The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Tokyo

Japan's ruling party on Sunday chose moderate political veteran Yasuo Fukuda as the country's next prime minister, seeking safe hands after a disastrous year under conservative Shinzo Abe.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is still reeling from a landmark election defeat in July, and a resurgent opposition immediately vowed to press Fukuda to call a snap general poll. Fukuda, 71, a dour-looking behind-the-scenes operator who openly admits he lacks charisma, easily fended off a challenge from hawkish former foreign minister Taro Aso in the race to lead the world's second largest economy.

Fukuda, wearing his usual grey suit, bowed before LDP members and pledged to revive the party, which he acknowledged faced "huge difficulties."

"I would like to do my best to revive the LDP," Fukuda said.

"I want the LDP to be born again so it recovers the public trust and is able to steadfastly carry out policies," he said.

Abe, an outspoken conservative who campaigned to build a "beautiful nation" freed from the legacies of World War II defeat, abruptly resigned September 12 after a slew of scandals involving his cabinet and sliding approval ratings.

Abe, who was considered a bright young face for the LDP when he took over a year ago this week, checked himself into a hospital after his resignation for treatment of extreme stress and exhaustion.

"I apologise to party members and especially to all the Japanese people that I created this political vacuum after I announced my resignation at such an important time," Abe said in a leter read to the LDP meeting. Abe, who remains out of sight, pledged to stand behind Fukuda, whose views on issues ranging from North Korea to wartime history are more centrist than Abe's.

Analysts say the LDP wanted a respite from the ideologically driven Abe and his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, who won elections through his flamboyant style but spearheaded free-market reforms unpopular in the countryside.

"Fukuda is not charismatic but he is being viewed as a safe pair of hands," said Robert Dujarric, director of Temple University's Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies.

"They know he's not going to be totally incompetent"

Fukuda, a former oilman and top aide to premiers, received 330 votes among party members against 197 for Aso, the party announced. One vote was invalid. The vote by LDP lawmakers and local officials made Fukuda party president He is virtually assured of being installed as prime minister Tuesday by parliament, where an LDP-led coalition controls the more powerful lower house.

Fukuda will be Japan's oldest prime minister on entering office since 1991, a stark contrast to the 53-year-old Abe, who was Japan's youngest leader in recent times and faced criticism that he was too inexperienced.

Fukuda himself has faulted Abe for not stepping down earlier after the LDP lost control of the upper house of parliament for the first time in the July elections.

Fukuda has also pledged to ease the pain of rural voters, who feel left out of Japan's economic recovery and deserted the LDP in the recent elections.

The opposition has vowed to use the upper house to end a naval mission supporting US-led forces in Afghanistan. Abe effectively staked his job on renewal of the mandate, which Fukuda also supports.

AP, Islamabad

In order to prevent the Opposition parties from staging protest rallies against President Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan Police has arrested 35 leaders of the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) on the charges of disrupting public order.

This step came in the wake of calls made by opposition parties that they would do their best to stop Musharraf geting himself re-elected as the President

The move was in response to the threat to escalate the confrontation with the government and disrupt the election, confirmed an intelligence official.

"Keeping in view the sensitive security environment and for the maintenance of tranquillity and security of the public, certain leaders encouraging unregulated and unlawful public assembly have been detained under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order," a Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad Capital territory press release said.

Those who are arrested include MMA leader Hafiz Hussain, Muhammad Aslam and Javed Hashmi.

Hafiz Hussain said that the police had detained him at his residence. He said it was unclear whether he would be confined there or taken away.

"This government will do anything to clear the way for the presidential election. They are using the state machinery to curb the opposition," The News quoted Hussain, as saying. Aslam was transferred to Adiyala Jail for 30 days under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (3-MPO).

According to sources, Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan and MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmad escaped the crackdown and were untraceable.

Sharif's party condemned the detentions, which follow a series of rallies on Friday against Musharraf's re-election in several cities across Pakistan, including one at the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

"The police raided their homes, whisked them away and took them to an unknown place," said Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif's party.

"This is a blatant violation of their fundamental rights."

AP, Jerusalem

Israel dispatched several fighter jets toward its border with Syria after a Syrian aircraft disappeared from Israeli air force radar screens, Israeli military officials said Sunday, reflecting the state of heightened tensions between the two sides over a reported Israeli air strike in Syria earlier this month.

The Israeli jets, which did not enter Syrian airspace, returned to their bases minutes later when it became clear the Syrian airplane had crashed. The incident took place on Saturday, which was Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday, when Israel's air force does not send any fighter craft into the air unless absolutely necessary.

The day also marked, according to the Jewish calendar, the 34th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1973 Mideast war, when the armies of Syria and Egypt launched a sneak atack on Israel on the holiday.

The Israeli army did not comment on Saturday's incident The officials who spoke to The Associated Press did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified military information with the media.

On Thursday, Israeli fighter jets were dispatched to the northern Golan Heights, along the border with Syria, when "suspicious activity" was reported in the area, the military officials said. Later it was discovered that the objects were migrating birds, the officials said. Great numbers of migrating birds can look like drones on air force radar screens, the officials said. Tensions between Israel and Syria heated up this month over reports of an Israeli airstrike in northern Syria on Sept6. Foreign media say the Israeli target was either arms meant for Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon or a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear project Syria has denied both but announced an incursion, but Israel has refused to comment

AP, Kabul

NATO helicopters, responding to a rocket atack at an Afghan army base, fired on a group of suspected insurgents, killing four and wounding 12 others in what may have been a case of mistaken identity, the alliance said Sunday.

The Afghan government and NATO were still trying to determine the "official status" of the casualties, with initial reports indicating they were Afghan police and road construction security guards "dressed in civilian atire and carrying weapons on an uncoordinated patrol," NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement

"The 12 wounded are civilians, we know that for sure," Afghan army commander Gen. Qadam Shah said.

Shah said it was not clear from preliminary reports if those killed were insurgents or civilians.

The rocket atack Saturday on the base in the Sirkanay district of Kunar province left one Afghan soldier wounded, ISAF said.

More than 4,400 people - mostly militants - have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.

At least 600 civilians have died in the fighting, many of them mistakenly hit in airstrikes by Western forces. Afghan officials have pleaded repeatedly with international troops to coordinate closely with their Afghan counterparts to prevent civilian casualties.

Reuters, Myanmar

Buddhist nuns joined the growing protests against Myanmar's ruling generals on Sunday, a day after a dramatic appearance by detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to pray with monks now leading the marches.

About 100 nuns joined more than 1,000 monks to pray at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, devoutly Buddhist Myanmar's holiest shrine, before marching to the centre of the former capital.

There were no signs of trouble. There were no police or soldiers in sight and people on the streets applauded as the marchers passed.

The mood was cheerful, with many people in Yangon seeing the emergence of Suu Kyi from her lakeside villa as a sign the military, which has ruled the former Burma for 45 years and ruthlessly put down a 1988 uprising, was being flexible.

AP, Beijing

China is planning to build a new satellite launch site - the country's fourth - to boost its burgeoning space program, state media reported Sunday.

The facility will be located in Wenchang on the southern island province of Hainan, about 38 miles away from the provincial capital Haikou, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The site is close to the equator which makes it well suited for launches because lower latitudes have stronger centrifugal forces, reducing the amount of energy required to launch rockets, Xinhua said.

The plan has been approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, and the Central Military Commission, it said, without giving any details on construction or a completion date. Telephones at the State Council and Wenchang government offices rang unanswered on Sunday.

China takes great pride in its space program and sees it as a way to validate its claims to be one of the world's leading scientific nations.

In 2003, China launched its first manned space mission, making it the third country to send a human into orbit on its own, after Russia and the United States.

China began building its first rocket launch site in Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert in 1958. The other two facilities are in Taiyuan in Shanxi province in the north and Xichang in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

AFP, Tehran

Iran on Saturday warned the West of the "serious consequences" of launching any atack against the Islamic republic after showing off a new longer-range missile in public for the first time. "Military aggression against Iran is no longer a case of 'you hit and you run away,'" said supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Anyone who launches an aggression will seriously suffer the consequences of this aggression." His comments, broadcast on state television, were the first such intervention by Iran's undisputed number one since French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned the world last week to brace for war against Tehran. Iran earlier showed off its military prowess at the annual military parade to mark the start of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, taunting its arch enemy Israel with a host of slogans calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. A longer range missile labelled Ghadr-1 (Power) -- which had been said to be in development by Western experts -- was shown at the parade for the first time in public.

AP, Baghdad

The commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East does not believe current tensions with Iran will lead to war and urges for greater emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy. "This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful," Adm. William Fallon said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television, which made a partial transcript available Sunday. Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, wraps up a seven-nation tour of the region on Tuesday that included stops in Persian Gulf countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the talks with military and political leaders were dominated by worries about expanding Iranian influence and U.S. accusations that Iran is supplying arms and training to Shiite militiamen in Iraq. "I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for," said Fallon during the Friday interview at Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. "We should find ways through which we can bring countries to work together for the benefit of all t It is not a good idea to be in a state of war. We ought to try and to do our utmost to create different conditions."

Reuters, Moscow

The leader of Russia's Communist Party accused President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of piling up vast powers and said the Kremlin's main party represented billionaires rather than ordinary people. "He (President Vladimir Putin) has more power today than the Pharaoh of Egypt, the Tsar, and the Soviet Union's General Secretary combined," veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told a party congress on the outskirts of Moscow. "He has four times more power than the quite powerful president of the United States," said Zyuganov, whose party is the country's number two political force with 162,000 members. Zyuganov said his party, the successor to the all-powerful Soviet Communists, hoped to win at least a fifth of seats in elections this December for the State Duma (lower house of parliament). It currently has just over 10 percent of deputies. The Duma is dominated by United Russia, a party patronized by Putin, which enjoys a two-thirds majority. Zyuganov said he was the only real opponent of the Kremlin and added he was gaining new supporters as voters were geting bored with unfulfilled promises from United Russia, which he said represented the rich, with over 30 billionaires among its Duma members.

Reuters, New Delhi

India's government and its communist allies are eyeing ways out of their face-off over a nuclear pact with the United States, but failure to grasp these straws will spark a fresh crisis next month, officials said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition faces an informal end-October deadline to start working on the next steps needed to clinch the deal, and if the row with left parties opposed to it is not resolved by then early polls may be called, they said. "There are one or two options being considered. But either way, we have to decide by the end of October," said a government minister. "The Americans want the deal to be approved by their Congress before it goes for its summer break around June."

AP, Lima

Former President Alberto Fujimori returned to Peru on Saturday to face charges of corruption and sanctioning death-squad killings, a grim homecoming for the strongman who fled the country seven years ago as his government collapsed in scandal. The plane carrying the 69-year-old former ruler landed in a heavy mist at Lima's Las Palmas air force base, a day after Chile's Supreme Court authorized his extradition. He was then flown by helicopter to a police base, where he is to be held until a permanent facility is prepared for his detention. Some 700 supporters who gathered outside the police air terminal across town to greet him were frustated when his plane was diverted to the air base. "We have come to welcome Fujimori, to tell him that we are with him and will accompany him wherever he goes so that he feels he has the support of his people," his daughter Keiko Fujimori, who was elected to Congress in 2006, told The Associated Press.