Daily Excelsior... World

Aides say Arafat recovering and in charge

CLAMART, FRANCE, Nov 1: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is gradually recovering from serious illness after a weekend of treatment and tests at a French military hospital, Palestinian officials said today.

French medical sources are more cautious, saying nothing can be ruled out until doctors release the results of the tests, which will determine the length of Arafat’s stay in the hospital southwest of Paris.

Palestinian officials met in Ramallah in his absence yesterday and pledged to ensure order. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to remain tough and said long-time foe Arafat would remain barred from the holy city of Jerusalem, even in death.

Arafat’s aides have been keen to show that the 75-year-old Palestinian leader is in command since he was rushed from his shell-battered compound in Ramallah to France on Friday with severe stomach pains and what his doctors said could be leukaemia.

"He is recovering gradually. He is in very good care and (having good) treatment from our friends in France and therefore we thank France for all the attention they gave to Mr Arafat," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said in Ramallah.

"I had a telephone call this morning with the brothers in Paris and they told me that his health is better," Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said. "He’s recovered the normal colour of his face... There is progress every day."

Palestinian official Mohammad Rashid told reporters Arafat got out of bed yesterday morning, joked with medics, read the Koran for the first time in 10 days and made some phone calls. He was taking food and no longer vomiting.

Aides say Arafat recovering and in charge

Aides said yesterday the medical tests had ruled out any life-threatening illness and that the focus had turned to a possible viral infection or other ailment. They said doctors were happy because his condition was stable.

But much will depend on what the French doctors say. They are not expected to announce their findings until Wednesday.

A small group of Palestinians lit candles last night and kept a vigil outside the hospital in the suburb of Clamart.

Aides say Arafat, who has for decades symbolised the conflict with Israel for a Palestinian state, remains in charge.

Arafat has temporarily delegated his powers to two men — Qurie and Mahmoud Abbas, his number two in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Qurie and Abbas chaired a Sunday meeting of the Palestinian National Security Council, and there was a special two-hour session of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Arafat was accompanied to the hospital by his wife Suha. He is due to be joined on Wednesday by his daughter Zahwa, aged 9.

In Jerusalem, Sharon told his cabinet yesterday Israel would not retreat from its tough military action against Palestinian militants and said he would reject any request to bury Arafat in Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital.

"As long as I am here — and I have no intention of leaving soon — Arafat will not be buried in Jerusalem," a Government official quoted Sharon as saying.

The Palestinian President, in effect confined to his offices by Israeli forces for the past 2-1/2 years, agreed to fly to france only after Israel promised to allow him to return to the West Bank after treatment.

Israel accuses arafat of fomenting violence in an uprising that began in 2000 and plans to quit the Gaza Strip unilaterally next year, saying it has no Palestinian peace partner as long as he is in power. Arafat denies encouraging bloodshed. (AGENCIES)

Bush, Kerry target key states ahead of tomorrow’s election

WASHINGTON, Nov 1: Unleashing the most aggressive voter-mobilisation drives in the history of US Presidential politics, incumbent George W Bush and his challenger John Kerry criss-crossed through the crucial battlegrounds of Florida and Ohio wooing potential voters in a final bid to tilt the balance in their favour in tomorrow’s elections.

The two campaigns will contact millions of Americans — many of them more than once — in the final hours of the campaign and then track their movements throughout election day to ensure they have gone to the polls.

The unprecedented efforts underscore the conviction of officials in both campaigns that with the race so close in so many states, the key to victory depends more than in any recent campaign on their ability to win the battle of the streets, ‘The Washington Post’ reported.

Addressing a series of campaign rallies, both leaders promised Americans to keep their homeland safe.

Kerry promised that if elected he would undertake an unprecedented "flurry of activity" to protect national security that would include quick cabinet appointments.

"I am going to make America safer and I have some very strong and real steps to take quite immediately to make that happen," Kerry was quoted as saying by the US media.

Bush said "if you believe America should fight the war on terror with all her might and lead with unwavering confidence, I ask you come stand by me".

Both the parties had lined up armies of volunteers in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico to woo as many voters as possible.

In Ohio, democrats said they had 27,000 people working phone banks and made 399,446 calls over the weekend. A Bush campaign official said they were contacting 400,000 people a day in Ohio as well. In Pennsylvania, the Bush campaign planned to contact 2 million voters till election day.

The weekend campaign blitz represented the culmination of many months of preparation by the campaign managers, which along with their outside allies will spend more than 300 million dollars targeting and turning out their voters, the report said.

Bush’s budget for voter mobilization is about 125 million dollars, at least triple that of four years ago, a knowledgeable official said. Kerry’s field operation, run out of the democratic national committee, will spend nearly 60 million dollars, more than doubling what the democrats spent in 2000, campaign officials said.

With passions running high, the campaigns have tapped volunteers with no previous involvement in politics to supplement campaign veterans. In Wisconsin, Union Foremen from Atlanta are working out of a storefront office in appleton. In Iowa, Kathleen Jorgensen, 37, a mother of two, has spent hours of her weekends going door to door. In Florida, Wallace Klussman, one of 1,500 members of the Texas strike force that has fanned out to the battlegrounds, spent the weekend canvassing for Bush.

Bush-Cheney Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman said yesterday that republicans built their operation on the belief that neighbour-to-neighbour or colleague-to-colleague contact is far more persuasive than relying on paid canvassers who have no personal connections to the voters they are wooing.

Republicans built their ground operation on the successful mobilization plan of 2002. (PTI)

Iraq hostage killing reopens Japan debate on troops

TOKYO, Nov 1: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appeared today to have won public backing for his refusal to pull Japanese troops out of Iraq despite the weekend beheading of a Japanese hostage.

But the killing of 24-year-old backpacker Shosei Koda has re-ignited debate over whether Tokyo should extend the troops’ mission when their mandate expires in December.

Japanese officials confirmed yesterday that the body and severed head of a man found in Baghdad was that of Koda.

Koda, the fifth Japanese to be killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led war, had been captured by a militant group led Byal Qaeda ally Abu-musab-al-Zarqawi, which had said it would behead him if Japan did not pull out its troops.

Yesterday Koizumi condemned the killing as a despicable act of terrorism and vowed to keep Japan’s troops in the country.

Mainstream media backed his refusal to meet the captors’demands.

"We cannot cave in to threats," said the liberal Asahi newspaper in an editorial. "A life was at stake, but this decision was inevitable."

Immediate political fallout from the killing was likely to be limited since many japanese had blamed Koda for putting himself at risk. Today, however, some people tempered their criticism.

"When I think of his mother’s pain, there’s nothing I can say," said a woman heading for work in central Tokyo.

Koda’s body was expected to be transferred from Baghdad to a US military base in Kuwait on Monday and arrive in Japan on Wednesday at the earliest, media said.

Koizumi, a close ally of US President George W Bush, sent the troops to Iraq on the mission — their riskiest since World War Two — despite opposition from most voters. Some critics say the mission violates Japan’s Pacifist constitution.

Japan has sent about 550 troops to Samawa, some 270 km (170 miles) south of Baghdad, to help rebuild the region, but their activities have been restricted by deteriorating security.

"We have to be fully on alert over security (in Samawa)," Koizumi told reporters on Monday. "The people of Samawa welcome (our troops’ activities)."

Under the law allowing Japanese troops to be sent to Iraq, the soldiers can operate only in a "non-combat zone", a concept critics have said from the start was meaningless in Iraq.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a news conference that the Government was looking into reports of an explosion near the camp in Samawa.

A dud rocket shell landed in the camp on Oct 22 and Kyodo said on Monday that another shell might have been lobbed into the facility. The defence ministry had no information on the report. Japan’s main opposition democratic party called on Sunday for the soldiers to be brought home when their mandate expired, a position already supported by nearly two-thirds of Japanese voters in a poll taken before the hostage crisis.

"I think it was a mistake for Japan to send troops. If Japan had not been involved, this (the killing of Koda) would not have happened," said 29-year-old nursing care worker Kaori Kamiyama.

"I am against the extension. The mission was unconstitutional in the first place," she added.

Retired Sadao Kato, 68, disagreed.

"The Government did what it could. It’s a matter of common sense that you shouldn’t go to dangerous places," said Kato.

"We need the self-defence forces to continue what they have been doing. I am a great supporter of the mission." (AGENCIES)

Uruguay’s Left celebrates first Presidential win

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY, Nov 1: Uruguay’s left celebrated its first Presidential victory into the wee hours today while partial election returns indicated Tabare Vazquez would win and his main challengers conceded on exit poll results.

With half of the votes tallied, the charismatic 64-year-old doctor was just short of the 50 percent needed to win in first-round balloting yesterday. But he should surpass that level when more votes come in from the capital Montevideo, his stronghold and home to half of the country’s voters.

Backed by encouraging exit polls and projections, Vazquez declared himself winner a few hours after compulsory voting ended in the nation of 3.4 million.

"We will begin to work in the morning on the political transition because there is no time to lose," Vazquez told supporters who embraced his platform of wider distribution of wealth and social justice in the aftermath of uruguay’s worst economic crisis.

By electing Vezquez, Uruguay joins the ranks of south American nations — Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela —which have chosen left-leaning leaders on platforms of poverty alleviation after a decade of US-backed free-market policies that often ended in economic chaos.

Vazquez’s broad front coalition — including socialists, communists, social democrats and a hugely popular former guerrilla movement — was also headed toward majorities in both houses of Congress.

"I think this is the beginning of a cycle of the left in power for 10 years or more," said political scientist Gustavo De Armas.

Young Uruguayans who saw their career options evaporate in recent years reveled late into the night on Montevideo’s main avenue, singing "you see, tabare is now President."

The election marked a radical departure from the last 170 years of rule by the the two traditional parties, the Colorados and Blancos, blamed for aggravating the 1999-2003 crisis and destroying social benefits envied by the rest of latin America.

Center-right national party or Blanco candidate Jorge Larranaga had 38 percent of the vote, while Guillermo Stirling of the centrist ruling Colorado party trailed with 11 percent. Both conceded and ruled out a runoff.

Uruguay’s economy is growing again, but the recession left one-third of Uruguayans below the poverty line and forced 100,000 mostly young people to emigrate.

Vazquez has been careful to point out that only the poorest of the poor, some 100,000, are likely to benefit from social programs at the outset of his five-year mandate because of lack of public funds.

"Tabare will probably need two years to create jobs. I hope to get a factory job," said Fabiana Carretto, 37, an unemployed single mother of three.

The new Government is hoping for fresh investment to rebuild industry in addition to ranching and banking. Taking a page from the book of the market-friendly leftist Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, Vazquez has told investors there will be no upheaval and Uruguay will honor its 11 billion in foreign debt.

"The cornerstone to reducing our vulnerability is growth. There is no other way," said Danilo Astori, a market favorite who Vazquez tapped for Economy Minister in his cabinet.

Vazquez will be sworn in on March 1.

(AGENCIES)

Several dead in ethnic clashes in China: Resident

BEIJING, Nov 1: Several people were killed and houses were set on fire in clashes in central China betweenminority Muslims and members of the Han community sparked by the death of a girl in a traffic accident, a resident said.

Martial law had been imposed in the wake of the violence, an official said. The official said he had not heard of any deaths but many people had been injured.

The clash in the Central province of Henan started when a taxi driver from the Hui Muslim ethnic group struck and killed a girl from the majority Han Chinese community with his car, leading to fighting in several villages, the resident said.

"People were so afraid. No one dared to go to work or go outside. Even the transportation has been stopped," said Theresident of a Han village involved in the clash who declined to give her name.

She said at least one person in her village had been killed in the fighting, and she had heard at least several others were dead.

Houses in her village had been burned, and she said the fighting had escalated when Hui villagers from outside the area were trucked in to join in the fighting.

The situation was now calm, with armed police patrolling the area.

Officials denied a report in the New York Times that 150 people had been killed.

"I haven’t heard there’s been any deaths, but the number of the injured is big," said an official in the nearby city of Kaifeng.

Martial law was still in force, said the official, who also confirmed that Hui farmers had travelled to the scene to help Hui villagers.

An official with the Zhengzhou public security bureau declined to comment saying such issues were national secrets until the case was wrapped up.

Clashes between Hui and Han people are not common but riots in rural areas have been increasing, although authorities are usually quick to quash dissent and preserve stability. (AGENCIES)

N Korea says US talks approach is crafty trick

SEOUL, Nov 1: North Korea brushed aside today Washington’s suggestion that Pyongyang had much to gain from returning to talks on its nuclear programmes, saying the US approach was a "crafty trick" to win Presidential election votes.

North Korea has held three rounds of talks on its atomic ambitions with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States but has ruled out fresh talks despite appeals from the other participants to come to the table.

Last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the region. A South Korean Government spokesman in Seoul quoted him as saying North Korea could expect "to get a lot of things" if it rejoined the talks.

"The Bush group’s claim that the DPRK will gain much for coming out to the six-party talks does not reflect its intention to lead the talks to any solution to the problem but is nothing but a crafty trick to attain sinister political and military purposes by employing a delaying tactics," said Rodong Sinmun, the main North Korean newspaper.

DPRK is short for the north’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In comments reported by the north’s official KCNA news agency, Rodong Sinmun said the US aim was to give the impression it had tried everything to encourage North Korea and thus win votes in Tuesday’s Presidential election.

"If the US truly wishes a solution to the nuclear issue through the six-party talks and peace on the Korean peninsula it should drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK and set forth a realistic alternative proposal," the newspaper said.

That was a nod to China and South Korea’s suggestions last week to Powell to consult with allies and come up with what South Korean Foreign Minister Ban-ki-Moon said should be a "creative and realistic proposal" to entice the north back to negotiations.

Pyongyang rejected a June 23 US proposal for a three-month freeze of North Korean nuclear programmes and the north’s agreement to verifiable measures to dismantle those programmes in exchange for US security guarantees and fuel oil from South Korea and Japan.

North Korea says it wants aid in return for a freeze.

Washington suspects North Korea is holding back from restarting the talks to see who wins the election, President George W Bush or democratic challenger John Kerry. The north denies this. (AGENCIES)

British teens sought over riverside murder

LONDON, Nov 1: London police today were searching for two teenagers who carried out a series of "violent and random" attacks on people in a popular entertainment area, which ended in the beating to death of one victim.

The assaults occurred within a 15-minute period early on Saturday on London’s south bank, a popular destination for theatres, restaurants and nightspots along the river Thames.

David Morley, a 37-year-old Barman from west London, was beaten by youths who attacked him and a friend as they walked alongside the river at about 3:30 a.m, the metropolitan police said.

Morley was taken to hospital where he died. An autopsy concluded he died of multiple injuries to his head and torso.

Police said the beatings were preceded minutes earlier by two separate attacks close by.

In the first, a man was struck on the head as he sat on a bench near the London eye. Ten minutes later, two men were attacked between Hungerford and Westminster Bridge, police said.

All three men received minor injuries.

Witnesses also reported seeing a woman punched in the face by a small group of attackers.

Police said they were searching for two teenagers, one white and one black, who were accompanied by two young women.

Some victims had items stolen from them, police said.

"The attacks were violent, random and apparently motiveless," said detective Chief Inspector Nick Scola, who is leading the murder inquiry.

Police urged any witnesses or other victims to contact them. (AGENCIES)