The New Nation - Internet Edition

Children among 20 killed as Israel pounds Gaza

AP, Gaza City

A bloody spike in Israel-Hamas fighting put the Israeli city of Ashkelon and its 110,000 residents at the center of an intensifying militant rocket barrage Thursday - and Israel's defense minister warned he would invade Gaza, if necessary, to halt the attacks.

Israel launched nearly a dozen airstrikes, killing 20 Palestinians, Gaza hospital officials said. The attacks included a not-so-veiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - a missile strike on a guard post outside his home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians.

The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.

Israel has been reluctant to invade Gaza, amid concerns of getting bogged down there, but Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his security chiefs Thursday that an offensive is a definite option. "The major ground operation is real and tangible. We are not afraid of it," Barak said, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the top-level session was held in secrecy.

Barak also told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the British foreign minister in phone conversations that Israel would step up its response to the rocket fire, but a ground offensive wasn't imminent. Security officials said an invasion would have to wait until clouds clear in the spring.

The latest spike began Wednesday, when five Iranian-trained Hamas militants, including two rocket masterminds, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. In retaliation, Hamas fired dozens of Gaza-produced Qassam rockets, as well as longer-range Iranian-made Grad rockets smuggled in via Egypt.

Several Grad rockets slammed into Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, on Thursday, including one that hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another that landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

While more than two dozen rockets have hit the Ashkelon area in the past, most fell in open areas in the southern outskirts and did not cause damage. The latest round of rocket fire was the most intense so far, and police chief Uri Bar-Lev said Thursday it was the first time a building in Ashkelon was hit. On Wednesday, a rocket exploded in the parking lot of Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital.

In the past, the Israeli border town of Sderot, with about 20,000 residents, had been Hamas' main target. In recent years, hundreds of Qassams have hit Sderot, just a mile from Gaza, and on Wednesday an Israeli father of four was killed by a rocket that hit a Sderot community college.

Ashkelon residents demanded better protection.

"We want a warning system, like they have in Sderot," one resident, Moshe Nissim, told Israel TV's Channel Two. "We have no protection from Palestinian attacks." The deputy director of Barzilai Hospital asked for fortifications for his emergency room, maternity ward and surgery departments.

Barak pledged Thursday to install the warning system in Ashkelon within hours, defense officials said.

Kenyan rivals sign power sharing deal

AFP, Nairobi

Kenya's rival camps resumed negotiations Friday a day after President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed a power-sharing deal to end a bloody two-month political crisis.

Former UN chief Kofi Annan, who brokered the deal after weeks of tough negotiations, will now lead talks on long-term issues including land, constitutional and government reforms, and economic disparities among Kenyan communities.

The deal creates the post of prime minister and two deputy prime ministers in a bid to break the political deadlock created by contested presidential elections that triggered unrest across the country, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing hundreds of thousands.

Kibaki has said the new posts will be created under the current constitution pending a comprehensive constitutional review in 12 months' time, which has been delayed since 2003 when Kibaki came to power.

It will the second time the country has a prime minister post, after it was scrapped in 1964 by founding president Jomo Kenyatta, a year after the country's independence from Britain. The main issue dividing the two sides in the talks appeared to be the amount of power the prime minister would be granted. Odinga said the new government, which he thought would be up and running by around the middle of March, would look to make significant constitutional, electoral and land reforms within its first year.

Kenyan newspapers warned that dividing up political power was only a small first step and that other underlying issues needed to be resolved to prevent a slip back to violence. "The formation of a coalition government is the minimum requirement for the more difficult work to follow," the Daily Nation warned in an editorial.

"The next agenda item on the negotiations t includes comprehensive constitutional review, focusing very much on sensitive issues such as devolution, land reforms, ethnic relations and the establishment of a just and equitable society."

Most of those issues "we have not preferred to address since independence in the hope that they would resolve themselves," it added. The Standard newspaper pressed lawmakers, who are due to resume parliamentary sessions on March 6, to move swiftly to make ammendments that would entrench the power-sharing deal in the constitution.

"Implementing the agreement and implementing some of the other challenges facing the country will not be easy.

Neither will healing the wounds caused by the divisive campaign, the election and its aftermath," an editorial read.

Washington, London and the UN chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the deal and called for its swift implementation to save the country from fresh political agony.

3 Pak cops killed in bomb blast

AFP, Peshawar

A roadside bomb planted by suspected militants blew up a police vehicle in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing three policemen, police said.

The explosion occurred in Lakki Marwat, a town bordering North Waziristan tribal district where security forces have been battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants since the 2001 collapse of Taliban rule in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Three policemen were also wounded in the attack, town police chief Romail Akram said, adding that the explosive device was apparently planted by suspected militants.

Nearly 500 people have died in intensified militant-related violence this year in Pakistan, a frontline state in the US-led "war on terrorism." Last year, about 2,000 people were killed.

Ahmadinejad declares Iran as world's number one power

AFP, Tehran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday that Iran was the world's "number one" power, as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy.

"Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

"Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place," added Ahmadinejad, who on Sunday will become the first president of the Islamic republic to visit neighbouring Iraq.

Ahmadinejad's comments come amid renewed Western efforts on the UN Security Council to agree a third package of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities.

They also came a day after former top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani launched an unprecedented attack on Ahmadinejad's foreign policy, accusing him of using "coarse slogans and grandstanding".

"You can see how some people heret try to materialise the plans of the enemies and by showing that Iran is small and the enemy is big," seethed Ahmadinejad. "These are the people who put the enemies of humanity in the place of God," said the deeply religious president.

Ahmadinejad once again insisted that Iran was winning the standoff over its atomic programme, which the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons but Iran says is peaceful. "The Iranian nation is on the verge of the final nuclear victory and no power can stop this nation."

China, US sign accord on defence hotline

Reuters, Beijing

China and the United States formally agreed on Friday a long-planned hotline to improve communication between their two militaries, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The agreement to establish a direct telephone link for quick communication in times of crisis was made during a visit to China last year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Xinhua gave no other details on the agreement, which it said was signed in Shanghai, along with a second accord on sharing archives with an aim to finding the remains of U.S. military personnel missing in the 1950-53 Korean War.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing had no comment, referring reporters to the Pentagon.

Military relations between China and the United States hit a low in 2001 when they broke off contact following a collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. spy plane.

Ties have improved markedly since then and the two have hosted joint military exercises in the past year, but mistrust and miscommunications still dog relations.

In November last year, China blocked a long-planned Thanksgiving visit to Hong Kong by a U.S. aircraft carrier group, the USS Kitty Hawk. Beijing later changed its mind and said the ships could dock, but by then the group was heading back to its home port in Japan.

China has refused to be drawn on its reasons for initially barring the Kitty Hawk from Hong Kong.

UN Council edges toward Iran sanctions

AFP, United Nations

The Security Council edged closer to adopting a third set of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance, with talks to continue Friday, despite reservations from some countries.

Envoys from the United States, Britain and France told reporters after consultations of the 15-member council Thursday that it had been agreed to pursue last-minute discussions on the text early Friday.

"Our intention is to vote on the resolution as soon as possible, probably on Saturday," Britain's UN Ambassador John Sawers said.

Adoption of the text, co-sponsored by Britain, France and Germany, is a foregone conclusion as it has already been agreed by the five veto-wielding members of the council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

And the sponsors say they have enough support among the 10 non-permanent members to ensure passage, which requires nine votes and no veto.

Malaysian Hindu woman running election as PAS candidate

Reuters, Malaysia

Malaysia's hardline Islamist party PAS is known for advocating a theocratic Islamic state, but that isn't stopping a non-Muslim woman from running as a PAS candidate in next month's elections.

Kumutha Rahman, a 29-year-old Hindu, is standing in a mainly Malay Muslim constituency in southern Malaysia, becoming the first ever non-Muslim candidate running on a Parti Islam se-Malaysia's (PAS) ticket.

"My fellow Indians were very shocked because I'm not a Muslim and they asked me what I wanted to do," Kumutha told Reuters in an interview at her campaign office in Ulu Tiram, a town near Johor's capital Johor Baru, near Singapore.

Death toll from Madagascar cyclone hits 83

Reuters, Antananarivo

Cyclone Ivan has killed 83 people and left almost 200,000 homeless after tearing through Madagascar last week, officials said on Friday.

Ivan pelted the Indian Ocean island's east coast with winds of more than 125 mph (200 kph) early last week, making it one of the largest cyclones ever to hit Madagascar.

"The latest toll states that 83 deaths are registered all over the country," said Colonel Jean Rakotomalala, head of the National Office for Disaster and Risk Management (BNGRC).

Anti-Musharraf front woos Islamists

AP, Islamabad

Opponents of President Pervez Musharraf are wooing Islamist politicians to bolster their drive to curb the powers of the U.S.-allied leader following his party's loss in parliamentary elections. The negotiations bring together opposition forces who have promised to tackle extremism and Islamists who sympathize with the Taliban - highlighting the extent of the former military strongman's political isolation.

"We believe that the problems are so big that as far as possible we should take along all the political forces," Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman of slain leader Benazir Bhutto's party, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Iraq's presidency approves execution of 'Chemical Ali'

AFP, Baghdad

Iraq's presidency on Friday approved the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, a top Saddam Hussein henchman known to the world as "Chemical Ali" for ordering gas attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. "The presidency has approved Chemical Ali's execution," a top Iraqi official told AFP on conditition of anonymity. He said no date had been decided for the execution by the presidency council, which comprises President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, Shiite Adel Abdel Mahdi and Sunni Tareq al-Hashemi. Majid was sentenced to death for genocide in June last year along with two other Saddam cohorts Sultan Hashim al-Tai, Saddam's defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, his armed forces deputy chief of operations. The three were convicted after being found responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Kurds in the so-called Anfal campaign of 1988. Under Iraqi law they were supposed to have been executed by October 4, 30 days after their sentences were upheld by the Iraq Supreme Court.

Hillary counts on women for comeback

AP, Columbus

Fighting to survive, Hillary Rodham Clinton is counting on female power to energize her faltering presidential bid. She's hoping a double-digit lead among women in Ohio is the answer. "I am thrilled to be running to be the first woman president, which I think would be a sea change in our country and around the world," the New York senator said this week in Cleveland, emphasizing anew the pioneering aspect of her candidacy. A woman in the White House, Clinton said, would present "a real challenge to the way things have been done, and who gets to do them and what the rules are." The remarks had a call-to-action flair and underscored just how much she is relying on women, always a key part of her support, to help her win Ohio and, perhaps, Texas on Tuesday as she seeks to get back on track in the Democratic nomination fight. She has urgent reason to prod the sisterhood into action.

US, Britain urge Myanmar to include Suu Kyi in polls

AFP, Bangkok

Senior diplomats from Britain and the United States on Friday urged Myanmar's military junta to include Aung San Suu Kyi and her pro-democracy party in a promised referendum and elections. Myanmar's generals earlier this month made a surprise announcement that they would bring the recently-completed constitution before the public for approval in May, setting the stage for elections in 2010 -- the first in two decades. Any hopes of real democratic reform in Myanmar were quickly dashed, however, when the regime said detained Aung San Suu Kyi could not run, while her National League for Democracy (NLD) party slammed the constitution. Meg Munn, a British foreign office minister, told reporters in Bangkok that the referendum in the country formally know as Burma must be a "genuine process" rather than a charade to quell growing world pressure.

US sends warship near Lebanon

AFP, Washington

Deeply concerned about Lebanon's political strife, the United States on Thursday sped its USS Cole warship there in what officials described as a signal aimed at bolstering regional stability. A top official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the deployment of the guided-missile destroyer off the coast of Lebanon but declined to say that the show of force was meant for Syria or Iran, which Washington considers foes of Lebanese democracy. It is "a show of support for regional stability" because of "concern about the situation in Lebanon," the official said. The guided missile destroyer USS Cole was the target of a bombing by Al-Qaeda extremists in October 2000 in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 US sailors. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, declined to pin the warship's presence to Lebanon's presidential vote, which on Tuesday was postponed until March 11 for the 15th time since September. "To say it is absolutely tied would be incorrect although certainly we are aware elections are due there at some point in time," Mullen said.

Thaksin is not 'the real PM,' Thai premier tells US envoy

AFP, Bangkok

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej told a senior US envoy Friday that Thaksin Shinawatra will not run his government from behind the scenes, now that the deposed premier has returned from exile. Samak met Friday with Christopher Hill, the US pointman for East Asian affairs, just one day after Thaksin staged a dramatic homecoming after nearly a year and a half in self-imposed exile. Thaksin was toppled in a coup in 2006, and a military-backed court has banned him from politics for five years. Although Thaksin has publicly vowed "never, ever" to return to politics, he has already played a critical role in ensuring Samak's victory in elections held in December. Many analysts say Thaksin will try to keep Samak on a tight leash. Samak, a charismatic but combative right-winger, has bristled at suggestions that he is Thaksin's puppet, and told Hill that he holds the reins of government, according to his spokeswoman Suparat Nakbunnam.