Israel pledges to keep Jerusalem undivided

Israel’s prime minister pledged to keep Jerusalem undivided despite Palestinian claims to its eastern half, as Israelis celebrated the 43rd anniversary Wednesday of the city’s reunification in the 1967 Mideast War.

The Jewish section of Jerusalem took on a festive mood Wednesday with parades and speeches by political leaders, touching only lightly on the political explosiveness of the hotly contested city.

Hundreds of youths, many carrying Israeli flags, marched in the annual Jerusalem Day parade from a main square in Jewish west Jerusalem toward the Old City. Earlier, an extremist Israeli group called the Temple Mount Faithful toted flags and banners through the Old City, demanding that Israel take full control of the hotly disputed holy site where the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound sits atop the ruins of the biblical Jewish Temples. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven at the site.

Walking in the parade through downtown toward east Jerusalem, Merav Adler, 18, said she was marching in support of Israel’s keeping the whole city. “It is very important for us to show that we can march from west to east,” said Adler, who lives in the nearby West Bank settlement of Efrat. Palestinian neighborhoods were mostly calm Wednesday, with residents ignoring the Israeli celebrations nearby.

Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Israel annexed that sector shortly after the 1967 war, although no other country has recognized the Israeli claim.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said Wednesday the city’s boundaries are “nonnegotiable,” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we will never go back to a divided Jerusalem that is cold and torn.” Between 1949 and 1967, Jerusalem was split by concrete and barbed wire barriers between Israel and Jordan.

The city is a key issue in U.S.-mediated Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts that resumed last week after a 17-month standstill. Palestinians demand that Israel stop all construction in West Bank settlements and east Jerusalem. Israel has agreed to slow construction, but has rejected a total halt.

In his Jerusalem Day speeches, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carefully avoided any provocative statements about continuing construction in all of Jerusalem, declarations he has made in the past. As part of the deal to restart peace talks, Netanyahu pledged to hold off on building in one of the neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, and the U.S. has made it clear it would not accept announcements of additional projects there.

Karzai, Obama to rebuild strained relations

President Barack Obama said a visit to Washington by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had “reaffirmed their friendship”, as the two leaders engaged in a determined public effort to mend fences.

After months of traded insults which had once threatened the cancellation of Mr Karzai’s trip, Mr Obama said that strains had been “over-stated”.

“Obviously there are going to be tensions in such a complex and difficult environment and a situation in which both Afghans and Americans are making enormous sacrifices,” he said at a press conference in the grand East Room of the White House.

Mr Karzai reciprocated, saying: “There are days we are happy, there are days we are not happy, but it’s a mutual relationship with a common objective.”

The Obama administration has rolled out the red carpet for Mr Karzai’s four-day visit, which ends on Thursday with a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where many US soldiers who have died in Afghanistan are buried.

With casualties rising and the war becoming more unpopular in the US, senior officials had publicly rebuked the Afghan leader for failing to clamp down on corruption, after he was returned to power for a second term in last year’s fraudulent elections. Mr Karzai retorted that he was thinking of joining the Taliban if the West continued to pressure him to enact reforms.

Having decided to keep criticism private, Mr Obama noted yesterday that progress had been made on corruption, but said “much more” needed to be done in terms of good governance. Mr Karzai vowed to spend US financial resources with “extreme care.”

Both leaders appeared to have aired their own concerns in their talks, which came as the US geared up for a major military operation in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province.

Behind the scenes, Mr Karzai pressed for greater support for plans to reintegrate Taliban insurgents, beginning at a “peace jirga” later this month.

Washington is concerned that invitations should not be extended to Taliban leaders in power before the September 11, 2001 attacks orchestrated from then al-Qaeda safe havens.

Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, said: “The US is very, very ambivalent about this. There is a lot of discomfort especially among the generals who dislike the idea of giving away too much politically to the insurgents.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai rounds out his Washington visit Thursday, meeting with congressional leaders and touring the burial grounds of many US troops killed in the Afghanistan war.

During the flagship event of the four-day visit intended to mend fences after months spent trading barbs, US President Barack Obama insisted Wednesday that flared tensions between the Afghan and US governments were “overstated” as Karzai staged an effusive show of support for American war goals.

The leaders met amid pomp at the White House after awkward public exchanges that strained their alliance and complicated Obama’s gamble on a 30,000-strong troop surge designed to forge a US exit from the Afghan battlefield.

US, Iran clash at UN nuclear meet

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blasted the United States at a UN conference here Monday for threatening to use atomic weapons, triggering a sharp American response and a walkout by several delegations.

“Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries, including Iran,” he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed the Iranian leader’s charges as “wild accusations” in her speech to the crucial review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Iranian nuclear crisis is seen as a key right of passage for the 40-year-old treaty which is credited with keeping the lid on nuclear proliferation worldwide. Iran is a test case, as its getting the bomb could set off an atomic arms race in the Middle East.

Describing Iran as the “only country” currently not in compliance with NPT obligations, Clinton said this was why Iran “is facing increasing isolation and pressure” from the international community.

Iran is under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions to get it to stop enriching uranium, which can be used to make the bomb, even though it insists its nuclear program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity.

Faced with Tehran’s nuclear defiance, the United States and five other major powers are trying to reach agreement on a fourth round.

In his address, Ahmadinejad roundly condemned the United States as a proliferator and manipulator of the NPT to its own ends in his 35-minute speech in the UN’s General Assembly chamber.

But Clinton insisted that US President Barack Obama “has made reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons and materials a central mission of our foreign policy.”

She labeled Iran as an “outlier” country, which like North Korea demonstrates “a determination to violate the rules and defy the international community.”

But she said that the meeting, which runs through May 28, aims to “strengthen a global non-proliferation regime that advances the security of all nations” and that “Iran will not succeed in its efforts to divert and divide.”

Ahmadinejad said having nuclear weapons was “disgusting and shameful, and even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons.”

In Washington, the Defense Department released previously classified statistics on the size of the US nuclear arsenal, saying it has over 5,000 warheads stockpiled.

This is part of a US drive to prove it is serious about disarmament and transparency about its nuclear weapons.

Washington has launched various initiatives recently to give weight to Obama’s vow made in Prague a year ago to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

But in a new nuclear policy unveiled last month, it stated that atomic weapons were still part of its defense posture and that it reserved the right to use them against non-nuclear-weapons states, like Iran, which fail to comply with the NPT.

Ahmadinejad called for the United States to be suspended from the UN atomic watchdog’s executive board over its threats to use nuclear weapons.

Besides the United States, fellow nuclear powers Britain and France walked out. Non-nuclear states which also left included Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Morocco, according to a Western diplomat.

Thai protesters mull PM offer of November elections

Thailand’s Red Shirt protest movement was on Tuesday to consider Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s proposal to hold elections in mid November as a way of ending the country’s political crisis.

A spokesman for the movement, which has demanded the immediate dissolution of Abhisit’s government, said late Monday it would discuss the prime minister’s proposal before responding.

“We may have offers for the government. We may not agree to everything,” one of the protest leaders, Jatuporn Prompan, told AFP.

Speaking on national television, Abhisit said Monday that he was ready to hold elections in November to resolve the tense standoff with anti-government protesters, who have occupied Bangkok’s commercial heart. He said the proposed timetable, under which an election will be held a year earlier than scheduled, was subject to all parties agreeing to a five-point reconciliation process aimed at ending the crippling impasse.

The plan calls for respect for the monarchy, greater social equality, an impartial media, an independent probe into the current political crisis and a debate on the need for constitutional reform.

“I’m convinced that it will not take long to achieve national reconciliation and when we achieve national reconciliation the government is ready to hold elections on November 14,” said Abhisit. “I think this is the best solution at the current time,” he said.

The mostly poor or working class “Red Shirt” protesters have occupied parts of Bangkok since mid-March, defying a state of emergency in their bid to topple a government they see as elitist and undemocratic.

There have been a series of tense confrontations between the demonstrators and the security forces in Bangkok, where 27 people died and nearly 1,000 were injured in unrest last month.

The Red Shirts have reinforced roadblocks and stepped up security checks on the perimeter of their sprawling protest site, which has been fortified with barricades made from piled up truck tyres, razor wire and bamboo stakes.

Abhisit last month rejected a compromise offer by the Reds to disperse if elections were held within three months, and the protesters have reverted to their original demand for immediate polls.

US says it has 5,113 nuclear warheads

The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and “several thousand” more retired warheads awaiting the junkpile, the Pentagon said Monday in an unprecedented accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly.

The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as part of a campaign to get other nuclear nations to be more forthcoming, and to improve its bargaining position against the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

“We think it is in our national security interest to be as transparent as we can be about the nuclear program of the United States,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters at the United Nations, where she addressed a conference on containing the spread of atomic weapons.

Britons Outsource their Vote to Afghanistan, Ghana, and Bangladesh

British voters go to the polls May 6 after a political campaign that has seen domestic issues in the forefront.  But there is a new element to this year’s election that has a decidedly foreign angle – non-British citizens living in Afghanistan, Ghana, and Bangladesh are going to be able to add their voice.  Give Your Vote is a new private project that lets Britons donate their vote to people living in the developing world.

A convoy drove down the streets of Kabul last week covered with banners promoting Britain’s upcoming election.

Flyers were handed out that told Afghans about the foreign policies of Britain’s top party leaders.

They were being informed about Britain’s election because some of them are going to have a hand in it.

UK election gets personal days before election

Britain’s political leaders launched personal attacks against each other on Sunday ahead of Thursday’s parliamentary election, with opinion polls showing support growing for the opposition Conservative Party.

Although no new poll has indicated the centre-right Conservatives winning an outright majority, ruling Labour’s 13 years in power appears set to end.

The party which swept to power in an overwhelming victory under Tony Blair in 1997 faces coming a humiliating third place on May 6 in the popular vote behind the much smaller Liberal Democrats.

Conservative leader David Cameron called Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown a “shrunken figure”, while Brown likened Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to a “TV gameshow” presenter.

An Angus Reid opinion poll for the Sunday Express newspaper put Conservative Party support at 35 percent, 12 points ahead of third-placed centre-left Labour. Although the pollster has tended to score Labour lower, the survey adds to four polls on Saturday indicating growing Conservative backing.

“I think we’ve got some momentum now…” Conservative leader David Cameron said in a BBC interview on Sunday.

No polls have the Conservatives with enough to win outright, indicating a coalition government as the most likely outcome, a a rarity in Britain with its first-past-the-post electoral system, and a situation not seen since 1974.

The financial markets have been nervous about such a coalition administration or a minority government, fearing an uncertain period of horse-trading at a time of a record budget deficit of more than 11 percent of GDP.

“FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE”

In an interview in the Observer newspaper, Brown admitted Labour was the “underdog”, and on Sunday was on a 10 stop tour around London.

“I’m fighting for my life, but i’m not fighting for myself, i’m fighting for the British people,” he said at a south London community centre.

The third-largest party, the centrist Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems, have gained in popularity after leader Nick Clegg gave polished performances in a series of U.S.-style television debates, and his support could be key in a coalition government.

But there was little sign of any overtures by political leaders to their rivals, as all three parties insisted they were focusing on winning a clear majority.

“We’re talking about the future of our country. We’re not talking about who’s going to be the next presenter of a TV gameshow,” Labour leader Prime Minister Gordon Brown said of telegenic Clegg in an interview in the Observer.

Cameron in turn launched an attack on Brown.

“And what a shrunken figure Gordon Brown now cuts. Once hailed as an economic colossus and political genius, he resorts to desperate smears and hysterical scares,” Cameron said in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

Clegg told the Independent on Sunday that a majority Conservative government would be run by a “clique” of people with “vested interests”.

Still unclear is where, when and how deeply each party intends to slash public spending, with deep cuts expected whoever wins. Wary of scaring voters, politicians have so far only outlined a fraction of the cuts needed to rein in a budget deficit which could threaten Britain’s AAA credit rating.

“It is incredibly challenging, there is no doubt about it … I do accept that (plans announced) is still not enough to fill this enormous black hole left by Gordon Brown and Labour,” Cameron told the BBC on Sunday.

Maoists shut down Nepal, testing peace process

Opposition Maoists shut down much of Nepal for a second day on Monday as their indefinite strike piled further pressure on the country’s strained peace process.

All shops, schools and offices were closed in the capital Kathmandu and other towns as vehicles were kept off the roads by groups of opposition supporters carrying sticks and chanting revolutionary slogans.

The Maoist party, which has the largest number of seats in parliament, is demanding that the ruling coalition be replaced by a Maoist-led national administration.

Lawmakers have until May 28 to complete a new constitution that analysts say is crucial to ensuring lasting peace between the Maoists and the state-but few expect the deadline to be met. Maoist guerrillas fought a bloody civil war against the state for 10 years before a peace agreement was signed in 2006, and the left-wing rebels then won elections in 2008 and held power for eight months.

More than 100,000 Maoist demonstrators rallied in Kathmandu on Saturday to protest against the current government, which is struggling to keep the country’s peace process on track.

“We are not asking to form the government on our own. We want a national unity government led by us,” Jhakku Subedi, a Maoist member of parliament, told AFP on Sunday. “This is a peaceful strike to oust a puppet government.”

In a televised address at the weekend, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal refused to resign and appealed for talks to continue, stressing that an “all-party consensus is the only alternative that will pave the way forward”.

“Shutting down the nation is not the way to find a solution to this impasse,” he said.

But Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who led the rebels during the decade of fighting in which at least 16,000 people were killed, told protesters that the strike would last until the government was forced from office.

Dahal, known often by his nom-de-guerre Prachanda, was prime minister until May last year when his Maoist-led government fell after the president overruled its decision to sack the head of the army.

The Maoists said they would only allow ambulances, waste disposal vehicles and journalists onto the streets during the day, and residents could only leave their homes for shopping for two hours in the evening.

The protests have so far been peaceful despite fears of clashes between the opposition’s aggressive youth wing and the security forces.

“This is a final and decisive fight against the government,” said Chitran Bishwakarma, 25, a female Maoist cadre who was wearing a red bandana with a star on her forehead.

“We are peaceful but if the government pushes us around and tries to intervene, we will not keep quiet.”

Many residents have been stockpiling food and supplies fearing the stand-off could turn violent.

The coalition government has faced months of protests from the Maoists over demands that the left-wing former rebels disband the paramilitary structure of the Young Communist League and return seized property.

Lawmakers are also struggling to reach an agreement on integrating nearly 20,000 former Maoist fighters languishing in UN-monitored camps around Nepal.

Pakistani convicted for Mumbai terror attacks

An Indian court on Monday convicted a Pakistani man of murder and waging war for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks that left 166 people dead in the heart of India’s financial capital. Two Indians accused of helping plot the attacks were acquitted.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the attack’s 10 gunmen, sat impassively with his head bowed as the verdicts were read. He was convicted in one of the siege’s bloodiest episodes, when he and an accomplice killed and wounded dozens of people at one of Mumbai’s busiest train stations. Photos of Kasab striding through the station, an assault rifle in his hand, became iconic images of the attacks.

Kasab was convicted on nearly all the 86 charges against him, including murder and waging war against India. While an exact total of the convictions was not immediately available, the handful of acquittals appear to have been for relatively minor charges, such as forging an identification card. Sentencing is expected to be Tuesday. He faces a possible death sentence.

The siege deeply shook India, despite the country’s long history of terror attacks. The violence stretched over three days and left corpses scattered through some of the city’s best-known places. Millions of people stayed glued to their televisions to watch it unfold.

The siege sparked calls for a wholesale restructuring in the country’s poorly trained and underfunded security forces, though few major changes ever took place.

The attacks and the subsequent investigation also added enormous pressure to India and Pakistan’s already tense relations. The two countries’ formal peace process was suspended in the wake of the violence.

India’s Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Monday that “the judgment in itself is a message to Pakistan that they should not export terror to India. If they do and if the terrorists are apprehended, we will be able to bring them to justice and give them an exemplary punishment.”

In Pakistan, though, the ruling appeared to reinforce the cross-border mistrust.

“The verdict well fit Indian designs to malign Pakistan. It was expected that Kasab would be found guilty, falsely though,” said Abdul Qayum a street vendor in the sprawling coastal city of Karachi.

Judge M.L. Tahiliyani said the gunmen in three-day siege came ready for sustained urban combat, bringing with them everything from machine-guns to a GPS device.

“These types of preparations are not normally made by ordinary criminals. These are made in an organized type of war,” he said.

Tahiliyani acquitted Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, two Indians who had been accused of helping plot the attacks, saying that the evidence against them “doesn’t inspire confidence in my mind.”

Fahim Ansari’s wife, Yasmin Ansari, told reporters that her husband had been falsely implicated.

“We had to undergo a lot of suffering. We feel relieved today.”

India blames a Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, for masterminding the attack. In his verdict, the judge said Kasab was a member of the group and that Kasab’s handlers were in Pakistan.

The evidence against Kasab included footage from closed circuit cameras in and around the train station and the testimony of more than 600 witnesses.

The trial was conducted in four languages in a special court in Mumbai’s high security Arthur Road Jail, where Kasab has been held since his arrest. He was arrested on the first night of the siege.

On Monday, security at the prison and the surrounding areas was exceptionally tight, with armed police and paramilitary troops on alert.

During the siege the gunmen stormed two luxury hotels, a Jewish center run by the ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement and the train station.

Six people were killed at the Chabad House, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka. Their 2-year-old son Moshe survived the attack, rescued by an Indian caretaker.

“After such a thing, the pain comes back, even stronger. The conviction of the Pakistani doesn’t comfort us at all, of course, because Gabi and Rivki can’t come back to us until the dead are resurrected,” Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, Rivka Holtzberg’s father, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Despite its complexity, the trial lasted only about a year – unusual speed for India’s notoriously slow judicial system.

One of the memorable moments in the trial came in July, when Kasab made a surprise confession, admitting to committing the killings. He later retracted that statement, saying he had been tortured.

The judge said the confession was not made under duress and was largely corroborated by other evidence.

Islamabad has asked India to hand over Kasab and co-defendant Fahim Ansari so they could be tried in Pakistan. India has not responded to the request.

Pakistan has arrested and charged seven people suspected of involvement in the attack, but top Lashkar leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is not among them, much to India’s ire.

Pakistan has promised to expedite its planned trial of suspects – a key demand of India. The two countries’ leaders agreed last week that their foreign ministers would meet, a key step toward resuming the formal peace dialogue.

Indian govt moves bill to allow foreign varsities

India took a step forward on Monday to allow foreign universities open local campuses, key to revamping the country’s education system, but the bill presented to parliament may take time to win approval.

The proposal will be watched to gauge New Delhi’s reformist appetite. After its victory in last week’s confidence vote, the Congress-led government is in a stronger position to move legislation to further free the economy.

Still, the government is dependent on fickle and reform-suspicious allies for a majority. The bill is unlikely to pass muster in the current parliament session that ends Friday.

Goldman Sachs counts the lack of quality education as one of the 10 factors holding India back from rapid economic growth. The demand for graduates over the next five years is likely to be 13.8 million, analysts have estimated.

Congress leaders have said they also plan to introduce a long-delayed bill to cap liability of operators in case of a nuclear accident, key for firms like General Electric and Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba Corp, to enter the $150 billion civil nuclear sector.