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57 dead in China torrential rain

AFP, Guizhou

The death toll from torrential rain in China has climbed to 57, state media reported, as the bad weather continued to cause havoc in five provinces.

The south-western province of Guizhou was hardest hit, with 38 people killed by flash floods and 14 missing, Xinhua news agency reported.

Nineteen people died in four other provinces in central, southern and eastern China.

Floods in Guizhou destroyed 5,000 houses and affected 15,000 people in one county alone, Xinhua said.

The news agency earlier reported that two bridges and a highway had also been destroyed.

In the central province of Hunan, seven people were killed and three more were feared buried under mud and rocks.

More than 16,000 houses collapsed in eastern Jianxi province due to the heavy rain, Xinhua said.

In quake-hit Sichuan province, officials warned that rain would further swell a "quake lake", a massive body of water sitting above millions of people that was formed after the huge tremor triggered landslides and blocked a river.

If it bursts, flash floods would sweep across large tracts of Sichuan, bringing with it torrents of rubble from the quake.

The 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Sichuan on May 12 has killed more than 68,000 people, and over 19,000 are still missing.

Reuters adds: Chin said on Monday it could guarantee there would be no epidemics in the earthquake zone, while some survivors complained their farmland was being bulldozed to make way for temporary housing.

Where bodies crushed under buildings in the devastating May 12 tremor could not be cremated, they had been buried deep underground and far from water sources to prevent contamination, Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qunan said.

Camps had been disinfected and people warned of health risks.

"Theoretically, when there is a large movement of people, the risk increases for the spread of transmittable diseases," he said on a webcast on central government website www.gov.cn.

"We have the ability and the confidence to guarantee there will be no epidemics after the disaster."

China has mobilized its military to unblock roads, clear rubble and deliver food, water and tents to millions displaced by the quake. Rescuers are racing to clear swollen "quake lakes" and set up housing before the summer rainy season begins.

A total of 69,019 people have been confirmed dead as of midday on Monday, with 18,627 missing and 373,573 injured.

A tent city has sprung up in Anxian, just off a main road running through mountain fields of corn and watermelons.

Pre-fabricated houses are going up, as they are elsewhere, to provide more long-term shelters away from the stifling heat of leaky tents. The people, mostly farmers from Chaping near the epicenter of the quake, have nothing to do.

Zhang Zhaohua, 24, sat in her tent with her 22-month-old boy and said adults could stand the heat and the unusual diet of instant noodles, served morning and night.

"It's fine for us, but not for the little ones," she said.

In nearby Yongan, 95 percent of the houses are uninhabitable, but many people survived the quake because they were out in the fields when it struck in the early afternoon.

Some were grumbling that their farmland, with crops also including beans, cabbages and citrus fruit, was now being bulldozed for the prefab housing.

"Our biggest concern is the future and how we will live," one woman said. "The government is using our land, so how are we meant to earn anything?"

Local official Zhang Piwu could not give a timeline for repairing those houses which remained, damaged but intact.

"The government has not released the plan yet," he said. "It's a very sensitive subject for the people. It's what the people are most concerned about."

The earthquake has gripped China, unleashing a flood of donations and volunteers to help in relief work. Domestic and foreign donations have reached 41.7 billion yuan ($6 billion).

Troops withdrew from a dangerous quake lake formed by a massive landslide at Tangjiashan after clearing a channel for water to flow out from behind the blockage. The water had risen to within seven meters of the lowest point of the unstable natural dam by this weekend, threatening downstream communities.

Trucks trundled across Sichuan with materials for pre-fabricated housing.

In Yingxiu, dynamite was being used to clear rubble and unsafe buildings. Workers vigorously sprayed disinfectant as overcast and muggy weather settled in.

"As time goes by, the major killers of inpatients are multiple organ failure and complicated drug-resistant infection, instead of crush syndrome and acute renal failure in early periods after the quake," ministry spokesman Mao said.

He said deep burial of the dead in Sichuan had been "scientifically handled" and water sources would not be contaminated.

Blast outside Danish embassy in Pakistan kills 8

AFP, Islamabad

A suicide car bombing outside the Danish embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad killed at least eight people and wounded nearly 30 others, state television and officials said Monday.

The blast left a huge crater outside the embassy, damaging the building and a nearby development agency. Several cars were destroyed by the force of the explosion and some were on fire, an AFP reporter said.

Denmark had downgraded the embassy and moved out most foreign staff in recent months due to threats linked to a row over the reproduction in February of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Danish media, diplomatic sources said.

"It was a suicide attack carried out in a vehicle, apparently targeting the Denmark embassy," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Government-run Pakistan television said at least eight people were killed in the blast and several more injured. Other channels showed smoke rising above the scene.

Another security official said at least five had been killed, including two policemen stationed outside the embassy, and 28 others wounded.

There was no immediate comment from Danish officials. Officials from the nearby Netherlands embassy said their staff were unhurt and the building was not affected.

Ambulances rushed away carrying casualties including a security guard covered in blood, and police sealed off the area. Several trees near the scene were also ablaze.

"I was in my room and there was a huge blast and the windows smashed. I was hit by a sharp object and am bleeding from my leg," said Mohammad Dilshad, who lives near the embassy.

A worker at the development agency, the UN-backed Devolution Trust for Community Development, said he arrived at his office seconds after the explosion.

"I saw blood and smoke and the trees were burning and debris was in the air settling down. Our building looked like it had been destroyed," Mohammad Salim told AFP.

"I heard cries for help. I saw five people on the street lying on the ground in a pool of blood. I got to the first injured and thought he was dead but he was still breathing. We put him in a car and sent him to hospital," he added.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

The attack was the first in Islamabad since a bomb blast at an Italian restaurant frequented by foreigners on March 15 killed a Turkish woman and wounded 10 foreigners, including four US FBI staff.

Pakistan has experienced a lull in suicide attacks since a new government came to power in March and began peace talks with Taliban militants based in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Hillary looks to fight after Puerto Rico win

AFP, Washington

Hillary Clinton said in comments published Monday that she may challenge a decision by Democratic Party leaders on convention delegates, threatening to prolong her nomination fight against Barack Obama.

The comments to The Washington Post, indicated Clinton is not ready to throw in the towel, even though Obama is widely seen as having gained the upper hand. "We reserve the right to do it. But I haven't made a decision yet," Clinton told the newspaper.

On Saturday, a Democratic National Committee panel restored the states of Michigan and Florida to its presidential convention, but with only half of their voting power.

Democrats in the two states had been initially denied the right to send convention delegates because they broke party rules by holding their primary votes in January.

Clinton gained a net 24 delegates from Saturday's two-state compromise, which was not nearly enough to secure her nomination.

But even as momentum and the delegate count favored Obama, she vowed in the interview to continue her political fight.

"I am focused on winning the nomination," she said. "So I'm going to stay focused on what is the business at hand, which is making my case to the delegates, and there'll be time, oh, way in the future to consider the campaign, because it's still very much alive and ongoing."

With Democratic voters essentially split and the primary contest approaching its final stage on Tuesday, Clinton made clear she was determined now to focus on influencing superdelegates, the top Democratic Party officials, who in effect will decide the nomination this year.

While the superdelegates have been moving toward Obama in recent weeks, the New York senator made clear she believed the trend can be reversed.

"One thing about superdelegates is they can change their minds," she told The Post.

The former first lady triumphed in Sunday's Puerto Rico primary by a margin of two to one.

Clinton pressed her claim to undecided party grandees that she leads in the national popular vote, and would be a far more potent candidate to take on Republican John McCain in November.

"I am in this race because I believe I am that candidate, and I will be that president," she said in her Puerto Rico victory speech.

Addressing a cheering crowd in South Dakota Sunday, Obama praised his rival as an "outstanding public servant" who would be a "great asset" for the Democrats come November's election.

"And whatever differences, whatever differences Senator Clinton and I may have, look, those differences pale in comparison to the other side," he said, as the final primaries beckoned Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs predicted that "sometime this week, we'll probably have a nominee for the Democratic Party and then we can get to the need to bring change to this country."

"If it's not Tuesday, I think it will be fairly soon," he told Fox News Sunday, noting ahead of the Puerto Rico vote that Obama needed just 66 more delegates to reach the revised winning line of 2,118.

Obama was set to address thousands of supporters on Tuesday night in the same conference hall in St. Paul, Minneapolis where the Republican convention will be held in September.

His aides, loath to alienate Clinton, stressed it was not a victory rally. But both the venue and the timing, on the night that the five-month primary campaign comes to an end, were freighted with political symbolism.

Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said the time for healing had begun with the weekend's compromise to reinstate Florida and Michigan.

"This is the beginning of the unification of the party, despite what you just saw on television," he said on CNN after clips from Saturday showed screaming Clinton supporters threatening to vote for McCain.

The former Vermont governor added: "We don't want to go to the convention, have a big fight at the convention, and lose the presidency."

Nepal's deposed king agrees to leave palace

AFP, Kathmandu

The ex-king of Nepal has agreed to quit his palace before a June 12 deadline and live as a commoner after a decision by a constituent assembly to abolish the monarchy, the home minister said Monday.

"He said he is ready to live life as a common citizen," Home Minister Krisna Prasad Sitaula told reporters after meeting Gyanendra.

"He welcomed and accepted the decision made by the first meeting of the constituent assembly."

The Maoist-dominated assembly formally ended the world's last Hindu monarchy and set up a republic, just before midnight Wednesday. The king was given 15 days to leave his palace in Kathmandu.

"I don't see any complications in the former king's departure from the palace. He told me he would leave within the (June 12) deadline," the minister told reporters after a 10-minute meeting.

Gyanendra is expected to move to a private residence in the north of the city-a home he occupied before he was vaulted to the throne in 2001 after a palace massacre .

The 1960s, pink-hued Narayanhiti palace-set in acres of prime land at the end of the capital's Kingsway commercial hub-will be turned into a national museum, officials have said.

The vote to abolish the 240-year-old monarchy capped a two-year peace deal between mainstream political parties and former rebel Maoists who led a bloody insurgency.

Home Minister Krishna Sitaula was among several government officials who met with Gyanendra at the Narayanhiti palace in the capital on Monday, in the first direct contact between the former king and the government since a newly elected Constituent Assembly abolished the monarchy on May 28.

The assembly gave Gyanendra 15 days to vacate the palace.

Gyanendra said he accepted the assembly's decision and that he would move out of the palace by June 12, Home Minister Krishna Sitaula told The Associated Press after the meeting.

"The former king appeared to be in relaxed mood and was not agitated. He did not give any indication that he would resist the government order to move out," Sitaula said. Gyanendra asked that the government assist in finding alternative accommodation for him and his mother.

Swiss voters reject anti-immigration initiative

AFP, Geneva

Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected an anti-immigrant initiative that would have made it harder for foreigners to gain citizenship, according to referendum results released Sunday.

All but one of 26 Swiss cantons (states) rejected the initiative by the nationalistic Swiss People's Party, while in the overall population 63.8 percent voted against it, according to official results.

The initiative was aimed at overturning a Supreme Court ruling that barred the widely denounced practice in some Swiss communities of subjecting citizenship applications to a popular vote.

"The people clearly said: 'We don't want xenophobia and we want direct democracy to respect basic rights,'" Swiss President Pascal Couchepin said on Swiss television SF.

People's Party lawmaker Hans Fehr said he still believed the requirements for Swiss citizenship should be more stringent. The party's campaign poster publicizing the initiative revived the imagery of brown hands clutching passports that in 2004 helped the party succeed in a similar campaign to curb naturalizations.

For the initiative to have passed, a majority of cantons would have had to support it, as well as an overall majority of voters. Turnout for the referendum was 44.1 percent. In some cantons, up to 82 percent of voters rejected the initiative. Only Schwyz canton, in the country's conservative central heartland, voted in favor.

More than 20 percent of the 7.5 million population in Switzerland are foreigners - one of the highest percentages in Europe. Children born in Switzerland to foreign parents have no automatic right to Swiss citizenship and must go through a naturalization process.

Each Swiss canton decides the process by which foreigners can become citizens, but applicants must have lived in the country for 12 years. Rejected applicants can appeal to the Supreme Court if they claim discrimination or violation of other basic rights. If Swiss voters had adopted the right-wing initiative, local communities again could have subjected naturalization candidates to a popular vote, this time without possibility of appeal.

The Federal Tribunal abolished community votes on immigrants five years ago after a referendum in the central Swiss town of Emmen rejected all 48 Eastern European and Turkish candidates for citizenship even though they had been thoroughly reviewed and approved as good inhabitants by local authorities. Eight Italians were approved.

Five former Yugoslavs among those rejected appealed to the Supreme Court, which held that they had been discriminated against because of their ethnic and religious origin. It said in a separate ruling that applicants had a right to know the reason for their rejection, which a public vote makes impossible.

US delegation meets Hamas leader in Gaza

AFP, Gaza City

A delegation of retired US diplomats met dismissed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya in the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday as part of a Middle East fact-finding mission.

The delegation represented the Council for the National Interest, a group of diplomats, analysts, and businessmen who, according to the group's website, seek to counter the "over-zealous tactics of Israel's lobby" in the US. "It was a very interesting and very frank discussion with the prime minister," Richard Viets, the head of the delegation, told reporters.

"He outlined in detail the view of the Gazan government on a number of issues," added Viets, who served as the number two US diplomat in Israel from 1977 to 1979 and ambassador to Jordan in the early 1980s.

Viets said the group had not sought permission for the visit from the US government, which along with Israel and the European Union considers the Islamist Hamas movement to be a terrorist organisation.

"We came here because we are very interested in educating ourselves better about the situation here in order to return home and to explain to our countrymen the reaction and the views of what we heard," Viets said.

"No doubt this will include representatives of the government," he added.

The group was planning to continue its fact-finding mission in Israel, the occupied West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Former US president Jimmy Carter drew fire from both Washington and Israel last month when he made a similar tour of the region and met senior Hamas leaders.

An official in the Islamist movement, which blames the US and Israel for imposing a crippling economic blockade on the impoverished coastal strip, welcomed the delegation.

"This visit is important in the context of the siege against the Palestinian people imposed by the United States," Bassim Naim said.

"Haniya reaffirmed the relationship between the Palestinian people and the American people and the fact that the Palestinian people make a difference between those who love peace and the aggression against our people done by the US government."

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas dismissed Haniya and cut all contacts with Hamas after the Islamist movement seized power in Gaza in a week of bloody street battles nearly a year ago.

Palestinian Authority PM pessimistic about peace

AFP, Ramallah

After a year as the Palestinian Authority's prime minister, Salam Fayyad is pessimistic about a peace deal with Israel, saying the accelerated construction of Israeli settlements largely strips the negotiations for Palestinian statehood of meaning.

Yet Fayyad, an economist by trade and a pragmatist surrounded by ideologues, refuses to give up.

In an interview at his office Sunday, Fayyad said he'll keep trying to improve life in the West Bank in small steps regardless of the fate of the U.S.-backed peace efforts. He hopes to break what he described as a culture of defeatism among Palestinians, nurtured by decades of Israeli occupation, and instead to instill a sense of the possible.

"The way we end it (occupation) is by this t spirit of positive defiance, to build despite the occupation, do what we can," he told The Associated Press. Fayyad, a former official at the International Monetary Fund who lived in the U.S. for 20 years, was appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a year ago to replace Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamic militant Hamas. Abbas fired Haniyeh, now the premier of Hamas in Gaza, after Hamas' violent takeover of the territory.

But Fayyad's list of troubles seems to be getting longer.

Hamas remains entrenched in Gaza, while Abbas' increasingly disgruntled Fatah movement is becoming more vocal in demands to be included in Fayyad's government of independents and experts.

Israel balks at easing movement restrictions for the Palestinians - a prerequisite for the recovery of the Palestinian economy - and Israeli soldiers continue to carry out raids in cities where Fayyad's forces are trying to establish control, saying the Palestinians aren't ready yet to handle security on their own.

Fayyad is skeptical about Palestinian prospects for independence.

The peace process is "being trampled upon" with Israel's accelerated settlement construction, including the latest plans, disclosed Sunday, for 900 more apartments in disputed east Jerusalem, he said. Both sides claim the area where the building is to take place.

"Believe me, I would want this (a peace agreement) to happen today before tomorrow, but I am really at a loss trying to really find reasons to be encouraged or optimistic, especially because the pace (of construction) has picked up so much," he said.

Australia's arguments for Iraq war all wrong: PM

AFP, Sydney

All the arguments Australia used to justify sending troops to fight in Iraq proved to be wrong, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament Monday as he fulfilled an election vow to bring them home.

Rudd, who ousted long-term conservative leader John Howard last November, was fiercely critical of the process that took Australia into the war.

Howard had presented four reasons for joining the US-led invasion in March 2003, Rudd said as a 550-strong Australian combat force began pulling out of the shattered country.

He then clinically listed, and dismissed, each of the arguments.

"Have further terrorist attacks been prevented? No, they have not been, as the victims of the Madrid train bombing will attest," he said.

"Has any evidence of a link between weapons of mass destruction and the former Iraqi regime and terrorists been found? No.

"Have the actions of rogue states like Iran been moderated? Not Iran's nuclear ambitions remain a fundamental challenge.

"After five years, has the humanitarian crisis in Iraq been removed? No it has not."

Rudd said he was particularly concerned about how the decision to go to war had been made, citing "the abuse of intelligence information."

He said there had been a "failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of the intelligence-for example, the pre-war warning that an attack on Iraq would increase the terrorist threat, not decrease it."

Rudd also dismissed Howard's argument that Australia's alliance with the United States meant it had to participate in the invasion.

The alliance was important but did not mean automatic compliance with all aspects of US foreign policy, Rudd said, charging that the decision to invade without UN approval had set a dangerous precedent.

Howard, one of Bush's staunchest supporters in the so-called "coalition of the willing" which stormed into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein's regime, earlier defended his decision to contribute troops.

"I firmly believe it was the right thing to have done," Howard said, while acknowledging the cost of the war had been "very, very heavy and much greater than anybody would have liked."

Before his election defeat, Howard had been Bush's last major partner in a coalition that once included prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Spain's Jose Maria Aznar and Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski-all now out of office.

Opinion polls showed that most Australians opposed its involvement in Iraq, and Bush dubbed Howard a "man of steel" for his commitment despite the war's unpopularity among voters.

No Australian troops died in combat in Iraq, and two officers complained in an official army journal last month that they were "scorned" by soldiers from other countries because they were given low-risk missions.

Rudd pointed out that estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths ranged widely from 50,000 to half a million.