Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned on Thursday that a Lebanese government crackdown on his group was tantamount to a ‘declaration of war’ as clashes escalated between supporters of rival political factions in the deeply divided country.
   Nasrallah issued his ominous statement on the second day of anti-government protests, with gunfights in several parts of the country, roads blocked and Lebanon’s only international airport effectively shut down.
   ‘The decisions (of the government) are tantamount to a declaration of war and the start of a war... on behalf of the United States and Israel,’ a defiant Nasrallah said at a rare press conference via video link.
   The Lebanese government on Tuesday launched a probe into a Hezbollah communication network and reassigned the head of airport security over his alleged links to Nasrallah’s powerful Shiite militant group.
   ‘Our answer to this decision is this,’ Nasrallah said. ‘We have the right to confront he who starts a war with us by defending our rights and our weapons.’ As the long-running political crisis threatened to spiral out of control, at least eight people were reported wounded in clashes pitting mainly Sunni Muslim supporters of the Western-backed government against Shia followers of the Hezbollah-led opposition
   The army command warned that ‘if this situation continues, everyone will lose and this will affect the unity of the military.’
   And newspapers drew parallels with the lead-up to the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
   The growing tension brought renewed expressions of support for the prime minister, Fuad Siniora, from key Arab powers Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which warned Hezbollah against any steps that might worsen the situation.
   Armed men, some hooded or masked, were seen in several mixed Sunni and Shiite neighbourhoods of Beirut, where troops and riot police spread and many schools and businesses remained shut for a second day.
   Protesters burned tyres and lit fires along the airport road, which remained blocked by large mounds of earth dumped by Hezbollah supporters when a strike over wages on Wednesday degenerated into sectarian violence.
   An airport official said all flights had been cancelled until at least 4:00pm (1300 GMT), and it was unclear whether traffic would resume later.
   Government loyalists burned tyres and set up road blocks along various points of the main highway in the east of the country leading to Syria, forcing travellers to find alternate routes, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

About 3,000 Afghan politicians and intellectuals criticised Thursday the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to ending the fighting.
   The meeting of mainly Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group, launched a new body that it said would work on ‘saving people captured in fighting’ and assist ‘those involved in conflict to stop fighting.’
   Afghanistan is in the grips of an insurgency by the extremist Taliban, a majority Pashtun group that was in government between 1996 and 2001. The country depends on about 70,000 mainly US troops for security.
   ‘Today our elders, children and women are captured and jailed,’ civil society activist Daud Mirakai, one of the founders of the new National Peace Jirga of Afghanistan, told the crowd.
   He was referring to arrests of suspects during US- and NATO-led operations mainly in Pashtun-dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan where Taliban militants are most active and are said to have local support.
   The forces regularly round up suspects but no women are known to be among them.

The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, on a visit to repair ties with Japan, pledged Thursday that his country would never become a military threat.
   Both Japan and its main ally, the United States, have repeatedly voiced concerns about China’s military spending, which has grown by double digits every year for two decades.
   ‘China will take defensive military policy and will not join any arms race,’ Hu said in an address at Tokyo’s prestigious Waseda University that was broadcast live in Japan.
   ‘We will not become a
   military threat to any country and we will never assert hegemony or be expansionistic,’ he said.
   Hu is the first Chinese leader in a decade to visit Japan, which has been working to repair ties with Beijing.
   Relations between Asia’s two largest economies have long been mired by disputes linked to Tokyo’s past aggression in China.

Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear-capable, air-launched cruise missile with a range of 350 km on Thursday, the military said, a day after India tested a long-range missile.
   The Hatf-VIII (Ra’ad) missile had been developed exclusively for launch from aircraft, a military statement said. ‘It has enabled Pakistan to achieve a greater strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea,’ it said. The indigenously developed missile also had special stealth capabilities and could deliver all types of warheads with great accuracy, the military said.
   On Wednesday, India tested a nuclear-capable missile with a range of more than 3,000 km. The South Asian neighbours, who have fought three wars since their independence in 1947, routinely test missiles in spite of a peace process launched in 2004 that has led to better relations.

Four Indian Kashmiri men had to be rescued from a fast-flowing icy river Thursday after they jumped in to protest a lack of jobs, the police said.
   ‘All the four were rescued by policemen and locals living in houseboats,’ the police officer Pervez Ahmed said. They were immediately hospitalised, he said.
   The four were part of a protest by dozens of unemployed educated youth who marched through the streets of Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar, hub of a separatist insurgency that began in 1989. There are more than 300,000 unemployed graduates in Kashmir.

Pressure mounted on the Zimbabwe government Thursday to admit foreign observers to oversee a presidential election run-off amid fresh claims that pro-government militias were instilling terror in the countryside.
   As the opposition alleged that 30 supporters had now been killed and a union leader said 40,000 farmworkers and their dependents had been made homeless, the authorities played down the levels of violence.
   Meanwhile, six days on from the announcement of results from an inconclusive March 29 presidential poll, there was still no word on when a second round should take place nor whether the opposition Movement for Democratic Change will participate.
   MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who believes he secured an overall majority over the veteran president, Robert Mugabe, in the first round, has argued his rival is trying to spread fear in the population to ensure his victory in the run-off.
   In its latest toll, the MDC said it now had information that 30 supporters had been killed by Mugabe supporters in attacks in rural areas.
   ‘What is worrying is that each day comes with gory stories of how human beings are being treated,’ said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
   ‘This is why we are appealing on bended knees to the international community to assist in ending the carnage.’
   In a press conference in South Africa, the leader of a Zimbabwe farmworkers’ union said that 40,000 people had been driven off their land either as a result of direct attacks by militias or through fear.
   ‘Since the elections we have recorded a total of 40,000 people who have been displaced,’ Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe, told reporters in Johannesburg.
   ‘Our members and their families have been left homeless. They have been attacked by a group of militias wearing army uniforms.
   ‘They have been accused of voting for the opposition. Most of them are either on the roadside or sheltering at some farms.’
   A number of human rights groups, including the New York-based Human Rights Watch, have accused security forces of complicity in attacks since the elections on March 29 which have been concentrated in rural areas.
   However the army has disputed the allegations, with a spokesman saying earlier this week that it ‘categorically distances itself and any of its members from such activities’.
   In comments carried by the state-run Herald newspaper on Thursday, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena also cast doubt on the MDC’s claims about the death toll, saying ‘three of the cases had no basis whatsoever while others were under investigation.’
   International disquiet however is growing, with the UN’s secretary-general adding his voice to calls for international observers to oversee the run-off.
   Gordon Brown, prime minister of former colonial power Britain, has asked for the run-off to be ‘monitored by the whole international community’.
   In a statement, the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, said ‘future stages of the electoral process must be conducted in a peaceful, credible and transparent manner in the presence of international observers’ while also voicing concern about violence.

Russia’s new president Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday said he would work in ‘tandem’ with Vladimir Putin, who was to be confirmed as the country’s prime minister at an extraordinary session of parliament.
   ‘I think no one has any doubt that our tandem, our cooperation, will only continue to strengthen,’ Medvedev told deputies of the lower house, the State Duma, which was set to confirm Putin as premier.
   Putin as head of government will play a ‘key role’ in shaping Russia’s development through to 2020, said Medvedev, who replaced Putin in the Kremlin at an inauguration ceremony Wednesday.
   Putin, 55, then took the stand and made a detailed speech, while Medvedev listened, outlining plans to make Russia an economic and financial powerhouse, as well as measures for improving social conditions. Putin’s United Russia party controls more than two thirds of seats in the Duma, meaning his candidacy as premier was no more than a formality. Medvedev was then to formally sign off on the appointment.
   Putin’s move to the premiership after eight years as president completed a carefully choreographed scheme in which his trusted protege Medvedev, 42, became president, while he moved into government. The Medvedev-Putin dual leadership is unprecedented in Russia, where overwhelming authority has traditionally rested with the Kremlin.
   Following a grandiose inauguration ceremony in the Kremlin’s golden Andreyevsky Hall, Medvedev’s first act as president was to nominate his former boss for the prime minister’s post.

Civilians caught up in fighting between security forces and Shia militiamen in a Baghdad slum are running out of food, water and medicine and relief agencies are unable to bring in supplies, officials said on Thursday.
   But aid officials and an Iraqi government spokesman denied reports there had been a mass displacement of residents from Sadr City, home to 2 million people and the stronghold of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.
   They said it was too dangerous to get aid into the district in eastern Baghdad, where weeks of clashes have killed hundreds of people. The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, seeking to impose law and order, launched a crackdown on militias in late March.
   Dana Graber Ladek, a displacement specialist on Iraq at the UN International Organisation for Migration in Amman, said around 500 families had fled when US and Iraqi operations against militiamen began.
   ‘Since then, very few Iraqis have been able to leave due to curfews and ... insecurity,’ Ladek said by telephone.
   ‘We need that corridor open to allow aid in, by US and Iraqi forces ... by everyone involved in the conflict.’
   Ladek said relief was need urgently. Public distribution of food rations had stopped while prices of basic food items were rising.
   Water and medical services were also falling short in the affected areas, especially since a US missile strike near a
   Sadr City hospital on Saturday damaged a number of ambulances.
   ‘Much ... depends on how long this (conflict) goes on for ... If it goes on for very long ... we risk some more serious consequences like an epidemic of cholera or malnutrition.’
   Maliki’s crackdown was initially launched in the southern Shia city of Basra, where the Mehdi Army put up stiff resistance for a week until Sadr ordered his fighters off the street. But fighting has continued in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

It’s now common wisdom that senator Hillary Clinton attracts older voters, women and the white working class, while senator Barack Obama is the go-to guy for youth, African-Americans and the elite.
   Retired teacher Maggie Lauria, 58, fits the mold.
   ‘For us women, our time has come,’ Lauria said at a rally on Wednesday for Hillary in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
   That the Democratic candidates battling to be the party’s nominee for the November presidential election became so closely identified with certain voter segments has been chalked up to demographics and campaign tactics – or mistakes.
   After a big win for Obama in the North Carolina primary and a narrow Hillary victory in Indiana on Tuesday, Obama holds a big lead over Hillary in the contest for the nomination, but Hillary has vowed to stay in the race.
   Exit polls from the Indiana primary showed about six in 10 voters under age 30 favoured Obama, while seven of 10 aged 65 and over chose Hillary. Six in 10 whites voted for Hillary, and 90 per cent of blacks favoured Obama.
   Gender, race and age divides can be explained by voters opting for the candidate who most resembles them. Hillary, 61, would be the first female US president, while Obama, 46, would be the first black to take the Oval Office.
   But working-class voters opting for Hillary and more educated professionals choosing Obama has analysts scratching their heads a bit.
   ‘I think it is merely an accident of history that Obama’s rhetoric –which was meant to appeal to all – had greatest resonance with those thirstiest for change. And they happened to be the liberal elites frustrated with eight years of the Bush administration,’ said Chapman Rackaway, a political science professor at Fort Hays State University in Kansas.
   Both Hillary and Obama went to top universities – she to Wellesley, he to Harvard – and both are now wealthy. Obama, raised by a single mother, had a more modest childhood, but neither did manual labour to make ends meet.
   The policy positions are similar enough that the average voter cannot see a difference.
   ‘When policies are nearly identical, voters have to turn elsewhere, and they’ll turn to things like character and the common backgrounds,’ said James Campbell, a professor at the State University of New York-Buffalo and author of ‘The American Campaign.’ Campbell believes Obama got tagged as elite simply because some of his strongest support was on college campuses.
   ‘Sometimes candidates become known by who their supporters are, and it becomes almost a self-fulfilling image. So if you have a bunch of academics and college kids at your rallies, you get branded with that image,’ Campbell said.
   Hillary has emerged as the defender of the working class – voters once claimed by rival senator John Edwards, who dropped out of the race.
   ‘A lot of it tracks back to the Arkansas roots of her husband and that’s how she made her break into politics,’ said University of South Florida professor Susan MacManus, referring to the poor Southern state where Bill Clinton was governor.

Russia may further increase troop numbers in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia if Tbilisi builds up its forces near the conflict zone, the Russian defence ministry said on Thursday.
   A Georgian government minister said this week Abkhazia was ‘very close’ to war following Russia’s announcement it was sending in hundreds of extra peacekeeping troops to counter what it called Tbilisi’s plans for an attack.
   Georgia’s pro-Western government denied any plans to attack and its allies in NATO, the European Union and the United States said Moscow’s actions could stoke tension.
   The defence ministry said after the reinforcement Russia had 2,542 troops in Abkhazia. The maximum permitted under a 1994 ceasefire agreement is 3,000.
   ‘Further steps by Georgia’s security ministries to build up troops in the conflict zone can only lead to ... commensurate action from the Russian side to bring the peacekeeping contingent to the maximum authorised strength,’ the defence ministry said.
   ‘All this is done for the sake of – preserving peace, preventing bloodshed,’ the statement said.
   Any further escalation in Russian troop numbers is likely to anger Tbilisi, which accuses the Russian peacekeepers of siding with the separatists.
   The US weighed in on the side of Georgia on Wednesday.
   ‘Obviously we’re very concerned what Russia is doing in Georgia in a series of actions which we have labelled and said are provocative,’ White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters during a briefing about US president George W Bush’s forthcoming Middle East trip.
   ‘We think Russia needs to back down from those items,’ he said.

At least 35 people were killed in Somalia in separate clashes between Ethiopian troops
   and Islamist insurgents, witnesses and officials said Thursday.
   Some 23 were killed late Wednesday near the village of Garsani, some 300 kilometres north of Mogadishu, when insurgents ambushed an Ethiopian military convoy.
   Several witnesses said at least 13 civilians and eight Ethiopian soldiers had been killed in the fighting, while the insurgents admitted to losing two fighters in the battle.
   'The fighting was so heavy and our holy warriors with the help of Allah won a huge victory,' Sheikh Abdirahin Ise, an Islamist spokesman said.
   'In return they killed pastoralists who were near the fighting zone,' he added.

Burundi’s army said on Thursday it had killed 50 fighters from the country’s last active guerrilla group in renewed clashes outside the capital Bujumbura.
   The attack comes barely a day after leaders of the Forces for National Liberation, an ethnic Hutu group, said they would return to the tiny coffee-growing country from exile to implement a long awaited peace deal.
   ‘The Forces for National Liberation ambushed our troops on patrol, the army then entered into heavy battle with the insurgents ... two soldiers were also killed,’ army spokesman Colonel Adolphe Manirakiza said.