Male, October 29
A former political prisoner has swept to victory in the Maldives’ first-ever democratic presidential election, unseating Asia’s longest-serving leader, officials said today.

The Indian Ocean archipelago nation’s election commission said with nearly all votes from yesterday’s historic polls counted, Mohamed “Anni” Nasheed had won 54 per cent of votes to 46 per cent for incumbent leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Gayoom had ruled the tourist paradise islands unchallenged since 1978, and had in the past thrown Nasheed into jail.

Gayoom failed to win an outright victory in the first round of voting three weeks ago, prompting the run-off against the charismatic 41-year-old Nasheed, once described by Amnesty International as a “prisoner of conscience.”

The Maldives, a liberal Sunni Muslim nation of 300,000 persons, has never had multi-party elections before. In fact, until a few years ago, anyone declaring an intention to seek high office used to be banished to an uninhabited island.

The elections were the result of Gayoom’s promise to bring political freedoms to the Indian Ocean archipelago in the wake of pro-democracy protests and international pressure.

With almost 97.5 per cent of the ballots counted, Nasheed had a 14,000-vote lead that put him safely above the 50 per cent mark, an election official said. — AFP

In a major breakthrough after coming to power, the Maoist-led coalition government on Tuesday constituted a five-member Army Integration Special Committee (AISC) led by deputy prime minister and minister for home affairs Bam Dev Gautam to work on integration and rehabilitation of the former rebels (Maoist) combatants into the Nepal Army.

A meeting of the political committee in the Cabinet held at the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluwatar this afternoon formed the special committee comprising each member from the CPN-UML, the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) and the Nepali Congress (NC), respectively, and two members from the CPN-Maoist.

Minister for Information and communications and Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara informed that the five-member committee under the leadership of UML leader and Deputy Prime Minister Gautam would start its work immediately and prepare a complete report on the integration and rehabilitation process of the Maoist combatant.

Other members in the committee are: Minister for Defence Ram Bahadur Thapa from the Maoist, Professor Mohammad Habibullah from the MJF and Minister for Peace and Reconstruction and Maoist leader Janardan Sharma as ex-officio member of the committee.

“A member from the NC will be inducted in the AISC once the party provides the name of its representative to the committee,” Mahara said.

The Nepali Congress, however, looked miffed. Later on Tuesday, NC vice-president Ram Chandra Poudel said, “The government constituted the committee unilaterally. We are not in consensus with the government regarding the composition of the committee and the terms of reference of the committee. We haven’t supported either of the decisions.”

Another NC leader Dr Ram Sharan Mahat said the Cabinet’s political committee “ignored the NC” and formed the five-member committee. “Instead, it inducted two members from the CPN (Maoist),” he added.

Earlier, the NC leaders had suggested that the government form a four-member committee led by a leader from a party other than the CPN (Maoist), with a representative each from the four major political parties.

“But the government’s political committee ignored the NC and formed the five-member committee inducting two members from the CPN-Maoist,” Mahat said. He also said the terms of reference introduced by the government had empowered the AISC to form the technical committees while preparing report for the PLA’s integration and their rehabilitation.

Of the 32,250 registered Maoist combatants confined in various cantonment sites across the country, the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) led the Joint Monitoring Coordinating Committee had verified 19,692 PLA personnel as eligible combatants.

President Asif Ali Zardari has reiterated that the blockade of Chenab water by India could dent the ongoing confidence-building measures (CBMs). Zardari was talking to Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal, who met him at the president’s house in Islamabad.

According to the state-run APP, Zardari urged India to abide by the terms of the Indus Water Treaty and stop blocking Pakistan’s water. Pal said the Indian government was determined to advance the CBMs with Pakistan. Pakistan blamed India for blocking water in Chenab while filling the Baglihar dam it had built on the river in its part of Kashmir. Both countries held talks on the issue in New Delhi last week and India also allowed Pakistan’s commissioner Indus Water Treaty, Syed Jamaat Ali Shah, to ascertain the fact.

On return to Lahore from India, Shah said Pakistan had partly accepted Indian version that water flow from catchments areas was lower than in the past, which delayed the work on filling the dam beyond the deadline India had given to Pakistan.

India has been asked to compensate by supplying water from its own rivers- Ravi and Sutlej. Zardari also met Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) president Raja Zulqernain on Monday during which he reaffirmed support to the people of Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). He said the cross-LoC trade would further enhance the CBMs.

He said the solution of the Kashmir dispute was crucial for settling all issues with India and hope enhanced trade would help to move towards a solution acceptable to all stakeholders.

Zardari received a lot of flak at home for his remarks to the Wall Street Journal during visit to New York last month, describing Kashmiri militants as terrorists and asserting that India had never been a threat to Pakistan. Though his aides tried to explain his remarks, he himself had not directly denied them. He has been consistently espousing the case of enhanced trade and people-to-people contacts as his priority while pending the resolution of the Kashmir issue in the due course of time.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan mini jirga has agreed to hold talks with the Taliban and militants on both sides of the border.

The two-day meeting of the mini jirga that concluded Tuesday reviewed the law and order situation in the border areas and different proposals to contact militant groups on Tuesday.

Informed sources said both sides had agreed to hold dialogue with the Taliban and considered names for setting up a panel of 10 distinguished people from each side for this purpose.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's upper house of parliament, the Senate has unanimously adopted a condemnation resolution against Thursday's US drone attack and asked the government to take effective measures to stop such intrusions, saying passing mere resolutions would not do.

Opposition legislators strongly advocated early implementation of the resolution passed by the in-camera joint session of parliament, calling the US assaults a breach of parliament and the masses' aspirations.

Leader of the House Mian Raza Rabbani who initiated the resolution, informed the house that the US ambassador would be summoned to register protest over the attack and to seek assurance that no such incident would take place in future.

The lawmakers were outraged by the missile assault, which took place within hours after parliament's in-camera session passed a unanimous resolution on terrorism.

Islamabad, October 29
Taliban militants today briefly took more than 100 children hostage at a school in Pakistan’s troubled northwestern tribal region before freeing them.

A group of 10 to 12 militants entered a state-run school in the Darwaz Gai area of Mohmand tribal agency, bordering Afghanistan, after a gun battle with security forces and took over the premises with the students inside.

However, they released the children after some time, officials said. It was not immediately clear what prompted the militants to free them.

After the children left, security forces exchanged heavy gunfire with the militants. They used mortars to target the Taliban militants in the school and a nearby market.

Mohmand agency has been tense over the past few days due to a major anti-militancy operation being conducted by the security forces in adjoining Bajaur tribal agency.

The army has claimed to kill more than 1,500 militants in Bajaur and reports have suggested that Taliban fighters have fled the area to Mohmand agency.

The Taliban recently carried out a suicide attack on a security check post in Mohmand. Following this, curfew was imposed in the area and four militants were arrested yesterday. — PTI 

New York, October 29
A US-based Kashmiri group has endorsed Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama saying he has better plans to fight terrorism across the globe.

Kashmir solidarity, which strongly opposes separatist forces in Jammu and Kashmir, said, “Obama will be able to better manage both economy and foreign relations and Indo-US relations will further strengthen under his leadership.” “Though our outfit prefers the trade policies of Republican candidate John McCain, it feels that Sarah Palin, as a running mate, is too risky to be one step away from the White House,” chairman of the solidarity Surinder Zutshi said.

The endorsement comes as polls show that Obama has wide support  among Indian-Americans. — PTI 

Washington, October 29
Archaeologists working in Jordan believe that they may have found the site of the fabled mines of King Solomon, which contained copper rather than the gold and diamonds of legend, new research shows.

In an account published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the archeologists detail their excavations at an ancient copper production centre in a desert region of southern Jordan.

Carbon dating of material found at the site and artefacts dates match the time when King Solomon, whose story is recounted in the Bible, is said to have run a vast empire in the Middle East around the ninth and 10th centuries BC. A team led by Thomas Levy of the University of San Diego and Mohammad Najjar of Jordan’s Friends of Archaeology worked at the site in Khirbat en-Nahas, which means “ruins of copper” in Arabic, in an arid region south of the Dead Sea.

“We can’t believe everything ancient writings tell us,” Levy said. “But this research represents a confluence between the archaeological and scientific data and the Bible.” Khirbat en-Nahas, comprising 100 ancient buildings, including a fortress, is situated in a large area covered by black slag (mine refuse) that can be clearly seen on Google Earth’s satellite imagery, the report said.

Mining trails and mines abound and the size of the operations argued for industrial-scale production, Levy said.

The existence of King Solomon’s mines has been an open question for archaelogists working in the area. An American claimed to have found them in the 1930s, but his work was subsequently dismissed.

British research in the 1970s and 1980s claimed that the Iron Age had not come to the area before the seventh century BC.

King Solomon’s Mines were made famous by a novel at the end of the 19th century by the writer adventurer Sir H. Rider Haggard, which told of a gang of adventurers in search of treasure in Africa.

The biblical King Solomon, the son of King David, was known for his wisdom, his tremendous wealth and his writings.

He is credited with building the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. — AFP

As the Sri Lankan troops made further inroads into the last remaining stronghold of Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lanka on Wednesday, the LTTE once again used two of its aircraft to launch air raids, one on an army base in the north and another on a power station in Colombo, demonstrating they are still a force to reckon with.

The attack on Tuesday night resulted in little damage to the power station and the army camp, but the city of Colombo and suburbs were plunged into darkness as power was shut off to prevent the LTTE aircraft from identifying key installations in the city.

However, despite the heavy anti-aircraft action that followed, the Tiger aircraft seem to have made a getaway after dropping two bombs, once again frustrating the efforts by the military to shoot them down.

The LTTE air attack also resulted in two passenger aircraft being diverted to Chennai till the situation had eased.

Meanwhile, government troops continued their push towards Kilinochi with troops taking over another key town Jayapuram in its thrust towards the Kilinochi town.

There has been a lull in the northern operations by the troops due to the monsoons that have set in and slowed down their advance.

Beijing, October 29
China will arrange new talks with Dalai Lama’s envoys in the near future, state media said today, days after the exiled Tibetan leader said he was downcast about negotiations with Beijing.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, has said he wants a high level of autonomy for Tibet, but not outright independence. China brands him a separatist.

“Relevant departments of the central authorities of China will arrange another round of contacts and negotiation with private representatives of the Dalai Lama in the near future at the request of the Dalai Lama side,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

Chinese officials said the Dalai Lama should “treasure this opportunity and make a positive response”.

The report did not mention when the proposed talks would be and who from the Chinese side would attend.

A senior aide of the 73-year-old leader of Tibetan Buddhism said on Sunday the Dalai Lama saw “no hope” of winning self-determination for his homeland, which erupted in riots and unrest in March. But the Dalai’s office later issued a “clarification” and said his remarks had been misrepresented.

The Dalai Lama nonetheless said “the Chinese leadership has so far not responded positively to our overtures and does not seem interested in addressing the issue in a realistic way”, according to the emailed clarification. — Reuters

Beijing, October 29
China, dubbed as the “the factory of the world,” today said its emissions almost equalled that of the US, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for the bulk of global warming.

China’s emissions of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas from fossil fuel burning, accounted for eight per cent of the world total from 1904 to 2004.

“According to our data, China’s current total emissions are almost as the same as that of the United States,” Xie Zhenhua, vice director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Xie told reporters here while explaining a government white paper on climate change.

“Whether or not we have surpassed the U.S. in emissions is in itself not important. We should look at the issue fairly and from a historic view,” he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

“If our total emissions were at the same level, the per capita emissions in China, home to a population of 1.3 billion, would be one-fifth of that of the U.S.,” he said.

In addition, some 20 per cent of China’s greenhouse gas emissions resulted from the production of its exports to developed countries as it is the “factory of the world”.

China has acknowledged that it was difficult to control greenhouse gas emissions because of its industrialisation process and its coal-dominated energy mix.

Xie said the country was in the process of industrialisation and urbanisation when emissions were usually high, a natural rule experienced by rich nations earlier.

“To advance further towards its development objective, China will strive for a rational growth of energy demand,” the white paper said. — PTI

Beijing, October 29
After toxic melamine in milk powder, now its the turn of eggs with the poisonous substance, forcing supermarkets in China to recall a particular brand as “unsafe to eat”.

An eastern Chinese city is recalling a brand of eggs after it was found to be contaminated with melamine, the same chemical blamed for sickening thousands of babies across the country in a milk powder scandal that killed four infants.

The bureau of quality and technical supervision of Hangzhou, capital of eastern Chinese province Zhejiang, said today that eggs with the Ciyunxiang brand were “unsafe to eat”.

It is issuing a recall of all Ciyunxiang eggs in the city. Though a countrywide recall has not been announced. The number of eggs within the contaminated batch is unknown.

Phone calls to the company, named Green Living Beings Development Centre in Shanxi Province, were not answered, the official Xinhua news agency reported today.

The Hangzhou bureau has tested 27 brands of eggs, being sold by various companies, in the city. The batch of Ciyunxiang eggs contained 3.5 mg of melamine in every kg.

Eggs from the other brands were deemed safe. Green Living Beings Development Centre’s other products on the market, including duck and quail eggs, were melamine free, the bureau informed.

There have been no reports that anyone in Hangzhou has been sickened by eating the contaminated eggs. People urged the city’s bureau of quality and technical supervision to conduct it’s own tests of all eggs after local media reports.

It was reported that eggs produced by Hanovo Foods Co. Ltd. in Dalian, Liaoning Province, were found by Hong Kong authorities to contain melamine, an official of the Hangzhou bureau said. — PTI

Hargeisa, October 29
A wave of suicide bombings today killed at least 28 persons across northern Somalia in attacks that snatched attention from political crisis talks taking place in neighbouring Kenya. The five synchronised blasts killed 25 persons in Hargeisa and another three in Bosasso.

No group immediately claimed the responsibility. But in recent months, Islamist insurgents fighting Somalia’s Western-backed interim government and its Ethiopian allies have launched attacks to coincide with international efforts to end turmoil in the lawless Horn of Africa.

The bombers hit as leaders of the interim government met regional heads of state for talks in Nairobi. The four-year-old administration is under pressure to solve the chaos and share some power with moderate opposition figures.

Washington, and its closest ally in the region Ethiopia, say Somalia’s Islamists are linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida.

“It is the work of the usual terrorists who try to create instability. I assure you they will not be left to get away with it. They will be brought to justice,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told reporters at the meeting.

In Hargeisa, in the breakaway Somaliland region, witnesses said three bombers attacked the president’s office, a UN Development Programme (UNDP) compound and the Ethiopian embassy.

Journalist Ali Jama Mohamed was walking past the presidency when a car crashed into its doors. “There was a big explosion and I saw many people, mostly pedestrians and some security guards, thrown to the floor. Some were dead and others wounded,” Mohamed told Reuters.

Witnesses said three persons were killed at the presidency, while at least 20 died at the shattered Ethiopian mission. Two people were killed at the UNDP building.

In Bosasso, in neighbouring semi-autonomous Puntland, two suicide bombers detonated explosives-laden cars inside the Intelligence Service compound, killing two soldiers and a woman and wounding several other people.

The violence has killed nearly 10,000 civilians and an unknown number of combatants since the start of last year. More than a million people have been driven from their homes. — Reuters

BRIEFLY

China crane plunge kills 11
BEIJING: A Chinese crane container carrying 23 construction workers plunged to ground, killing 11 and injuring 12, state media said on Wednesday. The accident happened due to heavy rain on Tuesday at a bridge under construction near Chongqing, in southwest China, when the steel cable suddenly snapped, Xinhua news agency reported. Nine workers died when the container hit the bridge and two died on the way to a hospital. — Reuters

Iran sets up new naval base
TEHRAN: Iran has opened a new naval base east of the Strait of Hormuz in a bid to boost its military control over the strategic Gulf waters, the country’s navy chief was quoted as saying on Tuesday. “With the opening of the naval base, a new line of defence has been created east of the Strait of Hormuz,” Admiral Habobollah Sayyari was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. — AFP

Dina Cocea dead
BUCHAREST: Dina Cocea, the aristocratic “queen of Romanian theatre” who performed over 100 roles in a career spanning more than 50 years, has died at age 95. Ion Caramitru, director of the national theater, said Cocea died on Tuesday in the Floreasca hospital due to a heart attack. — AP

Iraqi militant to be hanged
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Tuesday sentenced to death by hanging a suspected Al-Qaida in Iraq militant for the 2006 killing of three US soldiers. Ibrahim al-Qaraghuli, a 29-year-old farmer, was one of the three suspected militants who had gone to trial for the killings. The other two were found not guilty for the lack of sufficient evidence, but it was not immediately clear whether they would be released from custody. — AP

Picasso painting withdrawn
LONDON: A painting by Pablo Picasso that was expected to fetch more than $30 million at auction next week has been withdrawn from sale, Sotheby’s auction house said on Tuesday. “Arlequin” was to have been one of the star lots at Sotheby’s November 3 sale of impressionist and modern art in New York. The painting had been withdrawn by the seller due to “private reasons”, said a Sotheby’s spokeswoman. — AP

France honours Roger Moore
PARIS: British actor Roger Moore, who played the suave secret agent James Bond seven times, was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters, one of France’s highest honours, at a ceremony in Paris. Culture minister Christine Albanel, who presented the honour to Moore on Tuesday, said he was a true legend of both cinema and television. — AFP