Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on Monday vowed to topple the prime minister despite what he called attempts to ‘demonise and intimidate’ him.
   Anwar said allegations of sodomy levelled by a 23-year-old male aide showed he posed a threat to prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s National Front coalition, which has ruled Malaysia for more than 50 years.
   ‘We are on track to take over the government. We want to pursue this agenda for reform,’ a smiling Anwar told reporters.
   ‘Clearly, I am a political threat.’
   Anwar spent a night in police cells last week after he was arrested on sodomy allegations he says the government fabricated to prevent him from seizing power.
   ‘What is the issue? I have not seen the (police) report (made by Saiful),’ he said.
   Anwar’s Keadilan party aims to establish a new coalition government by the end of the year, its information chief said.
   ‘We are confident a change of government will happen by year-end,’ said Tian Chua.
   A return to parliament would be the next step in the political rehabilitation of Anwar, who was sacked as deputy premier in 1998 and jailed on sodomy and corruption charges.
   The sex conviction was later overturned, but the corruption count barred him from public office until April.
   Fired up by Anwar’s charismatic presence, the opposition Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance made unprecedented gains in March general elections, leaving it just 30 seats short of ousting the ruling coalition.
   But the accusation by aide Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan that Anwar sexually assaulted him threatens to derail the former deputy premier’s political comeback.
   On Monday, Saiful’s father Azlan Mohammad Lazim said his son was ‘ready to swear at any time ... in a mosque ... that he was sodomised as reported to the police, once the investigations are over.’
   Anwar has refused to provide a DNA sample to police saying he feared the evidence would be manipulated, but on Monday Saiful’s lawyer urged him to cooperate.
   ‘Saiful is urging Anwar to give his DNA sample and to cooperate with the police to speed up the investigation,’ Zamri Idrus told reporters.
   ‘I was appointed in July as Saiful’s counsel and I saw him just a few days ago. We are asking Anwar to give greater cooperation to the police and we push for a quick resolution to the investigation,’ he said.
   Anwar Monday condemned police over his arrest last Thursday, when he spent a night in a cell and underwent a strip search.
   ‘Why ambush and arrest me? Why put me in a cell? Why treat me like a common criminal? There is a pattern to demonise and intimidate me,’ he said.
   The comments came as Malaysia’s police chief filed a defamation lawsuit accusing Anwar of fabricating evidence.
   Anwar has accused Musa Hassan and attorney general Abdul Gani Patail of manipulating evidence in an investigation into an alleged beating he received while in police custody ten years ago.

India on Monday said its peace process with Pakistan was ‘under stress,’ repeating allegations that ‘elements’ in Islamabad were behind this month’s suicide attack against its Kabul embassy.
   ‘The composite dialogue itself is under stress. The dialogue is happening at a difficult time in our relationship with Pakistan,’ the Indian foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, told reporters in New Delhi.
   ‘In the recent past, several events have vitiated the atmosphere,’ he said.
   ‘Incidents on the Line of Control (in Kashmir), incitement of violence, some (Pakistani) leaders reverting to the old polemics – and this sequence of events culminated in the suicide attack on our embassy in Kabul,’ he said.
   ‘All our information... points to elements in Pakistan being behind the blast,’ Menon said after talks with Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir as part of a peace process the two nuclear-armed rivals launched in 2004.
   ‘The dialogue process is stressed, and it will certainly affect our relations with Pakistan,’ Menon said.
   ‘We, India, expect our concerns to be addressed,’ the foreign secretary said but added: ‘We consider it important that the dialogue process should continue.’
   The July 7 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul left dozens dead, including India’s military attache and a diplomat.
   Pakistan has already rejected previous allegations from Indian and Afghan officials that it was somehow involved in the bombing.
   New Delhi also accuses Islamabad of backing Islamic militants who are waging an insurgency in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which has triggered two of their three wars since 1947, and of being behind attacks in other parts of the country.
   Pakistan also strongly denies it arms or trains the militants.
   Ties between the South Asian rivals had improved since 2004 with increased political, tourist, sporting and cultural exchanges.
   But the process has had its frequent ups and downs.
   India stalled peace talks in 2006 in the aftermath of a series of bomb explosions on commuter trains in India’s commercial capital Mumbai in which 186 people were killed – an attack also blamed in Islamabad.
   Leaders of the rival nations – the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, – later agreed to resume the process after constituting an anti-terror panel comprising foreign and interior ministry officials from both sides.

The Israeli military has launched an investigation into the shooting of a blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian with a rubber-coated bullet which was caught on film, the army said on Monday.
   AFP earlier quoted an army spokesman as saying the soldier who fired the shot had been detained. The army denied saying this, but would neither confirm nor deny he had been detained.
   The army also declined to provide any details about the inquiry.
   The web site of Israel’s mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported that the soldier had been arrested and said he told military investigators he had been ordered to shoot by his commanding officer.
   Footage of the incident, released on Sunday by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, shows a Palestinian demonstrator handcuffed and blindfolded, with an army officer holding his arm.
   A soldier next to him appears to take aim at his leg, a shot is fired and the camera darts briefly away before showing the man lying on the ground.
   The protester, identified as Ashraf Abu Rahma, 27, was lightly wounded in the incident which took place on July 7 in Nilin, an occupied West Bank village where regular protests are staged against Israel’s separation barrier.
   The army, which said five border guards, three soldiers and two labourers working on the wall were injured during protests in June, announced the inquiry after the video was shown on Palestinian television.

Senior Thai and Cambodian defence officials emerged from talks Monday with no resolution to a military standoff near an ancient temple which has seen troops mass on the border.
   After nearly eight hours of closed-door meetings in an eastern Thai town, the two sides agreed only that force must not be used to resolve the nearly week-long crisis over disputed land near the 11th century Preah Vihear temple.
   ‘We both have legal problems, which we have informed our superiors to discuss,’ said Thai Supreme Commander General Boonsrang Niumpradit.
   ‘We will both bring back the problems to our governments. The meeting today was to find a proper solution to the Preah Vihear temple problems, but we both agreed to tell our soldiers stationed on the border not to use force.’
   He said that troops would remain on the border but their numbers would not be increased, and added that negotiations would continue at an unspecified time.
   More than 500 Thai and 1,000 Cambodian troops are stationed around a small Buddhist pagoda in disputed land on a mountain slope leading to Preah Vihear, which is owned by Cambodia.
   Both sides have both shown willingness to peacefully defuse the dispute, which saw weapons briefly drawn last week, but neither has shown any sign of backing down on their claims to the land near the Hindu temple ruins.
   The Cambodian defence minister, Tea Banh, said the two sides ‘worked as hard as we can’ during the negotiations in Aranyaprathet district, about 180 kilometres south of the disputed territory.
   ‘In the past several days the atmosphere is heating (up) and the talks today create understanding, but we are stuck with legal problems,’ he told reporters.
   ‘The concrete work has to wait. But we both agree to avoid confrontation and violence.’
   The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the Preah Vihear temple belongs to Cambodia, but 4.6 square kilometres of land surrounding the ruins remains in dispute.

Visiting Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem said on Monday that Damascus was keen to open a new chapter in its relations with Lebanon and to delineate the border between both countries.
   ‘Our relations today are on an equal footing,’ Muallem told a press conference after meeting with the Lebanese president, Michel Sleiman, on the first such visit by a high-ranking Syrian official in more than three years.
   ‘There is a new consensus president (in Lebanon) who has trustworthy ties with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and this can help resolve a lot of oustanding issues,’ he added.
   Lebanon and Syria said earlier this month that they had agreed to establish diplomatic relations and planned to open embassies in both capitals for the first time since independence from French colonial rule more than 60 years ago.
   Muallem during his hours-long visit handed an invitation to Sleiman from his Syrian counterpart to travel to Damascus, a trip the Lebanese press said would take place within a week or 10 days.
   The two men also discussed the issue of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, the delineation of the border between both countries and the fate of hundreds of Lebanese who vanished during Syria’s rule in Lebanon.
   ‘There is nothing to prevent the demarcation of the borders but we must take into account the fact that many Syrian and Lebanese villages are intertwined and whether this would harm residents,’ Muallem said.
   ‘Still, if we must delineate the border, we are ready.’
   He added that placing the disputed Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon under UN administration would in no way signify an end to Israel’s occupation of that area.
   The Shebaa Farms, a mountainous sliver of land rich in water resources measuring 25 square kilometres, are located at the junction of southeast Lebanon, southwest Syria and northern Israel. Israel seized the Farms from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war when it captured the neighbouring Golan Heights which it later annexed.
   Ever since, the Farms have been caught in a tug-of-war over ownership. Lebanon claims them, with the backing of Damascus, while Israel says they are part of Syria.
   On the missing Lebanese, Muallem said a committee set up to deal with the issue was advancing in its work but more time was needed before a final resolution.

A Pakistani court upheld the detention of disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan on Monday and barred him from talking to the media about nuclear proliferation while he is under house arrest.
   Khan, lionised by many Pakistanis as the father of the country’s atomic bomb, was pardoned but placed under house arrest by the president, Pervez Musharraf, in 2004 soon after he made a televised confession to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
   Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Aslam ruled Khan could meet relatives after security clearance and have access to health care of his choice, but would not be allowed to give media interviews.
   ‘He will be allowed to meet close relatives subject to security clearance, which is of paramount importance. He will not be allowed to make interviews to any print or television channel on the issue of nuclear proliferation,’ the judge said. Khan gave a series of interviews to media after a new government, made up of anti-Musharraf parties, came to power in late March following a general election in February.
   The 72-year-old scientist, who has been treated for prostate cancer, irked the army by making comments earlier this month about the smuggling of nuclear equipment that appeared to implicate the military and president Musharraf.

Rebuilding Myanmar’s cyclone-devastated south and bringing aid to millions of survivors will cost 1.0 billion dollars over the next three years, the United Nations and ASEAN said Monday.
   A joint report by the UN, the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc and the Myanmar government said the priorities were providing food, restoring agriculture and basic services, and helping communities rebuild and recover their livelihoods.
   ‘Recovery needs... are estimated at just over a total of 1.0 billion dollars over the next three years,’ it said.
   The report outlined the scale of the Myanmar’s worst ever disaster, which damaged or destroyed 800,000 homes, flooded 600,000 hectares of agricultural land and killed half the draught animals used to plough fields.

China and Russia signed an agreement Monday that ended a decades-long territorial dispute and finally determined their borders, in the latest sign of warming ties between the former Cold War foes.
   The protocol, signed by the two countries’ foreign ministers in Beijing, added to an existing agreement on their 4,300-kilometre boundary, meaning all of the frontier is now set.
   ‘China and Russia have discussed their border for over 40 years. It’s no simple matter that we have now demarcated the border in its entirety,’ the Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said, after the agreement was signed.
   ‘At a political level, it’s a mutually beneficial, win-win result,’ he told reporters at a briefing at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in the Chinese capital.
   A bitter rift during the Cold War saw the one-time communist allies fight skirmishes along their border.
   For years, both nations deployed enormous tank armies on both sides of the border, and if full-scale war had broken out, it could have led to one of the largest land battles in history.
   Recently, however, Russia and China have drawn closer together, motivated partly by a joint ambition to prioritise economic growth.

An international soldier and nearly two dozen insurgents were killed in new attacks in Afghanistan while Taliban militants captured a remote district, authorities said Monday.
   The soldier, who was with the US-led coalition helping Afghanistan to fight the insurgency, died Monday after being wounded in bomb explosion in the southern province of Helmand at the weekend, the force said in a statement.
   The death took to 138 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, mostly in hostile action. Nearly 220 foreign soldiers died in violence last year.
   About 20 Taliban rebels were also killed overnight after international helicopters attacked them in the eastern province of Khost, local government spokesman Khaibar Pashtun said.
   The choppers were called in after the rebels ambushed a police convoy, killing a policeman, Pashtun said.
   Elsewhere in Khost an Afghan driver was killed after militants attacked a convoy supplying a foreign military base there, a police official said.
   The NATO-led military force in Afghanistan announced late Sunday that one of its troopers had been killed in the same province.
   Dozens of Taliban militants meanwhile captured a remote district in central Ghazni province overnight, killing one policeman and injuring two others, a government spokesman said.

War-weary Iraqis voiced scepticism on Monday at visiting US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from the violence-wracked nation if he wins the White House.
   Several Iraqi civilians quizzed by AFP said they were doubtful whether Obama could make a difference despite the senator vowing to pull out the bulk of US troops from Iraq by mid-2010 if he takes office next year.
   ‘This proclamation is a mere political stunt,’ said Abu Ali, 43, a resident of Baghdad’s Sadr City, a stronghold of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
   ‘The American policy would not change with the change in the president, especially the military policy, which is planned by far-sighted commanders,’ the cigarette seller said.
   Sadr and his followers from Iraqi Shia areas, including Sadr City, have strongly opposed the presence of American troops since the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003.
   On Monday, Obama arrived in Iraq as part of a Congressional delegation for a fact-finding tour to assess the latest on the ground situation in the country.
   He has pledged to declare an end to the Iraq war from the first day of his presidency if he wins in November, and to withdraw most US combat troops within 16 months of entering the White House.
   Obama, who voted against the March 2003 war to topple Saddam, visited Iraq in 2006 and is returning at a time when violence has fallen to a four-year low – partly on the back of a US troop ‘surge’ which he had strongly opposed.
   Backed by recent security gains, the Iraqi government has been demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces.
   Last week the US president, George W Bush, and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, agreed to set a ‘time-horizon’ for the withdrawal of the troops in a security pact currently being negotiated by Baghdad and Washington.
   However some Sunni Arabs, once seen as supporters of the anti-American insurgency, said they felt that the Democratic candidate would be able achieve his promise to pull out the troops.
   Meanwhile, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said Monday that Obama will see during his trip to Iraq that he was wrong to oppose the troop ‘surge’ strategy.
   As Obama made his second trip to Iraq to meet with officials including war commander David Petraeus, McCain told NBC television that last year’s surge of some 30,000 additional US troops has helped bring down violence.
   ‘I’m glad that senator Obama is going to get a chance for the first time to sit down with General David Petraeus and understand what the surge was all about, why it succeeded and why we are winning the war,’ McCain said.
   McCain said the Democrat ‘used his opposition to the surge as a way of gaining the nomination of his party.’
   ‘I hope he will have a chance to admit that he badly misjudged the situation and he was wrong when he said that the surge wouldn’t work. It has succeeded and we’re winning the war,’ he said.
   McCain has heavily criticised Obama for visiting Iraq only once before since the war was launched in March 2003. The Democrat is travelling as part of a Congressional delegation, along with senators Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel.
   While McCain has been a steadfast supporter of the war and the surge, Obama opposed it from the start and has pledged to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office in January 2009.

Pope Benedict XVI met victims of sex abuse by priests before flying out of Australia on Monday, wrapping up a visit marked by his historic apology for the scourge of paedophilia in the Catholic church.
   The pope, who two days earlier had publicly expressed his ‘shame’ over the ‘evils’ of clerical child abuse, celebrated mass with four Australian victims and offered them consolation, the Vatican said in a statement. ‘Assuring them of his spiritual closeness, he promised to continue to pray for them, their families and all victims,’ it said.
   ‘Through this paternal gesture, the Holy Father wished to demonstrate again his deep concern for all those who have suffered sexual abuse.’ Benedict met two male and two female victims at St Mary’s Cathedral shortly before leaving Sydney after a nine-day visit, during which he led hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in World Youth Day celebrations.
   ‘As I bid you farewell with deep gratitude in my heart, may God bless the people of Australia,’ the 81-year-old pope said before boarding his chartered Qantas Boeing 747-400 for the nearly 21-hour journey to Rome.
   He was seen off at the airport by the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, a committed Christian, who announced that former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer would become Australia’s first resident ambassador to the Vatican.
   After the pope left, Sydney airport faced one of its busiest days on record as more than 100,000 foreign pilgrims from some 170 countries headed home.
   For a week, they transformed Australia’s biggest city into a vast open-air cathedral teeming with the Catholic faithful. World Youth Day was launched in 1986 by the late pope John Paul II to help stem the flow of young Catholics away from the once-dominant church in an age of growing secularism in the western world.
   But the pope’s trip was partly overshadowed by the controversy of sex abuse and he went further than ever before in his public comments on an issue which has plagued the church globally.

The Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday signed a deal laying down the framework for formal talks on forming a power sharing government to end a deep political crisis.
   It was the first meeting in 10 years between the two rivals, who are widely believed to detest each other. They sat at a conference table separated by the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, who mediated the deal.
   The preliminary agreement was signed in Harare’s Rainbow Towers Hotel after weeks of deadlock since Mugabe was re-elected on June 27 in a widely condemned poll boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence against his supporters.
   Mbeki said the agreement committed both sides to an intense process to try to complete substantive negotiations as quickly as possible. ‘All parties recognise the urgency,’ he said.
   A subdued Mugabe said after the signing that the agreement was ‘to chart a new way of political interaction,’ while Tsvangirai called the ceremony ‘a very historic occasion.’ Officials from both sides said the framework agreement sets a two-week deadline for the government and two factions of the opposition MDC to discuss key issues including a unity government and how to hold new elections. A government of national unity has been pushed as a solution to the crisis by the African Union and the regional body SADC, both deeply concerned by Zimbabwe’s political violence and an economic crisis that has flooded neighbouring states with millions of refugees.

The first US war crimes trial since Second World War began on Monday at the US navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, nearly seven years after the September 11 attacks prompted the president, George W Bush, to declare war on terrorism.
   Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, faces charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism and could face life in prison if convicted by a jury of US military officers.
   ‘This military commission is assembled,’ judge Keith Allred said after the potential jurors were sworn in.
   ‘You must make your determination whether or not he is guilty based solely on the evidence presented here in court and the instructions I will give you,’ Allred instructed jurors. ‘You must impartially hear the evidence.’
   The first trial in the controversial war crimes court got underway 6-1/2 years after the United States opened the prison camp in Cuba to jail suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
   Prosecutors contend Hamdan, a Yemeni in his late 30s, was close to al-Qaeda’s inner circle and was on the way to a battle zone with two surface-to-air missiles in his car when he was captured in November 2001, shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Colombian leftist rebels faced renewed public pressure to release their remaining jungle-held hostages Monday after more than four million people took to the streets in Colombia and around the world to highlight their plight.
   Crowds gathered in 1,000 towns and cities across Colombia on Sunday, demanding the liberation of hundreds of hostages still held by Marxist rebels following last month’s dramatic rescue of French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others.
   In Paris, Betancourt led chants of ‘No more hostages!’ as she addressed a crowd of several thousand people who came to watch artists perform in a square across the river Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
   Colombian star Juanes, Spain’s Miguel Bose, and French artists Renan Luce and Michel Delpech were among the singers playing at the concert.
   At Betancourt’s side was the socialist Bertrand Delanoe, who told the crowd: ‘Our duty is to continue fighting for the liberation of all hostages in Colombia.’
   Madrid and other European cities saw smaller rallies in support of the hostages, but the main events were to be held in Latin America, with the highlight expected to be a concert in Colombia by pop star Shakira.
   In Washington, thousands of people gathered outside the White House asking for the hostages’ release, and the commerce secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, called on the US Congress to pass a pending free trade agreement with Colombia, in view of its national day.
   Organisers said pro-hostage rallies were held in cities across the world: 30 in Latin America, 22 in Europe, six in Asia, 27 in the United States, four in Canada and two in Australia.
   Betancourt was rescued July 2 by Colombian armed forces who said they had tricked her captors into handing her over along with three Americans and 11 other Colombian hostages.
   Betancourt, 46, was abducted in 2002 by rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia while campaigning for the Colombian presidency. After being reunited with her children, who live in Paris, she returned to France where her ordeal in the Colombian jungle had turned her into a national heroine.
   The FARC continues to hold an estimated 700 hostages. Up to 2,000 more are believed to be held by the National Liberation Army, another leftist rebel group. Sunday’s rallies are calling for their immediate release.
   The marches coincide with independence day celebrations in the southern town of Leticia, attended by the president, Alvaro Uribe, and his guests, the president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of Brazil and Alan Garcia of Peru.
   Shakira, Colombia’s world-famous pop icon, sang Colombia’s national anthem at the start of that commemoration before she was to launch into a concert in support of hostage liberation.
   In Bogota, the central city square was turned into a sea of white, as 1.5 million people donned white shirts bearing slogans such as ‘Free them already,’ ‘No more kidnappings’ and ‘Peace for Colombia.’
   Organisers said more than four million people poured into the streets in towns and cities across Colombia, in the country’s third pro-hostage mass rally event so far this year.
   A championship soccer match in Bogota was stopped and the players observed a minute of silence for the rebel hostages.
   Colombian Interior and the justice minister, Fabio Valencia, issued a ‘call to dialogue, reconciliation and peace,’ telling FARC that Colombians were fed up with violence and kidnapping.
   Some of the 14 other hostages who were freed with Betancourt through a Colombian military operation were present and in other cities although three US defence contractors liberated at the same time were back in the United States and not participating.

French lawmakers gathered Monday for what was set to be a tight vote on president Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to rewrite the constitution, with opposition Socialists warning the project would turn France into a ‘monocracy.’
   The bill would set a two-term limit for presidents, give parliament a veto over some presidential appointments, end government control over parliament’s committee system and allow parliament to set its own agenda.
   But the clause that has dominated public debate is one that would let the president address parliament, which the head of state has been barred from doing since 1875 to ensure the executive and legislative are kept separate.
   Socialist senator and former justice minister Robert Badinter said the reform would be the equivalent of crowning Sarkozy king.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, warned Iran on Monday it must freeze sensitive nuclear work or face more sanctions, in the first address by a British premier to the Israeli parliament.
   Brown also attacked Iranian
   president ahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ‘abhorrent’ threats against
   Israel and declared that
   Britain stands alongside the Jewish state.
   His comments on Iran’s nuclear drive echoed a warning by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, that Tehran had two weeks to respond
   seriously to an international offer or face further ‘punitive measures.’
   ‘Iran now has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear
   programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not just one nation
   but of all nations round the world,’ Brown said.