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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages were rescued from Marxist FARC guerrillas Wednesday by Colombian commandos who posed as rebels and flew them out of the jungle by helicopter.
   In a dramatic and bloodless operation , the Colombian army put an end to Betancourt’s six-year-long captivity and also rescued three US defence contractors, held by the rebels since 2003, and 11 Colombian soldiers.
   ‘To all of you Colombians, for all of you French who have been with us, that accompanied us in the world, that helped us to remain alive, that helped the world to know what was going on: thank you,’ Betancourt said after her release.
   She said the hostages did not know that their new captors Wednesday were Colombian soldiers in disguise, some wearing T-shirts bearing the portrait of legendary revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
   The disguised soldiers made the hostages board a white helicopter with their wrists bound, saying they were being transferred to another rebel hideout.
   It was only when they were in the air that ‘the chief of operations said, ‘We are the national army and you are all free.’ And the helicopter almost fell because we started jumping. We screamed, we cried, we hugged. We couldn’t believe it,’ Betancourt said after arriving at a Bogota military airport.
   She embraced her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, as she descended from the plane, looking fresh and happy, dressed in an army camouflage vest and hat. The Colombian defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said the rescue, which came after a military agent infiltrated the rebels, ‘will no doubt go down in history for its audacity.’
   Betancourt , a dual national who was captured as she was campaigning for the Colombian presidency, described it as a ‘perfect operation.’
   Speaking in French and Spanish, she thanked everyone for keeping their plight alive.
   ‘We were able to dream. We were able to keep hope alive because we heard our loved ones’ on the radio, she said, according to a translation on CNN.
   US hostages Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, captured in 2003 when their plane crashed during a US defence department anti-drug mission, arrived back in the United States early Thursday. The men, employees of US defence contractor Northrop Grumman, landed at a military base in San Antonio, Texas, and were immediately taken by helicopter to a US army medical centre, television pictures showed.
   World leaders were swift to welcome the news, and celebrations broke out on the streets of Colombian cities as residents hailed the brazen jungle rescue as a bright spot for a country plagued for decades by kidnappings.
   The Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, who spoke with Betancourt just after her release, praised the ‘magnificent work’ of the rescue team and compared the operation ‘to the greatest epics in the history of man.’
   There had been mounting fears for Betancourt’s health following the release of a video showing her looking thin and frail, but her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said in Bogota he was surprised to see her looking so well.

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, and his central bank chief are among those who, under a US-drafted resolution, would face UN asset freezes and travel bans over last week’s widely criticised election.
   According to an annex to the latest version of the draft, obtained by Reuters on Wednesday, Mugabe is among 12 people who would face UN sanctions because he is the ‘Head of Government responsible for activities that seriously undermine democracy, repress human rights and disrespect the rule of law.’
   The Central Bank governor, Gideon Gono, would also face sanctions because he is ‘responsible for funding repressive state policies,’ the text says.
   Mugabe won re-election in the June 27 run-off ballot after Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, pulled out of the voting because of attacks on his supporters. Tsvangirai had won a first-round vote on March 29.
   Also on the sanctions list are the army’s chief commander, General Constantine Chiwenga, whom the MDC says coordinated Mugabe’s campaign for the election, which African and world leaders condemned as illegitimate.
   Emmerson Mnangagwa, who heads the rural housing and social amenities ministry, is also named in the annex, as is Happyton Bonyongwe, Zimbabwe’s head of intelligence.
   The list includes four other members of the government – George Charamba, Patrick Chinamasa, David Parirenyatwa and Didymus Mutasa – as well as three other security officials, Augustine Chihuri, Perence Shiri and Paradzi Zimondi.
   The draft text, which has been informally circulated to several UN Security Council members and was obtained
   in full by Reuters, also calls for an arms embargo against Zimbabwe.

A coalition of smaller parties in India will hold a meeting on Thursday to decide whether to support a civilian nuclear deal with the United States, a move that could help decide the
   fate of India’s embattled government.
   The United National Progressive Alliance includes the regional Samajwadi Party, which the ruling coalition wants to woo amid signs communist parties that currently back the government in parliament will withdraw their support over the nuclear deal.
   National security adviser MK Narayanan met leaders of the Samajwadi Party late on Wednesday to try to persuade them to back the deal, seen as a landmark accord moving India’s trade and diplomatic relations closer to the West.
   ‘Yes, we will discuss the nuclear deal and its implications today,’ Amar Singh, the Samajwadi Party general secretary, said hours before the meeting was due to start.
   The stakes are huge.
   If the government fails to secure Samajwadi support and the left withdraws from supporting the coalition, the government will almost certainly face early elections this year just as inflation rises to record levels and the economy shows signs of a slowdown.
   The ruling coalition already faces other challenges, including an indefinite strike by truckers across the country to protest against rising fuel prices. The strike threatens to drive inflation even higher and choke off some supplies of basic goods.

John McCain’s campaign raised the stakes ahead of White House rival Barack Obama’s expected trip to Iraq, saying the Democrat’s plans for immediate troops withdrawals ignored security gains.
   McCain ally and Republican lawmaker Eric Cantor told reporters Wednesday that ebbing violence in Iraq since the start of the US troop surge policy last year had rendered Obama’s policies obsolete. ‘What sounded sensible, perhaps to some, a year ago, ... is disingenous to the American people, and again, it ignores the realities on the ground,’ Cantor said on a McCain campaign conference call.
   Cantor said Obama’s policy of starting withdrawals immediately after becoming president, at the rate of one or two combat brigades a month, flew in the face of strategic reality. ‘I don’t think there is any question that Barack Obama should change his plan in Iraq,’ Cantor said. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war, first stated in 2002 before the invasion, helped him win votes of fervently anti-war grass-roots Democrats in his nominating campaign triumph over Hillary Clinton.
    The Illinois senator is expected to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming weeks, though details have not yet been released for security reasons. His campaign swiftly hit back at the McCain camp.
   ‘Throughout this campaign, Barack Obama has been clear and consistent in saying that we need to responsibly end the war in Iraq so that we can restore our military strength, finish the fight in Afghanistan and focus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11,’ said spokesman Tommy Vietor.

The leader of Mongolia’s Democratic Party insisted Thursday the national election had been ‘stolen’ and demanded a recount after the poll watchdog said the rival MPRP had won in a landslide.
   ‘I am deeply saddened that this vote was stolen. It was stolen and there needs to be a recount. The result is false,’ Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj said from his office.
   His comments came after the country’s electoral watchdog said the formerly communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party had won a 47-seat majority in the 76-seat parliament.
   General Election Committee spokesman Purevdorjiin Naranbat also dismissed charges of vote-rigging that had touched off deadly riots.
   However, Elbegdorj said he did not expect a recurrence of the street violence that erupted Tuesday after he first accused the MPRP of stealing the election.
   ‘I think it will be resolved through negotiation. I don’t think there will be more violence,’ he said.
   Riot police and soldiers were called out to quell the unrest which saw around 8,000 people rampage through the city centre, damaging buildings, torching cars and pelting police with rocks.
   The political violence was the worst in Mongolia since seven decades of the MRPR’s Stalinist-style control ended and the country transitioned peacefully to a democratic model in 1992.

Malaysia has reportedly blasted the United States for questioning its handling of sex accusations against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and said he was a ‘snitch’ for America.
   The United States said Monday it would oppose any politically motivated investigation or prosecution of Anwar, who faces new accusations of sodomy with a young male aide – the same charge that saw him jailed a decade ago.
   ‘America should not interfere with a (legal) exercise
   in our jurisdiction. This matter is still under investigation
   and it is not like we have
   come to a conclusion,’ said the home minister, Syed Hamid Albar.
   ‘American has always tried to warn small states like us,
   but we have never been threatened or felt threatened,’ he said in comments reported in
    the New Straits Times on Thursday.
   Syed Hamid also attacked Anwar’s allegiances, reviving old allegations that he is too close to Washington.
   ‘Anwar is a snitch for America. Every time anything happens, he reports back to America,’ he said.
   The opposition leader faces a police investigation over the claims, which he says are concocted by the government in an attempt to derail his plan to seize power with the help of defecting lawmakers.
   He has said the affair is a re-run of his 1998 sacking and subsequent imprisonment on sodomy and corruption charges. He was jailed for six years until 2004 when the nation’s highest court overturned the sex conviction.
   Anwar made a stunning return to politics in March elections that dealt the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition an unprecedented setback.

Armoured vehicles trundle through the streets in the Khyber tribal district, but residents say they are baffled by the lack of any fighting in Pakistan’s anti-militant operation here.
   Facing US pressure over recent deals with Taliban militants, Pakistan’s new government sent troops into the region on Saturday but there have only been half a dozen deaths since, a handful of arrests and no actual clashes.
   Many residents say Islamic extremists whom authorities said were threatening the northwestern city of Peshawar have simply melted into the hills. Others question how dangerous the hardliners really are.
   ‘I am not happy with this operation. Mangal Bagh’s men are still roaming in surrounding villages,’ fruit vendor Samad Khan said in the bazaar in the region’s main town of Bara, at the centre of the operation.
   ‘Troops only destroyed some houses, they did not disarm people or launch a siege and search operation,’ he said.
   Bagh is the leader of Lashkar-e-Islam, a radical Islamist group accused by officials of harassing local people, running torture centres and private jails and attacking convoys ferrying supplies to international troops.
   Khan accused the group of abducting his father after he failed to recite Koranic verses on demand, adding: ‘They told me if I don’t pay 5,000 rupees they will kill him. I paid the fine.’
   Yet Pakistan’s main organisation of Taliban militants – and Bagh himself – deny he has any links to the Taliban. Bagh says his men do not attack either Pakistani troops or foreign forces in Afghanistan.
   ‘The government has committed a grave atrocity against us by launching this large-scale operation. I have never opposed government and have always sided with the authorities,’ Bagh told a local television station late Wednesday.
   ‘We have never threatened the residents of Peshawar, nor have we kidnapped anyone. We just had religious centres, and madrassahs where children were getting Islamic education and where people came for arbitration.’
   Some residents praised Bagh’s men.
   ‘We were happy with the Lashkar people,’ shopkeeper Aman Gul said. ‘They established peace, they crushed criminals who used to disturb business in the area.’
   Jalil Khan, another fruit dealer said: ‘I must appreciate Lashkar-e-Islam. They established peace and eliminated crimes, just like the Taliban in Afghanistan.’
   But he said he was baffled by the lack of apparent activity.
   ‘Troops dynamited Bagh’s house in a nearby area but his men are still there. There is no clash and there is no firing. I don’t understand this operation,’ he added.

Two people were killed Thursday in central India in protests over the revocation of an order to transfer land in Indian Kashmir to a Hindu pilgrims’ body, the Press Trust of India agency reported.
   The protests were part of a nationwide action called by the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and an ally, angered that officials had rescinded the transfer after bitter opposition in Muslim-majority Kashmir. ‘Two persons have been killed in violence,’ Rakesh Shrivastava, an official in Indore city in central Madhya Pradesh state, told the agency.