the keys to unlocking diplomatic doors blocking progress on some of the world’s most testing challenges.
   China’s growing diplomatic clout has not gone unnoticed in the US Congress, where the fast-developing Asian power stood accused last week of turning a blind eye to bloody unrest in military-ruled Myanmar.
   The US administration has long urged China to be a responsible ‘stakeholder’ in the international community, but analysts say that Beijing cannot be coerced into adopting an expansionist US world view.
   ‘Some skeptics in China think the United States wants them to share the burden of carrying out US foreign policy goals,’ said Harry Harding, an international affairs professor at George Washington University.
   ‘Where China and the United States really do share interests, that’s where the cooperation has been far more enthusiastic. North Korea is the best example there,’ he said.
   In a six-nation agreement made public late Wednesday, the Stalinist North agreed to declare all its nuclear programmes and disable its main atomic reactor by the end of the year under US supervision.
   The agreement came about after strong Chinese pressure on North Korea, which shocked its communist ally and the world at large by testing a nuclear weapon a year ago.
   But as Harding noted, the United States has been frustrated by Chinese reluctance to join a Western drive at the United Nations Security Council for tougher action against the regimes in Myanmar, Sudan and Iran.
   ‘China desperately needs energy security and if you look at its dealings with Iran, Latin America, Africa, the US has problems with Chinese policy,’ said Cheng Li, head of Asian studies at Hamilton College in New York state.
   ‘And China’s view on non-interference differs dramatically from US goals on democracy and human rights,’ he said, while adding that ‘the Chinese want bargaining power with the Americans over their own vital interests in Taiwan.’
   From Beijing’s perspective, according to an annual foreign ministry appraisal last month, relations with the United States made ‘important progress’ in 2006 but problems remain on Taiwan, trade and human rights issues.
   Like China, Russia has balked at tougher UN sanctions over Iran’s nuclear drive, while India and Myanmar’s neighbours in Southeast Asia are skeptical about US and European calls to plunge that regime into deeper isolation.
   Nevertheless, it is China that is often singled out for congressional ire in the United States, reflecting what some fear to be its growing economic and military rivalry with the United States.
   Scot Marciel, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said president George W Bush’s administration had been doing its best to pressure China over Myanmar’s recent crackdown on mass protests.
   ‘While we have indications that Beijing has been quietly pressing junta leaders to exercise restraint ... we think China can do more,’ he said at Senate hearings Wednesday.
   But John Kerry, Bush’s opponent in the 2004 presidential election, and other senators demanded much greater US pressure on both China and India to force them to sever ties with Myanmar’s junta.
   ‘China needs to make it clear that it’s unacceptable that those monasteries have been cleared of monks, that people have been loaded into trucks and driven off into God knows where,’ Kerry said.
   Pressure is also intensifying in Congress to punish energy companies from China and elsewhere in Asia that are seen as propping up the regime in oil-rich Sudan and so helping to prolong what some have termed a genocide in Darfur.

Typhoon Krosa lashed China’s heavily populated east coast on Sunday with torrential rains and powerful winds that have already killed at least five people in nearby Taiwan.
   Packing sustained winds of 126 kilometres per hour, Krosa made landfall near the border of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, Xinhua news agency said, quoting authorities in Zhejiang.
   More than one million people were evacuated in the two provinces ahead of the storm, while schools and airports in some areas were shut down as a precaution.
   The typhoon was moving north in the direction of the eastern metropolis of Shanghai, which on Sunday was hosting both the Formula One Grand Prix and the Special Olympics.
   Five people were killed, one other reported missing and dozens injured in Taiwan when the storm – the biggest to hit the island this year – swept in, bringing heavy rains and winds of up to 162 kilometres per hour.

South Korea on Sunday reiterated that China could be invited to international peace talks aimed at putting a formal end to the Korean War.
   The leaders of North and South Korea agreed at a landmark summit in Pyongyang last week that ‘three or four nations’ should meet to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 conflict with a permanent peace agreement.
   The Pyongyang accord has raised questions about who should participate in such a meeting, as the war involved four main parties – the two Koreas, the United States, which led UN forces, and China, which backed the North.
   ‘As this issue requires a consensus among the four parties, we’ll push for it after listening to China,’ presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-Seon said Sunday, when asked whether eventual talks would involve three or four parties.
   ‘It leaves fully open the possibility of China participating together with the two Koreas in the peace talks.’
   Officials in Seoul have said that the two Koreas and the United States are ‘three’ basic parties to the peace talks, with China remaining an option.
   But the armistice was signed by China, North Korea and the US-led United Nations forces, but not by South Korea.
   When asked when peace talks could take place before president Roh Moo-Hyun’s term ends next February, Cheon said he could not give ‘a definitive answer.’

Hundreds of people protested outside Myanmar’s embassy in Bangkok on Sunday for a second straight day against a bloody crackdown by the country’s military regime, the police said.
   Holding posters of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 300-strong crowd, mainly students from Myanmar, chanted ‘Free Burma’, referring to the country by its former name.
   Some protesters held placards demanding ‘Free political prisoners’ and ‘Stop killing the people’.
   They wore red T-shirts and headbands in honour of monks who led rallies in Myanmar last month, which at their peak attracted 100,000 people to the streets of Yangon in the biggest challenge to the junta’s rule in nearly 20 years.
   The military put down the peaceful anti-government protests with violence, killing at least 13 people including some monks and arresting about 2,000 others.
   Bangkok police captain Phongsak Jong-itthi said protesters dispersed after about an hour, adding: ‘The protest was peaceful.’

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, defended his decision not to call a general election this year in an interview broadcast Sunday, as reaction indicated his honeymoon had ended with voters.
   Brown’s announcement Saturday that he would not go to the polls as early as November 1 saw him accused of weakness and indecision as well as fear, after new opinion polls suggested his governing Labour Party’s lead had evaporated.
   But Brown, who had enjoyed a bouyant ratings ‘bounce’ after succeeding Tony Blair in June, said he was not running scared simply because one poll suggested the goverment would lose its parliamentary majority based on the results.
   The prime minister also said a general election in either early or late 2008 was unlikely. In theory, he has until May 2010 at the latest to go to the polls.
   He said he had considered holding an election this year, and claimed Labour would have won ‘today (Sunday), next week or the weeks to come’, but decided it was better to give voters time to see his long-term ‘vision’ for the country.
   ‘It’s not likely that we’ll have an election not likely this year, whatever the dates you were suggesting,’ he told BBC television, whose interviewer asked if he was considering a vote in spring or autumn 2008.
   ‘I think the important thing is that we get on with the business of change in this country because people do want change and I am responding to that demand,’ he added.
   An ICM/News of the World poll of 83 key marginal seats published Sunday suggested the main opposition Conservatives were six points ahead and an early vote on those results could see the government’s 69-seat majority disappear.
   Two other newspaper polls put the Tories ahead of Labour, attributing the reverse to leader David Cameron’s well-received party conference speech Wednesday and headline-grabbing tax reform proposals.
   Brown was also accused of media manipulation or ‘spin’ after a trip to Iraq Tuesday, during which he said 1,000 British troops would be withdrawn from southern Iraq by the year end, even though 500 had already been announced.
   The Tories led the charge against Brown, with Cameron saying the man known for caution and his iron grip on the economy as Blair’s finance minister had made a ‘humiliating’ climbdown and suffered a loss of authority.
   The leader of the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, Menzies Campbell, said Brown had put party politics before the national interest by allowing election speculation to run unchecked.
   Others assessed that the arch political strategist had made an unforced tactical error by hoping to capitalise on his popularity, increase Labour’s majority and consign the Tories to their fourth straight election defeat.

The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, warned France on Sunday over what he labelled its ‘illogical’ position after Paris urged tough action against Tehran’s nuclear programme.
   ‘The Islamic republic of Iran will legally confront the illogical stances and words of some French officials,’ Mottaki was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency, although he did not elaborate on what action it would take.
   The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, angered Tehran last month when he said the world had to prepare for war over Iran’s atomic drive, and has been pushing fellow European states to adopt their own sanctions on Tehran.
   Mottaki criticised Paris for providing the Iran’s archfoe the United States-which accuses Tehran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons-of ‘opportunities to gain political advantage’.
   ‘France cannot continue this policy in the future and its interests are definitely not in line with the political objectives of America,’ Mottaki said.
   Iran denies it is trying to build the bomb, saying that its nuclear programme is aimed at generating fuel for its growing population.
   Last week, Kouchner proposed that in parallel to UN security council sanctions against Iran, the Europeans should consider their own additional measures, although he has since denied France was toughening its stance.
   Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by state television that Mottaki planned to respond to Kouchner’s comments in a letter to his EU counterparts.
   World powers agreed last month to wait for reports due in November from the International Atomic Energy Agency and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana before deciding whether to submit a new sanctions resolution to the UN security council.
   
   Iran holds more talks with
   UN over nuclear work
   Iran and UN nuclear experts will hold fresh round of talks in the Islamic state this week aimed at clarifying aspects of the country’s disputed nuclear programme, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday, reports Reuters/bdnews24.com.
   Iran agreed with the International Atomic Energy Agency on August 21 to explain the scope of its nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover for building a bomb. Iran says its atomic work is aimed at generating electricity.
   As part of the agreement, an Iranian team and the IAEA held a two-day meeting in September to answer outstanding questions over centrifuges Iran uses to enrich uranium.

With his pro-Western allies confirmed winners of a bruising election battle against their Russia-backed rivals, the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, is struggling to win the peace.
   His goal: keeping his victorious allies on side.
   Parliamentary election results released Friday marked a clear defeat for Yushchenko’s arch-rival, prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, after a years-long power struggle that has mired the country in political turmoil.
   But with most of the pro-West camp’s gains in the September 30 elections coming from fiery populist Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko faces domination at the hands of an ally he cannot control, analysts said.
   ‘There is a new war, but this time it is behind the scenes,’ said Volodymyr Malinkovych, a Kiev-based political analyst. ‘Yushchenko won the war against Yanukovych, but, in the new battle, Tymoshenko is clearly stronger.’
   At stake is political stability in this former Soviet republic of 47 million on the European Union’s eastern edge that has been riven by political infighting since the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution.
   That struggle saw mass protests led by Tymoshenko and Yushchenko overturn a rigged presidential election victory by Yanukovych in what many saw as a decisive turn West by a country with traditional ties to Russia.
   The effect of the latest shake-up on Yushchenko’s aspirations to wrest the country from Russia’s orbit and into the European Union and the NATO military alliance remain to be seen.
   But some observers see the likely return to prime minister’s office of Tymoshenko, widely loathed in Moscow political circles, as the cause of Russian gas company Gazprom’s threat last week to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid bills.
   According to election results released on Friday, an alliance of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc won a slim majority of 228 of 450 seats in Ukraine’s Rada, or parliament.
   But instead of basking in a clear victory, Yushchenko greeted the results with repeated calls for cooperation with the opposition. Analysts said this masked a desire to play the two dominant parties against each other.
   Yanukovych’s Regions Party secured 175 seats against the Tymoshenko Bloc’s 156, both more than double the 72 secured by Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, results indicated.
   ‘Yushchenko is trying to position himself as an honest broker who is not dependent on either of the two major forces,’ said Ivan Presnyakov of the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev.
   ‘He wants to be close to the opposition to build support against Tymoshenko,’ Presnyakov said. Tymoshenko or Yanukovych could use the prime minister’s office to boost their presidential ambitions, analysts said.
   ‘The coalition process is being dragged out for Yushchenko’s strategic goal, to avoid either Yanukovych or Tymoshenko coming to power as prime minister,’ said Volodymyr Fesenko, from Kiev’s Penta analytical centre.

The battle for the leadership of South Africa’s ruling ANC is becoming ever dirtier and fuelled by paranoia in the final weeks before delegates vote for the as-yet undeclared candidates.
   As the party’s 2,500-plus branches begin nominating their preferred contender, the challenge on the surface appears a straight contest between incumbent Thabo Mbeki and deputy African National Congress head Jacob Zuma.
   But behind the scenes, a far more bitter contest is being played out with the rolling of several high-profile heads in recent months seen by analysts as a direct consequence of their membership of rival camps.
   ‘The two main candidates are in mutual destruct mode,’ said University of the Witwatersrand political analyst Susan Booysen.
   ‘Everything has been polarised in the war between them.’
   Many suspect Mbeki’s recent suspension of the country’s chief prosecutor, Vusi Pikoli, was designed to turn up the heat on Zuma, who has so far avoided prosecution more than two years after his financial advisor was sentenced to prison for bribery.
   The 2005 conviction prompted Mbeki to sack Zuma as the deputy head of state, a move which Zuma has always contended was unjustified.
   Other perceived sacrificial lambs include Willie Madisha, the sidelined president of the ANC’s labour partner, COSATU, and the sacked national intelligence agency chief Billy Masetlha.
   Madisha, seen as an Mbeki ally, is at the centre of a probe into a missing 500,000 rand cash donation while Masetlha, who is regarded as close to Zuma, was fired by Mbeki in a fake email scam.

British jurors probing princess Diana’s death are to see for themselves in Paris where she died in a high-speed car crash with her lover Dodi al-Fayed.
   The jury, which has been meeting in London in an inquest to decide if the Paris crash 10 years ago was an accident, will on Monday and Tuesday retrace the last day of the couple-from the Ritz Hotel where they spent their final evening together to the crash scene in the Alma underpass.
   The judge, concerned the court’s Paris visit could provoke the same paparazzi hysteria that greeted the world’s most photographed woman when she was alive, has called on the media to respect the jury’s
   privacy.
   Lord Justice Scott Baker, acknowledging the intense media coverage of the case, said: ‘I believe this interest will most likely intensify when the court visits Paris.’
   He told the London court last week that the six women and five men jurors were performing a public duty ‘under considerable pressure.’ He urged media not to identify any of its members.
   Diana, 36, Dodi, 42, and chauffeur Henri Paul were killed when their Mercedes car crashed in a road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, pursued by paparazzi.
   Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.