The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met on Monday to try to accelerate peace talks that have shown little sign of progress ahead of a visit by the US president, George W Bush.
   The one-on-one meeting, which follows a visit by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has been overshadowed by a new criminal investigation into Olmert’s affairs that has some Israeli commentators questioning his political prospects.
   Olmert’s office declined to comment ahead of the meeting at the prime minister’s Jerusalem residence, where he was questioned on Friday by police over fresh allegations that were barred from publication under a court gag order.
   Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Monday’s talks would focus on negotiations on core issues, launched at a US-hosted international conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November, and on an Israeli obligation to halt Jewish settlement expansion.
   Rice said she still hoped to seal a statehood deal by the end of this year. Washington wants to see more progress before Bush visits Israel later this month to take part in ceremonies marking its 60th anniversary.
   But Israeli-Palestinian talks have been clouded by violence, primarily along the border of the Gaza Strip, and by Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians fear will deny them a viable state.
   Rice called Jewish settlements in the West Bank ‘particularly problematic.’
   A 2003 peace ‘road map’ calls for Israel to halt construction in the settlements. Israel says it will keep major settlement blocs under any peace deal – a plan tacitly endorsed by the US president, George W Bush, in 2004 – and recently approved new housing projects in the enclaves.
   The road map calls on the Palestinians to rein in militants.
   Rice on Sunday stepped up pressure on Israel to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where Abbas’s government holds sway. Hamas Islamists took over Gaza last June.
   After Rice’s last trip in late March, Israel said it planned to remove 61 barriers in the West Bank. But a UN survey subsequently found that only 44 obstacles had been scrapped – and that most of these were of little or no significance.
   Israel says its network of hundreds of barriers in the West Bank prevent suicide bombings. Palestinians view them as collective punishment and a blight on their economy.

Sri Lanka’s main media rights group on Monday voiced alarm after the island’s hawkish defence chief reportedly branded some journalists ‘traitors’ and called for sweeping censorship.
   The Free Media Movement said Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who has long demanded strict controls on how news organisations are allowed to cover the war with Tamil Tiger rebels, ‘must be held accountable for his words and reigned in.’
   Quoting recent comments by Rajapakse to Sri Lankan state television, the FMM said he had ‘termed as media ‘traitors’ those who published reports seen as harmful towards the security forces and military operations.’
   Rajapakse, the younger brother of the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, also ‘stressed that such media should be banned,’ the FMM said.
   The group condemned what it said was a ‘regime that openly calls for censorship, clamps down on critical voices of dissent and is defined by vulturine thugs who prey on independent media.’
   In January, Rajapakse called for the introduction of criminal defamation laws to stop journalists from writing on the government’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   The defence secretary had argued that there was ‘no need to report anything on the military,’ which has stepped up operations against the northern-based rebels after pulling out of a Norwegian-brokered truce at the start of the year.

Pakistani Taliban leader has warned local tribesmen to grow beards within the next two months in accordance with Islamic teachings or face harsh punishment, residents said Monday.
   The threat came amid an apparent increase in incidents of militants trying to enforce Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, where the new government is trying to make peace with hardliners.
   ‘Men must grow beards and stop shaving within the next two months,’ residents quoted senior Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Mohammad as telling dozens of people at a mosque in Khar, the main town in Bajaur tribal district.
   Beards were mandatory under the harsh Taliban regime which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 as part of a strict morality code that also made women wear the all-encompassing burka and outlawed music and other entertainment.
   ‘It is un-Islamic to shave beards. Harsh punishments will be awarded to all violators,’ added Mohammad, the central vice chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban Movement) and also a Muslim cleric.
   The group is an umbrella organisation of Taliban factions in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, has been accused of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December.
   Mohammad told a rally in March that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and fugitive Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar were not enemies of Pakistan.
   Suspected Islamic militants have been meting out vigilante justice in the tribal belt and targeting ‘un-Islamic’ hair salons, music and video shops with explosive devices for the past few years.
   But activities have increased in recent weeks amid a lull in military operations and fighting since a new government took power after defeating president Pervez Musharraf’s allies in elections.
   Last week Pakistani Taliban militants publicly executed an alleged criminal involved in kidnappings for ransom in Mohmand, another of the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas.

Japan’s ruling party is considering plans to encourage foreign workers to stay in the country long-term, a daily reported Monday after the birth rate fell for the 27th successive year.
   The Liberal Democratic Party has proposed setting up an ‘immigration agency’ to help foreign workers – including providing language lessons, the Nikkei economic daily said without naming sources. The party also intends to reform current ‘training’ programmes for foreign workers, which have been criticised for giving employers an excuse for paying unfairly low wages, the paper said.
   LDP lawmakers believe that immigration reform will help Japanese companies secure necessary workers as the declining birthrate is expected to further dent in the nation’s workforce, it said.

China’s state press on Monday accused the Dalai Lama of ‘monstrous crimes’, keeping up its fiery rhetoric against the exiled spiritual Tibetan leader despite agreeing to maintain dialogue with him.
   Chinese officials and two envoys of the Dalai Lama met in southern China on Sunday for their first talks in over a year following global pressure on Beijing to reopen negotiations amid seven weeks of deadly unrest in Tibet.
   The highly secretive talks in an undisclosed location in Shenzhen city ended with an agreement to meet again, although no date was set and no other major breakthrough was reported, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.
   Tibet’s government-in-exile, which said ahead of the talks that its top concern was to end the current wave of repression in the Himalayan region, on Monday described the talks as important despite there being no breakthrough. ‘The fact we are once again in contact is very vital for a solution to the Tibetan issue,’ Thubten Samphel, spokesman of the northern India-based Tibetan government-in-exile, said by phone.

At least 64 district politicians in one of the country’s poorest states have resigned en masse, citing threats from Maoist
   insurgents, officials said on Monday.
   Officials from the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar quit their party posts on Sunday after 37 of them were kidnapped and then released last week by insurgents, who accused them of failing to check police abuses on local inhabitants.
   ‘Many of them have cited threats to their lives as reasons behind their resignations,’ senior government official Deonandan Prasad Sinha said from Gaya, a district a few hours drive south of the state capital Patna.
   Thousands of tourists visit Gaya every year to see where Buddha is said to have gained enlightenment under a pipal tree.
   Maoist rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless villagers. They operate in a large swathe of India stretching from the east to some southern states, mostly in the countryside, and attack government officials and property.

Malaysia’s home ministry rejected on Monday a proposal to impose restrictions on women traveling overseas on their own following an outcry from women’s groups.
   The home minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said his ministry could not impose conditions requiring women to get written consent from their family before they can travel abroad alone.
   ‘There cannot be (such) a rule,’ the national Bernama news agency quoted him as telling reporters.
   ‘When a person applies for a passport, we don’t ask them where they are going. A person who wants to travel, makes his or her own decision to travel and how they are going to do it is up to them.’
   The foreign minister, Rais Yatim, said on Saturday both the foreign and home ministries mooted the idea in response to a string of cases where women traveling alone were used by international drug syndicates to smuggle drugs across borders.
   Women’s groups over the weekend reacted with outrage, calling the proposal ‘ridiculous’ and ‘regressive’. One of the groups, Sisters in Islam, declined to speculate a hidden religious motive but said the idea assumed women were less capable than men to make decisions.
   At the weekend, Bernama portrayed the proposal as an anti-crime measure rather than a religiously inspired idea and said it aimed to ensure that a woman’s family would ‘monitor her departure and serve as a preventive measure against being duped’.

Iran said on Monday it would not consider any incentives offered by world powers that violated its right to nuclear technology, ruling out a precondition to halt atomic work the West believes is aimed at making bombs.
   Foreign ministers of six world powers agreed at London talks on Friday to offer a new package of incentives to coax Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can make fuel for power plants or material for warheads.
   Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, insists its enrichment activity is aimed at generating electricity, and says the programme is a national right that it will not give up.
   ‘Those incentives that violate the Iranian nation’s right in any form will not be reviewed by the Islamic state,’ foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.
   France, one of the six powers, said the offer was generous and should not be rejected out of hand.
   ‘They are refusing a text which is extremely generous in my opinion, so I find it a bit premature that they are refusing it without having seen it,’ the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, told reporters. He said world power representatives would travel to Tehran ‘in the coming days’ to submit the offer.
   A senior European Union diplomat at a meeting on the fraying nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Geneva said of Iran’s comments: ‘This looks like an early reaction that may not be particularly serious.’
   The five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia – and Germany offered a package to Iran in 2006 that also required Iran to halt enrichment. Tehran rejected those proposals.
   ‘Regarding the incentives package ... we believe the path adopted in the past should not be continued,’ Hosseini said. ‘Talks should be held based on respecting nations’ rights.’
   The incentives offered to Iran in 2006 included civil nuclear cooperation and wider trade in civil aircraft, energy, high technology and agriculture, if Tehran suspended enrichment and negotiated with the six powers.
   A European diplomat has said the heart of the previous offer – helping Iran develop civil nuclear power – remains. Britain said details would be revealed only to the government of Iran.

Zimbabwe’s opposition on Monday mulled whether to contest a presidential election run-off after winning the first round as veteran leader Robert Mugabe’s camp began gearing up for the ballot.
   Sources in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had indicated party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who fell just short of the overall majority needed to topple Mugabe in the first round, would make an announcement Monday.
   However his spokesman said there were no plans for Tsvangirai, currently based in South Africa, to declare his intentions as the party had still to make a formal decision.
   ‘We are still putting things together and when we are ready, we will get the press informed,’ George Sibotshiwe said.
   Tsvnagirai has previously said he sees no need for a second round run-off, convinced he won more than 50 per cent in polling on March 29.
   However results from the Zimbabwe electoral commission on Friday, released nearly five weeks after polling day, gave him only 47.9 per cent while Mugabe was said to have won 43.2 per cent.
   While maintaining the electoral commission is biased in favour of Mugabe, the MDC is also aware any boycott would hand the 84-year-old – who has ruled the ex-British colony since independence in 1980 – another six-year term.
   ‘We are saying as far as we are concerned we won and a run-off is not necessary,’ MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
   ‘But in the unlikely even that ZEC convinces us that a run-off is necessary, any time any hour we will beat Mugabe hands down.’
   The run-off should in theory be held within three weeks of the declaration of results but the commission has still to set a date.
   Its secretary, Dominico Chidhakuza, played down the prospects of an imminent announcement of a date for the run-off, saying the commission had yet to discuss the issue.
   ‘We are yet to meet. I can’t give a date right now because there are issue we are still to discuss,’ Chidhakuza said.
   Many observers believe that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party, still reeling from their loss of control in parliament in simultaneous legislative elections, are playing for time.
   Mugabe’s former information minister Jonathan Moyo, now an independent lawmaker, said the authorities were likely to try and delay any run-off by over a month.
   ‘I suppose they are still trying to come to terms with the fact that they have lost parliament, and they stand to lose the presidency and they have not yet done enough to avoid that loss,’ Moyo said.

Iran accused the United States on Monday of carrying out a ‘massacre’ of the Iraqi nation and said further talks with Washington about improving security in its neighbour would be meaningless at this time.
   The Foreign Ministry also voiced support for the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, in his crackdown on ‘illegal’ Shia militias, a few days after an Iraqi delegation visited Tehran to urge it to stop backing such armed groups.
   Washington accuses Shia Iran of funding, arming and training militiamen to attack US troops and Iraqi government forces, despite its public commitment to stabilising Iraq.
   Tehran blames the violence on the presence of US forces.
   The two old foes have held three rounds of talks in Baghdad since May last year on ways to reduce violence in Iraq, but a planned fourth meeting has repeatedly been postponed.
   ‘Right now, what we observe in Iraq is a massacre of the Iraqi nation by the occupying forces,’ Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference. ‘Concerning this situation, talks with America will have no results and will be meaningless,’ he said.
   A unnamed Iranian official was last week quoted as saying Tehran saw no need for more talks with the United States on Iraq until what he described as US attacks on Iraqis stopped, but Hosseini’s comments were the first public such remarks.
   In Baghdad on Sunday, the Iraqi government spokesman said al-Maliki had ordered the formation of a committee to compile evidence of Iranian ‘interference’ in Iraq that will then be presented to Tehran.

British newspapers said on Monday it was too early to write off Gordon Brown despite the Labour Party’s worst local election debacle in 40 years, stressing that the prime minister could undo the damage.
   Brown on Sunday admitted that mistakes had been made but rejected suggestions he should resign. He also underlined that the global economic slowdown was largely to blame for his party’s performance.
   The Sun and the mass-circulation Daily Mail, whose support is regarded as critical for any prime minister, gave him breathing room in their Monday editions.
   ‘After Labour’s worst local election drubbing in 40 years, he knows he has to listen and learn,’ the Mail’s editorial said.
   ‘For 11 years, New Labour has never had to pay much attention to public opinion because it faced no credible opposition. On a whole range of issues ... ministers thought they could do as they liked.
   ‘Brown’s embrace of consumer-friendly policies is a welcome first sign of the new political realities,’ it said.
   The Sun, meanwhile, noted that because Brown did not have to call an election until May 2010 at the latest, underlining that he ‘at least has time on his side – and the country’s mood has rarely been so changeable.’ ‘Things look bleak. But he cannot be written off.’
   Starting his post-election fightback with an interview on BBC television, Brown said: ‘Of course we can recover from this position and I will tell you how.
   ‘First of all by sorting out the immediate problem with the economy and showing people we can come through, as we have in the past, very difficult economic times.

US military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq would make it difficult to mount any attack on Iran, the Pentagon’s top officer said in remarks broadcast on Monday, adding that he would prefer to avoid a new regional war.
   ‘I actually am very hopeful that we don’t get into a
   position where we have to get into a conflict,’ admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel’s Channel Ten television when asked if he might recommend that US forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively.
   Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff US Navy a dmiral Michael Mullen testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 10, 2008.

Thousands celebrated in the streets early Monday after Bolivia’s Santa Cruz voted for autonomy but the president, Evo Morales, warned that the vote was ‘illegal and unconstitutional’.
   Huge crowds filled the main square in Santa Cruz city to dance and triumphantly
   wave the opposition run province’s green-and-white flag.
   Morales went on televi
   -sion to sternly tell the province’s governor and citizens that he would ignore the result however.
   There were fears violence might erupt after the poll, which was punctuated by clashes between pro- and anti-autonomy militants that left at least 20 injured.
   Bolivia’s military chiefs have already said they view the autonomy move as a threat to national territorial integrity.