The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf struck a last-minute deal Friday with former premier Benazir Bhuto that paves the way for power-sharing and clears a key hurdle to his smooth re-election.

Musharraf, a key US ally who seized power in a coup eight years ago, still awaits a crucial ruling by the Supreme Court -- due later Friday -- on whether Saturday's presidential vote can go ahead.

But the deal with Bhuto's opposition party takes a huge amount of pressure off Musharraf, who is controversially standing for another five-year term in office while still holding his post of army chief.

After increasingly frantic negotiations, the government and Bhuto's party said overnight they had both agreed on a national reconciliation accord which would be made public later Friday.

The deal gives an amnesty for politicians active in Pakistan between 1988 and 1999 -- effectively clearing Bhuto of the corruption charges that forced her into exile eight years ago.

It prepares the ground for Bhuto's planned homecoming on October 18 ahead of parliamentary elections due by early 2008.

The pact was announced after she met with key party members in London.

Bhuto, whose Pakistan People's Party is the country's largest, had earlier threatened to undermine's Musharraf widely-anticipated victory by pulling her MPs from parliament, after other opposition parties also resigned.

Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, a close confidant of the president, said the deal was done. "They have agreed on the draft and it will be issued by the president tomorrow (Friday)," he told AFP.

"Benazir Bhuto has given her assent"

The cabinet was expected to give formal approval before sending the pact to Musharraf to sign, Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azeem said, adding: "We are almost there."

Musharraf's allies have a majority in the two houses of parliament and four provincial assemblies that will vote for the president, but he would benefit from Bhuto's support ahead of the general election.

He has vowed to quit as army chief by November 15 if elected.

Reuters, Baghdad

About 25 suspected Iraqi militants were killed in an air strike on Friday targeting a "special groups" commander working with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the U.S. military said. U.S. troops were engaged in what the military said was a heavy firefight west of Baquba, capital of volatile Diyala province, during a raid against a commander it said was linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Qods force.

Support aircraft were called in when U.S. soldiers came under atack from militants firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, with one insurgent thought to have an anti-aircraft weapon.

"Perceiving hostile intent, support aircraft engaged, killing an estimated 25 criminals and destroying two buildings," the military said in a statement

Police and hospital sources said 25 people were killed and another 35 wounded in the U.S. air strike in the village of Jezan al-Imam near Khalis, a town northwest of Baquba. They said four houses were also destroyed. U.S. commanders in Iraq have repeatedly accused Shi'ite Iran's Revolutionary Guards of training and arming Shi'ite militias in Iraq and supplying them with weapons, including rockets and roadside bombs, by far the biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Tehran denies the charge and blames the sectarian violence in Iraq, in which tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, on the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

The operation early on Friday targeted what the U.S. military described as a "special groups" commander, a term it often uses to describe militants it says are linked to Iran.

"Intelligence indicates he was responsible for facilitating criminal activity and is involved in the movement of various weapons from Iran to Baghdad," the statement said.

AFP, Seoul

South Korea said Friday the communist North was commited to peace and promised that the private sector will largely pay for an estimated 11 billion dollars in new projects agreed at a landmark summit

President Roh Moo-Hyun, only the second South Korean leader to visit Pyongyang, pledged with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to work for a peace treaty to close the last Cold War frontier after six decades of division.

The summit declaration also called for a series of joint economic projects including a special economic zone around the North's western port of Haeju, construction of joint shipyards and tours to the North's scenic Mount Paekdu.

The deals surprised South Korean analysts and media, who had low expectations of the summit, although Roh's conservative critics charged that he failed to press the North on its nuclear weapons and human rights record.

Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung said the two countries had started "a new framework to bring about permanent peace on the Korean peninsula and advance their relations, including economic cooperation and exchanges." "This summit has opened a new chapter for peace," Lee told a news conference. The leaders' declaration called for a summit with the United States and China to permanently end the 1950-53 Korean War, which halted with only an armistice.

Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon pledged that work to draft a peace treaty would take place "in line with denuclearisation" -- not separately from it

Reuters, Nairobi

One of Africa's largest rubbish mountains, the 30-acre Dandora site in Nairobi, is seriously harming children's health and polluting the Kenyan capital, a report said on Friday.

Located near slums in east Nairobi, the open dump receives some 2,000 tons of the city's rubbish daily. Maribu storks and other scavengers pick over the noxious heap, while scores of people including children try to make a living off the remains.

The study, commissioned by the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), found that half of 328 children tested had concentrations of lead in their blood exceeding the internationally accepted level. Exposed to pollutants from heavy metals and toxic substances in soil, water and air, almost half the children tested were also suffering respiratory diseases, including chronic bronchitis and asthma, a UNEP statement said.

Nearly half of soil samples from the area had lead levels almost 10 times higher than unpolluted samples.

"The Dandora site may pose some special challenges for the city of Nairobi and Kenya as a nation. But it is also a mirror to the condition of rubbish sites across many parts of Africa and other urban centers of the developing world," said UNEP head Achim Steiner, exhorting city leaders to remedy the situation.

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush said Thursday that he was "deeply concerned about foreign interference" by countries like Syria in Lebanon's upcoming presidential election.

"I am deeply concerned about foreign interference in the election. The message has been sent to nations such as Syria that they should not interfere," Bush said as he met with Lebanese parliament leader Saad Hariri, the son of slain former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. "As a result of that cold-blooded murder, the international community has demanded accountability" but the resulting plan for a UN-backed court has not made enough progress, Bush said during a brief joint public appearance. "That tribunal is taking too long to get started. The international community must work more quickly to stand up this tribunal so people will be held to account," said the US president "And not only that, this tribunal will send a clear message that there will be justice delivered" for Hariri's murder and other political assassinations in Lebanon, Bush said.

The court, which is to be based in the Netherlands, will try suspects in the assassination of Hariri, a popular five-time prime minister who was killed along with 22 others in a massive explosion on the Beirut seafront on February 14, 2005.

Reuters, Santiago

The widow and five children of late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet were arrested on Thursday as part of an investigation into allegations he stole $27 million of public funds and hid it in foreign banks.

Judge Carlos Cerda also ordered the arrest of a further 17 people including retired military officers from the Pinochet era, friends, associates and the former leader's personal secretary, court officials said.

"There are more than 200,000 pages (of court documents). It's been closely investigated," Cerda told reporters.

The center-left government described the arrests as a strictly judicial decision.

"The courts have ordered the arrests," Interior Minister Felipe Harboe said. "The government has no further comment"

Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973-1990, died in December last year at age 91 without ever being brought to trial to face embezzlement and human rights charges.

He left behind a widow, Lucia Hiriart, now 84, and five children: Augusto, Lucia, Marco Antonio, Jaqueline and Veronica. The year before he died Pinochet was charged with tax evasion linked to the estimated $27 million.

AFP, Yangon

Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will consider positively a heavily conditioned offer to meet the junta leader, her party said Friday, as a US envoy headed to meet leaders of the isolated regime. The ruling generals made the offers of dialogue as the United Nations readied to discuss the violent crackdown on the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in almost 20 years in the country formerly called Burma.Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 18 years under house arrest, is a living symbol of the pro-democracy movement that last week brought up to 100,000 people onto the streets of Yangon. While the top general, Than Shwe, is known to despise her, Myanmar's state media late Thursday said he was willing to see the Nobel peace prize winner if she ends her support for sanctions against the regime. Aung San Suu Kyi would consider the offer "in a positive light," said Nyan Win, a spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD). "It's up to Daw (Ms) Aung San Suu Kyi to decide," he said.

Reuters, Tehran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday Iran had overcome difficulties en route to a nuclear energy industry and no one could stop it, a day after France called for wider European sanctions to rein in Tehran. Diplomats said Iran had installed close to 3,000 centrifuge machines, enough to start refining usable amounts of nuclear fuel, but would need to run them in unison at high speeds for long periods to atain that threshold.

"I announce to the whole world that the Iranian nation has passed the difficult points (on its nuclear path)," Ahmadinejad said in remarks carried by Iran's official news agency IRNA. "And no power can stop this nation from making more and more (atomic) achievements."

AFP, London

The judge overseeing the inquest into the death of princess Diana told a London court Wednesday that it might never be possible to prove conclusively whether or not she was pregnant when she died. Speaking on the second day of the long-awaited formal probe into her death, judge Scot Baker told the 11 inquest jurors that they would hear "intimate" details of her private life. He added that there was evidence Diana was taking the contraceptive pill when she died and warned that scientific evidence may not be able to demonstrate "one way or the other" whether Diana was carrying a baby. Diana, ex-wife of heir to the throne Prince Charles, was killed alongside her Egyptian boyfriend Dodi Fayed and their chauffeur Henri Paul in a high speed car crash in Paris in August 1997. Dodi's father Mohamed Al-Fayed, the millionaire owner of London's upscale Harrods department store, believes they were killed in a plot hatched by Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, and the British security services.

Reuters, Jakarta

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday warned the once-powerful armed forces against returning to politics. Under former President Suharto, the general who rose to power in an anti-communist coup and who ruled for 32 years, the military had a prominent role. The military (TNI) had a fixed quota of seats in Indonesia's parliament, its members were involved in running various businesses, and they were frequently accused of human rights abuses. Since Suharto's downfall amid civil unrest in 1998, the military's political power has been clipped and it has come under pressure to abandon its lucrative business ventures. "The TNI needs to maintain its consistency in staying out of politics and should not try to find a new way to get involved in politics," Yudhoyono said in a speech marking Armed Forces Day at the military headquarters. Yudhoyono, a former general who spent his entire career in the armed forces, urged the military to continue the reforms that began in 1998 so that it could become a "professional and capable" institution.

AFP, Tokyo

Japan said Friday it had successfully put its first lunar probe into the moon's orbit, stealing a march over China and India as an Asian space race heats up.

The Kaguya probe, named after a fairytale princess, is on the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the US Apollo human spaceflight programme in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Japan's space agency. After it blasted into space last month on a domestically developed rocket from southern Japan, the lunar explorer orbited the Earth twice before firing its engine to change course. "The satellite successfully entered the moon's orbit We are glad that we achieved one of the big challenges in this mission," said Tatsuo Oshima, a spokesman from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).