The Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators said on Monday there was no turning back from US-led talks between the Israelis and Palestinians even though they have failed so far to produce a peace agreement.
   In a statement issued after a meeting of Quartet members — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — the group said the negotiations launched last November in Annapolis, Maryland should be accelerated.
   ‘The bilateral negotiations process launched at Annapolis is irreversible and ... these negotiations should be intensified in order to put an end to the conflict and to establish as soon as possible the state of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security with Israel,’ it said.
   The statement criticised both Israel and the Palestinians and urged both sides to do more for the talks.
   The group ‘condemned indiscriminate attacks on Israel’ and urged Palestinians to continue work on reforming their security services and to ‘dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism.’
   It also urged Israel ‘to freeze all settlement activities, which have a negative impact on the negotiating environment and on Palestinian economic recovery, and to address the growing threat of settler extremism.’
   The Quartet also expressed concern about the Israeli blockade of Gaza, saying the provision of humanitarian supplies to Gaza ‘must be assured continuously.’
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, spoke about a US-drafted resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations the UN Security Council is expected to vote on Tuesday.
   Rice said that resolution would ‘put the international community on record in believing in the irreversibility of the Annapolis process’ — a process she has been overseeing.
   Rice also dismissed suggestions that the failure to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of the year, as the administration of the president, George W Bush, had aimed for, meant the process had been a failure.
   ‘They have achieved a good deal of progress in their negotiations,’ Rice told reporters after the Quartet meeting. ‘If that process takes a little bit longer, so be it.’
   Libya, the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, criticised the US draft resolution for avoiding any mention of specific complaints the Palestinians have raised.
   ‘Ignoring completely what Israel is doing there I think will not help ... support for this draft resolution,’ Libya’s UN ambassador Giadallah Ettalhi told reporters.
   Asked if he planned to vote against the text, Ettalhi said he was still awaiting instructions from Tripoli.
   Among the issues he said he would like to see included in the resolution are the blockade of Gaza and settlements.
   Meanwhile, most Palestinians and one in two Israelis want to see Barack Obama’s incoming US administration play a more active role in the Middle East peace talks, according to a poll released on Tuesday, reports AFP.
   The joint Israeli-Palestinian poll indicated that 49 per cent of Israelis and 57 per cent of Palestinians ‘want a more active role for the United States in the conflict following the election of Obama for president.’
   However, 31 per cent of Israelis and 35 per cent of Palestinians do not want Washington to intervene, in the poll conducted by Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research.
   Israel and the Palestinians renewed peace talks after a seven-year hiatus at a conference held under US auspices in November 2007.
   While the talks have made little tangible progress since the Annapolis, Maryland conference, 49 per cent of respondents on both sides expect the intervention of Obama’s administration to be successful.
   Obama, who takes office on January 20, has vowed to continue backing the Middle East talks, whose future remains shrouded in doubt as Israel heads to February elections and the Palestinians face internal political turmoil.
   The poll was conducted among 1,270 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and among 600 Israelis. Its margin of error is three per cent.

Pakistan will not allow foreign investigators to interrogate Islamist militants detained over last month’s attacks in Mumbai, the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said on Monday.
   The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said in Islamabad on Sunday he had asked India and Pakistan for permission for British police to question suspects arrested in both countries in connection with the Mumbai assault.
   Gilani told parliament he had turned down Brown’s request.
   ‘I want to assure you that when I met the British prime minister Sunday, he asked if ... we would allow them to investigate those people. I said ‘we won’t allow it,’ he said.
   ‘It is our country and our laws will be implemented. We’ll follow our laws.’
   The British foreign office did not comment directly on Gilani’s remarks, but issued a statement which said: ‘We will continue to offer what support we can including police expertise, but will not impose it.’
   India, backed by the United States, has called on Pakistan to crack down on Pakistan-based militant groups after the attacks, in which 172 people were killed during a three-day siege in India’s financial heart.
   A British national and two people with dual British-Indian nationality were killed in Mumbai.
   New Delhi blames Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group it says was set up by Pakistan to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, for the Mumbai attacks.
   Islamabad has blamed ‘non-state actors’ and vowed to cooperate with investigations, but has repeatedly said anyone caught in Pakistan would be tried in Pakistan.

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at the US president, George W Bush, has a broken arm and ribs after being struck by Iraqi security agents, his brother said on Tuesday.
   Durgham Zaidi was unable to say whether his brother Muntazer had sustained the injuries while being overpowered during Sunday’s protest against Bush’s visit to Baghdad or while in custody later.
   He said he had been told that his brother was being held by Iraqi forces in the heavily fortified Green Zone compound in central Baghdad where the US embassy and most government offices are housed.
   ‘He has got a broken arm and ribs, and cuts to his eye and arm,’ said Durgham. ‘He is being held by forces under the command of Muwaffaq al-Rubaie,’ Iraq’s national security adviser, he added.
   Zaidi, 29, a journalist for private Iraqi television channel Al-Baghdadia, was swiftly overpowered by Iraqi security forces after he threw the shoes at Bush in a gesture seen as the supreme mark of disrespect in the Muslim world.
   An AFP journalist said that blood was visible on the ground as he was led away into custody although it was unclear if it was his.
   Bush, who was on a swansong visit to the battleground that came to dominate his eight-year presidency, ducked when the shoes were thrown and later made light of the incident.
   But Zaidi’s action won him widespread plaudits in the Arab world where Bush’s policies have drawn broad hostility.
   The Lebanese television channel NTV, known for its opposition to Washington, went as far as offering a job to the journalist.
   In its evening news bulletin on Monday, it said that if he takes the job, he will be paid ‘from the moment the first shoe was thrown’.
   A manager at the channel said that it had made its offer known to Zaidi and was ready to post bail on his behalf.
   An Iraqi lawyer said Zaidi risks a minimum of two years in prison if he is successfully prosecuted for insulting a
   visiting head of state.
   In Gaza, around 20 Palestinian gunmen from the Popular Resistance Committees, a hardline militant group that has been behind a spate of rocket attacks on Israel in recent weeks, staged a demonstration in support of Zaidi.
   Wearing fatigues and brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles, they stamped on photographs of the US president and held banners in support of the journalist.
   Egyptian independent daily Al-Badeel carried a front-page caricature of the US flag with the sole of a shoe replacing the stars in the top corner.
   Even government-owned newspapers in Cairo praised Zaidi’s actions. ‘Pelting the American president with shoes was the best way for expressing what Iraqis and Arabs feel toward Bush,’ wrote Al-Gomhuria editor Mohammad Ali Ibrahim.
   In Iraq, press comment was divided.
   The pro-government Al-Sabah newspaper expressed concern about the potential impact on press freedom of what it called Zaidi’s ‘abnormal individual behaviour.’

Thailand’s new prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva began working on his cabinet line-up Tuesday as hundreds of police stood guard against protests by angry supporters of the old government.
   Abhisit’s Democrat Party won over enough lawmakers to clinch a parliament vote on Monday, two weeks after a court dissolved the ruling party loyal to ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra after six months of political turmoil.
   The party said Oxford-educated Abhisit’s new cabinet would strive to boost the economy, which has taken a battering from anti-government street protests peaking with the siege of Bangkok’s two airports late last month.
   ‘Abhisit will oversee the economic team because this government gives priority to economic matters,’ Democrat Party secretary general Suthep Tuagsuban told reporters.
   He said cabinet posts were still being hammered out but would be divided between the Democrats and their smaller coalition partners, whose defection from the now-defunct People Power Party gave Abhisit his slim majority.
   The 44-year-old is awaiting the official decree from Thailand’s widely revered king installing him as Thailand’s 27th premier, and said only that he was ‘preparing for work.’
   Democrat Party executives expect the royal decree on Wednesday, and plan to name a cabinet by the end of the week.
   ‘Everything will progress swiftly as there is no time for a honeymoon for this government,’ said executive Alongkorn Polabut, adding that a policy statement would be discussed at a cabinet meeting next Tuesday.
   As Democrat leaders met behind closed doors, about 300 police stood guard outside their Bangkok headquarters where dozens of supporters of Thaksin dressed in red shirts had gathered to denounce Abhisit’s election.
   ‘Police have deployed forces at the Democrat headquarters since Monday, and Tuesday morning we will send more police there,’ said Major General Amnuay Nimmano, deputy metropolitan police commander.
   Clashes broke out between police and the ‘red shirts’ on Monday, after about 100 protesters gathered outside parliament and hurled traffic barriers and stones to try to block the main gate to the building.
   There were about 40 protesters outside the Democrat Party headquarters on Tuesday, and they left after representatives of a pro-Thaksin group laid a wreath, denouncing the party as a puppet of the army. In the afternoon, about 300 factory workers turned up, demanding Abhisit help them get their year-end bonuses.
   Analysts say the Democrats, who lost the elections in December last year to the PPP, will have a tough time reconciling Thailand’s opposing factions who support or detest Thaksin.

Afghanistan won commitments of additional aid and more troops from the international community in 2008, but a deadly Taliban insurgency, rampant crime and an unchecked drugs trade show no sign of abating.
   With more than 270 foreign soldiers — most of them American — killed already this year, 2008 has been the deadliest since the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in 2001 for the 70,000 international troops deployed here.
   General David Petraeus, who now commands US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, admitted that ‘in certain areas of Afghanistan clearly there has been a spiral downward that all involved... want to arrest’.
   This month, the International Council on Security and Development went as far as to say that Taliban insurgents had established a ‘permanent presence’ in roughly three-quarters of the country — a claim denied by Kabul.
   ‘The increase in their geographic spread illustrates that the Taliban’s political, military and economic strategies are now more successful than the West’s in Afghanistan,’ the London-based think tank said.
   The report suggested that Taliban fighters were posing an increasing threat to the capital — an assertion dismissed by the Afghan foreign ministry, which said the think tank had been hoodwinked by the Taliban’s spin doctors.
   But the insurgents staged a few spectacular attacks in Kabul this year — a suicide attack at the luxurious Serena hotel in January left eight dead, while a car bombing at the Indian embassy in July killed more than 60 people.
   And in April, militants targeted US-backed Afghan president Hamid Karzai at a military parade with explosives and gunfire but he escaped the assassination attempt unharmed.
   Nearly 1,000 police and 260 Afghan soldiers have been killed since March in insurgent violence but civilians have paid the heaviest price, with 1,445 killed between January and August, more than half of them in Taliban attacks.
   ‘The insurgents use human shields in most of their operations, hiding behind women and children to heighten the risk of civilian casualties,’ says Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, a spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.
   The US military says the number of combat incidents in the volatile east of the country near the border with Pakistan — dotted with Taliban weapons depots — has increased by 40 per cent in 2008 compared with last year.
   But the Islamist fighters, thousands of whom were killed in 2008 in US and NATO-led operations, are not the only forces wreaking havoc on the war-ravaged country, which is one of the world’s poorest.
   Rich Afghans and foreigners have been kidnapped in broad daylight in Kabul, and forces loyal to al-Qaeda-linked commander Jalaluddin Haqqani have staged brazen attacks, some of them in the heavily fortified capital.
   The drugs trade is also still running rampant. The United Nations says Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world’s opium and heroin. Some of the four billion dollars a year it generates ends up in the hands of the Taliban.

The cost of British military operations in Afghanistan will rise more than 50 per cent this year, a parliamentary committee said on Monday, as it called on the government to better justify the expense.
   According to figures provided by the Treasury, costs will rise to 2.32 billion pounds ($3.5 bln) in 2008/9, from 1.51 billion in 2007/08, an increase of 54 per cent, as Britain concentrates on the deepening Afghan conflict.
   And despite an intention to withdraw almost all its forces from Iraq in the first half of next year, the cost of Britain’s operations in Iraq will fall by just 4.1 per cent, parliament’s Defence Committee said in a statement.
   In total, the government is requesting 3.74 billion pounds to meet the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008/9, which the committee described as a ‘very significant sum of public money’ that needed to be more fully explained.
   ‘The reasons for the increases and the magnitude of costs in general are still not transparent enough,’ said James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the committee.
   ‘The ministry of defence needs to provide a more coherent picture of what these costs really represent on the ground in the future.’

A Hong Kong television company behind the annual ‘Miss Asia’ beauty contest has admitted the final outcome did not match the real tally of public votes, a newspaper here reported Tuesday.
   The ‘Miss Asia Pageant’ held earlier this month used public voting for the first time in its 20-year history, instead of the traditional panel of judges, and people sent in their choice via text message and on the internet.
   But Asia Television has said the tally of public votes was different from the figures given at the contest, the South China Morning Post said.
   ‘This is an unacceptable issue of trust,’ said Linus Cheung, the executive chairman of ATV, according to the English-language daily. ‘The number of votes shown on TV on December 7 was wrong.’
   The competition was won by 23-year-old Hong Kong student Eunis Yao, beating Canadian Belinda Yan, 22, and third-placed Lene Lai, 19, a model from Taiwan.
   Cheung did not reveal what the real result was or whether the places would change, but has announced an independent investigation into the incident, the Post said.
   No one from ATV was immediately available for comment.
   Last year, the BBC was forced to suspend several members of staff after it admitted fixing the winners of phone-ins and interactive competitions on six shows including charity appeals and children’s programmes.

The militants who attacked India’s financial centre last month, killing 179 people, also stole credit cards, money and mobile telephones from their victims, Mumbai’s top police officer said on Monday.
   The stolen goods and currency included thousands of rupees and dollars found
   on the bodies of the nine gunmen killed by the police during the three-day siege in Mumbai. A 10th gunmen survived and was captured by the police.
   ‘We have no idea what they were planning to do with the money and cards, but it just speaks a lot more about their evil nature and the fact that criminals love stealing money and cards,’ the Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor said.
   The attack has soured relations between uneasy nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan.

Japanese Nobel physics laureate Toshihide Maskawa said Monday he planned to bury his medal in the ground as the camera-shy professor returned from the ceremony in Sweden.
   Maskawa, who has charmed Japan with his eccentricities, made his first-ever foreign trip to collect the prize. He said he had never gone to conferences abroad as he was petrified about speaking English.
   Asked by reporters on his return to Japan what he would do with the medal, Maskawa said in an apparent joke: ‘Well, I’ll dig a hole and bury it below.’
   But Maskawa, a 68-year-old professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, later turned serious as he addressed reporters at Osaka’s Kansai International Airport.
   ‘Among scientists, there are good ones and bad ones. Not all scientists are good. What matters is how we can contribute to peace as human beings, depending upon the positions we are given,’ he said.
   Maskawa shared the Nobel prize with two other Japanese-born physicists, Makoto Kobayashi and Yoichiro Nambu.
   In the 1970s, Maskawa and Kobayashi came up with a theory on why antimatter sometimes does not obey the same rules as matter.

All foreign troops except for those of the United States will be out of Iraq by the end of July, the Iraqi parliament’s foreign affairs committee head said on Tuesday.
   ‘The cabinet has approved draft legislation on the withdrawal of the non-US forces in the coalition. It sets a timetable for a withdrawal of between five and seven months from January 1,’ Hummam Hammudi told reporters.
   The bill, which still has to be passed by parliament, will mainly affect the roughly 4,100 British troops deployed at Basra air base in the south.
   London newspapers have reported that Britain intends to begin its withdrawal in March with most troops out by June, although defence officials insist that the precise timetable will depend on conditions on the ground at the time.
   ‘We plan — subject to the conditions on the ground and the advice of military commanders — to reduce our force levels in Iraq as we complete our key tasks in Basra in the early months of next year,’ a British defence ministry spokesman said last week.
   But he added: ‘Final decisions on the timing of the drawdown will depend on the circumstances at the time.’
   From a peak of 46,000 British soldiers in 2003 when Britain joined the invasion, just 4,100 now remain in Iraq.
   Up to 400 troops are likely to remain to help train the Iraqi forces, while equipment such as helicopters and drones will be transferred to Afghanistan.
   Since the US-led invasion of March 2003, 177 British troops have died in Iraq.

Illinois lawmakers approved an inquiry on Monday into whether Governor Rod Blagojevich should be impeached in the wake of charges he tried to sell the US Senate seat vacated by president-elect Barack Obama.
   The Illinois House of Representatives voted 113-0 to form a committee to determine whether that body should bring as yet undefined charges against him, which if approved would result in a trial in the state Senate and his possible removal from office.
   Illinois House speaker Mike Madigan — like Obama and Blagojevich a Democrat — told reporters in Springfield, the state capital, the charges might include ‘abuse of power.’
   ‘We are preparing for a trial in the (state) Senate’ and will move with ‘all due speed,’ Madigan said, although he added the inquiry could take weeks.
   Chicago defence attorney Edward Genson, after meeting with Blagojevich for a third day, told reporters on Monday night that the governor had no plans to resign. ‘He’s not stepping aside. He hasn’t done anything wrong. We’re going to fight this case,’ Genson said.
   Blagojevich earlier went to work again at his Chicago office, signing several bills despite the growing demands that he resign — and not make a Senate appointment.
   The governor, 52, is accused of conspiracy to commit fraud and solicitation of bribes, based on conversations recorded on court-approved wiretaps.

Russia could buy unmanned reconnaissance drones from Israel, a top general said on Tuesday, after the military was caught short by Georgia’s own Israeli drones in a war this summer.
   The head of Russia’s general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, confirmed that talks were under way after a corresponding report in the Kommersant newspaper.
   ‘We’re talking about the purchase of a test batch of Israeli reconnaissance drones,’ Interfax quoted Makarov as saying.
   ‘If our industry is unable to produce in the near future the drones we need, then possibly we will purchase one batch, first of all for testing, from Israel,’ he said.
   Earlier Kommersant daily said the head of the armed forces, General Vladimir Popovkin, was in Israel in late-November for talks on the purchase with Israel’s defence ministry and defence contractor Israel Aerospace Industries.
   The paper quoted a Russian arms industry official as saying: ‘a contract for producing drones is almost certain to be given to Israel Aerospace Industries.’
   It also quoted an Israeli defence ministry official as saying a decision had been taken ‘at the highest level but the further fate of the contract is still being discussed.’

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain president John F Kennedy, is pursuing the Senate seat of senator Hillary Clinton, who has been nominated secretary of state, civil rights activist Al Sharpton said on Monday.
   Sharpton said he received a phone call from Kennedy on Monday in which she expressed her interest in the Senate seat.
   Sharpton said he told her he had not had any meaningful discussions with New York state governor David Paterson, who has the authority to appoint any replacement for Hillary, ‘about her or any other potential candidate to date.’
   ‘I unequivocally disagree with those that say she is not qualified and could not bring needed leadership to this state and country,’ Sharpton said in a statement.
   Paterson told a news conference in the state capital Albany on Monday that he would not talk about any individual candidates.
   Kennedy, 51, spent part of her childhood in the White House until her father was assassinated in 1963 and since then has kept a relatively low public profile.
   She endorsed Obama during his primary campaign against Hillary for the Democratic Party nomination and later helped the search for his vice-presidential candidate.
   Interest in her possibly seeking the senate seat has been enhanced by her family’s status as an American political dynasty. One of her uncles, Robert F Kennedy, was a New York senator and a presidential candidate when he was assassinated in 1968. Another uncle, senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, is one of the most powerful members of the Senate.
   Paterson previously said he was ‘consulting with a wide variety of individuals’ over the appointment and would not announce a replacement until the position became vacant.

South Africa’s former defence minister Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota was named president of a breakaway of ruling ANC dissidents Tuesday, vowing a non-racial political home for all South Africans.
   The newly-formed Congress of the People has branded itself as a non-racial movement and is viewed as a potential threat to the African National Congress’ 14-year hold on South African politics.
   ‘The history of South Africa will never be the same again,’ Lekota told 4,000 delegates at the official party launch in Bloemfontein.
   ‘Ours shall be a truly non-racial party that will provide a true home to all South Africans irrespective of race, class or gender,’ he added.
   The party’s launch marks a dramatic shake-up in the country’s politics, which have been dominated by the ANC since it defeated apartheid and won election for Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president.
   COPE was formed by former disgruntled African National Congress members and government ministers who quit office after the ruling party asked then president Thabo Mbeki to resign.

The UN accused rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo Tuesday of rights violations including kidnapping and forced displacements of local civilians in territories under their control.
   ‘There are kidnappings, forced movements of the population by the CNDP, the imposition of taxes through road blocks and civilians being forced to repair the roads,’ said Jean-Paul Dietrich, spokesman for the United Nations’ MONUC peacekeeping mission, referring to rebels led by Tutsi ex-general Laurent Nkunda.

The Greek police fired teargas at small groups of protesters who threw stones and firebombs in central Athens Monday in a second week of anti-government demonstrations since a policeman shot dead a teen-ager.
   Youths outside Athens’ main court and central police station clashed with the riot police, while acts of vandalism against shops were reported in two northern cities in protests against the December 6 killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. His death has triggered Greece’s worst riots in decades.
   The unrest, which has caused more than 200 million euros ($270 million) worth of damage, has fed on anger over political scandals, high youth unemployment and low wages, and the impact of a global recession on Greece.
   In bond markets, the spread between Greek debt and German benchmark bonds — a measure of perceived investment risk — reached its widest point in nearly a decade Monday, at more than 2 per cent. Analysts said the political crisis had compounded concerns due to the global economic downturn.
   IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned there was a risk of social unrest spreading unless the global financial sector shared wealth more evenly. Copy-cat demonstrations have taken place in many European countries.