The New Nation - Internet Edition

Zimbabwe power-share deal could be signed Wednesday

AFP, Harare

Zimbabwe political rivals meeting in Harare could sign a power-sharing deal Wednesday, veteran President Robert Mugabe said following negotiations.

"We are finishing tomorrow, hopefully. We are still going to talk, there are one or two areas of disagreement," Mugabe said late Tuesday as he left the venue for the talks.

A government source had earlier said that there was "room for optimism that this deal would be signed tomorrow and that President Robert Mugabe will form a government anytime from tomorrow or this week."

A southern African security summit due to begin Wednesday was deferred by a day amid speculation of a deal being signed.

The politics and security committee of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was supposed to meet in the Swazi capital Mbabane but the summit was postponed, South African foreign ministry spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said in a statement.

"We have been advised that the SADC Troika Summit of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-ordination scheduled for Wednesday in Mbabane, Swaziland, has been postponed," until a day later, Mamoepa said.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, appointed by the SADC to mediate an end to Zimbabwe's ruinous political crisis, was due to brief the summit on "the ongoing SADC mandated facilitation work in Zimbabwe," Mamoepa said.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai has faced heavy pressure to sign a deal throughout different stages of talks, and earlier in the day, all three rival parties signalled that no deal was anticipated.

However, Tsvangirai later acknowledged that there had been some positive development in the negotiations as he left the talks venue.

"This is work in progress and we are hoping that tomorrow we will be able to work on the outstanding issues," said Tsvangirai, whose party holds the largest number of seats in parliament after defeating Mugabe in a March vote.

Earlier on Tuesday, a source close to the talks told AFP that Tsvangirai had held separate "positive" talks in the morning with Mbeki who flew to Harare on Monday to revive the talks.

His counterpart from the breakaway MDC faction Arthur Mutambara, also expressed optimism that a deal is in sight.

"We have made tremendous progress, there are few remaining issues to be resolved and hopefully tomorrow we will bring finality and closure to this important process of dialogue," said Mutambara.

The stalled power-sharing talks involving the ruling ZANU-PF, Tsvangirai's MDC and Mutambara's splinter faction resumed on Monday after being adjourned for more than two weeks.

The talks had been deadlocked on the allocation of executive power between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

Mugabe has been President of Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, but agreed to talks after winning a June 27 run-off vote unopposed amid condemnation from the international community.

While the political crisis has dragged on, Zimbabwe's economy has continued its freefall with the world's highest inflation rate -- 11.2 million percent in June, according to official figures-and major food shortages.

Mbeki had been criticised for embarking on silent diplomacy throughout the process, but a deal could also allow Mbeki, due to leave office next year, an opportunity to bask in the glory of ending the longstanding Zimbabwean political mess.

Power-sharing discussions began after the bitter political foes signed a memorandum of understanding on July 21 in Harare.

Al-Qaida operatives killed in Pakistan

AP, Dera Ismail Khan

Two top al-Qaida operatives were among four foreign militants killed in a suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's volatile northwest, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday.

The officials said one was in charge of the terror network's activities in Pakistan's tribal regions, semi-autonomous areas that the U.S. fears have become a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters involved in attacks on American and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

The suspected missile strike occurred Monday in North Waziristan, destroying a seminary and houses associated with a Taliban commander. It was one of a series of such strikes in recent days in Pakistan, indicating the U.S. may be escalating its efforts to crack down on militants along the lengthy, porous Afghan-Pakistan border.

Three Pakistani intelligence officials identified four foreign militants killed in the strike as Abu Qasim, Abu Musa, Abu Hamza and Abu Haris. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of their jobs.

Abu Haris led al-Qaida efforts in the tribal areas, while Abu Hamza led activities in Peshawar, the main northwest city, said the intelligence officials, who said they got the details from informants and agents in the field.

Abu Haris' nationality had yet to be confirmed, but Abu Hamza was from Saudi Arabia, the officials said. Abu Hamza was believed to be a bomb-making expert as well. Abu Qasim was Egyptian, while Abu Musa also was Saudi, but both appeared to be lower-ranking al-Qaida members, the officials said.

An army spokesman, Maj. Murad Khan, said Wednesday the military had no information about the identity or nationality of the men killed in what he called "explosions" in North Waziristan.

"We don't know who died in the explosions there," he said.

Two of the intelligence officials said Tuesday that the overall death toll from the strike rose to 20 after residents and militants pulled more bodies from the rubble.

The targets were associated with Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s who American commanders now count as a dangerous foe.

Bush touts Iraq troop reduction, not big picture

AP, Washington

President Bush boasts that he's bringing 8,000 troops home from Iraq by February. What he doesn't say is he'll leave office with more troops there than before last year's big military buildup and few options for shoring up the force in increasingly violent Afghanistan.

The bottom line of Bush's troop announcement on Tuesday is that the U.S. military footprint in Iraq largely will stay intact for the rest of the year when he'll pass command of the wars to his successor. Bush is sending more troops to Afghanistan, but Democrats say it's not enough.

Bush chose the measured drawdown in Iraq because he didn't want to jeopardize recent security gains. He sent in 30,000 extra troops last year to buy time for political and economic progress in Iraq, which has been slow to materialize. Military commanders tell Bush there appears to be a "degree of durability" to the security gains, but progress in Iraq remains fragile and reversible.

In a speech at the National Defense University, Bush emphasized the positive:

"While the enemy in Iraq is dangerous, we have seized the offensive. Iraqi forces are becoming increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight.

As a result, we've been able to carry out a policy of return on success - reducing American combat forces in Iraq as conditions on the ground continue to improve."

On Wednesday, Bush is meeting in the Oval Office with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Tuesday afternoon, he visited severely wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, seeing, face-to-face, the human consequences of war.

"On the one hand you see the horrors of war," he said after spending an hour with wounded soldiers. "And on the other hand you see the courage of the people who have volunteered to serve."

Bush advisers said U.S. troop withdrawals were possible because of clear, undeniable progress on the security front, paving the way for other nations to pull out their troops too. They said the 30-member coalition with forces in Iraq would shrink to a handful in the next 90 days. They're leaving it to the Iraqi government to announce who's staying and who's going.

Three US-led soldiers, nearly 40 rebels killed in Afghan unrest

AFP, Kabul

Three US-led soldiers and an Afghan working with them were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan on Tuesday as government officials said about 40 rebels, some of them foreigners, died in air strikes.

The fresh bloodshed comes as US President George W. Bush announced 4,500 extra troops for Afghanistan's fight against a rising tide of extremism, and the Afghan and Pakistan leaders pledged to stand together against terrorism.

The soldiers were killed in the east of Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device (IED) of the type regularly used by Taliban and other extremist insurgents.

The US-led coalition did not give the nationalities of the troops but most international soldiers in the east are US nationals.

"Three coalition service members and one local-national contractor were killed today during an IED attack in eastern Afghanistan," it said in a statement that gave no further details.

The new deaths take to 201 the number of international soldiers to die in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.

An Afghan soldier was killed separately by a remote-controlled bomb that had been fixed to a bicycle in the southern city of Kandahar, defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.

No one claimed the blast but it was similar to those carried out in the past by Taliban insurgents, who carried out a double suicide bombing in the city's police headquarters Sunday, killing at least five people.

In the southern province of Uruzgan meanwhile, troops were tipped off about a Taliban gathering on the outskirts of the town of Tirin Kot and sent in a strike early Tuesday, provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat said.

"The coalition forces bombed them and killed 16 Taliban and wounded another nine," Himat said.

Malaysia's Anwar fights bid to move sodomy case to High Court

AFP, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who faces trial on sodomy charges, fought Wednesday to prevent the politically-charged case from being moved to the High Court.

Anwar has rejected the allegations levelled by a 23-year-old former aide-the same charge that saw him jailed a decade ago-as a government conspiracy to derail his plan to topple the ruling coalition. His supporters fear authorities might be able to manipulate the case more easily at the High Court, and that seeking a transfer is little more than a delaying tactic. At a Sessions Court hearing, defence lawyers opposed an application to transfer the case filed by Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, who Anwar is suing in connection with his original trial on sodomy and corruption charges. "For Gani to sign the order is ridiculous, he's an interested party and it is an ambush," Anwar told reporters after the hearing. In a win for the defence, the Sessions Court judge made the unusual decision of setting a September 24 hearing for the opposition to present its case against transfer to the High Court. Instructions from the attorney-general are not usually disputed, and the prosecution objected to the timing of the hearing, which will take place after the September 16 date by which Anwar is aiming to seize power.

"Two weeks is too long a time. This is a public interest case," government lawyer Yusof Zainal Abidin said.

Anwar's lawyer Sulaiman Abdullah accused the government of delaying tactics, and said there was no need to shift the case as sodomy trials are usually held in the lower court.

"It is going to be a waste of time if they transfer to the High Court, because they have to start the whole process again, and explain to the new judge what it's all about," he said.

Rice makes 'full-court press’ to win US approval of nuke deal

AFP, Washington

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has launched a "full-court press" to win passage in Congress of a landmark US-India civilian nuclear cooperation deal before January, her spokesman said Tuesday.

In a flurry of contacts members of the US Congress, Rice is speaking to key lawmakers by telephone and meeting others in person, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"From her perspective, this is a full court press, working with the Congress," McCormack said, using a basketball analogy for an all-out effort to win passage of the deal before President George W. Bush's term ends in January.

"She has made a lot of calls. She does have a lot of meetings coming up," McCormack said.

US lawmakers returned to work Monday after their August recess-and are expected to leave Washington again in late September to campaign ahead of the November 4 elections, leaving little time for action on the agreement.

US congressional approval is the final hurdle for the 2005 agreement, which offers India access to Western technology and cheap atomic energy as long as it allows UN nuclear inspections of some of its nuclear facilities.

The United States won approval in Vienna on Saturday for the one-off waiver for India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls the export and sale of nuclear technology.

The Group was founded to stop other countries emulating India's example in using imported technology to make an atomic bomb.

McCormack said Rice has spoken to House Minority leader John Boehner and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell as well as to Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Thai parties huddle ahead of Friday's PM vote

Reuters, Bangkok

The parties in Thailand's ruling coalition met behind closed doors on Wednesday to agree a replacement prime minister for Samak Sundaravej, who was removed by the courts for hosting TV cooking shows while in office.

Samak's People Power Party (PPP), the biggest in the six-member coalition, backed off an earlier pledge to re-nominate him as prime minister ahead of Friday's parliamentary vote.

"What the party spokesman said yesterday was not the party's resolution. Our resolution is the next prime minister must come from the People Power Party," Finance Minister and PPP secretary-general Surapong Suebwonglee told reporters.

Smaller partners have also not made their stance clear.

Chart Thai, the second largest party in the coalition, met with the PPP amid newspaper speculation that its leader, Banharn Silpa-archa, would replace Samak.

Banharn, a veteran provincial powerbroker whose disastrous premiership in the 1990s contributed to a baht collapse that triggered the wider Asian financial crisis, denied the rumors.

"It is impossible for the PPP to vote for me to be the prime minister. They have many choices, apart from Samak," he told reporters before meeting Surapong and other PPP leaders.

The 73-year-old Samak has yet to comment on Tuesday's court ruling that he had violated the constitution by hosting cooking shows on commercial television while in office. The conflict of interest verdict did not include a ban from politics.

Analysts said the verdict should have provided at least a stop-gap solution to the crisis, but the likelihood the stalemate will drag on for months is likely to take a further toll on Thailand's financial markets.

NKorea’s Kim suffered minor stroke

AFP, Seoul

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has suffered a minor stroke but his life is not in danger, a South Korean government official said Wednesday.

Kim's failure to appear at a major parade Tuesday celebrating the hardline communist country's 60th anniversary triggered renewed speculation about the reclusive leader's state of health. A US intelligence official also said he may have suffered a stroke.

However in Pyongyang, the regime 's number two leader was quoted as denying the reports, which another official branded a "conspiracy" by Western media.

The unidentified Seoul government official told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that Kim, 66, had undergone surgery after suffering the stroke but his condition is not life-threatening.

"It seems that he had intended to attend the September 9 event in the afternoon but decided not to because of the aftermath of the surgery."

Yonhap quoted another official as saying that Kim Jong-Il seemed to have suffered a collapse at some time. Kim's apparent illness comes amid deadlock in a crucial six-nation nuclear disarmament deal and fears that the North-which carried out its first atom bomb test two years ago-intends to restart the programme. There was no official confirmation from Seoul that Kim is ill. He is known to suffer from diabetes and heart problems and there have been numerous unconfirmed reports in the past of him receiving treatment.