Russia, Libya discuss nuclear cooperation deal

Russia and Libya are negotiating a deal under which Moscow would build nuclear research reactors for the North African state and supply fuel, officials said on Saturday.

Russia earns billions of dollars each year by exporting its civilian nuclear expertise, but it has faced criticism from Western governments who say the nuclear technology could fall into the wrong hands.

Officials said a document on civilian nuclear cooperation was under discussion at talks on Saturday between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, on his first visit to Russia for 23 years, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Under the deal, Russia would help Libya design, develop and operate civilian nuclear research reactors and provide fuel for them, said a Reuters reporter who saw a draft of the document.

A spokesman for Putin said the deal was under discussion. ‘The agreement has not yet been signed. Negotiations are under way,’ Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia is in a three-way race with Europe and the United States to secure lucrative contracts with Libya after it emerged from international isolation by giving up its weapons of mass destruction programme.

Putin said last month Russia was ready to consider building nuclear power plants for Venezuela, which under President Hugo Chavez has been a fierce adversary of the United States.

Russia is also building a nuclear power station for Iran, suspected by the United States and others of seeking to build an atomic bomb under cover of its nuclear power programme. Tehran denies it has any such intention.

BARBECUE

In keeping with his tradition on foreign visits, Gaddafi — who was born into a family of Bedouin herdsmen — pitched a tent in a Kremlin garden for his visit. A barbecue grill was set up in front of the tent.

At an earlier meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, he said he wanted more energy cooperation.

‘Unfortunately, in the past our relations have been mainly focused on military and diplomatic contacts and there was virtually no cooperation in civilian sectors,’ Gaddafi told Medvedev at the start of talks in the Kremlin.

Shokri Ghanem, Libya’s top energy official and head of its OPEC delegation, had come to Moscow ‘so he could discuss coordination with his Russian colleagues’, Gaddafi said.

‘I believe such cooperation is especially appropriate in the current conditions. Moreover, we are linked by a common vision of energy policy,’ Gaddafi said, in an apparent reference to the sharp fall in oil prices in the wake of the financial crisis.

Diplomats say Gaddafi’s trip to Moscow is intended to counter-balance his fast-expanding relations with the West. U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Tripoli in September for the first visit by a US secretary of state in 55 years.

A Russian newspaper reported on Friday that the Libyan leader planned to offer the Russian navy a base in the port of Benghazi, but the proposal was not mentioned during the part of Saturday’s talks when reporters were present.

Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves and Russian companies, including gas exporter Gazprom, and oil majors Rosneft and LUKOIL are keen to participate in energy projects there.

Source: Dawn

US election race enters final stage: Obama, McCain ready for epic battle

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain enter the final weekend of their epic United States election battle Saturday, scrambling across several states in a last dash for votes.

Obama, aiming to become the first African-American to be elected president next Tuesday, was bidding to lock down western battlegrounds in Nevada and Colorado before returning to the bellwether state of Missouri.

Victory in the west would go a large way towards securing an election triumph for Obama, even if he loses one of the major toss-up states out east such as Florida, a pivotal state in recent US elections.

Midwestern Missouri meanwhile has an impressive track record of backing the White House winner in every election since 1904, with one exception in 1956. Obama was to be joined by his wife Michelle at the events in Pueblo, Colorado and Springfield, Missouri.

The would-be first couple was to head on to must-win Ohio Sunday for three events including a rally with rocker Bruce Springsteen in Cleveland. Obama’s running mate Joseph Biden was stumping in Indiana and Ohio on Saturday.

McCain, meanwhile, was preparing to hit the trail in Virginia and Pennsylvania before heading to New York to make a cameo appearance in television comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live.

Despite gloomy polls that suggest Obama is heading for victory, the McCain campaign has defiantly said they remain in the hunt.

At a rally in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, a fired-up McCain got a welcome lift from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

McCain told supporters: “I know a winning campaign when I see one. We’re a couple of points back. Arnold said it best. The Mac is back. We need a new direction and we have to fight for it.”

However Obama’s massive campaign spending advantage has forced McCain onto the defense. McCain and running mate Sarah Palin will each race through seven states on Monday, many of them normally reliably Republican.

McCain has struggled to disassociate his campaign from the Republican administration of outgoing President George W. Bush.

In an interview on Friday, Obama said the other pressing priorities if he wins would be achieving energy independence and enacting universal health care for Americans reeling from the economic crisis.

“And none of this can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system,” he told CNN in Iowa, where he beat Hillary Clinton in the year’s first Democratic nominating clash.

“So that’s priority number one, making sure that the plumbing works in our capitalist system,” Obama said.

He refused to detail his potential choice of Treasury secretary-but noted that his economic advisers include ex-Treasury secretary Larry Summers, former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker and billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

On Friday Obama said he had admired McCain in 2000, when the Republican had decried “low road” politics after going down to a vicious smear campaign in his contest against Bush for the Republican nomination that year.

“But the high road didn’t lead him to the White House then, so this time, he decided to take a different route,” the Democrat said.

“But Iowa, at this moment, in this election, we have the chance to do more than just beat back this kind of politics-we have the chance to end it once and for all,” he said in Des Moines.

“We have the chance to prove that the one thing more powerful than the politics of anything-goes-the one thing the cynics don’t count on-is the will of the American people.

“That’s how we’ll steer ourselves out of this crisis-with a new politics for a new time. That’s how we’ll build the future we know is possible-as one people, as one nation.”

Source: The New Nation

Palin takes prank call from fake French president

Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

“Maybe in eight years,” replies a laughing Palin.

The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy’s “beautiful wife,” in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had received the prank call.

“Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C’est la vie,” she said.

The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state.

Audette, posing as Sarkozy, speaks in an exaggerated French accent and drops ample hints that the conversation is a joke. But Palin seemingly does not pick up on them.

He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor.

“I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun,” the fake Sarkozy says.

He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done.

“Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we’re getting work done,” Palin counters. “We can kill two birds with one stone that way.”

The comedian jokes that they shouldn’t bring Cheney along on the hunt, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a friend while hunting quail.

“I’ll be a careful shot,” responds Palin.

Playing off the governor’s much-mocked comment in an early television interview that she had insights into foreign policy because “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska,” the caller tells her: “You know we have a lot in common also, because … from my house I can see Belgium.”

She replies: “Well, see, we’re right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes.”

When Audette refers to Canadian singer Steph Carse as Canada’s prime minister, Palin replies: “Well, he’s doing fine and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.” Canada’s prime minister is Stephen Harper.

Palin praises Sarkozy throughout the call and also mentions his wife Carla Bruni, a model-turned-songwriter.

“You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife,” Palin says. “Oh my goodness, you’ve added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.”

The Sarkozy impersonator tells Palin his wife is “so hot in bed” and then informs her that Bruni has written a song for her about Joe the Plumber entitled “Du rouge a levres sur une cochonne” — which translates as “Lipstick on a Pig.”

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama derided his Republican challenger John McCain’s call for change in Washington as “lipstick on a pig,” days after Palin made a lipstick joke at the Republican convention. The McCain-Palin campaign then released an ad implying Obama was calling Palin a pig with that remark.

The caller asks Palin if Joe the Plumber is her husband and adds: “We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It’s called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit.”

He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the “documentary” made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt.

She answers tentatively, “Ohh, good, thank you, yes.”

The callers then reveal the prank and identify themselves and their radio station.

“Ohhh, have we been pranked?” Palin asks before handing the phone to an aide who ends the call.

Obama’s campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs, commenting on the prank, said: “I’m glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama.”

NKorea releases photos of Kim in bid to quash health rumours

North Korea on Sunday released photographs of leader Kim Jong-Il watching a football match, in an apparent bid to quell mounting speculation over the state of his health.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and other media carried the undated photos of Kim watching the game between two army teams, according to Seoul’s unification ministry, which monitors North Korean media.

One analyst said Pyongyang was struggling to calm jitters about Kim, who Seoul says is recovering from a stroke and brain surgery in mid-August.

In one of the photos disclosed by the ministry here, Kim sat smiling on a sofa inside a glass structure wearing his trademark sunglasses, while his full cheeks and bouffant hair looked the same as usual.

With his deputies standing or sitting nearby, Kim was wearing a brown winter jacket. Trees near him had autumnal leaves.

The North’s state television and Rodong Simnum newspaper also carried 14 different photos of Kim watching the game, standing and giving instructions to his deputies as well as a soccer pit.

None of the North Korean media disclosed when and where the photos were taken. KCNA earlier Sunday reported that Kim watched the match between two army teams, Mangyongbong and Jebi, but did not say when.

The National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s main spy agency, said it was analysing the photos, but it refused to elaborate.

“North Koreans are desperately stepping up their efforts to send a message: Mr. Kim is doing well. He is firmly in control,” Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor and North Korean expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University, told AFP.

But Seoul’s Yonhap news agency noted there was no single photo of both Kim and the game featured in the same frame. Instead, the released photos carry separate images of Kim or those of the game.

The release of the photographs were the latest effort by Pyongyang apparently aimed at suggesting the leader is well, following widespread overseas reports that Kim, 66, suffered a stroke in mid-August.

Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso said last week Kim is probably in hospital but still capable of making decisions about his hardline communist state.

On Thursday Kim failed to attend the state funeral for former vice president Pak Song-Chol.

Kim’s health is the subject of intense speculation since he has not publicly nominated a successor to run the impoverished and nuclear-armed nation.

After he failed to attend a September 9 parade marking the country’s 60th anniversary, South Korean officials said he underwent brain surgery following a stroke around mid-August but is recovering well.

On October 4 KCNA reported Kim watched a student football match but did not say when the game was held. On October 11 state television released still photos of Kim inspecting a women’s army unit.

US and South Korean officials said foliage shown in the photo appeared to indicate the pictures were taken before his reported illness.

KCNA in its latest report said the army game was held in connection with the close of the 11th People’s Sports Contest and Mangyongbong won “by successfully applying the Korean-style sporting method”.

“After watching the match, Kim Jong-Il congratulated the footballers on their success in the match, expressing great satisfaction over a high level of the game played by them,” it said.

KCNA said the leader watched the game along with senior army and communist party personnel.

Source: AFP