Kandhar, May 13
Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's top operational commander in southern Afghanistan, was killed during a clash with Afghan and western forces in the Helmand province, Afghan officials said today.

The death of Dadullah represents the biggest setback to the Taliban command since the insurgency began, after its Islamic militia government was toppled by US-backed forces in 2001.

''He was killed last night and right now I have his body before me,'' Assadullah Khalid, governor of neighbouring Kandahar province, told Reuters.

An interior ministry statement said Dadullah was killed in fighting with security forces in Helmand's Girishk district yesterday. Officials from NATO and the US-led coalition could not confirm it.

The one-legged Dadullah has been reported to have been captured or killed several times in the past, but this time the authorities appeared sure he was dead.

A Reuters reporter who had seen Dadullah in the past recognised the body brought to Kandahar.The bearded face was pale and splattered with blood, and he appeared to have suffered a head wound.

Placed on a stretcher, the corpse was partially covered with a purple cloth. The left leg was missing.A senior Pakistani security official, who requested anonymity, gave a different version, saying Dadullah was killed on Friday night in an airstrike. But an Afghan intelligence official said that was incorrect, and Dadullah died from wounds rather than being blown to pieces by a bomb or missile strike.

''His body is intact,'' the Afghan official said.— Reuters

New York, May 13
An Indian-origin woman was mowed down by a van outside her house here as she was putting the garbage out.

Nina Sharma( 49) was in front of her family's East Meadow home late on Thursday night when a gray van careened out of darkness and struck her at the curb before speeding away.

Sharma, mother of three teenaged boys, was hurled at least 30 feet down the street and landed in front of a neighbour's home.

Her husband, Rajinder Sharma, was in the house when he heard the horrifying thump and ran out.

He said he spotted her body down the street and ran to her, but she had suffered massive and fatal head trauma. Sharma was taken to the Nassau University Medical Centre, where she was pronounced dead.

Investigators found pieces of the car in the street and are analysing them, hoping that it will lead them to the hit-and-run driver.

Neighbours have been placing flowers at the site where her body was discovered.

Sharma moved to East Meadow from Flushing, Queens, a year ago. The Nassau County police is now asking for help in finding the driver of the van. — PTI

Strong-arm tactics are not an option in resolving the current crisis in Pakistan, according to a commentary by prestigious online news intelligence service Stratfor.

It points out that General Pervez Musharraf and his allies are maintaining that they will abide by whatever decision the judiciary makes, even if it amounts to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's reinstatement, undoing the decision to sack him. It will not end the crisis but only exacerbate it because an emboldened civil society and judiciary will not allow Musharraf to seek a controversial second term from the same electoral college, especially while he is President and military chief.

Stratfor writes: “Consequently, Musharraf has at his disposal a few options, none of them good. He can follow the advice of those advocating a hard-line approach and end up like former Pakistani military dictator Field Marshall Ayub Khan, who was driven out of office amid protests in 1969; or he can cut a deal with the main opposition group, the Pakistan People's Party, and share power.

Musharaf has been, to a great degree, an unorthodox military leader and is known to opt for pragmatism in the face of a difficult situation, and he is likely to go for the latter option. But doing so will just delay the pace at which he will lose power, since stepping down from the military in the current circumstances could erode his position to the point that he might not complete the second five-year term he is seeking.”

According to the analysis, because he fears losing power, Musharraf might not cut a deal and tough it out. This cannot be completely ruled out. But regardless of which option he chooses, Musharraf ultimately will end up losing power. He can only choose between a fast and complete loss of power, or sharing it, a move that could lead to a decent exit. 

Expressing serious concern over the increased recruitment of children in People's Liberation Army (PLA) by the Communist Party of Nepal- Maoist, the United Nations Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict has urged both the government of Nepal and former rebels to demobilise child soldiers immediately.

Sending messages to the government of Nepal and Maoists separately, the Working Group called for an immediate liberation of all child soldiers from military services.

“In regard to Nepal, we hope that the children who remain in the ranks of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) will be demobilised and reintegrated in their communities without delay,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said.

The Working Group which was established in 2005 to protect children from armed conflicts, however, did not mention the exact situation of child soldiers in the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), which completed the first phase of registration of the Maoist combatants and their arms, had also said it had found significant number of minors in Maoist combatants who were recruited after May 25, 2006.

London, May 13
Britain's Chancellor Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister-in-waiting,is planning to strip Downing Street of key powers and looking at setting up an inquiry into the mistakes made in the run-up to the Iraq war, the media here reported today.

One idea doing the rounds is to beef up the Intelligence and Security Committee of MPs and peers by making it accountable to Parliament rather than the Prime minister,The Observer said.

An inquiry along the lines of the Franks Commission, which examined the build-up to the Falklands war in 1982, is being pressed strongly by supporters of the Chancellor.

Brown recognises that Iraq is the key issue that is polluting the government in the eyes of many voters.

According to the report, Brown is planning to strip Downing Street of key powers in some of the most far-reaching reforms of the British premiership for a generation.

In an attempt to draw a line under the era of Tony Blair, Brown is looking at guaranteeing Parliament the right to approve war and remove symbolic 'royal prerogative' powers from the Prime Minister and hand them to Parliament.

He has also said that he will revisit many of the fundamental National Health Service reforms of the Blair years and demand that GP (General Practitioners) surgeries be open at the weekend and that doctors be on call in the evenings.

Doctors were given the right of opting out of out-of-hours care two years ago, under a controversial pay deal, signed by the then Health Secretary John Reid, that awarded them a 22 per cent pay rise last year. — PTI

Tehran, May 13
Iran today said it has agreed to hold talks with its arch enemy the USA in a bid to improve security in Iraq, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“Iran has agreed to talk to the US side over Iraq in order to relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, to support the government and to reinforce security in Iraq,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

“The time and date of the talks and the ranking of the negotiating team will be made public this week.”

He said the talks would go ahead after the USA made an official request to Iran through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran and also following mediation efforts by Iraqi officials,the local media reported.

Hosseini’s comments come just over a week after hopes were dashed that Iran and the USA would hold substantive contacts at the conference on Iraq’s security in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki barely exchanged pleasantries with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while a lower-level encounter on May 4 between high-ranking diplomats lasted just minutes. — AFP

Riyadh, May 13
A Saudi convicted of murder and two Pakistanis found guilty of drug trafficking were beheaded by the sword today, the Interior Ministry said.

Mufreh bin Ahmad al-Missbali Assiri stabbed to death Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Mudhlim Assiri after an argument, the ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency SPA.

He was executed in the southwestern region of Assir.

The two Pakistani men were beheaded in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for drug trafficking, the ministry said in a separate statement.

Nasser Khan and Abdulrasheed Musharaf were caught trying to smuggle undisclosed amounts of heroin hidden in their stomachs into the kingdom, the ministry said.

The beheadings brought to 66 the number of executions announced by the Saudi authorities this year.

At least 37 persons were executed in 2006, while 83 were put to death in 2005 and 35 the year before, according to AFP tallies based on official statements.

Executions are usually carried out in public in Saudi Arabia, which applies a strict form of sharia, or Islamic law. Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking can all carry the death penalty. — AFP

Yangon, May 13
Women in Myanmar not only have to watch out for pickpockets when they're commuting, shopping or walking down the street, but also hair thieves, a weekly journal reported today.

Long-haired women in crowded areas have fallen victim to surreptitious hair snippers who steal their hair to sell, the Burmese-language 24/7 news journal reported.

“My long hair was cut while I was on my way back from the office. I found out only when I got back home,” an unidentified female bus commuter was quoted as saying.

The woman said her friend's tresses were cut while she was walking down the street and she only noticed when some remaining strands fell. Another woman's hair was cut while she was shopping at a roadside store, the  journal said.

Many women in Myanmar have waist- or knee-length hair which they wear in a ponytail, making it easy for thieves to snip off the hair and sell it as extensions.

Women are also approached by hair traders who ask to buy their long hair, the journal quoted the bus commuter 
as saying.

The report said the price of hair had increased as demand for hair as an export or raw material rises. A viss  (1.6 kilograms; 3.5 pounds) of hair is worth between 400,000 kyats (USD 320; euro 235) and 500,000 kyats (USD 40; euro 290), it said.

Railways minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed said a government deal with former premier Benazir Bhutto is still on the cards despite current events resulting from the judicial crisis.

Talking to a private TV channel after the May 12 rally by the ruling PML, Rashid said the upcoming presidential election in October would be the key factor in an arrangement between President Musharraf and Ms Bhutto on a "give and take" basis.He said the rally was a political response to the opposition's anti-Musharraf campaign in the name of support for independence of judiciary and the suspended chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

Rashid said both Musharraf and Benazir were pragmatic leaders and had adopted a realistic approach to political issues facing the nation.

He emphatically stated that under the mutually agreed arrangement, Ms Bhutto would not return to Pakistan before elections.If the other exiled premier Nawaz Sharif made any attempt to land in Pakistan, he would be sent back to Saudi Arabia without much fuss.

He pointed out that neither President Musharraf nor he himself made any adverse remarks against Ms Bhutto in speeches at Saturday's rally. Asked why Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi chose the occasion for a very hostile tirade against Ms Bhutto, Rashid said the chief minister had a consistent stance on the issue.