The New Nation - Internet Edition

India won't take military action over Mumbai: War-mongering militants stoke India, Pakistan crisis

Reuters, New Delhi

India said on Tuesday it was not considering military action in response to Islamist militant attacks in Mumbai that killed at least 183 people.

"Nobody is talking of military action," Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters when asked about options on what action could be taken.

Indian investigators have said the attacks were carried out by militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group based in Pakistan.

Another report adds: Pakistan offered on Tuesday to help India investigate the militant assault on Mumbai and said it would "frame a response" to an Indian demand that it hand over 20 of India's most wanted men.

India has blamed Islamist militants based in Pakistan for last week's attacks in India's financial capital that killed 183 people.

Pakistan has condemned the assault, denied any involvement by state agencies and vowed to work with India in its investigation. On Monday, it rejected what it called unsubstantiated allegations of complicity.

Tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the attacks has led to fears of renewed confrontation after Pakistan's civilian government had been trying to push forward a tentative peace process.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, speaking in a televised address, repeated a Pakistani offer of cooperation, saying it was not the time for a "blame game, taunts (and) finger-pointing".

"The government of Pakistan has offered a joint investigating mechanism and a joint commission to India. We are ready to jointly go into the depth of this issue and we are ready to compose a team that could help you," Qureshi said. "Pakistan wants good relations with India," he said.

Meanwhile, the deadly Mumbai attacks aimed to push nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to the brink of war at a time when Islamabad was talking peace and U.S. and Pakistani forces were punishing al Qaeda and its allies, analysts said.

"It happened at a time when a new civilian government in Pakistan was not just reaching out to India, it was undertaking some very meaningful steps," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group (ICG).

"For the jihadi groups and their backers in Pakistan this was probably a make or break moment," she said.

What isn't clear is how deep any conspiracy goes in Pakistan.

A crisis with India would play into the hands of sections of the Pakistani military and bureaucracy who are unhappy with a U.S. alliance which has resulted in Pakistani forces fighting their own people in the tribal border areas, analysts say.

Bombs kill 30 people in two Iraqi cities

AFP, Baghdad

A spate of attacks targeting security forces in the heart of Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed around 30 people on Monday-the bloodiest day in Iraq in three weeks.

The bloodshed coincided with the release of official Iraqi ministry figures showing that violence across the nation climbed in November, with 340 Iraqis killed compared with 317 in October.

In Baghdad, 15 people died and dozens were wounded, including young police recruits and civilians, when a suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded in quick succession near a police academy, the interior ministry said.

The US military released a statement saying that 12 people were killed and 35 others wounded in the attack, which it blamed on Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The blasts took place on a stretch of road that reopened just two months ago after being closed for two years following a previous suicide attack.

Hours later, another 15 people were killed and 30 were wounded when a suicide car bomb ploughed into a joint US-Iraqi patrol in Mosul, police said.

The US military gave a lower toll, saying eight Iraqi civilians were killed and 36 people were wounded, including four US soldiers and two Iraqi policemen.

The military views Mosul as an urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is believed to be behind scores of suicide bombings.

Iraq has seen dramatic improvements in security over the past year as US and Iraqi forces have allied with local militias to drive out insurgents, but some regions, including Baghdad, still see near-daily attacks.

US panel warns biological attack likely by 2013

AP, Washington

The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.

3 killed in Assam train blast

AP, Gauhati

A bomb exploded in a train coach in India's insurgency-hit northeast on Tuesday, killing at least three people and injuring another 29, a state government official said.

The explosion occurred shortly after the train arrived at Diphu railroad station, about 200 miles (300 kilometers) south of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, said District Magistrate M.C. Sahu.The train was heading from Lumding in central Assam to the eastern commercial hub of Tinsukhia, Sahu said.

Highest tide in 20 years floods historic Venice

AP, Venice

Venice could use a bailout. The city built on water has too much of it.

Residents and tourists waded through knee-deep water Monday as they navigated the city's narrow streets and alleys, and its historic St. Mark's Square was inundated. Boxes of tourist merchandise floated inside the flooded shops around the square and even the city's famed pigeons sought refuge on rooftops and windowsills.

Iraq intelligence failure biggest regret: Bush

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush said in an interview set for broadcast Monday that he came to office "unprepared for war" and that his "biggest regret" was the US "intelligence failure" on Iraq. In a wide-ranging exchange with ABC television's "World News Tonight," Bush also said he was "sorry" that the global economic meltdown was taking place and predicted that he would leave office January 20th with his "head held high." The US president has been mired in record-low approval ratings after the botched government response to killer Hurricane Katrina (2005) and amid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the world financial crisis.

'Chemical Ali’ sentenced to death again

AFP, Baghdad

An Iraqi court sentenced Iraq's notorious "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid to death over his role in Saddam Hussein's brutal crushing of a 1991 Shiite uprising, according to an AFP correspondent at the trial, his seco

The hearing, set for 11 am (0800 GMT), comes after harrowing testimony from witnesses of Saddam's crushing of the rebellion who described family members being thrown from helicopters and mass executions.

Majid was sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide after ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign, when Iraqi forces strafed villages with poison gas, the source of his grim nickname.

Russia to upgrade missiles to evade US space arms

AP, Moscow

Russia's military is planning to upgrade its missiles to allow them to evade American weapons in space and penetrate any prospective missile shield, a Russian general said Monday.

In comments to the Interfax news agency, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces chief, Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, as saying that Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles will be modernized to protect them from space-based components of the U.S. missile defense system.

The upgrade will make the missiles' warheads capable of flying "outside the range" of the space-based system, Solovtsov was quoted as saying.