The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bush vows to support Israel against 'terror and evil’

AFP, Jerusalem

US President George W. Bush took a tough stance against Israel's armed foes on Thursday, a day after a rocket fired by Gaza militants wounded 14 people and triggered warnings of retaliation.

"The alliance between our governments is unbreakable," Bush said in remarks prepared for an address to the Israeli parliament marking the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel, an event the Palestinians regard as a "catastrophe."

"Israel's population may be just over seven million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you." Bush planned to tell Israel's Knesset that the United States and its allies will keep up the battle against extremist groups, including Al-Qaeda, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

"The president will reiterate that the United States is Israel's closest friend and ally," said US national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Bush, who is in Israel at the start of a five-day visit to the region, also warned that allowing archfoe Iran to obtain nuclear weapons would be "an unforgivable betrayal of future generations." His address to parliament comes one day after a rocket fired by Gaza militants slammed into a crowded mall in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, leaving 14 people injured, three of them seriously.

Bush held talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials after he arrived on Wednesday before attending a large conference in Jerusalem hosted by President Shimon Peres to mark Israel's 60th anniversary.

On Thursday, he was also scheduled to visit the ruins of the Masada desert fortress, which Israelis considered emblematic of Jewish resistance because Jews besieged in the hilltop position chose to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Romans during a rebellion in 70 AD.

Bush hopes to give impetus to peace talks during his visit, but the timing of his trip has angered Palestinians who mark Israel's 60 years on Thursday by remembering the 1948 exodus of some 760,000 Arabs after the birth of the state. Palestinians planned several commemorations of what they call the Naqba, or "catastrophe" including mass rallies in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. Bush's visit comes amid renewed turmoil in the region, which bodes ill for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that have made little tangible progress since they were revived at a conference he hosted in November.

Following his talks with Bush, Olmert stressed on Wednesday Israel would hold Hamas responsible for any attack launched from Gaza and will "take the necessary steps so that this will stop."

Two smaller Palestinian militant groups claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack but Israel says Hamas is to blame since it controls Gaza where it ousted troops loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June. Israel has carried out repeated military operations against Gaza in a bid to halt the almost daily rocket fire from the impoverished sliver of land. Israel and Palestinian militants have talked separately to Egyptian mediators about a possible truce in Gaza, but Hamas rejected Israel's demand that it free an Israeli soldier captured by the Islamists almost two years ago.

After Wednesday's attack Israel launched an air strike east of Gaza City in which two Hamas militants were killed and four wounded, after operations earlier in the day killed four people, including three militants, medics said.

Myanmar approves new constitution amid national tragedy

AP, Yangon

Myanmar's junta announced Thursday that a pro-military constitution has won overwhelming support in a referendum, which was held despite widespread criticism and in the midst of a national tragedy - a devastating cyclone that the Red Cross says may have killed more than 125,000 people.

State radio said the draft constitution, which critics dismissed as a sham document designed to entrench the military's rule, was approved by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters. It put voter turnout at more than 99 percent. Voting was postponed until May 24 in the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon areas, which were worst hit by Cyclone Nargis. But state radio said the results of the late balloting could not mathematically reverse the constitution's approval.

Myanmar's government issued a revised casualty toll Wednesday night, saying 38,491 were known dead and 27,838 were missing. But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its estimate put the number of dead between 68,833 and 127,990. Even though the figures seemed precise, spokesman Matthew Cochrane said they were not based on body counts, but were only estimate designed to provide Red Cross donors and partner organizations with an idea of the numbers being discussed within the aid community. U.N. officials have said there could be more than 100,000 dead in the May 2-3 cyclone.

With up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter, aid agencies were preparing or moving in a wide-range of relief supplies including material for temporary shelters, rice, drinking water, kitchen utensils and medicines, including 2,000 anti-snake bite kits.

Frantic race to save lives in China quake zone

AFP, Yingxiu

Time was running out Thursday to save survivors of China's massive earthquake which has left more than 40,000 people lying dead or buried under rubble in its stricken southwest.

Experts said the search-and-rescue operation was entering its most crucial phase yet four days after the 7.9-magnitude quake struck, with the chances of finding survivors diminishing by the hour.

As the military ramped up its rescue efforts with more troops and aircraft, a new threat emerged from creaking dams and reservoirs shaken by the quake.

State-run television said authorities had found "dangerous situations" at more than 400 reservoirs-two of them major-across five provinces.

The epic scale of Monday's quake is becoming clearer as teams hike into the remote epicentre, where whole towns were levelled causing untold deaths.

"As the destruction was severe and people were buried somewhere deep below ground, that's really trouble," Zhang Zhoushu, vice director of the state-run China Earthquake Disaster Prevention Centre, told AFP.

"If there are some survivors under such conditions, it would be a matter of luck or a miracle."

China has rebuffed most foreign offers to send rescuers, but said Thursday it would accept a Japanese team flying in with sniffer dogs.

"Most people are saved in the first three or four days," Willie McMartin, director of the British-based charity International Rescue Corps, told AFP in Hong Kong where his team is trying to get permission to enter China.

Palestinians mark catastrophe of Israel’s birth

AFP, Ramallah

Palestinians planned protests across the occupied territories on the 60th anniversary of the "catastrophe" of the birth of Israel on Thursday as the Jewish state's army went on high alert.

The commemoration of the Naqba, or "catastrophe"-the defeat of five invading Arab armies and the expulsion or flight of about 760,000 people-comes as US President George W. Bush was to address Israel's parliament. In the occupied West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem, activists plan to release 21,915 black balloons-one for each day since Israel's creation in 1948 -- to darken the skies over Jerusalem after a massive midday protest in Ramallah.

"Sixty years ago we were pushed into exodus and suffered an injustice. Today we call upon the world to give our people justice," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, himself a 1948 refugee, said this week. Those who were expelled from their homes or fled during the war that followed Israel's creation have since given rise to 4.5 million UN registered refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For Palestinians the fate of the refugees lay at the core of the decades-old Middle East conflict and has bedevilled past peace efforts as Israel has refused to allow any of the refugees to return.

Israel PM says agreements reached with Palestinians

AFP, Jerusalem

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday that "real progress" had been made in talks with the Palestinians and "understandings and agreements have been reached on very important matters".

"The discussions we are conducting with the Palestinian Authority are serious and very significant," Olmert said on the eve of a visit to Israel by US President George W. Bush.

"We are making real progress and understandings and agreements have been reached on very important matters, although not on all of them."

Olmert said he hoped a comprehensive agreement could be reached with the Palestinians although he made no explicit mention of the January 2009 target date set by Bush.

Congress faces BJP in new phase of state vote

AFP, Bangalore

India's ruling Congress party and Hindu nationalists face off Friday in the second phase of a crucial state election that analysts say could influence the timing of a national vote.

More than 10 million people are eligible to cast their ballots in districts spread across the central and coastal regions of southern Karnataka. They will choose 66 lawmakers from among 590 candidates.

Karnataka, home to 60 million people and centred on India's software city of Bangalore, will be followed by a clutch of state elections that precede parliamentary polls due by May next year. Analysts predict the national vote may be brought forward if Congress were to win Karnataka, where the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is fighting to win power on its own for the first time in the south.

Chavez tells Colombia not to build base for US

AP, Caracas

President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday warned Colombia not to allow a U.S. military base on its border with Venezuela, saying he would consider such an act an "aggression."

Chavez said he would not permit Colombia's U.S.-backed government to establish an American military base in La Guajira, a region spanning northeastern Colombia and northwestern Venezuela.

The Venezuelan leader said if Colombia allows the base, his government will revive a decades-old territorial conflict and stake a claim to the entire region. "We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire," Chavez said, referring to the U.S. during a speech to a packed auditorium of uniformed soldiers. "Colombia is launching a threat of war at us." He said Washington's top diplomat in Bogota, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, recently suggested that a U.S. military base in Ecuador could be moved to La Guajira.