The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

The Democratic-led House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat Wednesday and inserted timelines for an immediate troop withdrawal in a 50 billion dollar Iraq war funding bill.

The House voted 218 to 203 to pass the emergency war budget, calling for a pullback of most combat troops to start within 30 days, with a goal of completion by December 15, 2008.

President George W. Bush, who has thwarted every previous Democratic attempt to change his war policy, has repeatedly warned he will never accept mandated troop withdrawal timelines.

The vote, the latest drama in a prolonged showdown between Bush and Democrats over the war, was largely symbolic, however, as the bill is considered dead on arrival in the Senate.

"All of us here want to succeed in Iraq. All of us here want to make our nation and the American people safer," said Senate Democratic Majority leader Steny Hoyer.

"But after more than four and one-half years of pursuing the president's failing stay-the-course strategy, we are not achieving either objective."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added: "How much longer should we expect our young people to risk their lives, their limbs, their families, for an Iraqi government that is not willing to step up to the plate?"

But White House press secretary Dana Perino accused the Democrats of taking the war debate "down a well-worn path that calls for arbitrary withdrawal from the battlefield, despite the gains our military has made over the past year."

"These votes, like the dozens of previous failed votes, put the interests of radical interest groups ahead of the needs of our military and their mission," she said, adding Bush would veto the bill if it reached his desk.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates had earlier held closed-door briefings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

There had been suggestions the war funding bill might founder on the opposition of liberal and fiercely anti-war Democratic members of the House, but they decided to back it, boosting its chances.

"While this bill is not perfect, it is the strongest Iraq bill to date," said three key anti-war lawmakers, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters. "This is a concrete step in the right direction, and an important marker for this Congress to lay down."

The bill would require Bush to transition the mission in Iraq from combat operations to supporting Iraqi security forces and protecting US diplomatic facilities. It would also ban the use of torture and defer the rest of Bush's 196 billion dollar request for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The funding would run out after four months.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid warned on Tuesday that if the bill did not pass the Senate, Bush would not get any more money for the war this year.

That would force the Pentagon to dip into its current operating budget to finance the operations.

Reuters, Washington

The Pentagon on Wednesday said it was not worried about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons amid the political crisis there, rolling back from comments made by a senior U.S. general who called the issue a "primary concern."

"At this point, we have no concerns," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "We believe that they are under the appropriate control."

Last week, Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military was concerned about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal after President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and arrested thousands.

"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 said.

But U.S. defense and military officials have since backpedaled, saying the weapons are controlled by Pakistan's military and that the military is a responsible steward of the arsenal. Pakistan carried out its first nuclear test in 1998 and experts estimate it has material for as many as 90 weapons.

AFP, New Delhi

The hardline Hindu chief of India's Gujarat state is set for re-election despite fresh allegations linking him to the mass murder of Muslims, according to an opinion poll.

Narender Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, has a clear edge over his rivals, with 63 percent of people saying they were satisfied with his administration's performance, the Indian Express newspaper said on Thursday.

The Hindu nationalist politician's personal popularity has also risen from 38 percent in 2002 -- the year at least 2,000 Muslims were murdered by Hindu mobs -- to 40 percent now.

Fifty-six percent also agreed that Gujarat had "an effective leader," while 52 percent said Modi, a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had added to Gujarat's prestige. The western state goes into elections next month, and the poll said the BJP was on track to win 100 seats in the 182-member state assembly -- ahead of the Congress Party with 76 seats.

Reuters, Baghdad

US.forces backed by aircraft killed 25 suspected insurgents in operations targeting al Qaeda near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

It was the latest in a series of operations mounted against al Qaeda, which U.S. commanders say has been seriously weakened since the launch of a U.S. counter-insurgency strategy to deny the militants safe haven in provinces around Baghdad.

Meanwhile: A suicide bomber rammed his car into a police patrol Thursday in northern Iraq, killing six people and wounding more than 20 - many of them children walking to school, police said.

The explosion happened around 8 a.m. in Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city 180 miles north of Baghdad, said police Brig. Sarhad Qadir.

The city has seen a rise in violence in recent months, ahead of a planned census and referendum to determine the future of the city - whether it will join the semi-autonomous Kurdish region on its border, or remain under Baghdad's control.

The bomber's apparent target was the six-car convoy of a senior Kurdish police officer, Brig. Gen. Khattab Omar, who heads the city police department's quick response force, Qadir said.

North of the capital, in the ethnically and religiously mixed oil-producing city of Kirkuk, a car bomb targeting the convoy of a police colonel killed six people, including one policeman, police said. They said 17 people were wounded.

Reuters, Kabul

US-led coalition forces killed several militants in clashes in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Thursday, as a British soldier was killed in an explosion in the troubled region.

Taliban insurgents suffer heavy casualties whenever they engage with foreign troops, but there are few signs they are suffering from a shortage of recruits. Both the number of engagements and their geographical range has gone up this year.

The latest clashes came in the Garmser district of Helmand province, where mostly British and U.S. troops are battling to extend Afghan government authority to a string of towns along the fertile Helmand River that cuts through the barren desert.

"During a search of compounds in the district, coalition forces encountered armed militants in multiple buildings on the compounds," a U.S. military statement said.

"Coalition forces responded with a combination of small-arms fire; accurate, conventional munitions and precision-guided munitions killing several militants during the engagement," the statement added.

Reuters, Colombo

Sri Lankan troops killed 15 Tamil Tiger rebels and a soldier was killed in clashes in the north of the island, the military said on Thursday.

The spokesman said 14 rebels and a soldier were killed in four separate attacks in Vavuiniya on Wednesday. Another Tamil Tiger fighter was killed by troops in Muhamalai in Jaffna Peninsula.

The Tigers, who say they are fighting for an independent state for minority ethnic Tamils in the north and east, were not immediately available for comment.

The military has launched an offensive to drive out the rebels from Mannar after evicting them earlier this year from jungle terrain they controlled in the east.

Around 5,000 people have been killed in fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters since early 2006. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since the war erupted in 1983.

Reuters, Beijing

Chinese doctors operating on a woman with abdominal pain expected to find an inflamed appendix but discovered a football-sized 15-kg (33-lb) tumour instead, a Beijing daily reported on Thursday.

Surgeons at the capital's Chaoyang Dongba hospital spent 30 minutes removing the tumour from Xiao Wen's abdomen, the Beijing Times said. It measured 40 cm (16 in) by 30 cm (12 in) and is believed to have been benign.

"It's just unbelievable, who would have thought a stomach could have such a large tumour?" the 21-year-old's father said. One surgeon who operated on Xiao Wen said he had not seen such a large abdominal tumour in more than 20 years of medicine.

AFP, United Nations

A senior UN official warned here Wednesday that the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force may fail in its mission to protect civilians in strife-storn Darfur without the required air mobility and firepower.

"For the early phase of 2008, we need to have a force that is able to meet the test because we believe that that mission will be tested in early 2008," Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the UN department of peacekeeping operations, told reporters. He added that if the predominantly African 26,000-strong force "is not able to meet that test in a credible manner, then it will be very bad for our efforts in Darfur."

"The clock is ticking"twe are missing some critical capacities," he said, referring to 24 transport or attack helicopters.

Diplomats have said several Western countries able to provide the helicopters are reluctant to do so because of a lack of confidence in the the command and control structure for the joint force.

Reuters, Washington

After a stormy couple of weeks, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will attempt to right the ship on Thursday night at a campaign debate with her rivals. The increasingly combative Democratic candidates gather in Las Vegas for the televised debate with just seven weeks left before Iowa starts Americans down the path toward the November 4, 2008, presidential election. Clinton, a senator from New York, was widely seen to have stumbled at the last debate, on October 30 in Philadelphia, when her equivocating answers on Iraq, Social Security and illegal immigration prompted charges of double-talk from top rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards. In the days that followed, the Clinton campaign accused her male rivals of "piling on" her and talked about competing in "the all-boys' club of presidential politics" -- prompting accusations she was trying to play the role of female victim.

Reuters, Santiago

A powerful earthquake hit mineral-rich northern Chile on Wednesday, killing at least two people, injuring more than 100 and halting output at some of the world's largest copper mines. The magnitude 7.7 quake raised massive dust clouds in Chile's mountainous north and shook buildings in isolated cities up and down the Pacific coast. Dozens of road workers were reported trapped in and around a coastal highway tunnel that collapsed in the hardest-hit area. Government spokesman Ricardo Lagos said rescuers would try to reach them early on Thursday. "They will be evacuated by the Navy via the ocean," he said. "As far as we know there are no injured or dead (among them)." Hundreds of miles away in the capital Santiago, buildings swayed and unnerved even the earthquake-hardened. The area rocked by the earthquake lies between Chile's northern Pacific coast on one side and the barren Atacama desert and towering Andes mountains on the other.

Reuters, Tokyo

Warm handshakes and smiles for the cameras will be in evidence when U.S. and Japanese leaders meet on Friday for the first time since Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda took office, but the brief summit stands little chance of resolving the security headaches bedeviling the alliance. Japan's stalled naval mission in support of U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan and Tokyo's worries over Washington's warming ties with North Korea will top the agenda when Fukuda makes his diplomatic debut at a summit in Washington with U.S. President George W. Bush. The 71-year-old Japanese leader, who took over in September when his predecessor suddenly quit, is likely to come back empty-handed to Tokyo, where a standoff with opposition parties controlling parliament's upper house is paralyzing policy. To the dismay of U.S. policy makers, Japan was forced this month to halt its refueling mission for U.S. and other ships patrolling the Indian Ocean after opposition parties refused to agree to a new bill to allow the operations to continue.

AFP, Paris

French and German commuters struggled to work Thursday as rail unions brought transport misery in strike action over pay and pension disputes.

Rail traffic in Germany faced major disruptions early Thursday as passenger train drivers joined freight services in a strike that rail operator Deutsche Bahn called the biggest in its history. On main line tracks, around two thirds of trains were running, most of them high-speed trains. In the west of the country, half of the regional trains were operating, and in the east about 10 percent, according to Deutsche Bahn. Commuters in the cities of Frankfurt and Stuttgart faced traffic chaos as only a third of the suburban trains were running. In Berlin, there were 20 to 40 minute delays on commuter trains.

Moscow

A Russian opposition party said on Thursday it had asked a court to disqualify Russian President Vladimir Putin from a parliamentary vote next month on the grounds his job gives him an unfair advantage.

Putin is leading the election slate of the United Russia party in the December 2 vote. His critics say the Kremlin will use its influence to manipulate the vote in the party's favor. Officials deny the allegation.

Nikita Belykh, leader of the Union of Right-Wing Forces, a small liberal opposition party, said it was filing the suit against Putin.

"Yesterday our party filed a suit with the Supreme Court asking it to exclude Vladimir Putin from United Russia's list of candidates for the parliamentary election," Belykh told a news conference.

He said the grounds for the suit were Putin's "repeated violations of the law." He alleged the Kremlin was using its administrative