United Nations, August 12
After three weeks of contentious negotiations, the UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution seeking an end to month-long fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, creating a 24-km buffer zone and authorising 15,000 peacekeepers to help the Lebanese army take control of the country's South.

But the fighting may not stop immediately as the Israel Cabinet is due to meet tomorrow to consider the resolution drawn up by the US and France and diplomats say that it is yet to be seen whether Hizbollah would play by the rules.

However, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert told US President George Bush that he supported the resolution and the Lebanese were expected to issue their acceptance within a day or so.

“Olmert spoke with President Bush and thanked him for his assistance in keeping Israeli interests in mind at the Security Council,” an American official said.

Resolution 1701 does not call for immediate withdrawal of Israel from areas in south Lebanon that it has occupied in the recent conflict but expects Tel Aviv to withdraw its forces as Lebanese troops, helped by UN peacekeepers with robust mandate, take control of the South from where the Hizbollah has been firing rockets into Israel.

The Hizbollah’s key demand is that Israel must withdraw its forces immediately and had threatened to continue its fight till even one Israeli soldier was on Lebanese soil. But it could take weeks for the Lebanese to take control of the South and for the UN to strengthen its current 2,000-strong mission known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and raise its strength to 15,000. —PTI

London, August 12
German Nobel laureate Guenther Grass, regarded as the greatest literary icon in post-war Germany has admitted to being a combat soldier in the Waffen SS.

The SS, or the Schutzstaffel, started out as a private paramilitary bodyguard unit for Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, but soon emerged as a strong organisation responsible for maintaining the security of the Third Reich.

Commanded by Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, the SS was distinguished from the German military, Nazi Party and German officials by their own SS ranks, unit insignia and uniforms. It acted both as an elite fighting force and was responsible for running the concentration and extermination camps in occupied Europe during the WW-II.

The Waffen SS was the combat arm of the SS that fought alongside the regular army, the Wehrmacht.

Guenther, who won the Nobel Prize for his anti-Nazi novel ‘The Tin Drum’, has in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said he was recruited into the SS at the age of 17 and served the Waffen SS Frundsberg Panzer Division in Dresden after failing to get a posting in the submarine service.

“My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book ‘Peeling Onions’. It had to come out, finally,” BBC quoted him as saying before the publication of his war memoirs. — ANI

Crawford, August 12
President George W. Bush said today that a scheme to blow up several flights between Britain and the USA was carefully planned, well-advanced and had the potential to cause “death on a massive scale”.

In his most extensive comments on the disrupted plot, Mr Bush said it was a stark reminder that terrorists still aim to kill Americans five years after the September 11 attacks.

“This plot is further evidence that the terrorists we face are sophisticated and constantly change their tactics,” he said in his weekly radio address taped yesterday at his Texas ranch.

British and Pakistani authorities have arrested as many as 41 persons in the two countries in connection with the alleged suicidal plan, broken up by the British police this week.

Mr Bush authorised an increase in the terror threat warning for flights on that route to code red, indicating a severe risk of terror attacks. All other domestic and international flights in the USA were set to code orange, the second highest level on the scale.

Meanwhile, In a strange twist to a US Embassy statement in New Delhi that Al-Qaida was planning attacks in India, the State Department has said the advisory was in “hypothetical terms.”

The advisory issued yesterday that terror attacks might take place in Delhi and Mumbai in the run-up to Independence Day had created a sensation in India although the government had dismissed it as a “very innocuous” warning.

“I really don’t have much that’s beyond what’s in the warden message (issued by the US Embassy). But this does speak in somewhat more hypothetical terms in saying...possibly including members of” Al-Qaida, State Department Acting Spokesman Tom Casey said.

“...It’s not definitive information that is there, and we certainly weren’t trying to convey that in the warden message. I think we certainly are concerned in general about activities not only of indigenous terrorist groups, but of the possibility of those linked or in any way associated with Al Qaida, any time there’s possibilities like this,” he said.

Asked if there are indications that the advisory could be raised to a travel warning, Casey replied, “I don’t have anything at this point to announce for you. Obviously, we’ll evaluate the information that we have and see if anything more than this is required.”

“There have been previous attacks in India around this time of year in the past. Certainly with the train bombings that have occurred recently too, there’s an added concern since there have been terrorist incidents recently. I guess I would just try and put this in that general category,” he said.

“Certainly... we had information that came to our attention and that came to the attention of the Indian government that led us to be concerned about this possibility occurring again. And that’s why we were alerting American citizens to it,” he said. — AP, PTI

Colombo, August 12
At least 127 combatants were killed and another 280 wounded in heavy fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels in northern and eastern Sri Lanka today, the military claimed.

The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) used a force of 400 to 500 fighters to attack the de facto front line in the Jaffna peninsula and a nearby islet, according to military spokesman Athula Jayawardena.

"We estimate at least 100 to 150 Tigers were killed and 200 to 250 were wounded," Jayawardena said.

"We had our share of casualties too with three officers and 22 other rankers and two sailors killed. Eight officers and 72 other rankers were wounded." He said the Tigers fired 130mm artillery towards the main airbase at Palaly and damaged a Bell 212 helicopter and some other equipment near the control tower, but the airport was operational.

Simultaneously, the Tigers also fired at the Trincomalee Navy and Air Force bases in the north-east of the island for about 45 minutes, he said.

The Sri Lankan Air Force this evening destroyed an artillery gun position of the Tigers at Pooneryn, just south of the Jaffna peninsula.

It was the bloodiest fighting since the two sides entered into a truce in February 2002.

"The LTTE has intensified its terrorist activities to such an extent that it appears that they want to have a full scale confrontation," government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said here. — PTI