The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Colombo

Sri Lankan forces killed at least 60 Tamil Tiger rebels for the loss of 11 of their own men in heavy fighting in the Jaffna peninsula, the defence ministry said. Security forces moved ahead of their defences and advanced into an area held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to neutralise an offensive by the rebels on Wednesday, the ministry said.

"The number of LTTE cadres killed in the Muhamalai (Jaffna peninsula) attack has risen to 60 according to latest LTTE communication," the ministry said, revising its earlier figure of 52 Tigers killed.

However, the Tigers said only one of its fighters had been killed and claimed that at least 23 government troops died during two hours of intense fighting that also involved helicopter gun ships.

"We had better command and better tactics," LTTE spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiriyan told AFP from the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi. "There are times when we suffer more than the army, but certainly not in this case."

He said their intelligence sources indicated that the military's casualties amounted to more than 140 dead or wounded. The army said 41 soldiers were wounded.

No independent confirmation of the wildly conflicting claims given by both sides was available.

Wednesday's fighting came as President Mahinda Rajapakse presented the country's budget for 2008 with a record amount of money being allocated for defence, mainly to fight the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The defence budget was increased to 166.44 billion rupees (1.49 billion dollars) for 2008 from a revised 155 billion rupees this year, according to figures tabled in parliament Wednesday.

"It is essential to completely wipe out terrorism," Rajapakse told parliament. "Otherwise there can be no political solution," he said in a speech broadcast live on television.

The separatist Tamil Tiger rebels did not appear interested in a negotiated settlement to the tropical island's drawn-out ethnic conflict and had to be defeated, he added.

"I wish to emphasise that the fight against terrorism is not a fight against the Tamil people," the president said.

Tens of thousands of people have died since the Tamil Tigers launched their campaign for an independent Tamil homeland in 1972.

The government and rebels had agreed to a Norwegian-brokered truce in 2002, but the peace process began to unravel from December 2005.

Another report adds: The president of Sri Lanka said Wednesday there would be peace on the troubled island only after more fighting to crush separatist rebels as he unveiled the nation's biggest-ever war budget.

"It is essential to completely wipe out terrorism," President Mahinda Rajapakse told parliament, estimating defence spending this year of 155 billion rupees (1.4 billion dollars) rising to 166.44 billion in 2008.

"Otherwise there can be no political solution," he said in a Sinhalese speech broadcast live on television.

The separatist Tamil Tiger rebels did not appear interested in a negotiated settlement to the tropical island's drawn out ethnic conflict and had to be defeated, he added.

AFP, Islamabad

Pakistan's government will hold elections in February and lift the state of emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf within one or two months, his attorney general said Thursday.

The statement came after US President George W. Bush telephoned Musharraf for the first time since Saturday's declaration of emergency rule to urge him to keep to January's original election timetable and quit as army chief.

"Elections will be held in February, it has been decided," attorney general Malik Mohammad Qayyum, the government's chief lawyer, told AFP.

"The emergency will be lifted in one or two months."

The military ruler is also under pressure from ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, who has pledged to rally supporters in Rawalpindi on Friday and stage a "long march" next week if he does not restore the constitution and hold polls.

Officials had warned that the vote, seen as the key step in nuclear-armed Pakistan's transition to civilian democracy, could be delayed by up to a year, although the government said it wanted them held as soon as possible.

Musharraf imposed the state of emergency citing growing Islamic militancy and an interfereing judiciary. He suspended the constitution, sacked the chief justice and clamped curbs on the media.

Meanwhile police warned that suicide bombers had infiltrated Rawalpindi, a garrison town near Islamabad that has been hit by several recent blasts, ahead of Bhutto's protest. "We have very specific intelligence reports that up to eight suicide bombers have entered Rawalpindi," city police chief Saud Aziz told AFP.

"Naturally they will target big public meetings like what you have seen in Karachi," he added.

Twin suicide bombings killed 139 people in Karachi at Bhutto's October 18 homecoming parade after eight years in self-exile.

AP, Tuusula

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at his high school in this placid town in southern Finland on Wednesday, killing seven other students and the principal before mortally wounding himself in a rampage that stunned a nation where gun crime is rare.

Police were analyzing YouTube postings that appeared to anticipate the massacre, including clips in which a young man calls for revolution and apparently prepares for the attack by test firing a semiautomatic handgun.

Investigators said the gunman, who was not identified, shot himself in the head after the shooting spree at Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki. He died later at Toolo Hospital in Helsinki.

AP, Sana

A Yemeni court convicted Wednesday 32 al-Qaida suspects of planning attacks on oil and gas installations in the country, sentencing them to prison terms of up to 15 years. Four others were acquitted.

Six of those convicted remain at large and were tried in absentia. The prosecution had charged the group, all from Yemen, with forming an armed gang and planning attacks against oil installations with rocket-propelled grenades in September 2006.

The trial opened in March and authorities did not disclose when or how they were arrested. Three of them claimed they were tortured and forced to sign confessions, according to Yemeni official news agency SABA.

Among those who claimed duress was Abu Bakr al-Rubaei, the top suspect. He had allegedly confessed that he and others planned to carry out terrorist operations targeting Western and U.S. interests and homes of foreign diplomats in the country.

Reuters, Washington

The U.S. military is worried about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons after President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule, prompting protests and arrests, a senior Pentagon general said on Wednesday.

Asked if the U.S. military was concerned about the security of those weapons, Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "Certainly."

"Any time there is a nation that has nuclear weapons that has experienced a situation such as Pakistan is at present, that is a primary concern," Ham told reporters

"However, we'll watch that quite closely and I think that's probably all I can say about that at this point," he said.

Pakistan carried out its first nuclear test in 1998 and experts estimate it has material for as many as 90 nuclear weapons. Hundreds of lawyers and political opponents have been detained during clashes with police in Pakistan after Musharraf declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution on Saturday.

Washington considers Pakistan a key ally in the U.S.-declared war against terrorism. It is also an important partner for the U.S. military as it fights against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

AFP, Jerusalem

The construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank has accelerated even as Israel and the Palestinians work to relaunch the Middle East peace process, a settler watchdog said on Wednesday.

The construction of settlements "puts the chances of success at the Annapolis meeting in grave danger," Yariv Oppenheimer, secretary general of the Israeli Peace Now group told AFP. "If it continues like this we will soon have a settler state instead of a Palestinian state" in the West Bank, he said.

In a report covering the period from may to October, Peace Now said construction is underway in 88 settlements, ranging from single buildings to the development of hundreds of housing units.

Citing government statistics published in June, the group said the number of settlers in the West Bank has reached 267,500, an annual growth of 5.8 percent, versus 1.8 percent growth within Israel during the same period. "This means that the growth of settlements is much more than the 'natural growth' and includes massive migration of settlers to the West Bank," the report said. But Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, called the numbers "problematic" and insisted that the growth reflects the higher birth rates of settlers, who tend to be ultra-Orthodox Jews.

AP, Riga

Latvia's Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis said Wednesday that he would step down on Dec. 5 and that the four-party ruling coalition would immediately begin searching for a new head of government, his spokesman said.

The decision follows weeks of intense pressure on Kalvitis, Latvia's longest serving prime minister since independence in 1991, from both the electorate and President Valdis Zatlers.

Kalvitis' spokesman, Arno Pjatkins, said that it was not clear who would become the next prime minister or whether the current four-party coalition would remain in power.

He did, however, quote Kalvitis as saying that opposition parties would be consulted since the next government "would need as many fresh ideas as possible." The current center-right Cabinet has ruled since winning the October 2006 parliamentary election, but has seen its popularity plummet because of rising inflation and a recent decision to fire a popular anti-corruption chief.

Earlier Wednesday, Zatlers said that the government should resign since it had lost the people's trust, Latvian media reported.

Reuters, Beijing

China on Thursday urged Iran to heed rising international worry about its nuclear ambitions, saying Beijing would seek to work with Europe and the United Nations to defuse the crisis but holding its tongue on any new sanctions.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that his country's nuclear program was irreversible, showing continued defiance in the face of possible new U.N. sanctions. He claimed that Iran now had 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium in its Natanz nuclear plant.

Enriched uranium can fuel power plants but also, if refined further, act as material for bombs. Iran says its intentions are peaceful, but Western powers say the Islamic state wants the ability to make nuclear weapons and they have warned Tehran to obey a U.N. call to halt enrichment. As a permament member of the U.N. Security Council, China has the power to pass or veto any fresh sanctions on Tehran, but -- without outright excluding them -- Beijing has repeatedly said that negotiations can still solve the standoff.

AP, Islamabad

Former Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif, a key opposition figure, urged the United States and other Western nations Wednesday to abandon embattled President Pervez Musharraf, saying he is no longer able to help them fight terrorism. Speaking to The Associated Press from exile in Saudi Arabia, Sharif said the military ruler's desperation to cling to power has pushed Pakistan to the brink of chaos and was only helping Islamic militants. said thousands of his opposition party's supporters have been rounded up since Musharraf declared emergency rule over the weekend. He urged the Pakistani public to protest, and predicted many would in order to oppose the U.S.-allied general. "One man is holding the entire nation hostage for his personal interests," Sharif said. "The political forces, the lawyers and civil community that believe in moderation and democracy, they are sidelined today. Who is going to get the benefit? It will be the radicals and extremists. They will thrive now.

Reuters, Washington

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton still holds a 20-point lead over her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination but she and Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani are in a dead heat, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday. Among Democrats, Clinton leads with 47 percent, followed by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at 25 percent and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards with 11 percent, NBC reported. Clinton's 22-point advantage over Obama in the poll is virtually unchanged since this summer. In the new poll, 76 percent of Democrats surveyed give Clinton high marks for being knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency, compared with just 41 percent who say the same about Obama, NBC said. When asked who was more likable, 72 percent said Obama versus 49 percent for Clinton. A majority, 65 percent, also viewed the Illinois senator as more honest and straightforward versus 53 percent who rated Clinton higher, NBC reported.

AFP, Mount Vernon

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to the United States Wednesday and vowed to back the US stand on Iran and Afghanistan as he sought to forge a new era in cross-Atlantic ties. Hoping to turn the page on four years of frosty relations over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sarkozy solemnly vowed to nurture the historic friendship between the two countries and pledged to stand by Washington on some burning issues. "We may have differences, we may disagree on things, we may even have arguments, as in many families," Sarkozy told the US Congress in a rare address to the two chambers by a foreign dignitary. "But in times of difficulty, in times of hardship, one stands true to one's friends, one stands shoulder to shoulder with them, one supports them, and one helps them."Gone were the days when French fries were struck from the Congress menu here as unpatriotic, as US lawmakers rose to their feet to give Sarkozy a three-minute standing ovation when he swept into the wood-paneled chamber.

AFP, Jerusalem

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz called Thursday for Mohamed ElBaradei to be removed as head of the UN nuclear watchdog, saying he had turned a blind eye to Iran's nuclear ambitions. "The policies followed by ElBaradei endanger world peace. His irresponsible attitude of sticking his head in the sand over Iran's nuclear programme should lead to his impeachment," Mofaz told public radio from Washington. Mofaz, who heads "the strategic dialogue" between Israel and its main ally the United States, met on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "ElBaradei says he has no proof regarding Iran's nuclear programme when he has intelligence reports gathered by several countries and he heads an organisation responsible precisely for that," the former chief of staff said.

AFP, Tbilisi

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Wednesday declared a 15-day nationwide state of emergency after police clashed violently with anti-government protesters. The measure imposed restrictions on public gatherings and the media and closed all television channels except for the state-controlled network, Economic Development Minister Georgi Arvaladze said in a televised statement. shvili had earlier declared a state of emergency in the capital Tbilisi because of "an attempt at t a state coup," Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said. He said the state of emergency would be lifted "when the situation returns to normality." The action by the president came after a day of running battles between riot police and demonstrators demanding the resignation of Saakashvili, who came to power in the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution. The health ministry said that 486 people had been hospitalised after running battles with police, who fired rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons.