But government efforts to end a bloody power struggle in the eastern town of Gardez received a setback when the ousted provincial Governor declined an offer to come to Kabul for peace talks.

Karzai was given a warm welcome on his arrival in Herat and was due to hold talks with Herat’s Governor Ismail Khan, who has been accused of receiving backing from neighbouring Iran.

Both Tehran and Khan have dismissed the charges.

Iran has also voiced its opposition to the deployment of the multinational forces as well as U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the September 11 attacks.

At the country’s opposite extreme, far to the east in Gardez, there was little sign of progress in efforts to resolve a power struggle between clans of the majority Pashtun group.

The recently appointed Governor of Paktia, Padshah Khan Zadran, was driven out of his capital, Gardez, 120 km south of Kabul, late last week after two days of clashes with forces of a rival who claims to be the rightful Governor.

The clashes cost the lives of around 50 fighters, and Zadran’s forces have threatened to launch a counter-attack to try to recapture Gardez if he is not returned to power.

Government mediators travelled to gardez during the weekend but failed to push the two sides into a peace pact, although they did get them to agree to a brief ceasefire and to swap prisoners.

Zadran will not go to Kabul for talks with his rival, Haji Saifullah, Zadran’s brother said. “(He) turned down the invitation. He does not wish to see Saifullah and go to Kabul,’’ the brother, Wazir Zadran, told newsmen by satellite phone.

The team of mediators sent by Karzai warned both sides not to resort to violence and said the government would even call in U.S. air strikes against whoever resumed fighting.

Nevertheless, Wazir said there would be more violence if the interim government tried to replace his brother.

Karzai blamed Zadran for sparking the conflict with the heavy-handed tactics of his troops, but played down the significance of the clashes, given the country’s long history of war.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF: A government-backed security force trying to exert control over volatile northern Afghanistan’s largest city has told militia factions to withdraw their fighters within two days, a force commander said today.

Gen Majid Rouzi, appointed by the interim government to help establish the 600-member force in Mazar-e-Sharif, said he believed regional warlords would comply with the order.

“They will go, I believe. We told them they have two days to go to their barracks,” he said.

Any unauthorised gunman on the streets on Friday will be “confronted and their weapons will be taken away,” he told the associated press. Reuters, AP

“It is extraordinary for the USA to have to charge one of its own citizens with aiding and conspiring with international terrorist groups whose agenda is to kill Americans,’’ Ashcroft told a news conference yesterday.

He said the indictment handed up by a Federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, added four more charges to a criminal complaint filed against the 20-year-old Californian.

“The USA is a country that cherishes religious tolerance, political democracy and equality between men and women. By his own account, John Walker Lindh allied himself with terrorists who reject these values,’’ Ashcroft said.

The additional four counts were conspiring to contribute services to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network, contributing services to Al-Qaida, conspiring to supply services to the Taliban and using and carrying firearms and destructive devices in crimes of violence, Ashcroft said.

The indictment formalised six prior charges of conspiring to kill Americans abroad, engaging in prohibited transactions with the deposed Taliban government that harboured Bin Laden and providing support to two terrorist groups, including Al-Qaida, which has been blamed by Washington for the September 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The charges carry penalties of three life terms plus six additional 10-year sentences and 30 years in jail, Ashcroft said. None carries the death penalty.

In their own filing in court in Alexandria, Lindh’s lawyers argued that he should be released while awaiting trial, saying that he was not a flight risk or danger to the community. Reuters

Celebrations are being planned particularly in countries that send a large number of tourists to Britain such as Japan, Germany, Italy and the Scandinavian countries. That’s doing a bit for Indian tourism too; there’s a fair chance they will get a taste of India somewhere or other through the celebrations in Britain this year. IANS

The government said last week it planned to give the navy tough new powers to check boats suspected of carrying illegal immigrants to its shores as part of a new immigration Bill now before Parliament.

“The UNHCR expresses concern over the possible repercussions in terms of asylum and...in light of past experience, hopes that these measures do not cause other tragedies with serious loss of human life,” the agency said in a statement.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Cabinet has said the navy will be authorised to board and inspect boats and to impound and destroy vessels found to be acting illegally.

The navy has been used to patrol for illegal immigrant ships for years, but has taken a low profile since 1997 when a naval vessel collided with and sank a packed Albanian boat, killing more than 80 Albanians.

The Defence Ministry has said the navy will not be allowed to fire at or across the bows of boats suspected of carrying illegal immigrants.

Hundreds of Chinese, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Kurdish immigrants arrive every month in fishing boats or small ships from Turkey and North Africa. Many do not plan to stay in Italy but want to reach relatives in northern Europe.

Italy has one of the lowest immigrant populations in Europe, with just 2.2 per cent officially classified as immigrant. But surveys show Italians think there are too many immigrants in the country and the issue has become a political rallying cry for Berlusconi’s conservative coalition. Reuters

Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer, while showing Jerusalem’s seriousness about selling the Arrow missiles to India and Turkey, has said he would ask US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to allow missiles’ export to Turkey and eventual sales of the anti-missile system to India.

He said he would tell Rumsfeld: “Let us sell 200 anti-missile systems to Turkey and India”.

Ben Eliezer, in an interview with the ‘Defence News’, said Washington’s permission to sell the missiles to the third countries, including India and Turkey and the US funding for missiles’ co-production in the USA, would be among the key issues for his discussion with Rumsfeld tomorrow at the Pentagon.

Citing India and Turkey as prospective customers for the missiles, he said “although, I am certainly taking into consideration the US sensitivities with regard to ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan and Washington’s larger interests in the region.”

Asked whether Israel’s planned export request does not violate earlier insistence by the USA that there would be no third country sales of the Arrow, Eliezer said “between friends, nothing is chutzpah,” using the Yiddish language term for nerve. PTI

CONTRACEPTION SERVICE BY PHONE
WARSAW: A Polish Internet company has begun offering women a “contraception service”, warning them via mobile telephone text message to abstain when they are most fertile, a local newspaper has reported. The service is activated by completing a series of questions on the One-2-One company’s website, the paper reported on Tuesday. AFP