Tuesday International News

Security on Afghan border a job 
for Pakistan not US: Zardari 
20,000 flee from Pakistan into 
Afghanistan: UN 
Agence France-Presse . Washington 
 

Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview broadcast Sunday that Islamabad’s military is capable of quelling militant elements on its border with Afghanistan, and again urged the US military against launching incursions into its territory.
  ‘Let us do the job, we can do a better job than anybody else can. It’s partly and mainly our war. We fight it. Let us do it,’ Zardari said in an interview on CNN.
  His comments came after Pakistani and US troops last week exchanged fire along the Pakistani-Afghan border last week, after Washington said two US military helicopters came under fire.
  Zardari said only flares were fired last week toward the US helicopters to ‘warn that they have crossed over’ into Pakistani territory.
  The Pakistani leader, downplaying the confrontation, said it resulted from a misunderstanding.
  ‘It’s a murky border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Half the hill is here, half the hill is in Afghanistan,’ he told CNN.
  The Pentagon last week also called Thursday’s events involving the US helicopters ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’
  ‘They are confident that they were in Afghan air space the whole time,’ said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
  Meanwhile, the United Nations says 20,000 Pakistani refugees have fled to Afghanistan to avoid fighting between militants and Pakistan’s military, reports AP.
  The UN’s refugee agency says nearly 4,000 Pakistani families have fled Pakistan’s Bajur tribal agency into Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
  Pakistan’s military launched an offensive in Bajur, the most northerly of Pakistan’s wild tribal regions, several of which have fallen largely under the control of militants opposed to the Afghan and Pakistani governments.
  Tens of thousands of civilians have fled into other parts of Pakistan as a result of the 2-month-old offensive.
  The agency says it believes the majority of those who have crossed into Afghanistan will return home once the fighting stops. 
China hails spacewalk ‘heroes’, 
sets eyes on moon 
Agence France-Presse . Beijing 

The first Chinese man to walk in space was hailed as a national hero Monday, as the emerging space power gave one of its clearest indications yet that it is now reaching for the Moon.
  Mission commander Zhai Zhigang, 41, and his two fellow astronauts arrived here to mass-circulation papers filled with praise for their historic 68-hour voyage on board the Shenzhou VII spacecraft.
  ‘Shenzhou VII has touched down. The heroes have returned successfully,’ a typical headline read in the popular tabloid Beijing Times stretching across the front page.
  Mainstream papers devoted two or three full pages to coverage of the space walk, celebrating China’s status as only the third country in the world after the United States and the Soviet Union to accomplish the feat independently.
  The astronauts landed Sunday on the empty steppes of Inner Mongolia after concluding a mission viewed both here and abroad as emblematic of China’s rise in nearly all fields of human endeavour.
  Millions were watching the live broadcast Saturday as Zhai embarked on his 15-minute space walk, witnessing the symbolic moment when he waved a Chinese flag in the weightlessness of low orbit some 340 kilometres above the Earth.
  ‘It was a glorious mission, full of challenges with a perfect ending,’ Zhai said after being pulled out of the return capsule. ‘I feel proud of the motherland.’
  The crew were flown to space programme headquarters in the north of Beijing where they are to undergo two weeks of preventive quarantine, Xinhua said, as they are still vulnerable to terrestrial viruses.
  Coming ahead of China’s October 1 National Day, the Shenzhou VII mission triggered a wave of patriotic sentiment on the Internet. 
Bihar deploys police as 
flood victims protest 
Reuters/Bdnews24.com . Patna, India 

Hundreds of police were deployed in flood-hit Bihar on Monday, a day after soldiers opened fire on angry villagers demanding food and relief, wounding at least a dozen people.
  The police said a huge crowd threw stones at an army convoy in Bihar on Sunday, demanding food and shelter.
  ‘The villagers clashed with army personnel, threw stones at them and attacked their vehicles, forcing the army to retaliate,’ Kuer Singh, a senior police officer said on Monday.
  Monsoon rains and burst dams unleashed bouts of flooding in South Asia this year, killing about 1,500 people, mostly in India but also in Nepal.
  About 270 flood-related deaths have been reported from Bihar, reeling from the worst floods in recent years, officials said.
  At least 100,000 ha (250,000 acres) of farmland were damaged in the state after the Kosi river burst a dam in neighbouring Nepal and flooded areas downstream. 
Japan’s PM seeks friendly 
ties with Asia 
Agence France-Presse . Tokyo 

Japan’s new prime minister Taro Aso said Monday he would seek friendly relations with China and South Korea, while pressing North Korea on its nuclear drive and past abductions.
  In a first policy speech to parliament, Aso said he wants to ‘jointly build peace and prosperity in the region by working together with China, South Korea, Russia and other Asia-Pacific nations.’
  Chinese and South Korean leaders congratulated the outspoken conservative on his election last week by the ruling party, largely ignoring his past remarks over the country’s wartime colonialism.
  In the speech, Aso said his government will seek ‘action by the North Korean side in an effort to comprehensively resolve the issues of nuclear weapons, missiles and abductions.’
  Tokyo has taken the hardest line against Pyongyang in stalled six-way talks aimed at ridding the communist state of nuclear weapons.
  Japan has pressed North Korea for a fuller accounting on the fate of Japanese civilians the regime kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and culture.
  Former prime minister Yasuo Fukuda, regarded as a moderate on North Korea, controversially agreed in June to relax some Japanese sanctions after Pyongyang said it would start a new probe into the fate of the abductees. 
New Thai PM facing fresh legal woes 
Agence France-Presse . Bangkok 

A Thai senator filed a complaint on Monday accusing new prime minister Somchai Wongsawat of violating the constitution, just three weeks after similar charges forced his predecessor from office.
  Ruangkrai Leekijwattana has accused Somchai of breaching the charter by holding shares in Internet provider CS Loxinfo. The Election Commission received the complaint Monday, a spokesman said.
  ‘At present, there is no decision on whether the complaint will be further investigated or not. That decision must come from the five election commissioners,’ the EC’s Ruangroat Jomsueb said.
  ‘As a government office, we are mandated to accept every complaint submitted for further consideration,’ he added.
  The current constitution bans members of parliament from holding shares in companies with links to the state, and CS Loxinfo has a concession with government-owned CAT telecom.
  Somchai, however, said he was unfazed by the possible charges. ‘There is nothing to worry about, let everything follow the legal process,’ he told reporters when asked about the complaint.
  Sharp-tongued former premier Samak Sundaravej was stripped of office on September 9 after a court found that he had breached the constitution when he accepted payments for hosting two TV cooking shows. 
Iran won’t halt N work 
despite UN demand 
Reuters/Bdnews24.com . Tehran 

Iran said on Monday it would not halt sensitive nuclear work as demanded by the UN Security Council in its latest resolution on Tehran’s atomic programme that the West believes is aimed at making warheads.
  The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Saturday ordering the Islamic Republic to halt uranium enrichment, the part of the nuclear programme that most worries the West because it has both civilian and military uses.
  Iran, which insists its plans are peaceful, has already dismissed the resolution that did not add further sanctions to the three sets of penalties already imposed since 2006.
  Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi, in a news conference, made clear Iran would not accept the main demand.
  ‘Enrichment is our obvious right. Demanding that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment activities is beyond their legal right and we are continuing our natural path,’ he said.
  Iran, the world’s fourth biggest oil producer which sits on huge gas reserves, says it wants nuclear technology to make electricity so it can export more of its hydrocarbons.
  It has brushed off previous rounds of sanctions, saying it has a big cash cushion from windfall oil revenues to cope. But analysts say the economy is being hurt by higher trade costs and increasing wariness of investors, particularly Western firms.
  Russia, one of the five permanent members of the security council with veto powers, opposed further sanctions at this stage despite a US-led effort to impose new penalties.
  The United States and Israel have refused to rule out military action if diplomacy fails to end the nuclear row.
  Iran says neither country are in a position to attack the Islamic Republic but has warned that US interests, Israel and Gulf oil shipping lanes would be targets if Tehran is pushed. 
‘War on terror’ has not 
weakened al-Qaeda: poll 
Reuters/Bdnews24.com . London 

People across the world think the US-led ‘war on terror’ has not weakened al-Qaeda and many believe it has actually strengthened Osama bin Laden’s network, a poll for the BBC World Service said on Monday.
  The poll of almost 24,000 citizens found people in 22 out of 23 countries surveyed thought attempts to counter al-Qaeda since its September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States had not weakened it.
  The predominant view was that neither side was winning, the BBC said.
  ‘Despite its overwhelming military power, America’s war against al-Qaeda is widely seen as having achieved nothing better than a stalemate and many believe that it has even strengthened al-Qaeda,’ said Steven Kull, director of the Programme on International Policy Attitudes, which helped carry out the research.
  Kenya — which experienced deadly al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassy in 1998 and on an Israeli-owned hotel in 2002 — was the only country where a majority thought al-Qaeda has been weakened.
  In the United States, only 34 per cent believed al-Qaeda had been made weaker with 26 per cent reckoning the ‘war on terror’ had had no effect and 33 per cent thinking it had made the militants stronger.
  The majority US perception was that neither the United States nor al-Qaeda were winning.
  More than 40 per cent of citizens in France, Mexico, Italy, Australia and Britain believed the ‘war on terror’ had strengthened al-Qaeda.
  While the majority of people questioned had negative views of al-Qaeda, more citizens in Egypt and Pakistan had mixed or positive views of the group than negative feelings. 
Obama heads West after 
accusing McCain 
Agence France-Presse . Detroit, Michigan 
 

White House hopeful Barack Obama took his campaign to the American West Monday after accusing his Republican rival John McCain of ‘Katrina-like’ bungling over the US financial crisis.
  The Democratic nominee was to meet with voters in Colorado and Nevada aiming to make inroads into the onetime Republican power base.
  As the US Congress prepares to vote on a new Wall Street bailout deal, both contenders for the November 4 election said a drastically reshaped bailout plan was a bitter but necessary pill.
  Obama said it was an ‘outrage’ that taxpayers had to rescue financiers from their own folly but, like McCain, argued the world’s biggest economy was at risk of disaster without government action.
  The Democrat, addressing a crowd of 35,000 in Detroit, said McCain ‘doesn’t understand that the storm hitting Wall Street hit Main Street long ago.’
  ‘That’s why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a (Hurricane) Katrina-like response. Sort of stood there, said the fundamentals of the economy are ‘strong’, Obama said.
  ‘That’s why he’s been shifting positions these last two weeks, looking for photo-ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do,’ he told the rally, joined by his running mate Joseph Biden and their wives.
  Obama was evoking the widely slammed response of president George W Bush’s administration to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and making a pointed reminder of McCain’s ties to a deeply unpopular Republican leader.
  The Democrat also mocked his rival’s role in the congressional negotiations over the rescue package.
  McCain suspended his campaign and insisted he played a key role by reaching out to House of Representatives Republicans who remain angry over the government’s biggest financial intervention since the Great Depression. 
Five Lebanese soldiers killed 
in car bomb blast 
Agence France-Presse . Tripoli, Lebanon 

Five Lebanese soldiers were killed on Monday in a car bomb blast targeting an army bus on the outskirts of the restive northern city of Tripoli, security and military officials said.
  A security official said that another 24 people, 18 of them soldiers, were wounded in the explosion, the second deadly bombing targeting the Lebanese army in two months.
  ‘Once again a treacherous hand has reached out to strike at the military establishment in a terrorist attack clearly aimed at undermining efforts at peace and stability,’ a statement by the army command said.
  The bomb, placed under a parked car at the southern entrance to the city, was packed with nuts and bolts and police suspect the device was detonated by remote control.
  It blew up as the bus headed towards the capital Beirut during morning rush-hour. There were about 24 soldiers on board, most of them from the village of Akroum, located about 50 kilometres north of Tripoli near the Syrian border.
  The owner of the booby-trapped vehicle was detained for questioning, a security official said.
  The police and the army cordoned off the area as forensic experts began gathering evidence while residents rushed to the scene or to nearby hospitals to look for their loved ones. 
Venezuela will develop 
nuclear power: Chavez 
Reuters/Bdnews24.com . Caracas 

The president, Hugo Chavez, said on Sunday Venezuela will develop a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes, in another challenge to Washington just days after Russia offered nuclear assistance to the socialist Latin American leader.
  ‘In Venezuela we are interested in development of nuclear energy, of course for peaceful purposes, for medical purposes, for purposes of electricity generation,’ Chavez said at a political rally.
  ‘Brazil has various nuclear reactors, so does Argentina. We will have ours.’
  Chavez noted that Venezuela, which is a member of the oil-producing cartel OPEC, developed a nuclear reactor decades ago but abandoned it under pressure from the United States.
  He said the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, had offered help with a reactor, adding that ‘we already have a commission working on this issue.’
  Chavez did not offer details or say when a reactor could be ready, but the news could further strain relations with Washington, which views Chavez as autocratic and erratic.
  He has repeatedly challenged Washington, notably by defending Iran’s nuclear activities despite strong condemnation by the United States and Europe.
  This month Chavez expelled the US ambassador to Venezuela and repeated his frequent threats to halt oil sales that make up around 10 per cent of US oil imports.
  Venezuela has boosted cooperation with Moscow since Russia came under strong US condemnation for fighting a war against Georgia last month, strengthening ties between two of the United States’ strongest critics.