Pakistani lawyers shout anti-Musharraf slogans during a march in Islamabad, Nov. 12.

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 12--Authorities in Pakistan are set to ban a huge protest march called by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to demand an immediate end to emergency rule, officials said Monday.
Government officials and police were to meet to consider banning Tuesday’s planned rally from Lahore to Islamabad, and senior police sources told AFP it was unlikely to be allowed.
The so-called “long march“ is aimed at piling pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to end the state of emergency, which Bhutto said would make promised general elections by early January meaningless.
“There will be no long march,“ a senior government official in Punjab, the province which includes Lahore, told AFP under cover of anonymity.
“It will not be permitted.“
Raja Basharat, Punjab’s law minister, said rallies were forbidden under the state of emergency.
“It’s a political decision,“ Lahore police chief Malik Mohammad Iqbal told AFP.
“As far as we are concerned we know the threat (of an attack on the march) is very serious. It is imminent and it is of the highest degree.“
Authorities cited fears of violence to place Bhutto under house arrest last Friday and prevent her leading a rally in Rawalpindi.
On October 18, suicide bombings hit her homecoming parade in Karachi, killing 139 people.
Bhutto was greeted by crowds waving and flashing victory signs Monday as she was driven through Lahore under a heavy security escort, and her Pakistan People’s Party warned of violence if the rally was stopped.
“We will go ahead with the long march,“ provincial party spokesman Farzana Raja said. “If they stop us, there will be fighting in the streets of Lahore and protests in the streets of Punjab.“
Bhutto welcomed Musharraf’s schedule for elections by January 9.
But she said they would be meaningless if held under emergency laws, which the government has widened to give the army sweeping powers to investigate and try civilians--including possible court-martials.

ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 12--Israeli President Shimon Peres met with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul on Monday for talks on Middle East peace, and was also scheduled to meet with Palestinian president during his visit to Turkey.
According to AP, the talks come just weeks before Israelis and Palestinians are expected to sit down at a US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, with the aim of relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
“Turkey can play a first-tier role in the peace process,“ Peres said last week in Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
On Tuesday, Peres will become the first Israeli president ever to speak before the legislature of a Muslim country.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the president’s visit to Turkey “extraordinary.“
“This is the first time the Israeli president has been invited to speak in a Muslim parliament, in a Muslim country,“ he said.
Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas--who will arrive in Ankara later on Monday--were expected to meet Tuesday. Peres said in an interview on private CNN Turk television Sunday that discussions would focus on a planned industrial park that Turkey plans to set up in the West Bank.
The industrial zone is expected to create jobs for thousands of Palestinians. Turkey is waiting for a decision from Abbas’ government on how much land could be allocated for the project. Abbas will separately address the Turkish Parliament on Tuesday.
Turkey, a NATO member and Israel’s closest ally in the Islamic world, has in the past played the role of mediator between the Jewish state and its Muslim neighbors.

Ieng Sary

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia,
Nov. 12--Police arrested the ex-foreign minister of the brutal 1970s Khmer Rouge regime and his wife Monday and brought them before Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide tribunal to face charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who served the regime as a minister for social affairs, were brought to tribunal facilities in Phnom Penh under warrants issued for both of them, AP quoted a tribunal statement as saying.
The radical policies of the communist Khmer Rouge, who held power in 1975-79, are widely blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. None of the group’s leaders have faced trial yet.
Both are accused of involvement in the slayings of political opponents, according to documents from prosecutors seen by The Associated Press.
The arrests of Ieng Sary and his wife had been widely anticipated, as they were believed to be two of five unnamed suspects earlier listed by tribunal prosecutors.
Two others have already been taken into custody.
Police detained the couple at their Phnom Penh residence at dawn. Officers later brought them “smoothly“ to tribunal offices, where they were to make an initial appearance before the judges later Monday, said Reach Sambath, a tribunal spokesman.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Nov. 12--King Albert laid a wreath Sunday at the Monument to the Unknown Soldier while thousands flocked to the site of one of bloodiest battles of World War I in western Belgium to mark the anniversary of the war’s end.
Ceremonies across Britain, France and Belgium were held on Armistice Day to commemorate the end of the war on Nov. 11, 1918, reported AP.
In western Belgium, officials expected more than 10,000 visitors to the 150 war cemeteries dotting Flanders Fields.
Experts believe 100,000 soldiers remain unaccounted for 90 years after the end of one of the bloodiest fights, the Battle of Passchendaele, which ended with the capture of a small village church and left 500,000 soldiers from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand dead, wounded or missing.
“There are 100,000 bodies in the ground still to be found,“ said Franky Bostyn, curator of the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917. “Every year, 40 to 50 are officially declared, or found.“
Over the weekend, thousands made the pilgrimage to Passchendaele to pay tribute to those who died during the 1917 battle, which pitted British-led forces from across the British empire, including soldiers from Canada and other former colonies, against Germany.
Jim Prentice, Canada’s industry minister, and his wife, Karen, led a Canadian tribute to the tiny village.
Prentice honored his great uncle, Pvt. Roy Urquhart, who fought and died during the opening hours of the Canadian offensive on Oct. 26, 1917, which led to the end of the battle. At the end, only 8 kilometers (5 miles) of land had been gained but the battle helped end the war by depleting German troop and machinery reserves.

TOKYO, Nov. 12--A Japanese parliamentary committee voted Monday to resume support for the US-led “war on terror,“ setting the stage for a fresh showdown with the opposition.
The naval mission providing fuel to coalition forces in Afghanistan ended on November 1 because of objections by the opposition, which controls the upper house of parliament and argues Japan should not be part of “American wars.“
But a committee in the lower house, where Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s coalition enjoys an overwhelming majority, passed a bill to redeploy the ships in the Indian Ocean for one year, reported AFP.
The full lower house is expected to approve the measure Tuesday and send it to the upper house, where the opposition is likely to use its power to reject it.
“I hope the legislation will be approved so that Japanese warships can resume the Indian Ocean mission,“ Fukuda said in the lower house committee.
“Both sides need to make efforts to resolve the differences in opinion,“ he said.
The lower house can override a rejection by the upper house, but the opposition has threatened a censure motion against Fukuda’s government if it resorts to such drastic measures.
Fukuda’s Liberal Democratic Party in turn has warned the opposition, which has recently been in disarray, of a snap general election if it pushes through a censure motion.
The main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has said the censure motion would be for “breaching the will of the people.“
“We will decide whether or not we will present the censure motion to the upper house after assessing which view the people consider right--our view or the view of the government and the ruling party,“ DJP secretary general Yukio Hatoyama said in television panel discussion Sunday.

A Palestinian toddler holds up a lit candle in his house after the electricity supply was cut off in his area of Gaza City, Aug. 17.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Nov. 12--Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed on Sunday to press ahead with cuts to the power supply to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip despite legal moves to stop them.
“The electricity supply to the Gaza Strip will be limited,“ a senior government official quoted Barak as saying during the weekly meeting of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s cabinet, AFP reported.
“The electricity cutbacks will be established soon and will be included in a series of sanctions Israel is imposing on the Hamas government,“ the former premier said.
Israel last month began reducing fuel supplies to Gaza after declaring the impoverished territory a “hostile entity“ following Hamas’s takeover of the territory in June and the nearly daily rocket fire against southern Israel.
But Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered a halt to the power cuts on October 29 pending a full assessment of the likely humanitarian consequences on the population of the impoverished Gaza Strip.
Human rights groups have also appealed to the supreme court charging that the threatened cuts constitute collective punishment of the territory’s civilian population in violation of international law.
Barak, nevertheless, vowed to push on with the punitive measures.
“The goal of the sanctions is to weaken the Hamas government and limit its ability to provide services to the civil population,“ he said on Sunday.
The minister said that the defense establishment was considering placing devices on power lines between the Israel and Gaza “that will limit the supply of electricity but not completely cut it,“ the official said.
Israel supplies some 70 percent of Gaza’s electricity, with the rest being provided by Egypt and local power plants, an Israeli security source told AFP.
The threatened cuts have been criticized by the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.