Pakistanis prepare to cast ballot at a polling station in Rawalpindi on February 18.

Pakistanis began voting Monday for a new parliament in elections shadowed by fears of violence and questions about the political survival of President Pervez Musharraf--America’s key ally in the war on terror.
Musharraf was re-elected last October to a new five-year term, but the retired general faces growing public anger over his moves last year to declare emergency rule, purge the judiciary and curb independent media.
The parliamentary elections are broadly seen as a referendum on his eight years of rule--including his alliance with the United States that many Pakistanis oppose. An overwhelming victory by the opposition would leave Musharraf politically vulnerable, even at risk of impeachment.
The parliamentary polls were delayed after the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a suicide attack in December, and they cap a year of political turmoil and bloodshed in the nuclear-armed Islamic republic.
The vote is intended to complete a transition to civilian rule about eight years after Musharraf seized power in a coup, but analysts say it is more likely to spark fresh unrest if the opposition claim widespread fraud.
Voting in major cities began slowly after polling stations opened at 8:00 am with 81 million people eligible to vote. They are due to close at 5:00 pm, with the first results at about 10:30 pm.
Public opinion surveys have suggested that if the vote is fair, the Pakistan People’s Party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will finish first, followed by another opposition party led by ex-premier Nawaz Sharif.
The pro-Musharraf party--the Pakistani Muslim League-Q--is trailing a distant third, according to the surveys.
Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 military coup, warned Sunday that if the results are rigged, the opposition will launch a nationwide protest movement “from which those rigging it will not be able to escape.“
For his part, Musharraf has warned he would not tolerate protests by disappointed opposition parties after the election. That could set the stage for a dangerous confrontation in this nuclear-armed nation.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Feb. 18--A key conference on cluster bombs began in Wellington Monday with more than 100 countries expected to decide whether to formally back a treaty banning the controversial weapons.
The five-day conference is one of a series held as part of a Norwegian initiative launched in February last year which is set to culminate with the adoption of a treaty in Dublin in May, AFP reported.
Some 83 nations have voiced their support for the move, but key countries such as China, Russia and the United States--the main manufacturers of the munitions--remain opposed to an outright ban.
Cluster bombs are especially deadly since they contain smaller bomblets which scatter over a wide area and which sometimes explode only decades after a conflict has ended, killing and maiming civilians.
The conference has been organized by the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a global network of 200 civil society organizations including leaders from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
“After a year of remarkable progress to save lives, this is the moment of truth when countries must show their resolve and commit to negotiate the new treaty,“ the coalition’s coordinator, Thomas Nash, told the conference.
Protecting civilians is a key element of the treaty, New Zealand’s Defense Minister Phil Goff said in an address to the opening session.
“The challenge before us is to build agreement among a sufficient mass of countries, including those who possess cluster munitions, to form a legally binding treaty to stop unacceptable harm to civilians,“ he said.
More than 500 delegates from 122 states were represented at the conference, up from 46 nations represented in Oslo a year ago, he said.
New Zealand is one of six governments leading the Oslo process, along with Austria, Ireland, Mexico, Norway and Peru.
The CMC said France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have been exerting diplomatic pressure to weaken the draft treaty by excluding certain weapons, including a transition period and allowing the use of cluster bombs in joint military operations with countries that don’t sign the treaty.

The Kuwaiti daily ’Alrai’ in its latest edition noted that those who assassinated the top Hezbollah commander, Imad Mughniyeh were aware of the meeting between Palestinian leaders and the Lebanese Hezbollah leaders. That is how the Zionists and the Americans succeeded in assassinating Mughniyeh in a car bombing last week.
According to the daily, the Zionist regime, the US and intelligence network of a certain Arab country neighboring Syria jointly worked for Mughniyeh’s assassination.
Meanwhile, the Syrian authorities have detained Arab suspects to interrogate them in connection with the murder in Damascus of a top Hezbollah commander, the pro-government Al Watan newspaper reported yesterday.
“Suspects of various Arab nationalities have been arrested,“ the newspaper said quoting what it described as a well-informed source. “Syria will announce the results of the investigations when the probe is over,“ it added.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the murder but the Zionist regime denied any involvement.
Mughniyeh was on the most wanted list of Israel and the United States for a string of bloody attacks in the 1980s and 1990s that targeted the interests of both countries at a regional and an international level. “He eluded capture after having plastic surgery,“ Western intelligence services have claimed.

A Kosovar waves an Albanian flag as celebrates the independence of Kosovo in the capital Pristina on February 17.

PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb. 18--Kosovo looked forward on Monday to recognition by the Western powers who went to war to save its Albanian majority, but Russia served notice the new state will never be forced on its Serb allies in the territory.
Fireworks brought to a close a day of celebration in the Kosovo capital Pristina, where parliament adopted a declaration of independence from Serbia and proclaimed the new Republic of Kosovo a sovereign state, Reuters reported.
Kosovo’s 2 million Albanians were left guessing which country would be first to recognize the sixth state to be carved from Serb-dominated former Yugoslavia, closing a long chapter in its bloody demise.
European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday to discuss Kosovo’s secession. Swift recognition is expected from Britain, Germany, France and Italy as well as the United States.
Proposing the independence declaration to parliament, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said Kosovo would be a country of “all its citizens,“ a gesture to the 120,000 Serbs still living here.
But Serbia and Russia swept that aside.
“We’ll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence,“ Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said ahead of an emergency session of the UN Security Council, called by Moscow.
Serbs in Kosovo, led by the Serb-dominated north and with the full backing of Belgrade, reject the territory’s secession, reinforcing an ethnic partition that NATO and the United Nations have failed to erase since the 1998-99 war.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Feb. 18--Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the Israeli army had a “free hand“ to target anyone in the Gaza Strip, particularly ruling Hamas Islamists, to bring an end to cross-border rocket fire at the Zionist regime.
Olmert also said the goal of peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to reach an understanding on “basic principles“ for a Palestinian state by the end of 2008, rather than a full-fledged agreement, AFP said.
Olmert said Abbas had agreed to postpone talks on the future of Beit-ul-Moqaddas until the end of the negotiating process, a move that could anger Palestinians but help Olmert hold together his fragile coalition government for now.
“I don’t know if we will be able to reach an understanding with the Palestinians.
I hope we will. We’ll do everything in our power to.
we will not start with the issue which is the most difficult,“ Olmert said of Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
Israel asserts that it can maintain parallel tracks with the Palestinians, one aimed at reaching a statehood agreement with Abbas and the other at breaking Hamas’s hold on the Gaza Strip.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Feb. 18--Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the Israeli army had a “free hand“ to target anyone in the Gaza Strip, particularly ruling Hamas Islamists, to bring an end to cross-border rocket fire at the Zionist regime.
Olmert also said the goal of peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to reach an understanding on “basic principles“ for a Palestinian state by the end of 2008, rather than a full-fledged agreement, AFP said.
Olmert said Abbas had agreed to postpone talks on the future of Beit-ul-Moqaddas until the end of the negotiating process, a move that could anger Palestinians but help Olmert hold together his fragile coalition government for now.
“I don’t know if we will be able to reach an understanding with the Palestinians.
I hope we will. We’ll do everything in our power to.
we will not start with the issue which is the most difficult,“ Olmert said of Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
Israel asserts that it can maintain parallel tracks with the Palestinians, one aimed at reaching a statehood agreement with Abbas and the other at breaking Hamas’s hold on the Gaza Strip.

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France, Feb. 18--French police arrested at least 33 people in a major pre-dawn operation Monday north of Paris, targeting the suspected ringleaders of riots last year.
Nearly 1,000 elite forces took part in the operation in and around Villiers-le-Bel, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital, said sources close to the investigation, AFP said.
Police initially spoke of 17 arrests but later raised the number to 33.
Violence flared up in the area in late November after two teenagers died in a motorbike crash with a police car.
During three nights of the worst rioting, some officers were hit by gunfire and the clashes left 119 police officers injured, five of them seriously, according to justice ministry figures.
In December, police handed out leaflets in the area calling for witnesses to the shots fired.
The leaflets offered rewards of up to several thousand euros for information and said sources could remain anonymous.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said immediately after the riots that everything would be done to find those responsible for the attacks.
“That cannot rest unpunished, it is an absolute priority,“ he said.
Tensions have run high in France’s high-immigration suburbs since the country’s worst civil unrest in decades in 2005.