The New Nation - Internet Edition

Obama more likely to 'do the right thing’: World poll

AP, Washington

The matchup between John McCain and Barack Obama is close in nationwide surveys in the USA, but around the world it's no contest: Obama prevails.

A survey of 24 nations taken by the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds high levels of interest in the U.S. presidential election and broad optimism that American foreign policy "will change for the better" after the inauguration of a new president next year.

In all but three nations, those polled express more faith in Obama than in McCain to "do the right thing regarding world affairs." They were essentially tied in the USA. In Pakistan and Jordan, neither inspires much confidence.

"Obama obviously has an appeal that has crossed the waters," says Andrew Kohut, who directs the Pew project. "Some of it may have to do with his being associated with opposition to the war in Iraq, which is consistent with views of people around the world. Some of it may have to do with his charismatic qualities and the fact that he's different than the typical American presidential candidate."

However, the countries where people are paying the least attention include Indonesia, where Obama spent four years as a child. Just 15% of Indonesians say they're following the election closely.

Optimism about a new president is broad. About two-thirds of those surveyed in France, Spain, Germany, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania predict U.S. foreign policy will improve after the inauguration. In 20 nations, more say U.S. foreign policy will change for the better than for the worse.

Only in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt and Lebanon were people inclined to predict a turn for the worse.

AFP adds: Democrat Barack Obama's bid to become the first African-American US president has raised hopes in Europe and Africa, where majorities foresee a positive change in US foreign policy, a survey suggested on Thursday.

While Obama received more positive marks overall than his Republican rival John McCain among the 24 countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes project, not all looked forward to improvement with November's election.

"Excepting countries that are extremely anti-American, the Muslim countries, we find most people saying that they think that the next president will represent a change for the better with respect to foreign policy," said Pew president Andrew Kohut.

At least one-third of respondents in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan anticipated that US foreign policy would change for the worse with a new US president, no matter who is elected, while the number of those expecting a positive change ranked 30, 25 and 19 percent respectively.

In contrast, more than two thirds of respondents in France, Spain, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Germany saw change for the better.

When it came specifically to Obama, a 46-year-old Illinois senator and son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, the highest confidence ratings came from Tanzania and France (84 percent), Germany (82), Australia (80), Japan (77) and Britain (74).

"People around the world who have been paying attention to the American election express more confidence in Barack Obama than John McCain to do the right thing regarding world affairs," the report said.

"McCain is rated lower than Obama in every country surveyed, except for the United States where his rating matches Obama's, as well as in Jordan and Pakistan where few people have confidence in either candidate."

Obama's lowest ratings were seen in Turkey, where 62 percent said they had little or no confidence that Obama would do the right thing in world affairs. Even more Turks said the same of McCain (71 percent).

Pakistan lawyers 'to besiege parliament’ over judges’ jobs

Reuters, Lahore

A convoy of Pakistani lawyers set off on Thursday on the last leg of a cross-country rally, vowing to lay siege to parliament unless judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf last year get their jobs back.

Lawyers have been at the forefront of opposition to staunch U.S. ally Musharraf since he tried to dismiss the then Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March last year.

Chaudhry and dozens of other judges were purged when former army chief Musharraf declared emergency rule in November.

"If the judges are not restored t we will lay siege to parliament," a leader of the lawyers' movement, Ali Ahmed Kurd, told a rally of several thousand lawyers and political activists in the city of Lahore.

The protest, called a "long march" even though the lawyers are traveling in a fleet of about 200 vehicles, set off from the southeastern city of Multan on Wednesday. They are due to reach the capital Islamabad on Friday.

The protest is increasing pressure on Musharraf to step down. Isolated since his allies were trounced in a February election, opponents are demanding he quit and face trial.

It is also a challenge to the two-month-old coalition government led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and a threat to its tenuous unity.

The coalition has been almost completely preoccupied with the question of the judges and the related issue of Musharraf's fate despite a looming economic crisis and militant threat.

Analysts say if Chaudhry were reinstated, he would be expected to take up legal challenges to Musharraf's presidency that could lead to his ouster.

But Chaudhry might also review an amnesty that wiped out corruption cases against Bhutto, her husband Asif Ali Zardari, who has led her party since she was assassinated in December, and other party politicians.

Myanmar says US aid can’t be trusted

AP, Yangon

As individuals and aid agencies around the world dig into their pockets for funds to help Myanmar's cyclone victims, the country's ruling junta said Friday that such assistance from the United States could not be trusted.

State media has previously said Myanmar feared Washington was using the cover of humanitarian aid to invade the country and steal its oil reserves.

The suspicion continued Friday, when a media mouthpiece for the regime warned that "the goodwill of a big Western nation that wants to help Myanmar with its warships was not genuine" - a clear reference to the U.S.

Myanmar rejected humanitarian aid aboard naval vessels from the U.S., Britain and France, which sailed toward the Southeast Asian nation after Cyclone Nargis struck May 2-3.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said Friday that aid from nations who impose economic sanctions against Myanmar and push the United Nations Security Council to take actions against it come "with strings attached."

Despite the junta's regular attacks on Western donor countries, celebrities, ordinary people and aid groups there have donated generously to help the cyclone victims.

However, the U.N. said Thursday it has received about half the money it requested for cyclone relief, with some nations apparently delaying their donations because of concerns about restrictions imposed by the military government on foreign aid workers.

The U.N. set a goal of $202 million for its relief efforts but so far has received only $89 million, or 44 percent, from government donors, it said. Some $51 million in pledges has not yet been delivered, the U.N. said.

Funding shortfalls were particularly great for emergency food operations and education, the world body said.

"Funding is clearly not coming in at the rate we would hope," said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman in Bangkok for the U.N. relief operations. "Funding is urgently needed to sustain the pipeline for food and assistance."

China, Taiwan sign historic deals on travel

AP, Beijing

Taiwan and China agreed Friday to end a nearly six-decades-old break in transport links by expanding charter flights and tourism - a move seen as a likely harbinger of more ties between the longtime rivals.

The pact, signed in Beijing during their first formal talks since 1999, comes a day after Taiwan's representatives said they had reached a consensus with their Chinese counterparts on exchanging permanent representative offices.

Such missions would mark a huge step forward in establishing contacts and mutual trust, although Taiwan's chief negotiator, Chiang Ping-kun, emphasized that officials in Taipei still needed to approve the measure.

"There is still a long way to go for normalization of cross-strait economic and trade exchange," Chiang told reporters following the signing of the transport and tourism pacts. "There are still many issues to be discussed including expanding weekend charter flights into regular charter flights."

Taiwan has banned direct scheduled flights ever since the sides split in 1949 amid civil war.

The expansion of charter flights was a key agenda item for the talks that began Thursday. Those flights are now limited to four annual Chinese holidays and are usually packed with Taiwanese residents on the mainland returning home to visit family.

Newly elected Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou wants to gradually expand the charter schedule and supplement it with regularly scheduled flights by the summer of 2009. His target is to have 1 million Chinese tourists go to Taiwan every year, well above the current level of 80,000.

The agreement signed at a state guesthouse in western Beijing on Friday will allow for 36 charter flights to cross the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait running from Friday to Monday beginning on July 4.

Flights will be shared equally between Chinese and Taiwanese airlines, servicing routes between the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing and Taiwan's capital, Taipei, and seven other cities on the island. Flights would be open to anyone carrying valid documents, a change from the past when they were limited to just Taiwanese and Chinese.

A separate tourism agreement permits up to 3,000 Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan each day for stays of up to 10 days, according to the Straits Exchange Foundation, Taiwan's quasi-official negotiating body of which Chiang is head.

7 Palestinians killed in blast: Israeli envoy returns without Gaza truce deal

AP, Beit Lahiya

An Israeli envoy engaging in Gaza cease-fire talks returned without a deal late Thursday, after another day of bloodshed in the coastal territory that included seven Palestinians being killed in an explosion that Hamas indicated was an accident.

When the explosion flattened a house in the Gaza Strip, killing the seven, Hamas blamed Israel and unleashed rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel. But the militant group, which has controlled Gaza the past year, later suggested the blast was accidental. Dozens of gunmen have been killed while handing explosives in recent years.

By then Israel had carried out an airstrike aimed at a Gaza rocket squad, killing a Palestinian. Two other Israeli military operations in Gaza killed five more militants.

Clashes in and around Gaza are putting a strain on Egypt's effort to arrange a truce by acting as a go-between because Israel has no contacts with Hamas, which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide attacks and rejects the Jewish state's right to exist.

Israeli officials said envoy Amos Gilad told Egyptian mediators in Cairo that Israel wants progress toward freeing a soldier captured by Hamas two years ago as well as a commitment by Egypt to stop arms smuggling across its border with Gaza.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contacts are supposed to be private, said no agreement was reached Thursday.

With violence rising, Israeli government and security officials said Israel is willing to give Egyptian mediation about two more weeks to produce a truce, but warned that the military will be ready to invade Gaza if the effort fails.

Major points of contention remain, most prominently, Israel's demand to link the truce deal to the release of the captive Israeli soldier and a Hamas demand that Israel open Gaza's border crossings.

Israel blockaded Gaza a year ago after Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis, violently seized control of the territory from security forces affiliated with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

5 killed in US raid in Iraq

AP, Baghdad

The U.S. military says five gunmen have been killed and two others detained in a raid targeting a Shiite militia leader south of Baghdad.

Iraqi police spokesman Capt. Muthanna Khalid says two civilians, including a woman, were killed and three others wounded during Friday's gunbattle in Hillah.

A military statement says troops returned fire after coming under attack as they approached the residence of the suspected "special groups" leader in Hillah. It says the main suspect and an associate were detained in the raid.

The U.S. military uses the term "special groups" to refer to Shiite militia fighters who are refusing to follow a cease-fire order by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Japan to lift North Korea sanctions

AP, Tokyo

Japan decided to partially lift its sanctions against North Korea after the communist nation promised a new probe into its kidnappings of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s, news reports said Friday.

Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NKH quoted Foreign Minister Masahiko as saying Pyongyang also agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese jet that was flown to North Korea.

Word of a breakthrough came after the two sides - which do not have formal diplomatic relations - met for two days of bilateral meetings in Beijing.

The report, if verified, appeared to signal progress in Japan's decades-long campaign to resolve North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens for use as spies and language teachers.

In its efforts to persuade North Korea to cooperate, Japan has imposed tight trade sanctions against the impoverished communist nation, banning, for instance, the running of a ferry between the two nations.

The reports did not specify which sanctions would be lifted, or when that might happen.

In the hijacking, nine Japanese leftist radicals commandeered a Japan Airlines flight in 1970 and took the plane to Pyongyang. Four of the kidnappers remain in North Korea, and Tokyo has long sought their return to Japan to face justice.

2 UK soldiers killed in Afghanistan

AP, London

Britain's Ministry of Defense says two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

A spokesman says the two men were hit by enemy fire while patrolling the area around their base in the Upper Gereshk Valley. He says a third soldier was also injured in Thursday's attack.

The men served in the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment.

On Sunday, three soldiers serving in the same unit were killed in an attack in the Upper Sangin Valley.

At least 102 soldiers British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion by the U.S and its allies.

Malaysian PM agrees to hand power to his deputy

AFP, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, facing calls to quit after disastrous election results, said Friday he had agreed a plan to hand power to his deputy, the state news agency reported.

Abdullah had previously rejected calls from within the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) to formalise his plans to relinquish power, saying he would only discuss a transition after December internal leadership polls.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak is Abdullah's heir apparent but has made no public challenge, despite the crisis in UMNO since March general elections which produced the worst results in its half-century history.

"Najib and I have decided on the right time for me to hand over the premiership to him. We've no problems and we enjoy good working relations," Abdullah said according to the state Bernama news agency.

"The leadership change will definitely take place at the right time," he said at a luncheon with government officials and community leaders.

Najib, whose father was Malaysia's second prime minister, said during a visit to Britain this week that UMNO might not survive a leadership battle.

"UMNO is now at its lowest point and if you create a serious fight for the leadership, the party will be further weakened and unable to face the challenges ahead," he said according to the New Straits Times.

"What's the point of inheriting a position when you lose in the general elections? I don't want to lead the party to defeat."

Abdullah, who has repeatedly rejected calls to resign, called for an end to speculation over his relationship with Najib which he said would only damage the party.

"It's important for everyone to see the relationship between me and Najib as very crucial to strengthen UMNO and the government and to implement the development projects and programmes that have been planned," he said.

Nuclear power among options for UN greenhouse cuts

Reuters, Bonn

Developing nations might get help to build nuclear power plants under proposals at 170-nation climate talks in Bonn for expanding a fast-growing U.N. scheme for curbing greenhouse gases.

Nuclear power is the most contentious option for widening a U.N. mechanism under which rich nations can invest abroad, for instance in an Indian wind farm or a hydropower dam in Peru, and get credit at home for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's one of the issues that needs to be considered," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said on Thursday of suggestions by countries including India and Canada at the June 2-13 talks of aid for atomic energy.

Other proposals at the talks include giving credits for capturing and burying carbon dioxide, for instance from coal-fired power plants, or to do far more to encourage planting of forests that soak up carbon as they grow.

Many nations and environmentalists oppose expanding the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to include nuclear power. The CDM is part of the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases running until 2012.

"Nuclear power is not the energy of the future," said Martin Hiller of the WWF conservation group. "It should not be in the CDM. The CDM should be about renewable energy."

He said nuclear power was too dangerous although it emitted almost none of the greenhouse gases associated with burning coal, oil and gas and which are blamed for heating the planet.

No decisions on overhauling the CDM will be taken at the Bonn talks, part of a series of negotiations meant to end with a new long-term U.N. climate treaty by the end of 2009 to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol.

Zimbabwe opposition number two faces treason charge

AFP, Harare

The Zimbabwean opposition's number two faced a treason charge following his arrest minutes after arriving back in the country on Thursday to campaign for a June 27 presidential run-off election.

Police also detained opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai twice in the same day in central Zimbabwe, holding him for some two hours the first time and about four hours the next along with around 20 people in his entourage.

He was released without charge in both instances.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) secretary-general, Tendai Biti, could face the death penalty if convicted of the treason charge which centres around claims he plotted to rig his party's victory in the first round of the election in March.

He was arrested even before he reached passport control at Harare airport.

Tsvangirai is trying to topple veteran President Robert Mugabe in a second round vote in just over two weeks' time, after officially falling short of an overall majority in the first round of voting on March 29.

National police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said Biti would be charged for allegedly authoring a document which is said to have contained details of a plot to fix the election outcome.

Although Bvudzijena refused to give further details, state television reported in April that authorities had a secret document written by Biti which it claimed showed how teachers employed by the electoral commission had agreed to overstate the MDC's vote in return for payment.

Bvudzijena said Biti would also face a separate charge of "communicating and publishing false information prejudicial to the state" after he proclaimed victory for the party in the March 29 polls ahead of the official results.

Speaking shortly before he left Johannesburg for Harare, Biti said he was aware he faced the prospect of arrest.

Australian PM pledges cooperation with Indonesia president

AFP, Jakarta

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Friday promised a "new phase of cooperation" with Indonesia on disaster response and the environment during his first state visit to Jakarta.

Rudd praised the "very strong friendship" between the two neighbours after he met President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and senior ministers at the presidential palace.

"Australia and Indonesia are neighbours through geographic circumstance but we are friends through active national choice, and this is a very good friendship," he told reporters after the talks. He said the countries had agreed to broaden cooperation over nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change and disaster response.

The recent natural catastrophes in Myanmar, which was devastated by a cyclone in May, and quake-hit China underscored the need for a regional disaster response mechanism, he said.

"Indonesia has experienced the tsunami, the people of Burma (Myanmar) the terrible impact of the cyclone, the people of western China the earthquake most recently," he said.

"We do not know where a natural disaster will hit but between us we believe we can take a good and strong proposal" for a regional disaster-response system to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting next year, Rudd said.

The two leaders also discussed Rudd's plans for an EU-style Asia-Pacific Community to be set up by 2020 and to include the major economies of India, China, India and the United States.

He said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had provided a model of regional cooperation which could be expanded.

It was Rudd's first state visit to Indonesia since he defeated conservative prime minister John Howard in elections in November.

Yushchenko reassures Russia on defence

AFP, Paris

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko tried to reassure Russia that his country's ambition to join NATO is not aimed at Moscow, in an interview published Friday.

"We give our sovereign guarantee that Ukrainian territory will not be used against Russia," Yushchenko said in an interview published in the French Catholic daily La Croix.

"Our constitution prohibits the presence of foreign troops on our territory," he said, adding that Ukraine's desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) "isn't directed against someone, but by our national priorities." Yushchenko also noted that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons 15 years ago.

In April, NATO turned down Ukraine's application for a Membership Action Plan-a stepping stone to joining the alliance-but did say the former Soviet republic would eventually become a member.

Moscow has long opposed the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, which hosts Russia's Black Sea fleet, as an encroachment into its sphere of influence and a threat to its security.