The New Nation - Internet Edition

US supply line threatened by Pakistan truck halt

AP, Peshawar

A Pakistani decision to temporarily bar some trucks from a key passageway to Afghanistan threatened a critical supply route for U.S. and NATO troops on Sunday and raised more fears about deteriorating security in the militant-plagued border region.

The suspension of oil tankers and trucks carrying sealed containers came as U.S.-led coalition troops in eastern Afghanistan reported killing five al-Qaida-linked fighters and detaining eight others, including a militant leader.

Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters are behind much of the escalating violence along the lengthy, porous Afghan-Pakistan border, and both nations have traded accusations that the other was not doing enough to keep militants out from its side. The tensions come as violence in Afghanistan has reached its highest levels since the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in 2001 and as a surge in U.S. missile strikes on the Pakistani side of the border has prompted protests from Pakistan government leaders.

Last Monday, a band of militants hijacked around a dozen trucks whose load included Humvees headed to the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Renewed security concerns prompted officials to impose the temporary ban late Saturday, government official Bakhtiar Khan said. He said it could be lifted as early as Monday. Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, acknowledged only that "the appropriate authorities are coordinating security procedures." "The convoys will continue flowing. We will not discuss when, or where, or what," he said. Denied entry to the route, dozens of the trucks and oil tankers were parked along a main road near Peshawar, the regional capital.

Asked about security fears, Rehmatullah, a driver who gave only one name and said his truck was carrying a military vehicle of some sort, said, "This is our job, and we have to do it, but yes, we have a security risk every time we pass through the route."

Many of the supplies headed to foreign troops arrive in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi in unmarked, sealed shipping containers and are loaded onto trucks for the journey either to the border town of Chaman or the primary route, through the famed Khyber Pass.

Last week's ambush took place at the entrance to the pass. Police said around 60 masked militants forced the convoy to stop briefly trading fire with nearby security officers. U.S. officials say the attackers seized two Humvees and a water truck. Several trucks carrying wheat for the World Food Program were also hijacked.

While critical of U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions, both Pakistan's prime minister and president denied any plans to subvert the supply line as a pressure tactic in recent interviews with The Associated Press.

Indian Kashmir set to vote as separatists urge boycott

AFP, Srinagar

Revolt-hit Indian Kashmir begins voting in state elections Monday amid appeals for a poll boycott by Muslim separatists who have spearheaded a wave of massive pro-freedom protests.

Both rebels and separatist politicians argue elections only strengthen India's sway over the disputed Muslim-majority region and have been urging voters not to turn out at the polls.

"Elections can never be a substitute for our right to self-determination," says Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a leading separatist and Muslim cleric in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir where the insurgency has raged since 1989, claiming 43,000 lives.

Nearly 44 percent of eligible voters-considered a healthy level-took part in the 2002 state elections despite militant violence that left 850 people dead, mostly pro-India political workers and leaders.

This time around there has been no pre-poll violence with guerrillas for the first time in nearly 20 years vowing not to use guns to keep voters away.

But anti-India anger is still bubbling in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley since the eruption of vast demonstrations over a government decision to provide land to a Hindu shrine, a decision that was subsequently reversed.

The protests-reminiscent of the early 1990s when the insurgency had just begun-have left nearly 50 Muslims dead since June.

"I won't vote as a mark of protest against the killing of my fellow Muslims," says mason Khurshid Ahmed, 43. "I'll ensure no one in my family votes either."

Indian Kashmir was put under direct federal rule in July following the collapse of the state government over the land row.

Separatists are not contesting the elections, while pro-India parties have been trying to persuade people that voting will only provide a government for the state and will have no bearing on resolving Kashmir's future.

Kashmir is held in part by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan but claimed in full by both nations, which have fought two wars over the region.

The countries began talks to settle Kashmir's future in 2004 but there have been no breakthroughs, further frustrating the mood in Kashmir.

"The elections are in no way linked to resolution of the Kashmir dispute. They're only to elect a government to run the state," says Omar Abdullah, head of the pro-India National Conference.

Voters turfed out the National Conference in 2002 after it had ruled the state for decades, in favour of a coalition of the Congress party, which governs at the national level, and the regional Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

"It's not going to be a cakewalk this time. First we'll have to convince people to vote and than motivate them to vote in our favour," says another pro-India leader Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP.

India regards staging polls in Kashmir as enhancing the legitimacy of its rule in its only Muslim-majority state and has traditionally viewed a good turnout as signalling a victory of "the bullet over the ballot."

"The boycott call will have a significant impact in urban areas of the valley but in rural areas the impact will be less," said Tahir Mohiudin, a Kashmir analyst and editor of the influential Urdu weekly, Chattan, or Rock.

"India will definitely sell a good turnout as its victory in Kashmir. A lower turnout would be a major victory for the separatists," he said.

The seven-stage polls to the 87-member assembly are slated to wind up December 24 when Srinagar votes. The staggered voting allows authorities in the heavily militarised state to shift security forces around in a bid to ensure there is no violence during the polling.

Security forces say they are taking no chances, despite the rebels' pledges of non-violence in the state where many favour independence from mainly Hindu, officially secular India or a merger with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

"We're ready for the elections. We'll ensure fair polls," says Kashmir police chief Kuldeep Khuda.

The vote is part of a round of six state polls now underway in India and seen as a mini-referendum on the Congress party ahead of general elections due by May 2009.

te is part of a round of six state polls now underway in India and seen as a mini-referendum on the Congress party ahead of general elections due by May 2009.

Electioneering for the first phase has been going on in Hindu-dominated Jammu in the south and the Buddhist-majority Ladakh region but there has been little poll activity in the valley where three areas vote on Monday.

Four Palestinians killed in Israeli air strike

AP, Gaza City

An Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinian militants launching mortars at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian officials said, just hours after another group of militants struck Israel in a separate rocket attack.

The violence was the latest in a surge of spiraling clashes that have rocked a 5-month-old truce between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers. Both sides have said they would like to preserve the truce, which is due to expire next month, but events over the past 12 days signal the opposite is happening.

The militants killed in the airstrike were from a small Hamas-allied group known as the Popular Resistance Committees. A spokesman for the group calling himself Abu Attaya said the four were firing mortars into Israel when they were killed.

The Israeli military said the airstrike targeted a rocket squad in northern Gaza.

Palestinians launched two rockets earlier in the day into Israel, hitting near a community on the Israel-Gaza border. No one was hurt, the military said.

According to the military's count, Palestinians have sent more than 170 rockets and mortars flying at Israel since the violence resumed nearly two weeks ago. Israeli troops have killed 15 militants and two more died under unclear circumstances. No civilians have been killed on either side.

Israel is keeping its crossings into Gaza shut because of the ongoing rocket fire, barring badly needed goods and fuel from entering the impoverished territory. United Nations food supplies in Gaza have been depleted and the fuel cutoff has led to power shortages.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner said officials would decide later Sunday whether to reopen them. International pressure to crack open the passages has been mounting.

Hamas took over Gaza in June 2007, and Israel imposed a closure on the strip to weaken the hardline group. Egypt has also kept its border crossing with Gaza closed.

The blockade was relaxed slightly after the truce began in June 2008, but the crossings were slammed shut again because of the new clashes.

At least 3 dead in China subway tunnel collapse

Reuters, Beijing

At least three people were killed and 17 more were trapped when a half-built subway tunnel in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou collapsed, leaving a huge crater that also engulfed 11 vehicles, state media said on Sunday.

Workers building the new metro system scrambled to escape the slow cave-in on Saturday, which left a pile of jumbled steel poles jutting out of a gaping giant crater and forced the evacuation of nearby homes. China's construction industry has been plagued by corruption, poor standards and shoddy materials as the country's booming economy fueled a rush to expand infrastructure and housing. "Lots of workers immediately rushed to the hoist to be lifted above ground," said Zhu Juzhong, a 56-year-old worker from southwestern Sichuan province who said about 30 of his colleagues made it onto the lift, but three fell back down during the rush.

"Some colleagues who moved slowly were buried," the official Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

Another worker described a desperate climb up a steel cable after missing the lift because he was too far away.

In recent years accidents at bridges, schools, building sites, factories and mines have claimed hundreds of lives, on top of food safety problems that have undermined the "made in China" brand abroad and dented trust in the government at home.

The Hangzhou cave-in began mid-afternoon and left a hole 15 meters deep and 75 meters long, Xinhua said. Vehicles including several taxis and a public bus fell into the chasm.

State media initially said more than 50 were feared trapped, but after nearly 30 people on board the bus were helped to safety only 17 people were registered as missing.

Rescue efforts were complicated by a nearby river which started to seep into the devastated tunnel.

"There is a slim chance for the survival of trapped workers, because of heavy flooding in the crater," spokesman Wang Guangrong told Xinhua. By Sunday morning waters had receded to around three meters from a high of six meters, he added.

The construction company has sent workers to reinforce remaining parts of the tunnel, but the government did not rule out the possibility of further collapses, Xinhua said.

The accident was not the first time China's efforts to upgrade its public transport networks have met with tragedy.

In March last year a Beijing subway tunnel being built for the 2008 Olympics collapsed, burying six workers.

In Shanghai, where a subway tunnel collapsed in 2004, the mayor warned this summer

66 killed in Burkina Faso road accident

AFP, Boromo

At least 66 people died Saturday when a bus and a truck collided and caught fire in Burkina Faso in one of West Africa's worst road accidents, the country's transport minister said.

"We lament 96 victims, of whom 66 have died," Gilbert Noel Ouedraogo said. "Of the 66, 55 bodies were completely charred. There are 30 injured admitted in hospital."

He said that there were Ivorian nationals aboard the bus, which was registered in Ivory Coast and owned by an Ivorian company Ba Issa Transport.

"For the nationalities of the victims, it is difficult to say. There are Ivorians, there are Burkinabes. But we have only been able to identify 10 people. With the 55 charred bodies identification is very difficult."

Early indications suggested that the driver of the truck might have fallen asleep at the wheel.

Earlier court prosecutor Maiza Compaore told AFP by telephone from the site of the accident near Boromo, 167 kilometres (105 miles) west of the capital Ouagadougou, that the two vehicles caught fire.

"The scene is gruesome t there are bodies on the road, some are in the wreckage, there are charred bodies which are still being removed. It's really horrible."

The impact of the crash had forced the bus off the road. All that remained of the two vehicles were burnt-out shells.

Medvedev pins hopes on new US president

Reuters, Washington

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday he hoped U.S. President-elect Barack Obama could help restore mutual trust soured by rows over missile defense and war in Georgia.

In a gesture of goodwill, he made clear Russia was ready for compromise over plans to deploy elements of a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe and promised to hold off on a possible military response to the project.

"U.S.-Russian relations lack the needed mutual trust. We pin such hopes on the arrival of the new U.S. administration," Medvedev, in Washington for a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies, told the Council on Foreign Relations in a speech. The personal friendship between Medvedev's predecessor Vladimir Putin, who stepped down in May, and U.S. President George W. Bush, who steps down in January, helped to ease strains in Russian-U.S. ties for nearly eight years.

But Russia's August military operation to crush Georgia's attempt to retake a separatist region plunged ties with Washington to a post-Cold War low.

As the United States led international condemnation of Russia, Moscow stepped up opposition to U.S. plans to deploy radar in Poland and interceptor missiles in the Czech Republic, intended to defend against possible attacks from Iran.

Russia sees the project as a threat to its security.

A day after this month's U.S. presidential election, Medvedev announced plans to deploy missiles near NATO's borders to neutralize the missile shield installations.

Iraqi cabinet approves US military pact

AFP, Baghdad

Iraq's cabinet approved a wide-ranging military pact on Sunday that will govern the presence of more than 150,000 US troops stationed in the country, a source in parliament said.

The Cabinet meeting came a day after the country's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, indicated that he would not object to the pact if it is passed by a comfortable majority in parliament. That cleared a major hurdle to the agreement. An official at al-Maliki's office, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share the information with the media, said the Cabinet meeting got under way at 10 a.m. but had no further details.

The Cabinet session began shortly after a roadside bomb killed three people and wounded seven in a northern Baghdad district, the latest evidence that violence continues to plague Iraq despite the dramatic improvement in security over the past year.

Proponents of the security pact with the Americans, like al-Maliki's interior and defense ministers, say continued U.S. military presence is needed until Iraq's nascent security forces are capable of independently taking charge of security in the war devastated nation.

The roadside bomb hit a checkpoint belonging to U.S.-backed fighters in the Sunni enclave of Basatin in the predominantly Shiite Shaab district, according to police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Two of the those killed were members of the local Awakening Council, or Sahwa, one of several names used to refer to the Sunni insurgents and tribesmen who have revolted against al-Qaida in Iraq, joining the U.S. military in the fight against the terror group.

Five of the injured were also Sahwa members.

Wildfires in LA reduce hundreds of homes to ash

AP, Los Angeles

Southern Californians endured a third day of destruction Saturday as wind-blasted wildfires torched hundreds of mobile homes and mansions, forced tens of thousands of people to flee and shut down major freeways.

No deaths were reported, but the Los Angeles police chief said he feared authorities might find bodies among the 500 burned dwellings in a devastated mobile home park that housed many senior citizens. "We have almost total devastation here in the mobile park," Fire Capt. Steve Ruda said. "I can't even read the street names because the street signs are melting."

The series of fires has injured at least 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes from coastal Santa Barbara to inland Riverside County, on the other side of the Los Angeles area. Smoke blanketed the nation's second-largest city Saturday, reducing the afternoon sun to a pale orange disk.

As night fell, a fire fed by a sleet of blowing embers hopscotched through the winding lanes of modern subdivisions in Orange and Riverside counties, destroying more than 50 homes, some of them apparently mansions.

A blaze in the Sylmar community in the hillsides above Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley destroyed the mobile homes, nine single-family homes and several other buildings before growing to more than 8,000 acres - more than 12 square miles. It was only 20 percent contained Saturday.

It sent residents fleeing in the dark Saturday morning as notorious Santa Ana winds topping 75 mph torched cars, bone-dry brush and much of Oakridge Mobile Home Park. The blaze, whose cause was under investigation, threatened at least 1,000 structures, city Fire Department spokeswoman Melissa Kelley said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Orange and Riverside counties. Fire officials estimated that at its peak 10,000 people were under orders to evacuate, including residents of the mobile home park.

Extreme fire conditions were expected to continue into Sunday morning, with humidity at just 10 percent to 15 percent and winds gusting to 45 mph through canyons. Winds, however, could reverse direction and dip to 5-mph breezes Sunday afternoon.

"We still have another 15 hours of red flag conditions," Robert Balfour, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, warned fire officials at a briefing Saturday night.

Prince Charles wants to speak out as king: Biographer

AFP, London

Prince Charles, who has just turned 60, wants to break with tradition and keep speaking out on key issues when he becomes king, biographer Jonathan Dimbleby said in The Sunday Times.

Charles, the heir to the throne, is outspoken on several matters such as climate change and architecture. However, sovereigns traditionally keep their opinions out of the public domain.

"There are now discreet moves afoot to redefine the future role of the sovereign so that it would allow King Charles III to speak out on matters of national or international importance in ways that at the moment would be unthinkable," said broadcaster Dimbleby, a close friend of the prince who wrote an authorised biography of Charles.

Since inheriting the throne in 1952, Charles's mother Queen Elizabeth II has adhered to the tradition that the monarch's views are only heard by prime ministers and the privy council.

"To breach this convention, however cautiously, would represent a seismic shift in the role of the sovereign," Dimbleby wrote.

"It has the potential to be politically and constitutionally explosive."

Charles would not speak out to the degree he does now, Dimbleby said.

"But those who believe Britain needs an 'active' sovereign in the 21st century claim that it would be a waste of his experience and accumulated wisdom for it to be straightjacketed within the confines of an annual Christmas message or his weekly audience with the prime minister," he wrote.

Charles has told confidantes that he would like the role of monarch to evolve so that his experience and knowledge are not wasted once he inherits the throne, Dimbleby said.

Supporters of the idea think it would be "missing a trick for him to be required to take a vow of monarchical silence."

India rejoices over moon probe landing

AFP, New Delhi

India rejoiced Saturday over the landing of a lunar probe on the moon's surface that vaulted the country into the league of space-faring nations like the United States, Russia and Japan.

The TV set-sized probe, painted in the green-white-and-orange colours of the Indian flag, made a "precise-to-the-second" landing on the lunar surface late Friday after being released from the unmanned moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-1 satellite, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

Politicians across the spectrum buried their differences to hail the milestone in India's space history in which the nation joins Russia, the US, Japan and the European Space Agency in successfully landing moon probes.

"Today is a historic day for India," said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party. Opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani called it an event "to be recorded in golden letters".

Former Indian president and rocket scientist Abdul Kalam said the landing of the probe-which coincided with the anniversary of the birth of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru-"will kindle a dream in children".

"In 15 years I want to see an Indian on the moon," said Kalam, who conceived of the so-called moon impact probe, or MIP, and is popularly known in India as "missile man".

The media was similarly ebullient. "The tricolour has landed," trumpeted the Hindustan Times daily in a banner headline, referring to India's flag. The Indian Express newspaper said: "India touches the moon."