Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals are seen during the Kurdish conference at the Bilgi University in Istanbul, March 11. (AFP Photo)

ISTANBUL, Turkey, March 11--Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals gathered in Istanbul Saturday under tight security for a major conference on peacefully resolving the 22-year-old Kurdish conflict in the country’s southeast, AFP reported.
Police imposed strict security measures after nationalists threatened to disrupt the two-day event, which is designed to promote ways of ending a conflict that has long impeded Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union.
Police officers searched participants at the entrance of the venue, the private Bilgi University, and several dozen riot police were on guard outside the campus.
“Ultra-nationalist groups have threatened to sabotage the conference,“ former culture minister Ercan Karakas, who is among the organizers, told AFP.
More than 45 Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, politicians and journalists of various political convictions were scheduled to speak at the conference, entitled “The Kurdish question in Turkey: ways for a democratic settlement“.
Organizers said the participants could adopt a final declaration appealing to the government to do more to resolve the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984.
The conflict started when the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the United States, began fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
It has led to allegations of gross human rights violations on both sides, ravaged the already meager economy of the region and forced hundreds of thousands of already poor peasants to migrate into urban slum areas.
Keen to boost its democratic credentials and join the EU, Turkey has in recent years lifted emergency rule in the southeast and allowed the Kurdish language to be taught at private courses and used in public broadcasts.
It is also compensating villagers who have been displaced and suffered material losses during the conflict.
But Kurdish activists maintain the reforms are inadequate and are calling for a general amnesty for PKK militants to encourage them to renounce violence.
Around 12 million of Turkey’s 72 million inhabitants are estimated to belong to the Kurdish community.

Afghan soldiers stand near a burning truck after a protest in the town of Qalat in Zabul province, Afghanistan, Feb. 9. (Reuters File Photo)

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan,
March 11--Schools burnt, government employees assassinated, soldiers attacked: four years after the ouster of the Taliban the winter has never been so violent in southern Afghanistan.
Cold winter months that usually see a downturn in violence have witnessed a stream of attacks linked to Taliban loyalists and criminal gangs who have become the face of law in the absence of the authority of the struggling state, AFP said.
“There were more security incidents in Afghanistan during this winter than the past three winters put together,“ said a Western security official in the capital Kabul.
“The insurgency right now is a lot more dangerous than two years ago and a lot more clever. It is definitely intensifying and I think 2006 will be hotter than 2005,“ he said on condition of anonymity.
Even the Americans, until now an optimistic partner in Afghanistan since leading the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban, admit the situation has worsened and threatens the fragile Afghan state still trying to assert itself.
“We judge insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of the Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001 and will be active this spring,“ Defense Intelligence Agency director General Michael Maples told a Senate committee hearing last month.
“The Taliban-dominated insurgency remains capable and resilient,“ he said, noting that last year the number of rebel attacks had increased by 20 percent and suicide attacks had quadrupled.
Violence, most of it blamed on the insurgency, killed about 1,600 last year, many of them militants, a toll that was double the previous year’s.
On Monday the UN mission in Afghanistan also expressed concern about the deterioration of security in the south, where there are near-daily attacks, noting there had been about a dozen suicide attacks since the beginning of the year.

WASHINGTON,
March 11--A US think tank on Friday questioned India’s nuclear non-proliferation record, saying it had uncovered illicit Indian government nuclear procurement from Europe that leaked sensitive atomic technology, AFP said.
US President George W. Bush has used India’s so-called untarnished non-proliferation record as a basis for sealing a civilian nuclear deal with New Delhi last week.
But the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a private group in Washington, said in a report Friday that it “has uncovered a well-developed, active, and secret Indian program to outfit its uranium enrichment program and circumvent other countries export control efforts.“
Uranium enrichment is used as fuel for nuclear reactors but can--in highly refined form--be the fissile core of an atom bomb.
“Indian procurement methods for its nuclear program leak sensitive nuclear technology,“ said the report, co-authored by ISIS President David Albright, a former UN nuclear inspector.
When asked by AFP from where the Indian government made the illegal procurements, Albright said, “Certainly from the supplier states from Europe and could be from other places too.“
He declined however to elaborate. “We sculptured that comment in the report very carefully,“ he said.
US and Indian officials claim that New Delhi does not engage in illicit nuclear procurement and has an exemplary record of preventing nuclear secrets from falling into the wrong hands.
The ISIS report said that under the direction of India’s Department of Atomic Energy, the public firm Indian Rare Earths Ltd. of Mumbai procured sensitive materials and technology for a secret gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant outside Mysore in southern India.

Agim Ceku

SALZBURG,
Serbia-Montenegro, March 11--Serbia-Montenegro’s foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, voiced concern Saturday at a remark by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that independence for Kosovo was “almost inevitable“, AFP said.
“I’m surprised because this statement of minister Straw is against the charter of the United Nations, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act (a landmark Soviet-era treaty) and international law,“ he said.
“I hope the negotiation on the future status (of Kosovo) will continue successfully,“ he added as he arrived for talks in Austria with counterparts from the European Union and other Balkan states.
Straw’s remark about the UN-run Serb province--among the strongest statements so far about its possible separation from Belgrade--raised some eyebrows at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Salzburg, Austria.
Talks on the final status of the province finally began last month and are due to resume next week.
Straw said Friday that Belgrade might have to accept the “reality ... that a big majority of people in Kosovo are likely to be in support of independence“.
“Everybody accepts that the pre-1999 situation is unsustainable as a basis for the future. And if that is the case, then a pathway towards independence becomes almost inevitable,“ the British minister added.
Meanwhile, Kosovo’s parliament elected a former ethnic Albanian guerrilla commander whom Serbia accuses of war crimes as prime minister on Friday, ahead of the restart of talks on the disputed province’s future status, AFP said.
Parliamentary deputies in the UN protectorate’s 120-seat assembly endorsed the candidacy of Agim Ceku and his new government by 65 votes for, while 33 were against the decision and five abstained.
“We want a democratic and tolerant Kosovo. The creation of the state of Kosovo is the will of its people and this government,“ Ceku told the assembly immediately after the vote.
Ceku, who led ethnic Albanian rebels against Serbian forces during Kosovo’s 1998-1999 war, was nominated prime minister last week after Bajram Kosumi was forced into resigning by his own party.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 11--Around 30 foreign militants and their local supporters were killed as Pakistani troops using military helicopters destroyed their hideout in a remote tribal town near the Afghan border, AFP quoted the military as saying on Saturday.
The new operation against pro-Taliban suspects, which was launched late on Friday, also blew up their ammunition dump.
Secondary explosions continued to echo in the area, near Miranshah in the troubled North Waziristan region, late into the night, chief military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.
“We got information that some local and foreign miscreants were hiding in the vicinity of Miranshah. We launched strikes with Cobra and other helicopters,“ General Sultan said.
“According to our initial information, 25 to 30 militants were killed,“ he said.
The operation was launched after 8:00 pm on Friday, he said, adding that there were no arrests.
The secondary explosions, which continued for some time, indicated that a large quantity of arms and ammunition had been dumped in the area, the general said.
Residents said local people were retrieving bodies from the compound that was destroyed by the artillery shelling and air strikes.
Security officials in Miranshah said the death of at least three foreign militants had been confirmed so far and their nationalities were being determined.
The raid targeted a compound in Khatty Qila village, around seven kilometers west of Miranshah, residents said. The fortress-like compound was considered a key militant center in the area.
It belonged to local cleric Sadiq Noor, who is wanted by the authorities for his suspected links with Taliban and Al-Qaeda fugitives, they said.
Noor escaped a military operation in the area in September 2005 that killed around 40 militants, security forces said at the time.

Michelle Bachelet

SANTIAGO, Chile, March 11--Socialist single mother Michelle Bachelet will be sworn in Saturday as Chile’s first woman president, ushering in a new era in the socially conservative country, which is moving aggressively to shed the legacy Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, reported AFP.
Representatives from 120 countries were expected to take par in the ceremony that will take place in the port city of Valparaiso.
The United States will be represented by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, who was expected to use her visit to Chile to hold talks with Bachelet and outgoing President Ricardo Lagos as well as Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay.
Bachelet’s government will extend the rule of the center-left coalition that has governed the South American country since the end of Pinochet’s regime in 1990.
“Who would have believed five or 10 years ago that Chile would elect a woman president,“ Bachelet, 54, told thousands of cheering fans at a victory rally in Santiago in January.
She garnered 53.5 percent of the vote, seven points ahead of conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera, and won in all but one of the country’s 13 regions.
Her electoral victory had been widely anticipated, though her lead was stronger than expected.
An agnostic single mother of three, Bachelet might not have seemed an obvious choice for leadership in this socially conservative Roman Catholic country.
But the economic successes of the current administration evidently played a significant role in her election.

MOSCOW, March 11--Russia lashed out at a State Department report that criticized its human rights record, accusing the United States of a double standard, AP reported.
The annual State Department report, released Wednesday, said the continued centralization of power under President Vladimir Putin eroded the accountability of Russian officials. It also criticized the government’s rights record in the persistent conflict in and around Chechnya.
The US report “abounds in clear juggling of facts and is a specimen of unconcealed double standards in relation to human rights in Russia and the world,“ the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday.
The ministry pointed to “human rights violations within the United States, about which authoritative international rights organizations speak ever more loudly, and ... U.S. involvement in serious deviations from commonly accepted norms of humanitarian law in Afghanistan and Iraq.“
It said the report would hinder the development of Russian-American relations and lead Russians to believe American policy toward Russia is prejudiced.
The ministry rejected Western concerns about the Russian government’s attitude toward human rights, saying that “active work is being conducted to perfect systems designed to provide for the rights and freedoms of citizens.“