The New Nation - Internet Edition

Three US soldiers among 12 killed in Iraq

AFP, Baghdad

At least twelve persons including three American soldiers were killed in Iraq violence.

The US military announced on Saturday the deaths of three soldiers, including two who were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad that also left two Iraqis dead.

The two were killed when their vehicle was struck while on patrol in Baghdad. The attack also wounded one soldier who was taken to a US medical facility for treatment, a statement said without giving further details.

The military had earlier reported the death on Friday of another soldier, who sustained injuries in a rocket or mortar attack south of Baghdad.

Four other soldiers were wounded in Friday's "indirect fire" attack, it said. The US military uses the term "indirect fire" to refer to rocket or mortar attacks. Meanwhile, clashes involving fighters firing mortar shells and US-Iraqi forces in southwest Baghdad killed six suspected insurgents and wounded one, Iraq's interior ministry and American officials said on Friday.

The clashes occurred in the Saydiyah neighbourhood on Thursday, the officials said.

"There was an engagement yesterday in the Saydiyah area involving an aerial weapons team and an enemy mortar team," a military spokesman, Major Kirk Luedeke, told AFP.

"Six enemy combatants were positively identified, engaged and killed by the Aerial Weapons Team," he said.

"An additional wounded combatant was treated for his wounds and taken into custody for further questioning," Luedeke said.

"Weapons and several improvised explosive devices were found on the individuals involved and in the building they exited from." The interior ministry official said there had been fighting on the ground before the US military called in air support.

Although US military commanders say that the number of attacks across Iraq has fallen by 60 percent since June, they warn that Al-Qaeda and other insurgents groups remain a dangerous force.

The dip in violence is attributed to a "surge" of 30,000 US troops, the decision by many Sunni Arabs to turn against Al-Qaeda and actively hunt down jihadists, and a ceasefire being observed by the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Amother report adds: At least two men said to be Shiite militia fighters were killed Friday by Iraqi security forces in southeastern Iraq.

Six men died in clashes with U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported.

Fighting broke out in Kut, the capital of Wasit province, as security forces conducted a house-to-house search for rogue members of the Mehdi Army, the militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, CNN reported. Sadr recently extended a cease-fire, but some rogue members have set up a base in Kut.

Two police officers and eight reputed fighters were injured.

A U.S. soldier died of wounds from indirect fire in southern Baghdad, military officials reported. Four soldiers were wounded.

Russia wants to host Middle East peace confce

AFP, Ramallah

Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday criticized Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and called for an end to the Jewish state's "unacceptable" blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Following talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Lavrov also said Russia would soon set a date for a proposed peace conference which Moscow wants to host and which he is promoting on his Middle East tour."We are worried by the Israeli settlement activity and urge Israel to end it," Lavrov said at a news conference with Abbas.

Israel had pledged at a US-sponsored conference in November to abide by the 2003 international peace roadmap, which calls for a freeze of settlement activity.

Lavrov also called on Israel to lift the crippling sanctions it imposed on Hamas-run Gaza in January in a bid to end rocket fire from the impoverished Palestinian enclave.

"The blockade imposed against Gaza is unacceptable and it must be ended so the Palestinian people can live normally," he said.

Lavrov, who earlier travelled to Syria and Israel, has revived proposals for a Moscow gathering as a follow-up to the US November conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

A date for the conference "will be fixed in the near future," Lavrov said in Ramallah.

Abbas welcomed the announcement.

"We insisted on the need to organise this follow-up in Moscow as soon as possible," the Palestinian leader said.

Senior Israeli official expressed reservations over the proposal.

"Out of diplomatic courtesy, we didn't reject the plan, but the truth is, we are not enthusiastic," the official said, asking not to be named.

"There have been enough international conferences. What is needed is to move forward in direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority," he said.

In Washington, a spokesman for Condoleezza Rice confirmed the US secretary of state had discussed Russia's proposal during her visit to Moscow this week.

"The main objective is to help the ongoing talks to create a positive atmosphere that will allow the peace process to reach a conclusion," Lavrov said in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Lavrov also expressed support for Yemeni efforts to heal the deep rift between the moderate Fatah movement led by Abbas, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that seized control of Gaza in a week of violent clashes last June.

Abbas initially said his representatives were heading back after Hamas refused the Yemeni initiative, but made it clear at the news conference they would remain in Sanaa until Saturday.

"We don't want to talk of a failure, and prefer to wait and see what happens tomorrow," Abbas said.

The initiative, sponsored by Yemen, calls for a return to the political status quo that existed before Hamas seized control of the impoverished Gaza Strip in June, routing forces loyal to Abbas.

In Damascus, Lavrov had met Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal and stressed reconciliation between the Palestinian arch-foes was key to solving the Middle East conflict.

Abbas, meanwhile said he discussed with Lavrov his plans to travel to Moscow for talks with outgoing President Vladimir Putin, who officially hands over to Dmitri Medvedev on May 7.

China rejects dialogue, vows to smash Tibetan protests

AFP, Beijing

China turned its back Saturday on appeals for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, vowing to smash anti-China forces in Tibet, where it said the death toll in recent unrest had risen to 19.

A day after Beijing launched a manhunt for monks and others it blamed for unrest in Tibet, a defiant editorial in the People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, said opposition to Chinese rule in the Himalayan region must be wiped out.

"China must resolutely crush the conspiracy of sabotage and smash 'Tibet independence forces'," the newspaper said in the editorial, rejecting calls from US, European and Asian leaders for talks. The commentary accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding protests in Tibet in the hope of undermining the August 8-24 Beijing Olympics and splitting Tibet from China.

It said, "1.3 billion Chinese people, including the Tibetan people, would allow no person or force to undermine the stability of the region."

The commentary effectively rebuffed growing international calls for dialogue to end the crackdown on protests that began last week to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Beijing's rule of Tibet.

Earlier Saturday, China said 18 "innocent" civilians and one police officer were killed in the rioting in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, raising its official death toll from 13.

Tibet's government-in-exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala has put the toll from a week of unrest across the Himalayan region and neighbouring provinces at 99.

On Friday, leaders in Japan and Poland joined an international appeal for restraint and dialogue.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said China should talk to the Dalai Lama, as it prepared to host the Olympic Games.

"The opening of peaceful dialogue now would have a symbolic dimension, especially in the context of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing," said Kaczynski.

The Olympics is less than five months away and the symbolic start to events leading up to the Beijing Games is scheduled to take place in Greece on Monday when the Olympic flame is ignited.

The so-called sacred Olympic flame is to be lit at a 30-minute ritual in Mount Olympia in Greece in the presence of International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, whose organisation has been sharply criticised for its silence on the Tibet crackdown.

Greek police told AFP that "stringent security" would be applied to deter anti-China protests during the ceremony.

After a tour of Greece, the flame will travel to Beijing for an official send-off ceremony on March 31 for the torch relay on its journey across five continents.

It then returns to China in May and the start of a domestic leg that includes three days in Tibet in mid-June after a scheduled stop on the summit of Mount Everest in May.

Pro-Tibet groups have said that they are planning protests along the international route of the torch relay and also in China itself.

With China keen to put its best face forward ahead of the Olympics, US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded that China come clean on repression in Tibet.

Annan warns against conflict with Iran

AP, New York

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Thursday that military action against Iran would be "a real disaster" and said the Middle East could explode if the international community doesn't handle the many conflicts in the region very carefully. He also said there was "quite a bit of hypocrisy on all sides" in trying to resolve the five-year conflict in Sudan's Darfur region - especially in encouraging the African Union to take on peacekeeping when it didn't have the resources. At a wide-ranging round-table with journalists, Annan said he didn't have enough information to comment on the justification for the U.N. Security Council's demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment until it allays suspicions its nuclear program is trying to produce weapons. Tehran insists the program is peaceful, aimed only at using nuclear power to generate electricity. Annan said he had told Iranian leaders that "if indeed you have nothing to hide and you are not making a bomb and your intentions are pacific, open your doors, let the inspectors come, let them go anywhere - find a way of reassuring the world, not just the U.S." Asked how the international community should deal with Iran, he said dialogue was the only way.

Pak leaders plan talks with militants

AFP, Washington

The leaders of the newly-formed coalition government in Pakistan intend to start negotiations with Islamic militants in the hope of ending a spate of bombings that has shaken the country, The New York Times reported on its website late Friday. The newspaper said the leaders of the ruling coalition -- Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N -- said in interviews that they will use military force only as a last resort. President Pervez Musharraf has summoned the new parliament on Monday to elect a prime minister, which will clear the way for a coalition government hostile to him to start business. The allies of Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999, lost heavily in the February elections. Benazir Bhutto's widower and co-chairman of the party, Zardari, has held a series of meetings with legislators and coalition partners on the choice of prime minister, but no clear front runner has emerged.