Washington, January 21
Chinese President Hu Jintao has warned the US to keep away from Tibet or else bilateral ties would be greatly affected, a day after his American counterpart Barack Obama asked him to talk to representatives of the Dalai Lama to resolve the issue.

Hu, who is on a four-day State visit to the US, the first by a Chinese president in 13 years, said Taiwan and Tibet represented the core interests of his country and touched upon the national sentiments of 1.3 billion Chinese.

“A review of the history of our relations tells us that China-US relations will enjoy smooth and steady growth when the two countries handle well issues involving each other's major interests. Otherwise, our relations will face a constant trouble or even tension,” Hu said in his address to the US-China Business Council Luncheon yesterday.

“Taiwan and Tibet-related issues concern China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and they represent China’s core interests. They touch upon the national sentiments of the 1.3 billion Chinese. We hope that the US will honour its commitments and work with us to preserve the hard-won progress of our relations,” Hu said.

Such hard-hitting remarks from the Chinese leader came a day after Obama asked him to talk to the representatives of the Dalai Lama to resolve the Tibet issue.

“Even as we, the US, recognise that Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China, the US continues to support further dialogue between the Government of China and the representatives of the Dalai Lama to resolve concerns and differences, including the preservation of the religious and cultural identity of the Tibetan people,” Obama had said at a joint news conference with Hu at the White House.

The Tibet issue along with that of the human rights was candidly raised by Obama and his team during talks with the Chinese delegation led by Hu at the White House on Wednesday.

Tibet and Taiwan issues were also raised by US lawmakers when Hu met them at the Capitol Hill.

"China and the US are different in history, culture, social system and development level,” Hu said. “It is, thus, only normal that we have some disagreements and frictions. We should view and handle bilateral relations from the strategic and long-term perspective and with a sense of responsibility to history and to the future.” “We should prevent our relations from being affected or held back by any individual incident at any particular time. We should increase the mutual trust, remove obstacles and work together to build a China-US cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefits,” Hu said. — PTI

Istanbul, January 21
Iran and six world powers sought common ground today at talks jeopardised by Tehran’s refusal to discuss demands for curbs on nuclear activities that could enable it manufacture the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

As the two sides broke for lunch, with the Iranians dining separately, there was no sign of movement from either side from widely differing positions revealed after a first round of talks in Geneva last month. While the six would like to kickstart talks focused at freezing Iran’s uranium enrichment program, Tehran has repeatedly said this activity was not up for discussion.

Instead, Iranian officials are pushing an agenda that covers just about everything except its nuclear program: global disarmament, Israel’s suspected nuclear arsenal, and Tehran’s concerns about US military bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. “We want to discuss the fundamental problems of global politics at Istanbul talks,” said Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili, while president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested any push to restrict the meeting to Iran's N-program would fail.

A diplomat familiar with the talks says the six powers —China, UK, France, Russia, the US, and Germany — will seek to nudge Iran toward acknowledging the need to reduce worries that the nationmight turn its enrichment program to make weapons. — AP

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Al-Qaida No. 3 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and not the four men convicted by a Pakistani court in his murder, according to a new report. The investigation concludes that in their haste to wrap up the case, Pakistani authorities “knowingly used perjured testimony” to convict British-Pakistani Omar Sheikh and three others.

The four were responsible for kidnapping Pearl on January 23, 2002, but were not present when the journalist was beheaded at a safehouse outside the Pakistani port city Karachi, according to the report. The report identified 27 men who were linked to Pearl’s case. Members of at least three different militant groups played roles in various stages of Pearl’s abduction and murder, it said. Sheikh has been sentenced to death for his role. Sheikh had been jailed in India in 1994 for allegedly kidnapping Western tourists, including an American. He was freed in 1999 in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines plane.

Mohammed was arrested in March of 2003 and is currently incarcerated at the US naval detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The “Pearl Project” was led by Pearl’s friend and colleague Asra Q. Nomani and Barbara Feinman Todd, Director of the journalism program at Georgetown University. A faculty-student investigative reporting team at Georgetown conducted hundreds of interviews with past and present law-enforcement officials.

The investigation was published by the Center for Public Integrity. The report says people who were present and assisted in the beheading have not been charged. Pearl’s captors botched an attempt to film his execution on tape.

In a second staged execution, Mohammed decapitated the American journalist. FBI agents and CIA officials used a technique called vein-matching to compare the veins on the killer’s hands, seen on the gruesome video, with a photograph of the distinct bulging vein on Mohammed’s hands. Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, had confessed to the FBI that he slit Pearl’s throat. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi,” he declared at a 2007 detainee hearing.

However, federal officials decided not to charge Mohammed because they felt it would complicate their case against him since the confession was obtained between sessions of waterboarding. Mohammed said he decapitated Pearl to exploit the murder for propaganda and because he wanted to ensure that he’d get the death penalty.

BRIEFLY

A demonstrator holds a painting of former Prime Minister Tony Blair outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London. Blair appeared on Friday before an inquiry into the Iraq War, detailing reasons for joining the controversial invasion. — Reuters

Barack Obama to seek re-election
Washington: US President Barack Obama would seek re-election in 2012, one of his close aide has said, as media reports said that his re-election campaign would be based out of Chicago. The New York Times also reported that Obama has approved the decision to have his campaign headquarter in Chicago. This is a rare move for a sitting President who normally has his campaign office in the beltway. — PTI

Pak tribals protest against US attacks
Peshawar/Islamabad: Thousands of tribesmen rallied in the volatile North Waziristan tribal region of northwest Pakistanon Friday demanding an end to US drone strikes, which they said had killed many innocent people and disrupted life in the area. All markets and educational institutions were closed and transport stayed off the roads in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency. — PTI

Woman partially paralysed by love bite
Wellington: A New Zealand woman was temporarily partially paralysed by a "love bite" on her neck from her partner, doctors reported in the New Zealand Medical Journal. The 44-year-old went to Middlemore Hospital in Auckland last year after experiencing loss of movement in her left arm while watching television, the journal reported. Doctors concluded the woman had suffered a mild stroke but were puzzled about its cause until they found a small vertical bruise on her neck near a major artery, a love bite she received a few days earlier. — AFP

Nepal parties get 5 more days to form government 
Kathmandu: Nepal president Ram Baran Yadav on Friday gave Nepal's deadlocked political parties five more days to form a national consensus government after an earlier deadline to end the over six months long stand off expired. The top leaders of three main political parties — the UCPN (Maoist) , CPN (UML) and the Nepali Congress — asked the President for five move days to form the government. — TNS