Indian communists are not expected to soften their position over a nuclear deal with the United States at a meeting on Wednesday of a panel that aims to resolve their row with the government, left leaders said.
   The panel, consisting of senior government leaders and communist representatives, was formed last month after the left parties warned prime minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition of ‘serious consequences’ if it did not dump the historic pact.
   Opposition to the deal by the communists, whose support is key to the survival of Singh’s coalition, has led to the worst political crisis since the government was formed in 2004 and sparked fears of a general election before it is due in 2009.
   The deal aims to give India access to American nuclear fuel and equipment to help meet its soaring energy needs even though it has tested nuclear weapons and not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   But communists say it hurts India’s sovereignty and exposes the country’s foreign policy to Washington’s influence. They have threatened to end their support if the government pursues negotiations needed to secure global approvals for the deal.
   The panel held its first meeting last week and the two sides subsequently exchanged notes, with the government replying to concerns raised by the communists.
   The communists were preparing a ‘rejoinder’ to the government’s reply ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Nilotpal Basu, a lawmaker and a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said.
   ‘On many of the issues which are relevant, particularly those pertaining to energy policy, the defence of the government is very weak,’ he said.
   On Tuesday, CPI(M) chief Prakash Karat urged the government not to pursue the deal for six months and warned of a ‘political crisis’ if it went ahead.
   While the Indian government is yet to respond to that demand, US officials have reaffirmed that time was running out on the deal as Washington would be preoccupied with presidential elections next year.
   ‘They are trying to put pressure on us,’ said AB Bardhan, head of the Communist Party of India, the second largest of the four left parties who together have 60 MPs in the 545-member lower house of parliament.
   ‘They have their own timeframe, we have our own, but the government should not succumb to them,’ he said.
   Government leaders say they hope to convince the communists and allay their concerns through the panel. But analysts are not confident as left leaders seem to remain adamant.
   Ruling Congress party was to hold a new round of tense talks later Wednesday with its communist allies, who are trying to block a nuclear energy deal with the United States, officials said.

Pakistani newspapers Wednesday urged president Pervez Musharraf to commit to full democracy, a day after he pledged to quit as army chief – but only if he wins re-election.
   Papers seized on the condition stipulated by the military ruler. The English-language Dawn titled its editorial ‘If elected...’ while The News putting the offending phrase in italics in its headline.
   ‘What happens if he is not elected? Will general Musharraf, in that case, continue to remain the army chief and breathe down the necks of the president and the prime minister?’ Dawn said.
   Musharraf’s lawyer said on Tuesday that he intends to seek re-election in uniform by the current parliament in a ballot that is due by mid-October, saying that he will step down from the army before being sworn in.
   But newspapers said that Musharraf should instead be elected by new assemblies after a general election is held.
   ‘The time for manipulating the constitution and for weird legal contrivances is gone. The people of Pakistan want unadulterated democracy – democracy as is understood the world over,’ Dawn said.

The Thai military has failed to justify its reasons for overthrowing prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s elected government one year ago, a former ruling party official said Wednesday.
   Army chief general Sonthi Boonyaratglin said he ousted the twice-elected Thaksin on September 19 last year to end political turmoil, reunite a divided nation and rid Thailand of corrupt politicians.
   But Chaturon Chaisang, a former leader of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party, said the junta had ‘failed to prove’ the allegations it made when it launched the bloodless coup.
   Instead, the generals have only succeeded in damaging the country’s economy and compromising democracy here, he said.
   ‘A year after the coup, people have received only one thing – an undemocratic constitution,’ Chaturon told a press conference.
   Meanwhile, Thaksin said Wed-nesday he still planned to return home, a year to the day since he was ousted in a bloodless coup.
   ‘I will go back but after the election... I will probably have to wait until the election, when the new government is installed,’ he told BBC radio. ‘I can’t be sure when but that’s my idea initially. The situation in Thailand is changing every day.’

Typhoon Wipha slammed into China’s densely populated east coast on Wednesday, sparking the evacuation of around two million people and threatening the financial hub Shanghai.
   The storm made landfall in Zhejiang province overnight with winds up to 100 miles an hour, state media said, and churned toward Shanghai amid warnings it could be the most destructive typhoon to hit here in a decade.
   The China Meteorological Administration said the typhoon was expected to move north-northwest, bringing torrential rains to the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangsu and the Shanghai region.
   Although the weather was fine in Shanghai early on Wednesday, the financial metropolis battened down the hatches, closing schools and advising it could halt trading on the city’s stock exchange if the weather worsened.
   It ordered the evacuation of 291,000 people from low-lying areas and called ships and ferries back to port, according to the Shanghai Daily. Similar measures have been taken along the eastern seaboard, media reports said, with at least 1.5 million people evacuated from their homes in Zhejiang province alone.

Taiwan is mulling filing a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice if its latest bid seeking United Nations membership is blocked, officials here said Wednesday.
   The UN General Assembly is expected to discuss Taiwan’s membership application in the next few days, but the island’s foreign minister, James Huang, has admitted that the chance of success is slim amid opposition from China and the United States.
   Taiwan is recognised by only 24 countries.
   Taiwan’s government spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey, however, refused to cave in to the mounting pressure from the world’s two superpowers.
   ‘Taiwan people must stand up as we must not be continued to be regarded as a bone gnawed by two dogs,’ he said, in apparent reference to the objection to Taiwan’s UN bid by Beijing and Washington.
   ‘Therefore, the proposal of filing a lawsuit in the world court (over UN membership) is under our evaluation.’
   However, the leading opposition party warned against the idea, saying the case might be rejected by the Hague-headquartered court because Taiwan is not a sovereign state.

Iran on Wednesday said the military has drawn up a plan under which its fighter jets could bomb Israel if the Jewish state launched a military attack against the Islamic republic over its atomic drive.
   ‘We have come up with a plan that in the event of possible foolishness by this regime, Iranian bombers can carry out an attack in retaliation against Israeli soil,’ deputy air force commander Mohammad Alavi said, quoted by the Fars news agency.
   ‘In addition to our missiles, whose range covers the whole soil of this regime, we can attack them with our fighter jets and respond to any attack – an unlikely event – with an air attack on their soil.
   ‘This plan is not an empty threat because everything we do is based on planning. So Israel should remove any foolishness from its head.’
   His comments came after the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, warned that the world should brace for war against Tehran over its nuclear activities, which the West suspects may be a cover for a weapons programme.
   The United States and its ally Israel have never ruled out using military strikes to punish Iran for its defiance in the nuclear standoff and the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said on Sunday that ‘all options are on the table.’
   However, Alavi echoed the belief of Iran’s top leaders that the foes of the Islamic republic are not in a position to make an attack.
   ‘Israel is not an entity that could harbour a real threat against Tehran as it does not have the real ability.
   ‘Its talk about an aerial attack is only psychological warfare because we reject the idea that this regime has the capability to attack Iran by air.’
   But he added: ‘Israel knows what kind of blow it will get from our planes and missiles. Of course our plans are not made public but they should know that if they are needed they can be executed.’
   Washington accuses Iran of seeking an atomic weapon. Tehran vehemently denies those charges, saying its nuclear drive is aimed at providing electricity for a growing population whose fossil fuels will one day run out.
   Iran’s military elite has also warned the United States of the consequences for its interests of any attack, saying US bases in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq are well within the range of its missiles.
   Tehran has always insisted it will never initiate an attack but has vowed it will respond with crushing force to any violation of its territory.
   The Iranian air force has been hit by the US trade embargo, which means the country must work hard to find spare parts to keep its fleet in the air.
   Many of Iran’s planes are of American origin and were bought in a massive arms-buying spree by the pro-US shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was ousted by the Islamic revolution in 1979.
   But the Islamic republic has developed two fighter jets that officials say have been built entirely with home-grown technology.
   In August, it showed off for the first time the ‘Azarakhsh’ (Lightning) jet, said to be modelled on the American F-5.

World leaders converge here next week for the UN general assembly session to tackle an agenda dominated by mounting concern over climate change and efforts to settle conflicts in Darfur, Iraq and the Middle East.
   More than 100 heads of state or government are expected to attend the 192-member assembly’s annual high-level debate, which will run from next Tuesday through October 3 with climate change as its theme.
   Ahead of the debate, the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, scheduled a series of high-level meetings to focus on Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and climate change.
   ‘This will be a most intense period of multilateral diplomacy ever in United Nations history,’ the secretary general told reporters Tuesday.
   On Friday, Ban and Alpha Oumar Konare, the head of the African Union Commission, are to host a one-day ministerial meeting to lay the groundwork for crunch talks between the Sudanese government and all Darfur rebels in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, on October 27.
   ‘I hope that we will be able to map our strategy and roadmap for the forthcoming political negotiations in Libya,’ Ban said.
   The Tripoli meeting is to focus on broadening the Darfur Peace agreement signed in May 2006 to include those rebel groups which did not sign it.
   Ban said Friday’s session would also discuss how to expedite plans to deploy a 26,000-strong joint UN-AU force in Darfur to try to end more than four years of bloodshed believed to have claimed 200,000 lives and left 2.2 million people displaced.
   Saturday, Ban and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki will co-chair a ministerial meeting on Iraq to discuss how to strengthen the UN presence there and review a five-year international plan to stabilize the country on the political, economic and security fronts.
   The next day, Ban is to join the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, at a high-level meeting to discuss the political instability, rampant corruption and runaway opium production in Afghanistan.
   Also Sunday, the UN chief, will discuss improved prospects for Middle East peace with his partners in the diplomatic Quartet: the grouping’s special envoy-former British prime minister Tony Blair, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
   Sunday night, members of the Middle East Quartet will huddle with representatives of the Arab League at an ‘Iftar’ dinner, the evening meal for breaking the daily fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan.
   Monday on the eve of the assembly’s debate, Ban will convene a high-level meeting on climate change, which some 80 heads of state or government are due to attend.
   ‘What I want to achieve is a strong political message for the climate change negotiations in Bali in December,’ he said.
   The Bali meeting aims to set a roadmap for negotiating global pollution cuts that will be implemented after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol runs out.

Russia said on Wednesday its decision to suspend the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty later this year was a serious sign to the West, but stressed Moscow was not seeking confrontation.
   ‘Our aim Wednesday is to give a signal, a serious signal, to our Western partners that things cannot go on like this,’ the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Kislyak, told parliamentary hearings on the CFE.
   ‘We are ready to work with them to solve these problems but if not, we will suspend our compliance with the treaty,’ Kislyak said. ‘Our decision is not aimed at confrontation but the opposite.’
   Signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, the treaty limits the number of tanks, artillery, aircraft and helicopters stationed between the Atlantic and the Ural mountains in Russia, as well as in eastern and central Europe.
   The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree in July suspending Russia’s participation in it.
   Kislyak said the suspension would come into force on December 12 when a formal notification period runs out.
   NATO member Germany said last week it was launching an initiative to rescue the treaty and would hold a conference in October to discuss the landmark post-Cold War pact.
   Russia says the treaty is no longer effective because NATO states have failed to ratify the latest version of it.
   NATO has declined to ratify it until Russia withdraws all its troops from ex-Soviet Moldova and Georgia, as it pledged to do in 1999 when the pact was signed.
   AFP report adds: Growing military cooperation between Australia, Japan and the United States is worrying Moscow, as is work on US-Japanese missile defence cooperation, a top foreign ministry official said in an interview Wednesday.
   ‘The strengthening of US-Australian-Japanese ties has got our attention.... Narrow alliances, especially tight military-political unions, are a worry,’ deputy foreign ministry Alexander Losyukov told daily Vremya Novostei newspaper.

Methane released from wetlands turned the earth into a hothouse 55 million years ago, according to research released Wednesday that could shed light on a worrying aspect of Wednesday’s climate-change crisis.
   Scientists have long sought to understand the triggers for an extraordinary warming episode called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred about 10 million years after the twilight of the dinosaurs.
   Earth’s surface warmed by at least five degrees Celsius in just a few hundred or a few thousand years. The Arctic Ocean was at 23 degrees Celsius about the same as a tepid bath-before the planet eventually cooled.
   Richard Pancost, a researcher at Britain’s University of Bristol, seized an opportunity to dig, literally, into this mystery. Excavation of a site in southeast England to set down the Channel Tunnel rail link exposed layers of sediment from a bog that had existed at the time of the PETM.
   Pancost’s team sifted through the dirt to measure the carbon isotope values of hopanoids, which are compounds made by bacteria.
   They found that levels of these isotopes suddenly fell at the onset of the PETM, yielding a signature that can only be explained if the bugs dramatically switched to a diet of methane, a powerful, naturally-occurring greenhouse gas.
   Reporting in the British journal Nature, Pancost believes that the methane had remained locked up in the soil for millions of years before warming released it into the atmosphere.

British prime minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party widened its opinion poll lead over the main opposition, a survey released on Tuesday showed.
   Opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron, was also rated as the least popular party chief among voters, while Brown was rated as most popular, the ICM poll for The Guardian newspaper said.
   Backing for Labour rose one percentage point from a similar survey last month to 40 per cent, while the Tories fell two points to 32 per cent-the eight-point advantage is the biggest recorded by ICM since Cameron became Tory leader in December 2005.
   The Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third-biggest party, rose two points to 20 per cent.
   The poll’s results come during the thick of the political party conference season-the LibDem conference is currently ongoing, while Labour’s kicks off September 23, and the Tories’ starts on September 30 – and show that Cameron is regarded as the worst among party leaders.

Thousands of people demonstrated in Buenos Aires and La Plata on Tuesday to demand the return of a key trial witness who disappeared one year ago after testifying in a government torture case.
   Protesters demanded to know why the government had made no progress in the investigation into the disappearance of Jorge Julio Lopez, 77.
   ‘We are in a democracy and my father has disappeared,’ said his daughter, Ruben Lopez. ‘As a country we cannot accept this.’
   Lopez has not been seen since the day he left his home near La Plata one year ago, shortly after testifying against a former police officer during the military dictatorship (1976-1983), Miguel Etchecolatz.
   The elderly witness described for the court how he had been kidnapped in 1976 and tortured in 21 secret prisons under Etchecolatz’s authority, and said the officer was present during some of the torture sessions and gave orders himself.

A British judge jailed a grandmother for life Wednesday for ordering the execution of her cheating daughter-in-law in India, after discovering she was having an affair with a married man.
   The judge at London’s Central Criminal Court told 70-year-old Bachan Athwal, who was convicted in July of the murder of Surjit Athwal, that she must serve a minimum of 20 years in prison before she is eligible for release.
   Surjit, a customs officer at London’s main Heathrow airport, never returned from a trip with Bachan to a family wedding in India in December 1998.
   Her mother-in-law later boasted she had arranged for Surjit to disappear ‘off the surface of the earth’ by getting a relative to strangle her and throw her body into a river in the Punjab.