Afghans believe the United States knows about al-Qaeda bases in Pakistan, but does not hit them because it wants an unstable Afghanistan to justify its presence for wider regional goals, a state newspaper said on Wednesday.
   While many Afghans have vented such thoughts for some time, it was the first time a state newspaper which generally reflects the government’s view has expressed them, and may point to a souring of relations between Afghanistan and its biggest backer.
   Ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan, both major US allies in its war against Islamic militants, have hit new lows with the Afghan government accusing Pakistan of funding and training Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters for cross-border attacks.
   Nearly seven years after US-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government for refusing to hand over al-Qaeda leaders behind the September 11 attacks, the heads of the militant groups are still at large and are thought to be hiding in Pakistan.
   With more than 70,000 mainly Western troops based in Afghanistan, many Afghans believe the United States and its allies are deliberately not doing enough to halt the threat.
   The United States always said it would attack the militants wherever they were, but in reality it has not done so, the state-run Anis daily said.
   ‘The Afghan people have long doubted such claims of foreigners, especially of Britain and America, and their trust about crushing al-Qaeda and terrorism has fallen,’ Anis said.
   ‘The people have the right to think that there is something in the wind,’ it said. ‘No one believes stability and peace will be restored to Afghanistan until the training and equipping sites of the Taliban are closed.’
   US unmanned aircraft have made a number of air strikes on militant leaders inside Pakistan’s border region in recent years, but Western analysts say Washington fears large-scale attacks would anger Pakistanis and weaken the government there.
   But Anis said Afghans believe Washington wants to keep Afghanistan unstable in order to justify the presence of its troops due to Afghanistan’s geographical location bordering Iran and central Asia’s rich oil- and gas-producing nations.
   The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has been increasingly critical of his Western backers in recent months, saying air strikes against Taliban insurgents have achieved nothing but the deaths of Afghan civilians.
   Many in the West and the international community meanwhile have bemoaned Karzai’s lack of action against corrupt and inept state officials who undermine efforts to rebuild the country.
   Western leaders have set no timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, saying an eventual pull-out depends on when Afghan forces are capable of standing on their own feet.

New Zealand has doubts about a plan being discussed by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to give a green light to India’s civilian nuclear deal with
   the United States, a minister
   was quoted on Wednesday as saying.
   The United States has proposed to waive a ban on nuclear trade with India without conditions, like a compliance with a nuclear test ban or sanctions if India tested a nuclear device.
   The plan is being discussed with the NSG this week in Vienna. Critics say that the NSG needs to have tighter controls over India, such as with nuclear tests.
   ‘New Zealand has not arrived at a final position on this,’ New Zealand’s Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control Phil Goff was quoted as telling the Times of India.
   ‘But like a number of countries we do have reservations about aspects of the content of the draft exemption recently circulated to the NSG.’
   Diplomats see New Zealand being one of the most critical countries of the deal, along with Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and Norway.
   Public declarations from officials involved in the NSG are rare and the statement from Goff signals that India and the United States may have a tough time in Vienna persuading the NSG, which arrives at decisions by consensus.
   Approval by the NSG is necessary for the 2005 US-India deal on nuclear trade to proceed to US Congress for final ratification.
   It would lift a 34-year embargo on nuclear trade for civilian purposes with the Asian atomic power, which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has tested atomic bombs.
   Diplomats have said that several NSG member states felt the draft fell behind earlier US proposals, had unacceptable clauses and omissions, and went against existing US laws on the deal.
   If the waiver does not get NSG approval next week or at a second meeting likely early next month, it may not get ratified by the end of September, when US Congress adjourns for November elections, and could face indefinite limbo.

Deadlock between Pakistan’s coalition partners over the restoration of deposed judges has raised questions about the survival of the government that forced president Pervez Musharraf’s resignation.
   Musharraf, the former army chief and key ally of the United States in its campaign against terrorism, resigned as president of nuclear-armed Pakistan on Monday to avoid impeachment by the coalition government.
   But the two main coalition partners, the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and that of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, are unnatural allies.
   Bitter rivals during the 1990s, when Benazir and Sharif alternated as prime minister, the parties were thrown together by their opposition to Musharraf. His departure could undermine the logic of their alliance, analysts said.
   ‘The glue that was holding the coalition partners together was Musharraf. Now that punching bag has gone,’ said Rashid Rehman, a former newspaper editor and analyst.
   ‘Going by yesterday’s deliberations, alarm has been raised,’ Rehman said, referring to a long meeting on Tuesday in which the two main parties failed to break their deadlock over the judges Musharraf fired last year.
   Investors are watching nervously.
   The crisis over Musharraf had already hurt financial markets in the country of 165 million people, and raised concern in Washington it distracted from efforts to tackle militants.
   Musharraf’s resignation lifted Pakistan shares and the rupee on Monday and again on Tuesday but stocks fell more over 3 per cent on Wednesday morning as investors began to lose hope for an end to political tension.
   ‘The only thing that’s a surprise is how quickly it has happened after Musharraf left. They’ve hardly had time to savour their victory,’ Rehman said.
   Sharif, who heads the second biggest party in the coalition, has been insisting the judges be restored to office.
   But Benazir’s party is dragging its feet because the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty from graft charges granted to party leaders last year, analysts say.

Floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains left some 50,000 people homeless in India’s remote northeast, officials said on Wednesday, warning of more rains in one of the country’s most flood-prone regions.
   Floodwaters swamped some 100 villages in Assam state, destroying homes and croplands and forcing thousands of people to the safety of high grounds.
   Officials set up temporary shelters for the homeless in school and government buildings, and used wooden boats to rescue those marooned. Many camped on highways under plastic sheets with what little they had salvaged of their belongings.
   In neighbouring Nepal, at least 20,000 people were displaced and sheltered in relief camps in the country’s southeast after a river broke a dam and flooded six villages, an official said on Wednesday.
   Local media reports said three people were killed but an official said he had no information about the deaths.
   Television channels showed video clips of people wading waist-deep water to higher ground, carrying babies in their arms and balancing their belongings on their heads.
   Nepal’s the Maoist prime minister, Prachanda, is scheduled to tour the affected areas on Wednesday, official said. He has already announced $300,000 as immediate relief to the flood victims.
   Floods and landslides are common in mountainous Nepal during the annual monsoon season that normally begins in June and continues through September. About 50 people have died since the rains started this year.

Two elderly Chinese women who applied to demonstrate at official Olympic protest zones have been ordered to serve one year each of reeducation through labour, a close relative said Wednesday.
   In the latest signal that China’s leaders will tolerate no dissent during the Games, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, were interrogated for 10 hours and sentenced to one year of ‘Reeducaton Through Labour,’ said Wu’s son Li Xuehui
   ‘We will surely take legal action because what the police are doing is against the spirit of law,’ he said.
   China is using the August 8-24 Games to showcase its emergence as a world power and has cracked down on groups or individuals it fears could tarnish that image, according to human rights experts.
   The two old women, forcibly evicted from their Beijing homes in 2001, had applied five times for permits to protest during the Games, according to Li.
   Under the police order, the pair are spared immediate detention but will be sent off to camp if they cause more trouble, he said.
   An official at the Beijing Public Security Bureau said Wednesday they had no information on the cases, and asked AFP to fax a request for details.
   China promised to improve its human rights record when it was awarded the right to host the Olympic Games seven years ago.
   Last month China’s government said it would set up three protest zones for use by demonstrators during the August 8-24 Games, but Beijing police have said that not a single protest had been formally approved.
   The vast bulk of the 77 applications were withdrawn because the relevant authorities had addressed the problems through ‘consultations’, the police said.
   International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies said she would investigate the case of Wu and Wang, and that she hoped the protest areas would be allowed to serve their purpose.

Russia moved Wednesday towards recognising Georgian separatist regions as independent, raising tensions after blocking a UN demand that it withdraw forces from Georgia.
   Russian troops remained entrenched in the rebel provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, although the president, Dmitry Medvedev, said the bulk of the forces would be out by the weekend.
   A senior Russian commander accused Georgian forces of ‘regrouping’ in spite of agreeing to pull back under a French-brokered ceasefire agreement and said the Tbilisi government still had ‘aggressive’ intentions toward Russia.
   The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house said the body, the Federation Council, would meet in emergency session on Monday to debate requests from Abkhazia and South Ossetia for recognition as independent states.
   That announcement came moments after a senior Abkhaz lawmaker announced that the province would renew its appeal for recognition by Russia.
   ‘The Federation Council is ready to recognise the independent status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia if that is what the people of these republics want,’ Interfax news agency quoted council speaker Sergei Mironov as saying.
   He said this would also require ‘a corresponding decision by the Russian president.’
   Medvedev, who was at his Black Sea coastal residence in Sochi has already affirmed that Russia would ‘unambiguously’ back any decision made by the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
   The leadership of Georgia, backed by the United States, has said it would accept no change to the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of the territory of the state of Georgia
   Although it has provided support to both regions, Russia has so far not recognised their independence claims. Formal recognition by Moscow would redraw the map of Georgia and change the balance of power in the Caucasus.
   In a telephone conversation Tuesday with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, Medvedev vowed that all but 500 Russian troops needed for ‘additional security measures’ would be pulled out of Georgia by Friday.
   But in New York, Russia blocked a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding that its forces pull back to positions they held prior to the outbreak of fighting in Georgia on August 7.
   Russia’s UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, said it would be ‘a waste of time’ to vote on the draft, which he said was one-sided because it reflected only two of the six points contained in the ceasefire agreement brokered by Sarkozy.
   Over five days Russia’s army expelled Georgian forces from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and also seized control of several towns and strategic roads deep inside Georgia.
   An AFP reporter with Russian forces in South Ossetia saw armour and other military vehicles moving north and south on the main road linking Georgia and Russia, but no concerted pullout.

Warsaw and Washington signed a deal Wednesday to deploy part of a US missile shield in Poland, insisting the aim is to ward off Iranian attacks, despite deep Russian anger at the move.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, inked the accord at an official ceremony in Warsaw.
   ‘This will help us to deal with the new threats of the 21st century, of long-range missile threats from countries like Iran or from North Korea,’ Rice told reporters ahead of the ceremony.
   ‘It is defensive and is not aimed at anyone. It is nonetheless a system that establishes firmly again, and reaffirms, our cooperation and relationship with Poland. It will deepen our defence cooperation and it will deepen our ability to deal with threats,’ she said.
   Washington plans between 2011 to 2013 to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland plus a radar facility in the neighbouring Czech Republic — both NATO members since 1999 — to complete a system already in place in the United States, Greenland and Britain.
   Russia has refused to accept the US argument that the missile shield, which was endorsed by all 26 NATO member states earlier this year, is meant to fend off potential missile attacks by what Washington calls ‘rogue states’.

Two car bomb attacks in eastern Algeria killed at least 11 people, state radio reported Wednesday with the country still in shock from a suicide bomber who killed 43 people a day earlier.
   At least 31 people were wounded in the latest attacks in the town of Bouira, one on a passenger bus and another near a military headquarters, Algerian radio said.
   There was no immediate claim of responsibility but an al-Qaeda group has staged several attacks in Algeria over the past year and has been involved in clashes with government forces in the oil and gas-rich state.
   Bouira is part of a so-called ‘zone of death’ it forms with Algiers, Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes where attacks have been rife.
   One bomb targeted a bus parked near the Sophie hotel, in the city centre. The second bomb went off near the military headquarters in Bouira, which is 120 kilometres southeast of Algiers.
   The early morning blast blew out windows in the hotel and other nearby buildings. A security cordon was immediately thrown around the centre of Bouira, witnesses said.
   The attacks came only a day after a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into the entrance of a police school killing 43 people and injuring 45 in Issers, also east of Algiers.
   Most of the victims were university graduates waiting outside to take an entry exam in the hopes of joining the paramilitary police force.
   On Sunday, armed Islamists ambushed a security force convoy at Skikda, 500 kilometres east of Algiers, killing eight police, three soldiers and a civilian, media reports said.

Sly hints and outright guesses fostered speculation in the US vice presidential sweepstakes on Tuesday as Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain neared their choices of a No. 2.
   Time was running out for the announcement from Obama, whose running mate will be formally nominated at the party’s convention in Denver next Wednesday. His choice was expected by the weekend.
   McCain has an extra week to make his pick, and the Arizona senator scheduled a big rally for the crucial battleground state of Ohio on Friday, August 29 — the day after Obama accepts his party’s presidential nomination.
   Aides to the Republican candidate declined comment but did not dispute a report he would unveil his choice on that day, which would immediately shift the political focus from Obama’s coronation to McCain’s.
   With the selections drawing near, intense speculation about the candidates filled websites and cable news talk shows — to the delight of both campaign staffs.
   ‘The candidates want to stoke the speculation with nods, hints and winks to get as much visibility as they can for the ultimate announcement,’ said Doug Schoen, a Democratic consultant and former pollster for president Bill Clinton.
   History has shown the choice of a running mate is unlikely to have a major impact on the November 4 presidential election between Obama and McCain, but it could offer hints of the candidates’ priorities.

Zambia’s ruling party will have to overcome its internal divisions if it is to win the race to succeeded president Levy Mwanawasa, analysts said Wednesday — assuming the opposition can agree a joint candidate.
   As world leaders paid tribute to Levy Mwanawasa, who died aged 59 in a Paris hospital on Tuesday, speculation had already begun in Zambia as to who might succeed him.
   Constitutionally, the vice president Rupiah Banda will take charge of the country, but presidential elections should be held within 90 days to elect his successor.
   ‘There is no known front-runner at the moment,’ said Neo Simutanyi, a political science lecturer at the University of Zambia.
   But there is no shortage of pretenders. Prior to his death, the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy had announced that 19 senior members of the party had shown interest in succeeding Mwanawasa.
   But if the two main opposition parties — the Patriotic Front and the United Party for National Development — can agree a joint candidate, then they would be in with a real chance, said Simutanyi.
   It was their failure to do so in the 2006 election that split their vote and allowed Mwanawasa to win a second term in office.
   This time around, the two parties are in talks to discuss an electoral pact in which they could unite behind a joint contender.
   The main opposition leader, Michael Sata of the PF, is seen as a potential successor should the ruling party fail to unite behind a single candidate.
   ‘Everything now depends on how the government and ruling party manages the transition period of 90 days,’ said Lee Habasonda, executive director of the Southern African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes.
   Whoever takes over the reins of the ruling MMD, for example, will first have to overcome the internal divisions that wracked the party even before Mwanawasa’s death, said Habasonda.
   A short-term show of support for the acting president Banda would be crucial, he added.
   ‘If the MMD does not rally behind the vice president, the chances of the opposition winning will be very high,’ said Habasonda. ‘Banda may attract a sympathy vote,’ he added.
   Veteran politician and diplomat Banda, 71, is widely seen inside his party as an outsider who was plucked from political obscurity by Mwanawasa after the MMD suspended elections for the post of vice president at its 2006 congress.
   Although Banda is currently acting president of Zambia, the ruling party itself has no vice president.
   But whoever does emerge as the ruling party candidate will have to contend with the government’s growing unpopularity.

Tropical Storm Fay was heading eastward toward Florida’s Atlantic coast early Wednesday, with forecasters saying it will more than likely make a return trip to the waterlogged state after it finally moves offshore.
   ‘This storm is going to be with us for a while. That’s obvious now,’ Florida governor Charlie Crist said late Tuesday. ‘It looks like it could be a boomerang storm.’
   Forecasters said Fay may stick around through Thursday or later. Fay on Tuesday slammed into Florida’s southwest coast, buffeting the Sunshine State with severe winds and drenching rains, while also spawning tornadoes and severe flooding.
   Defying forecasts, Fay gained strength as it crossed Florida. Computer models showed that it could become even more potent as it travels over the Atlantic Ocean and eventually boomerangs back to Florida — possibly as a more powerful Category One hurricane.
   At 0900 GMT Wednesday, the centre of Fay was located about 15 south of Cape Canaveral, Florida and moving northward at about five miles per hour.
   Fay on Tuesday knocked out power to some 93,000 people across Florida, which was under a state of emergency, although surfers braved the elements to ride the storm-driven swells.
   State authorities ordered the evacuation of tourists and closed schools in the Florida Keys and counties to the north.

Israeli security forces raided and shut down three local radio stations in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron on Wednesday, witnesses and the radios’ owners said.
   ‘They raided our offices, they confiscated our equipment, and they detained everyone,’ said Ayman al-Qawasmi, the owner of Radio Hurriya. ‘This has happened before,’ he said. At least two people were arrested during the raids, including Mahmud Kanabi, an on-air broadcaster, witnesses said.
   Israel kept all crossings into the Gaza Strip closed on Wednesday after a rocket was fired from the territory in violation of a two-month old truce with Palestinian militants, the army said.