The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Islamabad

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is willing to share power with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhuto's party if it wins enough seats in the next parliamentary elections, officials said Wednesday.

Musharraf, who is seeking another five-year term, has held talks with Bhuto - who served twice as prime minister between 1988 and 1996 but saw her governments fall amid allegations of corruption and misrule - over a possible power-sharing agreement

The Supreme Court had to delay hearing two fresh challenges to Musharraf's candidacy for Saturday's presidential election by national and provincial lawyers after one judge recused himself, saying he had already expressed an opinion while part of a nine-judge panel that rejected other petitions Friday.

"According to my view, it is exactly the same case," said Justice Sardar Mohammed Raza Khan, one of the three judges who dissented from the six-judge majority opinion that allowed Musharraf to run. The justices were to hear the case Wednesday afternoon without Khan. The government indicated Tuesday it was ready to pardon Bhuto, clearing her way to participate in politics eight years after she left Pakistan to avoid arrest in corruption cases registered by her old political rival, exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Musharraf's 1999 coup ousted Sharif, who later was exiled to Saudi Arabia. Bhuto plans to return home from London on Oct 18. A senior Cabinet minister said Wednesday that Bhuto and the government were close to reaching an understanding about the presidential vote and the parliamentary elections, which are due to be held by January.

"President Musharraf has told us that he would not hesitate to share power with Benazir Bhuto, if she gains enough seats to be part of a government of national consensus," the minister said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. Both Bhuto and Musharraf are pro-U.S. and have called for moderates to unite against extremism. Bhuto said Monday she would cooperate with the American military in targeting Osama bin Laden.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Musharraf will soon issue an ordinance granting amnesty in corruption cases up to 1999 in which politicians had not been convicted - meeting one of Bhuto's key demands.

Azim said the amnesty was aimed at easing political acrimony ahead of the parliamentary elections. He indicated it would also apply to Sharif, who also faces corruption charges, but the exiled prime minister has been convicted on several counts since leaving office.

Bhuto has been charged with illegally amassing properties and bank accounts overseas while in power but claims the cases were politically motivated. She was also convicted of money laundering in Switzerland in July 2003 and ordered to pay $11 million to the Pakistani government The conviction was automatically thrown out when she contested it, but the case is still under investigation.

AP, Seoul

South Korea's president said the first summit in seven years with North Korea began Wednesday on some discordant notes, but in a sign of promise for the talks North Korean leader Kim Jong Il suggested the meeting be extended an extra day.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Kim took issue with the pace of Seoul's actions regarding international talks on the North's nuclear program, that he had problems with the two countries' joint industrial zone, and that they even quibbled over semantics about efforts to mend decades of enmity.

"We were candid and frank in engaging in the discussion," Roh said at a luncheon with the South Korean delegation in Pyongyang after two hours of talks with Kim, according to pool video relayed to Seoul. "In some issues we did not share the same perceptions."

However, when the two leaders resumed meeting after lunch, Kim proposed that the talks be extended to Friday beyond their scheduled Thursday close, South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Seong-yong told reporters in Seoul.

Yoon said Seoul officials were considering the offer, and that they interpreted it as Kim's desire for the talks to proceed in a "more substantial way."

Earlier, Roh said the North "may not be too happy about the pace in which South Korea agreed to implement certain measures" at international arms talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program. Roh gave no details, but he was likely referring to aid in exchange for disarmament

Roh also said Kim had issues about the two countries' joint industrial zone in the North Korean border city of Kaesong - one of the main achievements of the first-ever summit between the Koreas, held in 2000. The South Korean leader has said he would seek this week to expand economic cooperation between the two sides.

However, Roh added: "What we would confirm was that we both had a firm commitment for peace, and a commitment toward change and to set a new direction for the future."

Reuters, Yangon

Myanmar's junta arrested more people on Wednesday hours after the departure of a U.N. envoy who came to the country to try to end a bloody crackdown on protests which sparked international outrage.

At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Yangon, the former Burma's biggest city and centre of last week's monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken, she said.

"They warned us not to run away as they might be back," she said after people from rows of shop houses were ordered onto the street in the middle of the night and many taken away.

The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his iron grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met twice.

Singapore, chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which Myanmar is a member, said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation given by the Myanmar government to Mr Gambari."

Gambari was in Singapore on Wednesday on his way back to New York but was unlikely to say anything publicly before speaking to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a U.N. official told Reuters.

U.N. sources said he was expected to return to Myanmar in early November.

There were no indications of how his mission and international pressure might change the policies of a junta which seldom heeds outside pressure and rarely admits U.N. officials.

"I don't expect much to come of this. I think the top leadership is so entrenched in their views that it's not going to help," said David Steinberg, a Georgetown University expert on Myanmar.

"They will say they are on the road to democracy and so what do you want anyway?," he added, referring to the junta's "seven-step road to democracy."

AFP, Miranshah

Pakistani security forces killed 10 pro-Taliban militants after an early morning atack on a checkpost near the Afghan border left two soldiers dead, the military said.

The fighting erupted in the troubled tribal region of North Waziristan, where the US military said a day earlier that Al-Qaeda was re-emerging despite the presence of Pakistani troops.

Pakistani military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said that militants raided the post near the town of Mir Ali before dawn, killing two soldiers and wounding another four.

"Ten miscreants were killed in the clash," Arshad told AFP. "The situation is now quiet"

Security officials in the region said earlier that troops responded with artillery fire after the militants atacked with rockets.

The US military in Afghanistan said on Tuesday it expected Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to continue its "re-emergence" in the Pakistani tribal areas along the frontier with Afghanistan.

A peace deal signed between the Pakistani government and militants in September 2006 in North Waziristan -- one of seven semi-autonomous tribal zones -- broke down in July.

Violence has spiked in Pakistan since the collapse of the deal and after Pakistani forces staged a bloody raid on the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad at about the same time.

The mosque is due to reopen on Wednesday on orders of the Supreme Court

AFP, Sydney

Australians value the US alliance but don't like US President George W. Bush and are sceptical about Washington's ability to deal with world problems, according to a national survey released Wednesday. The survey commissioned by Sydney University's US Studies Centre also showed most Australians opposed their country's involvement in the US-led military campaign in Iraq. The centre's Alan Dupont said the survey showed Australians did not want to ditch the US military alliance, despite doubts about the foreign policy pursued by the Bush administration. "Australians are clearly able to differentiate between the foreign policy of a particular US administration and the enduring strategic value of the US alliance, which still receives overwhelming support despite widespread opposition to the Iraq conflict," he said. The survey found more Australians were favourably disposed toward Britain (87 percent) and Japan (75) than the United States (59), which ranked just above China (57). When the 1,213 respondents were asked to name something they disliked about the United States, the most popular answer was President Bush followed by a "US belief it's a world watchdog" and could "impose its views on others".

AP, New York

The United States said it expects agreement in the coming days on a plan to disable North Korea' nuclear facilities by the end of the year, but stressed that what counts is whether the North agrees to give up its nuclear weapons and the fissile material to make them. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. nuclear negotiator with North Korea, said at a Tuesday news conference that President Bush agreed to a joint statement proposed by China at the end of six-party talks last weekend on plans for disabling the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and achieving a full description of the North's nuclear program. Hill, speaking at the Foreign Press Center, said he expects all other parties to the Korea talks - China, Japan, Russia, North Korea and South Korea - to sign on to the joint statement, which should be released in Beijing in the next few days. While refusing to give details, Hill said the proposed joint statement will set a timetable for geting through the process of obtaining a full nuclear declaration from the North and disabling its nuclear facilities by the end of the year. Six-party talks on North Korea have dragged on for four years but if ultimately successful would roll back a nuclear program that a year ago allowed North Korea to detonate a nuclear device and that experts say may have produced more than a dozen nuclear bombs.

AFP, Kathmandu

Efforts in Nepal to phase out images of unpopular King Gyanendra from coins and banknotes have hit a snag with the release of new bills which still feature the monarch in the watermark. Banking officials in the impoverished Himalayan country, which is on the road to becoming a republic, admited that keeping down costs meant their increasingly republican sentiment could only go so far. "Watermarks are engraved at the very first stage of printing the notes," senior currency management official Manmohan Kumar Shrestha told AFP, explaining the paper was ordered before the monarchy fell out of favour. "We could not cancel the order as it would have resulted in a huge cost for the bank and the nation." Nepal's new 500 rupee (7.8 dollar) note, released on Sunday, have an image of two tigers on one side, and Mount Everest on the other. The image of a rhododendron has also been used in an atempt to obscure the watermark.