Toting rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs, the bearded tribesmen say they back the Pakistani government — yet pledge they will fight to the death against US incursions on their soil.
   The Pakistani military took reporters to the Pashtun tribal fighters in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan in a bid to show they have the support of locals for a month-long operation in the area, an al-Qaeda and Taliban hotspot.
   But there was also a strong message for US forces over the border, who have caused anger in Pakistan with a string of alleged territorial violations, including a raid by US ground troops on September 3 that left 15 people dead.
   ‘We will fight against America until the last soul if they come to our country,’ said Malik Manasib Khan, the leader of a ‘lashkar’, or tribal force, called up to help Pakistan’s army expel the militants — and anyone else.
   ‘For us, the Taliban, NATO and the United States are all equals,’ the burly tribal chief told journalists in the bazaar at Raghagan, about 12 kilometres northeast of Khar, the main town in Bajaur region.
   Fiercely independent, religiously conservative and obsessed by revenge, the tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border have repelled all invaders for centuries and still hold the key to stability in the region.
   When thousands of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the tribes sheltered them, viewing them as successors of the ‘mujahedeen’ who fought the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
   In 2003, Islamabad launched army operations at Washington’s behest in the tribal belt, especially the notorious Waziristan area, but civilian deaths helped to radicalise and fire up many more tribesmen against the government.
   Pakistani authorities have in recent years made major efforts to win the support of leading tribesmen in a bid to drive out foreign al-Qaeda militants and isolate the most hardcore Taliban commanders.
   Yet that policy — combined with US and Afghan suspicions that elements in Pakistan’s intelligence agencies still back the Taliban — has caused tensions with Washington, which wants Islamabad to launch an all-out offensive.
   Pakistan complied and in August launched a military push in Bajaur, the smallest but increasingly the most dangerous of the country’s seven tribal regions. The army said Friday the operation had left 1,000 militants dead.
   But the deaths of 11 Pakistani soldiers in a US air strike in June, a series of missile strikes and, on Thursday, an exchange of gunfire after Pakistani troops fired at US helicopters, have raised tensions to boiling point.

The Myanmar police kept guard outside the headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party Saturday as it marked its 20th anniversary, joined by the regime’s longest-held prisoner.
   Plain clothes officers took pictures of people arriving for the ceremony, attended by some 200 members of the National League of Democracy as well as Western diplomats.
   Tight security surrounded 79-year-old Win Tin, who was only released on Tuesday after spending 19 years in jail for acting as an adviser to Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
   ‘While I was in prison I always kept three main things in mind — to support the NLD, to support the People’s Parliament and to support the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. That is how I survived,’ Win Tin said at the event.
   The NLD called for the release of its leader, who has spent most of the last two decades imprisoned in her lakeside home.
   Shortly before the ceremony, a small group of NLD members shouted, ‘May Daw Aung San Suu Kyi be free. May all political prisoners be free,’ as they released sparrows into the air as a symbol of freedom.
   The NLD also issued a statement calling for the ruling junta to release all political prisoners, reopen NLD offices and convene a People’s Parliament.

The US House of Representatives on Saturday postponed the formal vote on the approval legislation for the US-India civilian nuclear agreement following a 40-minute debate.
   House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, a known opponent of the deal, supported the Senate version of the Bill saying the deal is a positive step as it will bring India into the non-proliferation regime.
   Fellow Democrat Edward Markey, who lead the charge on behalf of those opposed to the Bill, insisted on a recorded vote at the end of the debate following which the voting was postponed and it is now expected to be taken up Sunday.
   ‘I’m a strong advocate of closer US-India ties, including peaceful nuclear cooperation. I voted for the Hyde act which established a framework for such cooperation. The bill before us today will approve the US-India agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation,’ Burman said.
   ‘Integrating India into a global nonproliferation regime is a positive step,’ he said, adding Bush Administration has assured him they will push for an NSG decision prohibiting the export of enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to states that are not party to Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   Fellow Democrat Ellen Tauscher, however, disagreed maintaining that the Bill flies in the face of decades of American leadership to contain the spread of the weapons of mass destruction.

Former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said on Saturday he would contest the leadership of Malaysia’s ruling party, criticising a planned transition of power as ‘extra constitutional.’
   The United Malays National Organisation, the biggest party in the coalition that has ruled Malaysia for 51 years, agreed on Friday to delay to March from December a leadership vote that could have seen the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, defeated.
   The move is likely to accelerate Abdullah’s departure from office, although he declined to say whether he would quit on that date or run in the party poll.
   The premier had already said he would quit before the next election, which must be held by 2013, saying he would cede power to his deputy Najib Razak in 2010.
   ‘I reject the transfer of power and transition plan, simply because it is extra constitutional,’ Tengku Razaleigh told a news conference.
   He said he was hoping to contest the election for UMNO presidency by getting the required nominations. ‘I am going out determined to get the nominations required,’ he said.

Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain landed a knockout blow in their first presidential debate late Friday, but the youthful Democrat may have just scored a points victory by standing his own.
   Each campaign trumpeted favourable reviews from the instant punditry of television talking heads as Republican McCain played his strong suit of national security and Democrat Obama hammered his theme of the economy.
   But independent analysts said that on balance, Obama may have nosed ahead by crossing the most important threshold for voters only just tuning in to the marathon campaign — looking presidential.
   Indiana University political scientist Marjorie Hershey was reminded of the 1980 election between an enfeebled Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, and his less experienced Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.
   ‘A lot of Americans in 1980 were very tired of the Carter administration but did not know Ronald Reagan well enough to feel confident that he could take over as president,’ she said.
   ‘By his debate performance, a lot of viewers apparently felt persuaded that Reagan was sufficiently presidential that he could function at that level.
   ‘My suspicion is that that may have happened tonight with a lot of people who are sick of the president, George W Bush, administration but were just not sure about Obama’s credentials.’
   Commentators said Obama, 47, held his own on national security against his more experienced rival McCain, 72, and scored with repeated upper-cuts that portrayed the Iraq war as the defining failure of Republican foreign policy.
   McCain in turn parried with reminders of his younger Democratic challenger’s novelty on the national scene, at one point attacking Obama’s ‘naivete’ and insisting he himself did not need ‘on-the-job training.’
   But Obama, again and again, tapped into deep-seated unhappiness with Bush’s record to make McCain look guilty by association.

A car bomb exploded near a Shia shrine in southern Damascus on Saturday, killing 17 people and wounding 14 others in one of the deadliest attacks to hit Syria in a dozen years, state media said.
   The car packed with 200 kilos of explosives blew up near a security checkpoint on a road to Damascus airport in what interior minister General Bassam Abdel Majid told state television was ‘a terrorist act.’
   All the casualties were civilians, he said.
   ‘A counter-terrorist unit is trying to track down the perpetrators... We can’t point the finger at any party.’
   The rare attack in a country known for its iron-fisted security came during the morning rush-hour in the teeming neighbourhood of Sayeda Zeinab, the state-run SANA news agency said, quoting a Syrian official.
   The district is popular among Shia pilgrims from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq who pray at the tomb of Zeinab, daughter of the Shia martyr Ali and granddaughter of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.
   More than two million people reportedly visit the shrine each year. Witnesses told state television the bomb could have claimed more victims if it had gone off a day later.
   ‘It felt like an earthquake. The force of the explosion threw me out of bed,’ said one man who lives nearby.
   ‘Thank God this was Saturday. The catastrophe would have been bigger if the attack had taken place on Sunday when schools were open.’
   Another man said that the blast was heard some 10 kilometres away in the northern suburbs of Duma and Harasta.

Iran said on Saturday a draft UN resolution over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme was not constructive and could indicate divisions between world powers, state television reported.
   Six world powers handed the UN Security Council the draft on Friday after the United States, facing stiff Russian opposition, failed to secure agreement for new penalties over work the West believes is aimed at building atomic bombs.
   The Council has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran since 2006 for failing to heed a call to halt sensitive nuclear work, that Tehran insists is peaceful. Russia and China backed all three sets but only after watering down the sanctions. ‘These (resolutions) are not constructive,’ Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said.
   ‘What they need to do is to attract the trust of the Iranian nation through constructive cooperation and collective commitment.’ He also said the draft either showed world powers had failed to come up with a ‘logical response’ to Iran over its nuclear work ‘or they have lost internal cohesion as they have acknowledged themselves, and through this action they want to show there is actually cohesion.’

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, pledged on Friday to pursue peace efforts with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s successor but warned of a new cycle of violence if the fragile peace process collapsed.
   Abbas painted a cautious and at times bleak picture of Middle East peace efforts during a visit to the United Nations, casting further doubt on US president George W Bush’s target of securing a peace deal before he leaves office in January.
   Speaking at the Security Council, Abbas and other Arab leaders denounced Israeli settlement expansion, saying it was jeopardising talks relaunched last November at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted by Bush.
   The Arab League secretary-general, Amr Moussa, said Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank made the prospects for a two-state solution ‘very difficult, if not impossible.’

Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader and designated prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Saturday it was ‘urgent’ the country form a new government to insure food supplies and prevent starvation.
   ‘We need to respond to this crisis with utmost urgency. It is therefore imperative that a government be formed in the next few days and begins to implement plans to insure that our people have food and do not die of starvation,’ Tsvangirai said at a press conference in Harare.
   The leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change said the food security situation needed urgent attention as there would be ‘disastrous consequences if we take too long to attend to the crisis.’
   The 84-year-old president Robert Mugabe, in power for nearly three decades, signed an historic accord on September 15 with the opposition that allows him to remain as head of state while Tsvangirai takes up the new post of prime minister.
   But the deal so far exists only on paper as efforts to form a unity government have been blocked by disputes over choosing the heads of the main ministries.