The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Karachi

Telephone networks went down for hours, news channels went off the air -- but news that Pakistan had been plunged into emergency rule swept Karachi, the country's largest city, before communications shut down.

Naeem Ahmed said thanks to the television blackout he'd never sold so many newspapers as he did on Sunday morning from his stall in the centre of Pakistan's biggest city -- but that's where his happiness ended.

"Personally, I believe that emergency will further aggravate the precarious situation we are already in," Ahmed said.

Yawar Abbas, a 42 year-old businessman in Pakistan's commercial capital, was in a minority backing Musharraf.

"I think it's the right move," he said. "Emergency powers should help the government control rising terrorism and extremism."

Amir Ahmed said he was bemused by events as he waited at the city's airport for his brother to arrive from Dubai on the same flight as opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

"This is an amazing country. In a short space of a few months we have moved from talk of reconciliation to emergency," said Ahmed, an employee of a courier company. Having returned from self-imposed exile on Oct. 18 as part of a reconciliation process meant to pave the way to parliamentary elections in January, Bhutto had gone back to Dubai on Thursday to spend a few days with her family. When she came back two weeks ago there were hundreds of thousands of people on the streets to greet her for a homecoming ruined by a suicide attack that killed 139 people. On Saturday night there were just a couple of hundred supporters at the airport to welcome Bhutto back to her hometown. The ones who did were sure President Musharraf, a general who came to power in a coup eight years ago, had made a blunder that would lead to his downfall. "Musharraf has gone too far. Now he will not survive for long," Manzoor Abbas, a member of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party said. Firing was heard in several parts of the volatile city, notably Lyari, a neighbourhood where support for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party is strong.

Most of firing appeared to be in the air, according to witnesses, and it was unknown if there were any casualties.

But after eight years of being led by a general, many Karachiites, like other Pakistanis, just shrugged. "I'll still probably go to work tomorrow, I'll still get my paycheck, I'll still get to go out, I don't see any military outside my house," said Saif Khan a 25-year-old investment banker who was more interest in stability than political personalities.

"Even in the long-run, okay some investment banking deals may go south, oh well, such things happen."

Housewife Firdoos Begum, 45, was worried about rising food prices, a big factor in Musharraf's plummeting popularity. "Prices have risen so much, we cannot afford a lot of things," she said. "Emergency rule will further push prices up and poor will become poorer." Sharafat Ali, a driver standing outside a shop in the business district late on Saturday night, was downcast after the imposition of emergency rule in a country that has been led by generals for more than half the 60 years since it was formed out of the partition of India.

Reuters, Islamabad

Hours after Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule to the horror of many Pakistanis and the international community, the headlines said it all.

"General Musharraf's second coup."

"It is martial law."

"Draconian step."

Pakistan's broadsheets laid into the military ruler after he purged the Supreme Court and imposed sweeping reporting curbs that ban any coverage "that defames, and brings into ridicule or disrepute the head of state" on pain of up to three years' jail.

"Hopes that saner counsel might succeed in forestalling the extra-constitutional actions that had been hinted at t were obviously groundless," leading newspaper Dawn said in an editorial.

"One wonders about the nature and size of the risk taken by volunteering for a pariah's role in the comity (sic) of nations," it added. "Wisdom demands the courage to withdraw an action that will embarrass the whole country for ages."

Private television channels were blacked out on Saturday and Sunday, leaving only state television on air showing re-runs of Musharraf's late night address to the nation and advertisements promoting the government.

While Musharraf cited rising militancy and "interference" by the judiciary as the reasons for opting for emergency rule and suspending the constitution, his October re-election still awaited approval by a hostile Supreme Court -- which he has now replaced.

"Nov.3 will go down as another dark day in Pakistan's political and constitutional history," said The News. "This is one of General Musharraf's greatest errors of judgment and a sorry indication that nothing has been learnt from the mistakes of the past."

AFP, Istanbul

Turkey said Saturday that military options "remain on the table" to strike Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq despite new measures by Baghdad to clamp down on the separatists.

The United States scrambled to avert the threat of a cross-border Turkish attack as the crisis dominated a multilateral conference on the turmoil in Iraq in Istanbul, attended by 17 regional countries and major Western powers.

"All instruments remain on the table for Turkey," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan when asked whether fresh Iraqi pledges to curb the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) had satisfied Ankara.

"Whether they will be used or not, or when they will be used, is a matter of strategy."

Turkey has massed an estimated 100,000 troops along its frontier with Iraq amid mounting PKK violence against the Turkish security forces.

Iraqi officials said Saturday they were setting up new checkpoints in northern Iraq to try to restrict the movement of PKK rebels and cut their logistical supplies.

The Iraqi Kurdish authorities, accused by Ankara of harbouring and even aiding the rebels, began to shut down the offices of a PKK-linked political party.

Ankara, however, wants Iraq to urgently close PKK camps in the mountains of northern Iraq and arrest and extradite the group's leaders.

A senior Turkish government official said Ankara had seen no new element in the measures Iraq said it had enacted.

Reuters, Tehran

Thousands of Iranians chanted "Death to America" and vowed not to yield to U.S. pressure over Iran's nuclear program at a demonstration on Sunday marking the 28th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy.

Students burned the Stars and Stripes outside the leafy compound in downtown Tehran that once housed the U.S. mission stormed by radical students on November 4, 1979, almost 10 months after the U.S.-backed shah left into exile.

"The crowd shows that pressures from abroad cannot weaken our national will and Islamic unity," said Abdollah Salehi, a 22-year-old Tehran University student.

"Sanctions will not lead to any result."

The United States severed diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic in 1980, a few months after the seizure. Now, the two foes are embroiled in a row over Iran's atomic plans, which Washington says are aimed at building atomic bombs.

Tehran insists its plans are peaceful but its failure to allay suspicions has prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose two rounds of limited sanctions on Iran. Washington is pressing for a third round of sterner measures.

"We are not afraid of sanctions," read one banner.

Another read "We will not compromise with America even for a moment," quoting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

Washington insists it wants diplomacy to end the standoff but has not ruled out military action if that route fails.

Reuters, Nairobi

Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels said on Sunday they had killed another 270 government troops in heightened fighting in the remote eastern region of the Horn of Africa nation.

Most were blown up in packed trucks, the rebels said.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government has regularly denied ONLF reports of mass casualties as propaganda from the its foreign supporters. It has itself reported many deaths on the rebel side during its offensive against them this year. No independent assessment of casualties has been possible as the region is effectively off-limits to foreign journalists and is also often difficult to access for aid workers.

The Ogaden conflict is the worst of several insurgencies that Meles' government faces in the outer regions of Ethiopia.

Security forces launched an unprecedented offensive against the ONLF, which wants more autonomy for the arid region, after it killed 74 people during a raid on a Chinese-run oil exploration field earlier this year. In its latest "military communique," the ONLF said "large numbers" of its fighters had engaged government troops in five places between Oct 26-Nov 1 due to "summary executions, detentions of nomads and senseless shooting of livestock."

"These engagements resulted in over 270 TPLF (government) troops killed with an unconfirmed number wounded. Five military transport vehicles were destroyed by RPG-7s. The transport vehicles were full of troops when they were struck," it said. "Military engagements between ONLF troops and TPLF forces in the Ogaden have increased significantly over the last two weeks. This increase appears to be a coordinated and deliberate escalation in armed conflict initiated by the TPLF regime despite the humanitarian crisis in the Ogaden."

Reuters, Tel Aviv

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Saturday she did not expect Israel and the Palestinians would agree in a weekend of talks with her on a joint document for a conference on Palestinian statehood. Arriving in Israel for a new round of meetings with both sides, Rice said "knotty discussions" on the paper, intended to lay down the principles by which a Palestinian state can be established, were still ahead. "I absolutely don't expect there will be agreement on a document," she told reporters traveling with her, referring to chances a paper would be finalized by the end of her visit. The United States has not officially set a date for the conference slated for Annapolis, Maryland, an indication of the difficulties in bridging gaps between the two sides on the paper that will set the tone for the gathering. Both sides have said they want the conference to serve as a launching pad for negotiations on core issues of their conflict, such as borders and the future of Jerusalem and millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

AP, Ramallah

U.S.-led Middle East peace efforts will not be seen as credible by Palestinians unless a deadline is set for a deal, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Israel has rejected a timeline, the U.S. has been cool to the idea and Fayyad said he is not issuing an ultimatum. However, he warned that the situation on the ground is not static and that with continued expansion of Israeli settlements, prospects for a two-state solution are getting dimmer every day. Palestinians are worse off today than when peace-making began more than a decade ago, and they need "some notion of when this is going to end, particularly since conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate," said Fayyad, 55, an economist and former World Bank official who meets frequently with Israeli leaders and has won the respect of the Bush administration. In the runup to the U.S.-hosted Mideast conference, tentatively set for late November or early December in Annapolis, Md., Israel must make some "bold moves," Fayyad said in an interview at his West Bank office, with a large Palestinian flag and a wall sculpture of Bethlehem stone as a backdrop.

AFP, Istanbul

Baghdad and the United Nations should draw up a plan for the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Iraq, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Saturday. "The withdrawal of the foreign forces from Iraq must take place based on a plan that is introduced by the government of Iraq," Mottaki told reporters on the sidelines of a multinational conference here on Iraqi security. "Based on that plan, the United Nations should make a decision to end the mission of the foreign forces on an agreed date," he said. Mottaki was speaking after talks here between foreign ministers from Iraq's neighbours and major Western powers on efforts to stabilise the war-ravaged country. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon are also attending the conference.

AFP, Dubai

Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for a holy war against North African leaders and their French, Spanish and US allies in an audiotape message Saturday in which he announced a new Libyan arm of the militant network. In the message released on the internet, he also called on members of Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement to overthrow the Palestinian president, saying he had turned the movement into an "annex of the CIA". He urged militants to target US, French and Spanish interests in North African countries in the recording, the authenticity of which could not immediately be verified. "Islamic nation of resistance and jihad (holy war) in the Maghreb, see how your children are uniting under the banner of Islam and jihad against the United States, France and Spain," Zawahiri said.

Reuters, New York

Bush administration officials are weighing a plan that would grant detainees at Guantanamo Bay greater rights, as part of an effort to close the facility and possibly move some of the detainees to U.S. locations, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions. Citing U.S. officials involved in the discussions, the Times said the widely discussed proposals for revamping procedures that determine whether inmates are properly held included granting detainees legal representation at hearings. Giving federal judges, rather than military officers, authority to decide whether suspects are held is also under discussion, the report said. Officials contend that moving detainees to U.S. territory would have to include enhanced protections, the Times said. If detainees were relocated, "there is a recognition that for policy reasons you would need even more robust procedures than those currently at Guantanamo," the newspaper cited a senior official involved as saying.