The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kabul

A suicide attacker slammed a bomb-filled car into an Afghan army bus in Kabul Wednesday, killing at least 16 people in the second such blast in two days during a visit by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

The extremist Taliban group claimed responsibility for the morning rush-hour bombing, which struck in the south of the Afghan capital as Gates wrapped up a short visit to assess efforts against an intensifying insurgency.

The bus was reduced to a blackened skeleton of mangled metal, its roof and sides blown out. "It was a big explosion and sent fire into the sky," said Akbari Sarwar, a journalist who was on the road when the blast hit. "When I moved in I saw scores of bodies, legs, arms, heads, flesh everywhere," he told AFP.

Eight Afghan National Army soldiers and eight civilians were killed according to information given to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, spokesman Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters.

Another defence ministry officials said on condition of anonymity that up to 20 civilians may have been killed, many of them children, but information was still being verified.

Four of the dead were children in their early teens, health ministry spokesman Abudullah Fahim said. Seventeen people were treated in hospital, he said.

The attack occurred as Gates ended a short trip to Afghanistan in which he held talks with President Hamid Karzai about the violence being led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

A suicide attack that targeted the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on the first full day of his visit on Tuesday missed the foreign soldiers but wounded 22 Afghan civilians.

Agencies, New Delhi

The opposition group in Pakistan, All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), has decided to boycott the January elections.

Former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif's party is a part of the APDM so he is not contesting.

Meanwhile former premier Benazir Bhutto's party, PPP, is not a member but whether or not she will contest remains to be seen.

APDM, however, scheduled to hold talks with Bhutto and Maulana Fazlur Rehman to boycott polls after President Pervez Musharraf announced that he would lift Emergency in the country only on December 16.

"I intend to lift Emergency by December 16, repeal the PCO and hold elections within the Constitution," said Musharraf.

Emergency was no longer necessary, Musharraf said now that his own election had been legally validated and Pakistan was successfully dealing with terrorism at home.

"Now we need national consensus, political reconciliation, good governance," added Musharraf.

Musharraf appealed to the main opposition to participate in the January 8 elections.

But early reactions from the PPP and PML(N) indicated that they were not wholly convinced.

Musharraf is yet to agree to two of their key demands set up an independent Election Commission and restore the Chief Justice.

Meanwhile, Pakistani opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto set their parties to work Tuesday on a list of demands they say the government must meet to stop them boycotting elections in January.

The former premiers agreed to join forces at a meeting late Monday, saying that they would consider boycotting next month's crucial vote if President Pervez Musharraf does not agree to extra steps for free polls. Musharraf last week pledged to lift a month-old state of emergency by December 16, ahead of the key polls on January 8, but the opposition say the vote will still be unfair.

A committee set up by the parties of the two ex-premiers to draft the "charter of demands" had its maiden session on Tuesday, Sharif's spokesman Ahsan Iqbal told AFP.

"They have started work now," Iqbal said.

The chairman of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, Raja Zafarul Haq, said the committee's demands would be based on the discussions between Sharif and Bhutto on Monday night but would focus on fair elections.

AP, Jerusalem

Israel announced plans Tuesday to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood, drawing quick Palestinian condemnation that the move will undermine newly revived peace talks.

The new housing would expand Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in an area Palestinians claim as capital of a future state. Palestinian officials appealed to the U.S. to block the project, but Israel says a pledge to halt settlement activity does not apply anywhere in the holy city.

The plan focuses attention on one of the most difficult issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in peace talks that are supposed to resume this month - the future of Jerusalem.

Channel 2 TV reported, meanwhile, that President Bush will visit Israel next month for the first time in his presidency. The report said he would focus on Israel-Palestinian peace talks and Iran's nuclear program. White House officials and the U.S. Embassy would neither confirm nor deny the report. Other Israeli media outlets reported the Bush visit would take place Jan. 9.

AFP, Indonesia

Key industrial nations Japan and Canada appear to be moving away from binding emissions targets for rich nations in early talks at key a climate change conference, environmental groups warned Wednesday.

Nearly 190 countries have gathered at the UN meeting in Indonesia's Bali, which aims to see them agree to negotiate a new regime to combat climate change when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

"There is a little concern about the positioning of Japan and Canada. Their proposals are really not building on the strengths of the Kyoto Protocol," said Angela Ledford Anderson, of the US-based National Environment Trust.

She said Japan had revived the idea of a system whereby a country pledges to reduce emissions, and the international community reviews their progress, rather than committing to mandatory targets.

Reuters, Asmara

An exiled leader of Somalia's Islamists has rejected a call by Somalia's new prime minister for talks to try to end 16 years of conflict and stem a year-long insurgency that has killed some 6,000 civilians.

"Our problem is not with the old prime minister or the new prime minister. Our problem is Ethiopia's occupation," Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who is now chairman of the opposition Alliance For the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), told Reuters.

Ahmed's Islamist courts' movement ruled Mogadishu for six months last year, until it was routed by Ethiopia's army backing forces from the interim Somali government. "If the Ethiopian occupation is removed then everything is possible.

AP, Tehran

A new U.S. intelligence review concluding Iran stopped developing an atomic weapons program in 2003 is a "declaration of victory" for Iran's nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday. The U.S. intelligence report released Monday concluded that Iran had stopped its weapons program in late 2003 and shown no signs since of resuming it, representing a sharp turnaround from a previous intelligence assessment in 2005. "This is a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people during a visit to Ilam province in western Iran. "This was a final shot to those who, in the past several years, spread a sense of threat and concern in the world through lies of nuclear weapons t Thanks to your resistance, a fatal shot was fired at the dreams of ill-wishers and the truthfulness of the Iranian nation was once again proved by the ill-wishers themselves," Ahmadinejad said, drawing celebratory whistles from the crowd. Iran has touted the new U.S. intelligence report as vindication of its claims that its nuclear program is peaceful and Iranian officials insist that Washington should take a less hawkish stance and drop attempts to impose new sanctions in light of the report's surprise conclusions.

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush, seeking a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians before he leaves office, will visit the Middle East in early January, the White House said late Tuesday. "The president will go to the Middle East region in early January. Details to come," said US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who declined to confirm Israeli media reports that Bush would go to Israel. The announcement came one week after Bush announced at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, that Israelis and Palestinians had agreed to restart negotiations with the goal of creating a Palestinian state by late 2008. The daily Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot cited sources in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office as saying that Bush would arrive in Israel on January 9, but that it was unlear whether the US president would meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas or visit nearby countries. The daily said that the visit was arranged during Olmert's visits to the White House last week around the Annapolis conference. If Bush were to go to Israel, it would be his first visit there as president, and his first since traveling there as Texas governor in 1998. Bush leaves office in January 2009. The last visit to Israel by a sitting US president was by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in December 1998.