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NEW DELHI: India’s foreign secretary will travel to Pakistan
Monday to kick-start the stagnant peace process, marking the
government’s first contact with the new civilian leadership,
officials said. Shivshankar Menon is to meet his Pakistani
counterpart Salman Bashir on Tuesday for a review of the four rounds
of talks between the two nuclear-armed rivals since January 2004,
diplomats said. The talks will focus on “terrorism, levels of
infiltration” by Islamic rebels into India and ways to build on
the peace process.
--AFP
KUALA LUMPUR: Former Malaysian premier Mahathir
Mohamad quit the ruling party United Malays National Organization (UMNO)
Monday in protest over embattled Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi’s refusal to step down despite March elections that
produced the worst results in the history of UMNO. Mahathir ruled
Malaysia for 22 years until 2003 when he picked Abdullah as his
successor. Within months the two had fallen out and Mahathir began
accusing him of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement.
--AFP
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistani Taliban militants
Monday said a weekend suicide attack that killed 13 people was
carried out in revenge for a suspected US missile strike on a rebel
hideout. The bomber struck near an army base in the northwestern
city of Mardan on Sunday. The Pakistani military has accused US-led
coalition forces based in Afghanistan of launching the missile from
a pilotless drone and lodged a complaint over the violation of its
territorial sovereignty.
--AFP
TIKRIT, Iraq: Iraqi security forces captured a
senior al-Qaeda leader in Salahudin province, a provincial security
source said on Monday. On Sunday night, Iraqi security forces raided
the al-Qadsiyah neighborhood in the capital city of Tikrit and
detained Abdul Khaliq Awad al-Sab’awi, leader of al-Qaeda military
operations in the northern Nineveh province, said the source, who
refused to be named.
--Xinhua
HANOI: A made-in-Vietnam bird flu (H5N1)
vaccine conducted on 30 volunteers on a trial basis has initially
shown its effectiveness and safety, local newspaper Vietnam News
reported. “We can say that the vaccine seems safe, because there
is nobody who was in shock for 28 days following the first
injection,” said Doan Huy Hau, head of the Military Epidemiology
Department under Vietnam’s Military Medical Institute. The vaccine
was developed from monkey kidney cells and was produced by the
Vaccine and Biotechnology Products Company.
--Xinhua
BAGHDAD: A major Sunni party, headed by
Iraq’s vice president, on Monday demanded tough government action
against a US soldier who fired bullets into the Koran, the Muslim
holy book, on May 11 during shooting practice. The desecration was
also strongly condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, which
claims to represent more than 3,000 mosques, and which held both the
US military and Iraqi government responsible. US military
authorities in Iraq have apologized to the local community west of
Baghdad.
--AFP
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