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Mugabe makes peace with opposition
China signs border pact with Russia
Temple Dispute
Nawaz Sharif to skip Gilani’s conference
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Zardari’s top security officer killed
Al-Qaida leader asks Pak nationals to rebel
Obama wants US troops out of Iraq in 16 months
‘Butcher of Bosnia’ held in Belgrade
India dismisses US offer on farm subsidies
Unilateral US action in Pak may backfire: report
Parrot saves family from blaze
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Mugabe makes peace with opposition
Harare, July 22 President Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a deal on Monday that committed the ruling ZANU-PF and two factions of the MDC to two weeks of negotiations with South African mediators. A diplomatic source close to the talks said negotiations began on Tuesday at an undisclosed venue in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria. The source said neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai would attend the opening round. An MDC official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ”There was convergence among all parties that the dialogue had to start as soon as the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) was done, hence the resumption of that process today.” The government and the opposition had been deadlocked over talks since Mugabe was re-elected unopposed on June 27 in a run-off poll boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence against his supporters. Mugabe blames the opposition for the bloodshed.The main goal of the Pretoria talks will be the creation of a government of national unity, though the two sides differ on who should lead it and how long it should stay in power. But analysts said the two-week deadline may be difficult to keep to.“Unfortunately, I am very sceptical. I think it is ambitious to expect a solution in two weeks. Yesterday’s event is a good first step, but the two parties are so polarised it will take nothing short of a miracle to achieve that,” said John Makumbe, political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. Pressure on the two sides to share power came from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, concerned by the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe that has flooded neighbouring states with millions of refugees. The European Union on Tuesday increased pressure on Mugabe, saying it had agreed additional sanctions on Zimbabwe.
— Reuters
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China signs border pact with Russia
Beijing, July 22 The “additional protocol on the eastern part of borders" was signed by Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi and his Russian counterpart Sergei
Lavrov, Xinhua news agency said. "It shows that as long as we strive to find solutions on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, all questions - also complicated ones - can be solved," Lavrov told reporters. Russia is eager to boost exports of oil, gas and nuclear products to China, world's second biggest consumer of oil and power, though China's growing world clout is watched with some anxiety by Moscow's elite. Russia, whose $ 1.3 trillion economy is booming for a 10th straight year, has forged close ties with China on a number of world issues, including Iran and North Korea. But relations over the past century have run hot and cold. China and the Soviet Union went from being best friends in the 1950s to suspicious rivals a decade later when they fought a series of border skirmishes after falling out over ideological principles. The two countries signed an agreement on demarcation of the eastern part of their border in 1991, followed by a supplementary agreement in 2004. A pact on the western border was signed in 1994. According to the latest protocol, Russia would return Yinlong Island or Tarabarov Island and half of Heixiazi Island
(Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island), the China Daily said yesterday. The 174-square km of territory, which was seized by the then Soviet Union in 1929, was at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers that serve as the natural border between the two countries, the newspaper said. "It means that 4,300 km of border between us has been demarcated," Yang told reporters after signing the document. "In our talks, we placed high value on the speedy development and successes of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership in recent years," he said.
— Reuters
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Temple Dispute
Singapore, July 22 ''In order to avoid armed confrontation, the Royal Government of Cambodia has decided to request an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to find a solution to the problem in accordance with international laws,'' the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The foreign ministers of Thailand and Cambodia briefed their counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations about the situation at a working lunch, but did not give ASEAN a mandate to mediate, a Philippine diplomat said afterward. Cambodia had asked ASEAN to get involved through a letter sent to Singapore foreign minister George Yeo as host of this week's annual ASEAN ministerial meetings in the city state. But Thailand does not want to internationalise the dispute, he said. ''Thailand wants to continue bilateral talks, so ASEAN cannot do anything unless there is an official request from the two sides for ASEAN to intervene,'' the diplomat said. ''But the offer still stands. ASEAN is making available its good offices to help resolve the issue.'' Malaysian foreign minister Rais Yatim had said before the lunch that neither Cambodia nor Thailand was opposed to ASEAN's mediation efforts. ''The two of them are very willing to submit to the (ASEAN) jurisdiction,'' he said. Cambodia has asked ASEAN to form an inter-ministerial group of foreign ministers from Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos to ''find a peaceful solution to the current crisis and avoid a military confrontation between two ASEAN members''. ASEAN foreign ministers are holding their annual series of meetings first amongst themselves, then with Asia-Pacific powers culminating in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which has ambitions to deal with issues such as the Thai-Cambodia spat. Yesterday's talks on the Thai-Cambodia border partly bogged down over which maps should be used to settle ownership of the temple and surrounding area, officials said.
— Reuters
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Nawaz Sharif to skip Gilani’s conference
PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif will miss the leadership conference convened tomorrow by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to refurbish the tottering 4-party coalition amid reports that the PML-N has decided to pull out of the coalition if certain contentious issues, including the restoration of judges, were not resolved by August 14.
Nawaz is currently in London tending to his ailing wife and has named his brother and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif to represent him at the conference. But most political observers believe the conference will be a non-starter without Nawaz Sharif as no important decision will be taken in his absence. PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari returned from Dubai after staying abroad for nearly a month and met Gilani and some other senior cabinet ministers for nearly 7 hours. The meeting reportedly decided to strengthen the coalition. Asfandyar Wali Khan, president, Awami National Party (ANP), is attending the conference. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of JUI, is currently in Libya, but has confirmed he will be back in time for the conference. Fazlur met Zardari in Dubai while on way to Libya. He expressed disaffection over the way the coalition government was being run without due consultation with the coalition partners. The PML-N says it will stay in the coalition only if concrete steps are taken by August 15 on four critical issues, including restoration of the deposed judges and impeachment of Musharraf. The other major issues dividing the PPP and the PML-N are implementation of the Charter of Democracy and review of the policy on the war against terrorism. “We are extremely disappointed with the performance of the coalition so far,” a PML-N senior leader requesting not to be named said.
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Zardari’s top security officer killed
Karachi, July 22 Zardari is the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, while campaigning for an election that her party subsequently won. Ejaz Durrani, a spokesman for Zardari in Karachi, said the assailants ambushed the security officer, Khalid Shehanshah, outside his house in Karachi’s upmarket Defence neighbourhood. Zardari was in Islamabad when the attack took place. “The attackers got out of a white car and opened fire as Shehanshah was standing outside his house,” provincial interior minister Zulfiqar Mirza told reporters. Shehanshah was a member of Bhutto’s security escort on the day she was killed. Mirza declined to speculate who could have been behind Shehanshah’s killing.
— Reuters
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Al-Qaida leader asks Pak nationals to rebel
Islamabad, July 22 Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, alias Sheikh Saeed, an Egyptian identified as Al-Qaida’s third highest-ranking leader by US intelligence agencies, also claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on the Danish Embassy here in June that killed eight persons. In a rare on-camera interview to Pakistan’s Geo TV, he said the Danish Embassy bombing was carried out by a man from the “holy land” of Mecca, who had originally come to fight in Kashmir or Afghanistan. Al-Yazid spoke to the private Pakistani channel at Khost in eastern Afghanistan and terrorism experts said this was the first time since 2002 that any top Al-Qaida leader had given an interview. Al-Yazid, in the interview, sought for the destruction of the Pakistan government, which he said had “betrayed” the ‘jihadis’. He accused President Pervez Musharraf and his government of committing crimes by arresting
foreign fighters. Pakistani agencies had arrested “Arab mujahideen and handed them over to American infidels” and Pakistan, out of all Islamic states, has done the “most harm” to Islam, he said. Al-Yazid praised the people of the Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas, a stronghold of the Taliban, for helping in the fighting in Afghanistan. He called for more Pakistanis to join the fighting in Afghanistan, saying it was a responsibility imposed by Islam and “obligatory for them to render this help”.
— PTI
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Obama wants US troops out of Iraq in 16 months
Baghdad, July 21 His visit thrusts US strategy in Iraq and troop levels to the centre of the November election race between the first-term senator from Illinois and Republican candidate John McCain. There are more than 140,000 US soldiers in Iraq. Obama has called for the removal of US combat troops within 16 months of taking office should he win the election. Iraqiya state television and witnesses said Obama met Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad. There were no further details on Obama's visit which has been shrouded in secrecy for security reasons. Obama visited Afghanistan over the weekend, the other big foreign policy challenge the next American president will face. He called the situation in Afghanistan "precarious and urgent" and said Washington should start planning to transfer more troops there from Iraq. Maliki had suggested earlier this month about setting a timetable for US troops to leave Iraq but had given no dates. Obama has welcomed Maliki's suggestion but some Iraqis insist that the army and police cannot go it alone and that a premature withdrawal of US troops could open the door to the sort of violence that nearly tore Iraq apart not so long ago. On Sunday, the Iraqi government denied Maliki told a German magazine in an interview that he backed Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops within 16 months. The government said Maliki's remarks to Der Spiegel were translated incorrectly. McCain has attacked Obama for not visiting
Iraq recently to get a first-hand look at conditions. — Reuters
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‘Butcher of Bosnia’ held in Belgrade
London, July 22 Karadzic (63) was working at a medical clinic in Serbia's capital Belgrade using a false identity and was heavily disguised by a snow white beard before his arrest, Serbian officials said today. He was arrested after weeks-long covert operation to track down the former leader, said prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic. Karadzic is accused of ordering the deadly siege of Sarajevo and some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II - including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. Serbian minister Rasim Ljajic told reporters that Karadzic was using false documents giving him the name of “Dragan Dabic” and a non-Serbian identity at the time of arrest. “It wasn’t expected at all that this would ever happen to Radovan Karadzic - that he would ever be caught in this way,” said Ljajic, president of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.
— PTI
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India dismisses US offer on farm subsidies
Geneva, July 22 “My immediate response is that it doesn’t pass the ‘laugh test’,” the senior official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. He said the new proposed ceiling was double as current actual outlays for US farmers was about $7 billion, while the United States was asking developing countries to open markets by making real cuts in their actual agricultural and industrial tariffs. Earlier, US trade representative Susan Schwab announced the offer, conditional on improved market access from the US trading partners, in order to kick start negotiations on a new global trade pact at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
— Reuters
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Unilateral US action in Pak may backfire: report
New York, July 22 The US has increased the pressure in the recent days, asserting in public statements and closed-door meetings with the Pakistani officials that the increase in the number of Taliban fighters crossing from their tribal areas into Afghanistan to fight American forces was unacceptable, the New York Times said.
— PTI
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Parrot saves family from blaze
London, July 22 The family was woken by Bob, the three-year-old African grey parrot, whose growling became frantic as the flames spread to the living room. The blaze seemed to have started in the microwave oven. The trio, along with the bird, managed to escape in time.
— PTI
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SAARC summit: Tigers declare ceasefire Russia launches German spy satellite Bush’s plea for recognition to Kosovo Beijing hotels slash rates Carla defends nude photos 
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