Kuwait’s ruler dissolved parliament on Wednesday, lawmakers said, after a political crisis forced the government of the Gulf Arab oil exporter to resign.
   They said the amir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, will set a fresh election for May. Jassem al-Kharafi, speaker of the dissolved house, had been informed of the decision but state media had yet to publish the official decree, they added.
   The standoff had paralysed political life and delayed crucial economic reforms in the major OPEC producer and key US ally.
   Lawmakers said Sheikh Sabah, who has the last say in Kuwaiti politics, would announce the dissolution and call a new poll in a televised address later on Wednesday.
   ‘The decree is expected Tuesday night,’ the deputy speaker, Mohamed al-Bosairi, told reporters.
   The decision followed the resignation of the government on Monday, less than a year after it was sworn in, complaining of a lack of cooperation from an assembly that has repeatedly challenged ministers.
   The cabinet resignation left Sheikh Sabah with two options under the Kuwaiti constitution: to call for the formation of a new cabinet or to dissolve parliament and call a new election within two months.
   The parliament has been dissolved four times in the former British protectorate since 1963. Sheikh Sabah’s predecessors suspended the assembly for six years in 1986 and five years in 1976.
   The amir cut short a holiday to Morocco and returned late on Tuesday to deal with the crisis, holding urgent consultations with Kharafi, Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf al-Sabah and Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah.
   ‘This is a wrong decision,’ Mohammad Jassem al-Saqr, the head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee told Al Jazeera television by telephone from Beirut.
   The amir had repeatedly urged deputies and the government to work together for the sake of the country, but to little avail.
   Kuwait’s stock market rallied to an all-time high on Wednesday on investor hopes that a new assembly would endorse economic reform plans.
   Kuwait wants to diversify its economy away from oil to emulate the success of Gulf neighbours Dubai or Bahrain which have become regional financial centres.
   Parliament had made progress approving long-awaited reforms such as a reduction in taxes on foreign firms and privatisation of the loss-making national airline.

China is ramping up its security presence in and around Tibet following deadly violence there, with witnesses saying Thursday they had seen hundreds of military trucks on the move.
   Georg Blume, a journalist with German newspaper Die Zeit who was expelled from Lhasa by police Thursday morning, described seeing large military convoys moving near the Tibetan capital. ‘One convoy was about two kilometres long and contained about 200 trucks, each having 30 soldiers on board. So that’s about 6,000 military personnel in one convoy,’ he told AFP shortly before leaving the city.
   Blume, who said the large troop movements appeared aimed at ‘scaring’ the local population, added that he could not confirm whether the convoys were moving into or out of the capital.
   But a separate source who asked not to be unidentified told AFP: ‘Lots of security forces are on the streets. We can see Chinese security going door to door. It’s very tense.’
   A BBC journalist reporting from western China said he counted more than 400 military vehicles moving in convoys of up to 80 vehicles, which he said were headed for Tibet.

If Frank Hsieh loses Taiwan’s presidential election Saturday, it will be at least partly due to a public perception that corruption has taken root in political life, analysts say.
   The ruling party chief has never been indicted for corruption but a string of high-profile cases involving his Democratic Progressive Party — touching even outgoing president Chen Shui-bian — has badly tarnished its image.
   Analysts say the scandals, together with the flagging economy, could help seal Hsieh’s defeat against Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang, which also crushed his party in January’s parliamentary elections.
   ‘The DPP snatched power from the KMT (in 2000) by portraying itself as a clean reformist (party), but now the public is seeing a collective corrupted powerhouse,’ said political science professor Chang Ya-chung.
   ‘The graft charges further aggravate people who are already frustrated by the economic downturn which could ultimately end the DPP’s rule,’ said Chang, of National Taiwan University.
   Chen, who is standing down after eight years in office, has been implicated in a corruption case but enjoys presidential immunity until he leaves office.
   His wife Wu Shu-chen is on trial for embezzlement and Vice President Annette Lu for graft, while ex-premier Yu Shyi-kun and former foreign minister Chen Tan-sun have been indicted for corruption.
   All have denied the charges.
   The Kuomintang has had its fair share of corruption scandals too — Ma was himself indicted in February 2007 for allegedly misusing special expenses when he was Taipei mayor.

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, said Thursday he expected the new Pakistan government to be ‘good and effective’ US allies, as he made a surprise visit to neighbouring Afghanistan.
   ‘I expect they’ll be good and effective friends and allies of the United States, just as the previous government has been,’ Cheney told a news conference.
   ‘I have no reason to doubt their commitment to dealing with the problems that emerge,’ the vice president said, referring specifically to the troubled tribal area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
   He said the new government, which has already vowed to take on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a close ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’, had ‘as big a stake as anyone else’ in fighting militancy.
   Musharraf faces a fight for his political survival after his backers were trounced at the polls last month, with voters showing their anger over growing Islamic militancy and a host of economic problems.

A former Malaysian finance minister is preparing to challenge the prime minister after his ruling coalition suffered stunning election losses, a report said Thursday.
   Senior lawmaker Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said he would challenge the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, for the United Malays National Organisation leadership if he received enough support.
   UMNO leads the Barisan Nasional coalition that was humbled in the March 8 polls, and the party’s leader traditionally takes the job of prime minister.

Fighting between government troops and Tamil Tigers across Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged northern districts claimed at least 22 rebel lives, the defence ministry said Thursday.
   Security forces killed the rebels during artillery duels in Jaffna, Weli Oya, Mannar and Vavuniya on Wednesday, the ministry said, adding that two soldiers were wounded.
   The government’s casualty claims could not be verified and there was no immediate comment from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who control a swathe of territory in the island’s north.

The human, financial and strategic toll of the Iraq war stalked the marathon White House campaign as the United States marked five years since the start of the bloody conflict Thursday.
   Both Barack Obama and his Democratic adversary Hillary Clinton reiterated their vows to pull out of Iraq, while Republican nominee-elect John McCain insisted the fight against Islamic extremism was worth the price.
   The two Democrats kept up their sniping both over Iraq and over stalled plans to conduct new votes in Florida and Michigan, which have been stripped of their Democratic convention delegates in a scheduling row.
   Hillary, campaigning in Michigan, urged Obama to ‘make sure that the people of Michigan and Florida have a voice and a vote in this election.’
   Obama, on CNN, said Hillary had been ‘completely disingenuous’ over the dispute.
   As the president, George W Bush, defended the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, Obama used a speech near the giant US Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to highlight his steadfast opposition to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
   Heaping scorn on Hillary, Obama said the key to winning November’s presidential election was not to argue with McCain over who has more experience, ‘because that’s a contest that he’ll win.’
   ‘The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose,’ he said.
   The Democratic contenders flagged their intention to quickly start pulling most combat brigades out of Iraq if they win office, leaving a rump force to combat al-Qaeda and freeing up resources for Afghanistan.
   They both said the war was on course to cost the US taxpayer more than one trillion dollars while, according to an AFP tally, the US military has suffered nearly 4,000 fatalities in Iraq.
   Senator McCain meanwhile met with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, boosting his national security credentials a day after embarrassingly confusing the Sunni al-Qaeda with Iranian-backed Shia extremists in Iraq.
   The Republican’s campaign accused Obama of presenting a ‘fantasy plan’ that ignored the reality of al-Qaeda violence in Iraq. Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton said the Democrat did not need foreign-policy lessons from McCain.
   ‘We wish the McCain campaign well as they try to figure out the difference between Iran and al-Qaeda,’ he said.
   Hillary, who said Monday that pulling out of Iraq would be a triumph for US diplomacy, insists Obama has failed to pass muster as a prospective commander-in-chief and would be a dangerous risk to go up against McCain.
   Obama meanwhile continued to try to shake a raging controversy over racial politics ignited by his pastor’s incendiary sermons.
   He admitted in an interview with CNN aired late Wednesday that the matter had affected him personally.
   ‘In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates,’ Obama said.

The US president, George W Bush, authorised Wednesday supplying Kosovo with weapons, signalling the establishment of government-to-government relations after recognising its independence, the White House said.
   In a memo to the State Department made public by the White House, Bush said: ‘I hereby find that the furnishing of defence articles and defence services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.’
   A senior official said the authorisation followed US recognition of Kosovo’s independence and was part of the normal process of establishing relations with a new government.
   In a comment apparently meant to allay concerns from Serbia and its ally Russia, the official stressed the military restrictions imposed on Kosovo under a plan by former UN special envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari.
   Under the Ahtisaari plan, which is the basis for Kosovo’s supervised independence, Kosovo is allowed a lightly armed 2,500-person security force under NATO oversight and training.
   Kosovo, an Albanian-dominated Serbian province under UN administration since 1999, unilaterally declared its independence on February 17. The United States recognised it on March 18, despite strong opposition from Serbia and Russia.
   The US official, who asked not to be identified, said the US weapons deliveries were preparing the ground for the future, adding that the United States had struck similar relations with other countries in the region.

Envoys from Cuba and Iran sharply criticised the United States on Wednesday at a UN Security Council debate on counter-terrorism, accusing it of supporting ‘terrorists’ bent on attacking their countries.
   The Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, called on the Council to urge the United States to take action against Luis Posada Carriles, 80, who is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on suspicion of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
   The anti-Castro militant entered the United States illegally in 2005 and sought asylum. A judge dismissed the immigration case in June but the government is appealing.
   ‘There is no doubt today that the true intention was to prevent the details of his criminal actions under CIA orders from becoming public,’ Malmierca Diaz said during a council debate on counter-terrorism.
   He added that the US
   appeal had failed to mention Posada Carriles’ ‘long terrorist record.’
   The Security Council ‘must demand that the US government immediately sentence Luis Posada Carriles for his terrorist acts or extradite him to ... Venezuela, where he has long been wanted by the justice,’ Malmierca Diaz said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was home in the White House on at least seven days when her husband had sexual encounters there with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to senator Hillary’s schedule, released Wednesday among 11,000 pages of papers from her years as first lady.
   The words of the schedules are dry, but they take on emotional weight when coupled with revelations about the sex scandal that eventually came to light. A year later, the schedules show her pressing ahead and showing her face at public events as revelations about the scandal upended her life and threatened Bill Clinton’s presidency.
   The papers also shed light on her struggle for health care reform early in the Hillary administration, her scaling back when that effort failed, her travels abroad and the legal woes that dogged the Hillary in the White House.
   She also was an early champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement that she now criticises in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The papers show her holding at least five meetings in 1993 aimed at helping win congressional approval of the deal.
   It’s unlikely she would be surprised at this late date to learn that the president was cheating on her while she was home in the White House. But the release of the documents reminds voters anew about Bill Clinton’s affair and the impeachment proceedings that brought Washington to a halt for a year.
   The private crisis came at the most public of times for the first lady.
   She had speeches scheduled, at home and abroad. She appeared by the president Bill Clinton’s side at an education event where he angrily dismissed the reports of having sex with Lewinsky.
   Her schedule has her choosing flowers for a black-tie dinner, congratulating ‘Guns Aren’t Cool’ award winners and reading to kids in the week in January 1998 when allegations of the scandal begin coming out. She denounced a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ in a TV interview.
   Almost a year earlier, the schedules show, she was home on February 28, 1997, the day the report by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says Bill Clinton had a sexual encounter with Lewinsky in an Oval Office bathroom in the early evening, staining her blue dress.
   Bill Clinton had ‘drop by’ events or meetings in the Map Room and Diplomatic Reception Room between 11am and 12:30pm that day, according to her schedule. It also lists plays that night and a concert, but it’s not clear whether she attended.