Jerusalem, February 21
Israel freed 500 Palestinian prisoners in a good-will gesture today, a day after the government gave final approval to a pullout from Gaza and a revised route of the West Bank separation barrier that would encompass at least 6 per cent of land claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.

With the historic Cabinet vote, Israel began charting its final borders, bypassing negotiations and angering the Palestinians. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the decision to leave Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank was the hardest that he ever made, but would ensure a better future for Israel.

The release of Palestinian prisoners was one of the gestures Sharon had agreed to at his summit with Abbas earlier this month in Egypt. Convoys of buses carrying shackled inmates left Israel’s desert prison camp of Ketziot around dawn today, and arrived at five drop-off points on the edges of the West Bank and Gaza Strip just before noon, military officials said. They were greeted by cheering crowds of relatives.

Those freed had not been involved in attacks on Israelis.

Israel has promised to release another 400 prisoners within the next three months. A joint Israeli-Palestinian ministerial committee will decide which prisoners will be released in the second round. Israel is resisting Palestinian demands to free those serving long terms, including for attacks on Israelis. — AP

San Francisco, February 21
The world’s first mobile phone virus “in the wild” has spread to the United States from its birthplace in the Philippines eight months ago, a security research firm said on Friday.

The virus, called Cabir, has spread slowly into 12 countries and marks the beginning of the mobile phone virus era, which could one day disrupt the lives of many of the world’s 1.5 billion mobile phone users.

The biggest impact of the relatively innocuous virus, found in about 15 variations so far, is draining mobile phone batteries, said Mikko Hypponen, director of Finnish anti-virus research company F-Secure.

Hypponen said Cabir was found on Monday in a technology gadgets store in Santa Monica, California, when a passing techie spotted a telltale sign on the screen of a phone in the store.

“It’s interesting (the Cabir variant) has now been found in the United States, but it’s not the end of the world,” said Hypponen.

The mobile-virus threat will grow in the future as virus-writers become more sophisticated and phones standardise on technologies that make it easier for viruses to spread across not just specific devices, but the whole industry.

The danger is small at the moment, in part because of the range of handheld technologies. This is unlike the personal computer world dominated by the Windows operating system made by Microsoft Corp.

Also, many handheld device makers have recently released new mobile phones equipped with anti-virus software.

The store owner’s phone had also been infected, Hypponen said.

Both devices were Nokia 6600 smart phones, which combine phone and computer functions, like e-mail. Nokia is the world’s biggest mobile phone maker.

Analysts say the various features in smart phones make them more vulnerable to viruses than voice-only phones. Hypponen said it was likely other devices in the area were also infected by Cabir, although there was no confirmation of that.

Unlike computer viruses that spread quickly around the world via the Internet, Cabir spreads slowly because it travels only over short distances through a wireless technology known as Bluetooth. It also requires a user to restart the phone after it has been exposed for the virus to take hold.

In cases where Cabir spread to different countries, an infected phone has typically been carried by the user to another country.

Cabir has been found in countries ranging from China to the United Kingdom. — PTI

“The President has urged the USA to move from the stage of conflict management and assist in conflict resolution to bring durable peace to South Asia and the Middle East,” a Foreign Ministry statement quoted Musharraf as telling a visiting high-powered bipartisan American Senator delegation.

The delegation consisting of Democrate Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican John Macaine held talk with Musharraf on the developments in Iraq, Afghanistan and on the Indo-Pak peace process.

Musharraf to the delegation during the hour-long meeting that dialogue should move forward alongside confidence building measures to take ahead the peace process with India, the statement said.

The delegation appreciated the progress in Pakistan-India relations, it added.

Dubai, February 21
Bollywood actor Vijay Raaz, arrested by the UAE police in Abu Dhabi for possessing drugs, appeared in a local court, media reports said.

The Abu Dhabi police confirmed that the actor was arrested on February 15, and not the previous day as had been reported.

Raaz was quoted as saying that he was innocent and was made to sign papers given by Arabic speaking officials who assured him that they were trying to help him.

He had no clue where he was being taken and since the UAE officials were speaking in Arabic, he could not communicate with them either, Khaleej Times quoted an embassy official as saying.

The actor was here for the shooting of the Hindi film “Diwaane Hue Paagal”. — UNI

Peshawar, February 21
Authorities in northwestern Pakistan today reported 80 more deaths in the past week because of rain and heavy snow, while in the flood-hit southern areas thousands of troops were repairing roads and power lines.

Khan Sher, an official at the relief commission for North-West Frontier Province, said many roads were still closed in the hard-hit districts of Swat, Kohistan and Galyat, and two helicopters were dropping food and medicine to isolated communities.

He reported 346 dead, up from 260 a week ago, and 344 injured since the wintry conditions took hold in January.

He said casualties was likely to rise as more debris from floods, avalanche and collapsed buildings was cleared in the days ahead. — AP

Karachi, February 21
Osama bin Laden may be in Iran. One of the most senior American diplomats in Pakistan has said the USA believes Osama may have been intercepted and detained against his will by Iranian agents while travelling along the border between eastern Iran, Balochistan and Afghanistan.

It is a journey already tried out in the past by several Al-Qaida members, may be even by Osama himself, and therefore considered safe, explains the diplomat, who agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.

According to the diplomat, the ‘‘Osama in Iran’’ theory already features in American intelligence reports. Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. ‘‘Until last September we knew, we were sure, that he was in south Waziristan. Now we think Iran, or Yemen. These are the theories they are putting forward,’’ he explained.

For this reason, the USA is no longer putting as much pressure on Pakistan for the military operations to continue in south Waziristan or to open up new fronts in other areas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the diplomat said. ‘‘To open new fronts along the border risks destabilising Pakistan and there is no reason to do that, given that we are no longer sure Osama is in that area.’’

The Yemen theory indicated that Osama had fled to the Gulf country, driven partly by the desire to personally head up the new Al-Qaida offensive across the border in Saudi Arabia. But the most convincing hypothesis, considering the climate of tension between Washington and Teheran over the nuclear issue, is surely the Iranian one. And this is the one the diplomat insists on pursuing.

In the past there has been talk of the possible presence of leading Al-Qaida figures in Teheran, in a militarised compound directly controlled by the Pasdaran (Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards corps).

Further fuelling these rumours was an announcement last year by Hassan Rohani, Secretary-General of the Iranian National Security Council, that Al-Qaida-linked arrests have been made and that these would lead to a future trial.

‘‘They (the Iranians) have played these games in the past, letting whoever they pleased come and go, and freeing those who were no longer useful to them,’’ the diplomat said.

Yet this time, Osama bin Laden himself could have become trapped in one of the Iranian intelligence ‘‘games’’.

The Al-Qaida leader may have tried to seek temporary refuge in Iran after being forced to abandon south Waziristan, following the Pakistani and US military offensive and the arrest of a series of Al-Qaida members who could have revealed the exact location of his hiding place. Probably entering Iran through Balochistan and possibly passing through the border city of Taftan, Osama may have been taken in custody by agents from Teheran.