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Gordon Brown stressed his determination to stay on as Britain’s prime minister and lead his Labour Party into the next general election, in an interview published Sunday.
   Despite a raging expenses scandal, plummeting ratings and new attacks from disgruntled ministers, Brown predicted he would defy the opinion polls and steer Labour to victory in the vote which must be held within a year.
   ‘It is because of my purpose in politics that I am determined to lead Labour to the next general election. We must and we will win,’ he told the News of the World, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper.
   His de facto deputy, Peter Mandelson, has predicted that sniping over Brown’s leadership may resurface at the party’s annual conference in September.
   Media reports said Brown already faced new attacks from cabinet members. The Sunday Times said senior ministers had questioned Brown’s tactics for taking on the opposition Conservative Party at the next election.
   Brown insisted that Labour should fight the election on a platform of more public spending, while the Conservatives have said spending must be drastically cut because of the economic crisis. The Conservatives have a convincing lead in opinion polls.
   With a parliamentary expenses scandal still dominating headlines, Brown warned lawmakers they should spend their 13-week summer break rebuilding the trust of the electorate.
   ‘It has never been the trapping of power I care about but what we can do in power to help hard-pressed families,’ he said.
   ‘When people talk about the summer I think MPs will be wanting to be in their constituencies for a lot of time, talking to people.’
   Brown admitted he would only be able to restore public faith in his government if he ‘moves quickly’ and by ‘doing the right thing’.
   His authority has been shaken by the resignation of several ministers — some accompanied by sharp personal attacks — the expenses scandal and a drubbing for Labour in European Parliament and English local elections this month.
   The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said it understood that Brown was now trying to project a more human image in a bid to ‘reconnect’ with voters.
   He is to appear in a religious television programme this week as part of the campaign, it reported.
   Brown gave an unusually personal interview to The Guardian newspaper, published Saturday, in which he admitted he had been hurt by criticism aimed at him and said he could easily ‘walk away from all of this tomorrow’.
   ‘I’m not interested in what accompanies being in power. It wouldn’t worry me if I never returned to any of those places — Downing Street, Chequers. That would not worry me at all. And it would probably be good for my children.’
   One of Brown’s ministers, Northern Ireland secretary Shaun Woodward, said the prime minister would soon set out new strategies to tackle the twin challenges of the recession and the expenses scandal.
   Woodward told Sky News: ‘What we have at the moment is a major confidence crisis in trust in our institutions in this country.

The Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has refused to back down after reopening a debate over an ancient temple on the disputed border with Cambodia which has provoked bloody clashes.
   Bangkok this week asked world heritage body UNESCO to reconsider its decision to formally list the 11th century Preah Vihear temple in Cambodia, as ownership of land surrounding the ruins is still in dispute.
   Cambodia on Saturday rebuked Thailand for raising the matter, saying that its soldiers would defend their land again if necessary following outbreaks of violence in the past year which have left seven dead.
   But Abhisit — who made a one-day visit to Cambodia last week in an attempt to push forward border talks — said the UNESCO move itself was to blame for the tensions.
   ‘We are concerned that the moves by UNESCO may speed up conflicts, tensions or a border clash,’ the Oxford-educated Abhisit said on his weekend television programme.
   He said Thai deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban would soon travel to Cambodia to explain Thailand’s position, but said that Bangkok still believed all border issues should be solved by peaceful measures.
   Cambodia and Thailand have been at loggerheads over the land around the Preah Vihear temple for decades, but tensions spilled over into violence last July when the temple was granted UN World Heritage status.
   Although the World Court ruled in 1962 that it belonged to Cambodia, the most accessible entrance to the ancient Khmer temple with its crumbling stone staircases and elegant carvings is in northeastern Thailand.
   Soldiers from Cambodia and Thailand continue to patrol the area, with the last gunbattle in the temple area in April leaving three people dead.
   The Cambodian foreign minister, Hor Namhong, said in Phnom Penh on Saturday that his country ‘welcomes Thailand militarily, diplomatically, internationally or through peaceful negotiations.’

Australia’s treasurer Wayne Swan has dismissed calls for his resignation over allegations he abused his power, as the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, demanded the opposition produce proof to back its claims.
   Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has accused Swan of improperly using his position to try to secure a government loan for a car dealer friend of the prime minister then misleading parliament about his actions.
   Turnbull has called for Swan’s immediate resignation over an affair that has snowballed into the worst scandal to hit Rudd’s centre-left Labor government since it was elected just over 18 months ago.
   But Swan has accused Turnbull of peddling ‘baseless allegations’ and scoffed at suggestions his future was on the line and he may be forced to resign.
   ‘I regard that... as completely ridiculous, even absurd,’ he told Nine Network television.
   Rudd, who has also faced calls to quit from Turnbull, leapt to his treasurer’s defence, saying the opposition leader must either produce solid evidence before parliament resumes sitting Monday or tender his own resignation.
   Rudd challenged Turnbull to supply an email central to the allegations. It was purportedly sent from the prime minister’s office to a treasury official and sought favourable treatment for the car dealer, John Grant.
   ‘Turnbull therefore has the clock ticking in providing to the parliament for authentication the email upon which his entire case against myself, the treasurer and the government is based,’ Rudd told reporters.
   ‘Turnbull and the Liberals have been boasting for a long time now that they are in possession of this information. Well the time has come to produce this information to the parliament for authentication.’
   A senior treasury official told a parliamentary committee Friday he thought he had received the email from Rudd’s office asking him to look into funding for Grant, but could not be sure.
   The government contends the email does not exist and Rudd on Saturday called in police to investigate whether someone had faked the document in an attempt to discredit his government.
   Rudd has also ordered the auditor general to investigate any communications between his office and the treasury over Grant’s loan application.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday reminded Western countries of their ‘duty’ to welcome refugees, despite the economic and social problems of assimilating them into society.
   Addressing thousands of pilgrims at the popular shrine to a Catholic mystic in southern Italy, the pope called for prayers for the ‘difficult and often dramatic’ plight of refugees.
   ‘Many are those who seek refuge in other countries, fleeing war, persecution and natural disasters, and while accepting them poses many problems, it is however a duty,’ said Benedict, speaking in Puglia at the shrine to Padre Pio, one of Italy’s most popular saints.
   The pope’s comments come as Italy enforces tougher legislation to block foreign migrants from entering the country.
   Rome and Tripoli recently implemented a controversial new policy which allows the Italian navy to intercept illegal migrants at sea and return them to Libya, from where they set off for Europe.
   Rome’s agreement with Tripoli to repatriate the migrants, many from sub-Saharan Africa, has been sharply criticised by rights groups including the UN High Commissioner for Refu-gees, as well as the Vatican, on grounds that genuine asylum seekers may be among them.

The Zimbabwean prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, was booed and shouted down by exiles during a speech in London on Saturday when he pleaded with them to return home to help rebuild the shattered country.
   Tsvangirai told a stormy audience of 1,000 people in Southwark Cathedral that ‘Zimbabweans must come home’ — but they said that 85-year-old president Robert Mugabe must quit first.
   Failing to make himself heard above the boos and chants of ‘Mugabe must go’, Tsvangirai left the pulpit for two minutes before returning to face questions.
   He said, ‘I did not say ‘pack your bags tomorrow,’ I said ‘you should now start thinking about coming home’.’
   Boos also rang out when Tsvangirai insisted that the four-month-old unity government of his Movement for Democratic Change and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF had ‘made sure that there is peace and stability in Zimbabwe’.
   Many people shouted ‘not yet’. In a question and answer session, some exiles asked Tsvangirai what the government was doing to help Zimbabweans who had been ‘traumatised’ by violence.
   He replied: ‘If there is anyone who has been traumatised, it is me.’
   After briefly answering several more questions, a shaken-looking Tsvangirai was ushered away by his bodyguards amid a fresh hail of boos.
   One exile in the crowd, Alex Chigumira, 42, who fled Zimbabwe eight years ago, said: ‘We can already see that Tsvangirai has adopted the politics of Mugabe. ‘He is unrealistic. What he forgets is that people here are traumatised, that is why they are in Britain.
   ‘I do not think I would return to my country while Mugabe is still in power.’

A New York Times reporter has escaped from his Taliban captors after being held for seven months in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the newspaper reported on its web site on Saturday.
   David Rohde, together with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were abducted on November 10 outside Kabul.
   The newspaper, quoting Rohde’s wife Kristen Mulvihill, said Rohde and Ludin late Friday climbed over a wall of the compound where they were being held in North Waziristan in Pakistan. Mangal did not escape with them, it said.
   The two men found a Pakistani army scout who took them to an army base and on Saturday they were flown to the US Bagram military base in Afghanistan, it said.

North Korea has accused the US president, Barack Obama, of plotting a nuclear war on the communist nation by reaffirming a US assurance of security for South Korea, the North’s state media said.
   In a first official response to last week’s US-South Korean summit, the state-run weekly Tongil Sinbo said in its Saturday edition Obama and the South Korean president, Lee Myung-Bak, ‘are trying to ignite a nuclear war.’
   ‘The US-touted provision of ‘extended deterrence, including a nuclear umbrella’ (for South Korea) is nothing but ‘a nuclear war plan,’ Tongil Sinbo said.
   It said it wasn’t a coincidence that the United States has brought ‘nuclear equipment into South Korea and its surroundings and staged massive war drills every day to look for a chance to invade North Korea.’
   Pyongyang has created weeks of tension by conducting a second nuclear test and test-firing missiles.
   At a summit with Lee in Washington Wednesday, Obama warned that North Korea is a ‘grave threat’ and vowed to defend South Korea.
   A Seoul presidential official told Yonhap news agency Lee would seek a written US commitment to provide a nuclear ‘umbrella’ for Seoul as part of ‘extended deterrence’ against Pyongyang.
   North Korea detonated its second nuclear device on May 25, following the first one in 2006. It also went ahead with what Washington said was a disguised test of a long-range missile in April.
   The United Nations Security Council in response agreed to tighter cargo inspections, a stricter arms embargo and new targeted financial curbs to choke off revenue for the North’s nuclear and missile sectors.
   In response Pyongyang has vowed to build more nuclear bombs and start enriching uranium for a new atomic weapons programme.
   Some analysts say the sabre-rattling is part of an attempt by 67-year-old ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, to bolster a succession plan involving his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un.

The US president, Barack Obama, said in an interview Sunday he was confident Pakistan can ‘isolate extremists’ and that the United States had no plans to send troops to the insurgency-hit country.
   ‘I have confidence in the Pakistani people and the Pakistani state in resolving differences through a democratic process and to isolate extremists,’ Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday by private Dawn News television.
   Worsening Taliban-linked attacks have killed nearly 2,000 people in Pakistan since July 2007.
   Pakistani security forces launched an offensive to dislodge Taliban guerrillas from three northwest districts around Swat valley in late April, after militants flouted a peace deal and thrust towards the capital Islamabad.
   The US administration, which has put nuclear-armed Pakistan at the heart of its strategy to battle al-Qaeda, has welcomed the Swat offensive.
   Obama said that the United States would support the Pakistani government and military in its anti-militant efforts.
   ‘There’s been a decision that’s made that we support, that the Pakistani military and the Pakistani government will not stand by idly as extremists attempt to disrupt the country.’ However, Obama said that the United States had no plans to send its troops to Pakistan.
   ‘I will tell you that we have no intention of sending US troops into Pakistan. Pakistan and its military are dealing with their security issues,’ he said when asked about US missile strikes into Pakistani tribal areas.
   Missile attacks by unmanned drone aircraft used by US armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are a source of tension between Washington and Islamabad.
   Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace. Since August 2008, more than 40 such strikes have killed nearly 400 people.
   
   14 Taliban killed in
   northwest Pakistan
   At least 14 Taliban militants were killed in separate battles with local vigilantes and Pakistani troops in the northwest of the country, the police and military said on Sunday.
   A group of rebels fleeing towards northwestern Chitral district was intercepted by local vigilantes in the village of Patrak in Upper Dir district after which intense gunfight broke out, police chief Ejaz Ahmed said.
   ‘Seven militants were killed in the fighting,’ he said, adding that the police had blocked possible escape routes out of the area to try and catch the fleeing insurgents.

At least 11 special police personnel were killed and 10 injured in a landmine blast triggered overnight by suspected Maoist rebels in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, the police said Sunday.
   The attack took place late Saturday when a Central Reserve Police Force team was patrolling the Pushpal Road area, 500 kilometres from the state capital Raipur and a hotbed of rebel activity.
   TG Landkumer, a senior police officer in the state, said the CRPF men had gone to the area to investigate reports that suspected Maoists had blown up some vehicles ferrying workers engaged in road construction.
   ‘The men were on their way back when their vehicle ran over a landmine,’ Landkumer said.
   The killings came amid efforts by Indian security forces to quell a Maoist-led uprising in the eastern state of West Bengal, where security forces are battling to retake control of hundreds of villages.
   The Indian home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said the situation in the Lalgarh area, 130 kilometres from West Bengal’s state capital Kolkata, was ‘sensitive and continues to be tense’.
   ‘Security forces must carry on their work without distraction. Hence, I appeal to all citizens ... not to go to the conflict area,’ he said.
   In Kolkata, senior state police officer Raj Kanojia said security personnel were still trying to evict the rebels from an area of more than 1,000 square kilometres.
   ‘The Lalgarh police station, captured on Saturday, will be used as base camp to fight the Maoists. It’s a long term operation,’ he said.
   India’s Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers.

Residents of the town hit by Iraq’s bloodiest attack in 16 months were searched for their loved ones on Sunday after a massive truck bombing killed 72 people and destroyed dozens of houses.
   Saturday’s attack in the predominantly Shia Turkmen town of Taza near Kirkuk in northern Iraq was the latest bloody bombing in the runup to the planned pullout of US troops from Iraqi towns and cities.
   ‘The toll from the explosion yesterday in Taza is 72 dead,’ said Sarhad Qadir, the top policeman for outskirts, who added that more than 200 people had been injured.
   Ibrahim Mohammed Jassim, a doctor at Kirkuk’s morgue, confirmed the death toll but added: ‘It is likely that the toll will increase because search operations have not yet concluded.’
   The suicide attack, which left a deep crater in the ground, has been blamed on al-Qaeda.
   ‘Taza was struck by an attack that destroyed our families, our lives, our homes,’ said 58-year-old local resident Majid Shaker. ‘This is the true face of terrorism! Attacking innocents in their homes!’
   Iraqi emergency workers and US soldiers helped local residents sift through the rubble in a bid to find survivors of about 80 destroyed houses, with fears that people could still be trapped beneath the collapsed buildings.
   The International Committee of the Red Cross sent a tonne of medical equipment to Kirkuk hospital, according to Dibeh Fakhr, spokeswoman for the ICRC in Iraq.
   ‘Most of the victims were children, the elderly, or women who all represent easy targets for terrorists,’ provincial governor Abdel Rahman Mustafa said. ‘They want to plant the seeds of sectarian division among the Iraqi people.’
   Saturday’s attack was the bloodiest since two mentally impaired women were used by al-Qaeda as unwitting bombers in Baghdad pet markets on February 1, 2008, in twin attacks that killed 98 people.

The Dalai Lama has encouraged Tibetans in exile to embrace the democratic system of electing a leader, saying it was essential to keep step with the larger world and to ensure the continuity of their government.
   In a video clip shown to hundreds of monks, nuns and lay people in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala late on Saturday, the 73-year-old also said it was no longer essential to thrust spiritual and political leadership on one person.
   ‘The Dalai Lamas held temporal and spiritual leadership over the last 400-500 years. It may have been quite useful. But that period is over,’ the Nobel Prize winner said in the clip, according to a translated transcript.
   ‘Today, it is clear to the whole world that democracy is the best system despite its minor negativities. That is why it is important that Tibetans also move with the larger world community,’ he said.
   The Dalai Lama has suggested before it is up to Tibetans whether they continue with the spiritual institution after he dies, and could order an election among Tibetans abroad.
   The Dalai Lama could also choose a successor himself from members of his government-in-exile, or a college of senior lamas could pick someone from within its ranks, removing the mysticism of the traditional selection process.
   ‘When we put the whole responsibility in the person of the Dalai Lama, it is dangerous ... it is appropriate that a democratically elected leader lead a people’s movement,’ he said.
   ‘In reality, a change is happening in the responsibility of the Dalai Lama as the temporal and spiritual leader. This, I think, is very good ... a religious leader having to assume political leadership, that period is over,’ he said.
   The Dalai Lama’s succession is a sensitive issue as he ages and his health declines.
   Many Tibetans fear that the death of the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since fleeing a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, could create a leadership vacuum that Beijing could exploit to tighten its grip.
   China has said the Dalai Lama must follow ‘historical conventions,’ including an endorsement from Beijing.
   According to Beijing, the Dalai Lama’s incarnation must be chosen by drawing lots from a gold urn given to Tibetans by the ethnic Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty.
   But the Dalai Lama has suggested his incarnation might be found outside China, or even that Tibetans themselves could order a vote on whether to continue an institution that once gave one monk both spiritual and temporal sway over Tibet.
   He has also called for more democratic systems: Tibetans in exile first elected a prime minister, or Kalon Tripa, in 2001, which the Dalai Lama called a ‘magnificent achievement.’
   The current prime minister, Samdhong Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk and a Buddhist scholar, has served two terms, and the Dalai Lama has often said he was in ‘semi-retirement’ as a political leader, asking Rinpoche to take the lead in interacting with Tibetans.
   ‘As election takes place every five years, irrespective of whether the Dalai Lama is there or not, the exiled political system will remain secure, stable and sustainable in the long term,’ he said in the clip broadcast on Saturday.

A draft of Japan’s new mid-term defence policy guidelines is calling for the reinforcement of military personnel and equipment in the face of growing regional tensions, Kyodo news agency said.
   The draft, obtained by Kyodo, says Japan needs to reverse its policy of reducing its defence budgets in light of North Korea’s missile launches and nuclear tests, as well as China’s rise to a major military power, the news agency said.
   The document urges the government to raise the number of Ground Self-Defence Forces troops by 5,000 to 160,000, Kyodo said.
   The new National Defence Programme Guidelines, covering five years to March 2015, are scheduled to be adopted by the government by the end of the year.
   The draft also says there is a need to ‘secure options responsive to changing situations’ of international security, indicating Tokyo’s intention of considering if it should be capable of striking enemy bases, Kyodo said.
   Japan’s pacifist constitution has been interpreted as allowing a military only for self-defence and some experts say a pre-emptive strike doctrine would stretch that too far.

Four people were injured Sunday as tropical storm Linfa moved along the Taiwan Strait towards the Chinese mainland, bringing strong winds and torrential rain, officials said.
   Two motorcyclists were hurt in Taiwan’s southern Tainan city when they were hit by an uprooted tree, the National Fire Agency said.
   Meanwhile two Taoist monks were hurt by a collapsed wall in Penghu, an island in the middle of the Strait, as they chanted during a funeral ceremony.
   The storm was some 10 kilometres south of Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island off China’s southeastern Xiamen city, at 0900 GMT, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said.
   It said the storm, packing gusts of 90 kilometres per hour and moving north-northeast along the Taiwan Strait at an hourly rate of 20 kilometres, may brush the Chinese mainland soon.
   Airports on Kinmen and the Penghu islands were closed and offices shut down.
   Shipping services to the outlying islands were also interrupted by the high waves whipped up by gales introduced by Linfa.
   ‘If the storm keeps moving on the forecast track, it may lose strength,’ Chen Yi-liang, an official of the bureau, told reporters.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, discussed on Saturday efforts to achieve Palestinian reconciliation with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
   ‘We agree with Syria that the dialogue should succeed,’ Abbas’s aide Nabil Abu Rdainah told reporters.
   He was referring to Egyptian mediation between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas, which is supported by Syria and Iran. Egypt has set July 7 as a deadline to find a solution for divisions between the two groups.
   Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, cancelled a speech he was due to make later on Saturday shortly after Abbas met Assad. No explanation was given.
   Abbas’s visit to Syria is the second since May. His aides said Abbas had no scheduled meetings any Palestinian factions in Syria before leaving for Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah on Sunday.
   But Khaled Abdul Majid, who heads the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, said Abbas appears to have prolonged his visit to Damascus and a meeting between Abbas and Meshaal was possible.

Sri Lanka is pouring more troops into former rebel-held areas in the east of the island to hunt down remnants of the Tamil Tigers following their defeat in the north, a state-run weekly said Sunday.
   The military was boosting its strength in the east — around the towns of Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara — to where some guerrillas are thought to have fled, the Sunday Observer said.
   ‘The main concern of the army is to nab the remaining Tiger cadres now moving in the Eastern Province,’ the paper said. ‘The Sri Lanka army is now taking measures to increase the strength in the east.’
   There was no immediate comment from the military, which declines to discuss troops deployments publicly.
   However, official sources confirmed that security forces have begun combing jungles in the east, and have already clashed with two groups of fighters from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   The Tigers have admitted that they lost their top leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in a final battle last month, but the military believes that some lower-level cadres may still be in hiding and could try to regroup.