The New Nation - Internet Edition

Republicans try to capture spotlight in White House race

AFP, St Paul

Republicans sought to send a jolt of energy through their White House campaign, as President George W. Bush threw his weight behind John McCain, saying he was "ready to lead this nation."

After losing precious time ahead of the November 4 elections due to Hurricane Gustav, Republicans stormed back into the White House race on Tuesday aiming to recapture the limelight from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Bush, whose popularity has plummeted to near record lows, said McCain, 72, and his surprise vice presidential pick Sarah Palin , 44, were the right ticket to lead the country.

"We live in a dangerous world. And we need a president who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001: That to protect America, we must stay on the offense, stop attacks before they happen, and not wait to be hit again. The man we need is John McCain," said Bush.

But Bush , who has stood in the Oval Office for eight years and took the country into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only appeared in a short recorded video to the convention, leaving his wife, Laura, to bid farewell.

The Obama campaign has charged that Bush is merely passing the torch to a candidate who would offer four more years of the same "disastrous" policies, trying to shackle McCain to the president's unpopular programs.

Polls suggest that Obama won a significant bounce after his historic convention in Denver when he became the first African-American to be nominated as the presidential candidate for a major US party.

Outside the convention center, police used tear gas and chemical sprays to disperse hundreds of defiant protestorsÂ marching against Bush's policies.

Several arrests were made, bringing to nearly 300 the number of people held in two days of clashes outside the convention center in St Paul, police said.

Some of the protestors reportedly tried to scale a security fence around the Excel Energy Center, forcing police, wearing masks and other riot gear, to fire tear gas on the crowd.

Republicans image makers pressed home the message of service and of "putting country first," paying tribute to soldiers who lost lives in recent wars, and honoring several of the prisoners-of-war who spent time in a Vietnamese camp with McCain.

Revelling in their past leaders , former president George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, won standing ovations from the audience in the St Paul hockey stadium.

And Republican hero Ronald Reagan was also honored in a video tribute, as the party tried to shift the focus away from Palin, McCain's surprise choice for running-mate.

The Alaska governor, who is pro-life and a devout Christian, has energized the party's core conservative base and is due to address the convention on Wednesday. But she has lain low in St Paul since it emerged Tuesday that her unwed 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant, and would be marrying her baby's father.

The scandal, accompanied by other revelations of an alleged abuse of power and Palin's bid to nail down federal funds for pet Alaskan projects, has ignited a storm of criticism.

She was already under fierce scrutiny amid concerns that as someone with little national experience she was a reckless pick, as she would be next in line for the presidency should anything befall McCain.

Fred Thompson, a former Republican presidential candidate and star of hit television crime drama "Law & Order," electrified the crowd packed into the 20,000 seat Excel center, declaring that McCain was "the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of history have sought in their leaders."

"Strength. Courage. Humility. Wisdom. Duty. Honor," Thompson said, insisting that McCain had stood up for the right policy in Iraq and that the United States was now winning the war. "It's pretty clear there are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves: 'Who is this man?' and 'Can we trust this man with the presidency?'" he said.

But the Obama campaign hit back saying in a statement: "Tonight President Bush will pass the torch to the one candidate in this race who promises more of the same."

In a Gallup daily tracking poll on Tuesday, Obama was at 50 percent and McCain was at 42 percent of voters, the first time the Illinois Democrat had attracted fully half of the vote.

Cheney to rally US allies in Russia’s backyard

Reuters, Baku

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan on Wednesday for the first leg of a trip to show that Washington stands by its allies in the region after Russia's military intervention in Georgia.

As Cheney came into a region Russia sees as its backyard, the Kremlin renewed its rhetorical attacks on Washington, accusing it of helping to trigger the conflict by backing a pro-Western Georgian government bent on aggression. Azerbaijan and Georgia are links in the chain of a Western-backed energy corridor bypassing Russia which the West fears could be in jeopardy after the Kremlin last month sent troops and tanks deep into Georgian territory when Tbilisi tried to retake the separatist region of South Ossetia by force.

Cheney began his week-long trip in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea, then heads to Georgia and from there to Kiev for meetings with Ukraine's pro-Western government, which like Tbilisi is defying Moscow by seeking membership of NATO.

"These are the three countries that are the most directly affected by Russian pressure at the moment," said Janusz Bugajski, director of the New European Democracies Project at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"It's also sending a regional signal that America hasn't walked away from the region," he said of Cheney's trip, which will round off with a visit to Italy.

Suu Kyi rejects meeting with junta liaison

AFP, Yangon

Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to meet with the junta's liaison officer and declined a visit from her personal physician, state media said Wednesday.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been under house arrest for most of the last 19 years, but in recent weeks has refused even the minimal contact that the regime allows her with the outside world.

The military had arranged for her to meet Tuesday with Labour Minister Aung Kyi, who is tasked with coordinating official talks with her, the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar said.

But she informed her lawyer Kyi Win during a meeting on Monday that she would not speak with the minister, and also refused to see her doctor who had been set to give her a medical check-up, the paper said.

"For the time being, she wanted to meet no one, except advocate U Kyi Win," the paper said.

The talks with the liaison officer had been arranged at the request of the United Nations, following the visit of UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari last month, it added.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, refused to meet with Gambari during his six-day mission here. He was also shunned by the junta leader Than Shwe, who did not even invite the envoy to visit the capital Naypyidaw.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party has been at a loss to explain her actions, but analysts have said that she could be protesting the dialogue with the regime, which has yielded no tangible results.

Sri Lankan military says 53 killed in fighting

AP, Colombo

Government forces pounded rebel defenses with airstrikes, helicopter attacks and ground assaults as heavy fighting across northern Sri Lanka killed 47 Tamil Tiger fighters and left 13 soldiers dead or missing, the military said Wednesday.

A rebel-affiliated Web site claimed the Tamil Tigers had killed as many as 75 government soldiers in the recent fighting.

The intense battles came amid a punishing government thrust into rebel-held territory in recent weeks that has forced the guerrillas to abandon large parts of their de facto state and a succession of key bases and towns to the advancing military offensive.

The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of civilians, sending them fleeing deeper into rebel territory.

On Tuesday, troops captured the town of Mallavi, which lies along an important access road in the region and which the military described as an "administrative hub" for the rebels.

Battles raged Wednesday in the Nachchikuda area, deep inside the rebels' heartland of Kilinochchi, where Tamil Tiger fighters had built a dirt berm nearly 10 miles long and six to seven feet high, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Air force jets and helicopters supported by ground troops attacked the berm Tuesday and Wednesday, destroying large sections of it, Nanayakkara said.

Suspected US troops kill 20 in Pakistan

Reuters, Wana

Foreign commandos from Afghanistan backed by three helicopter gunships carried out a pre-dawn attack inside Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 20 people, including women and children, a provincial governor said.

The attack is likely to spark uproar in Pakistan where it is will be seen as undermining sovereignty at a time when a new civilian government is struggling to assert authority in the turbulent nuclear-armed state.

"It is outrageous," Owais Ahmed Ghani, governor of North West Frontier province, said in a statement.

"This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces t would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply," he said.

A spokeswoman or Afghanistan's NATO-led force said she had no information about the incident.

A spokesman for a separate U.S.-led coalition force declined to comment, referring questions to the U.S. Central Command.

The United States says al Qaeda and Taliban militants are based in sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border, where they orchestrate attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot violence in the West.

The attack took place in a village near Angor Adda in the South Waziristan region, a known sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

There were differing accounts of the attack with some people saying it was carried out by helicopter gunships while others spoke of an attack by ground troops as well.

"Troops came in helicopters and carried out action in three houses," said Gul Nawaz, a shopkeeper in the village.

Flood-hit Indian state appeals for more help

AFP, Saharsa

Flood-hit northern India is in dire need of international aid on the level of that seen after the 2004 Asian tsunami, a state official said Wednesday.

A large swathe of the already desperately poor state of Bihar is likely to remain under water for several months, leaving authorities coping with at least a million people who have lost everything, officials and aid workers said.

"We will definitely need the support of international organisations and agencies, the same as after the tsunami (in 2004) or the Gujarat earthquake" in 2001, said Bihar disasters minister Nitish Mishra. "It is not possible for just the government to have a complete rehabilitation policy on its own. Whatever more is available, we need it." The flooding started on August 18, when a river burst through defences upstream in Nepal and changed course to cut across a large rural area in Bihar state. Officials said work to fix the flood walls and divert the Kosi river back to its normal course cannot begin before the rainy season ends in October, and may not even be completed before early next year.

About 600,000 people have already been evacuated from the flood plains, but 350,000 more still need to be plucked from roofs or isolated high ground and brought to safety, they say.

However aid workers said that in some areas the currents were still too strong, and that much of the food being dropped by air had landed in water.

"All the wells and water sources are gone. We foresee a scarcity of water, milk, food. Crops have been destroyed. Land will not be fit for cultivation for six to seven months after the waters recede," said S.P. Singh, Red Cross chief in Bihar.

Path of Mideast peace passes through Syria, France: Sarkozy

AFP, Paris

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on the eve of a high-profile visit to Damascus that peace in the Middle East "passes through" Syria and France, according to an interview to be published on Wednesday.

"As I told President Bashar al-Assad when he came to Paris on July 12, the path of peace in this region passes through our countries," Sarkozy told Syria's al-Watan daily, which is close to government circles. "Syria can provide an irreplaceable contribution to solving Middle East issues. It is important that Syria plays a positive role in the region," he said in the interview, an advance copy of which was sent to AFP. A summit on indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel will be held Thursday in Damascus involving France, Syria, Turkey, and Qatar, the French presidency said Tuesday. Sarkozy's visit to Damascus is "political", the French presidency underlined, adding that the four-way talks were initiated by Syria.

The French leader's two-day trip, beginning Wednesday, is the latest step towards normalising relations that were frozen after the 2005 murder of Lebanon's former premier Rafiq Hariri, a close friend of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac.

The first visit by a Western head of state in five years, it is seen at home as a diplomatic victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, six weeks after he made a comeback on the world stage with a high-profile trip to Paris.

Iran Air flight makes emergency landing in Mumbai

AFP, Mumbai

An Iran Air flight heading to Tehran returned to the Indian city of Mumbai soon after take-off and made an emergency landing after one of its engines caught fire, an airport official said Wednesday.

"Full emergency was declared on Iran Air flight IR 811, after one of its engines caught fire," the unnamed representative from Mumbai's international airport told the Press Trust of India news agency.

All 294 passengers on board the Boeing 747-200 aircraft were safe after the landing on Tuesday night.

An Air India flight en route from Kochi in southern India to Muscat also made an unscheduled stop in Mumbai just over an hour later, the news agency said, quoting an airport official.

The Airbus A320 jet suffered a hydraulic engine failure and landed as a precaution, it said.