The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, criticised the US and British conduct of the war in Afghanistan, telling The New York Times in an interview published on Saturday his government must be accorded the lead in policy decisions.
   Karzai told the newspaper he wanted US forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members and their sympathisers, saying that fear of arrest along with past mistreatment were discouraging them from coming forward and laying down their arms.
   ‘It has to happen,’ he said of the end to such arrests. Karzai also said in the interview conducted on Friday that he did not have specific details about alleged mistreatment of people in custody.
   Ousted from power in 2001 by US-led and Afghan forces, the al-Qaeda-backed Taliban has vowed to topple the Afghan government and drive out the foreign troops who back it. Nearly 12,000 people, including more than 330 foreign troops, have been killed in violence in the past two years.
   Karzai, who faces re-election next year, criticised the US-led coalition for what he characterised as carrying out the war on terrorism in Afghanistan’s villages, and said the real threat was cantered in Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan. ‘The sanctuaries must go, period,’ the Times quoted him as saying.
   He also said that civilian casualties needed to stop, despite their numbers dropping significantly in the last year. ‘I am not happy with civilian casualties coming down; I want an end to civilian casualties,’ he said. ‘As much as one may argue it’s difficult, I don’t accept that argument.’
   Karzai added, ‘I must also be fair to say that our partners in America have recognized my concerns and have acted on them in good faith.’
   In calling for greater Afghan autonomy, Karzai said, ‘For the success of the world in Afghanistan, it would be better to recognise this inherent character in Afghanistan and work with it and support it.’
   ‘Eventually, if the world is to succeed in Afghanistan, it will be by building the Afghan state, not by keeping it weak,’ he told the Times. Karzai said relations with Pakistan’s new government began on a good note. ‘I am fairly confident of their good intentions,’ he said. ‘If the current government has the full backing of the military and intelligence circles in Pakistan and with the good intentions that they have, things will improve.’

Premier Manmohan Singh Friday said he hoped that India and Pakistan would be able to put their past differences aside and make progress in peace talks set to be resumed next month.
   Singh, on a two-day visit to the southern Kashmiri city of Jammu, said he had been ‘heartened by the very positive statements made by the new leaders (of Pakistan),’ in office after elections in February.
   ‘I hope that we (India and Pakistan) will be able to put the past behind us and that we can move forward with a sense of urgency, not inhibited by false fears or narrow agendas,’ Singh said.
   New Delhi will continue its attempts to ‘deepen its dialogue with the democratically-elected government,’ in Islamabad, he added.
   India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, but they launched a wide-ranging peace dialogue four years ago.
   The nuclear-armed rivals announced earlier this month that they would review the fourth round of talks during a visit by the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, to Islamabad on May 20-21.
   The meeting in Islamabad will be the first major talks between the South Asian neighbours since Pakistan’s new government came to power after defeating allies of the president, Pervez Musharraf, in February elections.

A new book looks at Osama bin Laden through the prism of his family, and suggests that the death of his extrovert playboy brother Salem in a 1988 plane crash was an important factor in his radicalisation.
   ‘The Bin Ladens,’ by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll, traces the family’s rise to prominence in Saudi society through the 20th century and how its fate, and that of Osama in particular, was inextricably linked with the royal family’s.
   By putting Osama’s life in the context of his 53 globetrotting brothers and sisters and the upheavals facing Saudi Arabia, Coll seeks to dispel some of the myths surrounding a man often portrayed in the West as an incarnation of evil.
   Osama was around nine years old when his father died in a plane crash in 1967. While immersing himself in Islamic studies at school, the boy found new father figures in radical mentors who later introduced him to the idea of ‘transnational jihad.’
   His elder half-brother Salem was a very different character: a larger-than-life, jetsetting playboy who took over the family business and wooed the Saudi royals with his boyish charm.
   The reward was construction contracts in the kingdom and a family fortune that was crucial to Osama’s role as mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
   While the brothers followed different paths, underlining the tensions in Saudi Arabia at the time between a pious past and the new allures of the West, Salem remained an important influence over Osama and the bin Laden clan throughout his life.
   The keen pilot’s death in 1988 in a flying accident left the dynasty adrift, and contributed to Osama’s growing rifts with his family and with the Saudi authorities, Coll argues. It also came at a time when the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was winding down, encouraging Osama and other radical leaders to consider a broader armed struggle.
   ‘I met so many friends of Salem who, without prompting, said if he had lived, 9/11 would not have happened, and you can see their case,’ Coll explained in an interview with Reuters. ‘You can just imagine at that moment in the early 90s ... Salem would just have figured out a way to bring him back in.’
   Coll was referring to the period when Osama began to quarrel with the Saudi authorities, partly because of his backing for Islamist militants in Yemen and partly due to the deployment of US troops on Saudi soil after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
   In the early 1980s Osama had begun travelling to Pakistan, where his wealth brought him influence among Islamic radicals backing the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency.
   There he was actively supported by Salem, who was keen to help his brother and serve the royal family’s clandestine foreign policy in the region at the same time.

Bomb blasts killed three Afghan policemen and four suspected Taliban Saturday, officials said, also reporting that 17 other people, including a population census official, died in unrest a day earlier.
   Two police officers were killed when a bomb planted in a road blew up their vehicle in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial spokesman Zia Wali said, blaming the attack on Taliban. Three others were wounded, he said.
   A third police officer was killed and another wounded in a similar blast in the southwestern province of Farah, regional police commander Khalilullah Ziayee said, also accusing the Taliban.
   Insurgents led by the Taliban movement that was ousted from government seven years ago have in recent weeks stepped up attacks on police, seen as a weak branch of the security forces.
   More than three dozen Afghan policemen have been killed in attacks this month, according to an AFP tally.
   Also Saturday, four suspected Taliban militants were killed when a car they were using to move explosives blew up in the eastern province of Laghman, a provincial official said.
   ‘Four terrorists were killed when the vehicle that they used to transport explosives for terrorist activities exploded. We think they were Taliban,’ provincial spokesman Abdul Wakil Atak said.

Myanmar’s pro-democracy party led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said Saturday opponents of the junta’s proposed constitution were being beaten and intimidated ahead of next month’s vote.
   The National League for Democracy said six party members had been attacked by unknown people and 20 others detained and tortured in the run-up to the May 10 ballot.
   The ruling generals say the vote will be fair and that approval of the charter will usher in multiparty elections in 2010, but pro-democracy activists say it simply entrenches the role of the military, which has ruled since 1962.
   The NLD, which has publicly called on people to vote ‘No,’ said it had reported the incidents but the authorities had taken no action to investigate.
   ‘The responsible authorities have never done any investigating, charging or taking any action to ‘uphold law and order’ over those crimes committed against NLD party members,’ it said.
   Six party members had been attacked and beaten by unknown assailants since the junta announced in February it would hold a referendum on the proposed constitution, it said. One member needed 21 stitches in his head after an assault, which also affected his vision.

The death toll from a bus blast outside Colombo rose to 26 on Saturday as Sri Lanka warned of more indiscriminate attacks against civilians while security forces remained locked in combat against Tamil rebels.
   President Mahinda Rajapakse said Friday’s blast was the work of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam guerrillas who are resisting a major military campaign in the north of the island.
   The president in a statement warned that the rebels could resort to further indiscriminate attacks and urged residents to exercise more caution.
   A powerful time-bomb ripped through an overcrowded bus, blowing off its roof, as it pulled out of the Piliyandala terminal into rush-hour traffic on Friday on the outskirts of the capital.
   ‘Two more passengers died in hospital and the number of people remaining in hospital this morning is 64,’ a police spokesman said.
   Grief-stricken relatives gathered outside two hospitals to claim the dead from the explosion on the bus, which was jammed with office workers and schoolchildren returning from private classes.
   Among those killed were a 10-year-old boy, a Buddhist monk and eight women.

President Robert Mugabe’s party has failed to secure control of Zimbabwe’s parliament in a partial recount of March 29 elections, results showed on Saturday, handing the ruling party its first defeat in 28 years.
   Results of a parallel presidential poll have never been released, and Mugabe has been preparing for a run-off against Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
   Tsvangirai says he won outright and his party has rejected both the recount and any run-off.
   For the first time since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, the MDC wrested a parliamentary majority from Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF in the March 29 poll, triggering a recount of 23 out of 210 constituencies.
   The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said that in the 14 out of 23 seats recounted so far, the original results was confirmed. ZANU-PF had triggered the recount by accusing election officials of taking bribes to undercount votes for Mugabe’s party.
   To win back a parliamentary majority, the ruling party needed to win nine more seats than it did in the first count. Only nine are left to be counted – but ZANU-PF already won three of those in the first count.
   Delays in the recount and in announcing the presidential result have brought growing international pressure on Mugabe, 84, and stoked fears of vote-rigging and bloodshed in a country suffering an economic collapse. The MDC dismissed the recount again on Saturday, regardless of the results.
   ‘Our position remains the same. We don’t recognise the recount. It is a charade. The original results stand as far as we are concerned,’ said an MDC spokesman.
   On Friday, Mugabe resorted to strong measures used in the past to keep the opposition in check, in what Human Rights Watch said was a stepped up ‘campaign of organized terror and torture against opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans’.
   The government denies it is waging a violent campaign.
   Armed riot police raided the MDC’s headquarters and detained scores of people in the toughest measures against the opposition since the disputed elections.
   The MDC said those detained included supporters who had sought refuge with them after fleeing various parts of the country ‘where the regime has been unleashing brutal violence’.
   The police said 215 people had been arrested in the raid, and no one had been charged yet.
   ‘We have released the elderly and women with babies. There are about 30 of them. We are still doing profiles for the others and checking with their provinces on whether they have committed any crimes there,’ a police spokesman said.
   Former colonial power Britain, which Mugabe blames for Zimbabwe’s troubles, has requested a meeting of the UN Security Council, the first session on the post-electoral crisis in Zimbabwe, a Western diplomat said.
   South Africa’s UN envoy Dumisani Kumalo said someone from the UN secretariat would brief the 15-nation council, probably on Tuesday, on developments in Zimbabwe.
   The Western diplomat on the council said any action in the form of a statement or resolution was unlikely. But the meeting would be useful in increasing pressure on Mugabe.
   Mugabe, a hero of the independence struggle, accuses the opposition of conspiring with Western critics to end his almost three decades in power, which began with high hopes that Zimbabwe would become an African model of democratic and economic success.
   Today, Zimbabweans face severe shortages of basic goods and a staggering inflation rate of 165,000 per cent – the world’s highest.

The United States and Britain issued new travel alerts warning of an increased terrorist threat in China Friday, as Interpol said Beijing must prepare for a possible al-Qaeda attack at the Olympics.
   The US State Department warned Americans travelling to the Asian country of a ‘heightened risk that extremist groups will conduct terrorist acts within China in the near future.’
   It said any large-scale public event, such as the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, ‘may present an attractive target for terrorists,’ and warned its citizens travelling in China to be alert.
   The statement updated March travel advice which said the threat of terrorism against Americans in China ‘remains low.’
   It was issued as Britain also upgraded its terror assessment for China, where it had previously said the risk was ‘low.’
   ‘There is an underlying threat from terrorism in China,’ the foreign office said on its travel advice web site, although it said it was not discouraging travel there.
   The change ‘reflects both the global risk of indiscriminate terrorist attacks and the possibility of terrorist attacks by groups opposed to the Chinese government,’ it said.
   ‘Particularly in the run-up to the Olympic Games, attacks cannot be ruled out, particularly in major urban areas. They could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers,’ it added.

Democrat Barack Obama said on Friday he would fine-tune his US presidential campaign and remind voters of his humble roots after a defeat in Pennsylvania fuelled in part by his failure to win over working-class voters.
   Obama leads the Democratic race but is in a gruelling battle with Hillary Clinton for the right to face Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election. Nine of the state-by-state nominating contests remain before voting ends on June 3.
   Obama, an Illinois senator, said he would make adjustments after losing Pennsylvania’s primary election to Hillary on Tuesday. That followed another big-state loss to Hillary, a New York senator, in Ohio in March.
   ‘There’s no doubt that a campaign has to continually fine-tune itself,’ Obama told reporters in Indiana, one of two crucial battlegrounds in the next round of contests on May 6.
   ‘You know this has been a long campaign. What worked well three months ago, if you’re doing the exact same thing now, it may not work as well,’ said Obama, who racked up a string of wins in February before stumbling in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
   Standing at a gas station, Obama said his rivals were part of a Washington political establishment that had failed to rein in oil companies and other powerful special interests.
   ‘The candidates with the Washington experience – my opponents – are good people. They mean well but they’ve been in Washington an awful long time and, even with all that experience they talk about, nothing has happened,’ Obama said.
   He said he was the only candidate who had tried to battle special interests and refused to take donations from lobbyists.
   Hillary questioned Obama’s commitment to fighting special interests during a stop in Bloomington, Indiana, noting he voted for an energy bill backed by the vice president, Dick Cheney, a Republican.
   ‘Actions speak louder than words. When it came time to stand up against the oil companies, to stand against Dick Cheney’s energy bill, my opponent voted for it and I voted against it, Hillary said. ‘That bill had billions of dollars of giveaways to the oil companies.’
   Hillary, a former first lady seeking to be the first female US president, and Obama have vied to portray themselves as the best stewards of a struggling economy in states hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and the housing crisis.
   But Obama, who would be the first black US president, has struggled to connect with white working-class voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. He was beaten badly by Hillary in Pennsylvania among low-income whites who do not have a college degree.
   The results followed Obama’s comments about ‘bitter’ small-town residents and subsequent charges by Hillary and McCain that he was an out-of-touch elitist.

The growing concern of Emiratis about being a minority in their own country surfaced again last week, with a senior official warning that it could lead to the collapse of the regime.
   ‘I’m afraid we are building towers but losing the Emirates,’ said outspoken police chief General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, referring to a construction boom in the emirate which is being fuelled by foreigners buying property there.
   Dubai is one of the seven members of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, the number of whose citizens dwindled to just 15.4 per cent of the 5.6 million population at the end of 2006, according to a recent study by the government advisory body, the Federal National Council.
   The ‘demographic imbalance,’ as it is euphemistically called, also plagues Qatar and Kuwait, two other energy-rich Gulf Arab monarchies that rely heavily on cheap imported Asian labour for their development.
   Tamim, who was addressing a ‘national identity conference’ attended by senior officials in the capital Abu Dhabi, hailed UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan’s decision to declare 2008 ‘national identity year,’ but said Emiratis have been late in tackling the demographic problem.
   ‘If the children of incumbent crown princes (of the seven emirates) manage to rule the Emirates, we should be thankful for that,’ he said.
   The veteran police commander warned that unless the problem is resolved, the UAE’s hereditary monarchy will not survive and this will lead to the collapse of Emirati society.
   A disaster will befall the UAE if the government does not take measures to redress the demographic imbalance, he said.
   Tamim has proposed establishing a union of Gulf Arab states that would grant a common citizenship, putting a ceiling on the size of expatriate communities and restricting foreign ownership of property.
   He also urged Emiratis to have more children.
   To drive home his point, Tamim accompanied his address by video footage of cars torched and shops damaged during recent riots by foreign workers, as well as clips of streets in Dubai packed with Asian expatriates.
   ‘They blocked roads and destroyed facilities, and (human rights groups) speak of workers’ rights,’ the general said.
   He was referring to reports by such organisations as New York-based Human Rights Watch critical of the working and living conditions of hundreds of thousands of mostly Asian labourers in the country, which also has sizeable Arab, Iranian and Western communities.
   While acknowledging that the imbalance is dangerous, Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said the UAE is ‘a tolerant, open and wealthy country’ which should not shut out foreigners.
   Emiratis cannot live in ‘isolated islands’ under the banner of ‘preserving their national identity,’ he told the gathering.
   Ahmad al-Tayer, a former education minister, said the UAE’s national identity was under threat not only from demography but also from the declining use of Arabic due to the massive presence of foreigners.
   ‘What fate awaits our children and yours?’ he asked officials.
   Mohammad al-Bawardi, secretary general of Abu Dhabi’s Executive Council, or local government, called for giving nationals the proper education and training to enable them to ‘hold all the leading positions’ in the country.
   The FNC study said expatriates from the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia make up around 75 per cent of the workforce, with Indians accounting for 42.5 per cent of all foreigners.

Lebanon’s parliament will try to elect a new president on May 13, the speaker said on Saturday, the 19th attempt to hold a vote derailed by the worst political crisis since the 1975-90 civil war.
   Parliament speaker Nabih Berri postponed the session for an 18th time on Tuesday but did not assign a new date. He instead called rival leaders to hold roundtable talks.
   But after pro-government leaders failed to respond to the invitation, Berri, also an opposition leader, set the new date.
   A source close to him said he still hoped the majority coalition would come to the table before the session.
   The opposition wants a deal on a new government and a law organising next year’s general election before electing a new head of state. Majority leaders say a new president should be elected first and then chair talks between the feuding factions.
   The political crisis has paralysed much of government, left the presidency vacant since November and led to bouts of lethal street violence in a country still recovering from its 15-year civil war.
   Saudi Arabia and the United States lead a host of Arab and Western countries who strongly back the Beirut governing coalition, while Syria and its ally Iran support the opposition alliance led by Hezbollah.

Turkish warplanes struck Kurdistan Workers’ Party targets inside northern Iraq on Friday and Saturday, the General Staff said.
   Army sources said it was the biggest air operation against separatist targets in northern Iraq this year.
   The military also bombed PKK targets on Wednesday, one of series of missions since the end of a February land offensive into northern Iraq where rebels have bases.
   Turkey’s army tends to step up operations against the guerrillas in the spring when the snow melts, making movement in the mountainous area easier.
   ‘Turkish Airforce planes, supported by ground weapons, struck PKK targets in an effective operation on April 25-26,’ it said in a statement on its website.
   Army sources had said on Friday an air operation was carried out at around 1630 GMT (12:30pm EST).
   The Turkish military staged an eight-day incursion into northern Iraq in February against the PKK, which Ankara blames for 40,000 deaths since 1984 when the group took up arms to carve out an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.
   The United States and the European Union, along with Turkey, consider the PKK a terrorist organisation.