The New Nation - Internet Edition

Pakistan kills 30 militants close to Afghan border

AP, Islamabad

Pakistan killed 30 militants close to the Afghan border Sunday as America's top diplomat in the region visited for talks with government leaders, officials said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher's trip comes amid strains between Pakistan and the United States over a spate of suspected American missile attacks on militant targets in the frontier zone in the country's northwest.

The U.S. embassy gave no details on Boucher's trip other than to say it had been planned for some time and that he was meeting a range of government officials.

Washington wants Islamabad to do more to fight al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in the northwest that are blamed for rising attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan insists it is taking the threat seriously, but U.S. and regional officials suspect that elements within the government and security forces may be secretly aiding the militants, a charge denied by Islamabad.

In the latest fighting close to the border, Pakistani fighter jets bombed insurgents, killing up to 20, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. The bombs hit an ammunition dump, causing extensive damage, he said.

It was not immediately possible to independently confirm the casualties or the others reported Sunday. Reporters cannot visit the area because of poor security and government restrictions. No Taliban spokesman was available for comment.

In nearby Bajur district, seven insurgents were killed when jets bombed their positions, said Muhammad Jamil Khan, the No. 2 government official there.

Security official Fazl Rabi said three militants were killed in other parts of Bajur when they tried to attack security posts.

Pakistan claims to have killed more than 1,000 militants in Bajur since August. Another report adds: Pakistani fighter jets bombed a militant hide-out in restive northwestern Swat valley on Sunday, killing a rebel commander and destroying an ammunition dump, officials said.

The airstrike in the Matta district of Swat killed a senior fighter closely associated with pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah, a security official said.

"According to reports received by us, commander Alamgir has been killed in the airstrike and several other casualties are likely because ammunition at their hide-out exploded," the official told AFP.

"It was a militant den. We cannot confirm casualties immediately."

The official said that intelligence reports had indicated a large militant gathering in the area, a stronghold of extremists loyal to Fazlullah, who has declared a jihad or holy war against the government.

The mountainous Swat valley was until last year a popular tourist destination where many Pakistani city dwellers went for their annual holidays and it featured Pakistan's only ski resort.

But the region has been turned into a battleground since Fazlullah launched a violent campaign to enforce Islamic Sharia law.

Russian troops attacked in Caucasus, report claims 50 killed

AFP, Moscow

A Russian troop convoy was attacked Saturday in the volatile Caucasus province of Ingushetia and an opposition website said around 50 soldiers had been killed, though officials confirmed only two dead.

Around 100 interior ministry troops were in vehicles travelling on a road near the village of Galashki when they were attacked with grenade launchers and automatic weapons by the gunmen, officials said.

A website run by opponents of Ingushetia's Moscow-backed administration, www.ingushetia.org, quoted unnamed local interior ministry and medical sources as saying that "around" 50 Russian soldiers were killed in that attack.

If confirmed, that figure would represent one of the most deadly strikes against Russian federal forces in the north Caucasus since the end of major combat operations in neighboring Chechnya several years ago.

The three main Russian news agencies and the main broadcast television stations, all either run by or strongly influenced by the Kremlin, however reported only that two soldiers were killed and nine others wounded.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack. The Chechen rebel website www.kavkazcenter.com however also reported the attack and, quoting sources in Ingushetia, said it had resulted in the deaths of 50 "infidels."

Unlike Chechnya in the 1990s, calls for independence from the Russia have not so far been central to the demands of local militants in Ingushetia, who have focused on opposing the province's Kremlin-backed leader, Murat Zyazikov.

However Ingushetia, a mainly Muslim province neighbouring Chechnya, has been racked by a growing number of attacks against security forces in recent years that are often blamed by officials on "foreign" Islamist fighters.

The ingushetia.org website is considered by independent observers a reliable source of information about events in Ingushetia that are not reported by Russia's state-controlled media.

During the course of two wars in Chechnya between 1994 and 2004, Russian officials and state-run media regularly omitted reporting on serious losses sustained by Russian troops until long after the fact, if ever.

The ingushetia.org website is highly critical of Zyazikov. The website's owner, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot dead in August in a mysterious incident after being taken into police custody.

Following Saturday's attacks, activists from the website said they were cancelling a demonstration to demand an objective inquiry into Yevloyev's death that had been planned for Sunday in Nazran.

In its report on the attack, ingushetia.org said: "A source from the Sunzhensky region interior ministry said around 50 soldiers were killed" while armoured personnel carriers and trucks were destroyed.

The website said five more Russian soldiers were killed in two other attacks in the area, apparently carried out on reinforcements sent to the site of the initial attack.

The assailants in the attacks escaped in the Galishki area and Russia's FSB security agency immediately launched a "counter-terrorist operation" in the region, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported.

International community failing its mission in Afghanistan: Miliband

AFP, London

Foreign Secretary David Miliband denied on Sunday that the international community was failing in its mission in Afghanistan.

"Our true missiont has been to use military power to create the space within which Afghan institutions can become strong enough to resist the Taliban. That mission is certainly not impossible," Miliband wrote in the Sunday Times.

Responding to criticism in the newspaper of Britain's role in Afghanistan, Miliband denied that Taliban insurgents were getting the upper hand over President Hamid Karzai's administration.

He said the majority of Taliban activity was concentrated in 10 percent of Afghanistan's districts, home to only six percent of the population, and he rejected suggestions that the capital, Kabul, was encircled.

"The Taliban lack the capacity to hold ground," Miliband wrote.

Some of the insecurity stemmed from "growing criminality", including the trade in heroin, Miliband said.

He hailed the decision by NATO defence ministers to allow their forces to do more to support the Afghan security forces in targeting drug facilities.

The fact that 18 provinces in Afghanistan were drug-free this year, up from 13 last year, was "progress. Not enough, but progress all the same."

On the vexed issue of the tribal areas of Pakistan which he said were used to launch insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, Miliband said new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had promised to make cooperation with Afghanistan a priority "and he has been true to his word".

Sri Lanka claims smashing 'final’ Tiger defences

AFP, Colombo

Troops and Tamil Tiger rebels were locked in intense fighting in northern Sri Lanka Sunday after government forces smashed through the "last major defences" of the guerrillas, the defence ministry said.

It said the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launched "poisonous gas attacks" to blunt the military offensive aimed at capturing the rebels' political capital of Kilinochchi, the ministry said.

Soldiers stepped up their offensive on Saturday and captured a two-kilometre (1.25-mile) stretch of the defence line set up by the Tigers near Kilinochchi, the ministry said. It said the fighting was at Akkarayankulam, about 13 kilometres southwest of Kilinochchi. Three weeks ago, the military had said it was within striking distance of Kilinochchi.

"Army's 57 division troops yesterday pierced the LTTE-built earth bund in Akkarayankulam, the terrorists' last major defence south of Kilinochchi," the defence ministry said in a statement.

It said the Tigers "launched poisonous gas attacks" on the troops. "However, troops withstood the chemical attack and beat off the terrorists," the ministry said.

It gave no details of casualties for both sides, but added: "Several soldiers made their ultimate sacrifice for the nation while many others suffered injuries during this battle."

There was no immediate comment from the Tigers.

Government soldiers fell victim to booby-trapped devices, anti-personnel mines and mortar fire, the ministry said.

"Battlefield sources confirmed that the terrorists suffered significant attrition in terms of men and material," the statement added.

India to hold polls in troubled Jammu and Kashmir

AFP, New Delhi

The troubled Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir will vote for a new state government in a seven-stage poll set to begin next month and conclude in late December, the Election Commission said Sunday.

"The commission is under a constitutional mandate to hold (a) general election to constitute the new legislative assembly in the state" by January 10, 2009, the body said in a statement.

Polling starts on November 17 and all votes will be counted on December 28, the statement said.

Indian Kashmir has been under federal rule since July following the collapse of the state government over a land row that triggered a revival of anti-India demonstrations in the Muslim-majority region.

New Delhi has been battling a separatist insurgency in Kashmir since 1989.

Pro-India groups welcomed the announcement of polls but separatist leaders were unmoved.

"Elections can never be a solution to the issue of Kashmir," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a moderate separatist, told AFP.

"They can never be a substitute for our right to self-determination. Our fight for freedom will continue."

The next two months will also see assembly polls in four other states-the Maoist insurgency-hit Chattisgarh, Hindu nationalist-ruled Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and the small northeastern state of Mizoram-as well as in the Congress-ruled capital region of Delhi.

The elections will be closely watched as a popularity test for both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress-led alliance that has governed India since May 2004 and the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

National elections must be held before May 2009.

11 bodies found in Iraq mass grave

AFP, Samarra

Iraqi and US forces have found a mass grave containing 11 decomposed bodies of men believed kidnapped by Al-Qaeda militants last year, officials told AFP on Saturday.

The mass grave was found in Al-Jillam, 25 kilometres (15 miles) east of the central city of Samarra, said Sheikh Khaled Fleyih Hassan, leader of an anti-Qaeda group which discovered the corpses.

Hassan said that one of the victims was the son of the Samarra municipality chief and that two others were bodyguards of the city's mayor. All the 11 men were kidnapped during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in October 2007, he said.

Samarra police chief Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Khalaq Al-Samarraie and a local doctor, Abid al-Samarraie, confirmed the report.

Meanwhile, police said three policemen were wounded in a bomb attack targeting their patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The body of an employee of the Kirkuk electricity company who had been kidnapped 16 days ago was also found on Saturday, an Iraqi security official said.

The victim had been shot dead.

In another attack south of Kirkuk, a Kurdish security official was killed when a bomb struck his car, police said.

Obama tells 100,000 supporters: Change is coming

AFP, St Louis

Addressing a sea of 100,000 supporters Saturday, Democrat Barack Obama fired back against White House rival John McCain on taxes and toxic campaign messages 17 days out from election day.

Just over two weeks before the November 4 election, the Republican insisted that Obama's economic plan would drive up taxes and "kill" job creation as the United States weathers its worst financial crisis in decades.

But the Democrat, who is riding high in national and state polls, said McCain was positing false arguments including via automated "robo-calls" to voters that portray Obama as a secret radical bent on subverting democracy. "You guys have seen the ads. Some of you have received the phone calls," the Illinois senator told an enormous crowd in St Louis numbered by police at 100,000, his biggest yet in the United States.

Missouri voted for Republican President George W. Bush in both the last two elections, but Obama said the "winds of change" were blowing in the heartland state and across the nation.

He added: "With the economy in turmoil and the American Dream at risk, the American people don't want to hear politicians attack each other.

"You want to hear about how we're going to attack the challenges facing middle-class families each and every day."

At his own rally in North Carolina, another Republican state now very much in play, McCain once again invoked Ohio plumber Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher, who is now a hero of conservatives after challenging Obama on taxes.

Jordan king 'pessimistic’ about Mideast peace deal

AFP, Madrid

Jordan's King Abdullah II said he doubted a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal will be clinched by January 20 when President George W. Bush steps down, in an interview published on Saturday in Spain's El Pais daily.

"For the first time I view myself as pessimistic. And I believe I am one of the most optimistic leaders in the Middle East," said the monarch, who starts a a tour of Spain later Saturday.

"The success of the peace process will depend on whether there are successful advances between Israelis and Palestinians when the next US administration takes over," he said.

"If we manage nothing by the end of the year, given the uncertainty between Israel and Palestine, there will be no future for the peace process," the monarch said, underlining that this prospect "scared everybody". Abdullah said "Israel must decide if it wants to be a fortress or involve itself in the Muslim and Arab world."

US President George W. Bush hosted a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November last year that launched the first serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years-with the goal of a peace agreement by the end of the administration.

The negotiations have made little visible progress since then, however, despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's joint pledge to try to reach a full agreement by the end of 2008.

The two sides remain deeply divided on the core issues of the decades-old conflict, including the future status of Jerusalem, the fate of some 4.6 million Palestinian refugees, and continuing Israeli settlement activity.

The talks were dealt a further blow last month when Olmert resigned amid a series of corruption allegations, plunging the Jewish state into what could be months of political turmoil and uncertainty.

Aso says Japan must support 'war on terror’

AFP, Tokyo

Prime Minister Taro Aso said Sunday that Japan must keep backing the US-led "war on terror" and reiterated his support for his country's controversial naval mission off Afghanistan.

"We will continue to proactively engage in international peace activities, such as the war on terror," Aso told Japanese soldiers during a ceremonial review of the air force. "Many nations, depite having seen casualties, are preparing to increase their engagement with Afghanistan," he said. "It is not a choice for us to withdraw from our ongoing activities." Japan has provided naval fuel and other logistical support in the Indian Ocean to US-led forces operating in Afghanistan. The current naval mission is set to expire in January, and Aso is pushing to extend it. Japan's opposition, which controls the upper house of parliament, forced a temporary halt to the operation last year, arguing the officially pacifist country should not take part in "American wars."

Japan was forced to renounce the right to wage war after its defeat in World War II.

Zimbabwe parties far from implementing deal: MDC

Reuters, Harare

Zimbabwe's rival parties are still far away from implementing a power-sharing deal, the opposition MDC said on Sunday, as some regional leaders prepared to hold a summit aimed at breaking the deadlock.

"We are still miles, miles, miles behind in terms of the implementation of the deal," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told South Africa's SAfm radio.

But Chamisa added that Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had no choice but to remain cautiously optimistic despite the hurdles.

He was speaking a day before some heads of state from the regional grouping SADC were due to meet in Swaziland to try to help Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU PF and opposition agree on cabinet posts after four days of inconclusive talks which ended on Friday.

The power-sharing deal, mediated by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, is seen as Zimbabwe's best hope for rescuing an economy where fuel and food are scarce and inflation stands at 231 million percent, the world's highest.

State leaders who form the Southern African Development Community's defense and security body are expected to hold talks on the stalemate in Swaziland on Monday.

Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, head of the smaller MDC faction, will take part in the troika meeting of Angola, Mozambique and Swaziland, Mbeki has said.

Tsvangirai threatened to pull out of talks last Sunday after Mugabe allocated powerful ministries such as defense, finance and home affairs to his own party.

"People are suffering. There is no food. No jobs. No cash in the country. The country is almost on the edge of total collapse. We want to make sure we rescue the situation. This is why we remain cautiously optimistic," said Chamisa.

Mbeki said on Friday a deal was still possible despite another round of inconclusive talks. But his effectiveness has been thrown into doubt since South Africa's ruling ANC party forced him to resign.

And the MDC accuses him of favoring Mugabe, an issue that Chamisa raised again.

"I suppose that Mbeki seems to be more inclined to appreciate the circumstances from the ZANU-PF point of view than from the MDC point of view," he told SAfm.

"That is the situation and we are hoping that when we go to the troika our side is going to be heard."

Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a March 29 presidential election but fell short of enough votes to avoid a June run-off, which was won by Mugabe unopposed after Tsvangirai pulled out, citing violence and intimidation against his supporters.

Mugabe's victory in the run-off was condemned around the world and drew toughened sanctions from Western countries whose support is vital for reviving Zimbabwe's ruined economy.

William and Harry begin motorbike rally for charity

AFP, Port Edward

Prince Harry and Prince William on Saturday began a 1,000-mile motorbike race across South Africa to raise money for charity.

The two brothers joined more than 80 other riders from around the world for the almost entirely off-road trek from Durban to Port Elizabeth in the Enduro Africa '08 charity race along South Africa's Wild Coast. "It's not just a bimble (joy ride) across the countryside, that's for sure," Harry told reporters before setting off. The race is intended to raise 300,000 pounds for the UN children's fund UNICEF, the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, and Sentebale-a charity founded in 2006 by Prince Harry and Lesotho's Prince Seeiso to help AIDS orphans. The money will help fund projects in South Africa and Lesotho. The princes suited up on Saturday in Port Edward, about 95 miles southwest of Durban, greeting children as they mounted their bikes for the long journey.

From Port Edward, they will cover approximately 150 miles per day on the light 200cc Honda CRF 230's supplied by the organisers.

They will face steep inclines, race down down slopes and go over 72 river crossings. William said they were prepared to fall in, having "packed their armbands."