The New Nation - Internet Edition

Iraq president seeks 'strategic' partnership with Turkey

AP, Ankara

Iraq's president says he wants a "strategic" partnership with Turkey, including getting the neighboring nation's businesses to invest in his oil-rich but war-torn country.

Jalal Talabani made the comments Saturday while wrapping up a visit aimed at easing the tension sparked by Turkey's eight-day military incursion against Kurdish rebels inside Iraq. Talabani, himself a Kurd, says Iraq wants "to forge strategic relations in all fields including oil, the economy, trade, culture and politics with Turkey." Talabani arrived in Turkey on Friday, about a week after the Turkish military ended its offensive against the separatist rebels. The rebels - who seek autonomy for Kurds in Turkey's southeast - have often launched attacks on Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

AFP report adds: The leaders of Iraq and Turkey pledged Friday to take measures against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq during talks to soothe tensions following a Turkish cross-border offensive against the militants.

"The aim of this visit is to be able to establish strategic and solid relations with Turkey," Iraq's President Jalal Talabani said after talks with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

"We want our cooperation to be a model relationship for the Middle East," Talabani said through an interpreter, adding that Baghdad wanted closer energy, economic, cultural and political ties.

Welcoming Talabani to Ankara for his first visit as head of state, Gul made a similar call and said both countries would hold further talks to work out the detail of what he said was the common vision for bilateral ties. "I believe that if we tap into the great potential between Turkey and Iraq, we will produce a great neighbourly relationship," he said.

The warm messages followed recent tensions between the neighbours over a week-long ground incursion by the Turkish army into northern Iraq to hunt rebels from Kurdistan Workers's Party (PKK), which ended last week. Turkey charges that more than 2,000 PKK militants use northern Iraq as a base for their separatist campaign against Ankara and accuses Iraqi Kurds of tolerating the rebels.

At the time, Baghdad slammed the incursion as an unacceptable violation of its sovereignty, while the United States feared it might escalate into a broader conflict between Turkish forces and Iraqi Kurds.

The Turkish military warned this week that it could carry out more cross-border strikes on the rebels if need be.

LatAm leaders agree to end border crisis

AP, Santo Domingo

The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela agreed Friday to resolve their angry recriminations over a cross-border Colombian commando raid, a crisis that has brought troop movements and talk of war.

The uneasy neighbors joined in a declaration noting that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe apologized for the last weekend's attack on a Colombian rebel base in Ecuadorean territory and that he pledged not to violate another nation's sovereignty again. The declaration signed by presidents of the 20-nation Rio Group also reiterated a commitment to fight threats to national stability posed by "irregular or criminal groups." Their emergency summit was an hours-long passion play, with finger-jabbing lectures, furious speeches and pleas for goodwill. The dramatic high point came when the host, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, urged Uribe to shake hands with his antagonists to show his goodwill

Indian prisoner released by Pakistan confesses spying

AFP, New Delhi

An Indian who insisted he was not a spy during more than three decades on Pakistan's death row has admitted he was a secret agent after his return to his home country, a report said on Friday.

Kashmir Singh, 61, was freed by Pakistan after 35 years at the urging of its human rights minister and crossed the border to India on Tuesday, where he was given a hero's welcome and showered with rose petals.

"I was a spy and did my duty," admitted Singh, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, adding he was paid about 400 rupees (10 dollars) a month for his work. "I went to serve the country," he told reporters in Chandigarh, the capital of northern Punjab state, but declined to say which Indian agency employed him and how he entered Pakistan. "Even Pakistan authorities failed to get this information from me," he said.

Singh, who hails from a village in Punjab, criticised the Indian government for failing to help him after he was caught in 1973, the report said. Singh was arrested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi at the age of 26 and sentenced to death by a military court. But he became lost in the system until Pakistan human rights minister Ansar Burney discovered Singh in jail following a tip-off this year.

Burney has said Singh became "mentally disabled" after spending three-and-a-half decades without ever seeing the sky or receiving a single visitor. Musharraf expressed "shock and disbelief" when informed about the case and accepted a mercy petition before issuing orders for Singh's release and repatriation, according to the minister.

Five killed, 31 wounded in fresh Iraq violence

AP, Baghdad

At least five people were killed Friday and 31 wounded in separate incidents around Iraq, media reports said.

In Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, four police officers were killed and 17 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle, the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency said.

The suicide bomber targeted a police station in the Ras Al Jada area of western Mosul in the early hours Friday.

Also in Mosul, one civilian was killed and 14 wounded when two explosive devices went off.

The first bomb was detonated in front of a policeman's house in the Nabi Sheet area central Mosul.

Few minutes later, another bomb exploded in the same area, killing a civilian and wounding 14.

Separately, the death toll of Thursday's twin explosions in Baghdad rose Friday to 68 killed and 120 injured, police officials said.

Two roadside bombs went off in quick succession late Thursday in Baghdad's busy Qarada business district, VOI quoted police as saying.

Carter, Annan to head ME peace mission

AP, Johannesburg

The council of world leaders launched by former President Nelson Mandela is sending a three-person team to help ease tensions in the troubled Middle East, the organization known as The Elders said Friday.

Former President Jimmy Carter, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and former Irish president Mary Robinson will visit Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia from April 13-21.

Launched last year to celebrate Mandela's 89th birthday, the group of 12 world leaders is dedicated to fostering peace and resolving global crises.

Annan noted his recent mission to Kenya in which he mediated a power-sharing agreement in the country's disputed presidential election.

"I have just completed an intense and grueling negotiation in Kenya and learned that conflict is easier than peace, but persistence makes peace possible," said Annan, adding that he was "acutely sensitive to the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in the mind of many in the Middle East."

Hillary, Obama face off in Wyoming

AP, Casper

Sen. Barack Obama sought to regain lost momentum in Wyoming's caucuses days after rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's nearly clean sweep of major primaries in their tight Democratic presidential race. Twelve national convention delegates are at stake Saturday in caucuses around the state, a small but critical prize in the close race for the party's nod. The epic battle between Clinton and Obama has given the state's Democrats - outnumbered more than 2-to-1 by Republicans - a relevancy they haven't experienced in a presidential race in nearly 50 years. Clinton won victories Tuesday in primaries in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, reviving her candidacy. But Obama has prevailed in 12 of the 15 caucuses, which rely on greater campaign organization and voter commitment than primaries. A winner has not been declared in Texas' caucuses; the state held both last Tuesday.

Mixed fortunes for Indian Congress in state polls

Reuters, Guwahati

India's ruling Congress emerged on Friday as the single largest party after elections in Meghalaya in the country's remote northeast, but failed to dislodge their communist rivals in Tripura, officials said. The troubled northeastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland normally lack political weight nationally, but, with a national poll due by early 2009 and speculation about an early election, the contests are being seen as a test of the ruling party's popularity. Congress was defeated by the rival Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in the states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh last December. The northeastern elections were marked by an unusually high voter turnout that analysts linked to increasing political awareness among women and young people.