China’s demonstrated anti-satellite capability makes it critical for Washington to work with Beijing to avoid an arms race in space, a leading US think tank said on Thursday.
   The Council on Foreign Relations report, ‘China, Space Weapons, and US Security,’ urges the next US administration to update policy for ‘an era where space is a potentially far more contested domain than in the past, with few rules.’
   China’s destruction of one of its defunct weather satellites in January 2007 showed the Chinese military’s ability to attack satellites, the report said. The United States and former Soviet Union demonstrated that capability in the 1980s.
   ‘The risks inherent in space conflict, where vital US interests are at stake, suggest that preventing space conflict should be a major US security objective,’ said the report by technology and security consultant Bruce MacDonald.
   ‘The United States and China should both pursue diplomatic options to increase clarity and minimise misunderstanding on space-related matters, and reduce the chances of accidental conflict,’ it said.
   MacDonald, senior director of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, recommends a mixture of military programmes to increase defences and diplomacy with China on the space issue.
   ‘Both countries have interests in avoiding the actual use of counterspace weapons and shaping a more stable and secure space environment for themselves and other spacefaring nations,’ the report said.
   MacDonald said China’s military dependence on space remained low compared to that of the United States, whose high reliance on space presents a vulnerability the Chinese People’s Liberation Army could exploit if it chose to deploy offensive space capabilities.
   ‘The PLA envisions the possibility of conflict in space and they’re preparing for it,’ he said in Washington, adding that Chinese thinking on space warfare was not understood completely by outsiders.
   China rejected criticism of its 2007 anti-satellite test and Beijing publicly says it opposes the weaponisation of space and will not get involved in arms race in space.

Sri Lankan soldiers and sailors killed 63 Tamil Tiger rebels on a second day of fierce combat in the north of the Indian Ocean island nation, the military said on Friday.
   The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said they had repulsed an army advance, killed 25 troops and wounded 40 in Vannirakulam, the site of heavy fighting for weeks, pro-rebel web site www.tamilnet.com quoted unnamed rebel officials as saying.
   There was no independent confirmation of the casualties from Thursday’s battles, which followed one of the single bloodiest days of fighting since the military cranked up an offensive drive three months ago. At least 71 were killed on Wednesday.
   Most of Thursday’s fighting occurred near Nachikkudah, a north-western port about 300 km north of that was the site of fierce land and sea clashes that the military said killed 25 ‘Sea Tigers’ and another 17 rebels. Eighteen were wounded.
   In the same clashes, five soldiers died and 14 were wounded.
   Fighting at various points further east killed another 20 rebels, and one was killed in the far northern Jaffna Peninsula, the military said. Three soldiers were killed and two were wounded, the military said.
   Heavy battles along the Karambakulam area, just outside the rebels’ political capital of Kilinochchi, late Thursday also left at least 18 rebels wounded, the ministry said, reports AFP.
   It put government troop losses at three killed and 12 wounded. Casualty figures cannot be verified as the ministry bars independent journalists from travelling to the battle zones.
   The Tamil Tigers who have been fighting for a separate state for minority Tamils in the island’s north and east since 1972, did not comment on the military claims.
   According to a ministry toll, the LTTE has lost 6,677 fighters since January, when a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire was abandoned. The authorities say 649 government soldiers have died in the same period.
   Government forces are battling to take control of Kilinochchi for the first time in a decade, as part of their plans to dismantle the LTTE’s northern mini-state.
   The rebels, however, have warned that the large Wanni region, which includes Kilinochchi and Mullaittivu towns, could turn into a mass graveyard for government troops.

India, reeling under a spate of bombings by Islamist militants, is building a new counter-terrorism centre, as part of a revamp of its policing and intelligence apparatus to prevent future attacks.
   The move comes after criticism that the government was not doing enough to prevent attacks, and its security agencies were ill-equipped to tackle the increasingly technology-savvy militant groups.
   ‘We will put in place a dedicated mechanism for research and analysis in areas of technology and counter-terrorism,’ Madhukar Gupta, India’s top-most home ministry official said on Thursday.
   The centre will research preventive mechanisms, intelligence, vigilance and surveillance and will be the single reference point for counter-terrorism strategies.
   India’s security agencies have long been criticised for lacking a cohesive counter-terrorism plan and poor intelligence gathering and analysis.
   Bombing investigations too have followed a predictable drill: Bombs go off, police round up suspects, usually Muslims, and then the trail goes cold.
   Bombs and other attacks have hit India with such regularity that, according to the National Counter-terrorism Centre in Washington, 3,674 people have been killed between January 2004 and March 2007, a death toll second only to that in Iraq.
   There have been coordinated bomb attacks in four Indian cities in as many months this year, killing more than 150 people.
   Critics say Indian intelligence has been so ineffective that it has failed to even unravel a series of emails sent by a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen to television stations before or shortly after most attacks this year.
   The emails have ridiculed intelligence officials and dared them to stop the attacks.
   India’s police are massively understaffed and under-resourced. There is no central database of militant suspects and little time for meticulous investigations.
   Gupta said policing at the state level was also being overhauled with separate units focused on intelligence gathering and analysis. Greater surveillance through close-circuit TV cameras and beat constables were also being put in place.

President George W Bush will meet Tuesday for the first time with his new Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari as ties between the two allies strain over Afghanistan and US strikes on Islamic militants.
   Bush and Zardari, who was sworn into office on September 9 to take over from Pervez Musharraf, will meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
   The talks will come just three days before Bush meets Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and as drones apparently operated by US troops from Afghanistan almost daily strike targets in the tribal border areas of northwest Pakistan.
   The Bush administration has accused Taliban Islamic militants and al-Qaeda followers of using the unruly border areas as bases from which to direct a growing deadly insurgency in Afghanistan.
   In private, US officials say that Pakistani leaders are not doing enough to flush out the militants and help stop the insurgency which has become the administration’s main military headache.
   But strikes against Pakistani territory, the tally of civilian casualties as well as reports that the US forces even conducted a ground raid into Pakistan on September 3 have fuelled anti-American feeling in the country.
   Islamabad has already protested the strikes and Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has pledged to safeguard the country’s ‘territorial integrity.’
   The talks between Bush and Zardari ‘are expected to focus on cooperation in combating terrorism, strengthening the economy and fostering democracy in Pakistan,’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
   Zardari is the widow of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated in an attack in December as she was campaigning for the country’s parliamentary elections.
   The US administration had pushed for Bhutto’s return from exile, and had worked to put in place a power-sharing accord with Musharraf, a staunch US ally in the ‘war on terror’ since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
   But Benazir’s assassination has plunged the nuclear power into political and economic instability for the past months, and Musharraf, an army general, resigned on August 18.
   Despite rumours of past corruption, Zardari will probably get a favourable reception from the US as it bids to continue the war on terror.
   Bush told Zardari by phone after he was sworn in that he had Washington’s support in the fight against terrorism in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

North Korea has begun work to restart its nuclear reactor because the United States has failed to honour its part of an international disarmament deal, a Pyongyang official said Friday.
   ‘We are making thorough preparations to restore (nuclear facilities),’ said foreign ministry official Hyon Hak-Bong.
   ‘You may say we have already started work to restore them to their original status,’ he told reporters at the border truce village of Panmunjom before the start of talks between the two Koreas on energy aid.
   The talks went ahead despite the deadlock in the six-nation nuclear deal and uncertainty over the health of the communist state’s leader King Jong-Il.
   Kim, 66, failed to appear at a September 9 anniversary parade. South Korean officials later said he underwent brain surgery following a stroke but is recovering well.
   Hyon, chief delegate to the talks, rejected the reports about Kim’s health as malicious.
   ‘That’s sophism by evil people wanting to break up unity between the two Koreas,’ he said.
   The communist North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, began disabling its ageing reactor and other plants at Yongbyon last November as part of the pact agreed with South Korea, the US, Japan, China and Russia.
   But it announced last month it had halted work in protest at Washington’s refusal to drop it from a terrorism blacklist, as promised under the six-party deal.
   Washington says the North must first accept strict outside verification of a nuclear inventory which it handed over in June. Hyon said such demands for what he called ‘forceful inspections’ are not part of the six-party deal.
   Similar demands for a ‘robber-like inspection method’ led to war in Iraq, he said in opening remarks at the talks, adding that the US wants ‘to go anywhere at any time to collect samples and carry out examinations with measuring equipment.’
   Hyon said the North had ‘perfectly and flawlessly’ completed 90 percent of disablement work including the extraction of 4,740 spent fuel rods.
   In return for disablement, the North’s negotiating partners promised the impoverished communist state one million tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent energy assistance.
   Nearly half has so far been delivered and Hwang Joon-Kook, the chief South Korean delegate, said the rest would be sent.
   ‘We also want to make sure that the six-party process does not go backward,’ Hwang said in his own opening remarks.
   In Seoul, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said North Korea is raising obstacles to completion of the second phase of denuclearisation.
   ‘North Korea understands well that the verification is about the declaration — to verify whether it is correct and complete,’ Yu said.
   In London the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Thursday the North could put its nuclear programme back on track in less than a year.

Myanmar’s military junta has launched a series of crippling cyberspace attacks on dissident web sites on the first anniversary of major protest marches by Buddhist monks, the sites said on Friday.
   The Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based weekly journal and web site (www.irrawaddy.org) covering the former Burma, described the online assault as persistent and ‘very sophisticated’.
   In a posting on a temporary site hosted on a back-up server, it also made a direct connection between the start of the cyber-attack on Wednesday and the monk-led protests that began in Yangon on September 18 last year.
   ‘Burma’s military authorities obviously did not want any similar sentiments this year and, once again, shot down their enemies,’ Irrawaddy editor Aung Zaw said.
   There were similar outages at the Burmese-language New Era Journal and the Democratic Voice of Burma (www.dvb.no), an Olso-based news outlet that aired footage and images of the 2007 protests and the ensuing crackdown, in which at least 31 people were killed.
   Irrawaddy said Thai web host I-NET had confirmed on Wednesday its site had been under ‘distributed denial-of-service’ assault.
   In ‘denial-of-service’ attacks a website is bombarded with so much traffic it grinds to a halt.
   DVB’s Thailand bureau chief, Toe Zaw Latt, said the agency’s website was only a small part of its reporting operations, and its radio and satellite television stations, both major sources of news inside Myanmar, remained up and running. ‘They can’t block our short-wave radio and satellite signals,’ he told Reuters.
   The DVB attacks, which also started on Wednesday, appeared to come from sites in Russia and China, Toe Zaw Latt said, corroborating reports of the junta getting Internet training from Beijing and Moscow, its main diplomatic backers.

All sides need to help bolster security along the Pakistan-Afghan border, where recent US incursions have strained US-Pakistan ties, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday.
   Speaking as NATO defence ministers gathered for informal talks, he underlined the need for closer contacts between NATO and the Pakistani government, which is angry at the US military action. ‘Clearly, it is up to Pakistan to define its own security interests,’ he said in an address at a security think-tank shortly before the start of the two-day NATO talks in London.
   ‘We all need to do a better job together of monitoring and controlling the border, and we need to intensify the work of our so-called tri-partite commission,’ he said.

Peace talks by Israel and the Palestinians are at a crossroads 10 months after their leaders agreed to try to reach an accord this year and both sides need to step up their efforts to meet that goal, the United Nations’ Mideast envoy said Thursday.
   ‘While there are some positive developments, there are also several factors that cause concern,’ Robert Serry told the UN Security Council. ‘The important period ahead must see decisive advances towards peace.’
   Despite continuing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, he said, ‘it appears so far that no agreement has been reached on the core issues.’
   ‘However, it also appears that there have been substantive discussions, the potential of which must be built on with a continuation of intensive negotiations,’ Serry added.

New Thai prime minister Somchai Wongsawat said on Friday he had opened a dialogue with protesters who have been occupying his official compound for three weeks, in a bid to end a campaign that has alarmed investors.
   Somchai, a brother-in-law of ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, declined to discuss details of what he had said to leaders of the anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy, but said he was optimistic there would be positive results.
   ‘We all are Thais and we should not hate each other for ever. Our differences on ideas can be ironed out through dialogue,’ Somchai told reporters.
   A four-month street campaign against the government has hurt confidence in the economy and damaged tourism.
   Parliament elected Somchai, a 61-year-old former judge and government bureaucrat, as prime minister on Wednesday to replace Samak Sundaravej, who had to step down last week after being found guilty of a conflict of interest.

Malaysia’s prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Thursday rejected opposition demands to recall parliament for a confidence vote, prolonging his grip on power but also a deeply uncertain political environment.
   Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had called for parliament to be convened by next Tuesday in the hope of ousting Abdullah which would then allow him to form a new government.
   Abdullah, who is fighting for his political life after the government that has ruled the country for over 50 years suffered its worst ever election result in March, rebuffed the call to bring parliament back before the end of a recess in mid-October.
   Anwar insisted at a press conference earlier that he had won over sufficient MPs from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition so as to form a new government, but declined to provide names or numbers, saying that would place them at risk.

The west must stand up to ‘bullying’ by Moscow, which is becoming increasingly authoritarian and aggressive, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said in a speech highly critical of Russia on Thursday.
   In her first major address on Russia since its incursion into Georgia last month, Rice said Moscow had taken a ‘dark turn’ that left its global standing worse than at any time since 1991, when it emerged from the fall of the Soviet Union.
   Rice, a former Soviet expert who has presided over a steady deterioration of relations with Russia, said Moscow’s invasion of Georgia was part of a pattern that included its use of oil and natural gas as a political weapon, the suspension of a treaty on conventional forces in Europe and a threat to target peaceful nations with nuclear weapons.
   ‘The picture emerging from this pattern of behaviour is that of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad,’ Rice said in the speech to the German Marshall Fund.
   The United States and Europe must not allow Russian actions in Georgia to achieve any benefit, she said. ‘Not in Georgia. Not anywhere,’ she said.
    ‘Our strategic goal now is to make it clear to Russia’s leaders that their choices are putting Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance.’ Moscow was internationally condemned for sending troops to Georgia to stop Tbilisi’s attempt to reassert control over the pro-Russian, separatist region of South Ossetia.
   Moscow later recognised South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states, and on Wednesday signed treaties to protect them from Georgian attack.
   The Kremlin said it had a moral duty to defend the regions against what it called ‘genocide’ by Georgia’s military.
   But some political analysts have said Russia’s actions heighten the risk of Moscow attempting to exert more influence over other former Soviet territories, particularly Ukraine.
   Rice rejected a Russian ‘sphere of influence’ over its neighbours and hoped Russia leaders would ‘overcome their nostalgia for another time.’
    ‘We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some Russian leaders seem to have: that if you pressure free nations enough — if you bully, and threaten, and lash out — we will cave in, and forget, and eventually concede,’ Rice said.
    ‘The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behaviour, and all who champion it.’
   She also scoffed at Moscow’s recent dispatch of ‘Blackjack’ bombers to US foe Venezuela.
   Rice said Russia’s behaviour threatened its participation in a number of global diplomatic, economic and security bodies, including the Group of Eight industrialised nations, and jeopardised Moscow’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation and the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development.
   But she said Washington would continue to pursue areas of common concern with Russia, from denuclearizing the Korean peninsula to stopping Iran’s rulers from acquiring nuclear weapons and combating terrorism, underscoring Washington’s need for Moscow to play a role in international negotiations.
   Rice, who called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to tell him she was giving the speech, said the door remained open for Georgia and Ukraine to eventually join the NATO alliance.

Venezuela expelled two Human Rights Watch representatives late Thursday, hours after the US-based group released a report accusing President Hugo Chavez of weakening democracy and the rule of law.
   The foreign ministry ordered the expulsion of Jose Miguel Vivanco, the group’s director of the Americas, and his deputy Daniel Wilkinson, co-editor and co-author of a 230-page report entitled ‘A Decade Under Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela.’
   Vivanco ‘has violated the constitution and the laws’ of Venezuela, ‘attacked Venezuela’s democratic institutions and illegally interfered in the country’s internal affairs,’ the ministry said in a statement.
   Venezuela should ‘have its national sovereignty respected’ in the face of aggression from ‘agencies of the government of the United States of America, which under the cloak of human rights deploy an aggressive strategy that is unacceptable to our people.’
   In a statement on state-run television, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said that Vivanco, who holds a Chilean passport, had left the country. It was not immediately clear whether Wilkinson had left.
   The expulsion ‘is a clear message to whoever intends to come here and plot from within,’ Maduro said.
   Chavez is a firebrand whose antipathy towards the United States and its President George W. Bush is often on display.
   The Human Rights Watch report described Chavez as a leader who failed to live up to his promise as a reformer and engaged in ‘discrimination against political opponents and critics.’
    ‘Ten years ago, Chavez promoted a new constitution that could have significantly improved human rights in Venezuela,’ it said.

The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, on Friday rejected the prospect of a new Cold War with the West and said Russia wanted further integration into the world economy.
    ‘We favour ... rational integration into the world economy and we see any attempts at throwing us back to the times of the Cold War as a direct threat to our modernisation project,’ Putin told investors at a forum in southern Russia.
   ‘We are interested in attracting more foreign investment. Although of course we want a mutual approach — a readiness by our foreign partners to accept investors from Russia,’ Putin said.
   Putin also defended the Russian economy amid volatility on its stock market.
   Russia ‘now has a completely different level of development of its economy and its financial system, a different, qualitatively higher level of stability for both the state and the national business community,’ he said.
   ‘We have seriously raised the effectiveness of our financial institutions, we have cleaned the market of problematic credit organisations. We have experience in quick reaction to the situation by financial authorities.’
   The Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Yakovenko said on Friday there was no possibility of a war with the United States and the European Union should guarantee security in Georgia.
   ‘Regarding the possibility of war between the United States and Russia, this possibility is ruled out,’ Yakovenko told reporters in Moscow.
   ‘We hope that the European Union will guarantee security’ in Georgia.
   Yakovenko also criticised the United States for acting in ‘bad faith’ by not granting visas to representatives of the disputed Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — the scenes of a military conflict last month.
    ‘The US has been blocking the issuing of visas. We consider this bad faith in carrying out its obligations as a government that undertakes to organise the United Nations. We think visas... must be given,’ Yakovenko said.
   Russia recognised the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the war in Georgia. No other country except Nicaragua recognises the territories, which broke away from the rest of Georgia with Russian support in the 1990s.
   The Russian minister also said that the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, the main guarantor of a ceasefire in Abkhazia, should have its name and mandate changed or move out of the disputed territory.
    ‘It’s logical to move it to the territory of Georgia, since the main threat to stability comes from there,’ Yakovenko said, referring to UNOMIG which has headquarters in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and separatist Abkhazia.

Anti-Semitism has risen in Europe and attitudes towards Muslims have become more negative in recent years, according to a US think-tank study released here.
   Anti-Jewish sentiment was up in six European countries surveyed for the Washington-based Pew Research Centre’s 2008 Global Attitudes Project. Of those, Spain was found to be the least tolerant toward Jews and Muslims.
   More than a third of Poles and Russians were anti-Semitic, as were one in four Germans and one in five French.
   Britain stood out as the only European country where there has not been a substantial rise in anti-Semitism.
   Only nine per cent of Britons saying they viewed Jews unfavourably, largely unchanged from recent years, according to Pew.
   In all the other European countries surveyed, anti-Semitism was up, with the rise ‘particularly dramatic in Spain, where unfavourable views have more than doubled over the last three years, rising from 21 per cent in 2005 to 46 per cent in the current survey,’ Pew said in the report.
   ‘Negative attitudes toward Jews are more common among older and less educated Western Europeans, and much of the rise in negative views over the last few years has taken place among these two groups,’ the report said.
   Europeans held an even worse opinion of Muslims than they did of Jews, the study showed.
   Fifty-two per cent of Spaniards, half of Germans, 46 per cent of Poles and nearly four in 10 French viewed Muslims unfavourably.
   Slightly fewer than one third of Russians and around a quarter of Britons expressed anti-Muslim feelings.

Russia said Thursday it had test-fired a new-generation strategic missile from a submarine, the latest launch of a multiple-warhead weapon designed to breach anti-missile shields.
   ‘A new-generation Bulava ballistic missile was successfully fired from the White Sea to the Kura testing site in Kamchatka’ in Russia’s far east, the Russian navy said in a statement.
   The Bulava, which the statement said was fired by the Dmitry Donskoi nuclear submarine off the northwest coast of Russia, can be equipped with up to 10 individually targeted nuclear warheads.
   The test comes amid Russian anger at US plans to locate a powerful missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic as well interceptor missiles in Poland to combat what it says are threats to global security.
   Analysts say Russia has moved to upgrade its missile systems to counter the US shield, which Moscow sees as an attempt to undermine its nuclear deterrent. Washington insists the shield is far too small to defend against Russia and is meant to protect against ‘rogue states’ like Iran.
   ‘At 7:05pm (1505 GMT) the test warheads hit their targets,’ a defence ministry official said, quoted by state news agency RIA Novosti.

A non-profit Internet rights group on Thursday filed a lawsuit against president George W Bush and others in his administration for the ‘massively illegal’ surveillance of emails and telephone calls without court warrants.
   The suit was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which took the administration to task for what it argued is ‘illegal surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans.’
   EFF lawyers filed a suit against AT&T in 2006 charging the US telecoms giant had opened up its network to National Security Agency agents without proper court-approved warrants.
   This year Congress passed legislation granting US telecommunications firms immunity from domestic spying lawsuits.
   Wrangling about the constitutionality of that act has stalled the AT&T lawsuit as well as a slew of similar litigation aimed at other telecommunications firms.
   EFF lawyers said Thursday the new lawsuit is aimed squarely at government officials, thereby sidestepping the immunity act.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday he was ready to debate the men running for US president when he visits New York for the UN General Assembly, and dismissed Western threats of more sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear drive.
   The outspoken president, who caused a storm of controversy during a visit last year, said: ‘I am ready for a debate with the US presidential candidates over global issues in the presence of the media at the UN headquarters.
   ‘I have no plans in my schedule to meet with US politicians,’ he told a press conference.
   ‘Last year, I said I was ready to meet with (president George W) Bush. But now he is at the end of his term and (a meeting) will not impact our relations and future.’
   The campaign of Republican candidate John McCain has castigated Democrat rival Barack Obama for offering to negotiate with the leaders of US foes like Iran and Syria if he is elected, and has adopted a hawkish foreign policy.
   Obama has said UN sanctions and diplomacy over Tehran’s nuclear programme must be made to bite.
   Turning to that key point of tension between the two countries, Ahmadinejad said Iran has no fear of threatened new international sanctions over its refusal to halt controversial nuclear work.

Ex-president Bill Clinton Thursday cast an approving eye at Sarah Palin’s political skills, but would not be drawn on whether his wife Hillary could run for the White House in 2012.
   Clinton, acclaimed even by his enemies as one of the most consummate American politicians in recent history, said he did not agree with Republican vice presidential pick Palin on politics, but warned fellow Democrats not to underestimate her.
   ‘She’s an instinctively effective candidate and with a compelling story,’ Clinton said in an interview with CNBC.
   ‘I think it was exciting to some that she was a woman,’ said Clinton.
   ‘I think she, I get why she’s done so well. It’s a mistake to underestimate her. She’s got good intuitive skills. They’re significant.’
   Clinton said he thought McCain, a Vietnam war hero and veteran lawmaker, was a ‘great man’ and that the election on November 4 would be close, but he predicted Democrat Barack Obama would emerge triumphant.
   But if McCain should win, would Hillary Clinton, who narrowly failed to capture the Democratic presidential nomination this time around, challenge the Arizona senator in 2012?
   ‘I don’t know,’ Clinton said.’