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US says election won't ease pressure on Iran: Iran now has 6,000 centrifuges, says report

Reuters, London

Iran would be wrong to believe it will be "off the hook" over its disputed nuclear program during the transition to a new U.S. administration, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

"One thing we all have to worry about is t that somehow the Iranian leadership may think they are off the hook for a period of time," said Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

"What they need to understand through our considered diplomacy is that they are not off the hook," he told reporters.

He was responding to a question about whether pressure on Iran over its nuclear program could ease between the election of a new U.S. president in November and his inauguration next January.

The West says Iran's nuclear program is aimed at producing bombs, while Tehran says it is for generating electricity.

Talks in Geneva ended in stalemate last Saturday with six major powers giving Iran two weeks to answer calls to rein in its nuclear program or face tougher sanctions.

"Six more months of Security Council violations is not going to put them (Iran) in any greater favor with any future U.S. president," Schulte said.

"Part of the strategy is to keep them on the hook, but also to make sure that, if we don't get a negotiated outcome, that the next administration, whoever is president, is in the strongest diplomatic position possible to continue work on this," he said.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has said Washington could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran and backs tougher sanctions against Tehran. He also supports military action if Iran poses a "real threat" to Israel.

Democrat Barack Obama says keeping Iran free of nuclear weapons would be a top priority and he would respond forcefully to an Iranian attack against Israel or any other U.S. ally.

The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany have offered Iran economic and other incentives in return for suspending uranium enrichment.

But Iran's top nuclear negotiator insisted in Geneva Tehran would not discuss a demand to freeze uranium enrichment.

AP adds: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran now possesses 6,000 centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

The new figure is double the 3,000 centrifuges Iran had previously said it was operating in its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

"Islamic Iran today possesses 6,000 centrifuges," Fars quoted Ahmadinejad as telling university professors in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

In April, Ahmadinejad said Iran had begun installing 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz. His reported comments Saturday provided the first public assertion that Iran has reached that goal.

The announcement is another act of defiance in the face of demands by the United States and other world powers for Iran to halt its enrichment work, which Washington and its allies fear Iran is intent on using to develop weapons.

A report by the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency delivered to the Security Council in May said Iran had 3,500 centrifuges, although a senior U.N. official said at the time that Iran's goal of 6,000 machines running by the summer was "pretty much plausible."

Uranium can be used as nuclear reactor fuel or as the core for atomic warheads, depending on the degree of enrichment. Iran says it is interested in enrichment only for its nuclear power program.

The workhorse of Iran's enrichment program is the P-1 centrifuge, which is run in cascades of 164 machines. But Iranian officials confirmed in February that they had started using the IR-2 centrifuge that can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate.

With Obama in Europe, polls show tighter White House race

AFP, Washington

The US White House race tightened Saturday after new opinion polls suggested Barack Obama's shine was wearing off and Republican John McCain was gaining ground in several important states.

The Illinois Democratic senator was greeted like a rock star by some 200,000 people in Berlin, as he continued his week-long foreign tour visiting crucial hotspots and important allies, demonstrating his foreign policy credentials in the race to be the next US president.

But voter polls inside the United States showed McCain chipping away at Obama's lead in the race, which remains between one and six points.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published Wednesday showed 55 percent of US voters considered Obama the riskiest choice for US president, while just 35 percent said the same of McCain.

The same poll found that 58 percent of voters identified more closely with McCain's values and background, against 47 percent who said the same of Obama.

A separate study published Thursday by Quinnipiac University showed McCain has gained ground in several key battleground states, and has overtaken Obama in Colorado.

The survey showed McCain close on Obama's heels in Michigan and Minnesota, and other polls have put McCain ahead in some key states usually considered Democratic bastions, such as New Hampshire.

"Well, I do understand it," Obama said in an interview with NBC news, about the number of people viewing him as a risky choice. "I'm new to the scene. John McCain's been around 25, 30 years in public life. I have just recently emerged in terms of our national politics. And so it's not surprising that people would say that," Obama said.

Obama's fast journey to Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, and then stops in Germany, France and, on Saturday, Britain, is aimed at showing he has presidential skills, meeting top leaders and pressing the Europeans to keep their troops in Afghanistan.

In an interview with CNN, he insisted he was not trying to interfere with the official US foreign policy.

However, he added, the principle idea he wanted to communicate in meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Brtish Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was to make them understand "that we're going to have to have a sustained commitment in Afghanistan, that it's not going to be a situation where we can do this on the cheap."

Karadzic lodges appeal against war crimes transfer

AFP, Belgrade

Radovan Karadzic lodged a last-minute appeal against his transfer to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague where he is to be tried for his role in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, a daily reported Saturday.

The appeal was posted by regular mail just before an overnight deadline expired, "so that it cannot be immediately forwarded to the war crimes court" in Serbia, Politika cited Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, as saying.

"Depriving the public of information about (the appeal) is part of the defence strategy," Vujacic was quoted as saying earlier by Tanjug news agency.

Karadzic, 63, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, was arrested in Belgrade on Monday, having evaded capture for more than a decade.

Despite his legal challenge, Karadzic still looks set to be transferred to The Hague next week.

The delaying tactic could give his Bosnia-based family, including wife Ljiljana and daughter Sonja, enough time to get back confiscated travel papers and see him before his transfer.

Karadzic went into hiding in 1996, the year after the ICTY indicted him.

The 11 counts against him include genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, willful killing, persecutions, deportation and inhumane acts against Muslims, Croats and other non-Serb civilians.

Cambodians go to polls amid border row

AP, Phnom Penh

Nationalist pride sweeping through Cambodia triggered by a border dispute with Thailand appeared to strengthen the popularity of longtime Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of parliamentary elections Sunday.

The election has been upstaged by a military confrontation with Thailand over contested land near a historic Hindu temple, which the Cambodian government says has triggered "an imminent state of war" between the two Southeast Asian neighbors.

Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister for the past 23 years, was already expected to win re-election before the dispute erupted July 15. But inflamed passions over the 11th century Preah Vihear temple and Hun Sen's firm stance against Thailand have galvanized undecided voters in his favor, analysts say.

"Now everybody is behind the government because it's the only institution that can deal with the Thai government. That means more votes for (Hun Sen)," said Kek Galabru, a prominent Cambodian human rights activist and election monitor.

More than 8 million of Cambodia's 14 million people are eligible to vote in Sunday's election. Eleven parties are vying for seats in the 123-seat National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, with the winner forming a new government to run the country for the next five years.

"The border issue near Preah Vihear temple is a sensitive one that has aroused nationalist feelings of the people. So, they have been lately paying more attention to it than to the election," said Thun Saray, president of the Cambodian election monitoring group Comfrel.

Internationally, Hun Sen has faced criticism for alleged corruption and human rights abuses.

But he argues that his tenure has ushered in peace and stability after the Khmer Rouge's genocidal reign from 1975-1979, which killed an estimated 1.7 million people.

Under his free-market policies, Cambodia's economy has been one of the fastest growing in Asia, expanding at 11 percent in each of the past three years.

Voters say their top concern for this election has been the Preah Vihear temple, which sits high on a cliff along Cambodia's northern border with Thailand. It has fueled nationalist sentiment in both countries on-and-off for decades.

Pakistan, India trade fire on Kashmir border

Reuters, Islamabad

Pakistani and Indian soldiers traded fire across the de-facto border dividing the disputed region of Kashmir on Saturday, Pakistan's military said, the second such clash in area this month.

Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said the Indian army fired machineguns and mortar bombs at the Pakistani side of the so-called Line of Control in Battal sector of Rawalakot district, where troops had a similar exchange of fire on July 10. "We immediately responded and fired into the area from where the fire was coming. They later stopped firing," he told Reuters. Abbas said there were no casualties on the Pakistani side. "We contacted the Indians and lodged a protest and asked for a flag meeting" of the local commanders, he added.

The armies of the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours have frequently exchanged fire across the Line of Control in the past but such skirmishes became very rare after they agreed on a ceasefire in late 2003.

Both countries went to the brink of their fourth war in 2002.

The recent exchanges of fire on the Kashmir border came as relations between the two old rivals, which have fought three wars mainly over Kashmir, have been strained by a suicide attack outside the Indian embassy in Kabul this month.

Afghan and Indian officials have accused a Pakistani intelligence agency of involvement in the attack that killed 58 people, including two senior Indian diplomats. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack.

Muslim rebels have been battling for freedom in the only Muslim-majority state of mainly Hindu India since 1989.

Fighting kills 74 combatants in Sri Lanka

AP, Colombo

Heavy fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels along the front lines of their civil war killed 66 rebels and eight soldiers, the military said Saturday.

The fighting occurred throughout Friday in the Vavuniya, Jaffna, Welioya and Mullaitivu districts bordering the rebels' de facto state in the north, said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, the military spokesman.

In the worst clashes, soldiers repulsed a pre-dawn rebel attack in the Mullaitivu district that occurred hours after government forces captured rebel-held territory near a key supply route, Nanayakkara said.

Troops killed 33 rebels in the battle and recovered all of the bodies, he said.

Separate battles in Vavuniya killed 16 guerrillas and eight soldiers, while 12 rebels died in Welioya and another rebel was killed in Jaffna, Nanayakkara said.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment. Both sides routinely exaggerate their enemy's death toll while underreporting their own.

It was not possible to independently verify the military reports because the government has barred most journalists from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place.

Fighting has escalated in recent months after government officials vowed to crush the rebels and seize their de facto state by the end of the year. Although the military gains against the Tamil Tigers have been relatively modest, troops in recent weeks have seized a string of key towns and rebel bases, consistently chipping away at the guerrillas' power base.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent state in the nation's north and east since 1983, following decades of marginalization by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Five Hamas fighters, child killed in Gaza bombing

AFP, Gaza City

Hamas-run security forces fanned out across Gaza City Saturday, clashing with rival gunmen and arresting dozens of people after a bomb blast killed five senior Palestinian militants and a girl of five.

The explosion late on Friday near a beach outside Gaza City was the deadliest incident in weeks in the territory which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement for more than a year.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately known but Hamas blamed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, accusing it of collaborating with Israel.

"This criminal act proves that the call for dialogue from Ramallah (Abbas's headquarters) was a lie designed to throw sand in our eyes and conceal a conspiracy to kill and assassinate and terrorise our security forces," Hamas said in a statement.

In the hours after the attack, Hamas-run security forces arrested dozens of people in sweeps across Gaza City, mostly Fatah members, according to witnesses.

Heavy fighting took place overnight in Gaza's Tel al-Hawa district, where Hamas gunmen battled with the family of a man they sought to arrest, exchanging gunfire and volleys of rocket-propelled grenades.

A senior Fatah official who asked not to be named said security forces arrested over 100 Fatah members and raided his party's offices across Gaza, confiscating computers and documents.

Most of Abbas's loyalists were driven from Gaza in June 2007 when Hamas seized power following a week of bloody street battles between the rival factions.

In a statement released by Abbas's office Fatah denied any involvement in the "mysterious explosion" and accused elements within the armed wing of Hamas of planting the explosives as part of an internal conflict.

It was the deadliest day in Gaza since a truce was agreed between Hamas and Israel in June which halted what had been near-daily clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops.

NATO soldiers kill four Afghan civilians

AFP, Kabul

NATO-led soldiers killed four civilians Saturday after opening fire on a car that did not stop at a checkpoint in volatile southern Afghanistan, the alliance's force said.

Another three civilians were wounded in the shooting the Sangin district of Helmand province, the International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

"ISAF soldiers opened fire on a vehicle that failed to stop at a checkpoint earlier today, killing four civilian occupants and wounding three others," it said. "ISAF soldiers fired warning shots in a safe direction away from the vehicle but were eventually forced to fire at it when it refused to stop, fearing an insurgent attack."

There have been several such incidents in recent years with international forces here to help Afghanistan fight a Taliban-led insurgency a key target for suicide bombings and other attacks. Troops warn civilians to keep away from their convoys and checkpoints, but sometimes people fail to heed the warnings apparently unaware that they are seen as a threat.

Helmand is one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, with Taliban insurgents active in the area and said to be involved in the opium trade. The drug is heavily produced in the province.

On Thursday a British army dog handler and his explosives sniffer dog were killed in Sangin after their patrol came under fire, the Ministry of Defence in London said.

Nuclear dispute dogs US ties with NZ

AP, Auckland

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that a lingering nuclear dispute between the United States and New Zealand ought to be overcome to focus on a new era of cooperation in the Pacific and elsewhere. Rice said joint efforts to return to democracy to Fiji, stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, push maritime and fisheries security along with promoting free trade must take precedence over New Zealand's ban on nuclear-powered vessels and those carrying atomic arms. Despite attempts to put the contentious issue behind them, New Zealand's 23-year-old "nuclear free" status continues to hamper joint military activities with the United States.

Mugabe re-election 'non-negotiable’: State media

AFP, Harare

Zimbabwe's ruling party has resolved that President Robert Mugabe's controversial re-election is a "non-negotiable" issue in ongoing talks with the opposition in South Africa, state media said Friday. Citing unnamed party insiders, The Herald said ZANU-PF's politburo declared at a meeting in Harare on Wednesday that the outcome of the June 27 ballot which was boycotted by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had to be respected.

"The meeting noted that there has to be a figure who appoints the all-inclusive government envisaged in the memorandum of understanding signed on Monday," said the report.

"And that figure is President Mugabe who won the run-off," the government mouthpiece added.

An unnamed source was quoted by the paper as saying that "there has to be a figure who creates the all-inclusive government".

Mugabe and Tsvangirai inked a memorandum of understanding earlier this week to pave the way for the fully-fledged talks that opened in Pretoria on Thursday aimed at ending the country's months-long political and economic woes.

Kosovo wants talks with Serbia

Reuters, United Nations

Kosovo's foreign minister said on Friday he was ready for direct talks with Serbia, but his Serbian counterpart said Belgrade would not talk with a "secessionist" government.

Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, declared independence from Belgrade in February. Some 43 countries, mostly Western, have recognized Europe's youngest state, although Serbia and its ally Russia say they never will.

"Pristina is ready to engage in practical talks with Belgrade on a wide range of issues," Kosovo Foreign Minister Skender Hyseni told reporters after addressing the U.N. Security Council.

Heavy rains kill 7 people in SKorea

AP, Seoul

Torrential rains that lashed South Korea this week have led to the deaths of seven people and left six others missing, the government said Saturday.

Six people were also injured, with one in critical condition, in landslides and flash floods triggered by heavy rain that started battering the country Wednesday, the National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.

Two people were found dead Saturday after they were reported missing in Bonghwa, 150 miles southeast of the capital Seoul, the statement said.

Three people also died Friday after their houses were pounded by landslides, it said. A day earlier, two South Korean soldiers were killed in a mudslide near their army base in Yanggu, about 110 miles east of Seoul.

The rainfall also damaged or flooded about 620 houses across South Korea, prompting 1,240 people to seek refuge elsewhere, the statement said. About 940 people later returned home, but the rest remained in local schools, community centers and other facilities.

British PM faces mounting calls to quit

AFP, London

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hit by a third crushing by-election defeat in as many months, could be forced to quit unless he reverses his government's flagging fortunes, media said Saturday.

Brown's governing Labour Party saw the Scottish National Party (SNP) overturn its 13,507 majority in the Glasgow East constituency in a vote Thursday, indicating it is now haemorrhaging support in its heartland. Labour members of parliament, fearful for their jobs at the next general election, were now urging senior ministers to tell Brown to step down or face being ousted after they return from holidays in September, newspapers said. Most carried unattributed quotes apparently from the same sources, blaming the prime minister for their current woes, despite a united show of support Friday from his senior Cabinet colleagues.

One of the quotes from an unnamed minister said: "We cannot go any lower. We are at rock bottom. We are not a one-nation party any more. We are now a no-nation party."

Another quote read: "It's become clear that no-one can do any worse than Gordon. If it's happening in Scotland, what chance do we have in London and the southeast (of England)?"

Justice Secretary Jack Straw and the former defence secretary Geoff Hoon were both said to have been sounded out to approach Brown to get him to stand down or face being ousted.

Both The Sun and the Daily Mail-both actively courted by Labour because of their perceived influence on voters-acknowledged the threat to Brown but held back from calling him to quit.

The Daily Mail's political editor said Glasgow East had left Brown facing "a battle for survival". "All talk now is not if, but when, an attempt is made to unseat him," he added.

In an editorial the newspaper said Brown's job was safe for now, but the knives would be sharpened in the run-up to Labour's annual conference on September 20, unless he turned things around in the next two months.

Cyprus reunification talks on September 3

AP, Nicosia

Rival Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders said Friday they will start historic reunification talks on Sept. 3, ending years of deadlock and sparking hope that the island's 34-year division could finally end.

President Dimitris Christofias, who is Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed on the date after meeting in the buffer zone dividing the two communities.

"The aim of the fully fledged negotiations is to find a mutually acceptable solution to the Cyprus problem which will safeguard fundamental and legitimate rights and interests of Greek and Turkish Cypriots," the two said in a joint statement read by Taye-Brook Zerihoun, the United Nations' top official on the island. Any agreement that Christofias and Talat might reach in the talks will be put to simultaneous referendums on both sides of the island, the statement said.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he "warmly welcomes the agreement" by the two leaders.

Ban "commends the leaders for the progress made so far and takes this occasion to reiterate the full support of the United Nations for their efforts toward a mutually acceptable solution," he said in a statement.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department applauded Friday's announcement.

"(We) hope that these full-fledged negotiations will result in an early agreement on the reunification of the island," said spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos.

Cyprus has been divided into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south since 1974, when Turkey invaded in response to a short-lived coup by supporters of uniting the island with Greece.

Nine killed in sectarian fighting in Lebanon

AFP, Tripoli

Nine people including a boy of 10 were killed in fierce sectarian clashes which raged through the night in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, a security official said on Saturday.

Lebanese army tanks patrolled the streets after militants from the rival Sunni Muslim and Alawite communities fought with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the latest bout of violence to rock the Mediterranean city.

Among the dead were a 10-year-old boy and two women, while another 50 people were injured, the security official told AFP.

Lebanon has been hit by sporadic outbreaks of violence despite a power-sharing deal between rival political factions in May which led to the election of Michel Sleiman as president and the creation of a unity cabinet.

The latest unrest comes after the new cabinet hit snags in deliberations aimed at drawing up a policy agenda ahead of a parliamentary vote of confidence which would enable the government to be officially installed.

Despite a ceasefire that went into effect at 1500 GMT on Friday, intense fighting raged through the night but by Saturday morning the situation was calm as the army sent in reinforcements.

Dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles were patrolling the streets to keep the peace between fighters in the mainly Sunni Bab al-Tebbaneh district and the neighbouring largely Alawite area of Jabal Mohsen.

Interior Minister Ziad Barud and the head of the internal security forces Ashraf Rifi headed to Tripoli late Friday to see the situation for themselves and to assess measures to restore calm.

Bab al-Tebbaneh is a stronghold of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority while the inhabitants of Jabal Mohsen are mainly supporters of the mainly Shiite opposition led by the powerful Hezbollah movement.

China bends 1-child rule in quake area

AP, Beijing

Parents whose children died or were disabled in China's devastating earthquake will be allowed to have more children after lawmakers in the hardest-hit province waived strict family-planning controls, state media reported Saturday.

The Sichuan provincial legislature passed exemptions Friday to relax family-planning laws that are commonly referred to as the one-child policy.

Under the exemptions, families whose only child died or was disabled or whose two children were both disabled may now have another child as may families in which one parent was disabled, the reports said. The May 7.9-magnitude quake left nearly 70,000 people dead in China's worst natural disaster in 30 years.

Among the dead were children from 18,000 families, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The loss of so many children stirred public anger across China over shoddily built schools in a chronically underfunded education system that is often susceptible to local corruption.

Parents of dead children have staged protests demanding investigations but in recent weeks have been subjected to intimidation and financial inducements to silence them.

Sichuan has begun paying $15 per month in subsidies to 5,200 families whose children died or were disabled, the China Daily quoted the provincial family planning commission as saying..