The government tried to woo the Samajwadi Party on Wednesday and secure a parliamentary majority amid signs its communist allies would withdraw their support to protest a nuclear deal with the United States.
   National security advisor MK Narayanan is due to meet leaders of SP later on Wednesday to persuade to back the civilian nuclear deal, seen as a landmark accord moving India’s trade and diplomatic relations closer to the West.
   Left parties have given the Congress-led ruling coalition a parliamentary majority over the past four years. But they say they will withdraw support if the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, moves ahead with a deal that they say makes India a Washington pawn.
   If they withdraw, the government needs the support of the SP, a socialist party in Uttar Pradesh with strong support from Muslims, to avoid losing a vote of confidence in parliament and facing an early election later this year.
   Fearful that the fall of the government could open the way to power for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the SP has hinted it is willing to negotiate with the centre-left Congress.
   ‘We always aim to keep the communal forces (the Hindu-nationalist opposition) at bay,’ SP head Mulayam Singh said on Tuesday night. ‘For that there are no political untouchables for us.’
   The SP has 39 seats, compared with 59 seats for the communist parties, in the national parliament. The Congress-led ruling coalition needs the support of 44 lawmakers to reach a majority and it hopes to also win support from a few smaller parties.
   The government wants to avoid an early election, worried that 13-year-high inflation and signs of an economic slowdown will destroy its chances of re-election.
   It would prefer polls on schedule in May 2009, which would give it time to slow the rise in consumer prices that have stoked voter anger against the government.
   The government faces a series of other problems, including an indefinite strike from Wednesday by millions truckers to protest rising fuel prices, and violent protests by Muslims and Hindus in Indian Kashmir over a religious land dispute.
   On Tuesday, Indian shares fell 3.7 per cent as a cocktail of high oil prices, inflation and political uncertainty took its toll, with investors worried that months of coalition-building and electioneering could lead to weak economic leadership.
   In mid-trading on Wednesday, stocks were up 1.5 per cent.
   The four left parties that prop up the government will hold a meeting on Friday to discuss the prime minister’s trip to a G8 summit next week in Japan.
   For the communists, his trip could symbolise a decision to move ahead with one of his most important diplomatic policies and for which he shook hands with the president, George W Bush, at the White House in 2005.
   The pact, which gives India access to US nuclear fuel and technology, is potentially worth billions of dollars to US and European nuclear supplier companies and would give India more energy alternatives to drive its booming, trillion-dollar economy.

Opinion polls show most people believe Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim did not commit sodomy against an aide after he was jailed on a similar charge seen as politically motivated before it was overturned.
   A small survey by the independent Merdeka Centre research firm found just 6 per cent of respondents believed the allegations, and nearly 60 per cent viewed it as politically motivated.
   ‘It’s going to be an uphill battle for the government because you are facing a more cynical public,’ said the firm’s pollster, Ibrahim Suffian.The survey polled 225 ethnic Malays aged 20 and above.
   A separate survey by the independent news web site, Malaysiakini, showed that 94.4 per cent of its respondents believed the allegation was part of a political conspiracy against Anwar.
   The political uncertainty dragged the stock market lower again, with the benchmark Kuala Lumpur Composite Index down 1.7 per cent at the midday break. The index has lost about 3 per cent so far this week.
   Ratings agency Fitch, which has a positive outlook for Malaysia’s foreign currency rating and a stable outlook for the local currency, said it was monitoring the impact of the political situation on economic policies.
   ‘The concern that we have would be that the political situation begins to affect the policy outlook. There is not really much evidence of that just yet,’ James McCormack, head of Asia sovereign ratings at Fitch, told Reuters.
   ‘It appears to us there is a political transition of sorts under way in Malaysia. The question is how fast does that move and how significant is it. And I think some of those answers are still unclear,’ he said.
   More than 7,000 people turned up at an impromptu rally late on Tuesday night in the biggest show of support for Anwar since the aide complained to police at the weekend about an alleged assault at a luxury Kuala Lumpur apartment last Thursday.

A Taiwanese newspaper on Wednesday said China was pointing new ballistic missiles at the island despite improving ties that will see direct charter flights begin this week.
   The People’s Liberation Army have built a new ballistic missile base on China’s southeastern coast opposite Taiwan and replaced missiles already deployed with improved versions, the China Times said. Taiwan’s defence ministry declined to comment on the report.
   Defence authorities had previously said that China had targeted the island with more than 1,000 short-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
   China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, despite their split in 1949 at the end of a civil war, and has threatened to use force if the island ever moves to declare formal independence.
   The paper said the PLA had once ‘pulled out’ their Russia-made S-300 air-defence missiles from several bases along its southeast coast. However, it said, the PLA lately has rearmed the bases with the improved version of missiles, which place Taiwanese fighter jets within striking range.
   Ties between Taiwan and China have begun warming since China-friendly president Ma Ying-jeou took office in May, pledging to improve relations with the island’s giant and booming neighbour.

The cyclone that devastated Myanmar’s heartland has also roiled a political landscape dominated by the military for more than four decades.
   Buddhist monks are regrouping after the battering they took nine months ago, civil society groups are emerging and foreign aid workers – often agents of political change in the wake of humanitarian crises – are present in unprecedented numbers.
   The junta’s grip on power remains absolute. But anger against the regime has probably never run so high.
   ‘Perhaps incremental change will emerge from engagement on humanitarian problems,’ said Joel Charny, vice president of US-based Refugees International who visited Myanmar just before the cyclone struck.
   People were already incensed by the brutal suppression last September of anti-government demonstrators, including the cou-ntry’s revered, saffron-robed Bud-dhist monks. Then came Cyclone Nargis, exposing the junta as inept and heartless, initially blocking international aid efforts and even now still hampering them.
   ‘The people are blaming the government. They are responsible for many deaths. They don’t care about right or wrong and they let people die just to hold onto power,’ said Aung Myoe, a 32-year-old driver in a comment typical of the mood in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. ‘In the ‘Saffron Revolution’ they lost their Buddhist legitimacy; with the cyclone they lost whatever concept of efficacy they had with the public,’ said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown.
   Steinberg said the junta constantly trumpet achievements in modernising the isolated and impoverished Southeast Asian nation formerly named Burma.
   Analysts say these passions and emerging trends may in the longer term loosen the junta’s grip on power. But for now it’s business as usual: dissidents are arrested, a brutal campaign against ethnic minorities rages on and the military strides toward elections guaranteed to perpetuate its control.

Nepal’s former crown prince Paras has arrived in Singapore, a source said Wednesday, as speculation swirled that he was planning to abandon his homeland for good.
   Paras, 36, boarded a Silk Air flight to the city-state on Tuesday, a senior airport security official in Nepal said, after initial reports said he had taken a flight to Bangkok.
   ‘What I heard... he already landed in Singapore,’ said the Singapore source.
   It was not clear where Paras was staying. A check by AFP of several luxury hotels in the city-state showed nobody registered under his name.
   When asked by journalists as he entered Kathmandu airport if he planned to return, Paras smiled and made no comment.
   One Nepalese newspaper reported on Monday that he was leaving for Singapore and would call for his family to join him after two weeks.
   On Tuesday another publication, The Himalayan Times, said the ex-prince was headed to Singapore to find a school and home for his three children and wife, but that he would not be living in the city-state himself.

Senior officials from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority held talks Wednesday in Japan in a bid to lay the groundwork for peace by improving the Palestinian economy.
   Japan, which is seeking a greater role in the Middle East, hopes the talks will lead to a deal on its signature project in the region – starting an agro-industrial park in the West Bank.
   The proposed project near Jericho ‘demonstrates an understanding of the relationship between prosperity and ensuring a lasting peace of all of our region,’ the Jordanian foreign minister, Salah Bashir, told reporters at the talks.
   But he said the best way to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to deliver on a two-state solution endorsed by a summit last November in Annapolis, near Washington.
   ‘The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the core issue of the Middle East. If we solve that we have better ability to address the other political challenges but also the prosperity and economic challenges,’ Bashir said.

Lawyers for the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister demanded his release from the UN-backed Cambodian war crimes court Wednesday, arguing that a royal pardon granted him amnesty for any crimes.
   Ieng Sary, 82, is one of five top regime cadres detained in connection with the Khmer Rouge’s murderous rule over Cambodia from 1975-79.
   He is held by the joint Cambodia-UN tribunal that was established in 2006, after nearly a decade of haggling over how to deliver justice in one of the 20th century’s bloodiest atrocities.
   With the first trial expected later this year, Ieng Sary’s lawyers argued that he should be shielded from prosecution by a royal pardon issued in exchange for his surrender to the government in 1996.
   ‘This pardon and amnesty protect Ieng Sary from any further prosecution,’ defence lawyer Ang Udom told the panel of five judges.
   ‘The royal decree fully covered all the crimes... So, the pre-trial chamber must release Ieng Sary immediately without any condition,’ he said.

Members of the executive board of the UN Development Programme would like the agency to resume its work in communist North Korea, from which it pulled out last year amid US charges of financial mismanagement.
   According to an internal UNDP summary of comments made by members of the agency’s board during a two-week meeting in Geneva last month obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, board members expressed ‘broad support for the resumption of UNDP activities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).’
   But they called for implementation of recommendations aimed at improving the UNDP’s transparency and accountability to avoid a repeat of mistakes uncovered in North Korea.
   The accuracy of the UNDP’s summary was confirmed by several national diplomats familiar with the Geneva meeting.
   The UNDP, the United Nations’ New York-based global development agency, suspended its operations and withdrew staff from North Korea in March 2007 after Pyongyang made it clear that it would not implement required changes to its relationship with the UNDP in order to boost transparency.

Zimbabwe's opposition leader on Wednesday rejected calls to form a national unity government, saying it would not solve the country's crisis after Robert Mugabe's widely condemned one-man election.
   Speaking the day after an African Union summit called for a unity government, Morgan Tsvangirai said it would merely accommodate Mugabe after much of the world had labelled his regime illegitimate.
   'A government of national unity does not address the problems facing Zimbabwe or acknowledge the will of the Zimbabwean people,' Tsvangirai told reporters.
   'The resolution does not recognise the illegitimacy of the June 27 election and the fact that most African leaders refused to recognise Mugabe as head of state.'
   The Movement for Democratic Change leader added that the resolution does not acknowledge 'that the MDC, as the winner of the last credible election, on March 29, should be recognised as legitimate government of Zimbabwe.'
   Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in the first round of the presidential election in March, but official vote totals showed him just short of an outright majority. The opposition leader subsequently pulled out of last Friday's run-off, saying his supporters were the victims of violence at the hands of pro-Mugabe militia, and 90 had been killed.
   His comments Wednesday came after Mugabe's regime hailed the AU resolution, describing it as an echo of the 84-year-old leader's call for dialogue.
   'Government is ready for dialogue with whoever, a dialogue for national unity in Zimbabwe,' Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said.
   International pressure on Mugabe has mounted, with the European Union repeating Wednesday that Tsvangirai must be head of any new government, despite South African President Thabo Mbeki warning against imposing a solution from the outside. Mbeki, chief mediator for Zimbabwe, said it was not for outsiders to dictate the composition of a government that will have to deal with the world's highest inflation rate and widespread food shortages. 'The result that comes out of that process of dialogue must be a result that is agreed by the Zimbabweans,' said Mbeki.
   The Zimbabwe crisis dominated the AU summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, following Mugabe's re-election by a landslide in the one-man poll decried as a farce by the opposition and Western governments.
   While neighbouring Botswana called for Zimbabwe to be suspended from both the AU and the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, the summit ultimately ended with a relatively bland call for Mugabe and Tsvangirai 'to initiate dialogue with a view to promoting peace (and) stability.'

The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said a ‘new process’ was underway in the five-year nuclear crisis with the West after the delivery of a proposal by world powers to Tehran, media reported on Wednesday.
   ‘A process is underway and it started with the package delivered by Iran,’ Mottaki said in an interview with US media in New York, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. ‘This package presented tackled important questions and then on the other side the world powers offered their own package,’ he said.
   Six world powers last month presented Iran with a proposal aimed at ending the crisis which offers technological incentives in exchange for Tehran suspending uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be used to make an atomic bomb.
   Iran’s own package is a more all-embracing effort to solve global problems and notably suggests the setting up of a consortium in Iran for enriching uranium.
   According to IRNA, Mottaki was asked about the question of suspending uranium enrichment. But he did not give any direct comment on the subject.
   Mottaki said talks with the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who presented the package in Tehran last month, were ‘respectful and a bit different from the past’.
   ‘We are studying it with a constructive regard,’ he said.
   There has been speculation in the Western media in recent days that Tehran has been adopting a softer line in the standoff and may be prepared to offer concessions to break the deadlock.

Barack Obama and John McCain are taking international detours from the White House trail, with risk-and-reward missions designed to polish commander-in-chief resumes four months from election day.
   Both men hope their statesmanlike poses in Europe and the Middle East will impress voters back home and score points in a tussle over sharply divergent foreign policy visions.
   But snares lie in wait – a policy gaffe overseas by Obama for instance would detonate new claims that as only first-term senator, he lacks the grounding and gravitas to serve as a wartime president.
   Both men face a balancing act in their presidential auditions: they must win the trust of voters concerned with national security, but not seem disconnected from domestic issues, and economic pain faced by many Americans.
   Democratic presumptive nominee Obama has announced plans to travel this month to dominant European powers Germany, Britain and France, and will make his debut in the Middle East in Israel and Jordan.
   He will travel to Iraq and Afghanistan under a tight security blanket, under pressure to modify his plan to begin an immediate pullout from Iraq in the light of security gains forged by last year’s escalation policy.
   Republican McCain, who journeyed to Europe and the Middle East earlier this year, is using a current trip to Colombia and Mexico to hammer Obama on trade and foreign policy, after lashing out at him in Canada a few weeks ago.
   In Europe especially, Obama is certain of a warm welcome, with polls showing huge support for his vow to overhaul US foreign policy and mend transatlantic ties strained during the Bush administration.
   ‘He will have his hand held as much as possible by the Europeans,’ said Justin Logan, a foreign policy scholar at the Cato Institute, noting that Obama shares continental concerns on issues like global warming.
   ‘There is every reason to believe a lot of Europeans would welcome an Obama presidency ... there also is a thirst for a contemplative US president.
   ‘I think Obama does a good job of cutting that figure, that will be well received in Europe and could reflect back to America making him look statesmanlike.’

Chewing tobacco and snuff are less dangerous than cigarettes but the smokeless products still raise the risk of oral cancer by 80 per cent, the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency said on Tuesday.
   The review of 11 studies worldwide showed people who chewed tobacco and used snuff also had a 60 per cent higher risk of oesophagus and pancreatic cancer.
   The researchers sought to quantify the risk of smokeless tobacco after a number of studies differed on just how
   dangerous the products were, said Paolo Boffetta, an epidemiologist at the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
   ‘What we did was try to quantify the burden of smokeless cancer,’ he said in a telephone interview.
   ‘This has never been attempted in such a systematic way before.’
   The researchers, who published their findings in Lancet Oncology, did this by looking at population-wide studies and trials of both humans and animals.
   They found frequency of use varies greatly both across and within countries, depending on sex, age, ethnic origin and economic background, and were highest in the United States, Sweden and India.
   They also found that while snuff and chew were less dangerous than smoking because they were not linked to lung cancer, getting cigarette users to switch was not good public policy.
   ‘If all smokers did this there would be a net benefit,’ Boffetta said.
   ‘The point is we don’t know whether this would happen and there is no data to suggest these smokers would stop or switch.’

The California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, on Tuesday sent National Guard units to help firefighters struggling to contain wildfires raging for 11 days in the northern part of the state.
   ‘Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today ordered California National Guard soldiers to provide direct ground support to help CalFire with the current wildfire threat in Northern California,’ a statement from Schwarzenegger’s office said.
   The move added 200 soldiers to the 18,900 emergency personnel already fighting dozens of fires sparked on June 21 by lightning strikes in the dry, hot wilderness.
   In northern California alone, the blazes have devoured 1,712 square kilometres, according to the state fire service Calfire, and have begun to close in on Big Sur, a popular hiking and camping location on the Pacific coast some 200 kilometres of San Francisco.
   Some 1,200 buildings are under threat in the Big Sur area, a prime tourist attraction.
   No one has been reported killed by the fires, which have destroyed 29 homes, one business and 21 other buildings and raised concern over air quality.
   California is frequently hit by scorching wildfires due to its dry climate, Santa Ana winds and recent housing booms which have seen housing spread rapidly into rural and densely forested areas.
   Last October, devastating wildfires were among the worst in California history, leaving eight people dead, destroying 2,000 homes, displacing 640,000 people and causing one billion dollars in damage.

Videos showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a US adviser created an uproar Tuesday in Mexico, which has struggled to eliminate torture in law enforcement.
   Two of the videos – broadcast by national television networks and displayed on newspaper internet sites – showed what Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero described as training for an elite unit that must face ‘real-life, high-stress situations,’ such as kidnapping and torture by organised crime groups.
   But many Mexicans saw a sinister side, especially at a moment when police and soldiers across the country are struggling with scandals over alleged abuses.
   ‘They are teaching police ... to torture!’ read the headline in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.
   Human rights investigators in Guanajuato state, where Leon is located, are looking into the tapes, and the National Human Rights Commission also expressed concerned.
   ‘It’s very worrisome that there may be training courses that teach people to torture,’ said Raul Plascencia, one of the commission’s top inspectors.
   One of the videos, first obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man’s nose – a technique once notorious among Mexican police. Then they dunk his head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats. The man gasps for air and moans repeatedly.
   In another video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer has an exhausted agent roll into his own vomit.
   Other officers then drag him through the mess.
   ‘These are no more than training exercises for certain situations, but I want to stress that we are not showing people how to use these methods,’ Tornero said.
   He said the English-speaking man was part of a private US security company helping to train the agents, but he refused to give details.
   A third video transmitted by the Televisa network showed officers jumping on the ribs of a suspect curled into a fetal position in the bed of a pickup truck. Tornero said that the case, which occurred several months earlier, was under investigation and that the officers involved had disappeared.
   Mexican police often find themselves in the midst of brutal battles between drug gangs. Officials say that 450 police, soldiers and prosecutors have lost their lives in the fight against organised crime since December 2006.
   At the same time, several recent high-profile scandals over alleged thuggery and ineptness have reignited criticisms of police conduct. In Mexico City last month, 12 people died in a botched police raid on a disco.

A senior Turkish general called for calm on Wednesday after two prominent retired generals were detained in a widening police investigation into a suspected coup plot against the government.
   ‘Turkey is passing through difficult days. We all have to be acting with more common sense, more carefully and more responsibly,’ land forces commander General Ilker Basbug, who is the second most powerful official in the Turkish military, said. the police detained 21 people on Tuesday as part of a nationwide investigation into Ergenekon, a shadowy, ultra-nationalist and hardline secularist group suspected of planning bombings and assassinations calculated to trigger a military takeover.
   The detentions of retired first army chief General Hursit Tolon and retired gendarmerie forces General Sener Eruygur inside military residences have sent shockwaves through Turkey, and Turkish newspapers said such moves were unheard of.

Hollywood film star Angelina Jolie has checked in to a French maternity clinic and is expected to soon give birth to twins, bringing her brood with Brad Pitt to six, the hospital said Tuesday.
   ‘As part of the normal monitoring of her pregnancy, as it has been arranged for a long time, Angelina Jolie was admitted to the Lenval Foundation’s Santa Maria maternity clinic,’ said a statement from the Nice-based clinic.
   The 33-year-old American actress is expecting twins and will stay in the clinic until she gives birth – the date of which has not been revealed – a medical source said.
   At the Cannes Film Festival in May, Jolie confirmed she intended to give birth to her twins in France.

South Africa is to hold a national tribute on Thursday to honour the lives and show remorse for more than 60 people killed in a recent wave of violence against foreigners. A memorial service was to be held in the capital Pretoria, with an address by the president, Thabo Mbeki, expected to 'declare that such acts of violence are never repeated,' said a statement from his office.
   The event is a replacement for a National Day of Healing initially scheduled for June 24. While the violence which broke out May mainly targetted Zimbabwean and Mozambican refugees, at least 21 of the 62 people killed were South Africans.