The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Preah Vihear

Cambodia has complained to the U.N. Security Council that Thai forces have violated its territory near an ancient World Heritage Site temple where hundreds of troops continued to face off Sunday.

Cambodia's permanent mission in New York submitted a letter to the chairman of the Security Council and the chairman of the General Assembly to "draw their attention to the current situation on the Cambodian-Thai border," Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said.

"Cambodia is not asking for U.N. intervention. We still stick to Prime Minister Hun Sen's instructions to try to solve the problem peacefully between the two sides," the minister told The Associated Press in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

The conflict over territory surrounding Preah Vihear temple escalated when UNESCO recently approved Cambodia's application to have the complex named a World Heritage Site. Thai activists fear the new status will undermine Thailand's claim to nearby land.

The tension that began Tuesday is centered on the compound of a Buddhist pagoda near the Preah Vihear temple complex. Cambodia and Thailand have both laid claims to the compound.

In his letter to the Security Council on Friday, Cambodia's U.N. Ambassador Sea Kosal said the provocative act by Thai troops was aimed at creating "a de facto overlapping area that legally does not exist on Cambodian soil." A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Sunday.

Based on estimates of commanders and Associated Press reporters on both sides of the frontier, more than 4,000 troops have been deployed around the temple and in the immediate border region.

The forces were on the brink of a shoot-out Thursday night, which was avoided when Cambodians retreated from the pagoda compound occupied by the Thais.

Opposing commanders and their troops have tried to defuse tensions, sometimes even sharing meals, snapping photographs and sleeping within easy sight of one another.

A Cambodian general, meanwhile, said he had little hope that upcoming talks between his government and Thailand will resolve the matter.

Cambodian Brig. Gen. Chea Keo said Thai troops have deployed artillery about half a mile northeast of Preah Vihear temple - the latest escalation ahead of Monday's meeting aimed at averting a military confrontation.

"Regarding the talks tomorrow, we have little hope about the outcome," Chea Keo said.

He said the reason for his pessimism stems from a recent counterclaim by Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej that the area around a Buddhist pagoda near the historic temple belongs to Thailand. Thai troops have been stationed at the pagoda since Tuesday.

PTI, New York

Americans are sharply divided on racial lines heading into the first presidential election in which an African-American will be the major party nominee, a new poll shows.

Barack Obama, who is attempting to script history by being the first black President of the United States, leads his Republican rival John McCain among all registered voters by 45 percent to 39 percent.

However, in a sign of how racially polarised US voters are, Obama draws support from 89 per cent of blacks, compared with two per cent for McCain, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Among whites, Obama has 37 per cent of the vote, compared with 46 per cent for McCain, said the poll reflecting the race relations in the country. In a finding that would require the 47-year-old senator to make a major effort to win White voters in the November election, more than 80 per cent of black voters had favourable opinion of Obama while only 30 per cent Whites had the same feelings for him. Nearly 60 per cent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites.

However, black and white Americans agree that America is ready to elect a black president, but disagree on almost every other question about race in the poll.

Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing.

About one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks, the poll found. The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics- Obama is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years, the Times said.

Reuters, Cairo

The Arab League criticized the International Criminal Court's prosecutor for seeking the arrest of Sudan's president on genocide charges, saying diplomacy should be given a priority to solve the conflict in Darfur.

Arab foreign ministers, holding an emergency meeting in Cairo on Saturday, said Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa would head to Khartoum on Sunday to inform the Sudanese leadership of a plan to defuse the crisis. Moussa said he would announce the details within two days.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has asked the court for a warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on suspicion of masterminding crimes against humanity in his country's troubled Darfur region.

Moreno-Ocampo accused Bashir of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a "slow death" and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes in Darfur.

The final communique of the meeting said the ministers "called for giving the priority for political settlement t and called for an international high-profile summit to push the political process in Darfur."

Earlier in the day, Algeria urged other Arab nations to press the United Nations Security Council to prevent the ICC from issuing the arrest warrant for Bashir. "What the prosecutor of the court has done is a dangerous precedent," Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told his Arab counterparts.

"We have (to take) t a strong stance in solidarity with our brothers in Sudan and move effectively with regional and international organizations and the t states in the Security Council to immediately reconsider this demand by the prosecutor," he said, according to extracts of his speech.

Sudan has asked China and Russia, as well as the Arab League and the African Union, to help it pursue a U.N. Security Council resolution suspending a warrant for Bashir for 12 months.

Diplomats in New York say the Arab League and the AU's Peace and Security Council are expected to call on the Security Council to block any ICC moves in the interests of bringing peace to Darfur, devastated by the 5-year-old conflict.

Arab countries, largely ruled by autocratic leaders, usually resent allegations of human rights violations in the region.

Analysts say Arab leaders are also concerned that failing to thwart the ICC move against Bashir may encourage more foreign intervention in their affairs.

AP, Geneva

US decision to bend policy and sit down with Iran at nuclear talks fizzled Saturday, with Iran stonewalling Washington and five other world powers on their call to freeze uranium enrichment.

In response, the six gave Iran two weeks to respond to their demand, setting the stage for a new round of U.N. sanctions. Iran's refusal to consider suspending enrichment was an indirect slap at the United States, which had sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to the talks in hopes the first-time American presence would encourage Tehran into making concessions.

Officials and diplomats refused to characterize the timeframe as an ultimatum, but it appeared clear that Iran now has a de-facto deadline to show flexibility.

EU envoy Javier Solana said that Iran still has to answer a request made on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany to "refrain from any new nuclear activity."

"We have not gotten all the answers to the questions," Solana told reporters. He said the two-week timeframe was meant to give Iran the space to come up with "the answers that will allow us to continue."

In Washington, a U.S. official was blunter.

"We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between cooperation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only led to further isolation," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

In diplomatic terms, "further isolation" is shorthand for economic and political sanctions.

Keyvan Imani, a member of the Iranian delegation cast doubt over the value of talks less then an hour after they started. "Suspension - there is no chance for that," he told reporters.

Imani also downplayed the presence of Burns - even though the Americans had previously said they would not talk with the Iranians on nuclear issues unless they were ready to stop all enrichment.

"He is (just) a member of the delegation," Imani said.

Chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili evaded the issue of suspension, demanded as part of the six-power proposal that carries a commitment of no new U.N. sanctions in exchange for an Iranian pledge to stop expanding its enrichment program.

"Iran is calling on the Western powers to resume the dialogue," he said.

AFP, Herat

Nine policemen were killed in Afghanistan Sunday in international military air strikes called in when police and troops clashed after mistaking each other for Taliban, authorities said.

The "friendly fire" incident occurred before dawn when Afghan and international soldiers moved into a district in the southwest without informing police, who thought they were militants, the deputy governor of Farah province said. "An engagement took place, each side thinking the other was the Taliban," said Mohammad Younus Rasouli.

The troops called for air support and military attack aircraft arrived and bombed a police post, he said. Nine police were killed and five wounded.

Rasouli said NATO's International Security Assistance Force had carried out the strikes, but ISAF said it was an operation by the separate US-led coalition. The coalition confirmed an incident and said it was investigating. Rasouli said the police chief of Farah's Anar Dara district, on the border with Iran, was among the wounded and was in a serious condition.

The incident comes as US presidential hopeful Barack Obama is visiting Afghanistan to find out how international efforts against extremist militants trying to overthrow the Afghan government are progressing.

There have been several deadly incidents of "friendly fire" in Afghanistan, where many local and international security forces are involved in a growing fight against Taliban insurgents.

Earlier this month a British helicopter mistakenly opened fire on a group of British soldiers in Helmand province, injuring nine of them, three seriously, the defence ministry said.

In January nine Afghan policemen were killed in the central province of Ghazni by US-led soldiers hunting militants, Afghan officials said.

ISAF meanwhile said Sunday that its soldiers had killed four Afghan civilians by accident when mortar rounds landed off target in the eastern province of Paktika near the border with Pakistan.

"An ISAF unit on a fire mission accidentally killed four civilians, with an unconfirmed further three deaths," it said in a statement. "Four civilians were also wounded and are now under treatment by ISAF forces."

It is the latest incident in which the international soldiers helping the Afghan government have killed civilians by mistake.

The US-led coalition admitted last week that it had killed eight civilians in an air strike targeting militants in Farah. Afghan officials said nine women and a boy were killed.

The coalition and ISAF are also investigating official Afghan reports that 64 civilians were killed in two strikes in northeastern Afghanistan early this month.

One hit a wedding party, killing 47 people including the bride, an investigation appointed by President Hamid Karzai found.

AFP, Peshawar

Pakistani troops and helicopter gunships killed 15 pro-Taliban militants and captured 60 others while clearing a restive northwestern town near the Afghan border, the military said Sunday.

Authorities launched an offensive in the increasingly troubled district of Hangu on Wednesday after Taliban insurgents occupying the area killed 17 paramilitary troops in an ambush. Pakistan is under intense pressure from the United States and other Western allies to crack down on Taliban forces on its side of the porous border with Afghanistan. "The operation is on and 15 militants have been killed so far, while 60 others have been captured," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

"Five of our soldiers have been injured," he said, adding that troops had managed to push militants out of the valley and were now targeting them in the mountains. Authorities lifted a curfew early Sunday morning and afternoon as troops used artillery against militants in Tora Warai area, west of Hangu, residents said.

Meanwhile, a top Pakistani official warned that White House hopeful Barack Obama's threats of US military action against extremist sanctuaries in Pakistan would undermine Islamabad's new government.

North West Frontier Province (NWFP) governor Owais Ghani told AFP in an interview that any incursion into Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan would spark "disastrous" consequences for the whole world.

Obama arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday, where he met US soldiers and was expected later Sunday to have talks with President Hamid Karazi.

Reuters, Geneva

Major powers gave Iran two weeks to answer calls to rein in its nuclear programme on Saturday or face tougher sanctions after talks ended in stalemate despite unprecedented U.S. participation.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said Washington hoped Iran now understood that it had a choice between cooperation and "confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation."

But prospects of ending a row that has triggered regional tensions and rattled oil markets looked dim as Iran's top nuclear negotiator insisted Tehran would not even discuss a demand to freeze uranium enrichment at the next meeting.

"We still didn't get the answer we were looking for," European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said after some six hours of talks in Geneva with Iran's Saeed Jalili and envoys from the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain-the so-called sextet of world powers.

Solana said he hoped for a clear answer from Tehran in around two weeks to a month-old sextet offer of trade and technical incentives to halt enrichment.

Asked whether Tehran would otherwise face a new round of the U.N. Security Council sanctions that analysts say are already beginning to bite on its economy, he told a news conference:

"The Iranians know very well what will continue to happen if nothing happens otherwise."

Diplomats said the presence of senior U.S. envoy William Burns at the talks underlined the unity of major powers in the dispute, and stressed that patience was running out with Iran.

"There is nothing more to talk about. The Iranians are running the risk of foreclosing their options," said one diplomat in Gevena, warning they risked "going down the path which means further measures in the EU and the U.N."

Solana said he hoped for more contacts with Iran "telephonically or physically," but officials made clear that any subsequent contacts would be at a lower level than Saturday's talks.

AFP, Colombo

More than 5,000 Tamil Tiger rebels have been killed by Sri Lanka's military since the beginning of the year, the defence ministry said on Sunday.

The ministry said its latest figures showed 5,036 rebels and 446 of its own soldiers had died in fighting from the period beginning January and ending Friday night.

The rebels have not released their estimate of casualties. Figures from both sides cannot be independently verified as journalists are barred from reporting from front line areas.

Sri Lankan troops have being trying since July last year to dismantle the de facto separate state the rebels maintain in the north of the country, with fighting centred around Mannar, Jaffna, Weli Oya and Vavuniya.

Army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka on Saturday said forces had wiped out two-thirds of the Tamil Tigers' military capability and estimated its current strength to be 5,000, with around 200,000 civilians forced to provide logistic support.

Despite military reports of massive rebel losses, the Tamil Tigers maintain a few fixed-wing aircraft, a formidable sea force and a band of suicide bombers known for daring attacks against security, economic and political targets.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has waged a bloody fight since 1972 for an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils, did not comment on the claims.

AFP, Kabul

France's defence minister told President Hamid Karzai in talks in Kabul Saturday that his country would stand by Afghanistan, which is battling an extremist insurgency, the president's office said.

Defence Minister Herve Morin visited Karzai after arriving on a surprise two-day trip to meet French reinforcements deploying to a base near Kabul as part of a NATO-led force battling Taliban and other insurgents. In their talks, Morin "assured his government stands by the people of Afghanistan," Kazai's office said in a statement.

"The president thanked the French government for supporting Afghanistan in security and reconstruction," it said.

Morin later flew to Kapisa, northeast of Kabul, to meet soldiers from an extra battalion of about 700 soldiers deploying at a base there that also has Afghan and US troops, an AFP reporter said.

France announced reinforcements to NATO's 40-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in April and the soldiers started arriving this month, taking to about 2,000 the number of French soldiers in Afghanistan.

They are due to be in place by the end of next month. Kapisa province, which adjoins Kabul, does not suffer the regular insurgent violence plaguing southern Afghanistan, but has seen some attacks.

AP, Baghdad

After intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

"We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of al-Qaida's fight in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview at his office at the U.S. Embassy.

Whatever the result, Petraeus said no one should expect al-Qaida to give up entirely in Iraq.

"They're not going to abandon Iraq. They're not going to write it off. None of that," he said. "But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan."

He said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaida to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have pressed Pakistan for more than a year to halt the cross-border infiltration. It remains a major worry not only for the war in Afghanistan but also for Pakistan's stability.

Discussing al-Qaida in cautious terms, Petraeus said he is not certain of the reliability of the intelligence information about the terrorist network's latest thinking. He was adamant, however, that until now al-Qaida has seen Iraq as its best opportunity for establishing a militant Islamic state closer to the Persian Gulf.

AFP, Seoul

South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo on Sunday accused Japan of damaging bilateral ties and putting regional peace at risk with its renewed claim to a group of Seoul-controlled islets.

Han, meeting with ruling party lawmakers, rejected Tokyo's new education guidelines calling for "a deeper understanding" of Japan's claims to the islets-called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea-lying midway between them. "This is not only damaging the amicable South Korea-Japan relationshipt but also undermining peace in Northeast Asia by letting the future generations repeat the distorted history," Han said.

The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) said in a statement after the talks with Han that Seoul would make the rocky islets sufficiently habitable for people to live on, helping to thwart Tokyo's territorial claims.

"The party, the government and the (presidential) Blue House reached a concensus that it is very important to make Dokdo inhabited islands as one of the concrete countermeasures," it said, without elaborating.

Also discussed at the talks was the possibility of exploring minerals in the seabeds, allowing wider public access, building a maritime hotel to promote tourism and sending marines to the islets, it said.

Reuters, Islamabad

Pakistan is committed to supporting the U.S.-led global coalition fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban but will not allow allied foreign forces to operate on its territory, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said.

"The international war against terrorism is our own war," he said in a televised address focused on the performance of his three-and-a-half month old civilian coalition government.

"(But) we will not compromise on the sovereignty of Pakistan. No foreign power will be allowed to take action on Pakistani soil t any decision and any action within the frontiers of Pakistan will be taken by us with full responsibility," he told the nation.

Pakistani is undergoing a precarious transition to civilian rule, with President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, taking a lower profile.

But the new coalition, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is faced with multiple problems, including an Islamic militant threat, an economy in trouble, plus power and grain shortages.

Washington backs its strategy of using tribal elders to persuade militants to give up fighting, but worries that Taliban groups have used the breathing space provided by talks to intensify cross-border attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan.

Gilani's comments came amid growing fears in Pakistan that the United States may take a unilateral action against militants' sanctuaries in the border areas.

Residents of Pakistani tribal areas on the Afghan border have reported an increased activity of pilotless U.S. drones.

Pakistani intelligence officials, and villagers near the border of North Waziristan and Afghanistan's Khost province said last week large numbers of Western troops had been airlifted in and had begun building scores of bunkers along the frontier.

AP, Berlin

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says U.S. troops should leave Iraq "as soon as possible," according to a magazine report, and he called presidential candidate Barack Obama's suggestion of 16 months "the right timeframe for a withdrawal."

In Baghdad, however, the chief spokesman for al-Maliki issued a statement Sunday saying the prime minister's comments were "not conveyed accurately" by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.

Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said al-Maliki did not endorse a specific timetable but instead discussed a "an Iraqi vision" of U.S. troop withdrawals based on negotiations with Washington and "and in the light of the continuing positive developments on the ground."

The Der Spiegel article, released Saturday, quoted al-Maliki as giving apparent backing to the withdrawal plans discussed by Obama - the Illinois senator and likely Democratic nominee has pledged to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months if he is elected.

"That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes," al-Maliki was quoted as saying. "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Asked when U.S. forces would leave Iraq, he responded, "As soon as possible, as far a we're concerned."

In the interview, al-Maliki said he was not seeking to endorse Obama.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to al-Maliki, said later that Iraqi officials do not intend to be "part of the electoral campaign in the United States."

"We will deal with any administration that comes to power," he said.

AP, Sydney

Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday a "spiritual desert" was spreading throughout the world and he challenged young people to shed the greed and cynicism of their time to create a new age of hope for humankind.

Speaking at a Mass before some 350,000 Roman Catholic pilgrims and a likely television audience of millions more, Benedict wrapped up the church's six-day World Youth Day festival. He urged the young people in his more than 1 billion-strong flock to be agents of change because "the world needs renewal."

"In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," the pontiff said.

The appeal came as Benedict finished a visit to Australia that touched on the themes that have defined his three-year-old papacy, including the struggle to rejuvenate a crisis-battered Church, reaching out to other faiths and raising global warming as an important issue among his 1.1 billion-strong flock.

The 81-year-old pope said it was up to a new generation of Christians to build a world in "which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished - not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed."

They must embrace the power of God "to let it break through the curse of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age," he said.

The aim was "a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deadens our souls and poisons our relationships," he said.

AFP, Washington

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saw her revamped nuclear diplomacy stall on Iran but stay the pace on North Korea as she prepared to fly to the Middle East and Asia late Sunday.

In Abu Dhabi on Monday, Rice and Gulf Arab allies were to get a first-person account from her number-three envoy about his unprecedented but apparently fruitless participation in talks Saturday with the Iranians in Geneva.

With far more to show for her diplomacy on North Korea , Rice is due Wednesday and Thursday to visit Singapore and meet her North Korean counterpart at what could be the informal launch of the last stage of its denuclearization. Iran gave no sign it would comply with international calls to halt uranium enrichment, even though Undersecretary of State William Burns went to Geneva in a shift from past US policy of rejecting meetings with Iran until it yields.

Washington said it sent Burns to Geneva to show Washington is "serious" about backing diplomatic efforts to end a long standoff that has raised fears of Israeli or even US military strikes against Iran.

The diplomacy involves the five permanent UN Security Council members-the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France-plus Germany. The West charges Iran with seeking nuclear weapons-charges denied by Iran.

US officials say Burns was to brief Rice in person as well as United Arab Emirates leaders and possibly other Sunni Gulf Arab allies who are concerned about both non-Arab Shiite Iran's nuclear ambitions and the risk of war.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, leading efforts for Iran to accept new incentives to stop enrichment, said in Geneva "it was a constructive meeting, but still we didn't get the answer to our questions."

AFP, Jerusalem

Prime Minister Gordon Brown met Israeli leaders on Sunday on his first visit to Jerusalem since becoming premier in a bid to bolster peace negotiations and economic development.

The visit, which will also take him to the occupied West Bank, is aimed at revitalising sluggish Middle East peace talks and pressing his "economic roadmap" to peace, which is based on improving the Palestinian economy.

He has also been invited to address the Israeli parliament on Monday-the first time a British premier will make a speech at the Knesset. On Sunday, Brown visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial where he laid a wreath at the eternal flame in the Hall of Remembrance, which honours the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

"Nothing prepares one for the story that is told here-of the atrocities that should never have happened, and the truth that everyone who loves humanity should know," Brown wrote in the official guestbook after touring the museum.

He then met Israeli President Shimon Peres and is due to told talks later with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Brown was also planning to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Sunday "to discuss the way forward on the peace process and economic reconstruction and development," the premier's spokesman Michael Ellam told reporters.

Brown will also meet senior Israeli ministers and opposition figures during his trip, which follows a surprise trip on Saturday to Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

Brown-who spent 10 years as finance minister under Tony Blair, whom he succeeded as premier in June 2007 -- is keen to discuss boosting growth in the Palestinian territories and financial incentives for stamping out militants.

Last September, he set out an "economic roadmap" for peace in the Middle East, in which he said it was his "strong personal belief" that kick-starting growth in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was crucial to establishing peace.