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Top militants among 1,000 killed in clash, claims Pak army

AFP, Tang Khata

Pakistan said Friday that troops have killed 1,000 Islamist militants in a huge offensive, a day after President Asif Ali Zardari lashed out at the US over a clash on the Afghan border.

Five top Al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders were among the dead in a month-long operation in Bajaur district, currently the most troubled of Pakistan's unstable tribal areas close to the porous frontier, a top official said.

In a further sign of the instability gripping Pakistan since the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad at the weekend, three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a shootout with police in Karachi.

Reporters were flown by helicopter to Khar, the main town in restive Bajaur, for a briefing on the military operation launched in August against Islamist militants who had taken control of most of the region. "The overall toll is over 1,000 militants," said Tariq Khan, inspector general of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, adding that 27 soldiers had also been killed in the fighting. "This is a center of gravity for the militants," Khan told journalists. "If they lose here they lose everything." Five top militant commanders were among the dead, he said. He said four of the commanders appeared to be foreigners: Egyptian Abu Saeed Al-Masri; Abu Suleiman, an Arab; an Uzbek commander named Mullah Mansoor; and an Afghan commander called Manaras. The fifth was a Pakistani commander named only Abdullah, a son of ageing hardline leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who is based in Bajaur and has close ties to Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bajaur, which borders the Afghan province of Kunar, has seen some of the fiercest fighting between Pakistani forces and Islamist militants since former military ruler Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led "war on terror" in 2001.

The operation came in response to international pressure on Pakistan's new civilian government, which ousted Musharraf last month, to prevent Pakistan-based militants from launching attacks in Afghanistan.

But tensions have escalated with Washington since a September 3 ground attack by US forces inside Pakistan, the first of its kind since 2001, left about 15 people dead.

Following an exchange of gunfire between US and Pakistani forces on the frontier on Thursday, new President Zardari told the United Nations that Pakistan would not tolerate violations of its sovereignty, even by its allies.

The incident happened after two US military helicopters came under fire from the Pakistani side, a US military spokesman said, insisting that they had been about a mile and a half inside Afghanistan. The Pakistani military said its troops had fired warning shots at two helicopters which were "well within Pakistani territory." "Just as we will not let Pakistani's territory to be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbours, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends," he said, without citing the United States or the border flareup.

In Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, three militants detonated suicide vests when police raided their hideout on a tip-off from a captured rebel, police said.

"We have saved Karachi from death and destruction. We know who they were and what was their target in Karachi, but we cannot disclose it immediately," provincial police chief Babar Khattak told AFP. The incident came less than a week after the suicide truck bomb attack on the Islamabad Marriott, one of the worst attacks in Pakistan's history, which left 53 dead and more than 260 wounded.

Reuters reports adds: U.S. and Pakistani ground forces exchanged fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Thursday, the latest in a string of incidents that has ratcheted up diplomatic tension between the two allies.

No casualties or injuries were reported after Pakistani forces shot at two U.S. helicopters from a Pakistani border post. U.S. and Pakistani officials clashed over whether the American helicopters had entered Pakistan.

The incident follows a U.S. campaign of attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, including a September 3 U.S. commando raid on a village compound in South Waziristan. Islamabad has protested those strikes and warned it would defend itself.

"Just as we will not let Pakistan's territory be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbors, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in New York on Thursday.

But in Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman insisted the helicopters had not entered Pakistan. He described the incident as "troubling" and called on Islamabad for an explanation.

"The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan," he said. "The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place."

According to Pakistan's military, its soldiers fired warning shots at two U.S. helicopters after they intruded into Pakistani airspace. The U.S. military said the helicopters were protecting a patrol about one mile inside Afghanistan when Pakistani forces opened fire.

"The (helicopters) did not return fire but the ground forces fired suppressive fire at that outpost. The Pakistani forces then returned that fire. The whole exchange lasted about five minutes," said an official with U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in Afghanistan.

Israel planned to bomb Iran this year, says report

AFP, London

Israel seriously considered bombing Iran's nuclear sites earlier this year but US President George W. Bush refused to support such a strike, according to a British newspaper report.

Quoting senior European diplomatic sources, The Guardian said Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert raised the issue with Bush in a one-to-one meeting May 14.

Bush said he would not support such a strike because of fears of retaliation, possibly on US targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concerns that the Israelis would fail to disable Iran's nuclear facilities anyway, it said. The newspaper noted that even if Israel had wanted to go ahead without Washington's agreement, its planes would be unable to reach Iran without passing through US-controlled airspace above Iraq.

Iran would be bound to assume that Washington approved the strike, raising the prospect of an attack against the United States, it said.

Israel considers Iran its greatest threat, because of Tehran's accelerating nuclear programme and repeated statements by its leaders predicting the Jewish state's demise.

Israel and the United States accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its programme is entirely peaceful. Neither the United States nor Israel-the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear armed state-has ruled out a military response to the nuclear standoff.

Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, told The Guardian: "The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table."

US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said he would not comment on any private conversations the president had.

New Japan PM asks for time as minister faces quit call

AFP, Tokyo

Japan's new Prime Minister Taro Aso asked the public Friday not to judge him too quickly, as one of his ministers was already faced opposition calls to quit over remarks deemed as offensive.

Members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) voiced disappointment over the first poll numbers for Aso, a conservative who has vowed new budget measures to revive the world's second largest economy . LDP leaders are closely watching his poll numbers to see if Aso can gamble by quickly calling a snap election to hold off gains by the opposition, which has seized on public concerns about a weak economy.

Newspapers published polls Friday giving his government an approval rating ranging from 45 to 53 percent-a leap from his beleaguered predecessor, but 10 points or more lower than other recent governments in their first days.

Aso, who flew to New York a day after taking over to address the UN General Assembly, said the public was "just looking at appearance."

"Ratings can only come after I get some of my job done," he told reporters at UN headquarters, in comments broadcast on Japanese television.

As Aso rushed back home, one of his ministers was already in trouble.

Transport Minister Nariaki Nakayama apologised after saying in his first interview that Japan was a "homogenous" country. Similar remarks by lawmakers in the past have upset the Ainu, northern Japan's indigenous people.

"I hear the Ainu people expressed displeasure and that's not what I intended," Nakayama said. "I decided to retract my remarks."

Nakayama also said in the interview that schools with teachers' unions had lower standards, and that farmers fighting for land seized for airport construction were "making profits by whining."

Nakayama, who re-entered the cabinet under Aso, is a staunch conservative who headed a group denying that Japanese troops massacred the occupied city of Nanjing in 1937.

The opposition demanded Aso fire him.

"He took back his remarks because they reflected what he really believes," said Yukio Hatoyama, secretary general of the main opposition Democratic Party. "He must not stay in the ministerial position while concealing his beliefs."

Opposition leaders have said that they think Aso is considering any Sunday between October 26 and November 9 for the general election.

The polls show that the LDP, which has been in power for all but 10 months since 1955, has only a narrow edge over the Democratic Party, which last year took control of one house of parliament.

"I think the published figures are generally lower than expectations," said Akihiro Ota, head of the LDP's coalition partner New Komeito.

"But elections are battles. I don't think there is any change to the general current" of having early elections, Ota told reporters.

Still, the polls also said that voters preferred Aso as prime minister by a two-to-one margin over main opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, a brusque veteran strategist nicknamed "The Destroyer" for his election campaigns.

The most popular prime minister in recent times was Junichiro Koizumi, a flamboyant campaigner whose popularity soared to nearly 90 percent after he took office with a pledge to destroy the old guard in his own LDP.

Koizumi, whose 2001-2006 tenure was the longest in three decades, stole some of the spotlight from his sometime rival Aso by saying Thursday that he would retire from politics with the next election.

Rain cuts off 20,000 China quake victims, 14 die

Reuters, Beijing

Torrential rain isolated more than 20,000 people in an area of southwest China still recovering from a devastating earthquake in May, state media said on Thursday, with 14 people killed and dozens missing.

Heavy rain caused flash floods, cave-ins and landslides in mountainous Sichuan province near the epicenter of the quake, where survivors are still living in tents and pre-fabricated houses.

At least 80,000 people were killed in the May 12 earthquake. Thirty-eight people are missing and roads and telephone lines have been cut in the storms, Xinhua news agency said. The downpours began to pound Mianyang city and surrounding countryside in Sichuan province on Monday night, it said.

Mianyang encompasses Beichuan and other areas that were the hardest-hit counties in the Sichuan earthquake.

The rainstorms were separate to a typhoon which plowed into south China on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, closing schools, cancelling flights, uprooting trees and bringing down billboards in several cities. Many rivers burst their banks.

Among the dead was the chief engineer of a British freighter tossed around in the storm off Guangdong, Xinhua said.

Thousands of homes and large areas of forest and farms were destroyed, the China Daily said.

Malaysian PM hints could step down earlier than planned

AFP, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has admitted he may not seek re-election as ruling party leader in March polls, indicating he could quit well before a planned transition in 2010.

Abdullah spoke after an emergency meeting of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) on Friday, over the plan to transfer power to his deputy Najib Razak in two years, which has caused a rift within the party.

The embattled prime minister said UMNO leadership elections scheduled for December would be postponed until March and that he would make an announcement in the next few weeks on whether he would bid for the top job.

"I have not made any decision as far as this particular point is concerned," he said. "The decision is mine, you can go on guessing. As far as I'm concerned I love the party."

Traditionally the president of UMNO-which leads a multi-racial coalition and has dominated Malaysian politics for half a century-becomes the prime minister.

But Abdullah admitted that several members of UMNO's Supreme Council were pushing him to quit and said the party leadership polls had been postponed "to help facilitate an early transition".

The premier-whose popularity has plummeted over broken promises for reform and accusations of economic mismanagement-has been in the firing line since March elections that handed the opposition unprecedented gains.

He is also fending off a bid to topple the government by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who says he has the support of enough defecting lawmakers to form a new administration.

Trade Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, one of the cabinet members pushing for a revamped leadership, indicated that the 2010 handover plan was now abandoned.

Democrats unveil economic stimulus plans

AP, Washington

Top Senate Democrats on Thursday unveiled a $56 billion plan to stimulate the economy, including proposals to extend unemployment benefits and help states pay for Medicaid.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., released the spending-heavy measure. A vote could occur as early as Friday. With most Republicans opposed, however, the Reid-Byrd stimulus plan measure is likely to stall. Democrats are then likely to hold the vote against Republicans in the campaign for control of Congress.

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that chamber would probably take up a similarly sized economic stimulus plan as early as Friday, but no proposal was released and a vote appeared unlikely.

Conservative Democrats have qualms about its impact on the budget deficit.

Also in line with a Senate vote expected Saturday is a $630 billion-plus spending bill funding the Pentagon, providing $25 billion in federal loans to automakers and $23 billion in help for victims of floods in the Midwest and Gulf Coast hurricanes.

The Reid-Byrd stimulus plan has been in the works for weeks as Democrats have kept promising an eventual vote on an economic stimulus bill to follow on the tax rebates sent out to most taxpayers earlier this year.

But President Bush has never bought into the idea that a second stimulus measure is needed, and Democrats haven't seemed to take the idea very seriously, either, unveiling the measures only in the waning days of the congressional session despite talking about it for months.

In fact, many Democrats are frustrated that their leaders refused to attach an extension of unemployment benefits to the must-pass measure keeping the government running and funding the Pentagon. That measure steamrolled through the House Wednesday by a veto-proof margin of 370-58.

The Senate stimulus measure provides $6 billion to extend unemployment benefits by seven weeks in all states and by 13 weeks in states with high jobless rates. It also contains almost $20 billion to increase federal payments to states for the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.

The Senate plan also contains a bevy of smaller items, several of which are hardly likely to do much to boost the economy or create jobs, such as $55 million for upgraded radios for the U.S. Capitol Police and $905 million to combat bioterrorism and prepare for a possible flu epidemic.

Bush, Abbas 'hopeful’ of Mideast peace deal

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush on Thursday told visiting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas he remained "hopeful" for a Middle East peace breakthrough before he leaves the White House in January.

"It's not easy. No doubt it must be frustrating at times for you, because it's hard work to get a state after all these years," Bush, the first sitting US president to call for creating an independent Palestinian state, told Abbas.

"Hope will remain, Mr President. We cannot live without hope. We will continue to work to achieve and realize that hope," the Palestinian leader said through an interpreter as they met in the Oval Office.

Israel, the Palestinians, and the United States had committed at a November 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to revive peace talks and work towards a hoped-for agreement on creating a Palestinian state in 2008.

"I've got four more months left in office, and I'm hopeful that the vision that you and I have worked on will come to pass, and my only pledge to you is that I'll continue to work hard to see that it can come to pass," said Bush.

"We will continue to work with you, and we will continue to keep the hope alive in order to reach a political solution for our issue and for the Middle East," Abbas pledged.

Behind closed doors, Bush promised Abbas "that if a Palestinian state does not come about during his presidency, it will happen in the near future, not more than a year," according to top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat.

Abbas told Bush the Palestinians would only accept a comprehensive peace agreement and gave the US president a list of Israeli "violations" of peace principles since Annapolis, said Erakat.

Continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, deadlock on core issues like Palestinian borders or rival claims to Jerusalem, have dogged the talks since they were revived in Annapolis in 2007.

"But, nevertheless, there is a firm determination on your part and on my part to give the Palestinians a place where there can be dignity and hope," Bush said as they met in his Oval Office.

The vastly unpopular US president's waning influence, the urgent demands of the US financial crisis, and political turmoil in Israel as it seeks to build a new government after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation have all clouded prospects for an accord.

The Palestinian leader and Israeli prime-minister-designate, Tzipi Livni, have pledged to work together on peace efforts.

Abbas said late Wednesday that the Palestinians were committed to peaceful negotiations, stressing that near-daily clashes between Israelis and Palestinians over 2000-2007 had "destroyed our lives and everything we had."

Privately, White House aides say they are not ruling out a breakthrough but mostly want to be sure that the process does more than tread water-and does not collapse-between now and the new US president's arrival in January.

Palestinian officials say they will not be squeezed into accepting a partial peace deal that does not satisfy their hopes or defers the toughest issues.

The meeting drew a denunciation from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which drove Abbas loyalists from Gaza in June 2007 in a week of bloody street battles and seized power in the impoverished coastal strip of 1.5 million people.

Israel and the West have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group and have boycotted Palestinian governments that include the Islamist movement, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 but is sworn to Israel's destruction.

Russia offers Chavez nuclear help amid US tensions

AFP, Orenburg

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was to meet Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Friday after Russia risked Washington's wrath by offering the fierce US foe help developing nuclear energy. The two were to meet in the city of Orenburg after hawkish Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Chavez in Moscow on Thursday that Russia was "ready to consider the possibility of cooperation in nuclear energy."

The countries have boosted ties in recent weeks following sharp US criticism of Russia's incursion into Georgia, with Moscow dispatching long-range bombers and warships to Venezuela for exercises near US waters. Putin made the nuclear offer after Russia this week delayed talks with the United States and other powers on fears Iran is developing nuclear weapons, concerns critics say have been exacerbated by civilian nuclear technology provided by Moscow.

Chavez called for increased ties with Russia as a counter-balance to US power.

"Today like never before all that you said on the multi-polar world becomes reality. Let us not lose time," Chavez told Putin. "The world is fast developing geopolitically."

In deployments not seen since the Cold War, Russia this month sent two long-range bombers to Venezuela for exercises and has dispatched a flotilla of warships from the Arctic base of Severomorsk to Venezuela, near US waters.

Putin thanked Chavez for the "warm welcome" given to the planes and said South America was growing in importance for Moscow.

"Latin America has become an important chain-link in creating a multipolar world, and we will pay more attention to this vector," he said.

Russia's relations with the United States are in a deep chill, most recently over the brief war in Georgia last month-a conflict where Chavez was one of the few world leaders to support Moscow.

During that war, Washington angered Moscow by holding naval exercises near its Black Sea coast. And when the war ended, the United States used warships to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia.

German commandos storm jet, arrest two

AFP, Berlin

German commandos stormed a KLM airliner at Cologne-Bonn airport on Friday, arresting two men suspected of wanting to carry out attacks, police said.

The Amsterdam-bound jet was stormed at 6:55 am (0455 GMT), police spokesman Frank Scheulen said.

A 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German citizen of Somali origin were arrested, said Scheulen, spokesman for North Rhine-Westphalia state police.

Media reports said the two men had left notes in their apartments saying they were prepared to die in "holy war" and that they had been under police surveillance for several months.