Israel and Hamas appeared on Monday to be abiding by a tacit agreement to hold fire in and around the Gaza Strip amid reported Egyptian efforts to secure a permanent truce after days of violence.
   For a third day in a row, the Israeli army did not carry out any raids in the Islamist-run territory while militants in Gaza have all but halted their fire, launching just one rocket and one mortar round over the past day, the army said.
   The calm follows days of bloodshed that has left 132 Palestinians dead, including children and other civilians. Four Israeli soldiers and one civilian have also been killed.
   Efforts have been underway in neighbouring Egypt to strike a more permanent ceasefire between Israel and Gaza militants. Over the past week, delegations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad have held talks in the country, along with senior American and Israeli envoys.
   ‘Israel today is in favour of a ceasefire with Hamas under certain conditions,’ a senior Israeli official said on Monday.
   Israel and the United States are convinced that a truce ‘would reinforce the Palestinian Authority’ headed by president Mahmud Abbas, the official said.
   Citing an official, the liberal Haaretz newspaper said the two sides agreed to new ‘rules’ and a halt to their fire ‘via a series of messages, both open and secret’ passed during a visit last week by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
   ‘The official credited these rules, under which Israel will not attack Gaza as long as Hamas does not fire at Israel, with the recent lull in violence,’ the paper wrote.
   
   Cheney to visit Middle East: White House
   The US vice president, Richard Cheney, will visit the Middle East for talks with regional leaders later this month, the White House announced early Monday.
   Cheney will leave on March 16 and will make stops in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey ‘for discussions with these key partners on issues of mutual interest,’ the White House statement said.
   Cheney’s agenda includes talks with Abbas and the prime minister, Salam Fayyad.
   Violence sharply escalated around Gaza on February 27 after Israel killed five Hamas militants in an air raid and Gaza militants retaliated with a barrage of rocket and mortar fire into the Jewish state.
   However, Jerusalem authorities announced Monday a decision to build a new Jewish settlement in the annexed eastern part of the city, a move that could undermine efforts to revive faltering peace talks.
   The project entails construction of 400 homes in mainly Arab East Jerusalem but is subject to approval from the regional council for urban planning, according to Yossi Gottesman, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.

Detained Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari for a second time Monday in three days, an official said, as he wrapped up his latest mission to the country.
   The Nobel peace prize winner, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest, spoke with Gambari for about 45 minutes at a military facility here.
   Gambari also held talks with the regime’s information minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan just before and after his talks with Aung San Suu Kyi, the official said.
   The democracy leader also met Saturday with Gambari, who wrapped up his mission Monday and was set to fly to Singapore at the end of the day.
   Gambari, who spoke earlier with foreign diplomats, is in Yangon to push the junta to include Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy in plans for multi-party elections.
   But diplomats who spoke with Gambari said his mission had not achieved any significant concessions.
   ‘We have the impression that he did not obtain very much,’ one diplomat said.
   ‘He said he was disappointed that he did not have any higher-level meetings,’ the diplomat said.
   ‘He said the discussions were very frank, everything was put on the table,’ he said, adding that the regime insisted on the lifting of western sanctions before any reforms could take place.
   In its public statements, the regime has rebuffed every overture made by Gambari, while denying him access to junta leader Than Shwe and stonewalling his efforts to broker a meaningful dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi.
   The generals have also rejected his offer to provide foreign observers for an upcoming May referendum on a new constitution.
   Myanmar surprised the world a month ago by announcing the referendum on the charter, which is designed to pave the way for democratic elections in 2010.
   A new law on the referendum sharply restricts the NLD’s ability to campaign, outlawing public speeches and leaflets on the text.
   Myanmar has not held elections since 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD won by a landslide in a victory that the junta never recognised.
   The proposed constitution would bar her from new elections on the grounds that she was married to a foreigner, the late Briton Michael Aris.
   Gambari had hoped to convince the regime to free up the process to include Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD.
   But Kyaw Hsan has insisted the constitution will not be changed and accused Gambari of being biased in favour of the democracy movement.
   The hard line has overshadowed Gambari’s success in winning two rare meetings with Aung San Suu Kyi.
   It is the UN envoy’s third visit to Myanmar since the security forces waged a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks in September, when the United Nations estimates at least 31 people were killed.
   His first visit had produced some concessions from the junta, including a heavily conditioned offer by Than Shwe to meet Aung San Suu Kyi face to face, and the appointment
   of a liaison officer to hold talks with her.

The first of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees languishing in camps in southern Nepal for more than 15 years have begun to leave for overseas resettlement, officials said Monday.
   Refugees classed as ‘vulnerable’ by the United Nations have been leaving without publicity since January, Kim Roberson from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
   ‘Their safety in their own community may not be assured, they may need medical or social care,’ she said and would not reveal where they went.
   However, ‘some people will leave Monday and we would like to see between 40 to 60 people leave in the next two weeks, to Denmark, Canada, Norway, the United States and New Zealand,’ Roberson added.
   In October 2006, the United States offered to take some 60,000 of the 107,000 refugees who live in seven camps in southern Nepal, and around 23,000 refugees have since applied.
   The people leaving in the next two weeks are not a part of the US offer to resettle 60,000 people, the UN official said.
   ‘We expect the larger numbers of refugees who will be part of the US offer to start leaving by the end of the month,’ Roberson said.
   Ethnically Nepali refugees began crossing a narrow strip of India into Nepal in the early 1990s, when Bhutan’s government introduced reforms promoting the national dress and language.
   Since then, the refugees have lived in UN-funded camps close to Nepal’s border with India.
   Earlier this month, a fire blazed through one of the camps, making around 10,000 people homeless, and the United Nations has said it urgently needs half-a-million-dollars of immediate relief supplies.
   Although thousands have already registered for resettlement, some refugee leaders in the camps want increased pressure applied to Bhutan to allow them to return to the Buddhist kingdom, where many still have homes and land.

More than 100 Tibetan activists were detained in Nepal on Monday after clashes with the police broke out when hundreds of protesters tried to march to the Chinese embassy, an AFP reporter said.
   The police baton-charged the demonstrators after they had been pelted with stones.
   At least two police and three protesters were injured, a reporter at the scene said.
   Around 4,000 Tibetans had gathered in Boudha, a Tibetan temple complex in Kathmandu, to mark the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape to India after an abortive uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
   The police tried to prevent around 500 people from leaving the enclave to protest outside the Chinese embassy when the clashes began.
   The police forced the group back after they had travelled around two kilometres
   from Boudha, the AFP reporter said.
   ‘Around 130 Tibetan protesters have been detained because they tried to block traffic on a main road,’ Ganga Panta, a senior local police officer said.
   ‘They will probably be released by this evening,’ she said, adding there were 500 Tibetans protesting outside the police station for the release of those detained Monday afternoon.
   Many of the protesters in the Tibetan flag-waving crowd wore T-shirts calling for a ‘Free Tibet’ and chanted slogans.
   A massive picture of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, hung over the demonstrators, who included monks and nuns as well as men and women of all ages.
   ‘Lots of people continue to be arrested in (the Tibetan capital) Lhasa. Lots of monasteries have been destroyed and a lot of monks and nuns imprisoned for life,’ Tashi Lama, a 35-year-old youth leader, said.
   Around 2,500 Tibetans every year make the dangerous crossing over the Himalayas from their Chinese-controlled home to Nepal. They then often move on to Dharamshala, the home of the Dalai Lama, in northern India.

Malaysia’s race-based politics has been shattered by a stunning electoral setback for the government, which has been deserted by minority ethnic Chinese and Indians, analysts said Monday.
   The fractured system under which parties represent either the majority Muslim Malays or one of the minority groups looks set to be consigned to history, replaced by a modern two-party system, they said.
   ‘The political landscape in Malaysia has undergone a change,’ said former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, who has reinvented himself as the opposition figurehead.
   ‘People want to see justice. I could sense that people were fed up with political issues along racial lines,’ he said after Saturday’s polls, which handed the opposition a third of parliamentary seats and four states.
   The New Straits Times said the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition – made up of 14 race-based parties – achieved 51.2 per cent of the popular vote after support from ethnic Chinese plunged from 65 per cent to 35 per cent.
   Backing from the smaller ethnic Indian community plummeted from 82 per cent to 47 per cent, while the number of Muslim Malays, who form the coalition’s bedrock, fell from 63 per cent to 58 per cent.
   Many flocked to Anwar’s Keadilan party, which held just one seat in the outgoing parliament but which will now have 31 lawmakers. The Chinese-based Democratic Action Party has 28 and the Islamic party PAS has 23.
   Keadilan has become Malaysia’s first major multi-ethnic party, made up of candidates from all three races and supported by all three – a momentous achievement.
   Meanwhile, the coalition’s Chinese and Indian parties have been annihilated, bearing the brunt of anger over the government’s handling of inflation as well as mounting ethnic tensions.
   ‘The race-based system is breaking down,’ said Johan Saravanamuttu from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
   ‘The government is not looking so representative... and may have to re-engineer itself to be much more cognisant of this shift in the way people are voting,’ he said.
   Saravanamuttu said the dominant United Malays National Organisation, which leads the coalition, would have to do a radical rethink about how it could become more inclusive to face the new challenge posed by Keadilan.
   Already there are calls for the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to step down and pave the way for a revamp of the party that has ruled Malaysia for half a century.
   ‘We now face a period of uncertainty such as we have never experienced before,’ said Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister and UMNO veteran.
   ‘People are now saying that UMNO has lost its legitimacy to represent the Malays. The other Barisan component parties have already lost their leadership role as representatives of the other major races of this country.’
   The Star newspaper’s Wong Chun Wai said in an editorial Monday that Barisan Nasional could consider reforming into a one-party, multi-racial organisation. ‘In the years to come, convincing younger voters to support a party purely on communal grounds will become tougher,’ he said.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court Monday presented charge sheets to five suspected militants accused of involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, court officials said.
   The five men were all arrested in the weeks following former premier Benazir’s slaying at a political rally in Rawalpindi on December 27 and last appeared at the court in the garrison city adjoining Islamabad a week ago.
   Judge Habibur Rehman ordered copies of the official charges to be provided to suspects Aitzaz Shah, Hasnain Gul, Abdul Rashid, Sher Zaman and Rafaqat – who goes by one name, a court official said.
   The judge said that the men would be formally charged at the next hearing on March 18, he said, adding that some relatives were allowed to briefly meet the suspects.
   The suspects were brought to court by police commandos in a motorcade escorted by armoured personnel carriers with their faces covered and in handcuffs, an AFP photographer said.
   The police had cordoned off the court premises and surroundings and the suspects were taken to the city’s main Adiala jail after the hearing, he added.

China will keep its controversial one-child policy unchanged for at least 10 years, the country’s family planning chief was quoted as saying Monday, amid a government debate over easing the controls.
   Any changes to strict family planning laws would only come after an expected peak in the number of births in the next decade, Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Population and Family Planning Commission told the state-run China Daily.
   ‘The current family planning policy, formed as a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions,’ the English language daily quoted him as saying.
   ‘So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth.’
   Nearly 200 million Chinese will enter childbearing age in the next 10 years, the report said.
   ‘Given such a large population base, there would be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child rule now,’ Zhang added.
   ‘It would cause serious problems and add extra pressure on social and economic development.’

A Russian helicopter engineer committed suicide in Nepal because he was apparently upset over the deaths of three colleagues in a UN helicopter crash last week, the police said on Monday.
   The engineer had serviced the UN-leased helicopter in which 10 people – two Russian and one Belarussian crew along with seven passengers – were killed when the chopper crashed in bad weather in hilly terrain.
   The Russian, identified by Nepal authorities as Alexandrov Evgeny, 50, was believed to have committed suicide in the capital Kathmandu, the police said.
   ‘The man was found dead in his rented house on Saturday evening. He was hanging from a nylon rope and we’ve found a suicide note in Russian,’ Binod Ghimire, a senior police officer involved in the probe, said.
   The police officer did not divulge the note’s contents but said ‘our investigations indicate he took his own life because he may have been disturbed by the deaths of his friends.’
   Four arms monitors from Gambia, Indonesia, South Korea and Sweden were killed in the crash last Monday.
   ‘This is a tragic death compounding the loss of our colleagues last week and we offer our deepest condolences to the family,’ Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the UN peace mission to Nepal, said.

East Timor’s prime minister Xanana Gusmao visited the country’s wounded president in an Australian hospital Monday for the first time since both were attacked by rebels, an official said.
   The president, Jose Ramos-Horta, and Gusmao ‘embraced in a very friendly and warm manner and spent about an hour together,’ Royal Darwin Hospital general manager Len Notaras said.
   Ramos-Horta, shot by rebel soldiers outside his home in Dili on February 11, was out of bed and in a chair when visited by Gusmao, who was uninjured in an ambush on the same day.
   ‘The president is still convalescing but his condition is improving on a daily basis,’ Notaras said. ‘It’s four weeks today since he was shot and he has progressed extremely well.’
   The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was kept in an induced coma for 10 days after being airlifted to Australia immediately after the shooting and is expected to remain in hospital another week to 10 days, Notaras said.

Residents in swathes of Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged east voted for the first time in more than a decade on Monday, but with armed former Tamil Tiger rebels seen as the likely poll winners, peace remains precarious.
   The local elections are seen as a dry run for a wider provincial vote in the north and east – the government’s blueprint for devolution in minority Tamil areas it hopes will go hand-in-hand with its push to win a 25-year civil war.
   ‘Our prayer is for calm and no war,’ said 53-year-old Alagaiah Kouindasamy, displaced as the Sri Lankan army recaptured areas of the lush district of paddy fields, scrub jungle and lagoons from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last year.
   ‘Because of the conflict we were displaced, lost our livelihoods. There was tension and fear, artillery was being fired. We just want normalcy.’ Rights groups and diplomats have questioned the government’s decision to endorse in the elections a breakaway rebel faction, the TMVP, which helped it defeat the Tigers in the eastern district of Batticaloa. The group is accused of abuses such as child soldier recruitment, abductions and killing.

Heavy storms disrupted air, sea and road transport in Britain on Monday, while a cargo ship was swept onto a beach in France and one person reported missing, emergency officials said.
   Dozens of flights were cancelled at British airports including London’s Heathrow due to the storms, described as possibly the biggest of the winter by British experts, local reports said.
   Belgium was also braced for the tempest, expected to last into Tuesday, with forests bordering Brussels closed to traffic for fear of trees being felled by the winds.
   Amid gale-force winds of up to 80 mph sweeping in from the Atlantic and driving rain, British coastguards scrambled to help a stricken tanker in the Channel off the southern English coast, a spokesman said.
   Airports were among the worst hit.
   ‘We have had to cancel some short-haul flights and there are likely to be delays to all services,’ said a British Airways spokesman, citing precautionary measures taken by air traffic controllers.
   The storm hit first in Cornwall and Devon in the southwest of the country, before sweeping east across England and Wales.
   On land there was widespread disruption on trains in southern England, including London where underground train services were also hit by flooding, while fallen trees were reported in a number of places, disrupting road traffic.
   At sea, the main Channel port of Dover closed as winds of up to 80 mph hit the south coast, preventing ferries from operating.
   Further west a Swedish tanker with 13 crew on board got into difficulties off the Isle of Wight, coastguards said.
   At least one coastguard tug was sent to help the stricken 11,000-tonne vessel. ‘We launched in force 11 winds,’ said lifeboat spokesman John Keyworth. ‘The eye of the storm one might say. It was pretty horrendous.’
   The prime minister, Gordon Brown, held talks with emergency services chiefs on Sunday night, ahead of the widely forecast tempest.
   The storm was described as a ‘potent cocktail of strong winds, wave action and high tides from tonight until Wednesday’ by Simon Hughes of the Environment Agency.
   The Agency issued seven severe flood warnings, along with 44 flood warnings, while Britain’s Meteorological Office put severe weather warnings in place for all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
   In France meanwhile an 88-metre long cargo vessel, the ‘Artemis,’ ran aground on a beach at Sables-d’Olonne, on the Atlantic west coast, according to the local government office.
   Slightly further north, in Britanny, a search resumed for a 26-year-old man missing since Sunday after falling in the sea in Relecq-Kerhuon, near the port city of Brest.
   Elsewhere the first stage of the classic Paris-Nice cycle race south of Paris was shortened due to heavy winds.
   ‘We haven’t had one this strong this year,’ said Emmanuel Bocri, a forecaster for Meteo France, adding: ‘In general there are one or two of this strength each winter.’

Serbia’s government on Monday asked the president, Boris Tadic, to dissolve parliament and call elections after the ruling coalition collapsed over a rift in policy towards Kosovo and the EU.
   ‘The government of Serbia has no more united and joint policy,’ the government said in a statement, proposing the dissolution of parliament and a general election on May 11. Tadic was expected to approve the proposal.
   The Nationalist prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, announced over the weekend that his government had come to an end, as his Democratic Party of Serbia was unable to overcome differences with senior pro-European partners from Tadic’s Democratic Party.
   The rift came less than a month after Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia, despite strong opposition from Belgrade which considers the territory its historic and cultural heartland.
   Angered by most EU countries’ recognition of the new state, Kostunica, backed by the ultra-nationalist opposition Serbian Radical Party, vowed to halt Serbia’s further integration into the European Union until the 27-member bloc rejects Kosovo’s separation.
   The pro-western Tadic insists Belgrade has no alternative but to join the EU as soon as possible, whatever the disagreements over Kosovo. Kostunica acknowledged Saturday that his cabinet had ‘no united policy’ on Kosovo.
   Tadic accused the DSS of trying to ‘slow down’ the process of European integration.
   In Brussels, the EU expressed cautious optimism that pro-European parties would come out on top in next month’s elections.
   ‘We hope that the European forces will win,’ said the Slovenian foreign minister, Dimitrij Rupel, whose country currently holds the union’s six-month rotating presidency.
   ‘I don’t think that there is any other possibility for our Serbian friends than the EU.
   ‘Where else should they go?’ he told reporters, ahead of talks with his EU counterparts in Brussels.

Lebanon’s presidential election, already delayed 15 times, is set for another postponement on Monday because of the country’s political crisis, the parliament speaker was quoted as saying.
   Asharq Al-Awsat quoted parliament speaker Nabih Berri as saying he may postpone the vote scheduled for Tuesday to March 25 – four days before an Arab summit which some leaders are not expected to attend unless the Lebanon crisis is resolved.
   The Beirut governing coalition, which is backed by Western states and Saudi Arabia, is locked in a power struggle with an opposition alliance supported by Iran and Syria. Damascus is set to host the March 29-30 Arab summit.
   The crisis has paralysed much of government, left the presidency vacant since November and led to bouts of lethal street violence in a country still rebuilding from its 1975-90 civil war.
   Both camps have agreed that army chief General Michel Suleiman should fill the presidency, which has been empty since the term of the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, expired.
   But Suleiman’s confirmation by parliament has been repeatedly derailed by a dispute over the make-up of a cabinet to be formed after his election.
   ‘Berri describes the internal Lebanese situation as being in a state of great paralysis, indicating that the continuation of the current situation will push him again to postpone the session,’ Asharq Al-Awsat said.
   Berri told the paper he might set the next session for March 25. ‘He said that he is betting on the possibility of a breakthrough in the Arab situation which will help to budge matters before the summit,’ the paper said.
   Parliament cannot convene to elect the president unless there is a deal between the rival camps that will secure a quorum for the vote.
   The Lebanon crisis has poisoned ties between Syria and Saudi Arabia, whose King Abdullah is not expected to attend the Damascus summit unless it is resolved. The leaders of Egypt and Jordan are also expected to miss the summit unless there is a deal in Lebanon.

Spain’s ruling Socialists faced awkward alliance choices Monday after winning re-election without the absolute majority they had sought to tackle a deepening slowdown in the once-robust economy.
   Prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s victory on Sunday was seen as an endorsement of the bold liberal social reforms, such as laws on gay marriage, fast-track divorce and gender equality, that marked his first four years in power in the Roman Catholic country.Despite failing to win an overall majority, the Socialists scored their highest vote share since 1986.
   ‘I will govern by improving the things we did well and correcting our mistakes,’ Zapatero told cheering supporters outside Socialist headquarters in Madrid. ‘I will govern with a firm hand, but an extended hand.’ The Socialists won 169 seats – seven short of an absolute majority in the 350-seat parliament – while the conservative Popular Party led by Mariano Rajoy captured 153 seats in polls marked by a high turnout.
   In order to govern effectively, Zapatero will need to turn to smaller regional parties like the moderate nationalist Catalan Convergence and Unity Party which won 11 seats and the Basque Nationalist Party which got six. Both parties have strong regional agendas that they will want to see pushed in exchange for their support.
   Zapatero has governed for the past four years in a thorny alliance with two leftist parties which only managed to win five seats between them on Sunday – down from 13 in the last parliament.
   ‘He will have to continue to rely on outside support, but it will clearly be different than the support he had in 2004,’ the left-wing daily El Pais said of Zapatero’s alliance options.
   But he will ‘have the opportunity to continue to apply the essential elements of his programme, especially relating to social and economic issues,’ it said. The elections came as a decade-long economic expansion showed signs of slowing due to the global credit crunch that has hit the key construction sector, leading unemployment to hit 8.6 percent last year, its first rise since 2003.

Iran blamed the United States on Monday for the two foes’ failure to hold a fourth round of talks over Iraq, saying Washington cancelled the meeting after Baghdad had sent an invitation.
   An Iranian delegation had arrived in Baghdad last week for what Iranian officials said would be talks with US officials on March 6. But the delegation went home that day without the talks ever taking place.
   ‘The Iraqis announced that they were ready and, based on the invitation from Iraq, we went there,’ Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.
   ‘But hours before the meeting, the Iraqi officials quoted the Americans as saying they were not ready. They told us this without any explanation,’ Hosseini added.
   He denied there was any link between the ‘cancellation’ of the talks and the visit of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Baghdad earlier this month. The Iraqi government and the US embassy have denied there was ever any firm date for any talks.
   Iran and the United States held three rounds of talks about Iraq last year despite mounting tensions over the Iranian nuclear programme. The two foes have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.
   The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi held face-to-face talks in May and July last year, the highest level public contacts between the two sides for 27 years.

Iranian hardline students have offered rewards totalling a million dollars for the ‘execution’ of three Israeli military leaders over the deadly strikes on Gaza, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday.
   The group is even encouraging Iranians to donate their kidneys to increase the bounties on the heads of the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.
   The rewards were announced by the Justice Seeking Students Group on Sunday at a ceremony in Tehran entitled ‘setting the bounty for the revolutionary execution of the designers of state terrorism,’ ISNA said. The bounty for Barak is set at 400,000 dollars while those for Dagan and Yadlin are 300,000 each, the report said. It is not clear where the money is coming from.
   ‘These sums will be given to any person or their families who could punish these individuals in any part of the world,’ the organisers of the event announced.