Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim Thursday called for an emergency session of parliament to hold a no-confidence vote against the prime minister.
   Anwar promised to use the special sitting to prove his claim he has the support of enough government defectors to topple prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Barisan Nasional ruling coalition.
   ‘Today, the Pakatan Rakyat (opposition alliance) leaders have submitted a letter to the PM requesting him to call an emergency session of parliament to deliberate a motion of censure against the leadership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi,’
   he said.
   Anwar said he would name the defectors at the session, which he hoped would be held no later than September 23. The next parliament session is only due to begin on October 13.
   ‘Convene an emergency session and you will see in parliament,’ he said, adding that ‘it is critical for the prime minister to respond.’
   ‘We face a major economic crisis. It is pertinent that they think of the nation and not the interest of themselves.’
   But Abdullah said the former deputy prime minister would have to wait until the next parliamentary session, after the fasting month of Ramadan.
   ‘I don’t see a need for it. Parliament will sit soon after Ramadan,’ he told reporters after chairing a meeting of his dominant United Malays National Organisation policy-making body.
   Anwar needs the support of 30 government lawmakers to take control of the 222-seat parliament.
   He stepped up the pressure on Abdullah a day after the small National Front party on Borneo island quit the ruling coalition, and the prime minister indicated he may step down earlier than planned.
   Abdullah is facing dissent from UMNO to quit after the ruling coalition was hammered in the March 8 polls. His popularity on the streets is at an all-time low amid high inflation.
   The ruling coalition has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain 51 years ago.
   Anwar said he may seek a meeting with the king to stake his claim if Abdullah failed to convene the emergency session.
   ‘I am not discounting the possibility,’ he said.
   Anwar said there was no reason for the government to detain him under the tough Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.
   ‘There is no reason why I should be arrested under the ISA. This is clearly not an option for any responsible leadership. This (Abdullah’s government) is now a minority government. The majority of MPs are with the opposition alliance,’
   he said.
   Abdullah also said there was no plan to detain anyone under the security law.
   ‘There are no plans to invoke the ISA on anyone,’ he said.
   Anwar called Monday for a meeting with Abdullah to arrange a smooth transition of power, but the premier refused and demanded he release the names of the defectors.

The Indian government has admitted to ‘vast gaps’ in intelligence gathering and says it will look to tighten anti-terror legislation following a spate of bombings in major cities.
   The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, also acknowledged that India had to face up to the growing involvement of home-grown militants in such attacks, which had previously been blamed almost exclusively on neighbouring Pakistan.
   ‘We are actively considering legislation to further strengthen the substantive anti-terrorism law in line with the global consensus on the fight against terrorism,’ Singh told reporters late Wednesday.
   Singh’s government has been strongly criticised in the wake of serial bomb blasts this year in the cities of Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and New Delhi, which have claimed more than 100 lives.
   After Saturday’s blasts in the Indian capital killed 22 people, the media accused the government of incompetence and of lacking a coherent counter-terrorist strategy.
   While acknowledging there were ‘vast gaps in intelligence’ that needed to be overcome, Singh rejected charges that his administration’s policies had made the country more vulnerable to attack.
   ‘There is no question of government being soft on terrorism,’ he said.
   India’s main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has taken the Congress-led government to task over its decision in 2004 to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act ushered in by the previous BJP-run administration.
   Congress had argued that the legislation, which gave sweeping powers to the police, was being misused to settle political scores and harass Muslims.
   Singh, however, acknowledged that the security forces might need stronger legal tools in conducting counter-terror operations.
   ‘Even this aspect is under consideration with the aim of identifying provisions which could be made to further strengthen the hands of the law enforcement agencies,’ he said.
   Several of the bombings this year, including the latest New Delhi blasts, were claimed by a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen, which has forced the government to confront the emergence of an indigenous Muslim militancy.
   In the past, India has focused its limited counter-terrorist and intelligence resources on rival Pakistan, which it accuses of orchestrating militant attacks.
   While insisting that the role of Pakistan-based groups should ‘not be minimised,’ Singh admitted that the involvement of local elements in recent blasts added ‘a new dimension to the terrorist threat.’
   Hindu-majority India has around 140 million Muslims.
   Communal tensions have always existed but, outside the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir, India’s Muslims have largely resisted the path of organised militancy.
   There are concerns that the adoption of harsher counter-terrorism laws, with provisions such as lengthy detention without charge, could inflame religious divisions.

Tzipi Livni was narrowly elected leader of Israel’s ruling party and vowed on Thursday to start work immediately on forming a new coalition that will let her succeed the scandal-hit Ehud Olmert as prime minister.
   After a tense night of counting following exit polls that showed the foreign minister cruising to a big win, officials said the final margin over Shaul Mofaz, a former general who is now transport minister, was just over one percentage point.
   The final result was a relief to Livni, a 50-year-old lawyer, who had declared victory to supporters hours earlier. ‘The good guys won,’ the one-time Mossad intelligence agent had told her backers within the centrist Kadima party.
   Party spokesman Shmuel Dahan put the final result at 43.1 per cent for Livni to 42.0 per cent for Mofaz — a huge swing from the 10- to 12-point margins shown in exit polls. Two other candidates trailed well behind.
   ‘The national mission ... is to create stability quickly,’ Livni told reporters outside her Tel Aviv home at dawn after an anxious night of waiting for the count. ‘On the level of government in Israel, we have to deal with difficult threats.’
   She made no direct mention of the peace negotiations she has been heading with the Palesti-nians for the past year.

The United Nations has rejected Taiwan’s bid to join the global body, blocking the island’s 16th such attempt, officials said Thursday.
   Taiwan this month launched a bid to join the 16 UN Specialised Agencies rather than seeking full membership to the global body. The move was seen as an olive branch to Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of its territory.
   However, the UN General Committee on Wednesday decided not to put Taiwan’s proposal on the agenda of the UN plenary session. ‘We regret it took the decision,’ Taiwan’s foreign ministry spokesman Henry Chen said. ‘There is no chance of getting the proposal to clear the UN floor this year.’
   Taiwan lost its UN seat to China in 1971. Beijing opposes the island’s efforts to join the body, seeing it as tantamount to seeking independence.
   While saying ‘China’s objection is expected,’ Chen called for ‘the right of the 23 million people in Taiwan to join international organisations’ and urged Beijing to be flexible and help resolve the issue.

The United States did not inform Pakistan about a missile strike on militants hours after the top US military officer said the United States would respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, Pakistan’s foreign minister said.
   The United States, frustrated by an intensifying Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, has stepped up attacks on militants in Pakistan with six missile attacks by pilotless drones and a helicopter-borne ground assault this month.
   US officials say Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters use ethnic Pashtun tribal regions on the Pakistani side of the border as a springboard for attacks into Afghanistan.
   But the US attacks have infuriated many in Pakistan, which is also battling al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, and the army has vowed to stand up to aggression across the border.
   The latest missile strike, on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border on Wednesday evening, killed five militants and was the result of better US-Pakistani intelligence sharing, a Pakistani official said earlier.

The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Thursday that threats of more sanctions would not deter Iran from pursuing its peaceful nuclear plans, which the West says are aimed at producing atomic bombs.
   ‘Whatever they do, Iran will continue its activities. Sanctions are not important,’ Ahmadinejad told a news conference. ‘The era of such threats has ended.’
   The United States, Britain and France this week vowed to seek harsher sanctions on Tehran over its defiance of UN demands for full disclosure and a suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that has both civilian and military uses.
   Their calls came after the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report on Monday that Iranian stonewalling had brought to a standstill its investigation into whether Iran had covertly researched ways to make an atom bomb.
   But Ahmadinejad told Iran’s state Press TV in an interview that the IAEA report had confirmed the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program and that Tehran had cooperated with the Vienna-based UN agency with ‘full transparency.’
   He also said the IAEA had no mandate to consider Western intelligence, which alleges that Iran had linked projects to process uranium, test high explosives and modify a missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead.
   Iran has repeatedly denied the allegations but the IAEA says Tehran must substantiate its position by granting access to sites, documents and relevant officials for interviews.
   The Islamic Republic says its nuclear work is for generating electricity and rejects Western accusations it is seeking to build weapons.
   Ahmadinejad added: ‘The United States government has made a claim that is beyond and outside of the purview and the provisions of the IAEA and the IAEA does not have a mandate really to examine such claims.’
   Iran has withstood three rounds of limited UN sanctions imposed so far and may count on Russia, at odds with Western powers over Georgia, to hold up harsh action by the UN Security Council, analysts say.
   ‘Those who say we want to put sanctions do so because of their weakness ... They are putting sanctions on themselves,’ Ahmadinejad told the news conference.
   ‘We will never surrender to excessive demands,’ he said.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, heads to his Labour Party’s annual conference Saturday to battle a swelling revolt which could force him out of Downing Street after just over a year in office.
   Brown will deliver a crucial keynote speech in Manchester days after four lawmakers who questioned his leadership — including one minister — were forced out of their government jobs.
   Although top ministers are remaining publicly loyal to Brown, whose ruling party is around 20 points behind the Conservatives in most opinion polls, at least 12 lawmakers have declared support for a leadership challenge.
   The row threatens to spill over on to the conference floor at a time when Brown will be hoping for a public show of unity which could herald the start of a fightback.
   George Howarth, one of the rebel lawmakers, said Brown was now the most unpopular British premier since Neville Chamberlain, who negotiated with Adolf Hitler in a bid to avoid Second World War in 1940.
   ‘We can’t allow that situation to continue,’ Howarth told BBC television Tuesday.
   Details of Brown’s speech are secret but it will likely try to switch focus from the leadership to the economic turmoil which triggered the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, nationalisation of US insurance giant AIG and takeover Thursday of Britain’s biggest mortgage provider HBOS by Lloyds TSB.
   Brown argues that, as finance minister for 10 years from 1997, he is the man to see Britain through the storm and that talk of a leadership campaign now is inappropriate.
   The premier said it was ‘vital’ to focus on the economy and not ‘internal debates’ in a letter accepting the resignation of Scottish Office minister David Cairns on Tuesday.

A former supporter and generous donor to Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday she had endorsed Republican John McCain for president, saying she did so because the Democratic nominee Barack Obama was too elitist.
   Even before jumping ship for the McCain campaign, Lynn Forester de Rothschild did not hide her dislike for Obama, who narrowly defeated Hillary in a months-long battle for the Democratic nomination.
   In July she told CNN: ‘Frankly I don’t like him. I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.’
   Rothschild, wife of British banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, and long-time member of the Democratic Party, gave more than 100,000 dollars to Hillary’s failed bid for the party’s nomination.
   ‘Senator Hillary disagrees with her decision,’ said Hillary spokeswoman Kathleen Strand.
   Appearing on CNN Wednesday, Rothschild backtracked somewhat to stress that she didn’t not like Obama, but ‘I said critical things about him because I don’t think he should be president in this election.’
   Rothschild said she was resigning Wednesday from the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, but that she would remain a registered Democrat.
   Former president ‘Ronald Reagan might have said it right, the Democratic Party left me, I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,’ she said.
   As Rothschild announced her defection to McCain, the Obama campaign lauded an endorsement from Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the US Supreme Court.

Sudanese aircraft bombed Darfur rebel positions on Thursday in the latest offensive in the war-torn region, rebels said, with the UN reporting wounded government troops in the area.
   Fighters from the Sudan Liberation Army have reported an upsurge in attacks in the past two weeks, with heavy battles between insurgents and government and militia forces backed by aircraft.
   Much of the reported fighting has taken place near Tawila in North Darfur state, some 50 kilometres west of the regional capital El-Fasher.
   ‘There is bombing both at Khazan Tungur and near Tawila with Antonov planes,’ Abu Bakr Kadu, a commander from the SLA-Unity faction, said from Darfur.
   All offensive flying in Darfur is banned under a 2005 UN Security Council resolution.
   Rebels on Wednesday said about 100 government vehicles packed with troops launched an attack, but were beaten back when separate SLA factions joined together in a unified force.
   ‘The bombing has continued again after Wednesday, but there are no government soldiers now,’ Kadu said, a report backed by other rebels.
   ‘The ground forces are not here now, but the Antonovs are moving across the area,’ said Ibrahim al-Hillo, a commander from the SLA faction led by Paris-based exile Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur.

The Socialist president, Evo Morales, and Bolivia’s autonomy-seeking opposition governors began negotiating Thursday to try to defuse a violent political crisis that has left at least 18 people dead.
   The talks being monitored by observers from the Organisation of American States and United Nations got under way in Cochabamba amid tight security measures with zero ceremonial pomp.
   Facilitators for the talks include the Union of South American Nations, the Roman Catholic church, European Union and the United Nations, officials sources said.
   Bolivia’s enduring political conflict blew up into deadly street violence last week as Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, struggled to assert his authority over the eastern half of his country.
   Tuesday’s deal on launching negotiations requires anti-Morales protesters to cede control of government buildings and gas pipeline installations, and sets out a return to order and an impartial inquiry into the Pando massacre, the government said.
   Rival factions agreed to avoid discussing a draft constitution, which Morales is seeking to rewrite along socialist lines, during the talks.
   The governors are also seeking for Morales to abandon land reforms and recognize their ambitions for autonomy. Dialogue froze between the two sides some eight months ago, and violence has once again flared in recent weeks in the divided country, the poorest in South America.
   Bolivia’s social and political conflict pits the impoverished indigenous majority of the Andean highlands against a more ethnically mixed and relatively prosperous eastern lowlands, where natural gas reserves are located.

Seven American soldiers were killed on Thursday when their transport helicopter crashed in southern Iraq, the deadlist such incident in the country in more than a year, the US military said.
   The CH-47 Chinook crashed about 100 kilometres west of the main southern port city of Basra as it was flying as part of four-aircraft convoy flying from Kuwait to the northern city of Balad, it said.
   ‘The seven soldiers were the only ones on board the Chinook at the time of the crash,’ the US military said in a statement.
   The crash comes just two days after US General Raymond Odierno took over as the new commander of US-led forces in Iraq from General David Petraeus.
   British military spokesman Major Paul Smyth said a British quick reaction force was despatched from Basra and a British road convoy in the vicinity was diverted to the scene of the crash.
   He said both British and US personnel were at the scene.

Zimbabwe’s leaders were to meet Thursday to chose a new government, after the president, Robert Mugabe, said the ruling party had been humiliated by a power-sharing deal with the opposition.
   Mugabe, prime minister designate Morgan Tsvangirai and opposition splinter leader Arthur Mutambara were to meet on Thursday to advance the deal, Mutambara’s spokesman Edwin Mushoriwa said.
   Mugabe told his ruling ZANU-PF central committee on Wednesday that party divisions during elections in March had cost him a winning majority in the first round of the presidential election.
   ‘One keeps asking if only we had not blundered in the harmonised election we would not be facing this humiliation,’ he said.
   But the veteran leader, in an address broadcast live on television, went on to assure his party that it remained in ‘the driving seat’ and ‘will not tolerate any nonsense from our new partners.’

Hackers broke into the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the John McCain campaign said.
   The hackers managed to infiltrate Palin’s personal Yahoo email account, and posted a number of the Alaska governor’s emails and two family photos on the internet.
   ‘This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law,’ the McCain campaign said in a statement.
   It said the matter has been turned over to authorities and asked anyone in possession of Palin’s documents to destroy them.
   A group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ claimed responsibility for the breach.
   Among the emails posted on the internet is a message sent from Palin to the vice-governor of Alaska, Sean Parnell, who is currently seeking election to Congress.
   The hacking comes at a time when Palin is suspected of using her personal email account for conducting public affairs in Alaska.