The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Washington

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said on Thursday Pakistan could have an election that was fair, if not perfect, if President Pervez Musharraf lifts its state of emergency on Dec. 16 as promised.

"I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent election and a fair election," Boucher told a congressional hearing.

"It's not going to be a perfect election," he said. He was asked if Pakistan could have a free election if Musharraf lifted the state of emergency as promised.

Boucher's view contrasts with that of opposition politicians and rights activists who believe there may be too little time before the Jan. 8 parliamentary contest for a free and fair election and who want Musharraf to reinstate ousted judges.

Pakistani lawyers and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took to the streets to demand Musharraf reinstate judges that he fired after imposing emergency rule on Nov. 3 in a crackdown on opposition politicians, the judiciary and the media.

Musharraf has freed more than 5,000 lawyers and opposition activists rounded up after he declared the emergency, but several Supreme Court judges including deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry are still being held under house arrest. The two main opposition parties are considering boycotting the vote, moves that would rob it of credibility and prolong instability in a nuclear-armed nation that is crucial to U.S. efforts to fight al Qaeda and bring peace to Afghanistan.

At the Washington hearing, lawmakers asked Boucher sharp questions about the wisdom of U.S. financial aid to Pakistan and protesters held up critical signs as he spoke, including "Stop Funding Dictators" and "Lies." Of the country's recent turmoil, Boucher said: "One would not want to have such disruption t this close to any election. That obviously changes the atmosphere."

But he added that he still believed it was possible to have "an election that really does reflect the choices made by the people of Pakistan."

Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, questioned this. "It's hard to imagine how Pakistan can have a credible election without an independent judiciary. If Musharraf can get away with jailing the Supreme Court and removing all checks to his authority, why does the administration trust him to play by the rules in the election?" Malinowski said. "To whom will the opposition turn if he tries to steal the vote?" he added.

Meanwhile, Pakistani opposition parties have failed to reach agreement on demands to set the government to ensure their participation in next month's election, making a united opposition boycott increasingly unlikely.

Reuters, Baghdad

A female suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people on Friday in an attack northeast of Baghdad on former Sunni Arab insurgents who have joined with security forces to fight al Qaeda, police said.

Another 27 people were wounded in the blast in the town of Muqdadiya, 55 miles northeast of Baghdad, in volatile Diyala, a religiously and ethnically mixed province which has become one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq.

Women and children were among the wounded, police said.

A "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. troops and the growing use of neighborhood security patrols, organized by mainly Sunni Arab tribal leaders, has helped reduce violence in Iraq to its lowest levels in almost two years.

The security crackdown has squeezed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda out of their former stronghold in western Anbar, where the neighborhood units sprang up last year, into other areas north of Baghdad like Diyala.

Police said Friday's attack targeted a building used by members of the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, a Sunni Arab insurgency group. A number of its members have begun working alongside security forces against al Qaeda.

While overall attacks have fallen 55 percent in Iraq since the "surge" was fully deployed in mid-June, General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, warned on Thursday that al Qaeda remained a dangerous foe that would seek to launch major assaults.

A militant group linked to al Qaeda in Iraq issued a threat on the Internet earlier this week vowing to launch a wave of car bomb attacks and strikes against Iraqi security forces.

AFP, Beijing

Chinese President Hu Jintao and his US counterpart, George W. Bush, spoke on the phone about building closer bilateral ties and resolving global disputes such as Iran, China said Friday.

The pair spoke on Thursday, covering a range of topics that included the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues, as well as Taiwan, the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website. "China is willing to make efforts with the US to push forward dialogue and reach more consensus and achievements so as to make more contributions on pushing forward Sino-US constructive cooperation," the ministry quoted Hu as saying.

Bush also spoke about building stronger bilateral ties.

"US-China relations are very important and the US places a lot of importance on this," the ministry quoted Bush as saying.

Both leaders spoke about ways to end the international stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme.

"The US hopes to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic means and hopes that the United Nations can continue to adopt the needed actions to push Iran to end its uranium enrichment activities," it quoted Bush as saying.

Hu said China was willing to continue to play a constructive role in the "appropriate" resolution of the Iranian issue, the ministry said.

Reuters, Paris

Germany and France said on Thursday Iran's nuclear program was still a threat and the search for more U.N. sanctions should go on despite a U.S. intelligence report that Tehran was no longer trying to build an atomic bomb.

EU and NATO foreign ministers, meeting for separate talks in Brussels, agreed there was no reason to change their position of threatening sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Karel de Gucht said.

Speaking at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the existing dual track policy of preparing sanctions against Tehran while leaving the door open to negotiations should go on.

"I think that we are in a process and that Iran still poses a threat," Merkel said, adding that talks between EU mediator Javier Solana and Iran's top nuclear negotiator should continue.

Sarkozy said he fully agreed with Merkel, adding: "What has made Iran move until now is sanctions and firmness."

The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published on Monday said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program four years ago. It said Iran was continuing to develop the technical means that could be applied to producing weapons.

AP, Guantanamo

A Yemeni admitted he was a driver for Osama bin Laden and knew of the al-Qaida leader's role in the Sept. 11 attack, an FBI agent testified Thursday, countering defense assertions that the detainee was a minor employee with no role in terrorism.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan told FBI agents that he had chauffeured bin Laden around Afghanistan in an al-Qaida convoy after Sept. 11 and overheard the leader say he had expected only up to 1,500 people to be killed in the attack, Special Agent George Crouch said."When Osama bin Laden learned it was much larger than that he was very pleased," Crouch recalled Hamdan telling him and two other FBI agents during one of a dozen interrogation sessions at Guantanamo in the summer of 2002.

The testimony, which revealed more about the allegations against Hamdan than previously known, came in a pretrial hearing to determine whether the detainee can be prosecuted before the first U.S. military tribunals since the World War II era. Hamdan, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly six years, is charged with conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

AFP, Sydney

Australia will deport 16 Indonesians who sought asylum as economic refugees after being picked up from a leaking fishing boat last month, the government said Friday.

The three families, including 10 children, came from the Indonesian island of Roti, where fishermen have blamed an Australian crackdown on illegal fishing for destroying their livelihoods.

But Immigration Minister Chris Evans said his department had found the rescued group did not require protection under Australia's refugee obligations.

"On the information provided, my department is satisfied that they have not raised issues which might engage Australia's protection obligations," he said.

AFP, Seoul

A tanker collided Friday with a barge off South Korea's west coast and more than 10,000 tons of oil has leaked into the sea, a South Korean government official said.

The Hong Kong-registered tanker Hebei Spirit was carrying a total of about 15,000 tons when it collided with the barge, said Kim Jong-Sik, an official with the ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries.

"This is the country's worst oil spill," Kim told AFP. "We worry about an ecological disaster.

"We have set up a boom, trying to stop oil from spreading along the coast."

The accident occurred five miles off Mallipo, some 90 kilometres (54 miles) southwest of Seoul.

Reuters, Tokyo

North Korea is making progress on disabling its nuclear facilities but more talks are needed to complete an inventory of its atomic arms programs, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Friday.

"They are disabling all three facilities and they are moving actually quite on schedule," Washington's top envoy to the nuclear talks, Christopher Hill, told reporters after arriving in Tokyo for talks with his Japanese counterpart.

Hill said that for technical reasons the disablement probably could not be finished by the end of this year, but added: "Everything is going smoothly."

AP, Washington

President Bush's personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, raising the possibility of normalized relations if he fully discloses his nuclear programs by year's end, is a turnabout for a president who has labeled the communist regime part of an "axis of evil." "I want to emphasize that the declaration must be complete and accurate if we are to continue our progress," Bush wrote, according to an excerpt of the Dec. 1 letter obtained by The Associated Press. The Bush administration sought to play down the diplomatic significance of the letter - the president's first to the reclusive North Korean leader. Yet, it reflected how U.S. policy toward the nation has shifted from the days when Bush shunned the dictator. The letter might sate Kim's craving to be recognized by the U.S. as a player on the world stage. However, White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush meant it as a "reminder" to North Korea that it has pledged to provide - by the end of the month - a complete and accurate disclosure of its nuclear programs.

AP, Ramallah

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he has rejected the concept of a provisional Palestinian state out of concern that the temporary borders of such an entity would become permanent.

Abbas told Palestinian lawmakers that during last week's Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md., the idea of a provisional state was brought up, but he turned it down - although it is a key part of the internationally backed "road map" formula for creating a Palestinian state. The border issue is but one of the many hurdles facing negotiators to the talks, which are set to begin Dec. 12. The second step of the three-stage road map calls for "creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty." Creating temporary borders would allow the Palestinians to have independence, while giving the sides more time to work out contentious issues like the final status of disputed Jerusalem.

Reuters, Singapore

The release of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be a key factor in the Philippines' decision to ratify a new charter for a regional grouping, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has said.

Arroyo, striking a tough posture, told the Financial Times that Myanmar's military rulers must comply with the human rights elements in the charter of the Association of South East Asian Association (ASEAN) by speeding the move toward democracy. She said the release of Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest, will be the "number one benchmark" for Manila to decide whether to ratify the charter of the 10-member grouping that was signed at its meeting last month. The charter needs ratification by all 10 ASEAN members before an economic and security bloc encompassing 560 million people can be established.

AP, Beijing

The death toll in a massive gas explosion at a coal mine in northern China rose to 105 Friday, the government's Xinhua News Agency said, making it the nation's second deadliest mining disaster this year. Rescuers from among 15 crews sent to the mine in Shanxi province's Hongtong county were pumping out deadly carbon monoxide from a shaft in hopes of finding survivors or recovering additional bodies, the central government's State Administration of Workplace Safety said on its Web site. The exact number of miners underground at the time of Wednesday's accident was still unclear. Citing mine officials, Xinhua on Friday raised the figure to about 120 from the previously reported 111. State broadcaster CCTV said the mine owner and its manager had been detained by police for questioning.

AFP, United Nations

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said Israel's decision to expand a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem was "not helpful" and he would discuss the matter with his partners in the diplomatic Quartet for Middle East peace. "The UN position on the illegality of settlements is well known," he told reporters. "This new tender for 300 new homes in east Jerusalem so soon after this Annapolis Middle East peace conference, I think, is not helpful," he added, referring to a recent US-hosted peace summit. "I will be discussing this matter with my Quartet partners." On Tuesday Israel said it had invited bids to build more than 300 new housing units in Har Homa, a settlement in annexed east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians have demanded as the capital of their future state.